Articles about Steven's appearance in the play "Blackbird"
David Harrower's 'Blackbird' to have its West Coast premiere at ACT
CalendarLive.com
March 30, 2007
By Michael J. Ybarra, Special to the Times
SAN FRANCISCO — The setting is utterly simple. Two people in a drab conference
room — two people who know each other but don't quite know each other at all.
An older man and a much younger woman. Their conversation is broken,
disjointed, starting and stopping in fragments like a vase knocked to the
floor.
"I asked to speak to Peter," says the woman, "and Ray appeared."
And then she drops the words that explode onstage like a nuclear bomb: "How
many other 12-year-olds have you had sex with?"
David Harrower's play "Blackbird," which is on Broadway and has its West Coast
premiere May 2 at ACT, has been one of the most talked about productions on
both sides of the country. And for good reason. It's the gut-churning story
of two people whose lives came together briefly years before, when he was 40
and she was 12, with consequences that have haunted them in the 15 years
since.
"The play is about the narratives we live by," Harrower says by phone from his
home in Glasgow. "Her belief is that she had some authorial voice in this.
Desire is not this black-and-white thing. This play goes into some
uncomfortable areas, and that's what I wanted to do."
The story unfolds in a single scene in the conference room when Una shows up
at Ray's work. After getting out of prison, he has changed his name. And he
insists he was not a pedophile:
"Those people.
Those sick bastards.
I was never one of them.
I was never that.
You
You've been told I was, I am, I
They called me that."
The idea for the play came from a newspaper article about a man prosecuted for
a relationship with a girl he met online, who allegedly claimed to be 19 but
turned out to be far younger. "What frame of mind would you have to be in to
do that?" Harrower wondered. "Was he a pedophile?" He decided to put himself
into the characters' minds.
"I had to suspend moral judgment in a way," he says. "I don't have to talk
about the actual event; it's refracted through their memories. They created a
relationship. Some parts of them may believe that relationship wasn't bad."
From dishwater to drama
In Britain, the work won this year's Olivier Award for best new play, beating
out Tom Stoppard's "Rock 'n' Roll." The Broadway premiere was greeted with
mostly raves, and the West Coast production promises to be equally gripping.
Director Loretta Greco says she knew nothing about the play when she picked up
the script.
"I couldn't put it down or stop thinking about it," she says. "If people are
thinking about Megan's Law, we're not doing our job. It's not a criminal case
study but two people who shared an event that shaped their lives. These are
two human beings together in a room who love each other deeply. For so long,
this event had been claimed by everyone else. Finally, they're together,
telling each other what they meant to each other. Like all love affairs, it's
complicated."
"This really hits you in the gut," adds Steven Culp, who plays Ray. "When I
read the script, my first reaction was, 'Oh, my God, what have I done?' It's
challenging on every level; it takes everything you have and more. It's like
Shakespeare; it has a power. You just stay out of the way."
Not bad praise for a writer who never expected to be one. Harrower was born
in Edinburgh in 1966, the son of a working-class family whose schoolroom
encounters with Shakespeare left him confounded.
"There weren't many books in the house," he says. "In school, Shakespeare was
taught so bad I was scared."
After school, Harrower drifted through a series of unsatisfying jobs —
including holding down three different dishwashing gigs at once.
He says, "I was doing these dead-end jobs and gave them up and gave myself
two years to become a writer. It took three. Thank heavens for the welfare
state."
A sense of complexity
Living on welfare, Harrower first tried his hand at fiction but soon decided
playwriting was what he really enjoyed.
"I drifted into it," he says. "I tried prose. I got bored writing
description. I just wanted to write dialogue."
In 1995, he walked into the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh and dropped off a
script, "Knives in Hens," the story of a woman who kills her cheating husband
with the help of a village outcast. The theater staged the play, which wound
up being a critical and commercial success. "One of the most produced
Scottish plays since 'Peter Pan,'" said the Guardian.
Other plays include "Kill the Old Torture Their Young" (1998), "Presence"
(2001) and a number of adaptations.
In 2005, the Edinburgh International Festival commissioned Harrower to write
a play. He labored for months on an early version of "Blackbird," with a cast
of 15 characters. But he was frustrated by the results. When a friend asked
him what the play was about, Harrower replied, "A man and a woman." Write
about them, the friend suggested.
Harrower cranked out the final work in a month.
"I had to think about two people, adults," he says. "The man has re-created
himself. He's changed. Or thinks he has."
At times, Harrower sounds exasperated with the way the subject is usually
treated.
