Other Desert Cities 1i2k5a

BEFORE SEEING THE PERFORMANCE… THE EXPERIENCE In the theatre we share stories which differ from TV, DVD, film, books, magazines, podcasts and other media. In the theatre stories are told by real people in real time before a live audience. Each performance of a play is different to any other, as it is dependent upon the time, the actors, the technical equipment and, very importantly, the audience. You can’t re-read a live theatre performance or copy it to see again and again. Each performance exists only once. The performance you will see of Other Desert Cities will differ from the one performed before and the one performed after, which makes it special and unique. Your role as an audience ensures its uniqueness. As students of theatre, you are advised to carefully prepare to see the production so that you can capture that unique, one-off experience and be able to reflect on it in detail.

ABOUT OTHER DESERT CITIES Other Desert Cities transports us to Christmas Eve, 2004, in the Palm Springs mansion of Lyman and Polly Wyeth, two old-guard Hollywood Republicans. For the holiday they’re hosting their son, Trip, a laid-back Hollywood producer and their daughter, Brooke, a liberal writer with a history of depression. Polly’s sister Silda, a liberal and a former screenwriter, is also living with them, having recently been released from rehab. When Brooke arrives, she announces that she has brought the manuscript of her soon-to-be-published memoir, a book that portrays her parents in an unflattering light and threatens to expose a long-buried family secret. When the family discover the book’s contents a battle between Brooke and her parents erupts, as deep seated issues are dredged to the surface and the characters are forced to grapple with the consequences of the choices they made in the distant past. (Source: http://www.goodmantheatre.org/Documents/OnStage/1213/ODC_OnStage.pdf)

CHARACTERS Polly Wyeth Lyman Wyeth Brooke Wyeth Trip Wyeth Silda Grauman

65-70, wealthy, well-connected, socialite, former MGM scriptwriter in partnership with her sister 65-70, former Republican Senator and US Ambassador, still an active member of the GOP (Grand Old Party) 35-40, their only daughter, a journalist, a successful novelist, writing a family memoir entitled Love and Mercy 30-35, their younger son, a successful producer of a reality TV show 65-70, Polly’s sister, a writer, a reforming alcoholic.

THE CREATIVE TEAM Director Set Designer Costume Designer Lighting Designer Composer/Sound Designer Design Associate Dialect and Text Director Assistant Director

Sam Strong Callum Morton Esther Marie Hayes Bluebottle - Danny Pettingill Steve Francis Andrew Bailey Leith Mherson Kim Hardwick

THE CAST Lyman Wyeth Brooke Wyeth Silda Grauman Trip Wyeth Polly Wyeth

John Gaden Sacha Horler Sue Jones Ian Meadows Robyn Nevin

THE SETTING AND CONTEXT Other Desert Cities is a contemporary American play set in 2004. The contemporary nature of the play is evident in the language, costume, set, props and use of technology that the characters embrace. Specifically, it is set in Palm Springs California, a desert city located approximately 100 miles (160kms) inland from Los Angeles on the West Coast of America. Palm Springs is known for its warmth and consistent weather and for this reason it is also known as a resort city. The action in the play takes place in what might be considered a typical Palm Springs home where indoor and outdoor living blend. The Wyeth family are wealthy and well-connected, and their home reflects this. It is grand house with beautiful furniture and there is a tennis court and a swimming pool. The family’s wealth is further captured in the play through references to Saks, Givenchy, Pucci and Brooke and Trip’s ‘Ivy League’ university degrees. There is also discussion about country clubs (upmarket golf or leisure clubs that tend to offer hip to a particular demographic of people) and fundraising events. The design in this production references a well-known example of the Palm Springs architecture, the Kaufmann House, built in 1946.

Images of the Kaufmann House Source: Google Images

The year in which the play is set, 2004, is three years after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre (the Twin Towers) in New York and the Pentagon in Washington and the same year that al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for those attacks. In 2003, the previous year, the United States initiated a military response against Iraq with the of the United Kingdom with the belief that Iraq, under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction. The decision to embark on the war with Iraq generated significant political upheaval in the US and indeed, around the world. This creates a background to young Henry Wyeth’s actions and to certain tensions that exist within the Wyeth family. From 2001 to 2009, the 43rd President of the United States was George W. Bush, a former Governor of Texas. Bush led a Republican government for two four-year until the election of the current president, Barak Obama in 2009. The Republican Party in the US, often referred to as the GOP or the Grand Old Party, is a major political party and has its origins in the anti-slavery movement. Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. It is generally regarded as a ‘conservative’ political party, whereas the Democrats are considered more ‘liberal’. The play also references Republican President Ronald Reagan (1981 to 1989), and Lyman and Polly’s friendship with Reagan and his wife Nancy, both during and after Reagan’s presidency. It is suggested that Lyman’s roles as an elder of the Republican Party and a former US Ambassador may very well have resulted from the Wyeth’s relationship with the Reagans.

PRE-SHOW EXERCISE – DRAMATURGY Your role as a dramaturg on this production requires you to provide the director with an historical overview of Other Desert Cities’ interpretation to the stage. Research and collect the following information: - Images from previous productions that capture interpretations of set, costume, props, lighting, direction - Excerpts from reviews of previous productions that provide a critique and/or analysis of the stagecraft, direction and acting Create a digital or hard copy folder of the images and excerpts and to present to the creative team as a resource for further investigation.

STRUCTURE AND THEATRICAL STYLES Other Desert Cities is linear in structure and the main action takes place over approximately 24 hours; the afternoon of Christmas Eve to Christmas Day. The play is performed in two Acts with an interval. Structurally, the story uses Act One to set up the characters, the world of the play and establish the ‘problem’ or drama. Act Two concerns the journey of the characters and the development of the central problem towards a climax, after which there is a resolution, resolve, or acceptance.

Another structural device in Other Desert Cities is the inclusion of a ‘coda’. Traditionally a coda is a final event or summary placed at the end of a musical piece, theatrical performance, film, even a novel. In this play the coda is a short scene that takes place six years after the main action and presents some form of answer, resolution or way of understanding the play. Stylistically, Other Desert Cities contains elements of both comedy and drama. There is comedy in the pacey, cracking delivery of the dialogue, but there is also drama in the tensions and conflicts within the Wyeth family. The play could also be considered a tragedy. Not a tragedy of the epic variety found in Greek Theatre of Shakespeare’s plays, but a tragedy in the modernist sense, a tragedy where ordinary people struggle deeply to come to with circumstance (see Director Sam Strong’s interview for further insight). Other Desert Cities has also been described as ‘naturalistic’, especially with regard to acting. A general understanding of ‘naturalism’ or ‘realism’ in the theatre is one whereby characters are ‘motivated by thoughts and feelings’, their vocal quality is ‘conversational’ and gestures are ‘natural and spontaneous’ (Reference: Acting in Person and in Style, 5th Ed). There is further discussion about theatrical styles in the interviews with key of the creative team in these notes.

PRE-SHOW ACTIVITY - PUBLICITY As the publicity manager for the production of Other Desert Cities you need to consider how you will market the show. Research the current MTC marketing material including poster, postcard, brochure, Facebook and any enews or other on-line publicity,. - Read the contextual material in these notes - Who do you think the target audience for the play could be? - Write a media release directed at the target audience; why should they come to see the production? - Create a series of ‘tweets’ that could be twittered across the season of the production.

PERFORMANCE SPACE and ACTOR/AUDIENCE RELATIONSHIP Other Desert Cities is performed in a proscenium arch configuration in the Southbank Theatre, Sumner, which allows both the set and the actors to be framed within the playing space. The Sumner is a very contemporary proscenium arch theatre, quite different in design and aesthetic to other proscenium arch theatres you may have been to, such as The Regent, Her Majesty’s or The Princess. Other Desert Cities makes use of the width, depth and height of the Sumner. The size of the stage allows for Callum Morton’s design, a large quite monolithic structure, to be placed on stage and still be able to incorporate the large water feature downstage centre. On the next page is a seating map of the auditorium in relation to the stage, and following that is a panoramic image of the Sumner looking towards the stage. By having some understanding of the style, size and aesthetic of the theatre, you can begin to consider how the possibilities of the space may impact on the interpretative choices and on the actor/audience relationship.

