Peter Zinn

Peter Zinn is no stranger to Retro Productions, having helmed their incarnation of Holy Days and Women and War. He was kind enough to answer a couple of questions regarding his past, his upcoming plans and what it’s been like to be directing Michael Frayn’s Benefactors, which you can still catch tonight at the Spoon Theatre.

How do you use collaboration in your directing process?

Collaboration with the actors is key when developing the characters early in the process.  I rely heavily on them to give me as many choices and take as many suggestions as I can possibly give them.   The truth inside each actor is unique to that actor – my job is to pull out that specific truth inside them that is going to fuel that specific character.
You’ve worked with Steppenwolf Theatre Company as a performer in the past. What do you think differentiates them from New York theatre companies?

I think they embody what’s so great about Chicago theatre.  Companies can take larger risks in Chicago because there just aren’t the major financial hurdles one has to to deal with in New York.  Chicago has a large community of theatre artists who can afford to live in Chicago on a significantly lower cost of living.  Equity rules are far more lenient in Chicago than New York so producers don’t have to risk as much money; space, marketing, etc. is cheaper.  All of this enables a richer soil for new innovative work that can veer away from the commercial aspects.  Steppenwolf embraced this in their early days and now they are one of the most important theatre companies in the world bringing their stuff to Broadway and The West End on a regular basis.

Your one-act play Waiting to Land recently received a production. What was that like?

It was great!  It was the first play I ever had produced and it was a thrilling experience to see it on the wonderful HB Playwrights Foundation Theatre Stage.  The one act eventually led to a full length version called Rumspringa that ran off-Broadway at Bleecker Street Theatre.

Matthew Semler and Heather E. Cunningham in Benefactors | photo by Alisha Spielmann

What can you tell us about Benefactors?

It’s a play about two smart London couples who are emotionally stifled.  Their relationships are diseased and damaged from within and are almost in complete disrepair (which always makes for an interesting story).  They fight to heal themselves and find a natural order and an alpha leader in their dysfunctional modern tribe - it’s a fascinating struggle.

What’s next on your agenda?

I’m directing Bill Quigley and C.S. Drury’s play Found at HB Playwrights Foundation Theatre.  I’ve directed a few plays by this incredible writing team and I’m very excited to working with them again.  After that, I start directing a workshop production of The Third Miracle by Richard Vetere at The Gene Frankel Theatre.  Richard wrote the screenplay by the same title starring Ed Harris and Anne Heche and this will be the first stage version of the story.

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Related Posts:

• Celebrating “Holy Days”
• Desk Set: Back Then, The Future Was Now
• Entrevista: Heather Cunningham Of Retro Productions

We’re going to start this review off with a quiz to illustrate a point.  What’s the title of the poem that begins “By The Shores Of Gitche Gumee?” Go ahead, I’ll wait while you find out for me.

Back so soon?  And your answer?  That’s right.  “The Song of Hiawatha” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  And just about how long did it take you to find out the answer?  Well, if you were like me you typed the title into Google, hit “search” and in .29 seconds (that’s literally the blink of an eye) not one, not two but 27,800 results were at your finger tips.  You could have the text of the poem itself, the Wikipedia entry that gives the history of the poem, the 1996 novel by Tama Janowitz, a link to amazon.com where you can buy the Janowitz book if you wanted to, or some videos from YouTube.

What in the world did we we do before Google?  Easy.  Before Google there were Gals . . . or more precisely there was The Desk Set: Bunny Watson, head librarian of the reference department at the International Broadcasting Company, and her team of librarians.  These gals were equipped with an encyclopedic knowledge of everything from batting averages to the names of Santa’s reindeer.  And they’d give it to you in . . . well . . . the blink of an eye.

Kristen Vaughan (Bunny Watson)

Like all the plays put on by Retro Productions, The Desk Set (written by William Marchant and directed by Tim Errickson) has solid roots in the past.  While the more famous incarnation may be the movie with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, this production stays true to the original which does not come off as a Hepburn/Tracy vehicle centering on their taut love connection.  Rather, this play focuses more on the story of a bustling research department whose staff uses their wits, copious amounts of library books, and their winning personalities to field whatever questions are tossed at them during the course of their fast and furious workday.  They do it with a smile that makes it all seem easy.

