Author: Jonathan Shipley

The Carlsen Cello Foundation is a non-profit organization that has loaned instruments to young cellists for nearly twenty years. We recently sat down with Miriam Shames, the Foundation’s director, to discuss cello acquisitions, the best pieces for cello and how you can help put a cello in a child’s hand.

Playing and studying the cello can be expensive. Base model cellos can cost $2,000 or more, and terrific “student” cellos can cost another $10,000 to $15,000. The Carlsen Cello Foundation provides a fine instrument while a recipient is actively studying, giving serious and deserving students the opportunity to practice and perform on a cello that matches the quality of their study and growing talent.

Miriam Shames is the Foundation’s director. With a Master’s Degree in Cello Performance, Shames is no stranger to the expenses involved with the cello, nor the beauty the instrument can bring. While being involved in the Foundation, she also works with cello students in her Seattle studio and has performed with such groups as the Pacific Northwest Ballet and Northwest Sinfonietta.

Who is Carlsen?

Ray Carlsen is a Seattle dermatologist who started taking cello lessons as an adult in the early 1990s. He immediately became interested in going to auctions in London and New York and collecting older, most European, cellos. Over the next two decades, through his own purchases and some donated cellos, his collection grew to its present—approximately 100 cellos that are loaned out to students. It’s a remarkable feat and a remarkable treasure in today’s world.

Why the Foundation?

Besides being a player himself, Dr. Carlsen, like so many, were drawn to the particularly beautiful and human sound of the cello. He also soon realized that an advancing student needed a cello beyond what is available through rentals, the price of which is prohibitive. The cello is enjoying a beloved place in the music world today, evidenced by its huge popularity among younger students, adult beginners, its use in some many genres and its draw with audiences.

Any notable cellists that have used a Carlsen cello?

Joshua Roman, the former principal cellist of the Seattle Symphony; Julie Albers, principal cellist of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; recent winner of a Boston Symphony audition, Oliver Aldort; and many more who are currently studying at major conservatories in the US and Canada.

Where do you get the cellos?

The cellos are purchased or donated. They are often restored in Seattle, and then maintained, by Rafael Carrabba of Rafael Carrabba Violins. He is a world-renowned restorer of the most beautiful and rare string instruments.

How can someone help?

The Foundation accepts tax deductible contributions, as well as donations of cellos.

What is your favorite piece of cello music?

My usual answer is “whatever I’m listening to right now.” But, of course, there are the Bach Cello Suites and the Schubert “Cello” Quintet in C Major.

The Young Shakespeare Workshop, a free program celebrating 25 years, is a Seattle-based non-profit that serves youth from Seattle and regions beyond. The seven-week summer First Year program draws teenagers from all walks of life to study and perform Shakespeare – sonnets, speeches, scenes – giving them the opportunity to celebrate the power of the human voice and illuminate experience. YSW was awarded the nation’s highest honor for out-of-school youth arts training in 2011, the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award.

We sat down recently with Darren Lay, a professional actor, director and teaching artist, that has been directing the program since 1998, to discuss Shakespeare’s power, the essential nature of art and ways you can help.

How did you get involved with the Young Shakespeare Workshop?

My love of Shakespeare began when I was a teenager in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It is incredible to me that a city like Seattle, priding itself on the arts, has public high schools without theatre programs. After moving to Seattle I joined with Eric Ray Anderson, a fellow working actor, and Kimberly White, to take up the mantle of the Young Shakespeare Workshop from Edward Payson Call, who began the program. I was not thinking I would still be at it 19 years later.

What’s the demographic profile of those kids you serve?

Kids of every description and stripe have participated in the program over the years—poor kids, rich kids, white kids, kids of color, straight kids, queer kids, religious kids, non-religious kids, kids with supportive parents, kids without parents, English language learners, immigrants, refugees, conservative, liberal. It is astonishing how wide a range of people Shakespeare can bring together.

Is selling Shakespeare to kids a hard sell?

It can be hard sometimes, if the context and situation is not supportive, but once kids get up on their feet and perform Shakespeare with each other as opposed to just reading it and have the time to begin to own the words for themselves, and see Shakespeare as ‘their artist,’ writing for them, then Shakespeare the brilliant poet and truth-teller does all the work. Shakespeare’s works easily sells itself given the right environment.

What can Shakespeare’s plays give kids?

