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.”]

"How to Survive an Election: Laugh With 'POTUS'"

by Gabriela Furtado Coutinho

[Avid theatergoers are quite familiar with political plays, like Gore Vidal’s 1960 The Best Man (revived on Broadway as Gore Vidal’s The Best Man in 2012; see “Best Man” by Kirk Woodward, 19 July 2012, and “In Memoriam: James Earl Jones (1931-2024), Part 2,” 25 September 2024), which is literally about politics and politicians, or Emily Mann’s Execution of Justice (1983; see “Performing Fact: The Documentary Drama,” 9 October 2009), which examines politically sensitive issues.

[But Gabriela Furtado Coutinho is here considering a play we can look at as therapy—laughter is the best medicine, as the saying goes (from the Book of Proverbs, popularized by Reader's Digest)—for recovering from today’s politics (specifically, 5 November two weeks back).  

[That’s how Furtado Coutinho sees POTUS, the 2022 political farce.  So have many spectators, it seems.

[This article was posted on American Theatre’s website on 28 October 2024.  It didn’t appear in the magazine’s print edition.  (All dates in the article, unless otherwise noted, are 2024.)]

Selina Fillinger’s popular farce about women taking control of the White House hits different this fall.

Selina Fillinger didn’t set out to write a play about electoral politics. But events in the current presidential election have transformed how audiences receive her play POTUS, Or Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive, a farce about women having to step in for an incapacitated president. Sound familiar? POTUS, among the most-produced plays in the country for the second year running, was scheduled at 11 TCG member theatres well before Vice President Kamala Harris advanced to the top of the Democratic ticket in the aftermath of President Biden’s June debate performance. 

[Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the publisher of American Theatre, is a nonprofit membership service organization that promotes professional nonprofit theater in the United States. Its services and publications focus exclusively on its member theaters, though its publications are available generally.]

Of those productions, 10 are programmed in September and October, before Election Day on Nov. 5. (One brave theatre, Zoetic Stage in Miami, has slated it for Jan. 9-26, 2025.) There are a few tried-and-true ways to cope with election jitters: inhaling ice cream straight from the carton, obsessing over bad TV, piercing the ceiling with existential gaze every morning and night. POTUS has been offering a communal alternative: shared laughter. Said Suzanne Tidwell, house services manager at Trinity Rep ([Trinity Repertory Theatre, Providence, Rhode Island] where POTUS ran Sept. 5-Oct. 27), of reactions to the show, “I’ve heard it repeated over and over: ‘Thank you. We needed that tonight. We really need to laugh.’”

Tidwell recalled the experience of debate night in particular, “They were quick to respond to every joke. They chose to be at the theatre that night instead of watching the debate. It became a sanctuary.”

[The second presidential debate (Donald Trump vs. Kamala Harris) took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 10 September at 9:00-10:30 p.m. (EDT).]

Artistic directors and house managers shared with me how this sentiment is ringing true for theatregoers across the country, in spite of the abysmal divides among Americans. The play’s hilarious confrontation of power, patriarchy, and “the pursuit of sanity” already felt timely when it opened on Broadway in 2022 and ran through the overturning of Roe v. Wade. 

[POTUS opened for a limited run at the Shubert Theatre on Broadway on 27 April 2022 after 13 previews starting on 14 April. (For those not familiar with the acronym, 'POTUS' is the common shorthand designation for “President of the United States,” referring to the current executive.) The show closed on 14 August 2022 after 126 regular performances. It was playwright Selina Fillinger’s Broadway début (and only her second play presented in New York City).  

[The production was directed by Susan Stroman (in her non-musical Broadway début), with scenic design by Beowulf Boritt, costume design by Linda Cho, lighting design by Sonoyo Nishikawa, and sound design by Jessica Paz. It starred Lilli Cooper (Chris), Lea DeLaria (Bernadette), Rachel Dratch (Stephanie), Julianne Hough (Dusty), Suzy Nakamura (Jean), Julie White (Harriet), and Vanessa Williams (Margaret).

[POTUS received 2022 Tony nominations for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play for Rachel Dratch and Julie White and Best Scenic Design of a Play and was also nominated for 2022 Drama League Awards for Outstanding Production of a Play and Distinguished Performance Awards for Dratch and White.

[The show got mixed reviews from the New York Times and the New York Post, but the ensemble cast was generally praised for their comedy work by Variety, the Washington Post, and other outlets. Show-Score, the theater review aggregator, gave POTUS a score of 85%, with 92% positive reviews.

[The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that overturned Roe v. Wade (22 January 1973) was issued on 24 June 2022.]

But it feels especially bracing right now to watch an all-femme cast avert disaster at the White House.

Take Trinity Rep’s first impulse toward the script: As artistic director Curt Columbus put it, they “picked it as an antidote to two old white men talking at each other. Then two weeks before rehearsal, one of the old white men dropped out and the world changed. It was such a different environment in the rehearsal room.”

At [Baltimore] Maryland’s Everyman Theatre, where the play ran Sept. 1-29, associate artistic director and POTUS actor Tuyết Thị Phạm said her rehearsal room also buzzed with “a shot of adrenaline” when it became clear that [Vice President Kamala] Harris would be the Democratic nominee.

The day that news broke, Curious Theatre Company [Denver] artistic director Jada Suzanne Dixon drove through picturesque Colorado to rehearsals for POTUS, which would play Sept. 7-Oct. 13. She wondered, “Do we need to do anything different? That was the question I was mulling over. By the time I got into the rehearsal room, there was this buzz and energy in the room. I said to everyone, ‘The beautiful thing about this play is it’s already on the page. Yes, the world is doing something different. Yet we don’t have to do anything different with our storytelling, because it is already here: women’s rights, feminism, and intersectionality.’”

Some productions responded to the historical significance of Harris’s campaign with subtle nods, adding Beyoncé’s “Freedom” [2016; from Lemonade] to the bow music or to the “Bitch Beats” playlist referenced in the show. Tracking such changes was self-professed theatre enthusiast “Broadway Bekah” Walsh, who has traveled around the country since the play premiered on Broadway to catch as many productions as possible. So far she’s seen POTUS 34 times at 20 theatres.

[A musical bow is an ancient musical instrument that can be picked, struck, or bowed to create sound.

[On her website, Susan Stroman notes: “As part of the plot, Harriet encourages Stephanie to listen to a playlist called ‘Bitch Beats’ – a compilation of songs that are the quintessence of female power, like Rihanna’s ‘Breakin’ Dishes’ or Bikini Kill’s ‘Rebel Girl’. She motivates Stephanie to find her confidence by dancing out a series of Power Poses.”

