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5 Questions With Colin Quinn

Colin Quinn (photo by Carol Rosegg)

History class is in session. It’ll only take 75 minutes, but at the end you’ll know everything.

You’ll know how empires rose and fell. You will learn how the British conquered the world through the sheer force of their withering contempt, why the Chinese just couldn’t stop building that wall, and why there are fewer countries more irrelevant than Australia.

And it’ll all be lots funnier than history as taught by Sister back in the fourth grade. She was a humorless cow, anyway.

“Long Story Short,” Colin Quinn’s acid interpretation of the events that shaped great nations and then brought them to their knees—punch-drunk, bewildered and condemned to keep committing the same disastrous mistakes over and over again—comes to the Susanne Roberts Theatre this week. The one-man show, directed by Jerry Seinfeld, runs from June 28 through July 10, 2011.

You’ll remember Quinn from his five-year stint on Saturday Night Live. His face redefines the meaning of craggy, and his widow’s peak carves out an impressive capital letter M across his forehead. Quinn has amazingly literate comedic sensibilities, and he offers up some head-spinning observations on the human condition, but the lines are delivered in a streetwise Brooklyn-ese, with a voice that sounds like a truck dumping a load of crushed rock. He stalks the stage (with a crumbling Roman amphitheatre as a backdrop), making some astonishing points as he goes along. For example, a riff in which he compares Antigone of Greek mythology to “Jersey Shore’s” self-obsessed Snooki, or re-envisioning Caesar as Goodfella mobster Ray Liotta. The show is fast-paced—in Quinn’s world, each empire rises and falls in about ten minutes’ time.

Of course, you’re not meant to take any of it seriously. Scott Brown, writing for New York Magazine, recalled a quote from director Seinfeld in which he described the making of “Long Story Short” as “taking a fatuous premise and proving it with rigorous logic.”

We chatted with Quinn by phone this week, and here’s what he had to say about the show and his Irish-American upbringing.

Q. A headline for the Hollywood Reporter review described your show like this: “The History Channel meets Comedy Central.” It was actually a pretty good review, but that kind of Hollywood pitch line description doesn’t really measure up to what you’ve done. The history of the world in 75 minutes is an Olympian task. How hard was it to pull all of that material together and make all the connections?

A. It like to play around with this stuff, anyway. I always think in terms of “combinations.” It’s always in my head somehow. It’s all people stuff to me. Altogether, it took a few months to bring together—different hours, different times.

Q. If you’re going to talk about the British Empire and the Roman Empire (and more), you really do have to have some sense of history. You couldn’t have tackled the “demise of empires” with just a Cliff’s Notes knowledge of history. So I suppose I could put this more delicately, but how did you get so smart?

A. Most of it, I feel like its common enough knowledge. And we (comedians) have a lot of free time. We can read any time we want. I read a lot. I don’t reads that much history—I was never all that interested in history. I’m really more interested in the global village. I feel like everything else. These connections have been going on since time began.

Q. For those who haven’t seen the show, how did you figure out that you could make the connection between Antigone and Snooki?

A. That junction is just based on the fact that what people used to watch is not like what people watch now. (Now) we see Snooki crying on her knees over the loss of her cell phone.Most people wouldn’t know who Antigone is, but I went to a few acting classes so I know my stuff.

Q. You’ve probably been asked this before, but did you have any qualms about how or whether stand-up translates to a long-running Broadway monologue—the kind of story-telling that has been compared to the work of Spalding Gray? What were the challenges?

A. My own form of comedy is long-form, rambling comedy. I just wanted to do something thematic for a change of pace. To me, that was really like a natural state. It wasn’t like I was doing a bunch of one-liners before that, anyway.

Q. We’re an Irish web site, so of course we need to ask you something Irish. Happily, you’ve already gone there with an earlier show, “Colin Quinn: An Irish Wake.” And here again you’ve been lauded for your story-telling powers. The New York Times review described you as a kind of modern-day incarnation of the Irish “seanchai.” (“Story-teller,” in the Irish language.) You grew up in Brooklyn, coming from an Irish family, and knowing a lot of the local Irish–evidently providing you with a wealth of material. Can you tell us how growing up Irish influenced you?

A. Irish people, they like to read more than most people. I feel like that helps a lot. And I feel like Irish people are very verbal. I definitely feel like my Irish blood helps me to be a performer and a writer of comedy.

