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2011-11-26T14:57:00.001-05:00

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Celebrating Jean Claude van Itallie

2008-10-24T22:48:00.003-04:00

The Theatre of Jean Claude van Itallie

Join the Segal Center andThe Soul of the American Actorfor a day-long symposium with readings, panels and screenings focusing on the work of New York playwright and director Jean-Claude van Itallie.

Scheduled afternoon screenings include Jean-Claude van Itallie in War, Sex and Dreams and Joseph Chaikin in Struck Dumb... . Invited participants include: Brian Murray, Laila Robins, Judith Malina, Lois Walden, Steve Gorn, Ruth Maleczech, Wayne Maugans, Angelica Torn, Ronald Rand, Rosemary Quinn, Kim Mancuso, Peter Goldfarb, and the cast of The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

The Program:

THE THEATER OF JEAN CLAUDE VAN ITALLIE
October 28th, 2008

CUNY Martin E. Segal Theatre – Graduate Center

Program conceived and staged by Ronald Rand

Welcome
Frank Hentschker

Greetings
Introduction to “War” and “The Hunter and The Bird”
Ronald Rand

“WAR”
Older Man…………………………………..Preston Dyar
Younger Man………………….……….Wayne Maugans
Woman………………………………….…Angelica Torn

“THE HUNTER AND THE BIRD”
The Bird……………………….Lil Malinich
The Hunter……………………. Ron Faber

Introduction of “America Hurrah”
Excerpts from “The Interview & Motel”
Bill Coco

“AMERICA HURRAH”
“INTERVIEW”
First Interviewer and Girl at the Party……………….Cynthia Harris
First Applicant……………………..…………..….………Ronald
Rand
Second Applicant……………..…………………………. Joanna
Rotte
Second Interviewer and Gym Instructor…….. Kermit Dunkleberg
Third Applicant…………………………………..……….…..Ron
Faber
Third Interviewer and Telephone Operator…………Rae C. Wright
Fourth Applicant………………….……………………….Judith
Malina
Fourth Interviewer and Politician……..……………...Peter Goldfarb

“MOTEL”
Motel
Keeper…………………………..………..Rosemary Quinn

Introduction to “The Serpent”
Professor William Coco

“THE SERPENT”
First Woman of the Chorus…………..Rosemary Quinn
Second Woman………………………..……Barbara Vann
Third Woman…………….………………….. Tina Shepard
Fourth Woman………………………….…...Judith Malina

A Panel Discussion
“AMERICA HURRAH” & “THE SERPENT”
Moderator: Randy Gener
Particpants
Jean-Claude van Itallie, Judith Malina, Cynthia Harris, Rosemary Quinn,
Marcia Jean
Kurtz, Ron Faber, Tina Shepard, Barbara Vann, Evangeline Morphos,
Bill Coco,
Alex Gildzen

Introduction of “Bag Lady”
Ronald Rand

“BAG LADY”
Ruth Maleczech

Introduction of “Struck Dumb”
Bill Coco

“STRUCK DUMB”
(Video)
with Joseph Chaikin
written by Joseph Chaikin and Jean-Claude van Itallie

Introduction to “The Tibetan Book of the Dead”
Lisa Shubert

“THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD”
Court Dorsey, Kermit Dunkelberg, Susan Thompson
Director: Kim Mancuso

Introduction of “Mila”
Lois Walden

“Revenge”
Lois Walden
Accompanied by David Lewis

A Panel Discussion
The Art of Collaboration
“Tibetan Book of the Dead” & “Mila”
Moderator: Lois Walden

Participants
Jean-Claude van Itallie, Lois Walden, Steven Gorn, Kim Mancuso, Kermit
Dunkelberg, Court
Dorsey, Susan Thompson, Didi Goldenhar, David Willinger

*************************
Dinner break 5:30 - 6:30
*************************

Welcome
Frank Hentschker

Greetings
Ronald Rand
Judith Malina

Introduction to
excerpts from translations of Anton Chekhov’s plays
by Jean-Claude van Itallie
Evangeline Morphos

“THE SEAGULL”
Boris Alexyevich Trigorin………………….…….Jake Robards

Nina Michailovna Zarechnaya……..………………Angelica Torn
Irina Nikolayyevna Arkadina ………………..……...Laila Robins
Konstantine Gavrilovich Treplyev…..………….Grant Kertchick

“UNCLE VANYA”
Yelena Andreyevna………………………………Angelica Torn
Mikhail Lvovich Astrov………… …………….Brian Murray

“THE THREE SISTERS”
Alexander Ignatyevich Verhsinin………………………Brian Murray
Nicolai Lvovich Tuzenbach…………………..…………Ronald Rand

Masha…………………………………………………….….Laila Robins

“THE CHERRY ORCHARD”
Lyubov Andreyevna Ranevskaya………………….Laila Robins
Pyotr Sergeyvich Trifimov……………………….Grant Kertchick
Yermolay Alexyevich Lopakhin………………..……Brian Murray
Anya…………………………………………………….Lauren Bond

Introduction
“War, Sex, and Dreams”
& Dialogue
Alex Glidzen

“WAR, SEX, AND DREAMS”
(Video)
with Jean-Claude van Itallie

Introduction “Light”
Lorraine Grosslight

“LIGHT”
Voltaire………………………………Jean-Claude van Itallie
Emilie………………………….………Rosemary Quinn

A DIALOGUE
Bill Coco and Jean-Claude van Itallie

Join us for a Reception & Book Signing in the Lobby

Music by Steve Gorn

PLEASE VOTE!

2008-10-03T20:06:00.001-04:00

What's the difference between George Bush and Sarah Palin? Watch this video now!

the blog that won't write itself

2008-09-09T00:17:00.004-04:00

It's been a bit of a ride since I closed in August: OsageCounty. Not happy to say good-bye to the best company of actors on the planet! I'm crossing my fingers I'll be back with the play again soon. I think it could very well happen. Seen in the audience the week I was there: Al Pacino, Michael Kahn, Kati Tong, my former college roommate Jeff Polsky. Goodbye August! See you on the campus, as they say.

On Monday, August 25, I attended a screening of a new film produced by my friend Dennis Ostermaier. The film is called House of Satisfaction, written and produced by Jesse Hartman. Hartman is convincing as a down and out junkie with a real genius for the smart rock lyric. But the story of "making right" with his family by stealing junk from a Cleveland mafia didn't hold up nearly as well. The films' best moments shine when they remind us all of the east village that once was. The Village of Mo Pitkin's House of Satisfaction, of indie films just taking off, of brave performances like those of Santo Fazio. It's a very worthwhile movie, and I hope it finds its place on the circuit soon.

Also on Monday night, I ran cross town from Tribeca to catch an evening of new solo work by performance artist David Cale at Joe's Pub. I have loved David for over a decade, ever since I saw him perform in The Redthroats at Second Stage, as well as in Smooch Music. David is developing a new show of mesmerizing monologues based mostly around the themes of, well, love. David weaves a story about a hansome cab driver who becomes a male prostitute for wealthy ladies on the upper east side. He circles in the world of art and finance, giving his "customers" an opportunity to be excited by a young man that is virile and romantic, charming and self-effacing, eloquent without condescension. And there is plenty of sex. I'll not betray any of the comedic effects, but what I will say is that here is a performer at the top of his game. He's open, lovely, raw ---he takes us through the journey on an emotional level. And that level is often funny. Very, very funny. Thank you David for a wonderful night in the theater. We can't wait to catch you again soon!

The next day....Tuesday....I began my MFA Program in Directing at Brooklyn College. That calls for a separate, or many separate blogs. So I leave you only with this simple thought from the great political director Erwin Piscator:

From a Radio Broadcast aired by West Berlin Radio on December 16, 1987:

"The concept of political theatre clings to me like a shirt. Not even today can I comprehend that there could be art without politics. I simply cannot comprehend it...Not because I do not want to comprehend it or because I have a theory about it, but quite simply because I do not see...theat we are allowed to remove politics from art...And politics in art is as permanent and natural as saying 'a-b-c'. There is nothing else. But there never has been anything else."

Tanks for comin'.
Wayne

My Broadway Debut!

2008-07-31T18:46:00.003-04:00

PINCH ME! This can't be happening!!

Tomorrow night the short film I shot last summer, Wake, will be receiving its premiere at the Tribeca Cinema. They're showing the film in both theaters, and apparently it's completely booked. As if that weren't cool enough, today I got a call from my agent that I landed a role in August: Osage County on Broadway! How is this possible??

I've spent twenty-four years in New York, working some, mostly regional theater, the occasional TV gig. And just when I made plans to return to grad school this fall (I'll be attending the MFA Directing Program at Brooklyn College)...bam! I start to get work! What does it all mean?

Well, first of all, a little explanation. I'm only going into the show for one week. Yes, one week only on Broadway. I'll be playing the role of Steve Heidebrecht, which means that actor Brian Kerwin must be going on vacation for a week. Which is awesome! I'll be joining a cast that includes the legendary Estelle Parsons! What a way to make a debut!

There must be something to the act of resignation. Not that I ever planned on leaving acting. However, just knowing that come September I will be taking my career into my own hands, no longer at the whims of fickle fortune and the casting powers-that-be, released me somehow. I wasn't desperate. I no longer needed the role. It would simply be fun! That's all. Consequently I went into the audition relaxed, confident, present. My only objective was to have fun and I didn't care at all whether I got the job. This is an important lesson, but one which cannot be replicated mechanically. I couldn't have achieved it simply by pretending not to care, or tricking myself into having something better to do. It had to be actualized. And so it was.

I'll be opening in the show on August 19 and closing on August 24. Get your tickets now!

A Catered Affair

2008-07-27T10:54:00.003-04:00

Today is the final show of A Catered Affair, the new musical by John Bucchino (with a book by Harvey Fierstein). I caught a matinee yesterday, getting in right under the wire, thanks to a cheap ticket on TDF. (If you don't know TDF, check it out. It's the only affordable way to see what's happening in New York without breaking your bank account.) It was important for me to see this show because my friend Richie Jackson was one of the producers. What would I say if I ran into him? "Oh, sorry, I missed your Broadway show!?"

But maybe it would've been better if I hadn't seen it. I still won't know what to say to Richie, although, the end-product is hardly the fault of a hard-working producer. I could understand what he saw in it, especially given the strength of the source material: a teleplay by Paddy Chayefsky and a Warner Brothers motion picture written by Gore Vidal. Add to that combination the presence of Harvey Fierstein as both writer and star, and it seems like a sure-thing. So where did this production go awry?

Creating a work of theater is like cooking. Straight plays are easier, like cooking supper for a group of friends. The better the recipe the better the meal. You may miss some ingredients, over or under-cook, substitute rice for potatoes, but in the end it will still taste pretty good if you stick to the main idea. Throw in some nice Chablis and all is forgiven.

Musicals are quite a different animal. They are like serving a ten-course dinner to a group of strangers. Like preparing, well...a catered affair. So many things can go wrong: bad choice of entree, too few hors-d'oeuvre, wrong choice of linen, not enough glass-ware. It takes extraordinary planning and command to pull off an event of that magnitude. And so it is in the theater. There more ingredients are in the mix, the more margin there is for disaster.

Nothing about A Catered Affair was a disaster. Zachary Borovay's projection design won the day, proving that filmic elements can be successfully used in the theater in a way that isn't so obvious. Brilliantly incorporated into David Gallo's set design, the projections embraced the production, giving us time, place, mood, and character. Ann Hould-Ward's costume design was functional, if not phenomenal, and Brian Macdevitt's lighting design worked seamlessly within the intricacies of the projections. If the sound design failed at any level it was owing to the decision to mic everything to the point of excess. The Walter Kerr isn't a large theater, but it is an old, acoustically-challenged one. A great performer like Faith Prince, however, doesn't need a mic in a space this size. It made her sound tinny and removed. At the design level, though, the show was a success.

Where it missed its mark, I think, is in both the score and the direction. The music, like the production was simply flat. There never seemed to be any emotional justification for the characters breaking into song. So many of the songs were exposition, and the style of the writing was non-lyrical. There wasn't a "hummable" tune in the entire show. (Even the spoken/sung quality of Caroline or Change had a least a couple of melodic lines to follow.) If there's never any "event" that raises the stakes up so a character has to sing rather than speak, then either the entire show should be spoken (a play) or sung (an opera). Otherwise, the audience doesn't know what world we're in.

I think the biggest mistake of all, however, was the choice of John Doyle as director. Sure, he's done some great work with musicals in the past, but working with new composers isn't in his repertoire. He likes a lean production, and gives a modern look to all his shows by paring them down to the essential. There's never a single extra prop, chair, set piece, or even a single movement by an actor that would be deemed in any way unnecessary to telling the story. It's a concert-style of acting, and the simplicity and honesty it conveys works beautifully for the shows of Stephen Sondheim. But Paddy Chayefsky is a different animal. His work grew out of the Group Theatre in the 1950's and his writing is all about character. Mr. Doyle certainly understands this, but he didn't give his performers enough of a sense of place and time, enough dramatic conflict. There seemed to be nothing at stake for these characters, their struggles seemed small and unimportant. There wasn't enough love imbued in the playing.

Maybe it was the end of the run and the actors were simply deflated. The closing of a show is a very sad time for a company, and the energy can just seep right out of the playing. But I must confess, I found myself checking my watch, looking at the lights, thinking about the projections, wondering when something, anything would actually happen. It never did.

A Catered Affair played 116 performances since its opening on Broadway in April of this year. It had a remarkable cast, a brilliant design team, and the strength of a very good story. But somehow it just didn't work. It was like sitting at a wedding reception poking your fork into a bland piece of chicken, and wishing you'd eaten before you arrived.

My Tribeca Film Premiere!

2008-07-18T20:18:00.002-04:00

Friday, August 1st, 8PM Tribeca Cinema 54 Varick Street @ Canal
Dress to Impress!

Requiem, MASS

2008-07-13T00:56:00.002-04:00

OKAY, this is admittedly a shameless promotion for a dear friend of mine who has written his...wait for it....sixth novel. The name of the book is Requiem, MASS. and for those you who have not yet heard of it, remember, you heard it here first! John Dufresne is an extraordinary writer, having written such classic novels at Louisiana Power & Light, Love Warps The Mind A Little. and Johnny Too Bad. John has also published a book of short stories (The Way That Water Enters Stone) as well as an inspriring textbook on the art of writing: The Lie That Tells The Truth. Such prolificness! And he's also a wonderful human being to boot. We collaborated for several years on a play called Trailerville which received its New York premier in the spring of 2000. John is my friend, mentor, and sometime drinking buddy. Buy mostly he's my favorite contemporary novelist, bar none. So do yourself a huge favor a go find this new novel immediately. This is a writer at the top of his game, and the book is sure to be unlike the kind of story you might expect.

Signs of the Times

2008-07-10T00:57:00.003-04:00

I've been remiss on my blogging. Apologies. I launched right into directing a show as part of the Algonquin Theater's One-Act Festival. The play is 5 O'Clock by Richard Brockman, and it will be seen this Friday (7/11), and possibly again on Sunday (7/13) if chosen as a finalist. I've also been working daytimes and burning the proverbial candle at all three ends. But I'm also exhilarated. FYI - I haven't finished blogging about the Lincoln Center Director's Lab. I have several pages of notes on our final guest - Anna Shapiro. But I haven't yet had the time to post them. So do return to see them. Meanwhile...here are some sightings from the streets.

(From my friend Paul Bartlett)... a sign posted in front of an East Village Restaurant:

"I really want the fish but the waiter keeps pushing his sausage."

And today on First Avenue, a dirty young white boy begging for change held up a sign that read:

"My parents were captured by swamp donkeys. Please help."

Only in New York, folks. Only in New York.

See you at the theater.
Wayne

This is a great site!

2008-06-20T18:58:00.001-04:00

MEYERHOLD MEMORIAL MUSEUM

Lincoln Center Directors Lab #17

2008-06-20T17:21:00.005-04:00

Friday 6/6 Bartlett Sher was our guest-du-jour. What a treat! He's spent alot of time at Lincoln Center this year, directing the impossible-to-get-a-ticket-for revival of South Pacific. He won a Tony Award for best director this year for the show. But he didn't know that yet when he sat down to talk to us at the lab. Sher is himself an alumni of the LCT Directors Lab, having passed through it the very first year. So it was somewhat of a homecoming for him. He was jet-lagged but not fatigued, his mind racing with thoughts on directing. He said many, many things. I tried to keep up with notes, but sometimes it was just more interesting to watch him formulate his ideas rather than keeping my face in a notebook. Here are some things he said.

"I always tell directors when I speak to them these four keys to success: do alot of work, see alot of work, stay out of debt, and get out of New York."

The room gasped when he said this. For one thing, most of us in the room are up to our eyeballs in debt, so that was a little disappointing. But "get out of New York"!? This prompted a big discussion about the virtues and pitfalls of plodding along with a career in the most expensive city in the country. Sher said "I guarantee you that if you are in some small city somewhere making the most fantastic, phenomenal theater, New York is going to find you." Hmm. He may be right. His own path certainly proves that point. He took up a job as an assistant director with Garland Wright at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. From there, Bart directed shows all over the country, and even worked as an assistant to Sir Peter Hall for two shows so he could learn more about directing Shakespeare. Sher has an insatiable appetite for knowledge and has studied the masters, both living and dead. He talked at great length about the influence of Giorgio Strehler. He extensively studied the work of Tadeus Kantor, and was obsessed with V.E. Meyerhold, going so far as to stage one of his shows exactly by using his notes. For Sher, he wanted to know the entire history of theater up to his time, so he could really understand the tradition that he was carrying forth.

The next provocative statement Sher made was "First we throw out all the British!" There were a handful of Brits in the room, and their objections were vocal but genial. But he makes a good point, and that is that we must find our own voices as artists - as American artists. We have to believe more in ourselves and invest more in our identity as a country.

About directing Sher said, "Directing is an interpreting art form, not a creative art form." We are there to serve the play. The writer is really the creator. (This stands in exact opposition to a statement made by Anna Shapiro the following evening at the lab.) The real task is to "create as many possibilities as possible to contact the work."

"Directing involves design, analysis, space and movement, communication, leadership, rhythm."

"[a play] is an arc of action over time."

"Read John Barton for Shakespeare."

"PRACTICE!"

Sher talked about the usefulness of floorplans. "I'm doing an expressionist painting even when I'm directing an Edward Albee play." He appealed to us to learn about the masters: Craig, Appia, Meyerhold.

"Work on more than one thing at a time. You must be layered in your approach."

"I look at my theater as a front for a subversive organization."

"Everything is site specific!" (Semiotics)

That's pretty much all I wrote down. Like I said, this is a charismatic, captivating man. One of the big lessons I will take away from the lab is the passion that all great directors bring, not only in the rehearsal room, but in their life - all the time. Thank you Bart!

Lincoln Center Directors Lab #16

2008-06-16T23:22:00.005-04:00

Wednesday 6/4

The wonderful thing about posthumous blogging is that I can say things like "today I attended the Tony Award winning play Passing Strange" ...a week before the Tonys. Passing Strange did win a Tony for Best Book of a Musical, which is actually a little sad given the frivolity of the plot: boy gets high, boy goes to Europe, boy gets high, boy meets girl, boy gets high, boy meets another girl, boy stays in Europe while his Mom dies, getting high and meeting girls. Boy feels guilty and writes Tony Award winning musical. I did enjoy the show, however. The music was engaging, and the staging, while still in a glorified "rehearsal mode" (with chairs acting as the main vehicle for scene changes and the band playing live onstage) was none-the-less delivered confidently by a very talented cast. Why is this show on Broadway, instead of running downtown at, say, a Darryl Roth theater? I have no idea. It feels out-scaled in the Belasco theater. But it should continue to draw good crowds, especially since winning a Tony.

The real highlight of my day at the Lincoln Center Director's Lab, however, was the presence of legendary director Jack O'Brien at our morning session. O'Brien -- who won the Tony Award for Best Director last season for The Coast of Utopia -- is absolutely captivating. He is energetic, enthusiastic, inspiring. Something that all of the guest directors at the Lab have shared in common. It is their presence, their enthusiasm, their ability to bring you immediately into their confidence that is the hallmark of their leadership. O'Brien has been working in the theater for a long time, so I was particularly eager to hear everything he had to say about directing. Here is a summation of my notes from our question and answer session with O'Brien.

"Let me begin with a pre-amble," O'Brien said, before fielding questions from Anne Cattaneo. "I started out with a company called the APA Rep, coming out of the University of Michigan. I was very lucky to work with such talents as Helen Hays, John Houseman, and Ellis Rabb. There seems to be some mystique these days about directors. [you must support each other in your efforts]...Reach out for each other! Root for, admire each other! Don't hold on to the past. Move on!"

Almost as soon as the "lecture" began, O'Brien was on his feet. He realized that some of the directors sitting in the back of the room might not be able to see him if he remained seated. He didn't sit down again for the remainder of the hour and a half. His movement was youthful, energetic, invigorating. He was on fire. It was as if he wanted to ignite everyone in the room with his enthusiasm and energy, and he seemed to have plenty of energy to spare.

O'Brien went on to talk about the role of the director: "To inspire and unify the company. You don't steer the ship. You embrace it - generously. I speak generously of what I do, I try to excite people about what we do. I embrace my own excitement. Then tease, provoke the actors to discover it for themselve. Then they own it!"

Some more O'Brien quotes:

"Speak in musical terms - phrases of music, sounds of instruments...staccatto, legato."

"Technique is for the nights you don't feel it."

