Performance Diary, Part 1

by Kirk Woodward

[When I started Rick On Theater in March 2009, it was in response to a suggestion from my friend Kirk Woodward, now a frequent contributor to this blog—including this post, “Performance Diary, Part 1,” and its companion coming up on 28 August.  In my first post on 16 March that year, I explained that I'd been e-mailing a few friends who used to live in New York and now lived far away.  They’d asked me to tell them what I see on the New York City stages. 

[I began copying Kirk on my reports, and he kept telling me I should try to publish them.  Since I only wrote when I saw something and I wrote about only what struck my interest, it didn’t seem likely anyone would pay me to do what I was doing.

[Kirk was working in IT at the time, so the idea of a blog came up.  He took charge of finding a suitable platform, and I almost immediately started to post.  (There are now over 1,200 posts on ROT, which has been running for 15 years, 5 months, and 9 days (as of 25 August 2024).

[Since I don’t see a show every week, I gave myself permission to fill in the intervening posting dates with coverage of other topics, mostly theater and the arts (but not always).  It became my plan to post articles on aspects of theater that most readers, especially those who weren’t associated with the professional or semi-professional stage, might not know about.

[Life in the theater is complex.  It covers a gallimaufry of fields, disciplines, and specialties.  It’s also labor-intensive, taking more time in one’s day, week, and month than most other endeavors in which people engage.  Many people, both theater folk and “civilians” (as one of my teachers referred to non-theater people—muggles, if you will), see a life devoted to the stage as more a calling than an occupation.  It’s what we do for love—to paraphrase the lines from the impassioned song in which Diana leads the dancers in A Chorus Line.

[As Kirk writes in his “Performance Diary”:

I hope this account indicates some of the many practical issues one encounters when putting on a performance, no matter which kind of performance it is.  Few things are “easy” in performing, no matter how small the show or how expert the team.

[I told Kirk, after I read both parts of his diary, that it made me reminisce some, so it obviously rings true.  I assured him that it's exactly what I want for ROT, along with the performance reports.  He chronicled the day-to-day activities of a theater pro—in Kirk’s case, a director, actor, teacher, and a little bit of a writer—when he’s involved in actual theater work.]

Between the middle of April and the middle of June 2024, I was involved in several performance events that separately perhaps wouldn’t make an entry for this blog but together, I thought, might serve the purpose, so here is a sort of performance diary for that period of time. I say “sort of” because I have revised a few of these entries after the fact. Still, between them they may suggest interesting things. I hope so.

I was surprised by how many performance events could be crammed into a short time period. I’m not always that busy! Here’s what I wrote:

APRIL 10 – Among the theatrical events I’m involved with so far are the following

1.   Love’s Labour’s Lost (hereafter LLL) - I volunteered to help the director, a friend of mine, if there was anything I could do as she directed this lesser-known play by William Shakespeare (1564-1616), and she has sent me the script to see if I can help edit it so it’s short enough to be performed without an intermission.

2.   2.  The Church World Service has a program at the Union Congregational Church in Upper Montclair, where I’ve done some shows, to help Ukrainian school-age children, mostly middle and high school, to get somewhat acclimated to the US. They take language classes, visit places, all sorts of things, and they’re doing a talent show at Union Congregational Church. The theater group there put out a call to see if anyone could help prepare the show, I volunteered, passed my background check, and I’ll be working with them for two three-hour rehearsals, with the first rehearsal tomorrow.

3.   3.  A woman I know asked if I could be a reader with her in an audition she’s doing by video phone this afternoon (that item will be completed later today).

[Two of the performances Kirk Woodward staged at UCC were March Madness – An Evening of Witty One-Acts (by many different writers) and Spoon River, selections from Edgar Lee Masters’s poetry collection, Spoon River Anthology. The UCC Players is also featured in ROT posts “Religious Drama,” 19 January 2014, and “Presbyterian Avant-Garde,” 19 May 2020, both by Woodward.] 

There are others too.

APRIL 15 – I talked with the leaders of the Ukrainian project on Zoom and I told them I’d just watch the next rehearsal and do anything to help that I could. So we’ll see, but it sounds interesting to say the least.

APRIL 20 – a rehearsal with the Ukrainian students. I had originally assumed that I’d be working with children, but as I said, these are high school-age students. They themselves put together the material for the show – songs, skits, and dances. Right now it’s messy and hard to follow. The director, also Ukrainian, is doing her best to keep everything organized. I suggested a couple of things – a bit of movement in an airport scene, a grouping for a scene in a park – and urged them to speak up. It’s not my show to direct, but I hope those thoughts helped a bit.

APRIL 21 – The Exclusions are a jazz group I brought together – drums, bass, piano, melodica (that’s me), and a vocalist. All except possibly me are terrific musicians. A melodica, in case you’re not familiar with it, is a small keyboard instrument that you blow into at one end. It’s often used to teach children music. It sounds a little like an accordion would sound if you blew in it somehow.

