Antigone

Notes from the Director

on Mac Wellman's

Antigone (as played by the Three Fates, also the Three Facts, on their way to becoming the Three Graces)

People may be surprised to see Woman's Will take on "experimental theater" like that of multiple Obie award-winning wordsmith Mac Wellman's. We, however, see this as a logical next step in our growth. Audiences are used to seeing Woman's Will's all-female casts infuse difficultly worded, classical texts with gentle references to modern day — this time, we simply take them farther, down the rabbit hole with us to Wonderland. This Antigone, unlike what we've read in school, takes place outside of time and replaces the well-known characters, sets and lines with the feral Fates of ancient legend dancing dances "of nothingness" and creating music on typewriters.

Though initially Wellman's Antigone sounds anything but traditional, all the classical elements are present: a fable about problems relevant to the community-audience; a story that entwines civic duty, politics, spirituality and nature; a chorus commenting upon the action through dance and song; actors stepping forth from that chorus to further the action; and a sense of heightened occasion, of study and celebration... The heady themes are the same in Sophocles' tale and Wellman's — moral law vs. governmental law (and what adjustments a society must make when those laws contradict each other); predestination vs. free will and the movement of a society from one self-conception to another; man vs. woman; old guard destroying the young who in turn destroy the old (an echo of our other 2007 production, Romeo and Juliet)... even Wellman's seemingly anachronistic line "what is more weird than man... or woman?" (Antigone, p. 8) reflects a sentiment in the original: "There are many strange and wonderful things,/but nothing more strangely wonderful than man." (ll. 388-9; Ian Johnston translation, 2005.)

Many images also come straight from the original: whirlwinds of dust, bodies fallen in war, a rock tomb... Antigone, being a story of a woman, naturally speaks through more feminine imagery than do most other extant ancient Greek plays, and Wellman both enhances those and adds other feminine yet visceral touches — her tomb is womblike, the rocks with which they would stone her to death become eggs — making this adaptation a natural choice for Woman's Will.

In Wellman's Antigone, the story belongs to the Three Fates, who serve as chorus and actors as they generate, iterate, fight over and edit the story of what-one-does-when-two-laws-are-mutually-exclusive, and by doing so, transform themselves from the old, feared pre-god entities of pre-destination to the Three Graces, newer goddesses of charm, beauty, fertility, nature, and most importantly, human creativity. As these spinners of destiny spin Antigone's tale, they hit the walls of contradiction again and again until they find a way to use contradiction to forge their own transformation, a process more than familiar to most humans. (This mirrors the transformation Aeschylus' The Eumenides, where a primitive society based on justice through vengeance reacts to competing laws — one must not kill one's blood relative vs. one must avenge the murder of one's blood relative — by evolving, by creating a third way — the Furies, symbols of vengeance, transform themselves into the "The Kindly Ones" who form the first jury-system, which gives a State responsibility for administering justice, freeing the victim's family from the need to avenge and allowing for reasoned, rather than emotional, responses to crime and punishment. A tragedy ends happily as a society finds a new way to deal with old problems.)

You will also see a fourth character in this play: The "Shriek Operator." This character is based on a diacritical mark from Philosophy which looks like an exclamation mark and indicates a unique, unrepeatable situation. This character, described as "an ancient god of unknown origins", yanks and jangles the Fates' throughout the play, sometimes seeming to hinder them and sometimes to assist, ultimately pushing them past the ordinary and into the wonder-ful.

Wellman's purpose in creating theater is to do just the same thing for the audience — to move us beyond the mundane, the "already known" and expected, the psychological, so that we can experience theater (and life) full of that wonder, and not just wonder in the positive sense. (Though he would no doubt deny it, this impulse is very similar to Brecht's employ of the alienation effect to make what is old seem new and strange again, to enlist our minds to re-examine our assumptions.) Our world is broken, Wellman says — so why do we pretend it is not? Why not make theater that admits there are gaps in continuity, ironies that allow us to see deeper than the surface of things, ruptures in the fabric of our lives that can make it more beautiful than anything safe can ever be (interpolated from Wellman's "Speculations", essay/rant in progress, available on his website www.macwellman.com)? In Wellman's world, our deepest fears and hopes become literal, "spirit is action," and "to dramatize is to think against the self." (Antigone, p. 7.)

And how do we attempt to achieve all these effects? By being both simple and complex, by juggling genres and mixing metaphors, by having a jolly good time while we gaze into the abyss. Woman's Will's production juxtaposes live and pre-recorded music/sounds, song and other vocalization, butoh and other dance, clowning, acrobatics, comedy, tragedy and word play to explosive effect. Audiences should expect to see modern equivalents of ancient Greek theater forms, telling anachronisms, words on fire, and very visceral and fractured images. Antigone is like all good theater — it is like nothing you have ever seen but everything you have secretly known.

