Artistic Co-Director, Business Manager, Deviser, Performer with Happenstance Theater

Interview by Peter Davis
Photos by Kintz

Happenstance Theater is a professional company committed to devising and producing original, performer-created visual and physical theatre. With the simplest means possible, they lift the experience into the realms of dreams, poetry, and art.

Cabaret Macabre features Mark Jaster, Sabrina Mandell, Karen Hansen, Gwen Grastorf, Sarah Olmsted Thomas and Alex Vernon. The show will run at Baltimore Theatre Project Thursday October 23 to Sunday November 2.

I saw their last show, Impossible!, 3 times.

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Sabrina Mandell and Mark Jaster are the co-founders of Happenstance Theater. Sabrina wears many hats. She is a lovely human; expansive, Renaissance and down-to-earth.

“We stop ourselves from solving all the problems.”

Peter
How and where did the seeds of the Happenstance Theater get planted?

Sabrina
I briefly went to college at 15. I encountered Jacques Lecoq (most famous for his methods on physical theater, movement and mime) through my movement teacher. I fell in love with what we did in class. But, I hated everything else about conventional theater. I decided I didn’t want to do theater and went off on all kinds of adventures, travelling around the world.

When I turned 30 I decided to get back into theater, and tried excavating those experiences from my youth, and there were a few identifying exercises that I remembered which then led me back to Lecoq. Then I looked at companies started by Lecoq alumni and stumbled onto images online and fell in love. That is what theater should be. Whatever that is that they’re doing, that’s what I want to do.

I came to DC to study with Dodi DiSanto, who was teaching Lecoq and discovered that kind of theater I had always imagined. That kind of theater is physical, dynamic, it really uses, acknowledges the real space of theater and the fact that it is live, happening in the moment. It uses the manipulation of objects, and all of the simple things at your disposal to tell a story, in an elevated and abstract way.

I discovered it could happen. And then, I started acquiring tools and skills to make it.

Peter
What problem does Happenstance solve?

Sabrina
Conventional theater was very talkie, a literary form that arrived on the stage. With the advent of television it became even less physical because actors were compressing even more their physicality, because of an idea of naturalism. That, to me, was a waste of space. I was hungry for something that felt a little more alive and dangerous.

Peter
How does an idea for a show come together?

Sabrina
Over the years we’ve arrived at a general formula which always has the potential to be altered. We have a general subject matter or theme we’re interested in exploring. We come together and brainstorm ideas based on the theme. We have a million ideas, then Mark and I start eliminating ideas and hone in on the things that really resonate with us.

We flesh out what each of those little bits might be. Mark and I go away and one of us will write something. Put it in a possible sequence. Sometimes write actual text and such and put it in a document and get up on our feet and build, physically, what it might look like.

It always changes. We are never thinking about the story from the beginning. That is where that happenstance starts. We start making the connections as we’re developing it. We go in many directions to discover what the thing is about.

We also stop ourselves from solving all the problems. Most actors try to answer all the questions and know what the exact story is, for themselves. And we stop before we get to that point. We want to keep the exploration and discovery going. We leave room for it to be something new at all times. We maintain a level of abstraction so there’s room for play.

Peter
What does it take to be a Happenstance company member?

Sabrina
They are all eccentrics. Because the work we do is generated by us, it means we can take our skills, all the individual things we happen to be good at, and all of our eccentricities, and highlight them. And give them an outlet and imagine them into characters.

We can also push each other to do things that are not our typical selves.

Peter
What is your relationship to text?

Sabrina
We love text. We have poets. We love Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde. It just doesn’t come first. We don’t let the text get in the way. We’re always thinking about dosage. We’re like chefs, how much is too much?

Peter
What is Happenstance’s enduring promise?

Sabrina
You will never see plastic onstage.

Honesty, generosity, full commitment by performers, and some nod to the past, something nostalgic, costumes, props.

We’re craftsmen and artists. We make things we use or find them. Plastic suggests a specific time period. Plastic is engineered.

Peter
It’s extruded. There’s no extruding in theater!

Sabrina
There’s no extruding in theater!

Peter
How has theater changed?

Sabrina
Theater became dominated by playwrights. Then there was a movement in the early 1900’s, people who said wait a minute, theater is a special proposition, it happens in a space. There was an effort made to reclaim the theater in a physical way. Then TV and film came on the scene and the stage was contaminated by television actors who did not have the physical training, because the centers of education were still teaching text-based theater. The stage became inhabited by people who couldn’t hold the space.

What has happened in the last 30 years has been because of the Lecoq school in Paris and so many graduates coming back and starting companies. The birth of new circus and new vaudeville, all of these movements arise because people are bored and hungry for that kind of physical dynamic and play. And fringe festivals (!) opportunities for people to generate their own material and try it out. That convergence has really helped the movement in this country towards more generative work.

Peter
Give me 5 reasons to come see Cabaret Macabre at Theatre Project.

Sabrina
It’s inspired by Edward Gorey who is the bomb. There is a slow motion croquet battle that is mayhem. You get to hear a musical saw played. It was nominated for 3 Helen Hayes Awards, 1 for costumes. All the costumes are vintage or antique. And there is no better thing to do for Halloween than see something macabre!

Peter
Duh!

Sabrina
Duh! You want 6 reasons?

 

 

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