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Cal Shakes and Word for Word company members work the land at The Farm in Salinas; photo by Derek Smith. |
In October, we launched our third New Works/New Communities venture with the first of several week-long workshops. Through an extended, community-based process, playwright Octavio Solis is adapting The Pastures of Heaven, John Steinbeck's novel of interconnected short stories set in Corral de Tierra, a small farming community in California's Salinas Valley. This project partners Cal Shakes with Solis and Word for Word Performing Arts Company to adapt the 1932 novel for a 2010 production on our main stage, the perfect setting for stories rooted in the rolling hills and farmlands of central California's Salinas Valley.
Solis is a San Francisco-based playwright whose plays have been performed at theaters across the nation, including Oregon Shakespeare Festival (for whom he is currently writing an adaptation of Don Quixote), the Dallas Theater Center, the Magic Theatre, Intersection for the Arts, South Coast Repertory Theatre, the San Diego Repertory Theatre, the San Jose Repertory Theatre, the Imua Theatre Company in New York, and Cornerstone Theatre. He responded immediately to this story of a "lost California": "I read the book and fell in love with Steinbeck's remarkable people, sad and wretched, staking all their dreams and ambitions in a small hidden vale of earth that just won't yield its secrets in the end."
Word For Word Performing Arts Company is an ensemble that brings uncut short stories to vivid theatrical life. Cal Shakes Artistic Director Jonathan Moscone has been an admirer of this company for years. "They exemplify everything great about theater: their pure passion for literature; their utter theatricality; and their commitment to the ensemble. Everything they do excites the imagination as their work proves the essential power of words to move, to affect, and to make you think." We look forward to developing the play in concert with Word for Word and our own Associate Artist Company.
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The first Pastures of Heaven workshop |
We are currently forming relationships with community-based organizations in and around Salinas, and plan to collaborate with these groups in the creation of the play through workshops, community conversations, and interviews. In 2009, we will link the project to our Artistic Learning Program through artist residencies centered on The Pastures of Heaven in our partner schools around the Bay Area.
In our October 2007 workshop, the first step in this multi-year process, Solis, Moscone, and ten actors from both Cal Shakes and Word for Word immersed themselves over five days in the world of the book, focusing on one particular story and its characters. The artists drew from both Word for Word's unique practice of staging literary works, and the collaborative process used by the Royal Shakespeare Company to develop Charles Dickens' The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby for their stage. Through a combination of performance, research, and conversation, project artists tried to fathom characters like Turalecito (little frog), a found child named for his odd appearance. They improvised scenes, explored different choices in performing brief sequences, and researched farming, historical events, and the flora, fauna, and topography of the Salinas Valley. Throughout, they began to hone their sense of the book's tone and Steinbeck's spare use of language, and how these stories might find their way to our stage.
Workshop participants included Cal Shakes actors Ron Campbell, Nancy Carlin, Catherine Castellanos, Dan Hiatt, and Joan Mankin, along with Word for Word artists and co-artistic directors Susan Harloe and JoAnne Winter.
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Octavio Solis at the first |
In March 2008, Solis and other project artists headed to Salinas for two days of field research. The group visited agricultural education center The Farm where they tried their hands at working the land, and learned about the history of local agriculture and agribusiness. Afterward, they interviewed seniors at the Firehouse Recreation Center, and explored future community events with the CEO of The National Steinbeck Center. They also began exploring the landscape itself, with multiple trips to Corral de Tierra, the breathtakingly beautiful real-life setting of The Pastures of Heaven.
Two weeks later, we held our second workshop for the Steinbeck Project in the Cal Shakes rehearsal hall, this time exploring the story of the charming but filthy Whitmanesque slacker Junius Maltby, his son Robbie, and their effects on the community. Again, Solis, Moscone, and Cal Shakes and Word for Word company members used improvisation, performance, research, and conversation to plumb the depths of Steinbeck’s delicate narrative. Workshop participants included Cal Shakes Associate Artists Ron Campbell, Catherine Castellanos, and Domenique Lozano, along with Word for Word charter company members Susan Harloe, JoAnne Winter, Jeri Lynn Cohen, Stephanie Hunt, Amy Kossow, Nancy Shelby, and Patricia Silver.
We are grateful to our project funders:
