Acting Questions

I love the recent posts on various blogs about acting. Isaac on Parabasis, for example, recently posted:

One of the challenges in contemporary directing is dealing with actors from all sorts of different disciplines and techniques and school in the rehearsal room. we have a number of ways of dealing with this. One is to have a company that creates its own technique. Another is to simply talk about what you want as an end result and trust the actor's various methods for getting there. The problem with the first is that it is impractical in a lot of ways for most artists, the problem with the second is that it doesn't leave a lot of room for exploration. The real challenge is really discovering together and creating together even when you have very very different ways to go about doing it.

Having directed more than 40 plays (before I was full-time journalist, before Back Stage, before I was the founding editor of Theatermania.com), I came upon this challenge all the time. I remember once directing a new play at the Metropolitan Playhouse back in 1998 or so, and there were five actors, each with a different approach, if not outright ideology. Fortunately, all five of those actors were smart and well-versed in many different approaches to the craft, so one actor could use, in the course of a rehearsal, a particular piece of terminology that another actor might choose not to subscribe to, for it would not work for them, but would understand and be respectful of. What you need when casting, quite frankly, are actors who are secure in their process. Many actors are not.

Much of this challenge, in addition, really relates not to the director so much as to other actors: If actors are able and willing to speak each other in different "languages," it doesn't matter who uses what (small-m) method. The greater challenge is when directors have to mediate -- when Actor A wants to come at a particular moment a certain way, but actor B refuses to work that way and a standoff arises. I also feel it's foolhardy for directors to be dogmatic about acting styles -- in rehearsals, it can generate the opposite of an atmosphere of tolerance and mutual understanding.

But to Isaac's point -- that you either need to create a company in which everyone subscribes to one ideology or "trust the actor's various methods for getting there" -- it's up to the director in the first place to have a working knowledge of what those various approaches are, especially to understand their inevitable pluses and their minuses (and all approaches have both). I should add that rehearsals need not be a forum for debating acting styles.

The problem with everyone subscribing to a singular ideology is not, as Isaac says, impractical; many companies do fine and sometimes even glorious work all working off the same approach. If anything, having one ideological is, ironically, rather practical; there's nothing more freeing than a common aesthetic shorthand. That said, it's difficult to take hard-headed (cap-m) Method actors and put them in a room with Anne Bogart or the Tectonic Theater Company.

The problem with everyone not subscribing to a singular ideology is not that there's not enough room for exploration but, rather, too much room -- a danger that there will be no structure, no linearity, no one to regulate the flow of expressions, experiments and ideas. But I submit that's precisely why the director is there. In this sense, the director plays stylistic traffic cop. True, sometimes you see a play and think to yourself, "Gee, they're not all in the same play" (a good example is Norbert Leo Butz in Isn't He Dead?, which is what I wrote in my review.) But often, you can have lots of actors coming from different places and you'd never know. Truly brilliant actors understand the endgame is about their role, their character, their interpretation, their me, me, me-ness; they understand the endgame must be we, we, we. If it's not, they're not the kind of actors one should be working with.

Just to be clear, I'm not attacking what Isaac is saying. I'm just saying that, in my experience, there's another way to look at the conundrum.

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Another Problem with Theatre Criticism

I've noticed some of the other bloggers link to this Michael Billington profile in the Guardian of playwright Edward Bond. It's a great piece, particularly the way Billington relates Bond to a whole class of British playwrights who don't seem to fit particular molds; his reference to William Blake in the lede is just dynamite.

The piece, moreover, is more than 2,000 words -- and that's another problem with theatre criticism: We lack print or even Web venues that will pay for and publish profiles of such a length. No, this is not to lend credence to George Hunka's ignorant trashing of American theatre critics a few weeks ago, and I only raise the memory of that horribly ugly column (written in the Guardian's blog, where he paid fealty to Billington) because his attack was on American theatre critics and their ability, not on the venues that publish and support their work.

