SDC Journal Fall 2019

FALL 2019

MICHAEL MAYER

From Chekhov to The Go-Go’s to Verdi + Beyond

BODIES IN SPACE

Annie-B Parson

OPEN WORLDS

VIDEO GAMES + THEATRE

Wendy C. Goldberg

AUDIO PLAYS

FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

Brian Kite Aaron Mark Mimi O’Donnell Diane Rodriguez Seret Scott + Leigh Silverman

OFFICERS

Pam MacKinnon PRESIDENT

John Rando EXECUTIVE VIECE PRESIDENT

Michael John Garcés FIRST VICE PRESIDENT

Michael Wilson TREASURER

Evan Yionoulis SECRETARY

Seret Scott SECOND VICE PRESIDENT

Leigh Silverman THIRD VICE PRESIDENT

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Laura Penn COUNSEL

Ronald H. Shechtmann HONORARY ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Karen Azenberg Pamela Berlin Julianne Boyd Marshall W. Mason Ted Pappas Susan H. Schulman

SDC EXECUTIVE BOARD

SDC JOURNAL

MEMBERS OF BOARD

MANAGING EDITOR

FALL 2019 CONTRIBUTORS

Kate Chisholm

Karen Azenberg

Saheem Ali Christopher Ashley Melia Bensussen Walter Bobbie Anne Bogart Jo Bonney Mark Brokaw Rachel Chavkin Desdemona Chiang Liz Diamond Marcia Milgrom Dodge Sheldon Epps Liza Gennaro Joseph Haj Linda Hartzell Anne Kauffman Dan Knechtges Mark Lamos Kathleen Marshall Sharon Ott Lisa Portes Lonny Price Ruben Santiago-Hudson­ Bartlett Sher Casey Stangl Eric Ting Chay Yew

DIRECTOR + CHOREOGRAPHER

FEATURES EDITOR

Molly Marinik SDC DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS

Joyce Friedmann GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Dominic Grijalva EDITORIAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Jo Bonney Sheldon Epps Liza Gennaro Ann M. Shanahan Leigh Silverman Evan Yionoulis SDC JOURNAL PEER-REVIEWED SECTION EDITORIAL BOARD SDCJ-PRS CO-EDITORS

David Callaghan Ann M. Shanahan

Elizabeth Bennett DRAMATURG

Mindy Cooper

DIRECTOR + CHOREOGRAPHER

Lear deBessonnet DIRECTOR

John Doyle DIRECTOR

Nelson Eusebio III DIRECTOR

John Heginbotham CHOREOGRAPHER

Jess McCleod DIRECTOR

Robert O’Hara DIRECTOR

Ruth Pe Palileo DIRECTOR

Jessica Redish

DIRECTOR + CHOREOGRAPHER SDCJ-PRS BOOK REVIEW EDITOR

Kathleen M. McGeever

Michael Unger DIRECTOR

SDCJ-PRS ASSOCIATE BOOK REVIEW EDITOR

Emily A. Rollie SDCJ-PRS SENIOR ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Anne Bogart Anne Fliotsos Joan Herrington James Peck

FALL 2019 SDCJ-PRS CONTRIBUTORS

Janna Segal

UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE

Annette Thornton

CENTRAL MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY

SDCJ-PRS PEER REVIEWERS

Donald Byrd Jonathan Cole Thomas Costello Kathryn Ervin Liza Gennaro Travis Malone Sam O’Connell Ruth Pe Palileo Scot Reese Stephen A. Schrum SDC JOURNAL is published quarterly by Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, located at 321 W. 44th Street, Suite 804, New York, NY 10036.

ISSN 2576-6899 © 2019 Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. All rights reserved. SDC JOURNAL is a registered trademark of SDC. SUBSCRIPTIONS + ADVERTISEMENTS Call 212.391.1070 or visit www.SDCweb.org.

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PRINTED BY Sterling Printing

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SDC JOURNAL | FALL 2019

The Road Awaits Us at Saddler Wells’s Elixir Festival, choreogrpahed by Annie-B Parson PHOTO Andrew Lang

FALL

CONTENTS Volume 7 | No. 4

FEATURES 15

Open Worlds

AN INTERVIEW WITH WENDY C. GOLDBERG

BY NELSON EUSEBIO III COVER 22

From Chekhov to The Go-Go’s to Verdi and Beyond MICHAEL MAYER IN CONVERSATION WITH LEAR deBESSONET

29 Bodies in Space

A udio Plays for the 21st Century

BY RUTH PE PALILEO

35

41

PEER-REVIEWED SECTION

“In this borrow’d likeness”: Casting, Race, and Religion in Early Modern and Contemporary American Productions of Romeo and Juliet

BY JANNA

SEGAL

AN INTERVIEW WITH ANNIE-B PARSON

BY ELIZABETH BENNETT COVER Michael

Mayer PHOTO Walter McBride FALL 2019 | SDC JOURNAL

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5

6

FROM THE PRESIDENT

BY PAM MACKINNON

FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

BY LAURA PENN

7

IN YOUR WORDS

What I Learned...

BY JOHN

HEGINBOTHAM

8

Why I Made That Choice

BY MICHAEL

10

Pre-Show/Post-Show

BY MINDY

11

Step Forward

BY JESSICA

UNGER

COOPER

REDISH

12

20 Questions

WITH JESS

McLEOD

46

48

SDCJ-PRS BOOK REVIEW

Embodied Philosophy in Dance: Gaga and Ohad Naharin’s Movement Research

58

THE SOCIETY PAGES

SDC Director Award, Chita Rivera Awards

KATAN REVIEW BY ANNETTE THORNTON

SDCF “One-on-One” Conversation

Off-Broadway Contract Negotiations

Directors Lab West

SDC FOUNDATION

2019 TCG National Conference Past Presidents Luncheon

BY EINAV

Masters of the Stage: Sheldon Epps

INTERVIEW BY ROBERT

2019 Donor Thank You

SDCF “Choreography in Collaboration” Symposium

2018-19 Mentor Thank You

O’HARA

55

IN MEMORIAM

Remembering Geoffrey Sherman

BY KAREN

AZENBERG

Remembering Edward Stern

BY JOHN

In Memoriam

Broadway Associates/Residents Gathering

Broadway Bares

Open Jar Studios Opening

63

SDC LEGACY

Michael Kidd

DOYLE

September 17, 2018–July 31, 2019

Head Over Heels on Broadway, directed by Michael Mayer PHOTO Joan Marcus

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SDC JOURNAL | FALL 2019

dway, ayer arcus

FROM THE PRESIDENT I joined SDC to direct a production of Donald Margulies’s Dinner with Friends at the Alley Theatre in the spring of 2001. It was on the heels of the implosion of a national tour based on Daniel Sullivan’s direction of Dinner with Friends that I, as the Associate Director, was supposed to have put up. I got my first agent, who remains my agent to this day, because of the particulars of the tour that never happened. And when the Alley Theatre needed a director for that play, I was ready to step into casting immediately on what would have been the tour’s set. This was before the Enron scandal, let alone 9/11, and the Alley Theatre must have been flush.

They needed a director fast, so they paid for my joining the Union. It was my first larger contract outside the world of assistant directing.

I got health insurance. I saw a dentist for the first time in several years.

And year by year, I became more involved with SDC, first through negotiations with the League of Resident Theatres (LORT). I will never forget seeing dawn break as we finalized that first collective bargaining agreement. The Law & Order “gung-gung” ringing in my ears when the lawyers had to caucus in a fancy room down the hall.

It was 2010. After much encouragement from then-Board Members Wendy C. Goldberg and Ethan McSweeny, then-President Pamela Berlin, and, of course, Executive Director Laura Penn, I first ran for an at-large position on the Board. I lost. I would run and lose another two times before finally getting elected in 2013. In that time, my career shifted from so many LORT contracts around the country to more work Off-Broadway and ultimately Broadway. I continued to be a back-bencher through difficult Off-Broadway and Broadway negotiations—and, more recently at the table, as Board President, sitting next to John Rando and Ruben Santiago-Hudson, co-chairs of our most recent week with LORT. The Union gives me a sense of important belonging. It’s been a great pleasure to work with choreographers and directors—peers from different generations, paths, and aesthetics coming together for common causes. I’ve seen our Union grow and prioritize itself as a place for the field to converse about story, craft, politics, and economics, and be a place of joyous camaraderie.

These are dangerous times in America and around the globe, but the Union is there for its Members, and we are healthfully growing and taking on what comes at us.

I encourage anyone at any stage in their career to get involved: be part of a negotiation; contact your Regional Representative; run for a seat on the Board; and use the resources, be they staff or the Manhattan office or an SDC mixer at a conference. I also encourage everyone to look at what SDC Foundation has to offer. Nominate your peers, sign up to be a possible Observer or to be observed. It’s so worth it, as artists and Union Members and Associates. We are stronger working together, sharing information and the love of this art form.

In Solidarity,

Pam MacKinnon Executive Board President FALL 2019 | SDC JOURNAL

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Even as we engage in this study, we continue to educate ourselves about the ways Members cross over between forms. It seems there is an increased porousness today, a fluid movement back and forth, from coast to coast and from stage to screens, large and small.

Although that’s not new, is it? SDC Founders and early Members were a bicoastal gathering, mixing their Broadway careers with film and TV in the early days of Hollywood. They were directors, producers, writers, and even actors.

What is it that’s different today about how SDC Members move between mediums? Is it that the back-and-forth is more like inand-around, a web of diverse and surprising opportunities? Is it the advancement of the digital world? What are the ways in which Members leverage their skills staging live work to secure other employment? Wendy C. Goldberg’s experience in video game creation demonstrates one such application. This has us watching and wondering—many hoping—that this vast industry may be an avenue for stage directors and choreographers to ply their trade. Then there are radio plays, a traditional form made new by the opportunity cyberspace provides and by audiences’ insatiable thirst for content.

There are Audible’s groundbreaking commissions, L.A. Theatre Works’ ever-growing library, Gimlet, Playing On Air, and others adding to the range and style of theatrical work that can be found on-air, 24/7.

Member Ruth Pe Palileo discusses with some of our leading directors this unique work and the dynamics of the producing entities who anticipate that this is a growth area in the years ahead.

This issue also features two exceptional artists whose accomplishments are impressive by any measure. You can find their work on expected and unexpected stages and screens, and when combined with our interview with Wendy Goldberg, these conversations make for a powerful, tangible representation of how SDC Members create a vibrant body of work across mediums.

Annie-B Parson has mined, with rigor and vision, the possibilities of bodies and space—inviting us, pushing artists and audiences alike,

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SDC JOURNAL | FALL 2019

into something new and wonderful, and at times foreboding. And Michael Mayer. When you talk about the busiest director in town, there is a good chance you are talking about Michael. In a single season, you can see his work in midtown Manhattan, up at the Met, in the movie theatre, and then at home on TV. With extraordinary craft and a smile, he expands his list of credits exponentially season after season.

SDC Founder, director/choreographer Michael Kidd certainly built a body of work across mediums. Even as he earned five Tony Awards (11 Tony nominations), his work in Hollywood included more than two dozen credits. And he was nominated (with Paula Abdul) for a Video Music Award (VMA) for his work on a Janet Jackson video. It’s possible that in 1987, MTV VMAs may have seemed as much like a new frontier as video games like Red Dead Redemption 2 do today.

In closing, Harold Prince, 1928–2019. Hal. When I heard the news that Hal had died, I immediately connected with Susan Stroman and Lonny Price. My heart was heavy. Truth be told, I could have reached out to any number of people; the list of Hal’s colleagues and friends is very, very long. Because, while being one of the most prolific and impactful theatremakers we have ever seen, he was a great human being. His generosity of spirit was matched by his generosity with his time. I have never crossed paths with anyone who has said they approached Hal and got no response. He lived with an open-door, open-heart policy. When arriving at SDC 10+ years ago, I made a list of people I had to meet if I were to understand the responsibilities of my new post, SDC, its history, and its promise for the future. Hal was one of my first calls. Within days of calling to ask if he might see me, I was sitting with him in his office at Rockefeller Center. Trying not to be totally distracted by my sense of awe, I settled in and sought his advice and counsel. What was his experience of SDC? What should I consider as the 50th anniversary was approaching? What did he see as the Union’s strengths? What had we overlooked? Where on the horizon should we set our sights? With candor, support, and wit, he gave me what I needed that day, as he did many times over the subsequent years. He loved this Union very much, although he was very clear that we must always remember that our reason for being is to support what he cared for so deeply: you—his peers, directors and choreographers. That day, by the time I made it back to my office, I had a message in my inbox, thanking me for the visit. Hal… Look to the winter issue of SDC Journal for a fuller and more fitting remembrance of this great man.

In Solidarity,

Laura Penn Executive Director

PHOTO

By the time this issue hits your mailbox, Network for Cultural and Arts Policy (NCAP) will be well into analyzing the data received from you for a research project undertaken by SDC and SDCF entitled Empowering Stage Directors and Choreographers: Investigating, Articulating, and Enhancing the Livelihood of Theatrical Leaders. This project will illuminate the touchstones that propel directors and choreographers to and through various points in their careers and provide us with a deeper understanding of the correlation between education and career progression, the relationship of employment patterns in various sectors and a viable career, and the role that work in other mediums plays in piecing together a living-wage life with opportunities to create a vibrant body of work. The study will give us a baseline assessment of how you survive (or don’t) in today’s ecosystem and provide insight into the resources available to you in the various stages of your careers. As we rely on the results of this study to inform and evaluate our priorities and strategies, we hope to simultaneously leverage them to increase the resources dedicated to strengthening the professional welfare and status of directors and choreographers, and through that, the field. We are grateful for support from the New York State Council on the Arts and the NYC Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, without which this study would not be possible.

Hervé Host

FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

IN YOUR WORDS What I Learned...

Why I Made That Choice Pre-Show / Post-Show

PHOTO

Hervé Host

Step Forward 20 Questions 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.

Oklahoma! on Broadway, choreographed by John Heginbotham PHOTO Little Fang Photo

WHAT I LEARNED…

BY JOHN

HEGINBOTHAM

I usually identify myself as a contemporary concert dance choreographer. This is a surprise. I really was raised, in my home state of Alaska, to be a lover of musical theatre.

Most family meals were accompanied by original Broadway cast albums— everything from Anything Goes to Promises, Promises to The Wiz to Cats.

Oklahoma! was one of the family meal soundtracks, and I’d seen the movie many times on our stovetop-sized Betamax video player. I was extremely familiar with the theatre and music of Rodgers and Hammerstein; even as a kid with limited context, I viewed their contribution as the top.

Originally from Anchorage, Alaska, JOHN HEGINBOTHAM graduated from The Juilliard School (1993) and was a member of Mark Morris Dance Group (1998–2012). He is the co-founder of the internationally acclaimed touring company Dance Heginbotham and has collaborated with artists including Isaac Mizrahi, Maira Kalman, Joshua Bell, Peter Sellars, and Daniel Fish. He is on faculty/ staff at Dartmouth College/the Hop and is a founding teacher of Dance for PD®. Awards include Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award (2014) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2018). www.danceheginbotham.org

I just choreographed the current revival of Oklahoma! on Broadway, and I am still thinking about and getting used to the idea of that. It’s a really big deal for me. I’m so grateful. The feeling is so intense that it’s sometimes a bit painful.

Dream Ballet. As we know, Agnes de Mille made the case for dance to function as a plot driver and as a way to tell the understory. What she did in the original 1943 production was communicate something that could not be otherwise shared through the frontal narrative of the play; she gave us psychological, kinetic, speechless, poetic, surreal ways into the characters and into the story. She invited the receivers of her work to witness the “things I can’t tell you about,”

which in Act 1 is how the protagonist, Laurey, acknowledges her deepest wishes.

What does it mean to have a dream ballet in 2019? What it meant to me was an opportunity to disturb, disorient, free up, create room for, and focus the possibilities of what could happen in Act 2, when a festive picnic shifts toward a life-and-death event. In this current Oklahoma!, which often portrays the tension between the members of a community and an outsider (or outsiders), I was inspired by something Agnes de Mille displays beautifully, imaginatively, forcefully in her Dream Ballet: the ability of dance to artfully mirror, highlight, and subvert the text of the show.

An equally important intention of this Dream Ballet is the commitment to giving audience members a chance to daydream about what they’re seeing and hearing, to interpret, associate, and wonder. Here is a quote from Agnes de Mille (to dance students at North Carolina School of the Arts, 1981).

It resonated with me choreographically; I thought about it a lot when working on Oklahoma!: “Take your time. Beginners are always afraid of taking time. They think nothing’s happening. Time is happening, and it works in suspense. Time can work for you as actively as a gesture if you know how to use it.”

FALL 2019 | SDC JOURNAL

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E D A M I WHY

E C I O H C T A TH BY

M IC H A E

R L UNGE

John Tartaglia and cast in Seussical at NewArts, directed by Michael Unger PHOTO T. Charles Erickson

It was the summer of 2013 and a memorable opening night of Seussical. Stage lights came up on John Tartaglia as a perfect Cat in the Hat—but he was soon eclipsed by 86 elated children who came singing and bounding down the aisles. Joyful tears filled the eyes of every audience member—and joy was a hard-won commodity in this place. Eight months earlier, on December 14, 2012, these children and their families experienced the horror of a gunman killing 20 first graders and six educators in their idyllic town of Newtown, CT. I first set foot in the warm and welcoming embrace of Newtown shortly after that tragedy, when I directed From Broadway with Love: A Benefit Concert for Sandy Hook.

Not knowing what else to do in response to the unthinkable, I, along with hundreds of Broadway’s finest, put on a show. More importantly, we had 100 extraordinarily talented Newtown-area students, ages five to 18, on stage dancing and singing with their Broadway heroes.

Newsies at NewArts, directed by Michael Unger PHOTO Michelle Spanedda

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SDC JOURNAL | FALL 2019

Inspired to do more, that concert connected me with local father Dr. Michael Baroody.

He invited me to head up NewArts, the performing arts division of the 12.14 Foundation, which he started in response to the Sandy Hook tragedy. The mission of the foundation is to foster self-confidence, grit, and resilience in children through character development workshops and mastery experiences in the performing arts.

Ten weeks from the day Dr. Baroody and I met, Seussical opened with its theme of “a person’s a person no matter how small” resonating with profound power. Even authors Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, who attended opening night, found new revelations in their words and music.

Over the past seven years, NewArts has presented 12 large-scale musicals involving over 500 local children on stage, backstage, and in the orchestra. These students work alongside Broadway professionals on a daily basis, and no child is turned away.

Although this column is titled “Why I Made That Choice,” for me it might more accurately be named “Why That Choice Made Me.” By showing up each summer with a legion of peaceful warriors, NewArts has changed the how, what, and why of my work as a director.

In most showbiz realms, opening night is the all-important finish line. At NewArts, the journey is perhaps more important than the destination, because the passengers gain so much in the process. Our guest artists gain as well because the inspiration runs in both directions.

I’ve had the honor of helming all the NewArts productions and watching kids grow from first-timers to mentors. There are hundreds of examples of why I return to Newtown year after year. One boy would cry and run into his mother’s arms whenever he made eye contact with anyone. After a few weeks of Newsies rehearsals, he would belt out “Santa Fe” at the drop of a hat and the top of his lungs, even for Alan Menken himself when the composer visited a rehearsal. Another boy

Arts, nger kson

who developed Tourette syndrome as a post-traumatic symptom constantly thanks us for believing in him. I can’t imagine anyone not doing so. Many parents have thanked us for giving their children their smiles back. One mother, whose son suffered from survivor’s guilt, told me that their participation in NewArts saved their family.

As proof of concept, the children of NewArts took it upon themselves to write an inspiring anthem using our slogan, “Rise Above and Go Beyond,” as the title. The first seven lines are an acrostic spelling N-E-WA-R-T-S, and the empowering themes I have selected for each season are concealed in the lyric. It has now become a tradition to end every performance with their song.

Of our many productions, a highlight is our 2014 world premiere, A ROCKIN’ Midsummer Night’s Dream. Our focus in adapting Shakespeare’s play was to show a world in disarray and, over the course of the musical, allow love to restore balance to the chaos. This theme would resonate in any town, anywhere, but in no place more deeply than Newtown.

In 2018, devastating events again found me as a director alongside a generous battalion of Broadway and Hollywood volunteers for another From Broadway with Love concert, this time for Parkland, FL. Again, we had 100 local youths on stage—many of whom were the generators of the March for Our Lives movement and Shine MSD. Those impressive teenagers and that concert led to Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School performing our A ROCKIN’ Midsummer Night’s Dream as their spring musical. Shakespeare’s story was again working to restore harmony to chaos.

Several of the original cast members from Newtown came to the show in Parkland. Seeing the bond between these two sets of theatre kids who shared an unfortunate commonality was proof that the arts is a palpable healing tool: an avenue toward building up and bringing together rather than the recent experiences they had of tearing down and rending apart.

Michael Unger with March for Our Lives kids PHOTO Sandra Flores

It is our duty as both humans and artists to counteract tragic loss with positive action whenever and wherever we can. It works. We need to be empathic warriors, infiltrating those nooks and crannies in which sadness and low self-esteem can turn children toward negative forces, and redirect them toward positive and empowering action. We must offer children tools for their future so they can become the ones to make this world a better and safer place.

Nicole Kolitsas as Puck in A ROCKIN’ Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Michael Unger PHOTO Richard Termine

MICHAEL U NGER has ju st become Artistic Direct or of Milwau kee’s Skylight Mus ic Theatre. Pr ior to that he was Associa te Artistic Dire ctor at OffBroadway’s Yo rk Theatre C ompany. He also currently is Producing A rtistic Direct of NewArts in or Newtown, C T (www.new org). His wor arts. k with NewA rts is featured the documen in tary Midsum mer in Newto Directing cred wn. its include M cCarter, Dea The Muny, Si f West, gnature, The Off-Broadway Paramount, and . World prem ieres include Annual Putn The 25th am County Sp elling Bee, 2. and A ROCKI 0, Caligula, N’ Midsumm er Night’s Dre directed bene am. He has fit concerts fo as the Sandy r th e York Theatr Hook, CT, an e as well d Parkland, FL Michael has , communities also directed .

15 operas, two are available of which on DVD. He w ill be directing upcoming 70 the th Anniversa ry Tour of Yo A Good Man u’re , Charlie Brow n.

FALL 2019 | SDC JOURNAL

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PRE-SHOW / POST-SHOW WITH

MINDY COOPER UC DAVIS

I became a director/choreographer because… in part because I grew up in a family that loved theatre. My mom directed the high school musical, my dad designed and built the sets, and it was easier to bring me along than get a sitter. I have distinct and wonderful memories of playing in prop boxes and having a blast, learning every song and step and nuance, and being in awe of how interesting everything was.

I began my professional career in ballet companies at 18, and when I was feeling stifled years later, I reconnected to a time when I couldn’t wait to get my driver’s license. That independence meant the privacy to drive and roll up windows and sing every show tune I loved, loudly! I segued to Broadway as a dancer and became immersed in this new storytelling, using so much more than bodies. I assisted everyone in the Broadway community I could because I missed process, which had been such an integral part of dance company life. Assisting and being a dance captain on Broadway and Off-Broadway was an amazing learning experience. And I realized one day that my own ideas were potent and I needed to follow my instincts and create my own work.

The best thing about working on a college campus is… tapping into a unique creative energy, unlike any other I’ve known.

UC Davis is a large campus in a small town.

It’s an incubation/think tank, full of forwardthinking, broad-minded intellectuals. I love the collaborative nature of interdepartmental ideas and the cross-pollination we can create.

I also love the young and potent mindset of the brainiac undergrads. They bring so much to the proverbial table. I have these amazing double majors in my classes and productions who teach me so much about the world and areas of expertise I know little about. It’s truly refreshing to work with a student who is fullthrottle passion and watch their skills develop and grow. It’s also important to me that I feel I’m training the next generation of theatre lovers—the folks who will take this passion for theatre and become donors and doers and door-openers.

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SDC JOURNAL | FALL 2019

As a director, I am drawn to scripts that… hit nerves, make us think, make us feel. Why remount the same old, same old? I love the challenge of breathing new life into something tried-and-true—and also the challenge of a new script that has so much to offer and yet needs structural work to clarify its messages. I run a new works festival, Ground and Field Theatre Festival, dedicated to cultivating new theatre voices and pieces. With hundreds of submissions each year to read, you hone the skills of finding writing that grabs you and makes you care. I am drawn to the ones where I find myself letting the teapot boil, the cellphone ding, and the dog bark just so I can see how the scene plays out. I love to learn from a script, voyage into parts unknown, and come out the other end richer and alert.

One of my favorite courses I teach is… a comedy class. I have always relied on a sense of humor in life, through ups and downs, healthy years and cancer years. I love the foundation a deep-rooted sense of humor can bring. And so I developed a comedy class for today’s actor, with large dollops of history and envelope-pushing from long ago, that teaches students to create humor aurally, physically, and visually—from the roots of radio shows and slapstick to a tight 10-minute set. I love how it informs and empowers them as actors.

I balance my work and creative life by… embracing the chaos! I have twin teenagers, live on two coasts, teach at a Research 1 institute, and continue to direct professionally all over the country. I love what I do, which helps! My superpower is managing time well. And I love how projects and life feed each other. I turn the cacophony into my own personal symphony for life.

As a director, choreographer, and performer in the Broadway/OffBroadway community for over 30 years, MINDY COOPER’s passion for new works has always steered her career.

Broadway: Chicago (original revival cast); Titanic (original cast); Dracula, The Musical (choreographer); Wrong Mountain (choreographer); Beauty and the Beast; Song & Dance; and Tenderloin. Off-Broadway directing and choreographing: 50 Shades! The Musical Parody, The Eternal Space, Mars/ Venus Live, Soul Doctor, Five Course Love, Hoi Polloi (world premiere of a lost Noël Coward work), Being Seen (FringeNYC), Deployed (NYMF), and multiple Broadway by the Years (Town Hall). Readings and commissions: My Friend Hafiz, Still Will Be Heard (Peak Performances), Mothers (NNPN), Mojave, Social Life: The Musical, Hysterical (GFTF), American Monkey. Mindy’s regional work has won several BATCC awards, including Best Director and Best Choreographer. She is Co-Founder/ Director of Ground and Field Theatre Festival (groundandfield.com), a national new works festival at UC Davis, where she is a professor.

STEP FORWARD

BY JESSICA

REDISH

A still from an upcoming music video directed and choreographed by Jessica Redish PHOTO Scott Hilburn

At the root of all my work is story. As a choreographer, it is my passion to bring story to music using movement—to give image to the sounds we are hearing.

This began when I was a young girl and saw musical movies on television. I would get excited about seeing all the dance in the frame. It made me feel something and it took until a few years ago for me to admit I want to make the next Dirty Dancing and that I dream in dance and music video. Growing up in Chicago, theatre became my language. I felt the need to find my own voice, in my own room, and I would do this by dancing to pop music for hours. This is still the foundation of my work to this day: I physically create the stories I see to the songs. Once I discovered Little Shop of Horrors, I figured out where I fit—that rock could merge with narrative—and something clicked.

