InFocus featuring Jacques LaMarre & Jared Mezzocchi

From the 22 News Plus Studio, this is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Barry. Hello everyone, and welcome to this edition of In Focus. I'm your host, Patrick Barry. If you're like me, you love going to see live stage performances. We have so many amazing theaters within a very short drive of where you are sitting in your living room right now. And I am very excited today because I have two professional theater people because they each have different roles. And I'm excited because joining me across the desk today, that's the wrong button. That is the right button there. I have Jacques Lamar. He is on your left as you're looking at the screen and Jared Mazzocchi. Mazzocchi. I know, and I just got back from Italy last summer. I should know. Mazzocchi. Accidente. Exactly. But they are playwrights, directors, multimedia. They create the things that you see on stages. So I'm excited to have them both with me today to talk about how they get the stuff that's up in here to what we see on our stages. So thank you gentlemen, both so very much for joining me. Jacques, I want to start with you because you and I had worked together a little bit during my Mass Appeal days, coordinating actors and directors onto that show, but you are a playwright. Yes. I guess my question is, first question is why? What did you, what happened in your youth that would prompt you to become a playwright? Well, it's an interesting journey that started actually not far from where Jared's journey started. Jared and I are both from Southern New Hampshire. We didn't know each other. I'm maybe a year or two older than Jared. But I worked, well, when I was a child and this is one of the things for parents or grandparents who are mentors who are listening or watching, my parents took us to this theater in Milford, New Hampshire. I grew up in a town called Amherst, New Hampshire. And Amherst and Milford are kind of like evil twins. And so much of our lives were spent in Milford even though we lived in Amherst. And my parents subscribed to this theater called the American Stage Festival. And as a child, they had a thing called the Young Company and we would go see the kids, the shows that were meant for children. And my parents would subscribe to the evening performances. I, when I graduated from seeing the children's shows, had developed a love for theater and started volunteer ushering on the nights that my parents would subscribe. And so I would just go hand out programs and help people to their seats and I would get to see the show for free. And I still to this day remember some of those formative productions when I was a tween maybe. And at a certain point, I started my career ice cream scooping, dish washing, working at Rite Aid Pharmacy in high school. And my brother worked at the American Stage Festival in the box office. And at a certain point he said, I don't wanna do this anymore. He decided he was going to move across the street to the meat shop. I don't know if you remember the meat shop. And I'm like, I'll take your job. And that's how my career in theater started was I started in the box office of the American Stage Festival. And after seeing so many shows, I was like, the young company required usually like six original scripts every summer for their children's shows. And so I asked the artistic director at the time, Austin Tichner, who later and now is with the Reduced Shakespeare Company, which so many people have seen Complete Works of William Shakespeare Reduced, that's him. And so I said, hey, can I try writing a children's show? And he said, sure. And there was no guarantee that they would do my work. And I just came up with this children's show based on three O. Henry short stories. I loved O. Henry's work. And he's like, this is great. We're not gonna do it. But would you write Rapunzel? And that was my first play was writing Rapunzel for the American Stage Festival. And to have that, you know, your first play get produced and toured to Manchester, New Hampshire, to Nashville, New Hampshire, and to the legendary North Shore Music Theater in Beverly, Massachusetts. I was kind of on my way as a professional playwright. Very cool. All right, Jared, what's your story? How'd you become an actor, director, playwright, multimedia creator? Yeah, just down the road from Jacques was a children's theater called Andy's Summer Playhouse in Wilton, New Hampshire. And I was a kid there. I had too much energy as a kid. And my mom and dad were like, we have to find something for you. And I was playing soccer on one side of the week. And then every summer I auditioned and was at this theater. And it's a children's theater, but it's all focusing on new work. The playwright's in the room. There's playwright workshops. There's design workshops. It was really training a child to have kind of the total experience of theater making. And at the same time, I was flipping burgers at the Drive-In Movie Theater in Milford, New Hampshire. And I would go upstairs and give the projectionist a bunch of the burger or a hot dog. And over time, he was like, do you want to learn how to thread up the film? Do you want to learn how to splice the previews together? And so I would do that all together as a kid. And I think I double majored in film and theater at Fairfield University in Fairfields, Connecticut. And then have just always been looking to merge media, theater, and how one makes it. So writing, directing, it's just all about how to shape these fictitious things in front of you in order to reflect it back onto our world. I just love, that's just a dream to be able to do. When it comes to, and I will classify you both as artists, as many people probably do, when it comes to artists, I love to find out the background because the way you're exposed to things as a kid, you don't recognize it then, but then you fast forward 20, 30, 40, whatever it might be, you realize, oh my God, those were very formative experiences which got me to where I am today. Like I said, you didn't think about it back then, but I love to have those starter questions because it kind of sets the groundwork