Behind the Curtain: Santa Fe Playhouse's 'Something Rotten' (Dakotah Lopez & Christian Libonati)

Join us on the Real Santa Fe podcast as we dive into the vibrant world of theater with Dakotah Lopez and Christian Libonati, stars of the Santa Fe Playhouse's production of "Something Rotten." Discover the rich history of the Playhouse, the comedic challenges of performing live, and the heartwarming stories behind the scenes. Whether you're a theater enthusiast or new to the stage, this episode offers a delightful glimpse into the magic of live performance. Tune in for laughs, insights, and a celebration of Santa Fe's artistic legacy.

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Original Music by: Kene Terry

Transcript

Bunny Terry (00:03.992)
Hello and welcome everybody to the Real Santa Fe podcast. We're excited today to talk to a couple of members of the cast of a show that Santa Fe Playhouse is producing. I'm gonna bring this back up in our conversation, but Santa Fe Playhouse is, I believe, the oldest running theatrical group west of the Mississippi. And if I got that wrong, you guys can correct me, but I've always found that really exciting.

that I believe Mary Oliver was one of the founders. Did I get that right? Yeah. So, so this, Santa Fe Playhouse has this crazy, crazy rich history and they're an integral part of what makes Santa Fe so cool. And I have two guests today who are no exception to making, creating interesting things and creating.

real Santa Fe. So Dakota Lopez and Christian Libanati, I got it right. I'm so excited. Tell our audience who you are and what you're doing. Dakota, you want to go first?

Sure, yeah. I'm Dakota Lopez, and I play the role of Nick Bottom in Something Rotten.

And I'm Christian Libanati and I'm, yeah, I play Nigel Bottom. So we're the duo of the Bottom Brothers. That's the right team.

Bunny Terry (01:35.37)
Explain what is something rotten.

Oh, goodness. Something rotten, it's a whirlwind of a show. takes, and actually something that I love about it is it's kind of like a historical fiction moment of taking the story of Shakespeare and putting it against some of his fictional contemporaries. So we're in the Renaissance and Nick and Nigel Bottom are playwrights trying to figure out what to write.

Hilarity ensues, I'm not sure how far to go, but in a nutshell, Nick is trying to figure out what to write and he goes to a soothsayer and the soothsayer says the next big thing in theater is going to be musicals. And so Nick and Nigel set out to create the first musical during the Renaissance.

And is there music?

yeah, there's a lot of music. There is a ton of music. The cool thing about the about this show is that it pays a lot of tribute to all of the big musicals that have kind of come before it. Everything from Sound of Music to Les Mis to to Evita. It really includes a lot of different styles of music, while also

Dakota Lopez (03:09.792)
having its own unique style in its original songs.

Bunny Terry (03:16.622)
I mean, I can't imagine. I want to get tickets, what I'm curious why this play? Why did you choose this over something else that might have been, it seems like maybe a little simpler to execute.

I mean, so Nigel of the two, so Nick and Nigel, Nick is kind of the director, big idea guy, and Nigel is kind of the poet. And so in reading the play and hearing about the play and seeing this character of Nigel, I was excited to actually play a poet who can just kind of...

wear his heart on his sleeve and just experience and he is very lucky because he has Nick and he has Bea who's played by Katie Lord, who's Nick's wife, who are kind of taking care of him and allowing him to just create and feel. So to play a part like that is so, so fun to put myself in that position.

And what about you Dakota? What did you love about?

For me, the two things that I really think about with the show is one, it's always exciting as an actor to get to do a comedy and to do a true, true comedy, something that is bits and jokes from start to finish, but also contains a lot of heart in it as well and some really beautiful moments of reality.

Dakota Lopez (05:03.832)
For me with Nick, what was so exciting to play him is that he truly represents this specific type of artist who wants to do great by his art and wants to succeed by his art, but is constantly being weighed down by the realities of the world, which is making money and being able to afford a place to live and afford

things to eat and clothes to wear and how do you take care of yourself and the people that you love so much when you're constantly fighting for this survival. so Nick throughout the show is constantly trying to figure out ways to just take care of the people that he loves so much. And he wants to do that by using his art as a means to do that. But as the show progresses,

It is one thing after the other that constantly gets in his way, which pushes him further and further into this desperate, people pleasing, willing to do anything type of attitude. And that's really fun to play with.

Well, comedy, I mean, I've heard, would never dare try to do what you guys are doing. We're all creative in different ways. First of all, that's a universal problem, right? That problem of how do I survive and still create art?

But I've always heard that doing comedy on the stage is much more challenging than drama. I mean, is that true?

