Tag: Jerre Dye

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Intermission Impossible Theater

The Falling and the Rising

CREDIT: Ziggy Mack

Ziggy Mack

Stephanie Doche (left) and Chelsea Miller

When America has gone to war, there typically has been a national sense of purpose and involvement. Even if the engagement was controversial, as with Vietnam, there was passion. Today’s drawn-out wars seem to inspire little more than a collective shrug. It surely is a combination of several factors. The nation is not exhorted to buy war bonds, or save metals, or send books to our warriors. The casualty count has been relatively low and our troops are superbly trained and capable, so there’s little national sense of urgency. The enemy is amorphous, and so is our patriotic rage. And there are a comparatively smaller number of troops involved — how many people do you know that are in a combat zone?

But our soldiers still die, get wounded, are permanently injured, go insane, commit suicide.

On occasion, there are efforts to break through the apathy and remind us of the profound seriousness, efforts, and sacrifices of those who wear the uniform. One such is a superb work being staged by Opera Memphis during its Mid-Town Opera Festival, which began last weekend and concludes this weekend.

The Falling and the Rising is a sublime opera that distills the complexity of our wars into vivid portraits of the women and men who continue to fight them. It is a beautiful work, deep but not heavy, a one-act that packs in a lot.

The libretto is by Memphian Jerre Dye, now a Chicagoan, but Memphis lays its claim to his remarkable talent as an actor, writer, and teacher. I daresay there aren’t many operas that have passages such as: “A parachute that’s poorly packed ain’t really worth a pile of shit.” And “I’m a grown-ass women.” Along with references to propofol and midazolam. But Dye’s verbal forays pack an indelible punch in telling the story of a soldier who is seriously injured when a roadside IED goes off. The military doctors induce a coma to help the chances of her recovery. The liminal dream space she inhabits brings her face to face with others who are serving or who have served, and the telling of their stories elevates the understanding of the soldier as well as the audience.

Zach Redler is the composer and deftly brings together various influences to beautifully express the story. The text is paramount, he says, as he speaks of what supports it: bluegrass, of black gospel music, Debussy’s Clair de Lune, and dollops of Sondheim. It is tonal with leitmotifs for the distinct characters that further sharpen their definition.

And the characters are beautifully rendered in the libretto and performed with remarkable power and grace by the singers. The Soldier is Chelsea Miller, former artist-in-residence at Opera Memphis, and possessed of an expressive soprano voice.

Mezzo-soprano Stephanie Doche is explosively eloquent as Toledo, the tough-as-nails “grown-ass woman” who reveals her past to the Army psychiatrist. As the parachute instructor Jumper, the popular tenor Philip Himebook brings a mix of kindness and swagger to the role. Darren Stokes, a bass-baritone, sings the part of the Colonel, grieving over the loss of his wife in action with exquisitely rendered restraint and feeling. The final character to appear in the Soldier’s dreams is the Homecoming Soldier sung by Marcus King with elements of rage, sardonic wit, humility, and reluctant acceptance, expressed at his hometown church where he keeps himself in check because his mother is there. But you can’t miss how he seethes, copes, and shares his wheelchair-bound fate as he embarks on this new life he never chose.

The Dye-Redler opera would have been complete with the original finale, but director Ned Canty, general manager of Opera Memphis, added a genius touch. He enlisted 24 veterans and active duty military men and women to be the chorus of the opera. When the five principal singers were bringing the performance to a close, it was already emotional, but then, as the two dozen chorus members walked slowly out joining in — some in dress uniform, some in POW T-shirts, some in fatigues — it became larger, deeper, something of a higher mystery and resolution. And an ideal conclusion to a brilliant performance.

The Falling and the Rising performs April 12th and 13th at 7:30 p.m. with members of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra playing. Tickets: www.operamemphis.org/tickets or call 257-3100.

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News News Feature

Empathy and The Falling and the Rising.

Librettist-playwright-performer-director-teacher Jerre Dye’s current project — not his latest, since Dye’s always working well into the future — is being staged over the next couple of weekends at Opera Memphis’ seventh annual Midtown Opera Festival. The Falling and the Rising is a soldier’s story, both contemporary and timeless, and well suited for a modern operatic treatment. Opera Memphis general director Ned Canty, citing sacrifices large and small made by the military, says, “We need to feel them, if only for an hour or two, and that sort of empathy is what opera is best at creating.”

