Several artists of the CRY HAVOC Company including Timothy Davis (Associate Artistic Director), Matt Cowart (Resident Director) and Kerry Flanagan (Resident Actor) among others, will be team-teaching a C2C workshop led by Kitt Lavoie, CRY HAVOC’s Artistic Director. The workshop will be themed Acting in Musicals and is discussed in the following Q and A with the artists:
Can you tell us a little bit about the workshop that you have planned for Coast to Coast New York?
KITT LAVOIE: Our workshop is focused on empowering actors to do really complex, detailed, and immediate work on their character and their character’s journey in a play, with a special focus on how to bring that work into the often very complicated and hectic setting of a musical rehearsal process. When an actor is working on a musical, they are juggling so many balls in the air that it is often very easy to let the acting part of their triple-thread slip in a way that they would not in a straight play. And the goal of our workshop is to not only give actors tools to keep their focus on their acting work, but also to use those tools to infuse their singing and dancing with the kind of nuance and intensity and storytelling that will make for a really fully-rounded, powerful, moving, engaging, and (where appropriate) funny performance.
Part of the fun of it, too, is that it is a team-taught workshop. The four of us will be leading it, but we will also have a number of our company members, who have worked on musicals at theaters around the country and on Broadway, on hand to roll up their sleeves and work with the students.
Who was your mentor when you first became interested in theater?
TIMOTHY DAVIS: Gregg Henry. He was the head of the theatre department at my college, and is currently the head of the national ACTF program at the Kennedy Center.
There are a lot of negative voices in an artist’s ears (often his/her own); finding one of those angels who genuinely believes in your talent is precious.
MATT COWART: Gerald Freedman was my directing mentor while I was getting my BFA at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. To this day, he has had the greatest impact on the way I think about/talk about/create theater. He taught me to tackle every play — whether it’s Chekhov, Mamet, Shakespeare or Sondheim – with the same analytical process. Contemporary text, heightened language, and the musical form each have their own unique challenges and styles, however, an actor and a director’s job remains largely the same: to breathe life into the story. By investigating the text (verse, music, or otherwise) we are able to discover the life that lies underneath regardless of what “style” that particular story is told in.
KITT LAVOIE: That’s great, and so important. And I think really speaks to one of the core values of our company – and of the workshop we are doing this summer. That’s something I had driven home by Gene Lasko, a grad school professor Tim and I have in common. And I actually think I first learned that from my first theater mentor, Peter Crosby. He was my drama coach in high school, and over the years our school had developed a reputation for doing these big, lavish productions. Peter was standing in for a couple of years while the usual drama director was on sabbatical—and while he kept up the grandness of the productions, he also put the real focus on the characters and the relationships in the midst of the dance numbers and flying scenery. On the importance of substance over style. And that is something I have held on to ever since, even when trying to do something with style.
What was the first professional theater arts job that you undertook?
KERRY FLANAGAN: My first job was at Amarante’s Sea Cliff Inn, a dinner theater in Connecticut. It was a great experience because I was rehearsing one play during the day and performing another at night. It forced me to get on point and quick.
TIMOTHY DAVIS: I spent a summer interning at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. I still consider it the best summer of my life.
I found my purpose for my life before having any practical justification for believing I had found it. It was a deeply internal instinct—”I don’t know what I’m doing yet, but this is what I should be doing.”
I think every actor fantasizes at moments about being famous or wealthy or in some other way successful; I’ve always wanted a career that would allow me to go to summer stock theatre every year.
MATT COWART: My first professional job was directing a reading/workshop of a new musical, KIKI BABY, at the Eugene O’Neill Music Theater Conference. I’ve always known I wanted to be involved in the development and creation of new works, and being able to work at the O’Neill was like a dream come true. Over the course of two weeks, the writer, composer, lyricist and I were able to work with actors during the day, and lock ourselves away at night to re-work scenes and write new songs for the next day’s rehearsal. The concentrated two-week process was like boot camp for writing a new musical—an experience I would have gladly paid top dollar for—and I was lucky enough to have it be my first “real” job!
What would you consider to be the most pivotal moment in your career?