"You get far on enthusiasm and support...bringing the actors into the same world."

"Find yourself as naked as possible in the experience."

"Emotions don't change. Clothes change."

At this point, O'Brien went into a lecture on the physiology of the human eye, the anatomy of the optic nerve. He spoke about the language of film, and about how we all share information. His objective is to engage the audience in such a way that "your ocular nerve is so charged you want to watch not to listen."

"....[theater] is not a passive environment. I invite the audience to play with me!"

He then began to talk about that moment in rehearsal when the actor just needs to get moving. It's terrifying. But it's better to get on your feet and just do something. "Let's try it! Let's try something," I tell them. "Get it moving. Don't be God. Don't make them God. The process of discovery is the best possible path."

Jack then told us a story about the way Tyrone Guthrie rehearsed the play Mary Stuart starring Eva La Gallienne. Irene Worth was playing Queen Elizabeth, and in the play each monarch had their own contingency of actors. So he rehearsed both groups separately for several weeks. They'd never even met each other. Then, when he brought the two groups together near the end of rehearsals, there was a genuine sense of competition, of unfamiliarity. The responses were completely natural. Guthrie apparently was about 6'4", and one day he just walked out of rehearsal. He said "nothing is going on here" and left. When he came back things were greatly improved. He put the honus on the actors, and not on himself.

Hint to actors: Come to rehearsal off-book. Memorize!

Hinto to directors: Let the poison out! (Listen to everyone's complaints equally.)

If an actor is giving you difficulty there are only two possible reasons:

He is terrified.
You're not listening to him.

Directing is all about relationships: build enthusiasm, respect, and trust.

When asked 'what inspires you personally?', O'Brien's answer was "Dance. I'm inspired by watching dance."

Directing a show in the round is useful. It teaches you all about axis.

Patterns are fascinating.

Director/Choreographer relationships can be tricky. Musicals become adversarial very quickly. Bond with the choreographer. Live with them. Hold them in your arms at rehearsal.

Any advice on Shakespeare? "Yes. Cut it!"

"Put the sex onstage!"

"Scene transitions are most important. We're lagging behind filmmakers. This is part of your elegant care."

"Verse plays speak to the sub-conscious. Sub-conscious is the poetry of sleep."

Problems with American actors? "We value sincerity in acting. We must focus much more on voice training. Make a ribbon of your speech. A scarlett ribbon in a blue sky!"

"Try to allow the actor to have a relationship with the playwright. The director is just there to make sure that nobody gets hurt."

Thank you Jack!

Lincoln Center Director's Lab: The Final Week, Day 15

2008-06-13T09:55:00.004-04:00

It's been five days since the Lincoln Center Directors Lab came to a close. I stopped blogging somewhere near the end of the second week. Week three was just too intense, and I didn't want to miss anything. Each day I think back on the Lab and remember something new - a face, a joke, a hint, a pearl of wisdom, a bit of craft. On the first day of the Lab Anne Cattanneo said "This is like director's boot camp." She was right. I'm now going to look back over my notes from the last week and try to condense them here. Maybe they will be helpful to you. They definitely will be helpful to me as I look back in years to come. To be sure there are things I missed. There may be some notes I jotted that now seem out of context. If I mis-quote or mis-represent any of the speakers at the Lab, my apologies in advance. And gratitude to all!

Tuesday 6/3

In the morning there were rehearsals happening of two new plays: Brokenbrow by Ernst Toller (adapted by Lab Member Alex Harvey) and The Sleeping World by Crystal Skillman. (The Sleeping World was of particular interest to me as it is a play based upon my late friend, playwright John Belluso.)

The guest speaker Tuesday afternoon was playwright Sarah Ruhl. Sarah is one of the most sought-after young American playwrights. Her work includes The Clean House which won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in 2004 and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 2005. Her play Eurydice ran at New York's Second Stage, as well as across the country, and Passion Play opened at Washington's Arena Stage in 2005. She is a 2006 recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. Sarah is completely unpretentious in person: calm, open, thoughtful. She spoke many times of the importance of her teachers, in particular playwright Paula Vogel, whom she studied with at Brown.

Sarah's "assignment" was to speak to the Lab about Expressionism in playwrighting, but she said she preferred the term "Magical Realism". This was also the phrase that John Belluso used for his work. John and Sarah had also known one another, so there certainly is a shared connection in their work. Sarah traced expressionism in writing through the work of Georg Buchner. Buchner's work reflected the inner working of a character's mind, as opposed to the omniscience of the playwright in earlier work. She said that Dadaism was too self-conscious as a style, and that her own work emerges more out of a need to tell a particular story, rather than create any specific "style". "As a writer," says Ruhl, "don't know what your style is, and don't fall in love with it." One assignment she was given by Paula Vogel was to "write a play that is impossible to stage." This simple exercise opened her up to the possibilities of theater. The imagination is vast, and too often playwrights are inhibited by their colleagues and critics. "The word 'clarity' should be banished when discussing new work."

When asked about what she might look for in a director, Ruhl was concise: "Balance. A strong leader bringing something muscular into the room. Don't let the playwright dominate."

How does she start a play? "I have an image, a voice, a scrap - no idea where it will go."

On play development: "I like to hear my plays in a living room. I hate readings."

Who are the writers she admires? "Caryl Churchill, Maria Irene Fornes, Elizabeth Egroff. And of course, Paula Vogel."

When writing a play about a difficult topic, Sarah again quoted the advice of her mentor Vogel: "If I said I was going to write a play about my brother dying of AIDS, I would never get off the couch. It's too depressing. But I can write a play about my brother taking a trip, meeting a kindergarten teacher along the way, having a great adventure..."

Thank you Sarah Ruhl for an inspiring afternoon and conversation.

Tuesday Evening - International Directors Conversation
One of the really great things about the LCT Directors Lab is the diversity of the participants from all corners of the globe. It's easy to become myopic in our views of theater as practiced only in America. So for this evening, Anne hosted a conversation with the lab's international directors. Here are some highlights:

Germany - Lutz Kessler and Andreas Robertz

Germany is home to over 150 publicly supported theaters, 250 private theaters, and 100 touring companies which all together bring more than 100,000 performances per year to the country.
The German National Theater in Weimar (where Goethe began the German tradition of writing for the theater) has a rep company that performs 25 plays in a season.
Some of the most important German directors today are Peter Stein of the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, Claus Peymann of the Tower Theater in Frankfurt, and Peter Zadek, the impresario of theater in Hamburg.

Germany is very much a "director's" theater. Famous directors lead the way, and unlike America (which we might consider a "playwright's theater") fulfilling the vision of the uber-director is more the model of creating theater. Lutz stated, however that theater in Germany is in crisis - "the notion of 'what theater is'." State funded theater creates artistic pressures. Lately, many of the theaters have been exploring what might be called "reality theater" or "documentary theater" - creating plays with non-actors. He cited, for example, Rimini Protokoll, when they created a work about funerals, exploring the story from five different angles using real people. Dance/Artist Alenka Loesch - who is based both in San Francisco and Berlin - was also cited for bringing together 30 non-actors to act as the chorus for a production of Woyzcek. In this instance, personal statements of the participants were blended into the play so they had a stake in the outcome of the production. Also popular in Germany are more familiar companies such as The Wooster Group, The Big Art Group, Theater of the World, Robert Wilson, and John Jesurun. All in all, the impression I got is that theater is quite alive and well in Deutschland, but the definitions between theater/film/art/dance/performance are becoming so blurred that theater as an art form is becoming meaningless.

Israel - Yoni Oppenheim
Lab member Yoni Oppenheim was born in the U.S., trained at NYU, but has spent a great deal of time in Israel. Any conversation about theater in Israel of course begins with the Habima, the national theater of Israel, and one of the first Hebrew-language theaters. Israel as a nation has the highest per-capita audience attendance in the world. Theater plays a central role in the culture, helping to create the national story. So much so, that there is even a theater division within the Israeli army. Some of the artists that Yoni cited were Hanoch Levin, a prominent Israeli writer and director who passed away in 1999; Nissim Aloni; and the Gesher Theater. Yoni also spoke of the emergence of Ethiopian theater, Arab-Israeli theater, and the Dybbuk Festival which is held each year at the Habima.

Italy - Erika Tasini and Nicola Zucchi
Italy is a country with a population of about 60 million people. Theater is not as strong as it might be because, as is the case in U.S., there is virtually no funding for the arts. The funding that was put into place as part of Italy's budget many years ago - overseen by the FUS - was never adjusted for inflation. As a result, each year the resources devoted to theater are shrinking at a rate equal to cost-of-living increases.

There are really three traditions of theater that have sprung forth from Italy:

Opera
Commedia del'arte
Matadore (a theater company based around a star)

There are twenty regions in Italy, and each region has an established theater. There are also about 30 well-established experimental theaters, and many successful youth theaters as well. But there is no public or private funding for small theaters who are just starting out.

Some of the great directors that define theater in Italy include: George Strehler and Luchino Visconti - fathers of the modernist movement; Paulol Rossi (not the famous soccer player with the same name); and Dario Fo. Like Germany, Italy is steeped in the idea of "director as dictator". Nicola described the state of theater in Italy as an "emergency". There seems to be a need for new ideas and processes, especially at the larger theater venues.

Erika Tasini teaches theater at Cal Arts and Nicola Zucchi has established a theater in Italy as well as a summer festival MASSERIA LO JAZZO.

The Phillipines - Sean Renfro
Sean Renfro spent much of his youth living in the Phillipines, especially in Manila. The Phillipines is a "country" comprised of about 7,000 islands with disparate languages and cultures. His experience there as an actor was that "basically there is no theater". It is a third-world country, and like most impoverished nations, people don't have the luxury of making theater. There are a few small theaters in Manila. Mostly they perform musical theater. He recalls that plays about Catholicism were around, and plays about colonialism (such as "Our Country's Good") were also popular.

Finland - Jaakko Nousiainen
Finland is a nation of only 5 million people, yet there are 60 state theaters in the country! Since gaining their independence from Russia in 1917, Finland has developed a great cultural heritage. One thinks of the great composer Jean Sibelius. The Fins are quite proud of Alexis Kivi, a playwright, poet, and novelist whose major work was Seven Brothers. Theater in Finland became quite radical during the 1960's and 70's. One company that came up in the 1980's, called Thurkka, single-handedly changed the Finnish Theater. They were a company that employed a lot of techniques of physical theater, striving to shock their audience. In 1987 a group of student performers who called themselves Theater of God, actually defecated onstage, and threw feces at members of the audience. This was the end of so-called "experimental" theater in Finland. In the 1990's Finland has turned its attention toward the craft of playwriting, play development, and a more disciplined approach to making theater. Some of the most interesting groups working today are Kom Theater, Group Theater, and Q Theater. Many women now are working as playwrights and directors in Finland. Each summer Finland draws crowds from around the world for its famous Tampere Theater Festival.

Zimbabwe - Styx Mhalanga
Zimbabwe gained independence from the UK in 1980, and has been fraught with conflict as a nation ever since. There is no commercial theater in Zimbabwe whatsoever. Whatever theater existed during the British occupation was for whites only. But there is a strong tradition of gathering together for singing in dancing in the various townships. After independence, other countries began investing in Zimbabwe's cultural expression - especially the Scandinavian countries. Styx has been working to establish a the Amakhosi Cultural Center dedicated to music, theater, and film. Many new writers are coming forward in spite of the oppressive statewide censorship. There is some investment in theater for young people. Much of the work for writers comes by the way of AIDS initiatives, writing soap operas to educate the masses, and of course it's all quite safe and censored. There is alot of work to be done in Zimbabwe. YOU CAN HELP! According to Styx, one of the things they most need are books. Any and all books on performing, filmaking, playwrighting, acting, plays, novels - anything - would be greatly appreciated. You can send your extra copies to this address: Amakhosi Theatre, Box 7030, P.O. Mzilikazi, Zimbabwe.

China - Mo Zhou
Mo Zhou grew up on both mainland China as well as Hong Kong. She speaks both Cantonese and Mandarin. She received her training in traditional Peking Opera, but was adamant to articulate that "Peking Opera" is not one style or genre. It is specific to each of its many regions. Major performance troupes are based in Beijing and Tianjin in the north, and Shanghai in the south. Western theatrical traditions arrived in China in the early 1900's. Much of the "western" theater performed in China is led by young people for young audiences, and often has more political content. Western plays tend to appear mostly in the mainstream in Hong Kong. The state-funded theaters in Beijing and Shang-Hai are more traditional, offer more physical theater with less emphasis on language. Audiences are considered small if attendance is less than 1,000 people. With a lack of good playwrights and directors, funding for these theaters may be in jeopardy. Mo mentioned some theaters in Taiwan that are incorporating traditional Chinese theater (old plays) with a new context. Among the theaters mentioned: Cloudgate Theater, and Contemporary Legend Theater (Wu Hsing-Kuo, director).

Mexico - Maria Morett
I came to learn on the last day of the lab that Maria and I have traveled similar paths. Maria began as a singer in Mexico. I began as a singer at the New England Conservatory of Music. Maria has also worked at LaMaMa ETC, and counts Ellen Stewart among her great theatrical parents. These days, Maria travels all over the world directing theater and opera. She writes and collaborates on new projects as well. She recently opened an opera in Tijuana. I look forward to following her work.

Directors Lab #10 - #11

2008-06-02T20:55:00.003-04:00

Friday 5/30 - "How To Talk To A Lighting Designer"

This evening we had a panel discussion led by the lighting design team of Lincoln Center Theatre's production of The Coast of Utopia: Natasha Katz, Brian MacDevitt, and Kenneth Posner. It was a terrific discussions, and maybe one of the most useful panels of the whole lab. It's not always clear how and when to integrate the lighting designer's work in the process. Many good points were made. Here are some from my notes:

Talk to a lighting designer like you would talk to an actor. In other words, speak to them in emotional terms. Say things like "I think this seen should be intimate" not "I think this scene should be darker." Don't rob them of their creative contribution. Trust them to do their work.
Research is useful for a first meeting. The director should bring whatever he has to the table- images, thoughts, ideas. Also, always ask the designer to bring their research. And take the time to consider it.
Lighting designers like it when the director says "this is what the play is about, this is how I see it."
Think of light as another character. Speak about it with image and emotion. Lights will help to tell your story in very unexpected ways.
Never use the words "warm" and "cool". Ever. Banish them from your vocabulary.
Lighting designers can function as storyteller. Imagine them as telling the story of the play without words. This is the job they can do.
After the very first run-thru of the play, the director will naturally want to know what his designers think of the work. But remember, the designer is just trying to take it all in. She is seeing the show for the first time. Give them a chance to just absorb it.
Sometimes lighting design can make or break a show. Think of "Grand Hotel". Not much plot to go on there. But the design made it all very interesting.
Without a strong director the lighting designer can become defensive, rather than offensive. Give them the respect they deserve and let them do their work as an equal!
Lighting designer Jules Fisher used to say two things: Never put a drink on my tech table, and never ask me "is that it yet?"
Don't "hunker down" during tech. Remain fluid. Stay active between he stage and the house. Use down time to work with the actors.
Nobody knows what its going to look like until you walk into the theater.
No idea is too small that a director shouldn't tell the designers.

I was pleased to have with me at the discussion my friend, colleague, and favorite lighting designer in the whole wide world - Paul Bartlett. Paul contributed alot to the discussion. Thank you Paul for being there!

Friday 5/30 - Andre Bishop

Friday morning we were treated to a special visit and talk with the Artistic Director of Lincoln Center Theatre - Andre Bishop. Andre is one of the most intelligent and articulate personas in the American theater, and has succeeded in making Lincoln Center a great national theater where many before him have failed. He was candid and honest in his talk, and fielded questions on a variety of topics. He said that "producing is the intelligent exercise of your own taste." It isn't something you learn how to do over night. He talked about the toll the pressure of his job sometimes has on his life. But I was left with a feeling of inspiration, that somebody cared about theater so much, and was striving to achieve the very highest of artistic standards. Andre's choice in plays is never based upon clever structure. He reads a play for its performability. He likes writers who are idiosyncratic, who have a unique voice and strong convictions. He said LCT cannot take a risk with beginning or unproven directors. But beginning next year they are launching a new initiative called LCT III, which will bring to the stage newer, more experimental work.

Friday evening I attended a presentation on director Robert LePage. The talk was given by fellow lab member Joanie Schultz. I went in knowing almost nothing of LePage's work. I left feeling inspired, wanting to see more, hoping for an opportunity to check out his work when he directs the Ring Cycle at the Met in 2009.

"Dreams become reality and then you have to live with them." Robert LePage

Saturday 5/31 - Macbeth Presentations

This morning we saw the presentations from the directors who had been rehearsing Act III of Macbeth all week. They were instructed to move their rehearsals to different locations, including a loading ramp, a hallway, a bathroom, and a the smoke ring of the theater. The idea was to allow the location to inform the text, and see how it manifests itself in the playing. It's a good idea. I see how it could be a benefit to work with a play in this way. Unfortunately, for me, most of the work was self-involved, and unintelligible to the audience. American directors still don't get that Shakespeare's work is about the words. If we can't understand what the actors are saying, then we're never going to hear the play. Perhaps I judge my fellow directors too harshly. But I was completely underwhelmed at the level of the work.

Now on to the final week!

ciao - w.

Directors Lab #6 - #8

2008-05-28T16:37:00.002-04:00

I've fallen behind in my LTC Director's lab blogging effort. Part of me thinks that I owe it to myself to keep writing about this experience. Another part of me, however, feels like I'm betraying the lab process. Not that there's any big secret, or we're sworn to silence, or anything like that. It's just hard to view something when you're in the midst of it, and so much is happening that I will be doing a dis-service to my time here by trying to encapsulate it. I will, however, for the sake of obstinacy, persevere. Here are some highlights:

Saturday 5/24

We saw a presentation of excerpts from Oedipus directed by Styx Mhlanga. Styx, as I mentioned in a previous blog, came here all the way from Zimbabwe, where he has been harangued by the police and local government for his work. He was delayed getting into the country and his process was even shorter as a result. But it was astonishing to see what he created in such a short amount of time. He began to weave the story together using elements of African Dance in the chorus. I didn't see enough of his rehearsals with the principal actors to learn about that process. It is a powerful thing, however, to see thirty-odd people on stage moving together to tell a story. We rarely have such an opportunity here in the states. I would love to watch how a work like this would develop.

Saturday night, we were given an assignment called "Who Are We". Basically, we were each given thirty seconds to tell the rest of the group about ourselves and our work. Something about the time limit made everyone really cut to the chase. It was a good way to find out about my colleagues. We then played two really fun, easy games: cross the line (group divides in half, then "cross the line if____(you're from New York, for example): then a variation on musical chairs called "I love my neighbor who_____".

We then broke for Memorial Day.

Tuesday, 5/27

I didn't attend the sessions during the day, opting instead to catch some time at my day job and get a little scratch. Tuesday evening, however, I gave a presentation on Joseph Chaikin to about ten members of the lab. I was surprised to learn how many young directors didn't really know anything about Joe. They'd heard of The Living Theatre (and oddly, not the Open Theatre), and had some vague idea of the sixties, but not much else. I spent alot of time talking about Joe's biography and place in American theater history, but I was grateful for a chance to keep his memory alive.

After my talk, I attended another presentation by Lab member Andrew Simon on director Arthur Nauzyciel. I'd never hear of Arthur Nauzyciel. Andrew worked with him at Emory University. He directed the students in a site-specific production of Roberto Zucco by Bernard-Marie Koltès. It's difficult to get a true sense of any director's process without experiencing it first-hand. But Andrew did a great job of giving us some insight into the techniques of the French director. For one thing, he addressed the way in which American actors are completely overtaken by Stanislavski method. He believes that characters emerge when you remove any psychology, so the focus is strictly on the language - sentence by sentence - finding the rhythm and reading the text as a score.

Wednesday 5/28

I watch a bit of a rehearsal for Macbeth. There are four directors working on Act III at various locations throughout the building. The idea is to let the place, for example a bathroom, inform the work. I was sitting on a concrete ramp in a hallway that was very uncomfortable and it was hard to hear the actors. I only lasted an hour and then I went out for coffee. But the work seemed to be progressing well.

From 11am - 1pm there was a discussion with the resident stage managers here at Lincoln Center about the role of the stage manager in the rehearsal and production process.

In the afternoon, we attended a performance of The New Century, playing at the Mitzi Newhouse Theater. A new play by Paul Rudnick, directed by Nicholas Martin, it's really four monologues loosely connected by the themes of homosexuality and death. Not terribly deep stuff, but there were some very funny moments, a little - very brief - full-frontal male nudity, and great character turns by Linda Lavin, Peter Barlett, and Jayne Houdyshell.

Before we left for the day, the stage manager handed each of us a piece of paper, on which was written this:

Question For Friday Discussions:

Take a globe of the world, and a long pin. Pierce the globe in any direction you choose and see where it emerges. Try to avoid the ocean. This is the country where you will be traveling to work.

Choose a play to bring with you that reflects the core beliefs of your country. This play should inform the country you are travelling to about what we believe in. Your adaptation or interpretation of this play might show a contemporary attitude towards these core beliefs.

What is the play you would bring? What is your "take" on it?

So, there you have it. For anyone wondering what's goin on at the Lincoln Center Directors Lab this year.

w.

Directors Lab #4 & #5

2008-05-23T23:54:00.003-04:00

Thursday 5/22

OK, I confess. I played hooky in the morning. I decided I needed to make some money, so I skipped the a.m. sessions which were a rehearsal of Oedipus directed by Syyx Mhlanga from Zimbabwe, followed by a discussion with LCT Executive Director Bernard Gersten. I'm sure both were very interesting, but I wasn't there.

