Politics and Professionalism on the Boards
Profiles of Artistic Director Tone Forrest, Resident Playwright and Board Member Craig Barnes, and Clara Soister (Actress and Director).
On January 7, 2008, I met with members of the Red Thread Collective for two hours at Java Joe’s Coffee Shop to discuss the theater company’s history, its vision for professional, quality drama in Santa Fe, and its upcoming performance schedule.
One of my earliest recollections is of my Scots grandparents talking about the importance of the red thread: “If you follow the red thread, you can unravel even a hopeless tangle.” Artistic Director Tone Forrest said that I was in the right ballpark, but the naming of Red Thread Collective (RTC) was more particular to the experiences of the seven co-founders of the company.
Tone, Craig Barnes (board member and resident dramatist), and Walter Dilts (board member and producer) are still with RTC whose name was suggested by co-founder Mitchell Sugarman (deceased) whose Russian acting teacher told him the following: “A red thread runs through an artist’s work; it’s the core of his integrity.” The image of the red thread embodies the vision of the company: “a thread of such sensitivity it cannot be seen, yet a thread of such vitality it can never be hidden.” (RTC Website Home Page)
With resonances of the Soviet Union and communism, the terms “red” and “collective” made Tone a bit nervous, but by the founding date of the company in 2001 these terms had lost the negative connotations of their Cold War usage. Tone posited that RTC suggested the individuals’ “commitment and integrity” when “the group assembles and collaborates in creating an effective artistic team.”
Tone Forrest is an eloquent voice for the value and necessity of drama. A highly accomplished actor and blues musician (among his many talents), Tone is an impassioned proponent for quality theater in Santa Fe: “Theater is for people who are interested in the depths of emotions” and “in the electricity of the moment.” The goal of RTC is to generate consistently first-rate theater “We can’t give them what they want, but we must educate our audiences as we attempt to cultivate and develop them…We have to show them what they need.” As the artistic director of RTC and as an individual, Tone feels “theater is a vital asset to all nations...There is nothing to replace live performances, no digital substitute, for being in the same room with other people.” The cathartic and communal aspects of the theater are central to RTC.
Tone also has a generous nature with regard to the help he’s received over the years. He is very appreciative of and thankful for El Museo Cultural, “a dedicated community service organization,” where all of RTC’s productions have been presented. Tone also throws plaudits Craig Barnes’s way for his “eloquent representation of the women’s side of issues” in the Elizabeth trilogy he’s penned. Finally, Tone acknowledges the members of RTC who, at the beginning, “faced a learning curve in all directions.”
However, Tone Forrest is no mere glad hander. He’s deeply committed to a “theater that truly belongs to the people and reveals (and revels in) the communal nature of drama.” Tone’s bedrock position is that what is needed for a successful theater community in Santa Fe is “more moral, physical, and financial support by individual and corporate benefactors.”
RTC Resident Playwright Craig Barnes has always had a wide range of interests and career moves: trial lawyer, lobbyist, politician, newspaper columnist, political commentator, and nuclear and post-Soviet Union international negotiator. He also has had a life-long love for Renaissance Theater.
When Craig was fifteen years old, his father who was in the military during the Korean War was posted to London in 1950. As a teenager, Craig took the “Yanks Go Home” signs and chants to heart and became very self-conscious. He began to question what Yanks stood for (the epiphany for his career in political commentary) and became in self-defense an Anglophile, memorizing all the kings of England and much about that country’s heraldry. A farm boy from Littleton, Colorado, whose family on long winter nights used to read Shakespeare aloud around the fire, Craig suddenly was immersed in world-class Shakespearean Theater.
Craig’s interest in Queen Elizabeth I was crystallized by two particular events that occurred in Santa Fe. First, local channeler Mary Janitis informed Craig that he “was previously a member of Elizabeth I’s court.” Then Craig saw Cate Blanchett’s performance as Queen Elizabeth in which the cinematic queen states proudly “What a great thing it was to be a virgin.” At this point, Craig was working on his book on female myths In Search of the Lost Feminine, and he wanted to write another story. He wanted to create an Elizabeth “who did not have to forfeit much of her life” and “who was not forced to choose between being a woman and a queen.” Thus was born Craig Barnes’s Elizabeth I Trilogy.
I was intrigued by Craig’s work experiences that suggested he was both cooperative and competitive. In response to a question about whether or not his work was enriched by the collaborative nature of working in the theater, Craig could provide no categorical answer: “If the input is good, it is vastly enriching; if the input is imbecilic, it is most difficult.” As he’s become a more experienced dramatist, Craig believes “he’s improved the quality of the people he’s worked with” and “become more discerning about what players and directors need.”
It is revealing to note that Craig began writing for the theater only after his father’s death. Craig’s father thought writing was “rather dilettantish” and much “too emotional” for a serious person. Theater for Craig’s father was “Errol Flynn…and a desperate sensuality.” RTC has benefited greatly from Craig’s finally picking up his pen.
Craig Barnes has hit the big time. In November of 2007, Hollywood came calling when Kevin Costner’s development person asked Craig to collaborate on a cable television series based on his well-received memoir, Growing Up True. Along with his political commentary, his international negotiations, his new work on the television series, and his continued writing and administrative work for Red Thread Collective, Craig Barnes has a very full plate. He is readying his Democracy at the Crossroads for publication and is working with John Flax on Theater Grottesco’s take on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.
Clara Soister is a relatively new member of RTC. She began as an actress in the RTC production of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milkwood. RTC Artistic Director Tone Forrest continued to think of Clara as a very talented actress. However, she has designs on being a director.
Under the inspiration and tutelage of Artistic Director Barbara Cannon of the Palo Alto Players, Clara directed her first full-length production, Crossing Delancey in the late 1990’s. She has directed Quinn Armstrong’s production of Athol Fugard’s Master Harold…and the Boys. She answered an open call for directors and won the plum position by “my presence and my enthusiasm.” She also will be directing Linda Loomis’s Living Out at the College of Santa Fed in the last week of February.
Clara Soister makes her directorial debut with RTC in Craig Barnes’s The Last Tudor scheduled for a twelve-performance at El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe beginning on June 6, 2008.
(There is a juicy bit of serendipity in Clara’s working with Craig Barnes that is too delicious to ignore. Both writer and director of The Last Tudor grew up many years apart on the same street in Littleton, Colorado.)
