What is Dancing Lessons about?
Dancing Lessons is a lovely story about two people working separately to rise above their obstacles in order to achieve growth.
 
What role do you play, and how do they fit into the story?
My role is that of Senga. She is an out-of-work Broadway dancer working towards understanding and acceptance of her current state of being. Her place in the story is that of a neighbor, teacher and fellow human who struggles with personal limitations and expectations of self.
 
What are some of your character’s strengths and weaknesses?
Senga’s strengths are also areas of growth; her passion and tenacity are positives while also being road blocks. Another area of growth for Senga is her propensity for anger.  
 
What do you find most challenging about your character?
For me, embodying Senga is challenging from a physical sense. The way she carries herself and works with physical limitations has been very eye-opening, while also fostering a greater sense of appreciation for my physical capabilities.
 
What line in the play means the most to you?
“Change equals courage.” This line is beautifully accurate.
 
What makes Dancing Lessons challenging/exciting/interesting to you?
An area I am quite passionate about is Autism awareness and education. It is a belief of mine that we should “Label Jars, Not People”. The opportunity to participate in a show that articulates even a glimmer into the reality of being an individual with Autism brings me joy. It’s exciting to have the chance to promote audience perspective and empathy.
 
Why do you believe theatre is important?
Theatre is so clearly an outlet for all involved. It gives more than it takes and even in its taking provides us with lessons about ourselves and those around us. This is an important outlet because of how it fosters support, liberation and development that gives shape to the world.

What is Dancing Lessons about?
Dancing Lessons, at its core, is about finding courage: to connect, to change, to relate, to explore, to touch, to try—and yes—to dance.
 
What role do you play, and how do they fit into the story?
I play Ever Montgomery, an award-winning geoscientist and professor at the New York Institute of Technology. Ever is on the autism spectrum, but is high-functioning. The premise of the play revolves around his desire to learn a few simple dance steps for an upcoming event celebrating his professional achievement.
 
What are some of your character’s strengths and weaknesses?
In a discussion I had prior to rehearsals, an autism expert at the Howard Center said about autistics, "If you've met one autistic person, you've met... one autistic person." I love that. Autism's idiopathic and completely unique to the individual. This is just as true for Ever. Defining his personal characteristics as being strengths or weaknesses is to do him a disservice; His eccentricities express the delightful dichotomy in his life-perspective. Ever sees things as right or wrong, black or white; there is no gray area, and he therefore struggles to pick up on social cues or understand nuance in conversational intention and subtext. And so, in an effort to fit in, he has made a life-long passion of studying the physical facial traits associated with human emotion, and tries hard to apply his understanding to his personal interactions. Ever doesn't want to be "neurotypical", but he tries hard to be what neurotypicals expect.
 
What do you find most challenging about your character?
At the most basic level, acting for theatre is the sending and receiving of energy. Actors spend years training their minds and bodies to learn how to send energy with intention, be affected by the energy that is sent to them, then convert the energy into a new intention and send it back. It is this exchange, simple on surface, complicated in practice, that fuels my creative process as an actor.

Ever Montgomery's given circumstances, however, have thrown all that understanding to the wind; Because Ever clearly does not pick-up on social cues or subtext in voice, he most always misunderstands the intentions/emotions of the energy being sent to him and is not affected in a "neurotypical" way. His reactions are literal, surprising, and unexpected. Sourcing these reactions from an authentic place is a unique challenge.
 
What line in the pay means the most to you?
"How can you be certain of that when I'm equally certain you're wrong?" - Revealing the confusion that naturally exists within two individual's perspectives on the same situation, this line is a moment of painful longing for Ever. He struggles mightily when he senses his assumed truths may not be reciprocated.
 
What makes Dancing Lessons challenging/exciting/interesting to you?
I'm excited to be working on a play with so much heart. It truly is a feel-good play.
 
Why do you believe theatre is important?
Theatre is important because it provides a safe environment for observing unfamiliar cultures, exploring fragile social issues, and initiating discussions that are difficult to speak about. Theatre brings communities together to encourage a deeper sense of place and self-identity. It is through the lens of theatre that audiences experience empathy.

 ehearsals are underway for our production of Dancing Lessons. While the cast and the production team are hard at work, we would like to share a portion of an interview between the playwright (Mark St. Germain) and Charles Giuliano (TotalTheater.com).

