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Sam Roberts: It’s
been a constant struggle. It’s
a fifteen hundred page book, you know, which I’m trying to do in a
one hundred page play. It’s
still perhaps a touch longer than I wish it was. There’s a lot of decisions to be made, like what parts do
you cut out – what parts do you leave in . . . how do you maintain
the central integrity of the novel while still adapting it and
finding a way to tell the story the best way you can.
Sam Roberts:
It’s a really gorgeous theatre. It’s the first time we’ve worked there.
It’s a beautiful 99 seat stage with a nice tall grid and a
wide stage, plus a backstage area – good technical specs. We’ve worked in a slightly bigger venue in Santa Monica
but this is one of the best equipped theatre’s we’ve worked in. It’s a real pleasure and to work on the design process with
so many assets at our disposal.
Sam Roberts : What
we’ve done with the show is that there are several points where we
are portraying story points through movements and choreography.
The scene you’re talking about is when he’s thrown from
the Château d’If into the ocean and he escapes, We’re portraying that through a choreographed piece.
Essentially we portray that information through actor movement
and use of light and sound.
Sam Roberts : Yeah –
we’re very excited about it.
Sam Roberts : Well,
actually, I’m working with Clark Freeman who plays the Count of
Monte Cristo. Clark and I
have worked in other projects in the past. He’s a member of the theatre company, and when I first
started working on the project he came to me and expressed an
interest in the role, so we talked about it. I discussed what I thought it would entail and what I thought
it would need and in the end I thought he would be very good for it.
He’s a fantastic actor and I’ve been really overjoyed with
his work every time we’ve done something together. It’s exciting to have him be a part of a project from the
beginning.
Sam Roberts : Yeah, let
me think. The first major
project I did in Los Angeles was One Flea Spare, which was with Sight Unseen Theatre also. At the time I had arrived here about a year or a year and half
earlier and had been doing small work on movie sets and theatres
around town and I had worked on a movie with these guys. So I met them like that.
Then
when they were looking at their next season, I expressed an interest
in directing. There were
three projects we talked about, but we didn’t get the first choice
optioned, which was “The Lobby Hero’. This was a second choice,
but the rights came through and it was a wonderful experience. It’s a beautiful play; it’s about the plague in
England so there was a lot of interesting research I had to do. I was working with
Clark
again, and a smaller group, but all were fantastic actors. It was just really a wonderful experience.
The stage we had was uniquely suited for it too – it was
very, very, very tall. So
I worked with the lighting designer on it, because during the play
the entire cast is trapped in the basement of the house, so I wanted
to enhance that prison feel. So
yeah, it was a great experience to work on a professional level and
have designers who could realize my vision and have actors who were
able to grip the text and deal with sort of heavy dramaturgical work,
not necessarily what you expect right away.
Sam Roberts : Yes
– well when Clark and Andy and Ryan and TJ started the company
which was a year or so before I got to know them, the joke was that
no one goes to see theatre in Los Angeles, and they really wanted to try and change that. So they thought it would be funny to call their company Sight
Unseen – guessing that no one might ever see.
Sam Roberts : Luckily
we’ve managed to disprove that recently. We’ve had large crowds and people really enjoy their stuff.
Sam Roberts : That’s
great. That is true, I think there is a large theatre going audience
in Los Angeles. I also think there are
a lot of theatres, and the theatres that manage to distinguish
themselves from the pack are rewarded with increased attendance and
large crowds.
Sam Roberts :
Or
the Pasadena Playhouse
Sam Roberts :
No. I was actually hired by them to direct that production, so I
was working with the company there.
Sam Roberts :
They
are actually a very interesting company.
