A Letter to Teddy

After the afternoon’s rehearsal, the director pulled all of the interns into his office.  They took places on the couch or on the floor while he pulled out a laminated sheet of paper from his desk drawer.  Admitting that some people may find this corny, it is something from which, when he was younger like his present audience, he drew inspiration.  He went on to read a letter dated from some time at the beginning of the last century from an unnamed actor to his sister imploring Teddy, a nephew or cousin or some such younger relation, not to become an actor. It also carried a warning, should his advice not be followed, of everything that must be sacrificed in Teddy’s pursuit of the actor’s life.

Teddy would have to miss birthdays, weddings and funerals.  He would not see his younger brother grow into manhood, nor witness the births of his nieces and nephews.  Teddy’s meager possessions had better include a few photos of friends from the neighborhood he would never be able to visit again.  But he shouldn’t have too many because Teddy will have to live out of a suitcase for the next thirty years.  He should be prepared to eat only one meal every three days, and to never make new friends, for he would have neither the time nor the money.

However, there was a silver lining: if Teddy could go without being with Mummsy in her final hours, if Teddy could forgo the trivialities of any type of family or home life, if Teddy could renounce his worldly possessions in order to blow wherever the winds of Theatre might take him, then what sublime rewards await Teddy on the stage and in the knowledge that he was a true actor.

Putting down the letter, the director looked at the interns as if he had just delivered a St. Crispin Day speech, expecting a rousing reply of “Theatre, our Director, and St. Genesius!”

What malarkey.

The irony behind it all was that this director ran a resident theatre company in a small city.  The company had a 65-seat theatre, rehearsal space, office space, costume and design shops, a resident company of 13 actors, 5 interns, resident stage manager and office staff.  The man reading this letter exalting the values of sacrificing everything that is not of the theatre for a career in the performing arts was married to one of the company members, with whom he owned a house not half an hour away from the theatre.  Both of their families were at most an hour or two away.  This, all out in ‘the provinces.’

When Teddy received all of this well-intentioned advice from his actor uncle, yes, Teddy would have had to put a few hundred miles of train track between himself and his family to make a career in New York City.  While New York is still the center of Show Business in America, it is no longer necessary to make the sacrifice of one’s roots to have a meaningful career in Theatre. For those who feel the need to be in New York City, New York City will always be there. 

The man reading this letter, unbeknownst to himself, was the example of what modern theatre artists should strive for. There will always be some travel involved.  Some actors will continue to be journeymen throughout their lives.  There will be missed events, but no more than college administrators, pilots, CEOs or veterinarians will miss.  This does not mean that actors must renounce families, friends and communities.  As demonstrated by this director, it is quite possible to have a home life, some stability and a rewarding career in Theatre.  There are plenty of successful actors who live where they want to live, and work where they want to work without much compromise.  These people should be the example, not Teddy’s uncle. We should be glad that we no longer have to follow his advice. 

Does Theatre Turn You On?

People like to do things that get them laid.  There is nothing worth doing whose end result is not (possibly) the promise of sex.  If the reward for something is sweaty, shameful, exciting bedroom, or taxi cab, gymnastics, then odds are that something will have a place of high regard in the hearts of the public for a long time.

When is the last time theatre got you laid?  When is the last time that the woman you took to the theatre could not wait to get out of her dress and into your pants?  When is the last time you felt capable of an erection after sitting through a play?

Theatre, like all art, should turn us on.  The stories, the passions, the emotions should have us vibrating on a higher level than in our normal lives.  Even serious dramas should leave us feeling like we have just survived a bank robbery at the business end of a shotgun – adrenaline pumping at abnormal levels that make us go home and screw our wives as if we could all be dead tomorrow.

Even if sex is not on the table, the conversations afterwards should be just as passionate and inspired.  Too often these discussions are about disappointments: the lack of creativity, the cost of the ticket, the flatness of the performers.  Nothing is a bigger mood-killer than a tease.