Ironically, the profiles I wrote for Back Stage run about 1,350 words, but sometimes, oh, what I wouldn't give for more room. I also know of several online theatre publications that don't believe that people will actually read 2,000-word profiles. I'd be curious to know how much traffic the Billington piece got, especially vs. being published in print.

There are exceptions, of course, such as John Lahr's recent (and appropriately praised to the sky) profile of Harold Pinter. I'm just saying such venues are fewer than they should be.

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Quote of the Day: Vince Lombardi

Winning isn't everything, but the will to win is everything.

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Quote of the Day: Theodore Roosevelt

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

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Quote of the Day: Jean Cocteau

From The Difficulty of Being:

The ability to burst out laughing is proof of a fine character. I mistrust those who avoid laughter and refuse its overtures. They are afraid to shake the tree, mindful of the fruits and birds, afraid that someone might notice that nothing comes off their branches.

Like the heart and like sex, laughter functions by erection. Nothing swells it that does not excite it. It does not rise of its own accord.

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Quote of the Day: Barbara Ehrenreich

I love this quote:

I was raised the old-fashioned way, with a stern set of moral principles: Never lie, cheat, steal or knowingly spread a venereal disease. Never speed up to hit a pedestrian or, or course, stop to kick a pedestrian who has already been hit. From which it followed, of course, that one would never ever -- on pain of deletion from dozens of Christmas card lists across the country -- vote Republican.

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Americans for the Arts Weighs in on the Iowa Results

Received this yesterday via email:

Americans for the Arts Action Fund APPLAUDS Iowa Caucus Winners

ArtsVote Initiative has Secured Support for the Arts from Obama and Huckabee

Washington, DC – January 4, 2008 – Arts advocates nationwide applaud Iowa voters for selecting candidates with strong support for the arts. Arts advocates are very pleased to see that the Iowa Caucus winners, Senator Barack Obama (D) and Governor Mike Huckabee (R), have made extensive policy statements in support of the arts and arts education. Since May, ArtsVote, an initiative of the Americans for the Arts Action Fund, has been the voice of arts advocates across the nation. The initiative is dedicated to making sure that the presidential candidates make on-the-record statements in support of the arts and arts education.

Senator Obama has written two policy briefs outlining his support, and Governor Huckabee has made policy statements and has been extremely vocal for years about his support for improving arts education throughout the country. Their campaign materials on the arts are available online at www.ArtsVote.org. Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards and Governor Bill Richardson also have statements in support of the arts.

In New Hampshire, the site of Tuesday’s primary, the candidates have heard from advocates from ArtsVoteNH—a partnership between Americans for the Arts Action Fund and New Hampshire Citizens for the Arts—in the months leading up to the election. Most recently, ArtsVoteNH held a statewide Arts Policy Forum at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, NH, at which five campaigns participated, including speakers on behalf of Senator Obama and Governor Huckabee. Video coverage of the event is available online.

Last summer, each presidential campaign received a copy of the Arts Action Fund pro-arts issue brief, outlining 10 public policy concerns, how they relate to the arts, and thoughtful proposals to address them. The issue brief is available online.

Americans for the Arts Action Fund’s ArtsVote2008 seeks to secure bold, new policy proposals in support of the arts and arts education in America from candidates during the 2008 presidential campaign. ArtsVote is a national initiative to help the arts impact the presidential election. In New Hampshire, the Arts Action Fund has partnered with New Hampshire Citizens for the Arts to identify, educate, train, and mobilize likely arts voters to help influence candidates to take strong positions for the arts.

The Arts Action Fund is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit membership organization created by Americans for the Arts, the nation’s leading 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization for advancing arts in America. Launched in 2004, it seeks to engage citizens in education and advocacy in support of the arts and arts education. The Arts Action Fund’s goal is to enlist and mobilize citizen activists who will help ensure that arts-friendly public policies are adopted at the Federal, state, and local levels, and public and private resources are maximized. Additional information is available at www.ArtsActionFund.org.

