Going on a theatre binge in a city other than the one in which you reside provides, inevitably, an imbalanced view of that city’s theatrical ecology. Unless you have unlimited time and an unlimited budget, you can barely scratch the surface of all that’s going on, with the possible exception of an intricately strategized Edinburgh visit in August.

For a variety of reasons, both professional and personal (plus free accommodations), I’ve taken to “helicoptering” into London a couple of times a year in an effort to see more than just the work that makes it to U.S. shores, and I’m just back from my spring visit. While it’s undoubtedly by accident, or perhaps a reflection of my own psyche, I was struck on this trip by how seven shows – only one musical; works new and revived; by British and American authors – managed to explore remarkably similar themes.  My week was one that focused on looking into the past and the role that honor and integrity plays in our lives.

Most obviously, Alan Bennett’s paired one-acts, Hymn and Cocktail Sticks (joined as Untold Stories in a West End transfer from The National Theatre), are autobiography with a decidedly rueful tone. In both cases, Bennett himself (embodied by Alex Jennings) recalls and interacts with his past, focusing on his relationship to music and his father in the former, and his growing intellectual disconnection from his parents in the latter. While Bennett has directly drawn on his own life in the past (he was a key character in his own The Lady In The Van years back), these short plays , written 11 years apart, show him as both reflective and perhaps regretful, a son considering his parents from a vantage point older than they were in the anecdotes on display.

The two most biographical plays (in commercial West End runs), though almost wholly fiction, were Peter Morgan’s The Audience and John Logan’s Peter And Alice. While both are rooted in historical events and real people: the former constructed from the framework of Queen Elizabeth’s weekly audience with the Prime Minister; the latter imagined from a one-time meeting of Peter Llewelyn Davis, the model for J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, and Alice Liddell Hargreaves, the template for Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland.  P&A takes meta to the max, as the adult role models grapple both with the men who gave them potentially eternal life, as well as the characters that bear their name, layering the mortality of humans alongside literary perpetuity, and their memories of their younger selves. The Audience, rather than simply being a highlights reel of postwar British history, uses the weekly audiences instead to address the burden and commitment of being the queen and Logan even allows Her Majesty to interact with her younger self, long since locked away.

Just as Queen Elizabeth is bound by the duty of her role, the young man who is at the center of Terence Rattigan’s classic The Winslow Boy (at The Old Vic) is potentially disgraced after an accusation of theft, breaching his family’s honor in the mind of his determined father. Though decades old (it debuted a few years before the Queen was placed in her regal straitjacket), its portrayal of a small cog being tossed aside without due process by a large and ostensibly honor-bound institution has any number of resonances in any era; the senior Winslow, hell-bent on clearing his son’s name, pronounces any number of sentiments that would be welcomed by Occupy Wall Street and veterans’ rights advocates alike. The more obviously political This House (at The National Theatre), set entirely in Britain’s Parliament between 1974 and 1979, though fascinated with the machinations of governing, also turns on tradition and honor, as the legislative body grapples with the place of long-standing practices in the face of political necessity; like The Audience, it takes its framework from history but roots itself in the humanity that manages to stay alive amid conflict that affects an entire country.

Going further back into history Bruce Norris’ The Low Road (at the Royal Court) posits an amoral antihero plying his capitalist trade in colonial America. With readily apparent parallels to recent economic crises worldwide, Norris deploys as his lead character an apotheosis of financial rapaciousness, looking backwards in order to damn practices of the present day and all too recent past. In this tale, the lack of honor makes the greatest argument for it. The one musical of my visit was a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along (a West End transfer from the Menier Chocolate Factory), the backwards treading story of three friends irrevocably broken apart at the beginning of the show, only to flash ever backward to the key points of their relationship, like a film run backward as they move from missteps to success to first meetings, and as their superficial, damaged lives are restored to their youthful integrity and dreams.

So here’s the question: is London theatre consumed by these issues, or do I unwittingly choose shows which embody certain themes? Do I build my own theatrical inkblot? Honestly, I knew little of either the Bennett plays or The Low Road; I saw them because of my interest in those authors. I knew something of the premises of The Audience, This House and Peter And Alice, but no details; I was drawn by the praise of others and by the Helen Mirren and Judi Dench to two of those shows. What if I hadn’t been able to get a ticket to several of these shows?  I had only purchased three before arriving in London. What if I had moved beyond the West End and the major subsidized houses into fringe venues, deciding what to see with even less foreknowledge? Perhaps I had curated my own version of PBS’s Masterpiece, cherry picking only the very best of what was on offer and leaving riskier, but perhaps even more compelling and diverse, prospects alone.

Whatever the motivations, intentional or otherwise, I created a week that was informative and reflective, and startlingly consistent in theme even if divergent in style. And for perhaps the only time I can remember, I saw seven consecutive shows and was pleased to have seen each and every one, no mean feat for any avid theatergoer.

But I do wonder: what if I had spiced things up with Viva Forever, or tapped into Top Hat? I would have come away with a markedly different vision of the English stage and its present-day themes. Hmmmm.

Though I’ve occasionally written about topics outside of theatre and the performing arts, with this post I’ll be titling them as a distinct series, affording me the opportunity to stray wider in my writing while noting when I’m “off-topic.” So here’s the first “Etcetera.”

If I tell you that I fondly recall coming home from junior high in the mid-1970s and huddling up to my radio for the verbal entertainment found there, I hope you will be struck by the incongruity of the date and the medium of choice. There was a burst of nostalgia for radio comedy and drama in that era; one station that I could receive, if the weather conditions were right, scheduled classic shows like Fibber McGee and Molly and The Shadow weekly; radio veteran Himan Brown launched a new series of radio plays called the CBS Radio Mystery Theatre (archived here), and even the countercultural satirists at the National Lampoon syndicated their Radio Hour, a precursor to their own stage show Lemmings and shortly thereafter, the debut of Saturday Night Live.

