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Haley Rice on playing Nell and Maria

1/26/2015

What characters are you playing and how would you describe them to someone?
I’m playing Nell, who would be your sexy, nosy best friend whom you love because she cracks you up and will hold your hair for you if you get sick at the club. Nell has a heart of gold, but will put you in your place in a hurry. She’s also a necessary gold-digger and, how shall I say, has a sex positive view of things? I’m also playing Maria. Maria is your disapproving grandma. Oh, Maria knows what you’re up to- sometimes before you know. She’s worried that you’ll catch a cold, or that you’re not eating enough, but you’d better not try to pull anything over on her, because she will put a guilt trip on you that will take years to recover from.

Is there anything about playing this role that intimidates you?
Starting a show with a monologue to the audience is jitter-inducing, but it’s also kind of fun. Just the technicality of show is intimidating to me - costume changes, timing, remembering who you are next when you come through the door. Even though I play several characters, I think I have the easiest changes. Poor John has all the difficult changes. He’s going to need some Gatorade and a towel for this show. And dear Chris almost never leaves the stage . . .

What is your favorite line in the show? Why?
I have so many favorites! I absolutely love Lady Davenant’s speech. It cracks me up every time, especially when she talks about idle actors getting into trouble and making mischief. I do love the line “I wouldn’t give a rat’s balls for three of you.” Coming from the South, I am fond of colorful and descriptive language. I may have to work this salty sentence into my repertoire somehow . . . .

Is there anything about your character that you can relate to?
Nell is fabulous. I absolutely identify with her directness and openness, though she has both of those qualities in quantities I couldn’t even imagine possessing. She’s also funny and witty, which I can be on occasion, given the right combination of caffeine and subject matter.

Why should someone come to see this show?
It’s a hoot! It’s really unlike any show I’ve ever done or seen before in that it combines sexy farce with wit and history. It’s funny, but there’s some beautiful poetic moments. It’s a bit bawdy, but it’s also historically interesting. Also, there’s kissing and cross-dressing. And it’s only 90 minutes, which is the perfect length of time for a farce.

Chris Caswell on playing Aphra Behn

1/21/2015

Chris Caswell

What character(s) are you playing and how would you describe them to someone?
I'm playing Aphra Behn. She was the first professional female playwright. She was also a spy, a libertine, and according to an early biographer and friend (who identifies herself only as "One of the Fair Sex"),

"She [Aphra] was of generous and open temper, something passionate, very serviceable to her friends in all that was in her power; and could sooner forgive an injury than do one. She had wit, honour, good humour, and judgment. She was mistress of all the pleasing arts of conversation, but used 'em not to any but those who love plain-dealing. She was a woman of sense, and by consequence a lover of pleasure."

Is there anything about your character that you can relate to?
Yes. When I first read the play, I was puzzled by Liz Duffy Adams' note about time. She writes, "The play is set in the Restoration period, but plays off the echos between the late 1660s, the late 1960s, and the present." I kept thinking, OK, I get why the Restoration would be compared to the 1960s, but why to now? Then I read an interview with Adams for Women's Project Theater (http://wptheater.org/wps-interview-with-playwright-liz-duffy-adams/) in which she says,

"I wrote Or, before President Obama was elected (during the primaries, actually). But I think I wrote it out of the same hopeful longing that millions were feeling, that helped elect him; hope does echo at this moment in history. I was tired of writing out of the anger, outrage and grief that the last few years brought us. I was dreaming of a new era: rational, enlightened, expansive. I was thinking about the cyclical nature of history, and wondering if the wheel was going to turn again."

And I understood. My own journal entry on the day we elected Obama was unabashedly hopeful -- a sort of general reflection on possibility. I don’t mean to make this political or to alienate anyone. It doesn’t have to be about Obama necessarily, or Kennedy, or Charles II. But it is about sharing a symbolic moment in history where society seems to shift overnight, and you suddenly feel liberated both personally and collectively.

I love that this play takes the risk in this cynical world to be optimistic. And I strive to shed my own skepticism enough to play Aphra Behn hopefully.

