Sight & Sound

by Kirk Woodward

[My friend Kirk Woodward hasn’t sent an article into Rick On Theater since “George Abbott” on 14 October, but he’s back now with “Sight & Sound,” a report on a Christian religious-based theater company two of whose productions Kirk recently saw.  From his perspective as both a practicing Christian and a theater professional, Kirk describes and evaluates the work of this company.  Sight & Sound fills a niche in the American theater scene that I suspect most of us don’t experience, or even consider, very often, and I think Kirk’s well-considered examination of it is well worth acknowledging and looking at. 

[Just to remind ROTters, Kirk’s recent guest posts on this blog have included “Mr. Dylan Gets Religion,” 23 April; “Stephen Schwartz,” 2 August; “Agatha Christie: Dramatist,” 1 September; and one half of “The Originalist Squared” (with my second half), 7 August.  (For other posts from Kirk, ROT’s most generous and reliable contributor, use the search engine, above left, and type in “Kirk Woodward.”  His work, always provocative and interesting, goes all the way back to the beginning of the blog in 2009.)]

Religion is a belief system; theater is a craft of performance. It might seem easy to combine the two – why not simply do a performance about a belief system? But in practice the two don’t always blend easily. Theater’s purpose is, in Hamlet’s words, to “hold the mirror up to nature,” but a religion promotes a particular definition of what that mirror ought to show.

The results of “using drama to prove a point” are often unsatisfactory. There are exceptions, one of which I described in an article in this blog on the play “The Tidings Brought to Mary” by Paul Claudel (see “Religious Drama,” posted on Rick On Theater on 19 January 2014). But Claudel’s play is deeply mysterious, and in any case exceptions tend to prove the rule.

Clearly “religious drama” can mean nothing more than a drama with a religious subject. For example, the play Saint Joan (1923) by George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) dramatizes a number of issues involving religion, such as the relation of individual experience to the teachings of church doctrine. Shaw does not appear to promote a particular church or a particular established theology; his play holds those elements in tension, and the result is powerful theater. In many other plays of this sort, their creators' intentions are possibly interesting but mostly irrelevant. 

Sometimes, however, a dramatic work appears, at least, to be created on the principle that the role of art is to serve God, and that therefore art is to be judged by how well it does God’s work. Tolstoy adopted this idea in later years; he found himself unable to see how purely aesthetic interests mattered, when God’s work was so important.

By this standard, categories of “good” and “bad” art are irrelevant; what matters is how well the work does God’s work. One problem with this approach is that it tends to be adopted by censors, fanatics, and dictators, who have their own ideas of what the good is and who also have the means to impose their standards on others.

Another problem is that, with religious art and practically any other kind of art, a work that’s created with a teaching purpose may well be dreary. How can it help it? There’s limited joy of discovery in creating something that’s already figured out what it wants to say.

Another approach, which we might call the aesthetic approach, is to say that there is no such thing as religious art at all. There’s only art, whether good or bad. Art takes as its subject whatever it wants, whether it’s religion or politics or love or whatever.

This approach ends all arguments, because it makes ideas of religion irrelevant – which is also its problem. Religion has its own claims. For example, one can read the Bible for its imagery, but it wasn’t written simply as a literary work, and at some point that fact may insist on being taken into account.

If we are of a scholarly turn of mind, we can take an anthropological approach and say that works of art reflect the ideas of religion held by people at the time. This approach looks backward into history, noting, for example, that the ancient Greek tragedies were performed as elements of religious festivals. The approach also looks beyond Western art, to non-Western cultures, looking at the way different cultures present themselves, often without attempts at value judgments on their beliefs or art forms. A limitation of this approach, again, is that it tends to trivialize religion, and whatever else it may be, religion is not a trivial matter.

A more recent version of the anthropological approach is the modernist declaration that today’s world has destroyed the coherence of works of art so that it’s meaningless to say that a work is “religious”, or for that matter to label it in any other way.

A post-modernist critic versed in deconstructionism would go even further and say that no matter what its intent, a work of art can only reflect the oppressive power structure of its time. This approach negates the experience of art, particularly the distinction between greater and lesser works.

Or we can go in the other direction, and say that on the contrary, all art is religious. The limitation of this viewpoint is that if everything is religion, then nothing is – what’s the point of talking about religion at all if what we mean by religion is “life”?

I offer these reflections because, as noted above, I recently had the opportunity to see two stage productions based on Bible stories, Moses (at a movie theater near my home) and Jesus (with a church group), created by Sight & Sound Theatres. I offer these reflections because, as noted above, I recently had the opportunity to see two stage productions based on Bible stories, Moses and Jesus, created by Sight & Sound Theatres. I had heard about their productions for years, and people I know at a church in New Jersey have made an annual bus trip to see Sight & Sound shows for years. A friend convinced me that I ought to see at least one of their productions, if only to see their brand of theatricality for myself.  

Sight & Sound is a for-profit commercial company with a Christian evangelical mission, founded by Pennsylvania farmer, Glenn Eshelman and his wife, Shirley, who began with a traveling slide show for churches in 1964 that expanded into a theatrical production company aimed at general audiences – but always with a Christian bent. Sight & Sound presented its first full-scale stage production (Behold the Lamb) in 1987, and to date has presented twenty or so different shows at its two theaters in Ronks (in Lancaster County), Pennsylvania, and Branson, Missouri. I saw a film of the stage production of Moses, and I saw the company’s newest production, Jesus, in Pennsylvania.

                                                                                                

Because of the Biblical subject matter of these shows, I ought to say something about my own background. I’m an active Christian, and I preach in churches in the Presbyterian Church USA, a “mainstream” denomination. I’ve also worked in theater for years, as director, playwright, and actor, on plays of all sorts. In particular I’ve written a number of plays that have been produced, and some of them have had religious themes.

