Jill Bari/JB - Call Her Anything 'cept Late for Casting Call

We're back for another visit with Richmond favorite (and Theatre Gym veteran) Jill Bari Steinberg. From what I've observed, most of Jill Bari's friends call her "Jill Bari" ("Bari" being pronounced exactly the same as "Barry"), although JB also seems to be popular. At least one close friend consistently calls her Jill. Jill Bari is married to musician Steve Organ.
Q - Thanks again for taking the time to talk with us. Should I call you Jill Bari, or JB, or Jill?

A - Yes.

Q - Do you have a day job, other than acting?

A - I work at the Library of Virginia. It's wonderful being surrounded by history, genealogy, and so many books. It's also nice to see people research their own family records. Corrie Barton, Jacquie O'Connor and Dan Stackhouse also work there, so one of us is always promoting one Richmond production or another. There's a group of my co-workers that comes to see most of my shows, and that group seems to be growing, so that's nice. We all have to do what we can to build the Richmond audience.

Q - You've had the opportunity to play a great variety of characters. Does any one role stand out as being particularly challenging or invigorating?

A - There's something challenging about every role and every performance. Sometimes I feel good about my work, and sometimes I fail miserably, but there is always a lot to learn from every experience and from every person you get to work with. I think I've had the chance to work with and learn from the best directors in town--Anna (who's directing Kimberly), Steve, Keri, Bruce, Scotty, Bo, Rick (St Peter--I'm new and had to ask), to name a few. The role I'm currently playing is challenging and fun because she's crazy and grounded at the same time. Luckily, I'm not alone. I have Anna to guide me, and an amazing cast of actors to listen to on stage. With Irene Ziegler, Debra Wagoner, Richard Koch and Matt Mitchell by my side, performing the role of Aunt Debra is a real blast.

Q - What's the best thing about working with Anna Senechal Johnson?

A - She's positive and supportive and wicked smart. This production is her vision of this great material brought to life. It's not easy to tell a bunch of seasoned (ie: old) actors what to do, but Anna always knows what will work best for the play. She directs with equal parts listening, problem solving, kindness and skill.

One of my favorite Anna directing moments happened during rehearsals for My Children! My Africa! (mid-90s). There's a moment in the script when the character I was playing has a complete meltdown--she screams, cries and even collapses. At the time that seemed like the scariest thing in the world to me, so I tried convincing Anna that it would be a lot stronger moment if I held back and didn't go there. She didn't agree and said something like, "That's what that moment is all about, losing all your confidence and comfort and control. Use your fear. I know you can do it." What resulted was--for me--a real breakthrough and one of my favorite moments ever on stage. That is something cool that the best directors I've worked with all have in common--they have always said something along the lines of "This is something you can do." That confidence in you from someone you admire goes a long way.

Q - If you go just by the numbers, one could say that the majority of the Richmond mass audience attends only touring blockbusters like Wicked or The Lion King, touring shows at the Landmark. What would you say to these masses to encourage them to attend a locally produced production?

A - First I'd say, "Good for you! You went to the theatre! Didn't you love it?" Then I'd gently suggest that they're really missing out if that is all that they're seeing. If they love musicals, I'd tell them to go see whatever musical is currently playing at Barksdale or Theatre IV or Swift Creek, and suggest we talk about it afterward. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Putnam County Spelling Bee, Once on This Island, Joseph, Annie, Seussical, Urinetown, The Sound of Music--the list of truly great, splashy, locally produced musicals goes on and on, and all of them were better than any bus and truck show I've ever seen. We buy local produce and goods because they are just better. It's the same with theatre. Not that I'm biased or anything.

(Part 3 coming soon to a blog near you! Photo captions: as the daughter in On Golden Pond with Joe Inscoe, as the mother in Last Days of Judas Iscariot with Jesse Mattes, as the niece in How I Learned to Drive with Gordon Bass)

Theatre Gym Veteran JB Steinberg Discusses "Kimberly"

This week we're posting a three-part interview with Jill Bari Steinberg, one of Richmond's finest. JB is currently starring as the truly dysfunctional Aunt Debra in Kimberly Akimbo, by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay Abaire, running for two more weekends at Theatre Gym, the 81-seat studio theatre space in the historic Empire Theatre complex. Kimberly is directed by Anna Senechal Johnson, and produced by Cadence Theatre Company in partnership with Barksdale's Theatre Gym. Theatre Gym used to be the name of Theatre IV's initiative through which facilities and other services were shared free-of-charge with independent artists who wanted to co-produce outstanding, contemporary, provocative theatre. Today, Theatre Gym is the name of not only the initiative, but also the facility itself. The 81-seat studio space is no longer named The Little Theatre--it's now Theatre Gym. New signage will be coming soon! Jill Bari is practically a founder of Theatre Gym. The Barksdale Buzz was pleased to catch up with her to discuss present and past experiences.

