Susan Allen filed this Citizen Review of Piazza as a comment, but it is so thoughtful and substantive that it merits its own post!
"I am an Arena subscriber who has seen four versions of Light in the Piazza, beginning at the Intiman Theatre in Seattle (also Chicago’s Goodman and New York’s Lincoln Center). I love this show and its lush, romantic score, but I braced myself for disappointment, feeling nothing could compare to the Tony-winning NY show. After seeing Arena’s March 6 preview production, however, I am happy to report I left delighted in many ways.
Here’s why: Molly, bravo for a different and highly romantic Piazza. You brought warmth and intimacy to this production in a way I have not experienced before. The earlier shows seemed to have a touch of coldness. (the shock of winter?) You brought out the nuances of all the characters. I liked the more rounded-out interpretation and prominence of Giuseppe, including his relationship with Fabrizio, his wife and his parents.
The other examples of love relationships—Giuseppe’s and his wife’s jealousies, lack of trust—the broken and never-quite-there love between Margaret and Roy—the mutual suspicions of Signor and Signora Nacarrelli, and the hint that Signor had lost the love of his life in the past—these all stood out more in this production, heightening the contrast between these love relationships and the innocence, passion and purity between Clara and Fabrizio. Another thing I appreciated was the energy and dynamic flow of the Naccarelli family, particularly Signor.
Oh, opening night. There is such a thrill that runs through this whole day. Even as I sit at my desk with a hundred other things to do (no rehearsal today! what a great gift to the actors), my mind keeps running over different scenes from The Light in the Piazza and I have different songs that stick in my head (currently it's the opening number, "Statues and Stories").
We had a great moment yesterday when Molly sat down with the whole cast and crew to reminisce about the journey we have been on. From our first week when the snow tried to shut us down, to the very first time we tried to stumble through the whole play, to the great leaps and bounds that have been happening since we moved into the space: it has been a tremendous ride. The cast and crew have really come together through the whole experience and there are moments when I feel like we've created our own big Italian family.
And now, we have the great moment where we get to let it just happen. Only 6 hours until the opening strains of the overture will fill the Crystal City space...
To the cast, there really only is one thing left to say:
It's a quiet moment in the tech process. Nicholas Rodriguez, our Fabrizio, has just finished melting my heart with Il Mondo Era Vuoto and we've paused briefly while our lighting designer is figuring out some cues in the booth while our choreographer works with a stage manager on the best path to bring out the Naccarrelli tie shop. It really is starting to all come together.
And just so you can get a better idea of what I'm talking about...here's the newest Piazza video with clips from some early music rehearsals. I hope your heart is ready to soar...
It's a big month around Arena Stage. Again. Throughout this whole period of diaspora, where we've been spread over five different locations while our new home gets built, we've been hard at work to "restage" the whole organization as a "center for American Theater dedicated to the production, presentation, development, and study of American work."
It's so close now we can see, feel, and taste it. We're less than six months away from moving back in!
And, like a horse charging to the barn, we're gathering speed on all aspects of our strategy. Just take a look at the things that are happening in March that you could plug in to:
Light in the Piazza begins performances. I heard the sitzprobe the other night. What a beautiful orchestration, and handled with such grace and precision by our musical director, Paul Sportelli, his players and singers. If you are following the "open dress rehearsals", this one will take place on Thursday, March 4th at 8pm. I expect the word of mouth on this to be explosive. It's one of the most romantic musicals ever written. Seeing it in such an intimate production and venue, sung and played at this level, the show is a completely different experience than what it's been in its earlier incarnations.
Sophisticated Ladiesbegins rehearsals. I was in the room last week for the final round of casting and I couldn't believe the energy in this show! It's an old marketing saw to say "don't wait-- get your tickets now", but truly: don't wait. This show has a heavy advance sale already and you ain't seen nothin' yet. If you snooze on this one, or wait for someone else to see it first, you're running the risk of not seeing it at all.
Our Student Playwrights Project will stage its winning plays. Come see what these high school students have written. Let's just say that reports of the demise of American theater are greatly exaggerated if this generation is already working at this level.
The Voices of Now Mentor Ensemble has a public performance of their original one-act play Encounter at the Intersections festival at the Atlas on Sunday March 7th at 2:30pm. A product of five months of workshops, dialogue, inquiry and rehearsal, the students were asked to write, move and build this performance in reaction to their daily encounters. This Intersections performance is part of the developmental process that will result in the final presentation this May.
