SDC Journal Summer 2016

JOURNAL SUMMER 2016

DAME GILLIAN LYNNE THE ART OF THEATRE IS TOGETHERNESS + STORIES WITH

KAREN AZENBERG | ALEXANDRA BELLER JO BONNEY | GREGORY BOYD | TRACY BRIGDEN TISA CHANG | RACHEL CHAVKIN | ANNE KAUFFMAN D. LYNN MEYERS | JENNIFER NELSON RUTH PE PALILEO | SERET SCOTT | LEIGH SILVERMAN DOMINIC TAYLOR | ERIC TUCKER + EVAN YIONOULIS

SUMMER 2016 | SDC JOURNAL

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OFFICERS

Susan H. Schulman PRESIDENT

John Rando EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT

Leigh Silverman VICE PRESIDENT

Oz Scott SECRETARY

Michael Wilson TREASURER

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Laura Penn COUNSEL

Ronald H. Shechtman HONORARY ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Karen Azenberg Pamela Berlin Julianne Boyd Danny Daniels Marshall W. Mason Ted Pappas

SDC EXECUTIVE BOARD

SDC JOURNAL

MEMBERS OF BOARD

MANAGING EDITOR

Julie Arenal Christopher Ashley Anne Bogart Jo Bonney Mark Brokaw Joe Calarco Larry Carpenter Rachel Chavkin Marcia Milgrom Dodge Sheldon Epps Liza Gennaro Wendy C. Goldberg Linda Hartzell Anne Kauffman Mark Lamos Paul Lazarus Pam MacKinnon Kathleen Marshall Meredith McDonough Ethan McSweeny Robert Moss Robert O’Hara Sharon Ott Ruben Santiago-Hudson­ Seret Scott Bartlett Sher Casey Stangl Chay Yew Evan Yionoulis

Marella Martin Koch FEATURES EDITOR

Elizabeth Bennett GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Elizabeth Nelson EDITORIAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Jo Bonney Sheldon Epps Graciela Daniele Liza Gennaro Thomas Kail Robert O'Hara Ann M. Shanahan Leigh Silverman Evan Yionoulis

SDCJ-PRS PEER REVIEWERS

Donald Byrd David Callaghan Kathryn Ervin Liza Gennaro Ruth Pe Palileo Scot Reese Stephen A. Schrum SDCJ-PRS ASSISTANT EDITORS + PEER REVIEWERS

Thomas Costello Emily Rollie SPRING 2016 CONTRIBUTORS

Laura Barati FORMER SDC JOURNAL INTERN

Alexandra Beller

UNIVERSITY OF MONTEVALLO

SDC JOURNAL PEERREVIEWED SECTION EDITORIAL BOARD

Megan E. Carter

SDCJ-PRS CO-EDITORS

Tisa Chang

ASSOCIATE

Kathleen M. McGeever SDCJ-PRS SENIOR ADVISORY COMMITTEE

James Peck MUHLENBERG COLLEGE

Emily A. Rollie WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

Seret Scott DIRECTOR

Dominic Taylor DIRECTOR + PLAYWRIGHT, PROFESSOR, UCLA

DIRECTOR/ACTOR + ARTISTIC

David Callaghan

SDCJ-PRS BOOK REVIEW

NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY

Gregory Boyd

Ellie Handel Nina Kauffman

Travis Malone

Kathleen M. McGeever

Eric Tucker

DIRECTOR

SDCJ-PRS BOOK REVIEW EDITOR

LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO

DIRECTOR-CHOREOGRAPHER

INTERNS

Anne Fliotsos Ann M. Shanahan

Mark Lococo

DIRECTOR, SDC FOUNDATION

DIRECTOR/CHOREOGRAPHER PAN ASIAN REPERTORY THEATRE

DIRECTOR, BEDLAM

Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY

Evan Yionoulis DIRECTOR

Christine Young UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO

Melanie Dreyer-Lude MISSOURI STATE UNIVERSITY

Brian Foley CHANDLER-GILBERT COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Liza Gennaro INDIANA UNVERSITY

Anne Bogart Joan Herrington James Peck

SDC JOURNAL is published quarterly by Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, located at 321 W. 44th Street, Suite 804, NY, NY 10036.

SDC JOURNAL is a registered trademark of SDC. SUBSCRIPTIONS + ADVERTISEMENTS Call 212.391.1070 or visit www.SDCweb.org.

Annual SDC Membership dues include a $5 allocation for a 1-year subscription to SDC JOURNAL. Non-Members may purchase an annual subscription for $24 (domestic), $48 (foreign); single copies cost $7 each (domestic), $14 (foreign).

Purchase online at www.SDCweb.org. Also available at the Drama Book Shop in NY, NY. POSTMASTER Send address changes to SDC JOURNAL, SDC, 321 W. 44th Street, Suite 804, NY, NY 10036.

PRINTED BY

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Sterling Printing SDC JOURNAL

| SUMMER 2016

SUMMER CONTENTS Volume 5 | No. 1

FEATURES 16 Beyond the Hudson DIGITAL ROUNDTABLE WITH KAREN AZENBERG, TRACY BRIGDEN, D. LYNN MEYERS, JENNIFER NELSON + RUTH PE PALILEO

26 COVER

The

Art of Theatre Is Togetherness

INTERVIEW WITH DAME GILLIAN LYNNE, D.B.E.

BY NINA

LANNAN

38 Director as Activist + Cultural Historian INTERVIEW WITH SERET SCOTT

BY CHRISTOPHER

ASHLEY

42 The Freelance Life ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION WITH JO BONNEY, RACHEL CHAVKIN, ANNE KAUFFMAN + LEIGH SILVERMAN MODERATED BY EVAN

YIONOULIS

47 PEER-REVIEWED SECTION

A Forum on Training in Directing + Choreography: Sources from Leading Women EDITED BY

ANNE FLIOTSOS + ANN M. SHANAHAN

SUMMER 2016 | SDC JOURNAL

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7

IN YOUR WORDS

What I Learned...Tisa Chang CURATED BY SERET

SCOTT

9 BACKSTAGE

Joanne DeNaut + Cindi Rush Casting Directors

BY ELIZABETH

5 FROM THE PRESIDENT

BY SUSAN H. SCHULMAN

6

FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

BY LAURA PENN

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hy I Cast That Actor W Gregory Boyd

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54

SDCJ-PRS SECTION

Theatre Directing + Choreography – Selected Sources by and about Women

58

SDC FOUNDATION

2015-2016 Observership Mentor Thank You

BY MEGAN

E. CARTER

PRE-SHOW / POST-SHOW Dominic Taylor

12 Sense & Sensibility in 20 Questions Alexandra Beller + Eric Tucker

COVER

Dame Gillian Lynne, D.B.E. PHOTO Walter McBride

PREVIOUS HEADSHOTS LEFT TO RIGHT Karen

Azenberg, Tracy Brigden, D. Lynn Meyers, Jennifer Nelson, Ruth Pe Palileo, Gillian Lynne, Seret Scott, Jo Bonney, Rachel Chavkin, Anne Kauffman, Leigh Silverman + Evan Yionoulis TOP LEFT Tisa

Chang

TOP RIGHT Mark Harelik + the company of Cyrano de Bergerac at South Coast Repertory, directed by Mark Rucker PHOTO Ken Howard

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BENNETT

THE SOCIETY PAGES

Semi-Annual Membership Meeting Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival

Broadway Dreams Foundation

Giving Back Corporation's Celebrity Spring Roast/Toast 30th Annual Easter Bonnet Competition 34th Annual Fred & Adele Astaire Awards

Drama League Fellows Luncheon

SDC Foundation's Directing the Future Symposium #FacebookLive 2016 Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement Tony Toast + 70th Annual Tony Awards

+

Harold Clurman

I began directing in junior high school in Brooklyn, out of sheer necessity—there was no drama club or drama teacher. So my fellow cast album lovers and I got together and put on a production of The King and I in which I, naturally, played the lead. To this day I have the entire show memorized. When I finally did direct The King and I at the Stratford Festival of Canada, my cast was amused at the fact that I was the one who answered when they called for “line.”

It was not until I got to the High School of Performing Arts (yup, the original Fame school on 46th Street) that I met my first actual director. Her name was Vinnette Carroll, and she was my teacher. Although she wasn’t teaching me directing—she was my acting teacher at the time—I knew she was a director. It was because of her that I suddenly realized directing was a profession. From that point on, it never occurred to me that I couldn’t do it.

I think about Vinnette a lot, because I worry she has been somewhat forgotten in spite of her incredible career.

She was the first African-American woman to direct on Broadway, with the musical Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope in 1972. In 1973, she made history as the first African-American woman to be nominated for a Tony Award for Best Director of a Musical, and the second African-American woman to be nominated for Best Book of a Musical, both for Your Arms Too Short to Box with God. What makes her achievements all the more remarkable is when you remember that musical theatre used to be—and in some ways, still is—a “boys’ club.” “Can you handle these people?” I would be asked in job interviews. “Can you handle a star?” Reporters asked me on a regular basis, “How tall are you?” It was difficult to get the opportunity to do the work and just be judged on the quality of that work. I remember getting a review—in a prestigious media outlet—that said “the work was so good it was impossible to tell the gender of the director.” And the reviewer meant that as a compliment!

When I finally got the job, I often found myself the only woman in the room—until we premiered The Secret Garden on Broadway. Much was made of the fact that the creative team was predominantly female, as if Heidi Ettinger, Theoni Aldredge, Tharon Musser, and Marsha Norman had no other qualifications—with their multiple Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize. The producers had put together a team of highly qualified theatre artists, and, for this particular project, most of them happened to be women.

I am forever thankful for these tenacious producers and the many bold creative partners I have been fortunate enough to collaborate with over the years. I would not have had the opportunity to do the work and build a career without their support—or without Vinnette Carroll, way back in high school, who was such a powerful role model and showed me a career as a director was even possible.

In solidarity,

FROM THE PRESIDENT Susan H. Schulman, Executive Board President

April 11, 2016 Semi-Annual Membership Meeting at Ripley-Grier Studios PHOTO Marella Martin Koch

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“

He believed that the new American Theatre would not simply be a place of entertainment, but an opportunity for artists to express their political and spiritual visions. ”

FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR We are activists here at SDC. Our dayto-day work includes advocating for directors and choreographers, fighting for better wages, safeguarding pension and health funds, and protecting the intellectual property of our Members.

We troubleshoot, problem solve, and, sometimes, we just listen. We work hard to build community amongst and between our Members because we know it is the collective that brings us strength.

We are determined to find those moments when the needs of directors and choreographers align with the needs of others so that we can join together to make the industry stronger and more vibrant for everyone. We take pride in our work, and each day that we are able to make progress towards these goals is a good day.

In your hand, you are holding the first issue of our fifth volume of SDC Journal. It is hard to imagine a time when we did not have this publication. As a reader, I feel like I have had the great gift of master classes with directors and choreographers. SDC Journal offers history lessons on the greats who laid down the diverse and eclectic foundation that so many expand upon today. With each issue, I have been given insights into that craft as can only be provided by the contemporary masters and I have seen glimpses of what lies ahead.

My assumptions are challenged, my experiences are validated, and I find great satisfaction in celebrating the success of SDC Members.

In my first letter, in Volume One, Issue One of SDC Journal, I spoke briefly about the challenge given me by the Executive Board as I was hired: “to deepen the understanding among our own constituents, as well as the larger community, about the work of directors and choreographers,”—or, to simplify, to answer the question, “What does a director or choreographer do?”

While we continue to look for that succinct, infectious turn of phrase, today I can look on my bookshelf and see what it is directors and choreographers do, have done, and will do.

And there is so much more to share. The conversations with the SDC Journal Editorial Advisory Committee get richer and more ambitious.

The aspirations for the magazine get bolder; our efforts to grow a subscription base beyond the Membership grow more significant.

This issue is nothing short of remarkable. A couple of years ago, I had the great pleasure of crossing paths with Dame Gillian Lynne. She has

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been ever-present at SDC, legendary and contemporary all at once.

But it was through Nina Lannan that I was encouraged to connect directly with Gillian. If you are blessed to know her, you will feel her laughter and passion rise off the page. If you haven’t had the honor, you will certainly feel like you have in this interview with Nina.

We launch a new recurring column this month—“Pre-Show / PostShow,” featuring Dominic Taylor. We travel across the country to speak with Karen Azenberg, Tracy Brigden, D. Lynn Meyers, Jennifer Nelson, and Ruth Pe Palileo—women leading in a myriad of ways within non-profit theatre. There are similarities in their reflections and yet, at the same time, each perspective is so completely distinct. We puzzle out the challenges of leading as a freelancer with SDC Board Members Jo Bonney, Rachel Chavkin, Anne Kauffman, and Leigh Silverman in a roundtable led by Evan Yionoulis.

Seret Scott— I first heard of Seret’s work around 1990, when she was emerging as a director. It would be nearly 20 years before I would have the pleasure of meeting her. Having now worked with her for close to nine years, I thought I could say I knew Seret. And while I do, and while I recognized the depth of her heart and talent, I really had no idea until I read this interview with Christopher Ashley.

In addition to this being the beginning of our fifth Volume of SDC Journal, it is the beginning of our second year collaborating with scholars, Members of the Association of Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), to publish peer-reviewed articles and book reviews.

We celebrate this partnership with a special Forum on Training, accompanied by a comprehensive and growing list of texts by and about women directors and choreographers.

We close this issue with the brilliant Harold Clurman. In the introduction to the American Masters presentation of Harold Clurman: A Life of Theatre, it was said: “He believed that the new American Theatre would not simply be a place of entertainment, but an opportunity for artists to express their political and spiritual visions.”

I think it is, and I hope we here at SDC Journal offer the Membership and greater theatrical community access to directors and choreographers as they strive to do just that.

In solidarity,

Laura Penn Executive Director

TISA CHANG CURATED BY SERET SCOTT BY

WHAT I LEARNED…

T0 THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE IN YOUR WORDS What I Learned...

Why I Cast That Actor Backstage Pre-Show/Post-Show NEW + 20 Questions

8 CONTRIBUTE If you wish to contribute to IN YOUR WORDS, would like to respond to any of the articles, opinions, or views expressed in SDC Journal, or have an idea for an article, please email Letters@SDCweb.org. Include your full name, city + state.

We regret that we are unable to respond to every letter.

ABOVE

Lydia Gaston + Ron Nakahara in Pan Asian Repertory Theatre’s Cambodia Agonistes PHOTO Juyoung Hong TOP RIGHT

Cambodian Master Artists Moly Chan Sam + Sam-Oeun Tes in Dream Ballet at Pan Asian Repertory Theatre’s Cambodia Agonistes PHOTO Corky Lee

I came to America at age six on a ship from Shanghai, accompanied by friends of my parents, and was seasick all the way. My parents had arrived a year earlier; my father was a diplomat for Nationalist China and assigned as the first post-WWII Consul General to New York. I grew up on Riverside Drive and became immersed in attending opera and theatre with my mother, who admired Western dance and music.

Thus was my introduction to worlds far from war and bombs in Chungking, but also away from the protective nurturance of my grandmother. I remember seeing Carlo Menotti’s opera The Consul, a mystifying experience for a six-year-old. I am indebted to early training in piano, ballet, Chinese dance, and the disciplines of public school. However, I always felt slightly out of place, and not quite accepted.

My Chinese friends were all children of diplomats and scholars, but an Asian, no matter the pedigree, was expected to be “perfect.” So I sought refuge in a world of fantasy and make believe, where I could dream aspirations beyond daily reality.

After attending Performing Arts HS as a music major, Barnard College, two years working as a guide at the United Nations, and with a growing career in films and onstage (on Broadway and off), I joined Ellen Stewart and her La MaMa, where she heard my cri de coeur, to create my own work. I directed a bilingual version of the Peking opera Return of the Phoenix, which was raved by the New York Times and shown on CBS TV’s Festival of Lively Arts in 1973. Return of the Phoenix was my tribute to the memory of my mother, who died in 1968, and whose death affected me profoundly and has reverberations in all my works.

Those were the striving days of pioneer artists who later became national icons: Andrei Serban, Julie Taymor, Harvey Fierstein. I directed Asian-American artists who shared my vision for an enduring platform to support the most valiant artists committed to the living stage, and the seeds for Pan Asian Rep were sown.

Pan Asian was the first American theatre invited to Havana Theatre Festival in 2003 with Rashomon.

We represented the United States in Cairo and Johannesburg Theatre Festivals in 1995 when Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa; though apartheid was officially banned, we performed to separate audiences. How ironic that our music theatre work, Cambodia Agonistes, which reflected the trauma of Pol Pot’s “killing fields,” was embraced by Pan African tribes and fell on deaf ears with the white audience. I am often asked why I do not act or direct elsewhere, and that is because my work at Pan Asian is not just a career—it is my life. We must honor from whence we sprang, and Pan Asian Rep, as vision and institution, remains a lifelong pledge.

TISA CHANG is a dancer, actor, director, and producer, celebrating 50 years in American performing arts. Inspired by the global independence movement and civil rights activism in the 70s, she founded Pan Asian Repertory Theatre in 1977 to champion professional opportunities for AsianAmerican artists to reach the heights of their dreams and aspirations. Directing highlights: Sayonara the musical (2015) and A Dream of Red Pavilions (2016). Pan Asian Rep continues to expand the vocabulary of American theatre with untold stories from the Pan Asian spectrum and from the Middle East. Acting highlights on stage: The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel; Lovely Ladies, Kind Gentlemen; and Pacific Overtures; Film and TV: Ambush Bay, Escape from Iran, and Year of the Dragon. Chang is a former Executive Board Member of SDC, member of Coalition of Theatres of Color, member of National Theatre Conference, and founding board member of CAATA, the national Consortium of Asian American Theaters & Artists, which will produce the fifth ConFest October 2016 at Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland.

SUMMER 2016 | SDC JOURNAL

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WHY I CAST THAT ACTOR

GREGORY BOYD On casting Tom Hewitt in Travesties at Long Wharf Theatre

I watched, closely, all the rehearsals. It’s rare to be another director in the room, especially when the director directing is a master—in this case, Tadashi Suzuki.

This was Summer 1987, and Suzuki was preparing The Tale of Lear for our coproduction with actors from four resident companies coming together, all of whom had some experience with Mr. S’s rigorous technique. Tom Hewitt was playing Lear, though he was more than five decades shy of the character’s age. His utter commitment to those grueling sessions, his charisma, his mastery of stillness, and his capacity for rage were impressive. And all the more impressive because I knew him offstage to be a cutup and a joker, too.

People go to the theatre—I think, secretly, and whether they know it or not—to see an actor “be put through it,” to see it cost somebody something. We watch an artist do a difficult task—and have it resonate.

Whether it’s funny, sad, quiet, loud. The things we most remember about a theatre experience is that connection with that performer. Or so it is with me.

I’d experienced Tom in plays many times since that Lear, from musicals—his glorious Frank-N-Furter, and also The Boys from Syracuse—to classics, Charles Surface in School for Scandal, and his roles in Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Coward.

He has had, always, since I’ve been watching him in the theatre, that rare-tofind combination of brilliant technique, charm, attractiveness, sexual energy, personality, comic chops, and the capability of controlled insanity. And each of those things seems to be at his call, when he wants it or needs it or decides to unleash it.

And he has also a very gentle and sensitive nature—a poetic nature, I’d say.

He is—oh, overused and undervalued word!—unique. I love him as an actor, as an artist, as a fellow, and as a fellow theatre worker—and I would certainly go and see him in anything and cast him in anything.

And sometimes there are special circumstances.

Tzara, the Dadaist “revolutionary,” is described by Stoppard as “boyish, charming”—actually, those are Tzara’s own words—and the Romanian/French poet/performance artist is used as a springboard by Stoppard to ignite his whirligig epic comedy that traffics in

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brilliant discourse on radical politics, Joycean aesthetics, Wildean aphorism, song and dance, and striptease.

Stoppard’s inevitable answer when asked his chief requirement for an actor in any of his plays is “clarity of utterance”—and this specification is truer in Travesties than in any of Stoppard’s other work, I think. It requires not only clarity but facility with Shakespearean pastiche, the juggling of various accents, low comedy sex farce, high comedy of manners, musical comedy, rants, growls, curses, stichomythia, etc.

And Travesties, like all of Stoppard’s plays, in my mind, is a very sexy play—or it should be. It’s bracing, intellectual, all of that—all of those things we say about Stoppard are true, that the air has more oxygen in it, that we feel smarter while we watch it—all that.

But for the plays to work at their fullest in the theatre, I think, there is an erotic element as well—that love of language and ideas that is lustful and sexy. I don’t want to sound like I’m making too much of this—but maybe I am. All actors in Stoppard need to connect with the text’s sexiness. Ideas and theatre are sexy.

So actors have to do all that clarity of utterance and stylistic virtuosity, and do it with apparent ease, and also while appearing crushingly attractive.

I thought of Tom. He was cast opposite Sam Waterston (brilliant) as Carr and Don Stephenson (ditto) as Joyce—and it was a dream working with all of them, all of them on fire with the play. And Cheryl Bowers and Maggie Lacey and Isabel Keating, too, each found her inner lustful, intellectual life force in maxima. The actors really sparked off each other—and a lot of that had to do with the combustible and charming approach that Tom took to Tzara, who is the engine of the play, rattling the cage of Carr’s selfcenteredness.

Tom also connected to the Dada performance artist in Tzara in a spectacular way. It’s hard to describe.

Groucho and Chico owe a lot to Dada, but so does David Bowie. And maybe Dada owes a bit more than we think to Wilde, who has his own claim to having invented the 20th century. Tom brought all those energies to the role, and sharpness and sweetness, too.

Tom Hewitt in Travesties at Long Wharf Theatre PHOTO T. Charles Erickson

BACKSTAGE

WORKING TOGETHER

EXPLORING THE CASTING PROCESS

C

asting a production is one of the most alchemical processes in theatrical production.

The craft has evolved significantly in the last 60 years from a hobby to a position to a

respected occupation that is nonetheless not understood—even by those in the theatre industry.

To illuminate the process, SDC Journal spoke recently with Joanne DeNaut and Cindi Rush, two leaders in the casting industry. Each of them debunks the perception that a casting director is a fearsome gatekeeper hindering the process, instead describing their roles as supportive collaborators who are an integral part of the artistic team.

Talk to any actor who wants to work on stage in Southern California and they will sing the praises of Joanne DeNaut. In the three decades that she has worked at South Coast Repertory, DeNaut has become the friendly face for actors seeking a spot in the theatre’s vast array of opportunities for new play development and production. DeNaut’s voice fills with pride when she talks about actors she has discovered who return to the company year after year or mainstage productions that have been chosen specifically to highlight the talents of particularly loved mainstays.

DeNaut joined the staff of South Coast right out of college, working as the Directors’ Assistant/ Office Manager for founding Artistic Directors David Emmes and Martin Benson. She also pitched in with Jerry Patch in the literary department, where she handwrote scripts and served coffee to Beth Henley. At that time, casting was headed by Lee Shallat, whom DeNaut credits for teaching her much and serving as a strong mentor. When Shallat left to pursue directing in television, DeNaut took over the job of casting. After a five-year hiatus in the late 1980s, DeNaut returned to South Coast and has led casting since 1993.

DeNaut views casting as a collaborative process but one in which the director makes the final decision. She offers directors and playwrights the optimal number of talented choices for each role. She accomplishes that after conversations in which the collaborators share their feelings about roles and what they’re looking for.

These days, DeNaut makes initial contact by email and follows up by phone, but she really values the face-to-face conversations about how the creative team sees the project and the process. It’s important that the director and playwright be “on the same page” in their expectations. She is emphatic that the director and playwright write casting breakdowns in their own words. “It sets a clear vision and helps to avoid confusion in determining the wants and needs for the roles,” she explains.

“Once in the audition room, it is important for the director to lead the process. It’s really important that the director get a sense that they’re directing and for the actors to be directed,” DeNaut says.

In the room, DeNaut confers with the director and playwright and often suggests giving another look to someone who might not have done their best that day, or bringing an actor back to read for a different role in the play. She loves when directors and actors know that they can count on her.

BY Elizabeth

Bennett

DeNaut recognizes that she is one of the first South Coast Rep staff members that the creative team starts working with early on, and it’s important for her, as a representative of the theatre, to make the creative team feel comfortable. “It’s the casting director’s job to make the actors feel good. It’s such an unnerving process for them, so it’s a good thing to have these friendly faces to welcome and introduce them. I make sure everyone has had ample time to read the script and the sides. And I make sure they have the scripts well in advance. I prep them about what the Christina DeCicco + Patrick Ball in Triad Stage’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof PHOTO VanderVeen Photographers

TOP

ABOVE

Joanne DeNaut + Mark Rucker

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audition will be like, remind them that they might need some time to settle in after driving here and coming off the freeway, let them know who will be in the room, and make sure they know that the director may stop them during the process.” DeNaut laughs when saying that she often feels like a therapist.

From the excitement in her voice, it’s clear that DeNaut loves her job. “I get such a thrill in watching a director who really, really knows actors,” DeNaut says before sharing some recollections of her dear friend and artistic collaborator Mark Rucker, who directed at South Coast regularly from 1992 until his death in August 2015. DeNaut and Rucker worked on 21 productions and countless readings together. DeNaut recalls that there was a lot of love. “Everyone—actors, stagehands—would do cartwheels to please him. He was clear in his vision and he let the actors find their way until it was time to take the lead. He never let ego get in the way of collaboration. He respected everyone involved. There was never anyone who didn’t want to work with him again or long to work with him. He found joy in the art, and it was infectious.”

“Another thing I think South Coast has done very well is matching the playwright with the director if it’s a new play. We’ve made a lot of matches here for the Pacific Playwrights Festival, and then that partnership becomes a great long-term collaboration.” This is also true of how South Coast and DeNaut have matched the right actors with material they continue with at other theatres. As a renowned center for new play development, South Coast’s commissioned plays and those featured in readings are among the most often-produced around the country.

DeNaut is excited by the “amazing” talent in the industry but particularly in the Los Angeles area. Her “local” talent pool extends up to 50 miles, so the full range of Los Angeles’s actors are available to her. She rarely needs to bring actors from New York unless a playwright or director has conceived a role with a particular actor in mind. “There are great actors on both coasts,” she exclaims. “Many actors are bi-coastal these days because so much TV is being produced in New York.” DeNaut describes the plight of pilot season—the winter months during which mainstream television shows are developed, filmed and then possibly chosen—and the impact of a shift to yearround television production. “It’s just constant.

I’m always researching who is in production now. I have actors who sneak around and when they accept an offer here, they ask ‘Oh, what am I going to tell my agent?’ And I say: They work for you. Just tell them you want to do this play.”

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Through her experience, DeNaut has developed firm beliefs in what makes the casting process work, regardless of the degree to which the collaborators know each other.

“Know the piece,” she advises. “Don’t have a casting meeting until you are totally immersed in the piece and the director and playwright have talked. Then bring in that third piece: the casting director. The clarity is going to save time. It’s evident when a director feels strong and confident. Actors want to be directed [by someone working] that way. And I want to see that confidence in knowing what their vision is of that production of that play.”

New York-based casting director Cindi Rush began performing at New York theatres at the age of eight. After graduating from New York University with a degree in Drama, she worked as a commodities trader for six years before seeking a return to theatre. “I wanted something creative that also had a business side to it,” she recalls. “It was either casting or agenting, and casting had more creativity involved.”

Rush worked at six agencies before she went out on her own. “I was like a shark, always moving forward,” she describes. “Back in the day, when the seasons were up, they laid you off after the theatre season was over. I took those two-month breaks to assist casting directors, doing searches for cable TV and film.

I parlayed that when I moved into Jay Binder’s office to handle pilot season because I had TV, film, and theatre experience.”

Rush also did what she had to do to make money, which included house-managing at Playwrights Horizons for $20 per show, eight shows a week. The experience put her in contact with a lot of playwrights and actors with whom she has long-standing personal and professional relationships.

Legendary casting director Jay Binder encouraged Rush to open up her own office.

When the time seemed right, he set up a desk for her in his office and called producers and directors to tell them to hire her. For four months, Rush worked on casting Wrong Mountain, dancers for The Music Man, and other jobs. Binder then put her in touch with Lonny Price, who was running Musical Theatre Works at the time. They created a barter system in which Rush gained free office space in exchange for casting the company’s readings. In June 2016, Rush celebrated 18 years since she opened her own office (Cindi Rush Casting, Ltd.).

Rush feels that her primary responsibility is to bring a piece of theatre to life from page to stage through the director’s eyes. She values

directors flexible enough to collaborate but feels that at the end of the day, her job is to offer up choices and present the director’s vision. She is also a firm believer in a playwright being a part of the process in casting new plays, though she feels that the vision becomes made more in the director’s eyes as a play goes into production.

Like DeNaut, Rush does a lot of the initial work through phone calls and emails. Ahead of time, she asks directors what they are thinking about in terms of prototypes, which helps her to offer choices and names in advance. Rush, too, prefers that directors write their own breakdowns and asks playwrights to approve them so that they’re on the same page. That advance work creates a level playing field in the room.

One of the most valuable things she brings is a familiarity with the actors. This includes applying supportive energy when needed and talking to the director about what he or she is seeing. During a sit-down after an audition, she can provide some perspective. “If somebody’s having a bad audition, you can say, ‘Look, we know this person. We should bring this person back, give them another shot.’ Or ‘It was not their best read. Let’s think about that.’ ‘Maybe an adjustment might help.’”

Rush cites the ability to verbalize a vision and to communicate clearly as the essential elements of successful collaborative partnerships with directors. An open dialogue and supportive energy are important to her as she learns about the play and cements collaborations. The collaborative dynamics have evolved over the years. “If you have a good working relationship with a director, there has to be a certain amount of trust where you ask, ‘Can I push the envelope, can I open this up a little bit?”

Both DeNaut and Rush acknowledge the challenges of “teaching” the casting process to young people interested in the profession as well as directors who need to learn how to work with a casting director. Rush provides new directors at the Drama League’s Directors Project with an overview of the casting process.

DeNaut teaches audition workshops that help actors understand the process and has also helped many emerging directors working with South Coast to become comfortable with the process. But both agree that casting is an innate skill that is hard to teach. Developing an eye and ear for the material and for an actor’s potential comes primarily through experience.

There’s bound to always be a little alchemy in the process.

thing about this era was that there was great artistic growth, tied into a conscious examination of aesthetics and their impact on society. As Du Bois put it eloquently, “The function of art is to use beauty to set the world right.” It would be wonderful to be on the scene when all of this is starting to flower.

