Lots of love for sure, but there’s also the madness that comes with parenting. Melissa Greenspan’s show captures it all: highs, lows, pivots, love, tenderness, anxiety, perfect plans in an imperfect world. Her engaging and candid look at motherhood made me go home and text my daughter. This is the perfect show for anyone who has a mom, is a mom, or is considering having children. Rich with paradigm-shifting moments and laughter, it’s a must-see. Take your mom—she’ll love it!
WHERE:Actors Company(Let Live Theater) 916 N. Formosa Av
WHY:Because there are not enough plays that focus on the health of women. Because Rahvaunia is exquisite as she brings to life four women and a host of characters who help us understand why discussing HIV is still an urgent and important conversation we need to be having as a community. Because often shame causes us to keep silence on issues that matter and this show breaks all those fears and taboos. Because this show hits you right in your gut in all the necessary ways that only theatre can do. Because Black women have been disproportionately affected by HIV in the United States, accounting for 54% of new HIV infections in women despite making up less than 15% of the female population. Because Black women are also 15.3 times likely to die from HIV infection as White Women. Because every 35 minutes a woman is diagnosed with HIV.
Because this solo show was a source of entertainment but also a tool for educating that will live outside the theatre and transform lives in ways still unseen. Because I lost a dear friend to HIV and still have not healed from the fact that he could/would still be alive if silence and shame had not won. Because this show calls for us to have love, grace and respect for anyone battling or living with HIV. Because 20% of Americans are living with HIV and don’t even know they have it. Because I walked into Rahvaunia’s show one way and left a completely different person. Because this one woman show deserves to be uplifted and supported and I hope to see it on PBS!
This is a powerful and very important show not to be missed. Please, catch this wonderful one-woman show and watch Rahvaunia give a voice to health issue we often turn away from and she is doing it with dignity and love.
WHY: To see this beautiful brown-skinned girl walk onstage and break cultural expectations is a gift of the times. Christina has this magical way with words; an ability to reach right out into the audience and relate to us in a way that is familiar and friendly. We know her.I Hope You Heal is a funny, personal, intimate and painful exploration of betrayal that is both thrilling and devastating. Through a series of chapters we are taken on a beautiful ride as we witness Christina come to discover her own worth, finding self-love by realizing that who she is and where she comes from is what makes her unique. To see her inhabit her own authentic story within those truths is a lesson to us all. Ultimately, this show is an invitation to the audience to heal any parts of ourselves that are in pain, denial, and blocking us from becoming our truest selves. It is an offering to take any heartbreaks and turn them into beautiful visions of a life you can walk through proudly. Don’t this miss this fabulous show and catch this beautiful artist who you will soon see writing some of your favorite television shows.
WHY: The Fairy Who Cried Gems filled my spirit and took me away in ways that I didn’t see coming. Lily is a magical storyteller who seamlessly weaves heartbreak and doubt into a triumphant collection of folktales which are inspired by the real experiences of Indian women who grew up in the United States. She boldly and bravely blends her mixed heritage, the oral history of Desi-American girlhood and female stereotypes into new realities with the hope that her younger sisters will have the opportunity to exist in a world where they can become or do anything they imagine, and never doubt that their voices matter.
The Fairy Who Cried Gems questions how women are seen or erased when stories are passed down from one generation to the next. What stories are being told and whose stories are being left out of the canon? How does one see their own story and is it a true reflection of who they are or how someone else sees them? Lily is not afraid to ask these questions of us or herself. With beautiful direction by Simran Fulton, Lily transitions seamlessly from one story to the next captured in a beautiful light where I even start to believe she is a fairy. Lily’s vulnerability and presence onstage are contagious. You can’t help but fall in love with her when she ends up wrapped in a traditional Saree/Sari and places a Bindi on her forehead – it took my breath away.
You have four more chances to catch this delicious show. Don’t miss it!
WHY:In this multimedia, solo-musical, writer/comedian Susan Sassi plays a changeling named “Mage Lynn” – an imaginative child who weaves a pretend world of musicals, game shows and a magical guide to move past childhood trauma. On her search for a happy ending, happiness seems determined to elude Mage, but her journey is an entertaining one to watch! The characters that come to life along the way paint a vivid and colorful story. And though her adventures take us to some rough places, the humor, honesty and musicality of Mage’s story has us rooting for her happy ending, and our own.
