Feeding A Colony Of Artists

Breakfast, Anyone?

A bunch of us working.  I like the celestial light.

This Thursday, Friday and Saturday this merry gang of Original Sinners:

Franca Sofia Barchiesi               
Paul Bernardo
Lauren Coppola
+Estefania Fadul
+Lindsey Gates
Chris Grabowski
Brough Hansen
Maggie Lacey
Liz McLaughlin
Phil Mills
Rahaleh Nassri
+Eric Sutton
+Alex Trow
+Steven Wooley

will be going up to the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center

 http://www.theoneill.org/

on an artists' retreat so we can work on the first four books of PARADISE LOST

I am not including "play board games" on the schedule, although that's what I'm planning we do every night after dinner until midnight or so.

OUT OF HELL

I think we're going to call these books, the first of three installments, OUT OF HELL, as it chronicles Satan's journey out of Hell and to Paradise.  It turns out that planning the retreat is a whole lotta fun as well - making up the schedule, creating the room assignments, figuring out transportation.

And of course, putting together the menus.

Although the idea of rehearsing for twenty hours in a three-day period and making six meals for a group of 14 is appealing, I decided to call in some help on this one.  Enter Chris Grabowski, director and cook extraordinaire, who was also my directing mentor at Vassar College, when I was a wee little thing.

LUNCH, THE MIDDLE CHILD

The first menu decision Chris and I made was to let lunch be a delicious but simple array of cold cuts from which the company could assemble sandwiches.  In this country, lunch is the neglected middle child of meals, and for reasons of simplicity, I wasn't going to change that (even though I'm a middle child, and there's a great reading of Paradise Lost in which Satan is the middle child, sandwiched between Jesus and Man.  And when I say "a great reading," I clearly mean one I made up myself last week).  To dazzle lunch up a bit, because even a middle child deserves some bling, I'm going to make the mayo from scratch, a not very hard thing to do if you've got a food processor, and it's hella delicious.  I use this recipe from the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/recipes/12459/Mayonnaise.html

BREAKFAST IS SEXY

I asked Chris to take over the dinners, because they're harder, and also because I love making breakfast.  Breakfast is a sexy meal, and during my single days, I'd love to see what I could whip up in whatever foreign kitchen I found myself (if this hasn't been made into a reality show, it obvi should be).

My proving-to-be-invaluable assistants, Steven Wooley and Estafania Fadul, and I spent a few hours this weekend figuring out the logistics, and they've created menu books and ingredient spread sheets and lots of other things to make our lives easier.

For one breakfast, I figured I'd put my money where my mouth is (god knows I've put everything else there) and make the tofu scramble that I posted about earlier, served over quinoa.

http://michaelbarakiva.blogspot.com/2012/12/vegetarians-are-annoying-but-you-dont.html

BETWEEN QUICHE, CASSEROLE AND HEAVEN. . . 

For my second breakfast, I'm going to make a strata, an Italian breakfast casserole dish that lives somewhere in the exquisite space between quiche, casserole and heaven.  I made this dish for the getting-to-know-you brunch I hosted for my FARRAGUT NORTH cast a few weeks before we started rehearsal.  Clearly it did the trick - link to our NY Times review here.  A strata is a great way to feed lots of people well.  I'm tripling the recipe, and making one of the portions without chorizo (an ingredient I add as homage to the Mexicans I'm marrying into) so that the vegetarians can dive in.

From what I understand, what amateur food bloggers like myself are supposed to do is take a recipe I like, make marginal changes to it, and then publish it as my own.  But there are some things that are sacrosanct even to a double genocide descendant such as myself, and one of them is the cookbook that basically helped me (re-)discover my love for cooking.  It is The New Best Recipe, the cookbook from the editors of Cook's Illustrated.

THE BEST COOKBOOK IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE WIDE WORLD 
 


Although the a few of the recipes are occasionally more complicated than they ought to be (the chicken parm takes like two hours to make), everything is so well researched, so clear, and so specific that it takes all the annoying guess work out of cooking and pretty much guarantees a successful product (if theater had an equivalent handbook, I guarantee you I would've committed it to memory by now).  I especially recommend it for beginning cooks, because I find its meticulousness as I wander into unknown territory especially comforting.  When I made this strata the first time for my FARRAGUT NORTH cast (another great review here from some local NJ rag) I had never eaten, let alone made a strata.  But I followed the good book, and it did not lead me astray.

Here's the recipe.  Stay tuned for updates from our retreat, pictures of the food we make, and Chris's dinner recipes!

