Shakespeare's Development as a Dramatist (Part 1)

by Kirk Woodward 

[A little over two weeks ago, my friend and a generous contributor to Rick On Theater, Kirk Woodward, e-mailed me.  “I’m working on another piece for [the blog],” he wrote.  “It involves reading and writing about a particular book, so it will take a while, but I’m trying.”  He didn’t tell me the book’s title or subject, and I replied, “I’m looking forward to your hint about something new a-brewing.  I gather you don’t want me to know what the book is yet.  I’m very curious!”

[Up to the time Kirk sent me his typescript and I read it, all he’d told me was that the “book was written over a hundred years ago.”  I responded that I found that “intriguing” in and of itself.  That was when Kirk sent me his final draft of the new submission, and I discovered that the book was The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist (118 years old) and that the author was George Pierce Baker, who, in his later book, Dramatic Technique (106 years old), codified the principles of drama.

[Baker was an 1887 Harvard College graduate who returned a year later to teach in the English department, as Kirk notes below.  He eventually taught playwriting, first in 1904 at Radcliffe College, the women’s undergraduate institution of Harvard University, then at Harvard College, the men’s undergraduate school.

[Baker was hired primarily to teach rhetoric, or argumentation, but he taught a normal range of English department classes, including literature.  One if those classes was English 39, The History of the Drama from 1642 to the Present Day—a study of dramatic literature, as theater wasn’t considered worthy of study as an academic subject at that time. 

[A thesis was required in Baker’s English 39 and around 1901, some students asked if they could write a play for that requirement.  Baker readily agreed, and in 1904, he started teaching playwriting at Radcliffe.  In 1906, the playwriting course was admitted to the Harvard curriculum as English 47 and, shortly afterwards, 47A. 

[Admission to English 47 was by submission of samples of the applicants’ dramatic writing.  To pass on to English 47A, the students competed by submitting one-act plays for Baker’s judgment and the winning student dramatists were admitted to the second-year class.

[In 1908, students from Baker’s classes formed the Harvard Dramatic Club and began staging the one-act plays composed in the dramatic writing classes.  This became the 47 Workshop; the first production of the Workshop occurred in 1913. 

[Baker believed that the faults and weaknesses of a script would be more clearly revealed only by seeing it on stage and that student dramatists would learn more about playwriting from the experience of seeing their words brought to three-dimensional life on a stage—and how that comes to happen.  (We’ll see that Baker’s analysis of William Shakespeare’s development as a playwright put considerable emphasis on his experience as an actor and his own “director” with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.)

[When we finished editing his article, Kirk remarked about George Pierce Baker that “as far as U.S. theater was concerned, he really was a pioneer in all this.”  I don’t know if any other U.S. college or university started teaching the arts of theater—as distinguished from dramatic literature—earlier than Harvard, but Baker’s English 47 quickly became the most famous college course in the U.S. 

[Baker was certainly the best known advocate of theater education in institutes of higher learning.  When he moved over to Yale, he oversaw the expansion of the Department of Drama in the School of Fine Arts to include instruction in directing, design, and other theatrical arts, forming the basis for creating the Yale School of Drama in 1955.  (As a measure of the prestige his work had, Baker’s playwriting course at Yale bore the same now-famous number that it had in Cambridge: English 47.  Harvard, at the same time, made its first act upon Baker’s departure, dropping his drama courses from the curriculum.)

[It’s notable, however, that, like the playwriting course itself, the Workshop had been student-initiated.  Baker's genius, his perspicacity, was to take up the impulse and nurture it.  Baker ostensively left Harvard when the university administration wouldn’t approve a degree in dramatic writing. 

[He went down to Yale because, ironically, in addition to offering the degree, the New Haven university agreed to build him a theater, without which, he said, he couldn’t continue the progress the Workshop promised.  The facilities he’d had to use at Harvard—he had to hop from one space to another, on both Harvard's campus and Radcliffe's, depending on what was available at that time—were woefully inadequate, but his requests for a purpose-built facility were repeatedly rejected.

[Kirk’s discussion of George Pierce Baker’s Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist will be published in two installments.  The first, of course, is below, and the second will appear in three days, 2 March 2025.]

George Pierce Baker (1866-1935) taught in the English Department at Harvard University from 1888 to 1924, focusing at first on rhetoric (argumentation), English composition, and British and American -literature.  In 1905, he started teaching a famous dramatic writing class, English 47. (Baker formally offered English 47: The Technique of the Drama for the first time in 1908-09.) 

In 1912, he launched the 47 Workshop, the performance program, to present the one-act plays composed in the playwriting course; the first production came in January 1913. (Subsequently Baker founded Yale University’s Department of Drama in the School of Fine Arts in 1924, which, in 1955, became the Yale School of Drama [renamed the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University in 2021].)

The Harvard class was actually two years’ worth, designated in the school catalog as English 47 and 47A. To get from the first to the second, students submitted one-act plays, and the students who were selected had their plays produced by the class in the second year.

An astounding number of Baker’s students went on to notable careers in the theater and the arts, including:

• Abbott (1887-1995), playwright and extremely successful director over many decades.

• Faith Baldwin (1893-1978), widely read author of romantic novels.

• Philip Barry (1896-1949), The Philadelphia Story (1939) and other plays.

• S. N. Behrman (1893-1973), playwright and biographer.

• John Mason Brown (1900-1969), influential New York theater reviewer.

• Hallie Flanagan (1889-1969), director of the Federal Theatre Project (see “The Federal Theatre Project (1935-1939),” 30 October 2024 on this blog).

• Ben Hecht (1894-1964), The Front Page (1928; with Charles MacArthur) and numerous notable screenplays

• Sidney Howard (1891-1939), They Knew What They Wanted (1924; musicalized by Frank Loesser in 1956 as the Broadway musical The Most Happy Fella).

• Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953), generally regarded as the first significant American playwright.

• Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938), Look Homeward Angel (1929; dramatized by Ketti Frings in 1957) and other novels.

• Stark Young (1881-1963), for many years the theater reviewer for the New Republic and translator of the plays of Anton Chekhov (1860-1904).

Baker is not well known today, mentioned usually in connection with O’Neill, who said he learned more from Baker’s personality than from his classes. (Baker spoke well of O’Neill.) Baker was supportive to his students.

One does however get the impression that he was definite and intimidatingly knowledgeable – not necessarily a chum, but certainly a mentor. Baker writes with authority – one would be cautious arguing with him. His writing style is a bit old-fashioned, and I have occasionally made minor changes in quotations with that in mind.

He is credited with introducing many developments in European theater to the United States through lectures and writing, and his book Dramatic Technique (1919) is still in print. However, the book title that caught my attention was his The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist (1907), out of print today, and that’s what I want to write about here.

I can’t remember where I first found a reference to Baker’s book, but it sounded both important and neglected, because, of all the angles from which one can observe the plays of William Shakespeare (1564-1616), surely his progression as a dramatist is one of the most interesting, and potentially one of the most revealing.

He begins his book, not with Shakespeare, but with the environment out of which Shakespeare emerged, and one sees immediately how sensible this is.

Many of our images of Shakespeare see him as a sort of playwriting monolith, always great and somehow greater than ordinary mortals. This has led to silliness like the idea that someone other than the “man from Stratford” wrote “Shakespeare’s” plays – “How could a simple actor have written these plays, since they are so ineffably great?”

He was certainly great, but as Baker points out, he emerged out of a specific environment and was influenced by that environment throughout his career.

Baker begins by noting that the greatest in an art is almost never the pioneer in the art as well. The Beatles, for example, wonderful as they were, didn’t invent rock ‘n’ roll, the Motown sound, or any of the numerous other influences they incorporated into their music.

The idea of greatness as a sort of gift dropped from heaven also ignores the work necessary if the artist is to mature and grow. “Shakespeare mellowed even in the powers with which he was originally endowed,” Baker says, while at the same time he “moulded his material, not merely to accord with public taste of his time, but so as to satisfy some inner standards drawn from his own increasing experience.” Artists do both.