The department is run by Bunny (Kristen Vaughan) whose superior intelligence and gentle zingers keep the wheels of the department turning year after year, one frantic day after another. Under her is the wise-cracking Peg Costello (Heather E. Cunningham) who breezily triumphs over the most difficult of brain twisters with a sly wink and an arched brow.  Ruthie Saylor (Alisha Spielmann) and Sadel Meyer (Aubrie Therrien) round out the desk set; as devoted to their leader as they are to setting the record straight and producing the correct answer no matter how much research it takes.

Heather E. Cunningham (Peg Costello)

Enter Richard Sumner (Matthew Trumbull),  a “methods engineer” and nephew of the big boss of the company.  He just recently installed a new “mechanical brain” in the accounting department saving the company time and thus money,  forcing the old-timers to accept the inevitable march of progress.  Mr. Sumner is now assigned to assess the possibility of installing a second mechanical brain in the research department. It’s a possibility that leaves the desk set rattled and defensive.

Kristen Vaughan’s Bunny is full of intelligence and fire.  She masters the difficult dialogue with style and ease, completely convincing you that she loves this job and would give her life for it.  Heather Cunningham does a number on the character of Peg – expanding her from a one-note good time gal into someone who runs deeper and truer.  Peg is brassy and bold, but Cunningham will every so slightly allow her vulnerability to peek through, and it’s at that moment when you fall in love with her.  Alisha Spielmann’s Ruthie is the new girl around the office, whose excitement about learning all there is to being a great researcher like Bunny is doused by the possibility of being downsized by Sumner’s machine.  Spielmann gives Ruthie that innocence we all had at our first job, that “I’ll do anything” spirit, that youthful earnestness that we all may remember, and she does so without making Ruthie a pushover or childish.   Matthew Trumbull as Mr. Sumner epitmizes the techy who comes into a new office wanting to “help everyone” but really wanting to “change everything” and naively believes there are not going to be any hard feelings as he does so.  Bunny’s long time non-fiance Abe Cuttler (Ric Sechrest) does a great job at portraying the typical 50′s old boys network – he’s part of that middle manager club who slowly makes his way up the ladder by trying to create Progress without actually progressing the company forward at all.

Matthew Trumbull (Richard Sumner)

The set (designed byJack and Rebecca Cunningham) is amazing, right down to the letter (or, should I say, the letter opener).  With props designed by Heather Cunningham and Casandera M. J. Lollar the ambiance is almost like another character of the play.  The texture of the wood and the old fashioned (though cutting edge at the time) office implements  take us back to the energetic time when  the future was screaming toward us like a Boeing 707.  The beauty of this play is that it captures the excitement of all the technological changes of the times, but in such a retro way that this progressive play of the 50′s becomes a thrilling example of Steam Punk.  And unlike Paul Bunyan’s or John Henry’s tragic tale of legends of past ages succumbing  to the inevitable tide of progress, the tone of The Desk Set has the flavor of a romantic comedy and therefore is able to be a more thoughtful story of how The Future can learn from The Past.  And, giggle all you want at the Mechanical Brain, but we’re finding these jumps of progress happening ever faster as Twitter and  smartphones now make our world of just 10 years ago look old fashioned.  We can take away a lot from this time capsule of a play as we all learn to adapt to the changes in the world around us.

So come and see what you can learn about your future by taking a vivd and exciting glimpse at the past  and The Desk Set.

Related Posts:

• Entrevista: Heather Cunningham Of Retro Productions
• The Thrill Of Creation – “Frankenstein With Mary Shelley” | “Gabriel”
• Entrevista: Peter Zinn Director Of Benefactors
• Macbeth – Behind Every Good Man . . .
• Celebrating “Holy Days”

Retro Productions’ latest show, Holy Days (Written by Sally Nemeth and directed by Peter Zinn) comes off as deceptively simply until you’ve sat with it a while.  It’s been several days since I’ve seen it and I find that I’m haunted by the seemingly stark yet surprisingly deep performances by Heather E. Cunningham (Rosie), Joe Forbrich (Gant), Lowell Byers (Will) and Casandera M.J. Lollar (Molly).

Holy Days begins with a metaphor, one which shifts the more you think about it.  At the opening of the play, Rosie addresses the audience with an empty gaze and a lilt-less voice to explain how she had once seen her garden full of daffodils which were in danger of being covered in frost; she gathered as many as she could into her arms, thinking she’d taken more than enough to fill all the vessels she had in the house.  But when she was able to arrange them, they barely filled one pitcher.  She went out to take more, but the remaining flowers were dried up … gone.