I tend to resolve the conflict between religion and theater (if there is one) in my own mind by supporting the right of a playwright to write whatever kind of play she or he feels called on to write. Playwrights take their chances on the success of their plays, but if one feels compelled to write a play with a theme, let the chips fall where they may.

My position, however, does not extend to Moses, because the script for that show was not written primarily as the result of an artistic spark, but as a “work for hire.” How do I know this? Because no writers are credited for the work. In fact no one who works on the production is credited by name. (There is also no “curtain call” at the end of a Sight & Sound show.)

This policy is not unique with Sight & Sound; I have observed it in other Biblical spectacles presented by churches. The theology involved, apparently, is that everything in the production is done for the glory of God, so individuals should not be named.

I find this idea both pretentious and un-Biblical. Moses and Jesus, just to name two figures in the Bible, are both identified by name in that book. Shouldn’t writers, actors, and technicians be named as well? The Apostle Paul lists many of his co-workers in his letters in the Bible. Why shouldn’t theater co-workers also be listed? 

In any case, the script of Moses appears to have been created by committee. Maybe it was – the script is notably uneven. Dialogue is elevated and lofty one minute, modern and conversational the next. Plot lines appear and disappear. The musical numbers frequently seem to have been heavily influenced by  Broadway shows (Les Miserables comes to mind), and occasionally from Disney films. 

However, the quality of the writing is not a major advertising point about Moses, or for that matter about Jesus. Two things are primarily important in these shows: they are based on Bible stories, and they are spectacular. To take them in reverse order:

Spectacular – Sight & Sound’s stages are huge (the two theaters are close to each other in design), some 300 feet in total length, making Broadway houses seem cramped by comparison. The performance area includes three sides of the theater – the regular “stage,” which is huge, and along the walls on the right and left of the audience – plus a center aisle that can be either a conduit for audience members or a playing space.

Using a mixture of set pieces and projections, plus numerous special effects, the shows achieve an almost cinematic effect. For example, when Moses escapes from Egypt, he walks on a small, multi-directional treadmill, on a stage floor filled with smoke, while behind him sweeps a scenic panorama that takes him from Pharaoh’s palace, past the pyramids and the Sphinx, across the desert, and into the mountains, while music blares.

Big scenes, in other words, are the theater’s meat, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Opera, of course, tends to run toward spectacle – “grand opera” is often an accurate description. Parsifal (1882), written by Richard Wagner (1813-1883), is certainly a spectacular opera with religion as its subject, although the exact nature of that religion is open to debate. Wagner, however, wrote the entire opera himself – it was anything but a committee creation.

Sight & Sound is an avowedly “evangelical” company – each show ends with an “altar call,” an invitation for audience members to join with members of the company in counselling and prayer. Not surprisingly, then, their productions are all Biblically based, usually centered around the stories of individual characters in the Bible, as can be seen from the titles of recent productions: Noah - the Musical, Joseph, Jonah, Moses, Samson, and the enormously popular current production Jesus.

Dramatizing a story from the Bible is not necessarily easy. Our era wants to know about the psychology of a character, often conveyed through a “back story.” The Bible provides little of either. Instead, it describes emblematic moments.

A dramatist often must, so to speak, “fill in the blanks” in the Biblical narrative, and the risks of this process surely are evident. Biblical incidents are presented side by side with recent inventions by (in the case of Moses) faceless writers; audience members may even imagine that they’re hearing scripture when they’re only hearing contemporary dialogue.

To say the least, the literary contribution of a contemporary writer may not quite equal that of a work that has held the interest of readers for over three thousand years.

One possible reason stories in the Bible are so memorable is that their readers are able to create details of the stories for themselves – perhaps drawn from their own lives. On the other hand, a drama on stage gives stories, as a character in William Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream says, “a local habitation and a name,” limiting the audience’s imagination in the same way that a music video is likely to become tightly associated with the song it illustrates.

INTERLUDE

A friend of my daughter auditioned with Sight & Sound for the role of the archangel Michael in their production The Nativity. He had learned the assigned song and expected that at the audition he would sing the song and read from the script.

As soon as he came on stage, however, a crew fixed him in a harness, strapped on him two angel wings each about ten feet long, and hoisted him into the air. He had had no idea this was going to happen. Nevertheless, he started to sing.

Then the wings malfunctioned, a technician ran onto the stage shouting "Stop!" and the crew worked on the system for a few minutes, coaching him how to move the wings in order to help fix them.

Finally they lowered him, quite shaken, to the ground. They took off the wings and the harness, and as he stood there, breathing heavily, the director said to him, "Okay, let's take the song from the top!"  The actor was offered the role as an understudy. He declined.

I saw the Sight & Sound production of Jesus on November 1, 2018, at the Millennium Theater in Ronks. In appearance the theater is a cross between an idea of a building in ancient Jerusalem and a Los Vegas casino, a feeling that continues in the lobby with its lights, displays, cafes, and shops. The wide auditorium seats just over 2,000 people in a series of sweeping rows.

The “special effects” in Jesus are stunning. Fishing boats float on the sea and rock appallingly in storms. Live animals behave just as they’re supposed to – camels, horses, pigs, doves. Rocks split, wind blows (in the auditorium!), rain falls, people travel among towns that effortlessly glide onto the stage, reconfigure themselves, and glide off again.

(Well, not entirely effortlessly – the stage does not have a turntable, and one could occasionally spot human beings pushing set pieces from one area to another, which I found comforting.)

The elaborate production values in Jesus are its calling card, of course, and deservedly may bring in audience members who might not have a vested interest in its religious theme.

Thinking ahead, I assumed that a major problem with the show would be the characterization of Jesus, who of course is not physically described in the Bible at all. I actually had no problem there. The actor playing the role is personable and physically not at all intimidating. I would like to know more about him as an actor but, as I mentioned earlier, his name is not available to the audience.

