At The Theater: To Wear A Mask, Or Not To Wear A Mask

 

[Earlier this month, the Broadway League, the national trade association for Broadway theater-owners and -operators, announced that it would drop its requirement that all members of the audiences at their theaters must wear masks inside the buildings in July.  

[I feel the decision is precipitous and premature, but while the policy was still in effect, there were theatergoers who flouted it, putting their own personal interests above the health and safety of other spectators and the artists, crew members, and building staffs who work in the theaters.

[There was a highly publicized incident at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre last April that spotlighted the selfishness of one theatergoer and several prominent actors responded.  I’m posting two columns reporting the incident because not only is it topical, but it happens to illustrate my own position on the issue of wearing masks in places like theaters while Covid is still around.  And it is!

[Actors Patti LuPone, Hugh Jackman, and Sam Rockwell, who are all quoted in the New York Times report below, say what I feel on the subject.  They also make a strong argument against what they, and I, see as irresponsible behavior of some New Yorkers.]

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“YOU DON’T WANT TO WEAR A MASK? DO IT FOR HUGH JACKMAN.”
by Ginia Bellafante

[The article below appeared in the “Metropolitan” section of the New York Times on Sunday, 26 June. Ginia Bellafante writes the “Big City” column, a weekly commentary on the politics, culture, and life of New York City.

Beginning in July, Broadway will no longer require audiences to mask up. Actors and theater workers aren’t loving the idea.

Last month, in a much-celebrated moment of public disciplining during a talk back with the cast of “Company” [at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre], a woman in the audience who was told to please put her mask back on refused and then, mocking the directive, waved it in the air and placed it over her eyes. Up onstage, Patti LuPone was not having it and told her to get out. As if incubated in a lab manufacturing legend-resistant organisms — and unlike almost anyone else on the west side of Manhattan — this was a person immune to the ire of Patti LuPone. Yelling back defiantly, she proclaimed, “I pay your salary.” A member of the theater’s Covid safety staff proceeded to escort her out of the building.

In the actress’s view, the woman should have been ejected as soon as it was clear that she was not going to wear a mask. “It shouldn’t have been up to me,” Ms. LuPone said. I called her earlier this week to gauge her feelings on the theater world’s changing Covid protocols. On Tuesday [21 June], the Broadway League, a trade association, announced that owners and operators of all Broadway’s 41 theaters would put a mask-optional policy into effect beginning on July 1, just as the 2022-23 season was kicking off.

In a written statement, the League’s president, Charlotte St. Martin, did not even pretend to ground the decision in statistics. “Millions of people enjoyed the unique magic of Broadway by watching the 75th Tony Award Ceremony recently [12 June],” she began, overlooking the fact that “watching” typically takes place at home.

“Are they afraid that they’re losing audiences?” Ms. LuPone wondered, pointing out that masks were still required of casts and crew backstage. “I don’t know.” Unions, nearly a dozen of which are involved in governing the theater industry, have pushed for strict safety rules since the beginning of the pandemic.

After rising steadily for a decade, Broadway earnings have taken an obvious beating over the past two years. Grosses for the week ending June 19 fell to $29 million from a prepandemic peak late in 2019 of nearly twice that. Covid outbreaks among performers have stymied productions, further complicating things. A few weeks ago, Hugh Jackman, currently starring in “The Music Man” [Winter Garden Theatre], tested positive for Covid for a second time, leaving the role of professor [sic] Harold Hill to Max Clayton.

Even though case rates have fallen recently after a late spring surge, the seven-day average in New York City is still more than 10 times what it was last June. Regardless, Broadway theaters — old, windowless and often poorly ventilated — present particular vulnerabilities to those working in them, especially actors who are communicating intimately with one another onstage, unmasked.

Sam Rockwell, who is starring in “American Buffalo” at Circle in the Square, is one of several actors I spoke with who is unnerved by the change in policy. “We’re doing theater in the round,” he told me. “The other day I had a guy cough four feet in front of me.” He and the rest of the cast and crew test constantly. “We test in order to have the privilege to take the mask off. We earn the privilege to take the mask off and spit saliva on the stage,” he said. “I don’t know if it occurs to the audience that they’re protecting the actors onstage. If someone is mad because they have to wear a mask, they have to know that we are testing everyday [sic].”

It is hard to see who benefits from removal, given that people who go to the theater tend to skew older and have traveled to New York from somewhere else. Moreover, anyone who has held back from seeing shows out of a fear of Covid is unlikely to spend hundreds of dollars to do so now that strictures have loosened. “Just looking at it pragmatically, this is not serving the audience,” Mr. Rockwell said. “It’s about, Do you want to see Hugh Jackman in the show? Do you want to go see that show without Patti? Because let me tell you, if she gets Covid, she’s not in the show for 10 days.” 

Last week, six out of the 11 cast members of the acclaimed Tracy Letts play, “The Minutes” [Studio 54] were out sick. One of them, Blair Brown, now in her 70s, has been especially cautious over the past two years, staying away from restaurants and public transportation. She did not understand how the League would periodically reassess the need for masks — which it has committed to doing — considering that there is no system for tracking transmission in theaters.

While it might be hard for the public to feel sympathetic toward actors, who seem in every way swimming in privilege, most who appear on the New York stage do not make up the ranks of the wealthy and well known. At the same time, according to the League’s own demographic study three years ago, the average annual household income of the Broadway theatergoer is $261,000. If you don’t want to wear a mask for Hugh Jackman, you might want to do it for the actor in the chorus who is making a lot less than that — the one with two lines, who is headed to bed early to teach a barre class at Equinox the next morning.

[Ginia Bellafante has served as a reporter, critic and, since 2011, as the “Big City” columnist. She began her career at the Times as a fashion critic,and has also been a television critic. She previously worked at Time magazine.]

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“PATTI LUPONE SHUTS DOWN ANTI-MASK AUDIENCE MEMBER: ‘WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?’”
by Wilson Chapman

[The following report was posted on the website of Variety, the theater trade paper, on 11 May (https://variety.com/2022/legit/news/patti-lupone-company-anti-mask-covid-1235264323/.)]

Broadway legend Patti LuPone is famous for her long history of calling out theatergoers who fail to follow proper theater etiquette, and that continued Tuesday [10 May] when she exchanged harsh words with an anti-mask attendee during a production of “Company” on Broadway.

The interaction occurred after the show, when LuPone — who stars in the musical as Joanne — appeared with the rest of her cast in a post-show Q&A hosted and filmed by the American Theater Wing. During the Q&A, LuPone called out a patron who wasn’t wearing a mask properly. Currently, the Broadway League’s COVID safety protocols requires all audience members to wear a mask inside theaters through at least May 31.

“Put your mask on over your nose, that is the rule,” LuPone says in a viral Twitter video. “That’s why you are in the theater, that is the rule. If you don’t want to follow the rule, get the fuck out!”

After applause from the rest of the audience, LuPone continued. “I’m serious. Who do you think you are, if you do not respect the people that are sitting around you?”

After a woman in the audience told LuPone “I pay your salary,” LuPone responded by telling her “You pay my salary? Bullshit. Chris Harper pays my salary,” referring to the producer of “Company.” “Who do you think you are? Just put your mask over your nose.”