Baker therefore attacks “the idea that there are certain standards by which the plays of any period may be declared good or bad without regard for the time in which a play was written [italics mine], the public for which it was written, or the stage on which it was acted.”

“That we find delight in Shakespeare’s plays to-day does not alter the fact that had he written for us he could not have written exactly as he did for the Elizabethans,” Baker writes, and unquestionably this is true, although frequently ignored by people like George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) in his attacks on Shakespeare.

“Drama cannot at any time wholly break away from the prejudices, tastes, and ideals of the public for which it is written.” “Any play,” he concludes, “derives a large part of its immediate value from the closeness of its relation to the audience it addresses.” (Note: its immediate value.)

I believe there is great danger in generalizing as to Shakespeare’s plays unless we first determine, so far as we can, both his purpose in writing a particular play and his relation in it to his audience.

On the other hand, Baker says, there are fundamentals of drama that do pertain regardless of their period. “The fundamentals of playwriting,” he says, are “selective compression, the unification of material which makes plot, characterization including motivation, and dramatic dialogue” (we might say, dialogue based on tension or on conflict).

You shall not scatter the interest of your audiences, but shall so order your details that at the end your purpose, if any, is clear, or that your story, at least, develops clearly and interestingly from start to finish.

As for the public for which Shakespeare’s plays are written, Baker notes that it was relatively small – for comparison, Baker says, “He wrote for Birmingham rather than London or Liverpool, for Providence or Detroit rather than New York or Chicago.” He provides an excellent, vividly descriptive tour through the London of Shakespeare’s day (little of which still physically exists today, partly because of the great fire of 1666).

Shakespeare’s audience had few avenues besides the stage for public discussion – “only in the theater could they gain much of the information without which to-day we seem to find it impossible to exist.” Londoners, Baker asserts, were hungry for information.

For example, “in Shakespeare’s day building after building intimately associated with the reigns of the kings who figure in the Chronicle Plays stimulated curiosity in the passer-by as to their lives and deaths,” curiosity that Shakespeare would go a long way toward satisfying.

Popular education had only just begun to spread. Consequently, as has often been pointed out, the theatre filled not only the place it occupies now, but the place of the magazine, illustrated histories, biographies, and books of travel and even of the yellow journal [that is, the tabloid press].

Baker also points out that Shakespeare’s audiences came to the theater with fresher minds than we do – performances typically began in the early afternoon, not at night after dinner!  (We do have matinee performances; sometimes those are sluggish too.)

“No less stimulating were the stories of adventure, discovery and conquest told by the English voyagers who came sailing homeward from all the known and unknown seas.”

The mood of the Elizabethan theatre-goer was delightfully childlike. He came, as a child comes, saying practically, “Tell me a story,” and he cared not at all, provided the story was interestingly told, if he had heard another tell it before. . . . What they demanded first of all in a play was story. [This] permitted everybody, since there was no law of copyright, to plagiarize with impunity, and, if the results were really artistic, with acclaim.

As a result, Baker points out, much early Elizabethan drama was crude and sensational, and characterization was not as important as plot.

At the same time, the audience was not jaded by what it saw on stage, since theaters had to change their bills every day or so. Therefore “apparently few of the Elizabethans at first wrote independently.” Playwrights wrote at bewildering speed (as demonstrated by extant contracts between theaters and playwrights).

Collaboration among writers kept things moving. Baker doesn’t make the following comparison, but the playwrights of Shakespeare’s time were more like screenwriters of the early days of movies than like the solo playwrights of today such as Arthur Miller (1915-2005) or Edward Albee (1928-2016).

An example would be Herman Mankiewicz (1897-1953), who frequently co-wrote with other screenwriters. He was the first of ten writers who contributed to the script of The Wizard of Oz in 1938. The playwrights of Shakespeare’s day would have found such a situation familiar to them.

Also importantly, rewriting earlier plays was common (Shakespeare himself, as far as we know, used only three basically “original” plots). “Much of the time of a young dramatist in Shakespeare’s day went to making over plays now popular, but out of date.” The result, “collaboration and adaptation of old plays to new social and intellectual conditions, [was] very favorable to swift and large development of a man with inborn dramatic instincts.”

And Baker makes one more point about the early Elizabethan playwrights: they

really lived in the theaters. Many of them did act; and therefore they could visualize their material not merely as dramatists but also as actors. The immense importance of that double power we shall realize as we watch the development of Shakespeare, himself an actor.

The theaters of the day, Baker suggests, were “much like a large family, or, perhaps better, a club of Bohemians. From year’s end to year’s end they wrote, talked, and lived drama.”

He suggests, interestingly, borrowing a suggestion from the playwright Arthur Wing Pinero (1855-1934), that the early Elizabethan playwrights were better at “strategy” than at “tactics” – at the overall structure of their plays (such as working for the maximum suspense in a scene), rather than the details within them (such as keeping the most dangerous character off the stage until the last possible moment).

Baker also feels it likely that the use of the physical stage in Shakespeare’s time was considerably more developed and flexible than we imagine:

Any close study of Elizabethan and Jacobean stage directions should convince the student that dramatists of those days never thought of their stage as rigid, but as supremely plastic, and calmly planned for whatever they desired, trusting to skilled carpenters and mother wit to create what they had planned.

Baker then moves from what Shakespeare developed from to what he developed to. An obvious question here is which plays Shakespeare wrote first. The answers based on documentary evidence are not always clear, and it is unlikely that we have everything Shakespeare wrote, or in the form that he would have liked us to have it.

Baker begins with Love’s Labour’s Lost (written 1594-95), The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1589-93), Titus Andronicus (1588-93), and The Comedy of Errors (1589-94) based on a frequent dating of these plays as written before 1594, but more importantly on the basis of their dramaturgy.

In Labour he sees a willingness to appeal to popular audiences, combined with weak and erratic storytelling, and much of its characterization is equally unrobust. (Having recently worked on a production of the play, I can testify to these things firsthand; see “Performance Diary, Part 1,” 25 August 2024].)

On the other hand, Baker maintains, while Shakespeare was deeply influenced by, in particular, the plays of John Lyly (1553 or 4 - 1606), he emphasizes love stories that Lyly essentially smothers in flowery language.

We have our first specimen of a play in which the love story is of prime importance and all else is arranged merely to set it off or make it more appealing to the public . . . written with a keen sense of literary effect and much poetic vigor.

In Two Gentlemen of Verona, Baker says, Shakespeare’s advance in technique is not great, but it is there, and much less dependent on extravagant dialogue. This demonstrates, he says, that “the Elizabethan audience of the public theatres liked a crowded and complicated story,” a point he will return to frequently.

Shakespeare in Gentlemen accordingly added material to the source story, but ponderously and unevenly, so that “the last scene fails to do everything for which we have been looking” – “the momentary effect, the start of surprise, mean far more to [Shakespeare at this point] than truth to life and probability.”

I have seen one production of the blood-drenched Titus Andronicus (in London) and I loathed the play. Baker states the plain truth that “the Elizabethans had stronger tastes and tougher nerves than ours,” and suggests that the first audiences saw the play, not as what we today would call a tragedy, but as a melodrama – “only a play.”

It is also a rewrite job, probably combining two plays into one, and Shakespeare demonstrates increasing skill in economy and pacing, which makes possible “the extremely large amount of incident, the constant use of suspense, the strong feeling for climax, and the relative unity of the plot.”

Although I will be happy never to see the play again, I do see what Baker means about Shakespeare’s rapidly increasing dexterity as a playwright. The Comedy of Errors is another adaptation by Shakespeare, and Baker singles out

the far greater complication in story than in the Latin originals; the skill with which the story is adapted to the tastes of the immediate public; and the ingenuity combined with sureness with which Shakespeare handles his many threads of plot.

Once again, “the Elizabethan audience liked a play crowded to the utmost with incident and complication.” Shakespeare also continued to bring the “love story” element of his work to the forefront, to the obvious delight of his audience.