(From news accounts it appears that one actor playing the role – apparently there are two, but judging from a photo he is the one I saw – is Brandon Talley, who graduated from Elon University in 2004 and has worked ever since with Sight & Sound. I know this because of a published article, not from the show’s program, since there barely is one.  Elon is a liberal arts school in Elon, North Carolina, founded in 1889, originally but no longer officially affiliated with the United Church of Christ denomination.)

For Jesus exactly one name is offered in the program: Joshua Enck is credited as “Producer/Director.” Enck, now 41 years old, became the president and chief creative officer of Sight & Sound in 2015. (The chief executive officer of the company is Matt Neff, also 41.) Enck’s name does appear in the tiny program, called “Insight,” and his director’s note offers a clue to the success of the production.

“What you are about to experience,” he writes, “is not a history lesson on the most famous person ever to walk the earth. It is not even necessarily a story of Jesus’ life.” Enck tells how a theme of “love that rescues” began to emerge as the show’s creators (otherwise unnamed) read the gospel accounts.

The theme of “rescue” does provide a thread through the entire show, and so there is a dramatic continuity to Jesus that the script of Moses simply does not have. Enck and his team could have chosen other themes, but to choose one and stick to it, whatever it is, is essential for a production of this scale. I conclude from the coherence of the storytelling in Jesus that the theater’s current leadership, at least, is as committed to theatrical excellence as it is to proselyting.

One example from Jesus may suffice. Mark 5:1-20 tells the story of the demon-possessed man running amok in a graveyard, healed by Jesus. In the Sight & Sound production, the graveyard is situated along a seaside cliff. On the left, as the audience looks at the stage, a boat loaded with Jesus’ disciples tosses realistically on what appears to be a rugged sea, while the “sky” above the scene seems to be heading for a storm.

On the audience’s right, the insane man rages on top of a craggy, almost inaccessible promontory, leaping from rock to rock and shouting imprecations at everyone, including the people in the boat, while further to the right is a crowd of townspeople, alternately yelling at the man and trying to figure out what to do about him. The effect is one of chaos wherever one looks.

In the midst of all this upheaval, Jesus clambers from the boat onto the rocks and slowly begins to make his way up the cliff, never rushing, occasionally shouting friendly encouragement to the lunatic above him, taking his time, deliberately climbing over one rock after another, while the disciples in the boat urge him to turn back, or at least to be careful. He is the only calm, almost cheerful element in a wild scene. After a while he disappears behind the rocks, while the turmoil continues. Eventually we see him again – he has made it all the way to the top, and he unthreateningly moves toward his encounter with the screaming man…

I hope it is clear from this representative description that what could be a fairly routine depiction of a miracle is powerfully presented, but in a way that serves the story. The contrast between Jesus’ calmness and the frenzy of everyone else in the scene, and the slow, deliberate way in which he moves toward his encounter with the madman, is both thematically and theatrically effective.

I have a few reservations about the show. I felt a loss of focus toward the end of the first act. (The second act, the story of what Christians call “Passion Week,” Jesus’ last week in Jerusalem, is dramatic in the gospel accounts and similarly dramatic on stage.) I also felt that the action, or really the lack of it, immediately after Jesus’ death on the cross was too drawn out.  

The musical numbers in the show are merely functional, and a short dance interlude seems obligatory and unnecessary. The motivations of Judas, who betrays Jesus, are mostly slapped together in one song and seem to be arbitrary decisions on the part of the writers, not based on what the audience had seen before that point.

I also feel that Sight & Sound has an uneasy relationship with Judaism and I was extremely uncomfortable, both in Moses and in Jesus, with what one might call “religious appropriation.” In Moses I fell this particularly in the Passover scene, where elements of actual ritual are mixed with at least one major Christian symbol, when a cross mysteriously appears over a house where Passover is being observed. In Jesus the issue surfaced in the scene where the Sanhedrin, an ancient tribunal of elders, gathers.

Obviously Sight & Sound is a Christian enterprise, but sorry, folks, it is not acceptable at any time to take someone else’s living ritual and employ it for your own purposes.

Having said those things, I’ve covered my objections. In general the production comes across as open-hearted and cheerful. (I have no way of knowing, of course, how many if any people experience the show as a religious turning point in their lives.) Artistically speaking, it accomplishes what it intends to. Scenically, it is overwhelming. The acting level is high, and the story, on its own terms, is coherent.

We may note, nevertheless, that Jesus doesn’t solve the question of the relation of religion and art; it merely illustrates one possibility. Jesus is a work of religious art because it says it is – there’s no question about it. Sight & Sound explicitly considers its productions opportunities for evangelism. So they answer the question of the nature of “religious art” to their own satisfaction. Other issues remain.

"The Art of Being Seen: Perspectives on the Casting Process"

by Doug Strassler

[As readers of Rick On Theater know, I occasionally post articles on this blog that examine aspects of theater production about which most people who aren’t in the business—whom one of my teachers used to call  “civilians”—don’t know much.  The current edition of  Equity News (Autumn 2018), the member magazine  of Actors’ Equity Association, the stage actors’ and stage managers’ union, ran a detailed article about the auditioning process.  I suppose most people with any contact with theater, even as casual audience members, know that auditioning is the sometimes intimidating procedure every actor goes through in search of acting jobs.  It’s the actor’s equivalent of a job interview, and it can be daunting and, sometimes, dispiriting.  One of the most talented actors I ever worked with—I acted with him twice and directed him twice—has never become as well-known as I believe he should have because he hates auditioning and, by his own estimation, isn’t good at it.  (I also auditioned with him when he, another actor friend, and I used a three-character scene a few times as a group audition piece.)  In other words, an audition can make or break an actor’s career.

