The Witching Hour is upon us, as Halloween is fast approaching. It’s the perfect time to grab out your flannel, brew yourself some spiced apple cider, and flick on a scary movie with all the lights on! With pumpkin patches and apple orchids being common destinations for this time of year, you might be looking for other offerings to indulge in a bit of spooky season fun. Look no further than the University of Detroit Mercy’s Witch by Jen Silverman.
Ahead of the production’s debut on October 25th, I sat down with Krista Schafer, the director of the University of Detroit Mercy’s Witch. In this interview, Schafer discusses what drew her to this production, how working with college actors differs from some of her past directorial work, how she’s grown in this role, and what themes from Witch resonate with her the most. Enjoy the interview!
[Note: The highlighted excerpts below of this interview have been lightly edited for clarity. Warning for mild spoilers from Witch. You can watch/listen to the full interview above, find it in most places where podcasts are available, or read on.]
Timestamps for this interview:
- 00:00 – Intro
- 00:35 – How are rehearsals going so far for Witch?
- 03:43 – Managing technical aspects of the show as the director
- 07:35 – About Witch
- 09:45 – What makes this show unique
- 13:49 – How as Witch been updated from the original story?
- 14:25 – Exploring gender and gender roles in Witch
- 18:23 – Process of bringing a show like this to stage
- 22:48 – How has Witch challenged you as a director?
- 25:02 – Themes in this play that resonate the most with you?
- 27:27 – What’s next for you?
- 29:15 – Outro
Highlights from the interview with Krista Schafer, director of UofD Mercy’s Witch
Brian Kitson: Thank you so much for joining us today and out of your busy schedule of rehearsals for Witch. How is the rehearsal process going so far?
Krista Schafer: Really fantastic. Really, I am enjoying it. I think the students are enjoying it. They seem to be. Either that or they’re lying to me. It’s just such a really meaty script and so it’s really fun to dig into it, and it asks big questions. There is no character that’s extraneous. Everybody is important to the plot and has interesting things about their character. And so everybody really gets a chance to dig in. And so those are my favorite kind of plays…
So it’s going really well. Move this week. We will move. We’ve been rehearsing at the university and this week we will move into the theater at the Boll YMCA downtown. And then we will have our set and start adding in lights and the actual props, and that’s always a super fun time because it takes everything like that we’ve been doing in a room with tape on the floor, and you know silly props or whatever, and it takes it, and it just like takes it up a whole bunch of notches. It’s so fun, so I’m really looking forward to that this week.
BK: I was going to say, seems like that makes it like a very real moment, know, of like, we’re doing this!
Krista Schafer: It does. It does. And one of the things, I mean, everything, like every layer you add, adds something, but there’s something about costumes I find in particular, really, like once the actors put those costumes on, they’re like, this is what my character feels like in this costume. And, you know, we’ve been rehearsing, the women have been rehearsing in skirts and some of the shoes are kind of specialized shoes. And so they’ve been wearing those for rehearsal, but it’s not the same as being head to toe feeling like you are that character. Once you start moving in them, it literally just changes how you move. And so, obviously, we do work on that in rehearsal, but there’s nothing like putting that costume on. It really makes a difference.
BK: Can you tell us a little bit about the show? Like no spoilers, obviously we want people to go and see it, but like just kind of what this show is about?
Krista Schafer: So the show is a really interesting to me examination of what do you hope for and what price would you be willing to pay for it and what price would you be willing to inflict on others or to allow others to pay? The basic premise is that the devil comes to town and is offering to buy people’s souls and finds his way to the local witch, she’s the town outcast, and he ends up sort of striking up an interesting relationship with her because she does not respond to the way that he expects her to, and so they sort of develop this really interesting back and forth. But then there are other characters in the town, in the castle, who you know he has also approached about selling their souls, and I’m not giving too much away to say that two of them very early on in the play say this is what I want, I will sell you my soul for this. And then to watch what that does to them, like I said, literally what price they are willing to pay, the things they’re willing to give up in their own life, and who they’re willing to hurt in their striving for the thing that they want.
