Play Out the Play!

The Hard Way

Simon over at The Next Stage has sent this meme over to me in which I must speak about three things I learned the hard way.  So, here are mine, such as they are:

1. The biggest one for me-- and it is a continual battle-- is to "Beware of Muddle". 
When directing or designing, I really have to work hard at keeping my vision clear, not letting other demands cloud it up. There have been two productions on which I've pulled double duty (as both director & actor or designer & stage manager).  While in both of those cases, the final product was fine-- even exceptional on some scores-- the split focus majorly impeded my leadership and threatened to derail a number of very important working relationships.  Frankly, it's a miracle those shows survived as well as they did. 

2. Beware of Precious.
I have an earlier post on being aware of staging or playing things so that they're beautiful but lifeless.  It also applies to the unwillingness of many directors to EDIT or SIMPLIFY their shows.  Early in my theatrical life, I worked with a lovely and talented director who, unfortunately, was simply unwilling to keep things simple and edit things out.  Once she had an idea for the show, it was in.  And it didn't matter if it wasn't materialized until final dress, cutting it was not an option.  As her stage manager, this is intensely frustrating.  Moreso because I knew that the life of the show was weighed down by her inability to edit and the safety of the actors was in question by her large and last minute additions.  There is a difference between the very precious ideas as they exist in our heads and the form they take on the stage.  A good director can't feel that any element is beyond question.  In fact, every element of a production needs to be questioned, questioned, and questioned again to prove its fruitfulness for the story.  Having stage managed bloated productions for ten years, I can honestly say I came from the school of hard knocks on this one. 

3.  Beware of Expectations
My mother has said since I was a child, "Beware of having too many expectations.  You're sure to be disappointed."  I think that just until these last three years or so, I had expectations that if I did good work, people would automatically appreciate it.  I expected that if I was "easy to work with and accommodating" people would appreciate and reward ME.  And I expected that everyone would come to understand my work. 

I can honestly say I've been disappointed on all counts.  But that's my own fault.

Most of the people in the theatre community are not going to sing your praises if you're doing good or challenging or forward-thinking work.  They're going to feel threatened.  Some will get over it and acknowledge its worthiness, but probably only grudgingly.  (And I have to say that I am guilty of this point, which is why I started writing reviews.  To force myself to acknowledge good work as well as bad).  But still, most of the theatrical community or theatre-goers will pat you on the back, say "good work", and then proceed to rave and publicly acknowledge the most mediocre of work.  So don't expect anything different.  It'll save a lot of frustration in the end. 

Around the same time, I started realizing that while I was trying to make everyone like me and like working with me, I was watering down a lot of my own standards for production.  I was excessively accommodating as a director, a yes man to the company's board, and universally liked as a hard-working contributer to the players.  And, I was completely overlooked the vast majority of the time.  The moment I began questioning things, demanding more substantive work, and-- granted-- being a bit of a bitch, I found people who wanted to be challenged in their work and broke away from those who didn't care to improve the quality of their work.  (Sometimes, you have to make a few bad decisions to create something new for yourself.)

So, I guess that's my top three.  There are certainly others and there will be more to come, I'm sure.  In the words of Shannon McNally:  "I never learn nuthin' but the hard way, cuz at the time it felt SO good."

The Value of Theatre: Paul R Jones.

Why do we Americans always have to put a 'value' or price tag on everything. I suppose it is an unfortunate necessity in this day and age with a generation who want life to be an Ipod. Theatre is not easy. It demands mental and emotional commitments that require much from participants on stage and in the audience. It also requires, as Thornton Wilder so aptly stated: "a willing suspension of disbelief". The "willing" is the key and, perhaps, the most difficult.

    Theatre has and will always BE for me. It is life itself. The coming together and sharing what it is to be human. For well over 2,500 years, theatre has brought people from all walks of life together to share, to experience, to escape, to laugh, to cry, to feel joy, to feel dispair, to debate, to argue, to mean, to understand, to accept, to reject, to transcend, to BE. We, or at least I, value theatre because it IS. I cannot live without theatre by either doing as a creator or sharing as part of the audience. That was my mission for over thirty five years in educational theatre and continues today in my new life as an actor and director. The frustration with the former opened the door to my incredible new life in theatre.

