Stage Kiss” by Sarah Ruhl Directed by Jeffrey Bracco January 16-February 16 Supported by Producers Sandra Moll & Rick Holden Synopsis
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Next on our stage: CODED THE LITTLE FOXES OUR TBA MUSICAL! MARCH 12-APRIL 11 MAY 14-JUNE 14 JULY 16-AUGUST 23 HIGHLIGHTS A companion guide to “Stage Kiss” by Sarah Ruhl directed by Jeffrey Bracco January 16-February 16 supported by Producers Sandra Moll & Rick Holden Synopsis What happens when life and art get too cozy? Part backstage comedy and part offbeat love story, Stage Kiss follows two actors with a history. After they’re cast opposite each other again, the lines start to blur. “When I kissed you just now, did it feel like an actor kissing an actor or a person kissing a person?” the leading lady asks. Either way, the show must go on — consequences be damned. Characters Nearly everyone plays more than one role in Stage Kiss, which (as one would expect from a comedy-love story about the theater) contains a play within a play. She (April Green): An actress in her mid-40s. Plays the role of Ada Wilcox opposite He, her former lover. He (Asher Krohn): An actor in his mid-40s. Plays the role of Johnny Lowell opposite She. In Act Two, after the play closes, they take on altogether different roles, in more ways than one. The Director (Tom Gough): A director Adrian Schwalbach, who helms the play in Act One and then heads to a new artistic project. In Detroit. Kevin (Matthew Regan): The reader and awkward understudy. Also plays the doctor, the butler and the pimp. The Husband (Damian Vega): The husband, or Harrison. Is he clueless, long- suffering or smarter than you think? Angela / Maid / Millie (Alexandra Velazquez): Millie and the maid in Act One; Angela in Act Two. An actress in her early 20s who keeps getting cast as a teen. Millicent / Laurie (April Culver): Millicent in Act One; Laurie in Act Two. An Top: Tom Gough as The Director. Above: Matthew actress in her late 20s or early 30s. Regan as Kevin. Previous page: Asher Krohn as He and April Green as She. All “Stage Kiss” photos are by Taylor Sanders. What people are saying about “Stage Kiss” “It manages to be both wholly original and instantly recognizable to the audience. As a satire of theater and theatricals, it’s right up there with Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys.” -the New Yorker “Part parody, part inside-baseball valentine to theater, part falling-down silly physical comedy about love.” -Newsday “Sarah Ruhl’s affection for the confused bustle of backstage life suffuses the play with warmth and genial humor.” -the New York Times About the play and playwright Sarah Ruhl If you saw City Lights’ bilingual production of Eurydice last season, you already know what a stunning writer Sarah Ruhl is. One of the reasons that director Lisa Mallette chose Eurydice for the innovative English/American Sign Language show was the beauty and warmth of Ruhl’s words. With Stage Kiss, Ruhl also shows she has smart, fresh comedy down cold. Stage Kiss had its world premiere at The Goodman Theatre in Chicago in 2011. Three years later, it debuted in New York City at Playwrights Horizons. The critics loved it. (See previous “What people are saying” section.) The New York production, directed by Rebecca Taichman, featured Jessica Hecht (The Price, Fiddler on the Roof and many others on Broadway; Friends, Breaking Bad and others on TV) as She. Dominic Fumusa (He) made his Broadway debut in 1998 in a revival of Wait Until Dark, but is best known as Edie Falco’s TV husband in Nurse Jackie. Besides authoring Eurydice, Sarah Ruhl has written many other acclaimed plays, including The Clean House and In the Next Room, or the vibrator play, both finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. (City Lights Playwright Sarah Ruhl. presented In the Next Room, which was also a Tony Award nominee for Best New Play, in 2012.) Other works include the plays Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Passion Play, For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday, How to Transcend a Happy Marriage and The Oldest Boy; and the book of essays 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write. Her new play Becky Nurse of Salem just had its world premiere at Berkeley Rep. Ruhl is known for her unusual voice that can make even everyday mundanities sound lyrical; as the New York Times puts it, her works have “a poetic sensibility and often cross over into the surreal.” A resident of Brooklyn, she teaches at the Yale School of Drama. Last fall, the Times reported that Ruhl will soon publish Smile, a memoir that explores her experiences