RADIO/PODCAST APPEARANCES
Jaime speaks with LA Theatre Bites about Mr. Burns and the future of science fiction and technology on stage.
Jaime talks to The Mutant Season's Gil about Astro Boy and the God of Comics at the Nerdist Studios.
Jaime and French Stewart discuss Stoneface with Dean Haglund and Phil Leirness on the Chillpak Hollywood Hour.
Jaime and Hearts Like Fists producer and lead actress on the Sheena Metal Show.
Jaime and Sacred Fools' managing Director Padraic Duffy hype the theater's 14th season on KPCC's Off Ramp.
Jaime speaks with LA Theatre Bites about Mr. Burns and the future of science fiction and technology on stage.
Jaime talks to The Mutant Season's Gil about Astro Boy and the God of Comics at the Nerdist Studios.
Jaime and French Stewart discuss Stoneface with Dean Haglund and Phil Leirness on the Chillpak Hollywood Hour.
Jaime and Hearts Like Fists producer and lead actress on the Sheena Metal Show.
Jaime and Sacred Fools' managing Director Padraic Duffy hype the theater's 14th season on KPCC's Off Ramp.
SELECT FEATURE ARTICLES
Astro Boy and the God of Comics Brings Live-Action Drawing to the Stage
by HALEY HUNTLEY
for @THISSTAGE MAGAZINE
How many pages make a play? In the case of Natsu Onoda Power’s Astro Boy and the God of Comics, the answer is eight. When Sacred Fools set out to produce the Astro Boy West Coast premiere, director Jaime Robledo armed himself with eight pages, a few visual aids from the premiere production, and an Avengers-style production team.
“We did a read-through of the script during our first rehearsal,” Robledo remembers, “and my explanation of the mechanics of the play took longer than reading the script itself.”
In twelve retrogressive “episodes,” Astro Boy explores the life and career of cartoonist and animator Osamu Tezuka (1928-89), whose prolific and innovative work was so influential it earned him the title of “Godfather of Manga.” With its exaggerated mid-century set, Astro Boy drops audiences head first into the world of the titular character, Astro Boy — one of Tezuka’s most famous — and eventually navigates into the non-fiction universe for glimpses into Tezuka’s biography, ultimately resisting distinction between the human story and its cartoon backdrop.
Astro Boy approaches technical challenges with feverish innovation. How do you bring a two-dimensional character to life? Actors collaborate to draw Astro Boy in a mural. One actor embodies him in full costume. The ensemble forms a “human machine” to construct Astro Boy from metal ducting (in a 3/4-time sequence that took three entire rehearsal days to choreograph). They puppeteer an Astro Boy doll against an animated cityscape projected on the back wall, to give the illusion that he’s flying. In bringing this character to life in so many ways, the production seems to celebrate the relationship between creator and creation with a loving, Pinocchio-like spirit. It has its Peter Pan moments, too, because while Astro Boy never grows up and never dies, Tezuka’s own mortality — from his battle-born youth to his secret struggle with cancer — strikes solemn notes throughout.
Astro Boy is also jam-packed with live-action drawing sequences, wherein actors render works of art on blank canvases right before the audience’s eyes, often while delivering lines or performing some other physical act (Robledo prioritized multitasking in the audition process). Each drawing sequence promises a moment of reveal, but the execution is the real surprise, as Astro Boy insists on reinventing its own techniques. In one sequence, actors form a sort of relay team to draw a single picture. In another, they draw on pieces of a portrait on disparate tiles and assemble them like puzzle pieces. Astro Boy’s drawing sequences aren’t effortless; they’re effortful. In their frenzied yet methodical way, they reveal the nuances of Tezuka’s lifelong, obsessive work.
Astro Boy is such a visual play that its translation from page to stage raised questions. “I knew what the play should be,” Robledo says, “But not exactly how to get there.” The show’s live-art director Aviva Pressman had understudied the original production, and she was able to offer insight in places, but Robledo wanted to avoid simply recreating the original, and thus enlisted his own imagination and the imagination of his brain trust. For example, parts of Power’s script read like poetry:
People draw on the paper wall.
A loud bombing sound.
Image of a mushroom cloud.
The embodiment of this moment on stage adheres to the stage directions, but also transcends them. Actors labor rapidly to draw a wartime mural — the first drawing in the show to abandon Tezuka’s style in favor of a more lifelike image — while sound effects and projections of blood spatter mimic gunfire. The tempo hastens and the tone grows urgent and ominous as the play explores Tezuka’s origin story and enters into the historical realm. Says Robledo: “Natsu laid out a wonderful template, a skeleton, that both focused me on the play’s intent and left a lot of room for interpretation.”
Robledo and his team not only colored in the world of the play — they blew the world all the way out, using four projectors, a scrim, a wall-turned-sketchbook, custom video animation, and countless other techniques. “We had to use the technology to tell this story,” says Robledo, because Tezuka’s work itself was so technical and visual. But Robledo felt an equal draw to the bones of the story, to Tezuka himself.
“I love a good spectacle,” he says, “but if there is no point to it, why bother? …The last thing I want is to create something beautiful, but ultimately hollow.”
by HALEY HUNTLEY
for @THISSTAGE MAGAZINE
How many pages make a play? In the case of Natsu Onoda Power’s Astro Boy and the God of Comics, the answer is eight. When Sacred Fools set out to produce the Astro Boy West Coast premiere, director Jaime Robledo armed himself with eight pages, a few visual aids from the premiere production, and an Avengers-style production team.