WHY: Mandy Williams, a multi talented Brit transplant, has crafted and performs a highly entertaining evening of charming and original tunes. Whether it’s her British roots or her subtle humor, her songs—with a wink and a nod—evoke a modern “variety theatre,” blending comedy, music and dance, reminiscent of the vaudeville houses of the past. She woos the listener, taking us on an enjoyable ride through the very human foibles of male/female relationships. Clever, witty and unexpected, her mellifluous voice enchants the audience as she lovingly examines men, women, their idiosyncrasies and their relationships.
WHY: Spunky, sassy, and sincere, Sam opens our hearts to the adventures of an aspiring actress in Hollywood, striving to find her artistic purpose. Labrecque embodies the quintessential fringe artist—bold, innovative, and deeply passionate. With meta musical numbers, composed/keys by the multi-talented Edith Mudge, captivating dance moves, humor, and a heartfelt narrative, she paved the way for a meaningful realization for both herself and her audience.
A couple years ago, Kacie Rogers was anonymously nominated for the Free The Arts Shay Fellowship, a paid opportunity to write and develop a solo piece. She seized the chance, and wrote a five minute submission piece. A few weeks later, she found out that she had gotten the fellowship. And thus—her solo show I Sell Windowswas born.
I Sell Windows, co-produced by Outside In Theatre & Bottle Tree Theatre (Kacie is one of the company’s co-founders), is an autobiographical collection of stories and reflections written and performed by Kacie. The anecdotes work through an artist’s experience of frustration and guilt, and let us be privy to a journey of self-discovery through grief.
After seeing a performance of I Sell Windows, I called Kacie to chat about the process of putting it together. As the show’s writer, producer and performer, Kacie and her personal collection of experiences are its driving force. Among other things, we talk about theater as therapy, the joys of working with great creative collaborators and writing about the things that scare you most.
Elana Luo: Let’s start at the beginning. Tell me about coming up with the idea for this show.
Kacie Rogers: What I was always interested in was writing all of the scariest things I could think of that I’ve never thought I could say in front of a roomful of people. Stories that were the most interesting, or formative for me in one way or another. So that was my approach. Because theater, in so many ways, has been such a home for me, and such a place where I have channeled a countless amount of emotions through characters. I just always wondered what it would be like to stand up there and do it as myself. I think it’s an act of bravery. I thought it would be very cathartic.
Kacie Rogers in “I Sell Windows” – photo by JJ Hawkins
But I was also terrified that people would hate me. And so I was like, well, I need a collaborator. If I’m going to write all these scary things, I need a collaborator who I can trust, and I will always know that she loves me enough. There’s nothing too scary for me to say in front of her.
Elana: Was that Jaquita Ta’le, the director?And she’s also a co-founder of your company, Bottle Tree Theatre?
Kacie: Yes. She would guide me to what was interesting to her and away from things that didn’t seem like they were serving the narrative. I remember for a long time she was like, we just have to find a container.
Elana: An umbrella of sorts.
Kacie: Yeah. One thing I did trust is that all these stories are coming from one common place. That common place is me. Ultimately, all we are as human beings are walking stories. So at some point if I just write down all these stories, I’m going to find a narrative somewhere, linear or non-linear. I am a narrative. And so I just kind of allowed myself to to write whatever and then trust that we would find a container.
Elana: And what did you find?
Kacie: It’s so interesting—the container ended up being window selling, yes, but ultimately, it’s the death of my grandfather. A common factor of a lot of the stories was the guilt and frustration I feel around being imperfect, and unforgiveness around missing my grandfather’s death because of my desire to serve my artistry rather than going to serve my family. That was a huge revelation for me.
Kacie Rogers in “I Sell Windows” – photo by JJ Hawkins
Elana: Once you had all these stories and their container, what was developing the piece like?
Kacie: It’s so deeply personal, every single part of it. It’s really hard. There’s a lot of self doubt that is all over this process, because it is me–performing me, writing me, about me. So it’s very, very vulnerable. And you constantly want to change things, because you’re like, maybe people aren’t responding to me, you know? Maybe I should “do me” differently. And that’s really hard.
Elana: Has there been anything that has helped you deal with that?
