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17 18 April – July
The World Premiere of
Jagged Little Pill Alanis Morissette & Diablo Cody Making a Musical from the Landmark Album
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THE GUIDE
Artistic Director’s Welcome
MANAGING EDITOR Ryan McKittrick EDITOR Robert Duffley ASSOCIATE EDITORS Rebecca Curtiss Grace Geller Joel Zayac CONTRIBUTORS Hanif Abdurraqib Elizabeth Amos Diablo Cody Annabeth Lucas Mario Alberto Zambrano COPY EDITORS David Libbey Stacey Schutzman
@americanrep
DESIGN Joel Zayac
Welcome to the American Repertory Theater! Custom Publishing by Dig Publishing LLC 242 East Berkeley St. Boston, MA 02118 Advertise: sales@digpublishing.com
The final mainstage production of our 2017/18 Season is Jagged Little Pill. Adapted
A.R.T. BOARDS
of an extraordinary creative team, including Academy Award-winning writer Diablo
from Alanis Morissette’s iconic 1995 album, this world-premiere musical is the work
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
BOARD OF ADVISORS
Cody (Juno, “United States of Tara”), Olivier Award-winning choreographer Sidi
Andrew Ory, Chair
Ann Gund, Co-Chair Karen Mueller, Co-Chair
Larbi Cherkaoui (Sutra, Beyoncé’s performance at the 2017 Grammy Awards), and
Diane Borger Laurie Burt Paul Buttenwieser RoAnn Costin Michael Feinstein Provost Alan M. Garber Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Catherine Gellert Rebecca Grafstein Lori Gross Ann Gund Sarah Hancock Jonathan Hulbert Steve Johnson Alan K. Jones Jerry Jordan Robin Kelsey Herman "Dutch" Leonard Serena Lese Dennis Masel Thomas B. McGrath Ward Mooney Bob Murchison Dan Nova Diane Paulus Mike Sheehan Fay Shutzer Sid Yog
Pulitzer Prize-winning music supervisor, orchestrator and arranger Tom Kitt (Next
Paolo Abelli Frances Shtull Adams Robert Bowie, Jr. Amy Brakeman Philip Burling* Greg Carr Antonia Handler Chayes* Lucy Chung Lizabeth Cohen Lisa Coleman Kathleen Connor Ophelia Dahl Rohit Deshpande Susan Edgman-Levitan Shanti Fry Erin Gilligan Jonathan Glazer Candy Kosow Gold Rachael Goldfarb Robert Green Barbara Wallace Grossman Peggy Hanratty Marcia Head James Higgins Linda A. Hill Horace H. Irvine II Brenda Jarrell Emma Torres Johnson Jason Kemper Dean Huntington Lambert Ursula Liff Timothy Patrick McCarthy Travis McCready Irv Plotkin Martin Puchner Ellen Gordon Reeves Pat Romeo-Gilbert Linda U. Sanger Molly Schoeck Maggie Seelig Dina Selkoe John A. Shane Michael Shinagel Lisbeth Tarlow Sarasina Tuchen Susan Ware Michael Yogman Stephen H. Zinner, M.D.
to Normal, American Idiot). The entire company has come together out of a shared love for this album and a belief in its relevance to our world today. Jagged Little Pill represents a courageous, boundary-shattering articulation of pain, healing, and empowerment. The music reminds us that, though it may be easier to remain numb, we can heal through self-knowledge and genuine engagement with the people and the world around us. Read on in this Guide to learn more about the show and its creative team. In an interview, Alanis Morissette offers insight into her creative process, and Diablo Cody reflects on the experience of adapting an album that inspired her as a young woman. An ensemble of A.R.T. artists share their own relationships to Alanis’ music, and Harvard Theater, Dance & Media Lecturer Mario Alberto Zambrano reflects on Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s multidisciplinary and global work as a choreographer. This spring at A.R.T. also includes a number of exciting productions at OBERON, the A.R.T.’s club space for cutting-edge performance. Boston’s Company One Theatre (which previously presented Young Jean Lee’s We’re Gonna Die at OBERON) returns with Wig Out!, written by Academy Award winner Tarrell Alvin McCraney (Moonlight, The Brother/Sister Plays). Our collaboration with Provincetown’s Afterglow festival also continues with The F Word, an examination of contemporary feminism through drag by Fauxnique—the first cisgender female drag queen to win a major pageant. These productions, and our entire season, would not be possible without you. Thank you for being here.
*Emeriti FOUNDING DIRECTOR Robert Brustein
As of APRIL 2018
Cover Photo courtesy of Next Epiphany
SEASON SUPPORT
The 2017/18 Season is supported in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which receives support from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
DIANE PAULUS Terrie and Bradley Bloom Artistic Director American Repertory Theater
AmericanRepertoryTheater.org 2017/18 Season 1
MAY 5 JULY 15, 2018 AT THE LOEB DRAMA CENTER
JAGGED LITTLE PILL Music by Alanis Morissette & Glen Ballard Lyrics by Alanis Morissette Book by Diablo Cody Additional Music by Michael Farrell & Guy Sigsworth Music Supervision, Orchestrations and Arrangements by Tom Kitt Choreographed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui Directed by Diane Paulus Jagged Little Pill tells an original story inspired by the themes and emotions laid bare in Alanis Morissette’s Grammy Award-winning album that introduced beloved anthems, including “Ironic,” “You Oughta Know,” and “Hand In My Pocket.” Following a family grappling with uncomfortable truths about many of the urgent issues deeply affecting our communities and our world today, this world premiere musical is directed by Diane Paulus (Waitress, Pippin) and features a book by Academy Awardwinning screenwriter Diablo Cody (Juno). ASL Interpreted Jun. 13, 7:30PM Jun. 17, 2PM Audio Described Jun. 15, 7:30PM Jun. 16, 2PM Open Captioned Jun. 14, 7:30PM Jun. 16, 2PM LARGE PRINT
OC
Alanis Morissette (center) in rehearsal with the cast and creative team of Jagged Little Pill.