STRATA RECIPE

Breakfast Strata with Spinach and Gruyere

SERVES 6

To weight down the assembled strata, use two 1 pound

boxes of brown or powdered sugar, laid side by side over

the plastic-covered surface. To double this recipe or the

variation that follows, use a 13 by 9 inch baking dish

greased with 1.5 tablespoons butter and increase the baking

times as suggested in each recipe.

Breakfast Strata

8-10 (1/2-inch-thick) slices supermarket French or

This is not a strata I made, but rather, the image of one I found online.

Italian bread

5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

4 medium shallots, minced

1 (l0-ounce) package frozen chopped spinach,

thawed and squeezed dry

Salt and ground black pepper

½ cup medium-dry white wine, such as

Sauvignon Blanc

6 ounces Gruyere cheese, grated

6 large eggs

1 ¾ cups half-and-half

1. Adjust an oven rack to the middle position

and heat the oven to 225 degrees. Arrange the

bread in a single layer on a large baking sheet

and bake until dry and crisp, about 40 minutes,

turning the slices over halfway through the drying time. (Alternatively, leave the slices out over night to dry.) When the bread has cooled, butter the slices on one side with 2 tablespoons of the butter; set aside.

2. Heat 2 tablespoons of the butter in a medium

nonstick skillet over medium heat. Saute the shallots  
until fragrant and translucent, about 3 minutes;

add the spinach and salt and pepper to taste

and cook, stirring occasionally, until combined,

about 2 minutes. Transfer to a medium bowl; set

aside. Add the wine to the skillet, increase the heat

to medium-high, and simmer until reduced to 1/4

cup, 2 to 3 minutes; set aside.

3. Butter an 8-inch square baking dish with

the remaining 1 tablespoon butter; arrange half of

the bread slices buttered-side up in a single layer

in the dish. Sprinkle half of the spinach mixture,

then ½ cup grated cheese evenly over the bread

slices. Arrange the remaining bread slices in a single

layer over the cheese; sprinkle the remaining

spinach mixture and another 1/2 cup cheese evenly

over the bread. Whisk the eggs in a medium bowl

until combined; whisk in the reduced wine, the

half-and-half, 1 teaspoon salt, and pepper to taste.

Pour the egg mixture evenly over the bread layers;

cover the surface flush with plastic wrap' weight

down (see note), and refrigerate at least 1 hour or

up to overnight.

4. Remove the dish from the refrigerator

and let stand at room temperature 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, adjust an oven rack to the middle

position and heat the oven to 325 degrees'

Uncover the strata and sprinkle the remaining

1/2 cup cheese evenly over the surface. Bake until

both the edges and the center are puffed and the

edges have pulled away slightly from the sides of

the dish, 50 to 55 minutes (or about 60 minutes

for a doubled recipe). Cool on a wire rack for

5 minutes; serve.

Original Sin

Adapting The Greatest Poem Ever Written In English For The Stage

Although one of the things I thought I would be writing about regularly on this blog was ORIGINAL SIN, my adaptation of PARADISE LOST with an amazing company of actors

Michelle Beck

Paul Bernardo

Kersti Bryan

Lauren Coppola

Stephen Bel Davies

Curzon Dobell

Mark Curtis Ferrando

Lindsey Gates

Erick Gonzalez

Jake Green

Morgan Green

Carol Halstead

Broughton Hansen

Kelly Hutchinson

Maggie Lacey
Linda Larson

Phil Mills

Rahaleh Nassri

David Scotchford

Roya Shanks

Eric Sutton

Alexandra Trow

Madeline Wise

But every time I’ve actually sat down to write about it, nothing came out.  Writing about process is so tedious, and god knows I didn’t want to commit that crime.  But today, I found out the O’Neill Theater Center in New London (where Rafael and I are getting married, as well), agreed to host us for a few days in mid Jan so we can have a retreat and work on the material more intensely.  (Major props to Lindsey Gates, the artistic director of the Lake George Theater Lab, who had the idea for this retreat in the first place.)  So I’m going to let that victory inspire me and see where it goes. 

I love actors.  I’ve always loved actors.  In college, when I directed a play a semester (or two, and in the second semester of my junior year, three) I picked projects for +Amy Holtcamp (then Amy Boyce) and +Emily Donahoe O'Keefe (then just plain ol' Emily Donahoe), who were the actors who inspired me. 

When I think about the things that I love about New York, the proliferation of mad talented actors who are willing to roll around and get dirty and make mistakes and surprise me in rehearsal is always high on the list.  I’ve worked in other cities.  I love other cities (sorta).  But their actors don’t hold a torch (definitely).