Sam Roberts : I
don’t quite remember how I heard about it, but I knew they were
interviewing directors and the script came my way. What excited me about it is that I saw a lot of opportunities
for directorial work in it. It
was a little ill defined and floating in space in a way that a
director finds very exciting. The writer, Phinneas Kiyomura had
really left a lot of options open, so I went in and interviewed for
the project and they liked the ideas I had, so I got the job and
worked with the company, which was great. They have some of the best actors I’ve worked with in
Los Angeles, really the whole company is very exceptional. I’ve worked there twice now and each time got to work with
really talented engaged people. The
space is – well, it’s not the best space I’ve worked in, but it
has a lot of sort of unique challenges and bonuses that it make it
very interesting to work with. It’s
a rewarding challenge.
Sam Roberts : Yes,
I have quite a bit of training in acting, and I used to act a
lot more than I do now. But
yes, I do some acting and a fair amount of adaptation and writing.
Sam Roberts : Yes. I
find that the task of adapting a novel for the stage is basically the
job of directing a novel. It’s
just that the first step is editing a really, really long play into
something that really functions as a play and is a playable length.
Sam Roberts : Yes. That’s very much what the process is all about for me.
First as I go through editing, I’m seeing the words and
thinking how I might see them in a physical live set. I’m always trying to picture the novel in the new medium and
the whole process is driven towards those pictures. So first I get the script and start working with the designers
sharing the ideas I have in my head with the ideas they are able to
conjure up. Then I slowly
adjust my picture towards the picture that’s forming and always
pushing everything towards that picture I’m able to always push it
into my head. Every
moment I have an idea of what the final product will look like.
When that product changes throughout the process I encounter
other artists to work with them, be they actors or designers, but
there’s always that vision of the final product.
Sam Roberts : Yeah. That’s very true for me.
I want to take the opportunity to make something as good as
possible, but I usually won’t change anything after the play is
open. I sort of think the
actors need to be left with what I’ve given them up to that point,
and continue to feel it grow in their roles. But I will always be making adjustments to a light cue or a
cross or the attention behind a line as late as – well, the night
before we open.
Sam Roberts : Yes.
I have rehearsals starting in a very short amount of time.
Sam Roberts :
Yes
we open a week from Friday.
Sam Roberts : Well,
that’s interesting. Andy
and I have worked together several times so we have sort of an
established process. I
make sure Andy reads the script, the we sit down and talk about how I
view the script in general. What
I think the music should sound like – the kind of sound palette I
want to draw it from. Then
we discuss the general idea of how we’re using this. Is it underscoring?
Is
it transition? Is it
both? Do we want
something that feels fully scored or something that’s very sparse?
Will there be a lot of environmental cues behind the music or
are there environmental cues behind the scenes? Is the music coming in and out of it?
Once we sort of sit down those basic structures Andy goes off
and writes a few test tracks and I listen to them. Then I might say, “I like this – maybe you can do this to
it” or I’ll say “I’m thinking for this section – “ or sometimes I’ll just see more of a general theme.
Once we’ve talked about that Andy starts to build the rough cues
for several sections – then we’ll get together again and talk
about exactly where music comes in and comes out of the whole script.
We start from the beginning and go all the way to the end so
he knows exactly which cues he has to build and roughly how long they
are. Then he goes off and
builds those cues and from then on it’s a back and forth editing
process.
Sam Roberts : Yes. I
tend to work closely and extensively with all my designers. I think it’s really important to make sure that every
artistic aspect of the production is on the same page. I view that as my job. It’s having that vision of the final
product and making sure that every one can see it as well as I do, so
that everyone is working toward the same goal.
Sam Roberts :
Correct.
Sam Roberts: Yeah - sure. We wanted to create a space that can be used for many
different things. The
story moves from location to location a great deal, so rather than go
with a more traditional, completely neutral space that we create with
small set pieces that can be move in and out we’ve gone for a broad
specific space. This way
our space is made up of both interior and exterior design elements, a
lot of nautical, but then there’s a lot of stuff that looks like it
could fit inside fancy Parisian homes of the mid nineteenth century.
