Every Brilliant Thing Interview

INTERVIEW | BRINGING EVERY BRILLIANT THING TO WHIDBEY

We sat down with the team behind Every Brilliant Thing to talk about hope, the healing power of story, and grieving together as a community.

In Conversation with Actor, Billy Tierney, Director, Deana Duncan, and Co-Founder and Co-Director of Healing Circles Langley, Diana Lindsay.

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How did this collaboration between Whidbey Island Center for the Arts [WICA] and Healing Circles Langley come about?

DEANA: I try really hard when I pick plays for WICA that I’m thinking about the community and a story that is important, a reason—that there is a why these words now, why this story now—not just what will it make at box office or what actor wants to be in this show. But this one was really, really personal, because a friend of mine last year took his life…I realized that I wasn’t processing it well and I read that there was this play about this…I was really touched by it. I knew it was one of the most personal plays I was ever going to choose, because not only did I want to produce but I wanted to direct it and I wanted to have influence on the impact it could have in the community…The more I started working on it the more I realized that I needed help around the themes, about making sure that I was holding it correctly

I literally look out my window at Healing Circles everyday, that’s just part of my life. And I think about Greg almost every day. I knew I wanted to reach out to Diana and that I wanted to ask Healing Circles to be part of the process. The play didn’t make any sense to me if I didn’t do that—if Healing Circles wasn’t involved…I didn’t want to do this play without them. So we were meeting around something else, having coffee, and I mentioned that I was working on this play and would she be willing to read it to collaborate.

DIANA: Well we’re really delighted that you reached out to us. The themes in this play of what are the conditions that would lead someone to consider suicide? Are they irretractable? Is there something that can be done?...Is there something we can do? You know, we all want to do something, to help someone anchor back into life. WICA held a conversation on mental health and suicide prevention and it was so powerful, and we had many discussions after at Healing Circles on that topic. But we’ve also held many grief circles for those that have been impacted by the suicide of others or by the death of others, and we felt like that’s an important conversation too, because suicide, because of our laws, has to be private—it can’t be with others. The others that surround the person don’t understand why usually, and feel a lot of regret, and have a lot of I wish I could have that they are not given the opportunity to work through. So that can be a lifelong impact, and it felt like that’s important to bring in, and this play is so beautiful with that.

But we’ve also had many conversations about what if choosing to end your life is the best available choice? Because of our work with cancer we brought in End of Life Washington early on to talk about the options that are available for somebody with a clear six months left and two doctors that will verify it. Death with dignity can be a humane way of letting people make that choice. But we’ve talked about how there are so many other situations in life that are equally full of suffering and pain where that’s not an option, dementia being one. And so we felt that that conversation was also an important one.

DEANA: We are doing three separate talks with Healing Circles during the run of the show…and the last one is going to be about end of life choices.

DIANA: So we look forward to being able to look at it in a bigger context.

How about you, Billy?

BILLY: Well, I am an observer of things, and I was here that day that Deana’s friend took his own life. I didn’t know him, but I was with Deana when that was happening and I could tell how much it affected her. For me it's not so much about whether or not I knew a person. I think that all human life is valuable…Then Deana had me read the script. My background is in improvisation and this is going to be my second play, my first one being about three-minutes on stage last summer for Curse of the Starving Class. But when I read the play, even though I’ve not done this before, I couldn’t imagine anyone else doing it. I could see myself in the role…And it's a unique play in that it wholeheartedly invites the audience to the experience. It’s done “in the round”, so everyone sees everyone and it’s done with lights up to some extent—so everyone really sees everyone…it’s an exercise almost, in seeing each other, and having a shared experience that could be at times uncomfortable, at other times is delightful and hilarious. I was really drawn to that.

And that sharing of the experience you spoke of, how do you all feel about the importance of processing something like this as a community, and how do orgs like Healing Circles and WICA work together in helping communities through these types of things?

