Last seen at Studio Theatre in In the Red and Brown Water, Jahi Kearse returns under very different circumstances. This time, he’s replacing an actor for the extension run of The Motherfucker with the Hat. He talks with Assistant Director Christopher Mirto about his rehearsal process.

You just finished a run of a show in Atlanta. When did you start rehearsals for Motherfucker with the Hat?
I was just in a production August Wilson's Two Trains Running at Kenny Leon's True Colors Theatre in Atlanta, directed by Latonya Richardson Jackson. We closed on Sunday March 10th.

My first rehearsal with the cast of Motherfucker was on March 5th. I was scheduled to watch the run of the show that night, but because of the oncoming snowstorm had to race back to Atlanta for the Wednesday night show of my closing week of Two Trains. I came back into DC on March 11 and started full cast and tech rehearsals the next day. Roller Coaster!  :-)

Have you ever done something like this before?
In a way.... yes. I was cast in the run of Baby It’s You on Broadway in New York. (It was in a theatre that backed the theatre that Motherfucker was running in at the same time. Chris Rock, who was Ralph D in that production, would come by from time to time and listen the music, and most likely admire some of the many beauties up onstage as well.) I was on a principle ensemble track, as well as understudying the role of Chuck Jackson, the lead song and dance man.

My personal show track was wonderfully simple. The Chuck Jackson role held a bulk of the music in the show, and a good part of the book. Understudy rehearsals for the production weren't scheduled to begin until the show opened in previews. What that meant was I had never spoken, or moved, or sung anything from Chuck's track in the show. Never sang out loud or in front of anyone involved in the production for the entire two-and-a-half-month rehearsal process.....

Thankfully, I had been working after hours, because at a rehearsal the morning after our first Broadway preview, the gent I was understudying had a scary stage accident on the set and injured his leg and the producers asked if I was ready to go on. It was one of the most nerve-wracking experiences.   

Welcome to Broadway! I closed my eyes....and jumped.

Without an entire rehearsal process, how do you prepare to do a show with such little time?
Reading. Reading. And more reading. Speaking. Speaking. And More Speaking. Thinking. Dreaming. Reading. Eating. Reading. :-) And a great cast and crew.

What attracted you to this production? Why did you agree to do it?
It’s raw. It’s quick. It’s twisted. The words go and go, and are on purpose. It shocked me when I first read it, and I’m not easy to shock. And I think it speaks to some aspects of living that need speaking to. I agreed to do it because I truly enjoy working with and in the work Studio produces.

What was it like meeting and working with the cast for the first time?
They're a cast of rock stars. Full On Super-Humans Giving Full Throttle Incredible Hulk Awesomeness! They've been so great to me, it’s made it easier.

What scene is the biggest challenge? What part of Ralph is the biggest challenge?

For me, the challenge in Ralph comes in the last scene. It comes to a point for him where life as he knew it has caved and is still caving in. He finds himself losing hold of everything that he had worked so hard to manipulate, like a puppeteer: A recovered substance addict now addicted to Control and losing it. It’s fast-paced and twists in around on itself often. Good fun.

 

Jahi Kearse (right) in rehearsal with Assistant Director Christopher Mirto

Artistic Team

Serge Seiden (Director) most recently directed The Golden Dragon for The Studio Theatre. His other Studio Theatre credits include Superior Donuts, In the Red and Brown Water, Grey Gardens, My Children! My Africa!, The Long Christmas Ride Home, Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom, Black Milk, The Cripple of Inishmaan, The York Realist, and A Class Act. He also directed Souvenir: A Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster Jenkins, which received three Helen Hayes Awards and five Helen Hayes nominations including Outstanding Director and Outstanding Resident Play; A New Brain, which received a Helen Hayes Award nomination for Outstanding Resident Musical; Two Sisters and a Piano; Blue Heart; The Last Night of Ballyhoo; and Old Wicked Songs, which received seven Helen Hayes nominations, including Outstanding Director. For The Studio Theatre 2ndStage, Mr. Seiden directed Sixty Miles to Silver Lake, All That I Will Ever Be, This is Our Youth, Ecstasy, Mad Forest, Hot Fudge, Sincerity Forever, and Durang/Durang. He recently directed Jacques Brel is Alive and Well… for Metrostage, and A Little House Christmas and Charlotte’s Web (Audience Choice Award for Favorite Family Show and Helen Hayes for Outstanding Production, Theatre for Young Audiences) at Adventure Theatre – MTC. Since 1990, Mr. Seiden has held various positions for The Studio Theatre; he is currently the Associate Producing Artistic Director and a faculty member of The Studio Theatre Acting Conservatory. Mr. Seiden is a graduate of Swarthmore College and completed the curriculum at The Conservatory in 1989. 

