FringeNYC 2013: Antony & Cleopatra: Infinite Lives
An Egyptian expatriate gets caught between two revolutionaries - her fiancee, an activist director who tries to upend his commissioned Shakespeare production, and her brother, a nationalist fresh from the violence of Tahrir Square.
Official production websiteShow details/ticketing at FringeNYC
Review by Jane Titus · August 11, 2013
I had a very intriguing evening in the theatre on Sunday. I went to see a production of Antony and Cleopatra Infinite Lives. It is a new play written and produced by The Porch Room.
The Porch Room is a group of young and ambitious writers and performers. They have created a many layered evening in the theatre that starts with the conceit of direct address to the audience, just like a Shakespeare play. No fourth wall, they ask the audience to join them immediately in their world. The premise is a production of Antony and Cleopatra staged in an archeological wing of a museum. As the story unfolds, political and personal pressures take the characters in many unexpected directions. They staged this simply and effectively with a large screen and a projection of a sphinx. The screen was used throughout to shift locales. It was all in all a very nice staging for a FringeNYC show. The costumesas designed by Olivia Rutigliano were evocative .
As the performance progresses, the play adds layer upon layer with parallels between the characters’ lives and Shakespeare’s sprawling play growing in depth and resonance. I think my favorite moment in the play is late in the piece when the stage is split between a contemporary scene and one of the scenes towards the end of Antony and Cleopatra. The scenes are about the same human event – the death of a loved one. And it is the Shakespearean characters that are able to give voice and eloquence to a profound moment in way that modern characters simply do not. The modern characters are mute. But they have the depth of emotion of the Shakespearean characters. It is a fine bittersweet moment on a number of levels.
Theatre when it works best challenges us and opens up new areas of thought and insight while affirming our human experience. Antony and Cleopatra does this. There are some bumpy moments in the beginning of the play but overall, the writing is very strong. The cast is well trained and articulate. Of particular note are Thom Boyer as Dr. Lawrence Elmegreen and Nazli Sarpkaya as Nassima El-Kahir. Dr. Elmegreen is the curator of the museum where the play takes place. His character walks a fine line between buffoon and villain. Mr. Boyer does a great job making this all believable and engaging. Ms. Sarpkaya portrays the character of Nassima who not only works in the museum but takes on Cleopatra as well. She is an honest, accessible actress with range. She made a very demanding role appear effortless. Brava. They are standouts in a very talented cast. I do find myself wishing for more variety in age, but it was a strong evening in the theatre. I can only wish that every visit to the theatre illuminated, entertained and moved me the way this play did.
Preview: Interviews with Artists from Antony & Cleopatra: Infinite Lives
We're asking artists from each show to answer questions about themselves and their work to help our readers get a detailed advance picture of the festival:
Theater Beats Movies · Samantha Apfel (Actor)
- Why do you do theater (as opposed to film, or TV, or something not in the entertainment field)?
Well, I'm only a student, so my general "career" experience is somewhat limited (in terms of trying things outside the entertainment field). But I've been doing theatre as long as I can remember— it began with school plays, which I loved, followed by acting lessons starting at around 8 years old. (I'm told I first demanded an agent of my parents, and they were sensible enough to stick me in a class instead.) And, well, in New York, theatre is what they teach you. I've never really studied any kind of acting other than live performance. I continued performing in college, and connections I made there led me to the Fringe. - What jazzes you about having a live audience to perform for?
To me, an audience is absolutely essential to what we do. A live performance is really the purest form of acting. Think back to the ancient Greeks— that direct, in-person actor-to-audience exchange is a huge part of the storytelling tradition. Feeding off their energy, reacting to their laughs or gasps...every performance becomes unique, which is part of why theatre is so incredible. It's this really fleeting moment that you get to share with your castmates and this room full of strangers. In film, you record your bit in a little bubble, and you really lose all sense of "performance." Performance takes a lot of skill and training, by the way— projection, pacing... issues that can be all glossed over in an editing room. It's really just a whole different ballgame when do-overs are allowed, and where's the fun in that? - Do you prefer to read plays by yourself, read them aloud, or perform them?
Oh, gosh. Never read them aloud, that's just painful. The best way to learn or understand a script is to perform it, hands down. I remember doing Macbeth in high school... I had a pretty small part, but I still knew that play backwards and forwards. I revisited it a few years later in an English class, and I thought, 'Thank God I did this play already, or I would have no idea what's going on.' Thinking back, I'm sure most of the class was totally lost, too. - What moment or section in this show do you really love to perform? Without giving away surprises, what happens in that moment and why do you love it?
