Journo: So what was it like directing these experienced actors who know the game, who know the lingo, and no doubt knew it when you were completely out of your element?
Director: They were very patient with me, as was stage manager Seth Caikowski, who resisted all urges to laugh in my face (or “tssk” in disgust) when his rudimentary questions were met by my perpetually blank stares. For the record, I now know what a rude speech is; why they say, “Thank you, 10″ and where the ice machine is at the PACE Center. I still do not know what a coda or a key is. I think Carla and Megan were mostly amused by my unbridled and often wholly uninformed enthusiasm, and my occasional mental scatter-shooting. At one point Megan, who’s far more of a man, emotionally speaking, than I am, compared me to a menopausal woman.
Journo: What about performing “Always … Patsy Cline” in a 550-seat arts center, when most people think of this as an intimate cabaret show?
Director: And so did I … at first. The prospect of doing the show at PACE in the first place felt antithetical to how the show was conceived. I had seen it work so well in places like the Galleria Theatre, Union Colony, Town Hall: Smaller is definitely better. But what are you going to do? We had a stage 60 feet across to fill. So my entire focus became fixed on eliminating distance between the actors and the audience. And it turns out, PACE was an ideal place to do that. There is no space separating the first row of seats and the stage. And you can lower that stage down to the ground, so that whenever Louise was sitting at her table, she was eye-level with the audience. I also told the set designer that we were pushing everything forward, in effect cutting the stage in half, and not using the back. I wanted everyone in the band to be as prominent as either of the two actors. And I wanted them lit throughout. The major epiphany for me came when I was researching Houston’s old Esquire Ballroom. That’s where Patsy and Louise met, and where most of the story plays out. I discovered that the Esquire could hold hundreds and hundreds of people, and it hit me: “This is not a cabaret show … This is a freaking concert musical!” And we played it that way. Also: I am guessing I am the first director in the show’s 25-year history to introduce wall-sized, interactive projections, and other multimedia effects.
Journo: Oh yeah, I heard about this gimmick: Projections? For “Always … Patsy Cline”? Seriously?
Director: Shut up. I had my reasons.
Journo: Do tell.
Director: This show is 25 years old, and it still works as written. We were not going to mess with that. But I am a firm believer that just because you are presenting a 20th-century story, that does not mean you can’t embrace 21st-century storytelling techniques. I also thought projections would help bring the show to life for those in the very back of the house.
Journo: But projections are already so … compulsory … these days. How did you justify them?
Director: We opened the show with an overture, and I have never been a fan of overtures in complete darkness. That’s why children scream when the lights go down in a theater. It makes you restless. So I added a silent video under the overture that showed a timeline of female vocalists leading the audience directly backward in time from Taylor Swift through LeeAnn Rimes, k.d. lang and a whole bunch of others, ending with Loretta Lynn, Dottie West, Jan Howard and, finally, Patsy Cline – both the real one, and Megan, the one you are going to meet on our stage tonight. I did this after realizing this year is the 50th anniversary of Patsy’s death. And even though I knew our primary audience would be older, I liked to believe that we might also draw a few theatergoers who have never been alive on this planet at the same time as Patsy Cline. I thought an introduction was in order.
Journo: And then there were … the Bubba Boys.
Director: Yes. This was one of my 3 a.m. moments, and I am still not sure if it should have stayed under the cover of darkness. It was certainly a bold comic choice. In short: In the course of delivering her monologue, Louise brings several recurring men in her life to life by regularly quoting them: Her boyfriend, her boss, and Hal the local radio station DJ, among them. I call them her “Bubba Boys.” I’ve seen the show done seven or eight times, I would guess, and I always wondered what those Bubba Boys might look like. Then I thought it might be fun to dress up one actor — our producer, Chris Starkey — and film him mouthing the lines these characters deliver. Out of respect for the show’s integrity, these clips were silent, shown underneath Louise delivering her lines just as written. The alignment was sometimes spot-on, and sometimes it was just a bit off, but I got a huge kick out of it every time I saw it. It certainly gave our staging a unique point of view, and it helped fill up that massive stage.
Journo: So in hindsight, was it the right call?
Director: I don’t know. When I, er, I mean you, started running your daily directors series, you featured Larry Hecht right as we were going into rehearsal. His answer to the question about his directing philosophy haunted me during our entire rehearsal process: “Do No Harm!” he said. I had Carla Freaking Kaiser Kotrc and Megan Freaking Van De Hey on my team, and here I was taking this huge production risk that might not work. If I did nothing, people would no doubt go home appreciating Carla’s warm and tender connection with the audience, as well as Megan’s spectacular voice and other great production elements. So why hand them any reason to start a sentence with the words, “But then again … ’’ I knew it was going to be a hit-or-miss gimmick. Some did love it. And some were put-off by it. So yes, the phrase “Do No Harm” rang (and still rings) through many a 3 o’clock hour in my head. In the end, I just trusted what my team was telling me: That it was a silly, good idea. I am sure some people thought it was not.
