Stage Whisper
Whisper in the Wings Episode 555
(upbeat music) - Welcome back and everyone to a fabulous new Whisper in the Wings from Stage Whisper. We are so excited to be welcoming back today's guests. And this time with a fabulous new interpretation of a classic joining us, we have Siobhan Raz, who is the director, producer, composer, and one of the actors in today's piece. And she is joining us to talk about needs more work productions presentation of Antigon. It's playing July 12th through July 21st at Moore Jackson Community Garden. And you can get tickets and more information by visiting the link that is in our episode description as well as in our social media posts. We are so excited about this piece. I'm sure the title kind of rings a light bell in the back of your head. But let's go ahead and welcome our guests so we can dive more into this. Siobhan, welcome back to Whisper in the Wings from Stage Whisper. - Thank you so much. I am so thrilled to be here again. I love this show. - Oh, thank you. That means so much. I'm so excited you're here and I can't wait to dive into this 'cause as we were talking, before we started, Antigon is inspired by, of course, the classic Greek play Antigone. And it's ironic that you've gone with this title because that's literally how I have to remember how to spell it and I know it's an easy spelling, but you hear Antigone and you're like, wait, there's got to be hidden vowels. But you've all decided to do an interpretation of Antigone and you've entitled it Antigon. Now, I'm excited to know more about this. So can we start by having you tell us a little bit about what the show is about? - Yeah, absolutely. So Antigon is an adaptation of Antigone by Sophocles with a choose your own ending twist, which we're very excited about. Really, there are two plots in the show running side by side. The first plot is the plot of Antigone. You all know it or hopefully it's about a young woman deciding to stand up to the laws of her city and to the dictator ruler of her city and enact what she perceives as justice or as godly justice at a great personal cost, right? So that's Antigone. Parallel to that, in our adaptation, we're really exploring what's it like when a modern acting troupe, which is us, is trying to put on the play Antigone in 2024 in New York City in the current political climate and what's it like when our actors are having certain struggles with enacting the very rigid social structure that is presented in Antigone and the very strict societal values that are presented in this play. And this is struggle of the acting troupe presenting the show interrupts the course of the regular plot of Antigone and interrupts the regular theatrical form of a presentation of a play. And really we end up having an discussion with the audience and maybe, you know, making other choices than what Sophocles decided about how the values presented in this play out. - That is fantastic. Oh, I love that. So what inspired you to to pen this, you know, this adaption of it? - So really it's a very interesting story. It was exactly a year ago now. We were doing another show in Central Park last summer. We were doing Cyrano de Bergerac, which is a classical, very famous French play and very, very good. And our production of Cyrano was in Summit Rock Central Park, which is kind of a hill location. And it was very, very movement heavy. We moved between scenes. So we kind of did a circle all around the hill throughout the show. And also while we were sitting in each of the scene locations, actors were kind of being 360 degrees around the audience. So actors were coming in from different angles, from behind, from the side, were climbing rocks, climbing trees. We were doing all of that. And I remember while we were rehearsing and doing runs approaching the opening of Cyrano, I was beginning to have feelings about I feel like we've used the space so well. We really, anywhere where something could happen in this hill in Central Park, we did something. What are we gonna do next year? At that time, I thought next year we were gonna be at Summit Rock again. What are we gonna do? Are we gonna just enter this very tired routine where every year we do the same circle, we sit at the same places, we climb the same rocks, is there anything new in the space that could be done? Our theater company is the site-specific theater company. So the use of the space is very, very important in my creative process. So really at that moment, I was thinking, the only thing we really haven't done with the space is to have the audience sit on the stage in brackets where the actors stand and have the actors go and sit on the benches where the audience is meant to sit. And in the moment I had this thought, I had this fully formed vision land on me from the heavens of Maggie Dickinson, the wonderful actress who is playing Creon in Antigon and who was also part of the cast last year. Doing this very emotional speech is one of those like great ancient kings. And then in the middle of it stopping and saying, excuse me for a second, looking directly at the audience and saying, what are you looking at? Yeah, yeah, you sitting there. What do you think you can do this better than me? Do you want, do you think it's so easy to be the king of this great city? Let's see you, let's see you play it out. Let's see what decisions you make. And then the actors and the audience kind of switch places. And now the audience has to be on stage and figure it out. And that was like the vision. The vision has changed a little bit since then even though many elements of it remained. But that was really the moment and I loved that. As soon as I had this image in my mind, I was like, this is so fun. And that really has led me to this idea of it's only fair for the audience to help the king decide what to do. It's the only logical way to continue is to have the audience be really, not only view the king from afar, you know, and having empathy from their quiet sitting place, but actually walk a mile in the shoes of the character. And that's when I knew we had to do