“We did a read-through of the script during our first rehearsal,” Robledo remembers, “and my explanation of the mechanics of the play took longer than reading the script itself.”
In twelve retrogressive “episodes,” Astro Boy explores the life and career of cartoonist and animator Osamu Tezuka (1928-89), whose prolific and innovative work was so influential it earned him the title of “Godfather of Manga.” With its exaggerated mid-century set, Astro Boy drops audiences head first into the world of the titular character, Astro Boy — one of Tezuka’s most famous — and eventually navigates into the non-fiction universe for glimpses into Tezuka’s biography, ultimately resisting distinction between the human story and its cartoon backdrop.
Astro Boy approaches technical challenges with feverish innovation. How do you bring a two-dimensional character to life? Actors collaborate to draw Astro Boy in a mural. One actor embodies him in full costume. The ensemble forms a “human machine” to construct Astro Boy from metal ducting (in a 3/4-time sequence that took three entire rehearsal days to choreograph). They puppeteer an Astro Boy doll against an animated cityscape projected on the back wall, to give the illusion that he’s flying. In bringing this character to life in so many ways, the production seems to celebrate the relationship between creator and creation with a loving, Pinocchio-like spirit. It has its Peter Pan moments, too, because while Astro Boy never grows up and never dies, Tezuka’s own mortality — from his battle-born youth to his secret struggle with cancer — strikes solemn notes throughout.
Astro Boy is also jam-packed with live-action drawing sequences, wherein actors render works of art on blank canvases right before the audience’s eyes, often while delivering lines or performing some other physical act (Robledo prioritized multitasking in the audition process). Each drawing sequence promises a moment of reveal, but the execution is the real surprise, as Astro Boy insists on reinventing its own techniques. In one sequence, actors form a sort of relay team to draw a single picture. In another, they draw on pieces of a portrait on disparate tiles and assemble them like puzzle pieces. Astro Boy’s drawing sequences aren’t effortless; they’re effortful. In their frenzied yet methodical way, they reveal the nuances of Tezuka’s lifelong, obsessive work.
Astro Boy is such a visual play that its translation from page to stage raised questions. “I knew what the play should be,” Robledo says, “But not exactly how to get there.” The show’s live-art director Aviva Pressman had understudied the original production, and she was able to offer insight in places, but Robledo wanted to avoid simply recreating the original, and thus enlisted his own imagination and the imagination of his brain trust. For example, parts of Power’s script read like poetry:
People draw on the paper wall.
A loud bombing sound.
Image of a mushroom cloud.
The embodiment of this moment on stage adheres to the stage directions, but also transcends them. Actors labor rapidly to draw a wartime mural — the first drawing in the show to abandon Tezuka’s style in favor of a more lifelike image — while sound effects and projections of blood spatter mimic gunfire. The tempo hastens and the tone grows urgent and ominous as the play explores Tezuka’s origin story and enters into the historical realm. Says Robledo: “Natsu laid out a wonderful template, a skeleton, that both focused me on the play’s intent and left a lot of room for interpretation.”
Robledo and his team not only colored in the world of the play — they blew the world all the way out, using four projectors, a scrim, a wall-turned-sketchbook, custom video animation, and countless other techniques. “We had to use the technology to tell this story,” says Robledo, because Tezuka’s work itself was so technical and visual. But Robledo felt an equal draw to the bones of the story, to Tezuka himself.
“I love a good spectacle,” he says, “but if there is no point to it, why bother? …The last thing I want is to create something beautiful, but ultimately hollow.”
Playing in the Big House Moving Stoneface from Sacred Fools’s Storefront Theater to the Pasadena Playhouse
By Jaime Robledo
Editor’s Note: Vanessa Claire Stewart’s biographical drama about Buster Keaton, Stoneface, premiered in east Hollywood at the 99-Seat Sacred Fools Theater on May 25, 2012. That production was widely heralded critically and enjoyed an extended run. Though he didn’t see the Sacred Fools production, Pasadena Playhouse’s artistic director Sheldon Epps read the script and chose to stage the play with the same director at his mid-size union theater – a rare step “up” for a local production initially presented in an intimate venue. Epps also approved using the same leading actor, French Stewart, and many of Sacred Fools’ acting ensemble. The Pasadena version, however, did add musical theater star Daisy Eagan.
It’s a hell of a thing knowing something’s your “big break.” It’s equal parts exciting and terrifying: exciting because it’s ultimately the result of your hard work plus the strange alchemy of timing and good fortune; terrifying because, well, now that you have this opportunity, you have to actually do something with it. Huzzah and Holy Shit!
The first iteration of the Buster Keaton bioplay Stoneface was a freak of nature. The reviews, the sold out houses, and the extraordinary reaction of audiences to the play were more gratifying than I – or anyone else involved in the production – could have imagined. 99-seat theater is tough, often thankless work. Getting a play opened is no small feat. Getting a consistent audience is a tiny miracle. Gaining critical acclaim at the same time is equally astonishing. Then, moving to a big theater in a town that typically imports its shows to those larger houses is damn near impossible. None of this was supposed to happen . . .
We could have been satisfied with the journey of the original Sacred Fools run from open to close, with the L.A. Weekly Awards accolades as the cherry on top. But we got a tap on the shoulder from L.A. theater superhero Sheldon Epps [Pasadena Playhouse’s Artistic Director]. Apparently we weren’t nearly done because Sheldon saw the promise of a grander vision in this little-play-that-could on the historic Pasadena Playhouse stage – a theater that first opened when silent movie star Buster Keaton was making Go West less than a few miles away. Our band of clowns couldn’t have asked for a better new home.
