Community-Based Theater

by Kirk Woodward 

[Following his article on “Staged Readings” on 11 February 2026, Kirk Woodward, Rick On Theater’s most prolific guest-blogger (just shy of 150 posts out of 1,335, including several multi-parters), is back now with a piece on “Community-Based Theater.”  It’s a subject about which Kirk knows a great deal, having toiled in its fields—as an actor, director, playwright, composer, rehearsal and performance accompanist, and probably most of the jobs that exist in that arena—during the span of his theatrical career.

[This isn’t surprising, since Kirk lives in Little Falls in New Jersey’s Passaic County, which is right next to Essex County (where he used to live), about 60 miles and an hour-and-a-quarter drive or train ride west of New York City.  From my experience and observation, Essex County has an exceptional number of performance venues and theater companies, both professional and community-oriented.  One might even say that it’s a little theater-mad, so there’s a lot of theater activity and interest thereabouts. 

[Kirk, as you might expect from someone with that kind of credential, has some pretty firm ideas about CBT, as he dubs it in his post.  For one thing, he has a more inclusive definition of community-based theater than is perhaps standard for what is more generally known as “community theater.”  (I’ll let you all read for yourself what distinction Kirk makes between the two.)

[A little over a year-and-a-half ago, I posted an essay by Jaan Whitehead called “Art Will Out,” originally published in the October 2002 issue of American Theatre magazine (volume 19, number 8).  The repost was part of my occasional series on the regional theater in the United States, and Whitehead, a New York-based author, theater executive, and political theorist known for her work in the performing arts, had a great deal to say about community-based theater.  Here are significant passages on the subject:

[C]ommunity-based theatre [is] 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 . . ., it is the artists who create and preserve this connection, . . . community-based theatre [devoting most of its creativity] to the integrity of the audience.

. . . .

[C]ommunity-based theatre . . . had its origins in the Depression [1929-39] but has experienced its main growth in the past two decades.  The Community Arts Network [a 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 [Antonin] Artaud [1896-1948; French dramatist, poet, actor, and artist who became one of the most influential figures in 20th-century avant-garde theater] and [Jerzy] Grotowski [1933-1999; visionary Polish theater director, teacher, and dramatic theorist; fundamentally redefined 20th-century performance], community-based theatres have added to their work other influences, such as commedia dell’arte [a form of improvised theater that originated in northern Italy in the 15th century and flourished across Europe through the 18th century], storytelling, folksongs and other more populist forms of expression.

[Aside from my caveat that Kirk uses more expansive criteria for community-based theaters, readers will find that Whitehead’s description of CBT’s in this country largely aligns with Kirk’s.]

I was proud of myself for inventing the term “community-based theater” (speaking about theater in the United States – conditions may differ in other countries).

Doing a Google search, I found that not only did I not come up with the term, but that it is widely used. Briefly overcoming my resistance to Artificial Intelligence (AI), here is a description that AI provides:

Community-based theater (CBT) involves local, non-professional groups using volunteers for actors and crew, focusing on accessible artistic participation, social connection, and entertainment for the public, often producing plays and musicals for fun, education, and to reflect local culture, distinct from professional theater by its amateur, volunteer-driven, and community-focused nature. 

Key Characteristics

 

•        Volunteer-Driven: Relies on unpaid actors, directors, and technical staff from the community.

•        Non-Professional: Primarily a social and artistic activity, not a paid profession.

•        Locally Focused: Often produces shows relevant to the community's interests and provides local arts engagement.

•        Accessible: Welcomes all experience levels, with some groups requiring no audition or experience.

•        Varied Scale: Ranges from small local troupes to large organizations like the Omaha Community Playhouse (OCP; Omaha, Nebraska). 

Types of Community Theater

 

•        Traditional Community Theater: Non-profits staging musicals and plays for general audiences, like AfterWork Theater (New York City) or Spring Lake Theatre (Spring Lake, New Jersey).

•        Civic/Participatory Theater: Programs like Public Works at The Public Theater (New York City) that deeply involve community members in creating ambitious shows with professional artists.

•        Specialized Groups: Groups focusing on youth, specific genres, or community dialogue, such as the Jersey City Theater Center (Jersey City, New Jersey) or West Hudson Arts + Theater Company (WHATCo) (Kearny, New Jersey). 

Why It Matters

 

·        Cultural Hubs: Often the only performing arts source in an area, bringing entertainment and participation.

·        Skill Building: Offers a stress-free environment to learn acting, singing, and technical skills.

·        Community Building: Connects people through shared creative projects and provides a space for community reflection and expression. 

There’s merit to this description, but it actually describes what’s usually referred to as “community theater.” In my usage the term “community-based theater” has a wider application than the AI description indicates. It does mean “local, non-professional groups using volunteers for actors and crew,” commonly known as “community theater.”

 

However, for me the term Community Based Theater (hereafter CBT), in a wider way, describes any theater in this country, including professional repertory companies, that is not run primarily for commercial purposes (as are Broadway shows and related touring companies).

 

Where art is concerned, rigid distinctions seldom work well, boundaries are porous, and definitions often have to leave room for exceptions. For example, traditionally “community theater” (also historically referred to as “little theater”) has meant performances of Broadway plays and musicals by local, amateur theater companies. As I indicated, this seems to be primarily what AI is talking about.

 

My use of “CBT” includes those theaters, but smaller ones too, for example, performances of plays that friends of mine and I have staged in living rooms, with audiences of maybe a dozen people at a time, and larger theaters too, like regional theaters (see below). And it includes larger theaters too, such as “regional theaters,” discussed more below.

Why does the use of the term “community-based theater” (CBT) matter? For me this line of thought began as a way to explain and even justify the kind of theater I do. I have made a little money as a playwright, but certainly not a living, and some of my plays have had multiple productions, but, again, not tremendously.

An aspect of CBT that is not included in the AI description is that in many cases the artistic standards and intentions behind CBT can be as high as those of commercial theater – or higher – although abilities and resources may lag behind Broadway standards. What the AI description of CBT leaves out is the determination of many in the field to live up to the highest artistic standards they possibly can.

A professional in any field has advantages that an amateur does not have – greater experience, working with others of high skill levels, training with leaders of the craft, not to mention benefits such as payment, a contract, unions, a budget, and so on.

However, non-professionals can reach as high as their abilities will take them (and they can take theater classes too), and my own experience is that many in CBT assume not only that they should achieve the highest levels of artistic achievement, but that they can.

Sometimes, indeed, they do, and CBT has often been the starting point for professional careers. After all everyone has to start somewhere – few if any find themselves instantly at the top of their profession.

My wife, Pat, was an excellent director, probably the best I’ve worked with, partly because she assumed that “Broadway standards” were what the cast was reaching for. She knew that by no means everyone had the ability to reach those standards; but she made that a goal, and many were surprised at what they could actually accomplish.

By the way, the distinction “professional/amateur” may not be acknowledged in the same way by people in theater and those outside it. Those not associated with CBT may assume “professional” means “getting paid for it,” and “amateur” means “not paid or little paid.”

For many CBT participants I know, however, however, “amateur” means something more like “not dependable for working hard at the craft” and “professional” more like “dependable at all times and in all circumstances,” a definition that obviously is achievable whether one is paid or not.