For more information on the show, check out the Philadelphia Theatre Company Web site.

June 23, 2011 by Jeff Meade

Arts

Review: Gibraltar: An Adaptation after James Joyce’s Ulysses

Patrick Fitzgerald and Cara Seymour

On the one hand, there is James Joyce’s classic novel Ulysses, a book that has been described as a “complex masterpiece,” with its manifold overlapping themes, rich symbolism and a vast and colorful cast of characters.

On the other hand, there is Patrick Fitgerald’s play Gibraltar: An Adaptation after James Joyce’s Ulysses, to be presented Saturday at 5 p.m. at Plays and Players, which does something both brave and fascinating. Gibraltar plunges deeply and directly into what Fitzpatrick believes is the novel’s heart: the complex, bittersweet love story of protagonist Leopold Bloom and his wife Molly.

The play takes its name from the birthplace of Molly Bloom, played by Cara Seymour. Seymour actually plays several other roles, including the muse, her husband’s deceased Hungarian father Rudolf Virág, Gerty MacDowell (a young girl Bloom encounters on the beach), and, at one or two points, the Blooms’ cat.) Fitzgerald portrays Leopold Bloom. The play premiered in New York in 2010.

Artist Rob Berry and the crew of Throwaway Horse LLC, creators of the online comic Ulysses Seen , were instrumental in bringing the play to Plays and Players. (Read the blog post.)

I’ve previously owned up to my ignorance of Ulysses. And so I have to admit, I was looking to Gibraltar as a gentle, accessible introduction to Joyce’s Dublin and Leopold Bloom’s travels about the city on that single day, June 16.

And so, in some ways, it was just that. It’s not hard to get a grasp on the broad outlines and themes, although at times it can be hard to focus in on specifics because the lines, derived from the language of the novel, come fast and furious. Consequently, some of what transpires onstage is hard to follow.

Still, hang in there, Ulysses newbs, and you’ll catch snatches of Joyce’s language and you’ll gain precious insight into what makes at least these two characters tick—or as much as they themselves have been able to figure out.

It’s hard for me to imagine a more challenging acting assignment, but Fitzgerald and Seymour are more than equal to the task. Fitzgerald’s passion and energy shine through. He makes the stage, with its meager props—a bed, a set of stairs, some dishes and a tea kettle, a hatstand and a Victrola—seem much larger than it really is. We cease to see props; instead, we begin to see Leopold Bloom, his life and his world through the actor’s eyes.

Seymour is a revelation, particularly as she delivers Molly’s soliloquy. It’s from the final chapter of Ulysses, and it takes up most of the second half. The lines are delivered from a squeaky bed at the far right side of the stage—the bed Molly shares with Leopold. Seymour opens the window wide onto Molly’s fundamental humanity as the character takes stock of her life and her relationship with Leopold—reminiscences tinged with longing and regret. As the monologue continued, you could sense that so-called “fourth wall” actors talk about becoming ever more permeable and, finally, dissolving into thin air.

I would never suggest that Gibraltar is easy going. The Sound of Music, it is not. Still, as the week in which Bloomsday is celebrated comes to a close, take the opportunity to see what two very talented actors can do with Joyce’s challenging masterwork.

Ticket information.

Location:

Plays & Players
1714 Delancey Pl
Philadelphia, PA 19103

June 16, 2011 by Jeff Meade

Arts

“Ulysses ‘Seen'” … A Comic Odyssey

Rob Berry at work.

As we walk from our meeting place at the Starbucks in the Fairmount section of Philadelphia to Rob Berry’s studio, just a few blocks away, Berry asks the question I’d been both anticipating and dreading: “Have you read ‘Ulysses?’” At which point, I came clean and admitted I hadn’t.

(Although, in my clearly woeful preparation for the interview, I had read the Sparks Notes.)

My ignorance of Irish poet and novelist James Joyce in general and his 1922 masterwork, in particular, apparently didn’t put Berry off. He seemed happy that I hadn’t tried to bluff my way through. He’s asked others the same question, and they’ve, well, lied. Berry himself admits he attempted to read the labyrinthine 265,000-word novel five times before he could make it all the way through.

Still, the fifth time was the charm. Berry got it—and he was hooked.

