Mark Krawczyk, actor (AEA), writer, director, teacher, & so forth... - blog

Coyote on A Fence Named One of the Best Boston Productions of 2017

1/1/2018

Photo by Tim Gurczak

Back in April I performed as death row inmate John Brennan in Bruce Graham's Coyote on A Fence with Hub Theatre Company of Boston. The production got a lot of great press and I felt like it was some of the strongest work I've done in my career to date. So it was a nice surprise to find out right at the end of the year that one of the pieces you worked on has been recognized by a local critic as a top production. David Greenham of The Arts Fuse singled us out as one of his notable productions for the whole year. Seeing as it was my second production in New England, and my first full production in Boston proper, I was extra proud to hear about the distinction.

In a year marked by racial and societal tensions brought on by an uprising of white supremacists emboldened by a seemingly sympathetic leader in The United States our play seemed so much more relevant. Ostensibly our show was about questions surrounding the validity of the death penalty, but really it seemed to be about so much more; questions of personal morality and egotism, how white supremacists recruit and encourage their members through incredibly personal means, and an allegory on how we all must come face-to-face with the way a society as a whole, and individuals hold one another to account for the worst crimes of humanity. It was incredibly moving to work on this material with this particular group of collaborators.

I loved working with Cameron Gosselin as Bobby Rayburn, Regine Vital as Shawna, Robert Benton Orzalli as Sam, and the rest of the production team:

Director - Daniel Bourque
Producer - Lauren Elias
Asst Stage Manager - Naomi Ibasitas
Set Design - Megan Kineen
Asst Set Design & Makeup - Tori Dowd
Props Design - Gabriel Graetz
Lighting Design - Jeremy Stein
Costume Design - Nancy Ishihara
Sound Design - Grant Furgiuele
Dialect Coach - Meredith Stypinski
Fight Director - Rebecca Miller
Poster Art - Cristhian Mancinas-Garcia

Thanks so much to the Hub Theatre Company of Boston, this incredible team of artistic collaborators, and David Greenham for listing us among the Best of 2017 in Boston.

Here's hoping 2018 brings more work this rich and fulfilling into my life!

My First Year at Boston Conservatory at Berklee...& Other Stuff

5/10/2017

In the last few days I’ve been told I’m in the running for a role I’d like at a theater where I’ve worked before, and that I’ll also be invited back to a theatre summer camp where I worked last year to teach and direct yet again this summer. It’s a nice problem to have, possibly needing to decide between two conflicting offers. Although it’s all work limited to the summer it makes me reflect on the last year, a year which has been incredibly busy, stressful, and successful.

A year ago this May I was working at The Winsor School, an all girls middle and high school in Boston, MA. I was teaching a class called “Scripted/Unscripted,” a sort of hybrid class that was meant to be a bridge between the worlds of improvisation and Shakespearean scene study…for seventh grade students…exceptional seventh grade students. The class was meant to prepare them for the next year when they would performing in another project I was working on at the time while there. I was simultaneously acting coaching the eighth grade girls in their dueling productions of Romeo & Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing. The eighth grade Shakespeare projects were a longstanding tradition at The Winsor School and I was told my work on them with the students as an acting coach was a great success. Talks were held to have me possibly stay on, teaching sixth graders, possibly directing one of the following year’s Shakespeare plays, among other duties and classes. However satisfying the work was there I felt the need to move on back to my own artistry, and working with students in higher education.

It was around this time last year that I made a choice between The Winsor School and the Contemporary Theater department at Boston Conservatory at Berklee. This would mean something of a dramatic pay cut, but seeing as schedules with both institutions conflicted, as did some of my internal desires for the evolution of my artistic career and pedagogy as an instructor, a difficult decision needed to be made. Despite being treated very well at Winsor, and really enjoying working with the student body and my colleagues, my desire to work with older students on deeper and more experimental material won the day…and the year. I made the decision to leave and try higher education for the first time in a few years.

However, first I would spend the summer of 2016 teaching an acting class and directing a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Walnut Hill School for The Arts summer theatre program in Natick, MA. The Walnut Hill Summer Theater Program’s unique combination of studio classes and professionally mounted stage productions allowed students to both develop their craft and apply their skills in performance, and gave me an opportunity to slowly ease back into working with an older group of students. During the five-week boarding program for students ages 13–17, each participant took daily classes in musical theater, dance, and acting (with myself or another colleague) and were cast in a play and a musical, as well as the ensemble of a second musical production. Class sizes were intentionally small, affording students individualized attention and a supportive environment in which to develop and strengthen their work. The intensive atmosphere of this program, and the deep relationships I built with many of the students, was the perfect primer for myself walking into a more extended, and much more intense atmosphere back in the heart of Boston.

