Our inquiry and interview series with this year’s Writer/Director Lab participants continues with the director David F. Chapman.

Space is the place: director/astronaut David F. Chapman

1) Briefly tell us about your thinking on REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY.
REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY is unlike any play I’ve ever read or worked on.  The subtitle is (a mystery play) and that captures it well. The story centers on an artist named Calvin, his girlfriend, his mother and his father.  But really (really really…) it’s about the difference between how we remember and how we document (a person, an event, a relationship…).

2) What part of the Writer/Director Lab process was the most instructive and entertaining and how are the directors utilized during the process?
Most entertaining?   Ken and Jenny’s welcome speeches at the readings (perhaps that’s most instructive too). Even though we are put in our writer/director pairs at the beginning of the year, in a sense all ten of us are working together. So to that end, it’s been really instructive to see inside several different writers’ individual creative processes. Midway through the year, each director staged a section of the script-in-progress with actors and a few rehearsals, to help the writer gain a sense of how the play feels in time and space.  That was really fun – sort of a trial run for the spring reading series.

3) How do you think the Lab will influence your future work?
Well, first off, I hope to continue collaborating in some form with the nine terrific people I shared the year with. I’ve also learned a lot from watching Ken and Jenny lead the Lab — always supportive, insightful, rigorous but still with a sense of humor.  That’s a great way to approach pretty much anything.

4) Do you have any advice for emerging young freelance directors?
Um, keep applying to the Lab!

Jen Wineman directed Josua Conkel’s play SPRAWL in this year’s Writer/Director Lab. FEED puts our set of questions to her and she has some really interesting answers.

1) Briefly tell us about how you directed SPRAWL.
On the day of the reading, we assembled our cast of nine and worked through the script for about five hours. I’ve been getting to know this play as it’s been created over the last seven months, but this was the first time the actors had seen the full script. The most important part of our condensed rehearsal period was making sure that the tone of the storytelling was consistent throughout. If pressed, I would call  SPRAWL an over-the-top sci-fi comedy horror extravaganza in two acts, so it was important that the actors all embrace the idiosyncratic style Josh created for the play. We were fortunate to be working with a cast of very smart actors who all have great comedic impulses and strong senses of theatricality.

2) What part of the Writer/Director Lab process was the most instructive and entertaining and how are the directors utilized during the process?
It’s been exciting gaining access to what is normally a very private process. Because the playwrights would bring in pages each week that we’d read aloud, we all got a glimpse of how each of these writers thinks about structure, character, and story. The directors all had an opportunity to direct a workshop presentation of our playwright’s play midway though the Lab process. Those workshops helped the playwrights to see how what they’d written was working, but they were also very helpful for the directors. For me, I learned a lot about the rhythm and style of SPRAWL, which affected the kind of feedback I gave Josh from then on and prepared me well for directing the public reading.

3) How do you think the Lab will influence your future work?
As a director who focuses mainly on new plays, my relationships with the playwrights I collaborate with are really important to me. Not only did I get to meet five incredibly talented playwrights in the Lab—all of whom I would be thrilled to work with in the future—but I will also come away from this experience better at giving feedback and more sensitive to the processes of different kinds of writers.

4) Do you have any advice for emerging young freelance directors?
I think it’s important to direct as much as you can. If people aren’t hiring you, then gather some friends whose work you admire, and put up a play together. The only way to get better at directing is by directing. And the only way to get people to hire you as a director is by directing. Don’t wait for people to give you opportunities. Make your own!

Join Sylvan Oswald as he explores Philadelphia and the roots of the play, which Soho Rep presents in its Studio series.

Playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury

FEED continues its interviews with members of the Writer/Director Lab. This week, playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury.

1) Briefly tell us about your play REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY.
Briefly — ha. As horrible as it sounds, the play is kind of about art and artists.  At the center of it is a question of legacy: what do we try to leave behind, what do we actually leave behind, and how do we deal with being left.  It’s also about the toll pathologies that are common in artists (depression, narcissism, addiction, etc.) and the people who love the artist. It’s also about photography, both as a form and as an omnipresent condition of contemporary life.