CHARLES GIULIANO: We attended a reading of Dancing Lessons last fall at Barrington Stage Company. What has happened since then?
MARK ST. GERMAIN: There have been two more readings and work between all of them. With the first reading, I was pleased by the reception.
 
CG: What kind of work?
MSG: From the first reading, I was very surprised by the response being as positive as it was. I already saw problems and needed to fix them. Mostly, that meant dealing with the dancer. Her story didn’t match his as far as interest and what happened to her. After a lot of thought, I ended up using parts of a friend’s life. That was more interesting to me. You end up stealing from everybody. The dancer’s story before was based on dancers’ stories from people that I interviewed. I don’t know about dancing. This time, it is about a relationship she had with her father. When I read about it and talked about it, I thought “this was really interesting.” So I did more work on her. Ironically, the actress we had playing it almost matches to a T her own background. The current actress, Paige Davis, I didn’t know her background other than that she has done a bunch of Broadway musicals as a dancer. There’s a TV show she is well known for, especially among young people, called “Trading Spaces.” You can’t walk down the street without people recognizing her. I didn’t know that when we cast her. I had no idea. There was a lot of work on her. Just trying to make the play a little deeper in parts. What I learned progressively about autism I tried to incorporate.
 
CG: Where did the idea come from?
MSG: There’s a man, Jim Houghton, who runs the Signature Theater [in NYC]. We were at a conference which he attended with his family. He has a son who is autistic. When I met the son, he was about five years old. He was non-communicative. He would sit at the table and not talk to anybody. He would just kind of curl unto himself.
About a year and a half ago I was walking down the street and met Jim and his son. The son is now about 17-years-old. He was so incredibly friendly and open. We had a nice conversation, and as we got into it, he said, “Your birthday is September 9, 1954. I remember at the table we talked about this, this and this.” I was stunned. I knew this was something that some but not all autistics have. I was amazed by the transformation. Jim and his wife had put a lot of time into getting him the right schooling to draw him out. That fascinated me. It kicked off the idea for the play.
 
CG: How about the fact that he’s a university professor who is about to receive an award? Hence the need for dancing lessons.
MSG: I knew he had to be high functioning in order to make the play work. People like Temple Grandin.
[Mary Temple Grandin, born August 29, 1947, is an American doctor of animal science, a professor at Colorado State University, a best-selling author, an autistic activist, and a consultant to the livestock industry on animal behavior.]
She’s very famous. She was also very withdrawn as a kid. To calm her down, she designed this box. She would get in, and the idea of being held tightly calmed her. That led to work with animals especially in slaughter houses. She tried to design humane ways in which animals were killed. There was an HBO movie about her which was very good. It won a bunch of awards. She’s fascinating.

There’s a man around here, Mike McManmon, who runs a program. A fascinating guy; I talked with him a bunch of times. What I learned about him got fed into it. [Michael McManmon speaker, writer, artist and psychologist founded the College Internship Program – a post-secondary program serving students with Asperger’s Syndrome, Autism, High Functioning Autism and learning differences. The Berkshire Visual & Performing Arts Center at the CIP campus in Lee, MA is a model program integrating community and student life with the Good Purpose Gallery, Spectrum Playhouse, and Joyous Studios all existing to support the mission.] There are some people who say, “this isn’t like any autistic person I know.” As Mike has impressed on us, everybody is different. There’s no one profile that fits everybody. Neurotypicals is the term given to people like us without autism.
 
CG: (laughing) But you’re crazy.
MSG: Oh, I am. But in a different way than you are.
 
CG: Who is to say that we’re normal, whatever that means?
MSG: Yes, it’s silly. There is no normal. But there’s no normal with autistics.
 
CG: There are group characteristics. Behavior patterns for identifying people with forms of autism.
MSG: There are some things. There are people who are high achievers. They are able to integrate themselves into society.

Check out the rest of the interview here.