Welcome everyone to Midday Magazine for the February 21st, 2024.
Have your host James J behind the mic.
Welcome in for Midday Magazine today.
Our friends from Wisconsin.
We have its community theater.
Talk about the winter production of The Glass Managerie.
Let you guys go ahead and down the line.
Actually, we'll go in this way.
Down the line, let you all introduce yourselves.
So the audience can put a voice to the name.
Go ahead and start Beth.
I am Beth Habhager and I am one of the co-directors.
Thank you for being here, Beth.
I am Seth Habhager and I am the other co-director.
No, Seth.
Are you done?
No.
No, it's me.
No, it's more of you.
I'm Melissa Kay and I am playing Amanda Wingfield.
Thank you, Melissa.
I'm Leslie.
I'm playing Tom.
Tom Wingfield.
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you for being here.
All of you appreciate the time and appreciate
you guys spending so much time on this production,
on the rehearsal time that you put into this,
all the effort and energy taking time
out of your personal lives to do this.
We greatly appreciate this as a community
and as lovers of the arts,
we thank you for doing this.
What I'd like to do is give a quick synopsis
of what the Glass-Managerie is for those who don't know.
One of the more famous Tennessee Williams shows,
if not his most famous in many ways.
So while it may seem like, well, who doesn't know the show,
there's plenty of people I imagine
that may not be familiar with it.
So to the directors, if you guys wouldn't mind
giving a synopsis.
Okay, I can start.
The show was actually his first hit.
It was premiered in 1944.
Before that, he'd been trying to get on stage.
He'd been writing for the pulps.
He's been writing for everything.
It was his big break.
And for good reason, it's a play basically.
It's very autobiographical in a lot of respects
with the mother and the sister in there.
And he tells you that right at the beginning.
He says it's a memory play for him.
It's a play of what brought him to where he is now.
Kind of remembering the past and some of his regrets,
some of the things he had to experience
and that sort of thing.
So the plot, such as it is, is Tom, the main character,
remembering a time in his life.
He lived in St. Louis with his mother and his sister.
And when a one night, he invited a friend of his
from the place where he worked to have dinner with them,
as his mother called, a gentleman caller.
She had designs for this gentleman to maybe marry Laura.
Who knows what her plans were on that?
And it's all about how that goes.
And why he ends up leaving the family
is basically what the main plot of the story is.
Yeah, I would say that it's a story
about family dynamics and the relationships
and the pressures because the fifth character
that you never see physically on stage
is the father that has abandoned the family.
And the impact that that had on their lives
and why things are going the way they are.
So it's a wonderful drama about the tensions
that we all have with our family.
I hadn't read the script until I was at UCLA.
So I'm about 22, 21 or something like that
when I first read the script.
And it felt very impactful to me.
But there was a lot about it that I couldn't necessarily,
in the synopsis, I didn't feel like I could relate to.
It wasn't until I actually read the show
that I felt like, oh, there's a lot of related ability
to this for just about anybody from any walk of life.
I feel like that's a fun or it's hard to use the word fun.
But it's a cool part of his writing
and something that Tennessee Williams,
I thought was very good at that this show
has related ability for almost anybody
no matter where you come from in life.
And I think that that's a cool part
that's going to bring people in.
I want to get into a little bit before we talk to the actors
and what they have been doing to build these characters
and mention the rest of the cast as well.
I want to give them a shout out also.
I want to start first with where this started.
And Seth, I know for you that this was,
I don't know if I can call it a passion piece,
but there was a little bit of that there for you
because you've done this show before.
About 14 years ago, I calculated that I played Tom
in a production of the Glass-Managerie.
You should have said four, bro.
I know, I know, I'm supposed to go to the date myself.
So old though.
You're forever 25, you're forever.
And it turned out to be one of my favorite roles
that I've ever done on stage.
And it was a different show.
It was like a multimedia show where we had video and voice over
and some different stuff and silhouette and that sort of thing.
