To the question, “How long should a man’s legs be?,” President Abraham Lincoln is credited with responding, “Long enough to reach the ground.” The quote may or may not be accurately ascribed to Lincoln, but it has been on my mind a lot of late, although not in regard to physical stature.

If you are a regular theatergoer, you are undoubtedly in the habit of ascertaining, before you see a production, what the running time will be. Your motivation may be practical: notifying the babysitter, figuring out what train to catch, making post-theatre dining reservations. But undoubtedly you have found yourself cheered, more than once, when your inquiry results in the answer, “90 minute, no intermission.”

It is the cheerfulness which concerns me. I am not entirely certain when the tide turned towards the single-act play (and in some cases musicals), but they seem much more prevalent of late. Perhaps this is simply evolutionary, as we’ve watched theatre go from five acts to three acts to two, and the standard is turning once again. But unlike other devolutions in theatrical scope, which have been economically driven (playwrights say they can’t get large cast plays produced, and therefore write more “practically,” to name one troublesome example), the “full-length” one-act play is actually counter to theatrical economics, as it wreaks havoc on intermission concessions sales, to the dismay of many managers and producers.

Years ago, in my press agent days in Hartford, I would regularly get a call from the major local critic, on a Wednesday or Thursday, asking about the length of the production that would open on a Friday night. His query was practical; he would leave the theatre immediately at the end of the production and go back to the paper to write for the next day’s edition, a schedule that even the New York papers had abandoned (and because we had only five previews, we were loathe to invite him sooner). As we came to know each other better, I would try to call him preemptively, and if I forgot, and received a Thursday call, I would pick up my phone and announce the number of acts and running time before I even said hello. After we had presented a few shows that were single act, intermissionless plays, for which the critic voiced his enthusiasm, I brashly asked, “Look, if all our plays were one act without an intermission, would we be assured of better reviews?” I was met with the only half-joking response, “It wouldn’t hurt.”

In recent weeks, I have noted an articulate and enthusiastic theatre tweeter lobbying for exactly that – that all plays should be unbroken and brief. We have debated the issue as effectively as one can do in 140-character snippets, but his advocacy of this position, and my prior experience with such opinions, moved me to say more on the topic.

Yes, I will confess that on occasion, I am heartened to know that I can make it home with enough time to brush my teeth and settle into bed before the start of “The Daily Show” at 11 pm. But it has never occurred to me to hope that playwrights would simply write shorter, which is in fact code for “less.” I am, however, an enthusiastic advocate of 7 o’clock or 7:30 p.m. weeknight curtains, which we had instituted in 1986 at Hartford Stage when audience surveys revealed a 2 to 1 preference in the audience for earlier start times – among an audience that snapped up tickets for the decidedly wordy works of Shakespeare and Ibsen. I like getting home early, but not at the expense of theatrical complexity.

I want to say to playwrights, already hobbled by the number of sets and number of actors they can utilize, please don’t restrict yourself by word or page count. Write the stories you want to tell, and take the time you need to tell them. As a notoriously discursive essayist myself, I also urge you not to be afraid of digressions if they illuminate your story, your characters, your themes. We cannot afford to have you put in a position where you must sacrifice texture and subtext in favor of train schedules or simple impatience. I am not naïve, and marathon events like Angels in America andThe Norman Conquests have their economic and logistical challenges, but they are in fact the exception, not the rule (yet often all the more recognized precisely because of that fact).

The issue of play length is perhaps most on my mind because of two plays I’ve seen in the past fortnight: Caryl Churchill’s A Number and Elevator Repair Service’s Gatz. The former I saw recently in London, having been enthralled by its New York premiere several years back. The latter I saw for the first time less than 24 hours ago, after reading about it for years. Both (even the second viewing of A Number, in a wholly new production), were profoundly memorable events for me. The former, with only two actors, four characters and a chair, manages to encompass a vast array of themes: familial love and loss, the nature of identity, the ethics of cloning, the slipperiness of truth. The latter transcends the dingy office in which it’s set and lifts the act of reading a classic book into rarified realms while illuminating an extremely familiar (to me), brilliant text, in a way that made me examine it as if new. Both experiences could only take place live, in a theatre; they would make no sense and lose their impact on film, radio or television. The former runs perhaps 50 minutes and says all that needs to be said, the latter requires some eight hours altogether, including a dinner break, and its very completeness is part of its impact.

