SDC Journal Fall 2018 - Winter 2019

FALL 2018/WINTER 2019

THOMAS KAIL LEARNING TO LISTEN TO YOURSELF RACHEL CHAVKIN AT THE EDINBURGH FESTIVAL FRINGE

CHRISTOPHER WHEELDON DRIVEN BY THE ARTISTIC CHILD

CARRYING ON THE LEGACY THE BLACK ARTS INTENSIVE

OFFICERS

Pam MacKinnon PRESIDENT

John Rando EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT

Seret Scott SECOND VICE PRESIDENT

Leigh Silverman THIRD VICE PRESIDENT

Michael John Garcés VICE PRESIDENT

Michael Wilson TREASURER

Evan Yionoulis SECRETARY

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Laura Penn COUNSEL

Ronald H. Shechtman HONORARY ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Karen Azenberg Pamela Berlin Julianne Boyd Marshall W. Mason Ted Pappas Susan H. Schulman

SDC EXECUTIVE BOARD

SDC JOURNAL

MEMBERS OF BOARD

MANAGING EDITOR

Saheem Ali Christopher Ashley Melia Bensussen Walter Bobbie Anne Bogart Jo Bonney Mark Brokaw Joe Calarco Rachel Chavkin Desdemona Chiang Liz Diamond Marcia Milgrom Dodge Sheldon Epps Liza Gennaro Joseph Haj Linda Hartzell Anne Kauffman Dan Knechtges Mark Lamos Kathleen Marshall Meredith McDonough Sharon Ott Lisa Portes Lonny Price Ruben Santiago-Hudson Seret Scott Bartlett Sher Leigh Silverman Casey Stangl Eric Ting

Kate Chisholm FEATURES EDITOR

Howard Sherman GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Elizabeth Nelson ADDITIONAL DESIGN

Dominic Grijalva EDITORIAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Jo Bonney Graciela Daniele Sheldon Epps Liza Gennaro Thomas Kail Robert O'Hara Ann M. Shanahan Leigh Silverman Evan Yionoulis SDC JOURNAL PEER-REVIEWED SECTION EDITORIAL BOARD SDCJ-PRS CO-EDITORS

David Callaghan Ann M. Shanahan

SDCJ-PRS PEER REVIEWERS

Donald Byrd Jonathan Cole Thomas Costello Kathryn Ervin Liza Gennaro Travis Malone Sam O'Connell Ruth Pe Palileo Scot Reese Stephen A. Schrum FALL 2018/WINTER 2019 CONTRIBUTORS

David Callaghan CO-EDITOR, SDCJ-PRS

Stephanie Coen WRITER

Thomas Hescott DIRECTOR

Anne Kaufmann DIRECTOR

Karen Jean Martinson CHICAGO STATE UNIVERSITY

Kathleen M. McGeever NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY

Tom Moore

SDCJ-PRS BOOK REVIEW EDITOR

DIRECTOR

Kathleen M. McGeever

Elizabeth Nelson

SDCJ-PRS ASSOCIATE BOOK REVIEW EDITOR

Emily A. Rollie SDCJ-PRS SENIOR ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Anne Bogart Anne Fliotsos Joan Herrington James Peck

WRITER

Sam Pinkleton CHOREOGRAPHER

Mary B. Robinson DIRECTOR

Emily A. Rollie SDCJ-PRS ASSOCIATE BOOK REVIEW EDITOR

Joanie Schultz DIRECTOR

Seret Scott DIRECTOR

Kimberly Senior DIRECTOR

Ann M. Shanahan CO-EDITOR, SDCJ-PRS

Tony Tambasco DIRECTOR

SDC JOURNAL is published quarterly by Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, located at 321 W. 44th Street, Suite 804, New York, NY 10036.

ISSN 2576-6899 © 2018 Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. All rights reserved. SDC JOURNAL is a registered trademark of SDC. SUBSCRIPTIONS + ADVERTISEMENTS Call 212.391.1070 or visit www.SDCweb.org.

Annual SDC Membership dues include a $5 allocation for a 1-year subscription to SDC JOURNAL. Non-Members may purchase an annual subscription for $36 (domestic), $72 (foreign); single copies cost $10 each (domestic), $20 (foreign). Purchase online at www.SDCweb.org. Also available at the Drama Book Shop in New York, NY. POSTMASTER Send address changes to SDC JOURNAL, SDC, 321 W. 44th Street, Suite 804, New York, NY 10036.

PRINTED BY Sterling Printing

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SDC JOURNAL | FALL 2018/WINTER 2019

Christopher Wheeldon rehearses with New York City Ballet dancer Tiler Peck for A Place for Us PHOTO Paul Kolnik

FALL/WINTER

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Carrying on the Legacy

CONTENTS

SDC MEMBERS CREATE NEW BLACK ARTS INSTITUTE

Volume 7 | No. 1

BY MARY

FEATURES 14

39

Singularly Built for a Cinderella Story RACHEL CHAVKIN ON BEING AT—AND IN— THE EDINBURGH FESTIVAL FRINGE INTERVIEW BY STEPHANIE

20

COEN

COVER

Learning to Listen to Yourself THOMAS KAIL IN CONVERSATION WITH ANNE KAUFFMAN

27

B. ROBINSON

PEER-REVIEWED SECTION

SDC and the Directing Program of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) CELEBRATING A LONG AND GROWING RELATIONSHIP

BY ANN

M. SHANAHAN, DAVID CALLAGHAN,

EMILY A. ROLLIE + KATHLEEN M. McGEEVER EDITED BY DAVID

CALLAGHAN + ANN M. SHANAHAN

Driven by the Artistic Child AN INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR/ CHOREOGRAPHER CHRISTOPHER WHEELDON

BY TOM

MOORE

FALL 2018/WINTER 2019 | SDC JOURNAL

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5

FROM THE PRESIDENT

BY PAM MACKINNON

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45

IN YOUR WORDS

What I Learned...

BY KIMBERLY

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SENIOR

2018 LTC Carnaval of New Latinx Work National Stage Combat Workshop

SDCF FROM THE ARCHIVES

New York Summer Sling

Masters of the Stage: Kwame Kwei-Armah

SCHULTZ CURATED BY SERET SCOTT

Why I Made That Choice

SDC Summer Staff Outing

RODOSTHENOUS REVIEW BY TONY TAMBASCO

48

Bay Area Welcome for Pam MacKinnon Directors Lab Chicago

52

Remembering Gillian Lynne

Director/Playwright Seattle Speed Dating

BY ANDY

Boston Membership Meeting

IN MEMORIAM BLANKENBUEHLER

Barrymore Panel

Pre-Show/Post-Show

BY KATHLEEN

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Chicago Member Meeting and SDC Night Out

M. McGEEVER

Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS Broadway Flea Market and Grand Auction

20 Questions THOMAS HESCOTT ON SDUK

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Pittsburgh Night Out

Step Forward

BY SAM

THE SOCIETY PAGES

SDC - Broadway Associate/Resident Summer Gathering

EDITED BY GEORGE

BY JOANIE

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54

Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy: Auteurship and Directorial Visions

FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

BY LAURA PENN

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SDCJ-PRS BOOK REVIEW

PINKLETON

59

SDC LEGACY

Sir John Gielgud SDCJ-PRS PERFORMANCE REVIEW

The Fall: A Lecture Performance REVIEW BY KAREN

JEAN MARTINSON

THIS PAGE Seret Scott teaching at the Summer 2018 Black Arts Intensive PHOTO Jason Gray COVER

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Jeremy Daniel

SDC SDC JOURNAL JOURNAL || FALL FALL 2018/WINTER 2018/WINTER 2019 2019

Names of SDC Members appear throughout SDC Journal in boldface.

FROM THE PRESIDENT We live in interesting times. I use the word “interesting” in the same way that it hits me as a comment from an acquaintance who has seen a show of mine that they clearly don’t get. And we live in interesting times that seem to be moving faster and faster with each passing news cycle.

I was in previews during the Kavanaugh hearings and felt the audiences shift each day, according to how they consumed the story in front of them. The stories we create, pour ourselves into, and put on stage do not get told in a vacuum, obviously. In this particular case, changes seemed nightly. Audiences arrived upset one night, open-hearted and hopeful the next, furious at some matinee as stuff was going down. Ultimately, by the time we got to “we don’t care what was true because we won”—I paraphrase—they seemed quietly resigned. The play was always the play, and it held what the audience was giving it nicely, allowing for deep catharsis through laughs and even tears. But the story did feel like it shifted, expanding and contracting with the news each day.

What we made somehow leaned into the times, essentializing and personalizing what perhaps was needed in the moment.

As I write this letter, knowing that our national midterm elections will have transpired before this goes to print but not knowing how they will land, I cannot predict what artists and audiences will be contending with, so let me stick a pin in the politics for a beat. What I am certain of is that our Members will continue to create big and beautiful stories, fiercely personal and demanding tales. Our Members will lead, build consensus, communicate about politics, movement, form, psychology, and community with rigor and humor and grace.

What we do seems particularly necessary in these interesting times. I am reminded of Lewis Hyde’s book The Gift and “the accumulated wealth of the spirit.” It seems apropos of directors and choreographers, as ours are art forms of conversation and communication with collaborators and audience. Hyde writes, “A circulation of gifts nourishes those parts of our spirit that are not entirely personal, parts that derive from nature, the group, the race, or the gods. Furthermore, although these wider spirits are a part of us, they are not ‘ours’; they are endowments bestowed upon us. To feed them by giving away the increase they have brought us is to accept that our participation in them brings with it an obligation to preserve their vitality…Only when the increase of gifts moves with the gift may the accumulated wealth of our spirit continue to grow among us, so that each of us may enter, and be revived by, a vitality beyond his or her solitary powers.”

We exist as part of a field in which the giving of gifts is essential: the giving of talent, of understanding, of empathy, of time on the part of artists and audiences. We live in interesting times, but how we spend that time, and how we share it, is fundamental to our lives, the lives of those with whom we work and those to whom we present our work. It is our job to make certain that work is not merely interesting and subject to the buffeting forces outside of rehearsal room and theatre walls, but nourishing to all who choose to place themselves within them and essential when we step out of them. Be kind to yourselves and others out there.

In Solidarity,

Pam MacKinnon Executive Board President

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FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR “Communication is oxygen.”

That’s not my slogan—it’s a core value for employees working for WordPress, the online content management system (a.k.a. open source website). I have a friend who’s living in Ireland and about to begin working for the company as a happiness engineer. WordPress has no offices, no central headquarters. When I was with her recently, I peppered her with questions about how that really works. How do you create a cohesive staff and keep everyone moving in the same direction?

What’s the retention rate? How do you mentor and conduct evaluations? In a nutshell, you get to live wherever you want; your work is fully portable; and WordPress has meetups all over the world a couple times a year, where employees travel in and spend focused time together.

“Communication is oxygen” is the first of WordPress’s six core values. The other five are: “Highly independent individuals,” “Meetups: face time is important,” “Focus on one thing,” “Clear communication spaces,” and “Transparency across all teams.”

I like them all, but I keep thinking about communication as oxygen and our challenges at SDC. There are more than 4,000 of you, including 2,000 Members and another 1,000 Associates active at any given time, scattered one by one in rehearsal halls, theatres, classrooms, and conference rooms. I spend a lot of time thinking about how we communicate to the Membership and facilitate communications among Members. I think about our vehicles for communicating: email, social media, websites, snail mail, media, and SDC Journal. I think about what communications need to travel through what sources and how we use communications to bind us together and move us forward, together—to unite, empower, and protect.

Unlike WordPress, we at SDC have a headquarters. That feels like a benefit to me because it often allows us to breathe the same oxygen together. I’m blessed to share our space every day with an extraordinary staff—and the Members who can take advantage of its resources.

Yet, like WordPress, we are also often scattered. I’m keenly aware of the need to be very careful about how we keep the communication flowing on any number of the many issues critical to you in your work and how to keep the channels open back to us. Posting on social media only works for those on social media. Mail works for those who happen to be at home, but it’s not so good for those working out of town. E-blasts end up in spam—and you unsubscribe because you get tired of finding so many messages from countless sources cluttering your life. I appreciate it when you call or write, and I know that for each person who picks up the phone or sends an email to share a thought, there are probably 30, 40, maybe 50 people who have something similar to say on the topic but are too busy to do so. *** When we imagined SDC Journal, we hoped it would become foundational in our efforts to grow our communications with you, in this instance, focused on your craft. We have introduced Members to other Members and exposed Members to the processes of other Members. We have inspired, frustrated, and surprised Members. We have evolved the content over these six years, and in this issue, we introduce a new regular column dedicated to the art of choreography, “Step Forward.”

I would be remiss if I didn’t thank some exceptional human beings who, for years, have been like our oxygen at SDC Journal. Elizabeth Nelson was with me in 2009 when we first explored the creation of SDC Journal. At the time, we thought we might call the magazine the Society Pages. I remember taking a mockup to a negotiation to share and gather feedback from some of you at an elongated caucus. It took us a few years to launch the magazine, but without Elizabeth’s tenacity, pursuit of excellence, artistry, and humor, I’m honestly not sure there would be a Journal. Elizabeth left SDC a couple years ago to relocate to the Berkshires. She continued as our art director through this issue you hold in your hand.

Also completing her tenure—as features editor—is the brilliant Elizabeth Bennett, dramaturg extraordinaire. Many of you have had the pleasure of working with her in rehearsal halls across the country, from Arena Stage to La Jolla Playhouse. For five years, with rigor and respect, she found the core of each feature, identified writers and interviewers, and guided edits. With a deep understanding of what you do, she represented you and was tenacious as she sought to ensure that the stories we published were worthy of your talent, your intellect, and your impact on the cultural life around the world. A couple years ago, she signed on to lead the arts council on Staten Island but continued to work with us until her success in that role required her to let go of her connection to SDC Journal. You will likely see both Elizabeths here in these pages in the future, but we will no longer see them on each masthead.

Please join me in thanking them for their contributions. *** Communication is oxygen for SDC as well. Without it, we cannot bind this community of artists together, and only if we are united will we succeed in our efforts to better support the Membership. And your communication skills provide the oxygen that allows theatre to live and breathe on stages throughout this country and abroad. As the linchpins of productions, you breathe life into every theatrical collaboration, in exhilarating, nuanced, insightful rushes of insight and empathy.

In Solidarity,

Laura Penn Executive Director

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IN YOUR WORDS What I Learned...

Why I Made That Choice Pre-Show/Post-Show 20 Questions Step Forward

CONTRIBUTE

PHOTO

Joe Mazza

If you wish to contribute to IN YOUR WORDS, would like to respond to any of the articles, opinions, or views expressed in SDC Journal, or have an idea for an article, please email Letters@SDCweb.org. Include your full name, city + state. We regret that we are unable to respond to every letter.

WHAT I LEARNED…

BY JOANIE

SCHULTZ CURATED BY SERET SCOTT

When I was young and emerging, I was lucky to assistant direct for over 20 different directors.

Each had a unique style, each taught me something different, and each contributed to the director I am today. I pulled inspiration and methods from them, picked their brains about why they made certain choices, and tried my best to support them in creating their vision on stage.

As an assistant, I would usually participate starting first rehearsal, and occasionally I was in the process earlier for auditions or design meetings. But there was something else I was always curious about: these directors’ preparatory processes. I would ask what they did in that crucial phase before they started working with collaborators, and most directors were generous with their insights, but I always wanted to know more. Believe me, I understand that it’s complicated to let people into that stage of work. It’s intimate, it’s a conversation with yourself—how could you bring an assistant into that without ruining it?

The last show I ever assistant directed was in 2009-10 at the Goodman Theatre, where I was the Michael Maggio Directing Fellow. I assisted Robert Falls on a new Rebecca Gilman play, and participated in both a workshop and an extended rehearsal process that were scheduled not only to develop the play but also for Bob to investigate and experiment with rehearsal methods. While he was already

Hit the Wall at WaterTower Theatre, directed

by Joanie Schultz PHOTO Jason Anderson

an artist who inspired me, my admiration for him grew exponentially over the course of that workshop and rehearsals, as I watched him with transparency, humility, and rigor lead the room in techniques that he had not yet mastered. I was shocked that a successful director like him had gone abroad to study and research, had come back armed with books to reference, and was so openly investigating a different way to approach text and rehearsal than he ever had before.

It was thrilling to watch and participate in this process, and to see the incredible results of that work in productions he’s directed since. And while I wasn’t exactly in that preparatory stage I always longed to see, it was the closest I could get as an assistant director.

There were so many lessons I learned on that show about approaching text, dramaturgy, scene work, and staging that I continue to use. But the biggest lesson I learned while working with Bob is that I must keep investigating, try new approaches, and treat my creative process as an ever-evolving practice. Watching a master of our art form passionately experiment with his technique inspired me to cultivate a spirit of ongoing development in my craft. Not only has this perspective pushed my work to places that are deeper and riskier, but also it has manifested a deep creative fulfillment that can only come from the love of the work.

I am forever grateful for assistant directing and for getting to have this vital experience before I retired from it.

JOANIE SCHULTZ served as Artistic Director of WaterTower Theatre in Addison, TX, in 2017 and 2018. Prior to that, she was a freelance director of theatre and opera based in Chicago. She has directed at theatres that include Kansas City Repertory Theatre, Studio Theatre, Cleveland Play House, Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, and Victory Gardens Theater. From 2014 to 2016, Joanie served as Associate Artistic Producer at Victory Gardens Theater, as part of the Leadership U One-on-One Fellowship funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation administered through TCG. She was also a Drama League Fellow; the Goodman Theatre Michael Maggio Director Fellow; the SDCF Denham Fellow; and member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab. She is an ensemble member at Steep Theatre, Artistic Associate at Victory Gardens Theater, and artistic cabinet member at Studio Theatre in Washington, DC. She received her BA in theatre/directing from Columbia College Chicago and her MFA in theatre directing from Northwestern University.

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Kimberly Senior (left) with mentee Ashley Teague

I drive away from Connecticut College, boldly headed toward my future as a director in Chicago. I have no idea what lies ahead. How the road paved with my good intentions, my trunk full of Beckett and Chekhov, and my heart brimming with ideas would suddenly be at sea in a big city. As prepared as I am, there is one crucial thing I am missing: a mentor.

WHY I MADE THAT CHOICE

It is Times Square at rush hour when you’re birthed into a city post-college. I get lucky.

Martha Lavey tucks me under her wing, models extraordinary leadership, and recognizes me when I do not know myself. Martha passed away last year. The 23 years I spent with her, subject to both her criticism and her championing, have been the single greatest influence in my life. When I needed feedback, she showed up.

When I needed a confidence boost to apply for a job, she practically dared me to do it. When I needed to end my marriage, she was the person I called, who listened without judgment, who asked all the right questions. She taught me not to end my sentences with question marks, to stand up straight, to carry my female-ness with pride, to bravely lead with my intellect, to say “fuck ’em” to those deserving of it. She shared with me herself, a woman and leader who also had doubts and fears, who was still working on herself, who had big dreams. She handed me a megaphone with which to speak.

I am passionate about my work as a director. I am even more passionate about the longevity of our field, our ability to tell stories that reflect the ever-changing world around us. I fear my work is not enough. Why is it important? I challenge myself to examine what it is I am actually doing and have the stunning realization that so much of my work is about citizenship and community.

About bringing new voices to old ears. About creating space for all different kinds of stories to be told, for all different kinds of people to tell their stories.

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BY KIMBERLY

SENIOR

Which is why mentorship runs directly parallel to what I am expressing on stages. I view mentorship not as a kindness but as a responsibility. If we are to continue to make work, to tell stories, or even survive, we need to raise up this next generation. How do we do this? Mentorship has three essential pillars: bearing witness, opening doors, and standing up. Bearing witness—the simple act of listening and seeing. Shining a light and holding the mirror up. Seeing the potential and the possibility. Holding someone else’s burden, freeing up their hands for the doing.

Also holding open doors. Doors can be heavy and unwieldy. Some doors are closed due to impossible entry fees; some are closed by gender barriers, racial prejudices. Some are so tightly shut by an older generation so afraid of what these brilliant young people have to say.

We must kick these doors down.

And standing up. On days where it feels like too much work, where I work twice as hard for half as much, where I feel like making art, raising kids, earning a living, being a friend, daughter, sister, parent, athlete, artist, teacher, director is just too much. Days where I want to lie down, pull the covers over my head, and wait for the storm to pass…I stand back up. I stand up because they are all watching. I stand up for the women I mentor, who are rising and growing and standing themselves: for Marti Lyons. For Keira Fromm. For Kate Bergstrom, Ashley Teague, Addie Gorlin, and so many others. I stand up for my kids, Noah and Delaney. They make me stronger and better and braver. And they see me standing. And they are stronger and better and braver for it.

Mentoring has given my work a greater sense of purpose. Many days, I feel like I get more than I give. And more importantly, I believe that this work ensures our future.

I can hold the megaphone, but we will only continue to tell stories if we pass the megaphone on and cheer from the crowd. This is why I choose to be a mentor.

KIMBERLY SENIOR is a freelance director and the director of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Disgraced, by Ayad Akhtar. Most recently, Kimberly made her HBO debut with Chris Gethard: Career Suicide, which premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival. Kimberly was awarded the 2016 TCG Alan Schneider Award.

She is the recipient of the 2016 Special NonEquity Jeff Award for her work as a trailblazer, champion, and role model for emerging artists and the 2018 Primary Stages Einhorn Award.

New York Credits: Disgraced (Broadway); Chris Gethard: Career Suicide (Judd Apatow); The Niceties (Manhattan Theatre Club); Sakina’s Restaurant (Audible); The Who and the What; Disgraced (LCT3); Discord (Primary Stages); Engagements (Second Stage Uptown). Regional Credits: The Niceties (Huntington); Sheltered (Alliance Theatre); Support Group for Men; Disgraced; Rapture, Blister, Burn (Goodman Theatre); Buried Child; The Scene; Marjorie Prime; Diary of Anne Frank; Hedda Gabler; The Letters (Writers Theatre); Other Than Honorable (Geva); Sex with Strangers (The Geffen Playhouse); Disgraced (Mark Taper Forum, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre); The Who and the What (La Jolla Playhouse); Little Gem (City Theatre); Want; The North Plan (Steppenwolf); among others.

What I love about theatre is...the transformative and provocative power to change both artist and audience through the simplicity of storytelling and feeding our soul, heart, and mind equally.

PRE-SHOW / POST-SHOW WITH

KATHLEEN M. McGEEVER

NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY

I became a director because…I began performing at a young age as a way to stand out from my siblings. My parents wanted to enrich our public education, so they found community programs, but funding allowed us to pick one art form only. My brothers chose music, my sister chose drawing, and I chose theatre.

From that point on, I wanted to perform, and I did, including a brief career in LA. However, something happened in my undergraduate education that I couldn’t forget. My directing professor, Dr. Amble, pulled me aside and said in his thick Norwegian accent, “You should be a director, you have a lot to say.” His words nagged at me, and despite directing opportunities coming my way, it took a while to listen to my heart. I remember thinking, as a storyteller, the director has a larger box of crayons and I like more crayons. Silly, but I actually use the crayon metaphor with my directing students. I bring to class a 96-piece and a 5-piece box of crayons and ask them which tool they would rather use.

To me, directing has more crayons in the box with which to tell the story, and the myriad of choices appeals to me.

Someone who was instrumental in my artistic development was…my graduate advisor, Dr. Robert Everding. Bob opened up the limitless possibilities in telling and retelling stories, pushing me to take risks and to embrace choices fully.

I started teaching in the academy because…I am an artist and an educator. I began my teaching and directing career in secondary school classrooms. Teaching theatre at that level was a lot more than art and craft; it was about growing up and figuring out who you were, and theatre was the ideal place for these young people to grow. I went on to graduate school for directing, but I never wanted to lose the power of theatre in teaching, so the academy was home. As a directing artist, the academy allows for experimentation and freedom that often the profession cannot afford, and this feeds me as an artist/educator.

Some of the plays/musicals I would like to direct are…Nottage’s Sweat, Loomer’s Roe, Hudes’ The Happiest Song Plays Last, Friel’s Translations, Keane’s Big Maggie, and, some day, Howe’s Chasing Manet. My favorites are all over the map, but they are all great stories, beautifully written, that provoke my mind, heart, and soul.

I balance my work and creative life by… gardening in my beautiful yard and spending time with my wonderful husband and two cats.

I love planting flowers and herbs, giving them a little water, and watching them grow. To me, time in my garden is meditation. Now, if the deer would just stop eating my flowers!

The work I am most proud of is…my 2014 production of Jeffrey Hatcher’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dark Romanticism was my inspiration; depicting demons and enigmatic landscapes, the artists reflected man’s inevitable fate. Fuseli’s The Nightmare was the particular piece that lured me into an uninviting world with unnerving human conditions by portraying the simultaneity of the body asleep and the nightmare within. This struck me as what Stevenson was exploring with his gothic novella and what Hatcher exploded in his play. The team fully embraced my inspiration, landing on the same page from start to finish.

