Coffee & Conversations for Evening Viewing

Posted by Bruce Miller
Rostov’s Coffee & Conversations is a weekday talkback event in which theatre enthusiasts meet in Barksdale’s Willow Lawn lobby on the second Tuesday of each month (October through July) to participate in a panel discussion with some of our community’s leading theatre artists. Working folks who can’t make it to these 9:30 a.m. programs frequently ask if we can repeat them in the evening. We're attempting to do so. Until then, we will broadcast the discussions on YouTube and provide links to these snippets on this blog.

The following links will connect you to the Coffee & Conversations event that was a part of our recent Sarah Ruhl Festival. Steve Perigard, associate artistic director of Barksdale and director of The Clean House, moderates. The panel is comprised of Rusty Wilson (director of Eurydice at the Firehouse Theatre Project), Laine Satterfield (Eurydice in Eurydice at the Firehouse), Kelly Kennedy (Lane in The Clean House at Barksdale), and Bianca Bryan (Matilde in The Clean House at Barksdale).

The ancestry of Bianca Bryan is discussed in one of these video snippets. The full story isn’t included on the tape. Bianca is of Chilean ancestry on her mother’s side. She was born in South Africa and spent her earliest years in the Azure Islands, where Portuguese is the native language. As she mentions in the video, most of her childhood was spent in Argentina, where she became fluent in Spanish.

We hope you enjoy watching these selections from our October Coffee & Conversations event.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7YS3TjP4LU – in which Steve asks the panelists if this is their first Sarah Ruhl experience, and invites discussion regarding Ms Ruhl’s qualities as a playwright

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrWPqR49V8M – in which Steve prompts a discussion of the difference between reading Ms Ruhl's plays and playing and/or seeing them, and Bianca launches a sidebar discussion of Ms Ruhl’s stage directions

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDjVfUXSZ0U – in which Steve mentions reading that Sarah Ruhl hopes to create ordinary characters who say exceptional things and exceptional characters who say ordinary things, leading into a discussion of the joke in Portuguese that opens The Clean House

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L7N-7ZRsFM – in which the panelists respond to audience questions about language, design and bashert

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMcMkEUsCYo – in which the panelists engage in further discussion of language, building relationships between characters, and managing real life relationships among theatre artists

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E21JMXHA8j0 – in which Kelly discusses developing her character (Lane in The Clean House), and the group discusses Ms Ruhl’s use of silence, imagery and punctuation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM03ebxGawI – in which a question from the audience prompts a discussion of the technical aspects of Eurydice and The Clean House

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76Q4gBEVmHk – in which Rusty discusses an email communication between Joe Inscoe (the actor who played Eurydice’s Father) and Ms Ruhl

December’s Coffee & Conversation program will feature Eric Williams (Uncle Stanley in Sanders Family Christmas) interviewing Scotty Wichmann (actor) and John Moon (director) about This Wonderful Life.

Hope to see you at the theatre!

--Bruce Miller (with IT help from Brad Tuggle)