But perhaps even Berry could not have predicted where his Joycean passion someday might lead. Berry—with graphic and web designer Josh Levitas, Joyce scholar Mike Barsanti and several other equally talented colleagues—is in the early stages of publishing a Web- and iPad-based comic adaptation of “Ulysses.” Two chapters, complete with hypertext-linked reader’s guide, have been published on the Web site “Ulysses ‘Seen’.”

If you’re looking for a way to get a handle on this classic of modernist literature, with its allusions to Homer’s “Odyssey,” its rich symbolism and subtle nuances, “Ulysses ‘Seen’” might be just your ticket.

Leopold Bloom, as imagined by artist Rob Berry

The project was hatched in June 2004, appropriately enough, in an Irish bar—The Bards at 20th and Walnut—during the Bloomsday Centennial. Bloomsday is the worldwide celebration of Ulysses, held every June 16, which takes its name from Leopold Bloom, who serves as Joyce’s Everyman. All of the events of “Ulysses” occur on that single day in Dublin.

“I was at a Bloomsday reading with a friend of mine who was a cartoonist,” Berry recalls, and talk turned to how “Ulysses” might be portrayed in film. “We were talking about how difficult it is to translate Joyce into other mediums. I was the one to say comics were ideally suited. Joyce uses the weight of visual symbols and he also uses a plasticity of time that you can’t put on film. What you are able to do with comics is to set a rhythm to it (the story) that’s visual, that allows people to know where they are.”

Some who listened to that argument weren’t so sure, and one of his fellow bar patrons bet Berry it couldn’t be done. “I wound up story-boarding 20 pages of ‘Ulysses’,” he says. “I won.”

The idea languished for a few years. in August 2007, at Berry’s wife’s urging, he submitted a snippet from Ulysses to the Philadelphia City Paper for its Comics Issue.

For help in scanning and translating his hand-inked cartoon into a Web-friendly graphic format, he turned to Replica, a high-end print and design shop, which is where Levitas worked. “That’s how I met Josh,” Berry says. “It turned out he actually lives on my block.”

From there, an idea that started out as a barroom bet began to take on a lot more substance. As he continued his wanderings among the “Joyce heads,” Berry met (at a Bloomsday festival) Mike Barsanti, a senior program specialist at the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage and former associate director of the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia. He pitched the idea to Barsanti. Barsanti’s reaction was, perhaps, predictable. “At first, he thought it was the craziest idea he’d ever heard,” says Berry, “And Joyce scholars know ‘crazy’.” But the more they talked—over beers, and maybe the brews paradoxically helped lift the fog—the more intrigued Barsanti became, and in time he was on board.

Another partner, copyright attorney Chad Rutkowski—the one who bet that a comic version of Ulysses couldn’t be done—joined the project in 2008 following an encounter at The Bards. Rutkowski became the counsel and business manager for a new company called Throwaway Horse LLC. (Throwaway was the 20-to-1 winner of the Gold Cup race featured in “Ulysses.”)

In time, another passionate Joyce enthusiast joined the project: Janine Utell, former facilitator of the Ulysses Reading Group and Bloomsday coordinator at the Rosenbach, who teaches 20th century British literature at Widener University.

Like a lot of start-up companies, this one is mostly virtual. (Company meetings, Berry says, take place at the Black Sheep near Rittenhouse Square.) If Throwaway Horse can be said to have an “office,” it’s the Callowhill Street studio Berry shared with Levitas.

To reach it, you climb two flights of well-worn gray steps bounded by mustard-colored walls. The studio is a bright, cozy and somewhat cluttered cube, with scuffed white walls and, along one side, exposed brick. At the far end of the studio sits two desks, positioned so they face each other—one of them, covered by illustrations in progress, belonging to Berry; the other, dominated by a large flat-screen monitor, hard drives, a tangle of cables and a pen-and-touch tablet, where Levitas helps translate Berry’s work into an electronic format.

The wall closest to the door is dominated by a cluster of paintings featuring Captain America re-imagined in a wide assortment of characters—black, white, bearded, bespectacled, double-chinned, and one with dark purple lipstick. An equal opportunity Captain America. The theme continues on the wall up above Berry’s left shoulder, where a plastic Captain America costume mask hangs. And here and there, black-and-white comic panels on large sheets of sketchpad paper are tacked into the wallboard.

On the bookshelves, reference works like “Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist” and “The Book of a Hundred Hands” share space with ”The Complete Tales of Winnie the Pooh” and the Winston Graham crime novel “Marnie.”