My first week at Boston Conservatory at Berklee began with service to the institution rather than immediate classroom instruction, by leading an orientation workshop in devising techniques for incoming freshmen and transfer students during the week prior to the beginning of classes. It was a great opportunity to meet my new students, as well as show them (and refresh for myself) my style of teaching in ensemble devising. Boston Conservatory at Berklee’s contemporary theater program provides rigorous ensemble-based training and a safe, experimental space that will prepare students to be bold innovators for the 21st-century stage. This acting program was focused on collaborative and interdisciplinary creation. It featured esteemed faculty members with professional experience innovating theater initiatives and performance techniques. The contemporary theater program prepares students for successful acting careers, creating and managing their own theater company, or using theater to build community, all within the artistic rigor of conservatory training, combined with the intellectual stimulation of a strong academic core, and the creative challenges of working on an Ensemble Performance Laboratory, in order to prepare students to become bold, compassionate, and highly skilled voices of 21st-century theater. The reason I chose to join this program was clear. It allowed me to use my years of training in General Theatre at Towson University, Devising at Dartington College of Arts in the UK, realistic and classical acting at Southern Methodist University, and my many years of professional work and enrichment training all in one place. The reason to work there was clear.

My primary work began shortly thereafter in two separate classes. One was the fall semester acting class. I would eventually successfully lead sophomore students through two diverse acting courses focused on the tenets of A Practical Handbook for The Actor. In the fall I used its methodology as a means to teach students how to engage scenes in texts ranging from American realism (including the works of Tennessee Williams, Annie Baker, David Mamet, and others), Anton Chekhov’s known works (classwork that prompted me to write a brief post on Medium titled “Anton Chekhov Acting Scenes”),and 20th & 21st century absurdist, grotesque, and post-modern plays (which included works by Jean Genet, Samuel Beckett, Maria Irene Fornes, Tom Stoppard, and Caridad Svitch). This work would further develop in the spring, but I also had other duties of service that to spread the word of this wonderful program.

It was in early October of 2016 I had received a Faculty Development Grant of $750 to stage several devised theater workshops in the Baltimore, MD region at three prominent arts high schools; Baltimore School for The Arts, George Washington Carver Center for Arts & Technology, and Patapsco High School. I was able to quickly travel down to Maryland and reach many students in order to show them the possibilities of devised theatre as a means of expression, as well as perform some recruitment for the department and the institution. This would eventually produce interest from some incredible applicants, and future interest from some underclassmen who would be rising as seniors the following year.

There was also some work with friends and colleagues. My friend Ashley Risteen asked me to coach her for auditions at some point. She was auditioning for a world premier play by Israel Horovitz at Gloucester Stage called Man in Snow. We worked diligently together on crafting her audition and she would eventually land the role. I was incredibly proud of her…and I hope she and I can eventually find time to collaborate together on a production. We’re trying…we’re trying.

During the fall I was also approached by my friend and colleague Rob Cope about whether or not I would be interested in staged reading directing project. These conversations eventually led us to work together in October at Salem Theatre Company on a staged reading of Sam Shepard’s True West that I directed and featured Rob, along with other artists Will Simmons, James Heyward, Nancy Finn, and Kate Devorak. Outside of being a successful leap into one of the seminal texts of Sam Shepard’s oeuvre, the project also inspired me to work on two of his more esoteric and experimental texts that were collaborations with Joseph Chaikin; Tongues and Savage/Love. I brought these to my department head at Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and had these approved as texts I would direct the following spring during the freshman Ensemble Performance Laboratory (EPL), but I’ll come to that later as well.

