It gives me great pleasure to introduce our 2010-2011 Season and the vibrant, heartbreaking, hilarious, fantastical, and wildly entertaining work of these four deeply talented writers.

I believe theatre is essential. Especially now. It feeds our souls by offering a sacred communion between writer, actor, and audience. In our wonderfully intimate space, its simplicity yields grace.

Subscribe today for an adventure you won’t soon forget!

See you at the theatre,

Loretta Greco
Artistic Director

In our new “Meet the Magic” series, we give you a glimpse behind the curtain and introduce you to the people who make the Magic happen.

Cari Turley is the Audience Development Manager. She’s the one who tweets and posts all those Facebook links, and you’ve probably talked to her if you’ve called the box office this season. She’s also the webmaster and our primary blogger, which means she really just interviewed herself and is now writing about herself in the third person.

…awkward.

Who is this mysterious character? Who’s taking care of Oedipus el Baby? What happened to #dailywig? Read on to find out!

How did you get your job here?

First, I met [former Managing Director] Scott Hawkins at a conference in Baltimore, and then I met [Artistic Producer] Erin Gilley at a different conference here in the city. When I heard there was an opening at the Magic, I jumped on it and emailed Scott and Erin before they even had a chance to post it on the website. I think they were a little freaked out by my enthusiasm, but I got the job.

What do you do?

Primarily, I’m the box office manager, which means I sell tickets, set policies about selling tickets, things like that. I keep track of where everyone is sitting and try to make sure everyone who wants to see the show gets a chance to do that. I’m also the webmaster, the social media manager, and part of the marketing team, so really I get to stick my nose in everything.

What’s your favorite part of the job?

They pay me to use Facebook! Actually, the best part is that every day is different. I have so many disparate responsibilities that no two days are exactly the same, which keeps me interested and excited about my job. And I love my “work husband,” [Patron Services Manager] Baruch Porras-Hernandez (we just adopted a baby!), who sits next to me all day and cracks me up. Yesterday, he made me laugh so hard I actually started crying. Have you noticed that almost every one of these “Meet the Magic” posts turns into a love letter to Baruch? There’s a reason for that.

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Audience Development Manager Cari Turley

What have you  learned from your job?

I’ve learned a ton about customer service, especially from Baruch. I feel like I know more about Sam Shepard than his own mother. And Luis Alfaro is a man who can hold his liquor.

What do you do when you’re not at the Magic?

I’m the co-captain of the San Francisco Wiffle Ball League, which just started back up for the season, so that keeps me pretty busy. I’m also working on a short film that I wrote as a teenager, and as soon as I convince my friends to yield all their spare time to me for the next couple of months, we’re going to start shooting. I also watch a really unhealthy amount of The X-Files.

What happened to #dailywig?

When I took over the Twitter account, I tried to get people involved by posting a daily photo of a staff member in a wig. We have these great wigs hanging on the wall in the office, and it seemed like a really good idea at the time. Unfortunately, there are only two wigs and about a dozen of us, so as you can imagine the combinations were pretty limited. I had hoped that our followers would get involved and post their own pictures, but it kind of fizzled out before we got that far. If you want to bring it back, post something! I search for the hashtag every day, so I’ll see it!

What advice do you have for people trying to get a job in theatre?

I’m not going to say “volunteer” because that’s what everyone says, even though it’s true. I think it’s more important to love what you do. If you love it, you’re going to work hard at it, and you’re going to get good at it. People will notice. I mean, you still have to apply for a thousand different jobs and be willing to work (really work) your way up, but it’ll happen. And don’t be a jerk, because the theatre community is small and everyone talks.

If you weren’t doing theatre, what would you be doing?

I’m one of those people who picks about twelve new careers in the course of a ten-minute walk, but lately I’ve been thinking about opening a candy shop.

In our “Meet the Magic” series, we give you a glimpse behind the curtain and introduce you to the people who make the Magic happen.

Rae Bittle is new to the Magic family this season, but she’s already an integral part of the patron services team. Read on to find out why the actors aren’t the only ones who need a vocal warm-up, what working with Baruch is really like, and how she almost worked for National Geographic!

