Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012

Atlantic Stage’s new play in constant flux

cslate@thesunnews.com

Cast members rehearse a scene from the play, Bigfoot & Other Lost Souls at the Atlantic Stage on the Coastal Carolina University, Myrtle Beach Campus. 01/05/12 Photo by Charles Slate

 

If you go

What | “Bigfoot and Other Lost Souls”

Who | Atlantic Stage, continuing its fourth season

When | Opens Jan. 26: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays through Feb. 12.

Where | 79th Avenue Theatre at Coastal Carolina University Myrtle Beach Education Center, at U.S. 17 Bypass

How much | $25 individuals; $20 educators, military personnel, and anyone 55 and older; and $15 students, including Osher Lifelong Learning Institute members

Benefiting | Horry County Literacy Council, from ticket sales for the Jan. 27 show

Note | This play’s content not geared for ages 11 and younger.

Information | 877-287-8587 or www.atlanticstage.com

Also | Other plays:

• “Lost in Yonkers” Feb. 23-March 11

• “Sylvia” March 29-April 15

The search for Bigfoot has made footsteps through Myrtle Beach, at least in a play bound for its formal world premiere May 4 at the Perseverance Theatre in Juneau, Alaska.

Atlantic Stage’s rehearsals started in late December for what officials call a “workshop production” of a brand new musical, “Bigfoot and Other Lost Souls.” It opens Thursday for three weekends through Feb. 12 in the 79th Avenue Theatre, at Coastal Carolina University’s Myrtle Beach Education Center.

The plot follows a woman writing a documentary of the elusive mysterious creature also known as Sasquatch, and the various people she meets in that journey, all while learning new nuances about herself.

Marjorie Mitchell, managing director for Atlantic Stage, continuing its fourth season, said officials hope to connect with younger audiences through “Bigfoot.”

“This is not an old-school musical like ‘The Music Man,’ she said. “It doesn’t have a straight story line. It is episodic with three story lines dovetailing at the end, more like ‘Pulp Fiction.’ ”

Rewriting and refining

This second joint venture with the CCU Professional Theatre Training Program has been undergoing constant revisions during rehearsals. Before monitoring an after-dinner practice Jan. 5, stage manager Becca Pickett remarked on the process of seeing each scene develop, with all the versions tried out, and then refinements made at a rate of probably 12 per day earlier this month.

By Jan. 5, six pages’ worth of tweaks had been made, said Pickett, from New York, a theater graduate of Nazareth College of Rochester. The challenge entails keeping up with the changes to make sure everyone, especially the cast of 12, stays on the same page.

“I live to make them look good on stage,” Pickett said, “and make them feel comfortable and prepared on stage, to the best of my ability.”

Barbara Hartwig has choreographed various CCU productions in the past few years, but “Bigfoot” marks her debut with Atlantic Stage. She said since officials had play readings in the spring, she enjoyed spending a few months “to live with it and create” her parts for “Bigfoot.”

“It’s not a heavy dance show,” Hartwig said before practice resumed, “but a lot of choreographed movement.”

With music and lyrics composed by Mark Hollman, a 2002 Tony Award winner for scoring “Urinetown,” the melodies “kind of tell me what to do,” Hartwig said, crediting everyone in the collaboration for “Bigfoot.” She said its numbers will incorporate many styles, including clogging. She also views dance, like singing, as “heightening expression” in a play.

Alexa Doggett, a CCU theater student from Austin, Texas, plays an FBI agent in “Bigfoot.” She’s appreciated having access to its script writer, Adrien Royce, and Hollman, when they visited from New York for rehearsals earlier this month.

“Our relationship with Adrien helps us understand the play,” Doggett said, noting playwrights aren’t often seen and consulted when a troupe mounts a production. “She’s right there.”

Doggett said immersion into “Bigfoot” takes a view from the “ground up,” whereas plays usually scan “down to the surface.”

Mentioning the constant fluidity of the script, Doggett said one whole page had been removed on Jan. 5, with one song cut, but two others added.

“You can’t get too attached,” she said.

‘Not the boss of me’

As practice resumed, Royce looked at her laptop and scrolled the script, orated as Hartwig and music director Steven Gross worked on repeated placement of and steps by about eight people in a crew in one scene, as they took turns making passes and turns for the song.

The music and lines crescendoed, “You’re not the boss of me.”

“Move on ‘me,’ ” Hartwig guided the cast members.

During a pause, Hollman asked Royce about something in the scene.

After a quick conference, Royce asked the crew to press on.

“Do whatever feels OK now,” she said, “because I might even rewrite it from that.”

After some more run-throughs, Gross wrote some notes on his score for modifications , and he soon counted the beat off before the cast redid that portion of the number to his piano accompaniment.

“It needs to have that pop,” Hartwig said, emphazing some hard turns and breaks to the effect of “That’s it ... You’re done!”

Symbiosis in writing

Royce said the play and all its extensions through the various characters reflects a nine-month period of her life, with some “personal, seminal moments” from about 30 years ago, that stemmed from drama in a court case. As time passed, she concluded it was “a story I had to tell,” because “you can’t make up stuff like this.”

Writing the play also helped Royce to sort things out; hooking up with Hollmann, whom she met in the early 1990s, let her take that next step of bringing it to life on stage.

Stepping outside the door from the rehearsal as the music played, Hollmann and Royce delved into how the partnership for this play enriched them respectively as artisans, especially in watching this play approach finality.

Hollman brought up a converse reaction.

“I get to see my mistakes in a relatively pressure-free environment,” he said. “This is a good way to see what I’ve gotten wrong. ... This is a great proving ground.”

Hollman also spoke of seeing his compositions, written in solitary environs, undertake a whole new form on stage.

“Here with human beings singing songs,” he said, “you feel them with emotion.”

Seeing what might resonate with an audience also lets Hollman understand another part of his creative drive for each play, then and now, because he said some songs initially “come out as duds, and some surprise me.”

Royce said in penning the script, Hollman was her first audience, and they’ve gone back and forth for two years in making “Bigfoot” ready for its next big step, maybe toward Broadway.

“He’s very honest,” she said, “and that makes the creative process so exciting. You’re searching for that truth.”

Contact STEVE PALISIN at 444-1764.