The story told by the opera is that of a soldier fighting overseas whose world is forever changed by an IED — improvised explosive device — that goes off while she’s on patrol. It results in a traumatic brain injury, and military doctors induce a coma to save her life. In this liminal dream space, she meets other soldiers and takes in their strength and toughness.

Jerre Dye

The genesis of the idea came from Staff Sergeant Benjamin Hilgert, a tenor in the Soldiers’ Chorus, the vocal component of the U.S. Army Field Band. He wanted to do an opera that embraced the military spirit, but it wasn’t until he connected with Dye that it began to take shape.

That meeting took place thanks to a notion Canty had a few years ago. Canty knew of Dye’s abilities and arranged for a commission of “Ghosts of Crosstown,” four short opera works with music from different composers. They were first performed in 2014 as part of the second annual Midtown Opera Festival and staged on the loading dock of the old Sears building as well as at Playhouse on the Square.

“Those short pieces acted like calling cards,” Dye says, “because they were mined from true stories.” One of those subsequent performances was at an Opera America conference that Hilgert had attended. “Ben saw the piece and said, ‘I want to talk to that guy,'” Dye says. “He asked me, ‘Would you be interested in writing a short piece for us?’ And I was like, ‘Of course I would.'”

The third member of the creative collaboration is composer Zach Redler, who Dye had worked with on one of the Crosstown pieces.

That 10- or 15-minute piece turned into a full-length chamber piece as interest developed and various organizations supported it with joint commissions. The U.S. Army Field Band was also involved in the commissioning along with Opera Memphis, Arizona Opera, San Diego Opera, Seattle Opera, and Texas Christian University.

Developing the story was a particularly affecting process for all involved. It evolved from interviews that Dye, Hilgert, and Redler did with dozens of soldiers and veterans at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and elsewhere.

The first interview on the first day was a soldier named Tyler, who was recovering from a traumatic brain injury. He’d been in a coma for a long time and “was eager to talk about what that experience was like,” Dye says. “And what it was like to come out, what recovery looks like, and he talked about it in some beautiful, subtle ways.”

That quickly convinced the collaborators to tell not about an injury but about what happens in a coma, what the brain is thinking about and what kind of information is being processed. And it allowed them to put several voices in the story.

But there was a particular revelation that came only when the interview was over. “I ran out of questions at the end of the interview,” Dye says, “and I ignorantly and clumsily said to Tyler, ‘So, what’s next for you?’ And there was a little bit of silence and he looked at me with the most amazing soulful eyes and said, ‘There’s nothing else. There is just this. There is just right here and right now.’ Yeah. After I wiped the tears from my eyes, I just went, ‘Okay, there’s my Zen message for the day. And that’s an aria.'”

The Falling and the Rising performs April 6th, 12th, and 13th at 7:30 p.m. with members of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra playing. Tickets: www.operamemphis.org/tickets or call 257-3100.

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We Recommend We Recommend

Ugly Duckling at the Buckman

Jerre Dye has a theory. “As artists, we conjure what we need to sustain us,” he says. Sixteen years ago Dye, a multifaceted performer and the author of plays like Cicada and Distance, conjured the sweet little script that put Voices of the South on the map as a cultural force in Memphis and has helped to sustain the independently minded theater company since. The Ugly Duckling was Voices’ first big hit and remained its most in-demand creation for years. As part of its 20th anniversary celebration, Voices is bringing it back for one performance only at the Buckman Arts Center at St. Mary’s school.

The Ugly Duckling was originally created as a low-budget means to an end. The young company wanted to raise money to travel to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to start research on Places of Enchantment, a play about conservationist icons Olaus and Mardy Murie. Company member Virginia Matthews remembers how Dye dumped a box of costumes, hats, and props on the floor and told the company to find things to play with. “Most of us are still using those same costume pieces we gravitated to that first night,” she says.

Voices of the South’s not-so-Ugly Duckling

Though Dye crafted the script, the show was a group effort, and before rehearsals, using scraps of free fabric, company cofounder Jenny Madden stitched together quilts that would become integral to the production. “We had less than two weeks of rehearsal,” Dye recalls, describing the play’s first opening at St. Mary’s as, “one of the finest moments of my life.”