I loved them all, but the most intriguing were the evening drive-time broadcasters on New York’s WOR, Bob and Ray. They would chat, do segues to traffic and news reports and intermittently launch into decidedly off-kilter comic sequences. Those I remember best were the serialized “Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife” and “Garish Summit.” None of my friends at the time listened to this stuff and it wasn’t until I got to college that I discovered the cult of Bob and Ray, who, as it turned out, were in their final regular radio run as I listened, having started their careers in the late 40s.

In the just-published Bob and Ray: Keener Than Most Person (Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, $27.99), David Pollack provides the first biography of the duo, from their fortuitous pairing  in 1946 through Ray’s death in 1990. Though their material has circulated for years, on tape and records (later CDs), in books and now on YouTube, the book offers the opportunity to learn the detail (even minutiae) of their joint career, including their early leap from radio to television in the latter’s earliest days, their role (along with another hero of mine, Stan Freberg) at injecting humor into advertising, and their reluctant foray onto the Broadway stage in 1970.

The book goes out of its way to point out what ordinary guys Bob (Elliott) and Ray (Goulding) were and how much they eschewed the trappings of even minor celebrity. It also repeatedly comments on the lack of conflict between the two, only mentioning Ray’s occasional flashes of anger that were quickly forgotten. There’s no tell-all here, pretty much just the facts, ma’am, and very little drama.

In addition to noting just how much the duo were outside the comedy mainstream (indeed, they didn’t consider themselves comedians at all), Pollack makes one important observation about the pair’s popularity. Because they performed almost exclusively for years in studios – not stages or nightclubs – there were no aural cues as to what was funny and what was not. Their humor thrived on being underplayed, and undersold. But what may have made them truly unique was that without a live audience, fans would feel they were an audience of one, communing directly with the hosts from their car or home, unmediated and deeply personal.

Save for the occasional line of dialogue, Bob and Ray, Keener Than Most Persons reproduces none of the duo’s material and its straightforward, authorized telling makes the assumption that you’re reading the book because you’re already a fan; there’s no effort to drum up new aficionados. While such an effort would have been challenging given that so much of Bob and Ray’s humor emanates from their rapport and timing, it’s hardly impossible to proselytize for comedians of the past; witness Dick Cavett’s superb evocation of the once sui generis improv of Jonathan Winters, which just ran in The New York Times.

So I must urge you to head to YouTube, to listen to my indescribable favorites, “The Komodo Dragon Expert” and “The Slow Talker,” both from their Broadway stand (therefore, with atypical audience laughter). Then just keep searching.

A personal addendum, less than 24 hours old. When the book arrived and landed on my coffee table, my wife’s response was, “Bob and Ray. Who are they?” At the time I didn’t launch into a rhapsody, but last night, having just read the book on an airplane, I began talking about Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding, mentioning that I thought Ray might have lived near her family on Long Island. “Goulding?” she said. “I went to school with a Mark Goulding. His dad did something in radio.” I showed her pictures from the book and, indeed, my wife recognized Ray Goulding from school events. He flew under the radar even in his own town.

I, of course, was floored to find that my wife had come so close to one of my heroes, completely unaware. So I played the two pieces mentioned above, and we both laughed until tears came to our eyes. I am happy to report that nearly 70 years after they began working together, I had just recruited a new fan to the cult of Bob and Ray. Join us, won’t you?

Not a musical.

Let’s be honest.  If you didn’t follow documentary filmmaking or live and die by theatre news, Hands on a Hardbody would sound like something that might play late at night on Cinemax. Those of a certain age might think it was a belated sequel to the 1984 teen sexploitation comedy Hardbodies (think Porky’s, with less class). But the fact is, that title was very likely a deterrent to audiences, even with “a new musical” appended to it, which is seemingly de rigeur these days, despite having been brilliantly parodied years ago by The Musical of Musicals (The Musical!).

It’s not my habit to write critiques of shows, and I’m not about to break that practice, but with Hands on a Hardbody now closed, I feel a bit freer to engage in analysis of the show’s marketing. In my outsider assessment, it didn’t manage to sufficiently surmount the challenges inherent in the show, attested to by the consistently low grosses throughout previews and the four weeks of the regular run. Hardbody built up no head of steam, no significant name recognition and apparently no advance sales, despite the usual potpourri of discounts. Frankly, if it came up in any of my discussions, I couldn’t make it sound inherently appealing either.

“Hands on a Hardbody,” a new musical

If, as some suggest, the theatergoing audience is finite, and fragmented by the welter of openings each spring, then Hardbody was starting at a disadvantage. Though it was based on a well-received documentary, it didn’t come with name recognition, since the film is 17 years old and grossed less than a half-million dollars; though its creative credentials were impressive, how many new musicals are sold solely on the strength of their writing team nowadays; it had a talented cast with several names well-known to theatre audiences (particularly Keith Carradine and Hunter Foster), but there was no Tom Hanks, Bette Midler or Alec Baldwin to tap into the celebrity buzz machine.

Mind you, I don’t mention the foregoing to say that they are absolute necessities for Broadway success. How many people really knew Once the movie before the show opened (with the benefit of starting at New York Theatre Workshop)? Were Jonathan Groff and Lea Michele big names before Spring Awakening? Who on earth was Lin-Manuel Miranda or Quiara Alegria Hudes in the public imagination before In The Heights?