[Bekah Walsh, who describes herself as “theater obsessed,” is a theater writer and influencer from Baltimore, Maryland. In August 2023, after having seen POTUS twice on Broadway (see above) before its limited run ended, took off on what she dubbed the “POTUS Trail,” during which she traveled around the U.S. and Canada to see as many regional productions as she could. Starting at the Laboratory Theater of Florida in Fort Myers (4-19 August 2023), she posted her experiences online on several different websites, ending her trail in May 2024 with the production at the Sylvan Adams Theatre of the Segal Centre for Performing Arts in Montreal, Quebec, Canada (12 May-2 June 2024).]

Walsh said she’s watched the tone of the play go “from a place of commiseration, laughing about being stuck represented by men, to suddenly having hope, to having the potential of a woman in this position.” Few things hit the same, she said, in every production: Some have leaned more into the ending’s dramatic edge, while some went further with the farce throughout. Many were staged in thrust, Arena‘s [Washington, D.C.’s Arena Stage; 13 October-12 November 2023] was in the round, and Everyman’s had actors running through the audience (while they improved clever DMV-specific references). 

[“DMV” is a local appellation which stands for the “District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia.”]

But across all the productions she’s seen since July, one line has jumped out: “Why isn’t she president?”

Fillinger anticipated these nuances but worked to ensure that the script would remain evergreen. The dynamics in the play, she said, “translate to any institution, office, or household.” At any moment, she said, “People are going to project it onto whatever the electoral moment is.” There’s been a “breadth of interpretation.” At one opening, she was especially caught off guard when, at the end, an audience member exclaimed, “Nikki Haley for President!” Laughing at the memory, she said, “But I hope that people can also see what’s happening underneath, because that’s where the real work begins.”

“Whoever is president, it is going to be on us, on the people, to make our voices clear, and that will always be the case. Patriarchy and white supremacy exist across parties, and there are fundamental issues with our democracy,” Fillinger concluded.

All the theatremakers I interviewed about POTUS said it brought in new audiences and fuller houses than expected. Even in Tampa [Florida], where audiences are more conservative than in other cities where the show has played, the turnout “cracked our all-time Top 10 list. The community really embraced it,” said David M. Jenkins, artistic director of Jobsite Theater, where it ran Sept. 4-29.

Indeed, the nonpartisan play has proven its expansive resonance not only in the number of U.S. productions over the past year, but also in how well it translated abroad. Back in April, the Deutsches Schauspielhaus production in Hamburg, Germany played with a compelling postmodern take.

[The German translation of POTUS by Nico Rabenald (Die Schattenpräsidentinnen – “The shadow presidents”; nb: the word Präsidentin in German means a female president), directed by Claudia Bauer, premièred at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus (German Playhouse) on 12 April. It ran until 31 May.]

Still, Curt Colombus of Trinity Rep reminded me of a sobering U.S. reality: “It might be harder to laugh after Nov. 5.” That’s why he—and presumably most other theatres—steered clear of programming the play post-election.

Zoetic Stage will chart that great unknown as the team revs up to tell the story around Inauguration Day, regardless of the election outcome. Instead of a POTUS fall slot, they went with Martin McDonagh’s [2003; Broadway: 2005] The Pillowman [24 October-10 November] for spooky season, which “Miamians really get into,” said stage manager Vanessa McCloskey. But it’s not all innocent thrills: She and Zoetic artistic director Stuart Meltzer shared they were excited about Pillowman’s cautionary, unfortunately relevant depiction of a totalitarian government.

“Miami gets a lot of election exhaustion,” said McCloskey. As a former resident, I can vouch for this: I’ve personally witnessed political tension rift even the closest of Latine families living in South Florida. The political proves personal, with trauma from citizens’ original homelands informing voting decisions in this heavily immigrant and first-generation-American community.

Meltzer elaborated, “In our community, we weren’t sure how POTUS would be received amid that tension” in the run-up to Election Day. But by the time January comes around, they reasoned, “The decision will have been made,” as McCloskey put it, “and there will be more space to laugh together.”

Creatives hold their breath to see not only how the election will turn out, but how the play will feel as a result. 

While artists may swing the energetic pendulum of public discourse and crave revolution, they still live in context, the Florida productions reminded me. Jobsite’s Jenkins employed intentionality similar to Zoetic’s with a politically diverse city. The goal in Tampa, Jenkins said, was not to alienate audiences before they even came into the theatre.

Other theatres around the country, meanwhile, marketed the material’s edgy side, from language and slur reclamation to protest. At Chicago’s Steppenwolf [Theatre Company; 26 October-3 December 2023] last November, for instance, the dramatic final moment saw Harriet (played by force of nature Sandra Marquez) flicking a cigarette butt onto the American flag, which went up in smoke. Tampa had to tread in the opposite direction.

“We truly avoided even using the term ‘feminist farce,’” said Jenkins. “It’s a trigger, and the work does speak for itself. Sometimes a theatre might want to prescribe a reaction—we feel a need to stress the importance of what we’re doing. But sometimes it’s not conducive to bringing in an audience. So we relied on the experience; we talked about ‘girls night out’ and levity.” A few patrons, he said, sent angry emails after seeing the show, but they were a minority. Cheers were heard at key lines most nights. But when it came to Dusty’s, “Affordable, safe reproductive health care is a basic human right,” at a time wherein Amendment 4, Right to Abortion Initiative is on the ballot, the room pulsated with a different kind of energy. 

Observed Jenkins, “You could feel that people wanted to respond in a positive way, but at the same time, they weren’t laughing or applauding; there was some alternate energy. As if that moment crosses the line too much into our reality. As a producer and theatremaker, I appreciated that, having this mixed company sit in discomfort together.”

Surprisingly, Bekah Walsh said, at performances she attended around the country she noticed the most intermission walkouts not in Florida, Texas, or Tennessee, but in California. “You could see some seats were emptier at this one performance, which I thought was funny, being in a liberal area,” she recalled. “Maybe it was just the audience that day. You never know.” 

You really never know. “Maybe personally I had some nervousness around how the audience might receive it,” said Jada Suzanne Dixon, even at edgy Curious Theatre Company in Denver [7 September-13 October]. “But then there were stories—like, someone came with a friend who lives in the neighborhood, blocks away, and had never been to our theatre. And they shared, ‘I’m going to become a subscriber.’ This play opened up doors for us.”

