Here Lies Love at The Public Theater (photo by Joan Marcus)

For some people, the words “interactive theatre” strike fear into their hearts, and they’ll do anything to avoid it. The prospect of being accosted by an actor, of having the spotlight turned on them, of potentially being embarrassed in front of others for the sake of everyone else’s amusement is something they equate with impromptu public speaking or a trip to the dentist. They certainly don’t want to pay for the opportunity to have this occur.

I have no such fear. I gave in to the participation at Sleep No More with only slight resistance (I was ultimately rewarded with a soft kiss on my neck from one actress, the only person to access that area in such a manner since I met the woman who is now my wife more than a dozen years ago). I threw myself into Queen of the Night with more enthusiasm. I dream of being brought up on stage by Bill Irwin and David Shiner, or by Penn & Teller, to be their prop or their stooge, as they see fit. I lean forward eagerly when those teams start scanning the audience. Perhaps I’ve never been selected because, after many visits, I look too eager.

But this should not suggest that I am an exhibitionist, least of all in every circumstance. As a result, my own particular bugaboos initially kept me from even considering two current shows, until I reminded myself of my commitment to not just see work that has the most obvious appeal for me, but to challenge myself more. That’s what pushed me into seeing Here Lies Love and Drunk Shakespeare, two radically different shows that few would likely ever group together. But they each featured elements that trigger my anxiety, my awkwardness, my flight reflex, so for me they’re of a piece.

Even with all the acclaim for its original engagement at The Public Theater, the words that leapt out at me in connection with HLL were “disco” and “dancing,” which both separately and together hold no appeal whatsoever. I lived through the original disco era without ever enjoying the music (I was moving out of prog rock and into British power pop at the time), and while I wouldn’t have undertaken to steamroll disco records (someone really did this as a stunt), I didn’t care to own or hear the music at all, unavoidable as it was. As for dancing, I have no natural gifts in this area whatsoever and few things make me so self-conscious as the act of attempting to move in some relationship to music, be it a formal waltz, a Broadway showstopper, or rock and roll. I’ll nod my head or tap my feet in rhythm, but that’s my limit.

The complete, rotating cast of Drunk Shakespeare (photo by Della Bass)

With Drunk Shakespeare, the first word in the title was more than off-putting, despite my affection for the latter. Though I have sampled alcohol on a few occasions over the years, I never cared for it; I was probably priggishly moralistic about it in my youth (though the only two times I was ever drunk were as a teen), but my ongoing avoidance of liquor is really rooted in nothing more than not caring for the taste and having no interest in developing it (this applies to vegetables as well, FYI). As a result, I have spent many an evening watching friends get gently tipsy or utterly blotto, while my consciousness remained unaltered. So a show in which an actor aggressively drinks but still performs his or her role, in an environment which encourages the audience to imbibe along with them, seemed like paying for the opportunity to watch strangers get smashed, which wasn’t much fun even when I watched my friends do it.

I ultimately saw Here Lies Love because of the overwhelming critical enthusiasm that prompted its return to The Public this spring; I needed to find out what had everyone so excited. I decided to see Drunk Shakespeare because it is drawn from the work of the company Three Day Hangover, the leadership trio of which includes a woman who interned at The O’Neill when I ran it, as well as her husband. I had skipped their last production because of my prejudices and I didn’t feel good about it, because I felt I was being unsupportive of the woman who had been a diligent worker years earlier and who I was pleased to reconnect with recently.

Now this is where you’ll expect me to say that in both cases, the shows were revelations which upended my previous biases. But I’m afraid I can’t. When exhorted to dance along at HLL, I hugged the perimeter of the endlessly reconfigured staging areas and moved only when a shifting platform required me to do so, even as others joined in with abandon. At Drunk Shakespeare I attempted to sip some Jameson’s Irish Whiskey, once the favored spirit of my college drama troupe, but found I could barely get it past my lips, let alone consume enough to have any impact on my blood alcohol level. No fun at a party then, no fun at a party now.

