During the 2012/13 Broadway season, a total of nine new musicals appeared on Broadway (hitting the average annual level of recent years). Of those nine, only four are still running. As I write, there are seven new musicals playing Off-Broadway, with an eighth due in a few weeks; there may well be others. What does it tell us when 12 months of Broadway yields just about as much new musical material as we find Off-Broadway in only a couple of months?

To be fair, many of the Off-Broadway musicals are limited runs in the seasons of subsidised companies, and two are commercial transfers from such companies from earlier this year. Only one will play in a theatre which is comparable in size to Broadway venues, and in that case it’s under the auspices of Shakespeare in the Park; most are in spaces where one week of performances equals the capacity of one Broadway performance. A transferred Off-Broadway hit can easily become a Broadway casualty given the commercial demands of larger theatres and higher costs.

Certainly, hit Off-Broadway musicals are hardly new; one need only look to The Fantasticks, You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown, Godspell and Little Shop of Horrors for precursors, and it’s unlikely the current new shows will ever attain the longevity of those icons. But in recent years, the standard model has tended much more towards the Off-Broadway to Broadway transfer for success, as evidenced by shows ranging from Rent to Avenue Q to The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Even shows that began in rudimentary stagings at the New York International Fringe Festival and the New York Musical Theatre Festival have fought their way to Broadway, including Urinetown and Next to Normal.

Surveying the variety of material, it would appear that the modest scale of Off-Broadway allows for a greater range of topics and styles than the Great White Way, from the sung through pop opera of Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 (based on a portion of War and Peace, and performed in a tent) to David Byrne and Fatboy Slim’s Imelda Marcos disco bio Here Lies Love. There’s one musical that is drawn from a film (Far From Heaven) and two with their roots in Shakespeare (Venice, after Othello, and Love’s Labour’s Lost). Several adopt variations on an environmental, break-the-proscenium approach (Here Lies Love, Murder Ballad and Great Comet). None model themselves on the formula of the classic American musical.

I suspect that no one is getting rich off of these productions, while the backers of Kinky Boots, Matilda and Motown on Broadway will surely do quite well over time. For these Off- Broadway musicals to become true earners for all involved, they will either have to manage sustained runs under a commercial model, on Broadway or Off, or spawn productions across the country and abroad. But even if that doesn’t come to pass, what they are doing is providing a superb showcase for predominantly new talent and unexpected subjects; they are bolstering the musical repertory at a pace at least equal to Broadway and building the reputations of artists.

This shouldn’t suggest that musical success Off-Broadway is a breeze, and it’s worth noting that many of these shows are only mounted with significant donor underwriting or “enhancement” from producers who hope the property will turn out to be Broadway-worthy. But with different scale and different expectations, Off-Broadway musicals may well be supplanting Broadway in advancing the form.

Hindsight doesn’t benefit anyone, but it is hard to resist wondering whether the short-lived Hands on a Hardbody might have fared better at director Neil Pepe’s Atlantic Theatre Company instead of in a Broadway theatre. Ironically, that was the birthplace of Spring Awakening, a musical that had struggled through a number of developmental productions over the years only to find praise, first Off- Broadway, then on.

There’s an old saying that one can’t make a living on Broadway, but can make a killing. It’s not easy to make a living off of Off-Broadway musicals either, but you can build a career.

Ever so quietly this week, the national arts scene became a bit more fragmented, a bit more stratified and a lot more invisible. The Associated Press has just spiked a chunk of its opera, dance and off-Broadway coverage. And in this case, no news is bad news.

In an email, AP chief theater writer Mark Kennedy described the decision to me:

“We sent out a survey before the Tonys to the members of our cooperative, asking about their use of our reviews,” he wrote. “While music, books, movies and TV came back positive, the results proved what we have long suspected: Members overwhelmingly are not using our opera, dance or off-Broadway reviews.”

“It’s more than that,” Kennedy continued. “In some cases, they actually resent [that coverage], thinking we can use our resources better. So while we of course will dip into the world of off-Broadway, whether for an occasional review or a story, we have to listen to the people who pay our bills.”

This may seem like an inside-baseball story, of interest only to theatrical publicists and producers. But the ramifications are a little greater.

Coverage in The New York Times has prestige and tradition, and speaks to the arts community; The Wall Street Journal reaches art organizations’ board members and corporate sponsors; USA Today has mass appeal. But the AP almost certainly has the widest reach of all: Its copy is available to hundreds of print and online outlets internationally, including the big three above.

Indeed, as news has increasingly shifted online, AP arts coverage is probably more accessible to more people than it has ever been. It appears directly on countless news websites — including NPR’s — without any human effort, as part of a continuous news feed, where it’s not subject to the day-to-day editorial priorities and space limitations that govern a print paper or radio show. Even when editors “don’t use” this coverage, it appears on their sites; in some cases, an AP item may prompt an outlet to do its own story on the same subject.