During the fall 2016 semester I first successfully produced and facilitated the sophomore EPL, which was a collaboration with Jeremy Eaton and Jennifer Johnson, artists from Double Edge Theatre. The course was based in the rigorous and holistic training process devised by Double Edge and was meant to challenge students’ limits physically and imaginatively. Training was based on the expectation that all participants would meet and challenge their own limits, which were individually identified and explored. The extensive work on this project involved a great deal of studio experimentation, which I at times exclusively oversaw in coordination with the collaborating artists, as well as long-distance traveling and personally shuttling the students to both Springfield and Ashfield, MA in order to experience the Double Edge process in different contexts. In Springfield the students had the opportunity to both aid in the building and setting up of a large scale site specific touring site for the Double Edge performance of their piece, Once a Blue Moon. In Ashfield the students had the opportunity to have on-site, fully contextualized training and conversations with the Double Edge ensemble. It was during one of these conversations that I remember company member, and Co-Artistic Director, Carlos Uriona, stating that one of the main goals of their training was to get their actors to one specific point in their process and performance work, and that was a moment when composition, innovation, research, process, and performance all synced up and moved an actor “toward something truly experiential.” At the end of the semester, the students had that opportunity to “move toward the experiential” when they created original material individually as well as in a deep ensemble context. This work would eventually culminate in an exhibition of their work in process titled Masquerade, performed in December 2016. Each student identified a strong foundation of individual work that could be developed in the future. This work helped the students to another epoch in their training, and also spurred me to write. I approached HowlRound, an online theatre magazine, and they agreed to publish a blog article I wrote titled “Mutual Duality: Making the Work Matter with Double Edge Theatre at Boston Conservatory at Berklee” about the process, and during this time I also took thousands of photos documenting the process and experimentation, which would prove to be valuable visuals for the HowlRound piece, as well as other work.

It was around the time of the Masquerade exhibition that I was asked by the previous program director, Wanda Strukus, to take on the daunting challenge of becoming a member of the Contemporary Theater leadership team as it began its transition into a new era. Wanda left to take on a position as program director for the Boston Center for the Arts and I, and my colleagues David Gammons, Theresa Lang, and Sara Stackhouse oversaw various aspects of the Contemporary Theater department. During this time we as a team saw, and overcame, a great many challenges as we met on a regular weekly basis, and in one significant retreat, to discuss logistical issues, the philosophical future of the department, curriculum needs, and the possibilities to make it a richer and deeper program. Among the many duties I undertook to aid this all in happening was in recruitment and building the new incoming freshman class, but first, my personal artistry needed to be given room to develop as well…and debated within myself.

During the winter break I auditioned for a production that greatly interested me intellectually, and cut right into the heart of my passion for theatre history study. Commonwealth Shakespeare Company auditioned me for a world premiere production of Our American Hamlet, a play about the life of Edwin Booth and his family. I was eventually offered the prominent role of his friend, and sometime lover, Adam Badeau. As thrilled as I was the rehearsal schedule conflicted with my newly offered role at Boston Conservatory at Berklee and I would have to, much to my personal chagrin, turn down the role. This was heartbreaking, but such decisions are part and parcel in the life of an artist/educator…especially an artist who needs a day job in the arts to survive. However, another role very quickly presented itself at Hub Theatre Company of Boston as John Brennan in a production of Coyote on A Fence by Bruce Graham. I worked with an incredible group of people on this critically acclaimed production that rehearsed throughout March, and performed in March into April, and I felt like I went on to do some of the best acting work of my entire career. As the old adage goes, when it rains it pours, and what else poured in to my life at the same as all of this was yet another offer to teach on Saturday mornings during another series of teaching workshops at Walnut Hill School for The Arts during spring 2017. I decided to accept to offer…because, hey, three jobs at once is just how I roll…especially if they involve driving great distances across an entire metropolitan area, and to other states.

Along with the previously mentioned outreach I had done in the Baltimore region, I also attended and administered the auditions in both Chicago and Boston along with my colleagues. During the workshops, auditions, and subsequent months I was able to help successfully bring in the largest freshman class in the history of the Contemporary Theater department with a diverse, healthy, and robust cohort of 14. I was able to to do this by personally interviewing candidates, forming personal relationships with many of them in many phone conversations, coffee dates, and Skype chats. As it stands now, I have personally auditioned every single one of our incoming freshman students, and made additional personal recruitment efforts with many of them. All in all I believe my efforts, even with those students who chose for various reasons not to attend, have increased the reputation of the Contemporary Theater department at Boston Conservatory at Berklee in terms of quality of its artistry and the welcoming nature of its community.

