The Studio Theatre

TIME STANDS STILL
by Donald Margulies
directed by Susan Fenichell

This searing drama from Pulitzer-Prize winner Donald Margulies follows an injured photojournalist who returns home from the battlefields of Iraq only to learn that some images can never be erased.

Time Stands Still runs approximately two hours and fifteen minutes including one ten-minute intermission.

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Read The Washington Post's Review

Following the February 2nd performance of Time Stands Still, The Studio Theatre, in conjunction with media sponsor TBD.com, hosted a special post-show panel discussion with three prominent area journalists sharing their thoughts on the play and their experiences in the field. Scott Thuman, Senior Political Reporter for ABC7 News and News Channel 8, moderated the event. Thuman was joined by award-winning photojournalist Dayna Smith, a 22-year veteran of The Washington Post who covered conflicts in Kosovo and Somalia and served as a rehearsal consultant for Time Stands Still, and Iraqi journalist Bassam Sebti, a former Baghdad correspondent for The Washington Post and current Arabic Editor for the International Center for Journalists.

“I felt like I was watching onstage what I went through in Iraq,” Sebti commented at the start of the discussion. The play’s depiction of the excitement of chasing the news evoked recognition within the trio’s own work. “What resonated most for me was this concept of ‘I’m willing to throw caution to the wind for the sake of a story,’” said Thuman, a belief that Sebti also shared: “I’d tell myself, ‘Don’t think about the horror. Think about what I can do.’”

Smith similarly pursued a photojournalism career out of a sense of idealistic duty: “I thought I could make a difference in the world.” She also noted the excitement of high-stakes assignments: “There’s an adrenaline rush. You’re not paying bills; you’re not checking email. It’s life or death.”

The inherent danger of reporting in conflict zones can often intensify the connections developed between journalists and their subjects. “You’re watching people’s lives unfold,” said Thuman. “It’s so easy to attach yourself.” He told a moving story about the bond he formed with a young Iraqi child, who was financially supporting his entire family.

Like Sarah in Time Stands Still, Smith said that while at times she could comfortably distance herself behind a camera from the chaos she covered, in-depth involvement was imperative to ensure the quality of the story, and to appease her loyalty to accurately representing her subjects. “You have to get inside people’s lives. You need to connect with them so you can show their story. Achieving that intimacy can be difficult,” said Smith. “As I got more experienced, I developed a greater sensitivity to my subjects. If there was a language barrier and I couldn’t ask to take a picture, I’d make eye contact and seek permission that way.”

The play also dramatizes the moral ambiguities of journalists who bear witness to atrocities, which Sebti admitted was spot on: “I often saw terrible things happen right in front of me. But I knew that if I intervened, I’d change the story. Like Sarah said in the play, that’s not my job. My job is to write it down and share it with the world.”

Distancing oneself from such tragedy can be difficult. “I had a barrier, but that barrier takes its toll on you,” said Sebti. “It all comes back to you that night, the next day…you’re haunted by all the images you see. When I heard thunder, I’d jump and reflexively hide behind a wall, even though I knew it wasn’t a bombing.” Thuman concurred, stating that it’s often weeks or months later that he’s truly hit by the enormity of the danger of his work. “Sometimes it takes years to get over what you’ve seen,” said Smith.
Near the end of the panel, after hearing numerous anecdotes of dodging death and witnessing unspeakable horrors, one audience member asked, “Was it worth it?” Smith, who left the fast lane of overseas reporting several years ago to raise her two children, emphatically replied, in agreement with her two co-panelists, “Yes, it was.”
—Lauren Halvorsen

A war photographer struggles back to the ordinary in ‘Time Stands Still’
By Peter Marks

Why is it that a loving relationship is more apt to withstand bombs than the dormant aftermath? Playwright Donald Margulies poses this question in the steadily engrossing “Time Stands Still,” a drama at Studio Theatre performed with the polish of a splendidly synchronized string quartet.

The four actors at director Susan Fenichell’s keenly realized command — Holly Twyford, Greg McFadden, Dan Illian and Laura C. Harris — apply a completely convincing varnish to the framework of Margulies’s story, set in the exposed-brick Brooklyn apartment of McFadden’s James and Twyford’s Sarah, journalists returning from harrowing stints in Iraq.

