Directors Jon Lawrence Rivera and Jules Aaron
Marry Me a Little and The Last Five Years, presented by Producing Artistic Director Tim Dang for East West Players. Performances Wed.-Sat., 8 pm; Sun., 2 pm; through June 21. Tickets: $45-$50. David Henry Hwang Theater, 120 Judge John Aiso St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. Call 213.625.7000 or visit eastwestplayers.org.
For the closing show of the East West Players’ 43rd season, Producing Artistic Director Tim Dang wished to continue the tradition of presenting an annual Stephen Sondheim musical. Since the composer’s Marry Me a Little is a compilation of songs cut from some of his Broadway shows, it is a one-act musical so Dang added Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years. Both stories center on the relationship between a man and a woman. To helm the shows, Dang called upon two veteran directors who have worked previously for EWP. Jules Aaron (Master Class) directs Marry Me a Little, with Mike Dalager and Jennifer Hubilla in the cast. Jon Lawrence Rivera (Mixed Messages, The Joy Luck Club) is guiding Michael K. Lee and Jennifer Paz in The Last Five Years.
Aaron and Rivera took time out of their separate rehearsals last week to answer a few questions asked by LA Stage… and by each other.
LA STAGE: What attracts you to a project?
JON LAWRENCE RIVERA: I am attracted to works that challenge me as an artist. And if the story excites me in some way.
LAS: Why did you want to do the piece you are directing at East West?
JULES AARON: Why direct Marry Me a Little at East West? At lunch with (EWP Artistic Director) Tim Dang one and a half years ago, I mentioned I directed the project. Tim is a big Sondheim fan and the intimacy of the piece appealed to him. Then the evening grew to include The Last Five Years, pairing the master of contemporary composers and the rising status of Brown’s music. Two couples in two one acts, each coping with being alone in two different styles.
JLR: I am directing The Last Five Years (L5Y) because Tim Dang asked me. After doing Jason Robert Brown’s Songs for a New World many people have come up to me saying I should do L5Y. Then other productions started sprouting all over the place. So I’m not sure I can do anything more with the show that other directors haven’t done already. When EWP asked me to do it… I found the “uniqueness” of this production. Previous productions employed Caucasian actors in the roles of “Jewish” Jamie and “Shiksa Goddess” Cathy. Now, we’re having Asian American actors play those roles (with Jason making only one word alteration).\
LAS: What do you bring to a new work?
JA: In terms of new works, I was trained at NYU where I have a PhD. in theatre history, criticism and dramaturgy. Much of my career has been built on developing new works. Recently we developed Great Expectations, a new musical at Backstage at the Hudson, Florida Rep and then at the Odyssey. We just found out we’ll be opening the season at Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2010. We hope it’s a first regional step to New York. That’s the step by step development most new shows need.
JLR: I love doing new work. It’s an environment I am comfortable in. Basically I bring my sensibilities to a new work: my emotional connection to the piece, my aesthetics, my logical response and my gut reactions.
LAS: How essential is it to have the playwright at rehearsals on a never before produced play?
JA: I love having the playwright during the first week to 10 days and then have them back for run-throughs later in the process. It varies with how much rewriting needs to occur. But there needs to be a time when I’m alone with the actors so they can feel free to explore. But I welcome the input of the writers-I’m a conduit to telling their story.
JLR: The playwright is very essential at rehearsals. In fact, with new work I insist the playwright be at most of the rehearsals (not every day; there are moments you want the actors to breathe a little and explore freely without the gaze of the playwright). Playwrights are very useful when clarifying things. They’re not very helpful when they suffocate actors’ instincts and director’s choices. I love working with playwrights who know the true meaning of collaboration.
LAS: How do you select actors? With actors unfamiliar to you what do you look for that will insure getting the performance you need?
JA: In casting, I prefer to use a casting director who knows my taste and with whom I have a working relationship. In LA, I use both Michael Donovan and Julia Flores. While I often suggest actors I want to see, I trust them to whittle down the number of actors to a manageable amount. It’s hard, truthfully, after 35 years to sit through generals but when I’m out of town I very often don’t know the casting pool and welcome seeing a larger group of actors. I look for actors who bring a positive energy into the room (the cast and I will spend considerable time together) and who make strong educated (by the script) choices and who take adjustments well (and who look like their picture).
JLR: Criteria number one for me: fearlessness. I love actors who make bold choices, even if they may be off the mark. I love them more than passive, inactive actors (the ones who have not thought of their character and their character’s choices before coming to rehearsal).
LAS: Do you prefer using actors you have worked with before?
JLR: There are actors I want to keep working with. Jennifer Paz is one of them. This is our third collaboration: Songs for a New World, Palm Fever (by Jean Colonomos) and now L5Y. But I also love working with people I have never worked with. I have enjoyed watching Michael K. Lee in several productions. So when this opportunity to work with him came up, I was thrilled. I think we inspire and challenge each other. So that’s good!
JA: I love working with actors again and it’s a joy to have a shared process-especially in some of the short rehearsal periods we have now. In the recent three-week schedule of Wait Until Dark at the Norris, it was reassuring to work with the wonderful Libby West again and I was familiar with the work of the other two leads. On the other hand, discovering new talent is exciting (e.g. discovering Matt Walker 20 odd years ago caused me to build a production of Taming of the Shrew around his “surfer dude” that wanders into a Shakespearean production.)
LAS: How do you decide on design elements? Have you ever done a production with minimalistic design? If so, can that strengthen the play?