Let’s start off easy. How long have you been at the Magic?

I started here in October of 2009 with “Goldfish.”

How did you get your job here?

I got the job here because Baruch was kind enough to hire me. But before that, [former Magic Development Director] Renee LeVesque told me that the Magic was hiring Patron Services Associates.

What’s a typical day like?

A typical day at the Magic for me is printing will call tickets, selling tickets at the door, and exchanging tickets upon request. But my favorite part of the job is seeing people that are happy with their purchases. Since the box office is near the exit of the theatre, I get to hear some of the after-show chatter. I love hearing when people plan to tell others about a great show at the Magic and how they are considering buying Magic tickets as a gift for someone.

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The fabulous Ms. Bittle, stuck in a box

Can you give us any trade secrets or Front of House trivia?

Warm up your voice prior to people arriving. Whether you are dealing with people at the door or on the phone, it makes it a lot easier to communicate when your voice is ready for lots of talking.

Who are the most interesting people you’ve met here?

Although not a specific story, the group of patrons I am most fond of are the ones that treat me like I am one of their grandchildren. My grandmother lives in Arkansas, so I don’t get to see her very often. It’s nice that they remind me of her.

Favorite Magic show?

Oedipus el Rey.

What advice do you have for people trying to get a job in theatre?

If you want a job in theatre, volunteer at a theatre. Volunteering is a great way to get to know people and to make connections.

If you weren’t working at the theatre, what would you be doing?

My degree is in geography and I was at one time an intern at National Geographic. If I had chosen to continue living on the East Coast, I think I would have had a good shot at a National Geographic job.

It’s hard to imagine a life on the outside, but what do you do when you’re not at the Magic?

When I am not at the Magic, I am at another theatre. I am in the professional apprenticeship program at Brava! for Women in the Arts. In this program, the apprentices get a broad overview of theatre and then are allowed to focus on their areas of interest. For me, those areas consist of the box office, marketing, and stage management.

Any funny stories about your boss, Baruch Porras-Hernandez?

During my employee orientation, Baruch told me that I should be sure to wear comfortable shoes during my shifts because I would have to take out the trash at the end of the night. He then said, “Although I don’t mind helping you, it’s 2009. Girl power!” He made it clear in a very funny way that taking out the trash is no longer just for the boys.

Last night, I had the privilege of attending the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards, hosted by Theatre Bay Area at the fabulous Palace of Fine Arts. Magic Theatre (in particular, last season’s production of Mauritius) was nominated for a staggering seven awards, so there was a strong Magic contingent in attendance!

We were honored to win three of the night’s biggest awards in our size category: Best Director (Loretta Greco), Best Supporting Actor (Rod Gnapp), and even Best Production (Mauritius). Wow! And if that wasn’t enough, Octavio Solis, director of next season’s The Brothers Size, won the Barbara Bladen Porter lifetime achievement award for playwriting, Erik Flatmo (set/costume designer for An Accident and set designer for Oedipus el Rey) was nominated for more awards than I can count, and Rob Melrose (director of An Accident) won a Best Director award for The Creature. A big night for the Magic! You can see the full list of last night’s winners here, on the Theatre Bay Area website, and I’ve posted some of my photos from the night below. Congratulations to everyone!

The fabulous party was in full swing when we arrived	Ryan was really excited by the food
Jackie was much more subdued	We ran into Tim!
Ryan and Loretta, listening to the nominees	We won!!
Arwen found a friend in the crowd	A Mrs. Whitney reunion: Rod, Arwen, and Patrick
Jackie, checking out the program	An impressive haul! Congratulations, everyone!

Yesterday was First Day for An Accident, the fourth and final show in our 2009/2010 season. It’s a stirring play about recovery and forgiveness written by playwright Lydia Stryk. The cast and crew gathered in the Lounge for some light breakfast and heavy reading, as well as some artistic presentations from our stellar gang of designers. Sound like a morning well spent? Don’t worry if you missed it; I took pictures for the folks at home.

Click on any of the images below to open the full-size version. Enjoy!

