BWW Q&A: Spencer Whale on KIN at Making Our Space Theatre Co.

This December, experience the magic of “Kin” as Anna, an Ivy-League poet scholar, and Sean, an Irish personal trainer, fall in love. In this play, however, we rarely see the two lovers together. The story is composed instead of scenes that might otherwise be found on the cutting room floor of a romantic dramedy. Audiences will come to know Anna and Sean’s love through a deeper look into their secondary relationships: Anna’s eccentric Best Friend, Sean’s agoraphobic mother, Anna’s distant father, and more. Friend and family ties stretch across Ireland and New York, revealing the complexities of connection and community.

Directed by Spencer Whale (“Lempicka,” “Vile Isle”), this production brings together a vibrant cast and creative team that boasts a mix of established and emerging talent. Making Our Space Theatre Co.’s Production of “Kin” will star:

Melissa Hurst* (“Claire Tow” at Lincoln Center) as Linda, Iliana Guibert* (“26 Miles” at Gulfshore Playhouse) as Kay, Yuka Taga (“Don’t F*ck With Ba” World Premiere at Toronto International Film Festival) as Rachel, Timothy Wagner* (“Stupid F*cking Bird” at Theatre 4 The People) as Adam, Joe Penczak* (“Macbeth” at Commonwealth Shakespeare Company) as Max, Eli Mazursky (“The Trumpery” at Huntington Theatre) as Sean, Sophia Castuera* (“The Saint and the Football Player” at Mabou Mines) as Anna, Ellie M. Plourde* (“Bettinger’s Luggage” at AMT Theater) as Helena, and Shah Motia (“Everyday Murder” at La MaMa) as Simon/Gideon.

The creative team includes: Director: Spencer Whale (“Lempicka,” “Vile Isle”), Scenic Designer: Michael Lewis (“Days of Wine and Roses”), Lighting Designer: Yichen Zhou (“Invasive Species”), Sound Designer: Evdoxia Ragkou (“Daphne”), Costume Designer: Marianne Needell (“Cuck Cuck Bull”), Stage Manager: Isabel Schwartzberg (“Leopoldstadt”), Intimacy & Fight Director: Leana Gardella (“The Devil Wears Prada”), Dialect Coach: Charley Layton (“The Who’s Tommy”)

Spencer Whale (Director, he/him) is a Brooklyn-based director and playwright focused on developing subversive new works and unearthing fresh, queer readings of classics. He made his Broadway debut this year as Assistant Director on Lempicka, directed by Rachel Chavkin. Recent projects include the premiere of Justin Halle’s end-of-days comedy Vile Isle at the Tank, which Helen Shaw called “superb,” and an upcoming midtown revival of Bathsheba Doran’s Kin for Making Our Space Theatre Co. He received his MFA in Directing from Columbia University, where workshop productions included his original play Cuck, Cuck, Bull; Justin Halle’s Vile Isle and Cowgirl; The Two Noble Kinsmen; and Vanya: An Active Analysis Workshop. He studied under Anne Bogart, whom he assisted on Siti Company’s farewell tour revival of The Medium. His training in new play development includes stints as Directing Fellow at Manhattan Theatre Club and Directing and Producing Fellow at City Theatre, where he helmed the Young Playwrights Festival, led developmental workshops, and assistant directed productions including Nomad Motel (NNPN Rolling World Premiere), A Funny Thing Happened…, and The Guard. Other favorite productions include Sam Morrison’s Hello, Daddy! for Dixon Place’s HOT! Festival; LUNGS, Fun Home, Big Fish, and Quentin Crisp: The Last Word in Pittsburgh; and Titus Andronicus and subculture at Cornell. Spencer has also worked with the Pittsburgh Public, Quantum, Kinetic, and Hangar Theaters. He is a patented inventor and inductee into the National Gallery for America’s Young Inventors. www.spencerwhale.com

What drew you to the script of "Kin" and why did you choose it for the inaugural production of Making Our Space Theatre Co.?

Kin is a gorgeous play, one that I knew I wanted to direct partway through my first read in the Drama Book Shop café. Bathsheba's witty, melancholy, unflinching writing is so layered and nuanced that it serves as the perfect structure on which to hang the kind of performances I'm most interested in developing with actors: those that are driven more by subtext and offstage history than by the motivations we see. My favorite word when directing is "texture," and this play has an endless supply. Kin provides gorgeous glimpses into the interlocking lives of ten characters, some of whom we only meet once, but each one is lovingly crafted as an whole, complicated human being. It's a mysterious play. Words and ideas resonate backward and forward through time, washing over the audience like the mist that permeates the play and accumulating meaning as the play unfolds. It's a gem of a script, and it's astonishing that it hasn't had a production in NYC since its 2011 premiere at Playwrights Horizons.

In what ways does "Kin" reflect the mission of Making Our Space Theatre Co.?

