Daily Archives: August 9, 2007

directing, interviews, quotes, theater

A Moon For Daniel Sullivan

It’s not that Slate has no theater coverage, just sporadic coverage, mostly centered around New York. They’re doing better than many news sources. There’s an article every few months. They cover the Tonys. They mention Spring Awakening. Obviously I think there’s more writing to be done on the topic, and more coverage of the regional world, but at least they’ve started.

I particularly enjoyed segments of Daniel Sullivan‘s diary during MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN, in 2000. The whole thing‘s worth reading, but here are a couple of good excerpts from the life of a stressed freelancer:

Daniel: 5:00 p.m.: A meeting with set designer John Lee Beatty on another play, Spinning Into Butter, by Rebecca Gilman. To be produced by Lincoln Center Theater in the summer. We sat in the theater and talked about where things should go. The play takes place in an office in a New England college. John Lee said, “What do I do so it won’t look boring?” He always gets right to the point. I was at a bit of a loss. “Windows?” I said. “Oh!” he said, surprised. But he always acts surprised by even the dullest idea. He’s very nice. “Maybe it should be a very tall room,” he said. “How tall?” “16 feet.” “That’s tall. Do they have rooms that tall in New England?” “Victorian rooms are tall.” “But Victorian doesn’t give you the typical New England school.” And so it went for an hour or so. I don’t know what initial design meetings are like for other directors, but this is par for the course for me. And at the end we agree to meet again soon since neither of us knows what the hell we’re doing.

And again:

Daniel: “The press department calls to ask where they should seat the chief theater critic of the New York Times. I suggest a local restaurant. “No, really, where?” I suggest Row J. “Why J?” “Because if he’s any closer he’ll see the side light we haven’t been able to hide.” ”

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interviews, theater, writing

The Crossover Interviews

I began my series of short interviews with a bunch of theater professionals, mostly folks from my days with Bill Rauch, today.

The first one was with Tony Taccone and it went very well. He’s had such an interesting career (here’s more about him in Ellen McLaughlin’s 2006 American Theatre interview), and so many of his projects have been explicitly political. One of the anecdotes he shared was about the Eureka getting burned down by an arsonist who objected to an anti-apartheid piece they were staging.

If the others are half as interesting as him it should be a great article. I’ve read a lot of interviews with Tony before – he’s a great communicator on behalf of the field – but I’ve never heard this stuff about him directing his very first show at Colorado Shakes before, or his transition from acting to directing. I love it.

The moment of time at which we transition from one field to another, one skill to another, from amateur to professional, defines us for the rest of our careers.

I’m hoping this can be a springboard for THE FIFTH WALL or for some other, longer series.

Here’s my warmup spiel:

As you know, I worked as Bill Rauch’s assistant for two years, during which time I observed a lot of working theater professionals, and also came into contact with many of Bill’s students and younger people in the field. Working as an assistant director at OSF, I felt that there was an interest in and need for some anecdotal research in what I’m calling “the crossover period” – moving from being a student or early-career professional to a fully professional theater artist.

So I’ve put together a couple of questions on the subject, which I’m asking to a wide variety of folks in the theater world – designers, directors, educators, administrators. I’m hoping to put this together into an article which is anecdotal and interesting, but also just reveals the wide variety of paths people take towards careers in our field. I want to dispel the idea that there is just one path or timeline towards a fixed point, and show how much change is inevitable.

My goal is to eventually have this reach publication, but I will send your answers to these questions back to you before they are shown to anyone else, so you can correct anything that doesn’t seem right to you.

These are the questions I’m asking. Kersti helped me narrow it down.

0) Where are you from (where were you born), and where do you live now?

1) What is your current job or profession, and what is a typical day for you? (Also mention what production you’re working on now, if any.)

2) What was your first professional job in theater – the point at which you were able to support yourself from your theater work? How did you get this job, and how long did it take you?