Kacie: I think I’m actively learning to deal with it. I have the best team around me. Like really top to bottom. Jaquita, Jessica [Hanna, Producing Artistic Director of Outside In Theatre] and Chelsea [Boyd, Co-Founder of Bottle Tree Theatre]; Arlo [Sanders], Paul [Hungerford] and Matthew [Pitner] from Outside In; my stage manager Arielle [Hightower] and my puppeteers [Brittaney Talbot and Perry Daniel]… all of those people are so affirming at every step of the way. They have been so selfless in all the ways that they are willing to throw themselves into the work because they believe in it so deeply. And if anything has helped me to quell those doubts, it’s been looking around me and being so humbled and so encouraged by the endless amounts of work and heaps of appreciation that they have gifted me with.
Elana: That’s beautiful.
Kacie: I’m so thankful. But outside of that, I think it’s really important to accept that your thing does not have to be for everybody. You can be fully you, and your thing can be fully your thing, and be amazing at being your thing, and still not be for somebody else. And that’s okay. I think that’s a big learning curve. So that’s the lesson I’m currently trying to speak into myself.
Jessica Hanna (Producer), Jaquita Ta’le (Director), Kacie Rogers, Chelsea Boyd (Producer), Brittaney Talbot (Puppet Designer_Performer), Perry Daniels (Puppet Performer), Arielle Hightower (Stage Manager) after “I Sell Windows” opening – photo by Mallury P
Elana: Moving along in the process, will you tell me a little about producing the show? How did it make it onstage at Outside In?
Kacie: In 2022, Jacquita found an opportunity with Greenway Court Theatre. They were looking to help produce a show, so she submitted I Sell Windows. We didn’t get that opportunity, but they gave us another opportunity to do a one-night-only performance as a part of their Jam Poetry Festival. So I did that last year.
And Jessica Hanna—she directed me in a play years ago and we just kept in touch because we’re both big theater gals. I knew Jess had taken several shows to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, so I invited her to a coffee to pick her brain about what that process is like. It just so happened that the one-night-only presentation of I Sell Windows was within the next couple of weeks, so I invited her to see the show. She ended up coming, and I remember her walking out and being like, “let’s meet this week.” From there, she was like, “I’m starting a theater company. I want to produce your show. I want to give it a run and then I want to take it to Edinburgh!”
Elana: Wow.
Kacie: It was just like that. It was one of those dreamy meetings where everything you ever want to happen, happened.
Bottle Tree Theatre’s Chelsea Boyd, Kacie Rogers and Jaquita Ta’le – photo by JJ Hawkins
Elana: You’ve been lucky, but you’ve also been prepared.
Kacie: Chelsea Boyd always says, “All things will come together with ease and joy.” We just kind of keep doing the work, showing up and taking the opportunities that fall in front of us, and as we have it, truly all things have kind of come together with ease and joy. And I’m so thankful for that.
Welcome to the literary landscape of The Body’s Midnight by Tira Palmquist. This world premiere, a co-production of IAMA and Boston Court and directed by Jessica Kubzansky, is a delicately interwoven script with surprising, beautiful and challenging moments.
I read the script before the play opened, talked with Tira and Jessica, and visited a rehearsal — all to discover how Tira’s playwriting and collaboration process influenced the production. As we know, creative generation is primarily an individual undertaking, but with this complex project, I wanted to hear and understand more about Tira’s sourcing of material and development.
The Body’s Midnight text presents dilemmas of family, aging, relationships, and health diagnosis fragility — all embedded in the geographic and cultural complexity of a cross-country exploration. Anne and David, a long-term couple and the core duo of the story, are on a trip from California to Minnesota to witness the birth of their first grandchild. There is an immediate indication of an underlying, yet unspoken, tension: even though their dialogue has all the markers of the fun tug-and-pull of a loving relationship, there are little pieces of concern and abnormality that let us know that is not their usual cross-country excursion.
And as the play moves through — no spoilers here! — there is a linking of grand geological sites, park rangers, family phone calls, and mythic characters, all addressing the themes of aging, choice, health and change. Exquisitely interwoven.
Tira and I have known each other for a ‘few’ years, and I have seen and read other produced Palmquist plays, including Two Degrees, Age of Bees & And Then They Fell. I immediately noted key similarities in this work — a balance of the personal, imaginary, poetic and factual in a way that keeps the mind moving while still hitting emotional truth.
After talking to Tira about this particular play, I was struck by how she allowed real events to establish the foundation and then layered other ‘realities’ and fiction to amplify the themes. Writers are often told, “Write what you know,” but even with that dictate, the unique aspects of a script often come from research, discoveries and creativity. This is a great example!
