The Vigil or The Guided Cradle

Whenever I get a chance to cover live theater, I don’t waste the opportunity. When I heard about the rave reviews that playwright Crystal Skillman was receiving for her latest play, The Vigil or the Guided Cradle, I decided to contact her for an email interview. (Here’s a sampling of the raves “It’s shocking in a way that such a primitive idea as torture remains so much a part of public discourse in 2010, but The Vigil perversely helps us understand why it has such a hold on us, repelling and fascinating us at the same time. Skillman and Hurley’s collaboration here proves timely and incisive.” [nytheatre.com - Martin Denton]; and “Just when you thought archaic forms of torture had lost their sex appeal, playwright Crystal Skillman unearths a particularly brutal form of coercion in “The Vigil or the Guided Cradle.” [Backstage.com - Reviewed by Mitch Montgomery]). The play, presented by Impetuous Theater Group and The Brick Theater, Inc., is described as “A Medieval man tortures a terrorist in 15th Century Prague while a young tourist in the 21st Century befriends a stranger. A play about the danger of crossing over, between now and then, THE VIGIL or THE GUIDED CRADLE is a chilling portrait of the art of torture and those desperate enough to use their ability to create . . . no matter the cost.” The play runs through May 8 at the Brick Theater (575 Metropolitan Ave., Brooklyn, New York City) Thu.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.–http://www.bricktheater.com/ or www.impetuoustheater.org. Skillman and I also got a chance to discuss some of her previous plays.

Tim O’Shea: How did you come to combine these two particular periods in history with this play (given that it addresses “A Medieval mercenary tortures a terrorist in 15th Century Prague while a young tourist in the 21st Century befriends a mysterious translator.”)

Crystal Skillman: Four years ago, I was being produced at a festival in Prague, and just by chance, we had arrived there the day after the Abu Ghraib photos had just been published. Those images were fresh on my mind, when we our group naively decided to visit The Torture Museum. As the museum went on and on, we came to realize these were all the actual instruments of torture used. It was intense. The museum really hits home that there is great thought and experimentation put into the creation of these torture devices. Half way through I turned a corner where I saw a full display of how The Vigil (or the Guided Cradle) torture device was the origin of Sleep Deprivation torture, and those Abu Ghraib photos, popped into my mind. This was the same thing, and I knew immediately I wanted to write a play about that. Right away, I realized to really capture this connection between this device and what is done today the play’s story would need to cut between now and then, weaving what is learned in the story as a whole. It was a huge task, but I kinda just knew that was the right approach. I’m lucky that Impetuous Theater Group and the Brick Theater both loved this approach as well and this play – they jumped on the opportunity to produce it together, at the Brick Theater where the play is running through May 8th.

O’Shea: How much research was involved before you started writing the play?

Skillman: For the modern time, I wanted to capture my naive experience as an American tourist so a lot of my research is honestly that trip to Prague and what leapt out to me. There’s a lot of beauty and barbarity in any place you visit, but Prague is filled with such amazing stories. Beyond being inspired by the inventor of the Vigil, Ippolito Marsili, the only inventor in the museum who was named, I was fascinated by the true story of the blinding of the clockmaker who created the clock in the old town square. The clockmaker’s story inspired the character of Jan, the medieval terrorist (who Ippolito interrogates in the Vigil). In my play this terrorist is the clockmaker’s son, who tried to blow up the clock as revenge for what they did to his father. In the 21st century, the tourist learns about the clock from the translator, a stranger she meets on the street, leading to events that force her to come to terms with who she is and the legacy her father has imparted to her. The play is a delicate balance of those connections until these two time periods are forced to face one another.

O’Shea: Have you worked with director John Hurley before? As the playwright, did you have a voice in the casting process or did you defer to Hurley on that?