Nothing was hidden from the audience; simultaneity was embraced with actor physicality in staging, supporting Hatcher’s theatrical convention of character doubling. We captured the transformative power of theatre.

A performance I wish I could see again… is a production of Beckett’s Endgame that I saw in County Kerry, Ireland. The 1978 production was the pivotal moment when I knew that I had chosen my life’s work. After a long walk along a deserted road, I stumbled into the horsestall-turned-theatre and settled into one of the nine audience seats set up in the makeshift house. As the play began, the sun set and the stars became visible through the slats in the walls, the story echoed in my mind, and I was transported. Though I cannot recall specific details, I remember the feeling of being moved to my core, and I haven’t stopped thinking about Beckett’s play for 40 years. That is certainly good storytelling!

KATHLEEN M. McGEEVER has worked professionally as director, actor, educator, administrator, and dramaturg. During the span of her 37-year career, she has directed over 50 plays. Some of her directing credits include Private Lives, The Art of Dining, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Dancing at Lughnasa, The Servant of Two Masters, Pride and Prejudice, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Water by the Spoonful, and The School for Lies. Ms. McGeever is an Associate Member of SDC and has served as Chair of the Northern Arizona University Department of Theatre since 2007.

I think it is important for the American theatre to…cast a wider net to capture stories told in different ways. We need to nurture stories that might be buried and let them be heard in larger forums than staged readings and limited runs.

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20 QUESTIONS THOMAS HESCOTT ON SDUK Stage Directors UK (SDUK) was founded in 2014 in England to focus on negotiating power and resource building in the directorial community, based in part on the model of SDC. Founding member Thomas Hescott is SDUK’s first Executive Director, balancing the challenges of building the organization and advocating for its positions with his own busy directing career. SDC Journal spoke with Tom to learn more about this rapidly growing organization.

What three words best describe the mission of SDUK? Can I have four words? Since day one, our mantra at SDUK has been “by directors, for directors”—and I’ve started adding “with directors” to that!

SDUK is about collective action—directors getting up and doing it for themselves, looking out for each other, sharing knowledge and resources, negotiating together. We’ve stopped expecting others to do it for us; we’re doing it for ourselves.

How did SDUK come about?

No one in the UK was really looking after theatre directors. Officially, Equity UK was meant to represent us, but by their own admission they hadn’t been great at looking after us. Equity UK is a vast union with many different needs from its members, and directors had gotten lost. At the same time (and probably because of this), directors had become apathetic toward Equity.

It was a stalemate. At a point in his life when many others would rather have been spending time with the grandkids or taking long holidays, a great man called Piers Haggard dedicated his time to bringing us all together, getting us talking, getting us angry, and galvanizing us into an organization.

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What kind of artists make up SDUK, and where are they working?

Anyone working as a director in the UK. We keep the definition of director very broad, and it encompasses people working on projects with communities, or with youth organizations, and people who might identify with the term “theatremaker” more than director. I think it’s best to keep the term director quite broad as we’ve seen enormous shifts in how theatre is created, and that inevitably affects how we contract artists. If we keep the term director open, then we’re more likely to be ahead of managements when current fringe ideas become mainstream.

We also have a student membership, and there is a whole array of assistant and associate directors on our books. One of the joys of having been there at the beginning of SDUK is that I’ve seen how our membership has developed over time.

A whole range of directors who were considered “emerging directors” four years ago are now running major UK theatres or creating work for some of our flagship companies. I’m always keen to make sure we look after our emerging artists—they’re often the most vulnerable, the ones most lacking a voice, and most in need of us, and if we get it right, then they stick around long enough to help the generation coming up behind them.

Directors are often the only one from their discipline in a rehearsal hall. What have you seen happen as you begin to put directors into a room together on a regular basis?

The great thing about coming together through SDUK is that we stop seeing other directors as the competition and start seeing them as our support.

What do you imagine the long-term effects of consistently gathering directors might be?

Keeping us separate, keeping us afraid and distrustful of each other weakens us. Having a network of directors strengthens us—we talk, we share information, we look for help and support.

Lots of that is contractual, but we also have what one board member describes as “the bat phone,” when members phone us up in emotional crisis. It may be a small problem (a tricky actor or a disagreement in rehearsals), or it may be something very big, especially around #MeToo revelations. Four years ago, there wasn’t a bat phone to call; now there is.

Change comes when people feel safe speaking collectively. Separation allows abuse of power and corruption to go undetected. We speak collectively to change the industry for the better, whether that be contracts, diversity, or abuse of power. We can change these things, but only if we work together.

Let’s talk about money. What does it take to make a living as a theatre director in the UK? Being a director in the UK and earning anything like a decent living has become almost impossible. When we launched, we carried out a survey of directors’ earnings and concluded that the average income for a UK theatre director was £10,000. To try and put that into some context, I just did a search to find the salary of a McDonald’s crew member, and even the lowestearning full-time member of a McDonald’s team would earn more than £10,000 in a year.

Even a fairly successful theatre director working full time in the subsidized sector (in regional venues or theatres like the Donmar or Royal Court) would struggle to earn between £20,000 and £30,000. So most theatre directors make money from doing other things: some teach, many work in TV and come back to theatre when there’s a project they really can’t say no to, and emerging directors spend their lives in call centers and waiting tables.

A joint Equity/SDUK meeting with Lisa Blair, Malcom Sinclair, Thomas Hescott, and Jeremy Herrin

Can you point to a couple of specific professional development and mentorship programs SDUK is leading that are having an impact?

We have always run a great series of masterclasses, breakfast meet-ups, and open discussions, and it’s one of the things our members enjoy about SDUK. As we try to represent the whole of the UK more thoroughly, we’ve started to create a hub system with deputies based across the UK. This means that more and more, our events are happening all over, not just in London.

Probably the program I am most proud of is our mentoring scheme. This is fairly unique, as it is not aimed at emerging directors only but is something that directors at any level can access. The last time we rolled it out, we aimed it squarely at mid-career directors, who are often overlooked in professional development programs. The mentoring program allows for directors to explore very bespoke ideas, so it’s not one size fits all. They come with a question they want to investigate, and we pair them with a director who has experience in that area.

Questions range from “How do I move from studio spaces to mainstage work?” to “I’m a new parent—how do I keep directing?” We’ve just found out we have funding from the Directors Charitable Foundation, the Noel Coward Foundation, and the Garrick Club Charitable Trust to roll out the scheme again later this year, and I can’t wait to see what questions directors bring to us.

theatremakers. I don’t think this is properly reflected in our contracts yet. It’s a very thorny issue and one I know our friends at the Writers Guild feel very nervous of, but it’s clear to me that we need a range of agreements that better reflect the range of ways theatre now comes into existence.

Does SDUK have any political intersections with local or national government?

We were invited to attend an investigation the Labour Party ran into working-class representation in the arts and media. We provided written evidence and attended some of the hearings.

Running a building or a company can provide you a decent wage for a while, but of course, those jobs aren’t easy to come by, and many directors don’t want to take on the administrative and management roles that come with running a company.

Those making it work do so with tenacity and ingenuity. We’ve found ways to make it work. But what troubles me most is that if we don’t pay directors properly, we’ll end up with a very small pool of rich kids calling themselves directors.

Theatre needs diverse stories and diverse communities. There’s an awful lot of talk about diversity in theatre in the UK, but if we don’t find a way of paying people properly, I don’t think we’re going to see any real change.

What steps is SDUK taking to improve wages?

Our fees report started to change things, and we did a huge amount of lobbying. More recently, we’ve started working with Equity and are involved in the current negotiations of our contracts.

As those negotiations are ongoing, I can’t say much about them, except that Equity, SDUK, Society of London Theatre (SOLT), and UK Theatre are all (currently) talking, and all understand the financial challenges directors face. I really hope that this dialogue continues, but it’s early in the talks, so anything could happen. What I do know is that SDUK is now very strong, and we’ll be galvanizing our member support to get the best deal in those contracts that we can. Our claim is ambitious but mature and fair. It’s a mark of how far we’ve come that we’re being taken seriously around the negotiating table.

What are some other contractual concerns or working conditions SDUK is looking to improve for its members?

Directors often conceive and create work from the very beginning, alongside writers and other

Thomas Hescott

Can you talk a little about the UK theatre community’s work on diversity and inclusion specifically as it applies to directors?

Directors, especially artistic directors, are the gatekeepers. I’d argue that if you want to see diverse seasons of work on stage, you need to diversify your artistic directors—something that is slowly starting to happen. Everything we’re doing at SDUK—from better fees and contracts to better training and education—is about creating a fairer, more transparent, and ultimately more diverse group of directors.

2019 is right around the corner. What’s going to be SDUK’s focus?

We’re currently putting together a “best practice booklet,” as 2018 is the year of best practice for SDUK. We also have much more work to do with writers and how we collaborate with them.

Much of 2019 will depend on how successful our collaboration with Equity to renegotiate our contracts has been.

To what degree has the SDC model been of value to SDUK? SDC has been hugely influential to us, and a great support. As you can imagine, many of our members were already Members of SDC because FALL 2018/WINTER 2019 | SDC JOURNAL

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of their US work. We inevitably turned to you very early on for support and advice, and SDC has been a great pool of knowledge and able to refer to past challenges and achievements, especially from the early days of its existence. We often find ourselves referring to advice from SDC in board meetings and at a management level.

The structure of unions and trade organizations in the UK and the US is very different, as are employment laws. When it comes to unions, the US currently has a much stronger, more robust system (don’t take it for granted!). There are things SDC can do that we simply can’t in the UK, and so our structures won’t always totally align. That said, within our negotiations with managements we often refer to SDC to see how our deals align with yours—not just in terms of fees, but also in terms of best practice.

What has been SDUK’s greatest triumph thus far?

The fact that only a few years after we formed we’re already a key part of negotiations of directors’ contracts with Equity UK. What is the gnarliest obstacle facing SDUK? The world is moving toward a gig/shared economy, and the arts are years ahead of the likes of Uber. We’ve been working off a gig economy for decades now. On the one hand, organizations such as SDUK are trying to fight that economy, but on the other hand, we don’t want to be the ones fighting a losing battle, so how do we adapt to represent our members in this new economy? It’s one of the reasons I’m interested in IP [intellectual property]; I suspect ongoing participation in work we’ve created will

A 2017 SDUK meeting PHOTO Elyse Marks

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play a bigger part in our incomes than initial fees will do.

Let’s pretend a deus ex machina materialized tomorrow; what form would it take?

I’m very interested in universal basic income models, although Finland just ended its trial after two years, so maybe this utopia is not to be. Certainly, the idea of a basic income for all citizens would free a great many emerging artists up to create more work, which I believe would lead to a creative boom such as the world hasn’t seen since the Renaissance.

If SDUK were a person (because you know, here in the US, corporations are people), who would its role model be?

Well, for the first few years, it was very clearly a physical manifestation of our founder, Piers. It needed to be, as he was our driving force, and literally everything was created by him—every document, every word on our website—it was all Piers. I’ve spent some time unpacking that with our general manager, Liz Holmes. Not because we have anything against Piers, but because for SDUK to survive, it needs to be bigger than one person. I don’t want us to reflect one person; I want us to reflect every director in the UK. I don’t think I could see one role model for SDUK anymore. We’re all about a collective of directors—how could we have a role model in an individual?

Who are your role models?

Professionally, Marianne Elliott has been a big inspiration. I assisted her on a play at the Royal Court 18 years ago (long before she achieved

world domination with War Horse and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time).

Her impeccable prep for a play, alongside an openness and vulnerability in the rehearsal room, is something I’ve always tried to emulate.

I’ve noticed that directors sometimes seem to think they need to be commanding and strong to lead a production. I noticed with Marianne that being open and vulnerable gets much better results from actors. It might be my Quaker upbringing, but I find this way of working much more powerful than the cliché of the shouty director man you see in movies.

How has being the Executive Director of SDUK changed you?

It’s made me much more tired than I used to be, as I juggle a full-time career as a director and SDUK commitments!

But seriously, I think I’ve become kinder, more tolerant, and much more aware of the community around me. That’s a remarkably uncynical, un-British thing to say, but it happens to be true.

If you could have any playwright, living or dead, dramatize your life, who would it be?

I’m about to direct a new play by the great James Graham (whose play Ink opens on Broadway in 2019). James writes the greatest dialogue, and he also makes seemingly dry and unpromising subjects spring to life. So I’ll go with him.

STEP FORWARD

BY SAM PINKLETON I’m a gay white choreographer moving through the world with a huge amount of privilege, fortunate to continuously be in rooms that are asking big questions about diversity. But I often wonder what questions aren’t being asked. What does it actually mean to be a choreographer with privilege? If diversity in the Union is defined by who’s getting hired, what concrete actions can I take as a white person who is working all the time? How do I use the platform I’ve been given?

When do I take the job, and when do I have the sense to not take the job? Who can I bring into the room? How can I use my power to actively contribute to changing the way things are done?

Mayte: Black people and people of color are not just qualified to choreograph ethnic shows! They’d love a stab at comedies and sci-fi and fantasy!

nuance in diversity. Five people in the production with the same artistic background or very similar résumés is also not diversity.

Ari: I would love to see more co-choreography instead of just assisting. Sometimes a choreographer is nothing without their assistant, and the assistant does much of the job of the choreographer. Why not acknowledge that in the playbill and share that space and power? Create more opportunities and fight for someone you truly believe in.

Sunny: Beyoncé says, “It’s important to me that I help open doors for younger artists. There are so many cultural and societal barriers to entry that I like to do what I can to level the playing field, to present a different point of view for people who may feel like their voices don’t matter...If people in powerful positions continue to hire and cast only people who look like them, sound like them, come from the same neighborhoods they grew up in, they will never have a greater understanding of experiences different from their own. They will hire the same models, curate the same art, cast the same actors over and over again, and we will all lose.” If Bey can do it, so can we. Be like Bey.

Mayte: Often things “appear diverse” but are just lazy. “We’re doing a West Side Story, you look Puerto Rican, that’s good enough.” “We’re doing a show that requires West African movement...you don’t have any history of West African movement, but you’re black, so I’m sure you can choreograph it.” Lazy.

So when tasked with answering some of these questions, I did the same thing I do when making work or assembling a team: I turned to some of the brilliant women of color I work with (all former associates who are blowing the world up) and asked them what they thought. Here’s what I got: Mayte Natalio, choreographer for The Winter’s Tale at Dallas Theater Center:

SAM PINKLETON

SUNNY HITT

MAYTE NATALIO

ARI GROOVER

If a creative wants to diversify their team and doesn’t know choreographers of color personally, they should ask around, watch videos, go to shows, read up on them. Write them an email, start a dialogue. It might be more work but never more work than what artists of color need to do on a regular basis to just get close to a level playing field. If it is truly important, then the production should not move forward until the diversity goals are met.

Sunny Hitt, associate choreographer for Soft Power: LISTEN. The act of deep listening is a true skill that many people have yet to fully develop. ASK for our input. Seek it out. We are not used to being asked but told, and so this is a simple yet profound thing those in power can do to include us in the conversation: to place VALUE on our input. When I experience this from a colleague, I know they are not just a colleague but an ally; and I don’t know about you, but I only want to work with allies.

Ari Groover, currently appearing in Broadway’s Head Over Heels: Don’t be afraid to step aside at times. I want more white creatives to really take the time to listen when it comes to diversity and apply it in the room on the creative team and not just so you can fill your quota on the equal opportunity form.

We have real ideas and real stories that will help your storytelling.

Sunny: Nonwhite people can usually tell when they are being bullshitted. Don’t do that. It’s not cute or effective.

Ari: As a black woman in the Broadway world, breaking into the choreography scene is like pulling an impacted wisdom tooth. They love it when I dance, but when I have ideas to offer to a creative team, I normally get told “stick to what you know, kid.” I’ve been blessed to be a part of countless preproduction labs and workshops for shows that have ended up using my own choreography, but I am never the one teaching it.

They love my style, but I can’t show it.

Mayte: Diversifying is not just about aesthetics.

Yes, representation matters, but to have a production that is truly inclusive for all audiences, the people building it must have diverse and varied backgrounds to draw upon and infuse their work with. And to take it a step further, there is

I know we can’t all exactly be Beyoncé, but an active challenge I give myself today and every day is one of true listening, not just to Mayte, Ari, and Sunny—three artists who have profoundly shaped the work I’ve made in the past year— but also to the world and the audiences (not the ones we already have but the ones we wish to have). This challenge—which I hope anyone reading this will hold me accountable to in the future—is to not only try to advocate continuously for artists who look and experience the world differently than me in my rooms and others, but also to know when to decline an opportunity: to see when a choice that I make personally is in service of a larger goal we are all working toward together. And to know that diversity in the theatre isn’t only about race but about gender, physical ability, body types, creative backgrounds, and training styles, and the list goes on. There is always more to do (snaps for intersectionality!). As someone who has babysat their way through previews for their own Broadway show, I know that making enough money to make ends meet is a never-ending struggle for all but an extremely privileged few directors and choreographers. But I have to ask the question: how can I prioritize my ethical code and the greater progress of our culture over the need to get a gig?

So when that offer for Dreamgirls (my favorite musical) comes in, or a show that might seem perfect for me but already has a full all-white or all-male creative team assembled, I have to ask myself, “Do I want to do this?” Or, more pointedly, “Do I want to make further contributions to The Problem?” Nope. But I CAN tell you 20 people who SHOULD do it (or 100—there are spreadsheets! I can email them to you!). Also, shouting about artists with different perspectives is honestly more rich and more fun than doing the old showbiz tap dance and trying to just convince people how great I am.

Fellow choreographers, please don’t pass this work off to the directors and the producers.

Listen to these women. We are implicit. We have power. “They’re just not out there” sucks. We can do better.

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BY STEPHANIE

COEN

T

hroughout her career, Rachel Chavkin’s masterful touch has underscored a joyfully wide-ranging body of work, from the sublime stillness of Small Mouth Sounds to the exuberant electropop opera Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, to cite only two recent examples. One constant in her career, however, is her relationship to the Edinburgh Festival. She launched her professional life with her company, the TEAM, at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2005; over the past 13 years, she has collaboratively devised and directed (both with the TEAM and as an individual artist) more than 20 pieces that explore big ideas with bold theatricality. On the eve of bringing her latest show, Status, to the Festival, she spoke with Stephanie Coen about what Edinburgh has meant to her.

Singularly Built for a Cinderella Story RACHEL CHAVKIN ON BEING AT—AND IN—THE EDINBURGH FESTIVAL FRINGE 14

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BY STEPHANIE

COEN

STEPHANIE | I understand that the TEAM, which you co-founded in 2004 with a group of five other NYU alumni, came together as a company because you wanted to bring work to the Edinburgh Festival. What was your own introduction to the Fringe?

RACHEL | I hadn’t known about the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. A colleague of mine, a playwright with whom I was working on a show, introduced me to it—she’d worked in Ireland and the UK, so she knew about it. Edinburgh is like an institution over there; it’s a rite of passage.

I had been selfGive Up! Start Over!, producing work directed by downtown since Rachel Chavkin graduating in PHOTO The TEAM 2002, but I think my biggest budget prior to that was $6,000, and I’d certainly never toured before.

The Edinburgh Fringe does a road show called “How to Bring a Show to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe,” where they do seminars for people who are interested.

I attended one of those and it sounded fun, and they talked about the fact that there’s a

commitment on the part of the press to review everything that happens there. And at 24, for some reason, I decided that the thing that I really needed was a review.

I talk to a lot of artists who say they want a company, and to emerging ensembles, and I always say, don’t start by forming a company— that isn’t a goal in and of itself. Do the work, and if it is going well, then the company will form.

To that end, I’d say we named ourselves “The TEAM” because we needed something to put in the brochure, but we actually became an ensemble after we won the Fringe First and got our first touring opportunities and commissions, and received an invitation to return to the festival the following year from the Traverse Theatre, which is basically the most prestigious venue at the Fringe, because it produces year-round and has much more support.

STEPHANIE | For those folks who don’t know the festival, would you describe what the experience is like coming for the first time?

RACHEL | It’s madness, kind of like a monthlong party. It’s spread out all over the city, so Edinburgh I think literally doubles in size over the course of the festival; maybe it’s more than that now, actually. There’s art happening from 8:00 or 9:00 a.m. until the wee hours of the morning. I believe there are between 3,000 and 4,000 shows happening, ranging from stand-up comedy to large shows like The Lady Boys of Bangkok that I think have been performing there for 20 years. Seeing six shows in a single day is a classic Fringe experience. And what’s so beautiful about the festival is you can happen upon a jewel that is being performed in a closet.

What is really important to understanding the Fringe is that it does not curate—each individual venue does, but some are just straight-up rentals, and fundamentally anyone can go.

STEPHANIE | Is that part of the founding philosophy in Edinburgh?

RACHEL | The Edinburgh International Festival was created almost immediately after World War II to bring the world, with a defined focus on Europe, together through art. The history of it is quite stunning. Then the Fringe popped up almost immediately as the counterculture to the main festival. The Fringe has grown ever since, and it’s now the largest festival in the world.

STEPHANIE | What advice would you give artists going to the Fringe for the first time to help them be agile when they are there? What’s your version of the guide to the Fringe that you got all those years ago?

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RACHEL | The guide is still out there; go to the Edinburgh Fringe website. That’s the number one advice I give to people: go to edfringe.com.

A PDF version of “How to Bring a Show to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe” is on that website, and it’s an amazing resource. Follow it. The Fringe is very helpful, and they want you to have a good time at it.

Beyond that, I personally try to avoid giving advice because I think it can be presumptuous that your experience of the world is anything like mine, and equally because earned experience is so much more valuable than gifted experience.

So I don’t know. I would suggest going if you can; actually just go and experience it. I know a lot of people have had really punishing experiences at the Fringe. It can be really expensive, it can be exhausting. In our first year, up until we won the Fringe First, we were performing to two audience members and actually canceled a performance because no one came. But the Fringe is also quite singularly built for a Cinderella story. There’s a lot of goodwill there and a hunger on the part of producers and critics and audiences to discover something new.

STEPHANIE | The TEAM eventually won The Scotsman Fringe First Award four times, as well as the 2011 Edinburgh International Festival Fringe Prize and numerous other awards. But how did you get the Fringe First performing for only two people?

RACHEL | Totally randomly. A young reviewer for The Scotsman, which gives the Fringe First, was a huge fan of American history. Our show was called Give Up! Start Over! (In the darkest of times, I look to Richard Nixon for hope), and he liked the title, so he put it on his itinerary.

I think for our first or second performance, he was one of two people in the audience, and the other guy was sleeping. He was the first reviewer I’d ever had come to see work I’d helped write as well as direct, and I think I bounded down to him and said, “Just curious, what paper are you from?” And he was surprised, and said, “The Scotsman.” I thought, “I think that’s a big paper.”

Then, two days later, I opened The Scotsman, and we’d gotten a four-star review, and there was a big picture of Jessica Almasy, the actress and co-author. If you get a four-star review, that automatically puts you into consideration for the Fringe First Committee to come see your work.

And they came, and that is how it happened.

And I’m now very close with that guy, the original reviewer.

STEPHANIE | Can you talk a bit about how your work has changed over the years that you’ve been going to Edinburgh? Is your method of creating work fairly consistent over that time?

Or can you point to going to Edinburgh as something that’s influenced your process?

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RACHEL | My process has definitely entirely changed over that time, but also I’ve gone from being 24 when I was first making a show for Edinburgh to being almost 38. But what going to the festival did, first and foremost, is expose me to a critical mass of work and practices from Europe and around the world—non-languagebased, non-spoken-word storytelling. Work that

by American standards is more “experimental.”

And it’s huge to see your work in the context of so much other work happening versus you come to the precious, single event, and then that’s it and there’s no conversation you receive back into your world. That level of exchange between the art object and the life in the bar afterwards is profound.

“It’s huge to see your work in the context of so much other work happening.”

I met all these international colleagues. To go to BAM and see Pina Bausch’s work is very different than to go and see peers of mine working now, generations younger than Bausch or so many other Next Wave artists.

Anything That Gives Off Light, directed by Rachel Chavkin PHOTO Eoin Carey

I’ve also learned a lot about how much development a show needs, and how many drafts a production needs before it’s “done.” Our first couple of years, we premiered a show in Edinburgh, and then we radically rewrote 80 percent of that show before the London or New York premiere or tour, even after it had gone well. You know?

I learned about previews, and previews are a wonderful thing.

STEPHANIE | What did you get at Edinburgh that you weren’t getting from doing work here in the United States?

