"Laughter in the House" by Bernard Gersten

LAUGHTER Bernard Gersten has been the executive producer of Lincoln Center Theater since its reopening in 1985. This spring Mr. Gersten sat in his comfortable Lincoln Center office, which sits close to the stage of the Beaumont Theater and is connected to the office of artistic director André Bishop by a doorway, and talked to our editors about his career.

Before coming to work at Lincoln Center Theater, I was doing my Wanderjahr. I got fired from my job at the Public Theater by Joseph Papp in August of 1978, and my first job after that was working as the producer of Michael Bennett’s Ballroom. When that nose-dived, I co-produced John Guare’s Bosoms and Neglect. First we did it in collaboration with Gregory Mosher at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, and then we brought it to Broadway, to the Longacre Theatre, where it opened on a Thursday, played Friday and Saturday, and closed on Saturday, very sadly.

After that, I received a telephone call from Francis Ford Coppola— whom I had met years before, very, very briefly, when he came to visit at the Public, and was treated high-handedly by Joe. Francis said, “I’m forming a new kind of studio, a Hollywood studio, and I remember you from when we met at the Public Theater, and I’d like you to come out here and work with me.” And I went out there. It was a monumental decision, because my wife, Cora [Cahan], was in the middle of building The Joyce Theater, our two kids were in school, and nobody really knew what the Francis thing was. But he had just acquired Zoetrope Studios in Hollywood—this was just before the release of Apocalypse Now, which opened during my first month there. It was an astonishing event. Francis was very exciting, and I worked there for two and a half years. We made five movies for $50 million—One from the Heart, The Escape Artist, Hammett, The Outsiders, and The Black Stallion Returns—and together they grossed less than a million dollars. We were bankrupt.

So I came back to New York and went to work as the executive producer at Radio City Music Hall for two years, during which time I produced Porgy and Bess—directed by Jack O’Brien, I should add!

The first and only legitimate production ever to play the Music Hall.

And then the Music Hall kind of pulled back. It didn’t go bankrupt, it just contracted. And in the fall of 1984 I got a job working for Alexander Cohen. We were producing the Tony Awards, and among the plays that we produced at that time was Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist at the Belasco Theatre, with Jonathan Pryce, Bill Irwin, and Patti LuPone—just so you know how the same characters reoccur in one’s life. It was really very good. Anyway, we opened and the show didn’t do very well. We closed it. Things were really slowing down at Alex Cohen’s.

Simultaneously, I was teaching theater management at Columbia in the graduate school. One of the things I would do with my students was create a model for running the Vivian Beaumont Theater, which had been empty for many years. I would say, “I don’t know what the big problem is with the Beaumont, but here’s what needs to be done there.” So we discussed producing about three plays a

HOUSE

by Bernard Gersten

year at the Beaumont, and two or three plays a year at the Mitzi Newhouse. We discussed what they would cost, and how long they should run. It was a model.

I was doing this and one day the dean of the school, Schuyler Chapin, came to see Accidental Death of an Anarchist, and when I saw him afterward he said, “Bernie, I really would like to talk to you about the Vivian Beaumont Theater.” And I said, “It’s funny you should say that—I’ve been teaching the Beaumont in my class.” So we arranged to have a drink, and he said, “What are your opinions about the Beaumont?” And I said, “Let me write a paper.” So I did, and I must say, I did it with some innocence. I certainly had no aspiration to work at the Beaumont. I hadn’t thought of it seriously. Well, maybe a little bit.

I submitted the paper to Schuyler and he liked it. I said that I thought at this time [the spring of 1985] the Beaumont was more needed in the New York theater than perhaps at any other time.

Schuyler said, “Would you come and meet with John Lindsay and me? John Lindsay’s in charge of a search group that’s looking for new management for the Beaumont. We have already identified Gregory Mosher as a possible artistic director.”

I went and had breakfast with Schuyler and John—who had given me an award when I was working at the Public Theater, and whom I, like everyone else, admired so and adored. John asked, “Would you serve as a consultant? We have money—we’ll give you money if you serve as a consultant.” And I said, “John, I have a job, I don’t need to be hired. Of course, I’ll gladly serve as a consultant.” Then he switched gears seamlessly and said, “Well, actually, will you take the job with Gregory Mosher and run the Beaumont?” And that was the offer.

I was reluctant at first—even though I knew and liked Gregory, and we got along well, and he was very admiring of me—in large part because of the things that had happened at the Public Theater; my fight with Joe was historic already. When the offer came, I said, “Let me think about it—let me talk to Gregory.”

