In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
– Ezra Pound
Poem for leaving New York, for the present.
Monthly Archives: January 2008
“Directors, like conductors, never retire.”
Sir Peter Hall talking with Jasper Rees in the Guardian, on, among other things, the nature of the director-animal:
“[…]They’re much more difficult than writers or actors to deal with. They’re the cat who walks alone.
I’ve worked with practically all the great directors, alphabetically, from Bergman to Zeffirelli. It’s wonderful to be involved in the mystery of other directors’ work, because they’re all different.
But most will know within the first three or four days whether it’s going to work. The interesting thing is when it’s wrong they have to go on and they can’t tell anybody it’s wrong.”
back in the saddle
Directing, that is, or travel – both. Spent the weekend between Red Bank and Philly, exploring the NJ Transit system. (Penn – Red Bank – Rahway – Trenton – Septa to 30th St.) Saw Aaron’s gory and wonderful MACBETH at TRTC, and met to talk SAGN choruses.
In Philadelphia, I visited Eileen and Danny, and achieved the rewrite of 13 Ways of Looking At The Chorus (which I’ve retitled “The Chorus Complex” in homage to Oedipus, for this draft, at least…) between 4 and 8 am. It felt creatively productive to see those guys again, but I also think it was just time to get it done. It’s funny how when you’re really ready to write something, you just wake up, no matter what hour of the day it is – and write it.
The new script has way more rhyme in it than I had imagined it would.
Today Susan and I saw Stoppard’s ROCK N’ ROLL (loved the second act, could have done without the first) and this evening I had design teleconferences with David (video) and Chris (piano.) I fly to Indianapolis tomorrow morning for pre-production on the Convergence and this flexibly titled chorus project. Rehearsals begin 1/31.
This has been a really wonderful stay in NYC, and unless something else comes up, I plan to be back in this city in April, May, and June – seeing lots of theater, and working on a script.
patting self on back
I’ve been reading through the MOH&H program again, pulling stuff for Upstage, and I was very touched to find this in my TD’s essay, when he was discussing why he got interested in the show: “If the acting was this weird, what would the technical aspects be like?” It made me happy.
I’ll take that to the bank and smoke it – or actually, I’ll take it to Penn Station and the train to Jersey, where I’m going to see Two River/Aaron Posner’s MACBETH with Teller doing the magic.
Vogel/Yale
Scuffle over the playwriting MFAs: Paula Vogel taking over at Yale from Richard Nelson. Reaction at Mr. Excitement News..
ParaDaisey
Sumana directed me to a conversation at Parabasis, which I have excerpted below, about monologuist Mike Daisey‘s piece, “How Theater Failed America,” which discusses, among other things, the casting system which I have been part of perpetuating in NYC this week. (Although our show has about half its actors local, the other half from New York.)
“what Daisey essentially says (And I agree) is that the original regional theater model of rep companies has basically devolved into a system in which theaters import all of their artists from other places (mainly New York) and put on shows. […] No one in the communities they perform for has any real connection to the work they’re doing because the casts and crews are these anonymous interchangeable people who rarely come back and with whom you have no connection.”
Wicked Stage reaction, and thoughts on theater and community.
Theatre Ideas reaction: “I think the freelance system of doing theatre, where an artistic team is put together piecemeal for each project through auditions and interviews, is artistically and economically bankrupt. It turns the creation of art into a crap shoot, and denies the experience of every other group art form in existence which shows that artists who work together over time create better work. […] I think that the only way live theatre is viable, both economically and artistically, is in the form of semi-permanent companies or “tribes.” ”
64 crayons
After a day between Astoria and the Astor St. Station, I went out to dinner with my aunt and uncle, and we discussed the 1973 Antioch College student strike. The Antioch alumni association is now trying to raise money to save the college, which has suffered more and more from low finances and low enrollment since then. (It was almost shut down in 2007.) They told me a number of stories about the actual strike.
From the Yellow Springs News Online:
” During the winter quarter of 1973, cutbacks in education spending by the Nixon administration seemed likely. Antioch allocated $300,000 for student loans, but students in the New Directions program, which was created in 1970 to increase the enrollment of minority and low-income students at the college, felt Antioch wasn’t providing sufficient guarantee that they would be supported until graduation.
On April 18, 1973, the New Directions and financial aid students said that they would strike within 48 hours if the Antioch Board of Trustees didn’t guarantee financial support to keep the students at the college.”
The campus was effectively shut down through the beginning of June, and my aunt was involved both in the strike itself and the actions to reinstate expelled students after it was over. I’m crazy, but I think there’s definitely a play in it – a big, messy, historical play about America, the 60s aftermath, education, financial aid, social class, and everything else you want a play to be about. I’m going to come back in April to interview her, and try to talk to some of the other major participants around the country. I may go to the school, too, assuming it stays open – even if it doesn’t. This feels like one of the most significant ideas I’ve ever come across. I feel the way I did when I first read LYSISTRATA. It means something. What remains to be seen, but it’s something unwieldy, large, exciting. (Adjectives.)
We also talked about governments subsidizing the arts, and they pointed out what I should have thought of before – that nonprofit status is effectively government subsidy within this country, and our tax code. The European countries that have more direct government subsidies of the arts take that tradition from a history of monarchy or theocracy, and patronage systems. Since this country doesn’t have that tradition, it doesn’t have that system.
Boy, does that shake up my brain’s opinions on the arts in the US and Europe. Color me having too many different ideas at once.
Nice work, if you can…
The OC Register’s ArtsBlog has an article by Paul Hodgins about why theater is the fast track to poverty:
“A few years ago, I waited dumbfounded while a prominent playwright, in the middle of an interview, took a cell phone call from her accountant. She was in the middle of declaring bankruptcy.”
Ghostbusters
My second 24 hours in New York yielded buckets of theater gossip, a job prospect, a possible apartment, an exorcism of ghosts from the past, a dinner in the Village, a drink, and a dead cell phone which forced me to end the day early. Susan says there are chargers you can carry with you which operate on hand-cranks. I need some kind of backup. I’d still be out there now, but the phone decided it had had enough.
TriBlogCa
Last night, after the LYDIA preview, I got on a red-eye from Denver to Boston, Boston to JFK. The problem with the red-eye from Denver is the connection to the East Coast is shorter, so you don’t sleep as long.
On arriving, I took the AirTrain this morning to TriBeCa, showered at my aunt and uncle’s apartment, and went in for a full day of auditions midtown. I rode the 123 to midtown. I met the director at the Tick Tock Diner and got debriefed on the other sessions, and then we were in the audition room for 8 hours. It was an incredible day.
The actors here are just as good as everyone says they’re supposed to be. Being in an audition room blocks from Penn Station, with theater-steeped New York actors, gave me goosebumps.
Then I had dinner with my NY-based family at a German restaurant, and we talked about economics and art and social responsibility, and health care reform. My cousin showed me his samurai and skate videos from high school (he’s studying filmmaking) Tomorrow my uncle, an economist, is going to give me his take on government subsidizing the arts. These are conversations I wouldn’t have, people I wouldn’t get to see, if I weren’t traveling around like this.
I still feel homesickness, like weights in my shoes. But I think if you abandon the idea of an orientation, or a home, or a plot, you don’t feel so disoriented. So I went to bed in Denver and woke up in midtown Manhattan. Neither of them is home to me. The only place that is really starting to feel like home is an airport.
I miss the LYDIA cast and I’m sorry to not be there for opening tomorrow. But I’m lucky to be able to keep moving.
Dara Weinberg 