Philip Zimmermann: The Story behind the SQuja’

Posted on October 30, 2014 by Caity-Shea Violette

We’re almost halfway through the rehearsal process! Now that we’ve started the blocking and language work of scenes that I’m in, it’s been exciting to see my fellow actors breathe life into their characters and dive into telling this story. Ali (our producer) mentioned at the beginning of rehearsal that combining the language, physicality and trying to remember to act at the same time is an incredibly difficult balancing act, especially for those new to the language. Despite this, I still had my secret hopes that it would be easier than she made it sound. Remember that “desperately, profoundly, emphatically wrong” thing from the first blog? It remains continuously applicable.

However, this has given me all the more respect and appreciation for the awesome cast of actors I’m fortunate enough to work with. I wanted to talk to some of the KCC veterans to hear more about their experience and how they approached their characters. I was able to chat with Phil Zimmermann (SQuja’) and discuss his process for playing this iconic role.

CSV: So, you’re playing SQuja’ (Scrooge) in this year’s production of KCC. That’s a pretty massive role that puts you onstage (and speaking Klingon) for almost the entire show and involved in nearly every rehearsal throughout the two-month process. I could imagine that being a little overwhelming. After hearing you were cast, how did you prepare?
PZ: I got in touch with Ali and Chris and requested a copy of the script shortly after accepting the role. I had a lot of time before rehearsals started which was lucky and so I read the original Dickens story a couple of times as well as watch A Muppet Christmas Carol, Scrooged with Bill Murray and and the 1951 “Scrooge” with Alistair Sims that Catie recommended. My summer got very Christmassy before it got Klingon. After immersing myself in the story and learning as much as I could about the character of Scrooge I started to back translate my lines from Klingon to English.

CSV: With so many different versions of A Christmas Carol and portrayals of Scrooge, did you have any particular versions that you used most for inspiration?
PZ: The Muppet Christmas Carol has always been one of my favorites, and I think it has some interesting parallels to the Klingon Christmas Carol. In that movie they had the challenge of telling this story in a new way, from the perspective of non-human (muppet) characters, and while they still speak English the movie communicates a lot through movement and the shapes of the puppets. So when I started thinking about SQuja’s physicality and voice a part of me thought “What would be a good muppet here?”.

CSV: Totally. And you bring up one of the biggest questions I’ve heard from people who will be seeing KCC for the first time this year. Assuming you’re not a Klingon speaker, what is the experience of seeing the show like? Do you need to be a Star Trek fan to get it?
PZ: Out of the five years Klingon Christmas Carol has been in Chicago, I’ve only actually gotten to see it once, last year. There’s not another show like this in Chicago. The Klingon is fascinating to listen to, and it’s easy to follow along with the super titles if you want to know what’s being said in English. You don’t have to be a Trekkie to enjoy the show, but if you are you’re going to get a lot of additional enjoyment out of it. There’s references from every era of Star Trek, from the original series to the current JJ Abrams movies. But the story of Scrooge’s transformation is so universal that anyone can see this play and connect to it.

CSV: You’ve been in KCC in previous years, right?
PZ: I played Kahless Present from 2010-2012 in the Chicago productions.

CSV: What was it like to stay with the same show at the same theatre through multiple years and casts? Is it weird to be currently playing SQuja’ in a cast with fellow actors who have played the role in previous productions?
PZ: Working as closely as I did with Kevin Alves for those first three years, it’s hard not to think about his portrayal, but his biggest influence on me is that I remember a lot of the queue lines he had for me and it’s helped in memorizing the script. Working with Clark Bender who played the role last year is always a treat, he’s a really fantastic guy and a real natural performer. It’s nice to have someone who’s been where you’re going on something like this. And there’s Christina who’s been in the show for all five years. It’s great having that connection to back when I first moved to Chicago and the show was just getting started here, too. That said it’s also really nice having so many people around who either I haven’t worked with before or are entirely new to KCC. There’s a lot of enthusiasm and new choices being made that keep the whole thing fresh.

