Threaded Order Chronological Order
| The Resident Acting Company (RAC), drawn from the former Pearl troupe, emerges with staged reading of "The Big Night" June 25 | |
| Posted by: Official_Press_Release 05:39 pm EDT 06/19/18 | |
|
|
|
| The Resident Acting Company, a new ensemble formed by actors of The Pearl Theatre Company, is emerging with a series of four staged readings. Culminating event is reading of "The Big Night" by humorist Dawn Powell June 25 at The Players Club. June 25, 2018 at 7:00 PM The Players Club, 16 Gramercy Park South Presented by The Resident Acting Company $35. Box office: www.racnyc.org, (212) 879-2341? Running time: 1:40 (including intermission). On June 25, The Resident Acting Company (www.racnyc.org), a new troupe drawn from the performing ensemble of The Pearl Theatre Company, will present a staged reading of "The Big Night" (1928) by humorist Dawn Powell, a harsh, biting comedy about a woman whose husband has been fired from an advertising agency. The play was the author's masterpiece but failed on Broadway in a production of The Group Theatre. The version to be offered is a restoration by Michael Sexton from the author's original notes and drafts. It retains some of the Group Theatre's "improvements" but includes the author's original ending. The reading will be at 7:00 PM at The Players Club, 16 Gramercy Park South, directed by Bradford Cover, Artistic Director of the troupe. Originally titled "The Party," this play was written in 1928 in response to Ms. Powell’s husband being fired from his job as an advertising executive. It was eventually picked up by The Group Theatre and went through a great deal of rehearsal and revision. Powell was never happy with the version they ended up with. The production ran for nine performances and was badly received. The restored version, edited by Michael Sexton, assembles the comedy into something that is closer to what Powell originally intended. It is set in 1932 in Myra and Ed Bonney's apartment in recently built Tudor City. Prohibition is in effect and they are throwing a party for a potential client who also happens to be an old "acquaintance" of Myra's. The ensuing shenanigans are bitingly funny and dark. Fran Lebowitz has championed Dawn Powell, describing her as "the best American writer you never heard of," praising her as "a fabulously funny writer.” But Powell's humor in "The Big Night" was not enough for The Group Theatre's Cheryl Crawford and Harold Clurman, who later admitted they had overworked the play, trying to wring social significance and psychological complexity out of an edgy, disillusioned human comedy. The upcoming reading is the culminating event of "The Power Series," a series of four readings at The Players Club that collectively constitute the launch event of the Resident Acting Company. The three preceding readings were Chekhov's "Three Sisters" March 19, "Much Ado About Nothing" April 26 and Sophocles' "Electra," translated by Nicholas Rudall, May 30. All four plays explore the concept of power and how it relates to issues women have faced in the past and today. The Resident Acting Company (RAC), an actor-led ensemble, contains former members of the Pearl Theatre Company's resident troupe (a few of them are "in the family" but not presently participating). The roster includes Jolly Abraham, Rachel Botchan, Robin Leslie Brown, Bradford Cover, Dominic Cuskern, R.J. Foster, Dan Daily, Chris Mixon and Carol Schultz. The actors of "The Big Night" are Ron Bopst, Rachel Botchan, Robin Leslie Brown, Bradford Cover, Maxwell Cover, Dominic Cuskern, Dan Daily, R.J. Foster and Tabatha Gayle. The Pearl Theatre Company was founded in 1984 by Shepard Sobel. Performing classical repertory with a resident acting company, its troupe of actors trained together and performed show after show together, forming a common theatrical aesthetic and artistic bond. The Pearl began in a storefront in Chelsea and moved to Theatre 80 St. Marks, City Center and finally, to a new theater at 555 West 42nd Street. Operating for 33 years as an Off-Broadway troupe, it earned Drama League awards, a Drama Desk for “nurturing a stalwart company of actors…" and several Obies. Shepard Sobel was succeeded as Artistic Director by J.R. Sullivan in 2009 and Hal Brooks in 2014. The company closed after 33 seasons in June, 2017. Now members of its acting company are banding together to continue The Pearl's artistic tradition of addressing the "big classics" with a resident ensemble. Bradford Cover, who was also a member of the Pearl's Resident Acting Company, has been selected as Artistic Director of the new troupe. He is an actor and director and son of the late Franklin Edward Cover (1928-2006), who was best known for starring as Tom Willis on TV's "The Jeffersons." Cover stresses the uniqueness of the RAC as a classical repertory company in Manhattan, saying "It's about having a group who have worked together for a long time addressing the 'big classics,' the beefy ones. They're a family of artists. What they bring to these plays is a different level of