4

A performance I wish I could go back to…When I am considering this question, I am thinking only as an audience member. If I think about it as an artist and the moments that I could have cleaned up, or the shows I should not have done, that list might get longer than I am comfortable with. I just finished a show, and I have half a dozen (minor) notes that I would alter next time around.

There are a few as an audience member. I wish I could see Far Away again at New York Theatre Workshop, but if there was only one performance I could revisit, it would be Do Lord Remember Me at American Place Theatre. This was the first professional show that I had ever seen. I was in high school at the time, and I only went because a girl I was fond of at Montclair High School was going. It was actually a Montclair High School trip and I tagged along. I remember that Glynn Turman was in it, but I remember very little of the show. I am sure it was good, but I was a teenager.

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PRE-SHOW / POST-SHOW WITH

DOMINIC TAYLOR 1

My morning ritual…is controlled primarily by my six-year-old son.

When I wake each day before seven a.m., I make his breakfast, snack, and lunch, and I shave before I wake him up. When I get him up, we turn on James Brown Radio on Pandora and eat our breakfast together. After he showers, we comb his hair, get dressed, and walk to school. He used to ride his bike to school, but he wants to walk so he can “notice more things.” Every time we walk these eight blocks, I do notice something new about Santa Monica. Albeit we only moved here in September, so it is relatively new, but when I leave him at school, and I walk back, I notice other things. I still hold his hand to school, so I notice that absence, but I also notice that days have endless possibilities when I take this walk.

When I get home, I check my emails and voice mail and start the other part of my day. Problem solving in a variety of forms takes up much of my day, but opening with endless possibilities is a wonderful way to start things off.

2

On my commute, I listen to…Sheekoy Sheeko, Sheeko Xariir. This disc contains four Somali folktales that are read in Somali as well as English.

This was put together by the Minnesota Humanities Center, and I found it after I moved to California. It is a blast to hear both languages. Of course, I do not speak a word of Somali, but I really appreciate what I perceive to be the differences in the languages, the gaps in translation.

For instance, where one Somali word is heard, it seems as if it takes 10 English words to translate the same idea. I guess it is the specifics and resonance of culture that I enjoy listening for.

3

If I could go back, I would go back…to the Harlem Renaissance.

Like most of my friends who share this period as some halcyon days, I imagine going to cocktail parties with Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Alice Dunbar Nelson, Alain Locke, and W.E.B. Du Bois. The other

My guilty pleasure is…Flip Wilson reruns. The Flip Wilson Show has taken over The Twilight Zone as the show that when I spy it late at night, even though I have seen it 100 times, I will watch it again. Geraldine was a character that Flip would perform, and doing the show in the round was engaging. If I was a scholar, I might write something about Geraldine in the Round. I cannot think of another TV show that tried it. It also had a series of useful tools. Redd Foxx was a guest once, and he did a wonderful tongue twister at the end that could be used in any elocution class.

6

My Netflix queue says I would love…Maybe this is what I am actually embarrassed about. I am one of three people in America who does not Netflix, Hulu, or whatever the other stuff is. I know that I am the only person in California without it and that if I am found out, I might have to leave the state. Rest assured, I am aware of all the great things I am missing.

7

I am actually watching…Golden State Warriors basketball. Stephen Curry is amazing. I used to play ball and I had a nice handle, but nothing like that man. Moreover, if I ever had a jumper like that I would have never gone into theatre. He has amazing vision and great passing skills.

He also rebounds at an alarming clip for a man his size. He sees the court the way I hope I see the stage.

8

I am about to read...Paul Beatty’s The Sellout. All of these people are telling me that I need to read this book. Like most people in this business, I read a lot of plays, so I catch up on my nonplay reading over the summer.

9 To wind down…This is usually at the end of a long week or two. I usually like to sip on a single malt scotch. Oban is my choice now, and I use these pretentious whiskey stones and listen to Thelonious Monk.

If I have just opened a show, I like to go to a bar (that has a lot of wood—think the old Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel, NYC) and have a dirty martini.

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SENSE + SENSIBILITY

Kate Hamill + Andrus Nichols in Bedlam’s Sense & Sensibility

IN 20 QUESTIONS In 2012, Bedlam Theatre quietly burst onto the New York scene with a four-person Saint Joan at the Access Theater. In less than five years, they have grown into a respected Off-Broadway and touring company. Sense & Sensibility, currently running at the Gym at Judson, was recognized with multiple nominations at the 2016 Lucille Lortel Awards. SDC Journal asked ERIC TUCKER and ALEXANDRA BELLER about the process of bringing Jane Austen’s classic to the stage in new and unexpected ways.

Enjoy.

20Q • 20Q • 20Q • 20Q • 20Q Which came first, roller skates or Sense & Sensibility?

ERIC | Kate was adapting the play for her own reasons, so the play came first. I read the script and thought about how I would adapt a Jane Austen BBC-style drama, a costumeperiod drama, and make it a kind of a party. I wanted it to move and explode in the room.

I had done period pieces before on wheels, so it wasn’t new for me, but I thought it would be fun to do with this script, to make it big and brash and not sit still for too long.

I wanted it to flow and move easily. There are a lot of locations in the play, and I wanted the staging to move easily through those locations. And the fact that it’s actor-driven and the actors have to move the setting makes it that much more fun.

Jason O’Connell, Kate Hamill + John Russell PHOTOS Ashley Garrett

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ALEXANDRA | Well, technically, they aren’t actually on roller skates, but the entire set is on wheels. The idea for everything to be in motion came from Eric. I can tell you what I saw happening from the outside, though.

The script felt very cinematic, and it was important that transitions would happen with an invisible t. It was also clear right away that there would be a ton of presence from all the characters who were not speaking in a given scene, both as the gossips and as a sense of pressure from the voyeuristic, oppressive attention of society. So having actors move things was very helpful to a sense that there was always someone there, even when you knew you weren’t supposed to see them.

Those aspects together make the decisions to have a very mobile set and actors involved in

John Russell, Laura Baranik PHOTO Ashley Garrett

all the movement a thoughtful and poignant one, I think.

pyrotechnically presentational genres of theatre.

Can you describe the production in two words?

What are your hopes for its future?

ALEXANDRA | Boisterous and tender.

How did it begin? What is it about Austen’s world you were hoping to explode in this piece?

ERIC | My vision for a project always begins with an idea as to how to tell the story. One of my first images was the body of Mr. Dashwood crashing down on a table in a very irreverent way. And that image actually made it into the stage directions of the published play. Though that did not make it into this production, I knew I wanted to work against the quiet, polite, careful approach to Austen that most interpretations have been like in the past. I wanted the style to be explosive and dynamic and immediate. It also has to move quickly because there is a lot of ground to cover. In the beginning of the play, there are a lot of images that the audience is struck with very quickly, and so I had to realize that quickly. I also wanted to set the tone with a modern sense of humor.

ALEXANDRA | I am not sure if “explode” in the question above was intentional or a typo, but I’d love to answer it as is, because I do feel like the show explodes certain tropes and expectations of Austen. I think we sometimes forget, now that the pressures on women are so different (though still manifold), that the form of Jane Austen’s social realism was a striking departure from the hyper-romantic genres at the time. I think Bedlam’s strippeddown spectacle is, similarly, a passionate and integral departure from our current

ERIC | I hope that it runs as long as it can. The response is wonderful, and it’s great to have people seeing it and loving it. I am also thrilled that Kate [Hamill]’s script continues to be produced in other regional theatres and that Kate’s work is being recognized as it should.

The story is a classic, and I hope that Kate’s version remains the definitive adaptation.

ALEXANDRA | Obviously, I hope it continues its momentum and more people get to experience it. I think the performers are spectacular, and it only gets deeper and deeper over time. If I had to declare my dream, it would go to Broadway!

Favorite moment, line, or gesture?

ERIC | My favorite line is Marianne’s response to Elinor’s line, “Do you compare your behavior to his?” and Marianne says, “No. I compare it with what it ought to have been; I compare it with yours.” Where it comes in the play is very satisfying.

ALEXANDRA | The first image that comes to mind whenever I picture the show is Stephan Wolfert looking at the audience as a horse.

He comes in as Edward Ferris’s horse and just stands there, but the quality of his focus is so clearly not human, it is genius and I look forward to it every show. I love the bit Eric created where Laura [Baranik] and Sam [Steinmetz] switch quickly back and forth between Lucy and Anne Steele and the old Ferris ladies. I feel like he’s taking his own device and pressurizing it, and it’s so tight and

hilarious. And, of course, the moment when Edward proposes at the end. I try not to cry every show, and I always fail.

Which character do you relate to most?

ERIC | I relate to Colonel Brandon because he seems to be someone who has had a lot of things happen to him later in life. Everyone comments on his age and how old he is.

But then he is finally able to find love and be happy in the end. He has experienced loneliness and loss and then manages to find a happy ending. Or maybe Margaret.

ALEXANDRA | Personally, I am more like Marianne: no restraint, often inappropriate with my level of sharing, and passionate about love. But in terms of the trajectory of the play, Elinor’s tension is so high throughout, and the audience has all the information to understand her struggle, but the other characters do not, whereas Marianne’s struggle is clear to everyone in the play, that I tend to empathize more with Elinor, because the narrative tension is resting on her seam.

Which character would you most want to play?

ERIC | I played Mrs. Jennings originally, so having had a chance to already be in the production, I am a bit biased. It doesn’t get more fun than playing the busybody and playing a woman! But if I had the chance, I think I would love to play Edward…or Margaret.

ALEXANDRA | I’m not a straight actor, so I haven’t really considered it, but if there was a stalled subway train and Mrs. Jennings, and all understudies, couldn’t make it in, I think I’d have a pretty great time filling in as best I could.

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Eric, it looks like Bedlam’s Sense & Sensibility is one of the first Bedlam projects you have directed in which you did not also play a role. What was the reason for that?

ERIC | I played the role of Mrs. Jennings in the first production, but I took myself out of the second run because we had another Bedlam show rehearsing, a play called Dead Dog Park, for a run at 59 East 59th Street Theaters.

Fortunately, it was a product of the company taking on more projects.

What has it been like to grow so quickly as a company? Any notable bumps in the road—or high-water marks?

ERIC | It’s been both rewarding and challenging. We’ve received a lot of recognition for our work and praise for our work, and that’s very satisfying, very gratifying. We’ve also had the challenges of growing pains, of more and more demand on us as a staff and company, and it’s been difficult at times to keep up and can be a strain on relationships. But so far, the joy of doing the work and striving for the goals we’ve set have kept it balanced.

How long have the two of you been working together? What is your process?

ALEXANDRA | We worked together on Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival’s Two Gentlemen of Verona, having gotten paired up fairly randomly. For me, it was instantly a great match. I think we work at a similar tempo and in a similar way in terms of sketching, trying things, making bold choices, being willing to throw things away and completely reimagine something. I liken working with Eric to Project Runway, the choreography version. He’ll have an idea, usually something outlandish and magical, and say something like, “Can you have the bed become a boat that’s sailing and then suddenly it’s a picnic blanket, and then it disappears? And can you do that now in 30 minutes?” I love it. He is specific in the best ways and then gives me tons of freedom to imagine things and never micromanages the scene. He works with a lot of trust and respect for his collaborators, gives you room to do your thing, and assumes that you will bring something in the room that he hadn’t thought of, which I think is one of the greatest strengths of a director. Then his ideas inspire me, and I make something, which creates a new invitation for meaning or staging or storytelling, which then shifts the scene, which then inspires me to change the movement. For me, it is a perfect ecosystem of artistic inquiry and choice making.

ERIC | We’ve been working together for almost two years. Sense & Sensibility is the second production we’ve worked on together. I think our process is simple. I’ll tell Alex what I want and describe images and visions that I see, and

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she’ll make an initial stab at it and usually I’ll then go back and modify things from there, and she will work on them. Our relationship is great because we can take turns on pieces or we can work in the same room together.

We can also work very fast and have now developed a shorthand with each other, which is so helpful. Alex and I both adapted to each other’s sensibilities very quickly. I think I direct everything with a strong sense of movement and flow, and Alex’s work complements that.

How did you create the physical language of the play, and how was the company involved?

ALEXANDRA | There are different and sometimes contradictory tasks for movement in the play. Sometimes the task is to be an invisible mover, to learn to disappear (which is harder than you’d imagine); sometimes, to be realistic and create an atmosphere (say, of a ball), so movement is serving the job of costume, set, prop to help the audience locate and contain the scene. Sometimes it was a moment of magical realism, where the actors were characters in a dream, or part of a mountain to be climbed, or riding a carriage that does not actually exist. For all of them, though, I think the most important thing is always deep embodiment (feeling the body) and relationship (either to the environment or time, or another character). I do think it is one of the reasons why I feel so at home in Eric’s world: movement is never an isolated event.

It is always about revealing something about the person through the body: joy, fear, desire, tension, anger, etc. As I mentioned, Eric gave me a lot of room to play before coming back in and handling the scene. The performers are all so stellar, and we have a lot of collaborative involvement about what’s working or not. But they are also rock stars and open to doing really challenging tasks and using them to help them continue their personal narratives, not as decorative events. They also give me a lot of trust and freedom before asking me for details or changes. But eventually, I try to invite them into the process of figuring out how it will work best for their bodies and best serve the play.

ERIC | I work scene to scene and moment to moment, and I pull out what’s necessary to tell each part of the story with the individual images we create. It’s a language that I have developed over the course of many productions. It culminated in this production in a much bigger way. I knew I wanted the quickand-easy flow of scenes in and out. The show is actor-driven, so the cast is out there creating that flow of set and action naturally with me. I want and enjoy a very collaborative room, and I look for people that help to create a creative, open, and willing environment.

(For AB) Eric in one word?

ALEXANDRA | Visionary.

(For ET) Alexandra in one word?

ERIC | Fierce.

How do you choose a project?

ALEXANDRA | I can’t answer in relation to Bedlam, since I am not involved at that level of decision-making. But, as a choreographer, I can say that I choose projects based mostly on the feeling that the elements (director, script, designers, producers) have a genuine interest in making authentic human connections. That doesn’t dictate anything about aesthetics, period, tone, or genre, but it does mean that the project is not a vanity project. I am interested in people, and I think theatre is one of the most immediate ways to clarify our experience of our own humanity, which I think makes us better people. So projects that are about the ego of the writer, director, or producer, or that lack an innate sense of humanity (even if the work is about inhumanity), are less interesting to me.

ERIC | When I get a glimmer of the angle I would take on telling a story, and when I feel like I have a grasp of a corner of an idea that I can grab on to, then I know I can do it and it’s a story that I would like to tell.

What do you consider to be essential ingredients in a piece of theatre?

ALEXANDRA | A compelling question.

Momentum. A dynamic landscape in which both inevitability and surprise can both function. A container that the performers can push against. That container could be a script, the direction, a movement score, a task, a spatial restraint, durational time, etc., but I think some type of pressure from the structure is necessary. As mentioned above, humanity.

Simplicity, and an understanding of the complexity inside of simplicity.

ERIC | Actors, audience, text, space.

Would you call what Bedlam does “new” work?

ALEXANDRA | I always fight with the idea that nothing is new and everything is new.

Ultimately, not to disparage the question, I realize I don’t care. “New” is not “better” to me. I’m thinking of the play within the play of The Seagull and the whole talk of new forms.

New, on its own, is not a valuable commodity.

I think Bedlam is making work that is definitely not derivative. Are they reinventing the art of theatre? I’m not sure that is possible, but I do think that they have a very specific, authentic voice, and they are saying something they believe in, and those are really the only things I care about. That is very much what Jane Austen was doing, as well, and one reason I think this play was such a perfect fit for them was that I think Jane and Eric share a value system about excess often getting in the way of rich human connection and real meaning. Ultimately, as we know, the most personal things are the

most universal, and the simplest are the most complex. Where does “new” fit into those ideas? I think they are separate questions, and the simple/complex and personal/universal are more interesting to me. Also interesting to me, and I believe to Eric, is the line between realism and fantasy, or metaphor and fact, because we function simultaneously in both of those states all the time. Our brains are never just in fact mode. There is always the awareness of the “meta.”

ERIC | I always try to look at each play, even if it’s Shakespeare, as if it’s a brand-new play.

The actors, designers, director, choreographer are a particular combination that makes each one new. We are trying to tell stories in a way that is unique to us. That’s what I do. And for a lot of people, that is something new. They are seeing work that they haven’t seen before, and to them that’s refreshing.

(For ET) Is there anything you’d like to ask Alexandra?

ERIC | What does she think the difference between choreographing and directing is?

ALEXANDRA | Ohhh. Great question. Off the top of my head, I’d say that for me directing is about negotiating actions based on the past, present, and future, and much of choreographing for theatre is about dealing solely with the present moment and what needs to happen right now. Directing feels like you are taking responsibility for the whole container all the time, and choreographing you can hone in on how movement, shape, time, effort can affect the story. Obviously you can direct movement and choreograph text, so I don’t think it’s as simple as speaking vs. moving, and I definitely want dance to move the story and open the mind to simultaneous realms of imagination.

(For AB) Do you have a question for Eric?

a more stylized point of view where there is nothing extraneous, sacrificing naturalism for something that is heightened, where bodies in space are not always just bodies. People are on stage, and the bodies can represent each other’s obstacles, facilitators, environment, etc.

If you were not a director/ choreographer, what would you be?

ALEXANDRA | This is so my dream job, it’s hard to imagine it… A blues singer?

A potter? An acupuncturist? I need to do something without too much bureaucracy. I don’t deal very well with systemic injustice, authoritarianism, or wasted time, so law, politics, education, and medicine are out, even though I have interest in them all.

ERIC | An actor, which I get to do sometimes.

I wish I acted more.

What’s next in the pipeline for Bedlam?

For you?

ALEXANDRA | I can’t answer for Bedlam, though I am excited for the extension of Sense & Sensibility. I will be restaging both Sense & Sensibility (with Eric) and As You Like It (with GT Upchurch) at the Folger in D.C. Working on a project with Dael Orlandersmith and Antonio Edwards Suarez for Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, and a few other things in the can. I am working on a movement choir for 25-30 women about the attack on reproductive rights in this country. And I am trying to establish myself in the theatre world, having been in the dance world for 20 years. Making that shift to a new way of functioning, both artistically and pragmatically, is quite exciting, though a bit daunting!

ERIC | Next for Bedlam is six actors playing three shows in rep.

Bonus Q: What do you wish you had been asked?

ALEXANDRA | The projects you have made without a choreographic collaborator have all had a deep sense of embodiment. Do you discuss the body with your actors, and if so, how does that come into the room?

ERIC | What would I excel at that people haven’t seen?

ERIC | We do talk about the body in particular because so much of my work consists of actors playing multiple roles, so we tend to start with creating a physical language with the body for the world of the play and for the characters. And that can range from the very subtle, like in our Saint Joan when characters are identified by just a gesture, or the characterizations can be much broader, like in our two different Twelfth Nights or New York Animals. I like to make theatre that involves the actors communicating with their bodies, bearing weight, where actors come together to make visuals, shapes, stories. Yes, the body is very important, and that conversation is in the room because it’s in the work and the process of how we work. I guess I think I work from

ALEXANDRA | What does working with Eric bring out in you that no other collaboration has done?

What would you have answered?

ERIC | Directing Broadway musicals.

What would you have answered?

ALEXANDRA | A sense of deep investment and nonattachment that is unusual for me. I work really hard to make things, and I have to let them go immediately because they are not mine, they are for The Show. And The Show is his, so once I make them, they are not mine, so while I care very much about them while I am making them, I have to detach immediately, and it is such a good skill for me to develop.

ERIC TUCKER Wall Street Journal (WSJ) Director Of The Year 2014. OffBroadway: Bedlam’s Sense & Sensibility (Off-Broadway Alliance Award; Lortel nomination, Best Director; Drama League nomination, Best Revival); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Drama League nomination, Best Revival; Best Classical Production 2015, WSJ; New York Times (NYT) Critics’ Picks); Bedlam’s Saint Joan (NYT/Time Magazine Top 10; Off-Broadway Alliance Best Revival 2014); Bedlam’s Hamlet (NYT Top 10; Time Out NY and Backstage Critics’ Picks); Tina Packer’s Women of Will; The Belle of Belfast. For Bedlam: Dead Dog Park; New York Animals (world premiere by Steven Sater/Burt Bacharach); Twelfth Night and What You Will (NYT Critics’ Picks); The Seagull (WSJ Best Classical Production 2014) and Sense & Sensibility (NYT Top 10; NYT/WSJ/Time Out Critics’ Picks); Saint Joan and Hamlet (NYC and tour; Elliot Norton Outstanding Visiting Production and Outstanding Ensemble, Boston Globe Top 10). Other: Sense & Sensibility (Folger); Copenhagen (Central Square Theater); A Midsummer Night’s Dream; The Two Gentlemen of Verona (HVSF); The Libertine (IRNE nomination, Best Director); Hamlet (with William Hurt); Mate (The Actors’ Gang); Macbeth (Best Overall Production and Best Director nominations. LA Weekly). Eric received his M.F.A. from the Trinity Rep Conservatory. He resides in New York City, where he is Artistic Director of Bedlam.

ALEXANDRA BELLER After a critically acclaimed international performance career with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, and projects with Martha Clarke, John Turturro, and others, she created Alexandra Beller/ Dances in 2001. Alexandra has created over 40 original dance theatre works, for both her own and other companies. Her choreography has been presented at/commissioned by Dance Theater Workshop, 92nd St. Y, Aaron Davis Hall, Danspace Project at St. Mark’s, Abrons Art Center, Joyce SoHo, P.S. 122, WAX, HERE, The Connelly Theater, SUNY Purchase College, Dance New Amsterdam, Symphony Space, and Jacob’s Pillow, and has been commissioned by companies internationally. AB/Dances has toured to the Open Look Festival in St. Petersburg, Bytom Festival in Poland, and throughout Michigan, Massachusetts, and New York, and received the company residency at The Yard in 2004. Alexandra was a visiting artist in Hong Kong, Korea, Oslo, Amsterdam, and Cyprus, and has been a guest choreographer at universities throughout the U.S. She has choreographed for numerous theatre companies, including Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival (The Two Gentlemen of Verona and As You Like It), Bedlam, Taylor Mac, Soomi Kim, Theatre Askew, and others. Current projects include Sense & Sensibility by Bedlam at Judson Gym, opening at the Folger in September 2016; As You Like It at the Folger in 2017; and a new production by Dael Orlandersmith (director/ playwright) and Antonio Suarez. Alexandra holds a B.F.A. and M.F.A. in dance and CMA) (Certified Movement Analyst) in Laban Movement Analysis and Bartenieff Fundamentals.

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BEYOND THE HUDSON

F

or many theatre artists, working in New York City is the be-all and end-all. Yet many SDC Members live and work outside the Big Apple, creating theatre of and for the communities in which they are based. This spring, SDC JOURNAL brought together some of its regional leaders through a digital roundtable in which the participants posed questions for each other. From their responses, we learned much about their individual careers and the shared challenges and joys to be found beyond the Hudson River.

KAREN AZENBERG ARTISTIC DIRECTOR | PIONEER THEATRE COMPANY | SALT LAKE CITY The mention of a New York connection is assumed to increase the credibility and reputation of a director, a play, an actor. What are your thoughts about this phenomenon?

I think it is somewhat understandable. New York has great theatre. It isn’t the only place that has great theatre, but New York is known for having great theatre. If you want a great cancer specialist, you go to the Mayo Clinic. If you want a great education, you go to Harvard or Princeton…

We all know that the work in the regions can be every bit as good as the work in New York. I like to expose my audience to artists from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Utah. Sometimes it is the quality that makes them come back for more.

How different was it for you, as an artist, to go from a very busy freelance career to being an artistic director?

Very! If I thought I was busy as a freelancer, I was sorely mistaken.

Of course, it is a different kind of busy. As an artistic director there is always something to do, plan for, think about, troubleshoot. As a freelance director there is always another project to book, another job to find. However, as a freelance person it is a little easier to step away during the time in between projects. As an artistic director there is no in-between time.

Is there a method to picking a season? In what way do you involve your artistic staff or colleagues? Besides the practical juggling act of number of actors/size of production/genre/ diverse voices—do you have a goal in mind?

If the guiding principle is to put together the best combination of titles available to us at any given moment, then, yes, there is a method to the madness. I usually start with a title or two that act as anchors—not necessarily titles that will sell well, although often that is the case, but certainly shows I am sure we want to produce in that upcoming season. There is always room for at least one title that I really, really want to produce—even if I think it might not sell very well— that needs to be balanced by something that I am sure will have a wider appeal. The practical

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juggling follows, and then a moment of reflection: would I want to see these shows?

Am I representing our mission? Am I pushing the envelope, even a little bit, somewhere in the season?

Programming for the Salt Lake City/Utah community is an incredible challenge. The audience has very differing tastes, from conservative family-friendly to new, edgy, never-seen-before fanatics and everything in between. On the surface that makes for a wonderfully diverse programming opportunity, but in practice it often makes it hard to make everyone happy. The LDS community, while great supporters of the arts, is often uncomfortable with language that, as a New Yorker, doesn’t even make me flinch. The transplanted community, on the other hand, craves the kind of theatre they saw in their city of origin, New York, Chicago, Washington, Seattle. With great thanks to my predecessor, Chuck Morey, PTC can produce plays that require a content advisory, and for the most part, our community accepts and respects that.

I would be lying if I said it doesn’t have an impact on our box office, but we are fortunate to have an executive board that supports our efforts.

The Deseret News Kate Middleton + Samuel Ray Gates in Alabama Story OPPOSITE

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There are always new artists to collaborate with, or to observe, new plays to read and become excited about. ” KAREN AZENBERG

Do you feel your company is valued and supported by your community? How do they show their support?

I know PTC is valued and supported in our community, but the competition is fierce and it is not abating at all. I am trying several tactics to get our voice heard: expanding our programming to include things that I hope will appeal to our different audience demographics, such as new play readings for the “risk takers” (unknown titles are scary for the more conservative portion of our audience), concerts of musicals, and world premiere plays and musicals on our mainstage. I am also trying to connect with members of the community as much as possible, to allow them to feel that they are being heard but also to talk about how and why we need their support.

We are the largest of several professional and semiprofessional and community theatres in the area, which is terrific, but brings with it a sense that you will always be there and the community doesn’t feel an urgency to support us. We have a history of financial stability that is admirable but is based on a 50/50 earned-contributed model, and with the changing tides of subscription purchases, what does that mean for the future? Anyone out there with any ideas, I am listening!

What do you do to keep it fresh? How do you get invigorated and ready to make art, make change, reimagine, and enliven your theatre every year?

I have found that, as an artistic director, it is much easier to keep it fresh. There are always new artists to collaborate with, or to observe, new plays to read and become excited about. Each new production is the palate cleanser, and my trips to New York and to other theatres are the retreat.

The challenge to continue to improve and grow is presented by the great work being done all around the country.

The exciting part of working on a practically perfect piece of musical theatre like West Side Story is that there are always more or different moments to find and refine. In addition, as I grow as a director, I find better ways to talk to actors about the play and develop their connection to the material. I think my West Side Story has benefited from my 25 years of working as a director and choreographer.

While it has maybe lost a little of the energy that a 27-year-old brought to it, it has some of the thoughtfulness of a 50-year-old.

If I were not a director/artistic director, I would be…

I have no idea. I’ve never been or wanted to be anything else.

How will the theatre be different in 5–10 years?

I have no idea. I think that is the fun of it: you can’t plan it, you can’t predict it and you never know where the next interesting idea will come from.

You have directed WEST SIDE STORY at least 14 times. What was the musical like when it was first your “baby”? How have you and the show grown or changed?

Each production is so unique! Like my children, those first versions were so perfect and, as I look back, so young! Yet I could never re-create them now: they wouldn’t be interesting to me.

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I make plays at City Theatre for the Pittsburgh region and hope they have a long life wherever that takes them. ” TRACY BRIGDEN

TRACY BRIGDEN ARTISTIC DIRECTOR | CITY THEATRE | PITTSBURGH

From your bio, I get a sense that City Theatre loves world premieres. Where does this come from? How do you find your playwrights?

City Theatre’s mission is to produce contemporary plays of substance and ideas that challenge and engage a diverse audience. When I took the helm as artistic director in 2001, I refined the mission to be even more focused on the development and production of new work. For instance, in the regular subscription season, no play is more than five years old. In my 15 years here, every season has included at least one world premiere—if not two or three. We regularly commission plays from both up-and-coming and established writers and host an annual new-play festival, Momentum, to develop plays and relationships with artists.

singer Judy Holliday. With a commission and development help from City, his dream play was realized in a spectacular production here last season.

City Theatre gets its plays from many sources, including agent submissions, requests, and our trusted collaborators—directors, designers, actors, and, of course, the playwrights themselves.

In my 30 years in the world of new plays, I have developed many strong relationships with playwrights, as have my associates Clare Drobot, Director of New Play Development, and Reginald Douglas, Artistic Producer. In the fall and early winter, I am never without my Kindle full of plays. This year, I probably read over 75 to select our six. We usually have one or two plays in the commission pipeline. My first commission was to Christopher Durang. We just got a generous grant from an individual to commission a play for families. I want to do a piece with music, movement, and theatrical storytelling—this summer’s project is to select source material and collaborators.

Or a commission can help a writer take a big risk. For instance, for Keith Reddin’s commission, I knew I wanted a play about contemporary politics and I wanted it to be fresh. I gave Keith a slot in the following season and a year to write a play. It was sort of a crazy leap of faith, but it totally paid off with a terrific up-to-the-minute political comedy called The Missionary Position. Our new-play festival, Momentum, is a great tool to move plays further down the road to production. Almost all of our world premieres and commissions have received a workshop in the festival. This June we will workshop Sharon Washington’s new play, Feeding the Dragon, scheduled for its world premiere at City this fall.

I got a fantastic new play education in my eight years on the artistic staff of Manhattan Theatre Club, during which time I built relationships with many notable writers. Plus, my mother was a book editor, so I guess you could say that my joy in working with writers is genetic!

How did being a finalist for SDC’s Fichandler Award impact your work with your board or team?

The new work at City Theatre seems to be a combination of commissions and submissions.

What are the pros and cons of commissioning plays?