RACHEL | I think funding is a big thing. Access to culture is regarded very differently in…I’ll just say the UK and Europe, since that’s my main experience, than it is in America. It’s very clear in that a play is affordable over there, and generally it’s not here. Almost every theatre offers concession price tickets, and I remember being so struck my first year that the Traverse had a ticket price for if you were on welfare. So live performance is just a part of daily life, in the way that maybe going to see a movie is here, because you can afford the tickets. That’s huge.

Cross-cultural conversation is at the root of the Edinburgh Festival. And because the TEAM is so interested in conversation about the themes we’re engaging with, we began almost immediately, our very first year, thanking the audience for coming during bows, and then inviting them to join us in the bar. And every venue has a bar—unlike America, where there’s often no place for conversation or for ongoing culture around the work itself. In Edinburgh, everyone’s at a bar or a café afterwards, so you’re just constantly swirling.

STEPHANIE | Is it correct that the last couple of pieces you’ve developed have come out of conversations with people, literally, at the bar?

RACHEL | Anything That Gives Off Light, the show that the TEAM most recently brought to Edinburgh, totally came out of bar conversations.

Rachel Chavkin rehearses for Anything That Gives Off Light

Architecting, directed by Rachel Chavkin PHOTO Eamonn McGoldrick

[The TEAM website describes the show, which premiered at Edinburgh in 2016, as: “Anything That Gives Off Light follows the story of a Scottish man who, after years of living in London, catches the sleeper train north to the heart of Scotland for a homecoming he’s been putting off for years. In a pub, an American woman drinks alone, trying to remember who she is while forgetting where she came from. When their paths collide they set off on a tour of the Highlands, slipping through the cracks between present and past, waking and dreaming, the real

and the imagined. But as they shed the layers of their national identities, the ghosts of dead philosophers, crofters, cowboys, myth-makers, and soothsayers get ever closer.”]

This was a collaboration with the National Theatre of Scotland and our first time in the main program at the Edinburgh International

heard, which is—I guess it’s a joke: “What do you call an Irish person who migrates to America?

An Irish-American. What do you call a Mexican person who migrates to America? A MexicanAmerican. What do you call a Scottish person who migrates to America? An American.”

That actually then crazily aligned with this map we found based on the 2010 census. It

Rachel Chavkin

Rachel Chavkin with the cast of Particulary in the Heartland PHOTO The TEAM

Festival. My friend Lorne Campbell, who’s a wonderful Scottish artist working in England, began riffing on how various American movies would end if they were made in Scotland. Like, “If The Karate Kid was made in Scotland, it would end when Daniel-san breaks his leg.” And at that time, it was a conversation about Scottish “miserable-ism” versus American exceptionalism, and why those two habits evolved.

I can’t remember if it was Lorne or someone else, but someone told an anecdote that I hadn’t

color-coded the country by county, based on the dominant heritage cited by respondents in that county, and the one culture that we kept expecting but couldn’t find was Scottish. But there was a huge area, which was Appalachia, which designated their heritage as simply “American.” And that’s the center of the Ulster Scots community—the Scots-Irish community, meaning largely Scots who immigrated via

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Ireland, where they’d essentially served as avatars for the oppressive British government for a while before getting kind of screwed themselves. Mostly Presbyterians. There’s a big misunderstanding in this country, of course, where a lot of these people think of William Wallace and Braveheart as their heritage (which is a whole other story), but actually most Americans of Scottish ancestry would in fact have been on the side of the red coats. This is one of the central themes of that piece—the miscasting of oneself as the underdog when, actually, you’re the oppressor.

STEPHANIE | So much of your work deals with American identity. What is it like to do work that deals with American identity in an international setting?

And did anything surprise you?

Chris Thorpe + Rachel Chavkin PHOTO James Ratchford

STEPHANIE | You started taking work to Edinburgh during the Bush administration; we’re now in the Trump administration. What has it been like for you to do work over the course of recent American political history?

Mission Drift, directed by Rachel Chavkin PHOTO Ves Pitts

RACHEL | America plays an outsized force in the world because of our economy and military history and export of popular culture. Due to both geography and an extensive, interlocked history, there’s much more interconnectedness in Europe; it’s way less inward-looking, and global politics are so much more present in the media there, so far as I’ve experienced it. World events often feel barely covered in America.

And so I think due to this outsized role we play, and how much we can and have really impacted the lives of people across the globe (for better and also very much for worse), there is a hunger in places like Edinburgh for critical examinations of what our country is doing. To that end, the TEAM’s work took off much faster abroad than it did in New York. It’s very different to examine your home from inside your home versus examining it from abroad. Our work has been much more critically celebrated abroad and

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mean to imply that one is less or more valuable than the other. It’s certainly always been a nice experience to see the work celebrated abroad, but also there’s something that feels equally healthy about the level of skepticism with which we’ve been met at home. That tension is not a bad thing.

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RACHEL | I think about how angry we were when we were making our first shows under Bush. We made a really angry show called A Thousand Natural Shocks, which took the four young characters from Hamlet and put them in a Denmark that resembled modern America.

[A Thousand Natural Shocks was shortlisted for the Best New Writing Award, Edinburgh Fringe 2005.] The other show, Give Up! Start Over!, was basically about Richard Nixon as a reality television hero/victim. [This solo show won the 2005 Edinburgh Fringe First Award.] I’ve been thinking about that show a lot because there’s a line in it, a Nixon line, which is: “Isn’t it a hell of a thing, that the fate of a great nation can depend on camera angles?”

Then, in the middle, obviously, we had President Obama, but we also had the financial recession, and at the time of the collapse we were just beginning to make a show, a musical composed by the extraordinary Heather Christian, about American capitalism and Las Vegas. So there was quite a sense of “What the hell is going on over there?” from an international standpoint.

has met with much more ambivalence at home, both very positive and negative, and there’s probably a number of explanations for that, some more self-serving than others.

STEPHANIE | What’s that been like for you?

RACHEL | It’s kind of fascinating and also something to not get seduced by—how your cultural touchstones look to foreign eyes. I don’t

[That show, Mission Drift, won the Edinburgh International Festival Fringe Prize in 2011. The TEAM’s website describes it as “a pioneering journey across the USA in pursuit of the soul of American capitalism, created in the blazing heat of a Las Vegas June. Told through atomic blasts, lizard ballet, and original music that fuses Las Vegas glitz with Western ballads and Southern blues, it features two interweaving love stories. It tells the epic saga of an immortal teenage Dutch couple as they travel west from Amsterdam to New Amsterdam in 1624, all the way to modern-day financially devastated Las Vegas, and the intimate portrait of a cocktail waitress and a cowboy grappling with the 2008 recession and their crumbling American dreams.

Over it all reigns Miss Atomic, a seductive storyteller/singer inspired by the 1950s’ beauty

pageants celebrating the bombs tested in the Nevada desert. She is the symbol of creation and destruction, bankruptcy and bonanza, and this profoundly unique American city.”]

STEPHANIE | And there are questions, too, from an American standpoint.

RACHEL | Totally. I could have told you that America is dominant culturally across the globe, but the degree to which American iconography has infiltrated and sort of twisted and taken on this life in the UK and Europe is really fascinating.

But it’s sort of David Lynch—like you’re standing in your living room, but then you’re like, wait, is this my furniture or is this a copy of my furniture? So it’s sort of remarkable to talk about America with people who know a lot about America but know totally different versions of the same stories than you do.

response to fucking up. How, in early human days, a mistake equaled “the tiger is going to eat you now,” and now it might mean you sent an email to someone you shouldn’t have, but our brain chemistry can’t tell the difference. It was just beautiful.

Chris and I had already known each other, but we hung out a lot that summer, and Chris said he was interested in making a work about confirmation bias, a tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s existing beliefs, and the biology behind why that bias evolved in our brains. He was interested particularly in trying to spot his own confirmation bias—which is very hard to do—by having an ongoing conversation with someone who, for all intents and purposes, looked like him: a middle-aged, white, working-class British man, but whose politics were as far from Chris’s

it ultimately rejects the idea of being able to change someone’s mind, at least someone who’s that oppositional to you. One of the classic results of confirmation bias is the polarization effect, which is that the more facts you show to oppositional groups, the further it will drive them apart versus bringing them together.

The new show, Status, similarly starts from a place of looking at the political implications of a personal habit: the common feeling that saying “My eyes are brown” is the same as saying “I’m American.” Nationality can feel biological, but of course it’s not. One of the opening lines of Status is, “He wants to get out of his country, and he wants his country to get out of him.”

That said, Status is much less science-based than Confirmation. It’s a more spiritual story that involves Chris, a middle-aged, white British

Rachel Chavkin rehearses Anything That Gives Off Light

STEPHANIE | I wonder if you could talk a little bit about your 2014 show, Confirmation, and this year’s Status, which are two pieces that you developed separately from the TEAM. Those are two parts of a planned trilogy, is that correct?

as possible. And he ended up finding a guy who runs a fairly popular white supremacist website and having an ongoing Skype conversation with him for more than about a year and talking about how their politics evolved.

RACHEL | Chris Thorpe, who’s a Manchesterbased playwright and performance artist, is my collaborator on these shows. He’s an incredible writer, and I had loved a show that he made in 2011 with a poet, Hannah Jane Walker, called The Oh Fuck Moment. It was a stunning show, very intimately performed for a small audience that involved Hannah and Chris telling stories of mistakes, and then inviting the audience (who totally could choose not to share) to share their own stories of moments in which they’d said aloud or in their heads, “Oh fuck.” The mistakes ranged from the sublime to the grotesque. And over the course of the piece, they also talked about the evolutionary biology of the neural

I offhandedly once dubbed the trilogy “The Mutilation Trilogy” because in Confirmation, during one of the final sequences, Chris imagines trying to find common ground with this alternate version of himself and describes the fact that we’d have to carve out our eyes. The sequence opens with this kind of graceful description of popping your eyeballs out of your socket, and then trading them with the other self, and then putting in their eyes, going for a walk together and talking about what you see. That’s the climax of that show; it ends basically with him saying that in order for us to come together across that depth of a political divide, we’d actually have to mutilate ourselves. It’s pretty grim because

guy, taking a magical-realist road trip, first to America, then to Singapore, and then to some airport you don’t know where, and then finally back home, as he tries to leave his sense of nationality behind. The piece definitely evolved as a response to Brexit, although during the show Chris denies this. It’s a good joke.

STEPHANIE | And what will the third one be? Do you know yet?

RACHEL | No idea. I found out we were making a trilogy, I think, part of the way into the process for Confirmation. I think maybe it sounded good for a grant application. I dig it. We like the idea of evolving a body of work that is hyper-specific to this collaboration. I suspect the third piece will be quite different…I think that is important.

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Anne Kaufmann + Thomas Kail PHOTO Jeremy Daniel

LEARNING TO LISTEN TO YOURSELF Thomas Kail in Conversation with Anne Kauffman 20

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THOMAS KAIL directed the musicals Hamilton and In the Heights, as well as the plays Lombardi and Magic/Bird, on Broadway. Off-Broadway, his credits include Kings, Tiny Beautiful Things, Daphne’s Dive, Dry Powder, When I Come to Die, and Broke-ology. ANNE KAUFFMAN’s directing credits include the revival of Marvin’s Room on Broadway, and Belleville, Detroit, Maple and Vine, Marjorie Prime, Mary Jane, Hundred Days, and The Lucky Ones Off-Broadway. They met to talk in the SDC offices in June 2018; this is an edited and condensed version of that conversation.

ANNE | When did you first start doing theatre?

I had that experience at Wesleyan and then I went away to Dartmouth on an exchange program for two trimesters. And when I arrived at Dartmouth, I didn’t know anybody.

The day before my 21st birthday, August Wilson came and lectured in one of my classes. We had read Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, and he came and talked about it for an hour. I’d never heard anyone speak that cogently or clearly or powerfully about anything. I often had really great professors, but I never met the person who actually made the thing. I just sat there, and I felt all the hair on the back of my neck go up. It was like, “What is this?” Especially him. He was such a convincing orator that I just got really swept up and I thought, “My God, if you can write plays, and you can speak like that, you can do anything.”

THOMAS | I don’t think I was conscious of that then, because now I look back and I’ve done enough stuff to say, “All right, so my job is to be the audience until there is an audience.”

THOMAS | What I didn’t realize I was missing at that point was the conversation with the writer, which is everything. Billy Wilder talked about liking to co-write because then you can have someone you can pull on the other side of the rope. I was very clear about what I wanted to do when I was directing and that’s because no one was saying, “Or maybe you should try that.”

Natalie Woolams-Torres + Nia Vardalos in Tiny Beautiful Things at The Public Theater, directed by Thomas Kail PHOTO Joan Marcus

So I started to understand very quickly that my relationship to being inside an organism, which I had done as a young athlete and then ultimately transitioned to coaching, had prepared me for this, because directing and coaching have so many similarities. Once I got into the room, it was a really open environment where if you had an idea, you could share it.

THOMAS | Trust me, it was.

ANNE | Did you realize what you were doing before an audience came in? You know how it is when you’re directing and you’re just doing what you want to do. And then the first time an audience comes in, you’re like, “Holy shit.

What was I thinking?”

ANNE | When did you come to learn what a director does versus what a writer does?

I also liked this idea that you created something and then you just continued to create it. Right? As the director. You’re doing that with Tiny Beautiful Things. How different are the jobs?

I didn’t really know what ‘assisting’ meant.

I didn’t know what expressionism was.

I knew plays because I saw them every now and then. But I was not steeped in them. He said, “I’m going to do a very free version of it, where we’re going to improv and use some of the text as a sort of jumping-off point.” It was very collegiate and very Wesleyan.

ANNE | I love that you had to fuck up Hamletmachine, which is already super fucked up.

So I was seeking something that could make time disappear, and I found it there again.

Next year, back at Wesleyan, I directed what I’d written—because no one else wanted to direct it—and I understood it so instinctively that I felt I should go and try to do this.

“I believe that the best things are made from harmony. I learned early on that the cauldron/ crucible idea—that great art comes from a tense environment—was untrue.”

THOMAS | My junior year at Wesleyan, I had a friend, Anthony Veneziale, who asked me to come and assist him on this play that he was doing, which was Hamletmachine.

I got pulled into this rehearsal, and even earlier than that, I got pulled into this first audition. I had been protesting, “You don’t want me, this is not what I do. I’m an outsider.” He said, “Good, then you’ll have a point of view that’s different than mine.” We started auditioning people, and I realized that it was like the tryouts that I knew from playing sports. Once we got into the room, I realized that rehearsal and practice were the same thing.

Preproduction and preseason were the same thing.

with it.” I went back to my dorm room, I flipped open my computer at noon, and I started typing.

The next thing I knew, it was six o’clock. The only thing that had made time disappear for me in that way was when I was on the field playing sports. Or, more recently, when I was in rehearsal at Wesleyan—those times, I’d look up and say, “How is it midnight? We just started.”

I had this one burning question, which I was too nervous to ask in front of anybody. I found him outside after the class as he was lighting his cigarette or his pipe, just as snow started to fall in Hanover. It was just the two of us, and my heart was beating absolutely through my shirt, and I asked him, “Is the outhouse really an outhouse? Or perhaps it symbolizes…” I had, like, four paragraphs of junior year nonsense in my head. And he said, “Sometimes an outhouse is just an outhouse.” I was floored.

He walked off into the snow with a puff of smoke, and I thought, “I have to write a play. I have to take this feeling and try to do something

When I got to New York City, Estelle Parsons was a very early mentor of mine.

I met her through the The Actors Studio, a very random occurrence. She invited me out to breakfast one day in the summer of 2001. I drove into the city, and in the restaurant she said, “What does it mean to direct? What does that mean to you?” I gave an answer for about four minutes. She responded, “Okay, so you don’t know. But I think maybe if you watched other people do it, it could help you focus that and understand what it means.

Come and hang out at the Studio and watch other people do it.” Because I had no idea.

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in the same way. You, Anne, know how that can be complex. You also know that when you find some kind of harmony that makes it possible, and it’s humming, there’s nothing like that.

There’s nothing like the rehearsal room that’s just going, and the good ideas are coming from all over the place. Your job sometimes is to identify the idea or to edit it or to shape it or to supply it.

I hope my sensitivity to writers allows them to know that I never try to fix anything. I’m just trying to remind them of what they told me in the first two or three meetings, “That’s the thing you told me about. How do we get back to that?

What was that impulse? Why did you write it?”

ANNE | For me, it completely depends on the writer instead of where I’ve come in on it. But I will tell you, my collaboration with designers— that is my preproduction work because they’re the best dramaturgs, in my opinion. They’re the ones who are asking the practical questions, the questions that we’re not even really thinking about. They’re asking questions about it not as a piece of literature but as a piece of performance.

I don’t read the play a million times. If I get too attached to an idea before I get into rehearsal, I’m not actually watching what’s happening with the people I’ve gathered, with the temperature of the room, with this live thing that’s happening.

Hank Azaria, Claire Danes + John Krasinski in Dry Powder at The Public Theater, directed by Thomas Kail PHOTO Joan Marcus

That’s what I crave. That’s why most of the projects I’ve done have been new work. I want someone in there with me to sit in the dark and stare at it.

ANNE | I’ve come to realize over the years that it’s best when engaging with a new work to assume that it’s perfect. I think the perception is that we’re supposed to go in as a dramaturg because, let’s face it, dramaturgy is what directors also do, and tell the playwright what’s wrong with the play. In fact, it’s most useful to go in and say, “This thing is working,” and then work on it live in a rehearsal room. After all, it’s one thing to look at it on the page and a completely other thing to watch it on its feet, the way it’s actually meant to be seen.

THOMAS | Before you go into rehearsals—at the very beginning, on something new—what is your relationship to the work? How do you get from zero to the first day with the writer?

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I’m holding on to something and not seeing what’s right in front of me. So it’s a real balancing act for me trying to figure out sort of how much I know the piece and how much to let them open.

THOMAS | I have so many questions for you.

This is the kind of discourse that I wish our jobs allowed us to do more.

ANNE | Les Waters, Ken Rus Schmoll, and I were hanging out during 10 Out of 12, and we were having dinner at Anne Washburn’s place.

And I just turned to them and asked, “You guys, how do you give notes to your designers after a run? After everyone’s super tired, do you just go through all your notes? Or do you write them out? Do you let the production team go, or do you do all the notes and you’re there till three in the morning?”

THOMAS | Well, I found very early on from working on the production side of things, before I started directing, when I was on run crews and

stage managing, that when you say it and how you say it matters more than what you say. I just knew there was a point when no one’s receiving any more information. So I just told myself, I won’t be someone who keeps people late.

I tend to keep my production meetings very short and try to let people leave so they can go home, or walk outside and breathe some air and then start over the next day. I’m a big believer that when the day is done, the day is done. It’s diminishing returns.

But there are times when I’ll be watching a rehearsal and might have an idea, but my job

Phillipa Soo, Renée Elise Goldsberry + Jasmine Cephas Jones in Hamilton, directed by Thomas Kail PHOTO Joan Marcus

is to keep it in and then, often, I’ll be surprised when I realize it just worked itself out and I was completely wrong. I’m also very comfortable saying, “I don’t know, let’s figure it out tomorrow.” and creating an environment where it’s okay for me to say that because it’s also okay for them to feel it.

ANNE | I also try to respect people’s time. I feel there’s an interesting sense of time that we must understand, because we have such little time to do anything. You have to keep thinking about time as being expansive, that you actually do have enough time to do all of it. You don’t have to cram this down someone’s throat right now.

THOMAS | There’s a quote that I remember hearing about when Fiddler was out of town in Detroit, and Jerome Robbins was at the bar. It was in real trouble out of town. Austin Pendleton was playing Motel, and he said— apocryphally, I’m sure—to Robbins, “What are we going to do?” And Robbins said, “Ten things a day.” That resonated with me. Chip away at it.

The challenge is to keep moving it forward. And don’t go sideways. Don’t go backwards.

have time on that side. So let’s just go like heck and see what happens.”

ANNE | I always tell my companies, “This is all great what we’re doing in the rehearsal room.

But once we get into previews, that’s when the work really begins.”

ANNE | You already started to distinguish between musicals and plays. Do you have a preference for one or the other?

THOMAS | I’ve found myself recently trying to take less time in the rehearsal studio to get more previews.

ANNE | It totally depends on the project, right?

I think some need much more preview time.

Sometimes we need to know right away how

THOMAS | The Venn diagram overlaps so much with them. But there are some opposing muscle groups that get worked in different ways. Now, this is not a perfect analogy, but if this were track and field, a play is like a 10K race and a musical is like a marathon. A play, even from when you first get asked to do it, it’s going to probably be a couple of years or a year and a half of work.

“I realized that I needed to identify myself as a director fully.

And to do that, I had to say it myself: ‘I’m a director.’”

Quiara Alegría Hudes, Thomas Kail, Lin-Manuel Miranda + Paulette Haupt at a table read of In the Heights at the O’Neill Center PHOTO A. Vincent Scarano

the audience is interacting. I completely agree with that. It would be really nice to be able to decide based on a project what we get more of: rehearsals or previews.

THOMAS | I often find if you go to a theatre—or your producer—and say, “I’d like to have more previews,” it’s a chance for them to make more income too.

ANNE | It’s hard the other way around.

THOMAS | I very rarely ask for more rehearsal time. I would rather have three more previews than those last three days in studio.

Especially when I’m doing a play. With a musical, I’ll say to the actors early on, “This is going to go a little faster than you think and you’re going to look up all of a sudden and be like, ‘What do you mean? We’re already heading into the theatre?’

And those first couple days in the theatre are going to be scary because you look down and realize how high up we are, but we’re going to

Something like that. With a musical, you can say this is day one, and it could be six years all of a sudden. So it’s just something that I try to be conscious of: because each project deserves the right amount of energy and attention.

Basically, the way I think about directing— especially how you move between projects—is like running a kitchen. There’s some stuff that’s defrosting. There are some things that are further along, already in the oven. There’s something that’s already being stirred, and there’s something on the counter and you’re not quite sure what it is. And two of those things will go away: you didn’t know what to do with it or you burned it or it never happened. And, even if some fade away, it was worth it. I like the focus and efficiency it forces—when you have to balance your time and energy.

ANNE | It’s kind of a painful day when you realize you can’t do everything, right?

THOMAS | Yes. When did you realize that?

ANNE | Pretty early on. Probably in grad school, when I totally flopped. Did you assistant direct for anyone?

THOMAS | I AD’d at this theatre in New Jersey called the American Stage Company. I AD’d for a few of the directors, and then I assisted a couple of times after that. I liked it, and I was a pretty good assistant. But I had to try to figure out who I was. I got worried that I wouldn’t get a chance to find my voice because I was a pretty capable assistant. I was good at anticipation, though I had way too much energy—I must have been quite annoying. It was great to sit and listen and absorb. I loved that part of it. But because I started theatre later in life, I felt like I was behind.

I thought, “You’ve got to start making your own stuff. What’s your voice?”

ANNE | When I AD’d, because I AD’d a lot of people, too, I really loved it and it was really helpful. But I say this to my assistants all the time: “Don’t keep assisting me because, you know, you’ve seen what I can do.”

THOMAS | I got to the city in March 2001. I lucked into this situation at The Drama Bookshop.

Allen Hubby, who ran the bookshop, had seen a couple short plays that my pals from college and I had done and said, “I want to have a resident theatre company.” We walked down to that little basement on 40th Street in the summer of 2001.

And he said, “If you paint this black, it’ll be a black box theatre. Get some chairs and just make things in here.”

We jumped at the chance. We had a desk, we had a phone, we had a computer. We didn’t have enough bandwidth to keep the theatre busy 52 weeks a year. So it taught me how to produce.

We were coming up at this time where other people needed a place to work out—a theatrical gym. And we said, “Hey, can you take this week and this week because we don’t have anything.

But maybe you could do it.” It taught me how to support other people’s work. My job on one show might be to set up the chairs, and the other show might be to direct, and the other might be to stage manage. That became very much like my grad school. It was a crucial moment in time for me.

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to New York, and I had my first show at HERE. It was a 15-minute play, part of this anti-war festival, and I did this Lanford Wilson piece.

Fifteen minutes. At the time, I worked at NBC as a secretary, and my boss had a huge office, and he would take two-hour lunches. And I’d ask, “Hey, can I…is it okay if I use your office for rehearsal while you’re at lunch?” So my actors came in and, for two hours a day, while he was at lunch, we rehearsed. You have to see opportunity in every corner.

THOMAS | Exactly. When I was at American Stage Company, they were doing The Glass Menagerie on the main stage. I went to my boss and said, “Can I pick one weekend to do For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls on the same set?

If the audience wants to stay, they can stay. If they don’t, that’s no problem.” He graciously agreed. Then, one weekend, we made an announcement in the program, and 100 people

meetings with people that I knew from my day job as a personal assistant. And they would say, “Oh, why are you here?” And I was like, “This is the other thing I do. I’m also a director.”