I had the grand opportunity to run The Music Theatre Company, a 96-seat theatre outside Chicago, for seven years, and it was a blessing—I was able to create some exciting work with many amazing collaborators. I started programming singer-songwriter concerts, and these artists, specifically women, were the people with whom I made my first music videos in 2013. While some differences between theatre and film were challenging, I was determined to make the leap. I sought out and received a professional grant from the Driehaus Foundation to study music video direction in New York in 2015, and from there I kept getting work in film.

The theatre is a space where imagination can be our best friend. Our eye will fill out the rest of a building’s exterior, or an abstract space can evoke magic. In film, we’ll believe whatever you show us, which is determined by camera specifications and materials in the frame.

It’s finding the conversation between the camera and the dance that makes memorable images and moments. Dance lives in a truly exciting and breathtaking way on film for me that can reach my core as a viewer—it’s so exciting. The camera is the eye—it can get into crevices and angles of the body we simply don’t see on a live stage.

This is the magic for me. The eye gets to move all over the body and can bring new meaning to the movement. This is why dance films have become so iconic. I’m in LA now, looking forward to being a part of this tradition while also making great dances for the theatre.

In 2014, I was hired to choreograph a national PBS special, a concert of an a cappella group called “Gentleman’s Rule,” staged in a 3,500-

seat house. The guilt as a proud Chicago theatre artist committed to intimacy and truthfulness was significant, but suddenly I realized I could have a wider reach and create this same truth for audiences nationally and worldwide. It was a challenge to think about reaching such a huge audience and to create choreography in a context without an overt story on a page, but at the end of the day, I loved it. I danced around the hotel until 2:00 a.m. I figured it out. My background in theatre gave me the tools and the foundation to learn how to translate movement to musicians and their dancers.

The most exciting work I’ve done recently was for the international tour of the Smashing Pumpkins that played Madison Square Garden, The Forum, United Center, and multiple venues worldwide. I met lead singer Billy Corgan in Chicago while I was running the company, where he saw my work. I was brought on to choreograph four songs that would be presented on screens behind the band. In one, “For Martha,” I was given the story of a mother dying, saying goodbye to her son, and going up the stairs to heaven. It was written by Billy after the passing of his mother. I put my own experience in it too, about people I had lost, and people all over the world reached out and told me it rocked them to their core. It was quite surreal to have this wide a reach, with people saying they can’t hear the song without seeing the dance. That’s when I feel like I’ve done my job.

JESSICA REDISH is a Helen Hayes Award-winning choreographer for her work on Silence! The Musical at Studio Theatre. She recently choreographed the international tour for The Smashing Pumpkins, directed for Elizabeth Banks’s WhoHaHa Creator platform, and was chosen for the prestigious Women in Film Mentorship Program.

Music video credits include: Morgxn, Janelle Kroll, The Lincoln Squares, and Brooke Moriber. Theatrical choreography and movement director credits include: Adding Machine, A Musical (OffBroadway, directed by David Cromer), New York Musical Theatre Festival, Ars Nova, Musical Theatre Factory, Writers Theatre, and The Music Theatre Company, where she was Founding Artistic Director.

She resides in Los Angeles. www.jessicaredish.com

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20 QUESTIONS WITH JESS McLEOD JESS McLEOD is a busy freelance director and current Resident Director of Hamilton in Chicago. SDC Journal caught up with her to find out how she balances her freelance work with Hamilton, what she’s learned, and what’s next.

Describe your professional life in two words.

Risk. Joy. How long have you lived in Chicago? What brought you there?

Ten years. I moved from New York to Chicago to earn my MFA in Directing at Northwestern University, and I stuck around because I found the scene and cost of living exciting.

Young directors who were succeeding in New York at the time were almost all straight white men with funding or familial connections I just didn’t have, so I cut my losses and opted for grad school, where I could focus more on the work and less on the business.

And did you?

Hell yes. I was so traumatized by having work assigned to me based on ethnicity (I’m a first-generation Korean-Filipina-ScottishAmerican) that I went in determined to prove my Americanness by working on classic American plays. But being the only director of color in my program for three years helped me see that the most American thing about me is my otherness, ethnic and otherwise. I’m drawn to direct Suzan-Lori Parks’s Venus because I understand what it’s like to live inside an ethnic container and have personality and behavior projected onto you—and O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra because I’m the black sheep of my family. I learned to see my “difference” as a compass rather than a barrier.

How does that impact your aesthetic?

It’s the alpha and omega of my aesthetic.

Society teaches women and people of color to filter everything they say and do, to stay small and silent in order to maintain existing power structures. So I gravitate toward scripts with a lot of layers, a heightened awareness of language—scripts that demand radical visuals/imagery that help audiences see what’s really happening around us, in us, to us. We end up with vast and complex

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interior lives as a result of encountering daily systemic pushback. I’m interested in staging that. We can only dismantle what we can see.

Have you been able to build a career working mostly in Chicago theatres?

I’m lucky to have found artistic homes at A Red Orchid Theatre, where I’m a new ensemble member (Do You Feel Anger?, Fulfillment Center), the Goodman (There’s Always the Hudson), The Gift Theatre (Wolf PHOTO Sarah Elizabeth Larson Play, Hang Man), and Haven Theatre Chicago (How We Got takes time—most theatres are still in the early On)—companies of varied sizes interested stages of acknowledging their institutional in producing aesthetically risky, provocative homogeneity and taking steps to change it. work. But my career actually started to gain When did you become the Resident momentum when I expanded my work Director of Hamilton in Chicago? How did beyond the theatre community. The Chicago you get that job? arts community at large—music, literature, June 2017. A colleague recommended me, fine art—is phenomenal and very tuned in which led to interviews with [Associate/ to its massive sociopolitical issues. In the Supervising Director] Patrick Vassel and last five years, I’ve created original operas [Director] Tommy Kail. In between, I saw the with community groups through Lyric show for the first time.

Unlimited’s Chicago Voices program, directed an original musical written and performed What are your responsibilities? by incarcerated teenagers at the Cook I maintain the current production, keep County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center our formidable crew of standbys and through Storycatchers Theatre, and helped understudies ready for anything, and rehearse run Young Chicago Authors’ Louder Than A Bomb Poetry Festival, where I used to say that incoming principals. I watch and note the show two to three times a week, and spend you could hear more sociopolitical content anywhere from four to 16 hours in rehearsal, in a three-minute poem by a 15-year-old depending on who’s learning what.

Chicago Public School student than on any stage in town. That’s changing, but change

What is your relationship with Associate/ Supervising Director Patrick Vassel, and how do you, Patrick, and Tommy work together to keep the show running in top form?

Trusting and communicative. Hamilton Residents are encouraged to interpret, not replicate, which helps keep it fresh for everyone. Along with our PSM Scott Rowen, Resident Choreographer Michael Balderrama, and Music Director Mike Moise, I oversee the daily artistic business of the show, sending notes and reports to the Chicago and New York teams once a week. Patrick and I usually do a weekly phone update on who’s coming and going and what impact that might have on the company and the story; Tommy and I, more like monthly. I love how much Hamilton’s nuance and message mean to the original creators; Tommy, Alex Lacamoire, Andy Blankenbuehler, and/or his associate Stephanie Klemons visit every few months, not just to check in but to reengage with the work itself.

Are you able to pursue other freelance projects at the same time? How do you make that work?

I’ve directed several shows and a handful of workshops since I started. The keys to making it work are only saying yes to shows I have an intense gut reaction to; avoiding double duty when several new actors are going into Hamilton at once; and having Patrick Vassel, who usually comes out when I’m in tech, provide directorial support as needed and completely ruin the cast for my return with his brilliance and insights.

Tell us about some of your recent directing projects.

By the time this comes out, I’ll have just opened Idris Goodwin’s Hype Man at Actors

Jess McLeod + Hamilton Chicago Schuyler sister standby Ta-Tynisa Wilson PHOTO Keith Webb

Theatre of Louisville, a three-person play about a white rapper, his black best friend/ hype man, and their wunderkind female beat-maker; they’re on the verge of their big break when a police shooting forces them to reevaluate their artistic responsibilities. Idris is the August Wilson of hip-hop plays, and the play masterfully entangles the personal and political. And the designers (Sara Ryung Clement, Lee Fiskness, Melissa Ng, Patrick Bley) have created a world that literally keeps changing on the characters—we keep expanding from a crappy rehearsal room with recycled equipment out to flashy concert venues and then contracting back to the room as the characters work to reconcile their choices inside with the world outside and fame keeps slipping out of reach.

I also recently completed a writer’s residency at the O’Neill with composer Diana Lawrence and playwright Samantha Beach on our

Steve Schine + Natalie West in Fulfillment Center at A Red Orchid Theatre, directed by Jess McLeod PHOTO Fadeout Foto c/o A Red Orchid Theatre

musical Mill Girls, in which a farm girl starts working in the mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, to help send her brother to college (it’s the 1840s) and ends up in the middle of a huge literary movement; the “mill girls” started the first female-authored newspaper in America.

It’s about how women play a role to advance and the toll that role takes on you—we push ourselves to make every scene a scene from a woman’s life we’ve never seen on stage.

Hamilton is a groundbreaking musical in so many ways. Where do you see musical theatre headed in the next 10 years?

Where I hope it’s heading is fewer lame movie adaptations and more producers taking more risks on musicals by women and artists of color, with real contemporary sound and subjects, and in artists connecting across disciplines to stretch and evolve the form. I also hope we’re officially opening up the casting process—one of the reasons I took my job at Hamilton was to work every day almost exclusively with incredible musical theatre performers of color on complex roles with real resources. It doesn’t exist anywhere else. And we out here.

What do you love best about working on a musical?

Setting up rules and then breaking them.

A new play?

Protecting and animating the vision and crazy ideas of an artist I wholeheartedly believe in.

Describe a specific tool or approach you learned as a resident, associate, or assistant director that you have carried into your own work as a director.

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about how a performer fits into a company/ show, and how the show/role fits into that performer’s life. It deepens your relationship and work together.

You were a Michael Maggio Directing Fellow at the Goodman a few years ago.

What did that fellowship enable you to do?

I sat in on executive staff meetings and saw how the sausage was made—programming decisions, technical implications, the creation and evaluation of short- and long-term plans. I poked my head into the offices of [Goodman staff members] Henry Wishcamper, Roche Schulfer, Adam Belcuore, Willa Taylor, Peter Calibraro, Tanya Palmer, and Steve Scott for weekly doses of wisdom.

I had breakfast with Robert Falls and talked shop about new musicals. Everyone came to my shows and offered invaluable feedback.

It was an incredible year, both because the Goodman’s staff is generous and the institution itself has a singular commitment to theatre on multiple levels—in Chicago, nationally, on Broadway, new, revisionist—and acts with real civic responsibility to provide the city with art and the power of art. And I’ve continued to love working there since.

How does teaching fit into your career?

The subjects I keep making shows about

Empower! at Lyric Unlimited, directed by Jess McLeod PHOTO Todd Rosenberg

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are much bigger than me or than any one show. Teaching is an opportunity to organize a curriculum around craft or one of those bigger subjects—last fall, I taught a Playwrights of Color class at the University of Chicago to a mix of intrepid theatre and nontheatre undergraduate students. We started with Adrienne Kennedy, and our midterm was metatheatrical presentations on The Octoroon and An Octoroon. It was marvelous.

What do you do in your free time? Do you have any?

I run. I read (not scripts). I go to as much non-theatre art as I can, with friends in and outside the arts community. I read too much news too frequently. I bet on who’s gonna win Top Chef.

What’s coming up for you?

Paola Lázaro’s There’s Always the Hudson at Woolly Mammoth. Mara Nelson-Greenberg’s Do You Feel Anger? at A Red Orchid. Kate Hamill’s freaky, hilarious adaptation of Pride and Prejudice at Long Wharf. A new children’s opera called Earth to Kenzie at Lyric Unlimited. American Idiot with Michael Mahler at American Blues Theatre. I’m also developing a multi-art mega-theatre touring piece about the first 150 years of America from the POV of the conquered with Idris Goodwin and numerous other artists.

Is there anything on your wish list to direct?

My list would take up the whole issue!

Playwrights might be faster: Jackie Sibblies Drury, Jen Silverman, Stew and Heidi Rodewald, Jennifer Haley, Suzan-Lori Parks, Lynn Nottage, Branden Jacob-Jenkins, Lily Padilla, Jiehae Park. Also: Assassins, The Threepenny Opera, Las Meninas, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Enron, Bach at Leipzig, Stunning. And What the Constitution Means to Me, the bravest thing I’ve seen on a Broadway stage—or any stage—in years.

Do you have any advice for directors seeking or moving into associate/resident positions?

Everybody: seek out directors whose work you admire and keep contacting them.

Residents: pick shows you’ll enjoy watching two to four times a week for a year (or two!) and keep your perspective sharp—don’t stop reading scripts and directing or seeing other art. Learn everyone’s names and thank them for their work. The occasional Sunday bagel spread can go a long way. And if you’re insanely lucky, you’ll end up working for the only director in America who, when he calls you to ask how the show’s going, means the one you’re directing, not his.

OPEN

W RLDS AN INTERVIEW WITH WENDY C. GOLDBERG BY

NELSON EUSEBIO III

WENDY C. GOLDBERG is well-known for a wide-ranging freelance career that has taken her to regional theatres all across the country. At the same time, she’s become synonymous with new play development and the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference, having served as the Artistic Director for the past 15 years. Recently, Wendy’s career has taken her down other avenues, including a stint directing for the acclaimed Rockstar video game Red Dead Redemption 2. And earlier this year, Wendy founded TheFrontOffice, an entertainment company specializing in crossover content, from live theatre to new media. Director and occasional gamer Nelson Eusebio III met up with Wendy to learn more about how she made the leap to video games, how the medium relates to her work in new play development, and what’s next as she grows her directing career beyond the stage.

Red Dead Redemption 2 PHOTO Rockstar Games

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Deborah Zoe Laufer, Wendy C. Goldberg + Stephen Ellis in a table reading of Leveling Up at the 2011 National Playwrights Conference PHOTO A. Vincent Scarano

NELSON EUSEBIO III | You’ve had such an illustrious career in the theatre as a freelance director and institutional leader, first as Artistic Associate at Arena Stage for five years—including becoming the youngest person to direct there in the theatre’s 50-year history, when you were just 26—and now as Artistic Director of the National Playwrights Conference (NPC) at the O’Neill. What led you to video games?

WENDY C. GOLDBERG | Four or five years ago, I directed a play about gaming at the O’Neill called Leveling Up by Deborah Zoe Laufer that was about four gamers who had graduated from college and really didn’t have a direction in their lives. And they were addicted to video games. It was the first play I had ever read that was looking at gaming and what it means to be a gamer, and both the isolation and community aspect of that lifestyle.

It takes place right when the economy was crashing, and one of them gets recruited by the NSA to do drone warfare. The play is ultimately a coming-of-age story and a social commentary. I did the premiere, and it had a few other productions. And then, two years ago, it was optioned for Broadway. We were trying to cast it at a very high level but couldn’t quite get the right people together at the right time, and the option ended up running out.

While we were working on it, I got an interview for Rockstar Games. Strangely, they were looking for exactly the skill set that I had. They wanted to hire somebody who had theatre directing experience, who also understood theatre in the round and had a bit of camera experience. I checked all the boxes, but they wouldn’t tell me exactly what it was for. They just said that there was a huge project that they were needing to finish.

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They brought me to their studios, which are here in New York, and I shadowed for a couple of days. They only have one lead director—Motion Caption Director Rod Edge—and they’d never hired outside of the company.

NELSON | What was it like in that studio? Is it all green screen?

WENDY | It felt like a space station, with actors in motion-capture suits with tons of digital cameras. There was no green screen, actually. It’s all cameras, and they’re capturing all the physical motion and scenes immediately. The footage goes into an animation program, then they go back and retool it.

I was hired to help Rod finish the project, which was Red Dead Redemption 2. At the end of the second day, he threw me in the deep end and gave me a huge scene to direct. It was really frightening, but I was also hooked, because I got to do a massive women’s suffrage march, and I worked with 30 actors in this enormous studio. It was just this huge canvas. That’s how it all started. And then they asked me back.

NELSON | Tell us a little bit about Red Dead Redemption 2 and what makes it unique.

WENDY | It takes place at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, when the entire landscape of America is changing. It focuses on a gang of people who don’t really fit anymore in society. They’re uneducated and are trying to get ahead but don’t quite have the skill set that they need. In many ways, the story is based off of The Magnificent Seven western movie. But it also feels very Chekhovian—it’s this idea of people who don’t quite fit in it anymore when the world is changing too fast.

The story itself was interesting to me. And what’s probably the most intriguing aspect is that it’s the largest open-world game ever created. Obviously, it takes many, many hours to play it. But because the world is open, you can wander around and do things that are off-mission. The world is infinite; you could possibly spend the rest of your life wandering around that world and you might still not see every piece of it. To me, as a storyteller, that was unbelievably fascinating. I was also drawn to this idea that we would connect to a central protagonist and become this person as the player.

NELSON | How did you prepare? Did you play the other games in the series, Red Dead Revolver or Red Dead Redemption?

WENDY | I did a little bit. I had to because it was all so secretive. As a director, it was really strange, because I was never just handed a script; I had to do a lot of research myself. I didn’t know what I was doing on a day-today basis until the morning I would arrive.

That had its ups and downs, because there were a lot of technical elements to deal with.

But I had a lot of help from the animators.

NELSON | Your title on the game is Performance Capture Director. What does that entail?

WENDY | I was essentially hired to humanize the experience for the actor because it is such a strange world. As an actor, you do a lot of projects in your lifetime, but you might not have ever put on a motion-capture suit. So it was my job to make it all feel comfortable for them, to show them around the world and help them understand what they were doing—without giving away too much about the game. I had no idea how secretive the culture was. You had to be very careful.

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With the exception of the people who were the leads, most actors didn’t know what they were doing until they showed up on set, so everyone was thrown into the deep end at the same time.

On the other hand, most of the staff had been working on this game for five and a half years. The overall arcs of the characters were already established. We were either just redoing things or adding things. For me, directorially, I understood that some of the lead actors had so much more knowledge of their characters than I would ever have.

NELSON | Right—they’ve been playing this character for five years.

WENDY | My boss, Rod Edge, had incredible vision to bring in a couple people who could provide additional perspective. I think his ideal scenario was that he would edit and we would be shooting. We got to the point where he would fully trust my colleague Jeff Wiens and me [with deciding on the best take].

NELSON | What was a typical day on set like?

WENDY | I was really drawn to the large, epic bank robber scenes just because that was so much fun. But the truth is, probably the heart of the game happens in what’s called these camp scenes—where the characters live together. They’re very intimate scenes. That felt like theatre to me.

Working with those actors to get good performances was really what it was all about.

And also working with the lead animators, who essentially act as directors’ assistants.

They’re the ones who know all the technical elements of what needs to get done, so they work side-by-side with the director.

Red Dead Redemption 2 PHOTO Rockstar Games

Red Dead Redemption 2: A Revolution in Storytelling Rockstar Games’s Red Dead Redemption 2 was by all accounts the biggest video game to debut last year, satisfying players internationally with its Wild West-themed size and scope. Considerable hype led to a massive launch, with the game taking in $725 million in its first weekend alone—the highest-grossing opening weekend for any entertainment product ever. Red Dead Redemption 2 is the third game in its series, joining 2004’s Red Dead Revolver and 2010’s Red Dead Redemption (to which it is a prequel).

While the game was nominated for dozens of awards surrounding technical achievements, it has also received considerable recognition in categories like art direction, costume design, performance, and narrative. New York Times critic Peter Suderman called it “true art,” likening it to “the movie industry during its 20th-century peak and television over the past 20 years. From The Searchers to The Godfather, from The Sopranos to The Americans.”

Perhaps that’s due to Red Dead Redemption 2’s incredibly vivid world. Players move through the single-player game as the outlaw Arthur Morgan, a gang member in the late 19th century trying to survive while the Wild West begins its decline. But the game also offers an interactive open-world design—meaning players can freely roam the expansive world of the game. So while gameplay includes such activities as shootouts and heists, players can also tame horses, interact with non-player characters, and make moral decisions as Arthur (to the tune of “Should I kill this person or not?”) that affect his honor rating and mean that there might be consequences for his actions later on in the game.

Creating Red Dead Redemption 2 proved to be a massive undertaking, beginning in 2011 with script work that resulted in a 2,000-page final script. Shooting began in 2013 with 1,200 actors in total (on SAG-AFTRA contracts) over 2,200 days of motion-capture work.

And when the game was officially released on October 26, 2018, Red Dead Redemption 2 received near-universal acclaim from players and critics, setting a new standard in the experience a video game is able to create and taking the open-world concept to a new level of possibility.

“Games like Red Dead Redemption 2 have made such incredible leaps in storytelling and character development. You simultaneously take on the role of actor—because you play as the character—while you also get to be director and audience observing the character’s path that has been designed for you. Red Dead is particularly unique, as you can choose to live a more villainous life as a gang robber or one that is more pious and helps the local citizens, and this affects how the other characters treat you. RDR2 also adds a unique style called ‘cinematic mode,’ which puts the gamer in the faux artistic hot seat. You truly feel like you’re shooting, editing, and screening a multimillion-dollar film with the flick of a button.

The immersion is quite breathtaking.”

– Peter Kuo, director + gamer

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“The immense scope of the world, the granular nature of the detailed realism, the enormity of the life teeming in the world with people, animals, birds, plants, and fish is mindboggling. The narrative is astonishingly well written, and the story unfolds over 60 or so hours if you play it as fast as you can. Slower play-throughs are rewarded with a story that is told through performances but also through books on shelves, journal entries, letters found in homes or on corpses, detailed newspapers that can be bought and read. When I call it a landmark work of popular fiction, I don’t think I am being remotely hyperbolic.”

“Motion capture is a technique familiar to many people but typically only captures the motion of a performer’s body in space. Performance capture, used in RDR and RDR2, adds a helmet that places an HD camera in front of the performer’s face, capturing subtle movements such as facial expressions and recording audio in real time. In performance capture, all the actors work together on real-world sets that exactingly duplicate the virtual environment in which the actor’s avatar exists. The data is then refined, enhanced, and optimized by animators, resulting in the finished scene. The amazing virtues of performance capture as a tool to tell a story are not immediately clear to folks unfamiliar with the tech, but Wendy seemed to understand what made it unique and also what made it similar to staging a play. Wendy’s strengths as a theatre director served her—and therefore all of us—very well.”

– Benjamin Byron Davis, actor

(Dutch in RDR and RDR2) “I loved the incredible attention to detail, from the characters and story development to the weather to the sound of the horses’ hooves on different types of terrain. I have never played a game where there was such a clear focus on the storytelling. Every character’s backstory is complex and rich. The choices players get to make have long-ranging impacts on the game play itself. I found myself completely drawn in to the lead character’s life. As a lighting designer, I also found myself marveling at how beautifully the entire world of the game is rendered. I often found myself stopping in my tracks just to appreciate the beauty of the world that the designers created.”

NELSON | When you’re shooting a big action scene, how does it work when the actors are jumping on carriages and trains?

WENDY | The scenery is all sort of built out, like a big jungle gym. It’s very abstract. It would be some elaborate scaffolding that they would build, sometimes the night before or the day of. We shot in huge spaces, so they were able to really use the volume.

They were pretty open if I said, “He needs to be doing something during this speech,” in the same way any director comes up with physical activity. I would ask, “Could he be smoking in this? Could he be whittling wood?

Could he be writing in his notebook?” Trying to make things look more natural and not feel stagey. I think that’s what this company is really brilliant at. It’s so naturalistic and flows seamlessly in gameplay.

NELSON | Because the reactions to the world are influenced by the control of the player, does that mean you would have to do multiple takes depending on what a person playing the game might choose to do?

– Josh Epstein, lighting designer “One of the most overwhelming parts for me was finally seeing the stifling amount of work and talent of the other departments and how it all beautifully fit together when the game came out. We, the story production side of it, were busy for many, many years doing all the performance capture and voice work, so it was amazing to see how everyone else’s work fit into the big puzzle. And what a big puzzle it is.

“The majority of acting was Ali Rose Dachis, Ben Morrow + Bobby Moreno in Leveling Up at performance capture (think Andy Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, directed by Wendy C. Goldberg Serkis). It was a privilege to learn PHOTO Sandy Underwood this new discipline and a joy to bear witness to a relatively new and rapidly expanding medium of acting and storytelling. Storytelling in gaming is fascinating because you are an active participant instead of a passive WENDY | Yes, we did all that. It was often if observer of the story. So much is up to the player nowadays, which affects the pacing of you come in from this side, then we have to the narrative. Players can accomplish the main missions as they see fit. Their morality and get it from this side. If you decide to go up actions can affect the narrative. Even their playing style can now be monitored and the and down the mountain the other way, we difficulty level adjusted accordingly to provide the desired challenge level. This heavily have to make sure we capture that. To me, affects how stories are being told and it is, in my opinion, a revolution in storytelling from this idea that we needed to get all those film and TV.” different takes and looks was fascinating— – Roger Clark, actor (lead character Arthur Morgan in RDR and RDR2)

allowing the canvas to be bigger and taking storytelling to another level.

NELSON | I imagine your theatre-in-theround skill set was useful in thinking that way.

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What did you know about directing for video games before taking on this role?

WENDY | I knew nothing about directing a video game. Working on the play Leveling Up, I had had to figure out what all these games were. I worked with a gaming consultant.

I didn’t grow up with a controller in my hand, and I do think that there’s something to that [with contemporary games]. If you really know your way around an Xbox or PS4, you’re just going to know what to do.

NELSON | Right, there’s an intuitive control system.

WENDY | Totally. And so there I am, playing Red Dead, struggling most of the time, doing all the wrong things. Dying. Because I just don’t know where to put my fingers, you know? I used to be good at arcade games, but I’m terrible at these home systems.

Now, it’s a many-billion-dollar industry and I’m finding all these people who are closet gamers that I didn’t know were gamers. I’m seeing how mainstream it all is. I do think that theatre directors are a good fit for this work because of our understanding of space and working with actors.

NELSON | Oftentimes, when we’re directing in theatre, once the costume comes on, the actor’s like, “Oh, I’ve discovered my character now that I’ve put on these cowboy boots.”

But the Red Dead actors were wearing these skintight motion-capture suits, right? Did you work with them to help them walk like they had spurs and boots on?

WENDY | There were some things that they were able to wear that helped the process, but yes, I did have to help with that. And then there are weird things for the player—you have to constantly have your arms in a certain

position and have your hands be available in a certain way. There are also limitations to the way you could move your body.