The Fichandler was very impressive to my board and staff. But its impact was felt more by me personally as a director. I think when you are out in the regions, you can be a rock star in your own community, but you can feel very disconnected from the New York scene. Getting

My experience commissioning writers has been, by and large, very positive. Often a commission can give a writer the opportunity to write a play he or she has always wanted to write, as was the case with Willy Holtzman’s play Smart Blonde. Willy had always wanted to write about actress/

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Elizabeth Rich + Jonathan Tindle in the world premiere of Some Brighter Distance PHOTO Kristi Jan Hoover

nominated for an award like the Fichandler gave me a great boost of confidence from my peers and the feeling that my work matters in the theatre community at large.

There is definitely a New York stamp of approval. When I moved to Pittsburgh from the New York area, I think I was very prejudiced toward New York talent. But of course after 15 years, I can say some of the greatest theatre artists in the world live in Western Pennsylvania, and Chicago, and Philly, and all the towns across the country. Some of the very best theatre I have seen has been done in the regions, and some of the very worst I have seen was done in New York! I love it when artists come to Pittsburgh for a show, fall in love with the city, and then move here because they can play better roles in a more creative atmosphere—and live in a much bigger house!

I refute the idea that the be-all, end-all of a play is “getting to New York.” I make plays at City Theatre for the Pittsburgh region and hope they have a long life wherever that takes them.

How do you keep it fresh? How do you get invigorated and ready to make art?

As a director, I continue to grow and get better with each season. A lot of that growth is because I get to choose my own plays and do them when I want to and how I want to. I can challenge myself and try new things and feel confident that I am safe and supported in doing so. I have a board and managing director (James McNeel) who love and value risk-taking and new ideas and want our company and the theatre in general to keep expanding and moving forward and a community that wants to see new work. That is a big gift to me. Of course I worry about “will it sell?” but I like to believe if it’s good, it will sell.

Another development in my directing has come from working on several very theatrical, abstract plays in recent years. David Greig’s plays Monster in the Hall and Midsummer, and most recently Anna Ziegler’s The Last Match, have all made me exercise my imagination, staging vocabulary, and way of telling a story. All those productions were realized in collaboration with the amazing set designer Narelle Sissons, who has given each an architectural playground to inhabit with very few props or pieces of furniture. Working on these, as well as a few other very theatrical pieces, has really exploded my notion of how to make a play and helped me discard many ideas or habits that were restricting to my work. When I saw how much an audience delights in watching characters ride a motorcycle on stage (with no motorcycle) or play tennis (with no ball and

racket), it was very exhilarating and helped me realize that anything is truly possible on stage! I am hoping to turn these newfound skills into doing some adaptation work myself, something I haven’t done since my days at Northwestern studying with the great Frank Galati.

If I were not a director/artistic director, I would be…

I would either work to help/save/rescue/ protect animals or I’d throw parties for a living.

I love to cook, and my favorite thing is to gather everyone around the dinner table with lots of good food, wine, and conversation.

(And maybe a couple of dogs.)

How will theatre be different in 5–10 years?

In 5–10 years the theatre will be very experiential—pieces that really blur the line between audience and play and are experienced both collectively and individually at the same time. Like Sleep No More. Though the emphasis will be placed on “unique,” the importance of a good story at the heart of any experience will never fade.

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As artists, we must stretch ourselves to learn, travel, experience, and grow, but then we can come back to our region and grow and bloom where we plant ourselves. ” D. LYNN MEYERS

D. LYNN MEYERS

PRODUCING ARTISTIC DIRECTOR | ENSEMBLE THEATRE CINCINNATI | CINCINNATI The mention of a New York connection is assumed to increase the credibility and reputation of a director, a play, an actor. What are your thoughts about this phenomenon?

I started my career in Cincinnati and then left for a period of years to work in New York and Los Angeles. I honestly don’t think I would have been hired for this job if I had not left. The idea that the best is always on a coast is still in place, but I think it is changing. Or maybe I just hope so.

Regional theatre has been such a dynamic influence in our nation that I can’t help but believe that those who choose to work regionally have a greater freedom to create and limitless opportunities.

What limits us is antiquated perceptions that homegrown can’t be great. As artists, we must stretch ourselves to learn, travel, experience, and grow, but then we can come back to our region and grow and bloom where we plant ourselves.

Is there a method to picking a season?

My guiding principle is the news: what makes a headline, what is “breaking news”? What do I hear people talking about in line at the grocery store, in a bar, or at a restaurant?

I do have to be realistic regarding budget, but I do not restrain my commitment to curiosity. I have to try to make my stage look like the audience I want, not just the audience I have.

My team here had a wide range of suggestions for next year, as we will be renovating our theatre for the first time in its 30-year history. This year is about “The Next Stage,” which fits our renovations as well as our attitude. I felt it essential to include [Kimber Lee’s] Brownsville Song and [Sarah Treem’s] When We Were Young and Unafraid in the season, given the state of our world.

Every show is about moving us forward.

My city is the reason for my programming. If I were anywhere else, it would not be the same shows. Regional theatre is for its region, and we need to present what is needed. I have pushed the envelope to stay open. In 2001, when the neighborhood of Over-the-Rhine, which is where Ensemble is located, was considered the nation’s worst neighborhood for violent crime and we had racial unrest and violence, I presented Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Musicians are bolder than

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some theatergoers, and by casting the best indie musicians, I hoped their followers would come. And they did. Then the theatre folks followed. I truly believe that if we had not presented that show at that time, we would not be open. We had to shake people into coming into a shaky neighborhood, and we had to keep them safe while they were here.

Do you feel your company is valued and supported by your community? How do they show their support?

My subscribers absolutely affirm that we are loved and respected. Yet I struggle to get funding for capital renovations and expanded programming.

We are still in the shadow of larger organizations. With 191 seats, we have helped change a neighborhood, define a region, and employ artists who have never had a chance in this region. And yet we are still in some ways “the other theatre,” and that is disturbing. It’s also true that when it comes to major funding, there are only so many dollars in any community, and we have to work really hard to get the contributions we need to develop and grow. The competition for funding is heightened, but there is a collective cooperation between companies, which is healthy and lovely. We do not compete for

Todd Almond + A. Beth Harris in Hedwig and the Angry Inch PHOTO Sandy Underwood

audiences; we complement each other, and that makes for a great region. For so long, it was about staying open, then it became about sustainability. Now it is about growth.

Could you advise us of some more formal casting practices that help “shake the tree” and encourage actors of color to show up?

As a member of the Casting Society of America, and having been a casting director for many years before taking this position at Ensemble, I heard about a program called Meals for Monologues, which a CSA member started in Chicago. We do a large push in the media, inviting anyone of any age and skill level to audition. It’s suggested, not required, that they bring a nonperishable food item that is donated to the Freestore Food Bank here. This makes it an event instead of an audition, and it’s not daunting. The participants feel as though they are contributing instead of being tested. This has greatly enhanced my actor file and encouraged very diverse attendance. It attracts not just interested performers but helps the public know about the shows.

I also have an open call every December.

The industry is growing more aware of “yellow face” casting decisions. Do you have advice on how we can be effective and kind in addressing these choices at various theatres?

I have just chosen to be very honest. If there is a play I care about presenting but I do not feel I can cast authentically, I don’t do that play until a time that I can find a way to do it as the playwright intended.

To cleanse my spirit, I listen to eclectic music, to the endless variety out there as opposed to trusting what is familiar. All kinds: from Bowie to Broadway, from Pit Bull to Pavarotti. I listen in my car with the volume up really, really loud, which is a great escape for me.

If I were not a director/artistic director, I would be…

A lawyer who takes on what appear to be cases that can’t be won. Or a songwriter.

How will theatre be different in 5–10 years?

I believe it will be a more immersive experience, incorporating — even more than it does now — music, film, dance, and poetry.

I believe it will evolve into an even stronger social format and continue to capture the most creative energy on the planet and maybe even beyond.

What do you do to keep it fresh? How do you get invigorated and ready to make art, make change, reimagine, and enliven your theatre every year?

I honestly love my work so much that it never feels stale. I get to present contemporary plays, so there are always new subject matters that push me forward. I am also challenged by those around me. My staff is a strong, smart team who are curious and always looking to expand their vistas.

I peopled my theatre staff with those who are intelligent and motivated. They keep me on point and vice versa!

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I wish there would be a theatre in every community; that each theatre would reflect whatever is current in that community; and that every performance would be free. ” JENNIFER NELSON

JENNIFER NELSON

DIRECTOR, PLAYWRIGHT, TEACHER | WASHINGTON, D.C.

In your career, you’ve done a bit of bouncing between the East and West coasts. How did that happen to you, and do you find it influences your work?

I was living in San Francisco and working as an actress with the Theatre of Man, a now-defunct “experimental” theatre company led by Cecile Leneman, doing movement-based work about the evolution of sexism. Through a series of coincidences, I heard about the Living Stage, the community outreach program of Arena Stage. Artistic Director Robert Alexander flew me out for an audition, and that’s what got me to the East Coast. I had no intention of staying. But both Theatre of Man and Living Stage were working on incorporating ritual and highly physical imagery into politically charged storytelling. Living Stage also offered the opportunity to work with nontraditional audiences: children and teens, incarcerated women and men, the disabled, etc.

After many years as a Living Stage actress (and eventually also associate artistic director), I switched my focus to directing. I got a TCG Early Career Director Fellowship. In part because I was as interested in the arc of a season more than any single production, I wanted to be at one theatre for the entire fellowship year. I was offered the choice of the Public—while it was briefly helmed

by JoAnne Akalaitis—or the Mark Taper Forum, which was then under Gordon Davidson.

Artistically, it was a very difficult choice! Ultimately I chose the Taper because I had a child and the California lifestyle had more personal resonance. I learned a lot about a fast-moving, multifaceted mega-theatre. I was also present for the early phases of Angels in America and Jelly’s Last Jam. It was thrilling to witness such exceptional work and interact with amazing artists.

However, by the end of the year, Southern California did not appeal to me as a permanent home.

I felt that the East Coast had a more vibrant community of small theatres—and that’s where I thought I could have the most direct effect. I don’t mean that to be a judgment about the quality of work being done on either coast, but about my personal mission.

You are both playwright and director. Do you direct and write on the same production?

If so, can you please share with us the ups and downs of wearing "two hats"?

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I had done some writing for Living Stage but didn’t think of it as real playwriting.

My specialty was creating short plays for specific audiences that had to do with specific community issues.

My first job after leaving Living Stage was with Everyday Theater, another community outreach company that worked specifically with teens caught up in the cycle of antisocial behavior, i.e., selling and/or using drugs. My play Torn from the Headlines was a fictional story inspired by a series of real events captured in a Washington Post article. The play was performed by some of the young people in the company along with two professionals, in a small rented theatre. Original music was composed by another member of the staff, who also brought in a small combo for performances. In retrospect it was both a terrific and a mighty challenge getting all those elements together. [Editor’s Note: Torn from the Headlines won the 1997 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding New Play.]

With such distinguished credits in work that is so socially relevant, do you feel the American Theatre is doing enough to address social issues? Have you seen change in our communities, given your work at so many amazing theatres?

Deidra LaWan Starnes + Eric Chamblee in Mosaic Theater Company’s production of The Gospel of Lovingkindness PHOTO Stan Barouh

If you mean do I see change in our theatre communities, then yes. As popular culture continues to evolve in the 21st century, theatres will be further challenged to stay relevant. The older, middleclass audiences that loved the classics above all are not necessarily audience mainstays anymore.

Also, more theatres are intentionally addressing specific audiences—and perhaps more important, more specifically diverse audiences. There are definitely more women getting produced—and more women of color within that cohort. I think it’s a good thing for everybody—and it’s also proving to be a major factor in attracting younger audiences.

If I were not a director I would be…

The D.C. community has a fantastic array of small theatres now that might not have been competitive just a few years ago. Things will continue to change; it’s the nature of life. What worries me most in terms of theatre is, how will we manage the economics of producing?

I WISH there would be a theatre in every community; that each theatre would reflect whatever is current in that community; and that every performance would be free.

A baseball season ticket holder. Following a team through their entire season is a major commitment.

How will theatre be different in 5–10 years?

Diversity is an oft-discussed topic right now. As someone who has been a part of the D.C. community for quite a while, what was the one most impactful event, program, or production to further the diversity agenda in theatre in D.C.?

I can’t think of a single local event that had more impact than many others. Ever since I arrived here, there have been struggling, smallish African-American theatres producing interesting work.

But the major leap forward in diversity had to do with the arrival of August Wilson on the national scene. His plays arrived at the moment when traditional audiences were beginning to wane. The Wilson phenomenon created such a cross-cultural éclat that theatres around the country were virtually compelled to pick them up. That success opened doors for more African-American playwrights, directors, and actors. I’m pleased to see we’re making visible progress for other previously marginalized voices.

How do you keep it fresh?

Baseball! I’m a little nutty about it, to the point of trying to write some short plays about women’s and girls’ involvement in it. There’s something in the ritual performance of a baseball game that resonates with me—and a few million others. I also like to read mysteries by women and to travel to places with beaches…where I can read books by women.

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I hope the theatre in 5-10 years will be a version of what it has always been—a training ground for our imaginations. ” RUTH PE PALILEO

RUTH PE PALILEO ARTISTIC DIRECTOR | CURRENT THEATRICS | LAS VEGAS

How does your Las Vegas differ from the widely commercial Vegas that gets so much attention for the casinos and the Cirque du Soleil shows? Do you see a community we never see?

I’m really lucky to see a Vegas that isn’t featured on the Strip. Vegas theatre is not centralized, so one literally gets around to locations in Vegas that are worlds away from the Strip and its aesthetic.

Companies like Cockroach Theatre and Poor Richard’s Players have been consistently producing quality indie theatre for years in the Arts District—stuff like Beckett and Bogosian. Lots of folks don’t even know there’s an Arts District in Vegas; it’s downtown near Fremont Street. Onyx Theatre, which was originally a sex toy shop, turns out cult classics from Cannibal the Musical to Heathers the Musical and is located in a topless bar district. Las Vegas Little Theatre is in Chinatown. Some Cirque performers produce solo work, such as at Baobab Theatre, which is inside the posh Town Square mall. There’s Super Summer Theatre, an outdoor theatre nestling in the red rock mountains. And there’s a whole underground scene of 55-plus-aged performing artists who craft shows for other retirees, in casinos and in retirement homes. Our own company, Current Theatrics, is based out of McMullan’s Irish Pub.

Las Vegas isn’t the first place I think of when one discusses plays, much less new plays! How do you find your audience in that community? And did your work touring shows come first or did that follow?

I just finished directing a new play by Erica Griffin, a local playwright who won KNPR’s 2016 award for playwriting. The show was about two married lesbians in Vegas, one of whom is struggling with endometriosis. Our audience for that show included the LGBT outreach of the Roman Catholic Church, showgirls, and snowbirds (people who live in Las Vegas during the winter and then move back to other cities “back East” during the summer). Also, because we’ve toured to so many cities, we have people travel to see our shows; we had audience members visiting from Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles.

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Touring shows began in 2010, after I moved to Vegas. My theatre partner, Thomas Costello, who is based in New York, phoned me and said, “We were just offered an interesting and potentially recurring opportunity to bring a production to Cleveland. What do you think?”

So we began to hammer out what I think of as a skewed triangle model of traveling theatre—him there, me here, and theatre wherever we could get a gig in between. Our only experimental rule was that we had to see how far we could take a company without paying rent. Not because we didn’t want to pay but because we didn’t want to be tied to one space. We could see other opportunities down the road, and they were all over the place, so we needed a model that would support us on the move. We’re totally reliant on the graciousness of venues that will trade with us, split with us, put us up, pay us, or sponsor us to arrive in their town and do a show.

What do you need to take into consideration when programming for your city? Are there things you can or cannot produce? Is that changing, or has it changed in the last 10 years? Do you feel like you can push the envelope? Or do you feel the pressure to make box office magic on every show?

Ace Charles + Sue McNulty in Kizzy in a Tizzy PHOTO Francisco Rodriguez

The best thing about Vegas is that the bar for “box office magic” is so very, very high. We have eight Cirque du Soleil shows selling thousands of seats every night, so one shouldn’t even try to compete with that; I feel like it takes pressure off. In fact, there’s a smaller company in town called A Public Fit, and by crowdfunding and being very strict about how often they produce a show, they have paid their people from the get-go, showing that viability is possible whatever the box office.

I have yet to produce a mainstream Filipino production. I’ve done big-budget theatre at some of the casinos, directed for the Philippine community, but have not yet been able to tell a story about Philippine characters that isn’t targeted specifically for the Filipino community.

I am curious about your work on large-scale projects. How do you fund this kind of work, and do you think there is a place for it with the ever-escalating production costs?

Our largest-scale production was The Anubis Gates, a play I adapted from a fantasy novel by Tim Powers. Its costs were low because we were traveling all the actors from Vegas and Dublin to London to perform the show. We funded it through Kickstarter and the goodwill of a sponsor for whom we had previously performed in Chicago. Looking back, though, I’m on-my-knees grateful that people were willing to support a troupe of traveling players. I feel it was definitely a once-ina-lifetime thing that happened because thousands of people love the novel.

There’s a place for [this work] if you find the audience that already loves some part of it. And did I mention finding graciousness? There are a lot of gracious folks out there, and they Tweet or Instagram or Facebook.

What do you do to keep it fresh? How do you get invigorated and ready to make art, make change, reimagine, and enliven your theatre every year?

I assume every one of us experiences the “post-show blues” after a project has closed. What I like to do then is read a lot of comic books and go see other peoples’ art, filling up especially on live music and art galleries. And I sleep much, much more than I have been. But the most invigorating thing for me is beginning to talk about the next project with the production crew.

If I were not a director/artistic director, I would be…

A detective, preferably a consulting detective.

Or a wedding planner.

How will theatre be different in 5–10 years?

I worry about the trend of using technology in the theatre to make exciting spectacle. Theatre will never become film, so why do we keep trying? So I hope The Theatre in 5–10 years will be a version of what it has always been—a training ground for our imaginations. I would hate to lose our ability to send shivers down the spines of audiences with a well-spoken word and make them gasp with a well-chosen gesture.

Right now, Current Theatrics often holds rehearsals via Skype. My stage managers rarely spike the set pieces; they just take pictures on their phones. But when we raise the curtain, we try to keep things simple, with as little technology as possible between actor and audience. I hope theatre in the next decade will remain “simple” but with a 21st-century spin on the beauty of simplicity.

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Studio portrait for Dancing Times, March 1966 PHOTO Anthony Crickmay

Gillian

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n Lynne

The Art of Theatre Is Togetherness An Interview with Dame Gillian Lynne, DBE

BY NINA LANNAN For more than seven decades, Olivier Award winner Dame Gillian Lynne has delighted audience members while thrilling and challenging dancers with her choreography and direction for theatre, film, and television. Shortly after Dame Gillian’s 90th birthday in February, Nina Lannan—General Manager and former Chair of the Broadway League—sat down with Ms. Lynne on behalf of SDC Journal to talk about an extraordinary career that has spanned dancing with Sadler’s Wells Ballet at Covent Garden during World War II to choreography for some of the world’s best-loved musicals, including Cats and The Phantom of the Opera. The two have been friends since 1981, when they worked together on Cats, and they shared reminiscences and reflections on Ms. Lynne’s life and how to live.

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NINA | A few months ago, you gave me your wonderful autobiography, A Dancer in Wartime. It is a brilliant book and covers when and where you were born and grew up, and then through World War II, up to when you were about 20. In this book, your mother takes you to a doctor’s office, and he analyzes you as being a born dancer.

GILLIAN | It all came about because Mum used to say, “I can’t control my child. She’s always fiddling, she’s always jumping up and down, she’s naughty at school, and I don’t know what to do.” I was known as “wriggle bottom” at home because I could not keep still. [The doctor] had been watching me very closely, and he said, “Mrs. Pyrke, can we talk outside for a moment?” He got her outside and, of course, the minute they’d gone, I started to dance. I leapt on his desk and leapt on his settee and leapt all over the place. [The doctor] said, “Mrs. Pyrke, this child is not sick. There’s nothing wrong with her attention syndrome, really. It’s just she’s a born dancer. Take her to class.”

How he knew that by watching me fiddle around, I don’t know. I hadn’t started to dance.

NINA | When you started to dance, what are your earliest memories of music—of that feeling of what music did to your body?

GILLIAN | I really felt I’d come home. The minute I got to dance, the minute I heard the music, the minute I was taught how to use my body and begin to think how I could do it myself, I felt at home.

NINA | Did you like the discipline of learning how to dance?

GILLIAN | Loved it. I’ve always loved discipline.

To this day, I do, which means I’m quite tough to work for.

NINA | Yes, because you expect it in everyone else around you.

GILLIAN | I do.

NINA | So, you felt you belonged, and that has stayed with you through your whole life?

GILLIAN | The extraordinary thing is, it has. I’m lucky because I’ve done so many things. I’ve done classical ballet, I’ve done modern. I went into rep[ertory] to learn to act. I went to the London Palladium, where I had to learn to hold a massive [house] of 2,160 people. You have to hold that house. You have to give it every inch of your performance. And I became their little dancing star.

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That whole thing was an absolutely amazing new feel to life. I began to smell other bits of the theatre, other than the ballet.

NINA | You started dance lessons, and then at some point, you moved to London and joined a company. You had the opportunity to see professional dancers at work, and you became immersed in the ballet world, yes?

NINA | I was going to ask you about your early influences and your mentors, and you’re telling me some of them. So, Robert Helpmann was very important in opening you up to other types of dance.

GILLIAN | He did a lot of plays as well as being the star dancer of the Royal Ballet. He introduced me to a lot of other people.

GILLIAN | I was immersed in the ballet world when I started. Then, when I was 14, I was dancing, and a wonderful woman called Molly Lake, who had worked with Anna Pavlova, saw me dance and thought, “That girl’s got talent.

I want her in my company.” I was too young to go to her company, but she used to have me up [to London] for special performances, all classical. I got used to the classical world and classical dance early on.

NINA | He was your bridge to the theatre world.

NINA | How did you make the transition into other types of dance?

GILLIAN | She was important to the whole world of dance and was one of the great women of all time. She ran the Royal Opera House for the ballet. That woman, she was a diplomat. She was a wonderful choreographer.

She was a hard teacher. Oh, how hard! She also was always looking for new, interesting people.

She was just a special person.

GILLIAN | Well, because I went to the Palladium and I started to, as I say, smell other things, and I could always…

NINA | The Palladium had an in-house dance company?

GILLIAN | No. They built a little company around me. In the Palladium, you did two shows a day and three on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Nine a week. So today, when the kids say to me, “I’m tired,” and all that, I say, “We’re only doing seven performances a week!”

I was always mad about jazz as well. I used to give jazz classes.

NINA | You were immersed in the classical world, but then how did you learn jazz and, moreover, end up teaching it?

GILLIAN | I don’t know. Somehow it must have been in my body. When I was a kid, my mother, with three other women, was killed in a most ghastly car crash when their baby Fiat skidded into a petrol tanker. All of them were killed very cruelly and immediately. I went to stay with an aunt because I had nowhere else to go. She and my uncle were deeply into music of every kind and had a marvelous jazz pianist who was a friend who used to come and play. I learned instinctively.

Robert Helpmann—who got me to the Palladium—was a wonderful actor, dancer, and he worked with Olivier a lot. He wasn’t a jazz dancer, but he tried everything. He acted. He sang. He did straight stuff, comic stuff. He got me absolutely interested in everything. “Try this, look at this, go and see this.”

GILLIAN | He really was. He liked my work, and he could see that I could act. He helped me all along the line, sort of pushing me to find different interests.

NINA | In your book, you mention Ninette de Valois.

She was married to a doctor. She always made us laugh because she used to say, “Right, now Arthur, my husband, says we aren’t eating enough.” We didn’t have any food then! I’m talking about the war. He said we had to have beetroot—greens and things. But those of us who grew up in the war didn’t have any food.

We never had meat at all; it was unheard of during the war. There was a little restaurant near Covent Garden, and they used to get a shipment of meat about once a month to every two months. They would send someone to the stage door to say, “Some came in today.”

We would all just run. If you were first, you got some. If you were fourth, you didn’t. That’s how dire it was.

NINA | So, Ninette was important to you on the classical front, and then Robert Helpmann helped you transition and exposed you to other work.

GILLIAN | And both of those choreographers did unusual works. She did The Rake’s Progress wonderfully. She did Job. She did The Prospect Before Us. She did lots of witty, unusual stuff.

He made a few ballets, but they were all to do with drama. So, it was much more interesting than a lot of work that we were given.

NINA | Explain to me: was there a fluid exchange between dancers who worked in ballet and dancers who worked in the West End or on Broadway?

“THE MINUTE I GOT TO DANCE, THE MINUTE I HEARD THE MUSIC, THE MINUTE I WAS TAUGHT HOW TO USE MY BODY AND BEGIN TO THINK HOW I COULD DO IT MYSELF, I FELT AT HOME.”

Dame Gillian Lynne

GILLIAN | Nothing. I was the first. I really was.

The Palladium Theatre went to Robert Helpmann and said, “Look. We need someone who can hold the theatre, is fast, and whom we can build ballets around. Who do you have?

Do you have someone with a big personality and strong technique?” Well, he thought I had both those, and he suggested me. I went along to meet them, and I was there for three years.

They built things around me. I learnt so much.

NINA | So you were the only, the first, to go from the ballet world into the West End, more theatrical world.

GILLIAN | You asked me how much rapport there was between the two of them. There wasn’t a lot. Musicals were not as good as they were here [in the United States], of course, but they had their own merit. The dancers who worked in musicals didn’t have classical techniques. They like to do jazz, which was dreadful in those days. That’s what made me want to grapple with it because I thought it’s got to be better than this. So I worked really hard at it.

I used to give classes on matinee days. I used to do the matinee at the Palladium, then rush to a wonderful studio in the middle of London in my makeup, give classes for two hours, and rush back and do the second show. It gave me a lot of stamina very early on.

NINA | So, now we understand a bit about your transition into dancing outside of the classical world. I read that, in 1962, you were dancing in a revue, and the choreographer fell out.

GILLIAN | That’s how I started. Literally, I was in the revue, and Tutte Lemkow, a mad Norwegian, was the choreographer, and he had a fit. He lost his temper.

NINA | Beware of fits in the theatre.

In the studio for The Look of Love, directed +choreographed by Lynne in January 1990 PHOTO c/o BBC

So, when this mad Norwegian choreographer fell out on this revue, everyone looked in your direction.

You were one of eight [performers], and suddenly all heads turned in your direction and said, “What do we do next?”

GILLIAN | They did. And I said, “Why me?

Why me? I’m in it. I’m a performer.” But the cast insisted, so I did it, and without realizing it, I was thrown in at the deep end and started as a choreographer.

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Nina Lannan + Dame Gillian Lynne, D.B.E. PHOTO Walter McBride

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Then, a lovely woman, who owned Western Theatre Ballet, said, “Gillian, I want you to make a jazz ballet for me. Nobody’s done a jazz ballet in England. You must do one.” I said, “But why me? I’m just grappling with it. I’m making myself go to lessons. I’m not really there yet.”

“No,” she said. “I’ve talked to the critics, and they say you’re the one to do it. Will you have a go?” I said, “What about the music?” She said, “Well, I’m talking to Dudley Moore.”

Do you remember Beyond the Fringe? They were Jonathan Miller, Dudley Moore, Peter Cook, and Alan Bennett. They were OffBroadway or in London, either or, as brilliant, brilliant comics. They had this revue, which was wonderful.

So [Dudley Moore] and I did a jazz ballet [with him] writing the score about “The Owl and the Pussycat.” He was a brilliant jazz pianist.

It was the first choreography I’d ever done. It wasn’t what I call very good. It had promise.

It was quite new because no one was doing jazz ballets, but I wouldn’t say anybody said, “Oh, this is brilliant.” But it was enough to get everybody talking. And then [Dudley] and I stayed great, great friends.

Everybody came to see it because of Dudley, really. Dudley’s name was wonderful. The other people in the revue were well known in that world, which was very big in England. I don’t think you’ve ever had it really here, have you?

NINA | No. I think because we had the whole of vaudeville here and then transitioning into other forms of...

GILLIAN | And wonderful musicals. You got there long before we did. And film. I was lucky because while I was at the [London] Palladium, the Warner Brothers casting man, John Redway, saw me, and then he asked me to do the film The Master of Ballantrae with Errol Flynn, which I did the choreography on too, but he was a great teacher and a great friend, and I had the most wonderful time and learned a lot.

NINA | Agnes de Mille was working at this time.

GILLIAN | She was a goddess to me. I would fall to the pavement.

NINA | Did you meet her?

GILLIAN | Yes, I did eventually. Once I’d become established, I met her. I adored her.

NINA | So you jumped right into choreography.

GILLIAN | I jumped right in. The extraordinary thing is that, from that, I never stopped. One minute, I wasn’t a choreographer, and the next minute, I was the choreographer. I was dropped in the pot.

NINA | And you made your way. Obviously, there must have been a real need, in the revue world, for a choreographer.

GILLIAN | Yes. There were plenty of balletic choreographers. There were about four choreographers in musicals, but our musical theatre hadn’t got to where it went once it got Andrew Lloyd Webber. It was much more amateur. There was a dearth of choreographers. There were fairly good people, but in the ballet. There wasn’t anything in between that was original. And that turned out to be me.

GILLIAN | I’m very much independent.

I become very close with the dancers. I believe in that strongly. When you talk about preparing, I believe you have to find out who it is that’s going to be in your piece or your musical. You have to feel their pulse as well as yours. You have to feel who they are and get to love them. Love is important.

NINA | What qualities do you look at when you are casting dancers?

GILLIAN | Line.

NINA | Line?

NINA | That’s fantastic.

GILLIAN | Line, number one. The line, be it a classical line, a jazz line—across-the-board, line! Some people, even major dancers, have a born, glorious line. And some people have not much else. Line is essential: it’s the way a body just drops into positions. So, I look for line.

GILLIAN | It is amazing, isn’t it? I just have no idea, to this day, how people could say to me, “Who taught you?” and be amazed when I say, “Nobody.” That’s why I’m dead against people having scholarships and a degree for choreography. I think it’s something that’s either in you or not.

I look for friendship. I always try to see who a potential cast member is as a person. I have a few silly things I do to make them laugh. And music. I would never willingly hire someone who is so pleased with themselves and so aware of their own look that they weren’t really listening. I like to find a person.

NINA | So you have to get out and do it.

NINA | Let’s talk about that. Do you have a set process when you start work on a new musical?

Where do you find inspiration for your choreography? Do you look at visuals? Do you look at books or listen to the music, or what do you do when you start work on a new musical?