for where you are today. Yeah, I'm just, aside from that, I'm just fascinated that we are so close in my career scooping ice cream that was at Hayward Farms. Oh man, ice cream and burgers. Right down the street from the Milford Drive-In. Really, the theaters that we both grew up in are just miles apart, but I never went to Andy's Summer Playhouse. I didn't go to American Stage House. You didn't, okay. So we're off balance there. The Rite Aid was right down the street from Hayward Farms, so like our entire lives were basically like online. We are up on our first commercial break. When we come back, we'll talk about the production and what takes place in their heads and on stages with cast and crew and how you end up seeing it on a stage. Stay with us. We're back in just a minute. This is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Barry. Welcome back, everyone, to this edition of In Focus. I'm your host, Patrick Barry, joined by Jacques on your left, Jared on your right. We're talking about life in the theater. Gentlemen, thanks again for joining me. I love the fascinating stories, as I mentioned, about the upbringing, but you guys are currently in the process of creating a production called Circus Fire, and it is a stage production. It has live, correct me if I'm wrong, it has live actors in front of you, but it also has your specialty, Jared, which is multimedia. But Jacques, I want to talk to you. This is your baby, right? This is something you came up with. Yeah, it's something that was kind of born 10 years ago when I was working at the Mark Twain House Museum as their director of special projects. I would put together author events, and it was approaching the 70th anniversary of the Hartford Circus Fire at the time, and we thought, oh, we should do something because this is within the community, but with it being Twain-focused there, we wanted to have an event with authors, and so we did an author event for the 70th anniversary, and for those of you who know your Circus Fire history, it happened on July 6th, 1944, and so I was like, oh, it's a holiday weekend. Who's gonna come to this, but we should do something to honor it because it's really important to the community, and it didn't matter that it was a holiday weekend. It was packed. Like, turn away, standing room only, and I was like, wow. People still remembered it. Yeah, it wasn't even just people still remember it. There were people who were there that day that came and wanted to talk about it, and so I ended up putting together two more author events around the Circus Fire, and again, no diminution in interest in it, and that led me to, of course, read the books from the authors, and I talked to Rob Ruggiero at TheatreWorks, and they had recently done their first production of a play that I wrote called I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti, and we were looking for a subsequent project, and I said, you know, I really would like to do something on the Circus Fire, and we talked about it, but we didn't get too far down the road, and then I just kind of set it aside, and sometimes things will kind of bubble up later. You know, it'll feel like it's time has come, and I went to see a production of a play called Sandra at TheatreWorks, and Jared spoke at the pre-reception, and Rob, in his introduction of Jared, mentioned his role at Andy's Summer Playhouse in Wilton, New Hampshire, and I'm like, oh, he's my paisan. And that's where the line formed. So I spoke with Jared, but I mean, it was just, you know, it was just a conversation before going over to see the play, and then I saw the play, and his work in that production elevated the play in such a way, his multimedia work, that I went to Rob afterwards and said, and I didn't say, like, Jared, but I said, this is how we could do Circus Fire. Okay. I didn't say, this is how, you know, he could make it happen, but like, the type of work that Jared is doing was not even imaginable 10 years ago, to me, to me. And Rob did some matchmaking, and was like, Jared, are you interested? And Jared said, yes. And then it was on, and it was pretty much happening without a script. Okay. And then we decided to conceive the production together, Rob, Jared, and myself, to tell the story in a unique way. So, perfect segue, Jared. So how did, first of all, explain what multimedia is, and then how you incorporated it into Jacques' vision? Yeah, you know, I mean, all of my work deals with multimedia, which really means that there are projections, video design, sometimes live cameras, to create a multifaceted story that is being told predominantly in real time with the use of prerecord or live capture technology. And, you know, with a play like this, I told Jacques just to, like, write it. Don't worry, because with multimedia, you can sort of expand much larger than what the physical body can do. And through that, you know, using, we're in a site-specific performance venue. We're not in the theater. We're in this foot guard hall, which is like a very large gymnasium. And it has ceilings that are kind of pitched like a tent, like a triangular ceiling. And so we're surrounding, we're using video design to surround, hit the entirety of the ceiling. It's well over 100 feet on either side, as well as the actors on stage. There's 12 of them might open up a newspaper, and on the newspaper, the flickering newsreel will happen as they are reading it live, as if they're reading it. So things like that are how we're incorporating it into this. So you took the basis of what he wrote and then created and added your own flair to it. Yeah, I mean, I think the thing with a co-conception like this is it puts the playwright and director in contact as the text is being generated. And so throughout, you know, Jacques would send me either a full draft or a section of a draft, and then I would read it and say, here's what's in my brain as I read it. This is what I see in front of me. And then that inspires Jacques to be like, oh, well, let me actually write to that a little bit and vice versa. And so it's really felt like a bit more of a baton pass back and forth, as opposed to a deliverable to the rehearsal. And