Editor’s Note: This is the sixth in a series of interviews with creative decision makers and artistic directors at all of Tucson’s theatres as we look forward to the 2019-2020 season.

Touring the golden cage with The Rogue Theatre’s Joe McGrath and Cynthia Meier.

by Leigh Moyer

“What we’ve managed to do is build a golden cage for ourselves,” said Joe McGrath, Artistic Director of The Rogue Theatre, with a chuckle. “Our audience wants us to do the plays that we want to do. So we have to keep doing the plays we want to do– not the plays that we think will sell, or that we think people want to see.”

Cynthia Meier, The Rogue’s Managing and Associate Artistic Director, added, “And they really are plays that we want to see and that we want to work on. We keep this ongoing, long list of plays and we’ll look at it throughout the year and say, you know, it’s about time we did Brecht. Or, it’s about time we did this play. And these are plays that we want to see and spend time with.”

This season is focused on stories about obsession; it will have shows that make you think, make you laugh, make you cry, and — if they do their job right — make you reconsider how you look at a piece of literature or a cultural phenomenon.

The Rogue is generally known for doing classic pieces. For example, they do a Shakespeare play every season. “It’s a touchstone for us. Our mission is doing challenging pieces of great literature in an ensemble way; Shakespeare is the epitome of that,” Meier explained. They usually do an adaptation of a novel as well, often adapted for the stage by Meier. They do plays that make you think and plays that make you feel deeply and… plays where usually at least one character dies. 

I teased McGrath and Meier about that. Meier laughed and commented that she should have done research on how many characters had died on their stage when she looked at the diversity of casting and the playwrights.

McGrath pointed out that while it is a funny unifying theme linking The Rogue’s plays, “Death is something that makes us human and unless we’re conscious of mortality and unless we bring it up, we’re not really dealing with what is important and even what is beautiful. The brevity of life is what makes beauty. There is no precious moment without the passage. So I want to stand up for death as being a good thing. So let’s hear it for death.”

Looking at this season and the major moments that the array of plays will present, it seemed to me Moby Dick was going to be the most challenging. I had one big question. There have been gods, snakes, dogs, and a bear on the Rogue stage, but all those things are smaller or more manageable. I wanted to know how exactly they were going to present the great white whale Moby Dick. That whale. Their answer: they don’t know yet. They have ideas, but how it will actually come together is still somewhat of a puzzle. 

“The interesting thing about this enterprise is making sure that we’re doing live theatre, not doing plays that are live television,” McGrath said. “That’s one of the reasons we like to go more theatrical. It’s all in the language. Film and television don’t like to just dwell on the language without visuals.” 

Maybe that is the answer. Moby Dick is a book, adapted for the stage in this instance by Meier and Holly Griffith. While theatre is a visual medium, for McGrath and Meier it is equally as much about language. “We usually do an adaptation because we believe that great literature deserves to be heard and seen, not just silently read,” Meier said.

McGrath jumped in to add, “And the interesting thing about great literature is that it is only great literature because of the words, because of the language. We think of Moby Dick as having whales and boats and the sea but it only lives because of the way it was conjured in language.”

He mused on how the audience feels and about The Rogue offers: “I’m guessing that a good percentage of audience members who stay after the show for the post show discussion just want us to tell them what to think. But that’s the nature of the plays we do; they don’t tell you what to think, they leave you grappling.”

The whole season is listed online and below, including a summer production. Come to see how they get a whale in a theatre, but come more to see how you relate to the whale; what your obsessions are and how they have shaped you. Season tickets start at $195.00 and single tickets can be purchased during the run of the show for $42.00 (preview performances are $32.00) with $15.00 student rush tickets available fifteen minutes before the show (depending on availability). Tickets for the summer performance of Middletown are $38.00.

The Rogue Theatre’s 2019-2020 Season:

Middletown by Will Eno (Summer Production)
July 11 – 21, 2019
Metaphysical musings on life and death bubble up from the “common folk” on the streets of contemporary Middletown, USA. Comic and prosaic lives show cracks of poetic existential despair. Directed by Christopher Johnson.

Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill
September 12 – 29, 2019
A masterful image of a day in the Tyrone household, struggling with alcoholism, morphine addiction, and regret, as they reflect on love, dreams, and roads not taken. One of the most lauded of American plays, this deeply personal play received both the Tony Award for Best Play and a Pulitzer Prize. Directed by Cynthia Meier.

Blithe Spirit by Noël Coward
November 7 – 24, 2019
The novelist Charles Condomine invites the spiritualist Madame Arcati to hold a séance in his home. Arcati inadvertently summons the ghost of Charles’ first wife, Elvira, who Charles can see, but his present wife, Ruth, can’t. A jealous ghost, Elvira tries to upset the marriage. Directed by Joseph McGrath.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville, adapted by Cynthia Meier and Holly Griffith
January 9 – 26, 2020
The obsessed Captain Ahab assembles a whaling crew to pursue the albino sperm whale, Moby Dick, that took his leg in a prior voyage. Regarded by many as the great American novel, Moby Dick is Homeric, biblical, and Shakespearean in its breadth of expression. Directed by Cynthia Meier.

The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Martin McDonagh
February 27 – March 15, 2020
In a rural Irish cottage of the aging Mag and her spinster daughter Maureen, their comic and appalling lives are brought to a head as a romance develops for Maureen that Mag resents. Directed by Christopher Johnson.

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
April 23 – May 10, 2020
The shipwrecked Viola dresses as a boy for protection and is employed by Duke Orsino to woo Olivia for him. Olivia falls in love with Viola-in-disguise and Viola herself falls in love with Orsino. Meanwhile, the pranksters of Olivia’s household dupe the puritan Malvolio into falling in love with Olivia. Directed by Joseph McGrath.

The John and Joyce Ambruster Play-Reading Series:

Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen
October 6, 2019, 2:00 pm
The story of a man who dares to speak an unpalatable truth and the devastating consequences.

Madagascar by J. T. Rogers
December 1, 2019, 2:00 pm
At three different periods in time, three Americans find themselves in a hotel room overlooking the Spanish Steps in Rome confronting the haunting mystery that connects them.

Molly Sweeney by Brian Friel
February 2, 2020, 2:00pm
Told in a riveting series of monologues, a blind woman living in Donegal, Ireland undergoes a revolutionary operation to restore her sight.

The House of Bernarda Alba by Federico Garcia Lorca
March 22, 2020, 2:00pm
Following the funeral of Bernarda Alba’s second husband, the tyrannical matriarch announces to her five daughters that their period of mourning will last eight years.

Editor’s Note: This is the forth in a series of interviews with creative decision makers and artistic directors at all of Tucson’s theatres as we look forward to the 2019-2020 season.