YOU LIVE, YOU LEARN Alanis Morissette on creating harmony in life and art
What have been some of the biggest influences on your music? I think that storytelling itself drives the melody and drives the harmonics. Then, my temperamental highsensitivity makes it such that when I write, it’s a very physical, visceral, urgent experience, and it all happens very quickly. I find writing music to be a way to be responsible for the current of energy and emotions that course through me moment to moment. Writing is the ultimate filter and processor. In terms of musicality, I've been influenced by such a wide cross-section of genres, mainly having been exposed to them through my parents playing music in the seventies. Everything from Carole King, Joni Mitchell to Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin and Whitney Houston—storytellers and activists who use music and writing as a means to an end, with the end being service. That's something I've always related to. You host a podcast (Conversation with Alanis Morissette) that focuses on wholeness and healing from a variety of philosophical, psychological, and neurobiological perspectives. Could you talk about why you began this project?
Photo: Gabriel Roche
I started writing records when I was nine, and from that time—and in my twenties especially—I was given the message that I had to separate church and state. So, the more psychological aspect of me, or even the dancer in me or the actor in me—I felt that somehow these all had to be very, very hyper-compartmentalized. I remember that certain people who had a vested interest in the “rock and roll” archetype in me were terrified of the psychotherapeutic version or the academic version of me. So, I was constantly trying to figure out what hat to wear in what context. Now it’s more of a holistic experience for me. I get to be my authentic self wherever I am. I'm a musical person who is academically, psychologically, and spiritually inclined. I've always cared about healing and service and connection and recovery and attempting to find one's own true voice and authentic self. It's an ongoing journey on a personal level for me. And then, I happen to enjoy both being a student and being at the front of a room supporting people by facilitating, guiding, and teaching. So, this podcast addresses many of the things I love the most. It’s clear that self-reflection and deep self-knowledge have been important to you for a long time. How does this impact your work as a creative artist? For me, every art form that I participate in is fed by the capacity to go within and tap into the sensations within my body, or the messages, or the thoughts—the false thoughts and the real thoughts—or the wisdom within,
the direct experience of a feeling. It’s a very receptive and intuitive process. That interiority muscle is infused into everything—it’s the engine behind everything I do. Whether I take a photo, or post something on Instagram, or collaborate with someone on a song—or in this case, a musical—the capacity to look within at the scary parts of my own humanity is what fuels everything. Family plays a central role in your life, and you talk about your family and your experience of parenthood a lot on your podcast. Family relationships are a key part of the Jagged Little Pill musical as well. Can you comment on this? When we're traumatized, we are traumatized relationally. So, however or wherever we're wounded in a relationship, it’s safe to say that we can be healed in relationships as well. I've been obsessed with what can create functionality within the three big relationships—the relationship with God, the relationship with one's own self, and the relationship with others. I’m interested in the intricacies of those—where I am sleepwalking, where I hide, where I'm totally checked out, where I am terrified, where I'm present. The human condition is fascinating to me, and the more I try to traverse my own inner terrain, the better I'm able to support people while they are traversing their own as well. Whether it’s my children, or people who come to my workshops, or people who come to the shows, I'm able to understand humanity more and more in others when I'm able to understand it in my own self. What about the upcoming Jagged Little Pill musical has you most excited? I love that the album has served as such an incredible platform from which to jump off of, and to add to. This collaborative experience is my dream come true. I just think the team is crackling and incredible. The story that Diablo Cody is writing in her inimitable style— direct, poignant, layered, intelligent, hilarious; Diane Paulus’ genius lens, sense, vision and perspective; and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s soulful, wild, spatially masterful choreography: it's truly a case of one plus five equaling 5,000. I like the community aspect of it; I like the interdependent aspect of how we are all working together. I have a sense of belonging, and I have to be transparent about the fact that that is not an ongoing thing for me. These are my people.
Interview by Elizabeth Amos, a second-year dramaturgy student at the A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University.
AmericanRepertoryTheater.org 2017/18 Season 3
A SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM Jagged Little Pill writer Diablo Cody reflects on the impact, and the influence, of the iconic album
song ended—let’s say it was “Cumbersome” by Seven Mary Three—the DJ broke in, sounding way more enthusiastic than usual. “I am so psyched to play this next song,” the DJ said—again, this type of editorializing was rare on Q101, a big corporate radio station. “It’s from a new singer named Alanis Morissette, and it’s going to blow your mind. Here’s ‘You Oughta Know.’” Curiosity piqued, I twisted the volume knob on my Sony boombox. A trembling voice filled the room—not just a voice, but a Voice: Alanis’s brave, forceful, naked Voice revealing itself for the first time. It was an immediate shock to the system. After a parade of grunge singers cocooning themselves in flannel and mumbling purposely vague lyrics, here, at last, was someone ready to expose her soul. And “You Oughta Know” was just the beginning— the beginning of the beginning. As we would soon discover, there was so much more to this artist than just spite and rage; on Jagged Little Pill she revealed herself to be tender, spiritual, shameless, kindhearted, eternally questioning, and utterly assured all at once. Shockingly, Alanis was only nineteen years old when she wrote these songs with producer Glen Ballard—just a skip ahead of me, age-wise, but miles beyond in terms of artistic maturity. Flash forward twenty-three years later: many other seminal 90s albums feel preserved in amber: beloved, certainly, but with their vitality confined to the era. But Jagged Little Pill, somehow, is more relevant than ever. It’s an album that tells us to wake up, “swallow it down,” and confront our fears. Most popular music encourages the pursuit of pleasure; Jagged Little Pill actually recommends
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discomfort. These songs suggest that we subject ourselves to that which hurts (and ultimately heals). That we debride our deepest wounds, even though the process itself can be excruciating. This type of therapeutic instruction continues to be a theme in Alanis’s music to this day, and yet somehow, her songs never feel gloomy or pedantic—actually, they feel euphoric. How?! It’s a miracle that Alanis performs over and over; no wonder Kevin Smith cast her as God in Dogma. Jagged Little Pill was the soundtrack to my seventeenth summer and has become even more meaningful to me as I head into my forty-first. Back in 1995, I never could have imagined I’d someday be tasked with creating a narrative around Alanis’s incredible catalog of songs. Like the music itself, the job has been challenging bliss. Working on this show, I am often struck by how inherently theatrical the music is, even before it’s been rearranged for the theater. The romance, laughter, tears, sex, and loss are already there, embroidered into the lyrics and melodies. I am incredibly proud of my role as translator and midwife in this production. If I’m lucky, I’ll make one of my heroes proud in the process.