I will never seek to silence anyone’s opinion about theatre, but I will ask those who advocate or agitate for more compact works to, similarly, try not to direct the playwright’s voice. Let’s not create a producing and theatergoing environment in which only the brief can survive. We need plays of every shape, size, subject and length if the theatre is to remain alive and vital.

And so I return to my opening epigram, but only to transform it. How long should a play be? Long enough to reach its audience.

This post originally appeared on the American Theatre Wing website.

I have a confession to make. I am a lurker. But please don’t alert the authorities.

By lurker, I am using the slang term for someone who frequents internet chat rooms, following the exchanges, but rarely, if ever, engaging in them. I have done so since at least the mid-90s, and I have a pseudonym which I have, only occasionally, employed in order to tentatively enter the fray, from which I almost instantly pull back for months at a time.

It probably goes without saying that I lurk only in theatre chat spaces. I am amused, informed and at times, quite shocked by what I read there. I distinctly remember an occasion back when I worked at Goodspeed, when I read a heated discussion about some bygone musical that Martin Charnin had worked on. I knew the conversation was rooted in patently incorrect information, but I saw no point in trying to correct it – even though at that moment, Martin was in the rehearsal hall up the street, and readily accessible to me. While I had a strong desire to enact the chat room equivalent of the scene in Annie Hall where Woody Allen shuts up a loudmouth critiquing the work of Marshall McLuhan by suddenly producing McLuhan himself from behind a stand-up sign in a movie lobby, I refrained. After all, I was pseudonymous, and in the anonymity of a chat room, the “Martin Charnin” I produced could have easily been a high school intern.

I’m reminded of this because as a blogger, any credibility I might enjoy is tied to my lack of anonymity, to my willingness to reveal my identity and my professional experience to anyone who wishes to know about it (you can do so via my bio here). My “open identity” was fostered by my Twitter experience, where I was readily identifiable by my title and company from the beginning, almost 3,000 tweets but less than two years ago.

As I have become an ever more enthusiastic tweeter, and now as I blog weekly, I have also noted that I rarely check on chat rooms anymore. Yes, lurking can be cured, but Twitter is addictive; perhaps I have traded caffeine for high fructose corn syrup.

To be sure, I very consciously cultivated my tweets as coming from the head of the American Theatre Wing, and while they reflect my thoughts and interests, I am also aware that they could be taken out of context, or misinterpreted as an official position of the organization. In fact, I was very nervous this past May, as my follower count had grown and we were in the midst of Tony Award season. From the chat rooms, I knew of the very, shall we say, passionate opinions people hold about the Tonys. I wondered whether Twitter would become a forum whereby people could barrage me directly with their criticism, even though I have repeatedly explained that I don’t tweet about the Tonys because there is an official Tony Twitter account, and I was neither going to compete with that nor risk getting enmeshed in Tony debate. I also cannot comment unilaterally on the Tonys because they are a partnership with The Broadway League, not solely the purview of ATW.

So I was pleasantly surprised when the Tonys came and went this year with no comments lobbed directly at me. While I saw conversations about the pros and cons of the awards and the broadcast, they were by and large, civil and thoughtful. I took every one to heart, even if I, by self-imposed policy, did not respond.