In my days as a publicist, pre-Internet, reportage by The Associated Press often resulted in a single story cropping up in the most unexpected places. It would get relayed back to me by other publicists in other cities — or, charmingly, by the parents of co-workers.

Further back, when I was a teen hungry to learn, AP coverage fed my arts interest with news of culture beyond that originated by my local paper.

What’s important to note is that this week’s news is not the callous edict of a commercially driven corporate behemoth, but rather a practical decision by a member-driven service organization that operates as a not-for-profit. Yet it represents how, in an ever more challenging environment for the news industry, the arts are drawing the short stick.

Some might think that coverage of these areas is essentially local news for Manhattanites. But the arts ecology is more complicated than that. Sure, many people may not be able to attend a New York opera in person, but both radio and TV broadcasts bring those performances to audiences across the country — and the AP’s stories may be the most accessible source of advance coverage for fans in a variety of markets.

Dance companies may well tour to those same locations, and since few can sustain themselves playing only in Manhattan, the AP’s coverage has a direct impact on the viability of those bookings as well.

As for off-Broadway? That’s the easiest to argue for. It’s home to a significant number of new works that may never reach Broadway, but which increase the body of theatrical literature — and which often go on to play numerous regional and amateur stages.

This is particularly important when it comes to plays (as opposed to musicals): Of the 45 works recognized by the Pulitzer for drama or the Tony for best play since 1984, only five originated on Broadway. Yet that is the arena on which the AP will now narrow its focus. Coverage of “regional” arts organizations — long hailed as a similarly deep well of creativity — has already been marginalized.

This is just the latest news in a dispiriting trend. Onetime show-business bible Variety has all but eliminated regional theater reviews, along with a significant amount of its off-Broadway coverage; there’s occasional opera coverage in its pages these days, and no dance coverage.

The Village Voice, home to off-Broadway’s Obie Awards, laid off drama critic Michael Feingold just weeks ago, after more than four decades of service, even as it broadened its coverage of food.

There are countless other examples: Arts coverage at outlets large and small has been narrowing in favor of the largest and most popular companies and offerings, just as arts funding sources have been shrinking, and often tilting in favor of the bigger players. That stratification will only be reinforced by the AP’s coverage reductions.

There’s an invisible cost here. When attempts to reduce or eliminate funding to the arts crop up — which they do with a depressing regularity — they gain traction in part because not enough people encounter the arts, or even regular coverage of the arts, on a daily basis. When a resource as mighty as The Associated Press can’t even offer material for consideration because of a professed lack of interest by other media gatekeepers, I worry it’ll only lend support to those who want to delegitimize the arts with a charge of elitism.

Because celebrity holds ever-increasing sway in all entertainment coverage, and because the performing arts are (to too many editors) the poor stepchild of entertainment, I have a sneaking suspicion that if Hugh Jackman ever ventures off-Broadway, when Renee Fleming sings something at the Met, wherever David Hallberg dances, The Associated Press will probably manage to tell us about it.

We’ll also still hear from the AP when an artistic leader is the victim of internecine violence in his own company, or when a tech mishap injures a performer. Bad news always trumps good.

But we will know infinitely less about all the fine work being done by those who aren’t already well known, or at companies where tragedies mercifully don’t happen, or among worthy troupes that could most benefit from national attention not found elsewhere.

And should The Associated Press’s decision prove to be a model for yet more media outlets, then entire swaths of the arts may be, as long feared, on the brink of popular irrelevancy. Because soon no one may know they’re there.

Here’s the post in its original form on NPR.org

June 26, 2013

President Barack Obama

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington DC  20500

Dear President Obama:

I realize it’s been a busy week, what with the overturning of the Defense of Marriage Act today and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act yesterday. I know you’ve just begun a weeklong trip to Africa and presumably get home just in time for some fireworks (actual, not political) next week. But we’ve really got to talk about this NEA thing.

I’m referring, of course, to the fact that there hasn’t been a chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts since Rocco Landesman stepped down at the end of your first term. While presumably the agency is running smoothly, the fact remains that for six months now, there’s been no notable public effort to replace him. I know how these things go (I watched The West Wing and House of Cards) and there may be elaborate machinations going on behind the scenes, but without a new chair even proposed, you’re giving off the signal that the arts don’t matter.

A lot of us in the arts know that isn’t true. Since you first took office, we’ve been pleased to see you, the First Lady and your daughters taking in cultural events in New York and in Washington and hosting others at the White House. Some of us would lobby for the symbolism of a cultural excursion by your family taking place outside of the aforementioned cities, or your Chicago hometown, to demonstrate how broadbased the arts community truly is, but the girls have school and you and your wife have countless commitments. We get that. But considering how little attention the previous tenants of your house paid to the arts, I would think that your small personal actions would lead you to action on the big picture.