Each theatre had its own wraparound programming, from voting information to pantsuit nights, but one that stood out to me was Trinity Rep’s “Femme Night” [11 October]. That iteration opened up dialogue about the rarity of femme-centered professional spaces. Suzanne Tidwell, Trinity Rep house services manager, shared with me how impactful it was to her, working the event.

“I’m usually busy and focused on logistics,” she said. “But I looked around at the lobby with the pre-show reception and realized I was in a space entirely filled with femme-identifying audience members, board members, and staff members. I saw this beautiful space to feel seen. As a woman of a certain age, when I started doing theatre, I was the first female to have been on the technical crew at my university. To be able to look around at the femme-identifying lighting ops and sound ops and run crew and know we’re doing the work of reclaiming our language and vocabulary and space has been a really moving experience for me.”

Earlier this year, I wrote a piece that extrapolated on my complicated relationship with mirrors, with looking on my femme and Latine body. As each staff member involved with POTUS productions described mothers bringing their daughters and daughters bringing their mothers to this show, I heard their glimmering hope. The image of Kamala Harris’s niece looking up at her during the DNC came to mind.

[The first link above takes readers to an article, “Tomorrow’s Tamoras and Titanias” by Furtado Coutinho, the author of “How to Survive an Election.” It’s posted on this blog in “Theater Education & Training, Part 3” (9 October 2024).]

The women depicted in this play are complicated, imperfect, messy, and complicit, and the fact that they’re allowed to be so gives me hope that we as a country can have more complicated, imperfect, messy conversations with one another about our systems of power. One by one, mirrors transform and small glass ceilings break, as femmes of every age watch POTUS’s women live large. We recognize the largest parts of ourselves. Dark, decisive, daring.

Fillinger has said that conservatives think the POTUS in question is Clinton, and liberals think it’s Trump. But that offstage body was never the invisible matter that mattered. Close your eyes and see it: Across the country, across many lines of division, we are all laughing at the same play. Fillinger might have given us the one POTUS we can all agree on. I consider it a win.

[Originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and raised in the vibrant immigrant community of South Florida, Gabriela Furtado Coutinho is a U.S.-based actor, writer, director, cultural strategist, and graduate of Northwestern University (Theatre/English Creative Writing BA).  In addition to now guest lecturing at Northwestern, she serves as Chicago Associate Editor of the Theatre Communications Group’s American Theatre magazine.  

[In addition to previous work with various Chicago collectives, as well as The Kennedy Center in their theater education/TYA division and Emmys/Television Academy in development of new kids’ TV, Furtado Coutinho has experience in developing new work, curating tangible care practices, writing in lyrical verse, and embodying power classical roles.

[On ROT, Coutinho’s writing appears in “Tomorrow’s Tamoras and Titanias” as referenced above and “‘Wish You Were Here: A Radical Access Roundtable,’” 6 July 2024.

[Born in Berkeley, California, in 1994, Salina Fillinger grew up in Eugene, Oregon.  Working one summer at Ashland’s Oregon Shakespeare Festival, she saw a production of Julius Caesar and started to envision a life in the arts.

[She left Eugene to study acting at Northwestern University in Chicago and took her first playwriting class in her sophomore year.  Her teacher encouraged her to enter the university’s Agnes Nixon Festival, established by the creator of the classic soap operas One Life to Live and All My Children.  Fillinger’s play, inspired by a headline about a man who walked into a bar and swallowed a pickled human toe used as a gimmick in drinks, was selected.

[The student dramatist went on to win the 2015 national Judith Barlow Prize for an original one-act play that was inspired by the work of a historic woman playwright.  In Fillinger’s case, it was 1928’s Machinal by Sophie Treadwell (1885-1970) and Fillinger’s play was Three Landings and a Fire Escape, about three women who become improbable friends and help one another through difficulties, one of whom summons the fortitude to take on the troubles.

[Fillinger morphed from a would-be actor to a writer, and in 2016, she heard the broadcast of presidential candidate Donald Trump “bragging about grabbing women by their genitals.  I, in turn, sat down to write a farce.”  By 2017, she had written POTUS, Or Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive, a farce in which the President of the United States inadvertently spins a verbal gaffe into a worldwide crisis and seven brilliant and stressed-out women on whom he relies risk everything, including their sanity, to keep him out of trouble.

[“The play is highly political, but it is not partisan. Republicans think it’s about Bill Clinton, Democrats think it’s about Donald Trump,” says the playwright.  Nevertheless, she had some difficulty selling the script—but “in 2022, well into Biden’s first term, POTUS premiered on Broadway.”  It became the third most-produced play of 2023—and remained on the list in 2024 at number seven.]

"Art Will Out," Part 1

by Jaan Whitehead 

A Supplement to the Regional Theater Series

[As theaters grow and become more institutionalized, they generate their own sets of needs that are separate from the art.  There is now an imbalance in how the art relates to the institution, a dissonance that pushes the art and the artists into a subservient role that is antithetical to the health of the theater.

[Jaan Whitehead’s article ran in the Theatre Communications Group’s (TCG) American Theatre (volume 19, issue 8; October 2002).  (It predates the AT online archive, but in addition to collections of the magazine in libraries or other repositories and digitized and microfilmed databases, it may also be found in databases such as ProQuest Research Library, accessible through many libraries.)]

CAN WE PUT THE ART BACK IN OUR ARTS INSTITUTIONS?

The deepest essence of theatre is the connection of the actor to the audience. You do not need sets, lights, costumes or even a stage to create this connection or to create theatre; you just need an actor speaking to an audience. We tend to think of our theatre institutions as the means by which this connection takes place, the means by which we gather resources to produce the art and gather an audience to witness it. But we do not think very much about the fact that the theatre institutions we create are not a neutral means for doing this, that the institutions themselves affect not only what art is presented to what audience but which artists create the art and how it relates to the wider community. Because our institutions are so familiar to us—they seem so natural and inevitable—we do not ask the probing questions about how they affect and mediate the art. In fact, in seeming to be the obvious answer to the issue of how to produce theatre, the institutional model becomes a mask that obscures these deeper questions. 

In recent years, there has been a growing chorus of voices expressing concern that, despite their many advantages, things are not well with our theatre institutions. The most commonly expressed concerns are that seasons are too bland, audiences too homogeneous and investment in new work inadequate to sustain a vital theatrical future. Usually, discussions of these problems tend to look outward at such things as the economy, the influence of television or conservative trends in the country. But I think we can see more clearly if we look inward, if we look inside our institutions and explore how they are, in fact, affecting the ways we develop and present our art. Rather than accepting institutions as inevitable, we can ask how their considerable resources are being used.

