Winter 2007-2008
Greater Atlanta’s Performing Arts Bi-Monthly
In this issue: The Artistry of Master Photographer
Jay Kuhr THE CREATIVE PROCESS: You Dig in Where You Are: The Clint and Bryan Show by Pamela Turner
SHOWGUIDE PROFILES: After the Tony: Susan V. Booth and the Alliance Theatre by Pamela Turner
DECEMBER 2007 ~ JANUARY 2008 PERFORMANCE LISTINGS ATLANTA SHOWGUIDE VENUES
A Lighthouse Publication Available Online: at www.atlantashowguide.com
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ON THE COVER THE ARTISTRY OF MASTER PHOTOGRAPHER
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Jay Kuhr
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THE CREATIVE PROCESS: You Dig in Where You Are: The Clint and Bryan Show
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SHOWGUIDE PROFILES: After the Tony: Susan V. Booth and the Alliance Theatre
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T H E A R T I S T RY O F M A S T E R P H O T O G R A P H E R
JAY KUHR
was born and raised in Savannah, Georgia where at the age of twelve I began my interest in photography. I was given an old Argus C3 35 mm. camera and began developing my own negatives and prints in the darkroom that my father had set up in his mother’s attic. I made a wonderful mess in that attic darkroom. As a high school senior I worked for a month with a professional photographer for a senior project. That experience convinced me to major in art at the University of Georgia, in the Photographic Design department, under the direction of professor Wiley Sanderson. He instilled a sense of the importance of doing things right and paying attention to the details, but I don’t think I was the best student. I dropped out of college to travel and pursue a lively career as a bum, backpacking and camping and supplementing my income with migrant labor. In 1991, I returned to college to complete my Bachelor’s degree in fine art. I settled back down in the Athens, Ga. area to pursue my reinvigorated interest in photography. My medium of choice is black and white film, printing on standard silver gelatin paper. I shoot primarily with a 4”x5” view camera. I do all my own darkroom work and finished prints are selectively toned with sepia and selenium toner, a technique that I learned of through the photography of Roman Loranc, Paul Kozal, and Michael Kenna. By sepia toning the highlights and sometimes the midtones of the print, I can impart a feeling of depth to the print. The toning process helps to imparts moodiness to the lighting. I work primarily with landscapes, exploring the interaction between landscape and lighting to create what I hope are emotionally evocative prints. I began with wild landscapes, mostly rivers and streams. This started to seem like a bit of a routine, so I’ve branched out into studies of rural landscapes, interesting trees, and small southern churches. I enjoy the challenge of trying to look at familiar settings in a new and interesting way. To view my work, contact me at my email address watermusic@bellsouth.net. A few samples of my work are posted on the Artist’s in Georgia website, where I have a mini-website. http://artistsingeorgia.com/jaykuhrphoto/jaykuhrphoto-site-waiting-for-owner-to-update-2.html 4
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CREATIVE PROCESS:
YOU DIG IN WHERE YOU ARE: CLINT AND BRYAN SHOW by Pamela Turner
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lint Thornton and Bryan Mercer are the kind of artists that hold Atlanta together, body and soul. As directors, composers, writers, actors, teachers, and designers their work has graced stages from the Atlanta Opera to Synchronicity Performance Group to Georgia Shakespeare. Both as a working couple and individually, they have made the conscious choice to throw over the Big Apple for our own Peach City because, as Thornton explains it, “…going off to New York would be ‘for me’ and it would be about whether or not I can make it. But here, I’m serving the community, and the work I do can make a difference.” This sense of purpose forms the basis for Mercer’s philosophy as well. “You just dig in where you are,” he says, “and get the job done.” That’s an important approach for someone who may perform a children’s show in the morning, work with the disabled in the afternoon, and direct a musical at night. The ‘digging in” mentality is at the core of Thornton’s and Mercer’s collaborative style, because although they each do their own projects, it is more often the case that they are working together, often switching hats in terms of who is director or actor or composer. This fluidity of position is of little concern to either of them. After collaborating for so many years at the Center for Puppetry Arts (where they met), “you let your ego go,” says Mercer, “—the best idea wins. You have to drop a lot of that baggage quickly to get it done.” Both agreed that they forget which idea belongs to whom, anyway, and not just for interpersonal reasons but for practical ones. “If we hold on to things, we’ll be up all night, so we have to know when to say ‘all right, let it go’.” At home they do