However, the greatest contribution one could make to recruitment is in the quality of work at the conservatory proper and the artistry present in the everyday studio work. This continued in the spring 2017 semester with my work beginning in the next level of sophomore acting study. Much of this course drew on the practical studies from Acting 3 and deepened those skills. These included technique and practice of scene study: analyzing a script, rehearsing a scene, playing an action, and learning to apply these techniques into Contemporary Theatre processes and performances. Whereas the previous course strictly adhered to using these techniques in order to find the playwright’s specific intentions, this course used them as a foundation to build toward the innovative. This course fostered a culture of experimentation that looked for possibilities beyond the playwright’s intentions. Individual and group work included new additions with theoretical and practical investigation, additional research and dramaturgy beyond the world of any performative text (i.e. play), as well as audience/performer concerns and connections. We primarily worked from such compositionally challenging texts as Ivan Vyrypaev’s Oxygen and Chuck Mee’s bobrauschenbergamerica.

Another class I led was one called “Auto Cours.” Auto Cours, by definition, means “self-cours” or “one’s own work” – that is to say, it is space where the students teach themselves with feedback and observation from the faculty/facilitator. Auto Cours is designed to be self-teaching through structured, weekly composition assignments that include solo work, duets, small groups, full-groups, and structured improvisations. This self-teaching includes contending with the challenges and realities of group work without the daily guidance of an instructor, as well as the challenges and self-discipline of of creating and adhering to a rehearsal schedule. Each week, the facilitator will provide a prompt and guidelines for the composition. Occasionally, the facilitator may use part of the Tuesday session to teach or model a specific compositional technique or strategy. I would structure this particular section of Auto Cours to guide students toward self-creating work meant to create a large scale outdoor happening.

My third and final class I taught during the spring semester was the Freshman EPL. Technically I was serving as a “director” of a production of Tongues and Savage/Love, but I was also mentoring the students in how to conduct script analysis, develop rehearsal calendars for separate devising sessions away from my guidance, learning and implementing multiple tools from various practitioners in how to devise one’s own material, and how to ultimately develop the interpersonal and professional skills necessary for driving creative process as an ensemble. My role on this project was not simply limited to being the teacher and director. During this process I performed the multiple tasks of classroom instructor, director, and producer, but not only this production. I was also overseeing the production needs of the sophomore Ensemble Performance Laboratory production of Tales from The Sandman. For both I sought out, and found, professional artists and technicians to work with the students to reinforce their exposure to a professional artistic atmosphere. For Tongues & Savage/Love I brought in Bridget Anderson, a professional stage manager I had previously collaborated with at Walnut Hill School for The Arts the previous summer (and I’ll ALWAYS highly recommend her to everyone I meet), and Akili Jamal Haynes, a fantastic professional accompanist who has worked with the dance department and other colleagues at Boston Conservatory at Berklee. Both artists offered a rich and diverse experience from which the students could learn, and with whom they could eventually effectively collaborate. The culminating performance of Tongues & Savage/Love was chosen as the “Accepted Students Day” featured event for the Contemporary Theater department and successfully convinced several students directly to join our department. Yeah, sure, this made me proud, but the joy in their eyes, and their open statements that they finally began to see the opportunities of their own artistry in this field made me extremely proud.

Personally overseeing the hiring and contracting of each individual member of the support team on both productions, as well as several production meetings for the projects was very daunting…and at this point exhausting. I taught steadily all semester during the days, but during the waning weeks of the semester I went from acting in a professional production of Coyote on a Fence, to directing a Tongues & Savage/Love in tech week a week after the previous closing, and then finishing my producing duties after that closing in overseeing the final details of Tales from The Sandman. It was truly exhausting…and there was still wrapping up the final performances of the monologues at Walnut Hill School for The Arts and Boston Conservatory at Berklee final class project almost simultaneously.

I might not schedule things this way again in the future.

Other service to the department included photographing the entirety of the Double Edge Theatre process and other workshops as well, providing those photographic materials to the social media campaigns meant to advertise the BFA in Contemporary Theater, and informally advising current students in office hour meetings. I even made meaningful connections with students in the Musical Theater department during the year. I attended their MainStage performances, as well as an individual production of This Is Our Youth directed by a junior named Jackie Chylinski that was staged in a private apartment just off campus. It began a great relationship with student that became a great means of reaching out into the greater Boston Conservatory at Berklee community. This relationship also aided when I attended several faculty meetings, and a spirited Student Forum meeting to discuss the future philosophy of the conservatory as a whole. That relationship also helped me learn about the general culture of the Musical Theater students and helped me when I and my colleague Theresa Lang were asked to organize The Ghostlight Project event at the beginning of the spring 2017 semester. It absolutely aided in how to do outreach to get students to attend that event. Another service I provided was inadvertent, but I welcomed the use of my professional acting career as both a means for student instruction and recruitment. The leading role I performed in that critically acclaimed production of Coyote on A Fence with Hub Theatre Company of Boston was attended by many of my students, and several prospective students, which engaged both groups in conversations about the work and its relation to our artistic work in the department.