Playwright Tira Palmquist
So, my first question? What was the impetus for the play? There are a couple of answers…
Tira told me that she had a doctor’s visit and a diagnosis that started her thinking: not the same issue as Anne’s, but enough to shake the norm. That, coupled with the challenging notion of ‘aging,’ brought the possible character and plot into place.
“In 2018, as the play first came to me, I thought about this woman getting a diagnosis, and then making this journey and having a bucket list for this adventure: trying to memorialize things and hoping against hope to make them permanent,” she said.
A family component also provided context: a few years before the writing, Tira’s mother had a mysterious and complex health downturn.
“In her 70s, my mother started to exhibit symptoms of what was initially misdiagnosed as a more common dementia, but an MRI confirmed, later, that she had had several strokes (probably what are known as ‘silent strokes’) that caused significant damage to important structures of her brain. I’ve had some significant migraines in my life that have mimicked transient ischemic attacks (sometimes seen as precursors to major strokes). The idea that something like this could happen to me, could rob me of my ability to use and appreciate language, was, frankly, terrifying,” Tira continued.
So, yes, Anne does echo Tira’s life experience — and the play deals with these fears and trials — but along the way… well, Tira expands relationships and environments that further reveal Anne’s journey.
Sonal Shah and Keliher Walsh Photo by Brian Hashimoto
Using her own experience of driving across the country, Tira fosters two particular aspects of travel to let Anne change. First, travel’s physical and mental impacts: “I am inspired by the way that travel (and longer drives) encourages a kind of patience and meditative attention to the world around you. Being willing to be surprised by the world rather than rushing through it,” she said.
With the travel disruptions, she allows her characters to veer off the planned path and dive into unusual locations that are surprising and allow for new realizations. There are deliberate jumps to locations that are not perfectly on the same highway; and there are jumps to memory locations that echo the past. This dance keeps the reader/audience in a mindset that discovers the roots of the relationships and story.
Her other use of travel is the specific locations: metaphorical representations that amplify Anne’s concerns and represent ideas about the planet’s fragility. Locations include the Grand Canyon, Glacier National Park, rest stops, and, of course, the Pando.
I admit, I did not know what the Pando was.
The Pando is a network of ash trees in Utah that are genetically the same tree, and what seems like individual trees are actually family branches sprouting from the giant lateral root of the parent. This is similar to the concept of character repetition and modification in the play.
“The inspiration for using the Pando in the play was actually a happy accident,” said Tira. “I started researching ‘disappearing places’ and mapping where these places would be along the route Anne and David would travel, and I just happened to stumble on information about this amazing place.”
Accidental finding. Well, maybe not “accidental.” As Tira described, it’s more the subconscious finding its way into a deep engagement with the core themes.
Another key to Anne’s core journey is her husband David’s embrace and care. I was curious about the sense of familiarity, and I gathered that there might be similarities in Tira’s own relationship.
“Well, the characters of Anne and David are drawn heavily from my husband and me — the kinds of conversations we have, the love language we’ve developed, the way I am his ‘monster’ and he is my ‘robot.’” (These are the quirky terms of endearment that they have for each other in the play.) “And while the catalyst for writing the play was a health scare I had, there’s not much else that is my particular story. The more that Anne, David and the other characters took shape, the more this play found its shape and purpose.”
Keliher Walsh andJonathan Nichols-Navarro Photo by Brian Hashimotoo
And the play does have a shape and purpose. For me, it felt like a challenge to understand, forgive, and maintain in the chaos of existence — but in a positive way.
Director Jessica Kubzansky described the journey as an “existential climb up a mountaintop,” which I agree with. It was lovely to see Jessica working during my brief visit to a rehearsal: the actors were just at the almost-memorized place, finding the details. Jessica was shaping the patterns and exceptions on the stage in ways to reinforce the “vast beauty” and the “crisis of connection” in the different environments. The actors — Keliher Walsh as Anne, Jonathan Nichols-Navarro as David, Sonal Shah as the daughter Katie and various other roles, and Ryan Garcia as son-in-law Wolf and also multiple roles — all were creating exceptional moments for the dance of dialogue, bringing all the voices together to remind the audience of the journey.
