Inside A.C.T.

By Simon Hodgson Who were all these women, anyway? Get a glimpse of these historical and legendary figures’ lives beyond the stage in this breakdown of characters from Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls . L to R:  Top Girls  actors   Rosie Hallett (Pope Joan),  Summer Brown (Dull Gret), Michelle Beck (Marlene), Monica Lin (Lady Nijo), and  Julia McNeal (Isabella Bird).  Photo by Kevin Berne. Isabella Bird  In 19th-century Britain, middle-class women were expected to lead lives filled with crafts, music, and church-related activities. But while Isabella Bird’s life began that way, this curious, intelligent woman chose a different path. When doctors prescribed outdoor activity as a tonic for her fragility, she took a trip to the United States to visit family. Traveling set Bird free—the letters she wrote home were full of quirky details, and she turned them into a travel book. In 1872, she toured Australia, Hawaii, and the Western United States,...

By Claire L. Wong Abuse of power. Feminism. Sexual politics. Experience some of today’s most pressing issues dramatized for the stage by Caryl Churchill, one of the greatest living English-language playwrights. This season, four Bay Area theaters collaborate in presenting three classic plays and one newer work. With the Caryl Churchill Passport, get one ticket to each show and the best available seats. Shattering the glass ceiling doesn’t come without a few injuries in  Top Girls . In Margaret Thatcher’s divided England, nothing will stand in the way of Marlene’s rise through the corporate ranks. But what of other women? In the race to the top, there’s no time for sisterhood.  Top Girls , directed by Tamilla Woodard at A.C.T., is at the Geary through October 13. Cloud 9 show art courtesy Custom Made Theatre Co. Cloud 9 explores sexual politics in colonial Africa and modern-day Britain at Custom Made Theatre Co. This seminal work challenges assumptions about gender and...

By Elspeth Sweatman  A year after bringing the rip-roaring adventure  Men on Boats  to the Strand, Director Tamilla Woodard is back at A.C.T. with Caryl Churchill’s 1982 play  Top Girls . Director Tamilla Woodard (left) and A.C.T. Artistic Director Pam MacKinnon (right) discuss  Top Girls . Photo by Claire L. Wong. What’s your process as a director? Do you like to do research? Any play I do, I go as deep as I can. Of course, I think that’s simply part of the job. The more you dig, the more you find and the more you find, the more you need to keep looking. I want to surround myself with as many tools as I can, not out of studiousness but to communicate about the play. First and foremost, I need to satisfy my questions so I go until I run out of time [ Laughs ] which 99.9 percent of the time is what happens. All of that is fuel for my imagination and decision-making. One of the things that I do with a play is I sit down and write just pages and pages...

By Elspeth Sweatman A year after bringing the rip-roaring adventure Men on Boats to the Strand, Director Tamilla Woodard is back at A.C.T. with Caryl Churchill’s 1982 play  Top Girls . Director Tamilla Woodard describes her vision for Top Girls . Photo by Claire L. Wong. Men on Boats , which you directed last fall at the Strand, upended stereotypes, and in a way, Top Girls is doing something similar. These are powerful female characters, but they are all still trapped inside the patriarchy.  They are responding to the invisible presence of men. It’s like there are only women onstage but there’s a big man head hanging above them, looking down at them. [ Laughs ] Jaclyn [Backhaus] tackled stereotypes in Men on Boats by having no men and no mention of the fact that these female-identified bodies were playing men; men disappeared entirely. Here, no men appear onstage but man-ness is ever present. Masculinity is present. Patriarchy is present. These women are under t...

By Claire L. Wong “Messy, messy women,” says A.C.T. Artistic Director Pam MacKinnon of Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls . As the cast, creative team, and company members gathered at A.C.T. for the first rehearsal, MacKinnon addressed the company. “These are messy, human people. You’re not going to find a hero in this. It’s a messy world.” Director Tamilla Woodard discusses Top Girls . Photo by Claire L. Wong. This muck and mire and mess aptly describes the world of Top Girls . In 1980s England, Marlene’s rise through the corporate ranks is hard-won. As her ambition vaults her to the top, she isn’t concerned with bringing other women along with her. The opening scene in the play features historical and legendary women who gather for a dazzling dinner party to celebrate Marlene’s latest promotion. The production examines the generational inheritance of what women, and particularly women of color, experience in the workplace. Director Tamilla Woodard says, “There are a lot of women her...