In the end it seemed all of my efforts had led to an artistic and professional home, one where I could use my prowess as an artist and educator to really reach out to and help develop students, while still developing myself as an artist. My efforts seemed rewarded when I went through an extensive ranking process and was awarded the rank of Associate Professor for the 2017-2018 year. I was thrilled and thought this achievement would be the height of my honors at Boston Conservatory at Berklee. However, I would be even more honored as all of my efforts were rewarded by the Student Government and Student Affairs staff when I was formally nominated for an Outstanding Theater Faculty of The Year award. Although the award would go to my well deserving colleague Christopher James Webb, I felt incredibly appreciated. Later, I would apply for, and be rewarded by Berklee with a Faculty Development Grant for $2000 in order to help in furthering my work in relation to Double Edge Theatre and experimental theatre work.

In the end I’m still auditioning for both film and theatre, still figuring out what my next work will be as an independent artist/actor/director/deviser, holding some end of the year academic meetings, grading, thinking, breathing, trying to find time to contemplate my own desires amidst all of this, but it’s been an incredibly rewarding year. I have some prospective offers to possibly decide between for the summer, callbacks for other auditions, and possibilities to discuss for the next year. I also became incredibly lucky when Katelyn Dix agreed to marry me last summer when we visited Montreal, Canada and we’re planning another trip to Quebec City at some point this summer…and our wedding in Massachusetts in November. Life is nuts. I don’t know if I got everything in here. I tried not writing too much about personal stuff because I really needed to do a professional assessment of the year. As rich as all of that was I hope it calms down a bit so I can enjoy my life with Katelyn,…and whatever else could possibly be ahead. I miss my family and a lot of my friends. I ultimately hope life allows for a successful career, great relationships with family, friends, loved ones, colleagues, and students alike, but I know life makes sharp cuts sometimes that just can’t be controlled.

A good friend of mine, Josef Ceralde, passed away a few months ago in the midst of all this. He was 36 years old. He used to say to me, “Marky…I was born on borrowed time. I don’t want to waste a second of this without being grateful…especially when I don’t have extra time to give away.” I miss him. He and I were making plans for him to come up and see my performance in Coyote on a Fence when he died on a Saturday afternoon after the first of two days of auditions in Boston. All of this madness was going on, wouldn’t stop, couldn’t stop…and he just passed. I knew he would die at some point from the time we became friends at 14. He had a heart transplant at a young age, kidney failure later, and dialysis in his waning years. Although I was a Polish-American son of immigrants, and he was Filipino-American son of immigrants, we both spoke the same depressed language of first generation Catholic kids in the States trying to perpetually figure out just who the hell we were and what we were doing. If there’s one thing I regret in all of this crazy year it’s not having one last chance to see him, but I know he wouldn’t want me to beat myself up for that. We both drove ourselves hard. He worked himself through a graduate degree in Public Policy, and got it, even when he knew he was close to death. I work myself this way missing special days here and there, and final days with a friend. I guess we both live on the same philosophy and it’s why we were friends and hard workers.

We live on borrowed time…and we ain’t got the time to worry about when the lender is taking it back.

Thanks for reading.

Dance on Bones by Dave White

12/16/2015

On December 6, 2015 I directed a staged reading of Dave White's fantastic play, Dance on Bones. This is a very lyrical and eccentric piece that on the surface is about how people smuggled jazz records into the old Soviet Union, which was a method of etching the records into X-rays that could easily get past border guards...hence the title.

A bit of the promotional copy I used for the show might give a better idea of what the show is about:

Sea levels are rising, trees are being ravaged, and jazz may be the only thing that can save our humanity from the Man of Steel. Dance on Bones is inspired by and structured around jazz music, riffing off of the folklore of the jazz scenes in St. Petersburg, Russia and New Orleans, Louisiana; creation myths; flooding cities; and the current environmental circumstances washing away our shores.