Sure, I know all about the various government positions you’re trying to fill, including serious problems with stalled judicial appointments, and I don’t want to in any way minimize their import. My god, the whole IRS situation alone must keep you awake at night. However, second terms are when people start peeling away from government appointments, not running towards them, since there’s more than likely a ticking clock on their service, depending upon the preferences of the next president.  When Rocco took the NEA gig, he knew he had four years guaranteed, said he only wanted four years, and proved to be a man of his word. His successor might only get three years, even if you act soon.

I know you’re not personally conducting a search or vetting candidates; you have a team of people to do these things and bring names forward for consideration. I’m not presumptuous enough to proffer candidates, especially as my list might be rather theatre-centric, and you may not want to follow Rocco with another theatre-oriented person, since the NEA has an impact on so many areas in the arts. Again, symbolism can be important. Beyond having an advocate in your administration who has the unequivocal authority of the office, we need the affirmation that this is important to you and that you believe the arts are important to the American people. It’s the silence that hurts, especially as we’ve watched the agency diminished over time, albeit with some recent gains that don’t go unnoticed or unappreciated.

Now I don’t know Joan Shikegawa myself, but if the trouble of a search is too onerous and she’s been doing well, then give her the full power. Don’t wait any longer. While we appreciate acting in the arts, “Acting Chairman” diminishes authority, rather than enhancing it. It suggests something transitory, and we need some permanence. We’ve spent too much time over the past couple of decades worrying whether the agency, and federal funding, would even survive.

There are remarkable leaders in the arts, who would be great advocates and great politicians. They would do your administration proud and the arts community could take pride in them. There’s very little the average citizen can do to nudge you on this, although I’m quite certain I could rally the troops on Twitter or Facebook to lob ideas at you via social media. But you probably want more decorum.

Now if it so happens that there’s something we can do, reach out. If there are factors contributing to the delay, give us a sign, so we know where we stand. But what I, and I suspect others, want to know is that the arts aren’t forgotten, and that our president believes they are important enough for his concern, his enthusiasm, and his actions. Name a chairman. Please. I look forward to hearing from you. Not by mail, but in the national news. Soon.

Sincerely,

Howard Sherman

I don’t mean to make anyone paranoid, but if your organization has unpaid interns, you need to start thinking about whether they may start legal proceedings against you for back pay. In the wake of a federal court ruling that found Fox Searchlight Pictures violated minimum wage laws in their engagement and utilization of unpaid interns, any number of shrewd interns may well be considering their options even as I write.

‘Well that’s Hollywood,’ you respond, ‘They’ve got piles of money and absolutely should have been paying their interns.’ But the minimum wage laws, in existence for years, don’t consider the assets of any company in deciding whether an internship is legitimate, only whether the proper criteria apply. While I’m no labor lawyer, I have long been familiar with the general guidelines of internships, which in essence say that an unpaid internship is legitimate only when there is a clear educational benefit to the intern (best ascertained when the internship is approved for academic credit, not by a ‘they get to see how things work while doing the copying’ justification) and when the internship does not involve labor that would otherwise have to be undertaken by a paid employee.

As Isaac Butler astutely points out on his blog this morning, the arts (and no doubt countless other businesses, both commercial and not-for-profit), operate under “an assumption of not paying people, with narrow, specific contexts as to when that won’t be the case.” Internships are ingrained in our culture and the resistance to change is due in part to the mindset of ‘that’s what I did when I was young and it should still be that way today.’ This same logic long ruled over medical education, with doctors-in-training working insane hours as if under some prolonged fraternity hazing – until people started noticing that patients were dying as a result. ‘That’s the way it’s always been done’ is not a legitimate excuse.

No one may be dying because of unpaid arts internships, but the legal and ethical issues are certainly brought to the forefront by the court ruling. Organizations are well advised to review their intern practices against the wage guidelines and applicable laws as soon as possible; this is not a blanket jeremiad against internships, only those which aren’t legit. On the upside, perhaps this new finding (again, based on long-standing laws) will prompt more organizations to develop and institute true internships, with defined training regimens for a limited time. Still other companies may realize it’s smarter to begin paying at least minimum wage as soon as possible. (Don’t get hung up on your personal interpretation of what “stipend” means; that’s another easy out, and a trap.)

Of course if those employees are full time, you’ll have to provide benefits as well, such as health insurance and paid time off, so minimum wage times 40 hours a week is only part of the true price tag here. While in the short term, absorbing these costs will l be difficult, it beats the looming prospect of legal action, resulting in not only making payments in arrears, but also bearing the burden of penalties. Whatever your company considers, get professional counsel to make sure you’re doing not just the right thing, but the correct thing.

