Catch this interview featuring the incredible pairing of Billy Siegenfield and Robert Bailey sharing stories and talking about the pressure of one person shows , their production of In Some Dark Valley and advice for young creatives!

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Jack Stevens’ Interview with Robert Bailey

Ahead of In Some Dark Valley, I caught up with Robert to talk about the themes at the heart of the production, the creative journey behind it, and what audiences can look forward to when the lights go up.

What drew you initially to create a solo performance based on a circuit preacher in post-Civil War Appalachia?

The original impulse was in the music: field recordings from the mid-20th century of white and black Southerners singing and playing their instruments in churches, on farms, in prisons and on front porches. I was struck by the authenticity and power in these folk melodies and wanted to build a theatre piece that incorporated them. I also wanted to confront the roots of a particular mindset that seemed to come from a severe brand of moral certainty afflicting society today. Henrik Ibsen’s verse play BRAND, the story of a fanatical preacher, provided the narrative hook: I was able to transform the character into a stern Appalachian circuit preacher, circa 1870.

Can you talk about the process of weaving traditional Southern songs into the performance, both musically and thematically?

The hymns and ballads were of course born in the British Isles and transported to the backwoods of America centuries ago. Their raw power and authentic expression of emotion lift the narrative to a certain level of intensity that permits the audience to enter into the character’s unfamiliar mindset. The choice of sung material arises from the dramatic moment, when my character cannot express what he’s going through without transcending speech. A song often punctuates a moment or drives the action forward toward a new development.

What research did you undertake to authentically represent the historical and cultural context of Appalachia in the late 19th century?

Research included readings about the Civil War period and the years afterward: Drew Gilpin Faust’s THIS REPUBLIC OF SUFFERING; John Richard Dennett’s THE SOUTH AS IT IS1865-1866; the Civil War photos of Matthew Brady; and many other works. Crucial inspirations were the novels of Flannery O’Connor, Woody Guthrie’s autobiography, Bob Dylan’s Chronicles Volume One, poetry by James Dickey, a TREASURY OF SOUTHERN FOLKLORE … all went into the brew. I watched YouTube videos of fire & brimstone contemporary preachers like Billy Kelly: perplexing, amazingly dynamic and part of a fascinating and bygone tradition.

How has the development process been so far, and have there been any challenges so far?

It has been a fascinating journey, starting with the original impetus to engage with the culture and the time period, identifying the narrative hook to hang it all on (Ibsen’s BRAND), the collaboration with my director over a two and a half year period, and on to workshop performances for small invited groups of friends and colleagues before finding the final form of the solo. In 2024 I brought it to the Hollywood Fringe Festival, followed by shows at multiple intimate theatres in Los Angeles and beyond. We also filmed a 3-camera version, now in post production.

Can you share how your collaboration with director Billy Siegenfeld shaped the performance’s physical and emotional arc?

Billy is one of my oldest friends from our undergraduate days at Brown University. He is a distinguished Professor of Theatre at Northwestern University, an expert in dance and movement, a director and performer and the founder of Jump Rhythm, an extraordinarytheatrical dance collective. I was extremely fortunate that he took on the task of directing: although we are in different parts of the US and were working remotely, Billy was able to shape the movement, refine the multiple characterizations (many of which he suggested, as he is also a brilliant dramaturg), demonstrate the most effective and knee-saving ways of getting up and down on benches and harness my energy. He intuited what the emotional point was for each moment, where to pause for maximum effect, and what should stay or what must go in the writing. His direction and dramaturgy were invaluable, and it was, for me, like being directed by a brilliant, loving brother.

How has the play evolved since its premiere at the Hollywood Fringe Festival?

I believe I have continued to deepen each moment, trust the form, relax and achieve more doing less. The characterizations live in me now and are immediately accessible. I have derived tremendous pleasure entering into the imaginative space the solo occupies. I literally travel to another time and place, another mentality, another version of myself that seems now as real as my own quotidian existence.

How does the play balance moments of tenderness and humour with its darker themes?

The minister may be a fiery exponent of the one true path of salvation, but he is also a loving husband and father whose emotions are greatly affected by relationships. He suffers because of the consequences that result from actions he believes he must take, and the love he feels is often on display. In the end, he is looking for some degree of grace. There are also, especially in the first half of the play, generous dollops of humor and even joyful exuberance.

What is one song in the show that means the most to you?

Possibly it’s “Poor Wayfaring Stranger”, as it was the first song I taught myself while applying the dialect that made it feel authentic.

In your view, what is the role of experimental theatre in shaping young audiences’ appreciation for art?

In its purest form and execution, it should carve a path toward new and authentic ways of using this ritualistic behavior we call live theatre. If the genesis of an “experimental” performance reflects the genuine feelings and imaginative impulses of its practitioners, and is in some way an attempt to cross the divide between actors and audience— if it is a true encounter, and not just an empty formal exercise—it can resonate with people of every age group. In all honesty, though, we must realize that “young” audiences need to be given a real reason for valuing this particular experience when screens offer them so much.

What’s the hardest part of performing this show solo?

Pacing myself, readying the body and mind and spirit and conserving energy while fulfilling each moment. It’s actually exhilarating!

One final question: why this show, and why now?

I suspect the strident forms of moral certitude on display in our era grew from rather tangled roots in our collective history. As audiences witness the spiritual dilemma of Reverend Brand and travel with him on his difficult journey, I hope they may reflect on the path he’s taken and find some form of relevance to their own yearnings and experiences. A reviewer in Los Angeles called the play “ a ballad of the spiritually blinded”; perhaps through this haunted pastor we can all realize, as life confronts us with difficulty, how easily we might lose our own way.