When I do check in on the chat rooms now and again, it seems that they are not as active as they used to be, and I can’t help but think that Facebook and Twitter have taken their toll on this form of conversation. The fact that Facebook and Twitter offer, if you wish to exercise it, control over who sees your messages and whose messages you see, has provided for a civility I often saw abrogated in chat rooms, where people were attacked for factual errors (even when they were correct), imprecise declaration of opinion, for having certain opinions, and even infractions as minor as the occasional typo.

I believe that spirited, thoughtful conversation and well-mannered debate about theatre is healthy for the form. It also benefits those who are unable to see certain productions, because it allows them to essentially triangulate opinion and arrive at their own understanding of unseen work. But while Facebook and Twitter seem to me a form of the Roman Senate, chat rooms are more akin to the Arena, and one joins the battle at one’s own risk.

A final anecdote: many years ago, I was driving the late New York Times critic Mel Gussow to see a production at Hartford Stage. The conversation turned to the work of August Wilson, then perhaps four plays into his famous cycle and still premiering his work at Yale Rep. I confided to Mel my then-held opinion that while I admired Wilson’s work, I didn’t really like it. “Well, you’re wrong,” declared the famously mild-mannered Gussow. “No I’m not,” I replied quickly. “Not liking something is my opinion, and opinion can’t be wrong. You may feel I’m missing something in the work, but my not liking it is true, and it’s my right.” Mel then promptly withdrew his statement, and we proceeded to discuss the pros and cons of Wilson’s work, which I have indeed reassessed more than two decades later, aligning myself much more with what was and is the prevailing sentiment.

In chat rooms, it seems to me, it’s very easy to be wrong, and to be told so by countless strangers. On Twitter, I may not always be right, but the people I’ve chosen to follow, and who have chosen to follow me, seem happy to ponder topics with me, with the scorn pared away by the brevity imposed on each thought.

This post originally appeared on the American Theatre Wing website

My friend Cassandra Kubinski stopped by the Wing office the other day. I was very surprised to find, as we chatted, that I hadn’t seen her in well over a year. It turns out she’d spent much of that time living in Nashville pursuing her singing and songwriting career, opening a music venue there with a friend for a short time. Cassie and I aren’t close friends, but I’m very fond of her. She has been very good about staying in touch overall, so this gap was anomalous. We first met about 13 years ago when she was in two productions at Goodspeed Musicals, while I was general manager there. I calculate that Cassie is about 27 or so now. Do the math. Or let me help you: she played the title role in Annie.

* * *

Theatre is a transitory field, albeit less so for those of us in administration, or on a resident theatre’s permanent staff. But for actors, directors, designers, authors and so many others, theatre is, among many other things, a constant go-round of meeting, bonding, working together, then breaking apart, only to start all over again with yet another group. As a result, friendships can operate somewhat differently than what you might be used to. Because everyone is constantly moving on to another project, it’s hardly unusual to go for a long period of time without seeing someone you consider a friend, then picking up right where you left off. One benefit of the proliferation of cell phones, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter and the like is that they actually allow theatre folk to stay in touch much more easily than when I entered the field. If you really want to find someone, you don’t end up in endless phone tag with a home answering machine, or, to date myself, their service.

At the same time, I have found theatre to be remarkably constant, perhaps because I spent much of my career in institutional theatre, which affords more continuity. The people I met when I worked at Hartford Stage are still an important part of my life, and rarely a day goes by one when I’m not in communication with at least one person who I know from my tenure there. But as a result, we have grown up together, aged together, shared losses and successes together.

Yet on some level, I will always be the impetuous, abrasive boy press agent. Pete Gurney will always be my adoptive W.A.S.P. uncle, who was so proud of me when I got the job at the Wing, and told me so; Richard Thomas will always be my energetic, mischievous older theatre brother who egged me on to my first (and only) shot of tequila; Kate Burton remains my warm-hearted, “everybody’s favorite” older sister, who once laced into me for not sharing a secret with her; David Hawkanson and Mark Lamos will always be my thrilling, aggravating, wisdom-imparting older cousins who teased me, taunted me, and taught me the ways of the world.

