The Cast:
Stephen Bennett as Peter Quince the Carpenter, Sara Buffamanti* as Hermia,
Danielle Coles as Starveling the Tailor/Moonshine, Will Dickerson as Oberon/Theseus, Liz Eckert* as Helena,
Marty Keiser* as Demetrius, Jason Kingsley as Snug the Joiner/Lion, Regan Linton* as Titania/Hippolyta, Michael Melendez as Snout the Tinker/Wall, Sylvia Morsillo as Flute the Bellowsmender/Thisbe, Gregg Mozgala* as Puck/Egeues/Philostrate, David Skeist* as Lysander, Nicholas Whitley as Bottom the Weaver/Pyramus, Jessica Yates as First Fairy
The Team:
Director / Alice Reagan
Education Coordination & Producer / Sara Buffamanti
Production Stage Manager / Mark C. Hoffner*
Fight Choreographer / Kyle Knauf     
Specialty Prop Designer / Isabel Nelson 
Assistant Director / Jessica Yates  
*Appearing Courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association
Photo Credit:
© John Palmer/John Palmer Photography

We presented "Spirits of Another Sort" to an audience last Wednesday and  Thursday night at the Ensemble Studio Theatre. This is the final post about the process leading up to those presentations. If you missed our most recent post by CCNY Associate Professor, Jan Valle you can read it here.

Spirits of Another Sort Workshop Journal #4- An Assumption Of Competence

An interesting thing happened during "Spirits of Another Sort." Halfway through our rehearsal process everything fell apart. No one could remember their lines, the blocking was a mess, and it looked like all the hard work that had been put into the workshop prior to the arrival and integration of the entire ensemble, simply hadn't happened.

This was expected, I had even anticipated this and had tried to express this to my fellow producers and directors. However, the reality of seeing the process implode in the rehearsal room was something none of us could have prepared for.

For the last three weeks we had been preparing our Rude Mechanicals to be in a room with professional actors by giving them the tools of professional actors. When rehearsals began with the entire ensemble it became clear that the Rude Mechanicals were/are not professional actors. They are lay people and they are disabled. We had to stop pointing them towards the performance we wanted them to give and we needed to celebrate and encourage the performance they were giving and how they were communicating it.

This is easier said than done, because we also had the responsibility of mounting a show and presenting our work in front of an audience in a week's time. In addition, there was an underlying tension between the actors with disabilities and the able-bodied actors about the expectations and depiction of disability through this play and process. The Rude Mechanicals, primarily amateur actors, were intimidated by the sudden influx of professional actors in the room.

The question of when and how to acknowledge Disability in the room has been one I have grappled with as an actor throughout my career. This is an issue that has proven particularly complicated for me as Artistic Director within the context of The Apothetae and its recent productions. I wrote on this issue in a recent article I contributed to Theatre Communications Group's 2014 National Conference: Crossing Borders {Art|People Blog Salon}.

I mention the then, up and coming workshop of "Spirits of Another Sort," and my concerns about bringing these disparate communities together under one roof for a common goal. You can check that article out here.

Four Artists at the Crossroads- by Heather Helinsky and curated by Caridad Svich

In the article, I stress the need for the creation of a strong ensemble.
"If an ensemble is an assemblage of parts, then all of those parts need to be acknowledged and respected. If one or more of those parts is misunderstood then that misunderstanding can lead to mistrust. Mistrust will kill ensemble, a positive working experience and can even derail the entire production. We can try to better, more simply acknowledge the discrepancy, the awkwardness and initiate a conversation about the thing that is other or different. It may be difficult, but if addressed at the onset, it will be a lot easier than if it festers until eventually boiling over. Chances are we’re all thinking “it” anyway. Chances are “it’s” not such a big deal. Then keep walking and get on with the business of seeing and being seen.  That’s what we’re all here for anyway, isn’t it?”

Director, Alice Reagan called a meeting with myself and the producing partners and stressed the need for clear story telling. Stephen, our Peter Quince, was asked to prompt the Rude Mechanicals in Act 5 Scene 1, the play within the play if they went up on their lines. Our Starveling/Moonshine, Danielle Coles, has a more severe case of CP and has a speech impediment. Alice, suggested the creation of cue cards for her. Will Dickerson, our Oberon/Theseus, who is also a special education teacher, stressed the importance of letting go of the time constraints associated with making a play, and instead giving the actors the time and space to find their lines and to create their character's behavior independently.  He was concerned that by having Stephen as Peter Quince at the ready to feed the lines, that the actors would become dependent  on him, not be actively involved in the scene, and be cheated of a full experience. 

The next evening in rehearsal I sat everyone down and discussed the reasons for doing this play in particular, and how I felt Disability could be truly shown and celebrated through these specific characters. As people with disabilities, so much time is spent in our daily lives, hiding or concealing the disability, not acknowledging it and trying to pass or blend in. I wanted this workshop to be something different for everyone. Through the inhabiting of their characters, I felt that each individual's disability could and should come through in a new way. This would allow each actors' humanity to come through the role as well. For instance, no one was asking Regan Linton, who uses a wheelchair to walk again to play this role, this was her Titania.

When Danielle saw Stephen with the cue cards, the first words out of her mouth were, "Am I that bad?" That idea went out the window. We needed to adjust our process. We all needed to be reminded that this was a workshop and release ourselves from the pressure of presenting a fully polished, fully produced production. We needed to trust our actors and the work we had put into the process thus far. Will was right, with time and patience from us, "the professionals," the actors would find their lines. We needed to trust that the audience would catch up, that watching an actor search for a line in the scene was inherently dramatic and true to what the individual actor was bringing to the role. Danielle's voice was hers, and it was beautiful. Sara assisted her with some stretches and vocal techniques to relieve tension in her face and mouth, and to give her a sense of freedom and confidence in speaking.  She needed to do her work, and we assured her that it was okay to let the audience sit in the place of trying to understand her. Let them be the ones doing the work for once! Group vocal and physical warmups became mandatory at the start of every rehearsal leading up to the presentations.  


