Bay Street's Interns And Apprentices Take The Stage In 'Indian Summer'

With opening night on August 25, the cast and crew of Bay Street Theater’s intern production, “Indian Summer,” are more than ready to show off their hard work and labor of love.

The three-day-run of the play, written by Gregory S. Moss, will employ the talents of the theater’s administrative interns and acting apprentices, as well as professional actors from New York, including the Emmy Award-winning director of Saturday Night Live, Don Roy King, who, with this show, is making his first acting appearance since 1969.

King’s daughter, Cameron King is directing the production.

“My dad is my best friend in the whole world,” she said. “I wouldn’t have cast him otherwise. It’s been great to just have that support in the room and have someone so close to me and who’s never gotten to see my work in such an intimate way.”

Cameron King previously interned at G4 productions in New York, the MUNY (St. Louis Municipal Opera Theatre) in Missouri. For Bay Street Theater, she has assisted on many productions and in 2021, directed a tribute to famed set and costume designer Tony Walton.

Needless to say, King was thrilled when Bay Street approached her for this project, allowing her to make her directorial play debut on the Sag Harbor stage with “Indian Summer.”

King is making a name for herself in the theater scene these days. She graduated from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University just last year, and is already regarded as one of “New York City’s most imaginative and energetic young talents” by Stephi Wild of Broadway World. However, it was King’s own experience as an intern that allowed her to relate so directly to the Bay Street apprentices and interns who make up the cast and crew of “Indian Summer.”

“The word intern doesn’t mean anything to me other than, you’re fresh and you’re still in school and you’re at a certain point in your career where you will not be for much longer,” King said. “There is this incredible underdog enthusiasm that exists when you work with a team of people who are at the beginning of their career because we have nothing to lose and everything to prove … We’re not calling ourselves a Tony Award winner when we walk into the room, so there’s no disappointment.”

“Indian Summer” is described by the young cast as a love letter to a small town. The play tells the story of two teenagers falling in love in a resort town near the Rhode Island coast. The main character Izzy, played by lifelong Sag Harbor resident Anna Schiavoni, is the lifelong local in the play, and she meets Daniel, played by Jake Anderson, a “tourist” from a troubled family who’s in Rhode Island for the summer visiting his grandfather.

“I would say that it’s about two people bringing things out of each other that they did not know they had,” Anderson said of the play.

As someone who grew up in a place not unlike that in the play’s setting, Schiavoni, who will soon start her senior year at George Washington University, finds a certain familiarity in the storyline.

“Our time here is so special,” Schiavoni said. “It makes the time that these two people have together more special and intimate.”

As a Bay Street acting apprentice, Schiavoni has been busy this summer taking part in masterclasses and serving as an understudy at the theater. But during the three-day run of “Indian Summer,” it will be her turn to take center stage.

“I’m excited for my family to come to see it … but also to play someone who’s very dissimilar to me,“ Schiavoni said.

Anderson is a professional actor based in New York, but he originally comes from the Midwest. He said he definitely recognizes himself in the character of Daniel and can relate to what he’s going through in the play.

“A lot of his confusion and pain I very much empathize with, and a younger version of myself had a lot of the same frustrations and anxieties,” he said. “This play felt like reaching back in time a bit.”

As a director, King’s familiarity with “Indian Summer” goes back to 2015 when she first saw the play performed at Playwrights Horizon, just before she went off to college. She said she was always struck by what she called the play’s “beautiful love story.”

“I loved the way that the playwright didn’t once ever condescend to those characters, because oftentimes, you write a puppy love story,” King said, noting that she often finds stories about young love to be flat and two-dimensional. “They’re about something that doesn’t matter to an adult’s more mature flame relationship.

“But these kids are just people falling in love because of their circumstances.”

In terms of circumstances, that was certainly an issue for King with this production due to unexpected cast changes. King began the planning process for the play back in November, and rehearsals began in June, but when three of “Indian Summer’s” intern cast members decided to leave the program for other opportunities, King had to scramble to cast professional actors in their place.

Currently, in addition to Schiavoni, Bay Street interns working on the production include the lighting designer, costume designer and props designer.

“Even before the cast changed — and especially after — I have been so thrilled with the way that the whole thing has gelled and the family we’ve created,” King said.

She noted that based on the ever-changing schedules, not only for herself, but for the theater and the cast and crew, the team has had to start and stop production more than once. The process involved working on table reads for a week, taking a week off, working on blocking for a week, and taking another week off, then doing a designer run, until they got to a full run-through of the production. The cast and crew were also off for almost a month leading up to the production, due to King being needed in Oklahoma where she was working on a rock musical.

“What that does is it allows those actors to marinate in the story as they go back and forth from New York City to Sag Harbor,” King said. “They see the importance of having a summer getaway. I trust these artists enough to know that they are doing independent work while we are not together, not necessarily taking a break from rehearsal.”

And like all things seasonal, after “Indian Summer’s” last performance at Bay Street on August 27, both Schiavoni and Anderson will move on to what’s next. For Anderson, that means the Philadelphia Fringe Festival where he will appear in a production next month. And Schiavoni? She will leave her hometown by the sea for her final year as a theater major at George Washington University where she will star in a fall production of “Medea.”

“Indian Summer,” written by Gregory S. Moss and directed by Cameron King, opens Thursday, August 25, and runs through Saturday, August 27. The cast includes: Don Roy King as George; Jake Anderson as Daniel; Anna Schiavoni as Izzy; and Eli Mayer as Jeremy. The creative team includes: Cameron King, director; Paige Rosko, dramaturg; Simon Knox, props and scenic designer; Theo Watson, costume designer; Ava Ansorg, lighting designer; Nick Leek, sound designer; Mike Billings, production manager; Harrison Lange, technical director. Tickets are $20 at baystreet.org or 631-725-9500.