This could be looked at as Monday morning quarterbacking, but the title must have suggested a challenge to the creative and producing teams up front. There was a change made from the documentary name, merging what had been “Hard Body” into “Hardbody.” Perhaps this means something to those who are truck aficionados, but in the steep canyons of New York (and let’s remember that new Broadway shows don’t often reach the tourist market right away), I fear this ultrafine distinction was lost.

Going back to my earlier comparison to late-night cable, I’m not sure whether “hard body” or “hardbody” is an important distinction; I also wonder about some of the glistening bodybuilders who beckon from magazine covers on the newsstand when those words are deployed. In any event, the title didn’t bring any marketing recognition to the table; perhaps it deserved something that would have moved us into the realm of the mythic, rather than grounding us, enigmatically, in the truck at the center of the show. Sometimes, being too loyal to source material can be counterproductive.

TV ads I saw seemed to be on the right track, emphasizing the spirit of competition. To be sure, playing up to TV’s countless reality contests wasn’t a bad strategy. I just wonder whether they went far enough, or – once again – were clear enough. You could (pardon the expression) drive a truck through the space between winning a motor vehicle and a better life. The campaign needed to express something between a pickup with a foreign brand name and a nebulous American dream. Unfortunately, few shows could have mounted the series of ads that might have prompted audiences to feel they had a stake too.

Poster or infographic?

Where I really worried for the show was in its big three-sheet in Shubert Alley, long considered prime display space for Broadway shows, much sought after and fought over. I’ve reproduced it here so you can see exactly how eye-catching it wasn’t. Frankly, it could be compared to everything from a flow chart to a child’s board game to assembly instructions, and it required a close read for it to register at all. In trying to do everything, it did almost nothing, and even marred by amateur photography here, it sure remains one of the most confusing images I’ve ever seen put to use in advertising a Broadway show, or any form of entertainment, for that matter. If this was also used in print ads I can’t say, having shifted to almost exclusively digital readership; it might have worked if you were holding it in your hands, but it still would have been quite the jumble compared to the simplicity of The Phantom’s mask or the Jersey Boys in lights.

You can debate the pros and cons of the show among yourselves, but the failure for Hardbody to gain even initial traction is evidence of a communications strategy that couldn’t pump up any meaningful interest, leaving the show in the hands of the critics and an uninformed base of ticket buyers at the most Darwinian time of the year. Ironically, in preparing this piece, I found the cover of a home video release of the documentary and it had a rather intriguing tagline that might have been provocative and helpful to the show: “You lose the contest when you lose your mind.” Turned around so that it didn’t harp on losing (negatives are, funny enough, not positive in advertising), there was still something there: a sense of mental toughness, of endurance, even of the potential for madness. And if reality TV has taught us nothing, those are qualities people like to watch.

So I mourn the closing of the possibly misunderstood Hands On A Hardbody both because it was a show that dared to not fit some standard Broadway formula and because its closing probably scared producers and investors for future projects that don’t fit the mold. I hope that’s not the case.

But I’ve found a great new opening night gift for the brave souls who dare to take on Broadway with new material in particular: “You lose the contest when you lose your mind.”

A couple of weeks back, the social media director at Cirque du Soleil reached out to me. He offered the opportunity to watch One Night for One Drop, their online video of a one-performance event the company had mounted in Las Vegas for One Drop, the water and famine charity founded by Cirque’s mastermind Guy Laliberté. The video was being streamed for only seven days and one needed to make a minimum $5 contribution to the charity to view it; I had already been importuned to do so, separately, via e-mails from one of the event sponsors, Zuckerberg Media, but I hadn’t made the leap. With the free pass from Cirque, I surveyed through the show, which was quite impressive, all the more for not being a rehash of existing company material (I thought it superior to their 3D film Worlds Away). I did share the link on Twitter a couple of times (sans the free access), but I really should send the charity $5.

What struck me most about the initiative was that it did something I bet every performing arts organization aspires to: it extended the reach of what was a high ticket price one-night event in one city to a world-wide audience. Let’s face it, we all go through the not-infrequent agony of putting together a benefit every year, some more elaborate than others, and the entertainment – which can be blah or brilliant, depending upon the company – is seen by maybe 500 or 1,000 people (if you’re really successful). What if that could be multiplied, offering a low-price donation point without cannibalizing the live audience?

To be sure, Cirque has many assets that make this possible: significant financial resources, radically different work rules, multi-platform expertise and major sponsors for the regular shows. I don’t quite understand how they mounted such a large company for a single performance – did they hire performers specifically for that show, how long was the rehearsal period, and so on. But presumably, and hopefully, what they made for the charity was markedly greater than the production cost (even with largesse from Laliberté). Whether the cost of filming it (expertly) and streaming it was balanced with online donations hasn’t been released.

But stepping away from the Cirque template, I do wonder whether some of the most creative arts benefits might find more audience, and support, if played after the fact online. Frankly, I can’t afford to go to most of these events, but I’d be very interested in donating a bit in order to see the complete annual MCC Theater’s “Miscast,” the LAByrinth charades, the numerous events from Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS (I’m not sure that Second Stage’s celebrity bowling would make the cut without some funny commentary added in post). I’m not necessarily interested enough in these events to buy a DVD, even if they exist, as I don’t need more disks cluttering up my home, but streamed for minimal cost to my computer? Absolutely. And if I feel that way as someone who works in the field and lives in New York, what about theatre fans from across the country, or even around the world?

There’s no question that not every benefit would be right for this; many are “variety shows” of performers who come and do a song already in their repertoire without benefit of much rehearsal or optimal sound; some might not consent to have their performance recorded and shared. There are union issues that would have to be worked out if the performance is to be available beyond the designated venue. Some of the events offer performances that are simply too brief to merit the cost of recording.