When you do ask this question, when you go behind the institutional mask, I believe you find that there is a dynamic in how our institutions developed that has undermined many of their original advantages. For, as theatres grow and become more institutionalized, they generate their own sets of needs that are separate from the art. With time, these institutional needs can become dominant, diverting resources from the art and altering sensibilities and values. Rather than being a means for producing art, institutions become ends in themselves, the art now serving the institution rather than the other way around. There is now an imbalance in how the art relates to the institution, a dissonance that pushes the art and the artists into a subservient role that is antithetical to the health of the theatre.

When this occurs, I think we honor our institutions best by challenging them, by asking how they actually are affecting the ways we practice our art on a daily basis. For instance, how does institutionalization affect the kind of work we do and the ways we develop our audiences? How does it affect the distribution of power in our theatres and how decisions are made? How does it affect our dreaming and how we plan for the future? And how does it affect the choices new artists have as they attempt to enter the field?

In this essay, I want to explore these questions, tracing first how this particular institutional model developed and why I think it causes distortions in how we practice our art. Then I want to look at what artistic alternatives already exist, alternatives that do put the art first and generate different kinds of institutional structures. Finally, I want to look at what might happen if we could break out of the framework of traditional institutional thinking and ask the fundamental question of whether we can use the advantages of an institution—its ability to gather resources and give visibility to the work—for the benefit of the art rather than the institution.

INSTITUTIONAL ART

Over 40 years ago, a group of pioneers founded the American regional theatre movement as a reaction against the growing restrictions of the commercial Broadway theatre [see “Regional Theater: History,” 8 October 2023]. At that time, most professional theatre originated in New York and then spread out through the country in touring companies. The works of Arthur Miller [1915-2005], Eugene O’Neill [1888-1953] and Tennessee Williams [1911-83] all were first seen in the New York commercial theatre. But as costs increased and popular culture changed, Broadway began to shy away from untested new work or serious classical work that might or might not draw an audience.

Frustrated with Broadway and wanting to step out from under its shadow, a small group of pioneers—Margo Jones [1911-55; Theatre ’47, Dallas, 1947], Nina Vance [1914-80; Alley Theatre, Houston, 1947], Zelda Fichandler [1924-2016; Arena Stage, Washington, D.C., 1950], Tyrone Guthrie [1900-71; Guthrie Theatre, Minneapolis, 1963]—founded theatres outside New York where they could continue to develop new work and produce the classics. Supported by the newly established National Endowment for the Arts [established 1965; see the multipart post starting on 5 November 2023] and innovative funding from the Ford Foundation, these theatres started a movement that grew and became part of the larger artistic renaissance of the 1960s and 1970s. Now, there are hundreds of large and small professional regional theatres spread out across the country.

In the early days of the movement, a particular model emerged as the institutional surround for these theatres—an artistic director and associates to produce the plays, a managing or executive director to lead the administrative side of the theatre, and a board of directors, who represented the public and carried the fiduciary role of seeing that the theatre’s financial affairs were in order. It was a dichotomous structure—the artistic energy on one side and the administrative energy on the other.

As theatres grew, organizing themselves around longer seasons and larger audiences, a pattern emerged in which the administrative side became more and more prominent in how a theatre operated. With longer seasons, you needed development and marketing departments; with larger audiences, you needed box offices and outreach programs; with more complex budgets, you needed business offices and new administrative personnel. As institutions grew, boards also expanded, taking on more fundraising and community-liaison roles. [There is a post on this blog consisting of interviews with members of two theater boards: “Theater Boards,” 11 December 2022.] And, as the field matured and theatres moved on to second- and third- generation leadership, the role of choosing the new leaders also fell to the board, which was drawn ever more deeply into the setting of artistic missions and institutional policies.

While the administrative side of the theatre expanded into a permanent institutional structure, the artistic side followed quite a different path. Although there was some expansion of the permanent staff, mainly artistic associates and dramaturgs, most of the growth took place through artists who were hired for the production of a particular play. Directors, actors and designers were all jobbed in, and, although theatres often developed longer-term relationships with particular artists, using them on a regular basis or bringing them in through residency programs, most artists really were pieceworkers who had little control over the evolution of a theatre’s work. Larger theatres did create their own in-house production departments with set, costume and prop shops. And a few theatres had permanent acting companies. But both the shops and acting companies were quite removed from the institutional decision-making center of the theatre. Rather than becoming a fixed part of the institutional structure, many of the artists had little presence in the theatre on an ongoing basis—and little institutional power.

As theatres evolved along these separate paths, they became caught in a dynamic that reinforced the separation of the artist from the institution. For, when a theatre grows, the very elements that generate the growth—income from ticket sales and fundraising—need to be reproduced each year for the theatre to be sustained. Theatres become more and more dependent on the box office and on the marketing and fundraising departments that generate this income; maintaining the effectiveness of these departments becomes essential to the survival of the institution, and more and more resources go toward this effort. The institution now needs to feed itself as well as fund its art. I think you see this most clearly in times of financial stress, for when a budget needs to be cut, it is much easier to cut the artistic costs that vary with each production than administrative costs that are firmly lodged within the institution; it makes more sense to choose a play with a small cast and few production requirements—the proverbial Love Letters—than to undermine the fundraising and box office that produce the theatre’s income. The art becomes the flesh, while the economic imperatives become the bones of the institution. And, as the art becomes increasingly subject to the economic needs of the institution, the institution starts to drive the art rather than the other way around. The theatre now produces institutional art; the institution, not the artists, determines the ecology of artistic creation.

[A. R. Gurney’s Love Letters is a play with one female and one male character, requiring almost no set—a table and two chairs—or costumes and very little preparation as it’s a reading of letters, which the actors read from the script with no need to memorize the text.  Its initial performance was given in 1987 in the New York City public library and has been produced since in other libraries around the country.]

It is this imbalance between the art and the institution that I think causes many of the disturbing tendencies we see in our theatres today. Because we have such a wide variety of theatres, each with its own rich history, geography and values, these tendencies affect different theatres in different ways. Many theatres may not see themselves reflected in these tendencies at all, while others see themselves reflected very clearly. But I think the forces of institutionalization have affected enough theatres with enough force that the tendencies have become relevant to the field as a whole.

The most obvious, and the most often remarked on, tendency is for the process of institutionalization to insinuate itself into the very heart of the theatre, into the intimate connection between the art and the audience. Too often, the art is packaged into a season of plays with short rehearsal periods and prescheduled runs, while the audience is packaged into a group of season subscribers. Art and audience become two sides of a symbiotic process, each side dependent on the other and each a constraint on the other. The subscription audience is needed to finance the season, but the season has to be attractive enough to draw the subscription audience. It becomes a treadmill—find the plays to attract the audience and attract the audience to finance the plays. The box office now mediates the relationship between the art and the audience, too often becoming the definition of that relationship. What began as a success—the achievement of using subscriptions to build audiences and stabilize cash flow—often ends up reducing artistic options, rather than freeing them [see “‘Subscriptions Are Dead, Long Live Subscriptions’” by Rosie Brownlow-Calkin, 12 June 2024].

A less obvious tendency in institutionalized theatres is for power to shift away from artists toward administrators and board members. Power means who asks what questions of whom—who frames the questions and who answers them. A good way to see how this works is to look at a theatre’s budget, the budget being an X-ray picture of a theatre’s priorities—how choices are made among scarce resources. If you think about the budgeting process and who is most closely involved—who brings what priorities to the table—you see that the different constituents in the theatre have very different access to and power over the budget table. Think of how the different people in a theatre relate to each other, how well they know and understand each other and how they do, or do not, interact. What you see is that the people working in a traditional theatre tend to fall along a continuum, with the board at one end and the shops at the other.

Where people fall on the line depends on whom they work most closely with and whose activities they best understand. So, next to the board, at one end of the line, is the administrative staff, particularly the executive, marketing and development directors, who work closely with the board on a regular basis. Moving along the line, the administrative staff, particularly the executive director, is most closely connected to the artistic director who in turn is most closely connected to the resident artists, then the production and technical staff, and finally the shops. So ranged along the line are the board, the administrative staff, the artistic director, the resident artists, the production and technical staff and the shops.

What is important is that, in most institutional theatres, the budgeting process takes place mainly at one end of this line, for it is usually the board that passes the budget and the administrative departments that prepare it with the artistic director. These are the people who sit at the budget table, and the further you are from this nexus of board, administrative leaders and artistic director, the less impact you have on the budget and, thus, the less power in your theatre. Because we tend to value the things we are most familiar with, it is not surprising that the urgency of your needs lessens the further down the line you are. And, of course, the actors, designers and directors who come in for each show are not on this line at all. To bring a better balance to the budget dialogue, the straight line would need to be curved into a circle, with greater connection and understanding among artists, administrators and board members and with more artists at the table.

Planning documents are also X rays [sic] of a theatre’s values and priorities, and a third troubling way I think institutionalization affects our theatres is that planning tends to replace dreaming—or at least constrain dreaming—in the life of the theatre. Planning for art is different than planning for an institution; to plan for art you would have to ask what is needed to make art flourish, to develop the art’s potential, not just its survival. You would have to ask what is needed to support and nourish playwrights—and actors—and directors—and designers. And what is needed to support the development of new plays and to sustain vital productions of existing plays. In institutional planning, such wider questions about the potential of the art tend to be collapsed into questions about the survival or growth of the institution. The support of theatre buildings, administrative structures and education and audience-development programs all become fixed costs that take precedence over the art. In the end, planning often becomes a more sophisticated and long-term form of budgeting. But, because we really do believe in our mission statements and the value of our art, we tend not to see this, or, if we do see it, we justify it on the grounds that, without the institution, we would not be able to support the art. What this does to dreaming is to contain it within institutional planning; if the dreams cannot fit within the parameters of the institution, they become “impractical.”

Finally, there is one last consequence that I find disturbing in how our institutions have developed: Because the funding infrastructure that has grown up around the field has come to expect theatres to take what is now the traditional institutional form, that form seems to be the only path new and emerging theatres can follow if they want to grow and gain financial stability. The regional theatre movement originally flourished with the support of the NEA and the Ford Foundation, because both of these funders were not only open to the ideas of the new theatres but actively sought their input on how to fashion programs to help them. The artists and funders built the theatres together. Forty years later, our funding community is not only much more entrenched; it is deeply invested in our traditional institutions, sharing many of their assumptions and values. Today, funders usually require new theatres to develop administrative structures along the lines of the traditional model before grants are forthcoming, inadvertently pushing them along the path to institutionalized art. It is very difficult for new theatres that do not have—or want—this institutional structure to break into the funding world, and traditional theatres do little to help them.

These are some of the problems that I think occur when theatres become dominated by institutional concerns. I am sure there are more. In many ways, the historical cycle is repeating itself; as our theatres have become more and more institutionalized, they are throwing the same kind of shadow over the art that Broadway did all those years ago. And, as before, a growing number of artists, particularly young artists coming of age in a new generation, are chafing to get out from under this shadow.

ARTISTIC ALTERNATIVES

Alternative ways of creating theatre do exist, and have for a long time, but the importance and richness of these alternatives have been marginalized by the overwhelming dominance of institutionalized theatre. What identifies these theatres, what makes them alternative theatres, is that they have remained artist-based theatres, theatres created and run by artists who choose what work they want to do and what audiences they want to reach. Despite the constant battle for funding and recognition, they have chosen a path as independent as possible from institutionalization in order to preserve artistic control over their work and their lives.

Within the world of alternative theatre there are two distinguishable traditions, traditions that, although remarkably different, present revealing contrasts with institutional theatre. One is the tradition of experimental or avant-garde theatre, theatre that constantly pushes the art form in new directions, breaking boundaries and redefining ways of creating theatre. Provocative and challenging, this work is defined by its artistic aesthetic; it is art mediated almost entirely by the artists that create it. The other tradition is that of community-based theatre, theatre deeply rooted in a particular community, which itself is an essential partner and collaborator in the work. Not to be confused with the local amateur groups that are often called “community” theatres, the community-based theatres I am talking about are professional theatres, usually ensemble theatres, that choose to work and live in a particular community, articulating the voice of that community through their art. Going back to the central connection between the art and the audience, in both of these traditions, it is the artists who create and preserve this connection, experimental theatre devoting most of its creativity to the integrity of the art and community-based theatre to the integrity of the audience.

