Mauritius; Scary, Funny and Suspenseful

By Bill Schmidt. Posted on 04/03/09

Yesterday was our first preview for Mauritius. It’s always exciting for me when we open a new production but I especially get excited when the audience really get’s into a show. Last night was no exception. There was plenty of gasping and nervous laughter, just what you hope for with a suspenseful thriller.

All of us at Cygnet were pretty excited to assemble such a great cast.  Three of the principal characters in Mauritius worked together previously in our 2007 production of Communicating Doors.  Communicating Doors was such a fun production and these actors have a wonderful chemistry together.  Manny Fernandes once again plays the guy everyone is afraid of, and Sandy Campbell and Jessica John play the eccentric half sisters.  Rounding out the cast is John DeCarlo, last seen in Cygnet’s production of Bug and Jack Missett from Cygnet’s Curse of the Starving Class of a few years back.  The characters in Mauritius are pretty quirky and the actors have tapped into their characters perfectly.  I think the actors are going to have a lot of fun with this one.

The production is staged by Cygnet Associate Artistic Director, Fran Gercke.  Fran gets great support from the spot-on design team of Jessica John (yes, she’s also doing the costumes), Eric Lotze (lighting), Matt Lescault-Wood (sound), Bonnie Durben (props) and Sean Fanning (set).  I do love it when all of the components come together so nicely and click.  I just can’t wait for the theatre goers to come out and see  it for themselves.

Mauritius is a San Diego premiere and one of the newest plays by Theresa Rebeck, one of Broadway’s hottest playwrights.  We’re so excited to have been able to secure the rights to this one.   Mauritius runs at the Cygnet Rolando stage through May 10th.

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Lights! Sound! Pancakes!

By Manny Fernandes. Posted on 03/30/09

It’s Saturday morning and we are getting ready to begin technical rehearsals for Mauritius.  Technical rehearsals can be exhilarating, because you finally get to see all of the elements start coming together.  The lights and sound are added. The finishing touches are put on the costumes and the set.  And while the twenty or so hours can make for a grueling couple of days of “hurry up and wait,” it is always amazing to come out of it on the other side and see the huge leaps the production has taken towards being a final product.

At Cygnet, tech means it’s time for a couple of traditions.  The oldest being the magic of watching Eric Lotze work his wizardry on the light board.  Eric has been designing lights for Cygnet since the very beginning, and I’ve never seen any designer who can manipulate the lights as fast as he can.  With his eyes darting across the ceiling from one light to the next, his fingers fly across the light board’s buttons.  It always reminds me of those accountants in old movies with their sleeves rolled up, visor pulled down, a stogie firmly planted firmly in one corner of their mouth, their right hand a blur producing a steady and rapid clicking from the keys.  I swear I’m always waiting for his left hand to reach out and pull the lever.  There’s no doubt why he has won several awards.  His designs always add another level of dimension to the production.

Matt Lescault-Wood, is doing the sound design.  Matt has done several designs for Cygnet this season, including the fantastic collection of 80′s music that was on display during The History Boys, but this will be my first experience watching him work.  What I’ve heard of the sound design so far, it is going to be jazzy, hip and cool. It’s always great fun to hear a musical representation of your character and I’m looking forward to hearing what he has for my sadistic stamp collector.

The other tradition, which just began this season, is a pancake breakfast to kick off the technical rehearsals.  It’s really nice to have a few moments before we delve into the work for the designers, cast and crew to come together like a family and share a meal.  Plus feeding theatre folk is always a good idea.  Of course the success of this breakfast may rest on my culinary skills.  Somehow I was designated the flapjack flipper for this production.  Oh, the pressure.  I hope I don’t burn them.

Posted in Mauritius | 5 Comments »

Announcing our 2009/2010 Season

By Sean Murray. Posted on 03/12/09

Bill and I are really excited to be able to finally announce the slate of plays selected for our 2009/2010 Season.  It takes a very long time to assemble a good variety of stories that we think fit our mission and that you might want to see and we think we might just have done it! Our seventh season is a line up of productions celebrating an eclectic series about strong individuals in extreme situations. With the exception of a revival musical which will play at Rolando, the entire season will be presented at our new home, the recently renovated Old Town Theatre. Therefore, we are saying a sad goodbye to the Rolando Theatre we have called home since 2003.

