Cooking up a new play: Home's Kitchen director, Maeve Chapman
Everybody's in LA: Maeve Chapman, writer and director
New play Home's Kitchen has its world premier on stage at NOCCA this week. We caught up with director Maeve Chapman to find out more...
Hi Maeve, thanks for taking time out of your preparations for opening night to talk to us. How are rehearsals going?
Of course! Thank you for asking. Rehearsals are going really well, we have a fantastic group of people bringing these characters to life. We’re running the show and each time we discover more about the characters and the world they live in. And we’ve even held a “cooking bootcamp” and worked with local Chef Kevin Belton to refine our onstage culinary skills which is a pretty unique and fun addition to rehearsals! We really can’t wait for the world to see what we’ve been cooking up.
Tell us a little bit about the play - what are the themes and what can audiences expect?
Home's Kitchen follows the seemingly separate lives of Marianne Rose, a young and disillusioned obituary writer, and Richard Davenport, a TV celebrity chef who seemingly has it all. The play asks the question "is it worth being able to love and be loved fully?” and explores these themes of love and connection through food, family, and faith. We also explore family and faith through the lens of the LGBT experience. The audience can expect to laugh, cry and fall in love with these characters as they try to figure out their lives. There’s also live cooking on stage so don’t come hungry.
It's billed as a fusion of New Orleans and New York talent, could you expand on that a little?
The majority of our cast and creative team is New Orleans based. New Orleanian actors Stephen LaDow, Matthew Raetz, Michael Vaughn-Kennedy, and Emily Chatelain are joined by New York actor Sam Drust, who has been developing this play with me in workshops for many years along with our lighting and projection designer Liam Corley in New York. While I myself am from outside Boston and now reside in NYC, I’ve really loved getting to work in this amazing city and collaborating with everyone!
Do you have a personal connection to NOCCA? How did the premier happen to be taking place there/in New Orleans?
This is my first time here, but a significant amount of our cast and creative team went to NOCCA and two now teach there, so in a way it feels like a “home” to many of our team. Our producer Natalie Rine got her pre-professional start at NOCCA and also wanted to make sure our development journey was linked to the play’s DNA, so Home’s Kitchen is making its world premiere in New Orleans because what better place is there to open a play about the power of food than the food capital of America? Home’s Kitchen and New Orleans are the perfect match.
You're going from here to off-Broadway, tell us about your hopes for the play's future, and why you think it could be a global hit.
Home’s Kitchen is the inaugural play in producer Broadway DNA's New Play Production Pipeline, producing new work for global licensing. As part of the pipeline, we’re doing a world premiere here, followed by a totally new production in New York, then new productions licensed around the world– including the potential to make a difference in countries and communities where women’s and LGBT rights remain silenced. My hope is that the next Off-Broadway production really allows us to keep exploring different design aspects of the show, to see how it adapts to different spaces and designers, and really see how the integration of projections can continue to help us tell the story. I think the themes of yearning to be understood and loved are universal, and getting to see the show resonate with new actors, designers, and audiences in different communities is a very exciting opportunity and recipe for success wherever we go.
Home's Kitchen opens at NOCCA on Thursday June 6th and runs through June 9th. Click here for ticket information
New play Home's Kitchen has its world premier on stage at NOCCA this week. We caught up with director Maeve Chapman to find out more...
Hi Maeve, thanks for taking time out of your preparations for opening night to talk to us. How are rehearsals going?
Of course! Thank you for asking. Rehearsals are going really well, we have a fantastic group of people bringing these characters to life. We’re running the show and each time we discover more about the characters and the world they live in. And we’ve even held a “cooking bootcamp” and worked with local Chef Kevin Belton to refine our onstage culinary skills which is a pretty unique and fun addition to rehearsals! We really can’t wait for the world to see what we’ve been cooking up.
Tell us a little bit about the play - what are the themes and what can audiences expect?
Home's Kitchen follows the seemingly separate lives of Marianne Rose, a young and disillusioned obituary writer, and Richard Davenport, a TV celebrity chef who seemingly has it all. The play asks the question "is it worth being able to love and be loved fully?” and explores these themes of love and connection through food, family, and faith. We also explore family and faith through the lens of the LGBT experience. The audience can expect to laugh, cry and fall in love with these characters as they try to figure out their lives. There’s also live cooking on stage so don’t come hungry.
It's billed as a fusion of New Orleans and New York talent, could you expand on that a little?
The majority of our cast and creative team is New Orleans based. New Orleanian actors Stephen LaDow, Matthew Raetz, Michael Vaughn-Kennedy, and Emily Chatelain are joined by New York actor Sam Drust, who has been developing this play with me in workshops for many years along with our lighting and projection designer Liam Corley in New York. While I myself am from outside Boston and now reside in NYC, I’ve really loved getting to work in this amazing city and collaborating with everyone!
Do you have a personal connection to NOCCA? How did the premier happen to be taking place there/in New Orleans?
This is my first time here, but a significant amount of our cast and creative team went to NOCCA and two now teach there, so in a way it feels like a “home” to many of our team. Our producer Natalie Rine got her pre-professional start at NOCCA and also wanted to make sure our development journey was linked to the play’s DNA, so Home’s Kitchen is making its world premiere in New Orleans because what better place is there to open a play about the power of food than the food capital of America? Home’s Kitchen and New Orleans are the perfect match.
You're going from here to off-Broadway, tell us about your hopes for the play's future, and why you think it could be a global hit.
Home’s Kitchen is the inaugural play in producer Broadway DNA's New Play Production Pipeline, producing new work for global licensing. As part of the pipeline, we’re doing a world premiere here, followed by a totally new production in New York, then new productions licensed around the world– including the potential to make a difference in countries and communities where women’s and LGBT rights remain silenced. My hope is that the next Off-Broadway production really allows us to keep exploring different design aspects of the show, to see how it adapts to different spaces and designers, and really see how the integration of projections can continue to help us tell the story. I think the themes of yearning to be understood and loved are universal, and getting to see the show resonate with new actors, designers, and audiences in different communities is a very exciting opportunity and recipe for success wherever we go.
Home's Kitchen opens at NOCCA on Thursday June 6th and runs through June 9th. Click here for ticket information