My journey to opening was bumpy and not without sweat and stress.  Okay,
maybe a few tears.  As much as I was excited and inspired to play two very
different roles, one of them was proving to be a hard nut to crack. “Vee Talbot.”
I stressed, fretted, reached out to other actors and directors
for advice or insight and still was not satisfied with my work.  Worse than that, I was
worried that the director was concerned that I wouldn’t put the pieces together
and find this woman.  I was certain I was going to be the weak link in the production.
And in a role that is so important to Orpheus Descending, I couldn’t accept that.

I have previously written about my thoughts on William’s “sight” imagery.  Which is
a helpful idea to work with, but not particularly helpful once you are on stage
and trying to play a full three dimensional being.  And working at Joria Productions
in NY, where I couldn’t hear myself think, let alone play a free, unconcerned performance,
was also very challenging.

I even watched the great Maureen Stapleton try to mine the characteristics of
“Vee” in The Fugitive Kind.  But found, (although usually a great fan of Ms. Stapleton)
that I was left questioning her choices and that of the directors of the film.  I
found almost nothing in her performance that could help me.  I thought, “Is this who “Vee”
is?  A vacuum?  A non-entity in a William’s play?”  What happened to Ms. Stapleton?
She was lack luster, uninteresting, a cipher.  For me, that is not who “Vee,” is.

Thus I traveled to Provincetown with a huge question mark on my face.  Hoping against
hope that I would find the missing piece to help me make a full characterization of this woman.
I thought, my costumes and hair will help.  The space will help.  Actually being able to fully
play and hear myself in a space so evocative as the Unitarian Universalist Church would
be the key to helping me find what I needed.

We had three, full, long rehearsal days.  And I worked on my own, thinking, speaking the
words of Tennessee Williams to myself over and over and over again! Breaking down
the text, trying to craft my speaking and find the changes
in each of the three scenes I was to perform as “Vee.”  I tried to understand what “Vee’s” place was
in the play, her purpose.  Looking closer at everything she does, and tries to do.  Looking
at the way she speaks to people.  At her relationships with everyone.  Trying everything
I could think of to dig in and realize a understanding of her, so that I could fully
represent her on stage.

That question mark, wouldn’t go away!   I knew I was getting in my own way.
I knew and know all the traps that actors can do to themselves and I kept
giving myself permission to fail.  And still I was not happy with my work.
Still I was confused and stymied by this woman.  I even thought, “Well
Tennessee Williams doesn’t want her to be black and white, even though
the lines talk about light and shadow.  Williams wants there to be alot
of gray, unanswered questions with “Vee.”  And I really tried to accept that.
I tried.

Opening Night was here!  I don’t think I have been so nervous about a part in
a very, very long time.  I was clear on “Nurse Porter,” my other role.  Admittedly
happier with that part, in some ways, as I had felt it had deepened from last
year, and I found more levels and things to play.  But, “Vee,” still tormented
me.  I decided to just let go of it all.  I decided to get out of my own way and to
let the audience decide whether what I had created was to be a part of this
world of Orpheus Descending or left behind.  I would give it 150%, good or
bad. And I would have to accept failure from the audience.

Oh we were lucky at The Tennessee William’s Festival.  We had scholars,
masters, teachers, actors, peers, friends, festival actors, festival
directors, festival producers, and on and on and on!  All sitting in our
opening night audience and supporting us.  All being theatre makers and creating Orpheus
Descending with us.  And all (perhaps) waiting for me to fail.

And here is what I forgot.  And I am ashamed to write/admit I forgot this.  It even brings
some tears to my eyes as I type this; “[The audience] makes the play as much as
the actors!”   And boy did they ever on opening night!!!  I forgot.  I really truly forgot
how beautiful and profound this play is.  The audience didn’t.  The audience trusted it, and I did not.
They found the comedy, every bit of it!  They found all the little references
that I thought would be lost.  They heard this play.  They really heard it!
They loved this play.  And they reacted to it!  And they transformed me and helped me finally find, “Vee Talbot!”
I will be forever changed by the opening night performance of Orpheus Descending!  And the
audience who helped me find my way!

Thank you Nick Potenzieri for believing in me.

Talfoto.com

In August 2009, my friend Andrew McGinn asked me to be in the production of The Lady of Larkspur Lotion he was directing for The Infinite Theatre’s Hotel Plays; of course my immediate response was YES! It had been 10 long years since I had done any Tennessee Williams.  At least 10 years since I played Blanche DuBois at the Interlochen Arts Academy – a school in Northern Michigan that nurtured my young love for Tennessee Williams’ writing.

