SDC Journal Summer 2014 by SDC Journal

JOURNAL

SUMMER 2014

IN CONVERSATION WITH

HAROLD PRINCE

INTERVIEWS WITH

LOU BELLAMY LARRY KEIGWIN LAURA KEPLEY DAVID LEONG + MORE

SUMMER 2014 | SDC JOURNAL

SDC EXECUTIVE BOARD

Susan H. Schulman PRESIDENT

John Rando EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT

Leigh Silverman VICE PRESIDENT

Oz Scott SECRETARY

Ethan McSweeny TREASURER

HONORARY ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Karen Azenberg Pamela Berlin Melvin Bernhardt Julianne Boyd Danny Daniels Marshall W. Mason Ted Pappas Gene Saks

COUNSEL

Ronald H. Shechtman EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Laura Penn

MEMBERS OF BOARD

Julie Arenal Rob Ashford Christopher Ashley Anne Bogart Mark Brokaw Joe Calarco Larry Carpenter Marcia Milgrom Dodge Sheldon Epps Michael John GarcĂŠs Christopher Gattelli Liza Gennaro Wendy C. Goldberg Linda Hartzell Dan Knechtges Mark Lamos Paul Lazarus Rick Lombardo Pam MacKinnon Meredith McDonough Tom Moore Robert Moss Sharon Ott Lisa Peterson Lonny Price Seret Scott Bartlett Sher Michael Wilson Chay Yew Evan Yionoulis

SDC JOURNAL

Published by SDC | Summer 2014 | Volume 3 | No. 1 FEATURES EDITOR

Shelley Butler

ART DIRECTOR/DESIGNER

Elizabeth Nelson

CONTRIBUTORS

Marc Bruni

Alyssa Dvorak

Laura Paone

DIRECTOR

PUBLICATIONS INTERN

Stephanie Coen

Scott Ellis

ASSC. ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

DIRECTOR

Lisa Peterson DIRECTOR

TWO RIVER THEATER

Kristy Cummings

Larissa Fasthorse

Lonny Price

WRITER

DIRECTOR

BUSINESS REPRESENTATIVE

Mark Duncan

Adam Levi

Seret Scott

BUSINESS REPRESENTATIVE

DIRECTOR

EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT

Elizabeth Nelson PUBLICATIONS & ONLINE MEDIA MANAGER

Ted Sod ACTOR/DIRECTOR

SDC JOURNAL is published quarterly by Stage Directors and Choreographers Society located at 1501 Broadway, STE 1701, NYC 10036. SDC JOURNAL is a registered trademark of SDC. SUBSCRIPTIONS + ADVERTISEMENTS Call 212.391.1070 or visit www.SDCweb.org. Annual SDC Membership dues include a $5 allocation for a 1-year subscription to SDC JOURNAL. Non-Members may purchase an annual subscription for $24 (domestic), $48 (foreign); single copies cost $7 each (domestic), $14 (foreign). Purchase online at www.SDCweb.org. Also available at the Drama Book Shop in NY, NY. POSTMASTER Send address changes to SDC JOURNAL, SDC, 1501 Broadway, STE 1701, NY, NY 10036. PRINTED BY Sterling Printing

SDC JOURNAL

| SUMMER 2014

11 24

SUMMER

CONTENTS

FEATURES

SUMMER 2014 Volume 3 | No. 1

IN TRANSITION

Laura Kepley HITTING THE GROUND RUNNING

BY ALYSSA

Kitty McNamee Builds a Career in LA DVORAK

15 Envisioning Change N INTRODUCTION TO SDC’S A DIVERSITY TASK FORCE BY MARK

DUNCAN

18 Complex Cultural Rhythms + Nuances

around the country BY

IN RESIDENCE

Brief “snap shots” of five summer Shakespeare festivals

DVORAK

24 The Alchemy of Summer Shakespeare

AN INTERVIEW WITH LOU BELLAMY BY TED

SOD

ELIZABETH NELSON

COVER

In Conversation with

Harold Prince

INTERVIEW BY LONNY

PRICE

38 Unfolding Each City’s Story

KEIGWIN’S BOLERO PROJECT

STEPHANIE COEN

41 Theatre As Its Own Medium

AN INTERVIEW WITH DAVID LEONG BY KRISTY

CUMMINGS SUMMER 2014 | SDC JOURNAL

FROM THE PRESIDENT

BY SUSAN

FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

H. SCHULMAN

BY LAURA

IN YOUR WORDS

Julie Taymor

An excerpt from the SDC Foundation One-on-One Conversation

PENN

Two Questions for Director Sturgis Warner CURATED BY SERET SCOTT

47 FROM THE ARCHIVES Masters of the Stage: Bartlett Sher +

2013-2014 IN MEMORIAM

A Celebration of Jerry Manning BY LISA PETERSON In Honor of Nicholas Martin BY SCOTT ELLIS

OUR MEMBERS IN PRINT

ANNE BOGART What’s the Story: Essays about art, theater and storytelling BY ALYSSA DVORAK

9 What is the best career advice 10

Our Members Respond

Why I Cast That Actor

MARC BRUNI on casting Jessie Mueller in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical

COVER Harold

that you have received?

SDC JOURNAL

| SUMMER 2014

THE SOCIETY PAGES

Broadway Backwards SDC’s 2,000th Member Sean Mathias + Derek McLane One-on-One LA Stage Day + Staff Travel 32nd Elliot Norton Awards Drama League Fellows Lunch Semi-Annual Membership Meeting KCACTF Off-Broadway Negotiations Pat Birch + Astaire Awards 68th Annual Tony Awards + Founder Margaret Webster

Prince PHOTO Walter McBride

2 PREVIOUS 1

Laura Kepley directing Michael Brusasco + Vanessa Wasche in Venus in Fur at Cleveland Play House, 2013 PHOTO Taylor Chrichton | 2 Lou Bellamy | 3 Montana Shakespeare in the Parks setting up in Birney, MT | 4 Harold Prince PHOTO Walter McBride TOP OF PAGE Bartlett

Sher + Julie Taymor PHOTO Elizabeth Nelson

In the last issue of SDC Journal, we asked our Members how they define their role as a director or choreographer. It’s a tricky question to answer, and the definitions and interpretations are as unique and varied as our Members. Florida Member Ellie Potts Barrett wrote that it’s her job to be “true to the book” while making her “actors look terrific.” Tricia Brouk of New York talked about creating a “safe environment” in which the work can happen, and Dennis Delaney, who lives in Ohio, pointed out that “the director is the unifying factor.” I find these, and all the submitted answers, to be true and more. Though we can sometimes successfully articulate what it is that we do, it remains a challenge for the rest of the world—our industry here and regionally—to fully comprehend what it is exactly that directors and choreographers do. Such is the nature of our intangible craft, but if we could hold the magic in our hands, would it be as extraordinary? And I do believe that our work is extraordinary. Part of what I hope to accomplish in my post as president is furthering the shared understanding of our work and contribution, why our specific and particular piece of the entire process is worthy of deeper understanding and respect. This publication is part of that ambition, and we believe it is working. More and more artists and colleagues beyond our ranks are taking notice. Recently SDC deployed an Associate Membership campaign to directors and choreographers working in higher education. In this way, too, we are spreading the message—inviting educators all across the U.S. into our fold by informing them of the benefits of Membership and professional affiliation. Who we are. What we do. Many are simply unaware, and it’s our responsibility to inform those working in the craft that they belong with us. Board Member and professor Sharon Ott, who has been invaluable in this work, said recently that SDC Membership “ensures that [educators] stay current and informed about the field [that they] are preparing young artists to enter.”

KAREN AZENBERG has been a Member since 1989 | ELLIE POTTS BARRETT since 2012 TRICIA BROUK since 2012 | DENNIS DELANEY since 1994 | SHARON OTT since 1980 SUSAN H. SCHULMAN since 1981

Before I took office last November, Karen Azenberg wrote repeatedly about community, a recurring theme here at SDC and in this publication. The value of collecting like-minded individuals for any number of purposes and conversations cannot be overstated, and never have I felt the value of this idea to be truer and more important than when I am in the presence of the SDC Board and Membership. I recently spoke at my first Membership meeting as president. On April 7th, despite the cold spring rains in New York City, 60+ SDC directors and choreographers gathered at the Opera Center of America for the Semi-Annual Membership Meeting to hear about the hard and exciting work of their Union. It was not only a delight to meet you, but it was also an inspiration. This meeting was our first time to live stream, and I am sure we will continue working toward greater accessibility so that our Members living and working in other parts of the country can tune in and participate. You have heard this before but it bears repeating: your voice and involvement is invaluable, as is your knowledge of current events and issues around SDC’s work that you then carry into your regions and communities. You help us tell our employers, our creative partners what we do—and why it matters. From the inside out, we create change in the industry, and we are always working to strengthen our position. Some of us have been Members for a very long time. Others are new to the Union. You get a sense of this with the “Member since” dates printed along the bottom of this publication’s pages. It’s easy to take for granted what you have until it’s either taken away or suddenly needed, and just as easy to be pleasantly shocked by all you may have been working without once you do join. There is strength in numbers, and as SDC prepares to enter Off-Broadway negotiations, I am fully aware of this fact. We have your back, and I believe that you have ours. In solidarity,

Susan H. Schulman Executive Board President

FROM THE PRESIDENT SUMMER 2014 | SDC JOURNAL

FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR ‘Tis the season. Let the summer rituals begin. For many theatres and theatre artists the season has wound down, the awards have been presented, the TCG conference has been attended along with graduations, fiscal years have ended, and sunscreen, summer camp, summer stock, and vacations are in the offing. This time of year is the return of the summer Shakespeare festivals. You might find yourself enthralled with Jack O’Brien’s Much Ado at the Delacort, at Shana Cooper’s Midsummer Night Dream in the hills of Orinda at Cal Shakes, or in the mountains of Utah experiencing Utah Shakespeare or at Othello Park in South Seattle. Dozens of SDC Members are at work embracing the elements, reveling in the scale, staging works of substance and humor at outdoor festivals across the country. In this issue you will glimpse just a few of the incredible companies who welcome SDC Members each summer. Meanwhile in New York we begin to hear the buzz of next season. Limited runs approach closing, and while we sadly say farewell to some of the shows that graced the Great White Way, the road companies are forming in preparation for upcoming tours. The routine is familiar. So much is the same from year to year—and yet we find ourselves in the midst of great change. So much accomplished, so much still to do. For our 50th Anniversary in 2009, then-President Karen Azenberg led an effort to illustrate the interconnectedness of our Membership. She began with Founders and created a web, a kind of family tree, tracing mentorship and influence. At the top were Sheppard Traube, George Abbott, Bob Fosse, Agnes de Mille, Jerome Robbins, Lloyd Richards, Elia Kazan, Peter Brook, and Alan Schneider, which flowed into Jerry Zaks, Carol Haney, Jack O’Brien, Martha Clarke, Michael Kahn, Casey Childs, Dan Sullivan, Sharon Ott, and Julie Arenal. Doors then opened for Sheldon Epps, Edie Cowan, Joey McKneely, Walter Bobbie, Tony Taccone, Marc Bruni, and many more—too many to list here with any sort of depth. It was a graphic demonstration of legacy, a snapshot of the impact of mentorship. In this hand crafted art form, the apprentice model is still how so many, many directors and choreographers find their way. Central in this family tree was the indomitable Hal Prince. The lines that ran from Hal were too numerous to draw, his influence profound. Somehow while building an extraordinary body of work this man found time, time and again, to let someone into his process, into his rehearsal room, and into his heart. His generosity of spirit shines through in Lonny Price’s conversation with him; what also shines through is Hal’s wisdom. And it is wise counsel – to the next generation, yes, but also to those in position today to influence how our work is made in the complex commercial arena. Hal harkens back to a time when directors and writers were in partnership, making new work together year after year, succeeding and failing and all the while honing their skills and supporting the development of the artists around them. In reviewing research on SDC Founders for this issue, I stumbled across a quote from Margaret Webster: “If we fail, as we easily may, I would like it to be a failure which leads others to do the same thing only better, and not a failure which will stifle any such enterprise for the next 10 to 20 years.” You know that dinner party question, “If you could have dinner with anyone from the past who would it be?” I think I would have to say that Margaret Webster would be top on my list. What fun it would be to have Margaret and all the SDC artists featured in this issue of the magazine. We could talk about risk, success, and failure, and what follows each. How might this brilliant woman, who can still claim the record for longest-running Shakespeare production on Broadway in history, respond to the work of our leading artists today? It was 1943’s Othello starring Paul Robeson in the title role and José Ferrer as Iago, which ran for 296 performances. Nothing has remotely approached this record since. She also played the role of Emilia in the production. Then in 1945 she staged The Tempest on Broadway with Canada Lee as Caliban, making this the second U.S. production featuring an African American actor in an otherwise all white cast. It ran for 124 performances. Next to Margaret might sit Lou Bellamy, Talvin Wilks, and Chay Yew, ruminating on diversity. Then Hal and Lonny, followed by Laura Kepley and Davis McCallum, discussing artistic leadership and community impact. I imagine David Leong, Anne Bogart, and Larry Keigwin engaged over the nuances of process and craft. And so many more. What a feast of conversation and ideas, past influences and future initiatives! Bon appétit!

Laura Penn Executive Director

SDC JOURNAL

| SUMMER 2014

IN YOUR WORDS Two Questions Our Members in Print We Asked Our Members... Why I Cast That Actor

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.

NOTED | SPRING 2014 On pg. 27 of the Spring 2014 Issue, in “Based on Trust, ” 1st column, 2nd paragraph, 3rd line, the sentence should read: “When people ask what do you want from a director, I say I want a director who’s going to reveal the subtext through staging…”

TWO QUESTIONS CURATED BY

for STURGIS WARNER

SERET SCOTT When did you know you were a director? What did the moment look like? Feel like? I came to New York as a young actor after college, and was in the game for about 17 years before I even had an instinct to direct. I also tried to write plays for three or four years, and found that, while pretty good at writing, I ultimately didn’t have anything that I wanted to say. But I think the experience helped me as a director working with writers in the new play process. Basically, I started to become opinionated—and not just about the work but about how to run a room, how to treat actors, how to put on a show. You learn from both the successful productions and the less successful. I often found myself thinking of how I might run a room.

If a mentor of yours were to see your work, where would they find themselves? One of my acting mentors was Wynn Handman, with whom I studied for five years off and on during the 1980s (he’s still teaching at 91!). I only realized a while ago that he taught me much of my directing technique. Wynn teaches you how to rehearse, how to access the unconscious while working within the process—how to really let things brew and not push for results. He has had such an influence on the way that I run a room, the way that I work with actors. There are two things that I always do as a director, no matter what style the show. One is to figure out along with the actors their moment-to-moment circumstances. The other is to discover the stakes at hand and see how high you can raise them without distorting the playwright‘s intentions. These are both Wynn Handman staples. I don’t know if he would recognize his influence, because it’s process, and process isn’t always visible. I think it would depend on what the play was. So it’s hard to say. But I think he’d see the actors working in a way that he would approve of. Sturgis Warner is a freelance director as well as Artistic Director of Twilight Theatre Company (a tool, not an institution) best known for Palestine, written and performed by Najla Saïd, and produced in association with New York Theatre Workshop. He has also directed at Actors Theatre of Louisville (Humana Festival), Barrington Stage Company, Abingdon Theatre Company, Kitchen Theatre Company (Ithaca, NY), New Jersey Rep, Adirondack Theatre Festival, Encore Theatre (San Francisco), Mile Square Theatre, 29th Street Rep, Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, Immigrant Theatre Company, and Peculiar Works Project, among others. A longtime actor, he works with many playwrights developing new scripts and projects. He is a member of New York Theatre Workshop’s Usual Suspects, is on the Artistic Cabinet of the Lark Play Development Center, and has close affiliations with INTAR. He has recently rejoined the acting pool and is currently developing a solo play, Fishing for Alaska, which he wrote for himself.

SERET SCOTT since 1989 | STURGIS WARNER since 2006

SUMMER 2014 | SDC JOURNAL

OUR MEMBERS IN PRINT

ANNE BOGART

What’s the Story Essays about art, theater and storytelling BY ALYSSA

DVORAK

We dream. And then occasionally we attempt to share our dreams with others. In recounting our dreams we try to construct a narrative…We also make stories out of our daytime existence. The human brain is a narrative-creating machine that takes whatever happens and imposes chronology, meaning, cause, and effect…We choose. We can choose to relate to our circumstances with bitterness or with openness. The stories that we tell determine nothing less than personal destiny.—From the Introduction. “In the theatre we are the inheritors of countless stories from numerous cultures and many centuries,” writes Anne Bogart of her newest book, What’s the Story: Essays about art, theater and storytelling, on her blog in August of 2013. “At present we are undergoing a cultural shift in which the stories that we pass along, as well as the stories that we invent, can help to shape new paradigms.” Bogart’s fifth book explores the immense power that storytelling has over an individual life: “how people describe themselves and the events around them has massive power on the experience of living.”

“People need to know who’s behind the great shows they go and see, who makes them work.”

What’s the Story connects the topic of theatre to the study of sociology and neuroscience. “The book is about the human impulse to tell a story in relation to theatre, in relationships to what is life, and in relationship to neuroscience,” Bogart told SDC. While her graduate education, in what is now called Performance Studies at NYU, prepared her to analyze the relationships from the sociological perspective, “in terms of neuroscience I had to study.” Bogart discovered that “DNA is a blueprint that we are born with that predetermines many of our physical characteristics and encodes genetic instructions, influencing our trajectory through life.” When it comes to stories, “they impress their lessons upon us and do nothing less than affect the neural structures of our brain.” And in terms of sociology, “the issues of theatre bleed deeply into issues of sociology and anthropology…they’re deeply intertwined and I think you ignore that fact at your risk.” She believes that when you look at theatre in a sociological way “you have to start asking: what is a play? What is an audience? What does acting mean? When does acting stop and start in life?” In order to help answer these questions, What’s the Story is broken down into 11 chapters with one-word titles: Spaciousness, Narrative, Heat, Limits, Error, Politics, Arrest, Empathy, Opposition, Collaboration, and Sustenance. As a child of post-modernism, Bogart was “brought up on deconstruction” and learned to break things apart and look at their most basic elements. “I kept trying to concentrate the [topic of the] chapter into fewer and fewer words, and then it just came down to one word. I’m always trying to make the point simpler and clearer.” All 11 chapters were of equal importance to Bogart during the writing process. “I believe in non-hierarchy, so they’re all equally meaningful to me.” However, “in each of the books there’s always one title that I think is going to be difficult to write, and usually it turns

ANNE BOGART is the Co-Artistic Director of SITI Company, which she founded with Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki in 1992. She is a professor at Columbia University, where she runs the Graduate Directing Program. Works with SITI include Steel Hammer, A Rite, Café Variations, Trojan Women, American Document, Antigone, Under Construction, Freshwater, Who Do You Think You Are, Radio Macbeth, Hotel Cassiopeia, Death and the Ploughman, La Dispute, Score, bobrauschenbergamerica, Room, War of the Worlds, Cabin Pressure, War of the Worlds: The Radio Play, Alice’s Adventures, Culture of Desire, Bob, Going, Going, Gone, Small Lives/ Big Dreams, The Medium, Noel Coward’s Hay Fever and Private Lives, August Strindberg’s Miss Julie, and Charles Mee’s Orestes. Recent opera works include Bellini’s Norma, Bizet’s Carmen, and Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi. She is the author of five books: A Director Prepares, The Viewpoints Book, And Then You Act, Conversations with Anne, and What’s the Story.

SDC JOURNAL

| SUMMER 2014

ANNE BOGART since 1990

out to be true.” In this book, that chapter was Opposition. It was “the one that needed the most rewriting,” as Bogart couldn’t figure out exactly how to depict it. The chapter title with the most personal attachment was Heat, “which is about empathy, the heat of empathy. I think being empathetic to the act of empathy.” Heat begins with the passing of Bogart’s mother, and this is the most personal anecdote featured in What’s the Story. Bogart hopes that the many personal anecdotes included throughout the book will connect her to a larger audience of readers. “I have always thought that you can speak more clearly to people if you speak from your own experiences. So quite often in theatrical writing I start out with the story of how I learned what I know…I’ve had a lot of people in the past say that I am writing for them, that I express what they are thinking but haven’t actually articulated.” Her ultimate hope is to “create a dialogue within the world of theatre.” She hopes that every reader will take away “the fact that they have the power over their own story.” What’s the Story: Essays about art, theater and storytelling was published by Routledge on April 19, 2014.

WE ASKED OUR MEMBERS AROUND THE COUNTRY

What is the best career advice that you have received? Handle the hard stuff up front. It’s better to get all negotiations out of the way before you get emotionally or physically involved with a show. It will protect you in the end. And get it all in writing. DARIN ANTHONY since 2007 | Los Angeles, CA

Best career advice I ever got was from the chairman of my theatre department: Start your own theatre. Any place can be a theatre. Just do it! ROBERT CACIOPPO since

2002 | Fort Myers, FL

“Be generous.” - Mary B. Robinson LAUREN KEATING Assc. since 2005 | Brooklyn, NY

“Surround yourself with people who are better than you.” - Sheila Siragusa DOUG OLIPHANT Assc. since 2012 | North Hollywood, CA

Robert Woodruff, my grad school professor at Columbia and mentor, said to me when I asked him for career advice, “Always know what your next project is, and you’ll never not be working.” KEN RUS SCHMOLL since 2006 | Brooklyn, NY

From Anna D. Shapiro. She said (something like), “You don’t have a career, you have a life.” JOANIE SCHULTZ since 2012 | Chicago, IL

“You will always achieve your dreams,

Opera director William Ferrara offers the perfect resource for the dramatic preparation of opera scenes for directors and student performers.

just never in the way you planned.” - Ann Reinking

Available on Amazon.com

Write a brief response to SDCJournal@SDCweb.org for a chance to have your answer published in the Fall Issue.

DAVID VAUGHN since 2014 | Union City, NJ

NEXT ISSUE

What does an artistic home mean to you?

ANN REINKING since 1992 | MARY B. ROBINSON since 1984 | ANNA D. SHAPIRO since 2001 | ROBERT WOODRUFF since 1986

SUMMER 2014 | SDC JOURNAL

WHY I CAST THAT ACTOR

MARC BRUNI Marc Bruni on casting Jessie Mueller in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical I have a coding system I sometimes use on audition sheets. When an actor comes in who is clearly talented but wrong for the part, I write “NFT” (Not For This). Do I always get it right? Absolutely not. As directors, we’re constantly called upon to make big decisions based on incomplete and imperfect slivers of information. We see a hastily prepared audition, a résumé of un-witnessed accomplishments, perhaps a YouTube clip of the actor doing a Cialis commercial, and put our faith in the promise of a future character. In the best-case scenario, this gamble pays off and the actor comes through with a sterling performance. Other times, it may not work out, and I end up wishing I’d written “NFT.”

