Aliah Whitmore
Three years ago, at the very first organizational board meeting of my now fledgling theater company Whitmore Eclectic, a member of my board pulled me aside and said, “You guys should think about putting up Moby Dick. Orson Welles adapted it into a stage production in 1955 and I think it’s pretty amazing.” And so I began to pursue the white whale.
From the moment I read Welles’ adaptation of Melville’s beautifully verbose novel I became obsessed with “The Governor” (the head of the theater company we meet in the play) and his crew of misfit actors who were “picked and packed by some fatality” to perform this unorthodox drama. It was immediately clear in my mind that my father, James Whitmore Jr,. was to play “The Governor” and “Ahab”. The opportunity to assist my father in the portrayal of roles that read like tone poems from the emotional compendium of his life has been an awe-striking honor.
With familial threads woven throughout the tapestry of this play, this story quickly became, for me, about a mentor and his serendipitous protégé (the Governor and the Young Actor). It spoke to me about grief and grieving, about a person’s last wish, about when we look back on our lives and see unexplored possibilities — what we should have and could have done. It spoke to me about legacy and what it means to pass down a philosophy or an ideal. This story has helped me to see that we are all teachers, no matter how marred by life or broken by heartache we are.
Kate McManus, Andrew Patton, Dustin Seavey, Richard Cox, Steve Madar, Michael Welch; Center James Whitmore Jr.; Bottom Andre Verderame (l.), Rob Fabiani
My company, Whitmore Eclectic, has been formed in honor of my late grandfather, James Whitmore. The spirit of our company is one of power, creative exploration and education. Whitmore Eclectic, in its exhibitionism, experimental nature and rough demeanor, truly parallels the company in Welles’ play.
From the beginning of the rehearsal and pre-production process, the line between the life of the play and the life of Whitmore Eclectic has blurred more and more. The actors in my show are strangely battling like the actors in the theater company Welles created. The people in my cast are experiencing loss and hardship that directly reflect the loss and hardship experienced by their characters. It has been queer and eerie and gloriously strange. It seems the deeper I have gone in directing this show, the more intense the coalescence of the two worlds became.
Dustin Seavey
Welles took the story of Moby Dick and framed it in the context of a turn-of-the-century theater company (which our production re-sets in the 1860s, closer to the publication date of Melville’s novel). The company is running King Lear as its main stage production. It is no accident that Welles chose Lear as the piece the company is preparing when it is interrupted by this impromptu rehearsal of Moby Dick. Many academics say that Moby Dick was Melville’s answer back to Shakespeare. Much of the language used by Melville is charged with the same energy as that of Shakespeare and the archetypical character relationships mirror Shakespeare’s almost directly. Ahab is as much Lear as he is Macbeth. Obsession and vengeance are what create his demise. The Old Testament’s relevance was a major keystone for the telling of this story onstage. God’s will versus man’s and who dictates our fate? It’s a fundamentally transcendental question in the literary movement of Melville’s time.
I took this story and fit it into a memory being had by “The Young Actor” who plays “Ishmael”. He has returned to the theater where
James Whitmore Jr.
he performed Moby Dick with this small crew of actors at the request of “The Governor,” who has died since the performance. This production is simply watching a man recapitulate a powerful experience as he grieves the loss of a teacher and friend. It’s very much what I have done in “the white and turbid wake” that has been the loss of my grandfather.
The story of Jonah, the story of the Governor, the story of Ahab — all told through the voice of the everyman — have a deep and resonating effect.
I, Aliah, was of that crew. “My oath was welded with the rest. Our souls were so possessed that Ahab’s hate was almost ours, and that white whale our foe as much as his.”
This journey I have taken with my company has terrified me and changed me. It has shown me my fear as much as it has challenged my abilities as a director. My prayer is that this story shows yourself to you as much as it has shown myself to me.
**Production Photography by Robert Fabiani
Moby Dick — Rehearsed, by Orson Welles, produced by Whitmore Eclectic. Opens August 4. Thur.-Sat. 8 pm. Sun. 3 pm. The Lyric Theatre, 520 N. La Brea, Los Angeles. 818-826-3609. www.Whitmoreeclectic.com.
Aliah Whitmore is the founder and artistic director of Whitmore Eclectic. This is her sixth directorial endeavor with Whitmore Eclectic. She has worked alongside her father for several years in network television but for the past three years her main focus has been getting Whitmore Eclectic off the ground with innovative theater and effective community outreach.