Skillman: I was lucky to have just worked with John on my comedy Hack for the Vampire Cowboys Saloon Series (where six writers show bits of plays once a month in a serialized way. If you don’t know the Vampire Cowboys, check them out, they are all about geek theatre/comic book culture. In a nutshell they are awesome). Hack is an I.T. Spaghetti Western about three I.T. workers who discover one of them has hacked into their hedge fund company. They scramble to pin the deed on one another as they each try to snag the gold in an ultimate showdown of The Good, The Bad, and The Geek. (FYI – I’m happy to share that Hack just got picked up by the Brick for their summer festival in June (more on that below)! Anyway, I asked John to direct Hack because I love his work (After Darwin, 12th Night of the Living Dead) – I knew he’d be perfect. He is such a grounded director, with a strong visual eye, that comes from him getting scenes up early on in the process and playing around with how they can be brought to life in the most active powerful way. It’s very similar to how I write – fast and I tend to flesh out my work in rehearsal. For these more genre oriented pieces, we make a really great combo I think. Our work tends to almost be like a graphic novel come to life in many ways (hmmm wonder where I got that influence [Ed: Skillman is married to veteran comics writer Fred Van Lente])  So – Vigil - John had fallen in love with the play last spring and it turns out he was sharing it with Impetuous Theater Group, where he is the Artistic Director, to consider it. And here we are! Casting wise, I was involved because John and I both have actors we love and want each other to get to know them. As we’re working on a few projects, we know that those we love we’ll get to work with on the right project so in a lot of ways we’re looking for what we need that day, but also thinking about the future. In the case of Vigil and Hack, our actors really are perfect for these roles which has been a joy.

O’Shea: Vigil was just named a semi-finalist for Castillo Theatre’s 2010 Mario Fratti-Fred Newman Political Play Contest . Is it riskier (from a marketing standpoint) to delve in political theatre, or do you think with some consumers, it’s the hook that draws their interest in being engaged/entertained?

Skillman: That’s a great question! I know it’s a hook that would draw me in as an audience member. But of course, the first step is hooking producers who believe in the piece and feel that there’s an audience for it. And there are a lot of producers that are jazzed by what a piece is saying or doing politically and there are a lot who aren’t at all it seems. What I have found sad challenging with theatre is that there seems to be a dependence on plays that are political to be really traditional (like a journalist telling his story on stage or having it dramatized on stage) or message oriented in a way that just tells you what you already know. I go to the theatre to discover and question – I’ve found as a writer using facts to inspire fiction helps unfold more a truth that an audience can be moved by. Perhaps because it engages their imagination on a whole other level and it’s easier to see how these plays might mean something to their own lives? I love plays that are bold but also really grounded in their honesty like Ruined by Lynn Nottage (at MTC last year), Viral by Mac Rogers (Gideon Productions, in the most recent NYCFringe), Enron by Lucy Pebble (Royal Court, currently on Bway). The best political theatre asks us to imagine why these problems being written about exist, and how intended or not, we’re a part of them. That’s what I hope Vigil does.

O’Shea: Unlike a novelist, a playwright creates a work that can evolve or change drastically depending on how the actors and director interpret your writing. Is it more nerve-wracking or exhilarating (or some other sensation) to see where the actors take your work?

Skillman: You hit the nail on the head. Actually to me, it’s totally nerve-wracking and exhilarating at the same time! But that’s how you know you’re possibly creating something great. I’ve found the secret to good collaborations (with actors, directors and producers) is to work with strong collaborators who will always tell you the truth. I only work with actors I trust and in doing so must listen to them. If there’s a line that they can’t say after they’ve been through it a few times or a section is not working, you have to think: is this really working? The balance is to know when certain things are what they are, and need to stay. But always, keep an ear open to listening. If you’re trying to create pieces that have a sense of truth, you must be open to hearing it yourself. The original ending of Vigil was great, but didn’t totally work for this production. I changed it radically before we opened. I couldn’t have done so without our team and in working with John. It was totally nerve-wracking and exhilarating, but I know we made the right choice and I’m really proud of it.

O’Shea: Is this your first play with Impetuous Theater Group & The Brick Theater or have you worked with them before?

