Silencing Theatrical Debate Over Israelis & Palestinians In North Miami

February 24th, 2016 § 1 comment § permalink

Crossing Jerusalem logoIf you’re not familiar with Julia Pascal’s 2003 play Crossing Jerusalem, that’s because the play has only had two productions in the U.S. Or perhaps it is more correct to say that it has had one and a half productions, because the play’s second U.S. run, by J-CAT, the Cultural Arts Theatre at the Michael-Ann Russell Jewish Community Center in North Miami, a community theatre, was shut down by the JCC after giving only half of its scheduled performances.

*   *   *

The play takes place during the intifada of 2002, and focuses on an Israeli family that chooses to take the risk of crossing Jerusalem to dine at a favorite restaurant to mark a family birthday celebration, a restaurant owned by a Christian Arab (in the script’s description) and staffed by two Palestinian Muslims. The characters represent a microcosm of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as interpreted by Pascal. In 2015, on the occasion of the play’s first London revival, Pascal spoke about her intention in writing Crossing Jerusalem with The Jewish Chronicle Online.

“I think that it’s the playwright’s duty not to take a simplistic line,” says Pascal. “I’ve been examining what plays have been done on Israel [in Britain] over the past 50 years, and almost all of them have been from an anti-Zionist point of view. So, because of who is allowed to write about Israel and who is commissioned to write about Israel, you only get the simplistic Israel-bad/Palestinian-good point of view through the plays we have seen. I fee it’s my duty to show all sides. Whether that’s comfortable or not is another question. It’s the kaleidoscope that’s important.”

Speaking just this week from London, after the J-CAT production was canceled, Pascal said, “Jews told me, ‘You’re very tough on us.’ Palestinians said, ‘You portray us all as terrorists.’ People tend to bring their own attitudes to the play.”

“I see right and wrong on both sides,” Pascal explained, “and I get it in the neck from both sides.”

As to her Jewish perspective, Pascal says, “I think it’s painful to be a Jew, but we have to deal with it. The way the state of Israel was built up was painful and in the long continuum of history, it’s no one group’s fault.” However, she described the media conversation around Israel in England by saying, “The British press is very anti-Israel. That is the default position.”

Ultimately, Pascal says, she wrote Crossing Jerusalem because, “There was no play in England that represented Israel in all its complexity.”

*   *   *

J-CAT’s production of Julia Pascal’s Crossing Jerusalem

J-CAT’s production of Julia Pascal’s Crossing Jerusalem

It seems clear that J-CAT and the JCC were fully aware of the potential for controversy in producing the play. Program statements from Paul Kruss and Gary Bomzer, the Chairman of the Board and the President and CEO respectively, began as follows:

“Throughout our history of community theatre, it is not unusual to periodically present a play whose content may be viewed as controversial and be a catalyst to stimulate audience discussion after the performance. For us at the MAR-JCC, it shows an openness to present theatre which may not reflect the views or opinions of the MAR-JCC’s lay leadership and staff, but has the potential to serve as an educational opportunity to delve into social, and even political questions and issues that the production raises. Crossing Jerusalem certainly falls into this category…from family dynamics to the Arab-Israeli conflict, Crossing Jerusalem touches upon subject matters that are heavily discussed in Israel’s open and democratic society. And for you, the audience, we invite you to participate in some of this discussion as part of a talk-back at the end of the show.”

The program also carried a statement from Michael Andron, the head of J-CAT, an employee of the JCC and director of Crossing Jerusalem:

“This is a challenging play. Its setting is in one of the most complex places on the planet. If it were easy to ‘show’ all the history and the political problems clearly, perhaps it might be easier to find solutions to them. Clearly, it is not so easy.”

Later in his program note, Andron continued:

Those in our audience who might care to argue that one actor’s statement, or another’s line or stated idea, is inaccurate (or, as in Politifact’s lingo: true, mostly true, mostly false, pants on fire), or that some clear insight or additional point of view is lacking in the play, would miss the point somewhat, I think. We will try, after the show, to add a layer of factual education on some of those issues.

The company’s website noted that the show contained “mature themes and language.”

*   *   *

With all of that understanding up front, how did it lead Bomzer, the JCC president and CEO, to terminate the run after only four of nine performances had been given? On February 16, he wrote to the JCC community:

We have heard the voices of many in our community advocating passionately to put an end to the show because they feel the message is inappropriate and troublesome. Please know that our intentions in presenting Crossing Jerusalem are good ones, and yet we realize that we have unintentionally caused pain to many in the audience; for this we are sincerely sorry.

The vision of the JCAT leadership was to engage meaningfully with each other on Israel, across lines of difference and to build a culture in which complicated questions are ones we can openly discuss. While we were aware that the play deals with some very controversial issues, the last thing we wanted was to alienate members of our community or damage relationships…

We must together devise constructive and participatory ways forward to get at our differences, even when they remain dramatic. Meanwhile, our leadership has made the decision to suspend performances of Crossing Jerusalem in order to avoid any further pain and to engage in rigorous, vibrant conversation that advances our community.

From being aware of potential controversy in his program note to apologizing for that controversy and accepting and advancing the idea that the play was causing pain, Bomzer’s shift in position and tone is significant. Instead of publicly defending the play, JCAT and his own role in seeing Crossing Jerusalem produced, with the intention of starting valuable discussion, Bomzer quickly disowns it, even though his letter acknowledges receiving many communications from people both in support of and against the play.

Michael Andron issued a statement via his Facebook page regarding the cancelation. It reads, in its entirety:

I want to share two thoughts about the cancellation of JCAT’s “Crossing Jerusalem”. (If you haven’t followed it, search it). Ten months ago, JCC CEO Gary Bomzer and I agreed that we would produce Crossing Jerusalem at JCAT as both a gripping drama and as an educational learning opportunity about the Middle East. We determined this should include my playbill director’s notes to the audience, a few brief remarks before the show about the complexity of a play set in a complicated part of the world, Israel, one that we both love and support, and an opportunity for a talkback with the cast and creative team after the show. I proceeded to direct an incredible cast and honored all the plans Gary and I agreed to.

As far as the cancellation is concerned: Personally, of course I would have preferred to continue the show to the end and let the audience decide for themselves. I directed this powerful play to portray all sides and stimulate discussion, education and insights. But insights shouldn’t incite (as I wrote in the playbill) and I feel horrible that they did. I’m saddened for the actors and crew who worked so hard on this production, as well as for those in the community who didn’t get to see the piece and decide for themselves what they felt and thought about it. This my opinion and I am not speaking on behalf of the JCC. But JCAT is part of the JCC and I understand and accept the difficult decision that the organization had to make.

When contacted, Andron declined to answer any questions regarding the cancelation beyond his Facebook post.

*   *   *

I wrote to Gary Bomzer on Sunday asking for an interview, saying that I planned to write about this situation within two days, and he responded just a few hours later, writing, “Thank you for your email. Please send me your questions and I will respond as best as I can.” I sent him eight questions at 8 pm Sunday evening and as I write on Tuesday morning, I have not heard from him again, even having re-sent the questions at 8 am this morning.

Some of my unanswered questions were:

4. The Miami Herald article cites Avi Goldwasser and Charles Jacobs expressing opposition to the play, with Goldwasser having participated in at least some of the post-performance discussions. How did Mr. Goldwasser and Mr. Jacobs, who as I understand it are based in New York and Boston respectively, come to be involved in speaking at and in connection with your production from the moment it began performances? Did members of your community reach out to them and include them in the dialogue before performances had even begun?

5. Corollary to number 4, I have a copy of a document prepared by Mr. Goldwasser which seems to be framed as a rebuttal to sentiments and statements expressed by the characters. Was this document inserted into programs or otherwise distributed at performances? If so, who made the decision to make this material available? Was any other historical or dramaturgical material available in the program or as handouts?

8. Are you concerned that by canceling the remaining performances in this play’s run, you may face situations in the future where members of the JCC community seek to have other cultural offerings canceled because they differ from their own personal viewpoints? Will this potentially limit the range of the JCC’s cultural offerings in the future?

In the various articles that have come out thus far about the cancelation of Crossing Jerusalem at the JCC, all reporters seem to be relying, as I am, on the same documents, statements and Facebook posts. Very little is being spoken aloud. The Miami Herald’s feature on the cancelation contextualized it by citing other conflicts over politics and culture in South Florida, notably over Cuban artists, but that article also mentions the controversy over The Death of Klinghoffer at the Metropolitan Opera in 2014.

In regards to the portrayal of Israelis, Palestinians and Jews (since not all Jews are Israeli), the Klinghoffer example is certainly pertinent. I would add the controversy over the New York Theatre Workshop’s planned production of My Name Is Rachel Corrie in 2006, which was canceled and ultimately produced else where in New York as a commercial production, and the clashes between Ari Roth during his tenure at Theater J, the resident company at the Washington DC JCC, over the content of his artistic choices which included a range of viewpoints about the social and political situation in Israel, which ultimately led to Roth forming his own company Mosaic Theater. A production of Rachel Corrie was also canceled in 2009 at the Mosaic Theatre Company in Plantation FL (no connection to Ari Roth’s new company), a professional company in residence at the American Heritage School prior to production.

Crossing Jerusalem at the MAR-JCC once again raises the question of whether complex, messy portrayals of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the human stories within it can successfully be produced within the context of Jewish Community Centers, or for that matter by artistic institutions in areas with significant Jewish populations. It seems quite possible that based on past examples, JCCs will shy away from this kind of work in the future, lest they be subject to the kind of criticism that has been levied upon the organizations cited above.

Will there be only one kind of approved narrative in the US for exploring this seemingly intractable situation through art? As someone with significant religious training in my youth, I was taught that Judaism is a non-dogmatic religion that values discussion and debate. I do not see those principles being sustained in the censorious actions of the MAR-JCC; I am one of the signatories to a letter developed by the National Coalition Against Censorship urging the JCC to reinstate the canceled performances.

Having read Crossing Jerusalem, I can see why people with strong viewpoints might object to some of the statements and opinions within it, though in my reading every statement is counterweighted by another conflicting one. I have certainly seen plays with which I do not agree, some of which even made me quite angry, but I support their right to be heard and seen by those who choose to attend them. I fear an ever-increasing artistic orthodoxy when it comes to portrayals of Israel in the U.S.