For the past few weeks, we’ve relocated into that home; literally moving on up to a city north east of Sacred Fools’ Hollywood home, and settling onto a stage that’s three times as deep and almost twice as wide as our previous one. The audience for any week of the run could exceed the numbers of the entire Sacred Fools run. It’s an immense undertaking. Budgets are bigger and you hear people say “yes” a whole lot more when compared to the often-restrictive environs of small theater. Luxuries such as “fly tower space” and “union staffed scenery workshops” are at your disposal. (I haven’t had a fly space to work with since college.) And a large organization that draws national attention has your art in its hands. It’s thrilling.
Still, despite all the fancy trappings and comforts, [playwright] Vanessa Claire Stewart, the cast, and I are worked hard to translate the show to a wider audience and the dauntingly cavernous stage. Everything was scaled up; the projections, the stunt work.
The sets and costumes are bigger and better. We’ve all had two years of living since our last performance at Sacred Fools, and those experiences have found their way into the artistic choices we’ve made. We’ve delved deeper into the characters and made some additions to the script to provide depth and clarity. At the same time, we’re keeping the heart of the show intact. The moments most cherished by audiences at Sacred Fools are still there and the soul of the piece. Our leading man, French Stewart, never wavers or falters. We’ve also added the brilliant Daisy Eagan to the thoroughbreds already in our stable.
Daisy Eagan and French Stewart in Pasadena Playhouse’s production of “Stoneface.” (Photo by Jim Cox)
In the end though, it’s just a matter of decimal points. The work is the work, no matter the budget. The spirit of invention is the same and we approach the work with the same ethic that we had as when we originally created Stoneface.
For many of us, the Pasadena version of Stoneface is a huge step up; for others it’s a return to the type of stages they are accustomed to. Either way, we’re all riding this General together. What French hoped for when he imagined he would play Buster Keaton one day, what Vanessa imagined as she typed away on her laptop, what I dreamed up as I watched countless Buster Keaton movies on Turner Classic Movies have all lead to this point. We’re making something truly special that is hopefully deserving of Keaton’s legacy and an example that the greatest ideas can come from the most humble beginnings. It’s our “big break” but, in a way, it feels like we’ve been here before.
By Jaime Robledo
Editor’s Note: Vanessa Claire Stewart’s biographical drama about Buster Keaton, Stoneface, premiered in east Hollywood at the 99-Seat Sacred Fools Theater on May 25, 2012. That production was widely heralded critically and enjoyed an extended run. Though he didn’t see the Sacred Fools production, Pasadena Playhouse’s artistic director Sheldon Epps read the script and chose to stage the play with the same director at his mid-size union theater – a rare step “up” for a local production initially presented in an intimate venue. Epps also approved using the same leading actor, French Stewart, and many of Sacred Fools’ acting ensemble. The Pasadena version, however, did add musical theater star Daisy Eagan.
It’s a hell of a thing knowing something’s your “big break.” It’s equal parts exciting and terrifying: exciting because it’s ultimately the result of your hard work plus the strange alchemy of timing and good fortune; terrifying because, well, now that you have this opportunity, you have to actually do something with it. Huzzah and Holy Shit!
The first iteration of the Buster Keaton bioplay Stoneface was a freak of nature. The reviews, the sold out houses, and the extraordinary reaction of audiences to the play were more gratifying than I – or anyone else involved in the production – could have imagined. 99-seat theater is tough, often thankless work. Getting a play opened is no small feat. Getting a consistent audience is a tiny miracle. Gaining critical acclaim at the same time is equally astonishing. Then, moving to a big theater in a town that typically imports its shows to those larger houses is damn near impossible. None of this was supposed to happen . . .
We could have been satisfied with the journey of the original Sacred Fools run from open to close, with the L.A. Weekly Awards accolades as the cherry on top. But we got a tap on the shoulder from L.A. theater superhero Sheldon Epps [Pasadena Playhouse’s Artistic Director]. Apparently we weren’t nearly done because Sheldon saw the promise of a grander vision in this little-play-that-could on the historic Pasadena Playhouse stage – a theater that first opened when silent movie star Buster Keaton was making Go West less than a few miles away. Our band of clowns couldn’t have asked for a better new home.
For the past few weeks, we’ve relocated into that home; literally moving on up to a city north east of Sacred Fools’ Hollywood home, and settling onto a stage that’s three times as deep and almost twice as wide as our previous one. The audience for any week of the run could exceed the numbers of the entire Sacred Fools run. It’s an immense undertaking. Budgets are bigger and you hear people say “yes” a whole lot more when compared to the often-restrictive environs of small theater. Luxuries such as “fly tower space” and “union staffed scenery workshops” are at your disposal. (I haven’t had a fly space to work with since college.) And a large organization that draws national attention has your art in its hands. It’s thrilling.
Still, despite all the fancy trappings and comforts, [playwright] Vanessa Claire Stewart, the cast, and I are worked hard to translate the show to a wider audience and the dauntingly cavernous stage. Everything was scaled up; the projections, the stunt work.
The sets and costumes are bigger and better. We’ve all had two years of living since our last performance at Sacred Fools, and those experiences have found their way into the artistic choices we’ve made. We’ve delved deeper into the characters and made some additions to the script to provide depth and clarity. At the same time, we’re keeping the heart of the show intact. The moments most cherished by audiences at Sacred Fools are still there and the soul of the piece. Our leading man, French Stewart, never wavers or falters. We’ve also added the brilliant Daisy Eagan to the thoroughbreds already in our stable.