Diablo Cody is the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of films including Juno, Young Adult, Jennifer’s Body and Ricki and the Flash. She also created the Emmy and Golden Globe-winning series "United States of Tara" alongside Steven Spielberg, and the WGA-nominated series "One Mississippi" with Tig Notaro.
Diablo Cody
I was sixteen years old the first time I heard the voice of Alanis Morissette. Well, technically that isn’t true—I grew up watching “You Can’t Do That on Television,” the Canadian kiddie show on which a young Alanis starred. But when I say “the voice of Alanis Morissette,” I’m not referring to the literal vibrations created by her laryngeal folds. I’m talking about the powerful and primal flow of essential Alanisness that is her legendary album, Jagged Little Pill. This was not just a collection of songs, you understand. This was a seismic event that shifted the plates of pop culture and redefined irony for a generation. Alanis Morissette, rock star, was more than a voice. She was a Voice. It was 1995, and I was hanging out in my bedroom in Lemont, Illinois, a small town with nine churches and zero bookstores. I was listening to Q101, “Chicago’s Rock Alternative,” like I did every day after school. Though the grunge trend had expired like a tub of old yogurt, rock radio was still dominated by growling, lank-haired dudes with low-slung guitars and Big Muff distortion pedals. Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder had changed the game by championing feminist causes, but the rock scene in general still felt like the same old macho circlejerk it had been since forever. The “girl bands” that did get airplay at the time were all punk bravado and defiance—very necessary, but not always relatable to me as a vulnerable and confused Catholic girl who had SO MANY FEELINGS and was often afraid to express them. There was an Alanis-shaped hole in my heart; I just didn’t know it yet. So there I was, in my bedroom, flipping through Sassy magazine and painting my nails with Wite-Out as I listened to the radio. As the
AmericanRepertoryTheater.org 2017/18 Season 5
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Photos courtesy of Next Epiphany
THE ALANIS MORISSETTE ALBUM FROM THE 90s AMERICA NEEDS NOW by Hanif Abdurraqib
The following article was originally published in the New York Times on June 19, 2017, following the announcement of the upcoming A.R.T. production. Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill, which just had its 22nd anniversary, is not only one of the landmark albums of the 90s; it has proved evergreen even as time has left other albums of similar aesthetic and acclaim behind. ... Too often, Jagged Little Pill is discussed only in terms of its bitterness and aggression—something that, I imagine, wouldn’t be so common if the album had been recorded by a man. The album was acclaimed upon its release—and remains so today—but even the most glowing praise still reduced Ms. Morissette’s work to its harshest emotions, and labeled them surprising. This flattening out of the album’s story does something that is still all too common: it reduces a woman’s emotions to the ones that are easiest for men to dismiss. In 2017, too many Americans still react with confusion and alarm to a woman who steers a
conversation on her own terms. During Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday [June 13, 2017], Senator Kamala Harris, Democrat of California, was consistently interrupted and talked over, and Mr. Sessions told her that she was making him nervous while she looked him in the eyes, unmoving. There are men in the narrative of Jagged Little Pill, but what’s thrilling about the album, especially today, is that Ms. Morissette seems so uninterested in bowing to their presence. To label Pill a breakup album is shortsighted, despite how it navigates the nuances of closure in a relationship. Ms. Morissette is, largely, not facing an ex, but facing away from him and looking to new endeavors, both romantic and mundane. Pill is not only an album of breaking, but also one of rebuilding, of finding a sliver of hope and stretching it beyond its limits. Every emotion is its own moving part that almost becomes a character: the sadness is a breathing, moving thing. The anger is a cloud that sits thick in the sky and then parts just in time for a little joy to leak
AmericanRepertoryTheater.org 2017/18 Season 7
Clockwise, from top: The company of Jagged Little Pill in rehearsal with director Diane Paulus; Antonio Cipriano, Whitney Sprayberry, and John Cardoza; Elizabeth Stanley and Sean Allan Krill; Lauren Patten; the company and creative team; Celia Gooding.
different type of heartbreak. It is possible that when brought to life, Ms. Morissette’s songs will extract something useful out of our shared grief and horror. At best, they will remind us what it is to seek out the small crack in the heaviest clouds. And if they don’t do that, at least they will give some of us a moment of nostalgia—something to look back on for a couple of hours, ignoring everything outside.
Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, a columnist for MTV News, and the author of the essay collection They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us. From The New York Times, June 19 © 2017 The New York Times. All rights reserved. Used by permissions and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express written permission is prohibited.
