SDC Journal Winter 2015

JOURNAL WINTER 2015

LOVE, SEX + DEATH THE NUANCES OF

MARTHA CLARKE’S PSYCHE

INTERVIEWS WITH

PETER BROOK RICHARD FOREMAN HILARY ADAMS SEAN GRANEY RICK SORDELET + MORE WINTER 2015 | SDC JOURNAL

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“

Being an Associate Member of SDC has been a blast. I don’t know why I waited so long. As a developer of new work, SDC seemed a bit in a different world than the one I was working in, but as my professional career developed alongside a tenured academic one, SDC has become invaluable. They have provided me with support and community to ground my professional directing work while being totally aware and supportive of my academic work. I would recommend that all directors in any venue or style who want a serious lifetime career join SDC.” REBECCA HOLDERNESS

Associate Member Director/Choreographer Joined August 2013

When you join SDC as an ASSOCIATE MEMBER, you establish a professional affiliation with the organization whose sole purpose is to unite, empower + protect directors and choreographers working at all levels throughout the nation. As part of this community of working directors + choreographers, Associate Members gain access to information, resources + programming related to the unique work that they do.

SDC EXECUTIVE BOARD

Susan H. Schulman PRESIDENT

John Rando EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT

Leigh Silverman VICE PRESIDENT

Oz Scott SECRETARY

Ethan McSweeny TREASURER

HONORARY ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Karen Azenberg Pamela Berlin Melvin Bernhardt Julianne Boyd Danny Daniels Marshall W. Mason Ted Pappas Gene Saks COUNSEL

Ronald H. Shechtman EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Laura Penn

In recognition of our many talented + dedicated Associate Members, SDC Journal will now include their names in red on the back cover.

INTERESTED IN JOINING SDC OR LEARNING MORE ABOUT MEMBERSHIP? CONTACT

MEMBERSHIP@SDCWEB.ORG

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SDC JOURNAL

| WINTER 2015

Julie Arenal Christopher Ashley Anne Bogart Mark Brokaw Joe Calarco Larry Carpenter Marcia Milgrom Dodge Sheldon Epps Michael John Garcés Christopher Gattelli Liza Gennaro Wendy C. Goldberg Linda Hartzell Anne Kauffman Dan Knechtges Mark Lamos Paul Lazarus Pam MacKinnon Meredith McDonough Robert Moss Robert O’Hara Sharon Ott Lonny Price Seret Scott Bartlett Sher Casey Stangl Michael Wilson Chay Yew Evan Yionoulis

SDC JOURNAL

Published by SDC | Winter 2015 | Volume 3 | No. 3 FEATURES EDITOR

Elizabeth Bennett

ASSOCIATE MEMBERSHIP is not available to everyone, only to those who are actively engaged in the craft of directing +/or choreography— from tenured professors teaching the next generation of artists to emerging early-career directors.

Becoming an Associate Member of SDC identifies you within the theatre industry + will provide you with innumerable rewards.

MEMBERS OF BOARD

ART DIRECTOR/DESIGNER

Elizabeth Nelson EDITORIAL COMMITTEE

Walter Bobbie Sheldon Epps Graciela Daniele Liza Gennaro Thomas Kail Leigh Silverman Evan Yionoulis

CONTRIBUTORS

Stafford Arima

Norman Frisch

DIRECTOR

DRAMATURG, PERFORMANCE

Megan Carter SDC FOUNDATION DIRECTOR

Olivia Clement SDC JOURNAL INTERN

Kristy Cummings SDC BUSINESS REPRESENTATIVE

Brett Egan

CURATOR

Laura Paone WRITER

Brant Russell DIRECTOR

Oz Scott DIRECTOR

PRESIDENT, DEVOS INSTITUTE OF

Seret Scott

ARTS MANAGEMENT

DIRECTOR

SDC JOURNAL is published quarterly by Stage Directors and Choreographers Society located at 1501 Broadway, STE 1701, NYC 10036. 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 $24 (domestic), $48 (foreign); single copies cost $7 each (domestic), $14 (foreign). Purchase online at www.SDCweb.org.

Also available at the Drama Book Shop in NY, NY. POSTMASTER Send address changes to SDC JOURNAL, SDC, 1501 Broadway, STE 1701, NY, NY 10036.

PRINTED BY Sterling Printing

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WINTER CONTENTS Volume 3 | No. 3

20 Deserving Astonishment 38 SDC FOUNDATION

FEATURES

12

An interview with auteur director Peter Brook.

IN RESIDENCE

Sean Graney HE FELLOWSHIP THAT T WAS A DREAM COME TRUE

BY OLIVIA

CLEMENT

choreographer duo RICK SORDELET + CHRISTIAN KELLY-SORDELET.

INTERVIEW BY KRISTY

CUMMINGS

to Make?

CARTER

Coverage of the 2014 Zelda Fichandler Award + Remarks from the Recipient + Finalists.

24 COVER

Love,

Sex + Death

THE NUANCES OF MARTHA CLARKE’S PSYCHE

14 All in the Family

An interview with father/son fight

INTERVIEW BY MEGAN

What Am I Going

INTERVIEW BY BRETT

44 SDC FOUNDATION Celebrating 25 Years

of the Joe A. Callaway Awards

EGAN

Coverage of the 2014 Joe A. Callaway Awards + Remarks from the Recipient + Finalists.

32 Following an

Idiosyncratic Instinct AN INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD FOREMAN INTERVIEW BY

BY

OLIVIA CLEMENT

NORMAN FRISCH

WINTER 2015 | SDC JOURNAL

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FROM THE SECRETARY

BY OZ

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SCOTT

FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

BY LAURA

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IN YOUR WORDS

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Why I Cast That Actor

BRANT RUSSELL on casting Laura McCarthy as Macbeth at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati

PENN

What I Learned...

Stafford Arima

CURATED BY SERET SCOTT

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IN TRANSITION

Hilary Adams: Serving a City Through Theatre

BY LAURA PAONE

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BACKSTAGE

Lawrence Paone,

Local 751 President

48 FROM THE ARCHIVES Difficult and Extraordinary Thoughts about the work of Alan Schneider

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THE SOCIETY PAGES

Remembering Mike Nichols

Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS Annual Flea Market

Broadway Salutes

2014 Annual Membership Meeting

+

Geoffrey Holder

COVER

Martha Clarke PHOTO

Walter McBride

PREVIOUS

Martha Clarke’s Garden of Earthly Delights PHOTO

Joan Marcus

RIGHT

Student Laura McCarthy as Macbeth in Brant Russell’s production at the CollegeConservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati PHOTO Mark

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SDC JOURNAL

Lyons

| WINTER 2015

“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”

FROM THE SECRETARY

Who are we and where are we from? We are from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta. We are from all points north, south, east, and west.

As I’ve traveled I have talked to SDC Members all over the United States. Many of our Members have to do all sorts of things to support themselves in the theatre as our careers develop or even just continue. Some of us teach. I work in television. There are those of us who drive cabs or trucks, wait tables, act, paint houses, perform music. All of us do those things to support our families and our love of the theatre. We have a Union made up of many people who don’t necessarily support themselves solely by working in the theatre.

Most of us would like to just make theatre, but we can’t always do that. Yes, Broadway pays for much, if not most, of our Union activities, but we are more than Broadway. We are regional theatre, Off-Broadway, Shakespeare theatre, opera houses, children’s theatre. We are located all over the country and in many other countries. We travel everywhere to do our work. Our dedication to who we are makes us strong, and SDC is drawing from that strength.

In 2011 I was very honored to become the first SDC Executive Board Officer from outside the New York area, and I am honored to have been recently reelected. I have been a Member of SDC for many, many, many years, and in the beginning of my career I felt that if you were not a Broadway director or choreographer, if you came from or were outside of New York, then you were a stepchild. By electing me to be the first officer from outside New York City, SDC is saying something to all our Members—that we do exist and we are important. Broadway is also very important, and I don’t mean in any way to minimize its importance or impact, but our Membership is national, and many of those shows that are on Broadway come from all across the U.S. In past years, SDC has made a concerted effort to reach out to that national Membership.

We have established a regional presence committee that meets and advises us on the needs of their regions. Each region has its particular idiosyncrasies, and we are working to understand and be sensitive to those particulars so we can legitimately do our work as a national union. I hope that my becoming Secretary further inspires our entire Membership to participate.

This country is rich with the development of theatre. When I first began my directing career, I directed a play in a bar on the Lower East Side with no door between the jukebox and the cook, who was frying chicken. But what came out of that back room was the creation that characterizes all of us. Wherever we are, we are doing things that will—and do—change the landscape of our theatre.

And now our work keeps expanding.

I was taught when I first started that my job was more than what was on the stage. It was the poster that told people what you were doing; it was the marquee as they walked in; it was the lobby that was the last thing people saw before they entered the actual theatre. With access to computers and other technology, we are moving into a new era with which SDC must contend, from podcasts to national live telecasts of our work. Wherever these projects come from, we must be prepared for those who are experimenting with new media, who are creating the future of our industry. And those people are around the country and, at times, around the world.

I am excited about the future, and that future is not just coming out of New York. It’s coming from those back rooms, those cabs, the restaurants, the schools, the places that we use to survive. Our industry is growing, and we are preparing for what lies over that next horizon.

I am appealing to all of you to look toward the future, to reach out, to let us know for what we need to be preparing. We have contracts that we continue to refine. We have workshops to keep us all up-to-date. We have a strong working Board that wants to protect us and get us to where we can support ourselves through the work we do in and for the theatre.

In solidarity,

Oz Scott Executive Board Secretary OZ SCOTT has been a Member since 1991

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“Have the courage to follow your most idiosyncratic instinct. Find that most radical, insurmountable difficulty in your work and make that the center of your work.”

RICHARD FOREMAN I recently read an NPR report about a group of Syrian women who were performing Antigone (see “Syrian Women Displaced by War Make Tragedy of Antigone Their Own” at npr.org). The backdrop was their lives and war-torn country, which inspired them to tell the timeless tale anew. Last summer I had the pleasure of seeing Casey Stangl’s Oedipus at the Antaeus Company in Los Angeles. This issue shares Sean Graney’s journey with the Greek tragedies, produced as part of his fellowship at Harvard. Anne Bogart has been exploring the hubris of war with Persians at SITI Company, the oldest play known. Theatre happens, I thought to myself.

It always happens.

Directors direct, choreographers illuminate stories. Distinct visions, unique contributions. Interpretative artists, both generative and creative. Stagers of classics and reinterpreters of classics. Expertise in bringing new work to life, musicals, straight plays. New stories, old stories told in new ways, and forgotten stories remembered. Yes. All of the above.

In every issue of SDC Journal, we try to represent the breadth of the Membership—geographically, stylistically, and generationally. We don’t always succeed, and we may never fully, as the paths you follow are so very singular.

We try to weave issues together with a loose thread.

This edition brings you a central suite that features a few of SDC’s most impactful Members, artists whose work resonates across forms and generations; they are barrier-breakers and called auteurs by many. Directors and choreographers who are quite simply remarkable artists and human beings: Martha Clarke, Richard Foreman, and Peter Brook. They are enigmatic, brilliant, simple, and indefatigable. Their work is difficult to separate from space and time. As they surprise and delight us, we fear them, and we admire them for their clarity and uncompromising values. Their careers bridge styles and forms; they have evolved in a very specific time and place and still resonate deeply today. We gain a small glimpse into the processes, ambitions, and lives of these profoundly distinctive artists who have inspired countless artists and will do so for generations to come.

We also take you to Omaha and North Carolina. Hilary Adams has recently found a new home as the Artistic Director of the Omaha Community Playhouse. In New York we celebrate the latest addition to the illustrious list of Zelda Fichandler Award winners, including 2014 recipient Joseph Haj. His impact, while grounded in Chapel Hill’s PlayMakers Rep, reverberates across the

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country. Joe challenges us to be bold and unwavering in our responsibility to work harder, to ensure that the work makes a difference for audiences and artists alike. He is fearless. SDC Foundation is committed to cultivating this bravery and courage in the regions by bringing forth the annual class of Fichandler Award winners and finalists—an inspiring group you will meet within these pages.

As we celebrate these artists of the new century, we also look back, always remembering the audacity of those shoulders upon which we now stand. The leaders of today will become the mentors of tomorrow, and some will become legends. Alan Schneider is remembered in “In the Archives,” and it’s particularly fitting in this issue as Zelda Fichandler and Alan are inexorably bound. We hear the late Gil Cates tell stories about Alan while Susan Einhorn shares how he “tested, provoked, prodded, teased, pushed to the limit of what you could contribute.”

Reading about Alan, I find myself skipping back to reread Richard Foreman’s advice to today’s artists to “have the courage to follow your most idiosyncratic instinct. Find that most radical, insurmountable difficulty in your work and make that the center of your work.”

And we say goodbye. Two iconic leaders in the crafts of directing and choreography have left us. Pam MacKinnon pays tribute to the incomparable Mike Nichols in these pages with eloquence and grace. We also recognize the distinctive Geoffrey Holder, who in fact made his Broadway debut in 1954 as a dancer in Peter Brook’s House of Flowers. Mr. Holder serves as an inspiration today for his uncompromising commitment to reimagining what the experience of theatre could be for “that young boy, sitting in the back of the balcony.” He certainly made good on his promise.

As this lands in your mailbox, we are already deep into the Spring Issue, which will explore various perspectives on reinvention, replication, and preservation. Planning is also underway for our special Summer Issue, which will feature SDC theatremakers in Los Angeles.

Until then, I am going to follow Peter Brook’s advice and take part as often as possible in the time-honored European tradition of en attendant—“the one who waits”—who attends, sits, and watches.

Happy New Year,

Laura

HILARY ADAMS since 2002 ANNE BOGART since 1990 PETER BROOK since 1959 GIL CATES d.2011 MARTHA CLARKE since 2002 SUSAN EINHORN since 1981 ZELDA FICHANDLER since 1987 RICHARD FOREMAN since 1976 SEAN GRANEY since 2008 JOSEPH HAJ since 2004 GEOFFREY HOLDER d.2014 PAM MACKINNON since 2001 MIKE NICHOLS d.2014 ALAN SCHNEIDER d.1984 CASEY STANGL since 2003

WHAT I LEARNED… STAFFORD ARIMA CURATED BY SERET SCOTT BY

My mother, who passed away in 2008, was my greatest mentor. Not because she had anything to do with theatre or the arts, but because through her actions she taught me what I consider to be the greatest lesson: the power of empathy. To understand and share the feelings of another person has influenced how I direct in a multitude of ways. Artists are complex individuals, and we put ourselves on the line and reveal our deepest selves through the work we do. Ego is usually involved, and that beast can also create unique and adventurous interactions. Doing one’s best to understand a person can give clarity to why an individual is reacting or acting in a certain way. Bringing the element of empathy to a situation has been a saving grace for me during my experiences. Thanks, Mom! STAFFORD ARIMA directed the West End premiere of Ragtime, which was nominated for 8 Olivier Awards (including Best Director). Other work includes: Carrie (MCC Theater), Altar Boyz (Off-Broadway), Allegiance (The Old Globe), Saturday Night (York Theatre Company), The Tin Pan Alley Rag (Roundabout Theatre Company), The Secret Garden – In Concert (NYC), Candide (San Francisco Symphony), A Tribute to Sondheim (The Boston Pops); Marry Me A Little (Cincinnati Playhouse), Abyssinia (Goodspeed Musicals), Spring Awakening (UC Davis), Guys and Dolls (Paper Mill Playhouse), Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris (Stratford Shakespeare Festival), and bare (2012 Off-Broadway).

Arima served as associate director on A Class Act and Seussical on Broadway. He is the artistic advisor for the Broadway Dreams Foundation and an adjunct professor at UC Davis. Arima studied at York University in Toronto where he received the Dean’s Prize for Excellence in Creative Work. He is a proud Member of SDC.

8 CONTRIBUTE 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.

IN YOUR WORDS What I Learned...

Why I Cast That Actor In Transition Backstage

We regret that we are unable to respond to every letter.

STAFFORD ARIMA since 2001

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Last September I began my second year as Assistant Professor of Drama and Resident Director at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati. When I arrived at CCM in fall 2013, the first show I saw was last year’s production of The Crucible, directed by my department chair, Richard Hess. Playing Abby Williams was Laura McCarthy, a sophomore from Pittsburgh. Her talent and commitment were immediately clear.

I don’t teach acting—and that’s a good thing. I am constantly inspired by the strange alchemy of mysticism and discipline that goes into a great performance. I am always eager to learn more about acting and how actors go about what they do, and I learn a lot from my students in that respect. In the meantime, I direct and I teach text analysis, history, and lit courses to actors here at CCM. It’s a great gig.

While Laura was appearing in The Crucible, she was also a student in my history of directing class. She was kind of a pain in my ass. She would occasionally come up with insightful, piercing observations about the evolution of the directorial craft, and these comments were indicative of formidable intellect and keen observation. But these comments were not frequent.

Laura was sometimes late to class, distracted when she was there, and not as diligent about keeping up with the reading as other students.

I am relatively new to teaching, and I’m not good at discipline or administrative management.

I don’t really know how to deal with someone who isn’t living up to his or her potential, someone who could help the course move forward. All I can do is talk to them about what might be in their way. Laura shared with me that she had recently experienced the loss of a mentor from back home in Pittsburgh. She had also lost a close friend in a freak accident. This explained a lot.

In the spring of 2014, we held auditions for my fall 2014 production of Macbeth. I was directing a production that would include transgender characters. This was based on departmental necessities (we had a lot of women in our casting pool at the time and relatively few men) and my interest in transgender identity, community reactions to it, and, in some ways, how we alter ourselves to get what we need from others.

The characters in our play would be transgendered, but not the actors themselves. The actors would be women (none of whom happened to be trans). The characters would be trans men.

Macbeth is a play about a man, and this would be the case in our production—our Macbeth just happened to be biologically female.

I waded through a few hours of auditions; I thought I had seen all I needed to see.

After reading Laura as Banquo (and thinking she did pretty well), I was about ready to send everyone home. Laura asked if she might read one of the sides—“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”—for me. I agreed. Laura’s read pierced a heart of pain that only someone steeped in tragedy could possess. She understood it. She could convey it. The role was hers.

WHY I CAST THAT ACTOR

BRANT RUSSELL On casting student Laura McCarthy as Macbeth at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati

After being cast, Laura spent the summer training. She showed up to school in the fall of this school year a few pounds lighter with more muscle, and with armpit hair. She embraced the preparation and the role with gusto.

She shaved her head. Her performance was muscular, tense, and clear as a bell.

I don’t know what’s next for Laura and me—maybe the stars will align and we’ll work together again. Maybe not. But her role in our collaboration was thrilling and taught me more about acting than I could learn in any classroom.

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RICHARD HESS Assc. since 1994 | BRANT RUSSELL Accs. since 2006

IN TRANSITION

HILARY ADAMS SERVING A CITY THROUGH THEATRE

BY LAURA

As the new Artistic Director at the Omaha Community Playhouse (OCP), Hilary Adams, an East Coast native who grew up near Washington, D.C., and worked as a freelance director in New York for the past 18 years, is becoming accustomed to life in Nebraska. “The most challenging part has been remembering how to drive and then getting used to driving everywhere. No more schlepping!” she says.

Of course, Adams has had to adapt in many more ways since she began her role at OCP in July. For almost two decades, Adams directed countless New York productions; assistant-directed Broadway productions, including Aida, Reckless, and Collected Stories; and in 2004 was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Play for Moby Dick.

It was a simple question asked by a colleague that would change her career both geographically and artistically. “Quite a number of years ago,” she says, “Lynne Meadow asked me if I had ever thought about becoming an artistic director. I had, but it was at that moment that the seed was planted that would lead to me seeking artistic directorship.” Her collaboration with other directors also opened her eyes to the gratifying nature of artistic leadership. “Throughout my training and professional career, I had the opportunity to work with directors who were also artistic directors, including Lynne, Robert Falls, and James Brining,” she says. “I learned a great deal about the challenges of balancing directing with artistic direction from them and how rewarding theatrical leadership could be.”

PAONE

something that is familiar,” she explains. Her experiences in New York will come in handy for OCP’s 90th season as Adams takes on her first two directing roles with The Drowsy Chaperone in the fall and Hands on a Hardbody in the spring. “I am very glad that I had the opportunity to watch veteran artistic directors do this. You have to prioritize carefully.

We rehearse shows at night because we are working with volunteer actors who have jobs during the day. So the challenge is really energy management,” says Adams.

As the largest community theatre in the United States, OCP works specifically to bring the arts and programming to the Omaha community. Additionally, Adams is expanding OCP’s reach to include partnerships with other community organizations.

OCP’s Alternative Programming includes Community Nights in which other Omaha associations perform at the Playhouse. On top of that, OCP recently launched From the Ground Up, a collaboration with the Great Plains Theatre Conference, which, Adams says, “will provide a new opportunity for playwrights in the community to develop their work.” Community is thus a large part of the mission of OCP, which works with over a thousand local volunteers on- and off-stage each year.

“Everything

we do at OCP is about and with the community.”

After receiving her Master’s in Applied Theatre from CUNY in 2011, Adams began searching for a job in which she could apply her new degree. “I was looking for a community in which I might make a difference through theatre and where my professional directing skills could be put to use combined with my love for and training in Applied Theatre—using theatre for social change, transformation, and education,” she says. After finding the job posting at OCP, Adams knew it was the perfect match.

Although Adams now directs in the middle of the country, she will not forget the lessons learned on the East Coast. “New York teaches you to work hard, make strong choices and go with them, and how important the details can be in a larger picture. I also am bringing the methodologies with which I worked in New York and am combining them with OCP’s traditions, creating new hybrids,” she says. For example, Adams is altering OCP’s audition process and combining the Playhouse’s method with a more Equity-oriented approach. This will create “an educational opportunity for the community volunteer actors to learn a new way to audition while still hopefully feeling comfortable with HILARY ADAMS since 1996 | ROBERT FALLS since 1986 | LYNNE MEADOW since 1976

A large part of OCP’s mission focuses on education, and the Playhouse offers classes and workshops as well as preand post-show programming. Founded in 1975, the Nebraska Theatre Caravan, OCP’s professional touring group, travels the country, performing in productions and participating in workshops with communities from coast to coast. To deepen this commitment to education, Adams aims to “look at ways to bring professional development to the teaching artists in Omaha, integrate additional preand post-show offerings, overhaul our existing spaces used for classes and workshops to develop a more creative and welcoming physical location for much of our programming, and create opportunities for assistant director training.”

Adams is already adjusting to her new life and work in Omaha. “I am very much enjoying being a part of the Playhouse community and having the opportunity to work with such a talented and passionate group every day. The responsibility of leadership is something that I am drawn to and feel comfortable with, and it is invigorating to be at the helm of the largest community theatre in the U.S. in a city where the arts are so strongly supported,” she says. Among other things, it is this sense of community that drove Adams to move across the country to Nebraska. “Everything we do at OCP is about and with the community,” she says, “so the Omaha community always and continually informs my work. I am in the beginning stages of learning about Omaha, the needs in the city, and how we might best serve through theatre.”

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BACKSTAGE WITH LOCAL 751 PRESIDENT Laura Paone interviews father, Lawrence Paone, in the Founders Lounge of SDC’s New York office

LAWRENCE PAONE

What exactly does a treasurer or ticket seller do? Can you describe their daily routine?

What skills does one need to be an effective treasurer or ticket seller?

It’s very much a customer service-oriented job. People want to see shows and they want to have a good time, and more often than not the box office employee is the initial point of contact for someone’s Broadway experience.

Patience, an ability to deal under stressful situations—especially a half an hour or 15 minutes before curtain time—[and] being able to multi-task. You also have to be good with numbers and certainly handling cash. There’s a thing from the old days called “bank face,” where the portraits on all the bills should be facing the same way. I know that sounds odd, but if you keep a neat drawer, your life is much easier because you know what you have.

Each box office has a head treasurer who oversees the entire staff, and on a nightly basis the treasurer will process the box office statement, which shows all the money that came in and all the expenditures. Every ticket that is sold, whether it’s through the box office, over the internet, the telephones, or through TKTS, has to be accounted for. The treasurer will also oversee group sale orders, single-ticket sales, customer service at the window, and any problems. Regarding ticket sellers, if someone shows up at night to pick up a reservation and the reservation isn’t there, the treasurer and the ticket sellers help solve the problem. Sometimes people leave them at home.