But as video, both official and bootleg, emerges from these benefits in the days and weeks that follow, organizations are failing to capture potential revenue and interest. Just as companies are and should be exploring opportunities for wider reach for their productions, a la NT Live, they should be looking at the inherent value in their own one-night productions, skipping movie theatres (The 24 Hour Plays has done a cinecast) or home video distribution and making the material directly available on their own websites – for a price.

What if a company could up their take by 20%, while only adding 10% to their expenses? What if that money was coming from out of state or even out of the country? What if more companies started thinking of their galas as true entertainments, not just formulaic cocktail/dinner/show/out-by-10 events? No question, there are no guarantees under this model, but if someone makes an early effort and succeeds, the possibilities are great, and indeed these events might become even more creative as they consider not just the wealthy patrons at the tables but the fans at home. The benefits, and I explicitly do mean the dual meanings of that word, could be huge.

Curtain call at Amity Regional High School’s “Sweeney Todd”

I have seen Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd many times over the years, probably more than any single show. It has thrilled me, scared me, impressed me, made me laugh. I mouth the words, I bob my head, I conduct in imperceptibly small movements of my hands. But until this past Friday night, Sweeney Todd had never made me cry.

Let me back up.

About a month ago, a threatened protest against a production of Sweeney at my old high school, Amity Regional in Woodbridge CT, sent me rushing headlong to a board of education meeting to speak on behalf of the show and the school’s drama program. While the opposition turned out to be muted, and my voice simply one of many, my vocal support of the drama program at my alma mater demanded that I back up my words with action, which in this case meant nothing more than returning to see the production.

Now in point of fact, I can’t be certain if I ever went back to Amity to see a show after I graduated. Perhaps I saw a show in the two years after I went off to college, when younger friends were still at the school; I have a vague memory of one or two shows that my sister, four years younger than me, may have been involved in. But they made no lasting impression. My recollection of drama at Amity High School always has me somewhere in it, and perhaps that’s true for most kids who did theatre in school.

So this is the point in the story where you think: oh, he cried at Sweeney for all the years gone by and the friends with whom he’s lost touch. It was more than half a lifetime ago and our lives take us on many paths, far from the friends we had as teens. That’s understandable. It happens to us all.

If that’s what you thought, you’re wrong.

You see, I am still in touch with, and close to, so many of my friends from the Amity Drama Club (and, by extension, the music department, which included the chorus and the band). While I may not see them as much as I would like, they are never far. We call each other on birthdays, gather for family celebrations (since so many of them are as close as family), mourn together (a task which I fear will only increase as days wear on). A few I speak with almost weekly. Facebook has helped with many reconnections of late, as did a spontaneously organized music department reunion last spring. I am the only one who made theatre my sole profession, though my days as a performer ended after one show in college.

My tears at Amity this past Friday night, which persisted for the first 15 minutes of the show, were for the sheer joy of those friends from that time. The moment the Sweeney ensemble united to cry out “Swing your razor wide,” I was reminded of how deep the friendships were that were forged on the stage on Amity High School, the intensity of the memories, the importance of our shared youth. Very few of us played sports, but this was our team; we had no championship trophies then or now, but we were and are our own prizes.

Watching the Amity kids on Friday, I wondered about their friendships, even their romances. Would they stand the test of time? I remembered my parents cautioning me as I went off to college that my high school friendships might fall away, as so many do; I was so happy that those friends are now, more than three decades later, still my friends, just as my parents’ own school friends remained their friends until they passed away.

In my day, the Amity Drama Club produced My Fair Lady, Oklahoma! and Bye Bye Birdie; the fairly recently reinvigorated Amity Creative Theatre, as it’s now known, has tackled Rent, Sweeney and Whose Life Is It Anyway?, shows that opened when I was in high school or even years later. I can’t compare the quality then or now, since I’ve not been back for so long and (mercifully) my high school years pre-dated the advent of home video.

But comparison is not the point. The achievement is in the work and the collaboration; though every high school drama club probably dreams of being discovered and whisked to Broadway, it’s just a lovely fantasy to be indulged, not a true goal. The lasting legacy is not the photos or videos, but the profound connections and the pleasure (and pain, since no show is ever easy) of the experience.

Also at play as I watched Sweeney was the fact that I have no children of my own, though I have six adored nieces. My niece Lillian played the title role Annie in middle school, but has since shifted over to costume design and construction; four have shown no great interest in the stage other than as members of the audience; my youngest niece, Rebekka, at age 10, has yet to evidence any desire to perform. I support them in their own choices and do not wish that they shared my interests at their ages. Even if I had children, there’s no certainty that they would have wanted to be on the stage or play an instrument.

So mixed with my tears of joy for my lifelong friends was an emotion I probably have no right to: I was so proud. I was so proud of the kids on that stage and backstage. That night, each and every one of them was my child and they were all sublime. We don’t know one another, yet we share something that is shared by anyone who did a show, or many shows, in high school.

I now know how my mother and father felt watching me; how my Uncle Bernie felt, snapping pictures madly at every show; how my Aunt Dorothy, my godmother, who used to come to our house and play the piano and urge us to sing, felt.

How beautiful, how sweet, how funny, how perfect and how loved you all are. Welcome to the theatre.

I am not a Pollyanna about the continuing challenges of racial inequality and prejudice in this country and around the world. I fear that mankind’s seemingly inexhaustible capacity and compulsion to define an “other” is so deeply seated that it will take many more generations to eradicate, largely through what futurists and fantasists predict to be an eventual blending of all races. I will not live to see that day.