That’s what many theatre productions have become – a tease.  When a good script is produced, there is always the promise of something sexy and inspired.  The cast is named and we think, ‘Oh, what X can do in that role…’  The director is a master, someone whose previous work you admired.  And at the end of the play, after the $100 ticket, the dinner beforehand, you feel as impotent as Bob Dole before Viagra, and the drinks at the end of the night are to forget the evening.

What went wrong?  Is it you?  Was it the play?  What about it?

There are so many reasons from the choice of script through the whole production process that the play did not turn you on.  And sometimes, let’s face it, it just doesn’t happen.  The problem is that is just isn’t happening more and more and no one seems to be stepping up like they did for septuagenarians and creating a little blue pill for theatre.

There is a wrong-headed opinion out there that considering the audience in any way means to only see the bottom line and to pander to the lowest common denominator.  Theatres need to consider their audiences more – seriously consider them as part of the production, not solely as a revenue stream.  Any theatre that makes it a priority to get their audience laid after seeing a production is guaranteed to create a following.

Equity Strikes Again!

A complaint that I have often voiced against Equity is that the organization does not look out for its own, or the institutions that give their members work.

Example A: 

There are companies that habitually produce shows under an equity showcase code, because that’s what they can afford and still hire dues-paying members of Equity.  Some of these theatres have the ability to scrape together enough money to produce a show under a larger contract, an SPT or some such agreement, and pay actors for rehearsals and performances as well as give them hours towards insurance, rather than putting up 3 small shows for which the actors are not paid.  However, Equity says that in order to do that, the producing company must, after a period of time, only produce shows under larger contract that is already a stretch for them to cover.

Example B: 

A certain very well known and prestigious theatre, which is an Equity theatre, wishes to host another smaller Equity theatre (which caters to an underserved demographic) operating under a showcase code (because it is what the small theatre can afford).  Equity actors are hired, and paid a stipend to perform.  Equity decides to tell both theatres that they cannot go forward with the project unless the smaller theatre can do it under a larger contract that they cannot afford.

In both instances, the short-term effect of Equity’s policies is that dues-paying actors are not working, resulting directly from the actions of their union.  Of course, Equity will defend itself saying that it’s acting in the best interest of its members.  In the first example, I can’t really see why Equity would put restrictions on theatres that want to pay Equity actors.  Perhaps they are trying to ensure that future productions with such theatres, but there is no certainty, especially in Theatre, and to try to ensure it later rather than to let actors take advantage of a sure thing now is beyond reason.  In the second example, Equity most likely does not want to see large theatres that are operating under larger contracts now, in this environment of fiscal cut-backs, begin to save money by producing shows under smaller contracts.  However, the producing entity is the one paying for the contract, the larger one is giving space.  And no matter what, these are all institutions that are working within the rules of the union, and the union should have no voice in any attempt to deny the production of piece that will pay its members.

These actions protect neither the producing theatres and institutions nor the actors.  All these situations do is force theatres into situations that are financially prohibitive and keeps them from hiring and paying union actors.  It undermines the autonomy of theatres and the rights of individual union members to work under conditions that they deem agreeable and are within the regulations of the union.

Defending EPAs by Dismissing Actors

To combat the ennui, frustration and dissatisfaction many Equity members have towards the EPA process, an article appears in the AEA newsletter of May 2011 that ‘kicks off a new series in Equity News on EPA Success Stories.’

The situation is this:  theatres operating under Equity contracts are required to hold open EPAs (Equity Principal Auditions).  In the audition notices for EPAs the theatres must list a character breakdown and state whether any roles have been offered and accepted previous to the open call.  It seems to be the practice that many of these theatres already have a very good idea who they want to cast, but being unable to get a 100% commitment before the audition, make the announcement that they are looking to fill roles when they are in fact, not.  Many actors believe theatres are just going through the motions before casting their first choice despite the auditions.

Of course, Equity wants the very sizeable portion of their dues-paying membership who believe that EPAs are a waste of both their time and money, to feel at ease and that they are getting a fair shake at employment.  To this end, Equity News has launched this series of articles.

