2015 Reflections

We at We Players are so grateful…

that we get to spend so much time outdoors
in historically-significant, culturally-charged, environmentally rich, and stunningly beautiful locations.

It’s our great joy to scout them out, to invest in complex partnerships with the federal and state governments, and to collaborate with talented artists from around the Bay Area and the world- all to bring thrilling works of art to our public parks.

And we thank YOU for joining us in the fog and mist, in the blustery cold of our coastal climes, in the sun-kissed open spaces, for climbing steep hills and sitting on the ground, for gathering in the dwindling light to enter the unknown in our mead hall. For braving the elements and opening your hearts to the stories we share.
We are SO excited to announce our 2016 sites and programs, we’ll be blaring our horns with news in January.

Before we launch into the new year and all its new adventures, we’re taking some time to reflect on 2015, lessons learned and accomplishments achieved. We’re feeling really grateful for you, our extended community, and we’re feeling proud and humbled at once by what you’ve told us about your experiences with We Players this year.

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Savor the sweetness with us!

Here’s what you and your fellow audience members had to say
about Ondine at Sutro this spring and HEROMONSTER at the Fort Mason Center Chapel this fall…

You told us that HEROMONSTER was:

You said the…

“intensity was palpable and visible in every calculated move made, sweat drop wiped, and grunt or gasp heard.”

and that we “populated [your] dreams with stirring visions”

And you shared personal discoveries:

“Gradually an idea emerged in my mind that had to do with ritual performance of a very old epic story taking place at an annual gathering of which we were part.”

“After all the battles, in the quiet of the aftermath, we wonder…would there still be heroes and monsters if we all lived in a world where everyone practiced how to be more kind, more loving?”

Our thanks to you, for joining us for HEROMONSTER

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Earlier this year…

y’all couldn’t get enough of that sparkly sea nymph and her sexy silly knight errant!

You told us that Ondine at Sutro was:

“beautiful, smart, and funny”
“mesmerizing”
“unbearably beautiful”
“Superb! So funny, so poignant, too good.”
“the only time I can remember soaring pelicans bringing tears to my eyes”

And that this is what happened to you:

“I left the piece feeling very filled up, inspired, and awake.”

“I will always remember the magical way We Players used the environs–most particularly the ending, when Ondine and the Old One disappeared over the ridge toward the fog-enshrouded sea. For me, that moment was perfection.”

“It’s not often that I feel that time has stood still during a performance and that was one of those times.”

“Once again, thanks to We Players I discovered a fabulous new space up to then unknown.”

And the head of SF Rec and Parks, Phil Ginsburg shared that:
“Yesterday’s performance was magical. It was one of the most unique and special theater (or park) experiences I have ever had. Thank you for introducing us to a whole new way of experiencing the elements in that spectacular setting. Thank you for opening our minds and hearts to what the Parks have to offer!”

In closing, here is a letter we received from an Ondine attendee:

I have continued to think of Ondine throughout the day today — what a profound, magical, and artful experience it was to enter Ondine’s world yesterday.

[My husband] spotted a whale breaching in the Golden Gate, just moments before Hans commented that, in his world, whales could pass between a man and woman in the course of a day…

As we wound our way up the hill to Sutro Heights, I was struck by how radiantly happy everyone was around me, the crowd of We Players attendees all smiling and laughing, in a way that is quite rare in our present-day rush and seriousness, and in a way that seemed to be contagious to those passersby staring in wonder at what must have appeared like our own private carnival. And then spotting the Old One standing above us on a cliff, silently watching our progress.

And when Ondine was wrenched from her consuming grief, by the third call of her name, the stark silence was softened by a burst of quiet birdsong in the tree above her, making it seem all the more real that this was indeed a sudden new dawn for her, and my eyes filled with tears. As Ondine and her fellow spirit beings disappeared into the swirling mist toward the sea, tears streamed down my face.

Thank you for creating this magic. For bringing us to greater awe and connection with the magic already in the land around us here, and in the waters and mists and silent ancient stories they hold.

Thank you for sharing your stories with us. We love you.

Happy Holidays!

a HEROMONSTER reflection

An audience member and new volunteer with We Players took time to share some impressions from her HEROMONSTER experience with us. We think this is so thoughtfully composed, that you might like to read it too! Thanks, Geneva!

Photo by Lauren Matley

HEROMONSTER’s only two actors opened the doors to the mead hall in the interior of the Chapel at Fort Mason and welcomed the audience into the space. We Players’ mead hall had food and real mead and ale on offer. The show itself was a mix of battles and fellowship, disjointed attacks and assists. During the show, the actors played both friend and foe, both ally and enemy to the other. With tenderness, brutality, and extreme physicality – framed in the Chapel with its beautiful stained glass windows and the chilly autumn air outside – HEROMONSTER brought forth difficult questions about the practice of kindness and severity in the distant past and the tangible present. Dressed in rags and meeting each eye, the performers laid these questions before every audience member to face if they could. Each moment was either warm or cold or frightening, and no member of the audience was free to leave without the challenge and discomfort of witnessing both loving and abusive intimacy between strangers.

