STEPHEN MOORE, Director
(also Artistic Director for the company)
Scheduled for production on August 19-20,
26-27 and September 2-3, 2000 by the Culver City Public Theatre, Californiaa
4/03/00 Been tough finding time to wear my "director" hat lately… my "artistic director" and "producer" hats have been taking turns being squarely planted atop my head. But The Misanthrope will not be silenced! More costume and set designs have been percolating their way to the surface.Spent some time leafing through Cosmo today in search of costume ideas for Celimene. I think I've pretty much got a handle on how I want her to look. Eliante and Arsinoe will no doubt come around once I've firmly made up my mind about Celimene.Gave more thought to the "abstract art" set design that I've been kicking around over the past couple of weeks. I'm concerned that a backdrop painted in such a fashion might be too busy. Must find a way to show excess without being too busy. Celimene's world should be very slick without being classy or artful, and yet I don't want the set being garish or hard to look at! I think I'll spend some time cruising the art museums and the art websites.
4/04/00 Celimene and her coterie are gossips! Nasty, catty, bitchy poseurs! While reading Daily Variety this morning, I thought of some more "business" for them: In addition to perpetually drinking Starbuck's coffee, chatting on cellphones, checking pagers, and setting car alarms, these people read Movieline to unearth the latest and greatest dirt on their friends and colleagues. Movieline might be too much of a Hollywood insider reference, though, so I might have to throw in a Hollywood Reporter or a Daily Variety.Everyone knows that I'm not a big proponent of updating. A lot of people have expressed genuine shock over my decision to update The Misanthrope. Updating is tricky business! I've always believed that a classic play should be updated only if the new time period is a perfect fit. I've seen The Way of the World updated to modern day New Orleans. It was awful! Didn't make a lick of sense! And quite an unpleasant surprise, because the director is a genius! I've seen The Taming of the Shrew updated to the Wild West. What a surprise to discover it a nice fit! So if I'm going to do service to Moličre and his condemnation of the French salons of his day, then I must skewer the Hollywood clique of our day with equal fervor!
4/08/00 Argh! Cutting Moličre/Richard Wilbur is so hard! Everything is so good, so crisp. It just breaks my heart to cut any of it! But I know from experience that anything over two hours is just too much for our non-captive, sitting-on-the-hard-ground audience. I feel like a criminal!
4/09/00 Tonight, during a conversation with Jack, inspiration struck! Jack made some scathing comment about the "crystal meth set", and it got me to thinking about the indecent number of people in Hollywood that are addicted to some "fashionable" drug or another. It reminded me of something that Rion said while we were watching the Oscars pre-show: Some pretty Hollywood boy was walking down the red carpet, and he kept wiping at his nose. Rion said something like, "Oh, honey, didn't anyone ever tell you not to snort cocaine right before you step into the spotlight?!?" ad but true! So, I thought (for about a nanosecond) about having one of the supporting characters be a cocaine fiend. But then I decided that I didn't want to put that sort of trash up on stage! I can achieve the same effect with other inside jokes without mucking up the scene with substance abuse!
4/10/00 I've decided that all of the cast except Celimene will wear the same costumes throughout the show. Celimene's costume (budget permitting) will change each time she makes an entrance. What a poseur! I'm a little concerned about achieving uniformity amongst the men's costumes. The specific look I've got in mind might be hard to achieve if we rely strictly on the cast members' personal wardrobes. But I don't know if the budget will permit purchasing or renting any of the pieces!?! I'm not even sure where one would rent such hip, modern men's clothing!?!
4/12/00 Scheduled the table read for May 1st. Guess I need to be finished editing by then!!! Self-imposed deadlines are good!
4/26/00 Had a great meeting with Jemaine tonight. She urged me to discard my first-choice set design (inspired by a painting by Paul Klee) because she felt that it would be too difficult to achieve the same effect on a large scale. Instead, I'm actually very excited to be moving forward – with Jemaine's approval – with my second-choice set design (inspired by a painting by an unknown artist). Jemaine's suggested approach to the actual large scale realization of my design is absolutely inspired! I can't wait to get started!
4/28/00 Came up with some great exercises to incorporate into my hour of the "Company Members' Workshop" prior to the open call. I'm so relieved! I've been totally blocked about the workshop – feeling like a deer caught in the headlights – so I was getting very anxious. Whew! I can't believe that it's already time for auditions again! Time really does fly when you're having fun.