This isn’t the first time LuPone has had harsh words for theatergoers who have attended her shows. In 2009, while starring in a revival of the classic musical “Gypsy,” she stopped her performance of the closing song “Rose’s Turn” to demand that an audience member taking pictures be thrown out of the theater. In 2015, she made headlines for snatching a phone from the hands of a texting audience member while performing in a Lincoln Center production of “Show Days.”

On Monday, LuPone received a Tony nomination for supporting actress in a musical for her performance in “Company.” The nomination is her eighth over the course of her career. She’s won twice, for her leading role in “Evita” in 1980 and for her performance in “Gypsy.”

[LuPone also won a Tony and a Drama Desk Award for her performance as Joanne in the current production of Company.  (Both Jackman and Rockwell were nominated for Tonys for their current performances on Broadway.  American Buffalo will close on 10 July and Company on 31 July.)

[The video of LuPone’s mask reprimand is on YouTube at Patti LuPone scolds audience member for not wearing a mask | USA TODAY - YouTube.

[Over the years, I’ve witnessed a few occasions when an actor had to address someone in the audience outside the performance.  I was at a performance of Lillian Hellman’s Little Foxes in July 1981 when Elizabeth Taylor, playing Regina Giddens, stopped in mid-speech to admonish someone up in the balcony who was taking flash photos.  Taylor said she wouldn’t continue until the photographer stopped or left the theater.

[In another instance, at a 1976 production of Henrik Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea at Circle in the Square uptown with Vanessa Redgrave as Ellida, John Heffernan, as Professor Arnholm at stage right by the railing that separated the audience from the performance area in that peculiarly shaped theater, paused in a line and looked at a couple of women right down front and said to them, “Are you through?”  Clearly they’d been chatting while he was acting!  

[Later that year, when I was doing my MFA thesis performance (in classmate William Mastrosimone’s thesis play, Devil Take the Hindmost), I had one scene right down front in a tavern set.  I was at a table with a camp-follower character I had picked up.  At one point, I heard snoring.  

[It persisted, and I thought it was someone in the front of the house who’d fallen asleep and was being rude and inattentive.  I was just about to say something, remembering Heffernan’s actions . . . when I realized it was my camp follower, who was acting having gotten drunk and passing out at the table next to me!  I’d never noticed her doing that before—I think the actress had embellished the bit without telling me.  I almost embarrassed myself!]

Cosplay

 

[About 2½ weeks ago, my friend Kirk e-mailed me that he’d gone to see a middle school show (no, he didn’t say what made him do that), and he commented that one eighth-grade actress impressed him.  He reported that her program bio said she does cosplay.  Kirk added, “If you don't know what that is, look it up.  I had to.”  (We’re both a couple of old codgers—though I don’t know that Kirk would appreciate my including him in that remark.)

[“I do know what cosplay is,” I huffed a little in response, “generally speaking.”  As a second thought, I added, “It occurs to me that it’s a suitable subject for a blog post . . . .  I’ll have to look into this.”

[Kirk went on to say that his son and daughter-in-law knew about cosplay—but they’re a couple of Millennials.  “If you do a blog piece on it,” my friend concluded, “I'll learn too!”

[So I did . . . and here it is!]

So, for those who don’t already know, what is cosplay?  One waggish website described it this way:

Think Halloween costume but all year-round and then dial it up to 11—that sort of comes close to what cosplay is.  

Not a bad description, especially if you’ve ever seen New York City’s Greenwich Village Halloween Parade.  The Coney Island Mermaid Parade, held annually in June (the 40th parade was held on 18 June 2022) comes in a close second—or maybe it’s a tie. 

Cosplay is a performance art in which the participants dress in costumes and make-up—many quite elaborate and, I believe, mostly homemade (or, at least, assembled by the wearer)—representing characters or concepts from Japanese anime and manga, Western comic books, graphic novels, video games, television shows, and films, in venues apart from the stage. 

Some cosplay enthusiasts spend hundreds, even thousands of dollars on custom-made outfits for events, many more invest time and creativity, using cheap materials and household items to transform themselves into characters of heroic, superhuman, or mythical proportions.

In addition to creating authentic costumes, the participants also act in character, or ‘role-play,’ copying their mannerisms and gestures and are usually subject matter experts on the characters they are personating. 

Cosplay embraces a wide diversity of character sources, many representing American comic book, movie, and video game characters.  Popular sources include Disney, Marvel, and D.C. comics; Lucas Films spin-off books and comics; Blizzard Games, and Bethesda Games.

Though originating in Japan, cosplay participants in the United States (and elsewhere, including Japan) use sources other than anime and manga for their character choices.  At conventions, you’re likely to see Sailor Moon, Batman, Cloud, Luke Skywalker, and Thor attending the same panel discussions. 

The age range for cosplay encompasses young children, preteens and teens, young adults, and older grown-ups.  Convention attendees sometimes include whole families.  Characters range across all ages, genders, races, and sectors of the galaxy and universe.

There’s also considerable cross-racial and -gender costuming (the latter is known as ‘crossplay’), which can cause some tension, though seldom is it meant to be demeaning or insulting.  Participants just dress up as the characters they admire, irrespective of race or gender.  Occasionally, that exercises someone else taking part in the event.

The point of cosplay is to portray a character.  A cosplayer can do this ‘accurately’ by copying a character’s exact look, down to the details, and mimicking his behavior and demeanor.  She or he can also put her or his own individual spin on the character.  Some cosplayers even invent their own characters, rather than draw on one from fiction.

Let’s do a little lexicography.

First, the word ‘cosplay’ is a portmanteau word, a blend of words in which parts of multiple words are combined into a new word, from ‘costume’ + ‘play.’  Oddly, it came to English from the Japanese word kosupure, short for kosuchumupure, which in turn was borrowed from the English words ‘costume’ and ‘(role) play,’ reportedly introduced in print in 1984 (some sources say 1983) in an issue of the magazine Mai Anime/My Anime.

Second, the word in English can be used as a noun, an attributive noun (a noun used like an adjective), an intransitive verb (i.e., without an object), or a transitive verb (with an object):

‣  noun: In cosplay, a good costume is as much about creativity as it is about the outcome.

‣   attributive noun: My nephew is a big cosplay fan.

‣   intransitive verb: They cosplayed for hours at a time.

‣   transitive verb: She said she has cosplayed other women in science fiction or fantasy.

Someone who engages in cosplay is a ‘cosplayer.’

Who, a celebrity news and entertainment weekly magazine published in Australia, included in one of its articles I read a little primer it called “How To Do Cosplay”; I think I’ll insert it here:

1.  Pick a character or concept you want to dress up as.  Consider your favourite comics, TV shows, and movies.  You can even dress up as a meme!

2.  Choose the ‘style’ you want to do your costume in.  Are you going to copy the character/concept as accurately as possible?  Or do you want to do a special ‘version’ of it, like a steampunk version, sexy version, gender-swapped version, etc.?

3.  Shop for your costume pieces.  You can check out sites like Ezcosplay for cosplay-specific items, or you can go to your nearest mall/clothing store to build it from scratch.  If you have money to spare, you can pay a cosplayer or costume-maker to make the outfit and props for you.

