Interview: Katie Wexler of MVP

Posted on March 1, 2012 at 8:00 am

Katie Wexler is one of the stars of Most Valuable Players, a sensational new documentary about three high school teams competing to win the Freddy Awards for theatrical productions. The Freddys are like the high school version of the Tony Awards. The movie shows that musical theater can be as thrillingly suspenseful and wildly entertaining backstage as it is from a front-row seat. Katie answered my questions about her dream role, her biggest challenge, and the best advice she ever got about performing.

What’s your favorite role that you’ve played and what’s one you wish you could play?

Picking a favorite role is tough! I always equate working on a show to gaining a best friend in the character you’re playing, and then never getting to spend time with them once the show closes. It sounds mildly morbid I guess, but that’s the kind of bond I form with the leading ladies I’ve played. I think I’d have to say I had the most fun playing Dot in Sunday in the Park with George. She is fiesty and hilarious and the range of growth she experiences throughout the show is tremendous, challenging, and an incredible ride for the actress on board. I am getting ready to work on Reno inAnything Goes in the spring time and she may give Dot a run for her money in the feisty department, so we’ll see how I feel come April!

Now dream role? Well, that’s every actor’s favorite question! No brainer. Eva Peron in Evita. And not the movie-Madonna-stuff…I mean Patti LuPone-Tony-Award-winning stuff!

Do you have a favorite musical?

I pace back and forth on the favorite musical spectrum between Sweeney Todd and1776. So, either a vengeful-murdering-singing-barber or singing-dancing-founding fathers. See? How can you not love musical theatre?!

What surprised you when you first began to learn about Broadway musical theater?

Hmm. “Broadway” musical theatre is such a teensy tiny microcosm of the art form ‘musical theatre’. There are brilliant musical theatre productions both old and new being mounted all over the United States in regional theatres, even some that tour through it! Broadway is only the tip of this wonderful iceberg. The regional theatres that adapt, engineer, and re-engineer timeless favorites, as well as invent new pieces that may make their way to Broadway, all over the country are the unsung heroes of the musical theatre world, I think.

What has been your biggest challenge as a performer?

Letting go. And whatever ‘letting go’ means on that day; whether it’s leaving behind stress, a terrible day, letting go of preconceived notions of what is ‘silly’ or feels uncomfortable. Letting go of insecurities and trusting yourself, fellow actors, and directors is so important. There’s really no room once you’re in the rehearsal space for anything else but letting go to the show or the piece and letting the work have an untainted life of its own.

What’s the best advice you ever got about performing?

Embrace your own uniqueness. The sooner a performer is ok with who they are; I mean fully come to terms with flaws, insecurities, weaknesses, strengths, and skills, and like it. Love it! Our job is to honestly portray humans on stage and what a better well to draw inspiration from than the life you know best—your own!

Do the Freddy Awards create too much pressure or do they inspire kids to do their best?

As far as my experiences have informed me, there are no negative consequences of the Freddy Awards. Of course some people will take competitive situations to the next level, but that’s any situation in life. It’s no different from kid’s pitting rival sports teams against each other in high school, it’s another way we motivate ourselves to do better. I know concerns had been expressed that theatre was such a different medium than sports that to “judge” and “win” were somehow bad words to qualify an art form, but from my experiences in the theatre both at the college level and professionally, it is painfully competitive out there just as much for actors as it is for professional athletes. High school thespians deserve their moment in the limelight for all the heart and time those kids put into the productions, and the Freddy’s has done a great job at giving it to them. If a little competition brings the community into the process and pushes these young artists to work harder, I say no harm no foul!

Tomorrow: An interview with Producer/Director Matthew Kallis.

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Documentary

The Loving Story

Posted on February 14, 2012 at 12:48 pm

Tonight HBO premieres a new documentary about one of the most important marriages in American history. And their name was Loving.

They should have been able to have the quiet life they hoped for. Mildred and Richard Loving were residents of Virginia who were married in the District of Columbia in 1958. The law of their home state prohibited marriage between people of different races. Mildred was black and Native American and Richard was white.

Police broke into their Virginia home while they were asleep in bed and accused them of the crime of sex outside of marriage. Mrs. Loving pointed to their marriage certificate on the wall in their defense, but that constituted another crime, the crime of miscegenation, a felony punishable with up to five years in prison. They were sentenced to a year in prison, suspended on the condition that they leave the state.

The case filed by the ACLU went to the Supreme Court, which ruled in 1967 that miscegenation laws violated the United States Constitution.

Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival…. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

They were together until Mr. Loving was killed in an automobile accident in 1975. Mrs. Loving made a rare public statement in 2007 in support of extending the same right granted to her by the Supreme Court to gay couples. She died the following year.

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the “wrong kind of person” for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.

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Documentary Television

Martin Luther King: Movies to Celebrate His Legacy

Posted on January 15, 2012 at 8:00 am

Today we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King and every family should take time to talk about this great American leader and hero of the Civil Rights Movement. There are outstanding films and other resources for all ages.

Every family should watch the magnificent movie Boycott, starring Jeffrey Wright as Dr. King. And every family should study the history of the Montgomery bus boycott that changed the world.

It is important to note that he was not asking for complete desegregation; that seemed too unrealistic a goal. This website has video interviews with the people who were there. This newspaper article describes Dr. King’s meeting with the bus line officials. And excellent teaching materials about the Montgomery bus boycott are available, including the modest and deeply moving reminder to the boycotters once segregation had been ruled unconstitutional that they should “demonstrate calm dignity,” “pray for guidance,” and refrain from boasting or bragging.