There is a similar ambiguity between “commercial” and “non-commercial” theater. In some European countries, in particular, theater is subsidized by the government at some level. In the United States, although varied kinds of government assistance are possible (for example, for state university theater programs), most theaters are basically responsible for coming up with the money they need to operate—especially now, with the National Endowment for the Arts curtailed.

This is as true of CBT as it is of Broadway and regional theater. (The Metropolitan Opera in New York City recently announced major cutbacks in staff and programming because of funding difficulties. Opera is a form of theater that’s particularly difficult to sustain.)

Except in unusual circumstances (including state government subsidy of university theaters), every theater has to run on the profit side of the balance sheet or it will have to close. Even if no actors are paid, others on the staff – directors, musicians, technicians – may have to be paid, depending on who’s available.

Performance space must be rented or, if owned by the theater, property taxes must be paid. Plays, both published and new, if not in the public domain, almost always require royalty payment. A building must be heated or cooled. Insurance may be required. Material for sets and set construction, lighting and sound setups, and costumes ordinarily take money.

So ordinarily a CBT is likely to be commercial on the business side, even if it doesn’t pay its actors. Some, of course, do, which brings up the question of “regional theaters” – major, professional, top-quality theaters like those I mentioned in the AI list at the beginning of this article.

Of course, again, strict distinctions aren’t necessary, and may not be possible, but from what I know of the beginnings of “regional theaters,” major operations like Actors Theater of Louisville (Kentucky), the McCarter Theatre Center (Princeton, New Jersey), Arena Stage (Washington, DC), and the Guthrie Theater (Minneapolis, Minnesota), began with literally a “community” impulse – the desire to bring the highest quality theater to their own towns.

All those theaters are professional – their staffs and actors are paid. Some put on plays that go on to be performed on Broadway. But all originated in impulses that were not exclusively commercial.

For example, I was present (as a high school student) at a meeting in the 1960’s when Richard Block (to this day an active director and speaker) and Ewel Cornett (1937-2002) combined forces to create the Actors Theater of Louisville. I remember their enthusiasm and their determination to bring quality theater to their city (and they did).

The same can be said for many “regional theaters,” major operations such as the McCarter Theatre Center, Arena Stage, and the Guthrie Theater. All those theaters are unquestionably professional – their staffs and actors are paid. Some put on plays that go on to be performed on Broadway.

But all the theaters originated in impulses that were not merely commercial. So to call them CBT is not out of the question, despite their scope and the size of their budgets.

In talking about “community-based theater,” it’s worth asking what community we’re talking about. “Community” is often a loaded word. Which community – what segment of the population – does a CBT represent? As the drama critic Eric Bentley (1916-2000) wrote in his seminal book In Search of Theatre (1953):

“The general public” is as much of an abstraction as “the common man.” Today there are dozens of publics separated by differences of interest as well as by levels of taste, intelligence, and education.

But I think there are two communities in particular that can be seen as sources of inspiration for CBT, and the two are not mutually exclusive. One is a community of those interested in civic development, who believe that a theater will enhance the city’s or the area’s life. The other is a community of artists who want a theater as a place to work and to do worthwhile productions.

An example of both communities working together is the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, where the desire to enhance the reputation and culture of the city met the interest of the director Tyrone Guthrie (1900-1971), who with co-workers was looking for a place to do significant theater.

I suspect that more than one CBT has failed because the community of actors, excited about the possibility of doing theater, didn’t sufficiently consider the community in which they would be based.

A plus for CBT is that it doesn’t have to cost an enormous amount of money. (There are exceptions here too – as noted above, opera, even for CBT companies, is nearly always extremely expensive to perform.)

It can cost as much as nine million dollars to put a play on Broadway, and up to twenty million dollars or more to put on a Broadway musical. Those figures are likely to be outdated in a few years, and not by getting smaller.

At the other extreme, I have staged a play with four actors for literally no money at all. It was satisfying to see the play, which I wrote, produced and well-acted, but obviously its impact was modest. On the other hand, many Broadway productions cost vastly more money and vanish with little evidence that they were ever there.

This observation leads to the question of what CBT can achieve beyond the simple purpose of getting a play staged. I remember my friend and theater expert David Semonin asking that question – in effect, if a theater isn’t top rate, why bother? David’s question is provocative. Here are some of my answers.

CBT is important to commercial theater because it can help create an appetite for Broadway and similar plays and musicals, familiarizing audiences with the material if not necessarily with the same staging. It can be a “feeder stream.”

A successful commercial play – a big Broadway play or musical – will have its own value, and a traditional function of CBT has been to make such shows available to local audiences, often years after their initial success, and to provide an opportunity for people to appreciate the worth of such shows.

Art – definitely including theater – is always a process of borrowing, lending, or trading elements from one iteration to another. The painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) is said to have recommended that artists “steal from the best,” and the cross-fertilization of commercial theater and CBT repeatedly demonstrates how that principle works.

CBT also allows people to perform on stage (or direct, design, costume, and so on) who are not able to do so in a commercial setting – a group that includes the majority of people who have experience in theater.

A friend of mine with years of Broadway experience once remarked to me, “The higher you go in this profession, the less the satisfaction.” I suspect this is true. A failure on Broadway, for example, can cost investors a fortune and artists a great deal of prestige. The stakes for CBT, although important, are significantly less threatening.

Another benefit of CBT is that it can help train actors and sometimes help prepare them for work of greater scope. A few years ago, a CBT theater in my area, the Theater League of Clifton, staged the musical Thoroughly Modern Millie (which first opened on Broadway in 2002, based on the 1967 movie) with a woman in the title role who was then around sixteen or seventeen years old.

Her name was Rachel Zegler (b. 2001). Subsequently she was selected by the film director Steven Spielberg (b. 1946) to play the role of Maria in his film version of the musical West Side Story (2021; 2022 Golden Globe Award) and has since had a stellar career in films, on Broadway, and on the West End in London.

[After WSS, Zegler appeared as Lucy Gray Baird in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023; 2024 People's Choice Award), and then as the title character in Disney's Snow White (2025),  She made her Broadway debut as Juliet in Romeo + Juliet (2024) and her debut in London’s West End in the title role of the musical Evita (2025; 2025 Stage Debut Award).]

My experience is that fine performances are possible in CBT. This is not to say that if the same performances were transferred to Broadway they would always have the same effect, and productions by necessity adapt themselves to their circumstances.

Still, excellent work is possible. The playwright and reviewer George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), looking not at theater but at the equivalent of CBT in music, wrote:

I do not mean that if the singers had been transferred from the little schoolroom and the mild cottage-piano to the stage of Covent Garden or the platform of St James’s Hall, with a full orchestra thundering around them, they could have produced the same effect. Suffice it that they did produce it in Penult [a small English town], and gave me thereby greater pleasure than I often get from singers with far greater pretensions. (Shaw on Music, 1955, Doubleday Anchor)

Certainly it’s possible for a person to appear in play after play and not learn anything. Today, however, training in theater is widespread, as is talent, and there are likely to be people in a production that one can learn from, sometimes through observation, sometimes through explicit advice.

There are many other things to learn from participating in CBT. Years ago my wife, Pat. and I took our high school-age children on college visits. The thought occurred to us that a substantial number of people graduate from theater programs each year, and parents may wonder – we wondered – how do they all find work in theater?