In the end, Cora came up with all the reasons that I should take the job, and felt that the timing to make a go of the theater was ideal.

The board had not yet been defined. There were some good people there. Adele Block, Anna Crouse, Joan Cullman, Linda LeRoy Janklow, Ray Larsen, Victor Palmieri, Elizabeth Peters, and Arthur Ross were among them. Anna gave a tea at her apartment at which I was introduced to members of the board. There I was, balancing a teacup in one hand and a pastry in the other, when they asked, “Well, what would it take to run the Beaumont?” I took out an envelope and a pen, and I said, “Well, if we were to do three plays at the Beaumont and they cost an average of a million five for each, and if we did two or three plays at the Mitzi and they cost two-fifty each…”

Anyway, all added up it came to $12 million, which meant we needed to raise $5 million and earn $7 million. Years later, Anna told me that nothing had ever made the budget for a theater so clear to her as that very simple back-of-the-envelope calculation. And I said, “Well, I really worked on it over a long period of time!” It assumed something like you’d sell 75 percent of the tickets at an average ticket price of

Blue Leaves wasn’t the first time that an Off Broadway show had moved to a Broadway house. But it had never happened here at Lincoln Center, and it turned out to be a very simple matter. We closed down on a Sunday and we opened on a Tuesday or a Wednesday. We did it with no fanfare. All of a sudden, it was there. The most important thing was that audiences were coming in great numbers. And suddenly the ghosts of the Beaumont were banished. The laughter of The House of Blue Leaves in the house purged the Beaumont of its ghosts and its history and its malaise.

The journey of The House of Blue Leaves was the initial journey of the theater—it moved from the Mitzi to the Beaumont in March or April, in time for the Tony Awards. It was nominated for Tonys; it won some Tonys. Meanwhile, we were planning the first Beaumont season, and we almost had enough money. With the success of The House of Blue Leaves, the strengthening of I usually make an opening-day speech to the the board, and that first flash of achievement, there was a spark of hope in the breasts of everyone involved. It companies each time we go into rehearsal. little was the effect of a hit.

Gregory was asked to write a mission statement, and he said, “We’re going to do good plays.” And I remembered what Norris Houghton said to Constantin Stanislavsky. play that we put on, John Guare’s The House of Blue Leaves. It was a Houghton went to Russia fresh out of Princeton and met Stanislavvery popular play. We opened at the Mitzi Newhouse, and we had more sky, who said, “So, young man, what do you intend to do? What do customers than we had seats. The Beaumont was empty, and one day you intend to do in the theater?” And Houghton said, “We want to we scratched our collective heads. And I don’t know which head was do great plays.” And Stanislavsky sneered or snorted, or whatever he being scratched, or who the scratcher was, but we said, “What would did. He said, “Everybody wants to do great plays. But how will you happen if we moved it up to the Beaumont?” And the conclusion was do them? What will you do to make your plays great?” Gregory and I that we would sell out and the Beaumont would be open. reduced the whole ethos of our theater to a few words: We’re going In all the history of the two theaters, nothing had ever moved to do good plays, and we’re going to have popular prices. Actually, from the Mitzi to the Beaumont. But saying, “Here’s a show that’s it wasn’t such a bad slogan. We erred on the side of understateplaying in this three-hundred-seat theater, it’s very popular, and could ment. All you say is here’s what it is. It’s a turkey sandwich on rye probably play very successfully in a thousand-seat theater, let’s move with Russian, and if you like it fine; if you don’t, order something it!” was very innovative, especially since the show was perfect in the else. Our language was to be more matter-of-fact, more plainspoMitzi, a perfect fit. ken—not the language of the institutional theaters or the regional We took the company up onstage and walked them around. theaters, where without a proper statement of intention a producThere were ghosts there. Finally, somebody turned to Christopher tion just couldn’t begin. And what do they do? Every theater does Walken and said, “Chris! You’re the only one of us who ever played the same goddamned stuff! You do all the plays, and you do all in the Beaumont. Why does the Beaumont have such a bad reputathe musicals. And everybody wants young playwrights, everybody tion? What’s wrong with it?” And Chris said, “Well, what’s wrong wants emerging this and emerging that. (You know my image for the with the Beaumont is when you come out onstage, and you look out there, you see all these red seats.” To which the answer was “Chris, we will sell all the seats, all the tickets, so you won’t see red seats.”

And he said, “No problem.”