Is there anything about playing this role that intimidates you? Why?
There is so much about playing this role that intimidates me, but I’m going to answer this lightly with a confession. I'd rather play the comic relief character than the straight man. It's not that I like comic characters better necessarily; it's just that I have a lot of trouble not laughing when a fellow actor is being hilarious. It's really, really difficult for me to look someone in the eye who is doing something brilliantly silly and ridiculous and pretend to be anything but tickled by what they're doing. Such is the case many times over in this play. Aphra may be stunned or incredulous or annoyed by these characters, but Chris just wants to burst out laughing and hug them. Please wish me luck!

What would you like the audience to be thinking about after the show?
Well, there's a lot of kissing in the show. So, in addition to all the heady conversation we hope OR, will raise (e.g. Why isn't Aphra Behn or Nell Gwynne a household name? Is freedom only possible under an enlightened leader? How does the structure of the plot support the theme?), I think audiences may also be wondering how many breath mints and sticks of lip balm we've gone through.

Why should someone come to see this show?
Because it's a whole lot fun! Whether you're looking for crazy characters, or action, or sex, or love, or laughs, or intrigue, or a real darkness based on the circumstances of the day, or a fast-paced, madcap show, you shall have it! (And, my personal favorite: it’s written by a woman, directed by a woman, and about amazing women.)

Unmasking the Origins of Or,

1/13/2015

Playwright Liz Duffy Adams Reflects
By Danielle Girard

playwright Liz Duffy Adams

Ever heard of Aphra Behn—the first professional female playwright who was also a spy? Most people haven’t. Even Liz Duffy Adams, playwright of Or,, a self-professed lover of Restoration Drama who received her Masters in Playwriting from the Yale School of Drama didn’t learn about Aphra Behn until after she graduated. There was no mention of Behn in Adams’ year-long dramatic literature survey course at Yale; no exposure to the playwright’s successful, but largely overlooked, work.

“Some years ago a friend asked me to write a verse prologue for her production of The Rover. I’d never read or seen Behn so I read several of her plays and biography and, of course, began to find her extraordinarily interesting,” says Adams.

As Adams explains it, Aphra Behn came from a modest background, but formed bonds with the aristocratic family for which her mother served as a wet nurse. Behn educated herself by using their extensive library and later developed connections that would land her a job spying for the English crown in the 1660s. Her life, by modern day standards, was certainly unique. She was widowed in 1667, ended up in debtor’s prison during her espionage career, and wrote over a dozen successful plays, as well as verse and fiction.

“She’s such an exciting person. When you do any research about her, I mean—there was no place in that society, that culture, at that time for her, and she created a place for herself,” Adams went on to say.

Writing the prologue for her friend’s production of The Rover sparked Adams’ desire to explore Behn through writing. She wrote a 10-minute rhyming couplet play, Aphra Does Antwerp, about Behn for a festival in 2001, and for years since has been trying to find an entry point for a full-length play.

The opportunity came in 2008 with a New Dramatists play workshop in New York. The playwright spent two weeks feverishly writing Or, in a tiny attic room—where August Wilson used to write—and workshopping the play with actors. “I used Aphra’s work as a jumping off point and inspiration,” explains Adams, “without aiming at a pastiche or copy.” She also tried to avoid writing “a stodgy, old-fashioned biopic type play. I wanted it to be a play of our time.” The resulting farce mixes modern and classic, prose and verse. It is full of gender bending, intrigue, and mad-cap antics—elements of Restoration Comedy that are equally hilarious today.

Or, captures Behn on the cusp of the transition between her life as a spy and as a playwright, two realms—theatre and espionage—which Adams believes have much in common.

“There’s a lot of things having to do with masking and disguise; masking and revelation; hiding and revealing and negotiating as she had to in a world in which it was very brave to be yourself,” elaborates Adams. “And this is something I think we’re all kind of familiar with too, in our own ways.”