Skillman: I’m so honored that this is my first time working with Impetuous and the Brick. And honestly it’s been like a dream. They are both such great theatres doing such great work – it was like a Voltron team up of awesome. It really helped make Vigil the strong production it is. John Hurley, James David Jackson and Josh Sherman, who head up ITG along with company manager Janet Zarecor, are a really great team. At the Brick I’ve gotten to know Co-Artistic Director Michael Gardner really well who has been really passionate about Vigil which has been lovely. He heard about the play from the amazing Jeff Lewonczyk and Hope Cartelli, a big part of the Brick and who run Piper McKenzie Theater, as they asked to read Vigil and fell in love with it. Impetuous had been considering the play all year so when the chance came to team up it was like – game on! The whole experience has been pretty magical. After years of development with the play, these two companies jumped on board in February to produce it in April/May! Kinda amazing actually.

O’Shea: With your play The Sleeping World, it delves into the death of a friend and its impact on his fellow playwrights. It sounds like a play that deals with a lot of pain and mourning-strong emotions. How taxing is it to on the playwright to delve into such turmoil for its subject?

Skillman:  The Sleeping World is my most personal play even though it’s fiction. It’s inspired by the loss of my friend playwright John Bellso who died in his 30s in 2006. At his funeral, a lot of things came up among friends – these realizations are used in the play though no character is based on one specific person. It was through losing John I myself realized – I was so wrapped up in writing, and creating worlds of fiction, that I was losing sight of what was happening in my life and really missing certain moments. It made me think a lot about what we do as playwrights: our job is to create fiction but how do we live our lives? Become less about what we do and people again? Connect? These writers keep trying to find the secret in this last unfinished play their friend who has died has left behind, but it makes them face who they are. We just did an amazing private workshop of the play with Woodshed Collective with a great cast directed by Daniel Talbott, who I work with a lot as a director as well – he directed my plays Nobody, Birthday and Telling Trilogy for Rising Phoenix Rep. It’s great to see that play getting so close to being done. The history of these characters in the play is going deeper and deeper, growing beautifully simple but complicated. It’s been emotional to write, so for sure taxing in that way, but also very easy at the same time because these people, this work, this world I know so well.

O’Shea: With another of your works, 4 Edges, you construct the following dynamic: “A young and unknown American photographer in search of raw, authentic images, sets off for a remote village in a foreign country. Unsettled, injured and very much the outsider, she slowly becomes part of a ritual between a woodcutter and his wife that she herself doesn’t understand – and it is more than it seems to be.” How hard was it in a theater setting to convey the photographer’s craft, or was that an element you did not have to address, given the play’s main focus (her injury and its impact)?

Skillman: Capturing the visual side came easier for this play for me. I actually studied photography as a major for a long time at Parsons School of Design, the Hartford Art School so it’s very personal in that sense. The imagery described in this fictional country I created is very clear and evocative, as is the staging of a violent act Palmer, the photographer captures. But her struggle with the image she’s captured and how that affects her relationships and the world of this play has been the harder journey. The play is so visually stunning it gets designers really excited which is wonderful, but I’ve spent time on the play to have the visual side of the play really mirror what’s going on internally with these characters and being more clear about that. 4 Edges and Vigil are siblings in some ways. They are both big and sprawling stories told in an intimate way. Both are visually very striking – as I’ve continued to work on them my goal has been to strengthen what these characters discover in the play, which makes this imaginative and visual approach mean so much more. In 4 Edges the simple act of taking a photograph changes this world and these characters. The theatrically comes from hitting home how the simple choices we make can affect the environment around us, leaving our own sense of self incomplete, until we learn to give back. Which may sound easy, but is so, so not.

O’Shea: Can you talk about your involvement with the Women’s Project Playwrights Lab? Am I correct in thinking that your involvement in such labs have a positive impact on your creative process, particularly given that The Sleeping World, came out of your work with the Lincoln Center Directors Lab?