Also, the actors couldn’t move in a contemporary style. Everyone needed to understand period movement. What’s interesting is because of the suits, anything rehearsed would often go out the window. It would feel like every acting thing you’ve ever done in your life is gone. And they felt really vulnerable, so I felt like my job was to get them comfortable, in particular the people just coming in for a day. Rockstar was the biggest employer of New York actors for all these years. People didn’t know that because the project was so secret.

“...it’s a many-billiondollar industry and...I’m seeing how mainstream it all is. I do think that theatre directors are a good fit for this work because of our understanding of space and working with actors.”

NELSON | I think it’s interesting because gaming is in some ways an offshoot of the geek culture that children of the ’80s grew up with. And now it’s big business. You can grow up and become a professional video gamer.

This is an actual thing that you can do.

WENDY | I learned all about that with Leveling Up. I realized, “Oh, this character makes money doing this.”

NELSON | And it’s its own complete culture and industry unto itself. It’s not surprising

Up at berg wood

that people like us who are professional storytellers would eventually arrive in this place. What was the time commitment overall?

WENDY | I worked on it for about a year, on and off. And what’s crazy is that I did nothing on it in 2018, and then the game was released at the end of that year. I didn’t see it until the night before the game was released.

We had a party. I did not understand the epic nature of the release.

After all the secrecy, everybody involved got to post on social media that they were part of it in some way. And all of a sudden, I saw that all these actors I know who I’d never worked with on the game had been part of it for one or two days. I think we were all craving to be part of that community.

When I was able to talk about the game, I discovered that a lot of my team at The O’Neill played it and were so excited for it to come out. I had no idea. I run the National Directors Fellowship program, which is now in its fifth year, and we had the lead actor in the game come in to talk with the directors about the work. We set up the game on four different screens. People were freaking out, because they play as him. We could talk about it from a craft perspective, but we could also just talk about it as fans and as gamers. And then we signed autographs. I never thought that I’d be autographing a PS4 box!

NELSON | Video gaming is not a particularly female-dominated industry.

WENDY | That’s for sure. In the theatre, we’re always talking about lack of opportunity for women and people of color and trying to create access points. Yet we know that we still have a long way to go. But with the video game industry, they have a really long way to go.

It’s going to take people like Rod Edge, who is very seasoned at doing this, trying to open the doors, being clear, and saying, “I want a female director to work with.” But that’s no different than most other mediums. I remember standing at a big regional theatre five or six years ago, where I was the only woman directing that season, and maybe one woman directed there the year before. That’s when I started realizing that we have to hold people accountable. We have to start looking at statistics.

NELSON | I helped found Asian American Performers Action Coalition (AAPAC), and one of the things we’re constantly looking at is statistics for actors. This year, we expanded the study to include playwrights and

Red Dead Redemption 2 PHOTO Rockstar Games

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directors. But there are fewer slots in seasons for playwrights and directors than there are for actors. How do you take diversity into account when hiring at The O’Neill?

WENDY | That’s one of the things I have felt strongly about, that the National Directors Fellowship program gives opportunities to people that have been banging their head against the wall and trying to get to that next step. And there just have not been enough people to help open those doors.

NELSON | Or even just pry them open. I remember a study that showed that people of color and women do not last in this profession without significant help from their mentors.

WENDY | One hundred percent. I started as an institutional leader at a very young age.

And I knew that I had status. I knew that, no matter what, I was going to have the ability to change things. I’ve taken that very seriously and tried to give back.

NELSON | Were you able to keep freelancing while you were working on Red Dead?

WENDY | A bit. But it was a conscious decision to pull back a little on that. Part of it was that I have a young child and we’re here in New York. I was able to do this work and be home by 8 p.m. and sleep in my own bed.

I did take a couple of shows that were really significant to me, like Indecent [at the Guthrie]. It was the first production postBroadway and that was huge, for many, many reasons, including my relationship with Paula [Vogel] and with the Guthrie. As a new play person, you’re always doing the new play in the basement while they’re trying to run something really commercial in the big space.

I felt like I knew my own tricks and needed something to shake it up completely. I was so fortunate.

NELSON | Can you tell us a little about what your job entails at The O’Neill as you prepare for each summer season? How does your directing background serve you as artistic director of new play development programs like the NPC? WENDY | I’ve always felt that as a new play director, you have to be a very good dramaturg. I’m constantly seeking out stories that we haven’t heard before. Or stories we think we’ve heard before, but then there’s some twist that makes it completely new and changes our perspective on something.

We have an open submission process, and with the help of many, many readers and people who work with us, we go through

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a reading process where eventually I get handed scripts from my peers and colleagues who are on my artistic council—all of whom are people that work a lot in the new play space. And then I put an eight-play season together, usually from about 50 plays that I’m reading myself.

I do feel like we are a national program that feeds the American theatre. The idea is that there is no house style; everything is very eclectic.

As a director who’s now been on both sides of this, I’m very sensitive around all those decisions. In the months it takes to put together the season, I talk to my artists more than most artistic directors talk to me when I’m doing a massive show at their company over the course of a year. I know that the NPC is a huge national platform for our artists, and I want to make sure that every artistic decision we’re making we feel good about together. And that I don’t impose anything on them. I want the writers to really drive the process.

I’m also very strategic. I think a lot about the life of the play beyond its time with us. I think about what region it might flourish in and which theatre might be interesting for its premiere. And who’s on the staff there that might become an advocate for it. We have dramaturgs who are central, as they are attached to other companies and can say, “I think this might be a good play for that company.”

The O’Neill has been my anchor and my home for all these years. When I left Arena, one of the things I knew was that I didn’t want to immediately run a producing company. I felt like the O’Neill was a great opportunity because I love development, and I also knew I wanted to be out there working as a freelance director.

NELSON | How do you engage with new plays in development, particularly when working one-on-one with playwrights? More specifically, how does your directing expertise enable you to shepherd these plays through this process?

WENDY | For every choice that gets made, I think about it as a director, in terms of what I think would be most useful to the process.

Making a good room. Finding the best actor.

Asking, “What does this story need in this moment? Who are the people that can help tell it the best?”

I think about how even though it’s just “a workshop,” it’s precious because it’s the beginning of something. We are in a very delicate place of trying to help these artists

figure out what this work is and what it can be for the future. In our setting, it really is about letting the writer lead. And asking the right questions, being aware of time limitations, and identifying what the goals are.

I think that often with directors and new work, we’re sort of the first date for writers and they’re trying to figure out who the right collaborators are. There’s a lot of packaging that goes on between agents—now more so than ever. But often I’ll say, “I don’t know if that’s the right person for this. Let’s open it up and let the writer ultimately make that decision and see if it is.” The reality is a lot of it boils down to scheduling and who’s available and all that. But I think it’s an opportunity for the writers to really consider things.

NELSON | I think oftentimes directors are worried that they’re going to invest many years developing a new play and then they’re going to be removed from the project.

WENDY | I do not know if we’re ever going to fully get rid of that. I mean, I am somebody who still gets replaced. I am really transparent with directors. So if I’m asking them to have an interview or meeting, they know where they stand. Like, “There’s a number of people that are coming in for this.” Or, “By the way, there’s been someone attached who is not available and I don’t really know if that relationship is going to continue.” I am sensitive to the directors because I feel very rarely are people that open with us.

NELSON | You’ve worked in new play development for a long time, and that set of skills has taken you to different places.

In addition to all the work we’ve already talked about, you’re also working on a tennis documentary with Lebron James. Can you tell us about that?

WENDY | I played tennis growing up. And I come from a really athletic background—my father was a professional football player in the early days of the pros. A few years ago, I was working on a play about illegal recruitment in basketball called Exposure by Steve DiUbaldo. I brought in a consultant to talk to the actors, Jim Calhoun, who’s on the O’Neill board and is the ex-coach of the [University of Connecticut] Huskies. When we finished, he said to us, “There are a lot of stories I’d like to tell, and maybe you guys are the people I should be talking to.”

Interestingly, Jim was going back to coaching, to a school that had been traditionally allfemale and was going co-ed. And they were trying to build a powerhouse basketball team.

I thought, I want to document that. We ended

up making a deal with a production company in Los Angeles, and through that I had an opportunity to talk to the United States Tennis Association about possibly doing something with them.

I wanted to focus on junior elite athletes who are in tennis and the reality of this very expensive sport that has very limited access.

More than anything, I was interested in spending time with really great young people who are making these big decisions about their careers and life.

On the Rise is a docuseries focused on the rising junior and early professional stars of US tennis. As we assess some of the larger questions in the game, post-2018 US Open—issues of equality and sexism—we will dive into some of the great challenges surrounding US Tennis and how the athletes are trained and prepared for the world stage. The series is in active development with LeBron James’s digital narrative space Uninterrupted.

There are a few other projects in development with my own company that are not as far along, but mainly a lot of the work looks at equity and our cultural moment. I feel really committed to making and curating work that is relevant and impactful.

NELSON | With documentaries, often the subject is chosen first, then the material is shot, and the story emerges out of that.

WENDY | It’s a bit like that, but we’re also trying to have a point of view. We’re interested in finding players that come from really interesting backgrounds. I think, if nothing else, I got to live out my dream of meeting [famed tennis coach] Nick Bollettieri.

I got to go to the USTA training center. I had an all-access pass to the US Open.

Indecent at the Guthrie Theater, directed by Wendy C. Goldberg PHOTO Dan Norman

NELSON | That’s really exciting. And it seems like this idea came out of new play development.

that when we saw a sign for Red Dead at our subway station for the first time, that meant a lot to him.

WENDY | It all did. Because it was a play.

Leveling Up was a gaming play. Exposure was a basketball play. It’s all about networks— building networks around those works and learning from the real people that do that.

NELSON | Literally more people watched the trailer for Red Dead—

NELSON | With all the new play development skills we’ve been talking about—dramaturgy, curiosity, creating authentic, real stories connected to real people—what do you think your next artistic move will be?

WENDY | There’s a lot of pressure to become an artistic director of a producing organization. And certainly I’ve been on that track as well. But I think that when you have so many projects going at the same time, it’s got to be a place that you feel so drawn to. There have definitely been a couple of positions out there that I know I would have really liked. But this is an ongoing process, and it’s not just about me. I have a partner, I have a son.

NELSON | How has having a child changed your directing? You seem like such a curious person. Watching someone else literally experience the world for the first time— WENDY | It’s been remarkable. And I’m having fun because I’m also rediscovering.

Now he’s in this sweet spot. He’s in third grade and he is getting into old games I used to love playing—all the retro stuff coming back. I’m like, “Oh my God, Battleship!”

NELSON | Do you think he’ll grow up and play the games you worked on?

WENDY | We do not have a gaming system, but he plays some games at friends’ houses.

And he plays games on his iPad. I will tell you

WENDY | —than will ever see any work on stage that I ever do. I was blown away by that intensity of scale.

NELSON | One of the things you said earlier that struck me was that you could explore the world of this game forever.

WENDY | Yeah. There’s this whole thing that happens in the game that I try to explain to people who have never played games before: you’re on missions and doing things in the city, but if you wander into the vaudeville hall, you can buy a ticket, go sit down, and watch a 45-minute show. And we made that. At first, I thought, “Who sits at their gaming system and just watches?” But my friends who are gamers are like, “Oh, I’m all about that!”

NELSON | I think they love the fact that those details are made for them, right? It’s a curated, crafted experience.

WENDY | Yep. NELSON | It seems like the way you can explore the whole world of the game is similar to the way you’ve approached your career. Like the whole thing has been this endless world in which you continue to try things.

WENDY | It’s all a big experiment, and it’s been incredible to participate in the future of storytelling in a form that leans on some of the most basic and ancient ideas of storytelling. I’m excited about how it all connects.

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Chekhov to The Go-Go’s

From

to Verdi and Beyond MICHAEL MAYER IN CONVERSATION WITH LEAR deBESSONET MICHAEL MAYER has directed acclaimed Broadway productions across various genres, from Spring Awakening and Hedwig and the Angry Inch to the recent revival of Lanford Wilson’s Burn This. At the same time, he’s continuing to build an impressive résumé in film—most recently, he directed an adaptation of The Seagull starring Annette Bening and Saoirse Ronan. And if that weren’t keeping him busy enough, last season he helmed both Marnie and La Traviata for the Metropolitan Opera.

What’s most remarkable is how Mayer continues to grow his career in all these mediums simultaneously. In a rare moment of downtime last spring, director Lear deBessonet (Founder and Resident Director of The Public Theater’s Public Works and newly appointed Resident Director of New York City Center Encores!), sat down with Mayer to chat about ambitious projects, scheduling challenges, and the importance of collaboration within a creative team.

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Marnie at the Metropolitan Opera, directed by Michael Mayer PHOTO Ken Howard/Met Opera

pera, ayer Opera

LEAR deBESSONET | In the past year alone, you’ve directed two Broadway shows and two operas at The Met. And this is in addition to your work in film. Beyond your professional accomplishments over this short amount of time, the aesthetic range of your projects is truly unlike any other artist I can imagine in our field.

Michael Mayer + Lear deBessonet PHOTO Walter McBride

MICHAEL MAYER | Sometimes I wonder if it isn’t like a mild form of schizophrenia. I look and there’s no guiding principle at all.

LEAR | There actually is to me because I feel like with those shows, if someone said, “Who do you think directed this?” I probably would say you. Is pursuing a large range of work intentional and something you set out to do, or does it just happen in an organic way?

MICHAEL | It happens in a completely organic way. And once I started working in such a vastly different array of styles and forms, I thought, “Oh, this feels really good.”

Because in entertainment, people want to put you in a very particular box. If you’re successful at one thing, they want you to keep doing that. It feels controlled and safe, but I think that safety and risk-avoidance are antithetical to creating art. So I started to really embrace a variety of mediums. It’s very rare that I’ve done something for a reason other than that I loved the material.

LEAR | That’s extraordinary. And perhaps that’s the link between all of your work.

MICHAEL | It would be great if that were true.

While I have made a couple of choices in my career as favors to people, I’ve never done anything just because I thought it would be commercially viable—that I’ve never, ever done.

LEAR | But you have done things that have been incredibly commercially viable.

MICHAEL | To some extent. I’ve also said “No, thank you” to a great number of things that have been phenomenally successful in other equally or more capable hands.

LEAR | Can you talk us through what your life was like this past year? I feel like it’s a microcosm that expresses the range of your work.

MICHAEL | Well, I will say that this year was unusual. This time last year, The Seagull was ready to open. We shot it two years earlier, and the post production took quite a while because my composer became unavailable at a certain point, and I was doing Funny Girl in London, so then I was unavailable. Because of scheduling, we waited for another year. So, in a sense, I had been done with The Seagull for a while, but I did have to do some press for

it and attend screenings last year. And that overlapped with the San Francisco production of Head Over Heels [which ran at The Curran in April–May 2018].

LEAR | Just that convergence alone would be a worthy topic of this interview.

MICHAEL | It was challenging. I had to go from Chekhov to Sir Philip Sydney and The Go-Go’s.

LEAR | Aesthetically, those two pieces could not be more different. It seems like in both cases you were in touch with what I like to think of as one’s internal Ouija board— following what you like and what seems true. You’re just watching and going in the direction that feels right.

MICHAEL | Yes, an internal Ouija board is exactly what it feels like. When Head Over Heels was finished in San Francisco, I went into tech for a new production of La Traviata at The Met. Then we opened Head Over Heels on Broadway [in July 2018], and a week later I was back in tech at The Met, but this time for Marnie.

LEAR | Michael.

MICHAEL | Right after that, I worked on a documentary about Wigstock [called Wig].

I was the director for the stage portion of it. [Wig premiered at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival in May and is now available on HBO.] I did that for a few days around Labor Day and then went into rehearsals for Marnie, opened Marnie, had a week off, and then I went into rehearsals for La Traviata and opened that. And during La Traviata, I was in the middle of designing Burn This, and I think we were also casting the understudies.

I don’t remember when I cast Brandon [Uranowitz] and David [Furr] exactly, but it was somewhere in there, too.

That took me through the year. It was a little bit nuts. I also had to have surgery on my medial meniscus in my left knee. I was on crutches during Marnie. And a week later, I got pneumonia, and I had pneumonia for nine weeks. I am not kidding.

LEAR | Wait. Were you going to rehearsal with pneumonia?

MICHAEL | I had to because they were new productions. I couldn’t not be there.

LEAR | I almost feel like that last detail is the most real-talk part of this conversation. There was, in some way, a physical toll involved in doing all of that.

MICHAEL | There was. What I realized is that I’m going to be 59 in a few weeks, and I cannot maintain the level of energy and running around that I did when I was much younger.

LEAR | For most people, this year that you had would be about 10 years of work.

MICHAEL | It could be two years, for sure, and it probably should have been, but it’s how it happens. Lear, you know this.

LEAR | I do.

MICHAEL | Certain things you can control.

What’s wonderful and strange about the opera world is that you book these things so far in advance. When is your Magic Flute [an upcoming collaboration with The Public at the Delacorte Theatre]?

LEAR | It’ll be 2021. It was going to be 2020.

MICHAEL | And when did you start talking about it?

LEAR | We started talking about it a couple of years ago.

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MICHAEL | That’s what they usually do. So you have that and it’s in your head, and you even start working on it, designing it. But it’s way down the line. By the time you start really working out how it’s going to actually function, you’re a different person than you were when you first conceived of it.

For example, when I first started working on both of those operas, my mother was still alive. She was incredibly important to me and used to come and see my shows.

I used to tell people all the time that she was like the audience in my mind. If she would understand it or if she would laugh or be moved by something, I felt like she represented a general audience.

LEAR | I think you and I have talked about this—that we both feel that way about our mothers, and that part of the embrace of populism is loving holding their perspective in our minds. It isn’t a drag but actually a thrill.

MICHAEL | It’s a gift that you have that person, that sensibility that isn’t marred.

LEAR | An aesthete.

MICHAEL | Yes, an aesthete, exactly.

LEAR | One of the weirdest things about the temporal nature of theatremaking is what you were saying about ourselves and the world around us constantly changing. Obviously, in the last couple of years, massive societal fault lines have occurred. And in this art form of the present moment, we’re continuing to have to negotiate that realness and also the constellation of working on projects over a course of multiple years. It’s such a mystery where things will actually land in the calendar because literal stars have to align, like actor schedules, theatre schedules, and producer schedules.

It’s amazing that anything happens in terms of

Head Over Heels on Broadway, directed by Michael Mayer PHOTO Joan Marcus

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how many things have to come together for a project to occur.

MICHAEL | It was interesting with Head Over Heels because when we started work on that three years ago, we did not have a clue how of-the-moment it would be by the time it came to New York.

LEAR | That show did feel like, “Oh, they must have made this last week.”

MICHAEL | The immediacy of it and its relevance to what was in the news every day.

LEAR | I’m trying to think if three years ago there was even a national conversation about trans identity?

MICHAEL | Jeffrey Tambor was playing a trans woman on Transparent, and no one was really questioning that in a big way. Laverne Cox was on Orange Is the New Black. But the conversation wasn’t as national or urgent as it is today.

LEAR | I feel like there’s probably a really good farming metaphor here—you’re planting all these seeds and giving them sunshine and water, but the rate at which they sprout is not entirely controllable.

MICHAEL | It really isn’t. The weird thing about our work is that you never know when it’s going to happen and when the right time is. I’ve had some experiences where certain things were worse off because it seemed like the right time. If I had listened to that internal Ouija board, I would’ve heard it going “no, no, no,” while at the same time a huge number of people were suggesting that we could make it work. Listening to that truth is a very difficult thing because it is so capricious.

LEAR | Do you feel that the amount of preproduction work you do is comparable in your process whether you’re working in theatre, opera, or film?

MICHAEL | It’s comparable, but it’s

different. With film and TV—and these are just my experiences—you’re not really offered a rehearsal process. You have to fight for it. So it’s the equivalent of doing all the design work, prepping everything in your head, being in constant tech, and never opening. You’re just in tech and then they say tech is over. Then you’re in the editing process, which is a thing that we don’t have in theatre—the closest thing would be while you’re in previews making changes, but it really doesn’t function the same way.

But in terms of having the visual concept, casting, doing all the work with the writers, getting the shooting script together or the performance draft together, all that is the same. And then you just skip the rehearsal and go straight to tech. TV and film are great because it really is about getting the light right, putting the camera here, and setting all the elements that are going to shape what the experience is of each second.

LEAR | In an odd way, it reminds me of the Public Works shows because they only have two days of tech for a 200-person musical. So you do have to have preplanned everything.

MICHAEL | That’s the opera, too— LEAR | —where you have to already have in your head exactly what you want at every moment.

MICHAEL | In the opera, you have your tech time but without any singers—and sometimes months before rehearsals begin! It’s basically a tech for the set and for lights to do whatever they’re going to do. But when you finally rehearse on stage with all elements and tech the actual performance, when you have the singers, supers, dancers, and chorus, then you have no time and you really have to know what you’re doing. TV is very similar; because it’s such a short schedule, you have to really know what you want. But you can always change it in the moment.

LEAR | Some directors sketch out work beforehand. I do my own version of little stick figures. Do you do drawings for yourself?

MICHAEL | Sometimes. What I do more often in terms of movement is get a blownup version of the ground plan, and I’ll put pennies down and write names or initials on them and move them around.

I stopped doing that for plays and musicals because it never ends up being even remotely like what I think it’s going to be. But with film and opera, I don’t have a choice. You have to storyboard ahead of time, especially when you’ve got a chorus of 60 people who have to enter.

characters are feeling at some point during the piece, no matter what it is.

LEAR | I also think the feeling of terror means it’s something you haven’t exactly done before. And there’s something about just going into the discomfort of where new ideas are. It’s never going to feel easy or low impact. It is an inherently terrifying landscape, and that’s part of what we signed up for.

LEAR | How large is the company of La Traviata?

MICHAEL | Absolutely. And I think it’s what people want. I know that’s what I want to see when I go to see a show. I want to see that risks have been taken and that there’s an unknowable element and that the artists are trying to put their finger on it a little bit so that you recognize it and say, “Oh, I know what that is and I don’t know what to call it either.”

MICHAEL | That’s a hard question because there are the principals and the supers and then there are dancers. I think we had 24 dancers? And then the chorus changes in each scene, but I think all together it was 56.

LEAR | In a way, it does justice to how baffling life actually is and how many moments in real human existence feel chaotic and multidimensional. Life isn’t simple. And so our work has to reflect that.

LEAR | Not counting the orchestra.

MICHAEL | In so many different ways, depending on who’s writing it and what the medium is, it goes back to those same essential questions of what it is to be a human being and how fucking hard it is to get through life.

MICHAEL | For Marnie, the orchestra was over 80 pieces. It was massive.

LEAR | My gosh.

MICHAEL | I’m doing Aida in two years.

LEAR | I see a look of excited trepidation and many other feelings on your face.

MICHAEL | Yes. Mostly terror.

LEAR | I think terror is a useful emotion as a director.

MICHAEL | It’s good to be afraid of things.

That panic flight response is a really good thing to connect to.

Because it’s what most of your

LEAR | I think of you as being known for having very rich, intimate relationships with collaborators. Even when I’m looking for stage managers, one of my criteria is “Have they worked with Michael Mayer?”

We’ve discussed this. I know that if you liked working with them, I will like working with them because you set up a room that is extremely rigorous but also has a lot of joy in it, and that minimizes drama in favor of what’s on stage.

MICHAEL | Yes. That’s always the goal.

LEAR | Lorin Latarro shared something with me about when you all were working on La Traviata. She said you would gather the team together and you all would have dinner and listen to music.

MICHAEL | Oh, yeah. Many, many, many times. I was just talking to [lighting designer] Natasha Katz about this, because I just worked with her for the first time on Burn This.

LEAR | Her work on Burn This was gorgeous.

I can’t believe you never worked with her before.

MICHAEL | I know, it’s weird. But you stick with your people. Natasha and I were saying we both noticed a few elements of the show that we didn’t fully investigate before we were in the theatre. And I said, back in the old days, when I first started, I would get all my designers together from the very beginning.

We’d all sit in a room over hours and I’d say, “What’s the play about?” And we would all together come up with the answer. Why are we telling the story? What is it saying and how do we participate in saying it? And you get to this point where it becomes a shorthand. That’s one of the joys of having teams of people where you’ve got that intimacy.

LEAR | Like you and [scenic designer] Christine Jones.

MICHAEL | Like me and Christine, or [lighting designer] Kevin Adams. We can cut to the chase so quickly because we’ve got this trust and understanding. But I still think it’s always better to go back to the very basic question of what the show is about. With the opera, you really can’t do it any other way, so we have to all be together on the same page. That’s one of the reasons why I really like doing operas, because it forces you to be in those rooms. And even if we’re not in the same physical room, I can get someone on the

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Michael Mayer + Anne Roth on location for The Seagull PHOTO c/o Michael Mayer

phone. I can get [video designer] Mark Grimmer in London to be looking at the same things as me. This is one area where technology has really helped in terms of communication and the whole design process.

LEAR | A design process that involves everyone actually being in the same room together feels increasingly difficult to orchestrate with people’s schedules, and yet I agree that there’s no substitute for it.

It’s a blessing when you have a show with a high level of complexity. Like with Hercules [at The Public]—we have had multiple daylong design meetings with everyone around the table because we’re figuring out how we’re translating the Titans from the film. It’s like, is that a costume? Is that a puppet? Is that a prop? Is that a set moment? Is it something totally different? It could be that we’re solving it with 20 capoeiristas. So we actually do have to have everyone, and it reminds me that part of asking designers’ availability means seeing if they’re available to be having these meetings in advance.

MICHAEL | And sometimes they can’t and then you have to make a really tough choice.

LEAR | I want to go back for a moment to the first film you did, A Home at the End of the World, which I think was 2004, is that right?

MICHAEL | That’s when it was released. I think we shot it in 2003.

LEAR | How did your transition to film happen? Is that something you had always wanted to do?

MICHAEL | I loved film. My parents got me a Super 8 camera for my bar mitzvah, so I would run around and make little movies.

It’s funny—I understood what theatre was from the movies. My parents weren’t theatre people at all. They had a handful of show

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albums, which I listened to when I was young. I didn’t know what theatre was until I saw Babes in Arms on TV in black and white.

So that’s what I thought theatre was—like Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland saying, “Let’s put on a show.” It’s like, “I can get the costumes up from the attic. We can get the props from the barn.” It was all about making stuff and getting everyone to join in.

And it’s really all about Judy, because seeing The Wizard of Oz at age three changed me forever. Like, I understood why I was on this planet somehow. The other thing about The Wizard of Oz was that I had to wait a year to see it every year on TV. That was more important than my birthday, Christmas, Hanukkah, anything. That was the thing I looked forward to.

So five years later, I’m watching TV, and that girl from The Wizard of Oz is in this other movie called Babes in Arms, and I’m like, it’s her! I was just transfixed. And I thought, I have to put on a show.

LEAR | And then you had fun acting.

