The Resurrection Tonys

It's hard not to see an extraordinary theme in this year's Tony Awards, and it's one of the favorite themes of show biz bios: after the rise and the fall there's the resurrection.

It's not really that dramatic in these three instances, but there is something interesting in figures whose names were much more prominent decades ago, suddenly reemerging with arguably the highest honors of their careers.

I'm talking about the 1980's pop star Cyndi Lauper, whose legacy was "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" and several other hits, at least one of the iconic videos of MTV's first years, and some less celebrated but pretty solid songs on several LPs, as we called them then.  Then she pretty much disappeared for decades, media-wise.  But somebody didn't forget her, because she got the call to write the lyrics and music for Kinky Boots, the current Broadway hit the NY Times describes as being "about a drag queen who helps save a struggling shoe factory."  Not only did this show win the Best Musical Tony, but Cyndi Lauper won for her songwriting--moreover she's the first woman to win for both music and lyrics who didn't have a male composing partner.

Christopher Durang became about as big a star as a young playwright could be with his Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You in 1979 and 1980.  Other comedies of the 80s, such as Beyond Therapy and The Marriage of Bette and Boo (which was staged a couple of years ago at HSU) entered the contemporary canon and are still produced across the country.  But though he's continued to write plays that got produced at various places (he had a work commissioned in Pittsburgh a few years ago, I seem to recall), his public profile seemed to be more as a teacher and mentor to younger playwrights.

But on Sunday, it was Christopher Durang standing up on the stage accepting the Tony for Best Play for his comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike--his first Tony Award ever.

The most amazing win however belonged to Cicely Tyson, who burst onto the scene with her Academy Award nominated performance in Sounder in 1972, and Emmy Award-winning performance in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman in 1974.  Her career had actually begun earlier, in the 1950s. She was in Jean Genet's The Blacks in 1961, the longest running non-musical on Broadway in the 60s, with a cast that included James Earl Jones and Maya Angelou.  I used to watch her every week in my favorite (and short-lived) TV series, East Side/West Side, which starred George C. Scott and also featured another now-veteran Broadway actress, Elizabeth Wilson.  That was 1963-64.

Cicely Tyson never entirely disappeared from television, theatre and the movies, but the fact is that she is 88 years old--and at this age, she won the Tony for Best Actress in a play, portraying Lady Bountiful in a revival of  The Trip to Bountiful.  She'd already won the Drama Desk Award and Outer Critics Award for the same role. (And yes, that's her in the photo at the top from last Sunday.)

So what does this all mean?  The 2013 success of  Lauper and Durang aren't unprecedented--Broadway often calls the controversial young artists of a previous generation while ignoring the current controversial young artists. That Cicely Tyson is not even better known, given her long career of notable work, may be partly due to her consistent portrayal of somewhat controversial black characters.

Actually none of them truly "disappeared."  Cyndi Lauper kept making music, won awards, became an LGBT activist, wrote a best-selling book, and bam, she's suddenly "resurrected."  But the return to the biggest stage is fairly rare.

Still, there are stereotypes here to be broken.  These awards also reveal a little to us about the enduring mystery of what happens to people who have been very successful, especially those identified with a particular character or show, and then seem to disappear.  The short answer is that if they are persistent, they simply keep working, wherever and whenever they get good opportunities, and make themselves available.

Actors know (and writers learn) that there are rhythms without rhyme or reason in the level of opportunities available over time.  Actors keep on acting, even if it is playing a role in the reading of a new script in somebody's living room.  Writers do what they must to keep creative, and to get through periods of rest and gestation. And of course they all must make a living, cope with relationships and family responsibilities, etc.  Perhaps the crucial move is to stay in touch with the power centers of Hollywood and New York, while pursuing those other opportunities elsewhere.

Still, there are so many pitfalls along the way, and so much depends on chance and being ready for it, that resurrections such as these three really must be celebrated, even as we view them with awe.

This North Coast Weekend & Audition Notice

The only theatrical game in town remains Next to Normal at North Coast Rep this weekend.

My preview of Dell'Arte's Mad River Festival theatricals appears in this week's NC Journal.

Meanwhile, NCRT has released this Audition Notice:

The North Coast Repertory Theatre announces open auditions for the comedy You Can’t Take It With You by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, directed by Mack Owen. There are roles for 9 men aged 20 to 70, and 6 women aged 20 to 55 years old. Auditions will consist of cold readings from the script. Monologues are welcome. Please bring a headshot and resume if available. Auditions will take place on Saturday, June 22 at 2 p.m. and Sunday, June 23 at 5 p.m. at NCRT, 300 Fifth Street in Eureka. Production dates are September 19 through October 12, 2013. A copy of the script is available in the Eureka Public Library. Please call NCRT at 268-0175 if you have any questions.

This North Coast Weekend

Next to Normal continues this Friday and Saturday at NCRT.  My review is in the NC Journal and online here, where you can also read a lively debate on whether I should have revealed in the review that the teenage son (Gabe) is a delusion of his mother (Diana.)  While differences of opinion on this are reasonable, I didn't do it without forethought.  As a plot device, showing Gabe as presumably a real character, only to reveal he isn't, would seem way too familiar a contrivance, except that the revelation takes place pretty early in the play, and knowing that Gabe is an illusion--or a delusion--is important to understanding the grip of Diana's illness.

I actually thought that not realizing pretty early that Gabe (played by Gino Bloomberg, photo above) is her delusion would be to miss the point of a lot that followed. (Diana is played by Andrea Zvaleko, also pictured.) So even though it counts as a spoiler I suppose--well, play reviews do that all the time, including reviews of this play. Generally I refrain from such a revelation if the surprise seems important.  My apologies to anyone who feels their experience is lessened by knowing this.

I think the only thing I would add to the review is an explicit declaration that there is humor in some of the songs and action, particularly involving the (real) teen characters, Natalie (Brandy Rose) and Henry (Luke Sikora), but also some moments between Diana and her doctor(s) played by Alex Moore.

Elsewhere, the youth troupe Spare Change performs at the Arcata Playhouse on Saturday at 8 p.m.  Their self-created skits deal with issues of special concern to teens.  www.srpp.org.

On Sunday, the Super Mario Musical by Eureka High student Madeira Seaman is performed at Eureka High School twice, at 1 and 5 p.m.  www.northstarquest.org. 

This North Coast Weekend

Opening tonight  at North Coast Rep is Next to Normal, the 2010 Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, with mental illness as its subject and a rock score driving its style. Directed by Tom Phillips with musical direction by Dianne Zuleger, it features Andrea Zvaleko, Gino Bloomberg, Kevin Sharkey, Brandy Rose, Luke Sikora and Alex Moore. Shows this weekend are (as usual) at 8 p.m., Thursday through Saturday. www.ncrt.net.