Director Jessica Kubzansky
Since this is a playwrights’ blog, there are a few points to highlight about getting the play written, read, developed and produced that might be illuminating. Tira is great at generating, then submitting, and then developing relationships that build ground for her work. She is also persistent: she keeps on track through the many steps and processes that may be needed to get to the desired end state.
As mentioned, she got the impetus for the play in 2018 and then began the initial draft in 2019, working through pages and ideas. The second inspiration or deep dive was at the Tao House in northern California (one of Eugene O’Neill’s homes). At that writing residency, she found additional inspiration from O’Neill’s plays and “found ways to thread those in as homage to him and that beautiful place.”
Next, as in many writer’s journeys, there was an opportunity for a deeper development at the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference in June of 2021. Tira was the Guest Playwright, and she felt this was “a huge step forward in the play — figuring out more about how reality and surreality could work in the play, to find the ‘rules’ of the world, and discover how to make some of the wilder poetry of the play feel authentic and earned, and not merely decorative.”
Also, the Boston Court was part of the process with their 2022 Playwright Group. That group gives an artist a year-long development process that provides the time to foster and deepen the world and characters of the play. This led to a public reading in April of 2023 at Boston Court’s New Play Festival – the first reading in front of a live audience! Jessica Kubzansky did a week of table work and rehearsal. Tira was especially grateful for her support, particularly Jessica’s fierce defense of how the play “plays with time and reality” and for providing support for expanding the poetry and magic of the play. As always, Jessica asked important questions about how The Body’s Midnight world operates and how that world operates on the characters. When I spoke with Jessica, she mentioned the rich challenges embedded in Anne and David’s relationship and how their realities intersect and collide, leading to emotional fruition.
And the reading? Tira said: “I really had no idea how the play would be received by an audience. I mean, Up until that point, I’d only experienced the play via Zoom readings and workshops… The reaction and responses really blew me away, and showed me, for the first time, that his was a play. A play that was important to other people, not just to me.”
Ryan Garcia, Sonal Shah Photo by Brian Hashimoto
It is now a year after the reading and it looks to be a full and beautiful production. The set design, bringing to mind the various natural locations, was just evolving when I saw the rehearsal. Now, I need to experience the full depth of The Body’s Midnight. Hope you do, too.
One more quote from Tira (and I’m sure writers can relate…):
“My writing process is, at best, chaotic. I have learned a couple things about myself: I can no longer just start writing with a kind of whim. I have to have the play sort of… gestate in my brain and in my body for a long time. I do a fair amount of very unorganized organizing work — as I said before, figuring out the beginning, middle, end, having a kind of shape or structure in mind — and then, when there’s a kind of critical mass of the play, I start to write. Usually, this first draft is pretty quick. I don’t honestly recall how long the first draft of The Body’s Midnight took, but I think it was a couple of months. Then there are moments of time and distance — returning to the play with new eyes, or with a new inspiration or realization. That recursive part of the process can take a few years.”
“The Body’s Midnight,” a co-production of IAMA Theatre Company and Boston Court Pasadena, opens April 27 and runs through May 26, 2024 at Boston Court. For tickets and information visit www.iamatheatre.com.
Whoever is still saying that “Theatre is Dead” in 2024 needs to come have a serious talk with me – because theatre is and always has been alive and well, and the reason for such lives solely within the determination of theatre-makers like Beatrice Casagrán.
Producing Artistic Director of Ophelia’s Jump Productions (OJP), Beatrice Casagrán dives headfirst into 2024 with a whopping 7-show season that is “guaranteed to entertain with compelling stories and educate current and new generations of theatre lovers.” And I am certain 2024’s season will do just that – their theatrical programming range is outstanding, from musical, to historical, to traditional straight plays and reimagined classics. As a theatrical artist who is also living, working and producing in Los Angeles, I am deeply inspired by Beatrice’s commitment not only to the theatre, but to the people who make the theatre with Ophelia’s Jump possible.
Needless to say, I was thrilled to speak with Beatrice to talk about the upcoming production of Musical of Musicals, the wonders of adaptational storytelling, and the stellar lineup for OJP’s new season.
Carolina Xique: I’m sure top of mind for you is Musical of Musicals – it’s not only a massive undertaking because it’s a musical, but then it splits off into five different musicals. So I would love to hear about what that process has been like.