Well surprise! Some people do get cast from these auditions.  But truly, the complaint is not that people are not getting cast.  By phrasing the complaint in this manner, Equity is attempting to dismiss the legitimate concern that theatres are only holding these auditions out of obligation and not as genuine casting opportunities.  Yes, ensemble, understudies, supernumeraries and interns may get cast from EPAs, but the principal characters – Equity Principal Auditions – honestly, when is the last time the Phantom or King Lear or Willy Loman was cast from an EPA? Or Carlotta or Kent or Happy?

Perhaps these are principal auditions in the sense that these are the principal auditions that the company holds, and not necessarily that they are looking for actors to fill principal roles.  Fair enough, but the theatres still should be up-front about which roles they are looking to fill, seriously looking to fill, from these auditions.

A more constructive article, and an argument that would help to settle the myth one way or the other, would be to release the names of theatres holding EPAs, how many roles advertised were cast through the EPAs, which advertised roles were cast through EPAs, how many different actors were cast through EPAs, and conversely how many roles and which roles that were advertised for the EPAs were given to actors through different means.  Every professional actor is aware of the incredible odds against getting cast out of EPAs due to the shear number of people auditioning.  Actors want to know what roles the theatres are actually looking to fill, and whether or not they should waste the time and money.

The writer signs off saying: ‘After all; if you don’t show up for the audition, you won’t book the job.’  To which actors respond: ‘Well, if the theatre is not interesting in casting the role, why should you show up?’

What's In A Name?

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From Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language:

Repertoire:

1. the stock of plays, operas, roles, songs, etc. that h company, actor, signer, etc. is familiar with and ready to perform

2. all the musical or theatrical works of a particular category, or of a particular writer, cmposer, etc., available for performance

3. the stock of special skills, devices, techniques, etc. of a particular person or particular field of endeavor.

Repertory:

1. a) a repository for useful things; storehouse

    b) the things stored; stock; collection

2. same as repertoire

3. the system of play production engaged in by repertory theatres

Repertory Theatre:

A theatre in which a permanent acting company prepares several productions for a season and keeps alternating them in limited runs.

Ensemble:

1. all the parts considered as a whole; total effect

2. whole costume, esp. one of matching or complementary articles of dress

3. a) a company of actors, dancers, etc., or all but the featured stars

    b) their performance together

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Go to any listing of theatre companies and one will find numerous institutions with the words ‘repertory’ or ‘ensemble’ in their names.  But if one researches these companies, one discovers that perhaps 80% of these theatres are neither repertory nor ensemble theatres.  Many of those calling themselves ‘company’ are only so in the loosest or legal sense, in that they are a business concern, but a company of performers is quite rare.

Some ‘repertory’ theatres are so in that they pull from an established stock of plays.  Fewer still repeat productions or cast in repertory fashion.  Yet this word appears frequently, even when the theatre’s mission, history and reputation exclude that description.  American Repertory Theatre states proudly (as it should) on its website that it ‘has welcomed major American and international theatre artists, presenting a diverse repertoire that includes new American plays, bold reinterpretations of classical texts, and provocative new music theatre productions.’  However, used in this manner, ‘repertoire’ could be applied to any theatre that has produced more than one play.  This description says that this company does pretty much anything without supporting a permanent company of actors.  That is completely antithetical to the description of ‘repertory.’

Every piece of theatre is created by an ensemble, if it is accepted that each separate cast is an ensemble in itself.  However, very few companies consist of ensembles.  It’s extremely rare to come across an ensemble of actors that stay together for more than one production let alone a season or more.  Most theatres have certain actors with whom they work repeatedly, but these actors are more guest artists than company members.  At a vast majority of theatres, the only company members are the administrative staff and board members.  It is an ensemble of administrators, not a theatre ensemble.