To complete their first year’s work, Dell’Arte International students present The Finals, a set of ten minute plays that audience members can “grade,” May 23-25 at 8 p.m. in the Carlo Theatre. www.dellarte.com.

This North Coast Weekend

This is the second and final weekend of The Mothership: Thesis Festival 2013, three plays devised and performed by graduating MFAs at Dell'Arte International School, Thursday through Saturday at 8 in the Carlo. I reviewed the shows as they were on opening night, but they're likely to be different this weekend.  To what I wrote in this week's NC Journal I'd add just a few words of further context.  Some readers may wonder why I seem to be taking two of the shows so seriously (Potato and Because I Love You Most of All.)  It is because these shows are not comedies nor primarily comic.  There are elements that are probably supposed to be darkly funny--and the opening night audience seemed to laugh at almost everything--but in various ways the shows themselves make claims as something more serious.The acrobatic violence in particular seems meant to be more than funny or clownish.

It's true that they both flirt with the ironic or comic aspect of horror and the grotesque, which some audiences (particularly younger ones) may find more interesting (or newer) than I did.  But in any case they didn't work for me as narratives, at least not when I saw them.  Finally, I tried to place this in the academic context in my column, and it may seem churlish to review them in the ordinary way.  But these performances invite the general public, and these students are training to perform before whatever audience pays its money.  They are very good performers.  But the "plays" they put together in a few weeks just weren't worthy of their performance skills.  So the bottom line for me is this: student work is student work.  But a show is a show.

Also completing its run this weekend is Skin Deep at Redwood Curtain, Friday through Sunday at 8.

This North Coast Weekend

The next batch of Dell’Arte School MFAs present The Mothership: Thesis Festival 2013, on Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., May 9 through May 18 in the Carlo Theatre. Summit Fever follows three grotesque clowns as they climb Mount Everest, Because I Love You Most of All is a surreal murder mystery, and Room 111 answers the question, “What do you get when you put three outrageous characters in a cramped motel room for eternity with a mysterious potato?” www.dellarte.com.

Continuing: Antigone at Eureka High (Thursday at 7), Skin Deep at Redwood Curtain (Thursday-Sunday at 8) and the final weekend of Hello, Dolly! at Ferndale Rep: Friday and Saturday at 8 and Sunday at 2.)

This North Coast Weekend

On Thursday and Friday (May 2, 3) at 8 p.m., the Arcata Playhouse hosts the physical theatre duo Wonderheads Mask Theater, performing an original piece, Loon. Co-artistic directors Kate Braidwood and Andrew Phoenix are graduates of the Dell’Arte International School, and their signature is larger-than-life masks and puppets, billed as “live-action Pixar.” Liz Nicholls in the Edmonton Journal described this show as “a simple, classic underdog story, the rediscovery of the sense of possibility. And it’s told with beautiful physicality.” Arcata Playhouse.org.

Skin Deep continues this weekend at Redwood Curtain.  I review it in the NC Journal this week.  The only observations I didn't have room for are minor bits about the characters' names.  "Squire Whiting" comes close to being parody for the one WASP in the play.  But I detect a pun in the heroine's name too--Maureen Mulligan--a mulligan basically being a do-over.  A second chance for romance, get it?

I do mention that food is a big topic--it could be another reason that this play is apparently done most often at dinner theatres.  In fact, despite an Off-Off New York debut, this may be basically a direct-to-dinner theatre play, and I suspect that's an entire genre now.  Still, the Redwood Curtain production is funny and enjoyable.  Even without dinner.

Speaking of dinner theatre, Murder By Dessert presents Cinquo de Mayo mysteries at two local Mexican restaurants this weekend:  at Capala Mexican Restaurant in Eureka on Friday and Luzmilla's in McKinleyville on Saturday, each starting at 9.

Also this weekend, Proof ends its run at HSU.  Thursday-Saturday at 7:30 p.m., with the last show on Sunday at 2, in Gist Hall Theatre. HSU Stage.

And Hello, Dolly! continues at Ferndale Rep, Friday and Saturday at 8, Sunday at 2.  It closes May 12.

Antigone continues at Eureka High, Thursday through Saturday at 7:30.

This North Coast Weekend

Proof, the Pulitzer and Tony Award winning play by David Auburn, opens for two weekends at HSU  on Thursday (May 25.)  It's a play about family, genius, madness, identity, academia, sex and love, but mostly (I've concluded) it explores the polarities of proof and trust, and the practical impossibility of one of them.  Redwood Curtain did a production of this some years back.

Directed by Michael Thomas and produced by HSU Theatre, Film & Dance, Proof features Dakota Dieter, James Read, Kyle Handziak and Queena DeLany. Lynnie Horrigan is the set designer, James McHugh designed lighting, Glen Nagy designed sound, Marissa Menezes designed costumes and makeup.  Proof plays in the Gist Hall Theatre Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. this weekend and next.  Much more at HSU Stage.  Tickets: 826-3928.

Also opening this weekend is Skin Deep at Redwood Curtain, a comedy by Jon Lonoff, about a "large, lovable, lonely-heart" and an awkward man on a blind date, and the course of their relationship.  Directed by Cassandra Hesseltine, it features Christina Jioras, Dmitry Tokarsky, Susan Abbey and Brad Curtis.  Daniel C. Nyiri designed set and lighting, costumes are by Jennevieve Hood and sound by John Turney.

Previews are Thursday and Friday, with official opening on Saturday, all at 8 p.m. Performances continue Thursdays-Saturdays through May 18. www.redwoodcurtain.com.   To reserve tickets, email boxoffice@redwoodcurtain.com or call 443-7688.

This weekend at Dell'Arte the International School's students present their annual audience favorite, the clown show.  This year it's called Who Ya Callin Bozo? Clown 2013, directed by Ronlin Foreman.  It plays Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. in the Carlo Theatre. Reservations are a really good idea:(707)668-5663.

The Arcata Playhouse and KHSU present The Word: A Community Story-Telling Project, with North Coast people telling stories about the North Coast, on Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Arcata Playhouse, with the Saturday show broadcast live on KHSU.

A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer, monologues edited by Eve Ensler and Mollie Doyle, is presented Saturday at 8 p.m. in the Native American Forum at HSU.

Eureka High School presents Antigone at 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday.

The Sue Bigelow Memorial and Celebration of Life is on Sunday, scheduled for 3 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at the North Coast Rep Theatre in Eureka.  Dianne Zuleger writes: "There may be a short presentation/reading from a script.  All are welcome to take the stage and share a Sue story. Please bring an hors d'eouvres of some kind and/or a beverage.  Also, if you have any photos, we'd like to put together a PowerPoint video.  Please send digital copies (or scan hardcopies) and email them to me. If you can't scan, bring them to me and I'll do it for you.  Thanks!"  Her email is didiz@sbcglobal.net.

