Kelly R. Haydon, Tzipora Kaplan, Katherine Heberling
Bird House
A nytheatre voices cyber-interview
Kelly R. Haydon, Tzipora Kaplan, and Katherine Heberling are all theatre professionals. All have worked as directors and have extensive experience in many other aspects of indie theater. Their unique producing company, the KNF Co., are producing this show.
Pictured: Kelly R. Haydon, Tzipora Kaplan, and Katherine Heberling
You are collectively, as KNF, the producers of Bird House. Could you tell us a bit about the play and how did you come to be the producers?
Kaplan: Two girls live in a treehouse on the Bright Side, until one leaves home to become a hero in the epic war happening far way, on the Lop Side. Alone for the first time, Louisy and Syl must re-form their lives and themselves, for better or worse.
I think the three of us probably have three different answers as to how we came to producing, but for me, I loved working artistically with Katherine and Kelly, so it seemed like the next, natural step in our working relationship. We were clearly three people with that rare bird, that balance and complimentary skills that are so rare in working relationships, and we loved our wacky, off-topic, meandering meetings and our midnight escapades at the diner. We've searched for a long time for a worthy project and I'm very proud of how far we've come, and it's a beautiful thing to realize that the scope of our imaginations is something acheivable. It is a gargantuan challenge, but what else is the creative process for?
Heberling: I think the three of us were initially attracted to the play for its "impossibilities." So many beautiful, strange, and haunting things happen, from an invasion of an army of ants to a magical wind to a cuckoo clock bird flying out of a girl's mouth. It's a challenging and rewarding play to stage, and when you read it, you ask, "How will they ever pull that off?" And that's the magic of the stage. Through puppetry, original composition, and video, Bird House is the type of visceral experience that can only really occur through live performance. It's also a very touching and timely story, both funny and bittersweet. It is about the impossibilities of everyday life, and our war-torn world in particular. The characters struggle with the question of what is most important: fulfilling promises to loved ones or doing something bigger to better the world.
The three of us met the playwright Kate Marks and director Heidi Handelsman at a small women's theatre company about six years ago now, and we worked alongside them there as directors. We've been searching for years for a way to play together again, and about nine months ago, they slid Bird House across our desks. We fell in love, and we have not looked back since.Haydon: In Bird House, a bird flies out of a girl's mouth. Cuckoo birds escape from the clock. A little girl on stilts leads an army of two to fight the Werewolves. An old woman leaks, literally. In Bird House, impossible things happen, which is how Kat, Tzip and I like our theatre: absurd, visual, poignant, and peppered with the unforgettable. Above all, CHALLENGING. There ought to be an e-Harmony type dating site that matches up producers with directors and playwrights based on a serious of probing questionnaires. Since 2007, we had been looking for a project. We went through a full year of reading after reading, searching for "the one," the play that we would fight for. We saw a lot of good plays, a few great plays, but none that were truly magical in every sense of the word.
Then, an old colleague of ours from The Looking Glass Theatre, Heidi Handelsman, sent us a script by another alum, Kate Marks. Kate and Heidi, like us, were feeling very jaded about the summer festival rut we had all fallen into. While I cannot overstate the effectiveness of theatre festivals, their importance in getting new work produced, and the amazing hard work and dedication that goes into organizing a mass event, after years in their arms you start to feel…ready to leave the nest, so to speak. Heidi wanted this play produced on its own, fully designed by a team of talents, and open for more than a weekend or a smattering of days over a month. Knowing we were in the same place, she came to us first.
Bird House was exactly the kind of poignant fairytale we didn't know we were looking for. Kate Marks is well-known for her visionary projects; she works often with projections, film, dance, and clowning. She's sensitive, quirky, and smart—ShirleyTemple of Fringe Theatre—and wrote a play culled on the emotional disconnect on a person that happens when a war goes on in a place that is very far away. It "examines the relationship between the place where war is a reality and the place where war is a story," in her words. With puppets.
But it seemed impossible to produce. How was furniture going to fly on our budget? How were we going shoot a bullet hole through a locket floating by in the wind? We realized quickly that these questions were not for us to answer, they belonged to the director, confident and spunky, full of ideas, and her team of designers. All we could assume was that it would happen as long as we made sure it happened. And it did, it has, it's opening this weekend; I could not be prouder. Our design team is supernaturally talented and we've been blessed with a terrific group of young volunteers dedicated to making the impossible happen. Being responsible for bringing all this magic on stage is a dream come true.
