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Photo by Scott Cally & Bella Muccari |
Michael: As a Cuban-American theater artist In The Heights holds very special meaning to me. More personally, my grandparents and father immigrated from Havana, Cuba to 183rd Street in 1952, my parents met on the 181st St A stop that was upstage left, and I was born in Washington Heights. My family and I saw the show off-Broadway and Broadway, I saw the National Tour in Boston the day after my Abuela passed away, and it was the only Broadway musical by grandfather and I ever saw together. The story of In The Heights is one that speaks to me in a profound way and has a very special place in my heart. After working on the show, it became clear from the amazing group of Latino/a artists that gathered around the piece that Lin Manuel Miranda's writing spoke to us all and each of our family's culture, sacrifices, communities and love. When The Gallery Players asked me to return to the theater, after directing last year's NY It Awards nominated Next to Normal, I simply couldn't pass up the chance to bring my family and my culture to life on stage.
Jonathan-Bruce: I wanted to work on this musical because it explores a wonderful concept: what is home in the face of adversity? The theater wanted to explore the concepts of the play given the changing backdrop of our part of Park Slope. We have seen so much change in the past few years, the bodega is now a juice bar, starbucks and artisan coffee have opened up, and rents have risen astronomically. It is a musical about Washington Heights, but it could be about Park Slope.
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Photo by Scott Cally & Bella Muccari |
Jonathan-Bruce: I hope the audience came away with a sense of what home was to them, how their choices in living and life affect others, and how to find home within themselves.
Jonathan-Bruce: I loved working with an amazing cast and crew. Everyone had some kind of connection to the neighborhood or the culture, and were so excited to bring these characters to life.
Jonathan-Bruce: This is a very big musical, and a very realistic musical. We had to make sure we were firmly rooted in realism but also could stay within budget.
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Photo by Scott Cally & Bella Muccari |
Jonathan-Bruce: Michael Bello is an incredibly adept and skillful director. His vision and specificity showed throughout the production and led to a cohesive, well thought out, and enthralling production.
Govin: I've worked all over the world on different productions with various companies, festivals and organizations. Exposure was the first productions from America that I was offered and I thought it would be exciting to work in New York City.
Govin: It was a very passionate group of artists who were all very dedicated to their craft. It’s always great to be a part of a team where everyone works and wants to work towards a common goal.
Govin: Budget and technical limitations of the space were very challenging. However I think that that sometimes makes most designs more interesting. Exposure is a great testament to that.
Govin: I was flying in from Istanbul; fresh from doing a large government festival in a 3000 seat theatre; then walking into the beautiful 60 seater Gene Frankel Theatre on the Lower East Side was a quick reminder of how varied this industry can be. From spectacle and scale to visceral and intimate.
Seanie: Getting to work with Dan Sweeney and Bret Koheart of Acquiesce (the band), two guys who I've hung out with in the village for over a decade, were kind enough to let us use their music to soundtrack the play.
Amanda: We wanted to offer them a time out from their financial insecurity. We believe in the pursuit of happiness and that money, materialism and capitalism shouldn't be the answers to what they are looking for.
Seanie: When I wrote the play, I wrote the part of Johnny for our dear friend James Anthony Tropeano III (Jimmie), who had worked on our last two productions. This past December, weeks before rehearsals were set to begin, he was killed in a tragic accident. The most challenging part was replacing him and rehearsing knowing that Jimmy wasn't playing his role. Most of the actors were friends with Jimmie so we had a pretty rough time with it, but we knew the show had to go on.
Seanie: Their commitment is remarkable. We have worked with a very brilliant and committed group of people. Many of the actors in One Way to Pluto! have been with us for the last 5 productions, including 4 original plays within a year.
Amanda: Seanie is amazing, because you can’t teach what he does.
Kia: There were a number of things that were very attractive about this project, a new playwright, multiple locations, allegory for the aids epidemic told with zombies...
Heather: Our history with Jason and the open-gender casting of this play. The story. The opportunities for other artists involved with Flux to shine.
Kia: Of course I love working with the creative team, director and cast. We really dove into the story and created a whole new world. Everyone was wonderful to work with and brought so many perspectives into the room with respect.
Heather: Seeing two artists grow tremendously in roles that were new to them. It was Jason's first full production as a playwright and Emily's as a director.
Kia: The space! We were at Access and they had a power issue with the building. I only had 16 dimmers and when the conventionals were on we couldn't run the A/C! I brought in a LED package to supplement the limitations and it proved to be the workhorse for emotional and environmental storytelling.
Kia: Because this was a new work, and a new playwright, we walked a thin line between wanting to say "yes" to every possibility, and needing to have an editing hand for what would make this production stronger while giving the playwright agency to learn. It was difficult during tech, and we made some big cuts close to opening that proved completely right but it was very hard.
Kia: They're awesome. I always have all the design support I get. How everyone wanted me to be satisfied with my vision, and the concern about being in a space that is not technically advanced.