Daisy Eagan and French Stewart in Pasadena Playhouse’s production of “Stoneface.” (Photo by Jim Cox)
In the end though, it’s just a matter of decimal points. The work is the work, no matter the budget. The spirit of invention is the same and we approach the work with the same ethic that we had as when we originally created Stoneface.
For many of us, the Pasadena version of Stoneface is a huge step up; for others it’s a return to the type of stages they are accustomed to. Either way, we’re all riding this General together. What French hoped for when he imagined he would play Buster Keaton one day, what Vanessa imagined as she typed away on her laptop, what I dreamed up as I watched countless Buster Keaton movies on Turner Classic Movies have all lead to this point. We’re making something truly special that is hopefully deserving of Keaton’s legacy and an example that the greatest ideas can come from the most humble beginnings. It’s our “big break” but, in a way, it feels like we’ve been here before.
JAIME ROBLEDO, THE POOR MAN'S JULIE TAYMOR
by BILL RADEN
for THE LA WEEKLY
Inside East Hollywood's Sacred Fools Theatre on a recent Sunday afternoon, actor Donal Thoms-Cappello is capering through a bizarre step of percussive, deliberate foot stomps, which alternate with clanking sound effects.
"No," a voice from the gloom interrupts, "there are three clanks." A shadow makes its way to the stage where, under the lights, it takes on the lanky features of writer-director Jaime Robledo, who sidles up to Thoms-Cappello and a stagehand pantomiming a Coney Island carousel to demonstrate: "So the first one should be bang [stomp], bang [stomp], and you can both laugh." Thoms-Cappello and Robledo both let out a laugh in time with the final stomp.
The step being rehearsed is part of a runaway-carousel scene, ripped from Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, for Robledo's new show, Watson and the Dark Art of Harry Houdini, beginning June 21. It is the kind of big, Broadway-grade spectacle on a small-stage budget that has given Robledo a reputation as the poor man's Julie Taymor -- the director who can stage the impossible.
That reputation was sealed in 2010, when Robledo's first satiric-vaudevillian riff on Conan Doyle (and this show's direct prequel), Watson: The Last Great Tale of the Legendary Sherlock Holmes, captured the imagination and praise of audiences and critics alike. It proved a huge hit for Sacred Fools and a big career boost for Robledo, who went on to stage the theater's boffo Buster Keaton bio-drama, Stoneface, to even greater acclaim last year. (That show has been picked up by the Pasadena Playhouse for a main-stage production later this season.)
During a break, the writer-director admits that he enjoys the challenge that comes with telling big stories on a small stage. "If a scenario scares the crap out of me, that's when I know I have to do it," Robledo says matter-of-factly. "I don't let any of the difficulties connected with putting it up deter me."
In the first Watson, those difficulties included such eventual coups de théâtre as staging a hot-air balloon flight, a hair-raising fight on a Turkish minaret and a re-creation of the Cliffs of Dover as Holmes and Watson pursued their quarry (and Holmes' very personal demons) across the European continent.
The new show ups the ante, taking the British crime-fighters across the Atlantic to the wilds of turn-of-the-century New York and a multiple-murder mystery involving spiritualism and Houdini himself. The runaway carousel is merely one of a number of choreographed stage stunts that comprise a re-creation of old Coney Island, which include Watson and Holmes riding a roller coaster and in a burlesqued foot chase through the stalls of the midway.
What the two Watsons have most in common, however, is an inventive visual wit and wryly anachronistic sense of humor, which pays fond homage to the Holmesian universe of Victorian scientific rationalism and cold deductive logic even as it gleefully tears it apart laugh by satiric laugh.
"There's a lot of irony in there," Robledo says. "I make Beatles jokes, because there's a scene that takes place in Liverpool. I make a joke about the Flying Spaghetti Monster, if you know what that is. But [the comedy succeeds] because I'm writing for certain [actors], and I know how they make things funny. ... So Joe Fria [who plays Holmes] has this rubbery body and this just insanely sharp, improv-comedy mind. Our new Freud is Graham Skipper, who was Herbert West in [the L.A. Weekly Award-winning] Re-Animator: The Musical, and he's got this high energy bursting from within -- just bat-shit insane kind of humor, which is a little different from [original Freud] French Stewart, who is a different kind of clown."
Where Robledo's Watson franchise most departs from Conan Doyle is in its elevation of Sherlock's underrated sidekick to star billing. If Watson isn't exactly the hero of the story, neither is he merely Holmes' stooge. The idea for the job promotion was inspired in part by Robledo's admiration for more recent, psychologically complex takes on Holmes that include the 1971 film adaptation of playwright James Goldman's They Might Be Giants and Nicholas Meyer's 1974 novel, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution.
Like those works, Robledo set out to "really kind of delve into that friendship between Holmes and Watson, and how they operate and what they mean to each other, and how one helps the other." And while he refuses to put explicitly Freudian labels on his creations, he doesn't deny that there is a bit of id and superego at work in their partnership.
"In my world," Robledo says, "Watson is the adult and Holmes is the child."
by BILL RADEN
for THE LA WEEKLY
Inside East Hollywood's Sacred Fools Theatre on a recent Sunday afternoon, actor Donal Thoms-Cappello is capering through a bizarre step of percussive, deliberate foot stomps, which alternate with clanking sound effects.
