Monty Cole, director of the CNP world premiere of Adrienne Kennedy's "Etta and Ella on the Upper West Side", sits down with CNP Producing Artist Daniel Alexander Jones.
CNP Producing Artist Daniel Alexander Jones hosts a conversation with Monty Cole, director of the CNP world premiere of Adrienne Kennedy’s Etta and Ella on the Upper West Side, which premiered at REDCAT in Downtown Los Angeles in February 2023. Over the project’s three year incubation at CalArts, Cole and his collaborators dug deep into Kennedy’s trademark embrace of symbolism, lyricism, and mythic figures to capture the Black experience in 20th century New York.
Hosted by Marissa Chibás, this podcast was produced by CalArts Center for New Performance, the professional producing arm of California Institute of the Arts, Travis Preston Executive Artistic Director and Dean of CalArts School of Theater. Produced by Rory James Leech. Editing and Sound Engineering by Clare Marie Neminich. Associate Producers Rachel Scandling and George Lugg. Associate Sound Design by Duncan Woodbury. Podcast theme music by Christian Amigo. Special thanks to Ravi Rajan, President of CalArts.
For more information on these artists and their work, as well as other CNP projects visit centerfornewperformance.org.
Find more episodes and subscribe to upcoming ones at centerfornewperformance.org/podcast by clicking on the podcast name and hitting the subscribe button!
MONTY COLE
with DANIEL ALEXANDER JONES
Monty Cole:
Every medium in American culture is trying to take advantage of liveness...
Every single medium is trying to figure out how to get people out to do something. Cuz they know that the experience economy is where the younger generation is looking towards...
When I was 20 or 19, something like that. I remember making an artistic mission for myself...
I wanna make theater a more integral part of American everyday life.
Music:
(intro music)
Marissa Chibas:
Welcome to CalArts Center for New Performance—where we follow the artist. I’m your host, Marissa Chibas, speaking to you from our home at California Institute of the Arts—where for five decades a community of artists has come together, where artistic practice knows no bounds. Our podcast is a place where you can encounter visionary artists, as they lead us into creative dialogue, and discuss generous acts of world-making. In this episode, CNP Producing Artist Daniel Alexander Jones hosts a conversation with Monty Cole, director of the world premiere of Adrienne Kennedy’s “Etta and Ella on the Upper West Side”, which premiered at REDCAT in Downtown Los Angeles in February of 2023. Over the project’s three year incubation at CNP, Cole and his collaborators dug deep into Kennedy’s trademark embrace of symbolism, lyricism, and mythic figures to capture the Black experience in 20th century New York. In this conversation, Cole, a graduate of the CalArts Directing Program and current CalArts School of Theater faculty member, discusses the seminal experiences that lead him to pursuing a career in theater, his correspondence with Adrienne Kennedy, and how Kennedy’s influences became his obsessions.
Daniel Alexander Jones:
Well, Monty, it is an honor to sit across from you and have this conversation.
Monty Cole:
The honor is mine. Daniel, I've heard so many things about you for Oh, so long and I've followed your work for so long, so many admirers across the country. So, no, it's an honor.
Daniel Alexander Jones:
What about the haters?
Monty Cole:
Yo, what about the haters? Let's talk about the haters who got haters across the country too.
Daniel Alexander Jones:
But no, it's a thrill. And, and I'd like to dive right in cause there's so much to talk about and to ask about. Um, but, but we, we begin with the fact that you have just helmed this incredibly moving production of, uh, Adrienne Kennedy's, Etta and Ella on the Upper West Side Which was not only its premier But really was a process where, and you collaborated into this imagined world and created structures that now define this work for the world forevermore, which is so exciting.
Monty Cole:
Right. It is crazy. So
Daniel Alexander Jones:
Exciting. So, um, we, we are here, we are talking about Etta and Ella. We are talking about CNP, we're talking about you and we're talking about your collaborators. And also we're gonna talk about the theater writ large. Right? Yeah, yeah. Good. I have a series of questions and I'd like to just dive in and ask them of you and go wherever they lead you. And I'll, I'll meet you on the road wherever you go.
Monty Cole:
Okay. Sounds great. Sounds great. Alright. That was great. Sounds
Daniel Alexander Jones:
Alright. So, you know, um, uh, you were sharing with me a little bit about, uh, where your parents came from. But I wanted to ask you a bit about where you come from as an artist. And the way that I thought I would ask is to say, take a moment and give me three pivotal snapshots of your life coming as coming up as an artist or in your early part of your career that you would point to that say, this is who Monty is. Or this is a defining idea of your artistry, your identity as an artist, where from whatever time, I don't care if it's from a child or what have you, no three pivotal snapshots, what would they be?