Sometimes they got lost in the mail and the customer didn’t even realize it.

Most box offices open at 10 o’clock in the morning, so at the very least the person or persons opening will get there probably at 9:30 a.m., maybe earlier. They will print ticket reservations for that night. If someone orders over the internet, if there’s 10 days or fewer from the time they order to the date of the performance, that’s what’s called a “HABO”—held at box office. Those have to be printed. The tickets are then put in envelopes, which is called “bagging,” and the envelopes are placed in the reservation rack alphabetically, which is called “racking.” That’s the first thing you do when you come in the morning: you print, you bag, you rack. Then you have to go through the reservations and make sure everything’s properly alphabetized, because you don’t want anything to be misfiled.

Throughout the day, you wait on people at the window, answer phone calls from group sales agents. The producer may call and ask how we did on the previous performance, in which case the person opening would refer to the box office statement the treasurer did the night before and say we took in this much money or we were down from the previous week. A producer or theatre owner might call and ask, “What do you think we’re going to do on the week? Will we break a million dollars or are we anywhere near that?” So it’s all about service, whether it’s to the customer, the theatre owner, or the producer.

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How does the success of a production affect the work of box office employees?

If you’re a ticket seller and you have a really popular show, you could be on the window from 10 o’clock in the morning until noon or 1 p.m., when the next shift comes in. Some creature comforts, like going to the bathroom, may not be possible because there are so many people in the lobby you can’t even get off the window. The flip side to that: if a show opens and doesn’t get good reviews and the producers know or suspect they have good word-of-mouth, they might decide to stay open, in which case lots of complimentary tickets are being issued to friends, colleagues, or people within the industry in order to fill the house. In that case, the box office treasurer and ticket seller may not be busy with lines of people at the window, but they’ll be busy printing, bagging, and racking the comps.

There’s also a thing called “dressing the house.” If you have a 1,000-seat house and you only have 400 tickets sold, part of the treasurer’s job is to make the house look like it’s full. So if you’re comping several hundred seats a night, you want to pull those seats in such a fashion where you’re dressing the house—you’re filling in different places like a checkerboard. Then hopefully the house is going to look full when it probably isn’t.

How do treasurers and ticket sellers collaborate with other people who work in the theatre? To what extent do they communicate with directors and choreographers?

Their primary contact is the company manager, who is the point person for the producer, general manager, actors, and the creative crew. Sometimes the company manager comes in with a ticket request for those people, so the box office is dealing with them a lot. I was the treasurer at Circle in the Square, which wasn’t a conventional proscenium house. Sometimes the director said to me, “Fill in the seats this way; I want the seats sold in this pattern, if at all possible.”

How did you transition from working in the box office to representing Local 751 as President?

All the unions have an Executive Board or an Executive Council; Local 751 has an Executive Council. In 2005 I decided to run for council, and I served as a trustee on the Executive Council for three years. At that point the President of the union was about to retire. The Business Agent at the time announced he was going to run for President. I saw the opening for the Business Agent position, decided to run, and I won the election. I did that for two terms, a total of six years. At that point, the President retired, I ran for President, and moved up from Business Agent to President.

What’s common about the jobs is the notion of customer service. When you’re in a box office, you’re trying to make sure that the customer is walking away satisfied. As Business Agent and now as President, union members come to me with issues. It could be personality conflicts within the box office; it could be a contractual thing where the employer is doing something that the box office treasurer says is breaking the contract.

But it’s still that notion of service, and I’m trying to make sure that there’s a satisfactory result. There’s that old cliché: slow and steady wins the race. I think that’s true for so many things. One of the things the former president taught me was take things slowly.

Don’t have that knee-jerk reaction. That’s important if you’re a ticket seller, if you’re a

treasurer, and if you’re the union president. I think that notion of not flying off the handle, taking a breath, and just seeing what the lay of the land is would serve anybody in any job. Because the knee-jerk reaction—that’s the easiest thing, but it also leads to the most trouble.

What is your favorite part of your current job, and what is the most challenging part?

My favorite part of my current job is running the membership meetings. This is where you hear everything that’s going on, and you can get any question from the floor. There are some times you might get a question that you think, “That’s an excellent question,” and it helps you convey to the membership the thought you’re trying to get across. There are other times I get a question I don’t even understand at first, and sometimes I say, “Can you go over that again?” Trying to communicate a thought to the membership that in the long run is going to be beneficial to the union as a whole can be very rewarding.

Tell me about your involvement with other unions and in the theatre community. What do you do with COBUG [Coalition of Broadway Unions and Guilds] and with Broadway Salutes?

Local 751 is part of the IATSE [International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees], so there’s an IA component on COBUG. But there are also many other unions on COBUG that are non-IA: SDC, Local 30, the engineers, AGMA [the American Guild of Musical Artists]. We meet once a month and explore common issues. It’s fun to meet with other union members. It’s always interesting to get another union’s take on certain situations.

With Broadway Salutes, that’s a lot of fun.

COBUG works side by side with the Broadway League, and this year I am a co-chair with Nick Kaledin from ATPAM [Association of Theatrical Press Agents and Managers], and Jessica Jenen and Mark Schweppe, the two Broadway League co-chairs. We acknowledge and honor people who have reached different levels of years of service in the Broadway community: 25 years, 35 years, and 50-plus years. Broadway Salutes has turned into a really rewarding and fun event.

People who have been in this business for a long time—dressers, stagehands, directors, choreographers, box office employees—get to be acknowledged for the work they do year in and year out on Broadway. It can be very touching.

What’s something you would like for directors and choreographers to know about the work of treasurers and ticket sellers?

A big problem for treasurers and ticket sellers is partial-view seats, usually seats far to the side. This would be a thing for the set designers, more so than choreographers and directors, although this could play into the staging of a show. But the point would be to minimize or eliminate the number of partial-view seats, to stage things in such a fashion that everyone in the theatre can see from everywhere. Because the happier the audience, the happier everyone is.

Is there anything else you would like readers to know about you or about the work of treasurers and ticket sellers?

I understand the convenience of ordering tickets over the internet. But what a lot of people don’t know is that, for the most part, there are no service charges at the box office.

So if you go on the internet, you’re usually getting hit with a per-ticket service charge and then sometimes another charge for the entire order. Now, if you’re in the suburbs or if you’re somewhere thousands of miles away, I understand you want to order your tickets in advance. But if you get to the city and you haven’t ordered your tickets, it’s best to come right to the box office. In many cases, there’s no service charge and you always receive personalized customer service.

Lawrence Paone is the President of the Treasurers & Ticket Sellers Union, Local 751, IATSE. Before being elected President in 2014, Lawrence was the Secretary-Treasurer, Business Agent for six years. Lawrence also worked for 22 years as an Assistant Treasurer in a variety of Broadway theatres owned by the Shubert Organization, the Nederlander Organization, Jujamcyn Theaters, and Lincoln Center Theater as well as the TKTS discount ticket booth operated by the Theatre Development Fund.

From 2000 to 2003 he was the Box Office Treasurer of the Circle in the Square Theatre.

Among many other shows on Broadway, he has sold tickets to Cats, Rent, Angels in America, Anything Goes, True West, and The Rocky Horror Show. Lawrence received a Bachelor’s Degree in Theatre Arts from Drew University.

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IN RESIDENCE

SEAN GRANEY THE FELLOWSHIP THAT WAS A DREAM COME TRUE

BY OLIVIA

CLEMENT

When asked about the recent completion of his yearlong fellowship, Sean Graney describes it as “a dream, the best year of my life.” Chatting with him, it’s easy to see why. As a fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Graney was given the time and resources to develop a project very close to his heart. All Our Tragic is an epic 12-hour play cycle that adapts and combines all 32 surviving Greek tragedies with a narrative that spans 75 years performed by a cast of 23 actors. With the help of the Institute, he was able to thoroughly workshop the lengthy script and has recently directed the world premiere with the Hypocrites theatre company at the Den Theater in Chicago.

The fellowship came about as a suggestion from Diane Paulus, the Artistic Director at American Repertory Theater at Harvard (ART). Graney had spoken to her about All Our Tragic, then in its “infancy development stages,” and she’d encouraged him to apply. Graney is the founding Artistic Director of the Hypocrites and has directed more than 30 productions for the company. In 2009 he wrote and directed a contemporary adaptation of Oedipus Rex and then went on to create Sophocles: Seven Sicknesses, a fourhour adaptation of the Sophocles plays. Motivated by the success of these productions, he launched himself into All Our Tragic, the entire canon of Greek tragedy—an undoubtedly more challenging venture.

Luckily for Graney, the Radcliffe Institute also believed in the ambitious project. It offers fellows the opportunity to focus on one individual project for 12 months across the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences.

Fellows are expected to free themselves from their regular commitments to focus solely on their project full time. For Graney, the fellowship, which he completed in May 2014, was a true privilege. “It’s been a great gift for me,” he says. “I’ve never been fortunate enough to do that before, to spend that time on any other project.” He was given his own studio, large enough to house rehearsals with 20 actors, and twice-weekly access to a class of ART graduate acting students. He was grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with the talented pupils. “It was mind-blowing. They got to know the script almost as much as I did. They were able to make these huge connections and point out things that needed development.” During the year, the script experienced numerous adjustments and benefited from readings. Graney’s time at the Institute culminated in a fully staged reading of All Our Tragic in May 2014, where an audience of 150 was invited to watch the entire 12-hour performance on its feet for the first time.

During his stay at the Institute, Graney lived and worked among a community of Radcliffe fellows, each expert in a variety of disciplines and whose offices were all housed in the same building on campus. This gave him access to what he describes as “the greatest minds in the country.

You could just knock on their doors and have some silly conversations.”

The Institute’s primary request is that fellows help foster this dynamic, multidisciplinary community, a charge that Graney took seriously. “I was very honored and excited to interact with these people,” he says. The fellows were invited to lunch together three times a week; Graney enjoyed these occasions and the opportunity for otherwise unlikely discussions. “These are conversations that you never usually have access to. Our lives are so fieldoriented, and you never usually experience such cross-genre of study. It was amazing. It opened my mind.” Fellows were also asked to make speeches regarding their independent projects to the rest of the fellow community.

It’s not surprising that Graney was so enamored of the social environment at the Institute; the value of community is a recurrent theme in his work.

One of his major objectives in creating All Our Tragic was to build a sense

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Performances of The Hypocrites’ world premiere of All Our Tragic OPPOSITE

Sean Graney in rehearsal for All Our Tragic PHOTOS

by Ryan Bourqu

SEAN GRANEY since 2008 | DIANE PAULUS since 2001

of community and foster a dialogue for his audiences. The premiere production of the play at the Den Theater saw nine hours of text and three hours of breaks. The spectators were invited to share food and drink and chat with the actors and one another. “People do bond over this thing,” says Graney, speaking of the 150 audience members who “stick it out” at every performance. “Yes, the lines around the food table are long,” he laughs, but people are also bound to make interesting connections over experiencing the play and the “breaking of bread” with strangers. He drew inspiration directly from the ancient Greeks, whose theatre culture was immersive and durational, and it also involved the constant flow of food. All Our Tragic strives to shift the individual theatre experience to the communal, and observing this development has been hugely rewarding for Graney. “It’s an amazing experience for me to be a part of, to be in the audience and looking at these people, [seeing] how well they’re getting along, observing the conversations between strangers,” he says. “It’s all very inspirational to me.”

For Graney, the Greek tragedies continue to remain relevant to contemporary audiences. “These are the oldest plays that exist, and we’re still going through most of the same problems, asking ourselves the same questions.

I find that interesting that there’s this huge historical conversation that’s been going on since the dawn of civilization,” he says. His intention in adapting and staging these texts in a more modern voice is to share his love of them “with people who think they don’t like them. I want to say no, you actually can like them. It just has to be shown to you in a slightly different way.” All Our Tragic certainly presents classical theatre in a “different way,” not only in its adaptation of language but also by asking audiences to commit to a 12-hour event. Graney’s goal as a director is to make this lengthy commitment all the more pleasurable and gratifying for the audience. His production incorporates elements of live music, replacing a traditional chorus with a trio of women who sing and play instruments. Dubbed “the Odd Jobs,” they guide the audience through the entire play. The show also uses live combat: six actors appear every 90 minutes and perform high-energy,

intense fights. “Theatre isn’t just necessarily an event that you dress up for and go out and then go home,” says Graney. “It’s this thing that as a society we should honor and commit to, and if we do, we will be rewarded for it.

That’s my hope: that I can be able to give the audiences a great experience.”

Delivering this “great experience” at the Chicago premiere was made easier for Graney with the support of the Hypocrites. “I love those guys. Such intelligent people,” he says.

Graney had previously worked with two-thirds of the cast on earlier productions. “A lot of

them were already acclimated to the way I like to work and understanding my vocabulary (as a director,)” Graney acknowledges, which made it easier to get the rest of the actors on board to work within the unique environment of All Our Tragic. Graney has a lot of respect for the Hypocrites and admits that they helped him overcome many of the challenges involved in staging such a long show. Naturally, he encountered some setbacks. “It definitely took a learning curve,” says Graney. He recalls that the first full rehearsal of the play was “amazing” and full of energy. The following day was much

more difficult, however, as the demands of doing this kind of show back-to-back dawned on the entire cast and crew. Graney has ensured that all the actors have enough resting time to preserve their resources during the show.

Graney was committed to using the fellowship as an opportunity to develop collaboration with All Our Tragic. “When I started this project,” he says, “I went into it thinking it was about community and I’m going to hold myself to that. I’m going to bring this to a lot of different people and open myself up to whatever they have to say. I made an unspoken rule to myself that any criticism I got I would take and try and incorporate it in the script.

When we read it again, if I didn’t like it, I would remove it. That made the whole workshopping of the script fruitful and pretty amazing.”

Graney opened himself up to a process of intense collaboration, inviting tough criticism and feedback. When asked if this has had a big impact on him artistically, he agrees that it has. “Working on this script, though, I was always open and excited to other people’s ideas; it’s taught me even a little bit more to be more open and respectful,” he says.

Graney admits that the benefit of time awarded by the fellowship made this process and collaboration all the more accessible and productive.

Having a year to focus solely on All Our Tragic afforded him the freedom to experiment with several different ideas.

“I’ve been lucky enough to work on it for so long,” he says.

“These things are a luxury of the amount of time I’ve been able to spend on it.” Yet like many directors, he is still eager to make more changes. “I don’t feel like it’s done. I don’t know when I’ll stop or if I’ll stop. I would love to continue my relationship with this play and deepen it.” His fellowship now completed, whether Graney will continue to work on All Our Tragic beyond its Chicago premiere remains to be seen. One thing for certain is the mark it has had on him as an artist and a person. “I feel like all of my artistic choices in my career have led up to making this,” he says. “I’ve never felt like that before. It’s been an exciting, life-changing experience, working on this script and deciding to do this project.”

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Rick Sordelet and

INTERVIEW BY

his son Christian Kelly-

KRISTY CUMMINGS

Sordelet have become a wellknown team of fight directors in the theatre as well as in the television and film industries. Rick’s wealth of experience includes more than 60 Broadway shows, most notably Disney’s The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast, as well as productions Off-Broadway, internationally, in the regions, and at the Metropolitan Opera, among others. He was the chief stunt coordinator for Guiding Light as well as for the films The Game Plan and Dan in Real Life. He has been honored with the Edith Oliver Award for Sustained Excellence from the Lucille Lortel OffBroadway League and a Jeff Award for Best Fight Direction for Romeo and Juliet at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Christian’s résumé includes Broadway’s Picnic and Breakfast at Tiffany’s 14

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and OffBroadway’s The Brother/Sister Plays and Appropriate, as well as daytime television’s All My Children, Guiding Light, and One Life to Live. Both Rick and Christian teach at several institutions including Yale School of Drama, the New School for Drama, HB Studios, Rutgers, and NYU. Together they have worked on numerous projects, from Ben Hur Live in Rome to Shakespeare in the Park’s King Lear. SDC Journal sat down with the father and son to talk about their careers, what enticed them into the world of professional fight choreography, and the dynamics of their work relationship.

RICK SORDELET since 2003

As the father, let’s start with you, Rick. How were you introduced to fight choreography?

RICK | I started as an actor. I went to the University of Wisconsin-Superior, where I met Albert Katz, one of the founding members of the Society of American Fight Directors, which at the time I had no idea what that was.

He taught stage combat, and as a freshman I went into his office and said, “Hi, I’m Rick Sordelet, and I want to assist you.” He looked up at me, pushed his glasses back, and said, “Who are you?” And that was the beginning of our relationship. I started taking his classes and slowly assisting him as well. Then Al started developing a bit of an eye situation and was relying on me to lead more of the class. He taught me how to teach. After I finished undergrad, I wanted to go to graduate school. I didn’t have any money, so I hitchhiked to Chicago so I could be there when the University Resident Theatre Association [URTA] auditions were happening.

You literally hitchhiked?

RICK | Yes, I literally hitchhiked with my friend Mike Hill. I met with several schools, but then I bumped into William Esper in an elevator.

That changed my life. He asked me if I had ever considered Rutgers. I had never heard of Rutgers, but he asked me to audition for him. He persuaded me to come to Rutgers to focus on acting and warned me not to become an inexpensive fight teacher while studying somewhere else. So I went to Rutgers and learned how to act. I can say that, true to his word, I left understanding the process in a way that nobody else, I think, could’ve taught me. Behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances became the cornerstone for my work. After I graduated, I started working as a fight director, and I taught at Rutgers. Three years after I graduated, I started a program at Rutgers-Newark for acting and stage combat.

I also taught at the High School of Performing Arts, and we had a sister school in New Jersey.

Then I got Beauty and the Beast, my first Broadway show. After hanging up the phone with director Robert Jess Roth, I remember sitting at my kitchen table and thinking, “I am now a professional fight director and I will be the best fight director I can possibly be.” I’ve never looked back.

Christian, what was your career path? Did your father’s career influence you?

CHRISTIAN | Absolutely. It was easier for me to get my foot in the door because, growing up, I got to go to work with my dad. I was lucky because I was able to shadow him, go to different theatres, and meet a lot of different people. It was never the same thing twice, which I loved. He also liked bringing me to

work because while I was a pretty shy little kid, if you got me talking I was very honest about what I was seeing on stage, especially for shows that were a little bit more comedic or geared toward kids. I was almost like a little focus group. The idea that I would go into the same line of work professionally was rumbling around in the back of my head from a young age. What I wasn’t really aware of at the time was that he was giving me skills that later on would be incredibly useful. Those experiences with him taught me how to articulate my thoughts—how to find the best way to tell a story.

maybe we’ll work in a backflip somewhere. We also have to talk to the set designer. Before we start blocking, we need to know what the set looks like. What does this box represent? Are these stairs? Can we use them? Can I jump on this table? All of those questions are important for us to know.

RICK | We are assessing.

I also played a lot of sports when I was younger. I ended up doing competitive fencing from the 6th through the 12th grade. Fencing seemed to be something that came naturally, and I thought it would look good on my college applications. I actually did quite well.

I placed nationally and went to the Junior Olympics. I didn’t start fencing thinking I was going to use those skills in my future career, but now I often do.

RICK | Costumes are key as well. Working on Lion King, those costumes were very much a part of the fight. Having a mask on top of your head means you are not going to be able to do certain moves. That information was very important to my process.

What triggered the idea to start collaborating with each other? Was it a natural decision?

CHRISTIAN | It was more of a natural progression. Before I started film school at the School of Visual Arts in New York, my summer job was shadowing my dad and team teaching workshops with him. When my dad would be out of town on a job, I would end up taking on more. I also started working professionally, and it made sense for me to start officially assisting him. Gradually I became more of a collaborator than assistant. After a while, we realized we had been collaborating consistently on almost every job. It was then we thought about starting a company and working as a team.

Once we really leaned into that decision, we found that most people responded really well to it.

So you are an official company?

RICK | Yes, Sordelet INK. How do you both prepare for a production?

What is your creative process?

RICK | I’ll say this about prep: the biggest part is listening. And sometimes a director doesn’t say what they want, but you hear it in their tone or you see it in their behavior.

CHRISTIAN | I agree: our biggest prep is really getting a sense of the director’s vision. Then we work with our actors and figure out how easy it will be to accomplish. What kind of injuries do they have? What are their skill sets?

They might be a tumbler or a gymnast, so

CHRISTIAN | Then we jump in and tailor-make it from there. Usually if we have a chance to do a workshop first, that’s when we’ll start to get a good sense of the shape of the fight.

Can you talk more about the workshop process?

CHRISTIAN | The workshop is key to making a fight have an organic flow and come from a natural place. Usually we have a variety of ages and experience levels in a cast. Sometimes a lot of people will have some stage combat experience and some will have zero. I like to make sure everyone gets comfortable right away. Most recently we did this with King Lear in the park and Appropriate [by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins] at Signature. We use the workshop to essentially give everyone a uniform vocabulary so we can all speak the same language and are all comfortable when we start the actual blocking. The actors become crucial to creating the fight as they know their character better than we’re going to. We’ll ask them, “What is your impulse?

What is it that you want to do?” Following a workshop, they will be able to respond using the physical vocabulary, and we can then start to build the fight. We start in slow-motion and then add and shape and build.

RICK | The workshop also gives us a chance to see what the actors are capable of.

As a younger choreographer, I would choreograph on paper. I used to come in with notes and different colored pencils of arrows and little dime-sized dots with people’s initials that showed where they were moving to. I found I was spending so much time trying to accomplish what was on my page that I was ignoring the impulses coming organically.

Soon all of that went away, and I started working in an organic manner. That was the birth of conceptual choreography.

PHOTO ROBERT JESS ROTH since 1992

Rick + Christian Sordelet Mark Ovaska c/o The Wall Street Journal WINTER 2015 | SDC JOURNAL

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Can you go into more detail about conceptual choreography? Rick, I understand that you developed this method, but now you both utilize it?

RICK | Conceptual choreography is Sordelet INK’s brand and is something I’ve been working on at the Yale School of Drama for 15 years. It’s embracing the fact that we do more than demonstrate and teach the technically correct way to fight on stage. We want to come in and enhance the director’s vision with our specialty. We don’t want to see a line between our work and the director’s work. We want it to be smooth and arc properly.

somebody, because they’re worried about their knee. They won’t be able to lose themselves in their character. We try to start every job at zero to see what tools we have to work with and what limitations there will be. Then we adapt the fight around those things in an organic and natural way. We never want to put an actor in a place where they feel compromised.

Is conceptual choreography a documented method, or do you need to learn it in person?

Do you teach this method to other combat teachers and choreographers?

CHRISTIAN | As a matter of fact, we just had lunch with a couple who want to learn from us.

RICK | So we pass the torch. But it’s one of those things that you learn by coming and working with us.

CHRISTIAN | It is more like we bring on apprentices. I don’t think you would be able to get a sense of the philosophy by just taking one class. It’s something you have to see in a variety of different…

CHRISTIAN | We want it to be seamless. We don’t want it to feel like a separate fight scene.

RICK | What it should feel like is, under the circumstances, this character had no other choice but to act out. We’ve been developing conceptual choreography so the method is not “this is how you throw a punch” but “this is why you throw a punch.” How your body throws the punch follows certain concepts about eye contact and delivery and…

RICK | Circumstances.

CHRISTIAN | Circumstances, exactly.

CHRISTIAN | Spatial awareness…

RICK | I’m always saying to my students and other teachers, “Take what you’ve learned from us and make it your own. You don’t have to call it conceptual choreography. Call it whatever you want.”

RICK | Right, spatial awareness.

We cover all those things but we never say, “This is the only way to throw a punch.” There are the safest ways to throw a punch for your body, but we’ll discover those along the path. Just like there’s no one way to say the lines, “To be or not to be,” we apply that same principle to our fight work.

CHRISTIAN | And apply it. The way that it works for stage combat is also applicable to other areas of the performing arts. Especially acting and what you bring to the scene emotionally. It follows the same kind of moment-to-moment reality, the same step-by-step, which can take you to that emotional place.

