The Spencer Theater Company is bringing Stephen King’s Misery to the Hoogland Center for the Arts this October. Director John Sivak and actor Justine Moser, who portrays Annie Wilkes, join Community Voices to talk about bringing the psychological thriller from the page and screen to the stage, developing its complex characters and creating tension in a production that never leaves Annie’s house. Misery runs Oct. 9-11 and Oct. 16-18.
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Melissa Snider:
Welcome to Community Voices, a production of NPR Illinois. I'm your co-host, Melissa Snider, in the studio with John Sivak and Justine Moser. They are both part of the theater production Misery, which will be at the Hoogland Center for the Arts the second and third weekend in October in Springfield. How are we doing today?
Justine Moser:
Doing great.
Melissa Snider:
Awesome. Thank you for coming in.
Justine Moser:
Thanks for having us.
Melissa Snider:
Of course. So John, you are the director, right?
John Sivak:
Correct.
Melissa Snider:
Justine, you are a cast member.
Justine Moser:
Yes.
Melissa Snider:
Portraying Annie Wilkes.
Justine Moser:
Yes, one of the main characters, Annie Wilkes.
Melissa Snider:
Awesome. And this is based off of the Stephen King novel. There's also a movie from 1990?
Justine Moser:
Yes, with Kathy Bates and James Caan. Thank you.
Melissa Snider:
Amazing.
Justine Moser:
And I believe Kathy Bates won an Oscar for it.
John Sivak:
Then it was also done on Broadway. And Laurie Metcalf, who played Jackie, Roseanne Barr's sister in the show Roseanne, and Bruce Willis were in it.
Melissa Snider:
Okay.
John Sivak:
Yeah.
Melissa Snider:
So for people who don't know the story, can you kind of outline the premise?
Justine Moser:
So the story Misery is about a very famous writer, Paul Sheldon, and he is known for writing a series of books about a character named Misery Chastain. They're romance books like Bodice Rippers. And he's in Colorado finishing a book and he gets caught in a storm and he goes off the road. And the play starts with him waking up in Annie Wilkes's house, who just happens to be his number one fan, loves all of his books. And she also just happens to be a nurse. So she takes care of him. He broke both of his legs. And it seems pretty nice. And then it turns out she's got a lot of issues. And she idolizes him a lot. And it turns into this whole control thing where he's been trying to write a book that's not misery. She makes him destroy it so that he can continue writing misery. And yeah, I mean, it's just kind of like a psychological cat and mouse, a thriller. There's a lot of psychological things happening before like the major violent scene that everyone associates with misery.
Melissa Snider:
Okay, I love a psychological thriller. So what drew you both into this particular production?
John Sivak:
For me, I have always loved Stephen King. I've been a big fan of the books and the movies. Misery is probably my favorite of his works. Like you said, I love a psychological thriller. as a viewer and a consumer and then as a director, it's the stuff that I love to dig into the best. Like I really love to dig into the psychology behind characters and something like this is just gold for that. And just being a story that I'm just a big fan of and have been for many, many years made it just like a no-brainer for me to do. Once I found out they actually had a stage adaptation of this.
Justine Moser:
And a good one.
John Sivak:
Yeah. So a year and a half ago, I went to Spencer and just said, I want to do this. And they said, we really want to do it too. So it just really happened very organically in that sense.
Melissa Snider:
So when I think of theater, sometimes I think of a musical, some comedy. This is a little bit darker. Is this kind of unique for you to like do this type of production?
Justine Moser:
To do like a more serious production?
Melissa Snider:
Yeah
Justine Moser:
Well, the last show that I was in was STC's Rabbit Hole And that was very serious too. But I don't think that I have been in a horror play. I don't think there are a lot of horror thriller plays. So yes, dramatic roles are not like new to me at all. But this is like the first character that I've had that has had such like deep, rich things going on. You know, she's not just crazy. There's a lot of things to unpack with her and that's what makes her so fun to play.
Melissa Snider:
So what has been the biggest challenge of portraying this character?
Justine Moser:
That's a really good question. I think the physicality, just getting into her body and how she moves, she's very solid and she's very stable. And it's like she's wearing this mask. And so kind of balancing that is really tricky. And then with Annie, her moods are very mercurial. And so it's balancing those quick changes in a way that I want the audience to be unsettled. I don't want them to feel like they can predict what I'm going to do. I want them to feel like they don't know when the weather's gonna change. So that's been challenging. And I think John would agree that like Stephen King does really, really amazing work with his characters. They're so complex. And so there's so much there. So I kind of just like feel for what feels right for that character. And I think about it and I get it in the body and I kind of go from there.
Melissa Snider:
Yeah. There's some pretty intense moments in this production. How do you reset night after night?
