[music]
--My first exposure to Oklahoma was probably as a kid, you know. I heard the
record. My parents played me the record, and I saw the '79 revival. The music, the
words, were in my memory, in my consciousness. And like a lot of people, I
thought I knew the show. When I started to work on it, I found out I didn't. Now
why I started to work on it was the kind of instinct or a whim. I think if I know
why I'm doing a show when I start out to do it, I probably shouldn't do it. I
discovered there was way more to this piece than I thought was there. I saw a
story about community, the nature of the outsider, the role of the outsider in the
community, and the need for a community to create an outsider, that I had no idea
that was in this piece. I've seen probably more shows in this theater than
any other theater on Broadway. I first came when I was 10 years old.
I saw a play called
Loose Ends here, and I've seen plays many, many times. So you know, I feel really
at home here and I feel really welcomed here by the whole community.
You know, when
we did it at St. Ann's, we didn't really know where we would take it, if it would
go on. And then we looked at a bunch of different theaters and then this really
felt right. And in conversation with Laura, it was clear that this is the place
this was the place to do it. --One of the challenges of moving to .
Circle from the other spaces is that every other space
we made. We were in a really big room, and
we made our own room inside of it. And this is the first time where we've been
sort of in conversation more with an existing room, which is great. The first
thing was, We can do it here if we can cover it all in plywood so that it's
it's both our room and its Circle. And it's sort of how they how they meet. And
originally, the plywood literally just came from us —it was a conversation about
what's the container? And ultimately it was like the point is that it's a
container. The point is not what it's made of. So what's the sort of simplest,
most honest way to do that? Make it out of plywood, right? That's what you would
do. --It was really important to us that
we were able to cover the walls, cover the
floor, cover the space beneath the seats, and really do all of that, and that the
audience walks in and they're in a space that's transformed and doesn't feel like
any other space they've been in. We work really hard to get the show
the way we want it to look, sound and feel. All those things align, then what it
means and what want a stamp on it is... I shouldn't be the one to say.
You know, I really think that we work so hard to get it the way we want it to be,
and then we do it, and then it belongs to the audience. And if I tell you this is
what I think it means, or this is the stamp, I don't think I should be allowed
to do that because then you're gonna view it with that frame in mind. And I
think you should be able to have your own experience of it.
--You can break the
set down pretty easily into its elements, right? It's like the plywood container,
and then the mural and the guns I think of as a pair, and then the fringe above.
The point was, this is the place where there are guns and there's violence and
there's danger. And it became really important that it had to feel like too
many guns, so getting to the number and the placement of it being an
uncomfortable number. The fringe, in some ways, is like literally the color in
that there's no other color in the set.
I think the fringe is sort of like the joy.
I also didn't really think about it till
it existed, but because of basically
HVAC, the fringe is always moving. In this production that can be really still, we
have this fringe that's always in motion about the actors.
--Yeah, the food thing has
always been a part of it. From the student production, I think, there was a
kind of idea about dinner theater, and likely thinking what dinner theater is,
and wondering if there's some kind of connection between why people go to the
theater and why people sit down for a meal together.
--I lied when I said the
fringe was the only color because the crackpots are the other color, which
visually are really important. And then also, obviously the crackpots how's the
chili which we all eat an intermission. It was interesting when we moved here, we
talked about, do we need the chili? And once you start to deconstruct it, like
maybe it comes from offstage? It sort of it all unravels. Like
eating the chili together at intermission, and having that be the real
chili that's been onstage, is a really actually sort of holds it all together, in a way.
--I think one thing that happens in this
production is that there's a kind of tension between the actor and the role
that they're playing for everybody. You know, it's not the typical ingenue, it's
not the typical bad guy, it's not the typical hero. So there are these ways in
which masculinity and femininity are kind of in play, and there's a kind of
distance between the actor and the role. And you know, I think everybody in the
show is both themselves and the part they're playing at the same time. I think
what's interesting for me is like that wasn't an intention. That was a result.
I didn't set out to do that. I cast the people that I thought were the
best and that moved me, and once we were
doing it, I went, Oh! There's this thing
that's going on and that's kind of cool.
Well, I love that it keeps, that I keep
learning things about it, that it's incredibly generous and it surprises me
all the time, that it's given material for these amazing actors to come out and
feel it every night. I don't get bored with it, and I'm kind of stunned
continually by by the skill of Rodgers and Hammerstein, the way words work
with music and just how much is in the story.
--I had never seen the show until I
worked on it. I don't know how else you do Oklahoma.
In terms of really just reading
the text and just the thing we've created, this feels like the only way to
do it.
--It sounds very simplistic to say it, but it's
really like we're just trying to take the material seriously. And when you
do that, it's incredibly rewarding. And there's this story here and it's a story
of depth and nuance and and and it's complicated.
[music]