I love me some Brian Friel.  One of my fondest memories of theatre was a production of Translations in one of Seattle’s small theatres (I think it was AHA!)  I haven’t seen as much as I would like, so I was happy to get the call from my friend Janet at T. Schreiber to come shoot their  production of Philadelphia, Here I Come!

It is amazing how much theatre you can fit into the small spaces in NYC.  The show is at the Gloria Maddox Theatre, where I’ve shot (and even performed) for a few Nylon Fusion shows.  The set is very evocative of a small Irish home of the 1960s and provides some nice levels and playing spaces for the actors.

The play gives us the last night in Ireland for Gar O’Donnell, before he heads to Philadelphia to stay with his aunt and uncle and work in a hotel.  He’s leaving behind his father and his job at his dad’s shop.  The action is commented on by Gar’s inner voice, his conscience, who seems to say what the public Gar wishes he could.  We see several of the characters who make up his life in Ireland — his widower father who is more boss than father, the doddering headmaster, who might have been the father he could have had, the mother figure housekeeper, his mates and the local Canon who comes to play checkers with his dad.  All of these characters seem to be living their lives by rote.  Even with Gar leaving the next day, not too much seems to be changing about their daily interactions.

Gar is also “visited” by some figures from his past and future — Kate, the  girl who got away, and her father Senator Doogan, who made Gar quite aware that he was not good enough for his daughter and his mother’s sister, his uncle and their friend, all visiting from America and the reason he is invited to come live with them in Philadelphia.

All of these people (with the exception of the American contingent) all seem to be on the verge of asking Gar to stay and he seems so on the edge, that given any excuse — any deviation from the daily ritual of his life — he would stay.  But we never see it happen.

Performances were strong all around and the direction (Jake Turner) kept me wondering if Gar would find what he’s looking for — either in Ireland or in Philadelphia.

I wasn’t originally going to blog about this.  It was just going to be some shots for the kids, but darned if there aren’t some compelling visuals in here!

I met Christian Ely a few years back when I choreographed the fights for a play he was directing for a short play festival.  It was a food fight that goes over the top… in an elevator!  Fast forward 7 or so years later and Christian reconnects with me through a friend — he’s teaching and directing at a middle school in NJ and would I like to come fight direct a Romeo & Juliet?  Well, schedules didn’t work out that year, but this year they did for Macbeth.  I didn’t know what to expect — I knew going in that we had a cast of almost 40 thirteen year-olds.  20-odd witches, an army of soldiers… but what could we actually accomplish?  I needn’t have worried.  These kids were committed to the play and to their director.  He does not pull the play down to a “middle school” level, he pushes it up above some NY productions I’ve experienced!  The witches are an omnipresent force of nature (or supernature?) and create some gorgeous images with their striking makeup and costumes.  The set is a mobile and grand canvas for evocative projections (created by an MKA alum, now in the business).  Add haze, lights and sound and it’s an effective take on this story of ambition.

One of my favorite moments was a discussion about if we should have blood.  “Oh, I want blood,” Christian said.  “OK, how bloody can we get the children,” I asked — expecting a couple little smears or blood packs.  “Buckets!”  came his response.  A gallon of blood was ordered and with dilution, we’re talking about 1.5 – 2 gallons possible.  From what I’ve seen, I’m guessing these kids will wring every last corpuscle out of that jug!

On to shooting it.  The auditorium is a vast space and the stage, including an apron built into the space made for a lot of area to cover, especially trying to fit all 37 kids into a single frame.  I moved between all of my lenses, but relied more heavily on the 70-200 mm f/2.8 L IS II than I have been recently in the usual small NYC spaces.  Light was challenging — the look of the piece was very stark, so lighting tended to be dark, sometimes accented with hot spots, with few scenes in any kind of wash.  the witches in their white makeup and gowns tended to blow out quite easily, especially when they were sharing the stage with Macbeth and Banquo in their pseudo-military garb.  The witches movement was very dance based so I tried to dial down the shutter speed on a few occasions to get some motion blur to evoke that dynamic.