My choreography always has acting in it. It’s never just a beautiful line, 40 million pirouettes, a great arabesque, a leap across the stage. It’s always, “What is their soul saying, what is their body saying, how is their mind reacting to the music?” I like when there’s a thought process going on and not just dancing. A thought process of “where am I, who am I, what is this music telling me to do?” I like to go into that in depth. Not just the technique, not just the steps.

GILLIAN | It depends on several things. The most important is the composer. I always steep myself in the music. The music is the first thing.

I either love the music or I don’t.

NINA | Has that changed since you started?

Do you look for different things now? Or did you look for these things right from the beginning?

If it needs a lot of reading, then I do it. Often it doesn’t. It needs you to have a feel for the subject. You have to just become one of the people in it. I don’t really go away and study it, prepare that, and do that, and for this bit and that bit. I’ve either got it in me or I haven’t.

GILLIAN | I don’t know. I think they just happened to me. I think that’s what I did.

Now, don’t ask me how I learned that. In our profession or any profession, some people were born with a certain tenacity or leaning.

Other people have to learn it. I didn’t have to learn it. I had the luck to fall on my feet amongst a lot of brilliant people and, I suppose, learn just by being there.

GILLIAN | In the end, I think it has to be within your soul.

I’ve never had any trouble, not even with Cats, which was, after all, a mammoth task. But it was a brilliant writer—Andrew—and another brilliant writer—T.S. Eliot. That’s all I need, really.

NINA | How do you work with a director when you start working on a new piece?

NINA | Let’s talk about film and television because you’ve also worked in those areas.

How does the interplay of storytelling and dance change, and how have you been able to move between these different mediums?

GILLIAN | I’m very lucky because I’ve worked in every medium except the circus. I missed out.

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NINA | No. There’s still time. I read that they’re getting rid of the elephants for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. There’s probably room for some more dancing now that they don’t have the elephants.

GILLIAN | I thought those were beautiful creatures. Wouldn’t I have loved to do something for them! I think they’re wondrous creatures, wonderful.

NINA | I am wondering how you approach dance in film and television and if the storytelling changes or not.

GILLIAN | Well, I am a television director. For years, I danced in it. [April Olrich] and I became sort of “names on everybody’s lips” in England at one point because we were a little duo, dancing twice a week on British television.

Then, I became a soloist and danced in a lot of big concerts and unusual shows on television.

Without knowing it, I learned how to shoot television. I learned about angles, about the movement of cameras, and the relationship between the cameras themselves. It just happened because I was always on it.

I was either just going to be natural and play at it or really take interest. I did the latter so that when I started to direct, I was ready. I never went to a school for television directing. But I had been, as I say, dancing so much, and I had been watching what the directors were doing, and when you’re watching a lot, if you’ve got any talent yourself, you’re either critical or you’re applauding, but you’re shaping what you would do. So, then you teach yourself.

I was sent for by David Rose, the head of Channel 4. I had done four years at the Royal Shakespeare Company, whose brilliant composer was Guy Woolfenden, who sadly died in April this year but with whom I had the great luck to do Comedy of Errors at the RSC. He and a friend, John Fletcher, wrote an extraordinary musical for television called The Various Ends of Mrs. F.’s Friends. David Rose said to me, “Two of our wonderful writers have given me this extraordinary musical, although I think it’s a bit mad, but I think we’ll have a go at it. We’ll do it. And when I said, ‘Who do you want to direct it?’ they both said, ‘We want Gillian Lynne.’”

I, excitedly, nearly fell under the carpet. I thought “Fame!” because they knew me. They knew me as the person who did all the staging at the RSC. But they were now talking about Channel 4, which was very, very renowned.

I thought, “Why have they done this? Why do they see that in me?” [David] looked at me piercingly because I think he thought to himself, “She hasn’t directed.” He said, “Can you do it?” I thought, “I’m going to say yes because

now or never.” So I said, “Of course, I can do it. I can’t wait to start. How thrilling. How wonderful.” And off I went.

NINA | You didn’t show him one bit of nervousness or wobbliness. You just said, “Of course, I can do it.”

GILLIAN | And he was thrilled because I think he was thinking, “Who am I going to get to do this because, if I find a director, then I’ve got to get a choreographer, and it’s a weird piece.” He was relieved that I said yes.

NINA | You solved two problems for him all at once.

GILLIAN | And it was a success.

[Within a] year, we did Cats and Phantom, and I directed Cabaret—the musical, not the event. I directed five huge productions for the BBC. So one minute, I wasn’t a director…

NINA | Well, the same thing as when you started choreographing. One minute, you were a dancer, and then, when you became a choreographer, boom, you were choreographing one thing after another. And so the same thing happened in TV. GILLIAN | That’s why I always say, when I have to give lectures—which, as I’m a Dame now, I seem to have to do—I always say, “Never say no.”

NINA | Never say no. That’s very good advice.

GILLIAN | Never say no.

Before I started choreographing, I acted a lot in rep, in plays, on television. I didn’t really have any acting training either, but I was always observant and had a million ideas myself. So I was being trained without knowing it. I went off and did those plays, huge parts. And then, suddenly, I met Dudley, and we formed a company that made a wonderful production, Collages, in the Edinburgh Festival in ’63, which took all the plaudits. Then, I was really a choreographer because I got three movies and Broadway.

David Merrick, who was a wonderful producer, who to this day—forgive me, all producers who are reading this, but for me, there’s only ever been one absolutely brilliant producer, and that was David Merrick. He was in London with a man called Binkie Beaumont, another wonderful producer. For one week every year, Binkie would come [to New York] and see everything in town. David would go to London and see everything in town. Binkie was reading the papers, and he said, “This is extraordinary.

We know this girl. She’s a very fine dancer, and she’s a good choreographer. But suddenly,

she has made a show, a totally different show with words and music as well as dance. You’d better go and see it.” So David came up to see Collages.

And it was a collage. It had jazz. It had classical. It had modern, as we called it then, but now you call it contemporary. It had some words. So it was words, music, jazz, classical, contemporary, and a lot of mime.

NINA | I was next going to ask about partnerships. I certainly know about the work you’ve done with Andrew Lloyd Webber and Jerry Herman, and one of your earliest partners was Dudley Moore. By working with him, David Merrick was able to see your work and then bring you over here, and one thing led to another.

GILLIAN | It absolutely did. And when I look back at it now, I think to myself, how on earth did all this happen? But it sort of flowed along like a river.

I met Andrew when I was doing some special work for Cameron Mackintosh—with whom I worked all the time—on his production of Oklahoma!. I was putting in a new Ado Annie (the girl who played her is now one of my best friends and married to Tom Selleck!) when the stage manager rushed onto the stage and said I had to take a phone call from Cameron. I said, “I can’t talk to him now! I’m in the middle of rehearsing his show!” Eventually, I was given a message: “Tell her to get on the 5:50 train from Bristol to London. Get off at Newbury and Andrew Lloyd Webber will be waiting at the station for her to drive her to his house to play her his score for Cats.” And that’s the first I heard of it.

So my first introduction to Andrew was sitting in his house in the country, each of us with a glass of white wine, while he played me the score of Cats. I found out later that night, when I finally managed to get home to my newlywed husband, that Andrew wanted me to do the show with him!

NINA | When you think about Dudley Moore or Andrew Lloyd Webber or Jerry Herman, what makes a good collaboration work?

GILLIAN | In the case of Andrew, I saw immediately that he has a seam of sadness in him and in his music. If you feel that, you’re into his music very easily. I think if you miss it, you miss an essence of him. I think it’s essential that you feel the inside part of someone.

Andrew is a funny creature. He’s difficult, he’s brilliant, he’s very dear. He’s a very cuddly person. I felt at ease with him, right off from the first show, which was Cats.

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Then there’s a wonderful writer, David Heneker, a fantastic man. I worked a lot with him because I [choreographed the film of Half a Sixpence]. And that’s where I did my first big directing on a movie. The director of Half a Sixpence, George Sidney, said, “We’re not going to do ‘Flash, Bang, Wallop!’" Well now, “Flash, Bang, Wallop!” is one of the big songs in that musical. Everybody knows “Flash, Bang, Wallop!” It’s a very important number, and it’s a gift because it’s such comic relief.

And [the lead actor, Tommy Steele] looked at me and said, “But Gillie, if we don’t do 'Flash, Bang, Wallop!', the film won’t work.” So we leapt on a plane and went to see Paramount Studios and said…

NINA | In Los Angeles? You flew from London to…?

GILLIAN | We did. We said, “What are we to do? We respect George, we love him, but we need to do it.” They said, “Go ahead and do it.” Well, that’s all very well to say. So George said to me, “Well, I don’t understand it. You direct it.” So that was my first bit of lone-wolf directing. It was easy for me.

NINA | That was your first. What an introduction.

GILLIAN | I learned a lot with that.

NINA | I have to ask, because certainly some wonderful women like Molly Lake and Ninette de Valois mentored you early on. But

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it seems that most of these partnerships and collaborations in the business have been with men. I wonder what it was like for you, as a woman, working in a very maledominated, male-centric environment.

GILLIAN | Well, darling, you know what?

It’s tough. I found it difficult, but I’ve got an awful lot of energy, which helps. And I’m very determined. I won’t give up, and I’ve got a lot of ideas. I never said, “Well, let me go home and think about that.” I can always go on in the moment if I have to. I don’t know where that came from because I didn’t have any training for it, as we said. It was just a little bubble inside.

I think it’s much less today. There are wonderful women film directors, some pretty marvelous theatre directors. However, I do think we are, as a race, all aware of the fact that we’re not always popular.

NINA | So, to young female choreographers, you would say that you got through by just being determined, full of ideas, and never giving up.

GILLIAN | Full of ideas. If everybody’s going sideways, I can always say, “Well, what if we did so and so?” And usually, they say, “That’s good.”

That’s one.

Always being ready with a solution, even if you then have to change it. Never say you can’t do.

I think it’s important that you are prepared to listen to every word that is said, ready to dive in at a difficult moment.

NINA | I think your life and the discussion we’re going through offers a lot of instruction as to how to live in this business.

GILLIAN | I think the most important thing of the lot is: never say no.

NINA | You can do anything.

GILLIAN | You can do anything. I think, as a woman, you have to be prepared not only to listen, but also don’t hang back. Don’t hang back. Be there eagerly. Even if you make a suggestion and it’s foolish, at least you’re not sitting there like a powerless human being.

NINA | Right. Jump in.

GILLIAN | Jump in, and I think then you learn.

When you jump in, it might not work, or it might. But either way, you’re going to learn and go on a step.

NINA | You’ve worked on so many productions and, of course, directed the first “working class” musicals in England; The Matchgirls and Love on the Dole and in so many different disciplines. Cats and Phantom are the longestrunning shows and the most beloved in the world. Were you aware, when they were first being created, that you were making history or a part of something special?

OPPOSITE LEFT

Program from Lynne’s Collages at the Savoy Theatre OPPOSITE RIGHT

Posing in an arabesque while a member of the Sadler's Wells Ballet Company, 1949 PHOTO Roger Wood LEFT

Rehearsing for Cats, 1985 PHOTO Louanne Richards RIGHT

As the Black Ballerina in Balanchine's Ballet Imperial in 1951

GILLIAN | We were so nervous at the first preview of Cats in London. We gave the kids a big kiss and, once the lights were down, we ran to the bar.

NINA | How was it working with Hal Prince and Maria Bjornson?

NINA | Ran to the bar for a drink.

Hal and I had wanted to work with each other for about 20 years. In fact, his opening gambit at my first meeting with him, he opened the door and said, “You don’t mean after 22 years we’ve got a chance to work together.” He and I hit it off right away. I don’t know why. We both admired each other at a distance, and we got on like a house on fire right away. That whole team did. Maria, Hal, Andrew—Andy Bridge, the lighting man—and Andrew himself.

Somehow or other, we all gelled. You know when a show opens, there’s always some reporter who says, “Oh, tell us the inside story. I bet you’ve had a lot of dreadful rows, getting something as good as this up.” I always say, “You’re totally wrong. This was the most wonderful moment from almost the first day. It just happened.”

GILLIAN | A stiff drink. We were down there, and we were all worried sick. We hadn’t gotten the money for the show. Suddenly, somebody said, “Listen,” and we heard shouts. We crept nearer the stage and heard enormous applause. The first theatre [we were in], the New London, had those vomitoriums so you could creep up and watch and listen without being seen. We crept up, and it was clear right off that we had a hit.

NINA | But when you were creating it…

GILLIAN | We had to wait for it to get under way and feel the public love it. We couldn’t believe it.

NINA | But from that first show, you saw people loved it, and then it went on. And Phantom?

GILLIAN | Phantom was different because Phantom is Andrew’s offer to Sarah [Brightman], his lover at the time. It was, “I have written this for you.” It was in wonderful condition. It sort of somehow gelled with itself.

And then we had the brilliant Hal Prince, the brilliant Maria.

GILLIAN | It was extraordinary.

NINA | Well, with your ballet background, I don’t think there could have been a better person to choreograph Phantom. It was like it was written for you. Maybe Andrew did write it for you.

Your original work on Phantom and Cats was fantastic. Those shows became phenomena and generated many, many companies. You and I saw every Cats company that was out on the road. I remember you would come out and talk to all of the dancers. You kept the connection between all of those various touring companies and the original company.

GILLIAN | Kristen Blodgette, the lovely musical director, and I were talking the other day. We were saying that David Caddick, the musical director, and Kristen and I worked together for about two days each year—sometimes even more—of really tough polishing. I used to ring Bernie Jacobs—the wonderful theatre owner, producer, and mentor at the Shuberts—and say, “Bernie, I’m giving the kids such a hard time. Can we have some wine and sandwiches?” He always said yes.

NINA | Maybe wine and sandwiches are the key to maintaining the choreography of a show.

GILLIAN | Well, yes. It was a relief after you’ve given your all.

NINA | I think there is a point to that, to taking care of a company and looking after them.

GILLIAN | I knew they appreciated that I came over and looked after it. But I think they really liked that the producers looked after them too—that they knew I’d ask for it. But not every producer does that, as you know.

NINA | How do you maintain and look after multiple companies of a show? Particularly as an artist, you’ve created something really special that first time. What happens when you have to put a second and a third and a fourth and a fifth company out? Doesn’t that get diluted?

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GILLIAN | Because of the iPhone, the electronic takeover, a lot of heart has got lost. More and more, I miss the feeling of a company, the feeling of togetherness in productions. It’s all sort of bigger and bigger, and crueler, in a way. I don’t know if I should say this, but I don’t think kids now work quite as hard.

GILLIAN | Well, you’re very lucky.

Let’s face it. You have wonderful assistants. But in the end, what you have to do is, you have to do your own special polish.

NINA | So you can rely on an assistant to put the show up, but you have to come in for the casting and to do the polish.

GILLIAN | You don’t have to, but it’s much better if you do. And that’s it, I think. Not everyone is prepared to do that at all.

NINA | You told me you just came back from a five-hour rehearsal yesterday at Phantom here in New York. What does it feel like to go back and revisit artistically something you did 30 years ago?

Rehearsing for The Look of Love with Juliet Prowse, Donna King + Ute Lemper, January 1990 PHOTO c/o BBC Photographer

GILLIAN | It’s quite self-disciplining. You look at it and think, “Why did I do that bit there? I could have done that better.”

NINA | Well, you’ve moved on as an artist, haven’t you? You’ve learned things in the intervening years.

GILLIAN | I always whip it in. I was doing that difficult “Masquerade” the other day. I never liked the number. I don’t feel terrible about saying this because everybody else likes it, and I told Andrew to his face: it doesn’t sound like the foyer of a French opera house on opening night. It sounds like a cowboy riding down the range, whirling his hat. [Andrew] said, “Oh, you are so sweet.” We were all sweeter then, I guess. He said, “Well, Gillie, I’ll go and sit where I can do it.” And he went away. Two days later he came back and said, “I’ve tried, but I have, by now, woven that tune into the little monkey’s theme. It goes all through the show. I can’t change it.” I said, “Then it’s up to me.” So I made two attempts at that number.

I still—every time I see it—change something.

I’ve never been satisfied.

NINA | So, in revisiting something 30 years later, or 10 or 15 or 20, you can’t resist the impulse to change it a bit.

GILLIAN | I can’t. I know I’m quite rare in that.

I want to get to work immediately because I’m a workaholic. But also sometimes you get a lovely surprise.

NINA | What do you wish stage directors knew about working with choreographers, since you’ve been on both sides of the aisle there?

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GILLIAN | I think they should be prepared to give more and then listen more. In other words, they should say, “Look. This is what I want. I don’t know what to do, but this is what I sort of see.” And then take interest. Come and have a look, and go out again. Sometimes what happens is they’re there, you’re here, and…

NINA | They’re in different rooms.

GILLIAN | I think there should be more rapport between the two. You watch the artists’ performances growing differently in each, differently in the staging of the musical numbers, and what they’re doing in all the scenes. You can learn so much how each role is coming up.

NINA | Each process informs the other process.

GILLIAN | It does. What’s more, you can learn so much because, if you come to see what I’m doing and you’ve had trouble with somebody in a scene and you see them doing something else, you think that’s it. Likewise, if you go and see the progress of the plot, it’s very good if you then go back and look at your own work and think, “I missed that. I must get that in.”

I think they should always have a big martini together once a week and go through it.

NINA | That’s good advice, a big martini once a week.

GILLIAN | Big martini once a week and crisscross discussion.

NINA | The business of creating theatre seems to have changed a lot during your career.

What are the biggest changes you’ve noticed, and have these changes or the changed environment—the technology—affected how you approach your work?

NINA | I agree with you about the togetherness during the production period. In the old days, when we didn’t have headphones, people were always yelling. So you knew what was going on. Now, everyone has headsets on, and there’s all this silence, and you sit and wonder, “What’s going on? We’re waiting for something to be finished.”

Everybody is working. We’re just not all in the process together.

GILLIAN | Not in the process and, if you’re standing on the stage doing something and you look into the stalls, all you see is a sea of machines.

NINA | A sea of machines and tech tables, yes.

GILLIAN | We never had that. We had our little crew. We had the lighting and the orchestrator, and we were like a group. We used to go out to lunch and talk, didn’t we? There’s a lack of heart and togetherness and, of course, darling, there’s such a width of things to do, other than the theatre, which I think it’s all right, but it doesn’t…

NINA | You mean the competition from other forms of entertainment pulling on both the performers and audiences?

GILLIAN | I do. I find that sad. And also, where in the midst of it—and I’m always saying this to Cameron [Mackintosh]—where in the midst of it are they finding the new Hammerstein and Rodgers, the new wonderful writers? Because they are not writing what we’re talking about…

NINA | …for the theatre. They’ve been pulled into other disciplines.

GILLIAN | There are some wonderful people, but I think the writing of the sort of musicals that we’ve been talking about—that really embrace theatre and bind it together and run for a long time—I’m not sure where that is.

It looks to me as if it’s gone out of the window a bit.

NINA | Jazz sounds, did you say?

NINA | I was going to ask what attributes interest you most or what do you think writers should be writing about in musical theatre these days.

GILLIAN | Sounds that aren’t making something.

NINA | Sounds without a melody.

What is your favorite curse word?

GILLIAN | I certainly think they should be writing about human beings. I mean, they always write about everything, but we are still human beings. We still have to go through illness and love and hate and joy. I think, more than ever, if they could write about love and combination and sticking together and creating together.

NINA | What binds us together.

GILLIAN | And what binds us together. But it isn’t like that now because everyone wants to be very clever and very technical and just make a mark for not the right reasons. But I think, if they could really stick together and make wonderful productions together…It’s so much what I feel. There we all were, in the stalls, with our own little bit of technology, but therefore we were much…I was more aware of you, you were more aware of me…

NINA | We need to concentrate on what binds us together and our closeness.

GILLIAN | What is going to happen to all those poor refugees? If we’re not careful, we’ll all be spoilt and killed and stamped upon, and then we will need what we’ve been talking about, which is that togetherness. In the end, the art of theatre is togetherness.

NINA | The art of theatre is togetherness.

GILLIAN | I think so.

NINA | I agree. You have to come together to celebrate a piece of theatre. None of us want to sit alone in a theatre and watch a show. We want to sit alone in front of our TV, but not a theatre piece. We want a house of people around us so we can feel together.

GILLIAN | If we’ve been able to grow up and rehearse and tutor together, then there’s a rapport that grows, which we can’t do without, really. And if we’re not careful, with all the electrical side of things and the television and the this and the new iPad and the new that, we’re going to lose that rapport that does make a beautiful piece of theatre.

GILLIAN | Oh, I’m not allowed to say it, I don’t think.

NINA | Well, you can say it, or don’t.

GILLIAN | “Asshole.”

Tommy Steele + Lynne in Half-A- Sixpence at Paramount Studios, 1967

NINA | I’m going to close by asking you just a few questions. We have a program here, Inside the Actors Studio. James Lipton moderated it and would interview performers and directors.

He had a list of 10 very short questions, and I’m going to ask them of you.

What is your favorite word?

GILLIAN | Well, I was going to say love because I can’t live without love. Warmth.

NINA | Warmth. What is your least favorite word?

GILLIAN | I was going to say “fuck,” but that’s not my least favorite word at all because it represents a lovely thing. Stupid.

NINA | What turns you on creatively, spiritually, emotionally?

GILLIAN | Music will always be the thing that gets to me.

NINA | What turns you off creatively, spiritually, or emotionally?

GILLIAN | Creativity and spirituality for the sake of cleverness with no heart that doesn’t take us anywhere.

NINA | What sound or noise do you love?

GILLIAN | The sea. I’m a Pisces, you see.

NINA | What profession, other than your own, would you like to attempt?

GILLIAN | Piano.

NINA | Composing or playing the piano?

GILLIAN | Playing, because I know I would compose if I could only play. When I was a kid, my very first term at school, my parents let me learn piano. But I had an absolute fiend of a teacher, who was so cruel. She got hold of my cheek with such strength that a tooth fell out.

NINA | She pulled your cheek, and the tooth fell out?

GILLIAN | I ran home, and I had the most wonderful parents in the world, and the only criticism I’ve ever had on them is that they didn’t then say, “Darling, you’ve got to grow— it’s a cruel world, it’s full of discipline. We will speak to that woman [if we must], but you’ve got to keep going.” They let me give up [the piano]. All of my life, I’ve regretted it.

NINA | Two more questions. What profession would you like not to do?

GILLIAN | I don’t think I could stand to be just a cook. I love cooking, but like a cook stuck in a factory or somewhere, I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t stand that.

NINA | And then the last question. If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say to you as you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

GILLIAN | Go back and try again.

NINA | What sound or noise do you hate?

GILLIAN | It has to be jazz that has absolutely no tune of any sort, but merely sounds.

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OPPOSITE

Nora Fiffer, Jerod Haynes + Eric Lynch in the Court Theatre’s Native Son; scenic designer Regina Garcia PHOTO

Michael Brosilow

SERET SCOTT DIRECTOR AS ACTIVIST + CULTURAL HISTORIAN

When SERET SCOTT received a Drama Desk Award for her 1974 Broadway acting debut, the acclaim followed years of arts activism engaging with the causes of civil rights and women’s rights. What she observed, participated in, and created during the 60s and 70s laid much of the groundwork for her decades-long career as a nationally recognized director and playwright— and much-loved collaborator and role model. For SDC Journal, Seret recently spoke with La Jolla Playhouse Artistic Director CHRISTOPHER ASHLEY about her experiences creating theatre in rural Southern communities and the streets of New York—and how she can feel the spirit of activism rising again.

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CHRIS | Let’s start by getting the shape of your life. Let’s go back to the beginning of Seret.

SERET | I was born and raised in Washington, D.C., and was in elementary school in the early 50s when schools started to be desegregated.

My parents were very interested in the arts so we went to many plays at Howard University.

My father was a clerk at the Pentagon and a taxi driver. My mom went back to college and became a social worker.

At age 5 or 6 when I started printing, I wrote plays. Dialogue would take a stack of pages because, with my big block letters, only 10 words fit on a page. I performed after dinner for my parents and my sister. The plays were six to eight minutes long with an intermission [during which] I had a commercial for a product that I made up. My parents seemed to think this was normal. Eventually I got my friends involved and we did my plays on the back porch of the apartment building.

CHRIS | And you moved out of that into dance?

One time I saw JFK on the lawn with JohnJohn and two Secret Service guys. They were sitting, rolling a little toy football to John-John, who was still doing the Frankenstein walk.

One Secret Service guy was leaning on a tree, smoking a cigarette and reading the paper. The other was sitting on the ground with JFK. Another time, early 1961-ish, I remember seeing people in front of the White House, kneeling. I walked over and there was the man I had read about in the newspaper as a “troublemaker.” His name was Martin Luther King, Jr. It was a sit-in. A couple of years later, in 1963, I attended the March on Washington!

In high school, I got a copy of a Tulane Drama Review and read about the Free Southern Theater, an integrated theatre company in Mississippi. They rode around doing plays any place they could with themes of voter registration and integration, social protest.

The thought that theatre could be used that way fascinated me. To do Waiting for Godot for sharecroppers…

be an all-Black company from here on in.” That effectively dissolved the Free Southern Theater.

I was at NYU, living on the Lower East Side.

[It was] the best time to be a college student.

Along with [taking] classes, you could march for or protest everything—the Vietnam War, Women’s Lib, civil rights…you could be a part of something that had texture, feeling.

I was involved in street theatre—what were sometimes called “happenings.” Most had to do with social justice. We would be out on the street, in Washington Square Park and Tompkins Square Park. Also, my rent was $54 a month! The best time!

Then in 1968, Dr. King was killed and it threw me into a real quandary. I realized that as much as I was experiencing at NYU, I should be someplace else, someplace not so far removed from what was really taking place. Gilbert left school and went back South to revitalize the Free Southern Theater. I got in touch and asked if I could join.

So, early in 1969, I went South and joined the Free Southern Theater. We were based in New Orleans and had one van and two cars.

Our little office in the Ninth Ward was on a corner and in front was the grassy, grown-over

“The Free Southern Theater opened everything for me: arts and activism.”

SERET SCOTT

SERET | I studied modern with Erika Thimey, a woman who had studied with Martha Graham.

When Ms. Graham was in town she’d come by the studio. I had maybe two classes with her.

At age 16, I performed with the Washington Light Opera Company as a dancer in Kismet. It was a huge mostly local company, maybe 55 people, and I was one of only two black people.

I remember noticing it. I would look around...I just thought “maybe I’m not supposed to be here.”

To get to dance on Saturdays, I had to take two buses. The big transfer location was in front of the White House and people waiting for a bus crossed the street and stood in front of the White House’s iron gates.

I went to historically black North Carolina College for one year and while [I was] there, NYU School of the Arts sent a flyer down announcing auditions for their inaugural year.

I auditioned over spring break 1966 and got in on scholarship. There I met grad student Gilbert Moses who, along with Doris A. Derby, John O’Neal, and Richard Schechner, had cofounded the Free Southern Theater (FST)—the group I wrote about three years before. Gilbert said the theatre [had] disbanded so he returned to college. In the 60s there were several schisms between black and white members of civil rights organizations. Blacks were saying, “You can belong to our organization but you can’t occupy an upper-level admin position.

We will lead our groups.” Many whites stepped down or left altogether. The rift in FST pulled it apart. The company said, “We’re going to

tracks of the streetcar named Desire. Isn’t that fabulous? We’d perform in community centers, church basements, backyards, parking lots— and every now and then, the edge of a cotton field. We put up platforms and sometimes had costumes, sometimes not. Initially, we had scripted plays or we did improvisations around whatever was happening in that community.

CHRIS | Was the show always being reinvented in response to the news of that day and that week?

SERET | If we knew they were in the middle of a boycott, we’d include that. We weren’t always welcomed by other Black organizations, partly because doing plays didn’t make a lot of sense to their more political agenda. In rural towns, we were put up in the houses of locals. They were austere, clean, small plywood structures with walls covered in newsprint to keep the air from coming through. What bothered me was that they always wanted to give me the bed. I don’t mind the floor. We were guests, so they SUMMER 2016 | SDC JOURNAL

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Carmen Roman, Eric Lynch + Jerod Haynes in the Court Theatre’s Native Son; scenic designer Regina Garcia PHOTO

Michael Brosilow

would give you the one bed. I was in a home where a woman had six kids—and two beds.

And basically no food.

Not only did they give you the bed but they wanted to make you a tomato sandwich.

That two slices of bread and half [of a] tomato would have fed two kids. But we were not allowed to say no.

CHRIS | Did you ever feel personally in jeopardy?

SERET | I didn’t have any prior experience with the Deep South. Two civil rights workers, “foot soldiers,” came to our office in New Orleans and gave us bare-knuckles rules about surviving the movement: Notice all cars, especially if they circle the block. Check license plates, if any. Don’t wear sandals to a march or demonstration; you have to move quickly.

Never give out the name of the person you’re staying with. Travel in pairs. Let somebody know when you leave and when you’re expected back.

Along with [the] black organizations you’ve read about, there were some—mostly in rural areas—not often talked about. There was a Black organization, the Deacons for Defense, which was somewhat underground. The

Deacons were armed and from mostly rural parts of the Deep South.

Say you were a sharecropper and a cross burned outside your door. At a local place for Blacks, you [would] say, “A cross burned in front of my door. Sure wish I could talk to somebody.” That night, two or three large Black men would be at your door. They were Deacons. “We understand you had a problem,” [they would say].

They helped [Free Southern Theater] one night. On a dusty, unpaved rural road, we saw a car behind us and thought we were being followed. Then we spotted a pickup truck ahead and realized we were boxed in, trapped. And there were rifles pointed at us from the pickup ahead. As we got closer to the pickup, we saw three or four Black men standing on the truck bed with rifles. It was the Deacons. The car following us made an abrupt U-turn.

CHRIS | Was there a transformative moment or a moment of awakening for you?

SERET | On spring break at NYU 1968. I flew People Airline home [on a] $16 student fare! I was walking through the airport and saw a man at a counter. It was Dr. King. I was so excited. I stood there and waited for him to look up. He

did, and I starting waving but I was so excited that it looked as though I was just opening and closing my hand at him. He looked at me a moment and then did the same motion back!

About 10 days later, he went to Memphis. Why did I see him again at this point?

[It was after that when] I decided to go South.

I just didn’t know why I was doing plays. The Free Southern Theater opened everything for me: arts and activism. To this day, it is probably the single most important time of my life.

CHRIS | Were there particular moments you remember of feeling real satisfaction or, “Wow, I can feel this work having an effect?”

