Quiet no longer, the Carrie Furnaces National Historical Landmark is the the site of intriguing and inspired events.
As the Rivers of Steel Heritage Site website says, “While production may have stopped on the site in 1982, the era of Carrie as an artistic muse was just beginning.” When Pittsburgh’s steel industry waned, the blast furnaces were stopped after 125 years of production.
However, artists and audiences have since gathered at “The Carrie” for experiences ranging from intimate workshopping of a new opera from Pittsburgh Festival Opera to a spectacular broadcast of “American Ninja Warrior.”
Now, after more than four centuries in production, Shakespeare’s most complex family drama is next, recognizes generations of families in the steel valley. In partnership with Rivers of Steel, Quantum Theatre will stage 18 performances of King Lear, at the Carrie Blast Furnaces site in Swissvale (adjacent to Rankin), May 11-June 2.
The singularly dramatic outdoor setting is only 10 miles from downtown Pittsburgh where this project was born. Karla Boos, Quantum’s founder and artistic director, heard the reading of a new edited version of King Lear presented at Bricolage Production Company.
“I loved so many things about it,” says Boos of the tightly-edited script.
The reading was requested by collaborative editors and Shakespeare scholars James Kincaid (who teaches at the University of Pittsburgh) and Julian Markels. Bricolage co-founders and artistic leaders Jeffrey Carpenter read the title role of the aging Lear and Tami Dixon played the Fool. The pair are also married to one another.
Tami Dixon
Jeffrey Carpenter
After Shakespeare’s titular king relinquishes his kingdom to his three daughters, he journeys into madness as his family collapses. This new Lear aims to brings more intimacy to the story’s relationships by reducing much of the play’s political and wartime text.
“The sisters are Lissa Brennan, Dana Hardy Bingham, and Catherine Gowl as Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia.”
In addition to Carpenter and Dixon, the cast of 11 also includes: Ken Bolden as Gloucester; Monteze Freeland as Kent; Michaelangelo Turner as Albany; and Joe McGranaghan and Connor McCanlus as Edmund and Edgar, respectively.
“And the smaller roles are assumed by various folks with Jessie Wray Goodman as Osvald and many in a kind of brilliant compression!” says Boos of how some actors will play multiple roles. The reading’s director Risher Reddick was thrilled to progress from what everyone thought was the “one night only” reading to stage a full production for Quantum.
Risher Reddick
“I’ve had the benefit of James Kincaid who did the cutting,” Riddick shares, describing him as “an amazing resource” in discussing the nature of the play’s themes of nature and mortality.
Reddick has worked on nearly 25 Shakespearean productions, and has directed close to a dozen–but this is his first Lear.
“One of the things that excited me the most, is that when you have worked on a lot of Shakespeare, there are fewer and fewer plays you’ve touched,” says the Boston-based director who teaches at Emerson College. “I have never worked on a production of King Lear as director or actor. I’m not coming to the play with any old knowledge of this play. I am really curious about the play. I get to explore like a kid.” He begins rehearsals in April for his “very ensemble-driven show.”
“The fool is Lear’s closest confident and truth-teller. It felt really right to have Tami in that role,” Reddick says. And he likes the “meta-narrative of husband and wife–Carpenter and Dixon–on stage.”
For Carpenter and Dixon, Lear is only the second production among their many acting projects in which they will share stage time. Of the original reading, Dixon says, “Risher was able to capture something magical and electric.” It’s an inspiration for me to tackle this and dive into the role of the Fool,” but can’t resist joking about “the opportunity to drive my husband into madness, I do this daily!” But she’s happy “to exercise that in a more classical manner.”
Carpenter likewise explores the vastness of the emotional range of Lear, who “gives away his power to quickly discovers that its not him that holds the power, but the position. He is not immune to the ‘cold.’”
Members of the production are in awe of The Carrie.
“It’s incredible, not only as a feat of engineering,” says Reddick, “but as the site has had a life after its use as a cog in the steel industry. The way it’s been a monument to the steel industry and the way its been transformed by artists, even vandals…makes one feel a bit in awe of human ingenuity and small, actually.”
Costume designer Susan Tsu describes the site as “incredibly beautiful, hulking.” She says, “It’s impossible to go to the space without being awe-stricken and humbled by it. I think it’s really significant that the Carrie Furnace holds such an historic and iconic place in the minds of Pittsburgh. People will bring with them what that know about it.”