Then I realized that I needed to identify myself as a director fully. And to do that, I had to say it myself: “I’m a director.” Now, this is perhaps completely my own issue, but I didn’t feel comfortable saying I was the director while I had this other job. But, until I said it, no one else was going to say it. So I told my boss, “I’ll find you someone to replace me. But I think I have to try fully to be a director.” This was in early 2005. I had been working on In the Heights since 2002, but at that point, we had no idea when there would be a production. But I needed to take that leap.

ANNE | Do you think being a producer helped you along the way?

ANNE | I recognize the fact that that’s what you are doing inside the rehearsal room, that you are producing as a director.

THOMAS | That’s right. Over the past couple years, I’ve had the great good fortune to become friends with Harold Prince. Hal started as a stage manager and produced, and then started directing. In my tiny way, I relate, though I certainly wasn’t producing Damn Yankees, West Side Story, and Pajama Game. I started as a stage manager. I had this micro experience of that.

I find that equips you once you get into the room as a director. Your job is to put yourself in a position where you’re having a conversation with every department head as if it was your personal responsibility. Because it is. My feeling is—and this is a generalization—it’s never their fault. I should have been there for them. No one ever designs a show that the director didn’t approve.

So when someone says they don’t like the design of the show, that’s not on the Lin-Manuel Miranda and designer. That’s company in In the Heights, on the director. directed by Thomas Kail These things are PHOTO Joan Marcus not happening in some sort of vacuum.

ANNE | How has your taste in material changed over time?

THOMAS | I would hope that it’s evolved in some way. But now that there are more dots on the graph, I can see that there’s a pattern. But I think I’m often telling the same kind of story.

stayed and watched our show. They’d just seen the Williams play. Every reference was so fresh.

And the director of Menagerie was like, “What is happening? You’re doing a parody of the play that I just did?” I said, “I’m so sorry. [pause] But did you think it was funny?”

I spent so much of my life sitting back and not putting myself out there early on—when I was in high school. And then, once I started doing theatre, I just felt like, “You’re late. You’re behind.”

So I would do it wherever.

ANNE | It’s helpful to hear. I feel sometimes it’s such a hard road.

THOMAS | I would do all these other jobs to support my theatre life. Then, when I had just turned 28, I realized that I was walking into

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THOMAS | Producing for me became very simple: what do I need to do to get from an idea to rehearsal? And then, once it was in rehearsal, I could be a director because I was producing all my early projects with my friends—I was doing both duties. So getting to rehearsal allowed me to just direct.

I think being a producer gave me an appreciation for how many people are needed to make anything. I was also informed by the other production jobs I had—being a stage manager, being on a run crew, or running a spotlight.

When I got into the room as a director, I knew the trickle-down from the things I would decide.

I knew that I could say yellow or 42, and we’ll do it tomorrow. And from that decision until the next morning, someone—or a group—had to make it happen. From my earlier experiences on production teams, I knew what it was like to try to implement someone else’s idea.

A lot of my work is about who we are when we’re here and what we leave behind, and changing roles within a small group or family or a small community. It’s something that I find myself drawn to.

I think what’s probably changed the most is I’ve been able to silence the noise around my instincts that prevent me from hearing it. So I think my gut has probably always been my gut, but I just didn’t know how to listen to it. Or I could get distracted, or it could get drowned out. Now I know that anytime I feel it in my stomach, if it’s a left or if it’s a right, if it’s yes or if it’s no, and I don’t listen—99 times out of 100, if I end up in trouble, it’s “Yeah, you didn’t listen to yourself.”

I trust my gut so much more. I feel like that’s probably the most significant change over the last 10 years. Once I got into my thirties, and

responsibility to do it in a certain way. That’s what emerged. It doesn’t matter if I’m doing a play with two people or a show with 35 people on stage—it has to be that. That doesn’t mean there aren’t moments of tension, but directors can control the temperature of the room in such a full way that it’s on us. I just try and take more and more responsibility. And I know how to distribute and delegate, but I also know that it’s on us. That’s okay. ‘On us’ is not an onus. Wow, look at that: Wordplay!

ANNE | It is interesting to think about shaking up your own process. Do you feel like you need or want to shake up your own way of doing things, or do you feel you have a method that works?

PHOTO Jeremy

Daniel

especially in these last five or six years, I want to try to do work that pushes me and is not in my wheelhouse.

ANNE | I completely agree. It’s such a relief, finally, to listen to yourself and let the noise go away. But how do you feel you were able to do that? For me, I think it was that I just had to do it a million times.

THOMAS | I agree. I think it’s about accumulating experience. Maybe, for me, it was as simple as that. You need to have enough time and experience behind you and then trust that.

ANNE | Was there something that you learned on a certain production that has changed the way that you worked?

THOMAS | I believe that the best things are made from harmony. I learned early on that the cauldron/crucible idea—that great art comes from a tense environment—was untrue. I don’t know how to work like that. And so I thought if I can make things of high quality, where people can come out of them whole, for the next show, when they tell you you’re crazy to expect something, or to have a certain standard, you look at them and can say, “But I just had it. I was just listened to. I was just respected.”

The amount of times someone has told me that an actor was difficult, but when I investigated more, I discovered, “Oh, you mean because someone insulted them or made them afraid or didn’t hear them? How do you think they’re going to react?”

I became very conscious at a certain point that if I had an opportunity to be in the front of the room and lead a group, then I have a

THOMAS | I think both things are true. I think I have a method that I find is effective and enjoyable. And yet I try to shake it up and should shake it up. I think about my rehearsals—they tend to have the same kind of cadence. One of the things I stopped doing a little while ago— maybe four, five, six years ago—is I stopped reading the play out loud on the first day. I just found, “Why don’t we do some work and then come back to exploring the text specifically?”

That came from working on shows that have a lot of music in them, where you actually can’t read on the first day—we haven’t learned the score yet. There’s nothing like being a director the first two days of musical: “I’m just going to go into this room and listen to these talented people sing some things.”

ANNE | That’s why I want to do musicals.

THOMAS | I thought, “Why do we just read through it?” I want the first day of school to allow us to get to know each other a little bit. So, sometime on the second day or the third day, we’ll all read through. And then I tend to like to get up on our feet pretty quickly.

Something that I value so much about what we do is that you can be surprised many times in a day. I love that our business allows us to make new friends at any stage of our lives. That happens all the time for us. We get to meet someone and say, “We should be friends.” That’s what comes out of it.

I do find that saying goodbye to shows is getting harder for me. I know I’m not in the company— I’m very clear that that is not my role, and that at the best, I’m like a cool uncle. So I know when to go home. I’m the first one to leave the party, all that stuff. But that’s hard. I’m so aware now that this group of people will be in this place for this finite amount of time. I think that my awareness of this has been much more elevated over these last few years.

ANNE | I find it painful to go back and watch my work during a run. I feel like I’m so close to my own work on it that it’s hard for me to watch it at all objectively. How often do you go back and look at Hamilton?

THOMAS | If I’m in town, I go back once a week or so. Mostly, just to be around. Often, being there is not about me watching and noting the show. I believe that being backstage and available for the hour before curtain matters equally on a show as me watching and noting.

It’s actually more about knocking on dressingroom doors. I’m constantly thinking about the fact they are there eight times a week.

I don’t know what it means for them—I hope it’s useful that I’m there. I do know what it means for me. It makes me feel connected to it.

ANNE | That’s how I feel.

THOMAS | There’s something about knowing that the show is happening that I find is a comfort. That I can look at my watch at a certain time and [think], “Oh, it’s that moment.” I think about the effort of the actor and the production team. The people that are making it together for every performance.

ANNE | With Hamilton, you’re now opening all these different companies all over. How do you manage the work in a way that maintains the show’s integrity but allows for variations?

THOMAS | Well, you know, it started very early with our original company, which was as extraordinary a group as you could ask for. About four or five months before people were going to start making decisions about whether they were going to stay or go, I said to the group, “You’ll never hear me use the word replace because I can’t and I won’t. I’m going to find somebody else who might play the role that you played.” If you gathered up all the people that have played, for example, Angelica or Eliza or Thomas Jefferson or Hamilton, the unifying factor has nothing to do with physicality—it has much more to do with essential qualities.

It was really important for us in those early cast changes and new companies to address this notion. That was something that [costume designer] Paul Tazewell and I talked about a lot with Lin-Manuel, Andy Blankenbuehler, and Alex Lacamoire. That was quite liberating for us.

One of the greatest joys of this show has been that I have been able to work and assemble this group of directors that are all working on the same show. We all have specific jobs that are different within, but there are six resident or associate directors who all go to work on Hamilton every day. That has been such an unexpected joy for me.

Patrick Vassel, who is now the supervising director, was with me as my associate for a couple of years while we were developing the show and, initially, he looked after the Broadway company. So he knew the show from the inside also. Then, when we mounted the Chicago company, we eventually hired a resident director who lives in Chicago—Jess McLeod.

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Hannah Ryan, who was out on the road, is now on Broadway, freeing up Patrick, who is flying around a lot. Taylor Holt is with another company, Zi Alikhan’s with another company, and Stephen Whitson is in London.

We share a common language, and each of them has spent significant time in our rehearsal process. I try my best to empower them all because they’re going to be out there living with the company. My relationship to each company will be quite different than theirs. So it shouldn’t

me to power it, then I failed. If I take away the scaffolding and the building can’t stand unless I’m there every night, then I failed the company.

I failed all of them. And so I try to make a thing that can exist without me. And I have this incredible resource now in these directors who can be there day in and day out and report back from the front. They’re essential parts of it.

ANNE | I think about what you’ve built with Hamilton—what I think of as a responsibility, given its particular kind of success. It is so

“Guess what I saw? Lin—or later, others from the cast—came out and tell this joke, or read this poem, or sing this song, or do this thing.”

It became a way for more people to have access to Hamilton, the same way our cast album gives you access. The same way the book by Jeremy McCarter gave you access—or the documentary.

These were things that allowed more people to participate and feel connected to the show because we were aware that, especially early on, it was playing only in one place and only 1,340 people a night could see it.

Now we go into cities and bring the show to more people. And it expands our education program, EduHam. I’ve seen EduHam in New York, and Denver and San Francisco and Chicago. You watch the courage of these students who stand in front of 2,000 of their peers and say, “This is a song I wrote about Phillis Wheatley,” “This is a rap that John Adams would have said to his wife, Abigail, if he had the chance.” They’re cultivating their own voice.

Gillian Jacobs + Eisa Davis in Kings at The Public Theater, directed by Thomas Kail PHOTO Joan Marcus

be me giving all the notes. It shouldn’t be me as the only interface. I really try to divide and conquer with them on things. They all have their own respective relationships with their companies. Nothing makes me happier than watching their own set of jokes that I don’t understand with the company. I say, “Oh, right.

They have their own language.” That’s exactly how it should be.

ANNE | That’s amazing, Tommy, that you’ve created a directing corps.

THOMAS | I find that exhilarating. I’ll get a performance report at the end of the night. I read it and think, “Wow, all that happened?”

No one is asking me, “What should I do?” They all know what to do. That means that we made it right. It’s like getting a satellite to space. I’m a booster rocket. At a certain point, I should fall away, and it will be in orbit. If it still needs

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meaningful for this country, for our art form, for where we are right now, where we were when it first started. It’s got such a wide reach. Can you just talk a little bit about how you approach that responsibility?

THOMAS | It’s really been at the core of what we all believed in since the show was at The Public Theater. And we have tremendous producers that support us—even our strange ideas. Like Ham4Ham. The Ham4Ham shows that what Lin was doing outside of the Richard Rodgers started in a very simple way. At our first preview on Broadway, we had about 500 people that gathered outside to play our ticket lottery.

I watched Lin out there that day talking to the crowd, and the people gathered were so excited that he was there. I knew we’d award 20 tickets from the lottery, so I thought 480 people are going home without seeing the show. But when Lin was out there, everyone there had a fun collective experience—it wasn’t about winning the lottery. Five hundred people are [saying],

In those moments, when some student forgets their words, forgets their lines, or can’t remember something, there’s this moment of quiet. I’ve seen this happen often.

Then, all of a sudden, from the audience, a group of 2,000 peers they’ve never met, just start cheering in support, “I got you. We’re here.” It’s empathy. It is an intensely moving example of what it means to support another. And those are the moments when I think we’re all going to be okay. Even though most of these students will never see this other student again, in that moment, they unify and let them know: “We’re here for you.”

So there’s a very deep sense of responsibility on this show we all feel because there’s an opportunity when your voice is amplified to try to use it for something that can bring us all together.

Christopher Wheeldon PHOTO Erin Baiano

DRIVEN BY THE

ARTISTIC CHILD AN INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR/CHOREOGRAPHER

CHRISTOPHER WHEELDON

BY TOM

MOORE

The critically acclaimed musical An American in Paris opened on Broadway at the Palace Theatre in April 2015. The musical adaptation, inspired by the Academy Awardwinning film of the same name, was CHRISTOPHER WHEELDON’s directorial debut and earned him two Tony Award nominations, as both director and choreographer, remarkable for someone who had never directed a Broadway show before and had only worked on Broadway once previously.

Born in Yeovil, England, and trained at The Royal Ballet School, Wheeldon has choreographed for companies all over the world, creating visually rich, lyrical productions for which he has been enormously praised. In 2007, he founded Morphoses/The Christopher

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Wheeldon Company, a dance company that he helmed for three years. Currently, he is the Artistic Associate of The Royal Ballet in London, where he has created and/or choreographed for Corybantic Games, The Winter’s Tale, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Strapless, After the Rain, The Sleeping Beauty, and Within the Golden Hour.

and environment, even if it’s just done using flimsy Mylar mirrors that you get in less fancy rehearsal places in New York. They were on wheels and were light. One day, I said, “You know what? Let’s just move these around a little bit today and see if we can make it feel like the columns are moving through the street.”

It was through the workshop process that we discovered that there was a language there that could convincingly and poetically suggest Paris.

Had you considered using literal representations of Paris?

Bob Crowley is the sort of designer who would Earlier this year, director TOM never want to just create Paris on stage, because MOORE sat down with Wheeldon that’s impossible. You have to say something to discuss the intersection of dance, about the light in Paris, about the color of Paris. choreography, and theatrical directing What you can’t do is build a big heavy set that within his work, as well as the creative says “The Eiffel Tower” because nothing is ever drive behind his new endeavors Leanne Cope + as director for both stage and Robert Fairchild film. in An American in I found An American in Paris seamless and euphoric. Not just because it was a lovely piece of entertainment, beautifully crafted, but because it crossed boundaries and opened up new possibilities for the American theatre.

I’m playing fanboy here.

Paris, directed + choreographed

by Christopher Wheeldon PHOTO Matthew Murphy

I’d like to start with a specific question about An American in Paris. I know you worked on the book with Craig Lucas for a long time. Did you know how the production’s transitions were going to happen? Had they taken place in your mind?

All the elements that seemed quite cinematic were in the book. It wasn’t until the workshop process that I thought, “Okay, this will be dynamic and exciting, but I don’t know how on earth we’re going to achieve this.” The workshop forced me to think about how we were going to pitch the show to producers. I needed a sense of how we might achieve all the journeys of Jerry chasing Lise through the streets of Paris.

In the end, our transitions were born out of necessity. I needed the workshop to feel fluid and magical, and give a sense of the locations

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When the show opened in New York, she didn’t want to come to the opening, but we ended up flying her over later. She spent a week with the production and talked with the cast. I finally got to sit down with her when we had tea at The Savoy in London, and we were there for almost three hours. She started coming to see my ballets at the opera house. She came to the opening of my newest piece there. Leanne got to know her a little bit as well. She went out for tea too. We’ve got these fabulous pictures.

She looks like she could be Leslie’s granddaughter.

I find that one of the greatest thrills of Broadway are the ongoing companies.

They take on a life of their own.

It does. It’s been wonderful to spread American in Paris across America, to see how potent the power of dance in the show has been all over the country.

I liked the movie, but I wasn’t passionate about it. I admired it, but I wasn’t moved by it. When I saw your production, it took on something that only theatre or [live] dance can do—it lifted you somewhere else. I thought that was a major achievement.

Thank you, that’s really kind.

No. I love spontaneity, in-the-moment creation, collaboration. As a ballet choreographer, I never spend a lot of time working on material alone. I like having bodies in the room; I like the conversation that you have with performers. In Craig’s book, much of it looked, at first, like a series of impossiblesounding trips through Paris, with Radio City Music Hall appearing out of nowhere from a dingy cabaret in a café.

I got to know Leslie Caron during the process.

She played hard to get at the beginning. We wanted to meet her, we wanted her to see the performance in Paris. Quite rightly, her daughter was very protective of her; I think she felt we just wanted to use her mother as a PR machine, which was not the case at all. I had heard Leslie was lovely and had read her book. I genuinely wanted to meet her.

going to come close to the beauty of the place.

You have to capture the essence of it. That idea went across the board.

We also knew that we shouldn’t try to recreate the movie because the film was special and of its time. We shouldn’t try to cast somebody who is exactly like Gene Kelly. Instead, we found Robert Fairchild, who captured the essence of Gene Kelly but was very much in his own world. Similarly, with Leanne Cope—although everybody said we cast her because she looks so much like Leslie Caron—I cast her because she was the only ballerina I could find who convincingly, in a very raw way, made me believe that I could follow her through an evening and believe her as an actress, not just as a dancer.

If you had seen the movie, you thought of Leslie Caron when you first saw Leanne, but it quickly became her own piece.

I can’t wait for you to see the film. [Note: the stage production of An American in Paris was shot for live capture in London; it debuted in screenings in the United States in September.] We did a threeshow, six-camera shoot, and—I’m not just saying this because it’s my project—but everyone who’s seen it is saying it’s the best capture of a proscenium arch production that they’ve ever seen.

Did you participate in the filming, too?

It was directed by Ross MacGibbon, who does all my work at The Royal Ballet, all the Royal Opera House’s live shows. He used to be a dancer with The Royal Ballet, so he understands dance. He and I have a shorthand, and he let me be part of the editing process. What’s beautiful about the camera is that it can really home in on the story beats that you sometimes lose in the grand sweep of a staged production. I think it’s such a gift because after the world tour, my show will go away. New productions of it will be done, but my production will be gone. But it won’t be, because we’ve got this lovely film.

You’ve talked about how much you enjoy collaboration. Even with a company of dancers, it seems that the world of dance must be slightly isolating, unlike theatre. Is that true?

It is. It’s all on your shoulders at the ballet. It’s just you and the music. That can feel a little bit lonely in comparison to theatre, where there’s sometimes too many voices. I wish there was a happy medium. I’m still trying to find that balance with theatre.

I read a wonderful quote that said you had almost too much freedom at New York City Ballet, but being thrown into Broadway, how did you deal with everybody having an opinion about what you were doing? I’m sure they did. They always do.

Everybody did. I got a great piece of advice from Nicholas Hytner years ago. When we were working on Sweet Smell of Success together, I remember him saying, “I will only ever answer to one producer. I will only ever answer to my lead producer.”

When I was considering An American in Paris, the producers really wanted me for the production, which was so lovely because I kept dodging the opportunity. I would purposefully not return phone calls. Part of me thought I could do it, but part of me thought that I really don’t think I can. They were so persistent, and I felt I might have a bit of leverage.

So I was bold and said to Stuart Oken, our lead producer, “Two ground rules. One, I don’t want to talk about the Tony Awards until we’re at the point where we could potentially be eligible for one. Two, I will listen to any note that you give me. I don’t care where they come from, but I only want to do note sessions with you. Those are my two rules.”

In the end, you can’t avoid opinions because people come to you directly anyway, almost always coming from a place of wanting to help.

I was quite grateful to set that rule from the getgo. I actually met with him and Van Kaplan, our other producer. I was quite happy with the two of them.

You once said, “The more you do, the older you get, the more scared you get.” I totally get that. I always think the next project will be the one where they find me out. Do you still feel that way? Or has the great success you’ve experienced calmed you?

The success aggravates or rustles up those feelings of fear because it’s very short-lived, like a drug, that burst of euphoria. You forget that every time. Success really is like a drug. It gets into your system. You think, “Oh, holy shit, I’ve done something that people really like. Now I’ve got to do it again.” I think the secret to a great career is the ability to stay consistent and ride through the successes and the failures, and that’s the most challenging thing about being an artist. Finding that balance, that path. It takes a lot of work to ride the highs and lows. If you get on that ride, inevitably, you end up feeling sick because you’re just going round and round.

I’ve never met a great artist who wasn’t terrified. If everybody is confident in what they’re about to do, it’s probably going to fail. Let’s talk about Nicholas Hytner, who is a theatrical hero of mine. What influence has he had on your directing aspirations or techniques?

I first worked with Nick on [the film] Center Stage, where I choreographed a really short section. I did get to sit in on some of the shoots of other scenes and watch him work. The thing I learned most from him then was how much freedom he offered me. Although his vision was

tight and he was clear on what he wanted, he let me even direct a little bit with the camera. I was only 26 years old, and this was a major movie.

He allowed me to be creative with the camera and say where I thought it should go.

Then we did Sweet Smell of Success together. I was 28. I wish I had been concentrating more, because that was the only time that I was in the room with Nick from the beginning to, in this case, the bitter end.

You must have been crushed.

I think it was crushing for all of us in a way, less crushing for me because I was 28 and I decided, “This is my first musical and so what if it was my last?” I actually felt like it was probably my last [and thought] I’ll just go back to the ballet, tail between legs for about 10 minutes, then get on with it, and that’s sort of what happened.

But I was in that process, all the way from the beginning, with Nick. Recently, I asked him if he would let me sit in on the first 10 days of his rehearsal process for Julius Caesar in London for The Bridge. Because I was sitting around, thinking I’ve done Shakespeare through dance, but would I know how to direct a Shakespeare?

I mean, even just reading Winter’s Tale to boil it down to a narrative for my ballet, I thought, “Oh god, this is such long slog, and I don’t really know what I’m reading here.”

It brought all the Sweet Smell memories back.

I thought, “Oh, I remember this.” I remember the freedom that he gave to the actors, the collaborative feel at the table. Even the things he said that were so endearing that ended up not really being true, although every now and then, they’d kind of sink in.

Nick always says in the beginning of a process— and I think it’s kind of similar to the kind of

An American in Paris, directed + choreographed

by Christopher Wheeldon PHOTO Matthew Murphy

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Well, they met during am-dramatics. My dad was directing and my mother was performing.

freedom that I give dancers, but I don’t think that I verbalize it like this—that he wants ideas, that he’s open to ideas. I think most people’s perception of Nick is that he’s a great director who knows exactly what he wants. It turns out he does, but I think it’s a way of him making everybody feel like they are part of the process.

What’s am-dramatics?

Amateur dramatics. My mother still does it.

They started a little group in the town that they moved to in Dorset 21 years ago. We have one of the last remaining gas-lit cinemas in the UK in our town, in Wareham. It’s a little, tiny cinema.

Maybe a hundred seats. They were going to close it down, and my parents started this revue, which has, 21 years later, kept the theatre alive.

They used to have auditions in our living room.

It’s the most deliciously painful two-and-ahalf hours of theatre you’ve ever seen. But it’s delicious because they’re all so committed.

He lets the actors find it for themselves.

That’s the key. Well, that’s what I’m learning about. I don’t think there is “a” key. Unless the actors find the truth in the moment for themselves, it’s never going to feel true. That never occurred to me before. While working on American in Paris, I thought, “They’re good actors who will read the line and it’ll all come out fine.” Turns out that’s not true.

The non-dancing actors in American in Paris were very patient with me. I’m the first to admit that I didn’t really know what I was doing. That’s probably not the wisest thing to do in the beginning of a rehearsal process. It’s a bit like going for a swim in a bay in Australia, where you know there are great white sharks and you’ve got a cut on your arm. It’s risky. I thought my honesty would endear me to them, maybe they would give me a bit more slack. They were all very patient and sweet with me.

I imagine that while it was a vulnerable space for you to be in, as soon as they realized how strong your instincts were about what you wanted, it all became very collaborative.

I think that’s what happened. I was blessed with a wonderful group. I could tell there were moments when they were uncomfortable because the only way I could be comfortable was by getting everyone up on their feet really early. We did a table read, and then I said, “Okay, let’s go!”

In London, when I was observing Julius Caesar, on the first day, Nick said, “We’re going to read through the play. I don’t want anyone to act, just read. If you want to act, act. But this is your moment when you don’t have to deal with me as your director. So have your moment.”

We read through the play, then we watched the documentary, and then the next day, we came in and it was, “Okay, scene one.” I felt so much better after observing Nick because I was doing the same thing, and I didn’t even know that was a good way to direct. It’s just the only way I know how to do it. And here’s a man who has done almost every Shakespeare play. Then, of course, he took it back to the table and there was a discussion. But he pretty much blocked out the first half of the show in the 10 days that I was there, and from then on, it didn’t change very much.

Did any of the plays that they worked on strike you or anything you saw in the West End?