This North Coast Weekend

Dell'Arte International second years present their Tragedy project, A Harvest of Stones, described as a "poetic story of a farmer who struggles to hold onto his land in the face of drought, debt, and ecological disaster."  It's ensemble-devised, led by faculty instructor Lauren Wilson, with choregraphy by Donlin Foreman.  It's at the Carlo Thursday, Friday and Saturday (April 18-20) at 8 p.m.  707 668-5663, www.dellarte.com.

Also beginning Thursday, the HSU Opera Workshop opens the contemporary comic opera Too Many Sopranos by Edwin Penhorwood, a satire with luscious music about four sopranos who must go to hell to bring back tenors and basses (i.e. men) for the soprano-heavy heavenly choir. North Coast singers Steve Nobles, Dylan Karl, Luke Sikora, Rigel Schmitt and Op Workshop director Elisabeth Harrington join up with student singers Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. in the Studio Theatre, upstairs in the HSU Theatre Arts building.  826-3928.  HSUMusic.

On Friday, Ferndale Rep opens the musical Hello Dolly. (No photo made available.) Directed by Justin Takata with musical direction by Tina Toomatta, choreography by Linda Maxwell and scenic design by Liz Uhazy, it stars Rae Robison as Dolly, with Dave Fuller, Erik Standifird and Molly Severdia headlining the large cast.  It continues weekends through May 12.  786-5483.

The Arcata Playhouse Family Fun series continues this weekend with Lakota storyteller Robert Owens-Greygrass performing "Stories to Grow Your Heart On" on Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m., with a Saturday afternoon show at 2 p.m.  On Sunday at 8 p.m. Owens-Greygrass reprises an earlier show, "Walking on Turtle Island." 

North Coast high schools are mounting their spring productions.  Thursday through Saturday at 7 p.m., Arcata High School performs the whodunit mystery It Was A Dark and Stormy Night (joshuarbaugh@gmail.com). Thursday and Friday at 7:30 p.m. Eureka High offers Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, described as "30 neo-futurist plays in under one hour."  441-2508. Ehsplayers.

Meanwhile, Shakespeare's The Tempest continues at NCRT.

This North Coast Weekend

This is opening weekend for the annual HSU dance studies concert, On the Edge of Your Feet, in the Van Duzer for two weekends, Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30 p.m.  There's one matinee, this Sunday at 2.  More at HSU Stage.

Meanwhile, The Tempest continues at North Coast Rep.  Much more on that below.

The Tempest: Sources and An Anthology of Themes

Margaret Leighton as Ariel, Ralph Richardson as Prospero (1952)

My review of Shakespeare's The Tempest, currently on stage at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka, is in this week's North Coast Journal.  The following posts are about the play rather than that production.

Out of numerous sources from reality and literature, Shakespeare's alchemy creates a myth: of Prospero, who uses his learning to command the magic of an uncharted island through the powerful spirit called Ariel, while defending his daughter Miranda against the animalistic man called Caliban. It begins with a shipwreck caused by Prospero’s magic that deposits Italian nobles and their retinue on this island, including men who are part of Prospero’s past as the deposed duke of Milan. They wander to their self-revealing fates on his magic island, according to his plan.

 This myth has fed countless other stories and supplied metaphors for many discussions through the years, just as this play itself has been interpreted and presented on stage in many different ways.The Tempest is rare if not singular in that Shakespeare does not base it on an existing text.  But there are likely sources, even for the basic story.

Litcritter Northrop Frye points to commedia del' arte, in which actors improvised on a loose scenario with stock characters and an assortment of bits and gags.  Several of the scenari involve a magician living on a magic island, a stock character sometimes named Prospero, whose comic business involves keeping undesirable suitors away from his daughters.  Shakespeare knew the tradition, and it's likely that in the original production of the Tempest, the comic business involving the jester Trinculo, Stephano and Caliban was improvised, commedia-style. (photo from NCRT production with Brian Walker as Trinculo, Tyler Egerer as Stephano and Kenneth Wigley as Caliban.)

  Onto such a basic story, Shakespeare could add other layers.  Contemporary playwright (and Oscar-winning screenwriter of Shakespeare in Love) Tom Stoppard says that he knows he has a play when he has two or three ideas he can try to bring together.  This is pretty clearly what Shakespeare does.  Only he doesn't always stop at two or three.

An isolated island might suggest the tradition of Utopian stories.  It also in turn suggests contemporary voyages to the New World, which was already being identified with Utopian possibilities.  Shakespeare knew   about the new English explorations and Virginia colonies.  He even knew people involved in them.  In particular he read accounts of the shipwreck in which hundreds of colonists and the new governor of Virginia had perished, and then the amazing accounts of the unexpected survival of all of those who were shipwrecked.  They came ashore in Bermuda, had some political intrigues while there, and finally built a new ship and completed their voyage to Virginia.

As a showman, he noticed how natives of distant lands such as the Americas were paraded for profit as curiosities in England.  When a couple of characters in The Tempest see Caliban, their first thoughts are how to make money by exhibiting him.    

Chyna Leigh as Ariel, Scott Malcolm as
Prospero at NCRT

Shakespeare had literary sources for other elements of the play.  He read Montaigne’s ironic essay on cannibals, which is reflected in Gonzalo’s Utopian musings about a radically different society based on a direct relationship to nature.  He had The Aeneid for some sense of voyaging in the Mediterranean (mythic and otherwise), and he transferred a speech from Ovid's Metamorphoses, when Prospero gives up his magic with virtually the same words as Medea uses to invoke her dark powers.  

Another major source is..the plays of Shakespeare. In some respects it's kind of anthology of clips from his greatest hits: there’s the royal treachery of his histories, a romance in a pastoral setting, a philosophical protagonist, spectacle, magic, music, and a couple of clowns. But they are oddly like clips--there are conspiracies that go nowhere.  This might be the only Shakespeare in which there's a terrible shipwreck and several characters plot murder, but no one dies.

When he wrote The Tempest, Shakespeare was near the end of his theatrical career.  Some sentimentally suggest that he may have himself played Prospero, but he seemed to have given up acting some years before.  His plays, his acting, his financial interest in the theatre had made him a wealthy and respected man.  He collaborated on a few more plays but basically he went back to Stratford.  Unfortunately it wasn't a long retirement.  He died in 1616, about five years after he wrote The Tempest. He was 52.

So theatre was his life, and his plays reflect that in many ways he saw life through the lens of theatre.  The Tempest certainly is an example--and many would say, the prime example.