But I thought we were above this sort of thing in the arts, at least insofar as exploiting racial differences go. But with this morning’s announcement of a new Broadway production of Romeo and Juliet, featuring Orlando Bloom and Condola Rashad as the famed lovers, I find that neither the press nor those associated with the show are able to simply announce their production and its fine cast. Instead, words like “interracial” and “mixed race” pepper nearly every article I’ve seen since I first learned of the production; whether that is by design of the producers or the reaction of the press is difficult to parse. The director has already been quoted speaking about wanting to emphasize the division of the Montagues and Capulets through his casting; he notes that he didn’t start with the intent of separating the warring families along racial lines, but that it evolved once his leads were selected.

Why is calling out the racial element necessary, I wonder, especially at the very moment the show is made public. They’ve announced with poster art in place, so it’s fairly self-evident that Bloom is white and Rashad is black. The casting of the veteran actor Joe Morton as Lord Capulet is also noted. Do we need to have this color divide spelled out for us? I tend to think we would do well to discover it when we see the show, or simply become more aware as more casting announcements ensue. Certainly it’s something for feature stories closer to the opening.

I am, emphatically, not arguing against the show artistically in any way. It’s a perfectly valid approach and I look forward to seeing what David Leveaux does with it. I’m especially eager to see Rashad because she’s such a compelling actor and I want to watch her career and talent grow.  It’s the racial emphasis of the initial news that concerns and surprises me, and it’s interesting to note that it has overwhelmed the observation that the actor playing Romeo is 35, which might otherwise draw attention.

Color-blind and color-specific casting has been used for years, especially with Shakespeare. At Hartford Stage in 1987, I did press for a production where a white Pericles married a black Thaisa, who was the child of a Latino father; Pericles and Thaisa’s child Marina was played by an Asian American actress. A year later, Jim Simpson, now of The Flea Theatre, directed a stage adaptation of Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons in which the gentry were white and the serfs black, to bring home the class divisions viscerally for modern audiences; it was not in the text. That was a quarter century ago. I recall a Pygmalion at Yale Rep with an African-American Eliza. Just last year in a glorious As You Like It, Lily Rabe, Andre Braugher and Omar Metwally were among the denizens of Arden for The Public Theatre, all of different racial heritage, yet it mattered not a whit; in 2007 The Public offered us a Latino Romeo portrayed by Oscar Isaac.  I’m sure there are countless other examples, which escape me only in the haste of my writing.

There are those who cling to ideas of what is historically correct with Shakespeare, but his work was both a product of its day and at times anachronistic unto itself (i.e. mentions of clocks in Julius Caesar). “Purity” would require the use of original pronunciation and all-male casts, both of which are rarely employed; I say anything goes if it is true to the text and illuminates the play. I reject narrow-mindedness.

But when it is instantly obvious to anyone with a knowledge of the actors already announced that the show is being cast along racial lines, and when there is imagery to point that out to the unaware, why must that be the beginning of every story? If Will & Grace, Modern Family and Ellen are now cited as leading Americans to greater acceptance of marriage equality, can’t the arts explore racial themes without using them as a marketing ploy? After 400 years, we all certainly know that the youthful protagonists die, in no small part because of the clannish enmity between their families; we’ll see that transposed in this production onto racial lines and yet, presumably, the message remains the same – the prejudices of parents must be eradicated, for the sake of children’s happiness and the betterment of society.

Talk to me about Orlando Bloom’s Broadway debut. Rhapsodize over Rashad’s talented family. Praise the acumen of the director. Embrace the timeless story of lovers separated by foolish divisions. But don’t parade out “interracial” and “mixed-race” as if such a casting idea is new to the stage, even when employed in a work where it is neither explicit or implicit in the text. In doing so, there is the risk of suggesting not how acceptable it is or should be, but rather that it is still something remarkable or strange. Frankly, I’d be thrilled if someone actually got to the show with no knowledge of the racial element, and discovered how it, perhaps, serves to bring the drama home, especially if it runs against their own expectations or prejudices.

“Mixed” romances and marriages, whether racial, religious, or based in some other bias, are certainly not fully accepted in every corner of this country or the world, but we are 40+ years past Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner.  Sell me this Romeo and Juliet on its many merits, not by suggesting that it will be heightened by a portrayal of racial enmity. Let’s show the way in our art, not exploit retrograde ideas in our rhetoric.

I’m often asked by journalists for observations about trends, on Broadway, Off-Broadway, or about theatre in general. One recent call queried me about the prevalence of shirtless men on Broadway this season, a topic on which I had little to say.

Although I was taught in my press agent days that two similar items are a coincidence but that for journalistic purposes, three similar items make a trend and get covered as such, I still tend to look at confluences on Broadway in any given season as accidents. Shows come together (or not) at certain times for many reasons, without co-ordination. But it’s hard not to look at the spring Broadway crop of one-actor shows and let it go unremarked.

In a span of only eight weeks, four of Broadway’s 40 theatres will be home to new one-person shows – all genuine plays, not musical revues or autobiographical monodramas – representing four of the ten new plays due this spring. They tell the stories of three influential women, all deceased – Hollywood agent Sue Mengers (I’ll Eat You Last), Texas governor Ann Richards (Ann) and Jesus’ mother (The Testament of Mary) – and those Scottish social climbers, The Macbeths. Not having seen any of them as yet, I know that the Scottish play has a single actor (Alan Cumming) playing every role; whether there are multiple characters portrayed in the other shows is to be seen.

Is this confluence the result of ‘star casting’ run amok? Not really, since of the four actors involved– Cumming, Bette Midler, Fiona Shaw and Holland Taylor (in alphabetical order) – only Midler is a multi-generational ‘big name’ in the U.S. The other three are all accomplished and honoured actors, and Cumming’s star has risen sharply since he joined the cast of TV’s The Good Wife, but none is necessarily box office catnip. Taylor last appeared on Broadway three decades ago in the infamous Moose Murders, while Shaw’s only prior appearance was as Medea during a brief run 11 years ago. Midler, we hear, won’t be singing, the feature of her previous Broadway forays in the 1970s.