DEANA: Well that’s the most we can hope for and I think that’s the best work we can do: if WICA can collaborate with Healing Circles in this way then we’re reaching the full potential of what this organization I think was always meant to be and what we’re built to be here for… When we’re having strong conversations and we’re holding community, that speaks directly to our power and purpose, and why we do what we do—not how we do what we do, but why.

DIANA: Rachel [Naomi] Remen says, “We heal best in community.” Francis Weller talks about grieving together as an essential healing need. And really we can’t grieve any other way. After our friend died, we held many circles trying to understand it. Many of our community were very close to him but it was COVID, and we could only [gather] by zoom. One of our poetry circles had gone global during the pandemic…The day after he died, I asked if the circle would be able to help us process. So everybody that knew him from Whidbey had a chance to say how they were feeling, how they were being impacted, and it was very beautiful. And then I just asked the people from elsewhere if they wanted to reflect back, and one of them said, “I am just so moved by what a loving man he was, and how loving your community is. I don’t live in that kind of community.” And a woman from Ireland said, “In Ireland we tell each other two hundred stories about the deceased person, and I’m really honored that I was here for the first, and I would be really honored to be here at the hundred and ninety-ninth telling.” And so, that is what we have to do. We have to tell each other these stories, it’s how we grieve. So I am really happy now that we can get back together in person to continue our process of individual grief and to continue, I feel like, we owe it to him to have the broader conversation.

DEANA: …I think there is real beauty in that: creating space for us to help each other heal. [As you enter the show] …you’re going to walk through hopeful quotes and hopeful conversation, every brilliant thing about how beautiful it is to be on the planet and have this moment, what a gift this lifetime is. So there is great hope in this show, and for me I think there are two things for the community: if somebody is struggling, the reason we’re having Healing Circles there, if they are triggered or need to speak they know there is somebody there that they can speak to and that will help them with that. And that for all of us…all of us know what grief is—that we understand the importance and feel the community.

What are three of your brilliant things that make you happy to be alive?

BILLY: …Off the top of my head I will say number one is breathing. I think that breathing is way more of a brilliant thing than we give it credit for. We’re just like Ah that old thing that happens every moment…but for me breathing is a brilliant thing. I think that watching people grow is a brilliant thing…for me it's my kids, watching my kids grow. But really, truly, it's always been: watching students of mine grow or watching people I perform with or people that I work alongside. Seeing people grow has got to be one of the greatest brilliant things in the world. And then, might as well just for the sake of good measure and sort of an homage to the first brilliant thing I mentioned, I think drinking water is a brilliant thing.

DIANA: I would say singing with family, creating with my grandkids, and walking with my friends in nature.

DEANA: Continuing to see growth in the love with my kids. They’re adults and they’re growing, it’s just getting bigger and bigger, it warms my heart. Time with my mom and dad, cause I know it’s scarce, I know I’m at the end, I recognize the end, and it’s brilliant to recognize it and see it. A life lived towards purpose. I feel really blessed that I’m in a place on the planet, with an education, how privileged I am, to get to do what I love—it’s a brilliant thing to live on purpose.

And I want to just say one thing as a shout out, I think this is a brilliant thing too: I love performers. I think actors are brilliant. And Billy…you bring an authenticity and a wholeheartedness…you bring that like in buckets. And that’s what this audience is going to leave with: they are going to be witness to this man telling a story that he needs to tell, and they are going to be touched by it, they are, I have no doubt. You’re brilliant.

BILLY: I have a hard time accepting compliments, but thank you.

What do you hope the audience and anyone struggling with any of these issues might take away from these performances?

BILLY: I hope people are affected in some way. I hope that some of the…parts of this character’s, this person’s story, cause people to consider their own story…This is just how I look at media in general—that maybe there is something that I can learn from this that helps me in my life. So, I hope that our audiences are open to the experience…I think it’s going to be surprising and maybe emotional for people to be a part of, and I just hope that they leave it feeling some new feelings or being able to address some old feelings that they might have, just from having the experience of watching a show in Zech Hall.