In Some Dark Valley heads to The White Bear Theatre (31st March - 4th April 2026). For full performance dates and ticket information, visit the official

Episode 461: Martin’s perceptive questions inspired an expansive conversation with Robert about where theatre, music, and spirit collide; about artistic courage; and about allowing history, music, and spirit to move through the body of an actor and into the soul of an audience. They also touched on the Alan Lomax field recordings of Southern hymns, ballads, and blues that influenced the development of In Some Dark Valley.

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August 19, 2025

RECOMMENDED

Writer/performer Robert Bailey’s riveting solo show is set in post-Civil War Appalachia, in a “dark valley” that serves not only as the story’s geographical setting, but as a descriptive for the murky spiritual place inhabited by its troubled main character.

For the outlines of his narrative, Bailey drew on the plot of Brand, Henrik Ibsen’s 1866 dramatic poem about a fiery preacher whose refusal to compromise seals his fate. Both Ibsen’s protagonist and Bailey’s have the same surname, which in Norwegian means fire. Both seek redemption by following, and interpreting for others, the will of their God as they perceive it. Both speak harsh words to their flock, and demand much. Both wrestle with being moral in an intolerant world. And both learn too late that there is more than one path to personal salvation.

The Reverend James Brand we meet in Bailey’s play grew up the sole surviving child of an aging father and a young mother who cared for money above all. The misery of his childhood somehow forged a religious calling and a determination, even as a youngster, to preach far and wide. But Brand’s desire to roam ends when famine-stricken residents of his native town, along with the woman he loves, pleads with him to remain with them and be their pastor. Heretofore solitary, he briefly finds some measure of human joy in his wife and son.

These events are all part of the story the Reverend spins when we meet him in a forest, which, notwithstanding a dark, nearly bare stage, is vividly portrayed via Phil Saguil’s striking sound design, with its potpourri of bird calls, chirping insects, rustling leaves, and later more ominous noises. Subtle lighting by Zoia Wiseman underscores the shift in mood and scene.

On that stage, in worn, almost tattered garb, Bailey’s Reverend speaks intimately and confidingly, the small theatrical venue where he’s performing heightening one’s sense of one-on-one. Every so often, he intersperses his monologue with a heartrending folk song or with melodic strains on a harmonica. His performance takes in the other characters in his story, whom he also portrays — his gentle wife Agnes, the mysterious woman on the mountain who challenges his faith, the Black mother he encountered in childhood who — against the grain of his Southern upbringing — imparts to him respect for people of another race. And the mayor of his town who, decades later, makes it clear that Brand’s tolerance of Black folk is unacceptable to the overwhelming majority of the people he leads.

Directed by Billy Siegenfeld, this is memorable theater. If the narrative itself is of a particular time and place, the play’s message — what happens when fervor closes the mind and twists into an instrument of pain — is certainly of our time, and every other time as well.

Meantime, for 65 minutes, we journey into the soul of this wildly errant yet unflinchingly honest character, whose life has been bleak, but whose willingness to share somehow opens on both sides a small porthole of light.

REVIEW

September 19, 2025

Another exuberating solo show has been born during the recent pandemic and in line with the ponderosity of that time, the story of ‘IN SOME DARK VALLEY: The Testimony of Reverend Brand’, takes us into another period of existence of great difficulties. The story is set in post-Civil War Appalachia, known as the great ‘Dark Valley’, where the cruelty of war took many lives and the heaviness of time dips into the mystery of God and the beginning of human race with its Biblical story of Adam and Eve and their multiplying.

It all started in 2021 and the love for singing. The collaboration between Robert Bailey (writer/performer) and his friend Billy Siegenfeld (director) was mostly done via Zoom at the beginning. Based on the plot of ‘Brand’, Henrik Ibsen’s 1866 poem about the act of combustion by preacher who questioned his fate, and has wonders what God looks like? Does God show us mercy by making us afraid or does it protect us from the dark valleys.   By opening the door to calamity caused by major misfortune and loss of his young son and his beloved wife, Reverend Brand decides to make Heaven his home while still on this plane of existence. The Spiritual Awakening and personal salvation illuminate his colorful performance, while telling the story and especially when singing. His voice is so pleasing; one does not want him to stop.

The portrayal of multiple characters in the story are embodied by Bailey with precision and strong body language. His vocal variety for each character is expressed with ease and power. When singing the original songs from the South, accompanied at times by enchanting sounds of the French harp, the audience is transformed into that time completely. The physicality is fantastic and his eyes following the movement of some characters is captivating. Robert Bailey has been a member of the faculty at the University of Southern California School of Dramatic Arts in LA since 2010. Three of his students and another colleague – a teacher came to see his brilliant work and gave him support and appreciation he deserves. Great job!

Director Billy Siegenfeld is the founder, artistic director, writer, choreographer, and musical arranger of the theatre company Jump Rhythm®.  His creative, skillful direction in this production is expressed with full impact on everyone.  His simple, almost totally bear stage, with mostly dimmed lights – is exactly what this play needs.

In Some Dark Valley: The Testimony of Reverend Brand premiered at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in 2024 where it won the Best of the Fringe TVO Award and the 2024 LA Gem Award for Outstanding Dramatic Performer (male). By caring about the storyline and appreciating the feedback Bailey is on top of the game and makes adjustments if there is a need. That is why his work is like a train; the train stops to recharge and gets back into action.