Central Park. Though her excellence in all three roles remained consistent, her look and characterizations did not, and in my visits to those shows, I’d failed to recognize that she was even the same person, resorting to regular Playbill bio consultation. While we were beginning our search for Carole, Jessie had just begun performances in Nice Work If You Can Get It. Her name was above the title so I did not need to consult my Playbill this time. Yet there she was again, brilliantly reinventing herself in the role of Billie Bendix, the tomboy bootlegger, originated beautifully by Kelli O’Hara. I was a fan of her chameleonic acting, but could she be Carole King? Could she even sing pop music?

Happily, I’ve had a recent instance of the former scenario. About a year ago, I got a call about directing a project based on the life and work of Carole King. The show was intended to feature the songs she wrote with her longtime lyricist and husband Gerry Goffin as well as the catalog of songs written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. Yet this show was not just a concert. It had real book scenes and a story written by Douglas McGrath that required talents beyond impersonation from whomever played Carole. She’d need to create a compelling and

We began auditions. Jessie was scheduled to come in, but canceled her appointment a day prior. Her schedule at Nice Work had prevented her from spending time learning our rather hefty audition packet. (For the role of Carole, the aspirants would sing two songs and read three contrasting scenes.) Meanwhile, we’d gotten strong interest from many of the most talented ladies in the Broadway community. The walls of Nola Studios shook from one powerful rendition of “Natural Woman” after another. By the second week, we knew we had several strong candidates who could deliver the show vocally.

endearing character with whom the audience would want to spend an evening. She’d need to be equally convincing at playing a 16-yearold precocious college student and a 27-yearold divorcée mother of two. She’d need to deliver 12 songs thrillingly in a way that didn’t distract from the memories of an audience full of rabid Tapestry fans. And she’d need to be available to start in three months. Already feeling behind, casting director Stephen Kopel and I went to work. One actress who’d repeatedly impressed us was a Chicago native, Jessie Mueller, who had come to New York when she was cast to play opposite Harry Connick in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. As the jazzy chanteuse, she garnered a Tony nomination and went on to play leading roles in The Mystery of Edwin Drood on Broadway and Into the Woods in

SDC SPRING JOURNAL 2014 | SDC | SUMMER JOURNAL 2014

Jessie rescheduled her audition. She came in on our final day and gave an emotionally honest, present, and compelling read of the scenes. She had a twinkle that made you believe her youth, yet she was equally strong in the scene where she needed to stand up to her philandering husband. Then she sang the songs. The same voice whose lush soprano had just recently lamented what it meant to be stuck “On the Steps of the Palace” was now, improbably, belting. Carole’s voice has a rasp to it, Jessie’s does not. Yet they seemed to share a longing and an emotional transparency. I just simply believed Jessie as Carole. And cared about her. She mesmerized and captivated all of us behind the table. As she left the room, I looked down at my audition sheet and wrote “OTW” (Off To Wardrobe). PHOTO

Joan Marcus

MARC BRUNI since 2008

IN TRANSITION

LAURA KEPLEY

HITTING THE GROUND RUNNING BY LARISSA

FASTHORSE

Laura Kepley began this past season as the ninth Artistic Director in Cleveland Play House’s 98-year history. By transitioning into the role from the Associate Artistic Director position, she has found both advantages and challenges to being a familiar face in the building.

The move from Associate Artistic Director to Artistic Director in the same organization is a rare one. How does an internal move into the role of Artistic Director affect your transition? It’s true that going from Associate Artistic Director to Artistic Director at the same organization is not very common. I feel very fortunate that our board of directors recognized me and saw that I was the right fit for the organization at this moment. CPH is undergoing a huge transformation. In 2011, we left the theatre building that had been our home for about 85 years and moved downtown in a very bold, forward-thinking, and collaborative move. As I joined the company in 2010, I got to meet the company and understand its past and incredible legacy while being a part of the bridge-making team as we moved into the future. One of the great advantages about having been here was that I was able to hit the ground running. I just programmed our 99th season, but I’m also right in the middle of programming our 100th anniversary season in 2015-16. Also, one of my first responsibilities when I stepped into the new position was crafting the five-year strategic plan, which included the centennial. Had I not had three years’ experience inside the organization, it would have been very difficult to jump right into that. I had been the Associate Artistic Director for three years, working with Michael Bloom when he was the Artistic Director. He always made time for my questions, and he generously explained his thought process to me. I was curious about the factors involved in his decision-making, and knowing that I wanted to be an artistic director someday, he shared his insights. I definitely learned from him and am grateful for his patience and mentorship. One concern I had about my internal promotion was that I wouldn’t get the opportunity to do all of the critical things that a new artistic director would do. Most new artistic directors get what I call a “listening period,” where they get to go out and meet new people, listen to people inside the company, and get an unbiased snapshot of the organization. I’ve tried to still have those conversations with people as though I were new. So I challenge myself to keep fresh eyes on everything.

Laura Kepley directing Vanessa Wasche in Venus in Fur at Cleveland Play House, 2013 PHOTO Taylor Chrichton MICHAEL BLOOM since 1986 | LAURA KEPLEY since 2008

SUMMER 2014 | SDC JOURNAL

But I have to say that’s easy to do because our company is in such transformation. On one hand, we’re 98 years old. But, on the other hand, as it’s only our third season in our new location, we’re only three! I am fortunate that our patrons and subscribers have been excited about my past work here, so I feel like I’m still getting the attention that somebody new coming in would get.

You’ve been working toward a leadership position for some time. Any advice for others looking to make the same leap? I think it’s important that if you are working inside a larger theatre organization that you make sure you’re going deep into your community. You do want to make sure that you have an eye on the national community to know what other theatres and what other artists are doing, but I think there’s a perception that you have to move in order to advance. I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I think that as long as you’re listening and plugged into the national conversation, you can learn and grow inside your organization. I’ve been extremely fortunate that I had great teachers and great artistic directors who have been mentors to me. Susan Booth at the Alliance; Curt Columbus at Trinity Rep; Oskar Eustis at the Public; Kevin Moriarty at Dallas Theater Center, among others.

Do you think being from Ohio affects how you are perceived or how you perceive your audiences and understand them?

who are from Cleveland are and bring them back home.

You seem very committed to honoring both those who mentored you and the vision of CPH. Can you speak to being one of a handful of female artistic directors at the regional theatre level? I loved the articles that were in the SDC Journal about women and leadership. I thought they were incredibly insightful and really inspirational. Being in this position is an honor and a huge responsibility. I bow to all of the people who gave me a chance. It’s women. It’s men. And I feel compelled to meet and follow emerging women directors and give them opportunities that were given to me. I think one of the things that I feel so fortunate about is there were a lot of people who saw

inclusive, welcoming, and that our community sees themselves and the full range of humanity onstage.

You will continue to direct, yes? Yes, next season, I’m directing the first and last play. We open with The Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman, who was the first female playwright I ever read.

Has becoming Artistic Director affected what you choose to direct and how you approach your process? I’ve been a part of season planning inside different organizations for about 10 years. In the past, my role in season planning was that of a provocateur—fiercely championing plays that I thought were brilliant, topical, innovative, and necessary. That hasn’t changed. But now I think more about how to connect these plays more deeply to our community. I think about how the work will speak to our community and how to invite the audience into the work. For some plays, we may have to work harder to find that audience, but that doesn’t mean that it is a play we shouldn’t do. I would say my directing interests and aspirations have stayed the same. I’m committed to new work and new plays. I’m committed to female playwrights. And even more now, in my new position, I’m interested in Midwestern stories, Midwestern writers, and the issues and concerns that resonate with folks in my community.

“

I feel compelled to meet and follow emerging women directors and give them opportunities that were given to me. I think one of the things that I feel so fortunate about is there were a lot of people who saw leadership potential in Do you have any advice for me before I saw it in myself. That’s huge.” women who are interested in leadership roles?

I grew up in Cincinnati—so complete opposite ends of the state, two very different communities. But two communities with very vital and long-standing regional theatres. During my turbulent adolescence, it was at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park where I truly found my voice and my community, my theatre people. It was a place of joy, discovery, connection, and freedom for me. It was my first artistic home and the teachings there set me on my life’s path. I would say having had that relationship helped me to understand what role and impact a regional theatre can have in people’s lives. There are so many great artists from Cleveland, and part of our centennial strategy is to nourish and support the artists who are here and to recruit new artists and get them to stay. And then the other aspect—what I call “the retrieval plan”—is to find where all those artists

leadership potential in me before I saw it in myself. That’s huge.

There has been a lot of talk about the lack of productions written and/or directed by women. As an artistic director, how do you balance diversity and your artistic vision? Our mission at CPH is to provide a wide variety of work that is smart, personal, provocative, entertaining, and socially relevant to our community. To me, it is imperative to have a multitude of ideas and a multiplicity of voices on our stages. When programming the season, I look closely at representation—whose stories are we telling? Who are the protagonists? Who are we literally placing center stage? It is my job to make sure that we are diverse,

Be yourself and trust yourself. For a long time I thought that as a director and as a leader I had to be something else to be the authority. Both male and female directors get all kinds of crazy advice about physical things you should change to be taken seriously. Ridiculous advice like changing your hair color or haircut. Young male directors are told, “Oh, grow a beard. You’ll look older. You’ll have more authority.” It’s taken me a long time to say, “I’m enough. I trust myself. Trust my gut.” I did get some fantastic advice from the CPH board chair during my transition. It was so simple. She said, “Just be yourself.” That was really liberating. PHOTO

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Roger Mastroianni

SUSAN BOOTH since 1998 | CURT COLUMBUS since 2011 OSKAR EUSTIS since 1997 | KEVIN MORIARTY since 1998

IN RESIDENCE

Kitty McNamee Builds a Career in LA

From the sandy beaches of Santa Monica Pier to the golden stars along Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, Los Angeles has been an artist’s beacon for more than a century. While perhaps most famously recognized as the film industry’s center, LA boasts an extensive performing arts scene—from Center Theatre Group to Rouge Machine—and more than 100 theatres call the City of Angels home. And yet, building a career as a freelance artist is as challenging here as anywhere, and stage choreographers are no exception. SDC Journal recently spoke to Kitty McNamee, choreographer and LA resident, about the unique professional life of a choreographer living and working in Los Angeles.

“Large-scale theatre work can be a little harder to come by because [theatres and producers] often bring productions in from elsewhere,” says McNamee. “Just getting in that door—like anywhere—is the biggest challenge.” McNamee has choreographed for multiple theatres across Southern California, including Hollywood Bowl, Reprise!, Theatre @ Boston Court, and Rubicon Theater in Ventura, and she has worked at the LA Philharmonic for over 10 years. She also has experience working in opera, regularly choreographing for LA Opera and San Francisco Opera. McNamee has coached and choreographed for well-known artists such as Julianne Hough, Will Kemp, Laura Marling, Margaret Cho, Vanessa Williams, Vittorio Grigolo, Lily Tomlin, Anna BY ALYSSA PHOTO

DVORAK

Erich Koyama

KITTY MCNAMEE since 2006

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Daniel Ezralow with USA assistants Yasmine Lee, Michael Pena + Tyler Gilstrap

Netrebko, Rolando Villazon, the boys of 90210, and the ladies of The L Word. Though working in traditional—and, in some cases, not-so-traditional—theatre work, McNamee wanted opportunities to further her own artistic development, and in 1997 she founded Hysterica Dance Co. to provide herself with the creative expression she sought as a choreographer. “My first love was contemporary dance, and I wanted an opportunity to develop my work in a larger format. I didn’t want to just get hired for a job and only do a tiny bit of a bigger piece. I wanted to generate more full-length projects; there are a lot of dancers here that work commercially, but the commercial work is a day here, a day there. We weren’t really getting to dance.” Hysterica recently traveled to Chicago for a performance with longtime collaborator Anna Clyne, composer for Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW concert. While McNamee estimates that 90% of her work keeps her within the limits of Los Angeles County, she has sought out opportunities that take her to the other parts of the world. In 2012, WET Design, a company dedicated to the design and implementation of cutting-edge water experiences, discovered McNamee’s talents at the LA Ballet and recruited her for a unique project. “I had been commissioned by LA Ballet to create new work for their NextWaveLA festival in 2012. During that

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project, a man named Jim Doyle, Director at WET, saw my work and recommended me for the job.” McNamee was hired to choreograph a water show for fountains at the Wynn Macau Hotel in China. “They had a water show running [already], but they wanted to see what else they could do with what they had, what other elements they might be able to add.” Choreographing with water was remarkably similar to choreographing with bodies. “The tempo that the water moves to, or the intensity with which the water is moving, is almost like bodies; it is very visceral.” Performance Lake, which holds the foundations at the Wynn Macau, has 200 water nozzles and holds 800,000 gallons of water.

Though challenging to establish a career based solely on traditional theatre in Los Angeles, the performing arts scene is ripe with possibility. “Make work as much as possible,” advises McNamee when asked if she has advice for other artists living and working on the West Coast. “Even if it’s for smaller companies or on your own, like I did with Hysterica—that way you can really build your chops and be ready for a job when the opportunity arises. Also, nurture the relationships you have when you’re starting, because typically those [are the ones that] grow and evolve.” Once that door opens, there is no telling how big a stage choreographer’s career can grow.

McNamee incorporated the culture of Macau into the piece, adding traditional elements such as a Chinese song called “Strut.” “We translated the song and incorporated its story, and we thought about the colors of China and Macau. It’s actually a very famous Chinese pop song—very culturally proud.” Earlier in 2013, McNamee once again worked with fountains, this time in LA where she choreographed site-specific works around the water elements at the Getty Center as part of Dance Camera West’s 2013 Film Festival. Other artists involved included Sarah Elgart, Daniel Ezralow, and Tony Testa.

DANIEL EZRALOW since 1995

ENVISIONING CHANGE An Introduction to SDC’s Diversity Task Force BY MARK

DUNCAN

“What would you like to see change?”

This was the first question posed to the members of SDC’s newly formed Diversity Task Force at its inaugural meeting held on April 2, 2014. This group of 13 directors and choreographers has been assembled to look at the issues related to diversity and how they specifically impact SDC and its Membership, and then to determine how to create meaningful change within the Union’s sphere of influence and within the industry at large. The Task Force is composed of a disparate group of artists, with different backgrounds, experiences, and ideas, working all across the country. From current Executive Board Members to established mid-career artists, and even non-Members, the group represents a wide range of thought. As a means of introduction, below is a summary of how each member of the Task Force responded to the question above:

WENDY C. GOLDBERG since 2001 | LISA PORTES since 1999

Wendy C. Goldberg

“I am particularly interested in artistic leadership positions. As a female Artistic Director [of the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center], I am interested in how we can create meaningful change at the top. I also think it would be incredibly helpful for SDC to have a strong stance, a point of view when it comes to diversity. This would be an effective tool to unite and organize the Membership behind a common goal.”

Lisa Portes

“I head an MFA Directing program [at the Theatre School at DePaul University]. Since I took on a leadership role, the program has taken on a more diverse composition, averaging approximately half of each class being of ethnicity. I am a woman of color and I am interested in supporting young directors of color. I want to find ways to build bridges between leadership and directors of color, bridges of trust and curiosity.”

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Mark Lamos

“I would like to see more diversity in regional theatre staff members— management, tech, development, etc. Diverse staffing not only enhances the perspectives of the theatre’s quotidian efforts, but it also enriches the workplace environment in ways that cannot easily be described. But I know from experience this to be so.”

Karen Azenberg

“Speaking as a new Artistic Director [at Pioneer Theatre in Salt Lake City], one of the biggest challenges I face in terms of hiring is how to meet new directors and choreographers and learn about their work. How can we make it easier for artistic directors to meet artists who are different from [who] they are, given the time and budget restraints many of us face?”

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Kathleen O’Rourke

“I want to combat the idea that diversity is merely a special interest group. There’s a perception that ‘diverse’ artists can only work on projects that relate specifically to their race/ethnicity, gender, etc. Minority artists do bring additional perspectives to their work, but the core of any artist is human. We are just as capable of working on projects that aren’t about our specific experience as anybody else. I’d like us to work to keep these artists from getting pigeonholed and for those doing the hiring to not think that hiring minority artists for non-minority projects will undermine the artistic integrity of the piece.”

Talvin Wilks

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Adam Nadel

“I’d like for all of us to understand the ecosystem in which we’re working and to acknowledge all the collective efforts to address issues, seeing these as threads of the same tapestry. In the past, these conversations felt divisive and combative, but because diversity has become part of the consciousness of the mainstream, it’s possible for us to be more collaborative and have a greater chance for success.”

Seema Sueko

Joseph Haj

“I am also on LORT’s Diversity Task Force and on TCG’s Board of Directors, so I am very aware of the numerous efforts related to diversity in the field. I want to encourage us to think of ways to not work just in our own silo. To create meaningful change, we have to be able to work together and keep lines of communication open between these various efforts. I think connectivity will be key.” PHOTO

Andrea Akin

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Christopher Ashley

“I would like to see the leadership of theatres across the nation become more diversified. In thinking about this type of leadership, we also need to consider the leadership of our Union as well and work to have more artists of color represented on our Executive Board. As others have mentioned, I’d like to see coordination between this Task Force and other initiatives across the field.”

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Donald Byrd

Crissy Pascual

“When theatres are looking to hire artists and administrators, particularly in senior leadership positions, I like them to know that I (and others) have lists of possible female candidates and candidates of color that I’m always willing to send and with whom I can share their job opportunity. I’d like to see more peers serve as connectors in this way. I read an article in the Harvard Business Review that discusses ‘bias for,’ which describes the underlying biases that people have to hire people that look like themselves. This can play a role with audiences and institutional boards as well. I would like to see us break through this dynamic through intentional training of ourselves and our industry.”

Chay Yew

“I’ve had a great deal of success with my board [at Victory Gardens Theatre] with matters related to diversity when I’ve explained it through the lens of how it aligns with the mission of the theatre. We need to see diversity on our boards, our staffs, and on our stages. Diversity isn’t just an issue; it’s a reality and a true reflection of our country. We need to encourage others to do the same if we are going to move forward as a field that leads national dialogue. I would also like to see more mentorship and grooming opportunities between artistic leaders and emerging artists of color, whether formal or informal. I look forward to the wonderful and needed journey that this Task Force will take together.”

Co-Chairs Michael John Garcés and Seret Scott began the conversation with the above question in an effort to assess the hopes of each member of the group, which clearly are many and varied, as well as to keep the group focused on the larger objectives. Scott noted, “Part of the challenge is how to begin this conversation when so many of us have been engaged time and again, and while there has been some success, it often has felt futile. What’s different is SDC’s engagement; with the support of the Union it is possible to imagine real change.” Diversity is a topic that has gained prominence in the field a number of times, most notably in the mid-to-late 1980s with the Non-Traditional Casting Project, which brought to light issues of racial discrimination in the employment of actors. As the nation and our culture have continued to evolve, with race, ethnicity, gender, and diversity becoming more and more a part of the collective consciousness, these conversations have continued to progress in various forms—from more culturally inclusive casting and the composition of audiences to diversity in season selection and, more recently, the leadership of institutions and employment patterns of directors and choreographers. After hearing from a number of Members who expressed concerns related to matters of diversity, the SDC Executive Board decided to form the Task Force in order to fully examine these issues with a range of voices at the table. As Executive Director Laura Penn says, “SDC as a labor organization and as a ‘society’ must represent the critical issues of our Membership and diversity is one such issue.” In addition to addressing a director’s and/or choreographer’s role in diversity with respect to casting, the stories being told, and aesthetics, the Diversity Task Force has been charged with specifically addressing the question of how SDC can use its stature to create broader, deeper access to jobs, leadership positions, and other positions of influence for all of its Members, with particular attention paid to underrepresented communities such as artists of color and women. As the meeting progressed, the Task Force began to discuss the ideas brought up in each of the above responses, the challenges associated with them, and what opportunities there might be for change to begin. One of the main tenets of the conversation became an idea brought up by Talvin Wilks of “activating success”— highlighting success stories and encouraging others to use these instances as a model for future successes. By doing so, Wilks believes it will keep the Task Force from becoming discouraged or weary. This thought was echoed by Seema Sueko, who says she would like to see more press about success stories rather than only having the more negative articles and blog posts gaining traction. Another idea presented was how some of these goals may intersect with the SDC Foundation. For example, the issue Karen Azenberg mentioned regarding artistic directors not having the means to travel to get to know more working artists could potentially be relieved by

MICHAEL JOHN GARCÉS since 2001 | SERET SCOTT since 1989

creating travel grants. Mentorship opportunities for mid-career and emerging artists of color could also be supported through Foundation programming. In the spirit of challenging the Task Force to think boldly, Lisa Portes brought up the idea of setting a challenge to theatres and producers at some point in the future. “In my work, I’ve always found that when you get a group of people working toward a goal that seems too big, that’s when you have the greatest successes,” says Portes. The Task Force began discussing the idea of setting quotas and the positives and negatives of doing so. “It’s a tangible means of measurement and I think that’s really the only way for us to get everyone thinking about the underrepresented artists,” says Sueko. In response, Donald Byrd discussed his process as a choreographer and how he is able to achieve results from his dancers. “I don’t give my dancers counts because if you give dancers counts, they are just trying to hit those marks, and since the ultimate goal is not to merely hit your mark but to dance together, it demands a higher level of thinking. The same should be true of any diversity work as well. We want to change the ways of thinking so that we’re all working together instead of just trying to fulfill a quota.” As the conversation progressed, overarching goals began to emerge as priorities for the work moving forward. While these may grow and change, the Task Force agreed that the goals below represent a solid foundation from which some actionable steps can be created in order to realize change. These initial goals are: 1) To create a public position statement on diversity for SDC 2) To support increased hiring in leadership and freelance positions 3) To connect with industry partners

4) To provide opportunities for current artistic directors to get to know the work of artists with whom they are unfamiliar 5) To support mid-career artists

6) To celebrate success stories with written praise and encouragement “It was provocative and productive,” said Garcés after the meeting. “There are many differences of opinion and divergent ideas about what should be prioritized, but I know our Membership is comprised of people who are uniquely skilled at creating constructive conversations out of difference. It’s what we do. That is what will make SDC an integral part of the diversity efforts happening in the field, and I’m really honored and inspired that this accomplished group of directors and choreographers is undertaking this difficult work.”