The first step in avoiding a singular viewpoint is for Crossing Jerusalem to be seen and heard once again at the North Miami JCC. If people choose not to attend? That’s OK. If there are protests? Also fine. Based upon my scanning of Facebook commentary, there are plenty of people in North Miami who want to see Crossing Jerusalem, perhaps even more now that it has become a cause celebre. They should have the opportunity to do so, or not, according to their own artistic, political and religious compass. If the play was sufficiently worthy for the JCC to produce in the first place, knowing its potential for controversy, Bomzer shouldn’t be going back on his word now, and should let audiences decide for themselves.

 

Howard Sherman is director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School College of Performing Arts; this post first appeared at artsintegrity.org.

Respectful debate on all aspects of this column are welcomed, however comments are moderated.

Silencing Theatrical Debate Over Israelis & Palestinians In North Miami

February 23rd, 2016 § 1 comment § permalink

Crossing Jerusalem logoIf you’re not familiar with Julia Pascal’s 2003 play Crossing Jerusalem, that’s because the play has only had two productions in the U.S. Or perhaps it is more correct to say that it has had one and a half productions, because the play’s second U.S. run, by J-CAT, the Cultural Arts Theatre at the Michael-Ann Russell Jewish Community Center in North Miami, a community theatre, was shut down by the JCC after giving only half of its scheduled performances.

*   *   *

The play takes place during the intifada of 2002, and focuses on an Israeli family that chooses to take the risk of crossing Jerusalem to dine at a favorite restaurant to mark a family birthday celebration, a restaurant owned by a Christian Arab (in the script’s description) and staffed by two Palestinian Muslims. The characters represent a microcosm of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as interpreted by Pascal. In 2015, on the occasion of the play’s first London revival, Pascal spoke about her intention in writing Crossing Jerusalem with The Jewish Chronicle Online.

“I think that it’s the playwright’s duty not to take a simplistic line,” says Pascal. “I’ve been examining what plays have been done on Israel [in Britain] over the past 50 years, and almost all of them have been from an anti-Zionist point of view. So, because of who is allowed to write about Israel and who is commissioned to write about Israel, you only get the simplistic Israel-bad/Palestinian-good point of view through the plays we have seen. I fee it’s my duty to show all sides. Whether that’s comfortable or not is another question. It’s the kaleidoscope that’s important.”

Speaking just this week from London, after the J-CAT production was canceled, Pascal said, “Jews told me, ‘You’re very tough on us.’ Palestinians said, ‘You portray us all as terrorists.’ People tend to bring their own attitudes to the play.”

“I see right and wrong on both sides,” Pascal explained, “and I get it in the neck from both sides.”

As to her Jewish perspective, Pascal says, “I think it’s painful to be a Jew, but we have to deal with it. The way the state of Israel was built up was painful and in the long continuum of history, it’s no one group’s fault.” However, she described the media conversation around Israel in England by saying, “The British press is very anti-Israel. That is the default position.”

Ultimately, Pascal says, she wrote Crossing Jerusalem because, “There was no play in England that represented Israel in all its complexity.”

*   *   *

J-CAT’s production of Julia Pascal’s Crossing Jerusalem

J-CAT’s production of Julia Pascal’s Crossing Jerusalem

It seems clear that J-CAT and the JCC were fully aware of the potential for controversy in producing the play. Program statements from Paul Kruss and Gary Bomzer, the Chairman of the Board and the President and CEO respectively, began as follows:

“Throughout our history of community theatre, it is not unusual to periodically present a play whose content may be viewed as controversial and be a catalyst to stimulate audience discussion after the performance. For us at the MAR-JCC, it shows an openness to present theatre which may not reflect the views or opinions of the MAR-JCC’s lay leadership and staff, but has the potential to serve as an educational opportunity to delve into social, and even political questions and issues that the production raises. Crossing Jerusalem certainly falls into this category…from family dynamics to the Arab-Israeli conflict, Crossing Jerusalem touches upon subject matters that are heavily discussed in Israel’s open and democratic society. And for you, the audience, we invite you to participate in some of this discussion as part of a talk-back at the end of the show.”

The program also carried a statement from Michael Andron, the head of J-CAT, an employee of the JCC and director of Crossing Jerusalem:

“This is a challenging play. Its setting is in one of the most complex places on the planet. If it were easy to ‘show’ all the history and the political problems clearly, perhaps it might be easier to find solutions to them. Clearly, it is not so easy.”

Later in his program note, Andron continued:

Those in our audience who might care to argue that one actor’s statement, or another’s line or stated idea, is inaccurate (or, as in Politifact’s lingo: true, mostly true, mostly false, pants on fire), or that some clear insight or additional point of view is lacking in the play, would miss the point somewhat, I think. We will try, after the show, to add a layer of factual education on some of those issues.

The company’s website noted that the show contained “mature themes and language.”

*   *   *

With all of that understanding up front, how did it lead Bomzer, the JCC president and CEO, to terminate the run after only four of nine performances had been given? On February 16, he wrote to the JCC community:

We have heard the voices of many in our community advocating passionately to put an end to the show because they feel the message is inappropriate and troublesome. Please know that our intentions in presenting Crossing Jerusalem are good ones, and yet we realize that we have unintentionally caused pain to many in the audience; for this we are sincerely sorry.

The vision of the JCAT leadership was to engage meaningfully with each other on Israel, across lines of difference and to build a culture in which complicated questions are ones we can openly discuss. While we were aware that the play deals with some very controversial issues, the last thing we wanted was to alienate members of our community or damage relationships…

We must together devise constructive and participatory ways forward to get at our differences, even when they remain dramatic. Meanwhile, our leadership has made the decision to suspend performances of Crossing Jerusalem in order to avoid any further pain and to engage in rigorous, vibrant conversation that advances our community.

From being aware of potential controversy in his program note to apologizing for that controversy and accepting and advancing the idea that the play was causing pain, Bomzer’s shift in position and tone is significant. Instead of publicly defending the play, JCAT and his own role in seeing Crossing Jerusalem produced, with the intention of starting valuable discussion, Bomzer quickly disowns it, even though his letter acknowledges receiving many communications from people both in support of and against the play.

Michael Andron issued a statement via his Facebook page regarding the cancelation. It reads, in its entirety:

I want to share two thoughts about the cancellation of JCAT’s “Crossing Jerusalem”. (If you haven’t followed it, search it). Ten months ago, JCC CEO Gary Bomzer and I agreed that we would produce Crossing Jerusalem at JCAT as both a gripping drama and as an educational learning opportunity about the Middle East. We determined this should include my playbill director’s notes to the audience, a few brief remarks before the show about the complexity of a play set in a complicated part of the world, Israel, one that we both love and support, and an opportunity for a talkback with the cast and creative team after the show. I proceeded to direct an incredible cast and honored all the plans Gary and I agreed to.

As far as the cancellation is concerned: Personally, of course I would have preferred to continue the show to the end and let the audience decide for themselves. I directed this powerful play to portray all sides and stimulate discussion, education and insights. But insights shouldn’t incite (as I wrote in the playbill) and I feel horrible that they did. I’m saddened for the actors and crew who worked so hard on this production, as well as for those in the community who didn’t get to see the piece and decide for themselves what they felt and thought about it. This my opinion and I am not speaking on behalf of the JCC. But JCAT is part of the JCC and I understand and accept the difficult decision that the organization had to make.

When contacted, Andron declined to answer any questions regarding the cancelation beyond his Facebook post.

*   *   *

I wrote to Gary Bomzer on Sunday asking for an interview, saying that I planned to write about this situation within two days, and he responded just a few hours later, writing, “Thank you for your email. Please send me your questions and I will respond as best as I can.” I sent him eight questions at 8 pm Sunday evening and as I write on Tuesday morning, I have not heard from him again, even having re-sent the questions at 8 am this morning.

Some of my unanswered questions were:

4. The Miami Herald article cites Avi Goldwasser and Charles Jacobs expressing opposition to the play, with Goldwasser having participated in at least some of the post-performance discussions. How did Mr. Goldwasser and Mr. Jacobs, who as I understand it are based in New York and Boston respectively, come to be involved in speaking at and in connection with your production from the moment it began performances? Did members of your community reach out to them and include them in the dialogue before performances had even begun?

5. Corollary to number 4, I have a copy of a document prepared by Mr. Goldwasser which seems to be framed as a rebuttal to sentiments and statements expressed by the characters. Was this document inserted into programs or otherwise distributed at performances? If so, who made the decision to make this material available? Was any other historical or dramaturgical material available in the program or as handouts?

8. Are you concerned that by canceling the remaining performances in this play’s run, you may face situations in the future where members of the JCC community seek to have other cultural offerings canceled because they differ from their own personal viewpoints? Will this potentially limit the range of the JCC’s cultural offerings in the future?

In the various articles that have come out thus far about the cancelation of Crossing Jerusalem at the JCC, all reporters seem to be relying, as I am, on the same documents, statements and Facebook posts. Very little is being spoken aloud. The Miami Herald’s feature on the cancelation contextualized it by citing other conflicts over politics and culture in South Florida, notably over Cuban artists, but that article also mentions the controversy over The Death of Klinghoffer at the Metropolitan Opera in 2014.

In regards to the portrayal of Israelis, Palestinians and Jews (since not all Jews are Israeli), the Klinghoffer example is certainly pertinent. I would add the controversy over the New York Theatre Workshop’s planned production of My Name Is Rachel Corrie in 2006, which was canceled and ultimately produced else where in New York as a commercial production, and the clashes between Ari Roth during his tenure at Theater J, the resident company at the Washington DC JCC, over the content of his artistic choices which included a range of viewpoints about the social and political situation in Israel, which ultimately led to Roth forming his own company Mosaic Theater. A production of Rachel Corrie was also canceled in 2009 at the Mosaic Theatre Company in Plantation FL (no connection to Ari Roth’s new company), a professional company in residence at the American Heritage School prior to production.

Crossing Jerusalem at the MAR-JCC once again raises the question of whether complex, messy portrayals of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the human stories within it can successfully be produced within the context of Jewish Community Centers, or for that matter by artistic institutions in areas with significant Jewish populations. It seems quite possible that based on past examples, JCCs will shy away from this kind of work in the future, lest they be subject to the kind of criticism that has been levied upon the organizations cited above.