For me, it all began in Cincinnati, OH where I saw Ginny Hoffman & Gary Sandy in A Streetcar Named Desire at ETC. I must have been about 14 at the time. Shortly after that I saw the Vanessa Redgrave fllm of the Broadway production of Orpheus Descending. I fell in love with the writing and began collecting and coveting as many Tennessee Williams plays I could and by the age of 15, I had developed quite a library.

My mother, an avid reader and historian and my father, a violinist and physicist were always enthusiasts for life and encouraged me to pursue my interests. Growing up in Mariemont, OH there was always Beethoven playing, Leonard Cohen and someone was always giving a reading of Dylan Thomas around Christmas. It was no surprise that my parents enthusiasticaly supported my new interest in theatre and specifically Williams.

Lunch breaks were spent in the library memorizing the entire final scene of The Glass Menagerie – in TW accent of course. This was not normal.

I learned the monologue of Carol Cutrere’s “I used to be what they called a Christ-bitten reformer…” and used it to audition for boarding arts high school, ARTS, and Juilliard.

My journey to Provincetown was preceded by trips to Key West, New Orleans, & Columbus, MS.  A visit to the Faulker House bookstore in Pirate’s Alley brought me to tears when the shop owner handed me a book of receipts from Tennessee’s hotel visits to Rome, along with writings and scribblings, an unpublished poem. You could feel Williams down there. Perhaps because it was the very subject of so much of his work. The sense of Place in WIlliams’ writing is key. Researching for The Lady of Larkspur Lotion, we visited Tom’s apartments. Places he lived before he was famous.

I had the pleasure of meeting southern gentleman and scholar Kenneth Holditch, who invited us to his home on Frenchman Street, showed us his original paintings by Tennessee Williams, recited parts from Night of the Iguana, and told us all he knew about Larkspur. In his book Tennessee Williams and the South, he mentioned the Ink Spots song “If I didn’t Care” which Williams played on the juke box at Victor’s after a long day of writing, enjoying Brandy Alexanders. I was able to incorporate this song into the intermission of The Hotel Plays bar at the Gifford House.

In late September, we journeyed to Provincetown by ferry and I knew instantly it was one of the most magical places on earth. Riding a bicycle (donated by a local shop) from rehearsal to a dress rehearsal of Miss Julie (in Norweigan!) to Wendy Kesselman’s The Callback reading rehearsals and down the stretch of Commercial Street which passes Captain Jack’s Wharf, I felt every fiber of my being. The cool night air whizzing past me as I rode home downhill to the Provincetown Inn was unforgettable.

The festival was unlike anything I had ever experienced. Festival curator David Kaplan encouraged everyone to meet and connect in a way that was so exciting, creating a wonderful commordarie. I knew I was in my element being around people from all over the world who had come together to celebrate and explore this prolific genius. The festival culminated with a party at Vixen where Ed Maritn was directing me to say a line from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, followed by an unofficial cast party at Captain Jack’s Wharf – the 1940′s fishing cottages where Williams wrote some of his most brilliant and celebrated work: parts of Streetcar, Glass Menagerie, & Battle of Angels to name a few.

Needless to say, I fell in love with Ptown & was deeply inspired. The Hotel Plays consisted of over a dozen one-act plays: all of them echoes and precursors – there were so many nuances to other plays, hints of characters that ignited my inner casting director.

I was also inspired when director Nick Potenzieri gave a heartfelt speech before our final performance. He said, “Keep working, keep creating, even if you don’t have money to create. Keep acting & creating. The money will come.” When I arrived home in New York I could not go back to normal life – I needed to keep this artistic creativity & the spirit of the festival in my life. The day I returned to NY, I began to organize a reading of Orpheus Descending. I rented a theatre and contacted 15 actor friends and we met one afternoon in early October for a read-thru. We quickly realized that everyone had different editions of the play, making for  a clumsy & fascinating read – further igniting my excitement. A buzz was brewing and I decided to do it again, this time for an audience. When Thomas Keith accepted my FB friend request and said that he would be very interested in attending a reading of OD I almost lighted the earth and began to fly.

Playwright Delaine Douglas attended the reading and at drinks afterward she told me “I like who your’e conspiring with.”