Our ‘swan song’ at the Rolando Theatre will brings the return of the show that started it all, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, with book and lyrics by John Cameron Mitchell and music by Stephen Trask.  Hedwig announced our beginnings as a company and after 40 shows, she’s bringing us full circle in our Rolando space! The story of a wannabe rock headliner and her search for identity, love and her “other half” will be directed by James Vasquez and feature Jenn Grinels as Yitzhak.  Filled with comedy, camp and serious rock and roll, Hedwig will touch your heart and ears!

The 09/10 season officially begins with the wildly funny Noises Off, by Michael Frayn (Copenhagen).  I am already working on the casting for this Tony-Award winning play about a motley and disorganized theatre company attempting, against all odds, to rehearse and perform their own production of a slamming-door farce called Nothing On.

In September, we will present the San Diego Premiere of Man from Nebraska by Tony-Award and Pulitzer Prize winning author Tracy Letts (August: Osage County, Bug).  It’s the tale of an ordinary middle-aged man on an extraordinary journey of self-discovery.  The production will be helmed by Associate Artistic Director Francis Gercke (Mauritius, Curse of the Starving Class).

For the holidays we bring the return of It’s A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, adapted by Joe Landry.  Our audiences demanded that this show return and we listened!  As one subscriber noted: “There are several Scrooge’s in San Diego, but only one George Bailey!”  Tom Andrew returns with his award-winning performance as George Bailey, and the brilliant Scott Paulson will once again reign over Bedford Falls with his old-fashioned Foley sound effects ‘orchestra’.  This year the cast of the fictitious “WCYG Theatre of the Air” will take over the Old Town stage as they recreate the classic story in a “live” 1940’s radio broadcast filled with music and the beloved characters from the film.  In it’s fourth year, It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play is quickly becoming a San Diego tradition.

2010 will kick off with The Piano Lesson by August Wilson (Fences). We are bringing back several of the artists that made our production of Fences so amazing and powerful. The Piano Lesson will be directed by Delicia Turner Sonnenberg (San Diego Critic’s Circle Award Best Director for Fences) and star Mark Christopher Lawrence from NBC’s “Chuck” and our very own Fences, Monique Gaffney (San Diego Critic’s Circle Award Lead Actor, Yellowman) and Antonio TJ Johnson (San Diego Critic’s Circle Award Lead Actor, Fences). August Wilson won his second Pulitzer Prize for The Piano Lesson, his fifth play in the “Pittsburgh Cycle”.  The story of a brother and sister in a war over the fate of a family heirloom, a unique, one-of-a-kind piano carved with the images of the history of their family.  It’s a spiritual, funny, moving and beautiful story of family, ambition, and tradition. 

The Piano Lesson will be followed in the spring by a musical.  I’m still working on rights and availability, but I do have my sights set on a couple of different shows, and any way you slice it, either of them will surely delight fans of musical theatre.

We wrap up the season with the classic comedy of style, Private Lives by Noël Coward.  Still considered one of the most flippant and witty plays ever written. I plan on being in this production, playing Elyot Chase and look forward to diving into the elegant Coward world of moonlit balconies over bone-dry martinis. Private Lives will be directed by James Vasquez, who choreographed A Little Night Music.

It will be a fun and interesting year, that’s for sure. I’m really looking forward to it.

Posted in 2009-2010 Season, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, It's A Wonderful Life, Man from Nebraska, Noises Off, Private Lives, The Piano Lesson | 3 Comments »

Moving forward…

By Sean Murray. Posted on 03/09/09

We have announced that Cygnet Theatre will be producing a revival of our very first production, Hedwig and the Angry Inch in the Rolando Theatre this spring. When we first put hammer to drywall and carved out the Rolando Theatre from the Actor’s Asylum in 2003, Hedwig was our leading lady. Well, lady of sorts. There we were in our brand new space with the paint fumes still in the lobby having just put the finishing touches on the walls and trim as the doors opened for our premiere show, a glam rock and roll musical about the heart break and joy of the lead singer of the Angry Inch, Fraulein Hedwig.

Basically, no one had heard of us, how could they have? We had not done ANYTHING yet! We were tucked in a corner of the Aztec Village Mall in Rolando, near SDSU. Who would FIND us? But the power of Hedwig brought people to us and set us off on our Cygnet-y journey. The show ran for twelve weeks! Hed-Heads flocked to the theatre and we loved them for it.

