The Stressball that is June

June is rolling by incredibly fast! It's not just me, is it? My To Do List keeps getting longer and longer ... except that I have lists all over the place, and on each one I should probably write "Consolidate To Do Lists." So, my apologies that I have not kept up with the company introductions while I have been submerged in article completion and out of town activities.

There are still several company members I cannot wait to introduce you to, and I will get those started up again next week once I am ......drumroll....... upstate! I will be heading up in the next couple of days to get things ready for the season. I still need to figure out a reliable internet connection. I need to be workably memorized on Act III of Merchant by Sunday. I have to pack bed sheets, rice, cans of beans, a few bottles of wine (those are for me!), paper towels, toilet paper, tissues, and dish soap into the car (thoughtfully donated by the Bradway family). Once I'm back in NYC, Patrick and I will be compiling our movement playlists (I cannot wait to tell you about these rehearsals in July!) for Midsummer and Merchant, transferring the website files to my laptop so I can work on the website while upstate (oh right, that internet connection again), and acquiring our very cool presentation board created by our amazing intern Jessica which is detailing our activism re: Scaroon Manor Amphitheater (this deserves its very own post).

To prepare myself for the freak out that will occur when packing the car later this week, here's what needs to come to the idyllic cabin in Adirondack Park:

Things to Fit in Furby (that's my car)
- one big box of ADK T-Shirts (PS - You can still order! They look amazing!)
- two weapons bags (re-appropriated golf bags from Good Will!)
- one floor tom
- box of singing bowls
- Scaroon Manor Amphitheater presentation board
- two dogs
- one "Fort Knox" dog-food container
- 4 skulls
- 2 swords, a dozen dowels
- backpack stuffed with scripts, notes, permits, laptop
- suitcase filled with normal clothes, running clothes, bathing suits, and costume pieces!
- extra bed sheets
- 10 pound bag of rice, half dozen cans of beans, one bag of ground flaxseed, and a box of red quinoa
- Complete Works props
- detergent (dish and laundry), tissues, toilet paper, hand soap and paper towels
- a hoodie!
- a bottle of zinfandel, a bottle of white zinfandel, and a bottle of cabernet sauvignon
- oh! and me!

Meet Celeste!

First things first. You are probably mispronouncing Celeste's name! She is Italian to the core, and we require an Italian pronunciation! I am no good at I.P.A. so my best attempt at presenting the proper pronunciation of Celeste's name would be:

che - LES - tay

So, now you're in the know. You may remember Celeste from last summer's productions in which she played Jaques in As You Like It and Lady Capulet in Romeo and Juliet, as well as several roles in Macbeth. I particularly loved her portrayal of Fleance. Adorable. In addition to Ce's classical chops, she is also an incredibly talented commedia performer. I had the good fortune to work with Celeste last summer just before heading up to the Adirondacks. We performed with Hyperion Theatre Project's fourth annual Manhattanpotamia show, The Trek Down Columbina's Treasure Trail -- and I believe that Celeste has performed in each and every one of the Manhattanpotamia incarnations over the last several years. She is pretty hilarious!

I know Celeste is excited to be performing one of her dream roles this summer: the Prince of Morocco in The Merchant of Venice. This is not to be missed! I am also really looking forward to her portrayal of Helena. This is a character so often played over-the-top, as a goofball, but I know Celeste is going to bring a sensitive and even tragic touch to this role and truly bring her alive for our lucky Adirondack audiences. We are thrilled to have her back this season! And I know she will be ready to relax by Schroon Lake after a month-long tour of Hyperion's A Midsummer Night's Dream in Italy. Welcome back, Celeste!

Fun fact: Celeste is a certified sommelier.