Review

July 2, 2025

Robert Bailey's "In Some Dark Valley" carries the weight of mountains and the burden of moral certainty. As Reverend Brand, a circuit preacher emerging from 1870s Appalachia, Bailey inhabits a character whose religious fervor burns as fiercely as the landscape around him is scarred. This solo performance, which claimed both the Best of the Fringe TVO Award and LA Gem Award for Outstanding Dramatic Performer at the 2024 Hollywood Fringe Festival, offers more than historical recreation. It excavates the dangerous intersection where unwavering moral vision meets human frailty.

Bailey's theatrical background, from his early work with Jerzy Grotowski at the Polish Laboratory Theatre to his tenure with Circle Repertory Company, informs this deeply physical performance. Under Billy Siegenfeld's direction, the piece achieves a remarkable balance: traditional Southern songs provide both musical foundation and emotional catalyst, while Bailey's embodiment of multiple characters creates a populated world from singular presence. The 65-minute work confronts audiences with questions that echo beyond its period setting. In an era when moral absolutism continues to shape political and social discourse, Reverend Brand's testimony becomes uncomfortably contemporary. Bailey doesn't soften the preacher's edges or romanticize his convictions, instead presenting the full cost of righteousness pursued without compassion.

Below follows an email conversation with Robert Bailey.

JS: What made you want to dig into this clash between moral certainty and the damage it can cause? Reverend Brand seems like he could be a pretty unforgiving character.

RB: I suspect the strident forms of moral certitude on display in our time grew from rather tangled roots in our collective history. Some of these are easy to identify and familiar enough to most Americans, like the unholy coalition of groups that participated in the Unite the Right march in Charlottesville in 2017. What impresses me about a traveling minister trying to uplift a defeated population in the post-Civil War South, however, is how a severe religious calling reflects conditions of poverty, disease and the devastation wrought by war. Reverend Brand brings his uncompromising vision of the gospel to these people because they have no other source of hope.

JS: The traditional songs sound like they're doing heavy lifting in the show. Are they driving the story forward, or did you build the narrative around them?

RB: My encounter with the original field recordings of ballads and hymns collected in the middle of the last century was a revelation. These unadorned songs exercised tremendous power over me. I grew up in the South but had no real experience with this music so deeply rooted in the soil beyond the cities and suburbs. For a long time, I dreamt of incorporating the songs into a theatre piece. Once I decided on playing Reverend Brand as a spirit-visitor compelled to offer the audience his testimony, I knew his bursts into song would become a necessary component of the piece. They underscore the narrative at crucial points along the way and lift the presentation to a higher level of intensity.

JS: Your time with Grotowski at the Polish Laboratory Theatre sounds formative. How does that training show up when you're embodying multiple characters in this solo work?

RB: The period I spent with Jerzy Grotowski at the Polish Laboratory Theatre in Wroclaw was a seminal one as I set out on my own theatrical journey, but more importantly it is the years I’ve spent reflecting on the ideas in his productions and writings that have continually reinvigorated me. Grotowski’s proposal that theatre return to what is unique and essential— the physical presence of the living actor and the living spectator in an intimate space of provocation— has obviously influenced the creation of my play. His insight that the enactment of myth is no longer possible when there is no shared ground of belief, but that confrontation with myth is still necessary in reflecting our current reality, is also a key to this production. On a technical level, Grotowski’s insistence on creating a fixed score of actions has sustained my performance under the guidance of the director, Billy Siegenfeld.  

JS: Billy Siegenfeld's directing approach with Standing Down Straight sounds fascinating. What's it like working with someone who thinks about gravity and movement in such a specific way?

RB: Billy gave me a tremendous gift as a direct result of his approach, Standing Down Straight: he permitted me to slow down, plant myself, breathe and let go of muscular tension. I had previously feared that any relaxation of tension would rob me of the intensity required to carry out my actions: the opposite was the case. “Drop your arms, Bob. Breathe. Come back to zero. Not only do you need it, the audience does as well.” I continually remind myself of these principles as I perform: they have given me the confidence to sustain the energy needed for a highly physical show.

JS: People keep saying this 1870s story feels very current. What parts of Reverend Brand's world are hitting audiences as particularly relevant right now?

RB: Beliefs generate emotions, and our most fervently held beliefs generate the strongest, sometimes violent, emotions. The problem arises when there is no room for any other compensating belief or even a recognition of other needs or points of view. All of us are in grave danger today of becoming slaves to our own belief systems. IN SOME DARK VALLEY charts one person’s progression along that treacherous path.

JS: You've done this show in quite a range of spaces. Does a 22-seat venue change how you approach the performance compared to a larger theater?

RB: It’s really a matter of degree. Between my 22-seat rehearsal space in North Hollywood and the 225-seat theatre at North Coast Rep there are variables, of course, but I try to keep the performance consistent. Adapting to the acoustics, dimensions and general feel of each space is a balancing act. What remains most important to me is maintaining a sense of intimacy with the audience.

JS: The description mentions moments of redemption coming through all this darkness. How do you find that balance between the harsh preacher and something more hopeful?

RB: Our troubled minister may be a fiery exponent of the one true path to salvation, but he is also a son, husband and father. There are moments in the play when it should be obvious to the audience how greatly his emotions are affected by those relationships. His problems result from what Blake termed “mind forg’d manacles”, the traps set for him by his own unyielding beliefs. When he loses everything as a consequence of his actions, the moment of truth arrives at last, and with it, grace.

