At Neil Simon Festival, A Contest Entry Fee That’s No Laughing Matter

January 29th, 2019 § 0 comments § permalink

If one looks around the website of The Neil Simon Festival, a yearly theatre event held in Cedar City, Utah, there’s a list of donors to the company. On that list are seven entries at the $100+ level. But the list is perhaps some 30 short, because that’s the approximate number of unlisted individuals who sent $150 to the Festival last year.

While the $150 sent by those people isn’t described by the Festival as a donation, it effectively is one for all but a single person. The $150 figure is derived from the submission fee playwrights are asked to provide as their entry fee to the Festival’s New Play Contest, now in its ninth year. While the Festival notes that every submission receives a written evaluation as part of the company’s response, it is not a fee for service. Playwrights are not offered the opportunity to submit and not receive an evaluation.

Richard Bugg, founder and executive producer of the Festival, said in a call with Arts Integrity that the $150 submission fee was new as of last year, markedly increased from their prior figure. He said it has had the effect of decreasing the submissions, from nearly 100 scripts to somewhere in the 30s. The deadline for the 2019 contest is 11:59 pm on February 1, so there is not yet a final count for this year.

Asked about the fee, which is notably high compared to other play competitions and workshop programs, Bugg explained that the fee is waived for any college or university that chooses and submits a single selection, though he said that none had done so. The Festival’s website states:

The entry fee is used in three areas: a) to help defray the cost of travel and lodging for the playwright, b) payment to our contest readers for their professional expertise, and c) contest administration (photocopying, advertising, etc. but not salary).

Bugg specifically said that the fee helps to underwrite payment to Douglas Hill, who reviews most of the scripts and writes the critiques. Bugg said that Hill is, “magnificent in looking at the structure of scripts and making suggestions.” The payment also helps to pay other reviewers engaged by Hill as needed. Bugg said he also reads all of the finalists’ scripts.

Hill also spoke to the effect of the submission fee, in an e-mail response to questions from Arts Integrity. “We have received as many as 120 submissions in some years, and as few as 20 in other years,” he wrote. “Unfortunately since the contest is less than 10 years old, and with the recent changes to the contest, it’s a little difficult to provide you with a good approximate number.

“We use it to some degree to weed out,” said Bugg. “We get a higher degree of script that way.” However, Bugg allowed that perhaps some worthy scripts might not be submitted due to the expense.

The season at The Neil Simon Festival, an independent not-for-profit organization, is short, only three weeks this coming year, with two shows a day five days a week, and with most actors performing in multiple roles akin to classic repertory format. The winner of the new play contest first receives a six-day staged reading in the year in which it is selected, and is then produced, for three performances, during the subsequent season. In 2019, that play will be I Left My Dignity in My Other Purse by Shelley Chester.

Asked whether the Festival was familiar with Dramatists Guild guidelines regarding play festivals and contests, Bugg said that he was not. Ralph Sevush, Executive Director for Business Affairs of the Guild, when informed of the $150 submission fee, provided the following guidance from the Guild’s best practices guidance:

BEST PRACTICE: The organization does not require a submission fee.  Furthermore, the organization imposes no other obligation on the author or encumbrance on the work (e.g., ticket sales, participation fees, technical rentals, hiring fees, marketing, or other selling obligations), except for do-it-yourself (“DIY”) productions. The Guild has long disapproved of excessive submission fees, which not only undermine the benefit of any “award” or “royalty,” but also impose financial hardship on the author. Any other authorial obligations should be clearly noted up front; this is particularly true for DIY and similar festivals that require authors to self-produce their works.

Regarding payments to the authors when their winning works are performed, Bugg said that there were none. The playwright receives transportation and housing during both visits. Bugg explained, “There’s no royalties. Just being in the season is reward in our eyes.” Bugg did make clear that other playwrights in the Festival, including the Simon estate, are paid royalties.

The Neil Simon Festival, now in its 17th year, is admittedly a small company, operating on a budget of roughly $300,000 per Bugg. While Hill wrote, “We’re probably best defined as a professional non-Equity company,” that assertion is undermined by a casting notice from the Festival. The notice stipulates availability from June 3 to July 29 in Cedar City and 4-5 weeks of subsequent performance in Park City and Ivins, also in Utah. Regarding compensation, the website says only that, “Housing is provided along with a modest stipend.” Bugg noted that while he and several of the other leaders of the company are members of Actors Equity and do perform in the Festival, “We don’t do contracts for ourselves.”

That the Neil Simon Festival operates a new play contest in which playwrights are asked to pay a fee far above the typical competition, that the selected playwright receives no royalty for their work being presented to a paying public, and that actors are essentially volunteering for an entire summer’s engagement stand as three red flags about the company. These simply are not prevailing industry standards. Professionals are paid for their work.

That the company leadership – Bugg, Hill, and artistic director Peter Sham – all teach at the university level (Bugg and Sham at Southern Utah University and Hill at University of Nevada Las Vegas) also raises questions about the professional standards they are imparting to their students, separate from their Neil Simon duties. The encouragement to “work” for little or no pay runs contrary to the practices and expectations that should be instilled in aspiring artists. The suggestion that playwrights of new plays should be rewarded simply by virtue of being produced undermines the perceived value of authors’ creations. Actors shouldn’t be grateful for a place to sleep, petty cash, and stage time. High submission fees emphasize economic disparity among artists, making it possible only for those of means to enter competitions that require a significant outlay (very possibly diminishing the range and caliber of submissions and the program in the process).

When the clock strikes midnight on February 2, the Neil Simon Festival’s  Play Contest entry period will close. But hopefully with some serious thinking resulting from outside scrutiny, the leadership of the company will rethink the economic model under which they function and the messages they communicate through their operating model. Perhaps they can use it to leverage more funding, locally or nationally. Because however great the experience may be for those involved, exorbitant fees for contest entrants and free labor by actors don’t add up a professional experience. It ends up costing the artists to be involved, even as audiences pay in order to see that work. And that’s no laughing matter.

Tina Landau: “A Home in the Theatre”

January 17th, 2019 § 0 comments § permalink

 

I was asked to deliver the Keynote Address for BroadwayCon, a three day expo for fans of Broadway theater.  The theme of the Opening Ceremony was “Home,” and included performances by Susan Egan singing “Home” from Beauty and the Beast, Hailey Kilgore with “Home” from The Wiz, as well as Ethan Slater, Ben Cameron, and Anthony Rapp contributing other songs and an opening group performance of “BroadwayCon Today,” set to the tune of “Bikini Bottom Day” from SpongeBob SquarePants – The Musical.This is what I shared with the audience at the Opening of BroadwayCon on Friday, January 11

*   *   *   *

Okay, I want you to take a moment to yourself to finish this sentence: Home is…. Blank.

If you even could fill in that blank and we all said our answers aloud there’d probably be as many different answers as there are people in this room.  In fact, there’s probably no other word that conjures so many meanings except for Love.

I’m obsessed with the word Home and have been since the years of moving from New York to California in high school where we kept switching homes to my various college dorm rooms then back to New York before two years at ART (the American Repertory Theater)  followed by a stint at Trinity Rep before moving back to New York where I blazed through several too expensive or rat-infested apartments which resulted in a period of 17 years in which I moved 19 times. I’m also one of the people who’ve made The Wizard of Oz the most watched movie of all time, and if you look at my bookshelves you’ll find one entirely devoted to titles like The Meaning of Home, Home: A Short History, Place and Identity: The Performance of HomeThe Poetics of Space, The Zen of Oz – and my favorite poem is T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets in which he says Home is where one starts from,” and sometimes at night to help me fall asleep I watch the show House Hunters which is about people searching for homes – and in high school I wrote a song called “Take Me Back Home” and in my musical Dream True, I wrote lyrics for a song called Finding Home – and last season with SpongeBob SquarePants I made a show that was ALL about home: SpongeBob trying to save his home, Pearl wanting to run away from home, Sandy missing her home but coming to find a new one in the community of Bikini Bottom, and Squidward who only truly feels at home with his name in lights on the Great White Way.

Danny Skinner, Lilli Cooper and Ethan Slater in “SpongeBob SquarePants – The Musical”

But what interests me most these days is not feeling or being at home, as much as missing home and the search that results from it, which I believe is the catalyst for great human activity and achievement across centuries and cultures. Home is both “our place of origin and our ultimate destination,” so its identity is two-fold:  the home we remember – which causes the missing – and the home we dream – which causes the searching. And the search is what brings us poetry and relationships and men on the moon – and Broadway shows.