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Nifty Interview with Alison Croggon

....who? She's the theatre critic for the Australian, down under, and I thought this Q&A with her was pretty interesting. I do get a little tired of reading about how much more important (hinting at how much better) her blog is to her regular work -- to me, the two are rather complementary factors and should not be put into a qualitative competition. Still, I enjoyed the interview.

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New Review: The Devil's Disciple

One of the pesky things about writing for a weekly is sometimes reviews come out on the late side. I caught The Devil's Disciple at Irish Rep about a week after it opened, and the review just came out in New York Press. Probably better had I missed it -- but every time I see Lorenzo Pisoni, I am more and more impressed. Eventually he's going to catch fire. He's got serious star potential.

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New Reviews: Shakespeare's Genealogies and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

Here are reviews of two books that I wrote for Back Stage, the first a very helpful tool called Shakespeare's Genealogies and the second the new Complete Works of William Shakespeare that Random House has put out.

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The Hyperbole of House Records

Every time a Broadway show breaks a house record -- meaning the production in that theatre "wraps," or grosses, more in one week than any other production in that theatre before it, I get a press release about it. I totally understand it's the job of the publicist to publicize such things, but I've never been convinced that anyone particularly cares. Here's what I received today:

GREASE BREAKS THE HOUSE RECORD
AT THE BROOKS ATKINSON THEATER

Producers of the new Broadway production of GREASE(TM) announced today that during the performance week of December 26 - December 31, 2007, the production set a new box office record at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre by grossing $1,140,813.46. GREASE(TM) broke the record ($962,662.00) previously set by The Odd Couple, starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick.

A few things on this. First, does anyone on earth spellcheck? Is it Atkinson Theater or Theatre? ("What is 'Theatre,' Alex?") Second, why remind everyone that Grease is trademarked? Who, exactly, is going to steal it, and for what purpose? Mostly it's there to make journalists ignore it, or to be obnoxious, which Grease most assuredly is in any event. Third, who, other than box-office personnel, fannish dweebs, the producers of the current Broadway revival, and the good folks at the Shuberts/Nederlanders/Jujamcyns, are keeping track of these figures? And what does it all mean? Does it mean Grandma Kleinbaum is going to rush right out and buy tickets for it because they've bought into the idea that it must be the hottest ticket in town and therefore they've got to see it? Well, sure, that's the point of such PR, but does anyone -- and can anyone -- measure the effect of such PR? I'm just saying.

I also find hilarious the plot synopsis attached to the release, just to clue those born under rocks or living, say, in Idaho or Middle Earth:

After spending a hopelessly devoted summer with Sandy Dumbrowski (Osnes), the new girl in town, Danny Zuko's (Max Crumm) world is thrown upside down when Sandy appears at Rydell High on the first day of school. What follows is a rock 'n' roll celebration of growin' up, cruisin' with friends and goin' steady.

The new production of GREASE(tm) features songs from the smash hit 1978 motion picture for the first time ever on Broadway including "Sandy," the Academy Award nominated song "Hopelessly Devoted to You," "Grease" and "You're the One That I Want" both of which were #1 hits on the Billboard Top 100 list.

These songs will be heard in addition to the Jacobs/Casey songs made famous by the original stage production including "Summer Nights," "Greased Lightnin'" and "We Go Together."

You gotta just love all those dropped g's. At least that what I'm thinkin.'

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Quote of the Day: Eugene Ionesco

I personally would like to bring a tortoise onto the stage, turn it into a racehorse, then into a hat, a song, a dragoon and a fountain of water. One can dare anything in the theatre and it is the place where one dares the least.

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Broadway Announces End-of-Year Statistics

And everything is just rosy, according to the Broadway League and Bloomberg.com:

1) Total revenue was about $938 million, up 3.5% over 2006. No doubt the total would have topped $1 billion had the 19-day stagehands strike no occurred.

2) Attendance rose to 12.29 million in 2007, about 2.7% more than 2006.

Due to an anomaly in the calendar, 2007 actually included 53 weeks, so that, to some degree, mitigates these sunny numbers. Also, we can assume the rise in total grosses has everything to do with skyrocketing, anti-audience ticket prices.

