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Vernal & Sere Theatre Part I: Sawyer Estes
128 Plays1 year ago
In this episode Amber talks with Sawyer Estes, a director, dramaturg, playwright and company member of Vernal & Sere Theatre. Vernal and Sere was founded in Atlanta, Ga in 2016 by five company members: Sawyer Estes, Erin Boswell, Lindsay Sharpless, Erin O’Conner and Katherine Barnes. This team produces new work (like Hurricane Season), adaptations (like the upcoming Glass Essay or Ubu Roi), and powerfully conceived shows like (4:48 Psychosis and Lear). No matter what they are up to, this team of explorers is on a journey I am super enjoying going on with them. They are highly collaborative and bring a special energy to everything they do. I hope you will enjoy this conversation with Sawyer as much as I enjoyed having it. Stay tuned for Part 2!
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Transcript
Introduction to Table Work Podcast
00:00:07
Speaker
Hey, everyone. Thank you for tuning in to Table Work, how new plays get made. My name is Amber Bradshaw, and I am a new play dramaturg, arts administrator and educator. On this podcast, I explore new play dramaturgy with artists working in the field.
Vernal and Sears Theater Background
00:00:23
Speaker
And there are certain companies that I really do have an artistic crush on. And one of those companies is Vernal and Sears Theater.
00:00:31
Speaker
Vernal and Seer was founded in Atlanta, Georgia in 2016 by five company members, Sawyer Estes, Erin Boswell, Lindsay Sharpless, Erin O'Connor, and Catherine Barnes. When you check out their website, they say that their work finds its place in the theater between the sacred and the profane. They say that they are drawn to work that is classical and new, that straddles the line between Vernal and Seer, fertility and barrenness, sacred and profane,
00:01:01
Speaker
happiness and grief. They ask their audiences to plunge headfirst into the void between such polarities and then reorient themselves to the difficult reality of being.
Innovative Productions and Themes
00:01:13
Speaker
So in addition to the productions that Vernal and Cyr does that are often new work like their last production hurricane season or potentially it might be an adaptation
00:01:25
Speaker
like The Upcoming Glass Essay by Anne Carson or Ubu Wah by Alfred Jerry. And then of course they do shows that are just powerfully conceived and directed and designed like 448 Psychosis by Sarah Kane and Lear by Yung Jean Lee. Their work is also heavily movement-based and they also teach it and you can train with them, which is really exciting and I look forward to doing so myself.
00:01:54
Speaker
So no matter what Vernal and Cyr is up to, they are explorers on a journey that I am really excited to go on with them. I'm a big fan of experimental theater and Vernal and Cyr checks a lot of my boxes for me as an artist and an audience
Upcoming Interviews Preview
00:02:09
Speaker
member. So I was really excited to sit down with a few of the team and have some conversations about their process and their work. This first set of interviews, part one and two is with Sawyer Estes. The final part three will be with Erin Boswell.
00:02:23
Speaker
I hope you will enjoy these conversations as much as I enjoyed having them. I want to give a short trigger warning. We will be discussing 448 psychosis by Sarah Kane. Please be aware this play has intense content around mental illness.
Role of Working Title Playwrights
00:02:38
Speaker
This podcast is brought to you by Working Title Playwrights, a new play incubator and service organization based in Atlanta, Georgia, in which I serve as Managing Artistic Director. For more about WTP and me, check out WorkingTitlePlaywrights.com. And now, part one on Vernal and Sears Theater with Playwright, Director, and Dramaturg Sawyer Estes.
Sawyer Estes' Journey to Experimental Theater
00:03:01
Speaker
We're here as actors and as artists to bear witness to a thing that is important.
00:03:08
Speaker
to serve a theatrical function in a democratic society that's losing it. And we don't need you to applaud us for it. And we're not going to ask. Now, if an audience member stands up because it swells in them that that guy got to give this apply, we're going to cry and we're going to be so happy. And it will interrupt whatever meditation is there.
00:03:37
Speaker
It'll come from a true interruption of joy. And that's like what we're asking for and not asking. So I am really excited to introduce my guest today, Sawyer Estes from Vernal and Cyr. And I want to give him a chance to introduce himself.
00:03:59
Speaker
Hi, I'm Sawyer. I'm from the Panhandle of Texas. A small town of 7,000 people went to school at the University of Houston, studied playwriting and dramaturgy. I chose to go to the University of Houston so that my study under Edward Albee, who I became infatuated with in high school and became my mentor for several years. I moved to New York City, made a terrific failure of a play, hated New York.
00:04:25
Speaker
moved to Atlanta, having never visited Atlanta, formed Vernal and Seer Theatre a year after living here, and have since made one of our 10th production as a company. And it's been kind of my artistic creative life. For the past seven years, I've never made a show outside of the company or worked outside of the company. It has just kind of been an incubator for our work. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. And we met in 2018.
00:04:55
Speaker
I saw a Berlin Sears production of 448 by Sarah King and I was blown away. So I must have reached out or something like that. But when Working Title Playwrights provided an equity workshop to the entire theater community that year, you offered to volunteer so that you could attend. And that's when I met you personally. Right. So that was our first time meeting.
