Last season we distributed 2,400 surveys to our audience as part of a national study of Intrinsic Impact. Over 48% of the surveys were completed, giving us vital information about what you (our audience) think of our work and how we can continue to provide quality theatre with our resident ensemble.
Beginning here and continuing through the season we will be sharing answers to your questions and results from the study. Here is a small sampling of the over 1,000 questions we were asked.
ROSMERSHOLM: Was this the only way Ibsen could have ended the play? Could the characters have resolved their issues another way?
“When performing in Ibsen’s challenging Rosmersholm, I approached each night not knowing how that final scene would end. Could things have ended differently? Every night I said yes. Rebecca could change her mind and stay. The house would become light again and love could continue to develop between my employer and Rebecca West from their platonic friendship into a true and shared passion. Or Rebecca could meet her trunks at the front door and go away leaving my master, Pastor Rosmer, sad and lonely in the darkness of his home. But every night I was shocked and horrified by the inevitable falling of the entwined couple into the Mill Race. So, no, there was no other possible ending, though each night, I hoped for one.”
- Robin Leslie Brown, Mrs. Helseth
“I think Ibsen ends it the way the only way he could. (Many of my friends who saw the show didn’t agree with this). I think Rosmer and Rebecca have painted themselves into an ethical/sexual corner and can see no other way out of it. (Of course they’re 19th-century Norwegians.) And besides, like the housekeeper says, “The dead wife has them now.” People like Beata never give up, even from, or particularly from, the grave.”
-Austin Pendleton, Dr. Kroll
How do you determine which actors play select roles?
“I assume this question concerns the casting of resident company actors, but I will attempt an answer that concerns both the resident actor and the guest actor (in just about every show at the Pearl, one or several roles will be played by guests to the company). Of course it is an artistic director’s job to make casting determinations and for me it ultimately becomes a question of how it “feels” – it just feels right or it doesn’t. Now, I also look at casting a season with the company in mind, and there are matters of balance to take into account: if an actor will play more than two roles in a season, which of these are roles that “carry the play” and which are in support? What sequence of roles will be of especial interest to a subscribing audience that will see all four plays? And is there a role that is particularly suited to a particular actor at this point in his or her career? Finally, is there a chance of casting one of our actors “against type” in order to yield the marvelously unexpected in the resulting production? All of these matters come into play for me when casting the season. In general terms, I’ll start with a leading “carry the play” role for an actor – say, Sean McNall in Richard II, or Bradford Cover in The Philanderer, or Carol Schultz and Dan Daily in The Subject Was Roses – and then fill it in from there. Guest directors have a say in this process – and of course, the actors themselves are asked about their preferences and hopes for each season. But ultimately, it comes to the artistic director’s call and I can’t set a final cast list until I can look at a sheet of paper with roles with actors names attached to those roles and from the gut know that it looks right and promises much.”
J.R. Sullivan, Artistic Director
ROSMERSHOLM: What was the political situation in Norway at the time?
“In 1885, the year Ibsen wrote the play, Norway was reeling from the outcome of an election that had secured a liberal government . . . and that led to bitter conservative backlash. Ibsen was appalled by the malicious polarization he found, and the play is, in part, a response to that disillusionment.”
-Kate Farrington, Dramaturg
ROSMERSHOLM: What did you think your role taught the audience? What ideas were you trying to get across?
“Strong women are the arch-nemeses of men. And they either will kill themselves or you over that power. Stay firm and true in your ideals. Start a revolution if you have to. Learn the system and then learn how to shake it up – you can’t break the rules if you don’t know the game. There’s no sense in being a victim – take your circumstances and use them to empower, not victimize yourself.”
-Margot White, Rebecca West
WITTENBERG: How did you research your character?
“The amount of information on Martin Luther was quite overwhelming. I found, in researching him, that most of my work was involved with understanding Martin as a good Catholic. Since the Martin Luther of Wittenberg is met before he actually broke from the Catholic Church, it was more important for me to understand the kind of Catholic Luther wanted to be, so that I could understand the depth with which he felt the hypocrisies of the church. In the eyes of David Davalos’ Martin Luther, “pride” is the greatest of all sins, so for him to even think that he was a better Catholic, or that he knew more or understood the Word of God better than his superiors, was the greatest, most damnable sin of all. His superiors have absolute authority. He is forced to accept and defend their actions. Faust convinces him that great men of moral conscience stand up to that hypocrisy and are willing to die for their convictions. Luther’s journey in Wittenberg, I felt, is his own admission and acceptance of his nearly unspeakable disagreement with the Catholic Church, and his decision and willingness to die for it–to overcome his mortal fear of death, and his immortal fear of eternal damnation, to stand up for what is right. It was literally choking him to death internally–mentally and physically. So very little of what is written about Luther after his confrontation at Worms was as useful to me as understanding how much he wanted to be a really, really good Catholic, and understanding and truly relating to his inner turmoil, and ultimately admitting and openly responding to the hypocrisy of the church. I believed that the more deeply I could feel Luther’s passion and distress, then the stronger and more interesting my relationships became with Faustus and Hamlet, the more funny the jokes would be, and the more interesting the journey of the play would be overall. That was my goal, anyway!”