Q - Thanks for talking with us, Ms. Steinberg. I'm told you grew up in Portsmouth. What brought you to our fair city?

A - I came to Richmond for VCU and stayed. My first professional Richmond production was Boys' Life, directed by Dan Ruth and produced by Keri Wormald. For a couple wonderful years Dan and Keri had a small stage company called Shadowcast Theatre Works. It was a great experience. The show was performed upstairs at what was then the Paradise Cafe-- now it's the deLux Diner & Lounge--one of the many Richmond theatre spaces that have come and gone.

Q - Has Richmond theatre changed that much over the years?

A - I think we have more theatre companies around now. That's a good thing in that it gives more people a chance to develop their craft.

Q - You've performed a lot in Theatre Gym. What's the experience like?

A - I love Theatre Gym because of its intimacy. In its early days, Theatre Gym provided a venue to a lot of actors and directors when not many other spaces were open to them, a way to produce something yourself to show the world what you had to offer. I feel like I grew up there in an artistic sense, having acted in My Children! My Africa!, How I Learned to Drive, Heathen Valley, The Cripple of Inishmaan, A Devil Inside, and the initial run of The Syringa Tree--as well as working behind the scenes on Jack and Jill and Raised in Captivity.

The intimacy of the space is great, but it also offers challenges. For some reason, people in the front row think it's OK to rest their feet on the stage. I guess it's nice that they're so comfortable there, but it drives me crazy. One night during The Syringa Tree, a gentleman's cell phone rang, which would have been bad enough but he decided to answer it, and then, while talking to his friend, he proceeded to walk across the stage to the actors' exit door. All 24 characters in my head wanted to scream at him. But I stayed cool, ignored him and continued the play.

One of my funniest moments on stage happened during A Devil Inside (pictured to the right). My character was dead after throwing herself under a moving train. Bill Blair and Bridget Gethins were playing a scene next to my decimated body. Bridget was supposed to shoot Bill at the end of the scene, and then he dies--I think just about everybody in that play died in the end. Anyway, Bridget goes to shoot Bill and the gun doesn't make a sound. So Bill grabbed his chest, started to collapse with a final death groan and haltingly shouted, "Oh! A silencer!!"

My poor little train-ravaged body started shaking with laughter and I couldn't stop. Since the audience was only three feet away, someone had to have noticed. Now if only I'd had that silencer when the guy with the cell phone walked across stage...

(To be continued... Photo captions: middle photo--Jill Bari with her husband Steve Organ; bottom photo--the cast of A Devil Inside: [back row, left to right] Steve Perigard, Bill Blair, Rick Brandt, [front row, left to right] Jill Bari Steinberg, Bridget Gethins, and an actress whose name Bruce can't remember, 'cause he doesn't think it's Donna Coghill but he might be wrong. Can someone help us please?])

"Blue Ridge Mountain Christmas" on Hardscrabble Knob

Posted by Phil Whiteway
We're pleased to announce the cast of Blue Ridge Mountain Christmas, our world premiere holiday musical at Hanover Tavern, running Nov 25 - Jan 8. Returning from our Smoke on the Mountain trilogy will be five beloved actor/musicians: Emily Cole, David Janeski, Drew Perkins, Aly Wepplo and Eric Williams, all members of Barksdale's version of the Sanders Family. Joining the fun for the first time will be Katrinah Lewis, Nick Shackleford and Anthony Smith.

Direction is by Anna Senechal Johnson, with music direction by Drew Perkins. The original script is by our artistic director, Bruce Craig Miller (he uses his middle name only as a playwright, to avoid confusion with another writer named Bruce Miller). The music is mostly traditional mountain music with English and Irish origins. All instruments (guitar, fiddle, mandolin, banjo, dulcimer, flute, piano, harp, bass, etc.) are played by members of the cast. Kelly Kennedy is offering assistance with music and choreography. Set design is by Terrie Powers, and costume design by Lynn West.