CHRISTIAN | A really important keystone in the philosophy of conceptual choreography is that no one actor is going to play a certain part exactly the same way. For example, Paul Giamatti’s Hamlet is going to be very specific to Paul Giamatti. It’s going to be completely different than Olivier’s Hamlet.

They each have their own unique brand, which comes with its own set of physical skills and limitations. Many times we’ll work with an actor who might have a bad knee or a bad back or a physical injury. Trying to shoehorn them into a certain kind of fight or a fight that you’ve had in your head is going to be unsafe and will look silly. They’re going to look like an actor holding back from a move, rather than a ferocious character who is trying to murder

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RICK | I don’t believe in a stage combat book.

We could make all kinds of books and videos, but we would rob the student of the actual opportunity to learn the method on their feet.

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ABOVE

Sheldon Best + Emmanuel Brown in Studio Theatre’s production of Sucker Punch in 2012 PHOTO

Scott Suchman

RICK | That is one of our strengths. We approach our fight work from an actor’s point of view, and we embrace what you bring to the table in terms of how you can physically enhance the show. Like Christian said, we’re not shoehorning you into our version.

We will find that beautiful compromise that brings us to the right place so that at the end of the day, eight shows a week, you’re going home to your family or friends healthy.

CHRISTIAN | And you won’t have to do physical therapy on your one day off.

RICK | That’s something I’ve learned along the way after doing 61 shows on Broadway.

Everyone wants to get the best, but you have

to consider longevity. Having done Beauty and the Beast for 20 years now has taught me so much. I have had to make changes over time. Unless someone is an actual aikido practitioner, the forward roll doesn’t work after 40 performances, even with the padding.

You need a way of doing it solidly from the foundation up.

A lot of people in the industry think that all fight directors are the same. They’re not. Some of us come with a lot of experience and we will bring to your show a degree of safety that somebody who’s newer to the business will not. And yet we both have the same title. Our track record’s phenomenal because we work really hard for that eight shows a week. When I’m working with young guys Christian’s age, I’m thinking, somewhere at home, there’s a dad and mom who love them as much as I love my children. I don’t want any of them going home for Christmas in a cast.

CHRISTIAN | For me, experiencing my own fair amount of injuries has made me very sensitive when I teach. If they’re doing something and I see a possibility that they may be compromised, I’ll prescribe injury-prevention exercises.

RICK | Safety. Safety. Safety.

How does the father/son dynamic affect your working relationship? What is different about collaborating with a family member versus other artists?

CHRISTIAN | In the past, I think, as we were developing this relationship, there would be times where he might make a joke or something, and I’d just be kind of like, “Oh, Dad.” And then afterward I’d be like, “Please, don’t do that to me.” We’d kind of give each other notes on how to keep each other comfortable in the room and how to avoid some of those situations that I’m sure everyone can imagine about working with a family member in a creative environment. But overall we’ve always gotten along really well and had a very honest relationship. We talk everything through and allow the other person to do so as well. So that makes it pretty easy.

RICK | My wife, Kathleen, is the moral and loving compass of our family, and she ensured there would never be contention in our house. We bring that from our home to our work. Every family has moments. Every family has their problems, and sometimes the yelling starts. There comes a time where you realize it is unnecessary. As we all get older and wiser, we just talk it out. We’re also very professionally minded. This is not our living room. We are guests of the production, and we serve the director’s vision. So having a family squabble in front of the cast…

CHRISTIAN | That’s not something we’re interested in doing at all.

I’m sure there are advantages to your close relationship in the room, like a shorthand of sorts?

CHRISTIAN | The shorthand is definitely useful.

And yes, being that we’re so familiar with each other, we can get a sense of what the other is thinking without having to spell it out. For example, I may see he’s starting to fade, so I step in. Or maybe he’s trying to describe something and I know exactly what he’s trying to say, so I’ll just jump in.

RICK | We have a great deal of respect— respect for the process, respect for each other.

I’m in awe of his work. I many times find myself as a student to his teacher. There has never been any jealousy between us. Our relationship has developed into one of mutual admiration.

I never feel threatened by my own son in a room. I feel comforted because he’s got my back in a way that nobody else would— nobody.

CHRISTIAN | I feel the same way. I owe my entire skill set to my dad. Of course, I’ve developed my own style in the process, but I never would’ve gotten to where I am without assisting him and learning from him. So, to me, any time I have challenged an instinct of his in the rehearsal room, it has always come from a place of respect or because I don’t quite understand his decision. I ask him to explain it to me. And then if I see something that doesn’t quite add up for me, I’ll call it to his attention.

But it’s never, “Oh, that looks awful, let’s do it my way.”

RICK | Most of the time Christian offers a suggestion, which then sparks an idea for me, which then sparks more ideas for both of us.

Then the actors say, “But what if we do this?”

And everyone moves the process forward together.

CHRISTIAN | Yes, that’s what we try to look for: ways to enhance each other’s work. I’m also still kind of catching up because he has such a skill set and such a wealth of experience. I’ll put something together, and he might help nudge me in the right direction by reminding me of some outside factors, like the size of the house, which is incredibly helpful. I love working with my dad.

RICK | And I love working with my son. It’s one of the most satisfying aspects of this profession, and it makes me not want to retire.

It makes me want to keep doing this for as long as he’ll let me hang around. Sometimes we’ll work with a younger director, and with me he may feel like he is working with an old man, but because Christian is with me, he feels like he has a contemporary. There’s a certain

comfort when that happens. Other times we’ll walk in the door and there’s a director who’s my age or older and they go, “Who’s the kid?”

Then they watch “the kid” work and they go, “He’s all right.” The same happens with the actors. It’s been very helpful to bring two different kinds of energies into the room.

CHRISTIAN | And different skill sets, which are also complementary, I think.

RICK | Exactly—Christian brings his experience with collegiate fencing to the table in a way that I can’t. And he has a competition background in a way that I don’t. It’s important that now I don’t refer to him as my associate or my assistant because he’s not. He is my other half.

Your collaborator.

RICK | Yes. We work together.

CHRISTIAN | Yes, partners, partners in crime.

RICK | We both still do shows on our own as well.

CHRISTIAN | But even then we’ll check in a lot. I’ll show him a video of something for feedback, and he shares some thoughts or ideas on how to enhance what I am working on.

So, even if you’re not officially both on shows, there is a certain level of involvement?

RICK | Appropriate at Signature last year was supposed to be a project we did together. I got stuck in Switzerland doing Frank Wildhorn’s new musical Excalibur, so I couldn’t make it back. Christian simply did all the fight work, and it was extraordinary. When I got back to see the fight, I watched what I considered— and I’m not saying this because he’s my son—one of the best fights I’d ever seen in my whole life. From an artist’s point of view, it was everything I wanted to see in a fight. It was the first time in my career I could not bring anything to the table. Nothing. It was such a rewarding experience to look at this young man and think, “He has exceeded where I am at my level.”

You have both also worked in television and film. Does the work or process change for each medium?

RICK | Working in television and film, a lot of times you have to come in predetermined. You have to already know what you’re going to do because camera blocking depends on it. You don’t have the luxury to walk in and take the time to figure it out.

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CHRISTIAN | Many times we might actually get a space, take some digital cameras, and check out a bunch of different frames ahead of time.

For example, we had to do this one stunt for a show on the Syfy channel. A girl had to have a harness on so that they could pull a rope and she would fly out of bed into a wall. They couldn’t use CGI, so they couldn’t remove the ropes digitally in postproduction. We had to find a way to hide the harness and ropes on camera. That was a significant challenge, so we test-shot a bunch of angles while performing the stunt. We actually enlisted my younger brother Collin to be our stand-in. We figured out that only three angles could really work, which saved a lot of time when shooting.

RICK | Also, when a stunt happens on film, it goes from A to B. If it doesn’t work, we say cut, we reset, and we go from A to B again. In a live show, A to B is infinite. In every moment there is an opportunity for something to go wrong because it’s live theatre. We don’t get the cut.

We need a plan B, C, and D, just in case.

RICK | Another difference when you’re working with a camera is you’re working with a legally blind, one-eyed entity. That’s what a camera is. That’s why there’s so much lighting that has to be set when you film. So you can fool the camera differently. When Christian talks about actually punching someone on set, we’re all in agreement that this is going to happen, but we’re still going through the safety aspects of where and how he’s going to do it. We’d never, ever do that on stage. In film that little moment will be captured and it will last forever.

Someone can’t do that eight shows a week.

You both have done a lot of work on daytime television specifically. What is different about working in that genre?

RICK | They’re basically doing a play a day, 90 to 100 pages a day.

CHRISTIAN | Another difference with television and film is oftentimes you have a stunt professional. When you’re working with someone who has that level of skill coming in, you have the opportunity to do a lot more. You also can speak in shorthand so we’re able to put something together really quickly. It will look great because they’ve developed their skills in such a way that they’re able to quickly and efficiently deliver a really solid product. In theatre, we usually don’t have a stunt performer.

RICK | It’s rare.

CHRISTIAN | Very, very rare. A lot of my students ask how they do the hit on television and film where someone is punched in the face in slow-motion and you see the sweat rippling off. My response is they hire a professional boxer who gets punched in the face for a living. They spray him down with water, put the camera on slow-motion, and he gets punched in the face. He gets paid for it. I think people lose sight of that.

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CHRISTIAN | Three takes was generous.

RICK | Because their time was of the essence.

A lot of actors think they’d never work on a soap opera. Most probably couldn’t. Those actors were amazing. That they were able to work under those conditions and bring such wonderful characters to life was so impressive.

In theatre, we talk about every moment. They just don’t have the time.

CHRISTIAN | I was in film school at the time, studying cinematography, so it was really fun for me to work with the camera and be able to utilize both skill sets at once. Having an eye for camera setups and an understanding of lighting was incredibly helpful. I would try to craft my fights in such a way that it was easy for them to shoot it efficiently.

RICK | At the end of the day, we are very lucky to have both feet in several mediums; to do theatre and television and then film as well. There are aspects that stay consistent in each in terms of safety and process, but then there are also specific needs and approaches that are different for each.

What kind of training would you suggest for people who want a career in fight choreography?

ABOVE

Rick (right) teaching students at Yale School of Drama a vampire bite with one man in the flying harness being lowered over his victim.

RICK | My number one, always, is to understand the concepts of directing and acting so that you can take this physical dialogue and apply it properly. If you have not read The Fervent Years or Directors on Directing, if you don’t understand the process of acting, whether it is Meisner’s or Stanislavski’s, then you’re at a disadvantage. Understand the process.

Studying fight work at specific organizations and getting particular certifications, that’s all good. But if it’s not coupled with your ability to act, then it’s just physical work. I don’t care what’s in your bag of tricks. It’s how you apply those techniques to the circumstances truthfully. Know your body, whether you’re doing karate, gymnastics, Pilates, yoga.

Understand where your center of gravity is and how it expands and how it retracts. Once you grasp that, you’re going to be able to do this work.

I’ve seen really great fighters out there who are just phenomenal. I love their choreography.

But if you can’t teach it and you can’t translate it and you can’t develop trust with a director or an actor, it’s not going to be effective.

CHRISTIAN | Definitely try to wear a bunch of different hats. I think having an understanding of what everyone in the other departments is doing is really important. Shadow someone or work as an intern or a production assistant on different kinds of work just to learn about different people’s creative processes. Take acting classes, dance classes, directing courses, something that’s really going to give you a sense of where these people are coming from.

My experience in photography really did wonders for me as far as working in television and film. That provided me a really strong skill set that I would recommend. I would also recommend training in many different fight styles to at least get a general understanding of them, because you never know which will become useful to you.

What do you find are the most common misconceptions about your craft?

RICK | What we hear all the time is, “It’s just a slap.” But you get Kenny Leon directing A Raisin in the Sun, and to him, it’s not just a slap. That slap means everything because it’s a turning point in the play. He brought us on early and gave us all the time we needed to make that slap perfect.

CHRISTIAN | And we needed all that time. It went through phases. The actress had to get comfortable with it. Then maybe she got a little too comfortable, and we had to turn it down a little. Even though it’s…

RICK | “Just a slap.”

We’re going to have people who’ll say they don’t need a fight director for that. We hear this all the time. Then we get called in to tech at the last minute because they couldn’t get the job done without us. Then there’s no time for the process to really work.

CHRISTIAN | I also always hear from producers, “We only need two hours of your time.” You don’t know how long it is going to take before you get there.

RICK | But that’s how much time you have and that’s how much money they have.

CHRISTIAN | When they say two hours and I know it’s going to be more than that—I know it’s going to end up being three visits of at least two hours apiece—that makes it difficult to negotiate how I’m going to be compensated for my time.

LEAH GARDINER since 2000 | KENNY LEON since 1998

RICK | Or you rush the process and someone gets hurt. And then people think it wasn’t worth it to bring a fight director in.

CHRISTIAN | Often the fights are the climax of the show. I don’t think that is something a producer would want to compromise or nickeland-dime. It’s as equally important as the dances, costumes, or the set if that fight is truly integral to the story.

What are the biggest challenges in the discipline right now?

RICK | There’s a frustration when a producer wants to hire a fight director, pays almost no money, and then expects you to be at every rehearsal. While you’re happy to do the project, you have to do other jobs at the same time. We haven’t reached that point yet where we are in a category—and SDC’s doing everything in their power to help us—where we have a contract that enables us to be exclusive to one show. SDC recognizes that fight directors/choreographers are part of the creative team. They recognize the collaborative process.

CHRISTIAN | What’s nice about the two of us working together is we can work on two different fights in the same show at the same time. So we maximize time.

RICK | Another challenge is that there are hundreds of young fight directors who are coming up from college who will do Broadway for $500 with no credit and no weekly compensation.

CHRISTIAN | We try really hard to set industry standards to make it easier for the next generation so that they can actually support themselves doing this professionally.

But you have a lot of people who—they’re hungry and they’re eager and they want to get their foot in the door. Unfortunately they end up compromising all of us. They end up holding the whole industry back. And then, consequently, a lot of times it ends up backfiring on them.

What has been the most challenging or fun experience that you have had as fight choreographers? If you can choose just one…

CHRISTIAN | I would say the most challenging was probably Sucker Punch at Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C., which we worked on together. We had an outstanding cast, and director Leah Gardiner really let us do our thing. The challenge with that production was that they wanted to create a highlight reel, of sorts, of a 12-round fight. It was a three-quarter thrust stage with a mirror set directly behind the fight. On top of that, the

platform the fight took place on rotated 360 degrees during the sequence. For a live fight like that on stage, that becomes very difficult, because we usually rely on the perspective that the audience can’t see to hide the air behind a punch or other safety mechanisms.

But here every single angle was visible. There was nowhere we could hide anything, which created a really specific set of limitations, especially as we wanted a ferocious fight. We didn’t want it to look staged because the fight was what the whole show had been building to.

What helped was that we were able to bring on one of our good friends who’s a professional boxer. He came in to train the actors how to box like a professional. He also taught my dad and me what it’s like to be a trainer because he wasn’t able to be with us the whole time.

He worked with us specifically on keeping the fight looking like a legitimate boxing match, but also keeping it safe for the actors and possible to do eight shows a week. Thankfully we had a good amount of time, but it was still pretty tight. It was about three or four weeks total for the actors to learn how to box and adapt those skills to our concept of stage combat. It was very challenging but yielded a great result. We were really proud of that fight. Challenging projects like that force us to think outside the box and shake up what we’ve already done.

RICK | One of my favorite projects was having Christian come on board with Beauty and the Beast, which has been such an important show to me for 20 years. Christian came down to South Africa, Argentina, Mexico City, and Korea with me. There was something very satisfying about going into other cultures and being a father/son team, especially in Korea because there’s a real respect for age in Korea. And to see a son and a father work together in Korea elevated the company in a way because they recognized that there was an appreciation from Disney for a relationship like ours.

CHRISTIAN | South Africa had a similar response as well.

RICK | Oh, yes, they did. And so it was satisfying not only on stage but as guests of those countries, to be in situations where our relationship—a good, solid father/son relationship—was a win-win-win. I’m eternally grateful to producers who have embraced our family and appreciate the work we do together.

Creating in that kind of environment is always a true pleasure.

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PETER BROOK’S ART MOVES EVER AHEAD, NOW IN THE MIDDLE OF ITS SEVENTH DECADE. He creates across

continents, re-energizes the traditional theatrical canon, and colludes with the greatest range of actors (John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Glenda Jackson, Vivien Leigh, and Paul Scofield, to name but a few). He experiments relentlessly, forging ahead with sublime curiosity, whether on the West End, Broadway, at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, or in Brooklyn.

He audaciously investigates the meaning of existence, the conflict of free will and fate, and the unfathomable depths of the human mind with his inimitable stagings of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which found depth and darkness in the faerie world; Titus Andronicus, which he pulled from obscurity to hold up a mirror to our lavish brutality; his seminal Marat/Sade that blew the doors off the asylum; and his latest, The Valley of Astonishment, a quiet, graceful inquiry into the workings of the human brain. Brook has devoured theories and theatre practices from Gurdjieff, Grotowski, and Artaud to Hindu scriptures, American Indians, and African Sufis—synthesizing a multiplicity of ideas and traditions to create intricate universes on the stage.

In 1968, he put on paper his thoughts about theatre aesthetics and the power of performance in The Empty Space. He described the potency of immediate interaction between actors on stage, between actors and audience, and, in a statement that might explain the staying power of both the man as an artist and the appeal of his work, says, “The theatre…always asserts itself in the present. This is what can make it more real than the normal stream of consciousness. This is also what can make it more disturbing.” From the mid-twentieth century on, Brook claimed space for the director as a primary storyteller with the power to interrogate the text and reconfigure points of view, to create earthquakes in the audience’s psyche, to delight and disturb using the full range of theatrical tools—space, text, bodies, and voices.

I’ve recently become the Director of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation, a position that requires a certain depth of knowledge and understanding of the intricacies of a directorial process. But despite being in the middle of my career and feeling that I know a thing or two about the art form, I found myself unnerved and off-kilter at the prospect of speaking to Peter Brook, this living legend of the theatre, whose writings have informed so much of my artistic thinking as a teacher and practitioner. The Empty Space, only the beginning of his writings, pushed me to articulate for myself what kind of theatre I wanted to make and how I wanted theatre to influence the world around me.

DESERVING ASTONISHMENT INTERVIEW BY MEGAN

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CARTER

My interview with Mr. Brook (which was very much Immediate Theatre for One) took place while he was going into previews for The Valley of Astonishment in Brooklyn. I was able to speak with him for 30 minutes between rehearsals. Heart pounding and tongue-tied, I managed to begin the interview and Mr. Brook graciously carried it along, keeping us ever in the present moment, focused always on right now. I encountered viscerally his true genius, and perhaps the gift of any great theatre artist—to be fully and intensely alive and curious in the room right now, beat by beat, never looking backward.

PETER BROOK since 1959 | SIR JOHN GIELGUD d.2000 | LAURENCE OLIVIER d.1989

MEGAN | Simplicity in storytelling, stripping away to the essence of a story, is something that it seems you’ve explored for most of your career and that you’ve worked with in different ways.

PETER | Well, I wouldn’t say most, because, to be very clear—and this is the essence of anything I can say in relation to this question—I had to start my career for a long time, plunging in every direction and joyfully living excess. Excess in life and excess in the excitement of theatre—of theatre color, theatre movement, scenic possibilities. And it was only thanks to this excess that gradually I could see that there was something better…just something better.

And to find that “something better,” one gradually has to strip away until one sees that nothing is richer than the human being.

And even then, a human being has a whole excessive outside of colorful clothes and ways and manners, and gradually, just by stripping these away, you find something that is more and more extraordinary. So this is the “valley of astonishment.” It’s a valley, but you have to go through many valleys, with their high crests and those deep descents into the bottom, to begin to see that there is something, which literally deserves the word “astonishment.”

MEGAN | But you talked about the bare stage as early as 1968 in The Empty Space. Were you still, at that point, exploring excess?

PETER | Of course. Now…you must help anybody who hears this…you must do everything to help them to think that stripping away isn’t a method. This isn’t a system. It’s something to help and encourage others, and The Empty Space…the ultimate, everything that it’s about is in the title. So people who really have reached this point don’t need to read the book; they just read the title. And the way— there are many ways—is like a long journey.

Jungles and mountains and certain moments where you’re on a higher point and you see a wonderful view, and then you know you must go on, take the next step. And in The Empty Space, I boiled it down for the reader to four different aspects of theatre. And each of them is an approach for people hoping to reach their potential. I wrote the book trying to show the possibility that exists in the comfortable, known, middle-class, successful Broadway/ commercial theatre, which has its great qualities and has its limitations.

PHOTO

Pascal Victor ArtComArt

And I went to the people who are trying to find what they call “holiness” and who strip everything away, like monks with austerity and going on fasts, and I say, “That’s all very well, but you really don’t get very far with that.” And then there are those who say popular theatre is something rough, gritty, and loud. That’s a lot of what’s around us today in that field of WINTER 2015 | SDC JOURNAL

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rough theatre. But we know that it just stops at a certain point.

And then I ended up by saying there’s one thing—and this is not a formula but just recognizing that at every moment—the immediate theatre, the theatre that catches one’s breath—and these are rare moments when a whole audience catches its breath—is when the whole process has led everyone to that moment of silence, that moment of empty space. But on the way, bit by bit, one sees, even in rehearsal, how much you can naturally strip away to give the emptiness a better chance of appearing from time to time. But God protect us from any ardent, well-meaning, talented young person who says, “Oh yes, I know what to do. I just have a bit of space and two chairs, and now I don’t have to worry anymore.”

MEGAN | So you’re advocating for the young director to simply do the work, to fully experience what they are doing?

PETER | But that they keep in mind all the time the secret voice whispering to them, “Yes, but it’s not enough. Watch out. No, it’s not.” Just the voice that says, “Yes, but it’s not that.” Then each day you look at the work anew, and you say, “Yes, I was satisfied yesterday, but it’s true.

It’s not that.” And gradually, then, you find a way. Again, it’s like on a journey. You stop for the night somewhere, you camp, but you wake up the next morning and say, “Now we must go on again.” In my book, The Quality of Mercy, I talk about how in the evolution of A Midsummer Night’s Dream a latent question, which I couldn’t have formulated, was suddenly answered by an unexpected experience like going to see this ballet of Jerry Robbins’s.

And suddenly seeing how he had brought old-fashioned ballet right into the present day, just by having dancers sitting, working close around the piano, and just getting up and doing the classical steps from something like Swan Lake.

And suddenly you saw the life of the movement, but in the choreography, and it made sense. With that music and that movement, you didn’t need forests, white dresses…and this helped me enormously, not rationally and mentally, but helped me with a question I was now asking in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I want this to come alive in the present. And I don’t want to do this by the oldfashioned thing of having painted forests and young girls running around pretending to be fairies. And yet I don’t want to be austere and eliminate those things because this is what the play’s about.

And so the question, “How can you today represent a spirit, which has no shape, face, it’s so invisible that nobody’s ever seen a spirit, and yet how can you make that come to life

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through the bodies of people on the stage?” was our running question before we even started. I describe how certain experiences— like suddenly seeing some Chinese acrobats, suddenly seeing Jerry Robbins work around the piano—fed this and finally led to quite different solutions. We discovered that these were all, again, steps on the way.

MEGAN | Yes, you couldn’t have planned for that.

PETER | No. If planning means being prepared for non-planning, and non-planning is no use unless it makes you aware of, “My God, we have to plan.”

MEGAN | You have said about process and technique that you can’t apply a technique across the board to everything you do, that you have to see what the work asks for.

PETER | That’s it. So there—you’ve given me my reply.

MEGAN | But when you imagine space and composition, because certainly these are the things that people think of when they think of your work—the way you compose space—is there any sort of approach that you always use? Or is it truly that each thing reveals itself to you as you’re working on it? Is there a particular thing that you think about space?

PETER | I’ve said this in very simple words. I say that every good project—I mean, you can have a bad project, because you have a bad choice, a bad stopping point, and then, whatever you do, it’ll never fall into place, but I’ve known that. But on the other hand—I use a simple word—you start from a “hunch.” Somebody says, “Here, oh, here’s something marvelous.

Why don’t you do this?” And your hunch says, “No.” And then you think to yourself, “Oh, this is just what I need to do.” And you do a little workshop, and you say, “No, it’s not that.”