talk “business” for thirty minutes or so, but for the most part they have learned to maintain some separation between personal and professional aspects of their lives. Thornton reports that this balance has only really come about recently. Part of it is that they have such different styles, says Mercer, at work and at home. “I took awhile to realize that Clint needed time and space for his creation [process]. I’m much more junkyard style and he’s more, I don’t know if it’s linear…” With Thornton supplying the word “methodical”, Mercer agrees and goes on to say, “I’m more seat of the pants, just throw it out there, which I’m trying to be better about but…” Thornton inserts that, “I’ve learned to just watch him and then yell. ‘Freeze, that’s it, do that’, and he does it.” The men attribute some of their style to their upbringing, with Thornton an only child growing up in Peachtree City in a family he describes as Sunday Presbyterians and a mom working nights from the time he was in the eighth grade. It was a big adjustment for him “to live with other people and realize someone is going to move things”. He characterizes his childhood as like the film The Ice Storm, ‘except without the car wreck.” Mercer’s growing up was more like The Addams Family, he says, where not only was he a twin (“the funny, talented one while his brother was the risktaker) but he lived on a lake in Central Florida and “was raised by a lot of people” in “a spot where 6
a lot of other people wanted to come.” Thornton quips that, “Thanksgivings are very different,” followed by Mercer with, “I have to really watch what I do and say and how fast I change the subject, because I’m like a big Jewish-Italian family. If you don’t jump in, you won’t get a turn.” But competition has never gotten in the way of their relationship, as they learned early on to revel in each other’s success and creation. “That’s key,” says Mercer, “and maybe the good part you learn from doing so many things—last year I was standing there cleaning the muck out of a pond [during a lull time].” Adds Thornton, “I was a nanny. Makes you humble.” These are resourceful men who have taken all that’s come their way and made it into gold. Thornton has formal training in directing through a master’s degree from the University of Georgia while Mercer answers that he went to the school of “hard knocks”. His training actually started, however, at age five when he began piano lessons with his Great Aunt Erin Pierce, who with her “Eubie Blake hands” played the accompaniment for silent films throughout Central Florida. This grand woman was clearly a treasured mentor for Mercer as is Jon Ludwig at the Center for Puppetry Arts. Both men share a debt to Ludwig as they do to another (former) Center artist, Lorna Howling. “She taught me most about how to be myself, to be fearless, and to just put it out there,” says Thornton, who describes himself as somewhat reserved. The more demonstrative Mercer adds that puppetry has taught him that as a performer, “it’s not about you; it’s about the puppet and the audience. It takes you out of yourself.” That philosophy extends to his music, where in describing his experience as the pianist for a play at Theatre Emory, he says, “You lose ownership of your art and your idea—if it doesn’t work with everything else, it doesn’t matter. If you don’t believe you’re part of everything else, then you’re missing something.” In similar terms, Thornton describes his directing approach as like “slipping into a channel”. “I call it ‘galvanizing’ because…I’ve discovered if I’m there and open while all my other artists do their best work, the skill is both in making choices and in allowing things to happen.” Despite this policy of inclusion and synthesis, neither Mercer nor Thornton seems willing to extend it to theatre critics. Says Thornton, “A reviewer’s two hours of experience doesn’t reflect the hours of blood, sweat, tears, and soul that went in to the production. We should just do it and let people come and see it.” It’s obvious that a great many people will want to see the work of these talented artists. In typical style, Thornton is in the process of a multitude of projects including directing remounts of A Year With Frog and Toad for Synchronicity Performance Group and of The Santaland Diaries for Horizon Theatre. Mercer also has several things coming up including a reprisal of the role of Frog and a directing gig, Duke Ellington’s Cat, for The Center for Puppetry Arts. But at the moment, he seems most excited to share the news that he is going to be teaching kindergarten as a resident artist. His work with children seems to encompass everything Mercer and Thornton have been saying all along. “Aim high. The higher you aim, the higher they get. You just break down their fear because that’s the only thing stopping them.”
“A reviewer’s two hours of experience doesn’t reflect the hours of blood, sweat, tears, and soul that went in to the production.
Playwright Pamela Turner is a regional rep for the Dramatists Guild of America and the Artistic Director of multiShades.atlanta. Contact her at pamelanne@att.net.
