With this week's short run of Andrea Lepcio's Sad Mad Glad Bad, New Perspectives inaugurates Off the Page, its season of workshop productions of plays-in-development written by members of its selective Women's Work Lab. I spoke with actress Deepti Gupta, who performs Sad Mad Glad Bad with Mary Micari, under the direction of Melissa Maxwell, about the play and Off the Page. Sad Mad Glad Bad runs at New Perspectives's 37th Street space through Thursday July 30th.
Deepti, Sad Mad Glad Bad contains a great deal of audience participation, with you and Mary demanding objects from the audience and using them to tell the play's story. How does workshopping this play with a live audience affect your use of audience participation?
In developing the piece, Mary and I were playing in a vacuum up until last night, when the run opened. What we've learned since is how an audience reaction may change what you perform, especially in a play like this. Also, the script doesn't say what the materials are, that we use to build the 'set' and illustrate the story. The script says I find things in the space and use them. Initially there was no production design. When the production designer came in she decided that I should start using masking tape to 'build' the 'set'. Ultimately I think the tape became a fascinating thing. I loved playing with it. Everything I created onstage was made up in rehearsal or even in performance.
Usually, play development involves sit-down readings, not 'on your feet' workshop productions such as this. Do you think this is a useful variation?
We began the process with cold readings, then worked forward to the staging you can see at New Perspectives. I've acted in two readings of this play before the workshop production. The process really takes the play off the page in many ways. There are things that definitely Andrea didn't write to be performed as a reading only. We were able to explore those things. We have rehearsed it as if it were a full production - since mid-June, for twenty hours a week. We've taken it very seriously, and I feel we are ready to do a run. I feel as if I could do a run, now.
The Off the Page workshop series is intended to broaden opportunities for and audience exposure to female playwrights, in keeping with New Perspectives's "emphasis on multi-racial casting and the development of new works by women and writers of color" in "an attempt to bring to that examination a range of voices that reflect the true diversity of contemporary America." Is New Perspectives achieving this necessary broadening of the theater's perspectives?
It's great that they're working with female playwrights only. It's affirmative action, and unfortunately necessary, as you'll know if you've read the recent survey in the New York Times about women in playwriting. I hope that sometime changing circumstances will allow New Perspectives to broaden the project to include male playwrights as well. As an actor of color who finds many roles written for white actors, I'm compelled to experience the theater world in New York in a color sense. 'Are they casting only white actors or are they casting people of color?'
Is New Perspectives' indeed casting people of color in the Off the Page series?
They cast me in this production. When I first encountered Sad Mad Glad BadI felt that in the way the characters are written, they're very white. When I was asked to be in the workshop production I was like, 'am I the right person?' My character, Olexandra is a doctor, and Indians are always cast as doctors, lawyers, etc... in television, film, theater. At the same time, the Off the Page staging is not a full production. If someone does pick up this play to fully produce, they won't necessarily pick an Indian woman. I don't know if I will ever get to do this play again. This workshop is a little oasis in the theater world, and I hope it has a positive effect when the play moves forward.
Are there plans for future seasons of Women's Work?
I hope so. I think it's very helpful to the playwrights to see their work explored 'on its feet' and before an audience.