DIANA: I also think it’s very important [to know]—these are times of big upheaval and we’ve just reopened our circle of two program—[that] there is somebody sitting there right now. So if you have a bad day, you can talk to somebody…that feeling of we’re not alone, there’s somebody to talk to, I think that’s really important. I feel in terms of death itself, that there’s been a long standing movement to see it as of course a part of life, but a part of life that we may not have any influence over, and yet sometimes we do…

People have been so generous with me to share their thoughts on end of life, what they’ve observed, [and] when my husband got sick and died just before the pandemic, I could spend his last year really making it as beautiful as possible, up until the moment of his death. I think when we don’t talk about it, we lose those opportunities that we could have to really make every moment of life as beautiful as it can be.

DEANA: Every Brilliant Thing.

DIANA: Yep. Every Brilliant Thing.

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Every Brilliant Thing runs April 8-23 at Whidbey Island Center for the Arts.

Tickets and more information available at www.wicaonline.org.

Healing Circles Langley is open once again for in-person drop ins!

Please drop by Monday - Friday from 10:00 am - 2:00 pm for tea and conversation. You can learn more about Healing Circles Langley and their community resources at www.healingcircleslangley.org.

WIDT | “The Nutcracker” at WICA

Whidbey Island Dance Theatre is Back on Stage with “The Nutcracker” at WICA

Among the whirlwind of the holiday season, there is that undeniably lovely and tempestuous affair fluffed with snow and tulle and cute children in creature costumes that few can resist. That is “The Nutcracker,” of course, and Whidbey Island Dance Theatre (WIDT) is back on stage with the ballet. 

When Russian choreographer Marius Petipa collaborated with composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to create “The Nutcracker” ballet in 1892, the famous team was most likely oblivious to the global tradition the piece would become through the next 125 years and beyond. Countless productions of the holiday ballet abound all over the world, but nothing makes the heart sing more than seeing one’s own community bring this holiday winter dream to life on stage. 

After being only able to perform via livestream last year due to the pandemic, WIDT is particularly excited to present its 29th season of “The Nutcracker” live and onstage at Whidbey Island Center for the Arts in Langley. Tickets are on sale now for the show which opens Friday, Dec. 10 and runs through Sunday, Dec. 19. 

WIDT alums, Brittany Falso and Elliauna McLean, have taken on the leadership roles of artistic directors at WIDT and are over-the-moon to be back on stage with this dedicated company of dancers and community members. 

"We are so excited to bring back live performances this year,” says McLean. “To see that curtain open for the first time on opening night is going to feel surreal." 

The ballet dramatizes the tale of Clara’s enchanted Christmas Eve, when her mysterious godfather’s magic leads to a dream of unexplainable and wonderful events through the night. Clara journeys to lands where snowflakes and flowers dance; where fairies, mermaids, and even a dragon perform; where a fierce and terrible battle is fought; and where a handsome prince comes to the rescue. 

Here is a company that is skilled enough to turn out a professional-caliber performance every year, much to the delight of its enthusiastic island audiences. The company manages to combine the traditional and the deliciously daring in a production in which more than 100 characters come to life. As always, WIDT’s production is full of color and fun, newcomers and familiar faces, and new twists in choreography, along with the artistry of several professional guest dancers and the charming collective of an all-ages cast. 

"Seeing how dedicated these dancers are in all of their rehearsals makes the lead-up to this year’s show all the more enjoyable," McLean added. 

Principal company dancer Kendall Marshall takes the role of Clara, supported by community member Lars Larson returning in the role of Godfather Drosselmeyer. Professional guest artist Robbi Moore dances the role of the illustrious Forest King and performs the Grand Pas de Deux with the Faerie Queen played by Chyler White, another guest artist to join the show. 