When I was in my twenties, I was sick in bed one day and started watching the ten-hour marathon of a show called The Family, hosted by the self-help guru John Bradshaw, in which he led viewers through an extended series of exercises.  I was asked to close my eyes and recall one moment from when I was a toddler, age 3 or 4 – and I remembered for the first time being outside in the playground at our house, sitting on one of those toy horses with springs that rock back and forth. I remembered the sunlight, the exact angle of its rays as it warmed me – but most vividly I remembered the feeling: free, safe, at home. Then Bradshaw asked me to recall an image from ages 6 to 9. What came was a memory of standing outside the kitchen door to my house, and trying to get in as I always did, but finding the door locked. And again, I remembered above all the feeling: alone, confused, rejected. There were only several years between those two moments but somehow in that time my experience had shifted from feeling at home in the world to feeling displaced in it.

Now I, like most in this room, am beyond blessed to have had that feeling arise from a locked door, as opposed to the millions on our planet who experience it due to  eviction, deportation, exile, imprisonment, or destruction of physical homes due to natural disaster, war, or poverty.  But I do believe that, though our physical realities may vastly differ, whether we’re born into privilege or poverty, whether our childhood was happy or brutal, we all share at our core a kind of spiritual or emotional homesickness – a longing for Home.

What is this thing, Home?  Home is… Blank.  What?

Last night when I asked my girlfriend what home meant to her and if she’s experienced the theater as a home, she answered Yes, she felt that way in high school when she joined the drama club and, to quote her, “suddenly felt I had a place.”  She went on to say that, as an actor, she felt at home on stage because she could express parts of her self that she couldn’t express in her physical home – she could be angry or mean or jealous on stage, but not with her parents at home.

Is Home the space to which you can bring all the parts of yourself and not just the pretty ones? Is Home the space – physical or emotional or spiritual – in which you’re most dimensional and least defined by others? Is Home a feeling of safety – knowing you will be cared for and protected there? Is Home the experience of being seen and known and, above all, accepted – not only by others perhaps but also by your self?

Yes And. At least for me. The word I keep circling back to is Belonging. Home as the experience of belonging.  Belonging in a family or relationship or cast or, in the rare moments you’re truly at home in your own skin and the stars align, the experience of belonging in the universe itself.

But when do we ever feel this?  Maybe never or occasionally. But we all want to feel this right? Because on some cellular level we carry a memory of it within us already – the feeling of belonging and being protected in our first home – yes, I’m talking about being in the womb – the enclosed, dark, safe space from which we emerge… Sounds a bit like a theater, huh? Just saying.

So we go through our lives longing to return to or find for the first time this space, this feeling. And the desire for the feeling becomes the motive of our actions. We walk on roads and go on journeys and make art and make musicals and go to the theater and listen to cast albums as we search for Home.  We travel, we read, we find lovers, make families, build structures, create communities, tell stories as we search for Home.

Which brings me to the theater – the place we tell stories. Most often, stories of the search.

According to Joseph Campbell in The Hero With a Thousand Faces, there’s only one story – it’s called the Monomyth – and it’s told over and over in all cultures, in all times, but through varying specifics.  It’s the story we need to tell because it’s the story of our search for meaning, for wholeness, for Home. And the need for this story is what defines us as humans. It’s the story of Seasons, from death to rebirth, and the story of Night turning to Day, from dark to light – it’s the Hero’s Journey and it’s a story about going away from and returning back to Home. (Also, keep in mind, the “hero” may be a man or a woman, a child, a creature, a community…)

Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz”

It’s here we find Odysseus and Aeneas, Dorothy and Luke Skywalker, Ishmael searching for Moby Dick and Alice going into Wonderland.  It’s here we find most any show playing on Broadway right now, all versions of the Monomyth and Hero’s Journey: Harry Potter, Wicked, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Lion King, Hamilton, Book of Mormon, Kinky Boots, the list goes on. And here too we find in Broadway’s history versions of the Monomyth in The Sound of Music, Death of a Salesman, Cabaret, Man of La Mancha, The Miracle Worker, Oliver, How to SucceedThoroughly Modern MillieHairspray, Billy Elliot – I better stop.  (Of course the danger in our use of the Hero’s Journey template to write a show is that we end up with shows that are more formula than fresh… but that’s for another day.)

As audiences for these shows, we connect to something mythic and subliminal – the Monomyth provides the familiarity of a home terrain.  And when we connect with the specifics of story or character and are able to identify our self in the drama – when we see representation that includes who we are – when we see lost or hidden parts of ourselves brought into light with compassion or love… Then too we find Home.

As people making these shows, we hope for connection as well – to reach across the footlights and feel something back. And in the meantime, we put ourselves in rooms with collaborators we quickly call Family, we establish familiar routines (how we sign in, warm up, set up our dressing rooms), we operate in a space where everyone’s contribution matters, from the director to the props master to the second electrician,  and when we go into a theater, most anywhere in the world, we recognize its signifiers as our own: the stage, the house, its architecture, its shadows, its aisles and fly rails, its ghostlight…. These we know intimately though we may be in a foreign city.

So we make theater and we see theater as a search for Home, and often it becomes one.  The theater is home when it offers us familiarity and intimacy – when it offers us safety as we attempt the impossible and splay open our souls and expose our vulnerabilities and fall on our faces only to discover it’s all okay – It’s okay to do that here. The theater is home when it’s a space where ALL, including the me riddled with shame or doubt or self-loathing, yes ALL, including neurotic me and lonely me and bullied me and isolated me, are welcome. When ALL are welcome.

Today I ask that we continue to share and expand this home of the theater – that we offer to others, not in this room, the refuge and comfort that we’ve all surely found here at times.

May Broadway be a home for an ever-larger family of theater-makers of every race, class, religion, country of origin, immigration status, (dis)ability,  age, gender identity, and sexual orientation who are making stories about and for audiences and fans of every race, class, religion, country of origin, immigration status, (dis)ability, age, gender identity, and sexual orientation. May our home be open, and grow ever larger in size and love.

May you search for and find a home in the theater.

May you find a home, here, today, at this conference –

And know that when we say “Welcome to BroadwayCon,” we are really saying, “Welcome Home.”

 

© Tina Landau, 2019, used by permission

Setting Free The Plays Of 1923

December 20th, 2018 § 1 comment § permalink

While the phrase “public domain” may hold little meaning for you (or make your eyes glaze over), January 1, 2019 will mark a significant milestone in that seemingly arcane distinction. That’s because at the beginning of the new year, creative works will once again begin to enter the public domain – that is to say that they will no longer be subject to copyright protection or restrictions – for the first time in 20 years.

Why the gap? Because in 1998 Congress enacted an extension on copyright protection (named for entertainer and congressman Sonny Bono, who fought for such legislation). So while works from 1922 have been in the public domain for two decades, it is only now that 1923 works move out of copyright. This means they can be produced, adapted, copied as anyone sees fit. If you’ve always wanted to create a radical modern retelling of Felix Salten’s Bambi, it’s all yours – provided you don’t accidentally incorporate elements which were unique to the Disney animated film, because those bits belong to Disney and they’re likely to vigorously protect their intellectual property.

While there have been various articles and web essays about what enters the public domain imminently, they have tended to concentrate on books, movies and songs – for example, you will no longer have to pay for the rights to “Yes, We Have No Bananas” going forward, should you be inclined to use it. You’ll also be able set Robert Frost’s “Stopping By The Woods On A Snowy Evening” to a hip-hop track and not owe his estate a dime.

Condola Rashad in “Saint Joan” at Manhattan Theatre Club in 2018 (Photo by Joan Marcus)

When it comes to theatre, the most notable work – and it has been noted elsewhere – that will come into the public domain is George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan. That means if Manhattan Theatre Club had just waited a year to produce the play, they would have saved, assuming a 6% author’s royalty, about $125,000 on their production. That said, Shaw’s Saint Joan is just one of many versions of the story, so keep your hands off everything from Jean Anouilh’s The Lark and Jane Anderson’s very recent Mother of the Maid.

This prompts the question: what other theatrical work is about to be up for grabs for all takers? 

Certainly nothing as quite as classic as the Shaw work, although Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine is widely acknowledged as an important work by an important playwright, even if recent outings are few. There was a musical adaptation that found success a decade ago.