Panoramic view of the Sumner Theatre

THE PLAYWRIGHT - JON ROBIN BAITZ About Jon Robin Baitz An early mentor of Jon Robin Baitz, the playwright John Steppling, once told him to ‘embrace failure’, to always try to take something from it, and there has been a few times during his twenty-five-year writing career that Baitz has needed to recall those words. The last time was just a few years ago when Baitz was sacked from Brothers and Sisters, the hit TV show that he had devised and written. While the second series was being developed, the studio and he had ‘creative differences’. Lines were drawn, hard words were spoken and, before he knew it, Baitz was legally muscled onto the pavement. The shock of losing control of his own work angered and depressed him for some time, but he eventually embraced the failure and salvaged an opportunity from the disaster. He told the LA Times, ‘The show gave me all the reasons to unconsciously think about subjects like the power of women and their emotional lives, but not the means of exploring them.’ To get some of those ideas before an audience, he wrote Other Desert Cities. The play opened at Lincoln Centre in January 2011 to terrific reviews before transferring to Broadway later that year. Success, which included a Pulitzer Prize nomination, relieved his lingering resentment. It’s a little ironic that he fell out with the Hollywood system, because he is practically a native of the place. He was born in Los Angeles in 1961 and although he spent much of his childhood in South Africa, Brazil and Holland

where his father had been posted as an executive for the Carnation Milk company, he completed his schooling at Beverly Hills High (‘A gulag of style over content,’ he now recalls). Instead of going to college, he read voraciously and got a job gofering for two shambolic Hollywood producers, who would become transfigured into the eponymous anti-heroes of his first comedy Mizlansky/Zilansky (1985). His first major play, The Film Society (1987), drew from his African experience, being about a teacher in a South African boys’ school confronted by his complicity in the apartheid regime. It had seasons in LA, London and offBroadway and marked him as a playwright to watch. However, his next play, Dutch Landscape (1989), an ambitious family drama also based on his African experience, never emerged out of numerous rewrites into a coherent work. It was one of those failures he was forced to embrace. The disastrous reviews from the LA press drove him to New York to start again. He re-emerged two years later with a considerable hit, The Substance of Fire about an uncompromising father’s attempts to retain control of his publishing house from his children. The off-Broadway production drew from the Daily News critic Howard Kissel the marquee quote: ‘Nothing makes me more hopeful for the American Theatre than the writing of Jon Robin Baitz.’ Baitz has always been a political writer, the politics often idling away beneath a domestic situation. The conflicts that erupt in his plays within families or between friends are at a deeper level often conflicts between conscience and loyalty. In Three Hotels (1991), originally written for television, the conflict centres on the ethics of marketing baby formula in the third world; in the farce The End of the Day (1992) Baitz examines the charlatanism behind American success; and in A Fair Country (1996), short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize, a family falls apart over the covert of the US government for the apartheid regime. After winning the Humanitas Prize for the television version of Three Hotels, Baitz has mixed playwriting with screenwriting, including a film adaptation of The Substance of Fire (1996) and numerous episodes Alias and The West Wing. But in between, the plays came out at regular intervals. He had a success in 2001 with Ten Unknowns, a funny, painful essay on the art market, and the ambitious The Paris Letter (2005) that follows the consequences over almost forty years of a man’s decision not to follow his own impulses in love and career. The play’s success was followed by the Brothers and Sisters debacle and a year or so of artistic paralysis. He eventually moved forward when the director Joe Mantello, his former partner and still a close friend and collaborator, reminded him: ‘Nobody is waiting for the next Jon Robin Baitz play.’ It was a harsh truth, which he embraced. Strangely comforted by the recognition of his insignificance in the greater scheme of things, Baitz sat down to write the play that no one was waiting for: Other Desert Cities. -Taken from MTC’s Programme notes, written by Paul Galloway

The following are excerpts from interviews given by the playwright Jon Robin Baitz about Other Desert Cities:

The Palm Springs in the play is a kind of battleground, but a battleground at the end of America, where all the promise of the West has been frozen in time. There were these anachronistic Americans living in a kind of cinematic library of old Hollywood movies, old versions of Western success. They were flitting around in my head, as was my own increasing anxiety about the role of the writer in the lives of others, and the responsibility that a writer has to himself and the people he loves. Source: http://www.goodmantheatre.org/Documents/OnStage/1213/ODC_OnStage.pdf)

Other Desert Cities is ultimately a play about forgiveness. In the writing of it, were you forgiving yourself? Absolutely. Eventually. I think that’s right. It’s something you have to learn to do or you’ll end up phenomenally bitter like some John Osborne creature. I think the kind of anger required to live that way will also drive you mad. But in order to forgive yourself, you have to first come to with all the things you don’t know and all the assumptions you’ve made, which is an active part of this play. To me, also, on a profound level, the play is about the emergence of humility in human nature and how vital that is. Again and again one is reminded of how little one knows. I live in real doubt about most things. I think I know something about what people feel, and yet that may just be a vivid projection. So I’ve become tentative as I get older about my claims. For example, the older I get the less simplistic my politics are. I find it at its base - no pun intended - nihilistic. It is nihilism. And there was a longing on my part in this play- maybe even romantic of me - to rediscover a level of humanism in conservatism, which seems to have been rejected entirely out of hand. Yet there is a critique in this play that they did this to themselves. You let this happen to your own party, your agenda, your own philosophy. On many levels, this play is finally an examination of how it is to live with being complicit. Source: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/11/02/jon-robin-baitz-talks-about-his-new-play-david-mamet-more.html

Playwrights’ introduction Jon Robin Baitz’s script of Other Desert Cities includes two introductory quotations The apparent ease of California life is an illusion, and those who believe the illusion will live here in only the most temporary way Joan Didion I was sittin' in a crummy movie with my hands on my chin Oh the violence that occurs seems like we never win Love and mercy, that's what you need tonight So, love and mercy to you and your friends tonight. Brian Wilson, Love & Mercy Joan Didion (born December 5, 1934) is an American author best known for her novels and her literary journalism. Her novels and essays explore the disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos, where the overriding theme is individual and social fragmentation. A sense of anxiety or dread permeates much of her work. Brian Wilson (born June 20, 1942) is an American musician, and the leader and chief songwriter of The Beach Boys. Besides being their primary composer, he also functioned as the band's main producer and arranger. After g with Capitol Records in mid-1962, Wilson wrote or co-wrote more than two dozen Top 40 hits for the Beach Boys. He launched his own solo career in 1988 and Love & Mercy featured on his debut album. Love and Mercy is the original title of Baitz’s play

PRE-SHOW ACTIVITY - ANALYSIS Read and re-read the above quotations by Joan Didion and Brian Wilson. - Discuss what each quotation means - Discuss how each quotation may relate to the written playscript - Why do you think that the playwright changed the title of the play to Other Desert Cities? - Compare the titles Other Desert Cities and Love & Mercy. What meaning and/or impact do each of these titles have?

FURTHER READING AND REFERENCES: Read a version of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks Read about the presidency of George W Bush (2001 to 2009). Also features Ronald Reagan, mentioned in the play: http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/georgewbush An overview of the US War in Iraq and the political repercussions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War This website profiles the Beach Boys, their work and their impact on young people on the West Coast of America in the 1960s and 1970s: http://www.beachboys.com/ (See Brian Wilson quote at the beginning of the play, discussed in interview with Director, Sam Strong) One of several scenes ed to Youtube from the Broadway production. These are worth exploring as dramaturgy in preparation for the MTC production: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9dO14rjY5w Palm Springs, California – architecture. What is specific about this architecture? What type of community or world does it capture? https://www.google.com.au/search?q=Palm+Springs++architecture&hl=en&rlz=1C5CHFA_enAU503AU504&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=y841UYblGYGNkw WM9oCgAw&ved=0CDoQsAQ&biw=1280&bih=679 Palm Springs lifestyle/fashion. An online magazine that aims to represent the contemporary Californian, Palm Springs lifestyle: http://www.palmspringslife.com/Palm-Springs-Life/Style-and-Shopping/ This link provides an insight into the types of films that Lyman Wyeth may have worked in. It focuses on Ronald Reagan, who was both a film star of the 1950s and the President of the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan_filmography Artist David Hockney (referenced by Costume Designer, Esther Marie Hayes): http://www.hockneypictures.com/.php http://www.davidhockney.com/

INTERVIEW WITH SAM STRONG, DIRECTOR OF OTHER DESERT CITIES

Sam Strong is the new Associate Artistic Director at Melbourne Theatre Company and this is his first Sumner Theatre show. Sam what was your initial response to the script, Other Desert Cities? Was the play one of your initiatives in of programming? How my directorial role with Other Desert Cities eventuated was a lovely connection between it being a play that was of interest to Brett Sheehy, the Artistic Director, and a play that I read and was immediately interested in directing. I often place a great deal of store in my first responses to work, because I think that is as close as you can get to an audience’s response to the work. I try to harness as much as I can of my first read. What struck me most about Other Desert Cities was the way that it combined both a family and a political drama. The play sits in what is almost a genre of immaculately crafted, American dramas. There is more recently August Osage County, but even going back to Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neill, there is a very well-worn path in American theatre. This play had all of the things that those great American dramas have. It is immaculately crafted, it’s a beautifully-told story and it is a platform or vehicle for very detailed and wonderful performances for actors. This is a work that lends itself to very deep character interrogations in the style of the great American dramas; it is very much an actor’s piece. But I go back to the fact that it combined the family drama with the political drama, the family fault lines or family tensions were made even sharper by the presence of the political fault lines. Those elements were what drew me to Other Desert Cities in the first instance.

