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New post on Mrshawking.com!

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Photos by Jennifer Giorno and John Benfield


"The ballroom scene by Pendragon Costumes"

When I was first writing Mrs. Hawking, I knew a big part of the appeal of the story would be the trappings and the spectacle. The look of the steampunk setting would add a great deal of gloss to the tale I was trying to tell, and I wanted to take advantage of everything that setting would afford me. And you can't tell a grand caper set in Victorian London without a few gorgeous period costumes.



Though I pitched in with a few looks for the Arisa 2015 production, mostly ones I’d already put together for the Mrs. Hawking photoshoots, our primary costume designer was Jennifer Giorno, also the actress playing Grace Monroe. So the challenge of putting together Victorian ballroom looks that could be changed in and out of in very short order fell on her. Not an easy task on our budget! But she got a great idea to see if we could a costume company to agree to sponsor our production by lending us some pieces. That is where Pendragon came in, a maker of fine costuming with a fabulous selection of steampunk and Victorian looks in their Mad Girl Clothing line.



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In return for credit in our program, they very generously agreed to lend us three pieces of handmade eveningwear for our leads. It was an incredible thing to happen to us, as it gave us the opportunity to have some of the most important costumes in the play be particularly beautiful, as well as practical for the demands of the quick change.

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A full Pendragon outfit can be seen here on Samantha LeVangie in her role as Mary. It was particularly important that Mary come out looking exquisite-- transformatively so --as an indication of Mary's potential to become a powerful, brilliant, dyanmic person. Jenn asked the company if it would be possible to get Mary’s garments in blue, as I’ve long imagined it to be Mary’s signature color.

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The other piece Pendragon so graciously lent us was for Mrs. Hawking, modeled here by Frances Kimpel. This was also a Corset with Bustle, a particularly useful piece not only because it looked so cool, but because its toggle-hooks running down the front assisted in making the quick change a little easier. Because Mrs. Hawking is a widow, of course it had to be in black.

Read the rest of the entry and see the rest of the pictures on Mrshawking.com!
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We have just gotten through our first week of rehearsal!



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Frances Kimpel and Samantha LeVangie, rehearsing as as Mrs. Hawking and Mary.


My style as director, as I've mentioned, is to have things fairly specifically planned out before I go into rehearsal. A personal artistic value of mine is a dynamic stage, with lots of interesting action happening at the right times. But incorporating the right amount of activity is a careful balance.

Read the rest of the entry on Mrshawking.com!

Mrs. Hawking, by Phoebe Roberts, will be performed at Arisia 2015 on Friday, January 16th at 6PM at the Westin Waterfront Boston.
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I give you the cast of Mrs. Hawking at Arisia '15!

Mrs. Victoria Hawking: Frances Kimpel
Miss Mary Stone: Samantha LeVangie
Mr. Nathaniel Hawking: Jonathan Plesser
Mrs. Celeste Fairmont: Arielle Kaplan
Lord Cedric Brockton: Francis Hauert
Sir Walter Grainger: Matthew Kamm
Mr. John Colchester: Robert Imperato
Miss Grace Monroe: Jennifer Giorno
Ensemble: Joye Thaller, Andrew Prentice

I am really excited to work with each and every one of these people!

Read more on Mrshawking.com!
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I am pleased to announce that we have a cast for the staged reading of Vivat Regina at Bare Bones with Theatre@First!


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As I mentioned, the three talented people playing Mrs. Hawking, Mary, and Nathaniel in last year's Bare Bones reading of the original play were kind enough to agree to return. I am delighted to have Elizabeth Hunter, Gabrielle Geller, and Ryan Kacani reading again. But that meant I still had three other people to choose!

This audition process was even tougher than it was last year; I was very fortunate to have a nice selection of talented people, but sadly that meant there were more people I enjoyed than I could possibly use. It's always sad when you don't have enough space for someone who gives a good reading and whom you'd be happy to work. I feel very grateful so many people were willing to share their talent with me to put on this piece. Thank you so much to everyone who auditioned; I really wished I had more roles.