SERET | Yes, after performances people asked questions that said to us [that] they got it.

I knew there was little paying work for me once I got back to New York or any place really, even regionals. The few recently established Black theaters had their own companies. A play we did at FST, Slave Ship by LeRoi Jones (now Amiri Baraka) was directed by Gilbert Moses and picked up Off-Broadway by the Chelsea Theater Center in Brooklyn, NY. It was a phenomenon at that time. The audience was looking into the belly of the ship. We traveled to Europe with the show.

ABOVE RIGHT

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c/o Allison J. Davis for LeRoy Neiman Art Center

[Then] back in NYC in 1974, a friend told me about a play he thought I was perfect for, My Sister, My Sister, by Ray Aranha. I won the lead role of an emotionally and sexually abused young girl who developed mental health issues as she got older. The production was directed

by Paul Weidner at Hartford Stage Company and moved to an Off-Broadway house and then to Broadway. Along the way I won a Drama Desk Award. An organization for Black psychologists came to see the play because mental illness in Black children had never been dramatically explored at that time.

While the show was still up at Long Wharf, I got an offer from New Mexico Rep. While [I was] out there, I got an offer from Crossroads Theater in New Jersey, and while that was happening, another show came up. My first directing jobs were back-to-back for maybe five or six years but it took that long for me to realize I was no longer an actress; I hadn’t even thought in that direction. What people knew of me at that point was just [as a] director.

Directing certainly extended my career. For Black women my age, wonderful actresses— there’s so little work.

I worked regularly after My Sister. A couple of years later, I was asked to stand by for Ntozake Shange in For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf when the show moved to Broadway. Ntozake didn’t stay with the production after opening night, which meant [that] less than a week after I was contracted, I was permanently in the show. I stayed with it for about eight months and then did a film.

CHRIS | Do you feel that there’s a particular director, or a few, that has influenced the way you work?

CHRIS | Let’s talk about your transition to directing. I know you’ve sometimes [said] that you didn’t necessarily choose to direct.

SERET | I hadn’t considered directing at all.

Writing was my passion. I had a chance meeting on the street with two young Black producers who were trying to mount a (very low budget) showcase in lower Manhattan. The play, Anna, was by Charles Dumas. It was about incest in a Black family and the producers thought it would be best served by a Black woman director. I told them I hadn’t ever directed…so, okay.

I sent one of the promo flyers from the show to a friend who was a playwright, Nancy Fales Garrett. In the most bizarre set of circumstances, Nancy gave the flyer to Long Wharf Theatre, where her new play Some Sweet Day was going to be on the main stage that fall. She said to Artistic Director Arvin Brown, “This is somebody I’d like you to consider as a director.” Arvin knew me as an actor but gave me a call.

For the Long Wharf to be talking to me about their new play of the season, and for the main stage, with 10 characters…I was stunned. There was no way in the world I was going to get it, so for the interview, I wasn’t as terrified as I should have been. There were three people in the room: Edgar [Rosenblum], Arvin [Brown], and Joey [Tillinger]. They asked me questions about the script. I didn’t know the right answers, so I gave them my real answers. The script had many senior characters and they were concerned about whether the older actors would respond to me as director. I said they would because I would hire my senior friends so they’d listen to me. Arvin said, “You have no idea what a perfect answer that was.”

a part of who you are at this time, so that I can build on that.

I really encourage actors to talk about their experiences—their perspectives—as a way of understanding the play together. I sometimes speak about my experiences down South and how they shaped me. Around the table, [the actors] ask many questions of me. I guess it’s sort of living history to them.

SERET | Jack O’Brien would be the first person to come to mind. When I started working at the Old Globe [in San Diego], Jack just believed in me. He thought I could do almost anything, so he let me. I did 12 shows there. It gave me a kind of confidence that perhaps I would not have had. When people believe in you... That was Jack.

I feel it’s coming around again—that people want to know about activism. For many people of my generation, activism worked its way into our artistic lives. I’ve written a two-character play, Second Line, about activism and choices we make. The story is about a Black couple at the University of Pennsylvania—the first in their families to go to college—who are challenged by current events and their consciousness.

The play is based in the civil rights movement and Vietnam. My mother was a civilian social worker sent to Vietnam by USAID during the last 15 months of the war to address the growing population of Vietnamese orphans.

She was evacuated out when Saigon fell.

CHRIS | Can you talk a little bit about your process for directing plays? Do you treat classic plays and new plays differently? Do you feel like you’ve changed through the years?

Me, a cultural historian, hmmm. There are so many people who never got recognition for the things we take for granted today. Like voting.

That’s why I step back from that [label].

SERET | I definitely feel [as though] I’ve changed through the years but I still approach classic plays and new work in a similar manner.

I’m very interested in the world the play lives in, the politics of the period, the point of view of both characters and events.

CHRIS | You have gone back to school as an adult. What was that experience like? And do you think it affected your work as a director?

I love Shakespeare but prefer the Greeks.

There’s something about that work that gets inside of me, just fascinates me. For contemporary and classic plays, I don’t allow the theme of the work to get so “big” that you cannot enter it from your own humanity.

Those stories are told over and over because of the humanity or lack thereof. Not much has changed. When Jason left Medea for a younger woman, Medea killed their children.

A devastated Jason asks, “Why did you kill our children?” whereupon Medea replies, “Because I hate you more than I love them.” I feel that’s exactly the political temperature of this country [right now]: a deep-seated disrespect, disregard, and sometimes even hatred, for the people.

CHRIS | I think that’s a headline.

I have heard you referred to as a cultural historian and activist, as a director. Do you think that’s true? How do you feel history and activism manifest in your work?

SERET | One thing I tell actors every single time is: Don’t try to figure out what I want. Give me

SERET | Being at the New School in New York City was a great experience. I wanted to sit in the classroom with 20-year-olds. I could not have loved it more. Hearing the things that matter to them, where they’re coming from, what they want to do and how they want to do it, [was] exciting. At first I didn’t speak up because I thought nobody wanted to hear from this little old lady who was in college in the 60s.

I found that they couldn’t wait to hear stories about school at that time. Even some of the professors.

CHRIS | What advice would you have for young artists just starting out?

SERET | Work as much as possible, no matter what the venue. Often casting directors scour small venues looking for the next interesting artist. And build communities. Back in the day, we talked to each other. Face-to-face. That allowed you to know who was thriving and who was not. Young people don’t know each other [now]; they communicate by electronics.

Communication is essential in a world that generally doesn’t understand artists. So I say, community: figure out how to do that. Know that somebody cares that you’re alright.

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JO

RACHEL

ANNE

LEIGH

The Freelance Life A ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION MODERATED BY EVAN YIONOULIS When I chaired SDC’s Off-Broadway negotiations a couple of years back, I thought a lot about the freelance directors whose work brings such vitality to the arena. I wondered if SDC Journal readers might share my interest in hearing from some of these directors, so I asked a few fellow SDC Board Members who work Off-Broadway (as well as regionally and in other jurisdictions) to come into the office one morning before rehearsals in April 2016. JO BONNEY, RACHEL CHAVKIN, ANNE KAUFFMAN, LEIGH SILVERMAN and I talked about their freelance practices, getting started and keeping fulfilled, mentorship, the juggle of work and life. I hope you’ll find their insights and candor as enlightening and refreshing as I did and get a sense of the depth of experience and understanding these extraordinary women, each at different points in their careers, bring to Board discourse.

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EVAN YIONOULIS | So, how did you come to directing, how did you get your start? Rachel, do you want to begin?

RACHEL CHAVKIN | Sure. I got my start founding a company called the TEAM and then segued slowly into freelance directing while still running the company. Though I loved and was really empowered by the TEAM’s work, I also began to feel like, “I need to know other people and kinds of performance as well.” I did every lab I could find, like Soho Rep Writer/ Director Lab, the Women’s Project Lab, and worked with whoever I enjoyed talking to. That was the beginning of it.

EVAN | Playwrights you met through those labs?

RACHEL | Yes. And I met people through grad school at Columbia and did a small show in the Red Room down on East Fourth Street, next door to New York Theatre Workshop.

But I would say the biggest juncture in my freelance life was Three Pianos, which I came to through the downtown experimental company scene. [The project] was three amazing guys— including my now-frequent-collaborator Dave Malloy—who came together to make a show about Schubert’s Winterreise cycle. Alec Duffy, another of the writer/performers and who now runs JACK [in Brooklyn] produced it at the Ontological with his company Hoi Polloi, and it got picked by New York Theatre Workshop for a transfer.

LEIGH SILVERMAN | I was always a theatre nerd. I was told that I was a terrible actor, thank God, early in my life. I studied Directing at Carnegie Mellon. I’ve always been freelance, since I moved to New York and have been doing it for 20 years.

EVAN | Jo? JO BONNEY | I didn’t start in theatre. I went to art school and studied video, photography, and graphics. I then worked in TV. When I came to New York in 1980, there was a very vibrant downtown art scene. I was making work for very little money and living on very little money. A friend and I received a grant to make a short film and we hired a guy who had been recommended to us to do a voiceover and write some script dialogue. He ended up becoming my husband, Eric Bogosian. (laughter) I segued into theatre through working on his plays without actually naming myself as director. We were creating pieces and putting them up in clubs and performance spaces, then later, actual theatres. It was through people watching me work, like Mark Russell at P.S. 122 and Joe Papp at The Public, and taking me

aside to say, “You’re a director. We want to start giving you other possibilities.”

It was a very organic process, learning on my feet and learning the terminology, and even how to collaborate with designers. I kind of love the freelance thing because essentially I love not knowing what I’m doing in the future— although more and more, I’m finding that’s not the case. Seasons are locking in way ahead [of time] now. Sometimes I feel a little trapped. On the other hand, I don’t want to complain because I’m delighted with the new plays I’m working on and am excited by the new playwrights.

EVAN | Anne?

ANNE KAUFFMAN | I was a terrible actor. It took a long time for people to tell me that. I think I always knew I was going to be in theatre somehow, growing up. I don’t know why.

I’m one of six children. Maybe it was to get attention. I was always very dramatic.

I realized that as an actor, I would check out in rehearsals unless the director was talking to me. Someone gave me a script to direct in my dorm at undergrad and I suddenly realized that directing demanded so much attention on so many different levels. It was thrilling to feel responsible for so many things. I think of myself as a lazy person and it felt like directing was the only thing that really brought me out of my laziness because I was firing on all cylinders.

I came to New York in the early 90s and assisted at CSC and the Vineyard, etc. I went to grad school at UCSD. When I came back, my first real entrée was a piece I did with Anne Washburn, which was a part of The Civilians, a company I helped found. That put me on the map a little bit, along with shows that I did with New Georges and Clubbed Thumb. I was very much involved in the downtown small-theatre community.

Like Jo, I like the freelance life, for the most part. It’s both exhausting and terrifying in terms of worrying about the next job and being responsible for your schedule, but it also allows me the most freedom. There have been a couple of artistic director jobs that I’ve gone for as co-artistic director with my dear friend and colleague Ken Rus Schmoll. We would go into interviews and get pretty far along but then I started to panic and feel claustrophobic.

So I like the freedom of the freelance career.

EVAN | I want to get back to talking about freelancing and the idea of artistic home in a minute. But first, I was wondering, have there been mentors in your life?

LEIGH | I did a lot of assisting in the first couple of years. I also did an internship at New York Theatre Workshop, which was foundational for me in terms of the artistic relationships I developed for the next 10 years.

Also, they hired me to answer phones, work wardrobe, and telemarket. They really helped make a life in New York possible for me, both as an artist but also just as a person trying to live here and do the work. That was really important and I am so grateful to [Artistic Director] Jim Nicola and [Associate Artistic Director] Linda Chapman and consider them my first friends and mentors.

Howard Shalwitz [Artistic Director at Woolly Mammoth] saw the first play that I ever directed when I was in high school. The play was probably terrible, but he said, “You are interesting and I’m going to hire you someday to work at my theatre.” And he did, as one of my first regional jobs. Even though I don’t feel like he was a mentor, he was someone who, at an early time, said, “Yeah, you.” I felt seen and appreciated by him and that was incredibly sustaining. There are those people who are important as the people who give you opportunities.

EVAN | Anne?

ANNE | A little early on in my career, Jim and Linda [at New York Theatre Workshop], too. Jim continues to challenge and push me and ask me about projects. Early on, Michael Hackett was the first teacher to call me a director. In graduate school, Les Waters was a mentor. But I just didn’t have a lot of people for years.

When I first came to New York, I found jobs where I could work that had flexible hours. I made opportunities. My director colleagues, friends, and I had a kind of scrappiness in the early 90s. We insinuated ourselves into various organizations. I worked for David Esbjornson at CSC: I bartered with him and said, “I’m working for you for free on this level, can you give me a space for a production?” I did that with a few other places, like Circle Rep. I think mentorship is a really important thing but I don’t feel like I had a lot of it.

EVAN | Jo? JO | I don’t think I had mentors, in the way I understand that word. I had, as Leigh said, people who saw me and told me I was viable as a director, that I could have an identity as a director. That was a huge thing when I first started working because I was so enmeshed in the downtown scene. I was not part of the mainstream theatre at all and I wasn’t surrounded by theatre artists. The idea of calling myself a director just seemed like sheer hubris.

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So the fact that some people I respected, like Joe Papp and Mark Russell, saw what I was doing and talked to me about other projects was very encouraging.

Joy Zinoman at Studio Theatre in Washington brought me there for my first out-of-town production and that was a huge step in understanding that there was a whole world of theatre in America and I could be a part of that.

I never assisted anyone. The first time I sat in another director’s rehearsal room was at the Sundance Theater Lab, where we were all invited to float around and watch the other workshop productions in process. That was so wonderful. You’re just thinking, “Oh, wow.

That’s how they talk to their actors. That’s what they do.” I’m not too sure it informed in any way what I did subsequently, but it was fascinating to be a fly on the wall, watching.

RACHEL | I was just going to say “watching.”

I went to NYU, so I was in the city. Then and still today, I’m at the theatre five nights a week. I was seeing stuff at P.S. 122, St. Ann’s, BAM. I would student rush or usher. It was a huge unofficial mentorship, though the artists didn’t know they were participating in that relationship with me. I was watching Ivo van Hove’s work, watching the companies a generation or two ahead of me and the TEAM such as Elevator Repair Service and the Wooster Group. [I saw] dance as well, especially William Forsythe. And I thought, “Oh, work can look this way.”

EVAN | You’re talking about self-study. I find I still do that for myself.

JO | I think that’s really productive. All the early stuff I saw—Richard Foreman, the Wooster Group, Mabou Mines, the work being done at The Kitchen and in alternative spaces like clubs and lofts—was very inspiring. Even if you weren’t witnessing the process, you were receiving that end product. It just hardwires you for possibilities. Even if you go down a road of doing more naturalistic work for a while, that’s always there as your background.

It’s so helpful. Going out and seeing stuff is just the riches of experience.

LEIGH | I think it’s interesting, though, that none of us really had a mentor who was that person who shepherded, or that experience in a very particular way that fits the definition of mentorship. I find that really interesting, because I know that it’s important to all of you, and it’s certainly important to me to be a person like that for the next generation.

None of us had that and, yet, I think it’s probably that lack of that that makes us want to provide that for the next generation. How

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do you think we can best do that? As women mentors.

RACHEL | I certainly think [about it in] choosing who’s going to assist me. During the past year, I’ve only had either female directors or directors of color. And then it’s about a sustained relationship with any of them: letters of recommendation, continued conversation, and trying to prioritize seeing their work, since you don’t really know an artist until you’ve seen their work.

JO | That becomes a big responsibility: you have to follow up when you bring someone on as your AD, particularly as we’re trying to widen the pool of young directors and help enhance their opportunities. As you accumulate your sort-of “family” of assistant directors, it becomes incumbent on you to make the time.

ANNE | I agree with all of the above. What Jo said is absolutely right. I feel like I have a cadre of young directors who I feel responsible for and it’s a lot of work. I feel a tremendous responsibility toward my ADs—which, when I ask around, I hear that is not always the case.

Ken Rus Schmoll and I started a directing fellowship with Clubbed Thumb and NYU in order to cultivate young directors and be responsible for them as they find a way into the world.

EVAN | Maybe we should circle back to the idea of freedom and an artistic home. Is there a portable artistic home? I sometimes find that my artistic home is my team of designers. Is that something that’s important to you, having a home base? What is an artistic home? Is that a term that means anything to a freelance director?

RACHEL | The first thing that pops up in my mind is a sense of accumulation—that someone is witnessing and also thinking about what could be cool to work on next, and supporting that navigation. For me, that’s very real estate-less. It’s entirely about sustained relationships. New York Theatre Workshop has been that for me. And I’m going to direct The Royal Family next season at the Guthrie and I’m so fucking tickled about it because it’s a huge period comedy and I’ve never worked on anything like that.

But I know Joe Haj from his time at PlayMakers [Repertory Company] and he met me first as the artistic director of an experimental company. So, even though I’ve never worked at the Guthrie, and I have no relationship to Minneapolis—beyond loving the city—that does feel like a home base now, in some way.

LEIGH | I think a difficulty of the freelance career is that there are a lot of places you have worked at but not a lot of places that feel like home. And you start to feel, “Where are my people?”

There are the people and theatres with whom I feel, whether I’m working there or not, “I’m in.”

Someone who understands the kind of work I want to do and answers the phone when I call.

I want to feel in a conversation with artists and theatres I admire and not just orbit in my own universe.

The reason I got involved at SDC and why I’m on the Board is because I get tired of thinking only of my own career. A big part for me of the “giving back” and mentorship is about improving the community in a macro sense. It has been very sustaining for me—even though it’s not an artistic home—to want to be with a group of directors around the table, to have conversations like this and to know that other conversations like this are happening.

But it’s also about the bigger picture. The idea and articulation of who directors are—what we do, the kind of work that we do—that can be hard to define and hard to talk about. Being on the Board has been very grounding for me, and an important part of this chapter of my life.

JO | When I first started, I was so isolated. I didn’t come out of an education system here in America where I had a peer group.

It’s only in the last 10 years that I got a strong sense of the community that Leigh was just mentioning. So, similarly, joining the SDC Board was a result of my wanting to be more engaged and give back to that community.

Because you understand that, although on one level, it’s a huge community, it’s really very tiny. We’re all just sloshing around in the same puddle over and over. You get to know the people at the various theatres and we may not return there for two or three seasons, but we always circle back.

Really, this is a big, extended family. As I get older, I feel more and more responsibility for my place in it, and how to nurture others in it. You can’t just be this lone wolf out there, making your way through your career. It’s just not satisfying in the end.

ANNE | What I’ve always hoped and striven for is access to artistic directors who, as Leigh said, will take your call or are interested in things you might have to offer. I feel that access is a kind of community.

I find that, as I’m getting older, I’m trying to create communities within the community. For example, Carolyn Cantor and I started getting

women directors together for dinner. That was part of the idea behind my collaboration with Sundance, as well. Besides providing space for directors to work on their own and take time to re-energize, the Directors Residency has, at its core, the goal of bringing directors together for discussion and to develop relationships and productive camaraderie. I keep trying to find ways to create community, to create families in this freelance world.

As a freelance director going to regional theatres or working in a new theatre for the first time, you’re walking into a whole new culture every time you do a show. Every time at a new theatre, you are learning, you’re walking into a different country and you’re learning their customs and how things work in that particular culture. I have developed enough of a community of directors that I call upon them, my colleagues who have been to that country and ask for help navigating that foreign land.

That feels very much like home to me.

RACHEL | It’s funny: the “downtown” world is comprised of all these different homes— various ensembles or iconic artists who carry with them a sense of a continuum, or body of work. That has its ups and downs. There’s a purity of purpose when you’re totally selfdefining and self-producing but it can also be kind of inward looking, and sometimes there’s a competitiveness that I don’t find as present in my freelance life. You can feel competition with grants. And then January hits—with all the national and international presenters coming to town—and it’s like, “Oh, my God. Did this presenter see your thing?” It’s a vital time but it’s also begun giving me hives.

I find sometimes in the freelance world, like here at SDC, there is such a feeling of fellowship—because everyone’s walking on their own.

JO | That’s probably also coming very much from when you have your own [company], the TEAM, where you are responsible. Also, it’s interesting that you have two hats then.

You are the creative and you’re also the administrator.

RACHEL | Totally. Also, of course, I feel more free as a freelancer because I’ve had some really great relationships with producers. Such as the original Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, which we developed at Ars Nova. I was relatively inexperienced in working with institutions and [Artistic Director] Jason Egan had to call and tell me it was my job to fight for the bigger set design, even though it cost double on what was already a doubled budget. He said, “Tell me why I have to spend this money.” And I thought, “Oh, right, because I don’t have to raise it. Wonderful.”

JO | Yeah, so you don’t edit yourself before you start.

EVAN | I’m interested in how, as a freelancer, one can chart one’s own artistic growth. I know writers ask us to do their plays. How does one navigate that, the choice of what you do? Is there an artistic growth trajectory to that work, versus just a career of directing plays? Is that something that one can have the luxury to think about or not?

LEIGH | I feel the goal has just been to work.

To support myself, I have to do an average of seven shows a year. So I’m always trying to say yes to everything all the time. Currently, I am trying to say “no” more and to be able to be choosier. That’s a real luxury. The opportunity for choice isn’t something I have experienced in my career.

Success for me is when writers come back with their next play. I have relationships with writers—Lisa Kron, David Greenspan, Tanya Barfield, and David Henry Hwang—where I’ve done three, four, or five of their plays. That, to me, is what success feels like. I like the idea of somebody saying, “We were in the trenches together and I trust you. We made something and now we’re going to do it again.”

So that is my dream for the future, to have more choice.

ANNE | It’s interesting to hear you talk about what success is. I’m thinking, “What does that mean to me? What does that look like?” I’m in a really weird place right now. I can’t decide what it is that I want. What’s exciting to me? I’m not used to checking with myself and asking what is it that I want to explore.

We need to help each other figure out what it is to generate. I’m so used to pitching another artist’s work, a playwright’s work, and I’m not used to checking in with myself and [asking], “What is it that I want to explore?” I feel like that’s a crucial question. And it’s astonishing that it’s taken me this long to realize that. I’m searching for what it is that I want to [do] with the medium and what I want to say at this moment in my life.

LEIGH | But Anne, right this second, you’re directing a project that I remember you doing a reading of 10 years ago. It’s a passion project, and you’re doing it. It’s so awesome EVAN | And tell us all what it is for the record.

ANNE | The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window.

It’s a Lorraine Hansberry play that I’ve wanted to do forever.

Yeah, it’s great to be able to do it. It’s all very strange to not have a playwright to reflect with, to collaborate with. It’s also exciting precisely because of that.

EVAN | I think about the whole of one’s creative journey, one’s career journey. How do those journeys run parallel to, intersect, or get balanced with life, with family, with friends?

JO | With difficulty.

EVAN | Jo, you have children. Have the cycles of that affected the cycles of your career?

JO | Yes. Theatre really doesn’t make allowance for having children. The six-out-of-seven day a week rehearsal process, the long days of tech, the preview period where you’re in rehearsal every afternoon and [have] a show every night, the productions out of town.

When I first started, so many young women directors, knowing that I had two kids, would ask me, “How?” Obviously, it helps a lot if you have a partner who is committed to doing the juggling with you.

For many years, I turned down a lot of stuff. I certainly didn’t go out on the road very much because how are you there for your family every day? Up until [the kids] go to school, it’s great. Eric and I did shows all over the place and would take a babysitter with us. Life was sweet, but the minute you hit the school system, that’s just completely destroyed.

So I think there is juggling but somehow, here I am. My kids are grown up and life moves on.

I’ve just come back from a production in L.A. and I’m leaving for London in a couple of days for auditions for a show there this summer.

It’s really messy for a long time and you’ve just got to deal with that fact. I think as directors, our very nature is that we’re control freaks. It used to drive me crazy that I couldn’t control every element, but I had to sort of give over.

You make it work.

EVAN | But even without kids, it’s a juggle, right? Anne?

ANNE | I’ve had a hard time trying to figure out how to integrate the two. I think I’m still trying to figure that out.

JO | But isn’t it that your fellow artists in the theatre scene become your friends? Anne, you were talking about going into a theatre and there were all these faces that you knew and [you think], “Oh, we get to have a drink together again and have dinner and talk and catch up.” So in a way, you have these little pockets of extended family all over the place. That’s an incredibly lovely thing that accumulates over time.

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EVAN | There’s something so sweet about seeing people that you worked with 10, 20, 25 years ago. There’s an amazing sense of people who knew you back when you were just starting out. Or, conversely, in my case, my students—seeing where my students are or what you’re talking about, with your assistants.

In that way, we all sort of have artistic children or younger siblings.

ANNE | I feel that every time I have a show, the entire team are my children. It’s a very intense relationship for a short period of time, but nevertheless… Maybe that’s where my maternal instincts are played out—in the structure of the rehearsal room.

RACHEL | There’s not a hard line for me between my personal life and my work life.

Does that make it sad? I don’t know. I don’t know many people out of the theatre. I try to get to the bar where my husband Jake plays pinball, and be with people who are not in theatre, but I miss way more weeks than I make.

The question of whether and how to have kids is super emotional one day and then a pretty simple “I don’t really need that” on others.

Trying to envision that daily reality is difficult because I love hanging out with my company or cast or design team, and drinking late every night. And then of course, there’s life on the road, which sometimes drives me nuts and sometimes I adore.

LEIGH | I have, at times, felt that the theatre was my primary relationship and then I also had a mistress. Yet I don’t know how to do it any other way. It requires all of you and, at the end of the day, more, because you have to get ready for the next day. I think that is the reality of what we do and how total it is. It’s hard.

JO | It’s also a situation where you have to be selfish for your work. If that’s who you are, and those are your choices, then, essentially, you can only be in relationships with people who respect that and who think that that’s a positive.

If my kids were sitting here now, they would happily tell you stories about all the plays, spelling bees, or whatever it was that they were in and I missed. And God knows, I got to as many as possible. But somehow it didn’t damage them. What it did was show them I really, really cared about and loved my work.

They’re both completely passionate about their work now and they understand that that’s the deal.

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If you’re with someone who is also very passionate about their work, whatever it may be, and your friends are likewise, then you will give each other license to take off and do what you have to do. If someone can’t and doesn’t feel that that makes sense to them, it’s going to be a pretty unhealthy relationship.

ANNE | I think that’s really true. I was married to an artist who is very passionate about his work, too. I think what my divorce taught me, and there were other issues that contributed to my split, too, but a central issue was my lack of presence. So now I’m trying to go to the funerals and go to the weddings because I’ve been so myopic. It’s really important to take the big picture in, to look up more often and take in more of the world. This is good not only for my personal life, but for my work.

EVAN | [There’s an idea that] young people, or that women, think they have to make it as directors while they’re young. What do you feel? Do you feel that that’s true?

LEIGH | I find that preposterous for a number of reasons, but mostly because women are hired for their experience and not for their potential. Jill Soloway has an amazing quote that reads, essentially, “People look at a young male director and think, “Oh, he did a successful indie; he should direct a giant blockbuster.” Whereas with a woman, it’s like, “Oh, she only did that tiny indie, how could she possibly direct a big blockbuster?” I see that dynamic constantly played out in theatre.

Women are not hired for big projects based on their potential. They are hired for their experience.

EVAN | I know people have to go, so just one last question. Do you have any particular hopes and dreams for the next 10 years or so?

RACHEL | For the ecosystem…?

EVAN | For the ecosystem and maybe for women in the ecosystem. What might we wish for our younger sisters and ourselves?

JO | What you hope is that the question doesn’t keep coming up. That it becomes irrelevant to talk about women directors or male directors and what you hope for women directors or how can women directors get access to whatever

resources that they need and deserve. It feels like this endless conversation and it’s 2016.

It is just so crazy.

RACHEL | In terms of what Leigh was talking about, I always feel that you just don’t know what rooms you’re not being invited to. It’s not like you get shunned at the door to the boys’ club. You just didn’t know there was that club— you didn’t know it was tucked back there.

ANNE | I remember sitting down with a certain agent, talking about me coming to the agency.

I asked, “What is it like to work with your client [name restricted by editor]?” He responded that [the male client] says, “I want to work with this band, I want to work with this story, and I want to develop this thing.”

There is a kind of confidence and entitlement. I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way.

I think it’s rather crucial to have those qualities as an artist. Certain [male] directors have that confidence and go in and create their thing. That’s where I think, “Oh, right. I need to think in that way.” That was an illuminating interaction.

I’m interested in introducing the idea in this country of directors as primary artists and not as secondary artists. At SDC and the Workshop and Sundance, we’re in the throes of developing how to discuss and promulgate this idea. Or, I should say, this truth. I think it’s critical that this country see the director as an artist in her own right.

EVAN | Absolutely. Well, thank you, everybody.

It was really lovely to speak with all of you and thank you for sharing so candidly.

JO | It’s nice just to hang out.

EVAN | I know, and now we can have a mimosa.

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A Forum on Training in Directing and Choreography: Sources from Leading Women INTRODUCED + EDITED BY ANNE

FLIOTSOS + ANN M. SHANAHAN

I

n the spirit of the SDC Statement on Diversity and Inclusion, for this issue of the Journal containing several pieces about women leading, we initiated a forum similar to the one on the relationship between the academy and the profession which introduced the new PeerReviewed Section last summer. We invited members of our board and others teaching in various types of institutions around the country to write about texts that they use in their classes, sources by or about women directors and choreographers.

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c/o Bloomsbury Publishing

In an initial brainstorming meeting, a member of the board queried: “Are there many texts by women about directing?” Beyond the several books by Anne Bogart, which have become standards in the field alongside Peter Brook and William Ball, others do not as readily come to mind. Additionally, books compiling information about directors and directing have been skewed for decades, often with fewer than twenty-five percent of their entries based upon women. In response to this imbalance, we created a nonexclusive, complementary list of sources by and about women directors and choreographers, primarily composed of books and scholarly journals. Because of their influence on practitioners, we included a handful of texts by feminist theorists in performance as well, though we could only print a few of many in this substantial area of scholarship. Likewise, we note that women of color and trans women working in the two fields are even less fairly represented in print, and women working in fields such as children’s theatre and devising deserve more thorough coverage than we are able to offer here. Please see the note at the end of the list on page 57 to send us sources we have missed on this preliminary list, which will be maintained and updated periodically at sdcweb.org/TheSourceList.