5/01/00 Great table read tonight. It was so nice to finally hear it read by voices other than my own. And interesting to hear several different actors put their own spin on each of the characters. I learned a lot about Alceste tonight.I also learned that there's no need to cut the play for time. It clocks at well below two hours! Hurrah! Now I don't have to feel like a criminal anymore. And now there's no need to worry about submitting a request to the publisher for permission to cut. Hurrah!
5/03/00 Had a nice little brainstorming session with Joe tonight about the score and sound effects for the show. Techno/club music, cellular phones, pagers, car alarms, doorbells, etc. But not too much! We're making a statement here… let's not underline the statement… let's just make it!
5/04/00 Overlapping! Had a great idea this morning for overlapping some of the Alceste – Philinte dialogue in the early scenes. Since Alceste is prone to repeating himself, wouldn't it be interesting if Philinte just rolled his eyes and began speaking his response even before Alceste was finished talking. After all, Philinte has surely heard Alceste's speeches time and time again!
5/13/00 Had a great meeting today with the other two directors for this season. Got to play producer, artistic director and director all at the same time. "The Three Faces of Steve?" We discussed the various exercises that each of us has planned for the Company Members' Workshop on Wednesday night. Sounds like it's going to be very informative. We also chose the audition material for the Open Call on Thursday and Friday night. Good stuff! I think it's time to get nervous!!!
5/17/00 Company Members' Workshop: Very interesting. I don't think I'll ever entirely understand actors. Nor would I ever want to! So what if each of the company members knows that he/she is guaranteed at least one role per season?!? That guarantee isn't an exemption from striving to do your best work. . I don't get it! Some of the company members showed a distinct lack of "give-a-shit" about what we were trying to do, what we were trying to accomplish, the environment we were trying to establish, the opportunity we were trying to offer. All of it! On the other hand, other company members took full advantage of the "workshop experience" and admirably met every task and challenge presented them. It is in those actors that I am most interested, of course.
5/18/00 Open Call Day #1: 75 actors. Argh! This night was truly about survival of the fittest! Only the finest actors left any impression at all. In general, the men were much better than at last season's open call. The women – the ingenues in particular – were weaker.Still a tremendous scarcity of ethnic actors. I spoke about this issue with an African-American actor who worked with CCPT last season. He told me that, unless a casting notice specifically references ethnicity, he automatically assumes that the director/producer/casting director is only seeking Caucasian actors. What a horrible predicament! I'm more than happy to put the phrase "We practice multicultural casting" in my casting notices, but I do so wish that it wasn't necessary! When did the casting process cease to be about casting the best actor for the role, regardless of ethnicity?!?
5/19/00 Open Call Day #2: Only 35 actors today. Whew! A much saner pace. Let the callbacks commence!
05/24/00 Callbacks: A long night! Called back too many women. Spent too much time with them. Didn't get to spend as much time with the men. Not that it really mattered – as is almost always the case, the best actors for the roles distinguished themselves quickly. The casting lottery tomorrow night should be interesting. I think all three directors are probably honed in on the same group of actors
05/25/00 Casting Lottery: Difficult not to be too much the artistic director of the company and not enough the director of my show. I wanted the other directors to get the best casts available to them, but I also needed to look out for my own show. A couple of stalemates; a couple of uncast roles. I was not able to cast Philinte. He's a tough nut to crack.
06/08/00 Philinte is cast! Got a great actor who was highly recommended by Jemaine and Heather.
06/13/00 Have taken on the set design myself. I know myself… I'll be much happier this way.
07/17/00 Lost my Oronte this afternoon. I can't believe it. A month and a half has passed since casting, and now, on the day I'm set to start rehearsals, someone drops out. Stuff and nonsense!
07/17/00 Read-Through: Very nice. Everyone seems genuinely excited. I had the actors clip photos out of magazines and/or newspapers… Photos that, for whatever reason, they think capture the essence of their characters. Whether it's the clothes, the look on someone's face, the hair style, the posture, the relationship to the other people in the photo, whatever. It was a great exercise, and all but one of the actors really took the time to hunt for those "just right" photos. I learned a lot about the actors and their characters. The read-through itself went very smoothly, and it seems that all of the actors are already developing a very nice sense of their character.
07/18/00 First Rehearsal: A good start. Quickly established "fluidity" as the driving force behind the blocking. My intent is to allow a fluid physicality to influence the actors' perception of Wilbur's verse. I'll venture to say that they'll shortly forget that their speaking in verse.
07/19/00 Another strong rehearsal. Always nice to discover that, putting aside interpersonal dynamics, an actor with good instincts is a joyous discovery.
07/23/00 Set painting began today. Very exciting! It's been a long time since I've designed and executed my own set. I'd forgotten how exhilarating it is to watch your design come to life!
