Video | The Last Goodbye Actor, Kelli Barrett

Check out this interview with Kelli Barrett who plays Juliet in The Last Goodbye!

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Special Feature | Jeff Buckley and William Shakespeare in Dialogue Across 400 Years

by Kristin Idaszak, Dramaturg

Jeff Buckley

“My skin is tight underneath the tear, dried upon my cheeks the night I cried.
When I smiled Good Morning to you, my crow's feet let you know that I lied.
Please let me give these gifts of mine to the woman who eyes shined on my back
as I slept. I left you because I loved you.”

William Shakespeare

“There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd.”

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Jeff Buckley

“And though the meaning fits, there's no relief in this. I miss my beautiful friend.”

William Shakespeare

“How heavy do I journey on the way

When what I seek, my weary travel’s end,

Doth teach that ease and that repose to say,

Thus far the miles are measur’d from thy friend.”

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Jeff Buckley

“I am a man enclosed in quotation marks, ever since I took a drink of you.”

William Shakespeare

“If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken and so die.
That strain again, it had a dying fall.”
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Jeff Buckley

“I'm lying in my bed, blanket is warm.. this body will never keep me safe from harm.
I still feel your hair, black ribbons of coal. Touch my skin to keep me whole. If only you'd come back to me.”

William Shakespeare

“When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see

For all the day they view things unrespected;

But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,

And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed…

All days are nights to see till I see thee,

And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.”

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Video | Delftree Department Tour

Check out this behind the scenes tour of the scene shop at Delftree!

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Dramaturgy | Romeo Prefigured: A Portrait of Jeff Buckley

compiled by Kristin Idaszak, Dramaturg

Starlight takes hundreds of light years to reach the earth, and as a result stars continue to shine brightly in the night sky long after the antecedents themselves have died. Jeff Buckley’s light similarly continues to shine 13 years after his death. Excerpts from this 1993 article form The New York Times give us a glimpse into a brilliant past from an artist on the brink of stardom:

Strange things happen when Jeff Buckley opens his mouth to sing. One moment he's a white bluesman with a sound straight out of the Mississippi Delta; the next, a jazz singer whose acrobatic voice swoops and glides through a haze of cigarettes and pained memories. The last thing he sounds like is his age -- only 26.

Even odder, his singing makes otherwise jaded clubgoers and music-business executives rave with none of their usual cynicism. They will talk of catching Mr. Buckley at East Village hangouts like Sin-é and the FEZ, where they have heard him sing anything from "I Loves You Porgy" to a Sufi chant, an obscure Elton John oldie or one of Mr. Buckley's own unconventional songs. And they will talk about his new contract with Sony Records and how Buckley is a name to watch.

The one person who doesn't care for the talk is the source of it all. "The music business is the most childish business in the world," Mr. Buckley said one morning last month at a downtown bistro, "Nobody knows what they're selling or why, but they sell it if it works."

Mr. Buckley, whose hair is cut in a short, modestly spikey buzz, pauses and shoots an intense stare out the window. "There was a woman outside who was talking to someone, and I was trying to guess from her eyes what she sounded like," he said softly. "You can tell everything from the eyes."

You can tell a lot from Mr. Buckley's eyes, too. He's the son of the late Tim Buckley, who helped disassemble the barriers between folk, jazz and improvisational music before a fatal overdose of heroin, morphine and alcohol in 1975. Not only does Jeff Buckley have the same winding, sensual, octave-stretching voice as his father, but his waiflike looks recall the face on the covers of Tim Buckley albums like Goodbye and Hello, a cult classic from 1967.

Mr. Buckley grew up with his mother and stepfather, mostly in Southern California, and learned about his father from old friends…[He] played briefly in a rock band, Gods and Monsters, but departed in the spring of 1992. As his main solo base, Mr. Buckley chose Sin-é (Gaelic for "that's it"; pronounced shin-AY), a coffeehouse where the occasional baby mouse scurries across the wooden floor. The stage, such as it is, is a cleared-away area against a wall.

"I figured if I played in the no-man's land of intimacy, I would learn to be a performer," Mr. Buckley said. Gradually, he did; he also paid the rent on his East Village apartment with money he'd collect from the plastic pitchers passed around at Sin-é.

Shane Doyle, Sin-é's owner, said : "He'll stop by to sing at 2 in the morning, and it doesn't matter if only a handful of people are there. He's definitely unusual in that way." Mr. Buckley often helps wash the dishes, too.

When asked which musicians have influenced his work, Mr. Buckley cites figures that predate his father. Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Louis Armstrong and Judy Garland records taught him about phrasing, for example. And "there was a time when I wanted to be Miles Davis," he said.