The staged reading was performed at Charlestown Working Theater in Boston as part of its Resident Lab series.

I'm looking forward to hopefully taking this show further along in the process and seeing what other opportunities spring up from the process of engaging this text.

What follows are several clips from our reading, and I think they give a good idea of what the experience was like of watching our presentation. The wonderful actors you'll see in these videos are Jamileh Alexandra, Avery Nelson Barger, and Ashley Risteen.

OXYGEN Remount Press

4/7/2013

The remount of Ivan Vyrypaev's Oxygen with Taffety Punk has been going very well. We (re)opened this weekend after nearly a full year away from the show in production, and have already received some really great responses and press!

Not bad since we only just stepped back into our performance space the week of performance, and only had two and 1/2 days (roughly 15 or so total hours actually) to have tech and dress rehearsals. Marcus Kyd, the artistic director of Taffety Punk, after the opening said to us, "It may have felt like you were throwing together a college production at the last minute, but you guys did it well!" To give you an idea of what he meant by that comment, we had to run the show THREE times on Friday. The first was a general tech run of the show to make sure that all the cues were in place and if any new cues (lighting and sound) had to be written into the show. The second was a full run of the show from beginning to end without stopping (which we hadn't been able to do all week), and then the third time was our opening night performance. Those are the realities of working in the modern theatre when all one has is a shoestring budget and limited access to space.

Then we did the show twice on Saturday, and believe me we noticed at the end of the evening performance that we had worked through the show five times in two days. We earned our day off today.

However, we did pull it together, and the press coverage so far has been good!

First off, although not a Russian newsletter, we got a mention on the Yahoo Group Polish Global Village from a chance encounter me and Esther Williamson (one of the other actors in Oxygen) had with Marcin Zmudzki, who maintains the group's site. If you click on the following link, "See Mark Krawczyk in the Taffety Punk Theater production of Oxygen at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop" you can read what he wrote about our unexpected Eastern European, DC-based meeting.

We had a great feature story written on the show in The Washington Post for their weekend guide, which can be found by clicking on the following link: "Taffety Punk takes on 'Oxygen'".

Some critics came this weekend and have offered positive reviews of the show. Click on the following links for those stories:

"BWW Reviews: Taffety Punk Presents Innovative OXYGEN" from BroadwayWorld.com

"Theatre Review: 'Oxygen' by Taffety Punk at Capital Hill Arts Workshop" from MD Theatre Guide.

Still, our best review has to be from The Washington Post for last year's run: "Taffety Punk Theatre's 'Oxygen' packs a wallop on Russian morality."

I saw another critic scribbling notes at last night's performance, so there are most likely more articles on the way. If you're interested in reading other responses to Oxygen I compiled all the responses to last year's run here: "Oxygen, Oxygen, Oxygen..." That includes our great review from The Washington Post and other really great responses to the show.

Yes, this is all shameless self-promotion, but all of us, me, the other actors in the piece, Esther Williamson and Danny Crane, our co-directors, Lise Bruneau & Chris Curtis, artistic director Marcus Kyd, our designers Peter Adams, Scott Hammar, & Brittany Diliberto, our assistant director Kelsey Mesa, and our stage manager Coral Elizabeth Smith, are all extremely proud of our work on this unique and provocative show.

Also, the show features NEW music, composed and performed exclusively for our show, by DC based bands The Caribbean, E.D. Sedgwick, Electric Blanketland, The Gena Rowlands Band, The Inexhaustible Chalice, and Jupiter Rex. And there are two ways to hear the music from our show. You can buy the full-length LP soundtrack to Oxygen by going to our soundtrack website, or experience it live with us as we do while performing it.

You can visit the Taffety Punk website for tickets. Please venture to the Eastern Market area of Washington DC and share an evening with all of us, our work, and an experience you won't forget!

Three Announcements

3/10/2013

So, here are three announcements:

1) OXYGEN is being remounted with Taffety Punk and plays April 5 through 26th. I posted an event link for that. Please check it out.

2) I'm directing THE CHILDREN'S HOUR at Carver Center for Arts and Technology in Towson, MD, and that runs May 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 10th, and 11th. I'll post more details about that in the weeks to come. Please come if you get a chance.