We had two great showings of our work for "Spirits of Another Sort" at Ensemble Studio Theatre last week. In addition to presenting some really strong work, The Apothetae employed five (5) actors with physical disabilities and four (4) actors with intellectual/cognitive disabilities integrated with four (4) able bodied actors. Our work was shared with over 150 people in those two nights, and the audience consisted of every ethnicity and ability. Also in attendance were representatives from The Public, The Lark Play Development Center and Theatre Communications Group. We presented an hours worth of material from A Midsummer Night's Dream with less than forty (40) hours of rehearsal.

Not too shabby...

The feedback was multi-faceted and on the whole very positive. The piece of feedback that stood out to me the most and resonated with the audience, was the need for this work to be presented in a legitimate, mainstream venue with the full financial and artistic support of an established institution.

None of this just happened. I didn't do this alone. I am indebted to all the talented artists and individuals who contributed their time, talents and energy to this process. I feel something truly wonderful happened on that stage at Ensemble Studio Theatre, and I look forward to continuing the work in the future.

Sincerely,
Gregg Mozgala, Artistic Director

After a week off, this past Monday we began rehearsals with the entire ensemble of "Spirits of Another Sort." If you missed our last post about the casting of this project, you can check it out here-

Spirits of Another Sort Workshop Journal #3- Where Are All The Actors?

One of my goals in documenting this process was to work towards the development and creation of a practical model for educators and fellow artists who interface with these particular populations. Sara Buffamanti and Becky Leifman are both teaching artists, Will Dickerson (our Oberon/Theseus), is a special education teacher in addition to being both an actor and director.

For me, the Disability Community is not exclusively comprised of people with disabilities. The community also includes doctors, physical therapists, occupational therapists, medical professionals, family members, friends, lovers, teachers- anyone who might enter that particular sphere of influence. This makes it one of the most diverse, complicated and inclusive communities in existence.

I met Jan Valle several years ago. A professor at The City College of New York in the field of Disability Studies, Jan was one of the first people I told about the project. I was eager to have her sit in on the process and get her perspective on the work. She came to one of our initial Rude Mechanical rehearsals and sat in on our first read-through with the full ensemble earlier this week. I am grateful for her participation and appreciate the fact that she was able to contribute something to this series.
-Gregg Mozgala, Artistic Director      

“You have NO idea what you are doing!” I blurted out in admiration to Gregg Mozgala, Artistic Director of The Apothetae, immediately after observing a three hour rehearsal with the Rude Mechanicals. Gratefully, Gregg laughed in recognition of my clumsy attempt to express what I really meant to be an acknowledgment of the highly transgressive nature of this work and its larger contribution to publicly redefining cultural meanings of Disability. As Gregg can attest, I was so blown away by the rehearsal that I initially could not articulate a response to it with any real coherence. It honestly took me a few days to process what I had seen.

I am a professor in the School of Education at The City College of New York. I have worked in the field of special education for over three decades; however, I currently teach and write from the theoretical perspective of Disability Studies in Education (DSE). In contrast to the conceptualization of Disability as a deficit, disorder, or dysfunction that undergirds special education, DSE scholars are interested in the social construction; what constitutes Disability in any given society and conversely what reinforces constructed notions of ability. In other words, if we reframe Disability as natural human variation rather than pathology, we shift away from a deficit model in which persons with disabilities are viewed for what they cannot do and move toward a strengths-based approach that assumes competence and values individuals for what they can do. DSE explicitly troubles widely accepted notions of what constitutes “normalcy” and its oppression of many individuals who cannot or choose not to conform to culturally determined standards of “normalcy.”

So, it is through a DSE lens that I viewed rehearsal with the Rude Mechanicals. (I am particularly interested in theatre and disability because I teach a course on inclusive theatre practices for CCNY’s graduate educational theatre program.) That evening, I entered an inclusive theatre space where able-bodied actors and actors with disabilities worked together in genuine community. This was no “special arts program” designed to meet “the needs” of the disabled as defined by non-disabled professionals. This was a rehearsal like any other rehearsal for professional actors. An assumption of competence was evident throughout every aspect of the rehearsal. The expectation was that every actor could and would participate meaningfully. Actors with and without disabilities thoughtfully considered character motivations and what “actions” might best represent those motivations. I was struck not only by the level of conversation initiated by those labeled as cognitively disabled, but also by the various and sophisticated ways they engaged in “sense-making.” While the able-bodied actors offered much in regard to experience, background, and leadership, the contributions made by the Rude Mechanicals legitimately enhanced understanding of the work for everyone. This was the conversation of ACTORS and a model for what is possible when we commit to a paradigm of competence.

Gregg’s conceptualization for this piece—Athenians as able-bodied actors, fairies as actors with physical disabilities, and the Rude Mechanicals as actors labeled with cognitive disabilities—is provocative in its inclusion and reflection of all of us who make up the human condition. I am reminded of a journal entry written by a student in my inclusion theatre class last semester. I think her words speak eloquently to the significance of Gregg’s ongoing work: 

"The artist tries to portray and bring an understanding and meaning to the human experience, and what is that human experience without everything and everyone who is part of the human experience? It is not just about some of us. It is about all of us. So reflecting the experience of all of us is exactly what art is there to do. It is always pushing boundaries, exposing the truth, reflecting back at society what society is doing, making sense of the world’s petty problems by turning them into art. So without disability included, the art is incomplete."