00:05:17
Speaker
And I was so impressed with that show.
Directing 448 Psychosis
00:05:21
Speaker
It was a beautiful production. And for a play that many would say is probably really confusing, maybe even unreadable, it was very clear. I mean, I was amazed at how clear the story was told.
00:05:38
Speaker
I'd love to talk a little bit about that since we're talking about it. I'll talk about, so I came before the psychosis all day. Yeah, yeah. I'd love to hear a little bit about your choices that you made for that show. Some of the things I remember that were super specific was you had four actors playing the role rather than one, right? Yeah, four women. And why did you decide on four rather than one?
00:06:06
Speaker
I like balance. I think most of our work, I'm looking for a kind of balance. And I was struck by the number four as a kind of, you know, now we're about to do another play with a square again. But then I'm looking, it just felt like a kind of balance that I wanted. I wanted it from all female identifying actors. I felt that that was important. And it felt right. I work from a sense of feeling, not a sense of,
00:06:34
Speaker
I like to keep some things very conscious. I'm very detailed oriented, but then I reach a point and then I like to remain unconscious of the thing. And it was something that very early felt right. I felt like I needed to be four women and I felt like they all needed to play every single role and know every single line. And then that the
00:06:56
Speaker
manner in which the play unfolded and how each line was said needed to be determined in real time in the space through a sense of unknowing. And I kept saying very early on that we needed the content of the play is about mental illness, chronic depression. And I felt like the form of the play is that content in a perfect way. And I felt like our
00:07:25
Speaker
production of it needed to also match that form. And so I've told them that what we're going to do is you're going to learn every single line, every single moment from every possible angle. So that then when you're in the moment in the space and some other actor, one of the other actors comes up to you and says a line, you're not going to know which one it is. And you're not going to know if you are the victim, the perpetrator or the bystander at any moment.
00:07:54
Speaker
so that it would feel like the self turning on itself and not knowing which direction it was coming from. And so I felt like it was really important for the actors in that piece to have that kind of sense of danger and unknowing. And if you talk to them about the experience of being in that play, it was anxiety inducing and often quite terrifying because they were
00:08:23
Speaker
floating just in a kind of unknowing even though it was very rigorously rehearsed a kind of
00:08:33
Speaker
I don't have a good word for it, but kind of fascist precision in the way we went about it. We rehearsed every scene from every possible angle. You play this role, you play this role, now switch roles. You do this, now you do this, and then switch roles again, now bring in the other performer, and we've rehearsed it over six months that way. So that in the space, it could happen any possible
00:09:02
Speaker
permutation of it, but we will have worked it and we will know what to do when that happens. And so if I remember correctly...
00:09:11
Speaker
all of the actors knew all of the lines, and each night, one person would just decide to start. Is that correct? How did it work? That was completely by chance. Every scene had a different kind of logic. It was a tiny point for our work. Yeah, because these were choices that you made as a director, right? So I'm super interested. To have four of them, they all know everything. They can all play the role.
00:09:37
Speaker
There's something about that, that in working on a play like 448, which is, if you haven't read it, is pretty rough. You know, it's a tough play to read, to experience. If you know anything about Sarah King, it's very authentic and very true to her experience. So like, it's a lot. But one of the things that I think the four people on stage did was allow the actors to not be alone. Yeah.
00:10:06
Speaker
in that terrifying space. They were together. They only had each other. And it was basically our company members, Erin O'Connor, Katherine Barnes, Erin Boswell, and then Madeline Wall, who's been with us from day one. She's basically the extended company. She's done four or five shows with us. And her parents are on the board. She's family. And it was them four and they
00:10:33
Speaker
Only, yeah, they only had each other. I mean, they would hold onto each other and be like, don't make us do this play again before we started. And then at the end, they would weep in each other's arms. But in terms of how, you know, the opening, everything, every scene had its own kind of logic. So we talked a little bit about the basketball background. And so we would, I had, we, the actors and I would watch motion offenses from
00:11:01
Speaker
certain basketball teams. And I would walk down. Hey, here's some basketball drama to review for you. I love it. We would go out and say, look, you see if Kyrie Irving's defender goes under that screen, you see how then he goes on top of it.
00:11:17
Speaker
And then how the other actor, the other player then creates space in the opposite direction. And so we would talk about balance in that way. And how so if this actor crosses down, you're crossing up, they go low, you go high, and we would determine. So basically, a scene would end if that actor was high, based on the natural instinctual movements of the previous scene.
00:11:44
Speaker
If one actor ended high and one ended low, then we knew that one that was high was then the doctor in the next scene, and the one that was low was the patient in that scene. Got it. Or we'd have the set divided by zones. So let's say it was four zones. If you ended in zone A, then you were playing these lines at the next scene. If you ended in zone B, but it was totally free how one might get there. And you just know someone has to be in every zone.