A Little Background - In 1912, a team of U.S. Forest Service employees headquartered at an inn named Mountain House, located about 20 miles outside Staunton. They walked, drove, rode on horseback, and surveyed the mountains and valleys of Virginia's Highland, Bath and Augusta Counties. Their work led to the 1913 purchase of more than 38,000 acres on and around Shenandoah Mountain--some of the first property to be acquired for the Shenandoah National Forest.

Connecting Mountain House with Hardscrabble Knob, the second highest peak on Shenandoah Mountain, a creek called Ramsey's Draft flows freely through these high Allegheny Mountains. From its headwaters of mountain springs at nearly 4,000 feet in elevation, the stream drains the wilderness's 6,500 acres. In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps build a road that roughly followed the path of the draft, allowing Shenandoah Valley residents unique and previously unavailable access to Hardscrabble Knob.

On cold December evenings in the 20s and 30s, the mostly poor Appalachian residents who once owned this land would travel in horse drawn wagons, up the new rough road, toward Hardscrabble Knob. Before reaching the peak, they'd leave their wagons at road's end, and climb through a dense stand of old growth hemlock, giant trees that had begun as seedlings at about the time that Columbus was "discovering" America. At the rocky peak, they would join as a community to perform their treasured holiday traditions, sing and play their ancestral songs, and celebrate this Garden of Eden that their English, Irish, Scotch-Irish and German ancestors had settled in the 1700s.

Historian and writer Lella Smith, who's family has lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains since before the American revolution, writes that in the 1930s, two areas in the United States were acknowledged as sacred: the Four Corners area of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Nevada; and the mountains surrounding the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Several peaks contained "dancing grounds, sacred places where paths crossed and people gathered to dance by moonlight."

Today, Mountain House is nothing but a wayside parking lot with picnic tables. The road constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps was washed away by Hurricane Camille in 1969. The majestic hemlocks have been devastated by an infestation of the wooly adelgid, and nearly all of the 500-year-old trees now have died.

In Blue Ridge Mountain Christmas, we'll venture back to December, 1938, to Hardscrabble Knob on Shenandoah Mountain (from which you can look east to the Blue Ridge), and revisit a merry night during the Great Depression when a group of warm-hearted Appalachians gathered in joy on a cold mountaintop to honor a sacred season and celebrate a magical land that was no longer theirs.

--Phil Whiteway

Theatre Gym Returns with Cadence's "Kimberly Akimbo"

Posted by Bruce Miller
With Thursday's preview and Friday's opening night performances of Kimberly Akimbo, our fabled Theatre Gym series will rise again like a phoenix from the ashes. Kimberly Akimbo is produced by Cadence Theatre Company in partnership with Barksdale's Theatre Gym. Directed by Anna Senechal Johnson, this quirky comedy by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire stars four of Richmond's favorite actors: Irene Ziegler, Debra Wagoner, Richard Koch, and Jill Bari Steinberg, joined by recent Theatre VCU grad Matt Mitchell.

Theatre Gym began in 1991 as an indie initiative of Theatre IV. Through our Theatre Gym program, independent theatre artists were given the opportunity to produce edgy work of their own choosing for adult audiences. Theatre IV provided free-of-charge use of the Little Theatre, box office services, and access to our set, costume and prop inventories. One hundred percent of ticket revenues went to the independent producer, and artists were paid a percentage of those revenues rather than a set fee.

Outstanding Theatre Gym productions included My Children! My Africa! by Athol Fugard, The Cripple of Inishmaan by Martin McDonagh, Jails, Hospitals and Hip Hop by Danny Hoch, Oleanna by David Mamet, How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel, The Syringa Tree by Pamela Gien (pictured with Jill Bari Steinberg to left), Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks, Italian American Reconciliation by John Patrick Shanley, Heathen Valley by Romulus Linney, Life Under Water by Richard Greenberg, Lobby Hero by Kenneth Lonergan, Keely and Du and Jack and Jill by Jane Martin, Rules of the Lake by Irene Ziegler, Boom Town by Jeff Daniels, SubUrbia by Eric Bogosian, Jesus Hopped the A Train by Stephen Adly Guirgis, The Dead Monkey by Nick Darke, Abundance by Beth Henley, and Raised in Captivity by Nicky Silver, and many others.