Hmm, probably (SPOILER ALERT! Although, come on, this play has been around for 400 years.) my death scene. (I play Cleopatra, fyi). Homegirl is balls-to-the-wall delirious at that point in the show, and it's so much fun to just rip into the lines and go nuts. - People who like which iconic film would like this show: THE SOUND OF MUSIC, STAR WARS, AIRPLANE, or FELLINI’s 8 1/2?
Okay, I'm gonna be real with you here for a second: I have seen exactly one of those movies. So! I'm gona make my own comparison. You will like our show if you like... er... you know, whatever reference I make here is just going to reveal my blasphemous lack of film knowledge beyond, say, the 2000's (90's baby, whattup!), so just come see it. Don't think, just watch. It's incomparable.
The Five W's · Pete Barry (Writer)
- Who are your favorite playwrights?
I guess it would be terrible not to throw Shakespeare on the list, since we've cannibalized his work for our own play. But I think all of us theater-degree bearing citizens owe a lot of who we are to David Ives. The man's simply a genius, and I'm sure he and Shakespeare would have gone out for beers. I wish they could have written something together. That sort of mixing-and-matching-and-juxtaposing-styles is one of the things I enjoy most in writing, which why I probably write with J. Michael DeAngelis so often. Some others? Well, when first asked this question, my immediate reaction was to draft a dream-team of playwrights, but it quickly devolved into assembling a team of bank robbers. So I did both. I'll take Stephen Adly Guirgis for his uproarious language, rich characters and bare-knuckle fighting ability; Caryl Churchill for her subversive fantasies and to bring the heavy weapons; Tom Stoppard for always knocking my intelligence up a notch and to drive the get-away car; and Sarah Ruhl for sheer visual imagination, gorgeous and snappy poetry, and the fact that I suspect she's probably some kind of wizard. - What's your favorite pastime when you’re not working on a play?
I can't overrate procrastination enough. So I fill my non-writing time with all sorts of activities, and since my day job is watching my wonderful children, these usually involve dumping sand into things. One of my favorite solo pastimes is checking out books from the library. Fiction is good for the soul, and non-fiction is good for the head, and both are vital to keep the writing palette fresh. Every member of my family seems to be in a race to see how much of the library they can walk home with. And I will clarify that "checking out" does not necessarily mean "reading". It's so much easier to rack up the books on your nightstand when you let go of this old-fashioned idea that you actually have to finish or even open them. And it's absolutely free. That is, until you're late returning them, and realize that 40 books times 25 cents times 1 week late equals I should have just bought the damn Kindle. - Where does this play take place, and how did you choose that location?
I'll start with the how, which will show you the why and the where. My co-writer, J. Michael DeAngelis, works at the University of Pennsylvania, and he was able to secure us a performance space at their Museum of Archaelogy and Anthropology, in their Egyptian room. It was an amazing space with stone walls covered in hieroglyphs, spooky lighting and a giant sphinx. His original idea was to work with the Underground Shakespeare Company, a student group on campus, to put up a version of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra with some original modern material written by us. As the modern "framing" play grew, it became quickly apparent that the obvious place to set the modern part of the show was in the actual museum, about a group of actors putting up the Shakespearean show in the room. It worked so well that one actor, who played the museum director, actually fooled the audience for a portion of the play into believing he was the real museum director, and they were very upset when he announced, ten minutes into the play, that they should come back next week to see the rest. Being in that space so entirely completed the illusion, that sometimes shifting from the play-within-a-play back to the modern stuff caused a rather pleasant surprise. We obviously don't have the museum this time around, but we're going to try to re-create that same experience on the stage, and I think it will still be quite effective. - When did you know you wanted to work in the theater, and why?
I didn't really act on stage until halfway through high school, and I didn't consider really writing plays until halfway through college. I earned my theater degree from Muhlenberg College in Allentown. While I was there, the first play I wrote, produced, and directed was so unbearably awful that it's become a bit of a legend among my closest friends. To be fair, it went up with an even worse-received play written by a another friend of mine, who I believe now owns the entire theater establishment of the state of Iowa. So, as you see, we didn't give up. But there was a turning point for me personally when my actor professor, Devon Allen, showed me that there were many different ways that you could approach theater professionally, instead of just heading off for the audition machine in New York. I'm going to be lazy and just plagiarize myself from an interview I did last year for the Muhlenberg alumni magazine: "Devon had her own theatre company, Our Shoes Are Red, that focused on creating original work. For the first time, I realized that you can make work, yourself. We got to see how theatre is made from the ground up. We saw it both in the traditional shows directed from a script and a score, and in the new, experimental works where we began only with ideas." This way of working was was very exciting for me, and it's fueled my passion and my philosophy ever since. - Why did you want to write this show?