2) Who are your greatest influences in your writing?
That changes every 5 days. I’m still really influenced by grad school: my teachers (Lisa D’Amour, Erik Ehn, Tracey Scott Wilson). My classmates (Mallery Avidon, Mia Chung, Joe Waetcher) and performance studies professors I came into contact with (Rebecca Schneider, Patricia Ybarra). I can’t stop thinking about plays by Jenny Schwartz and Erin Courtney and Young Jean Lee. While working on this play I’ve been thinking about [City University of New York's] Prelude Festival and their attempt to combine/explode the gallery and the theater, the white box and the black box.  I’ve also been reading work by moody white guys like Roland Barthes, Louis Althusser, Phillip Larkin, and Mark Zuckerberg (well, his website).

3) What part of the Writer/Director Lab process was the most instructive and entertaining?
I really enjoyed the directors projects, where we got a glimpse of a possible staging/interpretations of the plays mid-process — that was great both for my own process, and for having a shared reference for conversations and feedback for the other plays in the lab.  I’ve also loved way that Jenny & Ken were with each other and with us; I found their collaboration instructive and entertaining, and saying so makes  me a giant suck up, which is neither instructive nor entertaining.

4) How do you think the Lab will influence your future work?
I think the Lab structure made me appreciate how seriousness and rigor combined with levity and curiosity help me during the development process.  I liked the feeling in the room during lab meetings, and I felt supported by the professionalism of it: you have fun, you love the work, you show up prepared (most of the time), you are generous with your mind, you wrestle with partially formed ideas. I learned that these are good things to do to make stuff that might become not bad.

Director Jeremy Bloom

Up next in our series on the 2012 Lab participants is director Jeremy Bloom.

1) Briefly tell us about how you directed HOW TO GET INTO BIG BUILDINGS.
I fell in love with the play. For the reading, I positioned the actors in arrangements that I felt synthesized the characters’ kaleidoscopic relationships. We talked about pace. We focused heavily on casting. We thought about the plays big shift from one genre to another.  I got very into it.

3) What part of the Writer/Director Lab process was the most instructive and entertaining and how are the directors utilized during the process?
The most instructive: the divine feedback of our instructors, Jenny and Ken.  Entertaining: the acting within the group that often defies gender and type and reason. The directors participate in the discussions of the plays as they develop and support their writer partner throughout the process. Getting to know each of the other writer/directors and their work is the best part.

4) How do you think the Lab will influence your future work?
Constantly.

5) Do you have any advice for emerging young freelance directors?
Do the lab.

Trish Harnetiaux: the best in the West

Next up in FEED’s series of Writer/Director Lab profiles is playwright Trish Harnetiaux, whose examination of an iconic piece of British contemporary sculpture sent her imagination reeling.

1) Briefly tell us about your play HOW TO GET INTO BUILDINGS.
I’ve never tried, or been interested for that matter, in writing a love story, but now I wanted to.
Years ago I’d seen this installation art piece called ‘Exploded View’ by the British artist Cornelia Parker and found it extraordinary.  It was a wooden shed that had been packed with mundane, every day items (forks, dolls, pillows) and then it was blown up.  Parker hung it in a room just after impact, and lit it from within creating a hauntingly awesome look at something stopped mid-explosion – it contained all the energy of it’s inevitable trajectory, but allowed us, the viewer, to examine it now, in the delicate, disoriented position of having just been, well, exploded.

Cornelia Parker's "Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View" (1991)

So I decided that would be the structure of my play, it would be an exploded view play and this turned out to be very instrumental to how I approached the story.  How To Get Into Buildings is a love story, or three love stories, or maybe just really one person’s story.  And, as my lab-mate Peter Gil-Sheridan put it after an earlier reading (I quote him not only because it’s a very astute comment but because I can’t find a way to put it better) – it also seems to be about ‘access to things’ – to people, to love, to buildings.

2) Who are the greatest influences to your writing?
Ionesco, JM Barrie, Mac Wellman, Caryl Churchill, Erik Ehn, Ada Limon, Jennifer L. Knox, Kenny Powers, Aristophanes, Salinger, Derek Jeter, Hemmingway, early Tim Burton, Beckett, Dave Eggers (and I’m not afraid to say it, he did important things), Jenny Schwartz, President Barak Obama, Tina Satter, Erin Courtney, Albee, Normandy Raven Sherwood, Wes Anderson, Willie Nelson, Richard Brautigan, Jacob A. Ware, Julian Dibbell, Joe Orton, my dad, Edgar Allan Poe and Shirley Jackson – to name a few.