We did move it up. And, of course, the lesson learned was the same lesson that I had learned some years earlier, when we moved A Chorus Line, which was perfect in this three-hundred-seat configuration at the Public’s Newman Theater. We wondered how it could emerging playwright’s program? A young woman in stirrups, deliverpossibly move to the Shubert Theatre with fifteen hundred seats. The ing. With the head crowning. And there’s the emerging playwright!) answer was: when you add a thousand people you add theatrons, The whole character of the individual theater is based upon the taste which are the unit of theatrical energy. They’re like electrons or ions of the artistic director. That’s all there is. That’s all that differentiates or protons. They are given off by various theatrical things—actors, one theater from another. playwrights. Words give off theatrons. Words delivered add more When I was here with Joe there were successes, but nothing had theatrons. Actors with virtuosity add even more theatrons. The room quite that electricity. And, especially because of the long, tortured acts as a kind of magnifier—a reflector, like one of those orgone years of darkness, with The House of Blue Leaves there were sparks boxes of Wilhelm Reich. You release the theatrons, they bounce struck. I usually make an opening-day speech to the companies each against the wall and then bounce back into the work onstage, and time we go into rehearsal. It’s like lighting a fire—you get one leaf they energize it and give it sexual energy. The way orgasms worked to burn and you hope that the leaf will spread the fire. You fan it, for Wilhelm Reich. A theater without a roof is hopeless! All the theyou blow on it, you shelter it from the wind. You do whatever seems atrons escape through the open top! necessary to get the fire to glow and to burn. $15, or whatever it was. But it was all quite simple and unpretentious.

What it didn’t discuss was the artistic aspects of the venture.

But in my paper for Schuyler I’d written about artistic goals, about the quality of the theater—what the theater must do. I said that it must achieve the trust of artists. That it should be built upon the willingness of artists or, better, the eagerness of artists, to entrust their artistic lives to this theater. And that trust—that was the thing that had to be created at Lincoln Center, because it didn’t exist. There was no history. The Beaumont was just a place that had been a failed theater over many, many regimes.

I believed you just had to win the trust of the artists by virtue of how you behaved, what artistic choices you made, and what administrative choices you made. One of the best examples was the second

It’s like lighting a fire.

My slogan is “Eat it, touch it, stroke it, hug it.”

I don’t remember what the speeches were like for those first productions of the first full season at the Beaumont. But there was an excitement. John Lithgow was here, and Richard Thomas and Jerry Zaks and Tony Walton. The theater was going.

A not-for-profit theater in New York is a thing unto itself. And notfor-profit theater in New York is different from not-for-profit theater in Detroit or some other city, where they are usually the only game in town. New York is not the same. There was a temptation, since there was a history of the Beaumont’s being a replica of not-for-profit theaters around the country, of having a subscription, and doing a certain

What we have here, it’s not a rabbinical society; it’s not a church.

It’s a theater.

hedonist and in part because I worked for a few years with Joe, who suffered from anhedonia. I don’t understand anhedonia. My slogan is “Eat it, touch it, stroke it, hug it.”

And I think for people in the rehearsal hall that state of ecstasy is what you strive for when you are working together at the top of your peak with people who are as good as you are or better. The best example we had of that collectively was The Coast of Utopia. Their high was sky-high. It was incredible—they all knew it and they all loved it. But there’s also something else: the theater has a sense of humor.

I mean, the theater has a sense of humor. I have a sense of humor. I like jokes, I like wit, I like play. These are things that are necessary to my own life, and I choose colleagues and comrades and friends who have similar needs and desires and abilities. So I am still amazed at my own ability to close circuits and put wild things together and be amused by it. What we have here, it’s not a rabbinical society; it’s not a church. It’s a theater.

For me, one of the most interesting questions about the current incarnation of Lincoln Center Theater is how you explain the fact that this theater has run along uninterruptedly for twenty-four years—not challenged by crisis or desperation, with financial successes and failures, but never once has there been a crisis board meeting. There’s been only one change of artistic directors. There’s been no change in my job—I’ve been here all the time. And when there was a change

number of plays and doing experimental plays at the Mitzi. Those were the conventions. And they were applied here—certainly by Jules Irving and, to a certain extent, even by Joe when the Public Theater came here. But the results tended to be bland up here. It’s as though the marble overpowered those modest ambitions and aspirations.

We started out unconventionally—our board, having hired us, failed to say, “Now tell us exactly It wasn’t that we didn’t do stupid things, what you’re going to do, and then do exactly what you tell us you’re going to do.” So a style make mistakes, put on bad plays. None of that was of being somewhat improvisational emerged— responding to the circumstances that you either precluded. have made for yourself or that you find yourself in, not being caught in the web of a subscription that required you to open a certain play on a certain date.

