Starting this week, Jesse will be blogging about his experiences right here! Join us in welcoming him as the 2012 Classical Fellow and get to know him, below!

JESSE JOU Originally from Houston, Jesse Jou received his MFA from the Yale School of Drama. His credits include Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, the New York International Fringe Festival, and The Kitchen Theatre Co., Ithaca, NY. He served as Artistic Director of the 2010 season of the Yale Summer Cabaret and as the Staff Repertory Director of the 2010-2011 tour of the Acting Company. Upcoming projects are Formosa at Ars Nova’s ANTFest and the spoken-word theater piece Say You Heard My Echo.

The Drama League recently announced the exceptional stage directors selected as the 2012 Fellows of The Drama League Directors Project: Knud Adams, Amy Claussen, Vesselin Dimov, Shana Gozansky, Jess Jung, Swaine Kaui, Jesse Jou, David Mendizábal, Cat Miller, Patrick Walsh, and Christopher Windom.

The eleven exceptional young stage directors, who will spend the next year as part of the award-winning program, have been accepted into five different programs of study: the New York Fall Directing Program, the Hangar Residency Program (a partnership with the Hangar Theatre in Ithaca, NY), the Musical Directing Program (a partnership with Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, MA), the Classical Fellowship for Directors of Color (a partnership with Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, MA), and the U.S./Bulgaria Stage Directors Exchange (in partnership with Art Office Sofia and New York Theatre Workshop).

The Directors Project’s Class of 2012 begins their tenure with Professionals Week, beginning May 15th, during which they will meet industry luminaries, attend Broadway and Off-Broadway productions, and start their developmental training. They will be publicly introduced to the professional theatre community during the 78th Annual Drama League Awards on Friday, May 18 at the Marriott Marquis Times Square.

So last night we opening our Shakespeare Intensive shows.  It was a truly magical to watch the plays come alive on stage.  The students have been working incredibly hard for the past four weeks and it was wonderful to perform to a sold out crowd on a clear, beautiful San Diego night.   The Old Globe’s six hundred seat outdoor theater is situated right in Balboa Park with the San Diego Zoo as the backdrop.

With this production, I was interested in investigating the question of what it means to be an adult?  And how does one transition from youth to adulthood.  As well as irony that to live a life of learning and art you have to disengage from the world to create; however, to have something to say you also have to live your life and can’t disengage from it. 

 As a result, I set the production in the world of contemporary prep school populated by a student body on the cusp of graduation and adulthood.  We may not have been able to do everything but I think in many ways the production was a success.  The audience and performers had a great time and when Mercade appears at the end it was jarring and poignant to see these characters confronted by the realities of life which they had been working so hard to avoid.  Attached are some images from the night. 

-Snehal

So we are in the midst of our rehearsals with the Shakespeare Intensive Program here at the Old Globe. The program is one where high school students work intensively on one Shakespeare play for four weeks to really get an immersive experience with the language and also the opportunity to work on production on a professional level. The typical day of the program is usually a workshop or master class in the morning led by one of the Old Globe staff or guest artists from the Shakespeare Festival here and then rehearsals in the afternoon.

I am directing Love’s Labour’s Lost, and Patrick Pearson is Directing Merry Wives of Windsor. Its been a great week and today in particular we had a great day where Adrian Sparks, one of the actors in the Shakespeare Company led the students in a mask workshop. What was amazing was to see the student’s physicalities transform as soon as they put on a mask and began to be influenced by the shape and form of the mask they were wearing. I think it helped loosen them up in their bodies and the mask allowed a level of comfort where suddenly those who had been a little stiff or self-conscious where a hundred times more expressive and free. It was a very helpful and interesting workshop and led to a day of rehearsals in the afternoon where suddenly the actors were accessing their characters from the outside/in versus inside/out and using the language and physicality to bring Shakespeare’s text alive. It was great! Until next time.

-Snehal

A few days ago, I hit the three month mark into my fellowship now, and am gearing up for the opening of Peregrine:  Balboa Park, an unexpected but thrilling project I conceived of during my time here.

One of the most significant things that I have been struck by in San Diego is Balboa Park, where the Old Globe is situated.  Its a beautiful park that houses not only the Old Globe, but over a dozen museums, a botanical garden, the famous San Diego zoo, a Japanese garden, and numerous other performing venues including a large organ pavilion.  Its breathtaking in its diversity of locales and its Spanish and Latin American inspired architecture.  Its a location steeped in history, including two world’s fairs, but I think it is also a place where you can physically see a representation of our world today.  The old and new colliding with each other: sometimes seamlessly melding together, other times forming jagged pieces that don’t quite fit together.  Balboa Park is a place where you can see various cultures and traditions old and new having a conversation and where man and nature themselves seem to both co-exist and challenge each other.  In short, you can say I was inspired by the locale immensely and since my first visit in March, I have been trying to think of what kind of theatrical experience I could create that would utilize the park environs.

Well after many, many conversations and countless meanderings in the park what has come to fruition is Peregrine:  Balboa Park.  A migratory theatrical journey where the audience is invited to walk along two paths through Balboa Park and have a theatrical experience come to life around them.  Once the ideas of doing a project in the park came to focus, I approached playwright Lauren Yee and producer Heide Janssen, both collaborators I have worked with before to join me. What we agreed about Peregrine was we wanted it to be specific to the park and its history.  I was also interested in incorporating technology into the performance.  As well as creating an experience where the lines between theater and everyday life are blurred and so I spent a lot of time observing the park and who populated it.  One of the main things I kept noticing was the number of couples in the park there to have their wedding pictures taken, Lauren took note of the older couples who wandered the park in the evenings together hand in hand.  Together we came up with a list of shared characters if you will for our individual tracks.  We knew we wanted our two pieces to converge by local rather than by literally splitting up two stories.