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Theater Theater Feature

Short Stories by Jerre Dye at TheatreSouth

Short Stories, presented by Voices of the South, is exactly what it says. It’s a collection of brief, meditative narratives about loss: loss of parents, loss of youth, loss of freedom, loss of identity, loss of love, loss of lifestyle, loss of control, loss of innocence, and loss of Jesus. Many hushed tones and reverent, sweetly held silences too. Also adjectives. There are lots of glittering, garish, alluring, stinky, and provocative adjectives, languidly and liberally scattered near adverbs and such. That Dye kid can write, but somebody needs to intervene regarding the ornamentals. It doesn’t make his prose richer or more musical, it only makes it more. And by more, in this case, I mean less than it might be. Less confident. Less clear. Less to the heart of the matter.

“Uber” is a story performed by Todd Berry, about two men telling stories. One is an oversharing driver with roots in the Far East. The other is a distant passenger who doesn’t know he’s in powerful need of blessing. “Uber” is best when it’s in the moment, letting the audience decide what these internal and external dialogues mean as guarded and gregarious strangers clash, connect, and talk about death in their families. The piece ruminates too much on itself. Most all of these stories do. But “Uber” is effective in contextualizing both the evening and the mission of a theater company deeply committed to the singularity-like power of stories to connect across cultures, generations, dimensions, time, space, and maybe even the void of death.

“Jesus and Mrs. Stone” is where Dye really unpacks his adjectives. But let’s face it, if you’re not hooked by the faintly New Age-ish inner-child dance that opens this story, you’re probably dead inside. The opening is all about that thing kids once called “the feels” (til their parents co-opted it, they outgrew it, and life went on). In a sequence worthy of a Super Bowl commercial, a grown man, played by David Couter, connects with his old Sony Walkman cassette player and a song that unlocks his younger self (Reece Berry) and everything that mattered to him in the 1980s. The song is the Go-Go’s first hit “Our Lips Are Sealed.” What mattered was a fading free spirit named Ms. Stone, perfectly played by Anne Marie Caskey. Like “Uber,” it turns in on itself instead of resolving. It is, in some regards, one of Dye’s richest portraits wrapped in some of his thinnest writing. A little less wonderous wonderousness and a little more wonder would tighten things right up.

“Two or More” is the treat of the evening. I’d be happy to spend an entire night in the theater watching Steve Swift and Cecelia Wingate sitting on their imaginary porch going back and forth. It starts slow and stays that way, an excellent lesson for all those directors out there suffering under the illusion that broad farce is fitful and frenetic and works best when executed at breakneck speeds.

“Two or More” is a direct ancestor of a classic comedy routine most closely associated with hayseed comedian Archie Campbell of Hee Haw fame. Though it was usually scripted, “That’s Good/That’s Bad” functions like a theater game where a story is told in which all the things that sound good turn out bad and vice versa. In this case Swift and Wingate talk about the fate of a young hell-raiser who grew into an adult hell-raiser who found a good woman who led him to Jesus so he could become a hell-raiser for Jesus, before he fell off the wagon and lost Jesus but not the woman or the hell-raising. And so on. It’s classic front porch comedy with more substance than it lets on. Pitch perfect front to back.

Short Stories closes with a piece called “Do You Love Me,” a boy’s memory of his mother. Like most of the pieces up for consideration in this collection, it loses its way a bit while working through circumstances most viewers will respond to emotionally. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. And Couter and Alice Berry are so good together you’ll want to call your mama after curtain call.

This is a pretty show in sentiment and style. It’s also some of the greenest writing we’ve seen from TheatreSouth’s most celebrated voice. Well, at least since the last time the company staged a collection of Dye’s shorter works. That collection eventually spawned the excellent new play Distance. I’m really looking forward to seeing what mature things may grow from this latest seed batch.

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Theater Theater Feature

Playhouse’s Rocky Horror is too much of a good thing.

I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey. It seemed a fairly ordinary night when Bill Andrews — a Rocky Horror veteran — sat down in a sturdy, conservative, high-backed chair to tell the story of Brad Majors and Janet Weiss, two young, ordinary, healthy kids from the happy, perfectly normal town of Denton, on what was supposed to be a normal night out … a night they were going to remember for a very long time. While Andrews is (as always) spot-on as the musical’s narrator/criminologist, this introduction underscores everything that’s wrong with Playhouse on the Square’s incredibly fun, undeniably fab but somewhat gutted production of Richard O’Brien’s decadent, glam-rock fairy tale. While Dr. Frank-N-Furter is obviously the star of this horror show, its story is presented as a case study: the strange tale of Brad and Janet, their harrowing journey out of innocence. It’s basically Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel & Gretel but with electric guitars, aliens, and erotic candy. And for all of the goodness that happens in this production, it really is unfortunate that, after the opening sequences, these two characters — finely acted by Jordan Nichols and Leah Beth Bolton — almost fade into the background, and none of the other characters are ever allowed to really savor their moments in the spotlight. Once Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Jerre Dye) prances on stage as everybody’s favorite transvestite, it’s hard to even see anybody else.