Carpenter recalls when the site was still in production. “I went to Swissvale High School and looked down on the Carrie Furnace.” He describes attributes for this production as including “the resonance of the site and force of will of human beings working there” echoing in “the machinations of Lear’s world”. And, he adds, “The acoustics out there are really great.”
Reddick says, “In a lot of ways the site is the perfect site. King Lear is largely about the stripping away of identity on the way toward the end of life. The play is very preoccupied with the trappings of order, truth, and ritual.”
The trappings we may cherish, he notes, “become less import as we approach death…The play moves from a order and ritual to chaos and out into the heath,” says Riddick. “We watch the pain of him as he ‘crawls slowly toward death’, as Lear says.”
Within The Carrie, Reddick says, “There were two sites that really spoke to me, but in an effort to show off this place to the audience that’s coming, it felt right to have the action in different places so the audience can move. Essentially the audience will see much of the outdoor sites.”
Setting the opening act in The Carrie deer area “shows off the largeness of the furnace and the ways in which artists have transformed the site,” he says.
Coincidentally, Carpenter was one of many young people who sneaked through the complex fencing to helped create the stag that now symbolizes The Carrie’s reinvention.
Following an intermission, the audience will move to an open, “garden-like area” dotted with large native stones. Daylight will shift to evening light over the two acts, a consideration for the production’s technical scheme, which includes lighting by Todd Brown.
Reddick considers “this space is a monument to that identity of Pittsburgh and represents some of the change and transformation that city has had to undergo with the ruins and remnants that are left from that industry.” The parallels to Lear’s own loss of identity are important to him.
The director also asked himself, “How do we meet the scale of the space? The scale is going to be a challenge.The place is huge.”
The hulking “Carrie”
Tsu says, “The scale makes it necessary for us as the theatre creators of Lear to see what’s unique with this background. I had a deep wish to bring fire back to the Furnace”
Large, iconic scenic elements with lighting effects are in design via the artistic team’s collaboration.
She regards the site as a a landscape “in which we see people navigating the elements and surviving.”
The actors will be “tiny creatures” overshadowed physically by a number of “giant icons of power” that are “reflective of humanity and power,” says Tsu, who aims for “a look that is both contemporary and medieval…with a color palette inspired by “rust and decay.”
“Lear is going to enter himself dragging on a gigantic cape, a map of England,” the designer shares, “to show the scale of the country.”
Boos praises the dedication of Rivers of Steel. “These folks are dedicated to preserving this piece of history,” she says. “Through their efforts, it won’t return to to nature and become ruins.”
Quantum anticipates introducing many first-time visitors to majesty of The Carrie.
“People are looking for experience that is like no other,” Boos observes of her intrepid audience members. This tragedy, the first performed near the end of the playwright’s career in 1606, will be the seventh Shakespeare play produced by Quantum. “This one will be an amazingly memorable experience.”
King Lear is performed at the Carrie Furnaces site, May-June 2. “Pay What You Can Night” is set for Wed., May 8 and on May 22 audiences members can “Meet the Editors” during a pre-show discussion. All details are featured in Quantum’s website.
Dixon and Carter headshot photo credit: Becky Thurner
Reddick headshot: Emerson College
The Hulking “Carrie” photo credit: Richard Kelly
Carrie Furnace Deer headshot: Yvonne Hudson
Yvonne Hudson, a Pittsburgh-based writer, publicist, actor, and singer, joined PITR as a writer and adviser in February 2016. She began performing and writing during high school in Indiana, PA. The Point Park journalism grad credits her Globe editor for first assigning her to review a play. Yvonne is grateful to Dr. Attilio Favorini for master’s studies at Pitt Theatre Arts, work at Three Rivers Shakespeare Festival, and believing in her Shakespearean journey. When not working with nonprofits, this lifelong chorister sings with Calvary UM Church’s annual Messiah choir. Having played Juliet’s Nurse for Pittsburgh Shakespeare in the Parks, Yvonne is now seen in her solo shows, Mrs Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson: The Poet Lights the Lamp. Goals: See all of Shakespeare’s plays in production and memorize more Sonnets. Fave quotes: “Good deed in a naughty world,” “Attention must be paid,” and “A handbag?” Twitter @msshakespeare Facebook: PoetsCornerPittsburgh LinkedIn
Categories: Feature