Dakota Lopez (06:48.704)
yeah, what makes it hard is when we're in rehearsals and we're playing the jokes, we're doing the bits, sometimes some of the cast will laugh or even us, Chris Christian and I have had many moments of just kind of breaking on stage in rehearsals with each other. Christian is just, he's hysterical and the actress who plays my wife, Katie Lord also just phenomenally hysterical.

when you're doing it on stage for an audience, what you can't ever predict, and I've done a few comedies before where this has happened, but you can't ever predict what the audience is going to find funny and what they're not. And sometimes this weird thing happens where we'll do the jokes that the script has written for us, and the audience doesn't really react to it. But then they react to something completely not a joke, and it's kind of like,

You think on stage in the moment you're thinking, oh, well, that was strange. I wonder why they find that so funny. And so you start working with that bit a little bit for the next performance with the audience. You just never know what the reaction is going to be, what the give and take is going to be from the audience to the actor and also from your co-stars as well. so the hardest part about the comedy is figuring out the beat and the rhythm. If you lose that momentum in a comedy,

any moment, you're going to lose the show. It's so hard to get the audience back on track with everything that's happening. If you lose that momentum because they are there, they're already used to the absurdity of the world to the comedy that's happening. And if it starts falling flat, then they start going, wait, what's going on here? What are what are they talking about? What's the story again? And you start you start panicking and you start

trying to heighten it more and you keep losing them as well. So it's this delicate balance of give and take.

Christian Libanti (08:51.982)
And I'll just, just to also echo what Dakota's saying of, like, I've been in rehearsals for comedies where there's literally nobody's laughing the entire rehearsal process. Or they'd laugh the first time and then it never, you know, nobody laughs again. In this process, I think every single day people are laughing at the jokes just because they're so funny. And of course, like the performances again, you know,

In addition to what Dakota was mentioning, Travis Burge and Jet Terry, Travis plays the soothsayer and Jet plays Shakespeare. And they're just delivering these lines that to me, to seemingly the cast, it never gets old. And I just think the way that the script is written, it's just so much fun. So I'm excited to...

for audiences to see that.

So are you saying that the soothsayer gives you the idea that the next wave in theater is going to be a musical and so you sort of attack that without quite knowing what you're supposed to do with that information?

Yeah, and and I don't want to say too much about it because you know, I don't spoil too much of the fun But the soothsayer I I pay them half a crown in penis on currency and they they have a quote unquote vision and in this vision they see What what they're seeing is is big Broadway

Dakota Lopez (10:37.91)
you know, the marquee lights and such and such and like those big, big shows and tap dancing and whatever cliche you could think of in a musical, that's what they're seeing. And it leads into this fantastic musical number in which the soothsayer tries to get Nick on board with what musicals are and explaining them in the different styles and

It is a fantastic number. Travis Burge just nails it on the head and the ensemble, they're fantastic. They have to do a plethora of different dance styles from a Fosse to jazz to contemporary. They're lifting people in the air. gets very, very big, very quickly. And this whole

It's this whole selling point for Nick as to why we need to move on from whatever theater we're working on right now and focus entirely on musicals. But it's tricky because musicals don't exist. so Nick struggles with trying to capture that magic of what he saw.

This sounds like so much fun.

yeah.

Bunny Terry (11:59.374)
And you're doing it, the performances are at Scottish Rite Temple, right? Because I know there's a lot of people who are listening who are, I've never been in that building. I want to go in there and I, and I have been there. You've got a huge stage. I mean, you've got a lot of room to do stuff, right?

Am I wrong? No, it's a huge space and it's absolutely beautiful. We were just there for the first time last night, actually, and we were on the set and the set's been designed and built in a way that it just feels like it's part of the space. So it's beautiful. We're using the historic drops, the three-dimensional drops that are part of the space there.

And yeah, the set just, it feels so perfect for the space.

So not only, not only do people get to come and see this great show that you've been working on, they also get to get inside the Scottish Rite temple, which is a whole additional benefit because for those of you who don't know, who are listening from elsewhere, if you've ever been to Santa Fe, the Scottish Rite temple is the big pink building on the north side, you know, three blocks north of the plaza. So.

If you want to get in there and you want to do something fun, you want to go and see something rotten. So we're this, this is dropping on July 10th, which is actually opening night, right?

Christian Libanti (13:36.428)
It's our first preview. Yeah, it'll be the first time anyone will be seeing us perform.

And how do they find tickets? And I know this is going to run for a while. So give us the date it's going to run through.

It runs through from July 10th through August 2nd. And then to piggyback off of Christian there, the 10th and the 11th are our first and second previews, respectively. And the big difference between those two performances and the rest of the run is because those two performances are previews, they are pay what you will nights. So they are extremely discounted tickets for people to come and see.

because their previews, they're still technically considered rehearsals. They still have the big, all the gizmos and the whistles. We're in full costumes, we're in full lights, we're in full everything. We're running it as a show. It's just that they may, if something happens, we call hold for the actors on stage or something like that, which is exciting because it's live theater and people love seeing live theater do live theater things. But then Saturday,

The 12th is the official opening night performance and the following weeks, Thursday through Saturdays, those will be our performance nights with Thursday, Fridays and Saturdays having a 730 o'clock showing. And we're also doing double show days on Saturdays. So we'll have a two o'clock matinee along with that 730 o'clock showing as well.