That said, there was a key difference. I have long ago stopped wondering what within me makes dancing such torture, or caring when people quiz me in amazement about my abstemiousness. There’s no real peer pressure on these issues anymore and if one or both are limitations in the perception of others, then so be it. I never wanted to be John Travolta and realize I can’t possibly be Gene Kelly; I’ll never appreciate a fine wine or enjoy a round of beers at the end of the day. I don’t need to move to love music; a truly great hot cocoa gives me all the spirit lifting I need, sans spirits.

Selfie with cast members of Drunk Shakespeare

As a result, though I stood outside the action of Here Lies Love and Drunk Shakespeare, much as I had stood literally at the fringes and figuratively outside so many social events over so many years, I could enjoy them – and the people enjoying them – without condescension or alienation. I could appreciate the shows even without being fully immersed, but also without feeling like the odd man out, the way drinking and dancing had made me feel for so long. I guess it’s a sign of comfort in my own skin that I didn’t feel for many years, as well as an affirmation that things I might instinctively avoid because of long-held fears, I can now enjoy, opening me up to new experiences in the theatre and, perhaps, outside of it as well.

So shake that thang, boogiers of all ages at Here Lies Love. Drink up, college dudes and bachelorette parties who enjoy The Bard and Jagermeister at Drunk Shakespeare. I can’t fully join with you, but I’m glad you’re having fun with theatre.

P.S. Three Day Hangover is about to begin performances of Twelfth Night, or Sir Toby Belch’s Lonely Heart Club Cabaret, featuring karaoke with a live band. Have I mentioned that I happily sing in public, often a bit too loudly, even when I probably shouldn’t? I can’t wait to go. They’ve been warned and, now, so have you.

We all know that web traffic is the lifeblood of online media, giving rise to such essential reporting as “Which Game of Thrones Character Are You?,” “Which Breakfast Club Character Are You?” and every imaginable variant on this gambit. It is, of course, clickbait, designed to get you to interact with a site and see some advertising and increase page views, engagement time and other such metrics. Frankly, after finding out which Muppet I am (Beaker, if you must know), I stopped taking the bait.

But there’s some more high-minded clickbait out there, and The Hollywood Reporter is engaging in it right now. Via SurveyMonkey, THR is asking people to vote for what they think are the Best Drama Programs, at the high school and collegiate level (there’s no distinction between undergraduate and graduate for the latter). While I couldn’t find the survey on their website, it was being tweeted around, so I have the survey sans preface, sans methodology, sans everything. The fact that the schools you can choose from are pre-selected could be the top results of a larger study, but as it travels the tubes of the Internet, there’s not necessarily any way to know. (If there is any science behind this, I challenge THR to append it to their survey, and I’ll amend this post accordingly.)

To put it simply, I think this is preposterous and rather insidious, because when the resulting article comes out, a number of aspiring young theatre artists just might think it’s based in some degree of expertise, rather than the result of a narrowly defined popularity contest. A few schools might even cite it in promotional materials, and you can be sure the results will go zipping around with both pride and dismay.

So I’d like to say simply this: if you come across it, ignore it. Don’t fill it out. Don’t share it. Don’t comment on the results when they appear. Recognize it for the clickbait that it is, far beneath the sometimes excellent reporting that has been a part of the truly resurrected THR. If they exist to report on the industry, then they surely could commission a real study, or build a special section about drama education, not exploit us for our eyeballs. Offering a list of schools (and classes and even summer camps) with a slight nudge towards the fame of a few graduates (mostly actors, some of whom graduated decades ago) isn’t designed to inform anyone, it’s designed to get people to read and talk about The Hollywood Reporter. It doesn’t even offer the opportunity for write-in candidates, which would at least make it a fairer popularity contest. And who thinks the resulting article, revealing the skewed results, is likely to come out right around The Tony Awards, when theatre’s profile, like it or not, is at its highest nationally? I sure do.

What’s the harm, I hear some of you say? Isn’t it just another benign internet survey? No, because it will be the basis of boasting, of decision making, of aggravation, depending upon who you are and how you relate to the results.

While I’ve reproduced the survey, you’ll notice I haven’t linked to it. I won’t give them the satisfaction. I hope you won’t either. And if you want to give them a piece of your mind, tweet them at @THR.