Monty Cole:
That's great. I, I think, you know, I was, uh, I was watching a documentary about Steven Spielberg last night. Um, it made me think about my childhood a lot of times, uh, when I was a kid. I mean, I grew up in suburbia. I grew up in like the west suburbs of Chicago, uh, the first suburb west of Chicago. So Oak Park and Oak Park is like, it's, is what it would, it would love to tout is what it would say.it, it, uh, you know, um, Ludicrous went to Omaha High School for a little bit, but also like Ernest Hemingways from Oak Park and Frank Lloyd Wright. Um, and growing up, um, my sister was really into, my sister and I were both really into musicals. We were both into The Wiz, I don't think I've owned any DVD more than The Wiz,Or VHS tape more than the Wiz And she was into, um, she wanted to be in musicals and, uh, and then she dropped out and then I did musicals and I was better than her . No. But like, it was on Blast. I I was better than her. Let's just be honest. And I know you are listening, Misha, I was better than You . Um, no, but, but, but a lot of it does come back to like, I, when I think about the, that time, like the, like the eighties and nineties that there's like, um, wholesomeness to those movies. There's like a, there's a, um, like a caring about the audience and about their emotional arc that I think still resonates on a lot of my work now where I, when I watch, like when, when I, um, watch something or when I create something, I'm really thinking a lot about what I call like the audience arc of the piece and sort of how, what's the audience experience of the piece from walking in the door to, um, you know, the bow and, and how is there some sort of catharsis and how are they changed by the piece?:
I, I think about that a lot. And I think that it comes from that type of art that we were consuming in the eighties and nineties. I think that there was a, there was a care about like the audience feeling something in a way that we sometimes undercut that now, or we don't really care about it now. We don't care about the, the audience or like, we like to pretend we don't. Um, and I, and I unabashedly do, I, I do care that they feel something. Um, and the second thing I would say is, and, and while that's like really poppy, um, in high school we would go to see all the weird European productions that came into town in Chicago. So like, we saw Edward Hall's Rose Rage, which was I think an adaptation of Henry the Six, um, parts one, two, and three.
And it was just like this wild reinterpretation that was set in like a butcher shop. It was five hours long. I remember being changed after it. And I was like 14. I remember, I mean, I saw Ivo Van Hove, um, my wife and, uh, met at a castle in the Netherlands, uh, because Emerson College owned a castle, still owns a castle in the Netherlands. And you can just, you live there for four months and they give you a Euro rail pass and they like to introduce you to the culture. And I remember seeing an Ivo Van Hove production of, um, Taming of the Shrew before he was on Broadway. It was like all in Dutch at the same time, I felt like it could have been muted, it could have been fast forwarded. I could've been watching it from the other room and I would've known exactly the action of the play, what was going on where you were. And I was like, Ooh, that's, is that good staging is like when I can literally mute the play and I can still feel moment to moment what the story of it, it could be in a different language. I can still feel what the story is. And then, and then the third moment for me would be I, after I graduated college and you know, I did some producing, I worked at Groupon, cuz that's what you did in Chicago.
Um, and in the mid teens, uh, early two thousands. Um, and I worked for Chey Yew at Victory Gardens. I was an artistic programs manager there. Uh, I was a casting director. Um, I was just kind of in charge of a lot of different producing projects. And through that I just learned via osmosis from all the directors that came through there. But mainly I learned like about new play processes and development. and a certain care for the playwright. And so now I'm in this kind of place where I like, I love like innovative experimental experimental work because of that European like work that I loved when I was in high school and college. I love things that are like unabashedly, like cathartic and poppy. But then also I have a huge respect for the writer.
And I, and I just, and I want to always honor that collaborator. And it is a collaboration. Like, you know, I have, uh, I'm working on Incendiary by Dave Harris. We're about to do this at Woolly Mammoth in May, and it's like Dave's at every design meeting, like, I'm not excluding him from anything. because how, how could I, I mean I, um, and granted a lot of the times he goes like, yeah, that's about right. That's, yeah, that's right Monty. Yeah. But just to get those moments where he goes like, I think what you're trying to say here is this, because I wrote it like this. It's like, how, what am I gonna throw away that information? That's useful information. And so that's why Etta and Ella was such a beast. I think it's actually a perfect combination of those three influences coming together. It's that poppiness that you've see in like in cinema and like, and film noir. It's got like this experimental, um, existing out of time, out of space. And then it has deep catharsis. And also I'm trying to read Adrienne Kennedy's mind, which is a very complex mind. Um, and so yeah, it was
Daniel Alexander Jones:
That's beautiful. Yeah. That is a fulsome fulsome response. And it's beautiful. Cause it opens up threads that are perfect to tease out a bit more. Number one, um, another thing that I really admire about the way that you're walking with your work and the way that the work resonated is that it, it is not reductive.
Daniel Alexander Jones:
It's very specific.
Monty Cole:
Yeah.
Daniel Alexander Jones:
It, I And just for the audience who may be about to see a production of Etta and Ella who may have been reflecting on, on what they have seen, that, that you, you walk your talk in the sense that you invite a person who's coming to witness this work in Yeah. And you give us many points of access. It never felt pedantic. I never felt like I was being guided, but I felt guided in the sense of forced to look at a particular thing. Right.
Monty Cole:
Right. Right. But
Daniel Alexander Jones:
You did give us so many anchors and you were patient with us, and you took us into the story, and you took us into the characters and you took us into the world's plural that we were moving through, Now I'm gonna bring it right to, to this work and say to you, um, Adrienne Kennedy is not only a complex mind, but she is a complex mind who was part of the architecture of, of, of a historical moment in American theater. World theater, right? that, that we inherited as artists. Right. Like so here, or she is in that off Broadway like early scene where we're seeing those collisions of performance, art and, and theater. Right. And music and avant garde. dance and everything, yada, yada yada. Yet here you are in the 2020s engaging this process. And when I, I think you started in the late teens, right? Like you, when was your first engagement with the project, would you say?
