Reprinted from the October 6, 2010, issue of U.S. 1 Newspaper
Sitting around one of the tables at the then-empty cafe at George Street Playhouse, my conversation with actress Sandy Duncan very soon seemed like catching up with a friend of long standing. For me, it was long standing, as I remember seeing her delightful romp as Maisie in the Broadway revival of the musical of “The Boy Friend” back in 1970 and flying over my head as “Peter Pan,” again on Broadway nine years later. But, of course, she didn’t see me; she just has that warm and ingratiating persona that makes for instant relationships.
New Brunswick audiences, disappointed that she didn’t appear as planned in last May’s production of “Creating Claire,” can heave a sigh of relief as producer David Saint has invited her back to appear in “Circle Mirror Transformation,” which is now in previews and opens on Friday, October 8, to kick off George Street Playhouse’s 37th season. Last May Duncan had an unfortunate collision with a mismarked bottle of vitamin D, which prompted a nearly fatal overdose. She is grateful to local doctors for identifying the problem and taking swift action. Fortunately, she is now back, good as new.
“Circle Mirror Transformation” by Annie Baker was a major hit in New York’s last theater season. Produced Off Broadway by Playwrights Horizons, its run was extended a number of times, was nominated for Best Play by several critic groups, and won the OBIE Award for Best New American Play and an Emerging Talent Special Citation from the Drama Desk. This was Baker’s second play to make a big splash in New York City, garnering strong reviews and award nominations, all the more amazing considering how young she is; she was born in 1981.
The play is set in a small town in Vermont, in an exercise room in the town’s community center. The life of the play takes place over a span of six weeks of an acting class for adults. Duncan plays the teacher who leads a disparate group of locals in exercises that probably won’t produce actors and actresses, but certainly opens doors of understanding into their own psyches. As Duncan says, “It’s not really about an acting class. It’s a play about self discovery that happens through this acting class.” According to a press statement, these characters reveal secrets they never intended and are transformed in ways they never expected.
Though Duncan has never taught an acting class, “I don’t have the patience, not even for dance classes,” which were her first introduction to the world of theater, but two very special teachers in Texas and two more in her early New York City days had a deep impact on her life. “Some of the most valuable people in our society are teachers,” she says.
When Duncan was performing as Roxie Hart in the musical “Chicago” (1996) as a replacement cast member in that long-running Broadway show, she had an opportunity to make a public tribute. As she tells me about this, Duncan’s voice breaks. “I’m starting to cry.” One of her teachers, Uta Graham — “we called her Miss Utah” (pronounced with a Southern drawl) — attended a performance, for the first time seeing her former student in a big New York City theater. (She had seen Duncan in touring shows when they went to Dallas.)
At the curtain call, Duncan stepped forward, asking Miss Uta to stand, introducing her teacher to the rest of the audience, saying, “Every step I know is because of this woman.” Duncan remembers those classes with Miss Uta. “We did our exercises holding onto pool tables at the VFW hall.” Not too unlike the Vermont community center in “Circle Mirror Transformation.” This was a glorious moment. How often we don’t get around to thanking special people. Miss Uta died a year later.
Another teacher Duncan remembers with gratefulness is Zula Pearson, who taught at a community junior college in Jacksonville, Texas, which Duncan attended for one year. “She was an amazing teacher and taught a lot of people who ended up working in this business, including Tommy Tune. She absolutely got rid of my Texas accent before I came to New York. She just insisted.”
Duncan’s college career was cut short when she went to New York and got work in the theater right away. Her first New York shows were at City Center, and all were revivals: “Carousel,” “The Music Man,” Life with Father,” and “Finnian’s Rainbow.” At age 22 she replaced the leading lady in the popular Off Broadway rock musical, “Your Own Thing,” an updated version of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.” In New York City she studied with the legendary acting teacher Wynn Handman and voice teacher Jack Lee, both of whom she credits for a large part of her professional training.
Duncan was born in Henderson, Texas, and began performing professionally at age 12, as one of the princesses in a production of “The King and I.” She appeared in 24 shows in Dallas before she came to New York. It was the custom then for professional touring shows to bring in the stars and use local performers to fill in the supporting roles. This proved in actuality to be a very useful “acting class.”
