Here are Jasson Minadakis, Kent Nicholson, and Dan Whitten discussing Jacques Brel and Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. We opened last night — get your tickets before they sell out!

Here’s a link to MTC’s YouTube page, with video from all the productions this season.

Nice article in the IJ on our production of Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris — which had its first preview last night, and opens Tuesday. Come check it out!

“Brel’s sense of humor, his sense of irony, the structure of the songs is unlike anything we’re used to hearing in pop songs,” says the show’s director, Kent [Nicholson].

MTC’s artistic director Jasson Minadakis calls the revue, “One of my favorite musicals. I love the cabaret style of it. And Jacques Brel’s music is so incredibly contemporary. Yet it still has so much of that cabaret feel that he brought over when he first came to the U.S. in the 1960s and delighted everybody with his work.”

Link.

Actor Robert Brewer blogs about working on Jacques Brel is Alive and Well:

We’re three weeks in, and things are chugging along. I love working here at MTC because it’s so beautiful, especially this time of year. We spend our breaks outside in the courtyard of the theater and soak up the sun - we’ll all have wonderful tans by the time the show opens. Everyone’s working very hard, and the show has it’s intense dramatic moments, so the fresh air is good for our sanity. Gotta start rehearsal now - more to follow soon . . .

Love Person is “the best new play to appear around these parts in some time”, according to the Marin IJ. It’s playing for two more weeks in our Lieberman Theatre — make your reservations now!

Here’s an interesting study on the link between arts training and improved academic performance.

1. An interest in a performing art leads to a high state of motivation that produces the sustained attention necessary to improve performance and the training of attention that leads to improvement in other domains of cognition.

Video clips from the first day of rehearsals of Love Person:

MTC’s new Managing Director Ryan Rilette just moved here from New Orleans. He spoke today at our Afterwords event (following the Sunday matinee preview of A Streetcar Named Desire) about Tennessee Williams and New Orleans.

Tonight is the first preview for A Streetcar Named Desire. Get your tickets now!

Tech for A Streetcar Named Desire was this weekend — previews start Thursday, and opening is a week from tonight. Here’s actor Marjorie Crump-Shears talking about the process:

For those out there in “techno land” who have not worked in theater, let me tell you about the role of the Stage Manager (I am NOT one, and for good reason…….). The Stage Manager is the glue which holds the whole production together, and ours, in Heath Belden is SUPER(B) GLUE! The Stage Manager must keep everyone happy and productive starting with the director. Then there are the harried and stressed designers who need it all ASAP. Then there are the actors who have questions, and concerns, and get tired and cranky (well……a few, but not in this production). And the one person who is all things to everyone is this very special person, the Stage Manager.

Heath is so good at what he does it looks as if “there is nothing to it”. The first thing I noticed about Heath is that all of us, in labels and emails are addressed as Ms./Mr./Mrs. Now that may be the case for other fully professional companies (those who hire primarily equity actors and pay them equity wages) but this is my first stint in such a company………….and I LIKE it! Heath is wonderful at telling us what is going on, or where we are to be and when. His daily emails tell us when we are called and what we’ll be doing once we get to the theater. He meets with the production team (well, he IS a member of it) and acts as the liaison (with the director, of course) between the designers and the actors. He clarifies, organizes, and coordinates with skill.

At Sunday night’s tech rehearsal (the agonizing, painstaking, exhausting synchronization of lights, and sound, and actors on the newly built set), while waiting for the lighting team to work on a thorny problem, we skipped ahead to do a “fight call” (rehearse slowly at first, then with more rapidity, physical contact which has been choreographed, between two or more actors on stage). This fight call involved my character with Blanch. I had on the wrong shoes and needed the shoes I would wear during the actual scene. As I announced that I would need to run and get my shoes and proceeded to leave the stage, Heath bounded up and offered to run and get my shoes for me. I accepted with what I hoped was graciousness and insouciance (God forbid anyone should see how stunned I was that I didn’t have to run and get them!).

All the while thinking: “Oh-ma-gawd………….you mean I don’t have to run and get them myself???!!? The STAGE MANAGER does this, too??!!? In what kind of rarefied air is this production existing?”

With great dispatch, Heath brought them too me; and then, he took them BACK when we had finished!!!!!

You know, I may never work again with such a professional Stage Manager, but now I know how it is supposed to be done. Heath has spoiled me/us. He has set the standard very high, indeed. And, this production is excellently served by his equanimity and skill.

My hat is off to Heath and to MTC for hiring one of the best!!!

Clips from rehearsals for A Streetcar Named Desire.