When the FREEKS production of Annie Baker’s “Circle Mirror Transformation” opens today, director Patty Hamilton expects it to hit close to home— both because of the content of the play itself and the way in which the cast and crew have spent the past month rehearsing.
The play, which has won international critical acclaim since opening off-Broadway in 2009, is, at the plot-level, about an acting class. But it really goes much deeper than that.
“It’s about these five characters and how they discover things about themselves through acting exercises,” explains Hamilton, a sophomore. “It’s about self-discovery and changing through vulnerability. The games are facilitators for being vulnerable with another person.”
Circle Mirror Transformation marks Hamilton’s second time directing. In early April, her directing debut, Almost, Maine— which explores relationships in a small town through a series of vignettes— went up. While the two works are similar in their personal nature, Circle is more intimate. “You get to know these characters really well,” Hamilton says. “Almost, Maine was very beautiful— it was a beautiful look at human relationships. But this is more realistic.”
Hamilton notes that the text of the play itself more accurately reflects actual human interaction, with all its awkwardness and visible uncertainty, as opposed to the sort of eloquent, lyrical language that tends to be more popular in traditional theatre.
“It’s interesting because when you read the play, you don’t get it. You don’t really fall in love with it until you see them moving around and reading it. There are a lot of pauses and silences. The dialogue is very, very real.”
She points to a note from the playwright that reads “Honor the silences.”
“We kind of laughed at it at first. But you actually have to honor them, to make it work.”
The inherent realism of Circle has lent itself to Hamilton exploring her own burgeoning directing style. Coming into Stanford, she was primarily focused on playwriting. But then she took on directing Almost, Maine on a whim.
“It was probably my favorite thing I’ve done at Stanford,” she recalls. “I love the creative side, but I really love the people stuff— the collaboration, organization, direction. It’s a very human interaction-based experience. You’re in dialogue constantly with the actors and you get to foster their artistic ideas and their artistic growth.”
With a cast of only five actors and a production staff of just six, Circle has been a crash course in putting on a production for everyone involved.
“I’ve learned you’re going to run into problems, always,” she says. “It’s really hard to get money. We’ve used a ton of different funding options— Kickstarter, grants, different student associations. You have to learn how to get funding, who to talk to, who to work with.”
But working with the actors is Hamilton’s favorite part by far. Along with co-director Julia Martins, Hamilton likes turning around the traditional director-actor relationship, and asking the actors to tell her about their characters.
“The characters are all searching for something,” says Hamilton. “What are they searching for? This gets to the core of what we’re doing as humans. What are we searching for? That’s important to me.”
Their rehearsals— which go on for two to three hours a night, five nights a week— are as much about understanding their characters as they are about memorizing lines. They spend time talking about what motivates their characters, and even making up elements of the fictional backstories— such as job, favorite color, lifelong dreams— that never come up in the actual play.
“As a director, my main focus is less on blocking or even the really mechanical things. The focus is on the acting— if the acting is great, everything else will fall into place.”
This level of detail, Hamilton says, is what makes this particular play— with its realism and intense personal exploration— come alive. And it also shows what makes theatre so special and indispensable.
“Theatre is about getting to emotional truth,” she says. “A lot of the time, learning to act is learning how to be emotionally true. That’s how you can play parts, emotionally right. It’s all about theatre games. It’s not about the soliloquies in Hamlet.”
To that end, Hamilton has strived to create a level of closeness amongst her actors that is similar to that of the characters in the play itself. The play is emotionally meta, in addition to being superficially “a play about actors playing actors.”
“The play is about intimacy and knowing each other so it’s important that as a cast we have that same closeness. If the chemistry isn’t there, the audience can tell— that can’t be faked.” To create that noticeable feeling of familiarity and trust, Hamilton has the actors play the same acting games that the characters do in the play— putting the real people through the same paces that their characters go through.
“I’m forcing them to be friends with each other,” Hamilton laughs. “To have a good time when everyone wants to study for midterms. Having that kind of experience in a cast is really important when it comes to making it a fun thing, and not just a chore.”
The emphasis on intimacy in the preparation for the play not only reflects the emotional core ofCircle, but that of FREEKS as a whole. FREEKS, one of many theatre societies on campus, is open to anyone and anything. As Hamilton says, “anyone can do any show and put a FREEKS label on it. It’s just a cool group of people that loves theatre and wants to put on experimental stuff, very hard-hitting theatre that really makes people think.”
With a mission statement that boldly declares that they want to give a voice to the underrepresented people— the “freaks”— on campus, this experimental company basically has no rules. Hamilton notes that most FREEKS productions tend to be on the violent side, while she personally is more into more human themes: “I like stuff that deals with love and people and human raw emotion.” Regardless, the FREEKS offer a unique opportunity to any student who loves theatre and wants to create something professional.
“Other groups have a lot more infrastructure,” Hamilton says. “I don’t know that in another group, I would’ve been picked to direct. You have to work your way up more.”
The opportunities she’s had to direct and find her niche in theatre have made her optimistic about the Arts at Stanford as a whole.
“It’s an exciting time to be at Stanford because I see more and more talented students coming in. Students are creating opportunities for themselves, which is great to see.”
And that passion and freedom to do what they want in the production is making a difference in the audience, she says.
“Someone came up to me after watching Almost, Maine and told me this was their first time not sleeping during a performance. Which was really exciting for me!”
The Arts are having a moment at Stanford, and she encourages everyone to come out and support student-run theatre and— most importantly— seize the chance to be a part of it.
“There are a lot of people who have thought about theatre, and now’s the time to do it,” she says. “Everyone wants you to succeed. You never know.”
(‘15) hails from Cotati, California and has a compulsive obsession with all things film, politics, and creative writing. Her favorite pastimes include overanalyzing screenplays while watching TV, hiking, and running illegally through other people’s property.