They don’t, of course, at least not necessarily in commercial theater. But more than one dean of a theater department explained to us that the skills one learns in theater are “portable.” One learns things like being on time, focusing on tasks, listening, taking notes, getting along with people, analyzing and evaluating, and of course reading and presentation. (See the ROT post “The Relation of Theater to Other Disciplines” [21 July 2011], which presents an argument for teaching theater, and the arts in general, in schools.)

One also learns important things about life – that successes are to be enjoyed and treasured, that not everything succeeds, that it’s important to do one’s best even when the moment looks bleak, that there’s value in victories of many sizes.

Theater at all levels is a matter of doing one’s best, and, if that doesn’t work, trying something else. In that, as in so much else, it resembles the life it imitates.

Theater, by its nature as a community activity, also helps draw together the people who work in it. I am friends to this day with people I worked with in CBT decades ago.

CBT also provides a tryout arena for new and unproduced plays. At a minimum, an author may have the experience of seeing the play performed for an audience, and the play may possibly achieve other productions (this has happened, I am happy to report, to me).

It might also be published. Publishing companies that specialize in playscripts want to see evidence that the play has been performed before they will consider adding it to their catalog, and a CBT production can fulfil that requirement. And, of course, it might ultimately have a future in commercial theater, although such cases are rare. (See “Be More Chill: The Journey” [28 April and 1 May 2019], a collection of articles about a play that started at a community-based theater, made the unlikely transfer to Off-Broadway and then Broadway in 2015-2018.)

Traditionally over the years many community theaters, in particular, have been conservative in their programming, offering primarily comedies and musicals originally produced on Broadway. However, CBT also offers the opportunity to see plays that might otherwise not be staged, or that might not have been well received in their initial productions in more commercial theater.

My observation, for what it’s worth, is that as the number of interesting plays grows (and it is growing), the more willing even community theaters may be to try plays that are unusual or possibly disturbing.

A number of CBT’s now host new play contests or invite submissions. This, as I can testify, is an enormous encouragement to playwrights.

It’s fair to ask what the future holds for CBT. I don’t think there’s any question that its manifestations will change. Art, including theater, is continually morphing. For example, current audiences seem to prefer shorter and shorter plays – a new three act play is almost an impossibility, and one long act often takes the place of two shorter ones.

At the commercial level, theater has no choice but to program shorter plays, to consider new kinds of audiences, and to utilize and emphasize technology in productions. All these trends can be seen on Broadway now. Some will have more effect on CBT than others.

What will be the impact of the wave of technology – most spectacularly and dangerously AI – on CBT in the next generations? When I reached middle and high school, the two largest avenues for student growth were sports and the arts – primarily theater.

Today’s students are familiar with many more kinds of sports, and as for performances, they are more likely to be making YouTube videos than hunting out the local community theater. At least it seems that way to me. AI is a wild card so far, but it’s bound to have an impact.

The fact that schools still do “school plays” encourages me, because if theater grabs you it doesn’t let go (the phenomenon known as being “stage struck”). I also have hope for inventiveness, for exasperation with technology, and for a continuing human need for accessible forms of self-expression.

As I was completing this article I read a statement from Brooke Hartman Ditchfield, the new Artistic Director of the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse in Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, which has combined with another theater under the name of Circuit Arts. Her message, which illustrates much of what I’ve written here about CBT, reads in part:

We are exploring a variety of plays to stage at the Playhouse, with a particular focus on new works, supporting playwrights, and championing emerging voices. . . . I believe, especially at this moment in time, that theater is a vital part of the democratic idea, and that a thriving theater community reflects a thriving community as a whole. My aim is to carry that vision forward in the plays we produce, the artists we champion, and the audiences we draw to the Playhouse. New work from bold voices, co-productions with collaborators near and far, theater that sparks conversation, ignites curiosity, inspires reflection, and welcomes all; these are the ideas that I, and all of us at Circuit Arts, are so excited to bring our energy to.

So “Support Your Local Community-Based Theater.” There’s a worthwhile slogan!

[As usual, Kirk’s remarks suggest a number of further comments, some from personal experiences that illustrate his statements.  For example, In Kirk’s discussion of the "two communities" for CBT’s in the U.S., I see as an example of the first, “those . . . who believe that a theater will enhance the city’s or the area’s life,” as Washington, D.C., and of the second, those who “want a theater as a place to work and to do worthwhile productions,” as Los Angeles.

[As I report in "'Stages in DC’ (Summer 1985)" (25 December 2011), Arena Stage was definitely started to bring theater to the Washington, as D.C. didn't have much indigenous theater before 1950.  Before Zelda Fichandler (1924-2016), with her husband, Thomas C. Fichandler (1915-97), and Edward Mangum (1913-2001), founded Arena, theater in Washington meant a touring show at the National Theatre, the Capital’s Broadway-level house, or a college production at Catholic University, whose pioneering university-based theater program was started in 1937 by Father Gilbert V. Hartke (1907-86).

[In the program note for Arena’s opening production, Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer, on 16 August 1950, Fichandler wrote:

Local in origin, [Arena Stage] was founded in the belief that if drama-hungry playgoers outside of the ten blocks of Broadway are to have a living stage, they must create it for themselves.  Arena Stage was financed by Washingtonians—students, teachers, lawyers, doctors, scientists, government workers, housewives—who love theatre and who want to see it flourish in the city in which they work and live.  Its permanent staff of distinguished actors and technicians, many of whom have come to Arena Stage via the stages of other cities, now all call Washington their home.  (Quoted by Fichandler in her essay “Institution-as-Artwork,” American Theatre 30 January 1986 [online only], <https://www.americantheatre.org/1986/01/30/institution-as-artwork/>, 2 March 2026; reprinted in The Long Revolution [Theatre Communications Group, 2024]; originally published in Theatre Profiles 7 [TCG, 1986])

[In Los Angeles, I discovered that there are scores of Off-Off-Broadway-type troupes founded by and for all those chronically under-employed film artists who are starved not just for work, but for theater, where many of them got their starts. The phenomenon, which allowed screen artists to showcase their talents for film and TV scouts, developed in 1972 and proliferated through 1985.

[Kirk’s comment, quoting something attributed to Picasso, advising theater artists to “steal from the best,” reminded me of a remark that I recall my college theater director, Lee Kahn, used to say.  (Kirk and I were college classmates, and I checked my memory with him and Kirk confirmed that Lee did often say, “The first rule of theater is theft.”  Kirk even added that “that can be applied to all the other arts I know of, too”—which sounds about right to me.]

[As for theaters that failed because the leadership "didn’t sufficiently consider the community in which they would be based," I give you Peter Sellars (b. 1957) and the ANT in the 1980s (as I described it in "‘Stages in DC’ (Summer 1985)."  (ANT—Sellars's proposed American National Theater at the Kenedy Center when he was newly appointed artistic director there (1984-86)—may not have actually qualified as a "community-based theater," but it was the "community"—i.e., Washingtonians and D,C.'s theater press—that scuttled his directorship and the prospects for ANT. 