CSV: Alright, last question. This year is KCC’s final production in Chicago. During the last five years that it’s been performing, the show has become a beloved part of the holiday season, especially in the Star Trek and theatre communities. Is there anything in particular you’d like to leave Chicago audiences with as they celebrate this tradition in its final year?
PZ: I moved to Chicago to perform in this show in it’s first year here, and it’s been a huge part of my life since then. I’ve made good friends, found a great job, met a ton of amazing people and performed at an honest to goodness Star Trek convention all directly because of my involvement with this show. This show means a lot of different things to me and my hope would be that it means something to everyone who comes to see it and that they remember it as long as I will, which will be forever.

Huge thanks to our Phil for sharing his thoughts and wisdom. Visit his twitter page where he will be tweeting in character as SQuja’ throughout the show. Check back here this weekend for more behind-the-scenes Klingon mischief as told by our other KCC blogger, Timothy!

Caity-Shea

This is Klingon Christmas Carol’s 5th and FINAL year in Chicago, so tickets will be going quickly! Guarantee your spot by getting tickets in advance at: http://www.tinyurl.com/Klingontickets-2014

How the spit was flown and other tales….

Posted on October 26, 2014 by Timothy Sullivan

We took some publicity photos this week and so my lumberjack beard has been shed in favor of something that might resemble what I have during performances. This Monday we went over scenes we had done last week a second time. The first time we did them it was in English, now it was time for the Klingon to commence. We sat down with our language coach Jeremy and repeated every line of the scenes in Klingon. First syllable by syllable, word by word, and then line by line. It’s a process that takes a good chunk of the rehearsal but is well worth it.

We got up on our feet to do the scene in the original language. My first line of the season in Klingon was uttered with such enthusiasm that it launched a rather gross amount of moisture onto poor SQuja’. Rehearsal was brought to a halt while SQuja’ took care of my unintended gift. This is probably a good warning for those who have never seen the show before. Klingon is a very spittacular language. If you come and see the show and don’t enjoy getting showers like that, it’s always a good idea to maybe choose a seat a few rows back.

We also were fitted for our ridges on Thursday, which was well covered by Caity-Shea. While they were pulling people away for that, the rest of us were playing games designed to help our characters build relationships and work on our physicality. My favorite was a game simply called 3 minutes with SQuja’. Each actor got three minutes with our hard working and patient SQua’ Phil to do whatever we wanted to do to him as our character. It was both fun and revealing and I think people made a lot of discoveries that may be useful for the future. That’s all for this week!

Ali inspects our wigs.

SQuja’ is about to learn…it is not wise to mess with a Vulcan.

A SQuja’ and his love…

Photo time.

Klingon Combat and the Road to Ridges

Posted on October 24, 2014 by Caity-Shea Violette

I survived our first combat day! We spent our Saturday rehearsal working with our fight director, Zach Livingston, to put together a giant group fight sequence. We had an absolute blast and I was seriously impressed with what we were able to accomplish. I really appreciated Zach’s commitment to storytelling as he assembled the fight, always making sure that each movement served and enhanced the story. He also used each actor’s combat/movement experience to highlight the best of our individual skill sets. Stephen Dale (wIlqInS) goes on a particularly entertaining rampage and Kim Fukawa (Qob, marja’) also shows off her fierce combat expertise.

Bel throws the first punch in the fight! A moment I’m glad that Phil (SQuja) was able to capture, as I was apparently looking out a window in the exact opposite direction. Sure, the rest of the cast got to watch Vivian look exceptionally cool, but who can tell you what was going on with the brick wall across the alley? Only that window and I know, and we’re not telling.

In addition to some more blocking and physical work this week, we had our first introduction to ridges! As an actor, it’s always fun to take on new and challenging physical transformations. As a former middle school student who still gets nervous around the cool kids, I was a little worried that I would look goofy and wouldn’t make a terribly convincing Klingon in comparison to my KCC veteran cast members. As someone who has felt the pain of applying and removing heavy stage makeup multiple times a week and prefers to keep the skin on their face, I was terrified.