"No," a voice from the gloom interrupts, "there are three clanks." A shadow makes its way to the stage where, under the lights, it takes on the lanky features of writer-director Jaime Robledo, who sidles up to Thoms-Cappello and a stagehand pantomiming a Coney Island carousel to demonstrate: "So the first one should be bang [stomp], bang [stomp], and you can both laugh." Thoms-Cappello and Robledo both let out a laugh in time with the final stomp.
The step being rehearsed is part of a runaway-carousel scene, ripped from Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, for Robledo's new show, Watson and the Dark Art of Harry Houdini, beginning June 21. It is the kind of big, Broadway-grade spectacle on a small-stage budget that has given Robledo a reputation as the poor man's Julie Taymor -- the director who can stage the impossible.
That reputation was sealed in 2010, when Robledo's first satiric-vaudevillian riff on Conan Doyle (and this show's direct prequel), Watson: The Last Great Tale of the Legendary Sherlock Holmes, captured the imagination and praise of audiences and critics alike. It proved a huge hit for Sacred Fools and a big career boost for Robledo, who went on to stage the theater's boffo Buster Keaton bio-drama, Stoneface, to even greater acclaim last year. (That show has been picked up by the Pasadena Playhouse for a main-stage production later this season.)
During a break, the writer-director admits that he enjoys the challenge that comes with telling big stories on a small stage. "If a scenario scares the crap out of me, that's when I know I have to do it," Robledo says matter-of-factly. "I don't let any of the difficulties connected with putting it up deter me."
In the first Watson, those difficulties included such eventual coups de théâtre as staging a hot-air balloon flight, a hair-raising fight on a Turkish minaret and a re-creation of the Cliffs of Dover as Holmes and Watson pursued their quarry (and Holmes' very personal demons) across the European continent.
The new show ups the ante, taking the British crime-fighters across the Atlantic to the wilds of turn-of-the-century New York and a multiple-murder mystery involving spiritualism and Houdini himself. The runaway carousel is merely one of a number of choreographed stage stunts that comprise a re-creation of old Coney Island, which include Watson and Holmes riding a roller coaster and in a burlesqued foot chase through the stalls of the midway.
What the two Watsons have most in common, however, is an inventive visual wit and wryly anachronistic sense of humor, which pays fond homage to the Holmesian universe of Victorian scientific rationalism and cold deductive logic even as it gleefully tears it apart laugh by satiric laugh.
"There's a lot of irony in there," Robledo says. "I make Beatles jokes, because there's a scene that takes place in Liverpool. I make a joke about the Flying Spaghetti Monster, if you know what that is. But [the comedy succeeds] because I'm writing for certain [actors], and I know how they make things funny. ... So Joe Fria [who plays Holmes] has this rubbery body and this just insanely sharp, improv-comedy mind. Our new Freud is Graham Skipper, who was Herbert West in [the L.A. Weekly Award-winning] Re-Animator: The Musical, and he's got this high energy bursting from within -- just bat-shit insane kind of humor, which is a little different from [original Freud] French Stewart, who is a different kind of clown."
Where Robledo's Watson franchise most departs from Conan Doyle is in its elevation of Sherlock's underrated sidekick to star billing. If Watson isn't exactly the hero of the story, neither is he merely Holmes' stooge. The idea for the job promotion was inspired in part by Robledo's admiration for more recent, psychologically complex takes on Holmes that include the 1971 film adaptation of playwright James Goldman's They Might Be Giants and Nicholas Meyer's 1974 novel, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution.
Like those works, Robledo set out to "really kind of delve into that friendship between Holmes and Watson, and how they operate and what they mean to each other, and how one helps the other." And while he refuses to put explicitly Freudian labels on his creations, he doesn't deny that there is a bit of id and superego at work in their partnership.
"In my world," Robledo says, "Watson is the adult and Holmes is the child."
ROBLEDO'S ROAD
by Pauline Adamek
for LA Stage Times
On the directing page of Jaime Robledo’s personal website a quote leaps out — “I seek out high-concept projects with a smart, twisted sense of humor.”
It’s a guiding objective that is very much in evidence in the work of this imaginative 36-year-old writer, director and actor. Robledo’s star is ascending. He’s receiving accolades for directing the current hit at Sacred Fools Theater, Stoneface: the Rise and Fall and Rise of Buster Keaton. Written by actor/singer/playwright Vanessa Claire Stewart, Stoneface stars her husband French Stewart, who plays an older version of the iconic movie comic whose career was almost destroyed by alcoholism, while Joe Fria appears as the younger Keaton.
Now Robledo is directing Hearts Like Fists, an ambitious one-act comedy about female superheroes opening Friday at Theatre of NOTE. In October Robledo will direct Kong: A Goddamn 30-foot Gorilla for SkyPilot Theatre. He’s currently writing the sequel to his 2010 play Watson, which had a second run in 2011. Robledo will also direct its sequel, entitled Watson and the Dark Art of Harry Houdini — scheduled to open at Sacred Fools in June 2013. It’s shaping up to be a busy year for the talented artist.
Sketch Comedy Roots
Robledo graduated with a BFA in theater from the University of Mississippi in 1998 and moved to LA shortly thereafter. He says he’s been “bouncing around” Sacred Fools since 2003, admitting, “I wasn’t really a company member until about 2007-2008.”
Making the transition from acting to writing and directing was a natural evolution of his skills. Robledo formed a sketch comedy troupe with Henry Dittman and Scott Leggett (stars of Watson) called Prank. Recalls Robledo, “It was me, Henry, Scott and a guy named Rob Hubler who has since switched careers. We did that for a time, just trying stuff out.” The Prank team appeared at various spots around town, including the Comedy Store in LA, where it presented an hour-long evening with a conceptual thread, with one sketch flowing into the next.