There are basically two ways to stage Rocky Horror. You can either highlight the musical’s narrative threads, a weave of British pantomime, the Brothers Grimm, and classic drive-in cinema. Or you can say goodbye to all that and give yourself over to absolute decadence. Director Scott Ferguson chooses the later, which makes his show short on dynamic tension but big on jolts delivered directly to an audience’s pleasure centers. His vision of Rocky Horror is a pansexual psycho beach party fantasia complete with fast (but faulty) cars, zombies, tons of choreography, and some inventive video projection.

If you’ve heard that Dye’s performance as Frank-N-Furter is the greatest thing that ever happened, you’ve not heard wrong. Dye can work those heels and sell what he’s got. If Rocky Horror has a musical heart it’s “Hot Patootie” (“I Really Love That Rock-and-Roll”). With its 1950s swagger and its PG-rated backseat make-out lyrics, it’s the heteronormative baseline from which all else is extrapolated. It’s also the dimmest spot in Playhouse’s floorshow, treated like a throwaway until Frank breaks out his chainsaw to end it.

To borrow an idea from Mary Shelley and a line from songwriter Stephin Merritt, I think this show needs a new heart. Given a chance, all this sexy silliness can suckerpunch you with an emotional wallop. It starts when Eddie and Columbia are separated in “Hot Patootie.” Things heat up when Frank discovers the line between extreme and “too extreme,” and sings “I’m Going Home.” It all comes together as Brad and Janet struggle to find their way back home in the haunting “Superheroes.” And the audience is left to contemplate time, space, and meaning in the wistful, minor key reprise of “Science Fiction Double Feature.” We don’t really get to experience any of that this time around, but does it matter? Emotion is a powerful and irrational master, but so is pleasure. And, based on what I eagerly viewed on stage at Playhouse, the audience was clearly its slave. Using almost no scenery, Playhouse’s energetic, mostly able ensemble, delivers about as much fun as a person can have with their clothes on. Or half off. Or even fully off in some truly pathetic cases. You know who you are.

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Rocky Horror Show at Playhouse on the Square

Rocky Horror director Scott Ferguson dishes on Memphis actor/playwright Jerre Dye. “You know he cleans his house in red pumps,” Ferguson says, conspiratorially. “With a handkerchief tied to his head.”

“Jerre’s fearless,” Ferguson says of his Dr. Frank-N-Furter in Playhouse on the Square’s fourth production of Richard O’Brien’s classic proto-punk fairy tale. “He immediately goes to places nobody else would go.”

Dye likes the way playing Frank-N-Furter makes him feel. He likes the ridiculous narcissism and the extreme vulnerability. He knows he’s not really known around town as a vocalist or musical theater guy, and that aspect of the show still scares him every time he walks on stage. But he likes going to extremes. “Never underestimate the power of platform heels,” he says.

This is Ferguson’s second time to mount the original live version of Rocky Horror for Playhouse on the Square. His 1998 production starred Memphis stage veteran Mark Chambers as the Sweet Transvestite from Transsexual Transylvania. Dye remembers seeing Chambers in the role, all done up in his leather and glitter. It awakened something in an otherwise introspective kid and may be the moment when he decided he wanted a career in the theater.

The look of Playhouse’s Rocky Horror revival set is inspired by a theater under construction, and Ferguson promises some interesting updates to the perennial favorite. “The music is so ’70s,” he says, allowing that a lot has changed since audiences were first introduced to Brad the asshole, Janet the slut, Eddie the rocker, and a host of alien party animals. This revival, he says, will have a more modern edge.

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Distance at Theatre South

Terrible news arrived in the spring of 2011. Jo Lynne Palmer, one of Memphis’ most dedicated actresses had suffered a stroke on opening night of The Fantasticks. Palmer was taking on the role of Henry, the old actor who asks only to be remembered in light. It’s a traditionally male role and a part she’d wanted to play for 30 years.

Much better news arrives when Distance, the new play by Voices of the South playwright Jerre Dye opens this week at TheatreSouth. Palmer, who made a strong recovery and has been staying in the light as much as possible, takes center stage in a pivotal role created especially for her.