The battle scene was pretty epic, with just about everyone on stage — soldiers fighting, witches applying blood and feasting on the carnage.  Visually it was chaotic — we slowed the fight to slow motion, not for safety concerns (the kids were very good about stage combat safety!), but because there were so many bodies, it was too much to take in at full speed.  Blood effects for the final fight went well.  You can see the spray of blood coming from a couple of syringes, which “painted” his body with blood, but were also effective photographically.

Joan Kane, the director of this play, also directed of one of the pieces in Nylon Fusion’s last This Round’s On Us: Spring Break Forever! (The first three images in the gallery for TROU – Spring Break Forever!)  She and her partner at Ego Actus reached out to me about shooting their production of The Tragedy of Dandelion at Urban Stages.  The play is a bold undertaking — 29 roles played by 10 women across 5 acts, 13 scenes and 12 locations.  Oh, and in verse!  From the playwright’s website:

The Princess Dandelion dresses as a boy in order to escape her rapist and would-be husband, along the way falling in love with another princess, and traveling through her society, meeting nuns, soldiers, and clowns, and all the time her pregnancy continues, the impending birth complicating everything.

The play takes a lot of familiar tropes and stands them on their ears to defy expectation.  Shakespeare allusions abound, but there is a serious through line about identity and the ever present danger of being a female in a male dominated society.

Urban Stages is a small showcase theatre (65 – 74 seats) with a fairly deep stage.  The producer and director both told me they needed wide shots that would highlight the scenery and costumes for their website, so I tended to work a little wider on this shoot, again favoring the 24-70 mm f/2.8 with my new standby, the 16-35 mm f/2.8 coming in second.  The 70-200 mm f/2.8 still saw duty and got some of my favorite shots.

Lighting was widely varied — from a well lit throne room to a dark, dank dungeon cell — but most challenging were the scenes where the space was strongly defined by the lighting, for instance a hallway defined by a strong diagonal lane of light across the stage.  The actors had obviously not had much time to acclimate  to the lighting and were frequently half in and half out of the light.  This resulted in their heads and torsos in shadow and their belt and below strongly lit.  It took some work with the gradient filter tool in Lightroom to save what could be saved.

Ultimately, this is one of the challenges with working with a show so early in its life and especially showcase productions that don’t have the leisure of more than one or two runs on the stage before opening night; the actors are still trying to figure out their environment.

This is one of the most challenging aspects of what I do.  How do I shoot a show I’m IN?

Richard III for The Queens Players at the Secret Theater in Astoria has been an incredible process.  Set in a punk rock club in London in the early ’80s, Richard is a tale of acting out and defying social norms and good behavior in the pursuit of power.  As with so much Off-Off-Broadway theatre, there hasn’t been near enough time, but skirting immodesty, we’ve got a very talented cast and director (Alberto Bonilla) that have been able to make the most of the time we have.  There’s also the band.  It is hard to imagine a show that is made worse by live music and these guys bring the music of the era come to life adding an amazing energy to the show.

There’s also the look.  Our set IS a nightclub.  Everything is perfect.  I’ve been in this club before.  The band posters and graffiti are so evocative of the era.  And then there’s the costume, make-up and hair design.  They are dead on.  Sue Waller is a serious fashion designer making her first foray into costuming and the aesthetic is right up her alley.  Emily Lambert is responsible for hair and make-up design and just knocked it out of the park.  As an actor, these things are all wonderful — they help us live in the world of the show without feeling like you’re making excuses for what is not there.  The less you have to worry about what is not there or feeling that you’re pretending that you’re in the right setting or the right clothes the easier it is to just be.

And as a photographer?  The images come alive!  There is no acting when the band is playing — they are a band playing music, it’s honest and dynamic.  The actors have such intense looks, it’s hard to get a bad picture of them!

The challenge, as I noted above, is that I’m in the show.  I wanted to get the shots, but I couldn’t go into the house and I had to give myself adequate time to prepare for my scenes and make my changes.  Unfortunately, this meant I only got coverage of a few scenes.  But what I got, I’m really happy with!  The lighting is all over the place (in a good way) — straddling theatrical and club lighting, so there are extreme color casts and starkly lit scenes that kept me on my toes, but ultimately added to the overall look.

Nylon Fusion’s double header is coming up in a couple weeks!