a Greek play because all Greek tragedy really deals with what it is to be a good ruler and what makes a good ruler. So I immediately knew that would be the right type of play for this idea and that's where we landed on Antigone. And yeah, that's how it happened. - That is amazing. I love the ideas that you're bringing to the table with this. I love the idea of the audience on the stage being surrounded. That's amazing. So as of this recording, we are just about two weeks away and probably a little bit less than two weeks about from the show going up. I would love to know what has it been like developing this piece and getting it up on its feet? - Yeah, so it was a really, really intense process. I think one of the most intense processes I've ever experienced as a director because this show is very ambitious. It has many moving elements, right? There's the improvisatory element where we don't know what the ending of the show is gonna look like exactly because part of it is decided by the audience. In addition to it, I have chose to respect the original ancient Greek tradition of this play in having the chorus owns because the chorus has these songs in between each scene that were originally actually sung and choreographed. So we selected to incorporate music in those as well. So I composed the songs and the wonderful Joni Griffith arranged them and the brilliant Gianna Vasquez Bartolini is our choreographer. So we have, and we have the classical text and we have many ritualistic elements and it's site specific and it's immersive. So the show really has many moving parts that are each individually challenging and absolutely combining them all is challenging. But where I think was our really, really, we hit the gold pot. We hit the, we have the best luck ever is in casting this wonderful show because our cast, it's a very small cast. So it's an ensemble of six actors, including myself. The other actors include Katie Schaeffer, Maggie Dickinson, Devin Kalsa, Eli Lomax and Hila Schatz. This is the most brilliant ensemble I've ever had the fortune to work with. And I'm really blown away by us managing to find these people. During the audition process, it was very, very important to us to cast creators and creatives and people who can make something out of nothing and generate ideas. And that was something I really put an emphasis on. And we really succeeded in this goal. It was amazing because every single one of the actors in this show is such a great idea generator and such a person willing to come to rehearsal and play and explore. And I feel in this way that every idea that has made it to the show and the parts we devised and the music, it is all such an amalgamation of all of our best qualities as individuals and all of our best ideas that I really feel like we're hitting this point of the best the show can possibly be. And that was something I am very grateful for and has made the process really wonderful to me, even though it is very challenging, because it's not just me as a director giving people instructions and them going where I say and doing what I say, which would have been totally fine. And I have always clarified to my actors that if they just want to act, this is fine. But I am very happy that it has been so much more than that. And it is really a joint creative process of us six and Joni and Gianna who are in charge of our music and dancing and all of us are really putting our absolute best inside to create what I think is a remarkable outcome. I'm very proud of. That all sounds amazing. Some names there that you're working with that sound very familiar to me. So I love it all. Now with this great experience that you are building and creating and this wonderful adaption that you've created, is there a message or thought you hope that the audience will take away from the show? - Yeah, absolutely. So actually we have been very inspired, of course, by original ancient Greek theater traditions, but our other great source of inspiration in terms of techniques for this show is Theater of the Oppressed by Ogata Boual, which I really recommend. If anyone listening to this have not read the book Theater of the Oppressed, I wholeheartedly recommend it. It's an amazing theatrical tradition and technique that I am very connected to. And we read parts of the book in rehearsal and we're very inspired by it when devising our choose your own ending portion. And Ogata Boual speaks a lot about how theater is the rehearsal for a revolution. So to him, theater is meant to be a place where you can discuss ideas, where you can explore different courses of action through theatrical scenes or theatrical skits and putting the ideas on their feet with actors and testing them out. And then through the theatrical performance, you are meant to reach conclusions about your preferred course of action and then go outside and do it, really. So a theater is the rehearsal for the actual revolution. And that is something I was very inspired by in this adaptation. I think Antigone is a play that explores what justice is and especially it explores the role of the small citizen in brackets, of course, because no citizen is small, but it explores the role of the single powerless citizen against the big system of power, which I feel like unless a senator wants to see, a US senator wants to see our show, I feel like everyone who are going to watch this show are going to be the single citizen. And this show explores what should the single citizen do when approaching unjust systems of power and unjust decisions made by larger political forces. And then you get to suggest your own solution and will enact the solution. And we'll see how it goes. And I hope that the conversation can continue, you know, on the subway in your way home. And I hope that you can take the solutions you've offered and we've explored throughout the show and maybe think about how you want to incorporate them in your life, if you want to incorporate them in your life. That's the hope. That sounds so awesome. I'm literally getting mystery of Edwin Drew vibes. You know what I