Bernie Cardell
Bernie Cardell (Director)
The Inheritance
APRIL 7 — MAY 14
What was it about The Inheritance that made you want to tell this story?
When I am selecting the season, I like to have a mixture of titles with some that are familiar and some that will be completely new to our audience. One of the “completely new” titles this season is The Inheritance. When I first read it, I found it thrilling, dramatic, very funny, shocking, and deeply moving. It’s one of the most exciting new plays I have read in a long, long time. I am not surprised that it swept the Olivier Awards when it first premiered in London and the Tony Awards when it came to Broadway. I also found The Inheritance very exciting because it is the newest entry into a long line of gay theatre, and after directing The Boys in the Band, Love! Valour! Compassion! and both parts of Angels in America, I was (am) very excited to work on this epic.
Being the Director, you’re the leader. Does this ever make you nervous during the process? How about when the show opens, do you get nervous when presenting to your first audience?
Yes, as the director of the production, you are the leader. The buck stops with you. But I am far from alone, and none of this would be possible without a huge team of support. I have a great stage manager, production manager, two assistant directors, two assistant stage managers, a whole team of designers, as well as the staff and board of directors at Vintage. This has been an amazing group of people to work with. I used to get nervous every opening night, but that doesn’t really happen anymore. I may find myself getting nervous for the actors. I want so much for them and they have put in hours and hours of work on this. I want them to have so much success with this huge undertaking. But also, nervousness and excitement feel the same internally….so am I nervous, or just excited?
How do you go about directing a show? Are you researching/watching how it’s been done before and trying to put your own spin on it, or are you solely analyzing the script?
I always do research, but with The Inheritance, there wasn’t much out there about it since it is so new. I didn’t have an opportunity to see how someone else had done it because it had never been done here before. I do go through the script several times before we even have auditions. One reading is to just get the story. The next reading is to see what “comes to the surface” in terms of what moments really stand out to me as a director, what images come up, is there any symbolism, are we telling one story or multiple stories? The third reading is to start visualizing the play on stage. How do I see these characters moving, interacting, and coming into conflict. At least that’s the beginning. Then you cast the show and real work begins!
Are you free to let your actors try new things, or do you often find yourself wanting them to do it exactly how you’ve drawn it in your head?
I think you would be crazy to think that you could even get the show to look exactly as it does in your head. Unless you were also playing every part in the show. That wouldn’t leave any room for that unknown factor that is the actor magic. I have so much respect for actors. Most of the folx we work with get up, put in a full day’s work, and then come to rehearsal and still manage to find energy and humor and surprise. My hope is that all of the actors feel free to try everything that pops up from their intuition. That’s where the gold is. When we start rehearsal, I give them rough blocking. (For those that don’t know, blocking is when the director tells you where to go on stage and when, during what line, etc), and I want the actors to use that as their roadmap to find their show. The blocking often changes when we get into individual scene work where we break down the show into small scenes and work through them over and over. I find that most of the time, my notes to the actors are about fleshing out the instincts them having, polishing timing, emphasis…things like that.
I’d imagine casting isn’t always the easiest part of the process. How did you go about casting for The Inheritance? Any surprises?
In twenty years, I don’t think I have seen as many men audition for a show as we had for The Inheritance. It was an abundance of riches. That was the great surprise. So much talent. So many new people. This show could have been cast several different ways. So the difficulty (or opportunity) of casting this show was creating an ensemble that would match well with each other and with this play. There are also several couples in the play so you want two actors that will have chemistry with each other. Casting is such an important decision to make and that is where I spend a lot of time locked in my house, going over combinations, looking at resumes, putting actor headshots together to see what this couple would look like on stage or that couple. It’s a very thoughtful process. Talent is what gets you to the second audition (or callback). At that point, it’s all about chemistry, personal energy, and intuition.