Some may choose to debate whether the transition away from unpaid internships/jobs will place a greater burden on smaller companies. As a veteran of what most would consider large organizations, it’s difficult for me to assess the relative impact. I would certainly hate to see small or even nascent companies derailed, but as we’re taught, ignorance of the law (or willfully ignoring it) is no excuse for breaking it (a recent employment tribunal in England has prompted a reexamination of unpaid fringe theatre work). The arts ecosystem must absorb the lessons of the Fox Searchlight decision and, as a field that is perpetually challenged, we will find our way through. Indeed, we may ultimately be stronger, since in many cases, it is only young people of means who can afford to work for nothing; this will be a step (though by no means the whole solution) in insuring that arts careers are available to everyone.

Although unemployment rates are down, it’s well known that job opportunities for recent college graduates are still relatively slim, and it’s not unusual for young people to do multiple internships on their way to paid work. The current arts internship culture benefits from that harsh reality, since the demand for entry-level opportunities is possibly even greater than in the past, when internships and apprenticeships were already the norm, especially in glamour industries. Though it may not seem that way day in your day to day tasks, every single arts job is in fact part of a glamour industry – it’s not reserved for movies, TV, fashion, sports and publishing. But the nation’s economic issues, our own belief in the inherent value of the arts, and the unending stream of people desperate for their show business break, should not be used as a reason to avoid paying those who are, for all intents and purposes, employees.

*   *   *

Update, 4 pm, June 13: Hours after I posted this story, The New York Times reported on two interns filing suit against Condé Nast for underpayment of wages for summer internships over the past several years. This situation will only keep growing with each filing, and with each success by plaintiffs.

Full disclosure: I am a relative rarity in the arts, in that I never had any unpaid employment in my career. My financial aid package in college included 20 hours of “work study” each week beginning with my freshman year, which paid me minimum wage to work in the box office of the campus performing arts center, home to several professional companies. I parlayed that position into a public relations gig at a small professional company during my junior year, at the rate (as I recall) of $4 an hour. I was extremely fortunate to have had these jobs, as I knew my parental support was to end the day I graduated, and these opportunities set me up to start full employment immediately, since I already had professional experience.

Jean-Michel Basquiat

For those complacent about the ongoing reduction and elimination of professional arts journalism, I would like to offer a small but concrete example of where this decline is leading us.

On Monday June 10, the website BroadwayWorld.com published the following item, credited only to “BWW News Desk.” In my experience, this usually means that it is, more or less, taken directly from a press release.

Eric LaJuan Summers and Felicia Finley to Star in BASQUIAT THE MUSICAL Reading, 6/24

Basquiat, a new musical based on the life and times of 80’s art-star, Jean-Michel Basquiat will get a private reading on Monday June 24th.

Basquiat was a New York graffiti artist who shot to stardom in the early 80’s with his neo-expressionistic paintings and bad-boy image. He was a part of a cultural revolution that included fellow painters, Keith Haring and Fab 5 Freddy, New Wave bands Blondie and Talking Heads and Basquiat’s mentor, Andy Warhol. He was one of the most sought after painters in the 80’s until his untimely death in 1988 at only 27 years old. Written by Chris Blisset (music and lyrics), Matt Uremovich (lyrics) and Larry Tobias (book), Basquiat deals with the triumphs and failures of one of the art world’s most controversial figures.

The cast stars Eric Lajuan Summers (Motown) and Felicia Finley (Mamma Mia). Summers, who recently won an Astaire Award for Outstanding Male Dancer for Motown the Musical, will be reading the title role of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Other performers include: Roger DeWitt, Chad Carstarphen (In the Heights), James Lambert, Justis Bolding (Woman in White) Frank Viveros, Jason Veasey (Lion King), Gabriel Mudd, Rubin Ortiz, and Eddie Varley.

Basquiat is conceived and directed by Paul Stancato.

Now this is a pretty straightforward announcement of something that happens constantly in New York, a reading of a new musical. But in our era of search engine optimization, curation, consolidation, aggregation and “reporting” based solely on something written elsewhere, stories begin to grow. On Tuesday June 11, The Huffington Post carried the following “story,” with no byline, which escalates some of the language around this one-day industry reading. It is, presumably, drawn from the same source as the Broadway World item, or extrapolated from the item itself.

‘Basquiat The Musical’ Is Reportedly Happening

Move over Matilda, there is a new unlikely Broadway star in town. According to Broadway World, “Basquiat The Musical” will get a private reading on June 24 with stars Eric LaJuan Summers and Felicia Finley.

That’s right, art star Jean-Michel Basquiat will have his meteoric life immortalized in song, thanks to writers Chris Blisset, Matt Uremovich and Larry Tobias, and director Paul Stancato (who is married to Felicia Finley).

