Audience Influence

Those brandy filled glasses no longer clink in the Head Theater here at CENTERSTAGE, as the curtain closed on Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? November 30. However, one important part of this provoking show remains, and that is the audience.

The audience that hesitated walking into the theater knowing there would be over three hours of uproar, sarcasm, rage, and pain transitioned to the audience that walked out of the theater deeply engaged, moved and touched in watching the two couples loose themselves in games, gossip and agonizing secrets.

And they will soon return. CENTERSTAGE's production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? received many positive reviews, as The Baltimore Sun claims "The talented director Ethan McSweeny elicits first-rate performances from his top-notch cast." I recently found out it is our audience here at CENTERSTAGE that has made that cast rise a few more notches than usual, as I had the opportunity to speak with Leah Curney (Honey) about her experience.

As we sat in the downstairs lobby, Leah and I talked about Baltimore, and I asked her how the Charm City differs from other cities she has performed in. While she was not able to explore as much as she would have liked, she could sense this is an area that is being revitalized, an area full of history and on the verge of creating more. Leah particularly enjoyed the Farmers Market on Guilford Avenue, and the variety of restaurants up on Charles Street, since she tends to crave Indian and Nepalese food. However, one thing that stood out in Leah's mind about this area is the Baltimore audience here at CENTERSTAGE.

“CENTERSTAGE really reaches out to a diverse crowd, bringing in young and old people, from all sides of the spectrum" she explained. “There are no bells and whistles in this show. It is a talkative play, and most people are not used to that. To go on that journey we actors go through on stage is demanding of the audience, and here, they have chosen to journey with us.”

Leah admitted there are days she came into work tired after performing this exhausting three hour and ten minute play night after night, with the occasional matinee. Yet, once she steps onto stage, and after not only listening, but feeling the response of the audience, she is recharged and forgets how tired she once was.

“We play off of the audience's energy. We feel the response; although it is an intangible thing, it is so important, and at CENTERSTAGE it has been different than other places I have performed in. These audiences night after night have been so attentive and responsive, and I am really going to miss that."

~Emily

(Photos: Leah Curney onstage (above) and onstage with Andrew Weems (top) in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Photo by Richard Anderson)

Meet the Blogger

Name: Emily Hope Dobkin

Title: Box Office Assistant

Hometown: Simsbury, CT

Alma Mater: Goucher College

Amusing Stat: I've sailed around the world on a ship and I eat the core of every apple I devour.

I start every day with… believing as many as six impossible things before breakfast, followed by a bowl of mixed cereal and blueberry green tea!

One-Man Wonder

Charlie Ross, the writer and star of the upcoming One-Man Star Wars Trilogy, chatted with us about the origins of his unique production, and the challenges of life on the road.

CS: How old were you when you first began developing this act?
Charlie: 27

CS: What sort of response did you initially get from family? friends? critics?
CR: Family, positive—a little surprised.

Friends, positive—surprised, as I was never an overt Star Wars fanatic.

Critics, usually positive, some negative—it really depends whether the critic is Star Wars fan themselves.

CS: After performing the show so many hundreds—thousands?—of times, can you stand to watch the movies? Or does it feel redundant at this point?
CR: I haven’t watched them lately, but when I do I realize just how different my show is from the films. I find that the films feel long mostly because my version is so short.

CS: How do you keep the show itself fresh for yourself?
CR: The audience, they’re always changing, if it wasn’t for the fresh faces with their fresh reactions the show would get stale.

CS: You seem to slip into some characters a little too smoothly (Luke’s whine about going into Toshi Station to pick up power converters is dead on). And obviously you most closely resemble Mark Hamill. Do you feel more Luke-like? Or is there a secret thrill in getting to be Princess Leia?
CR: I was a whiny, feathered haired kid when I first saw A New Hope, plus I was living on a farm (and I was male)—so it was Luke I identified with.

CS: How has this changed over the years?

CR: As time has passed I’ve found myself feeling a bit more like Darth Vader. Mainly because I’ve had to sacrifice a lot of what matters to me: being with family and friends, in order to tour this show. Albeit I didn’t have to lose a hand or fall into a fiery river of lava in the process, I imagine it’ll all work out in the end.