You don’t know what “that” is. You have a hunch that there is something. And then suddenly somebody brings you a project, or you think of something, or you read something in the newspaper, and you say, “Ah, of all the things we’ve talked about for today, this is what we must do.” Now that’s the hunch.

And now you go, knowing that you’ll make mistakes; you’ll turn in the wrong direction, but the hunch is there. And “hunch” is a good word because it’s got no shape, no smell, no taste.

It’s just something; a gut feeling that then becomes an intuition and then that guides you gradually until the day comes—and it’s an extraordinary process, it’s just like in cooking— the day comes when a lot of things, which haven’t yet had taste or form, are put in the oven, and the moment comes when you take it out, and, ah, it’s ready. And the shapes are now

right. An omelet is like that. You mix it, you heat it, and there’s a moment when the shape and the form appear. If you start by saying to yourself, “It’s got to look like this,” you’ll never make the omelet.

MEGAN | Was there a particular production of yours that changed the course of your work or that was particularly meaningful to you?

PETER | I don’t look back on myself that way.

No, each thing is full of warnings or openings, and then one goes on again. But I never look back at something and say, “Ah, that was it.”

Or even, “That wasn’t it.” No, these are steps.

These are part of a journey.

MEGAN | So the journey of your career is much like the journey of each play for you?

PETER | Sure. And the lesson of theatre is that everything that has meaning takes place in the present. And that is the only thing. The theatre or somebody making theatre while hanging onto the past produces the horror of tradition. Like in our present tradition in Shakespeare, where you’re hanging onto forms that have died long ago. But as long as you see that Shakespeare’s text is only meaningful for today’s audience at this moment, this has meaning. Then you don’t fall into the other thing of bringing in cellphones to make it modern, but just feel how to rediscover the life of a play for this audience in this place now.

And that’s why, for instance, I’m going on from this interview to a rehearsal, because we know that the play that we’re doing came to a very good point in Paris and in London. But that doesn’t give us any false security. We have to reexamine everything to be able to play it here in New York in a different context, in a different place, and for a different moment.

Today is not the same because the audience that has lived through even the political events of the last six weeks is not in the same condition as the audience in another city three months ago. Theatre is endlessly—and this is even true of the crudest street theatre—a reminder not to remain in dreams of the past, which is what wrecks society.

MEGAN | So what you’re talking about doing, then, is carving out space for the audience to inhabit?

PETER | Not carving out. It’s gentler than that.

We’re adapting—renewing and adapting.

MEGAN | In the rehearsal process that is going into previews here with The Valley of Astonishment, have you made any particular discoveries?

PETER | Oh, of course, all the time. That’s why we come back together—to discover. But JEROME ROBBINS d.1998

Kathryn Hunter, Jared McNeill, Marcello Magni, Raphael Chambouvet + Toshi Tsuchitori in The Valley of Astonishment at Theatre for a New Audience PHOTO Pascal Victor

they’re now not sensational discoveries, but, “Here, this needs to develop; here, that’s a little too long, Why is that heavy? Why isn’t that alive?” You know it’s little—but it’s a million tiny things, which have to be refreshed.

MEGAN | Early in your career, you spent some time reviewing ballets. How did that influence the work?

PETER | One, it gave me a certain understanding for what a critic goes through because I saw in myself I knew very little about ballet. I loved it, but I knew little about it. And I saw all the temptations when you write a review, to find a smart phrase, a pretty phrase, all those things, and then give so much of one’s own personal judgment rather than really having a feeling of what could be and what isn’t. It was a great lesson to me of just understanding more about the critic, and that enables me today to feel, which I’ve written about, that a critic is not on the outside of the process.

A good critic feels that he or she is part of the actual growing process, not of a particular show but of theatre in general. So that anything they say, you feel that they have a sense of what the theatre could be, which they can’t express. But they see something, and they have a sense of what it isn’t. I’ve known a great theatre person who said, “I can’t say what theatre is, but I can see very clearly what it isn’t.”

MEGAN | Are there particular artists or particular theatrical works that you’ve been excited about in the last year?

PETER | Yes, but I’ve always avoided being in the position of handing out Oscars because it’s all going into the game of rivalry; if I say

something about one actor or one director, then what about the other? So I refuse that game.

You know that I’m the president of the Directors Guild in England? The Guild has a very strong aim, which is about the quality of work. And we’ve done many workshops for directors, particularly young directors, just to do what is so rare for directors, which is to meet like craftsmen in the Middle Ages with their guilds. To share, with interest and respect for one another, each one’s way of work, each one’s difficulties, each one’s moments of understanding, and just to let that be shared.

At the end of every one of these meetings, every director—it’s usually such an individualistic game—comes away feeling how marvelous it is not to be in rivalry with other directors or to see their shows as a rival but to feel that they were all in the same guild.

Without taking anything from the past in a heavy-handed way, but since the Middle Ages, the only aim of the guild was, through coming together, to maintain and even develop a quality of a shared work, so there wasn’t second-rate work coming out of its members. They were trying just to maintain a certain quality. And that’s what comes every time directors meet together, sit together, and feel they have different approaches, work and live very different material, but that the work quality is a shared concern.

MEGAN | I work for the SDC Foundation, which is very interested in what you’re talking about right now—directors being able to be in a room together as colleagues. The other thing the Foundation provides is mentorship, and we’re concerned with how things get passed on and how reciprocal learning can happen

when you put a young director in a room with an established director. And I’m wondering if you see value in and have participated in the mentoring of younger artists?

PETER | Mentored? No, I never wanted to be a teacher or a guru. I feel that, yes, we’ve many times had young directors who’ve come and worked as assistants and have then taken on the responsibility of taking a show out on tour and being with it. And this can be extremely valuable, but it’s a very delicate process, because it’s so easy—out of wrongly placed respect—for the young person to think that they’re learning from somebody, and they make notes, and they think, “Yeah, I’m learning their way.”

No, it has to be something much finer and more subtle. For 40 years, I’ve had somebody working with me, Marie-Hélène Estienne, who started as an observer, assistant, and helped so enormously on every level: arranging and organizing and doing auditions, researching, looking through material. But gradually her whole work has evolved in her own way to the point when she became a collaborator. And now it’s marvelous for me, at this moment in my life, to think that she really can insist that we’re labeled co-directors and co-authors. She takes rehearsals, she goes out on the road, and it is an absolutely shared understanding. But this has taken 40 years.

MEGAN | You’ve talked about discovering things in the moment, not making assumptions, not living on past experiences. Is there any other advice you would offer young directors?

PETER | No, my advice, as always, is if somebody gives you advice, don’t listen.

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A founding member of the pioneering dance company Pilobolus, MARTHA CLARKE has created works that straddle the worlds of theatre and dance, synthesizing modern dance choreography with text to create imagerich narratives full of power, beauty, and imagination.

As the late critic Stanley Kauffmann wrote, her work “epitomizes everything that is unique” about the theatre, “its grace, its capacity for inspiring awe.”

INTERVIEW BY

BRETT EGAN 24

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MARTHA CLARKE since 2000

MARTHA CLARKE | I grew up in Pikesville, Maryland—just outside Baltimore—with a nice, middle-class Jewish background. My mother was a good pianist, my father was an attorney.

He had been a jazz musician, and he even wrote for Fats Waller. My grandfather was a limited partner of Merrill Lynch, but he had live string quartets at his house every Thursday night. So I grew up in a kind of German-Jewish culture.

BRETT EGAN | Did your parents want you to be a musician?

MARTHA | I quit piano because my mother pushed me. She also wanted me to be good at sports. I did a lot of competitive diving till I hit my head on the board, and I’ve never been the same. [laughs]

In September 2014, Martha Clarke was on the verge of re-staging Chéri—a hybrid work featuring text by playwright Tina Howe based on Colette’s controversial novella and music by Debussy, Ravel, and Poulenc—at the Kennedy Center, leaving for work in Argentina, and enjoying a residency at Signature Theatre in Manhattan. Soon it would be announced that she had won the Joe A. Callaway Award from SDC Foundation.

Clarke made time to sit down with Brett Egan, president of the DeVos Institute of Arts Management, for an interview with SDC Journal. Egan and Clarke met when he was a Directing Fellow with the Princess Grace Foundation. His fellowship was sponsored by MusicTheater Group, which was teaming with New York Theatre Workshop to produce Clarke’s groundbreaking production, Vienna: Lusthaus. Egan worked as Clarke’s assistant director on Vienna and later supported her work on Belle Epoque at Lincoln Center Theater. They remain close to this day. His most vivid memories of their time in rehearsal together are of her “contagious, endearing laugh,” which was constant during their interview as well.

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Walter McBride

I was a student of ballet at the Peabody Conservatory of Music. I played the king in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Le Coq d’Or, which is The Golden Cockerel, when I was 10; I got boys’ parts in the yearly recitals because I was a good jumper. And from a very young age, I was shipped off to various lessons like art classes and eurythmic dance classes.

BRETT | Whose idea was it to put you in ballet classes?

MARTHA | All little girls took dance classes in my milieu. I think it was just kind of a thing if you were born in the ’40s, postwar, and you were from a certain kind of middle-class family; you were supposed to be versed in the arts as well.

BRETT | And through high school and college you continued to dance?

MARTHA | I met my wonderful modern dance teacher, Dale Sehnert, at Peabody Preparatory when I was 12. He had danced with Martha Graham, and he took a real interest in me. I remember in ballet class, when I was starting to learn the French terms, my mind would wander. And when I took my first modern class with him, I think the freedom was great for me. I think the musicality of modern dance is different from the kind of metric counting we were doing in ballet class. It was freer and more imaginative. I felt like I didn’t have to be in a cookie mold but could be who I was.

When I was 13, he brought me to New York to see Martha Graham’s work, to see her perform and Paul Taylor, too. We went to see Lotte Lenya in The Threepenny Opera as well, which was the highlight.

BRETT | It’s curious to me that that stands out.

What do you remember about that piece?

MARTHA | I don’t remember the production. I remember the colors of the production, but it’s

on the record album so I’m not sure if it’s my memory or familiarity with the record. I don’t look like Lenya, but I probably saw a woman who was a singer, dancer, and comedian. I identified with her.

I thought I wanted to be in musicals, so I started to learn the scores of musicals. I saw West Side Story when I was quite young.

Carousel stole my heart. I imagined I might be a musical comedy actress, a dancer on Broadway. As it turns out, I’m too weird. [laughs] BRETT | You went to a well-known theatre camp in Colorado, is that right?

MARTHA | I went to the Perry-Mansfield School when I was 13. It was a horseback riding camp with very good theatre and dance programs. A renowned choreographer named Helen Tamiris was in residence. She was mounting a production of Walt Whitman’s poems, and she was looking for a child for “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking.” She chose me, and the die was cast.

BRETT | Animals figure so prominently in your work. Did your love affair with horses start then?

MARTHA | No, I started riding at the age of three with my mom. I’ve always loved animals.

I think the way horses stand in a field is often really good staging. They never make a wrong move. The same with birds. You learn a lot about space by observing nature.

BRETT | Was there a particular role that you felt, as a young dancer—beginning to develop your own ideas about dance, your own ideas about theatre—that helped you move through a body of ideas? Where you said that this was something where you might want to move from being asked to do something on stage to creating your own work?

MARTHA | It didn’t happen until I went to the American Dance Festival. I was 15 and in a choreography class taught by Louis Horst, who was Martha Graham’s mentor. In my class were Trisha Brown and Lucinda Childs. I was the youngest, and 15 was young to go away and be with other college students. Louis took a liking to me, and I guess it was through Louis that I came to Juilliard. But I didn’t really want to make things until I went to Juilliard.

While a student at the American Dance Festival, I saw the work of Anna Sokolow.

What drew me to her work was her very overt sense of theatricality. Her work was very sociopolitically oriented, which I’m not, but the intensity and the sparseness of her vision was very influential on me as a young choreographer.

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BRETT | Were there other women in your life growing up that influenced the way that you think about the work that you’re doing now?

MARTHA | Anna’s work was the most profoundly moving. When I went to Juilliard, I came very much under the influence of Antony Tudor, who is a great English choreographer.

I was not technically a Tudor dancer, but spiritually I was. He was a great storyteller, and he was the first choreographer to use emotional subtext in combination with classical ballet vocabulary to tell very gripping stories on stage. In a sense, I had Sokolow and Tudor as my choreographic parents.

BRETT | You described it as four jocks and two chicks.

MARTHA | It was four jocks, two chicks, shiny leotards, and nudity!

BRETT | That’s a pretty radical shift of context, going from dancing with Anna Sokolow to dancing with four jocks, creating a highly jovial, acrobatic, completely abstract, completely apolitical type of movement. Two different worlds completely.

BRETT | Did you study theatre as well?

MARTHA | Oh, it was crazy.

MARTHA | I never studied theatre. I had a boyfriend when I was in college who loved the theatre, and he took me to see a lot, but that was a later development for me. Now it’s probably my passion. That and film. I went to hear Charlie Mingus. I went to see Martha Graham. I saw Peter Brook’s Marat/Sade and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I think they were seminal experiences for me.

BRETT | Was there any line between the work with Anna and the work with Pilobolus?

Looking back, the greatest influences on me at Juilliard were an incredibly broad musical education, the classes of Louis Horst and of Antony Tudor, and meeting Anna Sokolow. She took me to Israel when I was in my third year to be an apprentice to her company in Tel Aviv.

MARTHA | Not really. Our first work, Ciona, was very abstract. Then we did Monkshood’s Farewell, which was based on bizarre, medieval imagery. I played a kind of spastic dwarf, and the men were hunchbacks cavorting around. We then did a piece called Untitled where Alison and I had naked men under our skirts who could grow quite tall, like Alice in Wonderland.

BRETT | Are there elements of your work today that you would attribute in some way to Anna’s influence?

Over the seven years, the work became more and more specific in its imagery and in its storytelling. I think that was our influence as women and also the direction I wanted to move in. Robby and I collaborated on work that had less to do with piling up bodies and incredible shapes.

MARTHA | I think that the “less is more” ideology is, for me, fundamental. If you don’t need it, don’t keep it. Her work was extremely Spartan and spare.

BRETT | Was this a lab for a type of work that would emerge more fully in later years as you came to create work that has the imprint of Martha Clarke?

She terrified me. I was not that happy working in Anna’s company because she did not have a sense of humor. I thought, I’m not making any money, I might as well be having fun and getting a few laughs. I quit dancing when I was 23 because I felt there might be another way. But at that point I had no idea I wanted to create work of my own.

MARTHA | I think one of the things I couldn’t explore in Pilobolus was romanticism.

Sensuality could be explored fully because of the nature of the movement. Often I found that we would come across a resonant poetic image, but I would be frustrated and say, “What does that mean, where is it going?”

I’ve learned in the years of making work that it’s easy to fall in love with a beautiful image or movement, but if it isn’t integral to the entire meaning of the work, I tend to not allow myself to be seduced.

BRETT | How did you transition from that work to finding the group of people that you would create Pilobolus with?

MARTHA | I married a few months after I graduated from Juilliard to Philip Grausman.

He is a sculptor. We moved to Italy, and I had a son, David, who is a jazz musician. Philip was asked to be an artist-in-residence at Dartmouth. I met the Pilobolus group there.

The boys all took modern dance classes. Robby Barnett was a student of Philip’s, and through Robby I met Alison Chase, who was their teacher. We became friends. Alison and I kind

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of flirted our way into the male quartet. And the rest is history. [laughs]

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BRETT | What set the stage for turning the page into the next chapter away from working with Pilobolus?

MARTHA | The six-way collaboration became exhausting, and obviously the men outnumbered the women.

BRETT | Before your larger works with multiple people or players on stage, you were working as a soloist for a while.

MARTHA | While I was with Pilobolus, I started creating solos to preserve my sanity. Nocturne was pivotal. It’s a dance to Mendelssohn about aging. I played an old crone. Another solo, Vagabond, was about someone on stage, blanking out, nothing to say. It was probably a self-portrait. I think for many years my work actually represented my life.

Then I co-founded the dance trio Crow’s Nest.

I met Félix Blaska, who became my partner in 1978. Félix was a very famous French dancer, and Pierre Cardin, who had produced Pilobolus in Paris, invited him to join us for dinner. He didn’t speak any English, and my French was terrible, but I drew a picture of two stick figures on the back of an envelope of him and me with our little webbed fingers joined. He performed in New York a year later, and I went backstage to see him. He was having a tough time, and he decided to leave his company. He came and lived with me in Connecticut. Robby Barnett joined us, and Crow’s Nest was formed. We toured for three years, mostly in Europe.

BRETT | What were the three of you trying to do with Crow’s Nest?

MARTHA | Good music, storytelling. It was still collaborative, but I knew what I wanted to say.

Collaborating with two men was easier than collaborating with five.

BRETT | As a soloist working with two men, were there boundaries that you encountered in those types of work that led to a desire to keep solo work in your life for a long time?

MARTHA | It’s very difficult to make solos. In Pagliaccio, I used buckets as props. I probably sat in an empty bucket for a week, trying to figure out an interesting way to get out of it. It was too lonely doing solo work.

BRETT | Having gone deeply into solo work, what was the next tree branch after Crow’s Nest?

MARTHA | It was the Lyn Austin decade. I created six plays Off-Broadway for [producer and founder of Music-Theater Group] Lyn, who I had met when I was still in Pilobolus. Lyn became a surrogate mother, and a lot of work I created for 12 years was under Lyn’s generosity and aegis.

The first was Elizabeth Dead, a play I made with Linda Hunt. George Trow wrote the text.

Linda and I had gone to Paris to work on my first duet with Félix. She was not a well-known actress then. When we flew back, she said “I want to play Elizabeth I.” So we called Lyn Austin, and I said, “I’m going to make a piece PETER BROOK since 1959

for Linda,” and eventually she played Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I in a nightgown standing on a chamber pot. And it didn’t go so well. Then the next year I collaborated with Jeff Wanshel on A Metamorphosis in Miniature. A wonderful actor named David Rounds played Gregor Samsa, and Linda Hunt played his sister, Greta, and all the other characters on a stage that was eight feet wide. That won an OBIE for Best New American Play in 1982.

I made Garden of Earthly Delights, Vienna: Lusthaus, Kafka’s Hunger Artist. These all won OBIEs. Miracolo d’Amore was produced

by Joe Papp with Spoleto USA, followed by Endangered Species, which was the first time that the volcano erupted and I got burned by the lava of the press. [laughs] BRETT | This was at BAM? MARTHA | Yes. It starred Flora, an African elephant. When I was at Spoleto with Miracolo, David Balding’s Circus Flora from St. Louis was also in town. I was not having an easy time, and so I would escape to the circus. I befriended Tony the Monkey, and this led to a collaboration with Balding. Endangered Species was a really interesting piece that suffered from taking on way too big a subject—man’s relationship with animals, the Civil War, the Holocaust. Frank Rich hated it.

BRETT | The trajectory that starts after Crow’s Nest through Endangered Species is a series of major works, several of which are extraordinary collaborations with some very important playwrights and introduce text in a really significant way. What shifted for you in thinking about the introduction of text into your work?

MARTHA | Language was new for me, and it was something I initially had trepidations about. However, directing opera and working with libretti helped bridge the verbal, nonverbal, and music vocabularies. Text obviously opens up dramatic possibilities, and working with wonderful writers and patient actors supported my learning curve.

BRETT | Tell us about a couple of processes with playwrights that stand out for you as being particularly challenging, exciting, rewarding.

MARTHA | They’ve all been interesting. I really enjoyed my work with Alfred Uhry. He came to me with the idea for Angel Reapers, a show based on the founder of the Shaker movement.

It’s one of my favorite pieces.

BRETT | In a scenario such as Chuck Mee with Vienna: Lusthaus, how does the script evolve?

MARTHA | Chuck was a historian and editor at Horizon magazine when I met him. Joe JAMES HOUGHTON since 1999 | JAMES NICOLA since 1987

Papp introduced us. We went to lunch, and he wanted me to direct his Investigation of the Murder in El Salvador. I didn’t really understand it, which I said. And he said, “What are you working on?” and I said, “A show about Vienna at the turn of the century,” and he said he’d love to write it, and I said, “But it doesn’t have any words.” And he was handsome, so I said okay. [laughs] BRETT | Sensible basis for a working relationship.

MARTHA | So we did Vienna. He’d write pages without any character names and in no particular order. Then I would go into rehearsal with no particular order and no particular characters. I had four actors and some dancers, and all the actors would try the words. It took months to organize.

BRETT | In Vienna: Lusthaus, the dance evolves as a response to those pieces of text. So you had two trains running for a while that somehow you brought together.

MARTHA | In the beginning it was incredibly awkward. I go for a seamless interplay between text and image. Rather than calling it dance, it’s image making. I think some dance critics would say there’s not much choreography.

I’ve been deeply influenced by film, and there are many great screenplays where text is obviously a necessity, but film is a visual language. Since I’m confined to the stage, I tried to make living film.

BRETT | I’ve been around you when you’re preparing for a piece. You’re a voracious consumer of photographs, stories, ephemera, film, music from a period. This certainly would have influenced the way you would have worked with someone like Chuck Mee, providing him with elements that you felt began to come together to create an environment.

MARTHA | We worked separately, and then I mixed them.

I think the strongest, most elemental signature in my work is atmosphere. I make a world in which language can be woven throughout.

But I think, as a creator, the first thing I strive for is a kind of architectural atmosphere or atmospheric architecture. It’s getting a sense, like smelling lavender, making an atmosphere in which all kinds of detail can then be arranged.

BRETT | And you use this atmosphere, you convey it to dancers, to the designers? You’ve had a few longstanding, seemingly productive relationships with designers. Bob Israel and Chris Akerlind come to mind.

MARTHA | Jane Greenwood, Donna Zakowska.

The collaborators with whom I have had long-term relationships have a deep mutual understanding with me. You just find your people.

BRETT | Let’s talk for a minute about producers. I recall very clearly a story you told me about Lyn having mortgaged her house once to make sure that a piece of yours would make the stage. What, in your view, is the key ingredient? What makes a great producer?

MARTHA | Belief and support. Lyn had an uncanny instinct about me, about things I didn’t know about myself. She always encouraged me. When Lyn would back someone, it was literally until death do us part. We genuinely cared a lot for each other. I always thought of her as my second mom. She was crazy, intuitive, instinctive, and she could be destructive, but never with me.

Joe Papp was also another wonderful mentor.

He produced Miracolo d’Amore with the Spoleto Festival in Charleston. One day he said, “I don’t know if this is genius or shit, but let’s keep going.” I’ve never forgotten that. I said, “Do you have notes?” He said, “How am I going to give you notes?”

I’ve had a wonderful relationship with Jim Nicola from New York Theatre Workshop; he’s a great listener. And now I’m thrilled to be in the home of James Houghton at the Signature Theatre.

I think a good producer is absolutely keen on making good work. And sometimes it’s just showing up with a box of Kleenex or a little pat on the back and a glass of wine after a tough rehearsal. But I think it is the marriage of common sense, economy, and creativity. It’s always scary to make work, and it’s good to have someone to talk to.

BRETT | What differences have you found between working with dancers and working with actors?

MARTHA | Dancers are intuitive, not particularly cerebral. They feel with their skin and their cells and their muscles. With actors you usually have to front-load your communication with thought and analysis.

It’s like yin and yang. My experience has been when you have dancers and actors in a room they admire each other’s craft and inspire each other in very special ways.

BRETT | What are you looking for in dancers?

MARTHA | I’m very intuitive about my selection of people to work with, and I’m very specific. A lot of what comes out on stage is a result of picking a wonderful performer and collaborating with who they really are.

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Angel Reapers at the Joyce Theatre in New York, created by Martha Clarke + Alfred Uhry in 2011

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My work has been compared to dreams.

BRETT | There appears to be a very, very fine line, or no line at all, between the work that you’re doing in the studio and the relationship that you develop with people that you work with outside of the studio. You’ve referred several times to having this kind of innate understanding with these individuals. There’s something that envelops the relationship that you have with individuals that almost extends beyond the work. Is that fair?

MARTHA | Yes, it’s very intense. I would say that outside of a few old friends, my deepest affections in life are for the people I work with.