“Every other week we’d have a new hour-long show. We would rehearse constantly — just us in Scott’s apartment trying out material. ‘No, it’s not good, let’s re-work that.’ And I loved doing that.” That was when Robledo realized he had a knack for writing and directing. “I’ve never stopped,” he grins a little bashfully.
Around 2003, he parlayed those sketch-writing skills into a late-night series at Sacred Fools called Crime Scene, which was the precursor to the company’s late-night Serial Killers series. “Then I got into Serial Killers and I just took to it."
Serial Killers is a cutthroat showdown between episodic plays. Describes Robledo, “At its most basic, it’s ‘five plays enter, three plays leave.’ You have from five to 10 minutes to tell a chapter of your story and then the audience votes to see which three of the five come back the next week to continue their story. If you lose after the first week, then you write something else. You continue until you’re voted out, or you have a play-off where you may get to win, essentially. You finish your story and then the audience votes for the final serial.”
Watson: The Last Great Tale of the Legendary Sherlock Holmes was developed in this intense, hothouse environment where the writers are given only six days to write, cast, rehearse and tech each new chapter in their saga. The competition went on for 21 weeks (in tandem with the regular season). In 2009 it was Watson and Robledo that emerged victorious, having escaped elimination each nerve-wracking week.
Says Robledo, “The people who write the whole story in advance usually don’t win. You want to watch the audience, you want to know what plays, what sells. So if you have a joke that you’ve written in the first week, then you call back to it the sixth week, it’s no good if it wasn’t funny the first week. Or if you find a character that everyone loves, you keep bringing him in. And that’s what French was as Sigmund Freud; I realized I couldn’t get rid of him. He originally was supposed to be just in two episodes, but I had to write him into the play.” Stewart portrayed a wildly eccentric Freud as well as a bizarre Queen Victoria.
Watson was Robledo’s first full-length play that he both wrote and directed. The long-running and extended production gained raves and award nominations, including five 2011 LA Weekly Theatre Award nominations for cast and creative team, winning the award for outstanding comedy direction for Robledo. Watson was also nominated for four Ovation Awards: best actor in a play — Joe Fria; best featured actor in a play — French Stewart and Henry Dittman; and best director of a play — Robledo. Dittman, alone, took home a coveted prize.
Watson examined Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous creations — Sherlock Holmes, Dr. John H. Watson, the villainous Professor Moriarty and the elusive and ravishingly beautiful Irene Adler, positing Watson as the central character. “My first draft was basically taking the best stuff from the 15-16 episodes from Serial Killers that I patched all together. Some of the bits, like the horse chase scene and all action sequences worked very well. But the play seemed to be like going from action sequence to action sequence to action. The main thrust of the show — what’s in the mysterious box and the political intrigue — that was all new.”
Stewart has nothing but high praise for his frequent collaborator. “I love Jaime Robledo. Love him. Through sheer imagination, he can make a hundred dollar budget look like a million. He turns paper into storms and chairs into horses. I’ve worked with him four times now and the process is always the same. He does a stunning amount of homework, and then shows up at rehearsal and stares at the wall for the first 20 minutes. But at a certain point something locks in and his eyes change. He gets to work and he doesn’t stop. I don’t believe Stoneface would be possible without him. He is completely primed to move up the theatrical food chain for one reason. The more toys you give him, the more he gives you.”
Stoneface — A Silent Movie on Stage
Vanessa Claire Stewart, who had written and co-starred as Keely Smith in Louis and Keely: Live at the Sahara, was inspired to research Buster Keaton after learning that her husband was interested in playing the legendary comedian. Her resulting play unfolds as a series of vignettes of Keaton’s troubled life and fluctuating career, in which real life and reel life are merged.
While the subject matter is often dark, there are definitely laughs to be had, especially in the sequences of silent comedy bits — one-take gags and elaborate physical routines taken straight from some of Keaton’s most famous silent pictures and reproduced live on stage by the cast, as guided by Robledo.
The show launches with a film prelude. The main cast members (Stewart as Buster, Scott Leggett as Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and Tegan Ashton Cohan as Natalie) individually emerge from the small theater’s foyer, behind the audience, and cross upstage to a large projection screen. Each character then steps into a silent, black-and-white movie-in-progress. It requires careful planning, visual trickery and split-second timing.
“When we first started working on Stoneface,” says Vanessa Claire Stewart, “Jaime said the most beautiful thing that a writer could ever hear – ‘Write what you want and I’ll figure out how to do it.’ From the moment he said that, I knew I had no limits and was able to have free rein on the contents of Buster Keaton’s head — a world that had one foot in movie magic and another foot in the tragic circumstances of reality. Whatever I threw at him, be it an underwater scene or a boxing match where he battles his own memory, Jaime was able to pull off. He’s one of the most imaginative theater directors I’ve ever met and we were lucky to have him on board. Stoneface could not have been done without him.”
Hearts Like Fists
Robledo’s current project Hearts Like Fists has “kick-ass chicks wielding nunchucks, epic love stories and a villainous mastermind who just wants to be loved,” he grins. Written by Adam Szymkowicz, this is an action-packed adventure romance set in the surreal world of female crime-fighting superheroes. Nurses by day, skilled warriors by night, these ferocious femmes battle the dastardly and elusive Dr. X and his deadly war against romance.