The characterization in the play is not particularly strong but, as Baker says, one play can’t do everything; in a play where plot is by far the most important element, characterization has to take second place to economical plotting and farcical energy.

Once again, Baker emphasizes that Shakespeare is working on adaptations – and showing rapidly increasing skill in how he handles them.

Around the same time Shakespeare was working in another dramatic form, the “chronicle plays,” “plays which drew their material from national history.” The form is loose – “it simply applied to lay history the methods of dramatic narrative already practiced by the miracle plays for some centuries with secular material.”

The chronicle play, Baker points out, became a big item in the wake of the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588), when patriotism was at its peak. It was the most popular kind of play in England for about ten years, and every leading playwright tried to write at least one of them. Baker calls the chronicle play a transitional form; once it had reached its peak, it really had no way left to develop further.

In fact, Baker points out, aside from the representation of historical events, which is more or less based on how events actually occurred, as a dramatic form the only ways the chronicle play could change would be in increasingly effective characterization and in more riveting incidents, and Shakespeare’s craft developed in both areas.

Richard III (ca. 1592-94) is by far Shakespeare’s most performed chronicle play, and Baker says the reason is that it is most dramatic in its shape, whereas the Henry VI (1591) plays, for example, by necessity are basically a series of events.

Richard III has a central figure, frequently in view of the audience, and his story has a dramatic beginning, middle, and end. The same is true of Henry V (ca. 1599). On the other hand, Richard II (ca. 1595), Baker points out, really has no hero, while Richard III is a hero – a dynamic central character – although of a perverse sort.

Baker notes that Shakespeare can be seen to appreciate increasingly the value of comedy even in dark material – “the comic is desirable for contrast and it may relax tense emotion till a hearer may again be wrought upon with effect.” We see Shakespeare use this principle many times in his later work.

Similarly, in the chronical plays Shakespeare can be seen to be realizing the value of “love interests” and love scenes in plays. Baker cites the example of Hotspur’s intimate moments with his wife in Henry IV Part 1 (≤ 1597).

The chronicle play, Baker suggests, was not a great form for a dramatist to work in, although it gave Shakespeare the opportunity to grow in his ability to structure scenes in effective ways. The fact of history itself was a limitation, with events occurring in a fairly fixed order, and in many cases the characterization in the stories was a given, forcing playwrights to practice their craft on the details.

[The dates following the titles of Shakespeare’s plays above are the generally accepted, but approximate years in which they were composed.  If we’re going to look at the chronological development of Shakespeare’s dramaturgy, it’s helpful to have an idea when the plays cited as examples of each stage of his growth appeared.  (Dates of publication, frequently cited in analyses of the plays, was often years after the play was written and the dates of the performance premières aren't always known.)

[In 1966, Robert Brustein (1927-2023), theatrical critic, producer, playwright, writer, and educator, became Dean of the Yale School of Drama; that same year, he founded the Yale Repertory Theatre, which has become one of the most distinguished regional theaters in the country. 

[In 1979, Brustein left Yale for Harvard University, where he founded the American Repertory Theater (ART) and, in 1987, the Institute for Advanced Theater Training.  Thus was the circle of Harvard-Yale theater, begun by George Pierce Baker shortly after the turn of the 20th century, closed.  (Brustein retired as artistic director of ART in 2002, but remained on the faculty of the Institute until his death in 2023.)

[The second part of Kirk Woodward’s “Shakespeare’s Development as a Dramatist” will be posted on Sunday, 2 March.  Be sure to return to Rick On Theater then to read the conclusion to Kirk’s examination of George Pierce Baker’s Shakespearean analysis.]

"Don’t Say 'Macbeth' . . . And other superstitions, traditions and secrets of the theater world"

by Juan A. Ramírez

[On 14, 17, 20, and 23 August 2020, I posted a four-part series called “Ghosts, Curses, & Charms: Theater Superstitions” on Rick On Theater (the link is to the first installment).  Three months ago, in T, its magazine dedicated to fashion, living, beauty, holiday, travel, and design coverage that’s published 11 times a year, the New York Times published an article on a similar topic, but also covering some of the personal traditions in which theater folk engage behind the scenes. 

[Juan A. Ramirez’s article on some of these peculiar customs (including some I covered in my post) was published in T: The New York Times Style Magazine on 17 November 2025; it was posted on the paper’s website as “Don’t Say ‘Macbeth’ and Other Strange Rituals of the Theater World” on 8 November.]

Pulling back the curtain on the theater world’s strange rituals and enduring superstitions.

You may not have realized it, but there’s little chance you’ve heard anyone whistle inside a theater. In the old days, sailors often worked the ropes backstage, bringing to show business codes like command whistles. So a whistle meant as a compliment, or to get a person’s attention, might have landed a piece of scenery on someone’s head.

Theater is full of these customs — many arising, like most rituals, from hazy origins. Still, show people hold on to them. In an industry that hopes to conjure the same wonder every night (with wildly different results), there’s comfort in tradition, especially if it reaches back decades or even centuries. Some, as the 56-year-old Broadway wardrobe supervisor and costume designer Patrick Bevilacqua [The Great Gatsby (2024-Present)] says, are “rituals of consistency” — the private fist bumps or helpful Listerine sprays during a backstage quick change, which must be “choreographed within an inch of its life” to keep the show running smoothly. Others are spiritual; according to the actress Lea Salonga [Miss Saigon (1991-2001): Tony for Best Actress in a Musical, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical, Theatre World Award; Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends (upcoming in April)], 53, “any practice where everyone can see each other as human” is necessarily grounding.

Some are individual: The actor Hugh Jackman [The Boy From Oz (2003-04): Tony for Best Actor in a Musical, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical, Theatre World Award; ], 56, last seen as the lead in “The Music Man” [2022-23] on Broadway in 2023, buys scratch-off lottery tickets for each production member every Friday; occasionally, someone wins a few hundred dollars. Some are secretive, like stealing costumes after a show closes, while others are blared through the house, as when stage managers announce on loudspeakers before a performance, “It’s Saturday night on Broadway,” a reminder that the wearying workweek is almost over.

Length dictates quantity: Longer-running productions are more likely to develop more idiosyncratic traditions. This means that in New York, Broadway is more ritualistic than Off, and musicals outmatch straight plays for the same reason. The 64-year-old actress Amra-Faye Wright [Chicago (1996-Present)], for example, has for about a decade been painting murals each season backstage for “Chicago,” the second-longest-running musical in Broadway history [the current production has run 11,105 regular performances (as of 16 February)], which opened in 1975 [until 1977] and has been up since its 1996 revival [Wright was in it 2006-24]. All agree that London is more laid-back, despite having some quirks, such as everyone in the cast and crew banging on the windows facing the National Theatre’s interior courtyard on opening night; or the Baddeley cake, an intricately decorated and frosted dessert that varies from show to show but has been served with punch at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, every Jan. 6 since 1795. It’s named after Robert Baddeley [1733-94; best known for playing Moses in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School for Scandal], an actor who played minor roles there and who in his will bequeathed funds for the annual festivity.

As the 43-year-old British director Michael Longhurst [artistic director of London’s Donmar Warehouse theater (2019-2024; directed Broadway transfer of Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change (2020-21), which originated at Chichester Festival Theatre); nominated for Tony for Best Revival of a Musical, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival of a Musical] says, most are “a mix of the practical and superstitious.” Actors tell one another to break a leg — maybe because “good luck” is gauche; maybe because they’re an understudy wishing a principal would just bow out; maybe because a theater’s “legs” are the thin drapes that frame the stage, which you’d cross if receiving an ovation; or maybe just because they know it’s a phrase they ought to keep alive.