PHOTO Angela Sterling

If you were working on a scene, and something wasn’t happening, what did you do? Did you talk, or did you experiment? Did you improvise?

We didn’t improv. I don’t know those games; I know some of them now. They’re overrated. I didn’t do any of the things that I think actors really like to do. We didn’t do a lot of nittygritty. For me, if I don’t believe you, something’s wrong. Let’s figure out how to get the scene to a place where I believe you. Ultimately, isn’t it about truth? Truth in the moment, whatever that moment is. A well-written moment, a not-sowell-written moment, a musical theatre moment.

If it’s not true, then it’s not going to work.

A director’s toolkit is whatever it takes to get to that truth of a moment. I read that you used to construct models at home, that you used to build stage sets.

I did. We had a caravan that attached to the back of the car, and that’s how we would summer every year. For the rest of the year, it was parked on the driveway at home, so it became my workshop. I had my story theatre in the caravan and various crafting implements. I would make my version of a set for a production that we’d been to see, either in London or locally. That was my favorite pastime. I was the only child from my two parents’ second marriages. All my brothers and sisters were older and off at boarding school, so much of my childhood was as an only child.

Your dad said when you were starting your company, “Christopher’s been his own man since 12.” Did they expose you to not only the world of dance but also the world of theatre?

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I was struck by many things that I saw in the West End. Here’s a really funny story: when I was in Paris for American in Paris, the first time, I did an interview with a French journalist. He saw me as an elitist—snobby, maybe—in his views on musical theatre, and I remember him asking, “What was the great musical that captured your heart and make you wish to be involved in theatre for the rest of your life?” When I said Cats, he almost got up and left. He looked shocked and went a little bit cross-eyed. I really thought he was going to turn off his machine and leave.

Those are the musicals of my generation— those big, splashy musicals: Cats, Phantom, Les Mis, Miss Saigon. That was my Carousel.

As a nine-year-old kid who was completely theatre-smitten, to sit at the New London Theatre in London and have this incredible world of dancing cats come alive around you...I mean, come on! I might feel differently about it now. I think about my sense of theatre, and I love spectacle. I love finding ways to thrill the audience, that [it’s] not just about movement and not just about the spoken and singing material. I love the visual, the grandeur, the journey you can take an audience on visually.

I love all of that, and I think that comes from those early experiences of theatre.

I totally get how that would affect you enormously. I also read somewhere about you seeing Starlight Express.

Starlight Express was my favorite set that I built in our little caravan with my Scalextric. I had one of those car tracks and I just zoomed it all the way around and had it cross over the stage. I built all sorts of pillars and columns and tunnels for it.

I want to ask you about risk. For example, taking on a company as young as you were, building a dance company. What an extraordinary thing to do. You seem to constantly go outside your safety zone. You seem driven to do it. Do you think that’s true?

Christopher Wheeldon rehearses The Winter’s Tale at the Royal Ballet PHOTO Johan Persson

I do. I’m not sure whether it’s a constant need for adventure or whether I’m just a masochist.

Recently, I’ve had a really good time working on trying to understand all the parts that make us up, as a personality. Analyzing events, stepping out of myself, observing from different angles.

I think the death of an artist comes when you settle into a groove of what you do really well and therefore you keep doing that. Then you become an assembly line, and it doesn’t matter what it is that you’re building. It’s going to eventually be rote. You’re going to get tired of it, like eating the same meal every day.

Your work is so far from that. You have left and gone to greater challenges right at the peak of each “present success.”

Maybe I’ve never been afraid to follow my instincts and take that leap. I was 19 when I left London, and my career was on the up. But an opportunity to go to New York presented itself [to work with New York City Ballet], and I thought, “I can stay here with all the people that I love and all the people that I’ve formed relationships with, but I’ve been here since I was eleven years old, in the organization that I’ve been groomed to be a part of.” I just had a sense that if I didn’t take that step then, I would just stay. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Do you think you would have been unhappy if you had stayed?

I think, in hindsight, yes, I would have been because I never really had the drive to make it as a dancer. There was a crucial component of my talent missing as a ballet dancer, and that was partnering. The ability to feel the weight of a ballerina, in the way that transcends just mere technique, that actually becomes a poetic space.

You can’t be a male ballet dancer and not know how to manipulate or maneuver a partner. You can be the person behind that’s just keeping up her other leg, but I didn’t have that partnering instinct.

I was fabulous on my own. I was a good dancer.

At that point in time, I didn’t know that I didn’t possess the skill. When I came to New York, I was suddenly launched into an environment where you had to be instant, you had to have it. There wasn’t enough time for rehearsal. You started learning a ballet three or four days before it went up. If you couldn’t do it, then [you] didn’t go on. Somehow, I was a good enough dancer to bluff my way up to soloist, but I knew when I got soloist, that was as far as I was going.

Looking back, if I’d stayed in London, I think I may have found this out and just dealt with it. I don’t know, but I’m fairly confident that I made the right choice.

I think with your instincts, you always make the right choice. Even the wrong choice is the right choice. It’s what will drive you to the next career. Was having a dance company a positive experience?

Morphoses was a positive experience until it suddenly wasn’t.

Like so many things in the arts.

Until it all went belly-up. I had a dream of having a full-time company of 12 to 15 dancers where I could critique each dancer’s experience, really focus on the craft. That’s the side of a company that I loved. But the part that I couldn’t do was the full-time part. We couldn’t raise enough money. We started it in 2008, when the entire world’s economy crashed, and asking people for money was like asking them to give up their first-born child.

It was really, really hard, and I don’t have that gift. Being a director that can sit down and can look someone in the eye and say “I need $500,000 for a new production” is easy for some people, and it was never easy for me.

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Do you want to direct film, too?

You know me. I’m up for a challenge.

I don’t think you’re going to be satisfied unless you’re experiencing the entire artistic possibility.

I love being behind the camera. I loved working on the movie of American in Paris. I have made a couple of short dance films. I think camera and dance can actually be really great friends. I think there’s a perception of camera flattening out movement, but I think it can be used well.

That’s why the original director and choreographer have to be involved with the camera as well. If you have no idea what’s motivating the moves, then you’re not going to know where the camera is supposed to be.

Christopher Wheeldon rehearses American Rhapsody with New York City Ballet dancer Unity Phelan PHOTO Erin Baiano

learned a lot. We all went on. I went off and I created Alice in Wonderland and then Winter’s Tale, then American in Paris and now Salut. I’m happily back in New York and talking about more theatre. We’re all happy, and I think it was a really good step. So, looking back on it, it was an important time. I’m happy I started the company, and I’m happy I ended it.

You said you’re doing more theatre and you’re still with the ballet. How much of your time do you occupy with each now?

My plan is to take a chunk of time away from the ballet, from making new ballet. There are two ballet projects for next year, but they’re both re-stagings. The plan is to take a year and a half, almost two years, to focus more on theatre, shadow a bunch of directors. I want to put myself in the seat with the students and do a little bit of self-educating.

What directors would you like to observe?

The plan has fallen through, because projects arose. I’d love to be a fly on the wall around Ivo van Hove, because I want to know how his brain works. There’s something dynamic about those productions. It’s a vision.

I’m thrilled when I see a vision. I think it’s a shame there aren’t more chances for people to observe, even on a casual basis.

I think it’s interesting because I think a lot of directors would say yes. I’m interested in

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observing Bartlett Sher. I think he’s a great director. I think he brings his theatrical sensibility to the opera and makes opera suddenly feel like a vibrant, fresh, exciting art form. I really admire his theatre work as well, of course.

Are you going to work on something soon?

I am, actually. I’m not at liberty to say what it is, but I’m really excited about it. I’m getting to work with a writer [who] is really important right now, and I’ve wanted to work with her for a long time. That’s one of the main reasons why I’m doing this project. I’m also developing a piece of writing into a new musical with Brian Selznick, who wrote the libretto for my Nutcracker and The Invention of Hugo Cabret. We had a reading two weeks ago, just a one-day table read of the book, which was great. Now we have to write some music. But that project feels like it’s probably three years away. Very, very early stages.

Do you envision your life constantly going back and forth between dance and theatre?

I think so. I don’t know. We all have to plan everything so far in advance, which is difficult because often it’s a bizarre thing to look at calendars and talk about things in 2021. Who knows if I’m going to feel like doing “Teletubbies the Musical” in 2021 or whatever? I’ve committed already to my next full-length ballet at The Royal; that’s going to be November 2020, and we have to start writing the score now.

To me, the process of making a movie feels a little bit like building a skyscraper. You build three floors and then have a great, big wrecking ball smash it down. Then you decide, “Okay, let’s try again and we’ll build it a little higher.” It’s such a long process. But yeah, why not?

I know it has been some time since you worked with Jerome Robbins, but do you feel you drew at all from his theatrical instincts?

I think he was the only ballet choreographer that I ever worked with that asked us to understand who we were as people, even in his abstract works, even in a ballet like Dances at a Gathering.

He asked us to be like actors in a way that no other choreographer did. Usually, you learn the steps and you’re told what the story is, and now convey the story and go. But he actually forced us to think much more about how we could bring ourselves to the role, but also to understand within the context of that ballet who we were.

I feel that it’s in your work, too.

It was Jerry who taught me that a look and a reach is not just a look and a reach. It’s actually what you are saying to that person, what your connection is to them.

Edited and condensed by Elizabeth Nelson

The Summer 2018 Black Arts Intensive PHOTOS Hollis King unless otherwise noted

CARRYING ON THE LEGACY SDC MEMBERS CREATE NEW BLACK ARTS INSTITUTE

BY MARY

“I

B. ROBINSON

wanted to make sure that the young folks didn’t get so far removed from their culture that they lost their heart and souls—their blackness, unapologetically, the pride and integrity of their ancestors,” says director, actor, and writer Ruben SantiagoHudson about the need for the Black Arts Institute.

“In all the places I’ve taught, there has not been one place where students of color have not had a complaint about not having that part of them invited into the room, and having people who look like them teach them sometime,” says director, actor, and teacher Michele Shay. “So a schism gets created, splitting them, and to reach their full potential, that needs to be healed.”

“The ones who are going to graduate programs are sometimes having their own cultural experience trained out of them in order to be proficient at the European classics,” says director, actor, and teacher Stephen McKinley Henderson.

“What’s being taught to them in many institutions is to conform, to release what you were and become something else,” says Santiago-Hudson. “And what I wanted to teach was, ‘Be who you are and add something else on top of it.’”

These three SDC Members, along with Member Phylicia Rashad—all veteran, award-winning theatre artists who have had major acting and directing careers—founded a program that is already having a profound impact on the lives

of the young African American theatre artists who have participated in it. For five weeks in the summer of 2018, 30 actors took an immersion course that delved not only into African American theatre but also into black music, dance, history, politics, literature, and culture.

This program’s goal was to enable these theatre artists to become, in Santiago-Hudson’s words, “more aware of the glory of who they are.”

“I have a commitment to wanting to help the next generation,” says Shay, echoing all the founders, “so that we’re offering the industry profound, capable, and spiritually conscious artists who can eventually lead.”

T

he Black Arts Institute originated out of many conversations that were happening between artists and institutions about the need to ensure that the FALL 2019 | SDC JOURNAL FALL 2018/WINTER 2018/WINTER 2019

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Sonia Sanchez

next generation of theatre artists was provided a deep immersion in their culture, rooted in the African American canon and the Black Arts Movement. Henderson, Santiago-Hudson, Shay, and Rashad, as well as the “fifth founder,” poet Sonia Sanchez, all had relationships with both the Billie Holiday Theatre in Brooklyn and the Stella Adler Studio of Acting. Henderson connected the leaders of these two institutions, Dr. Indira Etwaroo, Artistic Director of the Billie Holiday, and Tom Oppenheim, Executive Director of Adler; and when Etwaroo and Oppenheim first met one-on-one, they knew this was an idea whose time had come.

The program took its name from the Black Arts Movement, which emerged from the Black Power Movement and burst onto the scene in the mid 1960s in the form of artists’ circles, writers’ workshops, theatre groups, dance troupes, new publishing ventures, bookstores, and cultural centers. It had a presence in practically every community and college campus in the country with an appreciable African American population, and its goals were to affirm the autonomy of African American artists and urge them to create art that would awaken consciousness in the black community. Sanchez, one of the key members of the Black Arts Movement, taught a course in African American literature at San Francisco State in 1966 (the first of its kind in the country at a predominantly white university), and is the co-editor of SOS––Calling All Black People: A Black Arts Movement Reader. “She’s at an extraordinary moment in her life,” says Oppenheim about the 84-year-old poet. “She feels like she’s ignited with a prophetic fire.”

“August always said that he was fired in the kiln of the Black Arts Movement,” says Henderson about playwright August Wilson, whose work inspired early conversations about the need for this program for young actors. “You’ve got to start with what inspired August.”

Michele Shay

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The choice was made to house the program at the Billie Holiday Theatre in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn because it is a historically black theatre in an African American community. Artistic Director Etwaroo had previously worked with Santiago-Hudson and Henderson when they served as Co-Artistic Directors for August Wilson’s American Century Cycle, which Etwaroo produced at the Greene Space at WNYC in Lower Manhattan in 2013.

Shay and Rashad also participated in this series––in fact, the four of them directed seven of the 10 live-recorded readings.

“Central Brooklyn is the largest community of African descent in the country,” says Etwaroo about the area where the Billie Holiday is located. “I lived in Africa for a couple of years and this feels the closest to that of any place I’ve ever lived. The way people are with each other, the way they greet each other, the layers of noise—it’s not like Midtown noise. There’s this incredible polyrhythm of sound that is so akin to Africa.”

A weeklong pilot to test the curriculum was held at the Billie Holiday in January 2018, during which Rashad, Henderson, Santiago-Hudson, and Shay led a combination of master classes, lectures, and monologue work from plays by African American writers. Jason Gray, who works at the Adler Studio and became the program’s administrator, describes the week as “euphoric— more than any of us expected, to have that energy every day in the room.” A riveting lecture

by Sanchez had not only the students but also the program’s founders “on the edge of their seats, like young kids,” he says.

“It was so clear in that trial run how much they wanted it,” says Henderson about the students. “They were hungry for it and they weren’t getting it.” Rashad, who coached them in monologues from Wilson’s plays, says that it was “exciting to see them move to a deeper level of understanding of what it means to portray a human being whose full humanity is investigated beyond what is seen on the page.”

“We teach a different way,” says SantiagoHudson about the founding faculty’s contrasting styles, which he feels gave the students “different elements to add onto your craft. Michele is loving and coddling, I’m harder and poppin’, Stephen is very cerebral, and Phylicia has her way that she brings in ‘your heart is the seat of God’ kind of teaching.”

It was easy to see, says Santiago-Hudson, “how important it was—not only to them, but to us, as people that are now carrying on the legacy. We talk about Frances Foster, Gloria Foster, Moses Gunn, Lonnie Elder, Douglas Turner Ward, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier—those people who carried the torch for us for so long. Now it’s us.”

For the five-week summer intensive, emerging theatre artists from all over the country sent in videos or auditioned in person, wrote essays, and had phone interviews with Gray, who had the job of winnowing the applicants down to the 30 who would participate. “I was looking for people who weren’t interested necessarily in being seen for casting by someone like Phylicia or Ruben—you can weed out that energy pretty quickly,” he says. Instead, he wanted to assemble a group of “folks who in their essays seemed to have a real yearning to be part of something massive, inheriting this legacy, who wanted to maybe teach, or write, or direct in the future.”

Accepted students found creative ways to raise the necessary money for their tuition fees.

Besides running GoFundMe campaigns, “There’s one brother that sold fish and chicken dinners,” says Santiago-Hudson. “Didn’t know where he was going to stay when he got here.” The 30 students who attended were from BFA and MFA programs around the country, as well as early career actors, and they expressed a range of reasons for wanting to be part of the intensive, from wanting to expand their knowledge of African American history to dissecting great works with master teachers to learning and

growing with other black theatre artists. “Black work is what keeps my drums beating and reminds me of where I come from,” says one student.

A typical day during the five weeks started in a way familiar to anyone who’s participated in a theatre training program: half of the group attended a voice and speech class, and the other half attended movement, followed by music and dance classes. But this was a training program with a difference: every teacher and every student was of African descent, and the approach to every class reflected that. Chantal Jean-Pierre, a voice and dialect expert, taught a class on mastering the Liberian dialect. Musician Bill Sims Jr. led the students in an exploration of blues lyrics. Choreographer Ronald K. Alexander taught his ballet-based/African-inspired approach to dance. Percussionist Ron McBee shared the history of each of his percussive instruments, then passed them out and led a jam session. Dancer and choreographer Camille A. Brown taught a class on African American social dance. And Carol Lynn Maillard and Louise Robinson, from the group Sweet Honey in the Rock, held a master class in singing.

“It’s different from a regular voice class—it’s speaking and singing from a place that just awakens a tone in the body that feels like home,” says Shay about the students’ experience of working with artists from Sweet Honey in the Rock. “It’s very ancient, very old, but when that happens, the fight for security and approval that every young artist feels—that disappears. There’s a true, organic sense of a right to express and be creative, which is what we spend hours and hours in acting class trying to get people to just sit in. But that, within the rituals of our culture, happens automatically.

“I feel like there is an innate body wisdom, like

Ruben Santiago-Hudson + Steven McKinley Henderson

an integrated wisdom between the head, heart, and body, that is a part of our culture. It is definitely part of the African culture, which, with Western thinking per se, the mind and the heart gets separated. So what we’re trying to do is put it all back together so it’s one unit for them.”

Other speakers included Bill Forchion, a clown and mask expert who talked about his 30-year career in the circus industry; Cynthia Henderson, an Ithaca College professor who lectured on “Theater for Social Change”; Jonathan McCrory, who spoke of his experiences as Artistic Director of the National Black Theatre; Hollis King, an artist whose career has included heading a major advertising firm and creating album art for many prominent artists; and Larry Powell, who screened his new film and spoke about the importance of investigating new forms of storytelling. Actor Tonya Pinkins gave a master class in singing; director Seret Scott spoke about her early involvement in the Free Southern Theatre; actors Brandon Dirden and Carra Patterson spoke about their experience acting in August Wilson plays and navigating the theatre and film industries; and playwright Donja Love taught a playwriting workshop focused on an experiential understanding of different identities.

The intensive extended beyond the arts to include politics and history as well. Public intellectual and professor Michael Eric Dyson spoke about the role of artists to reflect the times and hold humanity accountable. Professor Frank Leon Roberts, who created the first Black Lives Matter course at NYU, spoke about the movement’s history and tenets. Billie Holiday Director Etwaroo gave a two-hour talk on African American history, covering more than 50 years, from Reconstruction to the Harlem Renaissance—a lecture that left many students overwhelmed by the connections they felt between the horrors of 100 years ago and our country’s current moment. When one student

asked, “What can we do?” Etwaroo told them to draw strength from each other and quoted Amiri Baraka: “To be optimistic at a time like this is to be revolutionary.”

All the students read selections from SOS— Calling All Black People in preparation for the course, and the book’s co-editor Sanchez traveled up from her home in Philadelphia weekly to teach and lecture; on one occasion, she led students on a field trip to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem and showed them how to use its library. “They hadn’t gone!” says Santiago-Hudson. “These are black students, and no one has ever told them that’s important. They didn’t even know that the Schomburg is a resource for them.”

“The reality is, we can’t get mad at them,” Henderson says about some of the students’ gaps in knowledge of African American arts and literature. “They can’t just spontaneously know, and they’re not being told at the schools they go to. That’s the very reason that we have to do this. We can’t blame them for not knowing it. We have to provide.”

Speaking to the students about her own first experience of the Schomburg’s resources, Sanchez said, “My life changed forever, and I’m just hoping that your life will change forever also. You cannot act a fool any more, when you have this information. This is our business, our history, our herstory, our life. That’s why you’re so important––that’s why I love you all so much––because you will continue this great tradition.”

T

he cornerstone of the program was scene study classes, which focused on works from the Wilson canon, as well as Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog (with women playing the roles instead of men), Skeleton Crew

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by Dominique Morisseau, and lesser-known works, such as Carlyle Brown’s The African Company Presents Richard III and Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, a 1957 work by Trinidadian playwright Errol John, recommended by Rashad because of its emotional depth.

Immersion in plays by dramatists of African descent was an essential aspect of the program for these young theatre artists.

“They’re reading Lynn Nottage, and then they go back and they find out about these other writers that inspired Lynn Nottage. It’s thrilling, it really is,” says Henderson. “To see them relish and celebrate the culture, it’s amazing to see. It is amazing to witness them rejoice in themselves.

Bill Sims Jr.

“Shakespeare may be arguably the greatest playwright in the English language, but he ain’t the only one got a tongue,” Henderson says, quoting from The African Company Presents Richard III. He recalled seeing the play at Rutgers University, with Wilson in the audience. “He was in the ‘amen corner’, shouting,” he says about the playwright’s reaction to that line. “He really did say, ‘Woo! Woo! Woo!’ Amiri would say, ‘You study to be a writer, you don’t study one writer, you study all the writers. You read everything, but what your voice is going to be, what you’re going to write about, now that’s you.’ Because everybody writes from their own cultural base.”

“One of the things that I really try to make them aware of is what the writer is trying to tell them,” says Shay, in answer to a question about how being a director affects her work as a teacher. “How to understand what the story is and how to build character based on that and how to go beyond that. That’s because I’m a Lloyd Richards baby. He trained us to serve the playwright, to serve the story first, to create an ensemble.”

Stephen McKinley Henderson PHOTO Jason Gray

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SDC SDC JOURNAL JOURNAL || FALL FALL 2018/WINTER 2018/WINTER 2019 2019

As Santiago-Hudson points out, all the founding faculty are, in fact, “Lloyd Richards babies.” If August Wilson was forged in the kiln of the Black Arts Movement, the actor/directors who created this program were forged in Wilson’s plays, under the guidance of Richards, whose influence on the lives of so many theatre artists is incalculable. Dean of the Yale School of Drama and Head of the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, Richards was the director of six of the original productions of Wilson’s plays. He was the first African American director to work on Broadway—in 1959, he directed Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award, the first of many.

He went on to win the Tony for Best Director for Fences in 1987.

“I got a chance to spend some precious hours, after I’d been around for about 50 years, with Lloyd Richards,” says Henderson. “Lloyd crystallized and synthesized every road I had been down, all the things that got poured in. And then August came along, and he was a poet-playwright. You have to have the knowledge of all that music and history and politics and socioeconomics and culture—it all pours into being able to appreciate that big family album of those 10 plays and those characters we’re all related to.”

“I know that, for me, doing August Wilson, working with Lloyd—that changed my life,” says Shay. “It changed how I did things. What I’ve seen, directing August around the country in different colleges and places, is that once people experience that sense of self that’s offered from doing this canon, it doesn’t leave them. It gives them something that’s very stick-to-your-ribs.”

“August always used to talk about finding your song,” says Santiago-Hudson, “and when your song is accepted in the world, you’ve truly arrived. And I’m trying to help them find their

African American social dance class

song. I’m trying to help them find their voice.

The song is your voice: you’re comfortable inside your skin and you’re being who you are.”

T

he students who attended the first Black Arts Summer Intensive talk about wanting to write, direct, and selfproduce as well as act. “This program wasn’t just acting,” says actor and writer Steve Gray about his experience in the five-week program.

“It was getting to the essence of who we are, it’s remembering our culture. It’s identifying with our past in order to create these characters or write these characters or perform these characters.”

Deep bonds have formed among the participating students, many of whom talk about finding “my tribe” or “a long-lost family.” “This is a unique thing, to be among a whole collective of other black people who are theatre artists,” says Alicia Stith. “We wanted to find a way to stick together, because we haven’t had that up until this point. And so we’re trying to figure out what we want to do next.”

Stith organizes weekly group meetings at which unproduced plays from the Schomburg Center are read and discussed. The Schomburg has offered space for the group to do public readings, and several students are also talking about writing their own theatre piece based on material they’ve discovered at the Center. And every week, they swap the books they’ve been

reading on their own since the intensive ended.

“I have a book of names—I swear, there’s like six or seven pages—of people I need to know and read,” says Gabriela Urquia. “When you’re done with the intensive, you have to follow up, keep up—you can’t learn it all in the intensive; it’s not possible. But they gave us great resources, and we made great connections with each other. And I’ve been reading nonstop since.”

Jak Watson, a classically trained actor who loves Shakespeare, confirms that. “This experience awoke something deep inside of me that I realize has slowly been subdued,” he says. “I was unlocking parts of myself that I hadn’t had contact with in a long time. After living with the ‘double consciousness’ for so long, in training program after training program and institution after institution, you start to lose track of who you really are because you’ve gone so far deep into what you’re trying to become.”