James has come home with shattered nerves: the nomadic life of a war correspondent has lost its romance for him. Sarah, a widely admired war photographer, returns in far worse physical shape. Gravely injured in a roadside bombing that claimed the life of her Iraqi assistant, she arrives swathed in splints and covered in scars. But not, apparently, cured of the job’s adrenaline rush, one that James no longer feels. She desperately wants to go back.

Therein lies the central tension of “Time Stands Still” — for Sarah, war is the only place that time doesn’t. Protracted exposure to the world’s horrors has mutated their mutual desire: the play dances on the edge of James and Sarah’s bottled anger, especially as they’re forced to confront the warmer, cozier love between their magazine editor, Illian’s Richard, and his new, dewy girlfriend, Harris’s Mandy, an event planner who initially seems to live in a gauzy universe of Gracious Home catalogues and Tory Burch sales.

Margulies, who won a Pulitzer Prize for “Dinner With Friends,” a play tracing the delicate fissures in seemingly secure American marriages, demonstrates his gift again here for bitingly underlining the jaw-dropping absurdities of conventional social transactions. How dandy is it that he has Mandy — embodied here by Harris in a breakthrough performance of almost terrifying self-assurance — meet Sarah with a get-well gift that’s both ludicrous and touching in its naiveté? (Twyford’s looks of utter disdain get the appropriate rise from the audience.)

The moments that feel like snapshots of ordinary truth come across, in fact, as more special than the play’s narrative arc as a whole. Dramatic treatments of journalists and their battle wounds often strum the same chords: they’re tales of supremely gifted and committed pros whose emotional lives are not nearly as competently maintained. (See, for instance, “The Killing Fields.”) Hewing to this somewhat familiar outline deprives “Time Stands Still” of some measure of distinctiveness.

Still, if one is looking for a playwright who can filter out the clichés and deliver portraits of intelligent people with colorful, even bitterly funny points of view, Margulies is a writer to count on. Suffusing the plot, which takes place over the months of Sarah’s recuperation, is the intriguing issue of the unfairness of what James and Sarah must go through to try to stay together, considering the cushier circumstances of Richard and Mandy.

“You’re the Sid and Nancy of journalism,” Richard says to them, of their long affinity for disaster. Twyford and McFadden seem ideally matched in the struggle for the power to determine how they will co-exist: there’s love on each side, but bitterness is always in the mix, too. Twyford expertly conveys the resentment boiling up in Sarah, both at having to rely on James and feeling that he’s somehow let her down. McFadden balances the equation superbly, letting us in by degree on James’s conviction that he’s been eclipsed by Sarah and yet still looks for signs that she cares for him. (You have here the suggestion of what a noteworthy Martha and George they might make, in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”)

Fenichell guides the actors with a rewarding penchant for emotional directness. John McDermott’s set makes ruggedly handsome use of Studio’s Metheny Theatre and aids in the show’s sense of good flow, an impression mirrored in Mary Louise Geiger’s lighting, Ivania Stack’s costumes and echoed in Eric Shimelonis’s music for the blackouts between scenes.

The rightness extends, of course, to the persuasive Illian and Harris, who ensure that all four casting corners of “Time Stands Still” are muscularly occupied. The evening’s solid state reaffirms a perception that what Studio puts on its stages these days is all aspiring—and often coming close to — a gold standard.

Time Stands Still, by Donald Margulies. Directed by Susan Fenichell. Set, John McDermott; lighting, Mary Louise Geiger; costumes, Ivania Stack; sound and original composition, Eric Shimelonis; dramaturgy, Lauren Halvorsen; technical director, Charlie Olson. About 2 hours 5 minutes.