[Sellars actually said, “I think it’s my job, to do things that are obscure,” and the Kennedy Center lost audience from the start of Sellars’s tenure.  When Ajax, his last production, closed a week early due to poor box office, he more or less said that he didn’t care if people complained about his productions as long as they were talking about them.  He essentially insulted and dismissed his audience.  He left Washington with a year left on his contract, and ANT basically just died.

[In re: the discussion of "amateur" vs. "professional," I found this on ROT in "Greatness Thrust Upon Them” (27 May 2023)—which I assume is Kirk’s recollection of the conversation he had with his friend David Semonin:

My friend David Semonin (1941-2010), about whom I’ve written in this blog (see “Saints of the Theater” on Rick On Theater, 30 December 2011), had a way of asking questions that stick in the mind.  One day, probably after he had seen one too many local theater productions, he asked, “What’s the justification for community theater?” 

At the time and place he asked that question (decades ago in Louisville, Kentucky), admittedly there wasn’t a lot of outstanding non-professional theater (or professional for that matter – Actors Theater of Louisville was barely on the horizon at that time).  Theater has its skilled professionals. What do amateurs bring to the table?

. . . .

The word “amateur” unquestionably provides the basis for one answer to David.  It doesn’t mean second-rate (or worse), it doesn’t mean less good than something else, it doesn’t mean naïve or shoddy.  It comes from the Latin word “amator” or “lover,” from the verb “amare” meaning “to love” – a strong, passionate word.

An amateur, then, is a person who’s fallen in love with an activity, and that’s what so often happens in theater – one is “stage struck,” overwhelmed by a powerful attraction.  This was certainly the case for me.  I was fifteen when my friend Perry Baer invited me to a Saturday morning work call at Louisville Children’s Theatre (now Stage One, a very fine professional operation).

[I added, in the afterword to this post:

Many ROTters may know this, but the British don’t use ‘amateur’ with the same negative connotation that we do in the U.S.  A case in point: when I was stationed in Berlin with the army and helped start a theater group at the air base, we sort of modeled it after a similar group the British forces had.  Their troupe was called BATS, which was an acronym for the British Amateur Theatre Society. 

One of our founding members was the British wife of a U.S. Air Force NCO, and she wanted to name our group TAT to emulate the British group—but we went with the Tempelhof American Theatre because of the derogatory sense of ‘amateur’ in American usage. 

[I made this point several times on Roger.

[“Be More Chill: The Journey” (28 April and 1 May 2019), which I cross-reference when Kirk addresses the occurrence of a play originated in a CBT transferred to a commercial theater, is a collection of articles about a play that started at the Two River Theatre in Red Bank, New Jersey—a community-based theater—on 30 May 2015 and opened Off-Broadway at the Pershing Square Signature Center on Theatre Row on 9 August 2018 and then went to Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre on 10 March 2019 for 30 previews and 177 regular performances. 

[The musical was nominated for the 2019 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical, and on 20 October 2018, it was announced that Shawn Levy and Greg Berlanti will produce a film adaptation of both the novel and the musical of Be More Chill.  No release date has been announced, though reports are that a script has been written, but shooting hasn’t started.

[Kirk has informed me that the quotation from Brooke Hartman Ditchfield of the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse was from an e-mail to supporters from last February.  Ditchfield is the new artistic director; her predecessor, MJ Bruder Munafo, had served for 30 years and retired at the end of 2025. Ditchfield was previously director of Circuit Stage, part of Circuit Arts, a Martha’s Vineyard community arts organization that has recently merged with MVP.

[MVP is an archetypical CBT.  At the merger announcement, the Playhouse board of directors chair said that both arts organizations “are dedicated to creating accessible, meaningful, and diverse cultural experiences—year-round and Island-wide.”  He added, “Together, we can . . . ensure that live theater, film, music, comedy, and community events continue to enrich the Vineyard.”  These are fundamental goals of community-based organizations.

[For readers who don’t know, Martha’s Vineyard, which is Dukes County, is one of the two principal islands off the south shore of Cape Cod, Massachusetts (Barnstable County); the other is Nantucket, which is Nantucket County.  Both islands have many small islands associated with them; one of the Vineyard’s smaller islands is Chappaquiddick. off the eastern end. 

[The year-round population of Martha’s Vineyard is small, a little over 20,000 (about the size of Ashland, Oregon), but during the summer, the population swells to over 200,000 (Little Rock, Arkansas).  Most of these summer residents are affluent, and many are artists in various fields.  Generally speaking, they’re a sophisticated lot, which is why the arts, including theater, are important to the islanders, both vacationers and year-rounders.  This is one reason that organizations like the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse and Circuit Arts are important and supported, and why groups like these feel so connected to their communities.  It’s almost a perfect symbiosis.]

Performance Diary: 'Follies,' Part 2

by Kirk Woodward

[In his account of the work on the Gas Lamp Players’ production of Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman’s Follies, Kirk picks up where he left off in Part 1 of his “Performance Diary”: in the middle of the rehearsal period.  Kirk will take us through the final dress rehearsal to opening night and the short performance run.

[If you haven’t read Part 1, posted on 15 December, I suggest readers go back and pick that up before reading Part 2, below.  Kirk has been presenting a day-by-day chronicle of the progress of the show and without his commentary from the beginning, you will have missed the build-up.]

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11 – There are some rehearsals you just have to have, whether you want to or not. What I am going to write here should not be taken in the slightest as a criticism of the creative team of our Follies production. I think they’re splendid and doing a fine job. But a production has to work with what it has – including its schedule.

Tonight was a “stumble-through” of Act 1, which is basically a series of vignettes at a party, meaning that its focus frequently changes, while movements occur around the main events that seem to be random (they are not). It was the first time we’d tried to play the act from beginning to end.

The central story, about four characters, is played by eight actors, and that fact in itself demonstrates the complexities of the script (the additional four actors are younger versions of the “present day” characters). 

I have written before in this blog about my conviction that any part of the rehearsal process should have a single focus [see, for example, “Performance Diary, Part 2,” 28 August 2024: “I still feel that a director should define for the cast a single, definite purpose for each rehearsal, or for each run through . . . .”] – in particular, when something new like, say, stage lighting is introduced at a particular rehearsal, that should be the focus, and the actors should be told to concentrate on that and not worry much about acting (which nevertheless will happen, usually effectively, because the pressure is off).

[In “A Directing Experience, Part 1” (13 October 2023), in which Kirk explains this principle as applied by the director he was assisting: “One important directing technique, which I have come to strongly endorse, is that he tried to give goals for each rehearsal. This communication practice frees actors to concentrate on a few specific things, and in the process, everything else is likely to improve as well.”  ~Rick]

Tonight, though, was full of new items, and the result was predictable. Among tonight’s major “firsts” were:

We had a pianist for the first time – previously we had been moving and singing to recordings of previous productions. As far as I could tell, the pianist, who I have the impression will eventually be quite good, was unfamiliar with the score, which, being a Sondheim score, has plenty of complexities. He made his way through the score, but often what he played was unrecognizable.

We also had a musical director present for the first time, but since none of us had worked with him before, he had no idea of what the actors might want in the way of accompaniment, and he spent most of his time either indicating a tempo that might or might not work with the song, or turning pages.

We were in a new space – the cafeteria of the high school. The stage was marked out by tape on the floor, so we could tell how small the playing area is, but being in a big room gave the feeling of spaciousness. Next week the small size of the performance space will be a shock, even if intellectually we know the dimensions of the set.

