PEW Fellow Russell Davis discusses his fellowship
2008-2010 PEW Fellow, Russell Davis
Peter Mills and Cara Reichel Bring F.Scott Fitzgerald to the stage in THE UNDERCLASSMAN
Peter Mills and Cara Reichel Bring F. Scott Fitzgerald to the Stage in The Underclassman
Mills and Reichel are the cofounders of Prospect Theater Company, a troupe known for presenting brand-new musicals by emerging theater artists.
Ginevra King isn’t a name that rings too many bells, but she has a fascinating place in literary history. From 1915-1917, King was romantically involved with the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, who would go on to immortalize her most notably as Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby.
The theater artists Peter Mills and Cara Reichel explore this relationship in their musical The Underclassman, which is currently running as a production of Prospect Theater Company, an organization they cofounded in 1998, at The Duke on 42nd Street. The pair sat down with TheaterMania to discuss why they value new musicals and how Mills will make his next project, The Honeymooners, sing.
The Underclassman explores F. Scott Fitzgerald’s time at Princeton University and his pursuit of Ginevra King, the wealthy debutante. What inspired you to write about them?
Cara Reichel: In terms of our personal story, we went to Princeton together. We were both in the Princeton Triangle Club…a [campus musical-comedy theater troupe] that Fitzgerald wrote and performed for when he was in school in 1915. You get inundated with that mythology. That, fused with This Side of Paradise, which we both loved.
Peter Mills: I don’t know if we had the idea to musicalize this show until the Ginevra King part of the story came into place around 2004 when her family donated all of her letters to Princeton.
Cara: She burned all of Fitzgerald’s letters at his request, and she asked him to destroy hers. He destroyed the actual letters, but had someone type them up. So when he died, there was this portfolio of her letters that his daughter returned to her family, and that was donated to the library. You can see so much of their relationship. That was the catalyst; us having gone to Princeton, loving This Side of Paradise, having the personal experience of the collegiate theatricals that Fitzgerald also did, and the new information about this woman who was an early inspiration for him.
How much primary-source research did you have the opportunity to use?
Peter: I had gone down to Princeton library and looked at a lot of these things. They had Genevra’s diary, which chronicled the affair. And I looked at his scores from those Princeton Triangle Club shows, to get a sense of what the music was like.
Cara: We did a lot of research. There is so much digital information online. You can go on the Princeton website and see the manuscripts of This Side of Paradise.
Peter: The scores that he wrote are all scanned and online.
Tell me a bit about the musical style. Do you use quote any of Fitzgerald’s actual work?
Cara: We don’t use any of Fitzgerald’s actual [Triangle Club] writing.
Peter: There are a whole bunch of great things from which I felt I could reasonably draw [given the time period]. Ragtime had already been established and was very much a sound in the air. Operetta was a big part of the musical-theater scene at the time. But there’s also the early proto-Jazz Age sound in there, too. Early Irving Berlin stuff is right from their time period. We have a song in the show that’s a homage to the counterpoint that he does.
One of Prospect Theater Company’s most admirable qualities is how you give relatively unknown musical-theater writers the opportunity to have their shows produced. Was that always a goal?
Cara: That’s a big part of how the company became what it was. It started with a group of us who went to college together, and we just wanted to keep making theater. We realized we developed a skill set and a network of artists who were into new musicals. It just sort of came to the point where that was what the New York theater community needed; at that time, there wasn’t even the New York Musical Theatre Festival. It’s really essential that emerging writers have the opportunity to see their work produced before a paying audience. Readings are great at a certain point, but you learn different things when you see your show. I hope that we can continue, because as we grow institutionally, it becomes harder and harder to do full productions because it costs more and more.
Peter, you’ve got a big moment in your career coming up, with your musical version of The Honeymooners getting ready for a run at Goodspeed Musicals next spring. How intimidating is it to adapt one of the most beloved properties for the stage?
Peter: It’s a bit daunting. When we came to the piece, there was a finished script, and there were song moments that had been carved out for us. You have to write “To the moon, Alice,” “King of the Castle,” “Baby, You’re the Greatest,” all these iconic things.
You had to write a song based on the signature catchphrase, “To the moon, Alice”?