excitement for an audience--a quality of work that actually goes deeper into the heart of a play and finds the gold that is there, mining it and sharing it with each other. That doesn't happen with a pickup company in three and a half weeks of rehearsal or less." Cover stresses that the "magic" of such a troupe is grounded in the trust between actors that ripens over time. Cover describes the Pearl Theatre's programming model as a broader range of classics than is done by any other Equity classical company in NYC including the New York Shakespeare Festival. Beside Elizbethan Drama, genres include Restoration Comedy, Jacobean Comedy and Tragedy, Commedia dell' Arte and the entire classical canon from Sophocles to Tennessee Willliams and Eugene O'Neill. Mixed into this is "a new play every so often that interacts with the classical repertory in some profound way." The Resident Acting Company is a fiscally sponsored project of Fractured Atlas. It is presently assembling a Board of Directors, writing by-laws and preparing for events next season. Goals include another series of staged readings, a fundraising event in October and a full production by Spring, 2019. |
|
| reply to this message |
| Resident Acting Companies - Questions | |
| Posted by: JereNYC (JereNYC@aol.com) 11:59 am EDT 06/21/18 | |
| In reply to: The Resident Acting Company (RAC), drawn from the former Pearl troupe, emerges with staged reading of "The Big Night" June 25 - Official_Press_Release 05:39 pm EDT 06/19/18 | |
|
|
|
| I'm genuinely curious about the logistics of a resident acting company (not THIS company in particular, but in general). The impression that I get is that the company hires an ensemble of actors for a set period of time and those actors would be paid a straight salary for the duration of the contract, regardless of the size of their role in any given production and even if there is no role for them in any given production. Does this sound right? So how does that work financially? On one hand, I see the value in knowing that your labor costs (for the actors, anyway) are fixed for the entire contract period, but I would think that an arrangement like that could hamstring a company and not allow it to be nimble enough to scale back if need be. And you'd have to be so careful in choosing plays that will allow for roles for most, if not all, of your ensemble every single time, so that you're not paying someone who's not working. So I would think that you wouldn't be able to do, for example, THE SEAGULL and WAITING FOR GODOT in the same season. And, for the actors, would a resident company job like this pay enough to not have to seek other income? With an active company, I could see it almost being a summer stock situation with the actors performing one show while rehearsing another and that doesn't seem to allow much time to work another job. And how do benefits come into it? I assume that any contract via AEA would cover health benefits, vacation time, sick time, etc., but would, for example, a year's contract in a resident company be different from a year's contract in a Broadway show (aside from pay scale, etc.)? |
|
| reply to this message |
| re: Resident Acting Companies - Questions | |
| Posted by: mikem 09:27 pm EDT 06/21/18 | |
| In reply to: Resident Acting Companies - Questions - JereNYC 11:59 am EDT 06/21/18 | |
|
|
|
| Is there any resident acting company in the US currently doing this? I would agree that it sounds financially tricky. One of the big theaters here has a pseudo-resident acting troupe from whom they draw many of their actors, which they call an "incubator" for new works. They do readings, workshops, etc, beyond the big shows that they do. I think they have some kind of mechanism to pay some kind of stipend, but I think the pay for those who aren't in the current big show is pretty low. | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message |
| re: Resident Acting Companies - Questions | |
| Posted by: ryhog 09:58 am EDT 06/22/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Resident Acting Companies - Questions - mikem 09:27 pm EDT 06/21/18 | |
|
|
|
| Some regional theatres have resident actors signed to season contracts. Another model is the theatre+school or education component wherein the actors have non-acting functions included in their compensation to make it a (presumably not that high-paying) full time undertaking. I don't think the Pearl ever pretended to be a full time year round gig. In NYC, the other model is, I think, still (perhaps in some variation) involved at Atlantic, if nowhere else. | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message |
| re: Resident Acting Companies - Questions | |
| Posted by: whereismikeyfl 07:58 am EDT 06/22/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Resident Acting Companies - Questions - mikem 09:27 pm EDT 06/21/18 | |
|
|
|
| Even members of the Pearl's "resident acting company" were only paid for the productions they were in. | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message |
Time to render: 0.015747 seconds.