"A lot of time I feel like I don't belong here" he added, quickly turning forlorn. "Here" meaning where? "Here," he replied, as if the question was downright silly.

One moment Mr. Buckley will gush about a Led Zeppelin bootleg or will cockily say, "There are no precedents for what I'm doing,." Then he will turn near-suicidal : "I'm sick of the world. I'm trying to stay alive."

by David Browne ©1993 by New York Times. This interview was originally published in The New York Times, October 24, 1993.

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Interview | Stephen Sanders, Original Developer on The Last Goodbye

Williamstown Theatre Festival's Artistic Assistant Stephen Sanders is one of the unseen, unsung members of the festival's year-round staff who knows the festival inside and out. In addition to his integral role in keeping WTF up and running, he also has a special affiliation with The Last Goodbye--as one of its producers and an original developers of the piece, before it was ever slated to come to Williamstown. He sat down with dramaturg Kristin Idaszak to talk about the role of producers in non-profit theatre.

Kristin Idaszak: How did you first get involved with The Last Goodbye?

Stephen Sanders: My first summer here was 2007. I was the Assistant to the Artistic Director and General Manager, and I met Lauren Fitzgerald, who was working as the Publicity Manager that summer. We had a great summer and became fast friends. The same thing also happened with Kris Kukul, the Music Director here. So the relationships were in place before anything ever happened.

Fast forward to last October of 2008. Lauren and I work in the same building in New York and we’ve remained close, and she started working on this project with Michael during that summer while I was gone. When I got back to the city and I saw her on the elevator and she said to me, “Let’s take a walk; I have something I want to talk with you about.” We walked from our offices on 42^nd and Eighth, to 46^th and Eighth where they were having auditions for the first reading they were about to do. So between 42^nd and 46^th she told me about the whole project, and that Michael’s wife was pregnant and had the baby early so they needed extra help producing the reading. By the end of those four blocks I said, “Sure, let’s do it,” having no idea what I was getting myself into.

I walked into the first rehearsal and introduced myself to Michael, and then sat down and started reading stage directions for the first reading of the play. And that’s how it happened—I just dove in. And we all worked really hard to produce that reading in the East Village.

There’s a great sort of unspoken rule about producing:  always work with your friends because you need that level of passion and trust from the people you’re working with. And I learned that really quickly working on this project. We had no idea if this was going to succeed—it hadn’t been anything yet. It was just a group of friends working on something we believed in.

KI: What has been the best thing about working on this show?

SS: I think just having a dream or idea and seeing it fully realized. Initially it was just the four of us talking about it and working on our own, and now it’s here and I know that we created that—the four of us worked together to create it. And now I get to help give them what they need to fully realize that initial vision. That’s really my job—to make sure they have everything they need. And that’s what I like about producing in general. You’re like the invisible hand making sure everything is in place. It’s also about cultivating relationships and seeing a show through to production, and anything I can do to help attain that goal, whether it be big or small, is what I enjoy most about the process.

KI: So what’s your official role now?

SS: The four of us are calling ourselves “Original Developers.” In the first two incarnations of the piece—and here for us, too—in non-profit theatre the role of a producer is different than in for-profit theatre. It doesn’t mean necessarily financially backing a project; it’s about putting the pieces together and the organizational and developmental aspects of producing a show. In the commercial world the producer’s role is augmented by the money and the investments, though there are definitely still developmental responsibilities as well. We got The Last Goodbye on its feet!

KI: What does that entail in general for non-profit theatre?

SS: In non-profit theatres every institution has a unique producing model. It’s an umbrella title—we do a little bit of everything. Producers have to be jacks-of-all-trades. You’re working with a limited staff and with limited resources for that staff, so you really have to be able to help them do their jobs efficiently and keep things moving along. And actually, my position here at the festival as Artistic Assistant was really designed to be a catch-all. I’m around everywhere, I try to know about everything that’s going on, I’m trying to stay in the know about every project’s particular needs so that if there’s ever a problem I’m totally informed and ready to jump in at a moment’s notice and help push that project through to the end. And it’s not only the big things. The small things add up.

KI: It seems like the producer is the person who has to see the forest through the trees but also know where every branch and leaf is too.

SS: Exactly. And it’s so easy to get bogged down in the details but you also have to be able to pull yourself out and see the big picture. But that’s also what I like about it—getting to do both of those things.

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Video | The Last Goodbye Actor, Ashley Robinson

Check out this video interview with The Last Goodbye actor, Ashley Robinson!

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