INTERVIEW: ‘Hotel Good Luck’ receives U.S. theatrical premiere in Ithaca, NY
Photo: Desmond Bratton and Seth Soulstein star in Hotel Good Luck, live-streamed from the State Theatre in Ithaca, New York. Photo courtesy of The Cherry Artists’ Collective / Provided by Emily Owens PR with permission.
The Cherry Artists’ Collective is offering a special treat to its virtual audience members around the world. Through Feb. 20, the theater company is presenting the English-language United States premiere of Hotel Good Luck, the new play by Alejandro Ricaño. The work, translated by Jacqueline Bixler and directed by Samuel Buggeln, will be live-streamed from the State Theatre in Ithaca, New York.
The show, according to press notes, tells the story of Bobby, a late-night radio DJ whose life is turned upside down after an upsetting event derails his life and career. The play, which features live music composed and performed on stage by Desmond Bratton, first premiered at the Teatro Milán in Mexico City in 2015. Actor Seth Soulstein joins Bratton in the play.
Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Buggeln. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
What unique challenges have you faced with putting live theater in a virtual format?
It’s been a fascinating set of processes — this is our company’s third full production in a livestream form, and every time we learn more. The main challenge we set for ourselves as a company is to make our streamed productions feel artistically fully-formed. That is to say, we’re aiming to make a brand-new thing, rather than just a compromised version of the thing we used to do. (For example we’ve never put Zoom boxes in front of our audience, except when the scene was actually a Zoom call.) We want to be completely intentional about how we use the screen, just as we have always been about the stage. But this is all new to us, and to an extent, to everyone. So we’ve been learning new technologies as fast as we can, trying to keep things fresh, and to make these sometimes unstable or emerging technologies reliable over multiple live performances.
The element of liveness is another big challenge we set ourselves. It would be so much easier to just pick the best takes and edit together one perfect performance where nothing goes wrong, and send out the link! But what can I say? We’re live theatermakers, and we like to live on the edge!
Did your directing have to adapt to the new circumstances of this pandemic?
In so many ways! Of course creatively I’m getting used to camera angles and lenses and all that technology that up to now has been a very small part of my creative palette. (We’ve used live-streamed video in our plays quite a bit in the past, but it’s a whole new level when that’s all you have!) I think the way I am seeing my directing changing, and in a really challenging way, is that rehearsing with masks on, and with social distance, is very, very hard. I’m starting to realize that it is much harder to deeply connect to the actors in the room, that a ton of tools of communication are gone, and at the end, as proud as I am of the performances, I don’t feel like we have all been able to connect as closely through the process. That’s such a big reward that I don’t think I was aware of until it was so compromised. So let’s say the directing adapts in the more superficial form ways, but also in deep ways it gets changed — and honestly I’m just hoping it can change back soon!
How would you describe the central character of Bobby?
Ah Bobby — I feel like I should ask our wonderful actor Seth Soulstein, who surely knows more about him than I do at this point! I guess I’d say he’s a bit of one of those 30-something man-child straight dudes, I’m afraid to say. The thing that makes him interesting is that his arrested development comes from a kind of trauma that is very relatable, so I think we really root for him to make the progress that he eventually makes. And I don’t want to make the play sound too heavy — Ricaño is a very funny writer who creates these very quirky universes, so the segment where Bobby explains to us the outrageous things that have transpired, it’s actually a completely hilarious story. And Bobby knows that it’s hilarious, which only adds to his feeling of the injustice of it all. In the end he’s a dude who feels things very deeply and has to find a way to get some perspective.
Has the piece changed since its Spanish-language debut in Mexico City?
The playwright hasn’t changed the play since its big Spanish-language tour a couple of years ago. So we’re working with that original text. In the rehearsal process of a newly-translated play, just like a newly-written play, discoveries get made that may adjust the translation, and in many cases actually involve some small shifts to the original play, to make a certain thing resonate better, or be equivalently funny, in the different language and culture. Alejandro has been very trusting and generous in allowing us and the amazing translator, Jackie Bixler, to explore a few slightly different angles on some details. But basically, this is the play that he wrote! I expect that this production is very different from the original, which I unfortunately never saw.
How will live music be integrated into the show?
The play is written in a very interesting way. Structurally it’s basically a solo show, but there is a second role, much smaller than the main guy, who is written to be a musician. Ricaño doesn’t say anything in the script about when the musician plays, or what (though there are clues in Bobby’s dialogue), so this production’s choices really emerged from the creativity of Desmond Bratton, our amazing double-bass player and composer (and brand-new actor!). We were fortunate to be able to rehearse with him in the room a lot, so the music is very integrated. Though it’s a kind-of-solo show, Bobby is surrounded by other characters he describes: his parents, his ex-girlfriend, his beloved dog Miller. And Desmond has created a kind of theme or leitmotif for each character (including his own) that he can spin endless variations on. So in a sense he helps to populate the stage in a really rich and emotional way.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Hotel Good Luck, produced by The Cherry Artists’ Collective, is written by Alejandro Ricaño and directed by Samuel Buggeln. Virtual performances continue through Feb. 20, live-streamed from the State Theatre in Ithaca, New York. Click here for more information and tickets.