4.  OPTIONAL: If you want to take your cosplay to the next level, practice ‘acting’ as the character.  It doesn’t need to be perfect, but at least try to get their moves or poses down for the photos.

Now, let’s have a brief look at the history of cosplay.  (This survey is largely based on a chronology on the website for Who, the Aussie entertainment magazine.  It was posted in 2014, so it only goes up to 2013.)

Though most histories of cosplay start in the second third of the 20th century, when it was called, simply, “costuming” or “fan costuming.”  Who, in a separate post from the timeline I mentioned, links the practice to roots in early 15th-century carnivals where people dressed up as objects, concepts, famous historical figures, or popular characters from fiction or stage plays.  (Wikipedia also starts here.)

I’m skeptical of this connection as a substantive forebear of today’s cosplay, since humans have been dressing up for any number of purposes since they first crawled out of the sea.  The drive to dress up is surely as old as human society itself.  The first costumed performance must have occurred the first time a Neanderthal hunting party put on animal skins and danced around the campfire to replay the day’s success.

Later, the animals and hunters in the dances were supplemented with gods and spirits, heroes and adversaries, all appropriately garbed and masked, and the stories became plots or scenarios, and plays were invented.  Along the way, one can certainly imagine that other costumed performances, or performative events, were conceived like pageants and, yes, the precursors of cosplay.

As I said, Wikipedia also invokes the 15th-century European carnivals as the initiation of cosplay.  The online encyclopedia then moves the off-stage costuming impulse—working in the theater, despite the dressing-up, isn’t cosplay, though it might be hard to verbalize the distinction—to the late 19th century with the costume party and the fancy-dress party.

I don’t think the costume party is as popular today as it was a couple of generations ago.  It did continue well into the 20th century; I remember my parents attending several when I was little—there are even photos I still have of a few of the occasions when they left the house dressed as someone or other.

Then Wikipedia conjured up an event of which I’d never even heard, but which sounds like a Victorian-era precursor of the science fiction conventions I’ll be writing about shortly.  In 1891, a man named Herbert Tibbits conceived of what would today be described as a “cosplay” event held from 5-10 March in London.  It was called the Vril-Ya Bazaar and Fete, based on an 1871 science fiction novel, The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-73), and its characters.

Tibbets organized the fete to raise money for a London hospital of which he was the founder.  It had all the earmarks, however, of the first sci-fi convention, and serves very nicely as the antecedent of the conventions of the 20th and 21st centuries.

The documented history of cosplay, according to Who magazine, starts with 1939, when Forrest J. Ackerman (1916-2008), whom the magazine dubbed “perhaps the greatest fan of science fiction who ever lived.”  He went to the first World Science Fiction Convention, or Worldcon (2-4 July 1939 in New York City), dressed in “futuristicostume” and “strode the streets looking like a proto-superhero” speaking Esperanto with the designer of his costume, Myrtle Douglas.  He’s believed to be the first sci-fi fan to attend a conference in costume.

A year later in Chicago (1-2 September 1940), the first Worldcon masquerade took place.  According to Mike Resnick (1942-2020), sci-fi writer, in his book . . . Always a Fan (‎Wildside Press, 2009), “for the first couple of decades it was actually a masquerade ball.” There was a band, drinks, and dancing, with prizes handed out at the end of the night.

17 years after he cosplayed at the first Worldcon, Ackerman returned to the convention to report for Fantastic Universe, a science fiction magazine.  By 1956, wearing costumes was so well established that, Ackerman wrote: “Monsters, mutants, scientists, spacemen, aliens, and assorted ‘Things’ thronged the ballroom floor . . . .”  

By the early ’60s, Resnick wrote, “a number of fans spent considerable time—weeks, sometimes months—preparing their costumes.”  In 1963, Bruce Pelz (1936-2002), a sci-fi fan described by Resnick as “the most creative” costumer, attended Worldcon (31 August-2 September in Washington, D.C.) as Fafhrd from the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories (1958-88), about an unlikely pair of heroes found in and around a city on an alien world, written by fantasy legend Fritz Leiber (1910-92).

The first Comic-Con was held at the U. S. Grant Hotel in San Diego (a one-day event called San Diego’s Golden State Comic-Con on 21 March 1970).  Three hundred people attended, but costuming didn’t play a prominent role at the event.

In 1971, someone showed up at Worldcon in a nude costume for the first time in over two decades.  Resnick wrote that after that, “throughout the 1970s and 1980s there were half a dozen or so nude costumes every year.”  (A “nude costume” is what you probably imagine: not actual nudity, but a costume—perhaps a skin-colored body-stocking or appropriately decorated bits of clothing that give the impression of nakedness.)

Resnick reported in 1974 that Worldcon (29 August-2 September in Washington) masquerades had grown to more than 100 participants each year.  In its fourth year, San Diego Comic-Con (31 July-5 August 1974), as it was then known, began staging its own masquerade.  

A report in 1975 in Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described sci-fi conventions as “largely devoted to costume dances, parties, and mutual flattery.”

In 1980, the manga series Urusei Yatsura was released in Japan and along with the 1979 TV series Mobile Suit Gundam, helps popularize cosplay in Japan—though the word hadn’t been coined yet.

By 1982, the Worldcon (2-6 September in Chicago) masquerades were so popular, Resnick wrote, that organizers separated the competition into three categories: novice, journeyman, and master.

The inaugural Costume-Con was held in San Diego on 14-16 January 1983.  The new convention, which invited costumes depicting “anime, comics, video games, fantasy, sci-fi, theatrical/film/TV costumes, millinery, fursuits, and more,” took costuming from the sidelines and made it the main attraction.  (Fursuits, for the uninitiated, are custom-made animal costumes worn—and often designed—by cosplayers and members of the “furry fandom,” commonly known as “furries.”)

A Japanese reporter and manga publisher was the first to use the term ‘cosplay’ in print in 1984 after attending Worldcon, also known as L.A.con II (30 August-3 September) in Anaheim, California.  Captain Tsubasa, a manga about a soccer team was published the same year and increased cosplay’s popularity in Japan because it’s easy to dress up like a soccer player.

With the term “cosplay” yet to infiltrate the US, the Los Angeles Times described the Worldcon (28 August-1 September 1986 in Atlanta) masquerade as “much like a fashion show,” which “brought out master craftsmen who had spent hundreds of hours producing costumes that could grace a film with a $38-million budget, and novice consumers who use a minimum of materials.”

On NBC’s hit comedy Friends in 1996, Ross admitted to a fantasy likely shared by most straight men his age: Return of the Jedi era Princess Leia in a gold bikini (“The One with the Princess Leia Fantasy”; Season 3, Episode 1; 19 September).  Rachel complied with the request and even threw in some side hair buns for good measure.

The wildly popular anime Sailor Moon aired for the last time on TV Asahi in Japan in 1997.  According to the Japan Times, it “inspired a gazillion cosplayers to don Japanese schoolgirl miniskirts, prudence be damned.”

The first cosplay cafe opened in Akihabara, Tokyo, in 1999.  Many more followed throughout Toyo and Osaka.

Dengeki Layers, a magazine targeting the Japanese cosplay community launched in 2003.