The cast I finally settled on is a follows:

Mrs. Victoria Hawking - Elizabeth Hunter
Miss Mary Stone - Gabrielle Geller
Mr. Nathaniel Hawking - Ryan Kacani
Mrs. Johanna Braun / Frau Kirsten Gerhard / Narrator #3 - Joye Thaller
Mrs. Clara Hawking / Narrator #2 - Samantha LeVangie
Mr. Arthur Swann / Narrator #1 - Matthew Kamm

I am very excited to work with every one of them.

I hope you'll all come out to see this very talented cast read Vivat Regina on Thursday, October 2nd at 8PM at Unity Somerville at 6 William Street, Somerville, MA.
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I was very happy when Sam LeVangie, a friend and frequent theater collaborator, was going to be playing in my new larp Brockhurst. When I cast her as one of the fancy ladies, I thought it might be nice to help her with a costume. I've been wanting to drive my hand at a 1910s look for a while now. Most of my current collection fits people close to my size, so Sam, though significantly taller than me, is a good candidate.

I had this purple prom dress, which I've only worn out once, while playing Folding the River if I remember correctly. I tried it on Sam as a possibility for her princess character in The Prince Comes of Age, but didn't quite work then. Still, I remembered it was a good shape and color for her, so I decided adapt it to a 1910s dress for her.

I bought a lacy blouse from the thrift store and cut it up. It had enormous flutter sleeves, which made it ideal. A high waist with mesh sleeves and bodice detailing is characteristic of the dresses of the period, so I think it works.

It's not quite finished. I haven't sewn the stomach piece on yet, and I want to finish the raw edges of that piece with this thin dark red ribbon I have. But I like the effect. It's a nice combination of colors-- purple, pink, red, beige --and it evokes the period even if it's not literally historical. I think it will look nice on her, and work well for the role.

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Hold Thy Peace's fall 2013 production was Hamlet, directed by the lovely and talented Sam LeVangie, went up this past weekend, and I was very proud of them. They did a great job with very challenging material, and I couldn't believe how many talented people came together in that cast. It's so amazing to see how far Hold Thy Peace has come-- when I was in undergrad, it was very much the bastard stepchild of the Brandeis theater group, but now it seems to have completely moved past the old conflicts. Even the school respects it more, as is demonstrated by the three thousand dollar budget it got to put on the show. It makes me really proud and happy, as Hold Thy Peace was such an important part of my life.

The set was really gorgeous; designed by Ryan Kacani, they made a castle backdrop with beautiful faux stained glass windows, and the lighting effects for the ghosts were subtle and beautiful. [livejournal.com profile] niobien's recent intensive technical experience really showed as she stepped into Bernie's shoes as the new technical director. I loved Sam's vision for the show. Simply put, she has Horatio be a ghost that only Hamlet could see, and as other characters died, they joined the ranks of ghosts haunting the prince, chipping at his sanity, and silently foretelling his doom. Played by Aaron Fischer, he became a solemn Cassandra figure, understated in comparison to the intensity around him. Ryan played Claudius as a charismatic politician with an air of the ends justifying the means, his confidence designed to smooth over a crumbling inner state. His scene with Claudius's confessional monologue was one of the strongest scenes in the show. And of course there was Alex Davis as Hamlet, one of the most talented undergrads I've ever seen at Brandeis, whose tremendous ability to command a stage with his presence makes him absolutely mesmerizing. It was overall a wonderful cast, and I'm amazed to see multiple strong leading men in HTP for the first time.

I took this picture of Alex and Frances, the two Hamlets of HTP. Very different portrayals in all possible ways, and both amazing for different reasons. I like this little bit of history. :-)


The show also brought up a lot of memories. As you may recall, I directed the first production of Hamlet HTP ever put up, back in November of 2007. I was very proud of that show, and I think we did a very good job overall, despite struggling to find good people to be involved and so few resources for production. Honestly I was happy enough with my idea behind that show that I'd love to recreate it now that I'm more developed as a director. But at the same time it's become something that's a bit difficult to think about. It was a project that Jared was very deeply involved with, and I can't think about that play without having to think about him.

Cut for bitching and whining. )

I'll just have to figure out some way to separate the two. For well or for ill, one thing I've always been good at is distancing myself from memories. They don't necessarily stick to me-- I tend to reframe them as narratives and hold onto them that way, rather than maintain mental snapshots or videos of the moments --and that's made me good at keeping what I want to keep and moving past what I don't. Hopefully I will be able to keep this from tainting the memory of something I should really be proud of.