MICHAEL | Yes. I went to NYU Grad Acting, and around the time that I was done with that and thinking, “Oh, this acting thing isn’t really for me,” I saw a restored version of A Star Is Born, where it had some of the missing footage from [George] Cukor’s cut of the movie. You could hear the entire soundtrack, you’d hear scenes, and they put up stills where the film was missing. There was something mysterious and weird about the whole thing. And we land on that one scene when Judy comes back from a long day at rehearsal, and she tries to cheer up her husband, James Mason, and she acts out the whole production number by herself using all the stuff that’s in their living room.

That also did something to my head—I was like, “Ah, the idea of transforming any space into a theatrical world using whatever tools you have is how you tell your story.” So those things were these little signposts.

LEAR | So when you were 13 and you got the Super 8, what were your movies about? Were they scripted dramas?

MICHAEL | It’s so embarrassing. I was not a sophisticated 13-year-old. I’d make up

little scenarios, but my magnum opus was a music video of “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia,” sung by Vicki Lawrence.

I recruited friends and family to play the different characters. My friend Richard Semsker, his father had an old-timey bar in their basement, so I went location scouting and I put this whole thing together and timed it in my head. There was no sound. I had the song going and I shot it according to my understanding of the rhythm of the song.

And it was damn close to being right on; then I played it so much on my projector that the film got stretched out of sync.

LEAR | For so many directors who grow up anywhere in the country other than New York City, movies and movie musicals are likely the first entryway into theatre. And as a kid in your house, you do your own production and you use your sister and cocker spaniel as your players. It is perfect theatrical training, in a sense.

This is probably for another conversation, but what is it about Judy? It feels like there is a hero’s journey aspect of her story.

MICHAEL | It’s fascinating to me. How do you see a real human being playing a character in that very two-dimensional world of a black-and-white 1963 television? How does personality or something essential about a human being come across in this two-inchtall figure?

LEAR | It comes back to truth. Whatever those limitations were, she was doing something very true. The depth of her wants and needs, that was something that even at three years old— MICHAEL | I recognized.

LEAR | You saw it and thought, “I know what it feels like to want and to dream.”

MICHAEL | You can’t go over the rainbow. It’s not a real thing. It’s a metaphor. So even from three years old, I was connecting to some kind of metaphorical existential longing that somehow I recognized myself in.

LEAR | Back to the transition into doing that first film in 2003, did you have to essentially re-prove yourself in that other medium?

You had just come off of Thoroughly Modern Millie.

MICHAEL | When I went off to shoot the movie, I had done Millie in London and on Broadway, and we were casting the national tour. I remember there was one tricky thing because I was on location scouting in Toronto and there was a casting crisis going on, and I had to come back for that. But once Colin

Farrell agreed to be in the film, we got a green light.

He even came to audition. We met and I had him read from the script. For my first time directing film, I was a badass. He was like the hottest thing in the world.

LEAR | And you were like, “I need to see what you got.”

MICHAEL | I had only seen him play rough and angry and cynical people. And the character of Bobby was so vulnerable and unformed, I needed to see that he could do it. The truth is, I thought that he did beautifully in the film. He sat there on that couch with me, and we read scenes together and I bought it.

That movie just came to me. Tom Hulce called me up out of the blue. It’s the first thing we did together; I didn’t know him really at all.

LEAR | That’s another one of your long relationships. You and Tom have done, what, 10 projects together?

MICHAEL | And we’ve still got things in the works.

LEAR | In multiple mediums. You worked on The Seagull together, right?

MICHAEL | We did those two movies. Plus Spring Awakening, 10 Million Miles, On a Clear Day. And we recently did Chess together in Washington.

LEAR | And you have another film that’s coming up soon, Language of Flowers.

MICHAEL | Yes. I’ve been asked to do that, and then there’s the American Idiot movie,

David Furr, Keri Russell + Brandon Uranowitz in Burn This on Broadway, directed by Michael Mayer PHOTO Matthew Murphy

which may or may not happen. I’ve got a thing with Pharrell Williams that’s in the process of being rewritten right now.

LEAR | You and I were both Drama League directors—which is one of the few programs that exist for emerging directors in addition to what SDCF offers. There aren’t a ton of programs like that.

MICHAEL | There are so few.

LEAR | When I was trying to build those early stages of my career, I remember idolizing you and your work.

MICHAEL | It’s so hard to believe that.

LEAR | I remember all of us thinking, “Oh, I’m sure by the time you have achieved what Michael has achieved, you must have a greater level of stability in your life.” And what’s interesting is while you might have stability in other ways, you never really know which project is going to happen next.

MICHAEL | I don’t know what’s next. I only know Aida is in two years. [A few months after this interview, Michael was hired to direct the upcoming Off-Broadway revival of Little Shop of Horrors.]

LEAR | I almost don’t want to shatter anyone’s hope that it gets more predictable, but it really doesn’t.

MICHAEL | Maybe at Encores!, if it all goes how you want it to, it will be something that you can rely on as a touchstone and then you build a season for yourself the way we do when we’re freelance directors. But it’s very hard to know.

LEAR | It’s really hard to know. I’m still on staff at The Public as well, so I have these two staff positions, and it’s been wonderful for me to know I’m going to direct a show a year for each of these places. That’s a baseline that I didn’t have 10 years ago.

MICHAEL | It helps.

LEAR | Just letting go of the notion of “Oh, if only I had somebody else’s career, then I would be able to control which thing happens and when.”

MICHAEL | You can’t. Unless you own a theatre. In London, sometimes they’ll give someone a season, like “the Michael Grandage Company presents three plays directed by Michael Grandage.” We don’t program work like that here. But then again, we’ve got these regional theatres, and I think a lot of directors take over the artistic directorships in part because they get to determine what shows they’re working on.

LEAR | There are trade-offs, in that the responsibilities of keeping an institution alive and creative are also logistical and financial.

MICHAEL | I used to think about it many, many years ago. I think it’s also a young person’s game at this point. You have to have a kind of energy of seeing a gigantic future ahead of you. You can’t be shortsighted. Hats off to everyone who does it, but my God, it’s so hard, and fundraising now is harder than ever. I think the fun thing would be to hire friends.

LEAR | Which we do get to do.

MICHAEL | We get to hire friends to collaborate with us, but it’s really different. If I had a theatre, I could say, “Lear, what play do you want to do more than anything?” And I’d say, “Let’s do it.” That to me is the joyous part of it.

LEAR | That’s one the things that excites me about the Encores! job. I’ve never been in a position before where I was getting to go to other directors and say, “What are you really interested in doing?” This conversation is an indirect segue to another question. I feel like you have an authorial stamp on a lot of these shows you do. For example, you had a book writing credit on American Idiot.

MICHAEL | Co-writer, yeah.

LEAR | At this point, are all your projects things that you have authorial imprint upon?

MICHAEL | Not necessarily, no. A lot of the people who come to me with projects that are just ideas—especially musical projects— come to me because they want that kind FALL 2019 | SDC JOURNAL

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of collaborative experience. And if I like the material, I’m very happy to jump in there. It is very rare that I would put my name on it as an author. It’s only happened twice. With American Idiot, it was because I had the whole concept—I just saw these characters in the story.

LEAR | You would listen to the album.

MICHAEL | Yeah. The words technically weren’t mine, but the story that I crafted out of them I made up. So in a sense I was an author of that story. And one other time, Peter Lerman and I were doing this musical Brooklynite, and after lots of false starts, we finally had a delivery date. So I was like, okay, let’s write this thing. And we did that together. But it’s not something that I seek out. I don’t feel like I have a particular gift as a writer. But I do think I’m a really good dramaturg and can help writers fulfill what they are trying to do.

LEAR | With your work on musicals, you’re not necessarily writing dialogue, but you are crafting other stage languages.

Like the tempo of a song or a costume communicating something. Part of what you are doing is making sure that all the elements in the show are telling the same story.

MICHAEL | For sure. I’m doing that when I can. But I’ve been in rooms where that doesn’t happen and where the writers just want you to stage it. That way is less interesting to me, as I’m sure it is to you.

LEAR | Yes. MICHAEL | But there are also times when I’ve had an idea of how the show can function that releases something in the writers where then the show can become what it’s meant to be. And it’s something they never would have known.

LEAR | Sometimes it’s asking the right question from that Ouija board. Sometimes it’s just saying that something doesn’t feel right about a particular moment yet.

MICHAEL | Dick Scanlan and I work that way all the time together. I’m always saying to him, “Something isn’t right and, sorry, I wish I knew what it was specifically, but I just know there’s something wrong with it.”

LEAR | That’s the whole skill. My first job in New York was assistant directing for Anne Bogart.

MICHAEL | I assisted her once too, on The Women at San Diego Rep. LEAR | Anne talks about knowing the feeling

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of a show on such a gut level that you can immediately say yes or no—something does or doesn’t feel right.

MICHAEL | Yeah. It’s like Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink—that we can mentally make decisions quickly and with little information. I think he’s dead-on.

LEAR | I totally agree.

MICHAEL | The accrual of experience gives you that intuition. Sometimes it’s actual knowledge and sometimes it’s just a feeling.

But it’s informed.

LEAR | I’m new to opera, and The Magic Flute will be my first time working in that medium. I feel like I’m at the beginning of a big learning curve. One of the things that I did not expect is how different the hierarchy is between music and lyrics in musical theatre and opera, because musical theatre is so story-focused and the music is always— MICHAEL | In service of the story.

“The accrual of experience gives you that intuition.

Sometimes it’s actual knowledge and sometimes it’s just a feeling. But it’s informed.”

LEAR | Yes. It’s a problem if you can’t hear the lyrics in musical theatre. In opera, it’s not necessarily always a problem. Do you feel when you’re working on an opera that you’re still holding that set of theatre priorities in your head? Or do you switch over into a different mode?

MICHAEL | I try to keep it in my head to the best of my ability, because I think the history of opera has been that music is given such primacy that performers weren’t always asked to make sense of the story. It’s just been, how can they best produce the sound and where do they have to be to get it over the orchestra at certain points? It’s an athletic endeavor. But I think audiences are more sophisticated now, and we have lots of other avenues where we can see our stories played out. The music is beautiful— it is the reason why we talk about operas as “Mozart’s Magic Flute,” “Nico Muhly’s Marnie,” “Verdi’s Rigoletto.” The librettist is a secondary thought. In the same way that, as the director—and you’ll see when you’ve

got orchestra rehearsals—you just sit there hoping there’s going to be a moment where you can run up on stage and have a word with one of the singers, because the maestro runs the show.

When we first started with Rigoletto, Christine [Jones] had designed this really cool set, but there was one transition from the first scene into the second scene where we couldn’t figure out how to do it within the amount of time of the music that we had. And our gang is all there—we’ve all worked together for years. And Lorin Lotarro says, “I think we should just double those bars.” And I remember the stage manager saying, “Excuse me?” And Lorin says, “We need more time.

Can we just double these?” And she points to the score, just six bars. We all thought that was a completely reasonable thing. We found out very quickly that no, you can’t add bars.

You can’t cut bars.

LEAR | Which is the opposite of musical theatre. And you have to find a person who can sing it in the key.

MICHAEL | Absolutely, that’s exactly right.

LEAR | It’s a totally different set of rules.

MICHAEL | I remember seeing Julian Beck in That Time by Beckett. He had a spotlight just on his face. Every now and then, you could see his eyes, which was thrilling, but mostly it was just the mouth. After the play, he said that, as opposed to it being a burden to have all these constraints put on him, he found enormous freedom in those limitations. I feel like that’s the gift of the opera. You have to fulfill these things, but within that, you can really push against it as much as you want to, and that’s where the fun is.

LEAR | Are there any mediums that you have not yet explored that you’d want to try?

MICHAEL | Like the Olympics or something?

LEAR | Well, that’s what I want to try! I guess even within television you’ve already done a variety of projects.

MICHAEL | To be part of creating something that was a limited series would be great. I’d love to be a key part of doing an adaptation of a great book or something that was in six or eight parts. That would be really, really fun because there are some properties that don’t want to be a two-hour movie.

LEAR | For sure. And then you wouldn’t be signing away five years because, actually, you have other things that you need to do.

MICHAEL: Exactly.

Bodies Space in

AN INTERVIEW WITH ANNIE-B PARSON BY

ELIZABETH BENNETT

When ANNIE-B PARSON saw the Joffrey Ballet as a child in Chicago, her upper balcony perspective led her to believe that she was looking through a kaleidoscope instead of at people dancing. That experience contributed to her thinking of choreography as fundamentally bodies in space. In the decades since, Parson has explored a lot of bodies in a variety of spaces, from work around the world with her Big Dance Theater co-founders to actors on stage in NYC productions such as Orlando, In the Blood, Lazarus, and Here Lies Love. In addition to theatrical projects, her résumé includes concert work with musicians such as St. Vincent and David Byrne, as well as work with marching bands, symphonies, and augmented reality. She also writes about her work; her latest book on choreography—Drawing the Surface of Dance—will be out this fall from Wesleyan University Press. In April, Parson spoke with SDC Journal about the evolution of her work and the latest thinking about what a choreographer does.

Aaron Mattocks in Short Ride Out, directed and choreographed by Annie-B Parson PHOTO Paula Court

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ELIZABETH BENNETT | The Joffrey is an unusual company to imprint yourself on. Did those early shaping experiences lead you to think about dance as a career or more as an artistic practice? What were the other experiences along the way that led you to a career as a choreographer?

ANNIE-B PARSON | I was a visual art major in college, and later I switched to being a dance major. At the time, I was intrigued by conceptual art. Many of the artists I admired—such as Chris Burden—were replacing painting with the body in space; visual art and dance were coming very close to each other. I love simple, physical actions.

Some of that interest comes from seeing the work of the Judson Church dance artists: they used their bodies as found material. Seeing their work when I was a young dancemaker was formative, coupled with seeing the work of Pina Bausch. They were probably some of my biggest influences.

ELIZABETH | Was that orientation in conceptual art also what got you into sound design? I read that you created your own soundscapes for your work.

ANNIE-B | I did—and for other people too.

From my first dancemaking experiments, I was always thinking about sound design as I was making dances, and I still do. They are one and the same for me.

I know this is being called into question right now, but learning how other cultures move and make music (now considered “cultural appropriation”) was a large part of my choreographic research. Starting out, I was fascinated in particular with a juxtaposing of one culture against another culture’s ideas.

That is how the world looked to me. I was obsessed with mixing things up—these strange yet very potent alchemies that would arise from this research. For instance, I remember making a dance to a Russian choir singing an American pop song for a Gogol play in the early ’80s. Everyone thought it was really weird.

ELIZABETH | Where did you even find that kind of recording?

ANNIE-B | You have to imagine the world before the internet! I found it at the Performing Arts Library at the New York Public Library. They had record players set up in the lobby. I would search out one culture covering another culture’s work. I was interested in the American pop influence in Japanese, German, Russian, and Korean folk material. Music where, for instance, German folk music was sung by a Chinese pop group. And then I—as an American—made something new from that.

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And I was playing with folk movement. I’d go to the library, watch old videotapes of folk dances, stand in front of the screen in the library, and try to learn them. I’d then bring those ideas into the studio and work from whatever my body could hold onto, accepting the errors. Eventually I would make it my own through a process of deconstruction.

ANNIE-B | Often, I would bring in the textual and musical materials I wanted to work with, and Molly—being one of the most well-read people I know—would have a book she would be reading, and Paul would have ideas he wanted to pursue, and we would assume that all of our most recent interests could be absorbed into one piece of theatre.

The question now is, can you do that? There is a sensitivity issue that needs to be teased out with nuance. In 2006, the Japan Society sent me to Okinawa on commission because I wanted to study Okinawan pop music and folk dance. I was so lucky! I’ve been afforded a serious engagement with this tremendously old material. Sharing cultural ideas has always been central to cultural understanding. But the interaction must be respectful and deep.

It’s synergistic how things can speak to each other through long periods of rehearsal exploration in the room. Nothing is autonomous; nothing is separate from anything else. It’s all one. The crafting of the materials is what brings it together and allows it to live in the same space and time. Then, underneath all this, I would work with forms, compositional ideas, to hold it all together.

ELIZABETH | As opposed to parachuting in.

Does it feel uncomfortable to you now when you are bringing traditions of other cultures into your work?

ANNIE-B | I’m not doing it right now because of this moment; I want to be respectful of concerns that are being considered. I like the awareness of “No, we shouldn’t grab from other people’s stuff.” It’s dis-appropriation, in a sense. It’s a very delicate chemistry to figure out when this borrowing is poaching, when it’s done disrespectfully, when it’s done blindly, and when it’s studious and deep and thoughtful.

ELIZABETH | When you say forms, do you mean dance forms specifically?

ANNIE-B | Yes, and all forms. Any form. There was a period of years where I was working with poetic forms in dance and with text.

For instance, I rewrote the script of Terms of Endearment into poetic forms. I also would manipulate movement phrases into poetic form. For instance, where there would be repetition of words or sounds in the poetic form, I would repeat or rhyme the movement.

Or the form could be a very simple underlying floor pattern that reiterates and develops throughout the piece.

ELIZABETH | Does that awareness feel as though you’re making choices in a different way?

ELIZABETH | When a lot of people watch Big Dance, they wonder, “Is it dance? Is it theatre?

Is it movement theatre?”

ANNIE-B | Yes, but in a related way.

Dancemaking for me is largely about perception. There’s a lot to respond to in my own world. Limitations are always good for artists.

ANNIE-B | All those gray areas are very interesting to me. I feel total freedom to use absolutely any expressive tool while making a piece of dance/theatre. In my new piece I plan to explore the sense of smell.

ELIZABETH | The idea of found materials leads me to think of Big Dance Theater, the company you founded in 1991 with actor/ director Paul Lazar and performer Molly Hickok. I’d love to know about what the process is in working with found material.

ELIZABETH | Do you say to yourself, “Tomorrow we’re going in and my plan is going to be…”?

ANNIE-B | Our process has often, but not always, been about embracing the ahistoric, the anachronistic, with the intersection of old and new. Such as a text by Mark Twain mixed with a live conversation taped while standing on a bank line. I like setting these disparate materials side by side and letting them resonate.

ELIZABETH | Do you, Paul, and Molly start with an idea and then seek out the found materials related to that idea, or does the theme or idea come from the found materials?

ANNIE-B | Yes. That’s my job. To have a Plan A that the group will work from.

That’s what a choreographer does. The choreographer comes up with “The Big Tent.”

The choreographer says, “Okay, the dance is going to hold these kinds of materials—for example: the material should be small scale, isolated, diverge constantly, and occur in the corners of the stage.” Within these decisions, whatever they are, there may be steps, and those steps are like the words of the play in that the steps are part of the material of the larger statement. What to me is most significant are the larger aesthetic decisions that the choreographer imagines and activates.

ELIZABETH | There are labels getting thrown around about who’s a choreographer, who’s a movement director. A lot of people don’t understand that this is changing. Some people assume that narrative can only be created by text as opposed to being created by images or movement. Or the combination of movement with music.

was wearing a head mic so he could move anywhere on the stage. There was a marching band and they could move anywhere. So there was a lot of room for choreography in that show, but since it was largely brass, it seemed more familiar to have the musicians moving. And some performers were still tethered to mic stands.

ANNIE-B | I think dance existed before narrative as a communal activity that had a kinetic power of cohesion and belonging.

But today, there’s a serious overemphasis on storytelling. You hear it all the time in advertising and radio programs: “If we only could hear each other’s stories then we would understand each other.” I don’t think that’s true. I think we all create fictions around our lives. It happens unintentionally. And there is so much more going on in our day than a series of events. Stories can be reductive, but movement never lies!

Now, for American Utopia, David is breaking the form of a rock concert entirely. In this show, he unplugs the entire band by putting them in harnesses and wireless amplification.

In his first meeting with me about this show, he said, “Okay, there’s going to be a white box and white floor, and there’s going to be 12 people who can move freely, so you can choreograph the entire show.” We worked together very intensely. My task was to create the physical world of the staging/dances from start to finish—so it was a lot of material to generate! It’s been touring around the world for the past year.

I just think that there are other ways to learn about each other and the world than through storytelling—ways that are complicated and strange and demanding, that are completely non-narrative or partially non-narrative.

This is one of the really cool things about David Byrne’s show American Utopia (premiering on Broadway this fall). David is someone who has faith in dance as a powerful tool on stage. He doesn’t want to be tethered to the ubiquitous mic cord and guitar pedals so that he can be physically free. The first show we worked on together was Everything That Happens Happens Today, with Brian Eno. Everybody was plugged in at standing mics and pedals. Only the dancers were unplugged, so most of the choreography was made for the dancers.

The second show that I worked on with him was Love This Giant with St. Vincent. In that show, David’s guitar was unplugged and he

David Byrne’s American Utopia, choreographed by Annie-B Parson PHOTO Abigail Lester

The whole show is dance, in a sense. Here David is starting with a form, and the form is bodies in space making music. It’s an age-old dance form. And what happened is a content emerged from underneath that form, and that content has become quite political.

ELIZABETH | Is the content musical? Is it spoken?

ANNIE-B | There are songs that speak to politics, but it turns out that’s not what reads as the most political. What the audience perceives is a group of people dancing and playing music for two hours, and it feels like a citizen body. It feels utopian. And there is content and meaning that accrues in David’s text, but the content is also the meanings of bodies interacting with space, dancing and playing music to a very tightly choreographic physical score. David’s music is savvy and

observant about the world. It all adds up to a powerful statement by one of the great citizen-artists of our time.

ELIZABETH | What’s the relationship of the performers to the audience in that piece?

ANNIE-B | It’s traditional in that it’s a proscenium piece.

ELIZABETH | Can you talk to me about how you choreographed the performers to enter into a mosh pit environment in another David Byrne work, Here Lies Love, which he wrote with Fatboy Slim [and premiered at The Public in 2013]?

ANNIE-B | Here Lies Love was made more conventionally in that there was a director, Alex Timbers, and I was charged to choreograph to the music. The meta-reality of Here Lies Love is that it’s at a disco. The entire creative team was tasked with incorporating the disco world into the audience’s physical experience. Alex led the charge, deciding where in the space the songs would be and where the audience would be.

ELIZABETH | The physical experience was so democratic because there was a breakdown of the space—between the performers, the audience, the front-of-house staff.

ANNIE-B | This is Alex’s spatial work. It was a very complicated piece with a lot of moving parts—literally!

ELIZABETH | Did it feel as though you were creating choreography on the bodies or with the performers?

ANNIE-B | In Here Lies Love, the process typically was that I would work alone on the songs for a time and then do another more legible draft with my great associate

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choreographers Chris Giarmo and then Elizabeth (Lizzie) DeMent. In rehearsal, we would teach the material to the actors. It’s not the way I work in Big Dance Theater. If people are trained to be generative creators, I love developing material with them more collaboratively, but often musical theatre performers don’t have that particular training as you might find with a devised theatre performer.

ELIZABETH | Is that a hard shift to make in your own process?

the ball hard in their court in the far corner, and they hit it back really hard. It is very back and forth. But I choose what the balls will be that we are hitting.

ELIZABETH | It’s unusual to talk with someone who feels facility working with both methods in those different ways of working.

ANNIE-B | I suppose I am ultimately more engaged in a more collaborative process. It’s more intellectual, ultimately more interesting.

I make a living as a choreographer, and I

Here Lies Love, choreographed by Annie-B Parson PHOTO Joan Marcus

The other thing that she rejects from theatre—which theatre uses to a fault—is something I’m calling moralism. When we leave Pina Bausch’s theatre, we don’t leave in agreement. We see a world that she has constructed, and we see what she’s examining. But we don’t agree on an ethical position as we exit. Instead, we leave with heightened perception. This is what interests me most in theatre and dance: an increase in perception and awareness.

ELIZABETH | What’s been the value for you in being a Member of SDC? For someone who comes from a very different background, joining a union might not have been the natural choice.

ANNIE-B | SDC didn’t intersect with my world for a long time, until I was working quite a bit Off-Broadway, so I became a Member. I don’t think I was aware of its potential until about six months ago!

ELIZABETH | What happened six months ago?

ANNIE-B | I went to a meeting at SDC about choreographers working on Broadway, and my eyes were opened. The conversation that day was incredibly important to me.

What we talked about that day moved the conversation around what a choreographer does and is and how to find language for this.

That night I went home and wrote a letter in response to the meeting and sent it to [SDC Director of Contract Affairs] Randy Anderson.

The next morning, the amazing Randy was on the phone communicating our ideas, and those ideas went up to the right places. I never saw anything happen so quickly. I was blown away.

ANNIE-B | I like working both ways. In American Utopia and Here Lies Love and many other shows I have worked on, Lizzie and I would bring in movement as a first draft rather than bring in movement problems to solve, as in a devised theatre process.

In my company, the performers are generating material from a rubric that I am bringing in, and it’s coming from their bodies.

It’s not often that I would make movement and teach movement in my company.

ELIZABETH | Have those people been part of bringing in the found materials and whatever discussion goes on about them?

ANNIE-B | I would bring in the ideas and materials, and they responded to them. It’s essentially like a very high-level tennis game where I start things off with a serve, hitting

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have to work in so many different situations, so it demands flexibility. I also don’t expect everyone to have generative skills. It’s a particular training.

ELIZABETH | There’s more of a dialogue among the different disciplines now, so it can be increasingly difficult to label something.

Do you think we’re seeing the dissolution of the labels between disciplines?

ANNIE-B | Personally, I have never paid attention to these labels. The ancient Greeks made theatre that was entirely multidisciplinary.

Or take Pina Bausch’s work, for instance.

What she borrowed from theatre was character, circumstance, props, psychology, and relationship. What she’s not borrowing from theatre is narrative.

The question we were discussing was whether an actor could fairly be called a choreographer if they were involved in the developmental phase. I support fully and deeply that these performers are valuable generative collaborators and absolutely should be compensated for this contribution, but my question was, “If they’re the choreographer, then who am I?” The choreographer is the person thinking—from the very early stages of creation—of the whole piece from a movement perspective.

Who is the person doing all the research?

What about all the decisions around how movement operates and what the motifs are? What’s the nature of the movement vocabulary itself? Which part of the stage are we using? Is it a duet, a solo, a large group piece? Is the language familiar or unfamiliar?

What world does it come from? Does it come from my body, does it come from history, does it come from another part of the world, from a vernacular? Is it pedestrian or

virtuosic, stylistically familiar or idiosyncratic?

These aesthetic decisions are what a choreographer does and is. Before we meet the performers, there’s a large-scale aesthetic plan for the uber-choreography.

I have felt in the past few years—and I’ve seen this very distinctly in the larger culture— that choreography is mistaken for steps.

Steps can be an element of the choreography, but choreography is the overall aesthetic organization of bodies in space.

I think this has to do with something outside of our theatre domain. It’s YouTube stuff; it’s an exercise class where they call the actions choreography. But that’s a misnomer. Words so often get co-opted. The word “creative” was co-opted in the ’90s by businessmen sitting in Starbucks on their laptops. They weren’t actually being creative. They just weren’t going to an office and they weren’t wearing a tie. The structure of their day was different and they were feeling liberated by these stylistic changes. Their set, props, and costumes had changed! So, they applied the word creative to their new lifestyle.