Shakespeare gives kids a chance to step directly into the thoughts and feelings, relationships and circumstances that intrigue us all, a chance to experience intensely nuanced reflection that can relate to your own life experience or circumstances of those around you which acts to nourish a more intelligent and observant understanding of us all. The safe remove of art engages teens’ empathy and thoughtful weighing of human interaction, incredibly valuable to teenagers shaping their own identity and voice. Theatre is such a deeply worthy and important human invention for examining the world and our place in it.

What are your favorite Young Shakespeare Workshop memories?

There are really too many to choose from. Most revolve around performances when students transcend “the ordinary of Nature’s sale-work” and we are all compelled to marvel at Shakespeare’s brilliance. One should never mistake Shakespeare’s brilliance for your own, but sometimes it is lovely to imagine it is yours for a while, and you do come away feeling as if some of it might have rubbed off on you in some way during the insane funniness of Midsummer’s rough mechanicals, or the brutal and terrifying word induced pindrop silences in Othello, or the hauntingly beautiful Richard II as either performer or audience member.

What can people do to help Young Shakespeare Workshop?

We are always cash poor and, of course, the absolute best way anyone can help is to encourage that young person you know who needs that extra boost of confidence to contact us and join an often wonderfully life-changing community.

A brief scene from the Workshop:

Two weeks ago in the early hours of the morning, a massive explosion caused by a gas leak leveled a building in the center of Greenwood’s commercial district. Three businesses were reduced to rubble—Mr. Gyros, Quick Stop Grocery and Neptune Coffee—and the blast shattered windows as far as two blocks away. Our own Encore HQ, located just around the corner on 85th and Dayton, was mercifully spared, but many of our neighbors in the immediate vicinity were affected.

This wasn’t the first conflagration witnessed by the folks at Taproot Theatre, located in the heart of the business district at 85th and Greenwood. Back in 2009 a serial arsonist lit a blaze that caused about $3 million worth of damages to their property. They came roaring back in 2013 with the new, LEED Silver-certified Kendall Center, housing a 120-seat black box theatre, café, lobby and other updated facilities.

This year Taproot celebrates their 40th anniversary as well as their 20th year as a resident of Greenwood. I talked to producing artistic director and CEO Scott Nolte about weathering both fires.

When you heard the news about the explosion did it give you flashbacks?

It was sort of a punch to the gut. I got a text message from Mark Lund, our production director, at three in the morning saying that there’d been a gas explosion. When I talked to him later he said it was déjà vu driving south on Greenwood and in the distance you see fire truck lights and police lights and commotion of all kinds—destruction, terrible things. He thought he was coming for a burglar alarm problem in our building, same as in 2009.

It was shocking to see the way those buildings were leveled.

In the 2009 arson, the guy set eleven fires that damaged 15 buildings and one residence, but it was over the course of four months so there was a significant amount of damage dispersed around Greenwood over the course of months. In the explosion, it happened in one day. Three businesses are evaporated and upwards of 50 businesses have damage in some form, 13 residents have been displaced and I don’t know how many homes had windows blown out. Since most of the businesses in Greenwood are owner-operated places, the level of destruction to individuals’ lives is so alarming and so sad.

In the wake of this and the 2009 arson, do you have any insight into the role a theatre plays in the life of a neighborhood?

I think we’re trying to continue figuring out how we’re a crossroads for our immediate neighborhood. Some of that is with the café, some with the Isaac Studio Theatre hosting everything from the School of Rock to the police department. To what degree are we a community center for all the different organizations and small businesses that need a space to interact and do public things?

On the economic side, over thirty-three to thirty-five thousand people attend mainstage plays over the course of a year and the lion’s share of those are not from the greater Greenwood community. So they’re coming in here and having lunch or dinner, going out for a drink afterwards, maybe doing some shopping. The ability for us to be an economic engine for the sake of the rest of the community is a very, very positive thing as well.

Why did you choose Greenwood?

My dad grew up a mile south of here, and I grew up a mile north of here. Back in the late ’80s we were looking around to try and find where in the world we could go, because we’d [already] been uprooted a few times. We looked at VFW halls, old grocery stores, empty churches, all kinds of things between West Seattle and Lake City and even farther north. Eventually we came back to this decrepit old theatre building. It had about 400 seats that didn’t match, a dirt floor basement, the roof leaked, it was really a mess, but we saw the potential of turning an eyesore into something much more positive.

When we opened 20 years ago, I think there were 15 empty storefronts within a block of us. We were making the point that we are gonna do plays in this building; it’s gonna put people on the sidewalk throughout the evening and that itself changes the climate of a neighborhood. When you have more citizens on the street and doing things, that’ll make these other empty storefronts attractive to cafés, shops or small bars to move in. We’ve been a part of the economic revival and the economic engine to continue to bring outside money into Greenwood.