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Artistic Team

Susan Fenichell- (Director) is a freelance director as well as the Artistic Director of Hopeful Monsters, a collaborative performance group. Her directing credits include The Dead Eye Boy (two Drama Desk nominations); Marion Bridge (New York Times Critics’ Choice); the multi award-winning original production The Bacchae: Torn To Pieces (LaMaMa; Seattle and Austin); The Miracle Worker (Paper Mill Playhouse); Burn This (Huntington Theatre); the original adaptation of Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale (Philadelphia Orchestra & Boston Symphony); The Faculty Room (Humana Festival); The Illusion (Chautauqua Institute); and numerous productions at NYU and Juilliard. Operas include The Audition, Dido and Aeneas, Trouble In Tahiti, and The Death of Klinghoffer (Curtis Institute/Kimmel Center). She has directed extensively around the country and internationally, including at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Denver Center Theatre Company, The Empty Space, Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey, Santa Fe Rep, The New Harmony Project, Seattle Group Theatre, Theatre of NOTE, Ilkholm Theatre (Tashkent, Uzbekistan), and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Ms. Fenichell was previously Associate Artistic Director at Intiman Theatre in Seattle, where she directed numerous productions and created both an innovative staged-reading series and a highly successful experimental theatre lab. She has taught directing and acting around the country, received a TCG Observership grant and two awards from the Princess Grace Foundation, has served on numerous arts commission and awards panels, and is a longstanding member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers. Her most recent work includes a three-year cycle of pieces for Carnegie Hall, the third of which is currently in development and will perform in May 2011.

John McDermott (Setting)'s recent designs in New York include original productions of Asuncion by Jesse Eisenberg, Fisheye by Lucas Kavner, The Belle of Belfast by Nate Edelman, Girls in Trouble by Jonathan Reynolds, Kaspar Hauser by Elizabeth Swados, The Singing Forest by Craig Lucas, Saved or Destroyed by Harry Kondoleon, and American Sligo by Adam Rapp. He has designed 14 plays at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, six at the Flea Theater, five at the Cherry Lane and others at The Atlantic, Playwrights Horizons, Juilliard, The Public Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, La MaMa, Urban Stages, and Theater for the New City. Other design includes Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters, directed by Bartlett Sher at Intiman Theater in Seattle; The Last Days of Judas Iscariot directed by Adrienne Campbell Holt at Yale Dramat; and Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grille directed by Ted Sod at Bickford Theater. He served as Associate Scene Designer at Seattle Repertory Theater from 1996-2000. Upcoming projects include 3C by David Adjmi at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, Recall by Eliza Clark for Colt Coeur, Detour by Amanda Selwyn Dance Theatre, Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle in Philadelphia, and Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers at The Actors Company Theatre.

Mary Louise Geiger (Lighting) makes her Studio Theatre debut with Time Stands Still. Her work has been seen on Broadway in The Constant Wife, and elsewhere in New York in Olive and the Bitter Herbs (Primary Stages) The New York Idea (Atlantic Theatre Company); Kindness, The Blue Door, and The Busy World Is Hushed (Playwrights Horizons); Tongue of A Bird (The Public Theater); Oedipus At Palm Springs and Architecture Of Loss (New York Theatre Workshop). Additional New York credits include shows with Second Stage, The Vineyard Theatre, The Actors Company Theatre, Women’s Project, HERE, and Ars Nova. Her design for Mabou Mines’ Dollhouse played St. Anne’s Warehouse in New York and toured to The Kennedy Center, around the US and internationally. She has also designed at regional theatres around the country and for dance in the US and internationally. Ms. Geiger is Head of Lighting in the Department of Design for Stage and Film at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Ivania Stack (Costumes) recently designed costumes for Adding Machine: A Musical at The Studio Theatre and Pop! and Fucking A for the Studio 2ndStage. She has also designed costumes at several local theatres including: A Bright New Boise, Full Circle, and Boom for Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company; After the Fall, Photograph 51, The Odd Couple, In Darfur, and The Four of Us for Theatre J; bobrauschenbergamerica and Angels in America for Forum Theatre; Farragut North and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for Olney Theatre Center; Lucido and The True History of Coca Cola in Mexico for GALA Hispanic Theatre; Heroes and The Real Inspector Hound for Metrostage; and Mother Courage and Her Children, Separated at Birth, and Beertown for DogandPonyDC. Her regional credits include Breadcrumbs and Lidless for The Contemporary American Theatre Festival and Way Out West for the Berkshire Theatre Festival. Ms. Stack received her MFA from the University of Maryland.

Eric Shimelonis (Sound and Original Composition) has previously designed In the Red and Brown Water, Stoop Stories, and The Year of Magical Thinking at The Studio Theatre. Other recent projects include a series of new plays at the Juilliard School, the recording of a new CD with Voice of the City Ensemble, and a video project with the Washington Bach Consort. 　Mr. Shimelonis was recently nominated for a Drama Desk Award for his work on Adam Rapp's Hallway Trilogy at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, and a Big Easy Award for Best Musical Direction for the New Orleans production of Grey Gardens.