Her dad ran a gas station and her mother was a stay-at-home mom with the dreams of an artist. “Mom should have had my life,” Duncan says. Her mother would spend hours making a beaded gown for her. “I think I was the only girl in Texas who had a hand-beaded gown.” She was also an artist and the then-governor of Texas bought one of her paintings. “She was very creative, but she got stuck in a time and place where she couldn’t get out,” Duncan says. “So, she sort of vicariously lived through me.” That’s a heavy burden.
“I know my mother’s life story more than my own because I’m carrying that with me, too. I became aware at one point that I wasn’t living the life she would have chosen; she would have done it differently.” Her mother’s story certainly helps her understand the needs of the characters in “Circle, Mirror.” “People are so emotionally tight. That’s where something creative can make a big difference. People can start to open up.”
She says she finds the style of Baker’s writing to be a challenge as it has concise directions to the actor, down to the length of a pause. “It has to be performed with the precision of choreography.” Certainly, Duncan has the dance background to master this material. And in life, she admits to being a neatness freak. As we talk, she spills the sugar packet when she sweetens her iced tea. Everything has to stop while she cleans this up. So “concise” should be no problem for her.
Duncan is probably best known for her television work in a number of television variety shows and series, including a musical adaptation of “Pinocchio” with Danny Kaye and Flip Wilson and “The Hogan Family.” She received Emmy nominations for “Funny Face” and a dramatic role in “Roots.” And no one could have missed her as the smiling spokeswoman for Wheat Thin crackers.
More recently she has done more straight dramas, including playing Amanda in a production of “Glass Menagerie” at the Mountain Playhouse in Jennerstown, Pennsylvania, and the Miss of the title in “Driving Miss Daisy” at Casa Manana Theater in her home state. Her teacher, Miss Zula, should note that a southern accent can come in handy sometimes. Other dramas and comedies have followed. In 2002 she starred in the A.R. Gurney play, “The Fourth Wall” at Primary Stages in New York City under the direction of George Street’s David Saint. That was a providential meeting.
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from U.S. 1 Newspaper by Lucyann Dunlap
When something needs to be done, ask the busiest person — or so the saying goes. And it often seems to be true. So it wasn’t surprising that when I got a call saying Sandy Duncan, scheduled to star in the title role of George Street Playhouse’s new play “Creating Claire,” was ill and couldn’t talk with me, but that playwright Joe DiPietro could fill in. (Due to Duncan’s illness, George Street announced that the actress will be replaced by 1992 Drama Desk Award winner and Tony nominee Barbara Walsh.)
I soon found myself chatting on the phone with DiPietro, indeed a very busy man. A look at his schedule would daunt almost anyone. Currently, however, he is focusing on one of his newest plays, “Creating Claire,” which goes into previews on Tuesday, May 18; opening night is Friday, May 21. Of course, he has paused occasionally to celebrate award nominations as they accrue for his current Broadway success, the musical “Memphis,” which received eight Tony nominations.
Last summer “Creating Claire” was workshopped at the Cape Cod Theater Project in Falmouth, Massachusetts, where professional theater directors and actors work with American playwrights, holding staged readings of their work in development. DiPietro then gave the draft to David Saint, George Street’s artistic director. “He read it and called me the next day saying, ‘I want to do it,’” says DiPietro.
DiPietro has enjoyed success at George Street before. In 2008 John Rando directed the musical “The Toxic Avenger” with book by DiPietro, music by David Bryan (of Bon Jovi fame), and lyrics by both of them. Dealing as it did with the swamps of home (New Jersey), it was a big success and emerged again Off Broadway, opening in April, 2009, also directed by Rando, to run for eight months and garner accolades, including the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off Broadway musical of the season.
Claire is a tour guide in an upstate New York museum of natural history. While making her usual spiel to the visitors regarding Darwin’s theories of evolution, she suddenly begins to include her own ideas regarding “intelligent design.” Her personal religious awakening has seeped into this very scientific world. In addition to infuriating her boss at the museum, who fires her, there are also repercussions with her husband and her daughter, who is autistic.