I did, however, arrive in time for the afternoon rehearsal of Goldstar, OH. It was fascinating to watch director Andy Paris continue his process, working with the elements to bring his actors into the text. The process he employs is the same used to develop The Laramie Project. His subject matter - the Iraq war - couldn't be more immediate. There were moments of great enlightenment. Any time limitations are created, the art begins to emerge. I look foward to seeing where this leads.

In the evening I participated in the chorus rehearsal for Oedipus. It involved African dancing, and some re-enactments of old Living Theatre shtick. It was a nice stretch but theatrically unenlightening.

Friday 5/23

This afternoon there was a presentation of Goldstar, OH. Of course, it's unfair to even call it a presentation after only 4 days of work. But the material is gripping. There were some incredibly moving moments. They used the device of the interview, so we watch an actor playing the role of interviewer asking questions of the family who has lost a son or brother or husband. In between there were some non-verbal pieces that explored relationships in space and worked with light. It was a great effort, and I applaud the entire team.

I decided to skip the evening rehearsal of Oedipus. I don't really need to do anymore African dancing. I'll wait to see my colleagues in their presentation tomorrow.

That's all for now folks.
w.

Directors Lab #2 & #3

2008-05-21T22:46:00.002-04:00

It's been a whirlwind. I can't write as much as I'd like. Here are some of the notes I jotted down.

Tuesday 6/20
Religious Play Discussions We broke up into small groups to discuss the idea of religion and theater. Here are some bullet points condensed from my group:

What constitutes a "religious" play?
Community
Ritual
City/Country divide
Asking questions vs. Giving Answers
Class distinctions
The Power of the Theatrical vs. the Power of the Spiritual
Context
Hope & Light
Private vs. Public

"Preaching to the choir is fine as long as it inspires the choir to keep singing." - Peter Rothstein

Some of the plays under discussion were:

"The Happy Journey" by Thornton Wilder
"House of Blue Leaves" by John Guare
"The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told" by Paul Rudnick
"White Chalky Substance" by Tennessee Williams
"St. Joan" by G. Bernard Shaw
"Androcles and The Lion" by G. Bernard Shaw
"Galileo" by Bertolt Brecht.
"Jesus Christ Superstar" by Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice
"Gilgamesh"

Wednesday 5/21
I started the day by attending Ming Cho Lee's Clambake - a gathering of the finest new designers from across the country at Fordham University. I met designers from Yale, NYU, Northwestern, USC, Cal Arts, and Carnegie Mellon. It was great to see the work that is coming out of these schools. More on Ming Cho Lee later in this blog.

In the afternoon I attended a rehearsal for Goldstar, OH directed by Andy Paris. (Andy and I attended NYU at the same time, and he is a member of Moises Kaufmann's Tectonic Theatre Project, starring in the original productions of The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde and The Laramie Project.) Goldstar is a new work that he is creating based upon interviews with families that have lost a son in the war in Iraq. On the wall at rehearsal was a big sheet of paper with "The Elements" - a technique that was being created at NYU by Wendell Beavers. Here are "The Elements" of Theater, as listed in the rehearsal room:

Prop
Choices
Lights
Sound
Color
Costume
Gesture
Space
Scenery
Music
(Text)
Audience Relationship
Emotion
Intent
Time
Breath
Rhythm
Duration
Movement
Unison
Character
Subversion
Tension

Andy then had the actors do an exercise called "I begin. I end." The objective was to explore the poetry of a prop - "find the poetry of an object, a way it's not normally used" - then do a round of moments in the space using the prop. It was a fascinating exercise and many theatrically exciting moments came out of the work. Andy talked about "subverting expectation" by creating the unexpected. I can't wait to see how this work progresses.

I then watched an hour of rehearsal of a new play called Hookyjook directed by Chrystal A. Dickinson. Chrystal was doing table work with the actors, and had created a very cheerful and productive environment. It was fun to watch.

The best part of the day was a discussion with legendary designer Ming Cho Lee. Ming was the principal designer for Joseph Papp, creating the sets for nearly every production in Central Park during the 1970's and 80's. He teaches scenic design at Yale University. He had many wonderful things to say. Here are a few:

On technology:

"Nobody goes to the library anymore! You can go online and "google" and get just what you want. But what if you don't know what you want?"

"Image doesn't make the set, or the play. A picture isn't enough. You're dealing with actual space. As opposed to the movies, or TV that is two dimensional, theater is actual space. You creat infinite space within these finite limitations."

"People are manipulating finished images, but they don't go through the process of discovery. They are too lazy to go to the library, where you can open up many sources at once!"

"Everyone wants everything. It's gotten so complex. Instead of actors driving the show, technology is driving the actors."

On directing:

"I will not allow piece-meal decision-making. Don't delay decision-making as a director."

"Don't ask for diagonals in a classic play. Shakespeare calls for symmetry. Don't pin the play down with specificity."

"At the first showing (of a design to the director) the designer is scared out of their wits!"

20 May 2008

2008-05-20T20:19:00.006-04:00

note to an ex-husband
by Janet Ward

on the walk across town
the morning sun blasts at corners
where buildings abruptly cease
and gargoyles look out for me
crossing lexington between bumpers.
and then, when the light fades
at six o'clock on the walk back
Mister Softee waits
at sixth avenue
with a tall sweet cone
that tastes like cream
and lasts all the way
to eighth avenue,
where a girl can use her napkin,
wipe her mouth, and
toss it perfectly away
into the purple-line bin.
that's the moment i'd like to see,
when it all comes clear,
that little turn i made
and where we went:
what was lost,
and what wasn't.

Lincoln Center Directors Lab Day 1

2008-05-19T22:52:00.002-04:00

It was a day.

Registration for the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab 2008 began at 2:00 PM. We got packets and badges. Then they took a group photo on the steps in the lobby of the Mitzi Newhouse Theater. I wish I had the photo to post here. I actually brought my camera, but didn't take a single photo all day. Sorry folks. Anyway, it's not an attractive crowd. It's just directors.

After the photo we were led down into the depths of LCT to the large rehearsal room. I had flashbacks. This is where, as a student - way back in 1988 - I had acting classes with William H. Macy, Felicity Huffman, and Stephen Schachter. The room was pretty much the same, but cleaner.

There were opening remarks by LCT Executive Director Bernard Gersten. Bernie was also my teacher. I remember our class on producing meeting twice a week in the lobby to discuss how to bring in an audience for Speed The Plow. Gregory Mosher was the Artistic Director back then, and Maddona - yes, that Madonna - was spotted in the halls on her way to rehearsal. Bernie looks great now. Much thinner than I remember. And he's produced another hit - the revival of South Pacific directed by Bartlett Sher. (Mr. Sher will be coming to talk to us all next week.)

Next, we had our orientation from the creator of the Director's Lab: Anne Cattaneo. Anne is a petite woman with a dazzling smile and very hip eye-glass frames. She talked for about forty-five minutes. I took meticulous notes as she spoke. Her articulation of what the lab is and is not could serve as a primer on the process of creating theater. It was the singular highlight of the day, and at the risk of plagiarism (and of not doing justice to her speech) here are the Ten Points she articulated:

The Lincoln Center Directors Lab is not a teaching situation. It's not about mentoring. Nobody is considered more "important" than anybody else. We all have experiences that are valid and worthy of consideration.
You will experience some of what you encounter as utter non-sense, and other things as incredibly enlightened. Look for the things that you least expected.
The Directors Lab takes place in a theater - a real, live, working, operating, theater. Some things are practical - not theoretical. (At this point Anne describe "kicking Alan Alda out" of th e room we were in to begin the start of the day.)
The Directors Lab is intentionally large - 45 or 50 people. Its main asset is as a place to meet other people. Will directors even like one another?? It remains to be seen.
The most important stuff will happen in a bar.
Guests come into the Lab by serendipity (i.e. - whatever is going on and whomever happens to be in town at that time.)
Distrust the notion of choice. "It's not true that a given director's career is created by institutions." Nobody at a big institution will pick you out. You will make your own career.
Social aspect. Actress Lois Smith said "What I do in a reading bears no relationship to what I do in a rehearsal." The process is completely different as an encounter on a deeper and more personal level is what creates the work. Hence....Director Richard Ayre: "Invite the leading actor and designer to your house, read the play, and stop and ask 'what does this mean to us' at every scene, turn, punctuation, question." Group together around the play.
Question: Who is in charge when you're really making art? Ride the horse in the direction you are going!
We have a bias toward the actor.

Anne likened the Directors Lab to a boot camp. "We want to wear you down."

Finally, at 5:00 pm, we received an official welcome from Lincoln Center's Artistic Director - Andre Bishop. Andre has a deep and authoritative voice. He could make tons of money doing voiceovers. He told us all to "take advantage" of Lincoln Center and the opportunity we have before us. "Remain open" was his message.

After a break from dinner, we had a talk from Steve Cosson, Jim Lewis, and Michael Friedman from the ground-breaking theater company The Civilians. Their new play This Beautiful City is based upon interviews with residents of Colorado Springs, CO, and focuses on the Evangelical Christian movement there. They were all whisked away at 8:00 PM sharp to receive their OBIE Award which coincidentally was also happening tonight.

Lastly today we had a visit from director Ruben Polendo of Theater Mitu. It was a fascinating talk. Mr. Polendo studied with Peter Brook and has created a philosophy of "complete theater". He is an engaging and charismatic presence, but I was conflicted about his philosophy. It was basically a re-hash of Peter Brooks' writings, but I will reserve judgment until I actually see his work. Theater Mitu is in residence at New York Theatre Workshop and will be presenting their new work The Apostle Project June 4 - 15.

Mr. Polendo said one very important thing that deeply resonated with me: No fear, no deception. This is the measure for your work. I thought that was wonderful, so thank you Ruben for that.

I can't promise this detailed a blog every day for the next few weeks but I'll do my best. Stick with me. I think it will get better.

Wayne

The Lab

2008-05-09T23:51:00.002-04:00

"Everything we do changes us a little, even when we purport to be indifferent to what we've done. And what we witness, we also do." - Joseph Chaikin The Presence of the Actor

In a little more than a week I will begin my participation in the Lincoln Center Director's Lab. The Lab is an initiative that has been in existence for, oh, I don't know...a dozen years or so. It's three weeks of intensive work focused on whatever plays/ideas/desires are in the zeitgeist of the Lincoln Center Powers That Be (i.e. Anne Cattaneo). I am perhaps a bit long in the tooth to be doing the lab at this juncture, but I probably won't be the very oldest. Maybe the second oldest. I don't know why age is such a concern. Suffice it to say for now that I am both excited and skeptical about the whole endeavor. But I guess it will be an experience.

My intention is to blog a little each day from the Lab, and leave my notes behind for whatever their worth. This isn't at all original. In fact, just this evening I discovered a very nice blog from a 2004 participant. Isaac Butler wrote a very charming and intelligent blog from LCT. He has a clear and honest voice. I appreciated his candor.

I guess I'm now entering a new phase in my career. I'm shifting from acting to directing. I've loved acting, it's been a great journey, and I am by no means giving it up. But it's become more and more difficult for me to do the work. I find the grind of going on auditions to be draining my enthusiasm for the theater. Actors are at their worst and most vulnerable when they're in an audition. Most good directors know this, and try to give some modicum of respect back to the actor. But until you are given the permission to fail, to not feel the pressure of a call-back, not needing to impress everyone in the room, not caring whether you get it right, there really is no making any kind of art. It's all an approximation. Can you be the character the director imagines? Will your resume be fancy enough to warrant your hiring? Is your agent important enough to call back? Will your presence in my show enlarge my power? It's all exceedingly seductive. And awful. And yes, Virginia, unfair. And I've been doing it for twenty years, and it leaves me feeling, frankly, bored. So I believe it's time to let the notion of a "fancy" acting career float away -- like a trail of leaves in an Andy Goldsworthy film. Going, going...
I'm under no illusions whatsoever that directing will by any more financially secure than acting. In fact, I'm certain it will be much less so. For every show there are several or even many actors, but only one director. And in New York, it's very often only one or two directors who get to direct the bulk of the shows.
I'm interested in exploring questions that are important to me. And I'm excited to discover a new path.
Here's what the lab has told us so far: re-read MacBeth, and find a play about religion. That's it. That's all I know so far. Oh, and they've asked me to give a presentation on Joseph Chaikin. I'll let you know how that all comes off.

On Wednesday evening, I went by the home of Judith Malina who was sitting shiva for her husband, partner, and co-director of the Living Theatre - Hanon Reznikov. Judith as lying down on a mattress in the middle of the floor. Friends encircled her in chairs, dropping down to give a hug, have a chat, offer a word of comfort. Needless to say, she is quite bereft. I reunited with some old friends I've not seen in many years including Ilian Troya and Judith's daughter Isha. I've drifted away from the Living in the past decade, and Judith took the opportunity to scold me for my absence. She's quite right. I've always felt a part of the company, but haven't held up my end of the bargain. "I don't care if you sit in the box office, or clean the toilet, or work backstage, or are acting in the shows. I'm not asking you to do anything at all. But be here. Be part of it. Come and support the work." It was a scolding I was happy to receive. It meant she noticed and cared if I was there. God bless her in the time of grieving. And for anyone out there that's looking for a theatrical home, come to the Living Theatre. I think it's time to make some noise.

Hanon's obituary appeared in the New York Times yesterday.

In Memorium

2008-05-04T16:19:00.005-04:00

This week the downtown theater scene mourns the loss of two great artists: Janet Ward and Hanon Reznikov. Both were personal friends and colleagues of mine. Both were committed to the practice of theater as an agent of change. They were both writers, poets, activists, and performers. Both touched many other lives and gave inspiration to everyone around them. Both will be missed.

Janet Ward lost her brief battle with cancer on Wednesday, April 30th. I first met Janet when she entered the Joseph Chaikin Workshop. We became fast friends. Like Joe, Janet was obsessed with Samuel Beckett. She did many Beckett roles in the workshop, but I most remember her performance of Miss Fitt in the extraordinary production of All That Fall at the Cherry Lane Theater. Janet was also a member of New York's Tyna Collective where she played in Vaclav Havel's Largo Desolado directed by Eva Burgess at the Ohio Theater. I wrote an earlier entry about Janet's fight against cancer, but you can follow the whole story on the blog that has been maintained by her family. I will miss Janet very much.

Hanon Reznikov has for the past 24 years been the co-director of the Living Theatre. (He is pictured here with his wife and partner Judith Malina.) Hanon was in many ways the driving force behind the Living, though no doubt the legacy he has created will continue. Hanon is the author of many plays produced by the Living Theatre, most notably Utopia, Capital Changes, and Resistance.

Hanon was my teacher when I took a class with the Living Theatre at NYU in 1986. He opened my imagination to the possibilities of theater. He taught me that all theater is political, and unless you have a political agenda, it's all an exercise in vanity.
I spent more than a few New Years Eves at their home on West End Avenue. I worked as an intern in their office, and had a nice reunion with Hanon and Judith when they attended the opening of The Glass Menagerie (in which I played the role of Tom) at Yale Rep directed by Joseph Chaikin.

Hanon was an advocate for the pacifist-anarchist revolution, and a true philosopher and thinker. There is a wonderful interview with Hanon and Judith that you can look at here on YouTube.

What If

2008-03-18T23:42:00.002-04:00

What if...
There was no theater?
Nobody came?
There were no new playwrights?
There were no new plays?
The theater became archaic?
It became obsolete?

What if...
Theater was always affordable?
It only cost one dollar but you had to stand?
Plays were the only form of entertainment?
We considered large ideas?

What if...
Life really has no meaning?
Everything we do is in vain?
When we die there is really nothing?
English became the only language?

What if...
Dogs could speak?
Our fingers could smell?
We had no eyebrows?
Old was desirable?

The Week That Was

2008-03-14T22:08:00.002-04:00

Last week I was sick with the flu. It knocked me out of commission for five days. Bleck. It was pretty awful. But it's been going around and living in New York City means sharing everyone else's germs. But this week I was back on my feet, and what a week it was!

On Monday, I had my interview for the Graduate Directing program at Brooklyn College. I met with Professor Thomas Bullard, and we spoke for nearly 40 minutes. Tom is a warm man, with a gentle demeanor and a keen intellect. I could've spoken with him for hours, but I know he had other things to attend to. The theater department at Brooklyn has been growing rapidly in these past few years. There is a plan now for a brand new performing arts center, replacing the outdated Gershwin Theater that is now home to the college's productions. Even those facilities, however, are respectable. The approach to teaching directing at Brooklyn is very much based in Stanislavsky. It is a writer's theater, and unlike other "director's theater" programs, here the goal is to fulfill the vision of the playwright, and erase any traces of the directing rather than calling attention to them. I love this approach. It's where I feel most at home, and its in line with my own views on theater. We'll see if I get into the program, but irregardless, it was a day well-spent.

Wednesday evening was the final session of the Winter Workshop, the class I have been conducting along with Eva Burgess. I learned a great deal throughout the class. Eva taught me so much about how to by-pass our judgmental think-brain and how to access the place of impulse. Her exercises are fun, physical, and charged. I was focusing on voice work, specifically the kind of work that has been laid down by the great Cicely Berry. We all found a newly-awakened sense of language moving through several of Berry's exercises and techniques. Each class was also an opportunity for participants to do some scene work. Students worked on Shakespeare, Beckett, Albee, Shaw, Stoppard, Chekhov, and Tony Kushner. Congratulations to all of our workshop members: Jason Blaine, Elizabeth Bell, Rebecca Yaggi, Carl Mayer, Robin Sorenson, Melanie Armer, Samantha Desz, Erick Kever Ryle, Jon Okabayashi, Laura Gaona, and Guen Donohue.

I ended my week with an audition at Lincoln Center Theater for the National Tour of Frost/Nixon. I was delighted to have a chance to read for casting director Daniel Swee. The role I went in for is Jack Brennan, Nixon's chief of staff and the major antagonist of the play. It's a great part, and Kevin Bacon will be playing the role in the upcoming feature film. So, fingers crossed.

I also worked several caiter-waiter jobs this week. That's the un-glamorous part of my life. It leave me exhausted. But times are tough, and we all gotta pay the piper. All I can say is "thank God its Friday"!

W.

Thinking of Janet Ward

2008-03-06T08:04:00.007-05:00

"That's how it is on this bitch of an earth." Samuel Beckett

Two weeks ago I was given the news that my dear friend and colleague Janet Ward has been diagnosed with lung cancer. I was told the cancer was quite advanced (stage 4) and metastasized. The news left me stunned. How could this be possible? She's fine. I saw her not too long ago. We were planning to have a martini!

Janet is one of the most extraordinary human beings I've known. I met her when she came into the Joseph Chaikin Workshop back in '99. She has the radiant features of a woman half her age - and a body better than most women of any age - a bristling intelligence, an unquenchable curiosity for life, and the soul of an angel. Joe knew that about Janet too. Higher beings sense one another right away.

To me, Janet is an actor and a poet, a trusted colleague. But she is also a mother, a grandmother, a working professional, and a life force for so many friends and acquaintances across the country. Whenever I think of Janet I think of Samuel Beckett. Working with Joe Chaikin, she couldn't get enough of the Irish playwright. She worked on Rockabye, Endgame, and Footfalls. She was stellar in her role of Miss Fit in the Caliuga Arts production of All That Fall at the Cherry Lane Theatre. Most recently, Janet has been working on Winnie from Happy Days with director Miriam Eusebio, which is slated to go up in the 2009 season.

I really bonded with Janet, however, in the summer of 2004. The Republican National Convention was being held here in New York. A mutual friend of ours had written a play - somewhat of a protest piece - and was putting it up at the American Place Theatre's new space on 8th Avenue & 36th Street. Practically across the street from the convention. Our "friend" (who shall remain nameless) asked me to direct the show, and we invited Janet to come on board as our producer. Janet worked her ass off like always. She throws herself head-first into everything she does. And together we had done a pretty good job of pulling off a show with absolutely no backing or resources. We were betrayed by our "friend" however, when on the opening performance (with the New York Times in the house) he decided to throw away all of the direction and guidance and go onstage holding a script. It was a disaster. Things got even worse when his crazy wife came into the mix, shooting accusatory glares at both Janet and me. I guess we had been scapegoated for her husband's lack of professionalism. Anyway, we left the theater feeling like we had been mugged by a member of our own family. A few scotches later though, we knew we would be ok, and probably the stronger for our experience.

I'm so angry that such a lovely and talented person should be struck by a cruel disease. She has so much more to offer us - her words, her words, her gorgeous inspiring words! In 2003 Janet's poem Change was the winner in the adult category of the Poetry Society of America's Poetry In Motion 10th Anniversary Contest. It was put up in subway cars across thee city. You cannot imagine how proud I was, sitting on the F train, looking up at Janet's words, thinking "she's my friend". Thousands of people drew inspiration from this one poem everyday: (click on it to read it) So, may the love and inspiration that you gave to so many find its way back to you now, Janet. May it give you the strength you need as you heal and recover. With love and admiration....
w.

Viola Spolin on Emotion

2008-02-10T01:02:00.000-05:00

I've been re-reading Viola Spolin's seminal book Improvisation for the Theater. The entire book is amazing, but I found this to be particularly illuminating. I hope you do too.