And I think that even though we today are not necessarily selling our souls to the devil, or at least he hasn’t come knocking on my door, we certainly all have things that we strive for and hope for, and some of us are a little more willing to not care about who gets in our way to get those things. And I think it’s a really interesting examination of that. And then the characters themselves are all fascinating. So I won’t give away how it all goes. But to me, that’s the question, is what is it you hope for and what is the price that you would be willing to pay for it?
BK: Is that what drew you to the show, or were there other aspects that also drew you as a director? Or what do you think makes this show unique?
Krista Schafer: I think that definitely drew me to the show. One of the things that is unique about it is literally the character of Elizabeth, who plays the witch, and you interviewed Katherine [Mutschler] last week. She spoke so beautifully about the show. She starts the show off with a monologue, and she says, the question you should be asking – I’m not going to get her line right because that’s her job, but is – do you have hope that things will get better? And so I think it really sets up a question right at the very beginning of the play that the entire audience will be thinking of. And then there are moments where it gets recalled where they’re, you know because surely, you get swept up in the show and then something happens, and you’re like, right, the question is, do I have hope that things will get better?
But it’s also really funny. There are some just funny, funny moments. So it’s got it all. It’s got drama. It’s got humor. It’s got, as Katherine mentioned, it’s got a really great fight scene in it. There’s a little bit of dancing. It’s really a delightful show. The characters are all, like I said, so rich and the character of the witch is really complicated. So much in this play that deals with gender inequality and sort of the assumptions we make about somebody based on their gender, based on their sexuality, that, I think, are really important still to be discussing today. So that drew me to the script. Love a good, strong, central female character. So this play has that. And Katherine does just such a gorgeous, gorgeous job at it.
BK: What themes in Witch do you feel resonate the most with you?
Krista Schafer: Again, I think that the idea of gender inequality resonates. And again, that idea of what do you hope for? And I think that that’s a question to ask yourself almost every day. What do I hope for? What do I want to see for myself, and what do I want to see for the world? Because, you know, and how do those things jive? If what I want for myself doesn’t also help the world, then maybe it’s not the thing I should be hoping, you know? So I think that idea of what do you hope for is such an important question for us to be asking. And I think it’s what keeps us going, you know? Like, if you don’t have hope, then how do you get up in the morning?
BK: And one final question for you is just, you’re hard at work with Witch, but you also mentioned that you have your own theater company. So what’s next for you?
Krista Schafer: So next for me, well, we are the theater company Open Book Theater. We’re in Trenton, Michigan. Our next show opens November 8th. So two weeks after Witch opens, and I’m producing that show, but it’s called. Breaking Laws to Gain Freedom, Liberating Stories from Detroit. And it is a co-production with Extra Mile Playwrights Theater. And it’s a collaboration with five of their playwrights. They have written a play that delves into a lot of stories that are lesser known stories that happened here in Detroit that influenced Black civil rights nationwide. You know, like a lot of us are familiar with what happened here in ’67, but there’s so much more history in Detroit and this really delves into some stories that I didn’t know much about. I think it’s a really hopeful, really interesting, really local-based historical play that, I think, is going to be fascinating for our audiences. There’s that. And then I’m an actor and I will be back on stage in January for our production of Bernhardt/Hamlet. So it’s always, always something up.
BK: You keep yourself busy.
Krista Schafer: I do, I do. I’m very grateful to have a life in the theater. When you talk about things that you hope for, it’s the thing that I had hoped for, for many, many years. And so I’m very grateful that I have it.
Catch the University of Detroit Mercy’s Witch this October!
If you’re in the Metro Detroit area, grab your tickets for UofD Mercy’s Witch, which runs for six shows beginning October 25! What are some local shows you’ve seen recently? Let us know on social media @MyCosmicCircus or @BoxSeatBabes!
Exclusive Interview: Katherine Mutschler of the University of Detroit Mercy’s Witch
