| The learning never stops DPA’s New Plays Workshop Series offers lessons for students and faculty BY MATT GETTY 
Photo by Jeff Watts
Carl Menninger urges actors from A Pocket Full of Grace to make “strong choices” in their upcoming staged readings. Many theatre students likely long for the day when the learning finally stops. At some point, surely the acting exercises, directing workshops, and dance practicums will end, making them masters—rather than students —of their craft. This semester, through the new DPA New Plays Workshop Series, AU faculty playwrights Carl Menninger and Caleen Jennings are offering those students some bad news and some good news. The bad news is they’re wrong. The good news is it’s not because they’re never going to be masters—it’s that, even for masters, the learning never stops. “As an artist, you’re always answering questions,” says Jennings, whose children’s play Wish Eye New will be featured in the new series Dec. 8 through 10. “You might think that someday you’ll get to a place where you’ve got all the answers, but as soon as you get there, you find 30 new questions.” That’s why Menninger, who directs AU’s music theatre program, launched the series this fall. The workshops, he hopes, will give master and student actors, directors, and playwrights a venue to explore those never-ending questions by staging developing works in front of a live audience. “I wanted to respond to the fact that we have this new performance space with the Katzen Center’s black-box theatre,” he explains. “We already have the Greenberg, where we can stage performances, but there are commercial considerations there. This gives us a space for more experimental productions, where we don’t need to worry about the bottom line.” Menninger’s own A Pocket Full of Grace kicked off the series this weekend with two performances in the Dr. Cyrus and Myrtle Katzen Arts Center’s studio (black-box) theatre. The lively tale of a pickpocket and French dignitary falling in love in 1930s Paris marks the first collaboration on a musical for Menninger, who has directed and written numerous plays. Rather than staging a fully produced musical, however, Menninger and his cowriter, local songwriter William Hopkins, presented a staged reading. The cast of 14 students and 2 alumni carried their scripts with them on stage, read stage directions, and performed amid a set of folding chairs, wooden cubes, and collapsible tables. At the end of the performance, the audience offered feedback on the musical, which Menninger and Hopkins will use to make improvements to the piece. In the spring, Menninger will direct the same actors in a follow-up staged reading at Ford’s Theatre, where returning audience members will be able to discover what changes their comments prompted. “It’s great for students to get to see that theatre is really collaborative, and it’s also a great opportunity for them just to be able to perform at Ford’s Theatre,” says Menninger. “Not only is it something they can put on their résumés, but it also raises the bar a bit and asks them to deliver the goods in a way they might not know they can.” The collaboration with Ford’s Theatre represents a hallmark of New Plays Workshop Series. As evidenced also by the mixed student-alumni cast, the program is committed to uniting students, teachers, and professionals in the learning process. Spring semester performances in the series, for instance, will give student actors the opportunity to collaborate with established thespians from outside the DPA faculty like Tania Richard, who has performed at Chicago’s famed Second City and the Steppenwolf Theatre.
Caleen Jennings
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For Jennings, the more fully produced performance of Wish Eye New this December will continue a collaborative playwriting process that began last year. During her 2004 sabbatical, Jennings penned the play as she taught a children’s theatre class at Colgate University. Guiding students through improvisations based on their childhood memories, Jennings shaped a script in which college students travel back to childhood through a magic “wish eye” only to find that living in the past isn’t as fun as it seemed. “It’s really a play for all ages about how growing up isn’t a bad thing,” explains Jennings. “A lot of people may think they want to go back to their childhood, but let’s face it, if we were all kids again, the world wouldn’t be in great shape.” While the Wish Eye New production will be more fully realized than A Pocket Full of Grace, with actors working off-script in a high-energy performance seeking audience participation in song and dance, Jennings still intends to gather feedback for potential improvements. In fact, since Wish Eye New was performed at Colgate, Jennings has rewritten part of it based on reaction to that production. She’s also already discovering new potential in it based on the input of AU alumnus Tim Reagan ’91, who’s directing Wish Eye New in conjunction with a children’s theatre class he’s teaching at AU this semester. “He’s really added a lot of life and energy to it. He has a lot of experience working with kids, so he’s got a good eye for what captivates them,” says Jennings about Reagan, who also directs the drama program at the Sidwell Friends Middle School and has helmed children’s productions at Imagination Stage. Though both playwrights have a lot to gain from staging their pieces in the workshop series, Menninger and Jennings agree that it also represents a rare opportunity for the students. “Up until now, most of them have been performing plays in which they never have any interaction with the writer. They got a bound copy of the script and that was it,” Menninger explains. “Here, they get to see how an actor’s performance gives playwrights valuable feedback, and that’s empowering for them.” For Jennings the workshop also provides a useful example of artists in action. “It shows students that the risk-taking never stops,” she explains. “As artists, every day you have to get out there and take a chance. It’s not a case of, if I get really good at this stuff, it won’t feel like a risk anymore.” While that may be a disappointment for students hoping to one day put an end to all this learning, there also seems to be reason for excitement. After all, as both Wish Eye New and the workshop series itself suggest, learning, like growing up, isn’t all that bad. “It’s extraordinarily exciting,” says Jennings on her own learning process as she watches Reagan take her play from page to stage. “You create this thing in your head, and then somebody brings it to life, and suddenly you discover new aspects to it. It’s a high unlike any other I know.” |