Each of you brings varying theatrical skills and backgrounds to being part of a producing group. Could each of you tell us a bit about your own particular skills and the areas of theatre within which you have each worked the most?
Haydon: Tzip says often that the three of us put together would make an amazing person. We've also likened ourselves to the three principles characters in Ghostbusters: Tzip is the boss (Peter), Katherine is the brain (Egon), and I'm the blind enthusiasm (Ray). In Independent Theatre terms, Tzip takes over the task the of supervising the production, Katherine handles contracts, administration, company management, and—god bless—proof reading, and I handle the marketing and presentation.
Kaplan: I started as a director, and I will still do so when the opportunities present themselves and the project is right, but I've spent most of my time in technical management (stage and production management), which is a different kind of joy altogether. I know that I'm weird, but there's nothing quite like completing the complicated tetris of a perfectly scheduled load-in. Actually mking it happen is where the headache comes in :).
Heberling: I worked as company manager for an Off-Broadway theatre for four years. It was a small office, and I was involved in all aspects of running the company, artistic to administrative. Likewise with KNF, for all intents and purposes, I am our Company Manager. I create our production contracts, work with Tzip on budgeting, handle the insurance and union agreements, and spearhead all front of house matters. What I love about working with Kelly and Tzip though is how collaborative we are. While we all fall clearly into one management camp or another, where our skills overlap, we help each other out by acting as sounding boards and editors.
Why did you decide to band together to become the KNF Company and what do you offer a production that makes you unique?
Kaplan: The idea of legitimate management is something so foriegn to indie theatre. Equity showcases don't have management usually, they have the artists that conceived the show not sleeping at all for a month and running around in a haphazard fashion to get it done. That is not conducive to anything, least of all the show itself. Proper management makes a night and day difference in the success of a show if only because it makes the experience and process of the show so much better, and that is all that matters really. Shows come and go. I've done dozens and dozens and dozens, and the only ones I remember is where the experience of doing the show was magic, when the people I worked with were lovely, everyone had fun doing the show, and we all savored each other's company for that brief time before it was over. The experience of the show all comes from management, from the tone set by those at the top. I hope we've learned from our more negative experences at the bottom how to make it better when we're at the top.
Heberling: Like many artists striking out on their own for the first time, we embarked upon our initial collaboration for no greater reason than we wanted to work together on a script we loved. The show was extremely low-budget and low-tech, but we immediately noticed something special about our partnership: our skill sets complimented each other perfectly, and together, we made a well-rounded and strong management team. Most young companies spring out of an artistic center: a playwright, a director, or an ensemble of actors. And while all three of us come from directing backgrounds too, when we put our heads together, we resemble something more akin to the indie theatre's version of 321 Theatrical Management. I think it is this, our administrative and management skills, that make us stand out from most budding companies out there.
While working on our second collaboration, a festival of original work called KNF: Theatre in the Rough, we realized there was a lack of places for indie artists to experiment within and develop new projects without having to worry about advertising, hiring technicians, and all the other minutia that comes with self-producing. And that's where the idea for growing KNF came in. The three of us felt as though we had something to offer our peers. After all, indie means "independent," not "alone at midnight in a dank dark rehearsal studio contemplating how your college education possibly could have prepared you for your debut as playwright/marketing director/house manager/set designer/custodian." It comes right back to the age-old notion that there's no home for the type of work we want to do in the skittish commercial theatre world, so we must create our own space for it. But the three of us don't think creating something from scratch or on a shoestring budget necessitates sacrificing all the comforts of the big leagues. We've come to realize that, one show at a time, we can continue to serve our community by providing one-stop shopping of technical/production, press/marketing, and general/company management for artists like our Bird House ladies who do the work that we think is important.
Haydon: We are fortunate to have complementary skills. So often in Independent Theatre, these roles are neglected or streamlined to a disastrous degree. Any company with an office space can tell you the high value of their office management, HR, and supervising staff. Part of our success, I think, is the mutual agreement that a proverbial office should be just as well managed as a literal one.
The three of us met as directors at The Looking Glass Theatre's Writers/Directors Forum, where short plays by women are produced and directed by women in a bi-annual festival. The Forum is like boot camp for young, female, theatre artists; it goes a step beyond the regular festival format, encouraging camaraderie with meetings, group activities, and coaching opportunities with the interns. It was here that the three of us clicked. For the first time in amateur theatre, phone and emails were answered immediately, promises were kept, deadlines met, we talked through everything until the last detail, right down to the house music. It was magic, and we felt like it would be an big FU to fate if we didn't continue the partnership towards bigger and better things.