 Debra Booth (Set Design) is Designer in Residence at Studio Theatre, where she has designed Dirt, Bachelorette, The Golden Dragon, Reasons to Be Pretty, Adding Machine: A Musical, Moonlight, Blackbird, and My Children! My Africa!, The Pillowman, Red Light Winter, Caroline or Change, Fat Pig, A Number, Afterplay, The Russian National Postal Service, Far Away, The Shape of Things, and Privates on Parade. Her international work includes premiere operas Marco Polo (Tan Dun/Martha Clarke) and The Hindenburg (Steve Reich/Roman Paska). Regionally, Ms. Booth’s credits include Lost Boys of the Sudan for the Minneapolis Children’s Theatre; Marisol for Hartford Stage and the New York Shakespeare Festival; Trying, The Illusion, and Happy Days for Portland Stage; the New York premiere of Angels in America for Juilliard; The Game of Love and Chance for the Berkshire Theatre Festival; Broken Glass for the Philadelphia Theatre Company (Barrymore Award nomination); and Moon for the Misbegotten at Yale Repertory Theatre. She has also collaborated with Estelle Parsons and Al Pacino on Salome for the Actors Studio. Ms. Booth is the recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Design Grant and a graduate of the Yale School of Drama.

 Michael Giannitti (Light Design) has designed 41 productions at The Studio Theatre including The Golden Dragon, The New Electric Ballroom, The Walworth Farce, Tynan, Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet, American Buffalo, Reasons to Be Pretty, In the Red and Brown Water, Legends!, Rock ‘n’ Roll, The Seafarer, The Road To Mecca, Shining City, The Pillowman, Fat Pig, Afterplay, The Russian National Postal Service, and Seven Guitars, which earned him a Helen Hayes Award nomination. He designed lighting for the original Broadway production of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, and for its pre-Broadway tour which included Arena Stage. He has designed extensively for the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Trinity Repertory Theatre, Capital Repertory Theatre, Shakespeare & Company, Weston Playhouse, and the Dorset Theatre Festival, where he is Producing Director. Mr. Giannitti has also designed for Chautauqua Theatre Company, Virginia Stage, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Portland Stage Company, George Street Playhouse, Yale Repertory Theatre, Olney Theatre Center, and the Spoleto Festival. His New York dance lighting credits include Dance Theatre Workshop, Danspace Project, The Joyce, The Kitchen, and P.S. 122. Mr. Giannitti has been on the faculty at Bennington College since 1992. As a Fulbright Specialist, he taught in Romania and New Zealand.

 Ivania Stack (Costume Design) recently designed costumes for Time Stands Still and Adding Machine: A Musical at The Studio Theatre and Pop!, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, and Fucking A for the Studio 2ndStage. She has also designed costumes at several local theatres including The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, A Bright New Boise, Full Circle, and Boom for Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company; After the Fall, The Whipping Man, Our Class, Photograph 51, The Odd Couple, In Darfur, and The Four of Us for Theatre J; Young Robin Hood and Glengarry Glen Ross at Round House Theatre; 50 Words, Heroes, and God of Carnage for Everyman Theatre; bobrauschenbergamerica and Angels in America for Forum Theatre; Farragut North and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for Olney Theatre Center; Lucido, The House of the Spirits, Ana en el Tropico, and The True History of Coca Cola in Mexico for GALA Hispanic Theatre; and Mother Courage and Her Children, A Killing Game, Separated at Birth, and Beertown for dogandponydc. Her regional credits include Breadcrumbs and Lidless for 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 (Original Music and Sound Design) has composed music and designed sound for The Studio Theatre productions of An Iliad, Time Stands Still, In the Red and Brown Water, Stoop Stories, and The Year of Magical Thinking. His other recent projects include Our Class at Theater J, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo at Round House Theatre, and Sam Shepard’s latest play Heartless at Signature Theatre in New York City. Mr. Shimelonis was recently nominated for a Drama Desk Award for his work on Adam Rapp’s Hallway Trilogy at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, and a Big Easy Award for Best Musical Direction for the New Orleans production of Grey Gardens. He is the resident composer of Voice Of The City Ensemble and had his Carnegie Hall debut in 2010, with F. Murray Abraham performing his song cycle Elusive Things.