3) I just signed some funny looking papers this weekend making it official that I'm the Executive Director of this thing called M.Y. Actors Society, which I started with a person I worked with a few years ago. It's an organization based in Montgomery County, Maryland that gives interested young people an exposure to what it's really like to be an actor/theatre practitioner. I'm looking for interested theatre people to host workshops in acting, stage combat, dance, movement, etc. I'll be contacting people in the weeks to come, but also will be taking submissions from interested parties.

4) If for some reason I haven't replied to your emails, or texts, or arrows shot at my head, I'm sorry. I have been a bit busy with teaching and this stuff. I WILL get back to you.

OXYGEN Remount

3/10/2013

OXYGEN, by Ivan Vyrypaev

Back by popular demand, this unique play, set in modern-day Russia, is essentially a live concept album; the audience is guided through the evening by an onstage DJ. There are ten tracks — scenes that are constructed like prose songs.

With Esther Williamson, Mark Krawczyk, and Dan Crane as the DJ.

Directed by Lise Bruneau and Chris Curtis

With original music by:
E. D. Sedgwick
The Caribbean
The Gena Rowlands Band
Jupiter Rex
Electric Blanketland

Opening night is also a record release party! Y’all come.

Performed at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop
545 7th Street SE WDC 20003

April 5 — 26, 2013
Wed — Sat at 7:30 pm, Sat matinees at 2:00pm

Tickets $15, or $25 for your ticket and a 10-song album
Reserve here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/265839

Info: http://www.taffetypunk.com/

Miriam's Kitchen & Why Theatre Matters

2/15/2013

So I know I don't post on here often, but there is a great recent post to the theatreWashington website about an organization I came in contact with late last year that I felt I needed to share with all of you.

Miriam's Kitchen is a soup kitchen that operates in Washington DC catering to people experiencing homelessness...and looking for a way to experience the arts. I met with them through my experiences of performing in Our Class at Theater J in the Fall of 2012. Sasha Olinick and I were brought to Miriam's Kitchen by Grace Overbeke, an employee at Theater J, to answer questions about our production, our characters, our experiences as actors, etc. I could write a lot about the experience of meeting these people, but I will simply state that it was a humbling and joyful experience.

A member of Miriam's Kitchen has written the blog I mentioned at the top of this blog post. It affirms the power of such organizations as Miriam's Kitchen, and the power of theatre and art. Please click on the following link to read about it: theatreWashington - "Why Theatre Matters: Because We Matter"

Thanks!

Gary Oldman on Acting

6/20/2012

This video pretty much makes up my entire personal manifesto on what I think acting is, and what it takes to be a real actor...as observed by someone who has seen random celebrity athletes try to act in films.

Albee & Me

6/20/2012

I came upon a link to an article on a friend's Facebook site today. It's about Edward Albee and how he angered a translator named Joan Sellent. The article is called "Edward Albee: How to piss off a translator" by Ellie Robins on the Melville House Books website.

I posted a response to my friend's link, which I also posted as a response to the article, and I also felt like sharing it here. It's a short, true story about an interaction I had with Edward Albee back in 2003 that also states, briefly, my thoughts about how he treated this, and other, translators.

Enjoy!

- SDM

I call total B.S.! And...maybe partial responsibility for this.

I was in grad school at Southern Methodist University in 2003 when Edward Albee had come to our campus to accept an award from The Meadows School for the Arts. The school had planned several days of workshops and talks with Albee in order to give the students a chance to have time to learn something from America's greatest living playwrights. During one such meeting Albee said to an assembly of all of the students from the theatre department, "I make sure ALL of the major premieres of ALL of my plays are done EXACTLY as I wrote them to the word, to the letter, and to the punctuation. There has never been a premiere done of one of my plays for which I didn't do this." Shortly after that statement he opened up the assembly to questions.

I was the first one to raise my hand and asked, "Do you speak German?"

Albee looked confused and said, "What...?"

I repeated the question and added, "I'm just curious. Do you speak German?"

He said, "No. What does that have to do with anything?"

"You don't?" I said.

Albee repeated, "No. I just said that."

Then I said, "Well, then I'm confused."

"About what?" Albee said, looking somewhat annoyed with me.

"Well," I said, "didn't your first play, THE ZOO STORY, originally premiere in Berlin, Germany?"

There was a long silence. Albee stared at me (or what felt like THROUGH me) and said, "Yes. Yes it did."