Antigone is appropriate for people of all ages, as long as they have open, inquisitive minds and are ready to suspend their need for a linear plot. Come play in our dream!

MAC WELLMAN's recent plays are: BITTER BIERCE, at P S 122; JENNIE RICHEE, with the Ridge Theater, at The Arts at St Ann; ANYTHING'S DREAM at Mulhenberg College; and ANTIGONE, with Big Dance Company at Dance Theater Workshop. He has published two novels with Sun & Moon Press: THE FORTUNETELLER and ANNIE SALEM; Sun & Moon also published A SHELF IN WOOP'S CLOTHING, a book of poems, FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CENTURY II, an anthology of plays (co-edited with Douglas Messerli), TWO PLAYS: THE LAND BEYOND THE FOREST, and CROWTET 1 and 2, the latter two volumes under the Green Integer imprint. Roof Books has recently published his MINIATURE, a book of poems. He has received numerous award: NEA, NYFA, Rockefeller, McNight and Guggenheim Fellowships. In 1990 he received an Obie for Best American Play (BAD PENNY, CROWBAR, and TERMINAL HIP). In 1991 He received another Obie for SINCERITY FOREVER. He has received a Lila Wallace-Readers' Digest Writers Award, and most recently the 2003 Obie for Lifetime Achievement. He is the Donald I. Fine Professor of Play Writing at Brooklyn College.

The theater scholar David Savran writes: "All of Wellman's plays represent veritable orgies of language, stretching grammar to the breaking point, reveling in the sound and texture of words, they turn language, character and dramatic form inside out. Doing for drama what William Burroughs did for the novel, Wellman creates a unique, language-driven mise-en-scène that pulverizes the syntax of traditional theatre. ...Wellman offers a theatre of excess, of deeds rather than motives, of agents rather than victims. Most important, he writes plays that cannot be summarized or translated into another medium."

(Excepted from "According to Wellman: A political and linguistic outlaw revels in the theatre of excess." American Theatre Magazine, February 1999.)

Bios

Cast

• Lauren Carley (Shriek Operator)
  • California Artist-in-Residence, MacDowell Colony Residency recipient and recording artist Lauren Carley has performed her original solo shows throughout the US. Her solo CD, "Hooked on Weill," features original arrangements of the music of Kurt Weill. Recently seen with Woman's Will as Dr. Nakamura (Happy End) and Miss Prism (The Importance of Being Earnest), Ms. Carley also teaches Solo Performance at Colorado College, conducts at the Oakland Youth Chorus and premieres interdisciplinary works around the world. She has served as Adjunct Professor of Voice at New York University, vocal faculty at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, Vocal Department Head and Master Coach for Birch Creek Music Academy, and core artist and voice coach in the Emma Troupe Interdisciplinary Theatre Lab.
• Lauri Costigan (Lachesis/Aglaia)
  • Performer, director and teacher with over 25 years of dance training and performance experience, Lauri Costigan has performed on stages from San Francisco to Australia. A classically trained ballet dancer, her extensive training includes jazz, tap, hiphop, cancan and Hawaiian dance. She holds a BA in acting from San Francisco State University and a teaching credential from Notre Dame de Namur University. Most recently she played Ezekiel in No Nude Men's "Book of Genesis" at the Climate Theatre. Other projects include dancing with Bottoms up! Burlesque and the choreography and costuming of a full length modern ballet to original music by composer David Garner; titled 'Reaches', it is slated for early 2009 premiere. Ms. Costigan is a proud member of Theatre Bay Area. La vie est Belle, voila le quadrille! --Toulouse-Lautrec
• Melusina Gomez (Atropos/Thalia)
  • Melusina Gomez is a local performing artist, actress and writer with an emphasis on creating daring, imagistic, butoh-inspired, interdisciplinary work that explores what it means to be a story teller in the modern age. Her most recent work includes All Roads Lead... at E.P.I.'s Faultline Festival 2007, Excerpts from an Anonymous Story at Footloose's Women on the Way Festival 2007, and Lullaby and Goodnight (everything's fine) at Dance Mission's Manifestival 2006. She holds an M.A. in experimental performance from the Experimental Performance Institute at New College of California, where she has also developed and currently teaches a course on theatrical clowning and original performance composition as part of the E.P.I./Clown Conservatory crossover program. She is a graduate of the SF Circus Center's Clown Conservatory class of 2002, and has studied with Dell 'Arte, Theatre of Yugen, Inkboat, Group Tomei, and The Jean Shelton Actors Lab. She currently directs a therapeutic and expressive arts program for at-risk youth at Edgewood Center for Children and Families.
• Laura Ricci (Clotho/Euphrosyne)
  • Laura Ricci is a multifaceted artist and teacher with training in theater, clown, circus, and music. She made her Woman's Will debut in the fall of 2007 in Mac Wellman's Antigone, and is proud to be a new member of this inspiring company. A graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, she holds a Bachelor's degree in English Literature from Mills College, and studied under Judi Dench at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Connecticut. Laura has worked with ensembles around the country, including the Jungle Theater in Minneapolis, the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C., the Berkeley Repertory Theater and the San Francisco Circus, among many others. She is also a member of Eat Cake Productions, a women's aerial clown ensemble, and a founding member of the physical theater company Local Hero. She teaches and performs in circuses, theaters, museums, schools and other venues around the country.