 Robb Hunter (Fight Director) has directed violence for several Studio Theatre productions including Invisible Man, Superior Donuts, American Buffalo, Legends!, Reasons to be Pretty, and The Walworth Farce which received a Helen Hayes Awardnomination for Outstanding Choreography. Other choreography credits include this fall’s Don Giovanni at The Kennedy Center as well as productions at The Shakespeare Theatre Company, Arena Stage, The Washington National Opera, Olney Theatre Center, Ford’s Theatre, Centerstage, Rep Stage, and The Baltimore Shakespeare Festival. Mr. Hunter is a Certified Teacher for the Society of American Fight Directors and member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, AEA, SAG, and AFTRA. He is currently Artist in Residence at American University and the CEO of the theatrical weapons company Preferred Arms, Inc. 

Lauren Halvorsen (Dramaturgy) is The Studio Theatre’s Literary Associate. For Studio and 2ndStage, she has dramaturged The Aliens, Bachelorette, The Big Meal, and Time Stands Still. Previously, she spent three seasons as Literary Manager of the Alley Theatre, where she dramaturged ten productions, including Pygmalion, August: Osage County, and A Behanding in Spokane. 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. 

 

Cast

Liche Ariza (Cousin Julio) has been seen in New York in Sonnets for an Old Century at The Barrow Group; A Soldier’s Death at 13th Street Theatre; Mo(u)rning, Boss, Geneva, Martinez, Dismiss All the Poets, and Jane Ho with Hudson Exploited Theatre Company (HExTC); Tenn99 at LAByrinth Theatre Company; Line at 13th Street Theatre; Corner of a Morning at Peculiar Works Project;  Retrospective at Manhattan Theatre Source; and Sunset Boy at Red Room Theatre. Mr. Ariza collaborates with The 52nd Street Project. He is a recipient of the 2005 HOLA Award for Outstanding Performance for his work in Leopoldo Hernandez’s Martinez and the 2008 LA TEA Bilingual Award for his work in AB Lugo’s Geneva. His television work includes Upright Citizens Brigade, Blue Bloods, NYC22, and the web series slapHappy. His film credits include Entomophilia, The Bill, Miguel Angel Jesus, Proclaiming Macbeth, City Hall, Trópico de Sangre (Rains of Injustice) and the upcoming features Kill the Dictator and Biodegradable. Mr. Ariza is the author of the book On the Rollercoaster and the play Bending Jesus. He trained for drama at The Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute.

Rosal Colón (Veronica) has been seen on Broadway in A Free Man of Color directed by George C. Wolfe and The Motherfucker with the Hat (u/s) directed by Anna D. Shapiro. Her Off Broadway credits include Ninth and Joanie directed by Mark Wing-Davey at LAByrinth Theater Company, Until We Win and Dancing In My Cockroach Killers directed by Rosalba Rolón at Pregones Theater. On screen, her work includes Law and Order: SVU, and the upcoming film The House That Jack Built. Ms. Colón is a member of LAByrinth Theater Company. She is a graduate of LaGuardia High School for The Performing Arts and received her BFA from the Conservatory of Theatre Arts at SUNY Purchase.

Drew Cortese (Jackie) previously appeared in Washington at The Shakespeare Theatre Company in The Merchant of Venice.  His New York credits include As You Like It at The Public Theatre, 1001 with P73, and Honor and the River for SPF.  Mr. Cortese’s regional credits include the Denver Center Theater Company, ACT, The Guthrie, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, and New York Stage and Film.  He is on the faculty of the Vassar College Powerhouse Theater Training Program and Avenues: The World School. Mr. Cortese is a graduate of Duke University and NYU’s Graduate Acting Program, and is a proud volunteer for the 52nd Street Project.

Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey (Victoria) received the Helen Hayes Award for her performance in After the Fall at Theatre J. Other Washington area credits include Gruesome Playground Injuries and Stunning at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company;  Divorciadas, evangelicas y vegatarianas and Cita a ciegas at GALA Hispanic Theatre; How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents at Roundhouse Theatre; and References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot with Rorschach Theatre (Helen Hayes Award Nominee).  Ms. Fernandez-Coffey has also collaborated with The Kennedy Center, Arena Stage, New York Theatre Workshop, South Coast Rep, Young Playwrights, HERE and Blue Heron Arts Center.  She is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Jahi A. Kearse (Ralph D) is thrilled to return to Studio, where he previously appeared in Passing Strange, In the Red and Brown Water, Fucking A, and Topdog/Underdog. His made his Broadway debut in Baby It’s You! and appeared in pre-Broadway workshops of Holler If Ya Hear Me and Maurice Hines’ Yo Alice.  Other credits include The Ladykiller’s Love Story at New York Hip-Hop Theatre Festival; The Fortress of Solitude at New York Stage and Film; Woody Guthrie’s American Song, Five Guys Named Moe, Souls Possessed, Seussical the Musical, and A Christmas Carol at The Alliance Theatre; Two Trains Running, Sty of the Blind Pig, and Gut Bucket Blues at True Colors Theatre Company; The Glass Menagerie at PushPush Theater; Ain’t Misbehavin’ and Godspell at Theatrical Outfit; and Dreamgirls at St. Louis Black Rep. Mr. Kearse has performed internationally in Belgium, The Netherlands, and South Africa and is featured alongside Cuba Gooding, Jr. in the upcoming film Something Whispered.

About the Playwright

 

Both an actor and a playwright, Stephen Adly Guirgis is a long-time member of LAByrinth Theater Company. His plays have been produced on five continents and throughout the United States, including the extended, sold-out run of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Our Lady of 121st Street (Lucille Lortel, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle Best Play Nominations), Jesus Hopped The A Train (Olivier Nomination as London’s Best New Play), and In Arabia We’d All Be Kings. The Motherfucker with the Hat, his most recent play, premiered on Broadway in 2011 to critical acclaim and received six Tony nominations, including Best Play.

Synopsis

 

Jackie, out on parole and newly sober, is determined to start anew with his childhood sweetheart Veronica, but her unrelenting coke addiction, his slick-talking AA sponsor, and the discovery of another man’s hat in his living room all threaten to derail Jackie’s tenuous progress. With passion, profanity, and genuine vulnerability, Jackie and Veronica untangle their decades of codependence as they wrestle with the painful limitations of trust, desire, and rehabilitation.

 

Stephen Adly Guirgis’ rapid-fire black comedy was a smash hit on Broadway, where The New York Times called it a “bruising, tragicomic apache dance of love, betrayal and indecision.”

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With a play as surprising, explosive, and touching as The Motherfucker with a Hat, Costume Designer Ivania Stack faced a complex task in bringing each of Stephen Adly Guirgis’s unique characters to the stage. Assistant Director Christopher Mirto spoke with Ivania about the challenges and rewards of creating costumes for Guirgis’s vivid play.

What are some of the challenges in designing costumes for The Motherfucker with the Hat?
Finding the right research has been a challenge, because while there are thousands of photographs of glossy, hip, perfect city people, there are very few photos of real, regular people who feel like these characters.  These characters are uniquely poetic in their use of language, but they also feel very much like people that exist.  And they don't live in ads on the internet, or even in some photographer's gritty inner-city black and white photos.  They are somewhere in between, a place that's familiar enough that not many have bothered to take pictures of it.  And since I feel it’s vital to ground the design of these clothes in the research, I just had to look harder!

Which character are you most drawn to and why?
I am most drawn to dear Cousin Julio. He is an oasis of calm and comfort and kindness.  But I have to love and empathize with them all (and not judge too harshly!), or else their costumes become caricatures.

Which costume was the most difficult and why?
Victoria's maybe?  It has been a fun puzzle to figure out how to give her clothing that suggest the taste and class of a person who once held a high-profile career, but who has slid a bit and spends a lot of time on the sofa.  

What was one of your favorite shows to design and why?
I recently designed Our Class at Theatre J, and loved the color palette the design team came up with.  It was a challenging play for costumes because each member of the ensemble needed one outfit for the entirety of a play that spanned decades.  Ultimately the costumes gave the actors room to transform themselves as the play progressed.