The act was being put together for the second time, so many were unsure of their cues for entrances and exits (including me). Not everyone was completely “off book” with their lines entirely memorized (I was, but I have very few lines), and, again, the singers in particular were suddenly singing against musical backgrounds that were entirely new to them.

So we worked our way through the act, and it was necessary and useful to see how all the separately rehearsed pieces fit together, but there was a lot of confusion and little sense of performance – how could there be? As an example, Janet Aldrich, a powerhouse singer, made a huge impression singing “I’m Still Here,” but she had to call for lyrics twice and was being coached on movement while she sang, a reflection of how muddled things were.

At this point it doesn’t seem to me that the central story of the musical is clearly told – not that the authors have helped much with that problem. A friend told me that she had talked to a film director recently who said, “I tell the actors, you can do this or you can do that, but you have to do this, because if you don’t, the story doesn’t get across.”

That, it seems to me, is the crux of the matter – a director is always trying to answer the question, “How can the story best be told?” I don’t doubt that Kristy and Susan are aware of this.

And it’s foolish to judge a production based on rehearsals. We have almost two weeks until opening, nine full rehearsals, and as my friend also pointed out, we don’t have any of the “wizardry” in place yet – lights, amplification, orchestra, costumes, and so on.

At this point there’s also no coherent sense of style about the production, but the same point applies – there’s a long way to go, and we have good people in charge of the process. So, onward! Act II tomorrow night!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12 – Act II is less complicated than Act I as far as staging goes. Basically, after a brief argument among the leading couples, a kind of “Follies” called “Loveland” begins, and a series of brilliant songs takes ironic looks at the couples’ troubles.

I wrote last night about difficulties in telling the story of the show, but tonight the principals seemed to have that under control, so that’s good. We worked our way through the act; two of the male principals, for various reasons, are still using their scripts, but I doubt that anyone is worried about either of them. The teen company of dancers and actors is terrific, and so were several of the numbers tonight.

We eight men did our dance to baffled applause. Deshja Driggs, an extraordinarily talented performer who sings the lead in the song, eyed the solid floor of the cafeteria warily as she considered how safe our lifting her into the air could possibly be (I’m not one of the lifters, thank heaven), but her life was spared, at least for tonight.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13 – I arrived a little early (always a good idea – maybe even an imperative) while some scene work was going on, and Susan, the director, came over and told me that her husband, who has been playing the second male lead, has got a role in another major show.

He’ll be “swing,” a form of understudy, for a production that starts rehearsals next Tuesday. Obviously he can’t be in our show, and Susan and Kristy were interviewing a replacement when I arrived. Susan asked me not to tell anyone else, and I said, “Tell them what?”

I was complimented twice tonight on my opening speech. Of course that was before rehearsal; I hope they feel the same about it now.

When our rehearsal began, Kristy fine-tuned parts of the opening scene, and it’s now clearer and more fun. She really is a very good director. Then the cast separated for detailed work on three smaller scenes, and finally we eight male “dancers” worked out the glitches in our number until I thought my feet would fall off, especially my right one.

A note to directors: actors are not pleased if a director, having looked elsewhere, tells them that they ought to do something they just did. Much better to ask “Did you . . ." or “Were you able to . . .? I couldn’t see.”

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15 – In our performance space (the Glen Ridge, NJ Women’s Club) for the first time as a cast. It’s a lovely auditorium; the stage is definitely smaller than one would imagine (I think that was true for all of us), and tonight’s rehearsal was basically dedicated to adjusting our movements to the new conditions.

The set is basically in place. There are three stage curtains at the back of the stage (“upstage”), each gathered together in the middle so the back of the wall – a theater wall, appropriate for the show! – is visible. There’s a three-level staircase, not walled in but “skeletal,” a smaller platform on the other side of the stage, and that’s it. Properly lit (we had a few stage lights already), it’s lovely.

We needed to make many adjustments to the staging in the new space, there were basically four people making the changes (two directors, the choreographer, and the musical director), and both time and patience ran short as the evening went on. (Talent is important, but patience is one of the greatest theatrical virtues.)

Our dance comes toward the end of the show, and therefore of the rehearsal as well. There were questions about its ending, lots of conversation, no decision yet . . . .

That’s when I left, because my right foot, never sturdy because of two falls on ice over the years, pretty much gave way when I twice stepped clumsily on stairs. I was limping, it’s really sore, and I need to do my best to get it in shape for the rehearsal tomorrow night.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15 – Although I hadn’t broadcast my hurt foot, I hadn’t kept it a secret either, and when I arrived early for rehearsal tonight Susan was solicitous, asking if I wanted to stay in the number (I did) or if I’d rather get out (I wouldn’t), although she said it would be a loss because I’m so adorable in the dance, which I’m afraid means . . . well, you can figure it out.

The actor replacing Tony in the role of Buddy was working with Kristy, Susan, and the pianist when I arrived. He looks and sounds great but doesn’t read music, so I know what he’ll be doing this weekend, or at least I expect so – listening to performances of the show over and over.

We eight male “dancers” got together to find that Emily didn’t plan to work with us, which caused some grumbling, since the very end of the routine hadn’t been staged. However, we did get her for about 20 minutes; she didn’t have anything planned but by the time she went in to work with the new Buddy there was an ending in place.

I made it clear at the start of our work that my foot was in bad shape, but I was able to do the whole rehearsal, although I didn’t push it. Our next rehearsal will be Monday night in the performance space; it’ll be a technical rehearsal, settling light cues, microphones and sound cues, costumes, and so on, and considering the size and shape of the show it’s likely to be a long and grueling evening. We shall see.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 16 – Not a rehearsal, but a performance of the musical “Singin’ in the Rain Jr.” by Gas Lamp’s junior high school cast. (The original movie was released in 1952, the adaptation for the stage first opened in London in 1983.) It was quite impressive – close to 90 children, every one aware of what they had to do, and several exceptional voices. A good omen, I hope!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18 – All right, class, write one hundred times, “I will not judge the show by a rehearsal.” Tonight was a technical rehearsal and those can be expected to be rough. Lights, sound, a full set, costumes . . . all new. I had managed to pull together a full tuxedo, which I’ll wear through the whole show.

The night was extremely ragged, and when we had to stop at 10 PM we weren’t quite finished with the first act. That in itself isn’t a problem; the second act, which we’ll tackle in the same way tomorrow night, is shorter and less fragmented.

My foot behaved itself, and Susan told me I was “a breath of fresh air” because “you’re so confident.” She may say the same thing to everyone for all I know, but many if not all actors thrive on praise. The music is still under-rehearsed, with some not at all helpful tempos. There was no way to evaluate the acting, which has little chance in a technical rehearsal.

There was a nice feeling of camaraderie among the cast, I thought. People seem to be having fun for the most part. “It’s such a big show,” Susan said tonight.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19 – I told you they were smart! We left rehearsal last night planning for a 6:30 arrival time tonight for rehearsal. Today we got an email giving specific times for groups of people between 6:30 and 7:30, with the rest of the cast arriving at 7:30.