But, creativity is something else. It involves a powerful imaginative muscle and the manifestation of these ideas through craft.

her new concert. That was her concert tour called St. Vincent, and it was saturated with choreography and she was the primary mover. After that, she said, “I want to experiment with no choreography.” I said, “You know that choreography is not steps. It’s the arrangement of the body in space. Let me put your body in space.” In that show, I tasked myself to delay the audience the pleasure of the ubiquitous downstage center position that you expect the rock star to live in. I worked compositionally with her positioning in the space.

Some people would say, “Where’s the choreography? She didn’t do any steps.” No, she didn’t do any steps and it was expressive and dimensional. She was interacting with space, and that can be very intense.

ELIZABETH | What was it like for you to make your own dances, but working from choreography created by iconic dance giants, specifically Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham?

resurrect that piece on the company and then invite you in to take a wrecking ball and do anything you want to it?”

ELIZABETH | What an invitation!

ANNIE-B | I immediately said, “Yes, definitely.”

They had the original video and I studied it.

There was some inaudible text and music, but it seemed to be about her marriage. I felt it wasn’t a comedy at all; it was a tragedy.

I asked the playwright Will Eno to write text for me. We sat and watched Martha’s piece on video and talked about what we thought was actually going on emotionally. I cut a lot of sections and characters that I didn’t respond to, and told Will that I wanted about five pages of text. He sent me the text a while later—and then I had to go lie down! It was so extraordinarily deep, funny, brilliant, and meta. And that was it. We didn’t interact again about the piece.

I took Will’s text into rehearsal and I had the dancers speak it into microphones because

I Used to Love You, directed and choreographed by Annie-B Parson PHOTO Brigid Pierce/The Martha Graham Dance Co.

So when I walked into the SDC office roundtable and I heard that the word choreography was being used in this reductive way, we got into a really deep conversation about what we do. People think the choreographer is the one who constructs the tap dance between Act One and Act Two, and nothing else. Audiences may not grasp that choreography is the intentional and aesthetic organization of the body in space.

A choreographer may have staged an entire play because she decided how people would move throughout the play, but she is only credited for that tap dance. This experience was largely true for everyone in the room. We realized we need to write a definition for what choreography is. I am working on that now!

ELIZABETH | If that’s how people think of choreography, then what are people thinking of when they say movement?

ANNIE-B | Some choreographers like to be called movement directors for that reason.

I think movement, unless it’s abstract, is not actually perceived at all, meaning it goes unnoticed. For me, when I stage a play, rather than doing a read-through first, I think first about physical relationship and proximity to other bodies in space, a larger engagement with the body in space. For me, this is the DNA of the piece.

After I worked with St. Vincent on her Love This Giant tour, she asked me to choreograph

ANNIE-B | The Martha Graham commission was a beautiful, crazy idea that came from Janet Eilber, the company’s Artistic Director.

She is such a genius. She basically said, “What if I bring back Punch and the Judy, a 1941 piece that Martha made, and that Merce Cunningham and Eric Hawkins danced in? It was supposed to be a comedy, but I don’t think the humor aged well. What if I

that often sounds much better with nonactors, but also I love the architecture of the microphones. There was a reverence around creating this piece because I really got to go deeply into Martha’s work. But there was also an irreverence about it, a total sense of freedom to take out all the things that I felt didn’t age well. I turned things inside out, upside down, reversed them, de-sequenced FALL 2019 | SDC JOURNAL

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enough, the place that commissioned his work the most outside of Europe was in Indiana at the University of Notre Dame! But for the most part, he was not supported in this country. People hated his work. Now his work is very normalized.

ELIZABETH | I had a similar experience recently at the Guggenheim when seeing the Mapplethorpe exhibit. It’s almost exactly the same exhibit that I saw in 1989 at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, when the BDSM photos were in a room that had warnings before you went in. At the Guggenheim, parents were walking around with five-year-olds. Work that had been deemed dangerous art had now become conventional and accepted. Part of me was a little uncomfortable with the fact that it was no longer dangerous. I look at those photographs and think about how much they’ve been copied, particularly in the advertising world.

Annie-B Parson PHOTO Ike Edeani

them. The whole sound score is drumming— not hand drums but a drumming trap kit— and it’s super intense. My set and costumes were very un-Martha.

I gained a deepr respect for this giant of a choreographer. Her gifts are mind-blowing.

The way she constructs the material is amazing, but I didn’t relate to the overall sense of identity and tone in it, the angst!

There was never a moment where Janet said, “Don’t do that. Don’t tread on that.” I wanted to have a gay love affair on stage, et cetera.

There was a lot of free thinking.

Will has a beautiful line at the end. There are three Fates, and one of them says, in the voice of Martha, through a big talking head film of her from the 1940s, “I lived. I was lucky enough to live. I suffered. I was lucky enough to suffer. I’m gone, I’m lucky enough to be gone.” And the dancer exits by the time the line is finished.

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ANNIE-B | Yes. Like a contemporary painter remaking a masterpiece. Just after Merce Cunningham died, I curated an evening for the first anniversary of his death. My premise was simple: I wanted to have five choreographers who were working at a level of invention that was as arduous and rule breaking as he was. But not his rule breaking, their rule breaking. That was my take on what to celebrate about Merce.

“...choreography is the overall aesthetic organization of bodies in space.”

I don’t know what you call this form. It’s not a remake; it’s not an update. It’s a nod, a reimagining, a séance, a bow!

ELIZABETH | It sounds like a great way to provide a platform for people who might be the next Merce.

ELIZABETH | It’s a reinterpretation. It sounds as though that is one of the ways that the works of these kind of iconic artists is going to be able to be passed down.

ANNIE-B | It’s difficult to think about what groundbreaking and game-changing actually looks like in the present moment.

Cunningham was not supported in this country for a very long time. Strangely

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ANNIE-B | That’s also true with Marilyn Minter. Her work is ripped off by the advertising world. I see stuff in the subway and I think, “Minter? No.” But in my opinion, because she’s a woman she doesn’t have the power or stature she deserves. This work is so important aesthetically, and it finds its way in and floats up into the mainstream culture. But the artists themselves are not rewarded for that. I see that a lot in dance.

ELIZABETH | Is that a copyright issue? Is it because the work isn’t being filmed and so there isn’t a record?

ANNIE-B | The video record of our work is hardly representative of the live work. And I think there’s just not an audience for edgy work, and the runs are too short to gain one. And the writing about difficult work is lacking. So many reasons! There are many groundbreaking artists working downtown who I am so inspired by. Yvonne Rainer’s work was at MoMA, and MoMA kind of claimed her at this late date! She’s in her eighties! But it takes that long for dance to move through the ecosystem. Aesthetically, this work is changing the way things look, and our sensibilities, but it just doesn’t have a lot of eyes on it when it’s in its pure form.

ELIZABETH | What might change that?

ANNIE-B | A more adventurous perspective from theatregoers. And someone needs to write about dangerous art. We badly need diverse writers who can comfortably write about both dance and theatre—writers interested in dangerous, complex art that lives outside the marketplace! The audiences will follow their lead.

n tu r y

AUDIO P

L

21st

Ce

S Y A

f o r th e

BY

RUTH PE PALILEO

Audio plays—dramatized, typically scripted, purely acoustic theatre—have been around in one form or another since the birth of radio. Today, the field is burgeoning, with a variety of theatre and media companies across the country producing audio drama in some format. “Radio dramas,” “radio plays,” and “radio theatre” refer to shows originally created for broadcast on radio, whereas “audio drama” or “audio theatre” more broadly encompass acoustic theatre recordings on other media, most recently on podcasts and webcasts.

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“There really does seem to be a renaissance happening in terms of audio drama. When I started [before podcasts], people thought of radio drama as old-timey and radio stations were panicking at losing that 19- to 40-year-old demographic. I am delighted to see how the terrain has changed.

Because it’s always disturbed me that theatre was so inaccessibly expensive.”

– Claudia Catania Producing Artistic Director, Playing on Air

“Having plays really well recorded on audio is the most accessible way to give people an opportunity to experience the best stage plays in the American and world theatre canons.

There’s no barrier to listening to an audio recording. It’s absolutely inexpensive or no cost, and you can access these recordings from anywhere in the world—and people do. That’s our joy: making these great works available and preserving them for all time.”

– Susan Loewenberg Producing Director, L.A. Theatre Works

When they first appeared in the 1920s, radio dramas became wildly popular in Europe and the United States, where families would gather regularly around their radios to hear the next installment of a show, getting caught up in the stories and drama conveyed through voice and sound. Legend has it that Orson Welles’s adaptation of the sciencefiction novel The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, broadcast by Mercury Theatre on the Air in October 1938, caused a panic among its listening audience, who believed that an alien invasion was actually underway. Midcentury, however, the rise of television caused the popularity of radio drama to dwindle in the US. Just when it seemed that audio drama was going the way of vinyl, along came the podcast and, with it, a renewed appetite for audio dramas. Not only have webcasting and podcasting opened up the internet to the distribution of vintage audio recordings, but also they are the means of inexpensively creating new audio dramas for audiences numbering in the millions around the world.

Whether an audio drama is produced by a media company or a theatre company, it’s common practice to have a director involved.

SDC Journal spoke to six directors about the process of creating work for the ear and how it differs from directing for the stage.

These directors have collaborated with one or more of the major audio theatre companies featured in this article: L.A. Theatre Works, Audible, Playing on Air, and Gimlet Media.

While these four companies each produce their work a little differently, they represent the variety and depth of audio drama available to audiences today.

Of the companies we spoke with, L.A. Theatre Works (LATW) has been around the longest, having recorded its first audio script in 1985 for KCRW radio in California (the 14.5-hour, full-length, multi-voiced recording of Sinclair Lewis’s novel Babbitt). Susan Loewenberg, LATW founder and Producing Director, credits LATW member Richard Dreyfuss for the inspiration to record radio drama because he had heard BBC Radio’s recording of Ulysses and said he’d always wanted to do plays on the radio.

With a cast that included Dreyfuss, Helen Hunt, Amy Irving, Ed Asner, John Lithgow, and all 35 other members of LATW’s company, Babbitt was recorded in the studio and played on KCRW in an all-day marathon broadcast on Thanksgiving Day 1987. Babbitt became the first of many LATW recordings aired by NPR and the BBC, and Loewenberg continues to executive produce at least 10 audio productions a year for LATW. Billed as “a radio theatre company,” LATW records audio versions of plays originally created for the stage.

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Over the last 30 years, LATW has selected, invited, and trained dozens of directors, creating a pool from which directors can be matched to an upcoming project. Depending on the production, LATW’s process includes two types of recording: live in front of a subscription audience and in the studio—like LATW’s recorded version of the docudrama Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers, which toured to China in 2011 and 2013.

LATW has a weekly show that is broadcast in about 80 markets on public radio in the US. At the same time, the Radio Beijing network in China (boasting 1.31 million listeners daily) has been broadcasting one LATW play every other day over the past six years, and LATW has also recently added KCRW Berlin in Germany to its list of broadcasters. LATW now has a catalogue of more than 500 works available for purchase on its website.

Based in New York, Playing On Air (POA) had its inception in 2010 after Founder and Producing Artistic Director Claudia Catania attended a particularly enjoyable reading at an off-Broadway theatre. The performance made her think that with the same four hours of the actors’ and director’s time, a much larger audience—beyond those physically in attendance—could experience the same joy of hearing the play performed out loud.

She wondered, “Why should there be eight people on folding chairs experiencing this when for the same amount of time and effort, it could be eight million?” Billed on the POA website as “the free theatre podcast you’ve been waiting for,” the company produces one-act plays with acclaimed actors like Adam Driver, David Harbour, and Carol Kane.

POA’s first demo included the short plays Mrs. Sorken by Christopher Durang, featuring Dana Ivey, and Two Jewish Men in Their Seventies by Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros, featuring Jerry Stiller. Catania alone produced and directed POA’s projects until 2012, when the company debuted on public radio in 24 counties across New York State and began to grow even bigger. POA has now expanded its reach to radio stations in 14 states, while at the same time the work is accessible as a podcast across platforms. POA’s process typically involves recording in the studio, though occasional shows have been recorded in front of a live audience. Each POA recording concludes with a talkback session in which Catania interviews the actors, director, and playwright. Beyond producing audio drama, POA also awards the James Stevenson Prize for Comedic Short Plays, which includes a cash award and a recording for radio and podcast.

Another key player, Gimlet Media, focuses on “narrative podcasting” and has been recording episodic audio plays in the studio since its founding in 2014. Executive Producer

of Scripted Content Mimi O’Donnell joined the company in 2017, transitioning to Gimlet after a tenure as Artistic Director at LAByrinth Theater Company. O’Donnell had previous experience with audio drama, having directed Woke by Leland Frankel and The Helpers by Cusi Cram for Playing on Air. And she has recently done some directing for Gimlet, with the first season of the audio play Two Princes released in June 2019. Gimlet’s podcasts (including audio dramas) are downloaded over 12 million times per month by listeners from nearly 190 countries worldwide. And because the scripted content is heavily focused on the development of the narrative, directors are very involved in the creation of the work. Gimlet works with directors from a range of fields, including film, theatre, and documentary filmmaking.

One of the newer companies on the scene is Audible, the powerhouse audio entertainment company that started producing audio plays in 2016. Audible describes the process of its theatre initiative as “redefining

theatrical storytelling” and records both live on stage and in the studio, depending on the production. One of the company’s first projects was the audio version of Neil LaBute’s All the Ways to Say I Love You, which Artistic Producer Kate Navin produced after seeing MCC Theater’s 2016 stage production starring Judith Light. Navin also produced David Cale’s Harry Clarke—starring Billy Crudup as 19 different characters—from its stage debut at the Vineyard Theatre to its audio recording in-studio to an extended OffBroadway run at the Minetta Lane Theatre, where Audible now produces and records some of its live events. In 2017, listeners around the world downloaded over 2 billion hours of Audible content, fulfilling what Navin calls the mission of Audible Theater: “to make more performances available to more people.” Audible’s production process is highly focused on the audience member’s experience, and how the elements—sound design, performances, direction—will sound to the listener sitting in their car or wearing headphones. Audible’s newest endeavor is

commissioning and producing plays for audio that don’t appear on stage, like Madhuri Shekar’s Evil Eye, the first Audible Theater commission that was just released in May. Regardless of the way it gets made, audio drama challenges a director to create a show for both the smallest and the largest audience at one time—a single listener having the actor whispering the story in her ear and also millions of people in a virtual theatre where there are always enough seats. Sometimes, directors in audio drama are crafting a show that is recorded live in front of an audience who is just as eager to watch the Foley artist create the sound effects as they are to watch the actors. Other times, the director is sequestered in the studio with the actors and no audience at all, except occasionally the producer, playwright, or sound designer.

To learn more about this process, SDC Journal reached out to six directors who’ve worked in this growing field. The following are excerpts from individual conversations with them.

ABOUT THE DIRECTORS

Brian Kite

10 audio plays, including American Buffalo and Disgraced

Diane Rodriguez

Between Riverside and Crazy

Aaron Mark

The Horror of Dolores Roach, based on his stage play Empanada Loca

Seret Scott

Poof! and Crumbs from the Table of Joy

Mimi O’Donnell

Woke, The Helpers, and Two Princes

Leigh Silverman

All the Ways to Say I Love You and Harry Clarke

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How did you cross over from stage directing to audio theatre?

DIANE | Susan Loewenberg of LATW got me involved. She called out of the blue one day and asked if I wanted to direct for the company. LATW is unique in that it has been doing this for years, and when you go in as a director, they have a process that you fit into and there are people that surround you and support you in that venture. I’m a technical director, and I think the transfer of my passion for the tech was a really good match.

SERET | Poof! was Lynn Nottage’s first play. I directed it at the Actors Theatre of Louisville in 1993, and later Lynn asked me to direct the radio play for POA. Crumbs from the Table of Joy [also by Nottage] is a lovely play that I had directed twice regionally before directing the audio version at LATW. BRIAN | I was talking with one of the associate producers at LATW, and they were looking for new directors for their radio series. They called me in to do one of the just-in-studio or just-in-house recordings, and after we had talked for a while, they said, “Actually, we’re about to send a show to China; would you consider taking over that show instead?” I thought, well, that got way better! It was lucky that my timing was just right. I’m a regular with LATW now. It’s been great fun.

Daphne Rubin-Vega in Empanada Loca with LAByrinth Theater Company, directed by Aaron Mark PHOTO Monique Carboni

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LEIGH | Kate Navin of Audible Theater had seen All the Ways to Say I Love You at MCC and was trying to figure out how to capture it, and Judith Light was really game to revisit it. So even though the play had been finished for half a year, we went back, we re-rehearsed it, and then did it for the recording. We originally did the show not knowing that Audible was going to come on board and want to record it. With Harry Clarke, Audible was a co-producer.

AARON | Daphne Rubin-Vega and I made an audio version of my monologue play she did, Empanada Loca, which I wrote and directed, about a year after our run OffBroadway at LAByrinth Theater Company. A year or so after that, the expanded, serialized, full-cast version of that piece became the first season of the podcast The Horror of Dolores Roach for Gimlet Media, produced

by Mimi O’Donnell, who’d also produced the play. Between those two, I’d been working on audio versions of two other horror monologue plays of mine that had been done on stage, as well as writing a new piece specifically for audio for Audible Theater, which I’ll also direct.

When you’ve directed audio plays, has the playwright been involved in the process?

Were there any script changes that came about as you began to “direct for the ear”?

BRIAN | In almost every audio play I’ve directed, we’ve worked with the playwright.

We’ve never done stage directions or narration in any of the productions that I’ve done. We often have to add some things, like identifying where we’re going to say a character’s name for clarity. I just did a recording of Oslo. Working with J. T. Rogers, we suggested a certain number of IDs, and he accepted half of them. It’s a collaboration to figure out how much we need to add to do the storytelling. Sometimes we’ll also ID locations, though we usually try to do that through the soundscape, the background noise, through the Foley to capture where we are.

If there is something that is strictly done through action, we have to figure out if we can show it in another way. In a production of Disgraced I did, there’s a moment at the very end of the play where Amir just stares at this painting, overcome with the moment and the reflection on who he is and what’s happened.

So I tried to capture that same feeling by adding a sound cue of just a single tone that stretched out in a thin way and then grew to a sudden stop. I work with the playwright to determine solutions like that, too.

SERET | In the black, at the opening of Lynn Nottage’s 10-minute play Poof!, Stanley says

Billy Crudup in Harry Clarke at The Vineyard Theatre, directed by Leigh Silverman PHOTO Carol Rosegg

some very unkind things to his wife and she “damns him to hell.” When lights rise on the scene, we see a little pile of ashes and smoke rising. Stanley has gone to Hell! It’s hilarious.

For the audio play, we had to add a couple of lines to express that visual: “Stanley? Oh no, he’s a pile of ashes!”

AARON | For audio, I’ve only directed my own material and am constantly futzing with the text in the studio. Audio is extremely concentrated and close, so sometimes fewer words are necessary from a performance standpoint; on the other hand, without a visual, sometimes additional words are needed for clarity.

MIMI | We do a lot of script development.

We do in-studio reads. Not necessarily with the actors who will actually record it, but just to hear it. I compare it to a reading in theatre, where you can sit around a table all you want, but as soon as you get in with an audience, even [un-staged] with music stands, light bulbs go off on what works and what doesn’t.

A lot of times, we want to rewrite a few things because everything we are doing is episodic, season driven, where there is so much story.

You want to make sure that there is a journey happening, a clear path for the protagonist and the supporting actors to move the story along. The directors are definitely involved in the development of the script.

Can you tell us a little about the process of directing an audio production? How is your process different than when you’re directing for the stage?

AARON | Directing audio is more like directing for screen than for the stage. It’s about making sure you get all the little pieces needed to create the thing once the actors are done, so the process is much more moment-to-moment than start-tofinish. You’re not building performances that need to be replicated night after night, so there’s a freedom there, but you don’t have the benefit of sitting with an audience and feeling how it’s working or isn’t.

Beyond that, directing an audio production of something that’s been done on stage already (like a monologue play) is vastly different than directing audio of something that hasn’t (like a podcast with lots of people). The former is essentially translating to a more concentrated medium, which usually means resizing the performance in the studio and then piecing together as close to a definitive version of it as possible in post-production. If it’s something new for audio, it’s more about making discoveries in the studio and getting lots of options so that post-production can be a much more exploratory process.

What happens is that between each show you can give notes to your actors. So performance two is responding to the notes you gave the night before.

DIANE | At LATW, we were only in the rehearsal room for a week for Between Riverside and Crazy. I did mic blocking, and for the intermission I did a brief reconfiguration of where they all sat in the second act, so we had to get used to that.

Then we got into the theatre; that’s really where the techs would direct the actors in terms of how to use the mics. They have to make sure that they talk straight into the microphone when responding to each other. That’s something that really has to be rehearsed.

LEIGH | In the sound design in the original theatrical production, a sound cue may have been very subtle to provide an unconscious shift in tone or awareness.

But when you’re listening to an audio play, the cues seem to happen on a much more conscious level to transport us in time or change the geography or energetic beat.

The live audience really does help the actor know they’re on a roll and the audience is with them. It gives the performance that’s recorded a spark. There were five performances; all of them were recorded.

I took notes on the performances, like “better take than last night.” I also listened on a headset and took notes in the script.

SERET | With Poof! at POA, we did a couple of readings and talked through sections that needed more vocal or scriptural emphasis for the recording. That 10-minute play took perhaps four hours to tape. On occasion, I was able to record and edit in the same moment because it wasn’t before a live house. Dialogue that further clarified actions was added in post. With Crumbs for the Table of Joy at LATW, we rehearsed a full day, and the performance was recorded before a live audience that evening. Actors were at mics, fixed, and technicians added sound cues that filled in the physical movement for the taping and live audience, like footsteps, doors closing, water running.

What’s your role in conceptualizing sound design for an audio production, and how is it different than sound design for a stage production?

DIANE | Before rehearsal, I sat down with the music coordinator (or what I would still call the sound designer) and said, “How about a sound that communicates early morning?” or “Give us a sound with a mood to go into the next scene.” He would come back with one or two possibilities, and I would go through them and say, “Love it” or “How about more of this?” Once we got into the theatre, the recording techs would massage each transitional cue.

“We have already seen that audio drama can be a great promotional tool in audience building in the theatre. The recording of Dennis Kelly’s Girls & Boys was released on opening night of the run at the Minetta Lane Theatre, and we had folks that came to see the play because they had listened to it. I want more of that. There’s something to be gained by creating two distinct experiences [with audio and live performance]. People watch a Game of Thrones episode three times, but it’s much harder to go see a Broadway show multiple times. This is a way to reach the audience that wants to dig in deep to a production.”

– Kate Navin Artistic Producer, Audible Theater

“We are open to stories coming to us from any form or format.

Without audio drama, how do people hear these stories? They are usually off the beaten path; Off-Off-Broadway or downtown are the places you are finding the next round of exciting voices. Being able to give writers a platform and reach a wider audience across the country and the world is super, super exciting.”

– Mimi O’Donnell Executive Producer, Gimlet Media

Charlayne Woodard, Deidrie Henry, Tinashe Kajese in Crumbs from the Table of Joy with L.A. Theatre Works, directed

by Seret Scott PHOTO Joy D. Hutchinson

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Josh Stamberg + Rich Hutchman in American Buffalo at L.A. Theatre Works, directed by Brian Kite PHOTO Joshua Arvizo

MIMI | We get actors in the studio, we have them read the script, and we record them.

Then we get the sound designer to start adding some sound so that we can have conversations about sound before things are formally recorded. The ideal goal would be to get sound designers to actually write the scripts with the writers because clearly sound design is so important. That’s the next step of our goals, and we’re getting closer.

BRIAN | If I say, “I can hear a stream,” the sound designer asks, “How close are we to the stream? Are we next to it? Are we far from it? Is it running quickly? Slowly?” These are questions that help build the emotional content of the play, and we build the dramatic action and tension with these sounds.

SERET | In Crumbs from the Table of Joy, there’s a large photograph on-set that one character worships, while another silently, but visually, dismisses it. To make that understood, there had to be subtle emphasis in the dialogue that would not have been necessary if the moment were physically expressed. When a moment is captured solely in the voice, the listener decides what they feel and hear, without visual prompting. I hadn’t thought about that before because on stage, you see everything.

What is the director’s role in postproduction?

AARON | That will vary wildly with each director and each project. I’ve encountered people in the audio world who think a director’s job ends once the actors have been recorded; I don’t work that way. I like to be extremely involved in post-production, especially being the writer as well, and that means choosing the takes and being meticulous about timing in the edit. A note about taking a beat, for example, or tying a line together doesn’t go to the actor like it would in the theatre, but it’s that same kind of rhythmic and pacing work that’s being done. I also spend a lot of time with scoring and with the presence (or lack thereof) of other sound design elements once the performances are cut together.

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is to always know what the story is you’re telling and why. As long as that’s specific, then the listener gets cast in a role: they’re a confidante, they’re a jury, they’re a friend, they’re an enemy.

MIMI | We schedule four takes a line, and that’s a lot. We go into post, and there is a lot that can happen in editing. Each director is a little different in how much they are hands-on in post. Some say, “Assemble the episodes and send it to me, and I will send notes.” Others are like, “I want to be in the room choosing the takes, and I want to have a say in it.”

LEIGH | The editor, playwright, and I could discuss our thoughts while the recording was happening. In theatre, I take notes, and it’s going to be different every night.

There’s going to be brilliant strikes and gutter balls every performance. Whereas with the Audible recording, I can say, “The very end of that sentence got dropped,” and then we would go back and re-record it, so there is absolutely more “control” and ability to capture the show exactly as you want it heard.

BRIAN | I help determine which performance is best for our master. Then the editors take the notes and listen to the master on their own. They put together a cut, then I listen to that cut and I give my notes. It goes back to them and we go back and forth until we get the final product.

What have you learned from directing audio that influences your overall work as a director?

MIMI | There’s something that is happening in audio that is a little bit more distinct and to the point than a production on stage. Anytime we’ve tried to do long monologues, it’s been brutal to pull those off. I’m realizing more and more that it boils down to three elements—audio, actor, writer—and how we use all three elements to the best of our abilities.

LEIGH | Working with the actors to find and reconceive each piece as an intimate experience is really challenging and exciting.

In Audible-land, you’re speaking to one person very directly. That relationship is really clear. What I set up with both Judith and Billy

DIANE | You fade out one scene in sound, and you overlap and fade up another sound that goes into the next scene, and in my head, it felt visual, but it was really the sound that made it visual, the music that made it visual, the way the actors’ voices melded the scenes into each other. Doing the audio recording of a play seems to have inspired me visually.

BRIAN | All the skills we learn, everything we care about as stage directors matters in the same way when you’re doing a radio play— you’re just going to appeal to different senses for the audience: dramatic action, dramatic tension, understanding who the characters are, what they want, what the spine of the play is, and figuring out how to get that across without any visual storytelling cues.