[Members of Equity have a carefully organized  and monitored audition process and the union is always making adjustments as it gets feedback from working—or work-seeking—actors.  The union audition, known as an Equity Principal Audition, or EPA (as distinguished from an Equity Chorus Call, or ECC), is hectic and, to a novice, disorienting, but it is standard from one casting call to the next, as required by the Equity contract governing the production being cast.  (Non-union calls don’t follow the same rules and have no authority to monitor and organize them and are thus often haphazard and frustrating.)  Because it’s in the union’s interest to see that its members get jobs, a benefit of union membership is that it offers assistance and advice to members in any number of professional aspects of the business.  In this instance, the union queried a number of casting directors, the member of the production staff who usually begin the selection process, and in this article, passes the guidance and advice on to members.

[Some of what’s posted below is esoteric and “inside-baseball,” but I believe it’s mostly clear enough for the non-actor to glean some of what the auditioning process entails.  You will see a little of what an actor has to go through just to get to try out for a part.  You’ll probably find that it’s not like what’s sometimes portrayed on TV and in movies.  Just like most things about real life . . . .]

A host of casting directors and performers reflect on the casting process

“Access. Access. Access.”

That one word, in a nutshell, is what every auditioning performer longs for: the chance to be seen, at their best, in the hope of landing a role and providing for themselves. In this instance, it was uttered by Stephanie Gould, a performer with a mild form of cerebral palsy, who discussed her own path in navigating the casting process.

But this quest applies to all members who have ever walked into an audition space. Anyone who has ever been in an elevator with or walked in a hallway past someone rehearsing sides knows just how fraught and nerve-wracking the process can be. From getting an audition to getting to the audition to feeling that a casting director (CD) may not have seen enough of what someone can do, it’s a frustrating journey. Like college admissions, there can be many disappointments, as casting directors must choose from far too many performers for far too few opportunities. [. . . .]

“One time I went in for a required call for a new Broadway show,” Actors’ Equity 1st Vice President Melissa Robinette said. “I had worked for weeks before this EPA [Equity Principal Audition] for this gig. I got up at 6am; I knew I was right for it.”

Anyone who has been to an EPA probably knows what happened next. Not only did Robinette not get the job, while in the audition room she felt that the person on the other side of the table wasn’t giving her full and open consideration for the job.

“I was so angry, I went home and cried,” she remembered. But that’s not where the story ends.

“And the next day I got a callback from that audition for another Broadway show.”

This anecdote just goes to show amid all the nerves and adrenaline, it’s hard to know for sure just what the CDs across the table are seeing. A series of conversations with those on both sides of the audition room helped to shed light on the overall process.

GETTING TO KNOW YOU

The casting experience doesn’t have to be an adversarial one. Many of the CDs interviewed for this article sang a similar tune, emphasizing that they really are on the side of those across the table from them.

“We do want the actor to be good so we can get behind everyone we show to our team,” Merri Sugarman, a casting director with Tara Rubin, said. “The truth is that it’s about wanting to be good at our jobs, so the creative teams are happy with our work.”

The art of creating work in the arts is actually a very delicate science, replete with scheduling logistics and keeping stakeholders happy and informed. “I’m always hopeful that performers trust our understanding of our project’s needs,” New York casting director Michael Cassara said, “and that we’re there seriously considering them with a number of variables in play. There are a lot of people who do excellent work but don’t get called back that time around due to oversaturation. I may only see six people for one role [at an invited audition], and the challenge is how can I fit everyone in? There are a lot of people who are truly brilliant who might feel rejected – but being the seventh out of thousands is not a bad place to be.”

CDs have producers, directors, sometimes choreographers and musical directors to please, meaning the invited audition space is the only time a casting director fully holds the reins. Sugarman said she will do everything she can to see performers at their best. “I work really hard on prep for the auditions,” she said. “I try to make sure there is natural light in the room, and that everyone has coffee and water. If an actor hasn’t had a chance to put his bag down, sign in and take a breath, I’ll bring someone else in, so they have time to get ready. But no matter how much you try to tell people that we are rooting for them, they don’t believe it.”

Empowering performers in the room is vital. “If I could wave a magic wand, I would make all of the performer’s fear and nerves disappear,” Eric Woodall, Producing Artistic Director at North Carolina Theatre, said. “We want actors to be their best, and that usually comes from them feeling confident and ‘in the moment.’”

Kyle Atkins, Associate Producer for Riverside Theatre, revealed that his biggest pet peeve is when performers who have scheduled an audition time do not show up. Or show up at a different time. “I get it, lives are crazy, but commitment and respect are integral,” he said. “Someone canceled twice on me and then just walked in. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me right now?’ Or if you have a 3:30 appointment but you show up at 11:10am, you have to ask the casting person is this okay.”

THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENS

Casting directors are quick to discuss their overall role in the puzzle and what they do on their end to secure a safe and positive audition environment. But what exactly are they looking for from the actors who come in?

“That they would be familiar with the entirety of the piece they are auditioning for,” Justin Bohon, a casting director at Binder Casting, said, “and that they take as much time as possible to be sufficiently prepared, make strong choices about the character and that the material that they choose to sing in the room is appropriate to the piece.”

Center Theatre Group Casting Associate Andrew Lynford does his best to assuage those who audition for him. “I know people get nervous, so I do my best to chat with them and make them less nervous,” he said. “Be polite and confident, but don’t try to be funny or over-talk. We want to stay focused on you – there’s no need to shake hands with everyone.”

Honesty and punctuality are of supreme importance, but so is preparation – yet perfect practice with the wrong material can hinder a performer’s chances. “I don’t feel actors spend enough time taking apart their audition material, making intelligent, bold choices and putting it back together again,” said Mark Brandon, another casting director at Binder.