We’ve expanded a little since that summer of 2003! And we find ourselves wanting to grow into the kind of theatre that can support two spaces filled with challenging, entertaining and memorable productions. We have moved into our new home at the Old Town Theatre and have begun producing theater in that space and loving the larger range of opportunities for us and for our patron’s enjoyment there. We are finishing up this current season with overlapping productions of The History Boys, Mauritius, Bed and Sofa and, now we are adding Miss Hedwig and her Angry Inch. Performances for Hedwig and the Angry Inch are June 4 through August 9, 2009.

What we couldn’t have prepared for in all of our dreaming and planning was this dark looming cloud over the economy. It is just not a wise time to be thinking about growing.  We have made the difficult decision to make Hedwig will be the final Cygnet production in the Rolando Theatre. We won’t be renewing our lease on the Rolando Theatre when it expires.

The Rolando Theatre has proven to be a wonderful venue for intimate and exciting theatre and we are so proud of what was created there. And so happy to have brought theatre to the Rolando community and its neighbors, so it makes us sad to end our tenancy in the space.

To continue to produce seasons at both the Old Town Theatre and the Rolando Theatre, we had anticipated increasing the staff to facilitate the new direction we wanted to go in. But, this is a challenging economic environment that we, and arts organizations across the city and nation, are currently facing and we want to survive it by making choices that simplify and reduce our costs before it is a problem, not when it becomes a problem. So, we have decided that, for the time being, the most prudent and financially responsible option would be to concentrate our resources at our new larger venue in Old Town and put off our goal to grow until things settle down a bit.

We have spent so much time creating an exciting theatre space in Rolando, that it’s very important to us that the theatre be passed onto another company that will fulfill the theatre’s potential. The Rolando theatre and neighborhood has been very good to us, and we want to be sure that good theatre is continues to be created there. We have been talking with an arts organization about that opportunity. We’ll post you on the progress!

Posted in General, Hedwig and the Angry Inch | 3 Comments »

Bed and Sofa: the latest stage

By Sean Murray. Posted on 03/04/09
Andy Hull's model for the set of Bed and Sofa.

Andy Hull’s set model for Bed and Sofa.

Today we had our first formal design meeting for our upcoming Bed and Sofa. This is our first opportunity for all of the designers to get together and begin thinking about how all of our design choices are coming together. We want the ultimate product to have a cohesion, so that all of the various elements, each designed by different people, feel like they all belong to the same “world” that we are creating for the play.

As I wrote in an earlier post, the world of Bed and Sofa is that of the silent film. Since the original film was created in Moscow in 1926, we know that the look of the costumes, scenery and props will have a Soviet influence. Since we are trying to capture the feel of a silent film, we are setting the show in a world that is entirely seen in shades of grey, white and black.

Today, Andy Hull the set designer working with me on the show, presented his model of the set. We use this model as the first stage of the over all look. We can make changes on it still, but that time is now coming towards an end, as Nick Fouch, our technical director, now begins to turn the drawings and model into full size pieces made from real wood! Changes really begin to become difficult and expensive.

Here is a photo of Andy’s model. You can compare it to my first sketch. My idea for the set design came from the film. The apartment in the movie is a basement apartment and you can see the underside of the stairs jutting into the room. I liked the shape and tried to tie it in. In the musical the presence of Stalin is felt somehow as a looming Big Brother type. So we played with how to bring him into the design. I handed Andy this sketch and he has been working his magic on it. He cleaned it up and more importantly he added his wonderfully clever touches to it. The back masking flats, which will have collages of various images mentioned in the show, have the silhouette of the onion domes of St. Peters suggested in their shapes. Andy’s great.

We’ll keep you up on the progress.

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Love Song actor shares hidden talent

By Manny Fernandes. Posted on 02/24/09

The History Boys

We’ve always been blessed with using fantastic photographers at Cygnet.  Josh Zimmerman took beautiful setup shots for Yellowman and Love Song.  Chelsea Whitmore caught some great images during Desire Under the Elms.

Our favorite photographer, Randy Rovang, has been providing us with incredible production shots since our very first show, Hedwig and the Angry Inch.  Randy served as our Resident Photographer for the last year or so, shooting all of our productions, documenting the remodeling of Old Town, and providing candid shots during our Opening Night festivities.  Unfortunately for us, Randy decided to retire from photography earlier this year so that he could focus on other things.  And while we’ll miss his images, we wish him the best.  He has been a huge asset to Cygnet.