A flip through the pages of the venerable Burns Mantle Best Plays books for 1922-23 and 1923-24 is a great survey, and while the synopses that appear for most plays suggest there’s a lot that’s best left in the past, there are some plays that might be worth looking at again, either to produce on a budget (no royalties), or adapt for modern audiences. Mind you, there’s no racial or ethnic diversity to speak of in the mix, unless you count Hungarian, but of course now anyone can set that right. Maybe there are shows out there ripe for musicalization, with no strings attached?

Here’s a cursory sampling, in no particular order:

  • Will Shakespeare by Clemence Dane, which posited a love triangle in which Shakespeare and Kit Marlowe fight for the affections of one Mary Fitton, lady in waiting. It climaxes with a fight between Will and Kit which climaxes with (spoiler alert) Kit falling on his own knife. One can never have to many plays chronicling a life which went largely unrecorded by history.
  • Mary the Third was a mid-career work by Rachel Crothers, a highly successful playwright whose greatest success would nonetheless come with her last produced piece, Susan and God in 1937. Mary the Third looked at marriage across three generations of women in the same family.
  • Humoresque by Fannie Hurst was the story of a an up-from-the-slums violinist, and had already been a silent film based on Hurst’s short story. It was later considerably reworked by Clifford Odets and Zachary Gold into a film released in 1946, with the violinist now caught in a romance with his wealthy patroness, played by Joan Crawford.
  • My Aunt from Ypsilanti was “adapted from the French” and while the play seemed entirely negligible, you gotta love that title, the only Broadway show to ever use the place name Ypsilanti. Of course, titles can’t be copyrighted, so if no one stole this one by now, it’s unlikely to see  a resurgence.
  • Swashbucklers weren’t reserved for the screen, and 1923 saw the stage debut of Rafael Sabatini’s Scaramouche. One Sheldon Stanwood played the French hero, later embodied in 1952 on the screen by Stewart Granger. No records survive (actually, just didn’t look) as to whether the title character did the fandango.
“Scaramouche”
  • Frederick Lonsdale was a successful writer of musical librettos, but it’s his plays that have lived on, including The Last of Mrs. Cheney and On Approval,which will come into public domain in 2021 and 2023 respectively. But his Aren’t We All? from 1923 was in fact his last show to be seen on Broadway, in a starry 1985 production led by Claudette Colbert and Rex Harrison. 
  • The sharp-eyed might question the inclusion of Outward Bound by Sutton Vane, but while it premiered on January 7, 1924, the Best Plays book notes that it was copyrighted in 1923. This metaphysical mystery, a thematic precursor to the TV’s Lost (oh, right, spoiler alert), was sufficiently popular to yield two movie versions, first in 1930, with Leslie Howard reprising his stage role, and again with Paul Henreid in the Howard role in a 1943 version called Between Two Worlds (oops, again, spoiler alert).
“Outward Bound”
  • The same “Say, wasn’t that a 1924 show?” query might be applied to Beggar on Horseback by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly but once again, while it premiered on February 12, 1924, its copyright was 1923 – the same year as another collaboration by the duo, the musical Helen of Troy, New York, which had songs by the team of Kalmar and Ruby. Somewhat surprisingly, it’s the play which seemed to have legs, as it turns up now and again on various stages, though its last Broadway run was in 1970.
  • Ferenc Molnar had a solid run of hits between 1902 and 1941, including Liliom (which later became Carousel) and The Play’s The Thing (later adapted by Tom Stoppard as Rough Crossing). His 1923 fantasy of royalty, The Swan, translated by M.P. Baker, would become a film in 1956, starring Grace Kelly and Alec Guinness. It was one of two Molnar plays to debut on Broadway in October of that year, the other being the more tragically-minded Launzi, adapted by Edna St. Vincent Millay, about a young woman, rebuffed in love, who tries suicide, fails, is romantically rebuffed again, then acts as if she were dead, taking to wearing an angel’s wings.
  • Not to be outdone by Kaufman & Connelly and Molnar, George M. Cohan wrote two shows that premiered in 1923, doing the book, music and lyrics for The Rise of Rosie O’Reilly, which gave Ruby Keeler her Broadway debut, a musical, and The Song and Dance Man, a play. Just to one up the competition, Cohan starred in the latter piece – and the two shows opened in the same week, the former on Christmas and the latter on New Year’s Eve.
  • Cervantes’s Don Quixote predates concerns like copyright, so the material has actually long been available for free use. But for those who have grown tired of Man of La Mancha, they might want to delve into some archive and find out if there’s anything to be salvaged from Sancho Panza, the 1923 musical by Melchior Lengyel, with a score by Hugo Felix, which seems to have emphasized the wrong character, no doubt contributing to its brief run. Even 95 years ago, marketing mattered.
  • Years before Hedy Lamarr worked her white-washed wiles on Walter Pidgeon, Annette Margulies embodied the “native girl” Tondeleyo in the potboiler White Cargo, itself adapted from a novel called Hell’s Playground by Ida Vera Simonton. A British film of the play preceded the Lamarr version, and faced censorship for sensual content, even in the pre-Production Code days.

Those with forethought may have already been working on resurrections or revivals of some of these works, but have kept silent until the copyright fully expires at 12:00 am on January 1. But if we’ve had dueling The Wild Partys and both a play and musical called Hamilton, who’s to say there might not be multiple Aunts From Ypsilanti in our future. Dramaturgs and literary managers, playwrights and composers, artistic directors: start your engines. The new year will be here before you can say “Scaramouche”!

Update, December 31, 2018: Subsequent to the publication of this post, I was contacted by Glenn Fleishman, who wrote the excellent Smithsonian piece linked above. According to his research, while Saint Joan debuted in 1923, it was not copyrighted until 1924. So if this Shaw play is on your theatre’s schedule for 2019, you may want to delve deeper into its copyright history before deciding not to pay royalties on it.

Teaching Students & Audiences About Swastikas, The SS and “The Sound of Music”

December 18th, 2018 § 0 comments § permalink

If you see a stage production of The Sound of Music, here are some words you won’t hear: Nazi. Hitler.

Here are some words you will hear in the stage version: Gauleiter. Anschluss. Third Reich.

Regardless of whether you see The Sound of Music on stage or watch the perennially popular 1965 movie, here’s another word you won’t hear: Holocaust.

None of this is meant as criticism of The Sound of Music in either version. They are simply facts about the musical’s book and screenplay. Coming 14 and 20 years after the end of World War II, the stage and screen musicals (respectively) arrived in a period when a significant majority of the theatre and filmgoing public still held vivid memories of the war, and countless stories – both real and fictional – had proliferated in its wake, some coming while battles and atrocities still raged. Even casual mentions of associated terms and names surely brought instant recognition of the entirety of the perfidy that corrupted Germany and killed millions.

The real-life Trapp Family Singers

The Sound of Music focuses its attention on a heavily fictionalized account of the real-life Trapp Family Singers, who charmed Austria in the late 1920s and 1930s, leaving for America in 1938 following the country’s annexation by Germany (aka the Anschluss) so that the paterfamilias, a former naval captain, would not be pressed into service by the Third Reich. Rodgers and Hammerstein, the famed lyricist and composer working on what would be their final show together, and Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, the book writers, foregrounded the romance of Captain von Trapp and the governess to his children, Maria, with the rise of the of the Reich lightly threaded through the show, only to come into its fullest focus in the climactic escape of the family from Nazi clutches. Seven years after the Broadway premiere of The Sound of Music, John Kander, Fred Ebb, and Joe Masteroff would make the rise and intent of the Nazis much more explicit, and central, in the musical Cabaret.

While the overall structure of The Sound of Music remains the same in both the stage and film versions, there are many differences. In the stage version, the characters of Max Detweiler and Elsa von Schrader are, at the very least, appeasers of the German rise to power in Austria (“What’s going to happen is going to happen,” says Max, “Just be sure it doesn’t happen to you”) and at worst, potential collaborators. Indeed, unlike the film, where the Captain’s romance with Elsa is ended almost exclusively because of his evident love for Maria, in the stage version the couple break apart over their differing viewpoints of how to respond to the ominous political shift, laid out in the song “No Way To Stop It,” which does not appear in the film.

