Review of Sense and Sensibility at South Coast Rep
Manager Amanda Dehnert pairs up with playwright and actress Kate Hamill for a production of Pride and Prejudice at Main Stages that is ridiculously fun, intoxicatingly spirited and deeply moving. Ms. Dehnert, an innovative and critically acclaimed director who regularly directs at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival likewise equally many regional theaters including Arena Stage, South Coast Repertory and Lookingglass Theater, is also an Acquaintance Professor of Theater at Northwestern Academy. She brings a unique theatrical inventiveness to productions that range from Shakespeare (an all-female Julius Caesar) to big Broadway musicals (an exquisitely intimate My Fair Lady) to original stories (The Verona Project). Her work has been seen in New York at The Public (Richard Iii) and recently, in tandem with conductor/musical director Marin Alsop, a spectacular West Side Story for Carnegie Hall/Weill Music Establish and the Knockdown Centre in Queens that brought professionals, high schoolhouse students and community members together on stage and gave the audience an immersive feel of this great musical.
With a generosity of spirit that radiates over the phone lines, succinct eloquence and a lovely musical laugh, Ms. Dehnert spoke with me almost the joys of collaboration, challenges of adaptation and being drawn to telling the epic stories in the theater.
What drew y'all to this famous story? Does a 19th-century novel have anything to say to united states of america today?
I call up that Jane Austen is a very modernistic writer and she is capturing a lot of things nearly what it means to be a woman in society that are still very relevant. I actually enjoy the classics and especially love existence able to take stories that people already think they know and allow them come across the story again as if they are seeing information technology for the first time. And so tackling Pride and Prejudice was only a not bad opportunity that I couldn't pass up.
Would you lot call yourself a Janeite or an Austenite? I don't know which 1 is the appropriate term.
Well you know I really….Kate and I often joke that there are Austenites and Brontëites, and I'm probably actually a Brontëite. But I dearest Jane Austen's work.
How did you and Kate Hamill initially connect?
We were introduced kind of through the projection. Davis McCallum, artistic director of the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, and I had been talking about finding something to do together and he was going to be producing this play of Kate's. He thought that we might hit it off and we did! But I accept to say at present that I'chiliad thinking dorsum it might take been Braden Abraham, artistic director at Seattle Rep. I did Pride and Prejudice out at Seattle Rep in between Hudson Valley and this Master Stages production and nosotros were all getting to know each other all at the same time. I would have to check the actual order of the phone calls, and so to be condom I'll say at that place was Davis at Hudson and Braden at Seattle, they were both doing Kate's play and thought I'd exist a adept match for it!
So you've been doing Pride and Prejudice a good portion of 2017.
Yes, I've been doing it off and on since April.
This is not, I would venture to say, your mother'southward Masterpiece Theater Pride and Prejudice.
(Laughs) No it'south not.
Kate's adaptation seems to take one pes in Austen'southward England and one human foot in today'south culture, plus in that location'south this marvelous infusion of well-known pop music. Equally a director how did you approach the script and work with the actors in creating this slice?
Well you know, I'grand a large believer that people are people, that society changes simply human nature doesn't actually change that much. We were all interested in creating a earth that supported the plot that happens in Pride and Prejudice, considering it is dependent on some realities that existed in social club and then for young women concerning matrimony. But too making sure that we felt like we were doing the play now. From that point it's but a lot of collaboration and trial and error and bringing all the ideas to the table and ultimately letting the characters be as fully human as they are and not but characters in a Regency setting, just people in a story that'southward existence told in a theater.
Well, mission accomplished because it was so delightful and and so very meaningful at the end. My friend who came with me to the show afterwards remarked how much she wanted her teenage girl to see the show, that her seventeen twelvemonth former would totally connect with this universal story.
In that location is a wealth of music in the product. Did you contribute musically to the show?
Nothing compositionally. I handled the live $.25 of music that the bandage exercise, but the sound design was done past Palmer Hefferan who was really wonderful. And the cast is very, very musical as a group, and then I'd say we all merely kind of did information technology together.
Did Kate cull the songs or did y'all?
I call up it was a combination of ideas I had, Palmer had and Kate had. And and then ideas the cast had. Just trying to bring it all together and looking for the correct ways to ground some of the moments in a more twentieth century landscape.
What important qualities practise you wait for in the actors you lot'd like to work with?
They should exist good people. (Laughs) And artistic and willing to human activity with others. What happens on stage is very much about the whole grouping. So I like actors who are interested in really being upward in that location with other people, not just with themselves and their material.
Were there any challenges working on an adaptation of a famous novel?
I know information technology was e'er tough for Kate to balance making sure that the lines from the novel that are really, really famous, or well known or often quoted…information technology was important to her that those words withal alive within this accommodation. And so making sure that it was her telling of the story. Considering it is very much an adaptation, I mean it'due south not simply editing the book. And so making sure her telling was really what she wanted information technology to be and supporting that. I think Kate did a great job, so it was actually merely cracking to exist along for the ride.
Sounds like it was a tremendous pleasure working with Kate as a collaborator?
Oh, very, very much so.
Who and what influences you lot as a theater creative person?
Gosh, I estimate….oh boy…I don't have a good respond for that. I call up that people are fascinating and that the theater is a really important office of our culture. I just want to be a part of the continuum of artists that put not bad stories on stage.
Yous've directed Shakespeare and big musicals like West Side Story. Are you always fatigued to big stories?
Yes, probably. I like the stuff that's about the big challenges we confront as individuals and as communities and and then that oftentimes translates into these kinds of epic stories. But you lot can find those challenges in small stories as well, so it'due south more that I similar to become into the stories that are really nearly how we deal with being alive, how nosotros deal with being alone, how nosotros find people to connect with, how we face adversity, how we choose to shape our lives, how we detect happiness. Stuff like that.
Yes! The good stuff! What's side by side for you? Do you have any dream projects?
Y'all know, dream projects…oh, there are and then many stories that I dear that it is really difficult to name them, honestly. What I have coming up next is a production of Love'south Labour'south Lost for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in the spring. And betwixt now and then I'll be spending my fourth dimension teaching and but, you lot know, doing the day to 24-hour interval.
And when are you back directing in New York? Nosotros need you lot, Amanda! We demand your theatrical vision!
Well anyone who wants to get in touch with me and talk to me nigh a project is welcome to. (Laughs) I always hope for the opportunities!
Source: https://stagebuddy.com/theater/theater-feature/interview-amanda-dehnert-directing-kate-hamills-pride-prejudice
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