I am imagining it running on Broadway during the Presidential election in November 2012 and how Americans may have viewed their own politics through the lens of the play. It is one of those plays where the specifics of it are very important. There are different schools of thought about how you approach international work and whether you adapt it for a local audience with a local accent, or set it ‘nowhere’. Those are questions for which you cannot have blanket responses because they’re questions that depend on the individual demands of each show. But this is a work that needs to be realised in its American specificity.

So, when you say that, and knowing its American specificity, even down to the LA, West Coast, Jewish, Texan Americanisms, what research and dramaturgy do you do as a director, and specifically for this show? There are two versions of research on this piece for myself as a director, and for the designers and cast. There is a version that is a bit generalised where you say; hey it’s American and it’s kind of on the West Coast and that will be enough - which is not enough! Or there is the version where you really get excited by the detail of it and you interrogate that detail. One very clear example is the accents. There is a version of this play that could work well with the actors taking on a generalised American accent. Rhythmically that works with the writing, but there is an enormous amount of detail to be mined in the text that goes way beyond that. That variety of backgrounds that the characters have invites the detail. Brooke may be a touch more East Coast. There is that unique combination of Jewish and Texan with the sisters, Silda and Polly, and how much of each of those is to be suppressed or retained. Working in that detail is something I find incredibly exciting as a director, so it is nice that this piece lends itself to that.

Sam will you and the cast be working an accent coach? Absolutely. The title is Dialect and Text Director and that is Leith Maherson, a highly skilled voice and accent coach who I worked with on the MTC production of Madagascar (2011), another contemporary American drama. I also worked with Leith on a Red Stitch Actors Theatre production called Faces in the Crowd, which had some very particular Yorkshire dialect, influenced by London. So Leith is a really wonderful and detailed voice practitioner. That is completely necessary on this work.

Artist Callum Morton, has designed the set. He is an artist of international standing including being a Venice Biennale exhibitor, and known for the size and proportion of the installations he creates. Would you talk about working with an artist such as Callum Morton and what that process has been? How has it impacted on the design for this production? The collaboration with Callum Morton was brokered by Brett Sheehy. Brett had previously programmed him in a Melbourne International Arts Festival. We had a brief meeting here at MTC about working together in the future, that it might be Other Desert Cities, and we got along immediately so it was a great collaborative mood from the start. We then discussed the specifics of Other Desert Cities and more specifically the Palm Springs setting. Even with the early images that Callum began generating we knew we were on to something really interesting. It is worth noting about the design that we have taken a different direction to the Broadway production. The play is a classic living room drama and in the script the action occurs in the one room. In that way it is deeply naturalistic. As a designer and director that is something you need to embrace and in this play you also need to embrace the Palm Springs, Californian specifics. Callum and I were also very keen to put a work of art on stage but in so doing carefully consider the Palm Springs architecture and in particular the way that some of those classic Palm Springs houses operate on a continuum from outside to inside. So the idea arose early in our discussion to stage the play somehow in some combination between the interior and exterior. The Kaufmann house in Palm Springs was our primary model. Architect Richard Neutra designed and built the house in 1946 for the wealthy Kauffmann family. That house has an unbroken line between the living room, the patio and the pool and we were keen to replicate that, using the movement from inside to outside to create a strong visual journey through the play, to accompany the dramatic arc of the play especially as the drama ramps up in the second act.

When you talk about ‘movement’ are you making use of the stage revolve that the Sumner has? No, we aren’t. What we have done is place a room and a house on stage and we are playing the action in an around that. The design is like a distilled version of the Kaufman house. There are a couple of other underlying principles to the design. One is to meaningfully integrate the coda of the play which is set in a book shop six years after the main story takes place. We wanted to find a way to utilize the design space so that we didn’t just place the character of Brooke in a pin spot down the front. So we wanted to make that part of the visual journey of the show and to lift out some of the imagery that is in the text and the symbolism that exists. In relation to the concrete design, the idea is that Palm Springs is a ‘tomb’ and that the family has ‘died’ and ed away. So we have a large monochrome, monolithic house on stage with a glass front with a pool at the front, and the glass front opens up to reveal quite a naturalistic living room inside. At present we play most the first half of the play outside and we gradually move inside as it becomes too cold to stay outside. And the final scenes of the play are sealed inside with a highly intensified focus in keeping with the arc of the play.

What do you think the connections are for an Australian audience? This play will transfer best for an Australian audience if we realise it in all its American glory. In order for its more universal ideas and themes to resonate here and now in Australia - how families interact, how families keep secrets, whether the themes are intergenerational or political conflict- I think we need to place them in their original setting. In this case the universal is rooted in and emerges through the particular details of time and place. The piece does transfer and translate very well because ultimately the play is about family dynamic and that family dynamic is ‘exquisitely observed’, which is a phrase that Polly uses to describe Brooke’s first novel, and instantly recognisable. You know who these people are and the world they inhabit and you recognise how they interact as a family. One of the greatest lines from the play for me is, ‘Families will be terrorised by their weakest member’. And that is essentially what the play is about. The family is rich territory for not just American drama but world drama, contemporary or classical.

Sam, do you think it sits firmly in a Western-European canon? Absolutely it does. It is very much Western, Anglo, middle class. In saying that, one of the greatest challenges with transference is the challenge for the actors. This piece has a very American rhythm, and American speech is very direct and front-footed. It is always ‘active’ in that you are always ‘doing something’ to someone else. As Australians we tend to do two things with our speech, things which we probably inherited from the English. One is to be quite indirect in our speech and the other is to be a bit reflective. In Other Desert Cities the writing is the opposite of that. The language is very direct and requires ‘attack’, someone is always trying to actively do something to somebody else. Capturing that sense of attack in this work is vitally important for it to work, and vitally important for the rhythms of the language. This is a work that is dense in its language but rhythmically wonderful, and finding the music of the work will be very important. Another reason why I was drawn to it is I tend to have a strong aural bias as a director. I will often ‘hear’ before I ‘see’ as a director, so historically I have been attracted to plays that have quite dense language and are rhythmically dependent and Other Desert Cities contains some wonderful rhythmical sparring.

Are you permitted to make any changes to the script? Have you? I come from a new writing background and am interested in working with playwrights on new plays and if we work on an existing play and want to make any changes we would do that with consent from the playwright. I think we are in a very fortunate position with this script in that it comes to us very well-formed and the beauty of it is its crafting. We’ve inherited it on the back of an existing production so the play is very well-made already. There isn’t really anything to tinker with. In some respects it is like directing a classic play even though it is a new play.

Before you mentioned Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller, two great American modernist playwrights, and perhaps even Tennessee Williams plays - are there echoes of their work in this production? It is true of that earlier 20th century writing period; those plays are extraordinarily well-crafted and well-made. I think that particularly Miller bears the Ibsen inheritance quite proudly in that his plays are structurally water-tight entities. I’m particularly considering this because I am directing Miller’s The Crucible later in the year, which is possibly the most water-tight entity you can come across as a director! So I think there is a very strong tradition of the well-made plays in American theatre and particularly those that deal with the family and deal with, in that Ibsen-like fashion, the revelation of some form of secret from the past. You can draw a line from this play back through Tracey Letts to Miller, O’Neill and Williams; back to Norway’s Henrik Ibsen if you wanted to.

Theatre Studies students are studying theatrical styles in Unit 3. When I watched and listened to scenes from the Broadway production on Youtube there was a lot of laughter which surprised me. Would you agree that amongst the drama and tragedy of Other Desert Cities, there is comedy in this play? If so, how are you drawing each of these styles out in your direction? I think all of those aspects are inherent in the play. When I was introducing it on the first day of rehearsal, I cut what I had planned to say and borrowed something a colleague had said about the play when they read it for the first time. They said that they couldn’t put it down, it made them laugh out loud and it made them shed a tear and that comment captures the trifecta of experiences that Other Desert Cities gives rise to. What a great story it is, but how it balances the comic with the dramatic and the tragic. It deals with intense emotion, the revelation of traumatic secrets and it is a play that will have a strong emotional impact in the theatre. But it is also very funny! We are in the second week of rehearsal now and the process of putting the play on its feet has been a salient reminder of the comedy that exists within it. Part of that comedy springs from that sense of verbal sparring, and that American dryness, but it is bitterly funny. There is a tonal balance in the play about how much comedy to extract. You could extract a lot, particularly from characters like Silda. There are some classic comic sit-com entrances, but in a good way. The second act of the play is very moving, while the first act is lighter and funnier. So, there is a fair bit of comedy to be had and we will play with that and find a balance.

What is your directorial process during rehearsals Sam? To a certain extent how you rehearse depends upon the idiosyncratic demands of the play and the cast you are working with, which is one of the great things about directing because you can never really do precisely the same thing twice. But there are certain structures and shapes that you will generally follow over a four or five week rehearsal process. In of my individual style I tend to be very much about responding to what I am seeing in front of me rather than executing a pre-existing idea in my head. I will have an idea or vision for the scene, but more often than not, I may get into the room and we find something that is much more interesting than the idea I had in my head. Not always but sometimes that is the case. The rehearsal process for this production is built around particular visual moments and linked to the design. These are large visual steps and we have a flexible idea of what they need to be. I think when you are lucky enough to work with a cast of this calibre you would be foolhardy to close down their offers, because their offers are incredibly interesting and varied. So I tend to run quite a collaborative room and I think that rehearsal needs to remain fun and playful and exploratory. For me, part of directing is about balancing the broad sweep with the specifics. I tend to enjoy detail. I enjoy detail in performance and in staging so a lot of my work in the room is about adding detail and refining, adding gesture there, adding a pause here. So I will tend, over the course of a rehearsal period, to focus and distil – that would be a nice way of looking at it. I also like to get the work on its feet very early, so we will run the whole play on its feet in the first couple of days and give it some sort of ‘physical shape’ - which is sometimes referred to as ‘blocking’ - by the end of the second week of rehearsals. Then we start to refine and detail from there. So in those first two weeks we have an idea of the broad sweep and different actors will find their rhythms within that overall architecture. Some move very quickly, some slightly slower, but part of being a director is to put the architecture in place for each of the actors’ processes to sit within. Then ensure you are moving towards the goal of the production you want to make.

At what point would you lock things down? Being collaborative doesn’t mean being indecisive. It is actually about recognising the best ideas rather than necessarily having them. It is your job and responsibility to do that. It doesn’t matter where the ideas come from but ultimately the director is responsible for crafting the experience, however collaborative the process is. So, as a director, you need to be making decisions all the time. One of the traps that younger practitioners fall into, and I certainly did, is avoiding making concrete decisions. A strong decision is always preferable to no decision because you can change a strong decision. There is a delicate balance in directing between giving people enough of a framework early on and also giving them some space as well to find a pathway into the work. You don’t want to shut down creativity but, rather, you want to facilitate it. So directing can be very challenging within a relatively tight timeline.

Sam, as the director you collaborated with Callum Morton on the set design. Have you had input into the costumes? This is a fun show to realise costume wise because of the specifics of Palm Springs dress and we are going to go with that concept. I think it is very important in grounding the audience in the world of the play, particularly when part of the outside of the space has a monochrome (black/grey and white) quality. So if we are in a slightly abstract universe outside, then costumes help to ground it, and of course they assist in creating characters. This is a very particular socio-economic world and a particular geographic world. So costume is in some ways the best means of realising that world. In addressing that challenge, we are very lucky to have a talented young costume designer in Esther Hayes. Another thing that is an interesting balance is the colour palette. In the production there is a strong contrast between the monochrome exterior and the vivid interior. There is some very careful colour balancing going on between the costume and the furniture inside. For instance the design idea is that there can only be one purple thing so what gets to be purple - the pants or the couch?

At the start of the script is a quote by American journalist and author, Joan Didion about the illusion of Californian life, and then there is quote from Brian Wilson’s (Beach Boys) song Love & Mercy which is the original title of the play. Do you have any comment on these and their relationship to Other Desert Cities? I find those quotes incredibly interesting and helpful because they come at the text from a lateral perspective. One of the key aspects of rehearsal is getting out of the way of your own intellect and ensuring you are creating the work in an intuitive fashion. Particularly true if you come from a more cerebral approach, as I historically did, then you need to think more laterally, intuitively and creatively. Quotes like this are a good way in. What I took from the Joan Didion quote was the idea that Californian lifestyle is an illusion and this concept is very much built into the design of the production. What is real and what is not? What is an illusion and what isn’t? The Brian Wilson one connects me to his time with the Beach Boys and I think about that music as quite ambivalent. One the one level it is very happy and represents the high watermark of surfing culture and it’s buoyant and fun, but there is also a deep strain of melancholy in lot of Beach Boys’ work. That song, Love & Mercy typifies that melancholy, the darker shadow of the Californian lifestyle. And Brian Wilson wasn’t overly successful as a solo performer and that amps up the melancholy somewhat.

Do you, and does MTC, have a practice of post-production meetings or debriefs? Shows don’t often have debriefs. The companies I have previously been involved with have attempted to have one but more often than not we have moved onto the next show and the chance is lost. A robust debrief is really important, particularly if a show hasn’t been as successful as you wanted it to be. Ideally you would want a debrief to be an important part of the development of the artists who have been involved in the show and an important part of maintenance of quality across the whole season.

This is your first time directing a show to be staged in the Sumner Theatre. What challenges and opportunities has that offered? What’s been great about getting into the Sumner is it is a proscenium space. A lot of work I have been directing has been in very different sorts of auditoriums. Wharf 1 has varied configurations, Griffin is a very idiosyncratic space, Belvoir is as well, and the Fairfax is a studio space. So it is nice as a director to come back to something quite traditional in its stage and auditorium relationship. The proscenium means you have a great opportunity to create quite simple end on pictures. One of the beautiful things about Callum’s design is that it ‘frames’ the action on the stage into a series of hopefully very strong pictures, both outside and inside the house.

INTERVIEW WITH SET DESIGNER, CALLUM MORTON The architectural sensibility of Callum Morton is evident in his new stage design The first thing Callum Morton says is, ‘I’m not an architect.’ It’s my fault for introducing the word. Morton is famous for his art, yet you can understand my slip of the tongue. From the clean sophistication of International Style (1999, based on architect Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House) to the haunted, smoking ruins of Valhalla (for the Venice Biennale in 2007 and re-installed in the 2009 Melbourne Festival), Morton’s sculptures and installations often draw from a deep understanding and appreciation of architecture and architectural forms. It will not surprise you that we’re very excited that Morton is taking charge of the set design for Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz. The shift to theatre is not entirely new to him. ‘Very early on,’ he explains, ‘just before I went to study architecture, I did a couple of set designs. In fact, I seriously thought about set design before I went to study architecture. There have always been things in my work that have indicated a connection to that theatre world.’ On inspiration Morton’s tantalisingly evasive. ‘There are certain things that I’ve always been particularly interested in, in my work,’ he says. ‘Certain ideas - like the relationship between public and private space, or the relationship between inside and outside, various kinds of oppositions like that. They’ve always been there, ticking