The Bucky Convergence gets going in earnest. We'll start to see events like the screening/discussion at the National Building Museum on March 22nd, the event at the Crystal City theater on Monday night the 29th, and the Bucky Art show popping up all over Crystal City this month. In case you missed it, the show has become a centerpiece of a region-wide convergence of events and programs dedicated to the work of R. Buckminster Fuller. People will be gathering in DC beginning in early June-- coming from all over the world to be part of it. This month you can get sneak peeks at the show, the ideas, and the related events.
The New Play Institutehas an ambitious agenda for the month as well. We are already at full throttle on this program. If you haven't yet caught up to it, take a scroll through the New Play Blog to catch up.
There will be months and months and months like this. I hope we'll see you around for as much of it as captures your imagination!
We finished our time in the rehearsal hall with one last run through of the whole piece for the designers and production staff. As our Stage Manager said, it was so nice to see all the people that we will be spending the next week in the dark with (through the tech process) in the light! Having that group of people there gave the cast their first opportunity to really see how some of the material works with people - where people laugh, where people cry and the moments where everyone gets swept away with the music and the emotion. It also gave everyone the final confirmation that we have definitely outgrown the rehearsal hall!
Tonight is the sitzprobe. This will be the first chance for the cast to be with the full band - which in our chamber version consists of piano, harp, violin, cello and bass. Our music director has been telling us great things about them all week, so we can't wait to pair the live music withe the singing!
After a weekend full of theatre mavericks and devised work, today I was back in the room with the Piazza crew. It's always interesting to step away for a few days and see the great growth that has taken place, especially at this point of the process. The hard work of the past few weeks is really starting to pay off as we start to dig deep into the details of the scenes - the music, the movement and the emotion. And we only have a few more days before our official move into the theatre! Our amazing production team has been feverishly working to get the set and costumes ready and our musical director, Paul Sportelli, has started his outside rehearsals with our band. We really can't wait to add all the components together!
I'm sitting in the rehearsal room, listening to Margaret Anne Florence sing the heart out of the title song of The Light in the Piazza, and I have chills running up my spine. With only one day of rehearsal lost to the snowpocolypse, we've come great strides in sketching out the basic blocking for Act One and are into Act Two. I can't wait until the first time we put it all together.
For just a little taste, here's the first video we have about the show: Director Molly Smith talking about her vision for the prroduction. And don't worry...there's plenty more to come.
Here's Margaret Anne Florence and Nicholas Rodriguez from our production of TheLight in the Piazza. If it won't melt the snow, it's going to melt your heart for sure...
Click the photo to see the full slide show...
Then click here for more information and tickets to the show...
by Flordelino Lagundino, 09/10 Allen Lee Hughes Directing Fellow
Just finished the first week of rehearsals of The Light in the Piazza at Arena Stage. A very good cast and design team. I am finding the Music Director, Paul Sportelli, to be one of the best I have seen work. He is the Resident Music Director at the Shaw Festival up in Canada. What I like about him is that he is very quick to understand what he is hearing from the actor and has a great understanding of how they use their voice. Not only is he extremely knowledgeable about music (and a great piano player!), but he is also a very good acting coach in the way he takes the eccentricities of the music and marries it to acting.
One of the things that intrigued me about Paul's work was when I saw him doing exercises typically done in Shakespeare when he worked the speech. The actor would sing a line and he would ask a question to make them think of the next line as a new thought, or his question would make the actor go deeper in their struggle to communicate through song.
Also last week, Molly Smith, Director of Piazza and Artistic Director of Arena Stage, had a very interesting way of doing table work that I had never seen before. We all sat around in a circle at tables and she facilitated a discussion that was generated by the questions from everyone around the room. We would read a scene and if anyone had a question they could just ask it. The one thing that she told us that we could not do is ask a leading question. So you couldn’t ask a question in which you felt like you already knew the answer. This was very important to Molly; the questions must be genuine for this technique to work. Now the people answering could give an answer or they could just say they didn’t know. It was the first day of table work, but the actors were already getting a much better sense of the play, a deeper understanding of their given circumstances – which obviously is the point of working around a table. What is interesting about this “Questions” technique is the director is not always driving the conversation around the room. And by asking “real” questions, people open themselves up by admitting that they don’t know all the answers. It is building trust among the company.
So despite the snowpocalypse welcome we've given to our Light in the Piazza cast, our first week of rehearsal can only be described in one word: THRILLING. After spending two days working on the (very complicated) music and instructing our Nacarelli household on their Italian, we pulled everyone together around the table for our first read/sing through. As I sat and listened to the opening scene I felt like I was back on the streets of Florence - and as the final notes rang out in the gorgeous opening number, I was ready to by my plane ticket. This cast really is something special and its a treat to sit in the room and help as we start to create this world.
If you haven't already had the chance to check out Sub/text for this production, get ready to do some exploring. And stay tuned for more news from the rehearsal hall....
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