-Chris Mixon, Martin Luther
THE MISANTHROPE: Was it difficult to perform with the lack of props?
“Yes! I really wanted a glass of champagne in that salon scene – or a chaise to lounge on with Alceste. It was difficult to imagine a realistic sense of place with so few tangible objects to grasp and so little stage “business,” but in the end I think that allowed us to really play with the language in a way that would have been overshadowed by a lot of activity.”
-Janie Brookshire, Célimène
ROSMERSHOLM: I wondered why the director kept physical contact between the lovers to a minimum.
“Johannes and Rebecca are not actually lovers….their passion for each other has never been consummated…also…they are working hard to deny all traces of the erotic….to convince themselves that they have found the perfect ‘platonic’ spiritual and intellectual relationship…a harmony that weaves heady dialogue on political and spiritual matters into a co-habituation contract that doesn’t include marriage. Of course in keeping with the flow of the play….when this facade crumbles they fall into each other’s arms.”
-Elinor Renfield, Director
THE MISANTHROPE: Why did you set a 17th century play in the 18th century?
“Director Joe Hanreddy wanted to explore what tensions might be brought out in the play by taking this frivolous social structure and moving it a little closer to the eve of the French Revolution. There is much that doesn’t change at all between 1666 and 1766, from the strict social structure to the opulent lifestyle of the rich and famous. But what in Molière’s day was an exasperating superficiality would become, in the following century, the foundation for rebellion. Alceste might be extreme—but this society is living on borrowed time.
Interesting side note: the style of dress popular in 1666 is beautiful—but not always up to the wear-and-tear of theatre. If we are building the costumes, the mid 18th century provides a much simpler silhouette; if we are renting, it’s easier to find 18th century pieces. So, in this case, the director’s vision dove-tailed nicely with practical considerations.”
-Kate Farrington, Dramaturg
WITTENBERG: Was it more of a challenge to write a real-life character (Luther) into fiction than Faust and Hamlet?
“Luther presented particular challenges mainly because he’s a fairly well-documented historical figure, and he’s also an important religious personage. I wanted to give him the fairest shake I could, to have him serve the needs of the play without distorting the historical record beyond recognition or having his character slip over into out-and-out lampoon. I wanted any Lutherans who would see the play to recognize him and feel I was playing fair(ish) by him.”
-David Davalos, Playwright
WITTENBERG: I was curious as to how much dialogue was taken from Hamlet and Faustus and adapted to this play.
“There is quite a lot of dialogue taken directly from Hamlet—some in its entirety and some paraphrased. And Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus is drawn upon fairly heavily as well. What many of you might not know is how closely Mr. Davalos has adhered to some of Martin Luther’s writings. It may not be word for word, but his descriptions of his first trip to Rome, his “tower experience” in which he first came to believe in the doctrine of justification through faith alone, are very much how Luther wrote about them.”
-Kate Farrington, Dramaturg
ROSMERSHOLM: How did you prepare for getting into your character?
“I trusted the script a great deal. Some of my prep involved looking into issues in my own life but Ibsen is so good he helps you do that. He asks you to go to those deeper darker places. And it is a pleasure and an honor to work on Ibsen because of the brilliant way he constructs the play.”
-Bradford Cover, Johannes Rosmer
“I listened to The Black Keyes song, “Tighten Up” every night on my way to the theatre and tried to connect with each of the other actors before places to embark on our pending journey as a collaborative effort. Then just before going onstage, I centered myself alone backstage, ran my hands through the wet grass I carried on, and rustled it in time with the prelude music to sync my sounds and senses to the play.”
-Margot White, Rebecca West
“For me, every role is different and depending on the defining extent of the characteristics as provided by the playwright, my preparation varies. In the case of Mrs. Helseth in Rosmersholm, Ibsen offered a tersely worded character for me to play. My housekeeper, Mrs. Helseth, frequently made brief but timely appearances throughout the play and offered few words. Ibsen’s small six member cast size dictates how important even the supporting roles are to his story. No character is dispensable.When I play an oddly pivotal role such as this one where the playwright leaves the providence of the fleshing of my character to me, it is a more arduous task and I risk straying from what the director and I surmise the playwright’s intended purpose of my character in the play. Director, Elie Renfield called me for much of the rehearsal process though I was not on stage for large sections of the script. I was grateful for that opportunity as she and I intuitively knew I would need to observe the developing lengthy exchanges between the three major characters. In reality, my character would have been in the house perhaps out of sight yet within earshot of Rosmer or Rebecca West so as to be instantly at the ready when called upon, particularly in support of Rebecca for whom the housekeeper was genuinely concerned. That affection manifested during the rehearsal process. I struggled between my character’s Nordic reserved coolness and my own more passionate and talkative personality.
