Win a Segerstrom Stage 3-Play Subscription!

Dominic Marsh and Hannah Vassallo in Kneehigh's Tristan & Yseult.
Photo by Richard Termine.

Contest Details

Grand Prize
A Segerstrom Stage three-play subscription with two tickets each to see Tristan & Yseult, Of Good Stock and Peter and the Starcatcher!

How to Enter 

1. Make a video where you act out a love song as a monologue or scene with a friend
2. Keep the video length between 30 seconds and one minute 
3. Upload your video on YouTube and subscribe to SCR's YouTube channel
4. Tweet the video link to @SouthCoastRep or email your video link to nicholas@scr.org

Deadline: Jan. 30, 2015. A panel of judges will choose the most outstanding video as a winner. The winner will be announced on Feb. 2, 2015. 

The story of Tristan & Yseult is a romantic epic about true love—played out by Kneehigh with stunning theatricality and full of endless surprises! Here’s another surprise: we want to see how theatrical you can get when it comes to love. 

Enter our “Lover-Logues” contest and show off your acting skills—or dust them off—by turning your favorite love song into a monologue! Film it and be dramatic, hilarious or even a little bit weird; but most of all, have fun. We’ll share our favorites on SCR’s social media and choose one grand prize winner.

Watch our video for examples of  "Lover-Logues!"




See Tristan & Yseult on the Segerstrom Stage, Jan. 23-Feb. 22! Click here for tickets and more info.

Four Questions with "The Whipping Man's" Jarrod M. Smith

Jarrod M. Smith as "John" in The Whipping Man

Jarrod M. Smith is at an incredible milestone in his acting career: he's making his professional acting debut in South Coast Repertory's production of The Whipping Man. He studied acting at the prestigious American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and took time to answer our four questions for MyStage, SCR's discounted ticket program for those 15-to-25 years old.

What drew you into acting?
I've always been fascinated with the movies. Films would suck me into a variety of worlds that would have a lasting impression on me. My parents used to take me; I still remember going with my father on Christmas Day to see Street Fighter.

What’s been the biggest challenge you've faced building your acting career?
Figuring out where I fit in! When I first started acting, I was around people who had acted for a little while longer, but they had regular jobs and acting was their hobby. When I studied at the American Conservatory Theater, some of my classmates had been acting for many years and it was their career. I always knew I could get in stage or film and play ball with the best of them. Even if I really couldn't at the time.

Adam Hass Hunter and Jarrod M. Smith in The Whipping Man

You’re making your SCR debut and professional debut with The Whipping Man. Can you speak on that and what that means to you? 
I couldn't ask for more. It’s an honor to be making my debut as a professional at South Coast Repertory with this specific play. Great opportunity.

What advice can you give to aspiring actors?
Advice? I still need advice! But, the one thing I have learned is that if you don't hustle, you'll never be seen. The most talented of actors will never be seen if the "hustle" gene isn't in them. Don't be that actor.

More About MyStage

MyStage is a special program designed for 15- to-25-year-olds. Members get a special discount, $10 tickets for shows at South Coast Repertory. It’s like student rush, but you can get great seats by purchasing tickets up to a month in advance! Members also get access to exclusive social events and behind-the-scenes updates.

Ready to join? It’s free and easy to sign up. Just e-mail the following to mystage@scr.org:

• Full Name:
• Address:
• Phone Number:
• Birthday and Year:
• Email (not your parents’):
• School Attending (if applicable):

Learn more and buy tickets

Designing the Look of Destruction for "The Whipping Man"

Designer Tom Buderwitz on the set of The Whipping Man.

What do you do when the playwright calls for his story to be set in a destroyed-by-war formerly grand home in Richmond, Va? Put in a call to Tom Buderwitz. The Los Angeles-based scenic designer has worked with South Coast Repertory on productions since the 1998-99 season, including Bach at Leipzig, The Heiress, Collected Stories, Three Days of Rain and 13 seasons with A Christmas Carol.  He also is one of the most-respected West Coast-based designers. Variety has called his work “gorgeous” (Gigi), and the Los Angeles Times says his work is “breathtaking” (Putting It Together, The Autumn Garden) and “superb” (Crimes of the Heart). For The Whipping Man,  he has created an achingly beautiful and war-torn set. Learn more about his design process in the conversation below.

What drew you first to scenic and set design?
I came across the renderings of Robert Edmond Jones and Jo Mielziner in theatre books as a freshman in high school. I thought they were so poetic, magical and evocative. They captured the essence of the theatrical moment.

Who would you cite as your mentor—and how did that person work with/inspire you?
Allen Cornell was my scenic design teacher at Adelphi University. He is a fantastic designer who passed on a solid foundation in theatrical design and he instilled in me the idea of creating the right world for a play.