Lauren Halvorsen (Dramaturgy) is the Literary Associate at The Studio Theatre. Prior to joining Studio this past September, she spent three seasons as Literary Manager of the Alley Theatre, where she dramaturged productions of Pygmalion,　August: Osage County,　A Behanding in Spokane,　Mrs. Mannerly, Our Town, The Crucifer of Blood,　and　The Man Who Came to Dinner. She has worked in various artistic capacities for the WordBRIDGE Playwrights Laboratory, City Theatre Company, Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, First Person Arts Festival, and The Wilma Theater.　Ms. Halvorsen is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College.

John Keith Hall (Stage Manager) has stage managed productions on the East Coast from New Hampshire to Florida. He spent several years as Resident Stage Manager at the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, VA, where he supervised over forty productions. Mr. Hall is the Resident Stage Manager at The Studio Theatre, where he has stage managed The Habit of Art, The History Boys, Adding Machine: A Musical, and The Road to Mecca, among others. A graduate of Virginia’s Longwood University, John is a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association.

Jamila Reddy (Assistant Director) is the Artistic Apprentice at The Studio Theatre, where she served as assistant director on The Golden Dragon and The Habit of Art. She is an alumna of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where received a BA in Dramatic Art and Sociology. She directed several productions at the undergraduate level, including the premiere of Kind of Blue, an original play by Kuamel Winston Stewart, and Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf. For her contributions to the Department of Dramatic Art at UNC, Jamila received the Richard and Christopher Edward Adler Award for Excellence in Dramatic Art (2010) and the Louise Lamont Award for Excellence (2011).

Cast

Holly Twyford- (Sarah) most recently appeared at The Studio Theatre in Road to Mecca (Helen Hayes Award nomination). Additional Studio Theatre productions include The Internationalist, Black Milk, Far Away, The Shape of Things (Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Lead Actress), The Steward of Christendom (Helen Hayes nomination), The Desk Set (Helen Hayes nomination), and Betty’s Summer Vacation. She has appeared in more than 50 productions with many of the area’s numerous theaters including Ford’s Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Source Theatre, Theater J, Olney Theatre, Round House Theatre, and Arena Stage. She has performed in theatres in Boston, Philadelphia, Santa Cruz, and Milwaukee. Ms. Twyford has been nominated for 16 Helen Hayes Awards. She also received the Outstanding Lead Actress Award for her portrayal of Juliet in the Folger Theatre’s production of Romeo and Juliet and for her performance as Diane in The Little Dog Laughed at Signature Theatre. She received the Outstanding Supporting Actress Award for a variety of roles in The Two Gentlemen of Verona at the Folger Theatre. She was the recipient of the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Emery Battis Award for Acting Excellence for her portrayal of Anna in Old Times. For three seasons she served as Artistic Director of the Folger Library’s Bill’s Buddies, a touring educational outreach program. Ms. Twyford recently made her directorial debut with No Rules Theatre Company directing Diana Son’s Stop Kiss.

Greg McFadden- (James) makes his Studio Theatre debut, having previously appeared in Washington at The Shakespeare Theatre Company in Volpone. His New York credits include The Caine Mutiny Court-Marshall on Broadway, Timon of Athens and Hamlet at The Public Theater, When The Rain Stops Falling at Lincoln Center, In the Footprint with The Civilians, Roadkill Confidential at Clubbed Thumb, The Voysey Inheritance at the Atlantic Theater Company, The Sea and The Late Christopher Bean with The Actors Company Theatre, Three-Cornered Moon with the Keen Company, Badge at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, and A Tale of Two Cities at the Culture Project. His other regional credits include plays at Cincinnati Playhouse, St. Louis Repertory, the Humana Festival, and George Street Playhouse. His film credits include Synecdoche New York, Solitary Man, and the upcoming Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, and his television credits include Jeremy Larson on Guiding Light, along with appearances on Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Law and Order, Dirty Sexy Money, Cupid, and Conviction. He is a graduate of The Juilliard School.