Photos: Jimmy Ryan
through, and then the joy dances. It is an album of impeccable balance. I listen to the songs and realize that I have both felt this way and feared making anyone feel this way about me. Without knowing how the musical will make the album come to life, I’m still excited to see how it will sit in our political and cultural moment. A musical pulled from a 90s album won’t keep anyone safe or save anyone, beyond offering a small reprieve from the horrors of the outside world. But if it stays true to what I believe the clearest reading of the album is—as a celebration of small joys amid larger heartbreaks—it will resonate mightily. There are juicy and salacious breakup songs on Pill, sure. But I’m most drawn, now, to songs like “Head Over Feet” and “Hand In My Pocket” which seem like odes to rediscovering brief and impermanent freedoms. The latter song opens with the lyrics: “I’m broke but I’m happy / I’m poor but I’m kind.” Simple in language, but layered in its message about life’s balance—the album’s entire ethos distilled down to two lines. Though I’ve never forgotten what it’s like to have to search for joy along a vast terrain of seemingly endless misery, it has been an especially notable feeling in the past year. The pain, anxiety, and anguish many of us feel now, and have felt for months, isn’t attached to a severing of romantic ties. Rather, it is the slow and hovering sadness of a country, and the people in it, some of whom are more afraid than others about the far-reaching ramifications of a Donald Trump presidency. Not everyone is feeling the weight of this sadness and tension, but for those in the thick of it, a small escape is needed—to stand on a corner with a hand in a pocket, briefly unafraid. The musical that catches on is the one that reflects the moment it is released into, intentionally or unintentionally. ... But the album, as it stands, has aged into this time extremely well. Even if men are still not equipped to handle the full spectrum of women’s emotion when it is directed at us, or when it bypasses us altogether. And even if the country is in the throes of a
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REFLECTING ON JAGGED LITTLE PILL Released in 1995, Alanis Morissette’s album has served as a source of healing, empowerment, and inspiration for a generation of listeners and rising artists. Here, artists who have developed work at A.R.T. share some of the ways Jagged Little Pill impacted them personally and professionally.
SARA BAREILLES
Music & Lyrics, Waitress
TOM KITT
Music Supervision, Orchestrations & Arrangements, Jagged Little Pill I’ll never forget the moment I first heard Alanis Morissette’s music. And I would venture to say that, in that moment, I felt a sensation shared by many: the feeling that a force had been unleashed on the world, bringing with it an emotional authenticity and power that was undeniable. Alanis’ gifts—the fearlessness in her writing and her ability to speak so honestly about important human issues, all set to music that is both propulsive and achingly beautiful—have changed the face of music and the lives of the people who experience it. Alanis’ writing has had a profound effect on my own work in that she challenges me to dig deeper and to never be afraid to bare my sound. And now, to call her a collaborator and a friend is an honor indeed.
Alanis Morissette has always been one of the female artists I have looked up to and learned from. Jagged Little Pill was one of the records I listened to the most growing up, and it remains one of my favorites. I am awe-struck at how she handled dark emotions with such grace and power, and gave them a voice with no apology or shame. I found her to be an incredible force that was fearless in her authenticity at a time when that was not the “norm.” She’s a true badass.
TODD ALMOND
Music and Lyrics, Kansas City Choir Boy I remember listening to Jagged Little Pill and thinking, “Oh, it’s a brand new world now.” Somehow she launched us all forward with this album into a future that had room for weirdos like me and my friends, so I’m eternally grateful. Plus it still rocks.
BRETT MOSES
Music, Burn All Night In 1995, I was 8 years old and worshipped my older brother, who introduced me to the music that mattered. That year smelled like sunscreen and Polo Sport, and it sounded like Folds, Duritz, and—most of all—Morissette. My brother and I listened to Jagged Little Pill in secret, certain that Alanis’ wicked candor would piss off our folks, but her music was too explosive to contain. That record tore across the manicured lawns of Fort Worth, Texas and ripped that first pivotal hole in my suburban fantasy. Peering through, I discovered an acid-washed reality that would someday fuel my own songwriting. Was there ever a more mystical year in my life?
AMANDA PALMER
Cabaret, The Onion Cellar I remember hearing the lyrics “would she go down on you in a theater,” along with that huge, mainstream, bombastic pop production, and thinking: “Okay, Amanda, the rules of mainstream songwriting now include permission to sing about blowjobs. Clearly, the rules are not what I thought. Progress = check!”
AmericanRepertoryTheater.org 2017/18 Season 9
Cast members rehearsing choreography for Jagged Little Pill. Choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s recent work includes Sutra, developed with an ensemble of Shaolin monks; Dunas, created in partnership with flamenco dancer María Pagés; and Beyoncé’s performance at the 2017 Grammy Awards.
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BEYOND AN ORDINARY VISION Encountering the unexpected in Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s choreography
Soph Menas, Kelsey Orem, Antonio Cipriano, Whitney Sprayberry, John Cardoza. Photo: Jimmy Ryan Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. Photo: Koen Broos.
