Tell us a little about the playwright.

Kristina Leach was a friend of mine at CSU, Fullerton and known to all the actor' as our "resident playwright". During her time at Fullerton, she was awarded the John Cauble Short Play Award and was recognized by both faculty and students' as being a playwright worthy of attention. After graduating, Kristina went on to work as an acting instructor and Literary Assistant at the prestigious South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa and co-owned a theatre company in Long Beach. She worked as an actor, director, playwright and teacher for many post-graduate years. Currently, she is the Literary Associate at the award-winning Geffen Playhouse (Los Angeles) and continues to write.

What can you tell us about the play's production history?

"Grasmere" had its start at CSU, Fullerton in 2000. The play was an instant hit and the run was extended to Los Angeles and New York. In 2007, it was featured at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival by a New York based theatre company. It has also been produced at many colleges and universities. "Grasmere" was a nominated for Backstage West 2002 Award in Los Angeles and was awarded a David Mark Cohen National Playwrighting Award through the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival.

Do you consider this to be a play about poetry?

The play is about life's defining choices, and poetry sits nicely in the backdrop of the story. It is written in a lyrical fashion that takes the audience on a journey in and out of real time, inner thoughts and Dorothy's journal entries. Within the story, we see Samuel Taylor Coleridge struggling to develop what is now famously known as "The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner." We also learn that Dorothy is used as a muse for both mens' poetry and that while she writes herself, she is limited to keeping a personal journal mainly because of her gender. William Wordsworth is considered a primary figure in the Romantic Poetry period, and this story explores the probable inspirations for the words that would later define him.

Did you require your actors to immerse themselves in the poetry of Coleridge and Wordsworth?

My actors were so inspired by the play that they came in with poetry and research in hand. Mallory Scott, who plays Mary Hutchinson, spent the summer reading poetry and Dorothy's journal entries. She just recently approached me at a rehearsal so happy to announce that she finally found a poem that William supposedly wrote about Mary. We also spent one rehearsal day a week with a mental warm up know as "poem of your choice". Each actor would bring in a piece from the Romantic Poetry period and share it, and then incorporate it in that days rehearsal. Additionally, Melissa Booey (who plays Dorothy Wordsworth) and the cast spent some time with "The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth: A Life" By Frances Wilson, a book that explores the life of Dorothy and examines her journal entries.

From what you know about these famous poets, are the depictions accurate? Or does the playwright take liberties?

I asked Kristina Leach to tell us about her process as the playwright and this is what she said:

My love affair with the Wordsworths began over a decade ago. One particularly foggy morning, my professor spoke of Dorothy. I sat up when he said these words: "Dorothy Wordsworth lived with her brother in their home, Dove Cottage. She never married and slowly went crazy after William married their childhood friend, Mary." After class, I inquired about Dorothy. He knew little of her. But the bells were ringing in my crazy playwright brain. Diving head first into the works of Coleridge and Wordsworth, I wondered more and more about this silent sister of the Father of Romantic Poetry. So I poured over her journals. What fascinated me was not what she wrote on those pages - but what she left out. What she kept to herself all those years living with her beloved brother and his wife. What you will see here today is a meditation on history - a "what might have been". Dorothy, in my mind, still remains one of the original, unsung Romantics. To me, her story is both tragic and beautiful.

How did you approach the show from a production standpoint?

As with any production, a director often reads and re-reads the script looking for the conceptual core to come jumping off the page. With "Grasmere," I had a series of interesting discoveries that led me to define our production as a Revisionist Play. I started to imagine William and Samuel in our world today, and this rock star image kept coming to me. That vision was confirmed when in a later email from Kristina, she too called them the rock stars of their time period. With that image in mind, and taking Kristina's idea of "what might have been," I wanted to find the perfect blend of the 19th century and our world today. I would compare this to what Sofia Coppola did with the film Marie Antoinette in 2006. One example of this revision is the use of the Coldplay album, "Viva La Vida" for our production sound design. There are some other contemporary choices you may notice as well!

You have a keen interest in teaching people how to better use their voice. Can you tell us about that, and did your techniques play a role in this production?

My main focus in vocal training is the energy we use to produce sound. I would say it's similar to the subtext in a play's written text. Emotionally speaking, we naturally fluctuate our sounds based on how we feel: our levels of comfort or intimacy and our environment. With "Grasmere," we explored the emotional ranges of anger/resentment, bliss, celebration and innocent longing and desire. That included exercises such as screaming and shouting and creating the sound of intimate connection while still projecting enough to reach the audience. As far as dialect work, I opted to use Standard American sounds (which is focused on proper pronunciation, rounded vowels and crisp ending consonants) instead of trying to tackle foreign sounds for the sake of my actors' time. There are so many interpretations of an English dialect, the ear training alone with a group of four actors would require weeks of lessons. When we did "The Importance Of Being Earnest" last year, the comedic elements of the piece felt better with an even imperfect dialect. With "Grasmere," the dramatic elements of the production felt like the emotion filled communication of the words was more important than the dialect. I thought about all the productions in which we don't work to reproduce dialect work (such as Russian dialect work for Anton Chekhov pieces) and I realized that it isn't as important as the story. Overall, I see that the actors are appreciating and using the language and living through these characters with a truthful,engaging and diligent approach, and that is the ultimate goal for any production.

Anything else you'd like to say about "Grasmere"?

Just a quick note to add: The play begins and ends on Christmas Eve, which happened to be Dorothy's birthday. This fact makes for a nice holiday show of sorts, and I truly believe it will be an enjoyable experience that could be combined with a drive down Christmas Tree Lane, a hot cocoa and some interesting, inspired conversation about these poets and their remarkable contributions to our world.