Deduction: as I wrote yesterday, the music still needs to be settled down, and the orchestra (14 altogether!) will be there tonight, so the first rehearsal hour will be spent getting the singing and the accompaniment together. Once again, the creative team is looking at what’s most important to accomplish, and putting that first. Good for them!

I was wrong, or at least I think I was. When I arrived there were a few musicians tootling (actually only half the orchestra, the students; the rest arrive tomorrow night), actors hanging around, not much sign that anything important was happening.

Eventually we got started, picking up where we left off last night. Basically the two nights went the same: with numerous stops to set or fix things, a few actors holding scripts (including our Buddy, who of course is new) or unsure of lines . . . I kept thinking of the theatrical proverb “No matter how long you rehearse, you always need two more weeks.”

In particular I’m not sure about the musical part of the show. Some of the tempos strike me as off, usually too slow; there are clunker notes, and for several songs in this particular show, the orchestra needs to accompany the singer as they sing, not lead them – no matter how difficult this may be. It can be done, but so far, in our production, it only happens sporadically.

I added to the fun by stepping badly again in the same spot I did the other night, a setback to my ability to move. Susan was solicitous, had me put my foot up, gave me some Advil, and I was able to dance in our number, probably making no more than five major mistakes.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20 – The first of two full run-throughs in costume, with orchestra (complete and playing together for the first time), lights, sound, and no stops – except during “Who’s That Woman,” the most complex number in the show, where the orchestra lost track of the sudden tempo shifts.

I thought the evening as a whole did what it needed to do. Tomorrow night the transitions between scenes should be tighter, Buddy should be more secure on his song lyrics, and the cast’s main focus should be able to be on the show rather than on the technical elements.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21 – Final dress rehearsal, better than yesterday, the orchestra much improved. The run through wasn’t perfect, but the glitches were either song lyrics or the occasional transition. I also understand that ticket sales are good so far. I wasn’t good, particularly in the dance, but it wasn’t entirely my fault, I beefed to Emily about the spacing at the start of our number, and she said she’ll work with the dance tomorrow at 7.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22, OPENING NIGHT! – I was irritated about how I was handling the short scenes where I have lines. My daughter Heather said something I agree with: she said that a monolog is easier to handle on stage than a short scene with only a line or two in it, because a monolog has a context, while a short scene can seem to pop up out of nowhere, and in Follies that’s the way they seem to me.

So I rewrote my cheat sheet of cues and lines to clarify the sequences, and spent time reviewing it, and that helped. On to the opening performance! The house was full, maybe a hundred or so people. The orchestra regressed a bit from last night, I thought; I suppose musicians get nervous like anyone else.

The audience was enthusiastic and the show can be declared a success. The people I know who saw it felt that the story was clear, and they were impressed with various things including the general talent level, the scale of the production, and of course the score of the show.

Several people I know felt that the book of the musical was problematic. I agree – it’s really an avant-garde musical masquerading as a typical Broadway show, and it seems determined to make the audience’s experience a difficult one.

My choreographer friend Colleen liked the choreography; the general feeling seems to be that the problems with the production were largely technical (some sound glitches) and orchestral.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23 – A two show day, one at 2 PM and one at 8 PM. Feeling that my scenes were finally under control, I spent time on two parts of the dance number that I never seemed to get right, and ended up fairly confident about them.

The afternoon show, the matinee, was splendid, with the orchestra far more together again and the performances filled with an energy that had not been there before.

Our dance, I am happy to report, was quite good, and I basically did well. A friend said to me last night, “You don’t have to worry about how the men look anyway; Deshja is so good that no one’s paying any attention to you anyway.” She really is wonderful in her role; all the principal actors are excellent, and the singing is on a high level throughout the show.

There was one incident in our dance number: one of the dancers dropped his cane, stooped to retrieve it, and missed the second “lift” of the number, when Deshja is carried from the front to the rear of the stage. However, another member of the group, seeing the problem, immediately stepped in and helped carry her, so the number proceeded safely.

The evening show wasn’t as good, for two reasons that I can identify: everyone was tired (two big shows in a day is a lot), and we probably tried to repeat the good points of the afternoon show. Trying to recreate what happened last time almost never works. The audience was pleasant but not boisterous. However, I think they still got a good show.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24 – Another big crowd for our final performance of Follies, a performance that may not have matched the spirit of yesterday’s matinee but was nevertheless fine, and our dance number finally worked the way we wanted it to.

I was so tired that I actually felt myself momentarily fall asleep at one moment in the first act while I was sitting backstage. As a result I didn’t go to the cast party that followed a brief “strike” where everything was put away; wherever I tried to help, someone beat me to it, so I finally just went home.

A few observations:

This diary illustrates something that beginning directors need to know: directing a play is not the same activity as directing a musical. A play is an artistic activity of which you are the leader. A musical is less like a play than a military operation, with intensive strategic planning, a staff, orders, placement of troops, discipline, and so on. Musicals take extensive planning. Someone must do it.

In this case the creative staff (I’m told they called themselves the “Dream Team,” and they’ve worked together on several shows) simply are first rate. They seemed to work together seamlessly, they at least visibly stay calm, and they know their stuff.

The football coach Lou Holtz (b. 1937) used to tell his teams to expect at least three times in a season when things would look bad for them. They shouldn’t be alarmed, he said; these things happen.

This production of Follies was a succession of difficulties and successes. This, it seems to me, is true of theater in general, and in life too, I suppose. Patience, as I said above, is an important theatrical virtue.

Theater has the advantage of aiming for a specific goal: the production will open on this date, regardless of how rehearsals are going. If the date has to be changed, it’s still a date, and if the production has to fold without opening, well, at least it was aiming for a date until it didn’t have one.

So in theater, which is more important, what the show is like when it opens, or how it gets to that point? There are arguments for both “process” and “product,” and they don’t necessarily conflict with each other.

Old-timers – I mean through around the nineteenth century – might have firmly said, “Theater is about what the audience gets, and that’s that.” On the other hand, many directors today, including me, would say that the nature of the rehearsal process is crucial to the success of a play. (A few directors don’t even aim to present their productions, only to work on the material. To each their own, but I don’t feel that way.)

An example of process: as I reported, as far as I know we plunged right into staging numbers at the beginning of rehearsals. Looking back, I think it would have been valuable to have had a sit-down readthrough of the show, maybe just talking through the songs, so the director could frame how the story was to be told, suggest some atmosphere, talk about the theme of the show and how it would affect the staging, and so on.

Like any work of art, a production of a musical is really a projection of the imagination, and early group work would help to have the cast sensing and feeling the same things.

On the other hand, most of my evaluations of how things were going turned out to be wrong, so maybe the lesson is that people in a show are poor judges of how things are going – or at least that I am.

The creative team demonstrated that they could be trusted. I will miss being around that skilled, stimulating group of people. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if I weren’t the only person to be inspired by their highly professional work ethic to do a little better myself next time I’m working on a show. I hope so.

[Just a reminder for readers who are just finding Rick On Theater and have enjoyed Kirk’s account if his work in this production: Kirk has written two previous pieces based on his journal entries about working in theater, “Performance Diary, Part 1” (25 August 2024) and “Performance Diary, Part 2” (28 August 2024).  I recommend giving them a read.]

