CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION

Transcription

1 CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION by Annie Baker directed by Meredith McDonough Jan. 24 Feb actorstheatre.org PLAY G U I D E

2 IN THIS PLAY GUIDE CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION PLOT SUMMARY AND CHARACTERS SETTING ABOUT THE AUTHOR GLOSSARY START AGAIN ABOUT THIS PLAY GUIDE This play guide is a resource designed to enhance your theatre experience. Its goal is twofold: to nurture the teaching and learning of theatre arts and to encourage essential questions that lead to an enduring understanding of the play s meaning and relevance. Inside you will find information about the plot and characters within the play, as well as articles that contextualize the play and its production at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Oral discussion and writing prompts encourage your students to reflect upon their impressions, analyze key ideas and relate them to their personal experiences and the world around them. These prompts can easily be adapted to fit most writing objectives. We encourage you to adapt and extend the material in any way that best fits the needs of your community of learners. Please feel free to make copies of this guide, or you may download it from our website at actorstheatre.org. We hope this material, combined with our pre-show workshops, will give you the tools to make your time at Actors Theatre a valuable learning experience WRITING PORTFOLIO & DISCUSSION QUESTIONS BRIDGEWORK CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION STUDENT MATINEES AND THIS PLAY GUIDE ADDRESS SPECIFIC EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.1 Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.2 Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details and well-structured event sequences. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.5 Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.6 Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.7 Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.2 Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally. NATIONAL CORE ARTS STANDARDS TH.Re7.1 Perceive and analyze artistic work. TH.Re8.1 Interpret intent and meaning in artistic work. TH.Re9.1 Apply criteria to evaluate artistic work. TH.Cn10.1 Synthesize and relate knowledge and personal experiences to make art. TH.Cn11.1 Relate artistic ideas and works with societal, cultural and historical context to deepen understanding. If you have any questions or suggestions regarding our play guides, please contact Jane B. Jones, Education Director, at x3045.

3 EDUCATION DIRECTOR Jane B. Jones EDUCATION MANAGER Betsy Anne Huggins EDUCATION ASSOCIATE Lexy Leuszler RESIDENT TEACHING ARTISTS Liz Fentress Keith McGill Talleri McRae Letitia Usher EDUCATION/TEACHING ARTIST APPRENTICES Elliott Talkington Victoria Masteller PLAY GUIDE BY Maddi Fuller Victoria Masteller Elliott Talkington GRAPHIC DESIGN Amie Harris 316 West Main Street Louisville, KY ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Les Waters MANAGING DIRECTOR Kevin E. Moore CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION PLOT SUMMARY In her creative drama class at the local community center, middle-aged bohemian Marty coaches an unlikely assortment of small-town Vermonters: a recently divorced carpenter, a high school junior, a former actress, and Marty s own husband. As they tackle Marty s imaginative, improvisational, and sometimes awkward theatre games, their real lives gradually infiltrate the classroom inspiring transformations both personal and profound. Annie Baker s enormously popular comedy is a beautifully crafted, tender portrait of the tiny leaps of faith and creativity that spark unexpected insight. CHARACTERS SCHULTZ At the age of 48, Schultz finds himself unhappily alone after his recent divorce from his wife of many years. He works primarily as a carpenter and makes chairs in his spare time. JAMES He is 60 years old and is married to Marty. He has an estranged daughter from a previous marriage whom he attempts to contact throughout the play. MARTY Marty, 55, is the Co-Executive Director of the community center where the play is set. In addition to teaching drama, she leads classes in other subjects, such as jewelry and pottery. She is married to James. Marty longs to move to New Mexico. LAUREN Sixteen years old, Lauren is the youngest student in Marty s class. She is in high school and is figuring out what she wants to do with her life. She is considering becoming a professional actress, so she is disappointed when she realizes the acting class is only going to be theatre games and not scene work. THERESA At the age of 35, she s recently moved to Vermont from New York City after ending a toxic relationship. She is an actress and is also studying acupressure. 3