Of course if any artist were to get a Broadway debut, we would assume it would be Jean-Michel. The neo-Expressionist bad boy’s iconic style, charismatic persona and tragic early death make for an extremely compelling story. He’s already been the subject of documentary and film, and a blockbuster auction at Christie’s, but the musical threshold has yet to be crossed…until now.

Summers, who previously starred in “Motown,” seems like a good fit to play the graffiti king, leaving us wondering who will play Basquiat’s mentor Andy Warhol and brief beau, Madonna.

What do you think of the prospect of a Basquiat-based musical? And which artist would you most like to see doing jazz hands on Broadway? Fingers crossed for Gerhard Richter…

On the very same day that a one-day reading is announced by Broadway World, The Huffington Post informs us that Basquiat is “reportedly happening” as a Broadway show and the actor taking the lead role in the reading has been elevated to having “previously starred in Motown.” Considering that Motown has only been running for a couple of months, the use of past tense seems unwarranted, and the actor in question is a member of the ensemble there, not playing a lead role (the Motown ensemble plays a wide variety of small roles). In addition, this as-yet unseen reading is apparently already generating buzz, as the unnamed reporter opines that this actor “seems like a good fit to play the graffiti king,” even though the reporter is unlikely to have read the script, heard the score or been able to extrapolate from the actor’s Motown performance how his talents would bear on that material. Incidentally, as I write, 133 people saw fit to share this story with others, 67 tweeted it out and 463 “liked” it.

Then, in turn, this morning, Complex.com does its own “reporting,” credited to Justin Ray (noting it is “via The Huffington Post,” but also citing Broadway World as a source) in which Basquiat is now a sure thing.

“Basquiat The Musical” Will Be Coming to Broadway

We have heard a slew of rappers refer to Jean-Michel Basquiat in song, however the influential artist’s involvement with music will be taken to the next level. Basquiat The Musical will be having a private reading on June 24 according to Broadway World.

Yes, the prolific art icon will now have a musical dedicated to his life starring Eric LaJuan Summers and Felicia Finley. The musical was written by Chris Blisset, Matt Uremovich, and Larry Tobias. It will be directed by director Paul Stancato. Although it is unexpected, we imagine it will be a pretty awesome story. It’s another thing he could have added to his hilarious resume.

Eric LaJuan Summers starred in the big musical Motown and is sure to play the part well. However details have not been released as to who will play Madonna or Andy Warhol. However we anticipate it will become popular, though it will be hard to outsell his works (which have gotten crazy amounts of dollars).

Yes, in less than 48 hours, Basquiat is not only “coming to Broadway” – all reference to a reading is gone in the headline – but Complex “anticipate[s] it will become popular” and the lead actor is “sure to play the part well.” The snowball effect is well underway, for a show that hasn’t even had its industry reading.

I don’t bring this up in order to cast any aspersions on the artists or creators of Basquiat; I genuinely wish them well. But these three items, taken together, demonstrate how quickly some simple facts about a show early in its development blow it up into a Broadway show based solely on the voracious appetite of news consolidators and headline fabricators. Have they done so wholly of their own accord, or were they easy prey for a wily publicist? Hard to say.

Since I was a child, I’ve known the phrase, “You can’t believe everything you read.” But nowadays, when it comes to news, when facts are elaborated upon and disseminated by multiple “news” sources, our skepticism needs to be greater than ever before. If this is the new standard for news, we shouldn’t be bemoaning the death of accuracy, even more than the anticipated death of print?

And as for arts coverage? Without reliable and verifiable reporting, whether in print or online, our descent into nothing but gossip draws ever closer.

*   *   *

Full disclosure: I periodically cross-post blog entries from this site to The Huffington Post as an arts blogger, for which I receive no compensation, and I have not communicated with anyone there in connection with this piece.

Yes, I’m serious about the headline. I feel your scorn, but before your jerking knee sends you to the orthopedist, let me get right to the point.

There are any number of things one can object to in the Fast & Furious movies: the crudely drawn characters, the wooden acting, the endless (albeit largely bloodless) violence, the reckless driving, the disregard for the rule of law, the recurrent crashing cars, the nonsensical plots, the impossible (digitally created) stunts. I could go on.

But there’s one major aspect of this popular series that’s being increasingly looked at as a reason for its success, and it’s one to be admired: the thoroughly integrated, multinational cast.

We can say that it’s Hollywood’s crass way of appealing to every possible demographic and market, both domestic and foreign, and I suspect that’s true. But the net result is a series of films in which race isn’t a major issue – and loyalty, camaraderie and self-made families are, regardless of skin color.