Bunny Terry (15:16.6)
So from July 10th through August 2nd, you're going to have evening performances Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and then you're going to have a two o'clock appointment. I'm sorry. I'm talking, I'm talking like my other life where I'm a realtor. You're going to have a two o'clock performance on Saturdays every week.

yeah. It's a lot.

Well, so let's go back. I want to talk a little bit more about the show. If you had to choose a favorite piece, what, Christian, what, what's your favorite part? What's your favorite moment?

Sure, I think my favorite moment is actually toward the end. And there's gonna be a little, I'll give you a little spoiler here. I think it'll be all right because it's just ridiculous. So Nigel has this monologue where he actually develops the story for Hamlet, for Shakespeare's Hamlet. through the soothsayer,

Nick goes back to the soothsayer and asks the soothsayer, what will Shakespeare's biggest hit be? Because he wants to know that he's gonna make a sure hit. And the soothsayer is not the best soothsayer. So instead of saying Hamlet, he says omelet. So Nick says, okay, great, we need to write this big play about an omelet. And then he gets bits and pieces of the story of Hamlet.

Christian Libanti (16:48.662)
So he brings that back to Nigel and Nigel sees all these stories and he's trying to write something that's true and honest and from his experience. And so from the bits and pieces of Omelette, Nigel actually develops Hamlet. And he has this big monologue about what happens and he descends into madness and everybody dies and the stage is covered in blood and death and bodies and...

And he quotes, you he starts to speak the words of Hamlet for the first time. And at the end of this monologue, Nick just turns and says, where's the omelet? So, so it's, and he's completely blinded by this idea of what he thinks is going to be successful versus when he hears something that's true. And, I just love both how Dakota portrays that and presents that. And just the...

What that means, that challenge of when we get so fixed in a way of what we think is gonna succeed, you can't see something that's true and maybe right in front of you. So I love how while this show is so funny, it also has such heart and such human experiences in it.

Bunny Terry (18:13.516)
And what about you Dakota? What are you? What? What piece of it are you loving the most? Can you tell us or will it spoil?

No, I can say it because it is the same one as Christian. I remember, I think it was our first week of rehearsals, Christian and I were getting to know each other and learning who we were as people and as actors. And we talked about that scene in particular and how much we just loved this scene because it's such a, it's a really powerful scene.

The entire show leading up to this point has been very, like lots of fantasy, a lot of dream sequences, you know, in true musical fashion. There's a lot of fantasy, dream songs of like the characters thinking things that would happen that aren't actually happening. I have that as the Act One finale. There's another one in Act Two.

between a Christian and his love interest, a Porsche played by Rachel Biggs, where they have this big moment of what their love life could be. And it's lots of heightened and fun and flashy and it's cool. And then there's this moment between Nigel and Nick after the Hamlet monologue that's really just like, I wouldn't say it's a slap in the face to audiences.

But it's jarring because you see this real side of Nigel and Nick. You see this real side of two brothers and how their relationship really is. And you see this argument from both sides that Christian is doing such a wonderful job performing it that the audience is thinking, well, I see why Nigel's right.

Dakota Lopez (20:16.938)
I see why Nick is right too. it's not a typical, one of us is bad, one of us is good, one of us is right, one of us is wrong. It is these two people are clearly human and I feel bad for both of them. And you don't get a lot of moments like that in acting. It's most usually set up that there is someone who's right and there is someone who is wrong.

And it's very obvious who is right and who is wrong in those situations. And that is for the audience to vibe with, to identify with and to see themselves in. And it's a beautiful scene because we see ourselves in both of these characters. One isn't like a foil to the other. It is just a really beautiful human moment. And it's my favorite scene in the show.

And it's a really hard scene as well. It's very emotionally taxing sometimes.

This is, go ahead, go ahead, Christian.

But in just coming back to the idea of comedy versus drama, it's like, think this is part of the magic of comedy too, that it allows you these really human, it sneaks in these human experiences and where the audience might not be expecting it or ready for it. And that allows people to receive it in a completely different way and really see themselves on stage in a way they may not so much or...

Christian Libanti (21:52.034)
feel more removed from a more dramatic piece. So that's a, it's really exciting to be able to share that.

This is, mean, the Santa Fe Playhouse has this, as I said in the beginning, this really rich history. And is it sometimes intimidating to think I'm part of the building blocks that I'm just curious if you think, this is, I'm part of something that is so cool. I mean, Santa Fe Playhouse is so cool. It's such, mean, who, talk.