Joan Littlewood JAMES PECK MUHLENBERG COLLEGE

For the last several years, I have taught directing through the study of influential figures in the history of the art form. In a class called Major Directors: Theory and Practice, I adapt the perspectives and practices of historically significant theatre directors to the needs of the contemporary rehearsal hall. The course leavens the usual pragmatic concerns of the studio with material often relegated to theatre history classrooms. Among the

most generative figures my students and I study is the mid-century English director Joan Littlewood. As most readers of this journal will know, Littlewood was a working class theatre artist from London whose vital work unfolded across the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. Her artistic leadership of her company, Theatre Workshop, vaulted it into one of the preeminent ensembles of Europe. Theatre Workshop alternated between boundary breaking productions of the classics and contemporary plays about working class life. The productions often boasted a rambunctious energy drawn in good measure from the entertainments of the English music hall. The company’s signature production was Oh, What a Lovely War!, a collectively created Pierrot show excavating the traumatic legacy of World War I in vignettes built around the popular music of the era.

Littlewood is an especially useful figure through whom to introduce students to the craft, art, and social task of directing plays.

She synthesizes several prominent strands of European performance history. Rooted in Stanislavski’s model of character objectives, she engages the movement theories of Rudolph Laban to amplify and nuance the actor’s embodiment of them. Her scenography, developed especially with the designer John Bury, draws inspiration from the magisterial

work of Adolphe Appia. Students find these techniques accessible and practical. Littlewood also introduced numerous innovations of process. She used improvisation extensively and practiced group devising before it had been named as such. Theatre Workshop approached the classics without a shred of reverence, framing them not as the heritage of the ruling class, but as a tool of its demise.

Her optimism about the potential of theatre to transform communities is inspiring. For many years Theatre Workshop maintained its home in London’s hardscrabble East End and actively nurtured ties to local residents.

Numerous recent studies provide entree to Littlewood’s working methods and adapt easily to the requirements of the studio.

My primary text is Nadine Holdsworth’s Joan Littlewood, a short book in the Routledge Performance Practitioners series.

Holdsworth includes a biographical overview, a substantial introduction to Littlewood’s preferred techniques and rehearsal practices, a descriptive analysis of Oh, What a Lovely War!, and a concluding section with practical exercises that especially foreground Littlewood’s adaptation of Laban’s theory of effort qualities to the theatre.

I also use selections from Holdsworth’s longer study Joan Littlewood’s Theatre and Robert Leach’s Theatre Workshop: Joan Littlewood and the Making of Modern British Theatre. If time permits, Holdsworth’s brief biography can be supplemented with excerpts from Littlewood’s autobiography Joan’s Book: Joan Littlewood’s Peculiar History as She Tells It and Peter Rankin’s Joan Littlewood, Dreams and Realities: The Official Biography.

Within my class, students create small-scale etudes and larger-scale scene projects rooted in a play directed by each director we study.

For many years we worked on Oh, What a Lovely War!, but I never found a satisfactory way to fit this sprawling work into the limits of a classroom setting. I still require students to read it, but it is no longer our primary text. Rather, I have turned to the plays of Ben Jonson. Jonson was Littlewood’s favorite playwright, and she is widely regarded as the preeminent Jonson interpreter of the modern era. His scabrous comedies provide students manifold opportunity to enlist Littlewood’s exacting craft and obstreperous spirit as a prod to their own imaginations.

I remember as a graduate student in directing that as much as I loved my experience at the University of California at San Diego (and I did), I sometimes felt left adrift by the paucity of historical perspective explicitly undergirding my training. One way to provide students a sense of the ground they stand on is to root SUMMER 2016 | SDC JOURNAL PEER-REVIEWED SECTION

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c/o Taylor + Francis Group

CHRISTINE YOUNG UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO

I trained as a director twenty years ago, and I was often frustrated by the absence of curricular content about how women artists approach process. Peter Brook’s The Empty Space and William Ball’s A Sense of Direction inspired me, yet aspects of these texts also felt incompatible with my developing artistic viewpoint. I was hungry for theatrical wisdom from a wider variety of sources, particularly from artists who shared my experience of moving through the world as a woman.

Thank goodness that I now have a richer and more varied theatrical library to share with my students, one that includes fantastic texts written by women theatre makers!

Yet, this bounty of texts has created a new problem. Every time I craft a syllabus, I have to reimagine what is truly essential for students to read in order to become well educated, socially-conscious, forward-thinking theatre makers. To address this challenge, I allow students to self-select the texts they read in some of my courses. In Theatrical Composition, a class that introduces students to a variety of practical methods that artists use to create material for the stage, I bring in a collection of great books about theatre making and invite students to choose one. Each student writes a critical analysis of the complete book, selects a fifteen-page excerpt for the entire class to read, and then facilitates a discussion about the

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Tharp’s The Creative Habit provides an intimate and detailed description of her choreographic process, including many practical strategies for generating and developing creative impulses that students can use immediately. Chapters like “I Walk into a White Room” and “Before You Can Think out of the Box, You Have to Start with a Box” break the creative process into tangible, doable steps and highlight the role of patience and discipline. For student artists who often believe that talent and inspiration are the essence of artistry, Tharp’s emphasis on craft and the necessity of recommitting daily to one’s artistic work is eye-opening.

While I use texts written by Anne Bogart in nearly all my classes, And Then, You Act is probably my favorite, because this slim volume of essays contains some of the most cogent and inspiring material I have ever read about the how and the why of theatre. The intellectual and creative nourishment that Bogart’s writing provides seems particularly valuable for millennial students, many of whom are questioning whether they should commit themselves to an art form they love, but which they know is undervalued in American society.

I am grateful that I teach in an historical moment in which I have such a wealth of passionate, articulate, and diverse theatrical perspectives to share with students. By encouraging students to read deeply and broadly about theatre making, and by offering them the chance to encounter texts written by both women and men, we remind them and ourselves that every artist speaks with a unique voice and has an important contribution to make in the perpetual project of reimagining our culture.

c/o Taylor + Francis Group

While the master reading list for Theatrical Composition continually evolves, I always strive to include an equal number of texts written by women and men. Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life and Anne Bogart’s And Then, You Act: Making Art in an Unpredictable World are two books that have earned perpetual inclusion. Both are usefully structured with chapters focusing on discrete themes; excerpts are easily selected and can be read as complete texts within themselves.

These books have been popular with students, because they demystify the creative process and offer inspiring lessons on how to nurture creativity.

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excerpt. This strategy allows students to gain depth (by reading one complete book) and breadth (by being exposed to at least a dozen texts written by a diverse group of artists) in their exploration of theatre making. Perhaps because they have choices about what they read and discuss, students seem more engaged than usual by the readings for this class, and some are even inspired to read more than is required.

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their study in an extended encounter with a great artist who came up with a new way to work. That said, my ultimate goal is not for my students to direct “like Joan Littlewood.”

Rather, I hope they develop a habit of mind that attends to, draws from, and parries with the history of their art form as a resource for their own intuitions, aspirations, and historical moment.

Practical Application of the Theories of Katie Mitchell and Anne Bogart in the Directing Classroom MARK LOCOCO LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO

In The Director’s Craft: A Handbook for the Theatre, Katie Mitchell articulates a series of exercises as preparatory to her rehearsal process that encourage the kind of dramaturgical research essential to a director’s understanding of an existing play. Using her own work on The Seagull, she provides extensive examples for practical tasks a director should undertake on early readings of the play. She titles these “Lists of Facts and Questions,” “Circles of Place,” and “Character Bios.” What results is the articulation of the world of the play, followed by exercises that narrow focus to the structure of the work, identifying immediate circumstances for scenes and acts, identifying events (including those that occur between scenes or acts) and creation of a “Time Plan” that articulates how the playwright organizes this information and how the audience might receive and process it.

Throughout, she encourages that the director find a way to distinguish those statements which are fact, and supportable with textual reference, and those which are inferred by the director.

Mitchell moves effectively from these lists and descriptions to various forms of analysis of the writer’s life that foreground any aspect that might remotely illuminate the play, including research into the socio-historical world in which the play was written. Incorporating this information with a brief list of three or four themes or “ideas,” and an understanding or address to the genre of the play, she introduces the use of the word “concept” as the director’s interpretation of the “ideas” generated by the playwright.

Moving more deeply into the structure of the play, she first addresses the practical use of the manuscript of the text. From there, she advocates titling each act and scene based

As my students shift their work from the preparatory stage to the practical stage in which they’re rehearsing scenes, I like to provide them with a basic exposure to the work of Anne Bogart and the SITI company, using The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition by Anne Bogart and Tina Landau. Members of our faculty, staff, and student directors increasingly incorporate Viewpoints into their classes and productions, so most of our students have a basic understanding of the principles and vocabulary by the time they enroll in Play Direction. Workshopping exercises as outlined in the fourth chapter of the text, “How to Begin,” provide them with a swift grasp of what can become the foundation for ensemble building, as well as advanced movement work in rehearsal. After activating and focusing all the senses towards ensemble movement, we then move into the fifth chapter, “Introducing the Individual Viewpoints.” I try to spend concentrated time devoted to the viewpoints of Spatial Relationship and Architecture, as students make use of them in physical staging of representative scenes. Students are highly engaged by this work, and are eager to try it themselves, either directly in rehearsals with their casts, or indirectly through their own use of the Viewpoints as a lens through which to view staging and movement.

c/o New York Review Books

What results from this combination of research and identification is essentially a deep analysis of the play, but the specificity of the descriptions and clear objectives of the exercises allow students to approach works with a detailed plan to guide their first few readings of a play. It is Mitchell’s perspective as a director that shapes these initial inquiries and the resulting research. My students begin our Play Direction course (capstone to our major) by reading The Seagull, after which each student draws a different contemporary play for which they must document their first encounters using Mitchell’s exercises.

This provides them with practice at such dramaturgical preparation that they will later use in developing and documenting a capstone experience: directing a play of their choice. In later chapters, she effectively shifts her focus to rehearsals, interaction between the director and actors or other members of the creative team, and demonstrates how to implement the preparatory dramaturgy in the rehearsal room. I find this work invaluable in providing my students with a practical plan to guide their first encounters with a play they intend to direct.

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on the simplest description of the primary dramatic action of the scene, in playable terms that will serve the actors as well as help to create a sense of dynamic development of ideas. She then breaks down each structural unit into beats or “events,” which when viewed as a list provide specific structure to the overall development of larger portions of the play.

Books about Women Who Dance LIZA GENNARO INDIANA UNIVERSITY

I’m happy to have the opportunity to share three of my favorite books, by and about dancing women. All three books establish historic background and precedent for my course, Choreography for the American Musical, an examination of the evolution of musical theatre dance, from 1866 to the present.

Dance to the Piper, Agnes de Mille’s autobiographical account of her early days as a self-producing female soloist, a ballet and musical theatre choreographer, a friend and colleague of Martha Graham and Louis Horst, and her years in London dancing with Marie Rambert and Antony Tudor, is an illuminating record of the fledgling days of a dance artist.

Writing with intense clarity and humor, de Mille delivers an honest, insightful, sometimes painful, always inspiring account of the grit and tenacity required for a career in theatre. Her clear-headed, and self-critical description of her experiences choreographing Flying Colors (1932) and Hooray For What (1937) are lessons in the act of musical theatre production, addressing protocol, collaboration, process, and invention. Stripping her experiences down to barebones, de Mille offers a pragmatic look at an unforgiving business, while at the same time expressing her undaunted passion for making dances. Operating at the highest echelon of musical theatre, de Mille offers insight into what it was like for a woman to work in a male dominated field, how she learned to command a room, and how she fought to hire dancers who, while they did not fit the narrow standard of chorus girl beauty, were dancer-actors, able to express ideas in movement.

Barbara Barker’s, Ballet or Ballyhoo: The American Careers of Maria Bonfanti, Rita Sangalli and Giuseppina Morlacchi, is an

invaluable resource for understanding the early days of ballet in musical theatre, and the contributions of a small group of La Scala ballerinas, who literally risked life and limb as they traveled America performing in nineteenth century Spectacles. Barker offers an alternative to the commonly held perception of scantily dressed, Rubenesque dancing girls and introduces the classically trained ballerinas who set early standards for dance artistry in America. Photos, clearly representing the high quality of their classical training, support Barker’s examination of the ballerinas’ classical pedigree. While outraged clergy declared their performances indecent, obscuring their artistry amid sensational reports of nudity and wealthy male patrons, in fact, these ballerinas were courageous, skilled, and talented women who traveled the American frontier. I love this book for broadening the understanding of the evolution of theatre dance in America.

Kaiso!: Writings By and About Katherine Dunham, edited by Veve A. Clark & Sara E. Johnson, examines Dunham’s extraordinary career as an anthropologist, writer, choreographer, performer, and educator.

Her contribution to musical theatre dance is massive and, in my opinion, underrated.

This terrific collection of essays illuminates Dunham’s contributions to theatre and dance, including being among the first to codify a technique that is the foundation of all Jazz dance and theatre dance classes. Her collaboration with George Balanchine, Cabin in the Sky (1940) is elucidated in Constance Valis Hill’s “Collaborating with Balanchine on Cabin in the Sky: Interviews with Katherine Dunham.” Dunham describes her experiences working with Balanchine, her influence on him in relation to her knowledge of Afro-Caribbean dances and the “release of the pelvic girdle” (Kaiso! 247). Part Four, Dunham Technique, provides a variety of essays about Dunham’s educational projects. A brochure from the Katherine Dunham School of Arts and Research: 1946-47, demonstrates her pedagogical approach to the dual study of dance as practice and dance as scholarship and offers insight into mid-twentieth century theatre dance training.

Dance to the Piper and Kaiso! demonstrate how, in a field dominated by men, de Mille and Dunham expanded Broadway dance lexicons beyond the standard fare of their male counterparts, while Ballet or Ballyhoo examines the transgressive acts of a small group of highly trained ballerinas, who raised the artistic level of dance in 19th-century America. These books aid my investigation of the evolution of dance on Broadway, through rigorous, first-hand, and scholarly accounts of foundational contributions.

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Favorite Teaching Materials: Women Leading KEVIN J. WETMORE, JR. LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY

Every spring I teach a course entitled “Surviving as an Artist” for actors, designers, and directors, designed to get them thinking about life after graduation and the first five years of their post-college career in the arts. While we read some “practical” material on the various unions, headshots, and resumes, how to get work in the field, etc., I also have the students read Anna Deavere Smith’s Letters to a Young Artist.

Smith gets them thinking about being an artist not just in terms of the practical realities, but also in terms of the fear, alienation, triumphs, support, jealousy, and other issues that flow through every professional artist’s life. She writes as a teacher and mentor, but also as a working artist still dealing with all the things that they deal with and will deal with so long as they are in the business. She shares her own experiences, including the ups and downs of her work on The West Wing, and (for my money, the best part of the book) her going out on auditions and still not getting the parts after that.

Smith shares an anecdote of auditioning for a Queen Latifah film and finding the experience demoralizing. “I think a truly brilliant auditioner could turn that around. I was unable to” (92).

What follows, however, is neither self defeat nor a pep talk about auditioning or how fortunate she is. Instead, Smith continues with a discussion on auditioning from the other side of the table, discussing authority and play. In subsequent chapters she quotes from Camus, ruminates on Miles Davis, discusses Jessye Norman, and shares both the photographs of Lyle Ashton Harris and her own experience performing Twilight Los Angeles 1992 in front of then-President Clinton and at the Market

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Given this gender disparity, I use Kyna Hamill’s They Fight: Classical to Contemporary Stage Fight Scenes, a collection of 43 scenes divided into 4 categories: fights for 2 men, fights for 2 women, fights for 1 man and 1 woman, and fights for groups of 3 or more. The volume goes from medieval mystery plays through the late 90s, with special attention paid to subjects including scenes for women and diverse weaponry. I have students select their scenes from the volume, but I also have them read the whole book, cover to cover. Given that my classes in stage combat tend to be female-dominant, Hamill’s volume is useful as a resource for demonstrating a number of texts that feature women fighting as women, for providing raw material for staged violent scene work, and for providing a model for women in stage combat. It is my hope that in addition to its practical value, the volume might inspire some of my female students to pursue stage combat choreography.

c/o University of Illinois Press

I also teach a stage combat class in which students learn to incorporate technique to simulate violence into visual storytelling. I teach them as actors, but talk a good deal about my work as a choreographer and fight director.

The Society of American Fight Directors has one woman among 17 fight masters. Out of 45 fight directors, three are women; and out of 145 certified teachers, many of whom work at colleges and universities, 20 are female.

Dueling Arts International, another professional association of fight choreographers and teachers, has 11 women among its 45 instructors. Though I am a proud member of both organizations, I recognize that every time I teach the class, the majority of students are women, and the majority of those teaching and fight directing professionally are men.

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Theatre in South Africa. Her references to acting are framed as part of her larger discussion of being a young artist; there is material here for writers, directors, choreographers, and visual artists (indeed, the young artist of the title is a painter!). Smith encourages the reader to think about the process of the art, but also being an artist, working in collaboration with others or alone.

While she occasionally mentions specific challenges arising out of gender, the book is mostly concerned with any artist, regardless of gender.

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: Using International Women Stage Directors in the Directing Classroom EMILY A. ROLLIE CENTRAL WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

As a director, I love watching other directors work. There is much to be gleaned from observing directors at work in the rehearsal hall or on stage; through these observations, I find inspiration and ways to deepen my own work. Thus, as a teacher of directing, I ask my students to not only reflect on their directorial work but also explore the work of other professional directors.

While most directing assignments provide hands-on directing experience, I also ask my students to research a professional director—ideally one with whom the student is not previously familiar. After selecting a director, students explore that director and her work, identifying artistic approach and aesthetic tendencies, noting representative productions, and considering how surrounding socio-cultural contexts shape artistic work.

The students then present their findings to the class, exposing all students to an array of directorial styles and inspirations.

When initially presented with this assignment, choruses of “But where do I learn about other directors?” often erupt, as most students are uncertain where to begin. While texts such as Shomit Mitter and Maria Shevtsova’s Fifty Key Theatre Directors or Shevtsova and Christopher Innes’s Directors/Directing exist, most of those texts primarily feature men. As a feminist director and teacher, I find these male-centered narratives limiting and subsequently have sought other resources to offer my students, specifically two texts by Anne Fliotsos and Wendy Vierow: International Women Stage Directors (2013) and American Women Stage Directors of the Twentieth Century (2008). Of the two, International Women Stage Directors

nothing in the world of a play by accident. The puzzles may hold the key” [author’s emphasis] (9). The presence of a playwright changes the role of the students from deviser of meaning to communicator of a deeper meaning already hidden in the text, which sets us off on the right foot for future projects and class conversations.

As a feminist director and scholar, I also believe this work is essential, as ours is a field where significant gender disparity exists and persists.

Our students—young men and women— need to be aware of and empowered by work of women directors. By introducing my students to these women directors’ work in the classroom, I hope that my students will seek out further information about these directors, find inspiration from them, or possibly seek them out as future mentors or collaborators.

In a March 2016 SITI Company blog post, Anne Bogart discussed the importance of recognizing artistic predecessors and role models: “As artists we are all beholden to the journeys undertaken by our predecessors….

The forays, experimentations, discoveries, and actions of our heroes are what give us the permission to maneuver more freely”. Thus, through this project and by using this text, I help my student directors find inspiration, agency, and artistic freedom. I am attempting to build on the shoulders of giants, so to speak, and offer my students tools to see work of women who are creating provocative, imaginative, and stimulating work around the world and who might serve as inspirations and artistic heroes for the artists of tomorrow.

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Featuring women directors from twenty-four different countries, each chapter examines both historical and contemporary cultural contexts—contexts that inevitably shape the directors’ work. Each chapter continues with a brief overview of early women directors in that country, and then presents profiles of several contemporary directors. As the authors candidly note, the book does not intend to “include a scientific sample representative of the entire globe,” but it does offer quite a wellrounded international perspective, including directors from Great Britain, the United States, and Germany as well as from potentially lesser-known theatrical markets such as Kenya, Pakistan, Cuba, Taiwan, and Brazil. For my students, this geographic diversity is incredibly beneficial, and most students who pick up the text to look at one particular country find themselves perusing the chapter of another. In this way, the book provides a useful jumping off point for additional research. Additionally, each chapter includes a resource list, which is rich fodder for additional investigation. On a broader pedagogical level, the text models both how one can write about the oftenintangible work of directing as well as how we might begin to consider the macro- and microcosms in which a director and her work function.

c/o Taylor + Francis Group

is particularly illuminating. The book not only brings women directors’ work to the fore but also encourages students to expand their views geographically and culturally—an important venture in an increasingly globalized society.

The Poem Plays of Ruth Krauss

BRIAN FOLEY CHANDLER-GILBERT COMMUNITY COLLEGE Some of my favorite teaching materials are the Poem Plays by Ruth Krauss. These onepage high-concept plays in which “pineapples fly onto the stage from all directions” or “Everyone-On-Roller-Skates-In-Bed appears” can be found in Michael Benedikt’s Theatre Experiment; An Anthology of American Plays from 1967 (327-38). In my Introduction to Theatre and Directing I courses, the collaborative rehearsal and performance of a Krauss Poem Play is the first creative project I assign, and I have made the conscious choice to use them in lieu of open scenes in my Directing classroom.

My primary goal with Krauss’s short plays is to give the students an engaging and fun collaborative artistic experience. At the same time, I am looking to plant the seeds of a process for analysis and excavation of the plays hidden insights, and leave aesthetic values open enough that the students may bring whatever artistry they choose to the performance of a short play.

Prior to receiving the assignment, the students have read the beginning of Brook’s The Empty Space, Elinor Fuchs’ essay, “EF’s Visit to a Small Planet: Some Questions to Ask a Play,” and the first chapter of Mira Felner’s THINK Theatre textbook, which expounds upon the “Universal Properties of Theatre:” liveness, ephemerality, collaboration, and a synthesis of many arts (8-9).

Unlike open scenes, which are usually given without titles or credit to authorship, the Krauss plays have thoughtfully constructed titles, an author with a point of view, and a production history. My students have shared that these contextual differences change the approach from invention to interrogation and excavation.

As Fuchs suggests in Small Planet, “There is

The plays “strongly suggest that the essential aspect of theatre may not be dialogue, however fresh and unconventional; but rather a play’s projection through extra-textual proliferations” (Benedikt 323). Some of Krauss’s one-page plays have eight times as many wildly imaginative stage directions (“1500 HORSES rush by going west in profile”) as they do lines of dialogue. My students approach these creative challenges via research— unprompted, they wish to learn more about Ruth Krauss and her writing. They also work collaboratively—the nature of the challenges has consistently provoked a “yes-and” dialogue in which one student’s contribution of a soundscape is met with another student’s suggestion for found-object puppetry or choreography to accompany it.

The scarcity of textual evidence encourages deep interrogation of the meaning of each syllable. For example, one character is named “Girl.” What is the essence of “Girl-ness?” How do we communicate “Girl?” This is especially provocative in a group of students who all identify as male.

The adventurous nature of the text provokes equally adventurous choices: I have seen homemade masks, interactive digital media, and a tarp covered in vanilla pudding. About two-thirds of the groups over a period of six semesters have used a space other than our regular classroom.

The nature of the collaboration requires a greater degree of investment from students.

One of them offered, “I knew if I missed this rehearsal, my voice would be absent from the final product. And that you would be able to tell that from watching.” The style of the pieces allows for students with physical theatre or musical theatre aspirations to include mime, music, puppetry, and choreography in their work, which some of the plays we approach later in the semester do not encourage in the same way. The performances often include unconscious inclusion but memorable representation of elements that we reference throughout the semester: non-Western styles, Viewpoints, picturization, and more.

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A Director Prepares as Inspiration in Teaching Advanced University Directing Students DAVID CALLAGHAN UNIVERSITY OF MONTEVALLO

In A Director Prepares, author Anne Bogart recalls attending a production of Macbeth at age fifteen. While not cognitively understanding the production, she nonetheless found it compelling and decided immediately to pursue “this remarkable universe” (81). This anecdote beautifully frames a brief discussion of some of my favorite teaching materials and methods in my advanced Directing II class at the University of Montevallo’s Theatre Program of 110 BA and BFA majors. For our required Directing I class, students engage text from a contemporary realistic play with an emphasis on proscenium staging. Directing II is an elective with only six students, emphasizing the development of an individual approach to texts of varying styles and staging within a threequarter configuration.

My first encounter with Bogart’s book was quite a visceral experience, resonating deeply with me as a young director. Many years and productions later, as a teacher I now utilize several of her tenets as foundations for various class explorations and goals. The first is her assertion that “rehearsal is not about

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In my experience, many young directors feel pressured to be “all knowing” so they can somehow get actors and audience to understand their concepts; or at the opposite extreme, they have a reluctance or fear to share any personal viewpoint. We start with the challenge of choosing a play that authentically calls them, even if they can’t explain it rationally—what Bogart refers to as “eroticism” or attraction (61). Then, they undertake a rigorous structural analysis that breaks down the text, revealing new ideas to tease out further as their process continues.

If they can create a space where they truly “listen,” eventually, in tandem with other preproduction work, the director collaboratively sculpts a personalized interpretation as the play reveals itself in rehearsal. Bogart’s assertion that “a director’s job is not to provide answers bur rather to provide interest” is a challenging and evolving notion for the students (131).

Furthermore, I champion Bogart’s charge to “make a leap” in moments of uncertainty by walking into the space and essentially doing something—one “decisive act” (44) that has unforeseen ripple effects (86). I have found this remarkably true in theatre and life, and it can undercut the pressure that many student directors (and actors) have of making a “wrong” choice, which often paralyzes creativity. Rather, we emphasize the joy and “terror” (79) of allowing process, discovery, and trusting preparation in order to play impulsively in the rehearsal room, believing that doing the work will lead to the desired end result. Similarly, we always discuss the potential use and significance of metaphor, where I reference the great director Harold Prince in tandem with Bogart’s various metaphors such as theatrical “terror, eroticism, violence, etc.” (79, 61, 43). Prince recalled that when Andrew Lloyd Webber asked him to direct Cats, he immediately sought a variety of political metaphors; followed by a long pause where Lloyd Webber replied, “No, Hal, it’s about cats” (Episode 6). This illuminating story always resonates with students, reinforcing the value of mystery and waiting for the play’s secret to reveal itself at times, while at others just “doing something” in order to keep moving forward.

We find a final notion from her essays equally impactful: “the research eventually gets in your way…prepare 150 ideas for every scene, write everything down and then be ready to throw it all away.... You will never be ready and you must always be ready for this step. Your preparation gets you to the first step. And

then something else takes over” (133-34). With guided practice, this typically creates an “aha” moment where they can simultaneously value their pre-production work, while not relying on it so much that it locks them into preconceived ideas during casting and rehearsal. For the class, a key realization here is trust and not trying to “force a moment” before its time.

When balanced with a forward looking, zenlike directorial eye on deadlines, the students prepare to encounter the audience as the final step of the creative process and “leap” into the unknown we call directing.

c/o The University of Wisconsin Press

forcing things to happen; rather, rehearsal is about listening. The director listens to the actors. The actors listen to one another. You listen collectively to the text. You listen for clues. You keep things moving…you follow it until the scene reveals its secret” (125).

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c/o Taylor + Francis Group

audience placement to raise the stakes on the drama and theatricality of their work. Even if their choices in later projects were more realistic or “conventional” choices, they were still active, thoughtful choices that served the scene. They were able to more carefully craft the beginning and ending of their work, rather than just saying “scene” at the close. And, perhaps most importantly, they were able to hang on to the sense of adventure and joy that they felt on this initial project throughout the semester.

JoAnne Akalaitis: An Inspiration in Class and Rehearsal KATHLEEN M. MCGEEVER NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY

In 2000, a student introduced me to An Event in Space: JoAnne Akalaitis in Rehearsal, by Deborah Saivetz. He told me my work had similarities with the book, so I picked up the book and was pleased to find Saivetz' text and Akalaitis’s work helped me articulate my process, expand my approach, and translate my work to teaching tools and methodologies that I still use today. Part biography and part analysis, the book describes Akalaitis’s work both historically and contextually. I found her ideas were familiar to my young teaching and directing practice.

Akalaitis’s work with warm ups, in particular Dancing to Know the Space (Saivetz 50) is a valuable ritual in reawakening the body, mind, and emotional heart to the creative environment. As Saivetz states, the “exercise deals, in the simplest terms, with the relationship to body and space” (50). Dancing to Know the Space asks the actors to explore how they change, or the space changes, as the interaction continues. I find the exercise to be a powerful tool toward teaching actors to be alert, relaxed, and honestly present.

Stopping-and-Starting and all its iterations, is a series of exercises that I have often utilized.

I have found that young actors work well with

this exercise because it physically manifests the idea of actions coming to a complete stop and having to move to “something entirely new [beginning] a sharp attack” (53). Akalaitis is not interested in what she calls the “aesthetics of curves,” which I interpret as languid movement, and she stresses the power of Stopping-andStarting in the following exchange: “I’m in a scene, the scene is over, a door slams, a new door opens” (53). Stopping-and-Starting creates a powerful response to text for the actor, one in which we can discuss the work with physical language. I find in working with undergraduate actors that concepts of action, beats, and conflict become challenging for them to understand—to play within the scene.

The more we work with the exercise, the more I see light bulbs illuminate and the work become stronger.

Over the years, I have practiced some of Akalaitis’s exercises discreetly and others I have adapted to achieve different ends.

Composition and Slow Motion is an exercise I have used in its unaffected form. The exercise is a variation on Stopping-and-Starting and Internalizing the Structure of Montage. Here the actors move in slow motion through space, “working with the idea that they are moving within a group composition, or painting” (58).

Composition changes with the number of actors morphing to become “more and more perfect”(59). Working with actors on the spatial rather than psychological relationship is one goal of the exercise and a definite focus for my work with undergraduate performers. In 1999, I started using the cartoon The Powerpuff Girls (1998-2005) to describe the disconnect I saw with young actors and the world of the play.

The cartoon is a perfect metaphor for actor disconnect because it is drawn in two differing sections, the girls and a separate setting. Like The Powerpuff Girls, my students appeared as if they were hovering slightly out of sync with the space. Akalaitis’s exercises on composition and slow motion are practiced in my coursework with both actors and directors, and I also use it in the rehearsal hall. As Saivetz describes, Akalaitis “suggests that actors cannot help psychologizing everything they do and thus need to be reminded to work physically” (59).

Actors psychologizing everything leads to a disconnected performance and the exercise forces actors out of their heads and into their bodies, eliminating the “hover” effect.

