{"id":17,"date":"2015-04-21T18:14:55","date_gmt":"2015-04-21T18:14:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/richardengling.com\/blog\/?p=17"},"modified":"2018-07-17T18:15:51","modified_gmt":"2018-07-17T18:15:51","slug":"the-evolution-of-anna-in-the-afterlife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/richardengling.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/21\/the-evolution-of-anna-in-the-afterlife\/","title":{"rendered":"The Evolution of ANNA IN THE AFTERLIFE"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dramaturg<\/a>
Dramaturg Deborah Blumenthal<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/code><\/p>\n

By Deborah Blumenthal<\/p>\n

Anna in the Afterlife<\/em>\u00a0(companion play to Engling’s novel VISIONS OF ANNA) has had a long life, as it were. Playwright Richard Engling began working on the play in 2010, and it appeared in Polarity\u2019s Dionysos Cup Festival of New Plays in 2011. In the years since the festival, \u201cit\u2019s always been in this process of improvement,\u201d says Engling. There have been table reads, staged readings, and discussions, and he has enlisted feedback throughout the process from actors, director Susan Padveen, who has been on board since 2011, his co-founder Ann Keen, his daughter Zo\u00eb (also a writer), and dramaturg Deborah Blumenthal.<\/p>\n

\"Sheila<\/a>
Sheila Willis as Anna and Richard Engling as Matthew in rehearsal.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/code><\/p>\n

The play has undergone a lot of change in its five years in development, not the least of which is its title: the older version was not called Anna in the Afterlife<\/em> \u2013 it was called Absolution<\/em>, and did not actually take place in the afterlife, a development that now, according to Engling, \u201creally defines what the production looks like.\u201d Padveen recalls, \u201cI can\u2019t even remember the first form this play took\u2026. It\u2019s been really interesting to see it change in terms of the container for the story: the story has always been the same, but how it was told and what the structure was and what the arc of it was have really changed a lot, and in a really good way, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DSC_0157\"<\/a>
Kevin Grubb as Elliot, Richard Engling as Matthew and Shawna Tucker as Patty.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/code><\/p>\n

Anna\u2019s history, however, extends back farther than just the script\u2019s development process. When Engling\u2019s friend and fellow writer Fern Chertkow died in 1988, he wanted to craft a literary tribute to her. The result was his novel, Visions of Anna<\/em>, which later motivated him to write the play, although the play is much more inspired by than adapted from the novel: \u201c[several years after writing the book], an idea started coming to me to approach that material again, but for the stage\u2026 This was not an adaptation of the novel, this was a different way of approaching the same source material.\u201d Padveen agrees: \u201cI never felt that it was adapted from something else. I know that the story was the same, but I really felt that Richard attacked it as a stand-alone piece.\u201d The play, along with Chertkow’s\u00a0book\u00a0She Plays in Darkness<\/em>\u00a0and Engling\u2019s novel, is now part of The Afterlife Trilogy<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The development process has continued throughout rehearsal, albeit in different ways. Being in the rehearsal room has brought to light new things about the script: Padveen explains that \u201cas it\u2019s gotten up on its feet, a lot of the exposition that was in the text has been less necessary, so some of that has gone away, and the changes being made in the past few weeks have been smaller, says Engling: \u201cWe\u2019ve made a lot of little changes, mostly line changes, a lot of little cutting. We dropped one scene and wrote a new one\u2026 mostly refinements and trimming and that sort of thing.\u201d Engling has also taken on the unusual task of balancing being both actor and playwright (he plays Matthew), and although it is challenging and demanding, it also \u201creally informs\u201d the writing process: being in all of the scenes gives him an \u201cintimate view,\u201d and \u201cbeing inside\u201d it all has helped him continue to improve the script.<\/p>\n

\"Bryan<\/a>
Bryan Breau as Colin and Ellyn Nugent as Afterlife Anna<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/code><\/p>\n

As performances draw closer and the Anna<\/em> team gets ready to welcome its first audiences, an exciting mystery remains in the process; there are still things to be discovered, and surprises still to come, particularly as the design components come to life. Engling considers himself lucky to have a team of esteemed designers collaborating on the show: \u201cWhen you write a play and you say, okay, this is in the afterlife, you\u2019re really putting it out there for the designers to come up with something interesting. And I had no idea how it would be affected. I had some inklings of what I thought it might look like\u2026 but it\u2019s really an exciting process to have people coming in doing lights and sounds and projections and composing music. It\u2019s like we\u2019ve unleashed this little army.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anna in the Afterlife<\/em> ran April 22-May 24 at the Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60614. Those looking to enhance their theatre-going experience by reading the novels of THE AFTERLIFE TRILOGY can purchase the books at Amazon.com<\/a><\/code>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Deborah Blumenthal Anna in the Afterlife\u00a0(companion play to Engling’s novel VISIONS OF ANNA) has had a long life, as it were. Playwright Richard Engling began working on the play in 2010, and it appeared in Polarity\u2019s Dionysos Cup Festival of New Plays in 2011. In the years since the festival, \u201cit\u2019s always been in … <\/p>\n

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