http://www.mosaictheatre.com/ Mosaic Theatre en-us http://www.mosaictheatre.com/images/mosaic_theatre_sm.gif http://www.mosaictheatre.com/ 100 53 http://www.mosaictheatre.com/news_detail.php?id=14 Posted on Fri, Nov. 21, 2008 Mosaic's creator started with a dream BY CHRISTINE DOLEN Richard Jay Simon is a gambler. Not the kind who spends every spare hour in a casino, though he's good enough that he once played in the World Series of Poker, and he has a Fantasy Football team in a league with other South Florida theater types. Simon's biggest gamble: He bet he could create a successful professional theater company. In Broward County -- far West Broward, yet -- not the most welcoming place for aspiring theaters. And it would be in a black-box space in his former high school. Sounds risky, right? But as the growing, enthusiastic audience at the Mosaic Theatre in Plantation would be only too happy to tell you, don't bet against a dreamer who does his homework. ''I did a year of due diligence before I decided to start the theater,'' says Simon, who launched Mosaic in May 2001 at his alma mater, American Heritage School. 'I got a grasp of the theatrical landscape. I asked a million questions. I had a map of Dade and Broward in my bedroom, with pins in it representing every existing theater, so I could figure out what was missing. There was nothing in West Broward, and there weren't many theaters doing Off-Broadway plays. So I just thought, `If you build it, they will come -- if you do good, solid work.' '' Simon's journey from idea to reality hasn't been simple or trouble free. In 2007, for example, he reluctantly dropped his planned production of the controversial My Name is Rachel Corrie, a play about a young American activist killed while trying to help Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, because of protests (to the school, his board and himself) from Jewish groups and individuals. ''In the interest of protecting the organization,'' Simon says, ``I had to pull the plug.'' But this weekend, as he opens Mosaic's 37th production -- Conor McPherson's amusing, unsettling Broadway hit The Seafarer -- he can feel himself getting ever closer to the theater of his dreams. SCHOOL DAYS The son of dermatologist Paul Simon and his wife Mimi, who retains the soft accent of her native Alabama, Simon grew up in Hollywood and got interested in the arts at American Heritage. His teacher and mentor was Jim Usher, now chairman of the school's Fine Arts Department and the man who lured Simon back to Broward. ''We had nothing then. We worked out of a cafetorium,'' says Usher, who presides over a department with 27 full-time faculty members and the $28 million American Heritage Center for the Arts, where Mosaic makes its home. 'By the time Richard became a senior [in 1992-93], we had initiated senior directing projects. We stayed in touch all through his years at Ithaca College. I kept him up on the building. After he had graduated and been working a year or so, I said, `We have a black box. I'd really like a professional company stationed there, to create a great symbiotic relationship.' '' Though Simon had charted his post-collegiate course by taking freelance directing jobs and working as an artistic associate at Chicago's Court Theatre so he could learn how a company crafts contracts and works with unions, he longed to produce and direct plays that made him feel passionate. So when Usher reached out, Simon decided to come home. At the beginning, his parents helped a lot and were happy to do it. ''He called and told us he wanted to come back and fulfill his dream,'' says Simon's father, who sits on the theater's board. 'Our answer, without any hesitation, was, `Go for it.' It was the right decision. To see his passion, and the passion of the other artists he works with, is worth supporting -- emotionally, financially, in any way possible.'' Beyond the family backing, Mosaic's presence at American Heritage has been key to its survival and growth; without it, Simon says, ``we wouldn't exist.'' Founder and president William Laurie felt the school would benefit from having professionals on campus interacting with the students. The school gives Mosaic space rent free, along with free use of equipment, lighting, storage, Internet service, phone lines and office space. Laurie, who goes to most of Mosaic's shows, says, ``I really get a great deal of pleasure from seeing the work. Richard was one of my favorite students when he went to school here.'' SUM OF THE PARTS Simon, 33, chose Mosaic as his theater's name because he liked the image of little elements coming together to form an artistic whole. He started modestly, and so did the size of his audiences. His 2001-2002 season, which included plays by John Patrick Shanley, Frank McGuinness and Lee Blessing, cost $60,000 and attracted 50 subscribers. McGuinness' Someone Who'll Watch Over Me was, he says, ''the greatest show Broward County never saw. Sometimes, we played to six or eight people.'' For the first few years, Simon didn't draw a salary, taking telemarketing and security jobs to support himself. But from the beginning, Simon stayed focused on the kind of theater he wanted to build. ''Richard was acting according to what he wanted Mosaic to be,'' says Ken Clement, a member of the Seafarer cast, his seventh Mosaic show. ``I get treated better here than at some larger theaters. This