After a week of previews, we opened the show on Monday night. By the time you’re reading this, the reviews will have come in. The relationship between a critic and director is quite a unique one. In this case, I have put 25 years of my life into understanding, planning, editing and creating this work […]
Week 7: lessons from tech week
This week was tech week. The process is a slow one. I am continuing to work with the actors while the designers work on the bigger picture of the show.
Week 6: the runthroughs
We have been running Strange Interlude this week. Our first run was last Wednesday, a week ago. We ran through it again on Thursday and another time this weekend. I am very happy with the progress we have been able to make. As many directors know, this can be a make or break juncture for […]
Week five: landing the final two scenes
It’s week five. We just keep marching through the play like Sherman to Atlanta. All the way to Georgia! Every day we fill in more of the picture. Each scene now has a real shape. I feel free to fine-tune – focus the actors on maintaining their diagonals, throw out old ideas because they no […]
Week 4: we find O’Neill within the lines, the actors get comfortable, and we begin to see the contours of the scenes
To perform Eugene O’Neill, an actor has to be ruthlessly honest—with themself as much as with the play. It can be a tricky thing to sculpt for a director, and for the actor, it can exact a terrible toll. I once directed José Ferrer, the great actor and matinee idol, famous in the 1940s, ’50s […]
We finally have a text. The exploration of our characters continues
Strange Interlude rehearsals continue. We entered rehearsals with a carefully edited script, but it has kept on changing and evolving. There were times when we would stop, in the middle of rehearsing a scene, and put some dialogue back in. I know the play pretty much by heart at this point, and I could see […]
Notes from the first week of rehearsal
Last week I discussed the careful editing process which Eugene O’Neill practically demands from his theatrical collaborators. Like all of O’Neill’s plays, Strange Interlude is profound and intuitive and also a little over-written. This week, I’ve finished tableworking the play with the actors and we’re on our feet now, continuing to explore.[1] The first week […]
And so we begin
Hello, I am Michael Kahn, the Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company. Welcome to my new blog, “Stage Interludes from Michael Kahn.” Every Wednesday for the next eight weeks, I am going to be writing an installment of this blog about our current show, Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude, which I am directing.