P.S. I don’t mean to suggest that THR is the only site to do such spurious surveys. There are others. But this one is happening right now.

Sweeney Todd at Timberland High in Plaistow NH seems to have a lot in common with the threatened but ultimately triumphant production of Rent this past weekend in Trumbull CT. A musical is announced months in advance and, after some time has passed, the administration, citing both a failure to follow a previously unknown approvals process and concerns over inappropriate content, cancels the production. In Trumbull, it was just weeks before auditions were to begin; in Plaistow it’s over a show in the next school year.

If you look beyond the decision itself, politics at the school board level, in each case, seem to coincide with the dispute. In Trumbull, the school board suddenly ruled that only town residents would be permitted to speak at meetings, for the first time; in Plaistow, there was a declaration, currently being challenged on constitutional grounds, that once a decision is made by the school board, all members have to support it publicly.

A mature-themed school musical is once again at the center of a local controversy, but the pattern is a national one. While I urge you to read about the Plaistow situation in its entirety, as well as a sharply worded local editorial about the free speech issues regarding the school board, here’s the gist of what’s transpired, as reported by Alex Lippa of the Eagle-Tribune.

Timberlane Regional High School officials have canceled next year’s production of the musical “Sweeney Todd,” citing concerns over the nature of the script.

“I want an all-inclusive performance that the community can enjoy,” Superintendent Earl Metzler said yesterday. “We were uncomfortable with the script and agreed that this was not the right time or place for the performance.”

“Sweeney Todd” tells the story of a barber who murders his victims. His landlady then bakes them into pies and sells them.

The decision has caused a stir in the Timberlane community and efforts are being made through social media to convince the administration to reverse the decision.

“In the past, we have done shows with a wide range of difficult material and none of them have ever been opposed until now,” Timberlane senior Alexis Bolduc said. “And the only people who seem to disapprove of this show are the ones in charge.”

I have made the argument that high school theatre should be, first and foremost, for the students. I have made the argument that school theatre should challenge students so they can grow and learn. There’s little point in recounting those.

However it does appear that Dr. Metzler, the superintendent, is giving some manner of weight to missives he’s begun receiving from outside the community, triggered by social media and websites carrying the Timberlane tale of Sweeney Todd to the larger world. That’s where you come in.

If you are a student, parent, teacher or administrator who has had the experience of Sweeney Todd at your high school, recently or in past years, take a moment to write the Timberlane leadership and tell them about how the show was received and what it meant. If you are a theatre professional who cares about our next generation of theatre artists and the next generation of audiences, write and tell them why you think students should – perhaps even must ­– take on work like Sweeney Todd. If you are an audience member, a theatre aficionado, who believes in the value of Sweeney Todd, write about that and why students should be able to explore it in the Sondheim-approved, judiciously pruned school edition. Let’s demonstrate the level of commitment that exists among those who believe in the arts, and that we care not only what happens in the big cities, but in each and every community where theatre and the arts as a whole can be nurtured, not just in your own backyard.

The auditorium of Timberlane High

Worth keeping in mind? Timberlane has already done The Laramie Project. Twice. That says something about the people in the Timberlane district, although there have been some subsequent leadership changes and the show was confined to the smaller studio space on the Timberlane campus. Let me also note that Dr. Metzler will be leading an open conversation with the community this coming Wednesday, April 2, so an iron wall has not necessarily gone up, despite the announced cancelation. The distinct possibility for constructive dialogue remains, so I urge you to refrain from sarcasm, from rash generalizations, from anger, and instead focus on your stories, your experiences, your thoughts and how they can apply to the students in Plaistow.

Let’s operate under the genuine assumption that everyone wants the best for the students and just have differing perceptions of what that is. I’ve been strident in some of my past writing, but the Trumbull students proved you get more with judicious diplomacy than with unbridled passion, valuable as that can be at certain times.

You can share your thoughts and experiences with:

Dr. Earl Metzler, Superintendent, Timberlane Regional School District, 30 Greenough Road, Plaistow NH 03865

Mr. Donald Woodworth, Principal, Timberlane Regional High School, 36 Greenough Road, Plaistow, NH 03865

And while you’re at it, would you copy me as well?  I’m driving to New Hampshire on Wednesday and I’d like to be able to print out and share a sheaf of thoughtful, supportive and constructive messages with those those in attendance at the forum.