From the beginning student to the performing artist, great argument ensues as to how to get emotion or feeling for a particular scene. The problem of clarifying what is meant by emotion is far from simple, but if emotion is to be handled as a direct acting problem in the training, a position must be formulated. One thing is certain. We must not use personal and/or subjective (what we use in daily living) emotion for the stage. It is a private matter (like feeling and believing) and not for public viewing. At best "real" emotion put on stage can be classified as psycho-drama no matter how skillfully it is written or played, and it does not constitute a theatrical communication.

And later she writes:

When psycho-drama is confused with a play or scene, is in fact considered to be the scene, it leads the actor to exploit himself (his emotions) instead of experiencing total organic motion. What can psycho-drama do but abstract the tears that should come out of our personal grief alone, thus making artistic detachment impossible? Emotion newly generated on stage, however, remains detached because it is usableonly within the structure of agreed reality.

Viola Spolin, Improvisation for the Theatre, Chapter XI, p. 237 - 238. 1963 Northwestern University Press

Remembering Bill Hart

2008-02-02T10:46:00.001-05:00

I learned only recently that my friend and colleague Bill Hart had passed away on Sunday, January 20th. I was deeply saddened by the news. I hadn't seen Bill for a number of years, and wasn't aware that he was ill. He apparently had pancreatic cancer.

Bill was well-known by everyone who worked in the downtown theater scene in New York. For many years he served as literary manager at Joseph Papp's Public Theatre. He also directed a famous production of a play starring Robert DeNiro - the only time Mr. DeNiro appeared on Broadway. Bill also had been a long-time friend and colleague of Sam Shepard, directing several of Mr. Shepard's early plays with Theatre Genesis at St. Mark's Church on the Bowery.

I came to know Bill through Joseph Chaikin, when I was invited to join the ensemble of a new collaborative play about disabilities. Bill served as the company's dramaturg, but in many respects was a co-director with Mr. Chaikin. We worked together on the disabilities project over the course of ten years, sometimes with breaks of several months or even a year in between rehearsal periods. Many other artists came to work with the company as writers and contributors. Among them: David Willinger, Charles Mee, Jr., Bell Chevigny, Elizabeth Swados, and John Belluso. The work was presented in its final form as bodySONGS at the Public Theatre in 2001.

Bill had a great sense of humor, although his ideas were sometimes a little dark for Joe Chaikin's tastes. I loved that about Bill. He was always willing to push the work to the edge - exploring the kinky, the perverse, the deviant. This was a nice counter-balance to the kind of humor and levity sought by Joe. It was really Bill who ultimately shaped the piece we performed. He kept track of all of the work that had been created over the ten years, and culled them into a dramatic structure. His intellect was razor sharp.

I enjoyed spending time with Bill. We had drinks and meals together on many occasions. I remember one evening when we dined with Joe Chaikin at the home of Anders Cato. Bill was completely uncensored in his humor. I also remember being at the Acme Cafe on Great Jones Street after a reading of The Late Henry Moss by Sam Shepard. Bill sat across from Sam and the two men talked for hours. Sam needed to hear what Bill had to say about the play. That's how much respect Sam Shepard had for Bill.

Here is the link to Bill's obituary in the New York Times. Like his life, it is much too brief. He will be missed by so many of us.

World of Amitin

2008-01-20T12:27:00.000-05:00

On Friday I had a reunion with my friend Mark Hall Amitin. We'd not seen each other in far too many years. It truly felt like a homecoming. Mark had been at the center of my life in the theater for over a decade, and has influenced my thinking about the role of theater in society more than perhaps anybody else. He is the very embodiment of the artist/activist, and has spent a lifetime working to advance the evolution of humankind away from cynicism and violence and toward equality, peace and freedom of expression. This he has done both from outside "the system" (such as his work with the Living Theatre) and from within (bringing non-mainstream artists to prominence in Hollywood). His is a lifetime of achievement. I couldn't even begin to recount his accomplishments in this one blog entry. But let me just say this: if you look at every major theatrical movement of the past forty years - every significant experimental theater, many of our most honored writers, actors, and directors - somewhere you will find a link back to Mark. He operated as the hub for the convergence of politics and art at a time when America was most desperately in need of the voice of opposition.

In 1968 Mark began a company called Universal Movement Theatre, sharing an office space with Abbey Hoffman. He has known, worked with, represented, taught, produced and/or influenced artists such as Julian Beck and Judith Malina, Joseph Chaikin, Jean-Claude vanItallie, Lee Breuer, Ruth Maleczek, JoAnne Akalitis, Edward Albee, Sam Shepard, Spalding Gray, Ellen Stewart, Shami Chaikin, Joan MacIntosh, Karen Ludwig, Shirley Stoller, Bread & Puppet Theatre, Squat Theatre....the list goes on and on. He also discovered and nurtured many new talents, most notably Steve Buscemi (see photo on left), but also David Cale, Paul Zaloom, Mark Boone Jr., The Kipper Kids, and Peter Facinelli. Mark also earned his PhD. in Theatre from the Sorbonne in Paris, and has been active as a teacher, lecturer, and director for more than twenty years. Quite simply, he is "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma".

For several years I worked alongside Mark as he ran his theatrical management company World of Culture, Inc. It was here that I first learned the nuts and bolts of show business. I also got my feet wet as an actor. Mark helped me land me first roles in the theater, and also coached me for a recurring role on As The World Turns. It was through Mark that I met playwright Jean-Claude vanItallie, which ultimately led me to Joseph Chaikin. I will be forever grateful to Mark for giving me the opportunity to move among the most revered figures of the American theater.

Mark has overcome much adversity in his life. He came from very humble roots - a small town in New Jersey - where he grew up gay in pre-sexual-revolution America. He has always proudly maintained his identity as a Jew, even has he has questioned the deeper meaning of God and religion in his life. His passion for the plight of the Palestinians brought him to Gaza during the second Intifada, where he worked with a group of Palestinian actors to tell the story of their life and struggles. In more recent years he has traveled to Egypt to adjudicate a festival of international theater, and to China where he directed his own adaptation of Peer Gynt.

In the few short hours I spent with Mark on Friday, our conversation wandered from topic to topic - politics, relationships, eBay, death - but always we came back the theater. This is the common ground that we share, a project begun twenty years ago, whose next chapter is yet to be written.

Good to see you, Mark.
Wayne

Saved by The Long Arm of the Law & Order (or How I Managed to Not Take the GREs)

2008-01-17T23:38:00.000-05:00

This is truly one for the book.

There I was, yesterday afternoon, sitting at my computer and trying to solve an algebraic equation! Egads. I was scheduled to take the GREs today in preparation for my application to various graduate schools. At 5:30 pm, I got a phone call from my agent David Cash, saying that Law & Order wanted to hire me for a week, would I be available. Uh...yes. "Your first day would be tomorrow". Huh?

So much for the GRE.

I had auditioned for this new episode ("Tango") last Wednesday, and was completely flummoxed because I waited an hour and a half to get in. It was also the first night of the Winter Workshop which I am teaching with Eva Burgess , and I finally told Suzanne Ryan (Law & Order's casting director) that I had to leave. She squeezed me in, but I was in such a tizzy I assumed that was the end of it.

And it was. They cast somebody else.

But, whomever they cast suddenly booked a commercial and I was their next pick. So lo and behold...the role was mine. Not bad. A week's work on a network show in the middle of a writer's strike. I'm stoked!

I immediately contacted Ted Sluberski, and had a great coaching session.

So today I showed up at Chelsea Piers at 5pm and was rushed into hair and make-up. I got a great free haircut. And then on to wardrobe. Before I knew it, I was sitting in a bustling courtroom watching the work of such esteemed actors as Jeffrey DeMunn, Marlyne N. Afflack, Maria Dizzia, Valerie Whitman, Alana de la Garza...it was wild! Peter Parros was superb as Judge Matthew Alden, as was Eli Ganias who plays the court Clerk.

While I was in hair and make-up, Jesse L. Martin (who plays detective Green on the show) came in to chat. It's Jesse's birthday tomorrow (January 18) and apparently there had been cake. He was talking to Marlyne about The Wire, and was so passionate about the show, wondering why it hadn't been nominated for an Emmy for Best Ensemble. He went on and on about how underrated the show is. ( I can't wait to watch it on DVD. I don't have cable, so I've never seen it.) And then the conversation turned to my friend John Doman (pictured on left), who is one of the stars of The Wire. John did a guest-star on Law & Order back in December, and everyone was so delighted to work with him. I was grinning to myself, thinking I just directed John Doman in reading of Orange Alert. How lucky was I to have such a great actor!

All I can say is...thank God for Dick Wolf. I don't know how they managed to keep shooting while everyone else isn't working. But I'm so grateful for the opportunity. And for the paycheck. Maybe now I can have my teeth cleaned.

Ciao for now.
Wayne

Excerpt from The Kite Runner

2008-01-15T08:14:00.000-05:00

Keeping with the same topic as my entry yesterday - the role of positive feedback in the creative process - here's a little excerpt from Khaled Hosseini's extraordinary novel The Kite Runner.

One day, in July 1973, I played another little trick on Hassan. I was reading to him, and suddenly I strayed from the written story. I pretended I was reading from the book, flipping pages regularly, but I had abandoned the text altogether, taken over the story, and made up my own. Hassan, of course, was oblivious to this. To him, the words on the page were a scramble of codes, indecipherable, mysterious. Words were secret doorways and I held all the keys. After, I started to ask him if he'd liked the story, a giggle rising in my throat, when Hassan began to clap.
"What are you doing?" I said.
"That was the best story you've read me in a long time, " he said, still clapping.
I laughed. "Really?"
"Really."
"That's fascinating," I muttered. I meant it too. This was...wholly unexpected. "Are you sure, Hassan?"
He was still clapping. "It was great, Amir agha. Will you read me more of it tomorrow?"
"Fascinating," I repeated, a little breathless, feeling like a man who discovers a buried treasure in his own backyard. Walking down the hill, thoughts were exploding in my head like the fireworks at Chaman. Best story you've read me in a long time, he'd said. I had read him a lot of stories. Hassan was asking me something.
"What?" I said.
"What does that mean, 'fascinating'?"
I laughed. Clutched him in a hug and planted a kiss on his cheek.
"What was that for?" he said, startled, blushing.
I gave him a friendly shove. Smiled. "You're a prince, Hassan. You're a prince and I love you."
That same night, I wrote my first short story.

High Noonan

2008-01-14T17:33:00.000-05:00

I couldn't have been more proud last night as I listened to my friend Stephen Girasuolo's writing come to life. His new work Orange Alert had its first reading last night at Tom Noonan's studio on East 4th Street. Mr. Noonan (pictured here at left) has been mentoring Stephen in his writing, and was on-hand for the occasion. The actors had only one rehearsal the previous Saturday, which was completely focused on the writing - developing the characters and teasing out plot lines. Yesterday they were handed new scripts fifteen minutes before the reading. The scripts reflected the changes Stephen had made over the course of the week, including entirely new scenes. The reading came off without a hitch. The actors were splendid under the circumstances, and by all measures the writing had taken a great leap forward in the week since we first had read it. After the reading, Stephen and I were invited across the street to Mr. Noonan's apartment so we could get his "notes" on the play.

Tom Noonan has been working as an actor, writer, director, and teacher for 30 years. He's starred in numerous movies, on TV, and his film What Happened Was won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 1994. I confess I was eager to meet him, and grateful for the opportunity Stephen had given me. But what transpired in the course of twenty minutes left me flabbergasted. Mr. Noonan began his notes session with an attack on my directing (for a non-staged reading, with no rehearsal!!?), went on to insult the great majority of the actors who so graciously gave of their time to contribute to the process, and finally offered up a cursory analysis of what he perceived to be the weaknesses of the script. I was stunned. Not because he was critical. I can take criticism. And I really didn't care what he thought of me personally, or even my work for that matter. I'm not that insecure. What angered me, however, was his complete lack of generosity toward Stephen. All artists need support and encouragement, especially from their so-called mentors. Of course there needs to be criticism, but this must be tempered with a respect for the writer and his process. Giving credit for work well-done is every bit as important as picking apart what you don't like. That this man is charging for his space (which barely had enough light to read by, mind you) and then also charging for his "expert" services on top of it borders on the criminal. I could excuse his behavior if I thought he was high on crack. But alas, he seemed to be completely lucid, if not sober.

So here is my little warning to any of you out there who may be searching for a writing or acting teacher. Just because someone has fancy credits doesn't mean they're the person to turn to for your own growth and development as an artist. The creative impulse responds to "yes" and is stunted by "no". This is basic human psychology. Perhaps Mr. Noonan considers it his style to be curt, abrupt, and nonsupporting. I call it testosterone poisoning and consider acting teachers who affront students this way to be abusive.

The main thing, though, is that Stephen's work was a tremendous success. It's hard to put yourself out there, and open yourself up for commentary. I applaud him on his bravery and look forward to reading the next stage of development of Orange Alert .

2008-01-10T23:20:00.001-05:00

Hitting The Ground Running

2008-01-06T15:17:00.000-05:00

2008 is off with a bang!

I started out the year working with my friend Stephen Girasuolo, directing a workshop/reading of a new play he has written called Orange Alert. Stephen left the country not long after 911 and has been living in Europe where he learned three languages in five years. Orange Alert began as a series of scenes he wrote while living in Paris. It's very funny stuff, but also very moving. The characters come at each other like hungry animals. What is beginning to emerge is a series of vignettes in which all of the characters are somehow linked, each character's decisions impacting upon another character in a completely different scene. I'm delighted to be working with Stephen as he develops the play. We had our first rehearsal yesterday at Tom Noonan's Paradise Theater on E 4th Street. The cast that we've assembled for the reading is astonishing: Jessica Dickey, John Doman, Andrew Lawton, Indira Obregon, Derek Pliath, Ivan Sandomire, Greg Skura, and Janine Squillari. If you want to check out what we're up to, come by the Paradise Theater (64 E 4th Street) next Sunday at 7PM. I promise it will be interesting.

I also begin teaching this week after a hiatus of nearly five years! The Winter Workshop 2008 kicks off at the Algonquin Theater this Wednesday. I'm delighted to be co-conducting the class with my friend and colleague Eva Burgess. I met Eva during the very last workshop I was teaching with Joseph Chaikin before he died. Joe had wanted to focus on the works of Eugene Ionesco during that class, and even invited James Leverett (Theater Professor from Yale University) to speak with the class about The Bald Soprano. So it's no accident that we pick up the class right where we left off, with scenes from The Bald Soprano. Of course, this workshop will be different from the classes with Joe. Our emphasis is going to much more on voice and movement for the actor rather than examining the relationship between director and actor. I'm excited to get started.

I'll write more when there's more to write. Bye for now!
Wayne

Happy New Year

2007-12-30T21:53:00.000-05:00

Here is my wish list for 2008:

An end to the war in Iraq.
An end to the violence in Afghanistan.
An end to the atrocities in Africa.
An end to hatred and division in America.
An end to world hunger.
An end to the writer's strike.
Fair and open elections.
A rise to the next level of human consciousness where aggression and war are unthinkable.
A nationwide investment in alternative energy.
A rollback of greenhouse emissions.
A reversal of global warming.
A cure for Alzheimer's disease.
A steep drop in the price of Kona coffee.
An Oscar nomination for Hal Holbrook for his work in "Into The Wild".
Love and good fortune for all of my friends.
A blessing on each of your homes.
A future filled with promise.
Chocolate.

Happy New Year.
W.

Beckett Shorts at NYTW

2007-12-29T10:53:00.000-05:00

You could call me Lucky. I had the best seats in the house last night for the Beckett Shorts which are now running at New York Theatre Workshop. It's the most coveted ticket in town because Mikhail Baryshnikov makes a return to the stage in this much-publicized production. But Baryshnikov isn't the only, or even the primary reason to see this work. He is in the company of some serious heavy-hitters in the world theater.

The plays are directed by Joanne Akalaitis (founder of Mabou Mines). Volumes could be written on Akalaitis alone, especially in relationship to Beckett. She was one of the performers - along with Ruth Maleczech and Ellen McElduff - in a production of the Beckett short play Come and Go which opened at the Théâtre du Rond-Point on October 6, 1981, directed by Lee Breuer.

Akalaitis became a theatrical legend when her production of Endgame back in the 80's was closed down by the Beckett estate for taking too many liberties. The show did eventually open - with a letter written by Beckett disavowing the production included in the program. Writing for the New York Times (Dec. 20, 1984) Mel Gussow proclaimed "Miss Akalaitis's approach to this contemporary masterwork is volatile. In her hands, ''Endgame'' has an intense dramatic drive as well as profundity." It was a risk that worked in her favor, sealing Akalaitis' reputation as "great interpreter" of Beckett.

(BTW - Joanne Akalaitis isn't the only notable director to get in hot water with the cantankerous Irishman. Ten years earlier (February, 1973) André Gregory directed Endgame for New York University School of the Arts. His production featured "a wild array" of sound effects (bugles, machine guns, crowing roosters, automobiles) and quickly won disapproval from critics and Beckett.)

For this current foray into Beckett, Ms. Akalaitis' husband, Philip Glass, composed some new music. Not too much, however. The same loop plays incessantly before the show begins. The lighting has been done by the mother of all lighting designers: Jennifer Tipton. And another famous artist -Alexander Brodsky - was enlisted as the set designer. Brodsky is widely known as an artist of the Paper Architects school - one of the first artists to gain freedom of expression after the fall of the Soviet regime. His solo exhibitions have been seen all over the world (Russia, Venice, Guggenheim, Bilbao, MOMA, Whitney - you name it!) I kept wondering if there was some connection between Brodsky, and the artist character "Aleksandr Petrovsky" played by Baryshnikov on TV's Sex and the City.

Now, about the work itself. Let me preface this by saying that any performance of Beckett anywhere should be cause for celebration. I personally can't get enough of it, so an evening spent listening to the words of the master is an evening well spent no matter what. I had some great conversations with my friend Vyen both before and after the show. Vyen is a visual artist and often gives me a much deeper perspective on the theater - owing to the fact that she isn't invested in it in the same way I am. She sees it more objectively, and her experience last night was one of satisfaction. Sensing my irritation she said "Everyone takes Beckett so personally." Yep.

But I was underwhelmed. There's a kind of crispness to Beckett's writing. It has to do with the rhythm and the timing. So much of it should be funny. Really funny. Intentionally funny. Vaudeville funny. And comedy is all about precision. Not just in movement. But in intention. We need to see the characters' decision-making process. That was the secret to Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. I don't mean that you have to "telegraph" what you're doing. But there does need to be some thought process that goes from A to B (as Beckett himself writes in Rough for Theatre I - the third piece on the bill.) In Act Without Words I, Baryshnikov is scurrying about the stage hearing whistles, grasping for a jug of water, trying to cut down a rope....we need to know why he's doing it. Is he thirsty? Or is it just because this is what the stage directions tell him to do. It's a very tricky line, and much to Akalaitis' credit, they don't go in the opposite direction and over-reach. But when the production values are so high (a sand full of stage, neon lights, scrims, projections, a fully-mechanical palm tree), and the material is so superb, you can't help but wonder why there wasn't a little more time spent trying understand the moment-to-moment beats. It was unclear. And the audience felt it. There were a few forced laughs and some polite applause. It should've been so much better.

The second piece on the bill was Act Without Words II. Here again there was technical wizardry. The center of the stage elevated three feet and the action played out on a horizontal ledge. The mechanical "goad" that awakens both players from their "sleep" was similar in style to the palm tree, giving a retro-mechanical spin to the goings-on. I'm sure there is some very deep, well-thought out, aesthetic/philosophical statement being made by all of the scenic choices. That's all well and good if you have the money, which clearly NYTW does. But it all comes down to the performances, and this piece fell flat as well. There was no rhythmic clarity, no moment-to-moment decision making. The actions were muddied. David Neumann would take his watch out of his pocket and look at it without really registering the time, begin brushing his teeth before he'd even completed the next little "exercise", would move on to combing his hair. Each of these actions were done correctly, as indicated in Beckett's stage directions. But there were no moments of discovery, no moments of realization, no moments of wonderment, or frustration or humor. In fact, there were no moments at all. Just repetitive actions being done for no reason against a backdrop of repetitive music which also is void of any sentiment. Mechanical. I guess maybe that was the "concept".

The evening got a little more interesting with Rough For Theatre II. Characters began to speak. And this play, more than any of the others on the bill, is the quintessential Beckett. Here we have characters that are almost sketches for Endgame. Hamm can't stand and Clov can't sit. In this case A (Baryshnikov) can't see and B (Bill Camp) can't walk. The two characters are locked in a match of futility, each vying to be more pitiful than the other. Each trying to get one up on the other in whatever way they can. But about two minutes into the play I realized that Akalaitis had really handicapped herself with all that sand she put onstage. The wheelchair couldn't move!! That meant that all of the physical actions Beckett describes -- (He pushes himself forward a little, halts. He pushes himself back a little, halts. A. lays hold of the chair and starts pushing it blindly.) -- couldn't be carried out! I kept thinking - here you've got an actor in a wheelchair who can't move about the stage. Clearly much of the comedy of the piece lies in B's ability to evade the blind A, the interplay between sound and movement. But comedy was nowhere to be found in this production. Bill Camp growled through the play until you weren't sure what he was so angry about, and wondered why Baryshnikov's character didn't just leave the stage. Certainly there is cruelty in Beckett's writing. But the trick is to find all the light and humor you possibly can. Camp is a fine actor, and found a few great comedic moments. But he seemed like he was on his own with no directorial assistance whatsoever. (It was also disconcerting that the blanket he had on his lap kept slipping off as he tried to wheel around in the sand. Under the blank he was wearing blue jeans. Blue jeans?? C'mon. If you're going to spend this much money, at least finish the costumes off completely.)