The script (and some thematic elements)	The door to the Lounge
Carol and Jayne check out the design presentations	Loads of dramaturgical information
Tim and Arwen's scripts	Loretta and lighting designer York Kennedy crack each other up
Loretta addresses the cast and crew	Director Rob Melrose welcomes everyone to the readthrough
Set designer Erik Flatmo displays his scenic model	Scenic model for An Accident
Propmaster Jackie Scott and Sound Designer Sara Huddleston	Rob and Lydia discuss the text

In our new “Meet the Magic” series, we give you a glimpse behind the curtain and introduce you to the people who make the Magic happen.

Jayne Benjulian is the Head of New Play Development here at Magic Theatre. As San Francisco’s home for new plays, you can imagine what a huge responsibility that is! Currently, she’s spearheading the Martha Heasley Cox Virgin Play Series: five weeks, five new plays, all free and open to the public. What else does the Head of New Play Development do? Read on to find out!

How long have you been at the Magic?

This is my second season on staff. Before enlisting, I worked on the literary committee.

How did you get your job here?

I told Loretta if she accepted me as an apprentice, she’d hire me in six months.

And she did!

It took 10.

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Jayne Benjulian, Head of New Play Development

What does it mean to be the Head of New Play Development?

All of it has to do with playwrights: finding them, working with them before they come to Magic and in rehearsal when they’re here. Reading their work, hearing their dreams and goals, and understanding what they’re driven to do and where they want to go with their work. Early in the rehearsal process, I help the director reveal the world of the play to the cast: what it looks like, feels like, sounds like. Who are these people? Where do they live? What music do they listen to? During rehearsal, I’m the eyes and ears of the director. I sit way back in the theatre and hear how things sound during run-throughs. When a play opens, I turn to the audience and help deepen the experience of the play through contextual material in the program and TalkBACKs after the show.

Develop the play, develop the playwright. It’s what we do here.

Describe a typical day at the Magic.

There is no typical day! Today, I read a script and emailed an agent. I wrote the program for Lloyd Suh’s reading of Jesus in India and printed out his script. (Lloyd is in town to develop a new work with us about the lost teenage years of Jesus Christ.) I drew up an Actors’ Equity agreement regarding the rehearsal and public reading. Then I re-read Lydia Stryk’s An Accident, our next production. This is probably my fifth or sixth read of the play. I am looking for ways to elucidate the world of the play for the actors. For example, there’s a song in the play: Cole Porter’s Night and Day. So I found it on iTunes, listened to a few versions, picked two and purchased them to play for the cast. I also did research on contusions, MRIs, and the hippocampus. I looked at photographs in a book about hospital architecture.

On the way out of the office I ran into Rob Melrose, the director of An Accident, and chatted about Lydia Stryk, who arrives in town in two weeks. We agreed to meet next Wednesday in preparation for First Day, when the actors read through the script for the first time as a cast, meet the entire cast and crew for the production, and hear each artist talk about her vision for the play. I emailed Susan Bronstein, our docent coordinator, to find out who would give the pre-show talks for An Accident. I sent four scripts out to members of the Literary Committee for critiques.

After dinner, I listened to an NPR broadcast of Michael Pollan about the history of apples, a subject of interest to a character in An Accident, but I’m not giving anything away. Did you know that all the world’s varieties of apples can be traced back to the forests of Kazakhstan? Henry David Thoreau wrote, “It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.”

I carried home six of Lydia Stryk’s plays, but I ran out of time and had to go to bed.

What’s your favorite part of the job?

Being in the rehearsal room with actors. Asking questions the playwright can use to see her work in a fresh light.

Can you give us any trade secrets or interesting Magic trivia?

I follow in the footsteps of a revered dramaturg, Martin Esslin. Magic is reputed to be the first theater in America to house a dramaturg.

You read a lot of scripts. What are you looking for when you read?

A script that can live on the stage–not a teleplay or a screenplay. A script in the writing of which the playwright gives up part of herself.

What was it like organizing the reading of Theresa Rebeck’s new play, What We’re Up Against?

Fabulous fun, largely because Theresa is a blast to work with, and we had gifted actors working with us for three days. We did a lot of laughing. But all that time–in between the laughing and the reading–Theresa managed to rewrite chunks of the play, much of it either during rehearsal or at night for the following morning. That said, I spent altogether too many nights on my knees punching holes in scripts and making binders. But theatre is like marriage: You only remember the good parts.

