Leslie Hart Apprentice 2007: An Immersion Experience at.

Leslie Hart Apprentice 2007:

An Immersion Experienceat

Welcome to Madison…

…Home of Asbury…

…and Asbury Hall…

…The F. M. Kirby Shakespeare Theatre…

(A converted gymnasium on the campus of Drew University)

…The Kirby Gift Shop…

Home of t-shirts, season play scripts, and the William Shakespeare Action Figure

…The Dorothea Young Center for the Arts…

(a.k.a “The Doyo”)

…The Call Board…

Information central for rehearsal and crew schedules

…and…

The Production Office

Crisis Control CenterJob description:

• Everything from hiring designers to waxing theatre seats

• Home of the heavy lifters

Responsibilities of Production Crew

• Transporting 300 champagne flutes to the kitchens to be washed for Opening Night receptions

• Fielding phone calls from designers and theatre staffers

• Repairing quick-change tents at the outdoor stage after a thunderstorm

• Tracking receipts, creating expense reports, and submitting financial statements through expensewire.com

• Hand-sewing Velcro on to a canvas backdrop for a touring production of Twelfth Night (and teaching a Production Intern how to sew)

• Filling in when apprentices on other crews fail to report for duty or need an extra helping hand (ex. Striking a 40 foot wall and stage platform at the Outdoor Stage)

The Outdoor Stage at The College of Saint Elizabeth

home of the “Rude Mechanicals”

And their rehearsal of A Midsummer Night’s Dream

I helped raise this lofty wall…and ultimately helped destroy it as well.

The View from BACKSTAGE

Northwestern alumnus Dick Wood (pictured in orange)

designed the all-weather set

Hard at work testing the elastic on the fairy wigs (above) and sewing ornamentation onto fairy sneakers

(below)

A Midsummer

Night’s Donkey

…Beating the heat in Jersey in July

Surveying the amphitheatre during tech rehearsal. The actors continuously ran up and down the four cement stairwells throughout

the theatre.

The Scene Shop:Livingston, New Jersey

Mission:

to inventory the entire chair collection of

The Shakespeare Theatre of

New Jersey.

Mission Accomplished.

Opening Night parties…they’re all about networking…

and the (donated) Cabot cheese.

The Shakespeare Theatre is rumored to have the best opening night parties in the state –

Thanks to the Apprentices who arrive early to set up, make sure the pound cake is replenished, and usher revelers home after the actor van leaves.

Who put Chris in charge of the keg?

Opening Night parties are the perfect opportunity to chat with the actors, eavesdrop on critics, watch

subscribers horde the hors d’oeuvres, and request a meeting

with the artistic director.

Cocktail dresses were part of the required wardrobe…

Prospective Juliets rehearsing the balcony scene beneath the sapphire lanterns and above the Shakespearean quote wall.

Each Apprentice works one opening night, but all off-duty Apprentices are welcome to enjoy the party.

This picture pretty much sums up the entire summer for me…

Note the Apprentices in their party attire taking out the trash…

Robert Gomes and Caralyn Kozlowski in The Play's the Thing, 2007 © Gerry Goodstein

The Play’s the Thingdirected by Joe Discher

It’s all about the perfect peach…

Intermission pre-set for Ferenc Molnar’s farce.

Reviews were rapturous…the audience sadly absent.

Before…the castle interior.

Even the coat of arms had a name.

After…Apprentices maneuvering the

Genie lift.

This is the way we strike the set, STRIKE the set, strike the SET,

this is the way we strike the set so early Sunday morning…

Measure for Measuredirected by Jack Wetherall

Michael Milligan, David Manis, and Raphael Nash Thompson (Jake O'Connor and Roderick Lapid in background). 2007 © Andrew Murad

With a director from Canada’s Stratford Festival and a large cast of Wild Western

denizens, this production filled the seats but failed to

captivate the audience.

The Bald Sopranodirected by Matthew Arbour

Greg Jackson, Mary Bacon, and Angela Pierce in The Bald Soprano. Photo by Andrew Murad.

The only all-Equity cast of the summer featured a living room set inside a massive shipping crate and a very confused audience. Artistic

Director Bonnie Monte was questioned for selecting too modern of a choice for her classical theatre.

Apprentice Performances

King Henry VI Part I – Act I, Scene i.

First Apprentice Scene Night:Everything is Everything

Leslie Hart and

Jason Edward

Bobb in

Dates and Nuts

by Gary Lennon

DesiRed:The Directing Interns’ Scene

Night

Seth Gamble and Abbie Isaac in their process of Creating Tableaux

The Trojan Women

Chasya Hill as Hecuba

Chekhovian angst tableau for Uncle Vanya

Backstage

Leslie Hart as Armande in The Learned Ladies

Jenny McDowell as Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest

Fellow Apprentice Laura Stuart’s

Pre-Performance Warm-up Routine*

*in these pictures, I am wearing Laura’s sweater while she is wearing my shoes

Nice Work if You Can Get ItCompany Cabaret 2007

“An Exploration of Gender Identity in Shakespearean Drama”Adapted from Mulan

The LADIES…

…the MEN.