While we didn’t go into the full Klingon makeup, we looked for a base color and found the right ridges/wigs for the majority of the cast. Christina Romano (the actress playing my mother) and I were able to make our hair giant enough that we didn’t need to be wigged and could just wear our ridges. I was super relieved as I’ve spent many hours of my life pin curling massive amounts of hair to fit under wig caps and now I just might be able to spend that time eating dinner between work and showtime! Reach for those stars, Violette!

I’m really excited to keep moving forward in rehearsal and start working some of my marDa scenes. The first rehearsal of a scene is with Catie (our director) to block and work more character/relationship stuff. Then, the next rehearsal is to review blocking and go over language and pronunciation with our language expert, Jeremy. Looking forward to the next steps. More next week!

Caity-Shea

This is Klingon Christmas Carol’s 5th and FINAL year in Chicago, so tickets will be going quickly! Guarantee your spot by getting tickets in advance at: http://www.tinyurl.com/Klingontickets-2014

Let the fighting begin…..

Posted on October 19, 2014 by Timothy Sullivan

Beard Week 2

Heeeyy it’s the end of week 2. My beard is starting to look like a beard, much to the chagrin of my wife. It’s been a busy week for KCC. We started blocking rehearsals, had great qepHom during which I achieved honorable victory at Bananagrams, and had our first fight rehearsal. Speaking of game nights, I went to the House Theater Game Night last night and spoke some Klingon to Peter Sagal. He immediately ran away. Kidding. He was very good natured about it.

As I mentioned before, our fight choreographer Zach joined us to begin mapping out our first fight scene yesterday. I’m not going to get into the details of the fights themselves…you will just have to come watch them December 5^th-21^st at the Athenaeum Theatre. However, I will whet your appetite with a few pictures. Short blog today but fights are more interesting to watch then describe. I can say even in their beginning super slow speed, they are looking pretty rocking.

Our fight choreographer, Zach.

Zach demonstrating how to safely slam into a wall.

Matty is about to look like he is in a world of hurt.

Baby’s first qepHom!

Posted on October 18, 2014 by Caity-Shea Violette

Week two is almost complete! While I was only there for one rehearsal this week, it was a decidedly fabulous one.

Last night I participated in my first “qepHom” (Klingon game night) where we played Klingon versions of Monopoly, Cards Against Humanity and Bananagrams.

Because I apparently decided I hadn’t lost regular Monopoly enough times in my life, I gave it a try in Klingon. Naturally, SQuja’ was our banker…

While I may have lost miserably in Klingon Monopoly, I had a wonderful evening hanging out with fellow KCC folks and getting some more practice pronouncing Klingon.

Also, when I was visiting my friend in Madison this past weekend, we went over to her friend’s house to visit his 10-week old pug puppy named “Picard”. He was so cute that it caused me legitimate physical pain to look at him. A pain which I will now inflict upon you all.

Tomorrow we begin fight choreography!! Check back next week to see if I make it through the first few hours of fighting with all original limbs intact.

Caity-Shea

We are Klingons!

Posted on October 12, 2014 by Timothy Sullivan

I’ll be including a photo tracking the progress of my beard growing for KCC with every blog post. Not much to see yet but hopefully it is the beginning of an intimidating face of hair. Much like this guy’s, I hope:

Yeah, that’s the ticket! Caity-Shea did a thorough job of covering the language portion of the rehearsal process. I won’t add much other than to say it doesn’t get easier a second time around. For me at least, there was a little more comfort with the sounds of the language and my ability to wrap my mouth parts around how to form them. However, the grammar portions and how to construct a sentence in Klingon? It still makes my brain melt out of ears, which is better than Ceti eels being stuck in them I suppose.