Sweeney Todd is, at its core, about how insidious miscarriages of justice can be in a society, driving some to heinous acts in retaliation – ultimately for nought. That’s a valuable lesson, especially when told by an artist as skilled and respected as Stephen Sondheim. Let’s hope it can still be sung at Timberlane High next school year.

I am going to take it for granted that, since you’ve opted to read this article, you care about the arts. I’m also going to save time and typing by assuming that you appreciate media coverage of the arts and that you realize that without the attention of the media, it will be ever harder for the arts to share their news, their work and their value locally, nationally and internationally.

Since we are agreed, I will proceed directly to my point.

If you want to see intelligent, comprehensive coverage of the arts – features and reviews alike – then you’ve got to start clicking. Journalism is well on its way to being a numbers game for most outlets. How many people clicked on a story or video, how many times was it liked or shared, how much time was spent looking at it? We are already seeing journalism sites paying writers base salaries with bumps or bonuses based on online metrics; outlets say they are dropping certain types of coverage because it’s simply not generating enough traffic. It’s not enough to be happy that arts coverage exists, you have to actually engage with it to insure its survival and the job survival of those who create it.

Clicks mean eyes and eyes mean advertisers. As print becomes an ever-harder sell, online advertising grows ever more important to outlets. Even back in the days pre-internet, I encountered cuts in arts coverage because the arts didn’t generate enough advertising revenue (whereas advertisers loved sports sections and we get regular features about new cars because auto dealers buy big ads). Even now, arts spending online is a small sliver of online advertising, so our best means of supporting arts coverage is by actually reading it.

Let’s face it: anyone with a WordPress blog knows how many people read each piece they post (yes, I’m watching you). But that’s amateur hour compared to the realtime and cumulative algorithms and analytics applied at big media outlets. There are teams of people looking at clicks, links and likes for every story, and media empires are being built on click-bait methodology (why, hello BuzzFeed). It’s running the show in many places and it can’t be ignored.

So here’s what I propose. Every morning, when you get online, go to the arts section of your local media outlets, seek out their arts and entertainment stories, and click of them. Don’t click on each in rapid succession, but spend 30 to 45 seconds on each one (remember your multiple browser windows). You have to wait a bit because one analytic is stickiness or hang-time or whatever it’s called now, namely whether people are really engaging with coverage. A click on and immediate click off looks like you got there by mistake. And needless to say, it certainly won’t hurt in the least if you actually read a story or watch a video while you’re at it.

I should also note that just liking or retweeting a story isn’t enough: you actually have to look at it. Sometimes you’re just liking a friend posting about a story, not the story or video itself, and that’s an important difference. There have been studies that show that many people retweet items without ever actually reading them, and anecdotally I know that to be true: I often see my own tweets with embedded links that have more retweets than clicks. You’ve got to stop and look. That said, on Facebook likes and shares feed into an algorithm that’s sure more people might see the post featured in their feed, and retweets do the same, so be liberal with those too.

You need to share this idea with your staffs, your audience, your donors. This can’t be an effort by a couple of thousand core die-hards; this has to be a movement and it has to be sustained. I do my part every day in curating the articles I share on my twitter feed. You don’t need to be as exhaustive as I am, but whether you seek out a story or if it comes across your social media feed, click on it (often click on opera and symphony stories even though I rarely attend them). If the arts generate eyes, if they generate numbers, you’re going to have a direct impact on how the arts are viewed by the media decision makers. Clicking on the occasional ad next to an arts story matters too.

I’d like to give this idea some snappy name that the field can adopt, but I’m only coming up with corny and possibly inexplicable ideas like “Click 10 For The Arts,” which in my mind is shorthand for remind you to click on 10 arts stories daily. I hope that if people buy into this idea, someone will come up with something clever.

But unlike the world of journalism 25 years ago, where outlets only knew how many papers they sold, it’s now exceedingly easy to know what gets traffic and what doesn’t. No need for audience surveys when our every move online is recorded. If we don’t actively work to pump up the stats for arts coverage, it’ll continue to erode.