Dan Illian- (Richard) is pleased to be making his Studio Theatre debut. Mr. Illian originated the roles of Jacob in Dead City and Drums in Self Defense at New Georges, along with the role of Allen in the US premiere of Lars Noren’s The Last Supper at La MaMa E.T.C. Other New York credits include Jason in Medea at La MaMa E.T.C. (and tour of Turkey), Rodolfe in West Pier at the Koltès Festival, Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard at Salt Theater, and Leo in Summer Play at Clubbed Thumb. Regional credits include Schon and Jack the Ripper in The LuLu Plays at 15 Head, Claude in An Empty Plate At The Café du Grande Beouf at The Cricket, and numerous roles while a company member of The Guthrie Theater including The Winter’s Tale directed by Doug Hughes, The Play’s the Thing directed by Michael Engler, and A Woman of No Importance directed by Garland Wright. His film credits include starring roles in Jim; And & The by artist/director Pierre St Jacques (Berlin Film Festival); and Leaving Ashland. He recently completed production of the film Make Believe.

Laura C. Harris- (Mandy) is thrilled to make her Studio Theatre debut with Time Stands Still. Other Washington DC credits include Amadeus and 26 Miles at Round House Theatre, The Winter’s Tale and The School for Scandal at Folger Theatre, Amazons and Their Men with Forum Theatre, 1984 with Catalyst Theater Company, Freud Meets Girl with Wayward Theatre Company, and An Experiment with an Air Pump with Potomac Theatre Project. New York City credits include Cigarettes and Chocolate and No End of Blame (u/s) at Atlantic Stage 2. Ms. Harris is a graduate of Middlebury College, and is looking forward to returning to The Studio Theatre this spring to play the role of Gena in Bachelorette.

Donald Margulies on Time Stands Still | Coming Home | Interview with Director | Interview with Makeup Artist

Synopsis
Sarah Goodwin, a globe-trotting photojournalist, has just returned home from the battlefields of Iraq, having been critically injured by a roadside bomb while covering a story. Sarah’s boyfriend James, a foreign correspondent himself, is terrified about the possibility of losing her and guilt-ridden about leaving her in harm’s way shortly before the attack. He’s ready to get married and finally settle down after years together. Meanwhile, Richard, their old friend and publisher, (as well as Sarah’s mentor and former lover) has taken a hard look at his own life, and has taken up with Mandy, a much younger events planner. When Richard and Mandy visit Sarah and James’s shared Brooklyn loft, Sarah and James are mortified by Mandy’s youth and apparent naiveté.

As Sarah heals, she finds herself itching to get back to work, drawn to the excitement, importance, and even the danger of her life as a war photojournalist. As James attempts to convince Sarah that the time has come to forgo that lifestyle, they both have to face the secrets from their past and what they really want for their future.

Donald Margulies on Time Stands Still
I don’t write political plays and yet, because my plays are about people’s relationship to the world, they are intrinsically political. But they don’t conform to any specific political agenda. I try to show truthful aspects of human nature and human behavior. I’ve done my best to try to dispel the notion that Time Stands Still is an “Iraq play” because I don’t view it that way at all. I don’t have solutions to huge issues. But I do demonstrate the effects of the world in our living rooms. That is what interests me as an audience member, as a human being, and as a playwright.

So as Time Stands Still took shape, the backdrop of the current world of foreign correspondence provided a rich, high-stakes context for what is essentially a love story. I set out to dramatize the effects of time and circumstances on partnerships built on shared passions. What happens when people who love each other no longer want the same things? I suppose Time Stands Still is as much about marriage as Dinner With Friends.

I love smart, funny, complicated women in life and in art. When people ask me to describe my plays they ask, “Is it a comedy, or is it a drama?” and I respond, “It’s a play.” My plays are often very funny, but the humor in it comes out of the behavior of the characters. I write funny, clever people, but I am not imposing my sense of humor. It’s stuff that the characters come up with — and I don’t mean to sound mystical about that. You present something as character A, and think, well, how would character B respond to this? You just get into the rhythm of it. When I create a character like Sarah, I get inside her head (as I do with all of my characters) and improvise. I had ready access to her caustic sense of humor. There’s a lot of humor in Time Stands Still that leavens its intensity.

Some people who have followed my work for a long time have pointed out the thematic connections that run through my plays: loss, responsibility, and the conundrum of being an artist. I wasn’t conscious of those resonances when I set out to write them but they seem to exist. Sarah and James, the photojournalist and the correspondent in Time Stands Still, question their roles as observers and chroniclers of strife-torn, faraway places; Ruth and Lisa, the acolyte and mentor in Collected Stories, grapple with issues of loyalty and creative freedom.