The desire to write this story grew as we researched the backstory and started to write it. I learned an awful lot about Egypt, both ancient and modern. Everything kept snowballing as the material grew. It probably helped that at the time we were writing, things in Egypt were picking up in a tentative, but often slightly positive way. The riots were over, Mubarak was gone, and the question on the minds of the Egyptian people was, will this fledgeling attempt at democracy work? There was a feeling that in this instance, the fight had not been for nothing, the dead would not be forgotten, and a real democracy might finally take hold. Obviously, anyone reading the news today might think that we were naive, but there are two truths: nobody really know how Egypt's future is going to unfold, and nothing is going to change if people don't fight and keep fighting for that change. If we do anything to spread a little awareness through our art, maybe we'll have done some small service. If, as artists, we tell a compelling story, maybe we can light a fire or spread a little hope. Wouldn't that be preferable to going to the bank finding out that you're being held at gunpoint by Tom Stoppard and me?
Many Faces of Theater · Dustin Karrat (Other)
- Why are theater festivals important?
THEATRE FESTIVALS ARE THE BEST. Let's think about this: There are 200+ shows going on at any city at any given time during the bigger festivals. That's amazing. It's a great way for people to see a lot of theatre on a small budget, so they're great for audiences. You also get to see a lot of work that wouldn't normally be presented at a normal venue. There's no “Fiddler on the Roof” happening at Fringe. You get to see the cutting edge of what people are working on RIGHT NOW. Our show “Antony and Cleopatra: Infinite Lives” has lines that were added last week straight from news reports, you just don't get that sort of thing normally. That's a feature of festivals. Festivals also provide a lot of work for young performers. Almost every actor/writer/director I know did their first shows out of school at a fringe festival. They're a great place to take risks and be daring, creatively and professionally. I once saw a festival show where Abe Lincoln did a strip tease. 'Nuff said. - Are there boundaries as to what kind of theatre you will take part in?
I'm happy to push my boundaries and get out of my comfort zone. I hear a lot of actors say things like “Oh I could NEVER take my clothes off on stage,” or something to that effect. Allen Ginsberg said “The poet stands naked before the world,” and I think that goes for all art, from writers to actors to magicians, everyone. An actor portraying the loudest, most boisterous character is still revealing a secret part of his or her self to an audience. I think that's way scarier than just being naked. Of course, that could all change if I suddenly found myself in that position! I wouldn't take part in theatre that was immoral, though. I don't mean portraying an immoral character (those are the most fun!), but a play that pushes an immoral agenda. I wouldn't do a pro KKK piece, for example. Or something that knowingly endangers audiences or actors. I'm looking at you, a certain web-slinging musical. - Are audiences in New York City different from audiences in other cities/countries where you’ve worked? If so, how?
I guess we'll find out! I'm from Philadelphia, so this will be my first time performing in front of an NYC audience. From my experience, I expect the venue will have more of an impact than the city. It's like the difference between a regional theatre and a festival show. Regional theaters, full of subscribers, typically skew older. Festivals draw younger crowds, and sometimes you have a house full of fellow artists. I've done straight plays, movement pieces, comedies, musicals, puppet shows, from free fringe pieces to Equity houses, and I'm always surprised by the variety of people who will come out if the word of mouth is good. The first time “AC: Infinite Lives” was mounted, we did it in the Egypt wing of the Penn Museum. We had everyone from local college students (who need to learn to KEEP THEIR PHONES OFF DURING SHOWS!) to museum subscribers come. I personally just hope the audiences in NYC are nicer than the traffic. - Who are some current indie theater writers/directors/creators whose work really excites you now?
Is it tacky to say “The Porch Room?” It's tacky. I don't care. I'm really excited by their work. Michael DeAngelis, John Dowgin, and Pete Barry write some of the most clever, intriguing pieces I've ever seen. I acted in “Signs from God,” a fringe piece they put up in Philadelphia a couple years ago, and I still have epiphanies about some of the ideas they presented in that play. I mean, they've done a show about murderous door-to-door pitchmen. C'mon. And who else is combining Shakespeare with the Egyptian revolution? That's a crazy person idea. They have crazy person ideas that they execute so artistically, you can't help but be thrilled by what they do. I still have a text from Michael describing a project he was working on. “Something about being trapped in a room with a ghost and a cell phone.” I don't know what that means, but I know it's going to be amazing when it happens. - Which character from a Shakespeare play would like your show the best: King Lear, Puck, Rosalind, or Lady Macbeth -- and why?