Peter: That was actually something they felt strongly that they wanted to address in a song. The first thing people will say if they’re inclined to be snarky is oh lovely, a song about a guy who threatens to beat his wife. They wanted to diffuse that, the idea that Alice knows perfectly well he would never lay a finger on her.
How crazy is it to go back and forth between two shows?
Peter: I had a fantastic fall where I was shuttling between the Honeymooners workshop and this. I wish I could have this all year round.
Cara: Because of all the shows we’ve done with Prospect, Pete has gotten really good at writing and rewriting on the fly. That is a real skill when you’re working on a Broadway project. One of the great things about Prospect is having the chance to write a lot.
Jackie Gleason as Ralph Kramden, Art Carney as Ed Norton, Audrey Meadows as Alice Kramden, and Joyce Randolph as Trixie in a scene from The Honeymooners.Bang! Zoom! The Honeymooners Will Make Their World Premiere in 2015 at Goodspeed Opera House
UNCANNY VALLEY by Thomas Gibbons reviewed in The New York Times
He who dies with the most toys wins, or so they say. But what’s the point of having all those playthings if death is going to rip you from them anyway?
In Thomas Gibbons’s futuristic two-hander “Uncanny Valley,” presented by the Contemporary American Theater Festival at 59E59 Theaters, a very wealthy man named Julian hasn’t quite found immortality, but he has bought a means to forestall his demise for at least a couple of centuries.
With pancreatic cancer about to kill him, Julian plans to download the contents of his mind into an artificial human that carries his DNA and looks just as he did at 34, more than half a lifetime ago. The machine will assume his identity and his existence.
“I haven’t had enough,” Julian tells Claire, a neuroscientist who has spent her career working on artificial consciousness. “This world, this life! I can’t even imagine having my fill.”
The simulated Julian (Alex Podulke) is at first little more than a talking head in Claire’s office. Soon he gets a torso, then one arm and another, eventually an entire body. Schooling him, before the download, in the ways of our “skittish species,” Claire (Barbara Kingsley) explains the phenomenon of the uncanny valley: People get creeped out when something — such as the android Bina48, which inspired this play — looks almost, but not quite, human.
Mr. Podulke’s alert, sympathetic performance never elicits that shuddery sensation. Instead, he makes Julian a recognizable Mitt Romney type — even in the stiff, mechanical manner Julian has early on. Post-download, endowed with an oligarch’s smooth, entitled confidence, he retains a faint androidal echo in his speech and seems just disconnected enough from the concerns of ordinary humans.
The notion of human consciousness transplanted into machines is in the air right now. In Brooklyn, a different play called “The Uncanny Valley” features two actors and a RoboThespian, which is exactly what it sounds like. In Los Angeles, holograms substitute for dead loved ones in Jordan Harrison’s “Marjorie Prime.”
Mr. Gibbons’s “Uncanny Valley” is set perhaps 40-some years in the future but deliberately, somewhat jarringly, designed to look like now. It’s a techno take on the Pinocchio story: We watch Julian become an almost-real man, with Claire as one of a team of Geppettos. At 70, worried about her ailing, older husband, she’s familiar with the ravages of mortality that the wealthy can now escape.
Yet, as directed by Tom Dugdale, Ms. Kingsley seldom seems truly present, so it is difficult to believe in Claire the way we do in Julian. He is only a simulated human, and there may be a void where his ethical compass ought to be. But we’re sort of rooting for him just the same.
CANCUN por Jordi Galceran
Gala Hispanic Theatre presents “Cancun” by Jordi Galceran
CANCUN: A story about what happens when a dream vacation turns into the life you could only imagine.
After a night of fun, two married couples vacationing in Cancun begin to contemplate new possibilities in the great “what if’s” of their lives.
This hilarious comedy about contemporary relationships and marriage is written by Jordi Galceran, one of Spain’s leading playwrights from Catalonia.
Thursday, Sept 11 through Sunday, Oct 5, 2014
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Written by Jordi Galceran. Directed by José Zayas.
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In Spanish with English Surtitles
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Thursday and Friday at 8 pm; Saturday at 2 pm and 8 pm; Sunday at 2 pm.