Kate Mulley

We’re currently on day three of rehearsals for The Reluctant Lesbian. We’re spending the week workshopping and rehearsing this work in progress of mine, which means lots of long days, intense rehearsals and quality time with my laptop. It’s been such a pleasure to work on a show up here at Dartmouth with alums and faculty. The Department has been so inviting and the company has been dedicated and enthusiastic.

If anyone happens to be in the Upper Valley this weekend, please come see it. It’ll be at the Bentley Theater at the Hopkins Center for the Arts at 4 on Saturday afternoon. An article in The Dartmouth explores some aspects of the project and where we hope to take it after this week.

Since The Tutor, I’ve been busily working on my Writers Collective play, You Are Here. It’ll be performed at the Gene Frankel Theatre Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays in November. More information can be found at the play’s new website here.

And now, back to writing, website creating and other assorted theatrical activities. I’m seeing The Mountaintop this afternoon, which will be a nice break from working on my own play.

I’ve been interviewed by Adam Szymkowicz for his excellent ‘I Interview Playwrights’ blog. Check it out here!

This trailer for the Broadway production of Jerusalem has just been released. As ever, I’m skeptical of its success over here, but would love to be proven wrong. Rylance is terrific. The play is stunning. But it’s very bleak and very British, neither of which usually lead to Broadway success. But if the producers don’t mind taking a risk on it, I’m more than happy to get to see it again. Hopefully not too much has changed from the UK production.
 

As a side note, I’m enjoying seeing how theaters/producers get creative with theatrical trailers. They’ve definitely been getting better over the years.

I’ve taken a bit of a break from going to the theatre over the past month, partly because I’ve been working on creating my own. But I recently noticed that one of my favorite films about theater/actors, Withnail and I, was added to the Netflix Instant Stream collection. For those of you who don’t know it, it’s a hilarious, sad, brilliant movie about two out of work actors who go to a country house for a weekend get-away. Withnail is a drunk and a snob, “I” (known as Marwood in the screenplay) is much more stable, but gets caught up in Withnail’s mania. As someone who has found herself caught up in other people’s mania from time to time, I find their relationship especially compelling.

I had never heard of the film before I moved to England, but once there I started to hear it referenced pretty often. I’ve since watched it a handful of times, most recently this weekend. Richard E Grant’s performance as Withnail is absolute perfection, a true study in narcissistic self-destruction who garners occasional sympathy. And the references to various theater-related things are spot-on. I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen it, and recommend a rewatch for those who haven’t seen it in awhile. Just don’t try the drinking game where you match Withnail drink for drink, as I believe it would lead to alcohol poisoning, if not death.

[The above screenshot from the film will be my new work computer background]

I spent a couple days earlier this week reading a new young adult biography of Edith Wharton. I’m not quite ready for the Hermione Lee tome, so this was perfect. A nice, 150-page introduction to one of my new favorite writers. And now, my review is online! Take a look.

Continuing with the theme of YA books, I’m currently reading Rushdie’s new book, Luka and the Fire of Life, written for his youngest son. So far, so good. Like Midnight’s Children and Harry Potter and a video game had a baby.

Life and its many responsibilities have gotten in the way of actually posting anything here for almost a month, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been seeing plenty of shows that I have opinions about.  Brief notes follow:

Restoration: I thought this play was completely lovely. A clever, poignant story about redemption and Italy and art. Anything about Michelangelo totally captivates me, ever since I read The Agony and the Ecstasy in high school.

Oliver Parker: Something about Oliver Parker rubbed me the wrong way (see Behanding, actually, I think the reasons are similar). I laughed, I got why it was relevant, what the “drama” was, but I think it got stuck in a place where no pay-off could be satisfying. And it’s messiness did not serve me as an audience member, which is odd, because I usually like a bit of messiness.

Metal Children: A fine example of why I never want to direct my own work. Theatre is about collaboration. And the things you learn from having other people work with you on your script. This play started out with a great premise (it’s about a children’s author whose book is banned in a Midwestern town), but devolved into confusion and too many scene changes. But Billy Crudup was pretty excellent, so all was not lost.

Red: I think I would have preferred this play in London. The Broadway audiences laughed a bit too broadly for my tastes and I love the Donmar’s intimate space. But it’s a well-crafted play about art and mentorship and the changing of the guard, artistically speaking. Some stunning performances and one exhilarating painting scene.

The Libertine: This play was perfect for my role as dramaturg of an upcoming production of The Country Wife. It was a really ambitious off-off production with a high production value, a consistently good cast, creative use of a funny space (it used to be a courtroom) and lots of bawdy humor.

A Behanding in Spokane: Despite the bad reviews, and accusations of racism. I had to see this show. Martin McDonagh has consistently been my favorite playwright since I saw The Pillowman in 2005 and the buzz around the book shop has been pretty positive. So while I enjoyed it, I found it pretty inconsistent, stuck in one place and more of a vehicle for Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell than a play. Which is too bad. I definitely laughed, but I think that McDonagh’s humor is much more striking when it’s not trying to make itself American. And I noticed inconsistencies with BrE/AmE that threw me off (and could have easily been changed by one of the four American cast members). I’m glad I saw it, but it hasn’t been seared into my brain in the way his other plays have.