Production

• Erin Merritt (Director)
  • With Woman's Will, Artistic Director Erin Merritt has directed eight previous productions (most recently 2005's award-winning Happy End and 2007's Romeo and Juliet), choreographed fights for five, and acted in five, most recently Richard III. As actor, director and theatre teacher, Ms. Merritt has worked in the Bay Area and beyond with such companies as Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Shotgun Players, Center REPertory Company, Pacific Repertory Theatre, Willows Theatre Company, Unconditional Theatre, Washington's Interplayers Ensemble and school districts all along the West Coast. Her Logical Brecht: what he did, why he did it, how we do it has been used as a text at Reed College since 1990. She is a member of Theatre Bay Area's Theatre Services Committee.
• Tammy Berlin (Costume Designer)
  • began her life in the theatre in Chicago where she was the Artistic Director of Heroes Inc. Ensemble and Transient Theatre, and the Managing Director of The Playwrites' Center. This is her fourth show with Woman's Will, having also costumed Lord of the Flies, Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet. Elsewhere in the Bay Area she has designed for TheatreFirst, Oakland Public Theatre, Wilde Irish, Second Wind and Masquers. She is the resident costume designer for Central Works.
• Stephanie Buchner (Light Designer)
  • Ms. Buchner is very excited to work with Woman's Will. Her recent designs include Jessica Hagedorn's Fe in the Desert, directed by Danny Scheie for Campo Santo and Intersection for the Arts; Mike Daisey's Great Men of Genius at Berkeley Rep; Playboy of the Western World, Dear Liar and Fools in the Forest at Shakespeare Santa Cruz; Sleepy, Impact's Briefs: Sinfully Delicious and Cartoon! at Impact Theatre; Malady of Death for the Fools FURY Festival; Continuum for EnPointe Youth Dance Company; Steal Away, Self-Torture and Strenuous Exercise, and Collected Stories at UC Santa Cruz; and Obsession: Sex, Sweat and Slips at Lancaster University in the U.K.
• Christina Braun (Choreographer)
  • Ms. Braun is a second generation Butoh and a fourth generation Isadora Duncan/classical modern dance artist. She has been an integral member of Mary Sano and her Duncan Dancers since 1997, Koichi and Hiroko Tamano's Harupin-Ha Butoh Dance Company since 1998, Artistic Director Ann Cogley's Isadora Duncan Repertory Dancers since 2003, Katsura Kan's Saltimbanques since 2004, and Molly Barrons' Metropolitan Butoh since 2005. Ms. Braun's Butoh-inspired choreographies in collaboration with composers have been presented in the San Francisco Bay Area since 2002, including two evening length works entitled Peace Dreams. She has a BA in Dance.
• Lauren Carley (Music Director)
  • California Artist-in-Residence, MacDowell Colony Residency recipient and recording artist Lauren Carley has performed her original solo shows throughout the US. Her solo CD, "Hooked on Weill," features original arrangements of the music of Kurt Weill. Recently seen with Woman's Will as Dr. Nakamura (Happy End) and Miss Prism (The Importance of Being Earnest), Ms. Carley also teaches Solo Performance at Colorado College, conducts at the Oakland Youth Chorus and premieres interdisciplinary works around the world. She has served as Adjunct Professor of Voice at New York University, vocal faculty at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, Vocal Department Head and Master Coach for Birch Creek Music Academy, and core artist and voice coach in the Emma Troupe Interdisciplinary Theatre Lab.
• Jacquelyn Scott (Set/Props Designer)
  • Ms. Scott is thrilled to be working with Woman's Will on this production, her second with the company. Previous credits include Nathan the Wise, Criminal Genius, World Music, L'Histoire du Soldat, Bat Boy The Musical, Fogtown Fables and The Doll Hospital. She also works at Brava Theater Academy teaching high school students basic stagecraft.
• Diana Strachan (Stage Manager)
  • Diana Strachan (Stage Manager) has worked with various theatre companies around the Bay Area. In addition to stage managing, Ms. Strachan is a company member of and the production manager for Berkeley-based Impact Theatre. Not entirely satisfied with having only 2 jobs, Ms. Strachan is a full time employee of Theatre Bay Area.

Multimedia

Photos

Lauri Costigan as one of the Fates in Antigone.

Photo: Elizabeth Allen

Video

Rehearsal Video Clip (1 minute)