Is this a case of not fully understanding the terms ‘repertory’ and ‘ensemble,’ or are we experiencing a shift in the meanings of these words?  In either case, we are losing two defining characteristic strengths of Theatre. Working with and through a repertoire, theatre companies and performers build a knowledge and ease with a large body of work.  The audience knows that a particular theatre is a place to go to see Shakespeare or Chekhov or works from the Pan-Asian experience.  On television we are offered ensembles every night.  Sometimes we watch the same ensembles for years, but we see them playing the same roles and with the same rules all the time.  Whereas in live theatre, an ensemble can swing back and forth from Ionesco’s absurdity to Seneca’s tragedy, from RENT to Guilbert and Sullivan.  These are experiences lie exclusively in the realm of Theatre and communal story-telling that is at the heart of the medium.

Why are so many theatres identifying themselves as repertory and ensemble, and not embracing these forms and tools?  Until they do, they are selling the audience a false bill of goods and misinforming the public as to the nature of Theatre in general.  This practice renders two of live theatre’s great strengths impotent.

Casting Questions

Hamlet tells the players that theatre should ‘hold a mirror up to nature,’ but nowhere does he say that mirror cannot come from a funhouse.  Inside a theatre, there is a great tolerance in both the audience and the actors for the absurdity of the whole situation in which they find themselves involved, a tolerance for the creativity of live storytelling.  We believe in flats and scene changes.  It is okay for an audience to see the wires.  Where the suspension of disbelief starts to fall apart for modern audiences in an inability, or unwillingness, to accept performers who ‘do not look the part.’

Much is made of Equal Opportunity Employers (EOE) and non-traditional casting in audition notices and mission statements – and it should be, since theatres should serve and reflect their communities.  Of course it is a thin line between EOE and non-traditional casting on one side, and discrimination on the other. Anytime EOE and non-traditional casting are brought up, it still brings everything into play it seeks to suppress.  It brings race and discriminating factors to the forefront of casting, and makes every casting choice a statement.

In his article in the December 2010 edition of AMERICAN THEATRE, entitled “Casting Without Limits,” Richard Schechner asks: ‘If the deeply ingrained conventions of casting to type was set aside, what then would the criteria be for playing a character?  Is it utopian to insist that training plus insight into a role is sufficient?  Can critics educate spectators and producers alike to at least look and listen to casts where gender, race, age and body type of the performers are, as it were, not perceived – that is, to see a white actor as a black Othello (without “blacking up”) or an actress, or actor, of 60 playing Juliet?’ [emphasis mine].

We have seen Laurence Olivier put on make-up and play Othello as a black man.  We have seen Patrick Stewart play Othello as the only white man in the production.  Will we see a non-traditional cast in FENCES?  Why stop at race?  How about Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer playing Juliet and Romeo?  Everyone knows the story.  Why must we see young actors in those roles, when the ages of the performers are not as important as their ability to express what it feels like to be young and in love.  There used to be a great tradition of actors and actresses playing these roles well into their fifties and beyond.  Boys portrayed women.   Masks were worn and anyone could play any part at any time.

Has the collective imagination of the audience atrophied so far that we must have literal interpretations on the stage in order to follow or enjoy a story?  Has actor’s creativity been hamstrung to the point that they cannot see themselves in roles they do not outwardly resemble?  If so, then it is time for Theatre to lie down and die, because the shared imagination of the audience and the performers is the biggest strength that Theatre has.  Films are about the directors’ imagination.  Books are about the authors' imagination.  In both cases the audience are receptacles.  There is a reason that someone who can sit through a 2 and-a-half hour movie needs a 10-minute break in the middle of a 100-minute play: 

An actor steps on stage.  Another one arrives and says, ‘Hello, Tim.’  The first actor answers, and we accept that he is Tim.  ‘How is the family, Tim?’  We accept that Tim has a family.  ‘How was the 50^th birthday, Tim?’ Now, we know that Tim is 50.  ‘But wait a minute, he does not look a day over 25,’ we say to ourselves.  We no longer accept that reality. (But we know that what we are seeing and hearing is not reality.  It's people telling us a story, so why insist, even in the back of our minds, on literal truth?)  Reconciling what we see and what we hear becomes tiring and uncomfortable, and sometimes we lose the story.