Because these relationships remained in place, and still do, for more than half my life, for a long time I never had any sense of growing up. Just as with my blood relatives, or with my high school friends, the interactions between me and members of my theatre family revert to old patterns the moment I see them – often shocking outsiders when I lapse into the casual profanity that was the lingua franca of Hartford Stage in the mid-80s.

So it is only recently that I have begun to understand that I may now be the uncle, the cousin, to young people who entered my circle at one point or another during my career. As Cassie sat in my office, I looked at this extraordinarily self-possessed, determined young woman (which she has been since I first met her) and felt proud of her as she talked of her career, her changing perspectives, and her achievements. I sensed there were some disappointments along the way too, but hey, who tells their uncle or older cousin about those?

I realize there is a younger generation to my theatrical family, and though I cannot claim to have mentored them in the ways that Hawkanson and Lamos, and Michael Price of Goodspeed (another uncle), mentored me, I am extraordinarily happy each time I see them, and so thrilled with their successes. Howard Fishman, once a high school intern at Hartford Stage, is a successful recording artist with numerous albums and a flourishing concert and club performing career; Kate MacCluggage, who would answer phones on weekends at The O’Neill Center and is now the leading lady of The 39 Steps here in New York; John Barlow, once an intern at the American Shakespeare Theatre in CT, who used to do errands for me in NYC while I remained in CT, established one of Broadway’s top p.r. firms, and now contemplates his next career move; Lex Leifheit, who did p.r. at The O’Neill Center, now runs SOMArts in San Francisco; Chris Jahnke, who came to Goodspeed fresh out of college, is now a top-flight orchestrator and music director.

Though their successes and increasing authority are reminders that I am indeed aging, since they are all now adults and have become my peers, I harbor great pride in their achievements. Just as Kate Burton is fond of saying about her and me, “The kids have grown up, and are in charge.”

A week or so ago, I noticed that I was being followed on Twitter by a young man named Christopher Kauffmann. With a few quick clicks, I determined that he was the same Chris who, along with his younger sister, had appeared at Goodspeed in Finian’s Rainbow. I didn’t know him as well as I knew Cassie, and I haven’t seen him once in the ensuing years. He’s living in New York, acting. We’re going to meet for coffee soon. And I’m going to be very proud of him, too.

* * *

A final thought: there a countless young people who I’ve encountered over the years, and regret that I don’t know better. Every year at the Wing, some three dozen kids spend two weeks in our SpringboardNYC program, while several hundred participate in our Theatre Intern Group. I wish I had more time to mentor them, to become their theatre family, and I feel the same way about the six classes of the National Theatre Institute that were at The O’Neill during my tenure (one kid I remember a bit from those years, because he was so tall, was named John Krasinski, and he’s done pretty well with no help from me). Someday, I hope we all meet again, as peers.

This post originally appeared on the American Theatre Wing website

I keep reading articles about how people are getting excellent response to customer service complaints by starting websites, posting public Facebook messages and kvetching on Twitter. The reports say that major companies are monitoring the internet and proactively addressing issues with customers based on what they see online, lest public opinion take off in the wrong direction.

Consequently, when I saw two affronts to, well, everyone who works in or loves theatre, I decided to test this theory. Since I couldn’t start a website to save my life, and reserve Facebook solely for friends I’ve known since college or earlier, I turned to my social media tool of choice, Twitter.

The first affront, which I became aware of via pro-theatre agitator Leonard Jacobs (@clydefitch), came from the USA Network (@USA_Network). I happen to be a great fan of USA programming, in particular their In Plain Sight with Mary McCormack and Frederick Weller, both actors with solid stage credits. So when Leonard’s brief tweet, leading to his blog, pointed out that USA’s new “Character Blog” had launched in 10 categories, but without theatre as a topic, I was incensed. After all, theatre has had characters (and character) since long before TV was invented. Did USA Network really feel that theatrical characters weren’t worthy of their attention?