Some observers believe the play is about the "insubstantial pageant" of life as theatre, or the playwright/director as magician.  Others see it as centered on the issues of colonialism, or a meditation on nature, nature v. nurture, and human nature. The themes of revenge and forgiveness are often cited. There's evidence for all these concerns and more in this play.

The Man Who Would Be Prospero

Around 1603, when London theatres were again closed because of a major outbreak of the Plague, Shakespeare and his King's Men company took up residence in a small town called Mortlake on the Thames.  Also living in that small town was Doctor John Dee, who for awhile had been one of the most famous and influential men in England.

Doctor Dee was a learned  man who combined studies in mathematics, cartography and astronomy with studies in alchemy, astrology and magic.  This was not an uncommon combination in those times.  Dee first made his name with the mathematics of navigation, guiding British ships in the era of discovery.

Like Prospero, he loved books.  His personal library was reputed to be one of the greatest in England.  He drew up a plan for a national library during Queen Mary's reign, though it wasn't adopted.

He later became a highly influential court astrologer to Queen Elizabeth.  He wrote on mathematics but also on occult documents.  He created and interpreted a glyph which expressed the mystical unity of creation, at a time when such symbols themselves were thought to have power.  He later delved more deeply into magic, seeking contact with angelic spirits.

But like Shakespeare, he also was deeply interested in British explorations, especially to the New World.  He was an advocate for British imperialism, and is credited with coining the term "the British Empire."

Doctor Dee eventually retired to his summer home in Mortlake, where he found his library and his instruments had been looted.  According to writer Peter Ackroyd, at some point he announced that he had burned his books on magic.

Dee lived his last years in Mortlake with his daughter Katherine.  He died in his early 80s, about a year before Shakespeare started writing The Tempest.  There seems to be no record of Shakespeare meeting Doctor Dee while they were both in Mortlake, but Dee probably was a topic of conversation in that small town.  Shakespeare would have taken note of Doctor Dee years before as a unique and powerful figure in the court of Elizabeth, .  It seems reasonable that Doctor Dee was a major model for Prospero.

The Story Beneath

Kate Haley as Miranda, Scott Malcolm at NCRT

All of the issues and themes doubtlessly at work in The Tempest--the meditations on nature, colonialism, Utopia, the theatre, cosmology and the meaning of life, etc., and all the vexed questions about the various characters-- seem to me to  be overlays on the basic story, the most compelling and direct through-line of The Tempest: Prospero’s intent to secure his daughter’s future.

 When Prospero and Miranda landed on this island, and while he used his books to master its magic forces, he encountered two beings. Ariel was a spirit imprisoned by the now dead witch Sycorax; Prospero freed Ariel on condition that Ariel would serve him for a time. The other being was Caliban, the animalistic son of that same witch. Prospero at first befriended him. Caliban taught him what he knew about the island, and Prospero schooled Caliban in basic European or “civilized” knowledge, hoping to humanize him. But Caliban attempted to rape Miranda (an act he does not deny—it was, after all, his only opportunity to sire children.) Then everything changed, and the enraged Prospero used his powers to torment and enslave Caliban.

 Beyond his rage, Prospero must have seen what this meant. His daughter was becoming a young woman (15 or 16 at the time of the play), while he was becoming an old man (now 50.) His powers would inevitably wane, until he could no longer protect her from Caliban. Eventually she would be alone on this island. What could he do?

The ship returning to Italy from Tunis in Africa was an opportunity he could seize upon. Evidently he knew exactly who was on board—not only his brother and the King of Naples, but the young Prince of Naples, a suitable husband for Miranda. He could bring the young people together to see if they were really a match. He could also magically confront the others with their offenses against him, and put himself in position to reclaim his dukedom and return to Milan, where he could take whatever further measures he could to secure Miranda’s future.

Bobby Bennett as Ferdinand, Kate Haley at NCRT

 This is mainly what he in fact does. He brings Miranda and Ferdinand together, and they seem immediately infatuated with each other. But he has to test Ferdinand’s constancy and his honor. Shakespeare himself (also approaching 50) had a daughter who made a bad match with an unfaithful man.  Shakespeare also knew that King James would be in the audience for the first performance of The Tempest, and James had his own daughter's marriage to worry about.

Prospero had to make sure Miranda would become a princess, and not a fling. That Prospero is conscious of his own impending death is expressed most beautifully in his “we are such stuff as dreams are made of" speech, but he also notes later than when he returns to Italy his every third thought will be of death. Even his final speech, when he begs for indulgence and prayers, it is because without his magic powers he is weak.

 Commentators argue whether Prospero was intent on revenge or not, when he created the storm. Some vengeance, or at least accounting, was probably part of it, and he certainly still harbored anger. But he took care that the shipwreck didn’t kill or injure anyone. He did inflict torments on the ignoble Italian nobles, and was jolted out of his distracted cruelty by Ariel, but he had this goal beyond revenge--he could turn his justifiable revenge into forgiveness that actually doesn't seem all that sincere, but it is politically very smart. Especially if his goal is to secure Miranda's future.

 The King of Naples thought his son was dead, but Prospero returned him alive, and with a wife. The grateful king became Prospero’s ally on the spot. Then Prospero let his brother know that he also knew of his conspiracy against the King of Naples hatched on the island, but would hold that knowledge in reserve. When he then boldly proclaimed he would take back his dukedom, his brother could hardly object.

John Gielgud as Prospero (1951)

 These were deft and very effective political moves, meant to get him back to Italy where he could serve his daughter’s interests. For clearly he wasn’t much interested in returning for himself. Here on the island he had magic power, derived in part from his lifelong study. Now he had to give up his power (the staff) and his knowledge (his book), for a life of decline.

It's true that in plays of this era concerning royals, the health of relationships reflect on the health of the state: a good marriage suggests a goodly kingdom.  There's some expression of this in the content of Prospero's magic show for Miranda and Ferdinand (which would have been done as a masque), when the goddess Ceres blesses the impending marriage, equating a fruitful royal couple with a fruitful land.

Yet I can't convince myself that Prospero cares very much about Milan except for his daughter's sake.  He wants the marriage to be honorable, perhaps so that there's no taint of a child conceived out of wedlock that might affect the royal succession of his grandchildren.  But more urgently it seems to be because he wants Miranda to have a stable, prosperous and fulfilled life.

Mariah Gale and Patrick Stewart (2006-7)

 Granted all the other elements of the play, it is basically about a father—a single parent—seizing the opportunity to secure his daughter’s happiness and her future. One consequence of seeing the play this way is that it establishes Prospero as the protagonist—the one who is most active and propels the action. This may seem obvious, but many productions over the years have tended to emphasize other characters: Caliban (as a victim of colonialism and racism), Ariel (relationship to natural forces) or even Miranda.

