COVID-19 Update

Hello, Theatre Patrons-

Hope you have been well.

I’ve been dragging my feet on this announcement, dreading the reality of it I suppose. But the fact that it depresses me doesn’t make it any less true- live theatre, as we knew it in its previous form, continues to be unsafe and unpractical. If you were to ask me at the start of 2020 what August was going to look like, I would have anticipated a successful run of not only “Woolf”, but “Richard II” and currently starting rehearsals for “Dr. Seward’s Dracula”. If you would have asked me again in May, I would have given you a sheepish “I’m about 60/40 on whether we are on for opening our postponed “Woolf” in October.” And here we are.

The fact of the matter is, until we can ensure the safety of actors during a rehearsal process (and audience during performance), we cannot commence with theatre as we knew it before. This means we must pivot or hold our breath.

Pivoting means evolving our notions of what theatre can look like- this can be virtual performances, taking this time to develop and workshop our own material and/or choosing content based on the ability to have socially distant rehearsals with an eventual outdoor performance.

The latter garbley-gook roughly translates as picking plays to produce that aren’t “Woolf” and don’t include proximity, spitting and the like.

We’ve recently explored a play that is basically a dark courtroom dramady. Very little touching, although, touching. The timing of the above realizations concluded that the summer of 2020 was a wash. There would be no time for a quality product and no guarantee of reasonable weather if we took the time we need. We were able to have an exclusive reading of the play in my backyard- complete with tiki torches. It was lovely, sure, but the lack of inclusivity left me… well, depressed.

(P.S. “hold our breath” equals an eventual death, of both our creative spirits and our company. Hearts beat slower, expenses remain. Not to be morose.)

I’d much prefer the pivot. But I need input, involvement (and perhaps most importantly) reinforcement (positive and literal) from the community, artists and audience alike. What would you like to see? Do you want to contribute? DOES THEATRE EVEN MATTER!? (My crisis is showing, oops.)

Anyway.

All of this to announce the we are indefinitely postponing our October production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” by Edward Albee. Our eventual aim is to produce this when we can- but with the inability to project the future comes the inability to plan.

Your feedback is desired. Your presence is most certainly, missed. Please don’t be a stranger and hold tight- 2020 is almost over kinda.

Always yours,

Jamie Weeder, Artistic Director Wolf's Head Theater Co./Upper Peninsula Shakespeare Festival.

COVID and Our Future...

Hello, Theatre Patrons!

We hope that you are all staying safe and healthy.

After much thought and discussion, we've decided to shift our opening of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” By Edward Albee to our fall production slot. We are now slated to open October 14th, 2020 at the Ore Dock Brewing Company. Tickets will go on sale August 1st.

This outcome wasn’t arrived at lightly. Our work is highly collaborative and necessitates proper pacing to allow for a professional final product. The unknown that we are currently all facing, of when “things will return to normal”, when we will be safe to rehearse again makes it difficult to comfortably plan for a reasonable, or any, conclusion.

We thought our safest bet, and that is- as with everything currently- subject to change, is an October opening. Thus, an adjustment to our season is necessitated. Richard II, Upper Peninsula Shakespeare Festival’s August production, will be modified to a virtual performance likely opening this spring. Dr. Seward’s Dracula by Joseph Zettelmaier will be moved to our next season, opening October 2021.

“Friends of Wolfshakes” who’ve donated to us this season: Your financial contributions will be applied to both this season and next. Now more than ever we are so grateful that we have your support. Surely, we’d be a “covid casualty” if it wasn’t for the overwhelming amount of encouragement and advocacy we’ve received from this amazing community.

If you have any questions, please reach out to me. Thank you for your continued support and flexibility.

Jamie Weeder
Artistic Director, Wolf’s Head Theater Co./Upper Peninsula Shakespeare Festival
jamie@upshakes.org

Sin, Censorship and Sensationalism, oh my!(and why?)

"The purpose of playing… was and is, to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature: to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure."
-Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2

This concept is an artist’s gospel. What does it mean? Simply put, it means our obligation is to be truthful, inclusive, non-judgmental and relevant. When we look into the mirror- what we choose to see is one thing, but what the image encapsulates is another. Our reflection has no opinion. It simply exists, and the rest is up to us.

Nature, like us, is so full of beauty. It’s also full of brutality, ugliness and sometimes unfathomable ambiguity. Art, specifically theatre in our case, allows us to explore all facets indiscriminately. Our human obligation suddenly got a whole lot funner.

The Marquis de Sade- whose rabid erotic works inspired the term sadism- preferred literature as a medium. His perspective, although unusual, is no less valid than anyone else’s- some say he was the first surrealist. He had strong opinions as to what was virtue and what to scorn and his critics avoided the ladder part of Hamlets speech- the body of the time. The Marquis paramount crime? Writing "truth as life has taught (him) to perceive it."

In Quills, Doug Wright uses the idea of the Marquis de Sade as a mechanism for exploring taboo dollops. In the style of the Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol- basically theatre histories first naturalist performance concept (see: theatre of cruelty, the immersive avant garde, slasher movies) we’re able to exploit exploitation. This play is not a documentary: rather, it is an exultant fiction in which the Marquis’s preoccupations/attitudes are enlisted to tell a very relevant story.

Although this is not an authentic retelling based on actual events, our characters are no less human. Through a hypnagogic lens, we are able to relate to the seemingly unrelatable. In that, our perception of the real-life Marquis- embroiled over years of overstated eminence and controversy- becomes tangible.