Rather than playing to the medium’s strength, producers decided to make it easier for the audience, and sacrifice storytelling, talent and imagination in order to present an understandable story.  It is a trade-off that more often than not confines actors to constrictive types, limits the expectations of the audience and the expectations that actors have of themselves.

What then would be the criteria for playing a character?  What then makes a great actor?  Can a woman play a male role, without having the character be changed into a woman?  What then constitutes good casting?  What is more important to the story, the character portrayed, or the actor portraying the character?

The quest for these answers is a journey that will sustain both Theatre and the audience.  It will define them both in the years to come.  Theatres should lead the voyage, and the audience should follow bravely.

And the Author Is...

Somewhere there is a man who believes that Shakespeare’s plays are hidden allegorical parodies of Judeo-Christian history and religion.  There are books, essays and documentaries dedicated to this theory.  In New York City a theatre company devotedly produces burlesques of Shakespeare’s plays expounding this philosophy.  It is absurdly appealing to the sense of reason, logic, common sense and intellect.  As off the wall as this theory is, it is good to have this point of view out there in the universe, in so far as it gives artists another pool from which to draw.  It ceases to be of any value once it becomes ‘the answer.’

The problem arises when this interpretation transforms into the conclusion that this is the one true hidden purpose of these plays, and therefore, the man known as Shakespeare could not have written them for any one of uncountable arguments that arise from the text.  It must have been a Jewish Venetian woman who was sleeping with the theatre’s owner.  Why not make the case that due to the treatment of women and foreigners in the plays the author must have been a self-loathing albino Congolese woman?  People postulate that 100 monkeys locked in a room with 100 typewriters for 100 years will produce HAMLET.  That is what happened, and the canon of plays attributed to William Shakespeare were actually randomly composed over hundreds of years by a bunch of chimps with an inexhaustible supply of ink and parchment.  All of the references to the animal kingdom make that painfully obvious.

This machine needs to stop.  These theories and battles between Stratfordians and Anti-Stratfordians are all fine in themselves.  It is an interesting puzzle (for those who think Shakespeare’s identity is a mystery to be solved).  But it becomes dangerous when someone puts on blinders and begins using their choice of Shakespeare as an excuse for expounding dogma to the exclusion of all else.  The way plays effect us is the realm of Theatre.  Our effect on plays is the realm of academia.  Academia belongs in books; Theatre belongs on stage.

While these questions about authorship make interesting scholarship, they make terrible theatre.  Dogmatic theatre is church.  People do not go to church to be entertained, and if theatre is boring, it is worthless.

Who wrote these plays, and their original intent, is no longer of any practical importance.  The author can no longer celebrate the benefits of recognition, and any secret messages imbedded in these scripts were delivered long ago. The important messages are the ones we send to each other, Now; not messages sent to someone else, Then. That is the true genius of these stories: they exist on plane independent of who put the ink on paper.  Wherever we are, whoever we are, they speak to us.

What the plays reveal to us about ourselves will change as we do.  The 20 year-old Mr. Smith will read a different KING LEAR than that same Mr. Smith will read at 70.  The author did not change, the audience did.  While Shakespeare wrote the plays, we often forget that we are his audience, and the audience is the most important puzzle piece in theatre.  The audience, not the author, is the variable in the equation.

Anyway, the true identity of Shakespeare has already been discovered: Jack the Ripper.  The parallels are stunningly obvious.  Until this point in history nobody had a fix on either of these men.  Both men showed signs of intelligence far exceeding the bounds of their station.  Both men revealed something about the human soul previously untouched.  They were both geniuses of their art, and today they are both fodder for armchair detectives.  In both cases it does not matter who these people were: the ripper’s victims will still be dead, and the plays have already been written. 

What the plays of William Shakespeare reveal is not up to the identity of the author, but the identity of the audience.