ART MATTERS:
IN PRAISE OF THE AMERICAN REGIONAL THEATRE BY BEN
BARNES
Recently, I sat in the gallery of an RTE (Ireland’s national broadcaster) sound studio as the sitzprobe for my production of Madama Butterfly was conducted by maestro Tim Robinson with our crack cast and the national symphony. This is always a joyful moment for the director. The timepressurized rigors of the “stage and piano” tech and the “stage and orchestras” lie imminently ahead, but in those moments, the responsibility lies completely with the conductor and the director can sit back, as if at a private concert, and let that gorgeous music, played and sung with consummate skill and feeling, thrill anew and come blazingly to life after the piano reduction of the rehearsal room. In a tea break between acts, I spoke to Tim about how uplifting I found it all, and he said, “Well, having such skilled players and singers makes my job easy.” This is how I feel about American actors, who consistently bear out for me the axiom that a director can only be as good as the actors they are working with. In recent years, I have been privileged to work with Sandy Robbins’ company, the REP (Resident Ensemble Players), which—like PlayMakers Rep at the University of North
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Carolina or ART at Harvard—has a strong association with the University of Delaware. There, in recent seasons, I have directed productions of Juno and the Paycock, Waiting for Godot, The Seafarer, and The Crucible. The company comprises a permanent ensemble supplemented by freelance actors hired in from around the country, and a salient feature is that many of these actors were trained by Robbins in the well-loved PTTP training program at the University of Delaware, which was founded in Milwaukee in 1976 and moved east in 1988. Sandy Robbins is an inspiring Artistic Director and teacher/mentor (recently honored with the John Houseman Award for his services to the American theatre) and attracted back to his company highly regarded regional theatre actors who trained with him and made their names around the country. These include Steve Pelinski (Guthrie Theater), Elizabeth Heflin (Alley Theatre), Lee Ernst (Milwaukee Rep), and Kathleen Pirkl Tague. It has been my great pleasure to work with these and other highly skilled members of the Robbins company and associated artists who are engaged for individual shows and seasons. I can say, hand on heart, that as a director, having these acting forces combined with first-rate stage management, the very best
of technical resources, and unrivaled scenic, costume, and prop departments have allowed me to do, under the most supportive conditions, some of my best work in the theatre in recent years. From Sandy Robbins and his Associate Artistic Director, Sandy Ernst, down through the organization, “no” is not a word in the REP’s lexicon. The REP is not unique in the American theatre landscape. I know this not just from hearsay but also from direct personal experience. (I had, for instance, six great seasons at Milwaukee Rep under the inspired artistic direction of Joseph Hanreddy.) But it epitomizes all that is best in the American theatre and offers me, as a director, actors who prepare meticulously for every role, are fully focused and highly skilled, and, once they trust the director in question, are fully committed to delivering on their vision for the play in rehearsal. You might argue that all this is, or should be, axiomatic, but I have found in places like New York, Chicago, Toronto, London, and even Dublin that actors are pulled in many different directions—a filming day here, an audition there, a voice-over almost anywhere—so that the focus of those precious rehearsal hours (usually 120 in the
The Crucible at the REP, Delaware, directed by Ben Barnes PHOTO Evan Krape