HEROMONSTER pulled the epic Beowulf out of the shadows of space and time and introduced a modern perspective that has the power to change what we understand to be “heroic” or “monstrous.” Heroism as defined by old texts often describes strength and ruthlessness in a time when you would die without them. With the intimacy of the action and the continuity of the setting, We Players makes the epic relatable while still deconstructing the traditional understanding of its meaning.

The rustic mead hall setting, simple costumes, and haunting accompaniment helped revive the sense of wildness and danger beyond the walls of the mead hall, feelings we relate to less in our modern world but that help to remind us of the base moments in which these concepts of “hero” and “monster” were born and given life via story as a means to prepare for and survive in the harsh northern world. With that world as a seamless part of our own HEROMONSTER experience, the advent of heroism and monstrosity are pulled apart from the confusion many of us found in Beowulf. HEROMONSTER asked relevant questions about what our understanding of heroism and monstrosity are today, how each can exist and operate unnoticed by many people. HEROMONSTER came up into my face and asked me, “Have our definitions after all these centuries remained so much the same that we no longer recognize true heroism and monstrosity?”

Photo by Lauren Matley

While HEROMONSTER was indeed a divergence from We Players’ usual large-scale, outdoor performance, it was a show still fully committed to exploring new boundaries for the company and its audience. We Players delivered a grand experience in which the actors participated in exactly what the show asks of their audience: willingness to try something new even when it is uncomfortable, something that values thorough examination of the self and how we choose to behave and treat each other as fellow humans.

– Geneva Redmond

The Mead Hall and The Chapel

From the Studio to the Living Room, From The Mead Hall to The Chapel

For We Players, Place performs as a character. Locations have distinct energies, personalities and even desires. In the Old English epic poem Beowulf, King Hrothgar’s great hall of Herot functions as an important cultural institution that provides light and warmth, food and drink – a place for singing, story-telling and safety. The mead-hall served as a place of refuge within a dangerous and precarious external world – a world continuously threatened by attack of neighboring peoples and wild beasts of the great northern forests. The mead-hall was also a place of community, where traditions were preserved and loyalty was rewarded. This is where legends were created and perpetuated, reputations were built, fame broadcast, and history written through the telling of it. By extension, we imagine the WWII era chapel at Fort Mason Center – a place of quiet for private contemplation as well as a community gathering place – as the hall of Herot. Herot, like the chapel, is a sanctuary, a refuge for the tired and a place for rituals that support community.

The Process

Artistic risk often comes in the form of working with new materials, unfamiliar tools, and experimenting with new techniques. HEROMONSTER is a very different type of project for We Players. Unlike our hallmark large-scale, site-integrated theatre projects, which employ somewhere between 30 and 60 performers, artisans, and stage crew, this project features only three performers: two actors and a musician. This is part of a larger experiment for We Players, an exploration in balancing the massive scale of our signature works with projects smaller in scope, though still rich with poetic imagery and inspired by classical texts of epic dimension. We aim to build powerful theatrical events that are more flexible than our large scale works, and can be adapted to a variety of spaces, including indoor environments.

With HEROMONSTER, we began with the actor/creator’s version of a blank canvas – a studio with four white walls and open floor, which we (Nathaniel Justiniano and I) promptly covered with images, phrases, an avalanche of ideas scrawled on giant pieces of paper.

(Music Director Charlie Gurke joins a rehearsal at Montalvo)

The studio space we inhabited for the month of August was generously provided by the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga. The month-long immersion into the themes and imagery of heroism and monstrosity yielded the first version of HEROMONSTER, which we are currently performing in private homes throughout the greater Bay Area (ranging from San Jose to San Anselmo, with multiple stops in SF and the East Bay) while simultaneously continuing the development process while in residency at the Fort Mason Center Chapel. In this way, we learn by doing. New insights from each living room performance, and the charged conversations with audiences afterwards, inform and fuel rehearsals as we develop the show for the October performances in the Chapel.

This production is part of an even larger exploration and development process for We Players. Subsequent phases of this work will include collaborations with the renowned dance theatre company inkBoat and masters in the avant-garde music scene, the Rova saxophone quartet. Throughout, multiple translations of the ancient anglo-saxon poem Beowulf serve as a jumping off point, igniting inspiration and helping to inform our understanding of heroes and monsters, where they come from, and where and how they currently live among us all.

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A Postscript: It is my honor and pleasure to collaborate with Nathaniel Justiniano and Charlie Gurke on the creation of this piece. Natty has worked with We Players as an actor since 2012, when he captivated audiences as Zeus on the Mount Olympus of Angel Island. Charlie Gurke has served as We Players’ Music Director since 2010, and written award-winning original scores for all of our site-integrated productions since Hamlet on Alcatraz. We are also graced with the musical talents of Steve Adams, who alternates performances with Charlie Gurke. Endless thanks to the ever-gracious Lauren Chavez, our producer and compass, the steadfast and insightful Britt Lauer, assistant producer, and Rowan Beasley, our intern from London, who shines her big green eyes, is quietly curious and attentive, and helps us remain calm.

Together, along with you, we strive to shine light into the darker shadows of ourselves.

Journey with us into the darkness.

Autumn Intern!

We Players welcomes Rowan Beasley from the UK as a company intern this fall. Rowan arrived just last week and is already rolling up her sleeves and digging in with We! Beginning this week, she joins us in the rehearsal room as Natty and I begin adapting our current version of HEROMONSTER for the Chapel at Fort Mason. Rowan will be with us through the fall season and we are so very lucky to have her! Here are a few notes from Rowan about finding us during her coursework at Falmouth University.

DISCOVERING WE PLAYERS

During my first two years at Falmouth university I have had the wonderful opportunity to experience two modules that focused on Site-Specific theatre. In my first year we explored places around our campus in Penryn, then in our second year moved further out into Cornwall.

The Unlands module that I was part of in my second year took place at Truro train station- a common place that at first seems like a space that has a loss of identity and disconnection. Throughout the module I had been searching for the voice and the stories that have been left and marked out on the station alongside immersing myself in discovering my own body and place in this non-place.

A conversation with one of the members of staff inspired my focus on birds,; it opened my eyes to the freedom of the birds’ way of life. I wanted to pass on their perspective and adventures to the passengers, to draw attention to the endless opportunities a station as a space offers us. The scored origami birds I created became a symbol of the birds’ ideology. When I asked if a passenger would like to take one on a journey, I documented them by taking a photo of the birds in the hands of the passenger, which became a nest and new home. These birds allowed me to start conversations with the public, and gave me a chance to change the way they viewed the space.

During my research for my solo practise in this module I discovered the work of We Players theatre company. I was instantly inspired by the company’s use of beauty of the natural world to stimulate audiences and awaken them to their physical environment. I felt a sense of similarity in the work and ideology of these creations and what I wanted to achieve in the work I was creating.

The more I explored We Players’ work I became more influenced by the use of innovative performance spaces and how the company’s work became more relevant to my work at the station. I found that by creating work in experimental and unprecedented spaces, it awakens the audience to a whole new experience.

I discovered whilst working at Truro train station that you are reminded of the new possibilities, a place to find peace and an identity, which I hope I had passed on with my birds – allowing passengers to relate back to a moment where they felt inspired to see the world and let themselves be awoken to all that surrounds them. From what I researched, the work of We Players achieves this beautifully.

Now entering the cave of shadows…

Sutro!
Who speaks of your faded glory? You’ve just changed garments. You’ve traded your glass and steel for a flouncy full skirt of sea foam and a lush blouse of blossoming ice plant. You’ve traded your human imposed form – oh! the towering structure you once lorded over the rock wall separating you from your ancestor the ocean! – for the natural curves of eroding stone. Now you are in constant concert with the waves, your conversation with the wind yields softer edges, rounded now where once there were right angles. Only your stone footprint remains, and a lagoon of gentle waters. Our imaginations fill the well of that open space, the space you’ve left behind. We dream ourselves another world, a world of sea spirits and robust fairy tale figures. May the image of the lone fisherman plying your placid waters linger in our memories! May this memory ignite a thousand more of the story of Ondine and her Hans, which We Players left invisibly, indelibly, imprinted on the air.

NOW – we move from the vast expanse of Sutro’s sparkling sea towards dark forests where ferocious creatures lurk and mead halls where blazing heroes recount feats of glory.

I wake this morning with a new feeling, a trembling, a quivering, an uncomfortable and yet familiar sensation…
The beginning feeling…

The feeling of standing at the edge of the abyss, horrified at the prospect of stepping directly, purposefully, into the unknowable depths.
Sending one foot and then the other into thin air and thence to discover how falling down the rabbit hole feels this time…

Horrified, and yet certain that I’ll do it.

Though some gears in my physical machinery will resist the plunge, others will overpower the fear, the impulse towards self-protection, and hurdle me forward.
Poised briefly on this thin edge before the plunge…monsters and heroes here we come!

This fall, we will escort you into cave of shadows as we search for the monsters lurking in the closet and under the bed. I hope you’ll join us as we seek the heroes and monsters that live among us.

More from that shadowy cave of dreams soon…

mwah!

Ava