2017

Marina Kondo

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Timothy Huang: You were born in the Netherlands, but raised in America. Is there anything about Japanese culture that you have discovered is different from American culture?

Marina Kondo: I think as a performer I bring a lot of simplicity. And in Japan that is a very huge thing. Simplicity is a sign of beauty. My senior thesis was about this: if there’s a cup and there’s a crack on it, in Japan the crack is the beauty. That missing part, that emptiness represents something. And I feel like that’s a great metaphor for Japanese art and culture. In America we try as much as possible to fill every single white space with some color or design. In Japan it’s the emptiness that is mesmerizing. The missing part. The silence.

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The cast of "Pride and Prejudice"

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A Conversation with Kimberly Chatterjee, Kate Hamill, Amelia Pedlow, and Nance Williamson

Something joyous is happening at the Cherry Lane Theatre. That’s the home of Kate Hamill’s uproariously funny, clever, and at times deeply moving adaptation of Jane Austen’s most famous and celebrated novel, Pride and Prejudice. The limited engagement, directed by Amanda Dehnert and led by an energetic cast with Hamill herself playing the iconic Lizzie Bennett, is being presented by Primary Stages in co-production with The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival through January 6. We caught up with Kate and the other women in the cast: Kimberly Chatterjee, Amelia Pedlow, and Nance Williamson—whose palpable energy, playfulness, and affection towards each other suggested we were spending an afternoon with the Bennetts themselves—to discuss the role of women in the arts and the ways this 200-year-old text still manages to enlighten and surprise us.

 Margarita Javier
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2017 Lilly Awards photo booth

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The 2017 Lilly Awards

Monday, May 22nd, 2017
Playwrights Horizons
New York City.

Mimi Lein at the Imperial Theatre

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Michelle Tse: And I also imagine for this show, you maybe collaborated with the other designers more than any other production. Was there one designer you worked with more closely than another? We sat down with Paloma [Young, costume designer] recently, who said your set informed her designs a lot.

Mimi Lein: Really?!

MT: Yes! And I noticed when I was at the show that when the actors are spinning around on the constructed aisles that the circumference of their dresses were literally the exact width of your aisles.

[Everybody laughs]

ML: I know! I don’t know whether it’s possible that Paloma went and calculated that, but I noticed that, too! Everytime I watch the hem of their skirts I worry that it was going to knock over something. [laughs] I mean, if Paloma has calculated that, she hasn’t told me, but I worship her. I feel like for me, a lot of the bunker is actually in response to the punk flavor of some of the ensemble costumes. We certainly talked about it in the beginning, about this being an anachronistic vision of Russia. We’re not being period specific. This is not what 19th-century Russia looks like, you know? This is maybe if you went to a nightclub in Moscow in the late ‘90s and their theme was Imperial Russia. Maybe that’s it. So that has a lot to do with the techno music that Dave [Malloy, creator and composer] composed. So it’s kind of a mashup of things.

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Moodkill

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