Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Bozeman Daily CHRONICLE

Verge and Bozeman Actors Theatre collaborate on Durang play

Colter Langan, as Vanya, from left, Dee Dee Van Zyl, as Sonia, and Kari Doll, as Cassandra, rehearse a scene of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike on Monday, Feb. 2, at the Verge Theater in Bozeman. The play, directed by Gordon Carpenter, opens on Friday, Feb. 6.

By Rachel Hergett Get Out! editor
Posted: Friday, February 6, 2015 12:00 am

It’s morning in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and Vanya (played by Colter Langan) has just sat down for his morning coffee, watching birds in a pond near the family home he shares with adopted sister Sonia (Dee Dee Van Zyl).

The sibling bickering begins as Sonia enters with a cup of coffee only to find her brother has already poured one for himself. Increasingly frustrated, Sonia finally hurls the coffee mug at a bookshelf, prompting her brother to question her reaction.

“It’s an angry ‘I hate my life and I hate you’ response,” she retorts.

Thus the audience is thrown into the world of three-time Obie winner Christopher Durang’s comedy “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” which opens Friday, Feb. 6, for a three- weekend run at the Verge Theater.

The production is the second collaboration between the Verge and Bozeman Actors Theatre. According to Verge Theater board vice president Bennett Drozic, the Verge collaborated with Bozeman Actors Theatre on “God of Carnage” in 2012, when the group was still Actors Theatre of Montana. The successful run sold out eight shows.

“All of us at Verge Theater have an enormous amount of respect for the progenitors of Bozeman Actors Theatre and the excellent productions they have created,” Drozic wrote in an email. “We are so happy to share this Durang play with Bozeman Actors Theater, and look forward to future collaborations!”

“Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” features actors normally seen in Bozeman Actors Theatre productions, such as core company members Van Zyl and Langan. The Verge contributed the space and the support necessary to produce a play of this kind, including its established audience.

“They have an excellent structure in place,” Van Zyl said.

“Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” which won the 2013 Tony Award for Best Play, puts the works of Anton Chekhov in “a comic blender,” as described by Durang. There are aging siblings (named by their now-deceased professor parents after Chekhov characters) facing the loss of their family home. There is a cherry orchard, or at least a grove of fruit trees. There is an overwhelming sense of disappointment.

Durang shows a Chekhovian way of giving information to the audience, highlighting intricate details of the family’s life from Vanya and Sonia’s initial scene, according to Director Gordon Carpenter.

“Durang does a great job echoing Chekhov in the way he goes about that exposition in a way that makes it fun for you to experience,” Carpenter said.

The script also employs a delightfully self-deprecating sense of humor that echoes the Russian’s works.

“They talk about how terrible their lives are in a sort of funny way,” Carpenter said.

But Durang isn’t Chekhov. And this play is not a lesson in life’s futility. Unlike Chekhov, “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” leaves the audience with a feeling of contentment. It’s a stark contrast to “The Seagull,” Carpenter said, which ends with a “gunshot, lights down, curtain close.”

“I seem not to want to send the audience home unhappy,” Durang said in an interview.

As the play’s action continues, we meet Vanya and Sonia’s benefactor, their sister Masha (Rhonda Smith), a famous movie star who is seeking to sell the floorboards from under her siblings. We also meet Masha’s 20-something boy toy, Spike (Mark Bond), a neighbor girl who idolizes the star (Libby Gillhespy), and a cleaning woman more fitted to the works of Sophocles.

“They are doing Chekhov, but she represents Greek tragedy,” said Kari Doll, who plays the cleaning woman, Cassandra. “She’s a doomsayer.”

While there are many aspects of the production that will appeal to those who are familiar with Chekhov’s works, there is no pre-requisite to attend the production.

Bond sees the Chekhovian themes in the flawed state of the world, but said that Durang presents a more modern take.

“Traditional family values are very abruptly colliding with life in the 20th century,” he said.

Of the cast, Smith is probably most familiar with the works of Chekhov, due in part to her MFA program at Wayne State in Detroit with a focus on classic theater. Still, she said Durang’s work has other bits from history and popular culture, such as a quote by William Penn, that add just as much to the piece.

“Those are the things that make it really rich for me,” Smith said. 