So what to make of this monomania? In all likelihood, it’s simply a quirk of fate, but it has potentially lasting effects. As new plays on Broadway are typically launched into long lives in regional and later amateur theatres, is the theatrical canon being expanded with this work? One only has to see how Red and The Mountaintop have flourished around the US to see the Broadway effect on plays’ future lives, perhaps due to their tiny casts helping to balance out large plays elsewhere in a theatre’s season. Will these solo plays make the same journey – or are they taking the place of larger pieces that need a marketing boost to make that leap?

One-person shows place a significant burden on one person’s shoulders. In any venue, there’s the risk of the actor becoming ill or being injured; while subsidised theatres in the US often don’t use understudies – they’ll carry them on shows like these. But  will any audience want to see a substitute for the person truly charged with the singular task of holding a stage by themselves?

If the shows are hits, and do spawn future productions, they could further diminish cast sizes nationally. The economic temptation will be there, and perhaps playwrights who worry now about writing shows that require even six or seven actors will start to think in a smaller scale, to the detriment of the dramatic canon. We can ill-afford a scenario in which God of Carnage is a theatre’s ‘big’ show.

I look forward to each of these plays, which promise a variety of subject and style. But if solo shows become Broadway’s dramatic bread and butter, they’re likely to be met with the sound of one hand clapping.

“Hello? Do you have Tilda Swinton in a box?”

For a certain breed of relatively cultured wags (including the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay Abaire and, less exaltedly, me), Tilda Swinton sleeping in a glass box at the Museum of Modern Art is a comedic source that just keeps on giving. After all, this is an Academy Award-winning actor with a distinctly unique personal style ensconcing herself in a terrarium on random days for hours at a time. Modern art, performance art, personal eccentricity or creative vision – all grist for the humor mill. The piece has a name, incidentally — “The Maybe” — which only serves as a dog-whistle call to those who would poke fun at it; that Swinton first “performed” it in 1995 only increases the volume.

I freely admit I am unequipped to assess “The Maybe” as fine art or performance art. But in contrast to my own tweeted gibes and my enthusiastic embrace of David’s seemingly endless variations on the theme, I’d like to dispense with the humor and take the piece vaguely seriously, stipulating to the court that it is worthy of consideration, since experts have apparently deemed it as such.

If it is art of any stripe, why has it touched off such a sensation? If just anyone was asleep, or feigning sleep in a glass box at MOMA for hours at a time, it would be a curiosity, at best worthy of a squib on websites or the kicker story on local news. On occasion, I happen to talk with some coherence while I sleep, and I am known (by a very select few) to thrash about involuntarily as well; I’d be much more engaging lying in that box, but wouldn’t raise much media comment.

If there was no apparent air source to the box, this would rise to the dwindling level of interest of a David Blaine stunt. If there was an adorable  kitty or puppy in the box it might find attention as an internet video, or arouse ire and concern over the animal’s treatment. If we learned someone was being paid $50,000 a night to do this, it might prove as enraging as the new Virginia bus stop that cost $1 million to build.

The only reason the general public knows about this piece of art is because Swinton already has a level of fame. She’s got that Oscar and she’s a highly respected actress, though hardly a household name. She might be called a star, but certainly not a celebrity; this isn’t Hasselhoff or a Kardashian lounging about on view. But Tilda’s well enough known to raise oddity into spectacle, more than willing to exploit her renown for this “work,” which has surely generated international headlines for MOMA this week. Let’s remember, when she did this in the 90s, she hadn’t yet gone toe to toe with Clooney onscreen.

Some of the same cultural outlets that are quick to question when “name” actors are announced for theatre productions have covered the Swinton event, and while they’ve noted its peculiarity, many have left the withering and witty comments to those on social media. Silly as the whole thing may seem, I feel they’ve given Swinton some leeway, while shows on and off-Broadway with famous actors are damned right out of the gate as “star-driven,” even when the actor is impeccably cast (admittedly, not all are). No one that I’ve seen has reported the weekend grosses at MOMA, despite their surprise deployment of a celebrity and the subsequent press; however, it is often implied that when a stage piece with a star in it does well at the box office, it has somehow cheated its way to success. Are there different standards for museums and theatres? Or am I just not tuned in to the art world?

To be a celebrity or to be a star, that is the question.

“The Maybe”’s emergence this weekend happened to coincide with the premiere of a new production of Hamlet at the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven. Perhaps you’ve heard about it? Normally, a regional production of Hamlet might not evoke much attention, but this one has lured the New York theatre press onto I-95 and Metro-North almost en masse. Why? Because the melancholy Dane is being played by the very fine actor Paul Giamatti, a screen stalwart little seen on stage in recent years. The announcement of the show generated the first wave of press, given the incongruity of his appearance and manner with most visions of the sweet prince; the performance itself has yielded many more reviews than a typical show at a Connecticut theatre.

Some of the outlets that rushed to see the “famous” Paul Giamatti as Hamlet are the same ones who rail against the damage celebrity casting has done to New York theatre, yet here they are responding to its siren call (along with audiences, who made the show a sell-out even before performances began). I’m not denigrating Giamatti’s considerable talents, but dollars to doughnuts some other fine actor, unexpected or not, but without copious entries on the IMDB, wouldn’t have taxed arts travel budgets. It would have been “just another regional theatre show,” left to the local press.