00:12:13
Speaker
and get there in a way that's honest, not in a way that's, oh, someone has to be in zone C. And so when the play opened, we had two pinpoint spots of light on far ends of the stage, stage left and stage right. And we had to have one actor in one pool and one actor in the other pool, just a pinpoint of light. But I remember opening night after working on the play for seven months, not knowing which actors were gonna be there and having this moment of,
00:12:41
Speaker
Oh my God, like I've kind of worked through this play in such minute detail. And yet I don't know who's going to play my opening scene. And, uh, and kind of in that moment, just being like, this is, I'm also, it was incredible. Cause I, I felt like I had control and then ultimately relinquished all control to them in a way that like, I,
00:13:08
Speaker
now try to emulate in a lot of the work we do. And I thought in a way that was beautiful. That's really cool. Thank you for explaining that. That's really neat. I think it's pretty clear that there's a lot of strategy and technique and training to everything you'll do. You know, so it doesn't surprise me, but I really like that you're using basketball. It's really fantastic. One crazy thing, one last note.
00:13:35
Speaker
is the original production of it. And of course we can, not of course, but we can see, I can see to this idea without knowing this. And then as we started to work, I started to look further into the original production. And they actually rehearsed the play in the same way. So those four actors, two male, identifying two female, and they had this kind of fluidity in the way that they worked on it.
00:14:03
Speaker
The only difference was that when they came to the first performance, they fixed it where we never fixed anything. We never fixed it. So each night it was always a different person.
Production Choices and Actor Agency
00:14:13
Speaker
Yeah. Which is like one of the things I always mention about that show because I think that's a really brave and powerful choice. And there's something about giving the actor the agency to choose, especially when you're working on something as hard as 448.
00:14:30
Speaker
because I would imagine the care around that. A lot of potential for just breakdowns and a lot of inner stuff going on. And finding agency for them, they get to decide. Okay, I'm ready tonight.
00:14:45
Speaker
Yeah, one of my favorite stories is this moment. I think it's probably my favorite text ever. It's just such violent text, I don't even want to say it. But it's talked about essentially about genocide and just mass murder, but also about showing up to the party and everyone leaving. So something is potentially
00:15:12
Speaker
Yeah, but anyway the in this moment, I just think it's just whale of a speed chugging just like put your inside
00:15:24
Speaker
And for me, when I'm working on it, I said, God, for an actor to get to that moment, to bear witness to those lines, essentially to bear witness to the entire 20th century of catastrophe and violence, and to find that within themselves, to speak that text, I thought would take a huge movement of pathos. And so what we would do, we had this moment, right before that moment, it's called Rhythm of
00:15:54
Speaker
everyone was just running on a grid. And the first person that we call the splatting out. And so one person would splat out, second person, third person, and the fourth person, the last person standing, had to turn on a dime and come down to the center, or come downstage and deliver that speech.
00:16:14
Speaker
And so on the opening night, this is one of the favorite stories I've played. So on the opening night, that rhythm of madness lasted about two seconds because everyone was flattened out because no one wanted to say the speech because there was just the experience of being up. There was so much anxiety. It wasn't going well. Everyone was just like, not me, not me, not me, not me. Then there was another, so then the fourth person standing on that night just had the, had to just,
00:16:43
Speaker
kind of just unearthed that. And that person, I remember, just stood up the x of the rhythm, that just was quick. And then you could just see them with their back to the audience, probably for what seemed like, I mean, it seemed like two minutes, just trying to get themselves in a position to bear witness to that text before they had to come down, because they didn't have it. No one had it that night, but someone had to do it. And so I watched the actor do that. But then later in the run, some like closing night,
00:17:12
Speaker
the girls ran each other to death. They figured out maybe if they just kept going, they could find the courage to do it. Well, no one, everyone wanted to bear witness to that line. Everyone had it and everyone wanted to say it. And so no one was, no one was not hitting. And it became a, of course, vase one.
00:17:39
Speaker
Fos being Aaron Foswell. Yes. Yeah, but they ran, I mean, the rhythm madness took so long. And me as the director, I'm up there kind of cringing because I'm like, this moment is take, we're just watching people run their heads off and it's way too long. But then another part of me just thought it was so amazing to see four people that
00:18:03
Speaker
wanted to stand in for the atrocities of the 20th century and felt like they had to give it. And I was like, this is incredible that we had that opportunity and found a form to do it. Yeah, it was a really, really cool show. And for me, I actually chose to do a Sarah Kane monologue in college.
00:18:32
Speaker
from 448. And so, and I, it was the, yep, exactly. And, and so when I saw that there was like a production happening, I was like, Oh my God, I'm never going to get this chance again. You know what I mean? And I was super excited because that place scared the crap out of me. But I was like, wow, I want to see this produced.
00:18:57
Speaker
Because there's really no stage directions, right? There's no stage directions. It looks like poetry, but there's very little guidance in terms of what is this supposed to be, right? And it's just like her by herself, right?