To quote Joni Mitchell, “you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til its gone,” and we’ve lost too much already. So next time you want to take a quiz about what Shakespeare villain or what Sondheim character you are, at least spend the equivalent amount of time reading articles about Shakespeare plays or Sondheim shows. Because while the former may be fun, it’s the latter that will actually sustain arts journalism and sustain the arts.

P.S. Thanks for clicking on this story. Now would you be so kind to like it, favorite it, share it, retweet it and so on? And yes, I’ll know if you did.

Arizona’s Cactus Shadows High School

Having learned of high schools terminating productions and firing teachers over everything from Legally Blonde to The Laramie Project, it hardly comes as a surprise that Edward Albee’s Tony Award-winning play The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? came under fire last week at Cactus Shadows High School in Scottsdale, Arizona. Where surprise comes into play is that the sentinels of censorship sprang to action not over a production of the work, but over it being read in an advanced drama course for which students could receive college credit.

I’d have to admit that The Goat probably isn’t typical high school fare, and shouldn’t necessarily be in the general reading for all students. But for students prepared to work at a college level, Albee’s writing is important if not essential. I happen to be a particular fan of the play, finding it so compelling in its original Broadway production that I took the unprecedented step (for me) of paying box office rates to see it twice. In my personal hierarchy of Albee plays, it is second only to Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, with which it shares many characteristics. Is there “vulgar” language? Yes. Does it invoke (but not portray) bestiality and touch upon incest and pedophilia? Yes. But it does not advocate those taboos; it deploys them in service of a deeper meaning. Serious acting students working at a college level should be prepared to grapple with such material.

Upon reading and watching press accounts of the Scottsdale challenge to The Goat, they at first appear similar to other protests against certain works in high school theatre, but the situation at Cactus Shadows escalates to a whole new level.  Even though students admit to being offered alternative material, a preemptive acknowledgement that some might wish to opt out of The Goat, complaints arose from some who didn’t exercise that option. When school board members advised concerned parents to express their dismay to the principal and the teacher, they instead brought in the police. In turn, the police allowed the irate parents making the complaint to directly confront students about the teacher and the play, which I can’t help but think is a violation of any sensible school policy, let alone due process. Yet the Scottsdale Police Department says there is no complaint on file. What gives?

The school superintendent, quickly distancing herself from the teacher, says that she’s investigating how the play was brought into the classroom, as if it was smuggled in under cover of night. To the contrary: the play was on a list of works submitted in advance to parents, for their signature. Could the parents have all been expected to know the material and judge their comfort accordingly? Of course not, even if you accept the concept that parents have the right to individually approve curricula. But the teacher, who has been placed on paid administrative leave, could hardly be accused of subterfuge. While certainly the superintendent doesn’t check every lesson plan, is it possible that the teacher of the course submitted the reading list to parents for sign off without passing it by any other member of the faculty? I’d be surprised.

I’m really stunned that the school’s policy is apparently to take a teacher out of the classroom over any complaint until it’s investigated. This is an intellectual issue, not a student safety one. How is such a matter investigated and how long should it take? How does it rise to being a police matter?

The language of press reports from KPHO TV and The Arizona Republic have no doubt inflamed the situation, since they elide the gap between discussing hot button topics and portraying, let alone endorsing, them; certainly any metaphorical meaning is cast aside in the rush to grab eyeballs. Clearly neither reporter knows much about Albee (and to be fair, can’t be expected to) but they take far too much at face value from the conversations they have had about the controversy. Regretfully, the teacher sold Albee short by saying The Goat is an absurdist play; it may be harsh and posit extreme situations, but it is rooted in reality. The Goat is not Ubu Roi or The Bald Soprano.

Read the comments on the news stories linked here, because they suggest that the complaints are far outweighed by supporters of the teacher and the class. But that’s not evident from the stories themselves, especially the video segments, which emphasize the dissenters, not those who think the situation has been precipitated by a vocal minority. Editorial balance is one thing, but misrepresenting the balance of public opinion is another.

