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LBC CenterStage
Open As Many Doors As Possible
A Conversation With Ken Rugg
by Sander Roscoe Wolff
 
Actor, director, and recently retired Professor Emeritus from CSULB, Ken Rugg has lived and breathed theatre for most of his life. In 1956, he graduated with a BA in drama from San Jose State and, after a two year stint in the Army, began teaching. He hated it. After working as an actor for several years, he tried teaching again and got hooked. He completed his MA from CSULB in 1964 and taught there for more than 30 years.
Recently, he won "Best Supporting Actor" from the Seventh Annual OC Weekly Theater Awards for his one-man performance of Samuel Beckett's "Krapp's Last Tape" at the Chance Theatre in Anahem Hills.
He will continue his work there, directing several new productions.
LBC: If you don't mind, lets start with the current or upcoming productions you're involved in. Tell me about them, please.
Ken Rugg: Tonight, at the Chance we are conducting auditions for A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM and SPRING AWAKENING for productions to open in May. We will begin rehearsing on Saturday 29 March.
I'm a little amazed at the Theatre actually thinking they can do these large cast shows together in the small space they use. Dream has 20 plus and so does the other one. The dressing room can only handle about 12-15 people without getting one's elbow in someone else's ear. I know this from experience having recently been in a show at the Chance. Right after I retired from Cal State I did some shows in H'wood where the conditions were tight, but not [like] this.
LBC: What is your role in the production?
Ken Rugg: I am directing Dream.
LBC: Do you intend to do a traditional staging of the play, or something new?
Ken Rugg: Something a little different. I started by doing a cutting of the show to try and get it in under two hours. I am going conceptually with the Faerie world around us. I am going also with the metaphysical concept of dream versus reality, but not to the extent of Pirandello.
LBC: I don't know Pirandello. Can you please explain?
Ken Rugg: Pirandello was an Italian playwright who won a Nobel for literature in 1934 I think. He was married to an insane woman who he used as an inspiration in dealing with individuals who couldn't deal with the randomness of life and, therefore, created their own reality. e.g., long time prisoners, as in Shawshank, who are one day turned out of the reality they are secure with. They, very often, cannot reconcile themselves to the world of outside reality. They most often, as in the film, commit suicide or commit a crime just to get back into their secure world.
LBC: That's a very interesting theme. It is something we all do, to some extent, don't you think?
Ken Rugg: Absolutely, it's all a matter of degree. So in the play it's a matter of is it a reality or just a dream?
LBC: So, this is part of what you're bringing to this production of MND. How are you going to make the audience question the reality of what they're seeing in front of them?
Ken Rugg: Sort of. Right now what I am planning to do is to create, I hope, a situation where it begins with the faeries actually manipulating the humans like Bunraku puppets.
LBC: So, the reality is that we're simply pawns in their games?
Ken Rugg: So that we are aware of what the faeries may be doing... it creates what we call Superior Knowledge. Superior, on the part of the audience. They know about something that the faeries are doing that they humans don't know.
LBC: At the end of the play, though, do you want the audience to question whether the faeries were, in the context of the play, real or mere figments of some character's imagination?
Ken Rugg: If that happens, that is okay but, for me, it's a kind of bemused observation that we, as humans, may be controlled or our perceptions controlled by those whom we can't see.
LBC: If you don't mind, I'd like to move to another topic now. Can you tell me why theatre still maintains its relevance in the face of more easily accessible entertainment media, such as TV, video, film and the like?
Ken Rugg: It's different for different people. I love theatre, but there are genres ... The main point is that it's live and immediate.
LBC: Are there things that theatre can do that film and other media can't?
Ken Rugg: Yes, the actors, as we found in the 60s, can walk out and touch you. They can respond to the audience.
LBC: Tell me about the rewards and challenges of teaching theatre.
Ken Rugg: For me, other than [my dream of] directing on Broadway, it was the ultimate. I had the security, family and all, of a regular job, BUT it was in Theatre and I could direct and act as well as do the traditional lecturing gig.
LBC: In teaching theatre, were there certain reactions you were trying to evoke from your students?
Ken Rugg: I wanted them to use what I gave them as a basis for being creative and making those sorts of decisions on their own.
LBC: Isn't it the director, though, that's really responsible for the creative decisions in a production?
Ken Rugg: The director is, yes, and they work different processes but they, directors, designers and actors, [each] have creative choices to make within their own process.
LBC: Is it difficult moving from your role as director to being an actor?
Ken Rugg: It was at first. Especially hard moving from director to actor. I have a tendency, I don't think I'm alone, to worry about the small director stuff when I need to forget that and get with my actor's process.
LBC: I've done a little acting, and one thing I noticed is that one really needs to trust the director, and the work itself, in order to invest fully in the emotional center of a piece. How does that affect you?
Ken Rugg: If one can't trust the director, that's the best situation. Then, the actor has to work within him/herself to make it work.
LBC: As a director, do you try to win the trust of your actors, and help them with their process, or force them to do all that hard work on their own?
Ken Rugg: I'm used to that in the academic situation, but on the whole I don't think that director's should be messing with the actor's process. The director should try to open as many doors as possible for the actor but they have to go on in. Sometimes one will experience the actor who is, at that moment, unable to make decisions and commit. This is a situation that takes another approach. Part of the job is finding a way to communicate with the different actors. You run into Meisner, Method, Suzuki, Grotowski, etc, etc. - It's my responsibility as an actor to translate what the director wants into my process. How can the actor expect the director to translate everything into their particular dialect?
LBC: So, then, what is it that the director needs to communicate?
Ken Rugg: The story we're telling together.
For more information about the upcoming productions, and other theatrical works at the Chance Theatre, please visit their web site:
http://www.chancetheater.com
View Ken Rugg's LBC page and events
Learn more about Sander Roscoe Wolff
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