Will there be only one kind of approved narrative in the US for exploring this seemingly intractable situation through art? As someone with significant religious training in my youth, I was taught that Judaism is a non-dogmatic religion that values discussion and debate. I do not see those principles being sustained in the censorious actions of the MAR-JCC; I am one of the signatories to a letter developed by the National Coalition Against Censorship urging the JCC to reinstate the canceled performances.

Having read Crossing Jerusalem, I can see why people with strong viewpoints might object to some of the statements and opinions within it, though in my reading every statement is counterweighted by another conflicting one. I have certainly seen plays with which I do not agree, some of which even made me quite angry, but I support their right to be heard and seen by those who choose to attend them. I fear an ever-increasing artistic orthodoxy when it comes to portrayals of Israel in the U.S.

The first step in avoiding a singular viewpoint is for Crossing Jerusalem to be seen and heard once again at the North Miami JCC. If people choose not to attend? That’s OK. If there are protests? Also fine. Based upon my scanning of Facebook commentary, there are plenty of people in North Miami who want to see Crossing Jerusalem, perhaps even more now that it has become a cause celebre. They should have the opportunity to do so, or not, according to their own artistic, political and religious compass. If the play was sufficiently worthy for the JCC to produce in the first place, knowing its potential for controversy, Bomzer shouldn’t be going back on his word now, and should let audiences decide for themselves.

 

Howard Sherman is director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School College of Performing Arts.

Respectful debate on all aspects of this column are welcomed, however comments are moderated.

The Stage: Theatre needs fans in its offices, not just in its seats

February 19th, 2016 § 0 comments § permalink

The cast of Hamilton accepting the Grammy for best cast recording (Photo by Howard Sherman)

The cast of Hamilton accepting the Grammy for best cast recording (Photo by Howard Sherman)

I guess my dash from row O to row A the other night pretty much erased any pretence of professional distance. Especially once Entertainment Weekly magazine saw fit to write about it.

My so-called sprint was occasioned by my attendance at Monday night’s live broadcast of the opening number from the musical Hamilton, which was being performed at its home at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in New York as part of the recording industry’s annual Grammy Awards. My seating shift was in response to a request for someone to fill an empty front row seat. I was happy to help out, and I received a round of applause for my selflessness.

Online, my efforts prompted a number of Twitter followers and Facebook friends to call me a “fanboy”, and while it’s not a term I’d apply to myself in middle age, there are worse things that could be said of me. Since I have always maintained that I am not a critic, seeing myself as someone of the theatre who sometimes writes about the theatre, I’m actually a bit reassured to find that my fandom is showing. Thirty-six years after I first went to work in a box office, there’s something rejuvenating about finding that I am indeed still an enthusiastic fan of theatre, although a long way from starstruck.

Hamilton has certainly been the most public expression of my fandom, as evidenced by the 48 Ham4Ham videos that I’ve shot on the street outside the Rodgers, having begun them simply as material for a blog post I wrote in August, and never stopped. Just this week, my cover story on the musical’s protean creator and star, Lin-Manuel Miranda, comes out in Dramatics magazine, the only national US publication for high school theatre students. But I am not without self-control: I’ve seen Hamilton only twice, and I’ve never entered the ticket lottery for day-of-show seats.

By the standards of die-hards, I am an amateur. I have not committed the Hamilton cast recording to memory, like many fans who have yet to even see the show. While I would like to see it again at some point, I am not given to seeing shows numerous times; barring professional commitments, I rarely see any show more than twice, unlike fans I know and read of who happily see the same show dozens of times. My theatre fandom drives me to predominantly see that which I have not seen before. So little time, and so many shows.

As it happens, my front row experience, which also included witnessing Hamilton win the Grammy for best cast recording and a rapped acceptance by Lin-Manuel, came only four days after my latest opportunity to see perhaps my favourite stage performer work his magic once again. Bill Irwin, a gifted actor, clown, mime and so many other things, has returned to New York’s Signature Theatre with his sometime partner David Shiner for a second run of Old Hats, perhaps the 10th or 11th time I’ve seen Bill in a show of his own singular creation. I have been an unabashed fan of Bill’s since I first saw him in the mid-1980s; his particular gifts have the effect of making me grin the moment he walks on a stage (save for his career-changing turns in Albee’s The Goat and Virginia Woolf). Privileged to have first met him 15 years ago, when I greeted him excitedly by ticking off the litany of his work that I’d seen, like Kathy Bates in Misery, I take unbridled joy in seeing him at work – and now going backstage to see him along with an always intriguing mix of acting and circus royalty. I have long been a proselytiser to the cult of Bill, and I’m not in the least ashamed of it or subtle about it.

I think there’s something to be said for maintaining the enthusiasm of a fan even as the realities of raising money, balancing budgets, serving and collaborating with artists and staff, and so on, can abstract and distract from the very reason that drew us to work in the theatre in the first place. Given my career, I’m no longer the teen who stood in awe as James Earl Jones signed a programme for me, but I am also far from a jaded aesthete who deploys 35 years of theatregoing to decry the theatre of today. If you spot me by a stage door awaiting an audience with Laura Benanti or Audra McDonald, or at an event with camera phone at the ready (the better to feed my social media activity), don’t think less of me. After all, I’m still in touch with the kid who fell hard for theatre and never wanted to do anything else, and can still be thrilled by it and the people who make it.

Theatre needs fans not just in the seats, but in its offices, its rehearsal rooms and on its stages as well. After all, it’s not as if we’re in it for the money.

This essay originally appeared in The Stage.

The Stage: Why not have a selfie call after the curtain call?

February 12th, 2016 § 0 comments § permalink

The Woodsman at New World Stages (Photo by Howard Sherman)

The Woodsman at New World Stages (Photo by Howard Sherman)

During the curtain calls, I watched, as I so often do, while ushers made a valiant effort to stop theatregoers from taking pictures. So imagine my surprise when, barely minutes later, with the cast off to their dressing rooms, the house staff made no attempts to stop patrons from photographing the play’s final tableau, which was unshielded by a curtain and still under moody stage lighting.

I approached a woman who appeared to have a house management function and asked whether it was okay that everyone was taking pictures. “Oh, yes. It’s fine,” she replied.

So I waited my turn as people took selfies of themselves in front of the stage, with The Woodsman (the title character of the show in question and an analogue for The Wizard of Oz’s Tin Man) hanging suspended under the lights, waiting for Dorothy Gale to discover him. But that’s another story.

I found this approach to audience photos quite smart. So much time is spent (and digital ink spilled) addressing how the field can suppress the audience’s urge to commemorate their theatrical experience, that to find the opportunity freely given was extremely refreshing. I wonder how much extra exposure The Woodsman, playing in a small Off-Broadway house, is receiving thanks to this policy. How many patrons walk away from their final moments in the theatre having been welcomed and encouraged, with a truly personal souvenir to show and share, rather than chastised?

To be clear: I want to see phones turned off and cameras put away (often the same thing) throughout performances, to keep from disrupting the actors and other audience members. But I can’t help but wonder whether people might be more compliant with the de rigeur ‘turn off your phone’ messages if they included the invitation to turn them on again and use them after the curtain calls have ended.

Shows with curtains that wish to shield their stages can do so, of course, but why are patrons also prevented from taking pictures of the venues themselves? There are so many beautiful theatres that would turn up regularly on Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook if openly allowed – surely some, shot with varying degrees of stealth, already do. I would love the opportunity to photograph theatre interiors both here in New York as well as when I travel; West End theatres are distinctly different from most Broadway houses and I’d like to be able to have and electronically exhibit my impressions of them, up to and including fire curtains, which we don’t see stateside.

Some Broadway shows have created photo spots outside their theatres, and I’ve encountered one or two in lobbies, but those are obviously manufactured opportunities. We may not care for the selfie society (feel free to check my Facebook page; you’ll find very few images of me), but it’s a part of how people share their experiences nowadays. Why should theatre work so very hard to control what is let out of the walls of our theatres when our audiences are so eager to communicate on our behalf.

I appreciate the concern that unauthorised photos and videos may reveal so much of the show that knock-off versions can be replicated by unscrupulous or amateur producers. But don’t most shows already disseminate enough media to facilitate that already? Indeed, the biggest hits produce lavish souvenir programmes and even hardcover books, filled with pictures and even representations of original design sketches. I’m not convinced that this remains valid as a reason for prohibiting all photos within theatre houses or of show curtains or final stage settings.

One of the many concerns about the continued vitality of theatre is its ability to compete in media markets where exposure is simply too expensive for shows to make a significant impression, if they can afford to make one at all. Since word of mouth remains an essential sales tool, let’s think about how we can facilitate that by, within reason, allowing cameras to come out. After all, that one simple gesture would empower the audience to be advocates and not just attendees, actively promoting shows simply because they want to.

By the way: that photo of The Woodsman at the top of this column. I took it with my mobile phone. Not bad, eh?

This essay originally appeared in The Stage.

Is a Play Of Plays Making Fair Use Of Other Playwrights’ Words?

February 6th, 2016 § 0 comments § permalink

thatswhatshesaid promotional imageThere’s nothing quite like getting a cease and desist letter.

It may be commonplace if you’re an attorney and you’re receiving a cease and desist claim on behalf of clients, but for artists and arts administrators, at least, there’s a particular chill that accompanies opening a letter (or e-mail) that informs you that if you plan to present, or are currently presenting, a work that the sender feels is in violation of their rights and you don’t stop right away, you’re going to be subject to an assortment of penalties, typically not specified in the first salvo. Cease and desist letters are rather blunt instruments, and unless the artists or companies that receive them had an inkling that what they were doing might tick someone off, they can be quite disorienting, especially if the artists and/or companies don’t have an attorney on speed dial who can help them to determine the best course of action and the ability to pay said attorney to advise them and defend their interests.

According to a report by Rich Smith for Seattle’s The Stranger, Erin Pike, Courtney Meaker and Gay City Arts in Seattle, or some combination thereof, received a cease and desist late yesterday (Friday), demanding the immediate suspension of performances of Pike and Meaker’s thatswhatshesaid, which had given the first of four scheduled performances at Gay City Arts on Thursday evening. Thatswhatshesaid is a two-act theatre piece, performed solely by Pike, which is constructed out of dialogue and stage directions given to women in the 11 most produced plays in the country in 2014-15, as determined by American Theatre magazine. The works on that list include Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike by Christopher Durang and Sondheim and Lapine’s Into The Woods. Earlier, briefer versions of thatswhatshesaid have been performed in Seattle, Portland and Minneapolis.