Program cover for LaGuardia High School’s The Sound of Music

This dramaturgical prologue is provided in order to consider the recent debate at New York’s LaGuardia High School – almost 60 years since the musical’s debut, 73 years after the end of the war – over the presence of swastikas in a high school production of the stage musical. As first reported by the New York Daily News, the school’s principal insisted upon the removal of swastikas from the set and costumes of the show just before it began its 10-performance run. Students involved in the production protested, and a compromise was reached, in which the presence of the swastika was greatly reduced, but not eliminated: it was prominently rendered as banners (on video screens) flanking the stage during the Kaltzberg Musical Festival where the family competes late in the show, and as a cloth flag somewhat inexplicably draped over a gate in the convent where the climactic scene takes place (a nun pulled it down at LaGuardia, echoing the film moment when Captain von Trapp removes and tears apart a Nazi flag hung on his house).

The swastika was also to have appeared, as it would have in Germany and its conquered territories in that era, on armbands worn by military personnel. The compromise saw it replaced by the stylized twin lightning bolts that were the symbol of the Schutzstaffel, the SS, originally Hitler’s personal guards which grew into the Nazi elite force, charged with planning and carrying out the eradication of Jews, as well as Romani, queer, disabled and other specified identities which did not conform to the ostensibly “pure” Aryan characteristics. That the SS symbol was acceptable while the swastika was not has to do with a lack of historical understanding of what the former represented, while the latter, alarmingly, is in ongoing use by neo-Nazi organizations and vandals to this day, and therefore better recognized and instantly repellant.

The script of The Sound of Music does not require swastika banners, though it does specify SS uniforms, where the swastika would have been seen. The placement of either symbol, or the frequency of its use, misses the larger issue that must be considered when producing The Sound of Music today, namely that the show minimizes the historical underpinnings of the story in favor of romance, and that today, in an era when white nationalism has raised its vile head in international politics and in America, productions shouldn’t lean in to sanitization. That’s not to say that the text can or should be altered, but by avoiding the most obvious symbols of a regime known for unspeakable atrocities, productions risk underplaying its horrors. That the swastika scares people is only appropriate.

To be sure, schools will want to take care that images of the show featuring Nazi symbols and paraphernalia are not taken out of context, something that can occur all too easily in this era when everyone has a camera at the ready in their cell phone, and when such images can quickly be shared widely via social media. In the wake of the reports on the LaGuardia dispute, many teachers have written on social media about the care they take during rehearsals and performances regarding the use of props, costumes and photos thereof, often keeping those materials under strict control. One teacher wrote on Facebook of ritually burning the Nazi armbands after the final performance, so they could not be misappropriated.

Signage at LaGuardia High during the run of The Sound of Music

In a program note, presumably written and printed prior to the eruption over swastikas, the LaGuardia principal Lisa Mars, who also billed herself as executive producer of the show, wrote of the need to delve “deeper into the plot,” citing both Nazism and the Third Reich; an accompanying note from director Lee Lobenhofer invokes facism. A program insert, likely added in the wake of the controversy, headed “Stand with us, United Against Hatred,” explained that the students and faculty of the school had asked that a portion of ticket proceeds be donated to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. “LaGuardia Arts stand united against hatred and we ask that you join with us in denouncing all forms of hate and intolerance. When we say, ‘Never again will those atrocities of war be repeated,’ never again must be a promise kept.”

All of these statements and sentiments are not merely admirable, but necessary. Unfortunately, whether in advance or in response to outcry, the materials provided to the audience, which thanks to the number of performances and size of the theatre was some 10,000 people, didn’t say enough. While students involved in the show, or throughout the school, may have participated in some supplemental educational initiatives designed to ensure that they understood the full scope of what is only touched upon in the musical, the public statements made an assumption of knowledge that simply may not be the case. There should have been several pages in the program explaining all of the terms pertinent to the era, both those used in the show and those left out, as well as an overview of what took place in Europe during Hitler’s rampage. A related lobby display could have reinforced the messaging. We do need to delve deeper, but that excavation was not in significant evidence for the public at LaGuardia.

In April of this year, a survey by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany found a widespread lack of knowledge in the United States about Hitler’s rise to power and the scope of the Holocaust. As a result, LaGuardia – and all schools, community groups, and even professional companies planning to produce The Sound of Music– must take every opportunity to educate not only students but all audiences on the real facts (not alternative facts) about the viciousness of Nazi Germany and those who facilitated its rise, either overtly or through inaction, and the terrors that came to pass under its rule.

Yes, introducing the full reality of Nazism may mitigate the romance and sweetness of The Sound of Music, but at a time when Holocaust ignorance and outright denial has found increased footing, no opportunities should be missed. If the show is produced solely so we can sing along with “Do Re Mi” or “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” then its educational value is reduced, regardless of how often “the flag with the black spider” appears.

Producing The Sound of Music without swastikas plays into the hands of those who want to minimize or eradicate the truth of Nazi Germany, of why that symbol holds such terrifying power. But retaining that ugly symbol is only the start even with school productions, where successive generations (and their parents, siblings and friends) must be clearly taught what happened in that era, to more than just Austrians during 1938, so that we can educate against virulent policies that seek to turn certain groups into “the other,” to be insulted, excluded, and eradicated, in direct renunciation of our common humanity. We must not risk blessing only one homeland forever, as the song goes, but all of them that wish to unite in peace.

This article references the Williamson Music edition of The Sound of Music © 1960, as found in the collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.

Worry About The Censorship and Homophobia First, Then The Prayers

November 14th, 2018 § 0 comments § permalink

As word about a scuffle over a theatre production at Mitchell High School in Mitchell County NC has started to make its way beyond the local North Carolina media, accounts seem to be placing their emphasis on what is really the least of the problems there. After all, in America, people are free to pray as they see fit. Less than 30 people gathered to pray over the presentation of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) to a high school audience. What’s getting lost, or not reported at all, is the censorship that occurred, and the homophobic outbursts during the performance from students and afterwards from the clergy.

On Thursday, November 8, while 10th graders were taking the PSAT exams, students at Mitchell High were treated to a performance of Shakespeare (abridged) by the local Parkway Playhouse, which had produced the show a few weeks earlier. The presentation was arranged by the local Toe River Arts Council, which has brought all manner of arts offerings to the local community.

The majority of the show was performed until about 15 minutes to the end when, in the words of Dwight Chiles (via e-mail), one of the three actors in the company, “We were just starting to get to the audience participation section when I saw the managing director of Parkway in the wings signaling to me that we needed to cut the show. So I ran offstage leaving the other two actors continuing the show to talk with her. She said we had run out of time and that we needed to end the show now.  I asked if we should jump to the ‘Faster, Backwards’ section and she said, “No, we have to stop now.”

The Parkway Playhouse production of “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)”

He continued, “I ran back onstage just as the other two actors were about to pick an Ophelia and I told the audience that we actually have run out of time and that we were not going to get to finish but to make sure they go home and watch Lion Kingso they can see how Hamletends but to remember that it is a Shakespeare Tragedy and everyone dies at the end and then the curtain started closing on us. It wasn’t until we got back to the theatre to unload that we found out the show was shut down because of content.”

What has been reported, primarily by the local TV station WLOS, is that there was “inappropriate content” in the show, though no one has officially specified on the record exactly what content was considered so objectionable that it required that the show be summarily shut down. News accounts say that texts from both students and teachers to the school and district administration prompted the action. WLOS cited the portrayal of alcohol consumption and suicide (spoiler alert: Romeo and Juliet commit suicide) as the offending actions.

The school superintendent, Chad Calhoun, has not responded to several e-mail requests from Arts Integrity for an interview.

A silly and inspired travesty of the Bard of Avon’s oeuvre, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), the first show from the Reduced Shakespeare Company, has been playing internationally for some 30 years. It is widely produced in high schools, and upcoming and recent past productions, per the Broadway Play Publishing website, include Lee High School, Huntsville AL (2019), St. William of York Catholic Church, Stafford VA (2019), Hawaii Baptist Academy, Honolulu (2018), Prattville High School, Pratville AL (2018), Oak Glen High School Newell WV (2018), Newton County Day School of the Sacred Heart, Newton MA (2018), Dalton High School, Dalton GA (2018), The Academy of Classical Christian Studies, Oklahoma City OK  (2017), Cedar Fall High School, Cedar Falls IA (2017), and St. Teresa’s Academy, Kansas City MO (2017).

Unlike many shows, where authors do not permit alterations to the text as written, that is not the case with Shakespeare (Abridged). In an e-mail, co-author Jess Winfield wrote, “As far as I know, we’re unique among licensors in that we not only encourage but practically demand that productions adapt the text to suit the cast, the audience, and the news of the day. There are a few places in the script that specifically call for update and adaptation.” Winfield provided the authors’ note from the published text, which reads in part:

Far be it from us writers to tell you directors and actors how to stage the show; but having performed it ourselves about a billion times, we’d thought we’d offer you a smidgen of performance advice.