What advice do you have for people trying to get a job in theatre?

Volunteer.

If you weren’t doing theatre, what would you be doing?

I’d be sitting by the fire in a house in Vermont writing poetry.

In our “Meet the Magic” series, we give you a glimpse behind the curtain and introduce you to the people who make the Magic happen.

Julian Leiserson has been one of our stellar house managers since 2008. She’s an opera veteran, a pro barista, and she specializes in giving our lounge patrons just the right “mood enhancers.” Wait…what? Read more to find out what she means!

How long have you been at the Magic?

Since Evie’s Waltz, November 2008. It was odd–the whole economy tanked overnight, yet I found a GREAT job in no time!

How did you get your job here?

Craigslist post like so many work-seeking San Franciscans; the other half is the then-Patron Services Coordinator was my best friend from college, and here I was coming down from 4 years as a stage manager + 2 years production manager (yes, concurrently) with a local opera company.

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Working to be invisible.

What do you do? Describe a typical day.

I wake up, eat bacon, walk in the park… Somewhere along the way I land at the Magic wherein I either work to be invisible (if you have to find the house manager, they haven’t done their job) or make coffee, serve cookies, listen to theatre-goers talk about their day, and share behind-the-scenes trade “secrets” about why we are currently selling Twinkies. [Note: I bet we'd sell the other half of the Luis Alfaro one-man show (the handle of tequila) faster than we sell the Twinkies.]

What’s your favorite part of the job?

Being near theatre! I left my opera company for many reasons, but I love theatre and creativity beyond reason! I hope to return to stage managing but in the meantime I still get my backstage/behind-the-scenes fix!

Can you give us any trade secrets or Front of House Trivia?

Rumor has it I make the best/strongest Peet’s coffee. We do not serve hot chocolate, but any rainy day will have at least 3 requests for it. Patrons may not notice, but great pains are taken to thematically honor the show both in and out of the theatre itself: the art, the walls, even the music playing in the lounge before the show are tailored for each performance. “Mood enhancers” if you will.

Give us your funniest/best patron story. Who are the most interesting people you’ve met here?

Many memorable patron stories are often the unpleasant ones, but not always: One of my favorite moments was having my old supervisor from the bank show up one evening as an usher, reversing our authority roles. The most interesting people are the actors and techs, in my humble opinion. (I’m biased, obviously.) They have stories to melt your face with joy! Plus they love my coffee.

Favorite Magic show?

Tie between Evie’s Waltz and American Hwangap–how to choose between a powerful social commentary pertinent to young life in the US (there have been three shootings at my old high school in 10 years) or a personally moving story?
Oh hell, and Mauritus! What a fantastic show filled with amazing people and stellar dialogue!! I guess that’s the sign of a truly great company: so many good shows I can’t decide!

What advice do you have for people trying to get a job in theatre?

Just go and do it! Like all jobs, you have to start at the bottom, learn and observe, and work your way up. All theatres need ushers and volunteers. Oh, and networking! You can’t go wrong with too many theatre connections.

If you weren’t working at the theatre, what would you be doing?

But I AM working at the theatre! That’s a silly question! In fact, I am taking a hiatus from Responsible Adult Life by leaving for Europe for 7 weeks to visit 20 cities across 12 countries. Life Knowledge is worth more than any wages could earn you…except to buy your ticket to other places.

Since I left the opera and began working at the Magic, my day jobs have been a retail salesperson for a craft/scrapbooking store, an independent computer contractor for tax season, and a customer service representative for the homeowners association remittance department of a bank sending people to collections while repossessing their homes from a computer. I currently have no day job (until I return from Europe, that is). Welcome to the world of theatre!! In the words of my Facebook group: “I majored in something I enjoy and now I live in a cardboard box.”

Any funny stories about your boss, Patron Services Manager Baruch Porras-Hernandez?