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Mrs. Loring reading


I have two cool pieces of news for my career in the theater!

I've gotten a role in a professional show with Zero Point, the theater company I work for, called Boeing-Boeing. It is a silly, not totally tasteful but funny comedy show about a Parisian bachelor who juggles three flight attendant girlfriends because their flights call them away at different times, but is finding that faster jets means his schedules are starting to collapse into one another. I am playing Gabriella, the Italian girl with Alitalia. That means I have to practice my Italian accent! This is a very different sort of show than I usually do and I like this cast a lot, and I'm really excited to have gotten into a professional show. It's going up in the First Church of Boston downtown October 17th-20th. I hope you'll join me to hear my cheesy accent and see me look cute in a sixties stewardess uniform.

Also, Zero Point is giving me an opportunity to have a staged reading for my new full-length play, Mrs. Loring! It's the play I wrote for my thesis, inspired by and a prequel of sorts to The Tailor of Riddling Way. The summary:

"Young society wife Elizabeth Loring had everything she ever wanted, until her husband's death in World War I left her too emotionally shattered to live her life or care for her now-fatherless newborn daughter. At a loss, she has come to convalesce is an upscale mental hospital that provides comfort but traps troubled women in a cage of their own helplessness. But when she meets a young woman named Ginny in danger of being consumed by both her illness and the hospital itself, Elizabeth finds a new identity as a force of independence and strength in the face of an oppressive institution."

It will be going up in the Arsenal Center for the Arts black box in Watertown at 8PM on Thursday, August 29th. I'm still in the process of casting and assigning parts, but I do know that Elizabeth Loring will be read by the phenomenal Caitlin Patridge, and Ginny by the talented Samantha LeVangie, and I am extremely excited about that. I hope you will come and hear this piece presented by these talented actors. I've got rehearsals to arrange and editing to do, and I am determined to make this piece the best it can possibly be. Come out and help me develop this new piece!

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Took a leaf out of Jenn's book and helped some friends costume for a larp! Sam LeVangie and Aaron Fischer are two HTP friends who are trying out larping now, and they needed some help getting dressed for Prince Comes of Age. I want them to have a good time, because larping is always best with a cool community of people to do it with, and it's always fun to dress people up. Especially when you have a closet full of nifty things that do not get used nearly enough! Sam is playing a princess, and she's not too far off from my size, which meant lovely gowns! We tried several things, but we ended up going with the strapless white gown with the gold net overlay that only previously got to come out when I played The Dance and the Dawn. As for Aaron, he is wearing the reversible velour-and-satin blue doublet my mom made, which has found so many uses in larp and theater! I was happy to be able to help them, as costuming makes games that much more fun.

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This morning I cleaned the house from top to bottom, flitting between the work and scribbling thoughts in my notebook for the one-shot tabletop game I'm running this weekend. I'm always surprised at how much this sort of life suits me. If only I didn't have to worry about that whole distasteful money issue. Anyone in the market for a housewife? I'm very on top of the chores, I'm an excellent cook, I can keep to a budget, and I won't let my figure go. Just keep me in ballet classes and larp costuming and you'll never go off to work without a thoughtfully packed lunch ever again.

The game I'm running is for Carolyn, Ryan, Sam, Aaron, and Gigi, most of whom are new to gaming and would like to get a taste of what theatrical roleplaying is like before they play in a real larp. The game is set in Fairfield, in the universe of the Tailor of Riddling Way, and explore many of the same important themes-- family history, class differences, terrible secrets. I'm writing pregen characters and setting it right after the conclusion of the Tailor story. I am evening including some of the original characters. So far I'm feeling pretty good about what I have, and I think it's going to turn out to be a good game. It's meant to be roleplay-heavy and completely mechanics free as an exercise in acting and storytelling. If it goes well, I'd be happy to run it again for anyone who cares to play.
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The production at the Manhattan Repertory Theater of The Late Mrs. Chadwick requires a logo for use in promotional materials. I made one based off a banshee image I found off Google for the Fringe Festival performance, but the MRT is concerned about copyrights, and I don't actually own that image. So I made a new one by hacking together photographs of Sam, Lenny, and Frances in costume. It's a little crude, but I kind of like the idea of it, with just the ties and lapel fronts on either side, and the white swath of the ghost, with just Sam's nasty little smile.