The first World Cosplay Summit was held in Nagoya, Japan, on 12 October 2003.  Cosplayers from four countries, Germany, France, Italy, and Japan, participated in the festivities.

Jessica Nigri (b. 1989), an American-New Zealand cosplayer, promotional and glamour model, YouTuber, voice actress, and fan convention interview correspondent, was photographed at San Diego Comic-Con (23-26 July 2009) in a sexy Pikachu costume.  The photo went viral as she began her ascension as one of the biggest cosplay celebrities in the world.

The reality competition Heroes of Cosplay premièred on Syfy on 13 August 2013.  Despite heavy criticism from the cosplay community, the series was a modest ratings success, with its première drawing three-quarters of a million viewers.  No further contests were scheduled to be aired in the ensuing years, however.

This history of cosplay focused on various conventions and related events.  Who magazine, though, considers other activities, of most of which we’ve all heard for years, they include under the rubric of cosplay: live action-role playing events, historical reenactments, Renaissance fairs, game enactments like Dungeons & Dragons, and so on.

Back in cosplay’s early days, even up to the early 2000s, anything that smacked of geekiness or nerdiness like comics and cosplaying was considered uncool.  Non-cosplayers didn’t see the appeal and teased and bullied cosplayers—and not just kids.   

Today, however, the cosplay community is bigger than it ever has been.  Not only are more people getting into cosplay, but cosplay itself is becoming more and more lucrative.  Top-level cosplayers like Jessica Nigri, whom I mentioned earlier, and others such as Enji Night (b. 1991) and Hana Bunny (b. 1990) get paid (quite a bit, I gather) to dress up, appear at cons, and even promote products.

One thing, a (usually) costumed performance, that’s not cosplay, is—as I said earlier—theater.  Since this post started because a young actor declared that she also did cosplay, maybe I should try to distinguish between the two performative endeavors.  Let’s see if I can articulate the distinction.

As we’ve seen, the main aim of cosplaying is to create a character.  That’s the point of the whole effort.

You’d think (if you didn’t know better) that that’s also what an actor does.  Well, yes, he or she does create a character.  But that’s not the whole point of his or her job.  It’s just a means to a larger end.

As an actor in a play—and for the purposes of this examination, I’m assuming a traditional play, with a script—I have to create a character in order to bring the play to life, to tell the playwright’s story, make her or his point.  My character isn’t an independent entity, he lives through and for the world of the play—and the other characters. 

When a cosplayer interacts with another costumed character, they respond to one another according to each character’s persona—as the cosplayer has seen it.  But that’s really all—the cosplayers will try to behave in line with the way they believe their characters will react if they were real, but there’s no deeper context.

As an actor, I have to have understood my character’s purpose within the world of the play, my ‘role’ in that world.  I’m trying to accomplish something with respect to the play and the other characters—I don’t get to do whatever I feel like.  Cosplayers can: they are free to do what they feel like, including walk away.

I’m bound to a score, much like a musician is.  In the case of the actor, I’ve developed my own score, with the help of the playwright and the director (who don’t exist in cosplay).  In essence, with those other artists, I invent my character—even if it’s Hamlet or Oedipus, who’ve been around for hundreds of years.  My Hamlet or my Oedipus is not the same as all the others; I’m not trying to replicate a figure from another medium.  I invented my character; I’m not trying to be true to a template.

All this makes a costumed actor in a play different from a costumed cosplayer at a convention.  To further distinguish what I do from what they do, that costume I wear isn’t of my own devising, or my choice.  I have to make it mine, but after others have decided what it’ll look like. 

Of course, the words I say on stage aren’t mine—though I have to make them mine.  The movements I make aren’t mine either—but I have to make them mine, too.

And, on top of all that, I have to do and say the same things tomorrow night that I did and said tonight.  I’ve been doing and saying the same things for weeks—even though I have to make then seem like I’d never done or said them before.  The cosplayer doesn’t have that burden, either.

So, that, I think, is why acting in a play is not cosplay, even though actors and cosplayers both wear costumes and play characters.  Besides, the cosplayer tends to stick with the same character, if not forever, then for a long time.  The stage actor “in his time plays many parts,” as Shakespeare told us. 

(There’s a 1982 teleplay, based on a Kurt Vonnegut story, called Who Am I This Time? that takes off from the phenomenon of actors changing roles and “becoming” different people.  It aired on the Public Broadcasting Service’s American Playhouse.)

Playwright Lorraine Hansberry Honored In Times Square

 

[On Thursday, 9 June, the Lilly Awards Foundation unveiled a sculpture honoring the African-American playwright and activist Lorraine Hansberry (1930-65) in Times Square.  The unveiling marked the launch of The Lillys’ Lorraine Hansberry Initiative, which also includes two large scholarships, and is the first stop on a city- and nationwide tour of the sculpture, To Sit Awhile by Alison Saar of Los Angeles. 

[I have collected several articles on The Lillys, the Initiative, the sculpture, and Hansberry to post on Rick On Theater.  At the end of this compilation, I have included a short biography of the playwright, who had a remarkable life and career, despite their brevity.]

“LILLY AWARDS LAUNCHES LORRAINE HANSBERRY INITIATIVE”
by American Theatre Editors 

[The article below appeared on the website of American Theatre, the monthly magazine of the non-profit theater association Theatre Communications Group on 2 June 2022 (AMERICAN THEATRE | Lilly Awards Launches Lorraine Hansberry Initiative).]

The initiative will honor the pioneering playwright’s legacy with a touring statue and support for the work of multiple female/non-binary playwrights of color.

new york city: The Lilly Awards Foundation has announced the creation of the Lorraine Hansberry Initiative, which aims to honor the great American playwright and Civil Rights leader’s legacy while investing in those following in her footsteps.

In 1959, Lorraine Hansberry became the first Black female playwright on Broadway with her play A Raisin in the Sun. It continues to be one of the most produced plays in the world, but Hansberry’s contribution to the world was far greater than that single play. Her entire body of work as an artist, journalist, and Civil Rights leader has proven as relevant today as it was during her short lifetime, and deserves recognization as such.

Over 60 years after her pioneering example, female playwrights of color remain the most proportionally underrepresented demographic on American stages. Despite making up 20 percent of the population, holding 20 percent of the undergraduate degrees in English literature and in the performing arts, and being chosen by their peers for over 20 percent of the spots in national playwriting organizations, prior to the unusual programming seasons that followed the murder of George Floyd, they accounted for under 10 percent of professional productions.

“One can draw a straight line from the issue of real estate and racial discrimination that Hansberry pointed to so clearly in A Raisin in the Sun,” said Julia Jordan, the Lillys’ executive director, in a statement, “to the generational wealth gap that is preventing women of color, specifically Black women, from following in her footsteps today.”

The Hansberry initiative includes a unique scholarship to ensure that the next generation is able to follow in Hansberry’s footsteps. Unlike existing university scholarships, this singular grant will be primarily intended to cover the living expenses of three female and/or non-binary dramatic writers of color entering graduate school, with two additional recipients added each year. Each recipient will receive $25,000 for each year of their education, ensuring that they have protected time to write, work with collaborators, and benefit from the guidance of professional mentors in their respective fields. They will go on to create for the stage, television, and film, and their work will reach millions.

