Sara Marsh and Bill McCallum shed light on Dark and Stormy

Last year Sara Marsh actually did something that a lot of actors talk about. She started her own theater company. Dark and Stormy Productions opened in August of 2012 with Outside Providence, a collection of one acts by Edward Allen Baker, and continued with this year with Mamet’s Speed the Plow. Bill McCallum appeared with Sara in that production and had since joined the company as Associate Artistic Director. With their latest show The Receptionist by Adam Bock at The Traffic Zone Center for Visual Art, Sara and Bill continue a couple of D&S traditions. They are doing theater in non-traditional spaces that highlight the verisimilitude of the world of the play. They’re bringing a new playwright to the Twin Cities (OK, that didn't apply to Mamet, but you get the idea) and they’re actively courting a new generation of theatergoers. In preparation for The Receptionist the company put on a series of readings of other Bock plays to prepare audiences for this new writer and to whet their appetite for more. I sat down with Sara and Bill after a rare Vikings victory (which Sara had followed closely) to subject them to the budding Playlist questionnaire. What is your first memory of seeing a live performance? BM: I was with my family in Calgary, Wyoming on a family trip and we saw something at the Stampede Days. I don't know what it was. Some kind of Western shoot 'em up thing. I have no idea what it was about. There were gunshots and people falling off roofs and there was this one woman in a bustier. I thought she was pretty cute. SM: I think my first memory of live performance is actually being in something. I was a classically trained concert pianist until my hands stopped growing. So what I first remember is performing at Northrop Auditorium, playing the piano with probably 23 other kids or so. I think I was 6 when I did that. How did you start as a performer? SM: I started with ballet and piano when I was 5. I left ballet when I was 9, because of back problems. When I was 10 I did my first play at Breck, called A Mile in Their Shoes, and my teacher Tom Hegg went to my parents and said, "She's got something, so if she wants to do this, God help her, if she wants to do this, she could really do it. " So that was the first time, really, and I knew from then, from the age of 10 that this was what I wanted to do. From that moment on I focused all my energy on doing that. BM: I needed an easy grade in high school so I took a theater arts class. And I had kind of a knack for it and I liked it. When did you decide to make it your profession? SM: I got my first professional job when I was 18; I was cast in a film called Sugar and Spice. It was at the end of my freshman year in college. But like I said I had been focusing all my energies on this since I was 10. My poor parents. BM: When I was 18, my senior year in high school, I knew I wanted to try and take a stab at it. So I went away to a conservatory school in North Carolina. Why do you act? BM: I feel that it's really important work, almost like a ministry. To gather people together in a shared space and participate in a communal act of imagination that just stops and pauses and takes notice of what it is to be human, together, is an important, community-building event. And I don't think it happens in the same way in any other place. SM: I tend to be overly analytical. When I played Helen Keller in high school, I went to the Annie Sullivan Center, I analyzed Patty Duke and how she did it. I really enjoy the idea of figuring someone else out and trying to inhabit them. And as I've gotten older I've found more and more of myself in roles, though it took me a long time to embrace that. I always wanted to play things that were the opposite of me. And then there are simpler things: I like to make people laugh. I like the sense of community. I like the immediacy. For someone like me who overthinks things, it's kind of an escape. What keeps you going? SM: Every time I step offstage, or out of the recording booth or wrap a day of shooting something, I can't believe how much fun I had doing it. And I want to come back. No matter if I was crabby when I got there or if something wasn't right or whatever the case may be. I always am surprised, continually surprised, by how much fun it is. And that's what keeps me coming back to it. Then also, with Dark and Stormy, I want to contribute to the community artistically by providing a different way of performing and working on a project. I want to give actors and directors and designers the opportunity to do work they find challenging. So there's my personal stuff and then this other level of wanting to sustain theatergoers and artists that I'm starting to work on, and that I'm trying to get better at. BM: It's really fun. You get to meet a lot of really