I thought, wow, this is a really cool production.
And I had a lot of fun doing it.
It was one of the, like I said, one of the great parts
I've had.
And unfortunately not a lot of people came to see it.
It was kind of disappointing because we're like,
wow, we put all this cool stuff on there
and then no one came to see it.
So when I found that WRCT was doing it for this season,
I was like, I want to do that again.
I want to try it and I want a whole bunch of people to see it.
So I threw my hat in the ring to be a director.
They accepted my proposal of what I wanted to do with it.
And we just started planning from there.
Now I want to say that the first production was
by our good friend, Jill Nadeau.
And she did it, of course, in a different way
that we're doing it, but I took the basic idea
from what she did.
And I just, and changes here and there, of course,
because frankly we have a much bigger stage here
than we did at the other place.
But the whole idea of it being a dream play,
a memory show, it doesn't have to be realistic.
Being able to put images up on the screen,
or on the, the scrim as it were.
And showing video and filming the actors doing
certain scenes and that sort of thing,
as they're doing voiceover, monologuing kind of thing.
I love the idea of going back in between live on stage
and people watching the screen or listening
as we do other things on stage.
So for me, that kind of adds to the dreamlike quality
of the whole show.
There's with something a visual component going on
while there is stage things happening,
is there any worry or risk of people being distracted?
Probably.
I would say that.
But I think at the same time, when you get into the headspace
of the show, because we started off,
we have a West comes out on stage live,
and then we immediately go into a film
after he does his first bit.
And so I hope that sets the tone.
People realize that it's not just going to be a straight up play.
I mean, we've been advertising as multimedia,
but it'll give him an idea of what we're going to be doing.
So I think as they get to that point,
then they should just go with what we're doing.
And I think that should help.
There were, I wouldn't say, difficulties
doesn't feel like the right word.
But there were some challenges early on.
And it wasn't originally planned to co-direct this for you, too.
Can you tell me a little bit about that process
and how that developed?
Well, when he decided he wanted to direct,
I really wanted to be in a production of this at some point.
And I said, well, how would you feel?
He's like, I don't think for my first one,
but I've had directing experience in the past.
This is his first time ever directing.
And so would you be willing to at least help in that way?
So I was expecting to kind of assist
and direct and just kind of help him through that process.
And then when we found out his day job was going to start
to get interfering with his evening opportunity,
the night of the auditions I was told I got a promotion.
Nice, nice.
And like, well, you're going to be doing more work than I thought you were.
So I'd like to make you a co-director.
I said, OK.
And so we talked a little bit.
I had seen and been a part of the production that he was in.
And so I knew the direction he wanted to go with.
But I also understood the play well enough
that you move from the exterior to the interior several times
and trying to figure out how do we manage that with the space that we're in.
And so Seth, I have like, how about we do this
and we have a set piece that rotates
to give you the illusion of being the exterior and the interior.
And I have to give a shout out to Jim and to Pete
who made what was going on in my head a reality on the stage.
They have done a phenomenal job making that happen.
And then the scream itself, how were we going to get that on and off?
Because we had hoped that there was something
that could come from the ceiling and that wasn't realistic in our space.
So we figured out a way to work around that.
So it's not something that stays at the theater.
There have been conversations at home trying to figure things out and make it work.
But I think it's going pretty well.
You've touched on a little bit of some of the challenges
that have developed from this.
You have it on paper, what you want to do,
and then trying to bring it to reality.
Can be a difficult transition.
Have there been other challenges with this process?
I want to say that for the most part, it's been all technical stuff.
That's been more of the challenge.
Because as you're going to find out in just a minute,
our cast has been awesome.
They have been the thing I've worried about least about this show.
Everything else is like, how are we going to do this?
How are we going to do this?
But with these guys, they have just been fabulous.
And I have all four of them.
And we'll talk about the other two in a minute.
But I'm just doing this to make them just really nervous before they get to talk.
It's good idea.
So you know, very uncomfortable.