The show was developed through improvisation and ad lib, and is predicated on the conceit that these three guys are making the whole thing up as they go along, getting by on blind enthusiasm and boundless energy wherever they lack talent or any real clue about Shakespeare’s work. It’s important that the actors be genuinely surprised by each line, each action, and each turn of events. For example, although the audience participation section of Act Two is presented here based on our broad experience with how audiences generally respond, each audience is different. The actors should respond honestly to the audience’s performance, and their own, rather than stick blindly to the written text.

Jeff Bachar, artistic director of Parkway Playhouse, a professional non-Equity theatre, notes via e-mail that when asked by Toe River Arts to present the show at Mitchell High, “We, Parkway Playhouse, were asked to come up with a ‘PG-13’ version of the performance which we did.  We removed profanity and toned down the sexual innuendo.  There other small changes throughout such as: instead of mentioning drinking a six-pack the actors substituted ‘a bunch of Red Bull’.”

Bachar, confirming Chiles’ account of the suspension of the performance, also pointed out, “What has gone largely unmentioned is the fact that there were derogatory remarks made by a few students towards the actors.  These related to being transgender and homosexual.”

Chiles confirms that, writing, “There were a few homophobic slurs and things thrown at us on stage such as when I ran out in my pink tights I heard one student say ‘gay’ and few more said it again during the stage kiss in Romeo and Juliet.  Another time is when my character said “trans-global political thriller,” an audience member yelled “tranny,” which doesn’t make sense. As far as I could see there was no action taken by the teachers to stop people from saying things.”

In the wake of the performance shutdown, there have been two apologies by Toe River Arts, from both the executive director and board chairman, taking responsibility for not having more fully vetted the text and agreeing that there was inappropriate material.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So while a toned-down version of a popular high school show was shut down over content, beyond vague references to drinking (which had apparently already been cut) and suicide (a legitimate concern among today’s teens, but hardly surprising given the source material and Romeo and Juliet’s place in most high school curricula), there’s been no specific accounting over what was so inappropriate that the show couldn’t continue.

When the next day, the much-discussed prayer circle of less than three dozen was organized, off school grounds but adjacent to a familiar yellow school bus, it didn’t exactly produce a groundswell of response for a school with 600-700 students.

But in the wake of the prayer circle, local Pastor John McKinney, writing on Facebook that he applauded the school for their actions, shared an image of a petition he was starting, titled “Petition to Micthell [sic] County School Board” with a petition summary and background reading “Toe River Art [sic] Council or any organization of such nature,”and an action requested which read:

We, the undersigned, are concerned citizens who urge our leaders to act now to ban Toe River Art Council or any other organization from all Mitchell County Public Schools that would promote Homosexuality, Incest, Suicide, or any other that would be contrary to life. We are showing by signing that we support you and stand with you to make this decision.

The manner of dissemination of the petition, or its success, is unknown. However, it makes clear that there is censorship afoot, and that the portrayal of certain actions or lives are anathema to some in Mitchell County, and they want to impose their will on the entire community. The anti-LGBTQ stance, that causes so many young people to leave their homes and hometowns as soon as possible, is unmistakable.

Thinking back on what he thought might have run afoul of the supposed lines that were crossed, Chiles wrote, “I am guessing the depiction of drinking was when Romeo drank the poison from the apothecary and we used a flask for the poison. Also, when Benvolio tells Romeo to go to the feast of Capulets he says ‘there is free beer’ which is in the script.  The only time we used coarse language is in the Othellorap. One actor said ‘Beyotch’ and we didn’t edit it out because we needed to keep the rhyme with ‘heeyotch’. The suicide was the end of Romeo and Julietand the actor playing Juliet used a retractable knife and did the whole ‘stabby, stabby’ bit from the original production.  The stage kiss was also between Romeo and Juliet and it was just that a stage kiss.  Inches away from actually kissing each other.”

Asked whether he was concerned that the incident would harm Parkway Playhouse’s relationship with the Toe River Arts Council, Bachar replied, “I believe that continuing conversation with TRAC will help our relationship continue; however, in my opinion they censored our performance and I see that as contrary to their mission.  Regarding the schools, my belief is that we will be able to continue our involvement with them eventually but it will take a great deal of dialogue.  There is a petition in circulation that, if successful, would hinder free speech within Mitchell County schools so we would like to work with the school board there to make sure that does not occur.”

Chiles, reflecting on the incident notes, “One of the issues that I am having problems with is the apology that Toe River Arts Council issued that really just threw us under the bus especially our director for being a high school theatre teacher and saying that we did not do our job in editing the performance for the school.  But when the representative from Toe River did not show up to our rehearsal to help edit we did the best we could without any guidelines except it needed to be PG-13.  That really wasn’t fair.”

The question now is: will certain religious leaders and the censorially-minded, gender-and-sexuality-restrictive minority of Mitchell County succeed in restricting access to or funding for the arts in their area? Or will the majority of community take a closer look at what has transpired in their midst and speak out to make certain that area students receive an education that helps them to be well-rounded citizens who are prepared to compete in the world of the 21stcentury, in Mitchell County or beyond? In any event, it’s fair to hope that they’re all learning about their Constitutional rights, including the separation of church and state, and the right to free speech.

Because god help Shakespeare, in full or abridged, if the first group succeeds.

At One California High School, Gender Neutral & Color Conscious Casting in “1776”

July 4th, 2018 § 0 comments § permalink

Editor’s preface: Austin Tichenor of the Reduced Shakespeare Company wrote an extensive Facebook post after seeing a production of 1776, directed by his sister, the author of this essay, at their old high school in California, 38 years after having directed his own production in their hometown. His reflections prompted Arts Integrity to solicit this post, about how the production had come together; it is certainly only one example of how 1776 and many works for the stage are being reexamined in high school productions, especially in the wake of the success of Hamilton. Amy Tichenor Moorhead, teaches dance and musical theatre at Piedmont High School in Piedmont CA.

The musical 1776 has been a favorite of my family’s for decades, but I never considered it for my high school’s annual musical until I realized the opportunity that lay in gender-neutral, as well as color conscious, casting.

Like most high school musical theater directors, I’m always looking for shows that have lots of roles for female actors. While researching online, I learned of Kansas City’s Musical Theatre Heritage all-female 1776 in 2010. There was precedent for this in our 2011 production of Les Misérables in which two women were cast in small roles written for men. I realized right away that there’s no reason women couldn’t play any of the male roles in 1776, and that in this way, we could fully embrace trans* and non-binary students as well.

Keith Edwards, son of the late composer and lyricist Sherman Edwards, told Playbill.com in 2010, “An inclusive society is roughly what the Founding Fathers desired with the launch of the Declaration of Independence, and although they did not emancipate slaves or women at that moment, they prepared the way for both.” Inclusion is always one of my primary objectives and though I don’t think of 1776 as a show frequently performed in high schools, it felt like a valuable way to include young women in discussions from which they’ve been largely excluded. With the addition of an ensemble, plus color-conscious and gender neutral casting, the experience could be powerful.

The announcement that I would employ gender neutral casting was met with enthusiasm, and the audition process began in September for our February 2018 production. The casting process is challenging, more of an art than a science. It revives memories of my own auditions which makes me sensitive to the actors’ hopes as well as despair in not being cast as they’d wished.

I entered the audition process with no plan about how I would cast each role. I asked the actors to indicate on their audition form if they were comfortable playing either male or female characters as well as playing opposite either male or female actors and almost all were fine with both.

I could have cast the show a number of different ways, but I chose the actors I thought were strongest for each role, taking the whole cast into account. I didn’t plan to cast Abigail/John and Martha/Thomas traditionally, and I looked seriously at other combinations. During callbacks, certain actors emerged for roles that I never could have anticipated and this is the marvel of the audition process.

I hoped a student with a decent Scottish brogue would audition for McKean, and it turned out there was more than one – a woman won the role. One casting intent I did have was that the Courier would be played by a woman, but it was ultimately cast traditionally. At the conclusion of casting, only 30% of the roles were cast gender typically.

With the rehearsal process underway by early October, I decided the production would be costumed in traditional dress of the period. I considered modern-day gender neutral costuming, like formal concert attire, but found this was actually going to be more expensive, and the cast was excited about wearing 18th century coats and trousers, with buckles on their shoes, cravats, the use of canes, and a few powdered wigs.