Akalaitis developed Composition and Slow Motion to include breath—originating the breath within their bodies—to know where the breath is headed once it leaves the body (59). Total control of the actor within the space, a further concept mined from the exercise, explores the idea that the actors “must see both themselves and the entire group from ‘the outside’ at the same time that they are working from the inside” (59-60). “Seeing” is further defined as seeing it both visually and with

the body. The actor is aware of composition within the space and in relationship to the architecture and the people with whom they share the scene. The exercise is particularly successful for teaching directors to understand composition. The concept of breath in body and the idea of total control (59) connects the actor to the world of the play, creating honesty of being.

Akalaitis’s work is rich with the genealogy of Grotowski to Mabou Mines. Saivetz' text has been a powerful look into her work, both from a historical and a practical perspective.

Teaching Young Directors to Signify MELANIE DREYER-LUDE MISSOURI STATE UNIVERSITY

I teach Beginning Directing to undergraduate students. Most of my students are actors, and this previous experience serves them well when coaching other actors. But it often stands in their way when trying to conceptualize a personal vision or construct a signified space.

Learning to read a play as a director (big picture, conceptual ideas, primary themes, rhythm, flow) as opposed to as an actor (Who am I? Where do I fit into this story? How does this story affect me?) can be challenging for someone new to directing, but it is ultimately achievable within a short period of time. One of the most vexing skills for a young director to learn is how to apply aesthetic abstraction or metaphor to her storytelling.

As a young director, I recognized such a problem in my own work. I knew how to read a play, how to direct actors, how to talk to designers, but I recognized a lack of depth in my conceptualization. So I headed to graduate school to see if I could fix it. My quest was met during my studies at Northwestern when I began to study with Mary Zimmerman.

Zimmerman’s work, as is commonly known, lives in great measure through symbolism and signification. Her texts are often large, epic, and poetic by nature and thereby lend themselves to this treatment. But even when directing Shakespeare (Henry VIII) her work contains what one reviewer called “symbolic visuals” (Komisar). Following one of my project presentations in her class on Proust, Zimmerman tossed me a casual note. “You should consider working with music that is in opposition to the tone of the story.” This simple idea knocked something loose in my approach to storytelling. I suddenly saw the value in opposition, in representation, in several ideas living on stage at once. I began to watch Zimmerman’s work carefully, and to see the ways in which she structured and engaged with poetic space.

Zimmerman is a master of metaphor on the stage. Some have accused her of just creating “pretty pictures,” but she argues that her focus on image is all about connecting with an audience: You teach a vocabulary, and the audience becomes fluent in it. When that’s being accomplished without words, it creates an enormous sense of intimacy between audience members and the people on stage, because—like lovers or members of the family—they have gained an unspoken understanding and agreement, and they know how to read the metaphor in exactly the same way. (Loewith 424) Like Mary, I feel strongly about the value of poetic space in storytelling. In my classroom, we begin our lessons on the use of signification by initially working without text. Through a series of exercises involving found objects, the repurposing of familiar objects, and the reframing of traditional compositions, I tempt my young actors-becoming-directors to consider how metaphor will enrich their work.

I teach them to name what they see, then to change the signification and identify the ways in which the landscape has been transformed.

Once they have begun to delight in the power of representation, I return them to their texts and invite them to consider how they might use these new skills to shape the visual, aural, and kinesthetic landscape of their story.

Little has been written on Zimmerman’s work with imagistic space. Jason Loewith’s article on her provides the richest source of interviewbased information. Additionally, I recommend two recordings: one twenty-minute talk she gave to Chicago Ideas on “poetry in the theatrical image” (Mary Zimmerman) and an interview/overview of her adaptation of The Odyssey in “Backstage at the Goodman” (Goodman). Perhaps soon someone will take up this mantle and fill this significant gap in pedagogical scholarship. We could all benefit from more writing on the work of Mary Zimmerman.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS Published quarterly by Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC), this new peerreviewed section of SDC Journal serves directors and choreographers working in the profession and in institutions of higher learning. SDC’s mission is to give voice to an empowered collective of directors and choreographers working in all jurisdictions and venues across the country, encourage advocacy, and highlight artistic achievement. SDC Journal seeks essays with accessible language that focus on practice and practical application and that exemplify the sorts of fruitful intersections that can occur between the academic/scholarly and the profession/craft. For more information, visit: www.sdcweb.org/community/sdc-journal/sdcjournal-peer-review

SUMMER 2016 | SDC JOURNAL PEER-REVIEWED SECTION

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SDC JOURNAL PEER-REVIEWED SECTION

Theatre Directing + Choreography Selected Sources by + about Women DIRECTING BOOKS

Barranger, Millie S. Margaret Webster: A Life in the Theater. U of Michigan P, 2004.

Bartow, Arthur. The Director’s Voice: Twenty Interviews, Vol. 1. TCG, 1998. (Includes JoAnne Akalaitis, Martha Clarke, and Zelda Fichandler.)

Blumenthal, Eileen, and Julie Taymor. Julie Taymor:

Playing with Fire. Harry Abrams, 2007.

Bogart, Anne. And Then You Act: Making Art in an

Unpredictable World. Routledge, 2007.

---. Conversations with Anne: Twenty-Four Interviews. TCG, 2012. (Includes JoAnne Akalaitis, Martha Clarke, Zelda Fichandler, Tina Landau, Elizabeth LeCompte, Meredith Monk, Mary Overlie, SITI Company, Molly Smith, Elizabeth Streb, Julie Taymor, and Paula Vogel.)

---. A Director Prepares: Seven Essays on Art and Theatre. Routledge, 2001.

---. Viewpoints. Smith and Kraus, 1995.

Bogart, Anne, and Tina Landau. The Viewpoints Book. A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition. TCG, 2004.

Bowditch, Rachel. On the Edge of Utopia: Performance and Ritual at Burning Man. U of Chicago P, 2011.

Buccula, Regina and Peter Kanelos. Chicago Shakespeare Theatre: Suiting the Action to the Word. Northern Illinois UP, 2013. (Includes Barbara Gaines and Josie Rourke.)

Case, Sue-Ellen. Feminism and Theatre.

Reissued ed. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

---. Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory

and Theatre. Johns Hopkins UP, 1990.

---. Split Britches: Lesbian Practice/Feminist Performance. Routledge, 1996.

Cole, Susan Letzler, ed. Directors in Rehearsal: A Hidden World, Routledge, 1992. (Includes JoAnne Akalaitis, María Irene Fornés, Elizabeth LeCompte, and Elinor Renfield.)

Cole, Toby, and Helen Krich Chinoy, eds. Directors on Directing: A Sourcebook for the Modern Theatre. Allegro, 2013. (Includes Joan Littlewood.)

Coleman, Bud, and Judith A. Sebesta, eds. Women in American Musical Theatre: Essays on Composers, Lyricists, Librettists, Arrangers, Choreographers, Designers, Directors, Producers and Performance. MacFarland, 2008. (Includes Laurie Anderson, Jullianne Boyd, Vinnette Carroll, Katherine Dunham,

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Diamanda Galas, Anna Held, Hanya Holm, Mary Hunter, Sue Lawless, Meredith Monk, Albertina Rasch, Susan Schulman, and Julie Taymor.)

Daniels, Rebecca. Women Stage Directors Speak: Exploring the Influence of Gender on their Work. McFarland, 2000.

Delgado, Maria and Caridad Svich, eds.

Conducting a Life: Reflections on the Life of María Irene Fornés. Smith and Kraus, 1999.

Delgado, Maria M. and Dan Rebellato, eds.

Contemporary European Theatre Directors.

Routledge, 2010. (Includes Katie Mitchell and Ariane Mnouchkine.)

Delgado, Maria M. and Paul P. Heritage, eds. In Contact with the Gods? Directors Talk Theatre.

Manchester UP, 1996. (Includes María Irene Fornés and Ariane Mnouchkine.)

Goodman, Lizbeth. Feminist Stages: Interviews with Women in Contemporary British Theatre.

Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996.

Goodman, Lizbeth, and Jane de Gay, eds. The Routledge Reader in Gender and Performance.

Routledge, 1998.

Grise, Virginia and Irma Mayorga. The Panza Monologues, 2nd ed. U of Texas P, 2014.

Holdsworth, Nadine. Joan Littlewood. Routledge, 2006.

---. Joan Littlewood’s Theatre. Cambridge UP, 2015.

Irvin, Polly. Directing for the Stage. RotoVision, 2003. (Includes Anne Bogart and Julie Taymor.)

Kahn, David, and Donna Breed. Scriptwork: A Director’s Approach to New Play Development. Southern Illinois UP, 1995.

---. The Feminist Spectator in Action: Feminist Criticism for the Stage and Screen. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Kiely, Damon. How to Read a Play: Script Analysis for Directors. Routledge, 2016. (Includes interviews with Anne Bogart, Leslie Buxbaum-Danzig, Rachel Chavkin, Leigh Fondakowski, Anne Kauffman, Kristin Marting, Meredith McDonough, Lisa Portes, Julia Rhoads, Kimberly Senior, Leigh Silverman, Jessica Thebus, Kim Rubenstein.)

---. Theatre and Sexuality. Palgrave MacMillan, 2010.

Lanipekun, Jennifer. Communication in Theatre

Directing and Performance. Cambria, 2011.

---. Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theater. U of Michigan P, 2005.

Lehman, Susan Beth. Directors from Stage to Screen and Back Again. Intellect, 2013.

(Includes Judy Chaikin and Lenore DeKoven.)

Diamond, Elin, Unmaking Mimesis: Essays on

Feminism and Theatre. Routledge: 1997.

Dolan, Jill. The Feminist Spectator as Critic.

U of Michigan P, 1991.

Donkin, Ellen, and Susan Clement, eds. Upstaging Big Daddy: Directing Theater as if Gender and Race Matter. U of Michigan P, 1993.

Epstein, Helen. The Companies She Keeps: Tina

Packer Builds a Theater. Plukett Lake, 1985.

Fliotsos, Anne, and Wendy Vierow. American Women Stage Directors of the 20th Century. U of Illinois P, 2008.

Fliotsos, Anne, and Wendy Vierow, eds.

International Women Stage Directors. U of Illinois P, 2013.

Freidman, Sharon, ed. Feminist Theatrical Revisions of Classic Works. Jefferson, NC: MacFarland, 2009. (Includes JoAnne Akalaitis, Anne Bogart, and Mary Zimmerman.)

Garcia, Laura E., Sandra M. Gutierrez, and Felicitas

Nuñez, eds. Teatro Chicana: A Collective

Memoir and Selected Plays. U of Texas P, 2008.

Giannachi, Gabriella, and Mary Luckhurst, eds. On Directing: Interviews with Directors. St. Martins, 1999. (UK directors; includes Annie Castledine, Garry Hynes, Phyllida Lloyd, Katie Mitchell, Julia Pascal, and Deborah Warner.)

Littlewood, Joan. Joan’s Book: Joan Littlewood’s Peculiar History as She Tells It. Methuen, 2003.

Loewith, Jason. The Director’s Voice: Twenty Interviews, Vol. 2. TCG, 2012. (Includes Anne Bogart, Elizabeth LeCompte, Emily Mann, Julie Taymor, and Mary Zimmerman.)

Kiernander, Adrian. Ariane Mnouchkine and the

Théâtre du Soleil. Cambridge UP, 2008.

Manfull, Helen. In Other Words: Women Directors Speak. Smith and Kraus, 1997.

---. Taking Stage: Women Directors on Directing.

Methuen, 1999.

Mayer, John. Steppenwolf Theatre Company of Chicago: In Their Own Words. Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2016. (Includes interviews with Hallie Gordon, Tina Landau, Martha Lavey, Amy Morton, and Anna Shapiro.)

Miller, Judith G. Ariane Mnouchkine. Routledge, 2007.

Mitchell, Katie. The Director’s Craft: A Handbook

for the Theatre. Routledge, 2008.

Mitter, Shomit and Maria Shevtova. Fifty Key Theatre Directors. Routledge, 2005. (Includes Anne Bogart, Elizabeth LeCompte, Joan Littlewood. Ariane Mnouchkine.)

Moroff, Diana Lynn. Fornés: Theater in the Present Tense. U Michigan P, 1996.

Novak, Elaine Adams, and Deborah Novak.

Staging Musical Theatre, 1996.

Oppeheim, Lois. Directing Beckett. U of Michigan

P, 1994.

Piven, Joyce, and Susan Applebaum. In the Studio with Joyce Piven: Theatre Games, Story Theatre and Text Work for Actors. Methuen, 2012.

Ramírez, Elizabeth C. Chicanas/Latinas in American Theatre: A History of Performance. Indiana UP, 2000.

Robinson, Mary B. Directing Plays, Directing People: A Collaborative Art. Smith & Kraus, 2012.

Saivetz, Deborah. An Event in Space: JoAnne

Akalaitis in Rehearsal. Smith and Kraus, 2000.

Sandoval-Sánchez, Alberto, and Nancy S. Sternbach. Puro Teatro: A Latina Anthology. U of Arizona P, 2000. (Includes Laura Esparza, Diane Rodriguez and Susana Tubert.)

Schafer, Elizabeth. Ms-Directing Shakespeare: Women Direct Shakespeare. St. Martin’s, 2000.

Schneider, Rebecca, and Gabrielle Cody, eds.

Re: Direction: A Theoretical and Practical Guide. Routledge, 2002. (Includes Ariane Mounchkine, Pina Bausch, Liz Diamond, Meredith Monk, and Suzan-Lori Parks.)

Sheehy, Helen. Margo: The Life and Theatre of

Margo Jones. Southern Methodist UP, 1989.

Shevtsova, Maria, and Christopher Innes.

Directors/Directing: Conversations on Theatre.

Cambridge UP, 2008. (Includes Elizabeth LeCompte and Katie Mitchell.)

Singh, Anita, and Tarun T. Mukherjee. Gender, Space and Resistance: Women and Theater in India. D. K. Printworld, 2013.

Smith, Anna Deavere. Letters to a Young Artist.

Anchor, 2006.

---. Talk to Me: Listening Between the Lines.

Random House, 2001.

Spolin, Viola. Improvisation for the Theater: A Handbook of Teaching and Directing Techniques. Northwestern UP, 1997.

---. Theater Games for Rehearsal: A Director’s Handbook. Updated ed. Northwestern UP, 2011.

Stewart, Sabrina. The Reemergence of Mythology, Fantasy and Fable: Examined in the Works of Mary Zimmerman, Robert Wilson and Julie Taymor. VDM Verlag, 2009.

Young, Harvey and Queen Meccassia Zabriskie, eds. Black Theatre is Black Life: An Oral History of Chicago Theater and Dance, 19702010. Northwestern UP: 2013. (Includes Tosha Alston, Gloria Bond Clunie, Darlene Blackburn, Amaniyea Payne, Idella ReedDavis, and Jackie Taylor, and Geraldine Williams.)

DIRECTING

ESSAYS, ARTICLES + OTHER Armstrong, Ann Elizabeth. “Building Coalitional Spaces in Lois Weaver’s Performance Pedagogy.” Theatre Topics 15.2 (2005): 20119.

Bent, Eliza. “Destroying the Audience.” American Theatre 31.9 (2014): 30-34. (Interview Young Jean Lee.) Bogart, Anne. “Agency.” SITI Company, 16 March 2016.

Brodie, Meghan. “Casting as Queer Dramaturgy: A Case Study of Sarah Ruhl’s Adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando.” Theatre Topics 24.

3 (2014): 167-74.

Burgoyne, Suzanne, Karen Poulin and Ashley Rearden. “The Impact of Acting on Student Actors: Boundary Blurring, Growth, and Emotional Distress.” Theatre Topics 9.2 (1999): 157-79.

Burton, Rebecca. “Dispelling the Myth of Equality:

A Report on the Status of Women in

Canadian Theatre.” Canadian Theatre Review

132 (2007): 3-8.

Channick, Joan. “Oh Pioneers.” WITonline. League of Professional Theatre Women, 13 December 2012. (publ. with HowlRound.)

Chansky, Dorothy. “Usable Performance Feminism for Our Time: Reconsidering Betty Friedan.”

Theatre Journal 60.3 (2008): 341-64.

Chiang, Desdemona. “Why The Mikado is Still Problematic: Cultural Appropriation 101.”

HowlRound, 8 Oct. 2015.

Cole, Nora. “Vinnette Carroll: The First Black Woman Broadway Director.” Black Masks 20.3 (2012): 9-14.

Drama Mamas! Black Women Directors in the Spotlight and Remembered. Writer/dir./prod.

Rhonda Handsome, [2012] (www.youtube. com/watch?v=w0WSkwWYBm8.)

Dreyer-Lude, Melanie. “Feeling Double: The Psychophysical Activation of Personality in Bilingual Performance.” Theatre Topics 23.2 (2013): 197-208.

Wolf, Stacy. Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical. Oxford UP, 2011.

Fliotsos, Anne L. “The Pedagogy of Directing, 1920-1990: Seventy Years of Teaching the Unteachable.” Teaching Theatre Today. 2nd rev. ed. Anne L. Fliotsos and Gail S. Medford, eds.

Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 65-81.

---. A Problem Like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in

the American Musical. U of Michigan P, 2002.

---. “Tisa Chang: In Praise of Illusion.” American Theatre 20.3 (2003): 36-39.

Trevis, Di. Being a Director: A Life in Theatre.

Routledge, 2011.

Garcia Romero, Ann. “Latina/o Theatre Commons: Updating the U.S. Narrative.” Café Onda Journal of the Latina/o Theatre Commons.

HowlRound, 8 Aug. 2012. (Includes Juliette Carillo and Lisa Portes.)

González-El Hilali, Anita. “Theater as Cultural Exchange: A Director’s Perspective.” Latinas on Stage. Ed. Alicia Arrizon and Lillian Manzor. Third Woman, 2000. 422-36.

Greene, Alexis. “The Quiet Radical: Camaraderie and Causes Are the Hallmarks of Emily Mann’s Bountiful Quarter-century at the McCarter.” American Theatre 32.6 (2015): 24+.

Greene, Meg. “Gender Responsive Casting.”

Howl Round, 29 Jun. 2016.

Hendrick, Pamela R. “Two Opposite Animals?

Voice, Text, and Gender on Stage.” Theatre Topics 8. 2 (1998): 113-25.

Herrington, Joan. “Directing with the Viewpoints.”

Theatre Topics 10.2 (2000): 155-68.

Johnston, Kirsty. “Part I: Critical Survey of Disability Theatre Aesthetics, Politics, and Practices.” Disability Theatre and Modern Theatre. Bloomsbury, 2016. 13-106.

Kaufman, MJ. “Don’t Call me Ma’am: On the Politics of Trans Casting.” Howl Round, 19 Sept. 2013.

Marrero, Teresa María. “Latina Playwrights, Directors, and Entrepreneurs: An Historical Perspective.” Latinas on Stage. Ed. Alicia Arrizon and Lillian Manzor. Third Woman, 2000. 262-85.

Martínez-Vázquez, Maria. “Que Onda? with Arlene Martínez.” Café Onda Journal of the Latina/o Theatre Commons. HowlRound, 30 Mar. 2016.

“Mary Zimmerman: Metamorphosis of Poetry,” 7 Jan. 2013. YouTube, Chicago Ideas Week, www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9yYLqtp2fo McMahon, Marcy R. “Redirecting Chicana/Latina Representation: Diane Rodríguez’s Performance and Staging of the Domestic.”

Domestic Negotiations: Gender, Nation, and Self-Fashioning in US Mexicana and Chicana Literature and Art. Rutgers UP, 2013. 156-80.

Milan, K. K. & Wong, G. “Insatiable Sisters/Sister Solidarity.” Canadian Theatre Review 165 (2016): 32-34.

Mohler, C. E. “The Native Plays of Lynn Riggs (Cherokee) and the Question of “Race”specific Casting.” Theatre Topics 26.1 (2016): 63-75.

Lane, Jennifer. “A Conversation with Moxie Theatre’s Delicia Turner Sonnenberg.”

WITonline. League of Professional Theatre Women, 8 May 2015.

Owens, Denise. “Risky Business: A Conversation

between Lynne Meadow and Gladys Chen.”

WITonline. League of Professional Theatre

Women, 3 Dec. 2012.

SUMMER 2016 | SDC JOURNAL PEER-REVIEWED SECTION

55

Pe Palileo, Ruth. “What Age Am I Now? And I?: The Science of the Aged Voice in Beckett’s Plays.” Staging Age: The Performance of Age in Theatre, Dance and Film. Ed. Valerie Barnes Lipscomb and Leni Marshall. Palgrave MacMillan, 2010. 129-49.

Portes, Lisa. “Cultivating Artistic Curiosity.” Café

Onda Journal of the Latina/o Theatre Commons. HowlRound, 22 July 2014.

---. “Confessions of a Convert.” Café Onda Journal

of the Latina/o Theatre Commons.

HowlRound, 22 Aug. 2015.

Rodríguez, Chantal. “Living the Politics of Teatro in Los Angeles: An Interview with Diane Rodriguez.” Latin American Theatre Review 43.1 (2009): 143-49.

Rollie, Emily. “Intimate Relation(ship)s: The Development of Director-Performer Relationships in Feminist Solo Performance.”

About Directing. Ed. Anna Migliarsi. Legas, 2014. 29-38.

Rolón, Rosalba. “Driving The Bronx Manhattan

Theater Express.” HowlRound, 17 Sept. 2015.

Rosenthal, Susan Lori, and James Harding. “Ellen Stewart La Mama of Us All.” TDR: The Drama Review 50.2 (2006): 12+.

Running-Johnson, Cynthia. “Directing Crimp and Corneille in France: A Conversation with Brigitte Jaques-Wajeman.” Theatre Topics 25.2 (2015): 169-75.

Sandahl, Carrie. “Ahhhh Freak Out! Metaphors of Disability and Femaleness in Performance.”

Theatre Topics 9.1 (1999): 11-30.

---. “Queering the Crip or Cripping the Queer?: Intersections of Queer and Crip Identities in Solo Autobiographical Performance.” Gay and Lesbian Quarterly 9.1-2 (2003): 25-56.

Shanahan, Ann M. “Un-’blocking’ Hedda and Medea through Feminist ‘Play’ with Traditional Staging Forms.” Theatre Topics 21.1 (2011): 61-74.

---. “Playing House: Staging Experiments about Women in Domestic Space.” Theatre Topics 23.2 (2013): 129-44.

Watkins, Beth. “The Feminist Director in Rehearsal: An Education.” Theatre Topics 15.2 (2005): 185-200.

Carter, Alexandra and Janet O’Shea, eds. The Routledge Dance Studies Reader, 2nd ed.

Routledge, 2010.

Whiteman, Carol. “A Space for Confidence: Exploring Women in the Director’s Chair.”

About Directing. Ed. Anna Migliarsi. Legas, 2014. 101-108.

Clark, VèVè A., and Sarah E. Johnson, eds. Kaiso!

Writings by and about Katherine Dunham. U of Wisconsin P, 2006.

“Women in Theatre.” Spec. issue of American Theatre 15.7 (1998). (Includes Vicki Boone, Tina Landau, Carey Perloff, Molly Smith, and Julie Taymor.)

Wilson, Melinda D. “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone: An Experiment in ‘Race-Conscious’ Casting” Theatre Topics 19.1 (2009): 39-49.

“Women Nation: Women Leading U.S. Theatres in the 21st Century. “ Spec. issue of Women in Theatre Magazine 12 (2011). (Includes Susan Booth, Kamilah Forbes, Martha Lavey, Judith Malina, Eileen Morris, Raelle Myrick-Hodges, and Olga Sanchez.)

“Women-powered Plays: Theatremakers Across the Country Talk about Works Featured or Created by Female or Transgender Artists.”

American Theatre 32.8 (2015): 54+.

Wren, Celia. “You Can See America From Here: Molly Smith Puts Arena Stage and the Nation Face to Face.” American Theatre 27.7 (2010): 26+.

Young, Christine. “Feminist Pedagogy at Play in the University Rehearsal Room.” Theatre Topics 22.2 (2012): 137-48.

Zimmerman, Mary. “The Archeology of Performance.” Theatre Topics 15.1 (2005): 2535.

CHOREOGRAPHY BOOKS

Adair, Christy, ed. Women and Dance: Sylphs and Sirens. New York UP, 1992.

Albright, Ann Cooper. Choreographing Difference: The Body and Identity in Contemporary Dance. Wesleyan UP, 1997.

Aloff, Mindy, ed. Leaps in the Dark: Agnes de Mille.

UP of Florida, 2011.

Singh, Anita. “An Interview with Mangai.” Asian

Theatre Journal. 30.2 (2013): 486-505.

Banes, Sally. Dancing Women: Female Bodies on Stage. Routledge, 1998.

Smith, Jess. “Women Directors: Language Worth Repeating.” WITonline. League of Professional Theatre Women, 6 March 2014.

---. Terpsichore in Sneakers: Postmodern Dance.

Wesleyan Paperback, 1987.

Snyder-Young, Dani. “Generation Y Feminism at

Teatro Luna.” Café Onda Journal of the

Latina/o Theatre Commons. HowlRound, 15

Jul. 2014.

Troyano, Alina. “Author’s Introduction.” I, Carmelita Tropicana: Performing Between Cultures.

Beacon, 2000. xiii-xxv.

Waller, Marguerite. “Pocha or Pork Chop?: An Interview with Theater Director and Performance Artist Laura Esparza.” Latinas on Stage. Ed. Alicia Arrizon and Lillian Manzor.

Third Woman, 2000. 248-59.

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PEER-REVIEWED SECTION | SUMMER 2016

Barker, Barbara. Ballet or Ballyhoo: The American Careers of Maria Bonfanti, Rita Sangalli and Giuseppina Morlacchi. Dance Horizons, 1987.

Blom, Lynne Anne and L. Tarin Chaplin. The Intimate Act of Choreography. U of Pittsburgh P, 1982.

Brooks, Lynn Matluck, ed. Women’s Work: Making Dance in Europe before 1800. U of Wisconsin P, 2008.

Butterworth, Jo and Liesbeth Wildschut, eds.

Contemporary Choreography: A Critical Reader. Routledge, 2009.

Cramer, Lyn. Creating Musical Theatre: Conversations with Directors and Choreographers. Bloomsbury, 2013. (Includes Kathleen Marshall and Susan Stroman) Daly, Ann. Critical Gestures: Writings on Dance and Culture. Wesleyan UP, 2002. (Includes Pina Bausch and Deborah Hay) ---. Done into Dance: Isadora Duncan in America.

Indiana UP, 1995. de Mille, Agnes. Dance to the Piper. Columbus

Books, 1987.

Emery, Lynn Fauley. Black Dance from 1619 to Today. Princeton Books, 1989.

Friedler, Sharon E. and Susan B. Glazer, eds.

Dancing Female: Lives and Issues of Women in Contemporary Dance. Routledge, 1997.

Garafola, Lynn. Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. De Capo, 1998.

George-Graves, Nadine. Urban Bush Women: Twenty Years of African American Dance Theater, Community Engagement, and Working It Out. U of Wisconsin P, 2010.

Gottschild, Brenda Dixon. The Black Dancing Body: A Geography from Coon to Cool.

Palgrave MacMillan, 2003.

---. Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance: Dance and Other Contexts.

Greenwood, 1996.

Halprin, Anna. Moving Toward Life: Five Decades of Transformational Dance. Ed. Rachel Kaplan.

Wesleyan UP, 1995.

Hamill, Kyna. They Fight: Classical to Contemporary

Stage Fight Scenes. Smith and Kraus, 2003.

Humphrey, Doris. The Art of Making Dances. Ed.

Barbara Pollack. Princeton Book, 1991.

Jamison, Judith and Howard Kaplan. Dancing

Spirit: An Autobiography. Doubleday, 1993.

Kraut, Anthea. Choreographing Copyright: Race, Gender, and Intellectual Property Rights in American Dance. Oxford UP, 2015.

Lewin, Yaël Tamar. Night’s Dancer: The Life of Janet Collins. Wesleyan UP, 2011.

Lynne, Gillian. A Dancer in Wartime. Chatto &

Windus, 2011.

Malnig, Julie. Dancing Till Dawn: A Century of Exhibition Ballroom Dancing. New York UP, 1995.

Manning, Susan A. Ecstasy and the Demon: Feminism and Nationalism in the Dances of Mary Wigman. U of California P, 1993.

---. Modern Dance, Negro Dance: Race in Motion.

U of Minnesota P, 2004. (Includes Mary Wigman, Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Hemsley Winfield, Edna Guy, Helen Tamiris, Katherine Dunham, and Pearl Primus.)

Mayer, Marion. Pina Bausch: Dance Can Be Virtually Everything. Trans. Penny Black.

Oberon, 2016.

Mizejewski, Linda. Ziegfeld Girl: Image and Icon in

Culture and Cinema. Duke UP, 1999.

Moix, Ana Maria. Carmen Amaya 1963. Libros del

Silencio, 2013. (in Spanish) Ovalle, Priscilla P. Dance and the Hollywood Latina: Race, Sex and Stardom. Rutgers UP, 2010.

(Includes Dolores Del Rio, Rita Hayworth, Jennifer Lopez, Carmen Miranda, and Rita Moreno.)

Sagolla, Lisa Jo. The Girl Who Fell Down: A Biography of Joan McCracken. Northeastern, 2003.

Schwartz, Peggy, and Murray Schwartz. The Dance Claimed Me: A Biography of Pearl Primus. Yale UP, 2011.

Siegel Marcia B. Days on Earth: The Dance of Doris Humphrey. Duke UP, 1993.

Smith-Artaud, Jacqueline. Dance Composition: A Practical Guide to Creative Success in Dance Making, 6th ed. Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2010.

Stodelle, Ernestine. Deep Song: The Dance Story of

Martha Graham. Macmillan, 1984.

Tharp, Twyla. The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use

It for Life. Simon & Schuster, 2006.

Wigman, Mary. The Language of Dance. Trans.

Walter Sorell. Wesleyan UP, 1966.

Wong, Yutian. Choreographing Asian America.

Wesleyan UP, 2010.

Zaporah, Ruth. Action Theater: The Improvisation

of Presence. North Atlantic Books, 1995.

CHOREOGRAPHY

ESSAYS, ARTICLES + OTHER Aduonum, Ama. “Memory Walking with Urban Bush Women’s Batty Moves.” TDR: The Drama Review 55.1 (2011): 52-69.

Bannerman, Henrietta. “Martha Graham’s House of the Pelvic Truth: The Figuration of Sexual Identities and Female Empowerment.” Dance Research Journal 42.2 (2010): 30.