Beatrice Casagrán
Beatrice Casagrán: Before COVID, would do a small musical every two or three years because we have such a small space. During COVID, we lost one of the two theatres in the area that focused on just musicals. So I felt that to serve the community, we really needed to answer what they were asking for. So Musical of Musicals is our first offering this year. It’s also kind of tough because [while] musicals are super popular with patrons, they’re expensive – even a four-person musical like this one. But they also bring in new people who think that they don’t like plays. <laugh> When they come in and see the caliber of work that we do, we tend to see those people come back; they realize, “This is great!”
So that’s the reason that we chose Musical of Musicals for the opening show of the year. We tend to put up stuff that is newer and raises questions and we leave the mid-century musical style to others who do it very well. But this show pokes fun at that and lets everybody have a good time, so I’m really enjoying it.
It’s also a musical in which the book was written by a female [Joanne Bogart], so it met one of our criteria: that we mostly do works by women.
Carolina: Without giving away too much, what can audiences expect to see in Musical of Musicals?
Beatrice: It centers five little musicals all around the quintessential, back-to-silent-film early theatre plot of, “the landlord wants the rent and the ingenue cannot pay the rent.” <laugh> The same plot follows the five different little musicals in the style of five different masters in the field, so it’s the Rogers and Hammerstein team, Jerry Herman, Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Weber and Kander and Ebb. We have a great time just really embracing all the kind of archetypes and tropes of each one of those. It’s very clever the way it’s written. And it’s just funny. I think it’s been described as a valentine to theatre.
Cast of “Musical of Musicals” – photo by Sej Gangula
Carolina: I wanted to talk about the rest of the season. I’m kind of a Shakespeare-head myself. I was taking a peek at La Tempestad which was particularly interesting to me because I’m half-Mexican, half-Cuban.
Beatrice: Represent, girl! Yeah. I’m so excited. Yay. This is a project that I have thought about for years. This year we were able to get a couple of grants, and I had enough downtime that I was able to connect with other artists and make these friendships with more Latino artists and musicians.
So I now have the wherewithal to do the collaboration that’s needed for that kind of project, and I am super excited. I’m working with a wonderful actor singer who is helping me with translations. And we are going to be doing all original adaptations and maybe some original music as well.
It just seems like The Tempest is perfect, right? There’s so much magical realism in across Latino cultures. But in Cuba… the Yoruba influence and Santeria is really going to be a good fit with The Tempest. We’ll be able to really delve into it and have a wonderful time sharing that part of our culture. I want to make sure that the team that we put together is fully diverse and has all the representation of the richness of what makes up our Cuban culture, and Caribbean Latino culture, and to pay respect and to pay attention to making sure that the story is told correctly.
“La Tempestad” will be part of OJP’s annual Midsummer Shakespeare Festival at the Sontag Greek Theatre, Pomona College
Carolina: It’s not an easy culture or history to explore, so I just want to convey thanks for bringing our stories to light. And some of the season’s stories – like La Tempestad or CJ, An Aspanglish Play by Mercedes Floresislas – are reimaginings of stories many of us already know. For these reimaginings, what seems to be the thread that brings them all together for you?
Beatrice: I’m a fan of history. My undergraduate degree is in political studies. So much of what’s going on in the world today is these hideously false, hurtful, dangerous narratives. I think theatre has an incredibly important role in reaching people who are being sucked into this, and telling stories that people might not otherwise have access to or think that they want to see. So taking these different stories and showing them through a female-centric, Latino focus is important to me. They’re universal stories.
I’m kind of old school in that way. I have always been drawn to stories that are about humanity. And a lot of us are losing the idea that human beings are human beings; we’re not different in our basic yearnings and desires. CJ is a work that I’ve been trying to do for years. It is basically an adaptation of A Christmas Carol, but it’s a human story, and I think it’s even more amazing to be able to tell it from this lens. I love Mexican culture, it has so enriched my life. The richness of the mythology is inspiring. We’re going to have a lot of instruments that are native to Mexican indigenous cultures to be able to make that connection.
Carolina: The ensemble of folks who are directing and writing these pieces is amazing. I would love to hear how you think their perspectives will influence these shows.
Beatrice: Sheila Malone, who is a company member and is directing[Lauren Gunderson’s] Revolutionists, is also a queer leader. She is one of the original members of Dykes on Bikes; she is an expert on lesbian bike culture and she’s a brilliant projection designer and lighting designer and has been a co-artistic director at her own theatre. She’s going to be super nuanced and and I love the energy that she brings to it. So it’s great for me to be able to produce and see another director bring their vision. I also love Lauren’s work!