4 SETTING The play is set in a dance studio at a community center in the fictional town of Shirley, Vermont. The studio is windowless and contains a wall of mirrors and a big blue yoga ball. The play takes place over six weeks during the summer. Springfield, Vermont. Springfield is a good example of what the fictitious town of Shirley in Circle Mirror Transformation would be like, with a medium-sized population of about 10,000 people, a town hall, and many festivals. Springfield, Vermont. 4

5 Springfield, Vermont. With its early 1800s architecture and proximity to waterways, Springfield shares characteristics with the fictional town of Shirley. In this map of the United States, Vermont is highlighted in red. Part of New England, Vermont is characterized by its stunning natural landscape of dense mountainous forests. Vermont is known for its maple syrup, hiking trails, and ski slopes. 5

6 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Annie Baker ANNIE BAKER grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her full-length plays include John at Signature Theatre, The Flick at Playwrights Horizons (Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Hull-Warriner Award, Susan Smith Blackburn Price, Obie Award for Playwriting), Circle Mirror Transformation at Playwrights Horizons (Obie Award for Best New American Play, Drama Desk nomination for Best New American Play), The Aliens at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater (Obie Award for Best New American Play), Body Awareness at Atlantic Theater Company (Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations for Best Play/Emerging Playwright), and an adaptation of Chekhov s Uncle Vanya at Soho Rep (Drama Desk nomination for Best Revival), for which she also designed the costumes. Her plays have been produced at over 150 theatres throughout the U.S., and have been produced internationally in over a dozen countries. Other recent honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Steinberg Playwright Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, and the Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. She is a Residency Five playwright at the Signature Theatre. 6

7 GLOSSARY DOMINEERING: Forcing one s will over another in an aggressive way. In one of the exercises in the play, Lauren (roleplaying as Theresa) claims that her ex-partner, Mark, was domineering and made her forget who she was. MANIPULATION: The ability to handle, control, or move your body or the body of someone else in a skillful manner. Marty manipulates, or adjusts, Schultz s arms into a new position in order for him to better embody a character physically. MORALISTIC: Having or showing strong opinions about what one believes is right and wrong. In the exercise described under domineering, Theresa claims that her expartner, Mark, was judgmental and moralistic while also always lecturing [her]. TRANSFORM: To adjust a word or action to exemplify change. In an exercise in the play, everyone mirrors Theresa who repeats the word WOOP and does a gesture with it. Marty instructs Lauren to transform the word WOOP by giving it another gesture. By doing so, she changes how the word is understood by everyone else. MEISNER TECHNIQUE: An acting technique developed by renowned actor and teacher Sanford Meisner. The goal of Meisner technique is to allow actors to be in the moment while acting, rather than focusing on the result. Actors use improvisation and rely on their impulses in order to obtain a sense of authenticity in their performances. One of the scenes in the play shows Schultz and Theresa participating in a Meisner exercise in which one person says I want it while the other responds with You can t have it. This exercise allows actors to play with the intention behind the words they are speaking while also promoting active listening between scene partners. 7

8 START AGAIN Meet Marty, Schultz, Lauren, Theresa, and James. Lying on the floor of their community center s dance studio, they are trying to count to ten. It isn t going very well. The rules: at random, someone calls out a number, starting with one; if multiple people say a number at the same time, the group has to go back to the beginning. It s a straightforward game, often used in acting classes like theirs. However, it s hard to get in sync with a bunch of strangers, and it s almost impossible not to wonder if there s actually a point to all the counting. Marty, the ever-patient teacher, nudges everyone to keep trying Start again even when her artsy activities, designed to create unity and encourage self-expression, go comically awry. But as weeks pass and real-world concerns invade the goofy oasis of the community center, Marty s exercises acquire unexpectedly high stakes. With compassion and wry humor, Circle Mirror Transformation charts how simple theatre games lead to tectonic shifts in her students lives and her own. (Continued on next page) 8