Playwright Lorraine Hansberry. (Photo: Courtesy of the Goodman Theatre, Chicago)

We know that graduate school is the primary gateway to a career as a dramatic writer,” said Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage in a statement. “In my 20 years of teaching at the graduate level, I have had only four Black female students. If we want theatre to tell the full story of humanity, we need to nurture the full breadth of talent.”

Through this initiative, the foundation will keep the current national conversation about race, justice, and economic equality going by honoring Lorraine Hansberry. The initiative will add to the growing movement to honor women and people of color with physical monuments, and aims to alleviate the financial inequality that discourages women and non-binary playwrights of color from pursuing graduate degrees in her chosen art form.

The Initiative also includes a statue of Hansberry that will tour the nation in 2022-23 to raise public awareness of her work and teachings. Created by the renowned sculptor Alison Saar, the statue is titled To Sit Awhile, and features the figure of Hansberry surrounded by five bronze chairs, each representing a different aspect of her life and work. The life-size chairs are an invitation to the public to do just that: sit with her and think.

The statue will be unveiled in a ceremony in Times Square on June 9, which will feature performances as well as remarks from playwright Lynn Nottage and Lorraine’s older sister, Mamie Hansberry. The women and writers of color who have had their work grace Broadway this historic season will be invited to join Mamie Hansberry on stage. This will be followed by a showcase of student works from Speak Up, Act Out: Celebrating Student Voices at the New Victory Theater. The project, a collaboration between New Victory Theater, the Lillys, and 24 Hour Plays, will showcase monologues and short works inspired by Hansberry from NYC middle school students and performed and directed by professional artists, including Quincy Tyler Bernstein, Kate Whoriskey, Russell Jones, Jessica Hecht, April Mathis, Shariffa Ali, and Seret Scott.

The statue’s tour will include three installations in New York City, followed by a national tour of major cities and Historically Black Colleges and Universities. In each city, the Initiative will work with local theatres and social justice organizations to showcase the work of contemporary writers of color concurrent with the sculpture’s placement.

The full NYC tour itinerary is as follows: Times Square (June 9- 12), the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (June 13-18), and Brooklyn Bridge Park (June 23-29). Additional supporting NYC events will coincide with the tour. The Museum of the City of New York will present a panel, titled The Playwright as Activist, on June 13 as part of their Freedom Week programming, which will feature a conversation among playwrights Lynn Nottage, Lisa Kron, and Erika Dickerson-Despenza. The Drama Book Shop will dedicate their display space for the month of June to works by and about Hansberry and contemporary writers of color.

The entire Lorraine Hansberry Initiative is budgeted at $3,500,000. To date, $2,200,000 has been raised. To make a donation to support this important work, please visit the Lorraine Hansberry Initiative.

The Lilly Awards Foundation is nonprofit whose mission is to celebrate the work of women in the theater and promote gender parity at all levels of theatrical production. Founded in 2010, the nonprofit is named for Lillian Hellman, a pioneering American playwright. The annual Lilly Awards recognize extraordinary female writers, composers, directors, designers, producers, and advocates. As of 2019, the foundation had a budget of approximately $261,853.

*  *  *  *
“STATUE OF LORRAINE HANSBERRY UNVEILED IN TIMES SQUARE JUNE 9”
by Andrew Gans

[On 9 June 2022, the day of the sculpture’s unveiling, the national theater magazine Playbill published the following article on its website (at Statue of Lorraine Hansberry Unveiled in Times Square June 9 | Playbill).]

The statue is part of the The Lilly Awards Foundation’s Lorraine Hansberry Initiative, honoring the late playwright.

The Lilly Awards Foundation unveils a statue of playwright Lorraine Hansberry June 9 at 4 PM in Times Square. The statue is part of the Foundation’s Lorraine Hansberry Initiative, honoring the late American playwright and civil rights leader’s legacy while investing in those following in her footsteps. 

In 1959 Ms. Hansberry became the first Black female playwright produced on Broadway with her landmark play A Raisin in the Sun.

Maquette of To Sit Awhile by Alison Saar.

The statue will subsequently tour the country to raise awareness of the full breadth of her work and teachings. Created by sculptor Alison Saar, the statue is entitled “To Sit Awhile,” and features the figure of Hansberry surrounded by five bronze chairs, each representing a different aspect of her life and work. The life-size chairs are an invitation to the public to do just that: sit with her and think.

The June 9 unveiling in Duffy Square features a performance from Tony winner (and 2022 Tony nominee) LaChanze, plus remarks from playwright Lynn Nottage; Ms. Hansberry’s older sister, Mamie Hansberry; Tony nominee LaTanya Richardson Jackson; and Legal Defense Fund President Janai Nelson. 

The ceremony will also include a photo moment honoring several of the BIPOC, female, and/or LGBTQ+ writers, composers, and lyricists whose work graced Broadway stages this season, including Paula Vogel (How I Learned to Drive), Ruben Santiago-Hudson (Lackawanna Blues), Jeanine Tesori (Caroline, or Change), Masi Asare (Paradise Square), Lucy Moss (SIX), Christina Anderson (Paradise Square), and more.

An invitation-only showcase of student works from the New Victory Theater’s Speak Up, Act Out: Celebrating Student Voices will follow. The project, a collaboration between New Victory, the Lillys, and 24 Hour Plays, showcases monologues and short works inspired by Hansberry from NYC middle school students, performed and directed by professional artists, including Quincy Tyler Bernstein, Kate Whoriskey, Russell Jones, Jessica Hecht, April Mathis, Shariffa Ali, and Seret Scott.

The statue will remain in Times Square through June 12, followed by two other New York City installations: The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (June 13–18) and Brooklyn Bridge Park (June 23-29).

The statue will subsequently tour major U.S. cities—including Philadelphia, Detroit, Minneapolis, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago (Hansberry’s birthplace will enjoy an enhanced and permanent installation in 2023)—and historically Black colleges and universities. In each city, the Initiative will work with local theatres and social justice organizations to showcase the work of contemporary writers of color concurrent with the sculpture’s placement.

The Lorraine Hansberry Initiative also announced a scholarship to make sure the next generation is able to follow in Hansberry’s footsteps, regardless of race, gender, or economic situation. The grant is primarily intended to cover the living expenses of three female and/or non-binary dramatic writers of color entering graduate school, with two additional recipients added each year. Recipients will receive $25,000 for each year of their education, ensuring that they have protected time to write, work with collaborators, and benefit from the guidance of professional mentors in their respective fields.

“One can draw a straight line from the issue of real estate and racial discrimination that Hansberry pointed to so clearly in A Raisin in the Sun, to the generational wealth gap that is preventing women of color, specifically Black women, from following in her footsteps today,” said The Lillys Executive Director Julia Jordan in an earlier statement.

“We know that graduate school is the primary gateway to a career as a dramatic writer,” added Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nottage. “In my 20 years of teaching at the graduate level, I have had only four Black female students. If we want theatre to tell the full story of humanity, we need to nurture the full breadth of talent.”

[The Lilly Awards Foundation began in the spring of 2010 as The Lilly Awards, an outlet to honor the work of women in the American theater. The founders are playwrights Julia Jordan, Marsha Norman, and Theresa Rebeck. The organization is named for Lillian Hellman (1905-84), a pioneering American playwright who famously said “You need to write like the devil and act like one when necessary.”

