Connect Canyons
Episode 73: Hillcrest Theater Set to Raise the Curtain on American Debut of The James Plays
“All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players.” It's a quote you may have heard before, particularly those who are fond of theater. But the beginning of this monologue from William Shakespeare's "As You Like It" has become a popular turn of phrase, understood by many outside of the world of performing arts. It just goes to show good theater can live on for centuries and take on new meanings.
It's a tradition the Hillcrest Theatre Department hopes to continue as they set to lift the curtain on an American debut nine-years in the making. Nearly a decade ago, Hillcrest theater teacher Joshua Long took a trip to London. While he was there, he spent the day at the Royal National Theater where he first set eyes on “The James Plays,” written by Rona Munro.
“All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players.” It's a quote you may have heard before, particularly those who are fond of theater. But the beginning of this monologue from William Shakespeare's "As You Like It" has become a popular turn of phrase, understood by many outside of the world of performing arts. It just goes to show good theater can live on for centuries and take on new meanings.
It's a tradition the Hillcrest Theatre Department hopes to continue as they set to lift the curtain on an American debut nine-years in the making. Nearly a decade ago, Hillcrest theater teacher Joshua Long took a trip to London. While he was there, he spent the day at the Royal National Theater where he first set eyes on “The James Plays,” written by Rona Munro.
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Frances Cook:All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players. It's a quote you may have heard before, particularly those who are fond of theater, but the beginning of this monologue from William Shakespeare's, as you Like it, has become a popular turn of phrase understood by many outside of the world of performing arts. It just goes to show that good theater can live on for centuries and can take on new meanings. It's a tradition. The Hillcrest Theater Department hopes to continue, as they set to lift the curtain on a performance nine years in the making. Welcome to Connect Canyons. I'm your host, frances Cook. In today's episode we're talking about a show making its American debut at Hillcrest High School. I'm joined now by Hillcrest Fine Arts teacher, joshua Lum. Thank you for joining us, and we have three of our stars from the upcoming shows the James Plays. I'd like you all to introduce yourselves and who you're going to be portraying in the place.
Mary White:Hi, I'm Mary Wilhite and I will be portraying the Queen Joan of Scotland.
Auston Bills:Yes neither will.
Mary White:I yeah.
Gabriel Abbott:Hi, I'm Gabriel Abbott. I'll be playing King James II of Scotland.
Auston Bills:And I'm Austin Bills. I'll be playing James III of Scotland.
Frances Cook:Well, thank you all for being here. I appreciate you taking the time out of your day. I know with rehearsals and everything, you're all very busy. Mr Long, let's start with you. Would you tell us what are the James?
Josh Long:Plays. It is a trilogy. It's a series of three plays written in 2014 by a playwright named Rona Moonrow, and the chronicle 67 years of Scottish history following the reigns of King James I, King James II and King James III of Scotland, which is about roughly the same time as Henry V, Henry VI of England, which a lot of people know a lot of that history, partly because Shakespeare kind of dramatized that.
Josh Long:That was a little bit right, did not? For us and Rona, who's a Scottish playwright. She had grown up learning about Scottish history and there's a lot of crazy stuff that went down in their history and she wanted to theatricalize that and put that on stage for people as part of her, like Scottish heritage, but there was so much stuff that ended up being this trilogy of three different plays that are three very distinct plays. The first play all is the Reign of King James I and it has a beginning, middle and end. It's its own story. And then the second play is James II and his reign, and the third plays James III, and they're three very different stories as well as they're written in three very different theatrical styles Interesting. So they each stand alone and then, but together it tells this history of a country and a society and there's a whole bunch of things that she put in that. If you see all three, there's a whole bunch of different really cool connections and Easter eggs and things like that.
Frances Cook:So you don't necessarily have to see all of three to understand them. You can just go see number two.
Josh Long:Yeah, they stand alone and then they work as a trilogy.
Frances Cook:It's best to see them in their full entire. Yeah, awesome. Now, this has been something you've been trying to do for nine years. Yes, can you tell us what that process was like? Why is this such an important?