Performance Diary: 'Follies,' Part 1

by Kirk Woodward 

[In a continuation of his August posts on Rick On Theater, “Performance Diary, Part 1” (25 August 2024) and “Performance Diary, Part 2” (28 August 2024), Kirk Woodward, a prolific contributor to this blog (133 posts and counting), returns with a two-part contribution on his participation as a cast member of Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman’s Follies. This production was mounted by the Gas Lamp Players of Glen Ridge, New Jersey, a non-profit community theater founded in 2007.

[Follies ran on Broadway from 1971 to 1972, after which there were many regional and international premières and revivals.  Because the musical’s book was problematic, there were many efforts to revise it for several of the post-Broadway stagings.  Even though the score was praised and even beloved, Sondheim wrote new numbers and revised some of the original ones. 

[The script that Gas Lamp used, rented from Music Theatre International, the rights-holder, was the one developed for the London première, which ran 21 July 1987-4 February 1989 (644 performances) at the Shaftesbury Theatre in the West End, London’s theater district.

[Goldman rewrote his Broadway libretto extensively for producer Cameron Mackintosh (b. 1946), and Sondheim also wrote some new numbers and rewrote some others.  The London production was directed by Mike Ockrent (1946-99) and choreographed by Bob Avian (1937-2021).

[According to Wikipedia, “‘. . . The (London) Times described the evening as “a wonderful idea for a show which has failed to grow into a story.”’  The Times critic Irving Wardle stated ‘It is not much of a story, and whatever possibilities it may have had in theory are scuppered by James Goldman’s book . . . a blend of lifeless small-talk, bitching and dreadful gags.’” (‘Scupper’ is a mostly British synonym for ‘thwart,’ ‘destroy,’ or ‘scuttle.’)

[Glen Ridge, a bedroom community of New York City, is in New Jersey’s Essex County, about 60 miles and an hour-and-a-quarter drive or train ride—west of the city.  From my experience and observation, Essex County has an exceptional number of performance venues and theater companies, both professional and community-oriented.  One might even say that it’s a little theater-mad, so there’s a lot of theater activity and interest thereabouts.  In addition to the adult shows it produces, Gas Lamp also has many other programs and activities for its supporters. 

[The troupe’s Follies was presented at the Women’s Club of Glen Ridge on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, 22, 23, and 24 November (with two shows on Saturday).  Auditions for the production, as you’ll read, were held at the auditorium of Glen Ridge’s Ridgewood Avenue School on the evening of Monday, 23 September, with callbacks for teens on the 27th and adults on the 25th and 27th. 

[The company rehearsed on Monday through Thursday evenings, starting with the first meeting of the cast on Monday, 30 September.  The final dress rehearsal was on Thursday, 21 November, with the opening performance on the 22nd.  Kirk takes us through the whole proceedings, from audition to rehearsals to performance, making observations along the way, all drawn from his years of experience as an actor, director, composer-lyricist, dramatist, and teacher.]

Recently on this blog I posted an account of several events in the arts in which I participated (see “Performance Diary, Part 1” and “Performance Diary, Part 2”). My hope is that readers not in the arts might find an inside look into theater work to be interesting, and that those in the arts – well, we love telling each other what we’ve been through. In that spirit, here’s an account of an event that followed those in the previous articles.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 – Walking through an arts exhibit with two friends, one of them, Susan Knight Carlin, mentioned that she was about to direct a production of the musical Follies for a local theater group, the Gas Lamp Players of Glen Ridge, New Jersey. She asked if I might be interested in auditioning for a small role, and I said I was.

Follies, for those not familiar with it, is a 1971 musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim (1930-2021) and a book by James Goldman (1927-1998) about a reunion of former members of a series of revues like the famous Ziegfeld Follies of the first part of the Twentieth Century.

The theater building that housed the show’s Follies in the years between World Wars One and Two is about to be torn down, and the reunion brings together many of the stars of those years. In the course of the musical we learn what has happened to those stars since the Follies ended, and see them face revelations about themselves.

Follies first opened on Broadway on April 4, 1971 (the year in which the show is set), and ran until July 1,1972 for a total of 12 previews and 522 performances, a significant number, but its enormous expenses meant it wound up losing all its investment. Its score is generally considered a treasure, with Sondheim capturing the flavor of many styles of songs from the Twenties and Thirties in brilliant fashion. (Among other awards and nominations, the premiere won the Tony for Best Original Score in 1972 and the 1971 Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Music and Outstanding Lyrics.)

The “book” or script of the musical, on the other hand, has frequently been considered problematic, and Goldman tinkered with it for several revivals of the show. Its central concept, regardless, is remarkable: each of the “original” Follies characters is shadowed by a version of their younger selves, who contrast and eventually interact with them. The show has been revived in major productions several times, often with rewrites to the book. (Despite the book’s problems, Goldman was nominated for 1972’s Tony for Best Book of a Musical.)

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 – As it turned out, the audition Susan described was the following night, and I couldn’t go, so using my phone I taped a video of myself singing the Gershwin song “Love Is Here To Stay” to my own piano accompaniment, and emailed it to the theater, attaching my acting resume, which I hadn’t looked at in a while and which was much shorter than I’d remembered.

I was invited to a callback night, and I was available for it, so I went to the school auditorium where the company customarily works. I knew a few people there; most were strangers. Susan spoke briefly, but the evening was primarily led by the pianist for the evening, a woman named Kristy Graves, and I wondered if there was some kind of competition between the two, since Susan had told me she was the director.

I read for two characters, in very short scenes – the musical is mostly music, with relatively few extended spoken sections. I was pleased not to be too anxious about the audition – “audition nerves” are common – and I actually got a laugh on one line reading, which pleased me no end.

A day or so later I was offered the role of Dimitri Weismann, the producer of the long-gone Follies and organizer of the reunion that makes up the show. It’s a small part and a well-written one. I accepted the offer by email and was impressed by the efficiency and organization shown by Gas Lamp’s communications. They left few questions to ask; mailings included a contract and a first week rehearsal schedule, all professionally presented. A good sign.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 30 – First rehearsal. Some productions of musicals begin with a read-through of the script, but the script of Follies is hardly the focus of the show, so we didn’t. The school auditorium where we’ll usually be rehearsing is enormous, something like 800 seats, and I felt intimidated as I entered. Once more I knew only a few people in the room, and I got the feeling that others were in the same shape.

We began with an introductory talk, mostly details about organization. I realized the answer to my curiosity about direction – Kristy introduced herself and Susan as co-directors, because Kristy was also going to play an important role in the show, and it’s difficult (and usually not a good idea) to direct oneself. Susan, a professional actor herself (as was Kristy), would work mostly on acting issues. (Kristy was not the musical director for the show, despite her playing piano for the auditions, and very well too.)

As we got started, I thought to myself, “I haven’t done a big musical like this for a long time.” (That was in fact a major reason I’d been interested in auditioning for the show.) Then I realized that I had never been in a big musical like this before! All my experience in musicals had been on small stages with minimal sets and small cast sizes, none of it recent.

I couldn’t help laughing at myself. I also began to realize how out of practice I was as an actor. For example, most musicals, and certainly one on this scale, rent scripts and scores (sometimes contained in one book) from a publishing company, in this case Music Theatre International, which understandably doesn’t want to get its scripts back with writings in pen all over them. Actors learn to bring pencils. I had forgotten.