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Complex Cultural Rhythms + Nuances AN INTERVIEW W/LOU BELLAMY BY TED SOD

LOU BELLAMY has been at the helm of the Penumbra Theatre Company for almost 40 years. Founded on the tenets of the Black Arts Movement, his work at Penumbra has been a bellwether for the myriad incarnations of black life on stage. In this interview conducted by actor/director and dramaturge TED SOD, Lou talks about Penumbraâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s history, the challenges of portraying African American life in the theatre, and his plans to hand over the running of the theatre to his daughter, Sarah. ABOVE

Lou Bellamy + daughter Sarah PHOTO Ann Marsden

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LOU BELLAMY since 2000 | TED SOD since 2003

TED | You started the Penumbra Theatre Company in 1976—what does “penumbra” mean? LOU | It’s a Latin word; it means partial shadow. TED | What led you to start a theatre company and what did you hope to accomplish? LOU | First of all, as in almost everything in life, things sort of line up and back you into a corner. And then you end up doing them. That’s what happened to me and Penumbra. The theatre is in the same room that it has been in for 38 years. It is a lecture hall that we turned into a theatre. It’s located in the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center. The community center had procured a CETA grant. CETA was an acronym for Concentrated Employment and Training Act. It was a program rather like the WPA, the Work Projects Administration. It was put together to put people to work. But it also maintained the intellectual trust that existed in various communities. The community center was awarded a $150,000 CETA grant and hired me to administer it. Out of that grew Penumbra Theatre. TED | Was it always your intention to start a theatre that had its emphasis on African American work? LOU | At the time we began PTC, I had been professionally acting and directing for some time. I was finishing graduate school, and myself and a number of other black artists in the area had become totally dissatisfied with the depiction of African Americans on the Twin City stages. Our dissatisfaction was simply a microcosm of what was going on in the rest of the nation. Before the founding of Penumbra, black stories were told in Twin Cities’ theatres as an addendum to an American narrative. We were rather tired of that. The stories were one-dimensional. They didn’t explore the complexity of the human condition, of black life. So when I had this opportunity, I elected to tell a story that was broader. I wanted to construct an American narrative that had African Americans at the center of it rather than at the periphery. TED | Penumbra is almost 40 years old. What do you attribute to its longevity besides yourself? LOU | When we began to tell these stories and let this community speak, it emboldened all of us. Penumbra was founded on the tenets of the Black Arts Movement—that’s what guided me. When those people began to speak, it not only changed the content of theatre, but changed the style of it as well. The way we went about the work was very, very different because many of these people, to whom we were giving voice, were angry. The drama spilled off the stage and into the audience. We were acting in the aisles and anywhere else that would arrest the attention of the community—that sort of thing. The more of it we did, the more the style became clearer and more defined. It is based on the complex cultural rhythms and nuances of African American behavior. It began to grow and we became known for a kind of confrontational experience that I think is still relevant today. Some have termed it “the Penumbra effect.” Whenever I direct, no matter where I am, and I direct in major regionals across the country, that style informs my choice. I direct as though there are no one but black people in the house. The play is directed for them. So that provides a kind of authenticity, a cultural integrity that is palpable. Everyone feels it and everyone knows that they’re seeing something a little different. TED | What type of material did you start with in the early days? LOU | The first play we did was Eden by Steve Carter, which looked at immigration from the islands, the Caribbean. The way those people interacted with the resident African American community. I choose projects that reflect issues relevant to the black community and that have a social justice imperative. We’ve just finished a production of The Ballad of Emmett Till. People were impressed with the relevancy of that play. We’ve done Zooman and the Sign. And it was relevant as well. People remarked, “My gosh, how did you know that this young black male was going to be killed in our community?” Well, unfortunately, the issues raised in both of these plays reflect what is continually happening inside the black community. I try to reflect that. TED | I read that Penumbra went to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. in 2011. What show did you take there? LOU | An original play written by Dominic Taylor entitled I Wish You Love. It was a piece that he’d written about Nat King Cole. The larger statement was that even someone who scaled the heights that Nat King Cole did was still subjected to the same sort of racism that was happening at the time. Dominic was careful, through film footage and in text, to juxtapose the exploding civil rights movement with the conflict between Nat Cole and his producers. DOMINIC TAYLOR Assc. since 2008

TED | He was one of the first blacks to have his own television show. LOU | He was. And he was largely censored because he touched a white woman during a broadcast. TED | I remember reading about that. I’ve directed Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill and just reading about Billie’s life in order to prepare for that show made me realize how horrendous it was for black artists in the ’50s. LOU | It’s important to keep in mind that our business is a microcosm of our larger society. The same intolerance that exists out in the world happens in our business. Thank heaven for people like Lorraine Hansberry and some others who have shown that the human condition can be plumbed to its depth inside of the African American experience. Indeed, that’s what Shakespeare was doing, that’s what Chekhov was doing—they were being very, very specific. And that specificity, of course, leads to what we call the universal. TED | I read about your time in D.C. and that you and your staff diligently tried to get politicians to see the work. Was that successful? LOU | I think moderately. We had several important people who came to the show. I did want very much for our president to be there, but I recognize how difficult it is for him to attend any public outing. I wanted him to see work done by the largest black theatre in the country, the theatre that gave early support to August Wilson and so very many others who are shaping American theatre today. The Congressional Black Caucus supported the event, and several of those people came to the opening night. Washington, D.C., is for me, a midwestern country boy, like Disneyland. You walk around and these towering figures are just walking down the street next to you. We were sold out for most of the performances. That hasn’t translated to the kind of national support that I would have expected. We’re still working on it. I think that the work isn’t done. Michael Kaiser, who was president of Kennedy Center at the time, has been very helpful. TED | You’re often referred to in articles I’ve read as “a visionary.” Do you see yourself that way? LOU | If I am, I am only so because I’m standing on the shoulders of some people who have allowed me to see from an informed perspective. I’ve been fortunate in that I’m still around many of the artists who began this company with me, and I think that’s really important because as you SUMMER 2014 | SDC JOURNAL

begin to grow, if you don’t have informed criticism around you, you find yourself surrounded by sycophants and so forth, and, of course, everything you do is wonderful. And that isn’t the case for anybody I know. So I’ve had some checks and balances from our community and from artists that keep me grounded. And I think that’s been my strength, if I have one. TED | Do you feel like you would have done anything differently if you had the chance to do it over? LOU | I think that I probably would have called Penumbra “The St. Paul Black Repertory Company,” or something like that. I wouldn’t have been as clandestine with my objectives as I felt I had to be. I think that was a reflection of the times. I was doing theatre that reflected the knowledge and the power of the Black Arts Movement, but I still needed to go to foundations for support. It’s a bit difficult to get foundations or the government to fund the revolution. TED | Very true. Do you feel like the mission of the company has evolved over time, or do you feel like it’s the same as when it began? LOU | I have to say yes and no to that. Many of the issues that we were dealing with are still present. We’d like to think that we have evolved past them, but we haven’t. You may or may not know that Penumbra hit a financial wall in 2012. TED | I read about it, yes.

And for an artistic director to say “this is not our expertise and there are some people who know how to do this better than I”—that is unusual. And, of course, major companies do that all the time by bringing in the Royal Shakespeare Company, for example. But to admit that there is a black company who can do this work better and bring a cultural relevance to the work, and that’s what we want to share with our audience—that takes a special kind of courage, I think. TED | Does the Twin Cities have a sizable African American community?

LOU | I just said, “Look, we’ve got a $500,000 deficit here. People are waiting at the door to be paid when I come to work. I just can’t do it any longer.” In the old days, I would mortgage my home, or take out a second mortgage to make payroll and all that sort of stuff. But it was just too big for me to fix, and for a few of the people who cared very much about it to fix.

LOU | I think it’s about 5.5%.

So we just stopped, and we said, “If you think that this place is worth saving, we need help.” And out of that came an outpouring of support that surprised me. It just humbled me.

LOU | I was born in Chicago. But I was raised here. The theatre that I run is blocks from where I grew up as a child. So I’ve been here a long time.

We had to go back and review our vision and see if it still had relevance—if people still believed in those goals and so forth. And as a founder, I had some trepidation about that—that’s mildly put. But we did it. Our board of directors reaffirmed their allegiance and commitment to the mission. And we raised over half a million dollars in six months. So it was amazing. We artists often think that we are in the battle alone. It was wonderful to see so many artists and community members standing side by side with us. And I don’t know what to say about that except thank you and that the work isn’t done. TED | Is that around the time that the relationship with the Guthrie Theatre started? How did that happen? LOU | You may have also read in your research about me that I wrote an article once entitled “The Colonization of Black Theatre in America.” TED | You mean the idea that big regional theatres would usually do one black play a year—and it was usually a play by August Wilson? LOU | Or usually the most commercial play or musical and so forth. That there was an unfortunate hegemony exerted by larger, whiter organizations on the work created by and the perceptions of African American work. What guides the relationship that we have often had with the Guthrie and in any of the co-productions with major regionals that I do all around the country is that the partners acknowledge that Penumbra brings a degree of authenticity and experience to the work and (with our partners) we are determined to do something together that neither of us could do alone. TED | Which is a great way to think of it. LOU | I think so. It recognizes our cultural and intellectual authenticity and expertise and it opens the work up to a wider audience. It uses resources that we may have or may not have. And I think it takes a special courage for an artistic director to allow that.

Because you see the way funding guidelines are often constructed, one feels one has to be the expert, and one has to be doing something that no one else is doing. One has to find one’s niche. An AD has to get over the fear that partnering to extend one’s capacity and artistic reach might give the impression that one is incapable of doing the work alone.

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TED | Really, that’s fascinating to me. And you were born there, correct?

TED | You started as an actor—where were you working when you started as an actor, in Chicago? LOU | No, here in the Twin Cities. I got into theatre just by accident. I went to a college in a small town in Minnesota where, at the time, they had a city ordinance that blacks couldn’t own land inside the city limits. This was in 1962. At any rate, there was a professor there by the name of Ted Paul who was doing Finian’s Rainbow and he didn’t want to do it in black face. So he came up to the dorm where we were all staying in, all four or five black people in the town. And he drafted us into the show. I discovered that I had some talent and there were more girls in the theatre than there were on the track team, and that there were words already written to say to them. So it worked out really well—I liked to show off and so forth.

I didn’t have an undergraduate degree in theatre; my degree was in psychology and sociology. After graduation I came to the Twin Cities and I started acting and doing voiceover work—you sort of paint yourself into a corner. I had an opportunity to go to graduate school and I did as an actor. I played the roles in plays that I should have played: Dutchman, Othello, all that sort of stuff. I was a sought-after actor and I parlayed that. People wanted me to act in their season, so I said, “Okay, I’ll act in your show if you’ll give me a slot directing in your next season.” And that’s the way I got into directing. As far as running a company, being an actor really influences the way I view actors and the way I direct. I respect them tremendously—they’re the bravest people I know. I feel that I really take care of them. I make sure that they’re well watered, fed, and not put away wet. I say that with the deepest respect. They are the horses that pull our wagon. Having been an actor really influences my choices. Sometimes I’ll be stymied as a director. And I’ll walk onto the stage and stand where that actor is and suddenly I know what the right choice should be because I was trained as an actor. TED | Will you talk to me a bit about how you prepare to direct? It sounds like it’s very actorcentric. Do you do a lot of research? Does it change from show to show, text to text? LOU | I think what makes my work different is I am willing to do that research; I’m willing to be amazed by black countenance. I expect it to be intelligent; I’m not surprised by that. There’s an egalitarian approach; I do ensemble work. And that starts way before one goes to the stage. Ensemble work starts in hiring, it starts in press releases, it starts way before you get to the stage and begin to create anything. I’m always mindful that the people I’m putting on that stage are real people; they’re not constructs. I have a responsibility to them to tell that story correctly. And I don’t take that lightly. People will often say when you take a playwright like August Wilson, whose work has been done, and done, and done—people will see a production of mine and say, “I’ve never really seen the play, I thought I’d seen it, but I hadn’t really.” It happened when I went to New York and did Two Trains Running at Signature. That is not a new play by any means, but two of us won OBIES for that production.

Lou Bellamy + August Wilson

THE BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT Amiri Baraka, a writer and activist, started the Black Arts Movement after the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965. The Movement, which

So this informed attention to cultural nuance and detail really pays off, because it frees the script and allows the intent of the author to come through. But the demands are different in each of the pieces. You do an August Wilson play and you’re going to have to do some research, because August has done a tremendous amount of research. And you’ve got to catch up to that.

lasted until 1975, led to the creation of African

I think that too many people of all persuasions believe they understand what the African American ethos is. And they’ve only scratched the surface; frankly, they’ve only seen what African Americans have allowed them to see. I usually paraphrase that poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar:

movement include unity, self-determination,

“We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes… Nay, let them only see us while we wear the mask.” TED | You produced Wilson’s first professional production—correct? LOU | Yes, a play called Black Bart in the Sacred Hills. It was a compilation of a lot of his poetry that he put together under the watchful eye of Claude Purdy. TED | What made you realize that his writing was something to be reckoned with so early in his career? LOU | I think there was a truth there. And Claude was a marvelous director and just a towering intellect. Claude convinced me that there was more there than what I was seeing. I’ve got to tell you, that show was largely unsuccessful. The play was a takeoff on Lysistrata. It was set in the Old West and these women, of course, were withholding sexual favors until the men stopped fighting. And women walked out of that play in droves. And I remember saying, “I don’t think I can ever do one of August Wilson’s plays again. Our funding is going to go away.” That shows you how wrong I could be.

CLAUDE PURDY d.2009

American poetry, books, magazines, theatres, African American studies departments at universities, etc. Characteristics of the and separation from European ideology. “The Black Arts Movement is radically opposed to any concept of the artist that alienates him from his community. This movement is the aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power concept. As such, it envisions an art that speaks directly to the needs and aspirations of Black America. In order to perform this task, the Black Arts Movement proposes a radical reordering of the western cultural aesthetic. It proposes a separate symbolism, mythology, critique, and iconology. The Black Arts and the Black Power concept both relate broadly to the Afro-American’s desire for self determination and nationhood. Both concepts are nationalistic. One is concerned with the relationship between art and politics; the other with the art of politics.” – Larry Neal’s “The Black Arts Movement” in Drama Review, Summer 1968 (Part One of Three, excerpts) SUMMER 2014 | SDC JOURNAL

PHOTO

Allen Weeks

TED | Of August’s plays, you’ve directed quite a few that depict African American life in the 20th century. LOU | Yes, acted in, directed, and/or produced. And some that aren’t part of the 20th century, plays like Black Bart. August wrote a one-man show expressly for me to act about Malcolm X. So some of the plays you know about, some I don’t know will ever see the light of day again. I’ve got to say, I can see August standing out in the hall of our theatre right now, telling great tales about what he was going to do. I remember him talking about Levee in Ma Rainey, and he was up on a chair and describing how he was going to write that monologue where Levee calls down God. And I remember saying, “August, man, you can’t do that; you just can’t say stuff like that!” And he was grinning and he said, “I’m a do it, man, I’m a do it.” I remember August came to see a production of Two Trains that I had directed in Kansas City. When Memphis throws out Hambone, I direct it as a violent act; it’s over-the-top violent. I have him throwing trash cans at him and he really hurts him. It’s an overreaction. And August sat there and he watched it, and he said, “You know if I’d had been here I wouldn’t let you do that.” And I said, “Well, it’s done now. I don’t know what we can do about it.” And he said, “But you’re right. You’re absolutely right. You love Memphis even more when you see that happen.” I was selected the next day to direct the play in New York. TED | Do you have a favorite play of August’s? LOU | I think that each one of them has something special. It might be a special performance. I directed a production of Seven Guitars that was so wonderful that I may not ever want to do the play again. I played Troy Maxson twice, once for about eight months. When I began, I hated it, I hated Troy Maxson, I hated men like that, men that hold a family hostage. But when I began to get in there and find out more about myself as well as Troy Maxson, I began to love it. It became the singular most enjoyable acting experience of my life. TED | What newer writers are you excited about? Whose works are you interested in now? LOU | Dominique Morisseau; she can really write. She reminds me of an Ed Bullins. She’s writing and using a population of everyday people, not the elite or anything like that. I just love her work, I love her voice. I’ve read some of Katori Hall’s work that I really like. I think she’s got an original

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voice, it’s just totally hers. Radha Blank, Ifa Bayeza, Javon Johnson—those are some of the folks. TED | Do you have any advice to offer others who are running or may want to run an arts organization of color? LOU | I think that the tenets of the Black Arts Movements are useful. One of the tenets, which has guided me over the years, is that the black artist, or for that matter any artist, must eschew anything that separates him or her from their community. That’s an important, important benchmark. Various forces conspire to do that all the time. For example, as a black artist, I’ve heard, you’re an exception. Come out here, we’re going to make something out of you. Come and work here. It’s as though one ambassador from the community can bring the whole community to that organization. So I would caution anyone about that, I’d say stay close to your community. W.E.B. Du Bois cautioned the black artist to stay near their community. The other thing I’d say is that one must learn to follow one’s heart, and believe in that. When the muse strikes, it doesn’t hit you with a baseball bat; it’s very, very subtle, and very soft. And you have to learn to listen for that and be open to it when it happens. I think that one has to find out what opens the door for the muse and place oneself in that position as often as one can.

I think that you also have to study, and read, and be busy about interrogating the work that you want to do and life itself. I don’t think you can live it prophylactically; I think you have to get into it. And those are the things that bring out, I think, good work and leadership.

TED | I wanted to ask you a bit about your experience teaching. Did you see yourself as a teaching artist?

There are skills for leadership that I’m still learning. I’ve learned to trust that inner voice, the indefinable part of you that puts things together in a way that only you can see. People will say to me when they see a production I’ve directed, “How did you think of that? That is so unique.”

LOU | Oh, yes, of course, I did. I taught theatre history. I remember a turning point in my career when, as a teacher, I learned to let students into me. You can hold that material between you and the student and I did that for many years. And when I allowed them to know me, I became a better teacher.

Well, I’m loath to tell them it’s the only thing I thought of. It’s just the way I view the world. And one can’t be afraid of that, to put one’s view of the world into the work. I don’t think that theatre is about theatre. It’s about people. I’m 70 years old; so to say this might sound like a case of arrested development. But I still feel that my grandmother, my mother, aunts, and fathers are watching me, and I don’t want to do anything that embarrasses them. I have a responsibility to tell the truth about this work, and to find the beauty in the people. And it’s always helped me, especially since there are so many people that will pay you to show or overemphasize the underbelly of this experience or the ugliness of black life, and it’s certainly there. We’ve all got warts. It sounds corny, but I feel the need to make those elders proud and to not embarrass them. TED | How do you juggle running a theatre, teaching at the University of Minnesota, directing, and now preparing to hand over leadership of Penumbra to your daughter, Sarah? Are you supremely organized? LOU | No, hell no! I’m not teaching full time anymore; I’m retired from that. TED | I see, but you did teach for quite a while. LOU | I taught for 40 years at the university level. But now I am a co-artistic director, and that is really true. My daughter is shaping our seasons, and our offerings, and so forth. She grew up in the theatre; she played the little girl in Fences when I played the role of Troy years ago. I carried her on stage as a baby. So she’s been here her whole life. She takes what has come before her very, very seriously. She’s a student of history and she wants to build. August Wilson has a saying: “I’m standing in my grandfather’s shoes.” She understands that I’ve done an amount of work. Some of it, as we’ve said, I might want to take back or amend. But at least I’ve carried this as far as I can carry it. And her job now is to go on from there and take the good from that and make more of it. I’m very proud that she’s doing it. TED | It sounds like the perfect fit. She understands all about Penumbra and its history. LOU | You know, it’s a dangerous venture for someone to come into an arts organization after a founder. So we’re being very, very perspicacious, very careful about her implementing her ideas while I’m here so that I can help her make the transition to them, so that no one would challenge her about mission or anything like that. But it is different; she’s got her own point of view and I respect it. I look across the country and you see there is a plateau that these organizations of color reach, and that’s because they’ve exhausted all the foundation, government, and state funding. They get to a certain place and then stall. They can’t get past that. So many times there are external forces that make a founder have to stay in that position. TED | Will you really retire?

I taught directing and I think I was quite honest. I said, “I don’t know whether I can teach directing. But I think if you follow me around you’ll learn something.” And it proved to be a way of really educating some people and opening up some doors for them. TED | Did some of your students ultimately become part of the company? LOU | Some of them are running organizations of their own. The first August Wilson Fellow that I taught is Faye Price; she runs the Pillsbury House Theatre here in town. I directed Marion McClinton in his first production. TED | What do you see as the future of black voices on the American stage? Do you feel confident that it’s going to get better, or do you feel like we’re in a stasis? LOU | I think that to some degree putting a black body on stage is still a transgressive event. I think that there are valuable stories and valuable nuances to be shared from any culture. And I think that will go on and be as deep as the people. To say that the social justice work is done, that there still isn’t some marginalization in this society is to ignore the truth. I think that there are just too many talented artists in too many places and they’re not going to shut up. These artists are so damned unruly, they won’t line up. So that will continue to happen. And there are just wonderful stories being told.

LOU | I’ve exacted a commitment from Sarah that she’ll hire me as a director. The way we’re constructing the passing of this baton is that I will gradually minimize my role in running the organization, and she will maximize hers. And she’s bringing an integrated approach that I never could accomplish. She’s an educator. My knowledge has a theoretical base, but is more craft-oriented and experiential. She’s based in a lot more theory and pedagogy. And she is integrating all of the main stage productions with educational initiatives. And it’s taking on a kind of a power that I wasn’t able to accomplish. I’m really proud of it.

MARION MCCLINTON since 1992

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Macbeth at Illinois Shakespeare Festival directed by Robert Quinlan PHOTO Pete Guither

“It’s all about the intermingling of a community, beautiful text, gorgeous design, and these amazing stories. There’s something about the communion between the audience, the actors, and the air that is somehow worth all the deprivation, challenge, and inconvenience. It’s magic, and that’s such a clichéd word, but there’s an extraordinary alchemy that is particular to outdoor Shakespeare.” JESSICA KUBZANSKY

The Alchemy of Sum mer

Shakesp eare BY ELIZABETH

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NELSON

Magic is a word often avoided for its overuse and banality, yet it tends to surface repeatedly in conversations involving summer outdoor Shakespeare festivals. For theatre directors working—and sometimes living—in the communities where these festivals call home, the opportunity to direct the Bard’s work in the open night air provides a special connection to the text, the directorial process, and the audiences that gather in the grass as witnesses. Themes of community, beauty, preservation, and connection run through a great number of their mission statements, all dedicated to ultimately the same goal: to bring the work of William Shakespeare to the people under the stars in the setting most befitting his poetry, drama, and humor. More than 100 theatres carry membership with the Shakespeare Theatre Association (STA), an organization dedicated to acting as an advocate for productions and training centered around Shakespeare, and more emerge every summer. Many festivals foster comprehensive education and outreach programs, from academic training to after-school performances and workshops, all designed to deepen understanding and nurture appreciation for the text and supporting crafts. For many theatregoers, a night at their local Shakespeare in the Park is their singular annual trip to the theatre; it is an access point for many young artists and an opportunity for all to experience the magic of Shakespeare’s plays. SDC Journal spoke with five summer festivals across the country, taking a brief “snapshot” of their history, community impact, and artistic process.

