The Chautauquan Daily

CTC welcomes new age of maturity with announcement of 2013 line-up

August 20, 2012 by The Chautauquan Daily 0 Comments

The 29th season of Chautauqua Theater Company closed last Friday with Bratton Late Night, marking the 52nd performance in 56 days.

The season bubbled with unknowns. Vivienne Benesch became sole artistic director; Sarah Clare Corporandy stepped into the role of managing director; and Fifty Ways, the season’s second full production, offered the first-ever CTC world premiere on the Chautauqua grounds.

As the highest-grossing CTC season yet and with The Philadelphia Story marking the highest-paid capacity of any one show in CTC history, the 29th year has been a smash hit for CTC.

“I am incredibly proud of this season,” Benesch said. “It has been a truly remarkable season.”

Theater

Andrew Borba, Brown Bag, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Chautauqua Play Commission, Chautauqua Theater Company, ctc, dave quay, Ethan McSweeny, Friends of Chautauqua Theater Company, Gwen Tigner, Jessie Cadle, Marty Merkley, Masha Butler, Molly Smith Metzler, Sarah Clare Corporandy, Sherra Babcock, The Comedy of Errors, theater, Vivienne Benesch

Bratton Late Night Cabaret weds irreverence with talent in final CTC performance

August 17, 2012 by The Chautauquan Daily 0 Comments

Ranging from slam poetry and drum performances to songs and skits, Chautauqua Theater Company’s one-night-only Bratton Late Night Cabaret is always a surprise. All 14 conservatory actors perform together for the last time on one stage.

Bratton Late Night debuts at 10:30 p.m. tonight in Bratton Theater, and it is CTC’s final event of the season. The whole show is thrown together betwixt rehearsals for the final production, As You Like It, which closes at 4 p.m. today in Bratton Theater.

Directing fellow Sash Bischoff, the conservatory actors and the four design fellows organize the entire show. All of the senior staff is kept in the dark about the events of the evening, so each year lends itself to new surprises.

Theater

Stage manager Moore brings high standards to CTC

July 28, 2012 by The Chautauquan Daily 0 Comments

She has worked on Broadway and off. On musicals and plays. Most recently, she worked with Kevin Kline and Meryl Streep — who performed in Romeo and Juliet — at a benefit for the Public Theater in New York City. And in the fall, she will work on a Broadway remake of Golden Boy.

Though not onstage, freelance stage manager Jenn Rae Moore runs the show from behind the scenes. And despite Moore’s booming career in New York City, she returns annually to Chautauqua to serve as Chautauqua Theater Company’s production stage manager.

Besides Artistic Director Vivienne Benesch and Resident Director Ethan McSweeny, no one has been at CTC longer than Moore, McSweeny said.

“Viv and I live in fear of the day — and we know it will come — when she is too busy to come to Chautauqua,” he said. “I doubt most audiences realize just how much impact your stage manager has.”

Theater

Chautauqua Theater Company, ctc, Ethan McSweeny, Jenn Rae Moore, Jessie Cadle, Michelle Kanaar, stage manager, theater, Vivienne Benesch

After Adam Margolin (Michael Gaston) falls ill, his wife, Nina Strauss (Vivienne Benesch), comforts him and asks him not to take his planned trip to San Francisco. Nina’s common-law step-sister Zoe (Leah Anderson) looks on in disgust in Kate Fodor’s Fifty Ways. Photo by Eric Shea.

Between love and oblivion

July 27, 2012 by The Chautauquan Daily 0 Comments

In her new play, Fifty Ways, now playing its debut engagement in Bratton Theater, Kate Fodor explores the potent but ambiguous states of emotion that lie in the balance between loving and not loving, between forgiving and not forgiving, between moral obligation and freedom from obligation.

These are speculative states of being:

“Would I still love you if …?”

“Could I forgive you if …?”

“Would I stay with you if …?”

We may think we know the answers to those questions, but we never really do. We can never know in which of the 50 ways we might leave our lovers until fate actually delivers us to the crossroads of decision.

Guest Critic Reviews

Anthony Chase, David Aaron Baker, Eric Shea, Ethan McSweeny, Fifty Ways, Josh Tobin, Kate Fodor, Leah Anderson, Michael Gaston, Vivienne Benesch

Guest artists share relationships on stage and off in ‘Fifty Ways’

July 27, 2012 by The Chautauquan Daily 0 Comments

Though the married couple in Fifty Ways faces a deteriorating union and a seemingly endless feud, the actors behind the pair, Vivienne Benesch and Michael Gaston, are much bigger fans of each other.