Though 1776 calls for a cast of 26, I chose to add an ensemble to help bring the streets of Philadelphia to life — and to be inclusive of more students who wanted to participate in this musical — bringing the cast to 48. About half of the ensemble were costumed as female and the other half were dressed as male.

In addition to costume and staging choices, the physicality of each character is vital, because in a classic musical like 1776 the characters need to be defined as following the social expectations of their particular gender. How to shake hands, how to sit up straight, how to stand tall, how to bow in the manner of a stereotypical 18th century male required extensive rehearsal for all in the cast. The issues of correctness are more about the time period and region, so the women worked just as hard as the men to achieve the proper physicality. Even though the male characters are dressed as males, the fact that many are female actors in male roles is still apparent and it allows us to see these eighteenth-century congressMEN in a new light.

Rehearsals provided ample opportunity to take note of gender equality. In scene two, Richard Henry Lee declares, “I’ll stop off at Stratford just long enough to refresh the missus” and the bawdiness continues when he launches into the song “The Lees of Old Virginia” with the lyrics “may my wife refuse my bed if I can’t deliver . . .” Seeing a 21st century teenage girl portray an 18th century slaveholding man – conceived by a man in the 1960s to be an energetic but righteous buffoon – was both entertaining and eye-opening. It also emphasized that women’s roles in the story of our nation’s founding are missing from 1776, and when they are present, it is as a partner in bed.

Early in scene three, Thomas Jefferson announces he is leaving for home on “family business”, Stephen Hopkins’s response required attention in rehearsal. Hopkins chimes in and tells Jefferson, “Give her a good one for me, young feller.” We tried several different deliveries in attempt to retain the spontaneous, lighthearted intent of the line and the female actor, ultimately, embraced the notion that Hopkins is completely unaware that he is being offensive and was not considered to be so at that moment in history, though he is today. He’s not evil, he’s just of another time and set of sensibilities.

Benjamin Franklin is probably the most inappropriate character by 2018 standards with riotously suggestive dialogue throughout the show. Upon the arrival of Martha to Jefferson’s room in scene 4, Franklin asks, “Well, Halooo, and whose little girl are you?” Hilarious (because impropriety is often a source of humor) – and creepy – whether  Franklin is played by a male or a female. With a female in the role, it is even more difficult for the audience to ignore the impropriety because we can’t overlook the fact that a female delivered the line.

While the Thomas and Martha engage in a lengthy kiss, Franklin explains, “Of course she’s his wife. Look how they fit.” I had thought this line would be even funnier delivered by a female actress, but it never got the laugh that I expected. Perhaps because we know more about Thomas Jefferson than we used to, and times have changed. Later, Franklin jumps up from his nap at the invitation to go to New Brunswick “for the whoring and the drinking” – and once again the idea of women as “little brides” or whores is highlighted by the young women in the male roles saying these lines. It’s arguable whether the casting or the fact that it’s 2018 made the line more, or less funny.

Abigail Adams, a more fully-developed character than Martha Jefferson, still revolves around her husband John. She does reference their sick children and their farm’s struggles, alluding to how difficult it must have been for the women left at home. I initially planned to bring Abigail’s home to life with little children scurrying around to suggest all she would have had to contend with while still scraping out time to correspond with John. I had to let this staging idea go given the complexities it presented with the congress set and the placement of Jefferson’s house, and given Abigail’s primary role within the script as her husband’s main source of strength and support.

*   *   *

“The Lees of Old Virginia” in the Piedmont High School 2018 production of “1776” (Julie Reichle Photography)

Piedmont High School is predominantly European American (68%); however, the audition pool contained African-American and Asian-American students, as well as students of Indian  and Pacific Islander heritage. As a white, cisgender woman I gave a great deal of thought in casting deliberations as  to how to cast the individuals not historically granted access to privilege and power. In prior years, I have practiced color blind casting. But as Diep Tran, associate editor of American Theatre magazine told the Los Angeles Times, “Color-conscious” means “we’re aware of the historic discrimination in the entertainment industry . . . and we’re also aware of what it means to put a body of color onstage”. Snehal Desai, artistic director of the Asian theater company East West Players in Los Angeles, the longest-operating theater of color in the United States, said in the same article, “The thing about colorblind casting is that it denies the person standing in front of you. It ignores identity, and for people of color, that further alienates us”.

In casting a high school production of 1776, does color matter ? Yes it does. I was aware of the critical need to becolor conscious. On casting Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda told The Atlantic, “This is a story about America then, told by America now…and we want to eliminate any distance between a contemporary audience and this story”. One-quarter of the actors featured in my 1776 production were students from communities traditionally underrepresented on stage, playing historical characters who were, in real life, white.

There are two roles in particular that gave me pause. In the casting of Joseph Hewes (North Carolina) and Dr. Lyman Hall (Georgia), although I knew the actors would be wonderful in their roles, it occurred to me that the audience might be troubled and unsure how to interpret African-American students portraying Southern delegates, that is, stepping into the shoes of slaveholders. As Jessica Gelt wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “Color-conscious casting implies an understanding of the profound implications of skin color.”

I wrestled with how the Southern delegates were arranged on stage. Initially, I followed the Director’s Stage Guide’s furniture positioning for the scenes in the chamber which called for Hall and Hewes to be upstage left. I worried that the audience might see the casting of Hall and Hewes as resulting in an unfortunate accident which placed these two students in the back, behind others, rather than a conscious casting choice that would cause people to think. I tried several subtle variations on the arrangement of the delegates in that up-left corner, and eventually placed Edward Rutledge (cast typically) between them, and further upstage than Hewes. We did have a stage level change that gave some flexibility.

I worried about what the audience would think about the casting during Rutledge’s “Molasses to Rum to Slaves”. Even more than worrying what they might think, I worried that they wouldn’t think about it at all. At the conclusion of the song, the stage directions call for Rutledge to walk out as Hewes and Hall follow him. I directed Hewes and Hall to exchange a look and a nod before they began to follow Rutledge to suggest that they were making the independent decision to walk out rather than to simply be followers of Rutledge, under his authority.

*   *   *

From the 1980 Tichenor family production: “But, Mr. Adams” (l-r) Austin Tichenor (John Adams), John Tichenor (Benjamin Franklin), David Stein (Roger Sherman), Chris Stevens (Robert Livingston), and Bruce Turner (Thomas Jefferson)

I noted previously that 1776 has been a favorite of my family, dating back to when my brother Austin directed it in 1980. It was a community theater production that we produced with alumni and then-current students from Piedmont High School, performed in the same high school auditorium as my production 38 years later.

Austin cast himself as Adams, my other brother, John Tichenor, played Franklin, our dad played Hall, I assisted the choreographer and dressed the wigs, Mom sold tickets and cleaned the toilets — it was very much a family affair. In a post on Facebook after seeing my production, Austin noted an example of the benefits of diverse casting: “When Dr. Lyman Hall reveals his famous epiphany (“A representative owes the People not only his industry, but his judgment, and he betrays them if he sacrifices it to their opinion”) the moment retained all its irony but gained added resonance by being spoken by a young African-American woman. It became a fantastic and moving moment about the power of representation: Not only on our stages but in our governments.”  Just the reaction I’d hoped for.

With a gender neutral, culturally diverse cast, 1776 facilitates dialogue about our 2018 political panorama and reminds us of our responsibility for making sure that all voices are heard as we move forward. Rehearsals presented frequent opportunities for discussion and making connections to our country today – and there would be even more if we were doing the show this summer. The experience provided us with an opportunity to consider gender, racial and ethnic equality through the lens of musical theater.

As I continue to unpack the adventure five months later, the production still informs my thoughts about casting and directing.  I’ve realized that my casting process must be color conscious rather than color blind and even more than before, I will consider the gender spectrum. Instead of auditioning two distinct groups, men and women, I will look beyond the strictures of gender expectations, and, as I have in the past, the racial and ethnic default to casting roles as white unless specified as characters of color when choosing actors for roles. Yet I will be carefully aware of how the words and messages of the text resound when embodied by actors who do not replicate the characteristics of those who may have created the roles.

As I anticipate RENT, which I’ll be casting in September, a show that embraces characters all along the gender and sexuality spectrum, I’m eager to see what revelations we’ll come to when we cast consciously.