You hear a lot more talk about that now, leveraging arts to bring back neighborhoods. It seems like you guys were ahead of the curve. Was that uncharted territory back then?

Yeah. We were sort of looked down upon, like, why aren’t we in the Seattle Center or the Capitol Hill core where everyone else is? We were out here in the hinterlands, and how in the world would anybody find us in North Seattle? You gotta get a passport and take a stage coach!

One thing I would add from our perspective—from 2009 and 2016—is that we felt the love of the neighborhood. [In 2009] other theatres offered us trucks and performance space and rehearsal space. Greenwood rallied in such an astounding way on behalf of all these businesses that lost so much, and it’s been terrific to give back.

We do have about $20,000 damage to our building, but it pales in comparison to three businesses that are leveled and all the other small shops that are trying to figure out how to replace $3000 to $5000 worth of windows.

Good on Greenwood to rally for each other! Over 100 people turned out on a rainy day to clean Greenwood Avenue a couple Saturdays ago. That says a lot about the strength of this neighborhood.

Julia Griffin is all over the Seattle theater scene. She’s the casting director and artistic associate for Theater Schmeater, she’s directed for the likes of Annex and Seattle Public Theater and she’s acted in productions for GreenStage, Driftwood Theater and more. She’s also a blood consultant. That is to say: she’s someone who makes stage blood and makes it flow on stage using all sorts of tools, gadgets and theater magic. Currently she’s blood consultant for Seattle Shakespeare’s new production of Titus Andronicus. The show is pretty violent, and this pleases Griffin.

We recently sat down with her to talk blood making, catheter bags and how much blood flows when someone gets shot in the stomach.

How does one become a blood consultant?

It’s pretty random, I know. I took makeup classes in college. I liked gross bloody stuff for a long time. I would watch surgery shows in high school. Like, documentaries of surgeries. In college I took those classes and started doing zombie makeup—that was fun. When I started working at Theater Schmeater I did a lot more zombies. I was involved in a lot of GreenStage’s Hard Bard productions. Those are ridiculously bloody.

What is a blood consultant?

We make the blood flow on stage. I never thought at my age I’d buy so many catheter bags.

Do you have any sort of medical background?

I watched horror movies and watched a lot of YouTube videos. So… no.

What is stage blood?

Blood powder. It’s just stage makeup. Combine powder with corn syrup and water and you have blood. It works better than, say, Kool-Aid or food coloring. For one, those things stain. I go up to the Display & Costume store and buy them out of stock.

What other supplies do you need?

Blood packs are just Saran wrap. I also use a lot of syringes. Catheter bags. Those nose bulb sucker things you use on babies.

What is your favorite aspect of stage blood?

The reaction of it when it works, on stage and off. When an actor gets blood on their hands it’s visceral. It’s real. Even though you know it’s fake, it FEELS real. It’s awesome to watch actors react to it in a very real way, and the audience, too.

What is the most challenging aspect of stage blood?

It’s how to hide the apparatuses. An actor needs to know how to hold it, how to use it at the right time, how to pop the blood pack. It can be pretty tricky and when an actor is already nervous on stage, it’s challenging for them, sometimes, to make sure the audience doesn’t see a tube or something. To keep it hidden is key. Also, it’s a bummer when the blood goes off before it’s supposed to.

What can we expect, blood-wise, in the Titus Andronicus? 

I can’t tell you. But I CAN tell you it’s going to be gross. My favorite kill I’ve ever done on stage was in a production of Reservoir Dolls [an adaptation of Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs]. It involved Black Cats—I don’t think they’re even legal—and when it happened, blood went EVERYWHERE. Smoke curled off her chest. It was so cool looking.

Are you ever concerned of there being TOO much blood?

I’m NEVER concerned about over-bleeding. The more blood the better! I DO know how much blood a body spills when they get shot in the stomach; I’ve looked it up. I know when an artery splits how long it spurts. You want enough blood for the audience to react to it. Obviously, if you have a paper cut on stage, you’re going to bleed more than in real life. The audience has to see it.

How easy is stage blood to clean up?

OxiClean™. Soak costumes in it and we’re good as new. Or just wash them if they’re not too bloody and they’re fine. The blood on stage takes a little more effort to clean. It’s usually just a combination of bleach and water.

Is OxiClean™ what we should use, then, to clean up real blood?

Fortunately, I’ve never had to clean up large pools of blood. But, probably that’d do the trick.

What’s next for you in regards to blood consulting?

The Dutchess of Malfi coming in February with GreenStage. 