The last piece of the evening was by far the best, and demonstrates the Akalaitis' true genius. Eh Joe was originally written by Beckett as a television play for the BBC. I kept wondering how she would reconcile all the specific camera moves that were written in the script. Essentially the play is a long monologue by on off-stage (or I should say "off-camera") voice. We watch the face of Joe (Mikhail Baryshnikov) while the woman recounts stories of betrayal, and questions Joe about love, God, existence. Joe is sitting on his bed listening. Is he about to die? Is this all the regret left at the end of a life? It's not a funny play, but again, there is humor there if you look for it. Akalaitis didn't. But the technological skill with which the play is accomplished overcomes any criticism you could have about the delivery of the words by the one-note Karen Kandel. I spent more time wondering how it was all being done than actually listening to the words. Baryshnikov's face is projected in multiple layers: on the front scrim and two places on the back wall. He holds a tiny little camera in his hand as he sits on the bed, and his camera movements are exactly as Beckett had written. This is a great innovation that makes use of all the technological advancement we now have. It also shows Baryshnikov's great strength as an actor - on camera, not on stage. His close-ups are moving and poignant, and it is here that the merging of theater and film - mediums that Beckett was interested in integrating throughout his career - are truly successful. In the final play of the evening Akalaitis shows us her real power as director. But it isn't in working with the actors.

To MFA or Not To MFA

2007-12-26T18:53:00.000-05:00

Happy Holidays Everyone!

I hope you are having a peaceful and joyous time, wherever you are. Holidays are sometimes fraught with anxiety for me. But I am totally psyched for the New Year!

I've been a bit remiss in my blogging of late. (Apologies to anyone who has visited and seen the same old post.) But there is an excuse. And that's what I'm going to talk about now.

Some time in late October I got this idea that I should look into graduate schools. It was a combination of events that led me to it, but primary among them was the desire to resume my teaching. I had been teaching with Joseph Chaikin for eight years, and I desperately want to get back to it. I miss the exchange of ideas, the exploration, the challenge. We teach what we most need learn, n'est-ce pas? But teaching positions at the university level require an MFA. At least. I've only a measly BFA which puts me, well...nowhere. This was a shocking revelation, and I was in denial about it for a long time. But I've come to embrace reality. If I want to teach I need the degree.

When I consider the possible MFA programs, I can't imagine myself studying acting. I think I've come too far for that. I'm already competing with MFA grads at every imaginable level, so I don't see that as a wise investment. (If a degree in theater at all is a wise investment!) So I of course am led to directing. And the thought of that excites me.

Now it's a mad dash. I'm behind schedule, but not so far so that I can't catch up. I've scheduled interviews through U/RTA in January. I'm most hoping to meet Travis Preston who heads up the directing program at CalArts. Mr. Preston is a director I've been following for years, and the CalArts program, to me, looks like the best in the country. (I know - Yale Schmale). The CalArts theater program is headed by playwright Eric Ehn. For those of you not familiar with his work RUN, do not walk, to read any of his plays you can lay your hands on. He's a bona fide genius, and one of the best playwrights working in America today.

But the thought of uprooting to the west coast is disconcerting. Here in New York, the only game in town seems to be Columbia University, where Andre Serban is the main directing professor. It looks like a terrific program, but at $50 grand a year, I'll just keep looking. Rutgers seemed like an option, but they never answered my emails so that tells me something about their department.

UMass Amherst is very intriguing. They offer full tuition waiver and stipend with teaching assistantships. And it's in a great town. And it's within driving distance to New York. What could be better than that?

Maybe Brooklyn College. My colleague Miriam Eusebio has her MFA from Brooklyn, and spoke very highly of the department. She introduced me (cyberly) to Professor Thomas Bullard, who heads up the program there. Now here's a guy with credentials! He has directed at nearly every major theater in the country, every major theater here in the city, began the Lincoln Center Director's Lab, and managed to earn a PhD (from Yale) somewhere along the way. I cannot imagine a more accomplished mentor, and I'm greatly looking forward to meeting him. Besides, Brooklyn is here in good old New York where I've already laid down my roots.

I may not get into any of these programs. They are extremely competitive, accepting only a few students each year. But just going through the process of applying - writing essay, reworking my resume, writing a personal statement, attaining transcripts, submitting essays, boning up on many classic plays - has been a journey that I'm grateful to be on. Taking the GRE sucks. But other than that it's a great challenge. And who knows what may happen. Perhaps the writer's strike will end! Nah. I'm banking on education.

Winter Workshop 2008

2007-12-13T11:02:00.000-05:00

After a pause of several years, I've decided to begin teaching again. Many of you know that I taught a series of workshops for actors and directors with Joseph Chaikin from 1997 until his death in 2003. Since then, I haven't had the motivation to be back in a classroom setting. I wasn't sure how, or with whom, I could possibly teach with after Joe. But it feels like the right time now, and I've found a new teaching partner. I am delighted to announce that I will join together with my colleague Eva Burgess in offering a new class for experienced actors: The Winter Workshop 2008.

I actually met Eva at the final Joseph Chaikin Workshop. Eva is an extraordinarily talented director and teacher. When I began working on a solo performance piece earlier this year, Eva was the only person I would consider asking to be my director. She is bright, funny, and sensitive. Moreover, she has also developed her own techniques for finding your impulses as an actor, and expands these methods into a fascinating approach to creating ensemble work. She directed Largo Desolato for the Vaclav Havel Festival last season. It was one of the best pieces of theater I've ever seen. Teaching with Eva seems to be the next logical progression in the work I began with Joe Chaikin. He would be proud to know we continue on in his honor.

Here are the details on the class. I do hope you'll join us, and pass the information along to your colleagues.

The Winter Workshop 2008

Get out of your Head

Get into the Text

Get into your Body

Break Habits

Be Present

Each session includes:

- Warm up for mind, body and voice

- Collaborative & Ensemble work (including creating original pieces)

- Scene study of existing text from selected playwrights

When: Wednesdays 7-10 PM. January 9^th through March 12^th

How Much: $325* for 10 classes

Class size is limited. Please call 347-886-2157 for more information or email to evaburgess@earthlink.net

* Discount available for Joseph Chaikin Alumni and Tyna Collective Member

Eva Burgess is a theatre director, teacher and acting coach. Her directorial work has been seen in New York, Moscow, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Los Angeles.

In New York, Eva has been an Artist in Residence at HERE Arts Center, a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab and a participant in the late Joseph Chaikin's Workshop. She directed Vaclav Havel’s Largo Desolato at the Ohio Theatre, and Timothy Braun’s Angelina at Culturemart – HERE Arts Center. Eva has also collaborated extensively with Russian playwright Ksenia Dragunskaya. Eva directed Dragunskaya’s The Flood, a Russian-language piece, at DOC Theatre, Moscow; and developed an English-language production of A Feeling of a Beard at The American Living Room, HERE Arts Center, New York. Before moving to New York she spent 2 ½ years in Bosnia-Hercegovina, where she taught and founded a theatre company that created two original, Bosnian-language productions that were seen in Bosnia, toured Ireland, and were also performed at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland.

In her work as a teacher and director, Eva has synthesized her own method of working with actors by integrating her prior study, and the influences of a range of theatre artists, with her diverse experiences.

"I am interested in creating work for the stage that is visually, linguistically, and physically awake." Eva Burgess

Wayne Maugans taught with Joseph Chaikin from 1997 – 2002. As an actor he has worked at theaters such as Manhattan Theatre Club, Signature Theatre Company, Primary Stages, Joseph Papp Public Theater, Yale Rep. Atlantic Theater Company, Actor's Theater of Louisville, Cleveland Playhouse, Two River Theater, and LaMaMa ETC. Directing credits include two New York premieres:Trailerville and Uncle (both at Blue Heron Theatre). Wayne has also worked extensively in film and television. He is a featured performer in the BBC/PBS documentary Sam Shepard: Stalking Himself and is featured in the soon to be released short film Wake by Andrew Lawton.

"No matter which personal and hidden motives have led you to the theater, once you are within, you must find a meaning which, stretching beyond your own person, confronts you socially with others." Eugenio Barba

The Puppetmaster of Lodz

2007-12-02T11:11:00.001-05:00

THE PUPPETMASTER OF LODZ by Gilles Segal officially opens tomorrow, Monday December 3, at the ArcLight Theater. The show is a co-production between Mirth Theatre Company and the Blue Heron Theatre Company.

Directed by Bruce Levitt (Cornell University) it features puppets created by Ralph Lee (Artistic Director of Mettawee River Theatre, artist in residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine).

Ardelle Striker, Blue Heron's Artistic Director is more excited about this show than I've seen her in years. I'm also looking forward to seeing the work of my friend, lighting designer Paul Bartlett. You can be sure it will all be running smoothly in the capable hands of Stage Manager Sarah Ford. I can't wait to see it! It looks like it's shaping up to be a first-rate production.

Set in Berlin in 1950, the play is both a mystery story and the portrait of a noble man, Samuel Finkelbaum, a master puppeteer who since his escape from a concentration camp has locked himself in an attic apartment, patiently awaiting the end of World War II. Within his retreat, he creates a fantasy world with his puppets, which unfolds an unforgettable tale of profound love and the creativity of the human spirit in the face of devastation.

Featuring Suzanne Toren, Daniel Damiano, Herbert Rubens and Robert Zukerman.

Excerpts of Reviews of Puppetmaster from Around the Country

"A theatre experience that at various moments is startling, moving, mesmerizing, humorous and tragic." - Milwaukee Journal.

"Gilles Segal's play...is the wrenching, sometimes funny, and haunting story of a Holocaust survivor. It's about burying the dead, dealing with the wreckage, and moving on. Don't let those issues intimidate you, though...Puppetmaster both entertains and delights; it just doesn't do it in ways you might expect." - Baltimore City Paper Online

"This is a haunting play, a piece of theatre that remains in the mind long after the final curtain. It is a must-see production for anyone to whom the theatre is more than just fleeting entertainment." - The Schenectady Daily Gazette

"...Robert Zukerman, who plays Puppetmaster Finkelbaum with aching intensity, is nothing short of astonishing." - KPBS-FM San Diego, CA

Putting It Together

2007-11-11T23:21:00.000-05:00

Greetings, I invite you to join us this Wednesday evening (November 14th) for a very fun fundraiser. My colleague Miriam Eusebio is launching a new theater company (The Intentional Theater) and is hoping to raise enough money to pay for the rights to Samuel Beckett's Happy Days, which she has already secured permission to direct. The suggested donation is $25 bucks, but if that's a little steep for you, come anyway! It's sure to be a good party, lots of familiar faces, and an outstanding jazz performance by Sarah Lynch and Pete McCann. For more details visit www.intentionaltheater.org.

The Tricky Part

2007-10-28T22:54:00.000-04:00

This weekend I attended the Male Survivor conference held at John Jay College for Criminal Justice here in New York City. I had been at the conference when it was last held in New York, back in 2001. This conference has become extremely important to me, as I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. This year there were attendees from all over the world, and the movement to raise awareness and advocate support for this most difficult of topics is finally beginning to gain some momentum.

Part of the conference this year was a performance by Martin Moran of his OBIE Award-winning one-person show The Tricky Part. I had read about this show when it was first presented at Second Stage and I'd always regretted not seeing it. So I jumped at the opportunity to finally catch it, especially in the context of the conference, and in the company of other men who share the experience of sexual abuse.

I had no idea what I was in for.

I really wasn't expecting a whole lot. I thought oh this will just be a straightforward narrative play about one person's experience of sexual abuse. Nothing too theatrical, but it might inform my own work.

This play completely rocked my world. I've never, and I mean never, had the experience of sitting in a theater and being completely overwhelmed with emotion. Tears were streaming down my face and my entire body was convulsing in uncontrollable sobs. Needless to say...the play struck a chord.

It was almost an out-of-body experience for me. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It was if someone had entered my own life, crawled around in my brain, figured out exactly what I have been feeling for twenty years, and expressed it beautifully, poetically, eloquently. This was by far the finest performance of a first-person narrative that I have ever seen, and that includes every show I had ever seen by Spalding Gray.

Now, of course I am not an entirely impartial critic. Martin's story so closely parallels my own experience of sexual abuse that I could be nothing but a fan of his bravery. But I definitely went into the theater that night expecting far less than what I got. I was rather hoping, in fact, to be disappointed because I too have been working on a show about my own journey through the quagmire of betrayal. I didn't want to see someone else beat me to punch. But Martin did. And I'm so grateful that he blazed this trail.

There is this part of me that thinks now my own story is completely irrelevant. What could I possibly add to the narrative that hasn't been expressed more poetically by Martin. But then I think that's just another excuse for not getting on with the work. It's terrifying terrain, and that means it's ripe for exploration. How do you tell a story like this? Well, that's the tricky part.

I only can say thank you to Martin. Thank you for sharing your journey. Thank you for sharing your strength and courage. And thank you for simply surviving. It was truly a cathartic experience to watch your work, and I bless you for making that happen.

Peace.
W.

Catching Up

2007-10-19T18:08:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday evening I did a reading of All Hallowed, a new play by Bill C. Davis at the Player's Club on Gramercy Square. The reading was directed by Jerry Less. Also in the cast were Francis Sternhagen, Malachy McCourt, and Jeremy Jordan.

Last night I went to see Perfect Crime, playing at the Snapple Theater on 50th Street. My friend Rob Sedgewick has been appearing there recently in the role of Lionel McAuley. This show has been running for 20 years, and the lead actress (Catherine Russel) has only missed four shows in all that time. I'll let you do the math.

My colleague Miriam Eusebio is planning to direct a production of Samuel Beckett's Happy Days at WOW Cafe Theatre in 2009. I've been speaking with Miriam about fund raising for the project. The first big bill is due next month - $800 to the Beckett estate to secure the rights. Stay tuned for information to an upcoming fundraiser event.

These last few weeks I've also been running around on audition after audition. I'm not complaining. I'm happy that I have such distinguished representation as Doug Kesten at Paradigm and Pete Kaiser and David Cash at Henderson-Hogan Agency. In the last ten days I've gone out on auditions for a film, a play, a TV show, and several commercials, including spots for Lexus, Stay Free (yes, the tampon people) and Radio Shack. But so far...no news on anything.

Such is the life.

Meanwhile I've been desperately trying to figure out what I'm going to do for money. It's all swell and good to be an actor when you're working. You feel like you're at the top of the world. But in between gigs when the rent comes due, well, let's just say it can get a little scary. I'm not too proud to do what I have to, and I've already got some "bread and butter" work lined up. I think it's the waiting and wondering that really is hard. That, and the fact that you pretty much have to be available at a moment's notice to get in on some of these auditions. It makes earning a living really tricky. Unless, of course, you land a national spot. Then you can afford to spend your days running around auditioning.

I'm thinking about joining the Peace Corps.

w.

A Little Thing Like Breakfast With David Cale Makes Living In New York City Worthwhile

2007-10-12T23:13:00.000-04:00

Last week I had breakfast with David Cale. We run into each other from time to time here in the East Village. We always say "Let's get together" and then we always get busy and let it slide. But finally we did it. We met at Cafe Mogador on St. Mark's Place. I ordered eggs over easy. David had the Foul Madamas.

I've known David for (gasp) twenty years. I was but a youth when I met him. He was already a star in the performance art world. I saw him in his one-person show The Redthroats at Second Stage and I've been smitten ever since. David is a true artist. The kind of performer who blends humor and poetry with the ease and grace of a figure skater. He's performed at major theaters across the country and been featured on Bette Midler's Mondo Beyondo on HBO. He's also won one OBIE and two Bessie Awards.

Currently David is making a recording of his hit musical show Floyd and Clea Under The Western Sky. He was so excited to have the opportunity to make this recording with some of the best musicians in the country. I can't wait to hear it. The show opened at the Long Wharf Theatre and played to acclaim in New York at Playwrights Horizons. But the story of how the show came into being is what really fascinated me. It all came about because David fell in love with a character he was playing in a film.

The film is The Slaughter Rule starring David Morse and Ryan Gosling.

New York Times flim critic Stephen Holden said: "To the smaller role of Gideon's old friend Studebaker, a local country singer who lurches around in an alcoholic daze wearing a stocking cap and a miner's lamp, the New York performance artist David Cale brings a heart-tugging vulnerability. Tough, plaintive country music, beautifully chosen and performed and mostly of the vintage honky-tonk and swing variety, plays a large role in the movie. Of all the human activities, it is the only reliable balm, alcohol being a portal to violence."

David couldn't let him go. Thus was born Floyd and Clea.

I sat enthralled listening to David tell me the story of creating this character. It's so brave to take a character that is so far from oneself - Cale is British and couldn't be further from a drunken mid-westerner - and continue to explore it as a musical no less. He truly goes out on a limb. This is what makes him a great artist.

We sat for nearly two hours over breakfast. We ordered another cappuccino. Our conversation wandered over personal terrain, a mutual friend we shared concern for. He told me about working with Alan Cumming and Cyndi Lauper in the recent Broadway revival of The Threepenny Opera. David was not at all certain he would get along with Mr. Cumming, also British and enormously talented. But the two became fast friends. David spoke with great admiration of Cumming, saying he "loves his way of being in the world". Well, that's the way I feel about David Cale. I love his way of being in the world. His sparkling intelligence, his gentle demeanor, the way he can tell a story and make you feel you're the only one in the world worth talking to...this is why I live in New York. Because some days I get to spend with heroes. Some days there breakfast with David Cale.

Osho on Acting

2007-10-01T23:41:00.000-04:00

Osho on Acting

The great spiritual guru Osho has touched many lives. I keep a copy of his book The Inner Journey next to my bed. Last night I read this, and I thought of the acting process:

"When someone digs a well, he first takes out the soil and stones and then water seeps in from the sides of the well and fills it. The water was already there, it did not need to be brought from anywhere else. Only some stones and layers of soil needed to be removed. There were some hindrances, some obstacles: once they were removed the water appeared. It was not necessary to bring water to the well, it was already there - just some hindrances had to be removed."

Thus it is in acting. We don't "put on a character" we "let one emerge". The work is always clearer when we leave the realm of the thinking. As a famous acting teacher once said, "Get out of the way, it's none of your business."

Peace.
Wayne

Keep Going

2007-09-25T23:51:00.000-04:00

"...that which the ego is most afraid to resemble, is often composed of the images of the violated (castrated) body, the ethnic out-group, and the exploited minority." Erik H. Erikson

The theater is a place for outcasts. Its a breeding ground for non-conformity. To search for evidence of consciousness in the human species is to be a tremendous optimist. To dedicate oneself to a permanent state of transience is an attempt to live only in the present. Rehearsal is seemingly anathema to the art of being in the moment. But rehearsal teaches us only the ritual motions of the proceedings, the structure of the game. The playing is the practice. Breathing through the fear we open ourselves to criticism and to the scarier possibility of self-revelation. We fear our own incompetence. We sense our own spiritual impotence. We circle our flaws in black magic marker and hang them on the sidewalk for all to see. In doing so we add one more voice to the soundtrack of evolution. We raise the bar one notch. We carry tradition into the present and create the trajectory for future expression. We tell our stories so we can know ourselves. As we normalize our outlandishness we create a safer world for the ones who otherwise wouldn't fit in. Keep going.

W.

G'bye Alfred

2007-09-24T22:47:00.000-04:00

Last night was the final performance of Alfred Kinsey: A Love Story at the Michael Weller Theater. It's always sad to close a show, but I remind myself of something I heard a veteran actor at the Actor's Gang in LA say once: "I've been in hits. I've been in flops. They all close." Indeed.

Right after the show playwright Mike Folie introduced me to the lovely Miriam Hecht. Miriam had known the real Dr. Kinsey when he came to New York in 1942. She was among the first to give Kinsey her sex history, and helped introduce him to other candidates, as well as providing introductions to New York's gay community. After providing the Kinsey team with over 100 people to interview, Miriam ran afoul of the administrators at Hunter College where she was in attendance. Herman Wells, then president of Indiana University, came to her defense with "a soothing letter about science." I was especially honored when Ms. Hecht told me how well I had captured the famous Doctor's "little laugh".

From my perspective the show was a smashing success. And I don't say that just because I was in it. I've done some very earnest work that was, at the last, mediocre. But this show was different. It accomplished what any play could hope to accomplish given the restrictions of time and money that are always looming over the process: it fulfilled the playwright's vision. That is the only true test in creating new work. Friends will always be supportive, and critics are just another person's opinion. But if the production comes close to capturing the vision of the creator, then I say job well done. (For a great review of the show, check out the Gay City News.)

A huge debt of thanks to director George Craig for guiding me on this journey. Also, to my fellow cast members Melinda Wade, Jessica Dickey, and Carter Roy - I fell in love with each of you. Thanks for sharing your talent. See you on campus.

Wayne

Judging Your Character

2007-09-13T10:27:00.000-04:00

I've heard acting teachers say this: Don't judge your character. I get their point. They want us to embody our roles as living, breathing human beings, not devils with painted mustaches. But this advice flies in the face of what we learned from legendary theater director Bertolt Brecht. Brecht created a whole acting technique based upon seeing a character objectively. "Alienation Technique" (which is really a mis-translation - "distancing" is more accurate) is all about the actor embodying the character without losing himself. It's the difference between writing fiction in the first person versus the third. What's to be gained by this? Truth. We can never really be somebody else, and to fool ourselves into thinking we can or should be is self-defeating.