TIMOTHY DAVIS: There are several, and I can’t rank their importance… doing Equus opposite Gregg. It was the first time I had to dig into my resources to what wasn’t readily available or couldn’t be cleverly manufactured. Deciding to come to New York City. And, after taking an almost two year break from acting, deciding that I didn’t care if I became famous or wealthy or even earned a living from acting; it was something I just needed to do, and I needed to make my life work in a way where I could always act. If I was forced to, perhaps I would choose the last moment as the most important.
It’s quite something to walk away from something, and then realize that you need it so fervently that you’ll accept a relationship with it on any circumstances. I don’t know if that’s love. But it’s quite something.
KITT LAVOIE: Honestly, I think the founding of CRY HAVOC. All careers in the arts have their up times and their down times – and many of them rattle radically up and down over the first five or ten or twenty years of a career. To have a place where I could always work with people I trusted and admired made it easier to stick with it during the down times. And in this business, sticking with it is perhaps the single most important thing to building a career. And that’s hard to do when you feel like you are doing it alone.
What was your vision in the founding of CRY HAVOC? What are some ways that the CRY HAVOC Company that you co-founded in 1997 is unique in comparison to other theater companies?
KITT LAVOIE: Actually, the vision of CRY HAVOC has evolved over time. Originally, it was imagined as a “home base”—a place where we could come to work when we were not working elsewhere. And that’s part of the deal when you are an actor or a writer or a director—there are a lot of times when you are not working on a production. After a while, though, we realized that this home base was becoming something else—that with the team of people we assembled and the approach that we had developed, we had produced twenty-five shows in ten years and developed more than sixty new plays. So we decided in 2007, to celebrate the start of our eleventh year together by incorporating as a not-for-profit, and with that we began to build the programs and the infrastructure to do the kind of new play development and educational programming that we really wanted to do.
There are two things, I think, that make us unique. The first is that, while we do not solely do new plays, we put a real premium on cultivating and developing a community where everyone—actors, directors, writers, and designers—are really immersed in and expert at the process of developing new plays. I think many companies that develop new work tend to have an artistic director and a literary manager, and maybe a handful of writers and directors, who are the engine behind their new work development. And the rest of the actors and directors in the room are there to “help out.” We try to create a community where everyone at the table is well-versed in how to break down, talk about, and build new plays and musicals.
Secondly—and this is really something we learned about ourselves as we were developing our not-for-profit mission statement—our aesthetic is built upon the shared belief that the most interesting theater comes out of approaching all plays as conflict between individuals struggling to do what each desperately believes is right. The idea that it is not enough to understand your character, but that you really need to be able to believe in the things that they do. This concept is central to our approach and has wide-reaching implications, and will definitely be something we get into in the workshop.
Who or what do you feel that you draw the most inspiration from and why?
MATT COWART: Oddly enough, when it comes to inspiration for the theater I’m the most inspired by non-theatrical sources: news articles, visual art, dance performances, multi-media installations, new music, literature—the list goes on and on. I love discovering new things and imagining how they can be explored or utilized in a theatrical setting.
KITT LAVOIE: Agreed. I have come to realize I am a very reactive person, and almost every good creative idea I have ever had has started from “That’s so interesting… and it would be even more interesting if…” Everything I encounter is in danger of being repurposed into the plot of a new play or a way of talking about a character with an actor.
KERRY FLANAGAN: I am inspired by my life and all the people and things I come in contact with.
I am inspired by the fact that life can be a constant surprise if you let it. It keeps you open and available to your instrument.
What is one thing that you would change about if you could go back to the time when you were an undergraduate or a recent graduate?
KERRY FLANAGAN: I would have taken more business classes. Marketing and finance. I would take a class in branding. I would understand that this is a business and figure how and where I fit.
KITT LAVOIE: Yeah. Right out of grad school I was offered several jobs assisting directors on shows at significant theaters, but I thought, “I don’t want to be someone’s assistant—I want to do my own shows.” Then I spent the next five years doing a lot of work I was very proud of… but that virtually no one that I didn’t already know saw. I learned a lot during that time, and I value it for that—but it was only when I started working as an assistant or associate director on shows five years out of school that my career took a very sudden turn in the direction of, well, a career. I am very glad that I did some work in an environment that was out of the eye of the industry, where it was safe to take the kinds of risks and make the kinds of mistakes that allowed me to develop into an assured artist. But I do wish that I had begun earlier to make those efforts to work with people who had the kind of career that I wanted to have—even if it was just being the guy who gets the coffee.