by Mario Alberto Zambrano
We’d been invited to a party in the West Village. The hostess, a mutual friend, paired us together in the corner of the room—he was the token choreographer, and I was the token dancer. “You’ll both have plenty to talk about,” she said. “I’m sure.” Slightly bashful, he stood near the wall nursing a warm cup of tea, which I thought peculiar since everyone had wine. Before I could introduce myself, he extended his hand and said, “I’m Sidi Larbi, but you can call me Larbi. Sidi is just a form of saying mister in Arabic—my father is from Morocco.” If I had known then— ten years ago—what would lie before him, I might not have believed it. The party was a bit stuffy, filled with curators and artists from upscale galleries in Manhattan. I felt more comfortable staying in the corner with Larbi because I, too, was feeling bashful, and he didn’t seem to mind. He was gentle, kind, and very interesting. He’d just finished working with eighteen monks from the Shaolin Temple and was about to fly to Spain to work with a flamenco dancer on a new project. “You aren’t the typical choreographer, are you?” I said. Sutra, which means “thread” in Sanskrit and refers to sacred texts in Buddhism, is the name of the piece he spoke of, a collaborative work with Shaolin monks and set designer Antony Gormley. It premiered in London ten years ago at Sadler’s Wells and continues to be performed around the world. Twenty-one wooden boxes are arranged onstage. Together the monks and Larbi construct walls, bridges, a
temple, and, in one scene, a formation implies a graveyard—some critics have called these arrangements constellations. Over the course of the evening, Sutra unravels as an architectural and embodied discourse about the negotiation between form and space, its transformation, deconstruction, and imagination. With its poetic vision, the piece won the hearts of many. María Pagés, the flamenco dancer he spoke of that night, co-created a piece with him called Dunas. Larbi’s works are frequently collaborative, signaling his sustained interested as an artist in intercultural and interdisciplinary exchange. Coming from a hip-hop and vogueing background from his teenage years in Belgium, he has gone on to work in different media all over the world. For instance, the dance sequences in the film Anna Karenina directed by Joe Wright exhibit his cinematic sensibility, and last year he worked with Beyoncé on her performance at the Grammy Awards. In 2013, he premiered a full-evening work at The Paris Opera Ballet with Damien Jalet and Marina Abramovic titled Bolero. At Bunkamura in Tokyo, he directed a production called Pluto based on the beloved manga character Astro Boy. And since 2015, he has been the artistic director of one of the most renowned ballet companies in the world, The Royal Ballet of Flanders. Yet these accomplishments are only a dime’s worth of what his career has covered. Since I last saw him, he has created over 50 choreographic works and won two Olivier Awards, three Ballet Tanz awards for Best Choreographer, and, in 2009, the Kairos Prize. At the time of our meeting, Larbi had such a gentle demeanor that it didn’t seem to match what I assume engenders such a bustling lifestyle. But perhaps the aura of centeredness I remember keeps him grounded enough to move in and around his projects with grace. If you speak to anyone who knows him and works with him, they’ll mention how thoughtful he is, and intuitive, from studio to stage. This season, we have the opportunity to
indulge in Sidi Larbi’s work here in Cambridge: he is the choreographer of Jagged Little Pill, the world-premiere production directed by Diane Paulus, inspired by the 1995 album of the same name by Alanis Morissette. After that night at the party, we met again the following afternoon; we had hummus and mint tea on the Upper East Side. He had read an op-ed I’d written about a personal frustration I was having as a professional dancer, how I felt like an instrument conforming to a choreographer’s singular artistic vision. Larbi leaned across the table and wanted to speak to me about it. He looked very concerned. In his soft tone, he insisted that that was exactly what he wanted to avoid. “You shouldn’t feel used,” he said. “You should feel invited—invited to be part of the creation so that both you and the choreographer are taking agency over your collaboration.” Considering his rapport with so many artists across so many disciplines, it’s likely that he has been able to sustain the mantra, and in a culture where power is a virus and authority is bolstered by its own hubris—in politics as well as in art—it’s humbling to see such a renowned artist demonstrating such diplomatic composure.
Mario Alberto Zambrano is a Lecturer in Theater, Dance & Media at Harvard University. A Presidential Scholar in the Arts, a Princess Grace Fellow, and an Iowa Arts Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has been a soloist and principal dancer for Nederlands Dans Theater, Batsheva Dance Company, Ballet Frankfurt, and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago.
AmericanRepertoryTheater.org 2017/18 Season 11
The A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theater Training OUR TOWN
MAY. 20 - 26, 2018 AT FARKAS HALL
In the ephemera of everyday life, Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama uncovers the eternal. With humor, grace and poignancy, Wilder’s script takes us through the fictional town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire where we witness the great joy, the great sadness, and the gentle larger order of things that always surrounds us in life. Directed by Marcus Stern (Middletown, The Shipment, A Bright New Boise), this production features the graduating A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theater Training Class of 2018.
Our Town closes a season of fully-staged work presented by the graduating class (pictured) of the A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University. Productions this year have included Macbeth, Charlotte’s Web, Familiar, and Assistance.
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SHAPESHIFTING IN GROVER’S CORNERS This spring Marcus Stern directs the graduating actors of the A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theater Training in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. Stern spoke with production dramaturg Annabeth Lucas about how experimenting in form might introduce additional perspectives on the content in Wilder’s classic work. Why Our Town? In the last five to ten years, I’ve been in search of plays that have some spiritual element, without that aspect being blatant. As I started reading Our Town, I thought it seemed to be gently playing with a variety of spiritual ideas. The various lives in the town seem guided by a larger order, and the Stage Manager seems cognizant of this, so it felt like the play was trying to touch on a larger perspective of life. But what impacted my decision to work on Our Town the most was reading Donald Margulies’ introduction to the play, in which he called Wilder an incredibly progressive and innovative playwright—which isn’t the normal assumption about either Wilder or this play. He writes about how Wilder was more of an experimental writer, one who was playing with Cubism in dramatic writing in a way that was similar to what Picasso was doing in painting, and using innovative structure, like fractional pieces that add up to a whole in a non-linear fashion. The idea that the play could be considered a Cubist work opened up the possibilities of that world and repositioned the play for me. Our Town is set in early 1900s small-town America, and productions are often infused with nostalgia. What made the play relevant to you?