3) What part of the Writer/Director Lab process was the most instructive and entertaining?
I appreciated the humor in the room.  Everyone seemed to be both passionate and serious about the work, but also allowed for uncertainty and for trying brand new text out.  There was never the pressure of having to bring in something polished.  Ken and Jenny were so great and encouraging, and the other three plays are all so good and different from each other that it was entertaining just to watch them change, to read them aloud and be part of another writer’s process.

4) How do you think the Lab will influence your future work?
Oh, I don’t plan to leave the lab. Ever.  So, I look forward to writing a new play every year in the Soho Rep Lab.

FEED continues it’s exploration of the Writer/Director Lab with brief interviews of this year’s participants. Up next is Anna Brenner, director of COCKFIGHT.

1) Briefly tell us about your directorial thinking on COCKFIGHT.
Peter [Gil-Sheridan, playwright] begins COCKFIGHT with this sensitive and slow ease into the world of the Bravo family’s backyard in West Tampa – where young Juanie wakes up on the concrete in the morning and begins to paint a giant egg.  But then Juanie’s drunk rowdy parents come home and the tone abruptly changes.  The expectations are always shifting in both large and subtle ways.  So, I’m just trying to understand these characters, and what they really want for their lives, and what they want from each other.  It’s a typical approach for me—to find the atmosphere and tempo of the piece, while having empathy in grasping the essence of characters.  I always want to blow the audience’s mind, in some artful way, and I just want to direct a full production of COCKFIGHT, because it’s all there.

2) What part of the Writer/Director Lab process was the most instructive and entertaining and how are the directors utilized during the process?
About midway through the year we were able to workshop the play with actors, and then I presented a section of the play to the group.  We created a little theater in the Soho Rep office; I brought my flood light and plugged it in on a dimmer, it was very poor theater.  Those few days of rehearsal were so helpful.  Peter and I had a lot of questions going into it that we were able to explore: Is there really a giant egg on stage? Who is this narrator?  How drunk are Juan and Boozy?  It was exciting for me to begin to find the world of this play in the room.

3) How do you think the Lab will influence your future work?
I just hope I get to direct a play by each of the lab writers someday soon. Seriously. But also – The lab has brought up a lot of good questions for me about the primacy of text in American theatre that I wasn’t really asking before.  I’m sensitive to protecting writers, and yet I really want to jump in and get to work and bring it to life.  I think the lab has helped me find patience.

4) Do you have any advice for emerging young freelance directors?
I believe it’s important to find the people you respect artistically and put yourself near them.  Keep investigating the big questions; know why you’re doing a project; don’t just throw your own style onto everything; have patience, integrity, bravery…  It’s been helpful for me to direct as much as I can, to always practice and improve.

Professor of Dramatic Criticism James Leverett from The Yale School of Drama joins us in this video to give context and background to Dion Boucicault’s 1859 melodrama THE OCTOROON. The  play – featured as part of our Soho Rep Studio – has been radically reworked by playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. We are thrilled that playwright/director Mark Ravenhill will join us from the UK to helm the week-long workshop. Public performances follow on April 27th and 28th.

Boucicault’s play courted immediate controversy when it debuted in the US. The play examines race, slavery, gender and the 19th century’s perception of these themes; in other words, a prime play for Jacob-Jenkins (author of the blistering NEIGHBORS) to explore.

What do you make of melodrama in the 21st century? Comment below.

BIOGRAPHY
James Leverett is Associate Professor of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism. He holds a B.A. in German from Millsaps College, an M.A. in German from Rutgers University, and a M.A. in Theatre from the City University of New York. He was founding director of the Literary Services department at Theatre Communications Group, the national organization of nonprofit professional theatres. There he was series editor of Dramatists Sourcebook, Plays in Process, and New Plays USA. In 1988, he received the first Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas Award for service to the field. His writings have appeared in numerous national and international publications, including the Soho News, Village Voice, American Theatre, Performing Arts Journal, Theater heute, Die Deutsche Bühne and Theater, for which he is a contributing editor. His consultancy work includes the Rockefeller Foundation, Fulbright Fellowships, McKnight Foundation, W. Alton Jones Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Alpert Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and New York State Council on the Arts, for which he served as chair of the Theater Panel. He has taught in the Playwriting Workshop at the University of Iowa and worked as a dramaturg at the Mark Taper Forum, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Theatre for a New Audience, Berkshire Theatre Festival, and New York Shakespeare Festival. In addition to his position at Yale, he is visiting professor in the Theatre Division of the Columbia University School of the Arts.

