Synetic Theater's Ben Cunis: The New Gay Interview

TNG theatre guy Chris brings you this interview.

I was fascinated by local troupe Synetic Theater’s take on Dante’s Divine Comedy. Synetic actor Ben Cunis, who plays Dante in this production, was kind enough to answer a few questions. (And if inquiring minds want to know, he's straight.) We discuss the collaborative artistic process, the relationships between the characters, the challenges in bringing this epic story to the stage and what it’s like going through Hell night after night.

The New Gay Chris: What drew you, Nathan [Weinberger] and Paata [Tsikurishvili] to the work? What were some of the challenges in adapting the piece for Synetic? Describe the creative and rehearsal process in bringing this production to the stage.

Ben Cunis: This is a big question...

Dante is, much like the sin it depicts, a piece with a lot of attraction coupled with a lot of danger. It contains a wealth of fantastic imagery -- some of which can translate directly to the stage, some of which cannot. It depicts a deeply psychological and emotionally complex journey on the part of the hero. There are literally hundreds of characters throughout the Commedia, and a vast variety of punishments, challenges, rewards, and various adventures.

The wealth of material is a double edged sword. One danger we continually found ourselves running into was the risk that the show become a sort of museum, a pastiche of horrific images. So much time had to be spent creating the environments that it took enormous additional effort to work them, as "units" of hell, into a dramatic storyline -- and therein lies the key challenge that anyone who has ever adapted the Commedia must face: it is a hero's journey in the epic form, which is fundamentally different from the dramatic form to which we (as a culture and a company, both) are accustomed. The epic format is episodic, with a regular rising and falling of action over a long period. The dramatic form can put the entirety of one of those rise/fall/rise episodes in a single evening. Our challenge was ultimately to make an epic story's flow match up with what Paata [Tsikurishvili, director] likes to call a dramaturgical flow.

Our process is intensely collaborative. Audiences, critics, and judges alike all comment on the remarkable choreography and unity of the productions, but perhaps rarely glimpse the true combination of individual genius that goes into creating one of these shows. Paata is a master not of crafting a story and a vision on his own, but a master of taking the qualities, ideas, and talents that his artists bring to him, and weaving them together with powerful vision. The same can be said of Irina [Tsikurishvili, choreographer] -- she takes the movement capabilities of our members, improves them, and then uses them in the best way possible. Both of them will observe a large amount of improvisation on the part of the cast, then take the elements that work and use them. I've never felt such ownership of a role as with my roles in Synetic.

The process is very long -- up to 3 months of training, improvisation, creation, and rehearsal. Other theater companies are putting their work up in one to two months of rehearsal. Our rehearsal process encompasses not only "rehearsal" per se, but also a massive amount of training and improvisation, and through that, the integrated creation of the music, costumes, set, fights, dances, etc. (all theater is intensely collaborative, yes, and none if this is meant to denigrate the fantastic work of other theaters in the area, we simply have a very different process). Most actors come into a process when it has already been running, we come into the process almost at ground zero (the exception to this is that usually the adaptation and basic concept sketches are prepared beforehand -- even though these change massively in rehearsal). This is because the majority of story and concept work comes out of improvisation and experimentation with the actors.

A piece like Dante is the result of a lot of sweat, argument, and effort over a long period. If I had to come up with one term for the way Synetic creates its work, it's Mass Brute Creativity.

TNG: One of the fascinating things about Dante's work is that the sins he details in Hell are, for the most part, still considered wrong or sinful today. What do you think the piece has to say about right and wrong in a contemporary society?

BC: This was an important element of the creation process -- Paata sensed that the piece had to resonate with today's life, and that the show is ultimately about things that are in all of us. I look at the farcical scene of the Prodigal and Avaricious as a great example. A bunch of people in rags are forced to haul around large numbers that take on lives of their own and fling the sinners about in a chaotic mess. You can look at the state of our economy today, or look at the source of a number of our societal ills, and I, personally, think that it can often boil down to people to whom numbers are the "point"...they become slaves to the numbers and blind to actual humanity.

As for right and wrong, I think there is an interesting bit of wonderment in Dante. I think it asks a question -- at what point is sin unforgivable? Do we ever sin to the point of losing our contact with the divine...for eternity?

TNG: I found the relationships between Dante, Beatrice and Virgil very compelling. After the opening scene, Beatrice is essentially untouchable, while Virgil is very physically present, even affectionate with Dante. How would you describe Dante's relationships with Beatrice and Virgil in this production?

BC: The relationship with Beatrice, and the loss of her, is very much the catalyzing event for me. It's what takes Dante to the place of darkness, to escape from which requires his journey (though perhaps the true source of Dante's being "lost in a dark wood" is some more deep seeded attitude about life on his part). Beatrice is an ideal to Dante, and to me, the kind of ideal she is changes over the course of the story. She starts as an ideal of earthly love, of beautiful human connection, but by the end Dante begins to see her as a divine ideal, something that elevates not only the heart but the soul as well.

Virgil is something else. He is, (I'm about to be pretentious) in a Jungian sense, Dante's shadow. He is a part of Dante, to me. At the beginning of the process we toyed with making this more overt -- Virgil and Beatrice are parts of Dante's fragmented psyche, and the hero's journey is one of unification or shedding of these estranged parts. This ultimately did not get worked directly in, but to me, that's the story -- Dante is broken apart by loss and trauma, and his journey to the depths of evil and the heights of divinity brings him to wholeness. The entirety of the Inferno is, to me, a story of a man plunging through the depths of his own soul, not an external physical hell. It's an internal story, told through an external quest.

The relationship with Virgil, then, is more like having an adventure with a long lost twin, than a road trip with some crazy tour guide.

TNG: This is an extremely physical show for all of the actors and I imagine it's mentally exhausting as well. How did you and the cast prepare? As an actor, what is it like to go through Hell, literally, night after night? Is there a circle of Hell you find particularly disturbing in this production?

BC: Our training is rigorous, long, and difficult, and our rehearsal process is ten times as physically hard as performing the show itself. Fitness is a necessity for, and a result of, our creation process.

Every show requires a good hour of warming up, stretching, vocal warmup, various backflips and traditional chant things, and a few moments of listening to music by myself.

Going through Hell is a sweaty process, and the emotional heights I have to jump into at the end are made easier to enter by the fact that my lungs are burning/full of CO2 fog.

The circle of the hypocrites is particularly disturbing to me -- it contains some POWERFUL (and controversial) imagery...and I have to hold still and watch it every night.

TNG: If you had to make your way through Hell, who would you choose as your guide?

BC: Hmm. My roommate Ryan Sellers [a fellow Synetic actor]. He's friends with all those folks anyway, so I wouldn't have to worry about getting chomped by demons.

TNG: Is there anything else you'd like readers to know about the production or Synetic Theater?

BC: I suggest planning on grabbing a drink/companion/cold shower after this one.

Dante runs through March 22nd at Rosslyn Spectrum. Running time is 90 minutes and there is no intermission. Directed by Paata Tsikurishvili and choreographed by Irina Tsikurishvili. Set, costume and props designed by Anastasia Ryurikov Simes. Lighting designed by Andrew F. Griffin and music design by Konstantine Lortkipanidze. Fight Choreography by Ben Cunis. The piece was adapted by Ben Cunis, Nathan Weinberger and Paata Tsikurishvili. Tickets are $15 – $40. For more info, visit http://www.synetictheater.org