00:19:15
Speaker
So it's like, how the heck do you make that into form? And like, so I was just so impressed. And then to hear about the ways you did it, it like makes a lot of sense. And did you learn, did you come up with those sort of strategies when you were working
Character Fluidity and Thematic Influences
00:19:30
Speaker
with Albi? Was that something that you, or was it something that you developed elsewhere? No, Albi is more traditional than I think that I've grown interested in. And I, you know,
00:19:43
Speaker
Sorry, but we, you know, I think that it's the closest kind of thing that I could say that would be Charlie Kaufman's work, his film work. If you've seen, I'm thinking of ending things. I think if there's a certain form that my plays work in, the plays that I'm interested in that move like Kaufman's, I'm thinking of ending things, which I'm thinking of ending things is really just a lesser version of Snaggy New York.
00:20:13
Speaker
when there's this sense in Synecdoche, New York, where everyone is everyone. She says, so you're a caden. You're also the house cleaner with her red, raw hands. You are your daughter. You're the construction worker. You're the president. And there's a sense, I'm drawn to this kind of way of working and like the way of the form, which my plays more and more take,
00:20:43
Speaker
is a kind of specificity, particularly early on in the production and a kind of contained self, a self that's trapped. And then as the piece goes on, a kind of expansion of that into a kind of understanding of a unification, which often comes about through intense violence or trauma in the productions and through like
00:21:14
Speaker
And so 448 made that very clear. And then I see it in Hoffman. And I don't particularly see it in Aldi because it's more traditional. Aldi has a very strong sense of character. I always say I don't believe in character. Oh, really? Yeah. Talk about that. I think character's so fluid. And if I were to sit here and define who I am and so rigid,
00:21:43
Speaker
I even hate being recorded because I'm like, what if I say something I'm not going to agree with tomorrow? Well, we are contradictory, aren't we? Yeah. And I think where all of you would have these walks and you'd be talking to these characters, he'd say you'd take Jerry and Peter from Zoo Story on the beach and walk and have a conversation with Peter for hours or Jerry for hours.
00:22:08
Speaker
And I just don't operate in that way. I'm like, you're just talking to yourself. And I think I go into every play with that kind of disillusionment of, I know that I'm talking to myself, or if I'm staging Anne Carson, I'm not talking to Anne Carson's characters, I'm talking to Anne Carson. We're playing Anne Carson. When we're doing 448 Psychosis, we are, this is Sarah Kane.
00:22:38
Speaker
These other things are just these abstract, ephemeral abstractions that are really, I think, an illusion. And then we're bringing ourselves into that as well and then rounding it out into a kind of larger self. Yeah, so I really don't like to, I get when actors will talk to me about character, I just struggle and I'm just like, oh, how would you do it? And then just do it
00:23:07
Speaker
sitting or do it standing. And, um, and then if it doesn't work or because of some notion of character that we can't really define, um, then just put a different quality on it. Um, it reminds me of playwrights who are like, well, all the characters on me. Yeah. I mean, that's basically what you're saying is that the play is, is, is about, it's a conversation for you with whoever's created it.
00:23:35
Speaker
So if you've created it, it's your conversation, right? But if you're directing it, then it's your conversation with Dan Carson, for example, which is fantastic and so true. And I really agree with, and I think from a new play dramaturgy perspective, it's really important. And actually, like, I feel like supports a lot of what I say about focusing on the playwright rather than the story itself. And that like the key is,
00:24:01
Speaker
the relationship with the playwright themself in the process part when they're creating the piece, right? Because every character in the play is them. Yeah. You know, they can say it's not. It's not true. Who's it coming from? They can say that. But yeah, I mean, in any way, in any way that it would be not them. I mean, it's coming from you in any way that you are you.
00:24:24
Speaker
If we believe in that, then that's the extent that you get, you know? Or you're not you and you're a part of everything you've ever read or seen, and then that goes into where my boys like to go. We get to that, that yeah, you are not you, you are not this contained thing. You are an accumulation of everything you've read and everything you've experienced, which is also an extension of everyone else. And we are all these kind of self-contained things, like we contain the multitudes of all existence and all experience,
00:24:54
Speaker
And I think it's important for me in place to, if I'm doing anything consciously that has to do with some kind of way of going about it, it would be to make that clear. I just want to congratulate you on getting your 501c3 status for Myrtle and Sierra. It's really, really exciting. For those who don't know, it's quite a lengthy process and it is a huge thing to celebrate. So congratulations.
00:25:24
Speaker
I'm scared we're like married. You're like official now. Yeah.
Theater's Resilience and Collaboration
00:25:30
Speaker
Taxes stuff. I know, right? Amazing. After seven years. So you said 2016 and survived the pandemic. Yeah. Right. Which is incredible. Congratulations on that too. The most political thing I would say, survived the Trump presidency, which we didn't expect. Yeah. Which is a part of our initial story. I know. Yeah, we did sincerity forever.
00:25:52
Speaker
Thinking it would be this, whoo, we dodged a bullet. And then we're in a rehearsal and they get selected and we go, oh, it's not a who we dodged a bullet play. It's a, oh, this is, this is the reality. Wow. Wow. Wow. Yeah. And you, um, and you founded Bernal and Cyr with four other company members, right? Yes. Yes. Um, Aaron O'Connor, Catherine Barnes, Aaron Boswell, and Lindsay Sharpless.