The Stage: Why the thrills and chills of Sweeney Todd still speak (and sing) to me

June 29th, 2018 § 0 comments § permalink

Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone in the 2005 Broadway production of “Sweeney Todd” (Photo by Paul Kolnik)

When the Tooting Arts Club set up its immersive Sweeney Todd at Harrington’s Pie and Mash in 2014, I doubt it was expecting the production to become the longest-running professional production of Stephen Sondheim’s masterpiece. But that’s what happened, with the New York incarnation having recently passed 558 performances on its way to a total of 636 when it closes in August. If you tack on the London runs, it has lasted even longer.

Nit-pickers can say that the so-called Tiny Todd only had to fill 130 seats per performance in Manhattan, while the original Broadway run at the Uris, now Gershwin, Theatre had 1,800 or more (seating in the venue has been altered over time). But the record is for longevity, not admissions. After all, no one quibbles with shows like Théâtre de la Huchette’s The Bald Soprano, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, or The Fantasticks at the Sullivan Street Playhouse over their house size. Instead they applaud in amazement at their longevity.

For a die-hard Sweeney fan like myself – it has been, without question, my favourite musical since I first saw the original Broadway production late in its run – it’s heartwarming to know that for the past year and half, the mad barber has been wielding his razor in Greenwich Village eight times a week. It is a nightly affirmation of my own affection.

George Hearn and Angela Lansbury in the 1981 national tour of “Sweeney Todd”

When Sweeney was new, my adoration of it struck some as downright odd. During my first year at university, my roommate must have been convinced that I too, like the musical’s title character, was a bit off, so obsessively did I play the original cast recording (especially side two of the first disc in that two-record vinyl set).

My father was utterly mystified until he saw the show almost two decades later and admitted that he now understood its appeal for me. Like many, he couldn’t fathom a musical with such a sanguinary plot.

To brandish my bona fides, as well as the original Broadway production, I have also seen Sweeney on its first national tour, its first New York City Opera production, its first Broadway revival (a transfer from the Off-Broadway York Theatre known by aficionados as Teeny Todd), the Goodspeed Opera House production for which I was general manager, John Doyle’s Watermill production at Trafalgar Studios, Doyle’s Broadway production with Patti LuPone and Michael Cerveris, Jonathan Kent’s production with Imelda Staunton and Michael Ball, and the Tooting Arts version at the Barrow Street Theatre, which I plan to see once more before it closes. I’ve probably forgotten a couple.

Imelda Staunton and Michael Ball in the 2012 West End production of “Sweeney Todd”

I have also seen several secondary school productions, including one in New Hampshire where I helped faculty, parents, and students get the show back on the schedule after it had been cancelled by school administrators. One of the greatest joys of my professional life was reading aloud to the cast of that restored production, without them knowing until the very end who their correspondent was, a letter from Stephen Sondheim, praising them for their perseverance.

I have long known that my unswerving dedication to Sweeney puts me in a minority compared to those among my generation who cite A Chorus Line, Les Miserables, or The Lion King – and those of all generations who now declare Hamilton – as their favorite.

To a degree, loving Sweeney Todd deeply is a cult choice – not so obscure as say 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but hardly as mainstream as The Music Man. The things we love aren’t predicated necessarily on what others think. Rather, they are about what affects and appeals to us alone, what moves us, and somehow Sweeney spoke (and sang) to me, and hasn’t stopped in 38 years.

It is the very dissonance between my personality and the show that suggests why it might have a hold on me. There is something unknowable about Sweeney Todd, that makes some of us watch its Grand Guignol repeatedly, tapping a dark part of our heart perpetually, both horrified and thrilled, adjudicating and complicit.

If Sweeney Todd is the musical theatre’s equivalent of a violent film or video game (American Psycho notwithstanding), I should point out that it has never made me violent or even desirous of revenge. What I take from it is the beauty of its music, the propulsion of its plot and the brilliance of its construction. You may not want to get me started on how the musical contains three different songs called “Johanna,” which reveal more about the men who sing them than the woman about whom they supposedly sing.

Siobhán McCarthy and Jeremy Seacomb in the 2017 Off-Broadway run of the Tooting Arts Club production of “Sweeney Todd” (Photo by Joan Marcus)

Having seen many Sweeney Todds, the Teeny Todd, and the Tiny Todd – the latter two part of an ongoing de-escalation of scale for a work of soaring emotion and drama – I cannot help but expect that a one-actor version of the show may yet be on the horizon. That might sound facetious, but don’t rule it out. After all, Sondheim has allowed many variants on Sweeney, including a prog-metal version and alt-folk version among them. So long as the script and score stay intact, it appears Sweeney can wreak his havoc in many different arrangements, both physical and musical.

When I return to the Tooting Arts Club Sweeney at Barrow Street once more in the next few weeks, I will again savour a meat pie before the show, opting for the chicken rather than the vegetarian version. Indeed, tasty as the pies are, they are also my only disappointment from that production, because there wasn’t a beef option on the menu when I first saw it. After all, when having a meat pie at Sweeney Todd, one wants its juices to run bright red – and not from the presence of beets inside, if you know what I mean.

Originally published in The Stage

In A Times Square Renovation, New Version of the Past

June 11th, 2018 § 0 comments § permalink

Arnie Charnick at work on a Hotel Edison mural (Photo © Howard Sherman)

There are many who remain upset with the owners of the Hotel Edison for their ejection of the Edison Cafe several years ago, and you can count me among them, because along with the cafe went the best chicken soup I’ve ever had, a balm on days when it was cold out or I had a cold.

But now I have to tip my hat to those same owners, who, in the process of renovating the hotel, haven’t taken the corporate, pre-fabricated route, at least so far as the deco-ish lobby goes. Indeed, on this post-Tony Awards morning, when many Times Square denizens are still rousing themselves, there’s an artist in the passageway that connects 46th and 47th Streets through the Edison, painting new murals that evoke the bygone days of Times Square, at the turn of the 20th century, in the 1940s and in the “bad old days” of the 1970s (as seen thought the eyes of a motorist cruising 42 Street).

I would have liked to see more varied representation of people of color in the images, since they were far from absent in Times Square over the years. The objectification of women in several images, while perhaps true to the eras portrayed, perhaps need not have been quite so foregrounded. Al Jolson in blackface, while certainly accurate, perpetuates a discredited practice.

Yet it is a pleasure to see artwork in progress, not just a digital print-out being pasted to a wall. I made a point of telling the artist, Arnie Charnick, that his work was exciting, since we so rarely have that opportunity to express our appreciation directly to any artists, but I must confess that his mumbled reply was inaudible to me. No doubt his head was filled with thoughts of the work at hand, and a passerby snapping pictures with his iPhone was one of what is assuredly many distractions as he works so publicly.

Nonetheless, if you like seeing public art in progress, hustle to the Edison and take a look over Arnie’s shoulder. The art is handmade, and the hands are still making it.

Update, June 12, 2018: Apparently I was not the only person concerned about the representation people of color in these works. Subsequent to this post going up at 10 am on June 11, the artist removed the words “Place Trash Here” from a trash can visible in the lower left of the 1970s image, which depicts a black man in the can. The Daily News wrote about the complaints of hotel staff members which led to this alteration. My intent was not to precipitate censorship of the work, only to express my own response to it, but works in progress are not yet set in stone, or paint, as the case may be.

Hotel Edison lobby mural of the turn of the century by Arnie Charnick

Hotel Edison lobby mural, of the 1970s, by Arnie Charnick

Arnie Charnick using a digital reference at the Hotel Edison (Photo © Howard Sherman)

Quotation Marks Don’t Soften a Slur in Chicago

March 31st, 2018 § 0 comments § permalink

 

Now there is a redaction, an editor’s note, and an author’s apology. But for roughly 24 hours between Wednesday and Thursday this week, in a theatre review in the Chicago Reader, the racially incendiary “n-word” was part of the text online.

The review, by Justin Hayford, was of the Court Theatre’s current production of the stage adaptation of the 1967 film Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner. The slur is spoken, once, during the play itself, by a black father to his black son. When the word first appeared in the Reader, it wasn’t presented as a quote, but rather as Hayford’s paraphrase of that moment in the play.

Within hours of the review going online, outrage flared, with multiple advocates conferring and venting on social media with one another and sharing the communications they had begun to share with the Reader. Their efforts led to a fairly quick reaction from the publication, or rather reactions, because at first, the piece was altered to place the entire phrase containing the word in quotes, suggesting that Hayford was citing a line in the text. Subsequently, in a second edit, the quotes were shifted to only include the word itself in quotes. Finally, on Thursday afternoon, the word was wholly redacted, appearing as “[vile racial epithet]”, with the actual snippet of a quote – different than what Hayford had previously written – from the play appearing in the text, marked off with quotation marks.