[In 2015, through a partnership with the Dramatists Guild, the professional association for stage writers, The Lillys gathered their resources and conducted a national survey called The Count, revealing that BIPOC (black, indigenous, and people of color) women were by far the least represented demographic on U.S. stages. The Lillys spread that information nationwide and have devoted the majority of their funds and efforts to women of color ever since.

[One hundred percent of The Lillys’ financial awards in directing, design, tech, and composing, and the majority of their writing awards have been given to women of color.

[The Lilly Awards Foundation is a 501c3 non-profit whose mission is to celebrate the work of women in the theater and promote gender parity at all levels of theatrical production. The Lillys are dedicated to carrying on Hellman’s spirit and are committed to honoring the work of women in the American theater.

[The Lorraine Hansberry Initiative is the Lilly Foundation’s effort to honor the great American playwright and civil rights leader. Its mission is to invest in those following in her footsteps.

[This year, the Foundation launches the Initiative with a national tour of the sculpture To Sit Awhile by Alison Saar. A life-sized bronze statue of the playwright is seated under her admonition: “Never be afraid to sit awhile and think,” with a space beside her for the public to do just that.

[Beginning next year, a unique $2.5 million scholarship fund will give its first recipients $25,000 per year to cover not only the tuition but the living expenses of two women and non-binary BIPOC dramatic writers in graduate school.  The recipients may write for the stage, television, or film, and the scholarships will run for up to three years.]

*  *  *  *
“STATUE OF BROADWAY LEGEND LORRAINE HANSBERRY INVITES PASSERSBY TO SIT AND THINK IN TIMES SQUARE”
by Steve Overmyer

[On “Broadway and Beyond,” the recurring theater feature of the television station CBS New York (WCBS-TV, Channel 2), aired the following report on its six-o’clock evening news broadcast of 9 June 2022.  The website posting of the story, at Statue of Broadway legend Lorraine Hansberry invites passersby to sit and think in Times Square - CBS New York (cbsnews.com), is accompanied by a video of the report, recorded on the site of the sculpture in Times Square.]

new york – The legacy of Broadway icon Lorraine Hansberry is being honored in the middle of the Theater District.

As CBS2’s Steve Overmyer says, her image will be on display to inspire the next generation.

“It’s a little overwhelming in Times Square. It’s crazy, but no, it’s lovely and . . .  We’re a little, a few years late to celebrate the anniversary, the 50th anniversary of ‘A Raisin in the Sun,’“ sculptor Alison Saar said.

Hansberry was the first Black female playwright to have her show on Broadway. “A Raisin in the Sun” was a landmark play which opened in 1959. It tells the story of a Chicago family growing up in the middle of segregation.

“Not only is she the first Black woman, specifically, to have a Broadway play produced, but she comes from a tradition of firsts, and so that reminder being a place at the center of our city for all to see is truly beautiful,” Pace University professor Amen Igbinosun said.

It’s an interactive statue with movable bronze chairs inviting all to sit a while and think.

“So much of public sculpture is hands off . . . I wanted this to be a space where people could come and have a conversation and share thoughts and ideas,” Saar said.

“We need more reminders of who we are, and this is not just Black theater history, this is American theater history. This is America,” Igbinosun said.

The statue will only be in Times Square through the weekend before it begins its cross-country tour for all to enjoy.

"I hope they have a better understanding of who Lorraine Hansberry was. I mean, we know at a playwright, but she was also activist for LGBTQ community and African-American equity and women's rights," Saar said.

"We can sit down with this piece and think. Be present. Think, just for a moment, and that's powerful," Igbinosun said.

[Steve Overmyer joined CBS 2 in February of 2011 as a sports anchor and reporter. He hosts Sports Update every weekend on CBS 2 (WCBS in New York City) and WLNY 10/55 (Riverhead, Long Island).]

*  *  *  *
LORRAINE HANSBERRY BIOGRAPHY

Lorraine Hansberry was born at Provident Hospital on the South Side of Chicago on 19 May 1930. She was the youngest of the four children of Nannie Perry Hansberry (1893-1966) and Carl Augustus Hansberry (1895-1946). Her father founded Lake Street Bank, one of the first banks for Blacks in Chicago, and ran a successful real estate business. Her uncle was William Leo Hansberry (1894-1965), a scholar of African studies at Howard University in Washington, D.C. 

Many prominent African-American social, arts, and political leaders visited the Hansberry household during Lorraine’s childhood including sociology professor W. E. B. DuBois (1868-1963), poet Langston Hughes (1901-67), actor and political activist Paul Robeson (1898-1976), musician Duke Ellington (1899-1974), and Olympic gold medalist Jesse Owens (1913-80). 

Despite their middle-class status, the Hansberrys were subject to segregation. When she was eight years old, Hansberry’s family deliberately attempted to move into a restricted neighborhood. Restrictive covenants, in which white property owners agreed not to sell to Blacks, created a ghetto known as the “Black Belt” on Chicago’s South Side.

Carl Hansberry, with the help of Harry H. Pace (1884-1943), president of the Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company, and several white realtors, secretly bought property at 413 E. 60th Street and 6140 S. Rhodes Avenue.

The Hansberrys moved into the house on Rhodes Avenue in May 1937. The family was threatened by a white mob, which threw a brick through a window, narrowly missing Lorraine. The Supreme Court of Illinois upheld the legality of the restrictive covenant and forced the family to leave the house.

The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision on a legal technicality (Hansberry v. Lee, decided 12 November 1940). The result was the opening of 30 blocks of South Side Chicago to African Americans. Although the case did not argue that racially restrictive covenants were unlawful, it marked the beginning of their end.

Lorraine graduated from Englewood High School in Chicago, where she first became interested in theater. She enrolled in the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she immediately became politically active with the Communist Party USA and Progressive Party presidential campaign of Henry A. Wallace (1888-1965) in 1948.  She left before completing her degree and went to Chicago and Guadalajara, Mexico, to study painting.

Hansberry moved to New York in 1950 to begin her career as a writer, attending The New School for Social Research (now simply The New School). She moved to Harlem and wrote for Paul Robeson’s Freedom, a progressive publication, which put her in contact with other literary and political mentors such as DuBois and Freedom editor Louis Burnham (1915-60).

She continued her political activism, working not only on the U.S. civil rights movement, but also on the global struggle against colonialism and imperialism. During a protest against racial discrimination at New York University, she met Robert B. Nemiroff (1929-91), a Jewish writer who shared her political views. They married on 20 June 1953 at the Hansberrys’ home in Chicago. 

Like many black civil rights activists, Hansberry saw that the struggle against white supremacy was linked to the program of the Communist Party. A closeted lesbian, she explained many global struggles in terms of women’s involvement.

Besides writing news articles and editorials, she wrote scripts at Freedom. To celebrate the newspaper’s first birthday in 1951, Hansberry wrote the script for a rally and in February 1952, with the produced playwright Alice Childress (1916-94; Florence [1949, produced September 1950]; Just a Little Simple [September 1950-February 1951]), collaborated on a pageant for its Negro History Festival.