Skillman: These labs, which are groups of theatre artists or just playwrights who share work, are amazing. Lincoln Center gave my team a week to work on Sleeping World which was so great. With that time the director of the workshop Scott Ebersold (who I also love to work with) staged half the play! I learned so much so quickly and was able to rewrite much faster. Women’s Project lab has been so cool too – they assemble producers, directors and playwrights together for two years at a time to get to know each other. I’ve now found so many new collaborators – for instance producer Amanda Feldman is producing the full Hack at the Brick this summer! Also all the WP Lab playwrights, are being featured in Out of Time and Place, an anthology being put together by WP playwrights Christine Evans and Alexis Clements (who are true rock stars for editing this baby). Other upcoming WP Lab events include a staged reading of a new work we’re creating together at the Julia Miles theatre Off Broadway for July 15th. You can keep posted on what we’re up to at: http://www.womensproject.org/

O’Shea: A couple years ago, you tackled the Telling Trilogy, would you ever want to try a trilogy of that nature ever again, or is once enough? What was the biggest challenge in the construction of that work?

Skillman: You know, it was actually pretty easy because Daniel Talbott had the idea of doing a trilogy of ghost stories as short plays at an amazing restaurant/bar on the lower east side (Jimmy’s No. 43). He asked me to be the writer and we ended up doing one a year. We were able to really craft each piece separately (though often in a short period of time which I love!) and share with a small audience. We ended up getting fans from the piece, which was so much fun, and were honored that all three pieces, as one whole play, was selected for Plays and Playwrights 2008, so it lives on forever in print. My new play Another Kind of Love, is about three sisters who are part of a failed rock band that have the chance to re-record their one-hit wonder in Woodstock. I can see that family, which is pretty fucked up and living under the shadow of their mother, a famous singer and alcoholic from the 60s (fictional of course, you know me …), being a trilogy of full length plays. But gotta finish the first play first. This summer I hope!

O’Shea: You also do some musical theatre, do you ever find yourself working on a play taking it in one direction and then decide to explore it as musical theatre (or vice versa)?

Skillman: I’ve been honored to write book/lyrics for a great project That’s Andy, about a boy who wants to play Annie (Bobby Cronin is the conceiver and has done additional material and Kevin Carter is the composer/additional lyricist – both are incredible collaborators by the way!) And I’m happy to say That’s Andy is currently a finalist for the NAMT Festival this year so keep your fingers crossed. But most often what I’ve thought is a drama has stayed a drama. Though I have a play Flow, that is a kind of ghost story about those that died while building the Hoover Dam and the son of the first man who died who chooses to stay there that I think would make an awesome musical, especially with a score that evokes that period.

O’Shea: Anything you’d like to discuss that I did not ask you about?

Skillman: I’d love to encourage folks to come out and see The Vigil if they’re in NYC – it runs through May 8th at the Brick Theater and is a great production. It’s currently a critic’s pick for Backstage. Then mark your calendars for Hack! The Live DVD Cut the comedy I chatted about earlier busting out this June at the Brick’s Too Soon Summer Festival. John, Amanda, the great cast, and I will be constructing the play as a night where you pop in a DVD to watch these episodes where the audience gets to pick the extras – from commentary to deleted scenes! Details for both plays can be found at the Brick Theater’s site.

As well Hack has it’s own Facebook page which we’ll be updating as we go.

Tim O’Shea: How did the idea for the textbook first come about?

Jennifer Holt/Alisa Perren: We both teach classes about the media industries and were frustrated with the lack of course materials devoted to this subject – especially materials approaching the topic from a humanistic perspective. We also saw that the study of media industries had been growing and expanding but it had not yet been mapped as a field in an academic text. So we enlisted some of the people who have done formative work in this area as well as those doing new scholarship to help us put what we saw as the emerging field of media industries into context for our readers. (To view the book’s table of contents, click here.)

O’Shea: How did you divvy up the editorial duties on the textbook?

Holt/Perren: This was truly a collaborative effort. We worked together in recruiting contributors, editing all of the essays, and writing the introduction. And amazingly, we remained friends through it all.

O’Shea: How did you determine the topics covered and how many abstracts were submitted for you to consider?

Holt/Perren: We had to pare down to what was a reasonable and manageable table of contents for one book. That was one of the most difficult parts of this project. We wanted to provide readers with an understanding of the historical foundation of various media industries, and also look to the future. We also sought to look at the many ways these industries have been theorized, and consider the various methodologies that have been employed in their study.