9 That precision, combined with Baker s emotional honesty, led Associate Artistic Director Meredith McDonough to direct Circle Mirror Transformation this season. Annie s work is incredibly complex, she explains. I love that she takes things that could seem everyday and so deeply investigates them that they become profound. The play s comic touch was also a draw; the characters are hilariously awkward as they navigate the forced intimacy of their acting class. According to McDonough, They shouldn t be in the same room they shouldn t be in the same play! Moreover, she says, We laugh at things we recognize, and you ll recognize all of these people. You re going to identify with bits of all of them. Indeed, Marty and her students hard-won triumphs, fumbled confessions, and fleeting moments of connection struck a chord with audiences when Circle Mirror Transformation premiered in It soon became one of the most produced plays in the United States, and it earned Baker the 2010 Obie Award for Best New American Play, shared with her drama The Aliens. Playwright Annie Baker. Photo by Zack DeZon. To craft the play, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Annie Baker drew inspiration from several sources, including her experiences taking art courses as a teenager in Amherst, Massachusetts. Reflecting on Circle Mirror Transformation s origins, she recalled a motley crew of fellow students ranging from janitors to housewives to retirees, who gathered for improv comedy in the back of the public library, creative writing in a teacher s living room, and a very emotionally fraught tango class in a basement. The four small-town Vermonters in Marty s class are a similarly mismatched group. Schultz, 48, is a newly divorced, socially clumsy carpenter. High school student Lauren, 16, itches to do some real acting instead of playing around. Theresa, 35, is a former New York actor who recently moved to Vermont. And James, 60, Marty s husband, is an ex-hippie whose daughter won t speak to him. As the strict rules of Marty s games paradoxically free them to be themselves (for better or worse), Baker depicts their inner lives with remarkable precision. Both plays and most of Baker s work in general reflect her affection for what she s called the accidental poetry of everyday speech, as well as her interest in experimenting with silence onstage. In Circle Mirror Transformation, whether the characters have nothing to say to each other or too much, words frequently come up short, and Baker skillfully orchestrates the rises and falls of their conversations. McDonough compares the play to a piece of music and says that staying in tune with its tempo shifts, beats, and rests is a directing challenge she embraces, especially when it comes to the play s quieter moments. I think silence is an act of bravery, because it s much easier in life and onstage to just move through it and fill it with something else, she adds. As a human being who is uncomfortable with silence, I actually want to explore that and take a look at what that means. Observed with empathy, thoughtfulness, and Baker s signature attention to detail, Marty s class becomes a world unto itself in Circle Mirror Transformation. I m happy, and honored, to show that strange little world to an audience, Baker wrote in 2009, and to celebrate all the people who make art together and don t stop to worry about whether or not their names will be remembered. In doing so, she makes it possible to see with fresh eyes how ordinary decisions, like the choice to take a six-week drama class, can inspire new beginnings and leave a lasting impact on our lives. Jessica Reese 9

10 WELCOME TO SHIRLEY! Annie Baker s Circle Mirror Transformation is part of a quartet of plays she set in Shirley, Vermont. The fictional small town is a blend of several real Vermont towns as well as Amherst, Massachusetts, where Baker grew up. What inspired her to keep returning to Shirley? Vermont fascinates me, period, she explains. The remoteness and the self-congratulation and the embracing of diversity and the fear of diversity and the beauty and the good intentions and the old farmers and the old hippies and the new farmers and the new hippies I love all of it. In 2009, Baker wrote an encyclopedia entry about Shirley, excerpts of which are below. Shirley is a town in Windsor County, Vermont. The population was 14,023 in the 2000 census. Shirley is home to Shirley State College, and it hosts the annual Vermont Gourd Festival. Once a fishing place for the Abenaki tribe of the Northeast, Shirley was settled by the English in 1754 and named for Lord Henry Shirley, the man who was eventually responsible for one of the first acts of biological warfare in North America. In 1853, pure spring water was discovered near Shirley s Plum Brook, and for the next few decades the town was home to the Shirley Hydropathic Institute and became a curative health resort destination until Now the former Hydropathic Institute is home to the Shirley School, a small preparatory school for dyslexic students. Public nudity was legal in Shirley until 2008, and for years the town s Saturday Morning Farmer s Market was a destination point for nudists. But in 2008, by a narrow margin, the town banned nudity on the main roads or within 300 feet of any school or place of public worship, and the face of the Farmer s Market (always held in the parking lot of the Unitarian Church) was forever changed. In the 1980s and 90s, Shirley became home to a small community of Cambodian refugees who were fleeing the Khmer Rouge regime. The community is still thriving, and now all Shirley public school newsletters are distributed in English and in Khmer