Berry’s musical tastes are eclectic, too. The iPod is set on shuffle, and all the tunes reflect the artist’s diverse interests. It wouldn’t be unusual, Berry laughs, to hear Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” followed by Iggy Pop.

Before moving to Philadelphia in 2000, Berry had an enjoyed a successful career as an artist in Detroit, his easel paintings appearing in many galleries and shows. He says his paintings always followed a narrative style, in effect, telling a story. When he moved to Philadelphia, he says, “I didn’t want to do easel painting any more. The stories were becoming more important to me than the paintings themselves. I started to move away from paint to watercolor and ink drawing. It’s a faster medium to work in and better for print.”

For a time, he considered working in the world of mainstream superhero comics—not surprising, perhaps, for an artist who counts among his earliest creative influences the great comic artists Hal Foster (Prince Valiant), Burne Hogarth (Tarzan) and the immortal Jack Kirby (Captain America, Fantastic Four, X-Men and probably dozens of other comic creations).

Ultimately, though, the idea of creating longer-form stories was more appealing.

And then, in 2007, Steve Jobs and Apple introduced the iPhone. Berry knew things would never be the same, and he began to see creative possibilities on the Web, and—with the dawning of the iPhone—beyond. That’s when Berry’s thoughts about creating a comic version of “Ulysses,” which he had put on a back burner, popped back into his head again. “It all came back when I started to think about the digital page,” he says. “At that point I barely knew how to type. I knew that if I was going to reinvent, I was going to have to reinvent everything.

“I started to look at what had been done with CD-ROMs and hypertext. Hypertext (the presentation of intertwining text, graphics and other info on the Web) was a really exciting approach. With hypertext, you can go behind the page and go right to the reader’s guide. You can join a discussion from there.”

In 2009, Berry and his colleagues launched “Ulysses ‘Seen’” with the publication of the first chapter, “Telemachus.” In 2010, Apple introduced the iPad. In the same year—after a brief media-fueled dust-up resulting in changes to Apple’s prohibition against depictions of nudity and lots more attention to the project—”Ulysses ‘Seen’” became one of the first creative applications for the iPad. “We were geared to the idea that the iPad would come out,” Berry says, “and we would be ready.”

Interestingly, although “Ulysses ‘Seen’” appears in an electronic format, Berry creates the world of “Ulysses” by hand, his panels later scanned by Levitas. “I still use a brush. I still use water colors. It works for me.”

Overall, the process of creating “Ulysses ‘Seen’” is hugely time-consuming. Drawing on the 1922 version of “Ulysses,” which is in the public domain, the team plots out scenes and chapters, with multiple layers of review and re-review. It’s a comic, yes, but there’s an almost academic level of integrity to what the Throwaway Horse team is trying to do.

So, yes, it takes a long time, but the results are stunning. Berry’s renderings of characters like the unhappy Stephen Dedalus, for example, are almost three-dimensional and meticulously detailed. Dedalus fairly pops off the page, in all his unwashed misery, living out the nightmare from which he is trying to awake.

In at least one way, “Ulysses ‘Seen’” is following in the footsteps of the original, which was serialized. The electronic comic version, though, has a much longer timeline. “We’re expecting to be able to do two chapters a year,” he says.

Judging by the critical acclaim with which the first two chapters have been received, it’s well worth the wait.

You can share the Throwaway team’s enthusiasm for Ulysses this week as the Rosenbach hosts the annual all-day outdoor reading of “Ulysses” at its Delancey Place location on Thursday, June 16, from 12 noon to 7 p.m. Berry and Levitas are scheduled to read from 12:55 to 1.

Berry and company are also promoting “Gibraltar: An Adaptation After James Joyce’s Ulysses,” at Plays & Players, 1714 Delancey Place. Showtimes are:

Wed, June 15 at 7pm ($15)
Thursday, June 16 at 11am and 3pm ($15)
Saturday, June 18 at 5pm ($25)

Visit the Web site for more information.

June 10, 2011 by Jeff Meade

Arts

Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” by Gothic Candlelight

Josh Hitchens, writer and actor, "Stoker's Dracula"

It’s often a jolt for folks when they first hear that the world’s most famous vampire was created by an Irishman. Bram Stoker, author of “Dracula,” was born in Clontarf, north of Dublin, and moved to London in 1878 where he was hired to manage the Lyceum Theatre and act as personal assistant to the theatre’s owner, Henry Irving. But in his spare time, Stoker kept busy creating the ultimate tale of nocturnal terror.