So I sent out a spate of tweets chastising USA for their shortsightedness, to accompany Leonard’s own drumbeat, and what do you know? By late afternoon that day, USA Network was tweeting directly back to us, saying they had enormous respect for theatre and saying that they planned to add theatre to their repertory of blogs soon, asking us to give them time. I didn’t know exactly what they needed time for, since there are countless passionate, well-informed theatre bloggers who would jump at the opportunity for the promotional platform of a cable-network blog. But I decided I had rattled their cage enough, and took them at their word.

The second affront was more recent. Ovation TV, an arts dedicated channel, also launched a quartet of blogs under the banner CulturePop (@CulturePOPcom), and incredibly theatre wasn’t among them — nor was dance, opera, music or independent film, all aspects of Ovation’s programming. Instead, they offered a Bravo-like selection of Style, Art & Design, Food and “deals.” Consequently, I began tweeting my dismay. I had already seen the Arts & Entertainment Network devolve into A&E and don’t even get me started on where Bravo began and where they stand today. I’m even concerned when I see doo-wop acts on PBS during pledge drives.

I will hand it to Ovation – their response to my tweets was almost immediate, and while they actually seemed a bit peeved when I suggested they were relegating theatre to second-class status, a few back and forth messages established that they plan to add theatre to their blog mix. I have to give credit to whoever does their tweeting for their rapid response and genuine human voice.

So, you may well ask, what has been the result of all of this “lobbying by tweet” to date? Zilch.

More than two months after USA Network promised they’d be adding theatre, their blog selections are unchanged. My recent tweets have gone unanswered. It’s been several weeks for Ovation TV, and while as I write I can get 20% off at something called Poketo, America’s only arts dedicated network is running a website and blog series that barely touches upon the arts.

I am not naive. I understand that, to most TV networks, theatre is a niche, though frankly there are an awful lot of people filling theatres around the country every night. It appears that television, by and large, wants theatre, and indeed the arts overall, to remain a niche. Save for our friends at CBS, who continue to provide broadcast platforms for the Tonys and the Kennedy Center Honors, the evidence of commitment to the performing and fine arts on the television spectrum, which has multiplied far beyond Bruce Springsteen’s “57 Channels,” is minimal. Television rarely uses its vast reach and influence to inform Americans of the remarkable artistic work that cannot be seen via co-ax cable or satellite.

While I am quite certain that the prior paragraph particularly incenses Ovation TV, which does in fact offer a broad array of arts programming, their sudden investment in CulturePop online suggests that they may yet go the way of prior arts networks. If indeed they want an audience of arts lovers tuning in to them, they have to stand up strong and in a loud voice (known as marketing and public relations) stand with the arts community and promote not just their own television programming, but the artistic work available in theatres, concert halls and museums.

As for USA Network, their mission is not arts-oriented, but when they create character oriented blogs and leave out the very art form which first invented dramatic characters, they insult everyone who loves theatre. And that’s a shame.

These particular examples are perhaps petty, but they can be solved with minimal expense and some HTML code. Maybe if the leaders in the entertainment community truly stood behind the arts at every possible turn, we’d make the headway that’s necessary with our city, state and federal governments to insure that the arts are seen and supported for what they should be: an essential part of education and daily life, not some vestigial form catering only to the elites.

So make yourself heard. Blog, Facebook, Tweet to USA Network and Ovation TV and tell them not to take you – and all of us – for granted. It’s a step. After all, there’s plenty of pop available, but never enough culture.

This post originally appeared on the American Theatre Wing website.

When I was a senior in college, I was sent to meet some relatively recent alumni of my school who had already begun to forge careers in the theatre. I remember the day quite vividly, and can still quote from it freely, even though of the two people with whom I met, one doesn’t recall it at all and the other remembers the meeting, but not the gist of the conversation.