What Brecht was getting at was the ability of the artist to allow their work to be consciously political. He came of age in a time when fascism was on the rise in Germany. People were inclined to "escape" to the theater, and the whole world, it seemed, had developed a kind of myopia. No one was seeing what was really there in front of them. Acting styles were no different. Actors "pretended" to be someone else, and in their pretending there was no claim on them personally to take responsibility for the content of their material or the ideas being conveyed.

I think sometimes as contemporary American actors we forget the usefulness of Brecht's lessons. The Stanislavsky Method, and especially the Strasberg spin on it, have convinced us that we must "be" the character somehow. And in order to be the character we must see things from the character's point of view rather than looking at character objectively and saying "he's a liar" or "she's a madwoman". This I believe is a mistake, especially in the theater and especially with large and epic roles.

I say this only because I have recently made this error. In my playing of Alfred Kinsey in Alfred Kinsey: A Love Story (now playing at the Michael Weller Theater) I was attempting to force the character into my own world view and personality, rather than expanding to play in his. Simply reminding myself of Brecht's techniques opened up a wide range of possibilities. I can judge Alfred Kinsey and still play him with truthfulness. To deny the complexity of the character shrinks the scale and limits me to the "immediate truth".

There's no doubt Kinsey is controversial, which makes him a great character to play. I received this email from my brother Randy yesterday, after I sent him some of our notices. His response was strong, negative, and articulate:

Wayne-
My visceral response to such a work as "Kinsey: A Love Story" was, as you may imagine, one of revulsion. Your role made it even more so. I am pleased that you sent me the NY Times article, more so that I could read your post on "Theatre Arts":

Kinsey does some terrible things in this play, and goes on quite an emotional journey. I was growing more and more depressed as we got closer to "opening" night. I thought it was my work. I kept thinking..."I don't understand the role." In fact, I was beginning to experience the role physically, experientially. And my conscious mind didn't like it. I was trying to protect myself. Hence the conflict. Hence the confusion. Hence the weak performance and dropped lines.

While you may presume my initial negativity was moral aversion (which it was, based on the very title title alone, which may be the grandest oxymoron ever rendered), it also stems from deeply held philosophical beliefs about cultural inversions and historical revisionism. Then I thought about "the Producers" (the 1968 movie) ---and "Springtime For Hitler"---and how an inversion can portray monstrosities via theatrical devices (humor in the case of Brooks' work) to portray a humane gestalt.

That is all I can take away from what you wrote, aside the understanding that art does have a sanction to deal in the unsavory to a higher effect. I personally lived in the milieu generated by Kinsey and have an undeniable bias based solely on the corrosive effect it had on so many lives particularly in that era. As cannot see the play, I reserve my judgments in favor of your artistic license and congratulate you on the review.

"Moral aversion!" Yes. Well, that is certainly a useful perspective to own as an actor creating a role. If I allow myself awareness of Kinsey's darkness, it fuels the playing, sparks the imagination, and turns the light of truth up a notch. At least I hope so. Otherwise, what's the point?

Until next time....
Wayne

Up and Running with Alfred Kinsey

2007-09-11T16:44:00.000-04:00

Last night I opened in the title role of Mike Foley's play Alfred Kinsey: A Love Story (playing now through September 23rd). There's always something jittery about an "opening night". It's a strange psychological phenomenon. It's really no different from any other night. We'd already done the show in several previews. But calling one performance the official "opening" ramps up the energy for some reason. Not necessarily a bad thing. Energy can be good. It's knowing how to channel it that's the trick.

I'm always curious about this process of creating a character. We began previews last Thursday, and by Saturday night I felt completely lost. I began to mistrust all the good work we'd done in rehearsals. I felt tentative about the story. I didn't feel like I was breathing the role. My focus was off. I began to drop lines. It seemed like a total disaster.

It wasn't, of course. People who saw that particular preview liked the play a lot and didn't notice anything wrong on stage. I call that "the level below which you cannot fall" (meaning - no matter how bad you think you are, your technique should kick in and carry you). But still I was sure I was missing something vital. I had to go back to the proverbial drawing board and rethink my playing of Kinsey.

What I realized was that I was blocking my merging with the character. Kinsey does some terrible things in this play, and goes on quite an emotional journey. I was growing more and more depressed as we got closer to "opening" night. I thought it was my work. I kept thinking..."I don't understand the role." In fact, I was beginning to experience the role physically, experientially. And my conscious mind didn't like it. I was trying to protect myself. Hence the conflict. Hence the confusion. Hence the weak performance and dropped lines.

You can feel it when your acting really lands. Something shifts inside you. It's literally a physical sensation. The work moves from intellectual to cellular, and there's a period of adjustment as your body re-negotiates the change. It may take a few shows. It may take many. Sometimes it never happens at all. There's no integration of character and the performance remains trapped in "thinking". That is a worst-case scenario. And that is what was happening to me as of this past Saturday night.

I went home and did some thinking. It finally dawned on me...Kinsey is a villain!! How delicious!!
I don't often get to play bad guys. Here's my crack at a contemporary Iago. This is going to be fun.

Fun. Oh, that's right. This is supposed to be fun.

By Sunday the character landed. I began to let go and just trust myself. I stopped worrying about the lines and started just really watching my fellow actors - all of whom are amazingly present. I remembered those words of Sanford Meisner: "Get the attention off yourself and onto the other person." My body relaxed. My voice dropped down nice and deep. My hands were no longer flying about. The play flowed along, and I started to lean into the nastiness of Kinsey rather than trying to bend him to some version more acceptable to my own personality. I didn't miss a beat. And it was fun.

Now, with opening night jitters in the past, the exploration of character can really start.

The Kinsey Report

2007-08-28T01:00:00.000-04:00

Rehearsals for Alfred Kinsey: A Love Story are in the final phase. Tomorrow we move into the Michael Weller Theatre in mid-town and begin our tech rehearsals. It's an exciting time. I have a really good feeling about this one folks!

This is a new play by Mike Folie. Mike has been named one of the most promising emerging writers by Dramatist Magazine. I wasn't familiar with his work before this, but I'll sure be keeping an eye out for him now. He paints language in dense, bold strokes and pulls no punches with his characters. In this portrayal of Kinsey, he takes the famous sex researcher to task for hiding his own sexuality while denouncing the hypocrisy of others. Mr. Folie came to this project as a commission from George W. George, who is an endlessly fascinating character in his own right. He is a writer and producer (most famously of the film My Dinner With Andre) and is also the son of the famous cartoonist Rube Goldberg.

Directer Craig George has struck exactly the right tone for the rehearsal process. It's been calm, productive, and confident - like the man himself. Other cast members include Melinda Wade, Jessica Dickey (call her Jessie), and the devastatingly handsome Carter Roy.

I'm so grateful for the chance to play such a multi-dimensional character as Kinsey. Act one ends with Kinsey about to leave his hotel room for a "homosexual bar in Greenwich Village" - ostensibly to do more research. Before he goes, however, Kinsey is confronted by John Sanders, his student/protegee and late-night sex object. Sanders challenges Kinsey's idea of sexual love, which is never spoken of outside the bedroom. "No more hiding from each other. No more doing this under the cover of darkness." In Mike Foley's play intimacy becomes the word that dare not speak its name.

If nothing else you will be amazed at the scenic design by Sarah Lambert. In a tiny little space she has brought to life the inner world of Dr. Kinsey, the time in which he lived, and the spaces he inhabits. Her work is meticulous and alone worth the price of admission ($18). Add Richard Tatum's lights, Irma Escobar's costumes, Shaun Fillion's projections, Mark Goodloe's sound, and the navigational skill of Stage Manager Eileen Arnold and Alfred Kinsey: A Love Story should spring to life this week. The play officially opens September 5. Tickets are available at 212.352.3101 or visit Theatermania. I hope to see you there!

Wrapped

2007-08-14T23:24:00.001-04:00

Filming for Wake has finally ended. I wrapped on Monday morning after a frantic few hours at a diner in Long Beach. I was under the gun because I had to be back in Manhattan to begin rehearsals for a new play, Alfred Kinsey: A Love Story. That meant the film crew had to finish my scene by 10am. Everyone felt the pressure of time, but we made it. I had a fantastic experience working with director Andrew Lawton. He and Anre Garrett, his partner at Pier's End Productions, made every effort to be professional and courteous through what was no doubt a challenging process. Shooting was delayed the first day (August 8) by a freak storm that swept through New York City and dumped about 3 inches of rain down in two hours, shutting down all mass transit. Tricky way to start off a shoot. But somehow they made up the time, and the level of concentration they brought to the work was exemplary. It's all been a bit of a whirlwind, and I will talk in greater length about the entire process in another blog. Mostly I just want to say thank you to Andrew and Anre, as well as Shane Tilston, Sheila Kwan, Mike Sapienza, Skip, Laura, Chris, Jimmy, Ann, Malissa...everyone involved in the making of the film for a great experience. I'll miss you guys!
w.

L'Order

2007-08-07T00:15:00.000-04:00

This may be a bit of a blurry-eyed blog. I just got home from my day, which culminated in seeing the rock band MUSE at Madison Square Garden. Can anything in the world compare with the energy of a rock concert? I don't think so. It was an outrageous show, and those of you not familiar with this band may want to just go directly to iTunes and download all three albums. But I digress.

Earlier today I had an audition for Law & Order. I realized today as I crossed the West Side Highway to their casting office at Chelsea Piers that I've been showing up at these auditions for over fifteen years! I've done three episodes of the show so far, including Episode #3, in the very first season. Suzanne Ryan, the Casting Director, has almost single-handedly kept the pool of New York actors working in television. No other show has added so much to the economy of New York City. Law & Order is on every single New York actor's resume unless they've been living in a cave for the last ten years. I'm always sort of happy to get the audition, but the whole thing also makes me queasy. Their casting sessions almost always run behind, but as soon as you're in the room they're over in a split second. Quick, hard, brutal. Just like the show itself. This season, actor Jeremy Sisto joins the cast, playing a new detective on the force. The role I went up for is that of his brother, Joe Lupo, who decides to take his own life after being diagnosed with cancer for the second time. It's a short scene in the teaser, and then another scene on camera where the character says his "last words". Director Allan Coulter was good enough to give me a second shot, after telling me that the stakes were much higher than what I was playing. How do you wrap your head around the final moments of life without sinking into maudlin self-pity? I don't really know how it went, but I left feeling kind of awful, so maybe that's a good thing.

Tomorrow I begin rehearsals for Alfred Kinsey: A Love Story. I won't divulge anything until after the first rehearsal. The only thing I will say is that the script sure makes me horny.

Wednesday begins shooting on the short film Wake by Andrew Lawton. Here's another cheery little role, a father who loses his son in Iraq. Boy, I sure know how tip pick them. Next time, I want to do something more on along the lines of Nacho Libre, which is currently my favorite movie.

Congratulations to my friend Rob Sedgewick. He just landed a role in the Off-Broadway show The Perfect Crime. He's bracing himself for the "bridge and tunnel crowd", but I think any work at all is a good thing. See you on the boards Rob!

So long for now.
Wayne

Creating an Ensemble

2007-08-02T17:50:00.000-04:00

This morning I met my friend Dean Gray at the dog run in Union Square. I was hosing down my golden retriever Truman (it was a sweltering day here in the Big Apple) when Dean arrived with his two border terriers, Willow and Jimmy. Dean is a playwright and director. We worked together earlier this year when I directed a play he wrote called Uncle. It's such a beautiful story, so well crafted, and the production was critically a success. We were both wishing it could have played longer, found a wider audience. But the experience of producing it was invaluable. I think it's so important to switch hats in the theater. Actors who direct become better actors. Directors who write are able to envision the theatricality of their work in a way non-directors often don't. It's just a good thing to do. Now Dean the playwright is headed off to Wisconsin to direct a show that he's been passionate about for years.

The play is called The Drawer Boy. It's a charming story about two men who survived a war together. They now live on a small farm and have a simplified life that allows them to bury the painful memories of the horrors they witnessed together. That is, until they are confronted by a young theater director who begins investigating their lives for a "play". Truth will out in the end, but is it the best thing for these survivors? The story takes on other levels in its examination of the theater, the place of theater in the lives of non-urban people, the sacredness of storytelling, and the power of personal narrative.

Dean was talking a little about the process he'd like to engage in with the actors. He wants to create an ensemble, actors who move in synch, breath together, trust each other, have an awareness of their bodies in space. This is very different from the traditional method of staging a play. Of course there is always a process. But sometimes the little bit of effort it takes to get people out of themselves has a big dividend in the end.

One of the very earliest, and perhaps still most authoritative books on this kind of work is Improvisation for the Theater by Viola Spolin. Dean checked at the Strand, New York City's largest used-book store, but came up empty. I know I have a copy somewhere, but it's buried in my storage under a decade of other accumulated life-baggage. As we talked, I began to recall some of the exercises that I used in my own rehearsals: some were taught to me by Joseph Chaikin, some come from Cecily Berry's outstanding book Text In Action, and a few come from my colleague Eva Burgess who uses this work so successfully in her productions. I told Dean I'd write some down and share them with him. So, Dean, here they are. Hope they help.

Sound/Movement Exercise - This was invented by Joe Chaikin, and has become a staple of actor training. In its simplest form, the company forms a circle. (Most of these exercises are worked in a circle.) One actor comes to the center and begins a simple, repetitive movement accompanied by a repetitive sound. The actors stays with the sound/movement either allowing it to become more defined and more committed, or allowing it to change. What's important is that the actor move below the level of conscious thinking and begin to allow his body and voice to connect in a visceral way. There are many variations on this exercise. One of the best is after the actor has established her sound/movement they then face another actor in the circle and "teach" that actor their sound/movement. That actor enters the circle with the other actor's sound/movement and then transforms it into an entirely new one that he then passes to another in the circle. Play around with this one. It's a great warm-up and will really give people permission to break their inhibitions.
Walking the Space - This is as simple as it sounds, but it's really very important. You can start in a circle and then break it, or just ask the actors to begin walking about randomly. Then you can play: Fast, slow, running, slow-motion, freeze. It's great to do different walks to: on the heels, on the toes, outside edge of the foot, inside edge of the foot; and mix and match: heel of the right foot, toes on the left. Outside of the right foot, inside of the left. You get the idea. Have fun!
Create images (from Eva Burgess) - Give the actors 15 minutes and ask them to come up with 5 images of the play. These images should not be literal, but should be freeze-frames of their bodies in space, in relation to each other. This is performed non-verbally. They should learn each image, and then perform them for the director. They will inevitably tell the story of the play in a completely unexpected way.
Passing the Ball - This one also comes from Eva Burgess. Bring in 3 or 4 juggling balls, hacky-sacks or any soft bean ball. Then start, one ball at a time, to pass the ball across the circle to each other. Establish a pattern. Throw underhand, aim for the chest, and make eye contact with your partner. Then, after the pattern is established, add another ball, then another. This is great for concentration. Do this at every rehearsal!
Lone Wolf - I used to love this one. When I was in college we would do it before every show. The challenge is to form a close circle, a huddle. Then, simply count from 1 to 10. Or if you get really good, try doing the whole alphabet. But here's the trick: There's no planned order for the speaking, and if two people overlap, speak at the same time, you must start the whole thing again from the top. It's frustrating, but wait until you succeed!
Status - This is good in a large group. Bring in a deck of cards and randomly ask each actor to choose one without looking. Now they must "embody" their cards, an ace having the highest "status", a two having the lowest. They should try to be as clear as possible about where they fall in the pecking order, and see if the rest of the group can figure out what card they are.
Japanese - This is my favorite. It's quiet, meditative, simple. But not easy. The actors form a circle. One person starts. They make eye contact with another person across the circle. Hands folded in front of them, they then bow to the person whose eyes they've met. The person receiving the bow, bows back in acknowledgment and then immediately looks for another person to "send" a bow to. As soon as your bow has been received you start walking to assume the position of the person who has received your bow. You must pay attention. It's about flow and timing. Try it out. Maybe you'll develop your own version.

OK, so that's enough for today. I'll try to post some more as I think of them. There are lots of others that can be done in the context of scene work too, to look for clarity, rhythm, obstacles. We'll get to those another time. Thank you Dean for giving me the idea for this blog. Break a leg!
W.

nothing nothing then something

2007-07-25T23:22:00.000-04:00

Phew. What a week. Sometimes it's only a waiting game. A few auditions here and there. Nothing. I keep busy doing my own work - at Dixon Place with Eva Burgess, working on a website, writing. Then suddenly something in the air changes and things get busy instantly. But let me back up a bit.

Last Friday night I went with my friends James Shanley and Sarah Ford to see the Obie Award winning production of The Brig at the newly-opened Living Theatre on Clinton Street. This show is unbelievable! And I mean that in a good way. Judith Malina has reclaimed her title as the Mother of American Theater with this production. You will not encounter another show like this anywhere else. And understandably so. This is a production that has been 40 years in the making. If you have a chance run - don't walk and see this show immediately. It's only play for a few more weeks. Wednesday nights are pay what you can, so don't let money stop you. It is well worth your time, believe me.

On Sunday I had my first rehearsal for Wake. The film is scheduled to begin shooting the second week of August. We had a table read with the full cast. I'm truly honored to be among such fine actors. Congratulations to director Andrew Lawton and producers Shane Tilton and Anre B. Garrett for assembling a first-rate company.

Monday afternoon I received a phone call from my agent David Cash at Henderson-Hogan with an audition for Tuesday. It was for a play called Alfred Kinsey: A Love Story by Mike Folie being produced in September by The New York Theatre Collective. They sent me the script by email and I got to work on it right away. I fell in love with the role of Alfred Kinsey. As you would expect from a play based upon the legendary scientist, it plunges the treacherous waters of sexuality and taboo. I prepped as well as I could in a short amount of time then decided to just go have fun, not getting my hopes up too high. I got an offer the same day.

Wednesday morning, however, David Cash calls to tell me it isn't going to work out after all, because my shooting schedule on Wake conflicts with the first week of rehearsal. Argh! I was crushed. So I did what any desperate actor would do in my situation. I begged. I pleaded with David to work it out, and I promised to make up some rehearsal time along the way. To my absolute and complete surprise - it worked! Suddenly I'm in the enviable position of working on a film and a play, both great roles, both terrific projects, all at the same time! This life is sure confusing.

Thank you to casting director Cindi Rush for bringing me in, and mucho thanks to director Craig George for casting me. I can't wait to start!

OK, enough about me. (Is it even possible to say that on a blog?) Back to Letter To Actor D. In the first two sentences Eugenio Barba writes:

I have often been struck by a lack of seriousness in your work. This is not the same as a lack of concentration or good will. It is the expression of two attitudes.

For many years I've read this is saying "You don't your work seriously enough. You must work harder!" But working hard isn't the same thing as working well. I'm beginning to learn the difference. I think what Barba is getting at here really is a belief in oneself as an artist. To take yourself seriously is to have the conviction that what you are doing is what you should be doing, that working in the theater is important, and isn't just a frivolous self-indulgence. The next few sentences could also be read as "you don't know what you're doing", but again, I don't think that's what Barba's saying:

First of all, it seems as if your actions are not driven by any inner conviction or irresistible need which leaves its mark on your exercise, improvisations and performance. You may be concentrated in your work, without sparing your energies, your gestures may be technically correct and precise, but your actions remain empty. I don’t believe in what you are doing. Your body clearly says “I have been told to do this.” But your nerves, your brain, your spine, are not committed, and with this skin-deep-commitment you want to make me believe that what you are doing is vital to you.

Driven by...inner conviction. I don't think he means the character. He isn't talking here about believing in a Stanislavskian objective, or getting behind the situation in the play. He's talking about political conviction. It can only be political. It was Judith Malina (again) who told me as a student at NYU that unless you have a political message to convey, all theater is nothing but vanity. "What you're saying is look at me! Look at my costume! Don't I look wonderful! And listen to my voice! Don't I sound powerful!" Theater without political conviction is folly.

Barba continues:

You do not sense the importance of that which you want to share with the spectators. How then can you expect the spectator to be gripped by your actions? How can you, with this attitude, uphold the understanding of the theater as a place where social inhibitions and conventions are annihilated to make way for an open-hearted and absolute communication?

The annihilation of convention makes way for open-hearted communication. Bingo. Now we're on to something. We begin to see why theater is in fact imperative, even in this age of film, video, and mass communication.

And so, dear reader, I leave you with that. Until next time...break a leg.

w.

Letter to Actor D.

2007-07-19T00:35:00.000-04:00

Between 1997 and 2003 I had the great good fortune of being co-teacher of a series of master classes for actors and directors with Joseph Chaikin. You'll hear me speak of Joe often in this blog. He was my hero, my mentor, my friend. He was also my favorite director.

One person that Joe admired greatly is theater director Eugenio Barba. Barba was born in Italy, but made his way to Norway, and then finally to Denmark, where he has been the director of Odin Teatret since 1964. In our classes, Joe and I always distributed a packet of materials to the students on the first day. The packet was meant to help us find common ground, to inspire the students in the work we would be doing together for the next six weeks. One of the items included in the packet was Eugenio Barba's Letter To Actor D.

This letter is the most inspiring epistle on the theater that I've ever read. I find myself returning to it time and again. In fact, for the next few blogs I'm going to address this letter in detail, churning it over paragraph by paragraph, so that the ideas contained in it will permeate our sub-conscious. But for tonight I'm going to post the letter in its entirety. It was given to me by Joe and I don't know what book he got it from. But the original publication is credited in the preface. I hope you will find this as enlightening as I do.

LETTER TO ACTOR D.