“Every year, newcomers marvel at how joyous and spectacular our local production is,” says Whidbey Island Dance Company founder Charlene Brown, who began bringing this holiday event to islanders back in 1992. 

Brown helps choreograph the show along with other longtime WIDT collaborators including, both Falso and McLean, Megan LeMay, Katelyn Lodell, Leah Marshall, Robbi Moore, Jamee Pitts, Taylor Pitts, Chyler White and Graham Vanderwood. 

Even amid the pandemic, this ensemble of dancers, buoyed by their directors, choreographers and parents, has come together, even while breathing through masks as they dance, to make this show happen again. It is their holiday gift to their community and has all the festive earmarks of what the holiday season is at its best: bringing joy to others. Come and see them dance! 

“The Nutcracker” plays at 7 p.m. on Dec. 10, 17, 18 and at 2 p.m. on Dec. 11, 12 and 19. 

Tickets are $25 for adults, $20 for youths/seniors/military and are available online at wicaonline.org. 

Covid-19 Safety Precautions in Place for “The Nutcracker”: 50% audience capacity/adults proof of vax or Covid test required + mask/under 18 mask required. 

BIOGRAPHY | SAM SHEPARD

The Farmer’s Son

Born in Illinois in 1943, Samuel Shepard Rogers III (known as Steve Rogers as boy) was the son of a former Army pilot and a teacher. His family moved frequently and eventually settled on an avocado farm in Duarte, California. Duarte would become the suburb where True West takes place. Shepard’s father became more alcoholic and nomadic, like the absent father that hovers over True West and other Shepard plays. Shepard worked as a stablehand, an orange picker, and a sheep shearer while attending high school and later studied agriculture at nearby Mt. San Antonio Junior College. He dropped out of school to join a travelling theatre company and eventually moved to New York City.

Rock and Roll Playwright

In New York, 19-year-old Shepard found inspiration in rock, jazz, and Samuel Beckett’s plays. He worked as a waiter at the Village Gate nightclub, shared an apartment with the son of jazz legend Charles Mingus, wrote songs with John Cale and Bob Dylan, and played drums for a rock group called The Holy Modal Rounders. Reflecting on this time, he later told an interviewer, “I got into writing plays because I had nothing else to do. So I started writing to keep from going off the deep end.” In 1964, his first play Cowboys received a favorable review from The Village Voice and launched his theatre career. Informed by Jackson Pollock's abstract expressionism and science fiction, his early plays were poetic and hallucinogenic, often incorporating rock and jazz music. He worked in experimental downtown spaces such as La Mama, Cafe Cino, and the Open Theatre, winning six Obie (off-Broadway) Awards over the next few years. In 1969 he married actress and musician O-Lan Jones, and they remained married until 1983. His passion remained divided between theatre and music, and in 1975 Shepard joined a group of musicians (including Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez) to tour with Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Road.

Playwright-in-Residence

Theatre ultimately won out when Shepard opted to settle in San Francisco as playwright-in-residence at the Magic Theatre in 1975. Over the next 10 years, he wrote his most seminal plays, including Fool for Love, True West, and Buried Child. Shepard recalled his father coming to a performance of the latter play and berating the actors on stage. “He took it personally and he was drunk... he was kicked out and then was readmitted once he confessed to being my father. And then he started yelling at the actors again.” By the mid-1980s, as he reached his forties, Shepard was the second most widely-performed American playwright after Tennessee Williams.

WATCH: REMEMBERING SAM SHEPARD

WATCH: SAM SHEPARD ON HIS FAMILY

The Intrepid Artist-Cowboy

In addition to play-writing, Shepard had a successful career as an actor. His first film role was as a dying farmer in Days of Heaven (1978). He appeared in Lewis Carlino’s Resurrection in 1980. His breakthrough came playing Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff (1983). Biographer John J. Winters wrote that this role established Shepard’s on-screen persona as “the intrepid artist-cowboy of popular imagination,” which would blur with his writing. Other notable movies include Baby Boom (1987), Steel Magnolias (1989), and the Ethan Hawke Hamlet (2000) in which he played Hamlet’s father. He was last seen as the family patriarch in the 2017 Netflix series “Bloodline.” He also wrote several screenplays, including Wim Wenders’s Paris, Texas (1984 Cannes Film Festival Winner) and Silent Tongue (1994), a Western that he also directed.

