Who’s Afraid of Repertory?
- Joel Beers
- 2 hours ago
- 7 min read
From ‘Woolf’ to ‘Carnage,’ South Coast Repertory and two actors tackle a marathon challenge.
Sure, ballet and other dancers exert massive physical effort. But when it comes to other types of artistic creation, it’s not exactly bullfighting. Orchestra members sit. Painters stand at easels. And acting? Isn’t that just a matter of learning lines and not bumping into the furniture?
Not if you ask Kim Martin-Cotten and Brian Vaughn.
Both describe their current rehearsal process at South Coast Repertory as “running a marathon” or “climbing a mountain.” Beginning Jan. 23, the two actors embark on a nearly two-month run performing in repertory, appearing in a combined 53 performances of Yasmina Reza’s “God of Carnage” and Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Eight of those days feature performing both shows back-to-back.
These are not supporting roles. Both plays are intense four-character dramas with darkly comic edges, and Martin-Cotten and Vaughn play married couples who are onstage nearly the entire time. The emotional and physical demands are relentless.
Nor are these minor works. “God of Carnage” is one of the most produced non-musicals of the 2000s, winning three Tony Awards in 2009 including best play. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” first produced in 1962, is widely considered one of the canonical American plays of the post-World War II era. It won a Tony Award and was recommended for a Pulitzer Prize, though the Pulitzer board declined to award a drama that year, citing the play’s controversy. Albee would go on to win three Pulitzers, second only to Eugene O’Neill.
Both plays also became successful films, with “Virginia Woolf” starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, whose famously stormy relationship might have been more tumultuous than the fictional one.
The scale of the challenge is daunting. While “God of Carnage” runs about 80 minutes and contains roughly 11,000 words, evenly distributed among its four characters, “Virginia Woolf?” is massive, often running close to three hours and containing an estimated 60,000 words, most of them spoken by George and Martha, the roles played by Vaughn and Martin-Cotten.
Working the Dream
It’s not unusual for actors to rehearse one play while performing another. Performing two plays in repertory is something else entirely. It requires not only learning two scripts but building and sustaining distinct characters, emotional worlds, rhythms and physical vocabularies.
And both actors say they would not want it any other way.
“It’s kind of an actor’s dream,” Vaughn said over a Zoom conversation. “I feel like a kid in a candy store. You’re getting to work on these two well-written, highly regarded works, and you’re getting a chance to do them at the same time with the same actor. So, there’s a familiarity and a deepening of understanding and trust that is just really special.”
“It’s a long-form experience of moving from one story to another, which is a beautiful challenge that we meet together, which is different than meeting it alone,” Martin-Cotten said. “I feel like we help to anchor each other in this delicious experience.”
Living up to the repertory name
Though repertory has been in South Coast Repertory’s name since its founding in 1964, this marks only the second time the theater has staged productions in true repertory. (The term can refer either to a rotating system of plays or to a resident acting company employed across multiple productions. SCR was founded on the latter model).
Artistic Director David Ivers, who has a long history of working in repertory as an actor, director and producer, introduced repertory to the theater in the 2022–23 season with Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes” and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ “Appropriate.” He said the model presents both logistical and aesthetic challenges.
“There’s a whole organism that has to solve how two plays live in the same space,” Ivers said. “From scenery that accommodates stories set 45 years apart to choosing plays that speak to each other. You can’t do it casually. It has to be thoughtful and creative.”
There are two directors but one costume designer, scenic designer and lighting designer. That helps streamline the process, but it remains a formidable challenge that would strain any theater’s resources. It is also an incredible opportunity for theater artists, the theater itself and audiences, Ivers said.
“What I find most compelling about repertory theater is how galvanizing it is for an institution,” he said. “This kind of work shows resilience. It reminds an institution of what it’s capable of. It asks a lot of artists and audiences (especially those who opt for same-day viewings), but the return is enormous. Seeing theater in this form is the most adventurous. Audiences see true theater magic that showcases incredible craft and discipline. It is a theatrical feat.”
While solving logistical issues is obvious (on certain weekend days when shows are at 1 p.m. and 7 p.m., there may be no more than two hours between clearing the house for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” setting up for “God of Carnage” and reopening the house). But play choice is equally important. Ivers said, in finding two plays that complement and speak to each other.