3) Talk about one interesting change or setback you encountered on the path from that first job till now – something you didn’t expect. Did you ever work in other fields, or have to take non-professional work after first crossing over to the professional world?

4) If you could give yourself one piece of advice as a young theater artist, what would it be? Is there a particular city or company you would recommend, or a strategy – or just a piece of information you wish you had?

These next are the bonus questions, which I didn’t get to with Tony and I don’t expect to have time to include with most folks.

5) Did a particular mentor or teacher play a role in your becoming a professional theater artist? Do you teach now, yourself?

6)) What is a project you would like to work on in the future, or an area of the theater world into which you would like to cross over?

I was supposed to speak to Jeff Hatcher this AM but we missed each other, and I’m going to call Cliff Faulkner in half an hour.

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books, film

Beware Of Fainting Fits (And American Girl Dolls)

I finally saw Canadian director Patricia Rozema’s MANSFIELD PARK last week. I enjoyed it – she’s a really good director – but Fanny was too pretty for my taste, looking directly at the camera doesn’t work for me – and as much as I’m usually a fan of interpolating other lost or lesser-known material from an author’s work into adaptations for performance, in this case, I thought it made Fanny far too confident too early to have her quoting Austen’s “History Of England.” It did elaborate her relationship with Susie, though.

Fanny, at least the Fanny of the novel, never struck me as being independent-minded enough to do anything like write satiric history. But this was one fly in an otherwise great ointment. I admire Rozema for adapting Austen so well – and I’m sure if I live long enough, I’ll eventually create a less than faithful adaptation of an adored novel which will drive people wild but satisfy me.

Austen.com has a fantastic list of all the times in the book that Fanny is actually crying – fourteen times.

Has Patricia really not made a full-length film since 2000? She’s way too good for that! And is her next project, as IMDB claims, honest-to-god-really “Kit Kittredge: An American Girl Mystery??” Although with Abigail Breslin of Little Miss Sunshine playing Kit, I just might have to go see it.

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theater

And speaking of Eric Bentley…

He’s not dead! In fact, he’ll turn 91 on September 14. Here are some links:

Interview with director Robert Hupp in 1996
Columbia’s 90th birthday party for him
NY Times on his life and legacy. Can I just say how much I hate NYTimes Select, and how they are damaging their ability to become part of the online dialogue and conversation by making their articles cost money to access after time has passed? I hate them! They should at least let you watch a commercial like Salon to get to the article.
Wikipedia bio.

I do think Upstage needs a “dead or alive” feature.

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books, theater, writing

The Step-Daughter Lives

I got a copy of Eric Bentley’s translation of Six Characters In Search Of An Author from Bloomsbury. I’m going to be working on an adaptation of it. There have to be more contemporary translations – I’ll have to go to the Stanford library while I’m there and get the rest of them. Amazon has a Mark Musa version published in 1996. But this is a good translation. It’s the one I first read the play in and it has a lot of dramatic power.

The original Italian is available here via Project Gutenberg.

I’m going to have to make myself my own Ashland text bible – original language, classic translation (Bentley) and modern translations (Musa, etc.) side by side.

T minus 3 days till leaving Ashland, Oregon.

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Canada, directing, quotes, TV

Outrageous Fortune

Having just watched all of Season One, I’m going to take a drastic step – I’m going to put SLINGS AND ARROWS director Darren Nichols (Don McKellar)on my resume as one of my references.

Darren: I’m used to being hated. That’s my thing. But I can’t function as a director unless that hatred is kept in check by a thin, calculated veneer of invulnerability.

They really understand him in Germany, of course.

I loved him playing with the little plastic horse while he was reading the script, too – and the roll-up Bosch poster that he carried with him. There’s a very fine line between him and me. You could almost call it a thin, calculated veneer.

PS. Don McKellar also co-wrote the book for The Drowsy Chaperone, with Bob Martin (one of the Slings & Arrows writers, too)

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