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A Testimony to the Power of Theater: Robert Bailey's "In Some Dark Valley" Comes to Actors' Theatre Nov 22, 23 & 24

On a moonlit night in Appalachia, a fiery preacher travels through time to confront his own unyielding zealotry, in a work both haunting and illuminating in its relevance to today. Fresh from an acclaimed run at the LA Fringe Festival, actor Robert Bailey brings his powerful solo show to Santa Cruz for one weekend only. We caught up with Bob and show director Billy Siegenfeld to learn more about how the show came to be, the questions it wrestles with, and the message it carries.


A older man raising his arms to the heavens

AT: What was the inspiration for the show?


Bob: Many years ago, I became fascinated with the field recordings of Southerners singing traditional songs on porches, in fields, in prisons. Through the Alan Lomax archives (original recordings and research materials assembled by Alan Lomax over the course of six decades, which can be found at http://culturalequity.org/the-archive/loc), I started listening to this music that the people sing. The folk revival of the 60s wouldn’t have happened without this music. I grew up in Virginia, and while I didn’t hear it where we lived in the suburbs, probably people were singing this across town. Certainly my grandparents in rural Virginia and North Carolina would have sung this music.


a close-up view of a man playin the harmonica against a dark background

During Covid, I started thinking about a one-person show that could get at the root of the disturbing things happening in the culture, the rigidity of thinking and the passion for the wrong things. And I was also wondering how I could find a narrative to hang some of these songs on. I kept coming back to a paperback copy of an Ibsen play called Brand, a verse tragedy about an uncompromisingly moral pastor in Norway trying to accept the consequences of his choices. I realized I could shape this story in a different way using an Appalachian preacher from the 19th century. It also captured some ideas that had been part of my theatrical soul for many years, ever since I had gone to Poland to work with Jerzy Grotowski. He introduced the idea of “poor theater,” which eliminates all the parts that could be considered extraneous and relies on the actors’ bodies and voices to tell the story, and also emphasizes real contact between human beings. I thought that, through theater, the audience could confront this mindset of rigidity represented by Reverend Brand. Billy came onto the scene early enough to help me shape this.


Billy: Bob asked me to look at the piece. When I read it, it hit me on the level Bob was talking about. We are in a time of fanaticism, and finding an image or metaphor for confronting that was great. I didn’t have to keep writing angry emails but could find a creative way to channel my frustration with those increasingly rigid forces in society.


What I saw in the piece was a character who had a very tormented mind and was searching for a way through it. This play has the Reverend get hooked back into past episodes in his life through other characters, which makes it not just a play about him, but about the people he affected. We get to see  the torments, loves, and sadnesses of the Reverend that led him to make these fanatical choices, and we get to witness him confront that and find a way to the other side.


Bob: The one conception that I decided would make this work as a solo performance was the idea of a visitation. This guy in 19th century garb comes out of the past to address the audience. I realized he could retell the basic story points from Ibsen’s Brand in a way that becomes a testimony—why I did what I did, and why I made the choices I made. Working over Zoom—Billy was in Evanston, and I was in L.A--Billy encouraged the idea of embodying many different characters as visitations the Reverend experiences. The whole piece escalated artistically once Billy encouraged incorporating the additional characters.


An old preacher pointing with his finger

AT: You play many different characters in a short span of time--what is your approach to creating them?


Billy: Try to find action. Bob was originally writing ABOUT these characters—I encouraged him to let the characters themselves say what Reverend was saying about them. This let us keep changing the dynamic of the piece, instead of the Reverend just talking. Every time he can step into the physicalization of another character, it makes the audience move in and out of time with him. Those characters he’s remembering are there in real time speaking for themselves. He’s in his own present time but also telling the story of his past. Bob’s ability to physicalize intensely made this possible.


Bob: Billy pushed me expressionistically, so we’d have the contrast between the Reverend just talking to us to him disappearing into these other characters with their own fanaticisms to vary the narrative. Billy came up with concept that the Reverend is pulled into these situations—he’s being visited upon just as the audience is being visited by him.


Billy: The setting is stripped down—it’s not a church, just a black box space with simple black cubes—which puts the burden on the actor to create the scenery through his actions, sounds, etc. Bob would slow down to let each new character happen, then come back to talking to the audience. When playing or dealing with an obsessive person, it’s easy to stay obsessive. The additional characters took him away from his obsessiveness—they were part of him—they pull him out of the fanaticism.