00:26:22
Speaker
Awesome. Awesome. And you and Aaron are newly married. Is that correct? Congratulations. Five weeks ago or six weeks ago, we've been together eight years. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, I know. I know. And how would you describe what each company member brings to Bernal and Cyr?
00:26:49
Speaker
So, you know, all five of you, if you don't mind, I'd love to hear. And, um, also I'm excited that I will be interviewing Aaron Boswell. And so we'll have a whole nother perspective on Vernal and Sierra from her, which I'm excited about. So please share, tell us a little bit about the company members. We've, we've, you know, we continue to define how we each kind of fit into what the thing is. And it's still every day is a process of learning. We don't have really any fixed.
00:27:20
Speaker
titles still at this point. I might say that I'm the artistic director and they might be like, no, we disagree. Still up for discussion. And, um, but we, you know, creatively, we are still kind of all in the self kind of process of what we do best to, and how we might fit in and how we serve the company. And so, you know, uh, start with me. I, I,
00:27:49
Speaker
would say I do probably most of the reading and conceiving and like kind of the preemptive, I'm constantly thinking about what I might be interested or do next. And I'm constantly interested in a more like grand scheme of, of formally, what am I, what are we interested in formally next? And, and I often bring that to the team.
00:28:18
Speaker
Um, whether that's, you know, a play as a, as a play, or if it's an adaptation of a film or something that I have written, um, then, you know, it's innumerable ways of that. We might go about that, but it's typically like, this is a thing that I think we're in. And then I'll either be out interested in this too, or I'm not interested in this and we'll have tension or we'll be like, whoa, we're both interested. And then we'll be off to the races. Um, and then I direct in the room.
00:28:47
Speaker
dramaturgical voice often in the room and working with actors in the moment. Um, Erin Boswell, she's, um, she's the one that kind of gets, well, one of many, but she, I lean on her of making the things happen. She's incredible crafts in terms of acting, vocal coaching, movement direction, choreography. You know, um, it's sort of like intimacy direction. Um,
00:29:17
Speaker
So we look to her often, I look to her often for the development of tools in the room. I am not a teacher. I don't like teaching. I want to work with artists that are there and ready to work. And I get frustrated if I have to teach too much. I do teach, but only out of necessity to do the work that we want to do. Whereas Erin loves teaching. She just loves.
00:29:47
Speaker
Let's find new tools. Let's develop. And she, does she primarily teach the classes that y'all offer? She, her and Aaron O'Connor do. I don't even attend classes anymore. Got it. Part of that through, well, you know, we're briefly talking about about like pay to play or the sense of like, you know, start, you know, we're like auditioning in class. We don't want this like feeling of auditioning in class. So because I do a lot of the directing and stuff in the season, I felt like we felt like it was good to,
00:30:16
Speaker
Always important to acknowledge your power in the room. Yeah, from it and just let them have free space to build tools and to like come into their craft and then we'll bring it into the room and then we'll make something. Sure. Um, so that's her and Aaron O'Connor, Aaron O'Connor, kind of same token, movement director, choreographer. She's, um, one of my favorite mover dancers as an actor. Um, and she's a director. She co-directs often with me.
00:30:46
Speaker
She directed Lear most recently with Boswell. I didn't even tell that Boswell is also the director. She just does everything. And she teaches. And Kat Barnes is, she's a kind of Swiss army knife in terms of what we need when we need it. Community, she's very involved in the community, film community, and theater community. She's an incredible actor. We lean on her most for
00:31:14
Speaker
acting and what she brings to the stage. Then she's also usually handling props, purchasing budgets. She does all of that. She's just kind of a Swiss army knife. Oh, this thing's blown up. Cat, come solve it, because we're all freaking out. And she does that. And Lindsay Sharpless, she's been our lighting designer for every show. She's kind of the primary design kind of mind on that end. And she's an actor.
00:31:44
Speaker
And yeah, she just kind of makes her shows look phenomenal. And she's the most underrated, undervalued, underutilized, like Latin designer in the city, I think. And she's also an incredible actor and she's in the next piece. Awesome. Thank you for that. Thank you for that. Yeah. And so how do you break up the unfun things, the managerial, the administrative, the social media? How does that work? Social media is there in a column where
00:32:14
Speaker
She's so great at it and I think enjoys it. Yeah, y'all follow Bernal and Cyr on IG. They've got a great IG page. She's social media and marketing. Erin Boswell will be the head of education. Kat would be more about community development and budget. But, you know, honestly, and then I would be more, be at this creative overseeing a lot of
00:32:41
Speaker
everything. I'm the president of the board now. We don't know what y'all want and we don't want to dictate to y'all we're just here to support so you lead it for now and so that. Well that's a unique board structure. Go for it. I actually am a board member since last year.
00:33:05
Speaker
So I'm a voting member now of my board, but I wasn't before then. Yeah. I mean, ideally I think like we'll get me off of that. Weird, but it's weird. It would be weird for the AD to not be a voting member of the board, right? To me, that doesn't make much sense. You know, obviously I don't get to vote on my salary and things like that, but, um, but why not? Because I mean, really the board is taking cues from the AD anyways, so why wouldn't they be on the board? You know? I mean, it's not a board that's like wants to,
00:33:33
Speaker
I mean, you know, they know that they wouldn't have been asked to be on the board if they were going to try to dictate any kind of programming or anything like that because we'd say we don't need money then. But so they're on there basically just how to support us as people with a little bit more means or access to means to continue to do what we've done and to support.
