Think Globally, Act Locally

In January, the A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theater Training will present Boston-based playwright Kirsten Greenidge’s Familiar. Production Dramaturg Elizabeth Amos spoke with Director Rebecca Bradshaw about the contemporary relevance of this piece about family and the forces beyond their control, set in a clam shack on Martha’s Vineyard.

How did you come to know Kirsten Greenidge, the playwright of Familiar? What was your introduction to her work?

Kirsten is a Huntington Playwriting Fellow, so she’s had a relationship with the Huntington Theatre Company, where I work as a producer, for many years. We’ve produced two of her plays for the mainstage (Luck of the Irish and Milk Like Sugar), and this past summer, I produced a new play that she worked on at the Huntington’s Summer Play Workshops (And Moira Spins). She’s a quiet force, but in her work there is such anger and passion. I’ve been following her career for many years but have never directed her work, which makes this project especially exciting.

When seeking out new projects, what kind of material excites you as a director? What is it about Familiar that attracts you?

I love plays that challenge me. I love when plays have characters making choices I don’t immediately understand. I am not attracted to plays in which I feel like I get the world, I get what’s happening. Familiar is full of complex and nuanced characters. There are so many layers to these people, and they have a lot of secrets.

I also find the magic realism that Kirsten brings to a lot of her plays intriguing. It gives the director a lot of leeway to make discoveries. Sometimes that freedom is scary because you want to have all the answers, but other times, it is freeing because it is non-concrete. Her magic realism gives you a sensation, but it doesn’t give you an exact context for that feeling. The audience can also bring their personal lives into the play, which I find very inviting.

For theatermakers, the question of “Why this play now?” is an important consideration. How will the A.R.T. Institute’s production of Familiar interact with the context of today’s world?

I’ve been having conversations lately about the idea that we should, “think globally, act locally.” We are inundated right now with world news: you wake up with awful stories popping up on your phone every day, and you forget about what’s right around you and within your grasp.

There is a scary world surrounding the family in this play, too, and each of them handles it differently. Archibald wants to explore it, while Jill wants to hold him safely back, as if she’s trying to hold onto the thing that’s closest to her rather than letting it go into a world she knows is terrifying. I find that relationship very true to anyone trying to protect their loved ones from the realities of the world right now. The play also explores the reverse of that dynamic in Maya, who feels like she needs to just dig a hole and escape. I find that notion very relatable, too.

I think that by sitting with each of these characters, we can learn something about ourselves and our neighbors in today’s world.

At this early stage, are you able to give us any insight into your creative vision for the production?

There’s something about sand in a beach town that affects the entire lifestyle of the people who live there. Sand gets everywhere. There’s this feeling of sand being an irritant but also feeling like home. It’s a physical thing from the outside world that intrudes upon protected interior worlds. I love working with something that’s physical and tangible that actors can play with. There’s something about sand that I know I want to play with because whether they’re standing on it, dancing in it, or whirling in it, there’s potential to create exciting movement on stage.

As this is an A.R.T. Institute production, you’ll be working with graduate student actors. Having worked with student actors before, what do you enjoy about directing in an educational setting?

With universities, there is often more focus on the process, which I really value. My favorite moments as a director are in the rehearsal room. I love cracking open characters with students because I feel that they bring an investigative energy to the process of finding out who a character is. Also, with university actors there is a comradery between the students because they’ve been working intensely with each other in their classes. There is something I really love about the ensemble work that’s already engrained in students who have been in the classroom with each other for months or years.

Interview by Elizabeth Amos, a dramaturgy student at the A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University (’18).