Fact, fiction and perspicacity aside, a reflection may be notionless but history is absolute: The Marquis influence- intention over content- has been enormous in every sphere of Modernist art. His aim was to destroy every illusion surrounding human sexuality, be it historical, moral or religious, which inspired artists to look at the body in a new way. In visual art, how Picasso plays with the body, inside and out, showing it dominated by the gaze of the viewer. In cinema, from Hitchcock to 50 Shades of friggin’ Grey. Once you start looking, Sade’s presence is immersed throughout popular culture.

The Count de Sade- a modern day relative of the Marquis- resides in a quiet residential street on the Right Bank of Paris. He adorns his coffee table with 120 Days of Sodom, and when asked if he’s ever gotten any guff over his infamous ancestor, he replies "Au contraire… people are fascinated to learn that the Marquis de Sade was, in fact, not a fictional figure at all."

The push and pull of the people’s tide inflate and pummel with the fashion. Where will our perceptions lie in 500 years?

Why Chekhov?

Why Chekhov?

It’s rather undefinable theatre, although I would argue that good theatre should be undefinable.
A standard I try to hold true to as a director (and as a human person) is to try and find the comedy in a drama and try and find the drama in a comedy. Trust me, it’s easier than you think.
Because comedy comes from pain, for humor to hold true we must be honest in hopelessness and authentic in abjection. Satire is the most threatening form of comedy because its distances the player from the problem. It’s funny because it’s true. It’s also me. It’s funny because I have the objectivity that distance grants and have successfully coped (or not).
Because drama comes from us, the audience becomes the forced perspective. We’ve all known that person, we’ve all been that person- we watch as tragic figures of friends, enemies or our past selves dig their own graves and we grapple by giggling. Or: we celebrate how we’ve overcome, we celebrate speaking ugly truths to power, we celebrate the blatant broadcast of darkness that’s always been avoided, we celebrate the anti-hero because he is so incredibly charming, complicated and human and even though he just did that, we love him anyway. 
Good storytelling- good theatre- is all about the flaws and facets of every corner of what it means to be authentically human; The baffling, evolving and multitudinous of layers within relationships to people, places, things and ourselves.

Why Chekhov? It’s accurate

Know Your Why’s (and be willing to die for them.)

“Know your Why’s and be willing to die for them.”

This is a mantra I loudly implement while directing, and secretly apply to life. What does it mean? It means be honest with yourself regarding your objective, always. And if your objective isn’t worth it, f*ck it. Or you’re lying to yourself, which is aggressively worse. I’ve struggled with my Why’s in regards to theatre ever since I started, and as my first memory of doing anything was theatre, that’s 34 years of analyzing my Why’s, consistently questioning, dissecting and studying the most paramount anchor of my life. That’s a lot of existentialism. But my mantra is my gospel, I’ve never stopped, it has always been worth dying for.

(I’d like to think of myself as a spirted individual. Our culture can get uncomfortable with these facets- the sensitive, determined, tenacious woman. Past attempts to squash or dull my passionate fervor have had limited results. What can say.)

There’s been many reasons, still are, but the ultimate reason has and will always be is theatre’s ability to speak truth. To power, to the dismissive, to the un or misinformed, to those struggling to remember, striving to connect to themselves or others, straining to identify their identity. This can’t be devalued. And certainly not today, as we tussle and grapple for the understanding of others, ourselves, our history, our stories, our relationships, how the world churns. The sh*t that matters.

And if we aren’t endeavoring to learn more we aren’t doing our job as good humans. A symptom of the illness that is plaguing the American spirit as it stands is avoidance. Recently I’ve seen great strides, movements and truth bubbling up from the darkest aspects of our society. I’m exhausted every day from it, evidence of investment. It’s stark, brutal, naked and it burns. There’s also beauty, like the slimy fawn walking for the first time.

This is new for us.

But we aren’t all brave. We aren’t all ready, or open to the enormity of truth. A theatre provides a safe space to consume substance. It’s the spoonful of sugar.

But truth has become so unrecognizable that it can sometimes alienate us, and that can be scary. It takes some pluck to not only project it, but to genuinely absorb it- and this is a necessity. Theatre is therapy to not only the audience member, but the artist.

Recently popular tastes have been quite different- the theatre as a vacation. A place to press pause, to remark on glittery costumes and familiar tunes from simpler times. There’s no medicine anymore. (Let it be noted that I’m not at all an advocate of propaganda theatre, my preferred approach is reflecting back the subjectiveness of reality, I strive for the inherit theatrical tools of manipulation to stay subtle or absent.) There is a place for vacation theatre, but it’s not the sustainable subspecies- as evidenced by the Why's of theatre being the longest running occupation in human history. It didn’t start off as spectacle, it was the first newspaper: honest, funny, informative, topical and accessible.

The theatre should be a place to go to remember, not to forget.

It’s an education because it’s not accessing parts of your brain used simply for overwriting past facts by memorization, how we’ve been programmed to download information, feebly and unsuccessfully. It taps into the part of your brain that holds on to memories of your mother rocking you to sleep, your first kiss, your complicated relationship with your father. This is how humans are supposed to learn, we feel.

Truth that’s not to be endured, but enjoyed, absorbed and applied to life. There’s potential power there, and anything otherwise I feel is a missed opportunity. An art house without the art is just a house.

My goal with this statement is to remind those of the potent value and latent influence of what we are doing as a company. To remind you of your hunger to remember, to feel truth. When I speak to our audience members I can palpably sense an almost inability to articulate their experience. How to you voice being moved? How do you pronounce the echoes of the emotional earworm that was, with surgical precision, implanted during a thoughtfully produced piece of great art? How to you quantify its worth when it will be with you forever?

Sometimes it’s hard to comprehend, speak and advocate for your Why, but this has been my attempt. What's your Why?