 These admittedly can be showier parts.  My memory of a production in Pittsburgh is of Caliban, of Libby Appel's production at OSF of Ariel.   But I’m convinced that’s partly because Prospero has been treated too passively. Yes, he’s supposed to be old and wise, but not inert. He’s the magician, after all. I’d like to see him as a livelier, more dynamic and active presence. He has anxieties and doubts, moments of anger, joy and triumph and satisfaction. Mostly he’s locked into his task, and when he allows himself the distraction of putting on a show for the lovers, he angrily cuts it short so that he can attend to Caliban, for he can’t let anything derail his complex plan and the activities that must be delicately balanced.

Producing the Tempest, and Prospero's Gift

Ralph Fiennes as Prospero (2011)

The expression “if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all” does not apply to productions of Shakespeare plays, and perhaps least of all to The Tempest.  There's a feast of characters, different sorts of action and themes, with drama, romantic and physical comedy, music and magic. But it's also his shortest play, with these rarities: the classic unities of action in one play on one day, and with the modern approach of starting when events have come to a head. (Playwright Arthur Miller used to call it "when the chickens come home to roost.")  Some experts even call it an experimental play.

(The unity of time and action, it must be said, comes at the price of Prospero's long recounting of the past to Miranda.  During it he chides her several times to pay attention, but he might be even more anxious about the audience's attentiveness.)

 The spectacles present each new production with creative and technical challenges. How do you stage the storm and shipwreck that starts the play? The displays of magic? The non-human characters? Then there are the mysteries of motivations and meaning that require decisions, which themselves ensure that each production will be different.

In creating the play, Shakespeare undoubtedly did what he usually did--he kept in mind the actors his company had for the various parts, and the place where it would be performed.  The Tempest was first done in an indoor theatre, which allowed for candlelight to help create magical effects.  A ceiling meant that Ariel might fly down on a rope or wire (which Libby Appel did so effectively in the outdoor theatre at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in her final production as artistic director.)

At the same time, Shakespeare knew the show would probably move to the outdoor Globe, and so had to be adaptable.  Much of the magic in the play is accomplished through music--there are more songs in it than in most Shakespeare plays--and this is a feature that an outdoor theatre can even enhance.

So every production that follows must keep in mind the capabilities of the specific theatre: space, lighting, rigging, etc.  This all influences the interpretation and its expression.

Helen Mirren as Prospera in the 2010 Julie
Taymor feature film

The North Coast Rep production uses an earthy brown set with a central obelisk, and faux rocks etc. spattered with mathematical/magical symbols (that later play a more conspicuous part.)  This is an early decision for The Tempest--do you go brown or green?  Green suggests an island paradise, but brown suggests something more earthbound and at times bleak.  Or you can do both brown and green and add gray/black, as the 2010 Julie Taymor film does,with scenes shot on the volcanic rocks in the Hawaiian islands (though it is similar to Taymor's minimalist black gravel set for her first theatrical version.)  This permits the debate among the nobles as to whether the island is green or "tawny" to be a draw.

The Tempest more than most plays presents a rich variety of ways to structure a production. For example, there is time. “Tempest” comes from a Latin word that means storm but also time, as in tempus fugit, or musical time and rhythm: tempo. Prospero has a plan, and his magic is likely mathematical and astrological in part, so every act has its proper time, and the day has a definite tempo. Making time and the passage of time an overt and visible theme—with strange looking time pieces, etc.-- is a way of structuring the production. Especially for modern audiences, who are used to the “ticking clock” structure for literary, film and TV thrillers.

Christopher Plummer as Prospero (2012)

Another way (perhaps commensurate with the above) is to emphasize the alchemical connection.  According to interpretations that go back to Christian mystics but are more associated with Jung and post-Jungians like James Hillman and Thomas Moore, alchemists were not so much searching for a way to create gold, but exploring the secrets of the soul.  For these interpreters, the soul is the harmonizing function among body and spirit, mind and emotion.  The Tempest sets up these factors, as Ariel represents spirit and Caliban the body or the physical.  Prospero's magic is in harmonizing them, and his success is: Miranda, the wonder child, and her marriage.  The  word "soul" I believe appears in this play only twice, in the conversation between Miranda and Ferdinand.  In this way, Prospero's gift to Miranda is not only a safe and happy future, but the makings of her soul.

The Tempest and the Time Lord: Shakespeare and Sci-Fi

"Shakespeare, in this, the last play completely from his hand, is inventing science fiction."  So writes the acclaimed Shakespeare scholar A.D. Nuttall in his now classic book, Shakespeare the Thinker.  He starts off his chapter on The Tempest with some dialogue between Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock.

Nuttall was referring specifically to an interchange between Prospero and Ariel, when the spirit goads Prospero into feeling some human pity.  Ariel has described how, at Prospero's instruction, he has driven several of the Italian nobles to near madness.  In lines before the ones that Nuttall quotes, Ariel suggests that "your charm so strongly works them, that if now you beheld them, your affections would become tender."

"Dost thou think so, spirit?" Prospero says. "Mine would, sir," Ariel replies, "were I human."  It is indeed a familiar sort of exchange involving the logical Mr. Spock, or later, the android Data, who has no emotions but aspires to be human.

Nutall also mentions the most obvious science fiction parallel--the movie Forbidden Planet, released by MGM in Cinemascope and color in 1956.  It has direct and intentional parallels to The Tempest: a Prospero figure (scientist who taps into the technology, power and intelligence of a vanished alien civilization) marooned on a planet with his young daughter, who falls in love with one of the men who arrives from Earth.  The Ariel figure is Robby the Robot, and Caliban is symbolically the evil force that turns out to be the scientist's own denied negative side, his Id or Shadow, made immensely more powerful by the alien technology.  (There is a sense in The Tempest that Caliban reflects Prospero's dark side.)

The alien race in Forbidden Planet thought it was on the brink of perfecting its society--suggesting the Utopian theme in The Tempest--but its attempt ended in instant self-destruction.  Something similar happens in the Josh Whedon sci-fi film Serenity (2005) in which a solar-system government seeds the atmosphere of an idyllic planet with a chemical to make the population less aggressive, to further its objective of making a "better world."  But the chemical makes 90% of the population so passive that they waste away, while 10% become the fierce cannibals that still savage the system.  The name of this planet is Miranda.

Nutall relates the fantasy world of The Tempest's island to our sense of science fiction.  "Classic science fiction, as written by H.G. Wells, gives us alternative worlds in which things we have never experienced are imagined in circumstantial detail."  And it is true that for the modern temperament, it became easier to imagine an android than a spirit, a Spock than a sprite.  But after Harry Potter and the Hobbit films, and all the other popular fantasy stories of the past decade or so, we don't seem to find spirits and magic too unbelievable.  We can accept alternative worlds without machines.