FEED is happy to introduce a new interview series with participants from this year’s Writer/Director Lab. First up is JOSHUA CONKEL, writer of SPRAWL.

1) Briefly tell us about your play SPRAWL.

Sprawl is a dark comedy about a group of friends and frenemies gathering in a suburban model home for a book club meeting. Just as they begin to discuss the trendy self-help book, “Whisper to the Stars,” the earth splits open and belches forth a plague of poisonous insects. Obviously, this is only the beginning of what turns out to be a very, very bad night.

2) Who are your greatest influences in your writing?

Playwrights Nicky Silver, Charles Ludlam, Charles Busch and Christopher Durang. Filmmakers John Waters, Todd Solondz, and Pedro Almodovar. I’m also a massive fan of horror movies, comic books and underground rock music.  Sprawl, specifically, was influenced Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphoses, by Stephen King’s The Mist, and by this disco video by Cerrone: http://youtu.be/V112pTo–Js

A still from the 1978 video "Supernature" by Cerrone

3) What part of the Writer/Director Lab process was the most instructive and entertaining?

I didn’t realize until after the reading how influenced I was by the other plays. Sprawl quickly changed from a living room play (tentatively entitled Supernature) into the large cast sprawling monster presented at my reading, largely because I totally ripped off fellow lab writer Trish Harnetiaux’s structure idea around “exploded views” and re-purposed it toward my own nefarious goals. Sorry, Trish!

4) How do you think the Lab will influence your future work?

Soho Rep inspired me to go for the boldest, biggest, most imaginative version of the play. This is good news for me, as I now feel slightly less pressure to write “realistic” plays about white people on vacation. I’ll carry that in my little heart, always and forever.

xoxo

Joshua Conkel

FEED continues its look at Soho Rep’s thirty-fifth anniversary season with this Artistic Director interview. Daniel Aukin is in conversation with Time Out New York’s Theater Editor David Cote. The conversation ranges over Aukin’s early years in theater, as well as the work he did to cement Soho Rep’s reputation as a new writing venue.

Originally presented during the run of THE UGLY ONE on February 16, 2012

Also in this series: FEED35: Marlene Swartz in Conversation.

BIOGRAPHIES

DANIEL AUKIN’s acclaimed production of 4000 MILES (LCT3) by Amy Herzog will be re-opening at LCT’s Mitzi Newhouse Theater in April 2012. Daniel most recently directed THE UGLY ONE at SoHo Repertory Theatre, and the critically acclaimed world premiere of THIS by Melissa James Gibson at Playwrights Horizons and the Mark Taper Forum. Other credits include: BACK BACK BACK by Itamar Moses at Manhattan Theatre Club, Arthur Miller’s A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE at Arena Stage, Melissa James Gibson’s CURRENT NOBODY at Woolly Mammoth, Elmer Rice’s THE ADDING MACHINE at La Jolla Playhouse. As Artistic Director of Soho Rep., Daniel directed Mark Schultz’s critically acclaimed EVERYTHING WILL BE DIFFERENT (world premiere), Melissa James Gibson’s [SIC] (OBIE award for direction), Quincy Long’s THE YEAR OF THE BABY (world premiere), Mac Wellman’s CAT’S-PAW (world premiere), Marie Irene Fornes’ MOLLY’S DREAM (world premiere, OBIE Award), and Melissa James Gibson’s SUITCASE (also at La Jolla Playhouse). For other theatres:  Melissa James Gibson’s BROOKLYN BRIDGE at the Children’s Theatre of Minneapolis and Mat Smart’s THE HOPPER COLLECTION at the Huntington Theatre. Upcoming projects include the musical adaptation of the Jonathan Lethem novel THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE with Michael Friedman and Itamar Moses for Center Theater Group.  Daniel was Artistic Director of Soho Rep (1998-2006) where he commissioned over fifty new plays though the Writer/Director Lab and produced many premieres garnering eight OBIE awards, four Drama Desk Nominations, two Kesselring Prizes, and one Oppenheimer Award.