“We can hold trays just like they do.”

Even the casting director admitted our number was a “showstopper.”

Scheming Sisters:Shakespeare Scene Night

Heather Gorby as Regan and Leslie Hart as Goneril in the opening scene of King Lear

WANTED: photos

• Missing images of my Private Lives scene from Night at the Fights and my Learned Ladies scene from Desired.

…because I was busy taking the pictures…

Henry VI Part I

• SPTP coordinator and stage combat guru Stephen Davis worked harder for us than any other Shakespeare staffer, thus we designed a t-shirt (Top 10 Reasons Why We Love Stephen Davis) in his honor and presented it to him at the final dress rehearsal.

The entire Apprentice Company onstage – standing above the visage of King Henry V*

*The design for the floor is based on a picture of Hollywood actor David Conrad, star of the NJ Shakespeare season opener, Henry V

The Duke of Alencon squares off

against the

Duke of Winchester

The Duke of Alencon claims the throne.

(NB: This occurs in Shakespeare’s unpublished sequel,

Prince of the Blood)

The coffin of King Henry V

Sussex and Margaret of Anjou

Henry V’s funeral

The future Henry VI is doing double duty as an extra soldier to the right of the coffin.

The famousTemple Garden

scene, where the

Duke of Somersetconfronts the Duke of York, beginning the

War of the Roses.

STRIKE!The very last day…

Marcus gives in to exhaustion.

Victoria surveys the stage we mopped. Twice.

Masterclass!

Ballroom Dancingwith

Jeff Virchow and Tory Talbot

Stage Makeupwith the multi-talented Stephen Davis

BeforeAFTER!!!

Other Masterclasses…

• Included:– A talk back with the cast of The Play’s

the Thing– A Q&A session with the young

professionals in A Midsummer Night’s Dream- 6 hours worth of workshopping scenes

with artistic director Bonnie J. Monte- Epic Theatre with Devon Allen

Applying those stage combat skills…

Although we never actually had a day off,

we were occasionally able to reward a particularly demanding

day of crew work with a summertime treat…

The Nautilus Diner:Rehearsal Hall and Cast Party Central

…because no Immersion Experience in New Jersey is

complete without an authentic Jersey diner.

“Seven Belgian Waffles please!”

Parting Thoughts from Bonnie J. Monte

• At the beginning of July, I introduced myself to Bonnie Monte and asked if I could set up a meeting with her to find out more about her responsibilities as an artistic director –

– Her influence around the theatre was legendary and her employees both feared and revered her…I wanted to find out firsthand how Bonnie created such a spectacular theatre.

Due to extenuating circumstance, my meeting request was honored several weeks after the completion of my apprenticeship, and I returned to Madison with questions prepared for the woman directly responsible for the most informative six hours of my summer experience…

…I was not disappointed.

Before I could ask my first question, Bonnie said she’d tell me a little bit about her job first, and perhaps she might address some of my thoughts right off the bat…she then spoke for 45 minutes straight about her life

in the theatre.

• She described an artistic director as “the biggest picture” person

• She articulated a huge responsibility to her audience and the burden of honoring their emotions and intellect

• She explained that women see things differently, and how she seeks to be strong and compassionate as well as blunt and honest

• She reinforced that the artistic director is the person people go to, and how an artistic director encompasses ALL the art forms

• She explained that a Great Performances broadcast of The Seagull changed her life

• She expressed the value of working one’s way up and training as an artistic director through assisting other artistic directors in venues one would ultimately like to work

• Her most important criteria for the position is being “willing to do whatever it takes when no-one else will do the job”

I sought to advance my own life in the theatre through the wealth of experiences available to me in Madison that are not a part of the Northwestern theatre curriculum.

I sought to establish and broaden my network of contacts and collaborators within the theatrical world and experience firsthand the life of a professional regional theatre.

I sought a different kind of intensive training and the opportunity to work as an ensemble with a diverse group of actors who share my passion for classical theatre.

Not only did I experience these benefits and enhance my skill set as an actor while exercising my organizational talents in the Production Office, I fully realized that what I want more than any one major accomplishment onstage or behind the scenes is a life in the theatre.

If my own experience as an intern for Great Performances last summer and my most recent theatrical endeavor as an assistant director for Prof. David Bell’s Main Stage production of the Shakespearean musical comedy The Boys from Syracuse are any indication, my interest in striving for the ultimate job of artistic director continually strengthens.

Ideally, many more performance opportunities will lie along my path, but now that I have realized that acting alone will not always sustain my artistic and intellectual needs, I have an even higher goal in mind – to create, enable, and nurture theatre for appreciative audiences.

In applying for a Northwestern Immersion Grant for an Apprenticeship at

The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey,

Thank you, Bonnie J. Monte…

and

Thank you, Northwestern.

Leslie HartNorthwestern University School of Communication

Theatre, Class of 2008

November 2007