Language is not the only aspect of being a Klingon we have to cover before starting blocking for the show. In addition to our three language lessons, we have an entire rehearsal dedicated to exploring our physicality as Klingons. This happened last Thursday after we had completed our third and final language lesson. Our director Catie handed out colored bandanas to each of us and had us tie it around our heads so that they covered our eyebrows. Due to the ridgy nature of a Klingon’s forehead, almost every cast member will be sporting beautiful rubber forehead pieces. This means that we will be without the use of our eyebrows and forehead during the show. If you stop and think about just how much we rely on our forehead and eyebrows in our facial expressions, this is no small deal. Try it out. Furthermore, if we move our forehead and/or eyebrows during the performance we may very quickly become ridgeless Klingons mid-scene. No one wants to see that, so the bandanas will help us practice acting with only the lower half of our face.

We also practiced walking around the room and moving through space the way a Klingon would. Many of our individual physical characteristics will depend on the characters and how the actors interpret them. However, the element that all of us Klingons will share will be a readiness to be attacked and an awareness of what is around us at all times. No one will be back on the balls of their feet. It is the beginning stage of the actors discovering how to inhabit the bodies and lives of their characters. It is going to be a lot of fun living in this world once again. Qapla’!

“Capital T’s are to Klingon as Crying is to Baseball”

Posted on October 10, 2014 by Caity-Shea Violette

We’ve officially completed our first week of KCC rehearsals and although my brain is a little melty, I just might be starting to get the hang of it.

I knew that learning Klingon would be challenging and take some time, but to be honest, I thought it was pretty easily within my reach. I studied Spanish from kindergarten through senior year of high school, I learned IPA in my BFA program at the University of Minnesota, Duluth and being a writer makes me kind of a word geek. I knew it might be tricky, but I had secret hopes that I could pick it up instantly and be terribly impressive.

In short, I was wrong. Desperately, profoundly, emphatically wrong.

While the language lessons kicked my butt in ways I didn’t previously know butts could be kicked, we were given a tremendous amount of support. Leading us in our Klingon education was our insanely patient and knowledgeable Klingon Language Expert, Jeremy Cowan (pictured below).

We were given a PowerPoint presentation, multiple dictionaries (one with all of the words in the script assembled by Jeremy himself), grammar handouts and three 3-hour lectures. I cannot express enough respect or gratitude for the help that Jeremy, our producer Ali and the entire cast provided throughout the week.

As a theatre artist, I’ve been somewhat coddled by spending time around people who all share a similar passion and knowledge surrounding that passion. I know the references, I get the jokes, and I can usually hold my own in green room conversations with fellow actors. I feel like a member of the community. This is the first time in a while that I’ve felt completely and entirely out of my element. If a ‘Chekov’ joke is made, my knowledge of theatre in late 1800’s Moscow probably doesn’t apply.

For example:

(Writing practice sentences in front of the cast. Someone attempts to write the word “virtue” in Klingon spelling it “ ghobe’ ”)

Jeremy: So, what are you trying to write here?

Cast member: Virtue.

Jeremy: Close, but it’s actually spelled ghob’e’. You forgot the additional ‘ mark around the e, which actually changes it to another word. Does anyone know what the word ghobe’ means?

Entire room in unison: NO.

(Everyone bursts out laughing. I’m comforted knowing that I’m not the only one who didn’t know the answer)

Jeremy: Correct, the word ghobe’ means “no”.

(Resume failure)

While I might have been overwhelmed this week and still have plenty of practicing to do, I was able to learn basic pronunciations, grammatical structure and some Star Trek/Klingon history. We even learned some Klingon “epithets” and had an insult battle (pictured below).

In addition to these lessons, here are three helpful tips I picked up for the Klingon beginner:

1. Do not try to sneak bites of dinner in between practicing sentences aloud. No, not even a protein bar. You will spit it all over the actor next to you and it will be gross (Sorry, James).

2. When claiming that your mispronunciation of a word is a “character choice”, first ask yourself: “Am I Christopher Plummer?” If not, then perhaps reconsider.