    I think the only way to create "value" in theatre for a new generation is by them experiencing great theatre. Getting people to go to the theatre cannot be taught or required if there is to be real meaning and 'value'. But how to do that? In areas where great theatre is limited or difficult to get to get to and there is no inspirational mentor to point the way and share that love, I have no idea. However, here in southern Oregon all these aspects come into focus with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and it's incredible and successful educational and outreach programs. The 'value' here is in the experiences and the "doing" thus creating life long love for theatre.

 

Enough rambling,

Paul R. Jones

The Value of Theatre: M. Peterson

Theatre exists, as some guy named Hamlet once said, to "hold the mirror up to life."  To show us, in an objective fashion, who and what we are in both a positive and inspirational glow, and sometimes harshly in a more negative but realistic light.  It is perhaps the shadows cast by these metaphorical lights which Plato referred to as dancing on the wall in his famous cave allegory.  The Shadows are not the reality, but their very presence proves that a deeper level does in fact exist.  Similarly, theatre is not life, but it serves as a reflection of life, to show us what is that we may not yet be aware of, or what might be which we have not yet even imagined.

M. Peterson
Artists' Repertory Theatre, Fresno, CA

The Value of Theatre: Tom Nance

"Theatre, as in all art, should bring about an immediate life defining response and then if truly successful the response will linger and change a part of the participants' beings.

This theatre experience is analogous to the sport experience where what is remembered is the unusual and heroic. For example baseball fans remember the 1988 World Series where Kirk Gibson with two bad legs and a stomach virus come to bat in the bottom of the ninth with the Dodger trailing 4-3 with two outs and one man on first. With the count 3-2, Gibson slammed the ball over the right field fence and then hobbled around the bases to score the winning run. What the baseball fans remember are the courage and the triumph when everything told them that failure had the better chance.

As a community theatre actor, I have seen courage so many times back stage: the actor rushing onto the stage without missing a cue even though shards of glass still sparkled in his hair from the car accident which totaled his truck just a few hours before performance, or the young man just recently out of the emergency hospital after being bitten by a brown recluse spider. The young, pale skinned man would deliver his lines and then go off stage to vomit into a plastic lined trash can. Only once did the young actor miss a cue because he was sick, and that time two other actors filled in his lines flawlessly with one of the three specials illuminating an empty part of the stage as the only indicator for the audience that anything was amiss. Nor will I ever forget, the actress who performed the very night her mother died. The actress felt that once again her mother was watching her performance.

Now, these types of heroics are common place in the theater and other endeavors as well, but many within the non-theater community know nothing of these achievements. But the plays themselves in live theatre bring these same heroics for the actors, technicians, and audience to share: Henry Drummond standing up for his adversary Matthew Brady's right to defend his beliefs, Tevye confronting the crumbling traditions in his people's life while heroically clinging to his faith in God and his family, or Ma Joad fighting to keep her family alive when all the men in her life have been either killed, run off, or emasculated by a compassionless society.

Of course the theatre has more to offer than just heroics. Theatre can be mindless entertainment, tearing eyed nostalgia, or mind humbling satire. It's because of theatre's diversity that it does have so much to offer the community. Technology will change the operation of society but does little to change humanity. Art does that. As Paul Gauguin said, "Art is either plagiarism of revolution." Theatre at is best is revolution in that change only happens when the unexpected occurs. Live theatre is filled with the unexpected.  It is life itself."
~Tom Nance, local actor

A page of local quotes on the value of theatre is in the sidebar to the right.  I'll add to it as things progress.
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Okay, my random thoughts about the value of theatre. . . especially for non-theatrical types.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT?

0 Ideas combined stylishly with entertainment.

0 Exploration of theme and meaning in life stories.

0 It’s about community experience with live performers.

0 It’s about immediacy of action.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

0 Provides a communal, interactive experience of art and story-- as it is made.

0 If TV and Film can explore the more literal stories of our world, theatre explores the dreamworld of our humanity.

WHY ATTEND?

Other artists attend theatre for a variety of reasons: cross germination of ideas, immediacy of experience, emotional catharsis, blah blah blah.

Regular people, though. . . they attend the theatre because:

0 They want to be seen as “patrons of the arts”.

0 It makes them feel more cultured and intelligent than the average joe.

0 It’s a decently impressive date.

0 It’s “something different” for a night out.

0 For younger audiences, it separates them from the retail, “commercial” hobbies of their peers.

0 For older audiences, it is thought to be a safe, pleasant, “lovely evening”. 

Here’s the kicker: Theatre’s inherent value is that it doesn’t have to be ONLY the above.

