We talk to Scott Alan Evans, the Artistic Director of The Actors Company, about their production of "The Sea" and his involvement with the American Musicals Project.
 
"The Sea" by Edward Bond and tells the story of what happens when a storm shakes an East Anglian seaside community in 1907.

The Actors Company is dedicated to presenting neglected or rarely produced plays of literary merit.

The American Musicals Project (AMP) is curriculum designed for 7th and 8th grade Social Studies classes that is a colloboration between the New York Historical Society and the Department of Education.

"The Sea" plays from April 21st through May 12th. For more info and tickets click here.

For more info on The Actors Company click here.  

For more info on the American Musicals Project click here. 

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Broadway Bullet Interview: Scott Alan Evans: Artistic Director of TACT and the American Musicals Project.

 

Broadway Bullet: We have a new play by a writer that is normally known for doing dark works performed by a company that presents works that are hard to find in New York City. We have the director of "The Sea" here with us today, Scott Alan Evans. How are you doing?

Scott Alan Evans: Great. Thanks, Michael. How are you?

BB: Good. So, first off tell us about "The Sea" which is opening when?

SAE: We start previews on April 21st and the official opening in the 26th. "The Sea" is a remarkable play. What TAC does is mines forgotten plays sometimes neglected plays to find great theatrical literature that still resonates with contemporary audiences. The company isn't particularity interested in doing history plays or providing historical lessons. We look in the past for plays that have a lot of resonance with us now, and we certainly feel that about the sea. It's by Edward Bond, who is very well known in England, and in Europe actually. He has a huge following in Europe, but rarely done here in the states, and this is one of his more unusual plays, because, as you mentioned, Bond is known primarily for often dark very violent plays, and "The Sea" is comedy. It's a very funny, very interesting, thought provoking, thoughtful play that takes place in 1907 in a very small East Coast town in England, and there's kind of a threat that is approaching. Kind of an unknown threat. Well, let me just say this. That Bond wrote, as you may know, a play called "Lear" which was his adaptation of Shakespeare's "King Lear" and he wrote "The Sea" right after that and he was clearly in his Shakespearean mode and focused a lot of "The Sea" on several Shakespearean plays, but certainly took a great deal of inspiration from "The Tempest." "The Sea" starts with this huge storm and a shipwreck, which is certainly also reminiscent of "Twelfth Night" too.

BB: It is almost a kind of lyrical poetic style, isn't it? So how does that translate to comedy? Is it more like one of Shakespeare's comedies or is it a looser, kind of more contemporary comedy?

SAE: That's a very interesting question. Yes, there's a great deal of kind of Shakespearean humor. There's even a nod to the rude mechanicals in "A Midsummer's Night Dream" in the play, but also it has a real Chekhovian quality, and even nodes to Oscar Wilde. So certainly a British, very particularly British, sense of humor. Very witty, very sharp, and because it's Edward Bond, a lot of the humor's a little dark, but hysterically funny. Also, there are lovely lyrical moments, and very moving moments as well. Bond was a brilliant writer and very thoughtful. He had a lot of theories about how we should live and what it means to be human, and a lot of that comes through in this play, and I think in a very accessible way. In some ways more accessible then in some of his other darker more oppressive plays.

BB: Now you've been artistic director for TAC for fourteen years?

SAE: Yeah.

BB: And it's a very actor driven company?

SAE: Yes, in fact I'm co-artistic director with actors Cynthia Harris and Simon Jones, and TAC is unusual in that it really is actor run and actor driven. We have a repertoire company of about 30 actors. We also have designers and composers who are part of the company, and all of the work is generated by that group. We all look for plays. We all suggest plays. Everyone is very involved in the kind of work we do and how we do it.

BB: So then when it comes to settling on a play, when you have such a large community of actors, and you looking for something that's more ensemble driven then lead driven?

SAE: Well, absolutely. When we pick our season it really is quite a puzzle, because we have very specific guidelines in what we define as neglected. Basically it's a play that hasn't been seen in New York City in a professional way in at least 15 years, although the majority of the plays we do haven't been seen in 20,30, 40 years sometimes more, and then we also have to pick plays that really utilize the actors in the company, and we also want to balance the season so it has a great range of comedy and drama and from different countries, so it's a real jigsaw puzzle that we try to manage each season. But yes, we do try to concentrate on what would be great plays for the actors we have.

BB: So now with this one what were some of the attributes that the actors found about "The Sea" that they were really interested in?