Auston Bills:Yeah.
Frances Cook:Why is this such an important play set of plays for you.
Josh Long:I go to London every summer and I just watch as much theater as I can, and about nine years ago I went and I saw this production. It was being performed at the National Theater in London, which is the Royal National Theater, the Royal. National Theater which, in my opinion, what did you get?
Josh Long:Is the greatest theater company in the world, yeah, and I watched all three of them in the same day. They did a whole marathon thing and I immediately knew that this was something that I wanted our students at Hillcrest to do. It had a whole bunch of elements in it that I think are different types of theater that we really like to lean into at Hillcrest, but it also demands a large cast and a lot of people, which is why the National Theater had picked up on. It's one of the few theater companies in the world that can afford gigantic casts and things like that.
Josh Long:And we had done some things with the National Theater, gotten some of their scripts and were some of the first national premieres of some of their shows already. So I immediately contacted them and they were like well, of course you got to talk to Rona she's the one who gives the permission on that and eight years ago she had originally given us permission and said, yes, go ahead and do this. We actually announced this to be on our season eight years ago and then over the summer she had some second thoughts. She was like look, I just think because these and they were, by the way, in England, these plays were a huge hit. There was a critic that said I know this is blasphemy, but these are better than Shakespeare and they're a lot more accessible because they're not written in old time Like they're written as if they were in the 21st century the language.
Frances Cook:So now these and those Exactly, yeah.
Josh Long:It reads very modern but just like telling these historical stories, kind of like Bridgerton or something like that. Sure, and anyway. So they worked a huge hit in England, but no big theater companies in America picked up on them because it was three plays and literally there's like 54 speaking roles and an ensemble of as many people as you can get and no one can really afford that. And she emailed us this summer, like just a month after she'd originally given us permission, and said because this is gonna be the first time anyone outside of the United Kingdom will see this, I'm a little bit hesitant because we had entered into contract where we're going to cut and adjust some of the language. Sure, because there's some language that is not permissible on a high school stage in the script. And she said I would really like people to hear these scripts, as I originally intended, without any of the cuts. And I said well, we're a high school, we have to do those cuts if this is gonna work. And she said, okay, I'm gonna, let's wait on this, let's wait until maybe gets it done a little bit more. And so I'm sorry, but I'm gonna like revoke that Now.
Josh Long:It was so heartbroken because I was like these plays are so great. And then we've been chatting pretty much every year since then to see, but no theater company have picked up on it, so it's so expensive and it's such a big project to do. And then finally this last April I sent her agent a message and said, hey, we're still here, can we do them? And then she, like the email, literally says, oh my gosh, this guy won't go away, will he? And she was like, fine, let him do it, let him make their cuts. And she's like I'll be excited to see it, that'll be cool. And so here we are, way to be persistent.
Frances Cook:Yeah, that's awesome. Let's bring in some of your thespians here. That's a lot of pressure. How do you guys feel about being the first to perform such a big, extravagant show three shows outside of the UK?
Auston Bills:It's really, really, really exciting and it's a great honor that I get to do that. Something that he said when we first started working on it was that, since these are stories that no one's ever heard before, when people think of James the first, second and third of Scotland they're gonna see Gabe Williams face the first, his face for the second and my face for the third, and that's really exciting. And since no one's heard these stories before, they don't have any preconceived notions about how the stories are gonna go or what this set should look like. They're coming in completely blind.
Frances Cook:Takes a bit of that pressure off A little bit.
Mary White:Yeah, sure, I also think it's really exciting because of our theater department. We have a lot of really good opportunities in this department and our theater teacher obviously just is very passionate about what we do and I feel like our department has a lot of education and like knowledge on what we're doing and even if us, as students, are completely sure what we're doing, we can always like trust that he and his like artistic capability will just like guide us through it. So I'm really I'm really excited for him. That's awesome.