JLR: This production of L5Y is very minimalistic, a baby grand with two chairs on stage. That’s it. I love working minimally. I think it’s my training in 99-seat theatres. Let the actors tell the story not the scenery. I think it forces the audience to focus on the text/lyrics. One of my all time favorite works is Into the Woods at the Actors’ Co-op where I used 45 ladders all over the stage as trees (courtesy of set designer Gary Lee Reed). They’re in the woods… let them climb those trees! I hated the idea of having painted trees that look great but function nothing more than scenery (yawn). And I love stretching audience’s imagination. If you say those ladders are trees, and the actors only look at them as trees, they’re trees!
JA: As with actors, I’m a collaborator with designers-make me look good, help me tell the story well whether it’s a basement West Village apartment in the ’60s in Wait Until Dark or an upper West Side apartment in the present in Marry Me a Little. Minimalism is fine for the right project or right budget as long as it houses the story well and lets the audience fill in the details.
LAS: Doing a musical, how much do you rely on a choreographer and a musical director? What other factors must be considered with a new musical work?
JA: I’ve focused on musicals in the last 10 years (especially new ones). You must create a team with a musical director and choreographer because the story in a good musical is carried in the songs. I’ve worked frequently with (choreographers) Lee Martino, Kay Cole and B.P. Mendoza because they solidify the story thorough movement. All three have wit and the ability to make strong quick choices. Only two or three times have I staged myself. For Marry Me a Little, the movement is so character driven and personal that I’ve staged it myself so there’s a stronger connection of movement with the inner lives of the characters (which is only sketchily given by Craig Lucas) and what they specifically do in their everyday activities and in their fantasies. My sharp assistant Allison Bibicoff is a choreographer and if I need a time step, twirl or fancy footwork, she’ll fill in the blanks or give me another point of view. And what to say about the musical direction? It’s the heart of a musical. In Marry Me a Little, Marc Macalintal keeps the integrity of Sondheim’s music yet helps me drive this odd, wonderful piece forward. In a new musical work it’s much more complex-especially if the musical director is arranging the score. In Great Expectations, writers Steve Lane and Richard Winzeler have brought Daryl Archibald aboard who’s the prince of arrangers. Daryl knows how to propel Dickens’ complex action through orchestration.
JLR: My musical director and choreographer are my best friends during the process. But they have to support my ideas not the other way around. Choreographer Kay Cole is a wonderful collaborator because she breathes with me when we are working on a show together. Same with Brent Crayon (MD) who makes me hear the songs with the emotional depth I’m hearing. Even though I’m not working with either one of them for this project, I have been blessed to work with Music Director Marc Macalintal who brought so much of his genius to this production. He makes the show sound so amazing.
LAS: What do you do to inject new life into a tried and true classic?
JA: How to inject new life into a classic? Leave it alone unless your concept layers the story to make it more immediate and available. But there’s a reason it’s a classic-it’s good. The concept of the recent Broadway production of All My Sons drained the life out of it. From a New York Times article, it was obvious the director dislikes the show. Write your own play and leave poor Shakespeare, Chekhov, Miller and Williams alone! They know how to write.
JLR: I always look at tried and true classics as new work. I invest as much into them as if my production is the first production. I ask all the questions. Why do the characters say what they say? Do they mean what they say? I investigate what doesn’t quite work for me. And I wonder why they worked in other productions. I hate responses like “that’s the way it’s been done.” I don’t buy that. Not because it’s always been done one way; it’s the only way to do it. Where is the artistry? I don’t want to re-create Elia Kazan’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire. That was a very good production. But I’m not Kazan. I’m a Filipino American director in the 21st century with very different sensibilities. I want my own original stamp on it.
LAS: What project would you like to do in the future that is different than anything you have done previously?
JLR: I am veering more into big musicals and investigating how I can do them minimally. I am working on Miss Saigon in the fall with only rice paper sliding panels as the set. No helicopter in sight. Oh you’ll hear it, you’ll feel it but you won’t see it (frankly you don’t need to see it). I’d love to do A Little Night Music a-la-John Doyle (which I’ve pitched to several theatres). One of my biggest wishes is to do Les Miserables in an intimate setting. I’ve been jonesing to do that!
JA: I’d like to dramaturge and direct a new musical from the ground floor. There are two different teams I’m talking to now. That would be a true collaboration!
LAS: Jon, what would you like to ask Jules?
JLR: I have been a great admirer of Jules’ work for years. The only question I have for him is this: How do you maintain such a respectable career? You’re an inspiration.
JA: I try to only develop or direct material that means something to me and touches me in a personal way. Through my long, long career, my work has ranged from Shakespeare to developing new musicals. I thrive on variety. But if I come back to a show I’ve done before-like Marry Me a Little done previously over 26 years ago at SCR-I try to rethink it for the specific actors and theatre. (That incidentally is something Jon does very well himself.) My question to Jon is as the Artistic Director of Playwrights’ Arena and a working director and being involved with other projects, how do you manager to balance everything?
JLR: Pot calling the kettle black. Jules is the master at juggling several projects. I’m just keeping up with him. By managing time very carefully and really honoring what “free” time I get. Playwrights’ Arena is my artistic home. It’s really a part of me. So it’s always on my mind 24/7. I don’t even think of it as work but an extension of me. Time management really comes to play when I am directing for other theaters (which I love!), and in particular when directing at universities. It’s challenging when there is no “wiggle” room in the schedule, like actors in universities can only rehearse at night. So if I am working for another theatre at the same period, I hope those actors can work during the day. Then it’s juggling the time between projects and making sure I have time to eat, sleep and breathe in between. And the “rest” period is key. I do take at least one day off from each project. I’m very grateful if I can have one full day away from the theatre to re-charge. Time to restore my sanity. And everything gets balanced once more.