Christopher Pazdernik, Casting Associate at Chicago's Porchlight Music Theatre, echoed Brandon’s sentiment. “When we audition for classic theatre, and they come in with the latest pop hit, which won’t help me evaluate you in terms of the world of the play. That’s not to say they aren’t talented, but they are missing the mark in terms of coming in with something that will help you get cast. One season we produced shows from no later than 1964, and one actress came in and slayed, quite honestly, ‘I Know the Truth’ [from Aida]. But I didn’t know what to do with that.”

WAITING FOR THE LIGHT TO SHINE

All CDs interviewed contend that it is indeed worth the performer putting themselves out there at EPAs and at Equity Chorus Calls (ECCs). [. . . .] But do those people who put themselves on the line agree?

“Of course it is a bit more challenging and you deal with quite a bit of volume, but it is worth the investment of time,” said Western Region member Bets Malone. “I have a friend whose agent tried and tried to get her an appointment for a show, and the casting director wouldn’t give her a time because she was ‘wrong for the project.’ She went to the open call and booked the show. Perseverance is the key!”

Western Region member John San Nicolas lives in Portland and sees a different side of EPAs in the smaller cities. “EPAs seem like they are more of a perfunctory requirement sometimes begrudgingly complied with by the small number of Equity houses in town, and I think that it is a relatively rare occurrence that local actors book jobs as a result of EPAs,” he said. “Most companies have a core of people they trust that they hire over and over again, and it can feel like a real uphill battle for those on the outside looking in. EPAs can feel a little bit like a shot in the dark as a result.”

Casting directors are certainly sympathetic to the cattle call-like atmosphere of auditioning. “I appreciate that coming to open calls is a bit of a ball-ache, as we would say,” Lynford said. “It’s very easy for actors to say, ‘When I get there, it will be a bit of a scrum; I wait two hours for three minutes in the room.’ But I don’t want them to think it isn’t a worthwhile experience. One actress who had just moved from New York to Los Angeles came to a season EPA and got a role in a show at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. ‘I’m so glad I didn’t think I was above the opens,’ she said. And she is getting great work here because she came to the open and did that show.”

In New York, Cassara says that it is rare for him not to call many performers back out of an ECC or EPA. “I would say half of the shows we work on potentially have someone, or many people, who were cast when the initial audition was the EPA. Perhaps between 25 and 50 percent.”

REVIEWING THE SITUATION

Technology has certainly provided options for the casting process. Self-taping auditions has allowed increased visibility for performers regardless of where they live. “This provides me a chance to see those outside the New York community,“ Chad Murnane of Binder Casting said. “Selftaping also offers a convenience for both actors and creative teams with last-minute emergencies or busy schedules.”

Performers themselves offer a mixed take. Western Region member Idella Johnson felt that “self-tape auditions rob casting directors and directors of really getting to know an actor, and it robs actors of re-direction which gives insight on what the director may be looking for.” However, Robinette said that “auditions and callbacks via video have saved me a lot of money and stress.”

Self-tape certainly worked for San Nicolas. “A friend knew folks at Fusion Theatre in New Mexico who were looking for an actor for their production of Disgraced,” he said. “She suggested me to them and passed on my contact information. I learned a couple of scenes, sent my videos, was given adjustments and sent again. That worked out great, and we repeated the process when I returned to be in their production of Old Times.”

Lynford cautions that those who self-tape should make sure the size of their work reads as though it is for the theatre and not for film or television. “Treat it like you’re filming a theater show,” he said. “I would encourage not to do a cinematic version, or do two versions – the intimate camera version, then show me you can be a good theatre actor and be more expressive than you would be in a close-up shot.”

MAKE THEM HEAR YOU

As both a performer with a disability (she has been diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis and epilepsy) and as the Development and Media Relations Manager at Addison, Texas’s WaterTower Theatre, Debbie Ruegsegger has seen the casting process from both sides firsthand. She says the most important step to remove barriers to casting of actors with disabilities is to create a dialogue, transforming the audition room into as a safe a space as possible.

“Just by asking simple questions, you can learn a lot about what certain actors have to navigate,” she said, adding that invisible disabilities such as chronic fatigue syndrome and multiple sclerosis fall under that rubric as well. “Casting directors have no idea what is going on in someone else’s body – sometimes fluorescent lights made me forget everything, and they might think they I am unprepared.

“If I don’t know someone who I am auditioning for, it’s difficult to feel safe to disclose,” she continued. “We have to feel safe to ask for those accommodations. Adding that to audition notices could be a big step for theaters of letting certain communities know that they are confidential and not a deal-breaker. Many theaters are in the first steps of creating that, though we have a ways to go. Progress comes through a listening ear.”

Gould agrees that more transparency between actors with disabilities who audition and casting directors would be beneficial. “Consideration for nondisabled roles is probably the biggest challenge. We can play the girlfriend, lawyer, protagonist — anything, really. Theaters say they are looking for performers with disabilities, and then end up going with a non-disabled actor.

“But if you specifically seek out disabled talent, cast disabled talent,” she said. “I don't think people realize the amount of preparation that goes into auditioning for a disabled actor. Not just preparing sides or a monologue, but travel time – it can take us double the amount of time to get to an audition that might only last a few minutes.” (Gould credited her manager, Brandon Cohen of BAC Talent, and agent, Gail Williamson in Kazarian Measures Ruskin & Associates Diversity Department, for helping her get seen for both disabled and non-disabled roles.)

Still, times have changed. Anita Hollander, an amputee actress and National Chair of SAG-AFTRA Performers With Disabilities Committee, remembers, years ago, a Broadway casting director who “watched my monologue at an EPA, sighed aloud, and said, ‘It's a shame that you're so talented...’ The unspoken end of that sentence was ‘because I'll never be able to cast you, because you're disabled,’” she remembered. That kind of language would be shockingly out of place nowadays.