Photo: Clinton B. Photography
I never viewed it as a nostalgic piece. I viewed it as occurring only in real time without needing to be set in a specific time period. I also understood the small-town setting as a context that offered Wilder an opportunity to use the “simplicity” of pedestrian moments as a gateway towards a kind of clarity, stillness, or wisdom that is larger than our conscious thinking. Your productions are often non-naturalistic, featuring precise, even choreographic, movements. What does this approach bring to this play? Like many people working in various fields, I’m interested in finding alternative shapes for content that we’re familiar with. As a kid, my mom used to say, “how do you
know you’re seeing this spoon in the exact same way that I’m seeing this spoon?” That was fascinating. Suddenly the spoon had more resonance because it existed as an object of its own integrity that could be appearing in different forms to different people, as if the relationship between form and content were malleable. For artwork in general, when we play with form, we’re often trying to give people additional side-doors for entering content— opportunities to consider ideas, people, and moments in our lives from a different perspective. The non-naturalistic staging is that same idea of a side-door. As a concrete example, when we first see the alcoholic choir master, he drunkenly buries his head into a wall while talking to his singers during a choir practice. The singers are spread out far away from him on stage. He never looks at them, and they never look at him, yet he talks to them as if he’s right in front of them. By creating distance between him and the singers, and seeing him talk to and lean against the wall, we might bring out additional ways of understanding his isolation, emotional pain, and refuge in alcohol. That said, I want to add that I’m hoping the production will be a warm and entertaining piece. We’re aiming to make a version that feels sweet, sad, humorous, and resonant in some way. What served as inspiration for this production? I’m usually first guided by music, which I collect for each show. I divide the songs into scenes to see if any naturally suggest alternative forms of staging. I also find contemporary visual art another helpful guide. I don’t know if this is true, but contemporary visual art seems to have the largest number of successful examples of experimentation in the relationship between form and content. I was in a museum last summer and saw this piece which was a regular wooden door frame, in a wall, with the door open, and inside the frame were hundreds of flowers pressed against the opening—like there was a world of tightly compressed flowers just beyond that door. I sent a picture of it to the set designer, and it guided us to the idea of “what’s magical behind the regular door.”
Interview by Annabeth Lucas, a second-year dramaturgy student at the A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University.
AmericanRepertoryTheater.org 2017/18 Season 13
APRIL 26 MAY 13, 2018 AT OBERON
Wig Out! Written by Tarell Alvin McCraney Directed by Summer L. Williams Presented in collaboration with Company One Theatre
From the Oscarwinning writer of Moonlight, Wig Out! is the catwalk showdown of the year! When the House of Light is challenged to a surprise ball by the rival House of Di’abolique, they’ve got to leave it all on the floor to defend their family’s Legendary status. Fueled by a sizzling R&B playlist, Wig Out! is a divine exploration of drag ball culture, chosen family, and the desire to be desired.
In Tarell Alvin McCraney's Wig Out!, fame, fortune, and more are on the line as two legendary houses face off at a midnight ball. Pictured: Sidney Monroe as Rey-Rey, Mother of the House of Light.
ENHANCING THE GOOD
Photo: Liv Slaughter
An interview with Wig Out! Director Summer L. Williams
The Associate Artistic Director of Company One Theatre and the director of Wig Out! (at OBERON through May 13), Summer L. Williams reflects here on the show’s creative process and the role of cultural spaces in celebrating and sustaining intersectional identities.
Speaking of the distinction between ball culture and drag pop culture, this play highlights identities beyond conventional understandings of labels like “gay” and “trans,” “masculine” and “feminine.” How has that complexity been active in your work on this play?
As a theater director, what is it like to be staging a drag show?
This is a story about love beyond gender identity, beyond sexual identity. And it’s a story of how those identities can be at odds with one another. The world has said we need to define ourselves by those identities, but this play is asking the world, “What happens if I choose not to categorize myself by those standards?” In that case, the world will have a tough time figuring out who I am, in which case I can be seen as somehow less acceptable. And if I am made somehow less acceptable to the world, that invites you to strip away my humanity. One of the things we’re talking about in the rehearsal room is the phrase “masc 4 masc” [as in “masculine for masculine”—seen frequently on male dating sites]. For queer male identity, that language is very coded. It doesn’t have anything to do with notions of gender—it has everything to do with notions of status and power. And that’s an instance where status and power are becoming entangled in the way that we love and connect.
Well, I want to clarify that this play is representative of ball culture. Today people go to drag brunch on Sundays and watch drag shows on television, but the world of the balls is something else entirely. “Drag” can imply a kind of packaged entertainment, but balls are events that allow for—that celebrate!— the deep complexities and variations of identity and experience. Performers compete for different “houses” in categories ranging from “face” to “realness,” but there’s also great love and support. To walk a ball category is to, in many ways, fully live one’s truth. The ball scene is very much alive and well, but still quite underground. It hasn’t taken off in the way that drag pop culture has. I was lucky enough to go to a ball here in Boston, and it’s a very tightknit community. And it’s a lot of work. The stakes are really high: your name and reputation are on the line; there’s money on the line—and all those things matter.
AmericanRepertoryTheater.org 2017/18 Season 15
Jessie Mueller in A.R.T.’s 2015 world premiere production of Waitress, now on Broadway and National Tour.
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Would you say that a source of tragedy in this play is the ability of prejudices from the outside world to filter into the alternative spaces made by queer communities, especially queer communities of color? Absolutely. But the flip side of that coin is that ball culture emerged as an answer to whitedominated queer spaces, so we can’t have one without the other. That’s also an important part of queer history: we also have to look through the lens of race, which forged really interesting pathways forward that wouldn’t have existed in queer culture otherwise. In his Author’s Note for the script, McCraney notes that queer culture has been readily absorbed by pop culture, but he asks “are they ready for queer life of color?” At this particular cultural moment, what has it been like to work on a play centering queer young black and brown people? Stories that center all kinds of black and brown people are my jam and will always be my jam. So on the one hand, it feels like being home. On the other hand, I know what it feels like as a black woman in Boston to go into a restaurant or new bar somewhere downtown and be one of very few brown faces among the clientele. Now I have a deeper understanding for what it might mean to also want to go into that space and be black or brown and queer, and feel like there’s not a place for me in the area of the city that I call home.