No, I'm just kidding.
Very, very Stanley Kubrick of yours.
Very, yes.
Let's talk to the actors a little bit.
And thank you both for that synopsis and for that breakdown.
Appreciate that.
Melissa, I want to start with you, if you don't mind.
In part, because I have to ask, why?
Why do this to yourself?
I know how busy your schedule is Monday through Friday.
The challenges that you face and the things that you do for not only our station,
but even as friends and things like that.
To do something like this, I'm asking a joking kind of in a joking way.
But in all seriousness, I think that the audience,
when we're encouraging people to audition for a community theater and be a part of these things,
what's one of the biggest holdups?
I can never feel the time.
I don't have the time for that.
There's no way I could fit that in.
What made you want to do this show?
And how has that gone for you, that transition, that process?
Well, I wanted to do the show because Amanda Wingfield is such a different character
than you often are offered a part in a community show, community theater show specifically.
Most often, people want to see comedies, so most of the roles are comedic.
There are a couple light-hearted moments in the show, and there's a few lines that I think
we'll get laughs, and the way that we're playing it, but Amanda is a very...
She's a lot.
She's a nag.
She's a mother.
She cares.
She hurts.
The dynamic of her character across the arc of the play is so different.
She also tries to be the charming, young,
willing, and something that she was when she was having all her gentlemen callers coming.
So just to be able to get to experience playing that character was something I wanted to do,
as far as fitting it in time-wise, I'm trying your method of not sleeping.
And too much caffeine and couch surfing.
So, you know, it's fun, it's fun.
No, I am enjoying it, and I managed to fit it all in.
You make time for the things that you want to make time for in life.
That's basically what we do, and the fact that I don't have children also helps.
Poor Kevin the cat misses me.
I'm not his favorite person anymore.
Oh, well, yeah.
So there's that.
Sorry about hearing about that, but yeah, I was really sorry to hear about that.
What you mentioned a couple of things about Amanda there,
and how it's a different role, not just for you, but in general, it is.
Was there anything that you've had to do to get into the character, to research,
to character, to kind of like, even visually, like as far as appearance goes,
to turn into this, to turn into Amanda?
Well, we had to do the filming for the, some of the film scenes,
one in specific, is her when she's younger.
So, I actually have a costume that I wore one time the way it was,
and it's currently being transformed into something else,
which I haven't seen yet and don't know, but that will be what I'm actually wearing for the show.
So, the costume was worn for the filming, and then,
and I had a different hairstyle, which once our interviews come out on Facebook,
you'll get to see that, because somebody scheduled that in the same day.
That's all the time we had.
How many times do I have to tell?
I appreciate that, thank you.
I have the questions about Amanda and the acting that you guys did in just a moment right here,
but I want to get to the audience and us to get to know Wes a little bit,
and talk with him for a moment.
And, Wesley, then again, for being here, appreciate the time.
I want to tell you right away, you and I almost met beforehand,
because I was all gun-ho on auditioning for that role.
When I, when I read this play at the first time I read it,
21, whatever I was, it's been with me ever since.
That opening monologue of Thompson is one of the best monologues I've ever read in my life.
That alone would make me want to do this show.
For you, you read this script.
Is that one of the things that made you want to do this?
What made you want to play, Tom?
Well, I just wanted to audition for a play, really.
That's what it was.
You know, I live in Wisconsin Rapids, and they were having auditions, so it's okay, audition for a play.
Right up. Have you done a theater before? Have you done plays before?
Yes, so I did one in high school and one middle school.
Rennas, I never asked this to people, especially another actor, but how old are you?
Or a ballpark?
28.
Okay, all right, because yeah, you look 21 to me, Matt.
I had to add, I'm sorry.
It's not the first time.
Oh, I imagine I imagine to deal with that.
I'm sorry for that, but so, you know, you have some acting experience,
but it's been a while since you've done it.
I'm sure that you have seen other auditioned opportunities or things.
