ARTICLE, WALKING SHADOW THEATRE COMPANY'S "THE ALIENS"
Minnesota Daily reporter Austen Macalus interviewed director John Heimbuch, as well as Paul, about Walking Shadow Theatre Company's production of The Aliens by Annie Baker, and has published an article on the play, the process, and the production.
"To establish the rich depths within the characters, Heimbuch recognized the importance of finding ties between each scene.
'It’s the connections between those things that are worth watching,' Heimbuch said.
He compared the play to a bunch of pushpins connected by a single string, explaining that meaning only came with interdependence.
'If something is mentioned in one scene, it’s actually connected to some other piece of information in another scene,” Heimbuch said. “It’s up to us to figure out what those connections are.'
But presenting the ordinary in no way means producing the piece was easy. Heimbuch and LaNave acknowledged the difficulty of combining candor and significance.
LaNave describes the play as 'deceptively simple.'
'The dialogue was very complex,' LaNave said. 'The complexities and the obstacles for characters — what they find difficult in their lives — are the things in between the lines."
Read the rest of the article here.
(Photo: Dan Norman)