After much discussion, we finally settled on four main sections. We decided to keep our focus mainly on visual media (with the exception of radio which is fundamental to television’s history and industrial traditions).

Choosing the proper scope proved to be one of the more challenging tasks in developing the book. There is no question that the media industries expand far beyond film, television and new media (the focal points of our collection). We chose the scope we did for a few key reasons: first, we thought that looking primarily at audio-visual media would offer a greater degree of coherence and specificity across the essays. Readers would not only be able to learn about concepts, but also about the operations of these industries in greater detail, from a variety of perspectives.

Second, we felt this approach would make the material more accessible for those undergraduate and graduate programs oriented toward film and television studies – programs that are often less likely to have extensive course offerings on the media industries than those based in communication departments, for instance.

Third, this focus offered a means of differentiating our book from others already in print. The emphasis on audio-visual media enabled us to address a key tension in studying the media industries: namely, that these industries are at once distinct (in many respects, the film industry differs from the cable television industry, for example), and yet they also are and always have been deeply interdependent and interactive.

Thus, while focusing primarily on the audio-visual risks overlooking the important relationships and contributions of other industries such as comics, music and publishing to film, television and new media, were we also to examine all of those other industries as well, we would likely have a book both too general and unwieldy (not to mention several hundred pages longer!). We believe that the case studies offered by our contributors explore concepts that, though most directly applicable to audio-visual media, can also be extrapolated to other media as well.

It is worth adding that, on several occasions, our contributors do weave in examples from other media forms to make their points. Should we pursue a second edition of this book, one of our goals would be to further expand our discussion to other media. We see the current book as but an early step in what we hope to be a much more extensive conversation about what theories and methods are most productive when studying and writing about the media industries.

After deciding on the chapters we wanted, we commissioned various authors to write them. We were fortunate enough to have most of our writers sign on pretty quickly. Their enthusiasm for the project reinforced the demand and desire for this kind of book.

O’Shea: I was struck by the scope of the textbook, given that you cover historical data like Depression-era advertising to advertising trends in You Tube. Are there topics you wished you were able to address, but were unable to, due to time and/or space constraints?

Holt/Perren: Oh yes! We have enough left for three more volumes! Figuring out what to leave out was probably more painful than deciding what to include. As noted in our answer to your last question, we could easily have entire chapters (or sections) devoted to video games, comics, the music industry, and publishing, just to name a few that we had to leave behind. We would have loved to have issues such as intellectual property rights, labor and emerging marketing practices discussed at greater length, too. We are well aware that there is much more that can be discussed…but we are also proud of how much we – and our contributors – managed to explore. From our perspective, this is but an early step in what we hope to be a longer conversation about how and why the media industries need to be studied.

O’Shea: In teaching students, how hard is it to get them to fully grasp that in order to properly construct theory, they must fully grasp history? This question came to me in looking at Prof. Perren’s dissertation topic (“Deregulation, Integration and a New Era of Media Conglomerates: The Case of Fox, 1985-1995.”) and finding out Prof. Holt is “currently finishing a manuscript entitled Empires of Entertainment, which examines deregulation and media conglomeration from 1980-1996″.

Holt/Perren: As our contributor (current CEO of Generate and former WB network executive) Jordan Levin notes in his essay, executives immersed in the media industries often face strong institutional and economic pressure to “think in the now.” Similarly, at times it can be easy for scholars to get caught up in the proclamations by the press and industry that what is happening in the present is unlike anything that has ever taken place before.

But we have both been trained as historians, and thus recognize that the more you know about these histories, the more similarities and parallels you can find between past practices, behaviors and assumptions and present-day activities. From our view, an historical perspective is crucial because it forces you to more profoundly consider what is in fact new, or the specific ways in which something is new. Certainly policy shifts, the rise of new technologies, media consolidation, and the growth of niche markets have dramatically altered how media are produced, distributed and consumed. Yet we think it is important to move past the broad generalizations that are often made in top down approaches to consider more precisely how and why these changes have taken place.