Interview

“In Some Dark Valley: The Testimony of Reverend Brand” is a beautifully calibrated evening of storytelling (visitations) masquerading in simplicity, but powerfully ambitious in its expression, a tremendous spin of a yarn that writer/performer, Robert Bailey, has been presenting around L.A. and California.

I have been trying to get to this piece for a while, and I am so happy it is in residence at Moving Arts.

Completely assured and comfortable on stage, Bailey takes us on an intense journey of religious fervor, post-Civil War Appalachia, that as a recovered Pentecostal, I could relate to in too many ways. One simply must be consciously living in this moment in history to see the parallels of extremism, in conviction to God, and its effect on a people.

If only such narratives were so simple. This arresting piece is at once charming in its resiliency and heartbreaking in its convictions, making it such a wonderful theatrical complication that I was surprised it was over a brief 65 minutes later.

Bailey wisely avoids turning the evening into a fire and brimstone sermon, instead weaving a series of acapella songs into the proceedings that keep us deep in humanity when the tragedy of unyielding moral judgment causes a community, already nearly dead from war, poverty and disease, to succumb to their own personal destruction.

I was charmed, then riveted, and then dreading where I thought this piece would go. But it surprises in its tenderness, humor, and characterizations. There is a ridiculously sweet spin on Adam and Eve, and a striking love story running along the narrative that never fails to amaze.

Bravo to letting the language do its work, to the performer for his beautiful ease and execution, he’s making it look easy, but you know it’s not. And yes, to the complex simple act of storytelling, mesmerizing in poetry and body that carries the evening.

I love that sweet spot of a moment in a performance like this when the actor seems so conversational that a trip of a word or sentence makes you suspect that he is just making all of this up, a detour into improvisation. But, of course, he is so in command of the script that it feels so fresh and new.

What a simple yet profound thing to see on a very hot weekend, when the world is in chaos, and what we really need most is to gather the tribe and sit around the old black box telling stories.

Bravo Robert! I’ve known this human about fifteen years, bumping into each other in the halls of the university, where he teaches acting and directing, a quick conversation between classes. Or talking over a sandwich at a faculty event, interrupted by life each time.

Never really meeting him, in his excellence, until now. What a gift.

By Isadora Swann

March 3, 2025

Robert Bailey’s solo performance In Some Dark Valley follows Reverend James Brand on a moonlit night. This character, loosely based on Ibsen’s verse tragedy Brand, is a fiery post Civil War circuit preacher who emerges from the shadowy mountains of Appalachia to weave a tale of religious fervor set against a landscape scarred by war, poverty, and disease.

Bailey has been performing his play in festivals up and down California. It plays through March 9 at Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice

STAGE RAW I get the sense that Reverend Brand’s world is filled with trauma?

ROBERT BAILEY Well, this is the post-Civil War period in the South. It’s a defeated place, a defeated land, destroyed really. There’s sickness, there’s poverty, I think about 1/3 of the male population of the South died in the war. So it’s massive. And this is a person whose only literature was the Bible. And so he goes about his preaching … and his domestic life … in a very severe way. There’s one narrow way to get to eternity, and everything else is wrong. It’s only in the very final moments of the piece (it’s 65 minutes long) where there’s some sort of revelation to him about a different way he could have gone about it.

SR: It seems to me that there are parallels between his struggle to see outside of his own perspective and the struggles that America is facing in trying to cross divides of all kinds. Is that part of the reason why you decided to do this piece now?

RB: The simple answer is yes. What started me on this path was a fascination many, many years ago with the original field recordings made by Alan Lomax and others. White and Black Southerners singing. These are people who, for generations, have depended on their faith and expressed it through song. The hard times they went through are real, they’re very, very real, and they’ve continued throughout the 20th century and into this century, right? I had read a headline from USA Today, way back in 2015, “U.S.Torn on Confederate Flag.” And as a Southerner, I’m looking at that, I’m thinking, ‘Torn in what way? . . . What are you talking about? . . . ‘What’s the problem?’ The Confederate flag is what it represents; the South trying to divorce itself from the North to keep its slave population. Everything that started happening around 2020 [re-ennobling the Confederacy] was puzzling to me, disturbing, and as a Southerner, embarrassing.

So I wanted to confront it in some way. And when I settled on the narrative of a preacher, I found an archetype that represents a certain way of thinking. ‘We’re right, you’re wrong’. ‘This is the right way’. And yes, I think that’s one of the roots that’s bugging us right now. I don’t pretend that anything I’m doing captures all of it. It’s just one of the roots, right? And I wanted to embody that and confront it in some way.

SR: You include folk music in your performance. What role do you feel music has in creating culture and in perpetuating it?

RB: Oh, gosh, I mean, the more I study it, it is the culture. It is what makes people unique. If you hear Bulgarian women’s choirs, you don’t hear that music anywhere else in the world. It’s their culture. It’s an expression of their cultural identity. Because of mass culture, and the homogeneity of what gets played, this stuff is going to disappear.

It’s kind of like when you read about languages, you know, primitive languages that just disappear because nobody speaks them anymore. Scientists have noticed that, you know, millions of species are disappearing, right? They’re never going to come back.

These songs, we don’t even know how old some of them are, they passed through so many peoples. They transform themselves over time into variations and then by the time they cross the Atlantic they change again. So, it’s just huge. It is what culture is.

SR: Why is Reverend Brand an important character to embody right now?