The cease and desist correspondence came from Samuel French, the licensing house which represents some of the works on the American Theater list and are therefore excerpted in the production; Smith’s report doesn’t say whether Dramatists Play Service or Music Theatre International, which also represent some of the works utilized by Pike and Meaker, have taken any action against thatswhatshesaid. Smith’s report also seems to indicate that French’s letter concerns only the use of material from Bad Jews by Joshua Harmon, even though the newly devised work also contains material from Tribes by Nina Raine and The Whipping Man by Matthew Lopez, which are also represented by French.

The report in The Stranger quotes a segment of French’s letter and it seems to be fairly standard cease and desist boilerplate, with the appropriate parties’ names plugged in:

Any such program, publicity, production and/or presentation by you and/or permitted by you constitute and shall constitute the intentional infringement of the copyrights, trademarks and or other rights of our author and subject you and any and all other persons and/or firms involved with the publicity, presentation and/or production to the civil and criminal penalties specified under applicable law.

Should you or any of you permit these unlicensed programs and/or performances to take place and/or be performed, whether at a venue leased, owned or operated by you or otherwise, you and all involved personal shall be held fully liable and accountable as infringers and/or contributory infringers as specified under applicable law.

Accordingly, formal demand is hereby made that you immediately cease and desist from any and all such action by the end of business today, Friday, February 5, 2016, and you confirm that you will not conduct, publicize and/or present and/or permit to be conducted, publicized and/or presented any such program and/or performances.

Failure to do so will expose Gay City Arts, and all individuals acting in concert with these parties, to actions for willful copyright and trademark infringement and other legal claims.

Daunting, no? Enough to scare off lots of those accused of infringing, especially those with limited means, without a fight, right?

Now if Pike were simply standing on stage and sequentially reading every bit of dialogue and stage directions involving the female characters from each play, then what’s going on might be perceived as simple appropriation of copyrighted material, though even that’s not remotely a definitive determination. However, even with male roles excised, the sum total of that dialogue and stage directions could amount to seven or eight hours of stage time. Smith’s review of thatswhatshesaid for The Stranger, posted only seven hours before his report about the legal action, didn’t suggest he’d been at a marathon, but rather that Pike and Meaker had selectively chosen pieces of the various works and woven them into a quilt that yielded commentary on both the specific works, as well as the prevailing attitudes towards women being advanced in American theatre today.

So this seems the appropriate time to bring in the concept of “fair use.”

Your eyes may glaze over the moment someone suggests a primer in the fair use provision of U.S. copyright law, but it’s extremely pertinent here. Copyright law is designed to insure that original works remain the property of those who own them, for a defined period of time, so that they can derive revenue from the material without having it simply taken by others for their own benefit. It is why, simplistically, someone cannot simply retype a novel and publish it as their own work, or why plays can’t be performed without appropriate royalties due to the playwright.

But fair use keeps that ownership from being absolute in all cases. Because fair use allows for parody, Mad Magazine or Saturday Night Live or Key and Peele don’t need to pay the authors of creative works they might riff on. Because fair use acknowledges the value of education, teachers don’t need to pay royalties when their students simply read a play aloud in class. Fair use permits quotations from an original work in reviews and critical pieces about that work, and the same holds true for scholarly works. Fair use also considers whether new work that is in some way drawn from or inspired by an earlier work or works is sufficiently transformative of, and distinct from the original(s) as to constitute a sufficiently original work in and of itself.

But here’s the tricky part about fair use: while there are general guidelines as to what is protected under the fair use provisions, there is no absolute determinant that can be applied in all cases. That’s where lawyers and judges come in and that’s what helps to keep the field of intellectual property law perpetually active.

In Smith’s second report, he indicated that Pike had a plan as to how to proceed in the face of French’s cease and desist letter. That should prove fascinating. But it seems clear that if Pike and Meaker wish to mount future productions of thatswhatshesaid, or publish it, or have it licensed so that others may perform it, they’re going to have to challenge French’s assertions that their piece does violate the copyright protections afforded to Bad Jews, and presumably the other 10 works represented in the piece as well.

*   *   *

I haven’t read or seen thatswhatshesaid, but like many people to whom I’m connected on Facebook, I’d really like to. I wonder whether anyone from French has read or seen it, or if they’re just responding to The Stranger’s coverage of it. Smith’s review was zipping around on my timeline yesterday afternoon between theatre practitioners from all over, and I have to admit that the moment I read it, I thought, ‘Wow, this is going to be an interesting copyright test.’

Without having firsthand knowledge of the piece, or a legal degree, I can’t even hazard a guess as to whether thatswhatshesaid is, even just in my opinion (which counts for absolutely nothing legally), seemingly allowable under fair use, or if the situation is somewhat muddier or even a definitive violation. What I do know is that unless Pike and Meaker themselves were to agree that they were knowingly skirting copyright violation, I’d like to see them pursue their rights to the new work, at least so far as getting good legal counsel about their creation.

In this instance, the new work is using verbatim quotes from other copyrighted works, by authors I admire and several of whom I know, rather than just a general outline of a dramatic/comedic premise, but I can’t help but wonder whether this newly coalescing dispute is in some way akin to what befell David Adjmi and his play 3C. That work was a dark parody of the sitcom Three’s Company, which was proscribed from production or publication for three years until a judge determined that it was permitted under fair use.  That said, there may be a corollary here to the disputes over sampling in music, which in many cases have found that the original creators are due income from the subsequent work since their original material was taken directly, even if it was incorporated into something new.

Some might wonder how, given my advocacy for the rights of playwrights to control their work, I can also express support for what Pike and Meaker have reportedly done. My answer is that we’re dealing with artists on both sides of this issue, and if thatswhatshesaid is genuinely transformative, if it is a critical assessment of those original works achieved through theatrical means, if it parodies those original works by mashing up and using their own words against them, then perhaps it should be allowed to have its own life. I doubt, even without having seen it, that thatswhatshesaid will undermine the value of or confuse audiences about the original works excerpted and collaged within it. I appreciate French’s position in defending their clients, but I’d like to see Pike and Meaker have an equally strong defense too.

Update, 12:30 pm February 6, 2015: I’ve stumbled onto the Twitter account of Courtney Meaker and I’d like to selectively quote from her posts regarding how they proceeded with the second performance of that’s what she said. I share them in chronological order, but not every single post:

  • The show went on.
  • We redacted all the offending text per the cease and desist letter.
  • There will be more thoughts and likely a long essay to be written by me, but I want to say that[…]
  • […]as a playwright, I would be 100% on board with someone using my work in this way.
  • We held a completely subjective lens up to the work of the top ten most produced plays.
  • If my work was ever so lucky as to reach that spot, I would welcome someone dissecting it and taking it out of context.
  • I would want to know what someone thinks I’m saying about women using my own words.
  • I’m not perfect. I’m not a perfect feminist playwright. I’m me. And I would want to know.

This post will be updated as new information warrants.

Howard Sherman is director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School College of Performing Arts.

Is a Play Of Plays Making Fair Use Of Other Playwrights’ Words?

February 6th, 2016 § 6 comments § permalink

Promotional image for thatswhatshesaid

Promotional image for thatswhatshesaid (photo by Tim Summers)

There’s nothing quite like getting a cease and desist letter.

It may be commonplace if you’re an attorney and you’re receiving a cease and desist claim on behalf of clients, but for artists and arts administrators, at least, there’s a particular chill that accompanies opening a letter (or e-mail) that informs you that if you plan to present, or are currently presenting, a work that the sender feels is in violation of their rights and you don’t stop right away, you’re going to be subject to an assortment of penalties, typically not specified in the first salvo. Cease and desist letters are rather blunt instruments, and unless the artists or companies that receive them had an inkling that what they were doing might tick someone off, they can be quite disorienting, especially if the artists and/or companies don’t have an attorney on speed dial who can help them to determine the best course of action and the ability to pay said attorney to advise them and defend their interests.

According to a report by Rich Smith for Seattle’s The Stranger, Erin Pike, Courtney Meaker and Gay City Arts in Seattle, or some combination thereof, received a cease and desist late yesterday (Friday), demanding the immediate suspension of performances of Pike and Meaker’s thatswhatshesaid, which had given the first of four scheduled performances at Gay City Arts on Thursday evening. Thatswhatshesaid is a two-act theatre piece, performed solely by Pike, which is constructed out of dialogue and stage directions given to women in the 11 most produced plays in the country in 2014-15, as determined by American Theatre magazine. The works on that list include Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike by Christopher Durang and Sondheim and Lapine’s Into The Woods. Earlier, briefer versions of thatswhatshesaid have been performed in Seattle, Portland and Minneapolis.

The cease and desist correspondence came from Samuel French, the licensing house which represents some of the works on the American Theater list and are therefore excerpted in the production; Smith’s report doesn’t say whether Dramatists Play Service or Music Theatre International, which also represent some of the works utilized by Pike and Meaker, have taken any action against thatswhatshesaid. Smith’s report also seems to indicate that French’s letter concerns only the use of material from Bad Jews by Joshua Harmon, even though the newly devised work also contains material from Tribes by Nina Raine and The Whipping Man by Matthew Lopez, which are is also represented by French.

The report in The Stranger quotes a segment of French’s letter and it seems to be fairly standard cease and desist boilerplate, with the appropriate parties’ names plugged in:

Any such program, publicity, production and/or presentation by you and/or permitted by you constitute and shall constitute the intentional infringement of the copyrights, trademarks and or other rights of our author and subject you and any and all other persons and/or firms involved with the publicity, presentation and/or production to the civil and criminal penalties specified under applicable law.

Should you or any of you permit these unlicensed programs and/or performances to take place and/or be performed, whether at a venue leased, owned or operated by you or otherwise, you and all involved personal shall be held fully liable and accountable as infringers and/or contributory infringers as specified under applicable law.

Accordingly, formal demand is hereby made that you immediately cease and desist from any and all such action by the end of business today, Friday, February 5, 2016, and you confirm that you will not conduct, publicize and/or present and/or permit to be conducted, publicized and/or presented any such program and/or performances.

Failure to do so will expose Gay City Arts, and all individuals acting in concert with these parties, to actions for willful copyright and trademark infringement and other legal claims.

Daunting, no? Enough to scare off lots of those accused of infringing, especially those with limited means, without a fight, right?