00:34:02
Speaker
They are really a board right now of people that just want to support in that way and not in any way try to dictate the vision or creativity or this or that. And we've established it pretty clear that we'd rather do it for free than make those kinds of concessions. And we'll continue to do that.
00:34:32
Speaker
Yeah. And speaking of board, I'd love to talk a little bit about your audience because you have a loyal audience.
Audience Building and Actor Fulfillment
00:34:44
Speaker
You do well with your shows. You have people come back a lot. You retain a lot of audience members. And if you've ever been to a Vernal and Sears show and you're a theater artist, you will not see a lot of the community at the shows.
00:34:59
Speaker
And you'll do all of your shows at the Windmill Arts Center at East Point, right? Which shout out to Sam Ross and the team at the Windmill Arts Center for all that they do for the artists that work in the Arts Center. It's a beautiful space if you have never been. But tell me a little bit about how you built your audience and how you sort of developed that over these years. The main function and the way that we built the community
00:35:28
Speaker
from the beginning was I've worked in specialty coffee for about eight, nine years. And my wife has been a barista in the same cafe with me. And the cafe attract, it's Chrome Yellow on Edgewood. And we attract a number of artists and a number of kind of creative minded people from all walks of life and different levels of economic status. And it's just been a very kind of
00:35:57
Speaker
And so, you know, over being there for seven years and serving people coffee, and then once a year or twice a year, I also hand them a poster, a flyer, and I say, hey, you didn't know this about me, but I make theater. And we've been friends with a serving coffee every day for the past seven years. And come to this play, I think you'll like this one. And over time, they've come and then the work has been
00:36:28
Speaker
And they've been like, oh, wow, I thought you were just in coffee. I didn't realize that you did this thing. And I didn't realize you did it like this. I thought it was going to be some kind of, you know, bad community theater kind of that they'll say. And I didn't realize it was like, y'all are kind of professionals. I've had people say that. And I'm like, yeah, we're like hobbyists, but, you know, we like to take the qualities there.
00:36:55
Speaker
Over time, it's just kind of built and we've retained a number of them. And we've had a few people come in from the theater community too. And we've had support through the theater community. Joe Sykes being in the Exterminating Angel was a huge boost. Oh, I bet. I bet. To that end. And I felt like it was a big shift in the company getting more attention from the theater community because it was suddenly. There were so many people in that show.
00:37:23
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. But I think for Joe, as he's worked with Actors Express, he's worked all over. And suddenly it was like, oh, it's not just these weirdos. These are someone that works. That works. This is an audience that works. It gets good reviews. Like, this is an actor that works and gets good reviews. And now he's working with it. Which for me, to say just to thank him, it was a huge risk that he took, honestly, to work as long as he did on the show.
00:37:51
Speaker
with the amount of money that was given to him for the show, having the success that he's had in the city. Well, one of the things I find, sometimes the more professional artists are absolutely in need of some really authentic art. And sometimes they don't get to do stuff like that anymore, right? Yeah.
00:38:19
Speaker
I'm always so grateful because I feel like we have a lot of really well-known artists that love to read in our readings for working title. And we're not big potatoes. It's like stage readings. This is not big celebrity stuff, right? But I have hired people that could be considered Atlanta celebrities to read stage directions. And they were thrilled. Because it was like the playwright was one of their friends. And they were just so excited to be in the room.
00:38:47
Speaker
I think there's a lot to be said for professionals and people often have asked me over the years, how did you hire, how did you get that person? How did you hire that person? And I said, well, I asked. Yeah. Because a lot of people don't even think that they'd be interested. Yeah. And they're just wrong. They're wrong. People are interested and they do occasionally want to do stuff. It's like really off the path and they'll, they'll, they'll clear their schedule if it's, if it's,
00:39:11
Speaker
Um, fulfilling. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Goodness. Yeah. And like, you know, you say this, like, out of like, kind of both sides of your mouth, because in some ways she could be like, oh, theaters, you can exploit actors or labor, you know, because like, if you make work that they care about. So you don't want to say that too strongly, but actors want to make work they care about. Like, and that is, that fills, that fuels them creatively. And a lot of our work is,
00:39:39
Speaker
from actors that don't get hired anywhere else in the city. And if you've seen the work, you're like, these actors are really good. What the hell is going on? And it's either not, they're not getting interest from other theaters for XYZ reasons, or they're not interested in the work those theaters are doing, or, you know, one of those things are happening. And, you know, it's just, there is this kind of, from the work that we've done that has resonated with a number of people
00:40:09
Speaker
Um, where actors feel like very alive doing it and feel like, Oh my God, this is why I got into this thing. This is why I became an actor. And a lot of them are filming TV actors, you know, that were trained in theater. Now they're trying to make like a career. And so they're, you know, with that mediums, you know, higher, higher ceiling. And they're just like, they're just auditioning every day on, you know, on, you know, with little one liners and they forget the kind of.
00:40:39
Speaker
spiritual kind of thing that got them into this. Heck yeah. Heck yeah. I have so many actors who are like just back and forth from theater to film because they can't let go of theater. You know, they're like, so there's stuff that's really like, there's not a lot of love. There's not a lot of heart. There can be, but you know, so it's, I always say like in the theater world, we must provide that space.
00:41:05
Speaker
We must. What else do we have? We can't offer a lot of money. We can't offer huge audiences, millions of people watching something someone's been in. But we can offer an experience that hopefully has some creative currency, right? Yeah. I mean, what's the value of that experience? Yeah. And that's the actors. And it's also that notion or that drive also extends to our audiences.
Theater's Purpose and Societal Role
00:41:30
Speaker
And people are like, why aren't audiences coming? Why aren't audiences coming? Or whatever.
00:41:35
Speaker
You're trying to give them some less funded version of what Netflix does well. And it's like, what are you, you know, it takes a lot to go to theater. I mean, I'm so, it's your whole night. It's your whole night. You got to plan it. You got to park, you got to fight through traffic. Your night's gone. And then it's like, man, I got some like cheap entertainment version of what I can get on that Netflix that has millions of dollars behind it.
00:42:05
Speaker
incredible actors, you know, celebrity. And then, so you think about, I mean, for me, I'm like, that's, it's not even about this content happy, or is the content sad, or is the all these other things we kind of, is it too smart? Or is it too dumb? I don't think that that's really, it's a, it's something deeper than that. And it's like, what is it? It's a, for me, it's a spiritual thing. It's like, are you doing these things?
00:42:32
Speaker
500 BC Athens, while they were going to the theater, is that still true of our theaters? Are we doing that? Are we connecting with something higher or more inner with the way we make work? And I think that that's, for me, that's why people, they've come to our shows because I've given them coffee over seven years and they keep coming because I think in some way we are
00:43:01
Speaker
through the way we go about it, returning, for me, I hope returning theater to a kind of spiritual place. And I don't even know what that is. It totally connects to a lot of what Matt Torney said in his episode about Greek theater. And the theater is a place where we come to learn about ourselves, to connect with each other, to have a literal metaphysical experience. And if we're not offering that,
00:43:31
Speaker
what are we offering audiences? Exactly. It's like, it's just, and I completely agree. I'm like, it needs to be an experience, a full blown experience, you know? And so I agree that it's, I think there's a lot of missing the boat. And I think a lot of audiences that aren't returning, aren't returning because they think that's what there is and there aren't options. And the decorum, the,
00:44:02
Speaker
ritual, it's worn out for them. It's like, what am I doing? I'm not coming. The meet and greet, it's too hard. Life's too hard for us to still have the satisfaction of the cultural capital. It's like, oh, the shaking of hands, or I'm seeing it a play. It's just not worth it. The world's burning. It does not have the same residents anymore, absolutely. So then it's like, what are we replacing that with? What are we going to replace? What's the thing that they're getting out of coming?
00:44:31
Speaker
Absolutely. I wonder beyond what being that is. Um, for me, I mean, it's so hard. I know what I'm doing to combat that. Um, I know like, you know, the certain formal decisions we make that you'll never hear someone tell you to silence your cell phones in the space. You'll never hear someone introduce the play or, um, thank the donors or the sponsors. Um,
00:45:01
Speaker
because the space is sacred and that stuff is economic and social and it breaks the sacredness of the space. And so that's one thing I want them to get. I want them to get and I want them to come in and feel a kind of echo of the room that was there not waiting for them to be there and that would be there whether they were there or not. And then when you get there knowing that we're not going to break that
00:45:30
Speaker
we're not gonna bring in all the outside kind of profane world into this and the sense of, you know, that's the spiritual kind of thing, the sense of like, that this is important and that this is separate from the rest of it. Who doesn't know the silence their cell phones at a point, you know? They know and they can choose it or they can't. And if they choose not to and it goes off,
00:45:58
Speaker
And that's the thing that happens. And that's part of the show. Yeah, and that's part of the world. And then we get some meditation upon how attached we are to our cell phones. Exactly. And we just let that be in the room. And we do that with pre-show. There's this sense of like, you're coming in late. What's so funny, we'll have people come in, and the pre-show is happening. And we'll see them, and they come in slouched and tiptoeing. And they're 10 minutes early. And I just live up there like, that's amazing.
00:46:26
Speaker
Because you are late, you're always late, like the world, you're late, you are, or you're on time, and you can come in confidently and know that you're arrived and you're at something important, or you can tiptoe in ecologetically, and we're gonna see it, and that's part of the experience. And intermission, we do the same thing, there's something happening.
00:46:51
Speaker
And if you go to the restroom to use the, if you need to use the restroom, I want the audience, you know, as you're peeing, you realize I'm missing something because you are missing something and that's life. And so everything is thought about the end of the show. If you're going to clap or not clap, you know, we aren't going to ask for clapping very often. Um, but you can, we're not telling you, you can't, but you're going to maybe interrupt something. Do you want to do curtain calls?