RB: Let me step back for a moment. One of my big influences as a young person in college was the Polish Laboratory Theater and its leader, Jerzy Grotowski, who pointed out that it’s very difficult to create pieces that involve myth, or a collective belief system because we don’t have a collective belief system in modern secular society. But what he thought was possible was confrontation with myth. So I was proceeding along the lines of, this character, [this fervent preacher],should be confronted, but in order to confront him, I have to embody him.

That meant dialect, that meant costume. That meant lots and lots of research, lots of books, looking into where this comes from, what the experience of the war in particular was. Both sides prayed to the same Christian God, and both sides evoked that God and the rightness of their cause. The North, after suffering huge losses . . . everybody suffered huge, huge losses on both sides . . . the North was able to say, ‘Well, we were right, God was on our side’. The South had to twist that pretzel in some other way, right? ‘What is God doing to us? . . . Is God testing us?’ It’s a pretzel, isn’t it? It’s a moral pretzel.

I have to tell you that, growing up in Richmond, Virginia, I was not an enlightened person. Very few people around me were enlightened. The attitudes were baked in and we didn’t even think about them. They just were what they were. I was fortunate in that my father, for whatever reasons, when I would come home with certain attitudes and certain phrases or certain jokes or whatever it was, would say, ‘I don’t like that’. ‘I don’t want to hear it . . . You’re talking about people’ And I, I have to, I have to confess to you, at the time, as a child, I was thinking, ‘What’s his problem? . . . Everybody’s like this.’ It’s hard when you’re a product of a certain soil, when you’re grown in a certain soil, it’s hard to see it. So I knew that I had to play this character in such a way that I am inside of him.

SR: There’s something so poetic about what you said about needing to embody something to confront it. What do you think we as citizens can learn from the performing arts? Why should I watch it? Why should I care? Why is this relevant?

RB: I think live theater is a way of experience. It’s a mode of experience unlike any other. And again, Grotowski was very clear . . . he just pared it down to a live human being in front of a live audience. There is an immediacy. There’s an immediate encounter between living organisms and if this is borne out in my piece. It is one of the things I’m proudest of.

SR: The world that you describe this preacher’s world seems really similar to the world today. You know, you talk about young people dying, you talk about wars, you talk about poverty, you talk about inequality. It seems like everything has changed so much, but has the world really changed?

RB: I don’t think so. I just think the clothes are different, the styles are different, the machinery gets different, the technology gets different, you know, and the basic human experience remains the same. And obviously, we’re not up against the same reality. We’re not even up against the same realities that Midwesterners and Southerners went through in the 1930s, with the Dust Bowl and the great migration. I mean, we’re removed from those realities right now. Supposedly we have protections in place that would make those things not relevant to us. Supposedly we would not have a civil war in this country, but that’s a big supposedly, lately, right?

SR: What do you think this character would have to say to a young person like me entering into a world in which great migrations, like what you’re describing from the Dust Bowl, may have to happen again in the next 20 to 50 years because of climate change?

RB: I guess I would put it this way, all of us are on earth for a certain amount of time, yes? None of us really knows, individually, how long that is. Is our experience just, you know, follow the rules, get an education, get a good job, get a good salary, raise a family, make sure you have material comforts, and then that you still have material comforts when you’re really old, and you go to the old person’s home, and hope that you have enough money left over. Is that it? Is that it? Or like the great Peggy Lee once sang, “Is that all there is?” Are we on some sort of spiritual journey?

Whether we know it or not, I believe it’s the second. Now, I don’t want to sound like I’m preaching to anybody. It’s bad enough having to play a preacher. But following a creed, following a prophet, real or false, or somewhere in between, looking for answers, coming up against really harsh realities . . . for example, in this piece, there’s the war, there’s poverty, there’s illness, there’s a plague going around. There’s a lot going on to confront. Young people like you today are entering a world where the battle lines are being drawn. You guys have a whole lot to confront right now in the world. You’re tempted by the tendency to follow, to follow some pathway that might be the way, right? . . . And that I think is eternal. So I would say, if I’m doing my job correctly with this piece, no matter what age you are, if you follow the storyline you should be swept up in this one person’s coming to terms with that. I didn’t feel in a position to judge my character, or anybody, for choices made. But that doesn’t mean the choices are good. In the Scripture somewhere, it says, ‘Judge not, lest ye be judged.’ I’m as tempted as anybody to judge right now.

In Some Dark Valley is being performed at Pacific Resident Theatre, 7051/2 Venice Blvd., Venice; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 pm; thru March 9. [2025]

[view the interview]

One moonlit night, Reverend Brand, a fiery 19th century circuit preacher, emerges from the shadowy mountains of Appalachia, and our collective history, to weave a tale of religious fervor set against a landscape scarred by war, poverty and disease – a story that also shines a light on rare moments of tender and resilient redemption, according to a news release.

Robert Bailey’s solo performance grapples with the inevitable clash between an unyielding vision of moral rectitude and the tragic personal destruction it leaves in its wake, the news release states.

Embodying multiple characters while also singing gorgeous traditional songs handed down through generations of southerners, Bailey transports the audience to a land and era that is haunting and illuminating in its relevance to today.

By Mathew Chipman

November 20, 2024

merging from the Appalachian mist for three moonlit performances, In Some Dark Valley: The Testimony of Reverend Brand is coming to the Santa Cruz Actors’ Theatre this month with a haunting solo performance by Robert Bailey.

