Photo by Wilder Photography & Graphics by Zachary Fernebok
Seamus: Along with Matt Pauli, you’re one of the cast members who’s returning from the original production, so I wanted to hear what it’s like for you coming back to this part that you originated two years ago.
Megan: It’s crazy. I was actually watching, in preparation for the role this time around… just for fun I watched Firefly and then Serenity—
Seamus: Yes! I was wondering if Kaylee was in there anywhere.
Megan: Yeah, she is a little bit. It’s mostly her relationship with the ship, and then her relationship with the crew as family, is what I was really focusing on when I was watching it. But I was watching the documentary for Serenity and they were talking about how crazy it was… that that show was over. It had been over for several years, they all moved on to other things and then they all got called back to do these roles again, and how amazing it was to walk into the ship again, into Serenity. And, saying the words, and when the set was built, and wearing my hat again, I was like, “Holy crap, this is like coming home.”
I’ve done it once before, I realized. A character in one play who was, I think, sixteen, and then in the next play she was thirty. But these two plays take place so close together, just a couple months in between, and so it’s like going back and trying to remember who Megan was two years ago [and how] that informed Opal. And trying to bring that back but also bring in a whole bunch of stuff that I’ve learned since then. ‘Cause Opal was definitely a lot of me, before.
It’s interesting to work with new people in roles that I was so familiar with. Brad [Foster Smith] as Ruby especially, I think. Doug [Wilder] and I developed that relationship so well, I think, and we became close friends, so that relationship was a very specific thing between us. And then, so, with a new person in the role, it’s interesting to watch Brad find Ruby in himself, because he can’t just do a caricature of Doug.
Seamus: Right.
Megan: The heart of the character is still very much the same. It was fun to rediscover what that relationship is with a new person as Ruby.
Seamus: And you guys start King of the Sea in a very different place in terms of the relationship those two characters have.
Megan: Exactly. We started from a bickering brother and sister relationship and then we fell in love, and in this one we have a really nice, solid… or so it seems… relationship. It feels lived-in.
Seamus: You’ve changed, as people do, in the couple of years since the first show. How has that changed how you do Opal?
Megan: I have a little confession. In the last play, I was terrified of playing Aurora. Because it was so outside of what I usually play that I spent a lot of time working on her. I was figuring out why she did what she did and how she moved and I thought about it a lot. Whereas with Opal… Opal just wound up being “What are my impulses in the moment?” And so when I tried to find Opal again, I was like, “Shit. That was just me, onstage!” It became a more complicated question, of… who was I, rather than who was this character that I wrote down and studied.
Definitely, Opal… and I think it’s kind of written this way, and, strangely enough, has followed my own personal journey… the Opal in the previous play was very much more insecure. And she had a lot of anxiety. She was very concerned about pleasing people and what people thought of her. But she also had this really strong integrity, which I think is revealed even more in the second half of [King of the Sea]. That was very much me at that age. And even up to very recently, where I was very much caring about, “Oh my gosh, this person doesn’t like me!” Or, “I disappointed [them].” Disappointment was a huge problem for me.
I was actually listening to the old play today, because we have the video version and I had it playing in the background. The one scene that always hits me is the one where she disappoints Greyscale by turning the ship around. That was always the favorite scene of mine in the play, because I knew what that was like.
But in this one, she is much more steady. She knows who she is, she knows her strengths, and I think a lot of that has to do with Ruby. In our relationship, we talked about how she’s a naturally more highly wired person, but then, like, Ruby holds her hand, and she is free. And everything’s okay. She’s started to develop more of a confidence there. It strangely mirrored my own journey, recently, where I feel more comfortable in my own skin, more solid on the ground.
I think there’s a lot of me in Opal and I don’t know if that’s because I’ve played her and so Zach put more of me in her, or if I just happened to be very very right for the role.
But she’s very much into family and keeping things together and keeping them how they were. She wants the status quo, especially at the beginning of the play, when everyone’s a family and everything’s working so well. And then things go to shit. Her mission the entire time is to get the family back together, to get things back to the way they were.
Seamus: You’ve blogged about the playlist that you used to get into character for Opal and Aurora in the first Pirate show. Is there anything new in the playlist this time around?
Megan: There’s a beautiful song by Kate Nash called “I Hate Seagulls”. It’s the very first song on the playlist. It’s kind of how I feel Opal is at the beginning of the play with Ruby and with herself. It starts out with “I hate seagulls, I hate being sick, I hate burning my finger on the toaster and I hate nits”… because she does have kind of a short fuse. But then there’s this beautiful shift in the music and then it says “But I have a friend with whom I like to spend any time I can find with…”
(Sings a few bars:)
I like sleeping in your bed
I like knowing what is going on inside your head
It’s very gentle and very simple but it feels right for the two of them.
Seamus: Awww.
Megan: Yeah.
The playlist has two purposes for me. One of them is to track the emotional arc. It makes me sit down and be like, “Okay, what are the key moments in this play for this character, what is their journey?” Because we do so much stop-and-start, and out of order, and so using music to ground that helps me a lot.
