HAPPY NEW YEAR!

by Erik Abbott | 03 Jan, 2022 | Actors, Blog - what we are up to, Productions, Uncategorized, Vignettes of a Pestilence

Photo: Kevin Casper

What another strange year it’s been.

Actors Rep began 2021, as we do every year, with high hopes.

Our plans for 2020 to do a co-production with The Phoenix Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota (including presenting the show both there and in Luxembourg), shifted to 2021 due to the pandemic. It soon became apparent that Year Two of Covid would thwart those plans again.

We were however able to present a couple of overlapping projects. First was a rehearsed reading of a new script, Apokalypsis: Quarantine, in January, for the Writers Who Talk asbl (association sans but lucrative) online Launch Party. The play was very well received and two subsequent thematically linked pieces, The Last of the Cousins Beckwith and When We Get Back to Normal, were then developed under the collective title Vignettes of a Pestilence.

Each play is about a half-hour long and set in a different time period across the first year-and-a-half of restrictions and lockdowns. Apokalypsis: Quarantine takes place in the spring of 2020, and is about a married couple separated when the husband cannot return from an overseas business trip. The Last of the Cousins Beckwith features two cousins and life-long best friends, and When We Get Back to Normal involves colleagues in the same large company who have never met and who are the only ones who show up for a scheduled video conference meeting.

The plays were written to be performed either onstage or via a video platform. Given the difficulties and expense of live in-person production last spring, we decided instead to present them as recorded pieces in the online programmes of two international festivals, the Edinburgh Fringe and the Minnesota Fringe. (We’ve attempted to present live shows on the ground at both in the past, but have never been selected in the lottery for the Minnesota Fringe and were unable to secure enough funding to travel to Edinburgh.)

Working with Philip Taylor of Morpheus Marketing (https://morpheusmarketing.eu), we recorded the plays in June after a few weeks of online rehearsals—with the actors and directors in three different countries (Luxembourg, France, and the US) across seven time zones. Taylor set us up on a great recording platform, did the editing, titles, etc.

The three performers (Lolly Foy, Actors Rep Co-Artistic Director Christine Probst, right, and Artistic Director Erik Abbott) each acted in two of the plays and directed a third.

Foy, who lives in the Minneapolis area, rehearsed from two different locations there, as well as from New Ulm, Minnesota, a couple of hours away (where she was directing a show), a fast-food restaurant in North Carolina (where the crew graciously allowed her to use a corner booth whilst they were closing), and even from her car—in a motorway rest area somewhere in Virginia. (She later rang in for a press interview about the project again from her vehicle in the car park of a theatre in Massachusetts.)

Lacking our own venue or rehearsal space or even office space, we have become quite adept at making good use of what is available.

In addition to the Minnesota and Edinburgh Fringes, we also presented the works at a screening as part of Thèâtre Luxembourg’s premiere edition of their Festival Les Egarés in Differdange.

Assuming we can do so safely within the Covid protocols and restrictions we plan to present the pieces again as an event in a pub or restaurant setting in Luxembourg Ville. We’ve looked into some options and we hope to be able to announce something definitive by spring.

The productions were well-received, with positive feedback from critics and viewers.

Thanks to a grant from the Luxembourg Ministère de la Culture, we were able to ensure the artists were paid a reasonable (if lower than we’d hoped) stipend. We were also able to work with Taylor, who was absolutely brilliant. We are deeply grateful to him.

We have not given up on the collaboration with The Phoenix Theater in Minneapolis and indeed are actively seeking additional potential collaborators here—although the production timeline remains unclear. The play, Second Zechariah, was given a developmental rehearsed reading (online) in June by the Clamour Theatre in Northeast Florida, which led to what we believe is now a production-ready draft.

April 2022 will mark ten years since Actors Repertory Theatre Luxembourg was formed as an asbl. Our first show, Edward Albee’s The Goat Or, Who is Sylvia?, was a co-production with the Théâtre National du Luxembourg (TNL) in 2013. We followed on with a second production (A R Gurney’s Love Letters) in 2014, two productions in 2015 (Daryl Lisa Fazio’s Greyhounds and Donna Hoke’s Flowers in the Desert), two in 2016 (Daniel Pinkerton’s Do You Want to Know a Secret?—in collaboration with the Mierscher Kulturhaus—and Wallace Shawn’s The Fever), three in 2017 (Erik Abbott’s #WTF Happened? On the Phenomenon of Trump and Dear Santa… , and Rich Orloff’s Big Boys), one in 2018 (Anne Nelson’s The Guys), and the three recorded one-acts in 2021 (Erik Abbott’s trio Vignettes of a Pestilence).

Dear Santa… was revived in 2018 and #WTF Happened? On the Phenomenon of Trump was presented in the US in the Kansas City Fringe Festival in 2018 (where it was named ‘Best of Venue’) and again in 2019 as part of the Festival Multi(l)dingues in Bertrix, Belgium.

As a professional English-language theatre company (until recently the only one in Luxembourg), we have produced thirteen plays in a total of sixteen productions (including revivals). We have cast thirty roles across our shows, with actors based in Luxembourg, France, Germany, the UK, and the US. We estimate that more than 3.000 audience members have seen our work. Our meagre funding coupled with a frequent need for portability have ordained a minimalist design aesthetic, which we have embraced.

Artistic excellence and paying the artists who create it are core principles for us. We cannot (yet) compete with the payment levels of the larger, substantially better funded companies, but we have been able to attract superb theatre makers to work with us. We believe absolutely that the performances in our productions consistently display a level of craft and artistry that rivals professional theatre anywhere.

We remain committed to delivering passionate, thought provoking, professional English-language theatre to Luxembourg audiences—and, increasingly, beyond. We hope that 2022 will allow us to share a theatre space safely with a live audience. We hope that our funding levels will be sufficient to carry out the productions we have in our pipeline—and possibly to realise a long-held goal to join Luxembourg’s Theater Federatioun.

We hope someday soon to find a performance space or spaces we can call our home(s).

Most of all we hope to see all of you soon enjoying one of our productions.

We wish you a joyous and safe and healthy New Year!

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