It’s like when the actress Patti LuPone [Evita (1979-83): Tony for Best Actress in a Musical, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical; Anything Goes (1987-89): Drama Desk for Outstanding Actress in a Musical; Gypsy (2008-09): Tony for Best Actress in a Musical, Drama Desk for Outstanding Actress in a Musical; Company (2021-22): Tony for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical, Drama Desk for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical; Theatre World’s John Willis Award for Lifetime Achievement (2021)], 75, was given some of Ethel Merman’s [1908-84] jewels by the wardrobe supervisor Adelaide Laurino [1929-2003] to wear in the Broadway musical “Evita” in 1979. She didn’t just steal them because . . . well, who wouldn’t? She stole them because, as she says, “these will be passed down, but [the recipient] won’t be given the information that will be lost to time.”

Cards From the Neighbors and a Telegram From Bette Midler

It’s grueling work to get a play ready, which is why there’s a collective sense of celebration when a new show opens. For the past few decades, the casts and companies of Broadway productions have signed cards bearing their shows’ logos, then sent them to the newest show on its opening night. What were once couriered over were later faxed and are now sometimes sent as PDFs that are printed out by stage managers. While some shows keep them up throughout their run, most are displayed about as long as Christmas cards.

Aside from these well wishes, companies can expect gifting tables backstage full of presents from their producers and admirers and from one another. These can range from bottles of Champagne and homemade cookies to elaborate offerings like branded bomber jackets, tote bags and alarm clocks. Before the pandemic, Tiffany key chains featuring a show’s artwork would often be distributed in New York. The American actress Marisha Wallace [Aladdin (2014-Present); Something Rotten! (2015-17)], 39, who works mostly in London, says that British openings are not “as extravagantly gifted because U.K. people aren’t really gifters.” She learned this when she showed up to “Dreamgirls” in 2016 [Savoy Theatre, West End, through 2019] with T-shirts and personalized mugs for everyone, only to receive cookies in return. (Brits do, however, enjoy closing-night gifts.)

Personalized presents, as always, are the most appreciated. Salonga, who will return to Broadway in the Stephen Sondheim revue “Old Friends” next spring, remembers her first starring role (at 9 in 1980 as Annie in the musical’s Manila premiere), when her aunt gave her a small brass elephant. She now collects these figurines in her dressing room, pointing them toward the stage for good luck. The actress Tracie Bennett [End of the Rainbow (2012): Tony nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play, Theatre World], 63, still marvels at the books — some filled with recipes inspired by the production — that Denis O’Hare [Take Me Out (2003-04): Tony for Best Featured Actor in a Play, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play; Sweet Charity (2005): Drama Desk for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical], 62, gave to his co-stars in Sondheim’s posthumous Off Broadway show, “Here We Are,” last year at the Shed [2023-24] in New York: “He didn’t need to do it,” she says, “and that’s the point!”

LuPone, a self-described “instinctual archivist,” keeps many opening-night tokens in a curio cabinet at her Connecticut home, including an “Evita” death mask and an egg filled with small wooden statuettes of the actors from the 1987 revival of “Anything Goes” and mounted on a music box. The 46-year-old actress Mandy Gonzalez [In the Heights (2008-11): Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Ensemble Performance], now appearing in the Broadway revival of “Sunset Boulevard” [2024-Present], has long kept two significant gifts: a Western Union telegram sent by Bette Midler [b. 1945], for whom she used to sing backup, the first time Gonzalez originated a role on Broadway, in 2002’s “Dance of the Vampires” [through 2003]; and an iPod engraved with a message from Yoko Ono [b. 1933] for the 2005 premiere of the musical “Lennon” [2005].

Another backstage tradition was started by Alyce Gilbert, 81, who in 2007 became the only wardrobe supervisor to be honored with a Tony [Tony Honor for Excellence in Theatre], along with the late dresser Bobbye Sue Albrecht. Gilbert’s first Broadway show was the memorable run of “A Chorus Line” at the Shubert Theatre in 1975 [through 1990 (6,137 performances)]. When Bob Fosse’s “Dancin’” [1978-92 (1,774 performances)] stole several of that production’s members three years later, she and Albrecht procured a glass candy jar, spelled “Dancin’Wardrobe” on its lid with stick-on letters and took it next door to the Broadhurst. “It was the first time anyone had sent something that was really for the wardrobe department,” Gilbert says. Almost five decades later, she’s sent a jar to most musicals, and some plays, on their opening night. Filled with peppermints — they’re good for the throat and, unlike chocolates, won’t stain costumes — the jars remain in the wardrobe department for all to enjoy; crew members take them home, or to their next show, upon closing. Bevilacqua, the wardrobe supervisor for Broadway’s “The Great Gatsby,” says that collecting them has become an industry badge of honor.

You Must Touch the Robe

One of Broadway’s most regimented traditions has an impressive musical theater pedigree: In 1950, a chorus member on “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” [1949-51]. took a robe from a fellow chorine and sent it to a friend who was opening that night in the ensemble of “Call Me Madam” [1950-52] starring Ethel Merman [1908-84; Call Me Madam: Tony for Best Actress in a Musical; Hello, Dolly! (1964-70): Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance; Special Tony Award for her lifetime contributions to show business (1972)]. The recipient later added a cloth cabbage rose from Merman’s costume to the pale pink robe and gave it to a chorus member in the next opening musical, “Guys and Dolls” [1950-53], and an informal ritual was born. Since they traveled so quickly from contract to contract, Broadway dancers were often called “gypsies,” so the similarly itinerant garment was called the Gypsy Robe until 2018, when members of the union Actors’ Equity Association voted to rename it the Legacy Robe. [See my post “The Gypsy Robe” (4 November 2012).]

Equity had taken over the robe’s distribution long before then [1982], codifying the rules when it became obvious it was being improperly handled or accounted for, awarded based on popularity or bogged down by heavy additions such as shoes. These days, the robe is presented on the opening night of a Broadway musical to the ensemble member with the most Broadway chorus credits. An elaborate ceremony — which occurs half an hour before curtain, with the entire company (and past recipients) invited to attend — is led by the robe’s previous caretaker, who recites an Equity-written speech before revealing its new keeper. Once outfitted, that person circles the stage counterclockwise three times as each cast member reaches out to touch the robe for good luck. Then there’s a dash through the theater as the recipient visits each dressing room to bless the production.

The performer Jeffrey Schecter, 51, held back tears while receiving his second robe when a revival of “Once Upon a Mattress” [2024] opened this past August. [Schechter received his first robe, then still called the Gypsy Robe, for Fiddler on the Roof (2015-16).] Katie Webber, 43, who presented him with the robe that she’d received for “The Great Gatsby” [2024-Present] says the tradition not only honors the performers who form the backbone of any Broadway musical but also speaks to the profession’s unsteady, nice-work-if-you-can-get-it nature: “The longer I’m in this business, the more I’m shocked I’m still working.”

The wardrobe supervisor oversees the application of their production’s panel to the robe, which often bears the name of its recipient and includes signatures from all cast members. Bevilacqua says he likes to incorporate costume trims so that “in 100 years, people can see these were the fabrics we were using.” Once a robe is filled up, it’s archived by Equity, although a few of the 35 or so robes have been retired to the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts, the Museum of the City of New York and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. The robe that Schecter recently received had denim patches representing the down-home sensibilities of the previous season’s “Shucked” [2023-24], and there was also a black panel from the 2023 “Sweeney Todd” revival [through 2024] on one of the robe’s floor-length sleeves with a line on it from the show in blood-red yarn: “At last, my right arm is complete again.”

Falling Pigs, Dollar Fridays and Other Diversions

All productions must find ways to make coming to work every day fun and surprising. The wardrobe crew on the 2024 Tony-winning play “Stereophonic” [2024-25] started an odd tradition in which cast and crew members take turns dropping a five-inch-long silicone pig down the four flights of the John Golden Theatre’s stairwell when the actors receive their five-minute “places” call before the second act. Many people begin lending libraries of favorite books. During his ongoing stint in the musical “Hadestown” [2019-Present] the actor Jordan Fisher [Hamilton (2015-Present); Dear Evan Hansen (2016-22); Sweeney Todd (2023-24)], 30, also created his own more unique communal space: a stageside calibration station that acts as a type of shrine to which the company contributes crystals, stones, toys and flowers. According to Wallace, many London companies play a game in which everyone affixes a baby picture to the wall and then attempts to guess who’s who.

