Dickenz in the hood Essay Example For Students

Dickenz in the hood Essay When you rip your heart out of your chest in the Fichandler Theatre at Arena Stage, you dont just yank it out and drop it on the bedespecially if you are the ghost of Jacob Marley and youve been dead for seven years, and its Christmas Eve. And even though the stage directions only say, Marley takes his heart out and shows it to Scrooge, you have to pull it out with a flourish. Show it to the Arena, says actor Henry Strozier, holding the koosh-ball heart and brandishing it to the four walls of the rehearsal hall. Strozier has logged 11 years with Washington, D.C.s premiere theatre-in-the-round and has landed the role of Marley in Cornerstone Theater Companys brand-new adaptation of A Christmas Carol, running through January 2. He knows what to do with a heart at Arena Stage. But that doesnt stop 11-year-old DVaughn Spencer from making a gruesome suggestion. You should get some of that goopy stuff from a toy store red and let it run through your fingers, he says with authority. Director Bill Rauch approves with a grin. This may be the 10-billionth adaptation of Charles Dickenss well-worn tale of skinflint Ebenezer Scrooges encounter with a pack of ghosts on the night before Christmasbut this one is unlike any that went before, not only because it is set in 1993 in the southeast Washington neighborhood of Anacostia, but because A Community Carol is a unique collaboration of people from that struggling neighborhood, from the highly polished Arena Stage, and from Cornerstone, the distinctively populist company that specializes in bringing live productions to theatre-less communities around the country. This production is unusual, even for Cornerstone. Its the first time the Los Angeles-based traveling company has forged a partnership with a major resident theatre, enlisting its seasoned professionals as collaborators and basking in its long-respected footlights. On this Veterans Day weekend, two weeks before opening night, about half of A Community Carols 35-member cast gathers in the productions rehearsal hall, a warehouse room on the ground floor of a parking garage across the street from the theatre in Washingtons upscale southwest waterfront neighborhood. Strozier, who has just wound up a critically acclaimed performance as Malvolio in Arenas production of Twelfth Night, swaps quips with Al Freeman Jr., the Emmy-winning soap-opera star who left the cast of One Life to Live in 1988 to become a theatre professor at Howard University and is now starring as Ebenezer Scrooge, a black businessman who has walled himself away from the needs of his community. They are being coached by Rauch, who founded Cornerstone in 1986 with like-minded cohorts from Harvard, from which he graduated two years earlier. We kicked around the idea of starting our own company that would interact with the community and work with nontraditional casts, Rauch says. We thought it was not only a great thing to do, but that it would help us develop more deeply as artists, pushing us in new directions. In tandem with Harvard history graduate Alison Carey (who contributed to the writing of A Community Carol and is playing minor characters in the show), Rauch launched the venture with an interracial production of Our Town in Newport News, Va., then moved on to hammer out a Wild West version of Hamlet in the tiny town of Marmarth in North Dakota (and helped launch a community theatre there after the Marmarth Hamlet closed). Perhaps the most dramatic project came in the winter of 1988: In Port Gibson, Miss., where segregation survived in earnest, the company reworked Romeo and Juliet as the story of a racial feud, casting a white company member as Juliet and a black local high school student as Romeo. The story of that production caught the eyes of Hollywood producers and has been sold to Steven Spielbergs Amblin Entertainment for a possible film production in late 1994. Cornerstones accomplishments notwithstanding, it took some fast talking to convince the board of directors of the 43-year-old Arena Stage, and some of its company members, to undertake a production where half the cast has little or no acting experience and to offer it as a regular part of Arenas subscription series. There were a lot of areas of resistance, recalls artistic director Douglas C. Wager, a 19-year veteran of Arena who assumed leadership of the company after founder Zelda Fichandler retired in 1991. (Wager knew Rauch from the latters mid-80s stint as assistant to Peter Sellars, then producer of the ill-fated American National Theater at the Kennedy Center.) There were very healthy, aggressive discussions about whether or not Arena should be involved in it. Is it really wise to have 15 non-professionals in the cast? What would it be like playing in a scene with them? Whats my role as an artist, when normally I work with the director and other actors? What is the aesthetic standard? There was a lot of apprehension, but a lot of excitement and interest as well, Wager says. Commedia dell"arte EssayIt was Rauch who pushed for A Christmas Carol, Maslon says. Arena had always avoided the holiday war-horse, but the chance to update it and make it relevant to the 1990s was consistent with Arenas mission. The collaborating companies enlisted the talents of Edward P. Jones, a native Washingtonian whose collection of D.C.-based short stories, Lost in the City, won the PEN/Hemingway Award for best first work of fiction. He, Carey, Rauch and Maslon came up with the plays final draftif something that changes constantly during rehearsal can truly be called final. The main charge was to keep the script as close to Dickenss original work as possible and to update the images and references for a 1993 setting. The biggest hurdle was how to keep the narrative voice and Dickenss moral vision, Maslon says. We knew we didnt want some guy in an armchair too boring. Instead, Rauch came up with a device similar to the Greek chorus policemen, construction workers, firemen, fast-food workers and the like would comment on the plays development through Keck and Maslons songs. Updating the story to 1993 involved some ingenious writing. Tiny Tim is now T.T., confined to a wheelchair after being caught in crossfire out on the street. Marleys ghost first appears to Scrooge by way of the TV set. Bob Cratchit becomes a minor character, displaced by Penny Cratchit, Ebenezers underpaid secretary. And the riotous party thrown by Fezziwig (Scrooges old boss) takes place just after World War II, when Washington, still a very segregated city, was confronting the hypocrisy of sending so many blacks off to war then discriminating against them at home, a practice that becomes depressingly apparent when the racially mixed party gradually breaks up into two separate groups. Once the dance numbers were identified, Sabrina Peck who runs her own dance company in New York and has been with Cornerstone since an early production in Dinwiddie, Va. was called in to choreograph the production. I can already see the change in these kids, she says, running them through a rap number in the Old Vat Room, a cabaret-style theatre in Arenas basement. She has also been working with two deaf children who joined the production only recently. Shes impressed with the way the other children pitched in to help. Cornerstone is my first priority, says Peck, who is committed to the mission of marrying theatre to community, but is rewarded personally by the way Rauch gives her creative breathing space. Im able to talk with him about emotions; we can sit down and work out a scene. Its a constant dialogue Bill and I have: Whats the mood, the intention, whats the form? Wager concedes that Rauch has a curious way of operating. He has a sense of clarity and focus, but he surrounds himself with incredible chaos, Wager observes. Still, he remains decisive and creative. Some of that chaos is apparent in the first runthrough of the entire play. Rauch has pushed the schedule ahead, since it is a weekendthe biggest problem with the production so far is getting people who have jobs and school work to come together at the same time. The young folks attention spans keep blurring out of focus. The rehearsal hall feels so crowded it seems that the walls are closing in. But there are good omens. A late addition to the show is a rousing rap number, a brilliant substitute for some wooden lines that youngsters would never deliver well. Nicola Tyler and Teeko Parron lead the kids through the song and bring down the house. When the ensemble takes the stage for the final number, the musicians begin to tune up when someone in the wings reminds everyone to face the imaginary audience. So they turn in a rough kind of unison to face the beige concrete walls, raise up their voices and sing God Bless Us, Everyone in rousing gospel style. As opening night approaches, you can almost hear an audience clapping.