Randy’s retirement meant that we had to find another photographer for our upcoming production of The History Boys. Sean Murray had been approached by somebody regarding taking photos, but unfortunately, he couldn’t remember who that somebody was.  I can’t really blame him since he was in the middle of rehearsals for The History Boys, trying to finalize casting for Bed and Sofa, and planning our next season.

Luckily, my wife remembers everything.  When I mentioned to her that I was looking for a photographer she said, “Why don’t you ask Daren Scott?”  My immediate response was, of course, “Daren’s a photographer?”  After she sThe History Boysteered me to Daren’s Facebook page so that I could review some of his work, I decided to ask Daren if he would like to shoot our upcoming show.

For those of you who don’t know Daren Scott, and I hope that’s a very small number, he has appeared on the Cygnet stage in Las Meninas, The Invention of Love, Biedermann and The Firebugs, and most recently as Harry in Love Song.

When Daren accepted my invitation to take some photos for The History Boys, he was excited and nervous.  He had never shot a theatre production before, and especially not one in the Old Town Theatre where the stage can be wide and the lighting a bit difficult.  The photos he took, however, turned out beautiful.  So much so, that I’ve already invited him to take pictures for our next production, Mauritius.  Hopefully we can make that scheduling work.  Here’s to hidden talents!

By the way, the name of that person that Sean Murray was trying to remember: Daren Scott.  I love my wife.

The History Boys

Posted in Love Song, The History Boys | 5 Comments »

Creating a world for the imagination

By Francis Gercke. Posted on 02/20/09

The term “set design” is really such a boring phrase for, well, the set design.  Costume design is really the wardrobe of each individual character, lighting and sound designs are the atmospheres, props the personal objects of characters, and the set design is the environment.  The hard world of the play.  Tactile.

stampshop1web-copy

One of the challenges with Theresa Rebeck’s Mauritius is that it floats between three different environments.  Not odd or uncommon or unusual in theatre.  But normally it always leads designers, directors, and everyone else involved to ask:  “Okay, how do we do this?”  So then you start brainstorming and come up with a few great ideas, a couple of good ones, and several that lead to kind of uncomfortable silence (those ideas, unfortunately, normally emanate from me!).  Mauritius has to move from a seedy, basement-level stamp shop to a street cafe to the parlor floor of a brown stone and back again.  Sean Fanning’s set allows the actors to enter from the world above down into the stamp shop – the world below.  And then this combatively comic world of philately simply, easily, and fluidly becomes a worn but still somehow elegant family home.  And I am considerable jealous of the cast that gets to play in this environment because there is a great attention to deliberate detail.

Act 2 Set for Mauritius

In the process of design, it’s always curious to me how you can run the risk of going too far.  You can add too much “reality”.  Sean Murray was wise to advise that you can go too far and open a kind of Pandora’s Box in which nothing is left to the imagination, everything is real, and what once was going to be a partnership between the suggested reality of the designer and imagination of the audience is no longer possible.  I think we’ve avoided that, I think Sean Fanning has avoided that.  Instead what he has created is very deliberate, very precise, very beautiful and still leaves much to the imagination….Now all we have to do is add the lights, the sound, the costumes, the props, learn our lines and not bump into anything!

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Thoughts on The History Boys (as we go into previews)

By Tom Zohar. Posted on 02/16/09

It’s my day off. It’s raining outside. I feel cozy and happy and really excited for the week ahead– we’ve just finished teching The History Boys and I don’t think any of us could be happier with it.

Generally the whole rehearsal period seems now to have gone by so quickly… There was so much to learn and discover and figure out, and of course there still is, but as I look back on everything, I’ve been having so much fun I completely forgot how much work has gone into it. Through the French and the History of WWI and the songs and dances and subtext and blocking it really did all feel like playing… Playing with building blocks or clay and kinda just creating something along the way. I know that’s a very general way to describe a rehearsal process but it doesn’t always feel like that. This one did.

As for me, I love Posner. This isn’t a comment on my performance– there’s still so much to discover and figure out, and I’m incapable of observing myself like that even if I wanted to. No, I just love the words I’m given to say and the actions I’m given to do. Who else gets to sing Edith Piaf, quote Shakespeare, define words AND be utterly in love, all in the same play? And within moments of each other? And being in love in this play is incredibly easy. With this cast, you’re constantly surrounded with vitality and good energy, and you know you can’t fail because they’re all there to catch you, and you’re there to catch them. There really is a lot of love on that stage. Every time we run the show I feel us becoming more and more cohesive, and also more and more confident in our individuality. It’s awesome. This weekend especially we’ve gotten to a point where I find myself onstage so completely drawn in to what’s going on that I forget there’s any lines or acting involved. The actions and words just tumble out naturally. And I know the others would agree. This is an incredible ensemble Sean Murray has put together. I feel so lucky to be part of it.