Today The Exclusions gave a concert at Fewsmith Presbyterian Church, and in my opinion it was a success. We were well organized at the basic level and a little ragged in the details, but no harm as a result. Everybody played/sang well, and the audience, about 50 people, appeared to love it. We received suggestions that since today’s subject was “Jazz of the 20’s,” next time we should do “Jazz of the 30’s” and so on, and maybe we will. It’s a nice hook to hang songs on. We also heard a suggestion that we should do Latin, Brazilian, Bossa music. Maybe.

APRIL 24 – I finished making the requested cuts in LLL and put the annotated script in the mail. Cutting a play of Shakespeare’s is frequently done, but it takes arrogance to do it.

In making these cuts, I tried to concentrate on clarifying the plot, such as it is, and resisted the urge to cut the entire comic subplot, which seems to me to be unredeemable. Then I cut every line that I didn’t understand when I read it – not that I might not understand it if I researched it, but the audience can’t do that, and why would it be worth a director’s time trying to make a line work if it needs significant explanation?

I am convinced that it is most important that the play’s story be clear. Second in importance is the language – is a line simply functional, or does it illuminate the scene? Third in order is whether or not it makes sense; sometimes problems in that area can be fixed by updating a word or two.

APRIL 28 – For years a group of us have played bluegrass, country, folk, and novelty music at no cost for not-for-profit organizations. We’re called the Foggy Minded Boys, the Foggettes, and, when combined, the Foggy Family. The FMB are men, the Foggettes are a tight harmony group of women.

Tonight we had a Foggy rehearsal, four of us. We have several Foggette bookings but none for the FMB right now, but I wanted to revive some songs that we haven’t done since Covid – a Fifties medley, “Act Naturally,” a Flatt and Scruggs medley, a couple of novelty numbers, and so on. It was a blast.

Carlos, our banjo player, had bought a new banjo in Nashville, sold to him by the man who hand-made it, and it has transformed his playing. I said to him, “The wand chooses the magician.” I’m not sure he got the Harry Potter reference, but it’s true – this is the banjo he ought to have, and his solos were blistering, his accompaniment was solid . . . a good rehearsal all around.

APRIL 30 – I asked Marina, the director/coordinator of the Ukrainian students’ production, how their rehearsal last weekend went, and she wrote:

The kids were more prepared, they remembered their lines, but we were suffering with technical issues and our time in the sanctuary was limited. We analyzed our mistakes, fixed our flaws and awkwardness, discussed where and when to enter, exit, etc. Next time we will bring the costumes and props. Our sound playback will be ready, English subtitles for Romeo And Juliet [sic] are ready. Musical numbers are ready. We need your professional eye and precious instructions. We all missed you.

If every rehearsal accomplished that much, nobody would need my instructions, which I doubt are all that precious. Anyway we’ll see how the rehearsal goes on Saturday and what if anything I can offer the next time I’m there.

MAY 4 – my second and last rehearsal with the Ukrainian students. They had made progress in last week’s rehearsal, when I wasn’t there, and were able to do the program more or less from start to finish. Two hand-held microphones were a help, and the musical numbers, all Ukrainian songs, sounded fine if a little raw. Although the students seemed to welcome me, virtually all the conversation was in Ukrainian, and sometimes there’s be long discussions followed by absolutely no change in behavior as far as I could tell – but of course I didn’t know what they’d been discussing.

I tried to think what I could say that would be both useful and succinct, since I felt I only had one real chance to say anything, and I focused on trying to close the gaps between sections – know what’s coming up next, know where everything that you’ll need is located, jump right in and get the scene started as fast as you can. The director promised to make sure each cast member got a copy of the program, which should help with continuity.

In the evening I participated in a table reading of a new musical that a friend has written. I won’t say anything about the specifics, but, fairly typically as far as I know for a new musical, the show took a long time to read through and needs focusing and editing. The writer seemed to agree, so I hope we helped.

MAY 5 – a meeting to announce the selection of LLL as the September production of the St. James Players of Montclair, New Jersey, a community theater group that presents one play a year, usually by William Shakespeare, and to introduce the director, Sharon Quinn, who’s a friend of mine from decades ago. About thirty people attended, many of them from last year’s production of Antigone. The evening consisted of a short theater game and a description of the play by Sharon – that was all. Auditions in two weeks. This is the play I had worked on editing.

MAY 7 – a musical performance by the Foggettes. Before the Covid quarantine, we had three Foggettes (plus me on piano); after the quarantine we had two, one having moved to South Dakota. We found two new fine singers and we’ve all been working to get a real “group” going again, and I think we achieved it today. It wasn’t that everything was technically perfect (it’s never perfect), but everyone worked together and the show had heart.