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, now on stage at the Seattle Children’s Theatre, was first written by Ian Fleming (of James Bond fame) and adapted to the big screen by Roald Dahl (of James and the Giant Peach fame). The film starred Dick Van Dyke and was the tenth most popular at the box office in 1969. 

The production at SCT—as with most all other productions of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang—is based on the movie and not the book. How do you bring that movie to life on stage? Start by asking Carey Wong. The scenic designer has over 40 years of experience and has worked with many of the Puget Sound’s most prestigious arts organizations, including the Seattle Repertory Theatre, Tacoma Opera, Village Theatre, and Intiman Theatre. He’s been involved with Seattle Children’s Theatre productions for 20-plus years.

I visited him in tech rehearsal, going behind the scenes to witness the creation of what might be Seattle Children’s Theatre’s most ambitious show.

How do you begin this process?

You start by going to the source material. I read the book, I watched the Disney movie. The Disney movie changed the plot quite a bit from the original book. Fleming’s novel had a lot less adventure and wasn’t going to translate well to film. They reworked it and had Roald Dahl write the screenplay. All the while I’m thinking, how this can translate to the stage?

Do you do this initial brainstorming alone?

I’ve worked with [director and SCT artistic director] Linda Hartzell on many productions together. We begin thinking together about the period, the style, the asthetics of the show. We looked at pictures of English cottages and windmills. We talked a lot about the dichotomy between Britain and Vulgaria [two major settings in the production]. For Britain we wanted it to be rustic and rural. We used a lot of earth tones. For Vulgaria we wanted it to be florid and urban. We used jewel tones. We wanted to make it over-the-top.

What are some of the hurdles you saw for the show?
The car. The key to the show is the car. It does so many things. How can you make that happen, feasibly? It has to drive like a car. It’s a boat, too. But, most importantly, it has to fly. Using winches and turntables, we create stage magic for it to appear to do all those things. It’s a beautiful fabrication. The wheels move. It rotates. It has wings. It’s really something.

What’s next, after you do that initial research?

You think about design. I looked at Ken Adams’s work [the Disney movie designer.] Those are too big for a stage, so how do you scale it down to fit our theatre? You take various designs from all sorts of places and it becomes a hybrid for this particular theatre.

Where else did you get your inspirations for the design concepts?

The original designs of the novel weren’t detailed enough. They didn’t have much in the way of character, so I had to look elsewhere: Edwardian pen-and-ink style sketchbooks and illustrations and Victorian machinery. It was the golden age of cast iron and, at that time, form was as important as function. The Belle Epoque period was a big inspiration for me.

It’s a big production, design-wise, then.

It’s the biggest project I’ve done with Seattle Children’s Theatre. It’s a large cast and there are students from the SCT drama school. There are actually two casts of young performers. It’s big. Further, Potts has all sorts of adventures and there’s various sets that have to be conceived, designed, and created. There’s the Potts’ home, the candy factory, the fair and the country of Vulgaria. There’s a toy shop and a birthday party scene, too. You have to capture the locations visually with spectacle keeping in mind that people are going to be interacting with it.

What are some of the more interesting set pieces?

There’s a breakfast-making machine that cracks eggs, makes toast, cooks sausages and has a conveyor belt to it. There’s a haircutting machine. There’s all sort of devices, gears, and cranks to make these things look real to the audience. That’s the joy of live theatre, in my mind: seeing stage magic. It’s completely mystifying and exciting.

And there’s quite a few props, I imagine.

Props people play a huge part in this production. They translate my drawings into working objects. They mechanize it. The haircutting machine appears to be cutting hair. 

How do you get from a sketch on a piece of paper to a set piece?

I don’t sketch much, but I do generate artwork. We then make white models. It’s a little half inch scale model box of the stage and you play around with the sets and the people who will interact with them. You hone in further on design, adding color and detail. Once all that is approved, I start drafting architectural drawings for building cuts, sketch cars. From that, it goes to the tech directors who, with an eye on budget, figure out a way to make it work. “We’ve never built a car like this,” and then they build a car. There’s great joy in this collaboration. I trust them. We all find our strengths and use them.

Then it’s out of your hands as soon as your concepts are delivered to the tech and prop folks?

We collaborate. I comment on the overall feel of the show, but I’m a big-picture designer. I started in opera. I try not to fixate on the details.

Then it’s opening night and you watch the magic happen.

I like that it’s an ephemeral medium. It touches memories, inspires creativity. It sparks. There’s pleasure in it. It makes them think. Art has the enduring power to better peoples’ lives. I love being a part of that.

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