away. But really they’re just ideas that help me talk about the work; often the things that inspire you are a bit harder to locate.’ ‘I’m not just interested in art, although of course I’m an artist, so I am deeply involved in and inspired by that world. But I am equally as interested - and always have been - in architecture, literature, theatre certainly, and film, and a whole host of other things. I like to engage in a whole lot of different worlds.’ One difference he has noticed between the theatre world and the art world has been the nature of collaboration. ‘What a theatre-maker might call collaboration is quite different to what an artist might call collaboration,’ he says. ‘When I do the larger scale installation work, I’m really the director of those projects as much as a designer. I may be deg a space that you go into and which you experience, but how that space is narrativised, how you move through that space, what you engage with: they’re all things that I’m constructing as well. But the theatre way of working is quite different. If you are asked to do a set for the theatre, you are just doing the set. And at an institution like MTC, there’s the pressure of production and everyone is kind of compartmentalised - you need to be - in order to realise that ambitious programming.’ A long-time resident of LA, Morton was drawn to Other Desert Cities due to its familiar Palm Springs landscape and particular architectural context. ‘When I read the play - even in the first conversations we had before I read the play - I was interested in this specific architectural engagement with a place like Palm Springs. The play describes a kind of Republican interior, a mixed-up stylistic dimension that drives the family in many ways. But the approach I’m taking is to locate the play specifically in the Kaufmann House by the modernist architect Richard Neutra. This is probably one of the most famous houses in Palm Springs, and we’re going to recreate a portion of that exactly.’ The narrative crux of the play, the gradual dismantling of a familial façade, has driven this approach. ‘The family in this play live in kind of an illusion, he says. ‘What unfolds through the arc of the play gets them within closer proximity to some type of reality, and in a sense we’re doing that through the set. We’re using this notion of illusion on the exterior of the house, and then, as they move inside and they’re behind closed doors, that illusion dissolves.’ Taken from MTC’s Scenes Magazine, written by Stephanie Convery

INTERVIEW WITH LIGHTING DESIGNER, DANNY PETTINGILL Danny, what were your first responses when you read the script of Other Desert Cities? My first response was that the play itself is very much about people, a family, and how we, as a creative team were going to make that the central crux, it dramaturgically with lighting, set and other production elements, and Sam’s vision. He always has a very strong directorial vision but he wants ideas from us in order to or reinforce those choices. I thought it was a very well-written play and I responded to the fact that the relationships within it are not unique to the writing, but very familiar to everybody. When I think about a text like this I think it could just be put on its feet with the cast we have, even with scripts in their hands, and be very potent. So my response is about how to design without a heavy hand, to supplement that potency.

When you read a script for the first time do you always wear your lighting designer hat? The way I approach the script is usually to do with location, aesthetic and the action in the play. When I read I can often pull out bits of the play that I feel are really important and begin to conceptualise how I can those moments dramaturgically and as subtext.

You don’t always work with script when you design do you, Danny? No, I don’t. I approach a lot of projects from a theatre making background. Often it isn’t about what is being said but about what people feel and how we can make the audience feel.

How does lighting work in of subtext? Would you expand on that? Subtext is part of the way I design, something inherent in my body of work that I have continued to explore. Lighting design for me is always concerned with timing, rhythm, and ing the events in the play. Lighting and subtext occurs at the emotional level. So we consider what the characters might be feeling within the action at that time and then ask ourselves how can we use lighting to allow the audience to feel what the characters might feel? It’s ing lighting to heighten the audience’s experience and creating shifts and texture on stage that can put the audience in the psyche of the world of the play without a heavy handed approach.

Theatre Studies students attending this production are specifically examining how the script has been interpreted to the stage, so it is good to hear that as a designer contributes to the interpretation of subtext on stage. Is it collaborative? Other Desert Cities is a highly dramatic play and my role is to that. I am working very closely with Callum Morton, the set designer, and with Steve Francis, the sound designer/composer, and ultimately with the director, Sam Strong, to supplement that drama. In heightening the subtext our aim is to reach a particular ‘emotional level’ and I enjoy getting to the point where I no longer know specifically who has created the ideas that we see on stage. Is it me, Steven, Callum, Sam, or even the stage manager who might suggest a particular lighting angle because they can sense that it looks more effective, or is more striking, or needs to occur over 15 seconds and not ten? To me that is part of the process and ultimately part of the production. Theatre is about the team, seven minds looking at the stage and that is better than one.

Sam talked about the specific location of Other Desert Cities. An American West Coast, LA, Palm Springs, desert setting – how have you worked with these ideas? For me that Palm Springs location and the geographical odyssey of the play meant that I saw bleached desert light. As an idea, that is where I started. The architecture of the set that we will see on stage has been influenced by the Kaufmann House, which I’m sure Sam has elaborated on, so considering that set design and the idea that it is in the middle of a desert is what I have always returned to; and examining what that light is. How do we treat that desert light, and how chronologically can we represent it? With desert light there is nothing around you like we have in a city and depending on the time of day the light can do some very beautiful things. We are going to try and capture the light’s journey in of colour and intensity across the arc of the play - the story happens over 24 hours. I am at the point of discussing what colour the light may be at 8.30am compared to mid-day where it is more stark. Then what might it look like at 7pm when the sun begins to set. From that point desert light tends towards purples, blues, greens and reds into pinks. We want to do justice to that light and the location within a theatre context. Obviously we can’t put the sun on stage but our job is about recreating those different versions of light. We’ve made a decision to make considerable use of a cyclorama and the trajectory of the sun light in order to achieve that.

Is the cyclorama just for the lighting design? Is it also part of the set? It’s like a tool, or a large canvas that you can paint on. Lighting designer, Paul Jackson who mentored me, once said something that influenced my whole style. For a lighting designer, the stage is a canvas and we use light as our paint. The cyclorama is part of that canvas. It will allow us to ‘paint’ the stage with those contrasting desert lights, and very subtle shifts across the play to tap into the geographical location. The cyclorama can also act as a tool that we can use to implement the subtext I was talking about before - mood, emotion, tension etc.

What type of research do you do Danny? Did you go to the desert for example? I do sometimes go to locations as part of my preparation for deg a show. Research for shows usually starts though with images and I use the images that I find to communicate my concept to others. So, for this show I drew on a range of images specifically from the desert and around Palm Springs, examining where the light comes from, its colours and intensity, even how clouds affect the light in such an expansive area. Where there are no tall buildings you can actually see the shadows on the sand, or the clay. The way the sun moves in the desert. I started with an online search and then moved on to landscaped paintings and I often use a number of different resources when I am deg. I might take essays or pieces of text as stimulus. You can become very scientific with lighting but you also need to choose direction in which to travel. Initially you cast the net wide and once you find the direction that is the path you stay on. For instance I did a lot of reading about where the sun is at any given point in the year in Palm Springs. Ultimately you may not see that specifically on stage, but the finished product has that background and the research provides knowledge to help you create a feeling or convey a particular mood in some way.

Has Other Desert Cities offered any challenges for you as a lighting designer? The set of this production has given us a few challenges in how to light it, as you will notice when you see the production. I took it on as a really great challenge for us to tackle. There is little opportunity to use ‘conventional’ theatre lighting for a substantial part of the play, so Sam, Callum and I gave ourselves the challenge of producing something exciting that could still service our needs of lighting the action. I would say it has thrown up a few extra challenges but it has been exciting to solve them together.

You use the term ‘dramaturgy’ and Sam Strong uses the term ‘dramaturgy’. What do you mean by that term? To me the term means identifying and bringing out the essence of the play and the essence of the relationships we are seeing on stage. It is a process of questioning why the writer has made certain decisions, and written certain lines and then why they are meant to be or are directed to be delivered in a certain way. How can all that information be conveyed and read by an audience? We can’t be trapped into just making something ‘beautiful’. We need to explore and question and critique what we are creating. Dramaturgy is a process of ‘interrogating’ the play and the process. Knowledge is really important, you can never know too much about a script and a play and you can never research too much. It is a vital tool for being able to create theatre. As a designer you need to know what you are creating. Are you aiming for a naturalistic lighting design here? I don’t think I can avoid delving into the psyche of the play. That’s what I do. There will be some naturalistic elements - mainly to do with the position of the sun - as a base to come back to or consistently link the overall design. But there will be shifts that play with the subtext that we associate with naturalism.

So is Other Desert Cities a naturalistic play? Is that how the creative team are approaching it? To an extent the play is very naturalistic, but I think that in contemporary theatre practice we are re-inventing naturalism. Audiences are experiencing ‘realism’ and ‘naturalism’ on Facebook, Youtube, Television, and Film. As practitioners we need to continue to make theatre relevant and so that includes re-inventing naturalism as a theatrical style. We need to challenge the conventions of that and challenge what we see as the norm.