Baruch is a saint! The full stacks of cups in inventory are like pillars of worship for this man in our temple of coffee and cream! He sits to count our till with us after each show because he knows we can’t do basic math some days, and yet he still loves us anyway!  <3

After three months of bicoastal phone calls and emails, Playwright Luis Alfaro and Dramaturg Jane Ann Crum sat down to talk about Greek plays, Chicano culture, prisons, and poetry.

Jane Ann Crum: When did you become interested in the story of Oedipus?

Luis Alfaro: You kind of go through all the myths in grade school, don’t you? Then, when you get to junior high or middle school, the more complicated ones get introduced, right? [Laughter] Then, ten years ago, I was in Arizona on a residency and I went into a bookstore and the Greeks were on sale. They were selling ten plays for ten dollars, and I thought, “OMG, a Greek play a dollar!” [More laughter] The first one I read was Electra. I was working on this piece about a young girl who had murdered her mother in Tucson and it was amazing that these stories mirrored each other. That became my play, Electricidad. Ever since the Greeks entered my life ten years ago, finding the connections between the Greeks and now has become something of an obsession with me. Generally I write an adaptation followed by an original play and that’s what I’ve been doing for the last five or six years. I use the adaptation as a way of trying to become a better writer. The thing about the Greeks is that they’re so brilliantly written. In 90 minutes such extraordinary things happen–the whole cycle of life and death.

So you read Sophocles’ Oedipus the King and loved its structure and techniques. Are there visual things–images, for instance–that come to you when you’re writing?

For me, all writing is imagistic. When I first started to write [Luis studied playwriting with Cuban-American playwright, Maria Irene Fornes] one of the things Irene used to do was make us draw. I still draw; I storyboard my plays. And I believe that the theatre is one of those sacred places where you don’t have to travel in real time and you don’t have to ground a play in naturalism. My play Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner has a 750 lb woman who flies. I just wrote a play called Hero in which the bedroom walls of a young man who has come back from the Iraq war allow the war into his bedroom. I’m always dealing with imagistic, fantastical ideas that the Greek plays lend themselves to–that your nightmares can become prophecies.

Yet your plays are written to be very simply staged.

That comes from being raised in the teatro campesino tradition–poor man’s theatre, inventing stuff from the earth. My plays tend to be suggestive and sometimes they get in trouble when they land on a realistic set. I’m always excited when a director sees a play as an imagistic thing more than just a language thing.

The first reading of the first draft of Oedipus el Rey was held at the Getty Villa in Malibu. How did that come about and how did you and Loretta get together?

The Getty Villa has a Greek amphitheater in their outdoor space and one of their initiatives is to invite artists to re-imagine Greek plays. They asked, among others, Anne Bogart to do one; also Joanne Akalaitis and Stephen Wadsworth.

Those are directors, not writers.

Well, my residency was split with Ellen McLaughlin, who was writing Penelope. I thought connecting a prison world with a classical space seemed really fun so that’s how it started. Then we coupled a Greek scholar, Mary Hart, with a gang scholar, Father Greg Boyle, who heads an organization called Homeboy Industries. So we had a contemporary specialist and a specialist in the classics. It was a hard process because I had no material other than my research. I started writing scenes during the 10 rehearsal days so whatever I ended up with was what I ended up with, which was (I think) about 45–50 minutes of material. If you were an audience member on the night of the first reading, you’d hear scene 4 read aloud, and then someone would announce “Scene 5 to be written.”

But audiences love that!

I have to say they did and the conversations afterward were amazing. Anyway, Loretta heard about it, and even though I never send out unfinished material, when she said “Really, just let me see the unfinished draft,” I thought, “She’s a good friend” so I let her read it.

And you hooked up. She was interested in producing Oedipus el Rey, so she went down to L.A. and the two of you did some interviews…

Those interviews were part of a larger research push. I drove up Highway 99 three or four times. I went to Delano and stayed there for a little bit. I started reading up on the prison system and the California prison system in particular.

You’ve worked in prisons before and you’ve worked with prisoners…

Yeah, but part of your job as an artist in the prison system is to subvert. You get 30 prisoners who are supposed to do a poetry workshop and none of them can write, so you’re always subverting the system. It’s different when you read about the prison system and its formalities, the way the prison system is set up and how many we have. The building of prisons right now, the overcrowding and this injunction we just got–it’s all about money. All information about prisons fascinates me.