Photos: Becca Lewis (left), Liv Slaughter (right).
In that way, your work intersects with some of the conversations about race that have long been overdue in Boston. As someone who has made an artistic home here, what does it mean for you to be doing this play here now? I can proudly say that as a director and as a cofounder of Company One Theatre, if we were to go away tomorrow, I would know that we have pushed down some walls. We have made space for people to have their stories told as authentically as we can tell them, and it feels like we are continuing to do that work. It’s significant, but it’s not significant. It’s a little unfortunate and embarrassing that it is “so significant.” That’s the part that’s really difficult. You have to marvel: “It’s 2018, and there’s still a need for this change and growth.” I’ve
Left: Wig Out! director Summer L. Williams. Right: Cast member Miles Jordan as Nina.
been thinking a lot recently about Beyoncé’s performance at Coachella, where she was the first black woman to headline the festival. You have to walk into the space with confidence, holding up the torch, shining the way forward. But my God, it can’t be comfortable that this is the first time. Chosen homes are a central theme in this play—spaces which celebrate the complexities misunderstood, excluded, or criminalized by the outside world. Has the idea of a chosen home been active in your rehearsal room, or your thinking about potential audiences for this piece? Absolutely. One of the things that excites me is that this show features a company of upand-coming performers. Company One prides itself on being a stepping stone toward career opportunities that performers may not have gotten before working with us. In our current season, we made a conscious effort to produce three plays by black male-identified playwrights centering voices of black and brown men. That centering is really about celebrating the fullness and the richness of all that those lives are, in order to counter the narrative that we see over and over again in the media that those lives don’t matter. Two black men were recently arrested for sitting in a Starbucks, arrested just for sitting and waiting. That’s a disgusting and disturbing story, but it’s not surprising. The story of this play has been deeply personal for many members of the company, and audiences will be the “twelfth cast member.” The goal is for people to feel deeply and intimately a part of something, for us to live in the unique world of the play together. I
want people to move, and feel like they can get out of their seat and dance if they want to. I want people to talk back to us. I want people to feel like this is a full world. Because in all of this, I think there’s a real celebration of joy for what is. That’s the purpose of the house. That reminds me of the point in the play where one of the characters, Ms. Nina, says that she isn’t wearing make-up to hide anything. She’s wearing it to... what does she say? “To enhance the good!” On this project, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we can make space for ourselves where no matter what the circumstances are, good, bad, or ill, we’re going to make joy. And joy will be had.
Interview by Robert Duffley, A.R.T. Editor & Assistant Dramaturg
AmericanRepertoryTheater.org 2017/18 Season 17
A.R.T.’s exploration of vibrant, cutting-edge performance continues
N O R E B GLOW
GLOWBERON AT OBERON
Now in its third year at OBERON, Glowberon is an acclaimed series that features exceptional storytellers, solo playwrights, and cabaret and performance artists. The series was founded by Quinn Cox and is produced in partnership with Cambridge’s Glow Festival and Provincetown’s Afterglow Festival.
FAUX FEMINISM
FAUXNIQUE FEMINISM! Let’s hear it from the painted mouth of Fauxnique, the lady drag queen and dancing, singing raconteuse. A frank fabulist whose Fosse-lized focus and forceful frame forge fanciful factual fictions, Fauxnique’s fashionably fierce form of feminism is filled with f***ing fantastic feats of hi-femme frippery. See why she broke through the glass ceiling of the male-dominated world of drag. A look at feminism through the lens of drag cabaret and vice/versa.
The fist cisgender woman to win a major drag (queen) pageant, Fauxnique is a queen among queens. In The F Word, playing at OBERON on May 17, she explores contemporary feminism through fashion, lip sync, song, and storytelling. Here, Fauxnique speaks about the coevolution of her drag performance and feminist practice. Your award-winning drag performance has taken you all over the world—from San Francisco to Stonewall, and from Provincetown through Europe. What originally brought you to drag? I’m a classically trained dancer, so I come to drag from dance. I started as a ballerina, and I loved a drag aesthetic before I knew it was a drag aesthetic. I remember putting on fake eyelashes for the first time to do The Nutcracker and feeling like, “Oh, this is what my face is supposed to look like.” I went into contemporary dance next, and I trained at Bennington College. Then I was immersed in the dance world of San Francisco. At that point the work very much followed a stripped-down, postmodern aesthetic inspired by Judson Church and Yvonne Rainer’s “No Manifesto.” That was very necessary, but then there was a moment where I thought, “God, I miss glitter and sequins. I miss spectacle.” So I started performing at this club in San Francisco called Trannyshack. That’s a controversial word now, but it was a word that belonged to the community and was a term of endearment. The club was a big umbrella under which many different kinds of people came together. That was a formative place for me. I fell in love with all the queens, and I saw Ana Matronic there, and I thought, “Oh my God, they’ll let a cis woman come and perform.” No sooner did I start going there, then I started performing— at the same time that I was making dance work. How did those different forms cross-pollinate?