Cooke City-Silver Gate, MT

MONTANA SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARKS “There’s a place called Birney, MT. You spend 45 minutes on a dirt road to get to Birney, but that’s not where you’re playing. You drive up to the top of a butte—another half an hour on a dirt road—and from the top of that butte, there are no signs of civilization for 360 degrees. The first time I went up there as an actor, I thought, this is a joke! Who’s going to come? So we set up—we travel with a sort of portable Elizabethan stage—and then a trail of dust appears in the distance and 250 people show up. It was astonishing.” WILLIAM BROWN since 2004

Director William Brown first joined Montana Shakespeare in the Parks (MSIP) as an actor in 1980. Thirteen years later, after embarking on his directing career, he was hired to direct The Comedy of Errors. His time spent on tour as a performer provided valuable insight and experience to his directing process for MSIP. “I did three seasons as an actor,” he says. “I was still in grad school at the time, and nothing really prepared me for the event of it because nothing can. We rehearse, and the costumes and sets are built in Bozeman, MT—that’s home base—then a group of actors pile into a van with a truck and a trailer and hit the road. We take care of

everything—there’s no stage management, no technical support. It’s complete autonomy. We played all rural communities, border towns. In some of the bigger towns, we played to 2,000 people.” Since 1973, when a group of students and community members joined to present a variety of Shakespearean scenes—touring them through seven cities, beginning in hometown Bozeman—MSIP has presented over 2,150 performances for nearly 75,000 theatregoers. Founded by Dr. Bruce Jacobsen, MSIP is a fully professional touring theatre program, traveling to approximately 60 communities each summer in Montana, northern Wyoming, eastern Idaho, western North Dakota, and eastern Washington. SUMMER 2014 | SDC JOURNAL

DOING IT RIGHT

A Story by William Brown I did All My Sons last summer here at American Players Theatre (APT) in Wisconsin, and understandably, in a Midwest town, All My Sons landed in a way that you would expect. Well, [right around closing], I got a call from some of the actors who had been touring The Recruiting Officer by Farquhar, which I directed for Montana Shakespeare in the Parks. It’s an 18th-century English comedy, and I happen to think that there’s some great, extraordinary 18th-century English comedy that has far more depth than people will probably allow for. It’s about—like the title says—a time in Farquhar’s life when he took a job as a recruiting officer, went to rural communities in England, and did anything and everything to get boys to sign up for stupid, meaningless wars in Europe. Even used the same slogans [that are used today]: “Be all you can be,” “Find your destiny,” “Become a man.” All of those are in the play, and music and songs, and it’s not unlike recruiting right now. It’s very, very funny, but it ends with, “There they go. These boys are going off to war.” Which I think is a sobering image. I told [The Recruiting Officer cast] this story, that not many years earlier, right at the height of the war in Iraq, I went to this tiny little town called Boulder, MT—if it has 500 people in it, I’d be surprised—and when I got out of my car, I looked up and on every pole up and down the street were plywood yellow ribbons. There were 26 of them. That town of 500 people had 26 soldiers in Iraq. And you think, that’s how it gets done, isn’t it? There aren’t a lot of jobs there. Not much of a future. I told that to the cast and they heard me, and I think they believed me, but not down in their souls completely. And then they played Boulder, Mont., later that summer, and this is when they called me [while I was at APT]. When they got out of the car, there were 92 yellow ribbons up and down the street. It was so sobering to them that after the show the company manager came out, thanked everyone, and he told them that story. And this group, this community, which had laughed their asses off during the play, was suddenly moved to tears. And that’s the opportunity that something like Montana Shakespeare in the Parks gives to me, to actors, to audiences. It’s very special. You expect that from All My Sons. If you don’t get that, you haven’t done it right. Do you expect that from The Recruiting Officer? I was grateful for months after that.

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Their mission is to bring the Bard and other classics to underserved, rural areas, the vast majority with populations less than 10,000. There is no charge for admission. “It’s an astonishing journey, and something that is life-changing,” says Brown. “It’s been 34 years and I’m still a part of it, though not every summer. It’s important to me that I do, because…well, you have to have a lot of money to go to the theatre. [MSIP] is free. And you meet people who can talk to you about four different Twelfth Nights that they’ve seen, who can compare Malvolios. They are quite a sophisticated audience and that surprises some of the new actors that join us every year. You travel through some of the most beautiful country on earth. Sometimes you stop and jump in a waterfall and then get back in the van and keep going. You feel a little bit like an outlaw, in the best sense of the word.” Following the inaugural summer, MSIP mounted two productions with a paid company and staff: The Taming of the Shrew and The Merchant of Venice, doubling the season to 26 performances in 18 cities. Today, the acting company consists of 10 professional actors and the performances have increased each year; in the summer of 2014, MSIP will perform As You Like It and Romeo and Juliet 75 times in 59 cities. After 5 weeks of rehearsal, the company embarks on a 10-week tour. MSIP’s contribution to the performing arts in this region was recognized in 1991 with the Montana Governor’s Award for the Arts, the state’s highest honor for an arts organization. In addition to the summer festival, MSIP runs two educational outreach programs: Shakespeare in the Schools (SIS) and Montana Shakes! Both programs speak to the rising interest in Shakespeare and performing arts throughout the state, providing valuable opportunities to bring hands-on education and firsthand experience into the classroom. SIS, launched in 1993, was designed to “expose [middle and high school] students to Shakespeare as he intended—in a live theatrical performance.” A fully staged 75-minute performance, complete with set and costumes, tours the surrounding communities for 10 weeks, serving more than 10,000 students each year. The performance is followed by post-show workshops to help students better understand Shakespeare’s language, themes, and relevancy to today’s culture and society. Similarly, Montana Shakes! introduces Shakespeare to younger students (kindergarten through fifth grade) through an interactive 30-minute performance followed by talk-back sessions and hands-on workshops with emphasis in design, verse, and stage combat/movement. When asked about MSIP’s impact on the community, Brown replies, “You are aware of

how frequently you are playing a venue where there are no other performing arts that are going to come to that town. I’ve had ranchers say to me, ‘We always have to decide whether to go to the Shakespeare or the rodeo, and we always go to the Shakespeare.’ You’re so humbled by that. As an actor and a director— any part you have in it—you will yourself to do your best work, because it’s important. I think sometimes we can forget in the regional theatre who we’re playing to or what that connection to the audience is. You never forget it out there.” www.shakespeareintheparks.org

HUDSON VALLEY SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival (HVSF) blossomed out of an outdoor theatre project aimed to raise money for historic Manitoga, a 75-acre estate and modernist home of industrial designer Russel Wright in Garrison, NY. Actress Melissa Stern, who had been charged by Manitoga’s board with organizing the fundraising effort, and director Terrence O’Brien produced the inaugural production, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in partnership with New York City’s Twenty-Ninth Street Project in the summer of 1987. The audience consisted of 230 people. The following year, HVSF moved to another historic estate in Cold Spring, making Boscobel, an internationally recognized house museum with a leading collection of Federal-period furniture and decorative arts, its permanent home, and from there the company has continued to grow. As of 2012, the festival now presents for more than 39,000 people who travel from all across the region to enjoy Shakespeare set against the breathtaking views of the Hudson River Valley on 60 acres of manicured gardens and lawns. HVSF is a professional resident Shakespeare company, and its productions are produced in repertory beneath a beautifully designed open-air theatre tent overlooking the Hudson River. “This site is spectacular,” says Davis McCallum, HVSF’s incoming Artistic Director. “One of the most unique things about the location is the way the actors can appear over the Belvedere at Boscobel House and Gardens. There’s a magical moment…when the actors come over the hill with the Hudson behind them and approach the audience across this beautiful lawn. It’s so thrilling that most of the time when actors make this long-distance entrance, the audience bursts into spontaneous applause; it’s the kind of thing that you can’t get anywhere else in the American theatre.” After 27 years at the helm, founding Artistic Director O’Brien is stepping down, and McCallum, with an extensive career in textfocused work, is taking the reins. “I’m excited by what makes [HVSF] so unique, so special, DAVIS MCCALLUM since 2004

The Three Musketeers entrance at Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival PHOTO William Marsh

which is this very electric connection between the acting company and the audience. Both are underneath this big, circular tent, and [the production] feels like a conversation. It creates a certain energy in the room that you don’t always have when you’re doing a Shakespeare play indoors on a proscenium, and you turn out the lights on the audience. When the play starts, everybody can see everybody— there’s no sense in denying that the audience is there, fully lit. And over the course of the play, as darkness descends, a kind of focus accumulates in the middle of the room as the story takes hold. It’s so beautiful, so true.” The Festival boasts a number of education and community outreach programs, including a touring production through AccessShakespeare, an artists-in-residents program called Free Will, and the Teaching Shakespeare Summer Institute. Designed to support New York State Learning Standards for the Arts, the focus of these programs revolves around text, from engagement through action, exploration with dramatic techniques, and exercising of various creative interpretations. The Festival also provides a 17-week actor training program and a professional development program for elementary, middle, and high school teachers featuring workshops that aid educators in making Shakespeare more accessible in the classroom. “We have a huge impact all up and down the Hudson Valley through our education and outreach programs, which reach more than 40,000 kids every year,” says McCallum. “We’re also one of the biggest economic drivers in our local area; restaurants, bars, hotels all see their business increase as soon as our audiences come for the [Festival] on Memorial Day through the summer.” McCallum hopes to strengthen this relationship with the local and surrounding communities and increase HVSF’s impact as he leads the company forward. “I hope that’s one of the things we can continue to build on in the future. One of our challenges is how do we

take the magic—and that is the right word— that happens under the tent and continue to bring it into the community in the most impactful way the rest of the year?” HVSF is less than an hour by train from Grand Central Station. “We’re only 50 miles from [New York City], and yet it feels like we’re a world away,” says McCallum. “Come in the afternoon, bring a picnic, enjoy a glass of wine, and then, as the sun is going down, come into the tent and enjoy a Shakespeare play. It’s a great summer afternoon.” The 2014 season includes Othello and The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and David Ives’s adaptation of Pierre Corneille’s The Liar. The three plays will be presented in repertory from June 10 through August 31. http://hvshakespeare.org

LAKE TAHOE SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL On the northeast shore of Lake Tahoe stands a $2 million state-of-the-art facility—the Warren Edward Trepp Stage, home of Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival located in Nevada’s scenic Sand Harbor State Park. Established to enrich the performing arts culture of the central west, Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival has been delighting audiences with summer Shakespeare since 1972. During the company’s inaugural season, the New Shakespeare Company, as it was originally called, presented eight performances in the Ehrman Mansion on the west shore in Sugar Pine Point State Park. Two years later, the budding company expanded into Skylandia Park in Tahoe City, and then again in 1976 to Sand Harbor, where the company performed on a modest, hastily erected hand-built stage for approximately 500 people. Two names and three management companies later, Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival was officially christened, and in 1995 was incorporated as an “independent nonprofit organization dedicated to managing and

TOTALLY INSPIRED

A Story by Davis McCallum My first experience with Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival was as an audience member, when I saw Terry O’Brien’s production of Hamlet in 2011. There’s a real challenge in doing that play outside in the summertime because the sun doesn’t set until an hour into the show, which means the ghost has to be on stage at minute six in the play in broad daylight. So, how are you going to communicate to a 21st-century audience what would have been apparent to the Elizabethan audience, which is that this ghost [will forever be] in tortured limbo unless Hamlet acts to avenge his murder? You have to do something to make that palpable, not just an abstraction. Terry’s solution, like everything at our theatre, was all about the actors. The “Ghost” was essentially played by two actors; one actor played the Old Hamlet and another actor was behind him, costumed like some kind of tormentor, holding the first actor in a kind of strange, torture-like harness, almost like he was leashed in like a dog. The actor who played the dead King had black makeup on his lips and on his tongue so that when he tried to speak the words that Shakespeare’s given for the Ghost, his mouth kind of curdled. He had the impulse to express himself, but didn’t look like he was pronouncing. [The face of the actor behind him] was shielded by a kind of scrimlike headgear, and he was the person who spoke the lines into a body mic. So together, between the two of them, one person played the body of the murdered King Hamlet, and the other person provided the text. It was simple and disturbing and extremely effective. Hamlet’s been performed for 400 years and I don’t think that’s ever been attempted in quite that way, and it worked beautifully. The choice was deeply embedded in the text. It wasn’t a directorial imposition. It just happened to be a totally inspired idea. SUMMER 2014 | SDC JOURNAL

Lake Tahoe Shakspeare Festival PHOTO Joy Strotz

improving performances at Sand Harbor.” More than 26,000 patrons attend the Shakespeare production each summer, enjoying the beach, sunsets over the lake, and gourmet picnic fare from Shakespeare’s Kitchen, a dining area open before each performance. Producing Artistic Director Charles Fee, who is also AD for two other classical repertory companies, Idaho Shakespeare Festival in Boise and Great Lakes Theater in Cleveland, has helmed the company since 2010 and describes his experience working at the lake as “absolutely extraordinary.” “The space itself is utterly breathtaking. We sit on a giant sand dune on the shore of Lake Tahoe, and the audience looks across the stage out over the lake and into the mountains. Scenically, it’s one of the most staggering theatres that I have ever worked or seen shows in.” The majority of the audience filling the 1,000-seat theatre are first-time visitors enjoying the resort; the remaining 40% are local residents who visit Lake Tahoe each summer. “We have a really interesting

audience dynamic because a huge percentage of the house is sitting there for the first time, and they may not even be people who see theatre on any regular basis. But they’re at Lake Tahoe and there is literally nothing like this experience. We’re the only theatre that sits on the shore of the lake, and the only classic professional theatre company in the whole state of Nevada.” Each production rotates between the three companies, typically rehearsed and built in either Cleveland or Boise, depending on the space where they will first perform. The directors and creative teams design the shows with the different spaces in mind—the Boise theatre is also outdoors, but the indoor space in downtown Cleveland has a fly gallery and a hydraulic lift stage. “We’ve gotten very good at doing this because we’ve been doing it for a long time,” says Fee. “We augment the shows given the particular strength of each space; and we design shows that can be quickly and easily modified. So there isn’t a huge amount of change between one venue and the next.” The most radical change is lighting, especially

between the indoor Cleveland space and the two outdoor theatres. “I’ve been directing Shakespeare outdoors for 23 years. For me, where I notice the difference the most is directing indoors,” says Fee of his directorial approach to working at Lake Tahoe. “The technique that you need for large outdoor spaces is quite theatrical, and in a sense, presentational—which is a word that freaks people out—but all it means is that you have to recognize that we are here to engage this large audience in daylight in a text that is fairly dense. To do that, you really have to include that audience in your speaking; you have to always be thinking about bringing that audience up onto the stage with you and into the language of these plays.” Dedicated to educating and influencing future generations, Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival hosts two youth programs. The D.G. Menchetti Young Shakespeare Program enters its 13th season in 2014, and offers free interactive performances to children in the Reno, Tahoe, and Truckee regions. From February to May,

THEATRICAL WILDLIFE A Story by Charles Fee

We don’t have as many animals coming into the theatre in Cleveland as we have in Boise and Tahoe. There are animals everywhere. We see every single night, without any exception in Boise, deer coming right up to the theatre. We have every kind of creature you can imagine, like wild peacocks. There were two of them that for two seasons would come and walk through the lobby all through preshow, come into the theatre during the show, fly up into the light rail during the show. Giant male peacocks. Absolutely bizarre and incredible and sort of crazily magical. We have all kinds of birds. Bats are around—they are incredibly friendly. They occasionally zip through, eating a few bugs. Lots and lots of geese. The honkers fly right over the theatre every single night in perfect formation, and you literally have to stop. They are so extraordinarily beautiful—and that no one is going to listen to the text for that 10 seconds anyway. So the actors simply hold and acknowledge it and then move on. In Lake Tahoe, we occasionally have bears. Bears are really awesome and really frightening. We do our very best not to let a bear into the theatre.

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CHARLES FEE since 2014

Georgia Shakespeare’s Servant of Two Masters in 2008 PHOTO c/o Georgia Shakespeare

InterACT Workshops are offered to schools and community centers in Nevada and California, providing hands-on activities that teach students many of the classic themes of Shakespeare’s work, as well as an appreciation for all live performance. This summer Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival is presenting As You Like It, which will be performed 39 times from mid-July to the end of August. “In Lake Tahoe, you’re not competing with [the environment], but harmonizing with this breathtaking physical setting,” says Fee. “And Shakespeare’s plays lend themselves to the outdoors; they lend themselves to a very strong community experience. Come, bring a glass of wine and a picnic, watch a production, and enjoy not only Shakespeare but also this extraordinary site… we have an absolute blast.” http://laketahoeshakespeare.com

GEORGIA SHAKESPEARE “For our first 11 years, we were an outdoor summer theatre only,” says Richard Garner, Director, Co-Founder, and Producing Artistic Director for Georgia Shakespeare. “We were based on Oglethorpe University’s campus and we worked under 300-400 person tents. Then we moved indoors to a 500-seat space where we performed solely for a few seasons. But, I guess our roots were calling. So we started working [outdoors again] in Piedmont Park, which is Atlanta’s version of Central Park. In 2004, we started Shakespeare in the Park, where we do a performance that’s completely outdoors and free to the public.” RICHARD GARNER since 2000

Georgia Shakespeare was founded in 1985 by Garner and two theatre friends, Kirby McLain “Lane” Anderson and Robert Watson, each with strong interests in the Bard and ties to Atlanta. Their first season opened in July of 1986 with The Taming of the Shrew and King Lear rotating in repertory. The two productions performed 25 times on Oglethrope’s athletic field for 6,000 people. Today, Georgia Shakespeare presents four to five productions a season for more than 40,000 theatregoers, and is the resident professional theatre company for the university. From the beginning, Garner and his colleagues were committed to working with a company of professional artists and to hiring and nurturing local talent. They were also committed to making Shakespeare’s text “vibrant and accessible.” “Sometimes, people call us asking to rent Elizabethan costumes, and I say we don’t really have any of those. Most people today update Shakespeare to make it more immediate, and that [is something] I felt a lot of freedom to do in this community. We embrace [the text] with a company of artists, designers, directors, and actors who focus on how to bring this material—whether it’s Shakespeare from 400 years ago or 20th-century American classics—to our audience today, rather than taking our audience back in time. And yeah, the first couple years we had people walking out because there were no pumpkin pants and tights on stage. But now we’ve found an audience.” Georgia Shakespeare’s official home is the $5.7 million John A. and Miriam H. Conant Performing Arts Center, a 509-seat theatre with a modified thrust stage on the green

campus of Oglethorpe University, who shares joint use of the facility. The two organizations are completely separate nonprofits working in harmonized tandem. Artists employed at Georgia Shakespeare regularly teach workshops, lead classes, and direct productions on campus. The outdoor space where Shakespeare in the Park (SIP)—which is also called Shake at the Lake when the outdoor production is performed near Lake Clara Meer—performs one production each summer is located in historic Piedmont Park, a 53-acre expanse of green space two miles from downtown. “We wanted to geographically make ourselves available to a broader part of the population,” says Garner. “The nature of an outdoor performance is much more inviting to full families.” Garner and his company were also concerned with the affordability of tickets. “Financial accessibility was a big goal, so we set out to make [Shakespeare in the Park] free, which means we have to get the production completely underwritten each year. It’s an expensive venture to set up a full LORT theatre outdoors, but our community, foundations, and corporations felt that it was important enough to fund.” Each summer 2,000 patrons visit SIP. Georgia Shakespeare offers a number of performance-based education programs designed to develop audience members of all ages and instill an appreciation for and understanding of Shakespeare’s works. “The material wasn’t meant to be read. We use performance-based techniques in our teacher training and we work directly [with the students] in classrooms. So the logical next step…is the opportunity for them to actually see it in performance.” These education SUMMER 2014 | SDC JOURNAL

A STORY OF COMMUNITY by Richard Garner

The best story of community was our very first night doing Shakespeare in the Park in 2004. It was a Wednesday night. We’d never done this before—brand-new experience for the whole community—and the weather was a little iffy that day, but a full crowd of people showed up. It started raining lightly about a half an hour before the show. We had rolls of clear plastic backstage. The crew starting cutting up these 10-foot squares of plastic and handing them out to the audience, and that was enough for a while, but then it started raining a little harder. So we’re kind of going among the audience, just checking, you really want to go? And they say, oh, no, we want to stay. We want to stay. So we got these huge tarps—50 x 100 feet—[with which] we had to cover the entire stage, and we put two of them at the very front row programs include touring productions, Camp Shakespeare, No Fear Shakespeare Teacher Development, in-school workshops, and afterschool residences, among many others. In 2002, Georgia Shakespeare received the ABBY Award for Outstanding Arts Education. Garner is directing As You Like It this season, which will play for one week in the park before moving indoors, and his staging incorporates entrances through the audience, allowing actors to pick their way through picnic blankets. “Already, even as I’m working on one show, I’m thinking about how it will play on two very, very different stages. It’s a wonderful feeling of looseness in an outdoor space—I was just working on the speech when Duke Senior arrives in Arden and is telling his brothers in exile, ‘Here we are.’ And he’s referencing all of nature. Indoors, your job is to play on the audience’s imagination, but when he talks about trees, all he has to do is point. It’s kind of great.” The actors are body-miced, affording the same intimate performance as

where people were sitting on the lawn and they passed it back over their heads. And then, we got every broom, piece of pipe, and 2 x 4 we could find and gave them to audience members, and they used those as tent poles. It was the most remarkable experience of people literally holding up a tent over their fellow audience members. We brought the actors in and put them under that tarp and did Act I of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was amazing. People would be standing there, holding up what would be the center aisle with a broom, and someone would come over from the picnic and offer them a glass of wine and then offer to trade out for them. It was a stunning, stunning feeling. And then, of course, nature cooperated and the skies cleared up. We literally had this sort of event where we opened up, pulled the tarp off of everybody, and we did Act II on stage. By the end of that, even the stars came out.

the 500-seat indoor space. “That’s nice because our company focuses on the personal journeys of characters. It’s nice to know that we can still, even in our space with 2,000 people, have an intimacy to the work on the stage.” Georgia Shakespeare presented As You Like It for Shakespeare in the Park on June 4–8 and at the Conant June 14–29; the rest of the 2014 season includes One Man, Two Guvnors, The Frog Prince, Henry V, and A Holiday Panto: The Story of the Princess and the Pea. www.gashakespeare.org

ILLINOIS SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL Thirty six years ago, “Shakespeare in the Cornfields” erected a temporary stage on the tennis courts of Ewing Manor, a generous donation of property by the local philanthropic family of Hazel Buck Ewing to the Illinois State

University Foundation. That summer, on July 6, 1978, a group of 250 audience members sat in small, uncomfortable folding chairs to watch the first of 21 performances of a “futuristic, space-age Twelfth Night,” as described by the director, Dennis Zacek. The actors were college students, performing in less-thanideal circumstances—no dressing rooms, Port-A-Potties—but the evening marked the beginning of Illinois Shakespeare Festival (ISF) in Bloomington, IL. Cal Pritner, Department of Theatre Chairperson for the university, had been dreaming of a Shakespeare festival—accompanied by music, singing, and puppetry—throughout the early 1970s. His vision came to fruition with the support of his university colleagues, specifically Don LaCasse, who joined the faculty in 1973. LaCasse became the general manager and took over logistical planning and management of the festival. Together they gained support from the dean of the College of Fine Arts, and

