BWW Previews: Ensemble Theater presents HUSBANDS AND WIVES at The New Vic

Ensemble Theater Company's season opener is a brand new adaptation of Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives, rendered for the stage by ETC's artistic Director, Jonathan Fox. Husbands and Wives shows the trajectories of two long-term marriages. Jack and Sally are getting a divorce, which is shocking news to their friends, married couple Gabe and Judy. Jack's new girlfriend is a younger woman, an aerobics instructor, and Sally goes out with one of Judy's coworkers. Gabe and Judy remain married, though Judy is interested in Michael, and Gabe is enticed by one of his university students. As Jack and Sally work toward possible reconciliation, Gabe and Judy recognize their own irreconcilable differences. Ensemble's production incorporates live video feed to re-create one of the film's defining storytelling devices: the documentary style. In anticipation for this new adaptation, which runs October 5-22 at the New Vic Theater, I spoke with Fox about the inspiration for and implementation of this project.

What was the path to this piece? In other words, were you interested in adaptation, or where you interested in staging Woody Allen?

Fox: I've been interested in adaptation for a while, but I arrived at this about a year ago; I went to see a performance in Brooklyn by a Dutch company, and I noticed that several members of the cast had done an adaptation of Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives in the Netherlands. I wrote to the theater about their adaptation, and they basically said, "look, we aren't allowed to license you our adaptation, because Woody Allen owns the rights to the adaptation. You'll have to do your own adaptation, here's the film script." They said we needed to contact Woody Allen ourselves. I read the film script; I'd seen the movie 25 years ago when it first came out, and I liked it a lot, so I re-watched the movie, and then I wrote to Woody Allen's agent, and he put us on to Woody Allen's attorney, and then I got an email from the lawyer in LA asking to meet with us. The "us" was Woody Allen's manager and his marketing guy, who works on [his] digital stuff. They said, "Woody Allen said we should meet with you, so what do you want to do?" I described what I envisioned this to be on stage, and they liked the ideas, and moved forward, and basically, we got the rights to do it. But they said, "Don't use any other adaptations, just write one yourself." ...It all happened so quickly. We first approached them last November and by March we had gotten the rights to do it.

Did the script go back and forth between you and Woody Allen's team? Did they look at it and send you notes?

Fox: So they insisted on having a final approval over every aspect of the production, including script, casting, even down to the music I'm planning to use in the show. So they have been pretty quick to respond to almost everything, and they did approve the script with very few comments. There are changes being made in rehearsal that I have to then send to them in the final version before we get final approval. I realize we'd left ourselves really open if there was a serious disagreement, but they haven't done anything like that. They've been very accommodating. The one thing they've taken a lot of time with is our marketing. He's opening a movie at the same time, and we're including that in our marketing materials. This has been adapted before, but it's never been done in the U.S., and he's much more particular about the U.S. production versus a European production.

What do you think the appeal of your pitch was?

Fox: I think what got them excited was I had this idea of incorporating live video into the production. It's documentary style, with a handheld camera. We're not trying to re-create the movie on stage, but a big part thematically is what characters withhold from each other in terms of their feelings and the truth, so we use the camera to try to catch expressions that the audience can't. This has been a side interest for me-how to incorporate live video into a production. It's not recorded video, not projections, but live video. There are groups that have become known for doing this, like the Wooster group out of New York, so that was what I told them my thoughts would be, and they liked it.

Has creating this piece been challenging? Satisfying?

Fox: Yes, actually; more satisfying now that we're in rehearsal. When I wrote the adaptation, I went through a few iterations, and showed them to colleagues along the way, and got their feedback. So, for example, my first thought was to update the show to 2017. In doing so, I was getting stymied left and right because the culture has changed so much in the last 25 years-with the advent of cell phones, and snooping on your partner's phone, I realized it would be a whole different kind of thing. In fact, the concept of divorce has changed so much. That was what a couple of people said-they just didn't feel it was right, it didn't feel organic. Once I went back and said, let me try and send it back to the early 90s-then it felt like a huge weight off my shoulders because I felt like it was starting to flow more easily. That's an example of the process.

Another example of what I've struggled with (that we're still working on in rehearsal) is that in the film, there's an off-camera interviewer and narrator; how do you get that on stage? We're still working on different things, including how pervasive the live video feed is. The people in the Netherlands said they did their adaptation during the rehearsal process. I'm allowing myself the freedom to adapt and change ideas as we're going.... We didn't have any reading, or anything. It wasn't until the first rehearsal, when I could hear it spoken by the actors, and I could see people in the room listening it to for the first time-there was a lot of laughter, of people connecting with the story-that I started to relax.... Ninety percent of it is in the [film] script. There are these lines in the movie that are funny, but you don't necessarily laugh while you're watching. People find it intriguing, but it's a very dark story. But in front of the audience, there was general laughter, and that's part of the process of watching a play live on stage, that you don't get in the movie theater.

I've had an affinity for Woody Allen's work for many years, since I was a kid. I would read his stories in collections, and I just got his movies from the get-go, and have always felt like I had a sensitivity toward his humor that not everyone has. When I was 15 I went to see Annie Hall with a friend and I laughed so much through that movie, but he had no kind of feeling for the humor. That's when I realized; culturally I'm Jewish. I'm neurotic. So I had clicked into [Woody Allen's] sense of humor. So that helps. But I'm not trying to outsmart Woody Allen, or be funnier than he is, of course, but I allow myself to add a little bit to the script here and there to help it on stage.

Should I watch the movie first? Or should see it on stage first?

Fox: The actors asked me, "Should I watch the movie?" I said no, because I don't want them to be locked in a performance... I'm trying to pull out a different performance than what's in the film. But I don't think it's a bad thing to watch the movie. It'll inform you about what we've done in terms of the adaptation. On the flip side, you'd be coming to this as a brand new experience. There were a few people who watched the movie because they were curious. They said that they liked the movie, but they were interested in the specific challenges of adapting it. I'll leave it up to you.

What are the benefits and challenges of directing your own work?

Fox: If I were to produce a play, I would not hire the playwright to direct it. I think that because so much of it is Woody Allen, I don't feel as much ownership over the text, like I would if I were writing a play from scratch. The experience is not that much different that directing a play that I didn't adapt.

Who is the ideal audience for this piece?

Fox: All generations. We're looking at people who've been married for 23 years. We're looking at it from the point of view of understanding the challenges of a marriage, and the paths people can go through in their 30s and 40s and 50s. I also think for younger people, the story will be humorous and intelligent. I think it'll speak to a wide variety.

Ensemble Theater Presents

Husbands and Wives

Written by Woody Allen
Adapted for the stage and directed by Jonathan Fox

October 5-22
The New Vic Theater

http://ensembletheatre.com

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