As you worked with Serge on the design, what was one thing he said that influenced you the most?
That this is a romantic comedy.  It can be easy to only see the anger and betrayal and heartbreak and addiction in the story, but Guirgis’s language is so quick and energetic and profane that the play has the rhythm of poetry and humor. This point of view has had significant, though subtle ways of influencing the costumes.

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“Hello, my name is…and I’m an alcoholic.”

Though that introductory confession has evolved into a pop culture catchphrase (and occasional punchline), it remains an identifying characteristic of addiction support groups, most specifically Alcoholic Anonymous. AA—where the addicts in The Motherfucker with the Hat seek treatment—is the most prominent addiction recovery program in the world; the grass-roots organization estimates that there are approximately 116,000 groups and more than two million members in over 180 countries. In addition to promoting total abstinence from vices as the only way to truly recover from dependency, AA employs a methodology rooted in fellowship and character development, with a heavy emphasis on spiritual growth, to successfully conquer addiction.

Alcoholics  Anonymous: The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism serves as the primary text for AA’s program. Originally published in 1939, the self-help guide—generally known as “The Big Book”—is the original source of the seminal “twelve-step method,” a set of guiding principles outlining a course of recovery. In The Motherfucker with the Hat, playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis alludes to The Big Book’s aim to empower an addict to “find a power greater than himself”  in order to solve his problems. AA sponsor Ralph D tries to pacify his volatile sponsee Jackie, telling him, “First off, you need to calm down…No, not ‘Jackie’ calm. Higher Power calm.”

The non-specific language is deliberate: In 2010, the original manuscript of The Big Book revealed edits designed to increase the book’s accessibility to non-religious addicts, such as deleting references to church worship and using the phrase “God of your understanding” in lieu of “God.” Even in modern treatment culture, the inclusivity of the text prevails. Joseph Califano, founder of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, notes that “virtually every rehabilitation program in the country today includes a requirement to join an AA group …The concept of the 'higher power' was important because it made the whole spiritual aspect available to Catholics, Jews, and others.”

Regardless of the treatment option, recovery isn’t about indoctrinating addicts or fully eliminating their desire to consume alcohol and drugs. The Motherfucker with the Hat is quick to dispel the notion that sobriety absolves us of our flaws: in fact, rehabilitation often brings them front and center. The pride, delusion, and self-pity of the play’s addicts—derived from a life perched on societal edge—are their most insurmountable obstacles. Recovery, in any format, frequently requires major lifestyle changes, or even a modification of one’s core values, as a way of preventing the relapse of substance abuse problems.  As Ralph D tells his sponsee, “This program, Jackie, it’s a practice—not a theory.”

—Lauren Halvorsen

 

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In His Own Words: Stephen Adly Guirgis on The Motherfucker with the Hat

A couple of summers ago, I was in Chicago with my friend Bob Glaudini and I injured my back pretty badly. When I got back to New York, I spent 10 days in bed before I could even make it to a doctor's office. My condition was so serious that I was bedridden. My father more than once had to wipe my butt for me, and he did it without flinching and with love and dignity. If you ever want to know how much someone loves you, see how they react when they have to clean your butt. My dad's gone now, but I think the play—and its examination of acceptance, loyalty, and love—started somewhere in those ten days when he took care of me.

I think anything that anyone writes that's any good is going to have a lot of autobiography….All those characters, at one time or another, I've lived or I identify with in some way.

I'm familiar with those [AA] rooms. Let's say I'm a guy in his forties who grew up in New York City. I was the type of person that wouldn't say no to much, so when you get to be my age . . . you're either in a [12-step] program or been in and out of a program—or you're not here.

St. Paul said, ‘When I became a man, I put away my childish things.’ If my plays have a common link, it’s people struggling to put away their childish things. Incorporating religion is a way to tell those stories because religion gives you a game plan to grow and mature. The Motherfucker with the Hat is more secular but it struggles with those same questions.

There’s been a lot of light in my life, but also a lot of dark, and you either get better at balancing the two or you die. When I was teenager, I could drop a couple hits of acid and drink a case of beer and smoke a bag of weed and get up and go to work at seven a.m. In my twenties, I could smoke the weed and maybe be late for work. In your forties, it adds up. And you start thinking, if I’m going to be reckless, I want to be reckless in the direction of making work. So I guess my job until I start to suck is to keep writing. And to learn how to do that without killing myself.