As she takes a break from rehearsing Rose Cottages in the sylvan setting of the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga, director Heidi Helen Davis is in her element. Not only is she directing her 22nd production there, but she has also lived in Topanga for the last 15 years.
Heidi Helen Davis, left, and Ellen Geer at Mountain Mermaid in Topanga in 2009
Davis first met the Theatricum’s artistic director Ellen Geer when Geer saw Davis’ 1987 LA staging of Tachinoki, written by Robert Schenkkan (the Pulitzer-winning author of The Kentucky Cycle). “The play is about the Japanese-American internment during World War II,” Davis says. “Ellen saw the play, and she loved what I had done with it because it was all very original staging. We used original photographs, and all kinds of wonderful music. And she asked me to come work with her.”
Davis staged her first Theatricum production, Lillian Hellman’s Toys in the Attic, in 1988. Geer was in the cast. But Davis didn’t direct again at the Theatricum until 1993, when she took on A Streetcar Named Desire.
She remembers it well. “Ellen was stunning as Blanche. Melora [Marshall] created a Stella so completely comprehensible, the triangle of addiction clarified the inevitable conclusion.” One year later, for her Theatricum staging of Tennessee Williams’ other masterpiece The Glass Menagerie, Davis “determined that the part of Tom had to be split into two characters – young Tom and older Tom (the voice of the narrator). Ellen loved the idea and with her absolute commitment to the interpretation and her creation of Amanda, the show was a big success.”
In 1995, Davis directed …And the Dark Cloud Came, “Ellen’s original piece about her family’s living through the blacklist. I wanted John Randolph, Ed Asner and Jeff Corey to act as the House UnAmerican Activities committee, but their schedules were too busy to get them to the theater night after night. So I filmed them sitting behind a table and talking to an imaginary person on trial. I then projected it on a large screen up and above the stage to one side so the actor could speak and react to them. This added to the alienation of the proceedings and the power these people had over people’s lives.”
Davis kept directing every summer at the Theatricum and tackled two productions each in the summers of 2000 and 2006. She was especially pleased with her Long Day’s Journey Into Night in 2008 and her 2009 The Cherry Orchard, which placed the action in Virginia, circa the 1970s — “I proposed to Ellen that we do an American, modern interpretation of the often misjudged play. She once again enthusiastically threw herself into working with me on the adaptation and of course, in her beautiful portrayal of Ranevskaya [named Lillian Randolph Cunningham in this version].”
Over the years Geer “has become a dear friend,” Davis continues. “I’m lucky because Ellen and I work very well together. We think similarly. I’m flattering myself now. She runs the theater, I don’t have to do that. But our way of working is so similar, and also our taste and our instincts. And she has bestowed upon me the wonderful position of being the person who gets to direct her, as I’m doing in the current production of Rose Cottages. Ellen trusts me. She’s been very good to me and I love working with her.”
Davis first saw Bill Bozzone’s Rose Cottages “in 1985 in New York. I was a member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre, where it was produced. It was a very fine production and the play stayed with me for many years. I didn’t bring it to Theatricum Botanicum before, because we do mostly classical plays. But it’s a wonderful piece. I’ve always wanted to do a feel-good play.”
Rose Cottages is the story of Rose, the beleaguered owner of a rundown, cottage-style motel, who begrudgingly befriends two unwelcome guests — a penniless, teen skateboarder and a sassy widow who’s been dumped by her son and his new bride. At Davis’ request, Bozzone has re-written the part of Rose, which was originally written for a male actor, for longtime Theatricum actor and two-time NAACP Award recipient Earnestine Phillips.