AT THE END OF THE DAY

Many theaters have also increased their efforts to be more diverse and inclusive in casting, although there remains room for growth there as well. “I do feel that there aren’t many opportunities and roles for people of color,” African-American performer Idella Johnson said, while Manu Narayan, an American actor of Indian descent, said “I feel very, very fortunate that the jobs and the wonderful career that I’ve had have been against type,” and credits his persistence in attending EPAs with helping to open that door.

Equal Employment Opportunity Committee Chair Christine Toy Johnson believes that performers of color most often get hired through open calls when casting directors pursue a specific type. “Many people of color I know have actually gotten obs through open calls, and I think this is especially true when a production is looking specifically for a certain type of actor,” she said, “but I do think that people lose faith in the system, and stop going because they feel that when a show is not looking for their specific cultural background, they will not be given full consideration. Then it becomes a sort of vicious circle. They can’t be considered if they don’t go, but they get tired of going and feeling it’s a waste of their time because they’re not really being considered.”

Eastern Chorus Councillor Lauren Villegas also advises that casting directors can’t shoulder the full burden of representation. “The real root of the problem is the work getting produced,” she said. “The solution is less about the casting process and more about making sure the work being done in the industry is fully representative of the population.”

Idella Johnson agrees. “I do believe that there’s been progress, but there’s room for improvement, and that starts with screenwriters, playwrights and directors abandoning stereotypes and seeing us in roles that are normally cast or written for white people,” she said.

For their part, the casting directors interviewed here have amped up deliberate plans for greater inclusivity. “There is not a single project that we cast in our office in which one of the first conversations with the team doesn’t involve a serious and determined plan to cast as many ethnically diverse performers as possible,” Bohon said, and Murnane agreed that he, too encourages creative ethnic casting. “Our commitment to diverse casting, in every sense, is unwavering,” Woodall said. “We encourage our creative teams to cast in progressive and contemporary ways and encourage all actors to be submitted.”

“Our programming strives to be diverse and inclusive, but then, with each production we strive to make sure that directors are presented an inclusive group of potential hires at both the idea and audition phases of each process,” Adam Belcuore, Managing Producer at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, said. “In an effort to invest in the Chicago casting community we have hosted the Casting Society of America open call for actors with disabilities, as well as other local casting calls that specifically provide opportunities to under-represented talent.”

While steps have been taken to create greater accessibility and inclusiveness in the casting process, work remains to be done. Robinette cautions those with the power to cast to make sure they embrace inclusion, not tokenism. Still, both sides agree that the more performers get seen, the likelier they are to get cast.

“Even for required calls where I have heard they ‘aren’t looking,’” Robinette said, “I have had some awesome wins of getting called in for other things from those auditions or even being cast in other projects just because I was allowed to go in and remind them I’m alive.”

From the other side of the table, Lynford agrees. “It really is worth it and people have had great results doing EPAs,” he said. “Please keep bringing your talent to my door.”

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STAGE MANAGERS OFFER ADVICE: NETWORK! Actors hope that through auditioning, they can create positive relationships with casting directors. Stage managers also recommend building up a stable cadre of friends in the industry:

“Shadow stage managers and have coffee with PSMs [production stage managers] on big shows. Talk about how they got where they are and what their career trajectory was.” —ERIN MAUREEN KOSTER

“Never let fear stand between you and seeking professional stage managers for advice. Observing the work of our colleagues enriches a formal education.” —AMANDA SPOONER

[Doug Strassler is the editor of Equity News.  He writes and podcasts frequently about film, theater, television, literature, and other realms of pop culture.]

Women Playwrights of the ’80s

[Back in the mid-1980s, I worked with a former New York University instructor of mine, Cynthia Jenner, to try to start a new theater.  It was to be called Theatre Junction and Cynthia, who’s a dramaturg, planned for it to be a playwrights’ theater with a particular focus on women writers (though not exclusively).  She enlisted me after we’d become acquainted during her Production Dramaturgy course to be her assistant and I did a number of jobs for her, including a lot of scouting of new writers and plays.  While I initiated some of the reconnaissance missions, more often Cynthia would send me out to see a performance, presentation, or reading that she’d read about.  (I also read some scripts and other material to determine their potential suitability for TJ.  Cynthia had a number of performance projects she was considering calling for different types of material, including adaptations of non-dramatic sources and lunch-time presentations of non-traditional performances.) 

[The procedure was pretty standard.  I’d see a presentation and write a brief report for Cynthia.  Unhappily, the theater never came to be, but since I had recently started writing on a word processor (no Internet yet), I kept all the reports I wrote for Cynthia on file—and I still have them to this day.  Below are three reports I wrote for Cynthia in 1985; one is a staged reading (Nancy Beckett’s Labor Relations at the LaMaMa Galleria) and two are fully-produced plays (Louise Page’s Salonika at the Public Theater and Faulkner’s Bicycle at the Joyce Theater as part of the American Theater Exchange).  All three writers were considered “emerging” artists at the time these plays appeared; unfortunately, none of them attained the level of renown their boosters had hoped for in the 1980s.]

LABOR RELATIONS BY NANCY BECKETT

24 March 1985

The reading of Labor Relations by Nancy Beckett at The Galleria (La MaMa; 9 E. 1st Street) on Friday, 22 March 1985 was a rehearsed, semi-staged reading of a “work in progress” ostensibly for the consideration of Ellen Stewart of La MaMa.  (At the last minute, Stewart did not come, but sent a representative.  Stewart asserted often that she judges artists not on their proposals, résumés, or track records, but on an almost mystical individual response to their personalities.  She never reads texts, she says, never does any kind of “in-depth analysis about anybody about anything,” never goes to rehearsals unless asked, and seldom even sees a show at La MaMa.)