This is all a long way of saying that whether the box is a small glass display case or grand theatre, fame gets to the head of the media line, even when it comes to the arts, even in media that decry the ascendance of celebrity. I don’t begrudge MOMA or Yale Rep the attention they’re getting, but I wonder whether that attention may play into the hands of celebrity culture, saying to other organizations that they’ll get their shot at the spotlight when and if they too offer the media “names.” Will not-for-profits of every stripe, not just commercial enterprises, be driven towards stunts and stars, even if the examples I’ve given were staged with the utmost sincerity? Or can stardom be made secondary when contemplating the arts?

When we get a gift, part of the excitement is not knowing what’s in the box, the joy of discovery. But if the admittedly embattled media increasingly attends only to boxes – be they glass, canvas, concrete or brick and mortar – because they and we are already attracted to what’s inside, we’ll keep seeing more and more known quantities as companies vie for attention, and without it, it’ll be harder and harder to sustain work that retains the thrill of surprise.

Humor me.

In the wake of my post yesterday about the pros and cons of theatre seasons looking like the New York season from the prior year, and some great responses to it, the beloved phrase “national conversation about theatre” keeps coming to mind. Surely you’ve heard this concept, the now decades-old plaint from theatre professionals of all stripes that media conversation can center on a movie, a book, even a song, but that – perhaps not since Angels in America – neither the act of making theatre nor any particular work of theatre has made that grade.  Mind you, there are conversations within the field of great value; I’m talking about something that breaks past American Theatre, HowlRound, 2 AM Theatre, Twitter and other resources into the general public consciousness.

This is due to many factors, but surely one is the fragmentary nature of the American theatre. With each company choosing its season independently, there may be coincidences in programming, there may be a handful of select plays dotting the country over the course of a year or two. But in essence, outside of one’s own community, all theatre is a one-off.  Perhaps, on occasion, a little – or a lot of – collusion would be a good thing.

By now we’ve all heard of communities that choose a book for a city-wide read, with a concerted effort to promote the idea that a metropolitan bonds if they can all have a conversation about the same thing. This has been going on for a number of years, though not in places where I’ve lived, so I can only admire it from afar, rather than share personal experience. But it is a compelling idea.

Am I now going to suggest everyone should read the same play? No. You’re getting ahead of me. While there’s some merit to that idea, theatre is meant to be seen. I’m thinking bigger.

I wonder whether, say, a dozen theatres, large and small, in different cities and towns, could agree on a single work of theatre (and I’d much prefer that it was a new work, not a classic revival), a play of social and political importance, that could be near-simultaneously produced across the country. Not a tour, not a handful of co-productions, but a whole bunch of theatres doing the same work within, say, an eight-week period.

Now I know that every theatre has to balance its season, struggles with its budget, weighs its logistics. I’m not saying it would be easy. But hear me out.

“Clybourne Park” at Playwrights Horizons

When Clybourne Park was first produced at Playwrights Horizons in 2011, it was followed within weeks by a production at Woolly Mammoth. The following season, it was featured in a number of seasons (as well as in London at the Royal Court), making it to Broadway for the spring and summer of 2012, and now playing in yet more cities in regional productions. Now imagine if all of those productions (sans Broadway, which is irrelevant to my proposal) happened in only a few months time. Think of the conversations that provocative play would have sparked.  The same holds true for The Mountaintop, and Good People, and Ruined, and Chad Deity and many others.

A challenge? Yes. Impossible? No. Let us look to history. Specifically, A History of the American Film by Christopher Durang.

“A History of the American Film” at Arena Stage

In 1977, with Durang barely out of the Yale School of Drama, his pastiche of classic movies had a tripartite premiere, with productions in March and April of that year at the Mark Taper in Los Angeles, Arena Stage in DC, and Hartford Stage. It had been discovered in a workshop at The O’Neill the prior summer; it moved to Broadway, briefly, in 1978. But just imagine: a new play, by a tremendously talented up-and-comer, hitting a trifecta of productions out of the gate. I didn’t see it at the time (I was 14), but I sure remember reading about it.

If we want to be part of “the national conversation,” we have to look to a mashup of the Clybourne-History models, so the country will truly sit up and take notice, regardless of whether a New York berth is in the mix or not. We’ll either have to get over our deep desire to proclaim “world premiere” (or agree that everyone gets to say it); we’ll have to use a microtome to slice up the royalties normally given over to an originating company so everyone gets a share, but doesn’t overburden the play’s ongoing life; we’ll have to tacitly accept that the playwright might be working on the piece personally at only one theatre while revisions fly out to many. But remember that thanks to Skype and streaming video, the playwright can confer with disparate teams, and even look in on multiple rehearsals, without criss-crossing the country on planes. And no one need worry about cannibalizing audiences, since city to city overlap is fairly rare.

If many people are seeing the same play at once, we can at last have one show that’s reaching more people in a single night than any individual Broadway or touring show can; we’ll have a story that national press outlets can’t ignore; we’ll have a playwright who can dedicate themselves to working in theatre for a season without receiving an inheritance or a genius grant, since the collective royalties will be significant.

With theatres having just announced or on the verge of announcing their 2013-14 seasons, why do I toss this out for consideration now? Because it would take a year to get this together; for the intra-theatre conversations to begin and bear fruit; for a national sponsor or two to be signed up; for a single advertising campaign to be developed for use by all participants; to insure that a year from now, this grand idea could be unveiled to the public.

Collectively, the number of people who attend theatre on a daily basis in America is significant, but because it’s mostly happening in theatres of perhaps 500 seats or less, its hard for the country at large to get a handle on our significance. So let’s all hang together, since hanging separately doesn’t get us the impact we so desire, so need and so deeply deserve.