Lady M, for sure. Ripping power away from the establishment and taking over herself? She'd be all about the Egyptian revolution! I think she would appreciate the strong female lead in the show as well. And the mind games Cleopatra plays with Antony! She'd be right in the thick of it. “Out damned asp, out!” It's got a ring to it.
Theater is Political · John P. Dowgin (Director)
- Are you, just by doing theater, making some kind of political statement?
Unquestionably. 'Politics' is just the pretty word for influencing others towards a particular way of thinking. To some degree, that's what the act of telling a story, *any* story, is. When you're involved in a theatrical production, no matter what capacity, you're helping put a vision of the world, or of *a* world, out there for others to judge, in the hopes that they'll at least be entertained by it, at best be inspired by it. And when it all clicks, when the audience sees the final product and says, "Yes, that's a way of looking at it that I hadn't thought of," or they say, "My God, that's how I feel, I didn't know others agreed"... I don't know if there's a stronger form of political influence, because it doesn't force the belief from the outside, it inspires it from within. - Is this play political? Why or why not?
Absolutely. But to steal some imagery from Buffalo Springfield, it's not a 'Hooray for our side' play, but rather an 'Everybody look what's going down' play. The story revolves around a production of Shakespeare's 'Antony and Cleopatra' that becomes strongly influenced by two men who, on the surface, couldn't possibly be greater polar opposites of one another. The first is the director, an American who fancies himself a political activist, a self-imagined 'Occupy Everything' hero. The second is his future brother-in-law, an Egyptian nationalist recently arrived in America, fleeing the violence in Cairo. As events brings these two into conflict, an unexpected bond develops based on the play. They agree it's nothing more than a Western propaganda piece painting European philosophy and influence in a flattering light, Egyptian philosophy and influence in an embarrassing light. So from this commonality, they set out to turn the story on its head, to produce the play in a way that depicts both sides on equal footing and gives it modern resonance. But *can* an American director really understand what that entails? Can a man with no real religious convictions understand, and truly tell the story, of people who would die for faith? Can a child of a culture of plenty, even one who builds a career rallying against aspects of that culture, really understand what it means to fight a theocracy from within? The third major character is the fiancee and sister of the two men in question, which takes the political aspects into another light. You've got two men arguing over a play, written by a man, that revolves around a woman. Can they really understand her take on the situation? Can a brother accept his sister's decision to adopt a new culture, when he would fight to the death to save the one she has left? Can an American man truly understand what it is to be a woman making that decision, and facing the consequences it wreaks on her family and her personal identity? This is a long way of saying yes, our play is very much about influencing people: the myriad ways we try to do so, but also how very, *very* rarely we understand the full impact of that influence when we choose to wield it. - Theater is a necessary ingredient in democratic societies. Do you agree or disagree, and why?
Necessary because it's such an effective ingredient. Democracies run on ideas. The ideology that best advances its ideas will wield the most influence. And you can try to advance your ideas through debates, arguments, editorials, or pretty Powerpoints with crisp bullet lists. They'll all crumble before an idea told as a story, as events happening to characters whom the audience recognizes, empathizes with, and wants to see succeed or fail. - Who do you think has the right idea about theater: Brecht, Artaud, Shakespeare, or Aristotle?
If there were one "right idea" about theater, three of these names would've been forgotten centuries ago. Each had a different take on the animal, none right, none wrong, just theirs. Invoking self reflection, maximizing emotional response, cracking as far as you can into the character's head, defining the elements of a well-told story; few would argue that any of these have no place in the theater. They're different approaches, not valid or invalid ones. - Be honest--as a director, your leadership style is most like which of these political leaders of the past: Gandhi, Cleopatra, Stalin, George Washington, or Attila the Hun?
Actually, I'd rather take my cues from Captain Kirk: surround myself with people far better at their specific jobs than I could ever hope to be, keep them all on the same page, and see if we can find out what's behind that next star.
All About My Show · Olivia Rutigliano (Designer)
- Complete this sentence: My show is the only one in FringeNYC that...?