We have a few great inventions that are so in artistic directors there was no search committee. There was no torsimple and so obvious—a first-night dinner for the company after ture. There was no extended process. It wasn’t leaderless for a long their first preview before an audience, flowers for all on the first preperiod of time. When Gregory said, “Well, I’m out of here”—and view, wonderful dressing rooms, and a farewell drink or two or three that’s what he said—Victor Palmieri asked me if there was anybody on closing performances, so you don’t just walk out of the dressout there. And I put together a list. And Cora asked, “Why didn’t ing room into the night with your bags and straight to unemployyou put André on the list?” And I said, “He wouldn’t do it. He’s too ment. You get a little haze of alcohol to get you through. That’s what involved with Playwrights Horizons. He would never leave there.” makes the trust. But the underlying basis for trust is artistic integrity.

André Bishop was an old friend of some years, so I called him These decisions were made from an artistic perspective—to preserve, and said, “André, I’m calling you to let you know that on Monday enhance, and assure the artistry of the work that we are engaged in or Tuesday word is coming out that Gregory is leaving Lincoln Center to the best of our ability. It wasn’t that we didn’t do stupid things, Theater.” And he said, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” And I said, “So make mistakes, put on bad plays. None of that was precluded. But he’s leaving, and I’ve got a list of people, all of whom you know, so you always strove to do good and well. My illustration of what exI just wanted to get your opinion about them.” And I ran down the emplifies trust is the trust that exists among trapeze artists. Trapeze list of candidates, and he said, “X is wonderful” and “X...couldn’t artists literally entrust their lives to the catcher. They say, “I know that ask for anybody smarter, more pleasant to work with....“And so on when I do my triple something, and I reach out, your hands will be for each of them. And then I said, “And what about André Bishop?” there.” And that, to me, is such a vivid image. The catcher has a speHe paused for only a moment, and he said, “André might be very cial role. And I said that our theater is the catcher and the artists who interesting.” And then he went on and talked about André in the third work here are the flyers. And you have to imbue them with the sense person, with exactly the same amount of regard and objectivity as he’d that the catcher will always be there at the appointed time. spoken about the others. And I remember his summary. He said, “And, I like to go to curtain-down. I go a couple of times a week. I all things considered, André might be the most idiosyncratic of all of want to be sure the audience is still having a good time. That they’re them. But I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.” And I said, “Can we meet responding to the show, and that the cast is having a good time. It on Monday?” And he said, “Yes, let’s meet on Monday.” And I hung makes me happy. And certainly I’m driven—in part because I am a up the phone and said to Cora, “André‘s going to take the job.”

But you always strove to do good and well.

Blue Leaves wasn’t the first time that an Off Broadway show had moved to a Broadway house. But it had never happened here at Lincoln Center, and it turned out to be a very simple matter. We closed down on a Sunday and we opened on a Tuesday or a Wednesday. We did it with no fanfare. All of a sudden, it was there. The most important thing was that audiences were coming in great numbers. And suddenly the ghosts of the Beaumont were banished. The laughter of The House of Blue Leaves in the house purged the Beaumont of its ghosts and its history and its malaise.

The journey of The House of Blue Leaves was the initial journey of the theater—it moved from the Mitzi to the Beaumont in March or April, in time for the Tony Awards. It was nominated for Tonys; it won some Tonys. Meanwhile, we were planning the first Beaumont season, and we almost had enough money. With the success of The House of Blue Leaves, the strengthening of I usually make an opening-day speech to the the board, and that first flash of achievement, there was a spark of hope in the breasts of everyone involved. It companies each time we go into rehearsal. little was the effect of a hit.