And my best friends are people I work with. I value and love them and like to laugh together and have a good meal together and gossip about who’s driving us crazy. Working in the theatre and working with dancers is a little bit like being in love. It’s a heightened experience when it’s good. It’s also painful when it’s not going well.

BRETT | If you were to look back at your work, what stands out for you as commonalities and themes that you have tried to expose or work through?

MARTHA | Love, sex, and death. [laughs] The nuances of the psyche. My work has been compared to dreams.

I’m interested in a feminine point of view without being feminist with capital letters. In different decades of my life, the emphasis of my work was on pain or love, and that’s less interesting to me now. When I did Chéri, it was about an older woman and a younger man, and an older woman who has to accept her age and let go. So the subject matter as I’ve aged reflects kind of where I’m at. Also, I have a certain distance as my personal life is less dramatic. Different subjects interest me for different reasons, whereas I think probably a good 20 to 25 years ago I was working out of my own demons.

As you get older, there’s less distance between the highs and lows. Less drama, probably more contentment. And I think it’s possibly the only thing that aging has to offer.

BRETT | Let’s talk about Chéri for a minute.

Chéri is a nuanced love story written by Colette. I’ve seen you as you move in toward text. It’s a complicated mating dance. The text sends you signals, you respond over a period of time, thinking about colors and sensations and people. The ultimate experience as an audience member was informed by only the slightest use of actual text in the piece. You selected a few stanzas that were spoken, but the remainder of the work was communicated through movement, through an atmosphere only “indicated” by the text.

MARTHA | And much less of the kind of movement that’s usually associated with me.

Making Chéri with Alessandra Ferri and Herman Cornejo has been an extraordinary experience. I was working with two of the really great ballet dancers of our time, so I threw myself in the direction of what their technical abilities were. However, none of it is bravura.

The technique was sublimated for the acting in combination with their technical ability. It was about the storytelling.

BRETT | Let’s spend a bit of time on film. You mentioned earlier in our conversation that you think of much of your work not as dance but as moving images, and called on your self-stated obsession with film as an influence. Are there filmmakers you have a particularly strong affinity for that you find to be particularly instructive?

MARTHA | I think Ingmar Bergman, Fellini…

BRETT | We’ve watched Tarkovsky together.

MARTHA | I also love Robert Bresson, Cocteau, Da Sica, Visconti, Rossellini. Not so many Americans, oddly enough. I really love the Italian neorealists. I just adore them. I like Fritz Lang and some other very early filmmakers from the ’20s through the ’60s. I’m a great follower of HBO. I loved Deadwood.

BRETT | You’ve mentioned earlier in our discussion wanting to put a toe in the world of film. In your view, what’s possible in the world of film that hasn’t been possible on stage?

What draws you to that?

MARTHA | I think it’s the close-up. The way one sees. It’s also about light. I think being in an editing room is really fascinating.

BRETT | You’ve indicated that part of your attraction to the idea of film is the ability to create something permanent that can be referred to again and again. The challenge is collecting your work in a way that could be restaged at a future point. Recording it in a way that would allow someone 50, 100 years from now to re-stage it. Should a Vienna: Lusthaus or an Endangered Species be available for a future generation to re-stage? Or does the work of Martha Clarke end with Martha Clarke?

MARTHA | Oh, dear. The New York Public Library has filmed Belle Epoque, Garden of Earthly Delights, and I think smatterings of other things. Things of mine that were filmed in the ’80s have all melted away because it wasn’t digital and it was hard to preserve. Life is ephemeral, art is ephemeral. It’s hard to know or even if it’s important to know if one’s work is relevant for the future. My work is about me living in the time I’m living. Its

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relevance is for future generations to decide.

It’s not up to me.

process. What advice do you have for younger people trying to move into the field?

BRETT | Yes, at some point. But how is that decision made?

BRETT | I’ve been around you when you’re creating several pieces, and you have a scavenger-like energy during that time. A pile of books in the corner, piles of films on the table, all of which start to come together in what you call an atmosphere, which you then convey to your collaborators to create a piece. Can we talk about your relationship with stealing for a minute?

MARTHA | Go to law school. [laughs] I would only say you have to really love it, to adore it, because there’s great exhilaration that comes from collaboration with wonderful, interesting artists. There’s also frustration in trying to raise money and have the opportunity to see one’s dreams fulfilled. I think for a young person going into the field, it isn’t getting any easier.

You have to really know you’re ready to walk through fire. And you will.

MARTHA | I think when no one wants me anymore. [laughs]

BRETT | You’ve worked with a number of students in the university context. What is interesting about great students? What does it look like when a student is inspiring to you?

MARTHA | I have preferred the quiet and, in a sense, the emptiness of living among trees. It’s a little bit like a bear in hibernation in terms of creative thinking. I find too much constant stimulation of going to things and seeing things and keeping up with things allows less time for my own narcissist bulb to put in roots. That the quiet and reflective time, even if it’s not very reflective but is just quiet, is very important to my own truthfulness. Also, I think there are different times in your life, like when you’re younger, [when] assimilating an enormous amount of energy and input is exciting and thrilling, and that is as it should be.

MARTHA | With what?

BRETT | Stealing. How do you think of your relationship with these influences? As Stravinsky famously said, “Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.”

MARTHA | Martha Graham said it as well.

Yeah, sometimes if I’m in the beginning of making something, if I’m a week or two into it, I can look at anything and see material. But the blood’s got to be boiling.

MARTHA | Oh, you feel renewed when you are a person of a certain age and you’re working with someone who is young and hungry and full of vitality and imagination. It’s like opening a window in a dryaired apartment.

I find really wonderful I will see students something on provocative the front of a and inspiring. newspaper and However, use it. I’ll watch my advice to somebody across students, as Belle Epoque created by Martha Clarke, the street and it was to you, performed at Lincoln Center Theater use it. But it is don’t get means my brain overeducated. Go has been tuned out and practice to plucking things for the appetite at hand. I your craft and learn on the road. trust the process, and when I go empty, I don’t freak out about it anymore.

BRETT | Who are the younger people who have been influenced by you? Who has stolen well BRETT | So how do you know an instinct is from you when you look at their work? worth pursuing? What’s the decision point where you know you’re ready to make a piece MARTHA | I think I was an early influence about a subject? on Shen Wei. Sophie Bortolussi, who just choreographed Red Eye at the [New York MARTHA | A check. [laughs] Sometimes I’ll go Theatre] Workshop. I’ve had the pleasure in for a meeting, and I’m seized with enough of working with Rachel Dickstein and Lear passion to push it through. And then, of course, deBessonet, who are both doing very well.

I have to deal with the reality of making it.

And Brett Egan, who I love and am very proud of. [laughs] BRETT | We met when I was fresh out of college, and you put a wing around me.

BRETT | How does Martha Clarke retire?

You’ve had relationships with a number of younger people in your career, people who MARTHA | With gratitude. [laughs] Penniless and have assisted you, who have supported your with gratitude. You mean, can I see giving it all up?

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BRETT | You live in an astonishingly beautiful part of the world, in Connecticut, in Arshile Gorky’s home. And nature has played a variety of influences in your work. What role has leaving the city played in your process? What is the role of nature in your work or in your process?

As you get older, you strip away. Living simply, and not needing to be involved with everything. I know what turns me on.

BRETT | That’s beautiful. I’d like to ask, finally, 50 years from now, 75 years from now, 100 years from now, what would you hope people would look at as Martha Clarke’s contribution to this field?

MARTHA | Her love of Pomeranians. [laughs] BRETT | [laughs] You’re not getting off that easily. What does it add up to?

MARTHA | You know, cross-discipline is a very catchy phrase now. Inter-discipline, crossdiscipline. I think when I started being trained as a dancer and doing work and moving into theatre and being neither one thing or another, I made my own work. I think I made my own DNA. I’ve had a terrific, creative life. Sometimes I think retiring gracefully is kind of appealing.

I don’t want to stay on too long at the fair, creatively. Peter Brook’s 89, and he’s got a play that’s just opened in New York. Martha Graham kept it up until she was 94. I don’t believe I have that kind of drive, but I wouldn’t say never. I’m about to go to rehearsal today.

It isn’t an easy life. There are great highs and there are great lows. And that’s a good ending.

LEAR DEBESSONET since 2007 | RACHEL DICKSTEIN since 2010

Chéri at Signature Theatre PHOTO Joan Marcus.

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Often I found that we would come across a resonant poetic image, but I would be frustrated and say, “What does that mean, where is it going?” I’ve learned that it’s easy to fall in love with a beautiful image or movement, but if it isn’t integral to the entire meaning of the work, I tend to not allow myself to be seduced.

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FOLLOWING AN IDIOSYNCRATIC INSTINCT AN INTERVIEW WITH

RICHARD FOREMAN

PHOTO Paula

Court

INTERVIEW BY NORMAN

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FRISCH

NORMAN FRISCH | I want to start our conversation by talking about the artists who were important to you when you were young. You’ve said many times that from the point of view of your own theatremaking, some of the most influential people were, in fact, filmmakers, not playwrights.

RICHARD FOREMAN | Jonas Mekas, the head of the underground film movement in New York, was my practical and spiritual guru. Another big influence was the music of La Monte Young, an experimental composer making long, multiinstrument drones. I remember asking myself, “How could I make a theatre that captured that quality?”

NORMAN | A lot of people think of you primarily as a director, but you trained as a playwright, and you have worked all these years as a playwright alongside your directing career.

RICHARD | I think of myself as a playwright who started directing because nobody else would do my strange plays.

For six decades avant‐garde theatre and film director Richard Foreman has challenged, tantalized, and thrilled theatre audiences worldwide. He has written, directed, and designed more than 50 plays, 5 of which have received OBIE awards for Best Play of the Year.

Among the many prestigious awards Foreman has received are the MacArthur Fellowship and the Order of Arts and Letters from the French government.

In 1968 Foreman founded the Ontological‐ Hysteric Theater, which was first based in New York City’s Soho neighborhood and then for many years at St. Mark’s Church in the East Village. In residence with his own work, Foreman also provided a home for thousands of emerging theatre artists, many of whom have gone on to lead their own companies.

Foreman sat down in fall 2014 with dramaturg and curator Norman Frisch to discuss his career and the place that Ontological played in the formation of the downtown theatre scene as well as his forays into film.

My playwriting teacher at Yale School of Drama was John Gassner, a very great teacher whom I respected a lot. One day he said, “Richard, you have a lot of talent, and I don’t say that to everybody. But you have one problem. You get an effect, and you don’t want to let go of it. You repeat it again and again.” I went home thinking, “How am I going to fix that?” All of a sudden I thought, “If that’s my tendency, maybe I should radicalize that and make that the center of my art.” And that freed me to evolve my own idiosyncratic style.

When I began writing and then directing, I thought, “How can I make something that isn’t like the theatre I’ve seen since I was 12 years old?”

I went to the theatre all the time, and I hated most of it. Then at 15 I read about Brecht and thought, “Oh my god, this is what I need—a theatre that doesn’t depend on empathy but on a kind of scientific, clear‐eyed looking.” That, combined with the non‐inflected music of La Monte Young, gave me a vague idea of how I could escape the theatre of my times, which was based on empathy with the actors implicitly saying to the audience, “Love me, love me,” in plays that operated on a psychological, humanistic level, which never touched my depths.

I’ve always wanted, above all, to make a theatre that’s extremely dense, like consciousness itself. The first thing is always the text. The scripts for my plays seem abstract to people, with lines seeming to come from left field. Like the voices in one’s head.

The next question is, “Where could this ‘abstract’ text be located?” In a set suggesting different places at once, of course. When I started making theatre, I worked with some wonderful designers. But I began to realize that though they would give me whatever I wanted, it wasn’t what I would have discovered by making my own sloppy models and bypassing any verbal level of explanation. I wanted to make an intuited, total composition—with as much control as a silent painter at his canvas.

So I make the set, the sound, lighting, text, everything. But, of course, ANNE BOGART since 1990 | RICHARD FOREMAN since 1976 | PETER SELLARS since 1997

I don’t hesitate to change everything once we’re in rehearsal.

We rehearse something like 12 to 14 weeks. We rehearse in the built set with lights, sound, everything there is to experiment with from the beginning.

On the first day, I just say, “Okay, let’s start blocking. You enter here and go here.” We do no table work, even when I direct a classical play. Once in my life I had to start with a reading—I found it hard to sit through. So we are immediately on our feet—trying to discover where the play is hiding.

It usually takes many weeks before I finish making many stupid choices—I tell the actors it’s only ME, MYSELF making stupid choices. Trial and error, like editing film.

I encourage the actors to invent their own secret scenarios to justify what they’re doing. And my task is to make a composition in which it all fits and makes sense. I only want behavior that comes organically, naturally, out of the actor’s body. Sometimes they’ll be off to the side joking with someone, and out of the corner of my eye I’ll see them and say, “Oh, when you move your elbows like that, I like that.

We’ll use it.” I want only their own idiosyncratic selves on stage, not a character they imitate or invent.

I remember one of my more experienced actors saying, “Richard, you keep us in a very narrow corridor. But within that corridor, I feel freer than I’ve ever felt.”

NORMAN | When audience members think of what your work looks like visually, what stands out for them are usually the string grids that run across the stage.

RICHARD | They started out minimally—one or two strings across the stage. I got the idea when I saw my first picture of a Brecht production.

There was a half-curtain running across the stage on a low wire. It seemed somehow like a mechanism to lift the event out of the realistic theatre I’d hated since I was a kid. As the years went by, more and more string got added. At a certain point, I used string pulled out from retractable wheels to point at people or objects. I thought it evoked the way consciousness works, isolating things in a complex environment.

NORMAN | Anne Bogart and Peter Sellars are at least two of the people who have said to me that when they first encountered your theatre, they felt it to be the purest expression or extension of Brechtian ideals in American theatre into an American idiom.

RICHARD | From when I was 15 until about 32, I truly believed that in the history of Western theatre there was only one person who did it properly, and that was Brecht. I’m not equally enamored today, but I do consider myself a disciple who learned most about the theatre from pondering what Brecht was trying to do.

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Richard speaking with Oskar Eustis during Idiot Savant, which he wrote, directed + designed, at The Public Theater in 2009 PHOTO Paula Court

NORMAN | When you were a teenager or when you first came to New York, what were the Brecht productions that you were seeing?

RICHARD | When I was in high school, my friend John and I went to New York every weekend to see a play. The first Brecht I saw was Eric Bentley’s production of The Good Woman of Setzuan at the Phoenix Theatre with Uta Hagen and Zero Mostel. It was not well received, but I loved it.

NORMAN | And did you see the famous production of Threepenny Opera with Lotte Lenya?

RICHARD | Saw it. Loved it. Even dragged my parents to it. Years later, when I directed Threepenny, however, I changed my opinion and did mine in a style much more aggressive than the “friendly” Theatre de Lys production had been.

NORMAN | Your Threepenny at the Public Theater was one of the first of your works that I saw when I started coming into New York. I saw it several times.

RICHARD | I did it thanks to Stefan Brecht, who said to Joe Papp, “Well, okay. I’ll give you the rights, but only if you get Richard Foreman to direct it.”

NORMAN | Had you and Papp already worked together at that time?

RICHARD | Oh, no. He didn’t know who I was.

NORMAN | That was your first collaboration?

RICHARD | Sure. Joe came down to check me out by seeing Rhoda in Potatoland, which was the first date he ever had with [his wife] Gail.

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NORMAN | Really? He thought that was a good date night?

RICHARD | Little did he know! He came up to me afterwards and said, “Well, I didn’t understand everything, but it had heart—which is what counts for me. I could tell that it had heart.”

NORMAN | At that time, were there already younger artists coming to watch you work? There were a number of people who worked as performers in your company downtown who were deeply influenced and went on to make their own works.

RICHARD | Back then, my rehearsals were always open, and people would wander in and out. Then I got too tense having everybody watch me struggle. But there’s the story about Anne Bogart, who…

NORMAN | Anne Bogart says that, in college, she and her friends started the “I Hate Richard Foreman Club” because she so didn’t “get” your work when she first saw it. Then, when she came to New York, she had the experience of attending those open rehearsals over and over and over again over a long period of time.

RICHARD | She explained to me later, “I had nothing to do one night, and said ‘Oh, let’s go see that stupid Foreman rehearse.’” When she went home, she said, “Oh, yeah, he’s terrible.” But a week later she said, “Yes, it was terrible, but I want to go back.” Then she came around often and ended up being a friend and a great supporter of my work.

NORMAN | She still says that was the most important training that she had as a director. It’s in that time‐honored European tradition of training directors en attendant—the one who attends, who sits and watches.

RICHARD | I’ve never taught, and I wouldn’t know how to teach directing.

OSKAR EUSTIS since 1997

ASTRONOME: a night at the opera, written, directed + designed by Richard Foreman + produced by Ontological-Hysteric Theater 2009 PHOTO Paula Court

NORMAN | Yet for a number of years, when you were operating Ontological at St. Mark’s, there was a place where you could invite people. If people wanted to participate in your work, there was a place that they could come to. So many people fought to find a place in your productions as a stage manager, as a technician, and since have gone on to create their own work.

RICHARD | We had 12 to 15 interns for every play. It was unique because many theatres have interns who go get coffee and sweep up. My interns were always in rehearsal doing theatrical tasks—working the light board, making props, taking blocking notes. I’m very proud of the fact that most of the well‐ known, younger groups in New York started in my theatre.

NORMAN | You found a structure for sharing your space at St. Mark’s Church over time, when you were not in production.

RICHARD | Half the year I was in production and performance.

NORMAN | The other half of the year you let young people use the space. Not only were they given the opportunity to watch you work, but, in time, you came to watch them work. They talk about having the benefit of your eye as a very important aspect of working in the space. Was that something that you intended when you gave over the space to their use?

RICHARD | I want to encourage everybody. It’s always hard for someone with a truly original vision. If they can stick at it for 10 years, in spite of negative reaction—75 percent of my own audience would walk out of my early productions—then people MAY start to pick up on it. If they’re lucky.

NORMAN | Your film Strong Medicine serves as such a beautiful record of important theatre performers from a previous era of whom there is no other record. The film was made even before theatre companies could acquire or afford video equipment.

“

I decided, “My god, I’m going to be dead someday, and all my work will disappear.” So I wanted to make a film.

RICHARD | I’ve had mixed feelings about the film; I thought it was too theatrical. I made it in 1976 when I decided, “My god, I’m going to be dead someday, and all my work will disappear.” So I wanted to make a film.

NORMAN | It took you a long time to make another feature film.

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RICHARD | The last three plays I did in my theatre had filmed backdrops on big screens throughout the production. The actors were never in interaction with the screen but rather in counterpoint, following a different track, as it were. When I rehearsed the last one, I noticed I wasn’t looking at the actors as much as I was looking at the screen. So I thought maybe I should just take the plunge again and try to make a film. And I did.

NORMAN | And you enjoyed it?

RICHARD | Oh, yes. For me, making theatre was always like Orson Welles said about film: making a film, you’re given the best Erector Set that a boy ever had, and you can do what you want.

That describes how I arranged my own theatre practice—but of course I have even more control making a film. Most of my time is spent editing—controlling the perimeters of exposure, contrast, etcetera.

But that wasn’t the MOST important reason for my switch to film. As each of my plays develops, things get more and more complex. The compositional tension builds until all of the sudden an actor runs and bounces off a wall, for instance, or the lights get blinding or the music deafeningly loud. I thought of that as the play itself falling into the “whiteness” of transcendence. Of course, that’s something that you can really do in film—edit it so it moves into another realm, another level of consciousness.

“

I don’t think it’s a matter of getting closer. It’s a matter of circling the big mystery. Imagine the big mysteries at the center of a globe, and you circle it along different meridians.

The angle of approach changes, but you’re still circling.

My current films are very different from that first one, of course. Sophie Haviland, who used to be the administrator of my theatre, and I visited nine countries to shoot film. I would shoot for just four days—fast, like shooting a riot. I had a single sketch and one or two lines of dialogue for each scene. That was the only preparation.

NORMAN | How long did it take you to edit your most recent film, Once Every Day? RICHARD | A year and a half, at least.

NORMAN | You finished that about two years ago?

RICHARD | It premiered in fall 2012 at the New York Film Festival and was then chosen for the Berlin Film Festival.

It’s a funny thing: when I started making the new films a couple of years ago, I said, “I’m so happy to get free of the theatre, escaping the tension of audience reactions, of first nights and newspaper reviews. I’m going to put an ad in the paper saying ‘Richard Foreman is no longer making theatre, he’s making film. All his films can first be seen—on the day of his death.’” That was the way I felt about it. I wasn’t interested in “reactions” but in the aesthetic thrill of just making it.

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NORMAN | Are there performers that you haven’t worked with that you would like to?

RICHARD | In film I prefer working with young actors who are almost non‐actors. In the early days, my theatre used non‐actors—my friends who were filmmakers or artists. People who were interestingly awkward on stage. I always said there are all kinds of people in the world—Jewish people, Italian people, French people, and ACTOR people—a whole separate race.

I was indeed tired of seeing that specific “actor race” on stage. I started working with my wife, Kate [Manheim], who was not then an actress, but she soon developed an intense stage presence and technique so strong in it’s focus that she blew the other performers off the stage. So I needed real actors to match her intensity. Today, were I to do another play, I would only use professional actors, as I’ve done for the last 20 years.

NORMAN | When you see an actor that attracts you as a potential collaborator, do you know right away if you see them in a film or you see them on stage? Do you say, “That’s someone I could work with?”

RICHARD | I don’t see them on stage anymore because I stopped going to the theatre 20 years ago. Most people in my world know that.

But I used to hold auditions, though many of my actors were people suggested by friends. I even had them read from the text, but if they come to my loft to meet me, I’d say something like, “Go to the bookcase, take out a book, and check out a page. Imagine it’s talking about a nasty, cruel person. And you think to yourself—‘That describes Richard Foreman!’ So look at me, then look back at the book, and think, ‘Should I show this to Richard? Make him read about himself?’ And finally you, the actor, decide to come over, and make me, the director, look at it.”

So I would look—having a particular nonverbal reaction, depending on who the actor was. Then I’d give back the book, and they’d put it back in the bookcase. On that basis, I convinced myself that I was able to tell whether or not they would be a proper performer in my plays.

NORMAN | It’s a presence test.

RICHARD | Yes. NORMAN | Have you worked with actors who did not have that kind of presence when you began working with them and who developed it over time? Or do you think that’s a thing that someone either walks in the door with or not?

RICHARD | They may develop it a little bit, but I think you walk in the door with it. That may be my failing as a director. Maybe I should be able to get that out of anybody, but I don’t think you can.

I want an inner-directed person with a laser‐like inner intensity. I want to feel a slow burn always inside the performer. Even in my own small theatre, or when I do classical plays, the actors are always mic’d so they can speak using the lower base notes of their register, which are hard to project.

I never want to feel the actor is speaking to produce a result in another performer. And I dislike it when actors say a line with an upward inflection at the end—as if there were still more to be said. No. Each line should be a final statement.

NORMAN | Part of that may have to do with the way that you write plays.

Much of your writing is not composed with the expectation of a response in the moment.

RICHARD | That’s true. But even when I’ve directed everything from Havel to Molière, I want to hear the lines ending with a downward inflection.

NORMAN | Are there any plays by other playwrights that you still have an urge to tackle?

RICHARD | No real urge, but the playwrights that I favor are Molière— who I think is better than Shakespeare—and of modern playwrights, Buchner, who I’ve done, and Strindberg, whom I haven’t. That’s my particular pantheon.

NORMAN | When did you come to the conclusion about Molière? Before you directed one of his works or after directing one?

RICHARD | After I directed Don Juan, which is almost atypical Molière. I thought it was the greatest play I’d ever directed.

NORMAN | Do you still think it may be?

RICHARD | Yes. When I first did it at the Guthrie, it was very successful.

Then Joe [Papp] asked me to redo it in the park in the summer, and most critics hated it. They said, “Richard Foreman is trashing Molière. Well, my god, I love Molière, and some people understood, especially French people, some of whom said, “This is a great production of Molière.”

I remember sitting in the park with Joe one night after a preview. This guy walked up and said, “Are you Foreman, who directed this play?” I said yes. He said, “I want to tell you you’ve destroyed Molière. It’s terrible.” Joe jumped up, grabbed him by the lapels, and shook him, shouting, “Don’t talk to my director like that!” and shoved him away.