Illinois Shakespeare Festival PHOTO Lyndsie Schlink

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DENNIS ZACEK since 1981

with the dean’s assistance, gained audience with Tom Jacob, the President of Illinois State University Foundation, resulting in the final necessary funding to bring Pritner’s ideas to life. Founded in partnership between the Illinois State University School of Theatre and Dance and the College of Fine Arts, the goal of ISF was to bring quality and accessible Shakespeare to central Illinois, and to produce new interpretations that explore the human condition. “When I see a production there,” says director Robert Quinlan who has worked at ISF multiple times, “I always feel a sense of joy around the event of the play. Illinois Shakespeare Festival has a passionate and dedicated audience. It is the only professional summer theatre in the area, and the Bloomington-Normal public cherishes it for the engaging work that is produced, and also for the welcoming atmosphere. Many families picnic at Ewing Manor prior to the performance, and enjoy free jazz music and other entertainment as part of the overall experience.” The festival was produced in its “temporary” open-air theatre until 1999, when its permanent home, a 430-seat Elizabethanstyle theatre, was built on the wooded 6.5-acre grounds of Ewing Cultural Center. The company produces approximately 36 performances each season for 14,000 patrons. Like with any large, outdoor venue, working at ISF requires an attention to scale. “I try to imagine the experience of those seated in the back row from the very beginning,” says Quinlan. According to Quinlan, directors are encouraged to use “original practices,” particularly direct address, live music, and a keen focus on clear, engaged storytelling. In 2013, when Quinlan directed Macbeth, he staged musicians in the “heavens” and the witches’ entrances from beneath the stage. “We also added a gallery of onstage seating to

encourage a direct audience/actor relationship. The sun began to set around the time Macbeth committed his first murder, and we came back from intermission in total darkness to discover the witches around their cauldron. The outdoor setting added a magic to the entire experience that would not have been possible in an indoor venue.” As with any outdoor venue, ISF is subject to the weather, and its Midwest location tends to leave the company vulnerable to erratic weather patterns. Director Jessica Kubzansky, who directed Two Gentleman of Verona in 2004, was sent into hiding in the basement of her summer housing by several tornado sirens. Aside from rained-out techs and storm warnings, much of experience was marked by the clothes people wore—on and off stage— throughout the process. “That’s one of the interesting joys about working in an outdoor Shakespeare festival when you get to outdoor rehearsals...it’s often boiling hot in the day and at night it’s freezing, and there are so many mosquitoes,” says Kubzansky. “You have to wear a million layers and have bug spray.” Both the temperature swings and accompanying insects affect other parts of the process as well, such as working with the costume designer. “I’ve had many conversations about layers, either the advantage or disadvantage of them. It could be so hot that characters who are supposed to be incredibly bundled up might die unless their garments are incredibly lightweight. Or, conversely, we might think, ‘Oh, it would be so great to see her in that slinky gown,’ and she’s going to freeze. The temperature extremes that happen over the course of an evening are part of what you have to take into account when you’re thinking about design.” ISF hosts a variety of education and outreach programs including summer camps, school tours, and young audience productions. The eight MFA actors studying at the university make up the ISF Touring Company, which performs and tours 40-minute abridged plays and creates new work under the

CONJURING MAGIC Story by Robert Quinlan

One performance of Macbeth underscored the devotion of the ISF audience to outdoor theatre. The policy at the festival is to play through light rain. During one July performance, rain began to fall during Duncan’s murder and continued to increase in strength through the death of Banquo. The audience pulled out their umbrellas and very few people left the theatre. During intermission, the crew worked to dry the stage and used dozens of towels to soak up the water in the pit beneath the stage. The second act began with the witches conjuring apparitions from the trap for Macbeth, as the rain and haze caught the beams of theatrical light to create a truly mystical experience. Stage management stopped the show before the sleepwalking scene as the storm increased its strength. The audience remained through a 15-minute hold, and the performance resumed. Actors worked backstage to modify the fight sequence for a slippery deck floor, and the play reached is thrilling conclusion. At the end, the sense of community between actor and audience was palpable. That night, the outdoor setting amplified the power of the live experience. JESSICA KUBZANSKY since 2000 | ROBERT QUINLAN since 2013

Illinois Shakespeare Festival name. These performances are booked in schools and community institutions during the spring semester. These same actors also perform as part of the company during the summer season. The Festival’s Theatre for Young Audiences Productions provides family-friendly shows on Wednesday and Saturday mornings on the grounds, free of charge. There is also an access program that serves under-represented and resourced populations called Sharing Shakespeare, which works with social services to determine groups that would benefit from 600 free tickets to main stage performances. This summer, Illinois Shakespeare Festival will present a number of special performances and a trilogy of plays in repertory from July 8 through August 9: Elizabeth Rex by Timothy Findley, and Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, and Antony and Cleopatra. http://thefestival.org

REHEARSAL TETRIS Story by Jessica Kubzansky

A huge directorial challenge in most Shakespeare festivals is the Tetris of what and when you can rehearse—it’s a fun and hilarious daily negotiation. Most of the time actors are cast as a company, and a lot of times they are playing major roles in two shows and a minor role in a third. For instance, in the 2004 ISF season my Valentine was also Hamlet. And because we’re all rehearsing at the same time and all the plays go up within weeks of each other, there is a shocking math that people— who are not me, thank god—have already done about which show gets primary rehearsal and whic gets secondary. Nightly the PSM and each individual show’s stage manager get together and wrangle who gets to have whom when. I have such admiration for the people who figure out the schedule for us. The weird challenge of festival rehearsals is that you don’t get rehearsal every day, or it’s every day but you can’t really put a scene together that you need to rehearse for a couple of days. There are forced breaks when another show is in tech. It makes rehearsal time precious. Shakespeare festivals are where I first learned to type notes—even though I much prefer to give notes face-to-face. It takes me about an hour to give a run-through’s worth of notes talking to the cast directly, and it takes me three-and-a-half hours to type my raw notes into a communication that is clear and actor-friendly. It’s a huge amount of work, but I realized that when I gave notes verbally, I used up much of my valuable time in the room, and if I typed my notes and the actors had them before we started rehearsal, then I had the entirety of that time to work. I have to say that this skill has stood me in good stead ever since. SUMMER 2014 | SDC JOURNAL

In Conversation with

Harold Prince INTERVIEW BY LONNY

PRICE

al Prince is my hero. There, I’ve said it. Here’s why—when I was a kid, I saw three shows that knocked me out—Company, Follies and A Little Night Music. I was 14, attending the High School of Performing Arts here in New York (now La Guardia), and I wrote

Hal a letter about how much I loved his work and wanted a job in his office. He invited me up to his Rockefeller Plaza office, which he shared with his mentor, George Abbott (Hal still has his office there), and said I could hang around. And, I did—after school every day, and for a summer while he was prepping Pacific Overtures. When the show opened, I had the run of the Winter Garden Theatre, attended the recording of the album, and lived my fantasy. Eight years later, he fulfilled my greatest fantasy, giving me a part in Merrily We Roll Along. We have remained friends ever since. I have seen (I think) every show he has directed since the mid-’70s, and unlike many directors, particularly in the musical theatre, his references are not show business, but world theatre. Kabuki and Noh theatre for Pacific Overtures, Grand Guignol for Sweeney Todd, German expressionism for Cabaret, etc. He has brought techniques to Broadway that one would have had to travel many miles to see (or maybe BAM?), and were, for me, my education. He also worked with the finest writers of the time—Stephen Sondheim, Kander and Ebb, Bock and Harnick, Strouse and Adams—and gave many of them their first jobs. His work is always provocative and intelligent, and, may I say, beautiful. The truth is, there is not a great work of the musical theatre Hal didn’t produce, direct (or both) or inadvertently influence. His work continues to inspire me. And I can’t wait for the next one! Years ago you said to me that your shows that I love would never get made today. Absolutely. Tell me why? What did you mean by that? You wouldn’t be able to raise the money to do them. If you had to describe the show—for example, a show about a bunch of kids in street gangs, Puerto Ricans and Caucasians, gangland fights—you couldn’t raise the money. Right. You couldn’t raise money for a musical about the rise of Nazism in Germany, not for a second. You can raise money for revivals of all those shows, but new shows that are as daring today wouldn’t be able to raise their money. There is a dangerous diminution of material that is really challenging, and, yet, I think a group of us have proven that those kinds of shows can work and do very well. I don’t actually think you could raise money for a story about Tevye’s daughters, but look how many times it’s been revived successfully. Right.

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The only way you can do something that they would not normally support for commercial theatre is to do it first in a non-commercial setting. Doesn’t have to be out of New York; it could be OffBroadway. And if they respond to it—the critics and the public—then you can move it to Broadway and it has a run. Like Once, for example. That had to see the light of day somewhere else first and then it came in and it paid off. Spring Awakening, same thing. But those are the exceptions. The Lion King, the first 20 minutes of which are… Thrilling. Thrilling. And Wicked, which is certainly exploring very famous literary characters from a very famous children’s book and wildly successful film. I think that for 15 years now, the whole subject of branding has almost taken over the theatre, the industry, and now I think there are some second thoughts about branding. Not everything that was a great brand as a novel or as a film will necessarily be a great brand on Broadway. Perhaps it has something to do with the quality of the writing? I think it’s probably more quixotic than that. I can’t pretend to understand why, but I do know comfortably from my own position that you’re better off creating a brand. Phantom wasn’t a brand before we did the show. It became a brand and that’s healthy. That’s better. GEORGE ABBOTT d.1995 | LONNY PRICE since 1992 | HAROLD PRINCE since 1963

And that’s the hardest thing to do. You know, I can’t talk retrospectively about what’s hard or easy. Phantom of the Opera is a show I wanted to do because when Andrew mentioned it, I thought, “That’s a swell idea,” and I wanted to do a romantic musical. I was stunned at how few romantic musicals have ever been done. West Side is sort of one. South Pacific… South Pacific is the most. The King and I is a strange romantic musical, but romantic. There are very few and Andrew and I wanted to do one that was profoundly, potently romantic. Phantom represented a great deal of preparatory work. For almost two years, Maria Bjornson designed the scenery. She designed the costumes very quickly. In two weeks, actually. She literally said, “Oh, I think I have about 500 costumes. I can do 20 costumes a day.” And she did! But the scenery took 18 months. I had countless trips to London, a few trips to New York, and as far as I’m concerned, all the real pressure was before we went into rehearsal. By the time we went into rehearsal, it was being put in the theatre. Tech rehearsals were hard because it’s technically very complex. But the material was so polished; it was where we thought it should be. I started rehearsing at 10 o’clock in the morning and stopped at 1 o’clock in the afternoon, and Ruth Mitchell, who was my assistant, would drill them and choreographer Gillian Lynne would choreograph. And I would not return until the next day. I’d work from 10 to 1 for four-and-a-half weeks and never in the afternoon because it was so prepared. I could take a half-inch model and do the entire show for you before we went into rehearsal. After those four-and-ahalf weeks, we had a runthrough for everybody. At lunchtime I said, “Well, I’ll see you all in the theatre next GILLIAN LYNNE since 1982 | RUTH MITCHELL d.2000

PHOTOS

Walter McBride

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Monday.” And one of the kids in the company interrupted, “I want to ask you a question on behalf of everybody here. What do you do in the afternoons?!” During previews, we didn’t change a thing. The first preview was the show that’s playing on Broadway right now. Not a single significant change.

And that’s true of Evita. Not a single change after the first preview.

When I was a producer, I insisted actors sign for 18 months. In the case of stars, two years. Hell, Mary Martin and Ethel Merman, the two greatest stars of the musical theatre, stayed with shows until they closed. Often three years. And then sometimes they went from the three years to the road and played. Carol Channing knew that, too.

When do you get the physical idea of what the show should be and how early do you involve your designers?

I stopped producing because I did not want to raise $10 million. I’m not sure I could and I wouldn’t want to make the effort.

Well, Lonny, you were there the only time in my life when I couldn’t figure out what a show should look like, and that was really bad news for that show. That was Merrily We Roll Along.

I think that you should never say to an investor, “You’re going to make money out of this,” because it’s very probable that they won’t. What you should say is, “You’re investing in an experience. You’re investing in a work of art. You’re investing in something that will make you proud, and, then, perhaps, you’ll make some money.”

That’s all? That’s extraordinary.

Right. It drove me crazy. Eugene Lee was on that show and he’s brilliant, but neither of us could figure it out. And I called the whole staff at my office and I said, “I don’t know how to visualize this. The only thing that makes me comfortable and would solve the show is that you’d walk into the theatre and see an empty stage. And pipes of clothes would be rolled in from the wings and we would tell the entire story with rehearsal chairs and tables. But are we going to charge people Broadway prices for that? Are we going to charge them to see no scenery and costumes?” And the office said, as one, “If you think that’s the way it should be done, you should do it.” But I couldn’t do it. It’s probably not the first time I’ve ever run scared. But, after thinking for a day, I decided that I cannot charge people these prices to see something that opens on a bare stage with no production value. And so I didn’t do it. And, of course, I wish I’d done it. Years ago, you quit the League of New York Theatres and Producers. Why? I would rather answer your question with a question. Are the interests of the people who produce and the interest of the people who own theatres the same? What you’re looking at right now is limited engagements selling out. I went to see LBJ last night. I saw a Tennessee Williams revival. Right, Glass Menagerie. They open for 12 to 14 weeks and then they go bye-bye. That’s fine by the theatre owner’s standards because he has a long list of plays to go into that theatre. And it certainly serves

the purpose of the movie stars and television stars who are available for only a limited engagement. And, as for the producers, it probably guarantees a return of investment and a small profit.

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Actually, my record belies that. Forbes Magazine once put me on its cover because it figured two-thirds of my shows had paid back their investments and showed a profit. That’s a huge amount. But I’ll tell you what. Follies did not return its investment. At the time, it was the biggest musical ever done, costing $800,000. (Imagine that!) And it lost all its money. But it made history. And everybody who invested in it is proud that they were part of Follies. An even better example is Pacific Overtures. I invested in it. Everybody who put money in that show was told by me, “Don’t expect to get your money back.” It’s a piece of history about American incursion on an isolated culture: Japan. Strange subject for a musical. But Steve [Sondheim] and John [Weidman] wrote a beautiful show. Of course, the investment was lost, not only because of its subject, but it was directed in the Kabuki and Noh styles and with men playing women’s roles. Could I be doing anything more— Less commercial. —dangerous than that? No. Still, those investors were so proud to have been part of it. And it was beautiful. Because I am a pragmatic fellow, and, to protect my relationship with investors, Steve

and I always spoke of trying to alternate the probable flops with the potential hits. So, A Little Night Music followed Follies. And, as I mentioned before, Fiddler was not a surefire musical idea. But, as of now, we have returned 3,000+% on the investment. Wow. And your investors stayed with you. Oh, sure, they stayed with me right up until I quit producing. There were 175 of them. I did 11 backers’ auditions to raise the money for Pajama Game. I never did a backer’s audition again. I would send a letter to the investors and say I’m doing a musical about gang warfare in New York. Leonard Bernstein’s writing music, Stephen Sondheim, whom you may or may not have heard of, is writing the lyrics, and Arthur Laurents is writing the book. And there will be no stars in it. We were pressed to get into rehearsal because we picked it up from another producer, so the potential investors had to answer within 72 hours. Within 24 hours, I had raised all the money. No one ever got to read a script. In fact, I’ve never had an investor read a script. How beholden did you feel—when you were directing, not producing—to the money? I wanted to work the way I’d always worked. And only once was I subjected to eight pages of single-spaced notes from a clutch of producers, their wives, and their families. It blistered me. I ran cold. I said thank you very much and I will read them all and see what I can do. And, at that point, I thought I have to find a different way to work now. I have to work with people who trust me. And I’m very easy to talk to. If you’re smart, if you’re intelligent, I want to hear what you say. I believe I was always diplomatic, when I was an assistant and when I was a young producer. On the very first show I produced, Pajama Game, there were all sorts of things that I questioned during the rehearsal period. And I would make a long list of all of them, but I would not say anything to George Abbott, the director. I would watch every day and I knew enough about directing to know you can’t do it all at once. You have to do it a little at a time. And I would come back the next day and cross off the things that he’d done. And, finally, when we were almost ready to open the show in New York, I’d find I’d have 2 things left out of 100. And then I would discuss them, and then we’d see. Right.

ARTHUR LAURENTS d.2011

For example, with Pajama Game, the only thing on my list that I couldn’t bear was the very end of the show. It seemed to go against the grit of the material. It seemed like kind of a revue-like ending and not what this show is about. The show, in a way, is Richard Bissell’s autobiography and he was from Iowa. It had a real Mark Twain Middle-West thing, and almost everybody had an accent. When we got to the finale, it was very slick and smart-ass and I thought, “This is really wrong.” The show was a giant smash in Boston, but I still couldn’t stand the last five minutes. So I approached George (Mr. Abbott, at the time) and I bitched about the finale. He sent for Jerry Robbins, saying, “Look, Jerry, Hal’s really stubborn about this. Tell him what you have to say.” And I said, “I hate the ending of the show.” And Jerry said, “It’s a smash, for God’s sake.” I said, “I still I hate it.” And I made my case. I wouldn’t give in. It was the beginning of how well Jerry Robbins and I would get along in the future. Finally, he said, “Well, there’s one more rehearsal day on this show. Next Sunday, I’ve got three hours. I’ll do something else at the end if you want. Do you know what you want?” I said, “Yes, I want a party in Hernando’s Hideaway for the people who just won seven-and-a-half cents.” A celebration. He said, “I’ll try it, but I don’t believe in it.” And, of course, in three hours he’d done it. It was perfect and it has been in the show forever. I guess what I’m trying to say is, you have to be diplomatic. You talk when people can listen, and when they’re not able to listen, you keep your mouth shut. I also utterly believe, even more now when the cost of a musical is $10 or $12 or $15 million, that you should prepare until you think it’s perfect. CY FEUER d.2006 | JERRY ROBBINS d.1998

What do we do here with the producing landscape—is it going to get any better? What’s going to happen here? I haven’t a clue. I think the problem is not the absence of composers, lyricists, book writers, and directors. None of that. Their only problem is they don’t get to work as much. Yeah. I was able to do a show every year. One year, John Kander and Fred Ebb wrote Flora the Red Menace, which George Abbott directed. I knew it wasn’t working. However, I said to the fellas, “Guys, we open tomorrow night, I want to see you the next day.” The morning after the opening, instead of worrying about the reviews we got, we had a meeting in my office.

say, “Oh, that’s a Feuer and Martin show. Oh, that’s a Gilbert Miller show. Oh, that’s a Cheryl Crawford show. Or that’s the Theatre Guild.” I could tell you right away who produced the show because they were expressing their artistic choices on the stage. Not so anymore? No. There’s no consistency. The only place where this is possibly true is Disney. You once said you didn’t think people grew up. Well, I haven’t grown up. That’s for sure. I hope I have all the energy that I ever had. I feel about 40 years old. I forget names, but I think I’ve always forgotten names. So what are you working on now?

I said, “I’ve got a show to offer you,” and it was Cabaret. In a year, Cabaret opened. If a musical failed, the writers still got a second chance on Broadway the next year. Not as much today. How does that change? What do you think makes a good producer? A good producer is someone with taste, who doesn’t direct, act, design, or compose. But he has taste and he has the ability to put all those people together, the ones who can do it. And that becomes creative.

I’m nursing a couple shows now. One is based on an Israeli film called The Band’s Visit. It’s about a group of Egyptian musicians who go to Israel to concertize in an Arab village and get lost. They spend almost 24 hours in a Jewish settlement, discovering how to interact with the “enemy.” The book is being written by Itamar Moses and the score is by David Yazbek. And I’m working on it right now with the designer, Tim Mackabee. The other show is Prince of Broadway, a retrospective on my entire career, which, as you know, was initially rejected by investors in New York. But we were working with Japanese investors and, the minute the show became available again, they called within 24 hours and picked it up as producers. They’re wonderful. We’ll rehearse it in New York and then take it to Tokyo. It will play six weeks in Japan and then return to open on Broadway in the winter of 2016. So, there’s a lot to look forward to.

