Chronicles of O’Neill; The lion, the sorcerer and the wordsmith

Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, August, 2008


There’s been a long line of promising theatre artists that have strolled the green fields, napped in the hammocks and sat in the historic houses at the O’Neill Theatre Center. For over 40 years, this artistic haven for upcoming and settled playwrights, directors, designers, actors and critics have been a central part in developing talent.
At their nationals, the Kennedy Centre American College Theatre Festival (KC/ACTF) rewards a few promising student directors, designers and critics with the opportunity to be engaged in the world of the O’Neill and to perhaps, with a little luck, a little perseverance and the right open doors, one day shine as the future stars of American Theatre. Of this group, a young ferocious director, a witty playwright and critic and a magical sound designer, make-up the potential landscape of American theatre.

The Lion Director

Sitting on the sea porch at the Hammond house, cigarette pack and coffee within his grasp, 28-year old Devon Scalisi stares out at the four fawns in the O’Neill field. A smirk on his face, Scalisi sighs, lights a cigarette and finishes his rant.
“As a director, I need to be riding everyone else, having more energy than everyone else…it’s my fucking craft, my visceral nature, you got to invest yourself,”
Scalisi recently directed “Glengarry Glen Ross” at the Piano Factory Theatre in Boston. His theatre company, CounterProductions, was recently notified that they are considered for an Independent Reviewers of New England (IRNE) award.
Scalisi hasn’t always known what he’d like to tackle in life. At 19, he moved from Portland to New York to venture into the rapidly growing field of graphic design, a talent stemming from his childhood love of comics and children’s books. Sitting in a cubicle, four years later, the steely-eyed Scalisi felt an unnerving sensation in his heart—a sadness that he may be settling in the wrong profession.
“I couldn’t stand doing fucking graphic design for the man anymore, I fell into the machine,”
He quit his job and enrolled at Salem State University in Massachusetts, uncertain of the next challenge in his life. With the advice of a school counselor and his secret desire for theatre, Scalisi registered in a first-year acting class. He auditioned for every school play (landing principal parts in Julius Cesar, Zoo Story and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) but his curiosity unleashed his primal passion for directing.
His directorial debut, Twelve Angry Men (where he cast 6 men and 6 women), sent him to the ACTF regionals where Scalisi beat out graduate students from top theatre programs in New England and New York. Scalisi then represented his region at the nationals in Washington D.C. where after an interview with Wendy C. Goldberg, Artistic Director of the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, he was invited to work as Assistant Director in playwright Rachel Axler’s work in progress, Smudge.
Scalisi’s directing style borders on the cinematic. Every tableau he stages is an engaging image and once finely edited together generates a breathless rhythm. As he puts it, his style is “a medley of organized theatrical chaos,” devouring his audience. He obtains this level of urgency and commitment from his actors in rehearsal, where the young director has a “no holds barred” philosophy fueled by his love of all words in the English lexicon.
“My father was a pastor, we were at church three days a week growing up, I didn’t even say the word fuck until I was 18, but I use it now with my actors, my collaborators, I got to be real with them, and yeah, they’re taken aback at times but eventually, they get that my fucks are commas, periods in my speech, I love swearing, it’s part of language, part of my communication,”
Whether or not Scalisi’s manner of speech is suitable to all theatre artists is questionable but there’s no doubt that his message and style will clearly telegraph to his present and future audiences.

The Sorcerer of Sounds

The 23-year old Teruhisa “Terry” Uchiyama came to the O’Neill in a similar manner to Scalisi. His original score and sound design for a production of Oedipus at Sam Houston University in Texas landed him at nationals in Washington, culminating in a summer fellowship at the O’Neill as assistant sound designer. Although Uchiyama does not play any musical instrument, he has always been surrounded by the magic of music.
At five years old, Uchiyama remembers the evenings he spent at smoky Japanese Jazz clubs, sitting on stools listening to his jazz composer/musician father play to the crowds. Growing up with sounds around him, he developed a keen ear for the synthetic structure of music and the organic beauty of natural noise. At nineteen, with the support of his family, Uchiyama left Japan to study biology aspiring to become a geneticist. Three semesters later, as part of his degree requirements, Uchiyama registered for an acting class to fill his fine arts elective. Uchiyama was immediately bewitched by the theatre arts.
“My father was very upset, and still is, he doesn’t believe it’s possible to make a life in the arts, but I’m willing to risk it, to take the challenge,” Uchiyama reflects, smiles and confidently nods, his long brown hair slapping at his cheeks.
His optimism is sincere but well founded, as he has mastered his own instrument for creation; an Apple computer filled with sound wizardry. His designs encompass mélanges of the natural and the artificial. Multiple layers of noise converge into a unifying tone always mirroring the rhythms on stage. Uchiyama understands the aesthetics of theatre believing in sound design as a supporting vehicle for audience catharsis. By attending the early process of a production, he finds the muse to his music.
“Sound is a language to me, it arouses my creativity. Rehearsals give me the emotion, [the] feelings I need, sounds come into my head and I try to recreate the emotions physically in my computer,”
With the current body of work Uchiyama possesses, his spellbinding design will capture the imagination of the productions he collaborates with.

The Witty Wordsmith

Swinging in the shade in the celebrated O’Neill hammock, the 23-year old Scott McCarrey bursts into drumming laughter, his spiky brown hair intact.
“I feel like a hippie, I just want people to like what I do,”
The humble McCarrey, a National Critics Institute Fellow and 2006 winner of the Richard A. Weaver award for best play (KC/ACTF), has little to worry about his likeability. Behind his Woody Allen-esque glasses, McCarrey stores his library of language, of characters and plots; key ingredients of his acceptance to the graduate school at NYU’s dramatic writing program. However, three years ago, a case of mistaken identity kept the young playwright from following a much different career path.
With aspirations to go to University of Texas-San Antonio to study film, McCarrey’s high school counselor sent the wrong S.A.T scores forcing McCarrey to register at Sam Houston University. Although a High School drama teacher told McCarrey that he would never grasp theatre, McCarrey declared himself a theatre major, the “genre seemed to fit” him.
In school, McCarrey excelled as actor and playwright quickly becoming a darling of his program. His plays “Robot Songs” and “Grand Canyon” captured the imagination of his faculty, other students and his community. His play, Grand Canyon, chronicles an unlikely carpool where Abraham Lincoln, Joseph Stalin and Jack Kerouac head to the famous landmark. His genre ranges from absurdist to realism, both mixed with focused comedic and tragic elements leaving readers with thought-provoking endings. There’s a charm to the sophisticated ideas he channels through his characters’ crispy and catchy dialogues.
“I try to consider every aspect, it’s never just black and white but my nature always falls towards laughter,”
Within McCarrey’s nature lies a fiery ambition, evident in his passionate speeches about theatre and about the world. With his plays capturing the essence of his personality, his values and beliefs, he journeys towards a warm destination in contemporary theatre.

For over forty summers, The Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center has acted as an establishing force in the creation of a collaborative network of theatre artists where promising newcomers work with established professionals to energize the future of theatre. Years later, these newcomers, now professionals of their own, complete the cycle by returning to teach future generations. These three aspiring theatre artists prove the effectiveness of the O’Neill philosophy and hopefully in the 40 years to come, they will return, like their predecessors, and share the fruits of their artistic labors.

Pasha Yamotahari
The Shaw Theatre Report