Interview with Dawn Falado, Aaron Cromie, Balazs Lazar, students at Dell’Arte

By Mark McKenna

Mark McKenna: It would be great to hear from you guys what it is like to be here a year, why you came and why you are here and not somewhere else. What is a day like at Dell’Arte?

Dawn Falado: We usually warm up at about 9, and then we have two classes in the morning. Our curriculum changes from term to term. We are in a style block now called "melodrama," and in five weeks we will switch to "commedia," where a lot of our training is setting us up to absorb that style. Classes are an hour and a half each. We’ll have like a voice class for an hour and a half and then a break and then stage combat. Then we’ll have a lunch. This afternoon we were working on melodrama. This term we have the privilege of working on a project that the school brought in because they got a grant. So, we are going to be working with that director. I don’t know if that is usual.

Aaron Cromie: This is the first time. That is "Paradise Lost." It is a two-year grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts to collaborate with a single director and a company.

Balazs Lazar: It is really particular to be working on a piece for two years. It is a good chance to make a world-famous performance. I saw a performance that was made in this kind of process, a Russian performance in Budapest. I am from Hungary and I graduated from the Hungarian Drama and Film Academy and was working in the countryside. I picked up a lot of styles in Hungary, but my education was mostly based in the psychological approach. I felt I would like to explore myself in another way. I saw Michael Fields in Budapest three years ago, and this school seemed to me the best place to come and to try to pick up something. It is a kind of physical approach to theater that I really enjoy. It really helps me put together myself and my vision.

AC: My training is in music, my formal training in a state college in New Jersey. I was working with a puppet theater in Philadelphia and they brought in Daniel Stein to work on a piece. He pulled me aside and said, "You really should come to this school." I’ve always had an interest in that physical style rather than a psychological style. I guess what I have known all along is that it is physically what I do that the audience sees, not necessarily what I am thinking or feeling. To me, that was a direct link. I live in a city, Philadelphia, so the idea of coming to the middle of nowhere – by comparison – is wonderful. The environment is strictly focused on the work. It is extremely worthwhile for me.

DF: The thing that attracted me most to the program was that we had to create our own work. I didn’t find that in any of the other programs that I looked at. I felt like I needed the training also physically. I come from a physical background. I worked with a mask ensemble in Chicago, the Chicago Mask Ensemble. I had a revelation about movement and how it really frees the actor. I had come here a year or two ago to do a couple of workshops, and it had this artistic permissiveness that I hadn’t found anywhere else, supportive, not competitive. I feel like that works for me and it seems to work for our class. As an ensemble, I think we have a pretty good rapport. I am really having a great time.

BL: We learn from each other a lot because everyone has a different background. That is another unique possibility in this school, an international range.

AC: The student body is all very highly motivated. There are really no lazy people here at all, there are people that get tired but that is it. In the professional setting, you are always going to the end goal, the performance. Here they are very much into the idea of making big mistakes. I think they prefer you to fail, because what good is a student that gets everything right, then you are not really learning.

MM: Tell me how being here in Blue Lake and being in the community of Blue Lake is impacting your training and vision as artists. How is different, say, if you were in New York?

BL: We are really together from 9 to 5, ’til 10 sometimes during the rehearsal period. I think, because of this small place, we could really live here as a family. I think in a big city like New York, it could be impossible, because of the distance and because of the other seducing of the big city.

AC: There is simply no distraction. The focus seems to always be about the work. It is not about having to pay bills. I have done a lot of traveling, I have seen a good bit of America. Last semester, I went with a friend to a park probably about eight miles from here. I walked in and I saw redwoods and I didn’t see the sky. I started to get choked up. To me that is part of being here, feeling what I felt when I was there. To have the impact of being in an atmosphere where my mind is open to new things. It seems like the feelers are always out. There is so much stimulus here, and it seems like everything is just waiting for me to find it, rather than stuff coming at me.

DF: The beauty of the environment is inspiring all the time. I got to go home on break and sort of felt shocked by my home city of Philadelphia – didn’t feel as free. I’m hoping to contain the kernel of what we have here and bring more of that back. It is great to be able to go back to wherever you are staying here and talk about the work and talk about how to incorporate it into your lifestyle. The career that we have chosen is not the easiest path.

AC: Dawn and I, in talking about going back to Philadelphia, we are interested in starting a project. We are talking about trying to bring people in our program home and create something there. Not necessarily to reconstruct this, but to have this influence in a totally seeming polar opposite, on an opposite coast, work the way we work here, there. And seeing what kind of influence we can have in our own communities. That seems absolutely realistic. We are chomping at the bit. We are definitely looking homeward with what they are equipping us with here.

MM: How has being here influenced your idea about how an artist can influence the community?

DF: The relationship the school has with the town is really an example of something that began with a struggle and now is extremely semiotic. Folks at Blue Lake like the school and we like the folks at Blue Lake. I think the company is able to provide really low-cost theater for the community and the community comes to see it, community that if I transplanted them and their occupation back to where I live, wouldn’t be a theater-going community. To me, that is inspiring.

BL: Dell’Arte makes performance about local issues, local topics, which I have never seen before. The company is so tied with the place that they are living and working. The first show of the new year was the "Rag and Bone Shop" which was about the Rag and Bone Shop in Arcata. It is such a strong tie.

Mark McKenna is artistic director and an ensemble member of Touchstone Theatre, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He is a graduate of the Lecoq International School of Theatre in Paris. He has taught theater classes at Lehigh University and the University of Pennsylvania, and the MFA Theatre Program at Towson State University. McKenna is active in the growth of the Network of Ensemble Theatres. He is a board member of Alliance for Building Communities, a regional community-development corporation.

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