But the most widespread — and lucrative — activity is Dollar Fridays, a raffle that Bevilacqua half-jokes is “where we make our money.” The rules are simple: Someone (typically the production stage manager) passes around a kitty before the Friday evening performance; anyone is welcome to pitch in a dollar or more with their name written on it. Variations occur: Whole dressing rooms can enter as a unit, and famous actors are known to chip in extra. The winner is announced later in the evening — some productions do it during intermission — usually by the person organizing it. Certain shows allow participants to use Venmo. “But then,” laments the 43-year-old former “Stereophonic” stage manager, Erin Gioia Albrecht [A Strange Loop (2022--23)], “you can’t spread the dollar around the Theater District.”

A Bright Light to Ward Off Accidents — and Spirits

A ghost light is an exposed bulb that the head electrician or another crew member leaves center stage after hours so that nobody falls and hurts themselves in the dark. But for those with one foot in the supernatural world — and, as Albrecht says, “it’s certainly a superstitious industry” — the light is there to keep evil spirits away . . . or to provide friendly ghosts with a pleasant overnight experience. Many believe that every house on Broadway, the West End and beyond is haunted by any number of specters: the theater’s original owner, making sure that things are running smoothly; an aggrieved actor, still out for that final bow; a doomed showgirl, cursed to remain in destiny’s chorus. [Refer to my post on “Ghosts, Curses, & Charms,” referenced above: Part 1 explains the ghost light, and Parts 3 and 4 recount many theater ghost legends.]

Gonzalez, who starred in “Hamilton” from 2016 to 2022, recalls going into the cavernous Richard Rodgers Theatre to collect her belongings shortly after Covid-19 shut down Broadway for 18 months [March 2020-June 2021]. “The ghost light was the only light on,” she says. “Even though we were in a pandemic, I was proud the tradition stayed — one day we were going to reopen, and we needed good vibes.”

Other Curses and Hauntings

“I don’t even mind a poltergeist,” says LuPone, who believes she was haunted by Eva Perón’s [1919-52] ghost throughout multiple runs of “Evita.” In the world of pretend, she adds, “everything that goes along with the theater — the magic, the superstitions — just enhances one’s performance.” But even for nonbelievers, there’s charm to be found in eerier traditions. Salonga, who doesn’t consider herself “one of those people that attracts supernatural beings,” would nonetheless offer a greeting while walking backstage at London’s Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, to whichever ghosts might be haunting it, including the so-called Man in Gray, a mysterious figure with a cloak, sword and tricorn hat who supposedly roams around there. [Salonga has been at the Drury Lane twice: she premièred Miss Saigon there in 1989-99, winning an Olivier Award for her performance, and she returned for Lea Salonga in Concert at Drury Lane on 26 June 2024.]

Wallace learned the hard way that even practical customs can turn metaphysical. When Michael Ball [b. 1962], her co-star [as Edna Turnblad] in the 2021 London Coliseum production of “Hairspray,” caught her whistling backstage, he warned of bad times to come. No sailors dropped any beams on her head, but most of the cast soon came down with Covid, forcing the musical to temporarily close. And Gonzalez admits that she’s not sure whether “Dance of the Vampires” bombed (it closed just over a month after opening) because of the material or because she didn’t touch the Legacy Robe during its ceremony.

Perhaps the industry’s best-known bylaw is that, unless acting in Shakespeare’s early 17th-century play, one should never say the word “Macbeth” inside a theater — otherwise you risk ruining the current production. The origins of this are predictably murky. The play traffics in things that might very well incur a hex — witches, hauntings, grisly murders — but one possible source could be the simple fact that, in an era when most theater companies operated in repertory (performing a rotating selection of popular works), “the Scottish play,” as the piece can be safely referred to, was a guaranteed moneymaker. If your season was failing, it might be time to stage “Macbeth.”

The way to lift the curse — which LuPone enforced during a 2008 revival of “Gypsy,” when its director and playwright, Arthur Laurents [1917-2011], accidentally uttered the word during previews, after which a cast member broke their pelvis — is for the perpetrator to exit the theater, turn three times, spit over their left shoulder, swear, then say a line from another of Shakespeare’s works or knock on the theater door to be allowed back in.

Shakespeare, in fact, invites a fair amount of shibboleths. As Longhurst says, “If your repertoire is classical or Greek plays, you begin to connect to the ancient rituals.” A few years ago, the director learned of a site-specific one at Shakespeare’s Globe in London: All shows there must end in a newly choreographed jig — or chance a calamity. Longhurst was skeptical when directing a production of John Ford’s 17th-century play “’Tis Pity She’s a Whore” in 2014 (“You finish and everyone is dead, and it’s like, ‘Well, now we get up and do a dance?’”) but appreciated the creative challenge and came to see it as a way to counteract the show’s grim finale.

That’s hardly the only jinx that verges on the comical. Rumor has it that Daniel Frohman [1851-1940], the early 20th-century producer-manager of Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre [1886-1909], would wave a white handkerchief from his office overlooking the stage whenever his overacting wife, Margaret Illington [1879-1934], needed to rein in her performance. Some actors, in flashes of ego death, still admit to seeing that hankie today.

[Juan A. Ramirez is a New York-based Venezuelan-American writer and critic focused on film, theater, and all forms of pop culture, as well as queer issues.  His writing has been featured in the New York Times, New York magazine, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, them, INTO, HuffPost, DigBoston, Exeunt NYC, Theatrely, and the Huntington News.

[I didn’t cover the personal back-stage traditions of theater folk in my “Ghosts, Curses, & Charms.”  I had some practices of my own that I tried to keep up, however.  At the first theater at which I worked in New York City, I began bringing in brownies for my castmates.  I guess I did it about once a week during performances, and each batch was a little different.  The first tray were simply straight chocolate brownies, but when those went over well, I got adventurous.  I made mocha brownies by adding coffee to the batter, and chocolate-mint brownies.  I put peanut butter drops in one batch, and I even added a taste of brandy to one.  (And no, I never made pot or hash brownies.)

[I didn’t keep that up, though.  That theater was just a couple of blocks down from my apartment, so it was easy to bring the tray of brownies with me, but later I worked at theaters all over Manhattan—and a couple in New Jersey.  I retreated to an easier treat.  

[There were a couple of unusual toy stores in my neighborhood, and another shop that sold craft items from indigenous people from all over the world.  I looked for small gifts that either seemed evocative of my fellow actors and the director, or ones that seemed to match the characters they were playing—hopefully with a little humor.

[That got hard to keep up, so in the end, I finally just bought assorted mini-bottles of liquor.  One of the liquor stores near my apartment sold the little bottles like the ones served on airplanes.  That turned out not to be much fun, either to shop for or to give; there was no imagination in it.

[I also made it a practice for opening night to send the cast a telegram, following the old tradition of years ago.  I think the first ones I sent were actual Western Union telegrams, but then I learned of a service that just did opening night theater telegrams.  The messages came on special forms with colorful designs specifically reflecting show business, and the service, whose name I no longer remember—I’m sure it’s no longer operating anyway—guaranteed delivery just before curtain.]

More Theater Odds & Ends

 

[Here’s another compilation of short pieces from various outlets—this time, two Washington Posts and a New York Times—all about some aspect of theater.  Some of these—most of them, really—I filed away some years ago (these are all from the 2010s), and I’ve enjoyed rediscovering them.  I hope you find them interesting.] 

“THE LEAD HAS A BROKEN ANKLE?

GET THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR!”

by Rebecca Ritzel 

[The following article was originally published in the “Style” section of the Washington Post on 12 February 2014.  It was previously posted on the WaPo website as “Backstage: For Theater J, breaking a leg for real leads to 'Yellow Face' recasting scramble” on 11 February.]