Wells' first great story was The Time Machine, which made the transition from fantasy to science fiction while retaining mythic power.  It is however a more recent time machine traveler who provides another connection to The Tempest.

When the longest-running science fiction TV series anywhere (1963-1989)--UK's Doctor Who--was revived in 2005, each season featured at least one episode in which the Doctor and his companion visit a historical figure in the past: Charles Dickens, Queen Victoria, Agatha Christie, etc.  In the 2007 season, the Doctor (played by David Tennant) takes his companion, Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman) to 1599 London, where they attend a production of Love's Labours Lost at the Globe Theatre, and meet William Shakespeare.

These tend to be lighter episodes, though there is always a menace, and in this one they banter with Shakespeare quotes--some of which Shakespeare hadn't written yet.  There's a lot of historical accuracy in it all, and part of the plot centers on the actual mystery of whatever happened to Love's Labours Won, a title appearing on a contemporaneous list of Shakespeare's plays, but of which nothing else is known--no text, no accounts by anyone who saw it, if it ever actually existed.

Clearly the episode's writer, Gareth Roberts, relished relating aspects of Shakespeare's plays and life to the story, which involved aliens who manifested as witches, using Shakespeare's words to open a rift into which their evil hordes could invade and destroy the Earth.

But what to call these alien witches?  Shakespeare provides the perfect name in The Tempest: the evil witch who had imprisoned Ariel and had sired Caliban: Sycorax.  The name would then tie the adventure that the Doctor and Shakespeare had to Shakespeare imagining The Tempest:  the tale of a man with the power of a god (a thematic problem in the Tennant years on Doctor Who) who is accompanied by a daughter (a young woman companion), etc.  The battle with the witches would be backstory.  (In the episode, Shakespeare triumphs with the help of a word from J.K. Rowling, to further the magic connection.)

Unfortunately though, Sycorax was already taken.  Russell T Davis had used it the year before for the first aliens that the David Tennant Doctor faced.  Roberts had to settle for inventing his own, the Carrionites--descriptive but not Shakespeare.

However, he didn't lose out completely.  After the climactic scene during the only ever performance of Love's Labours Won, the adventure is over, and Shakespeare is sitting on the Globe stage the next day, chatting up Martha Jones. The Doctor wanders in from backstage where he's found a prop that he says reminds him of a Sycorax.  "And I'll have that off you as well," Shakespeare says, meaning that this word Sycorax is something else he's going to appropriate from what the Doctor and Martha have said and done.

So the connection is made anyway, and when Shakespeare writes The Tempest in 1611, he's apparently allowing himself to recall the fantastic events of 12 years before (notice that Prospero has been on the island for 12 years!), perhaps conflating the magician he knew of called Doctor Dee with the Doctor of Tardis, when a Lord of Time visited the great Globe itself, and left not a rack behind.  

Audition for Actors (and a Horse)

Skyclad Theater (a project of the Ink People) in partnership with the Arcata Recreation Division and NCRT present Plays in the Park, coming this summer.  Auditions for William Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Sarah Ruhl's Late: A Cowboy Song will be held Saturday, April 6th, 2pm-4pm and Sunday, April 7th, 7pm-9pm at the Redwood Lounge in Redwood Park, Arcata, with call backs TBA. The shows open Friday, August 2nd, and run alternating weekends through Sunday, September 1st in Redwood Park. All roles are available. Rehearsals will begin in June.

 Roles available for As You Like It

9 Male
4 Female
11 Male or Female
All age ranges

Roles available for Late: A Cowboy Song

1 Male, age 20-35
1 Female, age 20-35
1 Female, age 20-40, plays guitar and sings.
1Horse: Yes, a real horse. Good natured, calm, good around crowds. Well trained and able to be ridden.

Please bring a headshot and resume if you have them.  Short prepared monologues are welcome, but not required.  Several roles in both shows require singing.  If you are interested in auditioning for a singing role, please be prepared with a short song. If you are interested in offering a horse, a photograph will do.

Please email skycladtheater@gmail.com or call (707) 834-0861 for more information.  You can also visit www.playsinthepark.org.

This North Coast Weekend

The only game in town this week is Shakespeare's The Tempest at North Coast Rep.  It's on stage weekends at 8 p.m. through April 20.  Directed by David Hamilton, it features Scott Malcolm as Prospero, Kate Haley as Miranda, Chyna Leigh as Ariel, Kenneth Wigley as Caliban, Ken Klima as Antonio, and Bob Service as Alonso. Sets are by Calder Johnson, costumes by Patricia Hamilton, lights by Alex Service, sound by Gabriel Groom, with cinematography by Malcolm DeSoto.  There's likely to be plenty more on this play and production in this space, and a review in the NC Journal.

This North Coast Weekend

 Dell’Arte International School MFA students present Finding The Way Home: An Evening of Melodrama, a set of overlapping stories in which good triumphs over evil (eventually), Thursday through Saturday (March 14-16) at 8 p.m. in the Carlo Theatre. 707-668-5663.

 Arcata Playhouse inaugurates this year’s Family Fun Series with The Gruffalo, a play with animal characters and music adapted from an award-winning children’s book, presented by the London-based youth theatre group Tall Stories. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m., plus a Saturday matinee at 2. 707 822-1575.

 Community members are presenting several performances of A Thousand Kites, a play based on letters from prisoners, family members and correction officers: Friday (March 15) in Gist Hall at 8 p.m., the Native American Forum at HSU on March 29 during the university’s Criminal Justice Dialogue, and finally at Redwood Curtain on April 7 at 2 p.m. All proceeds benefit the Prison University Project and other programs.

This North Coast Weekend

Highlighting the second and final weekend of Hater at HSU is the appearance of Samuel Buggeln, the New York director who translated Moliere's The Misanthrope to create this play.  He will lead the talkback after the performance on Friday at Gist Hall Theatre, and will talk and answer questions in the Studio Theatre on Saturday from 3 to 5 p.m.  He'll then host a potluck for members of the production.

So this is Buggeln, and that up there again is Claudia Johani Guerrero, who plays Celine.  A certain newspaper with the initials NCJ has for the second week chosen to pass on the opportunity to publish her photo, or any photo from this production.  And this is the face they ignored in favor of dim and badly focused photos to lead their calendar.  I guess they're worried that people might actually be drawn to look at their newspaper.

As Celine, Johani Guerrero commands the stage, and has complete control of her moments.  The payoff was the utter silence in the audience at the end, when things turned serious.  Charlie Heinberg has never been  more effectively physical--but with Michael Fields directing you expect a physical production.  Mark Teeter is a revelation--he's not only skillful and confident in his outrageous characterization, but he was relaxed enough opening night to improvise with a prop accident.  Andreina Loaiza also performed with very effective skill and style.  The ensemble started out with a shaky entrance onto the fashion show runway set on opening night, but they loosened up quickly.  By now this show should be glittering.