The high recidivism rate you were talking about…

More than half of all men released go back immediately, within hours. You get out and if you don’t have a support system you’re going straight into an SRO hotel/motel in downtown L.A. on skid row. Already the vices are calling you back.

The environment may not be a prison, but the situation hasn’t really changed.

In downtown Los Angeles, skid row accounts for a third of all the drugs that go through the city. When people get out of jail and prison, they make that their first stop because they need a cheap place to stay overnight.

How did you find the former prisoners you and Loretta interviewed?

Father Boyle’s organization, Homeboy Industries helps gang members get out of gangs. It’s about tattoo removal, but it’s also about mental health. They offer services like social workers and mental health technicians. So we met a counselor first, an older woman, who actually picked the guys for us to interview. We were looking for someone who had recently gotten out and someone who had been in prison a long, long time. We couldn’t ask what their crime was, but we could ask anything else. And that was interesting to hear–to really let people talk about what that life is and how they got into that life. You know–the generational histories of lawlessness [Chuckle]. The challenge was to locate the play somewhere very specific. To look at Los Angeles as a site.

Because Pico/Union [a neighborhood in East L.A.] is your home.

I wanted to locate it in places I knew I could write honestly and freely about. That pharmacy near the Million Dollar store? [In Oedipus el Rey, the Farmacia where the Esphinge (the Sphinx) lives] I really knew that place.

You showed the cast pictures of your family home and that’s the home we’ve chosen for Jocasta and Laius.

I’m not sure I’ll ever do that again! [Laughter] But I think it’s a good thing to locate a play in a place you know. I keep finding that as you grow as a writer, you’re dying to bust out of the same old thing. But for Oedipus, because the emotional qualities of the play are so intense, I knew I had to locate everything else in a familiar place.

So you didn’t write the play chronologically?

I always write out of order.

Would you mind sharing what scene you wrote first?

The first scene I wrote was the meeting of Oedipus and Jocasta–him coming out of prison, going to his friend’s house and meeting this woman, this widow in grief–him needing to be healed and her needing to be healed, these two lost souls in the world who find each other and connect. They fit.

And it’s like lightning between them.

If you can locate the emotional center of a play you can build out from there. It’s always harder structurally if you don’t have an emotional center somewhere. I tend to write the scene before or the scene after the most dramatic scene, just to locate where the most dramatic scene IS. For me, that seems like the right way to work.

What about the chorus? It’s such a standard of Greek plays, and so many of us have suffered through so many (how shall I put it?) unfortunate choruses. What’s your connection to what is called in your play, the Coro?

We have a choral tradition in the Chicano culture called “Coro,” where you tell stories and it’s very intricate work–many different voices overlapping and finishing each others’ sentences. It’s musical and it shares a history with folkloric dancing. In the seventies, lots of teatros did Coro work and you’d go see it because it was sort of like watching ballet–beautiful, highly technical and hard to do. Thirty-something years ago, after the riots in East L.A, this word “Chicano” (that really expresses a politicized Mexican-American) started to take shape and “Chicano pride” became a huge part of what we were. So it feels like, in some ways, the chorus represents Chicanos, because it represents
that pride, that community. Regardless of whether it’s educated or not, it’s a voice. I love that in the Greeks, the chorus might be the puppet-masters, too. Do you know what I’m saying?

That’s what Nietzsche said, that the audience dreams the chorus and the chorus dreams the actors.

That makes a lot of sense to me.

Greek drama began with the chorus–everything was choral, just like in your tradition of Coro. Choruses of fifty men or boys sang dithyrambs, hymns to Lord Dionysius, moving in time with the rhythms of the poetry, and then, gradually, over time, the actors stepped out of the chorus to become the personifications of individual characters.

There are so many connections between my culture and the Greeks, and I love how we’re able to make this contemporary for our people. By our people, I mean whoever the audience is that night. That’s who we’re making it for. It seems like the right thing to do at this moment in time, as technology advances. I have this theory, “The more we have the less we get.”

You mean the more information that’s out there, the less intelligent we become?