Heather: Kia is one of the hardest working artists in Indie theatre and she always goes above and beyond, filling voids that aren't hers to fill. And she's a wonderful collaborator.You can follow these artists on Twitter
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Photo by Alicia Levy |
Peter: I was interested in spoofing the solo show genre, and managed to do that, while also poking fun at talk shows and celebrities. I was fascinated with the idea of a "regular person" being a guest on a talk show - but treated like a celebrity. I did a bunch of research on classic talk show hosts and discovered that many of them created personas as their on-air personality. This concept led to me having my old 90s character Lance come out of retirement to be the host of the show. And then that led to me creating a bigger backstory as well as interstitial bits to do in between the guests.
Peter: I wanted audiences to come away with a good feeling. I wanted to make people forget their troubles for an hour and to believe in the struggle of the character and to hopefully see parts of themselves in the character. It's a show about being optimistic...even when the chips are down. And for Lance, they are always down.
Peter: I love improvising with audience members who "Lance" treated like real celebrities. I did the show in NY, Orlando, Hollywood, London and a month-long run in Edinburgh. I met all kinds of people from all over the world with such diverse backgrounds and observing how they responded to Lance as if he was a real person was a real treat.
Peter: It was tough to find the heart and the "why" at first; but after doing the show at a few fringe fests, it became clear that Lance just wanted to be loved and recognized. It was then a challenge for me to realize that Lance was essentially me. Beyond that, the character is very high energy and it was a real workout as far as singing and dancing and keeping up with the variety of people who Lance chatted with.
Peter: I was fortunate enough to book and interview actual stars near the end of the run. These stars included FAME & Broadway star Laura Dean; FAME star Antonia Franceschi; Chanteuse Extraordinaire Tammy Faye; and YouTube/Off-Broadway Impressionist sensation Christina Bianco! And I always enjoy hearing people GASP when Lance's wig came off at the end of the show. It always warmed my heart. I called it the "Santa Claus" moment --- like, "Hey! That guy isn't real! But I want him to be!"
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Photo by Mark Veltman |
Ian: I was obsessed with the original anonymous text found online, and I believed that the time and place were right for it to be shared with the world in this form.
Ian: The close collaboration with an exceptional group of actors who were willing to trust in a very singular and often inexplicable vision for the piece, and not afraid to work very hard to polish a rough stone into multifaceted, gleaming clarity.
Ian: Delving into the words of a mentally-ill person, and pulling from their beauty and pain a pure theatrical experience.
Ian: There are almost too many strange things to mention -- the cast and crew still speak to each other in a shorthand of phrases from the text that will have no meaning to anyone who didn't spend months working on it. Our own in-joke patois.
Ian: A combined sense of despair and hope at the past present and future of our country -- a sense that things have gone horribly wrong, but there is still beauty, and ideals, and people who care, even in the midst of madness.
Ian: We made a remarkable piece of theater out of a madman's beautiful but difficult online rant, and continued our quest to make theater that is both basically indefinable/indescribable except by the production itself, and deeply satisfying to audiences of all kinds.
M.L.: I really wanted to work with the director and the company. The subject matter was interesting. I liked the script.
M.L.: It had a lot of technical elements that all had to work together, and in my area there was a lot of work to put it all together. It was easily my biggest show last year.
M.L.: They're very creative, smart, and friendly, and work really hard to put their shows up. It was a lot of hard work, but we felt really proud of it, and I'm happy that it and the company are being recognized.
Charles: Writer MJ Kaufman and director Adrienne Campbell-Holt are highly collaborative. Colt Coeur is a fantastic company.
Sandy: I was very excited to work with the director, Amiee Todoroff and working with the complexity of the set changes.
Sandy: The number of locations, limited storage and fairly realistic look.
Sandy: Aimee, Justin, Will, Molly and the rest of the production crew were just great people to work with.
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Photo by Josef Pinlac
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Anwen: Taking a well-known role, like Mercutio, and getting to be unapologetic in how fearsome and rambunctious and sexual that character is, and do it as a woman, without sacrifice. That was such an interesting challenge, because there was a fear the audience might respond to it really really badly- and they didn't.
Hamilton: It was our first production on the HBO Stage of Bryant Park and we wanted to be one Shakespeare's most classic and celebrated plays. We had done Hamlet the year before so Romeo and Juliet was the logical choice. Casting a woman in the traditionally male role of Mercutio was the most exciting choice of the production.
Hamilton: We wanted the audience to discover the Motagues and the Capulets feud as a feud that resonated in today's socioeconomic politics of the the 1% vs the 99%.
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Photo by Josef Pinlac |
Anwen: The most challenging thing was going up against people's expectations of what Mercutio should be- you get a certain subset of people who see him as the personification of rowdy male behavior, and so to come at that as a woman, and to embrace that facet of his personality without apologizing for being a woman, was a really interesting challenge.
Hamilton: It's very challenging to brave the elements in any out door production.
This one had a different element than we had faced before.
Bryant PArk/HBO stage became very warm on matinee days and we were forced to move the production, for those perormances off the stage and onto the grass. Our audience was right with us as many of them sat to the side in the shade and forced us to literally act closer toward the cooler parts of the park.
Hamilton: Anwen Darcy showed tremendous courage and versatility in embracing the role of Mercutio, customarily played by a man , as a female "bro" friend of Romeo's. The role called for Ms. Darcy discover and overtly sexual character as well as engage in complex fight scenes . Anwen Darcy is awesome because she is simply one of the toughest actress you will ever find.
