New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
‘The Sound Inside’ heads to virtual stage
THEATERWORKS HARTFORD SCREENS ANTHONY RAPP PLAY
When the Covid-19 pandemic shut down theaters throughout the country last year, the “fabulous invalid,” as legitimate theater has long been called, partnered with multimedia to effectively deliver its shows to theatergoers until they could safely return to public auditoriums.
TheaterWorks Hartford — Connecticut’s “Little Theater That Does” — has produced fresh theater all along, selecting intimate chamber pieces that lend themselves to this developing hybrid. Its production of Adam Rapp’s play, “The Sound Inside,” is available for streaming through April 30.
“We knew we wanted to pick one of the film-to-stream shows and explore those boundaries of not making a film, but not also making an archive of theater,” said Rob Ruggiero, TheaterWorks Hartford’s producing artistic director, who co-directed “The Sound Inside” with filmmaker Pedro Bermudez.
“This seemed like the perfect piece, because it’s already somewhat abstract in nature,” said Ruggiero, who has been with the small, professional theater for 26 years.
Or, as Bermudez said on the Zoom call, “How do you honor the idea of placing the audience in that space with the actors?”
Rapp’s tense story concerns Yale University creative writing professor Bella Baird (played by Maggie Bofill) and her brilliant yet mysterious student Christopher Dunn (Ephraim Birney). Through Bella’s monologues to the audience and her interaction with Christopher, we see that she finds him intriguing. The audience eventually surmises what she wants from him over the course of the 90-minute performance.
“The Sound Inside” was not on
TheaterWorks Hartford’s initial 2020-21 slate before the shutdown. It was added, however, after Ruggiero and his colleagues — Lawrence E. Moten III (set design), Alejo Vietti (costume design), Amith Chandrashaker (lighting design) and composer Billy Bivona — wiped the slate clean in favor of a streaming-only season.
“We announced it as one of the shows without knowing how we were going to deliver it,” Ruggiero said, adding that he had Bermudez in mind as his collaborator when he selected Rapp’s play.
“The Sound Inside” marks the first time that Ruggiero and Bermudez have collaborated on a full production together. Bermudez, a Hartford resident, owns Revisionist, a production company that works closely with agencies and nonprofits in the greater Hartford region, including the Mary & Eliza Freeman Center and the Wadsworth Atheneum.
Over the past five years, Bermudez, graduate of the American Film Institute, previously created season promos — mostly 30second clips on each play — for TheaterWorks Hartford.
“Every experience is different, leading up to this moment,” said Bermudez. “Rob has always supported my ideas. My take-away from this whole experience keeps changing.”
Ruggiero said the collaboration was liberating.
“I didn’t know if we would encounter creative tension between a theater directing a piece of theater,” he said, “and a film director wanting to push the line and really flex those muscles. And I think ultimately it was inspiring to both of us.”
Bermudez and his crew had to work carefully, as social distancing while filming in TheaterWorks Hartford’s 195-seat black box space posed rare challenges. Still, he filmed almost everything he’d envisioned, using a variety of
cameras, lenses, and a Dana Dolly for tracking shots. The space was divided into specific zones as per distancing rules.
“We tried to find equipment that would allow us to be really agile,” Bermudez said. “The dolly was actually my biggest concern. We used a Dana Dolly, which is pipe rigged on two stands. Moving it in and out of spaces is just a matter of minutes.”
Bermudez adjusted, fluidly moving about the actors, sometimes six inches away from the actor’s face, with his 30-lb Alexa camera harnessed to his torso.
“It’s strange to be that close to an actor, to a performance, and make a very subtle adjustment,” he said. “Say I have to dip down a couple of inches just to see his
eyes a little better. For me, it was exhilarating. It almost feels as if I was playing an instrument with them,” he said.
Bermudez said that he and his crew enjoyed other newly-discovered benefits of working inside the theater.
“We are able to control the environment easier than on location,” he said, “not worried about parking the trucks, someone from the town checking our permits. It was less stressful in many ways.”
Bermudez said while pre-planning is paramount, he learned to remain open to some improvisation.
“I had to feel my way through the performance,” said Bermudez, who filmed for six days and
edited the piece through four weeks. “Capturing the moment? That can’t be prearranged.”
Both Bermudez and Ruggiero admit that this process has spoiled them in many ways. Essentially, they both learned plenty from their generous collaborators and feel that they’ve struck on something exciting.
“It does feel like a new thing,” said Bermudez. “It needs to be explored and expanded upon.”
“Nothing makes up for live, communal experience,” Ruggiero said. “But in a world where we had to do this, I think this is really engaging.