“Walking into a room full of people at a predominantly white institution, you feel that you have to present a section of yourself and keep the rest at bay,” says Urquia. “It’s not that anyone is telling you to do that—for me, it’s something that I automatically did. Being in a room full of black people, there’s this ease and this weight off my shoulders that I didn’t realize was there until I was in a position to not carry it.”

“It’s super freeing,” says Stith, who talks about the need she now feels to do work that matters and “that is for us, written by us, about us.”

She quotes Santiago-Hudson, channeling the legendary Richards: “If you have the chance to hold somebody’s attention for a few hours, you can’t waste their time. Especially when there’s so much to be said.”

P

lanning has begun for the second week-long winter and five-week summer intensives, which will once again be a partnership between the Stella Adler Studio and the Billie Holiday Theatre. The collaboration between the two institutions “feels like something really new under the sun, and the answer to so much, both artistically and socially,” says Adler Executive Director Oppenheim.

One of the Black Arts Institute’s biggest needs is funding to help cover tuition fees, which several accepted applicants weren’t able to put together this past year. “We really need scholarship money,” says Shay. “I feel very strongly about that. I want to change the thinking that just because you don’t have the money, it doesn’t mean that your dream can’t come true. We are having the opportunity, in a truly profound way, to see the difference that it makes when people are learning in a cauldron or an environment or a container that includes their culture and their history as well. Especially because the people FALL 2018/WINTER 2019 | SDC JOURNAL

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Ruben Santiago-Hudson

that are teaching, we’re part of the living history of that.”

Indira Etwaroo

Michele Shay + students

Santiago-Hudson speaks of the sense of belonging that the students feel at the Billie Holiday Theatre, “an institution being run by African American people.

The young folks, that doesn’t go over their head.

Indira Etwaroo, she talks to them, and these young sisters, they kind of perk up: ‘Wow, there’s a sister running this.’”

“They realize what inheritors they are, these young people,” says Henderson. “They are inheriting this huge legacy, and it’s personal and it’s cultural. It’s the group and the individual—the group feeds the individual, and the individual contributes to the group. One hopes that they

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go back not only fortified by what we give them but really secure in their ability to do any kind of play.”

“I’m trying to make sure that they have the confidence when they leave here to inject that well-being into the arenas that they enter,” says Santiago-Hudson. “Into the ensembles that they become a part of. To be supportive, to be inside the family and not outside the family.”

Henderson agrees that the students’ work together this past summer “builds an ensemble—the strength of an ensemble. That builds that selflessness, that giving of oneself to the work. Because the business as it exists,

you can feel very alone in it. My hope is that an ensemble, or an ensemble spirit, is something that they’ll have when they come together with any cast.

“It awakens in them whatever they have the affinity for,” Henderson says, about where this unique theatre training—and this immersion in African American culture—might take its participants in the future. “Their ancestors are speaking to them—that’s the thing. It depends on what house they come from, as to what house they’ll build. However they’re going to make their contribution, we can’t predict. We give them everything we have and everything that we were given, but we’ve got to let it go into them, and let them take it and go where they’re going to go with it.”

SDC JOURNAL PEER-REVIEWED SECTION FOCUS ON ATHE 2018 EDITED BY DAVID

CALLAGHAN + ANN M. SHANAHAN

SDC and the Directing Program of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE):

CELEBRATING A LONG AND GROWING RELATIONSHIP BY

ANN M. SHANAHAN, DAVID CALLAGHAN, EMILY A. ROLLIE, AND KATHLEEN M. McGEEVER

(WITH EXCERPTS FROM THE ATHE 2018 CONFERENCE PROGRAM BY KAREN JEAN MARTINSEN, MONICA WHITE NDOUNOU, NICOLE HODGES PERSLEY, KAREEM KHUBCHANDANI, KELLY HOWE, AND ANDREW GIBB)

FIG. 1 Laura

Penn + Anne Fliotsos

DIRECTORS AND CHOREOGRAPHERS AT ATHE 2018 BOSTON: THEATRES OF REVOLUTION: PERFORMANCE, PEDAGOGY, AND PROTEST

From my vantage points as a Founding Co-editor of the Peer-Reviewed Section (PRS) of SDC Journal and ATHE Vice President for Conference 2018, I can appreciate and celebrate with special gratitude the growing relationship between SDC and the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), specifically the Directing Program, one of the association’s 23 focus groups. The relationship began in Orlando, FL, in 2013 through a contact made by Miriam Mills of Rider University with SDC. As then Head of the Directing Program, Miriam invited me to meet with SDC Board Member Sharon Ott and Paul Lazarus at the ATHE annual conference in Orlando to begin planning for a roundtable she was organizing on intellectual property rights for directors at the 2014 conference in Scottsdale, AZ. This exciting connection was followed by a thrilling phone meeting with SDC Executive Director Laura Penn later that summer. Recognizing that a substantial number of SDC Members (more than 30 percent) were teaching in the academy in full- and parttime capacities, SDC was interested in connecting with and supporting those Members, as well as growing new Members from directors teaching in higher education. The summer before, at the ATHE 2012 conference, I had begun work with a special task force of the Directing Program to create a peer-reviewed journal focused on directing. We saw a synergistic opportunity to collaborate. Laura Penn and other SDC Executive Board

Kaye, David Callaghan, Ruth Pe Palileo + Sharon Ott

FIG. 2 David

Members attended the 2014 conference in Scottsdale to host the first Annual SDC ATHE Cocktail Hour and meet with ATHE leaders. At that conference, Anne Fliotsos joined an inaugural editorial staff as a Founding Co-Editor (Fig. 1), and although not formally sponsored by ATHE, a peerreview board was formed by several individual members of the Directing Focus Group, and the Peer-Reviewed Section (PRS) of the SDC Journal was launched (Fig. 2).

What’s happened in the five years since is a testament to the organizational energies and capacities of directors and choreographers, and the strength and follow-through of both organizations and their Members. In the past year, I have had the privilege to work with an extraordinary Conference Committee of leaders from across the fields of theatre and performance studies, many of them from the Directing Program and members of the Peer-Review Board for the Journal—including several authors or editors for the PRS. The Conference Committee assembled a series of plenaries, workshops, performances, and special events around our conference theme: Theatres of Revolution: Performance, Pedagogy, and Protest. Drawing on the city of Boston for its historical significance in the American Revolution and for its legacy of both academic excellence and artistic innovation, we aimed to explore revolutions at the multiple intersections of politics, theatre education, and professional practice. We put together an Excursions and Performances Series to explore how contemporary and historical FALL 2018/WINTER 2019 | SDC JOURNAL PEER-REVIEWED SECTION

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enactments of US foundational stories perform race and gender—as well as erasure of the land’s history before colonization—raising complex questions concerning representation and revolution. In a culminating roundtable, we had dialogue in how these questions resonate with casting practices, season planning, performance practices, and pedagogies, as well as contemporary trends in theory and scholarship. We offered six paid workshops from local and international artists who advance revolutions on multiple fronts—from the use of digital technologies in education and performance to political and cultural revolutions and revolutionary performance strategies. We were thrilled to offer a keynote from sisters Quiara Alegría Hudes and Gabriela Sanchez, who discussed their Latinx Casting Manifesto and other aspects of their work as activists and artists.

(Please look for a transcript of the keynote in upcoming issues of American Theatre and Theatre Topics.) Our plenaries aimed to further dialogue between leaders in higher education and in the profession and to advance fights for justice through concrete action steps. We offered performances

by Sister Sylvester (see the special performance review by Karen Jean Martinsen on p. 44), History Matters/Back to the Future, and History Alive from Salem, MA, and we supported focus group pre-conferences on topics ranging from immersive theatre to self-care as revolution. We were proud to offer platforms for the Jubilee 2020 initiative, revolutionary work by Ireland’s Gaiety School, and other international artists and scholars.

SDC has generously sponsored events and advertised in the conference program, allowing an SDC presence at the conference to mature and grow. The following is a special shout-out to the fruits of our ongoing collaboration, including SDC’s Associate Membership category and new Academic Initiative co-chaired by Melia Bensussen at Emerson College in Boston, who participated in Directing Program events this year, and Marcia Milgrom Dodge.

We hope the below will inspire readers of the Journal—both those working in academic settings and those not—to consider how bridges between the academy and the profession can richly serve both groups, especially in these vital moments of transition (revolution!) in our fields, to consider Membership in SDC at the Associate or Full level, to consider joining ATHE and attending upcoming conferences, such as the return to Orlando in 2019 (see description on p. 44), to submit essays to the PRS (see submission guidelines, also on p. 44), and, most of all, to consider ways individually and collectively that directors and choreographers can continue to serve as leaders in our vital fields and the education for them.

PLENARY I: REVOLUTIONS IN PEDAGOGY AND PRACTICE

Laura Penn was invited to participate as one of 13 professional and academic leaders in the first part of an All-Conference Plenary event FIG. 3 ATHE

2018 Plenary: Revolutions in Pedagogy and Protest, participants listed in text

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occurring in Boston on August 3, 2018 (Fig. 3). This moderated panel discussion and open forum aimed to bring together leaders in higher education and representatives from professional organizations and advocacy groups in theatre for a conversation on the urgent revolutions— those already occurring and those still needed—in both the professional practice of theatre and training in the academy. As part of a larger initiative for “overhauls in training” led by Monica White Ndounou (President, Black Theatre Association, and 2018 Conference Committee member) with Theatre Communications Group (TCG), Black Theatre Network (BTN), and the 2018 International Black Theatre Summit at Dartmouth College, the panel included leaders in theatre education representing local institutions, as well as representatives from organizations such as SDC, Theatre Communications Group (TCG), Actors Equity Association (AEA), Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA), and HowlRound. The group included (listed from right to left as in Fig. 3): Martine Kei Green-Rogers (Moderator) President, Dramaturgy Program ATHE SUNY New Paltz Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LDMA) Jamie Gahlon Director HowlRound Scot Reese Head of Performance University of Maryland Theresa Eyring Executive Director Theatre Communications Group (TCG) Monica White Ndounou (Co-Coordinator and Panelist) President, Black Theatre Association ATHE Dartmouth College The CRAFT Institute Laura Penn Executive Director Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC) Patricia Ybarra Immediate Past President ATHE Chair of Theatre Brown University

Nicole Hodges Persley Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Incoming President, Black Theatre Association (BTA) University of Kansas

This dialogue is furthered at ATHE in the “action steps” workshops described below, and through the ongoing work of Monica White Ndounou at the CRAFT Institute and at the Black Theatre Summit, which occurred September 26–29, 2018, at Dartmouth College.

Keith Arthur Bolden Professional Director/Actor Spelman College

For more information, visit: https://theater.dartmouth.edu/news/2018black-theatre-summit-breaking-new-ground-where-we-stand

Kelvin Dinkins Jr. Assistant Dean/General Manager Yale School of Drama/Yale Repertory Theatre Joshua Abrams President Elect ATHE Deputy Dean The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London Nicole Smart Director of Diversity Actors’ Equity Association (AEA) Magda Romanska (on screen) Emerson College Executive Director—TheTheatreTimes.com Moderated by Martine Kei Green-Rogers, an Assistant Professor at SUNY New Paltz, a freelance dramaturg, and President of Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas, the panel discussion considered various meanings of revolution, in scholarship and performance, as well as in work as educators with students in the classroom and the rehearsal hall, and in the larger context of college campuses. We asked: how are revolutions in practice (in casting, production models, etc.) supported by and/or curtailed by current training models and practices? Likewise, how is the development of more equitable and liberating training models and more expansive curricula thwarted by outmoded, biased, and/or limiting professional norms, or the perception of these? How can educators and professional representatives forge a more responsive dialogue so that training models and professional practices can foster together the overhauls necessary to create art that is aesthetically revolutionary and that activates audiences to make lasting social change? (Fig. 4) The full plenary discussion was streamed live on HowlRound and is archived at: http://howlround.com/livestreaming-the-2018-association-fortheatre-higher-education-athe-conference-theatres-revolution

PLENARY II—REVOLUTIONS IN PEDAGOGY AND PRACTICE “ACTION STEPS” WORKSHOPS

In this second part of the two-phase plenary event, we aimed to take the fruits of the dialogue generated in Part I into “action steps” that we can enact in our performance practices, pedagogies, and acts of protest. ATHE members were invited to choose from one of three active participatory workshops, as described below for the conference program by their leaders, reflecting the three parts of the conference subtitle (Performance, Pedagogy, and Protest).

Performance—Kelly Howe, Loyola University Chicago “In this breakout group, we will use performance precisely to think through how performance can and cannot help us enact necessary revolutionary actions in our field(s) and in the world more broadly. Calling on techniques from Theatre of the Oppressed and other forms, we’ll imagine otherwise and some actions on the way to otherwise. We will discuss interventions that we and colleagues are already trying to make in our field, consider the relationship between those possible interventions, and explore possibilities for solidarity and shared struggle. We may build a short performance. We’ll find out together.”

Pedagogy—Monica White Ndounou, Dartmouth College, and Nicole Hodges Persley, University of Kansas “This introductory, experiential workshop is designed to develop individual strategies and institutional practices geared toward incorporating equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) initiatives into pedagogical and administrative practice. Participants can submit questions in advance and/or bring questions related to syllabi, assignments/exercises, season-selection options, curricular and program design considerations, and any other relevant materials for on-site consultation regarding incorporating EDI into multiple areas of pedagogical practice.”

Protest—Kareem Khubchandani, Tufts University “How do we imagine protest into being? As Susan Foster argues in her essay ‘Choreographies of Protest,’ the aesthetics of a movement have significant bearing on its efficacy. Given the troubled global political climate that particularly polices minoritarian subjects, it is ever more necessary to share the tactics that we use to activate, manifest, and 2018 Plenary: Revolutions in Pedagogy and Protest, Scot Reese, Jamie Gahlon, Martine Kei Green-Rogers, (on screen Magda Romanska) PHOTO Eric Ewald

FIG. 4 ATHE

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FIG. 5 Lewis

Magruder, Scott Shattuck + David Kay

FIG. 6 Eric Thibodeaux, Missy Thibodeaux + Anne Healy

transform political publics toward liberation. Activists, artists, and educators will share their tools of activism, describing how they envisioned and enacted protest: staging the body as obstruction, extending pedagogy to the streets, and responding to political crises via web-based activism.”

Ann M. Shanahan

SDC-SPONSORED AND SUPPORTED EVENTS

SDC leadership and staff have continued to attend the ATHE conference each year, and this relationship has grown in mutually beneficial ways.

Interest in the Journal’s essays and book reviews continues to expand, with our goal being to find innovative scholarship that speaks to issues of importance in our fields for all readers of the Journal, Members, and potential members. Attendance at the Directing Focus Group business meetings has greatly increased, with the majority of those attending at the recent conference in Boston indicating either Full or Associate Membership in SDC (Fig. 5).

The Annual SDC Cocktail Hour and increased visibility of this collaboration has led to a surge in Associate Memberships in SDC. We continue to discuss ways in which the Union and the academy can support each other, including greater awareness of professional opportunities, including SDCF Observerships, for members of the academy. University settings can also offer rich opportunities for professional artists to develop new works, as well as workshops, residencies, and traditional opportunities for work as guest directors, choreographers, and fight choreographers (Fig. 6).

The 2018 Cocktail Hour was our best-attended event to date, with Laura Penn commenting that the formation of the PRS section of the Journal and this ongoing collaboration had “virtually transformed” SDC, and the same can be said for members of the Directing Focus Group.

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SUPPORTING PROMOTION AND TENURE FOR DIRECTORS AND CHOREOGRAPHERS IN THE ACADEMY

One specific new area in which SDC and members of ATHE might possibly support each other further emerged in Boston out of a panel that provided strategies for successfully building a case for tenure and promotion in the academy. Coordinated and chaired by Lewis Magruder, an Associate Professor at Miami University of Ohio, the panel included three other experienced theatre administrators who teach directing and are also Full or Associate Members of SDC. The panel covered a range of areas but evolved into an in-depth discussion of the challenges of securing and documenting outside professional directing work, which is typically required for tenure and promotion in university settings. The Chair of SDC’s Academic Initiative, Melia Bensussen, who has been the head of a university directing program herself at Emerson University in Boston, was in attendance, along with SDC Communications Director Howard Sherman.

Both provided valuable perspectives on the lively discussion and questions that emerged over the course of the panel, with Bensussen suggesting that SDC could provide resources for Members in various regions, such as potential outside respondents to university productions and for tenure and promotion portfolios. Ways to contextualize productions, especially photos, were also discussed by the panel respondents and Bensussen for the benefit of the group of over 20 attendees. ATHE and/or SDC Members were also encouraged to seek out SDC regional meetings as another way to stay informed about Union happenings, important current issues in our field, and possible professional opportunities. Lastly, while the so-called ATHE “White Paper” has provided a valuable resource to make a case for production as the equivalent of “creative scholarship” versus traditional publications for acting and directing teachers with an MFA terminal degree, that document has not been revisited in many years, and faculty can still receive challenges in this regard at some institutions (especially those with campus-wide tenure and promotion committees comprising faculty from non-arts-based disciplines). Bensussen suggested that perhaps SDC, working with ATHE members, could help generate another source of standards to evaluate professional directing work that members of the academy could reference for university administrators and their tenure and promotion committees. This is certainly an intriguing idea that no doubt will be engaged in future conversations and conferences.

Panel participants and, more importantly, the larger conference left energized by the vital collaboration between ATHE members (especially rooted in the Directing Focus Group) and SDC, as embodied by the numerous enriching exchanges between conference attendees and SDC representatives in Boston. As we look ahead to the 2019 ATHE conference once again in Orlando, the Peer-Reviewed Section of SDC Journal will continue to seek ways to support and expand on this collective endeavor, which has mutually benefited the academy, members of the professional community, and those working in both arenas.

David Callaghan

DIRECTING THE REVOLUTION: NOTES AND REFLECTIONS FROM THE ATHE DIRECTING PROGRAM

The call for the 2018 Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) conference asked us to “explore revolutions at the multiple intersections of politics, theatre education, and professional practice.” Situated at what many deem a precarious yet key moment in the political and cultural landscape, the 2018 conference offered a timely venue for theatre artists, instructors, and directors to examine our role in cultural conversations and explore ways our work might contribute to the ongoing revolution. After all, art is public and political—as is our work as directors. How do we play a part in the artistic and cultural revolution? How can we use our directorial influence to create revolutions in our practice and pedagogy? What new directions are we interested in and grappling with to revolutionize our stages and inform our creative work? The 2018 ATHE Directing Program offerings tackled these questions head-on in rich sessions and robust

conversation, and as I consider the Directing Program’s diverse slate of events, several salient themes emerge—“takeaways” from the conference for continued rumination.

Takeaway #1: Revolutionary approaches and formats require revolutionary directorial approaches.

Each year, focus groups can offer a “pre-conference,” a focused conferencebefore-the-conference. Pre-conferences allow us to delve into specialized areas that particularly influence our artistic work. This year, the Directing Program collaborated with several focus groups to create a preconference on immersive theatre. The “Immersive Theatre: An Ongoing Performance Revolution” pre-conference reflects, I think, a growing trend and revolutionary aesthetic approach to creating art, but also one that necessitates a shift in the ways that directors approach our work and collaborative processes. Center to the pre-conference was a guest appearance by Jennine Willett, Co-artistic Director of New York-based Third Rail Projects, a company known for immersive works such as Then She Fell, a piece combining a hospital ward, the writings of Lewis Carroll, and 15 audience members per show, and Learning Curve, a collaboration with Chicago’s Albany Park Theatre Project that brings the spectator into Chicago public schools and high school students’ experiences. By examining Third Rail’s work in conjunction with presentations by other directors who create immersive environments in local communities and on university campuses, pre-conference attendees immersed themselves deeply in this revolutionary creation process and considered how allinclusive environments impact directorial methods on multiple levels.

Similarly, one of the most well-attended Directing Program sessions of the conference focused on foundational fight and intimacy choreography techniques for directors and directing teachers. Led by intimacy specialists Chelsea Pace and Kate Busselle of Theatrical Intimacy Education and SAFDcertified Chris Duval, this session offered directors practical techniques and exercises to empower students/actors and to create brave, safe spaces for physical interaction in rehearsal and performance. In fact, this session was one of several sessions hosted by multiple focus groups across the conference specifically focused on intimacy choreography. In the wake of #MeToo, #TimesUp, and #NotInOurHouse, these sessions indicate a more intentional focus by directors and movement choreographers to create brave, productive spaces for artistic collaboration. Inspired by these timely conversations, initial plans for the 2019 Directing Program pre-conference include offering further training for directors regarding intimacy and violence choreography resources—thus continuing the revolution begun at ATHE 2018.

Takeaway #2: Revolutions happen in the presence of and by learning from others.

In addition to conversations surrounding revolutionizing directing approaches and theatrical formats, there were significant conversations regarding how we document and support a diversity of directing approaches. As many scholars and artists posit, the directorial strategies we utilize in rehearsal are often shrouded in mystery, occurring behind the closed doors of a rehearsal room; however, as evidenced by the SDCF Observership program, directors can benefit greatly by watching one another in rehearsal. Since 2011, the Directing Program has sponsored a unique double session that allows a glimpse into the rehearsal methods of directors, specifically directors who hail from the conference’s host city. In 2018, the “Boston Directs” panel featured Boston-area directors Judy Braha, Ken Prestininzi, Lee Mikeska Gardner, and Wesley Savick, all of whom demonstrated working with actors on the same scene from Measure for Measure. In the discussion following the demonstrations, both the actors and observers noted how illuminating it was to watch multiple directors work and to gain insights from the diverse approaches to the text. As ATHE moves to Orlando in 2019, the Directing Program looks to

connect with Orlando- and Florida-based directors to share their working techniques during this rich annual session.

Takeaway #3: We need to mentor and actively support the revolution.

From the “Boston Directs” panel to the All-Conference Plenary and keynote address by Quiara Allegría Hudes and Gabriela Sanchez, there was a clear call to encourage and support new, emerging voices to revolutionize and maintain the vibrancy of our field.

The Directing Program sees that need, too, and we have initiated a mentorship program to promote conversations among emerging and established scholar-artists in the Directing Program and to offer intentional, ongoing support to emerging directorial voices. Spearheaded by our Graduate Student/Emerging Scholar Representatives, Joelle Re ArpDunham and Niki Tulk, this mentorship program is designed to create deeper connections between Members and opportunities for networking and support both at the ATHE conference and throughout the year.

Mentorship and supporting new voices is itself a revolutionary act. It allows us to learn from each other and break ground together toward new directorial approaches, visions, and opportunities. As Members of ATHE and SDC, it is vitally important to consider how we support emerging artists and welcome them to the fold, how we support their work and allow them to inspire new ideas in us and our audiences, how we collaborate and connect as professionals and colleagues, and how we all contribute to revolutionizing the field.

Emily A. Rollie Please see “Pre-Show/Post-Show” on page 9 by new Focus Group Representative for the Directing Program and SDC Journal PRS Book Review Editor Kathleen M. McGeever.

FOR FURTHER RESOURCES RELATED TO THE ABOVE, PLEASE SEE: ATHE Website https://www.athe.org ATHE 2018 Full Program https://www.athe.org/page/18_full_program The CRAFT Institute http://www.thecraftinstitute.org/ibts/ Ontap Podcast http://www.ontappod.com The episode is on the home page and is clearly marked “From ATHE in Boston.”

HowlRound Livestream http://howlround.com/livestreaming-the-2018-association-for-theatrein-higher-education-athe-conference-theatres-revolution American Theatre Magazine https://www.americantheatre.org The Theatre Times https://thetheatretimes.com Theatre Topics https://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/theatre-topics

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ATHE 2019 CONFERENCE ORLANDO, FL, AUGUST 7–11, 2019

Sister Sylvester, The Fall: A Performance Lecture PHOTO Maria Baranova

Scene Changes: Performing, Teaching, and Working Through the Transitions

As the lobby lights flicker, calling ATHE back to a second act in Orlando, it’s hard not to think about all that has transpired in that city, in the world, on our stages, and in our classrooms since last we gathered in the City Beautiful in 2013. Seemingly accelerated cycles of public violence, political change, creative innovation, and generational expectations have led us to ponder what comes next and how exactly we’ve arrived at our present moment. Our return to the resort space of the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress affords us the opportunity to pause and reflect upon the constantly changing scenery, to contemplate the forces that have thus far shaped our field and our organization, and to debate possible visions of the future—for our art, our institutions, and our students.

The 2019 Conference Committee invites you back to Orlando for an exploration of all that the theme of “Scene Changes” suggests. What are the practical challenges of scene changes for playwrights, directors, dramaturgs, designers, actors, stage managers, and stage crews? For whom is a scene change an interlude of quiet contemplation, and for whom is it the busiest moment of the night? What is the history of the scene shift, and how have theatre artists dealt with changes in production methods and audience tastes? How do scene shifts shape audiences’ experiences? How will our field respond to the challenges and opportunities represented by recent changes in leadership and by shifting economies of production? How do we reflect on techniques of theatre education and scholarship in this changing moment? How can we begin to proactively change the scenes of the theatrical climate and structure? Perhaps most importantly, how will we make use of the present moment to redress previous wrongs, preserve what is important, and move forward into the future?