As I read The Goat again, I was struck by how much of the dialogue in the play resembles an interview – or even a conversation – with Edward Albee, a daunting experience I’ve had the challenge and pleasure of undertaking. For Albee, there are no easy answers; he actually seems to delight in not providing any, despite writing some of the most probing theatrical work of the past half-century. Ask Edward what The Goat is about and I’d lay odds that his answer would be, “About two hours.” This only deepens the mysteries of the play.

The study and practice of theatre is not about easy answers. What a shame that a teacher in Scottsdale challenged his advanced students with some difficult questions and was taken out of the classroom as a result, and both he and Edward Albee are presumed guilty unless proven innocent.

P.S. When I attended high school in the late 70s, Albee’s The Zoo Story was on the reading list for English class, not for a drama or advanced placement course. When I saw the play again, for the first time in many years, at Second Stage in 2007, I was struck by the darkness and complexity of the material and marveled that it had been studied in a suburban high school classroom – without opposition – almost 30 years earlier. I am also indebted to everyone who had a hand in making that happen.

Update, October 15, 3 p.m. eastern time: I am pleased to report that the teacher suspended for teaching The Goat, Andrew Cupo, has been returned to the classroom, as reported in the Arizona Republic. But this is far from a victory, as from now on, Cupo will be required to clear every text he uses with the principal, bypassing (it would seem) a departmental chair, who I imagine normally has that responsibility. I believe in proper approvals, but has a special status been carved out for Cupo? In addition, superintendent Debbi Burdick has said that, “no plays that include suggestive sexual information, excessive profanity, suggestive sexual undertones, or that would be considered controversial in a high-school setting will be used for any reason.” I wonder: is this content policy in place solely for Cupo and drama, or for all literature taught at Cactus Shadows? Regardless, the long shadow of censorship has been strengthened at the school, forcing Cupo to seek approval for and second guess his every decision and depriving students of some of the greatest works of drama.

My thanks to Linda Essig for bringing this situation to my attention and for sharing the local news accounts. An Arizona resident, she has also written “An Open Letter To The Cave Creek School District,” which includes Cactus Shadows High School.

If you’ve not yet heard the story, the basic facts are these. Earlier this week, members of the football team at the University of Mississippi (aka “Ole Miss”) were required to attend a performance of The Laramie Project, the play by Tectonic Theater Project and Moisés Kaufman about the murder of Matthew Shepard 15 years ago and the impact of his killing on the town of Laramie. Some 20 players were among the students who taunted the cast with gay slurs; they may have instigated the incident. In the many news reports about it, it has been noted that the players were required to write a note of apology; one may have done so in person.  You can read accounts from the Associated Press and ESPN for more details.

This profoundly upsets me, and I suspect anyone who reads what I write, so my personal condemnation of the incident is insignificant. Given that just last week I explained how I can barely watch fictional stories about sports, and that I previously spoken up on the value of seeing Laramie Project produced in high schools, my deep dismay over this incident is unsurprising.

It remains a sad fact of American life that this kind of bigotry flourishes. For all the advances that have been made since Shepard’s murder, there are clearly swaths of people in this country whose reactionary behavior proves just how far we have to go in accepting that all people are created equal. It is a bit of sick irony that the football players at Ole Miss were required to attend a performance that explores the pain and horror of hate crimes and used it as an opportunity to display their basest beliefs.

I am encouraged, however, to see that the sportswriting community, which I do not know well (as you might surmise), has not shrugged off this incident. I recommend to you three columns in particular. “Apology isn’t enough for what Ole Miss thinks its football players did” is the headline of a piece by Gregg Doyel of CBS, who expresses my shared skepticism that the players will face any meaningful punishment for their actions. Greg Couch of Fox Sports goes further, and calls for the suspension of the players (“Time for Ole Miss to send a message”) as does his colleague Clay Travis (“Ole Miss Must Ban Players — Now”) – and I agree with them completely.  I am pleased to see members of the sports media standing against these actions, since they have access to the general public in a way the theatre community itself could never muster, even if every website and blog were to unite over this issue.