Gregory was asked to write a mission statement, and he said, “We’re going to do good plays.” And I remembered what Norris Houghton said to Constantin Stanislavsky. play that we put on, John Guare’s The House of Blue Leaves. It was a Houghton went to Russia fresh out of Princeton and met Stanislavvery popular play. We opened at the Mitzi Newhouse, and we had more sky, who said, “So, young man, what do you intend to do? What do customers than we had seats. The Beaumont was empty, and one day you intend to do in the theater?” And Houghton said, “We want to we scratched our collective heads. And I don’t know which head was do great plays.” And Stanislavsky sneered or snorted, or whatever he being scratched, or who the scratcher was, but we said, “What would did. He said, “Everybody wants to do great plays. But how will you happen if we moved it up to the Beaumont?” And the conclusion was do them? What will you do to make your plays great?” Gregory and I that we would sell out and the Beaumont would be open. reduced the whole ethos of our theater to a few words: We’re going In all the history of the two theaters, nothing had ever moved to do good plays, and we’re going to have popular prices. Actually, from the Mitzi to the Beaumont. But saying, “Here’s a show that’s it wasn’t such a bad slogan. We erred on the side of understateplaying in this three-hundred-seat theater, it’s very popular, and could ment. All you say is here’s what it is. It’s a turkey sandwich on rye probably play very successfully in a thousand-seat theater, let’s move with Russian, and if you like it fine; if you don’t, order something it!” was very innovative, especially since the show was perfect in the else. Our language was to be more matter-of-fact, more plainspoMitzi, a perfect fit. ken—not the language of the institutional theaters or the regional We took the company up onstage and walked them around. theaters, where without a proper statement of intention a producThere were ghosts there. Finally, somebody turned to Christopher tion just couldn’t begin. And what do they do? Every theater does Walken and said, “Chris! You’re the only one of us who ever played the same goddamned stuff! You do all the plays, and you do all in the Beaumont. Why does the Beaumont have such a bad reputathe musicals. And everybody wants young playwrights, everybody tion? What’s wrong with it?” And Chris said, “Well, what’s wrong wants emerging this and emerging that. (You know my image for the with the Beaumont is when you come out onstage, and you look out there, you see all these red seats.” To which the answer was “Chris, we will sell all the seats, all the tickets, so you won’t see red seats.”

And he said, “No problem.”

We did move it up. And, of course, the lesson learned was the same lesson that I had learned some years earlier, when we moved A Chorus Line, which was perfect in this three-hundred-seat configuration at the Public’s Newman Theater. We wondered how it could emerging playwright’s program? A young woman in stirrups, deliverpossibly move to the Shubert Theatre with fifteen hundred seats. The ing. With the head crowning. And there’s the emerging playwright!) answer was: when you add a thousand people you add theatrons, The whole character of the individual theater is based upon the taste which are the unit of theatrical energy. They’re like electrons or ions of the artistic director. That’s all there is. That’s all that differentiates or protons. They are given off by various theatrical things—actors, one theater from another. playwrights. Words give off theatrons. Words delivered add more When I was here with Joe there were successes, but nothing had theatrons. Actors with virtuosity add even more theatrons. The room quite that electricity. And, especially because of the long, tortured acts as a kind of magnifier—a reflector, like one of those orgone years of darkness, with The House of Blue Leaves there were sparks boxes of Wilhelm Reich. You release the theatrons, they bounce struck. I usually make an opening-day speech to the companies each against the wall and then bounce back into the work onstage, and time we go into rehearsal. It’s like lighting a fire—you get one leaf they energize it and give it sexual energy. The way orgasms worked to burn and you hope that the leaf will spread the fire. You fan it, for Wilhelm Reich. A theater without a roof is hopeless! All the theyou blow on it, you shelter it from the wind. You do whatever seems atrons escape through the open top! necessary to get the fire to glow and to burn. $15, or whatever it was. But it was all quite simple and unpretentious.

What it didn’t discuss was the artistic aspects of the venture.

But in my paper for Schuyler I’d written about artistic goals, about the quality of the theater—what the theater must do. I said that it must achieve the trust of artists. That it should be built upon the willingness of artists or, better, the eagerness of artists, to entrust their artistic lives to this theater. And that trust—that was the thing that had to be created at Lincoln Center, because it didn’t exist. There was no history. The Beaumont was just a place that had been a failed theater over many, many regimes.

I believed you just had to win the trust of the artists by virtue of how you behaved, what artistic choices you made, and what administrative choices you made. One of the best examples was the second

It’s like lighting a fire.

My slogan is “Eat it, touch it, stroke it, hug it.”

I don’t remember what the speeches were like for those first productions of the first full season at the Beaumont. But there was an excitement. John Lithgow was here, and Richard Thomas and Jerry Zaks and Tony Walton. The theater was going.

A not-for-profit theater in New York is a thing unto itself. And notfor-profit theater in New York is different from not-for-profit theater in Detroit or some other city, where they are usually the only game in town. New York is not the same. There was a temptation, since there was a history of the Beaumont’s being a replica of not-for-profit theaters around the country, of having a subscription, and doing a certain

What we have here, it’s not a rabbinical society; it’s not a church.

