 Welcome to the Valley Advocate Podcast, featuring interviews that take us deeper into the people and happenings on the local scene. For more podcasts and a closer look at what's going on in the Valley, visit us at valleyadvocate.com. Hello and welcome. My name is Dave Eisenstetter, editor of the Valley Advocate, and this is the Valley Advocate Podcast that we do in collaboration with Amherst Media. I'm here with arts and culture editor, Gina Bevers. Yep, and we are here with Chris Roman, our columnist for stage stroke. He's one of our famous columnists. Thank you for coming. Thank you. I'm writing about the Pietra. Yes, Pietra. Yes, Pietra. Of course. Yeah, and you've been, and you know, we talked a few weeks ago, I think, and you were telling me how you've been doing this for decades. I have been doing it for decades. Yeah, like about as long as the Advocate's even been around, almost. Longer than you've been alive. That could be a possibility. Yeah, I started writing for the Advocate. I grew up in the theater and then I kind of drifted into music. I was a singer-songwriter for a while, lived in England for 10 years, worked, did a show for three summers at the Edinburgh Fringe, which was very cool, and came back here and kind of drifted back into the theater, not so much as a performer, as a critic, and I just sort of fell into that because the Advocate was looking for a theater critic, and as a director more recently. Are you a good actor? No. Is that why you became a critic? When I was a freshman in college after all, when I was a kid, I only wanted to be an actor, not a policeman or a fireman or anything like that. And then when I was a freshman in college, I had this epiphany, and I realized that I knew a lot of professional actors because I grew up in a Shakespeare festival in my hometown, and I realized that I was not as good as them, and they were not getting work in New York. So I figured, no, this is probably not a good career choice, and by that time I was writing songs and singing, you know, folks singing kinds of things, and so I went that way for 15 years. That's terrific. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And you're directing. Yeah, and 15 years ago now, Time Flies, I was teaching at PVPA, the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts High School, teaching criticism, and the head of the theater department said, we've got a slot in the spring, would you like to direct a show? And I said, yeah, I've been sitting there watching shows for all these years, sitting in the critic's seat and thinking, now, why isn't this working? What would I do if I directed this show? And so I said, yeah, sure, I'll do it. And 12 years in a row at PVPA, I did kind of alternative kind of productions, starting with Brecht and going through Shakespeare and all kinds of stuff. That's really interesting. So what's the difference between sitting in the critic's seat and being one being critiqued? It drives you nuts because, you know, both sides of the brain are going at once. Because when I'm reviewing a show, I really, really try not to think, how would I direct this? But I can't help thinking as a director and dramaturg. So I often, I like to read a play in advance so that I'm not, so I'm watching the production and not the play itself, because I want to report on what the show actually is. And I try to give a sense of the show from a more or less objective point of view, because people want to know, like, what it's about, what the background is, what to expect if they go. But also give them a sense of the show, because most of the people who read my stuff are probably not going to see a given show. So part of my job is as a reporter. So you've done Brecht, and my understanding is you're doing Tartuffe coming up, is that right this spring? My current production project is a new musical version of Molière's Tartuffe, written by Jeff Olmsted, a local musician. And it's just, Tartuffe is 400 years old. It was first performed in 1664. And it just keeps getting more and more topical, because it's about this con man who worms his way into the household of a wealthy provision and posing as this very pious religious man. And so it's all about religious hypocrisy and conning. But also he's found out because he has the hots for this man's wife. And he can't keep his libido in his pants, so to speak. And so the way she catches him, calls him out, is by pretending to bring him on while the husband is hiding under the table. And so there's this seduction scene where she actually says, you know, if a woman says no, she really means yes. Which is all about what's going on in the Me Too era. So we talk about that in rehearsal. And it's a comedy, almost a farce. There's lots of physical comedy in it. And the songs are terrific. But it really has a lot of serious things to say about our world today, without really changing anything. So it kind of marries both worlds for you, music and theater. That's right, yeah, yeah. I told the composer, I told Jeff, that he's probably not used to working on a show where the director is also a songwriter. I thought about that because I'm like, how do you create, if you're non-musical and you're directing a musical, how does that even fit in your brain? So for you, it would be, it's probably pretty simple. It might get him mad. Well, yeah. We spent some time doing some revisions on the script and some of the lyrics and the songs and some of the structure of the piece. Because he's a terrific songwriter and composer and he runs a couple of choirs here in the valley. But he's not a playwright. And he's done a great job adapting Molière's script. But we tinkered with it a little bit. Do you feel like you like the really old stuff? I mean, I remember reading Tartuffe in school, my history of drama class. And I think Tartuffe was probably the very first thing you read, like that's old it is. And I mean, do you like looking back or do you think there's a lot of good kind of contemporary stuff too? Well, both. Shakespeare is my guy. I grew up in a Shakespeare festival, as