By Claire L. Wong Rules are made to be broken—and interrogated, rewritten, and overcome. The 2019–20 season at American Conservatory Theater features stories that examine the established rules of engagement, their violent and tumultuous histories, and the people chafing against these constraints. “Told with decorum, rage, spirit, and a wink,” says A.C.T. Artistic Director Pam MacKinnon, “this season’s offerings continue A.C.T.’s tradition of telling stories that provoke responses and lead to debates, dreams, and even action.” Women are pushing back against the rules of oppression in A.C.T.’s first two productions of the 2019–20 season. Tamilla Woodard ( Men on Boats ) returns to A.C.T. for her Geary Theater debut directing Caryl Churchill’s acclaimed modern classic Top Girls . Audiences may remember returning actors Rosie Hallett, who worked alongside Woodard in Men on Boats (2018), and Michelle Beck, last seen at the Geary in King Charles III (2016). In Margaret Thatcher’s d...

By Taylor Steinbeck For over six months, 13 young theater artists from various departments of A.C.T.’s Fellowship Program have come together to produce not one, but two plays in a project that will culminate in performances this week. Running April 19–22 at A.C.T.’s Costume Shop, the production features the work of Obie Award–winning playwrights Caryl Churchill and José Rivera with Far Away and Brainpeople , respectively. Both these plays tackle war, fear, and oppression through a dystopian lens, speaking volumes about the world we live in today. In celebration of this project marking the fifth consecutive year of the Fellowship Project, we spoke to some of this year's fellows about their experiences. The 2017–18 A.C.T. Fellows involved in The A.C.T. Fellowship Project 2018. Photo by Allie Moss. Nora Zahn (Director of Far Away ): Being a part of this project from beginning to end has taught me a ton, especially when it comes to all the tiny details that go into making a...

An Interview with Love and Information Director Casey Stangl By Beatrice Basso Scenic designer Robert Brill’s rendering for A.C.T.’s 2015 production of Love and Information Director Casey Stangl returns to A.C.T. after staging David Ives’s Venus in Fur last spring. Now, Love and Information , a play that offered her a blank creative canvas that she describes as simultaneously “exhilarating and terrifying.” Stangl brings her talent for seamless transitions and precise pacing to Love and Information , a play that offered her a blank creative canvas that she describes as simultaneously “exhilarating and terrifying.”     Stangl found her stride in directing new work and reimagining classics through a bold contemporary lens. Her movement background and interest in visual composition have helped her weave the complex fabric of Love and Information . At a new-play festival in Southern California a week before rehearsals began, Stangl was happy to talk about th...

The Enduring Mystique of Caryl Churchill By Nirmala Nataraj Caryl Churchill. Photo by Stephen Cummiskey. Caryl Churchill is perhaps the most acclaimed female playwright in the English-speaking world, and simultaneously the most elusive. Critic Charles Spencer has called her the “least predictable of contemporary playwrights.” Her work has been described as elliptical, provocative, shocking, confounding—and, over the years, it has become significantly more pared down, devoid of stage directions or notes, which only seems to contribute to her enduring mystique. Although Churchill has been writing plays for over five decades, she stopped giving interviews many years ago. She rarely comments on critics’ analyses of her work, but her past interviews and the words of her close collaborators, of whom there are many, continue to spark the imaginations of those who recognize the multiple ways in which she has pushed dramatic boundaries over the course of her career. Feminist and...

Posted by Adrian Gebhart, A.C.T. Education Department Volunteer Glenn Stott, Elyse Price, and Lisa Kitchens wait on the set of #Cloud9 while lights are focused on them at tech rehearsal. Don’t miss A.C.T.’s M.F.A. Program production of Cloud 9! (Limited run, May 15–18, in Hastings Studio Theater) Since joining the company in 2009, A.C.T. Associate Artistic Director Mark Rucker has directed productions of Maple and Vine , Higher , Once in a Lifetime , and Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet . He has also tackled several Master of Fine Arts Program productions, including last season’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and this past winter’s raucous The Wild Party in The Costume Shop. He has also worked with such Bay Area companies as the Magic, Cal Shakes, Berkeley Rep, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, and SF Playhouse. He is an associate artist at South Coast Rep, where he has directed more than 20 productions, and other regional credits include work at Yale Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, Arena Stage, ...