00:47:22
Speaker
I think one or two. I just realized that y'all don't do this. No. And I think it goes back to this, what do you get? So curtain call for me is a bunch of actors. Sometimes I'll promise this to say that I've had shows where I ask actors if they want to do a curtain call. Okay. And often the actors resoundingly say no. Okay. And so they don't like them. Well, they come to work with us and they don't want to ask for applause. Got it.
00:47:49
Speaker
Yeah. And, and I think like a lot of it is like these actors, a lot of the curtain call was just like, congratulate me thing. And it's like, we don't want to ask. We're not here again. We're not here for you.
00:48:01
Speaker
We are not doing this for you. We're not asking for your congratulations or your applause. We don't care if you need us to step out of the role so that you can see us go from the character of the actor so that you have a comfortable ride home with the illusion being broken. It's not important to us. We're here as actors and as artists to bear witness to a thing that is important.
00:48:27
Speaker
to serve a theatrical function in a democratic society that's losing it. And we don't need you to applaud us for it. And we're not going to ask. Now, if an audience member stands up because it swells in them that that guy got to give this apply. We're going to cry and we're going to be so happy. And it will interrupt whatever meditation is there.
00:48:57
Speaker
it'll come from a true interruption of joy. And that's like what we're asking for and not asking. And in Ooboo, we had a really controversial curtain call that was very thought out on my end and people didn't like it, but we did a song and dance number that served as the curtain call with after this kind of mass, violent,
00:49:25
Speaker
I remember that I was very grateful for the song and dance. Yeah, we did this like mass shooting, did a song and dance. And then what we did though is after the song and dance and the curtain call and we had the standing libation, we dropped the lights back down and there was just dead bodies all over the stage from a mass. And people felt like we pulled the wool over their eyes in that moment and felt like it was
00:49:53
Speaker
disrespectful from me.
Confronting Societal Truths and Next Episode Tease
00:49:56
Speaker
And like I had them cheer over dead bodies. And I just say to them, I did not force you to stand and cheer. I just turned your gaze to something happy in a musical number. And man, you forgot really easily. And that is confrontational.
00:50:19
Speaker
Um, but I was saying something in that, I was saying like, man, we forget super easily. We just turn on Netflix and we forget what the thing we just read into news. And it was a theatrical way of saying that. And yeah, it might be difficult. It might've been, um, but it was with a good intention to bring awareness to how easily we forget mass violence and trauma.
00:50:47
Speaker
Yeah, well, especially considering what we deal with in this country with shootings every single day, practically. Of course, when you did Ubuwa, it was during Trump's presidency, right? So you were making a lot of statements politically about that show. But I think for me, I go to the theater to be deeply impacted. And there is never a vernal and serious show that I see that does not deeply impact me. So I think
00:51:15
Speaker
For me, experimental theater isn't necessarily...
00:51:19
Speaker
something anyone should ever expect isn't going to be unsettling. It is by design unsettling and we unsettle ourselves so that we can change, right? And I really hope that seeing shows like that can change people and seeing like what that moment is where you realize you totally forgot for a second and you just saw a mass shooting and how crazy our brains are and how they work, you know?
00:51:46
Speaker
And that that is it's every time I go to the theater is always an observation of myself, learning more about myself so that I may grow and evolve further. Right. So if I go to the theater and I don't have that experience, then I feel like I don't know why I went, which goes back to what we were talking about, you know, is doing safe theater is really, really, in my opinion, very boring. Right. And
00:52:13
Speaker
just make a Netflix show if you wanna do that, right? Because realism can be found all over the place, but do we need it in the theater, right? It's a good question to ask. Yeah, and I mean, on that too, like, you know, something you said that made me think about, like, I'm an audience member too, and when I'm making work, I'm an audience, like, I make, it's me too, and I need, I also am at fault for reading the news headline, and then going and getting a burger.
00:52:43
Speaker
right and beer and having a good time like I'm at fault and so when I'm making work and I have the curtain call and then the realization I'm doing that to me too because I'd be the idiot standing with the curtain call climbing because I'm conforming to the theatrical convention and then I would want someone to slap me in the face and make me aware of what I do and and I just think that's a you know I'm always I'm also always an audience member and that and
00:53:13
Speaker
You're not alone. I think that's powerful. And I do feel that in your work. I think that you are thinking about the audience experience and it's like, what would I want? What would I want to see as an audience member? Which I think is pretty dramaturgical of you actually.
00:53:35
Speaker
Hey listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. It has been a joy to chat with Sawyer. This is part one, part two will be released very soon and you will get to hear the second half of our conversation. Thank you so much and have a great day.
00:53:51
Speaker
Thank you listeners for tuning in to Table Work, How New Plays Get Made with Amber Bradshaw. This podcast was brought to you by Working Title Playwrights. If you like what you've heard today, support this podcast and all our initiatives by leaving us a review, following us, and or consider making a tax-deductible donation to Working Title Playwrights at www.workingtitelplaywrights.com.