"What do you do with pedophiles?" he asks. "You have to try to understand
them. Our society prefers just to call them evil monsters and turn away from
them."
Harrower says women have come up to him or written to him to tell him similar
stories of prepubescent relationships with adult men.
"They absolutely concur with what is written in the play," he says. "They
were not abused. They knew what they were doing when they were 12. I'm not
going to argue with them."
Director Greco agrees.
"I have a daughter who is 6, and I see those sick freaks in the park looking
at her," she says. "Yet I remember how desperately at 12 I wanted to be taken
seriously by adult men."
For Harrower, that sense of complexity seems to be what he was striving for
all along.
"There's no point in me writing what people already know is wrong," he
says. "Judge them. That's fine. I'm writing something different. I'm not
going to write something that bores me. I want to know something else."
*******************************************************************
ACT Play Examines the Limits of Morality
ContraCostaTimes.com
April 26, 2007
By Pat Craig
ACT CONJURES images of Nabokov's "Lolita" and plays by Pinter when it
describes "Blackbird," which receives its West Coast premiere beginning
with previews on Friday and opening on May 2.
The new David Harrower production was named the top play at London's Olivier
Awards this year, beating out Tom Stoppard's "Rock 'n' Roll" and Peter
Morgan's "Frost/Nixon." Here, the play will be directed by Loretta Greco, and
will feature Steven Culp and Jessi Campbell.
"Blackbird," which is performed without an intermission, is set during one
evening in the back room of a warehouse, where Ray works as part of a rebuilt
life.
Late in the evening, Una, the young woman with whom he had an affair years
earlier, burst into to the room to confront him about what was an underage
relationship. The two argue and clash bitterly over the relationship and
their need to understand the past in an effort to perceive the truth of the
affair.
Greco has said the relationship was a "life-defining moment" for the pair,
which has colored every moment of their lives since. But despite the passion
and drive to understand and find the truth, it is all elusive, and leaves Ray
and Una, along with the audience, still looking for answers.
Harrower said he doesn't believe his play is about pedophilia, but is instead
about the gray areas. He said he is more interested in how those involved
deal with their actions and how they justify or explain to themselves, rather
than what they have done.
*******************************************************************
A Risky Walk Into Darkness
San Francisco Chronicle
April 22, 2007
By Sam Hurwitt
It's been a long time since actor Steven Culp was last in an American
Conservatory Theater production. It was 1994 when he played repressed
homosexual Mormon Joe Pitt in Mark Wing-Davey's staging of both parts of Tony
Kushner's "Angels in America" at the Marines Memorial Theatre, while the
Geary was still closed for repairs needed after the Loma Prieta earthquake.
Now that Culp has returned to ACT to star in the West Coast premiere
of "Blackbird," the Los Angeles actor is far better known for playing Marcia
Cross' long-suffering husband, Rex Van De Kamp, in ABC's "Desperate
Housewives." He was already a familiar screen presence by the time
"Housewives" hit in 2004, holding down simultaneous recurring roles as a CIA
agent on "JAG," a doctor's boyfriend on "ER," a space Marine on "Star Trek:
Enterprise" and the Republican speaker of the house on "The West Wing." He'd
even played Bobby Kennedy twice, in the 1996 TV movie "Norma Jean & Marilyn"
and the 2000 feature film "Thirteen Days."
"Blackbird," which in February won the Laurence Olivier Award for best new
play, is a tense two-person drama by Scottish playwright David Harrower.
Directed by Loretta Greco, the ACT production co-stars New York actress Jessi
Campbell as Una, a young woman who dredges up some very old business with
Culp's middle-aged Ray -- business so touchy and difficult that patrons
younger than 16 might want to stay home and catch up on "Housewives" reruns
instead.
"I've told my friends who are coming out, 'I don't want you to know anything
about the play,' " Culp says after a long day of rehearsal made doubly long
by the fact that the two characters remain onstage for the 90-minute play
without intermission. "I want people to come in without any preconceptions,
just take them through that emotional journey instead of, 'We're going to go
see this play about ...' But I think that in this play, the labels we put on
things, the way we structure what we remember, the stories that we tell
ourselves when we're reconstructing our lives, what society tells us and
therapists tell us -- all that stuff gets stripped away, and what you're left
with is the unexplainable and sometimes terrible mysteries of the human\
heart."
The play goes into some pretty dark places, and getting under the skin of
this character might make some actors' own skin crawl. But Culp relishes the
chance to play troubled and troubling characters, evidenced by a resume
filled with driven true believers whose agendas often bring them into
conflict with protagonists, and deeply conflicted individuals struggling with
dark secrets.