with Bell’s palsy, a condition that paralyzed the left side of her face and made smiling nearly impossible. Ruhl promises that the book won’t be “a complete downer,” and says it will also talk about family, faith, art and her theatrical career. The article also promised Ruhl’s first book of poetry, to be published Soprano Danielle de Niese, who will sing the role of Eurydice in in 2020, and mentioned that she is working on turning the 1957 the upcoming opera “Eurydice.” movie “A Face in the Crowd” into a musical, with music by Elvis Costello. An opera of her play Eurydice is scheduled to premiere in February at Los Angeles Opera, with music by Matthew Aucoin and Australian-American soprano Danielle de Niese singing the title role. It then heads to New York’s Metropolitan Opera. “What a strange job to kiss strangers in front of people and make it look like you know each other. Or kiss someone you know in front of people and make it look like a stranger.” -Kevin (Matthew Regan) in “Stage Kiss” About our di rector Fittingly for a play about the theater, Stage Kiss director Jeffrey Bracco is a veteran theater-maker with experience on and off the stage and on the page, as well as in front of the camera. He has worked as a director, actor and playwright in the U.S. and Europe. Most recently, City Lights audiences saw him portray Antonio in The Merchant of Venice last season, and in 2012 he worked on another Sarah Ruhl show here, playing Dr. Givings in In the Next Room, or the vibrator play. Other City Lights roles have included Serge in Art and George in The Language Archive. As a City Lights director, Jeff has helmed Mothers and Sons, In the Heights, Calendar Girls, Green Day’s American Idiot, M. Butterfly, Monty Python’s SPAMALOT, Santaland Diaries, The Three Musketeers and Nine (for which he received a Best Jeffrey Bracco, above, and at left, in City Lights’ 2012 production of Director nomination from the Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle). “In the Next Room” (with Elissa Beth Stebbins). Jeff has written several produced plays, including ShakesPod, POE-Pourri and City Lights’ Truce: A Christmas Wish from the Great War, which he co-wrote with Kit Wilder. He appeared in the film From Paris With Love and the French TV series Hard, and is on the theater faculty at Santa Clara University. Meet our Millie (and Angela) In Act One of Stage Kiss, the actress She meets other cast members from their play-within-a-play. That includes Millie, a spirited performer. “I’m actually twenty-three. People always cast me as like teenagers,” Millie says. “It’s so annoying.” In real life, the actress playing Millie, Alexandra Velazquez, doesn’t mind. She's also twenty-three and just played a teen last fall in The Wolves here at City Lights. “I am young, so I might as well play young for as long as I can,” Alexandra said affably. After graduating from U.C. San Diego last June with a degree in theater arts, Alexandra couldn’t wait for her post-school theater life to begin. She’s been thrilled that this life has included her first two roles at City Lights, where she worked as a box-office intern when she was in school. It’s a place that feels like home. First, Alexandra was cast in Sarah DeLappe’s soccer drama The Wolves, portraying midfield player #11, a smart, thoughtful and Alexandra Velazquez as Angela. rather morbid 17-year-old. The play rang remarkably true to Alexandra, who played competitive soccer for 12 years and saw herself and her teammates in the acclaimed script. Now she’s enjoying a slice of something lighter, playing actress Millie in Stage Kiss’ Act One, and Angela (She’s daughter) in Act Two. While the play certainly has depth and raw emotion, it’s a comedy and an offbeat love story, and a nice change of pace from the oft-serious The Wolves. “I thought Angela was a fun character. She’s angsty and another teen,” Alexandra said, laughing. “I love how assertive she is. She has these strong opinions. Everything she says, in her mind, is just right." Angela certainly has thoughts on her mother reuniting with an old flame in Stage Kiss. One of her lines: “Mom, come home, you’re being a total bitch.” Alexandra has some history with two of her Stage Kiss castmates — nothing as scandalous as the backstory of He and She. She was in an unarmed stage combat class with April Culver, who plays Millicent and Laurie. And Tom Gough, who plays The Director, was Alexandra’s favorite professor at Foothill College, where she studied before attending U.C. San Diego and took the majority of her acting classes with him. The class that made the biggest impact was a classical Shakespeare and movement course.