NORMAN | You have been invited back repeatedly to the Public Theater.

RICHARD | Yes, it was my second home for a long time. I know all the people there, and I think I’m correct in saying they all enjoyed working with me. In spite of my reputation for a demanding rigor, I’m actually a very nice, easy guy to work with, and though I control the performances more than most directors, I’m very gentle with my actors.

NORMAN | I think that misconception simply comes from people who find your plays forbidding or difficult. From those experiences, they assume that you must be a difficult person.

RICHARD | Maybe.

NORMAN | So, we’ll dispel that myth. Does filmmaking take up all your time now?

RICHARD | Oh, yes.

NORMAN | Is your reading practice still as strong as it has been over the years?

RICHARD | On and off.

NORMAN | It seems to me there’s always been a very strong connection between your reading practice and your theatre practice.

RICHARD | There are times I don’t read as much because I no longer have the energy to sustain 12 hours of uninterrupted concentration. Also because I devote so much of my energy every day to editing my film.

Right now, however, I’m reading quite a bit.

NORMAN | Your reading practice has been the framework for whatever kind of spiritual practice you have pursued over the years, yes?

RICHARD | I suppose I want to find out what it’s all about.

NORMAN | Do you feel like you’re any closer?

RICHARD | Of course not. But I don’t think it’s a matter of getting closer.

It’s a matter of circling the big mystery. Imagine the big mysteries at the center of a globe, and you circle it along different meridians. The angle of approach changes, but you’re still circling.

When I was young I thought I was going to find a book that answered all the questions and would fulfill my anguished longing.

NORMAN | You have a legacy of published work, both the plays and also essays and manifestos on theatre. Is there anything that you still want to add to that written legacy?

RICHARD | Not really. I still obsessively write notes to myself about my latest sudden insight. But a day later I make more notes that refine the preceding notes. More every day. Here’s a notebook in which I’ve started yet a new series of notes that I think explains it all—but, of course, it never will.

NORMAN | Do you feel that there is a kind of anecdotal legacy beyond the manifestos and the essays that would be important to capture?

RICHARD | Oh, yes. I have 1,012 amusing stories and anecdotes. Perhaps trivial, but they can be useful. I’ve always been interested in reading such things because they sustain you in the notion that your day‐to‐ day activity in the art isn’t unique. The ups and downs, the ludicrous situations, and the good situations are the way it should be and the way it always has been. There are certain people who’ve said things at different times that I’ve taken to heart .

NORMAN | When you’re invited to speak or to teach at places where young directors are being trained, what do you do? Do you just talk with people about their work, your work?

RICHARD | I must admit that mostly I talk about my work, but I try to make it applicable to a certain spiritual vision of the world—to what human beings are supposed to do with their given mental apparatus.

NORMAN | Is there a place now that you would send a young person who asked you for guidance? Or do you just urge them to make their own place?

RICHARD | There may be places, but I don’t know of them, and maybe that’s my limitation. But yes, I definitely urge them to figure out a way to do it all by themselves. If they can keep a unique vision going for maybe 10 years in spite of little seeming success, then at the end of 10 years they can reexamine and see if they still believe in their vision. But not before, certainly.

At one time I had a spectacular, long, deep loft theatre on Broadway and Broome Street. Crowds of people were trying to get into the shows. But I began to worry, “This is too safe. I can see that I’ll be here even when I reach 50!” Ha! “I’ll be coming back each year to do another of my plays in this space, and that routine’s just too predictable.” So I sold the theatre.

People thought I was crazy. But it forced me to do many different kinds of work in many different places. It was the right thing to do, of course.

My only advice is the difficult advice to find the courage to follow your idiosyncratic instinct. Find that most radical, insurmountable difficulty in your work and make it the center of that work.

I know how hard it is to follow that advice, but I’m convinced it’s the only way to make real art and not just become part of the entertainment industry. I’ve always considered myself an outsider in the theatre— somebody who shouldn’t really be in the theatre—but somehow I’m in it, and somehow I’ve survived.

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SDC FOUNDATION

WHAT AM I GOING TO MAKE?

Given by Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (SDCF), the Zelda Fichandler Award celebrates significant achievement in the field of theatre, singular creativity and artistry, and a deep investment in a particular region. The award was created in 2009 to honor the great work of the founders of the American regional theatre movement and is named after one of its most aspirant leaders, Zelda Fichandler.

Joseph Haj + Oskar Eustis (background) PHOTO Walter McBride

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ZELDA FICHANDLER since 1987

SDCF presents the award annually to an outstanding director or choreographer making a strong commitment to their community and an exceptional contribution to the arts landscape through theatre work in a particular region. The award heralds both accomplishments to date and promise for the future, presenting the recipient with an unrestricted grant of $5,000. The Zelda Fichandler Award is given regionally on a rotating basis; this year, nominations were accepted from the Eastern region of the United States.

On November 3, Joseph Haj received the 2014 Zelda Fichandler Award at the Clurman Theatre at Theatre Row. The following are excerpts from speeches delivered at the event as well as the finalists’ biographies and Q&As.

ON BEING PROFOUNDLY GIFTED

Remarks by Joseph Haj Thank you, Oskar [Eustis], for those beautiful remarks. Oskar is one of my favorite artists, artistic directors, thinkers, and human beings, and I am terrifically honored to be introduced by him tonight. Thank you, my friend.

I’d like to take a moment to recognize the extraordinary finalists for this award: my brother-in-arms in North Carolina, Preston Lane; my friend, the exceptional Kwame Kwei-Armah; and the very, very talented Tracy Brigden, Bonnie Monte, and Steve Cosson.

I’m proud to be in their company. And I’m honored to share in this gathering tonight with the Callaway Award winners John Rando and Martha Clarke, two artists I have admired from afar for many years.

The best part of winning this award is that I got to spend an hour on the phone with Zelda, who is an inspiration. We spent a lot of time speaking about the early days of the regional theatre movement, and I kept feeling like this is what it’s all about; there are those who come before, and the best of them hand down their wisdom to others.

Which leads me to my remarks today: to win an award like this, you have to be profoundly gifted, so I’d like to talk about that.

If you are sitting in this room today, and you have a career in the theatre, it is because you too are gifted. Not in some delusional, “I was born with my genius fully formed” kind of a way, but in this manner: somewhere along your way, someone who understood what you were after, or what you might be about, gave some of what they had so that you could have some of what you wanted. Those are gifts. And they ought to be acknowledged as such.

I was gifted by Barbara Lowery, my high school drama teacher, who saw an angry and disaffected teenager and encouraged me into the theatre.

I was gifted to be Ben Cameron’s teaching assistant when I was in graduate school at UNC; and I would watch and learn as he held 300 students—non-majors, at that— spellbound with his Chekhov lecture. To this day I’ve never met anyone better at describing what we do with such intelligence, skill, and passion.

I was 24 and gifted by JoAnne Akalaitis, who never turned over my headshot to see that there was little on my résumé. She liked me, and she cast me in The Screens. Fiveand-a-half hours of Genet at the Guthrie; and that changed everything for me, and led to a lifelong friendship. And I was gifted by the late Garland Wright, one of our truly great directors, who had an influence upon me entirely disproportionate to the time I spent with him. Garland once said to me that, “There is only one reason to be a theatre artist finally; and that’s because it makes you a bigger person.” And Anne Bogart, who called me and said, “I’m starting a company with Tadashi Suzuki and I’d like you to join,” and became a lifelong colleague, friend, and mentor.

And Robert Woodruff, the most fearless of artists, who has also been an extraordinary friend and guide. And Emilya Cachapero at TCG, who, when I received her call that I had been selected for the Career Development Program by a panel of SDC directors, said, “We would like you to spend the time in this program shadowing artistic and executive directors about the non-artistic aspects of the job, because we think you’re going to run a theatre someday.” I had never said to myself or to anyone else that I would be interested in running a theatre. But like the very best mentors and guides, they knew, a minute before I did, where I might provide the greatest service. And Oskar opened his heart, his mind, his office, and his institution to me so that I could learn, and so did Michael Wilson at Hartford Stage, and so did Libby Appel and

Paul Nicholson at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Leading an organization now, I can well imagine how vulnerable and exposing that could be, and they were great friends to me and gave me room to grow.

I carry all of those I mentioned, and so many more, with me all the time. And I suppose that’s how we speak of those who have impacted our lives; that we carry them with us.

But that sounds like a burden; like luggage. My experience of it is the opposite. They live inside me in such a way that I feel supported and buoyed and carried along by them.

There is no greater gift an artist—maybe a human being—can be given than to be believed in. And I have always been touched and not a little surprised when those I respected so much believed in me. There have been so many who saw the modesty of my talents and the desperation of my dreams.

And they heaped gifts upon me by sharing their wisdom and their expectations of what it means to be an artist. They gave me so much of themselves that I grew and grew and grew.

And so I am gifted.

And as we claw each other for room, space, voice, resources, and attention, and as our fear of our own inadequacy presents as bitterness and envy, we do enormous damage to ourselves and to our community. There is nothing more sacred or more ludicrous to do with one’s life than to become a theatre artist. We make it much harder for ourselves by taking insufficient care of one another. Hoarding our gifts won’t protect us from irrelevance. The best artists I know are continually giving them away, if for no other reason than that they know those gifts were given to them, and that they don’t own them.

Ours remains an apprenticeship game. The craft is passed on. We learn to be good by being in the room with people who are better.

I turned to directing as a mid-career actor, and I knew how to direct plays when I began to direct because the very best in the business had been showing me how for years.

And I had parents who taught me the beauty and grace in caring for others. And I have a wife and a daughter who daily call me toward my best self. And I have colleagues who I work with every day who are as good as anyone in the business at what they each do. And I serve a community that is dedicated to its own growth through its participation in the life of the theatre I lead.

Given such an embarrassment of gifts, being so profoundly gifted, how could I not have met with some success? Martha Graham once said, “Art is the presence of the ancestor.” I

JOANNE AKALAITIS since 1985 | LIBBY APPEL since 1990 | ANNE BOGART since 1990 | TRACY BRIGDEN since 1999 | BEN CAMERON since 1989 | MARTHA CLARKE since 2000 STEVE COSSON since 2000 | OSKAR EUSTIS since 1990 | JOSEPH HAJ since 2004 | KWAME KWEI-ARMAH since 2007 | PRESTON LANE since 1999 BONNIE MONTE since 2007 | JOHN RANDO since 1995 | MICHAEL WILSON since 1993 | ROBERT WOODRUFF since 1986 | GARLAND WRIGHT d.1998 WINTER 2015 | SDC JOURNAL

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SDC FOUNDATION

JOSEPH HAJ is the Producing Artistic Director of PlayMakers Repertory Company in Chapel Hill, N.C., where he has directed The Tempest, Metamorphoses, Cabaret, Henry IV and Henry V, Amadeus, Pericles, Big River, Cyrano (also adapted), and others. Haj has directed and performed at theatres throughout the United States, including the Guthrie Theater, the NY Public Theater, the Alley Theatre, the Mark Taper Forum, the Ahmanson, Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Folger Theatre, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and many others. He has worked overseas in Salzburg, Edinburgh, Paris, Berlin, Venice, and Japan. Outside of traditional theatres, Joseph has directed projects in a maximum-security prison in Los Angeles and in Batesburg-Leesville, S.C., and has conducted workshops in the West Bank and Gaza and with the Oneida Nation outside Green Bay, WI. As an actor, he has worked with many of the theatre’s foremost directors, including Garland Wright, Anne Bogart (as an original member of SITI Company), Peter Sellars, Sir Peter Hall, JoAnne Akalaitis, Robert Woodruff, and others.

Joseph has served on peer review panels for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and Theatre Communications Group (TCG), is the recipient of the NEA Millennium Grant awarded in 2000 to “fifty of America’s finest artists,” was a participant in the Career Development Program for Directors through TCG, and was named by American Theatre magazine as one of 25 theatre artists who will have a significant impact on the field over the next quarter century. His 2010 production of Hamlet at the Folger Theatre in Washington, D.C., was nominated for six Helen Hayes Awards, winning for Outstanding Production. Joseph Haj has served on the Board of Directors of TCG, is a member of Under the Radar’s Director’s Circle, and serves on the Diversity Task Force for both the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC) and the League of Resident Theatres (LORT).

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PHOTO

I owe so much to so many that it is hard to take credit for very much at all. But I am grateful for this award, as it has given me the opportunity to say thank you to those who have blazed the way, lit the path, and encouraged me forward. And to all of you who have joined us tonight: thank you. This is the only family that I ever wanted to belong to, and I am honored by this recognition.

Walter McBride

realize now that it is not only the presence of those in my biological ancestry but those in my theatrical ancestry. Some have passed on, some are far away, and some are in this room.

And I have their blood in my veins. They give me courage, they give me strength, they give me belief in this great art form that we all practice.

THIS YEAR’S FICHANDLER FINALISTS Remarks by Laura Penn, Executive Director of SDC + SDCF Zelda asked and answered in a recent conversation: “It is remarkable that this award could have gone to any one of six this year. Why is that?” She said—and I paraphrase, as I was writing as quickly as I could while the words, seemingly effortlessly, came from her—“Could it be that there is a hunger for these ideas? These ideas that have been lost in the trauma of trying to service these organizations, wondering all the while, ‘Am I going to make it?’ and forgetting to ask, ‘What am I going to make?’” And so I give you a group of five brilliant artists who have not forgotten to ask, “What am I going to make?” All of whom are with you tonight. [I’ll] ask you to stand so we may recognize you.

Tracy Brigden, Artistic Director of City Theatre in Pittsburgh. In the last 14 years, Tracy has become one of Pittsburgh’s most important and energizing artists, creating and nurturing artistic relationships and transforming Pittsburgh into a hub for new plays. From her nomination I share: “Truly a powerhouse, being at once organized and relaxed, rigorous yet playful, flexible within a clear artistic vision, and one of the smartest directors.”

Steven Cosson, Founding Artistic Director of The Civilians. Steve has passionately engaged with communities of New York on issues of social change and challenged the way we think.

“The Civilians’ methodology invites artists to look outward in pursuit of a question. Often engaging with individuals and communities in order to listen, make discoveries, and challenge historical ways of thinking.”

Kwame Kwei-Armah, Artistic Director of Center Stage in Baltimore. Kwame is a groundbreaking artistic leader, fostering complex new work that thinks big, aims for difficult civic discourse, and builds community in its wake. “While there are clearly many extraordinary directors in our field currently, there are few as visionary, as clear of voice, as powerful of dramatic impact, as poetically visual, as specific in character/relationship directing as I’ve seen with Kwame.”

Preston Lane, the Artistic Director of Triad Stage in Greensboro, North Carolina. A native of Greensboro, Preston has a profound commitment to the people and heritage of that community, creating theatre that directly relates to its audience, mentoring local aspiring artists and forging connections to other theatres in the region. “The last 13 years [of] the NC theatre landscape is paved with stones placed by and/or affected by Preston Lane, and I have been fortunate enough to witness this from the inside and out.”

Bonnie J. Monte, Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey in Madison.

For Bonnie, education is a central function of theatre, and she creates work on stage that reaches beyond the boards and into classrooms and community organizations to develop new perspectives. “For the potency with which her artistry opens up the classics to an everbroadening audience, for the inestimable effects of her emphasis on the artist training and education, and for her stewardship of an ever-growing artistic home for so many artists.”

The Fichandler Finalists of 2014. Thank you for being here, for giving us the opportunity to witness you and celebrate your amazing work.

SIR PETER HALL since 1967 | PETER SELLARS since 1997

TRACY BRIGDEN The 2014–2015 season

marks Tracy Brigden’s 14th year as City Theatre’s Artistic Director. At its helm, she has overseen the flourish of the Young Playwrights program and the inception of the new play festival, Momentum: New Plays at Different Stages, a principal tool in the theatre’s development of new work. Continuing this dedication to emerging voices, Brigden has also initiated the commissioning of new plays. In her time at City Theatre, she has never produced a season without a world premiere in it and regularly includes productions still in development.

Most recently at City Theatre, she directed the world premiere of Hope and Gravity by Michael Hollinger, the American premiere of The Monster in the Hall by David Greig, the world premiere of Louder Faster by Jeffrey Hatcher and Eric Simonson, and productions of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Abigail/1702, Seminar, Time Stands Still, Precious Little, The 39 Steps, Shooting Star, The Clockmaker, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Other City Theatre directing credits include the premieres of plays

by Christopher Durang, Adam Rapp, Keith Reddin, Eve Ensler, and Helen Edmundson, among others. Prior to coming to Pittsburgh, Tracy was Associate Artistic Director of Hartford Stage in Connecticut and Artistic Associate for Manhattan Theatre Club. Further directing credits include productions at Atlantic Theater Company, TheatreWorks Palo Alto, Westport Playhouse, the Hangar Theatre, CATF, and Pittsburgh Public Theater. Awards and honors include Pittsburgh Magazine’s “40 Under 40” and the Connecticut Critics Circle Award for Best Production and Best Director.

STEVE COSSON is a director and writer and

the founding Artistic Director of the Civilians, an artist-led company that is grounded in investigative theatre, which he defines as work that arises from creative inquiry into vital questions of the present. Rather than intending to document reality, the company hopes to compel audiences to confront what they don’t understand and therefore see, feel, and think in new ways. The Civilians is also based on a belief that experimental and intellectually rigorous theatre can be accessible to a broad public. Their recent New York credits include The Great Immensity, written and directed by Cosson at the Public Theater, and Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play by Anne Washburn, directed

by Cosson, and produced by Playwrights Horizons; both received critical acclaim. Other projects with the Civilians include co-writer/ director of Paris Commune (the Public Theater, BAM Next Wave, and La Jolla Playhouse); writer/director of In the Footprint (Civilians in NYC, ArtsEmerson, Annenberg Center); writer/director of This Beautiful City (Vineyard Theatre, Humana Festival, Studio Theatre); writer/director of Nobody’s Lunch (Edinburgh Fringe First Award, Civilians in NYC, A.R.T, Soho Theatre in London); and writer/director of Gone ADAM RAPP since 2006 | ERIC SIMONSON since 1993

Missing, which performed and toured regionally and internationally for several years before culminating in a successful Off-Broadway run at the Barrow Street Theatre. His work with the Civilians has been the recipient of an Obie award as well as nominated for Drama Desk, Drama League, Lortel, and Helen Hayes awards.

It has been listed numerous times in the New York Times, New Yorker, and Time Out critics’ picks and will be the first-ever company in residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Outside of the Civilians, Cosson also continues to freelance direct around the country.

KWAME KWEI-ARMAH, OBE, is a British

playwright, director, actor, and broadcaster, now in his fifth season as Artistic Director of Center Stage in Baltimore, Maryland. In 2012, the theatre’s 50th anniversary, he endeavored to address the perception of national isolation by inviting 50 leading American playwrights to write monologues on the subject of “My America.” These were filmed and projected on the theatre’s media wall and on its website.

Viewed by hundreds of thousands of people, it is now a feature film and has been a model adopted by schools across the country. His time at Center Stage has seen the launch of several more unique and successful community outreach programs. At the theatre he has directed Dance of the Holy Ghosts (Baltimore City Paper Top Ten Productions); The Mountain Top; An Enemy of the People; The Whipping Man (City Paper Top Ten), for which he was named Best Director; and Naomi Wallace’s Things of Dry Hours. Further directing credits include Let There Be Love and Seize the Day (Tricycle Theatre), Skeleton Crew by Dominique Morisseau (Lark Play Development Center), Much Ado About Nothing (Public Theater), Detroit ’67 by Dominique Morisseau (Public Theatre), and The Liquid Plain by Naomi Wallace (Oregon Shakespeare Festival). His works as a playwright include A Bitter Herb and A Statement of Regret as well as Elmina’s Kitchen and Let There Be Love, which had their American debuts at Center Stage. His play Beneatha’s Place premiered at the theatre in 2013 as part of the groundbreaking Raisin Cycle production and is now being taught in over 50 U.S. colleges. Kwei-Armah has served on the boards of The National Theatre and Tricycle Theatre, both in London. He also served as Artistic Director for the World Arts Festival in Senegal, a month-long international festival of black arts and culture, which featured more than 2,000 artists from 52 countries participating in 16 different disciplines. He is chancellor of the University of the Arts London and in 2012 was named an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

PRESTON LANE is a director and playwright as well as the Founding Artistic Director of Triad Stage in Greensboro, North Carolina. He will now enter his 15th year at the helm and

has directed over 40 productions there. As its leader, he is dedicated to using the theatre as a means to recount the region’s unique stories, provoke dialogue, and challenge conventional thinking in the community. Lane has witnessed many of the audiences attending Triad Stage experiencing theatre for the first time, and he has seen them go on to become the theatre’s core audience. The theatre is the recipient of one of the first National Theatre Company Grants from the American Theatre Wing. Lane himself is the recipient of a North Carolina Arts Council Playwright Fellowship, the Betty Cone Medal of the Arts, and is in his fifth year as the Artistic Partner for Theater for An Appalachian Summer Festival in Boon, N.C. He was formerly Artistic Associate at the Dallas Theater Center, where his productions included the U.S. premiere of Inexpressible Island (Dallas Observer Best of Dallas Awards: Best Director, Best Production) and The Night of the Iguana (Dallas Morning News: 2002 Top Ten Theatre List). As a playwright, his adaptations of great American plays have been produced at Triad Stage and other theatres. His work with musician Laurelyn Dossett includes Brother Wolf, Beautiful Star, Bloody Blackbeard, Providence Gap, and Snow Queen. Several are published by Playscripts, Inc., and “Anna Lee” from Brother Wolf is featured on two Grammy Award-winning Levon Helm albums. Lane is co-coordinator of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s MFA directing program and has taught at North Carolina A&T State University, University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Greensboro College, and Southern Methodist University. He also taught at the Liaoning Translator’s Company in Shenyang, China.

BONNIE J. MONTE The 2014–2015

season will be Bonnie J. Monte’s 25th as Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, where she has directed more than 45 productions. Under her leadership, the theatre has evolved into one of the largest and most respected classical theatres in the country as well as a principal training institution and leader in arts education. Monte has overseen the successful completion of a major capital campaign resulting in substantial renovations.

She was also responsible for the attainment of a second major performance venue for the organization: their Outdoor Stage. In 2002, the Star-Ledger named the Shakespeare Theatre the Regional Theatre of the Year. Monte’s work as Artistic Director has seen her receive numerous awards and honors including a Women of Achievement Award, sponsored by the New Jersey Assembly, and a Person of the Year Award from the National Society of Arts and Letters. She has also been named one of the 25 Most Influential People in the Arts in New Jersey by the Star-Ledger. Prior to her time at the Shakespeare Theatre, Monte was a casting director at the Manhattan Theatre Club as well as the Associate Artistic Director at the Williamstown Theatre Festival for eight years.

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Q&A

WHAT IS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE OF BEING AN ARTISTIC LEADER OF REGIONAL THEATRE?

TRACY BRIGDEN

The audience’s growing desire, bred by popular culture, to leave the theatre unruffled, unchallenged, and feeling “hopeful.” Catharsis no longer exists! There is a tendency for some theatre-goers to get upset by words, images, and ideas that they feel they are supposed to be offended by according to our new conservative “one-size-fits-all” morality without first examining their actual reactions and opinions.

KWAME KWEI-ARMAH

STEVE COSSON

I would say that all the moments of feeling that what I do matters tap into essentially the same place of contentment. The thing that scared me the most was writing and directing The Great Immensity, so perhaps I’m most proud that I took that risk.

IF YOU COULD SUM UP YOUR JOB IN TWO WORDS WHAT WOULD THEY BE?

Play Wrangler.

Email returner.

Art is how I have agency in the world. And I want my work to offer audiences the possibility of having more agency in society, in their actual lives. So call that an invitation?

Facilitator-dreamer.

I once heard on the radio a British choreographer describe his life mission as “to be of service to and through his art form.” Although I did not catch his name, I caught the bug. It was a beautiful articulation that I have adopted ever since. So weapon it is for me.

Community agitator.

I think my art is both an invitation and a weapon. I build community, but no community is strong if it doesn’t allow dissent. Art calls us together, but being together is not about being easy. True community insists on difficult questions, provocative thoughts, and passionate debate.