Was this just a matter of this just worked out your schedule wise?
Okay, that's how that played.
So that's, there's not wrong with that.
There's no wrong answers here.
That's cool to interesting to hear, and I know for a fact that there are going to be people
out there that are going to get some encouragement or some incentive because of hearing you and Melissa,
the difficulties or even the opportunities to be able to do this.
We're always looking for getting more people like yourself coming down to WRCT and auditioning.
I should warn you, you will never leave.
You're pretty much family now.
You're pretty much going to be going that quite a bit.
What are some of the things that you have done to become Tom?
Well, we've re-descripted over and over again, of course.
I've watched the two movies that were made.
And also, for me myself, I feel like the whole story of the family is very relevant today.
So, I mean, I guess I'd try to imagine myself in his position, and I feel like there's
just such a relevant play even today.
I'm sure there's a lot of younger people, especially in my generation that are going through
circumstances of being, you know, because everyone's on the internet and on the phone all the time.
His Laura lives in the world of glass animals, so I'm sure there's a lot of people who
can relate to that of being lonely.
Yeah, and so I feel like that's relevant.
And that relevance has definitely helped me imagine the perspective that Tom would have.
Very cool, and I appreciate that breakdown there.
That's really interesting to hear in the tie-ins there.
I think that not only is there a relatability for people out there,
but we love hearing kind of behind the curtain and hearing a little of that.
So thank you for sharing that time, Wesley.
I almost called it down there.
That's how convincing.
That's how convincing.
Yes, so convincing.
It's the mustache.
It doesn't write away.
It's like, oh, that's Tom.
I wanted to talk a little bit, and Wesley, I know that you don't have too much experience on
stage, maybe, and maybe none recording before doing that.
I know Melissa, you have a bit of that as well.
There's a difference between acting when you're being recorded and acting when it's one take
and you're live and you're on stage in that.
Did you enjoy that process, you guys?
Did you have fun with that?
Did you find it challenging?
Or did you not notice a difference at all?
Did you not approach it any differently at all?
Again, there's no wrong answers.
I'm just curious.
Wesley, I'll start with you.
I mean, when we were filming it,
I, you know, when we were filming the scene and recording the voice overs,
I just tried to do my best.
It definitely takes a bit to get used to hearing your own voice.
Oh, yeah, it's kind of weird to me, but that's how it is.
I mean, I don't know.
I just do my best, I guess.
Doing your thing.
Gotcha.
Melissa, how about for you?
And I know that you have some history with recording and video element,
not so much as an actor, but more of an, you know, interviewing in that.
But you have some experience with those things, too.
I think that part of what made it challenging is that it was so early on in the process,
where it was like all of a sudden, okay, we're filming this tomorrow.
I hope you have your lines down.
Right, right.
You know what you're doing.
Like, oh, yeah, okay, here we go.
But it was, it's cool to be able to incorporate that element into a stage play,
because yeah, it is not something that you see very often,
or I don't know that I've ever seen it,
with being, having both the multimedia and the voice overs and,
but yeah, the video elements, I think, are going to be really neat.
It was a little weird seeing myself up on stage on film, while on stage.
But, you know, it is what it is.
I think the audiences are going to really enjoy it.
I had to, I have to throw in there, Seth showed me a scene the other day,
just it's still in the editing process and everything.
There's still some work that needs to be done by it, and it blew me away.
Like, he was showing it to me for one reason,
but I came out of it a whole other reason of enjoying it and loving it.
The way it synced up with your voices, and it was just like, it got me getting goosebumps.
Like, I just think about it, it gives me up again.
It's such a cool idea.
I'm curious, especially for you guys that have some experience with WRCT and theater,
and your take on this too, Wesley, is being a new member in everything.
Do you think we'll see more productions, more multimedia productions like this?
Do you think that we're going to have more opportunities for this?
Because I'm really curious, because everything I've heard from the community right now,
there's so much excitement about this.
There's a lot more excitement about an old Tennessee Williams show
than you normally hear about an old play or something like that.