When I was a young wannabe, I could go to any Broadway theatre and if you erased the name of the producer—the one producer over the title—by looking at the stage, I could SUMMER 2014 | SDC JOURNAL

UNFOLDING EACH CITY’S STORY: KEIGWIN’S BOLERO PROJECT S

ince 2007, modern dance choreographer Larry Keigwin has been creating an extraordinary community art project in cities across the country, including New York City; Denver; Santa Barbara; Purchase, NY: Akron, Ohio; Red Bank, NJ; Chicago; Greensboro, NC; and Norfolk, VA. In each city, Keigwin partners with a presenting organization to choreograph an original dance set to the iconic score of Ravel’s Bolero, featuring professional dancers from his modern dance troupe KEIGWIN + COMPANY, alongside casts of community volunteers. One of the 10-year-old company’s signature works and the centerpiece of its community outreach efforts, each Bolero draws in dozens of people—as many as 50, often many more—of all ages, sizes, and abilities. Over residencies generally spanning two or three weeks, Keigwin (a dancer-turned-choreographer currently represented on Broadway with If/ Then) creates each dance through a collaborative process with the participants, capturing the unique qualities of their lives and celebrating the spirit of each specific region with theatricality, wit, rich visuals, and Keigwin’s exuberant choreography. Each Bolero is then performed as part of a program that also includes pieces from KEIGWIN + COMPANY’s professional repertoire. The New York Times, writing about Bolero NYC in 2007, called it “a joyful and breathtakingly clever celebration of the city and its people that is probably the most inexpensive legal fun to be had for miles around…To Ravel’s hypnotic music, the performers read newspapers, walk dogs, talk on cellphones, flirt, kiss, take care of children. There are moments of unison, moments of aloneness, moments of fantasy. (Everyone gets a trip up the red carpet.) It is funny, touching, and a masterly piece of choreographic organization. Go.” “I really enjoy the Bolero project because it’s theatrical,” Keigwin explains in an interview in his New York City office. “I approach it like a director, looking at how we tell stories abstractly and narratively. Each city has its own story to unfold.” ABOVE

Bolero NYC

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PHOTO

Matt Murphy

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BY STEPHANIE

COEN

What was the genesis of the project—did it begin as community engagement? It started because I was attracted to the Bolero score and I wanted to work with this iconic 15 minutes of music. I loved the repetition and the way that it built, and I was interested in different ways of moving people around the stage using lines and diagonals—a purely graphic, designed space. But because the music is so big, I thought, “I’ll need 50 people on stage.” I was in conversation with Wiley Hausam, who was then the Executive Director of the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at New York University, and who was the first commissioner of Bolero—and one thing led to another; we decided that we were going to make a piece about New York. It was Wiley who said, “You can’t make a piece about New York just with dancers and actors. It needs to be of New York, and created with New Yorkers.” So the project very quickly turned into working with community members. And did you keep your original idea of lines and diagonals, or did that morph into something else? When we started getting more specific and steering it toward New York City, we realized that the topography of the city is a grid, and so we had all those 90-degree angles and lines. LARRY KEIGWIN since 2011

We essentially took apart each aspect of the city and saw how many places there are lines—the subway platform, a coffee line—and crafted the dance according to scenes, using the trajectory of one day boiled down to 15 minutes. The prominent features we talked about to hold it together were density and diversity. We were very clear about the census report in NYC; when we cast it, we had maybe 200 people come to the audition, but we were very specific about the demographics—from different ages to size to ability to ethnicity. If what happens in this day is you wait for the subway in the morning and go to an opening at night, we wanted a very democratic world in which everybody goes to the opening and has a run down the red carpet. I know the audition is also the first day of rehearsal. What happens at the start of a typical process? From the very get-go, from the first moment the participants are in, there has to be a common sense that this is a playful environment. People have different insecurities, and different abilities, and I want to make sure that it’s safe. So we start very playfully, even just walking, or learning how to count and walk at the same time. Which I imagine is harder than it sounds. We count consecutively— one, two, three, four, five, Bolero Santa Barbara six; two, two, three, four, five, PHOTO David Bazmore six—and many people get lost immediately. I don’t want the community participants to have to count the music. That’s why we have dancers from the company with them. If we have dancers who can serve as dance captains, we have more freedom in how far we can push the community. We also start on the first day to develop a gestural vocabulary. I have all these different tools from my modern dance education that I keep on a sheet of paper, and I go through all the different compositional games that we can play. But it’s not that I’m generating the vocabulary; they are generating it. So they are going to work at their ability, and not my ability. What are some of the compositional games? I’ll give five people something to do—say, make a salad—and I run them through that task. Then I can build on that by saying do it really small, or blow it up; build that salad on your arm, or build a salad as a group on the floor. Or I’ll give another group sporting activities. Another game I play is I will improvise, and they will have to catch what I’m doing—but again, they catch it at their ability, and I will do it at my ability. Or I ask them to write their names with their body parts; that to me is really cool, because that allows them to move a little bit larger, and I can sense their authentic movement. I do think it’s the responsibility of a director or a choreographer to make everybody look their best. And so I do a few surveys, excavate their personalities, and understand where everyone’s abilities are. They will quickly reveal themselves. That’s where the improv comes into play. We’ll all make a circle and I‘ll say, who wants to go into the center of the circle and dance sparkly—or smoothly—or abruptly—I call it my adjective

circle, and I start seeing things in that. But we really try to capitalize on everyone’s strengths, even if their strength is character. And what do the community people bring to the process? What’s really so fun about it is that the participants are very engaged in the process. They are storyboarding with us, and they costume themselves. We created a template from the beginning of Bolero NYC that we would work within the tight structure of the music, and we would create a structure for the costumes—because we were always going to be working with a lot of people, we had to have a palette that was very clean. But the more allowance you give to the performers to create their own costumes, the more their personality is going to pop. Inevitably it happens in every city. For Bolero Suburbia [presented by the Performing Arts Center of Purchase College in Purchase, N.Y.], the participants were very clear that they had the highest density of golf courses and country clubs. So everyone was dressed in country club white with Lilly Pulitzer pink. We got to Ohio [where Bolero Akron was presented by Dance Cleveland and the University of Akron] and thought, how are we going to costume this one? But it so happens that the biggest industry in this town for years was Goodyear Tires, so we did racing—black and white checkers. Ohio was also probably the hardest narrative to find, until we abstracted Goodyear Tires a little bit further and said: the first three minutes of the dance the audience is going to see nothing but tires. I could choreograph 50 people rolling tires in and out of the wings, or dropping a tire, and the audience knew exactly what we were doing. We had to order 50 tires; we had to get 50 tires into the studio, but once that happened, we had a hook. Is it important that each city have a hook? Having two ideas for each dance is the hook of the composition—it really steers it. In New York, it was diversity and density. Mostly, I go in not knowing these communities, so there has to be some sort of surveying the land, surveying the people throughout the process. If we are going to boil this down to two ideas, what are they? In Chicago, it was the Bulls and sports. In Red Bank, it was beach and bling. Bolero Suburbia was about suburbia and family—which allowed there to be a lot about nuclear family vs. community family, commuting, and also domesticity; we had mani-pedis, armchairs, and TVs. The melody of Ravel’s score repeats 16 or 18 times, and so for the first two groups of that melody, it was just TVs on in the dark, with a guy watching television. I love finding a visual gimmick that might resonate. But I also want to be sensitive about not being cynical. I try to understand what is celebratory in every community. How much stays the same from community to community? Very little, really. It doesn’t always play out, but we try to find the iconic person in every community, someone that’s recognizable. In Denver [where Bolero Colorado was presented at the Newman Center for the Performing Arts in Denver], which was very much about the outdoor environment; the local weatherwoman gave the weather. In Chicago, Benny the Bull, the mascot of the Chicago Bulls, popped out of the

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wings on a trampoline. We also have many different templates that we can move around like puzzle pieces. There’s a template we call “Manhunt” that’s like a relay or round-robin. There are templates for two groups, for a parade; there are also techniques I use for finding different textures, like slow motion. There are certain things that I really like. I like it to end celebratory and start small, with one person. I like to bring out individuals among the mass. Sometimes it’s about finding cameos. Does anyone have any tricks? Do you ride a unicycle? Perfect. In NYC, it came about because, you think that because we live in such a dense city that everything would be connected, but you can also have such a feeling of loneliness among the mass. One of my favorite moments in Bolero NYC is that there is a one-year-old—everyone gets on the subway and the oneyear-old gets left on the platform and is the only one on the stage. Please tell me there’s a happy ending! There is, there is—the mother comes racing back. But the audience just immediately can empathize. What do you enjoy most about working with non-dancers? It’s really beautiful to watch non-dancers move expressively. We all go to the theatre and we expect to see beautiful people. It’s like looking through a magazine—how often do you see a regular person in an advertisement? Bolero is demystifying the theatrical experience. That to me is the most gratifying. It’s so real for the audience when they see someone like themselves up there on stage.

Bolero NYC PHOTO Matt Murphy

For me, also there’s a genuine sincerity that the non-dancers bring to it. Sometimes performers have not quite a mask up, but a heightened awareness of their own presence. Somebody who is not as experienced on stage is not going to have that same heightened awareness. Or other non-dancers have a different, larger awareness of the process. For the dancers and the professionals, there’s something exciting about seeing the possibilities that a non-trained person might create; it’s not about dazzling with your technique. I think that’s refreshing. And what are some of the biggest challenges? One of the things that’s challenging is to find something in the work that’s not light; that’s dark. In Santa Barbara [Bolero Santa Barbara, copresented by DANCEworks and Lobero Theatre Foundation], they have a hard time with wildfires, so how can we have a moment that is a little more reflective, maybe show a little darker side of the community? There’s something I often say at the beginning of a new process of Bolero, which is that we all have to practice the law of detachment. We may work two days on something that in the long run doesn’t make it to stage. You also have to be extremely flexible and say, remember that thing that was in the beginning of the dance? It’s now in the middle of dance. It’s in constant flux until opening. Also, I have to at least listen to

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every idea a community person brings, even though more often than not, I can’t take the ideas—which is where the two-theme rule comes into play and is helpful. But every once in a while, if you take one—then it’s reaffirming for the entire company. To me it’s similar to teaching. You never know when someone is going to have a better idea than yours or an idea that you wouldn’t have thought of that is so engaging. Do you bring to Bolero a different skill set than you use when you work with your company, or is there a lot of correlation between this and the work you do with your dancers? I feel like the creative process is very similar; it’s me creating and guiding and collaborating. This is how it plays out in the company as well. It’s still—it’s an extension, something that we do within the company that we can share with everybody. I try to approach everything similarly. My creative process, I hope, plays itself out in every endeavor. I think the one unifying thing is everybody can dance. That’s great for theatre. Not everybody who’s cast is a dancer, but you can still be a participant in my process. I’m a modern dancer that works in ballet, theatre, and hopefully film. And I understand that modern dance can be intimidating, and that there’s at times something of a stigma, and I don’t want that. That’s who I am. I want to be able to share what’s so exciting about it—and what’s exciting about it is that it’s completely free and up to interpretation. And every time you create something, it’s something new. What’s coming up? We have an exciting one coming up, which is two-fold. We’re going to Sarasota, FL, and performing in the courtyard of the Ringling Museum, part of the Ringling Museum’s arts festival. And while we’re down there, we’re going to meet with the Institute for the Ages and we’re going to work on beginning the process of making a film, Bolero Senior Citizens, which will hopefully take place in a pool and be a 15-minute film with seniors. This idea came to me because I was at my parent’s retirement community watching a water aerobics class with the noodles. Especially in this kind of community, I feel like there’s a sense that they are not very active—so kind of demystifying that and given them the freedom to show who they are. They’re very active; they are going to be dancing in a pool. And I’m hoping some woman shows up in a leather print bikini and a floral cap. Stephanie Coen is Associate Artistic Director at Two River Theater in Red Bank, N.J., where Keigwin presented the Bolero Red Bank in 2012.

OPPOSITE

David Leong rehearsing graduate students from Virginia Commonwealth University Department of Theatre PHOTO Glynn Brannan

Theatre As Its Own Medium AN INTERVIEW WITH DAVID LEONG BY

KRISTY CUMMINGS

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David Leong’s extensive and varied career straddles the worlds of professional theatre and higher education. As a movement director and fight choreographer, his impressive résumé includes 18 Broadway productions, including Billy Elliot and Carousel, 60 Off-Broadway productions, including Jitney and ’Tis a Pity She’s a Whore, and hundreds of regional productions including work at Arena Stage, the Shakespeare Theatre, the Guthrie Theater, the Mark Taper Forum, Denver Center Theatre Company, and Hartford Stage. As an educator, he is currently the Chair of the Theatre Department at Virginia Commonwealth University and has held previous faculty positions at Juilliard, Brandeis University, the University of Maryland, Northern Kentucky University, and the University of Montevallo. Leong is currently writing Extreme Play! Special Skills for Actors and Directors, a book that describes how to perform and stage “extreme” scenes. He is also co-authoring Say It with Success: The Art of Public Delivery with Aaron Anderson. Leong holds an MFA degree from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and a BA degree from the University of New Hampshire. In the spring, SDC Journal spoke with Leong at length about the course of his career, the kind of theatre that inspires him, his major influences, and the connections between the many different facets of his work. Let’s begin with your fight and movement work. How did you get your start? I was a gymnast from the age of 6 until I was 20. I had won a lot of medals in state gymnastics competitions in high school and also in New England regional competitions. Then I was on the gymnastics team as an undergraduate at the University of New Hampshire. One day I happened to be walking by a nursery school and I saw some children listening to a story, and it sparked my interest in storytelling. I thought, oh, that’s kind of cool. I went over to the theatre department and took a class in children’s theatre. In that class, people found out about my background in gymnastics and that I could move. From that time on, any time physical action was needed in a theatre production, they called me. If it was a stair-fall, if it was a punch, if it was a sword fight, if it was out of the world of traditional ballet, jazz, or modern, (although I had taken a lot of modern at that time, too, and a lot of contact improv), they would say, “Just get Leong to do it.” They just assumed

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that I could do those things because I could move well. And so, sort of blindly like we do when we’re very young, I just said, oh sure, I’ll do it. I didn’t know how much I didn’t know. My younger years were about exploring, because sometimes, the more you know, the more you feel trapped by boundaries. I have read that you were originally selftaught. Now you hold the distinction of Certified Fight Master. What training did you eventually undertake in order to progress in your career? When I was an undergraduate at UNH, I started taking workshops with members of Tony Montanaro’s mime company. Tony was a student of Marcel Marceau’s and he created a company in South Paris, Maine. Mime and gymnastics were my two movement disciplines. I brought those to my theatre work. What I liked about the theatre was that there was specific meaning behind every gesture, every movement, and even stillness itself. It was more than just an aesthetic thing. As a gymnast, I grew tired of movement for the sake of movement. There is no story or feeling to that story. It’s merely a physical discipline. Aesthetically, it’s beautiful, but my mind and body grew tired of that. So when I discovered the world of theatre, I became excited about the stories beneath and within the movement. Then there was a person from England that came upon my work. I can’t even remember his name. He wasn’t a fight master, but he had a lot of skill and after seeing my work, he said, “You know, David, what I notice about your work is you tell nice stories, you have some nice shapes and I like what you’re doing, but you have no technique.” And I said, “Okay.” I didn’t fall apart when I heard that. In retrospect, I’m surprised I didn’t, but I guess he said it in a very gentle way. I sought out Patrick Crean, fondly known as Paddy. He was the founding father of modern-day fight directing, having choreographed over 50 films and 500 stage plays in Europe and America. He choreographed [for] many of the greatest British actors, including Alec Guinness, Donald Wolfit, and Ralph Richardson, and also doubled and choreographed several Errol Flynn movies. Paddy came over from London to be the resident fight director at the Stratford Festival in Canada in the ’60s, where he stayed for 25 years. Paddy influenced everyone who is anyone. All the fight masters in London and in the U.S. studied with Paddy. I wrote to him, and I said, “Paddy, can I come work with you?” And he said, “Sure.” I spent three summers with him and we worked day after day. Every morning we had a ritual. We’d sit down and have tea and he would tell me stories about when he was working and how he solved a particular problem. He taught me about life and how to work with actors in these

daily conversations. Then in the afternoon, he would say, “Pick out a script from my library”— he had a collection of all the scripts he had worked on. I would select one and we would walk through the fights in that play or film. For instance, we walked through the 1954 Hamlet movie that he choreographed for Olivier. He would explain to me why he did little things here and there. He taught me things that no one even teaches now, like the rhythm of the sound that is made when blades engage and what it means when there’s a pause here, what it means when you’re pressing on a blade and you’re creating this kind of sliding sound. He taught me how rhythm translates into emotion. He taught me so many nuances that are completely overlooked in the theatre today. At the end of each day, he told me to go to the post office and make a copy of the script we had worked on for myself. I did that on and off for over three summers. I got to walk through the greatest fights done by the greatest actors. That was my formal fight training. I learned from the best person, walking through the best footsteps in the modern-day era of stage and film. And in my opinion, that was the best way I could’ve learned. I learned the art of staging action and movement from multiple points of view, including the stage director, film director, editor, and, most importantly, from the point of view of the audience. I also underwent very specific training for a production of Shogun Macbeth, produced in New York City by Tisa Chang because the fights involved Samurai swords. I had basic skills in that discipline so I studied intensively with Dale Kirby, who was a three-time national weapons champion with the Samurai sword and was on the World Cup team. I called him up and I said, “Dale, I studied Japanese sword work, but it’s really, really rough. Will you train me this summer?” And he said, “Sure, come live with my wife and me for the summer.” I went down to Nashville, Tennessee, and trained very hard. Dale’s Samurai expertise combined with the sword skills I learned from Paddy Crean prepared me for that production, which then jumpstarted my career in New York City. Do you have a certain style or aesthetic when it comes to choreography? My craft developed from a very personal place for me. I had kind of a tough childhood. Sure, there were the classes I took in painting at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (my father was a painter and architect) and also I studied the clarinet, piano, and guitar for about 10 years. But those early years were also filled with anxiety and fear, so I covered my pain with a steady TV diet of Robin Hood, Zorro, and Errol Flynn. You see, there was a lot of violence in my home. I saw some really ugly things happen. I saw everything you can imagine and some things you don’t want to imagine. Then when I got into the medium of fight TISA CHANG since 1975 | DAVID LEONG since 2012

choreography, there were standard moves that I thought were too cliché, so I said to myself, it doesn’t actually look like this in real life. I really know what violence looks like up close. I then started developing a whole way of creating what I then called “contemporary violence.” And that style sort of became the norm.

David Leong rehearsing flying angel sequence from The Miracle Theatre at Pigeon Forge with Tiza Garland in flight PHOTO Paul Dennhardt

It was also during this time that I learned a lot about myself. In the early 1980s, I was directing the play Extremities at Northern Kentucky University, where I was teaching acting and movement. In this play, a man breaks into a house and he tries to rape a woman and she turns the tables on him. She ties him up and physically tortures him until he admits what he had planned to do. I choreographed the violence with a very high level of realism and people reacted to it with incredible interest. It was during this time that I devised a whole set of contact improvs that would allow me to create the violence from an organic place yet retain the look of out-ofcontrol frenzied violence. I invited my therapist to come see it. After seeing the production, she said, “David, I know exactly why you’re doing what you do and why you’re good at it.” And I said, “Why?” She said, “Because this is your way to work through your stuff because you get to write the story of the violence, you get to control it, you get to teach it and know that it’s ultimately safe for the actors. You know exactly with almost breathtaking realism what this looks like, yet you know it’s fake.” And I said, “Oh my God.” It kind of scared me. I also found the more I worked through my personal history with violence, my work on stage changed, too. My work started out very romantic after studying swordplay with Paddy; I then discovered the frenetic look of contemporary violence and, after healing the pain of a childhood filled with domestic violence, I developed the ability to make my choreography more conceptual. That’s when I started being asked to choreograph in a much more stylized and elegant way. I’m many years past my final sort of big discovery there, and now I can move in any direction. So what MOLLY SMITH since 1996

happened to me personally truly changed my work. It was a really big part of how my work evolved. What is your artistic process for creating stage violence and movement? First of all, I’ll research big-time. I’m a huge researcher. I research, read the script, read everything about it. I travel to the location if I can and learn about it. When I did Napoleon in London, I went to Paris; I went to the Napoleon Museum. When I worked on The Civil War on Broadway, I went to Gettysburg and visited many of the battlefields. I read, read, read. I find out what the iconic images were at the time. I also spend a lot of time talking with the director. My degree was a mix of child drama, music, art, and directing, so I always think about the work from a director’s point of view, a storyteller’s point of view. If the playwright is alive, I obviously want to talk with him or her as well. I want to know the dramaturgical reason for why a particular fight or movement sequence is where it is. I want to get inside the playwright’s point of view, as well as the director’s. I want to find out what’s important about that event, and learn why it’s needed at that point in the script. Sometimes when I’ve worked on new plays, through conversations with the playwright and dramaturge I’ve discovered there’s not a strong reason for a particular fight sequence. In those cases, I have actually tried to talk them out of including it. I’ll also do a workshop with actors if I can. I want to play it out. I just did this with director Molly Smith for Mother Courage at Arena

Stage. We did two workshops at Arena Stage and then another two here at Virginia Commonwealth University. I try to workshop everything I can because I like to find it organically with actors. This way I can bring in ideas and play them out to see what works. And then, even when I go into rehearsal for the show, it’s not all preplanned. It’s very organic. I don’t work from the outside-in; I work from the inside-out. I take all of that, my research, the workshops, and my conversations with the director and playwright and then kind of start over. I then say, “Now let’s talk about you, the actor.” Then I create it again with them. Sometimes it stays the same and other times it completely changes. How do you approach working with the other members of the creative team? First of all, I like to get inside the head of the director in terms of what the story is about for them. Then I like to create a common vocabulary that we’ll use. To create this vocabulary, I start with the question: “On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the most realistic, 10 being the most conceptual or stylized, where do you see this sequence taking place?” Then the director, the choreographer (if there is a traditional dance choreographer as well), and I, together, have the conversation about whether that shifts throughout the show. We also discuss if certain moves are more in the world of the dance choreographer or the movement person or if certain things are more in the world of the director. Sometimes it’s all three of us together. I like that kind of relationship. I’m not an ego-driven person—I love collaboration; it’s so much better. I’m not a person who likes to work alone at all. It frustrates me. I don’t think I’m nearly as creative or imaginative. Are there certain qualities you look for in your collaborative partners? Well, for me it’s very important to work with very open people. Molly Smith, she just said it best—I quote her all the time. When we SUMMER 2014 | SDC JOURNAL

go into a production meeting, her first words are, “Listen, we’ve got a great collaborative, creative team here. I just want you to know the best idea wins. We’re all here together.” I like to work with people like that. If it’s not like that, it’s really hard for me to want to work on that project. What draws you to a piece of theatre? Well, two things. Number one, is it going to be challenging for me? I like to do something different. I like to work on projects I haven’t done before and on projects that scare me. The more challenges I’m confronted with, the more excited I am. If it’s almost impossible to do, if you say to me can you make these horses fly and can you turn this inside-out, etc., that’s a project that I’m going to jump on board with. For instance, when I worked with Francesca Zambello on Napoleon, we had to stage an avalanche and the Battle of Waterloo. I’m always going to point in that kind of direction, because I’m most attracted to what scares me most. That’s number one. Number two is the people. Are they collaborative? Do they want to create something new? I’m not a person who comes and plugs in a fight. I’m not Mr. Fix-It. I have turned down a lot of that kind of work. So you’re usually involved from the beginning? Yes, very much so. As with Amazing Grace, the new musical you’ve been with through its development. It started at Goodspeed and now it’s opening this fall in Chicago, with hopes for a New York run to follow? Yes, we’ll see what happens after the Chicago run. They are hoping for a New York venue to open up. It’s being called a pre-Broadway run, but we’ll see what happens. Can you talk about your role in the development of that piece? Yes. I was actually introduced to the piece through the costume designer, Toni-Leslie James, who works on my faculty at VCU. When she read the script and was in conversation with Gabriel Barre, the director, she said, “David, this has your name written all over it!” I asked, “Why?” She said, “Because it’s epic— there’s a sea battle, a shipwreck with a storm at sea, and a slave rebellion—this is you.” So I went and met with Gabe. We had a great rapport. The creative team actually did a workshop of the piece for a week at VCU, which was the first step. Then, we went to the Goodspeed. We did a workshop production there, which was very well received. We then

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returned to VCU for another workshop. And actually Gabe is in residence here at VCU right now directing Arabian Nights, so he and I are spending a lot of time working on the project now. Christopher Gattelli is the dance choreographer and he’ll be doing a workshop of the dance choreography in late April/early May in NYC. When you workshop pieces at VCU, do you use students? Yes, we workshop with undergraduate and graduate students. What a great opportunity—I am sure they jump at the chance to participate. Oh, they love it. It’s great professional experience for them, and exposure. It gives us an opportunity to work with people that are young and raw. That energy plus the facilities provide the opportunity to really just dig in. Since 1996, you have been the Chair and Producing Director of the Department of Theatre at Virginia Commonwealth University. Prior to that, you held other faculty appointments at various colleges and universities. When and how did you first start teaching? I actually started teaching right after graduate school. I was only 24 years old when I was a full-time university instructor—it scared the hell out of me! I hardly knew what I was doing. As I was finishing graduate school, the thought of working professionally never even crossed my mind. I found out about a teaching job, I interviewed, and I got it. This is back in 1975. You know, now people plot out so many things, I am going to do this, then this, and I’m going to do that down that road. Back then, most of us went to college just to stay out of the Vietnam War. Teaching sort of fell into my lap. For me, teaching was a way of affirming that I knew what I was doing. I taught all levels of graduate and undergraduate acting, directing, movement, and child drama and worked at Montevallo, Maryland, and Northern Kentucky University. By that time I was also working a lot professionally. I started thinking, hmm, you know what? I’ve been teaching for 12 years. I’m a tenured associate professor at Northern Kentucky University. Before I feel like I can teach again, I need to prove to myself that I can do this professionally full time. And like a blind fool, I quit my tenured job and moved to New York unemployed. Who is going to do that now? Who is going to give up a full-time salary with benefits? The head of the program tried to convince me to only take a leave of absence, but I felt the stakes wouldn’t have been high enough. I asked her permission to

resign and she agreed. I think to myself now, who in the world would do that? With that move to New York, did your professional career really begin to take off? It was already put in motion before I left Northern Kentucky University. I was brought in as a kind of show doctor to make sure everything was safe on a nearby production of The Empress of China. The actors told me they were doing a show in New York City that fall, Shogun Macbeth, and Tisa Chang was producing it. They told me I should talk with her about choreographing the fights. So I flew to New York and I met with Tisa Chang. We had a great conversation and she hired me. It ended up being a rave hit and I got a one-line mention in the New York Times. It was pretty insignificant, but because of that line, Joe Papp at the New York Shakespeare Festival noticed me. At the same time, I choreographed Romeo and Juliet at the Shakespeare Theater in Washington, D.C., directed by Michael Kahn, and I got a write-up in the Post. So I had two reviews, one in the Post and one in the Times, that were pretty much back-to-back. I was teaching a movement class and one of the student secretaries walked in to tell me I had a call. I told him to take a message and he said, “No, you should go get this call—it’s the Public Theater. Estelle Parsons wants to meet you, because they read about you, and they want you to come to New York to talk to her about choreographing a show.” It actually didn’t end up working out, but that was another prompt for me to move to New York and be a professional fight choreographer full time. For 10 years I was very fortunate and worked regularly. I averaged about 23 shows a year as a fight choreographer/movement director. I had to do a lot of projects just to pay my bills. I was determined not to teach at that time, because I wanted to prove to myself I could do this. My very first Broadway show was the Christopher Plummer and Glenda Jackson Macbeth. I worked on Broadway and OffBroadway and in all the major regional theatres in the U.S. Sometimes I was doing multiple shows in one day. I remember one morning I had a rehearsal at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and then I flew to New York in the afternoon and had a rehearsal for a Broadway show at night. And I was thinking, this is crazy! What led you back to the world of education and to your current position as Department Chair at VCU? Through my professional work, I had developed a very strong relationship with Michael Kahn, who was head of the drama school at Juilliard at the time. He invited me to teach there and I said absolutely. By that time, I was married and had one child who was three

GABRIEL BARRE since 1995 | CHRISTOPHER GATTELLI since 2000 | MICHAEL KAHN since 1966 ESTELLE PARSONS since 1989 | FRANCESCA ZAMBELLO since 2004

years old and very articulate. I came home from rehearsal late one night and he looked at me with those beautiful eyes and said, “Daddy, thank you for coming home tonight.” And I said, “Oh, boy.” I’ve been so busy proving to myself that I can work at the highest level so now I need to devote way more time to parenting my child. I know I can compete and now it’s time for a change.