Now if Pike were simply standing on stage and sequentially reading every bit of dialogue and stage directions involving the female characters from each play, then what’s going on might be perceived as simple appropriation of copyrighted material, though even that’s not remotely a definitive determination. However, even with male roles excised, the sum total of that dialogue and stage directions could amount to seven or eight hours of stage time. Smith’s review of thatswhatshesaid for The Stranger, posted only seven hours before his report about the legal action, didn’t suggest he’d been at a marathon, but rather that Pike and Meaker had selectively chosen pieces of the various works and woven them into a quilt that yielded commentary on both the specific works, as well as the prevailing attitudes towards women being advanced in American theatre today.

So this seems the appropriate time to bring in the concept of “fair use.”

Your eyes may glaze over the moment someone suggests a primer in the fair use provision of U.S. copyright law, but it’s extremely pertinent here. Copyright law is designed to insure that original works remain the property of those who own them, for a defined period of time, so that they can derive revenue from the material without having it simply taken by others for their own benefit. It is why, simplistically, someone cannot simply retype a novel and publish it as their own work, or why plays can’t be performed without appropriate royalties due to the playwright.

But fair use keeps that ownership from being absolute in all cases. Because fair use allows for parody, Mad Magazine or Saturday Night Live or Key and Peele don’t need to pay the authors of creative works they might riff on. Because fair use acknowledges the value of education, teachers don’t need to pay royalties when their students simply read a play aloud in class. Fair use permits quotations from an original work in reviews and critical pieces about that work, and the same holds true for scholarly works. Fair use also considers whether new work that is in some way drawn from or inspired by an earlier work or works is sufficiently transformative of, and distinct from the original(s) as to constitute a sufficiently original work in and of itself.

But here’s the tricky part about fair use: while there are general guidelines as to what is protected under the fair use provisions, there is no absolute determinant that can be applied in all cases. That’s where lawyers and judges come in and that’s what helps to keep the field of intellectual property law perpetually active.

In Smith’s second report, he indicated that Pike had a plan as to how to proceed in the face of French’s cease and desist letter. That should prove fascinating. But it seems clear that if Pike and Meaker wish to mount future productions of thatswhatshesaid, or publish it, or have it licensed so that others may perform it, they’re going to have to challenge French’s assertions that their piece does violate the copyright protections afforded to Bad Jews, and presumably the other 10 works represented in the piece as well.

*   *   *

I haven’t read or seen thatswhatshesaid, but like many people to whom I’m connected on Facebook, I’d really like to. I wonder whether anyone from French has read or seen it, or if they’re just responding to The Stranger’s coverage of it. Smith’s review was zipping around on my timeline yesterday afternoon between theatre practitioners from all over, and I have to admit that the moment I read it, I thought, ‘Wow, this is going to be an interesting copyright test.’

Without having firsthand knowledge of the piece, or a legal degree, I can’t even hazard a guess as to whether thatswhatshesaid is, even just in my opinion (which counts for absolutely nothing legally), seemingly allowable under fair use, or if the situation is somewhat muddier or even a definitive violation. What I do know is that unless Pike and Meaker themselves were to agree that they were knowingly skirting copyright violation, I’d like to see them pursue their rights to the new work, at least so far as getting good legal counsel about their creation.

In this instance, the new work is using verbatim quotes from other copyrighted works, by authors I admire and several of whom I know, rather than just a general outline of a dramatic/comedic premise, but I can’t help but wonder whether this newly coalescing dispute is in some way akin to what befell David Adjmi and his play 3C. That work was a dark parody of the sitcom Three’s Company, which was proscribed from production or publication for three years until a judge determined that it was permitted under fair use.  That said, there may be a corollary here to the disputes over sampling in music, which in many cases have found that the original creators are due income from the subsequent work since their original material was taken directly, even if it was incorporated into something new.

Some might wonder how, given my advocacy for the rights of playwrights to control their work, I can also express support for what Pike and Meaker have reportedly done. My answer is that we’re dealing with artists on both sides of this issue, and if thatswhatshesaid is genuinely transformative, if it is a critical assessment of those original works achieved through theatrical means, if it parodies those original works by mashing up and using their own words against them, then perhaps it should be allowed to have its own life. I doubt, even without having seen it, that thatswhatshesaid will undermine the value of or confuse audiences about the original works excerpted and collaged within it. I appreciate French’s position in defending their clients, but I’d like to see Pike and Meaker have an equally strong defense too.

Update, 12:30 pm February 6, 2015: I’ve stumbled onto the Twitter account of Courtney Meaker and I’d like to selectively quote from her posts regarding how they proceeded with the second performance of thatswhatshesaid. I share them in chronological order, but not every single post:

  • The show went on.
  • We redacted all the offending text per the cease and desist letter.
  • There will be more thoughts and likely a long essay to be written by me, but I want to say that[…]
  • […]as a playwright, I would be 100% on board with someone using my work in this way.
  • We held a completely subjective lens up to the work of the top ten most produced plays.
  • If my work was ever so lucky as to reach that spot, I would welcome someone dissecting it and taking it out of context.
  • I would want to know what someone thinks I’m saying about women using my own words.
  • I’m not perfect. I’m not a perfect feminist playwright. I’m me. And I would want to know.

Update, Monday February 8, 12 noon: Rich Smith of The Stranger has continued to pursue the story of thatswhatshesaid and the cease and desist letter issued by Samuel French. He interviewed French’s executive director Bruce Lazarus about their action, the play and the possibility of the piece being permissible under fair use.

I told him that in my review I described the work as a parody and a collage that draws from several plays, and asked if he considered the play fair use.

“That’s your interpretation. Because you call it a parody doesn’t make it so,” he said. Then he added, “Fair use is a defense, and if proved it’s perfectly fine and within the law. But it’s a judge’s determination as to whether [That’swhatshesaid] constitutes fair use. Not having seen it, not having read it, I couldn’t tell you if it was fair use or not.”

When asked whether he’ll act on his claim to “go after” Gay City Arts knowing that That’swhatshesaid ran with lines from Bad Jews redacted, Lazarus said it was up to Harmon and all the other authors “whose rights are potentially being infringed” to decide whether they want to pursue legal action.

I posited this story as a David and Goliath situation. Here you have a big publisher coming down on a tiny theater presenting a self-produced play. Did he consider the fact that the artists might not have enough money to retain a lawyer? “For all I know, the author of this play has the wherewithal and the resources to hire an attorney to do this play,” he said, “And our author has the wherewithal to hire an agent to enforce his rights.”

Update, Monday February 8, 11 pm: The Stranger’s Rich Smith continues to report on thatswhatshesaid, with a post from this afternoon citing the receipt of a second cease and desist letter by the show’s creators. It came from Samuel French specifically on behalf of Matthew Lopez in connection with his play The Whipping Man, which was included on American Theatre’s list. However, as Smith notes, The Whipping Man contains no female characters [the text in the original post above has been struck out to reflect that fact]. The only material in thatswhatshesaid pertaining to the play is the sound of performer Erin Pike riffling through the 72 page script.

Update, Thursday February 11, 3:30 pm: In a new report in The Stranger, Dramatists Play Service has now issued a cease and desist letter to thatswhatshesaid on behalf of five of their authors: Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike by Christopher Durang, Venus in Fur by David Ives, Tribes by Nina Raine, and Outside Mullingar by John Patrick Shanley.

 

This post will be updated as new information warrants.

Howard Sherman is director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School College of Performing Arts.

 

The Stage: Ticket bots are wreaking havoc on Broadway prices

February 5th, 2016 § 0 comments § permalink

Code“I have a guy.”

I used to hear this phrase a lot, from various people not in the theatre industry, who always seemed to be able to acquire tickets to sold-out Broadway shows with ease. I don’t hear it so much anymore, because now everybody has a guy, whether ‘he’ goes by the name of StubHub or Ticketmaster Fan-to-Fan resale or something along those lines.

In 2007, when New York State lifted caps on the amount that ticket resellers could charge over face value, long-standing opposition from the commercial theatre community had gone silent. Only six years after The Producers had introduced ‘VIP’ or ‘premium’ pricing, using the argument that these higher priced tickets would make it possible for productions and artists to realise more income via direct sales, most shows followed suit, with their sales success directly correlated to audience demand. Resellers jumped into the fray, more openly than ever before. But now, with the rise of automated bots that gobble up tickets for sale online, it seems to be getting even harder for the average ticket buyer to acquire seats at something close to a reasonable price, even from the official ticket outlet, in the already expensive Broadway arena, if they can get them at all.

In “Why Can’t New Yorkers Get Tickets?,” a report issued last week by the state attorney general, the results of which surprised no one familiar with what’s been generally evident for some time, it was affirmed that a combination of preferred sales that limited the number of seats actually made available to the public, along with mass acquisition of tickets by bots, were biting into ticket inventory in a big way. While there are laws in New York against the use of bots by resellers, and a few fines have been levied, it’s going to take a lot more scrutiny to police such sales. As it seems in so many aspects of modern life, the people determined to get a leg up on everyone else, even when their actions are criminal, seem to be further ahead of the technology curve than those chasing them.

Theatre is not alone in this struggle; the same holds true for rock concerts and sporting events. But any given theatre is so much smaller than those venues that the problem seems more pronounced, as does the heightened demand that drives prices up, a situation most apparent today with Hamilton, which is enjoying demand that’s comparable to those experienced, in my theatregoing life, by, among others, Cats, Phantom, Les Miserables, Miss Saigon, the 1992 Guys and Dolls revival, Rent, Jersey Boys and The Book of Mormon.

So this isn’t a new story, even if it has been turbocharged by technology and made more apparent by the rise of online sales. It’s based in the fundamentals of supply and demand. Some theatre buffs might feel some small sense of pride that theatre is able to generate this kind of interest and desire. But in the process, it only emphasises how expensive theatregoing can be, even when only a few shows command eye-popping prices on the open market.

Broadway is a predominantly commercial enterprise, so it’s unlikely that capitalistic efforts will ever return ticket sales to something close to accessible for the majority; the real battle is over who gets their hands on the most significant part of the revenues being generated. However, just as dynamic pricing spread from the commercial realm to subsidised companies, one can’t help but wonder what’s happening when celebrities appear in regional houses, or when 200-seat theatres such as New York Theatre Workshop start selling tickets to Othello with David Oyelowo and Daniel Craig in the leads this fall. While NYTW made an effort to limit resales during its run of Lazarus by requiring photo ID to pick up seats, that will only go so far.

