UpStage Napa Valley’s ‘The Sound Inside’ opens Friday in St. Helena
By Dave Stoneberg
ST. HELENA, Calif. — Napa’s Shannon McDermott and Michael Hunter from Rohnert Park will star in the two-person cast of UpStage Napa Valley’s next production, “The Sound Inside.” It opens Friday, May 3, in the Newton Hall at Grace Episcopal Church, 1314 Spring St. Nine performances will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. on Sundays until May 19. Tickets are $20 for students and $30 for adults.
UpStage Artistic Director Sharie Renault said “The Sound Inside” is a “90-minute piece of intense, fantastic theater with the most beautiful prose that I’ve ever read in a play. It’s a play about writers and readers, about people who love the written word.”
The two characters in the play are Bella Baird, a professor at Yale University, and her student, Christopher. Baird’s class is reading the classic Russian novel, “Crime and Punishment” by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Christopher is so motivated by Dostoevsky’s writing that he decides to write a novel. The play is based on his process of writing it, Renault said.
In “Crime and Punishment,” the main character is a destitute student who convinces himself that he should murder an elderly pawnbroker and use her money to help his family. When her sister happens upon the crime, he kills her, too. After he commits the murders, he then goes on to repent of them, and the novel centers on the consequences of his actions. Playwright Adam Rapp’s “The Sound Inside” is similar, Renault said, because it deals with difficult topics and “with the choices these characters make and the consequences of those choices. If you didn’t have that, you wouldn’t have any drama because that’s what theater is — it’s dealing with conflict and the resolution of that conflict. Just like in ‘Crime and Punishment,’ the leading character has consequences of what he had done and how he pays for his actions.”
Additionally, Renault warns that “there is a reference to suicide in the play,” which is noted in the program and online because she said, “We really care about our audience members.”
Renault said playing the part of Bella Baird is “the part of a lifetime” for Napa’s McDermott, who has performed in many UpStage Napa Valley productions and whom Renault says is “extremely talented.” Hunter, too, has done a great deal of theater in Sonoma County, and Renault calls him “an amazing actor.” To prepare for the audition, she said he read “Crime and Punishment” and William Faulkner’s “The Wild Palms” as well as reviewing David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest.”
“These are all very literary works that are amazing for an actor to prepare for a part,” Renault said.
“The Sound Inside” is also about isolation and loneliness, about which New York Times columnist David Brooks has written, saying there is an epidemic of loneliness in today’s society,
“I think this play captures a bit of that, even though these two characters have such a passion for the written word,” Renault said. “I think we’re losing that passion because of the digital world and texting. And that also brings about isolation.”
‘The Sound Inside’ on Broadway
Rapp is an American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, musician and film director. His play “Red Light Winter” was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2006. “The Sound Inside” premiered at the Williamstown Theatre Festival on June 27, 2018. It premiered on Broadway at Studio 54, starring Mary-Louise Parker and Will Hochman with director David Cromer on Sept. 14, 2019, and closed on Jan. 12, 2020. It received six Tony Award nominations, including for Best Play. Parker won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play, according to Wikipedia.
Renault saw “The Sound Inside” when it played in New York in 2019 with Parker in the role.
“I never thought our little company could get the rights for this play because it is such a coveted work that most regional theaters would do,” Renault said.
The next challenge was finding the cast because it takes so much dedication and talent from the two cast members.
“And yet I have cast it and it is an amazing, amazing piece of theater,” she said.
After obtaining the rights, Renault had to modify the rehearsal schedule to make it easier for Hunter, who drives from Rohnert Park to St. Helena on winding mountainous roads that can be treacherous in the dark. Renault limited the rehearsals, which began on Jan. 8, to Saturday mornings.
“That wasn’t hard,” she said, “because on the first day of rehearsals Michael had the entire play memorized. He was off book.”
A place for playwrights
UpStage Napa Valley is in the middle of its 2023-24 season, having finished Theresa Rebeck’s “Dead Accounts” in February and March. In October, the UpStage Napa Valley PlayFest 2024 will be presented from Oct. 11-27 with performances at 7:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. on Sundays. All will be held at Grace Episcopal Church in St. Helena.
Why does “The Sound Inside” or UpStage Napa Valley matter? Renault answers the question.
“UpStage Napa Valley matters because we offer playwrights a voice where their work can be presented, such as our playwright festival in the fall. We have received sometimes up to 300 playwrights submitted to our festival, and we choose nine of those plays to perform in October.”
The 15-minute plays are based on a prompt. This year that prompt is “just a bit outside.” Renault said she really wants local voices to submit their plays, but “we also have many submissions from the New York Theater Guild and plays from many, many playwrights from the East Coast and around the nation.”
The fact that the plays are only 15 minutes long doesn’t mean less effort is required of the people involved.
“To produce nine works is just like doing nine productions,” Renault said. “It is the same amount of work.”
Next year UpStage Napa Valley will present “Hold Out Hope” by renowned playwright Susan Jackson from San Francisco’s 3Girls Theatre Company, which was written for UpStage Napa Valley. With performed works from Rebeck and Rapp, Renault said, theatergoers could expect to see those plays in New York or Los Angeles or maybe in Ashland, Oregon. Instead, they’re being staged in St. Helena.
“I think that UpStage Napa Valley is very important because we honor playwrights and we are not afraid to do material that’s edgy,” Renault said.
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Dave Stoneberg is an editor and journalist who has worked for newspapers in both Lake and Napa counties.