Monty Cole:
Yeah, it was, I mean. I actually think I got the script in January, 2020.
Daniel Alexander Jones:
Right. Then. Beautiful. This is perfect. So it's been a perfect three years. Three years. Right. So my question for you, there's of course I want to know how did you collaborate. right? But I'm, I think part of why I'm really interested in it looking at you and looking at the values you walk with as an artist in the way that your art sings those values. Right. What does it mean for you as an artist who is in a moment where you are shaping the theater. you are a voice who is part of making this new generational imprint. You are caring, you are caring tradition, but you're innovating, you're pushing.
Monty Cole:
Yeah.
Daniel Alexander Jones:
Yeah. What is it for you to have been in collaboration with somebody where there's like, what, at least 50 not 60 years between y'all in terms of location, life experience, and, and I'd just like to open that covered door and say whatever comes forward for you. Yeah. Tell me about your collaboration.
Monty Cole:
I will say, I mean, that's the reason why I said yes without questioning it. It was, it was the mere fact that was Adrienne. And I mean, I, I remember first reading her work when I was 17. Um, I was a huge bookworm in high school, because I would read books like of Mice and Men and be like, oh my God, I really like the part where they're talking. I'd really like the part where the quotations happen. Um, and I found like, oh, s scripts are entirely that. Um, and so I think I've always thought of theater in some ways as a, as a literary art form, I think because of that. Um, and so in that way, I think approaching this work didn't feel totally foreign because Adrienne is writing in a very literary kind of way, and it almost ends up prosaic.
And, um, because it's adapted from her short story, uh, Sisters Etta and Ella on the Upper West Side, when I read it, I think Travis, um, artistic director of CNP and I both were like, it's fantastic cause it's not a play. We couldn't figure out why or how it's like, it's, um, on the page it almost looked like word art. And, and I don't think I knew the logic of it at first. Well, and not to say that I ever did, or that there has to be a logic for it, but like, I think when I first read it, I was, I could feel it I didn't understand it. And I think over time I learned to love that feeling good. You know,
Daniel Alexander Jones:
That Yeah. And that's actually very clear that love is very clear. Um, and I remember reading at one point, uh, a quote from her, and I feel like it may have been on the, on one of her book covers, but it said, you know, my plays are meant to be states of mind,
Monty Cole:
Right?
Daniel Alexander Jones:
And so the, one of the things that, that conjures is, we may have a lot going on in our mind, but there is a, whether it is buried or, or barely glinting an internal logic to what's going
Monty Cole:
On. Right, of course. Even in the midst of a nightmare. Yes, of
Daniel Alexander Jones:
Course there's clarity and specificity. Yes. And, and very often what I've experienced in prior productions that I've seen of Kennedy's work. is that there will be an imposed logic Yeah. Somebody will come in to make it make sense for an audience. Right. Versus what you just described. And I just wanna say, I feel that you did that work Because you went in and you let the logic of the place speak to you. Yeah. And you tell you it shaped. Yeah. Right. And, and, and in that, as you're saying, you actually did an adaptation of a, of a, of a piece that lived in this liminal place.
Monty Cole:
Right. Right, right, right, right.
Daniel Alexander Jones:
But did you have discourse with Kennedy? Did you have or what or what, to what degree did that happen and or where did that feel necessary or not to you?
Monty Cole:
Yeah. I would say my discourse with her in a very, like, uh, literal way as in like, her and I going back and forth via email may have started closing night . Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, I, I mean, I think that there was, like, there was, uh, an email. Here's what happened. I, I did so much research. I, um, I read her memoir, uh, uh, the people who led to my plays. I've read her other work. I, anytime someone can give me a clue, I listened to it, I've read it. I talked to people who knew her. You know, I mentioned this in that essay. My cousin Wendy, just happens to be the head of non-fiction writing at Columbia University and happens to be like, it's almost like she became a writer because of Adreinne Kennedy. Like, she loves her and they have a little back and forth.
And I asked her questions. I, I really tried to kind of ask, I asked you questions. I asked everyone sort of like about her. Um, and from that and from like gleaming from all these different sources, I started to like be able to create an, an image of her. Um, but also I knew that she didn't really want to be involved. And I knew that she, and that, in fact, most of the times when we would communicate to her, it'd be through her publicist. And, but I still wanted to have some sort of communication with her. So I, I sent her an a letter like last April, almost a year ago. And it was basically along the lines of like, Hey, I've been doing all this research. I know your people, your people know me now.
I promise you I'm putting as much care as I can into this. I promise you that I'm trying to do my best to honor your work. And you don't have to do anything. You don't have to say anything. You don't have to answer any questions. But I, I got you and I know I'm a new director to your works, but I just, I promise I got you. And she did respond to that, and it was very gracious. And it was very like, oh my God, you know so much about it. Uh, and she started sending pictures and she started showing. And one of my favorite emails was like, she sent an email of her parents and she said, “Etta and Ella's parents are my parents too”. Hmm. And I was like, yeah, a Adrianne and I get it.