As someone who was extremely surprised when the commercial theatre industry ended its opposition to resale caps almost a decade ago, I certainly applaud efforts to put all ticket buyers on a level playing field and stem the tide of unbridled price hikes, both official and illicit. At a time when income inequality continues to divide America in so many things, it’s a worthy effort, though I fear a losing battle which has probably already had an insidious and deleterious effect on the perception of theatregoing as an entertainment option for all, even beyond the confines of Manhattan.

Somehow, some way, people with the means to do so will manage to get the tickets they want, when they want. They will always have a guy, even if their guy is now a silicon chip.

This essay originally appeared in The Stage.

Peeking Inside The Wooster Group’s Off-Limits “Room”

February 3rd, 2016 § 0 comments § permalink

Let’s start with the basics: no one can possibly prevent critics from reviewing shows if they want to do. Whether it’s requested or even imposed by theatre company, a venue, a rights holder, or an author, members of the press – just like the public – can always buy a ticket to a theatrical production and express what they think. To actively prevent members of the press from entering a theatre is at least foolhardy if not potentially discriminatory; to prevent anyone from writing or broadcasting their opinion is a denial of their rights to speech. Just so we’re all on the same page.

Ari Fliakos, Kate Valk, Scott Renderer in the Wooster Group production of Pinter’s The Room (Photo by Paul Court)

Ari Fliakos, Kate Valk and Scott Renderer in the Wooster Group production of Pinter’s The Room (Photo by Paula Court)

That’s why a recent press release from The Wooster Group and the Los Angeles venue REDCAT quickly stirred up a hornet’s nest. It stated that the license granted to The Wooster Group for the REDCAT run of the Group’s production of Harold Pinter’s The Room, beginning tomorrow, contained the admonition, “There may be absolutely No reviews of this production; e.g. newspaper, website posts etc.” It also appeared in a press release issued by The Wooster and REDCAT, after an opening paragraph which stated “Samuel French, Inc., which manages the United States rights for Harold Pinter’s work, restricts critics from reviewing the world premiere of the Group’s production of The Room at REDCAT.”

Very little angers and piques the interest of the press more than being told what they can’t do, so it’s no surprise that following the initial word of the issue coming from the website Bitter Lemons, both the Los Angeles Times and New York Times did features on the ostensible critical blackout. But there’s more to the story, which both Times recounted.

In short, The Wooster Group acquired a license for “advance” presentations of The Room last fall, at their home The Performing Garage in New York, where it played an extended run in October and November of 2015. At the time the Group announced that engagement, press releases issued by the company spoke of the planned “premiere” at REDCAT, a return run in New York, and plans to make The Room the first of a trilogy of Pinter productions (The Wooster Group has subsequently spoken of plans to take The Room to France).

However, Bruce Lazarus, executive director of Samuel French, which licenses Pinter’s work in the U.S. on behalf of the Pinter estate’s London agent, says that the announcement of any presentation beyond the original New York license caught the company by surprise. The Wooster Group has confirmed that they had not secured licenses for any of the subsequent engagements beyond November 2015, with their general manager Pamela Reichen writing in an e-mail, “Our plans to do further Pinter pieces besides The Room were preliminary and tentative, when we first announced performances of The Room in New York City.  We did not have specific dates for these further productions, and so had not yet made an application for rights to Samuel French.”

Both parties agree that they began discussions about future licenses immediately after French learned of the company’s plans, but the pace and substance of those negotiations and terms are in dispute. What is not in dispute is that by the time rights for the REDCAT engagement were completed, the prohibition against opening the production for review was in place.

When this first hit the press, Lazarus issued a statement that read in part:

Samuel French is licensing agent representing the wishes of the Harold Pinter estate. The Wooster Group announced the Los Angeles production of Pinter’s “The Room” before securing the rights.  Had The Wooster Group attempted to secure the rights to the play prior to announcing the production, the estate would have withheld the rights.

Lazarus maintains that the Pinter estate had not been prepared to grant any subsequent license, because the British agent had lined up a “first class” production in the UK, which had an option for a US transfer. Lazarus points out that French could have simply said no. He said that French persuaded the UK agent to allow the LA production, with restrictions. “We said yes because they begged, said Lazarus, “They said, ‘We’ll lose money’.” At first the license was written so as not to permit any promotion of the production, but that was scaled back to being a limitation on reviews.

Queried about the “no reviews” language, Lazarus says French, “made it clear what we meant: don’t invite the critics and don’t provide press tickets. We were under no illusion that the press couldn’t buy a ticket and that if they did so, it wasn’t a breach of contract. We weren’t denying freedom of speech.” That said, whatever the content of the conversations were, in stark black and white contract language, the suggestion of a press exclusion appeared much more blunt, and became even more so when deployed in a press release verbatim. Lazarus allowed that in the future, should such stipulations be made, the language will be more specific.

Ari Flakes in the Wooster Group production of Pinter’s The Room (Photo by Paula Court)

Ari Fliakos in the Wooster Group production of Pinter’s The Room (Photo by Paula Court)

In the Wooster/REDCAT release, Mark Murphy, Executive Director of REDCAT, says that the review restrictions were “’highly unusual and puzzling,’ adding that, ‘This attempt to restrict critical discussion of such an important production in print and online is deeply troubling, with the potential for severe financial impact.’” In point of fact, review restrictions have become increasingly frequent, for any number of reasons. Just last summer, Connecticut critics were strongly urged not to review A.R. Gurney’s Love and Money at the Westport Country Playhouse because the show’s ‘true’ premiere was to take place immediately following its Connecticut run at New York’s Signature Theatre. Several years ago, national press was “uninvited” from the premiere of Tony Kushner’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide at the Guthrie Theatre once a commercial producer optioned the piece. Major press was asked to skip The Bridges of Madison County when it was first seen at Williamstown Theatre Festival. I can think back almost 30 years to a time when I pleaded with a New York Times critic not to attend a production at Hartford Stage, even though local press had attended. And let’s not forget how long Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark spent in preview before the press finally got fed up and covered it despite the stated preferences of the production. Whether or not one likes the practice of letting producers decide when reviews are or are not “permitted” (Jeremy Gerard of Deadline, previously of Bloomberg and Variety, stakes out his position in a recent column), whether one feels the press is honorable or complicit in how they handle these requests on a case by case basis, it’s hardly a rare practice.

In the case of how the press was handled in connection with The Wooster Group’s unreviewed advance showings of The Room in New York in the fall, Pamela Reichen, general manager of the company, who responded to e-mail questions, writes, “The New York performances were not open to the press. We develop our work over long periods of time that involve work-in-progress showings – like the October-November showings of The Room – at our home theater, The Performing Garage.  We only open a show for review in New York or elsewhere once development is complete. The decision not to invite press to the advance showings was our decision, not a stipulation from Samuel French.  It was our intention to open the show for review in Los Angeles.”

In a phone conversation about this situation, Jeremy Gerard of Deadline noted, “There’s no other kind of journalism where the journalist says, ‘Is it OK if I report this kind of story?’” That said, the allowance for theatrical productions to be developed and previewed in front of paying audiences has become generally standard practice and important to countless creative artists, the result of a détente between the natural instincts of the press and the creative process of artists.

It’s impossible not to wonder whether the license was actually being denied because of dissatisfaction with the advance presentation in New York by French or the estate. Lazarus says that’s not the case. “No,” he stated, “This is not a value judgment on the production.” That seems consistent with the account by Pamela Reichen, who writes, “We received an appreciative note from the representative of Samuel French who attended an advance showing performance. We have not received any other communication from the estate or Samuel French relating to the concept or execution of our production.”

Asked whether the current denial of right to perform The Room for the foreseeable future after the Los Angeles run would effect their exploration of other Pinter works, Reichen wrote, “Because the rights are not being made available to us, we have no plans to explore other Pinter works. No significant work had begun on them. But our inability to perform The Room in New York or on tour will cause The Wooster Group a significant financial loss. We are a not-for-profit organization, and we fund our own productions. We therefore must recoup our investment over time through long performance runs and touring fees.”

*   *   *

So let’s cull this down to the basics.

The Wooster Group entered into an agreement to premiere their production of The Room in Los Angeles without having secured the rights to do so, and predicated company finances on presentations of the work beyond the original advance shows in New York in the fall 2015. Whatever the circumstances of the negotiations for those rights, The Wooster Group moved forward with an additional engagement, and was planning for yet more, with no assurance that they could do the piece.

In ultimately granting the rights for the Los Angeles engagement, Samuel French, on behalf of the Pinter estate’s wishes, stipulated that the show at REDCAT should not be open for reviews, but with language that can be construed as a broadly sweeping admonition over any reviews appearing, as opposed to being merely that the venue not facilitate the attendance of critics. Could French and the Pinter estate have allowed the brief LA engagement to proceed with no restrictions, without materially affecting the fortunates of a UK first class production and avoiding the resulting fuss? Sure, but ultimately, it was their call.

In accepting the terms as set forth by French, The Wooster Group and REDCAT apparently still bridled at them, and so instead of asking critics not to attend, they issued a media release which implied an actual, but entirely unenforceable, press ban by French.

I would suggest that The Wooster Group and REDCAT, instead of acquiescing to their agreement and abiding by its spirit, issued the press release they did precisely to incite the press to greater interest in covering The Room, and it worked like a charm. It resulted in more national press than a 10-day run in Los Angeles might have otherwise received, and it prompted the American Theatre Critics Association to issue a statement in support of the right of the arts press to cover work as they see fit. Editors are reportedly debating whether or not to honor – is it a ban or is it a request – the position that the Los Angeles production isn’t officially open for review, even when it’s perfectly clear that they can do as they wish and always could.

Ultimately, The Wooster Group and REDCAT may have won the battle, but they’ve lost the war, since there won’t be any further Pinter work by the company at this time. But they did successfully turn the press account of the situation away from their inability to secure rights on terms they found acceptable into one of press freedom. However, the impact of heightened alertness by the press to requests that work be protected from review in some cases or for some period of time may prove detrimental to other companies and productions in the wake of this scenario. I have always supported the right of artists and companies to explore their work in front of audiences for a reasonable period of time before critics weigh in, and will continue to do so, but in all cases, the press will have the final word. I’m not sure this situation was ultimately beneficial to the arts community because it puts a longstanding, unwritten mutual agreement under the glare of scrutiny that one day may have far-reaching implications.