Certainly, since Holy Days takes place during the Great Depression in the Dust Bowl, one can make the obvious connection that this story is an analogy for the way life just dried up on the plains, how colors faded and

Casandera M. J. Lollar and Joe Forbrich (photo by Jordana Zeldin)

hope left.  However, sit with this image for a while and it grows deeper – the idea becomes one of need.  Needing to hoard the good moments, feeling almost overwhelmed by them when you have them, thinking you’ve got more life, love, goodness, and prosperity than you can handle, only to find it’s barely enough … and when you move to get another shot at happiness you find the prospects have all dried up.

Holy Days is also a metaphor for death, mourning and rebirth, but mostly it’s about the in-between … the waiting.  For those who know their Christian calendar, these particular holy days in the play refer to Good Friday – the day Christ died, Holy Saturday, the day he was deeply missed and strongly mourned, and Easter Sunday, they day he rose and restored hope and faith.  When we come upon Rosie, her husband Gant, his brother Will, and Will’s wife Molly, they seem to be stuck (metaphorically) in the mournful day of Holy Saturday even as they are literally preparing for Easter.  No doubt their Good Friday has past – clues are passed along thought the ways of their daily life as well as things that are hinted at – yes, the Great Depression has hit, but this family has lost a lot more.   And no doubt their Easter Sunday is coming – Molly is pregnant and full of eager anticipation to start her life; she’s annoyed by anything that smacks of hurt and detachment … she wants fun, and renewal, and affirmation.  And so, this family wallows in this never ending day of waiting … full of mourning for the death they’ve seen in all its forms, and bowed with diminishment … doing what they can to figure out how to keep themselves together even if the only way to accomplish that is through separation.

Heather Cunningham and Joe Forbrich (photo by Jordana Zeldin)

Each of the four characters is strongly carved out; they have all lived through the same dark episode but represent four different stages of acceptance.  Heather E. Cunningham’s Rosie is suffering deeply from a loss which has taken her hope and her heart, but there are still moments of anger in her, and where there’s anger there’s at least a spark of life.  She tightly wraps her depression around her as if it were the ratty sweater she can’t keep from pulling closer and closer.  Joe Forbrich’s Gant is the strong and silent type, he suffers as deeply as his wife, but he’s tasked as “the man” and so he must bear the burden of tending to the farm, looking for work in order to pay the mortgage, and resolutely abiding by the unwritten rules of the times that if going off to build a bridge for three years is what you must do to keep your family together, then you do it without hesitation.  It’s in the quite moments that he drowns his sorrows in liquor and lets the alcohol dull his ache. Casandera M.J. Lollar’s Molly is desperate to cast off these depressing relatives; she’s been part of the tragedies from a distance, and even her closing speech underlines the fact that she is unwilling to give over to this oppressive social and economical environment.  A gesture as simple as needing to color Easter eggs perfectly pinpoints how she must look for the promise of tomorrow.  Unfortunately, it leads to an almost cruel attitude toward her sister-in-law that presents itself in between otherwise mundane moments like baking a pie or milking the cow.  Finally, Lowell Byers’ Will represents youth, energy and hope.  He’s strong, both in character as well as build, and he’s been lucky enough to suffer less than his brother, even while he steadfastly sticks by him.  However, he does suffer for his brother, for the loss and the under-expressed sorrow … he even sheds tears of his own.  But ultimately he’s been spared and that gives him something that’s in short supply around the farm –optimism.  Subtle, but present optimism.

With an amazingly detailed set by  Jack and Rebecca Cunningham and Justin Sturges, and property design by Heather E. Cunningham and Casandera M. J. Lollar the world of this family rises up around you and you can feel the dust come in on the wind every time the door is opened.  While Holy Days could never be called a happy story, it most certainly is a beautiful one, filled with all the places the human spirit goes when facing down its greatest enemy: misfortune.

For an in-depth conversation with Heather Cunningham where she discussed this play, her role as Rosie, and more about her life in the theatre, check out Antonio Minino’s great interview which ran a few weeks ago.

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Related Posts:

• Entrevista: Heather Cunningham Of Retro Productions
• Entrevista: Peter Zinn Director Of Benefactors
• “Beautiful Thing” – The Classics Never Age
• Desk Set: Back Then, The Future Was Now
• Eli and Cheryl Jump … Look After You (Fringe Festival 2009)