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SHOWGUIDE PROFILES:
AFTER THE TONY: SUSAN V. BOOTH AND THE ALLIANCE THEATRE by Pamela Turner
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usan V. Booth may be sitting on the top of the world. Or call it a triangle of triumph, with one side occupied by the supportive man who is both husband and colleague, another by a bright and shining young daughter “long planned”, and the third by an organization that has just won the Tony Award for best regional theatre. In a spacious office on the top floor of the Woodruff Arts Center, Booth, the fourth Artistic Director in the history of the Alliance Theatre, sits looking much like any other CEO of a multimillion dollar corporation. After a few minutes of conversation, the three words that seem to describe her are calm, careful, and committed. But the most important thing she says when asked what next after a Tony is, “You certainly don’t rest on your laurels”, and her response to how it might be if she were a corporate CEO is that, “There would be a profound difference between my professional life and my personal life—they would be divided.” As it is, Booth gets to form an energetic synthesis of all the things she loves. “I am very fortunate that I have a husband who is not only in the same field but in the same building, two offices down [Max Leventhal is General Manager of the Alliance]. I have a child who is too young to figure out what she wants to do in the world but is very happy when she hangs out here (she’s seen a lot of theatre and loves it)…And the community’s sense of pride in this institution is very strong right now.” Booth makes it very clear that she is more interested in collective success than individual kudos. She also gives a compelling argument for the value of creating a work environment that is supportive to all of the personal needs of her staff. This healthy sense of balance is a contributing factor to the explosion of creative programming that is happening at the theatre. Booth has become very sympathetic to an employee who, for instance, needs to take some family time in the middle of the work day, and she is supportive of staff who want to reach outside the Alliance to pursue other creative projects. Even so, she is unwilling to take full credit for such a forward-thinking style of management. “This institution was a children’s theatre before it was a grownup’s theatre…so it defined its community generationally as well as culturally. That’s a living paradigm—that infuses the way the folks at the Alliance work together.” Booth’s advice to staff is to “take care of your home life because we don’t benefit from 24/7 work, or from someone who is neglecting some other part of their life.” Of course, there is a practical benefit to much of this. “I encourage staff to work at other theatres because they bring back great ideas and they also open themselves up.” Plus, it’s a way of sharing resources. “We have an enormous amount to learn from the way Tom Key engages his audiences…and from Lisa and Jeff Adler’s pure survival instincts…[and] from Del Hamilton’s unwavering commitment to experiment.” She calls this her “community education” and acknowledges that the Alliance must contribute as much back to the community as it gets. Further, it must keep in mind those other organizations such as The Academy Theatre that made its existence possible. “So there’s that sense of legacy, and what we owe is not a static kind of respect but an active one.” One way that she is working on that personally is through her service on the board of TCG (Theatre Communications Group). She is “bringing 10
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notice to this area and shaking the Atlanta banner at every opportunity.” Booth’s leadership qualities are only part of the reason the Alliance Theatre selected her for the job of Artistic Director. They were looking for someone who could effectively demonstrate that financial stability and artistic excellence were totally compatible. And, as a working artist Photo by Greg Mooney with a family background in Lauren Kling gets help moving out of her home from Craig A. Meyer, investment and jurisprudence, she Joseph Dellger and Courtenay Collins during the song “Timid Frieda” in the romantic cabaret-style musical revue Jacques Brel is Alive and Well was able to give them “an oldand Living in Paris Sept. 21 - Oct. 28 on the Hertz Stage at the Alliance fashioned Presbyterian Scots-Irish Theatre. financial conservative coupled with an artistic imagination.” That artistic imagination makes her an excellent stage director, with productions appearing at the Alliance and at other theatres, such as the prestigious Actors Theatre of Louisville Humana Fest. She finds the most satisfying work to be directing new plays, but also says that whether a new work or one already in the canon, “I am always compelled by plays that make provocative socio-political arguments— if there’s any common denominator in the plays I’ve done, it’s that.” She is proudest of the Alliance productions with such a focus and although this could seem to be a contradiction, also says that they will be incorporating more and more musicals in their future seasons. “At the end of each year,” she says, “we sit
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down collectively as a staff and ask, ’What did we learn?’” Right now it is that Atlanta audiences are “absolutely sophisticated enough and ready to engage with difficult subjects and to have discussions of rigor…but we have to reach them here [heart] first and here [head] second.” Further, “We’ve learned that you can have more complex conversations with more [diverse groups of] people in a musical.” Another thing they have learned about Atlanta audiences is that “the community wants a role in who we are and they are not willing to do it passively…much more of a dialogue city than a monologue city.” As a response to that, and influenced by the great success of the national “365 Days/365 Plays” project that was sponsored locally by the Alliance, Booth has set in motion a new project with author Pearl Cleage that will focus on building a model to use for creating a community-based play “that involves hundreds of people”. She has also begun work with staff on re-designing their post-show conversations for season productions. The new approach will involve “making it more of a level playing field” by inviting audience members to join in unmediated discussion groups using Alliance Theatre space for “audience-to-audience” conversations. “To live in an era where everyone is a curator, where everyone is an editor, where everyone is an artist, and then say, ‘pay and we’ll tell you what to think’, is ludicrous.” Booth smiles when she says that “Art is strong—it will survive our democratizing.” She has a lot to smile about, and there are more new ideas brewing all the time, including the inauguration of the Atlanta Writers Lab, which gives four local playwrights the guidance and resources to create new work during a full-year’s residency. So, it is obvious that no one at the Alliance is resting on her laurels, even though Booth might be forgiven if she gave that magnificent Tony a little pat every once in a while. For info about The Alliance Theatre, go to their website at www.alliancetheatre.org. Playwright Pamela Turner is a regional rep for the Dramatists Guild of America and the Artistic Director of multiShades.atlanta. Contact her at pamelanne@att.net.
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