Most recently performed at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in Los Angeles, where it was awarded “Best of the Fringe,” the play, directed by Billy Siegenfeld, explores the life of a religious fanatic in the aftermath of the American Civil War as he discovers within himself “the key to softness.”

Inspired by 1940s recordings of Southerners from all walks of life, singing traditional songs, Bailey wanted to explore the roots of the real people who have lived and died in the South.

“I was fascinated by field recordings of white and black Southerners, of regular people singing songs that had been passed down, ballads, hymns, stories of hard lives. It sort of resonated with me. I grew up in Virginia so I am from the South, and I wanted to put this music into a theater piece, and somehow during Covid when I was by myself I realized I could make a solo piece,” Bailey says.

During the pandemic, while he was adapting Henrik Ibsen’s verse tragedy Brand into Some Dark Valley, Bailey kept finding himself exploring how this country’s deep roots have been twisted to a point where we cannot understand each other.

“What I kept coming back to was that we were going through this period in our country that I didn’t understand. I didn’t know how we got here, how we got to people not even born in the South marching the Confederate flag through the Capitol—I have a lot of respect for this class of people in the area of the country I grew up in who come from very hard backgrounds and realities and rely on each other and religion to get by. It’s been a part of the American story since the beginning. People shipped over from England and expected to do the work, and if they lived they lived. If they died they died.”

Bailey explains that the character of Brand, a moral hero and a monster at the same time, “comes from that place—it makes me upset that these very deep roots are twisted in the fabric of our society that we can’t understand what’s going on.”

Siegenfeld and Bailey, who went to Brown University together, are a true actor/director dynamic duo. Siegenfeld’s work involves building performances out of primal human behavior, and Bailey’s training with legendary Polish director Jerzy Grotowski, who empowered actors to explore their relationship with the space itself, makes for a team that brings not only Reverend Brand to life but also each character he embodies throughout the play.

“We’re seeing a person who has a twisted mentality about religion, which we’ve seen a lot throughout history, where they believe they are right. He is a fanatic, and as a fanatic, he uses that belief, that dogma, to not treat people well. Throughout the play he meets people who are not like him … people with good hearts, softness and compassion, including his wife, including an older black woman. His journey thrashing around like number 47 [the 47th president] is suspenseful. Is Reverend Brand going to stop being an asshole fanatic? We don’t know,” Siegenfeld says.

Performances are Nov. 22–23 at 8pm and Nov. 24 at 2pm [2024] at Center Stage, 1001 Center St., Santa Cruz. The Nov. 23 show is a benefit for the Hurricane Helene relief fund. santacruzactorstheatre.org

[view the interview]

We caught up with Bob and show director Billy Siegenfeld to learn more about how the show came to be, the questions it wrestles with, and the message it carries.

AT: What was the inspiration for the show?

Bob: Many years ago, I became fascinated with the field recordings of Southerners singing traditional songs on porches, in fields, in prisons. Through the Alan Lomax archives (original recordings and research materials assembled by Alan Lomax over the course of six decades, which can be found at http://culturalequity.org/the-archive/loc), I started listening to this music that the people sing. The folk revival of the 60s wouldn’t have happened without this music. I grew up in Virginia, and while I didn’t hear it where we lived in the suburbs, probably people were singing this across town. Certainly my grandparents in rural Virginia and North Carolina would have sung this music.

During Covid, I started thinking about a one-person show that could get at the root of the disturbing things happening in the culture, the rigidity of thinking and the passion for the wrong things. And I was also wondering how I could find a narrative to hang some of these songs on. I kept coming back to a paperback copy of an Ibsen play called Brand, a verse tragedy about an uncompromisingly moral pastor in Norway trying to accept the consequences of his choices. I realized I could shape this story in a different way using an Appalachian preacher from the 19th century. It also captured some ideas that had been part of my theatrical soul for many years, ever since I had gone to Poland to work with Jerzy Grotowski. He introduced the idea of “poor theater,” which eliminates all the parts that could be considered extraneous and relies on the actors’ bodies and voices to tell the story, and also emphasizes real contact between human beings. I thought that, through theater, the audience could confront this mindset of rigidity represented by Reverend Brand. Billy came onto the scene early enough to help me shape this.

Billy: Bob asked me to look at the piece. When I read it, it hit me on the level Bob was talking about. We are in a time of fanaticism, and finding an image or metaphor for confronting that was great. I didn’t have to keep writing angry emails but could find a creative way to channel my frustration with those increasingly rigid forces in society.

During Covid, I started thinking about a one-person show that could get at the root of the disturbing things happening in the culture, the rigidity of thinking and the passion for the wrong things. And I was also wondering how I could find a narrative to hang some of these songs on. I kept coming back to a paperback copy of an Ibsen play called Brand, a verse tragedy about an uncompromisingly moral pastor in Norway trying to accept the consequences of his choices. I realized I could shape this story in a different way using an Appalachian preacher from the 19th century. It also captured some ideas that had been part of my theatrical soul for many years, ever since I had gone to Poland to work with Jerzy Grotowski. He introduced the idea of “poor theater,” which eliminates all the parts that could be considered extraneous and relies on the actors’ bodies and voices to tell the story, and also emphasizes real contact between human beings. I thought that, through theater, the audience could confront this mindset of rigidity represented by Reverend Brand. Billy came onto the scene early enough to help me shape this.

Billy: Bob asked me to look at the piece. When I read it, it hit me on the level Bob was talking about. We are in a time of fanaticism, and finding an image or metaphor for confronting that was great. I didn’t have to keep writing angry emails but could find a creative way to channel my frustration with those increasingly rigid forces in society.