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The Late Mrs. Chadwick had its debut performance yesterday, and I was so happy with how it went. We had a good audience who laughed a lot, and my cast and crew just did such a fabulous job. I even was lucky enough to have Gigi and newly-minted HTPers Ryan Kacani and Aaron Fisher in the audience to see it! It was also kind of cool to have something I wrote seen by people who don't know me, in hopes of increasing the exposure to my work.

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I was so pleased with the actors. Lenny and Frances were pretty much the first people who came to mind when I wanted to cast the roles of stuffy, unfailingly polite Arthur Chadwick and Edwin Shrewsbury, and I was so delighted that they wanted to do it. They were hilarious, grasping the particular tone of the humor perfectly and creating characters from this fabulous combination of the mannered way they spoke and their understated reactions to the madness all around them. I just love working with these two, and as usual they did not disappoint.

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The title character of Mrs. Chadwick I had to think about much more. She has no lines, but she is demanding all the same-- she has to be physical and loud, and the actress has to be utterly uninhibited. I thought about it for a while, and then I came to Sam LeVangie. I think she has a lot of raw talent, and I really admired the way she threw herself into things and gave them a try. Though I have many talented actor friends who I love casting, I don't always want to use the same people over and over again but instead have a large stable so I can always have the right person for the role. I've wanted to work with Sam for a while now, so I thought this might be the thing. To my pleasure she accepted the part, and she did a wonderful job, looking hauntingly lovely in her pale makeup and white gown as she fearlessly wailed, hurled stuff, and melodramatically flopped around the stage.

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And of course, I couldn't have pulled it off without Bernie and Carolyn. They handled the technical aspects, advising me on how to set up the stage, what sort of props and activity were going to be practical, and engineering a sound system to play the necessary sound effects of Matilda's carnage around the house. I am incredibly grateful that they were kind enough to lend their expertise to get my piece off the ground.

As far as directing goes, this show presented an interesting challenge in that it has two very distinct types of humor in it. The first is the witty, wordy kind inherent in Chadwick and Shrewsbury's dialogue. It's a little sophisticated, a little complex, requires a little bit of absorbing in order to get. The second kind of humor is the broad, physical, silly comedy of Matilda Chadwick. She screams, she breaks stuff, she rolls around on the floor. In order for both types of humor to succeed, we had to be careful to not permit them to overlap too much, so the nuances could be appreciated as well as the broader stuff.  

While there were many fine aspects of this production, one of my favorites was the moustaches. I had the idea to use false moustaches early on, and very quickly fell in love with the notion. You know, normally I'm very sensitive to the comfort levels and preferences of my actors and am usually quite willing to change my plan if it makes them feel better about it, but in the case of these moustaches, if my actors had been strongly objected to them, as Ryan Kacani put it after the show, I "would have found new actors." ;-)

So that's my third produced piece of playwriting after To Think of Nothing and Merely Players. It's cool that I was able to use a piece I generated during 31 Plays in 31 Days. And this one was seen by a little more by the public than the others, though it was a small house for a small festival. I need to get more of my work out there, and this is a start. I'm trying to submit more places in hopes of increasing my chance for selection. If you're interested, we still have one more performance next Saturday at 8PM along with Nick's show that Jared is in, Stranger Than Slash Fiction. I know a friend of Jared's managed to buy tickets for it yesterday, so there may be some available still. Go to this website to purchase.

Also, if anyone finds themselves in a position to put on a play, I just want to put it out there that I would love it if you'd consider using one of my scripts. As much as I love directing my own work, I want productions to happen without me as well. So if you need a script, please talk to me and maybe I have something that you would be interested in using. It would be my honor and pleasure.
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I now have some more concrete information on the upcoming production of my play, The Late Mrs. Chadwick.


