I thought I would take this opportunity to use my final post before the holidays to talk a little about violence in The Polish Play. As I have worked on it, The Polish Play has increasingly become about the Ubu’s crimes and the lack of reprecussions they receive for their actions. As the Ubus’ crimes accumulate the violence in The Polish Play slowly changes. It begins with acts of violence that are broadly comic and cartoonish and moves to something much more realistic, visceral and disturbing.

We have spent a good portion of this rehearsal week staging the play’s many acts of violence. We spent two days with our Fight choreograper, Qui Nguyen, working on the gruesome puppet masssacre and staging the play’s four human fight sequences. I have to say, it’s been really fun and the sequences all look great. We have added a great deal of puppet gore to the gruesome puppet massacre. Puppets get shot, they get decapitated, they get disembowelled. It’s true Grand Guignol.

Qui is an amazing storyteller. His fights are clear, precise and focused. The funny sequences are very funny and the disturbing sequences are extremely upsetting. He works quickly and is very responsive to the actors bodies, abilities and ideas. He also has a keen sense of how props (the weapons and the blood) can punctuate his choreography and deliver shocking bursts of violence and theatricality. His work feels really different from any other fight choreography I have seen. It is very fresh and exciting.

I need to run. We’re having a blood/shit meeting this morning to plan how we will create these fluids, how they’ll get onto the actors and how we will clean up after them. Does anyone out there know of any shows that have utilized a shit squib? Could this be the first appearance of a shit squib on the American stage?

Yesterday we finished table work. Our time at the table has been fun and very productive. We got up on our feet and spent the last two hours starting to stage the killing of Venceslas and the discovery of the killing of Wenceslas scenes.

We put Jordan and Dana into their Pere and Mere Ubu rehearsal fat pats. The fat pads- ingeniously constructed by Assistant Costume Designer Kate Cusack- consist of a short skirt with a pillow attached to the ass for Dana and a t-shirt with a zipper up the back and a pillow attached to the stomach for Jordan. They look amazing.

Here are some of Jenny Mannis’ costume sketches:

We had a great first rehearsal yesterday. The actors read through the play. It was really exciting to hear the play aloud. It’s an incredible cast. They are going to be amazing.

After the read-through we did a design presentation. We showed the cast Takeshi Kata’s model for the set and Jenny Mannis’ costumes sketches and walked them through our ideas for the puppets, the Foley sound effects and the fight sequences. Here are two pictures of Tak’s model:

After rehearsal I spent an hour playing with the model with Erica (the assistant director)and Kelly (the stage manger). We created a storyboard of what scenic elements will be in each scene and where we want to place them on stage. It is going to look fantastic.

The Polish Play is now cast. I couldn’t be happier about working with this amazing company of actors. Here’s the cast:

Jordan Gelber*- Père Ubu

Dana Smith-Croll*- Mère Ubu

James Bentley- Foley Artist

Jeff Biehl* – Queen Rosamond, Cotice, et al.

Torsten Hillhouse* – MacDuff, et. al

Jacob H. Knoll* - Banquo, et. al

Lucas Caleb Rooney*  – King Wenceslas,Ross, et al.

Ryan Ward* - Fleance, Lady MacDuff’s Son, et al.

Eunice Wong* – Bougrelas, Lady MacDuff, et al.

* Appears courtesy of Actors Equity Association

Welcome to the new, improved and redesigned Katharsis Theater Company website. I will be blogging on this page throughout the rehearsal process for The Polish Play.  I’ll post reseach images, design drawings, photos from the reheasal hall, pieces of the script as well as my thoughts about the development of the show. I hope you’ll bookmark this page and check back often.

-Henry

While Alfred Jarry borrowed many story elements from Macbeth for Ubu Roi, he changed the location of his play from Shakespeare’s Scotland to Poland. The title of Henry Wishcamper’s new play riffs on The Scottish Play—actors’ nickname for Macbeth (see The Curse of Macbeth)—and the setting of Ubu Roi.

Literally meaning ‘big puppet’, the term ‘Grand Guignol’ refers to any dramatic entertainment that deals with macabre subject matter and features over-the-top graphic violence. It is derived from Le Theatre du Grand Guignol, founded in the 1890s by Oscar Metenier. The staple of the Grand Guignol was the horror play, which inevitably featured eye-gouging, throat-slashing, acid-throwing, and other equally grisly acts.

Mashup \MASH-up\ n : 1. A digital recording that combines and synchronizes instrumental and vocal tracks from two or more songs, e.g., Destiny’s Child & Nirvana; Jay Z & the Beatles. 2. A website or web application that combines content from more than one source. 3. A play that combines content from more than one source, synthesizing it into a third play, e.g., the Katharsis Theater Company’s production of The Polish Play.