This letter was written by Eugenio Barba to one of the actors of the Odin in 1967. It has often appeared in books and magazines in different parts of the world, either to illustrate the Odin’s vision of theatre or to present, in more general terms, its attitude toward a new actor. It was first published in the book Synapunkter om kunst (Copenhagen, 1968).

I have often been struck by a lack of seriousness in your work. This is not the same as a lack of concentration or good will. It is the expression of two attitudes.

First of all, it seems as if your actions are not driven by any inner conviction or irresistible need which leaves its mark on your exercise, improvisations and performance. You may be concentrated in your work, without sparing your energies, your gestures may be technically correct and precise, but your actions remain empty. I don’t believe in what you are doing. Your body clearly says “I have been told to do this.” But your nerves, your brain, your spine, are not committed, and with this skin-deep-commitment you want to make me believe that what you are doing is vital to you. You do not sense the importance of that which you want to share with the spectators. How then can you expect the spectator to be gripped by your actions? How can you, with this attitude, uphold the understanding of the theater as a place where social inhibitions and conventions are annihilated to make way for an open-hearted and absolute communication? You represent the community within this space, with the humiliations you have undergone, the degradation which has closed you up, your cynicism as self-defense, and your optimism as the essence of irresponsibility. All this, together with your guilt, your need to love, the longing for a lost paradise hidden in the past, close to the person who could make you forget fear. Everybody present with you in this space will be shaken if you succeed in rediscovering these sources, this common ground of human experience, the hidden fatherland. This is the bond that unites you to the others, a treasure that lies buried deep within all of us, never unearthed, because it is our only comfort, and because it hurts when we touch it.

The second attitude I see in you is your embarrassment in considering the seriousness of your work. You feel the need to laugh, to sneer, and come with humorous comments about what you and your colleagues are doing. It is as if you want to flee from the responsibility that you feel is inherent in your craft, which consists in establishing communication with human beings and in assuming the responsibility for what you are revealing. You are frightened by seriousness, the knowledge that you are on the fringes of the permissible. You are frightened that everything you do is synonymous with tediousness, fanaticism, or over-specialization. But in a world where people around us either no longer believe in anything, or only pretend to believe in order to be left in peace, he who digs deep within himself to reach a clarity about his own situation, his absence of ideals, his need for spiritual life, will always be called fanatic or naïve. In a world with cheating as a norm, he who seeks his own truth is taken for a fraud, a hypocrite.

I wonder if you realize that all you create, everything liberated and given form by your work is also a part of life and deserves care and respect. Your actions before the community of the spectators should be powered by the flame hidden in the red-hot iron, the voice in the burning bush. Only then will your actions live on in the senses and the memory of the spectator, fermenting into unforeseeable consequences.

We know that when Dullin lay on his deathbed, his face deformed itself into all the important roles he had played: Smerdiakov, Volpone, Richard III. It was not just the man Dullin who was dying but also the actor, as well as the many stages of his working life.

If I ask you why you became an actor, you will reply: “To fulfill myself, to express myself.” But what does this mean? Who has fulfilled himself? Was it Manager Hansen who lived a quiet life, respectable and without problems, never tormented by answerless questions, or the romantic Gauguin, who broke with all of the social norms and finished his life in miserable poverty and degradation in a Polynesian village, convinced that he had found the lost freedom, Noa-Noa? In an epoch where belief in God is diagnosed as a neurosis, we lack the scales to weigh our life and tell us whether we have been fulfilled or not. No matter which personal and hidden motives have led you to the theater, once you are within, you must find a meaning which, stretching beyond your own person, confronts you socially with others.

It is only within the catacombs that we can prepare a new life. It is here that one can seek spiritual commitment without fear of confrontation with questions that will bring about a new morality. This presupposes courage: the majority of people has no need of us. Your work is a sort of social mediation upon yourself, your human condition and the vents that touch you to the quick through the experiences of our age. In such a precarious theater which shocks the normal psychic well-being, every performance can be your last. You should consider it as such, the final possibility of reaching out to others, crying out your last word, your testament, the reckoning of your actions.

If being an actor can mean all this to you, then a new theater will be born. A new approach to the literary tradition will spring forth, a new technique and a new relationship between you and the people who come to see you each evening because they need you.

Dixon Place #5

2007-07-16T17:50:00.000-04:00

After a two week respite I'm back here on the blog! I had some good news this week. I was cast in Andrew Lawton's upcoming film Wake. Andrew said it was a grueling decision and no doubt that's true. Casting is always tricky. It can make or break any project and you can't always be certain what sort of work you'll be able to pull from an actor. I'm delighted, of course, that I landed the role, especially in light of my last blog - On Crying . I welcome the opportunity to dig deep down and try to give a truthful performance that meets the demands of the script. For more information on filmmaker Andrew Lawton, visit Pier's End Productions.

Director Eva Burgess and I continued our work together at Dixon Place. You may recall that we have embarked on a theatrical exploration based upon some themes presented in the novel Peyton Place by Grace Metalious. We're also exploring the story of my own sexual abuse as part of the impulse to create the piece. It's pretty dicey terrain for me, but Eva has empowered me to keep moving ahead. Her work is very physical, and today we created a series of images that can be strung together into a "story". The images are not necessarily literal manifestations of any particular event. They are impulses, hunches, conjectures. But a story of course emerges for the audience, and as the actor I find that I'm less self-aware in creating these images than I would be just talking, or approaching the work head on. After the image work we did a writing exercise which could create some or all of the text that would accompany a series of movements. This is a very intriguing way to work because it taps the conscious in a non-threatening way, and makes room for sub-conscious impulses to emerge as well. Thank you again, Eva. You're a genius.

On Crying

2007-07-01T22:02:00.000-04:00

I had planned to be out of the city this weekend, like so many other New Yorkers. With the 4th of July falling on a Wednesday, I thought it a safe bet to spend a week out of town at my parents house in Pennsylvania.

Inevitably, when I plan to go out of town, an audition comes up. I'm forced to choose between the sanity of time out of the city and the duty of vying for work. I received the screenplay from my agent on Wednesday, and an hour later my decision was made. This time, work won out.

The audition was for a film called Wake.

Wake is a 25 minute short film written and directed by Andrew Lawton. In the film, a ten year old attends the wake of his older brother, a photo-journalist killed in Iraq. He recovers his brother's camera, and survives the day by documenting the events through the lens. It is a taut script and a compelling story. I was immediately hooked.

The role I was auditioning for was that of JOHN, the father of the two boys. Having lost his first son to the war, he finally confronts his own failings as a parent. He is separated from his wife, and a stranger in his own house. This is a man who covers everything with a smile. But the events of the day are too much, and at the end of the story he finally breaks, realizing the mistakes he has made simply by being too afraid to take a stand.

"I'm sorry, Nicky." he says to his surviving son.

"What for?" says the boy.

Silence. A tear rolls down JOHN's face. His eyes remain locked on his son.

"I'm so sorry."

NICKY holds his father's gaze. Tears now stream down JOHN's face. JOHN's head falls and he begins to sob.

This was the scene for the callback.

Much to his credit, Andrew told me that he understood this was only a reading, that in actuality there would be weeks of preparation, and not to feel obliged to "push" or reach for anything that wasn't actually there. But I had spent the entire previous evening thinking about this scene, thinking about how to get to that place emotionally, and truthfully. How do you cry on cue?

I've had auditions before where this is required. I've never been able to do it. What is missing in my technique? Why can't I just cry? What is so hard about doing this?

Some actors are fantastic at it. Matthew Fox who plays Jack on Lost is a master of the single tear drop. And there are plenty of actresses who seem able to turn on the faucet simply at the mention of the word "action".

So what to do? Am I just emotionally blocked? Is there something in me unwilling to give it up? Or am I simply too afraid to be that private in public? Any way you slice it, it doesn't bode well for me as an actor.

I thought about what happens when I really cry. That feeling in the solar plexus, the trying not to cry, the overwhelming terror, the tightness in the stomach. I seemed to have some success if I held my eyes open for a while without blinking and lifted my cheekbones slightly. If I breathed through my mouth, felt the air on my lower lip, a quiver might enter my voice.

But this was all way too technical. If I'm thinking about how to cry, then I'm not living the situation of the character. He's not thinking about how to cry. He's thinking about how not to cry. But how could I trust it would be there when I needed? What if it just didn't come?

Well....I wish I could tell you I learned how. I wish there were some secret discovery, some small trick, something to guarantee success. But alas, I came up with no such thing. What I did do was think alot about the situation of the character: where I am, what has happened today, the smells in the room, any sensory input that may be useful. I read some poems that are inspiring. I wrote in the character's voice about losing my son in the war, how it was my fault, how I felt about it. I wrote until the voice of the character merged with my own voice, until I found a place of common sadness. It didn't take long. And I listened to music along the way: Barber's Adagio for Strings, Mahler's 9th Symphony, anything by Artetha Franklin.

The result?

I got it on the first take, but lost it on the second. It felt organic and true one time. Two times felt like I was trying.

So I guess the lesson here is, when they say "rehearsal is up", hopefully the director knows to roll the cameras anyway. Or maybe it will happen on the second take. Or maybe it will take three. I honestly have no idea. All I know is, you've only got to get it right once.

Which is all so unlike the theater, where you've got to get it right every night. But the theater is a different beast. You have the benefit of the whole story behind you. You have the adrenalin of a live audience. And if "it" doesn't happen, you can always fake it. But the camera tells no lies.

Keep breathing. Deeper and deeper. You can always trust the breath. I'm beginning to actually believe that.

Peace,
Wayne

Is The Voice of Dissent Alive in the Theater?

2007-06-29T22:14:00.001-04:00

If it weren't for the current revival of The Brig playing at the Living Theatre's new space on the Lower East Side, you would hardly know from the theatrical offerings here that America is entrenched in an obscene war of aggression. Thank the Great Whomever that we still have visionaries such as Judith Malina and Hanon Reznikov around to remind us of our true calling. This is what the theater is for - dissent. Especially in a time of obfuscation and oppression such as we've been experiencing in the last six years. But why do we have so few offerings? Where are the protests? Where are the radical theater companies taking off their clothes and rolling in the avenues, getting arrested for staging sit-ins or the street theater that jars people from the oblivion of denial?

A few regional theaters may hint at the current state of affairs, reviving old masterpieces that send a vaguely anti-war message. Plays such as G.B. Shaw's Arms And The Man, Arthur Miller's All My Sons, or even the age-old Lysistrata pop up in small theaters and colleges around the country. But what has our generation contributed to the dialogue of current affairs? Are we just too shell-shocked to even go there? Too horrified at the actions of our own government? Too complacent or complicit?

Please somebody tell me I'm wrong. Let me know what's going on that I don't see. I want to know we're still alive, still vital, still answering the call to social responsibility that is the lifeblood of the theater. If nothing else comes from adversity, at least let there be art in the making.

When I think of theater in a time of war, my mind immediately travels to Bertolt Brecht, who created a whole method of acting in answer to the bourgeois ignorance which gave birth to Nazism. (It is no coincidence that Judith Malina is a direct descendant of Brecht's lineage, having studied with the great director Irwin Piscator at the New School before founding the Living Theatre with her husband Julian Beck.) This is courage in the face of death. Art flying in the face of supreme power. Do any of us still have the backbone to tell each other the truth?

I recently came upon a website devoted entirely to Brecht. Under the Freedom of Information Act, the FBI has released its files on the playwright. You can read the whole thing here. One passage however, in the very beginning, sums up how the Bureau was building a case in pursuit of Brecht:

On March 5, 1943, Source "B" advised that he knew BRECHT by reputation in Germany, where he was considered a radical and an assoicate of persons with Communistic inclinations. Source "B" stated that he became acquainted with BRECHT personally in the United States and found him still a radical and an enemy of Capitalism.

We could do with a few more enemies like that. Come out, come out, wherever you are.

Dixon Place #4

2007-06-27T23:23:00.000-04:00

I resumed my work today at Dixon Place with director Eva Burgess. It's extraordinary. Just the walk downtown from my apartment in the East Village was harrowing. It was a hot, muggy, stifling day in New York City. And there is so much construction going on on the Bowery that you can hardly hear yourself think. Everywhere you look there are trucks and scaffolding and cranes and noise. The Bowery has become the new chic part of the city, and is home to some of the most expensive real estate. Go figure. When I first moved here in the early 80's the Bowery was, well...the Bowery. Times change.

But it was exciting to be going to rehearsal nonetheless. I'm simply astonished by Eva. She carries Sabina, her 4 week old baby, with her into rehearsal like it's nothing. There's something about that new life in the room that is completely awe-inspiring. It seems like the most natural thing in the world to have this completely fresh life in the room. So much fertility. So much possibility. So much responsibility. But Eva is all about the work. Never mind the baby. What are we doing today?

But there are points in any process where everyone just needs to stop and take a breath. Today was the breath we've been needing.

We're developing a new work that takes some of its subject matter from Peyton Place, the 1956 blockbuster novel by Grace Metalious. I chose this story because of its small-town setting, its literary daring, and the iconic place it assumed in the lexicon of Americana at the end of the 20th Century. I also chose it for the story of incest that is revealed in the novel. In telling the story of Serena Cross - a high school girl who bludgeons her step-father to death after repeatedly molesting her - I am hoping to tell my own story. (Don't worry. I never bludgeoned anyone to death!)

But what we're attempting is much more than just re-telling an old story. It involves moving into new emotional and artistic terrain for me. I think more than at any other time in my life, I'm finally challenging myself to bring the most painful parts of my life into my work. It's terrifying. And the thought that constantly surfaces is - is this interesting? Is this worth telling? Is this theatrical and worth exploring? I do not imagine doing any kind of a "bio-pic". I think the facts of any past event are not nearly as interesting as the feelings they stir in the present. It's a matter of finding the right tone for the piece: empathy, humor, theatricality, expression.

So today was one of those days where we needed to just sit and begin to tell the story. My story. The "elephant in the room". Because we need to be on the same page. Eva needs to know where I'm coming from. We need to move through the literal to arrive at the universal. And it wasn't so hard. We're building trust. Little by little. One day at a time. Allowing the process to happen rather than forcing an idea onto the stage. Every time we're together I gain more and more trust in Eva, as an artist and as a friend.

This is a journal of our rehearsals, a diary of our progression. I think it's important to just say that working isn't always working - moving around, making things up, being brilliant. Sometimes its just sitting and talking to each other. This is the process too. Thank you, Eva. And thank you dear reader, if you've gotten this far. More to come, I'm sure.

W. M.

2007-06-25T00:22:00.000-04:00

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Steel Yourself

2007-06-24T13:40:00.000-04:00

You've heard it a thousand times: the poor starving artist, it's a tough business, don't quit your day job, what are you going to do for money, what restaurant do you work at? Is it all true? Were our detractors correct? Well, maybe - maybe not. For some lucky ones, no - never. There are those who "hit it" right out of the starting gate. They got a play that led to a film that landed them a series, etc. But for most of us it isn't like that. Sometimes it seems like we get enough work just to keep us in the game. We have good years and bad. We get callback after callback but no job. We can't get an agent. We have an agent. We want a better one. We begin to doubt ourselves: How long should I stay at it? Am I fooling myself? Did I make a terrible mistake? What if I quit just before my "break"? On and on and on.

Then, if we start comparing ourselves to others, we're sunk. I sometimes become obsessed with tracking the careers of my classmates: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Kristen Johnston, Clark Gregg, David Pittu, Adam Sandler. Everybody else is famous! Why did I miss it? Am I a big loser? Where did I go wrong? There will always be someone who has a better career, more contacts, more money, more talent, who is younger, smarter, richer. Going down this path will destroy you!!

My career is my career. Your career is yours. And life is a curious thing. You don't know what is going to happen. You could be up one minute and down the next. But if we really are committed to working in the theatre, what's most important is the journey. We have to take care of the things we have control of. Learning to love and nurture ourselves when nobody else cares, taking classes even after decades of professional work, taking time off, learning to do something else - these are the things that are most important. I say all of this mostly for my own sake because I operate at such a high level of anxiety most of the time. It really isn't serving me anymore.

I've heard it said to be an actor you must have "nerves of steel", be "wiling to risk it all", have an "ironclad ego". This is all true enough. But actors are trained to open up, be vulnerable, express the darkest places of themselves in order to convey a greater truth. Vulnerability works great if you're auditioning for a Tennessee Williams play, but it doesn't help much with a toothpaste commercial.

So is it really money vs. art? No way.
Is it possible to have a fulfilling career without being famous? Yes indeed.
How do you hang in there? Practice, practice, practice.

And by practice I mean spiritual practice. Emotional practice. Working on yourself in therapy or through meditation, yoga, or any other number of ways. It's the journey that counts. I just keep telling myself that because, believe me, there are days when it is hard, hard, hard. I know this post isn't saying anything new. If you're in the theatre you already know this. But sometimes it helps to be reminded by others who are on the same road.

If you're really having a hard time, take a look at the services offered by the Actors Fund. Everyday they are saving our lives through their social services, chemical dependence treatment, HIV support services, housing assistance...the list goes on an on. Go there! Get help! And if you can afford it send a donation! They have a particularly excellent group offered several times a year called Money And The Performing Artist. Conducted by therapist Annette Lieberman (author of The Money Mirror), this group may just turn your head around about "surviving" in this industry. It sure did help me!

Lastly...be gentle and kind with yourself. When you don't get the callback, the part, the agent, the audition, just remember: you may have dodged a bullet! I remember something a veteran actor I was working said: "I've been in hits. I've been in flops. They all close!"

Good luck, bad luck? Who knows.When its right for you it will happen.

Strength to you,
Wayne

Super Mario

2007-06-20T09:32:00.000-04:00

I ran into Mario Fratti a couple of weeks ago. He lives in the same building as a friend of mine in mid-town. Mario recognized me immediately and flashed that trademark smile of his. He is perhaps the most charming individual I have ever known. He's what I call "old school", but not because of his age. He seems timeless to me, and his appearance has never changed in the decade or so since I first met him. No, it's his suave demeanor, his European politeness, a touch of the aristocratic - and more than a touch of the poet - that set him apart in 21st century New York. He's a real gentleman. The kind of man that will always hold a door for a lady and tip his hat. Oh, and he is always dressed impeccably as well.

Mario thanked me for the last production I had directed. He was there. He reviewed it for L'Oggie, an Italian newspaper. I didn't see the review, nor could I have read it. But he assured me it was favorable. He then handed me a flyer with information about a new collection of his plays that has just been published. 28 Play. 28 Surprises. I look quickly down the list of plays, and to my surprise, I didn't know almost any of them! I thought I had read most of Mario's plays. But no, these were all new, at least to me. This man never stops!

Nor should he. To say that Mario Fratti is prolific is, well, decidedly an understatement. A colleague once posited that Mario had to write about a play a year, but I think that estimate is low. Mario has a style all his own. His plays are famous for their...you guessed it: surprises. There's always a twist ending, a turn, an unexpected event. And his characters are never the same at the end of his plays. I first met Mario when I was cast in a production of his play Sister at Theater for the New City, directed by Michael Hillyer. My character had a seemingly inappropriate relationship with his sister. Until we really got to know the mother. Then it all became startlingly clear. That was a good many years ago, but I remember the rhythm of the play was so important. The lines needed to pop quickly and not get bogged down in emotionality.

Mario wrote the book for the musical NINE which swept the Tony
awards when it premiered on Broadway starring Raul Julia. There was a revival recently starring Antonio Banderas. What's interesting is that the play, based upon Fellini's 8 1/2, is about a man who loves women. All women. Lots of women. Not obscenely, but passionately, elegantly - like Mario.

On his website it says: Fratti's nearly seventy plays have received some six hundred productions in two dozen countries and have been translated into many languages. That's some achievement.

I recently came upon a photo of Joseph Chaikin at the Edwin Booth Awards. I believe the year was 2001. And there in the photo, standing behind Joe, was Mario, looking splendid, happy, and dapper.

Mario also has a daughter named Valentina Fratti. Valentina is an extraordinarily talented director in her own right. I asked Mario where she was. He said, "Oh, she's directing plays now in Italy." Too bad, I thought. We could use her talent here. But at least we still have the father - the Capo di tutti Capo - Mario Fratti.

Stop Acting

2007-06-16T09:40:00.000-04:00

I love books about acting. From Stanislavski to Boleslavsky, from Brecht to Brook, I never get tired of reading about how other actors do their work. I don't mean to imply that you can learn acting from a book. Quite the contrary, I believe the only way to learn acting is by doing it - alot - for a very long time. But, fresh ideas about working can truly spark our imaginations and inspire us to find a new approach to our work. How To Stop Acting by Harold Guskin is one of my favorites. I find it liberating and reassuring, and his methods are so simple they might seem easy to dismiss. Except that they work! "Taking it off the page" is really the backbone of Guskin's method, and it is a sure-fire way to get to the truth on stage. I've been using Guskin's ideas for a few years now. In a nutshell it is the same as "dropping in" text, "personalizing", or any other number of terms. But Guskin's explanations are so clear and compelling it makes you want to run right out and try them, and that is really the best thing to do.

Guskin says his work is about "being free to let the phrase or line take me wherever it goes at that moment." It's breathing the line in, breathing the line out, then saying it and allowing whatever associations come up to be present. Simple. Not easy.

Harold Guskin is an actor, director, teacher, and acting coach to the stars including Kevin Kline, Peter Fonda, Glenn Close, and James Gandolfini - just to mention a few. So he must know something about what makes actors tick. But I find working with the ideas he sets forth in his book to be so liberating. The breath is never wrong. If we follow our impulses we will always be interesting. Others may not "get it", but we'll at least be making choices that aren't stuck in the pedestrian.