But the audience’s reaction is the same—it feeds the moment, it changes the timing of the play, so having the audience and the timing of the audience—the laughter, the applause, everything else—helps the listener to feel as if they are there in the moment with the characters, and that’s what makes it special.

SERET | I really enjoy listening to audio broadcasts, especially while driving. Without visual expression to guide me, the rediscovery of beauty within the voice is rewarding. A sigh or chuckle that’s heard, not seen, fills a different space. I hear the story in a more intimate way.

SDC JOURNAL PEER-REVIEWED SECTION An earlier version of this paper was presented for the McElroy Shakespeare Celebration at Loyola University Chicago in 2017, with author Janna Segal as invited guest lecturer. The lecture framed scenes from productions of Romeo and Juliet at Loyola University Chicago and DePaul University (directed by Cameron Knight) in 2017. Both productions made color-conscious casting choices and cast actors who identify as women in the roles of Romeo and Juliet and several other key roles. This lecture was followed by a talkback moderated by Professor of English Verna Foster with the author, the two directors, and invited guests including Henry Godinez (Goodman Theatre; Northwestern University) on race, gender, and ethnicity in casting Shakespeare.

INTRODUCED + EDITED BY

ANN M. SHANAHAN + DAVID CALLAGHAN

“IN THIS BORROW’D LIKENESS”: CASTING, RACE, AND RELIGION IN EARLY MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN PRODUCTIONS OF ROMEO AND JULIET

BY JANNA

SEGAL, UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE

In the United States, stage and screen productions and adaptations of Romeo and Juliet are often used as a means by which to address social inequalities, to counter prejudices, to pressurize ideologies, and to challenge social prescriptions. Casting is often instrumental in these versions of Shakespeare’s love tragedy, with the actors’ legible racial, gender, and/or ethnic identity in some way informing, to quote the play’s Friar Laurence, the “borrow’d likeness” of their character (4.1.104). Such strategic casting is conscious of the ways in which the production’s target audience reads social identities, and uses that consciousness to deepen the relationship between their spectators and the spectacle of Shakespeare’s play.

This conscious approach to casting was, to some extent, evident in director/choreographer Jerome Robbins’s Broadway staging of West Side Story (1957), the Romeo and Juliet-based musical that explored racial and ethnic conflicts in New York’s West Side. In its rendering of the Capulets into a Puerto Rican family and the Montagues into a Polish-American family, the original Broadway production featured a few Latino actors, most notably Puerto Rican actress Chita Rivera as Anita (Fig. 1), and a number of non-Latino actors cast as Puerto Ricans, such as Carol Lawrence as Maria (Chapman). The Academy Award-winning 1961 film co-directed by Robbins and Robert Wise replicated this at least partially-conscious approach to casting, with Puerto Rican actress Rita Moreno taking over the role of Anita, and with Natalie Wood playing Maria.

FIG. 1

In the wake of the stage and screen success of West Side Story, stage productions of Romeo and Juliet have continued to use casting that is conscious of the performers’ legible racial, ethnic, and/or gender identity as a means by which to root the play’s ubiquitous “ancient grudge” in contemporary issues (1.P.3). For instance, in the late 1990s, director and adaptor Joe Calarco purposefully used an allmale, four-person cast for a stage version of Romeo and Juliet that examined the effects of repressed same-sex desire in the homosocial sphere of a Catholic boys’ school. Although retitled with genderneutral consonants as Shakespeare’s R&J, the original 1997 production FIG. 1 Chita Rivera and Liane Plane in the 1957 Broadway production of West Side Story PHOTO Hank Walker FIG. 2

2013 Signature Theatre revival of Joe Calarco’s Shakespeare’s R&J with (from left to right) Alex Mills, Joel David Sautner, Jefferson Faber, and Rex Daugherty PHOTO Teresa Wood

FIG. 2

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and the 2013 revival at Signature Theatre (Fig. 2) pronounced the performers’ male identities, which were crucial to the production’s efforts to expose the painful repression of and the joyful release from heteronormative, patriarchal social constructions. The production’s conscious employment of the actors’ visibly male bodies is suggested

by Calarco’s emphasis on the staging’s masculine content in the prefatory notes to the published version of his adaptation: “This is a play about men. It is about how men interact with other men” (5). The same year as the revival of Calarco’s all-male stage adaptation and 56 years after West Side Story’s premiere, Romeo and Juliet reappeared on Broadway in a production directed by David Leveaux that the New Yorker’s theatre critic Hilton Als described as literalizing “the beef between the Capulets and the Montagues by making it about race” (“Heavy Date”). To achieve this end, Juliet and her parents were played by black performers (Condola Rashad, Chuck Cooper, and Roslyn Ruff, respectively), while Romeo and his parents were played by white actors, including one white movie star (Orlando Bloom, Michael Rudko, and Tracy Sallows1 ; Fig. 3).

A similar casting strategy was at work in Still Star-Crossed (2017), producer Shonda Rhimes’s ill-fated ABC television version of young adult novelist Melinda Taub’s adaption of Shakespeare’s tragedy.

Fashioned as a sequel to the play, the short-lived series’ premiere episode began with the clandestine wedding between Shakespeare’s title characters and ended with the public revelation of their deaths, which unleashed the “new mutiny” referenced in Shakespeare’s play’s Prologue (1.P.3). Some reviewers described the show’s casting as “color blind” (Ali, Lowry); however, it is better described as “color conscious.”

As defined by Teresa Eyring, “Color-conscious casting intentionally considers the race and ethnicity of actors and the characters they play in order to oppose racism, honor and respect cultures, foster stronger productions, and contribute to a more equitable world” (“Standing Up”). The show’s color-conscious casting created two sets of ostensibly interracial couples: Romeo and Juliet; and, following their deaths, Romeo’s cousin Benvolio and Juliet’s cousin Rosaline.

The first episode’s audience learned that both interracial unions were approved by Verona’s court because each was imagined as capable of, to quote the show’s Prince, “usher[ing] in a new era of peace” in Verona and thereby securing the “city’s survival.” This positioning of legibly interracial bonds as the only way to secure “peace” and ensure the “survival” of the state served to champion a more integrated, “equitable world.”

As with the inclusion of some Latino performers in the stage and film versions of West Side Story, Calarco’s staging with a cast of four male-identified actors, and the 2013 Broadway production’s casting of the Capulets and Montagues along racial lines, Still Star-Crossed’s color-conscious casting was instrumental to its use of Shakespeare’s drama to interrogate prejudices and social conflicts recognizable to its American target audience. This tendency in Romeo and Juliet productions towards contemporary resonance in dramatic conflict and consciousness in casting led me to consider how the cultural interrogations and representational strategies in these and other such versions of Romeo and Juliet might compare to those utilized in Shakespeare’s company’s initial production of the play in the 1590s.

My pursuit of this inquiry uncovered a dramaturgical impetus for Romeo and Juliet’s status as a go-to play for politically and socially conscious Shakespearean theatre. The use of gender- and/or colorconscious casting to bring a culturally resonant Romeo and Juliet to the contemporary American stage and screen can be compared to Shakespeare’s company’s use of an all-male, English cast to bring the “pair of star-cross’d lovers” (1.P.6) from the Catholic “fair Verona” (1.P.2) to the Protestant early modern English stage. Just as the American stage and screen versions discussed above sought to respond to biases recognizable to their target audiences partly through casting, I propose that the initial casting of Shakespeare’s play was one of the

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devices used in the first production’s effort to respond to prejudices against groups deemed “other” in Elizabethan England.

As will be shown, “race” in the play’s Elizabethan context was related to then dominant conceptions of Italian Catholics, like Romeo and Juliet.2 In the period, the concept of race was assigned specific meanings through such ideologically driven texts as Elizabethan court edicts, which categorized non-English and native Catholics as dangerous foreigners. These racialized “others” were persecuted due to what the court imagined was the threat they posed to the Protestant English state. Having established the relationship between race and religion in the play’s historical moment, I will examine the tragedy’s challenge to the period’s prejudices by tracing its departures from the anti-Catholic sentiments of its primary source text, Arthur Brooke’s The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562).3 I will then suggest that Shakespeare’s company’s production of the play contested the period’s prejudices against “others” partly through consciously using the all-male, all-English cast to solicit the targeted early modern Protestant English audience to identify with the Italian Catholic characters and envision “fair Verona” not as a foreign, papist place, but as a shared space “where we lay our scene” (1.P.2).

Orlando Bloom and Condola Rashad in David Leveaux’s 2013 Broadway production of Romeo and Juliet PHOTO Lauren Lancaster

FIG. 3

“Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace” (1.1.79) Researchers have shown that “race” in the Elizabethan period was a “highly unstable term” connoting a general “sense of otherness” (Hendricks and Parker 2). In her analysis of early modern English dictionary entries for “race,” Margo Hendricks finds that while the

term was precise enough to be used “to mark a person’s class,” it was also “general enough to allow it to be used for other purposes” (18).

Lynda Boose finds that “racial difference” in the period was situated “within cultural and religious categories rather than biologically empirical ones” (36). G.K. Hunter similarly argues that in literary representations of “others,” foreigner status was predicated less on “ethnographic differences” than on religious prejudices (52). Other critics, such as Ania Loomba, have emphasized the interrelated association between “blackness” and non-Protestantism in the period (207).4 Like Hendricks, Boose, and Hunter, Loomba argues that “races were defined more in social terms of customs, languages and law” than in biologically empirical terms; yet, she states, “a biological understanding of race” emerged in Spain with the 1492 and 1502 expulsion of the Jews and the Moors and then spread to England (207-08). Emily Bartels also finds that a “discourse of blackness was taking shape and getting use as a vehicle of discrimination” in Elizabethan England. Bartels asserts that “what complicates the inscription of racial identity and bias is the fact that constructions such as these emerged within a complex of social, economic, political, religious, and natural discourses” that intersected to render “race” into a multivalent concept (101-02).

Among the discourses intersecting with what Loomba and Bartels identify as an emergent but unsolidified biological conception of race was the anti-Catholicism officialised in court edicts from the outset of Queen Elizabeth’s reign (1558-1603).5 Elizabethan cultural anxiety about Catholics reached a climax following the 1588 Spanish Armada, when Elizabeth I’s navy defeated the forces sent by Spain’s King Philip II to unseat England’s first Protestant Queen. Even prior to Catholic Spain’s attempt to invade England, Elizabethan statutes identified all Catholics as dangerous people foreign to the English state. For example, An Act for the assurance of the Queen’s Majesty’s royal power over all estates and subjects within her Highness’ dominions (1563) warned against “the dangers” of those “licentious” supporters of “the See of Rome” “dwelling within this realm,” and without (39). An Act against the bringing in and putting in execution of Bulls and other instruments from the see of Rome (1571) promised punishment to those “evil-disposed people” promoting the “see of Rome” whom strove to “estrange and alienate the minds and hearts of sundry her Majesty’s subjects from their dutiful obedience, and to raise and stir sedition and rebellion within this realm” (61). An Act against Popish Recusants (1593) accused those indigenous nonconformists “terming themselves Catholics” of “being indeed spies and intelligencers not only for her Majesty’s foreign enemies but also for rebellious and traitorous subjects born within her Highness’ dominions” (92).

As reiterated in these statutes and others,6 non-native Catholics and those “subjects born” in Elizabethan England who practiced Catholicism were aligned with the monarch’s “foreign enemies” and denounced as “evil-disposed people” who sought to “alienate the minds and hearts” of “her Majesty’s subjects” on behalf of “the see of Rome.” The dissemination throughout Elizabeth’s reign of such edicts espousing pro-Protestant prejudice against Catholics served to craft and reinscribe an English national identity primarily based on religious difference.7 Although often imagined as a universal love story, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is firmly rooted in and responsive to an Elizabethan dominant culture that understood “race” in complex ways distinct from those now in use in the United States. The play emerged in a period in which “fairness” was associated with Protestantism in opposition to a “blackness” imagined as non-Protestant (Loomba 207), and at a time when an English identity was being built on the premise that to be Catholic was to be non-English. By the time of the play’s inception in the 1590s,8 court edicts situating all Catholics as foreign invaders were in effect. Given the play’s offstage cultural backdrop, we can infer that when Shakespeare’s tragedy set in “fair Verona” was first

staged (1.P.1), Italian Catholic was not imagined by most theatregoers as “fair”; rather, Italian Catholic was largely perceived as an alien enemy undermining the monarch’s authority and an emergent English national identity that was being built on the basis of intolerance to other “races” at least in part conceived of on religious, cultural, and geographic terms.

“Transparent heretics” (1.2.93) The Elizabethan court-issued, anti-Catholic discourses informed representations of Italian, Spanish, and indigenous Catholics in the period’s popular literature, much of which served to reiterate and thereby reinscribe social constructions of Catholics as “others” corruptive to an emergent English national identity. Among the literary works in which such conceptualizations were circulated was the primary source for Shakespeare’s tragedy, The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562). Arthur Brooke’s prose poem participates in the vilification of Catholics by framing the title characters as heretic “others” whose demise serves as a warning against foreign religious practices. The poem’s prefatory note to “To the Reader” pronounces that the purpose of the lovers’ story is to “warneth men not to be evyll” (284). The preface asserts that the deaths of Romeus and Juliet are the result of the following abuses against the Protestant Church and English monarchy: “unhonest desire”; conferring with “superstitious friers (the naturally fitte instruments of unchastitite)”; and “usying auricular confession (the kay of whoredome, and treason) for furtheraunce of theyr purpose” (284-85). The lovers’ coded-asCatholic conference with “superstitious friers” and their “treason[ous]” use of “confession” mark them as “unhonest,” “evyll” traitors. Thus, Romeus and Juliet are framed for the targeted Elizabethan reader of Brooke’s poem as a Protestant warning against “evyll” acts of “treason” undertaken by Catholics.

Geoffrey Bullough rightly notes in his introduction to The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet that Brooke’s poem is significantly more sympathetic to the lovers than is his opening address (277). However, as I have written elsewhere,9 Brooke’s less vilifying, post-prefatory depiction does not negate the possibility that the stigma of Catholic “other” initially attached to the figures through the framing device of Brooke’s note “To the Reader” was circulated with the poem, which was republished twice before Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was staged.10 The existence of Shakespeare’s public stage version in the 1590s11 also evinces the poem’s resonance in Elizabethan culture.

Cognizance of the early modern English audience’s familiarity with Brooke’s poem is further suggested by the similarity between the play’s full title, The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, and that of its source text, The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet. The play’s retention of the titular characters’ names also implies an attempt to capitalize on their notoriety in the popular imagination.

The textual revision of the lesson of the lovers’ narrative in Shakespeare’s analogue to Brooke’s note “To the Reader,” the first act Prologue, also indicates an awareness of the targeted audience’s potential familiarity with the poem’s pronounced, anti-Catholic moral.

Moreover, the opening Prologue’s effort to render the title figures from the source’s anti-papist frame challenges the prejudices against Catholics circulated by, among other Elizabethan works, Brooke’s poem. Rather than as signs of a profane “desire” that is a treasonous disruption to the English state (Brooke 285), Romeo and Juliet are introduced in the first act Prologue as sympathetic “star-cross’d lovers” whose heartbreaking deaths are described as “misadventure’d piteous overthrows” (1.P.6-7). Their empathetic end is not, as in Brooke’s poem, the result of their non-Protestant religious practices and nonEnglish backgrounds. Instead, their “piteous” deaths are framed as acts FALL 2019 | SDC JOURNAL PEER-REVIEWED SECTION

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of martyrdom restorative to the state: “with their death,” they “bury their parents’ strife” and cleanse the “civil hands” “blood[ied]” by an unspecified “ancient grudge” (1.P.3-8).

Verona,” and to “attend” to “a story of more woe” than that offered in the play’s anti-papist source text (5.3.308). The Protestant, English identity of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men who first performed Romeo and Juliet was pronounced by the livery they carried as servants of the court. In the guise of the play’s Catholic figures, they asked their targeted English audience to use their imagination to help them occupy subject positions deemed treacherous to the realm. In so doing, the initial production’s strategic casting asked its audiences to look beyond differences then associated with race and to instead focus on the “borrow’d likeness” (4.1.104) between Shakespeare’s Veronese characters and the actors’ offstage identities as servants of the English court.

Consideration of the initial performance context of Romeo and Juliet illuminates how the textual reframing of the titular characters in the opening Prologue may have been enhanced through conscious casting. The play’s second quarto title page (Fig. 4) announces that by the time of this 1599 publication, the play had been “sundry times publicly acted” by the theatre company in which Shakespeare was then a partner: the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.12 This all-male company of performers bearing the name and livery of its Elizabethan court patron, the Lord Chamberlain, also bore the name of their gender and social-class identities: they were “Men” and, by virtue “That in thy likeness thou appear of being performers with a court patron, to us” (2.1.21) they were classed as “servants” of the Protestant, English court. The actor cast Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was in the role of the Chorus and assigned written and first produced when the to deliver the Prologue, who would have conception of race was multivalent and been one of the English, male actors of inclusive of religion, when non-native this company, directly addresses the target and indigenous, recusant Catholics were audience of English subjects, whom have vilified as “others” endangering the English been warned by discourses circulated in state, and when performers in legitimate Brooke’s poem, Elizabethan court edicts, theatre companies were legally restricted and other texts against the dangers of to English males classed as servants of their those deemed a foreign, Catholic race. court patron. Revisiting Romeo and Juliet From the thrust stage of a London public with these facts at the forefront reveals a theatre, this English, male performer dramaturgical impulse for the stage and bearing the emblem of his company’s screen productions of Shakespeare’s love Elizabethan court patron tells his audience tragedy that strive to, at least partially that the “fair Verona, where we lay our through casting, address social inequities scene” (1.P.2) is to be collectively crafted by recognizable to a contemporary American the “we” in attendance in the shared space target audience. The Italian Catholic of “our stage” (1.P.12). The Chorus solicits characters of Romeo and Juliet as initially the audience’s “patient ears” (1.P.13) and embodied by the Lord Chamberlain’s eyes to help create that “fair Verona” in the Men serve to pressurize Elizabethan Elizabethan public theatre. The audience is prejudices against non-Protestants. The asked to be aurally and visually attentive to opening Prologue’s textual attempts to the all-male, English court servant-actors reframe the Veronese titular characters as FIG. 4 Title page of the Second Quarto of that constituted the Lord Chamberlain’s empathy-inducing figures whose “piteous” Romeo and Juliet (1599) PHOTO © British Library Board, deaths end state-wide “strife” (1.P.7-8) Men. Yet, the audience’s “patient” senses C.12.g.18, Second Quarto, frontpage 3 are solicited not so as to cement the belies a consciousness of the anti-Catholic performers’ legible gender, class, racial, prejudices circulated in the period by court religious, and national identities; rather, the spectators are asked to edicts and by literary works, including the play’s primary source text. “attend” (1.P.13) to the performers in the “borrow’d likeness” (4.1.104) The ways in which the performer of the first act Prologue solicits of their Italian Catholic characters so as to transport the actors, along a reciprocal exchange between the onstage Lord Chamberlain’s with the spectators, to “fair Verona,” the “where” of “our scene” (1.P.2).

Men and the offstage early modern English audience indicates an This location is not designated as a foreign, papist place peopled with awareness of the legibility of the actors’ socially prescribed identities “others” differentiated from the actors and the target audience on the as akin to those of the targeted spectators. The Chorus’s request that basis of race as defined as biological, religious, national, or cultural the audience co-craft a “fair Verona” (1.P.2) in a cultural moment in difference. Instead, Verona is coded as “fair” as English Protestants which “fair” was coded as Protestant and “blackness” was associated and it is identified as “our scene” (1.P.2). This co-created, communal with non-Protestants (Loomba 207) suggests how the Elizabethan realm is populated by “A pair of star-crossed lovers” (1.P.6) from “Two public performances of Romeo and Juliet may have strategically households” that the audience is asked to accept as “alike in dignity” used the mandated casting of male servants of the English court to to themselves and to the English actors representing the characters encourage its initial audience to, contrary to prevailing prejudices (1.P.1). and proclamations, imagine both the English actors and the Catholic characters as “alike in dignity” (1.P.1).

Like the previously discussed American stage and screen versions of Romeo and Juliet, the initial production of Shakespeare’s tragedy Perhaps it is because the content and casting of Shakespeare’s “fair intervened in then dominant prejudices against oppressed groups Verona” pressurized dominant conceptions of identities deemed in part through a strategic use of casting. As performed by the Lord “other” in the Elizabethan period that the play continues to be used Chamberlain’s Men, Shakespeare’s theatrical adaptation of Brooke’s to combat prejudices and to denaturalize social constructions that poem asked its targeted early modern English audience to critically serve to underwrite intolerance. Although the play engages with reconsider biases reinscribed in the edicts governing their lives and in Elizabethan conceptualizations of Catholics as non-English “others” the popular literature informing their consciousness, to travel to “fair that are less legible today, a consideration of its textual and theatrical

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challenges to early modern English racialized religious prejudices might inspire productions on “our stage” (1.P.12) that seek to counter the racialized biases against Jews, Muslims, and other non-Christian that have become more apparent in the United States following the 2016 presidential election. Unfettered by the legal restrictions delimiting the demographics of the actors in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and operating within different understandings of social identities, contemporary American productions that follow the interrogative energies of the play can also make strategic casting choices that embolden productions of Shakespeare’s love tragedy to address the persecution of people on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, nationality, and class in our cultural moment.

ENDNOTES 1 The full cast list of David Leveaux’s 2013 production of Romeo and Juliet can be found on the production’s Internet Broadway Database page: www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/romeo-and-juliet494555/#opennightcredit.

2 The use of the term “race” in the early modern period serves to remind us that race, like gender and sexuality, is a social construct that is historically and culturally contingent, and therefore capable of change. As Harry Elam Jr. writes in “Black theatre in the age of Obama” (The Cambridge Companion to American Theatre, edited

by Harvey Young, Cambridge UP, 2013, pp. 255-78), to recognize race as socially constructed is not to say that race doesn’t mean or “no longer matters,” but rather to recognize that what race signifies can be expanded and interrogated (258). Moreover, revealing the processes by which social constructs are endowed with meaning and made to matter in their specific time and place allows us to see how social constructions can be redirected or harnessed as, among other possibilities, tools of empowerment.

3 Geoffrey Bullough identifies Brooke’s poem as Shakespeare’s “main and perhaps sole source” (274) in his introduction to Brooke’s The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet in Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, vol. 1, edited by Geoffrey Bullough (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957). Bullough provides a summary of the story’s transmission from 15th- and 16th- century novella to Brooke’s poem to Shakespeare’s play (269-76), as does Brian Gibbons in his introduction to the Arden edition of Romeo and Juliet (Arden, 1980, pp. 1-77; 32-37).

4 Ania Loomba cautions against critical tendencies to minimize “the significance of colour” by prioritizing religious categories as the period’s primary means of demarcating difference in “‘Delicious traffick’: racial and religious difference on early modern English stages,” Shakespeare and Race, edited by Catherine M.S. Alexander and Stanley Wells, Cambridge UP, 2000, pp. 203-24; 207).

5 England’s break with Rome and the Catholic Church was finalized by the 1534 Act of Supremacy, which made King Henry VIII, Elizabeth I’s father, the head of the Protestant Church of England and established Protestantism as the religion of the realm. While Mary I’s five-year reign (1553-58) returned Catholicism to England, that religious retransformation was truncated by the 1558 ascension of the Protestant Queen Elizabeth, whose 45-year reign was contested by internal and external Catholic factions.

6 Other such acts include An Act restoring to the Crown the ancient jurisdiction over the State ecclesiastical and spiritual, and abolishing all foreign power repugnant to the same (1559), otherwise known as the Act of Supremacy. As indicated by the title, the Act of Supremacy identified “foreign,” popish “power” as “repugnant” to the state. The cited Elizabethan acts can be found in G.W. Prothero’s Select Statutes and Other Constitutional Documents Illustrative of the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I (Clarendon P, 1913).

7 Both Donna B. Hamilton’s Shakespeare and the Politics of Protestant England (U of Kentucky P, 1992) and Arthur F. Marotti’s Religious Ideology and Cultural Fantasy: Catholic and Anti-Catholic Discourses

in Early Modern England (U of Notre Dame P, 2005) explore the relationship between anti-Catholicism and an English national identity emergent in early modern England. Hamilton asserts that the “anti-Catholic polemic” initially devised to validate England’s break from Rome became “the central rhetorical tool for constructing and defending the value of the English state and for constructing new narratives of English history” (5). Marotti finds that “English nationalism rests on a foundation of anti-Catholicism” that began to be built at the start of Elizabeth’s reign (9).

8 While the exact date of Shakespeare play is unknown, critics generally agree that it was likely first produced in the mid-1590s. In his introduction to Brooke’s The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet, Bullough assigns Shakespeare’s play a 1594-95 date (269). Gibbons argues that 1596 is the latest possible date for the tragedy’s first performance in his Introduction to Romeo and Juliet (26).

9 In “The Aesthetic Resurrection of the ‘Death-mark’d’ Lovers in Romeo and Juliet” in Wonder in Shakespeare, edited by Mark Aune, Adam Max Cohen, Joshua Fisher, and Becky Steinberger (Palgrave MacMillan, 2012, pp. 139-47), I explore the effects of the tragedy’s appropriation of the conventions of Medieval resurrection drama. These include a challenge to the anti-papistry of the play’s source text, particularly as pronounced in Brooke’s prefatory note.

10 In his introduction to Brooke’s The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet, Bullough notes that the 1582 license for reprinting and 1587 reissue of Brooke’s text testify to its popularity in the Elizabethan period (275).

11 The titles for Q1 and Q2 indicate that the play was initially produced in a public theatre. Q1 (1597) announces that the tragedy “hath been often (with great applause) plaid publiquely by the right Honourable the L. of Hunson his Seruants,” and the Q2 (1599) title advertises itself as the version of the text “As it hath bene sundry times publiquely acted, by the right Honourable the Lord Chamberlain his Seruants.”

Both quarto titles are provided in Gibbons’s Introduction to Romeo and Juliet (1).

12 Known as the King’s Men following the ascension of King James, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men was the company in which Shakespeare was a partner from at least December of 1594. The Lord Chamberlain of the company’s name was Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, the Queen’s Lord Chamberlain. Following his death in 1596, his son, also Lord Hunsdon, became the company’s patron. In addition to Shakespeare, the partners of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men included William Kempe, John Heminge, and Richard Burbage. In 1596, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men is believed to have moved from the Theatre to the Swan, and, a year later, to the Curtain. In 1599, they moved to the Globe (Boyce 100-01; Gurr 278-94). In Acting Companies and their Plays in Shakespeare’s London, Siobhan Keenan notes that while “elite patronage” in England dates back to the medieval era (167), the Proclamation Act for the Punishment of Vagabounds (1572) made court patronage a requirement for theatre companies to legally perform (26; 172). Keenan suggests that there was a mutually beneficial relationship between a court patron and a theatre company: each company bearing the name and livery of their patron may have served as “a potentially powerful way of advertising one’s name, wealth, and status” (170); and for the companies, such patronage provided “status and potentially secured them lucrative invitations to perform at court and on tour” (172). In Shakespeare, Court Dramatist, Richard Dutton argues that the relationship between the court and courtsanctioned theatre companies like the Lord Chamberlain’s Men was less mutually advantageous than Keenan describes. Dutton finds that court “patronage was the key that unlocked the players’ regular access to the city’s paying costumers” (34), and this economic reality led the Lord Chamberlain’s Men to prioritize pleasing the court over audiences at the public theatre.