has become the anchor of Broward theaters.'' Today's Mosaic is quite different. This season, which began with a hit production of August Wilson's Radio Golf, will also feature productions of Sarah Ruhl's dead man's cell phone, Winter Miller's In Darfur and Neil Labute's In a Dark Dark House. Mosaic's budget is now $400,000 (earned through ticket sales, grants and donations), and there are 1,800 subscribers to the 2008-2009 season in the 120-seat theater. Though his audiences are still full of older theatergoers, many now come from Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties as well as Broward. And however edgy the play, they seem to embrace Simon's work. ''They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks, yet Richard continually does it,'' Usher says. ``They keep coming back for more.'' Simon's success, say those who know him, has to do with much more than the backing of American Heritage and his family. They paint a picture of a tenacious, hard-working artist with a collaborative directing style, a penchant for picking strong scripts, a drive to work with the region's best actors and designers, and a vision of how Mosaic can continue to evolve. Simon cites Joseph Adler, artistic director of GableStage, as an influence and a mentor. The two now sometimes compete for the same hot scripts, something that ''keeps me on my toes. I have to move quickly,'' Adler says with a laugh. He adds: ``Richard has a rare combination of business skills and the ability to make wise aesthetic decisions. That's why he's come so far so fast.'' Other artistic directors -- Deborah L. Sherman of the Davie-based Promethean Theatre, Antonio Amadeo of The Naked Stage in Miami Shores and Paul Tei of Miami's Mad Cat -- also laud Simon's range of skills. ''Richard's work is so solid and competitive and worth leaving home to see,'' says Sherman. ``More people should look at how Richard has structured Mosaic -- how he casts, his design team, the shows he chooses. That's what a producer does. He's smart -- very, very smart. And he knows how to market his shows.'' Amadeo, whose parts at Mosaic have included the title role in The Elephant Man and the lead in Adam Rapp's provocative Red Light Winter, finds Simon ``an inspiration. ''As an actor, I love working with him,'' Amadeo says. ``He has faith in me and hires me because he trusts me. He treats me with dignity and respect.'' Tei captured two of the four Carbonell Awards that Mosaic won last spring, one for his lead performance in Eric Bogosian's Talk Radio, the other for his supporting work in David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross. He has also directed at Simon's theater and says frankly that outside of running his own company, ``If it weren't for Richard, I wouldn't be working a lot. These are all choice parts. Dream roles. I've been thankful to do them.'' Despite his relative youth, Simon sometimes comes off like a focused old soul. Mary Becht, director of Broward's Cultural Division, worked with Simon while he served as chair of the Cultural Executives Committee. She goes to his theater and says of his style as a cultural leader, ``He takes things so seriously. He always follows through.'' PLAY TIME He's not all work, though. Tei says Simon is a great practical joker, someone who will give you ''a bottle of Jack Daniels that he's emptied out and filled with fire water.'' Simon's ''roommate'' at his Plantation home is Suzie-Q, a Greater Sulphur Crested Cockatoo that (unfortunately for Simon and his girlfriend) ''doesn't like women.'' Besides poker and Fantasy Football, Simon plays a fierce game of Ping-Pong. For all he has accomplished, Simon isn't done dreaming. His long-range plans include trying to attract an elusive younger audience, hiring a development director, having his own 200- to 250-seat theater, and continuing to elevate his work by surrounding himself ``with people who are better than me, because it is a collaborative art form.'' Ultimately, he says, he'd like Mosaic's work to matter on a national level, like the theater at Chicago's Steppenwolf or Washington, D.C.'s Arena Stage. An impossible dream? Maybe so. But Simon's admirers wouldn't bet against him.   http://www.mosaictheatre.com/news_detail.php?id=16 Congratulations Mosaic Theatre!!! Proud Recipient of 6 Carbonell Awards! Best Production of a Play: The Seafarer Best Director: Richard Jay Simon, The Seafarer Best Actor: Gregg Weiner, The Seafarer Best Supporting Actor: Dennis Creaghan, The Seafarer Best Supporting Actress: Kim Morgan Dean, A Body of Water Best Set Design: Sean McClelland, The Seafarer http://www.mosaictheatre.com/news_detail.php?id=18 Mosaic Theatre Season Auditions will take place on Sunday, June 28 (1-5) and Monday, June 29 (5:30-9). Please prepare two contrasting monologues not to exceed a total of three minutes. Singing auditions for our musical will be announced shortly. Please call Jon at (954) 577-8243 or e-mail jsaldivar@mosaictheatre.com with your name, telephone number, preferred audition date/time and he will confirm your audition appointment. Please bring two headshots and resumes to your audition. Thank you and good luck! http://www.mosaictheatre.com/news_detail.php?id=20 Ambitious Mosaic Theatre recreates challenging Tom Stoppard play By CHRISTINE DOLEN cdolen@MiamiHerald.com Tom Stoppard's smart, provocative plays are magnets for audiences who crave theater