Directing a new production of the play “The Sound Inside,” Goodman Theatre’s artistic director Robert Falls takes in the empty Owen Theatre in a recent rehearsal with actor Mary Beth Fisher. As Fisher begins her first line at the top of the show, Falls walks around the theater to get to a different view — something that’s not uncommon in theater directing to make sure audiences can see. But Falls instead places his hands in front of him, creating two capital “L” shapes, mimicking a small screen.
“It’s not this audience,” Falls said as he gestured around the theater, “it’s here,” he said, emphasizing the focused smaller frame.
Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, as many of us streamed shows and movies, theater-makers across the country plunged into the uncharted territory of creating Zoom plays.
Some of those productions have been pre-recorded and then streamed to audiences. The Goodman’s new “Live” series will instead be just that, plays performed live inside the theater and broadcast in real time to audiences at home.
Working with a production company lead by Christiana Tye, the “Live” series will present three productions, Adam Rapp’s “The Sound Inside,” fresh off a Tony-nominated run on Broadway and directed by Falls; Adrienne Kennedy’s “Ohio State Murders,” directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene, and Ike Holter’s “I Hate It Here,” directed by Lili-Anne Brown.
“The whole process here is to recreate the experience for the audience,” said Falls. “The audience chooses which performance they want to see, they buy their ticket, they’re instructed to get there early to make sure that the technology is working and at 7:30 in the evening, we’re all set to go live.”
“The Sound Inside” tells the story of a creative writing professor Bella (Fisher) at an Ivy League university who finds herself connecting with Christopher, an obscure first-year student, over a seemingly impossible task. The two-hander production will be transmitted from the Goodman to audiences at home for five performances, running May 13-16.
The cast of Fisher and John Drea (as Christopher), the stage manager Briana J. Fahey, assistant director Spenser Davis, Falls, and Lydia Pustell, Goodman’s associate technical director and COVID-19 compliance officer for the series, are the only members of the production team inside the building.
“The Sound Inside” cast and production team shared their bittersweet excitement about being back creating theater face-to-face.
“Immediately, it was a complicated first reaction,” said Fisher. “Our first day here was complex, it was joyful, it was sad to see the building so quiet. There was a sense of longing for the audience and for all of the people who make theater happen in this building who can’t be here with us.”
“After more than a year of not being in a theater space either as an audience or a theater-maker, it’s pretty overwhelming,” said Falls. “It’s an odd sensation to be back. It’s actually very exciting and challenging because none of us, not a single person, has worked in this way we’re preparing a play, but we know that it’s going out to an audience who will be watching it on a television or phone.”
The physical act of creating theater for cameras instead of for an audience during a pandemic are all the same, the only difference are the amped up coordination and communication, and lots of extra COVID-19 precautions, including testing multiple times a week.
When it comes to performing “The Sound Inside” for audiences at home, Fahey will oversee everything happening on stage and cue in lights and sound, while Tye will call cues for the five cameras. This first production in the “Live” series will use three cameras, a wide scene setter camera mounted in the corner of the house and one camera placed over a bed.
Tye previously filmed Goodman’s production of “St. Nicholas” in 2019 starring Brendan Coyle and is experienced in capturing live performances on film. She said this “Live” series is “a whole other ballgame.”
“So instead of capturing all the media into the camera and downloading it into an edit system,” said Tye. “It goes to a feed … and it essentially takes these signals into this machine, and I can call the shots.”
This is quite similar to a lighting designer programming the different changes in the stage lights, known to theater makers as cues, to a switchboard for the light board operator to use during the play.
“But anyway, the difference is we’re going to be going live,” said Tye, “and so this feed from me, to the technical director then goes to (the video platform) JW Player, who is beaming it out to ticket holders, live.”
The second show in Goodman’s “Live” series is Kennedy’s “Ohio State Murders,” running June 17-20. Decades after graduating from Ohio State University, protagonist and successful writer, Suzanne Alexander is asked to return to the alma mater to speak about her work and instead speaks with her own story of cruelty and deception.
Director Greene said “Ohio State Murders” will be the fourth play she’s directed since the pandemic, and recently directed a short film. She adds that each virtual play she worked on was put together differently and was operating on a different level than the Goodman.
“It’s gonna be really nice to have everyone in the same room, breathing together and I know that’s like a dangerous thing these days,” said Greene.
“There’s a bit of a dance that lives inside of this piece,” she said. “I’ve been calling it a broken ballet because there’s so much trauma and there’s a present history that continues to haunt.”
Brown will direct Holter’s “I Hate It Here,” the third and final play in the “Live” series. Studio Theatre in Washington D.C. recently produced “I Hate It Here” as an audio play, this Goodman production will be the first visual presentation of the play. Brown and Holter are frequent collaborators and worked together on the world premiere of Holter’s “Lottery Day.”
For directing this process, Brown said she’s working backwards and storyboarding, a technique of mapping out shots in film, of how she visualizes “I Hate It Here,” so this can inform the blocking for the actors once in the theater.
“This is backwards, basically, because we have no in-house audience,” said Brown. “The audience is at home, the audience is getting this through a camera, so really letting that lead how I’m going to design the blocking.”
“The story is about people surviving massive changes, and the pandemic looms in the background — but is also never mentioned by name,” said Holter in an email. “It’s not a ‘period piece’ but it is a piece about a period of time that we are all still at the very beginning of — it tells what it’s like to deal with smaller, human things as immense change keeps happening around you. We’re giving people a really funny, weird story that touches on a lot of current stuff but also wants to give people an awesome experience.”
To purchase tickets for Goodman Theatre’s “Live” series, visit www.goodmantheatre.org/Live