 DAVID COTE (Moderator) is theater editor and chief drama critic for Time Out New York. His essays, criticism and reporting have appeared in The New York Times, The Times (UK), The Guardian, Opera News and The Best Plays Theater Yearbook. He is a member of the New York Drama Critics Circle and appears as a contributing critic on NY1’s On Stage. He has written companion books to the Broadway musicals Wicked, Jersey Boys and Spring Awakening. He teaches arts criticism at Brooklyn College. Fellowships: The MacDowell Colony. In addition his journalism, David is an early-career playwright and librettist. As part of the HERE Artist Residency Program, he is developing The Scarlet Ibis, an opera for young adults with composer Stefan Weisman. He’s also writing a trio of operas with Robert Paterson tentatively called Fetish. The Gingold Theatrical Group also commissioned his play Otherland. More information at www.davidcote.com.

As FEED continues its celebration of Soho Rep’s history, we are delighted to take another look at perhaps one of the most monumental productions in the theater’s history – DRACULA – in a version by Mac Wellman. This pull-the-stops-out production was directed by Artistic Director Julian Webber and was by all accounts one of the most successful environmental stagings to ever be seen in downtown theater.

For the evening, FEED was honored that almost all of the design team from this landmark production returned to Soho Rep for a trip down memory lane. The evening was moderated by Anne Kauffman, freelance director and member of Soho Rep’s Artistic Council.

The participants were: Mac Wellman (playwright), Kyle Chepulis (Set Design), Brian Aldous (Lighting Design), John Kilgore (Sound Design), Melissa Shiflett (Music Composition).

BIOGRAPHIES

BRIAN ALDOUS got his start in lighting working for Dennis Parichy, resident designer for the late lamented Circle Rep, about 25 years ago. He first lit a Mac Wellman play, with Kyle Chepulis as the set designer, in 1989: Crowbar, EnGarde Arts’ Victory Theatre Project. His most recent design for a play was for Mac Wellman’s 3 2’s or Afar, with Kyle Chepulis as set designer, at Dixon Place last fall.

KYLE CHEPULIS In the theatrical world, most recently designed Mac Wellman’s 3 2′s; or Afar at Dixon Place and previously, Future Anxiety at The Flea Theater, an organization and theater that he, Mac Wellman and Jim Simpson founded in 1997.  One of his  companies, Technical Artistry, provides lighting design and technical consultation to museums, exhibitions, theaters, galleries and the arts.  Presently working on a new Flea Theater complex opening in 2013 downtown and recently consulted on the New Ohio Theater.  Brian Aldous and he even helped setup Soho Rep, HERE and many NYC theaters throughout the years.

ANNE KAUFFMAN (MODERATOR) NY Theater: Soho Rep, P73, 13P, Clubbed Thumb, The Vineyard, New Georges, Naked Angels, Dixon Place, Cherry Lane Theater, Playwrights Horizons, New York Theater Workshop. Regional Theater: The Wilma, Yale Rep, Steppenwolf, Goodman, ATL, The Arden, Woolly Mammoth, Asolo Rep, ART, Encore Theater, Shotgun Players, Chautauqua. OBIE Award for The Thugs, Lilly Award for Directing, Alan Schneider Award for Directing. Drama League Fellow, Founding Associate Artist of The Civilians, NYTW Usual Suspect, Clubbed Thumb Associate Artist, New Georges Kitchen Cabinet, Artistic Council Soho Rep.

JOHN KILGORE was the sound designer for Dracula by Mac Wellman. Designs for Soho Rep include Len Jenkin’s Careless Love and Swoop, also by Mac Wellman. Broadway designs include Starmites, Love! Valour! Compassion!, The Rose Tattoo, Tartuffe, and one of the only shows to close before it opened, Bobbi Boland. With Len Jenkin, Dierdre O’Connell and Steve Mellor, he is the sometime perpetrator of the Dream Express, the outlaw cabaret lounge act that is an outgrowth of Careless Love. His midtown recording studio, John Kilgore Sound & Recording, serves the theatrical, jazz, cabaret and alternative music worlds. He has been composer Steve Reich’s recording engineer since 1993.

