I got to ask some questions of the amazing cast and crew of The New Electric Ballroom. This show struck me in so many ways, and I would have loved to ask a million more questions of these amazing people. Luckily, I got some fantastic insight to this show, the characters, what went on behind the scenes, and of course, the actors who really made it all something so, so special.
There’s so much behind this show that I wanted to dive into, and I definitely got some answers to some of my questions. I hope it’s as illuminating for everyone else as it was for me. Getting to see into this show in such a deep way really changed my perspective and understanding on some things. What the actors and crew have to say is truly something deep.
I had a bunch of questions and opened it for people to respond to, as few or as many as they wanted. I got so much back from everyone, and I’m so grateful for the care I was shown, the same care that I think was put into The New Electric Ballroom. Being brought into the fold was an amazing feeling!
How did you guys balance the extreme comedy and extreme drama of the show?
Marcie Bramucci: Enda Walsh is an exquisite storyteller, and he has constructed this amazingly taut piece that operates on such an exciting edge. The joy is trusting and embracing and opening what he has crafted with honesty, in order for us as the performers and for the audience to fearlessly journey through together.
Marcia Saunders:
I just play the moments that ended up being funny. I wasn't trying to be funny. Some of the lines just happened to be comedic. Fancy that!! I had no idea that people would laugh at what I said. Maybe a few of the Virgin Mary lines that I thought were funny.
Janis Dardaris:
You balance the extreme comedy with the extreme drama in this play as it’s written. The Playwright takes you there and your job as the actor is to play the reality of the moments whether they’re funny or tragic. You play them with equal honesty.
Stephen Patrick Smith:
I think the balance between the comedy and drama is already there in the writing. You may notice that immediately after a particularly wrenching moment there is often a line or event that gives the audience relief such as Clara talking about the Virgin Mary or Patsy bursting through the door. That’s the mark of a great writer in my opinion, someone who understands how to take an audience on an emotional ride. There's a favorite quote of mine from WB Yeats which goes: "Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy." I think you see that in this play, where there is just a brief moment of happiness with Patsy and Ada, followed by a return to the desolation and isolation of the sisters.
What is your character’s personal, inner loneliness like?
Marcie Bramucci:
Ada's loneliness is vast. Her sisters had a taste of life in their adolescence, which proved devastating, but they also have each other in their suffering and in the understanding of what they endured. Ada has experienced very little by contrast - she's afraid of life, she's afraid to interact with anyone in her day-to-day life, working at the fishing cannery and avoiding human contact. She's also aware of her sister's mortality, and reflects on what happens when she's completely alone. Ada craves connection and anything other than this suffocating routine and existence. She recognizes the loneliness in Patsy, a kindred spirit, as he puts to words many of Ada's own experiences that she would not have known how to name.
Marcia Saunders:
My personal loneliness comes from being ostracized by the community. Shut out by ugly words about us. And when we were so young and vulnerable as young teen girls are.
Janis Dardaris:
I suppose the character's inner loneliness is like anyone’s loneliness - lonely. Feelings of emptiness, longing for connection and partnership, intimacy and love, but that’s not available to these women, so they cope with the day to day living as we all do. We carry on.
Stephen Patrick Smith:
Patsy's loneliness is different from that of the sisters in that his is not self-imposed. This is why his desperate efforts to make himself a kindred spirit of the sisters is doomed to fail. The sisters wish to be isolated and Patsy is violating that wish. Patsy's isolation seems pretty claustrophobic. He describes his bedroom as "a little shoebox." He notices little details of his lonely life like the dent in the pillow left by his head and the shape of his body marked on the bed. Patsy is isolated because he is an outcast. He smells of fish and rarely bathes. His only interactions are with other people on the outskirts of society, the elderly and disabled, and of course the sisters. Unfortunately he has developed a way of life and a routine that makes it very scary for him to deviate from, which is why he can't sustain his new found happiness with Ada in the end.
What does love mean to your character?
Marcia Saunders:
Love means acceptance of who you are. Kindness and gentleness. Not being MAULED BY AGGRESSIVE FISHERMEN!!
Janis Dardaris:
What does love mean to my character ever since it was so cauterized and cut short all those years ago. It doesn’t feel that it’s possible for Breda and I think it’s bred a kind of cynicism. She has a mistrust that love can ever really happen for anyone especially, in that town where they’re not terribly kind to these women.
I think love is a perennial feeling whether you’re young or old when it hits when you experience it there is no age barrier that’s the nature of love if you’re lucky enough to find it.
Stephen Patrick Smith:
I think love means an end to his loneliness for Patsy. He describes several ways he and Ada might possibly spend their lives together and hand in hand in his fantasy at the end of the play. But it is truly a fantasy. Unfortunately he has become so set in his ways that being connected to another human, literally holding hands, becomes terrifying for him. As he says, "Christ, already something's got ahold of me," when looking at Ada's hand in his. This seems like a trap worse than the trap of isolation he already lives in.
So much about this play is about storytelling. Breda and Clara have these grand stories, and Ada wants to hear them over and over again. How did you capture the spirit of the storytelling?
Stephen Patrick Smith:
Unlike the sisters' stories which are mostly stuck in the past, Patsy's stories are set in the present. He relays stories to the sisters about folks in the town and their various lives and ailments, or talks about his surreal experiences and visions outside. Patsy seems to have had no real significant events in his life like the sisters. His mother is dead and he never knew his father. He knows the song as simply a "song my poor dead mother taught me," and has no notion of the significance of that song to the sisters. One thing about perspective in Patsy's visions is that he describes "a great space" that he is running over "towards nothing, towards no place." This terrifies Patsy because it is the opposite of the claustrophobic life he lives in his "shoebox" and the narrow routines he follows each day. This is also why the endless possibilities of being in love and sharing a life with Ada also ultimately become too scary for him.
Ada is significantly younger than her sisters. Do you feel this affects how she perceives their stories?
Marcie Bramucci: Absolutely! Breda and Clara introduced Ada to these stories when she was six years old! And it must have been horrifying. She has been raised absorbing and working through her sister's trauma, which is reinscribed for Ada in the perpetual scorn of the village. Experiencing such a world view so young has completely warped Ada's perspective. These cautionary tales - told in love, to protect Ada - result in the debilitating fear that Ada lives with daily.
What was it like reliving the sexuality of a young woman as an older woman?
Marcia Saunders:
What I want from sex as Clara: Shared caring for the other experience. Knowing what the other likes. Gentleness. Not being practically raped by fishermen.
What is your process as an actor dealing with how the sisters treat you at the start of the show compared to the end of the show?
Stephen Patrick Smith: There’s a desperation for Patsy throughout the play to be accepted into the sisters' house and lives. He senses something "odd" outside and has premonitions of impending disaster with the seas shrinking and the cliffs receding. So that gave me something to play in the first scenes where we see Patsy, and it is such a relief for him when he finally gets asked to stay that he's willing to play along with any scenario the sisters devise for him. This is what enables him to take off his clothes and surprisingly come out of his shell briefly with the song. Unfortunately that effort becomes too much for him to sustain and he reverts to his old ways at the end.
Lily Fossner (lighting designer):
This is a play full of memory and the interior psychology of the characters. Lighting is particularly good at communicating things like memory and psychology, time, mood, and atmosphere. The lighting supports these moments in our play in a number of ways.
The play is set in a home, and we have used ordinary lighting fixtures (table lamps, overhead light) to motivate the idea of realistic light (in theatre lighting terms, we call these fixtures "practicals"). There are no visible windows in the set, and there is no sense of daylight entering this space - so the light carries with it an oppressive, airless quality.
The lighting also embodies the feeling of what the outside is - to the older sisters, the outside is full of lurking dangers; but to Ada, the outside is freedom, a chance for opportunity. In our piece, this light from outside the house is golden and sun-like, from an angle low on the horizon. It slices through the front door, sculpting and holding Ada in her moments of decision.
Because this play is partly a memory play, and the characters so fully embody the stories they are telling (they have prompts, they have costumes, they have music), the lighting is able to transform the environment from "home" to another space. The lighting for Breda's and Clara's memories evokes a dance hall through saturated color and a mirror ball. The lighting for Patsy is also connected to the idea of a ballroom, conjuring a dreamy, romantic vision of a future.
My favorite part of the lighting is how we used the practicals to create a creepy, destabilizing atmosphere to begin our story. Using a completely ordinary object to achieve such an effect is very exciting to me.
***
I really think The New Electric Ballroom was unlike any show I’ve ever seen, and that’s reflected in what I heard back from the cast and crew in my questions. Everyone involved knew that they were working on something incredibly special, and it shows on stage, of course, but also off stage in their responses to my questions. Everyone took a huge step with this show, and I’m so grateful we got the chance to experience that along with them.
Comentarios