Celeste Moratti

CELESTE MORATTI

(MID: Helena; VEN: Morocco, Balthasar, Salerio; KIDS: TBA)

Stage: Celeste in Crazy Sound, Antonio in Days of Antonio, and Roica in Boing Boing Boing Against the Wall (La MaMa Etc, NYC); Elena in The Theory of Color (Medicine Show Theatre, NYC); The Woman in Night Lights (Public Theatre, Cleveland OH), the Woman in Jean Cocteau’s The Human Voice (Inverted Foot Stage, NYC), title role in Euripides’ Medea, and Dario D’ambrosi’s Angelina (Teatro Quirino, Rome IT), Wife in Edmond, Emilia in Othello (Teatro Primostudio, Milan IT), Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Hyperion Theatre Project, NY and Italian tour), Jacques in As You Like It, Lady Capulet in Romeo and Juliet and Lenox/Fleance in Macbeth (Adirondack Shakespeare Company), Ensemble in Red Noir (The Living Theatre, NYC), The Angel in Angels in America: Perestrojka, Elmire in Tartuffe, Simonne Evrard in Marat-Sade (Stella Adler Studios, NYC). Film: Ariel in My Mother’s Fairy Tales, Antonio in Il Bambino Gallo, Bianka Yonak in Fight the Panda Syndicate. Member of The Living Theatre, Hyperion Theatre Project, Teatro Patologico and proud member of Adirondack Shakespeare Company!

Some fond memories from Summer 2010, our inaugural season:

Jaques in As You Like it

Lady Capulet in Romeo and Juliet

Lennox in Macbeth

Meet Lindsay!

This is Lindsay's first time working with ADK Shakes. Patrick and I have noticed that during the audition process, you sometimes just get a feeling about someone. Even from just their headshot and resume over email or online casting submission. Lindsay was one of those feelings -- for both of us. Of course, her headshot is gorgeous. But whose isn't? So it wasn't just the headshot.

That feeling continued to haunt me after her audition. She came into the audition room and was just enveloped in warmth. I like to scare (scare? weird out? baffle? impress?) our actors by greeting them by name as they come into the room. I wasn't bad either. I think I got about 70% of them! Most casting directors (in my experience anyway) don't do that, and it seemed to take some people aback. But Lindsay just took it all in stride, turned in a stellar audition, was warm and open and friendly to every single person in the room. Months later, she came to volunteer at the Bookend Project, and she was just the same warm and wonderful person. I knew my gut was right, and I just had to work with this person.

So here we are! In many ways, personality and integrity are just as important as skill and talent in the casting process. The summer season is not just a weekend-long commitment, as other RAW projects are. We'll be working closely for weeks on end and driving each other up the wall. It's important to have some sunshine in the group. Meet our sunshine, Lindsay!

Lindsay Bartlette Allen

LINDSAY BARTLETTE ALLEN
(MID: Titania, Philostrate; VEN: Nerissa, Salarino; KIDS: TBA)


Lindsay recently moved to NYC after graduating from the University of Alabama at Birmingham with a BA in Theatre Performance. Favorite university roles include Lydia Languish in The Rivals and Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. As a member of the Theatre UAB Touring Ensemble in Women of Shakespeare, Lindsay performed scenes as Olivia from Twelfth Night, Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing, and Julia from Two Gentlemen of Verona in public and private schools across Alabama and neighboring states. New York credits include Snapshot with Adam Roebuck Productions and Dorothy in Somewhere: An Alternate Ending to the Wizard of Oz, which performed at the Strawberry One-Act Festival in Chelsea. Lindsay was also a member of The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey's Acting Apprentice Company in 2009 where she played Dionyza in Pericles: Prince of Tyre and acted in the theater's mainstage production of The Tempest.

Adopt Lindsay and show your support for her Adirondack debut! Or you can adopt Lindsay and the whole fairy contingent.

Meet Bennett!

Ben and I connected in the most bizarre small-world ways this fall. He was guest-blogging for my professor Steve Mentz's blog. For my Introduction to the Profession class, our touchstone text was The Tempest, and Ben was dramaturging for a three-person production of the play in San Francisco with Cutting Ball. We began emailing and discussing my proposal for the Bookend Project, a dual production of Titus Andronicus and The Tempest.