The play is a three-character, autobiographical exploration of the relationship of a girl/young woman with her oldest brother and older sister spanning, in non-linear fashion, from her sister’s wedding when the girl was only 6 through the birth of her own illegitimate child when she was 18.  There is very little plot, the play unfolding by episodic scenes from various points along the pertinent time continuum arranged in an apparently random order.  In flashbacks within flashbacks, we see bits of the conflict among Kay and Ed, the older siblings, and Anne, their unwelcome baby sister; the conflict between Ed and Kay and their parents; the sudden death of their father, Kay’s wedding, and Ed’s surprise return on leave from the Army; his permanent return to take a union job from which he is currently laid off; Anne’s pregnancy, and the birth of her baby.  We never see the parents; Ed’s wife, from whom he is divorced; Kay’s husband, who beats her; her children, or Anne’s boyfriend, the father of her baby. 

The play is structured into 15 or 16 scenes and a Prologue with no act break.  In the Prologue and occasionally during the rest of the play, Anne narrates her story presentationally.  There may be some little dumb-show acting behind her, but not much.  This material particularly becomes talky and undramatic.  The other scenes, which are essentially realistic from what I could gather from the reading, are representational, but not very active.  The non-linear arrangement of the events seems to enhance this non-action since the progress of the small events dealt with in the plot are always delayed and attenuated.  The only real event of the play is the birth of Anne’s baby, and we know that’s going to happen right from the start because she tells us in her Prologue speech and the first scene is Anne going into labor.  (By the way, note the two uses of “labor” in Labor Relations: Ed’s job problems because of a labor dispute, and Anne’s “relationship” with her brother and sister which changes because of the birth of her baby.)  The only “surprise” in the story is that the baby is born on Christmas Day.

There are a considerable number of references to Catholicism, Jesus, church, and religious beliefs in general in the play.  Except for the obvious connection between Anne’s baby and the baby Jesus, a picture of which is the subject of a repeated monologue she delivers, I don’t know what Beckett was saying with these references.  It is clear, however, that she is making some important (to her) comment about her family’s belief in Catholicism, and I suspect (but I have no evidence for this) that she is using Kay and Ed as some sort of surrogate for Mary and Joseph (although, she has aspects of Mary in the character of Anne, too.  I was confused about all this anyway.)  This element seems to be the important reason for writing the play, but I didn’t understand what Beckett was trying to say.  I acknowledge that this may be due to my own lack of receptivity to this material.  Not being a Christian (though I, too, was born on Christmas Day), I very likely missed some significant point innate in this symbolism and, so, lost the point of the play.

Overall, I was bored and confused.  I don’t know anything about Nancy Beckett, but the play struck me as mildly self-indulgent, as if she felt compelled to write this, but I didn’t have to hear it.  (To give you a measuring stick, I feel the same way on a grander scale about Arthur Miller’s After the Fall.)  It is important to note, however, that I may have been the wrong person to judge this material because of its apparent central concern with Catholicism for which I have no feel. 

[Since this report focused on the play and, especially,  the writer, I didn’t record the names of the actors in the three roles in Labor Relations.  There may have been no program because it was a reading, or I lost it over the ensuing 33 years, but I now can’t reconstruct the cast of the La MaMa reading.  There were, of course, no reviews of this reading, and La MaMa never produced Beckett’s play (although I see that a staging was mounted in Chicago in 1988).]

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SALONIKA BY LOUISE PAGE

22 April 1985

Though Louise Page’s Salonika, presented at the New York Shakespeare Festival at the Public Theater, was not an uninteresting play, I was disappointed when I saw it on Saturday, 20 April 1985.  I suppose I expected more from a playwright to whom so much attention is being paid lately, with a production of her Real Estate at Arena in D.C. (opened at the Kreeger Theater on 8 February 1985) and this one here at the Public (2 April-19 May 1985 in the Anspacher Theater). 

Briefly, the play is about two old women, a mother, Charlotte (Jessica Tandy), and a daughter, Enid (Elizabeth Wilson), who come to Salonika, Greece, to visit the grave of their husband and father who died there in World War I.  They spend the morning on the beach, in the company of a naked young drifter, Peter (Maxwell Caulfield), and return there in the afternoon, after having gone to the cemetery.  Joining them unannounced is the mother’s man friend, Leonard (Thomas Hill),  who wants to marry her.  Throughout the play we see glimpses of the relationships between the mother and daughter, the mother and her friend, the mother and her dead husband (who appears as a young soldier, played by David Strathairn, from beneath the beach), and the daughter and her fantasy of her father (whom she never knew). 

The problem with the play is that it is disjointed and unfocussed.  The reviews have all centered on Page’s treatment of the dependent relationship between the mother and her spinster daughter, but, in fact, that is only part of the theme.  There is apparently equal weight given to the fruitlessness of war and the waste of dying in one.  I was never sure which was Page’s central message.  I don’t think she was, either.  I also gathered that we were somehow supposed to feel sympathetic to the dried-up old daughter, who in the end propositions the young man to sleep with her on the beach for money.  He literally keels over and dies almost immediately thereafter—probably from the prospect.  Trouble is, though I was sympathetic to her, I certainly didn’t fault her mother for her state.  The older woman didn’t give the impression of having forced her daughter to stay at home and wither away.  Her father’s death couldn’t be blamed—though she tries.  And the fact that she finds her mother’s having a beau threatening seems pure selfishness to me.

The play wasn’t unenjoyable.  However, this was mostly due to the superb performances (can you expect less from Jessica Tandy?) and a few telling moments.  The rest was more curious than good.  The chief theatrical (not to say dramatic) interest was the technical feat of bringing the dead husband up through the sand (which covers the Anspacher stage) with no evidence of a tunnel or a trapdoor, and the appearance of Maxwell Caulfield as the nude sun-bather.