Get this book now. His advice on auditioning is particularly helpful. Where else do you find somebody saying "Don't memorize!" Of course the brilliance of that is it allows you to be free to memorize more easily. But acting is not memorizing as many of us have been taught. Guskin reminds us what true acting is really all about. The answer lies in the imagination given flight by the breath in each moment.

I had How To Stop Acting sitting out on my desk yesterday when some friends came for a visit. One guest picked up the book and said, "Are you quitting acting?" She thought it was a book about how to exit the industry. Now that's the book I want to look at next!

Dixon Place #2 & 3

2007-06-14T09:36:00.000-04:00

Work continued this week with Eva Burgess at Dixon Place. Eva is truly inspired and inspiring. She may be the most innovative director I've had the privilege of working with. It's so completely different from what I do most of the time. No pre-existing script, no prescribed method, no anticipated results at this point. So refreshing! What we are discovering is a great sense of play. As Eva said, "We'll trick ourselves into writing it!" I love that. Because access to that other part of the mind doesn't come about by thinking. Here's a little recap of the last two rehearsals.

Dixon Place #2 - Monday, June 11, 2007

We did a good physical and vocal warm up first. Then Eva suggested as a jumping off point we choose some word groups at random. We tore up squares of paper, and on each piece we wrote words or phrases connected to the idea of themes, proverbs, and text. We mixed them all up and then randomly pulled the following: "stardom", "one good turn deserves another", and "what will the neighbors think". We played with the obvious notions around stardom for a minute, and then it occurred to us that maybe "stardom" suggested a floor pattern. So we laid out a star pattern on the floor with points numbered 1 thru 5. I walked the pattern several times, then we decided to explore the idea of creating an event that would occur at each point in the star. So at each stop-over in this star-pattern on the floor there would be1. an event, 2. a task that had to be completed in order to move on, and then a particular way or challenge in 3. the actual movement from one point on the floor to another. Our homework for the next rehearsal would be to come up with ideas to try around these three concepts.

Dixon Place #3 - Wednesday June 13, 2007

I got there a little ahead of Eva and began playing once more with the star pattern on the floor. First I walked it, then tried moving in all sorts of ways from one point to another. Then I added 3 more points, numbers 6 thru 8, so I had an octave if I wanted to create a kind of "keyboard" on the floor. The I thought it might be fun to try getting from point to point in a given number of steps. For example, from point 1 to point 2 in two steps, from 2 to 3 in three steps, etc. This became a very interesting way of moving because it is so specific and it requires some degree of concentration. It's also very fun.

When Eva arrived she brought with her (in addition to her beautiful 3-yr. old baby Sabina) - a game! It's a children's game with cards, and each card has on it a task: make a funny face, find something blue, pile it up and spill it, etc. She also added in the requirement to use the words we had chosen at the previous rehearsal, so at each point in the pattern I had to do a task, use the words "one good turn deserves another", say the number of the next point to travel to, and then go to the next point and repeat the process. The results were - well, alot of fun! I don't know exactly what it all means, but it suggested to me innocence. Play. Spontaneity. It also brought an interactivity with the audience that we hadn't previously thought about.

If you've had the patience to read all of this, then you're interested in process and process is what we're all about in this work. This is surprising work. I'm excited about the possibilities. Its a way of making theater we don't often allow ourselves the time to do. Thank you, Eva!

Glengarry Glen Close

2007-06-12T23:43:00.000-04:00

Back in the 80's I had a friend who worked at Ticket Master. You may remember Ticket Master. They were the guys you called for tickets to Broadway shows. Now everything is done online. But back then you could dial a number and speak to a real human being. My friend would field calls and take orders for shows, working all hours of the night. He had some particularly funny requests along the way. Once he had a customer ask for tickets to "Sunday In The Park With George Burns".

The one Ticket Master story that sticks most in my head, however, is the call he fielded for front row seats to that "new play by David Mamet" called "Glengarry Glenn Close". Picture Glenn Close dressed in a cheap suit, smoking a cigarette, saying something like "Fuck you. Eighty-two grand for the whole eight units. Cocksuckers want to fuck with me?" My friend said he dropped the phone.

Tomorrow I have an audition for Glengarry Glen Ross which is being produced at the Dallas Theater Center this fall. I'm happy to have the audition, but honestly I have to say - what is the meaning of this? Do we really care about the machinations of a couple of sleazy real estate agents with no morals or scruples whatsoever? Where is the poetry? Where is the language? And how, I ask you, how do we draw the line from Beckett to Pinter to...Mamet?? When did cynicism become the order of the day?

Glengarry Glen Ross won the Pulitzer Prize when it was first produced back in 1984. Maybe it was groundbreaking at the time, but somehow to me it seems that there's no there there. I've practiced the scene I have to prepare - between Williamson (my character, the manager of the office), and Shelly Levene (played with astonishing detail by Jack Lemmon in the movie version) - every which way from Sunday, and somehow it doesn't really make any difference! And I understand how to prepare Mamet, having studied with his protegees William H. Macy, Stephen Schachter and Gregory Mosher back in the day.

Mamet himself suggested that the lines of any play are "gibberish" and what matters is the moments that occur between the actors. If only that were really the case.

David Mamet, in addition to being a playwright, is a great theorist on the methods of acting. He is rooted in the technique of Sanford Meisner, particularly Meisner's exercise of "repetition". It's a fascinating method and has great validity as part of an actor's training. But Mamet seems to have created Glengarry Glen Ross as a 65-page repetition exercise. Attach any action to the scenes such as "show an inferior who's boss" or "get him to rue the day" or "win an adversary to my side" and while it changes the moment to moment playing, it doesn't really change the play. It all seems a bit too arbitrary. Great plays enter the subconscious, awakening us to language, and allowing the words to illicit a new response in the speaker and audience alike. Glengarry Glen Ross leaves me feeling cold at the very least and gives me a headache when I think about it for any length of time. Still, it's my job to get behind it, at least for tomorrow, and see if I can make it play.

I remember one day when I was a student at Lincoln Center Theater. We walked into class and Gregory Mosher announced that Lincoln Center would be premiering a new play by "America's greatest living playwright." Without skipping a beat I said "What happened? Did Sam Shepard die?" Mosher was not amused. That play was Speed The Plow. Quick...what do you remember about Speed The Plow?

Facing an Empty Room

2007-06-11T09:32:00.001-04:00

It's Monday morning. In a few hours I'll be walking down to the Bowery to meet my friend, the director Eva Burgess. I've gotten some space at Dixon Place, a little performance art venue downtown, and Eva and I are continuing work on a piece I first started almost ten years ago.

The idea is based upon the novel Peyton Place, written 50 years ago by Grace Metalious. Peyton Place was scandalous when it was released because of its frank portrayal of teen sexuality, and small town vices. It was also one of the earliest American novels to deal with the issue of incest, and because the character of Selena Cross was empowered not to be just a victim, but to act in her own defense, one could argue that Peyton Place was also a precursor to the feminist movement.

We have some resources to begin working with: the novel, a biography of Grace Metalious, several LP's, magazine articles. But I have no idea where we will go in our exploration or what this performance piece will become. I trust Eva implicitly, but it doesn't make it any less scary. Last week, before Eva came on board, I went down to Dixon Place by myself. I was completely self-conscious, aware that the person in the office could hear what I was doing. I felt ashamed to be there somehow, to not know what I was doing, to be completely in the dark with myself. So I just laid on the floor, listened to some music, and scribbled some notes. I have a feeling today will be better. It's so much easier to be foolish in a pair than all alone.

But in a sense, that sense of shame is exactly what this work is about for me. The themes of incest, misuse of power, abuse, and injustice have been the reason I've wanted to embark on this particular exploration. Shame is a very dicey emotion to work with. It's uncomfortable for everyone. It's antithetical to acting.

Grace Metalious died in 1964 (the year I was born) of cirrhosis of the liver. She drank herself to death. At age 39. What shame had taken over her life that led her to such success, and then to such a dismal end? She was hoodwinked by nearly everyone. She never made a dime off either the Hollywood movie or the television series that ran for a decade. And yet, she created a story that entered the American vernacular. I remember my own mother saying things like "It's Peyton Place over there, the way those people live." I didn't know what she meant at the time. Just that Peyton Place was bad, dirty, shameful.

I read on the internet this morning that Sandra Bullock is now starring in a film about Grace Metalious. My first thought was "Figures. Seems every time I embrace an idea, somebody else beats me to it!" But I don't think that's it. I think it has something to do with the vibration of the universe, the great unconscious that speaks to us in whispers, reminding us of the stories that we need to tell. At least that's a more positive spin. Anyway, Sandra Bullock or no Sandra Bullock, I'm moving ahead. It's me and Eva Burgess doing Peyton Place at Dixon Place!

I'll keep you posted as things progress. Happy Monday!
Wayne

Bill C. Davis : Writer on Fire

2007-06-10T09:43:00.000-04:00

If you haven't seen or read a new play by Bill C. Davis lately, you're missing out. Here is a writer with craft, intelligence, and style. But more than that, Bill C. Davis is a writer with a passion. He burns with the fire of possibility. You see, Bill still believes in the theater as an agent of change.

Yes, he wrote Mass Appeal. Yes, Mass Appeal was a huge hit and a great play. And yes, he has written other things. Screenplays. Fiction. Political commentary. And plays. Lots of plays. Really wonderful plays.

I met Bill last year when director Jerry Less invited me to do a reading of Avow for New York City's Algonquin Project. Like Mass Appeal, Avow has as its backdrop the Catholic Church. But the topic this time is gay marriage. Through an intimate portrayal of one couple and their relationship to their faith, we are given an insight into the hypocrisy of the church's standing.

I then did another reading with Jerry Less of Bill's play All Hallowed. This play is absolute genius. Three generations of a family deal with the loss of the patriarch. But who was he? An honored war veteran, an unfaithful husband, an angry father, a loving Granfather? His body is lowered into the ground as the rest of the village prepares to go trick or treating. What ghosts await for us all as we say good-bye to the past? Coming this October? Let's hope so.

Then in March, I was fortunate enough to work with Bill again. This time it was his new play called Expatriate. Bill directed actors Rosemary Murphy, Bill Fairbairn, and me, and the play was presented at the Studio Theater at Theater Row. The play is at once political and personal. What do you do when you've been betrayed by your country and by your family? This is the central question of the play. Again Bill finds a metaphor for big issues through intimate relationships, this time a Grandmother, a son, and a grandson torn between the need to be true to themselves and the need they have for each other.

Now Bill is at work once again. This time its a new musical called Austin's Bridge. The show is currently running at Virginia's Firehouse Theatre Project. If you're anywhere in the vicinity of Richmond, run to see this show. Otherwise you're going to have to wait until it moves to Broadway.

I look forward to catching up with Bill C. Davis again very soon. Expect great things from this man. They're already written.

Happy Sunday
Wayne

Riddle

2007-06-09T22:49:00.000-04:00

Here, for no particular reason at all, is my favorite quip:

The other day upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
Oh how I wish he'd stay away.

Happy Weekend!

Wayne

Coram Boy's Closing is Everyone's Loss

2007-06-07T09:36:00.000-04:00

It's just a little more than a week since Coram Boy closed on Broadway, but I can't stop thinking about it. I was at the final peformance, owing to the fact that my friend Ivy Vahanian, was in the cast. I didn't know anything about the show going in. I'd not heard, read, or scene a single ad, and I missed the Isherwood review in the New York Times on May 3.

Turns out, Ivy had one of the leads, floating onstage at the top of the show as an Angel, and then playing the pivotal role of Melissa. She was astonishing in the role, and I don't say that because I adore her personally. The arc of her character takes her from standing frozen as the Angel for 10 minutes, to lightening fast costume changes, and then as Melissa, falling in love, kissing the boy, having a baby onstage (the sounds that came out of her body!), losing the child, regaining the child fifteen years later - it's astonishing.

But that was the thing about Coram Boy. If I had to tell someone what the play was "about", it would not be easy to do in a simple paragraph. Based on a novel by Jamila Gavin, the show had some very dark overtones: murder, abortion, orphans, rape, slavery, women's rights. Yet the story never once felt like a political soapbox.

Although it was a British import (National Theatre production) it was a fine ensemble piece for some great American actors. Particulary good were Uzo Aduba as the boy Toby, and Bill Camp as the creepy/sexy bad guy Otis Gardiner.

The real hero of Coram Boy, however, was the director Melly Still. She managed 20 actors, a chorus of 20 singers, and an orchestra of 7 with such deftness and taste. There was never a moment in the show that lagged, and the staging was fresh, inventive, and carried an emotional wallup. Her eye for composition is impeccable, and she makes the empty stage come alive with more impact than all the flashy Broadway shows in the world could muster. This is a career to watch.

Sadly, though, Coram Boy never had a chance. Too many salaries, not enough shows. Ultimately, it speaks to the tastes of American audiences and the times we're living in. Who wants to sit through a Broadway show that actually says something? Who wants to feel uncomfortable? Who wants to see the ugly side of human nature? I think if Coram Boy had featured a few dance numbers, a half-naked boy swining on a bungee cord, or kids prancing around like they had spring fever, maybe it would've sold more tickets. But as it was - all human emotion and Handel music - this show had no place in a country that doesn't really want to look at truth.

"What Is The Word" by Samuel Beckett

2007-06-06T10:10:00.000-04:00

As I look back on the time I spent with Joe Chaikin, I rememer two occaisons on which Joe, having been asked to perform something, chose as his material this poem, written for him, by Samuel Beckett.

No small thing, to have a poem written for you by the man who is arguably the most important playwright of the 20th Century.

Joe would take each line of the text and allow it to rise up from deep inside, releasing it on little more than a whisper. Often his face would contort with effort, his own journey through aphasia literally a struggle to find the word.

This poem is hard to find. I'm not even sure if it's in print. So here for you, Beckett fans, the poem for Joe...

WHAT IS THE WORD
by
Samuel Beckett

(for Joe Chaikin)

folly-

folly for to-

for to-

what is the word-

folly from this-

all this-

folly from all this-

given-

folly given all this-

seeing-

folly seeing all this-

this-

what is the word-

this this-

this this here-

all this this here-

folly given all this-

seeing-

folly seeing all this this here-

for to-

what is the word-

see-

glimpse-

seem to glimpse-

need to seem to glimpse-

folly for to need to seem to glimpse-

what-

what is the word-

and where

folly for to need to seem to glimpse what where-

where-

what is the word-

there-over there-

away over there-

afar-

afar away over there-

afaint-

afaint afar away over there what-

what-

what is the word-

seing all this-

all this this-

all this this here-

folly for to see what-

glimpse-seem to glimpse-

need to seem to glimpse-

afaint afar away over there what-

folly for to need to sem to glimpse afaint afar

away over there what-

what-

what is the word-

what is the word

2007-06-06T10:09:00.001-04:00

Rabbit Hole

2007-06-05T10:15:00.000-04:00

Today I have an audition for the play Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire. It's being done at Florida Studio Theatre and I'm going in for the role of Howie, the husband. This play, which won the Pulitzer Prize this year, was originally produced by Manhattan Theatre Club and starred Cynthia Nixon (of Sex and the City fame).

I did not see the original production, but I've auditioned for this role before, so this is my third or fourth time reading the play and working on it. It's an astonishing play. Hauntingly beautiful. A painful journey into the lives of one family as they struggle to deal with the loss of their three year old child. The play doesn't offer any pat answers, and each of the characters process loss in their own way. Becca (the Cynthia Nixon role) has a particularly difficult time living with the memories of her son - the clothes, the toys, the photos. Even the house has become a shrine to his death and she feels increasingly more trapped and unable to move beyond anything other than constant guilt and sorrow.

To make things even worse, Becca's younger sisiter, Lizzy, has become pregnant. Never was there a more ill-suited candidate for parenthood than Lizzy. She drinks, parties, swears like a trucker, gets into bar fights, sleeps around, and is perpetually underemployed. But becoming a mother may be Lizzy's salvation. There is a particularly moving scene where Becca attempts to give LIzzy some of her dead sons clothes. It is a well-meaning gesture, but clearly Becca can't see past her own grief to how her actions impact on other people.

In the scene I've been given for the audition, Howie is alone with Lizzy and she confronts him about having an affair. It's unclear whether Howie actually has gone through with it, but the fact that he's been spotted in public with another woman is signal enough that his marriage with Becca is sinking. There is shame, guilt, denial, anger, frustration, rage, and a mounting sense of doom all in the span of a few pages. What a great task as an actor!

David Lindsay-Abaire may be one of the greatest living playwrights today. A great testament to the healing power of shared grief, Rabbit Hole is, in my opinion, the most important, and most perfect play for all of us living in a post-911 world. This is artistry at its finest.

A Decade with Joseph Chaikin

2007-06-04T09:03:00.000-04:00

About a week ago I was contacted by a filmmaker named Encke King. He is working on a documentary about the late great director and actor Joseph Chaikin.
I had known Joe and worked with him very closely over the last decade of his life. He was an extraordinary individual whose contributions to the American Theater are many and significant.

Encke met me for a cup of coffee to talk about Joe and tell me a little about his project. There already exist some very good footage of Joe, especially from the 1960's and 70's when he was at the height of his fame. In the early 1990's, however, Joe suffered a stroke after undergoing an open heart surgery, and became aphasic.

Aphasia is a disorder that occurs when the language center of the brain becomes short-circuited. A person knows exactly what it is that they want to say, they just can't find the words to say it. It's a frustrating condition to live with.

Joe was in rehabilitation for a year, and worked with a speech therapist for a long time. He never completely regained his old facility with language, but what emerged was in many ways far more interesting. He became a poet. A walking haiku. He was usually pretty clear and somehow managed to get his thoughts across. But the language he found was often startling. I remember once he was describing the artistic experience. He said this: "Theater is often heaven or... basement."

Joseph Chaikin was a five-time OBIE Award winner, including the first ever Lifetime Achievement Award. In the 1960's he founded a theater company called The Open Theater which created some of the most ground-breaking plays of the day including America Hurrah and The Serpent (both by Jean-Claude van Itallie). In the 1970's he formed another company called The Winter Project, an ensemble whose members include Ronnie Gilbert, Tina Shepard, and Will Patton.

Joe is famous also for a book he wrote called The Presence of the Actor.

He knew Samuel Beckett personally and directed several of his plays, both in Europe and here in the states. And he was very close friends to playwright Sam Shepard, with whom Chaikin collaborated on such plays as Tongues, Savage Love, The War In Heaven, and When The World Was Green: A Chef's Fable.

I met Joe in 1991 and began working with him as an actor on a new collaborative project about disabilities. Most of the company were actors with a disability of movement. The play was about mobility and cultural attitudes. I was one of two able-bodied actors who were to represent the rest of the able-bodied world. This project developed over the course of ten years, and was the thing that Joe returned to over and over during the last decade.

We then began teaching together. Workshops for Actors and Directors. Joe would choose a small number of playwrights to focus on (always Beckett and Shakespeare), and we would bring together a group of 12 actors and 6 directors for scene-study over the course of six weeks. I learned more in those workshops watching others than perhaps all my years of training.

I also had the priviledge of being directed by Joe in such shows as Chicago by Sam Shepard, A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White by Adrienne Kennedy (both at Signature Theater Company in New York), and The Glass Menagerie at Yale Rep. I got a taste of what it may have been like to work with him back in the Open Theater years when I was a member of the company in a re-working of his famous Winter Project play Tourists And Refugees, workshopped at the Manhattan Theater Club.

So when Encke King asked whether I would be interested in speaking with him about Joe I was thrilled. He told me they were looking for materials about Joe's life post-aphasia. It was a good excuse for me to go to my obscenely-overcrowded storage unit and do some editing. I found a milk-crate full of materials from my work together with Joe. I had been meaning to archive this material at some point. Now seems as good a time as any.

And so, dear reader, you will be the first to share with me what I uncover from my personal Chaikin archive. This truly was a great life in the theater.

I'm off now to rehearsal. Today I begin work with director Eva Burgess on a new piece, untitled, which explores America in the 1950's through the lens of Grace Metalious, author of the scandalous Peyton Place. Wish me luck.

See you bac here soon!

Wayne

Is Theater Essential?

2007-05-31T22:17:00.000-04:00

Welcome!

Is theater still necessary in our culture?

That's the question.

Is acting on the stage still a viable/interesting/worthwhile endeavor? Don't be so quick to answer. It's not an easy question.

OK, I'll give you a hint.

I think so.

But I'm not so sure all the time. I work in the theater. I usually make my living in the theater. But there are days, my friend, there are days...

My purpose here in blogging is simply to tell you what it's like to work in the theater - as an actor, a director, a teacher, and other other way that comes along.

I'm not going to tell you what shows are playing. You can find that anywhere.

I'm not going to tell you who's in the cast (unless they're my friend!) or what the critics say (who cares).

I'm just going to share my day to day with you.

If you're living in Chillicothe, OH and you're wondering what it would be like to be an actor in New York City...this is the blog for you.

So check back tomorrow. I promise to keep it interesting.

If I don't, I trust you'll let me know.

Peace,
Wayne Maugans

P.S. With all love and respect to Chillicothe.

P.P.S. I just got a phone call from my friend Sean Patrick Reilly. He's got a lead role in the play The Front Page at Williamstown Theatre Festival this summer. He's really excited. He should be. Williamstown is a big deal for an actor. Stars. Money. Stars. I'm very happy for him. Way to go Sean!!!