Gabriel Abbott:Yeah, I just think it's a really great honor that I could to portray James the second. But I think the main thing I'm worried about is people not knowing these plays and so they're not gonna want to come, necessarily because they just they don't know what it is. They're like I don't know. I don't really want to go to this. The James and what is that At a high school? I don't. I don't know what that is, and so I just feel like people are gonna be missing out on this great opportunity to see this, these great plays and these plays that we've been working on and just putting so much effort in and so much time.
Frances Cook:Well, your entire department has quite the the history of good performances, so I would imagine that's gonna get you guys a little bit of that drive and, like you said, you're putting in so much hard work into it. Tell me a little bit about the work that you're doing. So there are three separate plays, so are you all rehearsing together? Are you rehearsing separately? I mean, there's 120, some odd.
Josh Long:There's 137 actors, 20 crew members, crew members, whole bunch of volunteers, backstage volunteers, yeah.
Frances Cook:What's that look like for you on a, on a daily basis, when it comes to rehearsals?
Mary White:It's pretty different for each schedule, like each person's schedule is pretty individually different. There's just a lot of different groups that are in these shows and we have the option to be in multiple shows. If you were cast in multiple shows as, like, part of these different groups, so those rehearsals might look a little different, and for the speaking roles there's a little bit of overlap between like shows. You might be in one show in this show, but you might only be in one show.
Mary White:So the rehearsals are all very individual and it's really fun because then you get to work with like a broad spectrum of people and it's just. It's not like the same thing every day.
Josh Long:Yeah, and some of them like Mary's character. In the first play she plays the wife of King James I her, she's the queen and then in the second play her character doesn't die at the end of James of her, and so in the second place she actually plays the same character but as, like an older woman, she plays his mother. She plays James the second's mother in that, and so some of them take their characters over the span of multiple plays and and watch them grow up. So I have to work on multiple like different physicalities and things to do that. And then like Austin is playing James third in the third play, but in the first and second play he's like in the ensemble playing a warrior in the army and things like that. So they get to all like do different things and stuff like that.
Frances Cook:That's got to be quite an undertaking for you as well, especially you playing. You make it to play the same person, but we're talking a span of decades in between right A lot of experiences to take into consideration of what happens like in between the show.
Mary White:There's a lot that happens after the first show that we don't see. That is very crucial for Joan, my character, so it takes a lot of work to like figure out. Okay, how did that affect her and how am I gonna make that visible on stage, something that I'm currently working?
Frances Cook:Are you growing your beard for your hair? I am.
Auston Bills:I'm working on it.
Frances Cook:Nice, very nice. There's a lot that goes into this. I mean your physical appearance. You guys had what Two days of just boot camp and sword braining and I saw acrobatics talk about kind of the physicality of it.
Auston Bills:Okay, so there's several different groups within the show. There's like an army that he was talking about and we learned a bunch of sword technique and footwork and multiple different, historically accurate parries and it's so awesome. And then we have a choreographer that is like going through each little fight and making sure everything is great and awesome.
Frances Cook:Do you mean, like each individual pairing of people battling each other on the battlefield?
Auston Bills:Wow, wow, very involved and they're so cool. And then we have a nightmare sequence that takes place over the whole first act of his play. Oh, wow, that's cool and for that we're doing a bunch of Fran to assembly stuff. If you know what that is, explain that, if you want, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Mary White:It's a coffee or?
Auston Bills:Yeah, using bodies to create the story. It's not dance, dance, but it's close, it's close to dance.
Josh Long:Yeah, we've got a cast of it's like 80 kids that's like physically represent James's like inner anxiety and fears and nightmares and stuff, and they're dressed in black and tossing him all over the stage and yeah, there's a lot of acrobatic stuff involved with that and that's in the second play, although, like, army stuff is in the first play. So, like I said, each one were kind of different.
Frances Cook:What's it like for you to be kind of tossed around the most of your emotions Harder than you think?
Gabriel Abbott:Because you just have to be stiff and just stay in the same position. You can't be like flopping around, so you're gonna, they're gonna, drop you, or they're doing the movement for you, yeah basically Probably takes a lot of trust.