Come to Orlando for a change in scenery, and stay for a creative contemplation of that special moment in between, when we collectively sit in the dark, taking in what we’ve just seen, and imagining what might come next. For more information, visit ATHE.org —Andrew Gibb, ATHE Vice President for Conference 2019

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Published quarterly by Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC), the Peer-Reviewed Section of SDC Journal serves directors and choreographers working in the profession and in institutions of higher learning. SDC’s mission is to give voice to an empowered collective of directors and choreographers working in all jurisdictions and venues across the country, encourage advocacy, and highlight artistic achievement. SDC Journal seeks essays with accessible language that focus on practice and practical application and that exemplify the sorts of fruitful intersections that can occur between the academic/scholarly and the profession/craft.

For more information, visit: http://sdcweb.org/sdcjournal/sdc-journal-peer-review/

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SDCJ-PRS PERFORMANCE REVIEW The Fall: A Lecture Performance Devised and Performed by Sister Sylvester. Association for Theatre in Higher Education 2018 Annual Conference, Grand Ballroom, Westin Boston Seaport, 3 August 2018.

At the 2018 annual conference of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), guests filtered downstairs to the nondescript Grand Ballroom of the Westin Boston Seaport to see Sister Sylvester’s The Fall: A Lecture Performance. Things began conventionally enough, with director Kathryn Karaoglu Hamilton leading a TED-talk-esque dissection of Peter Whitehead’s 1968 film The Fall. With two large monitors on either side of the stage offering a close-up live feed of her lecture and a white wall upstage center displaying an accompanying PowerPoint, Hamilton documented how the film began as a scripted drama yet was serendipitously transformed into a documentary as Whitehead captured the very real student protests that broke out at Columbia University while he was filming. Legend has it, the film, which faced extremely limited release in the United States, eventually traveled to Athens and Tehran, sparking momentous revolutions in those cities. Hamilton’s lecture queried the relationship between art and image and its ability to provoke social action in the real world.

Yet, just like its object of study, what was one thing soon transformed into another.

Chance and chaos, in the form of Sister Sylvester ensemble members Kelsea Martin and Cyrus Moshrefi, quickly encroached on the lecture, disrupting its seeming order—and Hamilton’s voice of authority. Martin and Moshrefi performatively broke into the stage space to embody a series of figures: themselves; the model Alberta Tiburzi, who dances with psychedelic abandon; Whitehead at different moments of his life; various student protesters depicted in the film; and others. Just as the performative figures multiplied, so too did performative objects: Martin and Moshrefi brought to the stage film reels, paintball guns, overhead projectors, and laptops. Even a live chicken joined in the event, serving as a stand-in for Peter Whitehead (though mostly wandering at his own pace around the stage, happy to peck at the feed the performers left for him). The performance accumulated and overwhelmed the structure of the academic lecture, and as it did, any concept of “the truth” became precipitous and precarious, even as the actors insisted that what they were saying was real.

The interaction between the film and the live performance exemplifies how The Fall: A Lecture Performance used its own process of art-making to heighten, defamiliarize, and render unreliable the truth. The performance pointed out how racial and gender politics impacted the protests, or at least Whitehead’s depiction of them. The protests separated along racial lines; black students of the Student Afro Society (SAS) had in fact asked the predominantly white Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) to leave, and the two groups occupied different buildings and adopted different tactics. Martin then focused on how The Fall depicts the SDS. Footage from the film played on the upstage wall, showing a group of attractive white students euphorically occupying campus buildings. Through the lens of Whitehead’s camera, the men are shown seriously discussing their demands and strategies, while the women sing and dance. Martin’s voice became an incantation as

she narrated the film images shifting back and forth: men talking, women dancing, men talking, women dancing. Refusing to adopt such passivity, elsewhere in the lecture she spoke of her love of guns while shooting paintball pellets at the wall as a visual aid. She offered a primer on various guns and their popularity, highlighting automatic weapons, such as the AK-47, and its close cousin, the AR-14. She also discussed the various guns her grandparents and parents had gifted each other and her, thereby destabilizing the narrative. Was it possible that gun lovers might give each other lethal weapons as a symbol of their love and affection for each other? Was it true that this had indeed happened in Martin’s family, as she described it?

Other moments juxtaposed the violence captured in the film with simulations of that violence on stage. Returning to the issue of race, the performance noted that the black protesters gained community support along with the endorsement of national leaders from the Black Power movement. With such backing, the SAS successfully negotiated a peaceful withdrawal from campus. In contrast, the removal of the SDS protesters devolved into violence. Moshrefi focused on a scene of a young white male protester attempting to scale a building. The police grip his legs and pull him away as he desperately tries to hold on, until he falls to the ground without being able to cushion the impact. He is unceremoniously handcuffed and hauled off as blood streams down his face. In response to this footage, Moshrefi threw himself on the stage repeatedly. Though his physical movements, amplified by his heavy breaths and the loud thudding sound his body made as it landed each time, recalled the painful image of the injured student, Moshrefi could rise and drop again and again.

In the midst of this exertion, he carefully broke down his movements to show how he was able to protect his body as he fell. Issuing an indictment against the privileged white students, he noted that they spent their time thinking about their intellectualized demands, when they should have spent more time practicing how to protect their bodies.

The piece culminated with a viscerally powerful collision of image and action that flickered between the horrific and the sublime. Hamilton revealed the likely reason that Whitehead’s film never saw wide distribution to be his inclusion of a “Destruction Art” piece performed by Raphael Montañez Ortiz, in which Ortiz destroys a piano, beating it with a live chicken until both the instrument and the animal are left mutilated.

Whitehead included the complete gruesome act, which ends as Ortiz hands the bloody carcass to a seated young female assistant, its flesh brutalized and its white feathers stained deep red. Hamilton logically analyzed Ortiz’s artistic vision, emphasizing how he, like many poor Latinx youth, had worked in a slaughterhouse; how our society relegates such work to the already marginalized; how the violence he enacts on the chicken parallels the violence indigenous and minoritized subjects feel at the hands of the dominant white capitalist patriarchy. She continued by recalling the realworld violence depicted in and surrounding Whitehead’s film and their performative interrogation of it. By extension, the audience might fill in the many who suffer and die violently today. Still, it was terrible to watch the chicken’s destruction, and the tension only rose with the presence of the living animal on stage. Chekhov’s chicken?

It was Martin who appeared next, dressed now in a chicken costume complete with bloody stains. Embodying the corpse, she allowed Moshrefi to spin her limp body in a stunningly beautiful dance. Another transformation. As Hamilton noted how the university system itself had changed to become a place of ever-increasing privilege, preventing true social change by pricing out poor and minoritized students who might spark revolution, Martin and Moshrefi continued their transcendent dance of death. The audience was left to question whether art can make lasting social change, what the ethics of art-making might be when truth is destabilized and the horrific is rendered beautiful, and what our role as theatremakers in higher education should be.

KAREN JEAN MARTINSON CHICAGO STATE UNIVERSITY

SDCJ-PRS BOOK REVIEW Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy: Auteurship and Directorial Visions Edited by George Rodosthenous BLOOMSBURY METHUEN DRAMA, 2017. 296 PP. $29.95 PAPERBACK.

Due to the large gaps in historical records, every modern performance of a Greek tragedy is an adaptation. So much information is lost to us that any approximations of “original” staging are educated guesses at best, and the evolution of cultural attitudes toward music, dance, and performance mean that much of what is extant from antiquity would be incomprehensibly alien to even the most educated modern theatregoers. In Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy: Auteurship and Directorial Visions, George Rodosthenous and his contributors critically examine the interplay between “original” text and directorial vision to evaluate how directors like Katie Mitchell, Tadashi Suzuki, Yukio Ninagawa, Theodoros Terzopoulos, Nikos Charalambous, Bryan Doerries, Ariane Mnouchkine, and others draw inspiration from ancient Greek tragedy to tell impactful stories to their audiences. The circumstances and approaches of the individual directors examined by the contributors vary widely, as do the contributors’ own critical lenses.

However, taken as a whole, this collection of eleven essays, plus an introduction and conclusion by Rodosthenous, tells a story that would be familiar to Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Just as the authors of these tragedies fashioned legends from their past to tell meaningful stories for their present, the directors featured in Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy demonstrate the ways 20th- and 21st-century directors similarly reshape Greek tragedy for their own contemporary audiences.

Despite what we often tell ourselves about the timelessness of Greek tragedy, modern directors of these plays must significantly adapt the play text, both in terms of re-scripting extant texts and adapting original staging conditions to contemporary performance settings, to create productions that speak to contemporary audiences. The directors examined in this volume make substantial contributions to the production, through translation, cutting, compilation, or other literary and dramatic adaptation of the work, such that the author of each individual essay considers the director to be the production’s primary author. Rodosthenous’ editorial framework considers an understanding of both the work of individual directors and multiple directorial approaches to a single play text.

Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy is loosely organized into three sections: “Global Perspectives,” “Directing as Dialogue with the Community,” and “Directorial Re-Visions.” Each section contains three to four essays related to its sectional theme, although many of these essays would fit equally well in any other section. Because most of the essays examine the developing body of work of an individual director or evolving approaches to a certain play text or performance, Historicist and New Historicist approaches are the most prevalent critical approaches of the contributors, although these are often mixed with other critical approaches to suit the individual director or play.

In his introduction, Rodosthenous acknowledges that space constraints necessarily limit his ability to present a more complete picture of significant directors of Greek tragedy. This limitation is most keenly perceived in the “Global Perspectives” section, where each contributor examines one or FALL 2018/WINTER 2019 | SDC JOURNAL PEER-REVIEWED SECTION

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two directors within those directors’ national contexts. Andrew Haydon offers clear and critical examination of Katie Mitchell’s development as a director in the early 1990s, and Penelope Chatzidimitriou’s equally astute examination of Tadashi Suzuki’s and Yukio Ninagawa’s work in postHiroshima Japan would, for example, function equally well in the section on “Directing as Dialogue with the Community.” Without commentary that specifically connects the work of the directors examined within this section to national and cultural viewpoints, “Global Perspectives” falls short of offering a truly “global” perspective.

Rodosthenous’ organization best supports examinations of directorial approaches in “Directing as Dialogue with the Community.” Magdelena Zira’s essay on Nikos Charalambous’ production of Suppliants, Adam Strickson’s exploration of La MaMa’s production of Trojan Women, and Sophie Klein’s analysis of Bryan Doerries’ “Theater of War” productions all examine the history, practice, and development of their respective topics without creating the impression that they are leaving the greater corpus of other directorial work within similar frameworks unexamined. Of the essays in this section, Zira’s and Klein’s pieces most directly support Rodosthenous’ argument for directorial auteurship in modern productions of Greek tragedy. Both authors examine the creation of performances by directors for survivor communities: Charalambous’ Suppliants spoke to audiences of post-invasion Cyprus in 1979–1980, and Doerries’ “Theater of War” to the wounded veterans of the ongoing global war on terror. In both cases, the directors sought to activate Greek tragedy to heal the psychic and cultural wounds of their audience communities.

In her examination of Charalambous’ 1979/1980 production of Euripides’ Suppliants, Zira focuses on Charalambous’ integration of contemporary rituals of grief following the 1974 invasion of Cyprus into his theatrical practice. Zira particularly notes Charalambous’ use of the iconic black-clad mothers, wives, and daughters of missing Cypriot prisoners, whose public protests made them a fixture of contemporary consciousness. By focusing on this contemporary ritual of supplication, Zira argues that Charalambous’ approach achieves the combination of holy ritual and performance that would have been a feature of the ancient Athenian play festivals but has tended to be absent from subsequent productions of Greek tragedies.

Klein makes a similarly strong case for Bryan Doerries’ auteurship in his “Theater of War” productions, which draw from Sophocles’ Ajax and

Philoctetes. Doerries is unapologetic in cutting broad swaths of the play texts to suit the aims of his performances: “...to recognize the heroism and sacrifice of our service men and women, and also to promote increased understanding of...[the] struggles that they face on the battle and home fronts” (151). In Doerries’ productions, the text of the play is ancillary to the discussion between performers and audience members that follows the performance. Klein argues that this panel discussion becomes an extension of the chorus, and that Doerries, through his directorial practice, activates ancient Greek tragedy to reintegrate citizen-soldiers with their peacetime communities while acknowledging their experience of war—a key function of tragedy for the citizen-soldiers of Athens in the fifth century BCE. Based on the effectiveness of Charalambous’ and Doerries’ directorial efforts to address their communities, Zira and Klein make strong cases for viewing the text of Greek tragedy as raw material for adaptation.

Fashioning the antique tragedy into a performance that appears timeless while speaking to audiences today is the true success of the auteur director.

Zira and Klein demonstrate how Charalambous and Doerries have achieved this success by crafting their productions for specific audiences and with specific intentions for what those audiences should take away from their productions. Charalambous and Doerries achieve through their 20th- and 21st-century productions what the ancient Greeks sought to achieve through theirs, and provide models for the artistic and social outcomes that an auteur’s directorial approach can manifest.

In assembling this volume, Rodosthenous creates a survey of how the supposedly “timeless” tragedies of ancient Greece have been reauthenticated in our contemporary world and will continually be reauthenticated with each subsequent performance. If, as Rodosthenous says in his conclusion, “Greek tragedy has been fundamental in helping us understand ourselves, and understand the others around us,” his book may help directors and students better understand their responsibilities to meaning-making within their communities, particularly when directing plays from antiquity (252). Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy is a reminder to directors of all texts that however great the play, the director bears the ultimate responsibility for ensuring the audience shares in that greatness.

TONY TAMBASCO DIRECTOR + EDUCATOR

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE NEW ASSOCIATE MEMBERS WHO HAVE JOINED UNDER THE 2017 & 2018 SDC MFA GRADUATE STUDENT INITIATIVE BROOKLYN COLLEGE TEXAS STATE UNIVERSITY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA — LOS ANGELES INDIANA UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS — AMHERST UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

Njideka Agwuna, Columbia Liam Castellan, Indiana Carly Conklin, Texas State Nana Dakin, Columbia Mark Hairston, Columbia Charles S.C. Jin, UCLA Kim Kerfoot, Columbia Isabelle Kettle, Columbia Artur Makaryan, Columbia

Mary Corinne Miller, UMass Amherst Polly Noonan, Brooklyn Jennifer Onopa, UMass Amherst Kevin Ray, Brooklyn Ariel Rodriguez, Columbia Evelina Stampa, UCLA Anna Strasser, Brooklyn Matthew Trucano, Columbia Jayongela Wilder, UCLA

The initiative is aimed at building relationships between SDC and recent graduates—the future leaders of the American theatre.

For more information about SDC’s MFA Graduate Student Initiative, contact Associate Director of Member Services Marisa Levy at MLevy@SDCweb.org 4646SDCSDC JOURNAL JOURNAL | FALL PEER-REVIEWED 2018/WINTERSECTION 2019

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SDC FOUNDATION FROM THE ARCHIVES

Masters of the Stage: Kwame Kwei-Armah Kwame Kwei-Armah is an award-winning actor, writer, and director. From 2011 to 2017, Kwame served as Artistic Director of Baltimore Center Stage. In 2018, he began his new position as the Artistic Director of London’s Young Vic. This interview is a condensed conversation between Kwei-Armah and SDC Associate Member M. Graham Smith for SDCF’s podcast series, Masters of the Stage: Regional Originals. This conversation took place in December 2017 and aired January 9, 2018. Readers can subscribe to SDCF’s free podcast on iTunes or access past episodes at www.sdcfoundation.org

Kwame Kwei-Armah Leon Puplett

PHOTO

GRAHAM | How did your journey in the theatre begin, and how did it bring you to Baltimore?

KWAME | I started out in the theatre as a singer-songwriter. At about 18 years old, I saw an advertisement in The Stage, London’s trade newspaper, for a tall, skinny black guy who could sing. A friend’s mother saw the advertisement and applied on my behalf. I auditioned and got it. This job turned out to be really pivotal. The play was Clash Point at an off-West End venue, The Westminster Theatre.

It was really trying to make manifest an art and address the riots in Britain in the 1980s about black disenfranchisement and the aftermath of confusion. It was a political play.

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However, what I enjoyed far more than being on stage were the discussions about the play’s thematic concerns. That was my introduction to new writing and the power of new writing; not just how we conserve the talent but how we conserve the audiences. I found myself very interested from that point on. When I later became a professional actor, I wanted to figure out how to balance my career. I did commercial West End shows, which allowed me to subsidize the work that I loved doing, which were new plays. Once I got to a place where I was working consistently as an actor, I grew increasingly frustrated with the idea of waiting for people to send me the right plays that said the right things, so I became a writer.

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I began to write with the intention of addressing things that I felt were important. I was never concerned with casting myself as an actor in my writing. My most significant political influences were people like Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X. There’s a tenet that runs through their philosophies of self-determination, of never waiting for someone else to do something for you. It urges you to go out and self-determine.

That said, in our business, luck, good fortune, and timing play a major part in one’s success or lack thereof too.

As a playwright, I did not want to wait for my plays to only be interpreted through the lens of white directors. It was then that I taught myself how to direct. Shortly after, I was fortunate

enough to be invited to be an Artistic Director first at the World Festival of Black Arts and Culture in Senegal and subsequently at Baltimore Center Stage.

GRAHAM | I’m curious about the duality of your understanding of both the British and the American theatre world. Was there any kind of culture shock experience that you had as you mastered the American theatre landscape and how it differs from the culture of theatremaking in Britain?

In terms of actors, I do not believe that there is a difference between the American and the British actor. I think that they are equally brilliant, equally well trained, and committed to this bizarre way of making a living. I have loved dancing with American actors. There is an old stereotype that the American actor and theatre is slightly more visceral than British. That implies that somehow the American actor and theatre is all about the guts and not the mind and the British theatre is about the mind and not the guts. I do not think that’s true. In this country, there is a brilliant marriage of the visceral and the intellectual. As a result, Britain has fast

And I thought, “You don’t want to argue?”

GRAHAM | Do you have a preference for one or the other, in terms of note-giving and notetaking?

KWAME | I don’t think I do. What is interesting is that the actor is fundamentally doing the same thing, whether they push back or not. The American actor is taking the note and thinking, “Do I agree with it?”, then saying, “Okay, I’ll do it.” Or, “I’ll do it badly three times if I don’t agree with it and then he won’t ask me to do it again.”

Kwame Kwei-Armah in rehearsal for SOUL The Stax Musical at Baltimore Center Stage PHOTO Bill Geenan/Center Stage

KWAME | I don’t know if I’ve mastered it, but I certainly have some observations. The biggest culture shock for me was the shift into an artistic director position after having been a freelance artist all my life. People hear your words differently. I realized that your office changes the way people listen to you. That’s not unique to the United States, but it was unique to my experience because I hadn’t been an artistic director in Britain before. The biggest shock for me, in terms of theatremaking, was how disciplined the actors were during notes. As an actor myself, I was used to note sessions where the director would give you a note and you’d say, “Yeah! I got it, but the reason I did it was this…,” creating reasons and a discussion. When I got here, I was working with brilliant American actors and I found that they would just take your note.

The other biggest shock, which is related to theatremaking but less related to the art of theatremaking, was American philanthropy. I was stunned by how willingly your average American supports the arts with their own money. In Britain, the Arts Council is a major contributor to the arts ecology. In the United States, however, there isn’t a body that does that kind of thing.

The NEA is magnificent and our local arts councils are wonderful, but the percentage of the budget is markedly reduced in America. I realize that I’m very fortunate to be in Maryland because there are many other states that give nothing at all. I realized that the American mindset is almost like tithing. We tithe to the arts or to the thing that we care about.

adopted that because we have seen it in film and witnessed how powerful it is.

GRAHAM | Is there anything that the American theatre landscape does in a particularly useful way that you hope to implement in your leadership in the Young Vic? KWAME | There’s a funk about American theatre, and I love me some funk. I’m a James Brown addict, and there’s an energy and swagger that comes with it. Again, the swagger is not overconfident but has a sense of ownership of the work and the energy, an ownership of the ethos behind making theatre. There is an intellectual vigor that accompanies the swagger that I define as funk. I want to bring that back with me as part of the theatre artist I am today.

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GRAHAM | Do you have any ideas about how to facilitate funk, or funkiness, in a rehearsal room or institution?

been a cultural and programming renovation under your leadership too. Could you talk about some of the programs that you’re proudest of?

were doing our Third Space Theatre here, but we would go out into the community and play at various venues across the city.

KWAME | I think I do, but that doesn’t mean it will work. I’ll start from the rehearsal room. My rehearsal room is dedicated to the application of the spirit. That’s what we, as artists, are trying to do and, in particular, what artists of the diasporic African hue are trying to do. These characters have been written for us. They’re on the page, yet they’re floating above us. What we need to do is try and pull them into our bodies organically to become one. When it comes to

KWAME | From the start of my time at Center Stage, I stood on the shoulders of giants. Irene Lewis, my predecessor, brought me here to do Elmina’s Kitchen, which showed me the breadth of their ambitions. They diversified their audience. When I arrived here, it was about 11 percent African American. So, Center Stage and Irene programmed a third of the season toward that African American audience, thus growing an African American audience.

The challenge when I arrived was that August Wilson had arrived at Baltimore Center Stage at the time that Irene was programming. Wilson was a wonderful carriage to say to the African American community of Baltimore, “Come and see yourself reflected through the lens of a master, a master who is doing really well on Broadway and winning everything.” By the time I got to Center Stage, they had done eight of Wilson’s ten plays. There was a sense that the audience had seen all the August Wilsons. So what were we going to do next?

Kwame Kwei-Armah in rehearsal for SOUL The Stax Musical at Baltimore Center Stage PHOTO Bill Geenan/Center Stage

It actually, rather brilliantly, began to fragment.

There were different voices saying different things. My job was to find those writers, work with them, bring them here, and present the audience with new ways of telling these African American tales. August Wilson is now in the realms of the classics, quite correctly, but there are new voices speaking to the community.

In 2015, I did a play called X’s and O’s, by KJ Sanchez, with Jenny Mercein about American football. Many people said that we shouldn’t do it, that we wouldn’t get a lot of single tickets from it. I wanted to do it because I wanted to say to those husbands—who don’t really want to come to the theatre but come with their wives because they want a date night—that this is a theatre for you too. I’m going to cater to every section of the community. I want them to hear that I’m coming to them, not just them coming to us. That’s been the underlying ethos—access for all.

GRAHAM | Could you talk about the Rapid Response Theatre work?

the act of facilitating, asking, and beckoning the spirit into our bodies, I think there’s no better way of doing that than through music.

I start each rehearsal with 35 to 45 minutes of music and have my company dance together. I’ll bring in the first week’s music, and then other members of the company will provide music. We alternate and get to know each other through our music. We dance together, sweat together, and then we begin our day. I really only started doing that in the States. That’s part of that funk and fostering people’s commitment. Applying the spirit of funk through the frequencies and energy of music inspires an energetic, emotional togetherness. A recent scientific article claimed that when we look at narratives together, our heart rates sync up. I think that’s beautiful. We long to be one. We want communal oneness. I hope to bring my sense of communal oneness, particular to the spirit of funk, to the Young Vic. GRAHAM | In addition to the renovation at Baltimore Center Stage, it seems that there’s

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There were a few things that I had to do to make the place my own. I needed to find my song. Community is everything to me. For artistic directors of the previous generation, their communication with the audience and community was on the stage. By the time I became an artistic director, the world had changed. You have to be part of the community now, which really resonates with me. I love the people. I didn’t come into theatre to serve the four percent. I came in to be part of the fifth estate. I think that an artistic director has to have a relationship with the community. Particularly in the States, when so much of our income is individual giving, we are part of the community and we are here to serve it.

I’m very pleased that we started a mobile unit, taking classic work to people in the community.

We’re not asking them to come back; we’re just saying, “Everybody deserves art; let’s go out to you.” I’ve been really pleased that the community has accepted us as a community service. We

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KWAME | When I got here, I realized that I needed to learn about this country. And who better to tell me truthfully about it than the artists and writers? So I reached out to about 50 writers and asked them to write a three-minute monologue about their America. It could be negative, positive, anything. It was a blank slate; I just wanted them to write it. We subsequently filmed them and it got made into a feature film. It was brilliant because I got 50 takes on America.

GRAHAM | You commissioned 50 writers to write 50 plays just as you arrived here. That’s fantastic!

KWAME | We filmed it, put it on our website, and it became a thing. People could say, “This is America of 2012.” Our second one, My America 2, came about when I felt the country was shifting.