The only way to build a career in this business is to get in the room with the people who have already built their own.
It is also worth remembering that the people who are in a position to give you guidance and opportunity are generally good people who will want to help. But they can’t if they don’t know who you are.
TIMOTHY DAVIS: Agreed. I would spend more time meeting people, and understand that this is a long-range game. And I would tell myself to lighten up; my work ethic is what makes me a serious artist; I don’t need to justify my artistic existence by being a pain in the ass to people who gave me the gift of being interested in working with me.
What advice do you have for young people who are trying to break into the theater arts industry as actors, writers, directors and designers?
TIMOTHY DAVIS: Nearly everything is an opportunity, almost none of which are immediately available. Your work is the only thing you can control. Be joyful in experiencing it, be grateful in sharing it, and be resilient if you feel ignored. If you can do these things in the face of all the pragmatic pressures you’ll face in your life, you’ll find a place in the business. And if you cannot, find something else to do as an occupation. Seriously. Get out.
MATT COWART: Find people who are creating the kind of work that excites you and GET INVOLVED. Observe. Discuss. Learn. Discover their process. How does it work for you? What would you do differently? Once you are able to more fully and exactly articulate what you want to work and how you want to work on it, “breaking in” becomes almost secondary—the way “in” will reveal itself.
KITT LAVOIE: Get in the room.
What would you consider to be the most important skills that an individual should possess in order to be successful in the theater arts industry?
TIMOTHY DAVIS: Three things. First, work ethic—this is even more important than innate talent. Second, resilience—the most discouraging thing about being an actor isn’t that you’ll get told “no” a million times; it’s that no one will seem to tell you anything, or care enough about you to even acknowledge you. You need to be self-reliant to seek out knowledge, to work hard, and develop your skills, even when no one seems to be watching or cares. Because someone will eventually want to do both, and you better be ready to justify their attention. Third, camaraderie—being a person worth working with is invaluable. I don’t understand actors who come into rehearsal and everything’s a fight; you would think everyone is against them. Everyone is FOR you; that’s why you’re there.
Treat everything as an opportunity for you and your comrades to solve problems. Together.
MATT COWART: Versatility. I always cry a little on the inside when I meet a young actor who says things like, “Oh, I don’t dance,” or “I don’t really work well with classical texts.”
LEARN. GROW. DEVELOP. Why would you want to limit yourself?
And this doesn’t only apply to actors. I’ve found that the designers I work with OVER and OVER again are lighting designers who have also designed sets, sound designers that enjoy composing music—the more you can expand your “creative comfort zone” the more of a complete theater artist you will become.
KITT LAVOIE: And at the same time, it is also very important to have a clear sense of what your product is. Actors (and directors and writers) tend to like to believe that they can play (or do) anything. And it absolutely is great to work outside of your area of expertise—if only because it makes you a better collaborator. But you need to identify what it is you are going to make a living at. With how competitive the business is, there are going to be people who do almost all of it better than you do. So you want to identify what three or four things you do better than almost everyone else—in terms of the kinds of roles you play, the sorts of plays you direct, or the kinds of stories you write—and embrace those as the cornerstones on which you can build your career. That is important not only in the way that you market yourself and the kinds of jobs that you go after , but also in figuring out how to improve and hone your product. Do you read like a cowboy, but you’ve never been on a horse? Take some riding lessons. You read as the nervous intellectual who has a well of emotion simmering right under the surface? Work on scenes in your acting classes that are about that conflicted nature so you can figure out how to harness it. It will make you more prepared to snag and succeed in those roles that you are actually going to be considered for, rather than expending your professional effort preparing for roles that other people simply are going to be better suited for.
What are some things that you enjoy doing outside of your professional work?
TIMOTHY DAVIS: I do brazilian jiu jitsu. It’s like physical chess, and I enjoy the mental and physical stimulus. I like reading the newspaper. I try to read the entire New York Times every day. I rarely succeed, but I feel a lot smarter, and more importantly, more connected to my city, my culture, my country, my world, as a result of trying. And I love sports. There’s a wonderful connection between athletics and the arts. The original Greek Olympics included arts competitions, and Laurence Olivier referred to actors as “athletes of the heart.”