What I saw in the piece was a character who had a very tormented mind and was searching for a way through it. This play has the Reverend get hooked back into past episodes in his life through other characters, which makes it not just a play about him, but about the people he affected. We get to see the torments, loves, and sadnesses of the Reverend that led him to make these fanatical choices, and we get to witness him confront that and find a way to the other side.

Bob: The one conception that I decided would make this work as a solo performance was the idea of a visitation. This guy in 19th century garb comes out of the past to address the audience. I realized he could retell the basic story points from Ibsen’s Brand in a way that becomes a testimony—why I did what I did, and why I made the choices I made. Working over Zoom—Billy was in Evanston, and I was in L.A--Billy encouraged the idea of embodying many different characters as visitations the Reverend experiences. The whole piece escalated artistically once Billy encouraged incorporating the additional characters.

AT: You play many different characters in a short span of time--what is your approach to creating them?

Billy: Try to find action. Bob was originally writing ABOUT these characters—I encouraged him to let the characters themselves say what Reverend was saying about them. This let us keep changing the dynamic of the piece, instead of the Reverend just talking. Every time he can step into the physicalization of another character, it makes the audience move in and out of time with him. Those characters he’s remembering are there in real time speaking for themselves. He’s in his own present time but also telling the story of his past. Bob’s ability to physicalize intensely made this possible.

Bob: Billy pushed me expressionistically, so we’d have the contrast between the Reverend just talking to us to him disappearing into these other characters with their own fanaticisms to vary the narrative. Billy came up with concept that the Reverend is pulled into these situations—he’s being visited upon just as the audience is being visited by him.

Billy: The setting is stripped down—it’s not a church, just a black box space with simple black cubes—which puts the burden on the actor to create the scenery through his actions, sounds, etc. Bob would slow down to let each new character happen, then come back to talking to the audience. When playing or dealing with an obsessive person, it’s easy to stay obsessive. The additional characters took him away from his obsessiveness—they were part of him—they pull him out of the fanaticism.

Bob: The more I worked on it, the more things I would read that fed into it. For example, reading the book White Trash: The Untold History of Class in America reminded me that we’re talking about real people here. I remembered how in the summer between college semesters I was working construction in Virgina, working with guys who’d drive in from West Virginia. These guys taught me how to do construction, and they were people with great dignity who came from hardship and dealt with hardship. People are all coming from their own needs, backgrounds, hardships—I know these people and have gotten to know them even better by working on the play. Billy didn’t grow up in the South, so he needed to find his own way into that point of view.

AT: Talk a little about your collaboration as actor and director--what roles did you play in developing the show? Have you worked together before, and what do you enjoy about working together to create theater?

Bob: For me, it’s like being guided by your best friend or brother. He has expectations and pushes me, but not beyond what I can do. On our Zoom calls he’d be articulating in this beautiful way, and even demonstrate—"Can you see me?”—showing me something that’s obvious to him, but maybe more difficult for me. And eventually I’d realize, oh, that’s what he’s been saying about movement and directing energy. There was one moment of choreography that took me forever! He’s also very well read and has been a great dramaturg, helping me recognize when I’ve said enough and when I need to say more so the audience can understand. All these things together were joyful for me. He makes it a joyful process. We laughed a lot. We’ve never as adults since college collaborated so closely.

Billy: I’ve wanted to work with Bob for forever. Getting to work with him as an actor was great—Bob works so hard at his craft. He’s always been a physical actor, and that was the key for me. I knew he was willing to splash his body in different directions. He also has a tremendous ability with the way he uses his voice. He can impersonate anybody. He can bring so many different textures into his voice, and we worked on matching those textures with physicality. Even just standing there speaking he’s going to be compelling, but I pushed him to find a physicality that matched his voice for each character.

AT: Say a little about your performance company Jump Rhythm.

Billy: I started life as a percussionist and I love social things. Jump Rhythm is teaching people to simultaneously vocalize and move. Children do this all the time. It’s part of the biological make-up of what it means to be human. We have rhythmic movements in us—our heartbeat, breath, etc.—and I try to put that impulse into what I teach, getting my students to just be kids. It’s a pedagogy based on trying to give articulation to the energies in yourself rather than trying to look or move like somebody else or adopt a posture. How does the body want to move, versus how our brain thinks we should move. Bob is a naturally musical actor.

Bob: Billy has been on me from day one about energies--where do they come from? what part of the body? The most useful advice was him encouraging and permitting me to come back to zero or neutral over and over again. He’d say, “What you just did has manifested itself, now come back to rest for both you and the audience. Give your complete commitment to that energy, physically and vocally, then relax it so that something else can happen.”

AT: What is the message of the show? What do you want audiences to come away with?

Bob: One of my former college classmates came to see a run-thru and said, “I’ve been struggling for a long time to come to grips with this rigid way of thinking, especially from the religious right, and you helped me see something.” I hope the show will help with coming to terms with our feelings and our own prejudices about a certain class of people—it can be a little window of light that can shine on that area.

AT: What else would you like to share about Reverend Brand or making theater in general?

Bob: Film and TV do many things better. When theater tries to incorporate the things film and TV do so well, it loses its identity. Today we have no problem finding stories being told in all different kinds of media. But theater involves a live performer and live spectators—that’s something that theater does differently.