Howard Sherman is the director off the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School College of Performing Arts.

Peeking Inside The Wooster Group’s Off-Limits “Room”

February 3rd, 2016 § 2 comments § permalink

Let’s start with the basics: no one can possibly prevent critics from reviewing shows if they want to do. Whether it’s requested or even imposed by theatre company, a venue, a rights holder, or an author, members of the press – just like the public – can always buy a ticket to a theatrical production and express what they think. To actively prevent members of the press from entering a theatre is at least foolhardy if not potentially discriminatory; to prevent anyone from writing or broadcasting their opinion is a denial of their rights to speech. Just so we’re all on the same page.

Wooster Group’s production of The Room, with Ari Fliakos, Kate Valk, and Scott Renderer Photo by Paul Court.

Ari Fliakos, Kate Valk, and Scott Renderer in The Wooster Group’s production of Pinter’s The Room (photo by Paula Court)

That’s why a recent press release from The Wooster Group and the Los Angeles venue REDCAT quickly stirred up a hornet’s nest. It stated that the license granted to The Wooster Group for the REDCAT run of the Group’s production of Harold Pinter’s The Room, beginning tomorrow, contained the admonition, “There may be absolutely No reviews of this production; e.g. newspaper, website posts etc.” It also appeared in a press release issued by The Wooster and REDCAT, after an opening paragraph which stated “Samuel French, Inc., which manages the United States rights for Harold Pinter’s work, restricts critics from reviewing the world premiere of the Group’s production of The Room at REDCAT.”

Very little angers and piques the interest of the press more than being told what they can’t do, so it’s no surprise that following the initial word of the issue coming from the website Bitter Lemons, both the Los Angeles Times and New York Times did features on the ostensible critical blackout. But there’s more to the story, which both Times recounted.

In short, The Wooster Group acquired a license for “advance” presentations of The Room last fall, at their home The Performing Garage in New York, where it played an extended run in October and November of 2015. At the time the Group announced that engagement, press releases issued by the company spoke of the planned “premiere” at REDCAT, a return run in New York, and plans to make The Room the first of a trilogy of Pinter productions (The Wooster Group has subsequently spoken of plans to take The Room to France).

However, Bruce Lazarus, executive director of Samuel French, which licenses Pinter’s work in the U.S. on behalf of the Pinter estate’s London agent, says that the announcement of any presentation beyond the original New York license caught the company by surprise. The Wooster Group has confirmed that they had not secured licenses for any of the subsequent engagements beyond November 2015, with their general manager Pamela Reichen writing in an e-mail, “Our plans to do further Pinter pieces besides The Room were preliminary and tentative, when we first announced performances of The Room in New York City.  We did not have specific dates for these further productions, and so had not yet made an application for rights to Samuel French.”

Both parties agree that they began discussions about future licenses immediately after French learned of the company’s plans, but the pace and substance of those negotiations and terms are in dispute. What is not in dispute is that by the time rights for the REDCAT engagement were completed, the prohibition against opening the production for review was in place.

When this first hit the press, Lazarus issued a statement that read in part:

Samuel French is licensing agent representing the wishes of the Harold Pinter estate. The Wooster Group announced the Los Angeles production of Pinter’s “The Room” before securing the rights.  Had The Wooster Group attempted to secure the rights to the play prior to announcing the production, the estate would have withheld the rights.

Lazarus maintains that the Pinter estate had not been prepared to grant any subsequent license, because the British agent had lined up a “first class” production in the UK, which had an option for a US transfer. Lazarus points out that French could have simply said no. He said that French persuaded the UK agent to allow the LA production, with restrictions. “We said yes because they begged, said Lazarus, “They said, ‘We’ll lose money’.” At first the license was written so as not to permit any promotion of the production, but that was scaled back to being a limitation on reviews.

Queried about the “no reviews” language, Lazarus says French, “made it clear what we meant: don’t invite the critics and don’t provide press tickets. We were under no illusion that the press couldn’t buy a ticket and that if they did so, it wasn’t a breach of contract. We weren’t denying freedom of speech.” That said, whatever the content of the conversations were, in stark black and white contract language, the suggestion of a press exclusion appeared much more blunt, and became even more so when deployed in a press release verbatim. Lazarus allowed that in the future, should such stipulations be made, the language will be more specific.

Ari Fliakos in Wooster Group’s production of Pinter’s The Room (photo by Paula Court)

Ari Fliakos in The Wooster Group’s production of Pinter’s The Room (photo by Paula Court)

In the Wooster/REDCAT release, Mark Murphy, Executive Director of REDCAT, says that the review restrictions were “’highly unusual and puzzling,’ adding that, ‘This attempt to restrict critical discussion of such an important production in print and online is deeply troubling, with the potential for severe financial impact.’” In point of fact, review restrictions have become increasingly frequent, for any number of reasons. Just last summer, Connecticut critics were strongly urged not to review A.R. Gurney’s Love and Money at the Westport Country Playhouse because the show’s ‘true’ premiere was to take place immediately following its Connecticut run at New York’s Signature Theatre. Several years ago, national press was “uninvited” from the premiere of Tony Kushner’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide at the Guthrie Theatre once a commercial producer optioned the piece. Major press was asked to skip The Bridges of Madison County when it was first seen at Williamstown Theatre Festival. I can think back almost 30 years to a time when I pleaded with a New York Times critic not to attend a production at Hartford Stage, even though local press had attended. And let’s not forget how long Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark spent in preview before the press finally got fed up and covered it despite the stated preferences of the production. Whether or not one likes the practice of letting producers decide when reviews are or are not “permitted” (Jeremy Gerard of Deadline, previously of Bloomberg and Variety, stakes out his position in a recent column), whether one feels the press is honorable or complicit in how they handle these requests on a case by case basis, it’s hardly a rare practice.

In the case of how the press was handled in connection with The Wooster Group’s unreviewed advance showings of The Room in New York in the fall, Pamela Reichen, general manager of the company, who responded to e-mail questions, writes, “The New York performances were not open to the press. We develop our work over long periods of time that involve work-in-progress showings – like the October-November showings of The Room – at our home theater, The Performing Garage.  We only open a show for review in New York or elsewhere once development is complete. The decision not to invite press to the advance showings was our decision, not a stipulation from Samuel French.  It was our intention to open the show for review in Los Angeles.”

In a phone conversation about this situation, Jeremy Gerard of Deadline noted, “There’s no other kind of journalism where the journalist says, ‘Is it OK if I report this kind of story?’” That said, the allowance for theatrical productions to be developed and previewed in front of paying audiences has become generally standard practice and important to countless creative artists, the result of a détente between the natural instincts of the press and the creative process of artists.

It’s impossible not to wonder whether the license was actually being denied because of dissatisfaction with the advance presentation in New York by French or the estate. Lazarus says that’s not the case. “No,” he stated, “This is not a value judgment on the production.” That seems consistent with the account by Pamela Reichen, who writes, “We received an appreciative note from the representative of Samuel French who attended an advance showing performance. We have not received any other communication from the estate or Samuel French relating to the concept or execution of our production.”

Asked whether the current denial of right to perform The Room for the foreseeable future after the Los Angeles run would effect their exploration of other Pinter works, Reichen wrote, “Because the rights are not being made available to us, we have no plans to explore other Pinter works. No significant work had begun on them. But our inability to perform The Room in New York or on tour will cause The Wooster Group a significant financial loss. We are a not-for-profit organization, and we fund our own productions. We therefore must recoup our investment over time through long performance runs and touring fees.”

*   *   *

So let’s cull this down to the basics.

The Wooster Group entered into an agreement to premiere their production of The Room in Los Angeles without having secured the rights to do so, and predicated company finances on presentations of the work beyond the original advance shows in New York in the fall 2015. Whatever the circumstances of the negotiations for those rights, The Wooster Group moved forward with an additional engagement, and was planning for yet more, with no assurance that they could do the piece.

In ultimately granting the rights for the Los Angeles engagement, Samuel French, on behalf of the Pinter estate’s wishes, stipulated that the show at REDCAT should not be open for reviews, but with language that can be construed as a broadly sweeping admonition over any reviews appearing, as opposed to being merely that the venue not facilitate the attendance of critics. Could French and the Pinter estate have allowed the brief LA engagement to proceed with no restrictions, without materially affecting the fortunates of a UK first class production and avoiding the resulting fuss? Sure, but ultimately, it was their call.*

In accepting the terms as set forth by French, The Wooster Group and REDCAT apparently still bridled at them, and so instead of asking critics not to attend, they issued a media release which implied an actual, but entirely unenforceable, press ban by French.

I would suggest that The Wooster Group and REDCAT, instead of acquiescing to their agreement and abiding by its spirit, issued the press release they did precisely to incite the press to greater interest in covering The Room, and it worked like a charm. It resulted in more national press than a 10-day run in Los Angeles might have otherwise received, and it prompted the American Theatre Critics Association to issue a statement in support of the right of the arts press to cover work as they see fit. Editors are reportedly debating whether or not to honor – is it a ban or is it a request – the position that the Los Angeles production isn’t officially open for review, even when it’s perfectly clear that they can do as they wish and always could.

Ultimately, The Wooster Group and REDCAT may have won the battle, but they’ve lost the war, since there won’t be any further Pinter work by the company at this time. But they did successfully turn the press account of the situation away from their inability to secure rights on terms they found acceptable into one of press freedom. However, the impact of heightened alertness by the press to requests that work be protected from review in some cases or for some period of time may prove detrimental to other companies and productions in the wake of this scenario. I have always supported the right of artists and companies to explore their work in front of audiences for a reasonable period of time before critics weigh in, and will continue to do so, but in all cases, the press will have the final word. I’m not sure this situation was ultimately beneficial to the arts community because it puts a longstanding, unwritten mutual agreement under the glare of scrutiny that one day may have far-reaching implications.

The two sentences which finish with an asterisk above were inadvertently left out of the post when it first appeared, and were added approximately 90 minutes after this piece first went online. Bruce Lazarus’s title at Samuel French was incorrect in the original post and the text has been altered to reflect his correct position at the company.

Howard Sherman is the director off the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School College of Performing Arts.

 

Confronted By My Own Writing, Three Decades Later

January 30th, 2016 § 0 comments § permalink

DP logoI am not given to reveries about bygone days or a review of my life choices on my birthdays. The same holds true for New Year’s eve and day. But just in time for my birthday this year, I was forced to look back on a small portion of my past, thanks to an archiving project undertaken by my college newspaper at the University of Pennsylvania. I suspect that many other alumni of The Daily Pennsylvanian are having this experience right now. It just so happens that its debut timed out just prior to my birthday.