At a distance of 26 years, one of the more salient bits of advice I received that day was as follows: “You know, if you’re any good at what you do, and you stay in this business long enough, you’re going to do just fine – because so many people drop out along the way.” Not exactly inspiring, but practical, grounded and, as I have learned, true.

Now I could easily spend a number of paragraphs parsing this advice and the factors that contribute to it, but I’ll leave that to you, because I’m more interested in a corollary to that advice, which I learned for myself: “If you stay in this business long enough, you’re going to meet your idols.”

Much is written, and said, no matter where you work in theatre, about “the theatrical community.” In my experience, the theatrical community is neither singular nor exceptionally small, though I daresay the number of people working in the professional theatre in the U.S. is probably smaller than the number of people working in the legal profession, or the medical profession, and it’s certainly dwarfed by any number of categories of public service employees.

But the fact is that theatre is small enough, fluid enough and interconnected enough that, over time, one builds up an enormous network of friends, associates and acquaintances, all of which Facebook, LinkedIn and the like would be all too happy to track and chart for you, were everyone you’ve ever encountered to subscribe to any one such service. I strongly suspect that in the field where John Guare popularized the notion of “six degrees of separation,” everyone in the theatre is likely separated by not more than three degrees.

Obviously the effect is intensified by a number of factors: how many theatres you work at or productions you work on, whether you move among different cities as you pursue your career, whether you change your area(s) of expertise as your career develops. In my case, I have had eight employers and five job titles, working in only three states; I have had some association with approximately 121 full professional productions, not counting workshops and readings.

But this is all prologue to the knowledge I declared above. And I will now launch into a seeming non-sequitur.

Last Saturday afternoon, I went to see a movie that, at that moment, was playing on precisely one screen in the country. In fact, I have this sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t even a movie, but a DVD projected onto a movie screen. It was a documentary about a once popular, now largely forgotten pop singer and songwriter named Harry Nilsson. I expected to be the only person there, and was heartened when I walked into the theatre to see three other people.

After settling down, I was aware of other people trickling in and settling as well, and of a couple who took their places in aisle seats across from me, just one row back. I didn’t not turn to look at them, but merely registered their presence, as one does. Then they began to speak to each other.

‘Wait a minute,’ I thought, when I heard a man’s voice. ‘That voice is awfully familiar.’ And so I turned and found myself perhaps five feet from Harold Prince. I immediately got up, took two steps, and politely interrupted, saying, “Hi, Hal.”

“Well look who’s here,” responded the legendary director and producer, who then introduced me to his wife Judy. He then asked why I was there, saying that they, too, had expected to be the only ones in the theatre. The chat continued, on various subjects, including a close mutual friend, until I excused myself just before the film was to begin.

I sat there in the half-light of the theatre, overjoyed. Because more concretely than ever before, I understood that Hal Prince knew who I was, remembered who I was, and was perfectly happy to have me accost him and start a conversation. All based primarily on his having done the American Theatre Wing’s podcast “Downstage Center” some two and a half years earlier – and his admission at that time that he watched our “Working in the Theatre” TV program, too. (“I have no idea when it’s on,” I recall him telling me. “My wife finds it.”)

Now I can imagine your thoughts as you read this. ‘He runs the American Theatre Wing. They do the Tony Awards. So he knows Hal Prince. Not a surprise.’

But what you don’t know is that, Sweeney Todd is my favorite musical of all time. It was by seeing the original production of Evita that I began to understand what a director actually does. A key factor that had influenced my decision to attend the University of Pennsylvania was that Hal had gone there, that at Penn I allied myself with the same theatre group he had once been a part of, and I worked on shows in the Harold Prince Theatre. When I was graduating, I wrote to him asking for a meeting, and though I never got a reply, my hero-worship was undiminished. On a trip to Las Vegas only weeks ago, I saw his revised version of Phantom. We even share the same birthday.