Performing in this drag mode was really inspiring: it provided weekly practice in a kind of permissiveness that the dance world didn’t really have. I started to combine the two, and I ended up winning the Miss Trannyshack Pageant. That was ostensibly controversial, because I was the first cisgender woman to win a drag queen pageant. Within the community, it wasn’t actually that controversial, but it was kind of surprising. Some people might have only encountered drag as cisgender men performing as women. What wider definition of drag would you offer? Drag is a performance practice that plays with gender. The richness is in the artifice, and in the permission to put on and play with being different kinds of women, different kinds of characters and creatures. To me, a drag queen is not a man presenting as a woman. For a while, people would say, “Oh, Fauxnique is a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman,” and I would reply, “No, I’m not, actually. I’m a drag queen.” People love to try and figure out the category that I’m in. I don’t like the word “bio-queen.” I think it’s silly. I’ve heard the word “FAB-queen,” which is an acronym for “female assigned at birth,” and I think that’s cute. I embrace “faux queen.” Many people bristle at that term, because it implies that you’re false. But I kind of love it: it’s French, it’s fancy, and also, it’s a reminder to me that all drag is faux drag. I think understanding the performativity of gender, in the sense of the philosopher Judith Butler’s work, is also extremely important. Right now there’s all this controversy around RuPaul—his comments about women and trans women, and their right to be on “Drag Race.” A lot of people interpret those comments to mean that RuPaul is saying only one kind of woman can do drag. And actually what he’s saying is only who can be on “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”
Photo: Michelle Blioux
THE F WORD MAY 17, 2018
AmericanRepertoryTheater.org 2017/18 Season 19
Yes. Most of the world sees “Drag Race” as the end-all, be-all. And many people argue that if you’re going to make any kind of living as a drag queen, you have to be involved in the RuPaul machine in some way—and that is holding economic privilege for men, as per usual. I can sit with that, for sure. But I also really believe in the idea of making your own thing. RuPaul is the establishment now—he’s part of a huge machine. The decision-making process around who gets to be on “Drag Race” is driven by what America will understand. The fact that America is embracing drag is actually kind of a miracle, so I think it’s a little misguided to think that we could sell any story more complicated than “it’s a man pretending to be a woman.” I might be cynical, but it’s not surprising to me in the least that “Drag Race” is resistant to more complicated stories. So as a cisgender woman performing in—and winning—pageants, would you say that you have been part of a more nuanced story? In promotional language, it’s always more fun to claim that something was controversial. In reality, the complicated story is more subtle. It wasn’t like I stormed the gates of the meany-pants drag club that didn’t want me and convinced them that girls can do it, too. They knew girls could do it, too. The more complicated story is, “This is a place we came together in difference.” Speaking of the conversation between drag performance and ideas of gender performativity, you recently performed an embodied conversation with Judith Butler in San Francisco. What was that like? It was fabulous! We wanted to see, as a
choreographer and as a philosopher, what happens to conversation and to thinking when you’re in a different bodily mode than the standard format of sitting behind a table with plastic water bottles. So we danced. We had headset mics, and we talked about our different subjects within different choreographic spaces. We danced to disco music and talked about how we each discovered drag—and how drag had inspired both of our work. Her book Gender Trouble really began in drag clubs. We also took moments of stillness and silence; we held each other’s heads and talked about vulnerability and the rights of different types of bodies to appear in public protest. It was a rich experience: those ways of being in our bodies materially affected the discourse. And it was interesting to dislodge the usual mode of discussion—I couldn’t ever be on equal footing discursively with Judith Butler, but we were really able to have a conversation. And I held Judith Butler’s head in my hands, which means I can die happy. How does your current show, The F Word, join these conversations about gender and performance? I have always identified as a feminist who makes art, but not necessarily as someone who makes feminist art. But around 2015, I started thinking about “the f-word,” and it felt necessary. People are talking about the word “feminism” now; people are no longer afraid. And all through 2016 and since then, the show has felt really important. What can audiences expect to experience in the show? In this show, I sing and I dance; I tell stories and I lip sync. My first cabaret show was a collection of short, sharp numbers called Faux Real. And
I started writing monologues as a way to give myself time to change costumes onstage, but then I realized, “Oh, these stories and monologues are a really fun part of the show.” So I started developing that element more. As a classic drag practice, how is lip sync in conversation with the feminist themes at the center of this piece? To me as a dancer, a lip sync is an intricate dance of the face. You’re choreographing breath: you’re trying to make someone else’s breath sound like it’s coming out of your body, and that’s a rigorous choreographic practice. I don’t want to give away too much of the show, but at one point, I lip sync to a clichélevel drag number, but I’m commenting on it. The song itself is problematic, and I use the show to deal with that. In another piece, I use lip sync to highlight a kind of absence: I embody and emphasize a woman whose labor might go unnoticed. Those are two points where I’m thinking about lip sync as a feminist practice. And then there’s also the fact that I lip sync to male voices. At once point I perform to a really heavy, almost metal song—I’m lip syncing to embody a voice that’s not mine, or a voice that’s very far from mine. I also keep those ideas in mind when I choose what to sing: I sing at a few points in the show that are vulnerable moments, and for me, an important way to articulate feminism is to elevate and embrace vulnerability. The masculinist patriarchy devalues vulnerability and simultaneously calls on women and femme people to be vulnerable. But I feel that vulnerability can be powerful: I maintain that in the performance of femininity, the willing performance of vulnerability is a subversive act. In promotional materials for The F Word, you’ve talked about breaking the glass ceiling within drag. Where, in your experience, is that ceiling maintained? It’s the world. It is a sexist and misogynistic world, and we have a lot of work to do. I don’t think there’s one glass ceiling that gets broken, then everybody gets to fly through. But since I won Miss Trannyshack, I hope that I have paved the way for cisgender women to feel more welcome to do drag, or to feel like their unique voice is welcome. So I hope that I’ve been able to help some other people through. Within the world of drag, of course I’ve experienced misogyny occasionally. But mostly, my experience as a drag queen has been a wonderful combination of irreverence and rigor, celebration and thought that has fortified my feminist practice.
Interview by Robert Duffley, A.R.T. Editor & Assistant Dramaturg.
Presented in partnership with Provincetown’s Afterglow Festival, Fauxnique’s The F Word arrives at OBERON May 17.
20 2017/18 Season AmericanRepertoryTheater.org
Photo: this page: Gareth Gooch; opposite: Rachel Hanon
Are those two things more often conflated than they should be?
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OBERON - May 17, 2018 at 8PM
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