Average ticket price for 2007: $76.32. And your first-born.

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What the (More or Less) Three-Way Tie in Iowa Means

It means Hillary will be the nominee, and Edward will drop out before the month is over.

What I wish is Hillary would pick Obama to be VP. I love Barack, but he can't win. Yes, yes, I know everyone says that about Hillary, but I think Hillary can win. And I think the two of them would be colossal.

Edwards is a hack, and not credible, with very much the plasticity of Romney, but on the saner side of the political ledger.

Let Huckabee be the nominee. We'll feed him to the devil in bite-sized morsels.

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Quote of the Day: Moss Hart, II

Act One takes the reader through Moss Hart's long, long struggle to reach success in the theatre. Here is the scene he describes at the end of the book, on the morning after the opening -- and tumultous rave reviews given to -- Once in a Lifetime, the first of his indelible creations co-written with George S. Kaufman. Suddenly, he would be a nobody -- and dirt-poor -- no more:

"....Even through the rain-splashed windows of the cab, I could see a long double line of people extending the full length of the lobby from the box office. The line spilled out under the marquee where another line was patiently forming under umbrellas. I got out of the cab and walked into the lobby and stood gaping at all the people. It was not yet half-past nine in the morning. How long I stood there, forgetful of everything else but the wonder of that line, I do not know, but the box-office man, looking up for a moment to glance across the lobby, caught sight of me and smiled. There is no smile as bright as the smile of a box-office man the morning after a hit. It flashes with the iridescence of stage jewelry under spotlights and is as wide as the proscenium itself. His smile did not waver -- it grew more brilliant as the telephones jangled behind him and visions of ticket speculators, like sugar plums, danced across his mind. He waved me over to the head of the line and stuck his hand out through the opening in the grille to shake my own.

'A year at least,' he said. 'It's the hottest ticket in town.'

....I doubled the bills in my fist and walked out and into the taxi. Without a word I went through the pretense of counting the money, thoroughly aware of the awed silence around me.

'When,' my brother said quietly, 'do they change the name of the theatre to the Money Box?'"

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Arts Advocacy Update XIV

The content below is from Americans for the Arts' Cultural Policy Listserv.

First, some news...

President Bush Signs Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2008 with $144.7 Million for National Endowment for the ArtsNational Endowment for the Arts

Yes, that's right -- Bush approved the largest jump in NEA funding in 28 years. Because when absolutely everybody else hates your guts, it must be time to suck up seriously to the artists.

And now, more tidbits...


Art Means Business
Baltimore Magazine, January 2008
"In 2002, Maryland became the first state to create Arts and Entertainment Districts as a way of stimulating development. Of the 15 designated areas around the state, two are located in Baltimore City: Station North (which includes North Avenue from Howard to Greenmount) and Highlandtown. In these neighborhoods, state and city government are using tax incentives—including property tax credits, exemptions from admissions and amusement taxes, and a waiver of the sales tax on artwork—to attract and retain artists and arts-related development. But can the arts really give Station North and Highlandtown the boost they’ve long needed? Looking around, there are signs that it’s already happening."
The state needs it -- good stuff.



Arts Education Appropriations and Research
TCG Bulletin, January 2008
"After nearly 10 years without comprehensive national data, Congress has approved more than $2 million in funding to support a fast-response arts education survey in the 08-09 school year. ...Congress also approved near-level funding for the competitive Arts in Education grant programs of the U.S. Department of Education, following an across-the-board cut to all of the Department's programs."
It's really the only good thing about Huckabee's candidacy -- the idea of arts in education. So this is good in that respect.


State Department Cultural Exchange Programs
TCG Bulletin, January 2008
"Congress has allocated $505 million for Educational and Cultural Exchange Programs within the State Department's FY 08 appropriations. This is a $19 million increase over the President's request and a $59 million increase above last year's budget."
You can actually go to this site to learn more about this.