Early reports indicate that Hearts Like Fists is ambitious, featuring intricate fights choreographed by Andrew Armani, and cutthroat timing to multiple technical cues (over 400 for a 90-minute, one-act show). Sound designer Mark McClain Wilson describes it as “a film on stage,” adding, “As a designer, working with Jaime is great for two reasons. First off, Jaime’s vision for the theater is quite large in scope, sometimes almost cinematic, so he gives you a very large field to play in. Secondly, what’s refreshing is that he has great trust in the artists he surrounds himself with, both actors and designers. He trusts that his people will bring in the goods. When he guides, he does so with a very easy but steady hand. His decision-making is sharp and direct, but it is never something that hovers over you. That fine line between knowing what you want, yet not micromanaging to the point where you stifle the impulsive and creative freedom of the artists around you, is a difficult one to find. Jaime walks there quite dexterously, and it makes for a very engaging and fun creative experience.”
Robledo describes Hearts Like Fists as a satire that is “comic book-inspired. The dialogue is very much like what you would see in a thought bubble. There is no subtext — it’s what they’re feeling. We deal with a lot of superhero traits such as secret identities. The main crisis for the lead character is whether she can handle being a superhero and be in a relationship at the same time. It is kind of a metaphor for dealing with a broken heart.”
Musing over his recent successes, Robledo says, “With Watson and then Stoneface, I couldn’t have imagined any better ‘one-two punch’ in a career. I mean, Stoneface is only the fourth play that I’ve directed. We have a lot of people that really care about the show and so do the audiences.”
“If I said, ‘All right. I want to direct a play, and it’s going to have these reviews and it’s going to over-sell and have standing ovations every night’ — that’s a pipe dream, and yet it’s happening with this show. I decided after Watson that this year I wasn’t going to say ‘no’ to anything. I’m just going to put my head down and work and when I come out at the end of it, I’ll be where I want to be. That’s starting to happen.”
by Pauline Adamek
for LA Stage Times
On the directing page of Jaime Robledo’s personal website a quote leaps out — “I seek out high-concept projects with a smart, twisted sense of humor.”
It’s a guiding objective that is very much in evidence in the work of this imaginative 36-year-old writer, director and actor. Robledo’s star is ascending. He’s receiving accolades for directing the current hit at Sacred Fools Theater, Stoneface: the Rise and Fall and Rise of Buster Keaton. Written by actor/singer/playwright Vanessa Claire Stewart, Stoneface stars her husband French Stewart, who plays an older version of the iconic movie comic whose career was almost destroyed by alcoholism, while Joe Fria appears as the younger Keaton.
Now Robledo is directing Hearts Like Fists, an ambitious one-act comedy about female superheroes opening Friday at Theatre of NOTE. In October Robledo will direct Kong: A Goddamn 30-foot Gorilla for SkyPilot Theatre. He’s currently writing the sequel to his 2010 play Watson, which had a second run in 2011. Robledo will also direct its sequel, entitled Watson and the Dark Art of Harry Houdini — scheduled to open at Sacred Fools in June 2013. It’s shaping up to be a busy year for the talented artist.
Sketch Comedy Roots
Robledo graduated with a BFA in theater from the University of Mississippi in 1998 and moved to LA shortly thereafter. He says he’s been “bouncing around” Sacred Fools since 2003, admitting, “I wasn’t really a company member until about 2007-2008.”
Making the transition from acting to writing and directing was a natural evolution of his skills. Robledo formed a sketch comedy troupe with Henry Dittman and Scott Leggett (stars of Watson) called Prank. Recalls Robledo, “It was me, Henry, Scott and a guy named Rob Hubler who has since switched careers. We did that for a time, just trying stuff out.” The Prank team appeared at various spots around town, including the Comedy Store in LA, where it presented an hour-long evening with a conceptual thread, with one sketch flowing into the next.
“Every other week we’d have a new hour-long show. We would rehearse constantly — just us in Scott’s apartment trying out material. ‘No, it’s not good, let’s re-work that.’ And I loved doing that.” That was when Robledo realized he had a knack for writing and directing. “I’ve never stopped,” he grins a little bashfully.
Around 2003, he parlayed those sketch-writing skills into a late-night series at Sacred Fools called Crime Scene, which was the precursor to the company’s late-night Serial Killers series. “Then I got into Serial Killers and I just took to it."
Serial Killers is a cutthroat showdown between episodic plays. Describes Robledo, “At its most basic, it’s ‘five plays enter, three plays leave.’ You have from five to 10 minutes to tell a chapter of your story and then the audience votes to see which three of the five come back the next week to continue their story. If you lose after the first week, then you write something else. You continue until you’re voted out, or you have a play-off where you may get to win, essentially. You finish your story and then the audience votes for the final serial.”
Watson: The Last Great Tale of the Legendary Sherlock Holmes was developed in this intense, hothouse environment where the writers are given only six days to write, cast, rehearse and tech each new chapter in their saga. The competition went on for 21 weeks (in tandem with the regular season). In 2009 it was Watson and Robledo that emerged victorious, having escaped elimination each nerve-wracking week.
Says Robledo, “The people who write the whole story in advance usually don’t win. You want to watch the audience, you want to know what plays, what sells. So if you have a joke that you’ve written in the first week, then you call back to it the sixth week, it’s no good if it wasn’t funny the first week. Or if you find a character that everyone loves, you keep bringing him in. And that’s what French was as Sigmund Freud; I realized I couldn’t get rid of him. He originally was supposed to be just in two episodes, but I had to write him into the play.” Stewart portrayed a wildly eccentric Freud as well as a bizarre Queen Victoria.