Sure, the nominal stars of the films are the bland white Paul Walker alongside burly Vin Diesel, who lays claim to “ambiguous ethnicity” and whose character is identified as Italian American. But look at the group surrounding them: Michelle Rodriguez (Latina, from Texas by way of the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico), Tyrese Gibson (African American from LA), Chris “Ludacris” Bridges (African American and Native American from Illinois), Elsa Pataky (Spanish), Sung Kang (Korean American originally from Georgia), Gal Gadot (Israeli) and Dwayne Johnson (from California, of Canadian and Samoan heritage). It’s not the U.N. (the villains are predominantly British, with one hulking Dane thrown in for good measure), but it is a melting pot. The director of the most recent films in the series is, not so incidentally, Taiwanese.

How many stage events can lay claim to this kind of diversity? Do we see this in our orchestras, our dance troupes, our stage productions? If we have to provide models in order to promote acceptance, and indeed our ongoing health as a field, are the Fast & Furious flicks leading the way in racial equality, under the cover of a mass entertainment that we might prefer to disdain?

And even though almost every character is strikingly attractive, both male and female, the usual gender barriers don’t apply. We might well be troubled by the gunplay and the hand-to-hand combat, but no one can say that the films are particularly sexist, since the women are equal (and often victorious) combatants, while the men take time out in the most recent film to express deep caring for a newborn child, to the extent their acting chops permit.

Don’t read too deeply into these movies – they’re all surface. But since there will always be potboilers and popcorn flicks, isn’t it remarkable to find ones that are ahead of the curve on race relations in a way that many arts groups can’t consistently demonstrate. Might not this approach ultimately serve our own bottom lines, as well as our loftier ambitions? I’m not advocating a Fast & Furious musical (dear god, no), but rather the reinforcement our own commitment to multiracial stories, colorblind casting and other initiatives, because we’ve still got a long way to go and our futures depend on a true embrace of multi-culturalism.

As Fast & Furious 7 is already in production, I can only hope that by the time number 8 roars in our direction, it will feature gay and lesbian characters as well among our band of heroes, as the series’ popularity enables it to integrate ever more inclusivity into its midst, among the explosions and wrecks. Even market-driven ensemble shoot ‘em ups need to grow up in that respect as well.

Oh, and by the way, I’ve seen four of the six films: the first was OK, the second was dull, I skipped 3 and 4, but the last two were absolute hoots. If you like that sort of thing.

Is there no one in town aware of social injustice?

Part of the compact we make when we go to the theatre is to shut out the outside world and completely immerse ourselves in the world displayed before us by artists, by actors. We can’t shut out our own thoughts of course, our memories and associations, but our gaze is directed, what we see and hear is planned to evoke a desired response.

It is impossible to achieve that focus when your theatre is the visitors room at Sing Sing Prison on a hot spring evening, which is where I was on Friday night, seeing Thornton Wilder’s Our Town performed by a cast of inmates of the maximum security facility, under the aegis of the not-for-profit Rehabilitation Through the Arts. I was one of a couple of hundred outsiders invited to see the production, which had already been performed twice for the general prison population, and my anticipation was as great as any I’ve had before going to the theatre.

Every child born into this world is nature’s
attempt to make
a perfect human being.

It is impossible to contemplate a visit to Sing Sing without riffling through all of the associations it brings to mind. Coming from a upper middle class family, I don’t know people who’ve gone to prison; serious crime has never touched my life or the lives of my immediate community. Crime and prison are something I read about in the newspaper, or see served up as entertainment. Dragnet. Law and Order. “Book him, Danno.” The Birdman of Alcatraz. Our Country’s Good. The Shawshank Redemption. Oz. “Anything you can say will be used against you.” Escape From Alcatraz. Short Eyes. Cool Hand Luke. The Green Mile. Not About Nightingales. Dead Man Walking. Helter Skelter. The Executioner’s Song. Even Nick Nolte in Weeds, a fictionalized account of the San Quentin Drama Workshop.

From the moment I passed the first chain link fence and a complacent guard who merely said, “Here for the play?,” I was relatively at ease. As I waited in an under-air-conditioned visitor’s trailer packed with attendees, I marveled as others in the awaiting audience, attired as if for a Sunday matinee at any theatre, grumbled about the heat, while I was wondering what the prisoners might be experiencing on that 90+ degree afternoon.  I was sweating profusely, but silently.

Live people don’t understand, do they? They’re sort of shut up
in little boxes, aren’t they?

We began to be taken into the security area in groups of about 25. We emptied our pockets, took off shoes and belts, just as at the airport, although there was but a single line moving slowly through a dingy room adorned with signs and memos of assorted warning that may have been up for 30 years or more (one cautioned against bringing in “alcholic” beverages, a typo of indeterminate age). Then, in groups of six, we passed through one true prison gate – on which stood, incongruously, more than a dozen two-inch Muppet figures. As that gate closed, another heavy door, only six or seven feet beyond it, was opened, and we entered the visitors room, our theatre.