I watched the rehearsals and floundered for a while. I sought materials outside of the text, for help in creating my character. Our dramaturg, Kate provided extensive research on Norse Mythology and the functions of a housekeeper of an old manor-house in the outskirts of a small town on a fjord in western Norway in the late 1800’s. The costume designer, Niki printed photocopies of household staffs of the period. Still, because the script left my Mrs. H. so mysteriously underdeveloped, I needed more. I watched diverse films like Whoopi Goldberg’s Carina Carina, Emma Thompson’s Remains of the Day, a re-run of The Brady Bunch and one of Hazel with Shirley Booth and I continued to study the servant classes by reading and rereading novels by Edith Wharton, E.M. Forester and James Joyce and still I needed more. It was Mrs. H’s horror and keen fear of Ibsen’s rural Norse mythological belief of White Horses that I needed to own for myself. To that end, I listened to rural folk music from all over the world and read of the historical witch trials in Salem and Googled American Indian rituals to ward off evil and bring rain or healing. I talked to my Louisiana born sister-in-law of the convention of magic (black and white) in Cajun country. I was looking for a handle in order to prepare for what one reviewer later described my performance as “the actress who successfully handled the more purple passages of the play.” It was certainly my intention to achieve that while still being a real person, the long serving housekeeper in the house on the hill.”
-Robin Leslie Brown, Mrs. Helseth
“It was hard getting into my character (Kroll). I thought it might be. That was a large inducement to me to want to work on the role. My problem was that politically I am the polar opposite of Kroll, and of course Kroll speaks of little else beside his political feelings in the play. But sometimes a person opposite from you is easier for you to grasp than a person sort of halfway closer to your feelings. A person opposite you is sort of like you turned inside out. The same passions, just turned inside out. Kroll, for example, hates the rabble. Well, working on it, I thought, “That’s exactly the way I feel about some (not all) of the Tea Party-ers.” The thought of them and theirs in power just terrifies me. That was a big help to me in understanding Kroll’s fears of what was happening politically in Norway.
And then there’s another personal element about Kroll’s political feelings. And Ibsen never spells it out. He just scatters information around, allows the actor to identify with it, and then lets the actor realize that he (the actor) has begun to identify with the emotional sources of all the character’s beliefs. Thus: it’s pretty clear that Kroll comes from a family with profound emotional, and probably even chemical, dislocations in it. We know his sister (Beata) went mad with paranoia (much of it inflamed by Rebecca, as we learn). And Kroll himself has a strong tendency toward seeing things through the dislocations of paranoia: we see evidences of this again and again, when he makes it clear to Rosmer that Rosmer “is either for me or against me,” and when he tells Rebecca that “you wrapped me around your little finger,” as if that were all there was to it. So Kroll’s family clearly had strong paranoid tendencies in it, and that, combined with living in provincial Norway during that time, must have made his childhood a frightening and alienating one. And then he found the Rosmer family. The most remarkable, respected, charismatic household in the neighborhood. And he started hanging out in the Rosmer household (Rosmersholm) a lot.
And he found, I assume, a stability he’d never known at home. And the Rosmers were conservative. Magnetically conservative. Radiantly conservative. So he began to live for this family, and, inevitably of course, for their beliefs. Thus his politics are all bound up with his sense of where his emotional survival would be. This is why Ibsen is a great writer. Particularly since, as I say, he never spells all this out. You have to piece together, as in life. You have to know it subliminally (and let the audience feel it subliminally), as in life.
And, because it’s subliminal, it gives us the actor a profoundly rooted emotional and sensory platform to stand on. (A playwright friend of mine, Jeanne Dorsey, saw the show, not having known the play beforehand, and said afterward that “This is the best play I’ve ever seen about the fact that people’s political passions are never finally only about politics.”)”
-Austin Pendleton, Dr. Kroll
THE MISANTHROPE: How difficult is learning lines in verse rather than speech? Do you enjoy period drama – showing that times change, people rarely do?
“It might seem counter intuitive, but learning verse is actually much easier than learning contemporary language, because the rhythms make it much harder to learn the lines wrong, and they seem to sink in more quickly, I think, probably because of the regular form. It’s similar to the way we learn song lyrics, almost unconsciously. And I love period plays! Although I’m not sure people rarely change, maybe more that anybody’s capable of anything, anytime.”
Mathew Amendt, Acaste
We will be continuing to share responses to your questions throughout the season. Please check back.
