Previews: Mixed Media presentation of THE TURN OF THE SCREW at CATASTROPHIC THEATRE

THE CATASTROPHIC THEATRE opens THE TURN OF THE SCREW at the MATCH complex on November 17th, and the show runs through December 9th.  Tickets are available on both the MATCH website as well as the site for CATASTROPHIC THEATRE. They are promising an "atmospheric piece” that incorporates live theater, puppets, and elements of cinema in a unique experience for audiences.  The show is based on the Henry James novella from 1898 about a governess assigned to take care of two strange children in a creepy house.  It’s a wonderful slightly spooky story that has been told often over the years.  THE CATASTROPHIC THEATRE has brought in New York director and designer Adam J. Thompson to work collaboratively with Houston artist Afsaneh Aayani to direct this piece.  Both Adam and Afsaneh are known for aggressively blending design elements with theater to create something entirely new and exciting. I got a chance to sit down and talk with Adam about the show, and what we can expect in this innovative retelling of an old favorite tale. 

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Brett Cullum: Henry James wrote this work at the turn of the century. How do you make THE TURN OF THE SCREW fresh? How do you make it something to translate to audiences in 2023?

Adam J. Thompson: THE TURN OF THE SCREW is an idea that I've been interested in presenting theatrically for quite some time. And I think it is actually very relevant right now, because we're having these huge cultural conversations about truth and alternate versions of truth.  And how people create their own truth and the limits of their own truth. And then how that creates conflict between different groups of people, because we all get our information from different places, and create our own constructs of truth, and hold very dearly to what we think the truth is, and I think truth used to be considered a much more universal idea. And now, perhaps, it's considered a more individual idea when thinking about society. It becomes perhaps a more challenging thing to grapple with.

The story is about a governess who goes to a house to care for two children, and she starts to have an experience which may be a sort of grand capital “T” truth, or it may be a very individual experience that she's having, which nobody else is having, and she's trying to convince them all that what she's experiencing is the actual capital “T” truth.

She could be considered an unreliable narrator. You only see the story through her perspective in the novella. 

When you translate something visually you have the opportunity to show, not only the first-person experience, but how other people are viewing that first person experience. In our show you see how the governess experiences the story. You also see how the other characters experience her experiencing the story. You can create simultaneity, two truths happening at once.

So that's why I was interested in doing it now. It felt like an interesting time to tackle the question of truth, and how we relate to truth and how we see things. And that's big for us, for our production. That's a core tenant of what we're putting on stage.

Brett Cullum: Catastrophic Theatre. The hallmarks of them as a company are - they blend a lot of design into their works. It's always impressive to see their sets and their effects. Tell me about the team you're working with to bring this to life.

Adam J. Thompson: Yeah. So, I'm the only out of towner. All the other folks are local and very well known for their exceptional work. And they've all been a real joy to work with, and have very excitedly embraced the challenges of the piece. And so it is a sort of hybrid style. It is environmental things happening all around the room. We will not ask the audience to participate. I know people have qualms about that sometimes, but it is environmental and it combines what I would call traditional theater, which is sort of scene work with creating live cinema with cinematic elements, and with puppetry components. It's a very prop heavy show. A lot of it is about the narrative power of objects, and how stories can arise from objects. I'm co-directing the piece with Afsaneh Aayani, who is a local artist whose work is wonderful, and she's also designing the set, the costumes and the puppets. There is also a wonderful lighting designer props, designer sound designer. All hail from Houston. And I'm working with a wonderful local video designer as well. Dat Peter Ton, who's has been a really wonderful partner in realizing the visual components of the piece. It's really an A plus team!

Brett Cullum: What about the cast? Do you have somebody that's playing the governess? 

Adam J Thompson: The governess is being played by Annie Wild, who is a Houston based actor, and she's fabulous, and has embraced the unique nature of this character who is struggling to find her identity. The story was written or published in 1898, and this was a moment in time when the Spiritualist movement was beginning to flourish. And we pull a lot from that history. And what's unique about that moment in time, it’s one of the first moments that women were given positions of authority because it was thought women were better conduits to the spiritual world than men were. So they began to take on positions of power, but at the same time were limited in in that they're limited by social mobility. And so the governess is this woman who represents women collectively, being on the cusp of more social mobility, but still struggling with feeling, held back by cultural norms. And then a decade or so later, women's suffrage became a really hot political point. And this is the beginning of that narrative.

That character in particular is balancing a lot in terms of the psychology of the character. But then, because of the form of the piece, all the actors are doing this. They're balancing puppetry skills with stage acting skills, with camera acting skills. We're really asking a lot of them. And they've risen to the challenge immediately.

Brett Cullum: You basically have a four-person cast. Is that correct?

Adam J. Thompson: We have a four-person acting cast, and then we have a couple of other folks on stage who are helping us with some of the cinema components, and then Hessam Dianpour, our wonderful composer, is also on stage as a live musician. So there are six to seven people on stage at any given moment.

Brett Cullum: What do you think is the biggest challenge in staging this version of TURN OF THE SCREW?

Adam J. Thompson: Well, there's a lot happening. And as I mentioned, it's environmental. Unlike a traditional proscenium show, where you're just thinking about everyone facing out. People are moving around all the time, and the seating we've built is very unique. There are seats on risers, seats on the floor. People are moving around the audience and so figuring out the logistics of that in terms of the story telling, but also the safety of it is a is a particular challenge. And the technology especially the live video technology is always something that's the crazy, crazy, crazy thing in the room that everyone is trying to wrangle into place at any given moment. For me, that's part of what's exciting about it, too. I'm interested in putting the process of creating performance on display rather than hiding it away.

Brett Cullum: I wanted to ask you; do you believe in the supernatural?

Adam J. Thompson: I don't not believe in the supernatural. My feeling is there's no way I am intelligent enough to understand how everything in the world works. I consider myself a pretty curious person. I read a lot, etc., and I think it's just more interesting to be open to the possibilities. Certainly, in preparing for this show I read a lot about the history of the supernatural and spiritualism, and watched a lot of horror films, and looked at the different ways people tackled that topic, and I think I would be foolish to say I know for certain that something can or cannot exist.

THE TURN OF THE SCREW is playing at the MATCH complex at 3400 Main Street from November 17th through December 9th.  Tickets are “pay what you can” and the show runs 90 minutes with no intermission. 

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