The first strong burst of American experimental or avant-garde energy occurred in the 1960s and 1970s in downtown New York. This was experimental theatre in its most radical form, challenging everything from the relevance of the written word to methods of acting, the role of audiences and the physical use of a theatre space itself. As part of the counterculture of the time, this theatre was political in its approach and communal in its creation, much of the work coming from ensemble groups of writers, directors and actors who wanted to create new forms of theatre as well as shocking audiences out of their complacency. Influenced by the powerful theories of Antonin Artaud [1896-1948; French], Jerzy Grotowski [1933-99; Polish; see “‘The Stone in the Soup’” – Excerpts” by Tom Crawley, 14 and 17 April 2011], Bertolt Brecht [1898-1956; German] and Peter Brook [b. 1925; British; see “Peter Brook’s International Centre of Theatre Research,” 23 August 2011], they wanted to break open the fourth wall and make theatre an authentic experience of transformation. Julian Beck [1925-85] and [his wife] Judith Malina’s [1926-2015; German-born American] Living Theatre [founded, 1947, New York City], Joseph Chaikin’s [1935-2003] Open Theatre [1963-76] and Richard Schechner’s [b. 1934] Performance Group [1967-80] were the most influential of these early groups. It was theatre that was both deeply intellectual and emotionally explosive.

Soon a second wave of experimental work emerged, partly in reaction to what was perceived to be a growing loss of rigor in the earlier work—a tendency toward emotional and physical excess—and partly due to changing times as the counterculture came to an end and a more individualistic and self-absorbed culture emerged. This new work tended to be visual and associative rather than linear and narrative, a reflection of the changing ways people were perceiving and absorbing information in the new age of technology. And, rather than being communally created, most of this work came from the vision of a single artist, an artist who often worked with a company of actors and ongoing collaborators but whose own vision dominated the process. Robert Wilson [b. 1941], Richard Foreman [b. 1937], the Wooster Group [formed 1975; New York City], and, more recently, Anne Bogart [b. 1951] and her SITI Company [founded 1992; New York City and Saratoga Springs, New York] are all examples of this wave of experimental energy. But, like earlier groups, these artists maintain a minimal institutional structure, create original pieces over long developmental periods and have an artistic aesthetic that is dynamic, not static, evolving with their work. And they continue to have close connections with international artists like Ariane Mnouchkine [b. 1939; French; Théâtre du Soleil, founded 1964] and Tadashi Suzuki [b. 1939; Suzuki Company of Toga (SCOT), formed 1976] who share their abiding interest in exploring the forms and meaning of theatre.

The other, so very different, tradition of alternative theatre is community-based theatre, which really had its origins in the Depression [1929-39] but has experienced its main growth in the past two decades. The Community Arts Network [project active from 1999 through 2010 that promoted information exchange, research, and critical dialogue in the field of art] calls this “art made as a voice and a force within a specific community of place, spirit or tradition.” The aim of community-based theatres is to become an indigenous part of the community, creating a theatrical voice for that community but also becoming one of its civic institutions, like schools and libraries. Many of these theatres reach audiences that have never experienced theatre before, and the relationship that develops between the artists and their audiences is very alive, a process of mutual creativity. And, although much of the work has intellectual roots in the ideas of the same thinkers who inspired the avant-garde such as Artaud and Grotowski, community-based theatres have added to their work other influences, such as commedia dell’arte, storytelling, folksongs and other more populist forms of expression.

These theatres have extended the geographical reach of the regional theatre movement, residing in many small towns and rural areas around the country and also in under-served neighborhoods of urban centers. Not unexpectedly, the tradition includes a rich variety of theatres—from the Roadside Theater of Whitesburg, Ky., which creates original work from the oral histories and songs of its Appalachian community; to the Cornerstone Theater Company, which originally created work in different rural communities and now works within and among the diverse communities of Los Angeles; to A Traveling Jewish Theatre [settled in San Francisco in 2009 as The Jewish Theatre San Francisco; closed 2012] and the San Francisco Mime Troupe, which create specific kinds of theatre that tour here and abroad. Despite these differences, however, these theatres are unified in how they practice their art. Almost all are ensemble theatres whose artists collectively create the work; decision-making rests in the hands of the artists, and resources go toward supporting the artists and the artistic process—a very different model from the corporate one that dominates American theatre.

Both experimental and community-based theatres are important because they show clear alternatives to institutional theatre. But they also are important because both have experienced new bursts of energy in recent years and are claiming a stronger voice in the theatre community. Community-based theatres have begun to organize nationally, creating connections across geographical boundaries and establishing their work as an authentic movement that should be made known to young people coming into the field. And they have begun to create exciting collaborations.

For example, in the summer of 1999, the Touchstone Theatre of Bethlehem, Pa., created a play about the shutting of the steel mills in their town and the devastation this caused. Although conceived and produced by Touchstone, the play, Steelbound, was written by Cornerstone’s Alison Carey and based on Aeschylus’ [ca. 525/524-ca. 456 BCE] Prometheus Bound [ca. 430 BCE]. It was directed by Bill Rauch, also of Cornerstone; the costumes were designed by April Bevans of Pennsylvania’s Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble; and the lighting was done by Ken Rothchild of New York’s Irondale Ensemble Project. Presented in the bold structural remains of an empty iron foundry, the play included three choruses of local people in the Greek tradition—one of steelworkers, one of women and one of youth—whose voices were central to the play. Expected to be a requiem for the losses to the community, the play turned out to be a healing experience, a beginning as much as an ending. This is just one example of the vitality that is energizing community-based theatres today.

Though the recent burst of activity in community-based theatres comes mainly from already-existing theatres, the new burst of energy in experimental theatre comes from the emergence of a whole new generation of artists who want to shake up the theatre world now, as their predecessors did before them. The range of the new experimental theatres is eclectic and, following the expansion of theatre to encompass the whole country, is spread out geographically rather than being concentrated in New York City. These small and energetic companies, created by artists in their twenties and thirties, place themselves in direct opposition to institutional theatre, deeply critical of the effects of institutionalization on the art and the life of the artist and shunning pressures to be pushed down similar paths.

Many of these theatres are close in spirit to the early wave of avant-garde art because they are deeply concerned with collapsing the distance between the artists and the audience and with issues of democratic community. They consider the idea of theatre space fluid, changing with the needs of a particular play, an environment for the actor and audience, not just a performing stage. And much of the work is multimedia, including film, music, dance and the visual arts, and, like other such original work, needs to tour to extend its life. These new artists want to reinvent a theatrical sensibility that is alive, not mediated by institutions as to form or content or place.