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WORKS CITED

Ali, Lorraine. “Shonda evokes Shakespeare with ‘Still Star-Crossed.’” LA Times. 29 May 2017. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/ la-et-st-still-star-crossed-review-20170529-story.html. Accessed 8 August 2018.

Als, Hilton. “Heavy Date.” Sept. 20, 2013. The New Yorker. http://www. newyorker.com/magazine/2013/09/30/heavy-date. Accessed 8 August 2018.

Bartels, Emily C. Speaking of the Moor: From Alcazar to Othello. U of Pennsylvania P, 2008.

Boose, Lynda E. “‘The Getting of a Lawful Race’: Racial discourse in early modern England and the unpresentable black woman.”

Women, ‘Race,’ and Writing in the Early Modern Period, edited by Margo Hendricks and Patricia Parker, Routledge, 1994, pp. 35-54.

Boyce, Charles. Shakespeare A to Z. Dell, 1990.

Brooke, Arthur. The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, edited by Geoffrey Bullough, vol. 1, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957, pp. 284-363.

Bullough, Geoffrey. Introduction to The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, edited

by Geoffrey Bullough, vol. 1, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957, pp.

269-83.

Calarco, Joe. Shakespeare’s R&J. Dramatists Play Service, 1999.

Chapman, John. “‘West Side Story’ premieres on Broadway in 1957.” 27

Sept. 1957. 25 Sept. 2015. Daily News. http://www.nydailynews. com/entertainment/theater-arts/west-side-story-recountsromeo-juliet-1957-article-1.2368364. Accessed 8 August 2018.

Dutton, Richard. Shakespeare, Court Dramatist. Oxford UP, 2016.

Elam, Jr., Harry J. “Black theatre in the age of Obama.” The Cambridge Companion to American Theatre, edited by Harvey Young, Cambridge UP, 2013, pp. 255-78.

“Episode Guide.” Still Star-Crossed. ABC. http://abc.go.com/shows/stillstar-crossed/episode-guide. Accessed 8 August 2018.

Eyring, Teresa. “Standing Up for Playwrights and Against ‘Colorblind’ Casting.” American Theatre. 7 Jan. 2016. http://www. americantheatre.org/2016/01/07/standing-up-for-playwrightsand-against-colorblind-casting/. Accessed 8 August 2018.

Gibbons, Brian. Introduction to Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, edited by Brian Gibbons, Arden Shakespeare, 1980, pp. 1-77.

Gurr, Andrew. The Shakespearian Playing Companies. Clarendon P, 1996.

Hamilton, Donna B. Shakespeare and the Politics of Protestant England, U of Kentucky P, 1992.

Hendricks, Margo. “Surveying ‘race’ in Shakespeare.” Shakespeare and Race, edited by Catherine M.S. Alexander and Stanley Wells, Cambridge UP, 2000, pp. 1-22.

---, and Patricia Parker. Introduction. Women, ‘Race,’ and Writing in the Early Modern Period, edited by Hendricks and Parker, Routledge, 1994, pp. 1-14.

Hunter, G.K. “Elizabethans and Foreigners.” Shakespeare and Race, edited by Catherine M.S. Alexander and Stanley Wells, Cambridge UP, 2000, pp. 37-63.

Keenan, Siobhan. Acting Companies and their Plays in Shakespeare’s London, Bloomsbury, 2014.

Loomba, Ania. “‘Delicious traffick’: racial and religious difference on early modern English stages.” Shakespeare and Race, edited by Catherine M.S. Alexander and Stanley Wells, Cambridge UP, 2000, pp. 203-24.

Lowry, Brian. “‘Still Star-Crossed’ picks up where Romeo and Juliet left off. CNN. 26 May 2017. http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/26/ entertainment/still-starcrossed-review/index.html. Accessed 8 August 2018.

Marotti, Arthur F. Religious Ideology and Cultural Fantasy: Catholic and Anti-Catholic Discourses in Early Modern England, U of Notre Dame P, 2005.

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Prothero, G.W. Select Statutes and Other Constitutional Documents Illustrative of the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I. 4th ed., Clarendon P, 1913.

“Romeo and Juliet.” Internet Broadway Database. www. ibdb.com/broadway-production/romeo-and-juliet494555/#opennightcredit. Accessed 8 August 2018.

Segal, Janna. “The Aesthetic Resurrection of the ‘Death-mark’d’ Lovers in Romeo and Juliet.” Wonder in Shakespeare, edited by Mark Aune, Adam Max Cohen, Joshua Fisher, and Becky Steinberger.

Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp. 139-47.

“Series Premiere: In Fair Verona, Where We Lay Our Scene.” Still StarCrossed, season 1, episode 1, ABC, 29 May 2017. ABC. http:// abc.go.com/shows/still-star-crossed/episode-guide. Accessed 8 August 2018.

Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet, edited by Brian Gibbons, Arden Shakespeare, 1980.

West Side Story. Directed by Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise, United Artists, 1961.

DR. JANNA SEGAL is an assistant professor of Theatre Arts at the University of Louisville. She has published single and co-authored articles on As You Like It, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, The Roaring Girl, and Dario Fo and Franca Rame’s Elisabetta. Janna is also a dramaturg whose production work includes Shakespeare, contemporary plays, and new plays in development.

SDCJ-PRS BOOK REVIEW Embodied Philosophy in Dance: Gaga and Ohad Naharin’s Movement Research

By Einav Katan PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 2016. 228 PP. $119.00 HARDCOVER. Einav Katan’s Embodied Philosophy in Dance: Gaga and Ohad Naharin’s Movement Research is an early contribution to the new Performance Philosophy series from Palgrave Macmillan, covering an emerging interdisciplinary field of inquiry that investigates the relationship of performance and philosophy within a broad range of disciplines and theories. The book’s cover describes Katan’s book as “deciphering forms of meaning in dance as a medium for perception and realization within the body.” Gaga is a movement approach to personal physical knowledge and self-awareness developed by Ohad Naharin, the founder, artistic director, and choreographer of Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company. As a practitioner with Naharin’s company since 2003, author Katan’s scholarship is groundbreaking in that she offers the first comprehensive analysis of Naharin’s research from an insider’s perspective.

The book is not a Gaga “how-to” but rather contains “tendencies and emphases” of Gaga stemming from Naharin’s approach that “redefine[s] the dancing body” (ix). The book is divided into five parts, each of which contains several chapters. In the acknowledgements, Katan outlines the book’s structure: “Since the philosophical approach is phenomenological—namely, the claim is that the body supplies all the theory concerning it—all parts of the book start with a description

of an experience” (x). Katan devotes the remainder of each part to answering the questions evoked by the specific experience, using philosophers such as Aristotle, Peter Gärdenfors, Martin Heidegger, Immanuel Kant, Susanne Langer, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and C.S. Peirce. The descriptions of the experiences are clear and accessible for they provide the reader with Katan’s insider knowledge of the sensual inquiry, sustained focus, and mental attitude required of a Gaga practitioner. The succeeding chapters are challenging because Katan demands much from the reader in terms of commitment and willingness to synthesize the philosophical journey of the argument.

Katan introduces her philosophical underpinnings in Part One, “Embodied Philosophy in Dance.” The next two parts are devoted to the dancer’s focus and direction of attitude. “The Sensual Emphasis of Gaga” covers qualities and sensory attunement, while “The Mental Emphasis of Gaga” layers on the perceptual demands of the dancer to stay responsive to the sensory discoveries made during a Gaga class. Katan begins “Part Four: Physical Practice of Intelligence” with a synthesis of the first three parts, then layers elements of play and musicality onto the dancer’s inquiry. In the final part, “The Moving Forms of Dancing Gaga,” Katan expands the field of inquiry to include the audience’s experience while viewing Gaga.

In Part One, Katan establishes her two main arguments: 1) dance itself is philosophical and 2) dance is both a communicative and a cognitive act. She begins with a detailed description of a short sequence from Naharin’s 2003 dance Mamootot. She describes a process whereby dancers live through rather than show movement, through a process of understanding and thinking. The dancer reacts to information supplied by their body: “in order to create the form, he articulates it, and reactivates meaning by following and directing the logic of movement as it happens here and now” (11). Thus, Gaga is a somatic practice in which “the individual body is the origin of knowledge and its subject of inquiry” (25). The dancer uses physical habits of movement, prior training, attentiveness, perception, and reflection to allow for further experiences and new knowledge to emerge. Dancing is a cognitive experience and expression comes from a thoughtful process of shaping the movement (16). In Part One, Katan clearly establishes the importance of dance as a “living process of shaping movements” (14) and the intersectionality of mental and physical reasoning processes.

Both Parts Two and Three give the reader a sense of the mental demands for the Gaga dancer. Part Two, “The Sensual Emphasis of Gaga” begins with a detailed description of the instruction “float,” an example of one of the metaphors used during a Gaga class. Here, “float” becomes a code to work within the forces of gravity, not against them, thereby allowing “the self-organization of the body [to open up] new ways to live and enact it” (44). Employing both Gardenfors’s and Merleau-Ponty’s writings on sensations, Katan establishes that the artist sensually perceives and understands how to transform a sensation, thus altering how they perceive the world around them. She states: “elements of kinesthesia, proprioception,

and other sensory stimuli are integrated in the research as it proceeds.

Thus, even if what is felt might be caused by an imaginary game, sensations are actually there, activated and personally experienced, and furthermore perceived in their actual condition” (66). In “Part Three: The Mental Emphasis of Gaga,” Katan connects the emotions of sensual emphasis as discussed in Part Two with the demands of self-regulating as dancers learn to attune with their bodies and minds.

As Katan asserts, this attuning is not always easy, and if not careful the dancers can begin to externally shape rather than internally live the movement. To counter this, the dancers must add embodied wisdom to embodied knowledge, so that they can learn how to work with sensual research and continue to redirect it into new knowledge.

The suggestion in this chapter to “connect effort into pleasure” (88) is refreshing, because the demands of the Gaga dancer, on paper, can seem devoid of playfulness.

In Part Four, “Physical Practice of Intelligence,” Katan synthesizes the information in the previous chapters and demonstrates how layers are added to the instruction in a Gaga class. At this level of inquiry, dancers are given purposefully contradictory suggestions, such as: “Move quickly while you lead slow gestures in space!” (133). In Gaga, the dancers of the Batsheva Dance Company enact rhythms; the accompanying dynamics contribute to the dancers’ ability to feel, follow, and direct their movement. Katan explains that for Gaga dancers, expectations and preconceived goals must be left behind: “Gaga … is not an end to itself; it is more a means of doing that serves the perceptual experience” (163). Thus, the dancer, even in executing choreography, must continue to be attentive to his/her senses and continue the research. Katan calls this a “continuous perceptual process,” which she discusses in the final section, “The Moving Forms of Dancing Gaga” (175). One chapter in particular, “Understanding Expressions,” stands out as a provocative discussion of the experience of the recipient of the movement (i.e., the audience) while the performer, still attuned with her/his sensory perceptions creates and makes art. The points that Katan makes about expression, mimesis, empathy, and kinesthesia are applicable to all performers. She does not, however, ground her writing solely in theory or Gaga.

Katan’s Embodied Philosophy in Dance: Gaga and Ohad Naharin’s Movement Research is an investigation of Gaga research emphases.

Because of its philosophical focus, the text does not provide the reader with a clear or practical idea of what Gaga entails or even what it means. The book does, however, make one curious about Naharin and his approach—redefining what it means to dance, express, and discover possibilities of movement. This book will appeal to dancers, educators, philosophers, movement specialists, and anyone who is interested in the somatic process of creating choreography and the potential of dance to be useful as process rather than end product.

ANNETTE THORNTON CENTRAL MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY

CORRECTION: In the Summer 2019 SDCJ-PRS essay introduction, the final sentence referred to a production of Guys and Dolls at Theatre Under the Stars “featuring an all Latinx cast.” It should read “with a Latinx-featured cast.”

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Published quarterly by Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC), the Peer-Reviewed 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: http://sdcweb.org/sdc-journal/sdc-journal-peer-review/ FALL 2019 | SDC JOURNAL PEER-REVIEWED SECTION

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Sheldon Epps in rehearsal at Pasadena Playhouse with frequent collaborator, music director David O

SDC FOUNDATION SECTION

MA STE RS OF T HE S TA GE: S HEL DO N E P P S Sheldon Epps is Artistic Director Emeritus of the renowned Pasadena Playhouse, where he served as Artistic Director from 1997 until 2017. He has directed plays and musicals at many of the country’s major regional theatres and on Broadway and has also directed several beloved television shows, including more than 20 episodes of Frasier. In addition, Epps is President of the Board of Trustees for the SDC Foundation. This interview is condensed from a conversation between Epps and Robert O’Hara for SDCF’s podcast series, Masters of the Stage Conversations. Their discussion took place in May 2019 and aired in July 2019. Readers can subscribe to SDCF’s free podcast on iTunes by searching for “SDCF Masters of the Stage” or access past episodes at www.sdcfoundation.org.

ROBERT | Do you remember where you were when someone said, “Pasadena Playhouse”?

And you possibly coming on board to run it?

SHELDON | Yes. This takes me way back, Robert, because I was born in Los Angeles.

ROBERT | Oh, really?

SHELDON | Yes. I lived in LA until I was 11 or 12, and then my father got a job in New York City, so the family moved to Teaneck, NJ, but I was born and raised in Los Angeles. People think I make this story up because it’s just too good a story. My father was a Presbyterian minister and very much believed in arts exposure for young black kids. We would go

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off and see a ballet. We’d go see a symphony.

One morning, we were loaded onto a bus and made a long trek to this beautiful theatre and saw Ethel Waters in The Member of the Wedding.

with my life because it was about a young person.

ROBERT | Oh my gosh. Wow.

SHELDON | I think 11.

SHELDON | It was certainly an education in diva-dom and how to take a bow. Amazing.

That theatre was Pasadena Playhouse. It’d be a better story if I could tell you that was the day I decided to spend my life in the theatre.

Not true. But it was a day that I fell in love with going to the theatre and having the experience of sitting and watching a play—in that case, a play that had some verisimilitude

ROBERT | And did you understand the significance of Ethel Waters at that time?

ROBERT | How old were you when you saw this play?

SHELDON | Oh, no. I didn’t understand it historically, but just by that performance I knew that I was watching somebody pretty important, somebody who knew how to own a stage and an audience and play the music in incredible ways.

In my freelance career, I was asked to Pasadena Playhouse in 1991 to direct On Borrowed Time by the Artistic Director at the time, Paul Lazarus. That was around the time when—and you understand this—a successful freelance career means you never get to stay home. You’re always going someplace, coming home, repacking, and going somewhere else, and often to great places. I had this wonderful run up to being in Pasadena where I directed at the Guthrie, Cleveland Playhouse, and a couple other places. I was questioning, is this going to be the rest of my life, to repack my bag every six weeks?

As I was in rehearsal for that production, I was asked by Jack O’Brien to come down to direct a new play in the smaller theatre at the Old Globe. I almost said no because I was just tired of being out there on the road. But Jack can be very persuasive, so I went to do that play, fell in love with the Old Globe, had a great relationship with Jack, and applied while I was there for a TCG residency grant, which we got, which then brought me back to the Old Globe for four years as Associate Artistic Director. That was the first time I had a taste of “Oh, you can have a home, you can be on a staff, you can live in one place and make a living as a director.” I viewed that residency, working with Jack, as an opportunity to really study what it means to be an artistic director, because it was something that I thought about. Jack offered me tremendous access to anything and everything, and because that was the beginning of a very profound commercial career for him, he was often not there and endowed me with running the theatre, and said, “Honey, you got it.”

When I got there, Jack had just finished directing Hal Holbrook in King Lear and the next week was starting Damn Yankees. I said, “Well, that’s the kind of career I want to have.

I want to have that kind of eclectic range and possibility.” And if I could have that at the Old Globe, fabulous. And I pretty much did. I did Noël Coward, but I also did Play On!, with Duke Ellington songs, and the first play that I did there was a play with predominantly black characters. And I did Shakespeare and Tom Stoppard. It allowed me exposure to a wide range of material and artistic possibilities, but also exposure to what it means to be an artistic director and to run a theatre.

It was during that time that the invitation came from Pasadena Playhouse to be Artistic Director. Frankly, at the time that I made the decision to do it, I said, “Well, I’ll do it for five years and then move on to something else.”

I always sort of worked in those five-year increments, and lo and behold, at one point, those five-year increments became 20 years.

Twenty very challenging, frustrating, tiring, but also rewarding and very, very gratifying years in which I do think I made a difference, and the theatre evolved into something greater than it was.

my value as a television director was that I knew how to help actors. I also knew how to help tell the story and work with writers and all of that, and then also using the camera to tell the story.

ROBERT | Was it there that you began transitioning into television?

There are probably forms of television that I did not do that are much more complicated technically and visually, with explosions and cars turning over and all of that—that even now I would say I’m not terribly equipped for—but really the value that I bring, that you would bring, that any good theatre director brings to working in television primarily is working with the actors and getting them clear on intention, motivation, and all the who, what, where, whys that we always talk about that help them give better performances. When you walk onto a television set, there are all these people doing all these things. The sound people, lighting people, cameramen, prompt people...there’s really only one person among those hundred people who knows how to talk to an actor, and that’s the director. So you better know how to talk to an actor.

SHELDON | Yes, because the theatre was based in LA. I don’t think it could have happened any other way. People from the world of television would come to see my work. People said, “How did you get on Frasier?” Part of what they were saying is, “How did a black guy wind up directing Frasier?”

ROBERT | Right, exactly. It’s all code.

SHELDON | And frankly, I don’t think it would have happened except for this. I directed, in one of my first productions at Pasadena Playhouse, Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing.

Incredibly witty, incredibly complicated, all about the words, the language, and one of the creators of Frasier came to see it and immediately approached me in the lobby and said, “Well, if you can do this Tom Stoppard play, you can do what we do on Frasier.

Would you be interested?” And I said, “Hell yeah!” I spent a long time observing, but because the theatre was based in LA, I was able to move into directing television because it meant I didn’t have to leave town to work in TV. It did make for some incredibly long, hard days and juggling what became two good careers, but it was primarily because of the location of the theatre.

ROBERT | I’m interested what you see craftwise in the difference between television directing and theatre directing. Is there a difference for you in terms of how you approach the actors in the television directing and the actors on the stage?

SHELDON | No, there is not. And I think that is the thing I discovered in working in television that was most appreciated by the actors, because a lot of television directors come from the technical side. They’ve been editors, ADs, stage managers. I remember I was directing a show with a wonderful actress named Frances Conroy. In television, producers do get up and talk to the actors, and a producer came up and was trying to explain something to her, and went on and on. I could see Frances was confused, and the producer walked away, and I said, “Frances, I think all he’s trying to say is that your intention is to punish the other character.”

And she looked at me and said, “Oh. You’re a director.” Quite simply just because I used the language that we use every day in our rehearsals for plays and musicals. And I think

ROBERT | Interesting. What is your relationship in the television industry to the producer? Because in the theatre, I think some of the best artistic directors just let you do your job.

SHELDON | Yes. ROBERT | And come in and give observations, but don’t say things like, “This is what I would do and this is how I would change it.” They hire the director that they think can do it and let the director do their job. Ultimately, there are all these other mechanisms in television, in terms of editing, the time slot it’s going to be aired, the laugh track, or anything that comes after you have done the work. I’m interested in how you negotiate working with your boss in television as opposed to in the theatre.

SHELDON | Right. It’s an adjustment you have to make and accept when you work in television. First, the way you described a good artistic director functioning with a guest director is, from my point of view, the right way to function. If you want somebody to direct a play the way you would direct it, you should direct it.

ROBERT | Exactly.

SHELDON | Otherwise, you should be there to help your guest director get their best version of this production on the stage.

In television, you simply have to accept that you’re number two or three to the producers and writers, and your job is to deliver a FALL 2019 | SDC JOURNAL FOUNDATION SECTION

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version of the show from your point of view, including the editing of it, that you know is then going to be changed by the writers, the executive producer, and maybe even by the network. So in many cases what finally winds up on the air may be very different than what you finally delivered. You just have to know that and accept that. And in the best of cases, you deliver—and this was true of almost every Frasier episode that I did—what you believe to be the best version of that script.

There may be a few tweaks, but basically when you see it on the air two or three months later, it is what you delivered. And that’s great.

ROBERT | In the theatre, we can close down our room and tell a group of people they cannot be in there until we’re ready to show them something. I would imagine TV is much more public in terms of the work you have to do. In television, you walk onto a set and there’s a bunch of people doing a bunch of things, and to me, of course, that’s called tech. And you get there once you’re ready for tech.

SHELDON | Yes, that’s true.

ROBERT | To start the process in tech...

SHELDON | With a hundred people staring as everybody’s making bad choices and the wrong decisions.

ROBERT | Exactly. What is your relationship to the amount of power that is given to the director? Especially now in this era where there’s been a number of people being called out for the exploitation of individuals in the room. I always think that as a director, I run the room in a sort of way that will help the play.

SHELDON | Yes. You set the tone.

ROBERT | You set the tone, but at times I’ve asked myself, could I have done better? Could I have been a better leader in the room, especially now and considering I may want this room to be this way, but someone may actually not need it to be that way today. You know?

SHELDON | Right.

ROBERT | Where is that space for you? Where do you sit in that space?

SHELDON | I think it’s one of the more complicated things that we have to do: to create the tone, to create the energy in the room in a way that is good for everybody.

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And it’s hard because you can actually work with people who like a frantic, crazy, fractious room. I don’t. My personal philosophy is nothing has ever gotten better because you’re in there screaming six hours a day.

ROBERT | Exactly.

SHELDON | And throwing four-letter words around.

ROBERT | And just taking advantage of everyone in the room at that time.

SHELDON | I’ve never seen anything better because the room was run that way, either in my own running of it, or watching directors or artistic directors. In most cases, I’ve only seen that damage the process. I try not to create that atmosphere. I don’t think I do create that atmosphere. But there are people, there are actors, I suppose, who thrive in that kind of atmosphere with that kind of—one might call it “creative abrasion,” you know? And so sometimes you’ve also got to honor that, but monitor that and say, “Okay. We’ve allowed that.”

ROBERT | You’ve taken up all the space that you can take up today.

SHELDON | Yes. We all need to breathe now, so let the rest of us have a little bit of air.

ROBERT | Right.

SHELDON | Or we let that flame ignite for a while, but now we need to dampen that down and see how we can move that energy into something that is creative and productive. I used to be rather afraid of any conflict in the room. But you get to a point where you say, “Okay, well, maybe a little conflict in the room is not so bad.” Maybe a good, respectful, healthy argument or heated discussion about something is okay, and we’ll survive it, we’ll get through the day, and at the end of the day, you acknowledge it. You say, “Well, that was kind of hot and heavy, but hey, we learned something from it. We grew from it.

And maybe we won’t have to have that same argument tomorrow, which is good.”

I think that we often say that directing is about time management, but it’s also about people management. It is very much about psychology and sort of being a psychologist to each individual actor, but to the company as well. I’ve not had to fire many people over a long career, but once or twice, I’ve had to say, “This person is trying to overwhelm this process due to their personal needs.

I’m going to have a chat with this person about that, and if it gets better, fine, but if it happens one more time, that person has to go.” And I’ve let that person go.

ROBERT | Do you think you want to be artistic director of anything again?

SHELDON | I don’t think so. I had an extraordinary experience; 20 years is a long time. I think it’s time for another generation, your generation, to have those jobs and lead those theatres, and lead the field to new places.

ROBERT | What do you think of the turnover that’s been happening in artistic leadership?

Do you have any advice or cheerleading to those who are stepping into roles that have been traditionally held not only by men, but by white people? Coming into Pasadena Playhouse, I can only imagine there was a long history of white people before you.

SHELDON | Here’s what I would say.

Acknowledge the fact that because you’re a person of color stepping into a situation or situations that have not been filled by a person of color previously—or ever, in many cases, especially with these larger theatres— acknowledge the fact that there are going to be people who are waiting for you to fail.

Acknowledge the fact that there are people who assume that you can only fail because you’re not going to be up to it. Acknowledge all of that, be a little bit intimidated by all of that, and then get over it and do what you do. Your success will be the best and only argument that you have to make. That’d be my advice.

ROBERT | That’s really wonderful. I like that idea of acknowledging it.

SHELDON | Yeah, because it’s there.

Pretending it’s not there is not helpful.

Because they’re realities. It’s not your job to walk in and change people’s previous prejudices. Your job is to be there to do the work. Acknowledge the fact that people have prejudices, and then let it go.

ROBERT | What holds you to the flame? As in, “This is why I am doing this.” Because as directors, we have so many things pulling on us.

SHELDON | I am so lucky, Robert, to be the beneficiary of a lineage system of great mentors like Jack O’Brien, Lloyd Richards.

Hal Scott was an artistic director of a theatre long before any black man or woman had been an artistic director. Israel Hicks, who was both my teacher and my wonderful friend. I’m so lucky to have had exposure to those masters of the art of direction, but also masters of leadership of institutions. I believe in passing it on. I believe in the value system of lineage and of mentorship, and I believe in the fact that it is reciprocal that the younger has as much to teach the older as the older does to the younger.

Sheld Kiss M

PHOT

ROBERT | People have asked me about people I can see in the industry that look like me or that have journeys through their career that I find emblematic, and certainly yours is one, and George C. Wolfe another, and Carey Perloff. It’s all these different people that you have to acknowledge because of the doors that you guys opened, for people of color and for women. No one gets into position in a void.

SHELDON | Thank you, that’s very generous of you. I’m just reminded of the great Sidney Poitier quote when he got one of his Oscars and said, “I’m only here because I was able to stand on the shoulders of those who went before me.” I’ve been so blessed and so fortunate to do most of the things that I ever dreamed of doing. So now I can move forward in the next few years by choice. And that is a rare and wonderful opportunity.

Jeff Allin + Christina Haag in The Real Thing at Pasadena Playhouse, directed by Sheldon Epps PHOTO Craig Schwartz

Sheldon Epps with Wayne Brady + Merle Dandridge, Kiss Me Kate at Pasadena Playhouse PHOTO Craig Schwartz

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A M ESSAGE O F T H AN K S FRO M S DC F SDCF—the only national organization dedicated solely to directors and choreographers—is happy to be celebrating a dynamic and vital renaissance, which builds on its strong history. The Foundation continues to grow and evolve to be of even greater service to our colleagues and our field by offering access, opportunity, and community to artists at all levels of their careers.