*   *   *

Save for signs about proper behavior, vastly less than in the security area, it felt as if I was entering the cafeteria of a particularly large junior high school. There were guards, some on platforms, some on the floor, but I saw only a few. Having entered on the narrow, northern side of a long rectangle, the room seemed vast, but it was filling with people and it had been set up as a makeshift theatre. Chairs (all numbered for some purpose other than theatre seating) were arranged in a shallow three-quarter thrust, facing the eastern wall, where two levels of risers had been installed. Behind the risers, dark green fabric obscured what I assumed were more signs about proper decorum in the visitors room; the same fabric draped a collection of vending machines on the south wall. Were these standard issue, I wondered, or were they scenery, evoking the green hills of Grover’s Corners?  A collection of inmate art (another initiative of Rehabilitation Through the Arts) was on display, and refreshments were being served. Only by looking west was there a clear reminder of where we were: windows revealed spools of razor wire and fencing, beyond which was “the yard” flanked by what were presumably cell blocks. Beyond that were the tracks for the train lines that had brought me to Ossining, and beyond them, the Hudson River.

The ceiling was low, hung with fluorescent strips. There were no theatrical lights, but a small sound area sat in what might have been, in other circumstances, the stage right wings; there was a mixing board and an electric keyboard and familiar cabling ran out from there into the playing space. A pre-show announcement told us that these productions are usually done in the prison auditorium, which was under renovation this year; it was the first time since the theatre initiative began in 1996 that it hadn’t been available, and the setting was the simplest ever used (although perfectly appropriate for the famously spare Our Town).

There isn’t much culture; but maybe this is the kind of place to tell you
that we’ve got a lot of pleasure of a kind here: we like the sun comin’ up
over the mountain in the morning, and we notice a good deal about the birds.
We pay a lot of attention to them. And we watch the change
of the seasons; yes everybody knows about them.

I was surprised to find inmates, both those in obvious period costume and those in prison drab, freely mingling with the invited audience, greeting many who they seemed to know. They were shaking hands and even embracing visitors, contrary to every fictional depiction in which contact between prisoners and guests was forbidden. I had been told that the cast’s families were not permitted to attend; I assume the obviously pre-existing relationships were because the audience (almost entirely white and over 50) were in some way affiliated with RTA or other prison outreach programs.

Kate Powers, the show’s director and one of my friends from Twitter, introduced me first to her stage manager (the actual stage manager, not the character of the Stage Manager from the play), then to a large man in overalls who I was told would play Howie Newsome the milkman, then to a younger man who would play George Gibbs. The last spoke of Kate’s “unique style of directing,” so I asked whether he’d been in other plays. Only one, he replied, prompting me to wonder what was so unique that someone with presumably little frame of reference would find it so unusual.

Having arrived at the prison just after 5 pm and having been processed through security by about 5:40, it was just over an hour before we were called to our seats, as the last guests were cleared through.

*  *  *

Now you know! That’s what it is to be alive.
To move about in a cloud of ignorance
to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those. . .
of those about you. To spend and waste time
as though you had a million years.
To always be at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another.

Had I wished to, I suspect I could have learned a great deal more about the circumstances of the production from Kate. She had posted the occasional comment to Twitter, or to Facebook, about a challenge (one inmate struggled with an umbrella, unfamiliar with the mechanism) or about an acting breakthrough, or an emotional one.  She did an interview with journalist Jonathan Mandell. But I left it at that. I may well wish to understand the logistics and stories behind putting on a play in such an environment, but this night I simply wanted to react, to the setting and to the production, as I would in most theatergoing experiences.

Seated behind me was Peter Kramer, a local reporter who had seen the production two nights earlier, sitting with the general population; he has written previously about the prison’s theatre program. To my immediate right was a woman who had appeared in RTA’s production of West Side Story (three actresses had been brought in for this production as well, to play Emily, Mrs. Webb and Mrs. Gibbs). To her right was a veteran of the RTA theatre program, a former inmate, who now worked on the outside, counseling others, a man clearly well known to all there.

I guess we’re all hunting like everybody else for a way
the diligent and sensible can rise to the top
and the lazy and quarrelsome can sink to the bottom.
But it ain’t easy to find. Meanwhile, we do all we can
to help those that can’t themselves and those that we can we leave alone.

Had I learned the backstories of the actors, they surely wouldn’t have resembled a Playbill bio. I might have been able to find out their crimes, the length of their terms, whether this was their first incarceration. Perhaps I should have. But I was not there to judge them, since they had already been judged; I was not there to second-guess the judicial system or the penal system, flawed as it may be. Most of what I know about jurisprudence and incarceration, as I’ve said, is via fiction. Reality is vastly more complex, but I am not sufficiently versed in the subject to explore that. Theatre is what I do, and what I can, respond to.

*   *   *

Detail of art for the RTA production of OUR TOWN by inmate Robert Pollack

And so: Our Town.