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“We never acknowledge the impact that operating in these combat zones has on us,” said Newsweek Chief of Correspondents Marcus Mabry, who covered the Bosnian conflict in the 1990s. “Usually when you realize it is when you don’t expect it: I was back in my home in Johannesburg, sitting in my living room with a 360-degree view, relaxing in a beautiful South African evening, and I’m looking down the hill, thinking this would be a great place to have a sniper’s nest. It was a war flashback.”

Coming Home:
Advice on reentry to civilian life for reporters who cover violence

The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma has worked with reporters and specialists on traumatic stress to create a handbook for reporters deploying to areas of conflict. This is an adaptation of their advice to reporters and photojournalists returning to the homefront.

You’re on the plane heading toward safety, feeling immensely relieved to be physically whole and dreaming about that first embrace with loved ones. Surprisingly, this could be your most vulnerable time. One military chaplain described the vulnerability as an “existential void,” a sudden feeling of aimlessness and loss.

You have changed. But life back home probably has not. Feelings that may surprise and overwhelm you include:

Disappointment with attachments that seem cold compared with the terrible intimacy of watching people, even strangers, bleed and die.

Frustration with friends who seem more interested in trivial cultural events than in global matters of war and peace.

Discomfort with material abundance that stands in stark contrast to the desperate need in other parts of the world.

Alienation from a family that had to make do without you. Your spouse may not need your day-to-day help. Children will have changed and grown into different people with different expectations of adults.

After three tours in Iraq for the North County Times, Darrin Mortenson says he felt like a “professional outsider” at home in California. He longed for the sense of purpose he felt covering a war, and only when he began preparing for his next deployment did he feel life coming together in a solid, coherent sense of purpose. Gradually, Mortenson learned the healing value of talking through the aftermath with editors and with other journalists who had survived dangerous assignments.

One common after-effect correspondents have shared is a profound sense of professional letdown. “There may never be another story in your life that grabs you as intensively as this one will,” says Dana Hull, who covered the Iraq war for the San Jose Mercury News. “What are you going to do after that for an encore? Be prepared to be disappointed with the stories that come afterward.”

Photographers, in particular, seem to be emotionally confined by their “silent way” of explaining violence. “It’s important for us as photographers to verbalize things a little bit more than just turning in the film and walking away from it,” says Robert Nickelsberg, a photographer for Time Magazine. But many reporters also struggle when they try to “walk away” emotionally.

Above all, this is a time to tap that support network once again. Make time to talk to loved ones who know how to listen, the pros who have gone before you, and mental health experts who can help you sort things out. The key for every correspondent is to respect the serious emotional challenge that comes with a dangerous assignment and to meet the challenge by taking personal responsibility for your own mental health. By making a priority of good choices, you will increase your probability of staying safe and delivering superior coverage.

Hannah Allam says that she struggled with her isolation from family members and friends while she was in Baghdad. “I wish I had known up front more about the changes to expect in myself,” she says. “I thought, ‘Well, this would be an adventure and it’s been a life’s dream, and I’d go off and do it and then I’d come back and settle into my normal life.’ I found that was not the experience at all.”

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Interview with the Director
As rehearsals for Time Stands Still approach, dramaturg Lauren Halvorsen spoke with director Susan Fenichell about the play’s unexpected nuances, Fenichell’s ardent research habits, and her excitement about mounting this production in DC.

What attracted you to this project?

I suppose I’m always searching for what makes the complex simple and what makes the simple complex. Time Stands Still is one of those plays that can appear quite straightforward at first glance but there are a lot of nuanced layers within it. Its simplicity lies in what seem to be the facts: there are two professional couples, there is a realistic set, and the action is placed in contemporary times. These familiarizing factors make it seem like we know these people, like we can anticipate them. But the perspectives and experiences in Time Stands Still are more complex, more akin to what happens when one looks at the world through a prism. In one moment things appear as we believe they should. In the next moment the beveled glass turns—and then turns again and again—and all the while the light has been refracting in subtle and unexpected ways, changing what we thought we knew.