On the one hand, looking closely at media industry history can lead one to look at the present more closely, forcing one to question the latest marketing or journalistic claims about how “this new technology will change the way media is produced” or how “this new corporate strategy will reshape how media is consumed.” We can see that, in fact, much of what we take to be so novel has been around for years (if not decades). On the other hand, contemporary developments can also lead us to reexamine and rethink historical processes in a new light. In recent years, talk of the rise of “convergence” has led many media historians to look back at what were previously conceptualized as “distinct” media forms (not just film and television, but also comics, music, radio, magazines and newspapers).

O’Shea: I find it interesting that in a book about Media Industries, newspapers get mentioned on one page out of 280+ pages. How much of newspapers’ current struggle stems from the fact the industry did not effectively embrace new technologies?

Holt/Perren: Yes, newspapers were certainly neglected in our desire to focus on the television, film and new media industries. Perhaps if they had adapted better, they would have made it into the book! On a more serious note, the problems facing newspapers are certainly also being faced by all other sectors of the media industries to varying degrees. Every industry – film, TV, newspapers, etc. – is scrambling to find a workable business model. So far, there are many compelling ideas, but few solutions. Right now the situation facing the newspaper industry is especially dire, but other sectors of the media industries – including broadcast affiliates and indie film distributors – are also struggling as their long-standing ways of doing business are faltering.

Having said that, we both agree that much of the current crisis that the newspaper industry is facing is a result of their inability to compete with and adapt to new digital technologies. Primarily, it is their failure to come up with a workable business model that can be reconciled with the very expensive business of reporting news and with the dwindling supply of advertising dollars for publishing, along with the new habits and expectations of so-called digital natives. Add in the fact that traditional media outlets have used up their supply of investor goodwill in this economy, and there are major problems. New media ventures seem to have more latitude for failure at the present moment. Consider this: Google is on schedule to lose $470 million this year on YouTube alone, which is almost five times more than the Boston Globe’s anticipated losses. You don’t hear people talking about the disappearance of Google, though.

There is an excellent interview with Walter Isaacson on The Daily Show that addresses this very question. Isaacson thinks it is the notion of “free” that has killed the business.

O’Shea: How much do you expect the future of the media will be shaped by scholar-activists?

Holt/Perren: One of the unfortunate consequences of the free fall going on in both the newspaper and magazine industries is that there is less money to support more in-depth research and reporting. However, on the flip side, something interesting has begun to occur within the academy: a wider range of media scholars are indicating a desire to communicate with the broader public. The ease of communicating through the Internet has enabled and encouraged some scholars to disseminate their work in a wider range of platforms and venues. The types of activism take a variety of forms depending on the scholars and organizations. Many of the most prominent scholar-activists are interested in addressing systemic policy issues (such as Lawrence Lessig, Patricia Aufderheide and Robert McChesney).

It is worth adding that, along with these scholar-activists, there are many others who are increasingly acting as public intellectuals. These people are communicating with a wider audience about current topics in accessible and engaging prose. Among those who are doing so on a regular basis (through blogs as well as other venues) are Henry Jenkins, Jason Mittell and Chuck Tryon. In addition, a number of sites have launched in recent years that serve as places where diverse conversations take place between scholars, journalists, and the wider public. For examples, see Flow and In Media Res.

O’Shea: Every month seemingly brings the premiere of some form of new media. Are there certain types of new media that you have been surprised to find have gained in popularity or potentially did not click with consumers as much as you initially expected?

Holt/Perren: Generally we both try to avoid playing the prediction game for, as you note, these days one technology or platform is quickly being replaced by another. Twitter, of course, is all the rage these days, and after spending some time on it, one of us (Alisa) can see its value. However, we both remain skeptical as to whether it will take off in the same way that Facebook did, or whether either one of these platforms will be around in a few years.

One problem right now is the sheer bounty of both technologies and content. Many people working in the industry and studying these developments agree that there will soon come a time when the computer and television will “marry.” They are most definitely already in a serious, committed relationship. Companies have tried to push this relationship forward for years now (remember WebTV?). And there is no shortage of technologies available now (see Slingbox, Roku, AppleTV, Microsoft Xbox, etc.). Yet we wouldn’t be willing to make a bet as to how they will take the final plunge. Till death do they part? …Not yet.