Update: Reports are that Hater had a very successful second weekend, with packed houses of enthusiastic and engaged audiences.

Produced by HSU Theatre, Film & Dance, Hater completes its West Coast premiere with performances on Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. in the Gist Hall Theatre.  More information on Buggeln (including how to pronounce his name) as well as the production at HSU Stage & Screen.

The other big theatrical event on the HSU campus this weekend is the 40th anniversary show of the Humboldt Light Opera Company on Saturday at 7:30 in the Van Duzer.  Tunes from the last nine productions plus a sneak preview of this summer's show center the festivities.  I'll be there.  
 Advance tickets are available at Holly Yashi and Threadbare Dancewear in Arcata, at Parasol Arts in Eureka, and online at hloc.org.

The Pitmen Painters plays its last weekend at Redwood Curtain.  Final performance is Saturday.

This North Coast Weekend

Dueling Molieres on the HSU campus this weekend.  Although readers of this week's North Coast Journal may be surprised to hear it (though not readers of the Eye or Tri-City Weekly) , the HSU Theatre, Film & Dance production of Hater, a new translation of Moliere's The Misanthrope, opens Thursday.  It's directed by Michael Fields, and plays in Gist Hall Theatre  at 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, and 2 p.m. on Sunday, as well as next weekend.

Wednesday (Feb. 27, otherwise known as tonight) another version of another Moliere play opens at the HSU Van Duzer Theatre at 8 p.m.  The Northcoast Prep first and second years are doing a 1970s themed production of The Imaginary Invalid, directed by Colin Stevens.  It starts at 8 p.m., Wed.-Saturday, a one weekend run.

I don't have any more information on the Northcoast Prep show, and getting that much wasn't easy.  But there's a lot more about the HSU show at HSU Stage and Screen.  Briefly, though:

 Samuel Buggeln is a New York-based director of such cutting edge downtown shows as Bedbugs!!! and Go-Go Kitty, GO!. He is also fluent in French. He combined these talents in his new translation of Moliere’s comedy, The Misanthrope, called Hater (“misanthrope” loosely translates as “hater,” though not in exactly the same sense as “hater” is used today.) Dell’Arte’s Michael Fields met Buggeln in New York and proposed Hater for production by HSU Theatre, Film & Dance.  This is its West Coast premiere, and may be the first production since its downtown Manhattan premiere.

 The script reads like heightened contemporary conversation (with lots of f bombs) and director Fields promises a slam-glam “bling Baroque” production. The compulsive truth-telling misanthrope is now called Alex (played by Charlie Heinberg.) The beautiful gossip and flirt he’s in love with against his better judgment is Celine (Johani Guerrero, photo above.) Others in the cast are Brodie Storey, Mark Teeter, Galen Poulton, Luke Tooker, Michelle Purnell, Andreina Loaiza, Adrienne Ralsten and Derek Burns.

P.S. Saw opening night.  Charlie Heinberg's never been better, Johani Guerrero is a star, and at least two of the supporting performances--by Mark Teeter and Andreina Loaiza--are astonishing.  This show is going to be legendary.

The Pitmen Painters continues this weekend at Redwood Curtain.

Clarification

An important point may have been lost in the editing of my current Stage Matters NC Journal column, in the "Coming Up" section about a play opening at HSU next weekend: Hater, a new translation of Moliere's The Misanthrope.

The director of this production is Michael Fields, the Producing Artistic Director of Dell'Arte.  But Hater is a production of the HSU Theatre, Film & Dance department, not of Dell'Arte or any other producing organization.  Which means for one thing that it is a largely a student production supervised by TFD faculty, and one of its purposes is education.  

More About the Pitmen Painters

painting by Oliver Kilbourn

My review of  The Pitmen Painters at Redwood Curtain appears in the current North Coast Journal.  These are a few notes on the historical background of this story (play by Lee Hall, "inspired by a book by William Feaver") which is based on real people and events.

The play begins in 1934 in Ashington, a coal mining town in the north of England.  The Great Depression, which began with the New York stock market crash in 1929, had spread worldwide.  England had not fully recovered economically from World War I so it was not as hard a fall, but the consequences were still severe, especially in places like Ashington.  Unemployment in the coal mining north reached 70%.

Though the worst of the Depression may have been over by 1934, it's still odd that it doesn't factor more in this play. It was a horrific time.  In his book The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell details the conditions: lack of food and fuel, terrible sanitation and housing, and the general drab deadening drag of life.

 The Depression is not even mentioned by name.  (One character refers to "the recession," an odd choice of word, especially since it wasn't a familiar term for some years yet. It was more likely to have been called a "slump" or the Great Slump.) One suggestion of the impact is that the youngest character ("Young Lad") says that he's never had a job in his life, even though he looks for work every day. Yet the conditions of mining plus the Depression were factors that helped make socialism popular among the working class, which is embedded in this play.  The Marx-quoting dentist in the play is something of a joke, but it's not unrealistic.

There are references to the cramped, damp, dark and dangerous mining conditions, and the fact that the older characters started in the mines at the age of 11 or 12.  Boys would not start quite that young by 1934--a law passed in 1917 required children to stay in school until 15.

Beginning in the mid to late 19th century, the British government began consciously expanding educational opportunities. There were new colleges to educate the lower middle class, partly because growing industrialization required more technicians and "scientists" (a word that was born in this period.) Eventually the working class was included.

Also in the mid 19th century, the Cooperative Movement became established in the UK, and particularly in the industrial north of England, where local co-ops formed an association.  Cooperatives functioned in different ways in different places and times, but education for workers was an early priority.

By the turn of the century, universities were offering extension courses.  So it happened in 1907 that university extensions, the Cooperative movement and particularly trade unions combined to form the Workers Education Association.This is the group that sponsors the art appreciation course that is at the center of The Pitmen Painters.  

  The WEA grew quickly to 70 local branches, and by 1945 there were 800 branches. The Workers Education Association continues to this day, with nearly a thousand centers in the UK.  Throughout its history, the WEA campaigned for worker education, and it was instrumental in getting that 1917 law passed extending the compulsory school age, as well as other laws, such as the 1944 Education Act which promoted equal educational opportunities for the working class.

George--one of the characters in the play--is comically officious, and concerned about the WEA regulations.  But the WEA did have careful regulations.  It centered on a system of tutuorials for classes of no more than 40 members who committed themselves to participating for three years.

There was a WEA art appreciation course that began in the Ashington YMCA in 1934, involving at least  the people named in the play (5 of the original 13.) Ashington had a concert hall, a theatre (home to the Ashington Labour Players) but no library and certainly no art gallery or museum.