Josh Long:Yeah, yeah, the weirdest thing, well, the most unique thing that we've had to do for this one, because we've done some shows with some of that physical theater stuff. We've done a lot of like fight choreography stuff before. The thing that we've never done before is we have to do like a 10 minute long medieval football match in James's second and that's it's like a mixture of People don't know exactly the rules of how they did it in those time periods. Sure, it's kind of like a mix of rugby and American football and soccer and then wrestling. It all like devolved into a gigantic wrestling match. So we kind of had to like invent that game and then put it on. We've got a group of 30 athletes that come in and do this live on stage and the ball's going and hopefully we're gonna keep our audience safe as well as the actor, and then it devolves into this giant brawl and it's really cool and it's been fun like really figuring that out and putting that in. So there's just so many things in here that like A lot of elements, yeah.
Gabriel Abbott:That's probably the most exhausting part of the show for me, really. Yeah, it's like a big football match where everybody's running at all times and we're all wrestling and it's just exhausting.
Frances Cook:So you're putting all your skill sets to use All of them Physical, mental, learning your lines, reading your fellow actors across the stage. We've talked about how it's a bit of pressure to be the first to be putting these shows on, but it's also a bit freeing because you get to make up your own football game and things like that. Is the playwright coming?
Josh Long:I don't know. I don't know. I mean she lives in Scotland, so I don't know, but we've been in communication.
Frances Cook:Has she been giving you advice, or how involved has the gender?
Josh Long:She worked with us on suggestions for the text changes that we need. When we said, where can I see this work, she'd be like, okay, and sometimes she'd be like I don't know. And sometimes she'd be like, why don't you switch it to this? That's been kind of the bulk of our communication.
Frances Cook:Nice, she's working on this she got a little bit of free reign with it, that's fun.
Josh Long:Yeah well, I wouldn't say free reign. She's very like. She's really great playwright and this is honestly some of the best writing that I've. And we I mean this I've directed over 100 shows at Hillcrest and this is honestly every day almost in rehearsal. I'm like, oh my gosh, this writing is so good. It's just so. There's a scene that Gabe here has to do just minutes after this 10 minute long football game. That is, these two teenage boys. That is one of the most difficult acting scenes that I've ever given to two kids. But it's so cool seeing these young because they're characters that actually are teenagers, sure, and so like. When I saw it in England it was played by professional actors in their 30s and stuff. But watching these two teenage boys do this scene is actually written to be two teenage boys and that something very dramatic happened to in Scottish history based on a true story, it's so cool. That's kind of like a big surprise ending to the second play. That's.
Frances Cook:But you're able to provide that extra layer of depth as teens portraying teens.
Josh Long:Yeah, because, like her character also like was taken from England to Mary in real history, to Mary James I of Scotland as like a peace treaty thing when she was what? 17 years old. It's cool seeing them in the actual appropriate age Bracket too. Absolutely.
Frances Cook:So tickets on sale as of February 8th yes, but the third play is almost sold out. It is oh because well, okay.
Josh Long:But yes the true answer to that is yes, because the style of the three plays are all very different. We're actually staging the third play in our black box theater, which is new. The whole performing arts center at Hillcrest is very new. It's a great place to do theater, but we wanted that one that story's a little more intimate and the relationships a lot more focus on these like very dynamic and political relationships in part three, and so we're staging that in kind of a more intimate space. There's only, I think, 116 seats per night. We're running six nights on that one but the tickets aren't even on sale yet. But yeah, it's already 83% sold out because we have seasoned ticket holders who all bought seasoned tickets at the beginning of the year, back when we were doing Into the Woods, and we have so many seasoned ticket holders, which is so cool and great about the community of Midvale and their support of Hillcrest as a high school in general. So, yeah, once those tickets go on sale on the eighth, get in there and get them.
Frances Cook:Yeah, so again, you can see them separately if you choose to, but you're also combining the tickets into a discounted package, is that correct, yep.
Josh Long:Awesome, that'll get you into all three.