Caitlin [Lopez, Beatrice’s daughter who is directing Knight of the Burning Pestle] and I founded the Shakespeare Festival in Claremont 10 years ago now. She is hugely into Shakespeare and and Elizabethan theatre, through a queer lens. She also has a very strong background in improvisation, so this version has a lot of audience participation. And we’re running it as a master class, the whole production. We are going to be casting about half the cast with local college students who will be paired with mentor professional artists in their areas of interest, and they will be getting other ancillary classes, seminars, workshops and other opportunities.
Kelly McBurnette-Andronicos [playwright of Second Death of a Mad Wife] is amazing. We’ve done two of her plays; this one is really interesting, too. I’m staging it in a way that I think is gonna be really fun because it’s gonna be somewhat immersive. Twelve Ophelias by Caridad Svich [directed by Elina de Santos] is amazing, too. I reached out to her and she’s like, “Oh yeah, do the show!” <laugh> She intervened with her licensing to make sure we got [rights], which was great.
Kelly McBurnette-Andronicos’ “The Hall of Final Ruin” (OJP 2022 Season) – photo by Caitlin Lopez
Carolina: What excites you most about this season? And what has been the most challenging?
Beatrice: I feel like for the last four years we had to kind of hunker down and, in some ways, make decisions to do things that were not necessarily what I see as core mission. Because we just were struggling like everybody else. I actually, like a lot of other artists, had this existential crisis where I found myself asking, “Is art even important? Does anybody care anymore? People are dying. And what is it that art brings to this? Who cares?” But art is what kept me going. And we were able to program for free and I think we kept other people going. It’s part of mental health, it’s part of community wellbeing.
This is the first season in which I’m doing what I want as an artist, what I think is important as an artist and what is important as a social-justice-minded organization. I am putting women and gender-marginalized people at the center of things. I am fully invested in hiring young people from local community colleges who are emerging artists, most of whom are Latino and of varying genders, who don’t have opportunities and who are learning. It’s an insane season. It’s insane – it’s seven productions!
The challenges? During the push for AB5, I was one of the leaders in the theatre community in California who said, “We have to stop fighting AB5. We need people need to get paid. We need to ask the government and people in the state to understand that our work is worth something and to fund.” But that hasn’t really happened. It happened during COVID and now the funding is all drying up. And so we are running at a huge deficit for every single production.
I’m going under the only way that I know how right now, which is full steam ahead and working my butt off to try to get grants and to spread the word, to reach out to patrons and say, “We have to have the help if you want us to keep going!” So part of the reason we have a season like this is we have a small crew and part of my personal commitment is I want to keep these folks employed. I need to give them hours because they need to live. I’m making a huge effort to try and make sure that I consistently have a number of hours for folks so that they don’t have to make huge changes in their lives all the time to try and make ends meet.
Carolina: If you could pick a classic tale to retell from your own lens, whether it’s your own story or somebody else’s story, which would it be and why?
Beatrice: Well, that’s kind of what I’ve done with La Tempestad. I was born in Cuba, but my parents left when I was just a baby. “My Cubans,” as I call them, are dying off, right? My dad’s 86, my aunts, and my mom are already gone. And like you say, it’s the history of this island; this little nation is so replete with stories that are important. So that’s really what’s in my mind right now.
I’ve retold Hamlet and used portfolio and other original writings to highlight Ophelia’s arc, which is how our theatre got our name. I made Laertes a lesbian character who was a suffragist and kind of looked at the female arcs in that play, and the different outcomes. A young woman who’s basically had her agency stripped [away] by the female in power and all the males in her life and finally takes agency in her last act, which is to kill herself. And then juxtaposed that with Laertes who was off traveling because they were not living the traditional female role. I’m constantly looking at projects like this and will continue to do so, I hope, through my career, ’cause that’s what really gets me going. <laugh>. Yeah, Shakespeare retellings through feminist lenses is really something I love to do.
“Musical of Musicals” runs through February 18th. For more information about “Musical of Musicals,” “La Tempestad,” and the many, many more wonderful productions that Ophelia’s Jump will be producing this year, you can find more information at opheliasjump.org. For information on how you can support or make a donation, please visit opheliasjump.org/ways-to-support.