Jim Nicola invited me to go see ROMAN TRAGEDIES at BAM (click on the link if you don't know what this is) and I was inspired by how big theater could be, and how rarely we make theater of that size in this country.  I wanted to make something that big.  Something that wouldn’t fit into a four-week rehearsal process or a two-hour night of theater. 

When I was an undergrad at Vassar, the English Majors Committee would do twelve-hour reading of PARADISE LOST in the chapel.  I believe they started at noon and went until midnight, and people would wander in and out as they pleased.  One of my mentors who has passed away, the inimitable Ann Imbrie, loved this event, and I remember attending with her my senior year and being struck by how theatrical the poem was.  Milton, I later found out, originally imagined it as a closet drama and only later reconceived it as an epic poem.

I went through my actor files, and intuitively made a list of actors who I thought might be interested in working on this with me.  I sent out an email to all forty of them.

Sending the email out to the actors terrified me.  I composed it.  I edited it.  I recomposed it.  I stared at the mouse nervously, trying to will it to send itself so I wouldn't have to take responsibilitiy for it.  Apparently, I'm not telekinetic.  Unlike Jean Grey, who is.

Mostly, I was scared no one would want to do it (I have a profound fear of rejection – that and my total lack of acting talent really crippled the acting career I never had).  But I was also scared that we’d spend all this time working on the text and nothing would come of it, and then people would be mad at me for wasting their time.  And to be frank, that’s still possible.  But the place of not knowing is a powerful place, and that’s where I was when I sent out that email, and that’s where we live with this project.

Thirty of those forty actors replied expressing interest.  Twenty were available.  We started meeting and have just finished our third session.  Kathy Hood and James Gregg at The Juilliard School have been kind enough to dedicate space to me as an alum, at least for our first few sessions, and I hope they continue to do so because when you ask good actors to work for free, it’s nice when the space isn’t shitty.

Before each session, I cut the text and then create the character distribution.  Here's an example to illustrate my point.

A passage from Book 2, line 650’ish:

Is this hilarious?  He looks so angsty

about her middle round
A cry of Hell Hounds never ceasing bark'd
With wide Cerberian mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous Peal: yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturb'd thir noyse, into her woomb,
And kennel there, yet there still bark'd and howl'd
Within unseen. Farr less abhorrd than these
Vex'd Scylla bathing in the Sea that parts
Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore:
Nor uglier follow the Night-Hag, when call'd
In secret, riding through the Air she comes
Lur'd with the smell of infant blood, to dance
With Lapland Witches, while the labouring Moon
Eclipses at thir charms. The other shape,

If shape it might be call'd that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joynt, or limb,
Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd,
For each seem'd either; black it stood as Night,
Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell,
And shook a dreadful Dart; what seem'd his head
The likeness of a Kingly Crown had on.
Satan was now at hand, and from his seat
The Monster moving onward came as fast
With horrid strides,

gets cut and distributed into

milton

about her middle round
A cry of Hell Hounds never ceasing bark'd
With wide Cerberian mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous Peal: yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturb'd thir noyse, into her woomb,
And kennel there, yet there still bark'd and howl'd
Within unseen.

death

The other shape,

milton

If shape it might be call'd that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joynt, or limb,
Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd,
For each seem'd either;

death

                            black it stood as Night,
Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell,
And shook a dreadful Dart; what seem'd his head
The likeness of a Kingly Crown had on.

sataN

Satan was now at hand, and from his seat

The Monster moving onward came as fast
With horrid strides,

Each session starts with a brief meditation (at my insistence – rehearsing in New York is hard for me, with all its hustle and bustle, and this lets me focus) and then we read the book very slowly, for sense and scansion and meaning but mostly for sense.   That takes a few hours.  I will often re-distribute and cut based on how the material sounds and the actors’ input.  Then we break, come back, and read the whole thing straight through.

Working on this kind of material is always an honor, and working with actors of this caliber even more so.  Our goal is to trim the whole poem down to, let’s say, eight hours, and then do a concert read of the whole thing in early May, with two meals breaks, for which I will prepare the food.

Believe it or not, this was supposed to be my short post, so I’m going to sign off now.  My next post about this will cover the guest artists we've had come visit us, how the retreat goes (and of course, the menus I'm putting together to feed the artists participating on it) and some (hopefully) illuminating insights into this epic piece.

Happy New Year and thanks for reading and especially thanks to all of you who have told me, in email or text or person or on the soccer field, that you’re enjoying these entries.  I’m having a hell of a time writing them.