Now to find “the” play…

With U.S. theatre seasons being announced almost daily, things have been pretty lively around the old Twitter water cooler, with each successive announcement being immediately met with assessments at every level.  How many female playwrights or directors? Is there a range of race and ethnicity among the artists? Is the season safe and predictable or adventurous and enticing? How many new plays, or actual premieres? How many dead writers? How many American playwrights? Any new musicals? The same old Shakespeare plays?

Thanks to social media, what once might have incited some e-mails and calls among friends in the business is now grist for the national mill, and the conversations swing their focus from city to city as rapidly as a new announcement is made. While some of the critiques may strike a more strident tone than I would personally adopt, I have to say that this is evidence of the developing national theatre conscience, under which news of upcoming work is not merely relayed but considered, from a macro rather than micro viewpoint, and not only by artistic directors at conferences or journalists in major media. People are keeping score.

I find this heartening and useful; last year I wrote a column for The Stage in which I declared my belief that the work on U.S. stages must better reflect U.S. society. But even as I applaud every recounting of a season being graded on a variety of balances (gender, race, vintage, etc.), and hope that it informs not only a national conversation but action and change at the local level, I want to strike a note of caution about one of the criteria being applied, specifically: why are so many theatres doing the same plays?

It’s easy if one lives in a major metropolitan area that’s rich in theatre to wonder why certain plays are receiving 10, 15 even 20 productions in a single season, typically works that have been seen in New York, whether on Broadway or off.  We all see the list compiled each fall by TCG and American Theatre magazine; it generates stories about the most popular plays at U.S. theatres and usually mirrors the NYC fare of the past year or two. But at the same time, how many new plays remain unproduced, or receive a premiere and then don’t find their way to other stages?  Have U.S. theatres become ever more safe and New York-centric?

What seems like a herd mentality has a more practical basis. It has been some time since plays have toured the country with any regularity (before the current War Horse, the last significant non-musical tour I recall was Roundabout’s Twelve Angry Men); the days when a play would run a season on Broadway and then tour for a year are long over. So while not-for-profit theatres may have been born in part to offer an alternative to commercial fare that was once available throughout the country, the life of plays has fallen almost exclusively to institutional companies.

Those companies tend to be fairly hyperlocal, drawing the majority of their audience from a 30 to 45 mile radius. This holds true even for larger cities, although they may benefit from some portion of a tourist trade. Generally, only “destination theatres” like Oregon Shakespeare Festival or Canada’s Stratford and Shaw Festivals can lay claim to a wider geographic spread. So while our overview of production may be all inclusive, the communities being served are less transient and more insular than that view.

On top of that, we can’t deny that theatre in New York has a range of media platforms which, even in our online era, few other cities can match. Consequently, a success in New York, or merely a New York production, gets a boost in the eyes of all concerned – theatre staffs, freelance artists, funders, audiences. And as a result, companies which are the major – or only – theatre in their community may feel duty bound to offer those “name” works in their seasons, because their audiences may not have any other opportunity to see them and also because their artistic leadership believes in the quality and value of that work. Of course, in some markets, theatres may compete for these “name” works, especially if they’re accompanied by the name Tony or Pulitzer.

This was brought home to me years ago during my time as managing director of Geva Theatre in Rochester NY. Geva was by far the largest theatre in Rochester; its peers were the former Studio Arena Theatre in Buffalo, 60 miles to the west, and Syracuse Stage, some 80 miles to the east. Each city had its own theatrical microclimate, with only the smallest sliver of die-hard theatre fans traveling among all three, an effort hampered by a snowfall season that ran from November to April.

Having come from Connecticut theatre, where a daytrip to New York was commonplace for professionals and audience alike, I wasn’t used to working on “last year’s hits” (though Geva’s seasons were certainly much more varied than that). In Connecticut at that time, doing work recently available in NYC was redundant. Frankly, what had been a source of pride at the places I’d worked had become a sign of elitism in my new setting, and I had to adjust my thinking accordingly – a mindset that has stayed with me as I ventured back into Connecticut and then to Manhattan.

This year, Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop has been one of those frequently produced plays; on the east coast alone I know of productions in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington DC without even looking at schedules; I could just look at the Amtrak Northeast Corridor schedule for that rundown. Some might call this copycatting, especially after its Broadway run the prior season, but based upon reviews and reports of sales, The Mountaintop has been meaningful at each venue where it has appeared, presumably without overlapping audiences. And on a personal note, I have to say that even in a production compromised by a labor dispute, I found the Philadelphia incarnation to be even more affecting than the Broadway one.

Even as I lobby for artistic directors to be ever more committed to a wide range of essential criteria, I acknowledge the difficulty of their task. Aside from taking into account the questions I highlighted in the first paragraph, they also have to consider issues like budget, educational commitments, work that might prove especially meaningful to their audience or their community. Many have to do that with only five or six shows in a given season and it may not be possible to hit every desired mark.

A national survey across a range of criteria will certainly show us trends in production at the country’s institutional theatres, and I avidly support such an effort. But as we look theatre by theatre, we might allow, slightly,  for what else could be happening at other theatres in the same city, and perhaps for how each theatre’s season does (or doesn’t) make improvements in diversity year over year. We also have to accept that in meeting one of many goals, a theatre might fall short on another; watching how they trend over time will be the most telling indicator. And while we need more and more platforms for truly new work, if a show with a New York imprimatur is a genuine part of a season striving towards meeting a range of goals, it is not necessarily a cop-out.

A final word for the theatres that face this new scrutiny, from playwright Stephen Spotswood during yesterday’s water cooler chat on Twitter: “Dear theatres whose seasons people are complaining about: This means we care and are invested in you. Start worrying when we stop.”