From roughly September 1981 to April of 1984, I wrote for The DP, after breaking through the cliquish barrier that didn’t afford me much opportunity during my freshman year. But once I began writing in earnest, I turned out some 70 pieces over three school years, a pretty good count considering my writing was limited almost entirely to 34th Street, a weekly magazine insert to the main paper where I was also arts editor for two semesters. Unlike the main newspaper, 34th Street of that era was focused on news and entertainment beyond the campus itself.

With my friend John Marshall (l.) at an annual DP dinner circa 1982

With my friend John Marshall (l.) at an annual DP dinner circa 1982

It’s worth noting that at the time I wrote for The DP, the internet was inconceivable and there was no prospect that my writing would last more than a couple of days, save for a few bound volumes that might gather dust in the paper’s archives. While I do have a stack of old papers stashed away in a drawer, I never anticipated that my thoughts on entertainment from ages 19 to 22 would ever be generally available to those who wished to seek them out.

Of course, dipping into the archive proved irresistible, and I quickly discovered pieces I remembered rather well, notably my first celebrity interview, with a not yet knighted Ian McKellen, which I had retyped and added to this website a few years ago. I found a number of film and theatre reviews, all written with the hauteur and certainty that one can perhaps only muster at that age. But as I browsed headlines, I was quickly reminded of some pieces, despite a distance of over 30 years, while others were so unfamiliar that I wondered if someone else had written them.

The most surprising pieces are the ones where, while my language may have been infelicitous and is now outmoded, with some unintentional sexism in evidence, it seems my perspective on the arts wasn’t all that different from what it is today. These are the ones from which I want to share a few bits and pieces.

In March 1982, I attempted to address both student performers and critics, tired of the endlessly repeated patterns of a review one day, followed by outraged letters from the subjects of those reviews a couple of days later. In “For Reviewers and Reviewees,” I counseled critics:

If you feel that there is something wrong with a show, say so, but don’t be nasty about it. The search for exciting prose should not extend to slandering the performers. They are, after all, fellow students. A negative observation about an actor is fine, but avoid excess, it does neither the performer’s nor your reputation any good.

Lights, sets, costumes, and, most importantly, direction are all critical elements of a show and involve great commitments by those responsible. These factors of production deserve much more than an offhand summation of “good” or “bad.”

To provide balance, I advised those involved in student theatre:

Remember that the reviewers also try to be as professional as possible. That means they must say what they feel, be it pleasant or uncomplimentary. Just as a director can choose to emphasize any facet of a script in production, a writer can focus on any element of a show that he deems worthy of mention.

Getting reviewed is an unavoidable part of performing (unless a producer decides not to let reviewers in). Right or wrong, intelligent or irresponsible, reviews are almost inextricably linked to the performing arts. Also, reviewers must speak with authority, since only they can justify the personal opinions that they write about. If a writer hates, for example, the score of West Side Story, he should say so, regardless of what anyone else thinks.

Two days after he received the Pulitzer Prize in 1982 for A Soldier’s Play, I had the opportunity to attend a small press gathering with Philadelphia resident Charles Fuller, held at Freedom Theatre, a company focused on work by African-American artists. I reported the event, in part, as follows:

Fuller says that at first he wasn’t sure everyone would like A Soldier’s Play, which is currently being staged by New York City’s Negro Ensemble Company. “We wanted to take a chance,” he says. “It begins to deal with some of the complexities of black life in this country.”

Fuller is only the second black playwright to win the prize. “It’s an important step for me as a playwright – I don’t know what effect it will have on theater as a whole.” As for Fuller’s own effect on theater, he wants to “talk about black people as human beings. We’ve been talked about as statistics for so long.”

Fuller says that his writing develops from his hopes for society. “It’s a severe racial pride. But it’s not racist.”

I presumed to opine about the state of Philadelphia theatre from a historical perspective, in the days before many of the vibrant companies that now occupy the city had begun. This was hubris, of course. But take note of my concern about ticket pricing.

Philadelphia theater ain’t what it used to be. Thank God.

After skyrocketing financial restraints severely depleted the number of pre-Broadway tryout productions here, Philadelphia in the 1970’s was left with but a few large Broadway-type houses and very little to put in them. Smaller companies tried in vain to bridge the gap, failing for a variety of economic and artistic reasons. And Andre Gregory’s Theatre of the Living Arts – the city’s only interesting theater of the 60’s – got too weird for patrons and fizzled out over a decade ago.

Pre-Broadway tours still come around every so often, with Anthony Quinn’s Zorba revival highlighting the past season and an Angela Lansbury Mame promised for the summer. Less discriminating theatrical patrons will probably be sated with the national tours that appear regularly with watered-down versions of Broadway smash hits, although paying 35 dollars for Andy Gibb in the otherwise wonderful Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat should be considered a criminal offense.

I had the opportunity to interview Spalding Gray, relatively early in his solo performing career, in conjunction with one of his monologues that few people have even heard of. It was performed at a venue called The Wilma Project, now known at The Wilma Theatre.

“I am a sort of actor-anthropologist, a mixture of story-teller and monologuist,” Gray says, summing up his unique performing style. He talks directly to the audience from memory, using no script. Unlike previous one-man shows. Gray portrays no one other than himself as he “re-remembers” his life experiences for audiences.

Gray will deliver his piece, In Search of the Monkey Girl, for a live audience the first lime this weekend. He has performed it four times into a tape recorder, in order to provide a text for a series of sideshow photographs shot by Randall Leverson which were printed in Aperture magazine. “It was strange,” Gray says. “He had worked for ten years and I only took ten days.”

In the course of his journey to the state fair, Gray was attracted to a trio of middle class preachers. “They had lost their drug rehabilitation center as a result of the Reagan cutbacks and were working in the sideshow in order to save up enough money to reopen it.” he says. In the meantime, Gray adds, “they were geeks, sucking on the heads of fifteen foot snakes.”

I am glad to find that I was concerned about the portrayal of women on screen at a young age (while completely misunderstanding a film’s genre), writing the following about 48 HRS, the Walter Hill movie that introduced Eddie Murphy to the big screen:

Compounding this inept rehash of the hard-boiled detective genre is the incredibly sexist treatment of women. The few females presented are either climbing into or out of bed, making 48 HRS the most callously anti-feminist film in years.

Even live theatre, or taped productions, something that is once again a current topic, caught my eye, and my thoughts today aren’t all that different than these from 1982:

First, in the case of NBC’s offerings, is it really necessary for T.V. to air the programs live? Granted, live productions were the rule in the fifties, but now editing allows for choosing the best of many takes. Finer quality could be attained from editing together several different performances of the same work. Nowadays live broadcasts are novelties masquerading as high art.

Second, judging by the cable tapings of stage shows, can true justice be done to a work that is primarily staged for one viewing perspective? The limitations imposed by stage architecture result in a radical lessening of camera angles, which have traditionally been used by T.V. and cinema to add to a production. One play shown on HBO included shots from the back of the theater, rendering the figures on the stage almost invisible. Stage shows should be directed again if they are to be adapted for the camera.

Third, what of realism: will a T.V. audience accept “theatricality’?…

…It is commendable that T.V. is attempting to bring theater to a mass audience, but it is a shame that the artistic qualities and capabilities of both media are being compromised in the process. While the public should strongly support the revival of television drama, perhaps theater is belter off where it belongs: on the stage.

I do remember my lengthy feature on the issue of book banning and censorship, which presaged some of my work at the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School on arts censorship. I spoke with figures I didn’t care for at the time (and still don’t), such as Phyllis Schlafly and a spokesman for Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority. Frankly, I wish I’d spoken to more anti-censorship figures as I look back at the article, but my summing up wasn’t bad, though I deeply regret the absence of two asterisks at the time, or my use of a racial slur at all, when referring to Mark Twain’s character of Jim in Huckleberry Finn:

In Texas this past August, a couple who spend their time reviewing school books for “questionable” content voiced disapproval of a textbook that describes the medicinal qualities of the drug insulin. They said that the reference will lead students to believe that all drugs are sale and beneficial.

Earlier this year Studs Turkel visited a high school in Girard, Pennsylvania, to talk with students and teachers about the movement to remove Working from twelfth grade reading lists. His appearance convinced authorities to restore the book temporarily, but they are still seeking a means by which Working can be banned.

The above examples are not isolated incidents. The rapidly rising wave of book banning and censorship threatens to engulf the U.S.’s entire elementary and secondary education system. There are ten times as many books banned today as there were only a decade ago. Books are being withheld or purged from classrooms and school libraries according to the dictates of various parental and political interest groups…

…No matter how big the issue becomes, the controversy boils down to three issues; what rights the Constitution guarantees to students, what parents want their children to read, and what censorship means. Is it the removal of traditional values from books or the removal of books from libraries? And who will decide?

Finally, in a piece I had completely forgotten, I find that my work at the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts was not something that emerged late in life, but had actually been on my mind a long time ago as well. It’s important to remember that at the time, “handicapped” was still emerging to replace “crippled”; “disabled” was not yet identified as the best term. There’s some hyperbole here, and outmoded and awkward expression, but the core of my thinking, I hope, rings true.

An actor’s greatest fear, short of death, is probably of being disfigured in some terribly obvious way. A facial scar, a missing limb, even something so simple as nodes on the vocal cords can send the finest actor into oblivion. But a handful of actors over the past several decades have proven that the handicapped are still superb performers who do not deserve to be shunned by an industry that has based itself on physical perfection…

…Currently, Adam Redfield is touring in the play Mass Appeal, despite an obvious case of neuralgia which has paralyzed the right side of his face. While the condition is temporary, it is to the producers’ credit that they have allowed Redfield to continue in the role. It also proves that the handicapped should be allowed to perform in “normal” roles, even if they do not quite fit the character description, it is sobering to remember that had Redfield had the neuralgia before his audition, he probably would have been quickly discarded.

Are we fully formed as people in college? Certainly not. But it seems that many of the same interests and issues that moved me to to write 30 years ago remain important to me now. I wonder if anything I said in the 80s, or today, will still hold up another 30 years on. But I’d like to still be writing, and I wonder what will be in my mind in 2046.

 

« Older Entries

Newer Entries »