Bob: The more I worked on it, the more things I would read that fed into it. For example, reading the book White Trash: The Untold History of Class in America reminded me that we’re talking about real people here. I remembered how in the summer between college semesters I was working construction in Virgina, working with guys who’d drive in from West Virginia. These guys taught me how to do construction, and they were people with great dignity who came from hardship and dealt with hardship. People are all coming from their own needs, backgrounds, hardships—I know these people and have gotten to know them even better by working on the play. Billy didn’t grow up in the South, so he needed to find his own way into that point of view.

 

an older man in preacher garb raising a fist to the sky as though he's drawing an imaginary sword

AT: Talk a little about your collaboration as actor and director--what roles did you play in developing the show? Have you worked together before, and what do you enjoy about working together to create theater?


Bob: For me, it’s like being guided by your best friend or brother. He has expectations and pushes me, but not beyond what I can do. On our Zoom calls he’d be articulating in this beautiful way, and even demonstrate—"Can you see me?”—showing me something that’s obvious to him, but maybe more difficult for me. And eventually I’d realize, oh, that’s what he’s been saying about movement and directing energy. There was one moment of choreography that took me forever! He’s also very well read and has been a great dramaturg, helping me recognize when I’ve said enough and when I need to say more so the audience can understand. All these things together were joyful for me. He makes it a joyful process. We laughed a lot. We’ve never as adults since college collaborated so closely.


Billy: I’ve wanted to work with Bob for forever. Getting to work with him as an actor was great—Bob works so hard at his craft. He’s always been a physical actor, and that was the key for me. I knew he was willing to splash his body in different directions. He also has a tremendous ability with the way he uses his voice. He can impersonate anybody. He can bring so many different textures into his voice, and we worked on matching those textures with physicality. Even just standing there speaking he’s going to be compelling, but I pushed him to find a physicality that matched his voice for each character.

 

AT: Say a little about your performance company Jump Rhythm.


Billy: I started life as a percussionist and I love social things. Jump Rhythm is teaching people to simultaneously vocalize and move. Children do this all the time. It’s part of the biological make-up of what it means to be human. We have rhythmic movements in us—our heartbeat, breath, etc.—and I try to put that impulse into what I teach, getting my students to just be kids. It’s a pedagogy based on trying to give articulation to the energies in yourself rather than trying to look or move like somebody else or adopt a posture. How does the body want to move, versus how our brain thinks we should move. Bob is a naturally musical actor.


Bob: Billy has been on me from day one about energies--where do they come from? what part of the body? The most useful advice was him encouraging and permitting me to come back to zero or neutral over and over again. He’d say, “What you just did has manifested itself, now come back to rest for both you and the audience. Give your complete commitment to that energy, physically and vocally, then relax it so that something else can happen.”


 an older man with his hands in a prayerful or pleading position

AT: What is the message of the show? What do you want audiences to come away with?


Bob: One of my former college classmates came to see a run-thru and said, “I’ve been struggling for a long time to come to grips with this rigid way of thinking, especially from the religious right, and you helped me see something.” I hope the show will help with coming to terms with our feelings and our own prejudices about a certain class of people—it can be a little window of light that can shine on that area.

 

AT: What else would you like to share about Reverend Brand or making theater in general?


Bob: Film and TV do many things better. When theater tries to incorporate the things film and TV do so well, it loses its identity. Today we have no problem finding stories being told in all different kinds of media. But theater involves a live performer and live spectators—that’s something that theater does differently.


Billy: Playwright Tony Kushner once said that theater audiences get 25% smarter when the lights go out. That’s also something theater does. That statement helped me understand why theater has been so powerful. People have an anonymity that’s conferred when the lights go out—they feel more relaxed and can let more things come in—often things they probably only let in in private. Theater is unique in that way—as an audience you do a different kind of work than you’re used to, which is to imagine something. For 65 minutes people can imagine along with Bob.


Bob: With a theater performance, anything can happen, and you have to be open to it. There may be something that goes the same way every time, but in terms of what I feel when doing it, there are micro-moments that change depending on the audience. The show is still flexible and breathing, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to bring it to Santa Cruz.


"In Some Dark Valley: The Testimony of the Reverend Brand," a joint production of Jump Rhythm and Actors' Theatre, plays Friday and Saturday, November 22 and 23, at 8 pm, and Sunday, November 24, at 2 pm. Buy tickets HERE.



 

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