PRESTON LANE

WHAT IS YOUR PROUDEST ARTISTIC MOMENT SO FAR?

My first production of Brother Wolf, an Appalachian riff on Beowulf that I wrote with songwriter Laurelyn Dossett and produced at Triad Stage.

It was my first time as an artist that I allowed myself to be proud of being Appalachian, to embrace the vibrant culture of my home region, and to stop running from something I suddenly realized I had no reason to be ashamed of.

BONNIE J. MONTE

Education. As the arts become less and less a part of a child’s education, we are faced with the daunting prospect of creating generations who have no knowledge of or appetite for what we do and how it can enrich and better their lives. That means that the regional theatres must try, against very challenging obstacles, to fill that education void...

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DO YOU CONSIDER ART TO BE YOUR WEAPON OR YOUR INVITATION?

WHAT IS YOUR PROUDEST ARTISTIC MOMENT SO FAR?

I view what I do as a huge, lifelong work of art—I think of running the theatre as an endeavor akin to weaving a vast tapestry, one that depicts an enormous history as each artist, season of work, achievement, play, breathtaking moment is woven into the canvas. If I had to choose, it’s the continual weaving of that evergrowing tapestry...

Both, depending on the moment, the circumstances, and the specific work of art. Sometimes I try to use it as both simultaneously.

I WANT TO MAKE THEATRE THAT…

Is remembered long after the curtain is down.

THE OVERARCHING QUESTION THAT DRIVES MY WORK IS…

I AM EXCITED ABOUT THE FUTURE OF MY ARTISTIC HOME BECAUSE…

THE PLAY ENDS, THE LIGHTS COME UP. IN YOUR IDEAL WORLD, WHAT COMES NEXT?

“What’s the story?”

We are in the midst of a major campaign and construction project to renovate and reinvigorate all of our spaces for the next era of City Theatre.

A long and wonderful conversation about the play, the production, and the ideas of the play, preferably over cocktails.

Has never happened before.

What is the next question?

I always think big.

Bourbon, and people talking about thoughts, feelings, and ideas that spring from the experience of what just happened.

Entertains, moves, catalyzes debate.

Is the central question big enough?

I have a brilliant team of co-artists, supported by an outstanding board who believes in us.

An intense, intricate, and intelligent debate about what was just seen on the stage.

Provokes.

What does it mean to be an individual in a community?

We are deeply rooted in our community and our core values.

Changes people—and not just for a moment. I want to create work that causes deep, internal sea changes in those who view or participate in our work.

How can I use a particular piece of writing or this enterprise we call a theatre to help change the world for the better?

I have worked [for] years to create an exceptional, extraordinary workplace/environment for my artists, and we are now in a position to engage in a kind of mind-bending new philosophy about how we can open up our workplace to the public. That is one of the big steps we’re taking to address the issue about education and grooming an audience for the future.

Q&A The finalists were each asked a series of questions about their personal philosophies and approach to leadership and the craft.

SDC Journal compiled a few of their answers.

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SDC FOUNDATION

CELEBRATING 25 YEARS OF THE

JOE A. CALLAWAY AWARD

BY OLIVIA

CLEMENT

William Martin remembers sitting in the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation office when Joe A. Callaway walked in and announced his retirement from show business.

The year was 1989, and Martin was the Executive Vice-President of the SDCF. Mr. Callaway’s visit to the Foundation had another motivation; he wanted to set up an award that would recognize and foster good direction and choreography for the stage as determined by Members of the Union. This year the Foundation’s Joe A. Callaway Award celebrates a momentous 25 years of honoring SDC directors and choreographers for outstanding work on a specific production.

Since its inception, the annual award has recognized excellence in the craft of directing and choreography in the New York City region (including the five boroughs). The Callaway season runs from September 1 to August 30, and each year the committee considers over 200 Off-Broadway shows. It is the only award given by professional directors and choreographers to their peers, setting it apart from other industry accolades. Recipients and finalists are chosen by the Callaway Award Selection Committee, which comprises 14 longstanding SDC Members.

Joe A. Callaway was a man who wore many hats and had many talents. He was an academic, an associate professor at Michigan State University, and for many years the most widely booked lecturer on the Broadway seasons. He was also the first recipient of a master’s degree from the Goodman School of Theatre. He was a noted critic, a popular television and radio reviewer, and an actor, performing Off-Broadway and in regional theatre. His long career, spanning over 50 years, encompassed a variety of roles that highlighted his dedication to American theatre as a whole. Perhaps above all, Mr. Callaway was a devoted philanthropist. Since his death in 1991, his benevolence lives on in awards he endowed not only for direction and choreography but also for acting (though the Actors’ Equity Association), playwriting (through New Dramatists) and theatre academia (through NYU).

He was also the founder of San Diego’s Globe Theatre and of the Midwest Equity summer theater in Marquette, Michigan.

Beyond the realm of theatre, he was a passionate activist and established the Callaway Award for Civic Courage, which recognizes individuals who take a public stance to advance truth and justice.

PHOTO

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John Rando Walter McBride

WILLIAM MARTIN since 1975

William Martin remembers meeting a sweet, kind, and incredibly enterprising man. He recalls that initially Mr. Callaway was eager to consider all kinds of productions for the award, from Broadway to showcases and even readings. “In his mind it was for any directing at all. He wanted to include anything and everything.” With the Foundation, Mr. Callaway agreed to narrow the eligibility to SDC Members only and to professional productions employing Equity performers.

The motivation behind Callaway’s desire to be all-inclusive was his passion for nurturing great direction and choreography at all levels.

Barry McNabb, the current Vice-Chair of the Callaway Committee, believes that this is at the heart of their mission. “In all honesty we look at the person who’s directing their first or second show in New York with a clean eye, just as we do the others. That is a part of his legacy that we really do try to maintain.” In the spirit of Callaway’s original intent, the Foundation eventually decided to remove Broadway productions from being eligible in 2003.

A glance at the list of past recipients affirms that several of its directors and choreographers were in the earlier stages of their successful careers when they received the award. For others, the award had marked a much more established point in their professional journeys. William Martin remembers the year that Susan Stroman received the award for her work as a choreographer on And the World Goes ’Round in 1991. He recalls that Stroman opened the check and declared, “Now I can afford a new pair of tap shoes!” She thanked her peers and hurried back to rehearsals; she’d just signed on to do her first Broadway show.

For Martin, this exemplifies the potential for the award to celebrate all levels of talent, as Callaway had intended. “If you look at where she was in her career, that was exactly what Joe wanted,” says Martin. Stroman herself recognizes that the award signified a critical crossroads: “In 1991 I was just starting out; And The World Goes ’Round was one of my first big jobs Off-Broadway. My collaborators and I had taken a chance, and I remember a sense of pride that we had actually made something happen. That feeling of accomplishment was incredible.

But for that work then to be recognized by my peers was truly beyond anything I could ever have dreamed. Being honored with the Joe A. Callaway Award was a turning point for me; it gave me confidence to keep going and to keep trying new ideas. Support and encouragement like that is vital to any new artist taking her first steps.”

Recipient Andy Blankenbuehler echoes this sentiment: “The year I was given the Callaway

Award was definitely a turning point in my career. I had worked so hard to make my transition from dancing to choreography. It felt like a long and grueling uphill trek.

Receiving the Callaway Award felt like an extra boost of energy to help get me up and over that hill. The Callaway Award marked the beginning of a very exciting year with In the Heights. I keep the award on my desk as a reminder that the hard work paid off. There have been other big mountains to climb since that time, but it means the world to know that my work has been recognized.”

Another of Callaway’s stipulations was that the recipients be determined exclusively by SDC Members. McNabb believes that this peer review element is an important part of Callaway’s legacy. “That is something so unique. The recipients appreciate that the committee is made up of directors whose own productions they might have seen. They know that these are working professionals who are highly regarding their work.” Chair of the Committee Sue Lawless emphasizes that this is “one of the main things that sets it apart…This is our own joyful award between us. With all the theatre awards given in this city annually, we are the only peer award, our own Foundation giving an award to our people and judging them ourselves.

This is kind of special.” Recently appointed Committee Member Jonathan Cerullo acknowledges that it is one of the principal reasons he was excited to join the panel.

“It’s a peer-to-peer award, and that’s really important,” he says.

For Lawless, it is no surprise that Mr. Callaway would insist upon a peer voting provision, as whom better to judge a director or choreographer’s work than his or her own colleagues? As many directors or choreographers would attest, their role is often considered ambiguous. And yet, as Lawless points out, “there is a job description to directing and choreography. I don’t think that you acquire that knowledge until you’ve been doing it for at least 10 years, like the members of this committee. Because we know what directors and choreographers do and that is still somewhat of a mystery to the theatre-going public and greater world.”

A Callaway Committee member must have been with SDC for no less than 10 years to be invited to participate. Jonathan Cerullo admits that, upon joining, he was very impressed by the high level of understanding and expertise shared by members: “The intelligentsia at the table—these people who really know the craft of choreography and directing. It’s humbling.” The 14 members bring with them a wealth of knowledge and experience as well as a diverse range of theatre backgrounds.

Callaway Committee members have worked

ANDY BLANKENBUEHLER since 2000 | JONATHAN CERULLO since 1994 | MARTHA CLARKE since 2000 SUE LAWLESS since 1983 | BARRY MCNABB since 1991 | JOHN RANDO since 1995 | SUSAN STROMAN since 1987

professionally in musical theatre, the avantgarde, classical theatre, on contemporary plays, and on Broadway and Off-Broadway.

“We’re not kids” says McNabb. “We all come from these eclectic backgrounds and have different takes on theatre. We have different aspects of our own careers that we bring to these discussions.”

Above all, McNabb believes that the Callaway Committee as a whole is looking for a high level of creativity from the director or choreographer: “Someone that makes you sit up in the theatre. That’s what we’re looking for. Somebody that makes you care. And that can still entertain us.” The members gather every five to eight weeks to discuss the shows that have been seen. Each sees an average of around 120 eligible productions a season, which can equal up to four per week, depending on the season. A group of finalists is then considered at the conclusion of the year, and a recipient is chosen. All of the members see this as their duty. “We do not take this lightly,” says Lawless.

Now in its 25th year, SDCF’s Joe A. Callaway Award is beginning to garner more attention from both the New York theatre-going public and the community of directors and choreographers it serves to benefit. “The Callaway Award has gotten more prominent, and people have realized it’s a wonderful award that we give to our peers,” says Lawless. As Chair, her mission for the award’s next phase is to raise its profile further: “We intend to go to the moon! The future is ours.”

Lawless sees the award setting an important benchmark for directors and choreographers.

“It sets a standard to look toward and examine. Something exciting, something to try and attain.”

As the Joe A. Callaway Award moves into a new chapter, and the committee and Foundation focus on promoting its profile, Lawless insists that it will “significantly remain as it is—honoring the excellent work of the directors and choreographers of our Union.”

The members of the committee are dedicated to upholding the legacy of Mr. Callaway.

“That is really the basis of it all. To stay within the spirit of what he set it out to be,” says Lawless. On the evening of November 3rd— the award’s 25th anniversary celebration at the Clurman Theatre at Theatre Row in New York City—the 2014 Callaway was awarded to both Martha Clarke for her choreography of Chéri, produced by the Signature Theatre, and John Rando for his direction of The Heir Apparent, produced by Classic Stage Company.

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SDC FOUNDATION

THE FOLLOWING ARE EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES DELIVERED AT THE EVENT: BETH WHITAKER SPEAKING ON BEHALF OF MARTHA CLARKE, RECIPIENT FOR CHOREOGRAPHY It is my great honor to represent Signature Theatre and accept the Callaway Award for choreography on behalf of Martha Clarke. We are thrilled to have Martha as part of our Residency Five program at Signature, developing and producing three new works with her over a five-year residency. Her unique and extensive body of work has always blurred boundaries between dance, movement, and traditional theatrical forms to create singular, vital experiences on stage.

TOP

Callaway Finalists Denis Jones, Jo Bonney, Moritz von Stuelpnagel, Bob Richard + Shea Sullivan with recipient John Rando (center) ABOVE

David Grausman + Beth Whitaker, Associate AD of Signature, accepted award on Martha Clarke’s behalf

Chéri has been on tour and is currently playing in Buenos Aires, so Martha could not be with us tonight but sent these remarks:

OPPOSITE

I am thrilled and honored to receive the Callaway Award for Chéri. It was an exceptional experience collaborating with Alessandra Ferri and Herman Cornejo. They are brilliant and inspiring. I am deeply grateful to Signature Theatre for its wonderful support and presentation of Chéri as well. We open Chéri in Buenos Aires this Wednesday, if anyone wants to come. Again, many thanks for this honor and wish I could be with you.

Callaway recipient John Rando PHOTOS

Walter McBride

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Chéri, based on Colette’s 1920 novel set in Belle Époque Paris, was created for the amazing dancers Alessandra Ferri, prima ballerina assoluta, and Herman Cornejo, principal dancer with ABT. Martha challenged and inspired these accomplished artists to explore a new vocabulary, adding spoken text by Tina Howe, performed by Amy Irving, and a haunting soundscape of French classical music, performed by pianist Sarah Rothenberg. The design team—David Zinn, Christopher Akerlind, Arthur Solari, and Samuel Crawford— were her final collaborators in casting the spell of this exquisitely beautiful and heartrending production. We are proud to have Martha call Signature an artistic home and are looking forward to developing and presenting her next two works.

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JO BONNEY since 1999 | DENIS JONES since 2006 | BOB RICHARD since 1999 SHEA SULLIVAN since 2001 | MORITZ VON STUELPNAGEL since 2010

REMARKS BY JOHN RANDO, RECIPIENT FOR DIRECTING I am deeply honored to receive the 2014 Joe A. Callaway Award for directing. I am profoundly grateful to the SDC Foundation and the selection committee for this honor. The honor is made even greater to have been included in the company of this year’s stellar group of nominated directors. Simply put, I am humbled.

I would first like to thank Brian Kulick, the Artistic Director at Classic Stage Company, and his theatre’s wonderful staff. I am very proud to have had the opportunity to direct The Heir Apparent there.

I must also pay tribute to my dear friend and colleague of some 20 years, the great playwright David Ives. It is always a director’s privilege to work with David. I am grateful for his faith and trust in me with his work. I lost count some years ago, but I think I have directed certainly more than a dozen shows that have the words “Written by David Ives” on the title page.

The Heir Apparent marked a special return for me to my New York directing roots of working in classical comedy Off-Broadway.

And directing this 18th-century Jean-François Regnard play in an adaptation by David was nothing short of wonderful for me. David’s impeccable dexterity with language, iambic pentameter, and rhyming couplets is simply unparalleled in contemporary American theatre.

Within the strictures and confines of 18th-century poetry, David manages to make the comedy feel completely alive and present to today’s audiences; at the same time, having something to say to us about the machinations of greed in our present day world as well. At the height of his despair, Eraste, our would-be heir, frets to his servant Crispin about their failure to extract the riches of Eraste’s infirm uncle.

Eraste: Alas, my friend! We’re pigs in Fortune’s Poke, Our fertile dreams going up in sterile smoke!

Crispin: You just gone bonkers chasing after riches.

You think you’re bad? Check out these sonsabitches.

(He indicates the audience).

“THE HONOR IS MADE EVEN GREATER TO HAVE BEEN INCLUDED IN THE COMPANY OF THIS YEAR’S STELLAR GROUP OF NOMINATED DIRECTORS. I AM HUMBLED.” JOHN RANDO

I am grateful to the brilliant collection of actors we gathered to say David’s hilarious words. I am also grateful to them for humoring me and executing whatever bit of silliness I could concoct for them. I consider myself very fortunate to have been surrounded by such amazing classical actors: Paxton Whitehead, Carson Elrod, David Pittu, Suzanne Bertish, Claire Karpen, Amelia Pedlow, and David Quay. Each of them had that one thing I look for in an actor: dedication to the finding of the remarkable. Whether it be in a turn of a phrase or the sound a character makes when coughing or walking on one’s knees, this troupe, in my humble opinion, took acting in period style to a remarkable place.

I would also like to thank my design team led by the genius John Lee Beatty, who somehow managed on a modest budget to create a most elegant setting; David Woolard, who brought his usual impeccable taste to pitch-perfect costumes; Japhy Weideman and his gorgeous lighting; and Nevin Steinberg with his scintillating sound.

Lastly, I would like to just take a moment and thank my favorite audience member, my wife, Eileen. She has been with me through all of my comedies, both on the stage and off. I am so happy and grateful that, even after having been an audience member to my plays for more than 22 years and knowing most of my routines, she still manages to find my work funny. Thanks again to the SDC Foundation. And thank you.

BRIAN KULICK since 1997 | DAVID PITTU since 2002 | PAXTON WHITEHEAD since 1988

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FROM THE ARCHIVES

DIFFICULT AND EXTRAORDINARY Thoughts about the work of Alan Schneider.

REPRINTED FROM THE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF STAGE DIRECTORS & CHOREOGRAPHERS, INC., WINTER 1985, ISSUE NO. 12.

EDWARD ALBEE Things Alan Schneider taught me: Never direct a play you don’t respect. (You probably won’t get rich, but you’ll save your soul.)

Get to know the play you are going to direct, thoroughly, long before rehearsals start. (Coming to the first day of rehearsal to “discover the play” is certainly exciting but just as certainly suicidal.)

Hire the right actor, one capable of vanishing into the role and filling it. (Twelve-year-old girls can play Lear, and this, indeed, may prove how clever you are, but is this really what both life and your craft are all about?)

Listen to your author. (He did write the play, and he may just possibly have some insights and good ideas; in other words, you are not there to correct Beckett or breathe death into Chekhov.)

Thank you, Alan.

ROBERT ANDERSON Alan and I worked together for over 30 years on five plays. In 1951 he dug an early play of mine out of Audrey Wood’s office. It was All Summer Long, an adaptation of Donald Wetzel’s novel A Wreath and a Curse. As with all my plays before and since, this one had been rejected by almost all the New York producers. Alan gathered together some actors for a reading, among them Kim Hunter and John Ericson. I worked on the play, and in 1952 Alan directed it with great success at Zelda Fichandler’s Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. It starred a very young George Grizzard. In 1954, after the 1953 production of Tea and Sympathy, Alan again directed All Summer Long, this time on Broadway for the Playwrights’ Company, with a cast including June Walker, John Kerr, Ed Begley, and introducing Carroll Baker.

In 1967 Alan directed You Know I Can’t Hear You When the Water’s Running with Martin Balsam, George Grizzard, and Eileen Heckart, and, in 1968, I Never Sang for My Father with Alan Webb, Hal Holbrook, Lillian Gish, and Teresa Wright.

In 1982 we had cast Free and Clear, in which Rosemary Harris was to star at the Kennedy Center, when Alan’s doctors insisted he

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lighten his workload, and that production was jettisoned. Two days before Alan’s last trip to London, we had lunch at Sardi’s to discuss the casting of my latest play, The Kissing Was Always the Best, which he was to direct.

I don’t think Alan ever really liked the socalled Broadway theatre, though he worked effectively in it. He was a perfectionist, working till the last minute to make every word, every gesture, every moment count. I think he felt that he could hone productions more to his liking in the atmosphere of his beloved regional theatre. We had many discussions and arguments about this because I did not necessarily agree with him.

I vividly remember during rehearsals for the Broadway production of All Summer Long, when Alan was having trouble with some element of the set or lighting, and he stood on the stage in exasperation and cried out, “I can get what I want on the Arena Stage. Why can’t I get it on Broadway?” Our general manager, Victor Samrock, advised Alan not to risk going backstage for a day or two after this outburst.

Some years later, when Jo Mielziner, that most brilliant of designers, had not been able to deliver some effects, which he had assured us he could get in I Never Sang for My Father, Alan was again beside himself and would not trust himself to speak to Jo but communicated with him only through me.

Alan was fond of playwrights and protective of them. Every play he did he described as “a wonderful play.” Other than that he had little to say about a play before we went into production. But after rehearsals started, he would keep chipping away through what I can only call his diabolical little notes, passed to cast and playwright after every rehearsal or run-through. Sometimes he was right, and sometimes he was wrong. When I felt he was wrong, I exercised my playwright’s option and told him so. The same note would appear on my sheet after the next run-through and the next. The times he was wrong are unimportant, but one particular instance when he was right was most important.

Alan and my producer, Gilbert Cates, had tried to persuade me during rehearsals that I Never Sang for My Father didn’t build the way it should to the ending. I was stubborn. Finally, when I saw a late run-through, I had to agree

with them. The ending was right, but the way we came to the ending in the last few minutes was wrong. Overnight I wrote an extension of an existing scene, which worked very well, and, in a sense, saved the play. I dedicated the play to Alan and Gil. Finally, Alan was a man of great energy, and he instilled this vitality into his productions.

I personally feel that sometimes Alan taxed his energies, was enthusiastic about too many projects. But that’s the way he was.

An energetic perfectionist in love with each “wonderful play” he directed.

This summer when I went to London, I journeyed to the spot where Alan was so absurdly killed. He loved the theatre of the absurd. Perhaps he would have laughed at and understood the senseless manner of his death...perhaps saying his favorite phrase, “Well, what are you going to do?”

RICHARD BARR In the program for the Hampstead Theatre production of the play The War at Home (now entitled Home Front), I wrote the following, which sums up my feelings and thoughts about Alan as a director and friend: “Alan sublimated his ego and extraordinary talent to the intentions of the playwright.

For Alan, the play, not the director, was the thing. His continual encouragement of new playwrights—some young and some not so young—has left an indelible mark on the contemporary theatre.”

I remember reading with him the first two acts of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in my kitchen. I had a page, then shifted it across the table to Alan. We did not talk. However, when we finished the second act (Edward had not completed the third), Alan said to me, “This is one of the most important plays written by an American. Hold your breath for Act III.” We held our breath, but we need not have worried. So we cast the play and opened it.

The rest is history.

GILBERT CATES Alan Schneider was not a simple man to understand. He was a hard worker and expected everyone around him to work hard.

He did not suffer fools or incompetents well.

Occasionally he was short-tempered, but he

EDWARD ALBEE since 1974 | RICHARD BARR d.1989 | GILBERT CATES d.2011 | ZELDA FICHANDLER since 1987 | ALAN SCHNEIDER d.1984

loved his work and had great affection for those who got things done. His motto seemed to be, “Don’t talk…do!”

I met him for the first time in late 1966. My partner, Jack Farren, and I were getting ready to produce Robert Anderson’s new play, You Know I Can’t Hear You When the Water’s Running. We met in Audrey Wood’s office, and Alan’s first words to me were, “Hi, Boss.”

I thought, “What a wonderful and unusual director. He called us, his producers, ‘Boss.’”

Well, technically I guess we were his boss, but you would not have known it to watch Alan work. He worried about everything along with us: the set, the schedules, choice of theatre, etcetera. About the only thing that didn’t concern him was the opening night party. He was constantly busy. Alan would not consider any outside distractions while he was blocking. However, once the show was blocked, he always seemed to be going to or from a meeting, to a class he was teaching, or discussing another play, or meeting with a playwright, or designing a program for a college. He even made time for his then-daily swim.

Alan directed two of the Robert Anderson plays that I produced (the second being I Never Sang for My Father). He was set to direct Bob’s newest play later this year. We had already begun discussing casting, considering theatres, and were developing a schedule when the awful accident that took his life occurred. Alan was impatient with our waiting for a star to do the play. “Why wait?” he said.

He understood the financial importance of a star but felt the play was great and we should just get on with it. Anything that slowed Alan down was not acceptable.

My memory of Alan, whether at the “take in” at the Colonial Theatre on a snowy night in Boston or during understudy rehearsals at the Ambassador Theater in New York, or, for that matter, walking on 7th Avenue, is a blur of activity. I miss that activity. I miss Alan.

SUSAN EINHORN Working with Alan Schneider was like working with a theatrical time bomb. Rehearsals seemed to be taking place inside a volcano.

Every minute of work was invested with extraordinary intense energy, and the stakes were very high. The pressure was always on us, for all of us—the playwright, the actors, the stage managers, the designers, and for me, his assistant. You were always being tested, provoked, prodded, teased, pushed to the limit of what you could contribute. If you succeeded, you were deeply appreciated, praised, and rehired with loyalty. Alan’s mind worked like lightning, and he dared all of us to keep up with him.

