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Water Crisis Brings Theater Event to Charleston

Theater has often been a means to convey a particular message. Since ancient times, it has been used to teach lessons, understand important events, tell…

Theater has often been a means to convey a particular message. Since ancient times, it has been used to teach lessons, understand important events, tell stories, and provide entertainment for its audience, and one company comes to Charleston this summer to start a dialogue with West Virginia…about water.

On January 9, 2014, an estimated 10,000 gallons of MCHM, a chemical used to clean coal, spilled into West Virginia’s Elk River. The result was catastrophic, leaving 300,000 West Virginian’s in the Kanawha Valley with unusable tap water. Coincidentally, that same day in Brooklyn, New York, the New Brooklyn Theater, a company whose mission is to perform theater wherever theater is uniquely needed to move forward public conversations, opened a production of Edward Albee’s, The Death of Bessie Smith inside the Interfaith Medical Center in Bed-Stuy when it was threatened with closure. The company was founded three years ago by artistic director, Jonathan Solari, and he was already thinking about what the company might perform next, as news of West Virginia’s water crisis reached him.

“Immediately I was bombarded with emails from activists in New York who were from West Virginia,” Solari said, “tweets and all sorts of things, photos of the brown water in the bathtubs. And I was just thinking, what is going on? So we did a little bit more research as information became available or information did not become available, and started speaking with people who were either from Charleston, from West Virginia, and started getting a sense of it.”

Solari and the rest of the New Brooklyn Theater chose Henrik Ibsen’s, An Enemy of the People hoping it would address the water crisis and act as a platform for the citizens of Charleston to speak out about what’s been happening. As part of their motto, the New Brooklyn Theater likes to perform in unusual spaces, and for this piece, they will be building a site-specific stage on the Kanawha River at the Public Access Dock in Porters Hollow in Charleston.

“We’re doing a new adaptation that we’re creating ourselves with our playwright, Jeff Strabone, who’s also on the board of directors of our theater company,” Solari said, “so now we’re trying to ground this great story in West Virginia in a way that speaks directly to our audience and to this situation. We’re performing on an extension that we’re building up to the public access dock next to the Frontier building, so boats are gonna be going by and we’re not going to be able to stop that and that’s just going to be part of our storytelling. You have to embrace all that.”

An Enemy of the People deals with a man named Dr. Stockmann, who’s been seeing symptoms in the town that have caused him concern. Thinking it could be the water at the local baths that is the basis of the local economy, he runs a test, finding out that the water is being polluted and has been for the last ten years.

“So the play is about his fight to try to bring that truth to the forefront. The way into the story is through a similar situation that we’ve been experiencing here since January. At the heart of it, it’s a play about a man who has to discover and come to terms with how difficult it is to do the right thing, but we do that through the lens of polluted water,” Solari said.

To help make their performances come to life, the New Brooklyn Theater casts local actors of the area in which they perform to give the story a more genuine feeling by having actors who have witnessed the issues first-hand.

“It’s been eye-opening,” Solari said, “you know, there’s only so much that we could do in terms of pre-production when we’re reading newspaper articles and listening to the radio. But to be on the ground first hand, to be able to collaborate with people that lived through it and continue to live through it and have those voices in the room as part of the collaborative process; that’s priceless to us.”

The key to the New Brooklyn Theater’s mission is creating a dialogue about current issues, and Solari says if they’re not trying to actually engage with their audience and directly addressing their concerns, then their not doing their job.

“When the play’s over, it’s not just where are we gonna eat right now, but actually something that you can carry with you and will hopefully empower our audience to take ownership for the decisions that are made that affect them. And to facilitate that conversation.”

An Enemy of the People will open on June 12^th.

Celebrating Shakespeare, 450 Years After His Birth

It was this month, 450 years ago, that the famous playwright William Shakespeare was born in Stratford Upon Avon.

“We have made Shakespeare our literature,” saidPat Conner a retired English professor from West Virginia University. He’s studied Shakespeare and his texts, and says there are many reasons people still flock to Shakespeare’s words even nearly 400 years after completing his last work. Conner says he made one such discovery when studying the play, “The Merchant of Venice.”

“He really does find a way to get inside of and to show a sympathetic view of almost every character,” said Conner.

West Virginia University is commemorating the anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth with a production of Henry IV. This production is a singular adaptation of two Shakespeare plays, Henry IV Part 1, and Part 2. To prepare for the production, some of WVU’s former acting students have returned to talk about special acting techniques used to perform Shakespeare.

One is called the Alexander Technique. Former WVU theater student Brian Edelman now teaches the technique to professional actors in New York City.

It includes using the body to relax and project your voice better when pronouncing Shakespearean dialogue. Edelman explains.

“The classic Alexander technique directions are let the neck be free so that the head can move forward and up, so the back can lengthen and widen,” said Edelman.

“Those are the classic, classic ways of approaching the work.”

While the students who learn the technique will be using this tool to help in reciting Shakespeare, Edelman says this technique can help in many walks of life.

“People with pain use it a lot, dancers use it, singers use it. It’s really good for anyone. People sit at a desk all day, it’s really big for them,” said Edelman.

Edelman says many people, when they hear the name William Shakespeare, get preconceived ideas about what to expect from a production. And he says that isn’t always a positive reaction. But over time, he says his appreciation for Shakespeare has grown.

“I love Shakespeare because the poetry is so good that when you’re saying these lines, the sounds that you’re making is the action that you’re playing, is what you’re trying to get from the other person. So there’s all this great alliteration, and it really becomes the third character in a scene. That’s what I love about it,” he said.

Along with the play, The West Virginia University Rare Book Room will hold an exhibition of William Shakespeare’s First Folio. This is a collection of 36 of the Bard’s plays, including Henry IV. That book was published in 1623.

The folio exhibition will be at the Robinson Reading Room, on April 23, at 2:30 pm.

More information about the play performances can be found here.

Theater fans statewide mourn loss of Theatre WV

Some fans of the stage are already feeling the loss of one of the state's largest theaters. With the loss of Theatre West Virginia, state theater buffs…

Some fans of the stage are already feeling the loss of one of the state’s largest theaters.

With the loss of Theatre West Virginia, state theater buffs are already feeling the pain. A former employee says he’s going to miss what it brought to Southern West Virginia.

Jim Stacy is a Morgantown lawyer, and Beckley native, who spent several years going to shows at Theatre West Virginia.

He even worked on its house staff for a short time. He says upon hearing the news the program is closing its doors, one emotion immediately came to mind.

“It genuinely made me sad. Living there, being a kid who started loving theater early, that was the first place I saw there. It was a very special place to see theater, because of the setting. That beautiful outdoor backdrop. To see that end, takes a little piece of me away, I think,” he said.

Stacy says it brought a great deal to not only fans of theater, but to all southern West Virginians.

“We have to be able to think about what’s going to be able to boost the culture of a state, of the region, of the nation, it’s the arts that always do that,” said David Beach, an English professor at West Virginia University and a director at M.T. Pockets Theatre in Morgantown. It’s a community theater company.

Theatre West Virginia flourished in the Beckley area for more than 50 years.