I get it now. Um, uh, but of course she couldn't just say, I am Etta or Ella. Um, she had to say in her own way. And so I, and every single step of the way has been like trying to solve a mystery. And I think I've intentionally kept it that way. Good. You know what I mean? Like, I, I intentionally was not trying to solve the mystery on day one, cuz I don't think it's meant to do that. Um, and so since then, you know, as she's wanting to know like what the future of the production is, um, we go back and forth. She shares our accomplishments, da da da, it's nice. Um, but I don't think either of us wanted that relationship when the process was happening.
Daniel Alexander Jones:
Yeah. Which is, I think a another powerful, powerful testimony. And also I think that feels like an, uh, a response about that intergenerational query. It also brings up for me another question which has to do with, um, how do I phrase this? Let's see. It brings up for me another question which actually has to do with freedom. and how we might argue even in a very baseline analysis of black artists in the United States, particularly black theater artists. Yeah.
Monty Cole:
Yeah.
Daniel Alexander Jones:
Whether or not we claim that identity. You know, and I think that there are, there are, um, uh, ways in which Kennedy's work, your work, my work can be put in categories that we may or may not want those the work to be in. Right. Right. Right. But there is a common conversation, which is we are looking at work by an artist who wrote at a time when black American artists were radically redefining the parameters of what their experiences were. could be and perhaps most, most notably what we could imagine. Yeah. What could we imagine? Yeah. Right. Yeah. And so in, in her case, just as a point of history for the listeners, she put on stage what had been previously forbidden, which is the internal working of the mind on its own terms inside a structure that we live in. Right,
Monty Cole:
Right, right.
Daniel Alexander Jones:
And she did that thing. Yep. And it confounded many people. Yep. It inspired many people, et cetera, et cetera. And I guess my query for you right now is, you know, you, here you are. Um, and, and I don't know your age, but I can guesstimate from when you say you we're coming up, that you are at a moment that I think we all can argue is a pivotal moment in the
Monty Cole:
American
Daniel Alexander Jones:
Theater We are seeing radical changes in the nature of what institutions are, are putting forth, uh, material that is being viewed as being important in the world. Right. Right. Yeah. We are seeing changes in leadership. We are seeing changes in the ways that work gets done. we're seeing an incredible rising generation of, of black artists in particular, some of whom are alums of Cal Arts. Right. True. You know? Yeah. Like, I think about, you know, um, Alicia, all Alicia, you, you know, uh, uh, uh, Zola d I can go Sarah Jean as an as, as a generative artist, his wife, the talking, we can go down the list of visionary leaders. Right. So, here you are. What do you take from your lineage? And what do you leave behind?
Monty Cole:
Ooh. Okay. Can I tell you what actually I think was the most difficult obstacle of this play for me is, is related to this.
When I was here at Cal Arts as a student, I saw so much experimental, interesting, innovative work, work where they, you know, they, you didn't have to have the answers for it, it was just, it was doing something new that you never had seen before. And, and, and they were just naturally, creatively just going there, allowing themselves to go to those places. And I could do that to a point, like, you know, I came here because I like saw the, the weird shit, the weird theater of the, the performance or the da da da. And I was like, how do I combine that with what I do? Cause I think that's way more interesting than a lot of the work I'm seeing in theater. Like, how do I, I think the innovators are gonna lead the way eventually. And here we are now, we were, good Lord, please let the innovators lead the way.
And I will say, as a black artist, I don't think I always would allow myself to do it, to make something experimental, strange, confounding because of that audience arc thing, because of that audience caring about the audience and how they feel about it, and da da da da da. And so I think there's, um, when I came to Cal Arts, I, I, and watched other people's aesthetic, and mine was like this polished thing from regional theater, and I got so enthralled with people's disobedience, and I wanted to channel more disobedience into my work. Beautiful. And I, uh, and I watch, and I look at Adrienne's work and I see so much gorgeous disobedience that still you feel something, but it's, it's not following the rules. It's not, um, it's, it's not always meant to be completely understood in the way that you might assume to be in theater. And and I think about my, my mom and my sister and or people who they invite to see, uh, my work and like the, the, the aunties who have my signature from when I was in Little Shop and, I just, and I think, are they gonna feel something?
And is there a world in which I can still build something that I've never seen on stage before, but then the audience still feels something? And that is, uh, that is where I get torn into. It's the, um, it's like I know damn well that the average black audience in the American theater is a 40 to 60 something year old black woman who has subscription to the large regional theater and probably has not seen some of the more strange work that's come into town. And the American theater already alienates them. Who am I to alienate them even more? And is it alienation by doing something experimental and new? And that's my constant tug of war is that I'm like, give me that new shit Right. In my veins. And then I'm also like, there's a always just a question of accessibility for me. And, and, and I, and I, and I never, and I, and I, and I'm always going to be torn with that. And I think that tearing actually, um, if I could feel myself for a moment, I think that what makes my work good, a lot of times that's your,
Daniel Alexander Jones:
That's your engine, and
Monty Cole:
It does make it good.