“Since my stroke, I like to act as much as I can,” Palmer says. “I like to go from show to show to show. Any part. I’ll be a spear carrier in the back, if that’s what they need me to do.”

Distance, a play about illness, memory, identity, and relationships, opens days after Chicago’s Jeff Awards, where the latest iteration of Cicada, a play Dye developed in Memphis, was nominated in two categories, including a supporting actress nod for Palmer’s Distance co-star Cecelia Wingate.

“I love working with Cecelia,” Palmer says, “And hope to work for her someday because she’s a wonderful director.”

In Distance, Palmer plays Alzheimer’s victim Irene Radford, a troubled planet drifting “further and further away from the small universe of people who inhabit her world.”

Nobody has written for Palmer before. “There are plenty of roles I’ve loved doing,” she says, naming a few, lingering a bit over her performance as a determined Texas matriarch in The Trip to Bountiful. “But this is a first. I’m glad Jerre wrote this wonderful play and thought of me. I hope I do him proud.”

Distance at TheatreSouth through November 3rd, $23. www.voicesofthesouth.org

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Theater Theater Feature

Gender Bender

Compleat Female Stage Beauty, a funny, thought-provoking, gender-bending, almost pitch-black comedy by Jeffrey Hatcher, is currently bumping across the stage at Circuit Playhouse. But not in the bumping and grinding sort of way. Nope. Just in a bumpy sort of jarring way. It’s not a graceful production at all, even if Jerre Dye, as Edward Kynaston, the show’s lead character, is the very portrait of grace and physical control.

Stage Beauty is also one of those rare shows that audiences may or may not know but which immediately gets Memphis thespians all aflutter. Not only is it the sort of rare, juicy, character-driven script that actors love to tackle and talk about, this particular production also boasts the long overdue return to the stage of Dye, a celebrated local performer whose extraordinary gifts as an actor have gone untapped for years while he pursued other interests as a set designer, writer, director, fund-raiser, and goodness only knows what all else.

The multitalented Dye, younger brother to John Dye of Touched by an Angel fame, has spent the past several seasons devoting the bulk of his energies to growing his company Voices of the South, a small professional troupe dedicated to developing original and narrative works that are often garnished with a Southern accent.

In Stage Beauty, Dye is exceptional as Kynaston, a 17th-century British actor who specialized in presenting Shakespeare’s tragic and comic female roles during a time when women were forbidden to act. Dye deserves whatever praise may come his way. The physical control he displays when presenting Desdemona’s speeches and parrying with Michael Gravois’ hysterically indifferent take on Othello is inspiring and alone worth the cost of admission.

The nearly but not quite tragic story takes its darkest turn when, by royal decree, women are finally given permission to perform on stage, and Kynaston is beaten, pelted with bags of shit, and driven out of his profession for desiring to play, and excelling at, female roles. And, of course, for being a filthy bum.

There are some wickedly funny lines aimed directly at thespians in the audience, and for this past Friday night’s performance of Compleat Female Stage Beauty, there was a group of actors in the audience who sat in a close bunch, laughed louder than anybody else, and leapt to their feet in a standing ovation as soon as the play’s last words were spoken.

Compleat Female Stage Beauty is destined to be overcelebrated by the theater community. And that’s too bad, because Hatcher’s play is full of potential and doesn’t need an amen corner. There’s enough talent in Circuit’s cast to blow the doors off of the theater, but despite Dye’s performance and some wonderful moments provided by Gravois, Stage Beauty bumped along in a series of gloomy fits and uneven starts.

Director Dave Landis’ take on the show is too slow and too sloppily organic by half. This is a play that’s built around formal stage conventions, and the lackadaisical pacing mars the production.

Many of the characters, particularly King Charles, his whore Nell Gwynne, and the foppish Sir Charles Sedley are presented by the playwright as broadly drawn clown roles, but only Ann Marie Gideon’s very funny Nell is actually presented that way. The rest are given to us somewhat realistically, making the dim-seeming bulbs whose every line is a laugh-er seem way too piteous and rather difficult to mock.

But Gravois is back in top form in the role of Thomas Betterton, a besieged actor manager who’s just trying to keep his theater afloat.

There’s nothing wrong with a simple set, but Nick Chapman’s unadorned series of raised platforms doesn’t even look intentionally minimal. It just looks unfinished or intentionally ugly.

Compleat Female Stage Beauty is at Circuit through May 18th. Should the actors ever find the show’s groove and fall into it instead of clanking about from scene to bumpy scene, this show could very well grow into something worth talking about yet.