that sparks both thought and emotion -- and for artists who relish the bottomless challenge of bringing the playwright's rich worlds to life. When the Czech-born British writer's plays cross the Atlantic, they become must-see, much-honored theater in New York and at major companies around the United States. Those works include the nine-hour Coast of Utopia trilogy (about Russian intellectuals and the roots of radical politics), Jumpers, Travesties, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Real Thing, The Invention of Love and Arcadia. Yet those meaty plays are rarely produced by South Florida's professional theaters, doubtless for reasons ranging from cast size to the plays' intellectual heft. Stoppard's work has been neglected here since GableStage revived The Real Thing at the start of 2001. That drought ends this weekend as Plantation's Mosaic Theatre kicks off its season with the playwright's most recent Broadway hit, Rock 'n' Roll. Rehearsals for the play, which travels from Cambridge to Prague between 1968 and 1990, have been a frenzy of hard work, intellectual investigation, moments of illumination and occasional bouts of fear. ``I'm not smart enough for this,'' jokes Antonio Amadeo, who plays Stoppard's sort-of-alter ego Jan in Rock 'n' Roll. ``But this was written by someone who knows what he's doing. It's a joy to go home with my brain oozing out of my ears.'' A VAST CANVAS Rock 'n' Roll is, in fact, daunting for everyone involved. Parts of its vast canvas include the Prague spring of 1968, when the Soviet Union brought a brutal end to the attempted reforms of Czech leader Alexander Dubcek; the Velvet Revolution of 1989, with the nonviolent overthrow of Gustáv Husák's repressive government and election of playwright/dissident Václav Havel as president; the Czech band Plastic People of the Universe; the music of Pink Floyd and founding member Roger ``Syd'' Barrett; Marxism; the poet Sappho -- well, there's more, much more. Mosaic's artistic director, Richard Jay Simon, knew that Rock 'n' Roll would be a challenge for him, his cast, his designers and his audience. At first, he was put off by the size of the cast: Though the script's 19 roles can be played by a dozen actors, that's still a large and expensive company. But having worked hard since he founded Mosaic in 2001 to build it into the kind of theater that won six Carbonell Awards in April, and having fallen in love with the play, Simon felt ready for a challenge that would make his brain tingle. ``I don't remember a project where I had to cram so much into my brain,'' he says. ``Communism, Sappho, mythology, politics, all of the political figures in Czechoslovakia -- I hardly knew anything. You worry whether the audience will get it, even if you have a guide in the program. But if we tell the story and make the relationships compelling, then it's OK. His plays are a little bit dense, but they're meant to be seen, not read. . . . The storytelling is incredibly rich.'' Anchoring the cast are three Carbonell Award-winning actors: Gordon McConnell, Laura Turnbull and Amadeo. Simon says he chose them because he knew -- beyond their obvious talent -- the discipline, thirst for research and depth of understanding they could bring to their roles and to the play itself. McConnell plays Max, a prickly British professor and unrepentant Communist who's angry that his protegé Jan has decided to return to Prague to fight for reform. In the first act, Turnbull plays Max's wife Eleanor, a classical scholar who's dying of cancer; in the second, she's their daughter Esme, an ex-hippie who once fancied Jan. WHAT IF? Amadeo sees the music-loving Jan as the celebrated Stoppard ``in an alternate universe, asking what if he had gone back to Czechoslovakia.'' (He didn't, though he became a translator of Havel's work.) None of the actors has ever done a Stoppard play. Turnbull has done research about Eleanor's academic field, focusing on people she knows who have fought cancer and refused to give up, developing a different personality and voice for Esme. It is, she says, ``very exciting. I'm happy to come to rehearsal.'' McConnell has used a bit of family history -- his uncle Kenneth McLachlan was a passionate Scottish communist -- to find his way into Max. ``He's a hard-line ideological communist who has no idea that the practical application of this great idea is not working,'' says the actor, who likens Max's personality to the prickly lead character on TV's House. And all those references, all that history? ``The bottom line is characterization,'' says McConnell. ``We all have our characters solid. The history is an overlay.'' Christine Dolen is The Miami Herald's theater critic. http://www.mosaictheatre.com/news_detail.php?id=21 Congratulations Mosaic Theatre!!! Proud Recipient of 9 Carbonell Award Nominations for 2010!   ·     Best Production: Why Torture is Wrong and the People Who Love Them ·     Best Director: Richard Jay Simon, Why Torture is Wrong ·     Best Actress: Barbara Bradshaw, Why Torture is Wrong ·     Best Actress: Laura Turnbull, Rock 'N' Roll ·     Best Supporting Actress: Miriam Wiener, In a Dark Dark House ·     Best Supporting Actor: Erik Fabregat, Why Torture is Wrong ·     Best Set Design: Sean McClelland, In a Dark Dark House ·     Best Lighting Design: Suzanne Jones, In a Dark Dark House ·     Best Lighting Design: Jeff Quinn, Why Torture is Wrong