In the advent of the introduction of the Spoon River Anthology by the department’s own Gypsywood players troupe in December 2016, we had come to the artistic director Jeff Smith and asked him about his thoughts on both the new play and the direction the GWP are taking nowadays. The following interview only scratched the surface of the complex undertaking that is directing an actor ensemble, but it still proved too extensive to be included in the Kaardian print. Here on the blog, however, we are not limited by space and you can read the interview in its entirety.
On behalf of the Kaardian, I’d like to thank Jeff for being so cooperative and open about his experience and future vision.
Lewis
Q: Good evening, Jeff. I’ll start by asking what exactly your position is in the GWP right now.
A: I’m the artistic director, the person in the company, who basically decides which plays will be done and who will direct them. Sometimes direct them myself, but mostly look for directors.
Q: So basically you have the ultimate influence over what the group is going to play?
A: Yeah. I work cooperatively with Tom Kačer, whom I’d call (he doesn’t actually use this title…) the managing director, he manages the theatres, the logistics, and he was the recent re-founder of the company, so I wouldn’t do anything that he wouldn’t be okay with, we work well together. I try to get the students to form some kind of artistic steering committee to take more direct role in the artistic direction of the company, but they’re reluctant to do that and it’s hard to coordinate them on that. (“chuckles”)
Q: Too many of them, or are they just not brave enough?
A: Well, there hasn’t exactly been anyone to sort of step forward and take leadership in this. So yeah, in the long term, that’s something I’d like to encourage because this is meant to be a student’s company as much as possible.
Q: You’ve been involved with the company for years. Are you noticing any changes this year in the direction that the company is taking?
A: This year in particular? Well, I think we have some performers who are learning their craft and they get better from year to year and I like to see that… and not just performers, but musicians and designers, I think in some ways we’ve done well these past years in developing talent and giving people chance to learn their craft and get better at it. I don’t have any specific idea of the company except that I would like it to do something new every year if possible, so two years ago with Animal Farm we did a musical, which was new at least relative to our recent history. Of course the group goes back fifty years and they’ve done lots of stuff already. So it’s not like we’re going to do something entirely new, but I like to take challenge, so there was doing a musical two years ago, then last year it was doing Shakespeare and also a more ambitious tour schedule. This year of course we have a guest director, who’s very accomplished in the American theatre – Gene Terruso. And we’re developing a show, it’s an adaption, but it’s our own original adaptation of the underlying work – Spoon River Anthology. So that’s the new thing. Eventually I’d like to see us develop an entirely new show. That would be one of my goals. Might be like a two-year project, you know, completely original show, not an adaptation of an existing work. That’s… obviously more ambitious.
I’d like to see us have more of a presence in the community and attract audiences, who are not just friends of the actors or staff or the university people, or at least attract more people from the larger university community, not just the Faculty of Arts. But also anybody in the Brno area who’s interested in English theatre. So that means advertising in a different way, raising our profile, doing more intensive kinds of publicity and so forth.
Q: So expansion is your goal then?
A: Well, I’d like to see us doing multiple shows a year, you know, like other theatre companies do, maybe two, three shows a year. (“pauses to think”)
Q: If you don’t mind an interruption, you said that you trying something new this year, so when I was talking to the actors the other day, when talking of the new play, they mentioned this shift towards a more dramatic, darker material perhaps…
A: Well, compared to the last year, certainly. I mean Animal Farm had dark themes as well but since I was directing it, I was focusing on the comedy because that’s what I know how to direct, I wouldn’t have chosen Spoon River if I was directing it, it was Gene’s suggestion because I don’t really consider myself that versatile as a director, I think I know something about comedy, but I think that yes, we’re taking advantage of a good opportunity of Gene’s involvement to expand our range that way. In a work that has multiple moods, some quite serious.
Q: It seemed to me like the actors were quite pleased with that, maybe with the change of feel. They did say that it was challenging though.
A: Yeah. They’re getting a very different kind of direction form Gene than they would from me because I’m basically a literature professor, so I tend to be text-oriented, so we took Midsummer Night’s Dream, I cut it to a manageable length so we would be able to perform it in our time frame and then we started rehearsing it. And I encouraged people to learn the lines as soon as possible because I worried that it might be challenging, especially with the people with larger roles to learn all those Shakespearean lines.
Gene’s approach is completely different. He comes more from the acting world rather than the literary one. You know, he was the president of a major acting academy in the US – the American Academy of Dramatic Arts – and he’s been doing more of a kind of character development acting type workshop with the text in the background but with actors under specific instructions not to memorise the text, which is a very different approach… So that they wouldn’t lock themselves into particular readings, interpretations and so on.
But you’d have to ask him what his exact aims with the actors are. (“laughs”)
Q: Then let’s return to our previous topic, which was the future of the GWP. You seemed to have more to say on the matter.
A: Yeah, another thing, actually, which I’d like the company to become is aware of its own tradition and history. When I selected Animal Farm two years ago, that was specifically a tribute to the company, as well as the 25th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution. It was that and it was actually also the 25th anniversary of the company performing Animal Farm under Don Sparling’s direction at the time of the Velvet Revolution. And we had an alumni gathering which the department – Don Sparling primarily – organised, a weekend when the alumni of the GWP came and were recognised for their past participation and we performed for them.
Q: Wouldn’t that be like fifty percent of the department staff right now?
A: (“laughs”) It certainly included some of our staff, yes. And I thought it was quite successful and again my goal was to pay tribute to the company and its history, but I want the current members to feel like a part of that history and this is really what I’m emphasizing, they’re not doing just any student activity, they’re carrying on a long tradition, that I hope will continue for many more decades and they’ll be a part of it and fifty years from now when they’ll be old people, they’ll be coming to reunions like that. Because I think that the company is a real resource that way. You could maybe set up a great theatre company at any given moment, but you can’t set up a fifty-year history.
Q: So you’re planting the idea that will survive everything, even if another let’s say pauses in the creative process happen, you will return to it eventually?
A: Yeah, I think so, but really, I’d prefer it not happening, at least not on my watch. (“laughs”) I’m pleased that we’ve been able to keep going with a sense of momentum every year, I feel that there are people who are actively participating, we’ve had excellent leadership from students – assistant directors, company managers, who have been brilliant in their job. And another thing that I take pride in is that we do our own music in the Gypsywood Ensemble, for the last two years, we’ve had original music for the show. And I’m really pleased that it’s happening this year as well. I hope to see it continue in the years to come.
Q: So do we. Thank you very much for the interview and all the information you’ve given us.
A: You’re welcome.
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