SDCF programs rely on the generous support of individuals, government agencies, foundations, and corporations. We want to thank every donor who gave so generously to the Foundation’s successful Fiscal Year 2019. Every gift makes a difference! If you would like to make a donation in support of our current programs, please contact ProgramAssociate@ SDCFoundation.org.

On behalf of SDCF, we very much appreciate and value your ongoing support!

Sheldon Epps President

Linda Hartzell Fundraising Chair

$25,000+

$10,000–$24,9 99

Concord Music Group, Inc. New York State Council for the Arts Stage Directors and Choreographers Society The Shubert Organization

Jujamcyn Theaters Thomas Kail Nederlander Theatrical Corporation Dean Pitchford & Michael Mealiffe The Broadway League, Inc. Barry and Fran Weissler

$5,000-$9,999

James & Deborah Burrows Foundation Trip Cullman Matt & Amy Davidson Sheldon Epps The Hargrove Pierce Foundation Linda Hartzell Doug Hughes

Judith & Douglas Krupp David Lee Jerry Mitchell Laurie Oki Pryor Cashman, LLP Temple University University of Rochester

$2,500–$4,999

Mrs. George Abbott Eve Alvord Walter Bobbie Ida Cole Disney Theatrical Group The Dodgers Jill Furman Freddie & Myrna Gershon Robyn Goodman Gould, Kobrick & Schlapp, P.C. Todd Haimes ICM Arlene T. Lazarus

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Pam MacKinnon Stephanie McClelland New York Community Trust Charles & Eleanor Nolan Scott Pascucci Eva Price Joan & Steven B. Rosenfeld Stephen & Deborah Smith Spivak Lipton LLP Victoria Traube United Scenic Artists Local 829 Jake Wisely Work Light Productions

SUMMER 2019 | SDC JOURNAL FOUNDATION SECTION

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F

N

TO AL L OF O UR 2 0 1 8 – 1 9 D O NO R S $ 1 ,0 0 0–$ 2 , 4 9 9

ATPAM (Local 18032) Melinda Sharts Atwood Victoria Bailey Richard Bird Julianne Boyd Mark Brokaw Brooks & Distler Marc Bruni M. Graham Coleman Elizabeth Diamond Simone Genatt Floyd Green Hadestown Broadway Marc Handelman Nicole Harman I.A.T.S.E. The Jerome Robbins Foundation John Gore Organization James Jordan Diane Ruth Katzin Anne Kauffman Victoria Kulli James Lapine Lorin Latarro Jeffrey T. Lazarus Scott Lazarus Kenny Leon Lincoln Center Theatre Julie McDonald Ronald & Janet Neschis Laura Penn & Marty Pavloff Daryl Roth Segal Consulting Susan Stroman WME Evan Yionoulis

$ 5 0 0–$ 9 9 9

Melia Bensussen David S. Berlin, Esq. Larry Carpenter Rachel Chavkin Tomas Costanza Cris Criswell Carl Danielsen Bob Evans & Steve Davis Marcia Milgrom Dodge

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Hailey A. Ferber Franklin, Weinrib, Rudell & Vassallo, P.C. Richard K. Garmise Kathryn Grody & Mandy Patinkin Groundswell Theatricals, Inc. Joseph C. Haj Deborah M. Hartnett Jeff W. Herbst Dan Knechtges John Kulli Joe Mantello Jason Moore Michael Moore Casey Nicholaw Jack O’Brien Sharon Ott Proskauer Rose LLP John Rando David K. Schmerler Susan Schulman Seret Scott Leigh Silverman Casey Stangl Sterling Printing Julie Taymor Tom Toce & Liz Portland Treasurers & Ticket Sellers Union Local 751 Matthew Francis Warchus Charlotte Wilcox Allan & Beth Williams Michael Wilson

$ 2 50–$499

Alyson Adler Saheem Ali Karen Azenberg Pamela Berlin Anne Bogart Jo Bonney Theodore S. Chapin Desdemona Chiang Creative Artists Agency (CAA) Willy Falk JoAnn Hunter Cole Jordan Wayne S. Kabak

Stephen Kocis Fran Kumin The Manhattan School of Music, Musical Theatre Faculty Kathleen Marshall Robert Antonio O’Hara Robert Osmond Hope Pordy, Esq. Bill Rauch Peter Reynolds David Richards Bartlett Sher

UP T O $249

Rachel Alderman Randy Anderson Andrea Andresakis Caroline Barnard Elizabeth Rubyline Bell-Haynes Jenny Bennett Jesse Berger Allison Bibicoff Al Blackstone Michael Blakemore Sara Brians Cate Caplin Robert Caprio Jonathan Cerullo Hope Clarke Karin Coonrod Jason M. Cooper Patricia Crown Yvonne Curry Sarah Davidson Rick Davis Susan Einhorn Susan Enid Evans Robert Fitch Katherine Freer Cecilia Friederichs Joyce Friedmann Barbara Gaines Michael John Garcés Maija Garcia Liza Gennaro Jeremy Gerard Robert Gilbo Di Glazer

Lynnie Godfrey Wendy C. Goldberg Steven Gross Stephen & Ruth Hendel Tony Horne Richard David Israel Gus Kaikkonen Nancy Keystone Jesse Kornbluth Mark Lamos Michael Lilly William C. Lipscomb Abraham Lule Giovanna Marchese Ben Martin Meredith McDonough Dianne McIntyre John Miller-Stephany Paul Moore Carl Mulert Rosemary Newcott Charles Newell Katherine Owens Walter Painter Sam Pinkleton Aaron Ricciardi Kenneth Lee Roberson Mary Robinson Arthur Rotch David Ruttura Amy Saltz Bobbie Saltzman Andy Sandberg Ruben Santiago-Hudson Arthur Seidelman Molly Smith Ellen Sorrin Pamela Sousa Dana Spialter John Tartaglia Eric Ting Gerald vanHeerden Kimberly Vaughn Tony Vezner Bonnie Walker Donald Wesley Barbara Wolkoff Bryna Wortman Sidney Erik Wright

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THANK YOU TO A L L O F O U R MEN T O R S

Thank you to all who served as an SDCF Mentor for an Observership or Fellowship during the 2018–19 season. Your efforts support and encourage the next generation of artists in our field and we are sincerely grateful.

MENTOR May Adrales Chris Ashley Karen Azenberg Lileana Blain-Cruz Bill Castellino Rachel Chavkin Rachel Chavkin Roger Danforth Rick Dildine Marcia Milgrom Dodge Timothy Douglas John Doyle Denis Jones Sarna Lapine Pam MacKinnon Emily Mann Davis McCallum Patricia McGregor Ethan McSweeny Casey Nicholaw Robert O’Hara Diane Paulus Lonny Price Michael Rader Josh Rhodes Erica Schmidt Dominique Serrand Susan Stroman Daniel Sullivan Patti Wilcox Chay Yew Chay Yew

PROJECT Much Ado About Nothing Diana Sweeney Todd Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine Christmas in Hell Continuity Hadestown The Odyssey The Sound of Music Once The Color Purple The Cradle Will Rock Tootsie Little Women Toni Stone Skylight Cymbeline Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole Julius Caesar The Prom Slave Play Gloria: A Life Scotland, PA South Pacific Scotland, PA Mac Beth Dionysus Was Such a Nice Man Marie Long Lost The Music Man Lady in Denmark Mojada

OBSERVER Anna Strasser Callie Nestleroth Ryan Graytok Britt Berke David Kahawaii Renee Yeong Cara Hinh Katie Lupica (Gielgud Fellowship) Caitlin Davies Margaret Lee Tai Thompson James Blaszko (Weill Fellowship) Katharine Quinn (Traube Fellow) Peter Petkovsek Yojiro Ichikawa Rani O’Brien Anna Strasser Melisa Mowry Dan Hasse Ilana Ransom Toeplitz (Ockrent Fellow) Mary Hodges Rebecca Aparicio Jonathan Zautner Graham Miller Erin Thompson Ashley Malafronte Gaby Sant’Anna Emma Gassett Steve Mazzoccone Kimberly Fitch Leda Hoffman Adam Coy

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE NEW ASSOCIATE MEMBERS WHO HAVE JOINED SDC UNDER THE 2019 SDC MFA GRADUATE STUDENT INITIATIVE The initiative is aimed at building relationships between SDC and recent graduates—the future leaders of the American theatre.

BROOKLYN COLLEGE Emily Edwards Christopher McCreary Lillian Meredith COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Daniel Adams Mark Barford Miriam Grill Katherine Wilkinson

TEXAS STATE UNIVERSITY Tom Delbello Liz Fisher UCLA Sylvia Blush UNIVERSITY OF IOWA Erica Barnes Lila Becker Bo Frazier Sarah Lacy Hamilton

For more information about SDC’s MFA Graduate Student Initiative, contact Associate Director of Member Services Marisa Levy at MLevy@SDCweb.org.

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REMEMBERING GEOFFREY SHERMAN

BY KAREN

“With a smile…”

It was those three words that Geoffrey used to sign his emails. I believe he wrote them with a smile, too. Well, sometimes it was probably with a devilish glint in his eye, or maybe a smirk, but I think it was always with love for theatre and the artists with whom he collaborated.

He entered the rehearsal room with his signature cup of tea, tan khaki pants, blue button-down shirt, and sensible sneakers. He loved to laugh and did so often, with gusto. It was infectious and always eased the tension.

He was kind and empathetic; he created a safe space for his collaborators where all ideas were welcome. Everything was worth exploring.

Geoffrey Sherman’s career exemplifies the range of experiences it takes to spend nearly five decades working in the theatre. Although born and educated in England, he worked in the United States for the better part of his career. In addition to an extensive freelance career on both sides of the Atlantic, he was Artistic Director of the Hudson Guild Theatre, Portland Repertory Theatre, Meadow Brook Theatre, and, most recently, Alabama Shakespeare Festival. He took risks, and was praised and penalized for it, but he remained

AZENBERG

committed to making the best theatre possible in whatever theatre he was in.

Geoffrey was a devoted husband and father and is a role model for me as an artistic director and director who managed to have a meaningful career and family life. His wife, Diana, has said, “He was never happier than he was when he was directing a play.” I can’t disagree.

Geoffrey was a mentor to so many artists, actors, directors, designers, playwrights.

He was fiercely loyal; if he liked you, if he thought you had talent, he gave you opportunities that kept you working—and helped you grow as an artist. He gave honest and thoughtful notes that outlined attainable goals and results. As someone who benefited from his artistic largesse, I cannot begin to detail all that he taught me or, more correctly, all that he helped me learn. And I will always remember sitting in his office and telling him I had been appointed Artistic Director at Pioneer Theatre.

He just looked at me…with a smile.

GEOFFREY SHERMAN, who served as the Producing Artistic Director for the Alabama Shakespeare Festival from 2005 until his retirement in 2017, died on March 12, 2019.

During his tenure at ASF, Sherman completed the canon for the theatre with a critically acclaimed modern English version of Timon of Athens (produced as part of Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play On initiative).

His productions of Shakespeare, musicals, adaptations of classics, and original works were praised as magical, visually stunning, highly entertaining, and remarkably accessible. Committed to developing new theatrical work, Sherman oversaw the development and world premieres of numerous plays that subsequently were published and licensed for performances across the country, such as Gee’s Bend by Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder, The Nacirema Society by Pearl Cleage, Way Downriver by Edward Morgan, In the Book Of by John Walch, and Bear Country by Michael Vigilant.

Born in Britain, Sherman studied theatre and television directing in England at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, the University of Bristol, and the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

He moved to the United States in 1978 and directed plays around the country before serving as Artistic Director at BoarsHead Theatre in East Lansing, MI; Meadow Brook Theatre in Rochester, MI; Portland Repertory Theatre, OR; and the Hudson Guild Theatre in New York.

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REMEMBERING EDWARD STERN

BY JOHN

I first met Ed Stern when the 2005 revival of Sweeney Todd was playing in London.

I was immediately struck by the warmth and wisdom of the man. He invited me to Cincinnati to remount Sweeney there. That wasn’t to happen, as the production was already planned for Broadway. However, I was so taken by him and so recognized his love for his theatre that I suggested we look into doing another Sondheim musical. That led to Company, which went on to win a Tony as Best Revival of a Musical.

Now, bear in mind that, coming from Scotland, I had no idea where Cincinnati was! Nor could I anticipate how it would feel rehearsing a musical there in January! It may have been cold outside, but that theatre was warm in every way possible. All because of Ed. The welcoming and nurturing staff, the fine quality of the work, the engaged audiences were all a testament to this joyous, generous, encouraging human being.

Ed and I went on to make two more productions together: Merrily We Roll Along, to celebrate his love of the work of Stephen Sondheim, and The Three Sisters in a wonderful new adaptation that Ed commissioned from Sarah Ruhl. It had a marvelous cast led by Corey Stoll, Laila Robins, Frank Wood—to name but a few.

The critics liked it, we loved it…the audiences weren’t so sure. This gave Ed great delight.

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DOYLE

We were surprising them, maybe even angering them, and so we were doing our job. He supported us. He believed in what we were doing. That’s what the theatre needs! Creative producers who understand and support the artists with whom they collaborate.

As a creative collaborator, Ed said little, but when he did contribute, it was always incisive and invaluable. He knew how to be an artistic director. How to open his doors to another artist, to be there for them, to be a helpful resource, but not to impose his personal taste upon them. Not only did Ed run a great theatre, but also he was a great director.

Actors loved working with him. He took risks, had vision, and passionately believed in the importance of excellent regional theatre.

He left an enduring legacy at the Playhouse in the Park. I know he will always be remembered with great love and affection.

Ed and I shared many cups of coffee on his frequent visits to Manhattan. We celebrated a mutual love for the theatre. We laughed—a lot! How I miss his laugh. How I miss Ed Stern.

EDWARD STERN, a prolific freelance director and longtime Producing Artistic Director of Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, passed away on April 2, 2019, at the age of 72.

Born in New York in 1946, Stern studied theatre at the University of Virginia and Indiana University. He co-founded the Indiana Repertory Theatre in 1972 and served as its Artistic Director until 1980.

During his two-decade tenure at Cincinnati Playhouse, from 1992 to 2012, Stern directed 40 plays and led the Playhouse to national prominence with three Broadway transfers and two Tony Awards, one to the Playhouse in 2004 for excellence in regional theatre and the other for outstanding Broadway revival for Company in 2007. Playhouse productions under his artistic leadership also transferred to major regional theatres, Off-Broadway, and internationally to London, Dublin, Vienna, Toronto, Edinburgh, and Hong Kong. He set the bar for artistic excellence within the Cincinnati theatre community, championed the arts, helped foster the growth of the other professional theatres, and was instrumental in the creation of the League of Cincinnati Theatres.

Loved in the rehearsal room for his joy, sense of humor, compassion, and intelligence, Stern directed at regional theatres nationwide, including 28 productions at St. Louis Repertory Theatre. He held faculty positions at Rutgers University and the William Esper Studio in New York City.

IN MEMORIAM September 17, 2018 – July 31, 2019

Kenneth Albers DIRECTOR Since 1986

DIRECTOR/CHOREOGRAPHER Since 1988

María Irene Fornés

Ron Nash

Jack Allison

Robert Foster DIRECTOR Since 1971

Yutaka Okada

DIRECTOR Since 1978

Marlene Ascherman

Aaron Frankel

Katherine Owens

DIRECTOR Since 1985

DIRECTOR Since 1959

DIRECTOR Since 1959

Cliff Fannin Baker

Macario Gaxiola

Harold Prince

CHOREOGRAPHER Since 1984

DIRECTOR Since 2007

DIRECTOR Since 1963

Mark Bramble

Eugene Grona

Geoffrey Sherman

DIRECTOR Since 2001

DIRECTOR Since 1959

DIRECTOR Since 1978

Martin Charnin

Joseph Klein

Joel Silberman

DIRECTOR Since 1965

DIRECTOR Since 2004

Frank Corsaro

Monica Lind

Jo Jo Smith

John Donahue

Charles Maryan DIRECTOR Since 1964

DIRECTOR/CHOREOGRAPHER Since 1975

Stanley Donen

Peter Masterson

Daniel Stewart

DIRECTOR Since 1972 DIRECTOR Since 1959

CHOREOGRAPHER Since 1986 DIRECTOR Since 1993

Rina Elisha DIRECTOR Since 1977

Kathi E. B. Ellis DIRECTOR Since 2003

Alvin Epstein DIRECTOR Since 1986

DIRECTOR Since 1959

DIRECTOR Since 1970

Nick Mayo

DIRECTOR Since 1977 DIRECTOR Since 1997

DIRECTOR Since 1983

Edward Stern

DIRECTOR Since 1994

Rip Torn

DIRECTOR Since 1959

DIRECTOR Since 1967

Donald Moffat

Arthur Williams

CHOREOGRAPHER Since 1969

DIRECTOR Since 1959

Franco Zeffirelli DIRECTOR Since 1964

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THE SOCIETY PAGES SDC MEMBERS @ WORK + PLAY

PHOTO

Christopher Duggan

Upon presenting George C. Wolfe with the SDC Director Award for exemplary collaboration with choreographers on Broadway at the Chita Rivera Awards, held at the NYU Skirball Center on May 19, Camille A. Brown eloquently stated: George C. Wolfe is a griot of space, time, rhythm, history, and theatre. In Francis Bebey’s words, “a griot is a living archive of the people’s traditions.” The universe has placed George here for a very special reason. I believe one of those reasons is to ensure the authenticity of black narratives and human stories that are universal and worldly.

My first experience seeing George’s work was Jelly’s Last Jam at 13 years old. My mom was so excited, and I watched her sit next to me, looking at the performers with pride. She took me to a lot of shows, but for this one she stressed the importance of learning something about our history. At 13, I didn’t quite understand, but I did know that watching Gregory Hines glide through space in a way that stretched time and moved the earth was an awakening I wasn’t yet able to articulate.

When I was 14, I was involved in a summer theatre arts program. In our acting class, we had to perform a section of The Colored Museum, and I played the woman with the permed hair. We had to investigate what articulation really meant because this work required just as much articulation of the head as it did vocal delivery.

At 16, I was mesmerized watching Savion Glover in Bring in ’da Noise, Bring in ’da Funk. In one section, he was standing in front of mirrors. As a young student, this was a really cool concept. Now, as an adult, I understand it being the double consciousness of the black performer demonstrated through a powerful, masterful vehicle.

A couple years ago, I went to see Shuffle Along. Now, a bit more sophisticated in looking at theatre and being a choreographer, I clearly saw the director/choreographer relationship between George and Savion. The space felt open, warm, loving, authentic, and generous to dance. With every show, George gives choreographers and dancers the gift of true collaboration.

George, your respect for dance and its importance in ALL spaces gives the dance community life. You care for us and allow the language of dance to breathe in your creative spaces and stages. You tap into the African tradition of storytelling—the call and the response—the Ago (meaning, “Are you listening?”) and the Ame (which means, “Yes, we are listening”). Your guidance is always a call to action, and our response is always an awakening.

When I see your work, I am liberated and I know the ancestors are proud.

I am humbled and totally hyped to present the SDC Director Award for exemplary collaboration with choreographers to the master griot, George C. Wolfe.

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ggan

SDCF presented a “One-on-One” Conversation entitled “Producing Theatre for an Ageless Audience,” moderated by Linda Hartzell, with luminary directors Mark Brokaw and Marcia Milgrom Dodge and playwright Timothy Allen McDonald on May 20.

SDC’s Off-Broadway contract negotiations, beginning on May 23, ended successfully on June 26. Thank you to our fabulous negotiating committee co-chaired

by Mark Brokaw and Sam Pinkleton and which included Saheem Ali, Jo Bonney, Leah Gardiner, Sheryl Kaller, Thomas Schall, Seret Scott, Liesl Tommy, Michael Wilson, Christopher Windom, and Evan Yionoulis.

STANDING Meagan Morris, Christopher Windom, Randy Anderson, Thomas Schall + Sam Pinkleton SEATED Liesl Tommy, Evan Yionoulis, Kristy Cummings + Sheryl Kaller

BACK

Thomas Schall + Jo Bonney

Sheryl Kaller, Kristy Cummings, Laura Penn

THIRD ROW

SECOND ROW

Gardiner

Sam Pinkleton + Leah

Mark Brokaw, Adam Levi, Maegan Morris + Randy Anderson

FRONT ROW

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SDC Members attended the 20th annual Directors Lab West entitled Building the Future of the American Theater at the Pasadena Playhouse May 25 – June 1.

ABOVE LEFT

Diana Wyenn + Janet Miller

Annie Yee

A great time was had by over 60 SDC Members at the annual SDC Members-only Happy Hour on June 6 at the 2019 TCG National Conference.

LEFT Lisa Portes + Joseph Haj

Justin Emeka, Tamilla Woodward + Stephen Buscher

RIGHT

LEFT Adam Levi, Edgar Garcia + Justin Cerne

Steven Cosson + Melissa Kievman

ABOVE

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On June 7, Director of Member Services Barbara Wolkoff joined a TCG National Conference panel to discuss “Fostering Sustainability: People-Centered Benefits & Policies for Theatres of Any Size.”

RIGHT Liz

Olson, Barbara Wolkoff, Ari Teplitz, Cliff Esserman + Christy Hamilton

SDC Executive Director Laura Penn and President Pam MacKinnon welcomed Pamela Berlin, Marshall W. Mason, and Susan H. Schulman for the annual Past Presidents Luncheon on the SDC rooftop on June 6. (Karen Azenberg, Julianne Boyd, and Ted Pappas were unable to attend.)

LEFT Susan H. Schulman, Laura Penn, Pamela Berlin, Marshall W. Mason + Pam MacKinnon

An SDCF “Choreography in Collaboration” Symposium held on June 10 featured panel discussions with Michael Arden, Joshua Bergasse, Benjamin Endsley Klein, Connor Gallagher, Christopher Gattelli, Spencer Liff, Kathleen Marshall, Jason Moore, Nancy Renée Braun, John Rando, Peter Pucci, Shea Sullivan, and Alexandria Wailes.

RIGHT Kathleen Marshall, Joshua Bergasse, Shea Sullivan, Peter Pucci + John Rando

SDCF “Choreography in Collaboration” Symposium attendees

LEFT

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On June 14, SDC hosted a Broadway Associates/Residents Gathering on the SDC office rooftop to toast the 2018/19 season and all the work that associate/resident directors and choreographers do to keep Broadway thriving. Committee Chair Benjamin Endsley Klein and President Pam MacKinnon were joined by many SDC Members and staff.

Broadway Bares creator and co-executive producer Jerry Mitchell and the Broadway community helped raise over $2,000,000 for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS at the annual Broadway Bares fundraiser held at at New York City’s Hammerstein Ballroom on June 16.

RIGHT

Billy Porter + Jerry Mitchell PHOTO Jonathan Tichler

On June 17, the lid came off at the ribboncutting ceremony at Open Jar Studios, NYC’s newest rehearsal space founded by Jeff Whiting, Susan Stroman, and Andy Blankenbuehler, among other Broadway notables.

Kathleen Marshall, Jeff Whiting + Tucker Johann

LEFT

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Director-choreographer Michael Kidd, who created works for both film and stage, was an innovator of the integrated musical, where dance movements play an integral role in the plot. Kidd believed that dance should always serve the story.

Born and raised in New York City, Kidd originally studied chemical engineering before quitting his program to accept a scholarship at the School of American Ballet.

He performed around the country and on Broadway, eventually becoming a soloist for the American Ballet Theatre, where he also began choreographing his own work.

Kidd’s career as a choreographer on Broadway began with Finian’s Rainbow in 1947, for which he won his first Tony Award for Best Choreography. He went on to be the first choreographer to win five Tony Awards, for his work on Guys and Dolls (1951), CanCan (1954), Li’l Abner (1957, which he also directed), and Destry Rides Again (1960, for which he was also nominated for Best Director).

Kidd eventually transitioned to film and is best known for his choreography for The Band Wagon (1953), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), Knock on Wood (1954), Guys and Dolls (1955), and Hello, Dolly! (1969).

In 1977, Kidd was awarded an honorary Academy Award for advancing dance in film.

“ If you can make

them laugh or cry, move them emotionally, make them respond to the dancer as a real person doing something believable within your theatrical framework, well, you’ve done a job.

”

SDC LEGACY MICHAEL KIDD 1915–2007

PHOTO

Photofest

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SDC MEMBERS + ASSOCIATES continued...David

Thome • NaTasha R. Thompson • Jenn Thompson • Kent Thompson • Scott Thompson • Tai Thompson • Tazewell Thompson • Lynn Presorted Std M. Thomson • Steven E. Thornburg • Joan Vail Thorne US Postage Ryder Thornton • Myles Thoroughgood • Tim Threlfall PAID 321 W. 44TH STREET | STE 804 | NY, NY | 10036 Julia Thudium • Lucie Tiberghien • Michael S. Tick • John Permit No. 203 Tiffany • Jana Tift • John Tillinger • Alex Timbers • Becky Albany NY Timms • Awoye Timpo • Eric Ting • Annie Tippe • Alex Tobey • Lawrence Tobias • John J Todd • Kelly Todd • Tom Todoroff • Liesl Tommy • Susan Toni • Daniella Topol Jamie A. Torcellini • Lori Craig Torok • Matthew Kaylor Toronto • Edward Torres • Maria Mercedes Torres • Jacob Toth • Charles Towers • Anne Towns • Randee Trabitz Jon D. Tracy • David Trainer • Sal Trapani • Joseph Travers Michele Travis • Chloe Treat • Leta Tremblay • Kara Tremel Darko Tresnjak • Russell L. Treyz • Rickey Tripp • Annette Trossbach • Tom Troupe • Timothy X. 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Bashline • Christopher Basile • Jacob Basri • Judy Ann Bassing • Kathy Bates • Gleason Bauer • Jennifer Elizabeth Bauer-Lyons • Jessica Bauman • Ronald P. Baumanis • Michael Baxter • Keith Baxter • Cheryl Baxter Christopher Bayes • Sammy D. Bayes • Roger Bean • Amanda Bearse • Kurt Beattie • Steve Bebout • Doreen M. Bechtol • Carol Becker • Ilana Becker • Lila R. Becker Willard Beckham • Julie M. Beckman • Eliza Beckwith • Megan Behm • Andrei Belgrader • Craig Belknap • Ian Belknap • Mark Bell • David H Bell • Lou Bellamy Alexandra Beller • Elizabeth Bell-Haynes • Michael Bello • Ian A. Belton • Jen Bender • Vivienne Benesch • Peter Bennett • David Bennett • Jenny Bennett...

Presorted standard ==> 3 - 1

Presorted standard ==> 3 - 1

Non Profit Organization ==> (same turn as standard mail)

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SDC JOURNAL | FALL 2019