mean? Very much so. Oh my God, one of my favorite and dream musicals, if any casting directors are listening. I love mystery of Edwin Drew. Yeah, that is just so awesome. The fact that there's so many endings that we could choose. It makes me want to come back more than once to see how the audience does. If you see the other endings, you know what I mean? Absolutely. And also I should note that the goal of ours is for you to actually suggest endings you believe in. But if you want to just be a little chaos gremlin and suggest buck wild ideas, that is also possible. We'll take those. So we really welcome audiences to unleash their full creativity. That is fabulous. So my final question for this first part is, who do you hope have access to Antigon? So this is a question that is very close to my heart because I myself as the artistic director of Needs More Work Productions am disabled and this is a disabled lead company. And so it's very important for us to do the best of our ability to have full access to the show, to everyone who wants. A admission is free. So hopefully it is financially accessible to everyone. And also if there are any sort of accommodations you want, please email us at needsmoreworkproductions@gmail.com. And let's talk about it. You know, there are certain things I can't do. For example, the ground at the community garden is unpaved. And I know that is an obstacle for some people with mobility aids. But anything I can do, if you have like audio processing situations and you want me to email you the script of the show so you could follow along, if there's anything we can do, we would do it. It is very, very important for us to do the best of our ability so that anyone who wants to see theater can see theater. And anyone that wants to have this discussion that we're having and we think is important with this adaptation is able to be a part of this conversation. So please talk to me. I promise I'll answer all emails. - Please listen carefully. (upbeat music) Well, on the second part of our shows, we love giving our listeners a chance to get to know our guests a little bit better. Pick your brains, if you will. And of course, we have had you on before for a previous wonderful episode. So I actually wanna start by asking you, how is it that you came under the performing arts? - Well, actually it's a very fun story. I don't remember if I told it last time, but it is connected to Antigone. So I'm gonna tell it now. When I was in ninth grade, I always loved theater, first of all, and I would watch like videos of shows when I was like four years old, and my uncle just texted me last week, like a video of me as a baby watching the hunchback of Notre Dame and telling him to stop videoing me lip syncing. But when I was in ninth grade, I had to select majors for my high school. And in the high school, I went to for some reason that is unclear to me to this day. You could either select the robotics program, which was very prestigious still. I think this year in the high school I went to, they won the world championship for robotics, like it's very, very lucrative. Or you could go do theater. And I was really conflicted. I am very connected to science. Both my parents are scientists. And I was kind of leaning towards robotics, really. And then the senior plays happened. So in February, the senior plays all went up, and it was such an amazing year with many different like absurdist and post-modern shows that really like opened my mind to things. You know, it wasn't all modern realism. It was really different things than creative things. And actually, one of the productions, which was directed by a friend of mine, was Auntie, which is another adaptation of Antigone, which was really, really good. And yeah, and I saw that. And at that moment, I knew that if my friends from my school year are going to be on stage in their senior plays when I'm a senior, and I'm not going to be there because I'm going to be building robots, I'm going to eat my heart out. Like I'm going to not, I'm going to know I made a mistake. And that was the moment that I selected to pursue theater in high school and continued after high school, and here I am. So I'm very thankful to Antigone, and it's really a full circle moment for me, which is really nice doing this play finally on my own. And I'm very inspired by their production as well. I still think it's good. It's on YouTube, so I watched it again recently, and it's still really good. It's so awesome, wow. And you know, it leads to my favorite question that I have to ask once again. And I don't know how we top that memory, but is there another favorite theatrical memory that you could share with us? - Oh my God, I have so many. I love doing theater. I think a fun memory I can share is last Christmas season. So in the 2022 Christmas season, I was performing as an actor in the Polar Express train ride, which is an immersive show based on the movie. And it's on a moving train. It's very, you know, very extreme type of immersive, which I love. That's why I have an immersive theater company. But my track in the Polar Express as an actor was pretty much fully improvisational. I wasn't one of the characters who has lines. I was one of the characters who just talks to the audience throughout the entire show without a script saying whatever. And for the two months, the show ran, even I think maybe a little over two months, the show was running. Every like two, three days, I would come up with a new bit because I just get bored fast. I think that's why I love immersive theater. That is so, you know, so fast changing. I would come up with brand new bits and it got to a point where I had full side plots going on throughout the course of the show that only I and the other performers knew about. So there would be the plot of the Polar Express. And at the same time, me and another performer would try to have Santa promote us to be reindeers next year. And every single show, we would progress it a little bit until in the final show, Santa turned us to be reindeers in front of the children who I don't think had