The first time we met was on the bare stage of the Longacre Theatre in December of 1971.

I had been summoned by phone in response to a letter I had written to him. We were strangers. He took my hand with tremendous power, put his arm around my shoulder, and briskly walked me around the stage. He wanted my assurance that I would not abandon him in the middle of the rehearsal day to attend to my husband. I was to be an unpaid intern. I assured him I would stick it out. The rehearsal process for the revival with music of The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window was the most exhausting, exhilarating, and educational introduction to the professional theatre I could have had.

What followed were three more Broadway productions for which my salary, responsibility, and billing increased consecutively. They were Michael Weller’s Moonchildren (starring Ed Herrmann, James Woods, Kevin Conway, Maureen Anderman, Jill Eikenberry, Stephen Collins), the Cronyn/Tandy Beckett Festival at Lincoln Center (featuring the world premiere of Not I, along with Happy Days, Krapp’s Last Tape, and Act Without Words), and Elie Wiesel’s Zalmen, or the Madness of God (starring Joseph Wiseman).

Alan had an intuitive respect for the playwright and for the play itself and was a brilliant and skillful editor and shaper of new material. He was endlessly going over his text looking for possible cuts and revisions.

His relationship with Sam Beckett was one of the most important in his life. The respect bordered on awe. Even of Beckett’s work, which he understood so deeply, he asked many questions. During rehearsals of Not I, he received a letter. “All I know is the text,” responded Mr. Beckett.

With actors he had many stormy relationships.

Alan was not easy to work with. He didn’t care to be easy. He demanded a lot and never tired of trying to improve performances.

Sometimes his cajolings and encouragements were overwhelming, as he continued striving for perfection through copious notes to the actors. Those notes have become legendary.

For over 100 dress rehearsals, previews, and out-of-town performances, I wrote down the notes through which he conducted a nonstop running dialogue with the actors.

Alan Schneider had as full and varied a life in the theatre as any American director has ever had. He was above all else a teacher of tremendous impact. Always associated with an educational institution, he became his own institution because he loved to hire young actors and nurture beginning playwrights. He had an uncanny knack for discovering talent, as the cast of Moonchildren proves. Unofficially and rather quietly, Alan trained an army of

KEVIN CONWAY since 1981 | SUSAN EINHORN since 1981 | CHRISTOPHER HANNA since 1996

young directors. Because he was a good teacher, he always encouraged me to challenge him. We spent many hours traveling together to and from rehearsals, happily arguing about the work on the play.

As each of the productions opened and closed after extremely short runs, he swore never to direct for Broadway again. He said it was like running for election—and losing. Nevertheless, he never stopped running.

CHRISTOPHER HANNA As he delivered his farewell to our class at the University of California, Alan Schneider’s eyes filled with tears. He was Russian and expressed emotions with verve. I took the parting more lightly and reminded him on the way out that I would be in rehearsal with him in New York in a few weeks. Alan’s face screwed up with a foreboding intensity that was his trademark.

“That doesn’t count,” he warned. “Out there it’s never the same. It’s a different world out there.”

To talk of Alan’s work in the professional theatre is to speak of a perfect mastery over life’s “out there.” Today I find myself glibly listing the frailties of the system that my generation of regional theatre directors has inherited, forgetting the moonscape of opportunities facing Alan when he began his career. There was Broadway and there were colleges. “You guys have got it made these days,” he would bark at me when I complained about my plight. Comparatively speaking, he was correct.

Whether it was the existential silence of Godot or the clatter of human colliding in Virginia Woolf, Alan’s burning energy welded together actors and audiences to face the uncertainties of life that writers were beginning to uncover after World War II. He took seriously Beckett’s charge that a perfect rendering of an ash can outweighed any sentimentalized view of more pleasing objects and dedicated his own craft to pulling the nuances of those forms into focus.

It comes as a surprise, then, that what made Alan the most dynamic teacher I have studied under was his denial of that “world out there” in his teaching. During my three years as his student, I watched this man who had redesigned the modern theatre with the works of Beckett, Albee, and Orton derive ecstatic pleasure from introducing his students to Our Town or The Happy Journey to Camden.

I followed him storming out on a carefully selected group of actors in a New York audition because he had seen no one worth his time but sat beside him later that week as he wildly applauded a mediocre student actor when he followed a note from Alan’s little white pad for the first time.

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To speak of Alan’s unabashed idealism with his students should not suggest that he kept us ignorant of the vicissitudes that accompany a life in the theatre. He took ceremonial pleasure in listing the land mines awaiting the unsuspecting novice heading to New York and frequently began classes by itemizing injudicious career moves of past graduates.

He did not refrain from stopping students midway into passionate monologues with the complaint, “Too far out for an audition,” and was equally candid in critiquing the myriad headshot proofs and contact sheets that filled his mailbox each morning. Alan’s enthusiasm over his students did not necessarily protect them from the temper fits and mood swings that were synonymous with his name in professional theatre circles. A young student who was stage managing was unqualified for her assignment and collapsed under the blows of his temper early in the night during the first technical rehearsal. I will never forget the image of Alan, red-faced, racing around the set until 1:00 a.m., screaming, “Stay with me, dear!” as the poor girl tried to call cues into her headset through tears. When we finally walked out of the theatre that night, he clutched my arm dramatically and gasped, “I don’t know how I’m going to do this when I’m 80.”

These legendary “reigns of terror” during the production process made Alan a controversial figure in the theatre world. His admirers learned to humor him, citing the pressure of juggling temperamental actors and the firing line of the New York press. In contrast, his detractors focused on his tantrums as the essence of his process, interpreting them as either cunningly manipulative or vengeful.

My experience with the “maniacal” Alan on campus did not support either scenario.

Instead, I saw this side of Alan’s personality as evidence of his overwhelming commitment to the theatre and its community. In a technical rehearsal situation similar to the one I have described, another director of Alan’s stature could have viewed the production as “just another college show.” Rather than wreaking havoc, he would have set his sights on being at home with a drink by 10 o’clock. Similarly, a less committed professor would have dismissed the young student as having no professional promise and settled for assigning her a low grade. To Alan, neither was an option. He felt compelled to give the new script the best production possible. He saw the young student as his charge and would not let her rest until she was ready to call Richard Foreman’s next extravaganza in Central Park.

For Alan, passion came only in two speeds—on or off. Neither the Times critic nor the most demanding star had any effect on that. Alan was the only person I have known with his kind of responsibility in the theatre world who did not complain of sleepless nights.

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The fruits of that passion, fortunately, usually came in less harrowing forms. More characteristic were the ad hoc tutorials in his office over sherry, where I listened, mesmerized, to his glowing reports of [Liviu] Ciulei’s Elizabeth I or [Peter] Brook’s Cherry Orchard. That passion filled his voice every opening night as he recited The Props of Helene Weigel to his students gathered in the green room. It once drove him to stop a professional actor three times to repeat a bit of brilliant business for the sake of a student actor who was sitting in on rehearsal. “Come on, WATCH,” Alan said as he clutched the student’s hand. “Someday, you’ll be able to answer a phone like that!!”

Alan had no strict methodology as a teacher.

He had only two hard theories, which he advanced to his directing students: 1) fire is always interesting on stage, and 2) never miss your sleep. (But if you can’t sleep, EAT!) Beyond that, the only constant he brought to his teaching was an evangelical fervor for passing along the dream of the theatre to a new generation of artists. That singleness of purpose fueled him to direct every undergraduate actress to blow out Laura’s candles differently each time he watched the scene in class. It kept his faithful leather bag filled with the work of countless fledgling writers who “just needed a chance.”

My most fortunate experience as his apprentice was the opportunity to assist him on the original production of Beckett’s Rockaby. Because we had no rehearsal hall, we had to prepare it in Billie Whitelaw’s living room. Because we had no production assistant, I was stationed behind Whitelaw to rock her chair during rehearsals. Although I was never able to see her performance from the front, the experience was not wasted. Instead, I was able to watch Alan’s eyes as he listened to her exhale Beckett’s eerie poetry. They captured the wonder of Balboa studying the Pacific. I can still see them glow.

Next month I begin rehearsals on my first production since Alan’s death. It comes as a shock that I can no longer ask for his recommendations on casting or advice on policy. I know I will be frantic when I can’t call him at midnight to share my secret insecurities. But these are small concessions to fate. In a greater way, Alan will be there for the remainder of my career. Through the strength of the dream he taught me, he will be informing, challenging, and inspiring every choice I make.

RICHARD RIDDELL I first met Alan in 1976 when I was a student at Stanford University, and Alan was brought in for summer enrichment of the program. He directed Godot, and I was lucky, or unlucky,

as many of the other students thought, to design the lighting for it. Alan’s reputation preceded him to Stanford; he had directed there before, and many of the students in the MFA/PhD program were from the East Coast. So there were plenty of horrible Alan Schneider stories in circulation by the time he arrived. Nevertheless, I looked over what he had directed before and was, understandably I think, guarded but excited about working with him.

As soon as Alan arrived, he began what I would afterward recognize as his customary assault on misguided management in the theatre. He made it clear to all of us that what was happening out there on stage between the actors and the audience was the most important thing, and our job, as director, designers, and technicians, was to facilitate the communication between stage and audience.

He was tough when he sensed someone did not understand or support this simple axiom.

One day he expelled the stage manager from “his theatre” during a technical rehearsal.

Bob Egan (now Associate Artistic Director of the Mark Taper Forum) was my light board operator, and the two of us found Alan’s combativeness refreshing. We enjoyed the way he challenged fashionable critical terminology, very much the vogue at Stanford then. Alan: “There is no such word as dramaturlogical.”

I took Alan on over the night scenes in Godot.

Being a graduate student with the strong belief that I was making new discoveries anytime I worked on a production, I told Alan that we must find a way of doing the night scenes without using blue light. “How can you do night without blue?” Alan would ask. I would explain how the old convention of “blue equals night” was tired, and, in fact, incorrect. Night wasn’t blue; it was just as bright as the day. “Go ahead and try something, but I’m telling you, it won’t work. I want blue light for night.”

Faced with this opposition, I decided to concentrate on the day scenes instead. When Alan left Stanford, promising to keep in touch, I believed him. And I had learned two things from him: night for Alan was blue, and he could not tolerate anything short of total dedication to the work at hand—by a stage manager, an actor, a designer, or himself.

We did stay in touch, and a few years later, when he was at the Juilliard School and I was living in West Berlin, I wrote Alan to tell him of my good fortune in designing Krapp’s Last Tape directed by Beckett himself. Alan wrote back immediately, telling me how lucky I was and how he had never directed a production with Beckett in the theatre. He wanted to know all about it, and the next year when I saw Alan in New York City, I told him. He related to me his discontent with being an administrator

PETER BROOK since 1959 | LIVIU CIULEI d.2011 | ROBERT EGAN since 1986 | RICHARD FOREMAN since 1976

at Juilliard, and I told him about this unusual and comfortable situation at the University of California, San Diego, where I had gone after Berlin. “They actually encourage people to design and direct all over the world, and even assist them in getting there.” Alan was intrigued, and within a year he was a member of the faculty.

While he was the Quinn Martin Professor of Drama at UCSD, Alan directed several productions, and I designed the lighting for them all. I had to. There were times when I tried to get a student to work with him, but he always managed to get me involved or implicate me in some way—sometimes very unpleasantly—so I did get involved. It took a while for me to see that he was just as dedicated to these students and committed to the quality of their productions as he was to his professional work. He put himself completely into every production he directed, even if it was Our Town for the umpteenth time with a $3,000 budget. He never talked about commitment, but he lived it to such an extent that every student who worked with him sensed it and must have examined himself to see if he had it, too.

While working on a production of Thornton Wilder one-acts, I tried again to break what I considered Alan’s overly conventional approach to lighting, and this time I won. At a certain point in Pullman Car Hiawatha, the action freezes and the narrator goes around the car, talking about each character. Alan wanted special lights to come up and go down every time the narrator moved. I told him that it just wasn’t in keeping with the simple presentation of Wilder’s material, the use of no setting, simple props, no realistic illusion. Alan argued, and he had a certain amount of right on his side, but I finally suggested just giving the narrator a flashlight so he himself could light the people he was talking about. Alan laughed, then he proceeded to mock the idea at every opportunity for days. But he tried it, and, in the end, he kept it. He still mocked it years after that production.

While the flashlight episode was treated with great humor, it points up one of the few blind spots Alan had in the theatre, namely the use of design. Whether it was a product of bad experience with other designers or simply an inability to see how design could truly enhance a production or simply his intense focus on action and text, Alan never seemed to appreciate design. We talked and argued about this constantly, year after year.

But I loved working with him. He made me feel, as I’m sure many others felt when working with him, that what I was doing was very important to him. While never thoroughly contented with my own work, I always felt

RAND MITCHELL since 1997

when designing for Alan, whether at the university or in New York City, that when the curtain went up on opening night, we had achieved something. We had worked hard, had confronted problems presented by the play and the actors, and had dealt with them honestly. Alan would probably recoil at the notion that what he taught students was how important the art of theatre was. Though he was uncomfortable with the term, it was the art, that unfathomable experience that happens on stage in performance between an actor and an audience, that captured Alan’s intense energy and very being.

DAVID WARRILOW Any account of my experience of Alan Schneider must, of necessity, be partial—in both senses of the word. Partial because Our Town at the Guthrie was my only glimpse of his resolution of material not signed by Samuel Beckett, and partial because I love him, in the ever-present sense.

I was far from having an open mind when I crossed the street from Richard Foreman’s Penguin Touquet at the Public Theater for my first encounter with Alan Schneider, who sat with a martini and an open mind. He had the eagerness of an explorer, he exhibited strength (as distinct from that old hallucinogenic, power) and he fearlessly bared his passion for the theatre. That did it. We would work together.

Ohio Impromptu, written by Samuel Beckett at the request of Ohio University, was a world premiere, some 18 minutes long. Rand Mitchell (Listener) and I received pittances; Alan, whether at the behest of asceticism or his accountant, often declined payment for such work. All the rehearsals were held in my small Lower East Side apartment.

We were engaged in a labor of love, and Alan reveled in the experience. It was of no consequence that the play was of brief duration, that there was to be one performance, and that it would be reviewed only in academic journals. Ohio Impromptu is a chamber music masterpiece, and it was treated with a meticulousness consonant with its nature. Tempo, tones, held notes, demisemiquavers, pauses, repeats…and Alan always on the edge of his chair, holding his breath in childlike excitement, triumphant when I finally moved inside the structure and surrendered to the tenderness and muted heartache of that language.

Ohio in Chicago…Ohio in Paris. Plus a stage version of Eh Joe. Then the triple bill at the Harold Clurman Theatre—Ohio Impromptu, Catastrophe, What Where—always characterized by a determination to realize the author’s vision as exactly as possible.

A young director once remarked to me, “We don’t have to love each other to make art together.” Perhaps not, but if not, then the art is joyless. Fulfillment is not brittle.

Alan knew the virtue of vulnerability. He was no cynic. He would impishly tell stories from his “life in art” but never gossip. He was loving, compassionate, but woe betide the intelligent man who played dumb! Retribution was swift, but if the lesson, applied with tough love, was learned, then anger was swift to pass.

Above all, this man knew that success can be gratifying but that a job well done brings spiritual growth.

BILLIE WHITELAW I keep tearing up my notes about Alan because whatever I write about him seems inadequate and even fatuous.

As my friend—I loved him dearly. As my director—I trusted him totally. His artistic integrity and refusal to compromise made me feel very safe. The chic and fashionable were not for him.

On one of his visits to London I was driving him after a matinee from one little theatre in the north of the city to an equally unfashionable little playhouse in South London. “My taste in theatre is not very conventional, Billie,” he said. He was rushing around that time to see what our new writers in the theatre were up to. And this devotion was to become, literally, the death of him.

Not being able to get a play by a 24-year-old American playwright put on in the States, he managed to stage it at one of our best “try-out” theatres in London. There, in Swiss Cottage, he was hit by a motorbike—all eager, all excited, all Alan—as he hurried across the street to meet his set designer for the first time…

His death is a tragic loss. Even now I cannot believe he is no longer with us. Even in death that pulsating energy was still there. I was privileged to be with him and his family in the hospital when finally he had to let go. It seemed then that the only way Alan could be taken from us was by an Almighty Blow.

That enthusiastic, eager smile will be with me always. And also his rage when he felt things were not going the way he thought they should—two sides of the same coin.

I feel the richer for having known him, and if a bit of him has rubbed off onto me, I am indeed lucky.

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THE SOCIETY PAGES SDC MEMBERS @ WORK + PLAY

On Sunday, September 21, 2014, thousands turned out for the annual Broadway Cares/ Equity Fights AIDS Flea Market in New York’s Times Square, hunting for Broadway treasures.

SDC’s table showcased signed scripts, posters, Playbills, and special experiences, including backstage tours and tickets to shows. A recordbreaking $713,986 was raised overall for BC/ EFA, and SDC raised $6,157, a $4,000 increase from 2013.

TOP LEFT

Director of Member Services Barbara Wolkoff + Member Services Coordinator Jennifer Toth TOP RIGHT

Member Stephen Brotebeck sells an item to a shopper at this year’s Flea Market RIGHT

Member Peter Flynn with his son Hudson volunteering at the SDC BC/EFA Flea Market table

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STEPHEN BROTEBECK since 2014 | PETER FLYNN since 2000

REMEMBERING MIKE NICHOLS

BY PAM MACKINNON

Mike Nichols came to a late preview of my production of A Delicate Balance the week before he died. We had only met once before, the evening he won a Tony for Death of a Salesman. I reintroduced myself backstage after the show. He was energized and energizing, so positive, kind, and effusive.

He wanted to talk about the play, which he’d never seen before, and wanted to know where I’d come from. Actors gradually surrounded him, wanting to hear what he thought of the evening. He spoke to people individually, warmly. Pointing to a photo on the set of the film Catch-22 hanging in our green room, Bob Balaban tried to say that Mike discovered him; Mike turned it around, saying that within a week of shooting that it was clear that Bob had discovered him.

asking why this, why that; and taking the lead once topics were established. We talked about family and responsibility, strength and kindness, and pacing and language. He shared that there was much about the play that reminded him of his own family and that he easily identified with the absurdity as well as the mundane situation of the family gathering.

He wondered if we’d ever tried a night without Glenn’s wig. (We had.) We talked through the pros and cons of that (again). “What if this happened more gradually?...Never think that the audience isn’t with you there…Your unique combination of strength and kindness is palpable; never think otherwise, never worry about that…Can we talk more about ‘the terror’? How did you rehearse and talk about that…Harry and Edna?”

A small group of us wound up going out at Martha Plimpton’s urging. It was a Tuesday, so the next day’s two shows loomed large, but “this was Mike.” We walked the two blocks to the bar. A small battalion of black SUVs would follow. En route, Glenn Close was mistaken for Meryl Streep. Arm in arm with Mike, she laughed and said it happens. She was delighted he was there to witness.

Mike was very on point, very encouraging, specific, and immediate, and when the Amstel Light was finished, it was time to go home.

“Diane’s going to be angry I stayed out so late, but I had a great time. Congratulations! What fun to talk to another director and one I like. I don’t get to do that very often.”

We climbed the stairs of the bar, ordered a round, chit-chatted a while, and then turned back to the play: “What did you think?” and “I want to know what you thought of the play.”

For the next 45 minutes, Mike became both student and professor, listening to the actors;

He got into his car, all smiles. Our little group on the sidewalk stayed in the glow for a few more minutes, then said goodnight, ready for sleep and the day’s matinee.

On September 23, 2014, a vibrant crowd gathered in Times Square to celebrate the sixth annual Broadway Salutes, an event giving special recognition to individuals who have dedicated their lives to Broadway. The day honors those who have worked in the industry for 25, 35, and 50+ years; it is an occasion to thank the many faces of talented Broadway actors, composers, designers, dressers, make-up artists, managers, producers, ushers, stagehands, and more. Guests were welcomed by Harvey Fierstein and treated to performances by Lindsay Mendez, Adam Heller, Jarrod Spector, and Andy Karl. A special video presentation also featured interviews with honorees. Along with thousands of professionals working on Broadway, the event celebrates our unique and dedicated family.

ABOVE

Member Marc Bruni, the director of Broadway Salutes, poses on the red carpet with performers Jarrod Spector, Lindsay Mendez, Andy Karl, Adam Heller + host Harvey Fierstein BOB BALABAN since 1999 | MARC BRUNI since 2008 | PAM MACKINNON since 2001 | MIKE NICHOLS d.2014

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On Monday, November 17, 2014, SDC’s Annual Membership Meeting was held with a standing-room-only crowd of more than 65 and an online presence of more than 50 via live stream. The meeting’s agenda included a State of the Union address, results of the recent Off-Broadway negotiations, and a report on the Funds’ transition to a modified third-party administrator. At the heart of the meeting was a report on capacity building for the Union, which focused on finances, the upcoming office relocation, and the I.T. conversion.

TOP LEFT

Vice President John Rando + Executive Director Laura Penn TOP RIGHT

SDC Members

At the Annual Membership Meeting, longtime Executive Board Member Tom Moore, who was instrumental in the founding of the Zelda Fichandler Award, was presented with the President’s Award for Extraordinary Service. The honor is bequeathed to a Board Member who has shown exceptional leadership and dedication. The following is an excerpt from Tom’s acceptance remarks:

BELOW

Vice President John Rando presents Executive Board Member Tom Moore with the 2014 President’s Award for Extraordinary Service

“It is not by accident that the founders of this Union put the name ‘society’ in the organization’s title. Although the word was moved from the beginning to the end in the rebranding, its existence remains a powerful statement. We should never forget that in addition to being a trade union fighting for our rights we are also a society of individual artists striving as best we can to create something important and enduring, and that this unique, creative society should be celebrated and defining in each and every decision this Union makes.”

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TOM MOORE since 1972 | JOHN RANDO since 1995

“

I create for that innocent little boy in the balcony

who has come to the theatre for the first time.

He wants to see magic, so I want to give him magic.

He sees things that his father couldn’t see.”

GEOFFREY HOLDER 1930-2014

Geoffrey Holder was frequently described as a larger-than-life presence. Perhaps it was his imposing 6’6” frame and big personality, or more likely it was his multitude of talents, structuring a long and successful career in the arts that included director, choreographer, dancer, actor, composer, designer, and visual artist. He arrived in New York City in 1954 as the director of a dance troupe, The Holder Dance Company, from his native Trinidad and Tobago; throughout the ’50s he danced with the group as well for the Metropolitan Opera Ballet. His Broadway debut was in 1954 as a featured dancer in the musical House of Flowers, directed by Peter Brook, with music by Harold Arlen and book by Truman Capote. Holder went on to continue playing one of the characters from the musical in the 1973 James Bond film Live and Let Die. His sporadic film career included Doctor Dolittle (1967), Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (1972), and Annie (1982). He was also a notable stage actor, performing the principal role of Lucky in the 1957 all-black Broadway revival of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, directed by Herbert Berghof. That same year he choreographed and danced in the George and Ira Gershwin musical Rosalie in Central Park. Outside of musical theatre, his independent dance designs were critically recognized as bold and dazzling; Holder dance classics include “Banda” (1957); “Prodigal Prince” (1971); and “Dougla” (1974). Mr. Holder’s choreography was in the repertory of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre and the Dance Theatre of Harlem. In 1975, he was awarded Tony Awards for his direction and costume design in The Wiz: A Supersoul Musical, a retelling of The Wizard of Oz in an African-American context. He received another Tony nomination for best costume design for the 1978 Broadway musical Timbuktu! Coupled with his numerous dance and theatre credits, he achieved celebrity status as the comedic, white-suited spokesman for 7 Up in the popular television commercials of the 1970s and ’80s. He was also a talented painter, photographer, and sculptor and had his work shown at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., and at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Mr. Holder was a significant figure in the American cultural scene in the last half of the twentieth century, a man who wore many hats and whose talent was immeasurable.

WOODY ALLEN since 2003 | HERBERT BERGHOF d.1990 | PETER BROOK since 1959

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SDC MEMBERS + ASSOCIATES...Kevin Fox · Jeffrey Frace · Drew Fracher

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