Billy: Playwright Tony Kushner once said that theater audiences get 25% smarter when the lights go out. That’s also something theater does. That statement helped me understand why theater has been so powerful. People have an anonymity that’s conferred when the lights go out—they feel more relaxed and can let more things come in—often things they probably only let in in private. Theater is unique in that way—as an audience you do a different kind of work than you’re used to, which is to imagine something. For 65 minutes people can imagine along with Bob.

Bob: With a theater performance, anything can happen, and you have to be open to it. There may be something that goes the same way every time, but in terms of what I feel when doing it, there are micro-moments that change depending on the audience. The show is still flexible and breathing, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to bring it to Santa Cruz.

"In Some Dark Valley: The Testimony of the Reverend Brand," a joint production of Jump Rhythm and Actors' Theatre, plays Friday and Saturday, November 22 and 23, at 8 pm, and Sunday, November 24, at 2 pm. [2024].

[view interview here]

by Dan Ruth

We tend to think that the darkness of the American Civil War took place hundreds and hundreds of years ago, and that it exists in a place far, far away in a corner of our history that cannot be touched. In reality, it ended only 159 years ago and the consequences and repercussions from the war are still felt today. There is a genre of theatre and I suppose storytelling, which relies on these spans of time to weave and spin haunting tales of a time before our time, when stories were handed down through generations.

Robert Bailey has created such a story, a story that contains no trace of today’s modern built world, where the only water around was in the river or creek that runs by the village, when messages were sent by horseback and protection for your village and the people that surrounded you was in the hands of God and the elements. In the tradition of theatre such as “The Diviners” by Jim Leonard Jr. and Romulus Linney’s “Holy Ghosts,” Robert Bailey steps out of that tradition with his finely crafted In Some Dark Valley: The Testimony of Reverend Brand, which is playing at The Madnani Theatre, as part of The Hollywood Fringe.

Bailey’s creation of Reverend Brand is a fiery post-Civil War roaming circuit preacher, who has visitations and sees signs in nature; a man who is much more human than holy. As a young boy and a product of backwoods Appalachian life, he sees people as they are. He befriends Ludie, an African American woman and her two small boys, only to return one day to find their entire house burnt to the ground and the three of them gone forever. Life in the holler challenges young Reverend Brand on every level, both spiritual and physical.

Later in his life, he is the only man in his village to go down river to save the life of a dying man. This act of bravery causes the villagers to want to keep him as their preacher, but when Reverend Brand uses money from his wealthy deceased mother to rebuild the village church, he is rebuked when he allows black folk into the congregation. Darkness and specters follow the preacher throughout his life. As he loses both his wife and his child to disease, he relies on the humanity of circumstances to make sense of this cruel, confusing world, buried deep in the holler. Ultimately, it’s the Reverend who must question what is right. He sees that the church is hollow, and that man, God, and death, are all part of the much larger, natural world, and that no one, not even a man of God can save themselves.

In Some Dark Valley truly is delightfully dark but there is also humor and outstanding storytelling through finely etched characters. Using not only spoken word, but songs and the haunting sounds of a French harp as well, Robert Bailey’s In Some Dark Valley: The Testimony of Reverend Brand is a powerful and highly entertaining show that takes full advantage of the lights and a full sound design to draw you into its musty, backwoods world. Directed by Billy Siegenfeld.

See Review

By Ernest Kearney

June 11, 2024 | Los Angeles

The dark wooden canopy of the Appalachia Valley, known as The Great Valley, shrouds a deep and massive scar that cuts across the eastern landscape of America. As the titular character In Some Dark Valley: The Testament of Reverend Brand, Writer/Performer Robert Bailey succeeds from his first moment on stage in capturing that unknown terror which the vastness of wilderness has held for humanity from Oedipus and Dante to Dorothy and The Evil Dead.

Man’s ability to have unwavering faith in what is beyond his senses to affirm is one of life’s great mysteries. Another is his capacity to lose that faith. There are echoes of this in the story Robert Bailey shares with his audience; that of a man confident of the divinity within himself who is then destroyed by that deception.

Bailey commands the elongated stage of the Madnani masterfully, with a robust physical presence while he envelopes the theatai in the essence of postbellum America through his sincere singing of hymns from the period.

What most impressed me about In Some Dark Valley was how Bailey, through the enfolding of his language, succeeded in conveying the preeminence of the spoken word held in the nineteenth century.

It is hard for our modern sensibilities to perceive the power that words once possessed. Language has been weakened today by our visualization of it. There are few places in the twenty-first century where one can walk without being awashed in the representations of words; digital billboards, towering print advertisements, flashing neon signs, and typographical logos converting words into art.

In the nineteenth century, words had power through their purity and their potency was undiluted. The demarcation point for this change can be found in the comparison of two short turns of phrases; Today, we go “to see a play.” But, from the time of the ancient Greek stage until only the last century, theatergoers went to “hear a play.”

Bailey captures the period’s respect for language through his characters’ usage. They choose their words carefully to communicate their thoughts with clarity; as when Agnes, the Reverend’s young wife, seeks to warn her husband of his faltering faith, “You bruise where you oughta caress.”

Or when Brand realizes what his failure to live his belief has brought him to, “a loneliness so deep it didn’t have no depth.”

As directed by Billy Siegenfeld and produced by Cori Allison, Robert Bailey’s In Some Dark Valley: The Testament of Reverend Brand has but one flaw that I could see; it was limited to only three performances thus denying more Fringe audiences the opportunity of experiencing this exceptional and exquisite work.

See Review