Page, who’s British and has something of a track record across the pond (though Real Estate and Salonika are her débuts in the States), may be someone to keep an eye and an ear on, but as of now, her stuff seems less than exciting.  She may emerge as a more dynamic writer than she is now, however, with some exposure of the magnitude she’s now experiencing.  I wouldn’t dismiss her entirely.

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FAULKNER’S BICYCLE BY HEATHER McDONALD

12 June 1985

The presentation of Heather McDonald’s Faulkner’s Bicycle, a Yale  Repertory Theater production presented by the Joyce Theater Foundation as part of the American Theater Exchange.  I saw it on the afternoon of Wednesday, 12 June 1985; Frank Rich had panned the play and the production on 10 June as “something of a sleepfest.”  As a writer “in the early stages of her career, . . . one can easily forgive her failures of craft.  What is harder to countenance is her play’s utter lack of an original theatrical voice.  ‘Faulkner’s Bicycle’ is pure synthetic; it contains hardly a line, character or scene that we haven’t encountered dozens of times before.” 

I don’t agree with Frank Rich’s review at all.  I also don’t think the script has been badly damaged by the Yale production, though I don’t think they helped solve any of the problems that I spotted when I read it.  As a matter of fact, the production pointed up some of the problems.

I thought the set was an unnecessarily ambiguous half-way measure between cluttered realism and symbolism.  My preference would have been for something that didn’t try to recreate any of the scenes realistically, and was all one unit.  The constant blackouts between each scene to shift set pieces emphasized the disjointed, episodic nature of the script, rather than supporting the tenuous continuity that lies beneath it.  With some 26 scenes (I didn’t count them at the Joyce; that’s how many there were in the original script), that means at least 25 blackouts, which is excessive, I think.  (Faulkner’s Bicycle ran 90 minutes.  Without the blackouts, it might run closer to 75.)

McDonald’s play is about Claire Pierce, a spinsterish young woman in Oxford, Mississippi, the hometown of novelist William Faulkner.  In the summer of 1962, Claire has to contend with her aging, senescent mother and her sister, Jett, a struggling writer who’s fled the big city, to which she took off years earlier, to return home.  Shortly before the novelist’s death, Claire sets her cap for Faulkner, and he is soon giving her nocturnal rides on his bicycle.  He is wary of encounters with strangers but finally comes to tea at the Pierces, arousing a forgotten friendship with Claire’s mother; they’d gone to school together.  As Faulkner sits uncomfortably in the Pierce parlor, Mama says, “People say you’re drinking yourself to death.”  He replies, “People say you’re growing senile,” and adds, “You were a bit like that in high school.”  The writer loosens up after taking out a flask and brings up detailed recollections of their shared youth.  (In St. Peter’s Cemetery in Oxford, there are four graves in the Faulkner family plot.  One is marked cryptically with only the initials “E. T.,” believed to be a family friend.  Do you suppose McDonald is imagining that it’s one of the “Pierce” women?)

The casting bothered me, too.  All the actresses were very accomplished, though I found Tessie Hogan as Jett a bit stiff and Cara Duff-MacCormick as Claire mannered.  The real problem was that all of the women were too young for the roles.  Kim Hunter hardly comes off as 61, and the two daughters looked more like early 20’s (and Claire seemed younger than Jett, which is backwards), not mid 30’s.  This seriously weakens the impact of most of the play.  (Though she’s 60, Hunter doesn’t look it on stage, and Addison Powell, who plays Faulkner, is 64 and looks every day of it, with his shock of white hair and weathered face.  Faulkner was also 64 in 1962, the year the play is set and the year the writer died.)  Middle-aging daughters facing this problem are more dramatic than youngsters, who just seem self-indulgent.  Also, their being older means Claire has been taking care of Mama longer—which is significant.  Mama must be the same age as Faulkner (they were schoolmates, after all), and the fact that she’s old should be important, too.  A younger woman facing senility is different than an older one.  Except for finding a role for a favored Yale School actress (Hogan), I can’t understand why the women were cast this way.

I thought the slide projections were mostly ineffective.  When I read the script, I found this device a wonderful touch, but they didn’t really amount to much here.  I think this is because they were so far away.  Perhaps the rear of Yale’s set was not so distant from the audience as the Joyce’s, but I think the slides would have been more effective if they were projected at the proscenium, say above the actors’ heads, or to the side.  In any case, they were mostly lost for me.

Except for the disjuncture caused by the blackouts, none of this really diminished the play as a piece of theater.  It still had a strong impact on me, particularly the scenes with Mama in the bathtub.  (The “shit” scene, despite its scatology, was very powerful).  None of the character problems (such as recluse Faulkner being affable at an afternoon tea) are resolved, but the production did not damage the play beyond redemption.  The weaknesses were more obvious and the strengths weren’t played up in this production, but I could still see the play we liked.  It’s still there. 

[The American Theater Exchange’s festival at the Joyce Theater was a new program designed to bring works from regional American theaters to New York.  It was meant to be a continuing event, but the 1985 presentation turned out to be its only season.  The ATE presented three plays at Chelsea’s Joyce Theater; besides McDonald’s Faulkner’s Bicycle from Yale Rep, which ran from 30 May to 22 June, the festival also brought Season’s Greetings by Alan Ayckbourne (6-27 July), produced by Houston’s Alley Theatre, and Jack Henry Abbott’s autobiographical In the Belly of the Beast adapted for the stage by Adrian Hall and Robert Woodruff, produced by the Mark Taper Forum of Los Angeles (8-31 August).  (I saw another production of Belly, the portrayal of convicted killer Abbott, from Chicago’s Wisdom Bridge Theatre that same year at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., with William L. Petersen as the convicted murder.)]