Berg, Shelley C. “Saving a Legacy: Agnes De Mille’s ‘Gold Rush.’” Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research 19.1 (2001): 60-90.

Daniele, Graciela. “Twenty Questions” (Interview).

American Theatre 22.3 (2005): 72.

Farah Jasmine, Griffin. “Pearl Primus and the Idea of a Black Radical Tradition.” Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 17.1 (2013): 40-49.

Gonzalez, A. “Urban Bush Women: Finding Shelter in the Utopian Ensemble.” Modern Drama 47.2 (2004): 250-68.

Harris, Andrea. “Gendered Discourses in American Ballet at Mid-Century: Ruth Page on the Periphery.” Dance Chronicle 35.1 (2012): 30-53.

Kraut, Anthea. “Between Primitivism and Diaspora: The Dance Performances of Josephine Baker, Zora Neale Hurston, and Katherine Dunham.”

Theatre Journal 55 (2003): 433–50.

---. “Recovering Hurston, Reconsidering the Choreographer.” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 16.1 (2006): 71-90.

Meglin, Joellen A. “Blurring the Boundaries of Genre, Gender, and Geopolitics: Ruth Page and Harald Kreutzberg’s Transatlantic Collaboration in the 1930s.” Dance Research Journal 41.2 (2009): 52-75.

Meglin, Joellen A. and Lynn Matluck Brooks.

“Where Are All the Women Choreographers in Ballet?” Dance Chronicle 35.1 (2012): 1-7.

Marranca, Bonnie. “Meredith Monk’s “Recent Ruins”: The Archaeology of Consciousness: Essaying Images.” Performing Arts Journal 4.3 (1980): 39-49.

Osterweis, Ariel. “Public Pubic.” TDR: The Drama Review 59.44 (2015): 101-16.

Perron, Wendy. “Part V: Preserving the Legacy: Katherine Dunham: One-Woman Revolution.”

Studies in Dance History (2005): 624-28.

Phillips, Victoria. “Martha Graham’s Gilded Cage: Blood Memory—An Autobiography (1991).”

Dance Research Journal 45.2 (2013): 63-83.

Preston, Carrie J. “The Motor in the Soul: Isadora Duncan and Modernist Performance.”

Modernism/modernity 12.2 (2005): 273-89.

Ruprecht, Lucia. “Gesture, Interruption, Vibration: Rethinking Early Twentieth-Century Gestural Theory and Practice in Walter Benjamin, Rudolf von Laban, and Mary Wigman.” Dance Research Journal 47.2 (2015): 23-42.

Sholiton, Faye. “Dianne McIntyre: Dance-Driven Dramatist.” Dramatist 18.2 (2015): 64-67.

Simas, Rosy “My Making of We Wait in the Darkness,” Dance Research Journal, Special Issue on Indigenous Dance 48 (2016): 29-32.

Smithner, Nancy Putnam. “Meredith Monk: Four Decades by Design and by Intervention.”

TDR: The Drama Review 49.2 (2005): 93-118.

Wolf, Stacy, and Liza Gennaro. “Dance in Musical Theatre,” The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater. Ed. Nadine Georges Graves. Oxford UP, 2015. 148-168.

ADDITIONAL SOURCES CITED IN FORUM Benedikt, Michael. Theatre Experiment: An Anthology of American Plays. Doubleday, 1967. 323-24.

Felner, Mira. THINK Theatre. Pearson, 2013. 8-9.

Fuchs, Elinor. “EF’s Visit to a Small Planet: Some Questions to Ask a Play.” Theater 34.2 (2004): 5-9.

Goodman Theatre. “Backstage at the Goodman: Homer’s The Odyssey,” 1999. Vimeo, Turgical, vimeo.com/11044961.

“Episode 6: Putting It Together.” Broadway: The American Musical. Writ. Michael Kantor and Laurence Maslon. Dir. Michael Kantor. PBS, 2014. DVD. Komisar, Lucy. “Shakespeare’s Executioner Got the Wrong Man.” American Reporter, 27 June 1977. www.larrybryggman.com/reviews/ rvhen8.htm.

Krauss, Ruth. “A Beautiful Day,” “ In A Bull’s Eye,” “Pineapple Play,” “There’s a Little Ambiguity Over There Among the Bluebells.” Theatre Experiment. Ed. Michael Benedikt. Doubleday, 1967. 325-29.

Leach, Robert. Theatre Workshop: Joan Littlewood and the Making of Modern British Theatre. U of Exeter P, 2006.

Rankin, Peter. Joan Littlewood: Dreams and Realities—The Official Biography. Oberon, 2014.

NOTES

• Special thanks to our editorial board and Rebecca Daniels, Pamela R. Hendrick, Amy Wilkinson, Sarah Cullen Fuller, Molly Shanahan, Debra Goodman, and Irma Mayorga for consultation on this list of sources.

• Notes on included names are given except in critical sources in which individuals are too numerous to list.

• For this list by and about women leading, we have only included works authored, edited, or co-edited by women. Texts edited by men but containing direct interviews with women are included as noted.

• This list is formulated in a hybrid of the 7th and 8th Editions of the MLA Style Guidelines in order to reduce space for entries and maximize inclusion.

• For several sources about women leading in the fields please see the SDC Journal features and new peer-reviewed articles and reviews.

Archives of past issues can be found at sdcweb.org.

• We created this nonexclusive list of sources by and about women directors and choreographers to complement the “Forum on Training in Directing and Choreography: Sources from Leading Women” in the PeerReviewed Section on page 47. Please see the introduction to the forum and notes above for more context. This list will be available and periodically updated online at sdcweb.org/TheSourceList. Please send any texts and other sources we have missed on this preliminary list to both Ann M. Shanahan (ashanah@luc.edu) and Marella Martin Koch (MMartinKoch@SDCweb.org) for consideration at the next update.

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SDC FOUNDATION

BY MEGAN CARTER The art of theatre is handed down from artist to artist. Being in the room to experience the unique alchemy of another director or choreographer’s process is fundamental. The Observership Program provides early to mid-career directors and choreographers paid opportunities to observe the work of master directors and choreographers as they create productions on Broadway, Off-Broadway and at leading regional theatres. Our Observership Mentors are among the most exciting directors and choreographers working in the field, and the time and energy they pour into our programs reverberates throughout the community, enriching the art form and promising a future populated by equally magnificent and magnanimous artists.

In the two years I have served as director of SDC Foundation I have been reminded over and over again that the engine that runs our programs is the generosity of spirit that our directors and choreographers show each other. I am struck, in particular, by our dedicated Observership and Fellowship Mentors, who share their passion, expertise, and hard-earned insights with our program participants.

Thank you to all of our mentors over the years.

Thank you, not just for the work that you do, but for the spirit in which you do it.

Thank you for fostering the imaginations and futures of the next generation.

2015-2016 Mentors MENTORS

PROJECT

OBSERVER

Stafford Arima

Allegiance

Makiko Shibuya

Matt August

How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Amile Wilson

Karen Azenberg

It Happened One Christmas

Megan Minutillo

Andy Blankenbuehler

Bandstand

Brandon Powers

Tracy Brigden

Some Brighter Distance

Caitlyn Robinson

Laurence Connor

School of Rock

Alex Hare

Lear deBessonet

The Odyssey

Adrian Alea

Timothy Douglas

Mothers and Sons

Candis Jones

Sheldon Epps

Breaking Through

Courtney Buchan

Leah Gardiner

The Ruins of Civilization

Dennis Corsi

Matt Gardiner

West Side Story

Philip Fazio

Michael Grandage

Hughie

Rachel Black Spaulding

Thomas Kail

Daphne’s Dive

Rebecca Martinez

Anne Kauffman

Workshop

Michael Landman

Neel Keller

Women Laughing Alone with Salad

Ian Stewart

Kwame Kwei-Armah

Comedy of Errors

Candis Jones

Lorin Latarro

The Odyssey

Andrew Williams

Emily Mann

Babydoll

Christopher Burris

Davis McCallum

Clarkston

Evan Cummings

Marcia Milgrom Dodge

Empire

Morgan Gould

Jerry Mitchell

Gotta Dance

Cassey Kivnick (Ockrent Fellow)

Casey Nicholaw

Tuck Everlasting

Mandie Black (Traube Fellow)

Sam Pinkleton

Runaways

Alex Perez

Eric Schaeffer

girlstar

Amanda Connors

Susan Stroman

Dot

Chari Arespacochaga

Tazewell Thompson

Lost in the Stars

Jenny Bennett & Alison Moritz (Kurt Weill Fellows)

Michael Wilson

Grey Gardens

Diana Wyenn

Chay Yew

Hillary & Clinton

Hutch Pimental

“I had an absolutely transformative Observership experience—I would recommend it, and City Theatre/Tracy Brigden in particular, without hesitation. SDCF and the incredible artists and administrators at the theatre gave me a rare gift in the form of a chance to focus exclusively on my development as a director. In my experience, such an opportunity to be insulated from other obligations is completely unique (“This is a real thing? And you get paid? And you can just apply for it?” was a common refrain from actors and designers I met along the way), unmatched by other internship and assistantship opportunities both in terms of scope and benefit.” - Caitlyn Robinson, Observer, Some Brighter Distance with Tracy Brigden | For more on Tracy Brigden, please see “Beyond the Hudson” on pg. 18-19.

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FOUNDATION SECTION | SUMMER 2016

THE SOCIETY PAGES SDC MEMBERS @ WORK + PLAY

On April 11, 2016, Members gathered at Ripley-Grier Studios + online via livestream for the Semi-Annual Membership Meeting. The Diversity + Inclusion Committee presented SDC’s new Statement of Commitment + announced the 2015-2016 Standout Moments recognizing Members’ contributions to greater diversity + inclusion in the theatre.

On April 15-16, SDC Executive Director Laura Penn + Board Members Ethan McSweeny + Chay Yew attended the 2016 Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival in Washington, D.C., where they named finalists for the SDC Directing Initiative + awarded fellowships to Rommel Arellan-Marinas (Florida International University), Liz Fisher (Texas State University) + Nathaniel Niemi (University of Hawaii - Manoa).

LEFT Sammi

Cannold + Makiko Shibuya at Semi-Annual Membership Meeting

THIS PAGE Ethan

McSweeny, Robert Schenkkan, Gregg Henry + Chay Yew at KCACTF BOTTOM LEFT Ryan Fortney, SDC Fellow Liz Fisher, Frank Britton + Will Davis BOTTOM RIGHT SDC Fellow Nathaniel Niemi, Chay Yew, Executive Director Laura Penn, Ethan McSweeny + SDC Fellow Rommel Arellan-Marinas SUMMER 2016 | SDC SDC JOURNAL

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Choreographers Spencer Liff + Dan Knechtges made a pit stop at Moscow’s Red Square on their travels as part of the Broadway Dreams Foundation PHOTO

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Annette Tanner

On April 30, SDC Board Secretary Oz Scott + Tony-nominated actress Starletta DuPois were honored at the Giving Back Corporation’s Celebrity Spring Roast/Toast in Los Angeles. All proceeds from the event went to benefit collegebound inner-city youth.

PHOTO

Karim Saafir Photography

The 30th Annual Easter Bonnet Competition raised a record-breaking $5,528,568, the largest grand total in Broadway Cares history.

Tom Viola, Executive Director of Broadway Cares, produced the event + Jonathan Cerullo staged "Tea for Two" for the Bucket Brigade, Broadway Cares’ tireless volunteers.

Jonathan Cerullo w/ make-up artist Angelina Avalon + Tom Viola, Executive Director of Broadway Cares

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On May 16, SDC co-sponsored the 34th Annual Fred & Adele Astaire Awards, where several Members received awards and nominations.

Andy Blankenbuehler (Hamilton), Savion Glover (Shuffle Along) + Sergio Trujillo (On Your Feet) won Best Choreography in a three-way tie + Maurice Hines was honored for Outstanding Body of Work in Dance.

LEFT

James Gray, Susan Stroman + Brittany Marcin

RIGHT

Carmen de Lavallade + Maurice Hines PHOTO Caitlin Cannon

On May 17, SDC hosted its’ annual Drama League Fellows Luncheon, welcoming twelve emerging directors to the New York theatre community.

It was Roger T. Danforth’s final Fellows luncheon as the Drama League’s Artistic Director. COUNTER-CLOCKWISE SDC Director of Member Services Barbara Wolkoff; Roger T. Danforth; Katie Lupica; James Palmer; Yavor Kostov; Kalina Wagenstein, Executive Director of Art Office Sofia; Noa Egozi, Shaun Tubbs; Drew Feldman; Sara Holdren; Chloe Treat; Ilana Ransom Toeplitz; Jesca Prudencio; Candis Jones PHOTO Marella Martin Koch

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SDC Foundation’s Directing the Future Symposium with New York Theatre Workshop + Adelphi University on May 23 was an opportunity for mid-career directors to come together to discuss resources, information sharing, growth + best practices. Working with facilitators in small groups, symposium attendees also attended breakout sessions in order to write mission statements for directors that communicate the essence of what directors do and the best way to clearly and consistently articulate the importance of their contributions.

TOP

Anne Kauffman + Elena Araoz

Also on May 23, Sarna Lapine, Jade King Carroll, Chloe Treat + Morgan Gould sat down with 92Y's Meredith Ganzman, far left, to discuss the challenges faced by women directors and choreographers in SDC’s first-ever #FacebookLive event.

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On June 6, past Board Presidents Pamela Berlin and Julianne Boyd plus current Board President Susan H. Schulman met at The Plant to celebrate Marshall W. Mason, recipient of the 2016 Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement. Honorary Advisory Committee Members not present: Karen Azenberg, Danny Daniels + Ted Pappas.

LEFT TO RIGHT

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Susan H. Schulman, Marshall W. Mason, Pamela Berlin + Julianne Boyd

June 10 was all about Tony Toast, hosted

by Susan H. Schulman in her Upper West Side home. The 2016 Tony Awards nominees gathered to celebrate an exciting Broadway season. This year’s nominated Members were: Michael Arden (Spring Awakening), Andy Blankenbuehler (Hamilton), John Doyle (The Color Purple), Scott Ellis (She Loves Me), Savion Glover (Shuffle Along), Rupert Goold (King Charles III), Thomas Kail (Hamilton), Jonathan Kent (Long Day’s Journey Into Night), Frank Langella (The Father), Joe Mantello (The Humans), Hofesh Schechter (Fiddler on the Roof), Randy Skinner (Dames at Sea), Liesl Tommy (Eclipsed), Sergio Trujillo (On Your Feet), Ivo van Hove (A View from the Bridge), and George C. Wolfe (Shuffle Along).

LEFT TO RIGHT

Mark Brokaw, Susan H. Schulman, (background) Liesl Tommy, Barlett Sher, Laura Penn, (sitting) George C. Wolfe + Leigh Silverman PHOTO Marella

Martin Koch

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TOP

Andy Mientus, Michael Arden, Walter Bobbie + Thomas Kail at Tony Toast BOTTOM

Mark Brokaw, Joe Mantello + Marshall W. Mason at Tony Toast PHOTOS

Marella Martin Koch

The 70th Annual Tony Awards celebration on June 12 was a night to remember. The ceremony was held at the Beacon Theatre + saw wins for Frank Langella for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play, Ivo van Hove for Best Direction of a Play, Andy Blankenbuehler for Best Choreography + Thomas Kail for Best Direction of a Musical.

ABOVE

Executive Director Laura Penn + Tony nominator Warner Shook

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The iconic HAROLD CLURMAN was a director, writer, educator, and critic who became one of the most respected and influential members of the American theatre. The son of two Jewish immigrants, Clurman was born in 1901 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He first experienced theatre when his parents took him to see Jacob Adler perform with the Yiddish Theater. He later recalled, “…it was a transformative experience. I immediately had a passionate inclination toward the theatre.”

After attending Columbia, Clurman moved to Paris at the age of 20 to study at the University of Paris. While writing his thesis on the history of French drama, Clurman was influenced by the work of Jacques Copeau, whom he later assisted, and inspired by the creative force of the Moscow Art Theatre’s permanent company. Clurman returned to New York in 1924, taking every theatrical job he could as an extra, stage manager, or play reader, and bringing with him the kernel of his vision.

“

I was interested in what the theatre was going to say…The theatre must say something. It must relate to society. It must relate to the world we live in. ”

In 1930, Clurman started giving weekly lectures on the importance of founding a permanent acting company to create more meaningful and political theatre. Citing Konstantin Stanislavsky’s ensemble work with the Moscow Art Theatre, Clurman believed the foundation of trust built by ensemble work would free artists to create emotionally honest, realistic work in a lasting community. With Lee Strasberg and Cheryl Crawford, Clurman gathered 28 artists—including Stella Adler, Morris Carnovsky, Phoebe Brand, Elia Kazan, Clifford Odets, and Sanford Meisner—to form the Group Theatre in 1931. In its ten years, the Group Theatre produced twenty plays, including several written by Clifford Odets and directed by Clurman—Golden Boy, Waiting for Lefty, and Awake and Sing!.

After the Group Theatre closed, Clurman transitioned to Broadway, working with playwrights such as Eugene O’Neill, Carson McCullers, and Arthur Miller to create theatre that was both meaningful and popular in its exploration of American pathos. A critic who also taught many of the successful actors of his time, Harold Clurman left a lasting mark on the American theatre that continues to influence today.

PHOTO

Jack Mitchell c/o Getty Images

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SDC MEMBERS + ASSOCIATES continued...Barry McNabb Kitty McNamee • Anne McNaughton • Todd James McNerney BT McNicholl • Michael McNulty • William McNulty Amanda McRaven • Ethan McSweeny • Jessica McVay Debra McWaters • William Mead • Lynne Meadow 321 W. 44TH STREET | STE 804 | NY, NY | 10036 Stephen Mear • Wilfredo Medina • Shawna Mefferd Kelty Danny Mefford • Joseph Megel • Frank Megna Rob Melrose • Harland Meltzer • Sam Mendes Ray Mercer • Diane Conrad Merchant • Brian Mertes Penny Metropulos • Mike Metzel • Barbara Meyer D. Lynn Meyers • Mia Michaels • Carolyn Michel Michael Michetti • Joan Micklin Silver • Kate Middleton Judith Midyett Pender • Wilson Milam • Maria Mileaf Sarah Miles • Angela Miller • Janet Miller Charles Miller • Kimberly Miller • Troy Miller • Jaclyn Miller Rhonda Miller • John Miller-Stephany • Beth Milles Paul Millet • Howard Millman • Miriam Mills Stephen Keep Mills • Merri Ann Milwe Jasson Minadakis • Nicolas Minas • Mark Mineart Steve Minning • Judy Minor • Trish Minskoff Dominic Missimi • Jerry Mitchell • Rand Mitchell • Jodi Moccia • Elaine EE Moe • Armando Molina • Janine Molinari • Tim Mollen • Pamela Moller Kareman Karen Molnar • Mary Monroe • Bernard Monroe • Bonnie Monte • Virginia Monte • Michael Montel • Jenny Montgomery • Rob Montgomery Christy Montour-Larson • John Moon • Christina Moore • Adrianne Moore • Kym Moore • Matthew Robert Moore • Charlotte Moore • Christopher Liam Moore Jason Moore • Kevin Moore • Mandy Moore • Tom Moore • Brad Mooy • Rene Moreno • Charles Morey • Edward Morgan • Kevin Moriarty • Michael Morris Nina Morrison • Sean Morrissey • Thomas Morrissey • Amy Morton • Jonathan Moscone • Douglas Moser • Paul Moser • Gregory Mosher • Allison Mosier Jeffrey Moss • Robert Moss • Aaron Moss • Andrew Kenneth Moss • Larry Moss • Michele Mossay • Macey Mott • Alyce Mott • Darrell Grand Moultrie Jeffrey Mousseau • Rusty Mowery • Kathleen Mucciolo-Kolins • Tom Mullen • Paul Mullins • Jonathan Munby • Lainie Munro • Alan Muraoka • Mary Murfitt Michael Murnin • Christopher Murrah • Michael Murray • Joey Murray • Brian Murray • David Muse • Eve Muson • Jonathon Musser • Birgitte Mutrux Floyd Mutrux • Gloria Muzio • Mark Myars • Susan Myer Silton • Randal Myler • Raelle Myrick-Hodges • Raelle Myrick-Hodges • Stephen Nachamie • Michael Najjar Ron Nakahara • Allison Narver • Ron Nash • Adam Natale • James Naughton • Shakina Nayfack • Ariel Nazryan • Timothy Near • Robert Neblett • Noel Neeb Julian Neil • Jennifer Nelson • Daniel Allen Nelson • Richard Nelson • Lila Neugebauer • Dorothy Neumann • David Neumann • Brian Newberg Mara Newbery Greer • Charles Newell • Neal Newman • Bari Newport • Oanh Nguyen • Casey Nicholaw • Kent Nicholson • James Nicola • Todd Nielsen Ann Nieman • Nathaniel Niemi • Cynthia Nixon • Terrence Nolen • Scott Nolte • Sample Non-Member • Nathan Norcross • Cassie Nordgren • Todd Norris Dallett Norris • Bruce Norris • Natalie Novacek • Stefan Novinski • Trevor Nunn • Will Nunziata • Mike Nussbaum • Julia O Connor • Dan O Driscoll Thomas James O Leary • JoAnn Oakes • David OBrien • Jack O’Brien • Tim Ocel • Sarah OConnell • Ricarda O’Conner • Chris OConnor • Jim O’Connor Evren Odcikin Odcikin • Christine OGrady • Mary Ellen OHara • Robert O’Hara • Yutaka Okada • Nicholas Olcott • Doug Oliphant • Charles Olsen Todd Olson • Matt Omasta • James O’Neil • Kathleen ONeill • Michael ONeill • Cynthia Onrubia • Ciaran OReilly • Eliza Orleans • Eric Ort • Kenneth Ortega Giovanni Ortega • Jennifer Ortega • Erin Ortman • Adesola Osakalumi • Amy Osatinski • Alan Osburn • William Osetek • Tom Ossowski • Michael OSteen Sharon Ott • Andy Ottoson • Lee Overtree • Nancy Dobbs Owen • Leslie Owens-Harrington • Ibi Owolabi • Rumi Oyama • Orlando Pabotoy • Al Pacino Susan Padveen • Lynne Page • Jane Page • Jeffrey Page • Anthony Page • Marshall Pailet • Walter Painter • Renee Palermo • Andrew Palermo • Joel Paley James Palmer • Cecilia Jessica Pang • Seth Panitch • Johnathon Pape • Evan Pappas • Ted Pappas • Victor Pappas • Casey Paradies • Andy Paris • Tony Parise Cindi Parise • Richard Parison Jr • Catrin Parker • Harry Parker • Christian Parker • Robert Ross Parker • John Parkhurst • Todd Parmley • AnnieB Parson Ron OJ Parson • Estelle Parsons • William Partlan • Michael Parva • John Pasquin • Caymichael Patten • Carrie Lee Patterson • Kevin Patterson Rebecca Patterson • Denise Patton • Pat Patton • Alan Paul • Andrew Paul • Kent Paul • Jennifer Paulson-Lee • Diane Paulus • Laura Pavloff • Travis Payne Lee Ann Payne • Pat Payne • Ruth Pe Palileo • Lindsey Pearlman • Patrick Pearson • Christopher Peck • James Peck • Sabrina Peck • Scott Pegg Shaun Peknic • Lisa Pelikan • Alessandro Pellicani • Adam Pelty • Regina Peluso • Ron Peluso • Daniel Pelzig • Austin Pendleton • Emily Penick Gail Pennington • Robert Penola • Josh Penzell • Carl Peoples • Neil Pepe • Melanie Pepe • Charles Pepiton • Lorca Peress • Alex Perez • Alex Perez Luis Perez • Ralph Perkins • David Perkovich • Michael Perlman • Carey Perloff • Michael Perreca • Margarett Perry • Vince Pesce • Nikol Peterman Lisa Peterson • Dane Peterson • Eric Peterson • Jim Petosa • David Petrarca • Frank Petrilli • Steven Petrillo • Julie Petry • Yasen Peyankov • Matt Pfeiffer Tony Phelan • Brian Isaac Phillips • Clayton Phillips • Arlene Phillips • Jackson Phippin • Sara Phoenix • Liz Piccoli • James Pickering • David Hyde Pierce Richard Ramos Pierlon • Nina Pinchin • Sam Pinkleton • Mark Pinter • Kiara Pipino • Ron Piretti • David Pittu • Bryan Adam Pivnick • Joey Pizzi • David J Platt Martin Platt • Jack Plotnick • Jeffrey Polk • Will Pomerantz • Teresa Pond • Ginger Poole • Brant Pope • Billy Porter • Lisa Portes • Aaron Posner • Markus Potter Joanne Pottlitzer • Benoit Swan Pouffer • Anthony Powell • James Powell • Stella Powell-Jones • Kathleen Powers • Doug Powers • Brandon Powers Dani Prados • June Prager • Artemis Preeshl • Alfred Preisser • Jerry Prell • Stephen Press • Michael Pressman • Travis Preston • Joyce Presutti • Lonny Price Paige Price • Josh Prince • Harold Prince • Jay Prock • Pete Pryor • Peter Pucci • Nira Jean Pullin • William Pullinsi • Jane Purse • Tom Quaintance Tee Quillin • Bill Quinlan • Robert Quinlan • Daniel Quinn • Shaunessy James Quinn • Zeffin Quinn Hollis • Everett Quinton • Martin Rabbett • Larry Raben Victoria Racimo • Sara Rademacher • Michael Rader • James Rado • Stephen Radosh • Richard Raether • Tyne Rafaeli • Lisa Rafferty • Matt Raftery Michael Raine • Mark Ramont • Chase Keala Ramsey • Kevin Ramsey • John Rando • Charles Randolph-Wright • J Ranelli • Steve Rankin • Jay Raphael Bradley Rapier • Jerry Lee Rapier • Tommy Rapley • Adam Rapp • Jenn Rapp • Phylicia Rashad • Sarah Rasmussen • Bill Rauch • Katherine Ray • Stephen Rayne • Pete Reader • Alice Reagan • Lee Roy Reams • Theresa Rebeck • JM Rebollo • Vanessa Redgrave • Jessica Beth Redish • Barbara Redmond • Stephen Reed • Scot Reese • Cara Reichel • Jacqueline Reid • Frank E. Reilly • M. Seth Reines • Gordon Reinhart • Ann Reinking • Eleanor Reissa • Calvin Remsberg Elinor Renfield-Schwartz • Charles Repole • Joseph Rettura • Jack Reuler • Abe Reybold • Gus Reyes • Marie Reynolds • Brian Rhinehart • Josh Rhodes Craig Rhyne • Will Rhys • Joe Ricci • Nicole Ricciardi • Craig Rich • Kevin Rich • Bob Richard • Jean-Paul Richard • Molly Richards • Robert Richmond Charles Richter • Ian Rickson • Tom Ridgely • Roger Riggle • Glynis Rigsby • Laura Rikard • Gillian Riley • Rose Lee Riordan • Joseph Ritsch • Tlaloc Rivas Jon Lawrence Rivera • Jesse Robb • Sanford Robbins • Tim Robbins • Ilyse Robbins Mohr • Kenneth Roberson • Colette Robert • Adam Roberts • Guy Roberts Nancy Robillard • Marc Robin • Mary Robinson • Michelle Robinson • Fatima Robinson • Mark Steven Robinson • Tom Robinson • Cait Robinson Andrew J Robinson • Mabel Robinson • Blake Robison • Steven Robman • James A Rocco • Juanita Rockwell • Rachel Rockwell • Ray Roderick Alejandro Rodriguez • Renee Rodriguez • Damaso Rodriguez • Diane Rodriguez • Amy Rogers • Andy Rogow • Ken Roht • Richard Roland • Emily Rollie Nancy Rominger • Mary Lou Rosato • Judy Rose • Seth Roseman • Eric Rosen • Sharon Rosen • Sarah Rosenberg • Susan Rosenstock • Celine Rosenthal Stuart Ross • Justin Ross • Jason Rost • Janet Roston • Mary Theresa Rotella • Robert Roth • Lisa Rothe • Michael Rothhaar • Stephen J M Rothman Peter Rothstein • William Roudebush • Josie Rourke • Bruce Rous • Brad Rouse • Christina Roussos • Mia Rovegno • Misty Rowe • Deb Royals Robert Roznowski • Shawn Rozsa • John Gould Rubin • John Rubinstein • Kim Rubinstein • Michael Rudman • Pesha Rudnick • Eric Ruffin • Dom Ruggiero Rob Ruggiero • Jerry Ruiz • Patricia Runcie • Michael Rupert • Darrell Scott Rushton • Brant Russell • Dylan Russell • Brian Russell • David Ruttura • Hannah Ryan Andrew Ryder • Sebastian Ryder • Richard Sabellico • Stephen Sachs • Lisa Jo Sagolla • Adam Karal Sahli • David Saint • Deborah Saivetz • Brian Sajko Lainie Sakakura • Anthony Salatino • Nick Saldivar • Norma Saldivar • D.J. Salisbury • Amy Saltz • Matt Saltzberg • Bobbie Saltzman • Peter Sampieri • Jeremy Sams Stephen Sanborn • Alex Sanchez • KJ Sanchez • Andy Sandberg • Megan Sandberg-Zakian • Jennifer Sandella • Derrick Sanders • William Sanders Kirsten Sanderson • Beth Sanford • Lee Sankowich • Stephen Santa • Marcos Santana • Ruben Santiago-Hudson • Joel David Santner • Fiona Santos Guy Sanville • Giovanna Sardelli • Joel Sass • Jocelyn Sawyer • Cathey Crowell Sawyer • Madeline Sayet • Sarah Scafidi • Sam Scalamoni • Dick Scanlan Don Scardino • Tee Scatuorchio • Eric Schaeffer • Kimberly Schafer • Thomas Schall • Neil Kristian Scharnick • David Schechter • Louis Scheeder • Donna Scheer Danny Scheie • Gideon Schein • Mary Schmidt • Erica Schmidt • Anthony Schmitt • Ken Rus Schmoll • Paul Schnee • David S. Schneider Lauren Class Schneider • Mark J Schneider • Robert W Schneider • Walter Schoen Jr. • Kiff Scholl • Sarah Jane Schostack • Robin Schraft • Terry Schreiber Carol Schuberg • Susan H. Schulman • Arlene Schulman • Richard Schultz • Joanie Schultz • Kaipo Schwab • Krista Schwarting • Scott Schwartz...