"I've been fortunate enough that I've been able to do characters like that in
a lot of different venues, and they just kind of keep coming my way," Culp
says. "The more complex and contradictory the better, because those are the
most interesting characters to play. That's what I'm drawn to. 'The human
heart in conflict with itself' -- isn't that what Faulkner said? I don't feel
it's my job to tell the audience what opinion they should have about is this
a good guy or a bad guy. My job is to make that decision as hard for them to
make as I can."
This is the first time Culp has made it back to the stage since his now 5
year-old twins were born.
His most recent play was Yasmina Reza's "Art" at South Coast Rep in 2000. TV
and film have been keeping him busy in recent years, and it was actually a
side effect of his screen work that led to him being cast in "Blackbird."
"I did this series for ABC called 'Traveler,' a one-hour thriller," he
says. "It was supposed to premiere midseason, but now they're holding back
till the end of May, and we're going to take the place of 'Lost' on Wednesday
nights. But until the show airs, contractually I can't really go out for TV
pilots, I can't do recurring roles on series, I can't really do all the stuff
that has kept me going for the last few years. The movies were not exactly
knocking down my door, so I said, 'OK, what can I do during this time?' I
contacted ACT, just to see what they were doing. I had read the little blurb
about the play 'Blackbird,' and that was all I knew about it. ... They e-
mailed me the script, and I went, 'Oh my God, what have I done?' I did have
the thought, 'Am I up for this? I don't know if I can do this.' Then, of
course, I had to pursue it."
After he read for the part and worked a bit with director Greco, it seemed
like a good fit all around, and so Culp is working on his English accent for
this disturbing little nugget of a play shortly after his family flick
"Firehouse Dog" hit theaters and just before the "Traveler" pilot hits TV.
While Joe Mantello's U.S. premiere production of "Blackbird" at the Manhattan
Theater Club in New York (which opened earlier this month with Jeff Daniels
and Alison Pill) removed certain details in the play to make it less British,
Greco's staging at ACT keeps all the cultural specificity intact.
"America is kind of a land of reinvention, more so than Great Britain, and
the fact that my character has totally reinvented himself before the play
starts has more resonance if it's happening there and not here," Culp
says. "Loretta said, and I totally agree, when you're specific about these
things, about class and locale, the more universal it is. When you homogenize
it, I think it loses something."
One thing that's likely to be universal is that the provocative and thorny
"Blackbird" will push a lot of people's buttons.
"It's been a long time since I've done a play where I'm not sure if, when we
get to the end, they're going to pelt us with fruit or not," Culp says. "I
think people are going to walk out of the theater having a lot of different
opinions. I hope."
*******************************************************************
Culp goes from 'Desperate Housewives' to 'Blackbird'
April 27, 2007
InsideBayArea.com
By Chad Jones
STEVEN CULP, whom you might recognize from his stint as the late Rex Van De
Kamp, husband of Martha Stewart-wannabe Brie Van De Kamp on ABC's "Desperate
Housewives," doesn't want me to tell you much about the play he's in at San
Francisco's American Conservatory Theater.
The play is "Blackbird" by British playwright David Harrower, and it is indeed
an intensely tricky piece of work.
"I'd prefer it if audiences came in cold and just let the play unfold," Culp
says after a day of rehearsals.
Yes, that would be nice, but "Blackbird" definitely is not for everyone. Like
David Mamet's "Oleanna," a two-person drama about power shifts in a teacher-
student/male-female relationships, Harrower's play is about a man and a woman
with a startling relationship.
About 15 years prior to the start of the play, Ray (Culp's character) had a
relationship with Una (played in this production by Jessi Campbell). But
here's the thing: At the time of their relationship, Ray was 40 and Jessi was
12.
Playwright Harrower says of the play, which also opened in New York earlier
this month: "I don't believe this is a play about pedophilia. And I didn't
want it to be. Yes, it discusses an illegal, under-age relationship, and in
most people's minds, the man would be termed a pedophile.... What interested
me is how people then go on to deal with the consequences of their actions
and desires, how they justify or explain to themselves the reasons for what
they did."
Culp, 51, doesn't really want to address the issues in the play, but he will
say that Harrower's language, which can be sparse and full of pauses, reminds
him of Mamet, Pinter and Albee.
"This language has to express the inexpressible," Culp says. "What happens in
the play involves moving beyond what these characters have been told by
society, by therapists, by whomever. It's full of the rawness of the
inexplicable and the unknowable mysteries of the human heart. These are two
human beings with a complexity of feelings for one another."