That we’re actually shrinking our intellect, shrinking our imagination. So this seems the right time to go back to something primal, something indigenous, something original, as a way of discovering who we are today. My plays are simple that way. I’d rather have the creativity happening in the audience’s head. I write simply. I want to think that I’m complicated, but I’m not.

You’re a poet. In the rehearsal room you’re always talking about poetry. You’ll say: “This is a song. This is a poem.”

I feel that a play is a long-form poem. It doesn’t seem so far away from when I was writing traditional poetry. The minute voices started happening, metaphor started freeing me, there were rhythms, and my writing became so much more interesting. Maybe I’d trapped myself as a poet into a certain way of thinking. The theatre released all that. You
know. The empty space…

Well, you fill it. That’s for certain.

Oedipus el Rey opens for previews tomorrow evening, so the designers are hustling to get everything finished before the audience arrives. I gave my Girl Friday, Sonia Fernandez, the Magic camera and asked her to take some more photos of the rehearsal process. Here’s what she sent back!

(Click any of the pictures to make them bigger)

Jackie, Alex, Alexae, and Letty, hard at work	Alex's owl masks for the Oracle
Another of Alex's gorgeous masks	Costume Designer Alex and a giant snake
Abbey Simon builds a prop for the marketplace scene	Letty Samonte builds a chicken prop for the marketplace
Jackie Scott paints tattoos on Joshua's arm	Eric Aviles (El Coro) and his fake tattoo

Sonia Fernandez is the Assistant Director for Oedipus el Rey, which means she does…well, I didn’t know what she does, exactly. So I asked Sonia to keep a journal of her 11-hour day yesterday, and she was even kind enough to take pictures for me! Isn’t Sonia the best?

So here you go: A day in the life of an assistant director. Take it away, Sonia!

9:45 am Arrive at the Magic. I see Jake (Sound Designer) driving up as I make my way across the parking lot through the rain.

9:50 am Chat with Cari about doing a blog post of my day. [Ed note: How meta!]

9:55 am A view out the back door of the theater (we may use this door in the show!). It’s a gloomy, rainy day at Fort Mason.

10:00 am Production meeting. Nobody wants their picture taken. Sara [Huddleston, Production Manager] finally agrees but it turns out kinda blurry. Sara is enjoying the breakfast spread before the meeting.

10:10 am Each designer discusses logistical questions or issues (i.e., how are the projections going to work, what do the owl masks look like, how are we going to do the blood at the end).

11:00 am Rehearsal begins, as each rehearsal does, with a pronunciation warm-up. We have a lot of Spanish in the play and we want to make sure everyone’s pronouncing those words the same way. We start with character names like Tiresias (pronounced “Tee resyas”), Creon (“Crey ohn”) and the harder ones like the Aztec Goddess Coatlicue (“Kwat lee kwe”) or her daughter Coyolxauhqui (“Co yo sha kee”).

11:15 am Loretta gives notes on yesterday’s run. Biggest take-away: We may completely change the beginning. I tried to take a picture but it came out really blurry.

1:00 pm Design run. I sat on the right side of the house seats (which are now squared, btw). It looks pretty cool from the sides. Yay thrust stage!

3:00 pm Run is over, actors are on break. Loretta talks to Dave, the fight choreographer. They discuss the last few fight scenes.

3:34 pm Armando (Creon) takes a picture of me running lines with Carlos (Sobador) an Eric (Laius). Everyone else is in the theater playing with blood, fake blood. Unfortunately, I can’t take a picture of that. We can’t ruin the illusion.

4:00 pm Rehearsal is over.

4:20 pm I get Armando to take a picture of me with my favorite dramaturg, Jane Ann Crum.

4:45 pm Let the light hanging begin! Tirza (in purple) directs a bunch of other cool ladder people.

5:00 pm Just checked email and we got a new scene 12 from Luis [Alfaro, the playwright]! He’ll be back in town bright and early tomorrow.

5:20 pm Sara graciously drives us (Loretta, Jane and I) to Brazen Head. It’s raining and she’s nice.

6:30 pm Working dinner at Brazen Head.

7:00 pm We walk over to Jane’s hotel and continue working.

8:20 pm Going home. It’s not raining anymore!