“Call the understudy, I can’t go on tonight,” is the closing theme from the cult television comedy “Slings and Arrows.” The show about backstage drama at a theater company debuted in Canada in 2003, but in the ensuing decade, the refrain has become a bit dated.

[Slings & Arrows was a darkly comic TV Series, aired on Canada’s Movie Central cable channel and The Movie Network streaming service in 2003-06, and in the United States on the Sundance Channel, 2005-07.]

These days, it’s not “call the understudy,” it’s “text the assistant stage manager.” And post-recession, there may well not be an understudy to call.

Jessica Soriano, an assistant stage manager at Theater J, got the dreaded text message [Tuesday,] Feb. 4. The actor sending it was Al Twanmo, one of the leads in the play “Yellow Face.” He was at the hospital, being treated for a broken ankle after falling on black ice. Soriano then e-mailed (still no phone call involved) the production team with the bad news.

[Yellow Face, a 2007 play by David Henry Hwang, played at Theater J in Washington, D.C., from 29 January to 23 February 2014.  It was directed by Natsu Onoda Power; at the time, Ari Roth was the artistic director of the company. (Roth was fired in December by the theater’s parent organization, the Washington DC Jewish Community Center, for protesting the DCJCC’s cancelation of a series of controversial plays about the Middle East (some of which were critical of Israel). See my post on Rick On Theater “The First Amendment & The Arts, Redux,” 13 February 2015.]

With little deliberation, Wednesday night’s show was canceled (ticket holders received refunds), but the actors were called to the theater. Director Natsu Onoda Power had an idea to make sure the show would go on sooner rather than later.

First, she re-blocked the entire play, allocating many of Twanmo’s lines to the four other actors in the ensemble who play multiple roles. But replacing Twanmo’s main character was going to be tricky. David Henry Hwang’s “Yellow Face” is a satirical comedy about racial stereotypes. The lead character is Chinese American, as is his father, who Twanmo was playing. The only Asian actor Theater J found who could read for the role on short notice was, in the words of artistic director Ari Roth, “30 years too young.”

Undeterred, Power turned to Roth.

“There was just one person who knew the part, who is not Asian, and who the audience would accept in this role, and that’s Ari,” she said late Thursday night after Roth, a 50-something Jewish playwright, made his professional stage debut playing an elderly Chinese American banker.

Roth maintains that he wasn’t actually acting, “I did this as a reading, everyone else was up there acting,” he protested, adding that he was “doing Al” and did his best to match Twanmo’s cadence.

The part of the father is written in broken English, with lots of stubborn humor, given Twanmo’s character is an immigrant who worked his way up from a laundry worker to the chief executive of Far East National Bank. Before his fall, Twanmo had received praise for his work in “Yellow Face”; Post critic Peter Marks called his performance “beguiling” in his review of the show. Roth will not be nominated for a Helen Hayes Award [the Capital area’s local award for excellence in theater; Helen Hayes (1900-93), the “First Lady of the American Stage,” was a native Washingtonian] for his one-night stint as a substitute, but what he will take away is a bouquet of yellow roses, and some insight into life outside an artistic director’s office.

“I have never spent so much on my personal grooming,” Roth said, “At 5 p.m., I stopped doing my computer work and started preparing for the show.” Those preparations included both streaking his hair with gray and spending some time in front of the mirror trimming nose hairs. He came away not only with more respect for his actors but also for the stage managers and others working behind the scenes at Theater J.

“I have been running this theater for 17½ years,” Roth said, “and I’ve never been backstage watching for an entire show.”

When Roth did come out onstage, it was in a wheelchair, a change Power kept when Twanmo returned to the stage Saturday. In Act II, the script calls for an ensemble member to play the father’s doctor. In Power’s revision, the doctor (played by Mark Hairston) will always wheel Twanmo out. But there’s still a major challenge that they’ll have to deal with until the show closes Feb. 23: a massive set of file cabinets surrounds the stage, and only one entrance is wide enough for the chair.

“The scenery is not wheelchair-accessible,” Power said.

Casting a wider net

Theater J learned its lesson in staging accessible theater the hard way, but several other theaters in the Washington area are deliberately seeking to be more inclusive in their casting, and are succeeding artistically as a result. At Studio Theatre, Nina Raine’s play “Tribes,” about a deaf son in a dysfunctional family, has been extended through March 2. Out in Herndon [Virginia], NextStop Theatre Company is mounting a well-reviewed production of Shakespeare’s “Richard III” with a deaf actor, Ethan Sinnot [sic; Sinott], starring as the murderous monarch.

Also worth noting: Deaf actor Hector Reynoso is a company member at Synetic [a physical theater company located in Crystal City in Arlington County, Virginia], and next month’s World Stages international theater festival at the Kennedy Center will include Israel’s ­Nalaga’at Theater for deaf and blind actors.

Locally, the two leads in “Tribes” and “Richard III” share an interesting connection: Sinott is chairman of the theater program at Gallaudet University [prestigious university in Washington, D.C., for the deaf and hard of hearing], and James Caverly, who plays the lead in “Tribes,” is one of his most successful graduates. Yet until he drove out to Herndon recently for a dress rehearsal, Caverly had never seen his former professor act. Caverly loved the concept – and the performance.

“It was brilliant!” Caverly wrote in an e-mail message. “For so long, I’ve thought of Richard III as it was written in the text: a hunchback, hobbled, and writhed villain who’s sole ambition was to destroy those who had more power over him. I never perceived him to be deaf. And it does make sense when you correspond it to a real-life scenario. Most of the royal court chose to seclude him because of his deafness, which eerily echoes with the daily basis of deaf people everywhere. . . . This is a big step for the DC theater scene, and [I’m] proud to be part of something bigger.”

[Rebecca Ritzel is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in more than 20 publications in the United States, Canada, and the U.K.  Ritzel regularly contributes arts and entertainment articles to the Washington Post, the Washington, D.C., City Paper, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Raleigh, North Carolina, News & Observer.  Washington’s Theater J, founded in 1990, produces plays “that are part of the Jewish cultural legacy.” 

[I have posted performance reports on three plays by David Henry Hwang (“Golden Child,” 9 December 2013; The “Dance and the Railroad,” 17 March 2013; “Kung Fu,” 8 March 2014) and a performance by the Nalagaat Deaf-Blind Theater Ensemble of Tel Aviv (Not by Bread Alone, 12 February 2013) on ROT.  Earlier, my friend, the late Helen Kaye (1934-2020), who reviewed theater for the Jerusalem Post, sent me her own review of Not by Bread Alone, which I posted in “Dispatches from Israel 1,” 23 January 2013.

[Coincidentally, Ari Roth’s experience filling in at the last minute in a stage role happened to me once, years ago.  I happened to think of it just the other day.  I was in college—May 1967, the second semester of my sophomore year.  I was taking a directing class, the final exam for which was to direct a one-act play.  I had finished my final rehearsal for the presentations the next day and one of my classmates, who’s rehearsal was scheduled to follow mine in the university theater, approached me.

[One of his cast members had been taken ill and wasn’t going to be able to do the show the next evening, and my classmate asked if I’d fill in.  Well, I couldn’t let him down for his final grade, so I agreed to learn the part—it was relatively small, even for a one-act play—but he and his cast would have to help me out.

[I said I could learn the lines and the blocking for the next day after the one rehearsal that night, but the rest of the cast would have to keep to the lines as written, especially the cues, and the blocking as rehearsed—no ad libs or improvisations when I was on stage.  I wouldn’t be able to handle deviations.

[I don’t remember who the director was, or the play, and I don’t know what grade he got on the project—but we made it through and, as far as I could tell, no one knew what we’d had to do.  I do remember being totally keyed up for the whole scene in which I appeared, which was only a few minutes but seemed like at least a half hour to me. 