Pippa Pearthree strangling Dan Moran with Lois Smith in the background from George Walker’s Escape From Happiness dir. by Irene Lewis PHOTO Richard Anderson

I decided to go back to the world of higher education, but I didn’t really want to teach full time and I wanted to continue to work professionally. I interviewed for a couple of jobs, including the Head of the Movement program and Chair of the Department of Theatre at VCU. In the end, I wanted that position, because they were looking for someone who knew the professional world and was still active, but also someone who knew the field of higher education. It was a perfect fit. Do you feel that your role as an educator enhances your craft? You know, they both complement each other very well. I wouldn’t, I couldn’t do one without the other. The thing is, when I’m working professionally, I’m always a teacher because often the work I’m called upon to do, whether it be to stage a shipwreck or a sword fight, most people don’t have that expertise. So actors of the highest level of skill and training will let go of their egos and say alright, help me with this. I am always teaching, coaching, and directing. I’m lucky—I teach and mentor graduate students here at VCU and work with professionals both here on campus and on professional productions. So I have my feet in both worlds, but honestly there’s no difference for me. At VCU you initiated a collaborative program between the Department of

Theatre and the medical school. Can you tell me about this unique piece of work? It all started when I was reading the New York Times Sunday Magazine and there was an article about how doctors and nurses had lost their ability to really build rapport with their patients. Patients felt that doctors weren’t listening or didn’t understand them. I was curious, so I went to Dr. Richard Wenzel, a world-renowned doctor of epidemiology at the VCU medical hospital and asked if this was a problem. And he said, “Absolutely, it is a huge problem.” I explained that in theatre, we teach actors how to listen well. We teach how to listen for subtext, how to listen for underlying meaning and intention. We also teach expressiveness and presence. I asked him if he would like to put together a team and study whether we could apply these teaching methods to doctors.

We received two grants to conduct our study. Now, we didn’t do theatre with doctors. The last thing doctors want to do is theatre—when they think of theatre exercises, they think of being asked to pretend they’re climbing a tree, pretend they are walking through peanut butter, that kind of stuff, which they would never want to do. We extracted exercises that are used to train actors and reconfigured them with medical terminology. Through these exercises, we taught doctors how to build rapport with their patients. We published the results in the Journal of General Internal Medicine and the program exploded at VCU. We were being asked to go into the surgery, dentistry, psychiatry, and nursing departments as well, to teach empathy, problem solving, and teamwork utilizing the fundamental principles of communication. In addition to doing the work here at VCU, we also now travel around the world to conduct workshops on this kind of training. The other part of this collaboration is the Standardized Patient Training Center, which provides simulation-based training for faculty, medical students, and staff. VCU was building a new medical school and they asked my colleague Aaron Anderson and me if we would head up this program. It now occupies two floors of the medical hospital and is a major part of the medical training here at VCU. We have about 75 people who are employed at the hospital as standardized patients. Some are actors from the Department of Theatre, but many are people from the community who have had some theatre training. They work anywhere from a few hours every other week to 30 hours a week. We received the VCU School of Medicine Award for Educational Innovation in 2008, and the program continues today as a fully funded formal agreement between the Department of Theatre and SUMMER 2014 | SDC JOURNAL

School of Medicine now housed in the Center for Human Simulation and Patient Safety. You also work with the National Association of Schools of Theatre (NAST), which is an association of schools of theatre, primarily at the collegiate level, that establishes national standards for undergraduate and graduate degrees in theatre. It is also the national accrediting agency for theatre and theatre-related disciplines. How did you become involved with NAST and what are your primary responsibilities? I worked with the site evaluators when they came to VCU and was instrumental in getting our accreditation for the theatre training program. I found the process fascinating. Site evaluators visit theatre programs across the United States to determine if they meet the standards set by the accrediting body. Extensive reports are then submitted to NAST for review and accreditation. The whole idea of making sure that standards are met interested me. After helping our department go through the process, I then went through the training to become a site evaluator myself. I learned how to assess them and help them gain accreditation. I then moved up another step when I was nominated to be a member of the commission. The commission is a group of 16 to 20 people that read all of the site evaluators’ reports and vote on which institutions gain accreditation. That is a mind-boggling event. Every year we sit for one week in a room with these huge tomes of books piled up, and we sift through these reports and talk about programs. Literally, hundreds of programs are talked about each year. That, for me, was and still is a major eyeopener. It has been such a great process. First of all, I travel all over the U.S. to see training programs. For my own education, it helps me as a chair and as a leader, and it also helps me understand where our theatre department lies across the U.S. And it helps me as a professional to see the different points of view as to what is considered important and how quality training at one institution differs from quality training at another institution. Having reviewed and evaluated many theatre programs through your experience with NAST, what qualities make a strong directing program stand out? Speaking specifically of MFA directing programs, I find there are four essential components that make a program stand out. The first is mentorship. One-on-one mentorship is essential. You have to have very small classes, admitting only one or maybe two people each year. The second is that the

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faculty mentors are working professionally as directors in the real world, and hopefully working at all different levels and in different arenas—including both commercial and notfor-profit jurisdictions. The third component is that a program provides opportunities. Directing students need to direct; they have to be directing all the time and at least one full-length show every year. There are a lot of directing programs where students only get one mainstage thesis—this is not enough. They also need to be directing in a wide variety of styles, including plays with elevated text, new plays, classics, etc. The fourth component is that the coursework must be substantive. A program must include courses in collaboration, leadership, actor coaching, actor/director relationships, working in different styles, and the differences between teaching and coaching. The coursework needs to reflect those things a director will need once they step outside of the classroom. Programs that succeed do these four things really well. The ones that are not successful, they need to work on these areas of training. I also have to mention that in addition to MFA programs, I think there are a number of really strong directing programs that are not connected to universities but revolve around mentorship. For instance, in several regional theatres, they have a directing fellow who is mentored and then given the opportunity to direct smaller productions and they progress from there. Mentorship is so key—many of the great directors today did not go the MFA route but rather were mentored and moved up through the ranks that way. You also have your own business working as a personal coach to executives for public presentations and also to theatre professionals for auditions and for interviews for positions in higher education. What inspired you to take on this additional endeavor? First of all, when I was applying to graduate school back in 1973, I didn’t know how to interview well. I didn’t know how to promote myself on paper and in person. And through the years, I know I have mastered that process of how to interview and how to sell yourself while continuing to be authentic and real. Additionally, I have been on hundreds and hundreds of search committees for faculty, dean, and president positions, so I have sat on the other side of the table as well. I’ve had some help in my life. I’ve had some people that have taken me by the hand and said, “David, let me show you how to do this.” And so, probably 15 years ago, I decided to give back and coaching is my way of doing that.

I think I have a skill. I can really coach you on putting together a résumé, sending it out. I can coach you on interviewing for a particular job or presenting a 20-minute sales pitch. I have a passion for that as much as I do for anything else in life. I love that as much as creating something in the theatre. I actually find the coaching is a comfort zone for me. I’m probably more comfortable doing that than anything else, actually. Who do you consider to be your mentors? Paddy Crean was my chief mentor. He passed away a while back, but he taught me about life. He taught me about professional life and personal life. He gave me a sense of artistry. Then there are three others that have heavily influenced my work who I would also consider mentors. The first is Molly Smith because of her overall leadership and her ability to convey the human experience on stage and off. The next is Michael Kahn because of his sense of what theatre is; that had a big impact upon me. He helped me understand that theatre is its own medium. You can borrow and combine and kind of turn something inside-out and look at it a different way, but theatre is its own medium. Joanne Akalaitis is the final one. She was a tremendous influence on me and I’ll tell you exactly what she gave me. One day we had a conversation and she said, “David, I love the way you work. But you don’t have to think in a linear way. You can go from A to K to L to M to D and back to Z. You can do it that way, as long as by the time it all adds up in the end, we know.” And I thought, bingo! I get that now. Those three were my biggest influences, and are still. They have been very important to me in my life. Is there a common thread that connects the many facets of your career? To a lot of people, it seems like I wear 25 different hats. But for me, it’s all the same. If you said to me, David, you can only do one of these things, I’d say, I can’t. The fact is, I love to do all of these things. I can’t do just one. They’re all about how you package something and how you put it together. It doesn’t matter whether I’m doing a piece of movement design for a sea battle or helping you put together a presentation for a board of directors. It’s all the same for me: the preparation, the research, the follow-through, the designing of the material. They’re all about connecting people. They’re about telling stories. You see, if I’m coaching you on a job interview, there’s a story you have to tell and I help you shape it. I help you get it on its feet. I’m helping you design it from start to finish, just like I do in the theatre or in the classroom. It’s about collaboration. It’s about the human experience and that’s what pulls it all together for me.

JOANNE AKALAITIS since 1985

FROM THE ARCHIVES

MASTERS OF THE STAGE

BART SHER + JULIE TAYMOR On April 29, 2014, director Anne Bogart moderated SDC Foundation’s One-on-One Conversation between renowned directors Julie Taymor and Bartlett Sher at the National Opera Center in New York. During the conversation, the two influential directors discussed the beginnings of their careers, collaborating with design teams, and the importance of knowing how and when to accept feedback on a production. The following is an excerpt from the evening. Listen to the entire conversation via podcast at www.tdf.org. LAURA PENN | Good evening. My name’s Laura Penn and I’m the Executive Director of SDC. On behalf of Ellen Rusconi, the Producing Director of the Foundation, I’d like to thank you for joining us.

JULIE | If we could turn these lights down…

The Foundation was established in 1965 to support the work of directors and to help create opportunities for gathering, exchanging information, and advancing the craft, all of which will be met tonight by the illustrious people you see on the stage. I just want to let you know that tonight’s program will be available as part of our Masters of the Stage podcast series, in partnership with Theatre Development Fund. Meanwhile, I give you Anne Bogart, Julie Taymor, and Bartlett Sher.

JULIE | There we go. Thanks, that’s good.

JULIE TAYMOR | (Referring to the lights.) Can I just ask if this is… ANNE BOGART | You want to see everybody, don’t you? JULIE | Yeah, I do, actually. ANNE | Is that possible?

ANNE | There’s a director in the house! LAURA | And so the evening begins.

ANNE | This is so much better. First of all, I’m delighted to be here with you and with my friends, and that we are together with this opportunity to penetrate the depths of directing for the theatre. I’m going to dive right in, but I just want to thank you for sharing this with us. I think I became a director—this is not about me, don’t worry—I became a director by leaving the United States. I became an American by going away, and because I thought I couldn’t see straight. I couldn’t see what I was doing. I couldn’t see where I came from. I couldn’t see whose shoulders I’ve stood on, and it was only got by going [away] and pretending to be German; and I learned that that was a mistake—don’t get me started— and I think I share that with Julie and Bart. I want to start with that issue of journeying

ANNE BOGART since 1990 | BARTLETT SHER since 1996 | JULIE TAYMOR since 1996

away in order to find out who you are. I want to ask both of you, if you’d like to dive into that subject, and I think it’s interesting for everybody to know specifically where you went and what happened and what sort of transformations occurred. Let’s start with Julie. JULIE | I would say it started when I left my Newton, Mass., little suburbia and went to downtown Boston to Boston Children’s Theatre. Immediately I was out of my own comfort zone, my own familiar background, and I was with kids doing theatre, kids from the projects and from all different walks. And that was already a big thing, taking the subway or the T. That love of travel started at that age, at about eight or nine. I traveled a lot as a kid; I went on the Experiment in International Living to Sri Lanka when I was 15; then I was in Paris when I was 16 for a year and studied at École de Mime Jacques Lecoq, where I studied mime and started to create puppetry. It was a way to study movement and objects, not literally making the puppets.

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The big, big journey was when I graduated from Overland College. I went to Indonesia on a Watson Fellowship. I went for three months and stayed four years, and started a theatre company, at age 21 or so, of Javanese, Balinese, Sundanese, masks, dancers, actors, musicians. I was on my way to Japan to work with the Awaji, which is a Bunraku troupe—a folk Bunraku troupe. I was going to Indonesia just for three months and then I was going to go to Awaji for a year, but I landed in Indonesia and was so taken by the power of theatre there in its original form that I just stayed. ANNE | What was it about the power of what you experienced there? JULIE | Well, first of all, the traditional Indonesian theatre—Javanese, Balinese—it was mostly Java and Bali. It comes out of religion. It’s entertainment, but that’s not how it began; it began as a worship. Shadow puppetry— Indonesian shadow puppetry—is Wayang Kulit; it comes from the word Bayangan, which is the ancestor spirits.

singer. It was so embedded as part of living that it was a shock to me when I went there at 21 years old. I couldn’t believe that everybody in the traditional places—the villages—that the arts were not something that was considered extra. ANNE | There’s something particular in what you’re saying. Certainly technique. One can see the influence and how a story is told that’s different, but the aspect of religion is really interesting to me and I think somehow it’s infected your work. Is there a way to talk about that, the spiritual side of what you experienced there and how that’s remained with you? Because I throw that gauntlet down: I think it has remained in your world. JULIE | Really? ANNE | I do, yeah.

The first original shadow plays were the shadows that the puppeteer—the dalang—would put up; they were the ancestor spirits. And as the stories were told, the men would sit on the side of the puppeteer—the dalang— and the women, who are supposed to be kept in the dark, would sit on the other side and think those were really the spirits. The audience moves all around, so you could either experience it as a mystery or you can experience the entire creative, which lends itself to Lion King, conceptually, because you have to be able to appreciate it where you forget the strings and rods, or the fact that there’s a puppeteer or a performer; you’re in the story. At the same time, you’re allowed to make the decision in this Indonesian theatre of watching the mechanics. The thing about the theatre that I saw in Indonesia—and this was a long time ago when there was no television, or very little and very little movies—it was the dominant entertainment form. I saw little children coming and sitting on the laps of their parents as they’re playing gamelan orchestra, like the Suzuki method of playing. In Bali, there is no word for actor or artist. It’s something you do; it’s part of your everyday life. A person would be a farmer or a teacher and perform Topeng mask drama at night; or a woman would be an Arja singer or an opera

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JULIE | Well, it does affect you when you see people doing it for different reasons than just financial or fame; that the art of doing it is as important as the result. I got that in a major way. I think that’s why Lion King has stayed alive, because when we created the show, it was really a very spiritual activity, no matter how successful that show is financially. There is an aspect of it that we all feel from the South African music and the South Africans who are in it, to the racial experience of it, to the children who were in it and the doing of it. My associate director and the other people, they feel it; it’s amazing to me… ANNE | You’ve created a culture in the— JULIE | Yes. There are stories that are told to every company about what I experienced in Indonesia, what it is to perform there. Everybody knows—if you’re all directors—if you have a show that runs a long time, how

do you keep the vitality, the spirit of the performers, [alive]? I’ve got to clock in for my two hours, so you go back to a show and you freak out, right, because you say, what happened? It’s not there anymore, in a long-running show. Usually in a two- or three-month Off-Broadway, that doesn’t really happen—I mean, hopefully it doesn’t happen. But I think that Lion King was so related to my time in Asia—in mostly Indonesia—I felt that. It’s there even in the design of The Lion King. Every single piece of cloth was hand-dyed, every bead on the costume of the lionesses is a real bead. ANNE | That’s huge. JULIE | Disney supported this, because I said, look, if the performers are wearing something that is so beautiful to them this close, they’re going to feel it. They’re going to feel the power. People could say, well, in the 10th row, you don’t notice it. The actor notices it, so there’s something about infusing the details, and I would always say to the actors, when you go work out at the gym, or when you do yoga, or you do any of those things, what is the point of doing it half-assedly? If you don’t invest yourself at that moment in a completely full-out way, you’re cheating not just the audience, but yourself, so having the actors really be committed in that way to understanding that the act of doing it is critical to their well-being, that is the religious, spiritual way to approach the performance. ANNE | I was, as I tend to do too much, going from one YouTube episode to another. I found this episode of the cast of Lion King on an airplane. JULIE | Oh yes, did you see that? ANNE | Coming back from Australia, and they transformed the culture of the airplane. I mean, it was sort of visible…it was amazing. You could actually feel that…I hate using the word “spirituality” and I don’t know why I’m doing it tonight, because it’s something that you shouldn’t say too often, but I think it’s absolutely fascinating. The theatre is two things, right? It’s the extreme fake and the thing you can’t fake, and the most interesting theatre is those two extremes put next to each other, which it seems you do.

Before I drop your journeys, I want to do one more thing before we go to Bart, which is Lecoq in Paris. It seems to me that so many wonderful directors and actors—but directors in particular, since this is an SDC event—have trained at Lecoq, and they seem to have a technique to take stories or feelings or something to say, and make them visible. Is there anything you can say about what you’ve learned from studying at Lecoq? JULIE | I was really young when I went and they don’t take people as young. I went for one year. I didn’t do the clowning—the second year is more clowning—but I did spend a year. I think it is the understanding that the body is as critical as the brain and the head and the language. It was really the whole notion of ideograph, which has infused every aspect of how I work as a director and designer; I probably got [this] from part[ly] Blau—Herbert Blau—and then a great deal from Lecoq, which is a way to codify or pull in or get to the essence of what a play is about, or a movie or whatever you’re doing… an opera. And when you direct an actor, it’s trying to get them to get to the essence of it and use the body in an abstract way.

script well enough with a depth as well as the band does, and the band is improvising and they’re experiencing new relationships in the music together, and usually through chemical means. So it’s quite intense. JULIE | At 11? BART | Yeah, I was 11…I wasn’t allowed to do chemical means at eleven. I inhaled a lot from afar, I guess, but it was fun. Also those light shows and weird things happening, and it was part of a whole ethos that all the rules were off about what the world could be. I have older brothers and we went; my whole family went; it was weird, but it was fun. Most of my experience overseas is more typically Western European. I went to Europe when I was 15 and traveled around. My brother was working there, so I got to see a lot of mostly art museums, and I wasn’t a theatre kid; I was more of an athlete and didn’t really know that I wanted to be a part of theatre.

ANNE | I think ideographs are so useful for a director and I’m going to come back them. Bart, could you describe your journey? BART SHER | It’s pretty different…I would say probably my first big adventure was…I grew up in San Francisco in the ’60s and ’70s, so my first big theatrical experience was being taken by my older brothers to a Grateful Dead concert, which meant basically being an 11 year old in a room with like a lot of people…one of the rare experiences where the audience is taking larger risks than the people on the stage, and it was very eye-opening. It was an effort to seek transcendence in different forms through the music, kind of a bacchanalian thing. I became a big devotee, and I was a big part of the culture and had a political sort of basis to it. I was growing up in a city, which was filled with the protests of the Vietnam War and an upheaval in all kinds of public discourse in every way, so I thought the world was going to be like the one I grew up in San Francisco, which didn’t turn out to be completely true. And that particular experience had a huge impact on me, because I don’t know what the shadow puppet plays are quite like, but I know that the audiences at that concert know the

ANNE | What kind of athlete? BART | I played basketball. I wasn’t on the varsity or anything. I played golf; I caddied. Then in the ’80s I went to Oxford and studied modern British poetry for a summer, and then I went to graduate school in England, where I studied in the University of Leeds in Northern England, almost exclusively African theatre. Then the biggest influence on me was a guy named Tadeusz Kantor, who was a Polish avant-garde theatre artist. He was born in 1915 and lived to 1990… ANNE | How were you introduced to Kantor? BART | In 1984, I went to the Olympic Arts Festival, which actually had the biggest impact on my life because at the Olympic Arts Festival, I was able to see Giorgio Strehler.