 They'd just completed a course on evolution, and--as in the play--a college art instructor, Robert Lyon, came to teach them art appreciation.  He started with slides and lecturing.  In the play he gives that up almost immediately, but in reality it took a few classes for him to come up with the idea of the class members doing their own paintings and talking about them.

Though the play uses images of actual Ashington Group paintings, it probably takes some liberties.  In the play, Jimmy paints a picture of whippets, which he may well have.  But the best known painting of that subject produced by this group was by George Blessed ( a later member not in the play. His nephew is the famous British actor Brian Blessed.)  This might partly be because much of the early work didn't survive.  Having paintings around was often wasted space in a working class culture.

They did formally call themselves the Ashington Group in 1936, and they became somewhat famous in the art world through the 1940s, though they were mostly known as "the pitmen painters."  Though their fame slipped, they continued painting.  By the time they were rediscovered in the 1970s, they had accumulated a large collection of work.  It was writer William Feaver whose book led to their resurgence, and it was his book (which Lee Hall found in a secondhand book shop) that eventually led to this play.  A Guardian article recounts Feaver's eureka moment:

  Their rediscovery began in the 1970s when Mr Feaver, then teaching in Newcastle, noticed some Geordie pensioners at an exhibition in the city's Laing art gallery. "They invited me up to their hut in Ashington and I was amazed," he said. "There were all these paintings, cobwebby and in stacks against the wall, which they called their permanent collection. They spat on their fingers - there was a lot of spit involved with the Ashington Group - and rubbed the paint so that I could see what they looked like when they were clean.

"When you're a critic, you often get invited to discoveries which people describe as wonderful. This is the one occasion in my life when that was absolutely the case. The best of the group would certainly have gone to art school today. Their dedication was humbling."

Oliver Kilbourn and original member Jack Harrison in 1982

The play spends most time with Oliver Kilbourn, generally considered the most talented painter among them.  He never left Ashington, and continued to participate in the painting group.  The play makes much of his opportunity to take a stipend to paint, and his decision to remain in the mines instead.  This may raise all sorts of issues for Americans in or from working class cultures.  The relationship of the individual to the community, and the community's attitudes towards individuals with different ambitions, can be very complicated.  The play refers to this, and is suggestive, though it goes past it pretty quickly.  But it can be a major issue.  It certainly was where I grew up.  At the time this play is set, my father was growing up in a coal company town in western Pennsylvania.  His father and grandfather were coal miners.  Though the coal mines are long gone, and even the steel mills and much of the other industry, the area retains a working class cultural cast, and certainly did when I was growing up there (though not in that town.)  I suspect there are resonances of this for some of those who grew up in Humboldt County as well.

But Kilbourn himself apparently did not stress this issue.  He claimed to like mining, and he believed that the mines gave him his subject.  Others had painting skills and education, but no subject, he insisted.  It was better to have the subject and acquire the skills.

Kilbourn was the last surviving original member when he managed to preserve the collection before his death in 1993. In 2007 their permanent collection was exhibited and housed in the Woodhorn Colliery complex, with a ceremony officiated by Princess Anne.

The play ends with a scene that is probably puzzling to most Americans, especially in the context of what "socialism" has come to represent these days.  But in England, the period just after World War II was a time of promise and hope, especially for the working class.  The postwar Labour government nationalized coal, steel, rail and utilities, in an attempt to consolidate and modernize these industries, and revive the economy. It was not a controversial move. For workers, especially miners, it meant immediate improvement in working conditions and safety.  Miners were given paid vacations and sick leave for the first time.  The National Health Service was about to begin, bringing free medical care to people who could never afford it.

An historically-minded British audience would know this, and also know that this hope--and the ethic of we're all in this together-- didn't last.   In fact, Lee Hall's film Billy Elliot takes place during the 1980s of union-busting and Maggie Thatcher's budget-cutting and aggressive capitalism that was its antithesis.

Auditions

The North Coast Repertory Theatre announces open auditions for the comedy The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife by Charles Busch, directed by Scott Malcolm. There are roles for 2 men aged 20 to middle age, and 3 women middle aged to 80 years old. Auditions will consist of cold readings from the script. If you wish to present a prepared monologue, please have it be no longer than one minute and contemporary comic. Please bring a headshot and resume if available. Auditions will take place on Sunday, March 3 at 5 p.m. and Monday, March 4 at 7 p.m. at NCRT, 300 Fifth Street in Eureka. Callbacks, if required, will be Saturday, March 9 at 3 p.m. Rehearsals will begin in late May. Production dates are July 25 through August 17, 2013. A copy of the script is available in the Eureka Public Library. Please call director Scott Malcolm at 672-6021 if you have any questions.

Auditions for Humboldt Light Opera Company's Shrek the Musical will be held from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, February 23 at the Pan Arts Studio in Arcata (1049 Samoa Blvd, Suite C). The show runs three weekends in August at HSU. Audition registration and more information is available at hloc.org. Shrek the Musical is a hilarious, irreverent musical version of the popular Dreamworks film, featuring a supporting cast of fairy tale creatures, dancing Dulocs, and more. HLOC seeks both singers and dancers for this production. Questions? Contact info@hloc.org.

This North Coast Weekend

Dell'Arte International second years present Contents Under Pressure: A Night of Adaptations Thursday (Feb.14) through Sunday at 8 p.m. in the Carlo. The Dell'Artisans adapt a poem by Shel Silverstein ("The Devil and Billy Markham"), a short story by The Wizard of Oz author L. Frank Baum ("A Box of Robbers") and a story by the inimitable Kurt Vonnegut ("Welcome to the Monkey House.") Themes and treatment include sexually explicit stuff, so no adults, please. It's pay what you will and if all that isn't enough, there's a Valentine's Day Drink Special, a potent brew called "Love Potion #9." Reservations: 707 668-5663 ext. 20, www.dellarte.com. 

 Redwood Curtain opens their new season with The Pittman Painters, a play about a group of British miners who become art world sensations, by Lee Hall. Co-directed by Peggy Metzger and James Hitchcock, it features Craig Benson, Gary Sommers, Lincoln Mitchell, Jerry Nusbaum, Cassandra Hesseltine, JM Wilkerson, Joseph Hunt and Lillian Damron. Previews are Thursday and Friday (Feb. 14 & 15), with official opening night on Saturday at 8 p.m. Performances continue weekends through March 9 boxoffice@redwoodcurtain.com or call 443-7688.

 This is the final weekend for Songs for a New World at Ferndale Rep. Reservations: 1-800-838-3006 or 786-5483.

 Also the final weekend for American Buffalo at North Coast Rep. Reservations: 442-6278. www.ncrt.net.