RESIDENCY FIVE
7
MARTHA CLARKE & BRANDEN JACOBSJENKINS
Signature Theatre’s Residency Five Program recently welcomed two new playwrights into the fold: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Martha Clarke. Both artists will be featured in Signature’s 2013-14 All-Premiere Season; Clarke’s Cheri, an exciting fusion of theatre, live music, and dance, starts performances in November 2013, and Jacobs-Jenkins’ play Appropriate will have its New York Premiere in March 2014. To help introduce them to Signature audiences, Signature Stories asked Branden and Martha about their work, process, and interests.
How do you generally begin writing a play/creating a piece? Branden: It’s still slightly mysterious to me. I tend to have fragments of things – certain images, anxieties, obsessions, historical events – just floating and tumbling around the nether of my mental space. These fragments will change shape and size in direct proportion to how much I think or read about them. Then one day I’ll look up and see that a few of these things have fused themselves together into some kind of idea. Then I just play around with this little mongrel in a Word document until characters emerge and reveal the rest of the play to me. Martha: An idea drifts through in a bubble – if it takes hold, I order books, research, marinate and then look for a producer who believes in it. Selecting the right collaborators and cast creates the DNA for a stimulating process and hopefully a finished product I believe in. It is always a crapshoot! What projects are you working on right now or would like to start working on? Branden: I’m a little superstitious about this sort of question, so I’ll just say I’m doing a lot of reading around and about WWII and primates. Martha: I am excited to be working on an adaptation of Colette’s Cheri with two extraordinary dancers. I have admired Alessandra Ferri for many years. She is an exceptional actress and can distill emotional expression with every gesture. Herman Cornejo is a force of nature. I was literally stunned the first time I saw him dance. It is my first collaboration with the delightful Tina Howe who is writing an extended soliloquy for actress Suzanne Bertish. Pianist Sarah Rothenberg will play a gorgeous selection of French music from the Belle Époque. It is a thrill to be working with this remarkable group of artists. I am also thinking about reworking a play I did at the National Theatre in London with Christopher Hampton, Alice’s Adventures Underground. It is about Lewis Carroll and his obsession with young girls. All the language is Carroll’s: letters, poems, as well as his beloved books. Who or what has been your most important inspiration? Branden: Caryl Churchill, probably. Her body of work and the shape her career has taken have given me a lot of courage to try and reinvent myself as much as I think I can with every new venture, to not shy away from my more cerebral instincts, and to recognize that being made to think in the theatre can be an emotional experience. Martha: Antony Tudor, my ballet teacher at Juilliard has been a definite influence. His ballets were narrative and filled with psychological detail. He had exquisite taste in music as well. Great film directors such as Fellini, Bergman, Bresson and Visconti have always inspired. Their unique style, use of light and space, and always wonderful performances are endlessly instructive. I continue to be a devotee of European films. I am often inspired by great painters. For Cheri, I am looking at Bonnard and Vuillard.