But the culture of college sports, especially at schools with teams that compete at the top level in games that land on television, have this pathetic inability to truly address meaningful change in an often corrupt universe. At The New York Times, business writer Joe Nocera has written column after column about the repeated failures of the NCAA to curb abuses within their system, specifically the kind of money made on the backs of so-called student-athletes, with a particular eye to the long-term effects of traumatic brain injuries. We read about crimes, in particular sexual assault, that is systematically hushed up at colleges, by athletes and other students, in the name of protecting the reputation of the school. Disrupting a play doesn’t rise to a comparable level of criminality, but this week’s events are symptomatic of a larger disease, one that is not unique to sports programs, but that is in abundant evidence right now at Ole Miss and should be quashed in no uncertain terms.

We only have to read the accounts of Tuesday’s Laramie performance to see that Ole Miss cares more about their football team than about the student body at large, let alone the drama program in particular. When members of the team began their heckling (too soft a word, just as bullying is insufficient these days as well), it was the football coach who was called – but what about security, the police? They will be held accountable as athletes within a special system, not simply as students, let alone as individual citizens ganging together to espouse hate.

Ole Miss has a football game tomorrow. The school has not yet said whether these offenders will play in it, or whether anything more will be asked of them than the wan apology already proffered. At the same time, I suspect if activists were to interrupt the game by running onto the field and calling the players names, they would be arrested, suspended, and expelled or some combination thereof.

Even if you agree with every word I’ve written even before you read it, I hope you’ll add your voice to the chorus speaking against this incident at Ole Miss and all of those like it, in person, online, using whatever resources you have. Even if, like me, you’re no sports fan, surely you have friends and family who are, and who should hear about what has happened this week in Mississippi, since it’s hardly an isolated case. Worse has been done and sadly will be done, but we can’t allow the empty theatre of college athletic penalties (if they even occur) to trump the sad human drama that led to Matthew Shepard’s killing and which is played out on our national stage day in and day out.

To write directly to members of the University of Mississippi athletic program, here’s a complete list of contacts. Write directly to the Chancellor of the university, Dr. Daniel W. Jones at chancllr@olemiss.edu and to the director of Athletics Ross Bjork at rbjork@olemiss.edu.

Direct tweets to @OleMissRebels, Ole Miss Athletics (@OleMissNow) and football @CoachHughFreeze. Post Facebook messages to www.facebook.com/olemisssports and www.facebook.com/OleMissFootball

Update – Saturday, October 5, 8 am: The Ole Miss’s “Bias Incident Response Team” released the following statement on Friday evening:

“The task of identifying specific individuals who were purported to have disrupted the performance is difficult because of the dark theatre, and initial reports vary in regard to the frequency, volume and source of the comments or disruption,” the statement read. “Although initial reports indicate that student-athletes led the action, it is important to note that this has not been verified and they were not the only students present. Reports indicate that comments were made by student athletes and students but no report has singled out a specific student or mentioned any names.”

According to a report in the Jackson Clarion Ledger, headlined “Ole Miss delivers punishment in homophobic slur incident,” members of the team at the performance will, however, be required to attend “educational dialogue session led by university faculty and allies.” In other words: we know they were part of this, but not enough to actually punish them, despite what the headline says. Apparently at Ole Miss, the dedication to football outweighs the word of a faculty member. The headline from ESPN, “No evidence against Ole Miss players,” seems to completely absolve them.  The ugly game goes on.

Is there no one in town aware of social injustice?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*   *   *

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

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

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

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

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

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

*  *  *

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

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

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

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

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

*   *   *

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

And so: Our Town.

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

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

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

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

Cover art from a 1961 paperback edition of OUR TOWN

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

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

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

*   *   *

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

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

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

My, wasn’t life awful – and wonderful.

Yes, I brought my camera to a Broadway show with the intention of using it. And I did.

Having read that the audience was invited on stage before the start of The Testament of Mary to gaze upon an assortment of props, as well as the leading lady Fiona Shaw, I brought my camera to document the event. I figured it would make for perfect art to accompany a blog post about the wisdom of a show exploiting audience curiosity in order to seed a social media marketing campaign.

Instead, I was converted.

No, not like that.