I teamed up with director Nick Potenzieri of The Infinite Theatre. I was impressed by his orchestration of The Hotel Plays and his enthusiasm for the story of Orpheus. He had founded The Infinite Theatre in 2007 with Jodi Kelly as a means for artists to channel their creativity.

The Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theatre Festival invited us to bring Orpheus to Provincetown last year & we enjoyed 3 sold-out performances. The festival invited The Infinite Theatre back for a reprise this year & we are currently in tech at the Unitarian Universalist Meeting House – the oldest church in Provincetown which will be our stage. We open on Friday night & will perform 2 shows on Saturday.

Between the beauty of Provincetown & the celebration of America’s great playwright – the 100 year mark of Tennessee Williams birth – this is an experience of ecstasy.

My deepest thanks to all who have been involved with this production – to The Infinite Theatre, the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theatre Festival, & to Mr.Williams for writing this wonderful play.

“What on earth can you do on this earth but catch at whatever comes at you and hold onto it with both your hands until your fingers are broken?”

For more info, please visit www.twptown.org

We are taught about the magic “what if” on our first day of acting class. And such “what ifs!” What if you came from Sicily and lived in a small Southern town in the 1950s where your father the Wop bootlegger was murdered some 15 or 20 years ago “for selling liquor to niggers?” What if you watched him burn alive because no one would lift a finger to help him as he singlehandedly tried to put out the fire? What if your first love (a Cutrere!) – whose child you were carrying at the time – abandoned you because of pressure from his family and you were ostracized by everybody? What if you married a “sonofabitch” and found yourself in a hell from which there is no escape? And what if into this life a Choctaw cry brings forth an Orphic boy who changes everything?

These are powerful “what ifs!” But why on earth would we go to the anguished place that suffers plights like these — except that by undergoing them, we can change the course of life somehow — bring release and banish isolation? What if by taking part or witnessing (because in theatre, the observed and the observer are always one) — all the arrows of our lives turn into flowers — the way barrenness gives way to a green fig that is discovered on a tree in springtime.

Don’t we do it to learn that nothing can take our love away if only we can remain steadfast through that terror that masks itself as death?

As we head for Provincetown to perform Orpheus Descending for a second time, let’s honor the life of its creator, Tennessee Williams, who found that he could transmute pain into beauty through the alchemy of his poetry, that there are birds who never light upon this earth but one time, and that sometimes we need to descend in order to arise.

The theme of sight. Light and shadow. All these ideas are present in Orpheus Descending for just about every character.

Why has William’s chosen this sense almost above all others to keep coming back to in Orpheus Descending? Why not our sense of hearing, or taste or touch even? The role of The Conjure Man gets sight, but no words, only sound. Even “Orpheus,” his great gift was his ability to play music, more a sense of hearing than sight. But Williams chose sight.

I am working on the role of “Vee Talbot,” a self professed Visionary. She says, “I can’t live without my visions.” And yet William’s almost chooses to punish her for them, by temporarily blinding her. And, as we know, of course forcing her to relate more with her other senses.

Vee chooses to “get into painting,” again a hobby we can only appreciate with sight. She paints her visions. And perhaps by doing this she is freeing herself of the light and shadow, or even good and evil of these visions?? Though Vee doesn’t seem to want to interpret what she sees verbally, only through her sense of sight. She doesn’t want to talk to anyone about these visions, that is until Val shows up. Only in Val does she find the safety to verbalize what she sees. The need to speak about them. How does that create me as Vee in this play?

Vee says, Since I got into this painting, my whole “outlook,” is different. “Outlook.” Williams chose that word very specifically. It is, as I like to say, an “onion” word. Multiple meanings, from a continued theme.

When you work on a Tennessee William’s play, because he was such a master at crafting language you realize that the themes are just skimming the surface. He creates this onion that is continually being pealed. But I have found with Vee that my way into her world is to realize her primary sensory enjoyment is not speech, but sight.

Williams is spinning and spinning Vee around a world of sight and only through her sight or Visions will she ever become free. But there is always a price. And just as “Orpheus,” had to pay The Boatman, “Charon,” to bring him across The River Styx to Hades, Vee pays a price as well.