Journo: What about the way you staged the ending?
Director: I am most proud of how we integrated video (above) into the final song before the encore. Patsy sings “True Love” right after Louise announces Patsy’s death in the plane crash. In previous stagings, this moment has always driven me batty. Here we have Louise, in tears, telling the audience that this young mother she has been bonding with all evening long has been torn apart in a violent, unforgiving plane crash. And yet, here she is, still standing right next to Louise, singing another song. As a director, I needed to create necessary, impenetrable distance between Patsy and Louise … and between Patsy and us. Initially, my grand plan was to place a live-feed camera behind the stage, where we would see Megan singing the song, larger than life against the back wall, enveloping all of the onstage band members in the process. I did not want the song videotaped because this is LIVE theater. But in the end, there was not enough confidence among my team that the live-feed technology would always work. My philosophy is this: Every insurmountable problem affords the opportunity for you to imagine something even better. So I thought to record Megan singing the song on a silent video that would project on the wall while she sang the song live in a shadowed silhouette somewhere just beyond Louise’s front window. In the accompanying video made by Sammy Taggett, Megan appears on the big screen in grainy, blurred tones, indicating death and distance. Through the course of the song, though, the video comes into both color and focus. The idea is that yes, we acknowledge Patsy has died, but she will live on — in living color — through her music. I think that worked beautifully.
Journo: The PACE Center is different from any other facility, including the nearby Lone Tree Arts Center, in that when you rent it for theater, the scenic designer (Shaun Albrechtson), lighting designer (Richard Spomer) and sound designer (Ross Ewing) all come along with the rental. Your Starkey Theatrix production team had to provide everyone else — from stage management to costumes to properties. So what do you think of this model, and what was it like working on a hybrid production team?
Director: It was, in a word, fantastic. I think the PACE model is ingenious. Think of how many times we have all sat in the Buell Theatre on opening night of some touring production, and the mics are cutting out because the visiting sound designer hasn’t worked out the kinks here yet? When we had our first production meeting, I thought, “No one knows the stage better than this guy, or the lighting better than that guy, or the sound system better than that guy.” It doesn’t get any better than that. And I have to say, when I presented the PACE team with my initial “vision statement” – I expected to be met with blank stares. I told the team: This play does not take place in Houston 1963, or even in Parker 2013. It takes place in Louise’s snow-globe of a synapse of a memory, and that allows us to abandon all literalism. I said I don’t want there to be a single 90-degree angle; I want one location to blend into another because it all takes place in her jumbled memory. And they dug it. Shaun came back with a set design where the walls of Louise’s living room swoop and swirl. But even when we’re in the Esquire Ballroom, that’s still Louise’s wallpaper on the wall next to the honky-tonk’s jukebox. When I told the sound and light guys to design the show as if this is a concert, not a Broadway musical, they went to town. Richard played with a water-based) haze that allowed for all kinds of evocative lighting effects. But what most tickled me was that he actually listened when I said, almost as an aside, that I hate tribute shows that ignore the real icon in favor of the actor playing them. As if the real Patsy Cline never existed. So about two days after tech, I’m noticing this brilliant, subtle touch: Louise has a framed photo of Patsy on her TV, and Richard had focused a very tight special light on it that stays on from start to finish. I loved it when other people noticed that, too. And Ross produced the best sound I’ve ever heard at a musical: There was not one cut mic, not one scratch, not one missed line of dialogue over the sound of the band. And then there were those designers who came from Starkey’s team: I told costumers Laurie Lamere Klapperich and Rae Klapperich that I would not allow Patsy to look foolish for one second on that stage. She was a down-home momma, and tough as any guy, but she was also an elegant, sophisticated woman who enjoyed working the social party circuit in Nashville. Patsy was hot, and she rocked the capris pants look. My costumers were thrilled to be given the freedom to dress Megan accordingly.
Journo: So what was it like once the performances started?
Director: Every night was a roller-coaster. I found myself studying the vast differences in how one audience would respond to the show versus another. There were days, especially during the matinees, when I was convinced that the average age of the audience was 104, and that we were going to surely need a gurney for every one of them (after the curtain, of course). But each time, they would all rise up in unison the second the curtain-call started. (I have grown cynical of what I call “rolling standing Os” — when people begrudgingly stand only because the person in front of them is already standing, and they can no longer see. So they stand, too. Legit standing Os are the kind where it happens in unison.) I will never, ever forget the evening performances when the house was packed, the audience was totally into it, and you could feel the love swirling back and forth between actors and audience. I’ll always cherish the small moments, too, like the stage manager Seth Caikowski tapping his hand against his leg along with “Stupid Cupid,” the look of pure joy on drummer Dan Hoeye’s face as he played, keyboardist Neal Dunfee’s right leg involuntarily flying into the air as if he were Buddy Holly reincarnated; the look of absolute loss when Carla tells the audience that Patsy is dead. Closing my eyes and letting Megan take me … wherever she wanted to take me.
Journo: Tell the truth: Did you give the show over to the stage manager after final dress, or did you keep coming back to see every performance?
Director: Oh, I came back for every show, and I was much-teased about that. But in the sweetest way. The truth is, this was a major event in my life; I loved it; and I didn’t want to miss one second of it. We only had seven scheduled performances initially, and there was nowhere else I would have rather been. While I was there, there were opportunities to talk about whether everything was still working as it should, but I only gave small notes through the stage manager — unless I was asked directly by the actors for my input.
Journo: Were there any unexpected emergencies?
Director: Yes. Carla has chronic knee pain anyway, and we kept her on her feet for long stretches. That took its toll over time. But she also took a fall at home before the final weekend of shows and I didn’t know she cracked her kneecap, bruised her lung and chipped a shoulder bone until after we closed. The biggest incident, of course, was Megan being confronted with her boyfriend Robert Michael Sanders’ botched shoulder surgery. He was moved to intensive care shortly before Megan was due to report for the final Friday night show. I told her we’d cancel in a heartbeat if she needed to be at the hospital. But, by then, I think she needed the show just as much as the show needed her. Her condition: “I can’t cry after I put my stage makeup on.” So I laid down the law to the company: No asking Megan about Robert. No overt shows of emotional support. All business. Be professionals and do the show. She went out and delivered her best performance of the entire run. Then she went back to the hospital.
Journo: So, mister former theater critic … what do you have to say of your reviews?
Director: Very humbling, and awkward. There were three that I know of, and all of them were intelligent, supportive and well-written. I felt a little conflicted because last month I had written a guest essay for a national theater magazine about what I called “the sea of acidic sunshine” that dominates online theater criticism these days. I certainly had the sun shine on me. But who am I to argue against what Deb Flomberg, Claire Martin and Bill Wheeler wrote about us? I agree with them, hah. Seriously, it was enlightening for me to see the direct correlation between reviews and the economic health of a show. Deb’s review came out on The Examiner’s web site first. It wasn’t so much about her reach but what she said that convinced the powers at Starkey and PACE to green-light an extension, even before The Denver Post review came out. Claire called Carla “faultless,” and that warmed my heart. I was especially grateful for Bill Wheeler’s review because he singled out so many individual, triumphant contributions from my production team. The irony is that his was the kind of review I never would have gotten past my editor at The Denver Post. He basically banned me from writing “checklist” reviews that run though various elements of performance and design, as opposed to an essay ruminating on the theatrical experience itself, and its context in our lives today. I was prepared for someone to take a more jaundiced view, and I was looking forward to not being a hypocrite in response. I was oddly anticipating adopting a stiff upper lip and taking the criticism with good grace and humor, so that I could be an example to everyone else out there about the critical role that criticism plays in the artistic process. But, fortunately … I never had to put my money where my mouth was.
Journo: OK, this nonsense has gone on long enough. So, in conclusion, what would you say are your primary pieces of advice now that you have tried your hand at directing?
Director: Here are a random few:
*Have a vision. Even it’s for a seemingly simple show, and even if no one in the audience will spend 5 seconds trying to figure it out. You still have to have one. If nothing else, to give you something to talk about with your creative team at Old Chicago at 1:20 a.m.
*Don’t walk into a roomful of people who know what they are doing and act like you know what you are doing.
*Know exactly what, when and how to say something before you open your mouth.
*Get in the intermission beer line early.
*When you are sure that everyone is on the same page with you about something important, write it down, send it out to everyone by email and ask, just so you’re all sure, “Is everyone on the same page?”
*Whenever you write something down, know that anyone watching will assume that it’s a note — and that you must hate them. Tell your creative team that you are a compulsive note-taker … in life. So just because you see me taking out a pen and writing something down, it’s more likely a reminder for me to buy a bell pepper on the way home than it is a note about your performance.
*Never apologize for the performance an audience just saw.
*That said: No more matinees.
*Edith Weiss had it right when she said the most important personal attribute a good director should have is wine and cigarettes.
Email John Moore at CultureWestJohn@gmail.com
Click here to subscribe to the CultureWest.org Monthly E-Newsletter