Families should also read They Walked To Freedom 1955-1956: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Paul Winfield has the lead in King, a brilliant and meticulously researched NBC miniseries co-starring Cecily Tyson that covers Dr. King’s entire career.

The Long Walk Home, starring Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek, makes clear that the boycott was a reminder to black and white women of their rights and opportunities — and risk of change.

Citizen King is a PBS documentary with archival footage of Dr. King and his colleagues. Martin Luther King Jr. – I Have a Dream has his famous speech in full, still one of the most powerful moments in the history of oratory and one of the most meaningful moments in the history of freedom.

For children, Our Friend, Martin and Martin’s Big Words are a good introduction to Dr. King and the Civil Rights movement.

‘Louder than a Bomb’ — Poetry Slam Documentary Tonight on OWN

Posted on January 5, 2012 at 8:00 am

I’m delighted that the brilliant documentary “Louder than a Bomb,” from director Jon Siskel, will be broadcast tonight on Oprah’s OWN network at 9/8 Central. Every family with teenagers and everyone who loves words should be sure to tune in. “Louder Than A Bomb” goes behind the scenes as four Chicago high school teams compete in the Chicago area teen poetry slam. Hopeful and heartbreaking, the film captures the young poets’ hopes, obstacles, and longing for a way to tell their stories and the way the very act of turing their stories into poetry transforms their world. The result is electrifying and inspiring. Highly recommended.

Interview: Sarah McCarthy of ‘The Sound of Mumbai’

Posted on November 23, 2011 at 12:42 pm

“The Sound of Mumbai,” premiering tonight on HBO2, is a touching documentary about the most unlikely of productions, a concert performance of “The Sound of Music” featuring the “slumdog” children of one of the poorest communities in India. These children have so little contact with the world outside that they had to be shown a photograph of a mountain to understand what “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” was about. But they thrilled to the music of Rodgers and Hammerstein and the opportunity to perform in front of an audience. I spoke to director Sarah McCarthy about making the film and a young singer named Anish whose confidence and spirit are especially endearing.

Does everyone in the audience cry when they see this movie?

Lots of people do. The sniffling in the theater when Ashish sings his solo, and then others hold out until the end.

It was interesting that the conductor was an Austrian. It was a culture shock for him. How did he feel about working with songs set in Austria but written by Americans, about a family that escaped from Austria?

He was invited because of the connection with “The Sound of Music” and he really didn’t know what to expect. He was kind of overwhelmed by the whole experience of the slums and running around with Ashish and seeing how the kids live, about how they sleep on the floor and about how one of them was nearly sold for adoption and he couldn’t really believe it. He’s talking about going back in a year or so. It was an extraordinary and overwhelming experience for him.

I think Austrians have mixed feelings about the show, “The Sound of Music” because they were compliant with the Nazis. The first production they have ever put on in Salzburg is going on at the moment. For a long time they rejected it and it’s only now that the new generation is embracing what is, after all, the biggest musical of all time.

How did you come to this project?

My producer, Joe Walters, sometimes conducts the Bombay Chamber Orchestra and was always at me me to make a film about it and I thought that sounded really boring. He sent me the announcements of the concerts they were doing and one was about children from the slums singing songs from “The Sound of Music.” My ears really pricked up because I thought how strange to hear these iconic songs that make you think of mountains and green space and rivers sung by these kids — that audio/visual disconnect would be quite cool for your brain to try to make sense of. Off we went to India and made a trailer and fell deeply and instantly in love with every one of the kids. We came back to London to try to raise money, failed, and went back anyway, with the tiniest most ridiculous budget, running out of money on the shoot and working off of credit cards. It wasn’t until we showed the film at the Toronto Film Festival and sold it to HBO that I could pay our cameraman.

What is your background?

I’m Australian and went to film school in Australia and then came to London and worked in development at the BBC and an independent channel. I made a movie called “Murderers on the Dance Floor” about the 1500 inmates at the maximum security prison who performed to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and became an internet sensation. The prison governor is really deranged. They practiced 8 or 9 hours a day. He also had them do Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby!” Then I made a film for the BBC about a 77-year-old “killer granny” who killed her husbands for the life insurance money. I’ve just come back from a month-long shoot in Russia and the US about an American family that adopted three Russian children.

How did Ashish become so confident?

It comes from his family unit. He’s genetically engineered to be that way but his mom and dad and brothers and sister are very close-knit. Those places can be dark and dangerous but they all live on top of one another and have to learn to be friends. There’s a real community there and the kids thrive on that. I was blown away by how socially sophisticated these kids were. These kids have a close family but not a safe place to live or enough to eat. The kids in my next film have had a safe place to live but no family ties or community. Ashish’s school is also very encouraging, though they’re not academically rigorous. It’s pretty tough to be on such minimal resources. That is the biggest struggle for us. We’re interested in using the film to further these kids’ education. We’re working with the school to raise funds to put these kids through university but they also need to catch-up support to be able to do the work. We talked about putting him in a different school but decided it would be too tough for him. They don’t have the basics — a quiet place to study, a structured lesson plan, a desk. You can have all the determination and commitment in the world and it is still really hard.

Ashish has moved to a better place. He now lives in an apartment with a door that locks and a tap he shares only with about 30 people instead of 300.

How did you gain the trust of the kids so they could be so candid with you?

I have two younger brothers. And I love kids. I love hanging out with them. Ashsish and I became friends very quickly and played a lot of games. He almost became part of our crew. I’m in touch with him all the time. We Skype at the school principal’s office and I remind him not to show off and brag all the time. But he remembers that concert very clearly. He snuck into his neighbor’s apartment and watched it three times in a row.

HBO’s teachers guide is available for download.