It’s a theater.

hedonist and in part because I worked for a few years with Joe, who suffered from anhedonia. I don’t understand anhedonia. My slogan is “Eat it, touch it, stroke it, hug it.”

And I think for people in the rehearsal hall that state of ecstasy is what you strive for when you are working together at the top of your peak with people who are as good as you are or better. The best example we had of that collectively was The Coast of Utopia. Their high was sky-high. It was incredible—they all knew it and they all loved it. But there’s also something else: the theater has a sense of humor.

I mean, the theater has a sense of humor. I have a sense of humor. I like jokes, I like wit, I like play. These are things that are necessary to my own life, and I choose colleagues and comrades and friends who have similar needs and desires and abilities. So I am still amazed at my own ability to close circuits and put wild things together and be amused by it. What we have here, it’s not a rabbinical society; it’s not a church. It’s a theater.

For me, one of the most interesting questions about the current incarnation of Lincoln Center Theater is how you explain the fact that this theater has run along uninterruptedly for twenty-four years—not challenged by crisis or desperation, with financial successes and failures, but never once has there been a crisis board meeting. There’s been only one change of artistic directors. There’s been no change in my job—I’ve been here all the time. And when there was a change

number of plays and doing experimental plays at the Mitzi. Those were the conventions. And they were applied here—certainly by Jules Irving and, to a certain extent, even by Joe when the Public Theater came here. But the results tended to be bland up here. It’s as though the marble overpowered those modest ambitions and aspirations.

We started out unconventionally—our board, having hired us, failed to say, “Now tell us exactly It wasn’t that we didn’t do stupid things, what you’re going to do, and then do exactly what you tell us you’re going to do.” So a style make mistakes, put on bad plays. None of that was of being somewhat improvisational emerged— responding to the circumstances that you either precluded. have made for yourself or that you find yourself in, not being caught in the web of a subscription that required you to open a certain play on a certain date.

We have a few great inventions that are so in artistic directors there was no search committee. There was no torsimple and so obvious—a first-night dinner for the company after ture. There was no extended process. It wasn’t leaderless for a long their first preview before an audience, flowers for all on the first preperiod of time. When Gregory said, “Well, I’m out of here”—and view, wonderful dressing rooms, and a farewell drink or two or three that’s what he said—Victor Palmieri asked me if there was anybody on closing performances, so you don’t just walk out of the dressout there. And I put together a list. And Cora asked, “Why didn’t ing room into the night with your bags and straight to unemployyou put André on the list?” And I said, “He wouldn’t do it. He’s too ment. You get a little haze of alcohol to get you through. That’s what involved with Playwrights Horizons. He would never leave there.” makes the trust. But the underlying basis for trust is artistic integrity.

André Bishop was an old friend of some years, so I called him These decisions were made from an artistic perspective—to preserve, and said, “André, I’m calling you to let you know that on Monday enhance, and assure the artistry of the work that we are engaged in or Tuesday word is coming out that Gregory is leaving Lincoln Center to the best of our ability. It wasn’t that we didn’t do stupid things, Theater.” And he said, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” And I said, “So make mistakes, put on bad plays. None of that was precluded. But he’s leaving, and I’ve got a list of people, all of whom you know, so you always strove to do good and well. My illustration of what exI just wanted to get your opinion about them.” And I ran down the emplifies trust is the trust that exists among trapeze artists. Trapeze list of candidates, and he said, “X is wonderful” and “X...couldn’t artists literally entrust their lives to the catcher. They say, “I know that ask for anybody smarter, more pleasant to work with....“And so on when I do my triple something, and I reach out, your hands will be for each of them. And then I said, “And what about André Bishop?” there.” And that, to me, is such a vivid image. The catcher has a speHe paused for only a moment, and he said, “André might be very cial role. And I said that our theater is the catcher and the artists who interesting.” And then he went on and talked about André in the third work here are the flyers. And you have to imbue them with the sense person, with exactly the same amount of regard and objectivity as he’d that the catcher will always be there at the appointed time. spoken about the others. And I remember his summary. He said, “And, I like to go to curtain-down. I go a couple of times a week. I all things considered, André might be the most idiosyncratic of all of want to be sure the audience is still having a good time. That they’re them. But I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.” And I said, “Can we meet responding to the show, and that the cast is having a good time. It on Monday?” And he said, “Yes, let’s meet on Monday.” And I hung makes me happy. And certainly I’m driven—in part because I am a up the phone and said to Cora, “André‘s going to take the job.”

But you always strove to do good and well.