We experienced a slew of black bodies being killed institutionally. I felt the country turning and I wanted to know what that turn was. We approached writers again and said, “Tell me about your America now. I don’t want you to

talk about anything other than what you feel.”

We planned to shoot it on the spot where many of these black men had been killed. We went to where Trayvon Martin was shot and filmed one there. We went to Charleston during the funerals of the nine men, and we were calling that Rapid Response Theatre. We would land, put a table in the middle of the floor, perform for whoever was there, and record it. It was important to record the piece in order to capture the audience around it. I was very satisfied with that. It was one of the most heartbreaking moments to be shooting in Charleston, where we were later shut down, seeing the funeral cortege go past and hearing people say that we are one America, not several.

GRAHAM | Did any of the other of those videos also run into a shutdown situation?

KWAME | They all did! This idea wasn’t something you could go and ask for permission.

These are sensitive monuments and places. We turned up without planning for permission and just ran in. Alex Koch, a dear collaborator and brilliant filmmaker and video and production designer, and myself went to the estate where Trayvon Martin was shot. It was a gated community, and we didn’t have permission to enter. We arrived, put the cameras in, and then we thought, “Oh my god, how are we going to get in?” We realized that if we approached the gates in the right way, we could open them and go in. Alex, who is Caucasian, looked at me and said, “Can I go in there with you?” And I said, “No, I’ll do it myself,” because, ultimately, the only person who should really have done it was me, as it was my project. What he was actually doing was loaning me his whiteness.

He was protecting me. I realized that all my life I had been pushed against or looked after by whiteness, by being self-determined, or thinking I was being self-determined. I looked at him and said, “Of course.” It was a wonderful moment of friendship and alliance. It wasn’t theoretical that black men get killed there. It had actually happened. He loaned me his whiteness and we walked in together. It was a pivotal moment for me, in terms of my American journey.

GRAHAM | You first arrived here a few years after the Obama presidency had started and now, as you depart, we’re in our first full year of a very different presidency. Your experience of America has been in the midst of a pretty wild time. Could you contextualize that, in terms of what’s happening in the world and how you’re seeing, since you’re working with artists on both sides of the ocean? How should we, as artists, respond to this moment? What sort of responses do you think are the most powerful and which strategies are appealing to you?

KWAME | While I think the Chinese proverb “May you live in interesting times” is pertinent, it’s also a curse. I arrived in the Obama era and I wanted my children to live in a country

fluidity [are] here to stay as people who view the world from outside of the box often have really interesting ways of looking at the world and then applying that to their art.

when there was a president of color. That was wonderful. I would say that the America we became was, in part, due to a bit of backlash from that. I describe myself as a generative and interpretive artist, as well as a curatorial one.

Sometimes it’s in the singular, other times it’s all three. I have different responses depending on what hat I’m wearing. We have to use every strategy we know of because we are part of the fourth/fifth estate. There are some of us that have to come out fighting, which is what I think comedy has done. It lets the world know that not everybody in this country perceives the current direction as the right direction. I think theatre works best in metaphor. As a curatorial artist, I’m always asking, “How do I speak to the time metaphorically? How do I try and write the zeitgeist?” As a generative artist, I am figuring out the way to speak to this time, which is different from looking at the news. I think that is our challenge.

GRAHAM | There are so many young directors and leaders out there. Is there any advice you might offer to a young person coming up in the theatre?

GRAHAM | The political challenges that are facing us in the world are also coinciding with a very interesting moment in American theatre as our landscape is turning so quickly. As you depart, we’ll find ourselves in this country without a black leader of any of the major theatres. [Since this discussion, and as of present time, Hana Sharif has been named Artistic Director of The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis.]

As these boards make these decisions, do you have any advice that may inform their choices about what might best serve their institution and the field going forward?

KWAME | That’s interesting because we’re asking people to do two things at the same time. We’re quite a binary culture in the West.

We believe that the thing in front of us is a thing we do. Boards are responsible for their specific theatre. While TCG does a great job, there isn’t necessarily great join-up between the boards of other theatres often in the same city, let alone across the country. Thus, it becomes difficult for boards to perceive themselves as national players. They can only really look at themselves within the sphere of their own influence. That said, it’s really important at this point in time that each board understands that they’re making statements with their chosen artistic directors to their community and that these choices will affect the way the community sees the world.

That’s a really big thing.

I think that this is a moment of truth, a moment when boards have to ask, “Do I want my new artistic leadership to be on the right or the wrong side of history?” Again, that is not to say that a brilliant straight white male or gay white male isn’t best for your institution or that you shouldn’t go there. One shouldn’t be goaded by the winds of fashion or newfangled-ness, but this is a moment to be bold, a moment to say, “I believe in tomorrow and tomorrow will look like this.” My hope is that boards across the country acknowledge that gender, race, and gender

KWAME | What has helped me as I negotiate this landscape is a sense of what I want to say and how I want to use my art to contribute to the betterment of society. That doesn’t always mean it has to be political. Having audiences laugh and feel good for two hours is a political act. Having an audience look at itself and question why it’s structured the way it is is a political act. I think one should make a statement and believe in that statement. Find a way to corral others to believe in your statement and then be really, really good. The one piece of advice I give myself all the time is to look at every piece of art that I make through the lens of the person I think hates me the most. It is then that I see things that I might not have seen before.

GRAHAM | That is a great reversal of the way that art is usually approached. You’ve opened up the culture of this cultural center to reach the widest possible community to fill this space with their stories, their love, their art. There are so many theatres around the country striving to achieve the things that you’ve been successful in doing here. Do you have any words of wisdom about how other theatres can open up their programming?

KWAME | I think right at the core [of] what I do is the community. I want to animate and serve the community. I want to make them feel that this is a place they can walk into whenever they feel like it. The doors are not shuttered until playtime. The environment isn’t dark and discouraging. This is a place that exists because of the human body, and I want the body to come, join, and bring its energy. If I’ve been successful in anything, I would say it is in transmitting that as much as humanly possible.

I wanted to reach the community in Baltimore and say, “I want you to come here; I want you to be here. And if you come, I’ll try and reward you with love. You may not like every play or every installation, but you need to know that we have designed it with you in mind. Not to present a museum piece, not to be part of the elite, but to be part of popular culture, to be part of you.”

Edited and condensed by Claire Simonis

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REMEMBERING GILLIAN LYNNE

BY ANDY

BLANKENBUEHLER

Gillian and I met for dinner last fall at one of her favorite restaurants in the West End. We sat side by side in a booth at the back corner.

The maître d’, the waiters, the whole staff offered Gillian respectful nods of the head throughout dinner. Everyone knew her. I had only just begun to know her, but even still, we huddled shoulder to shoulder throughout several courses, laughing, contemplating and sharing moments of silence. In those moments, a shocked voice was speaking inside my head.

It said, “How in the world did you ever end up here?”

Our table faced a window. The window looked out on an alley. Across the alley was a stage door. Gillian pointed to the theatre door and said, “I was dancing on that stage when the bombs were falling.” I have no doubt that Dame Gillian Lynne had pretty much seen it all. I can’t possibly claim to know Gillie as well as the countless collaborators, dancers, actors, and friends who had known her for many years, but nonetheless, she has impacted my life in immeasurable ways. *** 1987. The tape deck of my orange VW Beetle played the cassette tape of Cats over and over as I drove through Cincinnati. Though I was just a teenager, my creative brain was already on overdrive. After my dance studio closed for the evening, I would stay alone. I would play the tape and imagine what the dancing might look like. I imagined (with such hunger) what it would be like to perform on Broadway in Cats. I wore out the tape. I bought another one. I wore out the tape. I bought another one.

1990. I moved to NYC. I pinned a photograph of the Winter Garden Theatre and the show’s marquis on my bedframe. The dream of dancing in Cats had carried me to NYC, but I never got the chance to perform in the show. *** During previews of Hamilton on Broadway, I received a card backstage. The letter said, “I understand what you did up there. I think we will see eye to eye.” It was from Gillian, and though at that point we had never met, we began a relationship built on mutual respect and understanding. Several months later, Andrew Lloyd Webber graciously asked me to meet with the Cats team to work on the recent revival.

There was excitement about me diving into the piece with fresh eyes, but I feared that a working partnership with Gillian would be difficult. Our young friendship had growing pains, to say the least.

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In the months to follow, Gillian and I walked a path of eggshells and landmines. I was hungry to bring as much as I could to the table, and of course, that kind of enthusiasm often clouds perspective. I remember asking her once about one of her steps. I didn’t find the moment to be completely successful, and I asked Gillian to break it down. She stood in her dining room and talked me through the step. Her 89-yearold body slowly inhabited layer upon layer of complexity. The moment was so specific and organic. It had been shaped by years and years of life experience. It was sculpted by the sharpest kind of inspiration: intellect. The dance step was perfect. I was wrong.

I felt a bit of sadness in that moment, because I was reminded that theatre and dance are living, breathing things. So many times, the initial impulse of creation can hardly be repeated.

You can try, but it often loses something in the retelling. Gillian was and is the core impulse of Cats. It was born in her body. I thought of Hamilton and wondered if my heart would one day break because the show had changed from the crystal power of its initial impulse.

Inspired by the material and the tremendous dancers in the revival cast, new ideas sprang out of me, but I started to realize that you cannot separate Gillian Lynne from the stage production of Cats. I began to fear that the show might actually break without her DNA driving the dance. With Gillian’s longtime assistant, Chrissie Cartwright, at my side, we worked hard to discover new moments while never losing the magic of what Gillian had created. *** The final week of the run, the Cats revival on Broadway simply took my breath away. At the

Saturday matinee performance, I finally lived my dream of being in Cats on Broadway. The costume and hair departments worked their magic on me, and on my kids, Luca and Sofia, and we joined the company on stage for the performance. The Blankenbuehler Jellicle cats crept through the set, sang with Skimble, hissed at Griz, and even took a bow and exited through the famous oven.

That night, the whole family watched the show from the very first row. The cats crawled over us, and we were simply transported. From that unbelievable vantage point, I couldn’t stop thinking about what it must have been like to see Gillian carve her magic out of blood, sweat, and tears. It is still mind-boggling and inspiring to think that Gillie choreographed the show when she was 55 years old!

I watched the closing night performance from the first row of the mezzanine. As I was watching the ball, my reverence for Gillian Lynne hit its peak. The dancers were superhuman. They were on fire. I have never seen a more gutsy or impassioned performance. Then it hit me like a freight train: how many dancers have lived their dream because of Gillian Lynne? How many people learned to dance, how many dancers have learned to fly, how many dancers have found their calling, how many dancers have moved to NYC or London or Melbourne or Hamburg or Vienna or Paris—just to dance in Cats? *** We finished our dinner on that rainy night in London. Gillie asked if she could drop me at my hotel. I said I needed to walk. I popped open my umbrella and started down the alley,

past the stage door where Gillian Lynne once danced in pointe shoes while bombs fell during World War II. I walked slowly, but my mind raced. It raced through her stories of learning how to direct film. She spoke with pride of being a female director/choreographer in London when there weren’t any female director/ choreographers in London. She looked at me with the eyes of a grandmother. She looked at me with the eyes of a comrade. She asked about my kids, and she gushed about her love, her husband, Peter. I saw her hand go on top of mine as she spoke about the blessings and curses of dedicating your life to being a choreographer.

IN MEMORIAM

August 18, 2017 – September 16, 2018

Scott Ambler

Milos Forman

Donald McKayle

CHOREOGRAPHER Since 2013

DIRECTOR Since 1972

Jay Broad

Dave Groom

DIRECTOR/ CHOREOGRAPHER Since 1964

DIRECTOR Since 1979

DIRECTOR Since 2010

Bob Carlton

Peter Hall

DIRECTOR Since 1995

DIRECTOR Since 1967

Eric Concklin

Alan Johnson

DIRECTOR/ CHOREOGRAPHER Since 1984

DIRECTOR/ CHOREOGRAPHER Since 1973

GILLIAN LYNNE, a dancer and choreographer perhaps best known for choreographing the original production of the musical Cats, died on July 1 at the age of 92.

Ken Costigan

Gillian Lynne

DIRECTOR Since 1978

Anthony Schmitt

Born in Bromley, Kent, England, Lynne began dancing at age eight and was performing with the Ballet Guild at age 15. She danced with Sadler’s Wells Ballet (later The Royal Ballet) for seven years before leaving to become a star dancer at the London Palladium. She began choreographing when she replaced the original choreographer of a revue named England Our England, and her first major musical theatre choreography credit was The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd in 1965.

Gemze de Lappe

DIRECTOR/ CHOREOGRAPHER Since 1982

William Martin

Robin Schraft

DIRECTOR Since 1975

DIRECTOR Since 2015

Vivian Matalon

Paul Weidner

DIRECTOR Since 1977

DIRECTOR Since 1984

Maybe it was because she thought we saw things eye to eye, but silence would follow where no more explanations were needed. And that voice in my head would again say, “How in the world did I ever get here? How in the world was I so blessed to have been touched by this legend?” I am one of those dancers who found their way to NYC because of Gillian Lynne. I am one of those dancers who is living their dreams because of Dame Gillian Lynne.

In 1976, she choreographed The Comedy of Errors for director Trevor Nunn, which led to Nunn bringing her on to the Cats team in 1981. Her choreography for the show would be danced literally around the world. She later choreographed two more shows composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber: the equally globe-circling The Phantom of the Opera, now the longestrunning show in Broadway history, and Aspects of Love. She received Tony Award nominations for Cats and Phantom. Her other Broadway credits include Pickwick; How Now, Dow Jones; and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

CHOREOGRAPHER Since 1969

James Dunn DIRECTOR Since 1996

Warren Enters

Brian Murray DIRECTOR Since 1969

Novella Nelson DIRECTOR Since 1994

Rachel Rockwell DIRECTOR/ CHOREOGRAPHER Since 2008

DIRECTOR Since 1990

DIRECTOR Since 1976

Among her shows in the West End, she choreographed The Card (1973), Tomfoolery (1980), My Fair Lady (1978), and Cabaret (1986).

She choreographed the films Half a Sixpence, Man of La Mancha, and Yentl, and was one of two resident choreographers for The Muppet Show in the latter part of the 1970s.

She received a CBE in 1977 and was made a dame in 2014 for her achievements in dance.

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THE SOCIETY PAGES SDC MEMBERS @ WORK + PLAY

Mark Schneider + Gina Rattan

David Perlow + Timothy Koch

On June 18 at an SDC - Broadway Associate/Resident Summer Gathering, SDC President Pam MacKinnon, Broadway Associate Steering Committee Members Gina Rattan and Mark Schneider, Members of the Broadway Associate/Resident Steering Committee and SDC Executive Board, and SDC staff joined with the community of associate/resident directors and choreographers to toast the successes of the 2017/2018 season and discuss next steps toward securing Union coverage for their work.

The SDC staff took their annual Summer Staff Outing at the Whitney Museum this year on July 18, with a guided tour of the collection at the Whitney Museum on the High Line, followed by a company lunch.

On July 20, SDC Vice President Michael John Garcés and Lisa Portes, on behalf of the SDC Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee, welcomed directors and choreographers who attended the 2018 LTC Carnaval of New Latinx Work: ¡ConeXión!, produced by the Latinx Theatre Commons (LTC) in association with Teatro Vista and the Alliance of Latinx Theater Artists (ALTA) Chicago, and hosted by the Theatre School at DePaul University in Chicago. More than 220 playwrights, producers, actors, directors, scholars, and theatremakers viewed six new plays and discussed the state and future of Latinx theatre during the convening. SDC Members KJ Sanchez and Chay Yew also attended.

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Lisa Portes, Michael John Garcés, KJ Sanchez + Chay Yew

Geoffrey Alm + Chuck Coyle

Members of the SDC Fight Steering Committee Geoffrey Alm and Chuck Coyle represented the Union at the Society of American Fight Directors’ National Stage Combat Workshop at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, LA, on August 3.

Dan O’Driscoll

From August 16 to 19, SDC Member Dan O’Driscoll represented SDC Fight Choreographers at New York Summer Sling, a four-day stage combat workshop organized by the Society of American Fight Directors (SAFD) in Brooklyn.

Organized by Dave Sikula, members of the Bay Area community gathered on August 14 at Nexus Center to provide a Bay Area Welcome for SDC President Pam MacKinnon as she began her tenure as Artistic Director of ACT.

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Chay Yew, Barbara Wolkoff + Wm. Bullion

From August 19 to 24, Directors Lab Chicago held their annual workshop at the Victory Gardens Theater and other locations around Chicago. This year’s gathering focused on the theme “All Art Is Political: Empathy, Identity, and Intention in the Theater” and challenged directors to articulate the goals of their work as it relates to the psychology of change, persuasion, and bias. Board Member Chay Yew and Barbara Wolkoff represented SDC.

On August 26, SDC partnered with The Dramatists Guild to host a Director/ Playwright Seattle Speed Dating event at the Seattle Center Armory, which brought Members of both groups together for an evening of networking.

On September 13, Executive Board Member and Northeast Regional Representative Melia Bensussen hosted a Boston Membership Meeting at her home, alongside Boston Steering Committee Members Daniel Gidron, Judy Braha, and Ted Hewlett. Members and non-Members alike discussed the first year of the SDC/NEAT (New England Area Theatre) Agreement and how SDC can continue serve the greater Boston area.

Daniel Gidron + Judy Braha

Emily Ranii, Ted Hewlett, Misha Shields, Allison Mosier Sheff + Elaine Vaan Hogue

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SDC Regional Representative Melia Bensussen moderated a conversation with Barrymore Award-nominated directors and choreographers about making theatre in Philadelphia at a Barrymore Panel on September 24.

Arianna Soloway, Keira Fromm, Cody Estle + Jason Gerace

Kay Martinovich + Doug Clayton

Chicago-area SDC Members joined President Pam MacKinnon, Director of Member Services Barbara Wolkoff, and Contract Affairs Representative Adam Levi for a Chicago Member Meeting and SDC Night Out at Steppenwolf Theatre Company on September 28. SDC Members also attended a performance of Bruce Norris’ Downstate, directed by MacKinnon.

Corey Bradberry, Carrie Lee Patterson, Seth Bockley, Tommy Rapley + William Pullinsi

Rives Collins + BJ Jones

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Bill Castellino, Nick Corley, Allison Mosier Sheff, Barbara Wolkoff, Jonathan Cerullo, Colleen Sullivan, Jeremy Blunt + Dominic Grijalva PHOTO Michael Kushner

On September 30, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS raised more than $900,000 at the 32nd Annual Broadway Flea Market and Grand Auction.

SDC’s table was 11th out of 58 tables in terms of the most amounts raised, bringing in $10,129. The SDC Flea Market Committee was chaired by Jonathan Cerullo and Nick Corley; the “Flea Team” included Heather Arnson, Neal Kowalsky, and Sidney Erik Wright, and volunteers included Britt Berke, Jeremy Blunt, Sara Brians, Emily Briggs, Bill Castellino, Edie Cowan, Alex Dmietriev, Matthew Earnest, David Edwards, Glenn Giron, Kenney Green, Susan Kerner, Gary John LaRosa, Margaret Lee, Fred C.L. Mann III, Allison Mosier Sheff, Colleen Sullivan, Susan Toni, and Eric Vitale, as well as staff members Maureen Fox, Dominic Grijalva, and Barbara Wolkoff.

Randy Kovitz + Michael Hood

At a Pittsburgh Night Out on October 2, SDC Board Member Desdemona Chiang met with fellow SDC Members for a reception to welcome Marya Sea Kaminski and Marc Masterson, Pittsburgh’s newest Artistic Directors. Following the reception, Members attended a performance of Pride and Prejudice, directed by Chiang.

Julie Petrusak, Marc Masterson, Randy Kovitz, Philip Gates, Marya Sea Kaminski, Desdemona Chiang, Michael Hood, Mara Newbery Greer, Eben Hoffer, Adil Mansoor + NaTasha Thompson

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PHOTO

Photofest

English actor, producer, and director Sir John English actor, producer, and director Sir John Gielgud enjoyed an illustrious career in theatre Gielgud enjoyed an illustrious career in theatre and film that spanned more than 75 years. and film that spanned more than 75 years.

Considered to be one of the greatest actors of Considered to be one of the greatest actors of his generation, particularly of Shakespeare, he his generation, particularly of Shakespeare, he was knighted in 1953 for his services to theatre was knighted in 1953 for his services to theatre and appointed to the Order of Merit in 1996 for and appointed to the Order of Merit in 1996 for exceptional contributions to the arts. exceptional contributions to the arts.

The grandnephew of celebrated English actress The grandnephew of celebrated English actress Ellen Terry, Gielgud attended the Royal Academy Ellen Terry, Gielgud attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and made his acting debut in of Dramatic Art and made his acting debut in 1921 at the Old Vic Theatre. At age 25, Gielgud 1921 at the Old Vic Theatre. At age 25, Gielgud became the star of the Old Vic, with acclaimed became the star of the Old Vic, with acclaimed performances as Hamlet and Richard II. During performances as Hamlet and Richard II. During the ‘30s and ’40s, Gielgud became a West End the 1930s and ’40s, Gielgud became a West and Broadway favorite, known for his starring End and Broadway favorite, best known for roles in Richard of Bordeaux, The Importance of his starring roles in Richard of Bordeaux, The Being Earnest, Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet.

Importance of Being Earnest, Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet.

In the 1950s and ’60s, Gielgud toured throughout the world with his solo recital of In the 1950s and ’60s, Gielgud toured passages from Shakespeare, Ages of Man. An throughout the world with his solo recital of actor of considerable versatility, he performed passages from Shakespeare, Ages of Man. An in contemporary plays by Edward Albee, Alan actor of considerable versatility, he performed Bennett, Charles Wood, Edward Bond, David in contemporary plays by Edward Albee, Alan Storey, and Harold Pinter later in his career.

Bennett, Charles Wood, Edward Bond, David Storey, and Harold Pinter later in his career.

Gielgud’s film and television work as an actor included Beckett, Caligula, Julius Caesar, The Gielgud’s film and television work as an actor Elephant Man, War and Remembrance, Prospero’s included Beckett, Caligula, Julius Caesar, The Books, Shine, Elizabeth, and dozens more. He Elephant Man, War and Remembrance, Prospero’s received an Academy Award for his supporting Books, Shine, Elizabeth, and dozens more. He role in Arthur and an Emmy for Summer’s Lease. received an Academy Award for his supporting

Gielgud had a nearly as highly regarded, prolific career as a director, beginning in the mid-1930s role in Arthur and an Emmy for Summer’s Lease. with lauded West End productions of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. He often directed productions in Gielgud had a nearly as highly regarded, prolific which he also starred, such as Richard of Bordeaux, career as a director, beginning in the mid-1930s The Importance of Being Earnest, Medea, The Lady’s with lauded West End productions of Hamlet and Not for Burning, Ivanov, and multiple Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet. He often directed productions plays, especially Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, King in which he also starred, such as Richard of Lear, Much Ado About Nothing, and Hamlet, his Bordeaux, The Importance of Being Earnest, signature role.

Medea, The Lady’s Not for Burning, Ivanov, and multiple Shakespeare plays, especially Romeo Between 1938 and 1975, he directed numerous and Juliet, Richard II, King Lear, Much Ado About productions on Broadway, including Spring Nothing, and Hamlet, his signature role.

Meeting; The Importance of Being Earnest; Love for Love; Medea; The Lady’s Not for Burning; Much Between 1938 and 1975, he directed numerous Ado About Nothing; Big Fish, Little Fish; Five Finger productions on Broadway, including Spring Exercise; The School for Scandal; Hamlet; Ivanov; Meeting; The Importance of Being Earnest; Love All Over; Irene; Private Lives; and The Constant for Love; Medea; The Lady’s Not for Burning; Much Wife. He also directed the operas The Trojans and Ado About Nothing; Big Fish, Little Fish; Five A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Royal Opera Finger Exercise; The School for Scandal; Hamlet; House.

Ivanov; All Over; Irene; Private Lives; and The Constant Wife. He also directed the operas The Gielgud received Special Tony Awards in 1948 for Trojans and A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the The Importance of Being Earnest and in 1959 for Royal Opera House.

Ages of Man, as well as the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for Big Fish, Little Fish in 1961.

Gielgud received Special Tony Awards in 1948 He was honored with a London Evening Standard for The Importance of Being Earnest and in 1959 Theatre Award’s Special Award for lifetime for Ages of Man, as well as the Tony Award for achievement in the theatre in 1982 and the Olivier Best Direction of a Play for Big Fish, Little Fish in Award for lifetime achievement in the theatre in 1961. He was honored with a London Evening 1985.

Standard Theatre Award’s Special Award for lifetime achievement in the theatre in 1982 and the Olivier Award for lifetime achievement in the theatre in 1985.

“

I am all in favor of spontaneity, providing it is carefully planned and ruthlessly controlled.

”

SDC LEGACY

SIR JOHN GIELGUD 1904–2000

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Armina Lynette Lammers