Deliberate Pairing
Written roughly 45 years apart, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “God of Carnage” examine marriage, power, masculinity and social performance through different lenses. One emerges from postwar American anxiety, the other from contemporary liberal malaise. Both strip away civility to reveal something raw underneath.
The American theater had never seen a play quite like “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” when it opened on Broadway at the Billy Rose Theatre on Oct. 13, 1962. What begins as witty banter between a middle-aged professor and his wife curdles into a brutal late-night ritual when they invite a younger couple home. What could be mistaken for a Noel Coward drawing room comedy quickly shifts after metaphorical PCP is added to the bourbon and brandy. (Drinking plays an enormous role in both pieces.) Psychological games replace plot. Language becomes a weapon. Carefully manufactured social masks dissolve into the primal and savage. Illusion and truth blur.
Stylistically, the play fuses multiple 20th century movements. It is realist on the surface, with naturalistic dialogue in a comfortable New England home on a small university campus. Beneath that lies absurdism, with repetition, circular arguments and meaning eroded by talk. Expressionism surfaces as emotional truth overrides literal fact. Comedy is present too, though aimed squarely at the jugular.
To top it off, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” also works as a metaphor for the failed American Dream. (It is no coincidence that the two main characters share the first names George and Martha, echoing the nation’s founding couple.) The play exposes the gap between postwar promises of success, stability and masculine authority, and the emotional emptiness underneath. Academic ambition replaces earlier ideals of progress, marriage stands in for domestic bliss and the illusion the couple clings to is revealed as the flimsy structure holding the relationship together.
“God of Carnage” compresses similar ideas (particularly as marriage as a social construct rather than a lifelong union based on love, trust and respect) into a tighter, faster form. Two sets of parents meet in the living room of a Brooklyn brownstone to civilly discuss a playground fight between their sons. Politeness quickly dissolves. Alliances shift. Liberal civility collapses into chaos. The play uses strict realism and rapid verbal escalation to strip away manners and expose tribal instinct and cruelty beneath.
Both plays rely on exaggerated behavior, sudden reversals, alcohol-fueled loss of control and escalating humiliation.
Despite the similarities, Martin-Cotten said the differences help keep the roles distinct.
“Even though both plays are extremely confrontational, they are handled in very different ways. The rhythm, pace, writing style and internal structure are also very different,” she said, which helps keep the portrayals from bleeding into each other.
But it still happens.
“In a recent ‘God of Carnage’ rehearsal I was tired enough to turn to Brian and realize I was shouting at him like Martha,” she said. “So it does happen.”
Both actors were trained in repertory theater, though this is the first time either has performed these two plays and the first time they have worked together onstage despite knowing each other for years.
Both praise everyone involved in the production, most notably Ivers “for putting together such a very special project, because these plays speak to each other beautifully,” Martin-Cotten said, as well as the show’s directors, Lisa Rothe (“Virginia Woolf”) and Marco Barricelli (“Carnage”).
“They are vets, and they're just great to be in the room with,” she said. “They make it so much fun, and they make us so much better by asking us to be our best selves.”
And, of course, they spread the love to the other actors, Don Donohue and Melinda Page Hamilton, in “Carnage” and Gabriel Gaston and Elysia Roorback in “Virginia Woolf,” all of whom, Martin-Cotten said, “are such a treat to work with and who are doing incredibly and dynamic work.”
But make no mistake; appearing in nearly every minute of two plays places enormous responsibility on two actors in particular.
“We got into this because we love theater, we love performing, we love acting,” Vaughn said. “To get to do both of these plays is a real honor and you want to bring your best work to it. That sets a high bar and means everyone is bringing their A game.”
“You have to bring every tool you have,” Martin-Cotten said. “You’re constantly asking how much you can give, being aware of the skill set needed to help tell the story and how to transform to meet the needs of the play. It’s an intellectual, physical and emotional marathon.”
Or, as she put it more simply, climbing a mountain.
And doing it twice.
‘God of Carnage’ and ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’
When: Done in repertory, 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Wednesdays, 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m., Saturdays, 1 and 7 p.m. Sundays, Jan. 23-March 21
Where: South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa
Cost: $36-$122, single and group discounts available
Info: scr.org