DiPietro says the idea for the play came to him when he saw a newspaper article about a group of religious fanatics who went to a natural history museum “Evolution of Life” tour. “They had peppered the guide with questions, pressing their agenda: ‘How do you know what you’re saying is right? How can you explain this?’” Realizing that most of these guides are “retirees or stay-at-home moms who want to get out of the house a few hours each day,” he could imagine how overwhelming this might be. “And maybe it might be more interesting if the tour guide herself began espousing these things. That started my journey writing this play.”
Following a theme that has been evidenced in a number of his previous plays, the humor and humanity of the situation appealed to DiPietro’s imagination. The playwright has been noted for his comic point of view since his school days in northern New Jersey, continuing through his college years — he graduated from Rutgers with a degree in English in 1984.
When I ask him about his own philosophy, he says, “I like to think of myself as a humanist. We writers need to empathize with our characters.” He says he feels that “Creating Claire” doesn’t take a particular political or religious side. “It’s a show about four people trying to make sense of their lives. As a dramatist, I try to understand everybody; I want to write four complete human people.” And we can count on DiPietro to also make the most of the humor in human behavior, even when they are being serious.
Claire’s husband is a religious agnostic. “What do you do when your spouse changes fairly drastically? He’d just like to get his normal life back.” This is an interesting description from the author of the hugely successful “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change.” This was the play that jumpstarted his career in the theater, opening on August 1, 1996, and playing for a record 5,003 performances. It has been performed all over the world, from Hong Kong to Los Angeles, from Barcelona to Budapest. This revue about suburbanites dating and marrying explores the irony that the “perfect mate” becomes someone else once their union is “legal.” Now, 15 years later, Pietro says, “People change. One needs to adjust.”
He thinks that audiences, whatever their religious beliefs, will follow the journey of each of the characters. This sounds very serious: science versus religion. “Perhaps I think we need both,” says DiPietro. “Humankind needs both. There are limits to each of them: how God deals with science and how science deals with God — it’s complex. That’s why I’m really proud of this one.” He has been working on the play for about three years, mostly thinking about it. “It wrote itself easily, which is usually a good sign to me.”
A lot of things seem to have come easily since his days growing up in Oradel, New Jersey. In high school his teachers discovered his talent and he won a national playwriting competition. His father was a banker (now retired); his mom was a stay-at-home mom until he and his sisters, one older, one younger, were out of the house. One of his creative genes came from his mom, who “has become quite a fine painter,” he says.
I first saw his work in 1994 at the American Stage Theater (no longer in existence) in Englewood, where a number of his first plays were produced. Off Broadway was next.
In 2005 DiPietro made his Broadway debut with the musical “All Shook Up,” a “jukebox musical” featuring the music of Elvis Presley. He wrote the book loosely based on Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.” (See how a degree in English literature can be helpful?) Though it ran for a month of previews and six months of regular performances, it wasn’t the hit that had been hoped for. He had worked on it for two years and was disappointed. Considering what to do next, he decided not to “lick my wounds and slow down,” but instead to write as much as he could as fast as he could. “It was a good life lesson. I know now. Just do your show. Write something that means something to you. Get people around you who you trust, and take it from there.”
One of those people he trusts is David Saint. “He’s a terrific guy and a top rate director,” says DiPietro. “He creates a very creative and fun rehearsal room, loves theater and theater people, and can turn anyone into a believer in what he’s doing. Once in a while he’ll give a direction and I’ll think, ‘I’d never thought of it that way. This is much better than my original idea.’”
Once “Creating Claire” is underway, he has a busy schedule for the summer that will have him traveling a lot. That post-”All Shook Up” writing marathon is paying off. Hands-on with the George Street production of “Creating Claire,” he will also do the same for “Falling for Eve” an Off Broadway musical he was commissioned to write for the York Theater. A retelling of the Adam and Eve story, it opens Tuesday, July 6.