Would you talk about the use of interior light in the production? The interior light in the production taps into those more naturalistic elements of the play. There has been a lot of discussion about what the interior lighting design will be. Sam, Callum, and I have worked very closely for a long time in order problem solve. The house is completely enclosed and discussion centred on whether to have a ceiling or whether we cut holes in the ceiling and put theatre lights in as an easy solution. But we knew for the

integrity of the play and for the architecture that was being put on stage we didn’t want to do that. We needed to find something we could use in the house so that everyone can see and achieve what we wanted in of aesthetic. When you see the production, the solution is obvious and I think it fits the architecture and style of the production.

Sam Strong said the costume and set items project a very strong and contrasting colour palette. How does that impact on your design? It impacts a little. When you have such a stylistic colour palette and you want that to stand alone, then a lot comes back to the understated nature of the light. We are working with a lot of colour temperatures and by this I mean how the lighting captures where the sun is, how much red is there, how much blue and it will always appear quite white apart from the cyclorama but different temperatures of white. At some points more blue, at others more green or more red, or a combination of these. My job is to ensure that the set and costume palette can still stand alone and the light doesn’t saturate or mute them. Although we may mute them at some point if we don’t want to emphasise the bold colours and this can be achieved with light.

Will those final decisions be made during the season of the production, in the bump in? Well during the development I continue to discuss these ideas up until we get into the theatre. You can have done all the research, made all the decisions but in the theatre things change. A large part of my role is to be very adaptable when we get to the bump-in point, to problem solve and trouble shoot. The classic example is that you have a look or style in your head that you based a particular scene or look around but it doesn’t work in the theatre and you may need to reconstruct it. And it will shift again between plotting and then preview and then again by opening night.

Do you take up varying audience positions in the theatre as you are plotting and tech-ing a show? I’m renowned for being a bit of a roamer when I plot! I’ll always walk and I’ll always make sure that I sit in many positions in the house to ensure that what the audience sees is, not necessarily the same, but is consistent. I find it really interesting watching something from a different position and seeing something new, it continually surprises me.

This unit of study demands a comparison between the script and its realisation on stage. So students consider stage directions, staging choices and then see if they are followed or re-interpreted. In the script the following stage directions appear and I wondered if you could respond to them – how are you interpreting them? ACT I - Scene Two The Wyeth living room, late afternoon. Christmas Eve. The sun is going down, an ochre desert light pervades. The Christmas tree is lit, in all its splendour. Silda and Polly are wrapping a few last presents. The fire is lit. Silda is smoking Virginia Slims. Polly is drinking a scotch, rocks.

That is a good staging direction to discuss. I pulled out that line about ‘the sun going down’ in my first reading of the play and ‘an ochre desert light pervades’. That line was very interesting to me as a lighting designer to begin my research on desert light and colour. While the interpretation may not look exactly like the staging direction in the script, the lighting for that moment will come from the script. I will often use those staging directions or something else the writer has included as a starting point and place my own touch on it. During the planning and then development of the design, our discussion may very well begin with that description and evolve into an interpretation of that on the stage. It needs to serve both the play and our audience.

Sam Strong hinted that there is an outdoor water feature that is lit from inside as well. I want to leave that it is as a bit of a surprise but it will be part of the lighting design? Yes it will. Not to give too much away either, the outdoor water feature helps establish the Palm Springs architecture and it will need to be lit quite particularly.

Danny, there are some pretty damaged people in this play dealing with depression, death, family dysfunction, political drive, but also love and healing. Does the lighting design have a role to play in reflecting or enhancing these concepts? Yes it does and the subtle shifts that I spoke about before and the way you can treat the lighting in of the dramaturgy and the emotional arc. It can impact significantly on the way the audience sees and feels those moments.

The second act, and particularly the last scenes in that act, are intense and highly dramatic… And I’m running parallel to that. Those moments are about stretching the tension as much as we can in order to make it as powerful as we can dramaturgically and the lighting has to run parallel to that. We are still in discussion about whether the effect will be sudden or gradual but that is one of the roles that the lighting design must have.

Is there a post production meeting after a show like this? Is that common? That depends. There may not be a general one but certainly Sam Strong and I will debrief. I think that process can be very important for a creative team. Perhaps there were elements you wanted to keep because it worked really well and then something that didn’t work so well. To be able to identify those elements in a constructive way for your own practice, and the development of the people and companies you are working with is really important.

SOME INFORMATION ABOUT COSTUME FROM COSTUME DESIGNER ESTHER MARIE HAYES “From initial discussions with Sam Strong and Callum Morton, we really wanted the costumes to be bold and for the characters and costumes to pop from the set. It's was important for the design to represent a wealthy republican family from a particular social set that at one point lived very public lives. One of character that stands apart from the family is the daughter, Brooke. A New York writer from Sag Harbour, the colours of her costumes are monotone and muted, which separates her from her family who she has not seen for several years. As the characters are so strong and defined, I researched actual republicans, socialites, producers and writers as well as conservative, preppy and American styles. The colour palette for this show is for the most part is bright vibrant colours of pink, green, blue, purple and yellow. The Inspiration for the colours were images of Palm Springs. The way plants, water and the changing color of the sun pop against the desert. I looked at images of people in the 60s, 70s and 80s at resorts and country clubs in Palm Springs as well as the Artist David Hockney, who is referenced in the play. In particular Portrait of Nick Wilder and Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures). I also wanted to use colour to show relationships. For example I put Polly and Silda in equally bright colours to show their connection as sisters who worked together in Hollywood in the sixties, although their styles and views are quite different. Similarly I used blues and greys in Brooke and Lyman's costumes to show the sensitivity and strong connection of their relationship as father and daughter.” Esther Marie Hayes spoke to Meg Upton via email.

THINGS TO CONSIDER AND DISCUSS BEFORE SEEING THE PRODUCTION:            

What do you know about lifestyles in West Coast America, specifically California? What does the name ‘Palm Springs’ suggest? What does the title Other Desert Cities conjure for you? How might a city survive in a desert? What happened on September 11, 2001? When did the Iraq War begin? Who began it? Why? What is the difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party in the US? What might be the Australian equivalent in of political parties? What is an ‘Ivy League’ college or university? What do you consider to be a ‘typical’ family? Do families have secrets? Why? Does your family celebrate Christmas? What happens at your family’s Christmas? Some terminology - what is a Carney, a weapon of mass destruction, a Goy, an Amish?

When you are watching the show, try to heighten your awareness of everything by watching and listening very carefully. If you have time at the end, take down some notes on:  The things you saw; characters, action/gesture, set items, costumes, lighting states, props.  The things you heard; music, sound effects, lines of dialogue, words  How you felt at different points during the production; perhaps disturbed, threatened, amused, mystified, saddened, angry, curious, confused.

AFTER SEEING THE PERFORMANCE… ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION KEY KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS VCE Theatre Studies Unit 3, Outcome 3 requires students to respond to the production in relation to the following key knowledge and key skills. Key knowledge This knowledge includes:  the contexts of the interpretation of a written playscript including historical, cultural and social;  decisions that were evident in the production to interpret the written playscript for performance;  the application of acting and other stagecraft to develop the written playscript for performance;  theatrical styles in the written playscript and in the play in performance; Key skills These skills include the ability to:  analyse ways in which the contexts of a written playscript were interpreted through performance to an audience;  evaluate the interpretation of the written playscript for performance;  analyse and evaluate the application of acting and other stagecraft to develop the written playscript for performance;  discuss similarities and differences of theatrical styles between the playscript and the play in performance;  and you need to use appropriate theatrical language, terminology and expressions to describe, analyse and evaluate a theatrical production.

CONTEXT AND THE WORLD OF THE PLAY Other Desert Cities is a contemporary American play.  From your reading of the script, what American references did you see? List these.  From your viewing of the performance, what were the American features? List these.  Did you feel familiar with this world? Why/why not?  How does the world of the play differ from an Australian context? ‘The piece does transfer and translate very well because ultimately the play is about family dynamic and that family dynamic is ‘exquisitely observed’…a phrase that Polly uses to describe Brooke’s first novel’ - Sam Strong, Director  Do you agree with the director’s comment above?  What does the term ‘exquisitely’ observed mean?