Watson was Robledo’s first full-length play that he both wrote and directed. The long-running and extended production gained raves and award nominations, including five 2011 LA Weekly Theatre Award nominations for cast and creative team, winning the award for outstanding comedy direction for Robledo. Watson was also nominated for four Ovation Awards: best actor in a play — Joe Fria; best featured actor in a play — French Stewart and Henry Dittman; and best director of a play — Robledo. Dittman, alone, took home a coveted prize.
Watson examined Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous creations — Sherlock Holmes, Dr. John H. Watson, the villainous Professor Moriarty and the elusive and ravishingly beautiful Irene Adler, positing Watson as the central character. “My first draft was basically taking the best stuff from the 15-16 episodes from Serial Killers that I patched all together. Some of the bits, like the horse chase scene and all action sequences worked very well. But the play seemed to be like going from action sequence to action sequence to action. The main thrust of the show — what’s in the mysterious box and the political intrigue — that was all new.”
Stewart has nothing but high praise for his frequent collaborator. “I love Jaime Robledo. Love him. Through sheer imagination, he can make a hundred dollar budget look like a million. He turns paper into storms and chairs into horses. I’ve worked with him four times now and the process is always the same. He does a stunning amount of homework, and then shows up at rehearsal and stares at the wall for the first 20 minutes. But at a certain point something locks in and his eyes change. He gets to work and he doesn’t stop. I don’t believe Stoneface would be possible without him. He is completely primed to move up the theatrical food chain for one reason. The more toys you give him, the more he gives you.”
Stoneface — A Silent Movie on Stage
Vanessa Claire Stewart, who had written and co-starred as Keely Smith in Louis and Keely: Live at the Sahara, was inspired to research Buster Keaton after learning that her husband was interested in playing the legendary comedian. Her resulting play unfolds as a series of vignettes of Keaton’s troubled life and fluctuating career, in which real life and reel life are merged.
While the subject matter is often dark, there are definitely laughs to be had, especially in the sequences of silent comedy bits — one-take gags and elaborate physical routines taken straight from some of Keaton’s most famous silent pictures and reproduced live on stage by the cast, as guided by Robledo.
The show launches with a film prelude. The main cast members (Stewart as Buster, Scott Leggett as Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and Tegan Ashton Cohan as Natalie) individually emerge from the small theater’s foyer, behind the audience, and cross upstage to a large projection screen. Each character then steps into a silent, black-and-white movie-in-progress. It requires careful planning, visual trickery and split-second timing.
“When we first started working on Stoneface,” says Vanessa Claire Stewart, “Jaime said the most beautiful thing that a writer could ever hear – ‘Write what you want and I’ll figure out how to do it.’ From the moment he said that, I knew I had no limits and was able to have free rein on the contents of Buster Keaton’s head — a world that had one foot in movie magic and another foot in the tragic circumstances of reality. Whatever I threw at him, be it an underwater scene or a boxing match where he battles his own memory, Jaime was able to pull off. He’s one of the most imaginative theater directors I’ve ever met and we were lucky to have him on board. Stoneface could not have been done without him.”
Hearts Like Fists
Robledo’s current project Hearts Like Fists has “kick-ass chicks wielding nunchucks, epic love stories and a villainous mastermind who just wants to be loved,” he grins. Written by Adam Szymkowicz, this is an action-packed adventure romance set in the surreal world of female crime-fighting superheroes. Nurses by day, skilled warriors by night, these ferocious femmes battle the dastardly and elusive Dr. X and his deadly war against romance.
Early reports indicate that Hearts Like Fists is ambitious, featuring intricate fights choreographed by Andrew Armani, and cutthroat timing to multiple technical cues (over 400 for a 90-minute, one-act show). Sound designer Mark McClain Wilson describes it as “a film on stage,” adding, “As a designer, working with Jaime is great for two reasons. First off, Jaime’s vision for the theater is quite large in scope, sometimes almost cinematic, so he gives you a very large field to play in. Secondly, what’s refreshing is that he has great trust in the artists he surrounds himself with, both actors and designers. He trusts that his people will bring in the goods. When he guides, he does so with a very easy but steady hand. His decision-making is sharp and direct, but it is never something that hovers over you. That fine line between knowing what you want, yet not micromanaging to the point where you stifle the impulsive and creative freedom of the artists around you, is a difficult one to find. Jaime walks there quite dexterously, and it makes for a very engaging and fun creative experience.”
Robledo describes Hearts Like Fists as a satire that is “comic book-inspired. The dialogue is very much like what you would see in a thought bubble. There is no subtext — it’s what they’re feeling. We deal with a lot of superhero traits such as secret identities. The main crisis for the lead character is whether she can handle being a superhero and be in a relationship at the same time. It is kind of a metaphor for dealing with a broken heart.”
Musing over his recent successes, Robledo says, “With Watson and then Stoneface, I couldn’t have imagined any better ‘one-two punch’ in a career. I mean, Stoneface is only the fourth play that I’ve directed. We have a lot of people that really care about the show and so do the audiences.”
“If I said, ‘All right. I want to direct a play, and it’s going to have these reviews and it’s going to over-sell and have standing ovations every night’ — that’s a pipe dream, and yet it’s happening with this show. I decided after Watson that this year I wasn’t going to say ‘no’ to anything. I’m just going to put my head down and work and when I come out at the end of it, I’ll be where I want to be. That’s starting to happen.”