MELISSA SHIFLETT began her career as resident composer to the experimental Dream Theatre at the Body Politic Theatre in Chicago.  She specializes in opera and song-writing.  Her opera Dora, composed to a libretto by Nancy Fales Garrett, was originally premiered by La MaMa, ETC in association with The American Chamber Opera Company and was given its second full production in April, 2009, by the Peabody Chamber Opera at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.  Excerpts from Dora were presented on New York City Opera’s first annual Vox festival showcase.  Her opera My Undying Love: An Amusement was presented by The Construction Company in 2008 in a production by The American Chamber Opera Company.  Other operas include Lisa’s Room: A Dream commissioned and performed by Piccolo Productions in Chicago, and Without Colors produced by the Minnesota Opera New Music Theatre Ensemble. Ms. Shiflett’s Songs on Sara Teasdale Poems and Water Dreams were premiered at Carnegie Hall in 2002 by soprano Shauna Holiman and can be heard on Albany Records.  Her Lullaby Duets were performed at the DIA Center for the Arts in New York, The William Ferris Chorale in Chicago, and on a concert of her songs at the 92^nd Street Y on their Meet the Virtuoso series.  Songs she composed for theater have been performed both nationally and internationally in the plays Dracula by Mac Wellman and Tales of the Lost Formicans by Constance Congdon.  The most recent works, Fantasy Songs and The Rose Saga, sung by Ms. Shiflett and Helen Mandlin, have been performed at The Construction Company in New York City and the 92^nd Street Y. Ms. Shiflett has received grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the Margaret Jory Copying Assistance Program of the American Music Center, Meet the Composer, and a Diverse Forms Artist Grant (funded by the NEA, Rockefeller Foundation and Jerome Foundation) to complete the orchestration of her opera Dora.  She holds degrees in Music Composition and Piano from the American Conservatory of Music.  She is a music instructor at the 92^nd Street Y and is a member of ASCAP.

MAC WELLMAN’s recent work includes 3 2’s; or AFAR at Dixon Place in October 2011, The Difficulty of Crossing a Field (with composer David Lang) at Montclair in the fall of 2006 (and elsewhere more recently),  and 1965 UU for performer Paul Lazar, and directed by Stephen Mellor at the Chocolate Factory in the fall of 2008.  He has received numerous honors, including  NEA, Guggenheim, and Foundation of Contemporary Arts fellowships.  In 2003 he received his third Obie, for lifetime Achievement. In 2006 his third novel, Q’s Q, was published by Green Integer, and in 2008 a volume of stories, A Chronicle of the Madness of Small Worlds, was published by Trip Street Press as well as a new collection of plays The Difficulty of Crossing a Field from Minnesota Press. His books of poetry include Miniature (2002), Strange Elegies (2006) both from Roof Books, and Left Glove, just out from Solid Objects Press.   He is Distinguished Professor of Play Writing at Brooklyn College.

Where does the economy of beauty intersect with popular opinion on the subject? Join Professor of Economy Steve Landsburg in a conversation with Professor of Sociology Ashley Mears in discussing these issues. Interestingly, Ashley herself became a runway model to research her dissertation on the issue of public opinion and beauty. This FEED proved a huge hit and a real eye-opener into the world of THE UGLY ONE. Enjoy!

BIOGRAPHIES
STEVE LANDSBURG (Moderator) is a Professor of Economics at the University of Rochester. He is the author of The Armchair Economist, Fair Play, More Sex is Safer Sex, The Big Questions, two textbooks in economics, a forthcoming textbook on general relativity and cosmology, and over thirty journal articles in mathematics, economics and philosophy. His current research is in the area of quantum game theory. He blogs daily at www.TheBigQuestions.com. For over ten years, he wrote the monthly ‘Everyday Economics’ column in “Slate” magazine, and has written regularly for “Forbes” and occasionally for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. He appeared as a commentator on the PBS/Turner Broadcasting series Damn Right, and has made over 200 appearances on radio and television broadcasts over the past few years. He has served on the board of directors of Hutchinson Technology, the world’s largest maker of suspension assemblies for hard disk drives.

ASHLEY MEARS is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Boston University. She completed her Ph.D. from New York University and was a visiting fellow at the Center for Gender Studies at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on the intersections of culture, markets, and inequalities. Her first book, Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model (University of California Press, 2011), examines the production value around the “look” in New York and London fashion markets. Her articles are published in the journals Ethnography, Poetics, and Social Forces, and she has written for The New York Times and The Week.