Making Our Space is all about showcasing talented actors and giving them agency over how they present themselves: Kin is unique as its inaugural production because it features Making Our Space's founders in three lead roles: three roles they were each born to play, which made it an easy choice for me to direct. Our producer-actors Ellie, Eli, and Sophia have worked tirelessly to bring this production to fruition, stepping far outside their comfort zones to secure everything from fiscal sponsorships to donations of materials and resources. Perhaps because they're actors first, they put their collaborators' dignity and comfort above all else, and have proven themselves to be some of the most supportive and effective producers I've worked with. They've truly embodied what it means to make your space in this industry, something that inspires me every day I come to rehearsal. The play's cast of nine actors playing ten roles allows the company to expand to include actors of a wide range of talents, backgrounds, ages, and identities. Reviving the play presented an opportunity to make our space in a different way: by casting the play with a much more diverse cast of actors than it had previously featured, a choice that reflects not only the company's values, but also the ways our industry has worked to grow and change since 2011.

Could you detail your journey from being an Assistant Director on Broadway to directing this production?

It's funny to look back on my time with Lempicka and think about how it intersects with this production because I was already very much involved with Making Our Space before I started assisting Rachel Chavkin. In fact, I directed the second Making Our Space actors' showcase shortly after announcing my involvement in that project. So, really, the two opportunities grew in parallel, and my experience with Lempicka enriched my journey with Kin in strange ways. One of the joys of working on my first Broadway production was the opportunity to reconnect with old friends and mentors who wanted to see the production, one of whom was Cornell directing professor (and renaissance man) David Feldshuh, who was visiting from Ithaca. I grabbed a drink with him and his sister, Broadway icon Tovah Feldshuh, after a matinee of Lempicka, and he mentioned how much he'd like to connect me with Tony-winning director Sam Gold, another former student of his whose work I greatly admire. Funny enough, Sam walked by our table just then and said hello to David, and he and I ended up grabbing coffee a while later, speaking a good deal about his experience developing Kin for its premiere. Ours is a small, generous community of artists supporting artists, and I'm always glad to be reminded of that.

How has your focus on queer narratives and subversive works influenced your approach to "Kin"?

I like to joke that this is the straightest play I've worked on in years! I'm very thankful to have carved out a niche developing new works that elevate queer voices and narratives, but this project has given me a real chance to reflect on what owning that perspective has meant for my development, and what I have to offer anew to the kinds of plays I used to direct. My perspective as a gay man allows me perhaps a little more room to question assumptions about the many heterosexual relationships in the play and the supposed morality of the characters' actions as they navigate how their lives might fit together. Perhaps it's easier for me ask the messy questions. I'm certainly not shy about sharing my own embarrassing stories to help an actor access the writhing agony of searching for connection. Beyond that, after working on productions with much more capital i "Intimacy" on display, I've developed values around staging sex and collaborating with intimacy directors- like the very talented Leana Gardella, who is part of our team- that pay dividends working on quieter, less sexually pyrotechnic productions like this one. One of those values is to work hard to never make the work more uncomfortable than it needs to be: to let the performers communicate where they feel ease and where they'd like to take extra care. All that said, Bathsheba is a queer writer herself, and just because the queer narratives of the play don't announce themselves loudly doesn't mean they're not present. It's been particularly exciting to question and explore some of what might be hiding below the surface of these characters' journeys. It'll be up to the audience to decide what that might be!

Can you share more about your process of developing new works and how you apply this to established scripts like "Kin"?

I think it's been about five years since I've directed a full production that wasn't a new work. Recently coming off production of Vile Isle at The Tank, it's been a real joy and a shock to the system to work on a frozen script. That was a play I've been developing with playwright Justin Halle for two years (since its earliest, fragmented pages, and across two full productions to date), and continually revisiting it has been one of my greatest professional joys. One of my core beliefs is that it's never too late to fix something that's not working, and on a new play that often means rewrites until it's too late to rewrite. There wasn't a day during previews of Lempicka that our brilliant writers Carson Kreitzer and Matt Gould didn't deliver a new page, making at least some small tweak to a moment. I believe the work must always be iterative, and that if we think we got it right the first time we're not pushing hard enough. I do miss the collaboration with a playwright while working on Kin, but it's a relief to work on a script that was so lovingly crafted and warmly received upon its premiere: to trust that the brilliance is there, and that we merely need to bring it out. The only real way to develop a new production is to treat the script as a new work and look at it with fresh eyes. Kin was easy to discover anew because of the time that's passed since its writing. It's a play about love in the modern age, and, thirteen years since the Sam Gold-directed premiere, technology has already changed so much. Zoom and FaceTime have fundamentally changed the ways we connect with our loved ones across space and time, in some ways making the world smaller, but in others contributing to a loss of in-person connection. The specific nostalgia I experience when reading this play about connection in the early 2000s resonates directly with my feelings about why theatre endures: an eternal human need to gather and to speak with one another. Once I find that initial seed of impulse for a production, concept and design start to grow organically from it.

What do you hope the audience takes away from this production of "Kin"?

It's become something of a new marketing tagline that we hope our production encourages audiences to "pull their people closer." This was something I said the day after the election on one of those days when we question why we do what we do as theatremakers. Above all else, I remember feeling thankful that the play gives me something beautiful and affirming to cry at instead of something tragic. I think audiences will be in awe of the craft on display from some incredibly talented performers and deeply moved in all the ways we hope to be in the theatre. It's a play that's as funny as it is poignant, and we hope everyone will bring a friend, a date, a loved one with whom to hold hands and feel less alone in this world. And maybe they'll even call their moms!

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