This weekend, the Ebenezer Mazwell Mansion and the Rosenbach Museum & Library are presenting “Stoker’s Dracula,” adapted and performed by Philadelphia actor Josh Hitchens.

From the time of its completion, Stoker envisioned “Dracula” being turned into a dramatic piece for Henry Irving to enact onstage. According to Stoker’s grand-nephew, Daniel Farson, who wrote a biography on his relative, Irving walked in on a reading at the theatre (to an audience of two people) and gave his one word review of the piece: “Dreadful!”

That is not a word that’s being applied to this weekend’s presentation.

The Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion is “the perfect backdrop” for Stoker’s legend. Located in Germantown, the Mansion is the only Victorian house museum in Philadelphia. And boy, is it a good one. With its stone façade and gothic tower, visitors can experience the spectral mood before they even enter the dark parlor, lit only by candlelight, where the reading is being held.

Hitchens’ adaptation is abridged, but contains Stoker’s own words—giving the dramatization the authentic sense of horror created by the author. “This is how Stoker wanted to see his novel,” Hitchens explains.

Also on display at The Mansion this weekend are facsimile copies of Stoker’s notes kept during the seven years he spent writing the novel. The originals are owned by The Rosenbach Museum & Library, a Philadelphia treasure house that is home to “a nearly unparalleled rare book and manuscript collection, with particular strength in American and British literature and history.”

During Stoker’s lifetime, “Dracula” did not produce the kind of critical and financial success that he had hoped for. When he died in 1912, his widow Florence was forced to sell the notes at a Sotheby’s auction the next year. They were purchased for a little over 2 pounds.

This weekend’s presentations of “Stoker’s Dracula” promise to thrill and chill audiences with the author’s words that are “better and scarier than any of the ‘Dracula’ movies.” As of Friday, there were still tickets available for tonight’s 9PM performance, as well as Sunday’s 2PM and 4PM performances. Saturday evening is sold out.

For more information, contact the Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion at 215-438-1861, or online at www.ebenezermaxwellmansion.org/dracula.

June 10, 2011 by Lori Lander Murphy

Arts

Review: Inis Nua Theater Company’s “Dublin by Lamplight”

Jared Michael Delaney as "Frank and others." Photo by Katie Reing

Delight (noun):

1. Great pleasure; joy

2. Something that gives great pleasure or enjoyment.

3. Inis Nua Theatre Company’s current production of “Dublin by Lamplight.”

Take a little vaudeville, throw in a little silent film comedy the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, and Harold Lloyd, sprinkle liberally with cheap gags, commedia dell’arte makeup, and, because it’s Irish, a smidge of Republican sentiment (and we’re not talking the GOP here), and you have the recipe for one delightful evening at the theater. Even if the theater is a century old gothic church on Philadelphia’s Broad Street.

In Inis Nua Theatre Company’s production of the Michael West wild “Dublin by Lamplight,” six actors play 30 to 40 parts in white face, the only prop is a chair, and the painted backdrop plays a role for about six minutes. Still, your imagination takes you through the streets of Dublin, on stage and back stage at a turn-of-the-century theater, a dingy garda station, and the catwalk of a bridge, led by the actors who use broad gestures and a physicality just short of mime to bring everything you can’t see to life. The story is told in third person, with the actors describing each scene as they jump into it. Composer John Lionarons sits stage left at a piano, playing accompaniment, adding to the silent film ambiance of the play.

The story: In the early 1900s, Willy Hayes (Charlie DeMarcelle) is the proverbial starving artist (really starving) who is attempting to launch a new theater company, the redundant Irish National Theater of Ireland. To produce the debut play, “The Wooing of Emer,” he must woo the wealthy and the Republican-leaning feminist, Eva St. John (Megan Bellwoar), who is promised a starring role in both the play and Willy’s life. Willy’s brother, Frank (Jared Michael Delaney), is an actor and a drunk, not necessarily in that order. He is also a patriotic Republican who is only slightly torn between loyalty to his brother’s theater company and exploding a load of gelignite under the limo of the King of England who is visiting Dublin. Frank has been carrying on an affair with a young maid, Maggie (newcomer Sarah Van Auken), who is also erstwhile seamstress for the company. She is much coveted by Jimmy (Kevin Meehan), a young man with a rolling gait that suggests a birth defect or many years before the mast. Though the play needs no comic relief, if it did, it would be ably provided by Martyn (Mike Dees), an effeminate actor who is given many of the best lines.