any idea what was happening, but they enjoyed it and we made it entertaining to them. But yeah, that's some of my favorite memories. Or I came up with some bits last year that I know that my friends who were in the show this year again did my bits this year to children when I wasn't there. So I think these are some of my favorite memories because that is some of the most creative. I think I got to be in a show. I would tell the children that they have to be above a certain level of excited or the excitement tank in the train wouldn't fill up and the train wouldn't go. All sorts of, you know, yeah, I would ask the children to recommend to Santa when they meet him that he promotes me to be a reindeer next year. Yeah, I had all sorts of things going on and it was a really fun. I think that show really opened my eyes to how funny it is to improv because I was terrified of the improv in until that very moment. And then I kind of just went off and did a bunch of wild things. And then I was like, oh, this is, I guess it's not as hard as I thought it is. And it's actually really fun. That is such a wonderful memory. Thank you so much for sharing that. Oh my God, that's amazing. Well, as we wrap things up, I would love to know, do you or your company have any other productions coming down the pipeline that we might give up for you? Yeah, so actually, I'm not sure if I can fully announce this, but I can say that we're having a very exciting collaboration later this summer with the Barefoot Shakespeare Company, who I love, they're amazing. I just saw their last show. They did a winter's tale about two weeks ago, and it was amazing. And we have a very exciting collaboration in the pipeline with them. Which is going to be our company's first, how do you say first experience doing Shakespeare? Which I'm very excited about because as an actor, I do a lot of Shakespeare. But in my theater company, we have yet to do one. So yeah, I keep an eye out on both us and the Barefoot Shakespeare Company and social media. For more announcements about this soon, I can also share that I'm currently looking to adapt a few of my all-time favorite Sherlock Holmes short stories to a type of immersive murder mysteries. I'm not quite sure when that is going to go up. My hopes is somewhere in the fall. However, it could be that this project proves more challenging than I think. Very likely, so we'll see. But yeah, keep your eye out for Shakespeare and Sherlock Holmes, two of the best literary endeavors of humanity, in my opinion. So I'm very excited for both. - That is incredible. Oh, amazing. And it leads to my final question, which is if our listeners would like more information about Antigon, or about you, maybe I'd like to reach out to you, how can they do so? - Absolutely. So needs more work productions is mainly active on Instagram. If you go to Instagram and write needs more work productions, you will find us, we're with the yellow logo. And that's where you can find all of our things, including a link to this episode when it posts, including a link to reserve your free tickets to Antigonate, which please do that. Please reserve your tickets. We also have our email, which is needsmoreworkproductions@gmail.com. Feel free to email us. And when I say us, I mean me. It gets to me and I will be happy to talk to you an answer. If you wanna find out more information about me personally, I have a website, which is my full name, sivanraz.com, very easy to find. You can find all sorts of information and videos and news about my things there. And also I'm on Instagram at razasev, R-A-Z-S-I-V, and I am always happy to talk to fellow theater enthusiasts. So please do check it out and reach out. - Wonderful. - Well, Sivan, thank you so much for returning to us and bringing us this amazing show. This sounds so incredible and so excited about it. And I'm so excited about all the other things you have coming down the pipeline. You are just continuing to create such great work. So thank you so much for your time today. - Thank you so much. And listen, you and me both, I'm very excited to see how everything shakes out and to share our shows with the New York City people. I hope as many people as possible will be able to make it. - Yes, absolutely. My guest today has been the amazing director, producer, composer, and actor, Sivanraz. She joined us today to talk to us about needs more work productions presentation of Antigon, which is playing July 12th through the 21st at More Jackson Community Garden. You can get your tickets, which are free, and more information by visiting the link provided in our episode description, as well as on our social media posts. And also look to those two spots for some contact information that we have for our guests. But make sure you come on out. It'll be beautiful in the evening, that heat'll break, and it's in this beautiful location, the More Jackson Community Garden. Go check out this wonderful adaptation of Antigon and Antigon playing July 12th through July 21st. - So until next time, I'm Andrew Cortez, reminding you to turn off your cell phones, unwrap your candies, keep talking about the theater. - In a stage whisper. - Thank you. (upbeat music) - If you like what you hear, please leave a five star review like and subscribe. - You can also find us on Facebook and Antigon. Instagram at stagewhisperpod. - And feel free to reach out to us with your comments and personal stories at stagewhisperpod@gmail.com. - And be sure to check out our website for all things stage whisper and theater. You'll be able to find merchandise, tours, tickets, and more. Simply visit stagewhisperpod.com. Our theme song is Maniac by Jazzar. Other music on this episode provided by Jazzar and Billy Murray. You can also become a patron of our show by logging on to patreon.com/stagewhisperpod. There you will find all the information about our backstage pass as well as our tip jar. Thank you so much for your generosity. We could not do this show without you. ♪ There's a broad way from there oh swear ♪ ♪ I don't care anywhere near your town ♪ ♪ Makes me there ♪