What makes you most proud of the work that you do?
Seeing it all come together with all of the other elements: acting, direction, costume, lighting and sound. My sets never feel complete until actors in costume under light appear.

What keeps bringing you back to SCR?
SCR has created a great working environment. I feel fully supported here and am encouraged to dream and push the boundaries of my craft. It is a place where I can freely exercise my design muscles. There is great reverence for the work here and an inherent professionalism that is ever inspiring.

What is your process in approaching a design like The Whipping Man?
It always starts with the text first. Having a pure first read is a theatrical experience, just me and the play (playwright). Then comes research and a lot of dialogue with Director Martin Benson about the play. We next spent time developing the plan (layout) of the set, carefully working through blocking possibilities and sightlines. In design, form follows function, and the way the design works has to take precedent over what it looks like. A well-functioning design will then take care of much of the form a design takes on.

What did you find most creatively challenging?
Probably finding the right level of destruction and deterioration in this set. It was supposed to have been a very nice place not very long ago, but the end of the war and recent events have wreaked great havoc on this house. Trying to find the right balance here was crucial.

What should audience members note about the set as they watch the play?
Don’t note anything. Take the set at face value and listen and watch the play unfold. The set is big and grand and almost another silent character all on its own. Hopefully the set will make sense and just be accepted as the right place for this story.

Learn more and buy tickets.

"The Whipping Man": A Night Different from All Other Nights

by Andy Knight

In His Own Words: Playwright Matthew Lopez on The Whipping Man’s Inspiration


Matthew Lopez

"In researching the end of the war, and the very eventful month of April 1865, I came across a reference to the fact that Passover began that year on April 10, the day immediately following Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. This means that as Jews across the nation were celebrating this sacred ritual commemorating their ancestors’ freedom from bondage in Egypt, a new kind of exodus was occurring all around them. The parallels were irresistible.

"The Whipping Man began in my mind with the image of an old man performing a Seder. Recently freed from a lifetime of slavery, he speaks the words of the Haggadah with a newfound understanding of their meaning. The words are hopeful, a promise of justice to come. Something ancient and distant suddenly becomes immediate. The past and the present intermingle as he becomes a part of a history that began thousands of years before his birth and that arrives finally at the moment he takes his first psychological and emotional step towards emancipation. The promised justice has finally arrived.

"The result, I hope, is an inexorable link between the African American and Jewish imperatives of reminding successive generations about their people’s past. There has always been a conversation between black and Jewish histories in the United States. It is a conversation based, I believe, on a similar history. In The Whipping Man, that similar history becomes a shared one."

—Matthew Lopez, playwright

By the spring of 1865, the American Civil War had reached a turning point: Union troops had significantly weakened General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army during a bloody nine-month battle around the city of Petersburg, Va. When Lee and his army finally surrendered Petersburg and retreated west, they left the nearby city of Richmond—then the capital of the Confederate States of America—vulnerable. At Lee’s behest, most of Richmond’s population evacuated the city on the night of April 2, 1865.

During the evacuation, the Confederate army set fire to buildings throughout the city to keep reserves of tobacco, cotton and other supplies out of Union hands. Other Richmonders looted before leaving. At around 11 p.m. that night, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, along with members of his cabinet, took the last train out of the city and escaped to Danville, Va.

The evacuation cleared the way for a next step. On April 4, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln visited Richmond, which had officially fallen to the Union a day earlier. Members of Lincoln’s party told stories of the president touring the Confederate Congressional chambers, visiting Richmond’s famous Libby Prison and even stopping at the Confederate White House to sit in President Davis’ empty chair. One famous account told of a group of freed slaves who bowed when the president approached, to which Lincoln replied, “Kneel to God only, and thank him for the liberty you will hereafter enjoy.” The president returned to Washington, D.C., after spending four days in Richmond—and only the day before Lee’s final surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9. Six days later, Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.

The Confederate White House in Richmond, Virginia

Playwright Matthew Lopez sets The Whipping Man in Richmond a few days after Lee’s surrender. The play begins on a stormy night as a lone Confederate soldier, Captain Caleb DeLeon—a member of one of Richmond’s most prominent Jewish families—stumbles into the ruins of a once grand home. He collapses in a faint, but awakens when Simon, one of his family’s former slaves, enters with a rifle in hand. The two men recognize each other, and Caleb realizes that he’s finally found his way home.

Like many of the buildings in Richmond, the DeLeons’ house was destroyed and looted during the city’s evacuation, but Simon assures Caleb that the family and their former slaves managed to escape unharmed. Before Caleb can ask any more questions, Simon notices the week-old bullet wound on the soldier’s leg. Gangrene has already set in and Simon, who worked in the hospital during the war, knows that immediate amputation is the only way to save Caleb’s life.