Benesch, Chautauqua Theater Company’s artistic director, and Gaston, a guest artist actor, have been close friends for 25 years.

“We are doing this play about these intimate relationships — and Viv and I have never dated — but we’ve lived through each other’s relationships. We’ve lived through each other’s careers’ ups and downs,” Gaston said. “There are a lot of things about this play, which is brand new, which reflects our 25-year friendship.”

Gaston and Benesch are but two of the three guest artist actors in Fifty Ways, which shows at 8 p.m. tonight in Bratton Theater and runs through July 29. The third, David Aaron Baker, has also known Benesch and Gaston for many years.

Theater

Chautauqua Theater Company, David Aaron Baker, Fifty Ways, Guest artists, Jessie Cadle, Kate Fodor, Michael Gaston, theater, Vivienne Benesch

Nina’s husband, Adam (Michael Gaston), sits on the bathroom floor with Nina’s common-law step-sister Zoe (Leah Anderson). Photo by Eric Shea.

‘Fifty Ways’: A promising play full of hurt, more hurt and hope

July 24, 2012 by The Chautauquan Daily 0 Comments

Fifty Ways, the new play by Kate Fodor showing in premiere with the Chautauqua Theater Company, might become music in time. Its promise is atonal. Right now, it plays too pleasantly.

Fifty Ways begins with great assurance, dropping several F-bombs by the end of Page 3 and keeping up that verbal damage for the duration.

As well, the protagonist quickly and convincingly vomits three times, his wife having just concluded a declamation with an odd synesthesia about the different barks her house emanates, which is her way of complaining about the things that don’t work around the place. Those things that don’t work bark at her.

Guest Critic Reviews

Anthony Bannon, Chautauqua Theater Company, Chautauqua Writers' Center, ctc, CWC, David Aaron Baker, Eric Shea, Ethan McSweeny, Fifty Ways, Josh Tobin, Kate Fodor, Leah Anderson, Lindsay Jones, Michael Gaston, Paul Simon, Vivienne Benesch

Vivienne Benesch and fellow cast members perform vocal warmups before opening night of Chautauqua Theater Company’s world premiere production of Fifty Ways.

Behind the scenes at the world premiere of ‘Fifty Ways’

July 23, 2012 by The Chautauquan Daily 1 Comment

It’s two minutes before the show starts on opening night. The air teems with anxiety, energy and excitement. Actors and crewmembers rush in and out of dressing rooms, bathrooms and hallways — lit by black light — in an effort to be fully ready for their call to places, which signifies the start of Act One of Fifty Ways.

Nervousness fills the space. Chautauqua Theater Company Artistic Director Vivienne Benesch, who plays Nina Strauss, is fully made up and dressed. She stops in the dressing room of her fellow actors.

“It’s just another show,” she says. It’s both a reminder and a reassurance for herself and the rest of the five-person cast.

But really, it’s not just another show. It is CTC’s first world premiere, and it is the world premiere of the first play ever commissioned by CTC and the Chautauqua Writers’ Center.

Theater

Bales Karlin, Chautauqua Theater Company, Chautauqua Writers' Center, ctc, CWC, Eric Shea, Ethan McSweeny, Fifty Ways, Jenn Rae Moore, Jessie Cadle, Kate Fodor, Kate Wilson, Vivienne Benesch, world premiere

McSweeny directs ‘Fifty Ways’ with meticulous vision

July 21, 2012 by The Chautauquan Daily 0 Comments

Ethan McSweeny is a storyteller, but always of someone else’s story. And on average, he tells five different stories per year as a nationally acclaimed freelance director.

Be it William Shakespeare’s epic plays at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C., or playwright Kate Fodor’s brand-new productions in Chautauqua’s own Bratton Theater, McSweeny gives life to the works of others.

“I am the interpreter. In the same way that a conductor is not a composer,” McSweeny said, in a momentary lull in the midst of rehearsals for the show he is currently directing.

Theater

Chautauqua Theater Company, Chautauqua Writers' Center, ctc, Ethan McSweeny, Fifty Ways, Jessie Cadle, Josh Tobin, Kate Fodor, Leah Anderson, Michael Gaston, Vivienne Benesch, world premiere

CTC welcomes new age of maturity with announcement of 2013 line-up

Bratton Late Night Cabaret weds irreverence with talent in final CTC performance

Stage manager Moore brings high standards to CTC

Between love and oblivion

Guest artists share relationships on stage and off in ‘Fifty Ways’

‘Fifty Ways’: A promising play full of hurt, more hurt and hope

Behind the scenes at the world premiere of ‘Fifty Ways’

McSweeny directs ‘Fifty Ways’ with meticulous vision

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