In the 36 hours since I saw the next-to-last Broadway performance, I have come to realize that the audience ambling and photobombing of Shaw was in fact an integral part of the show, and it reveals new layers to me even as I write.

Colm Toíbín’s revisionist view of the mother of Jesus, adapted by Shaw and director Deborah Warner, gave us a most ordinary Mary, who spent much of the show in a drab tunic and pants. She was remarkably modern in her speech, talked with an Irish accent, and dangled a cigarette from her lips. The set was strewn with anachronistic props: plastic chairs, a metal pail, a bird cage – a yard sale filled mostly with items from the Bethlehem Hope Depot.

Mary’s tale might be that of any Jewish mother whose son has fallen in with the wrong crowd, less disciples or worshippers than hooligans; her skepticism about her son’s miracles is hardly veiled. She spoke of the raising of Lazarus as if he had been buried alive, of the transformation of water into wine as a show-off’s trick, and wrenchingly of the crucifixion. She described those who urged her to recount her son’s life and death in specific ways, contrary to some of her own recollections; she talked about potential threats to her own safety resulting from her familial connection. She stripped bare and submerged herself completely in a pool of water for a second or two longer than might seem safe; an auto-baptism perhaps?

But that’s the play. Or so we’re meant to think.

In hindsight, the play – or at least the production – began the moment Fiona Shaw took her place, Madonna-like, behind plexiglass walls, at roughly 7:40 pm before the announced 8 pm curtain. While it’s perhaps unfortunate that this device was used so soon after the Tilda Swinton-in-a-box stunt at the Museum of Modern Art, we were clearly watching a tableau vivant of the Virgin Mary as seen in countless religious icons, not an Oscar winner feigning sleep.

The moment the play proper, or perhaps I should say “the action,” began, the audience was shooed to their seats, cautioned against further photos, the glass case lifted, and Shaw quickly shed the fine vestments for the costume described earlier.

As I had stood among the crowd on stage, and it was indeed a crowd, I thought, ‘Why isn’t this better managed? Everyone is going in a different direction. People could trip, people could slip off the stage itself, they could taunt the live vulture, they could foul up the preset props.’ Even after I wormed my way up to the plexiglass and was ready to retake my seat, I couldn’t, such was the flow of people coming and going from two small stairways on a suddenly tiny stage.

I have come to realize that we were the modern day rabble, gawking at the remnants of Jesus’ death. There was no corpse, but the barbed wire we tiptoed around would later be a crown of thorns, Shaw as the Madonna was indeed a gazed-upon icon, making her transformation to flesh and blood all the more striking minutes later. We weren’t looking upon any of this with reverence, but with the avid curiosity of onlookers at a tragedy. Our actions were the curtain raiser, we were our own cast in a sequence of immersive theatre within the confines of a proscenium theatre.  The vulture was gone after this prologue, since we had picked the bones of the production dry under our eager gaze; Mary was vividly alive, and therefore of no interest to a animal that feeds on carrion.

Yes, I tweeted photos of the motionless Shaw; I imagine others did the same. I tried to get a good shot of the vulture, but it wasn’t much for posing and its black feathers in low light made it even more difficult a subject. I wasn’t about to use a flash, lest it trouble the seemingly imperturbable bird; others had no such compunction.

I have seen many coups de théâtre in my years of theatergoing, but this was the first time I had been a part of one. Even my tweeting served the piece; I was spreading the classic image of Mary to others, tipping them to the ability to photograph her themselves, in order to have their own actions questioned and subverted for the subsequent 90 minutes. As I did it, I felt there was something cheap in my actions; only in hindsight do I realize that Shaw and Warner had expertly suckered me into their game, as the modern day equivalent of a gawking bystander in ancient times.

Unfortunately, only another 1,000 people may have had the opportunity to respond to my small, complicit role as I exploited images of the show on social media, in the public relations of religious and theatrical iconography, since The Testament of Mary closed after its next performance. Perhaps it ran too short a time to become the stuff of legend, but it was, for me, a memorable experience, one martyred by what Broadway seems to demand.  I hope it goes to countless better places.

all photos by Howard Sherman

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.

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…