MAY 10 – For several years my son Craig and I have separately been participating in simulations for a university class for social workers, in which we play predators who target seniors, and the class members, in twos, interview us, trying to figure out if we’re dangerous or not. Today we had the most participants I’ve ever worked with – twelve teams, ten minutes each, over three hours.

My goal this time was to behave more suspiciously than previously, in order to give the interviewers more reason to be skeptical of me. In about the fifth session today I was asked whether I wrote checks for the man I’m accused of exploiting, and I replied, “No, I’d never get involved in that. Checks can be traced!” I thought that was practically a confession of guilt – why else would I be thinking along those lines?

To my amazement, no one noticed the implications – I’m not sure if they didn’t hear me or felt there was no good way to exploit my statement, but in any case I was able to repeat it with two other groups, and no one commented. I was delighted – I guess my criminal instincts were satisfied.

This evening was the monthly “jazz jam” at a church in Bergen County, New Jersey. The “house band” is called Foreign Exchange, because there are many people from Japan in the band, the church, and the community. The band members vary in skill; the tenor saxophonist, Yoshi Koyama, is world-class, others – including myself – are working to improve. The leader, Michael Hinton, is an astonishing percussionist, who over his career has worked with, among others, the Grateful Dead, Liza Minelli, and Henry Mancini. In this group he plays piano. Good things can happen, and the closing number, “There Will Never Be Another You” (music by Harry Warren and lyrics by Mack Gordon; 1942), was a rouser.

MAY 11 – the Ukrainian We Are Here: Refugee Youth Variety Show gave its one performance this afternoon.  I thought of the two remarks The Art of Coarse Acting (Michael Canon Green, 1964) says you can say about a show, “Better than Broadway!” and “Nobody noticed a thing.”

But more on my mind was what Theseus says in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “For never any thing can be amiss / when simpleness and duty tender it.” The truth is, the show was lovely for what it was and for what it represented. The teenagers had written and structured it; I’d have put it together differently, but so what, it was their show.

There was one highly theatrical moment, when a singer, doing a song called “Ey Guzel Qirim,” a Tatar ballad about deaths of an indigenous people in the Crimea, began singing in the shadow and moved slowly into the light. There were dances, songs both instrumental and sung, and a funny modern-day Romeo and Juliet in Ukrainian, with a projected translation.

A representative of the Church World Service, which sponsored the program, told me that some of the cast hopes to go home despite the dangers; some don’t. All in all, I was overjoyed for them, and moved.

A curious sidenote: As I walked up to the church where the Ukrainians were going to perform, Janet, the director, called out. She was sitting on a bench with Gary, an actor, and she said, “I need you to sit on the bench” so Gary would have someone to deliver a monolog to, in another scene Janet was directing. So we sat outside and rehearsed the scene for a while. Theater happens in all sorts of places.

MAY 19 – Tonight we held first readings for LLL with a small turnout, but I was impressed that everyone handled the language well, with no exceptions. It’s true that the theater company has performed Shakespeare’s plays for about 15 years; maybe experience does count for something.

MAY 20 – the second and last night of auditions for LLL. More people came and it looks like we’ll have a cast. Some random thoughts about directors and actors at auditions:

1.      Directors make most of their initial casting decisions almost immediately on seeing an actor. Therefore they shouldn’t waste the actors’ time. The temptation is to read an actor a number of times in order to make them feel that they’ve been heard.

2.      Instructions to actors should focus on things the actors can do at that moment. Philosophical or psychological subtleties, interesting but irrelevant plot details, detailed character analysis, all are pointless at an audition unless an actor can do something with them on the spot.

3.      Why do directors ask actors to act in auditions in ways that they wouldn’t ask them to in rehearsal? Directors learn (sometimes!) not to ask actors for “results,” such as “Can you do this scene again, but this time be really angry?” Good directors (I would say) work on reasons for behavior and on what the characters want. There’s no reason they shouldn’t do the same in auditions, but frequently these often get “shorthanded,” presumably in order to see how flexible the actor is. I still object.

4.      Directors should remember that actors may bring unexpected traits and abilities that potentially can enrich the play more than the directors’ own preconceptions might. Otherwise why have actors at all? Maybe replace them with AI created replicas? (I hope no one takes up that suggestion.) Another way to phrase that idea is that directors should be alert to ideas for roles that they have not considered.

MAY 21 – the casting for LLL seems fine, and we have had just enough people to fill all the roles. I mentioned above that I thought I might be cast in the play, but I never put my name in, feeling that we had enough good people to cast without me, and I was correct. I imagine I’ll be working on the show in some capacity.

The Mental Health Players, under the auspices of the New Jersey Mental Health Association, present short scenes on mental health issues for audiences all the way from patients to psychologists, followed by audience discussion. We will have one coming up on Friday, so this morning Martha, with whom I almost always do the scenes, called and we worked out a shorter version of the scenario we were sent. We’ve done this scene (on depression – Martha is the victim, I’m her oblivious brother) before, but not since Covid.

MAY 22 – I often have the kind of dreams that people call “actors’ nightmares,” in which one dreams of appearing in a play, or some other performance situation, unprepared and confused. Last night I dreamed I was going to be the baritone soloist in some sort of oratorio. I was sure I’d do fine although I hadn’t rehearsed and I could only recall part of the first number. At the last minute I realized it might be a good idea to have the music for the piece and I started looking for a vocal book . . . .

Tonight in a Zoom class on “classic TV” led by my friend the actor Joseph Smith, we discussed Ed Sullivan, who by having no performance skills at all made a perfect host for countless gifted performers. His situation reminded me of one of the central paradoxes of acting: the more skilled the actor, the less the actor looks like they’re doing anything at all. Obviously Ed Sullivan demonstrates the falsity of that conclusion: he doesn’t do any “acting,” and he doesn’t seem like he is, either. Being straightforward and lifelike on stage isn’t “natural.”

MAY 24 – Martha and I presented our Mental Health Players scene today at a county treatment facility specializing in mental illness. Our scene went fine; the audience was made up of patients and attendants, and some in the audience were not able to take in the fact that we are actors.

I was reminded how theatrical “conventions” – procedures and devices – can become so familiar that we forget that’s what they are. The idea that we two people up there were not brother and sister and in many ways are unlike the characters we portrayed is a familiar idea for most audiences, but it’s nevertheless arbitrary, a fact seldom noticed. Some in this audience were confused and thought that in real life we were brother and sister, one really suffering from depression.

MAY 27 – a readthrough on Zoom of LLL by five of us, including Sharon, the director. A goal was to see how long the show would run, with a target of 75 minutes (in one continuous act); the readthrough took 74 minutes. In practice this does not mean the show will actually be that short, since it will contain musical numbers, not to mention scene changes, varying line readings, and mishaps. In other words, the script needs more cutting, which Sharon says she will do.

MAY 31 – a local theater company, just starting out, has now produced two new, full-length plays, one of which I saw tonight. How might one decide which was “better?” My answer: the first one gave me nothing to think about. The second had its problems, but I’ve spent the next day thinking about it.

JUNE 9 – a first cast readthrough of LLL, and it took an hour and twenty minutes, which is a good timing for a first reding. It’s a nice cast, although the difficulties in a production of Shakespeare are huge. His plays take everything a director has got.

JUNE10 – a readthrough for LLL preceded by two withdrawals from the cast, one small role and one largish one. One who quit thought the casting of her role was inappropriate, and one said to me, “I didn’t understand a word.”

People dropping out of performances happens frequently in community theater, but it happens in professional theater too (where the effects can be more complicated). The headaches a director then faces includes finding someone else to play the role and, often, having to adjust the rehearsal schedule.

Interestingly, at tonight’s reading the level of comprehension of Shakespeare’s words, at least as far as I could tell, was much higher than last night, with some actors positively comfortable in their roles and the plot seeming more and more intelligible.

I irritated myself by speaking up at least once when I should have kept quiet; I’m not directing, I’m not even acting, so shut up. I did start sketching ideas for blocking in my script, I admit it, both to keep my mind active and to see what I might come up with – not to be shared with anyone.

JUNE 14 – In tonight’s “jazz jam” I realized tonight that one thing I’ve learned is not to anticipate what I’ll play when it’s my time to solo, but just to trust that at that moment I’ll play what I’m supposed to play. “Be in the moment” is really the lesson. I want to apply that more to my acting as well.

JUNE 15 - Bone tired, I still dragged myself this evening to the second half of blocking rehearsals for LLL. I guess it was okay; I could hardly keep my eyes open. When I began this diary piece, I was involved in five different projects; four are now completed or on indefinite hold, with only LLL in the running, and I’m basically just an observer on that. But who knows? In theater anything can happen.

*

At this point the account of LLL ends, because the two-month period I’m writing about is over, and because, due to scheduling problems and vacation, I didn’t see another rehearsal for a month.

I hope this account indicates some of the many practical issues one encounters when putting on a performance, no matter which kind of performance it is. Few things are “easy” in performing, no matter how small the show or how expert the team.

The second half of this diary will focus on one production, with the aim of pointing out more of the interesting challenges one encounters in theater.

[The second half of this diary, which will be posted on 28 August, will focus on the production of two new one-act plays in which Kirk had two roles.  Kirk’s aim is to point out more of the interesting challenges he encounters while working in theater.  Please return to Rick On Theater for “Performance Diary, Part 2,” on Wednesday.]