Culp also sees the play as a "classic cathartic work full of pity and
terror."
Enough about the play he needs to promote but doesn't really want to talk
about. With his ongoing success in television — in addition to "Housewives"
he was on "The West Wing," "CSI" and "Star Trek: Enterprise" — Culp really
didn't need to go back to the theater.
But a fluke of scheduling, involving his new ABC series "Traveler," which has
delayed its premiere so as not to compete with "American Idol," left him with
time on his hands. He wanted a project, a theater project, to be specific,
and it had to fit into his time frame.
Having worked at ACT about 15 years ago as Joe Pitt in "Angels in America,"
Culp decided to check out the company's Web site. He saw it had "Blackbird"
on the schedule. Though he didn't really know anything about the play, he
called the casting director anyway.
"They sent me the script," he recalls. "I read it and thought, 'Oh, my God.' I
didn't know if it was something for me, but then I couldn't get it out of my
head. My goal was to find something that took everything I had and more. The
moral is: Careful what you wish for."
The father of 51/2-year-old twins, Culp was hesitant to leave his family in
Los Angeles, but he says he was convinced this was the best possible time for
a theatrical challenge.
"Rehearsal has been fruitful," Culp says. "Loretta (Greco, the director) has
been great. I'm fully engaged."
Culp pauses and offers a smile. "This kind of experience invigorates me," he
says. "But it'll age me."
"Blackbird" continues through May 27 at American Conservatory Theater, 415
Geary St., San Francisco. Tickets are $17.50-$73.50. Call (415) 749-2228 or
visit http://www.act-sf.org.
Because of the play's controversial nature, there will be audience discussions
following each performance. There will also be two "Theater on the Couch"
sessions in which members of the San Francisco Foundation for Psychoanalysis
discuss the psychological aspects of the play after the shows on May 4, 6
(matinee) and 12.
*******************************************************************
BroadwayWorld.com
April 27, 2007
By Eugene Lovendusky
American Conservatory Theater is proud to present the West Coast premiere
Blackbird, written by David Harrower, and directed by Loretta Greco April 27
through May 27. An intimate and unflinching portrait of two individuals
destroyed by an illicit love, Blackbird officially opens Wednesday, May 2 at
8PM.
"A no-holds-barred drama reminiscent of Nabokov's Lolita and the works of
Harold Pinter, Blackbird takes place over the course of one evening in the
back room of an industrial warehouse," states press notes, "Late one evening,
as Ray goes about his job in a life he has newly rebuilt for himself, in
barges Una, a young woman to whom he has not spoken since the end of their
affair more than a dozen years earlier. As Una and Ray bitterly and violently
clash over the nature of their earlier relationship, their all-consuming need
to understand the events of their past leads to an overwhelming and at times
shocking demonstration of how far they will go to find the truth. A
compassionate portrait of a very human pair of souls locked in a relationship
that blurs the lines between lust, love, and something far more sinister."
Due to controversial and sensitive subject matter, ACT's production of
Blackbird is recommended for audiences 16 and older.
The cast of Blackbird features Steven Culp as Ray and Jessi Campbell as Una.
Best known for portraying Rex Van De Camp in ABC's hit television series
Desperate Housewives, Culp starred as Joe Pitt from the ACT's long-running
production of Tony Kushner's Angels in America. Campbell was recently seen in
the world premiere of Victoria Martin: Math Team Queen at Manhattan's Women's
Project (a production directed by Loretta Greco), and has appeared in recent
productions of Inky, Eikon, Twelfth Night, Marisol, and Don Juan Comes Back
from the War.
Playwright David Harrower began developing Blackbird after reading of a well-
documented, real-life drama. In 2003, former United States marine Toby
Studabaker met a 12-year-old girl from Manchester, England, in an internet
chat room. After meeting in person, the couple fled to Europe. Though she
allegedly never revealed her true age, Studabaker claimed he thought the girl
was 19. He was eventually arrested by her side in Germany. In April 2004,
Studebaker was sentenced to a four-year prison sentence to be served in the
UK.
The American premiere production of Blackbird is currently playing through
April at Manhattan Theatre Club in Manhattan, New York. The production
features Jeff Daniels and Allison Pill and is directed by Joe Mantello.
The design team for ACT's production of Blackbird includes Robert Brill
(sets), Russell H. Champa (lights), David F. Draper (costumes), and Jake
Rodriguez (sound).