3. Capital T’s and lowercase i’s, d’s and h’s are to Klingon, as crying is to baseball. (as observed by this year’s SQuja’)

As somewhat of an outsider to science fiction fandoms, I was a little worried that I might not be accepted into the community. This time I’m happy to say that I was once again wrong. Even if you don’t understand the Star Trek culture and couldn’t tell the difference between TNG or DS9 if your yIn depended on it, the passion and spirit with which KCC was created is enough to make anyone fall in love with it. Whether it’s a book, a movie, a band, a sports team or a TV show, we all look to something outside of ourselves to seek identity and community in an increasingly isolated world. The Star Trek fandom invites its members on adventures that transcend earthly limitations to illuminate our place in this world by exploring others. And whether you speak Klingon or not, I think it’s pretty easy to see what makes that wonderful.

Meet the KCC Bloggers!

Posted on October 7, 2014 by Caity-Shea Violette

Each year, Commedia Beauregard’s production of Klingon Christmas Carol has two cast members blog about their experience and give sneak peeks into the making of this epic fan favorite. Here’s a little bit of information about this year’s bloggers, returning cast member Timothy Sullivan and new cast member Caity-Shea Violette.

Hi, there! My name is Caity-Shea Violette, and in addition to playing the roles of marDa, Warrior 2 and Boy in Klingon Christmas Carol, I’ll be one of your KCC bloggers this year! I’ll be posting behind-the-scenes pictures, as well as individual experiences and whimsical stories from the KCC cast/creative team (who, in only two rehearsals, have thoroughly impressed and intimidated me with their encyclopedic knowledge of all things fandom). I’ll be blogging weekly, so be sure to check back for undoubtedly awkward (but hopefully charming) anecdotes as I fearlessly proceed into the final frontier. For more info on my background, feel free to visit www.caitysheaviolette.com

Hey there! My name is Timothy Sullivan. This is my second year as part of the cast of Klingon Christmas Carol. This year I will be playing the roles of Kahless Past and Seller. I will be your other KCC blogger
this year with a post every Saturday if all goes well. Like Caity-Shea, I
will be doing my best to entertain you with tales of our cast’s adventures, photos, and maybe a few interviews with KCC members. I will also include a photo of my beard growing progress with every post
as prepare to haunt the stage for a good cause in December. For more
information about my background, please visit www.timothysullivanactor.wordpress.com

Check here for weekly updates from these two, and click here to buy your tickets in advance. This is Klingon Christmas Carol’s FINAL YEAR in Chicago, so make sure to get your tickets before they’re gone!

KCC Begins

Posted on September 30, 2014 by CommBeau

Look for blog posts from the cast and crew of as we record the process of putting together the 2014 production of A Klingon Christmas Carol.

See You Soon

Posted on June 2, 2014 by CommBeau

Seeing a piece you’ve written in performance is always slightly surreal. I don’t know if other writers experience this, but I tend to let go of the piece rather quickly and move on to other projects, so when I sit down to watch a play I’ve written, I almost always view it as a stranger.

Did I really write that? Hey, that’s pretty good. Ooo, maybe should have cut that line. Huh, wonder where THAT came from?

It’s been pretty consistent, even in the case of the 24-hour festivals I’ve written for: something detaches when I hand over the script to a director, and then I just want to see what the actors and the director do with it.

Of course, I can also assume the director’s hat and the actor’s hat, and I tend to wear them when I see shows, so I did have some critical evaluation of the performance elements. But listening and seeing the show itself is always a fresh experience that I enjoy. There’s a little bit of anxiety in that I hope other people like what I’ve done, but the first few titters on Thursday night alleviated most of that.

Writing short form is a challenge – 10 minutes is not a lot of time to tell a story. These restrictions can be a great boon, though , because they force you to streamline your thoughts and pick the best and most efficient ways to move the action forward to a conclusion.

My main concern in the end was. “Does it work?” I think, that yes, it did. I’ll be interested to see it again, interpreted through another set of hands, just to see the changes. That’s what this kind of art is to me: fluid and lovely.