A Western Sunset  

Sam Shepard and Jessica Lange began a decades-long relationship in 1983 and had two children: Hannah and Samuel Walker. The two broke up in 2009 but did not announce that they had parted ways until 2011.

In 2000, Shephard bought a small farm in Kentucky, where he raised horses, continued writing, and enjoyed a low-profile life. Shepard died in 2017 from complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease. He left behind more than 55 plays, two collections of short stories, and a novel.

SOURCE: Roundabout Theatre Company

RELATED PROGRAMMING: CURSE OF THE STARVING CLASS | JUN 11-20, 2021

BIOGRAPHY | Kurt Weill

Kurt Weill was born on 2 March 1900 in Dessau, Germany. The son of a cantor, Weill displayed musical talent early on. By the time he was twelve, he was composing and mounting concerts and dramatic works. During the First World War, the teenage Weill was conscripted as a substitute accompanist at the Dessau Court Theater. Weill later enrolled at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik, but found the conservative training and the infrequent lessons with composer Engelbert Humperdinck too stifling. After a season as conductor of the newly formed municipal theater in Lüdenscheid, he returned to Berlin and was accepted into Ferruccio Busoni's master class in composition. He supported himself through a wide range of musical occupations, from playing organ in a synagogue to piano in a beer hall, by tutoring students in music theory, and, later, by contributing music criticism in print and on the radio.

Early Works & Operas

By 1925, a series of performances in Berlin and at international music festivals established Weill as one of the leading composers of his generation. In 1926, he made a sensational theatrical debut in Dresden with his first opera, Der Protagonist, a one-act work on a text by Georg Kaiser. Modernist aesthetics are most apparent in the one-act surrealist opera Royal Palace (1926) featuring film and dance, and the opera buffa Der Zar lässt sich photographieren (1927) on a libretto by Georg Kaiser. By this time in his career, Weill's use of dance idioms associated with American dance music and his pursuit of collaborations with the finest contemporary playwrights had become essential strategies in his attempts to reform the musical stage.

Bertolt Brecht

Collaborations with Brecht

A commission from the Baden-Baden Music Festival in 1927 led to the creation of Mahagonny, Weill's first collaboration with Bertolt Brecht, whose Mann ist Mann and whose poetry collection, Die Hauspostille, had captured Weill's imagination and suggested a compatible literary and dramatic sensibility. The critical success of Mahagonny encouraged Weill and Brecht to continue work on the full-length opera Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (1930). Exploiting their aggressive popular song-style, Weill and Brecht also wrote several works for singing actors in the commercial theater, including Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera) and Happy End. They explored other alternatives to the opera establishment in the school-opera Der Jasager and the radio cantatas Das Berliner Requiem and Der Lindberghflug/Der Ozeanflug. Increasingly uncomfortable with Brecht's restriction of the role of music in his political theater, Weill then turned to another collaborator, the famous stage designer Caspar Neher, for the libretto of his three-act epic opera, Die Bürgschaft (1931), and again to Georg Kaiser for the daring play-with-music Der Silbersee (1932). In both he refined his musical language into what he called "a thoroughly responsible style," appropriate for the serious and timely topics he addressed.