Of course, it is not possible to know how these experimental theatres will develop over time—where they will head artistically or institutionally—or how many will survive. Today they live with very few resources outside their own talent and energy. But they are the first real computer generation, collapsing geography with websites and e-mail and creating new ways of communicating and working. And they are consciously trying to develop a vocabulary that expresses who they are and how they work—a vocabulary that will better identify their differences with institutional theatre. But, perhaps most important, they are filled with the kind of anarchic energy that has always had the potential to create change.

Looking at how experimental and community-based theatres operate demonstrates that there are alternative ways for artists to be connected to their art besides the mediation of institutional structures. But, since it is still institutional theatres that dominate the field and absorb most of its resources, I think you need to circle back to the traditional institutions and ask what their potential is for change. And to ask how we can imagine such change taking place. We tend to think of our institutions as finished projects, but they are not; they are always in a state of becoming and can be sculpted with the same thoughtful creativity as our art.

BREAKING IT OPEN

Obviously many traditional institutions are what they want to be—happy in their mission and their audiences, while their audiences are happy with them. Many of these theatres, particularly the larger ones, are more than just theatres; they are cultural anchors that play important social and economic roles in their cities. In many cases, they are the main source of theatre education in school systems; they are important and visible political advocates for the arts; and they contribute in significant ways to the economy of the community. As cultural leaders and prominent institutions in a community, their sense of identity and worth has a broad base that goes beyond the theatre they produce; they have genuine stakes that make them less likely to move toward radical change.

There are also theatres that obviously sense problems with institutionalization and, consciously or unconsciously, are making efforts to counter these problems. In a number of theatres, connections are deliberately created between artists and boards, with artists giving presentations at board gatherings, artists actually serving on boards and, in some cases, board members becoming interns for the production of a play, following the play from the original design meetings to opening night—all attempts to deepen board members’ understanding of the art and the artistic process. Many theatres have drawn more artists into their permanent operational structure as dramaturgs, artists-in-residence and education artists, adding more artistic voices to the institutional mix. One theatre I know has a family dinner each spring, gathering together everyone from stage managers to carpenters to box-office workers to board members, attempting to transform authority relationships into human relationships. And some of our best institutional thinkers, particularly Nello McDaniel and George Thorn [cofounders in 1991 of ARTS Action Research, an organization dedicated to helping artists and fledgling arts organizations become financially stable], have worked with theatres to develop alternate ways of organizing themselves—replacing hierarchical structures of authority with concentric circles of participation—and urging theatres to extend the collaborate artistic process of the rehearsal hall to institutional decision-making.

Finally, there are theatres, particularly some younger theatres and theatres with new artistic leaders, that are generating fresh energy in the field by forging alliances either with other theatres in this country, including some of the more experimental theatres, or with international artists who bring exciting new sensibilities to the work. And some of these alliances are beginning to cross traditional cultural lines, revitalizing audiences as well as the art. These theatres are finding ways around their institutions to connect with their art.

These are just a few examples of the creative ways in which theatres are changing how their institutions operate. But, because these strategies do not change the basic dynamic of the institution, they do not reverse the tendencies they are trying to overcome. They are working from the outside in, ameliorating many of the problems of institutionalization but not reversing the institutional processes that cause the problems. But what if you wanted to create more fundamental change—to work from the inside out, rather than the outside in? What if you wanted to really break open institutions, creating new ways of working and new relationships to the art? What would you do? How would you begin?

If theatres really want to change, or even explore the idea of such change, I think you need to start where all theatre starts, with the artists. You need to bring the artists to the table, not in a token way but as vital and respected members of the dialogue. The obvious reason for doing this is so their needs and priorities are included in the theatre’s decision-making. But, actually, I think there is a more compelling reason, which is that artists think differently from administrators; their imaginations, creativity and values come from a different internal place, making them more likely to bring whole new perspectives to the table. At a minimum, I think artists will identify many of the dissonances that exist between the art and the institution. But more significantly, I think they can open up a new dialogue, a dialogue of possibility in which alternative institutional realities can be explored. Not being so hampered by institutional baggage, artists are freer to turn the kaleidoscope, revealing alternative ways of defining and fulfilling a theatre’s needs.

For example, maybe, if you look really hard, you would find that your mission statement has become empty as the real driving force of the theatre. If so, how would you change it or how would you change the institution to restore its vitality? Or maybe the box office has become too much of a stranglehold on the central relationship between the art and the audience. How could you redefine that art/audience relationship in ways that would, in turn, redefine the role of the box office? Or maybe you really are not sure what the term “governance” means. Who is governing whom about what? Is it enough for a board to hold the institution in trust—i.e., the financial integrity of the theatre—or should it also hold the art in trust? If so, what does that mean? Once you let the institutional imperatives be only one part of the dialogue, many new questions and possibilities emerge.

And there is one more reason I think artists belong at the table. In the press of institutional development, artists have inadvertently given over the guardianship of their art and lives to others. But it is their work and their lives that are at stake. One of the most important things alternative theatres show us is that there are artists who are willing to go to extreme lengths to maintain that guardianship. Artists should not be pieceworkers, occasional visitors to their theatres. They should have a dignified and integral role in those theatres and in the guardianship of their art.

Bringing artists to the table can change the scope and sensibility of the dialogue. But I think more is needed; I think you need to change the environment as well, to change the whole atmosphere in which the dialogue takes place. To do this I would move the table—figuratively and maybe even literally—out of the boardroom, the development office and the box office and onto the stage. It is on the stage—the very heart of the theatre, where the art and the audience live—that I believe a theatre can best find its bearings, where it can best see itself in terms of the art rather than the institution. I would put the planning table on the stage—and the budget table and the funding table and the board table. And sitting at each table would be artists and artisans, as well as administrators and board members.

If you are on the stage, the pressure is to look at the theatre through the eyes of the artists, for it is on the stage that artists have authority. This begins to put balance back into the power relationships at the table, the artists now having their own authority, not authority derived from others. So concerns about the art come to the fore. Planners have to ask what they really are planning for. Budgeters have to ask what they really are budgeting for. And board members have to ask what they are holding in trust for the community, what “fiduciary” means, beyond its narrow legal meaning. If it is the art that is being planned for, budgeted for and held in trust, then the knowledge and authority of the artists take on real meaning. Where before it was mainly administrators who defined the theatre’s reality, now the question opens up: Whose reality is being created at the table and why? Whose views have authority and why? The conversation becomes a true dialogue.