It feels like we're giving them something that just was copyrighted in 2023 or something like that.
Like, that's the feeling, the vibe that I've gotten from people.
Do you think we'll see more of these things?
I'll start on the end here with you guys.
I would hope so.
I don't know.
It depends on what shows that they choose to produce, because it's not conducive for every show.
It worked well for this show and the setting that we have it in,
but not all plays are going to be able to be in this way.
One day, I'll learn how to do this job.
What I really was at, what I was trying to ask there,
and asking, in the play selection process,
if you think we'll see even more of this there too,
where we're getting into selecting plays,
and maybe in part because they have a multimedia paradigm.
I would hope so.
I mean, it's been, we've started Tech Rehorsal a week early,
so that we're having two weeks of Tech, rather than one,
because of all of the extra pieces that we have to make sure are in place.
And, you know, I'm glad that we've had this week
to work out some of the timing, some of the kinks,
and make sure everybody's on the same page,
so that when we get to costume and everything next week, we're ready to go.
And the people that are in the booth are phenomenal.
You know, our David's that are up there,
do a great job designing the sound and designing the lights,
and figuring out a tech glitch that we had from the Gecko,
and finally last night have it resolved.
So I'm hoping because they're getting used to it,
they'll be more excitement about the possibility of doing something like this in the future.
And I think that, especially with some older shows, you know,
when Wesley pointed out to me earlier about the relevance of this play,
it's something I didn't even consider, but he is so right about that.
One way to make older shows more relevant is to do stuff like this.
I think it's a way to like spice it up a little bit,
make it a little more interesting, make it like so people will be more,
oh, yeah, oh, they're doing that show again.
Oh, wait, they're doing that.
Oh, that sounds interesting.
And kind of that was another kind of angle that I was hoping would work with this,
is that there would be a little bit more buzz,
because we've all, most people have heard of Tennessee Williams.
They probably know one or two of his more famous plays,
but, you know, this was seen.
Well, oh, they're doing that one again.
Well, but it's different, it's been done a million times,
but has it been done like this?
So, yeah.
I think that it's going to be inspirational to people who may be thinking
about directing a show,
but also have an interest in videography or, or making movies,
because this gives such a, it opens so many doors to possibilities,
and possibilities of, of maybe, you know,
incorporating new, other shows that you wouldn't think you could do this with,
but, but, I don't know, I think, I think it's very inspirational.
Well done, well done.
Let's give me a compliment.
Let's, let's mark that down.
Mark that down and get a compliment.
Let's, real quick, as we're getting close to wrapping up here,
mention the rest of the cast.
Oh, yes, sorry.
No, no, I can't remember.
You might have to take this one.
Oh, we got a cheat sheet here, okay.
Keisha Lendowsky plays our Laura Wingfield,
so she rounds out the family,
and then we thank Daniel Bloodsoh,
who is our gentleman caller, whose name is James.
Connor.
Thank you, Mike Jim, but he has James O'Connor.
Uh, and we certainly want to thank all our tech people,
all of our, uh, people work behind scenes and stage to make this happen,
and make this play such a great production.
And one encourage people to not only get your tickets,
but, uh, attend more and more of these shows.
We don't just mean coming in the audience and seeing them.
We want you behind the scenes.
We want you a part of the show.
We want you on that stage.
Uh, WRCT is for everybody.
We want everybody to be, feel welcome and, uh, come on down.
The show kicks off on March 1st.
There is, uh, productions on March 1st,
2nd, 7th, 8th, and 9th.
All shows are 7 o'clock.
March 9th will feature as well as that 7 o'clock show,
8 o'clock matinee.
Get your tickets and find out more at wrctheter.org,
wrctheter.org.
Thank you all, uh, for your time and, uh,
for hanging out and putting up with me.
Appreciate each one of you.
Thanks James.
Thanks James.
We'll have more midday magazine right here at WFHR,
locally grown radio.