Hayford’s apology began:

“I included the N-word in my review of Court Theatre’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. A lot of people let me know I shouldn’t have.

You’re right. I agree. I apologize.”

He went on to write, in part:

“Although the character in the play uses the N-word, I could have conveyed the horror of the stage moment without quoting the word at all, as many of you rightly pointed out. I might have used “vile racial epithet” instead. I clearly underestimated the hateful and hurtful nature of that word’s appearance in print, even when citing a character’s use of it.”

The editor’s note on the piece itself now reads:

“During the play, one of the characters uses a racial slur. Although the offensive language came directly from the script, we should have not printed it. We have removed the offensive word. We apologize.”

Given the relatively rapid time lapse from offense to apology, some might feel that the issue has been put to rest. But that fails to recognize the significance of the initial insult and the ham-fisted way in which the Reader tried, twice, to rationalize and qualify the primary word choice.

With any professional publication, even though the ranks of editors and copy editors have been reduced in recent years throughout the field, it’s simply not possible that Hayford’s review appeared online without at least one other person at the Reader having read it and approved it. The backtracking and ultimate contrition only began when the furious reaction set in.

When quotation marks went up around Hayford’s original clause containing the slur, it was ostensibly to make clear that the word was part of the text. But Hayford’s failure to provide an accurate quotation from the script completely undermined the effort, and in a review of some 440 words, was a phrase of less than 10 sufficient context to justify that particular quote, with that word, the only quote in the review? As it came clear that Hayford was not citing the script, the quotes were shifted to only the word in question, stripping it of any context and making impossible to acknowledge it as coming from the script. On that basis, quotes could have also surrounded Hayford’s use of the word “and.”

Having learned of the online upset during this period of multiple revisions, but prior to the final version, Edwin Eisendrath, CEO of the Chicago-Sun Times, which owns the Reader, reached out to Richard Costes, an active advocate in the Chicago theatre community, who had been posting about the review on Facebook and e-mailing the leadership at the publication. Eisendrath wrote, in part:

“The concerns, later summarized in in the e-mail you sent, are disturbing, and prompted some digging. In fact, we have confirmed that the awful racial epithet quoted in the review is in the script and was part of the performance. The reviewer felt the scene was a powerful part of the play, and included it in the write-up. . .

You are also right that the word and the subject are painful. Theatre, as all arts do, treats in painful subjects [sic]. Sometimes artists are more successful and sometimes less successful in their efforts. Reviewing these efforts can be tricky when the reviewer wants to convey the experience of the performance.”

Leaving aside the condescension of the CEO explaining the purpose and effect of theatre to someone in the theatre, it is clear that the initial plan at the Reader was to justify each successive choice – until they reached a point when they realized the position wasn’t defensible. As a matter of free speech, they had the right to print what they did, but it took a lot of voices crying out to bring the Reader to the point where the powers that be understood that in this case was a serious ethical lapse to deploy the slur.

Why “in this case”? If, in an essay-length review, a critic writing about this piece, or perhaps one of August Wilson’s plays, included a sustained quotation, or several, in which the word was fully contextualized, then it might be seen as part of a comprehensive critique and clear part of the author’s voice. It does appear – just once – in Todd Kreidler’s stage adaptation, but the brief quotation strips the word of the context of a scene or the speaker, let alone a two-hour anti-racism work.

Only weeks ago, the Reader was engulfed in controversy when this same racial slur was used in the headline of an article about gubernatorial candidate J.B. Pritzker. The Reader, appropriately, backtracked there as well; in fact, it fired the editor responsible. So it’s impossible to think that anyone working for the Reader hadn’t already been made aware of the incendiary nature of the n-word, even if they had never encountered it and its ugly history before (which is, of course, highly doubtful).

The Chicago Reader gave extraordinary service to the theatre community with its groundbreaking expose of Profiles Theatre in June 2016. In fact, their sensitivity there only throws the pain and anger prompted by the Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner review into higher relief. They have absolutely done better in the past and, if their writers, their editors and their publisher have actually learned something from making the same gaffe twice in two months, they will do better in the future. But they have to prove it.

Another Chicago voice heard clearly during the immediate outrage over the review was that of playwright Ike Holter, whose Facebook page became a rallying point against the use of the slur. Among his many posts was this thought, which might serve as a guide to all future editors and writers considering the use of the n-word and its impact:

“If a black person is mad at the word, assume it is on a level of hurt, pain and fear that you will never understand. Do not tell them to “Calm Down” or “Be Quiet”. either support them or leave them alone. When we hear that word from a non black person, it hits an invisible bone in our body. You don’t want to know what it feels like, so don’t act like you do.”

One last note: Hayford’s review, with the slur intact, sans apology, appears in print in this week’s Chicago Reader. Even if there’s an editor’s note next week, nothing can take that back.

The Stage: Ubu Bake Off gives voice to theatre’s anti-Trump insurgents

February 23rd, 2018 § 0 comments § permalink

At The Playwrights Center Ubu Bake-Off, Paula Vogel and Jeremy B. Cohen (Photo by Whitney Rowland)

Four days ago, the US theatre community fostered the birth of more than 100 new short plays, on our federal holiday of Presidents’ Day. These were not, however, created in a spontaneous outpouring of national pride, but rather a coordinated – if entirely voluntary – effort that specifically sought to conflate the current presidency with Alfred Jarry’s absurdist and profane play Ubu Roi.

Held at nearly two dozen theatres and theatre-related organisations, the Ubu Bake Off was the brainchild of award-winning playwright Paula Vogel, who, please pardon the expression, cooked up the idea while musing on Facebook just five weeks ago. The interest from her Facebook friends and acolytes was immediate.

The Ubu Bake Off followed guidelines Vogel has previously used in her teaching career. It was an exercise designed to prompt people to quick, instinctive creativity, helped along by a 48-hour writing time limit, coupled with a five-page limit. Vogel also provides a set of ingredients, so that the resultant playlets are all variations on a theme.

For Monday, the ingredients included Pa Ubu 45 (supposedly 6ft 3ins, a trim 239 lbs, in “excellent health”, and, yes, the hair is his and real), angry ambassadors from every country that Pa Ubu has insulted, a strange use of the English language that sounds like it is supposed to be English (ie, words for ‘shit’ are prolonged like ‘pshitte’), covfefe, and a double-triple-quadruple-octahedral cheeseburger with special sauce.

Among the companies that participated were the Vineyard Theatre (a creative home for Vogel) and the New Ohio Theatre in New York; the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis (which Vogel attended), Victory Gardens Theatre in Chicago and Crowded Fire Theatre Company and Antaeus Theatre in California. I even got into the act, hosting a small group under the auspices of my day job at the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.

This decentralised, far-flung realisation of Vogel’s idea means that no one person saw, or even read, all of the one-act plays that emerged. Almost like carefully organised insurgent cells, each location, each playwright, was part of a larger whole, carrying out their own missions, not knowing what else might be happening for the benefit of the cause elsewhere. Yet, at the same time, we were secure in the knowledge that other partisans were fighting the good fight in the same manner at the same time.

In my little troupe, we read nine plays over two hours, with playwrights and actors joining to give voice to the texts brought into the room, none adjudicated in any way. The Playwrights’ Center deployed eight actors to read all of the plays – in this instance, an astounding 41 plays by 44 playwrights in an event that lasted more than five hours. No doubt the solutions were as varied as the locales.

Based on the circle at my office, and the plays read, the Bake Off inspired instant camaraderie (I had previously met only one of the participants). It was great fun, in the name of expressing frustrations with our present leadership, while concurrently paying homage to a literary classic. The low-pressure, everyone-is-welcome spirit also stripped away any sense of theatrical hierarchy or critical judgement. It even freed me to try my hand at playwriting for the first time in about 40 years.

But perhaps most importantly, Vogel’s inspiration and recipe yielded a great deal of work in a very short time, demonstrating that her educational tool offers a significant opportunity for involving many voices on the same subject.

Without the demands of rehearsal, staging, ticket sales and fundraising, Vogel’s Ubu Bake Off stripped theatre to its most rudimentary essentials, yielding experiences that were, if my own metaphorical kitchen was at all representative, unifying and cathartic. It certainly provides a model for rapid-response theatre applicable to almost any topic. I suspect we have more national Bake Offs in our future.