Justine Moser:
I think Jake, who plays Paul and I are really good at touching base with each other. Because there's a lot of... intimacy sounds weird in this context, but it is. Like there's a lot of weird, crazy intimacy happening. It might be like very manipulative or very like aggressive, but Annie and Paul are all each other has for the whole play. So I think, yeah, we just touch base with each other, and we just try to like remember like before we start, it's Jake and Justine. And then after I'm done yelling and screaming at him and you know, wielding A sledgehammer at the end of the show, I'm Justine and he's Jake. So we just try to get back to that.
Melissa Snider:
Yeah. So John, for you, what have you found most interesting about directing the characters and watching their relationships develop through the rehearsals?
John Sivak:
I think what is the most interesting is just really digging into the psychology of the characters and the layers of them. Like Justine said, Annie is a very complicated, layered character. She's able to really assimilate herself into society. and function fairly normally to the outside person's eyes while at the same time she has this other side to her. The biggest thing in terms of Annie is navigating both of those sides and really digging into what the psychology is and what Annie's thinking and actions are, I mean, down to just even body language and all of that with both of those sides. How can we best convey to the audience what Annie's emotions are right now? And then it's the same for Jake who's playing Paul. I mean, he's such a layered character and that character probably has the biggest journey of any character. He starts out as this very egotistical, full of himself, spoiled, famous writer guy who has not ever really had to take care of himself in any way. And by the end of it, he's this completely changed person through this trauma of having gone through being kidnapped and held hostage. He's a completely different person. So it's navigating all of that. And then the third character is a police officer, which seems pretty straightforward, but he's got to be the perfect foil for Annie to play off of. Because he's the only real wrench in this. If he had never shown up, she would get away with this. But he's always kind of in her way at the wrong time.
Melissa Snider:
Interesting. So it's a very contained, I would say, performance, right? Like it takes place in one house, mainly one room. So how do you keep the audience feeling tense?
John Sivak:
We're in a very small space and that was purposeful on my part because I wanted the audience to feel that sense of like entrapment or confinement that Paul is in. So I think that's going to really help. And then it's just a lot of it is really on these guys. With this being a three-person cast, you don't have big group numbers or anything like that to help move everything along or put different energy into it. really is a lot of what these guys do in every scene and how they convey the action.
Justine Moser:
And the play is like 20 something scenes and the scenes are fairly short and we're not even doing an intermission. So it's just all the way through. So I think that is intentional in like how the tension is going to continue to build in the audience. And I think the fact that like each scene is very direct in what's happening, but it doesn't go on forever and then you move on to the next. And so it's amping things up. So I think that's really effective in building the suspense with our audience.
John Sivak:
The show too in itself is short. It's less than. 90 minutes long. I think it's a 64 page script. So I mean, it's in terms of shows, it's pretty short. And I think that's purposeful. The goal is you take a breath when the lights go down, you don't exhale until the very last scene. I mean, it is a roller coaster ride.
Melissa Snider:
So does the stage allow you to do something different than what the audience has seen through the movie?
John Sivak:
I think probably the biggest thing is the way that Paul gets out of the room the first time. In the movie, there's a bobby pin on the floor that he finds. In the play, it's part of the typewriter. So they've had to adapt things to make them, I think, especially like in that situation, just more obvious. Because that kind of subtlety, you can't take a camera and focus it on to a bobby pin.
Justine Moser:
Like you could in the movie
John Sivak:
Right.
Justine Moser:
Yeah and even in the book, it's the bobby pin too. You know, so that's an example of how they adapted something, we switched it, but it still stays true to what happens. You know, Paul still gets out of the room.
John Sivak:
Right. And even in the last scene, I don't necessarily want to say what happens, but it's different from the book. Kind of similar to the movie, I would say, but it's different than what the book portrays it.
Justine Moser:
But still not so drastically so. It's like the same conclusion happens.
John Sivak:
Yeah, it stays true to the story. but they changed it to make it more fit for the stage.
Justine Moser:
And kind of back to your question, like asking, how the stage helps tell the story in a way that a movie doesn't, like in movies and TV, we get close-ups of the actors and we get cuts or sometimes we get an escape from the actual setting. Like in the movie, I think we go into the town, but like the play, we never leave the acreage. We never leave her house. And then also because like you're not getting close-ups of our faces, you're seeing more holistically what is happening. I don't know. It's a better way to see entertainment, I think sometimes.
John Sivak:
I think so. I would say that this stage version is... an amped up version of the movie, really. They can do more with subtleties in the movie. We can't do a whole lot with that. These characters kind of have to be really in your face in order to really portray what we need to for this show.
Melissa Snider:
That's amazing. I love how different everything is from the book to the movie to the stage.