I soon found out that Ben worked as an actor, as well as dramaturg, playwright, director, teacher, and he was interested in submitting a video audition for ADK Shakes's summer season. And despite the fact that Ben lived across the country, we also had quite a few mutual colleagues! It really is a small, theatre world: "But how do you know these people?" Ben's audition video blew us away, and I also had the opportunity to meet him in person on a short NYC visit in the fall. He is just all-around terrific: a brilliant guy, a talented actor, and he has superb comic timing. We are looking forward to working with him this summer, and we can't wait for you to meet him too. I bet you even have some mutual friends.

BENNETT FISHER

Bennett Fisher

(MID: Theseus, Moth; VEN: Antonio, Launcelot Gobbo, Tubal; KIDS: TBA)

Bennett Fisher is a San Francisco-based playwright, director, and actor. He has performed with San Francisco Theater Pub (Henry IV Parts I and II), Marin Shakespeare Company (Antony and Cleopatra), Crowded Fire (The Lysistrata Project), the Pear Ave Theater (Pick Up Ax), Stanford Summer Theater (Elektra), AtmosTheatre (The Frogs), and Brava Women's Theatre (Sincerity Forever), among others. Directing credits include Audience and Ubu Roi for San Francisco Theater Pub and the upcoming world premier of Susan Sobeloff's Merchants for No Nude Men. His first full-length play, Hermes, premiered in San Francisco last fall, where it was hailed as a "daring and extremely intelligent" and "a breathtaking experience in relevant, contemporary theatre" by The Huffington Post. Two more of his full-length plays - Devil of a Time and Don't Be Evil - are slated for full production in 2011-2012. His various short plays have been performed in New York, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, and New London. He is an associate artist with AtmosTheatre and Threshold Theatre, a founding director of the San Francsico Theater Pub, and the artistic director of the Flying Island Theatre Lab, in residence at the Palo Alto Art Center.

Support Ben's cross-country P.R. with ADK Shakes this summer by adopting him! You can also keep up with him by checking out his website.

Bottom Mask - Part 1

Yesterday, Patrick (ADK Shakes's Exec. Director) and I began work on the Ass Head Mask (or Bottom Mask) for this summer's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Over the last week, we purchased a whole bunch of materials: a giant block of clay, alginate, plaster of paris, plaster strips, wooden popsicle sticks, straws, raffia. Pretty hot grab-bag. The first step of the process was to take a mold of actor Tom Morin's face, who is playing Bottom this summer. Once the mold is set, we will fill it up with plaster of paris to make a positive plaster cast of Tom's face on which to build a clay version of the mask perfectly fitted for Tom. There are several steps after that as well, but I'll get to those in later posts.

Step One: Set up our living room to look like the operating room in Brazil.

Our garbage bag drop-cloths are economical.

Ready for surgery.

We also used garbage bags as smocks, since all we could find at the local A.C. Moore were child-sized smocks. Tom arrived while I was being fitted in my garbage bag. I felt like we may have frightened him.

Patrick measures the alginate while Bob Dylan plays in the background.

Our first batch of alginate hardened way too quickly. The package called for a 1:1 ratio of room temperature water and alginate powder. With 80-degree water, we should have 8 minutes before the alginate set -- but we had not even two minutes before it was completely hardened into rubber. So that batch went into the waste basket. Next time, more water and coooolder. The second batch turned out much better!

Tom being an incredibly good sport.

After we got the alginate on, Patrick began covering Tom's face with plaster strips. These act as a support structure for the alginate mold, which is pretty rubbery and mobile. We need to work pretty quickly to get all the strips on. The weight of the plaster will also help us get a better mold of Tom's face. Also, (having been through this process once myself) I'm sure Tom wants to escape from the alginate-and-plaster-craziness as soon as possible!

 Here's a look at the completed plastering:

Pretty creepy!

Poor Tom lost one of his breathing straws as the alginate dripped down his face! He had another minute or so to set while Patrick and I washed hands, preparing to remove the entire piece from Tom's face. Of course, I had to capture the moment of truth on camera:

After washing up and pulling pieces of alginate out of his hair, Tom graciously stayed to chat with us for awhile. We had a relaxing evening of Chinese food, Peter Pan, and peeking at the mold after Tom left. Next weekend, we will pour the Plaster of Paris into the mold and have a perfect replica of Tom's face to begin the clay model of the Ass Head!