CS: Did performing this piece confirm or bust your preconceptions about the typical Star Wars fan? Have you met any celebrities that revealed themselves as stealth fans after seeing the show?
CR: I didn’t have any concept of Star Wars fandom—the degrees that some people go to, the lows and the highs, and the camaraderie shared across borders and language—it’s a worldwide phenomenon.

I am pleased to say that someone even as macho as Vin Diesel is a Star Wars fan, he sat in the front for the whole show.

CS: What are some of the biggest challenges you are faced with as a solo performer on the road?
CR: Other than aspect of being away from my zone of comfort, a big challenge is weathering the bad days between good. When I have a hard show r a crappy day it’s mine alone to bear. It can be hard but I’ve grown callous over the years- in a positive way.

CS: Can you share any advice or warning to artists or performers who are considering a solo show?
CR: Choose your subject matter with your heart though be prepared to be passed over and ignored. Just because you love something doesn’t necessarily follow that others will. You must push through the adolescence of your work—it’s like high school: it can be easy for some and hellish for others—but once you reach the other side, find your audience, you will discover the long road ahead. If you can survive that period you’ll rarely look back, except maybe to laugh.

CS: What is the oddest or most interesting space in which or group for whom you’ve performed the show?
CR: Other than Star Wars conventions where I’ve performed for thousands at a go, the oddest was performing for two German tourists (girls) who’d heard about the show and wanted to see it very badly. They paid me five hundred bucks to perform in the living room where they were staying. It was Wunderbar!

***

The One-Man Star Wart Trilogy opens on Tuesday, December 9th and runs through December 21st. Check out www.centerstage.org for more details.

A letter from the Dramaturg

"[I]n an important way it’s actually a play about money and I was very pleased on that level. It’s something I’ve been interested in trying to do—to write a play in which money, an economic system, is sort of in a privileged position in terms of the narrative, in terms of what you are experiencing in watching, and so I feel really good about that. I am happy there are songs in the show that are simply about how little money this woman has—that don’t sentimentalize; that simply deal with an economic anxiety or economic difficulty and that the tracing through of this kind of game with the change sets a little engine in place that accomplishes various things and dismantles various things. To that extent it’s Brechtian." - Tony Kushner, 2007


Caroline Thibodeaux is a family maid. She works in the Gellman household for thirty dollars a week. She leaves work one day because of a disagreement over money she finds lying around the house. Then, about a week later, she comes back to work. In a sense, this is the entire plot of Caroline, or Change. Tony Kushner sets the play in Lake Charles, Louisiana, in November of 1963—to the west of the bloody states of Alabama and Mississippi, which were exploding in a violent process of desegregation, and to the east of Dallas, where President Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a motorcade—but the main action of the play is intensely focused, almost microscopically so, on the people in the Gellman house and the daily wages of their maid. The Change referred to in the play’s title has a similarly compound nature; in the play, “change” can mean the large historical changes buffeting the nation during the period—the assassinations, the marches, the freedom rides, and so on—but it also stands for loose change, the coins jangling in all of our pockets, the money that tells us what we can afford to be, where we can afford to go, who we can afford to be.


In Caroline, or Change, Tony Kushner set out to write a play about America’s potential for social change, and the provocative point the play raises is that this change is often made more difficult, if not impossible, by the power that money holds over us in society. Caroline, or Change is not really a play about character, even though it is filled with expertly drawn portraits of recognizably realistic people. It isn’t even a play about action, since we essentially end the play where we begin it, with a maid working for a family in the south (for the same wages). What Caroline, or Change seeks to represent is the extent to which money shapes and conditions our lives, our personalities, our decisions, and ultimately our politics. These are not new ideas. In the first production of this season at CENTERSTAGE, Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker, Dolly Levi remarked that, “The difference between a little money and no money at all is enormous—and can shatter the world.” Or, as the characters on fellow Baltimorean David Simon’s dear departed television show The Wire would utter as an ominous and all-too-necessary refrain: “Follow the Money.”

~ Drew Lichtenberg, Production Dramaturg