11 WRITING PORTFOLIO NARRATIVE: CCRA.W.3 In Circle Mirror Transformation, Marty s students are taking a risk by trying a new class that pushes them outside of their comfort zone. Think about a time when you took a chance on a new class, activity, game, or team. How did it feel to be in this new experience? Were you scared or excited? In retrospect, what did you learn? Write a onepage personal narrative or monologue about the first day of the new class or activity. A monologue is a theatrical tool in which a character delivers a long speech to another character in order to express what they are thinking or a point they need to make. ARGUMENTATIVE: CCRA.W.1 Annie Baker is a contemporary playwright who is known for her slice of life plays that encapsulate how it feels to live in our current world. In her style, Annie Baker goes against conventional philosophies about what makes something dramatic, including her colloquial use of language. Baker uses a magnifying glass to look at seemingly low-risk situations, such as taking a community center s acting class, in order to highlight their complexity. She is interested in mining the small, often forgotten moments of our lives for the drama buried within. Based on your comparisons, what makes Circle Mirror Transformation dramatic? Write an essay about why this story should be in play structure, or if it would be better served as a short story, film, or some other medium. INFORMATIVE: CCRA.W.2 Write a review of the performance of Circle Mirror Transformation that you saw at Actors Theatre of Louisville. What parts of the play (the actors performances, the set, props, costumes, lighting and sound design, etc.) were your favorites and why? How effective were these elements in telling the story? Back up your claims with evidence and details from your experience of watching the performance. Then, make a copy and send it to the education department at Actors Theatre of Louisville c/o Jane B. Jones 316 West Main Street Louisville, Kentucky We will share your thoughts with the creative team. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS PRE-SHOW QUESTIONS 1. Circle Mirror Transformation focuses on characters attending a community center class. The audience is never shown the private lives of the characters outside the class. How does the setting of the play affect the audience s understanding of the characters? What might we learn, or miss, by only seeing the students in a class? How does our public behavior differ from our private behavior? What do we present to others, and what do we try to conceal? 2. The students in Marty s class are enrolled for different reasons, not really knowing what the outcome of the class will be for them. James takes the class because his wife, Marty, is the teacher. Schultz takes the class because he is lonely. Lauren takes the class because she wants to become an actress. By the end of the class, the characters change in unexpected ways because of their connections with each other. Do you think we are predestined to meet certain people who help us change? Or do you think we meet people completely by coincidence? 11 POST-SHOW QUESTIONS 1. Annie Baker purposefully adds short and long pauses in her plays to create a realistic atmosphere. In fact, Baker writes in her Author s Note how much time a short or long pause should take. Think about the different moments that the pauses were taken in Circle Mirror Transformation. Sometimes they were taken when a character was processing emotions like heartbreak or anger. Other times the pauses are taken for a character to think or during moments of focus. Consider what those moments would be like without the pauses. What effect would that have versus the effect you experienced in the play? Would it be different? The same? Do the pauses change how we perceive the character s journey? 2. During one of the first classes, Lauren says, I signed up for this class because I thought we were gonna act. Marty replies, We are acting. Lauren thought acting could only be done through rehearsing scenes or putting up a play, but Marty believes acting can also take the form of games. This is one of many examples in the play in which the characters expectations do not align with reality. What other examples do you see in the play where the characters expectations do not align with reality? How do these moments affect what the characters choose to do with their lives?