I said. I love Shakespeare because he knows so much. He's so wise. He writes such great play. I mean, he's just, you know, just as structurally and dramatically Shakespeare's plays are indestructible. And, but also- I like how to run one over. The thing that I like about Shakespeare also is that he has this relationship with the audience. His characters don't pretend that there's a fourth wall up there and they're pretending to be in a whole different part of town than the audience. Cause actors share that space. You talk to actors and they say, tonight's show, the audience was quite different even though they just sat there quietly until a curtain call. But you feel it. You're sharing a room with the audience and Shakespeare explicitly shares the room with the audience. I mean, his actors were out there on the stage of the globe right there and the audience was like standing on the ground and they could touch the actors and they heckled and hooded and made comments and all of that. So it was very rough and tumble. But the scripts, even if you don't do it that way, it's implicit that the audience is right there. And that's the way I like to direct a show. So there are lots of asides that Molière put into his show and more that we've added, the audience is the first, the first scene is a party and the family comes in and they're expecting the guests and the guests aren't there because they're not in the cast, they're in the audience. Is there anything that we could be doing to be better audience members instead of just sitting there? I would not encourage you to stand up and heckle. Okay, all right, no heckling. Yeah, and engaged audience, pay attention and the interchange with not an audience participation kind of audience, the interchange is your eyes and ears and brain engaged in the show and the audiences pick up on that. If you're not paying attention, they know. They partly know because you're coughing and whispering and checking your phone. Gosh, you're not gasping when the knife comes out right before the murders. And yeah, yeah, that's right, yeah. And you're not laughing or whatever, yeah. So you've seen a lot of stage productions. Good God. Was that a statement of obvious? Captain obvious statement? I see a hundred plays a year and it used to be 150, but I'm getting older. You'll tear it down to 93. But you know, I consider myself so lucky to live here. I lived in New York for a while. I lived in London for a long time and I grew up in a small college town and it's great to be in this valley where it's a small college town in many ways but it's also not a megalopolis but a cultural metropolis. And there must be a dozen small semi-professional and professional theater companies that do shows occasionally here in the valley alone. And then of course the Berkshire's explodes during the summer and the two great companies in Hartford Theater Works and Hartford Stage. And I see as much of everybody's work as I can. Wow, so out of all those shows, what's your, which one do I ask first? Favorite or least favorite? Which one would you like to answer? Well, I anticipated this question. So I have a kind of short list of favorites. For instance, and I wrote it down. Chester Theater Company is way up in the hills in Chester. It's like 40 minutes from anywhere but they are so good. They're in this tiny little theater and they do great work with small cast, thoughtful plays. And they did a show, they did a couple of shows this summer but I guess my favorite out of those was a thing called Skeleton Crew by Dominique Morisseau about people, it takes place in the break room of an auto plant in Detroit that is about to be closed down. Wow. And all African-American cast, which is really rare in these parts. Where do they find all the African-Americans? They hire them from New York and Boston. So there's not too many black actors who live around here and especially professionals. If they wanna work, they gotta go away. That's pretty remarkable. But it's really great that actors are willing to come here and do great work. And another show that's right on the top of my list is The Tempest Shakespeare at Shakespeare & Company. Which they did an outdoor production of it. They used to have this big outdoor stage down the road at the mount but now they're on their own property in Lenox. And they started doing shows in little enclosed space but outdoors on a really simple stage. And it was so imaginative and so lively. And the two young lovers, Miranda and Ferdinand were played by two wonderful young actors. Ella Loudon and Dion Gryffin Sanders. I think his name is. He's black, she's white. They made no bones about it whether they weren't trying to make a point. But Shakespeare & Company, of all the companies here in this area is the one that is really pioneering color blind casting. Where you cast the best actor for the part and you just let the audience participate in that reality or lack of reality. And the two of them together were so cute and so lively and Miranda Prospero's daughter is often played as, oh daddy, what's going on? And she's not like that. So that was one of my favorites. And there's a company out in the, we're starting to get into one of my hobby horses which is women in theater. Nationwide, there's something like 60 or 70% of the plays that are produced by professional companies are written by men. Almost all of them are mostly about men. Most of the playwrights are men. Most of the directors are men. And a lot of companies here are really consciously doing something about that. And one of them is called WAM Theater. And they specialize in plays by and about women. And they hire women directors and all of their plays are centrally about a woman and a revival that they did this past year is called Emily the Contest de Châtelet that defends herself tonight, something like that. And it takes place in the age of Voltaire. She was a lover of Voltaire, but she was also a scientist and a really smart woman and they did a wonderful production of that. Yeah, well, I just wanted to say really quick that