These timeless themes inspired Adams to use Or, to draw thematic parallels between the 1660s, the 1960s (the era of her childhood), and present day. “I’m interested in writing historical plays because I’m interested in the cyclical view of history, the way that things keep coming around over and over and over again and the parallels that exist between eras—the ways in which they’re the same and the ways in which they’re different,” explains Adams. In Or, these thematic parallels often manifest themselves in the notion of freedom: personal freedom, sexual freedom, political freedom, and freedom of ideas.

Or, serves as a break from Adams’ traditional body of work. “My previous work has been largely in the realm of science fiction, however unlikely a theatrical genre that may be: post-apocalyptic settings,” says Adams. “I have noticed that there is a through line through all my work. It seems that the one thing that makes it possible for me to write a play is when it is, on some level, about recreating civilization after or during catastrophe. Whether that’s a destroyed, embittered London, like in Or, or a post-apocalyptic world.”

Adams is intrigued by the sense of renewal that arises with the recreation of a civilization after destruction. She explores the existence of a “subculture that can look incredibly naïve, but is exactly what gives us hope” in such times. Adams explains that the characters of Or, are perfect examples of “a subculture of artists and thinkers and people who actually, as Elvis Costello sang, want to know ‘What’s so funny ‘bout peace, love and understanding?’”

Adams hopes that Or, offers an exciting and fun evening of entertainment that provides audiences with a dose of hope and joy. “I think people sometimes strangely underestimate audiences and think they need to be jolted,” stresses Adams. “I want them to feel awake, the way I want to feel awake when I’m in the theatre, thinking and feeling. And I hope I’ve helped to create an environment for that kind of experience.”

Reprinted with permission from Seattle Repertory Theatre.

Sarah Carleton on Directing "OR,"

1/7/2015

What do you think this play is about?
At first glance this play is about England's first female playwright Aphra Behn ... who also happens to be a spy! It takes place during the 1660’s, immediately following the reign of Oliver Cromwell who had shut down all theaters in London and had them demolished. King Charles II is brought to the throne and immediately permits two theater companies to begin producing plays. Charles’ support of and interest in cultural freedoms sets in motion a newly released energy spurring a restoration/revitalization of the theater. As you can imagine the appetite for theatre, which has been denied for so long, is huge. And so, a new era of artistic and social freedom is ushered in. In a rollicking comic fashion, Or, intertwines and layers the freedoms of the 1660’s restoration with the the sexual revolution of the 1960’s … and today. With a deeper look Or, is about embracing change and the power and vitality of social, artistic and sexual freedom.

What excites you about working on this show?
Pretty much everything. I love working with the historical characters of Aphra Behn, King Charles II, Nell Gwynne, William Scot and others. And the complicated/hilarious situations in which we find them. I’m very excited to work with three wonderful actors taking on eight intriguing characters. I love the pace, the plot twists, the mad-cap antics … the list goes on and on. So much fun!

What would you like the audience to be thinking about after the show?
What a fun, entertaining, and enlightening time they just had at the theater.

Why should someone come to see this show?
Because underneath all the antics is the underlying theme of the importance of change and working towards freedom, peace, and love.

What is your favorite line from the show?

NELL:
Was there ever a simple time, since there were people in the world?

APHRA:
There was, long ago.
Before the wars of ministers and kings
Before the need to struggle for our bread
Before all strivings base and harsh there was
A golden age of happiness sublime
Where lovely nymphs – like you with fewer clothes –
In fragrant groves lay hidden from the sun
Which dappled through the leaves to gild their days
While night time ‘neath the pearly moon there played
The gentle shepherdesses and their swains
Living all for poetry, music, love
Before the grim unnatural rule of law
Of gods and men, O sweet Arcadia!
Unfettered, unrepressed, and unashamed
A happier better time could not be named.

NELL:
Sounds fabulous. And guess what – it sounds like right now. The puritans had their day, now it’s our turn to make a new golden age.

Haley Rice on playing Nell and Maria

Chris Caswell on playing Aphra Behn

Unmasking the Origins of Or,

Sarah Carleton on Directing "OR,"

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