December 2014 Holiday Happening

Wild Joe*s Coffee Spot Events

Friday, December 12, 2014 @ 5:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.

A holiday happening for the Bozeman Actor’s Theater featuring cast and special guests. 

Founded in 2008 as Actors Theatre of Montana, the newly-minted Bozeman Actors Theatre is under the leadership of DeeDee Van Zyl, Cara Wilder, Will Dickerson, Dan Erickson, Colter Langan and Sylvia Miller. BAT has co-produced many full-length productions in Bozeman: “The Life and Times of Tulsa Lovechild,” (2009, Black Box Theatre), “A Streetcar Named Desire, ” (2010, Ellen Theatre), a staged reading of “Well” (2011, Dulcie and Black Box Theatres), “God of Carnage” (2012, Equinox Theatre), “August: Osage County” (2013, Ellen Theatre) and “The Language Archive” (2014, Black Box).

BAT is a non-profit company of theatre professionals without a home. We have co- produced plays in various existing theatres, and our ultimate goal is to secure a theatrical space of our own in the Bozeman area.

The Language Archive

Bozeman Daily CHRONICLE

A place to call home

Bozeman Actors Theatre hopes new nonprofit status will lead to new performance space

By Rachel Hergett, Get Out! Editor

Posted: Friday, October 10, 2014 12:00 am

Before a rehearsal in her garage south of Bozeman last week, actress Dee Dee Van Zyl noted the theater company responsible for recent productions such as “God of Carnage” at the Verge Theater and “August: Osage County” at the Ellen Theatre may as well be called “The Drifters,” due to a lack of space to call their own.

The company’s name, prior to this spring, was the Actors Theatre of Montana, which was often confused with the Montana Actors’ Theatre, based in Great Falls and Havre. This became an issue while applying for non-profit status. So, the group chose a new name: Bozeman Actors Theatre.

“We located ourselves,” Van Zyl said. “We gave ourselves a home right there.”

Still, the company’s third play in three years, “The Language Archive” by Julia Cho opening Wednesday, Oct. 15, will be in yet another new space, this time the Black Box Theater on the Montana State University campus.

Where Actors Theatre of Montana was a loose group of professional and semi-professional actors, The Bozeman Actors Theatre is a newly created nonprofit organization with a board of directors and a vision for the future. The two-year goal includes a space to call home, though they are willing to share with other theatrical organizations.

“We definitely feel that Bozeman is in need of another performance space,” Managing Director Cara Wilder said.

Ideally, the space would be 150 to 200 seats, akin to the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center in Big Sky. A capital campaign is in the works and consultations with developers, realtors and architects have begun.

“Now we just need a multi-millionaire ski benefactor,” Wilder said.
Talks to become a nonprofit organization began within the company last year after the success of “August: Osage County.”

“The core of us came to the realization what we wanted to do was being validated by the community,” said board member Daniel Erickson, an actor who moved back to Bozeman to pursue the idea of art for art’s sake.

The production of “August: Osage County” marked a turning point, where founding members realized the theater needed to take the next step in its development, or do nothing and fall to the wayside. Efforts to organize were spearheaded by Sylvia Miller, who is now board chair.

“She’s just a really dynamic go-getter,” Wilder said of Miller. “There’s nothing in her way.”

Bozeman Actors Theatre offers classic American theater to the community. Previous productions have included “The Life and Times of Tulsa Lovechild” and “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

“We’re not musical theater,” said Van Zyl, who is also a board member. “We’re not cutting edge, new theater or improvised theater. There’s a lot of things we’re not.”

“The Language Archive,” which opens this week, is a play Van Zyl and Wilder first saw in Ashland, Oregon.

“It did not have the weight or length of ‘August: Osage County,’” Van Zyl said. “It’s perhaps more celebratory for opening a different phase in the life of the theater.”

For the play’s director, Will Dickerson, the community always has room for more storytelling arts, including another theater company.

“It’s not so much we’re filling a void, but we’re adding variety and texture,” he said.

The Bozeman Actors Theatre will move to the Black Box this week for a few days of rehearsals in the performance space before the preview of “The Language Archive.”

“We’ve been as flexible as we can as a fledgling group without a home of our own, rolling with the punches and making art wherever we can,” Wilder said.

For more information, visit Bozeman Actors Theatre on Facebook, or call 406-580-0374.