As Willy and several other characters, Charlie DeMarcelle is a wonder. He brings impeccable timing and strong comic physicality to the part—slipping and sliding on the stage as precariously as if it were coated in ice. He would have made Buster Keaton jealous. Jared Michael Delaney transformed himself so well and so often (Frank, a British undercover man, and several others) that it was hard to remember that one actor was playing many different roles. It takes more than a quick wardrobe change to pull that off—it takes acting, and Delaney acted the hell out of those characters. Mike Dees’s Martyn is hilarious, and Sarah Van Auken, as the maid who plays Eve to Megan Bellwoar’s Margo Channing (see: Bette Davis’s “All About Eve”) when Eva St. John is jailed for demonstrating in the streets, was just delightful.

And, I’m happy to say, so is this play. I’d see it again.

“”Dublin by Lamplight,” by Michael West, is directed by Tom Reing, artistic director of the Inis Nua Theatre Company. It runs until May 14 at the Broad Street Ministries, 315 South Broad Street, Philadelphia. To order tickets, go to the Inis Nua website. You can also call 215-454-9776.

May 4, 2011 by Denise Foley

Arts, Music, People

The Heavenly Voices of Cappella Caeciliana

Last night some of the most heavenly voices on earth dropped by St. Malachy’s Church in Philadelphia.

The parish, located in the middle of North Philadelphia, was established in 1850 by Irish immigrants. Today, the church is also home to St. Malachy’s School, an independent Catholic school that educates over 200 minority children.

For Cappella Caeciliana, the Belfast choir founded in 1995, the church was a must stop on its first American tour. The choir’s music director, Donal McCrisken, is the Head of Music for St. Malachy’s College, Belfast, Northern Ireland’s first specialist music school.

Cappella Caeciliana performed selections from their vast choral repertoire for a blissfully enraptured audience. Filling the church was a crowd that braved the dreary weather and was richly rewarded for its effort. As a tribute to Michaela Harte McAreavy, the daughter of Tyrone’s senior football manager Mickey Harte, who was murdered on her honeymoon this past January, the choir sang “She Moved Through the Fair.” It was a favorite song of the young woman who had many friends in Philadelphia’s Irish Community where her loss is still mourned.

McCrisken spoke afterwards. “Music is probably the most powerful medium there is. It has a way of going from heart to heart. Music transcends boundaries, transcends difficulties; somehow music cuts through and none of those divisions mean anything.

“But at the same time…when you walk into this parish, when you walk into this church, you know they’re very special people here. There’s something intangible, something special in the air here.”

And he would know something about that; Cappella Caeciliana is a Northern Ireland choir made up of both Catholic and Protestant singers.

For the choir who spent the day at St. Malachy’s school, talking to and performing with the children there, the warmth and genuineness that floods the church and the school made an impression.

“We hope our music in a small way is a return for that,” McCrisken said. “And we’re delighted the music has spoken to your audience so powerfully.”

See our photo essay from the concert.

April 29, 2011 by Lori Lander Murphy

Arts

The Roar of the Greasepaint

Actor Jared Michael Delaney, in character. Photo by Katie Reing.

Can six actors play 40 characters while wearing painted-on masks?

We’re about to find out. The Inis Nua Theatre Company’s production of the ground-breaking play, “Dublin by Lamplight,” opens on April 27 at Broad Street Ministry on the Avenue of the Arts in Philadelphia.

The play is set in 1904 when the King of England is paying a visit to Dublin where Republican sentiment is high and the atmosphere volatile. At the same time, a group of actors in the “Irish National Theatre of Ireland” are trying to put on a play called “The Wooing of Emer.” While the company producer is doing a little wooing himself—of a local rich woman who is leading protests against the British and whom he hopes will fund the play—his brother is gathering explosives to protest in his own way.

Inis Nua Artistic Director Tom Reing has been waiting a long time to bring the play to the US. He first saw it in 2004 when he was training at England’s Corn Exchange Theatre Company. Written by Michael West, whose “A Play on Two Chairs” was Inis Nua’s debut play, “Dublin by Lamplight” was directed at the Corn Exchange by Chicago-born Annie Ryan, who is also West’s wife. It wasn’t until Reing was able to get funding (and not by wooing any local rich women) that he was able to afford to produce a play with six actors. (And he’s not saving money by making them play 40 parts—it’s in the play.)