Frances Cook:So final question, and this is for all of you, other than obviously encouraging people to come see the show. I've heard wonderful things about Hillcrest Theater Department. I'm ashamed to admit I've never been. I never made it over here before really starting my time with Canyons. What do you want people to know about these plays and what do you want them to know about the importance of performing arts and Hillcrest Theater?
Mary White:These plays have a lot of characters that are not good and that are not bad. All of these characters have so many layers to them that are just parts of humanity in every character that I guarantee anyone who comes to see these shows can relate to a part of a character in one way or another. So it's not like you're sitting in the audience and watching this nice little play. It's something that, if you want to, you can lean forward and really resonate with these characters and learn something.
Mary White:So I think that these shows are a great opportunity for people to come and learn something.
Auston Bills:Yeah, I would say just more of what she said, that there's no. I like to say there's no good guys and bad guys in these plays.
Frances Cook:They're all human.
Auston Bills:They're all like they all have really good features about them and then they all have really awful features about them, and every character is that way. I mean there are some that are more likable than others and some that are more unlikable than the person as a whole. I cannot, I can't, really think of one that I would pin as this is a 100% good person. Sure, the end Kind of like all of us, kind of like every person ever.
Frances Cook:Like you said, it's, relatable, right yeah?
Auston Bills:absolutely, and also with the fact that it's a story that no one's heard before. If you do, come and see it, leave your heart open and allow the story that you've never heard before to really hit you and listen to it and learn. Let Rona teach you some things. She will.
Gabriel Abbott:I would even say, like all of the James's, even though they're like, the plays are based around James the First, James the Second and James the Third. None of them do really any good things. Yeah.
Auston Bills:Yeah.
Mary White:Like people come see the play.
Gabriel Abbott:I mean, they have flaws? Yes, they do.
Josh Long:Yeah, something that Rona put into is she really researched the history and and fleshed out the stories of not just the three James's but all of the women in their lives and that sometimes get lost in history, and she fleshed out a lot of these really great female characters around that are a variety of people as well, on the range of like good to bad. As far as like people, the thing that I would say about these plays is kind of a little bit similar to what Austin said, which is just like I think it's so great that I'm that audiences that see this won't know what's going to happen. And I think lots of times nowadays with theater, we find the audiences want to come see theater that they're already familiar with, like stories they already know, or, like we know the Little Mermaid, we know like things, they've seen the movie or they've seen this, and so they come to theater a lot of times now knowing how the story is going to end, and that's why they come see it, because they already like, like that, which is great. The opportunity that we have here with James the audiences have is to experience something that they probably don't know what's going to happen at the end, which is a whole other type of experience.
Josh Long:Yeah, especially because Americans are not very familiar with Scottish history. Like even when it was at the National in London, a lot of the British people who saw it were familiar with some of these things. So, like when William Douglas comes out, they're like, oh, we know what happened to William Douglas, whereas our audiences are gonna be like what and they'll be able to be taken on that ride, which I think is so cool, and I hope our audiences are keep an open mind to having kind of a new experience and and sit forward and and experience these stories that they they are probably not familiar with, which is, I think, is really cool.
Frances Cook:Like you said, come with an open heart, learn something. Well, these shows sound phenomenal. I'm gonna probably. What time do tickets start so I can? 7 am, 7 am, okay. Yeah, log right in.
Josh Long:Part one opens on February 23rd, okay. Part two opens on February 29th and then part three opens on March 14th. So yeah, they're not all like the same weekend. Sure, you can like spread it out. Take a deep breath. There is a day, march 2nd, that you can see a matinee of part one and then the night show apart, to no pressure, if yeah. Yeah, for her that's gonna be a big day. But yeah, the whole calendar is at hillcrestheatercom.
Frances Cook:Perfect, and that's where you and that's where you go get tickets. Yes, wonderful. Thank you all so much for being here. I feel like I've already learned so much about these plays, what's going into them. I can't wait to see them. I hope you all go and see them as well. Thank you, I appreciate you being here. Thank you, and thank you for watching and listening. If there's a topic you'd like to hear discussed, send us an email to communications at canyonsdistrictorg thanks for listening to this episode of connect canyons.
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