At some point, he’ll go to Chicago to see the production of his play “Fucking Men,” which opens Saturday, June 26. He explains the title, sort of: “I wrote this as a writing exercise, never expecting it to be done because it calls for an economically unfeasible 10 actors, has no lead role to attract a star, and I gave it an aggressive title.” (“Aggressive” is one word for it.) However, it was produced successfully in London this past fall. He describes it as a gay twist on the Schnitzler play “La Ronde.”
DiPietro’s friend and everyone’s favorite TV mother from “Happy Days,” Marion Ross, asked him to write a play for her and her husband, who are both in their 80s. He was a little anxious about writing for someone he knows. “What if it’s not good?” However, they performed “The Last Romance” last year in Kansas City and it went “really well,” he says. Now the play is being mounted at San Diego’s Old Globe Theater, opening Friday, July 30, for its West Coast premiere.
Undeterred by all this activity, he and David Bryan, his collaborator on “Toxic Avenger” and “Memphis,” are working on another musical, this one about songwriters in the early ’60s titled “Sing the Song.” As with “Memphis,” the music is new, but “inheriting the soul of the old music” of that particular time. Explaining how this worked on “Memphis,” he says, “Know the time period but write a score through modern ears. Some of the chord progressions would not have happened in the ’50s. It sounds like the ’50s but it’s not rock and roll, it’s much more sophisticated than that.”
There’s also talk of a film adaptation of “Memphis.” DiPietro says, “I think it’ll happen; we should be selling the rights soon. And I hope I’ll be able to write the first draft or two of the screenplay.” But he admits that he doesn’t understand the film world and definitely feels more at home in the theater. “I love theater and am fortunate to be able to work in it. During the ’70s when I was growing up, my folks took me to see shows. I saw ‘Annie,’ ‘Shenandoah,’ ‘The Elephant Man,’ ‘The Wiz.’” So theater was never that foreign to me, and I always loved it. This is a good argument for exposing your kids to culture.”
He assures me that he has lots of ideas for new projects “ruminating” in his mind but he does hope to take a breather once his summerfull of shows is over. He says he plans to “throw” his dog Rocko (an eight-year-old pug) into his car and “get away from New York and my life” to his Connecticut home. He plans to relax — and write, of course.
George Street Playhouse has always attracted high caliber artists on and off our stage. We also work with burgeoning talents who maintain successful careers in New York on and off Broadway.
This year, GSP alumnae have accumulated a collective 8 2010 Tony Nominations for their work, and you saw them here...FIRST
Joe DiPietro and David Bryan are nominated twice this year for their musical Memphis, (technically bringing our alumni total to 10.) Mssrs. Bryan and DiPietro are both nominated for their score, while Bryan is also nominated for his Orchestrations (with Daryl Waters) and Joe DiPietro is nominated for his book to the musical.
Joe's currently working on Creating Claire here this month, and you saw their Toxic Avenger here last season.
Earlier this season we presented the musical Calvin Berger. The set designer for that show, Derek McLane, won last year's Tony for 33 Variations, and was represented on Broadway this year with three shows Ragtime, The Miracle Worker and Million Dollar Quartet, and was recognized for his tiered set for Ragtime.
Speaking of Calvin Berger, Martin Pakledinaz who created the chic high school fashions for our cast, is nominated this year for his costume design on Ken Ludwig's farce Lend Me A Tenor.
In another design category Robert Wierzel was nominated for his lighting design in the musical Fela! Mr. Wierzel was here two years ago with Theresa Rebeck's play The Scene.
Don Holder's lighting design for Come Fly Away is also nominated. Mr. Holder, who is incredibly busy on Broadway, was last at George Street Playhouse in 1998 during Voices in the Dark.
In Acting Categories, Rosemary Harris and Maria Dizzia are nominated this year in the Featured Actress in a Play. Ms. Harris who was here in Oscar and the Pink Lady is nominated for her extraordinary performance in The Royal Family at Manhattan Theatre Club earlier this season. Ms. Dizzia performed at GSP several seasons ago in Agnes of God, and is nominated for Lincoln Center's production of Sarah Ruhl's In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play.
A hearty congratulations to all the nominees!