As for things that I’m working on… I’m dramaturging two plays this summer. Fuente Ovejuna opens on June 17th, The Country Wife opens on July 10. More info on those will follow.

There will also be a reading of my new play The Tutor on June 29 at CSV. I just need to finish writing it first.

And I’ve made a list of the 36 plays I should read before the end of the summer. Am in the middle of David Lindsey-Abaire’s Rabbit Hole to kick it off.

I have a post from a month and a half ago with this title that’s been sitting in my dashboard waiting for me to write it. Other than a few phrases about things I wanted to include, I didn’t really know what I planned to write. But now it feels like time to write something.

Back in December I attended a meeting organized by the Dramatists Guild about gender parity in the theatre. One doesn’t really need to see the statistics to know that the majority of plays produced are written by men, but the ones that are out there are pretty frightening. The meeting was pretty enlightening (and actually reminded me a little of the scene from The Heidi Chronicles where they have the women’s meeting? Would Wendy be proud!). Sometimes it’s really nice to get a group of people in one room to talk about all the issues, perspectives, etc. We had a second meeting in January and I’m a member of the Mentoring committee, which we’re still in the process of defining, but are definitely on the right track. It’s nice to think that I’m actively working to change this, through my writing and through my time and effort with the Guild.

The book shop is another place where this comes up frequently. Recently someone approached me and asked me for a play written by a woman in the past 10 years, for an assignment at NYU. I think I accept more responsibility than I should when customers ask me for help, but I especially did with this one. I hemmed and hawed, wondering what play I could give this 19 year old actress that could really change her view of theatre. I settled on A Number by Caryl Churchill (I think we had run out of Far Away). I now find it interesting that the play that I thought summed of plays by women in the past 10 years is one for two men written by a 70 year old British woman. And that I tried to sell it to the girl by saying “Daniel Craig was in it in London.” I’m hoping she loved it and went out and read more plays by Churchill and recognizes the way that she has changed British (and by extension world) theatre in the past 40 years or so. She was certainly a revelation for me.

And finally, I have a title/concept for a new play and can’t wait to start writing. I love this feeling of burgeoning creativity, it’s been awhile.

I’ve been archiving a collection of used and rare children’s books this week and it’s been such an interesting experience. When I was an archival assistant at Dartmouth, I cataloged the Pilobolus archives for a couple of months and was so fascinated by the development of the company from a group of Dartmouth undergrads to an international sensation. I’ve always had a fondness for dance, despite never being great at it (good, but definitely not great). And seeing what they did with their bodies to create art was pretty cool. Children’s books are a completely different story though (pun only slightly intended). Some of these are books that I loved when I was growing up, others I have never heard of, but they all have made me think about what makes good children’s literature and why it’s so important.

The first book I ever read was Dr Suess’ Hop on Pop. Appropriate that it would be a Dr Suess book and I would end up at Dartmouth 15 years later, the land of Suess pride. I quickly graduated to more difficult fare and was constantly pushing myself to read more challenging books. Remember bragging about chapter books? Sometimes I think things haven’t changed. Reading, say, The Savage Detectives now is like reading The Mixed-up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler when you were a bit too young for it. Part of the appeal is what you look like reading it in public (says the girl who read The Castle before driver’s ed so no one would talk to me). And then it’s also good to have an engaging story, characters you understand/relate to, etc.

When we were assigned to write children’s plays during my MA, we made a list of characteristics that children’s books should have. My most important thing was talking animals. I loved books with talking animals. I’ve been poring over William Steig books recently and my favorite bio of his says “This is only the third book he’s written with human characters.” What is it about talking animals that seems so appealing to children? Is it like reading fantasy, where things aren’t exactly the way our world is, but we understand the rules that they follow? Children’s books also tend to have morals, (if you love the weird looking animal, it will turn out to be your missing husband) and lessons (one fish two fish red fish blue fish). It’s another way for kids to understand the guidelines of society. It makes me think of Matilda who only really understands the world around her through the books she reads because there’s no other sense of normalcy. And then she runs away with her teacher, which I’m sure would cause some kind of cable news scandal today.

Combine all this contact with children’s lit with a trip home for Labor Day weekend and there’s been a lot of nostalgia floating around. Finding old dance costumes, letters from older, cooler friends, and, of course, books I read as a kid. So maybe my next play will be for young audiences. Or maybe I’ll start writing young adult fiction. There’s definitely a market for it!

I spent a couple days in New Hampshire with my parents after the end of Sezze Sun and they suggested that we go see a show at the local summer stock theatre, The Barnstormers Theatre. It’s about five miles from the cabin that my great-grandfather built near Silver Lake in Tamworth, NH and boasts an 8 week season with 8 different plays, all apparently performed by AEA members. We saw a production of I Love You Because, a musical loosely based on Pride and Prejudice about dating in New York (which occasionally rang too true for comfort). It was a fun night out– better than listening to the Yankees pummel the Red Sox on the radio–and nice to see theater more or less thriving outside the city. I wasn’t a huge fan of the musical itself, but the overall experience was good. Looking at the 2009 season, they have a pretty wide range of material, including NHB favorite The Weir by Conor McPherson (who is a very lovely man in the flesh), a play that is probably pretty cool when performed in rural New Hampshire. My mother is now on the mailing list, so I’m sure I’ll be back next summer to see what they have in store.