“It’s a dream come true for me,” Reing says. “This is the play that inspired me to start Inis Nua and we’re finally doing it.”

There’s more than a hint of Commedia dell’arte about “Dublin by Lamplight.” In the Italian style, the actors’ faces are painted to look like masks, so their characters and emotions are revealed instead by their voices, facial contortions and physical movements. It’s also true to Corn Exchange Theatre Company’s mantra, says Reing: “dancing on the razor’s edge between the grotesque, the heartfelt, and anything for a cheap gag.”

Funding for the play, which came from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage through the Philadelphia Theatre Initiative, the Wyncote Foundation, the Charlotte Cushman Foundation and the Independence Foundation, also allowed Reing to bring in musician and composer John Lionarons to provide an original score.

“The music underscores the entire piece. It makes it feel like a silent move soundtrack but obviously we have dialogue,” Reing says.

Though Inis Nua’s season of Irish, English, Scottish and Welsh plays are usually staged at the Adrienne Theatre on Sansom Street, “Dublin by Lamplight” will unfold in the Sunday school room of the Broad Street Ministry which now occupies the Chambers Wylie Presbyterian Church, a Gothic Revival Church built in 1901, right across from the Kimmel Center. The setting couldn’t be more apt.

“There are six archways on two floors where all the classrooms were and the center of the room where they used to have choir practice is what we’re using for the performance,” says Reing. “Since the play takes place in 1904, we’re getting a lot of mileage out of the setting. We knew we couldn’t use the Adrienne because the style needed depth and height. We use only one chair, our only set piece, with a backdrop. The physicality transforms the stage. There’s a lot of ambiance.”

And, like many Irish plays, it is “riotously funny,” Reing says, “and then at the very end. . .well, I’m not going to tell you.”

You won’t have to wait for it for too long. Preview night is April 26, and the play officially opens April 27 and runs till May 14. Tickets are $20, $25 and $30 and can be ordered online or by emailing the box office at boxoffice@inisnuatheatre.org.

The play stars Jared Michael Delaney, Mike Dees, Kevin Meehan, Charles Delmarcelle, Megan Belwar, and Sarah Van Auken. Makeup by Maggie Baker.

See more of makeup artist Maggie Baker’s magic here. Photos by Katie Reing. And go behind the scenes at Inis Nua’s blog.

April 15, 2011 by Denise Foley

Arts

Light and Shadows at the Plough & Stars

For more years than he can remember—practically since the Plough and Stars opened in the former Corn Exchange in Philadelphia’s Old City—architect Ted Watson has whiled away countless Sunday afternoons applying his well-honed visual skills to something very unlike the design of buildings. Instead, he takes pencil and pad in hand to capture in exquisite detail any and all aspects of ordinary life in one of Philadelphia’s most popular Irish pubs.

During the week, as an executive associate for Heery Design, Watson works on a range of architectural projects, including schools, health care facilities, and extended care and high-end retirement communities such as the Walnut Street Theatre Tower project. But on Sundays, he strolls a few blocks from his home in Old City over to the Plough to soak in the local color and translate it into unembellished black and white.

Bar patrons, diners, waiters and waitresses, brass beer taps, piles of crumpled napkins—they all find their way onto the pages of his sketchpads.

But if you’re leafing through the bright white pages looking for a recurring theme, a favorite quickly emerges: It’s the fiddlers, flutists, pipers and accordion players who meet every Sunday afternoon at the Plough for a free-wheeling traditional Irish music session.

Watson doesn’t play an instrument, but he understands and appreciates the energy and the passion that the Plough musicians pour into their reels, jigs and hornpipes.

“I appreciate creative effort above anything else in life,” he explains. “They’re givers. They maybe get a free beer, but they’re here mostly because they love doing it.”

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Irish musicians can be a shy bunch. They’re surrounded by chattering diners, a soccer game is playing on the gigantic wall screen, waitresses bearing drink trays pirouette past, but the musicians are mostly in their own world. Regardless, they don’t seem to mind Ted Watson staring at them.

Says Tom O’Malley, who has played guitar at the session for years: “Ted is part of the group. If he didn’t show up, I’d miss him.”