Daniel Alexander Jones:
Right. And it's a, I'm this, that was such a beautiful answer and I, I have a deep sense that when people get to hear it, it's going to give them, it's gonna let something roll off their shoulders. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's so beautiful. Um, here's the thing that happened for me though. When I watched your production, I recognized those women
Monty Cole:
Yeah. Right. I know. Yeah. I
Daniel Alexander Jones:
And so I'm, I think part of what I want to link to now, if I may, is, is also thinking about the Center for New performance, thinking about Travis's vision in, within it, thinking about this idea of letting the artist lead, which is the, the, the moniker that we come back to for this, right? . And, and why I go there next is to say, if we don't have the capacity to explore to quote unquote experiment. to, to live in aesthetic terrain that is not easily digestible, then we never actually get to see whether or not people might actually really like it. Right. I know.
Daniel Alexander Jones:
Because part I think what we're talking about in part is whether or not you are welcomed to this and whether or not you are
Monty Cole:
In the welcome. That's right. That's right. Given
Daniel Alexander Jones:
Which you did in this production given the signs and the signals to say, we not going somewhere that you've been before.
Monty Cole:
Yeah, yeah,
Daniel Alexander Jones:
Yeah. But we are going go and I'm gonna be here, and we are gonna be here. And so one of the questions I have that is cn it has two parts, CNP specific. Number one, I'm curious about how that idea that you were invited and you even said you started the thing, you know, you and Travis sat down and you're like, what is, how do we, blah. So you started this process. So part one of the question is, what specifically about this place and this way of working, let you go into that, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then part two is what do you think is the, is the invitation for the field at large based on what you experience here? Oh. Like, were there things that happened here that couldn't have happened somewhere else? What did that look like structurally? Et cetera, et cetera. So take that and run.
Monty Cole:
Yeah. Oh my God. Uh, so many things I'll, I'll, first and foremost, last April we had a workshop and there's so many things that are sort of unprecedented about that workshop. And good Lord, I, I, I can't even imagine doing her work without this type of process now. Um, she, so we, we had a five to six, six week workshop
Where we had designers in the room, and we, and, and I had the lighting designer, Claire, who, Claire and I have collaborated for a while. She's from Chicago. She just happens to be a CalArts student now, which is good for me. Right. Uh, we like kind of went two ships passing the night a little bit. But, um, uh, she and I worked in Chicago for, so we kind of have a shorthand. So I was like, we need to like carve light on her face in this sort of north side. She needs to glow in this kind of way, but it needs to be so specific that like, if she leaned forward in her chair, we'd miss her. Like, it needs to be like carved in such a specific way. And is there a way that we can hit that every time? And like, how do we create this noir aesthetic, um, on stage in a way that like, we can still feel the space and be with it the whole time.
And, um, what is like this piano and how does that a relationship to it? And I would say, and we, we were playing projection a little bit, playing with space a little bit, all these different elements. And in that workshop, I was just so scared of Adrienne. I wanted to honor her so much I wanted to do right by her. I was hearing all these stories. I was trying to just like do the thing as close to what she has written as possible. And, and towards the end of it, I started breaking some rules. And then her publisher was like, Hey, we wanna see what you've done. Can you write up in like the script format, almost basically what you've done? And I was like, oh God. Oh God, you don't wanna see that. You don't wanna see that. Uh, and I did. And eventually they were like, oh, yeah, that's okay.
I was like, oh, well, if it's like that, then the next time we go in, I should go in. Like we should, we should go really? We should go in. Um, we under, we started to figure out the [inaudible] language of it, the spiritual language of it, da, da, da. And if I didn't have that workshop, I don't think I, I would've been as daring in so many ways with the, the, what we ended up doing. That's one. Number two is there was no performance at the end of that workshop, which is huge. And by the way, some artists might be like, wait, what? Like, you didn't even get to like, see an audience reaction, da da da da da. You care so much about the audience. Like, why did you see, but like the fact that in that five week time where I was working with students, and honestly the actors were alums, but like, I mean, talented as hell, like loving the pieces, beastly good alums, right?
like, they're all cal arts people, but like the, they're like, yeah. And, uh, at the end of that five weeks, I didn't even stage the violence at the end yet. And I was like, great. That's how far we got. That's right. That's right. When do you ever get to say that? Right. When do you ever get to say, this is how far we got in this process this time. That's right. See you next time. That's right. Never. Right. Never. And, um, and you certainly wouldn't give money to an Adrienne Kennedy piece to do that. You would maybe to a musical or to like something more commercial, blah, blah, blah, to give money to an Adrienne Kennedy piece to workshop for five weeks with no expectation of like, and then of course you're going to show everything you've done to the students, da da da. And you have to get it tech ready, and you have to spend this much time to get it to look like a product so that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No. Yeah. Like, and I, and, and granted, I have done that here before, but it was on a project where it was, it was a, I was coming in as a visiting artist, and it was like something where it was a performance series project where like, you know, it's the, like the parameters were Yeah, exactly.
Daniel Alexander Jones:
Specific, but it
Monty Cole:
Wasn't even CNP related, but like, this was to, to hear like, hey, I mean, to be honest, Travis would tell me like, Hey man, I kind of want you to fail.