"Antony and Cleopatra: Infinite Lives" is the only one in FringeNYC with a plot that hinges on the presence of a Sphinx. I’ll bet, though, it’s also the only show in FringeNYC that is actually three different shows in one – the play’s about a Shakespeare company putting on Shakespeare’s "Antony and Cleopatra" in a traditional fashion, and then, halfway through, changing the way it’s staged to communicate unrest in modern Egypt. One third of the show is a comical rendition of the machinations of a theater company with lofty ambitions, one third is an elaborate, glitzy historical romance, and one third is a modern, politically-aware adaptation. - What aspects of design are you responsible for, and what exactly does that entail? Please be specific, e.g., if you’re the sound designer, what are the things that the audience will experience that you’re responsible for?
I’m the costume designer. As the production features many different styles of dress, I have to design garments and make them from scratch, as well as find pieces and put together modern outfits. The costumes in the show have to illuminate the transformation of a Shakespeare production from representing Egypt as an ancient, baroque dream to illuminating its modern political concerns. All of the costumes worn by the Ancient Egyptians and the Ancient Romans are made by me, for example, while the others were assembled. The theoretical centerpiece of all the costumes, though, is Cleopatra’s gown. It’s made of blue mesh with a beaded bodice composed of glass seed beads, pearls, turquoise, and tiny metal filaments that also rain down the skirt. Certain parts of the fabric are gilded, and the collar and various parts of the train are made of tiny, blunt shards of metal. It’s pretty heavy. It’s also the only garment that appears throughout the whole show, regardless of other costume changes. You'll see why. - Is there a particular moment in this show that you really love or look forward to? Without giving away surprises, what happens in that moment and why does it jazz you?
Before "Infinite Lives" came to FringeNYC, it premiered at the Philadelphia Fringe and Live Arts Festival, staged at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. The script was written for this run – with lots of parts pre-cast with members from the affiliated Underground Shakespeare Company. Since almost every actor in the cast of "Infinite Lives" plays a member of the imaginary troupe, and then plays that same troupe member acting as a Shakespearian character, Michael DeAngelis and Pete Barry (the writers) got the idea to name a lot of the characters in the troupe after the real actors who played them – and therefore have the real actors play really exaggerated versions of themselves. So, there are some inside jokes. I designed and made the costumes for the Philly Fringe run, and, as such, my name was one of the many incorporated into the script, for “Olivia, the costume/set designer" within the play's theater troupe. Because the Philly run was completed with a smaller budget, and I only had under two weeks to make about 15 ornate, Egyptian/Roman costumes and assemble about 15 more modern military ones, I had to be really creative with the materials and styles I chose; though many of the costumes were sewed by both machine and hand, lots of them had components made of cardboard, hot glue and duct tape. So, my favorite part in the show is the moment when I, a behind the scenes presence, am incorporated into a really nice inside joke onstage, – when one of the characters says flatteringly to the “Olivia the costume/set designer” character, “Olivia, I’ve seen you work miracles with cardboard and duct tape. The things you can whip up...” Hearing that from backstage is really gratifying. - How does your design work reinforce or deepen the themes and ideas in this show?
As I've mentioned, one of the many insightful points captured by "Infinite Lives" is the struggle to stage a play in such a way that will make it more meaningful in a contemporary atmosphere. My design work has to capture this. The two sets of costumes I have to make for virtually the whole cast are aesthetic opposites of one another but, together, represent the theme of a search to find and reflect Egypt’s true identity. One set of clothes represents an opulent dream of a romantic, ancient, Roman-Empire-occupied Egypt, so the costumes are more whimsical in their luxuriousness than entirely historical. The other set, however, must convey a gritty, modern reality - so we scrounged up real uniforms. The changing of the costumes from ancient to modern (and from lavish to simple) is the most obvious, but perhaps most important, sign of the play-within-the-play’s switching motives. - Which “S” word best describes your show: SMOOTH, SEXY, SMART, SURPRISING?
I think the production can be described with “smart” most of all, as it manages to convey three distinct plots in one, without being confusing. Most importantly, though, it delivers Shakespeare in a modern, and often moving, manner that is highly accessible to modern audiences. The biggest hurdle I’ve observed all Shakespearean productions face is the fact that audiences are convinced that without modern dialects or Leonardo DiCaprio in a Hawaiian shirt, Shakespeare is dusty and outdated and impossible to understand. "Infinite Lives" is about this very topic – about making Shakespeare accessible to modern situations, and modern thought – and it, itself, is very easy to follow and easy to enjoy.
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