$1-million startup for arts reserve sought by Danner
St. Petersburg Times (FL), 12/26/2007
"When [St. Petersburg, FL] officials took an ax to the budget earlier this summer, arts organizations were among the first to get cut. Now, City Council member Jeff Danner wants to make sure those arts organizations get some funding back with the creation of a privately funded arts reserve administered by the city."
Part of the growing trend of doing end-runs around public appropriations in favor of private donations. Smart move -- it protects ongoing constituencies against the vagaries of the economy and politics.

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Quote of the Day: Moss Hart, Part I

Not that I'm remotely alone in saying this, but I have always found Act One, Moss Hart's simply extraordinary memoir, to be one of the most inspiring books ever written. Especially for those of us afflicted and infected with the drive and the soul of the theatre. A few years before I was able to interview her, I had occasion to telephone Kitty Carlisle Hart -- I was organizing an awards ceremony and we were asking her to be a presenter. I couldn't figure out how to talk to her and all I could blurt out was, "I read Act One six times." Kitty reached out, gently touched my arm, and said, "Aren't you a dear?" in just the kindest, sweetest way. So in tribute to Moss and Kitty, the first of two quotes from Act One. The first quote is from way in the beginning of the book, as Moss recounts the unrelieved "dark brown taste of being poor" and surviving an especially hard and dispiriting childhood. In this quote, he writes about what discovering the theatre means to such a youngster:

"....But certainly the first retreat a child makes to alleviate his unhappiness is to contrive a world of his own, and it is but a small step out of his private world into the fantasy world of the theatre. We have all seen children create imaginary companions or even imaginary parents. The daydream of attending our own funeral and savoring the abiding satisfaction of having our contrite and conscience-stricken parents stand weeping over our coffin is so usual a fantasy of childhood as to be almost obligatory, and it disappears with the other flights and fancies of childhood. But to the deeply disturbed child caught in a situation that he cannot resolve, the first wonder of the theatre comes as a revelation and a resolution of his unconscious difficulties. Here on a brightly lit stage, before a hushed and admiring audience, are people doing the very things he has played out in his own fantasies: assuming heroic or villainous guises, bathing in the applause and love of a hitherto hostile world. Suddenly he perceives that his secret goal is attainable -- to be himself and yet be somebody else, and in the very act of doing so, to be loved and admired; to stand gloriously in a spotlight undimmed by the rivalry of brothers or sisters and to be relieved of his sense of guilt by the waves of applause that roll over the footlights to those wonderful creatures on the stage. After all, is not the essence of acting the art of being somebody else? Is not the craft of the playwright the ability to make a fantasy of his own creation so true to the lives of the characters he is depicting that the audience accepts it as reality? And what is any play but the expression of its author's conscious fantasy at that particular moment? I would hazard a guess that no play idea is ever completely accidental, and I would hazard a further guess that the temperament, the tantrums and the utter childishness of theatre people in general is neither accidental nor a necessary weapon of their profession. It has nothing to do with so-called 'artistic temperament.' The explanation, I think, is a far simpler one. For the most part, they are impaled in childhood like a fly in amber."

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Happy New Year -- and Quote of the Day: Tallulah Bankhead

Happy New Year!

We're back from the Berkshires and I'll be writing about our adventure getting home probably tomorrow.

It was possibly the most terrifying experience I've ever had in a car.

Or, if you like, here's the short version: N I G H T M A R E.

Anyway, I'm going to attempt to put up a fun or interesting or illuminating or insightful quote every day, and I thought begin the year with something wonderfully bawdy.

It comes from Charles Kaiser's The Gay Metropolis:

An actor [Kaiser used a pseudonym] who was openly gay back in the 1940s, "was put off by some of the things the men he met wanted to do in bed -- a sentiment he shared when he first met the legendary Tallulah Bankhead. 'Oh God!' she replied. 'I know just what you mean. After all, I've tried everything. If I go down on a man it chokes me and if I go down on a woman it gags me. If I get buggered it hurts me like hell and if I get fucked is gives me acute claustrophobia. So I've just gone back to reading, love!'"

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