Our production of Orpheus Descending is being presented as a “morality play”. Now for anyone (including myself) who may be wondering what that means, here is definition from Wisegeeks.com:

“A morality play is a type of theater, which was common in medieval Europe. It uses allegorical characters to teach the audience moral lessons, typically of a Christian nature. The basic premise of the morality play, however, in which an “everyman” character who is easy to relate to makes a journey and is influenced by characters along the way, eventually gaining some kind of personal integrity, is still common in many works of theater and film.
One of the most salient characteristics of the morality play is the way that characters are named. Instead of normal names, they are called by the quality they represent. “

In Orpheus, I play Eva Temple. Eva is a straight laced, righteous woman, who protects her reputation by dedicating herself to service in the local church and avoiding relationships of any kind with anyone of a “corrupt” nature, i.e., men and women who drink, smoke, go to “juke joints” where more drinking, smoking, dancing, and other “temptations” abound. She lives with her sister and has entered spinsterhood sans the love of a husband or children. She is pure.
I am reminded of childhood friend who joined me for a festival at my church. I remember her shock when she saw a priest drinking beer and smoking a cigarette. She said to me, “doesn’t he know that it is sinful to smoke and drink? Our bodies are the “temple of the Lord” and should remain pure. Eva tries to be such a temple. She avoids corruption and “corrupt” people. As with many of the characters in “Orpheus Descending” the ones that are the pillars of the community, are actually the ones who are the most destructive in their rigid interpretation of what is right and moral behavior, in order to control and protect their placement in this world and the next. New ideas, unfamiliar people and customs, or the needs of the unfortunate encroach on the territory of the diserved, the chosen, the “white people”. What is sacrificed are the qualities connected to love, humanity, and the music of the heart that comes from being emotionally free, like a bird with no legs.

According to Matthew, Jesus said: It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.”

florence marcisak:

Infinite Theatre:  Orpheus Descending.  Florence graduated from the National Shakespeare Conservatory and was most recently featured in Stefano Palombi’s film Haiku, premiering at the Short Film Corner at Cannes Film Festival 2011. Featured also in Stealing Suburbia which also premiered this year at Cannes.  Recent plays include leading roles in The Intervention, and the world premier of The Laurel Bay Country Club Burglar.

I had done mostly comedies in High School and so this was an odd role for me. At once comic in parts and evil too. I just let myself be molded using my instincts to guide me. What I found in Orpheus Descending was a world unlike any I had visited before in theater. The characters were so rich and diverse, I was mesmerized by their complexities. And “Nurse Porter,” just fit right in with all of them.

Now some 30 plus years later I am once again finding myself playing “Nurse Porter.” Perhaps much much closer to what her age should be, and with a deeper understanding of who she is in this world that Tennessee Williams has created so masterfully.

What else I found in revisiting Orpheus Descending after over thirty years is so complex and sometimes even troubling, comic and yet incredibly bittersweet. And like a Hurricane an incredible swirling of energy and power that is unstoppable. This play is like a force of nature, moving and yes, even destroying the weak or leaving them changed forever. And yet I wonder if those it leaves in it’s wake are really the strong ones. Or are they just the best at surviving?

By Michele Tauber, Vee/ Nurse Porter in Orpheus Descending

It seems there are alot of artist I meet who want to work on ideas and concepts that move and shape our lives and the quality of them.

These are not just people who are struggling to make something beautiful and entertaining, but people who are looking to shake things up both within themselves and within the community they serve. In a way they are like politicians, expressing their views and making laws. Except the laws an artist makes are universal and grounded in a deep connection between human beings.

Over the past couple of weeks I have been rehearsing Orpheus Descending by Tennessee Williams for the Provincetown Tennessee Williams festival with members of the company. I have had alot of amazing conversations with the people I work with about the nature of meanness in a person or persons, or desperation of someone who feels trapped by his/her circumstances.  These are some heavy topics to look at and on a personal level wish they were only in the world of the play.  Yet after a rehearsal, when I walk back out on the streets of New York, look at the headlines on the news or more often simply talk with my friends and neighbors I find these themes like these over and over. I find by coming in contact withe words of Tennessee Williams has helped me with my connection to the words of the people in my world.  I am somehow made me more aware, more compassionate of everyone and what they go through.

I expect you will hear more from our company.  It is my intent to start and keep an open dialuge going going between us and our audiences. One that keeps us all questioning and working on the important ideas and concept of our day. A dialogue that moves us forward in connection to each other and forward in movement towards understanding each other. A dialouge that helps us understand each other.

Inside of a Theater we call the events unfolding on stage a play, outside the theater that same journey of events we call life.

I  welcome you all to share this journey with us.

If you wish to donate to this years revival of Orpheus Descending please visit us at: