Inside A.C.T.

An Interview with Shana Cooper, Director of The Unfortunates By Cecilia Padilla   “ The Unfortunates is a metaphor for facing hardship,” says director Shana Cooper. “When we fall on hard times, I am always struck by how difficult it can be to open ourselves up and be vulnerable. This show reminds us of the power in community and music. Joe’s journey exemplifies the strength it takes to let someone catch you when you fall.” After taking on the challenge of bringing Big Joe’s world to life at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), Cooper now reimagines this hero’s journey for A.C.T.’s Strand stage. We caught up with Cooper to talk about the play’s inspiration, message, and fresh take on American music. (L-R): CJ (Christopher Livingston), Big Joe (Ian Merrigan),  and Coughlin (Jon Beavers)  face the  horrors of war in The Unfortunates .  Photo by Kevin Berne.   The Unfortunates has a unique sound and script structure. How does it compare to other musicals? I t

By Simon Hodgson  Bill Rauch is in his ninth season as the artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF). While visiting San Francisco for last Thursday’s triumphant opening of the new musical The Unfortunates at The Strand Theater (it premiered at OSF in 2013), he sat down with A.C.T.’s  M.F.A. Program actors for a Q&A moderated by A.C.T. Artistic Director Carey Perloff. (L-R): M.F.A. Program actor Leonard A. Thomas, A.C.T. Artistic Director Carey Perloff, and OSF Artistic Director Bill Rauch. Photo by Simon Hodgson.  Is classical theater training still relevant? It’s deeply necessary, but it’s becoming more and more rare. At OSF, there’s a tension between casting new work and casting classical plays. Ideally, you want actors who can play contemporary, classical, and musicals too. Real repertory actors are very rare, because it’s a marathon, not a sprint.  How do you create a season? At OSF, I was lucky enough to inherit the Boarshead syst

By Cecilia Padilla and Shannon Stockwell The plot of The Unfortunates is strange and engaging, its visual world outrageous and meaty. But it is the emotional score that makes the show so moving. It is the music that brings this group of misfits together and unites them in the face of tragedy. “St. James Infirmary” The initial inspiration for The Unfortunates  is “St. James Infirmary,” a classic blues song with mysterious origins. “It represents a morphing tradition,” says  The Unfortunates music director Casey Lee Hurt. “No one knows where the thing started.” It’s impossible to know the origins of the song because it comes out of an old European folk music tradition, which was based on sharing songs orally. The earliest written reference to anything resembling “St. James Infirmary” is “The Unfortunate Rake,” an Irish folk song from the seventeenth century. But the reference to St. James Infirmary dates the song even earlier than that. Although it’s unclear what hospital t

By Shannon Stockwell  When I first got the email, I ignored it. Some of my fellow A.C.T. staff members were getting together to put on a production of The Vagina Monologues , by Eve Ensler, and they were inviting all women in the company to audition. Audition? I hadn’t acted in years. What’s more, I had gone a long time without saying the word “vagina” in public—I was feeling myself becoming sort of prudish—and it made me blush just thinking about telling people that I was in the show. I rationalized to myself: It’s outdated. It was first performed in 1996. What relevance could the show possibly have anymore? And then I auditioned. Stockwell at a rehearsal for The Vagina Monologues . Photo by Rebecca Struch.  I’m still not entirely sure why. Maybe I wanted to spend more time with the people I work with. Maybe I missed acting. Maybe something inside me wanted to be able to say “vagina” in public.   And at the first read-through, all of my rationalizations ab

By Simon Hodgson The Unfortunates started out as a side project for musical collaborators Jon Beavers, Casey Lee Hurt, Ian Merrigan, and Ramiz Monsef. In 2013, with the creative team now including playwright Kristoffer Diaz, the show emerged as a breakout hit at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF)—an original musical that blended bluesy grit with contemporary syncopations. Over the last couple of years, the musical’s creators have worked with A.C.T.’s artistic team to refine the score and script for a run at The Strand. We sat down with Beavers, Hurt, and Monsef to find out more about the amazing journey of The Unfortunates . Four of the five creators of The Unfortunates: (L to R) Ramiz Monsef, Jon Beavers, Ian Merrigan, and Casey Lee Hurt. Photo by Randy Taradash. What’s the inspiration behind The Unfortunates ? Ramiz M onsef: The seed of the whole thing is the song “St. James Infirmary.” The first time I ever heard that song was in a Betty Boop cartoon, in which

By Cecilia Padilla There is nothing so uniquely American as jazz music. In its simplest form, jazz embodies the essence of the American people: bold and inventive. The improvisation of the jazz ensemble can even be seen as a metaphor for the American democratic ideal: musicians playing solos have the liberty to express themselves as long as they adhere to the overall structure of the tune—individual freedom but with responsibility to the group. The evolution of jazz music also carries with it the social development of our nation from slavery to the swinging songs of World War II. Musically, jazz contributed immensely to the way contemporary musicians approach instrumentation, composition, and vocal arrangements. It is difficult to find a popular tune today that does not derive from such jazz icons as Joe Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Thelonious Monk. Jazz is the great equalizer; for more than a hundred years, it has been the common ground between blacks and whites, me

By Ariella Wolfe  In mid January, A.C.T. Studio 8G was filled with stories, Spanish and English translation, songs, laughter, and even some Beyoncé. Sky Festival, the annual three-week period during which the A.C.T. Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) Program explores and develops student-originated new material, provided an opportunity for M.F.A. students, staff from the Education & Community Programs Department’s Stage Coach initiative, and members of the San Francisco community to create theater together, build relationships, and share their work with the rest of the A.C.T. community. Part of the ensemble of Mariposas de Papel.  Photo by Ariella Wolfe.  Following last year’s Sky Festival/Stage Coach production of Stories from the ’Loin (humanizing stories of homelessness in the Tenderloin), M.F.A. second-year student Diana Gonzalez-Morett and Community Producer Rebecca Struch proposed a community-devised theater project that would feature the stories of women from San Fra