What the finished product has become is an experience where audience members are sent one of two tracks that they are to download to a mp3 listening device.  Once they arrive at meeting point, we separate them into one of two paths, The Academic or Land of Rocky.  They then are given a map of their route and led by escorts to the starting place of their journeys.  Once an audience member pushes go on their mp3 player they are then in what we called a 360 experience where theater can happen anywhere around you.  Ultimately the two paths ended up converging at a fountain in the park.

Its been an incredibly rewarding experience. In the end a company of over 20 came together around the project and I am so thankful to the folks at the Old Globe for allowing me to create theater outside of traditional theatrical walls and to also take a risk artistically and work in a way I have never before.  We had one preview last week and I am looking forward to the next three days of performances.  Below are some of the images from the experience.

-Snehal

So we recently opened Much Ado and it was a great night under the stars in San Diego.  Also, due to the Rep format since there were essentially three openings in two weeks, this last opening was followed by the official opening night party which was a great opportunity to cut loose for all the cast and company complete with a 90′s inspired dance party afterwards.

Since then things have been going pretty smoothly with the biggest surprise thrill in the last few weeks being a peacock, apparently loose from the zoo, making its way backstage.  It also apparently tried to upstage the actors with its mating call during the show.  Balboa Park also experienced a pretty significant black out last week.  It led to the cancellation of all shows that night, but it was amazing to watch the staff and crew out here as they so adeptly dealt with the crisis of figuring out if the power would be back in time and when it was not, the plan to let over a thousand patrons know of the cancellation.

Before we opened last week, I had the opportunity to be a part of one of the Insight Seminar’s The Old Globe frequently has. These are hour long sessions on Monday nights in which patrons get an opportunity to meet members of the company and have a conversation about process, ideas, and other insights about the production, most times before these audience members catch the actual production.  For the Insight seminar on Much Ado, I was able to sit on a panel with the director Ron Daniels, the Set Designer Ralph Funicello, as well as the two leads George Hatzi and Jonno Roberts, who are Beatrice and Benedick and also married in real life.  The conversation was great as the audience for the festival is one that is very smart and savvy and have gotten to know different productions of the same play as well as the various directors and company members who have worked at the Globe.

One of the most interesting points was the role of the director with Shakespeare.  Ron Daniels, in many ways was interested in making the focus with this production, be as much about the actors and text and possible, and being if you will being an “absent” director, or a director who makes everything flow and move so seamlessly and naturally that you are drawn into the play and don’t step back to analyze things otherwise.  This is something that is much harder to do then it appears, and something that I as a director have never been as interested in.  So, in general it has been nice for me to work with someone who has a differing view from me.  Its also something not obviously totally achievable since the director is there playing a hand as soon as he chooses a setting for the production, etc but this idea of whether the Director as an artist makes his hand obviously clear and present on a production or handles it with a lighter touch is an interesting one I think.

The larger insight for me from this seminar though, was the revelation that for some reason we feel we have to work harder when it comes to Shakespeare.  That due to the complexity of the text and the language, that somehow its harder work and we have to do more to make the plays accessible or clearer.  When it reality its Shakespeare, one of the world’s greatest playwrights ever, and rather then have to work harder you need to actually do much less and trust in the text and the brilliance of this playwright.  This might not be something that is revelatory to most but I don’t know where in my experience somehow Shakespeare became associated with work and heavy lifting as a director, when actually the opposite is true.

So there you have it, been a full and eventful past few weeks here.  Next week we head into rehearsal for Love’s Labour’s Lost which I am directing for the Shakespeare Intensive program here, and looking forward to.  More updates soon and hopefully less peacocks.

Snehal

P.S-Below are some images from the show as well as of the infamous bird.  Photos are courtesy of Henry DiRocco, Jeffrey Weisser, and Bret Torbeck.

Hi Everyone,
I am here in beautiful, sunny, temperately climated California, and just wanted to give you a quick update on my recent going-ons as we inaugurate the Drama League’s newest fellowship program.

I arrived at the Old Globe in San Diego in April and immediately went into rehearsals with Ron Daniels on Much Ado About Nothing which is being stage in the Old Globe’s beautiful outdoor Festival theatre.

Currently, I am in LA for the TCG and National Asian American Theatre Group conferences, before I head back to San Diego for previews and our opening next week. I am also meeting here with the playwright Lauren Yee as we collaborate on a new project that will be done site specific in Balboa Park where the Old Globe is based. More soon…

Snehal

The Drama League is pleased to announce the first year of our Classical Fellowship for Directors of Color, in partnership with the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. Each summer The Old Globe produces several classical plays on its outdoor stage, and also sponsors a Summer Shakespeare Intensive for talented high school student performers. Our new fellow will spend four months at the Old Globe, assisting the directors of three main-stage classical plays, teaching classes in the Shakespeare Intensive, and directing actors from the Intensive in a production of a Shakespeare play.

Snehal Desai, an MFA graduate of Yale Drama School, will be our first Classical Fellow. We are delighted that he will inaugurate this new program for us!

The Drama League would like to thank the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation for their generosity, and our Diversity Council for their help and support.