07/24/00 Group rehearsal. Fabulous! When I arrived at rehearsal, all of the actors were already there, ready to work. Got to love that! Tonight was the first time we've worked on one of the "party" scenes. It was so great having everybody together. Of course, we spent the whole first half of the evening working on just one scene, but it looks great! Man, am I excited!
07/25/00 Costume retrieval. A long day spent pulling costumes for the photo shoot on Sunday afternoon. A mixed bag. Some stuff we found; some we didn't. We have enough to shoot the photo on Sunday, thank goodness.
07/25/00 Slow going tonight. Act 1 Scene 1 is hard work. I think we made some good progress tonight, and I think the actors were feeling better about the scene by the end of the evening.
07/27/00 Impossible to get any sense of Act 3 Scene 1 whilst my Clitandre is out of the country. Can't wait for him to return!
07/29/00 Set painting continued today. We finished the abstract painting walls. They came out very nicely. Kurt and Kyle were a godsend this morning. They were absolute gods with the sponging. And Jemaine and Kevin were equally godlike in their ability to copy Kurt and Kyle's handiwork
07/30/00 Set painting continued again today. We painted the solid walls. The colors are so vibrant! Very hip, very now, very modern. All that remains to be done is the Celimene portrait and the stencil on each of the abstract painting walls. I'm so glad that we're essentially done now. One less think to worry about! And a later calltime for the next couple of weekends!
07/30/00 Photo Shoot went well, with a minimum of fuss and muss. The set and costumes looked great. The actors looked beautiful. I think we got a very nice sense of the whole Hollywood "rich and famous" party circuit. Can't wait to see the proofs.
07/30/00 First rehearsal in the park: The actors were able to get a sense of their performance space today. I think it was a lot smaller than they expected it to be. After the run (Part 1), I jumped up on stage and moved the rehearsal furniture around to open up the space a bit. I hope it helps! Act 2 was definitely the highlight of the run, even with two missing actors. Act 1 was somewhat of a mess! Could've been that the actors were thrown off by the space, but a large percentage of their blocking just went into the shitcan. Man, was that ever frustrating! A step backward from Tuesday night. Act 3 (what we could do of it without Clitandre and Acaste) was just okay. The Celimene – Arsinoe scene seemed to go pretty well, but the Alceste – Arsinoe scene suffered the same fate as Act 1. Spatial adjustment, that's all. Tomorrow we move on to blocking Part 2.
07/31/00 Act 5 blocking: Hard work. The pace in this act is breakneck, and nearly every character is onstage. To boot, the cast was very chatty tonight. I finally had to tell them to rein it in, as they were driving me nuts and making it impossible for me to concentrate. Typically, I would expect my stage manager to do this, but since he has now stepped into the role of Oronte, he was onstage with the rest of the cast. One more day of preliminary blocking, and then we're on to fine-tuning!
08/01/00 Act 4 blocking: Another tough night. My Eliante and Philinte are having problems finding the right tone for their characters. Not an easy task. Difficult to have them be honest and virtuous without having them be goody-goody. We had a jam session at the end of the evening that I hope helped them get a better sense of their characters. I'm sure they'll make fast progress once we get out of this preliminary blocking phase. My Alceste and Celimene are such a joy. All I need do is set up the scene, and they run with it and make my job a cakewalk. And they both respond so openly and willingly to direction. Woohoo!
08/03/00 What an incredible rehearsal! This was only the second time we worked on Act 4, and it was nearly performance level. What an amazing group of actors! My Eliante and Philinte made incredible progress tonight. It occurred to me during the run that Eliante – "the one we are most to trust" (R. Wilbur) – really is out of place amongst all of these shallow, artificial people. It was the actor's performance that led me to that realization. Well done! My Celimene is struggling with Act 5, as any actor worth her salt would! What the heck is going on in Celimene's head as each member of her coterie dogs her down?!? Jemaine made an excellent point – It's desperation! The tables have never been turned on Celimene before. What must she do to stay on top?
08/05/00 First Part 2 rehearsal off book: A fairly typical first rehearsal off book. My Alceste was really struggling today. No worries. I know he (and the rest of the cast) will be fine. My cast is so strong that even line problems do not destroy the show!
08/06/00 First Part 1 rehearsal off book: More of the same. Today it was my Philinte that was struggling. Again, no worries. Janet watched rehearsal today and afterwards told me that, despite the line problems, she could "just tell" that we had a great show in the making. Nice to hear. I trust Janet to tell me the truth.
© 2000 Stephen Moore ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
august 2000
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