Yeah. I kind of want you to like, like mess it up this time. Like, just like, just like do something that you haven't done before and just like, and, and, and, and fail, uh, during this workshop. And, and the fact that I could get to the end of it and, and, and be like, and I, to be honest, I got to the end. We got to the end of it and realized, oh my God, we're, we've been staging it moment to moment, to moment, to moment to moment. But actually when you literally just do what's on the page, the play doesn't breathe. Um, and in fact, we relearn that lesson probably in the, in the, in the, in the most recent process as well. But you, you kind of learned like, oh, like you have to like build in space for it to do to, to, to, to breathe on its own in order for it to exist.
Daniel Alexander Jones:
But that is what you just say right there, right Is you have to learn it. Yeah. And you can't learn it in three weeks. You can't learn it. No. With, and you know, you, and, and so these, the, the testimony comes back to say, to say, when we think historically, every significant consequential, aesthetic movement has had in its genesis, the space, the time, and the energy, whether it be turned that be turned into hard currency or turned into the sweat equity, right? that there was, there was the ability to invest in a series of explorations that was Yeah. Duration, right? Like, so Yeah. Like that's what you look at that period, you know, I always, I always love when I'm teaching a class to kind of draw the lines and say, y'all know, this was happening at the same time as this, and that at the same time is this, and that they all lived in this many blocks of each other, and they were all in each other's audiences. And so to when we think about that Kennedy didn't exist in a vacuum. And, and that her contributions resonated in such profound ways. And that the, the young people who came to see her shows 10, 15 years later became the architects of what we now think of as Exactly, et
Monty Cole:
Cetera, et cetera. Exactly. So
Daniel Alexander Jones:
I'm, I'm heartened by your response too, because I think it says, you know, at moment where we're seeing a winnowing of, of, of, uh, spaces of programs where everything is now, you know, uh, and, and this is a generalization, but I think anybody who's working in the theater now would agree. You need to know two years ago what you're gonna do. And that Yeah, I
Monty Cole:
Know
Daniel Alexander Jones:
That destroys
Monty Cole:
It kills everything. Everything. And I'll say also, the, the process doesn't end ever like this. Like, it's not, and we, and we don't, like, we think, oh, they had a three day run at the REDCAT. That was the product. It's like, I think the, the last performance we might like, it's like, I think we got like, oh, that's the play. You know? Yeah. We're kidding. Even now I go like, okay, when we do it again, it'd be nice to bit that, that moment needs to be built up. But
Daniel Alexander Jones:
This is, this is also for me, Ben, an historical issue, right? when, and talking about, you know, not only my generational, the work we all were doing and continue to do and, and what I see y'all doing and the ones behind you, right? That, you know, part of the thing is iterative and abstractive work didn't starting Europe. Right? Like we No.
Monty Cole:
Right, right.
Daniel Alexander Jones:
Traditions in this. And so when we think about the fact that we, we are Syria in our storytelling, that even if you go back to those foundational modalities, the congregational modality of the church, like you wove so much of that in that we keep coming back, we keep repeating and touching and, and evolving and sophisticated, and that we learn through that kind of doing and passage. So Yeah. You know, there's, there's also, for me, I think a, another question which is, um, you know, thinking about you and where you are going, you've just come through this amazing journey, which is continuing, right? Like continue you and grow and live and, and you know, I, I will continue to be excited to see like what, what, what variance emerged from that imagined space But now how has this changed you and what do you want to do now? And when you look at the field, what has that dropped into your lap as the next set of, of tasks that you want to take on as an artist and a leader in the field, what you are
Monty Cole:
Yeah. I mean, with the plate does and what the production does, which I, and I always try to figure out how to do in my work in a way that, again, covers those bases that I talked about before, and I think I might have mentioned this in that topic that you and I had, which is like, I love work that lays out the stars in the sky and asks the audience to create constellations. Beautiful. And I just, when you're handed a script, or hell, even when you're writing one in yourself, it's sometimes hard to honor that. You want to pull an audience through, hold their hand and make sure that they get every emotional beat, yada, yada, yada. And Adrienne's work doesn't call for that. And, and it forces you to not work like that. It forces you to, to re to allow the audience to make constellations.
And, and it's just a beautiful reminder of that. And I, and I, and I think that like redefining how cinema and performance kind of come together is a thing that I'm always am gonna be interested in. I think we can go further there and even this production and, but like, and, and how we can make it specific and, and eye-popping, like, um, intentional, but there's a, but really that element of like, how do we allow audiences to create their own experiences? That's, that's the thing that I've been really trying to figure out how to do. And I love, I love that you can do that in a Persian theater. Like, it doesn't, it doesn't have to be a walkabout experience. It doesn't have to be immersive. It could, it can that people had that in a 45 minute piece downtown on Asian theater
Daniel Alexander Jones:
To like, in spades. And there's something that I want to note for the listeners as well, which is that, that was another point of, of, um, praise, but also deep just structural recognition of what Yon made, which is, I have rarely seen that kind of filmed or projected, uh, material work in the way that you got it to work. So it, it felt, it did feel like it, it had responsibility. It was not environmental. It was not purely emotional or textural. It carried narrative, but then it also gave it back to the live performers. And sometimes they were in duet in some really powerful ways. Right. And it signals to me too, like, I think again, what, what are we having reports every day about movie and live theaters closing, closing, closing. Cause people want to have an experience they can have on their laptop. Yes.