Perhaps one reason why no one minds is that Watson is completely unobtrusive. He’s average height, his brown hair is flecked with gray. He wears a simple plaid shirt and jeans. He is friendly but soft-spoken. But his Everyman appearance doesn’t explain it all. Watson possesses a sniper’s talent for fading into the scenery, and there’s a skill to that.

Hunched over a glass-ringed high-top table below a second-floor overhang, Watson easily blends into the woodwork. A focused yellow beam from an overhead canister shines down upon his sketchpad, illuminating his head and shoulders. The light refracts through the lenses of his glasses, forming tiny bright puddles on his cheekbones. From his perch, he sits mere feet from the ring of padded stools near the fireplace where the musicians pound out their tunes. Beyond the players, Watson has a bird’s eye view of the whole restaurant—the regulars propping up the bar and quietly sipping their pints, the families and gatherings of friends celebrating birthdays, the bright afternoon rays slanting down through the bar’s 16-foot windows, the dust motes dancing in the sun.

Watson knows what he’s looking for: the contrast between soft light and deep shadow on a fall afternoon—“Those old bank windows are incredible”—or the facial expression of a banjo player totally locked into an old Ed Reavey hornpipe.

And there’s one other element, harder to define, but Watson knows it when he sees it.

“The best thing is, it’s the moment,” he says. “The vitality of the moment is what fills the sketch with its energy.”

Energy might seem like the last thing you’d expect to see in a stark black-and-white pencil sketch. But Watson is highly skilled in capturing emotion. His sketches are not snapshots—they’re character studies, rich in detail and yet, as he says, “not super-realistic.”

Take, for example, one of Watson’s long-ago renderings of Kevin McGillian, a two-row button accordionist and the unassuming patriarch of Philadelphia’s traditional Irish music scene. In the lacy swirls, scribbles and delicate crosshatching, Watson presents meticulous detail while at the same time seeming to fill in only the barest outlines of his subject. On one level, we take in the clearly delineated outlines of McGillian’s prominent, sloping nose and strong, jutting jaw; on yet another level, we see only a cat’s cradle of spidery strokes and soft shading.

The McGillian drawing is one of Tom O’Malley’s favorites: “It’s hard to get a picture of Kevin. It really brings out the best in him.”

Watson is pleased, of course, when someone likes his work, but sketching does just as much for him as it does for his subjects. It’s clearly a departure from what he does, and does well, during the week. “I’m an architect, and people say I like doing this because it doesn’t involve straight lines,” he laughs.

But Watson’s love affair really goes back to when he was 15, in high school. “It was just an interest that I had,” he says. “I did portraits of all the team captains.”

He went on to major in anthropology, with a minor in art, at Franklin & Marshall College. He embarked upon a career in architecture in a roundabout fashion. Around the end of junior year, the chairman of the anthropology department took him aside, noted that he had all these other interests—art, sports, student activities—and suggested that perhaps anthropology might not be the correct career path. The anthropology chair suggested he talk to his art professor for advice … and he suggested architecture.

The professor, who had worked with Frank Lloyd Wright, “had forsaken architecture, or it had forsaken him, for sculpture; he was a very good sculptor. He saw art as a very difficult choice, financially and otherwise, as it surely is. He believed that architecture was a course that should result in a stable, employable life style, and in theory artistic satisfaction. He believed that my ability in sculpture and art would be applicable, as it was once for him.”

Watson went on to study at Penn, in the waning years of the great Louis Kahn.

Throughout his career in architecture, Watson’s love of art—he declines to describe himself as an artist—continued, though he pursued it only on his yearly vacations to Scotland, where he sketched castles and country life. “Then I’d come back here and I wouldn’t draw at all,” he says.

There came a point, though, when he knew that drawing only on holidays was just not enough. In time, that desire to do more led him to start taking in the creative opportunities available to him at the Plough and Stars. The music of the place was particularly appealing.

“Listening for me includes seeing, seeing includes action, trying to reach into the emotion, and energy of the moment. I became aware that I had so many willing, and often unaware, models for my visual research into the anthropology of living.”

Over the years, Watson has developed a kind of symbiotic relationship with those models, who, like him, pursue art for art’s sake. They don’t seek to draw undue attention to themselves, and neither does he.

“The joy of sketching is, it’s just my opinion,” he says. “If I don’t like it, I keep it and learn from it. If I do like it, I might show it to someone.”
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April 1, 2011 by Jeff Meade

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