Best of all, it’s FUN. This is a fun, fun, fun show to be in. Every moment is a treat. I don’t think there’s a single person in the ensemble who doesn’t enjoy every single moment they have on stage.

I think that, whatever happens, we have something very special in the works here.

Posted in The History Boys | 1 Comment »

Teching History Boys

By Sean Murray. Posted on 02/12/09

I am full of anticipation today. We begin tech tonight for our upcoming production of The History Boys. It’s one of my favorite times in rehearsal: when the show that is being put together in a rehearsal room begins to actually look like a play! This is where the production begins to develop it’s “look” in the lighting and sound designs. I always love working with Eric Lotze and can’t wait to see what we come up with.

Matt Lescault-Wood is designing the sound for the show. Full of atmospheric environments that will help create the school grounds of these boys. Shirley Pierson, one of our SDSU Lipinkski Fellowship Designers, is creating the 1980′s school wear. Bonnie Durben our props. And Andy Hull, also a SDSU Lipinski Fellowship Designer, has created a sort of deconstructed school, not really literal, but definitely evokes that environment. With Stanley Cohen as my stage manager, rather the captain of the show, I am so happy to be working with all of them.

Oh, and those boys…there’s a lot of talent up there and a lot of energy. Go get ‘em guys.

Bon Voyage, History Boys!

An update:

We’ve finished teching the show and had the great luxury of doing a run thru on Sunday. I couldn’t be happier or more proud of the work that the boys and their faculty are doing. It’s just such a treat to get to work with them. They are dedicated, fun, energetic (o God, are they energetic!) and thoroughly talented.

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The black and white world of Bed and Sofa

By Sean Murray. Posted on 02/11/09
Primary ink sketch for the Bed and Sofa set.

I am really excited about beginning work on our upcoming musical, Bed and Sofa, by Polly Pen and Laurence Klavan. We did this show as part of our very first season, before many people had even heard about our work. It turned out to be a wonderful success and helped introduce our theatre to a new range of people. I’ve wanted to work on it again because it was one of the most unique experiences I’ve ever had in the theatre.

It’s based on the 1926 Russian silent-film by Abram Room. The movie, which is available on Amazon in beautiful restoration DVD, was a breakthrough film that is startlingly contemporary in it’s acting style and cinematic directing.

As we begin work bringing this musical-adapted-from-a-silent-film-for-the-stage we’re trying to capture the essence of a silent movie. As in our first production, we are creating a world onstage that is completely engulfed in glorious black and white! Every detail of the set from the bedding to the fried egg is presented in shades of grey. Even the actors are in grey scale creating the total illusion of the silver tones of the silent era. Andy Hull, our SDSU Fellowship Designer who designed The History Boys, is working with me on the set design. We are having a great time taking the cramped apartment set from the film and adapting it for the stage. The set from our original production in 2004 is being re-imagined in a slightly bigger version for the Old Town Theatre.

What’s exciting for us is that the new production isn’t a remount at all. It will feature a entirely new cast, as our original Kolya, Eric Anderson is currently on Broadway in the revival of South Pacific, and Julie (Jacobs) Ludlum now resides in Northern California with her husband and two babies and Michael Elliott now lives in Texas. They were wonderful and were recognized for their work with awards from the San Diego Critic’s Circle. But the new cast that is being assembled consists of some of San Diego’s favorite musical performers and I am thrilled and excited to see what they bring to the roles. When I am finished casting I’ll share who they are and maybe they can be convinced to add to this blog as we begin rehearsals.

The production team is top notch. The talented G. Scott Lacy will be music directing and a designer I’ve loved and worked with several years ago, Corey Johnston, will be designing the costumes. Our resident artist lighting designer Eric Lotze is given the challenge of creating a live version of a black and white film and  Sam Lerner will be creating a soundscape that evokes the world of Stalin’s Moscow. And the many black and white props, including grey eggs and real black bread, will be created, as always, by Bonnie Durben.

It’s getting exciting. More to come…

Posted in Bed and Sofa | 5 Comments »

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