“I thought of Earnestine for this piece,” says Davis, “but when I met with Ellen about the play I gave her several possible casting choices. She said, ‘I was thinking about Earnestine’. I told her I was thinking the same thing, but I didn’t know if it would work. We chatted about it for a couple of weeks,” Davis continues. “Then we got down to the kernel of what do we think this piece is about? Or rather, what do we think the writer is saying? What struck me was the abandonment issue. You’ve got older women, you’ve got African Americans, you’ve got young people and all are in some way estranged, or abandoned. The older woman, played by Ellen (Geer), is abandoned by her son and daughter-in-law. Rose was abandoned by her husband. The boy’s mother has taken off and he lives with an abusive father. And yet this is a family. And I’ve always liked that theme — that the oddest grouping can be a family. “
Graco Hernandez, Ellen Geer and Earnestine Phillips
Cast in the role of the boy, Lydell, is young newcomer Graco Hernandez. “We were looking for an 18-year-old,” says Davis, “but this kid comes in, hair covering his face, and there’s something special about him. Then, when he told us he was 13 going on 14, we said ‘oh no’. But at the callbacks he was beautifully prepared. Not only did he know the scene, backwards and forwards, but he knew where he was physically, he knew how to interact. He’s quite remarkable.”
Theatricum Botanicum is a 299-seat outdoor amphitheater, terraced into the hillside of a rustic canyon. When asked if it’s a challenge for actors to project vocally and emotionally in the space, Davis says, “I rarely even have to address that. First of all we’re in this very lucky situation of being a repertory company. So our actors are used to performing in this space. The only time I’ve ever felt I needed to encourage an actor to project further out, either volume-wise or emotionally, I would give them a note like ‘use your fourth side. I want you to imagine you’re seeing this.’ I try to make the fourth side important to them. We’re so state-of-the-art in 2011. I try to teach directors to get actors to just be. Just be in pain, just be in sadness. It used to be that they could pretend it or act it. The audience is too sophisticated, now. We try to direct actors to be natural and real. It’s a style we’re going after.”
Davis teaches directing at the Los Angeles Film School and, during the winter months, acting and directing at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Although not a native, Davis was raised in California. “I started writing and directing theater in elementary school, then junior high and high school,” says Davis. “I went to college at Cal State Polytechnic and then to San Francisco where I studied privately with a wonderful company called Poverty Theater and Phillip Pruneau. Then I auditioned for and was accepted into the advanced training Master Program at ACT, the American Conservatory Theater.”
Rose Cottages runs in repertory at Theatricum Botanicum with three Shakespeare plays and Moliere’s Tartuffe, as well as a five-night run of My Name is Rachel Corrie. In early September, it will be possible to see all six plays in a single weekend. However this schedule poses some production problems for the set pieces of Rose Cottages.
“Let me put it this way,” says Davis, “This play needs an outdoor setting with an indoor area. Scenes take place inside and out. Once you resign yourself or rather give in to the spectacular setting, you can use it to your advantage. In previous productions we’ve used the hill a lot for entrances and exits. In Blithe Spirit , for example, the ghost drifted across in the darkness. At the end of Glass Menagerie Laura sees her brother and follows him up the hillside. You can do things here you can’t do anywhere else.”
Ellen Geer, Graco Hernandez, and Earnestine Phillips
“But Rose Cottages was not written for a theatrical space like this,” Davis continues. “There are seven scenes and they move from time frame to time frame and indoors and out. You’ve got actors who finish the scene inside the cottage, and the next scene is the next day at a certain time and they’re supposed to be coming from a path. In normal theater they’d run around the back and make another entrance. You can’t do that here. So logistically you have to keep finding ways to move them. There’s one scene where Ellen’s character, her son and his wife are all in the tiny little cottage and then we jump to a different scene and we jump back and the son and daughter-in-law have abandoned her. There’s no way to get the son and his wife off stage. So what I did was, in the scene shift, we see them sneaking off. They do abandon her but in the play we just hear about it. And now we see it. It might be too much on the nose for playwright Bill Bozzone so I emailed him. I check with him on every little line or production adjustment we make.”
In conclusion Davis hopes that audiences leave the production feeling lighthearted. “That they had a good laugh at the foibles of people. And this may be a little too idealistic,” Davis says, but it would be nice if people left the play a little bit more open-minded. The play’s main characters are an African American woman, an older woman, a 14-year-old Mexican kid who desperately wants a family. It would be nice if people came out thinking why not? Why not a family like this?”
**Production Photography by Ian Flanders
Rose Cottages runs in repertory from July 30 through October 2. The Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 North Topanga Canyon Blvd. Topanga. 310-455-3723. www.theatricum.com.