One of our 1990s Theatre Gym productions was A Devil Inside, an early work by then novice playwright David Lindsay-Abaire, directed by Anna Senechal in her pre-Johnson years. Anna was and is friends with Lindsay-Abaire's wife, Chris, and Theatre IV's Theatre Gym was one of the first companies in the nation to produce his work. Twenty years later, Lindsay-Abaire would win the Pulitzer for Rabbit Hole. Now, once again, Anna Senechal Johnson (pictured to the right with Cadence's cast of Fool for Love) will be directing another of his plays, Kimberly Akimbo, in partnership with Theatre Gym.

There are two major changes in Theatre Gym now vs Theatre Gym then.
1) It used to be that the initiative was named Theatre Gym, but the performance facility was named the Little Theatre. Now, both the initiative and the facility are named Theatre Gym.
2) It used to be that each Theatre Gym production was co-produced by a different independent producer. In 2011-12, and we hope beyond, all Theatre Gym productions will be produced by Cadence Theatre Company in partnership with Barksdale's Theatre Gym.

Barksdale still provides the performance venue, box office services, and access to set/costume/prop inventories free of charge. We also provide limited PR and lots of producing advice. All ticket revenues are still used to pay the artists involved with the production.

Theatre Gym has been on hiatus for the last several years, initially because of interior damage caused by a leaking roof, and then because we were just too busy with other projects to add anything else to our plates. By partnering full-time with Cadence Theatre, we hope to be able to keep the program going without over-burdening our already ridiculous workloads.

If you would like to be a part of history re-making itself, please join us for Kimberly Akimbo, opening this Friday evening. It's going to be a great show, and herald the long-awaited return of an important and innovative Richmond theatre initiative.

--Bruce Miller

Two Treasures

Posted by Bruce Miller
Congratulations to Carol Piersol, co-founder and Artistic Director of Firehouse Theatre Project, who is recognized in and on the cover of the September issue of Belle Magazine as one of Richmond's seven outstanding women in the arts.

Her fellow honorees include Sarah Shields Driggs, Architectural Historian, Save Outdoor Sculpture; Ashley Kistler, Director, Anderson Gallery, VCU; Pamela Kiecker Royall, Benefactor and Collector; Andrea Orlosky, Executive Director, Art on Wheels; Greta Brinkman, Musician and Music Director, WRIR; and Maya Payne Smart, Author and Vice Chairwoman, James River Writers.

Carol co-founded the Firehouse in 1993 with Jeff Clevenger, Bill Gordon, Anna Senechal Johnson, and Harry Kollatz Jr., and has served as artistic director for the last 18 years. The best way to understand the incredible value of her leadership is to watch Parts 1 and 2 of the terrific Firehouse documentary created by Richmond filmmaker Alan Futterman.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5wju_o0jl4 and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWSuD1qN0ag&feature=related.

In the documentary, eight of Virginia's finest actors (Jeff Clevenger, Justin Dray, Sara Heifetz, D. L. Hopkins, Bill Patton, Melissa Johnston Price, Amy Sproul and Scott Wichmann) speak eloquently and movingly about Firehouse's steadfast commitment to its artistic values.

Carol has embodied these values, steered and protected this commitment for nearly two decades. All the while, she and her colleagues have continued to improve the Firehouse's production quality, year after year, while also maintaining its historic facility, and growing its audience and operations. Her contributions to Richmond's theatre community inspire me more than I can say.

She's also been a good friend to Theatre IV and Barksdale for a long time. Congratulations, Carol, on this well deserved recognition.

On a second and equally jubilant note, our beloved facilities manager and indispensible jack-of-all-trades, Tom McGranahan, is back in the saddle with us after his recent surgery. I think he's supposed to still be in bed, but you can't keep a good man down.

I've known a few saints in my life: my father, Phil Whiteway's mother and father, my late Sunday School teacher Barbara Maynard, and Tom McGranahan. He's a bawdy saint, to be sure. But a saint nonetheless. I look at Tom McGranahan and I see the hand of God.

Welcome back, Tom. The old place wasn't the same without you.

--Posted by Bruce Miller