ANNE | This was in Los Angeles. BART | I saw Ariane Mnouchkine’s company, which used some of these same things that Julie also uses. I saw Kantor and I saw Suzuki, all of them were there at this one festival, and I was 23 or 24 years old, kind of just learning about theatre, and they completely opened the doors. But the one that attracted me the most was Kantor. ANNE | Why? BART | It was the most experimental and the closest to the experience I’d had of being in a Grateful Dead concert, but in not a literal way. When I got to reading his writing about theatre, he was approaching theatre from a completely different point of view, one from that of a painter, from a radical point of view and an avant-garde point of view. He would look at text in a completely different way; he’d smash things together, he’d use repetition, he’d use a whole different series of things to come up with something that was absolutely separate from the text and I just found it fascinating. And of the pieces that I saw, the one that affected me the most was this piece called Wielopole, Wielopole, which was extraordinary to me, and I wanted to know why. So I just decided to go to school and study that. At the same time, I did a lot of African theatre, because that was the specialty of Leeds...There and a guy named Nkuki Whatianga, who was from Kenya, and another man—playwright Femi Osofisan, who I later worked with at the Guthrie. All the Sub-Saharan African stuff was strangely being mixed with Shakespeare being mixed with Kantor and I was trying to make sense of all of those. ANNE | I find it so delightful. When I saw South Pacific, which I loved, and it’s such a graceful production, I remember saying to the person I was with, “That’s possible because of Bart and his Kantor experience.” BART | Yes, totally. ANNE | Is there a way you can relate how the influence of Tadeusz Kantor and Rodgers and Hammerstein might fit? BART | There’s probably one moment in the piece where Kantor had the most influence, and that’s this moment late in the second act. SUMMER 2014 | SDC JOURNAL

Kantor’s always trying to push the envelope from the metaphor into some other space. There’s a part in the second act where the soldiers—where they normally do “Honey Bun” and they sort of march off into fighting the war for a good old American cause—I slowed down the music and switched the way the march went in order to try to get a sense, not of just the event as Rodgers and Hammerstein experienced it, but to push it into a deeper metaphor that would capture…I actually borrowed from one of his pieces… ANNE | To capture what? BART | When you saw those kids march off into that thing, you saw all kids marching off into a war. You saw all the possible devastation of it, instead of only narrowing it into the specific event of that one configuration where we were looking at it from 1949 and having survived it. I was trying to see it from the point of view of all the things that Americans have done since, which meant Korea, Vietnam, Iran, etc., and what it’s like for young people to really see what the impact was of them marching off into that war. What they don’t tell you in South Pacific was the war they’re all going off to was one called Tarawa, which was like the bloodiest in the South Pacific, and almost every one of those people would have been killed. I wanted to capture some of that and Kantor is always using repetition or using movement to do that, and I actually took part of the image from one of his pieces called All the Artists Must Die, in which he was playing it off of soldiers from his experience growing up in World Wars I and II. ANNE | I think what you say about it becoming all wars as opposed to one war, all young soldiers going off, is the key. I think it goes back to something Julie was talking about, too, where if you’re staging a living room, do you design a living room or do you design the arena of living rooms? And I think it’s a very different mentality and a different way of thinking. BART | Kantor’s whole point of view is about art and how art—especially abstract expressionism or art in the 20th century—was trying to crack through the normal figurative expression to something else. He was always trying to push it into another place. The hard part about theatre is that it’s essentially a figurative art, because people are in the middle of it. So how [do] you push it into the “abstract,” into a deeper thing? My experience of Wielopole when I first saw it was I wasn’t just experiencing the soldiers and the Jewish rabbi; at that time, I was experiencing something that felt much older.

I had the same experience seeing Strehler’s Servant of Two Masters, which he had done almost exclusively in candlelight, long before Mark Rylance; it tried to get a sense of the history and connection into that, but also in a completely contemporary way. I was interested in that kind of thing. I think it’s the same thing as shadow puppets. The thing behind the puppet behind everything else, where you’re trying to crack into some crevice, which opens up all the information that might be buried in an object or buried in a moment or buried in whatever. That’s what directors do; they hunt to open up the moment so that if it’s the beginning of The Lion King and everybody parades down, it’s not just that you’re watching the Disney thing; you feel like all the animals have arrived for the ritual, and we all know that ritual. So we push past the myth that the Disney one’s sitting on to the deeper myth that we all share in some deeper relationship. We’re all hunting for the crevices into that and some pieces provide them more than others. ANNE | That’s gorgeous. Then you have that Kantor-African influences and then you have Garland Wright and the Guthrie. BART | I had Robert Woodruff, who taught me a lot; I worked with him as well in more the experimental side before that. Then I went to the Guthrie, where I worked with Garland Wright, who was a very classical director and a much more text-based director. I’d been doing almost all experimental work and then went into a long phase of more textural work in a company that was working in repertory to do things that are hard to accomplish in American theatre now. But it still was a very, very powerful time at that institution. ANNE | Let me ask you something: there you were at the Guthrie working with Garland, who clearly was a strong relationship, same as Herbert Blau, which I’d love to get to. Did you have an image of where you were headed? Or what did you imagine your future would be? Julie, I’m going to ask you that same question. BART | No, no. I think what a person like Garland does is he made me imagine a place I could go; that it’s always helpful to have some kind of mentor or some figure out there that you see ahead of you who does the work in a certain way, and you measure yourself against this. ANNE | And that was Garland? BART | That was Garland. It was a little bit Kantor. I got a job and the job allowed me to do this work and kept unfolding into new things.

ANNE | What job? BART | I was resident director there for a couple of years and he made this job for us to come and work and assist and learn. ANNE | I just should say, Garland Wright, who died tragically young, [was] one of the best American directors and there’s no words to lose somebody like that. BART | He was extraordinary. He died in 1998 and he was 52. We went to SMU; he was a kid growing up gay in Texas. His father tried to institutionalize him because he was gay and then he fled to New York and started his own theatre company called the Lion Theatre. He did these amazing pieces, developed under Michael Kahn, this amazing ability to do the classics, plus very contemporary work. It was a very beautiful visual sense and a very mysterious, rich artist and somebody you could watch. He didn’t help you; he would just make you watch and that was fine. You had to watch him work and watch him do stuff and then eventually after enough time… ANNE | So, you say ahead of you, you have Garland. I relate to that; I think every one of us has to have a model, something that you’re measuring yourself against. What was it about his work or his life or his being that you saw as a model? BART | He was very thorough, and his ability to articulate his skill at staging and work, his process from text all the way through tech, through previews, was a great thing to learn, the just pure craft of it. He was a great leader of an institution, so he could articulate and talk about theatre in a way [that] led people to the more difficult work. He’d led a community to accept and participate in ambitious theatrical work that was classical and sometimes not classical. Because with him we did Indian plays, we did Femi Osofisan plays, plus we did classical work, plus we’d do workshops with people. We did all kinds of building of skills. And he was an example; he was just a great teacher and leader in everything that he did and every dinner you had with him, he passed things on. He was just filled with all the spirit of that and you would do anything for him. ANNE | You’re filled with the spirit of him? BART | Yeah, I try to be.

To listen to the entire conversation, visit www.tdf.org.

PHOTOS

SDC JOURNAL

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Elizabeth Nelson

MICHAEL KAHN since 1966 | ROBERT WOODRUFF since 1986 | GARLAND WRIGHT d.1998

IN MEMORIAM JUNE 21, 2013 – JUNE 21, 2014 Marc Breaux CHOREOGRAPHER Member since 1982

Philip Cusack DIRECTOR since 1977

Leslie Cutler DIRECTOR since 1972

A CELEBRATION OF JERRY MANNING

Gene Feist

IN HONOR OF NICHOLAS MARTIN

BY LISA PETERSON

DIRECTOR since 1973

BY SCOTT ELLIS

Last week I had the sad honor of speaking at the memorial service for my friend Jerry Manning, Artistic Director of Seattle Repertory Theatre. Jerry had undergone heart surgery back in April, and the last I’d heard, he was doing very well. Suddenly, though, a staph infection raged through him, and he was gone. The Seattle theatre community was devastated, because in addition to being a great theatre soul and wit, Jerry had turned SRT into a vital town hall for Seattle, vowing and succeeding at “putting the Seattle back into Seattle Rep.” He had the gift for bringing people together. I first met Jerry in 1990. I had a grant to observe Liviu Ciulei at Arena Stage in D.C., but it was a modest grant, as most grants are, and I needed someplace to stay for six weeks. Because we had a friend in common—Jim Nicola of New York Theatre Workshop—Jerry and his partner Gary opened their Capitol Hill apartment to me—for six weeks! That’s how I met Jerry, because he opened his door wide and said “Come on in” to a young director he barely knew. In the ’90s, we worked together at New York Theatre Workshop, where his incredible eye for talent made him an amazing casting director. One play that we did together, Naomi Wallace’s Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, starred a kid who had just quit high school in N.J. named Michael Pitt. Somehow, Jerry had found him, and believed in him, and brought him in to audition. There’s nothing like that feeling when you sit with a great casting director and watch a new talent bloom in front of you. Michael went on from his first professional play with us to do some incredibly exciting work in film and television, and I know he’s only one of the scores of actors that Jerry held his hand out to. But the biggest act of courage and generosity that Jerry gave me was his offer to produce An Iliad before there was even a real script. I know CONTINUED P. 52 LIVIU CIULEI d.2011 | SCOTT ELLIS since 1991 | LISA PETERSON since 1992

Felix Fibich CHOREOGRAPHER since 1966

Bick Goss DIRECTOR/CHOREOGRAPHER since 1970

Philip Seymour Hoffman DIRECTOR since 2001

Mitch Leigh DIRECTOR since 1980

Jerry Manning DIRECTOR since 2013

Nicholas Martin DIRECTOR since 1993

Malcolm Morrison DIRECTOR since 1984

Chuck Patterson DIRECTOR since 2001

James Smock CHOREOGRAPHER since 1970

Patsy Swayze DIRECTOR/CHOREOGRAPHER since 1993

Stuart Vaughan DIRECTOR since 1962

I met Nicholas Martin’s sweater before I was introduced to him. Victor Garber, his great friend, and I were walking and he insisted on stopping to pick up a birthday present. The gift, a sweater with such rich, loud colors and patterns made me wonder who could wear something so bold, so alive; it had to be someone with a big personality. I met Nicky several days later, over 25 years ago. I have often thought the sweater was a reflection of how Nicky lived his quietly benevolent but large life. Directors aren’t often close with other directors, but I was the lucky one because Nicky truly was a great friend of mine; in fact, we became family. Nicky’s kind heart and giving nature made it impossible not to love and respect him. He had a joie de vivre that never diminished how totally present he was in any environment. When he was talking to you, he was in the moment, wildly authentic and calmly intuitive. An actor-turned-director, he had perspective and extensive knowledge and was always generous with both, even when the benefit to others might have been at his expense. Nicky was truly a great friend. He also helped me as I made my own transition from actor to director, always there when I needed him, offering both wisdom and concrete direction, and as only Nicky could, with great humor and kindness. He was a mentor who never let the insecurity of his own relevance or career interfere with his generosity to friends, young writers, or hopeful directors. His deep intelligence was brandished with a wicked sense of humor, leaving little wonder why he never had any trouble getting people to come aboard on his projects, whether up in Boston at the Huntington Theatre or at Williamstown Theatre or anywhere in between. I don’t know when he became part of my family or I part of his; it, like much of Nicky’s life, happened organically and always felt right.

CONTINUED P. 52 SUMMER 2014 | SDC JOURNAL

MANNING CONTINUED FROM P. 51

you all know that these ideas we have will stay stuck as ideas unless someone graces us with belief and gives us the opportunity to actually make the thing real by committing time and resources to it. Jerry put out his hand to me and my writing partner, Denis O’Hare. He forced us to actually write our play by simply scheduling it. He fanned the flame of our idea. And I feel that Jerry held the door open and welcomed us into the world of playwriting, since until then I was mostly a director and Denis was mostly an actor. Jerry changed our lives by his decision, and then he stayed with us until the flame could burn on its own.

THE SOCIETY PAGES SDC Members @ work + play

In many ways, Jerry was an unassuming choice to be an artistic director. He was whip-smart, had great taste, and strong opinions, but he was shy, and not fond of public speaking. But he cared so much about theatre and the people who make it. He was humble, always downplaying his status in the American theatre. But person by person, Jerry reached out and made folks feel essential and appreciated. And Jerry was great at that oldfashioned art of picking up the phone and just, well, checking in. I could fill paragraphs recounting the many, many, many times that Jerry took me out when I was in Seattle, often for long, drunken talks, full of gossip and art and humor, with a seemingly inexhaustible, open heart. He was such a great host, man. But I’m sure many of you have similar stories, because his generosity was wide and unstoppable. He gave me an intro into his Seattle family. And I’ll keep trying to pass along the great lesson I learned from Jerry: Hold out your hand.

Founded in 2006, Broadway Backwards is an annual event benefiting Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center. Held on March 24, 2014, at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, the 9th annual Broadway Backwards celebration brought together Broadway greats to perform musical theatre songs typically reserved for members of the opposite gender. This year’s celebration was hosted by Tony Award winner Julie White and newcomer Bebe Wood and directed by SDC Member Robert Bartley. This installment of Broadway Backwards was the most successful since its inception, raising a staggering $423,183 in one night.

MARTIN CONTINUED FROM P. 51

What contributed most to his bold spirit and quality of character was his childlike innocence. He was pure, even in dealing with his own life’s hurdles. It will be noted that I have spent far less time addressing his myriad professional accomplishments; that’s simply because as great as they were, they came secondary to his starring role as a magnanimous human being. It is this that we will remember, and it is this that I will try to emulate. I always thought how perfectly that birthday sweater imitated Nicky’s vibrancy in its color and pattern and of how it captured his brightness. I realize now that it was he who made the sweater come alive, as he has his friends, colleagues, and all who knew him. In this way, Nicky has ensured that his biggest production, his own life, will never close.

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On May 16, 2014, Marsha Mason became SDC’s 2,000th Active Full Member. Ms. Mason recently directed Chapter Two, currently playing at Bucks County Playhouse, which led her to join SDC. Of becoming an SDC Member she said, “I am thrilled to be a part of SDC and look forward to supporting the Society in any way I can. I feel that I am a grown up director now!” TOP

Tom Viola, Robert Bartley, Glenda Testone + Daniel Whitman PHOTO

Matthew Blank BOTTOM

Marsha Mason with SDC swag

ROBERT BARTLEY since 2012 | MARSHA MASON since 2014

On March 24, 2014, director Sean Mathias and scenic designer Derek McLane came together at Opera America for an SDC Foundation One-on-One Conversation about craft and career. Attendees were able to hear firsthand how Mathias, an acclaimed director who has worked all over the world, and McLane, whose extensive Broadway experience earned him a Tony Award for 33 Variations, delve into the creative process, collaborate with the design team, and ultimately create groundbreaking works of theatre. RIGHT

Sean Mathias + Derek McLane PHOTO

Elizabeth Nelson

UPPER LEFT

Western Business Representative Kristy Cummings at LA Stage Day’s Outdoor Bazaar LOWER LEFT

The second annual LA Stage Day was held on May 17, 2014, at Cal State Los Angeles. Director of Contract Affairs Mauro Melleno, Western Business Representative Kristy Cummings, and Southwest Regional Representative Rick Lombardo were on hand for the event that brings together directors, designers, teachers, and students for a day celebrating the performing arts in the greater Los Angeles area. While in LA, SDC hosted “A Director’s Role in Putting the Team Together,” a break-out session moderated by Member Matt August, who was joined by directors Glenn Casale, Nancy Keystone, and Elina de Santos. Focusing specifically on the director’s role, the panel discussed how one successfully assembles a design team and casts a production.

Western Bus. Rep. Kristy Cummings at the LA Stage Day break-out session “A Director’s Role in Putting the Team Together” with moderator and Member Matt August + Members Nancy Keystone, Glen Casale + Elina de Santos ABOVE

Members Janet Miller, Ann-Giselle Spiegler + Julie Arenal PHOTOS

Staff

SUMMER 2014 | SDC JOURNAL

On May 19, 2014, SDC Members Mary Zimmerman and Melia Bensussen were among nominees who gathered at the 32nd Annual Elliot Norton Awards in Boston. SDC Director of Member Services Barbara Wolkoff and Deputy Director of Contract Affairs Randy Anderson attended the awards, which honor achievements in theatre in the Boston area. The following day, Wolkoff and Anderson held a Membership Meeting focused on expanding SDC’s presence in the Boston area, including how to stregthen relationships with local colleges and universities. TOP LEFT

Deputy Dir. of Contract Affairs Randy Anderson (center) with Members Russell Garrett, Lisa Rafferty, Judy Braha + Larry Sousa at the Boston Membership Meeting TOP RIGHT

A.R.T. Managing Dir. William Russo (left) + Member Jim Petosa (right) with Dir. of Member Services Barbara Wolkoff + Randy Anderson at Elliot Norton Awards

In May, current Drama League Fellows gathered for lunch and discussion in the SDC boardroom. The Fellows, who are part of the Drama League’s mission to develop the artistic growth of aspiring directors, sat down with Director of Member Services Barbara Wolkoff and Member and Artistic Director Roger Danforth to learn about the Union and the Foundation .

SDC JOURNAL

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Director of Member Services Barbara Wolkoff discusses SDC’s mission with the Drama League Fellows in the SDC boardroom RIGHT

Member and Artistic Director Roger Danforth MELIA BENSUSSEN since 1992 | JUDY BRAHA since 1988 ROGER DANFORTH since 1981 | RUSSELL GARRETT since 2004 JIM PETOSA since 1990 | LISA RAFFERTY Assc. since 2014 LARRY SOUSA since 2013 | MARY ZIMMERMAN since 1994

For the first time ever, on April 7, 2014, SDC Members were able to witness the Semi-Annual Membership Meeting from all corners of the country. Through the power of live streaming, Members from Seattle, WA, to Louisville, KY, connected with over 40 Members who gathered at Opera America in Midtown Manhattan to hear the State of the Union and contract updates, as well as the results of the 2013 independent audit report. LEFT

President Susan H. Schulman + Executive Director Laura Penn

BOTTOM LEFT BELOW

Director of Contract Affairs Mauro Melleno

Member Charlie Hensley

PHOTOS Elizabeth

CHARLIE HENSLEY since 1988 | SUSAN H. SCHULMAN since 1981

Nelson

SUMMER 2014 | SDC JOURNAL

April 19, 2014, the recipients of the SDC National Fellowships were honored at this year’s Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. Executive Board Member and Southwest Regional Representative Sharon Ott congratulated the Fellows, including Amelia Bahr, Ibi Owolani, Rebecca Harper and Desiree York, who all received an SDC Associate Membership for one year. SDC Board Member Sharon Ott with SDC National Fellowship recipients Ibi Owolabi + Rebecca Harper

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MIDDLE SDC Fellow Alicia Herder works with lab actors in Jeremy Cohen’s workshop

Actors Theatre of Louisville Artistic Director Les Waters meets with the SDC Fellows at the Kennedy Center

BOTTOM

PHOTOS

Susan Shaffer

SDC and the Off-Broadway League negotiated a new Off-Broadway Agreement June 9–11, 2014. Every year this Agreement generates roughly 100 employment contracts for SDC’s Membership. The 2014 Negotiating committee consisted of Marc Bruni, Timothy Douglas, Leah Gardiner, Jackson Gay, Anne Kauffman, Matt Lenz, and DJ Salisbury, and was chaired by Evan Yionoulis. ABOVE

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Counsel Ronald H. Shechtman, Member Evan Yionoulis + Deputy Director of Contract Affairs Randy Anderson at Pryor Cashman LLP in New York City

“I believe I’ve collaborated with Pat Birch as often as any choreographer in my experience. The reason for that is obvious: She is as smart as anyone I’ve ever worked with and her background qualifies her to do everything from modern dance and ballet to Broadway jazz. She gets inside the material and its characters. She understands metaphor and she never shows off for the sake of showing off. She’s the real thing.” -Hal Prince On June 2, the 32nd Annual Fred and Adele Astaire Awards honored SDC Member Pat Birch with its Douglas Watt Lifetime Achievement Award. The Astaire Awards are the only awards that honor excellence in dance and choreography on Broadway and in film. They were founded in 1982 by the late Fred Astaire and the late Douglas Watt (a critic and writer for the NY Daily News and The New Yorker, whose 100th birthday would be this year). The Douglas Watt Lifetime Achievement Award honors a dancer or choreographer with an outstanding body of work. “For as long as I can remember, Pat has been in my life as a friend and mentor,” says Patricia Watt, daughter of Douglas Watt, Producer of the Astaire Awards, and Founder of the Douglas Watt Family Fund for the Performing Arts, which has initiated a public school-based program of dance and movement therapy aimed at addressing the unique needs of children with autism and other developmental disabilities. “Pat has continually strived for—and achieved—excellence in the fields of dance and choreography, and I am so elated the Astaire Awards are honoring her this year for her incredible contributions.”

PAT BIRCH since 1967 | AGNES DE MILLE d.1993 | TOM MOORE since 1972 | HAROLD PRINCE since 1963

Pat Birch began her career as a dancer in Broadway musicals (including Brigadoon, Goldilocks, and West Side Story) and has performed as a soloist with Martha Graham and Agnes de Mille. She earned Tony Award nominations for her choreography of the original Broadway productions of Grease, Over Here!, Pacific Overtures, Music Is and Parade, has directed and choreographed music videos for Cyndi Lauper, the Rolling Stones, and Carly Simon and also choreographed numbers on Saturday Night Live for six years. “Pat Birch has many extraordinary qualities as a choreographer and collaborator, but none is as significant as her skill in bringing the ‘dance’ out of non-dancing actors and performers,” says Executive Board Member Tom Moore. “In the two shows we did together, the original Grease and Over Here!, we cast actors who could act first, sing second, and dance third, and yet somehow they all ended up looking like dancers. And that was all due to Pat Birch. I think it’s one of the reasons you remember each and every one of the characters in these productions. “Pat is a remarkable collaborator, in that the vision and essence of the piece come first, and any choreographic steps and moves serve that higher purpose. She is brilliant in making a unique original out of a blank canvas, and nothing she creates is quite like what she has done before! And as anyone who has worked with Pat knows, to collaborate with Pat is to make a friend for life.”

SUMMER 2014 | SDC JOURNAL

On June 8, 2014, the 68th Annual Tony Awards were presented live from Radio City Music Hall in New York City. The Friday before SDC hosted its annual Tony Toast, a cocktail party for nominees and Executive Board Members celebrating the seasonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s achievements. ABOVE LEFT TO RIGHT

Tony Winners Jason Robert Brown (Best Original Score + Best Orchestrations), Warren Carlyle (Best Choreography), Kenny Leon (Best Direction of a Play) + Darko Tresnjak (Best Direction of a Musical) PHOTOS Joseph Marzullo/WENN BELOW LEFT TO RIGHT

Spencer Liff + Michael Mayer | Susan H. Schulman, Laura Penn + Lonny Price Ethan McSweeny, Leigh Silverman + Tom Moore | Darko Tresnjak + Christopher Ashley

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| SUMMER 2014

MARGARET WEBSTER

Director and SDC Founding Member , the daughter of British actors Ben Webster and Dame May Whitty, was practically born on Broadway. Born in New York in 1905 while her father was starring in The Prince Consort, Webster’s birth was announced from the stage at the New Amsterdam Theatre. Although she spent most of her early years in England where she studied at the Etlinger Theatre School, Webster worked frequently in the United States. After transitioning from acting to directing, she staged her first Broadway production, Richard II, in 1937. Subsequently, Webster went on to direct various Shakespeare plays including Henry IV, Twelfth Night, and Macbeth. Her staging of Hamlet in 1938 was the first uncut performance of the play ever produced in the United States. In the 1950s, Webster directed Don Carlos and Aida, becoming the first woman to direct at the Metropolitan Opera. Her 1943 direction of Othello, which ran for 296 performances, marks the longest run of a Shakespeare play ever on Broadway. 1905-1972

“A director becomes a diplomatist, a financier, a pedagogue, a top sergeant, a wet nurse, and a martyr, the kind of martyr who used to be torn into pieces by wild horses galloping in all directions at once.” SUMMER 2014 | SDC JOURNAL

SDC MEMBERS...Jim

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SDC JOURNAL

| SUMMER 2014