SAE: Well, it truly is an ensemble play. There are 13 roles in this play, and I'd say the vast majority are fantastic parts, and the challenges of the style of the play are also really fascinating, because of the tone, its mixture of dark and light, its humor and drama. Those are really great challenges for all of us as we've been exploring this work. The other thing that's important for TAC when we pick plays is that we're very interested in…are aesthetic is that we're really interested in creating theatre from the text and the actors craft, because we're actor driven we're not particularity interested in the set and the physical production. Although, it's important. Our focus is really on making theatre from a plank and a passion, and using the text and the actors ability and craft to bring it alive is what we find makes theatre most vital for us. So that was the other important thing about "The Sea" is that it's so language driven. Language is so important and it's through language that the story is told, primarily, that attracted us to this fantastic play.

BB: All right, we're going to switch gears for a second because you're also involved in another project that I think a lot of our listeners might be interested in, and that is the American Musicals Project.

SAE: Yes.

BB: Maybe you can describe this because I thought this sounded fascinating.

SAE: The American Musicals Project is a program that comes out of the New York Historical Society, and it's a program for 7th and 8th grade middle school, originally designed for New York City public school kids, and it uses great musical theatre masterworks to help teach Social Studies and English Language Arts. So what the program does is follow the state mandated requirements for Social Studies, because in 7th and 8th grade kids learn American History in a continuum, so we follow the state mandated requirements, and we created academic units that follow those requirements, and tie a musical, and in some cases more then one musical to each unit, and we provide a comprehensive guide that includes lesson plans, materials from the musical, if there's a movie we include a clip, we include lyrics, sometimes scripts, and a huge amount of primary sources, historical primary sources from the New York Historical Society's vast collection. We put that all together, and we take that, and train New York City public school teachers to use that material to help teach that to their kids. What we've found is that the students respond unbelievable well to the material, which is great fantastic material as we all know, and tend to retain information better, tend to learn history better, tend to enjoy the learning process more. So it's been an incredibly successful program. We started eight years ago with three pilot schools; one in Manhattan one in Brooklyn, and one in the Bronx, and now we're in over 400 schools and we reach over 20,000 kids a year.

BB: Can you give us a specific example to one of the packages, the units, and how it relates to the curriculum?

SAE: Sure. Absolutely. So lets say a teacher has to teach post-Civil War reconstruction, which she does have to do, or he. So they can pull out our "Showboat" unit and follow, if they like, follow our particular lessons and what we do is train them how to teach with the video and teach with music, because those are specific skills.

BB: Are the students shocked to find out that in the Civil War reconstruction that there were guys singing "Ol' Man River"?

SAE: Well, what's interesting about the "Showboat" unit particularly is that there are two film versions. There's a version from the 1930s and a version from the 1950s, so what we also do is compare those two versions because they're very different and they show real change in race relations. The 1930s version is much more of an integrated movie. The African American characters are involved, they're real, they're fully drawn. In the 1950s version, it's really interesting, but the African American characters are almost invisible. That's part of the lesson is to talk about why was that, how does history reflect that through the medium as well? Then what we do is we train the teachers, as I said, to use this material, and that's primarily what we do. It's not a performing program. It's truly an academic program.

BB: Now I understand this is new, and I doubt you'll get flooded, but if we do have any teachers outside of New York, is there a chance of this program being opened up?

SE: They should definitely contact the New York Historical Society and ask for the coordinator for the American Musicals Project, and I think its AmericanMusicalsProject.org.

BB: All right, so we got that, and jumping back to "The Sea" that is at the Becket Theatre on Theatre Row?

SAE: That's right.

BB: That's one of the great new multiplexes.

SAE: It's fantastic. Actually we've been at Theatre Row several times. We've done our whole season there. We're one of the resident companies there, and we'll be there again next year, which we're very happy about. A few years ago we did a play called "The Triangle Factory Fire Project" at Theatre Row.

BB: you wrote that one didn't you?

SAE: I wrote and directed it along with Christopher Peeler, and that was a big hit for TAC and has gone on to many productions all over the country.

BB: I understand your last production just got raves from the New York Times too.

SAE: Yeah, that was a wonderful way to start the season. We did a production of "Home" by David Storey and, yeah, we did great. We got fantastic reviews and we're hoping that will help propel us into "The Sea."

BB: Well, if our listeners are looking to catch "The Sea" and see what TAC is all about where is the best place to get tickets?

SAE: You can get tickets through Ticket Central or through the TAC website at tacnyc.org.

BB: All right, well, thank you so much for coming down as you get ready to launch this production.

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  You can listen to this interview and many other great features for free on Broadway Bullet vol. 111. Subscribe for free so you don't miss an episode.

 or MP3 Feed with XML