Why KNF Company—does this name have a special meaning, significance?
Haydon: In 2007, Katherine's boss at The Directors Company decided to have a summer festival with her at the helm. We were all in and out of the TDC office in those days, and often jokingly referred to the festival as "Katherine and Friends," which he actually loved. Katherine n' Friends: Theatre in the Rough festival was born. For our logo, we shortened it to KNF.
After the festival, we played around with other names but could not agree on anything. KNF was an acronym we were used to, that already had a bit of history, and had a the catchy ping sound that often accompanies aligned consonants. The KNF Co we became, only KNF can mean anything you want it to. It's a wonderful guessing game at social events. I sometimes tell people it stands for Karl's Nantucket Flapjacks.
Heberling: I feel like the name of our company is the inside joke that will never die, despite my many, many efforts to kill it. A couple years back, The Directors Company, where I was working as Company Manager at the time, built a new studio space equipped with a small technical package for readings, workshops, and showcases. The Artistic Director, Michael Parva, offered me a chance to premiere a play series that would inaugurate the space. I sat down with Kelly and Tzip one afternoon, and we brainstormed what type of festival theme we could possibly come up that hadn't been done in a city over-saturated with theatre festivals. Finally, out of a lack of interesting ideas, I jokingly said, "Let's direct some plays we've been wanting to do and round up some of our friends and their pet projects. We'll call it Katherine and Friends." This suggestion, which I thought was ridiculous at the time, came replete with wild jazz hands. Much to my shock, the two of them loved it. And when I was out, they snuck into my office, pitched it to Michael, and he green-lighted it. Before I knew it, we were creating marketing materials splashed with my name.
Despite the tongue-in-cheek title, the series ended up being a very serious undertaking. Katherine & Friends (or KNF, as it eventually was shortened to on our gads and gads of festival paperwork, as well as our marketing materials) gave our talented and hardworking indie theatre friends an opportunity to develop their work in a supportive, professional environment without the pressures of full-scale production. It was basically what The Directors Company does on a much bigger scale in compressed festival format. We asked friends we knew to submit their projects and ideas to us, and we picked a handful that would fit best in a workshop setting. We put almost a year into building the space and the forum to present this work, and it was an astounding success. We may have only been a blip on the NYC theatre radar, but we helped about a dozen new shows get their start. The series also involved 100 up and coming artists, and it was a real stepping out onto the scene for us. And the name stuck, but thankfully, only in its abbreviated fashion.
Do you singly or as a company have a grand plan as to where you would like to be, say in five years?
Heberling: I think we're at a crossroads as a young producing organization. The three of us have been working together in various configurations —as each other's stage managers, as directors in the same festival, etc.—for almost six years now. But we've only produced together for the past three, and the idea of carving out a niche for ourselves permanently is even younger than that. Right now, we are at the point where our projects are getting bigger, more complex both artistically and financially. Both Bird House and our show before it involved full design and technical staffs, and we've collectively acted as the general, company, production, and marketing managers on them. These have been full-time undertakings that we somehow managed to work around our day jobs. Honestly, much of our success is due to very understanding and supportive bosses who are also in the industry and remember what it was like to start out on their own. We've also been lucky to have some amazing scripts and opportunities fall into our laps in pretty regular intervals. There hasn't been the pressure of a season, or even keeping up the momentum on the next show. In this way, it seems like the commercial producing model sized down to a much more modest indie theatre scale works best for us. But as our projects continue to grow and our spare time shrinks, we are just now arriving at the point where we should sit down and come up with that five-year plan, figure how to continue to make this indie producing model work in the long-term for us. Sustaining this business model will be a challenge, and finding a way to do it will be no less so, but The KNF Co seems to like doing things bigger and badder than what's traditionally considered reasonable.
Haydon: The first thing we are going to do is sleep for six months, on our couch, preferably with a pound of chocolate and a DVD collection of Dynasty. We haven't talked much about our five year goals, but it's on the agenda. Each of us have some catch-up to play on our personal lives—I'm applying to grad schools, for instance—but rest assured, you haven't heard the last from The KNF Co yet.
Kaplan: Singly, I would say that five years from now I will have a sustainable 5 year plan. The nature of this business is that it's kinetic and thusly, hard to plan for :). I would hope that we've gotten a little closer in our quest for the ultimate oxymoron, artistic satisfaction.
July 7, 2009