What makes theatre valuable to everyone is that it can seem harmless and antiquated (and perhaps it often is), but it can also be very subversively DANGEROUS while remaining oddly accessible.

And I don’t mean ‘dangerous’ in just the revolutionary form of the word. While in some quarters of the world a theatre production yielding marches in the streets for political and societal change could be a good thing, I’m actually speaking more about danger in the personal sense. (And who doesn’t love a little personal danger now and then?)

When seeing a production, any audience member could be in danger of:

0 Having an unexpected emotion rise up within himself.

0 Having her imagination engaged to such an extent she’s suspended in a moment, leaving herself behind.

0 Seeing something completely unplanned happen on the stage.

0 Seeing something completely unpleasant happen on the stage.

0 Witnessing really brave actions and then feeling shameful for his own cowardice.

0 Witnessing something really cowardly on the stage and then feeling shameful for humanity’s cowardice.

0 Becoming alarmed by the events of the play, and then becoming angered.

0 Becoming saddened by the actions of the characters.

0 Feeling joyous at the revelations of love in the characters.

0 Experiencing something unpolished, unsanitized, and not approved by the FDA.

0 Having an audible response to the play in the middle of a group of silent strangers.

0 Realizing those silent strangers aren’t so different from themselves after all.

You see, when people come to the theatre, for whatever initial reason, they unknowingly risk feeling in myriad unexpected ways. And there’s little getting away from it once it starts. The actors are right there. All of these risks are heightened because it’s a live experience. They risk sharing an engrossing, real-time moment with performers and other audience members—all of whom are in the same room and part of the experience. And, they risk never having the same theatrical experience twice, so they have to grab it quick or it’ll be gone.

 

 

 

PS—that sort of risk is a major factor in appealing to sports fans for their live events.  Just think of theatre as a sports event for the literary-minded, and it makes a little more sense.

Why do we dig on it? Theatre's Value.

Theatre bloggers throughout North America are spending today tossing out ideas on the value of theatre in a multitude of forms.  I'm going to have to think on it for a bit, but I sent out the call to many local theatre practitioners hoping they'll also have a few words to say. 

In the meantime, check out what these very smart people have to say on the subject: 

The Next Stage:  How is Theatre Valuable

Theatre is Territory:  What is theatre good for?  (a compilation of quotes from blog posts)

Steve on Broadway:  What is the value of theatre?

Theatre for the Future:  Thought Attacks!

Theatre Forte:  Today we blog about value

Devilvet:  The value of theatre

I'll check back when I've formed a few thoughts and hopefully will have some thoughts from my local colleagues to post. 

~Heather

What's next?

I'm thinking of stealing  some interview questions  from These Guys and making up a few of my own in order to get more of an influx of ideas for this blog.  While I'm looking around for my next directing project, it'll be a little while before I'm back in the rehearsal room.  My next theatrical project is actually in the costuming realm:  costuming Twelfth Night for the Woodward Shakespeare Festival this June/July.  And while I'll certainly be blogging my experience in this new and overwhelming area, I still want to hear some commentary from others in the area. 

I'll contact some people and see what pops up for me as far as bloggerviews. 

In related news, I went to see Sweeney Todd today and moderately regretted not seeing it during opening weekend when my positive review might have given it a bit of good word of mouth.  Today's matinee was well attended, though, so they didn't seem to need my help!  lol!

All's Red. . . closed.

The final performance of "All's Red that's Riding Hood" was yesterday, and by all accounts went very well.  I couldn't see it since I was prepping for the FCC Feast of Scholars Dinner. 

Our little cast party at Rousseau's was lovely with great fun and many laughs.  I do have to share Randi Saul-Olson's gift to me.  It's one of the most original gifts I've gotten for a show:  a decoupaged box with a wolf in sheep's clothing on it.  LOL!  If you look at it closely, the basket has bread, wine and turnips in it.  The rocks have little blood spots on it and the trees have bits of Red Riding Hood's cape on it.  LOL!

 

It, along with the stuffed wolf and the volume of Grimm's Grimmest Tales are very lovely tokens from the cast. 

I'll write more later, but right now I'm really exhausted from having finished three major projects in as many weeks.  There's more photos in the All's Red photo album, though.  And I hope to have a scene up on You Tube soon. 

~H