Director Lee Conrads ’12 and musical director Raymond Berg ’79 are on campus this fall working with Carleton’s theater department on a production of Indecent.
Both celebrated theater professionals, Conrads and Berg share a common goal when working with students: focusing on the process of making great theater rather than the product. That’s not to say they won’t work hard to put on a great show; they’ll just approach the work differently.
“I’m excited to discover that Carleton student who may be a geology major, but they have a performing gene and they’ve chosen to explore this project with us,” says Berg.
The accelerated schedule—with students beginning rehearsals in mid-September for a production that opens six weeks later—is doable, but challenging.
“We cast the play at the end of spring term so that we could hit the ground running this fall,” says Conrads. “Actors are singing and dancing. There is dialect work at play. Everyone is going to be spinning a lot of plates. Indecent is not really a musical. It’s a play with music. That distinction is significant. In a musical, the songs move the plot forward. Usually, it’s about heightened emotion. If you’re too emotional to speak, then you sing. The songs in Indecent are important to the story, but it isn’t a musical and people shouldn’t expect one.”
Conrads pitched Indecent, written in 2015 by playwright Paula Vogel, to theater professor Andrew Carlson ’99 when the pair met last year to discuss having Conrads do a residency this fall.
“Indecent is a good fit for the department’s ‘power and resistance’ theme,” says Conrads. “Most people think about those things on a political level, but Indecent looks at power and resistance between individuals, inside families, and inside communities, as well.”
As someone who works with people who sing, Berg agrees: “Singing and musical performance are expressions of community and solidarity. It’s why churches and religious organizations have their own style of music. Same thing with ethnic groups. It’s why countries have national anthems. When people sing together, they are saying ‘We are in this together.’”
And what’s on the docket for this talented duo at the end of fall term?
“I’m on the staff of a small theater company in Los Angeles called Studio X,” says Conrads. “My work focuses on new play development. We call it punk rock theater: provocative theater that’s not just an intellectual exercise, but that engages an audience member’s whole being.”
“I am doing the [St. Paul] Ordway’s holiday production of Beauty and the Beast,” says the Minneapolis-based Berg. “I was playing a show at Mixed Blood when the world pulled the plug in March 2020. I didn’t do another fully staged unmasked theater performance until this April. It’s been a rugged two years. But theater has come alive, and people are breathing a sigh of relief.”