These later works outraged the Nazis. Riots broke out at several performances and carefully orchestrated propaganda campaigns discouraged productions of his works. In March 1933, Weill fled Germany; he and Lotte Lenya divorced soon thereafter. In Paris, Weill completed his Second Symphony and renewed briefly his collaboration with Brecht for Die sieben Todsünden, a "ballet with singing" for George Balanchine's troupe "Les Ballets 1933." He also wrote a number of cabaret chansons, as well as the score for Jacques Deval's Marie galante. When a German-language premiere of his Der Kuhhandel seemed hopeless, Weill arranged for a London production of this operetta, which had been adapted as a British musical comedy and re-titled A Kingdom for a Cow. In September 1935, Weill went to America, with Lenya, to oversee Max Reinhardt's production of Franz Werfel's biblical epic Der Weg der Verheissung, for which Weill had written an extensive oratorio-like score. After many delays, the work was finally staged in 1937 but in truncated form as The Eternal Road.

Broadway and Hollywood

In the interim, the Group Theatre had recruited Weill to collaborate with distinguished playwright Paul Green on a musical play loosely based on Hasek's Good Soldier Schweik. Weill's innovative and extensive score for Johnny Johnson, though still recognizably European in accent, established the composer on the American scene. For a brief period in 1937, Weill had two works running simultaneously in New York. Encouraged by his reception and convinced that the commercial theater offered more possibilities than the traditional opera house, Weill and Lenya decided to stay in the United States, remarried, and applied for American citizenship. Weill followed the Group Theatre to Hollywood and completed two film scores, including Fritz Lang's You and Me (1938). But he found the motion picture industry hostile to the type of film-opera he envisioned and thereafter always considered Broadway "home."

During the next decade, he established himself as a new and original voice in the American musical theater. He continued to enlist leading dramatists for the cause of musical theater, including the foremost playwright of the day, Maxwell Anderson. Their first collaboration, Knickerbocker Holiday, was only a modest success, but it showcased Weill's first American standard, "September Song." Weill's first hit was Lady in the Dark, a musical play about psychoanalysis by Moss Hart with lyrics by Ira Gershwin, his return to the theater after his brother's death in 1937. A daring experiment, with music restricted to only the dream sequences (a technique analogous to the use of color in The Wizard of Oz), Lady in the Dark broke Broadway records for production costs but recouped all of it in its 777 performances, with Gertrude Lawrence appearing as Liza both on Broadway and national tour. Weill quickly acquired the reputation of being the finest craftsman in the business, no less for his large-scale musical forms than his unique insistence on orchestrating all of his own works.

The even greater success of One Touch of Venus (1943) gave Weill the credibility to embark on a series of bold ventures. He was elected as the only composer-member of the distinguished Playwrights Producing Company, which brought Elmer Rice's Pulitzer-Prize winning drama Street Scene to Broadway as an American opera, the first real successor to Porgy and Bess. With lyrics by the Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, Street Scene garnered more favorable reviews than had Porgy and enjoyed a longer Broadway run. Next teaming up with Alan Jay Lerner for an original musical entitled Love Life (1948), Weill used American musical idioms and a vaudeville frame to chronicle in non-linear form the impact of 150 years of "progress" on the marriage and family of Sam and Susan Cooper, who never age. Now considered the first "concept musical," its first genuine successor was Cabaret (1965), and even Stephen Sondheim found Love Life "very useful" for his own work. Weill's last Broadway piece was no less daring: the musical tragedy Lost in the Stars, adapted by Anderson from the novel Cry, the Beloved Country. Starring Todd Duncan, it challenged the Broadway institution and audience to a degree that would not be exceeded until the 1970’s in the Sondheim-Prince collaborations.

During the forties, Weill had also contributed extensively to the American war effort, as well as a series of Jewish and Zionist pageants. Although all of the Hollywood adaptations of his musicals mutilated his scores, he enjoyed his work with Ira Gershwin on the original film musical Where Do We Go from Here? (1945). He was also very proud of his folk-opera Down in the Valley (1948), which received hundreds of productions in schools and communities throughout the nation. Weill was at work on a musical version of Mark Twain's Huck Finn and was planning another American opera when he suffered a heart attack shortly after his fiftieth birthday. He died on April 3,1950.

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