John Sivak:
Yet if you saw all three, you would not notice much difference. It's just about the energy that you have to put into it.
Melissa Snider:
Right. What has been the most memorable part of working on this production so far?
Justine Moser:
I think this is a credit to like John's directing and also to like my co-stars, Jake and Jim. I just feel very comfortable at rehearsal and like, you know, it's heavy. It's a heavy play. There's a lot happening. I am hurting both of them, you know. It's a lot, but yet I still feel very safe and comfortable and it's still very enjoyable. I've been in some dramatic plays that go to really dark places and it's not enjoyable at the end. And I think it will be exhausting, but I think the whole time it will be very enjoyable. Just acting on the stage with Jake and Jim is just so fun. They give so much back. And then John and the assistant director, Brandon, you guys give such great feedback and you're so supportive of choices that we make. So it's just been a really great like collab— not collaborative— I just— it feels very comfortable and it feels like we're giving and taking and respecting each other, I think is a better word than collaboration.
Melissa Snider:
All on the same page.
John Sivak:
Similar to what you said, just I'm having so much fun talking about bringing this show together and being able to analyze the characters and talk over the different emotions and the psychology and things like that with these guys. And what I love about working with these three is they're all just pros at this and they take it very seriously. They're working on things outside of rehearsal. They're thinking about their characters. So when we're having conversations about it and we're giving notes and things, they're giving us their own thoughts and feedbacks. And in that way, it does feel like a very collaborative process. The way I see it as a director, I'm the one giving you the blocking and tell you what my vision is. I give you constructive feedback. You're the one up there doing it. A lot of these choices, a lot of the things that we've done in this show are not only choices made by me, the director, but they were things that you helped craft too. So you have more ownership of it. And I just, I love anytime I get to work with actors who are willing to take that on. I just absolutely love that they've embraced that and that that's what the process has been.
Melissa Snider:
Absolutely. All about the teamwork.
John Sivak:
Yeah, it needs to be.
Justine Moser:
Well, and because not every director is open to things, you know, I think especially back in the day, a director is like, what I tell you is what I tell you. So I think that is changing, but I think John definitely does listen and is open to what we say. So I appreciate that a lot.
John Sivak:
You have to be somewhat assertive and say like, you know, I mean, this is my vision. I don't want people to walk all over me, but at the same time, No, if you have ideas, please let me know. Like I want this character to be yours as much as possible. So that when you're on stage, you're making the most natural, you've made the most natural choices for that character. And it's just almost coming off as, you know, an extension of yourself very naturally.
Melissa Snider:
I love that. You guys are so into it and I love that. It's gonna be a great production. Is there anything you want people to know about Misery before they come see you at the Hoogland?
Justine Moser:
Yeah, I guess it's intense. It's not a casual show.
Melissa Snider:
Okay, so be prepared.
Justine Moser:
I don't think right. We don't want people coming and being like, oh, it's going to be like, hello, Dolly.
John Sivak:
Not at all.
Melissa Snider:
Well, that is a fair warning.
John Sivak:
I wouldn't bring a small child.
Melissa Snider:
Definitely.
Justine Moser:
My 5 year old is disappointed. that he cannot come. But I think he would be scarred if he saw mommy.
Melissa Snider:
Probably.
John Sivak:
Oh, yeah. There's a lot of screaming.
Justine Moser:
Yeah.
Melissa Snider:
It's a little alarming.
John Sivak:
I mean, it's definitely not children's entertainment, but if you feel that your child can handle it, then go for it. just depends on what you think they can handle.
Melissa Snider:
Misery will be at the Hoogland Center for the Arts?
John Sivak:
October 9th through the 11th and 16th through 18th. The 9th and 10th and 16th and 17th performances are at 7.30 and then the Sunday performances on the 11th and the 18th are at 3 p.m.
Melissa Snider:
Do you have the dates and times listed on your website?
John Sivak:
We do. It's spencertheatercompany.com. You can also find all of the information on their Facebook page and then tickets can be purchased by going to the Hoagland Center for the Arts website, which is www.hcfta.org/tickets. Or you can also call 217-523-2787.
Melissa Snider:
Awesome.
John Sivak:
And then they're available at the door also.
Justine Moser:
Yes.
Melissa Snider:
Okay. Well, hey, that sounds good. Well, once again, you're listening to Community Voices. I'm your co-host, Melissa Snider, in the studio with director John Sivak and cast member Justine Moser. Thank you 2 for coming in today.
Justine Moser:
Thank you. Thanks for having us.
Jeff Williams:
Community Voices is a production of NPR Illinois.
Dialogue transcribed by Microsoft Speech Service, an AI feature of Microsoft Word. Reviewed by humans for readability and accuracy.