But, I hear you say, it’s not like this was your first meeting. No, it wasn’t. But it was the first time we’d merely run into each other, and he treated me as a familiar, a peer. There in Theatre 1 of Cinema Village, by sheer coincidence and a shared, obscure interest, I felt I had truly arrived, at the age of 48.

Yes, I have met many famous people. But knowing them is what’s important to me. I think that all of us who work in theatre are fans and no matter how long we do it, we remain fans. My frisson of excitement at running into Hal Prince last Saturday was a reminder of how much of a fan I still am, even though I needn’t stand at a stage door.

And for those thinking about their career, I can think of no better encouragement: “Do theatre. You’ll get to meet your idols.”

This post originally appeared on the American Theatre Wing website.

As I write this on in the late afternoon of September 11, 2010, I am sitting on lower Sixth Avenue in New York City. Had I been sitting here nine years and one day ago, I assume I would have had a view of the upper floors of the World Trade Center towers. I would not have been sitting here nine years ago, because the towers would have already fallen that morning, and lower Manhattan was simply nowhere to be.

Nine years ago today, I was about 125 miles east northeast of Manhattan, on the grounds of the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, where I was just about a year into my tenure as Executive Director. The O’Neill, for those who’ve never had the opportunity to work or visit there, is a bucolic spot on the Connecticut shoreline at the junction of Long Island Sound and the Thames River, quite close to all major amenities, but (at least then) still blessedly a seemingly isolated retreat. It was, supposedly, on that very plot of land that Josie Hogan attempted to soothe and perhaps save the tortured James Tyrone, Jr.

When news of the first plane striking a tower reached us, shortly after 9 am, it was not because we had a TV on. In fact, there wasn’t a working TV in the building. One of the staff either had read it on the internet or heard it on the radio; I don’t really recall. All that got to me was that a plane had hit one of the towers. I assumed it was an unfortunate accident and went about business as usual. When the news emerged about the second plane strike, it was clear that this was no accident. I have no memory of when I learned about the crash of the plane that we ultimately learned had been Pentagon bound.

When the towers fell, we received the news, as if in some earlier age, only via radio. It was for me, and I mean this in the literal sense, incomprehensible. I truly couldn’t imagine the towers burning and collapsing. I had no visuals to provide me with proof.

By this point, of course, staff was glued to the radio and it was quite apparent that no work would be done that day. Reports began to come in of school closings, of business closings, of the State of Connecticut closing all offices.

Since I didn’t need to gather the staff, who were huddled around the best radio, I then made a snap decision. I told them that unless they had children who were being released from school which they had to attend to, we were not closing, like seemingly everyplace else. Radios would be turned off, discussion of the tragedy needed to stop, and we would face the day as normally as possible. We needed to do this, I said, because of the kids. The kids had nowhere to go, and what message would we send if we fled the campus while they stayed, but for a skeletal staff?

‘The kids’ to which I referred were the students of The O’Neill’s National Theatre Institute (NTI), a semester long-theatre intensive which drew some thirty students from colleges around the country to live and learn on The O’Neill campus. The kids had arrived for the semester but two days earlier, and here they were in new territory, with peers and teachers they barely knew, as a national tragedy of untold proportion and impending threat unfolded. And I was scheduled, as I was each semester, to greet and speak with them at 11 am.

My primary goal was to make sure the kids felt safe. By the time we gathered, the news had spread, not through staff gossip, but because of parents calling kids to check on them and, in doing so, to tell them the news, and in turn, students calling parents to check on them. So when the kids, and the full staff, gathered in the cafeteria, I, not yet 40, with no spouse, partner or children of my own, had to be the wise and calm adult – indeed, the father.

Churning in my trivia-laden mind was a fact that I had learned in college: that southeastern Connecticut, home to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and the defense contractor euphemistically named Electric Boat, which was in fact one of only two manufacturers of U.S. nuclear submarines, was strategically considered to be first strike territory in the event of a major foreign incursion. What horrible knowledge to have at such a time. For once in my life, I kept trivia to myself.