And then there is one last step I would take in the effort to open up possibilities for change: to look outward to the larger environment in which the theatre operates, for change rarely happens in a vacuum. To imagine different kinds of theatre institutions, you also have to imagine a different kind of landscape for these institutions to live in, one that is more open, more multidimensional and has more points of entry for artists, audiences and new theatres.

Although there are many aspects to this wider landscape—cultural change, technological change, public policy, international influences—the most important has to be the funding community, for little significant change can happen without this community. So the real question is to what extent funders are willing to become partners for change. Obviously, the funding community is just as diverse as the theatre community, so there is a wide range of sensibilities and resources among the foundation, corporation, individual and government funders who make up this community. And, within this community, there already are a number of funders working creatively with theatres to support artistic and institutional change. But there are many more who remain tied to traditional approaches. To achieve the degree of change in the theatrical landscape I am suggesting, more significant breaks with traditional patterns, by a greater number of funders, will be needed. How might this happen?

The most obvious thing that comes to mind is that we invest so little in the development of our work and of our artists. In Moscow, a new theatre center is being founded just for the purpose of providing a nourishing and protective environment for creating theatre art. Named the Meyerhold Center [presumably, the Meyerhold Theater and Cultural Center, founded in 2002 as both a performance venue and a center of education for those who wish to experiment with the form and content of theater] after the legendary Russian director [Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874-1940), experimental theater producer, director, and actor], the center will have no company or regular performances; it is a center that hopes to eventually enfold master classes, experimental productions, festivals, symposiums and a publishing program within its laboratory environment. It is a center for enriching art, not producing it. Can we imagine funding something like this? Or even providing more direct funding to artist groups such as playwright centers or acting companies so they could have autonomy as well as support in developing their talents. Or could we provide funding for artists, themselves, to create work that is then presented by traditional theatres, the model followed by successful experimental groups? Opening up funding to more ways of nourishing and producing theatre would certainly add vitality and depth to the theatrical landscape.

[The Meyerhold Center has become a politically troubled institution since Whitehead’s article was published.  A few hours after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Elena Kovalskaya, then artistic director of the Meyerhold Center, a state-funded organization, resigned her post in protest over President Vladimir Putin's action. "It is impossible to work for a murderer and get a salary from him," she wrote in a Facebook post.  The Russian government then merged the Meyerhold Center with another Moscow theater institution that has been friendly to Putin’s regime.]

The second thing that comes to mind is to allow more people and more ways of working into the funding process, to open up funding to a wider range of theatres, particularly new and experimental ones. For instance, very small theatres could be helped if funders created pools of funds that could be distributed by local arts organizations or other neutral groups. This would save funders from having to invest in researching each theatre, an economy of scale of sorts, while providing an ongoing base for such theatres. Something like this occurred in New York City after the terrorist attacks when the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York, the support group for New York theatres, was granted several pools of money to distribute to theatres, particularly small theatres, that had been badly hurt by the attacks. Or funders could provide more support for touring—one of the crucial needs of experimental and ensemble theatres that create unique work that cannot be easily duplicated. A good example of this is the National Performance Network [organization, formed in 1985, that supports artists in the creation and touring of new work, and advances racial and cultural justice in the arts presenting field], which was created to help such theatres form collaborations and tour as a way of expanding the reach of their work. More efforts like this could make a difference. Or perhaps funders could give traditional institutions incentives to include young artists and small theatres in their programming. They could be given grants to present this work during the summer, or at nontraditional times of the day, or in festivals drawing together a number of these groups. It would be exciting to walk into a theatre complex and be able to choose from a noon reading of a new play by a small theatre, a 6:00 multimedia performance by an experimental theatre, an 8:00 traditional performance by the host theatre and then, perhaps, a midnight jazz cabaret. What a diverse audience would be passing through the doors and what a wonderful mix of energies would be filling the spaces!

Finally, there is the question of the distribution of funds within the field. In a survey done for the year 2000 by TCG, 145 theatres of different sizes provided information on their total assets, including physical assets such as land and buildings and financial assets such as endowments, cash and securities. The results were that the 40 theatres in the survey with budgets over $5 million owned 79 percent of the assets; the 69 theatres with budgets between $1 million and $5 million owned 20 percent of the assets; and the 43 theatres with budgets under $1 million owned 1 percent of the assets. Put another way, the top 30 percent of the theatres held almost 80 percent of the assets, while the bottom 30 percent held only 1 percent. Obviously these numbers reflect the particular theatres in the survey, but, if anything, the skewed distribution is understated because there are hundreds of other small theatres and only a few other large ones that were not in the survey. Even acknowledging that the theatre field is deeply undercapitalized in the first place, it still seems clear that the scarce resources available to the field are concentrated in too few large theatres. So, a more even distribution of resources is certainly a further way funders could change the theatrical landscape.

Nourishing the art, inviting a wider range of artists and theatres into the funding process, allocating funds more evenly to theatres already there—these are just some of the ways the funding community could help open up the theatrical landscape, and many funders are already contributing to such change. But how do you accelerate the process? How do you think bigger? How do you show that the form or size of an institution does not determine the quality or value of its art?

Today we appear to be at another point of vital change in the American theatre, a time when the energies of new generations and changing times are again challenging how we create and present theatre. There are more questions and voices of dissent, more pressures from new artists coming into the field, and more consciousness of the need to move out from under institutional shadows. As our theatres settle into middle age, the time seems ripe for a new age of pioneers, pioneers who can put the art—and the artists—back into the heart of our theatres.

[Jaan Whitehead is an emeritus trustee and past board chair of SITI Company, an ensemble company founded by Anne Bogart.  She’s served on the boards of the Acting Company, Arena Stage, Living Stage, the Whole Theatre, Theatre Communications Group, and the National Cultural Alliance.  She has also served as executive director of Theatre for a New Audience and as development director of Center Stage.  Prior to entering the theater world, Whitehead taught political philosophy at Georgetown University.  She’s published essays in American Theatre and HowlRound and is the co-editor of The Art of Governance: Boards in the Performing Arts (2005).

[Following the original AT publication of “Art Will Out,” Whitehead’s article generated a number of responses (including one from Zelda Fichandler, co-founder in 1950 and artistic director from 1950 to 1991 of Arena Stage, former artistic director of The Acting Company, 1991-94, and chair of the graduate acting program of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, 1984-2009).  I plan to post these letters to the editor of AT and other responses on Tuesday, 6 August, and probably thereafter.]