Monty Cole:
You know?
Daniel Alexander Jones:
Exactly. And so, so I think that that, that also signals to me to say, you're, you're asking questions that are questions that are about the future, and they are not, which I, which thrills
Monty Cole:
Me. Right? Yeah. I, I will say, I just, I thought about this actually just yesterday,
When I was 20 or 19, something like that. I remember making an artistic mission for myself. Ooh. Who, which is kind of crazy. I, I remember it being like, it's not word for word. Right. But it was like something along the lines of, I wanna make theater a more integral part of American everyday life. Yeah. Which was more the thought of like, why does this thing feel like it's so separate from the culture? And how do we get those things to intersect better? Yeah. And like, and how do we make it so that, I mean, nowadays when I think about building work in a quote unquote theater, I, I don't even like to say theater really anymore. I'm, I'm thinking like liveness, like how do we, how, and, and I mean, to get on a soapbox a little bit, like Please, I, I've said this since I, I've said this since like 2014, and then it became less so of the case in the pandemic, and then it's come back and now it's just, it's, it's just obviously a, just a truth at this point.
Every medium an American culture is trying to take advantage of lifeness. Like film is making money off, its, its IMAX and 3D glasses and music is making money off of its concerts. And, and like, every single medium is trying to figure out how to get people out to do something. Cuz they know that the experience economy is where the younger generation is looking towards. And everyone wants to just be able to say that they did something. I, Hey, I went out and I did something tonight. Here's this photo of like, the thing that I did last night. Did, you know, did you do the thing last night? And the one medium that doesn't take advantage of that is the one medium that does it implicitly, which is theater.
Daniel Alexander Jones:
You better tell the whole story now when you tell it. That's
Monty Cole:
Right. I don't understand it. It's like, that's right. It's like when you read that synopsis and that seasoned announcement, are you like, I gotta go do that, I gotta go see that. And, and for at Anella, for as you know, strange and sometimes as experimental as it is, I read the synopsis of what we are doing and I go, yeah, I'd go see that
Daniel Alexander Jones:
You absolutely. Yeah. And I, I, I think the, hopefully the people hearing this are about to do that. Right.
Monty Cole:
Right, right, right. Yeah. Just done it.
Daniel Alexander Jones:
And we are in a difficult place, and I say this, you know, in my fifties, having been in the field for 30 years, I felt a very similar way that you feel now when I was in my twenties looking at being like, you know, cuz it was a moment where it felt like it was going to get more live. There was gonna be more access. Right. It was more permeable. We had changes in, in leadership and all kinds of amazing artists coming up, yada, yada, yada. But it's like we wouldn't let the old thing die. I know. And it's like, it got the, it got those, uh, the paddles like And so why is this important? It's not to say, oh, old theaters should die, or people shouldn't go to a Christmas carol or they shouldn't have a season or anything like that. It's the, that it's not so much about keeping the old a alive, but it's the pre preventing of the new form from emotion.
Oh, real. And the fear around that. Yeah. And the resistance to that. And so, you know, I just want to, I want to say again to you, I feel the force of what you're engaged with and it's working and it's real. Would you maybe, as we kind of come to a conclusion also share with us a bit more about the incredible artists you got to work with in this team. Oh my God. Maybe just if you want to, if you want to just reflect on what, as a whole it was like to work with them, or there's a particular set of experiences you had where you're like, look at this team.
Monty Cole:
Yeah. I mean, just to talk about like where the broader aesthetic impulses came from is just the more we read about Adrienne and the more we like looked into her work and was really just like looking at even the structure of the play. We were just seeing a detective story. We were seeing a mystery, and we were, and then we were trying to figure out like a, and, and, and also we've seen this heightened style, um, the stakes of it comes from, and, and sometimes even the humor of it comes from like, um, it, it, it's, it's life or death and it' s academia. You know, it's like both of those things at the same time. and, and that's, and and, and, and, and sometimes it's over the top, but also completely real. Like, I know that, like you said, you know, these women.
And so we, you know, we watched a lot of film noir movies. I would say strangely actually though, um, as much as like, I think aesthetically light lighting wise and like, um, you know, production design wise, like watching the older films, the black white films were really useful.And so, and I think watching the older films, they were like, oh, I have permission for it to be intense. I have permission for it to be that stale. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right, right, right. For it to be, um, like one of her, the first lines is her desperate voice is dramatic. Like, for both of these characters are allowed to be dramatic. Um, and to, to give that scale to sometimes moments where you could read off the page and not see that scale.
Um, and speaking of scale, we knew that we wanted this big canvas. It was almost like we wanted to take the idea of like, uh, we were thinking about, I was thinking a lot about Rear Window, like the experience in New York of like, looking across from one building into another building and like peeking through the curtain and trying to look into someone else's life. Um, what if you could take that curtain and just like, make it huge and oversized in the size of the space and allow that changing of the curtain to carve new spaces That, and the projection, as you said, like trying to blend in the Simax style. I was like, I want an opening credit sequence. Um, I want an opening credit sequence where you can tell that there's something wrong, but like, um, but that there's a mystery afoot and that you can under, you can feel this, the, the, the place of it, because otherwise the, the aesthetic, the, the, the set and the, the sound, and that wasn't exactly going like New York, New York, New York in the, in a literal way, but in a feeling way. But
Daniel Alexander Jones:
In a feeling. And we were instantly there. Right. And this is one of those places where I say like, you, you made that in such a way that, you know, your aunties, you're talking about come and that we, they, we've all been on that couch together watching that movie.