[I’m sure I collapsed as soon as the curtain came down—and I probably found a drink somewhere as soon as I could get to it.  (In Virginia, where I went to school, you couldn’t buy a drink in a bar or restaurant at that time.  You had to by a bottle in a state package store and keep the booze at home.)]

*  *  *  *

“WITH TRAINED NARRATORS,

BLIND THEATERGOERS FIND A SIGHTLINE”

by Caitlin Gibson 

[Caitlin Gibson’s report ran in the Washington Post on 5 May 2016 (sec. C [“Style”]) and was posted on the paper’s website on 4 May as “'He's picking his nose': How volunteers help the blind 'see' a theater performance.”]

‘Describers’ bring onstage action to life

On the brightly lit theater stage, the first scene of Robert Schenkkan’s Tony award-winning play “All the Way” is in full swing: President Lyndon B. Johnson [1908-73; 36th President of the United States: 1963-69] is pontificating behind a podium. A large desk is wheeled into the spotlight. An agitated secretary darts into view.

[All the Way is a 2012 play by Robert Schenkkan about President Lyndon B. Johnson's efforts to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It was commissioned by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where it premièred 25 July-3 November 2012. The play was produced in 13 September-12 October 2013, at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the production premièred at Broadway’s Neil Simon Theatre from 6 March 2014 to 29 June 2014 (27 previews and 131 regular performances). It won the 2014 Tony for Best Play and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play.

[The Arena Stage production of All the Way in Washington, D.C., ran from 1 April to 8 May 2016 on the Fichandler Stage (the arena theater). Jack Willis played LBJ; he was nominated for a 2017 Helen Hayes Award as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Play.]

Steps from the bustling action in the Fichandler Stage at Arena Stage, about 20 audience members are not actually watching the drama unfold. They sit silently, some with their heads bowed, others with their eyes closed. They are all blind or visually impaired; they either can’t see the stage at all, or it appears as little more than a haze of light and shadow.

But these theatergoers aren’t missing the action: Through the headphones clamped over their ears, a woman’s voice is explaining everything happening onstage, in detail, in real time.

The voice belongs to Rita Tehan, a veteran theater describer for the Metropolitan Washington Ear, a nonprofit organization that provides audio services to the blind and visually impaired in the Washington region. Tehan sits behind the crowd in a dark, elevated sound booth as the fast-paced plot — depicting the efforts of Johnson and civil rights leaders to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — unspools below.

Tehan speaks crisply into a plastic audio mask linked to a large radio transmitter, explaining what’s happening on the set as vividly and efficiently as possible.

“He waves her away, and pats her on the rear end,” she says when Johnson abruptly dismisses his frazzled secretary.

“LBJ is picking his nose — really deep,” she says during one of the show’s comic moments, raising her voice slightly to be heard over the audience’s laughter. “Hoover is watching.” [That’s J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972), the first, and longest serving Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (1935-72).]

Tehan points out when Johnson turns from one character to another mid-sentence: “He’s talking to the tailor now,” she quickly interjects. She makes sure that her listeners don’t miss the joke when Johnson, frustrated by his strict diet, swipes a bite of Sen. Richard Russell’s [1897-1971; Democrat of Georgia (1933-71)] dinner. (“LBJ stabs a pork chop on Russell’s plate and pops it in his mouth,” she says. “Russell’s eyes widen.”)

She continues for well over an hour, until the stage lights dim and Act One comes to an end.

“This is intermission,” she says. “It will be about 15 minutes.”

Then she lowers the mask and exhales.

An art in itself

Tehan’s preparation for “All the Way” began weeks before the May 1 matinee, one of more than 50 annual performances with description services provided by the Ear. Describers typically see a performance at least once or twice before they narrate it live, to familiarize themselves with the script and note important visual cues.

The Ear’s roughly two dozen volunteer describers serve more than 250 blind or visually impaired people at seven local theaters every year. They take special requests, too — a couple of years ago, a describer accompanied a blind fan to a Lady Gaga concert at Verizon Center.

“It takes a very special person to be a describer, someone who can think fast on their feet,” says Neely Oplinger, the Ear’s executive director. The people who sign up — and pass a rigorous audition — tend to stick around; many have been volunteering for 10 years or longer.

Tehan joined the organization in 1992, but she had practice long before that: Her father went blind from diabetes when she was a teen, and she used to describe his favorite television shows to him.

“They are so dedicated, and most of them really know theater,” Oplinger says of the group’s volunteers. “But it takes a lot more than knowing theater.”

They also have to know the rules: When describing a performance, you have to slip all the description into the gaps between dialogue. You shouldn’t make judgments; instead of concluding that a character looks “disappointed,” you note simply that he frowns and his shoulders droop. You must capture any movement that’s essential to the plot. And — as with any live performance — if you make a mistake, you have to keep going.

These guidelines were created by Margaret Pfanstiehl, who founded the Metropolitan Washington Ear in 1974 to improve the lives of the blind and visually impaired. Pfanstiehl, a Virginia native, suffered from a degenerative disease called retinitis pigmentosa, which eventually left her almost entirely blind.

At first, the Ear was a radio reading service — still a core part of its identity. The Silver Spring, Md.-based nonprofit has nearly 400 volunteers who read newspaper and magazine articles over closed-circuit radio, and the organization offers a dial-in service for listeners to hear recordings of articles from major publications, including The Washington Post, the New York Times and many others. About 5,000 people in the Washington area use the service.

But Pfanstiehl, who died in 2009, was also a devoted opera fan and theatergoer who longed to find a way for blind audience members to enjoy live performances.

“I always wanted a little voice to tell me whether it was a gunshot or a slamming door onstage, if the villain was walking across the stage with a dagger, and whether or not the lovers were facing each other,” she once told Reuters.

In 1981, Arena Stage approached the Ear about making live performances accessible to the blind. Pfanstiehl — then Margaret Rockwell, a divorcee — recruited longtime Metro spokesman and radio pro Cody Pfanstiehl as the first volunteer describer.

They watched dozens of movies together, says Oplinger, and he described the scenes unfolding onscreen. “Together, they devised what they called ‘the art and technique of audio description,’” says Oplinger. “And in the process, they fell in love.”

The couple, who married in 1983, went on to develop a comprehensive training system, teaching hundreds of volunteers to capture live performances for the blind.

Of course, the human mind is not a camera, so the description process is perhaps more like translation — an art in itself: The word choices matter, as do the pacing of the narration, the tone of voice and the clarity of enunciation. A secretary doesn’t just run into view, she gallops. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. doesn’t touch his wife, he gently strokes her arms. The describer has to engage in a sort of verbal dance with the actors, gracefully avoiding overlap or interruption.

And like any art, it’s imperfect. Sometimes details are missed, or a describer talks over a character, or the audio sounds muffled. But even with minor hiccups, the effort makes all the difference to a blind member of the audience, says Freddie Peaco, president of the Ear’s board of directors.

“You can hear the voices, but you don’t know the setting of the stage. The audience gives a great gasp, and you don’t know why they’re gasping,” she says. “With the describer, all of that comes to life, and I can’t tell you how meaningful that is.”

The show goes on

For a describer, Tehan says, “the moment the curtain rises, you’re on your toes” — and so she is as the second act of “All the Way” begins. She stands in the dark booth, her eyes trained on the stage.

“House lights are fading to black,” she says.

After the show, her listeners will praise her performance —“You did a great job, a great job!” one man will gush, grasping her hand — but Tehan won’t be entirely convinced. Even now, halfway through, she’s frustrated by details she couldn’t capture, by how little time she has to speak between the actors’ lines. An artist is never satisfied.

But the show goes on. Tehan cranes forward to follow the actors, her glasses reflecting the glow of the stage lights. She raises the mask to her face. In the seats just beyond the booth windows, all ears are on her.

[Caitlin Gibson is a feature writer focused on families, parenting, and children.  She joined the Washington Post in 2005.] 