And then it also, if I’ve had a really shitty day at work, or I’m just not in the right headspace, I can sit there and listen to the playlist, and there are certain songs where I’m like, “That. That is where this character lives.”
My absolute favorite example of that is in the first Opal playlist that I made. I had this whole backstory… and we had to solidify that backstory during our table work, talking with Matt, where Opal came from a really poor family with lots of kids, and she was ignored, but she had this skill set with tools and so she would make things to help out her family. And she was in a market one day and she had a fun little mechanical toy that she had made and Grayscale saw it and they struck up a conversation. The song that I chose for that moment was “Heaven’s Eyes” from The Prince of Egypt. And every single time I listen to it, no matter what, I go, “Oh, gosh, THERE’S Opal and Grayscale! Right there.”
Seamus: Awwwwww.
Megan: It’s basically about “How do you know your worth in the grand scheme of things?” I could picture Opal talking to him, being inspired, and then packing her bags at the age of seven or eight and just meeting him on the plank of the ship that goes down to the docks and then she meets everybody and they go off.
Seamus: The backstory that you came up with for Aurora and for Opal was a lot of fun to read, but it didn’t answer my most burning question, which is, where did Opal get that rad aviator cap and goggles that she always wears?
Megan: I have no idea, actually. In my head she comes from Cobalt City, which is kind of the more steampunky area of this world, with a lot of the more, mechanics and gears and brass and stuff. So I have a feeling it comes from there. ‘Cause she is also very different clothing-wise. Nobody else wears something quite that steampunky. I think that it is a relic of her home. And also very useful! As you will see in this upcoming play, when they have to drive through some really bad weather.
Seamus: Your love of fantasy and speculative fiction is well-documented. I think you have two blogs going on the subject, right?
Megan: I do!
Seamus: Do you find that knowledge helpful when playing a character who lives in a fantasy world?
Megan: It makes me ask more about it. We talked about the rules of the magic in the poetry. How the ship works is very important to me. Things like that. I found myself pulling less on my knowledge of world-building and fantasy and sci-fi and more on nautical things.
When I was a kid, I read this book called The True Confessions of…
Seamus: Oh, Charlotte Doyle, yeah! I had to read that.
Megan: And I fell in love with that book. And I learned a lot. That’s probably where I got my love of stories like this, these adventures-on-the-sea stories. I remember a lot from that and from subsequent adventure books that I’ve read. And so every time someone’s like, “How do we do this?” I’m like, “Well, uh, in reality it would be this way,” or “Time is told by bells!” or “This is starboard and this is port,” or, “They would bury someone at sea this way…” That sort of thing.
Seamus: So you’re not just playing the most knowledgeable person about ships on the ship, but you are in fact the most knowledgeable person about seafaring in the cast.
Megan: Well, I would say I’m the most vocal person about ships. I don’t know if necessarily I’m accurate with all my information, but I volunteer it very readily. It’s another thing that Opal and I have in common.
Seamus: Going back to what you were talking about with Ruby, what’s it like working with a new cast who are putting their stamp on these established characters?
Megan: Jason and I were talking about it, and he is very correct when he says that each of these characters are kind of like the Avengers in a way, where they have a core. They have a thing that they are, and that’s really what needs to be played. He made the comparison of, like, “Captain America, he has to have his shield. He doesn’t necessarily need to have the pirate boots. That was part of his costume, but he doesn’t need them. He needs the shield.”
Seamus: He definitely had bright red pirate boots in the forties.
Megan: So in that sense I think that’s how Jason tackled having new folks play older characters. They can’t be the other person. It’s like playing the same symphony through a woodwind or a piano. They have to find the truth of the character within themselves. It’s interesting to watch that process. And then the characters come out and you say, “Oh, there you are! Hello!” You recognize the characters that you loved before, even though it’s coming through a different instrument.
I love working with them. It’s like whole new… new friends that I’ve never worked with before at all. Kaylynn [Creighton] is amazing and adorable. She has a slightly different Sandy than Megan Graves. I think Megan was a lot fiercer and feistier and this Sandy’s a bit more dry, which is fun. But they’re still the same person, just different facets.
Seamus: Without giving anything big away, are there any Opal moments in the show that you’re really looking forward to?
Megan: I have a wheel! It’s not here yet, but I’m pretty much up there a lot of the time with my wheel and it… it feels so good. This is what Opal does. This is Opal’s station. She’s here, she’s home, she knows what she’s doing.
Steve, the composer for the show… created this beautiful kind of John Williams version of “Peg Leg”… a song from the previous show, and it’s soaring and orchestral and it’s the very first thing in the show. I remember hearing it for the first time and my heart swelled. And I get to be up driving the ship for a certain portion of it. So to have that epic music and I’m like, “Yes! This is my life! I get to be driving a ship with epic music with the people that I love around me!” And that’s pretty much Opal. But also me.
Megan Reichelt as Aurora in “The Pirate Laureate of Port Town”