In 1956, her husband and Burt D’Lugoff wrote the hit song, “Cindy, Oh Cindy.” Its profits allowed Hansberry to quit working and devote herself to writing. She then began a play she called The Crystal Stair, from Langston Hughes’ poem “Mother to Son.” She later retitled it A Raisin in the Sun from Hughes’ poem, “Harlem: A Dream Deferred.”

In A Raisin in the Sun, the first play written by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway, she drew upon the lives of the working-class black people who rented from her father and who went to school with her on Chicago’s South Side.

She also used members of her family as inspiration for her characters. Hansberry noted similarities between Nannie Hansberry and Mama Younger and between Carl Hansberry and Big Walter. Walter Lee, Jr. and Ruth are composites of Hansberry’s brothers, their wives and her sister, Mamie. In an interview, Hansberry laughingly said “Beneatha is me, eight years ago.”

After a try-out tour to New Haven, Connecticut (opening on 19 January 1959 at the Shubert Theatre), Philadelphia (Walnut Street Theatre, 26 January), and Chicago (Blackstone Theatre, 10 February), all to positive reviews, the play premiered on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on 11 March 1959. It transferred to the Belasco Theatre on 19 October 1959 and closed on 25 June 1960 after 530 total performances.

                                          Program for the Blackstone Theatre run of A Raisin in the Sun 
                                                from its final pre-New York stop in Chicago in February 1959 before 
                                                transferring to Broadway in March.

Hansberry won the 1959 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Raisin at the age of 29, the first African-American dramatist, the fifth woman, and the youngest playwright to do so.  The play was also nominated for the 1960 Best Play Tony.  The production had a stellar cast, including Sidney Poitier, Ivan Dixon, Lonne Elder III, John Fiedler, Louis Gossett [Jr.], Claudia McNeil, Diana Sands, Douglas Turner [Ward]. (Ossie Davis, husband of Ruby Dee and half of an illustrious acting couple, took over as Walter Lee Younger in August 1959.) 

A Raisin in the Sun (Columbia Pictures, 1961, directed by Daniel Petrie) was filmed in Chicago in 1960 with largely he same cast as the Broadway mounting,  It was taped for an ABC television broadcast in November 2008, directed by Kenny Leon and starring Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs as Walter Lee, Audra McDonald as Ruth, and Phylicia Rashad as Lena. The broadcast was nominated for an Emmy and a Golden Globe.

The play was revived twice on Broadway, in 2004 (with the cast and director of the TV version) and 2014 (with Denzel Washington, directed again by Leon), winning Tonys for both Best Revival of a Play and Best Direction of a Play.  

In October 1973, the play opened at the 46th Street Theatre as the musical Raisin (with a book by her former husband and Charlotte Zaltzberg; music by Judd Woldin; lyrics by Robert Brittan); directed and choreographed by Donald McKayle, it won the Best Musical Tony and the Best Actress in a Musical for Virginia Capers as Lena Younger. It ran 847 performances, closing at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in December 1975.

Two recent plays, together with Hansberry’s original, are often referred to as “The Raisin Cycle.” The 2010 Bruce Norris play Clybourne Park (première: February 2010, Playwrights Horizons in New York; Broadway: April 2012; Tony for Best Play), opening just before the events of A Raisin in the Sun, depicts the white family that sold the house to the Youngers. Beneatha's Place (premièred at Baltimore’s Center Stage), a 2013 play by Kwame Kwei-Armah, follows Beneatha after she leaves with Asagai for Nigeria and, instead of becoming a doctor, becomes the Dean of Social Sciences at a California university.

The première production of A Raisin in the Sun was directed by Lloyd Richards (1919-2006), later associated with the works of August Wilson, who was the first Black director to stage a play on Broadway.  Richards was nominated for a Tony for Broadway’s Raisin for Best Direction of a Play, which had played at the Shubert in New Haven for four performances in January 1959 while on its short pre-Broadway tour; the director would later (1979-91) return to New Haven as dean of the Yale School of Drama and artistic director of the prestigious Yale Repertory Theatre.

Hansberry was diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas in 1963. She had surgery on 24 June and 2 August, but neither operation was successful in removing the cancer.

Her second play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, about a Jewish intellectual, opened on Broadway on 15 October 1964 and ran for 101 performances, receiving mixed reviews. Her friends and supporters rallied to keep the play running.

On Tuesday, 12 January 1965, Hansberry died of pancreatic cancer at 34. Sidney Brustein had given its last performance on Sunday, 10 January and was dark on Monday as is the theater custom. 

The production didn’t give a performance on the 12th, in respect for the author’s passing, but the play’s immediate future was left in doubt until Thursday, 14 January, when the producers, Nemiroff and D’Lugoff, announced that it would not reopen. 

(Some sources record that Sidney Brustein closed on 12 January, the day Hansberry died, but it was officially still open that night.  It was also still officially open on the following two nights, as the closing notice wasn’t issued until the 14th. The Broadway website Internet Broadway Database [IBDB] designates 10 January, the date of the show’s last performance, as the closing date.)

Although Hansberry and Nemiroff divorced in 1962, before her death, he remained dedicated to her work. As literary executor, he edited and published her three unfinished plays (The Collected Last Plays; New American Library, 1983): Les Blancs (Broadway, 15 November-19 December 1970 for 40 performances), The Drinking Gourd, and What Use Are Flowers? 

He also collected Hansberry’s unpublished writings, speeches and journal entries and presented them in the autobiographical montage To Be Young, Gifted and Black (Cherry Lane Theatre [Off-Broadway]; 2 January-7 December 1969 for 380 performances). The title is taken from a speech given by Hansberry in May 1964 to winners of a United Negro Fund writing competition: “. . . though it be thrilling and marvelous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times, it is doubly so, doubly dynamic, to be young, gifted and black!”

In August 1969, Nina Simone introduced a song entitled “To Be Young, Gifted and Black” (lyrics by Weldon Irvine), released as a recording in 1970, named in memory of the singer’s friend, who was the godmother to Simone’s daughter. The song would become an anthem of the American Civil Rights Movement.

In 2013, Lorraine Hansberry was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame (see my post on Rick On Theater on 10 February 2020) and in 2017, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

"Unscripted, Unrehearsed & Unflappable"

Improv Masters Offer a Peek Behind the Curtain

[On 10 January 2017, I posted a report on Will Hines’s How to be the Greatest Improviser on Earth (Pretty Great Publishing Co., 2016).  My tack was to “consider how parallel improv is to dramatic acting and how different.”  (Hines defined “improv” as “the art of making up comedy scenes as you go, on a stage.”  My report is posted at https://rickontheater.blogspot.com/2017/01/how-to-be-greatest-improviser-on-earth.html.)   

[Now comes “Unscripted, Unrehearsed & Unflappable” from SAG-AFTRA magazine (Volume 11, Number 2 [Spring 2022]), the publication of the union that represents performers in film and television.  It serves as a kind of companion piece to my post because the unnamed author reports on not that parallels between dramatic acting and improv exist, but how the skills of an improviser can benefit an actor in scripted material.

[Based on my own experience as an acting student, actor, and acting teacher, I can affirm that “Unscripted” is spot on.  I can attest to the fact—as I’m certain many other actors can as well—that there are many times on stage, whether it be a live-theater stage or a soundstage, when the confidence and flexibility of an experienced improviser would have been mighty welcome.]