STRUCTURE AND NARRATIVE Most of the action in Other Desert Cities takes place across approximately twenty-four hours. It is a play that is structured in two acts with an interval.  As you watch the play how is the timeline of twenty-four hours made clear?  What is the purpose of an interval in the theatre? Does this play need an interval?  Is the interval in the performance placed at the same point as it is in the script? Could it be elsewhere? Why/Why not?  Evaluate the overall structuring of the play - was the staging of the two acts and the interval successful in generating interest, tension and drama? ‘The play sits in what is almost a genre of immaculately crafted, American dramas. There is more recently August Osage County, but even going back to Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neill, there is a very well-worn path in American theatre’ - Sam Strong, Director  What do you know about American drama?  What do you know about Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams?  Would you describe their work as fitting into a particular ‘genre’? ‘[The play is in]…that Ibsen-like fashion, the revelation of some form of secret from the past’ - Sam Strong, Director  The director is making reference here to Henrik Ibsen, the great Norwegian playwright of the late 19th Century - some of you may have seen the adaptation of his play The Wild Duck at Malthouse Theatre last year.  Do you agree with this comment by the director about Other Desert Cities being similar in structure to Ibsen’s plays?  What type of impact does/could the revelation of a ‘secret’ on stage have on an audience? Evaluate the way the Wyeth’s family secret was revealed on stage during the performance  Structurally, at what point did it begin to be revealed?  Through which character, piece of dialogue, directorial decision?

THEATRICAL STYLES The play has been described as being a drama, comedy and tragedy. The director, Sam Strong calls it ‘The trifecta of experiences that this Other Desert Cities gives rise to.’  What are the conventions of a drama?  What are the conventions of a comedy?  What are the conventions of a tragedy?

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How does Other Desert Cities fit in with these conventions?

‘What struck me most about Other Desert Cities was the way that it combined both a family and a political drama’ - Sam Strong, Director  Would you agree with this comment?  Specifically, what is the family drama in the play?  Specifically, what is the political drama in the play?  Here you may need to refer to the context in which the play is set and the backstory to the characters. ‘The glass front opens up to reveal quite a naturalistic living room inside’ - Sam Strong, Director  Evaluate the extent to which the living room set in the play was ‘naturalistic’  Consider the use of specific properties and set items and their practical use. ‘There will be shifts that play with the subtext that we associate with naturalism.’ - Danny Pettingill, Lighting Designer  What is subtext?  Do you think it a necessary component of naturalism? Why? What conventions of naturalism suggest subtext?  Identify two moments in the play where you believe that subtext was evident/conveyed (You could relate this question to what is not being said between characters as one way of thinking about it.)  Consider how stagecraft can contribute to subtext. Would this shift the theatrical style more into nonnaturalism? ‘The interior light in the production taps into those more naturalistic elements of the play’ - Danny Pettingill, Lighting Designer  Do you agree that the interior lighting design for the play had naturalistic elements?  Identify two specific states or lights that conveyed this ‘Part of that comedy springs from that sense of verbal sparring, and that American dryness, but it is bitterly funny’ - Sam Strong, Director  Consider now if you found the play funny when you read it.  Now consider if you found comedy or humour in the play when you saw and heard it.  Compare and contrast how the live performance can impact on comedy and humour.  Identify three moments within the play that you believe were comic or humorous. Which characters were involved? What was the joke? What type of comedy was it? Was it achieved through ‘verbal sparring’ or ‘dryness’ or ‘bitterness’ as suggested by the director?

DIRECTION Traditionally the director has a key role in interpreting the playscript to the stage. Read the director, Sam Strong’s interview carefully. ‘The proscenium means you have a great opportunity to create quite simple end on pictures. One of the beautiful things about Callum’s design is that it frames the action on the stage into a series of hopefully very strong pictures, both outside and inside the house’ - Sam Strong, Director  Discuss the pictures created around the pool between pairs of characters - Brooke and Trip, Brooke and Lyman, Trip and Polly  Choose two moments from Act II when the family are ‘sealed’ inside the room. What pictures does the director create of the five family ?  How does the director use the set items and properties to assist with creating these pictures – for example the bar, the couch, the fireplace and the coffee table?

‘In Other Desert Cities…the language is very direct and requires attack, someone is always trying to actively do something to somebody else. Capturing that sense of attack in this work is vitally important for it to work, and vitally important for the rhythms of the language’ - Sam Strong, Director  Consider how language is used in the play  How does the use of accent give a sense of ‘attack’ between the characters?  What does the director mean by the rhythms of the language?  Try reading the script aloud in your natural voice – what do you notice?  Despite speaking the same language, do you agree that Australians speak differently from Americans (not just in of accent)? ‘That house has an unbroken line between the living room, the patio and the pool and we were keen to replicate that, using the movement from inside to outside to create a strong visual journey through the play, to accompany the dramatic arc of the play especially as the drama ramps up in the second act’ - Sam Strong, Director  Choose three moments from the play which occur outside. How do these capture the particular emotional tone of these particular moments? For instance the status between characters, the proximity to each other or distance between each other and movement in the space. ‘Being collaborative doesn’t mean being indecisive. It is actually about recognising the best ideas rather than necessarily having them… A strong decision is always preferable to no decision because you can change a strong decision’ - Sam Strong, Director  Relate this comment to your class’s own production for Unit 3  Consider the decision making processes across the four stages of production  Do you agree with the comment that you can ‘change a strong decision’?  When do you think ideas and decisions need to be locked down? At which part of the production stage?

DRAMATURGY ‘There are two versions of research on this piece for myself as a director, and for the designers and cast. There is a version that is a bit generalised where you say; hey it’s American and it’s kind of on the West Coast and that will be enough - which is not enough! Or there is the version where you really get excited by the detail of it and you interrogate that’ - Sam Strong, Director  What evidence is there of dramaturgy in this production?  Can you hear subtleties in the accents?  Can you see research in the design elements? ‘This play will transfer best for an Australian audience if we realise it in all its American glory’ - Sam Strong, Director  As a dramaturg, would you recommend to the director that the play could be transferred to an Australian context?  Where would it take place? Who would the characters be? ‘To me the term(dramaturgy) means identifying and bringing out the essence of the play and the essence of the relationships we are seeing on stage. Dramaturgy is a process of interrogating the play and the process’ - Danny Pettingill, Lighting Designer  Do you agree with this explanation about dramaturgy?  How can lighting be involved in the dramaturgy of a play?

DESIGN AND STAGECRAFT SOUND There are several elements to the sound design for Other Desert Cities. A key element is the music especially composed by Steven Francis.  Notice how music works at the very beginning of the play  What mood does the opening music set?  What instruments dominate or are evident?  Why do you think these particular instruments may have been used? Discuss when music is used throughout the rest of the play  Between scenes?  During scenes?  Between Acts?  Why do you think those choices have been made? Evaluate the compositional components within the production  How effectively did they create the world of the play?  How effectively did they contribute to the emotional arc of the play? Consider what diegetic sound is used in the production - sound that belongs to the world of the play. In particular, consider the opening to Act II when Brooke is pacing.  What sounds can you hear?  What effect do they have on the scene? In Other Desert Cities the actors wear microphones especially inside the house.  Discuss the difference between the function of the microphones and the design aspects of amplified voices  What do microphones amplify? What impact does this have on the actor/audience relationship? ‘The final scenes of the play are sealed inside with a highly intensified focus in keeping with the arc of the play’ Sam Strong, Director  Focus on the amplification of the voices when the doors to the Wyeth’s home are closed.  Discuss the director’s comment about the characters being ‘sealed inside’. How does the amplification both address and enhance that?

SET DESIGN AND PROPERTIES ‘[The design captures] certain ideas - like the relationship between public and private space, or the relationship between inside and outside, various kinds of oppositions like that’ - Callum Morton, Set Designer  What is public about the set design for Other Desert Cities?  What is private about the set design for the play?  What do you imagine is off-stage? What in the script suggests what is off-stage? I was interested in this specific architectural engagement with a place like Palm Springs. The play describes a kind of Republican interior, a mixed-up stylistic dimension that drives the family in many ways – Callum Morton, Designer  What do you think the designer means by this statement?  Can a home be as specific as this?

‘We’re using this notion of illusion on the exterior of the house, and then, as they move inside and they’re behind closed doors, that illusion dissolves’ - Callum Morton, Designer  What are the illusory (not real) aspects of the set design?  Given that this is a desert setting, what does the downstage water feature contribute to the illusion of this world? ‘It is worth noting about the design that we have taken a different direction to the Broadway production. The play is a classic living room drama and in the script the action occurs in the one room. In that way it is deeply naturalistic’ - Sam Strong, Director  What is distinctly different about the design for this production as compared to the Broadway production? ‘One (challenge) is to meaningfully integrate the coda of the play which is set in a book shop six years after the main story takes place. We wanted to find a way to utilise the design space so that we didn’t just place the character of Brooke in a pin spot down the front. So we wanted to make that part of the visual journey of the show and to lift out some of the imagery that is in the text and the symbolism that exists’ - Sam Strong, Director  Having read this quote by the director, consider how the set design accommodates the coda in the book shop. How is it achieved? Evaluate its effectiveness Consider the properties in the play. For example ashtrays, glasses, jugs, Christmas presents, bags, tennis rackets, the book manuscript.  Which properties are significant to particular characters?  Which properties remain just decorative as opposed to practical?