The dates of performance will be at 4pm on Sunday, September 30th and 8pm on Saturday, October 6th at the Atlantis Playmakers at 380 Cambridge Street in Burlington. It will be part of a block of short pieces of various types. Tickets will be available for purchase soon, but the website is not updated yet. I will let you know as soon as all the info goes live.

Also, I have assembled a cast and crew! Lenny Somervell and Frances Kimpel will be taking on the roles of Arthur Chadwick and Edwin Shrewsbury respectively, because I think they'd be super-funny cross-cast as stuffy, poncy little Englishmen in tweed suits with moustaches painted on them. The role of Matilda Chadwick, the obnoxious shrieking ghost, will be played by HTP up-and-comer Sam LeVangie, recently seen as Warwick in Margaret and Lavinia in Titus Andronicus. Technical assistance will be provided by Bernie Gabin and Carolyn Daitch. We don't have a lot of tech to be operated at the theater, but we do only have a fifteen-minute slot and as written the play involves a lot of props and a lot of mess. Their job will be to help me figure out how to stage it to keep the spirit of the action while keeping it possible to set up and tear down in those five extra minutes.

I'm really excited. We're all going to be meeting together this Sunday for lunch and talk about logistics. I think this will be a lot of fun, and the end result will be a really funny piece.
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This fabulous picture is Prentice as Edward of York, eldest son of the Duke of York, besides HTP freshman newcomer Samantha LeVangie as the Duke of Warwick. I place the two of them side by side because originally I'd planned for their costumes were switched. Warwick switches sides twice in the play based on who he believes is the better claim at the moment and is recognized as a cunning military thinker, so I thought dressing the character in all black might stand well for that turncoat nature. Edward was going to have the camo jacket because the rest of his brothers all had variations on that army color scheme. But the black jacket wasn't fitting Samantha very well, and Jenna pointed out that since it didn't conceal her hips, it wasn't helping her much with making her look cross-cast. So on a whim I switched her pieces for Andrew's, and things clicked. The hat remained, concealing her hair and giving the impression of a military beret. She also seemed to move more confidently in the camo. I wish there was a better logic for Edward wearing all black, but he does become a fairly ruthless king and it does look pretty sharp on him. I found a sharp black dress shirt in club storage for him, and asked him to bring in his silver tie that would look white against the rest of it. It is a nice nod to his white-rose York allegiance.



Excusing the terrible quality of this picture, this is Alex Davis, another freshman newcomer, as the Duke of York, the leader of the white-rose party campaigning for the English throne. This was a military uniform I found complete in the Halloween section of the thrift store. Originally I considered this for Alex because he is one of the biggest men in the cast and he might have been the only person to fit it, but I ended up liking how official he looked in it, and the way it echoed the look of Suffolk's uniform. No one was like to confuse Plesser and Alex, so that similarity was safe. Also when they stood across from each other they create a cool visual motif. His dress shirt was white because of the York white rose sigil. The black tie and black belt finish the ensemble. Again I was quite pleased.



Here are the two younger York brothers, Stephen Badras as Richard, later the infamous Richard III, and Lenny as George, later Duke of Clarence. Dave requested that they look alike. When first went to the thrift store, I scoured to the place for anything vaguely military-looking, including the olive-drab jacket that you see Lenny wearing now. She told me she owned one very much like it and brought it in. Since I needed the same costume for the both of them, we put her jacket on Stephen, because he had stage combat to do and it fit him better. She also graciously took the baggier pair of camo pants for the same reason. I like how the jackets give them bulk, making them look like bigger men, and enabling Stephen to counterfeit a strange deformity to his body that is part of being Richard. Their looks are the reason I had originally planned to have Andrew in the camo jacket as their older brother Edward, so as to visually echo them, but I think it worked out.





Here is Alison Thvedt, a third freshman newcomer, as Rutland, the fourth and youngest York son. She is basically wearing what I wore when I played Fleance in that production of Macbeth I was in a few summers ago. I got Alison a black T-shirt similiar to the one I wore, and those cargo pants are mine, bought for the Fleance role. Since they are not really my style since then I've been using them as paint pants, which explains the splatters you may notice on them. I don't think they make any differnce to the look overall. :-) I bought her a hat like Samantha's, again like what I wore as Fleance, but she ended up wearing it as a background soldier rather than as Rutland.

To be continued in part three!

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