In addition to that we have a few moving set pieces that
combine into the set to create a small variety of looks and locations
and then from there a lot of the work is going to be in lights to
help place us in time, day or night , but also in general area, like
where the action takes place. We
have different types of light cues for Marseilles and for Paris.
Sam Roberts : Yeah,
we’re pretty excited about it.
Sam Roberts : Actually
there’s a couple, but I would say that Melanie Lora who plays
Mercedes, who is the love of the Count of Monte Cristo’s life.
Sam Roberts : Well,
we auditioned for every other role in the play. We’ve never worked with Melanie before, but she came in and
gave a very impressive audition. We liked her for the role.
She has good stage chemistry with
Sam Roberts :
Yes,
we have a couple of large fights and a couple of small fights.
Sam Roberts: I
always try to do a little bit of both. I don’t think there’s a point in doing theatre that’s
not entertaining because people want to see. But for me the real pleasure in making a piece of art of any
kind is communicating with the audience. You have to have something you want to say.
I want my plays to be entertaining, but in the process of
entertaining to inform and enlighten. We are not focusing strongly on the historical aspects of the
play however. There’s
a lot of great stuff in the novel. One of the things I like to do is to work pretty strictly with
the text. I don’t like
to add a lot of words or change a lot of intentions or character
roles from the original work as I bring it to the stage. A lot of the political commentary that Dumas makes is
metaphoric and very little of it is given the kind of in-depth
explanation that today’s audience may need because many of the
political things he was commenting on at the time were common
knowledge to the public in a way that they are not today. But I think that I have found a metaphor that grows out
Dumas’ political metaphors and the central metaphor of the book.
And that for me it’s a commentary on free will.
Sam Roberts: Yes. I think it’s a lot about free will.
One of the things that was going on in France at the time was Napoleon. The
French had lost their entire aristocracy to Napoleon. He killed them all during the uprising and it was purely
self-made society. Every
man served as his skills were able. So you could make yourself anything.
And then, then nobility was restored but there was no nobility
left! So France , post Napoleon II, is a country sitting on the edge of these ideas
between deterministic and free will society. A society that has nobles is very deterministic – you are
what you’re born to be, but a society that was tried to be built by
Napoleon was all free will - you are what you make yourself. And now we had sort of deterministic trappings put on a
society that was still in may ways a society of free will. Because to become a noble in
France after Napoleon was work. There
weren’t any, so you had be right – have the right connections and
be involved politically. So
it’s an interesting time and the book really sets forth that
debate. Dantes is set on
a path and other people control his fate. He decides to break away from that and assert himself not just
in controlling his own life but in controlling the lives of others.
When he controls the life of others, it starts to fall apart
all around. In the end he
sort of learns the lesson which is, you should always make your own
choices but you should never gain to make another’s choice for
them. That’s the other
part of being a society that lives for a free will. I’ve tried to literalize that metaphor in the adaptation
using the tools and variations and the stage. So we’ll see how I did.
Sam Roberts : I
think that may be. In the
end, this is the ultimate tale about revenge. It’s one of the reasons I love it.
It’s the classic revenge tale, and one of the first major
pieces of literature that focuses on it and I try to keep true to
that. We have, hopefully, the intensity and the action that you want.
Sam Roberts : Actually
no. I always wanted to be
a writer since I was a kid, but in high school I started working in
the theatre and became very interested in directing. When I was fifteen or sixteen I read “Portrait of an Artist
as a Young Man”, the James Joyce novel, and that made me decide
that I was not just interested in it – I would go on and study it!
And that’s what I did.
Sam Roberts : Yup!
Sam Roberts : Not at the
moment. I’m going to
revive the script when the production is done and see if I can place
it in other venues. I’ll
also be working on a personal writing project and I’ve been talking
to some people about some other scripts they have for next fall.
We’ll see what I’ll be doing.
Sam Roberts : Thank you.
Glad to do it.
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