While the characters of Sarah and James have careers that have taken them all over the world, Time Stands Still takes place in only one interior location – their Brooklyn loft. Can you talk about the role of the setting in the play, and how you and set designer John McDermott approached the design?

When I think about the word “setting” I always think about creating the setting for the very specific jewel in my hand—or perhaps I mean a prism in this case. So the big question is: what is the prefect setting for this gem? With Time Stands Still it was incumbent upon John and me to first work out our emotional responses to the characters and their back-stories as we talked about what their physical lives might look like. Is the loft an oasis? Is it a trap? Is it a way station? Questions like these are at the root of what this play is about. Without providing our answers here, I will say that this process happened over many conversations and, at some indiscernible point, we began to hone what we both felt was our goal. Since this is a contemporary play, photos almost always accompanied these talks, as did stories from our own lives and those of friends and colleagues. In this way, slowly but surely, we found the life and character of the set itself. I believe it’s incredibly important that the director and design team meld their visions into one seamless whole, and that can only be arrived at through collaborative and painstaking attention to detail.

The intricacies, dangers, and challenges of combat journalism factor heavily in Time Stands Still. What resources have you relied on as you’ve prepared for rehearsals: any particular books, images, articles?

First, let’s just say that it really helps that I read as many newspapers as I can cover-to-cover every day, that I listen to NPR all day long and the BBC World Service all night, and that I can’t put down a good magazine story even when I try. So it will come as no surprise that I believe in deep research into every play I direct, whether Shakespeare or Donald Margulies. I’m never happier than when I can surround myself and the cast with lots of text and images to help guide our collective work. In this instance, all of this reading and looking and listening and talking I do points to the fact that this play is, if possible, even more timely than when it was written just a few years ago. Every time I turn around there is another feature article, another interview, another photo spread, another kidnapping of a female journalist, another war correspondent killed. More lives changed. So at first I naturally began to compile my own archives and then, when I had my own foundation, the talented researchers in the Literary Department at Studio Theatre took the baton and ran with it.

This is your first time directing at Studio. Is there anything you’re looking forward to about working in DC?

To begin with, the fact that we are able to call on so many people in the greater DC community to serve as authorities on research aspects of this show is just fantastic. Time Stands Still feels like the perfect play for DC and I say that as someone who is really fascinated by the place. It strikes me that many people here must surely wrestle with what it means to travel to, to send people to, to have one’s loved one living and working in the harm’s way of what is now called a “conflict zone” —and that is a priceless connection. Ethics and responsibility, echoes of the past and visions of the future, the vagaries of cause and effect—they seem almost palpable in the air here. I really couldn’t ask for a better marriage of project, artistic home, and city.

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An Interview with the Makeup Artist: Skip Smith
In Time Stands Still, photojournalist Sarah is severely injured in a roadside bombing in Iraq. Dramaturg Lauren Halvorsen spoke with makeup consultant Skip Smith, who has over 30 years of film and television experience, on the intricate creation, design, and application process of the scar makeup.

What kind of information do you take from a play to create a makeup design? For Time Stands Still, did you conduct any specific research prior to meeting with the director and actress?

When creating a particular FX makeup for any production, specific information has to be gathered to ensure the correct look. In regards to Time Stands Still I needed to know the type of explosion the character was involved in. How severe are the injuries? How old are the injuries? And last, how much of her body is going to be revealed and will her costume come in contact with the makeup? With this knowledge, I proceeded to do research on different types of shrapnel wounds from various war and medical photos to determine the design of the scars.

Can you describe the design process of the scars? Were there any surprising discoveries made in initial test sessions?

The design process was very interesting. Unlike film and television where you have ample opportunity to do touch-up on the makeup, this is a live production with no such luxury. Also, it had to be easy to apply in the shortest amount of time. To achieve this goal, a stencil system was developed using a pliable vinyl material, shaped to the actor’s face, that has the scars cut into it. Next an alcohol-based makeup is applied to the stencil to give the scars color. Finally, after removing the stencil, two types of scar material makeup are added to some of the wounds to give them a more dimensional look. It was a bit surprising during the first test runs: under the lights, that scars I thought were intense had to be strengthened, but after a few color tweaks a realistic effect was achieved.

Time Stands Still will be performed eight times a week, sometimes twice a day. How long will it take to apply the makeup?

The application process for the scar makeup takes approximately 45 to 50 minutes.