The SITI Company has had a long history with the Actor’s Theatre of Louisville and as a part of the 2009 Festival, our wonderful dramaturg Sarah Lunnie has put together a series of retrospective photographs from all the productions that have been performed here over the years. She also collated some thoughts from the SITI Company members about their experience with ATL and I thought it would be great to post these on the blog.
“You never quite recapture the Victor Jory (ATL theatre), the feeling of this room. As clichéd and romantic as it sounds, it’s our world. Our DNA is in the bricks, in the panelling of the dressing rooms. I’m always sad when we close a show in the VJ. There is something about being in this loft space - I always think the VJ is up in the sky. You have to keep climbing the stairs to get to it. You can’t get out of it easily. And there is just so much rich history.”
Ellen Lauren - Associate Artistic Director - SITI Company
“Many of the plays we make at Actor Theatre of Louisville go on to have lives outside of here. We take them out and they live in our repertoire. I sometimes think of the Victor Jory as a maternity ward. Its a place where we birth plays and they grow up and have lives. There’s something wonderful about that kind of connection to the space, that it launches things.”
Leon Ingulsrud - SITI Company
“My relationship with the SITI Company really began at Actors Theatre back in 1992, when I worked with Anne in a production of William Inge’s Picnic. Since then, Actors has introduced us to a number of current company members, and our development as a company continues to be deeply connected with our work here. We have a real hometown audience here - a lot of old dear friends who come and see our work whenever we come.”
J.Ed Araiza - SITI Company
“I was sitting in my office here at Actors back in 1991, working on sound cues for my first Humana Festival, when the phone rang. It was the stage manager on Educardo Machado’s In the Eye of the Hurricane. ‘D,’ he said, ‘get over here and check out what Anne Bogart is doing. You’re going to love what’s going on over here.’ It seems like so long ago now, but I still remember how I felt as I watched rehearsal that day. I was in the room with someone who was pushing the boundaries and redefining, before my eyes and ears, a new way of working. Here I am eighteen years later: a member of SITI Company, from the beginning, back for my twelfth Humana.”
Darron West - SITI Company Sound Designer
“I walked into a rehearsal room to watch Anne Bogart work and felt very much like Alice did when she fell down the rabbit hole. It was a world were a very different logic pertained and that logic was infinitely, quintessentially theatrical. It was tantalizing and unexplainable in the same moment. There was a firm directorial guidance and no guidance simultaneously. There was an agreed upon vocabulary that at first was impenetrable and yet seemed simple. The work being essayed in the room conformed immediately to my idea of good process; the more they worked the better it got. The principles of the work produced excellent results quite quickly but they were not the principles with which Stanislavski and Brecht had hammered into shape for decades. What on earth was going on here? I stayed.”
Jon Jory - Producing Director, Actors Theatre of Louisville 1969-2000
Something happened over the course of so many years making shows in Louisville. The audience responded and came back at the work. In the last couple of seasons I have particularly enjoyed observing the audience arrive in the theatre for our shows. It feels like they are pulling on their boxing gloves. There is a sense of feistiness and energy, like, ‘What is this company going to toss in my direction this time?’ It’s very hard to describe the feeling in this room, but its a good one. I sense the audience thinking, ‘We’ve taken it before, we got something out of it before, it was a challenge before and now we are ready for the next hurdle.’ Perhaps the theatre is like a gym of the human spirit which offers a workout of the imagination. Louisville audiences have demonstrated an appetite for the kind of theatre workout that I want to share.”
Anne Bogart - Artistic Director, SITI Company
” The opportunity to collaborate with the SITI Company over a long arc of nearly two decades means the world to me. Our association predated my arrival in Louisville and is part of what brought me here. I love the raucous spirit of collaboration, the questions examined in the process, and the ongoing debate about creativity. I treasure the friendships and marvel at an ensemble that knows each other so well. It is a joy to watch this company intuitively compose space, extend time and shape a particular brand of expression. It is the only kind of collaboration that can happen in the theatre and I am proud to be a part of it.”
Marc Masterson - Artistic Director, Actors Theatre of Louisville
We are currently at the beginning of week three of Under Construction at the festival and have been learning a lot about the show by presenting it to a variety of audiences. We move next Monday, to a new city and a new space. It will surely make for an interesting transition.
Dave
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