When John, another former slave in the DeLeon household, arrives, Simon tries to convince Caleb to go to the hospital for the amputation. Caleb refuses, although he won’t say why. With time running out, Simon performs the amputation himself, with only John by his side and some whiskey to clean the wound.

As Caleb convalesces, the three men grapple with how their lives will change now that the war has ended, and a tension grows between them. With Passover underway, Simon, a devout Jew, decides to hold a makeshift Seder. For all of them, the ritual of honoring the Israelites’ escape from slavery in Egypt carries a profound meaning in April 1865. But even the shared experience of the Seder isn’t enough to hold these men together, for each has deep secrets—and it’s only a matter of time until they’re revealed.

With rich characters, surprising plot twists and a pivotal moment in American history as a backdrop, The Whipping Man tells a harrowing and thought-provoking story. While writing the play, Lopez, the son of whom he describes as “Civil War buffs,” was interested in dramatizing “the first tentative steps of the long, painful, hopeful journey that began in April 1865 and continues today.”

Since it first premiered at New Jersey’s Luna Stage in 2006, The Whipping Man has had more than 30 productions across the country, making it one of the most widely produced new American plays in the last several years. Its success thrust Lopez into the national spotlight and has made him one of the country’s most sought-after playwrights. With his incredible range as a writer and his skill at bringing complex relationships to life, it’s no surprise that Lopez’s work is so popular with audiences. He is currently under commission to write new plays for a number of major theatres across the nation—and SCR is thrilled to be one of them.

Learn more and buy tickets.

Jarrod M. Smith, Adam Haas Hunter and Charlie Robinson

The Whipping Man at SCR

Founding Artistic Director Martin Benson directs SCR’s production of The Whipping Man. Benson is drawn not only to Lopez’s fresh voice, but also the play’s bold and thoughtful take on history. “It’s a tremendously theatrical play,” Benson says. “But it also deals with a subject that is unique and very rich. It has a great deal to do with tradition and values, and it looks at the issues of slavery in many different ways. I think this play is a really unique look at an important time in history, and I find it exciting to contemplate.”

To bring the play to life, Benson assembled a cast that includes SCR veteran Charlie Robinson (Simon). Robinson—whom audiences know from performances in Death of a Salesman, Jitney and Fences—is no stranger to the character of Simon: he’s reprising the role after appearing in The Old Globe’s 2010 production of the play. The cast also includes two SCR newcomers, Adam Haas Hunter (Caleb) and Jarrod M. Smith (John). Hunter has appeared on a number of Southern California stages, including A Noise Within, the Theatre @ Boston Court and Center Theatre Group. Smith recently moved to Los Angeles after training at San Francisco’s prestigious American Conservatory Theater and makes his professional debut in The Whipping Man.

The Whipping Man’s design team includes Scenic Designer Thomas Buderwitz, Costume Designer Angela Balogh Calin, Lighting Designer Lonnie Rafael Alcarez and Sound Designer/Composer Michael Roth—all of whom have worked on a number of SCR productions.

Read more about the cast here.

Go Behind the Scenes with Our Young Actors (Part Two)

Young actors from A Christmas Carol: (top row) Blogger Sophia Utria, Joshua Myran, Maximos Harris, Bloggers Zoe Hebbard and  Emily McDaniel, Mitchell Huntley, Blogger Benjamin Susskind, London Walston.
(middle row) Alexis Cueva, Bloggers Olivia Drury and William Lynam.
(bottom row) Bloggers Karoline Ribak, Katherine Parrish, Jacqueline Vellandi, Aoife McEvoy and Bella Browne.

Our Bloggers

Olivia Drury (Young Girl About Town), age 13. Olivia has been studying acting at SCR for two years and started performing in plays at age five. She played Troy in High School Musical and Burt in Mary Poppins. “I was a huge tomboy.”


Will Lynam (Turkey Boy), age 11. Will has been studying at SCR for two years. Fun fact: “I am very good with technology and I can fix most computer problems."


Emily McDaniel (Belinda Cratchit), age 11. Emily has been studying acting at SCR for three years. She has two pet bunnies named Toki and Sugar. “I am bananas about bunnies!!”


Aoife McEvoy (Tiny Tim), age 10. Aoife has been studying at SCR for two years. Fun fact: “I’m named after an evil queen who turns children into swans in Irish mythology.”


Zoe Hebbard (Belinda Cratchit), age 11. Fun fact: Zoe is a competitive ballroom dancer.


Katherine Parrish (Martha Cratchit), age 16. She’s been studying acting at SCR for four years and is an avid Broadway musical theatre fan.


Karoline Ribak (Fan), age 17. She has been studying at SCR for nine years and previously played Belinda Cratchit in A Christmas Carol back in 2007.

Sophia Utria (Fan), age 16. She has been studying at SCR for two years. Fun fact: she has a twin sister. “We can sometimes read each others' mind.”


