My one-act play, “Leaving Cremona,” opens this week at the Analogio International Festival 2022!
Jozef (Nikos Vatikiotis) and Helena (Filippa Koutoupa), survivors of the holocaust and left with no home, struggle to figure out how to leave the displaced persons camp in Cremona in order to start a new life. Directed by Konstantina Nikolaidi. Translated by Smaro Kotsia.
A PRIOI Theatrical Productions: www.a-priori.gr
1. Director Konstantina Nikolaidi - founder of A PRIORI Theatrical Productions - makes it easy to collaborate from across the ocean by email! Our shared passion for doing theater permeates all and any boundaries. I’m also so fortunate that Konstantina is fluent in English.
2. Konstantina asked for my script interpretation. This is the first time I’ve been asked this question. It makes me wonder whether a playwright’s script interpretation is common practice in some countries. I haven’t come across it in the US. I’m reluctant to give my interpretation because I like complete freedom to be given to the director, actors, and designers to instill their interpretations - this is the phase where I let go the script and that the collaboration with other theater artists begins. So, instead, I provided Konstantina with my motivation for writing this play:
I can say what inspired me to write this play. I know a wonderful woman who has a very kind husband and three great daughters. When we met, her parents had already passed away. Her father, in particular, was very old when he had her and her brother. One year we had a holocaust memorial in Pittsburgh and she asked me to go with her. She said, "It suddenly occurred to me that my father had a whole family before he had us. His first family perished in the holocaust." She had never given it much thought. Her comment struck me: How did her father create a whole new family and spare them from the pain of his past? How did he manage to raise them as if they were his "only" family? In other words, my friend's family is so kind, funny, and well-adjusted that I would have never known her father had a family before this one. Many people I know who are children of holocaust survivors live with their parents' pain & anxiety and idiosyncracies.
I modeled Jozef and Helena as a couple who survived trauma and want to give a "healthy" family life to their children. I explored through them how they negotiated such a feat.
3. Directors interpret symbolism in the script - be it the characters’ names or objects in stories told within the story of the script. As a playwright, I need to keep the symbolism clear.
Filippa Koutoupa (Helena) and Nikos Vatikiotis (Jozef) star in “Leaving Cremona” at the Analogio International Festival 2022 in Athens, Greece.
4. Directors piece together characters’ motivations with various actions that happen in the play like a puzzle, so as a playwright I’ve got to keep checking back on what I wrote to ensure I keep the motivations clear.
5. Resources! While directors do their own research to understand the background and context of the script, it helps if I also provide some key resources I’ve used in my research for the play. I provide a page of props. I’ve decided now to also provide a page of a few key resources.
#analogio2022 #crossingborders #kambanellis #greekdrama
A PRIORI Theatrical Productions: www.a-priori.gr
I’m thrilled that my one-act play, “Leaving Cremona,” is among the plays being produced this week at the Analogio International Festival 2022 in Athen, Greece! It’s included in a spectacular lineup of plays addressing the theme of Crossing Borders.
Text: Judy Meiksin
Translation: Smaro Kotsia
Direction: Konstantina Nikolaidou
Performers: Nikos Vatikiotis, Philippa Koutoupa
Here’s the info!
I pay no attention to NAFTA, as the world of economics is someone else’s specialty. However, these plays that share the same side of the same coin, yet exist across the border from one another, bring NAFTA down to the gritty real world. Sweat by Lynn Nottage steps into a bar in Reading, Pennsylvania right at the time the factory workers find out a good amount of the equipment was snuck out at night-time and moved across the border. Nottage’s play goes beyond “down-and-out factory workers”; her main characters, because they encompass both people of color and Caucasian, bring complexity into the story that has rarely been seen in mainstream news or on the Broadway stage. Add to the mix where middle-aged women and their teenage sons are front & center, we get a vibrant moment in life since all the front & center characters get to speak more than 100 words. My favorite line: “Sometimes I think we forget that we’re meant to pick up and go when the well runs dry: Our ancestors knew that.”
Hilary Bettis knows this in her play, The Ghosts of Lote Bravo. Her characters haven’t yet gotten comfortable; they’re still looking for the right well. They search near the border upon the arrival of the US factories called maquiladoras; but the maquiladoras offer far, far, far, far less than a livable wage in a community where control is gained by those who levy the most violence. I read that the play was written in order to shed some light on the hundreds of women who, over decades, have turned up murdered. This play shows a community of people striving to work in an environment that the production notes write, “The stench of sweat, shit, and decay is so constant that people no longer smell it.” Hundreds is numbing. So this play brings us into the private lives of one mother and her teenage daughter.
Favorite line: A virgin knows nothing about the sins a woman must endure for survival.
If I were a theater, and if I could get the rights, I would produce these plays in repertoire where the audience could see either one of these first, have dinner to sit quietly and let the feelings surface in all their mess, then see the other one.
The character I most want to see on stage: La Santa Muerte, the Saint of Monsters and Ghosts.
Whenever a playwright wonders – If I write it this way, will it be doable? – all they need do is study this script and watch the performance. Irene Sankoff and David Hein moved the stories of close to 7000 people stranded from their flights and 9000 people who lived in Gander, Newfoundland, into numerous characters through 12 actors for a play that could be performed by the full ensemble or by even fewer actors for small stage sets. And the full ensemble is basically onstage for the duration. Here’s a wonderful interview with the writers and cast member and Tony nominee Jenn Colella. I saw the musical at the Ford’s Theater in DC.
A contemporary musical I could see again and again!
It’s puzzling why I haven’t bought a ticket yet for The Color Purple, the musical.
I was introduced to the story through the movie first, and still believe this film shows the absolute best performances by Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey. When the film came out, I saw it over and over and over. My favorite lines:
When Sophia says “Get my children out of here”
Shug: I think it pisses God off when you walk by the color purple…and you don’t notice it”
Celie: Her entire dinner speech
Then I heard one of the writers in my feminist writers’ group comment how the movie was sculpted as a film about him, rather than staying to the story about her. So I knew I needed to read the novel. Yet, I resisted reading the novel because it was so long and I’ve had trouble getting into novels in general. I pushed through my resistance and Alice Walker’s book is among the best I’ve ever read where I learned that a way to write history into a story is to show the effect on the character’s current life.
As I keep re-watching the film (however painful it is), I could probably look at how the screenplay focuses on him, but director Steven Spielberg certainly lets the best acting come out of his cast – we’re there; and no matter how many clips I look through to say “my favorite” – it’s just too, too many. Who played young Nettie in the film? Ah! Akosua Busia. Who can beat this performance?
Alice Walker on the novel and the film.
I may be afraid that the musical won’t live up to the film or the book. Stop it. I mean really.
Next time the musical comes to Pittsburgh, I’ll be there.
Fun Home – Yes!
Fun Home: A musical based on Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel Fun Home – When a young woman comes out, it unravels other family secrets where family members are now able to confide in one another. Favorite song: “Changing my major”. This musical is the first Tony Award winner where the book, lyrics, and music composers are all women - Lisa Kron (lyrics, book) and Jeanine Tesori (music).
Credit: Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company
Miss Julie, Clarissa and John, by Mark Clayton Southers (2016) - Inspired by August Strindberg's Miss Julie, Mark places the storyline in the US reconstruction-era in the South. This play that deals excellently with the various characters' complexity was also produced in the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland.