Rick's Guide to New York, Part 1

 

A Special Installment of “A Helluva Town”  

[Many years ago, I compiled a visitors’ guide to New York City.  I was going out of town for a short time, and the widow of one of my professors in undergraduate school was going to be staying in my Manhattan apartment.  I was going to leave town before she arrived from Virginia, so I wouldn’t be able to show her where I kept things or where to find stores and services in my neighborhood, so I decided to write up a guide for her.

[I focused on the apartment, the building, and the immediate neighborhood.  Over the years, I updated the guide and expanded it a little, in case I have another out-of-town guest when I wasn’t around.  That never happened, so I stopped keeping up the guide. 

[But I thought, if I brought it up to date now, and jettisoned the parts about the apartment and the building, it might be an interesting thing to share on Rick On Theater.  I live in the Flatiron District (which didn’t even have a name when I first compiled the guide!), and it’s an interesting neighborhood—and has even gotten better in some ways.  So, here’s the result of my revision.

[Even without the stuff about my apartment and my building, the guide was pretty long.  And in its original form, it was full of abbreviations, shorthand, and telegraphic prose.  When I expanded all that into proper English, the guide was too long to post all at once.  So, I’ve split the document into three parts, of which this is the first.  It’s a little haphazard, but it’s readable enough.  You all will decide if it was worth the effort.  So, especially those who aren’t from around here: Take a little bite of the Big Apple!] 

Willkommen! Bienvenue! Welcome!
To the Big Apple

Here are some things you might want to know about The City and the Borough of Manhattan:

General: “The Bronx is up but the Battery’s down.”  That’s true, but Brooklyn is also “down.”  New York City really doesn’t exist.  (The lyric’s from “New York, New York” from On the Town, music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, 1944.)

The five boroughs are really quite separate, both physically and emotionally.  Note that the famous Dodgers were never the “New York Dodgers” but the Brooklyn Dodgers.  The Yankees, you’ll notice, are never called the “Bronx Yankees”—though they are known as the Bronx Bombers occasionally.  The Dodgers, of course, were just “The Bums”—or “Dem Bums” if you spoke the local dialect.  (The hapless Mets, just to complete the trilogy, play in Queens.)

Everyone knows that Manhattan is an island, and some people even know that Staten Island is part of New York City (although it’s nearer New Jersey and voted to secede in 1993).  But New York City is actually three main islands (and many smaller ones, not all of them inhabited, such as Roosevelt, City, Governor’s, Rikers, Ellis, Liberty, and North and South Brother).  Beside Manhattan and Staten, Brooklyn and Queens are actually on Long Island.  Only The Bronx is on the mainland. 

(The five boroughs of New York City are also counties: New York [Manhattan], Bronx, Queens, Kings [Brooklyn] and Richmond [Staten Island]; it is the only U.S. city so organized.)  Brooklyn was a separate city (and still claims to be the fourth largest city in the U.S.) until 1898, after the Brooklyn Bridge was built (1883) to connect it to Manhattan.  (Many Brooklynites are still miffed about this betrayal.) 

There are also several rivers, aside from the famous Hudson to the west (also known as the North River, its original Dutch name—Noort Rivier—where it runs along the Manhattan shore).  There are the Bronx River and the Harlem River, both in the north.  The Flushing River, also known as Flushing Creek, is in the Borough of Queens (on Long Island) and the Hutchinson River flows through the Borough of the Bronx and southern Westchester County to its north.

There are also many other streams that don’t rise to the level of a river (no pun intended . . . but I’ll take it).  Some, even if you’re not from the Big Apple, you’ve probably heard of: the Gowanus Canal and Newtown Creek in Brooklyn; Spuyten Duyvil Creek in Manhattan; and Fresh Kills on Staten Island. 

(Spuyten Duyvil and Fresh Kills, like Staten Island and Brooklyn, are names derived from 17th-century Dutch, though the exact translations are often lost due to corruption over the centuries, especially after the British took over New Netherland and New Amsterdam in 1664.)

The well-known East River, by the way, isn’t a river at all.  It’s actually an arm of the ocean—a tidal estuary or strait—is salt water, connects Upper New York Bay on its south to Long Island Sound on its north, and has tides like the harbor.  Because it’s narrowed by Manhattan Island on the west and Long Island, with the Boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, on the east, it looks like a river.

The following comment by Andrew H. Malcolm was published in the New York Times on 19 April 1991, Section C (“Weekend”): 20; it’s rather appropriate:

New York Survival Tips

One striking thing about New York City is its residents’ willingness to tell visitors where to go, whether recommending a good restaurant or responding to comments on their civility.

But here is a non-New Yorker’s advice for visitors who don’t know what questions to ask:

New Yorkers don’t actually think they are more important than anyone else.  They know it.  What else could explain why they came here?  And look at the geography: New Yorkers live where the Passaic River and the Gawanus Canal merge to form the Atlantic Ocean.  Enough about import.

New Yorkers are not happily ignorant about the rest of the country.  They recognize there are 50 other states.  They know the H in Ohio is silent so it comes out Iowa.

Next, something about city geography.  New York City is Manhattan, period.  The other three boroughs—Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx—were allowed in because the subways had to end somewhere.  Staten Island, which is trying to get out, was needed to keep New Jersey at bay and to support the wrong end of a bridge named for the explorer Verrazano, who left too.

Now about crime.  Some people think that a city where 5.5 people are killed on the average day should be called Detroit.  This is ridiculous.  New York is a fine name.  New York remains one of the region’s safest island cities.  And the New York Police Department, with the uniformed personnel equivalent to two full Army divisions, is determined to keep the city as safe as it already is.

Some fashion tips: wear running shoes everywhere, as New Yorkers do; yes, it looks funny, but so do life jackets.  Wear all luggage like bandoliers.  Do not take photographs; that’s what those nifty Big Apple postcards are for.  Wear jewelry only indoors.  For streetwear, don a Walkman; in groups, everybody don a Walkman.  If you run low on incense, go to Times Square.  Do not say hello to people, even if you know them; it’s too Des Moines.  And places like Idaho don’t even have subway cars to deface.  If someone says hello to you, use those shoes; he’s not from Des Moines.

Also, do not admit to possessing a driver’s license; it hurts the environment and New Yorkers oppose pollution unless it’s in the Hudson River.  Do not expect New York bus drivers to accept United States currency.  Walking in groups of 500 or more for safety requires a parade permit, which explains Fifth Avenue’s closure every 15 minutes.

Above all, do not try to trick these big-city people about the pigeons.  New Yorkers know they’re just grown-up sparrows.

(Andrew H. Malcolm (b. 22 June 1943 in Cleveland, Ohio) is himself not a native New Yorker.  He was educated at attended Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana, and Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.  He then wrote for the New York Times (1967-93) as a correspondent in Chicago, San Francisco, Vietnam, Bangkok, Tokyo, Korea, and Canada.  After leaving the New York Times, Malcolm wrote for the Los Angeles Times from 2001 to 2011.  In between, he worked for the Governor of Montana (1993-99).  His current position is as a columnist for the conservative political blog RedState, whose parent company is based in Irving, Texas.)

The famous nickname: Let’s get to one of the most curious facts about The City.  (If you live here or anywhere nearby, New York is just “The City.”  To many, that means specifically Manhattan, and some New Yorkers from the other four boroughs speak of going “to the city” when they mean Manhattan.)

I’m thinking of the city’s world-renowned nickname, The Big Apple.  People worldwide recognize the name, but there are lots of stories about where the moniker comes from.  Many are apocryphal, and even the fact that the origin’s unknown or uncertain is no longer true.  (One false account that was popularly circulated had it that the name referred to an early-19th-century New York City brothel whose madam was named Eve.  The girls were “Eve’s Apples.”)

There are many interesting details about the nickname, but the basic story is fairly simple.  It started to show up in a column by John J. FitzGerald (1872-1952) in the New York Morning Telegraph in the 1920s. It was at first a term used in horseracing circles—New York was a big racing town in the early and mid-20th century, as Damon Runyon (journalist and short-story writer; 1880-1946) would affirm (consider “Fugue for Tinhorns” from Guys and Dolls (1950; music and lyrics by Frank Loesser [1910-69] and book by Jo Swerling [1897-1964] and Abe Burrows [1910-85]): “I got the horse right here”)—particularly among the African-American stable hands.  

The moniker meant that New York was the center of the racing business, where the crowds were large and knowledgeable and the bettors well-healed and avid.  Running in the Big Apple was the horseracing equivalent of playing the Palace!

By the ’30s, the name had been appropriated by the jazz world, which had the same relationship with New York City as the horseracing world did—it was the best place to have a gig.  Heading for the Big Apple was climbing to the top of the jazz pyramid.  (In 1937, a song called “The Big Apple,” recorded by Tommy Dorsey among others, became a hit.)  From that usage, continuing into the ’40s and ’50s, the nickname spread and became permanent.

In the 1970s, New York City’s official tourist and marketing bureau began promoting the city as “the Big Apple,” marking it as the semi-official name for the city, and in 1997, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (b. 1944; 107th Mayor of the City of New York: 1994-2001) approved the designation of the southwest corner of 54th Street and Broadway, near where FitzGerald lived his last years, as “Big Apple Corner.”  So, the Big Apple we are, and the Big Apple we shall ever be!  Now, go buy a T-shirt.

(By the way, the town of Manhattan, Kansas, population 52,000, likes to call itself “The Little Apple.”  Minneapolis, Minnesota, has apparently taken to calling itself “The Mini-Apple” (get it?).  A coupla fellow-travelers, if ya ask me!) 

History of New York City: In the pre-colonial era, the area of present-day New York City was inhabited by various bands of Algonquian tribes of Native Americans, including the Lenape.

An Italian, Giovanni da Verrazano (explorer in the service of King of France; 1485-1525) discovered New York Harbor in 1524.  In 1609, English explorer and navigator Henry Hudson (b. ca. 1565, disappeared, 1611), sailed up the Hudson River. 

Then in 1624, the Dutch founded the first permanent trading post.  In 1626, the first governor, Pierre (Peter) Minuit (born in present-day Germany of Walloon parents; 1580-1638; Director and Governor of New Netherland: 1626-31), bought the island of Manhattan from the Lenape people for what’s been historically estimated as the equivalent of $24. 

(This is a guestimate by a 19th-century historian who based it on the then-current value of 60 guilders, the value placed on the goods by the Dutch settlers who made the trade for the land.  The figure had never been adjusted for inflation, nor is there an accurate inventory of the traded goods in order to appraise their probable worth—to the Europeans, let alone the Indians.)

The Dutch built a little town on the southern tip of Manhattan Island.  It was called New Amsterdam and it flourished by selling skins.  The settlers sold otter, beaver, mink, and sealskins.  However, New Amsterdam was a tiny town with only about 1,500 inhabitants in the mid-17th century.  In New Amsterdam buildings were, at first, made of wood but in time houses of stone or brick were erected.  

In 1647, Petrus (Peter) Stuyvesant (Dutch; c. 1610-72; Director-General of New Netherland: 1647-64) became governor of New Amsterdam.  In 1653, Stuyvesant established a municipal government for New Amsterdam based on those of Dutch cities.  

However, in 1664, an English fleet arrived.  Fearing the English would sack the colony, Stuyvesant surrendered.  The Dutch briefly recaptured New Amsterdam in 1673, but they lost it to the English again in 1674.  This time, it was renamed New York in honor of James, Duke of York (1633-1701), brother of King Charles II (1630-85). 

By 1700, New York had a population of almost 5,000 and it continued to grow rapidly.  By 1776, the population was about 25,000. In 1800, New York City had about 60,000 inhabitants.

During the 18th century, amenities in New York improved.  The first newspaper, the New York Gazette began publication in 1725.  The first theater in New York, the New Theatre, opened on Maiden Lane in 1732.  King’s College (now Columbia University) was founded in 1754, the oldest institution of higher education in New York and the tenth-oldest in the United States.

On 16 November 1776, George Washington (1732-99; Commander in Chief of the Continental Army: 1775-83) withdrew from New York, leaving the British army to occupy it.  Then on 21 September 1776, New York was struck by a great fire, which destroyed hundreds of houses.  Altogether, about one quarter of the city was destroyed.  

The British continued to occupy New York until the end of the war.  Though not all New Yorkers were committed loyalists during the Revolution, New York had a higher percentage of loyalists than any other American colony.  Washington didn’t reenter New York until 25 November 1783, when the British evacuated the city.  

Elected President of the United States on 6 April 1789 and inaugurated on 30 April, Washington (presidential term: 1789-97) took his oath of office at Federal Hall.  New York City was the first capital of the United States from 1785 to 1790, first under the Articles of Confederation (1781-89) and then under the United States Constitution (ratified: 1788; effective: 1789).

At first, New York City grew in a haphazard way.  However, in 1807, Daniel D. Tompkins (1774-1825), Governor of the State of New York (1807-17), appointed a commission to draw up a plan for the city. The commission reported in 1811.  The plan proposed that new streets should be laid out on a grid pattern.  There would be 12 avenues running north to south and 155 streets running east to west.  As New York City grew, the grid pattern spread north across Manhattan.

By 1820, New York had become the USA's largest city with a population of 123,000.  It continued to grow rapidly. The population of New York City in 1830 was 202,589, the first time a city in the United States had a population of over 200,000.

However, in 1835, fire destroyed much of the old district of New York.  It was soon rebuilt, and by 1840, New York had a population of 312,000.  By 1860, it had 813,000 inhabitants.

From the 1830s, horse-drawn buses ran in the streets of New York.  The first elevated railway in New York was built between 1867 and 1870 by Charles T. Harvey (1829-1912), a civil engineer.  It began carrying passengers in 1868.  It was soon followed by many other elevated railways or “els.”  The first line of the New York subway, the largest system in the world and the only one that operates 24/7, opened in 1904.

In the early 20th century, Broadway became famous for its theaters.  Meanwhile, the Statue of Liberty was unveiled by President Grover Cleveland (1837-1908; 22nd and 24th President of the United States: 1885-89 and 1893-97) on 28 October 1886.  

In the mid-19th century, many Germans and Irish came to live in New York.  In the late 19th century, many Italians arrived and in the 1890s, many Eastern European Jews came to New York.  In 1892, the United States Immigration Station opened on Ellis Island.  Between 1892 and its closure in 1954, almost 17 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island.

The island is now the site of the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration and the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital and other unrenovated sites, the Abandoned Hospital Complex, are open to the public through guided tours.

Meanwhile, in 1898, the five boroughs of New York City were united under a single municipal government.  The City of New York had a population of 3.4 million.

In the 20th century, New York City continued to grow.  By 1980 New York had a population of 7 million.

Many famous buildings were built in New York City in the early 20th century.  The Flatiron Building, one of the city’s most iconic and immediately recognizable structures, was built in 1902.  New York Public Library, the second-largest public library in the United States behind the Library of Congress and the fourth-largest public library in the world, opened in 1911.  

The 55-story Woolworth Building was erected in 1913.  The same year, 1913, Grand Central Station opened.  The Chrysler Building, 77 art-deco stories, was erected in 1930 and the 102-story Empire State Building, the world’s tallest building until the first tower of the World Trade Center was topped out in 1970, was erected in 1931.  Also in 1931, the General Electric Building (50 floors) was built. The Rockefeller Center, 19 buildings covering 22 acres in Midtown Manhattan, was built in 1932-40.

World Fairs were held in New York in 1939-40 and 1963-64.  However, in 1965 there were also race riots in Harlem.  Also, in 1965, New York suffered a power blackout.  Another blackout happened in 1977 and in 2012, Superstorm Sandy caused flooding that brought on another city-wide power failure.

In 2001, tragedy struck when the World Trade Center was destroyed in a terrorist attack on 11 September (9/11).  However, New York recovered from the attack, and today, New York is still a busy port, the third largest in the United States and the largest on the East Coast.  

It’s also a major industrial and financial center.  New York City is, of course, an important tourist destination. Today, the population of New York City is 8.3 million, with another 2 million in the city every day for work, business, tourism, and play.

Some directions:  In Manhattan, uptown is north (street numbers get higher), downtown is south (street numbers get smaller until 8th Street, then all hell breaks loose!). 

Though the areas with pre-grid street layouts have irregular traffic directions, within the grid, streets and avenues generally alternate northbound or southbound and eastbound and westbound.  For instance, 6th Avenue is northbound/uptown, 5th Avenue is southbound/downtown, Madison Avenue is northbound, and so on.  The same for the streets: 15th Street is westbound, 16th is eastbound, 17th is westbound.

There are some streets that are two-way roadways, such as Park Avenue (which is divided by a landscaped median) and 3rd Avenue.  The two-way east-west streets are major crosstown thoroughfares: 8th Street, 14th Street, 23rd, 34th, 42nd, 59th, 72nd, 79th, et cetera.

5th Avenue (a south-bound street) is the middle: the East Side runs to the East River (isn’t it neat!) and includes 4th (which becomes Park Avenue South at 17th Street and then Park Avenue at 34th Street), 3rd, 2nd and, 1st Avenues, and Avenues A, B and C (known as “Alphabet City” to the cynics). 

York Avenue, a southbound roadway, runs from 59th to 92nd Streets through the Upper East Side, to the east of 1st Avenue and is an extension, with respect to the address-numbering system, of Avenue A.

Madison Avenue (northbound) starts at 26th Street (Madison Square) and splits the block between 5th and Park Avenues.  Lexington Avenue (southbound) starts at 23rd Street (Gramercy Park) and splits the full block between Park and 3rd Avenues (both mostly two-way roads). 

The West Side includes 6th (uptown) through 12th Avenues (two-way traffic)—though down where I live, in the Flatiron District, there isn’t anything beyond 10th Avenue except the West Side Highway and the Hudson River.)  As the island widens going north, 11th (southbound from 24th to 34th Streets; elsewhere, two-way traffic) and 12th Avenues appear, as does Riverside Drive (two-way), which generally parallels the Hudson River and Riverside Park from 72nd Street north.

Broadway (two-way traffic from its northernmost point, then south of Columbus Circle/59th Street, one-way southbound) cuts across Manhattan on a diagonal, starting at Bowling Green, below the Financial District, running up the Lower East Side, crossing 5th Avenue at 23rd street into the West Side and continuing roughly parallel to the Hudson River to Inwood at the northern tip of Manhattan.

In the middle of its run, whenever Broadway intersects with a major crosstown street, there’s a square (and one circle) adjacent to the crossing point.  At 14th Street and 4th/Park Avenue is Union Square (home of the infamous Tammany Hall).  At 23rd Street, it crosses 5th Avenue and Madison Square is nearby. 

(It doesn’t quite fit the paradigm, but it’s close: at 8th Street and Broadway, there’s a gap between the intersection and 3rd Avenue to the east, but in the area between Broadway/8th Street and 3rd Avenue is Cooper Square/Astor Place.  That’s the location of the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (see Part 3), a higher-education institution for architecture, the arts, and engineering, and the Public Theater, the city’s busiest theatrical producing house.)

On the West Side at 6th Avenue and 34th Street, the intersection of Broadway is next to Herald Square.  When it meets 7th Avenue at 42nd Street, Times Square is adjacent.  (Father Duffy Square—recently dubbed “Actors’ Square”—with the statue of George M. Cohan and the TDF TKTS booth is the north end of Times Square.)  At 59th Street and 8th Avenue/CPW, Columbus Circle, the city’s only traffic circle, is formed.

(Visitors and others not familiar with the actual New York City should note that Times Square doesn’t really exits.  There’s no park like Madison Square Park or Union Square Park, for instance.  Times Square isn’t even geometrically a square; it’s closer to two triangles emanating north and south from West 45th Street, where north-south Seventh Avenue intersects northwest-southeast Broadway): formed by the intersection of Broadway, Seventh Avenue, and West 42nd Street.

(With adjacent Duffy Square at the northern end of the “square,” Times Square is a bowtie-shaped space five blocks long between 42nd and 47th Streets, with Duffy Square as the northern triangle of Times Square bowtie, bounded by 45th and 47th Streets, Broadway, and Seventh Avenue, known for the TKTS reduced-price theater tickets booth run by the Theatre Development Fund.)

Distances: In Manhattan, 20 numbered street blocks = 1 mile (e.g.: 14th Street and 6th Avenue to 34th Street and 6th [Herald Square] is one mile).  The long blocks between avenues are about seven to the mile; however, the exact number can vary depending on where you are, due to variations in block lengths across the island.

(Since Madison and Lexington Avenues bisect blocks, they don’t figure into the estimated distance-measuring along the grid.  Calculate only from 5th to Park Avenues or Park to 3rd Avenue, ignoring Mad and Lex.  Got that?)

[Well, that’s the beginning.  I’ll have the next installment on Monday, 2 December.]

Physical Theater

 

[Almost three months ago, I published a four-part series on theater education and training on Rick On Theater.  One article, “It’s A Clown’s Life: Lessons From Clown School” by Lara Bevan-Shiraz, was about physical theater, the topic of the two articles posted below.  “It’s A Clown’s Life” was posted in “Theater Education & Training, Part 1,” 3 October 2024.

[Physical theater can be defined as a genre of theatrical performance that encompasses storytelling primarily through the performers' physical movements, which may also include masking.  Mime and theatrical clowning have influenced many modern expressions of physical theater, and traditions such as Commedia dell'arte, as well as Asian theater forms such as Japanese Noh and Balinese theater have influenced Western physical theater.] 

“CHICAGO’S PHYSICAL THEATER FESTIVAL:
MOVING IN MANY SENSES”
by Gabriela Furtado Coutinho 

[This article, which wasn't published in American Theatre’s print edition, was posted on the magazine’s website on 2 August 2024.]

This essential gathering, now in its 11th year, doesn’t just regularly break the fourth wall; it also breaks down theatrical and global barriers.

A baby and a theatre festival: Over a decade ago, a beloved Chicago couple discovered they were pregnant with both. Their kids now run about wild, creative, free. The annual Physical Theater Festival Chicago proved a popular tween this year, boasting eight different shows, five workshops, and three virtual events across the month of July [13th-21st], and attracting over 2,000 audience participants. But you may be surprised to learn that this landmark celebration of storytelling was conceived on an unassuming flight of fancy.

Co-founders and artistic directors Alice da Cunha [actress, director, and producer] and Marc Frost [novelist, screenwriter, film and television producer and director; b. 1953] first met doing physical theatre in the U.K., and they continue to draw lifelong inspiration from sweeping curations like the London [international] Mime Festival [1977-2023]. “When we came to Chicago, Marc and I always said that when we retired, we would start a physical theatre festival,” said da Cunha. They didn’t have to wait that long, receiving a curatorial grant of $3,000 from Links Hall just two years into their Chicago residence—and three trimesters into the gestation of their firstborn, Benjamin.

[Links Hall in Chicago is a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering artistic innovation and public engagement. It maintains a facility that offers flexible programming, facilitating research, development, and presentation of new work in the performing arts.]

If anyone can tackle such a massive undertaking, it’s these two brilliant creative leaders. Da Cunha and Frost have become local theatre celebrities, known for their warm effervescence and sharp critical eye for movement. Audiences crowd around them at each show for a conversation or a Carioca “hello” (two kisses on the cheek) as the two bustle about festival tasks. Their whole lives seem to have prepared them for these moments, as they switch seamlessly between community building and company management, diplomacy and art, heart and mind, one language and another. They extend many bridges.

[Everything that comes from the city of Rio de Janeiro, including natives, is called Carioca. Cariocas are also extremely friendly and are very comfortable with physical contact, such as kissing on the cheek, which is a typical greeting.]

Each year it’s moving to see how they form a border-defying family. Da Cunha’s roots in Portugal and Brazil and Frost’s upbringing in Chicago help them create Windy City spaces that feel like home to artists from all over the world. This year’s lineup featured much-anticipated spectacles which had garnered high renown in their home countries and accolades across international festivals. These included Clayton Nascimento’s grounded and transformative Macacos, from my native Brazil: Chula the Clown’s hilarious and heartbreaking Perhaps, Perhaps . . . Quizás from México; and an array of multigenerational offerings like cinematic The Man Who Thought He Knew Too Much from Voloz Collective (France/U.K.). From Chicago artists there was Scratch Night, featuring works-in-process; Theatre Y’s soul-stirring Little Carl; and an outdoor Millennium Park extravaganza with circus and magician performers. 

All the pieces this year delved into some element of play, metatheatricality, and silent imagery. Many were one-person shows; some were completely nonverbal. All fit da Cunha and Frost’s expansive definition of physical theatre: “If you close your eyes, you wouldn’t get at least 50-90 percent of the storytelling.” Bodies in space morph into anything and everything: A child’s struggle to put on a jacket transforms them into a rhinoceros in the delightful Don’t Make Me Get Dressed (by Boston’s The Gottabees). In Macacos, a Black Brazilian man realizes the stage is a space to dream and resolves to become a jazz diva, until history bursts at the seams and floods in more sobering anecdotes. And in The Man Who Thought . . ., bodies turn into walls, bullets, horses, and spilled coffee, in the style of French movement artist Jacques Lecoq [1921-99].

American performing arts often feel siloed. Genres like theatre, standup, circus, and clown self-segregate, and it’s not often you see a company deeply integrate those approaches and communities. This festival proves the value of intertwining international performance pedagogies. I felt the air shift with possibility each moment a performer broke the fourth wall, shifted genre midway through a show, ventured into self-referential territory, or pulled up audience members. Speaking with patrons, I learned that many look forward to the Physical Theater Festival each year because of this risk-taking innovation, which has become increasingly rare in a risk-averse American theatre landscape. People’s excitement around the international shows should be a lesson to Chicago, and more broadly the U.S., to continue branching out from conventional Western storytelling.

Take Perhaps, Perhaps . . . Quizás [Quizás is Spanish for ‘perhaps’ or ‘maybe’], for instance. This nonverbal one-woman show, which depends on audience participation, contains a degree of fourth-wall-breaking and engagement that is still all too rare in American theatre, and was executed impeccably in festival performances.

Dressed in a wedding gown, Chula the Clown starts out seated, penning love notes and romantic dreams on sheets of paper—then crumples them up. Her “mask”—a painted white face with arched brow—locates itself between the traditional 18th-century clown look and the 2010s boy brow makeup obsession. Hair sprouts from her head like an untamed wedding bouquet, moving with her as she jolts her head to notice the audience. She searches for a groom in the audience. Purses her heart-shaped lips and heaves a wordless sigh. Muchacha’s unimpressed. 

Gaby Muñoz, the person behind the clown, has taken this particular piece around the world for 14 years, and has several other shows under her belt as Chula, who she describes as an extension of herself. Perhaps, Perhaps . . . Quizás has a heartwrenching ending you don’t see coming: As audience participants return to their seats, the protagonist realizes the extent of her loneliness, and, as Muñoz put it, her “absence of self-love.” Muñoz based this devastation on her own experience of separation from a longtime partner with whom she lived in London and Montreal. When she returned to Mexico City heartbroken, she didn’t know many people and decided the audience would become her playmates. “People are surprised with how much they can participate,” Muñoz said. “Audiences who don’t normally do theatre become a part of it. It’s vulnerable for me like it is for them, because I don’t know what will happen—I am not totally in control.”

She said she’s seen it all: At one performance a while back, a woman protested when Muñoz selected her boyfriend as the groom. But the ending is always the same, she said: We see the beloved protagonist restart the cycle of searching for love from the outside, never from within.

“The piece aims to lighten the theme, but it’s surreal how resonant it remains—trying to find your strength with someone else, when actually you must find it within yourself,” said Muñoz. “It’s been a form of therapy to me. I am a mirror to so many other stories like mine. I find community. I know I can feel deeply in silence, and still people can understand my pain.” 

That balancing act between joy and pain also triumphed in Clayton Nascimento’s powerful Macacos. I’d long awaited this international sensation; several family friends in Rio de Janeiro had already seen the show, which has even impacted Brazilian justice and education. Nascimento’s central conceit, he said, is that “theatre is a space to dream,” and he makes full use of its possibilities, taking us through an embodied history crash course in Brazilian racism, recent murders of Black boys, and his own joyous dreams for more expansive and free living.

He begins the show in Brazilian Portuguese, with subtitles projected, contorting his body to depict white people hurling racist slurs, morphing into a Black child playing with a toy car, and relishing in the “Single Ladies” dance to emphasize Black joy. His body feels as poetic as his language, and watching him, I felt I was experiencing the genre of choreopoem afresh. Several minutes in, he stopped to address us in English, asking audiences members to share Chicago’s history of anti-Blackness.

At each place he tours, Nascimento modifies the show to suit that city, throwing in references and asking the audience to share their city’s realities. In Chicago the play ran 90 minutes, but in Brazil it often hits a sweeping three-hour mark, full of local references and a brave grappling together. This version for the U.S. aims to bridge the specificity of Black Brazilian experience with what international audiences may comprehend, offering more recognizable cultural touchstones, like novelist Machado de Assis [Brazilian novelist, poet, playwright, and short story writer; 1839-1908], plus context about the U.S.’s own complicity in Brazilian oppression.

Beyond Nascimento’s tireless physical prowess and agile command of form, seamlessly moving us through different theatrical approaches, Macacos delivers its message and then some. Normally you can’t measure theatre’s impact on society, the way it shapes hearts and minds in mysterious and intangible ways. But Macacos has brought forth real-world justice: After one show in Rio, a lawyer approached him to reopen the case that is central to the show, in which police murdered 10-year-old Eduardo de Jesus Ferreira by his home. Now public schools in São Paulo plan to teach his script, aiming to fill a gap in education regarding Brazil’s history of colonial violence.

[Macaco is the Portuguese word for ‘monkey’ or ‘ape.’ It’s also a racial slur against black men and women (macaca)  in Brazil.  Americans may remember the 2006 incident when Republican U.S. Senator George Allen of Virginia used the word macaca to refer to an American of Indian descent who was filming an Allen reelection rally for Allen’s Democratic opponent.  Allen went on to lose his reelection bid.]

As the one-man show tours the world, Nascimento often brings along Eduardo’s mother, Terezinha. “The people have opened their arms to her,” he said. “Look at what the theatre was capable of.” She wasn’t able to come to Chicago for the Physical Theater Festival, but did provide a letter, addressed to her son, whom Nascimento embodied.

A spotlight of mourning focuses Nascimento, whose eyes fill with the tears of saudade. He speaks her words: “Clayton told me the stage was a space to dream. So I’m going to dream with you, my son.” 

[Saudade is a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia that is supposedly characteristic of the Portuguese or Brazilian temperament.]

Macacos will next travel to Russia. I become misty-eyed thinking of all the places the Physical Theater Festival artists see, all the lessons they carry, all the stories they exchange, all the people they touch. Nascimento expressed his excitement about breaking the fourth wall, yearning to dream together with people from all over. Brazil poses its own tremendous challenges in conversations about race, and if Nascimento’s play could impact people’s lives there, well—I cannot deny that anything is possible. Hearing stories like Nascimento’s puts the world in context: Theatre has treaded upon dreamlike surfaces. It is only logical to expect more transformation to come from cultural exchanges, more than we could dare imagine now.

Said Nascimento, “Terezinha’s voice in the play stands in for many mothers who lost their children to violence. She becomes like all the mothers in the world. And every time this play happens, this mother can speak with her child. I have seen Terezinha along the years. And with each performance the play has allowed her heart to find more hope and see the world. The message I want to give people is: Dream.”

Even at workshops it was clear that dreaming at the Physical Theatre Festival means a great deal to Chicago residents beyond your average theatre artist. In a workshop called “The Clown and the Silence,” led by Gaby Muñoz, one participant said she didn’t have a background in theatre at all. What brought her there? “A retired lawyer needs a lot of clown,” she said with a laughing sigh.

As Muñoz put it, opportunities to play allow you to “viajar sin viajar” [‘to travel without traveling’]. Work across the festival transcends borders and ignites the human spirit, sometimes without language, always physically clear, and ever genre-bending. “I think a lot of people don’t know of the option to make theatre that way,” said Alice da Cunha.

She and Frost know they’ve done it again when they sit at the back of a theatre and listen to the audience. “That’s the most important part,” said Frost. “Listening to the audience.”

So I let the laughter and cries wash over me. The chatter in the lobbies invited me into a kind of family. Attendees who’ve been with the festival from day one mixed with those who had just fallen in love that day. Kids laughed with grandparents. Strangers speaking different languages felt familiar to one another because they’d experienced emotions through plays together, in their bodies. This sticky Chicago July, the globe seemed to move just a bit closer together.

[Gabriela Furtado Coutinho (she/her) is American Theatre’s Chicago associate editor.  On ROT, Furtado Coutinho’s writing appears in "‘How to Survive an Election: Laugh With “POTUS,”'" 14 November 2024; “‘Tomorrow’s Tamoras and Titanias,’” 9 October 2024 (in “Theater Education & Training, Part 3”); and “‘Wish You Were Here: A Radical Access Roundtable,’” 6 July 2024.  (A more complete biography of Furtado Coutinho follows "‘How to Survive an Election.’”)]

*  *  *  *
“RUNNING AWAY TO JOIN CIRCUS THEATRE”
by Gary M. Kramer 

[Eight-and-a-half years before Gabriela Furtado Coutinho’s report on the 2024 Physical Theater Festival Chicago, American Theatre published this article by Gary M. Kramer (January 2016 [vol. 33, no. 1], part of “Approaches to Theatre Training꞉ The Mind/Body Divide,” a Special Section.  (The text below ran online as “Running Away To Join Circus Theatre,” posted on AT’s website on 16 December 2015.)]

How circus arts companies are training artists to become both actors and acrobats.

Once upon a time, so the axiom went, everybody wanted to run away and join the circus. These days, though, no one has to run away; circus is becoming more of a possibility in one’s own backyard. Circus arts organizations are popping up everywhere, and everyone from established theatrical troupes to fringe performers are incorporating acrobatics and circus arts in their work and creating theatrical spectacles. This growing trend has created a demand not only for practitioners of circus arts, but also trainers and directors who specialize in these arts from all over the country.

Jeff “Tree” Anderson is a coach, choreographer, and director who cofounded Clan Destiny Circus, a circus theatre in Asheville, N.C. He firmly believes that “everyone deserves circus.” Unable to compete with Cirque du Soleil with its huge sets, costumes, and music, Anderson and his DIY circus create workshops for ordinary people to participate in activities ranging from pole dancing to acrobatics and human pyramids, to programs where parents can learn to “fly” their kids properly. Anderson’s theatrical work includes teaching mime to show how a face or body moves when it is happy or sad.

“What does an angry face/sad body look like?” Anderson asks rhetorically. “The responses to these exercises are mental, physical, and emotional.”

He continues, “Once we have mime, we tell stories. One such performance is the cycle of the Hindu Creation Myth, or another piece, Day in the Life Mechanica, about how circus can liberate you.” His shows feature silk elements and aerials, as well as hula hoopers and spinning fire staffs.

Anderson studied mime and theatre in college and was inspired to create his acrobatic mime troupe in the late 1990s. “The genesis for all of this comes from Mummenschanz [Swiss mask theater troupe who perform in a surreal mask- and prop-oriented style] and Vsevolod Meyerhold [Russian and Soviet experimental theater director, actor, and theatrical producer; 1874-1940], a contemporary of [Konstantin] Stanislavski” [Russian and Soviet theater director, actor, and teacher – father of modern Western acting; 1863-1938], he explains. “He developed biomechanical theatre, which is a physical representation of complex internal emotional concepts, and he built these crazy sets with slides and intense physical work activities.

“What I find is that people have muscle memory from years of play and putting their butt over their head,” Anderson continued. “The play and the sense of adventure and creating a character hits on a deep childhood thing—everyone has an aspiration to be a famous performer. Doing something like circus speaks to that.”

Peter Andrew Danzig is an actor and personal trainer, as well as the founder of Theatrical Trainer, a Philadelphia-based company designed to condition actors, dancers, and circus professionals to enhance their performance. His company provides one-on-one coaching to prepare an actor for a specific role. He leads workshops for casts and teaches new skills in movement coaching, choreography, and physical theatre.

Danzig realized that the landscape for physical theatre in Philadelphia was growing quickly, with independent companies and large resident theatres incorporating acrobatics, light tumbling, and circus arts, as well as general extreme physicality and even Parkour into their productions. His training is based on kinesiology, biometrics, and each individual’s physiology.

[According to Wikipedia: Parkour is an athletic training discipline or sport in which practitioners attempt to get from one point to another in the fastest and most efficient way possible, without assisting equipment and often while performing feats of acrobatics. With roots in military obstacle course training [parcours du combattant – French for ‘obstacle course’] and martial arts, parkour includes flipping, running, climbing, swinging, vaulting, jumping, plyometrics, rolling, and quadrupedal movement—whatever is suitable for a given situation.]

“There are no longer actors who just dance—there are actors who do circus silk work [also known as “aerial silks,” among other names], and tumbling, and backflips, and are extreme physical contortionists,” Danzig explained. “But most actors are not specifically trained one way or another to address the needs of the role.” His company, then, was created to help “prepare character movement,” incorporating circus arts and physicality.

Indeed, it is common now for directors to ask performers if they have a front roll or know other forms of tumbling. Danzig recalls, “On one of my first jobs, I was asked to stand on someone’s shoulders and create shapes. I had danced my whole life, but this was something new. It was out of my repertoire.”

Learning the skills is one thing, but just as important is learning to stay in proper condition to do them on a theatrical schedule; singing, climbing, or dancing 7-8 times a week for 2-3 hours at a time means burning calories at a rate equivalent to that of a soccer player. To keep up one’s stamina, Danzig recommends conditioning exercises that range from planks and V-ups to leg lifts and weight-bearing activities that engage the body’s core.

“Actors need to think of themselves as athletes,” said Danzig. “Circus works with biometrics, so we want them to be able to bound and jump and land, and use multi-plane arc movement to address that kind of work. There needs to be upper body strength.”

A recent example of his work: He taught the cast of [Philadelphia’s] Luna Theater Company’s all-female production of Animal Farm [17 October-7 November 2024] some light tumbling and acrobatic work, including building a windmill with their bodies.

“You can’t just go to a gym and do crunches or a cardio class—it’s a different kind of conditioning and a rigorous skill set,” Danzig explains. “If the actor is climbing silks, push-ups and upper body strengthening and push-and-pull activities are much better than lifting weights and doing bicep curls.”

Also in the City of Brotherly Love is Damon Bonetti, founding artistic director of the Philadelphia Artists’ Collective, a theatre company that has begun to incorporate circus. Their upcoming staging of He Who Gets Slapped (March 30–April 10), adapted by Walter Wykes from Leonid Andreyev’s [Russian playwright; 1871-1919] original [1915], is set in a seedy French circus in the 1920s, although the actual circus is only heard from offstage. Still, Bonetti—whose background is in more traditional theatre—plans to incorporate circus arts into the production. He has partnered with the Philadelphia School of Circus Arts and hired performers from local companies such as the Headlong Dance Theater and Pig Iron Theatre Company, who are adept at physical work.

Bonetti plans to use circus and physical arts to create interludes at the top and in between scenes that will involve live music and establish location, as well as create flashbacks that further or foreshadow the plot and character development. “The actress playing the show’s lion tamer bought a bullwhip and is going to learn the skills involved with cracking it,” Bonetti boasts.

While this is Bonetti’s first production with circus arts, he already is open to incorporating more acrobatics into his theatre. “Here in Philly, we have had such a rich tradition of physical performance,” Bonetti said. “Ten years ago, it was very divided between physical and classical text; they didn’t mix much. But those bridges have come down, so that you’re not just going to see a classic performance done in a traditional way. Even if it’s not a super-movement piece, you’re going to see more expressions featuring the body; it’s more visceral. With this particular play, it worked out perfectly.” Indeed, though he admitted that “it’s a tease that we don’t get to see the performance of circus,” by incorporating “interludes that are organic in the story,” he’s made circus integral to the storytelling.

Caitlyn Larsson is the director of Fit to Fly [Berri, South Australia], a company that independently contracts with theatres to provide “circus to real people.” A self-described “fixer,” Larsson travels all over the world to work with companies that want to incorporate circus in their productions.

“I come in early and start with nothing, or come in late and fix what they already have—make it presentable, make it pretty, make it understandable to the audience, tell a story, give it life, and make it more dimensional,” she explains. “I get people who can dance or do aerial—not both—and I open them up to doing more to show them how amazing they can be.”

Larsson’s work involves creating trust and a safe space for this kind of play. She tailors her work to individuals and groups, and trains performers for circus routines at their level.

“The real work is bringing character to a piece—gestures and facial expressions—and bring that to the story,” says Larsson. “If your character is climbing a fabric, why does he do that? What does he want at the top of it?”

Part of her craft is guiding actors by talking about the world of the play and creating that world’s distinctive rules.

“I have directorial training, so I pick out what they are trying to express,” she says. “People hold things they create dear to their hearts, and theatre doesn’t always work that way. You sift through the parts that work . . . I show them they have a good instinct when they have an idea or a suggestion that doesn’t quite work, but I can also take them in a different direction; it’s remolding the tidbits.”

Larsson has also performed as an aerialist and done volunteer work with Clowns Without Borders, a humanitarian organization. Hers is a hectic life, but Larsson acknowledges that the pros outweigh the cons.

“I’m OK not having many belongings,” she says. “I have three suitcases of circus paraphernalia and one suitcase of clothes. I don’t own property or have a lease. I’m a vagrant; I love to travel.” (She did point that she has a retirement account, but “no guarantees when I get old.”)

It turns out that some people do still run away with the circus.”

[Gary M. Kramer is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia who, in addition to his articles for AT, reports about film and writes reviews for Salon, Cineaste, Gay City News, Philadelphia Gay News, The San Francisco Bay Times, and Film International.  He’s the author of Independent Queer Cinema: Reviews and Interviews (Harrington Park Press, 2006), and the co-editor of Directory of World Cinema: Argentina, Volumes 1 and 2 (Intellect, 2014 and 2016).

[Readers of Rick On Theater will have discerned that I have an affinity for physical theater.  I’ve never been a big fan of clowning (see my reviews of Theater of Panic in “Short Takes: Some Unique Performances,” 28 July 2018, and The Second New York International Festival of Clown Theatre in “Some Vintage Reviews from the Archive,” 15 March 2021), but there have always been exceptions.

[I have, however, always admired the work if Bill Irwin and David Shiner (see my report on “Old Hats,” 22 March 2013).  There are other physical theater performances on which I’ve blogged, notably “Golem (Lincoln Center Festival, 2016),” 28 August 2016; I also greatly enjoyed The Street of Crocodiles by the Théâtre de Complicité (now named just Complicite), a troupe dedicated to the physical theater style of Jacques Lecoq.  (I saw Crocodiles years before I started ROT, so there’s no report on that show.

[I myself studies mime, originally for the physical discipline—but I enjoyed it so much that I actually performed it a few times.  I also coached the casts of two shows in mime when I was in grad school.)

[For several years, I was also closely associated with the late avant-garde director and play-maker Leonardo Shapiro (1946-97), about whom I’ve blogged a lot, and he had an abiding interest in circus performances, an attraction which had begun in Hovey Burgess’s New York University classes when Shapiro was studying directing at the School of the Arts (later renamed the Tisch School of the Arts).

[Shapiro declared that his favorite classes at NYU had been the circus classes taught by Burgess (b. 1940), a circus clown and juggler who turned to teaching circus techniques to actors, and his productions were vert physical and often full of circus work.  But the level of physicality in his shows came not just from the circus work, but very much out of the Jerzy Grotowski (1933-99) techniques and principles to which Shapiro was devoted.

[A number of the actors with whom Shapiro worked extensively were also circus artists, such as Michael Preston, who performed as Rakitin with the Flying Karamazov Brothers, and Cecil MacKinnon, a founding member of the Pickle Family Circus and a ringmaster and clown with the Circus Flora.

[Circus performance is an immediate form: what the observer sees, as Burgess pointed out, is what is happening at that moment.  While conventional theater artists create illusions, Burgess believed, “Circus is more real.”]

"A surprising number of Hollywood stars are Australian: how the country pumps out acting talent"

by Jon Wertheim 

[When I watched this segment of 60 Minutes, the venerable CBS News magazine show, last Sunday, 17 November, I realized something.  I’ve seen acting troupes from all over the world, either when I traveled abroad or when they came to the States.  I’d made some conclusions about the quality of their work, most of which was superb.  These were mostly the top troupes in their homelands like the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Comédie Française, or the Grand Kabuki.

[But I realized I’d missed something, something right under my nose.  That’s what this 60 Minutes segment was about.  I’d never noticed that, little by little, we’d assembled a sort of ad hoc acting troupe of Australians here in the U.S., and for the most part, it was damn good, even excellent.

[Okay, so they weren’t all working on the stage here—in fact, most of them were making movies.  But, like the Brits and most European actors, back home, they almost all work in all the media: TV, movies, and theater.  (There’s more inter-genre movement here now, but most American actors still specialize; they’re either TV actors, movie actors, or stage actors.)

[But as correspondent Jon Wertheim points out, the Australians that have come here to work—some as permanent residents or even naturalized citizens, others are migrant workers: they do a job here and then go back Down Under.  Still, they’ve mostly contributed some good acting here, and Wertheim looks at why that’s so.  I thought I’d share his report with those Rick On Theater readers who aren’t also 60 Minutes watchers.  There’s a video of the segment on the CBS News website.]

For the record: it’s iron ore. But it’s easy to make the case that Australia’s leading export is . . . acting talent. How has an island of only 27 million people minted Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Cate Blanchett, Mel Gibson, Margot Robbie, Chris Hemsworth . . . we can keep going here . . . Sarah Snook, Russell Crowe, Heath Ledger, Naomi Watts . . . to say nothing of so many Oscar-winning directors, designers and crew? We headed to the bottom of the globe—and then, other spots on the globe—to explore the Aussie takeover. We met stars. We heard theories . . . and in a quiet Sydney neighborhood—impossibly far and away from Hollywood—we found a place that pumps out talent.

Scene: London’s West End, it’s Theater District. Sarah Snook [b. 1987; Adelaide, South Australia] is fresh off her Emmy-winning breakthrough role as Shiv Roy . . . the vicious-yet-vulnerable daughter in the HBO show “Succession” [cable TV series; 2018-23].

For her next act, she has upped the degree of difficulty and pivoted from TV to live performance, playing all 26 roles in an innovative, multimedia staging of Oscar Wilde’s [1854-1900] “The Picture of Dorian Gray” . . . a theatrical sensation, coming soon to Broadway [Sydney Theatre Company production at the Music Box Theatre; scheduled: 27 March-15 June 2025; adapted by Kip Williams from the 1890 novel].

Jon Wertheim: It’s not unheard of for someone to have a successful run in TV or film and then go do theater.  I’m not sure I’ve seen someone do 26 roles of theater at once. What are you thinking?

Sarah Snook: You know, it’s an incredible play, an incredible opportunity to be able to play so many different roles, and so many different characters. And, you know, it’s that thing of you come off some of the best writing in the world, what do you do next? Something has to be, you know, out there to challenge you. And this certainly is. Yeah. The challenge.

If it’s an unusual bit of career management, it is also on-brand as the kind of daring move you would expect from a modern Australian star.

Jon Wertheim: What is going through your head during this performance, with all of these marks, and roles, and lines, and angles?

Sarah Snook: Nothing. Which is quite nice.

Jon Wertheim: Really?

Sarah Snook: Yeah. The focus required is a kind of a state of meditative flow in a way. Because if I’m sitting there going, “Oh. Am I on my mark? Am I doing this?” Then the next line has happened. So if I think about anything else, then I’m stitched up.

Stitched up? That’s Aussie for in a jam. . . . didn’t know Sarah Snook was Australian?         

If you couldn’t have guessed by the accent—we’ll get to that soon—you might have guessed it by simply playing the percentages. 

Name an A-list star of the stage or screen today; odds are bloomin’ good, they come from the Land Down Under.

Jon Wertheim: There are a lot of you, aren’t there?

Sarah Snook: Yeah. There’s a few of us out there.

Jon Wertheim: Here’s this country. Fewer people than Texas [30 million].

Sarah Snook: Is it really? Stop it. Really? Pretty good ratio.

Jon Wertheim: I was gonna say you guys are doing pretty well for yourself, aren’t you?

Sarah Snook: Yeah. Not so bad. Not so bad. Huh.

Yes, they are everywhere, these Aussies . . . filling up IMDB [Internet Movie Database] pages and call sheets . . .

JACKMAN IN “WOLVERINE”: Oh, are you . . .

MARGOT ROBBIE IN “BARBIE”: Yes! This is what I was supposed to do . . . 

They’ve brought us her . . .

And him . . .

CHRIS HEMSWORTH IN “THOR”: Don’t touch my things.

Him too . . .

RUSSELL CROWE IN THE “GLADIATOR”: Are you not entertained?

Heroes . . .

CATE BLANCHETT IN “ELIZABETH”: Upon this moment . . .

And villains . . .

HEATH LEDGER IN “THE DARK KNIGHT”: Why so serious?

Earning top billings . . .

NICOLE KIDMAN IN “MOULIN ROUGE”: A real actress 

GEOFFREY RUSH IN “THE KING’S SPEECH”: I am a thistle-sifter. I have a sieve of sifted thistles and a sieve of unsifted thistles.

Earning top awards . . .

CATE BLANCHETT ACCEPTANCE SPEECH FOR “BLUE JASMINE”: Thank you so much.

NICOLE KIDMAN ACCEPTANCE SPEECH FOR “THE HOURS”: I have such appreciation . . .

RUSSELL CROWE ACCEPTANCE SPEECH FOR THE “GLADIATOR”: Thanks very much . . .

HUGH JACKMAN: I’m an Australian, who played an Australian, in a movie called Australia . . . 

[The fundamental details of the films named above are:

•   This seems to be a scene with Jackman (b. 1968; Sydney) as Logan / Wolverine and Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson/Deadpool from 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine directed by Shawn Levy for Marvel Studios.

•   Barbie (2023), directed by Greta Gerwig with Robbie (b. 1990; Dalby, Queensland) as Barbie for Warner Bros. Pictures.

•   Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), directed by Taika Waititi with Hemsworth (b. 1983; Melbourne) as Thor for Marvel Studios.

•   Gladiator (2000), directed by Ridley Scott with Crowe (b. 1964; Wellington, New Zealand; family settled in Sydney when he was four) as Maximus for DreamWorks Pictures.

•    Elizabeth (1998), directed by Shekhar Kapur with Blanchett (b. 1969; Melbourne) as Elizabeth I for PolyGram Filmed Entertainment.

•   The Dark Knight (2008), directed by Christopher Nolan with Ledger (1979-2008; born in Perth) as The Joker for Warner Bros. Pictures.

•   Moulin Rouge! (2001), directed by Baz Luhrmann (b, 1962; Sydney) with Kidman (b. 1967; Honolulu, Hawaii, to Australian parents on student visas) as Satine for Twentieth Century Fox.

•   The King's Speech (2001), directed by Tom Hooper with Rush (b. 1951; Toowoomba, Queensland) as Lionel Logue for Momentum Pictures.

•   Blue Jasmine (2013), directed by Woody Allen with Blanchett as Jasmine for Sony Pictures Classics.

•   The Hours (2002), directed by Stephen Daldry with Kidman as Virginia Woolf for Paramount Pictures.

•   Australia (2008), directed by Luhrmann with Kidman as Lady Sarah Ashley and Jackman as The Drover for 20th Century Fox.]

Aussies, they’ve become [sic] to Hollywood, what Kenyans are to marathoning, wildly overrepresented. and not just in front of the camera.

Take filmmaker Baz Luhrmann—a singular creative force, almost a genre unto himself . . . he spoke to us from a far-flung location where he was scouting his next film.

Baz Luhrmann: It’s got to a point where there are so many Australian performers and actors, behind the screen, I mean, screenplay writing and directing, but particularly with actors, that even I have to be told, “Oh, you know, X is Australian.” I mean, “Oh, I didn’t know that.” Because they are really everywhere. Now, NIDA was a really big part of that because I think it kind of set the culture and set the attitude.

NIDA—the National Institute of Dramatic Art [based in Sydney; founded in 1958], think of it as the Juilliard of Australia. 

[For those who aren’t from the U.S. or New York City, or aren’t theater or music enthusiasts, the Juilliard School, located at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in Manhattan, is arguably the premier music conservatory in the United States, founded in 1905.  The Drama Division was launched in 1968 and has become one of the two top theater training programs in the U.S. (the other being the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University, known as the Yale School of Drama until 2021).]

Its rise to prominence marks a major plot point in the Aussie cinematic invasion. The acceptance rate is barely 2% . . . Naomi Watts and Hugh Jackman were among those declined. Baz Luhrmann was class of 1985. Sarah Snook, class of 2008, one of only 24 admitted students that year.

At NIDA, Snook received training in the classics, experimental theater . . . and also picked up some hacks . . .

Jon Wertheim: I was told I had to ask you about how you cried during [Anton] Chekhov [esteemed Russian dramatist; 1860-1904], during the “Three Sisters” [1901] performance.

Sarah Snook: Who told you that?

Jon Wertheim: We’ve got our sources.

Sarah Snook: Who told you? (laugh)

Jon Wertheim: We do our research here. 

Sarah Snook: Yeah. (laugh) There were a few of us who were nervous about having to you know, instantaneously (snap) produce tears. And so we were very cheeky and would put Tiger Balm on a little handkerchief. And when we were behind a particular screen, we would just quickly like put the Tiger Balm in our eyes. And so then we’d have very red eyes, and look very upset, to cry for, for Russia. 

[Tiger Balm, first developed in Burma (now Myanmar) in 1870, is a Chinese product popular as a topical pain reliever all over Southeast Asia (and apparently in Australia as well). It’s an ointment based on petroleum jelly (what Vaseline is) mixed with ingredients like menthol, camphor (that’s the main ingredient in mothballs), and eucalyptus oil, all of which are irritants and will make the skin sting and redden. As there is a risk of damage and even blindness, most doctors and medical professionals don’t recommend using it near or, worse, in the eyes.]

At less risk to her health, there she also learned to mask that charming Aussie accent.

Jon Wertheim: How often do you get, “She’s Australian?”

Sarah Snook: I do. Yeah. Frequently. 

Jon Wertheim: Is that something they taught you at NIDA at all?

Sarah Snook: Yeah. Accent work at NIDA, you know, British accents, American accents.

Jon Wertheim: I’m thinking that’s one more thing you’ve got to think about. Not, not just your lines, and not just your marks.

Sarah Snook: No. I know. Well, that was the thing on the show. We always had to [. . .] you know, there was often times where we had to improvise. And so I had to try and think in an American accent as well, which is tricky.

Luhrmann, too, still leans on his NIDA training . . .

Baz Luhrmann: The National Institute of Dramatic Art, the drama school I went to, I mean, I, I do remember one thing. And I think it’s sort of an Australian attitude which is, “Don’t wait for permission to be told that you can act.” We were taught to devise things. We were taught not to sit around and, “Okay, there’s the play. That’s your part. You may be in it.” We were taught to make up story, get with friends, make a show, create something. I had an idea that I would take the Greek myth and with a bunch of friends devise it and set it in the world of ballroom dancing while I was at the National Institute of Dramatic Art. That little play went for about 30 minutes. It was called “Strictly Ballroom” [1984].

Within a few years, Luhrmann had turned that “little play” into a worldwide film, a cult hit with all Aussie cast and crew. That was 1992. Then, Australia was still a theatrical outback of sorts. True, Errol Flynn was born in Tasmania; but Australia’s contribution to the silver screen extended not much beyond well, this . . .

Then the NIDA talent started filtering out . . . Mel Gibson . . .

Cate Blanchett . . . 

Toni Collette . . . 

Baz Luhrmann’s wife, the four-time Oscar-winning costume and production designer, Catherine Martin is another NIDA grad. . . .  

Jon Wertheim: Help us understand where NIDA fits into the broader entertainment industry.

Baz Luhrmann: That “can do, will tell, you know, don’t wait for permission” attitude that NIDA instilled in the very first graduates, that spilled out into the kind of larger sense of what it was to be, you know, a performer in Australia. You know, just throwing yourself off the cliff and flying.

In Sydney, we found the godfather, the guru . . . now 92, John Clark [b. 1932; Hobart, Tasmania] was NIDA’s all-powerful director for 35 years, starting in 1969. He set a goal from the start: developing and unlocking a distinct Aussie mode of acting, marrying the theater of London with Hollywood gloss . . . 

John Clark: We thought the method acting that was having such an influence [see “The Method – a Review” by Kirk Woodward, 12 March 2022]. And everybody was emoting. And the style of acting was terribly emotional and lacking in skill and imagination. So we thought, “No, we’ve got to find a way of doing it that takes the best of America and the best of Britain, but allows our own national characteristics to develop.” 

Jon Wertheim: What makes Australian acting unique? 

John Clark: Skill, confidence, courage, an enjoyment of the body. I mean, NIDA’s never encouraged self-indulgence or show-off acting. The actors who have done well in Hollywood, they are not acting with a capital A. They are playing characters with such conviction and with such truth-without what Australians would call decoration or bullshit. 

John Clark: It’s straight down the middle. And they do their homework. They’re highly intelligent. 

John Clark: And they know who the person is they’re playing.

In addition to running NIDA, John Clark co-founded the Sydney Theatre Company, a harborside bandbox, where NIDA students can launch careers . . . and established stars can come back home to get back to basics . . .

Yet another supporting role in this story: Aussie soap operas . . . seriously, don’t judge . . . the soaps enable actors to sharpen their skills day-in, day-out, before their call-ups. . . .

Jon Wertheim: Australia has all these institutions. There’s NIDA, Sydney Theatre Company, the soaps. What contributions do they make to this over-representation of Aussies that we see?

Sarah Snook: Well, a good training ground.  Australia’s got great training grounds for international work. There’s a way you can—you can test yourself in Australia. And you can fail safely in a way. And I think failure’s really important to see your limits and to help grow.

Hardly a child star, Snook grew up as a typical Aussie free-range kid . . .  

Jon Wertheim: You were telling me about your upbringing. You’re riding a bike in the national park in Southern Australia with kangaroos . . .

Sarah Snook: I feel like that’s a real grounding force in my life. Having that, you know, independent play in-in-in sort of risky areas, that breeds a lot of self-reliance in a kid.

Jon Wertheim: These experiences you had on the other side of the world actually really help you. 

Sarah Snook: Yeah. They build your character, so that you can play other characters.

For all of the pathways and infrastructure there’s something else about Aussies. And there’s probably a lesson here for all of us. Simply put: they’re the anti-divas—doing drama; not bringing drama to work.

Sarah Snook: The things that I really respect about the Australian actors that I love overseas, there is a bit of an understanding that it’s all oftentimes smoke and mirrors. And it’s fun. And it’s a game. And it’s, you know, it is profound in some ways, but it’s also silly. Like Chris Hemsworth has got a great tongue and cheek sort of attitude about it all. And also Baz Luhrmann, with all, you know, his films tend to have a bit of a little cheek or a wink to the audience.

Jon Wertheim: There’s a phrase in heavy rotation we kept hearing. Those Aussies, they take the work seriously. They don’t take themselves particularly seriously.

Sarah Snook: Yeah. That’s it. That’s what it is. A much better way of saying what I just said. (laugh)

Finally . .  about that distance . . . Baz Luhrmann believes that the remoteness of Australia—a place where actors can stretch their talents and horizons beyond the gaze of Hollywood tastemakers—is, in fact, a blessing. . . .

Baz Luhrmann: The one thing everyone agrees about with Australia is that it’s far, far away. And I think that we still think that the idea of being either in a movie or in a play on Broadway or in a television show in Hollywood is still a romantic notion. It’s still a privilege. It isn’t a job. It’s a dream.

Produced by Jacqueline Williams. Associate producer, Elizabeth Germino. Edited by Daniel J. Glucksman.

[Jonathan Wertheim is a sports journalist who became a 60 Minutes correspondent on CBS in 2017.  His reporting for the newsmagazine has spanned from sports, and foreign and national news to sports and culture.  In 2021, Wertheim shared the story of the Ritchie Boys, the secret U.S. intelligence unit bolstered by German-born Jews who helped the Allies beat Hitler; see his report posted on ROT on 19 May 2021.

[Two other Wertheim reports from the broadcast magazine that are on this blog are "‘Prisoners in Nazi concentration camps made music; now it’s being discovered and performed,’" 2 March 2022, and "‘Kabuki: Inside the Japanese Artform with its Biggest Star, Ebizo,’" 1 May 2020.]