Jacqueline Vellandi (Tiny Tim), age 10. She started in SCR’s Youth Conservatory when she was eight and just finishing third grade. She loves SCR and can’t wait to be a Junior and Teen Player. She likes to write scripts, hold auditions and then run rehearsals and perform shows with her Barbies and Legos.

Our young bloggers performed in A Christmas Carol more than two-dozen times now. We asked them to talk about different milestones during the production.

How does it feel performing onstage, in front of sold-out houses?
Jacki: It feels like a dream come true!
Olivia: It's a feeling that really cannot be put into words. It's like everything around you just disappears and you can't feel or remember anything other than that moment. It is truly a feeling like no other, kind of like electricity.
Aofie:  I like it when I can hear people in the audience laugh or gasp. I want to make them feel emotions and get involved in the story.
Karoline: The audiences' energy creates the magic and brings our story to life.

Are you still discovering new things about your character?
Karoline: I'm constantly challenging myself to break routine and find ways to keep my interactions real and fresh.
Benjamin: In the party scenes, I play a character without a name.  I haven't really thought about this, so I have been coming up with his story as the shows go on.
Jacki: I keep finding out new things about Tiny Tim—like he's really energetic even if he is sick and weak. I’m working on showing that excitement he feels inside.

Were you nervous before opening night?
Sophia: Surprisingly, no. We had been rehearsing for this moment, and everyone was ready.
Emily:  I couldn't sit still all day. I was shaking when the lights dimmed for the show to begin. But once I got out on stage I felt great, not scared at all. I loved it!
Olivia: I was very nervous backstage. But, once I was waiting to enter and heard the excited murmurs of the crowd trying to find their seats, I just took a deep breath, and stopped being nervous. I thought "This is what I love to do, so why am I nervous?"

What do you do backstage when you’re not onstage?
Sophia: Costume changes!
Benjamin: I have so many that I don't even get to talk and rest during intermission.
William: I have to do a really quick costume change for one of my scenes.  If I take too long then the other actors in my dressing room squirt me with a water bottle to get me to move a little faster. It is a fun way of keeping me on track.
Olivia: If I am not changing costumes, I hang out with the other actors in the dressing rooms or the green room. We usually play chess and talk.
Karoline: Our chess games backstage are extremely intense.

Any fun backstage stories?
Aoife: Backstage we like to make up names for the characters that don’t have official names. We gave Turkey Boy the name Gregory Thomas Caspian III. We named two of the Fezziwig guests Beatrice and Esmeralda.
Emily: Daniel Blinkoff (Mr. Cratchit) taught me how to play checkers during intermission. One time, Karen Hensel (Mrs. Fezziwig) was about to go and she realized she had a Vons grocery bag caught on her hoop skirt.
Katherine: Our Red Team cheer before every show is "Roses are red and so are we!" We like to make a tunnel for Gregg Daniels (Marley's Ghost) to exit through before the schoolyard scene. And after every show, Daniel Blinkoff (Bob Cratchit) high fives us and says "Slap me five!"and we say "Gimme some change!"

Have your friends and family been able to see you in the show?
Zoe: Definitely! My grandma flew from Virginia to come see the show!
William: My parents and brother have seen the performance three times and I have had family fly in from three different states to watch me perform.
Emily: My mom has a ticket to every performance and my whole family has seen it. Even my Grandma who lives out of the country came to opening night.

Jacki Vellandi as Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol

What's been the best part about being in A Christmas Carol this year?
Jacki: Christmas started in November for me, when I was cast in A Christmas Carol and I love Christmas—so that’s been awesome.
Katherine: I've loved making relationships with all these wonderful people I never would have met otherwise, including the actors, the tech crew and my crazy Cratchit family. I will never forget the time I have had doing this show; these wonderful memories will live with me forever.
Emily: I have been able to meet so many nice, kind people and I’ve learned new acting skills. My favorite part though is being on stage—I just love it!
Olivia: My favorite part is being with all the actors and the crew. They are so much fun to be around and are always very helpful. We have such a good time!
Zoe: Probably just getting to perform with all these professional adult actors. I learn so much stuff from them.
Aoife: I love everything about it!
Sophia: I love the holidays, and this year I got spend a lot of time this season doing what I love and being around people I have become really close to. Every day since the first rehearsal, there is something to celebrate or smile about. The whole cast and crew is so full of spirit, it's impossible not to be happy.
Benjamin: I think my favorite part about being in A Christmas Carol this year is being able to perform with professionals and being able to perform with Mrs. Argyros.
William: The best part of being in A Christmas Carol is being transformed into another period of time.
Karoline: Every member of the cast is warm-hearted, supportive and always there to make me laugh. I feel blessed beyond belief to work with such an inspiring group of artists. I cherish every second with my A Christmas Carol family and will always treasure the memories, wisdom and joy they have given me.

Read part one of this blog.