I asked, "Was it performed in an English language theatre?"

Albee answered, "No. No it wasn't."

So then I asked, "Did you go through it line-by-line with someone?"

"No. No I didn't." Albee replied.

Finally I asked, "So what did you do?"

There was a long pause during which it seemed like Albee considered his answer and said, "I just trusted my translator and director."

Albee answered questions for the rest of that first assembly that weekend, but he kept on glancing (actually...GLARING) back at me. I think I angered him with my cheeky line of questioning. There was then a lunch arranged for the whole student body of the theatre department in honor of Mr. Albee.

Friends of mine in the department came up to me and said things like, "You have got some nerve! Where did you come up with that question?!"

I answered to one, who later became a close friend, "Well, I once dated a translator. She was really adamant about what her work meant to her, what went into it, etc. and felt that playwrights sometimes ignored her work and didn't honor it. I felt like he wasn't doing that."

I was clearly gloating...maybe a little too loudly.

It was a buffet style lunch when one of my teachers (I'll call that person R.B. here) said, "Maybe you want to sit over here, Mark?" This professor escorted me to a table that felt like it was one the other side of the room away from everyone else, and, most of all, away from Albee.

"Great," I thought, "I've been exiled! I should have kept my mouth shut, I guess..."

Shortly after that, R.B. escorted Albee to the same circular table where I was seated and sat him directly across from me. R.B looked at me, lightly smiled, and then walked away. Albee and I caught eyes for a second, looked away from each other and proceeded to eat our lunch. Other students quickly swarmed in to sit at the same table and started launching questions at him about career, how he liked Dallas, his writing process, etc.

One of my colleagues from my grad class, in the middle of one of her questions, for some reason, stopped and said, "How rude of me. I keep talking and asking questions." She looked at me and said, "Mark, do you have any additional questions for Mr. Albee?"

There was a long silence during which all those seated at this circular table turned to me and waited for what I would say. I also remember Albee carefully putting down his silverware in a very determined fashion and staring at me as I said, "Yeah...uh...can you pass the rolls?" He reached over to the rolls, which were in a basket on his side of the table, passed them to someone to his right, who then passed them to me. I said, "Thank you." Albee continued staring at me, pressed his lips together and just nodded a few times in silence. I said nothing else and the other students started firing questions at him again.

My friend who turned the questioning over to me came up to me immediately after lunch and said, "'Can you pass the rolls?!' That's all you could think to ask?!"

I said, "What? They were on his side of the table. How else was I supposed to get them? I'm also fairly sure he wanted to kill me for my other question."

If I didn't drive Albee to this policy of totally disrespecting a translator, then I am certain I was fairly instrumental in cementing it in his mind as a good policy to shut-up young, impertinent scamps like myself.

Oxygen, Oxygen, Oxygen...

5/15/2012

I have been delinquent in posting onto this site, but there is much to post about my current show, Oxygen, which closes this week at Taffety Punk. We've had some great reviews, so far, from three different publications. Please check out the reviews from the following sites to get an idea of what the show is about.

The Washington Post

The Pink Line (a blog about DC arts and culture)

DC Theatre Scene

We had some low numbers in audiences during the first week and so I decided to write up some blogs about the feedback from individuals about the show (in order to hopefully drum up some interest), most of which has been overwhelmingly positive. You can find those blogs, as well as a blog about WHY I wanted to do the show in the first place at the following links:

FIRST REACTIONS TO OXYGEN

MORE RESPONSES TO OXYGEN...& MORE!

Why Oxygen?

Oxygen by Ivan Vyrypaev...

I also did an interview with a web publication called view of the arts a while back where I mentioned some more information about my work on the language of Oxygen, as well as some of my teaching and acting work in general. That link can be found here:

In Conversation with Mark Krawczyk

Finally, going into our last week of Oxygen, I was informed late last night that our production has been chosen by the Washington Area Performing Arts Video Archive (WAPAVA) to be significant and important enough to be filmed and archived. They'll be filming this Thursday night. It's been one hell of a 4 month rehearsal process for this one, and a short performance process. Maybe this will lead to more performances of Oxygen in the future. Maybe not. In either case it's been an incredible ride. Please come check us out during our final week of performances. We close on May 19th.

Go to www.taffetypunk.com for ticket information and purchases...or click on the link at the beginning of this blog.

- MK