No differently than attending a student production, it would be unfair to write anything resembling a review. The casting pool is limited, as is any prior experience. While we know the stories of Rick Cluchey or Charles S. Dutton, former prison inmates who ultimately became acclaimed professional actors, future acting careers surely wasn’t the point of the show. It was about the teamwork, the self-esteem building that surely we all know if we’ve ever been in a show, a music group or (I imagine) a sports team.

What I can tell you is that Wilder’s play came through loud and clear. There were some minor alterations: George’s kid sister became a kid brother; Grover’s Corners was re-situated in New York along the Hudson River, there’s a mosque up the hill in town these days, and the religious affiliations of the community include a sizable share of Muslims. Historically accurate interpolations for Wilder’s drama set at the turn of the century? No. Perfectly in keeping with the meta-theatrics that power the play? Absolutely.

Everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal,
and something has to do with human beings.
All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that
for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised
how people are always losing hold of it.

There was no bashfulness in the cast, but no showboating either. No one peered out and waved to those they knew in the audience. No one flubbed lines, or goofed around. Every word, every action came through loud and clear, enough so that the play worked its sad magic on me once again. As I know more and more people who live in that cemetery among its conversing residents, I find the play increasingly moving, almost painfully so. When Emily spoke of loving George “forever and ever,” my knowledge of what was to come brought me deep sorrow. No matter that I was in prison, watching amateur actors with backgrounds that might have evoked pity or fear. I was in Grover’s Corners once again.

Cover art from a 1961 paperback edition of OUR TOWN

The outside world intruded upon the production in one way that wouldn’t have been possible in the cloistered environs of an auditorium. With the performance commencing at 6:50 and coming down, intermissionless, at about 8:50, the wall of west-facing windows provided a natural illumination that, at first, overrode the institutional lighting. The actors were lit up by blazing light during the time movie-makers call “magic hour” when the sun approaches the horizon, casting a particularly rich, orange glow. As the play progressed, Grover’s Corners shifted from daylight to magic hour and then, by act three, as darkness took over the prison yard, the train tracks, and the river, the inner light became only the unvaried white of fluorescent bulbs. Nature had receded leaving only the cold surroundings of the visitors room, brighter than a wet funeral afternoon, but harsh in its own way, and surely as unforgiving.

Beyond nature’s magic, Kate Powers achieved her own coup de theatre, less instantly startling than the one employed by David Cromer in his rightly hailed Our Town, but one organic to the venue and this cast, and deeply, quietly powerful. As act two bled directly into act three, as the wedding seating was shifted to become the gravestones, nine men, inmates, dressed in green work shirts, green work pants and heavy boots (the other actors wore costumes that were a rough approximation of the play’s original period), made their way in slow motion up to the top riser. There they proceeded to seat themselves in one long row and stare out at us, unmoving, for the entire act. These were of course, within the context of the play, more gravestones, more of the deceased. But as these nine men sat and stared out, unspeaking, I could not help but see them as prisoners and actors all at once, locked away for crimes I knew nothing of, for how long I did not know. Were their lives over, as in the play? Was the play itself their escape, or even a sign of their eventual redemption? Their stares gave away nothing. No threat, no sadness. No heaven, no hell. Perhaps those in the audience with deep faith saw hope, perhaps those who believe only in this life saw nothing but emptiness. I saw Wilder by way of Beckett,  I saw beauty and the abyss, and I saw superb theatre.

They stay here while the earth part of ‘em burns away and burns out;
and all that time they slowly get indifferent.

*   *   *

It’s worth pointing out that Sing Sing is one of five prisons where Rehabilitation Through the Arts works, and that there are prison arts programs in many places around the world, and have been for many years. I have read about them often, and shared their stories with others through social media. Nothing I’ve written should suggest that this experience is singular or unique – it is simply the first time it ceased to be an abstract idea for me, and became reality.

I’m going to be grappling with the experience of seeing Our Town at Sing Sing for some time, I expect, because I have to process so much more than I do when simply seeing a professional production. I probably have to learn more as well. Even if I see another theatre production in a prison, it cannot possibly have the same impact as this one did, this first foray, ever so slightly, ever so briefly, behind prison walls, into a human drama far greater than any work of fiction can encompass.  But as someone who attends theatre relentlessly, and who at times despairs for it, this was one of those evenings that reminds me why theatre is my life’s work, and more than simply make-believe.

If you haven’t realized it at this point, the italicized sections that punctuate this essay are all dialogue from Our Town itself. They stood out in bold relief when they were spoken on Friday night. Even though they weren’t emphasized or called out in any way, they took me away from the play in startling flashes with meaning beyond what even Wilder might have imagined, given the setting, and the speakers. Even by accident or coincidence, great works reveal the world to us in new ways each time we encounter them, even – or perhaps most especially – behind bars.

My, wasn’t life awful – and wonderful.