interesting, attractive people. You get to learn a lot of really fabulous things that you wouldn't otherwise come into contact with. And I love the job. I just love it. And I feel like I've accumulated enough experience and craft, that I understand how it works, and that's really fun. So that's why I love the job. The other question is what keeps me in the life. And the answer is because the jobs that are really rewarding come along just often enough to keep me from quitting. Because it's a really stupid, stupid life. And also, I'm too old to learn a trade. What is a role/production/process that you're really proud of? SM: I think that would have to be a toss-up for me. Pre-Dark and Stormy that would have to be Arcadia at Theater in the Round. Because I had never done an accent onstage, I had never done a period piece quite like that. It was a lot of firsts for me. And I felt for the first time, on that show, I just got what I was doing. There was no looking at the script and saying, They want me to what? What is this?! I felt like I, for whatever reason, that role, for me, that role made sense. And then with Dark and Stormy, the play we're doing right now, The Receptionist, I'm incredibly proud of what I've learned from the people I'm working with. The caliber of the people I'm working with in this show is unbelievable! Across the board. I can only hope that I'm succeeding in giving as good as I'm getting. BM: There are a number of things I've done on the big stages that I'm super proud of. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf that I did back in 2001 was really fantastic and fun. Directing Matt Amendt's play The Comedian's Tragedy and developing that into a great evening of theater, I'm really proud of the work we did on that. And then the Dark and Stormy producing work. There's just so much that goes into it that you normally don't have to deal with. So there's a great sense of accomplishment in putting together an evening that works. What is a role/production/process that challenged you? BM: Antony and Cleopatra was probably my least favorite experience. It starts with the pleather pants that didn't breathe with the attendant crotch sweat. And there was the way many of us were treated as living scenery. It wasn't a particularly well told story I didn't think. Everybody was unhappy on that production. SM: Doing Weekend Comedy at the Old Log. It was one of those situations where you got ten days of rehearsal for a six and a half month run of a play that just wasn't a good play. It just didn't work and I didn't have chemistry with the actor I was working with at the time, and I was trying to find that in a short amount of time. But we did the best we could and there were moments in there that were really great and I loved working with Michael (Tezla) and Michelle (Cassiopi) and Don (Stolz). I'm very grateful I got my Equity card on that show, but it just didn't work. Even after six months. What's your favorite word? BM: You know, I want to say "barrier," but only because that was my best friend Ken Anderson's favorite word in 3rd grade. I think now I'm saying "complexity." SM: I'm going to judge myself here but the first word that came to my mind was "triumphant." "Woof!" That's my second favorite word, "woof." What's your least favorite word? SM: "No." BM: "Scabrous." SM: That's so fancy! And mine comes with the caveat that I'm grateful for every time I've been told no, because something good has come out if it. What turns you on? SM: Charisma. Intelligence. Humor. Spontaneity. BM: The sound of crunching snow under my feet. And weather. SM: I love weather, but I hate winter. And thunder and lightning! Yup. What turns you off? SM: Stuffiness. Rigidity. A closed mind. Saying no after I've given you a really good reason to say yes. Snideness. People who cannot admit that they were wrong and cannot change their mind about something or someone. BM: Selfishness. What sound or noise do you love? SM: A cat purring. Classical music on piano. An acoustic guitar. BM: Train whistles and distant thunder. What sound or noise do you hate? BM: Really high soprano opera singing. SM: Crows. The caw of crows. The whining of dogs and dog barking. I'm a cat person. The drill of the dentist. What's your favorite curse word? SM: Fuck. BM: Fuck. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? SM: A doctor, a meteorologist or a paleontologist. Or a teacher. BM: A lawyer. What profession would you not like to attempt? BM: A restaurateur. SM: Commission sales. Anything janitorial, because I have a problem with germs. If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say to you when you arrive at the pearly gates? SM: You did a good job. (Long pause) Wow, I need other people's approval. BM: Come on in, the party's to the right. Thanks to Marcel Proust, Bernard Pivot and James Lipton for inspiring our questions.