LIGHTING ‘For instance I did a lot of reading about where the sun is at any given point in the year in Palm Springs. Ultimately you may not see that specifically on stage, but the finished product has that background and the research provides knowledge to help you create a feeling or convey a particular mood in some way’ - Danny Petingill, Lighting Designer  Relate Danny’s research process to your own production planning. How important is research to design in the theatre? ‘Lighting design for me is always concerned with timing, rhythm, and ing the events in the play. Lighting and subtext occur at the emotional level. So we consider what the characters might be feeling within the action at that time and then ask ourselves how can we use lighting to allow the audience to feel what the characters might feel’ - Danny Pettingill, Lighting Designer  In this quote the lighting designer talks about lighting design as having several functions and requirements. Separate these out into a list e.g. timing, subtext etc.  Find an example of a lighting state which you believe is representative of each of these elements. ‘For me that Palm Springs location and the geographical odyssey of the play meant I saw bleached desert light. How do we treat that desert light, and how chronologically can we represent it? We’ve made a decision to make considerable use of a cyclorama and the trajectory of the sun light in order to achieve that’ - Danny Pettingill, Lighting Designer  Discuss how the influence of the desert was evident in the lighting design.  How did the use of the cyclorama contribute to creating the desert light at different points within the production?

COSTUME AND MAKE-UP ‘So if we are in a slightly abstract universe outside then costumes help to ground it, and of course they assist in creating characters’ - Sam Strong, Director  How do the costumes enhance the development of the characters in Other Desert Cities? You may like to choose two of the characters and place a microscope over the costumes they wear as part of your analysis and evaluation  What aspects of the stage directions are evident in the costume designs for this production? ‘This is a very particular socio-economic world and a particular geographic world. So costume is in some ways the best means of realising that world’ - Sam Strong, Director  What is the socio-economic world that these characters live in?  How does the costume and make-up design establish their wealth and prosperity? ‘Another thing that is an interesting balance is the colour palette’ - Sam Strong, Director  How would you describe the colour palette used in the play?  How effective are the choice of colours in establishing belief in the characters?  How does the costume design work in contrast or complementary to the set design? ‘My job is to ensure that the set and costume palette can still stand alone and the light doesn’t saturate or mute [the costumes]’ - Danny Pettingill  Discuss the lighting in relation to the costume design and make-up design. Do you feel that the lighting allowed the costume and make-up to work effectively in the performance?

CHARACTERS AND ACTING ‘One of the greatest challenges with transference is the challenge for the actors. This piece has a very American rhythm, and American speech is very direct and front-footed’ - Sam Strong, Director  Comment on the use of accent by the actors. How effectively did each of them convey a particular American accent?  Was what you heard on stage what you imagined when you read the script?  What challenges does using an accent have for an actor? ‘That family dynamic is ‘exquisitely observed’ - which is a phrase that Polly uses to describe Brooke’s first novel and instantly recognisable. You know who these people are and the world they inhabit and you recognise how they interact as a family. One of the greatest lines from the play for me is, ‘Families will be terrorised by their weakest member’’  How did the actors create each of the family in this play - mother, father, daughter, son, aunt/sister?  Were they what may be considered typical? Why/why not?  Were these characters recognisable to you? Do you know people like them or have you read about people like them? The director and designers refer to the presence of the theatrical style of naturalism in the play. In the overview to theatrical styles in these notes some conventions were given as to how naturalism may be defined.  How is this style apparent or evident in the acting in Other Desert Cities?  Select a moment between two of the characters and discuss how naturalism is clearly evident eg voice, gesture, movement, silence, interaction , reaction In Other Desert Cities, the characters cultural backgrounds include Californian, Texan and Jewish  Did the actors use any particular expressive skills that made these evident?  How did the script assist?

Select two of the characters in Other Desert Cities and explore in detail how they used their expressive skills in order to create their characters – voice, movement, gesture, facial expression, language, stillness.

INTERPRETATION Part of your analysis and evaluation is to compare the playscript to the performance. How are each of the following scenes staged?

And Brooke is suddenly on her feet, and snatches the manuscript out of her hand and flings half of it at her father and half at her mother, and pages fly about, up into the air, hit the Wythes a nd drift to the floor Scene II - March, 2010 Some suggestion, perhaps not literally, of Elliott Bay Bookstore in Seattle. A book reading/g. Brooke, is finishing reading sections of Love & Mercy to the crowd. Trip is there.

THEMES Family, wealth, happiness/contentment, the American dream, truth and lies, memory, love, trust, and loyalty are some of the themes and ideas explored in Other Desert Cities. Consider how each of the following quotations reflects one or more of these themes. BROOKE (Still looking out.) You know that sign on the highway where you can either turn off for Palm Springs or keep going to ”Other Desert Cities”? I am always so tempted just to keep on driving, you know. How do they do it? They never even leave anymore. They barely go into LA. BROOKE No, but it is about Henry. Whom we can’t talk about, it’s about our brother, who went to war with our parents, ed a cult, disappeared, and then planted a bomb in an army recruiting station, before killing himself - is what it’s actually about. POLLY Silda. I love those fundraisers. I believe in them. I believe in that ‘crowd’. They’re my people. They have a stakein upholding the entrepreneurial American spirit. I’m still aTexas girl, Silda. So are you. SILDA What can I say? It cheers people up. This is America, we get warm and fuzzy about war. BROOKE I’m sorry. But. It’s all I’ve got, you see. (Suddenly, angry.) I don’t have an imagination! WE are all I have. SILDA These people, driven by fear, have taken ownership of an entire country. And fear - fear led to punishment and in the case of your brother, even at the cost of a life itself - just to hold on to the ’way things were’. You managed to explain in one little book, in one book. And you did it just by telling the story of this family. (Beat.) Isn’t that something?

BROOKE I am so sorry but... I am suddenly so tired of the indentured servitude of having a family. SILDA The zealots who have taken over your party and marinated it in intolerance. You guys let it happen. You are incapable of speaking out, even while finding fault with it in private. (Beat.) And you live in that complicity every day. A war in which so many people are dying in a desert, thousands of miles away. Because it’s a war declared by a man whose father is someone with whom you occasionally dine, you keep silent. That is what true believers do. That, that’s what your daughter has written.

POST SHOW ACTIVITY PRODUCTION PLANNING After seeing the performance and working through some of the analysis and evaluation, now consider how your experience of Other Desert Cities relates to your own production work in Theatre Studies Unit 3.From reading through the interviews identify what of the creative team did in the production planning stage for the play - What aspects of their work would you include in the production development of the play? - What role do the director and lighting designer have during the production season of the play? - Is there a post-production evaluation stage? - What is similar to or different from your own class’s approach to the production stages?

Production Images: Photos by Jeff Busby

Other Desert Cities - Set Designed by Callum Morton

Ian Meadows and Robyn Nevin

Sacha Horler and Ian Meadows

John Gaden and Sacha Horler

Ian Meadows and John Gaden

John Gaden and Robyn Nevin

Ian Meadows, John Gaden, Robyn Nevin and Sacha Horler

Sacha Horler, Robyn Nevin, Ian Meadows and John Gaden

Robyn Nevin, Ian Meadows and John Gaden

Robyn Nevin, Sacha Horler (obscured), Ian Meadows and John Gaden

Ian Meadows, Robyn Nevin and Sacha Horler

Robyn Nevin, Ian Meadows, Sacha Horler and John Gaden

John Gaden, Sacha Horler and Sue Jones

Sacha Horler, John Gaden and Sue Jones

John Gaden and Sacha Horler

Sacha Horler and Robyn Nevin

John Gaden, Robyn Nevin, Sacha Horler, Sue Jones and Ian Meadows

Robyn Nevin and John Gaden

Robyn Nevin, John Gaden and Sacha Horler

Other Desert Cities Teachers’ Notes © Melbourne Theatre Company Education 2013