12 BRIDGEWORK AT YOUR DESK 1. Many of the games featured in Circle Mirror Transformation require or create a place of self-reflection for the participants. Through the games, the audience learns about the characters wants, needs, and dreams. In the final class, the students play a game in which they describe where their classmates end up in ten years. Using newspaper and magazine clippings, make a collage of who you will be in ten years. This can include where you want to live, what kind of job you want to have, how your personal style will transform, and hopes for travel and family life. Reflect on your collage: what do your aspirations say about your life right now? What are the steps you ll need to take to achieve your goals? 2. Annie Baker is known for her ability to make dialogue sound natural by mirroring common speech patterns. One of the ways she replicates these patterns is by including lots of pauses and filler words ( um, uh, er, ah, like, okay ) in her work. Listen to 20 seconds of either a podcast interview or live radio broadcast, and try to transcribe it. Emulate Annie Baker s rules for describing speech patterns by: Writing pause for when there are approximately two seconds of silence. Writing long pause for silences longer than four seconds. Using ellipses ( ) for when a thought trails off and an emdash ( ) for when someone interrupts either their own thought or someone else s. We have provided a toolbox using text from Circle Mirror Transformation for further clarity. TOOLBOX After you are finished transcribing, did it surprise you how often people are interrupted or use filler words? Did the pauses, stumbles or interjections tell you something about underlying meaning in the conversation? If one person speaks more, what does that say about their character? Can you tell, based on how the conversation went, how familiar or comfortable the people were with each other? Now that you have taken a deeper look at the creation of natural dialogue by the podcast, text example, and personal reflection, try creating your own dialogue. Think about the circumstances of the characters: are they strangers or close friends? Are they in a new or familiar place? Example text from Circle Mirror Transformation: SCHULTZ. Night terrors. MARTY. Huh. Yeah. Maybe. I don t know what it is. SCHULTZ. It was night terrors. MARTY. Yeah. SCHULTZ. Becky went on medication for she went on some kind of epilepsy medication. It helped her. MARTY. Huh. (Pause.) MARTY. And it s a real SCHULTZ. It s a real thing. It s a real thing. Look it up online. WHEN WHAT WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE EXAMPLE When there is a two-second pause. Write in the word pause. (pause) When there is a four-second or longer pause. Write in the words long pause. (long pause) When a thought trails off. Write in ellipses. MARTY. Huh. (Pause.) MARTY. And it s a real SCHULTZ. Becky went on medication for she went on some kind of epilepsy medication. It helped her. When someone interrupts either their own thought or someone else s thought. Write in an emdash. MARTY. And it s a real SCHULTZ. It s a real thing. It s a real thing. Look it up online. AWAY FROM YOUR DESK 1. Group Counting, a theatre game featured in Circle Mirror Transformation, challenges a group to count to ten together. At the start of the play, the group can barely get past the number four without having to restart, but by the end of the play, the group is able to count to ten together easily. In the game, only one student is allowed to speak at a time. One student begins the exercise by saying one, then another random student says two, and so on. There is no predetermined pattern of who says what number, and students cannot communicate who will say the next number with gestures or sounds. If two or more people shout out a number at the same time, the group must all start back at one. Try this game in your classroom with groups of no fewer than four students. Work on the game until each group is able to count to ten without having to restart the game. How challenging is this game? Are there tools or techniques that aid in accomplishing the game? Why do you think Marty used this game in her classroom? What can students learn from Group Counting? 2. James and Theresa are partners in the Gibberish Game, in which they can only say the words ak mak or goulash. Though James is speaking in gibberish in the game, he is able to communicate that he has feelings for Theresa. Try this improv game in class; two participants should engage in a conversation using only the words ak mak and goulash. Before the start of the game, the teacher should secretly give one of the participants a clear objective of what to achieve during the conversation. When the conversation is over, reflect on the scene. Were you able to figure out what the characters were trying to communicate? What did the actors do with their physicality and voices to accomplish their goals? 12