Continuing our look at the history of Soho Rep in honor of our 35th year, Literary and Humanities Manager Raphael Martin interviews one of the founding co-Artistic Directors, Marlene Swartz about the days that she and Jerry Engelback dreamed up the theater and how they spent their first few years running it. Marlene also speaks about those who succeeded her: Julian Webber and Daniel Aukin. It’s an amazing slice of life look at the early days of the off-Broadway movement. We hope you enjoy it.

BIOGRAPHY

Marlene Swartz - founding co-artistic director of Soho Rep – started Soho Rep with Jerry Engelbach in 1975.  She directed her own adaptions of Ibsen’s The Master Builder and Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya as well as a new musical version of Aristophanes’ The Congresswomen. Her direction of the world premiere of Stephen Davis Park’s The Idol Makers, won her a directing award. Marlene was also known for her interpretations of Pinter, both in The Birthday Party and The Caretaker.

Marlene and Jerry went through three spaces between 1975 and 1986: their original one in SoHo on Mercer Street, one season at the Auditorium at Bellevue Psychiatric Building, and four years at Greenwich House in the West Village. Jerry left Soho Rep in 1986 and Julian Webber, Soho Rep’s leading director, joined as co-artistic director in 1990.  Julian oversaw the move to Walker Street where he become the sole artistic director in 1991, as Marlene began minimizing her involvement.

Marlene co directed Blue Man Group in its first incarnation at the Astor Place Theatre in 1991. At the same time she started her story consulting business, The Story Conference.  Her clients’ work has been featured at Slamdance Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Toyota Comedy Festival, U.S. Comedy Arts Festival, Aspen, American Shorts Festival et. al.

In 1997 Marlene returned to get her masters degree and set up private practice as a psychotherapist specializing in issues dealing with the arts. She treats private patients, has worked on artistic and collaborative issues with bands and theatre troupes, and consulted on a reality show.

Marlene currently spends part of her year in the mountains of Mexico, where Jerry and his wife, also live.

In this terrific FEED post-show discussion connected to THE UGLY ONE, the NY Times journalist Alina Tugend interviews professor of US History Natalia Mehlman Petrzela (The New School) about our society’s obsession with bettering ourselves. In the talk they pair examine the history of the movement in the Unites States and abroad, as well as our current societal desires to live mistake-free lives. All in all, a perfectly meshed response to Mayenburg’s THE UGY ONE. Enjoy!

Biographies

Alina Tugend (Moderator) writes the award-winning column ShortCuts for the New York Times business section and her book, “Better by Mistake: The Unexpected Benefits of Being Wrong,” will be out in paperback in March. A native of California, Alina has been a journalist for 30 years and been published in  numerous publications, including The Los Angeles Times, the Atlantic and Family Circle.

Natalia Mehlman Petrzela is Assistant Professor of Education Studies and History at Eugene Lang College the New School for Liberal Arts, and a historian of postwar American culture, politics, and society. Petrzela is currently completing a book about battles over sex education and bilingual education in the public schools during the 1960s and 1970s as a lens through which to explore modern conceptions of Americanism. She has published in various scholarly contexts about the problems and promises facing the postwar United States during a period of unprecedented pluralism, and her work has been supported by the Whiting, Spencer, and Mellon Foundations. The “Me Generation” of the 1970s provided the backdrop to Petrzela’s current book project, and first inspired the questions that animate her newer work, a social and intellectual history of self-improvement in American culture. The right to pursue happiness is an embedded and enduring facet of our culture, and Petrzela asks how this pursuit has meant different things in diverse contexts, and how our contemporary embrace of “holistic wellness” and “personal empowerment” is a political project. From the Declaration of Independence to the utopian communities of the 19^th century to the “human potential” movement of the mid-20^th century to fitness craze of the 1980s to today’s ubiquitous “mind-body” programs, Americans have been tireless in reinventing themselves in ways both empowering and imprisoning. Petrzela has an M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Stanford University, and a B.A. from Columbia College.

Join us in this video as the cast and members of the creative team speak about the creation of this production. From changing characters in a split-second, to the influence of American sculptor Donald Judd on lighting designer Matt Frey. We hope this look behind the scenes will complement Marius von Mayenburg’s dazzling piece of theater.

Moderated by Raphael Martin (Literary & Humanities Manager).

With: Daniel Aukin (Director), Matt Frey (Lighting Designer); and cast members Lisa Joyce, Steve Boyer, Alfredo Narciso and Andrew Garmen.