then I move it forward, yeah. We are up on our second commercial break. Stay with us. We're back in just a moment with more. This is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Berry. Welcome back, everyone, to this edition of In Focus. I'm joined today here in the 22 News Plus Studios across the desk. On your left, if I'm looking at it correctly, Jacques Lamar. And off to your right, Jared Mazzocchi. Oh, Mazzocchi. Mazzocchi. Rhymes with Versace. I keep saying that to myself countless times. I apologize, Jared, so many times for that. Jacques, we just listened before the break and how Jared does what he does. Is this a new form of collaboration for you to create something? Or, because you're normally a stage playwright, writer in a, for lack of a better description, sort of like three-dimensional here. But when you bring in Jared, it seems like it becomes four-dimensional because you have this whole different element. So is this a new experience for you? Yeah, for the most part, oftentimes playwrights work in isolation. And usually the way I write is I go off, I'll rent an Airbnb or I'll go on vacation or what have you and hide and write and focus. I have a very busy day job. And then I get home and there's husband and there's dog, there's cats, there's chaos. And so it's always great for me to just kind of clear the decks and work. And usually it's an idea of my devising and just going off and writing it and see what I have. And this play, the process has been incredibly different because there's been not just Jared, but Rob Ruggiero who helped with co-conceiving it. So I normally do not, I normally wear the hat as a person who worked in theater administration of being like, how can we make this affordable and easy for theaters to put on? I'm sure theater goers have watched particularly on regional stages. Shows have been getting smaller and smaller because of cost increasing. And so going into a process where I'm being told that it's not going to be in a regular theater and that it's not going to, that I'm gonna have a cast of eight people. And then when I produced the script, it became 10 people. And then when we did a reading of the script, it became 12 people. So this is the most, the largest cast that TheaterWorks has ever had in a show. And it's in this non-traditional space. It may be the most expensive show they've done. I'm not for certain, but it's, I was really freed up from a lot of the constraints that I will wear as a playwright going into writing a play of, and then leaving so much room for Jared's imagination. There's not a lot in the script that says, this is what I'm thinking Jared should or would or could do. And so seeing what colors he's going to bring to the story that he helped shape in the writing process. So Jared, is this a, this collaboration normal for you? Whereas it's kind of getting Jacques out of his- Yeah, I mean this, I love new work and I love work. I'm constantly talking to colleagues out there that are considering work of like, give me the impossible script. Give me the script that you really like, but have no idea how to produce. And let me use my tools to like find, like crack through those tensions and solve the problems. And so it's, I love this type of work. I can't imagine a rehearsal room without the playwright, and just being able to bounce ideas and continue to chase the impossible thing. That's the thing that I love. The only thing that they said, literally there were no no's. There were no, we can't do that. The only thing was I was trying to have a friend who made a giant elephant puppet. I was like, maybe we could use a no. But other than that, everything else. Yeah, everything else, it's been boundless. And this, the way Circus Fire is presented, it's not your normal seating stage up in front. This is, what do they call it, in the round? Yeah, it's in the round. And, you know, it's sort of emblematic of being in one of the three rings of the circus. But as we've been staging it, I would also argue that, you know, one of our chief objectives is not to just reproduce the traumatic event, the catastrophic event, but ask a larger question. And our question is, how do we, as a current day community, remember our past in a very liminal moment of generations, you know, passing on and a new generation being here? And those who experienced that Circus Fire event are becoming less and less with us. And so in the round ends up being this kind of introspective of like, here we are as a community, and how are we looking at this thing as a collective group of people? And also, if I can real quick, you know, one of the big inspirations is not just the one ring of a three ring circus, but also the medallion that is the centerpiece of the Circus Fire Memorial in Hartford. And the Circus Fire Memorial in Hartford was realized over 20 years ago, but its location in the north end of Hartford has been hidden, literally hidden because it was behind a school, now it's behind a construction site, it's still visitable. But that was, Jared, Rob, and I went to the site the day of the anniversary of the fire to be there and be inspired by it. And so the play kind of begins and ends at that memorial. I didn't even know there was a memorial there. I mean, that's the question. And so as a community, we have these things out there that we aren't visiting enough. And how do we make sure that people know that exists? And what do we do with that right now, as again, as we're moving into the next generation? And that you have to go look for this history. And it's the same way with things like the Holocaust or Titanic or 9-11 or any of these other mass tragedies. You know, I went and visited the site of Sandy Hook and you have to make the effort to wanna know about this painful part of our collective history. Gentlemen, our time is up, but thank you both so very much. Fascinating conversation to learn about each of your skillsets and how you're bringing them together for an amazing production. I am always in awe of artists. So thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for having us. Thank you. This is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Berry.