MATT COWART: LOOOOOOOOOST. Does that count? Okay, but really, I love traveling. Seeing and discovering places I’ve never been, cultures I’ve never experienced. I also really enjoy gardening—I find it very relaxing. Is this what you mean? I kind of feel like you’re flirting with me. But in all seriousness, I think LOST should count.
KERRY FLANAGAN: I really try to have a well rounded life. Lots of reading. My new fascination is reading comparative theology and anything I can get my hands on about gender differences. I’m also trying to take up horseback riding. ‘Cause I read like a cowboy.
KITT LAVOIE: I was a poli sci major as an undergrad and had planned to become a political operative before I made the shift into theater and film. But I still love politics and read and watch as much as I can about that. But even there, like everyplace else, I find myself repurposing my interest into the things I write and direct – the film I recently wrote and directed was about the children of a newly-elected president, and I am finishing work now on a full-length play about a Republican governor tapped to run as a vice presidential candidate on the Democratic ticket. Actually, I do have a weekly street hockey game I play – with a group of playwrights and actors, naturally – where the unspoken rule is “we only talk about hockey.” So I guess that is the thing that I do that is definitively “outside of my professional work.”
Is there anything else that you would like to express to students who may be interested in attending this summer’s workshop?
KITT LAVOIE: Well, while the workshop is clearly focused on acting in musicals, I think that actors who do not consider themselves “musical theater actors” would take a lot away from it as well. I think the work we do on how to make your character immediate and unavoidable is useful to all actors – as is the discussions on how to hold on to, prioritize, and utilize that work in creative situations that have additional demands. And, again, we are all about empowering actors to take ownership of their character and their situation in a musical rehearsal process—and you never know when you will find yourself acting in a musical. I think you will hear from members of our company at the workshop at least a couple of stories of people who had never been in a musical before… when they suddenly found themselves singing on a very high-profile stage.
Want to know more about the artists who will be teaching the Acting in Musicals workshop?
Kitt Lavoie is a Resident Artist and Artistic Director of The CRY HAVOC Company. He has directed more than eighty shows, including original productions of more than thirty plays. With CRY HAVOC, he has directed Romeo & Juliet, The Median Line, realer than that, Good Enough, Macbeth and Yukon Brass. Lavoie has written twenty-one produced plays and musical books and has written and directed the film Rainbow Rabbit Reliant. He works regularly as associate to director Lonny Price, including the Tony-nominated revival of 110 in the Shade and the Emmy-nominated PBS Great Performances production of Company among others. Kitt is a Member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers and the Dramatists Guild.
Timothy Davis is a Resident Artist and Associate Artistic Director of The CRY HAVOC Company. He is an actor, writer and producer and has worked on over 30 plays and 10 independent films. Davis has performed in productions associated with the Berkshire Theatre Festival, Ensemble Studio Theatre, AboutFace Theatre and Diversecity Theatre, among many others. His film and television credits include Law and Order: Criminal Intent, and Steven Soderbergh’s, The Girlfriend Experience. Tim completed his undergraduate degree at Iowa State University and his master’s degree in acting at the New School University.
Matt Cowart is a Resident Artist with The CRY HAVOC Company. In March of 2010, he will be producing Sondheim: The Birthday Concert, at Avery Fisher Hall with the New York Philharmonic. Recent credits include: Two Gentleman of Verona: The Rock Musical (The Thrust Theater), All Fall Down (45th St. Theater) and Broadway: Three Generations (Kennedy Center, co-directed with Lonny Price) among others. He was a 2004/2005 Kenan Directing Fellow at the Lincoln Center Institute and is an alumnus of the 2005 Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab and a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. Cowart is a graduate of UNCSA
Kerry Flanagan is a Resident Artist and Artistic Associate of The CRY HAVOC Company. She has appeared in many CRY HAVOC productions, including The Median Line and Romeo & Juliet. Other New York productions include the rock musical Jessie, Jesus Christ Superstar and It’s Karate, Kid!—The Musical (winner of NYIT award for best new musical), among others and has also worked with Hell’s Kitchen Musicals. She is a background vocalist for The Eden White Band, with whom she performed at Lilith Fair and is a member of Actors Equity and a lifetime member of The Actors Studio. Flanagan received her BA from Fordham University and her MFA from New School University (Actors Studio Drama School).