I really, I always look of your columns that you do throughout the year. I really look forward to the ones where you look back at, I think you call them the trifectas, right? Where they have women involved directing, acting, writing and actors of color as well. The trifecta is the term that I use for in the column that I write every year about women in theater. And so far, the trifecta is playwright, director and a woman at the center of the play, not just a lead part, but very often there's like two women and men. But for instance, Emily is really about Emily. And so that's the trifecta because there were quite a few. There's something like nine shows last year where that was true. Ask me about the worst play. Okay. What's the worst play you've ever seen? I'll preface this by saying that the Williamstown Theater Festival is this old established summer theater up in Williamstown. And they've got a woman artistic director now, Mandy Greenfield, who is really trying to put on a lot of new shows and shows with women and about women and by women and also people of color. And some of the shows like aren't quite ready to put on. And so I didn't see all of their shows last year because it's a little far. But I have to say, the worst show of the season was this thing called Moscow, Moscow, Moscow, Moscow, Moscow, Moscow, Moscow. And it's- That's a bad start. That sounds like a Russian code. It's a comedy by, right? It's a comedy by Hallie Pfeiffer that's based on Chekhov's The Three Sisters. And it's called that because the Three Sisters sit around the whole play moaning about how they're out on the sticks and they're not in Moscow and they want to go to Moscow. And Moscow was so great and here is so terrible. And it's a kind of cool idea to do a little riff on this classic play. But it was like teenagers doing a skit on Chekhov. And it just wasn't funny. It was just totally, totally over the top. A comedy skit based on really depressing play by It was a chance and maybe it didn't pay off. It just didn't work. The three actresses were all great and they were like working their little hearts out. But on the other hand, there was another Chekhov riff last summer by Silverthorn Theater up in Greenfield called Stupid Fucking Bird. Oh good, I was hoping you were gonna bring that one up. Yes. Which is a riff on the seagull. And it didn't try to really take it apart. It wasn't a parody. Some of it was very funny. Some of it was very heartfelt. And it was directed by an amazing young woman director named Toby Berkovici. And that one worked really well. So you can make fun of Chekhov if you want. Yeah, that is funny. Do it right. Yeah, right, yeah. Yeah, so you've seen so many plays. Like what does it take these days to wow you, do you think? Wow. Energy, intelligence, some sense of trying to say something with a play, but to say it well. I'm not a fan of Adjit Prop Theater where we're going to make a point here. Right, right. I like good writing. That is not only meaningful, but also clever, witty, smart. And I love good acting. Every once in a while, there's an actor who comes along and I'm thinking of Ella Loudon, the Shakespearean company actor. And she comes on stage and she's so alive. And she's so totally present that you just want to look at her even when she's not talking. I love those moments. That's great. Have you ever written a play? Yeah, in third grade. Third grade, wow. That's funny. I wrote a play and thinking about it as a critic, I say, no, no, no, you don't want to do that. But no, no, because I see so many plays by so many good playwrights that I wouldn't want to try. But I'm a dramaturg. I've worked with playwrights on their plays, as I did with Jeff on Tartuff. So to that extent, I'm editorially. And the reason I like directing is because I can do that part, I can do the creative part, I can work with actors because writing, as you know, is a lonely business, so. Not here. That's why we do it in a big room with all of us. Yeah, and you have 10 square feet of space between you. Yes, yes, yeah, definitely. But yeah, so that, and theater is a collaborative venture and that's why I like working in it. Yeah, and directing too, is there one play that you really want to get your mitts onto and direct at some point that you haven't gotten to yet? I think the top of my bucket list is The Three Penny Opera by Brecht and Kurt Weill, which is about, well, it takes place in London in the early 19th century, but it's really about what happens under capitalism and how if you're poor, you get screwed and if you, but it's this delightful, witty, cynical musical. And I would just love to do it sometime. It sounds like you're in town to me. That's one of my, I don't know. It is, I, it's a, it has a bad title. I really like the musical You're in Town. Yeah, I think You're in Town owes a lot to Brecht. Yeah, it sounds like it, yeah. Also Candide, which is almost an operatic musical by Leonard Bernstein. And I'd love to do that sometime with singers, real singers. So what's next for you? Well, I'm working right now on Tartuff and we open on the 12th of April and run for two weekends at the Hawks and Reed Performing Arts Center in Greenfield, which is like- And on his face. Yeah, and it's become the hub of Greenfield's cultural renaissance. They're doing great work up there. Yeah, yeah. Programming. Well, thanks so much for coming by and thanks for your great writing every couple of weeks. So I really look forward to reading about the, as I know that lots of people do. Absolutely. You've got a following after your decades of work. So thank you. Both of my fans, thank you too. No, no, it's really great to have this platform and the Advocates readership. And branching out into online is also really great because not only do I contribute to the paper itself, but I can blog and review and so forth online. So that's a real gift as well. So thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Our pleasure. Thanks, Chris. Nice one, thanks. Thanks for listening. And don't forget to visit us at valleyadvocate.com. Thank you.