Interview with the Director: Natsu Onoda Power

Portland Stage’S thegreatleaP Interview with the Director: Natsu Onoda Power

Edited for Length and Clarity by Rachel Ropella Directing and Dramaturgy Apprentice Rachel Ropella spoke with director Natsu Onoda Power before transferring The Great Leap from the Hangar Theatre to Portland Stage. They discuss the portrayal of sports on stage and some of the challenges of directing a co-production.

Rachel Ropella (RR): The Great Leap is a very athletic play, what was your connection to basketball or sports before you began to direct this show?

Natsu Onoda Power (NOP): It's so lame, but I've actually been really jealous of sports all my life. Because, reason one, why do people pay so much money to go to sports games, and then they'll complain about $60 theater ticket? You know, people pay hundreds of dollars for primary seats for their favorite team. And whenever I go to the game, there's this great sense of community, great sense of belonging, and enthusiasm. And there's the pregame ritual, they psych themselves up to go to the game, and then they celebrate after. So it's a great day of celebration, and the community. And there's a sense that you're making this event together, which I don't see in theater audiences. The second reason that I'm jealous is that it's all about superhuman skills on display, you get to marvel at amazing athleticism and skills and training. And I feel like in theater, we often end up doing a lot of work to make our skills invisible. Like, we paint metal to look like wood, and we paint wood to look like metal. And so we spent all this time making skills invisible. And of course, it's the opposite of that.

RR: I think it's interesting how physical theater can be, but we try to make it so subtle.

NOP: Yeah, but I think in the US, that's the primary mode of theater. I mean, there is certainly theater where we're just marveling at the very special skills of people and things. I’ve tried to incorporate basketball in my work twice before. I got people to train actors to use basketball in choreography, but it didn't go well because actors are trained to act and not to play basketball. Right? So I thought that this play’s adaptation of basketball to verbal actions on stage and within relationships and structure is so ingenious. So it's like I've always been jealous of sports and this play has sort of transformed my jealousy into something that I can embrace.

RR: I think that makes total sense. I think there’s two different but striking types of performance when it comes to sports and theater. And you're getting the best of both worlds within this piece, because there is physicality, but also the dialogue is so sharp.

NOP: And the references in the play are just so smart. I loved it when at the Hangar, there were people who were laughing at every basketball joke. I think it's such a great way to bring the community together in a theater.

RR: I know with this co-production, it was originally performed at Hangar Theatre in Ithaca, New York and now you've moved it here to Portland Stage. At Portland, we have a traditional proscenium stage, but the Hangar has a thrust stage that extends out into the audience. What is it like to rehearse a play, knowing that you must have two theaters with very different stages in mind?

NOP: Well, luckily, I have a wonderful design team that is the same in both places. And also, I have a wonderful stage manager who's going to be at both. I think stage managers are amazing humans, I rely on them so much, and they're often under appreciated. So I just want to give a shout out to Myles [C. Hatch], who's going to be the glue to hold it all together. There were several challenges. One is that the theater's spaces are set up differently and one of the things that I really embraced at Hanger was characters coming from two entrances from the audience, but we can't do that at Portland. But I hear that the acoustics in Portland are really fantastic. Here, actors will not be miced and at Hangar they were. And I'm not against it, but as soon as you put a mic on actors, there's a slight distance that it automatically creates between the audience and the actor. I'm really excited about the intimacy of natural voices in the theatre.

RR: So you’ll be in a new space and also get to see the actors for the first time in a while for the same production. What does that feel like?

NOP: Because the rehearsals were such a fast process in Ithaca, I'm really looking forward to seeing how the actors' relationships with the characters have developed in the few weeks that they've had. It's so interesting, because as a director, you leave on opening night, and then you don't come back. The actors continue to develop their relationship with the characters and with the team, but I never get to be a part of it. And this time, I get to reinsert myself. It's like being away from a circle of friends and when you come back, they have shared events and lives together, and you feel a little bit out of it. But then things pick up, so I'm looking forward

ray yamamoto and eileen doan in the great leap, at tHe Hangar tHeatre and Portland stage ComPany, 2022, PHoto By raCHel PHilliPson. to that experience on an artistic level. I knew the character of Wen Chang as one person in rehearsal, but because Norm (Garcy Yap) has been spending time with the character by himself, I might now see a different portrayal of Wen Chang.

RR: You really might! While working with this cast again at Portland Stage, what is one moment within the play that you’re excited to revisit with these actors and that you're looking forward to the audience seeing?

NOP: It's so predictable, it’s but the second to last scene: the game. When we staged it, we felt that it was so physically challenging- it's really fast. But then by the time we opened, they got it down so well that it didn't seem as challenging. I felt like it was more impressive when they were struggling with it. So I'm excited to up the game of the choreography within the basketball game when we are at Portland Stage!