I can only paraphrase what I remember saying to the students that morning, since I had neither the time nor the concentration to commit thoughts to paper in advance. But I faced a room filled with anxious 20-year-olds, other people’s children, children who I did not know and who did not know me. There was no buzz, no boisterousness; there was no need to quiet them down.

David, the director of the NTI program, introduced me and I asked each staffer to introduce themselves with their name and their title, as we always did. Then it was my turn to say something.

I acknowledged that there had been a tragedy that morning in New York, and assured them that if they had not already spoken with their parents, we’d make sure they had time to do so very shortly. Then I said that they were probably sitting there thinking — that, in the face of massive tragedy, their pursuit of theatre study, or a theatre career, might now seem insignificant, or perhaps frivolous.

Then I told them why they should banish those thoughts. They needed to continue on with exactly what they were planning at that point in their lives. They should not be swayed by whatever had occurred that morning (since we knew only of the results of actions, not the source or human toll, as I spoke). If they already loved theatre enough to spend a semester away from home and from their school among strangers in order to learn more about it, then surely they could feel, as I did, that theatre was the only means we had to express our feelings about the world. I had committed my life to theatre 16 years earlier, upon college graduation, because I had no other choice. Theatre was what fascinated me, moved me, fulfilled me and challenged me. It was also the means through which I had come to understand life and other lives, cultures, even worlds.

I urged them not to see theatre as irrelevant, as expendable, in the face of horror, but instead as profoundly necessary. I believed, and hoped they would too, that theatre, and indeed all artistic expression, might be more essential now than ever, since perhaps through the arts we could come to express our own feelings about what had happened and help others to come to terms with it as well. I told them, using a phrase that I would later find many were using, that unquestionably the world had just changed. But I also said that the world had changed a lot since the days of Greek drama, and that theatre had survived and continued to be meaningful to many people. Then I told them to use the phones or send e-mails if they wished, to return in an hour for lunch, and go back to class.

I do not think my talk was revelatory in the grand scheme of words spoken that days or in the days, weeks and even years that followed by people wiser, better known and better spoken than I am. But apparently it served well enough for my small audience, because the staff stayed, pretending that this was just another work day, the kids returned to class, and the semester continued as planned, as, slowly, America returned to a new type of normal.

When I finally went home that night, and turned on the television, I was very grateful for the O’Neill’s lack of televisions in that too stingy for cable, pre-broadband internet-era, because as I saw the images of that morning’s tragedy, what had been inconceivable became all too real. Had I seen them, I wonder whether I would have had the strength to keep the staff on site (an unpopular decision with them at the time) or to give the talk I instinctively and perhaps impulsively gave. And that talk, while hardly the St. Crispin’s Day speech, had achieved its own theatrical goal, even as I had given vent to my truest feelings about theatre in my life, in the face of great tragedy.

* * *

A coda:
Two weeks after 9/11, NTI had booked a trip to New York, for a day of theatergoing with the students. David and I debated the wisdom of taking such a trip so soon, but, with no official caution given by the government, we decided to stick with our plan of business as usual. David did have to grapple with one parent, who had heard from a friend with a friend at the FBI that there was a new threat, and wanted his daughter to stay away from New York. David successfully convinced the concerned father that if his daughter was pulled from the trip, a domino effect would ensue, and that the trip would be ruined for all. I joined the group for the journey, since if I was actually advocating risk, I should share in it.

The day passed without incident. The NTI group saw some other matinee while I saw, with unintended irony, Strindberg’s Dance of Death. I accompanied the students to an evening performance of Mary Zimmerman’s transcendent vision of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. At 11 pm, we were on our bus headed back to Waterford. In the darkness of the bus, pierced here and there by an overhead reading light, we passed through Westchester, and David and I turned to each other almost simultaneously, confessing our mutual relief. Theatre has its power, but there’s nothing like heading, safely, home.

This post originally appeared on the American Theatre Wing website.