Talk to our listeners a little bit about the heart of Santa Fe Playhouse as you understand it, because you're doing it. This is a huge service in the community, I think, and it's one of the defining, it's something that a lot of people don't know about. A lot of people who live here don't know about, and yet I, I mean, I'm just, know, in Boomer language, it's one of the coolest things about Santa Fe, I think.

tell me what you think.

I mean, I think that it's really, it is truly exciting to be part of a legacy like that in sharing theater. And it just goes to, again, the importance of it, that this space has been operating for so long, over hundred years. And it's actually interesting in this musical, toward the end,

Christian Libanti (23:28.782)
Again, I don't know, I'm giving spoilers left and right, but it just doesn't matter because it's just all so funny. But at the end, Nick and Nigel end up actually coming to America and bringing musicals. So in a sense, it's fun to be doing that in such a historic space and sharing this art form that has had such a wonderful history.

as well in this space.

Bunny Terry (24:03.34)
Dakota, do you have anything you want to add to that about being part of Santa Fe Playhouse?

It's really magical. I always get a sense of feeling whenever I'm on a stage of all of the history and the energy and the amount of people that must have stood where I'm standing and walked where I'm walking. And it's beautiful. And the Playhouse is such a pillar of

theater and has so much history and I hope a hundred years from now, actors on that stage are talking about Christian and I and being like, did you know that Christian and Dakota were here in this space once and did these shows here? And it goes for everybody in our cast. Everybody is working so hard and it shows.

that they're working so hard. And I'm so proud of every single person that's on stage with us right now at the Scottish Rite. And it is a beautiful thing to think about that this cast of 20, 22 people, this production team, this crew backstage is all contributing to this history and this legacy that the Santa Fe Playhouse has cultivated over the years.

Yeah, and there's just also such an exciting energy that Anna Hogan and Jessica Mara are bringing to the Playhouse. So they're the artistic director and managing director. The ambition that they have, the insights and that they have, the care that they're taking in their programming, I think it's really exciting to see how the Playhouse, again, even though it has a long history,

Christian Libanti (26:01.496)
how it continues to evolve. it probably that's why it is, you again, one of the longest running theaters in the country. So it's exciting for the history of it as well, or for the future.

I'm going to apologize right up front for not knowing the answer to this question, but that's why I'm here. Maybe you can answer it. Other than ticket sales, is the Playhouse a nonprofit that people can support?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's all it's a nonprofit. So they will certainly accept donations, tax deductible donations. It's a it's a great service to the community. And so yeah, please do go to their website, www.SantaFePlayhouse.org and you can learn

And you can also get tickets there, right?

Yes.

Bunny Terry (26:55.412)
Well, I'm going. I'll have to buy a ticket for the weekend after this one. I mean, I'm out of town the 11th and 12th, but I want to come in and see you and say hello and laugh until I fall out of my chair because that sounds like what's going to happen, right?

You have no option. It's truly just...

Yeah

It is one of the hardest shows to perform in because my co-stars and our ensemble do some things that are just so funny. I'm biting my tongue on stage to keep myself from laughing at them. It is quite the challenge. if I'm struggling up there, know that everyone in the audience will be falling out of chairs for sure.

I highly recommend coming early because there's even more chance of us just cracking, especially those first previews. I feel like we're just going to be cracking up. So we'll try not to, but no promises.

Bunny Terry (28:00.866)
Well, for those of you who are listening on July 10th, show up at Scottish Rite. What time are the performances? I'm sorry, I know you said this, Dakota, but.

no, not a worry. The evening performances are at 730. Typically, I don't know if it's different at the Scottish Rite, but typically the house will open at seven o'clock so people can start filling in and getting into their seats and getting nice and comfy and finding where the bathrooms are. It's usually what I'm doing when I go to a theater. But they start, the show will start at 730. And then the matinee performances, the afternoons are going to be at two o'clock with again,

Typically, the house should open at about 1.30.

And is this something we can bring our kids to? mean, you know, if you've got some tweens and teens, that's, would that be a good, something fun to do with your kids?

my gosh, absolutely. It's just so fun and the laughs don't stop. So yeah, and again, if you love musicals, you'll get so many fun references. If you love Shakespeare, you'll get so many fun references. If you hate musicals or you hate Shakespeare, you'll still have an amazing time because it's so lighthearted and just so irreverent.

Christian Libanti (29:19.598)
that it just, it's something that I truly thank anyone.

can't wait. And I'm so thrilled that you both agreed to come on the show and talk about it. Because this is just another so so you can go to the opera, or you can go to see something rotten. Anytime between July 10, and August 2, on a Thursday through Saturday night, or Saturday at two o'clock. Thank you guys for being on the show.

for having us.

Thank you.

Always fun, but this was really especially fun. Thanks.