Monty Cole:
Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah. Right. Exactly.
Daniel Alexander Jones:
It also, it also gives, it lets everybody in that room know that we have something in common to touch.
Monty Cole:
Exactly.
Daniel Alexander Jones:
It's so generous. Right. Exactly.
Monty Cole:
That's then we
Daniel Alexander Jones:
We'll go, we will go anywhere with you. Exactly. You do that. So that's a mark of your success. And I feel like you, you've nailed that.
Monty Cole:
Who talks about that? I mean, everyone talks about this, but Robert O'Hara talks about this a lot, like in the first five pages, I'm gonna tell you exactly what this experience is gonna be. I'm giving you the first five pages to walk out the door if you, that's, that's if you, if
Daniel Alexander Jones:
You not ready. Right. Right. And again, and Robert O'Hara another, another voice that I feel like, um, you know, is, is uncompromising in the determination to make sure that we don't collapse Yeah. And collapse our identities. Yeah. Yeah. And so like that, again, there's a fulsom aspect, but I want to praise something again about that, that moment. Because what you then do is you do the thing that, again, a lot of the old guard and a lot of the gatekeepers forbid, which is you say most people don't know an opening credit sequence from a movie. Like, why can't we use that in
Monty Cole:
Yeah, yeah. I know, right?
Daniel Alexander Jones:
Why can't we, we have projection and, and that scale, why can't we use that kind of wink and a nod that we all know a Joan Crawford performance? or we all know, like we know that era. Yep. And that there is some, there is inherent text
Monty Cole:
To that, and it's still important that it feels live. Right. So there's a, there's a pianist on stage of scoring the opening credit sequence. So it's not like you're just watching a movie, you're watching a live experience of a movie that you couldn't have anywhere else. You couldn't
Daniel Alexander Jones:
you know, kind of in conclusion, what I would say is you just in that answer wove together everything you've talked about in this conversation and gave the evidence for me, which is this is only possible if, number one, we value the idea, that the unknown will gift us.
Monty Cole:
Yeah.
Daniel Alexander Jones:
Number two, that we have to have the time, the space, and the support. And I'm not talking only about logistical financial support, but I'm saying the energetic to support, to have somebody say to you, go so far out that you might fail, because that's gonna be where the good stuff is.
We don't get the good ideas if we don't give them space to come forth. and you did that. And you did, and I love the shape that you've described. And just for the folk listening, you know, we don't often get a chance to be present to the generation of a work, right? And most often the, you're, you know, if you are not a maker, your encounter with that is likely through an interview or a talkback, you know? Right. Obviously this is an interview.
Monty Cole
Right, right,
Daniel Alexander Jones:
Right. But, but to be able to hear you describe this process in from multiple angles in this conversation, I hope people understand how many things get fed by working this way. that, that your, your collaborators got to try things they hadn't tried before. Your, in particular, your actors were tasked with challenges that were maybe beyond their experience or their training, but they got to give it a shot. Right. Malik gets to play in a way that's different than the way that, that he's habituated to playing. which brings me back to you in Oak Park, going to the castle, going on your adventures, and that you walk with that spirit of curiosity and you give yourself permission to go to the places you've
Monty Cole:
Done there. And I think, by the way, I'll say most artists know this, but maybe most good artists know this, that like, it's that curiosity that's the life and blood of the thing. Right? Like if in the moment you lose that, you're dead. And, and I, I fear the regional theater right now is losing its curiosity.
Daniel Alexander Jones:
Yeah. I, I would agree. And I will say this last image, which I always tell folk to look at, birds flying in a flock, they don't have a conference. One bird makes the decision to be curious and go in a different direction, and everybody goes, I'm curious to see where you, Monty, take us all including the American Regional Theater by going and following your curiosity. And thank you for a beautiful conversation.
Monty Cole:
Thank you. Thank you, Daniel.
Daniel Alexander Jones:
Oh yeah. It's good.
Monty Cole:
Yeah. I can talk to you for foot. Yeah, me too. I can do forever. It was.
Music:
(Outro Music)
Marissa Chibas:
That was director Monty Cole in conversation with Daniel Alexander Jones for CalArts Center for New Performance. This podcast was produced by CalArts Center for New Performance, the professional producing arm of California Institute of the Arts, Travis Preston, Executive Artistic Director and Dean of CalArts School of Theater. The CNP Podcast is produced by Rory James Leech. Editing and Sound Engineering by Clare Marie Neminich. (nem-eh-nich) Associate Producers are Rachel Scandling and George Lugg. Associate Sound Designer is Duncan Woodbury. Podcast theme music by Christian Amigo.
Special thanks to Ravi Rajan, President of CalArts. For more information on this and other CNP podcasts, visit centerfornewperformance.org.
You can find more episodes and subscribe for upcoming ones at centerfornewperformance.org/podcast or find us on your favorite source for podcasts, including iTunes and Spotify.
Thank you for listening. Until next time.