The Wanting Forest at Silk Moth Stage was truly one of those once-in-a-lifetime projects.
Philadelphia-based playwright Monica Flory and I met via Zoom in the lockdown times. I don’t think either of us remembers which Zoom, but we both attended a lot of director/designer networking things, theater mom things, and play readings. I felt convinced we must have met before, but when we compared our histories, it seems unlikely. Now I think maybe I just recognized her, in a deeper, soul-led way.
Monica surprised me by coming to see Give Us Good, one of our first Silk Moth plays. A couple of years later, she emailed me to say that she was working on a play, and it felt like it might be a Silk Moth play (“but absolutely no pressure!”). I asked her to send it to me. I was just leaving DC when the email came through, and I started reading the script on the train out to Reston. Before I knew it, I was openly weeping on the train. Strangers were concerned. I nearly missed my stop, I was so engrossed.
The story starts with a young mother, Mira, whose new baby, Aspen, won’t stop crying. Mira tries singing her different lullabies, and finally one works. Unfortunately, the one that worked contains a curse, that the baby will never be content, that she will always want. Aspen grows up, and as a young woman, she goes out into the world on a journey to try to figure out how to live with the combination of blessings and curses that she’s bringing into adulthood. Meanwhile, Mira goes through a series of transformitive dreams as she learns the shape of life without Aspen.
It’s exactly the kind of play that I like the best, and as I think about those plays—examples would include Give Us Good, The Winter’s Tale, Caucasian Chalk Circle, and JB—they are all essentially fairy tales for adults. But usually, when a playwright sets out to create a fairy tale for adults, they do it by adding sex and/or violence. These stories all examine deeply adult problems through a magical lens. Problems like, “How do I cope with the bad stuff in my head?” or “What is the cost of doing good?” Those stories, for whatever reason, are the ones that feel the most like what I want to play with.
The rehearsal process for this one was just a total dream. We started with an optional workshop week, where we collaborated to develop a movement vocabulary for the world. Holly Labbe, our movement director (as well as SMS Board President) led us through a series of exercises. We didn’t touch text at all until the last day, which felt for me like being thrown in the deep end of a pool. I’m a word nerd, but I’ve been trying for the past four years to get good at movement, which means being uncomfy sometimes.
Speaking of being uncomfy, I had to take a flying leap out of my comfort zone on this play. We had an actor who was supposed to be in the show, but had to back out for personal reasons. She told me in June, and since we didn’t start rehearsal until August, I was not concerned. I was terribly sad not to be working with her, specifically, but I was sure we could find somebody else. I asked twenty-five different women to be in this play. I cast a wide net, contacting people close to home, as well as actors I admire from all over the country. They all had to say no. It wasn’t, “No, and lose my number.” It was, “I really wish I could, but I have this random, one-off life circumstance that will not let me do it at this time.”
Finally, a week before the actual rehearsal period started, I sat down on my porch and made a list of what I actually needed:
- A woman
- Over 40
- Who is not a terrible actor
Well, it turns out I have one of those around the house.
People often assume that I was an actor before I came to directing. This could not be further from the truth. I’ve been directing since I was nine. I have studied acting a great deal—when you’re 14 and you go to theater camp, they don’t have anything for you if you are a director, so they put you in the acting classes; when I was older, I studied acting technique because I wanted to be able to speak to actors in their own language, regardless of what their training path had been like. But not counting being in the non-dancing ensembles of high school musicals, I think I actually acted in three shows in high school (one of which I co-wrote and directed), two shows in college, and a handful of scenes in grad school. I’m not an actor, and I’ve never felt like I belonged on that side of the table. In part, I have a deep understanding of what good acting is, and it’s a set of muscles I haven’t put into regular practice. I am aware of all the work my peers have done to become excellent actors, as I have been focusing on developing my directing skills, and the gaps make me self-conscious.
I called Holly and basically said, “Talk me out of this.”
She said, “That is exactly what we should do.”
So I took the money I would have spent on another actor, and hired Amanda Saufley to be my assistant director and stage manager—another set of eyes, and another organizational brain to take the pressure off of me a bit. I recorded rehearsals so I could focus on acting, and then watched them back to make notes with my director hat on. A strange surprise: watching the rehearsal recordings, I realized that I somehow do actually know how to act. If you didn’t know I was not really an actor, you wouldn’t guess. A bigger surprise: I actually loved it. I had such a great time. Acting is so much more immediate than directing. The feedback loops are so much tighter.
This preliminary work helped us tremendously, because we had to create all of the landscapes Aspen visits—a ship at sea, a mountain top, a sandy shore. The only environment that came easily was the forest, which aligned nicely with reality. We explored using our bodies to be ocean currents and forests and mountains.
We also had to create Mira’s dreams, like one where Aspen’s father, Henry, is the sun, and consumes her. Collaborating with Holly and the ensemble to find our way into those images, using only our bodies, bamboo, silks, and an ocean drum, was exhilarating and satisfying.
One of my favorite movement things was how we created the mountains. Holly taught us to brace planks of wood on our bodies and Amy (Aspen) climbed onto them. She was never more than about three feet off the ground (and usually much less), but her acting gave an impression of precarity. A number of people asked me how we kept her safe. The answer was just that she was not in danger, but I loved that it felt dangerous.
Jim Clemens was our music director. I’ve been wanting to have him out to play with us for a long time. He helped us figure out how to put together some of the complex counterpoint and helped Monica reformat the music to make it easier for future productions. Christabell is a brilliant musician with a wide collection of instruments to work with, so we ended up having autoharp and accordion in addition to guitar, cello, violin, and various drums.
The script suggests that multiple members of the ensemble can play Aspen as she grows up, and we did this, passing an orange pinafore from one person to the next. One idea I put into the play was that each of us in the ensemble played Mira at different points. As she transformed in her dream, we passed a robe along. I liked this because I think this play is not just about Aspen growing up, but also about how parents transform when their children grow. Mira is not static; she is becoming her next self in the course of the play.
Costume designer Elizabeth Wislar, assisted by Heidi Jablonski, took on the challenge of creating pieces that could be worn by all of us, despite a diversity of body types and heights. Elizabeth’s costumes overall were stunning. Everyone commented on these works of art that we wore on our bodies. She recycles fabrics and garments, so she did our entire show with zero waste. She and Heidi also created a huge backdrop with a map of Aspen’s journey on it.
This play feels like the most Silk-Mothy of our plays so far. I’m forever in awe of how Monica saw what we were doing, and wrote a play that didn’t meet us where we were, but projected forward and encountered us where we were headed. It was visually stunning, the acting was grounded, the music met the forest sounds kindly, and all of us stretched as artists. Audiences responded intensely to it.
I am so proud of this piece, and of every single person involved.
- Ensemble:
- Amy Ippolito
- Ariel Tatum
- Aili Huber
- Sarah Levine McClelland
- Christabell deMichele
- Alaina Shefelton
- Director: Aili Huber
- Assistant Director/Stage Manager: Amanda Saufley
- Costume Designers: Elizabeth Wislar, assisted by Heidi Jablonski
- Music Director: Jim Clemens
- Movement Director: Holly Labbe
- Production photography: Tiffany Showalter