THE ACTOR’S SECRET WEAPON: Performers and instructors explain why improv skills
can be useful for any actor.

The ability to excel at improv is something of a superpower. Performers, equipped only with their wits, are seemingly making something out of nothing and making it seem effortless and, most importantly, entertaining. But in reality, that spontaneity takes training, practice, cooperation and a healthy dose of mental agility.

“It’s so much fun,” said Cheryl Hines, who plays Larry David’s ex-wife on Curb Your Enthusiasm [2000-present, HBO]. The hit show is filmed without a script, so when the scene starts, no one knows how it will go — and that’s where the comedy alchemy begins.

“I still remember very early on, it might have been the first season, and we were doing a scene with my ‘parents.’ And the actress that was playing my mother asked Larry in the scene if he had a mint. And he dug around in his pocket and found a loose mint — this is while we’re rolling! He said, ‘I found one’ [and] she said, ‘I’m not going to eat that out of your pocket.’ And he said, ‘Well, you asked for one.’ And I just remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, we’re shooting a TV show and talking about a loose mint that Larry had in his pocket in real life — but now it’s part of the scene, and it’s hilarious, because that’s life.”

On Curb Your Enthusiasm, Hines said, performers will often do warmups backstage, where performers will stand in a circle and go around and tell a story one word at a time. She said the exercise helps her dial in to what her scene partners are saying.

Once filming begins, they do between two and six takes of each scene, depending on how many people are involved, she said.

“Larry writes a story outline, so you know the broad strokes, and you don’t talk about the scene or the information until the camera starts rolling. And if you’re listening, it will all be right there.”

Not every actor will get the opportunity to ad lib with Larry David, but having those skills and understanding the fundamentals of improv is something nearly every performer can benefit from, even for those who would rather stick to the script.

“I think every actor should have training in improv. It will make you a stronger actor, and it’s really helpful for auditioning,” said Hines, who received her improv training at The Groundlings Theatre. “Learning how to improvise has helped me in every way with scripted roles. It helps you feel confident that if something happens in the scene that’s unexpected, you will be able to stay in character and deal with that moment.”

[Cheryl Hines isn’t related to Will Hines, the author of the book I referenced in my introduction to this post and a performer and teacher at the Upright Citizens Brigade, another improv troupe, who eventually ran its school in New York City.]

It may sound counterintuitive that improvisation requires preparation and practice, but Upright Citizens Brigade Training Center Director of Education Johnny Meeks notes that it is a skill that must be learned like any other. Improv and sketch training is not a replacement for traditional acting training, but it can provide more acting tools for a variety of situations.

“One of the easiest ways to see that is in a commercial audition, where you’re often asked to ad lib or improvise or even just put a button at the end of the audition you’re doing,” he said.

[To “put a button” on an improv scene means, once having discovered what an improviser thinks is going on in a scene, to come out directly and define what’s going on.  At that point, the performers are free to go on and heighten and explore the scene from the new perspective the button has given them.]

The ability to think quickly on your feet during the critical moments of an audition can make the difference between getting cast and losing out on the role.

Improvisational acting is most closely associated with comedic performances, and that’s where an actor’s mastery of the skill is most evident. Meeks and his colleagues train students to quickly identify what’s funny about a scene so that they can focus on that element, add to it and heighten the humor. 

The basic idea is “yes, and . . . [.]” That is, first you must mentally accept and agree with what your scene partner says. It becomes an established element of the world the two or more of you are creating. From there, you build upon the idea by adding details of your own — and that means getting back to one of the fundamentals of acting: listening.

“A big element of our work is listening,” Meeks said. “That’s almost what we focus on entirely to begin with at the school. It’s not uncommon for folks that talk about the craft of acting to talk about listening and reacting, and that’s more of an intangible skill that you can really benefit from [with] improv training.”

As the actors build the reality, they are establishing the parameters of what’s considered normal in that situation. The humor emerges from the aspects that diverge from the established “normal” and subvert expectations, and actors are trained to quickly identify those unusual elements and call them out.

That technique can be applied to character work as well, explains Upright Citizens Brigade Training Center Artistic Director Christine Bullen. Even if an actor is not changing the dialogue at all, their being able to identify and emphasize the unusual elements helps them make the character their own, she advises, especially if the character’s personality is dissimilar from their own. Additionally, the training helps actors quickly make and fully commit to acting choices.

Actors with improv training are also well equipped to shift gears on the fly, for instance when a director asks them to approach the scene in a completely different way. It can also be a useful skill during an audition, if a performer is asked to read for a different role.

“If you’ve done a lot of improv, you would be able to understand all the tools at your disposal in terms of creating character [and] making strong choices in the moment,” Bullen said. “Having that understanding of who you are and what makes you funny and unique in a scene is really helpful.”

Actor, podcaster and musician Tawny Newsome, who plays Angela Ali on Space Force [2020-22, streamed on Netflix] and voices Beckett Mariner on Star Trek: Lower Decks [animated TV series, 2020-present; CBS All Access, Paramount+], has fully embraced the joys of improvisational performance. Newsome spent more than five years playing eight shows a week to full houses with The Second City comedy troupe. The experience was an intense training experience that she said cured her of any notions of stage fright or fear of failure.

“It is a gauntlet. It was kind of a performing grad school, and it absolutely released any sort of fear or stage fright. I just have zero anymore,” [s]he said. “There’s no embarrassment I can feel worse than what I’d felt at 2 a.m. on a Saturday night in front of a drunk crowd stuffed full of chicken fingers, just looking at me in a scene I’d poured my heart into, and being like, ‘You suck.’”

These days, Newsome thrives in the improvisational medium, and gravitates toward projects that let her flex those skills. She loves the interplay between actors doing improv, even when working with performers who have less experience in this facet of acting. That highlights another of the fundamentals of the art, which is that it works best when actors are consciously making an effort to make each other look good.

“I’m good at ad-libbing things that will set you up for a punchline or set you up for a good character moment,” she said. “It delights me to no end when [performing with] someone who maybe doesn’t come from that much of a comedy background, [and] I feel them wanting to play. [I] give them a little setup and they’re able to respond in character with something super funny, and see them surprise themselves, like, ‘Whoa, I was really funny right then,’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, we did that together. Doesn’t that feel great?’”

Improv brings the thrill of the unexpected and surprise delights for both the audience and the performers — and the magic really happens when actors get in the zone. Meeks describes how that feels.

“You know The Matrix? When Neo starts to see the code falling and then he can avoid the bullets and do all his powers, that’s kind of what’s going on in my mind. Because of the training and experience I have had, I start to see a blip in the code when that unusual or funny thing happens,” he said. “Then, when you get into that commercial audition, where [the director says], ‘Hey put a button on that,’ you’re already in that hyper Matrix-y mode in your brain, of like, I know exactly what would come next because that’s the muscle I built in my head.”

[Author of How to be the Greatest Improviser on Earth, Will Hines, recommends using Matt Besser, Ian Roberts, and Matt Walsh’s The Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual (Comedy Council of Nicea, LLC, 2013) as a reference for explanations of basic improv terms and forms.]