*  *  *  *

“INVESTING IN THE THEATER

CAN GET A CHILD’S FOOT IN THE STAGE DOOR”

by Liz Moyer 

[Liz Moyer’s report appeared in the New York Times on 27 May 2017 (sec. B [“Business Day”)].  It was posted on the Times website on 26 May as “To Invest in Your Child’s Theater Dreams, First Invest in the Theater.”]

Dean Roth, the owner and president of a New Jersey company that makes parts for the tool-and-die industry [William T. Hutchinson Co. in Union, New Jersey, a third-generation family business], admits he has utterly failed to talk his teenage daughter out of pursuing a career in musical theater.

Instead of watching helplessly as she bounded down an uncertain career path, he became a Broadway investor to get an inside track: He said his initial $1,000 outlay [equivalent to $1,400 today], in the 2011 revival of “Godspell,” was “tuition for me to find out what the business was like.”

[The Broadway revival of Godspell, conceived by John-Michael Tebelak, who wrote the book based on the Gospel of Matthew, with music and new lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, ran at the Circle in the Square Theatre from 7 November 2011-24 June 2012 (30 previews and 264 regular performances).

[The production was directed by Daniel Goldstein and choreographed by Christopher Gattelli, with scenic design by David Korins, costume design by Miranda Hoffman, lighting design by David Weiner, sound design by Andrew Keister, and projection design by Daniel Brodie.]

Since then, he has invested in 22 other shows, with six returning profits so far. And he and his daughter, Kim, now a musical theater student at Syracuse University [see my note following the article], have come to an understanding about where to draw the line between meddling parent and struggling artist.

Like so many parents juggling feelings of pride and concern as their children step into adulthood, Mr. Roth said he wanted his daughter to understand the risks — as well as the rewards — associated with a career in the arts, and the only way he could see doing that was for both of them to get closer to the business.

“I wanted her to go into this with open eyes and know what she was getting into,” Mr. Roth said.

As with practically everything in New York, especially the insular world of Broadway, connections mean everything. Being a child of an investor in a show doesn’t secure a part or even an audition, but it can create opportunities that open doors.

“Getting to know a director and having the opportunity to observe a rehearsal or a script reading to get a deeper understanding of the business, that is a definite advantage,” said Pippin Parker [b. 1969], a playwright and the dean of the drama school at the New School in New York City.

Ken Davenport, a Broadway producer [the current Gypsy with Audra McDonald and the upcoming Othello with Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal; he’s produced two Tony-winners] and blogger who raises money for shows and has worked with Mr. Roth [the 2011 Godspell] and other investors, said he has seen more parents invest in shows to encourage a passion they share with one of their children or to bolster the child’s career prospects.

“The parents don’t have the friends or relationships, so they do it the old-fashioned way by writing a check,” he said. “All that check does is get you in the door. It’s up to the kids to prove themselves.”

Of course there’s no substitute for talent, Mr. Parker and others said.

“Investing is a wonderful and glorious activity, but unless you know what you are doing as an investor, the best you can hope for is a glass of Champagne with Bette Midler,” said Peter Cooke, the head of the drama school at [Pittsburgh’s] Carnegie Mellon University, which sends many graduates on to Broadway careers.

The only career path he can see, he said, “is being well trained.”

There are different ways productions raise money, but for many shows, affluent individuals play a key role. Typically, these are people with at least $1 million of investable assets — what the finance industry calls an accredited investor, who is presumably able to swallow the considerable risks associated with this type of investing.

Producers raise the money by putting together pools of investors, who tend to give an average of $25,000 to finance a production in a Broadway theater. Sometimes there are different investing tiers, and those who give more can get perks like having their names printed above the show’s title on posters and Playbills, or getting an invitation to a dress rehearsal.

The investor pools are usually organized as a limited partnership, like a private equity investment fund. Very often these investors are people who know the show’s insiders, including the actors, writers, directors and others bringing it to the stage.

Tim Speiss, a former board chairman of the Abingdon Theatre Company, a Broadway production group, said he once auctioned an item for a production in which the winning bidder could get his or her child a small speaking part in one performance. “There are some very clever ways to raise money,” said Mr. Speiss, who is a wealth adviser at EisnerAmper, an accounting and advisory firm based in New York.

Once a show gets up and running, the investors might get their money back, proportionate to what they put in, plus any profit after the show’s expenses are covered.

Many shows are money losers: Just one in five will end up being profitable, and even fewer are runaway successes. But Mr. Davenport points out that those odds aren’t much different than those of any other alternative investment in which a high-net-worth investor might dabble. As far as privately held start-ups — a favorite of private equity investors — some 50 percent of new companies fail after the first four years, according to labor statistics.

Linda Huber, an executive at a financial services company in New York, began investing in Broadway a few years ago when her daughter, now a high school senior, showed an interest. Her daughter, Claudia Lopez-Balboa, gives her advice on which shows to bankroll. So far she has invested in four, including “On Your Feet,” a musical about the lives of Gloria and Emilio Estefan [Marquis Theatre, 5 November 2015-20 August 2017], a story that resonated with her daughter’s part-Cuban heritage.

“For art that’s worth making, it’s the responsible thing to support these endeavors — it’s a thing to do together,” Ms. Huber said.

Her daughter is about to graduate from St. Paul’s School, a New Hampshire boarding school, and plans to go to the University of Michigan in the fall to major in finance and minor in arts management.

Ms. Lopez-Balboa said that Broadway had captured her imagination since she saw the show, “Bring It On” [St. James Theatre, 1 August-30 December 2012], as a middle-school student — she recalled skipping all the way home afterward.

“I wanted to produce a show that would make you leap in the air,” she said.

She reached out to Daryl Roth, a 10-time Tony-winning producer (and no relation to Mr. Roth, the tool-and-die executive) to seek out an informational meeting about the business.

Ms. Roth recalled that initial meeting and said she was impressed by Ms. Lopez-Balboa’s energy and interest — enough to hire her as an intern for two summers.

Ms. Roth, the lead producer of the show “Kinky Boots” [Al Hirschfeld Theatre, 4 April 2013-7 April 2019], said she understood where Ms. Lopez-Balboa was coming from because her son Jordan had also dived into the theater world. “I wanted to help Claudia learn and be excited about working in theater,” Ms. Roth said.

For Dean Roth, the industrial company executive from New Jersey, the first $1,000 investment got him and his daughter invited to a cocktail party at Sardi’s, where they mingled with other investors and met the show’s director, Danny Goldstein.

Some of those contacts advised Kim Roth on whether she should pick college or an acting conservatory (she chose college), gave her tips for getting started in the business, and helped answer other novice-level questions.

Ms. Roth, who interned for Ken Davenport one summer, has one year of study left at Syracuse before setting out for what she hopes will be a career as an actress, singer and dancer on Broadway. [She got her BFA in 2018; see below.]

“Living so close to the city just getting to make those networking connections is definitely helpful,” Ms. Roth said. [Westfield, New Jersey, where the Roths lived at this time, is 23 miles from New York City—a 35-minute drive or an 85-minute train ride.] “Knowing someone doesn’t necessarily help, but it doesn’t hurt.”

[Kim Roth (b. 1996), originally from Westfield, Union County, New Jersey, completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in musical theater from New York’s Syracuse University in 2018, and is now living in Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey.  She’s had additional training at Shakespeare’s Globe in London, on whose stage she’s performed (The Merchant of Venice, 2016).  Acting, singing, and dancing are her passions.  Roth is a member of Actors’ Equity Association.

[Liz Moyer is a journalist with experience reporting and writing about finance, markets, public policy and consumers.  She was most recently a reporter at Barron’s; she was previously an editor at the New York Times and a reporter at the Wall Street Journal.  Moyer has a Master of Science in journalism from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (1991).

[My friend, and a generous contributor to this blog, was, with his late wife, a small investor in a Broadway musical (Memphis, Shubert Theatre, 19 October 2009-5 August 2012).  It won several awards, including the 2010 Best Musical Tony! Read about his take on being a “Broadway Angel” (by Kirk Woodward, 7 September 2010).]