I decided I had better pay increased attention to what was going on. (A good thing too, because before I was supposed to enter a scene I found my zipper was down.)  

After the opening talk, the group divided in two, with dancers on the stage and singers in a music room, where we began to learn the parts the chorus would sing. (Unlike many musicals, this one doesn’t have a separate singing-and-dancing chorus; the whole company sings the group music, and there isn’t much of it – most of the songs are for small groups.) Another “big musical” feeling – I had flashbacks to Army training, where a number of us would sit in a classroom while a colonel lectured to us.

Actually it wasn’t really much like that – the choral teacher was quiet and very nice. She familiarized us with some of the tricky bits of the vocal lines – since Sondheim wrote the songs, it makes sense that there’d be tricky bits, because his melodies and harmonies are often complex, but as I said the chorus parts are mostly unison, so we’re all in it together.

At exactly the scheduled time, we reassembled on stage to begin work on the opening scene, the most complicated in the show, in which most of the characters come onstage in small groups and have a moment to identify themselves, both in the scene and for the audience’s benefit. Kristy staged this scene; she talked it through, arranged the actors in their opening places, walked them through the music slowly, repeated the process until it was secure, and by the end of the rehearsal the scene was staged. Presto!

I watched this from behind the upstage curtain (at the back of the stage) – my character comes on late in the opening, and we didn’t quite get there. No problem, I’m sure.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1 – The stage manager sent me an email in the morning that refined the time I’d be expected for rehearsal – another sign of efficiency. I have been trying to figure out what time to leave for rehearsal. Last night I barely got there on time; tonight I was half an hour early.

Susan directed the two short opening scenes in which I have lines and did fine; she has a good eye for staging details. I got almost no direction, but then my two speeches have a total of nine words in them. One actor asked Susan a lot of questions about costumes, on the “Have you considered this?” angle. Susan was polite, but I had the impression she was thinking, “My friend, you have no idea how competent this group is.” Of course it will have considered the costumes, and will have a plan for them too.

Susan had originally said the show might be double-cast, with two actors for each role, but as it turns out only one role has two actors, and they both worked with me on the scene with Solange, so when we were finished I asked, just making small talk, “Is it weird to have a double?” One of the performers said, very frankly, “I have epilepsy and it makes me feel much better to know that someone else can do the role.” So interesting – we often don’t know what someone’s story is.

One more sign of the group’s organization: the stage manager, in the auditorium, sat at a table with someone next to him. I don’t know what his function is, but I’ll bet he has one. That theater means business.

Besides my two short lines, I have one longish opening speech. It’s lovely, and I’m working on memorizing it by reading it aloud over and over, relishing every word.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 7 – I was unsure whether I was called for rehearsal tonight – the schedule said “Adult Male Ensemble,” and I didn’t know whether I was included in that group, and couldn’t get clarification. However, I showed up, and it was my worst nightmare – a two-hour dance rehearsal for a big dance number!

I don’t know that I’ve ever done any extended show dancing. I’m certainly not a dancer – very much the opposite. I’m also anything but young and anything but limber, and I have a weak right ankle. No matter. Nothing ventured, nothing gained . . . it’s always darkest just before the dawn . . . to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield . . . Insert your favorite motivational saying here.

Actually I could have used a motivational saying or two – my main difficulty was the voice in my head saying, “You can’t dance worth anything,” followed immediately by my brain, my legs, and my arms shouting, “You’re right!”

There were six of us (there will be eight in the number altogether), none of us young and no more than one or two of us in good shape, but I felt that everyone picked up the steps faster than I did – there are a couple of sequences I never did correctly all night. I have none of what dancers call “muscle memory,” when the body makes the correct moves automatically, and I didn’t demonstrate for certain that I have memory of any kind, actually.

Emily, the choreographer, was cheerful, positive, and has the gift of paying no attention to anything people say along the lines of, “I’m awful with this.” She occasionally corrected but never criticized. She had worked out choreography in advance, but she said to us, “If you don’t like it or it looks silly, we’ll change it,” and I’d say she made up between twenty and thirty percent of the dance (as far as we got tonight) on the fly.

The saving grace is that at the end of the rehearsal she led us in making a video recording so we can work on the steps for next time, which will be next week. No more rehearsals for me this week, but plenty of work to do.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15 – We got the following email today:

We are writing to let you know about some changes made to our Follies production team effective Monday, October 14^th.

Susan Knight has agreed to become sole Director, and Kristy Graves has agreed to step down as co-Director. Kristy will continue to be a member of the cast and the costumer of the show. This change was made to address logistical concerns and potential conflicts of interest.

We expect that these changes will not cause any disruptions to production, but we wanted you all to be aware.

I’ll probably never know what this is all about, but it doesn’t seem to me to have been written in a spirit of joy. A friend of mine ribbed me, “They were doing fine until you got there!”

I’ve since heard that the email was the result of conflict in the theater group’s board. Not surprising, but not great either. NOTE: As things turned out, Kristy and Susan, who had worked on shows together successfully for years, pretty much worked on Follies the way they’d planned to, despite the ultimately meaningless change in titles.

Meanwhile my friend Annie wrote me:

DANCE REHEARSAL!  Still laughing at the panic emanating from those typed words.   It makes me think of something an acting teacher said when assigning some seemingly impossible scene work . . . . you know, one of those things that you think you could NEVER pull off . . way beyond your capability. The student says, “I can’t.” The teacher respectfully accepts that and asks, “Can you try?”

I didn’t like that teacher, but that teaching has stuck with me all these years and it’s gotten me through so many times when I thought I could never do something.  Because it gives me something beside “can I or can’t I.” It gives me “I can try.” Heck, I can always try - that much I can commit to.

And then, of course, the shock is finding out I can do so much more than I thought. Even if not perfectly so . . . . the main key to even a dance performance is the feelings and energy you bring to it. So try to conjure fun and joy and that will translate accordingly.  It’s called a play for a reason . . . . so give yourself permission to play!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18 – Second dance rehearsal, quite different this time: we were in a cafeteria rather than on stage; most of the rehearsal was spent on cleaning up what we’d learned last time; and the atmosphere was more informal than previously.

I had always thought that basically a choreographer was an unchallenged leader, at least when choreographing. At this rehearsal there was a great deal of back and forth (not with me!), even at moments when Emily was actually working out choreography (she revised some steps when necessary).

I had worked literally for hours on the dance as seen in the video of it, and although I doubt if I looked much like a dancer tonight, at least I looked like I’d been to the previous rehearsal. A couple of the men in our group told me they didn’t watch the video at all during the week; I can’t imagine that, but I never looked, or tried to look, at how anyone else was doing – I had my own problems.

By the end of the rehearsal we had at least seen all the steps that will make up the routine, and we’ll have new videos, or I hope so. All in all, I didn’t have too much of that going-down-with-the-ship feeling I had last week. A great relief.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 21 – After Susan made a speech telling us it was all right that Kristy was still doing the staging, Kristy dictated to us the remaining moves we made in Act 1. It turned out that I have more lines in the act than I had realized – good grief!

Also I did a spectacularly poor job of writing down the blocking as she gave it, because I found it hard to locate myself in the script, which of course alternates between dialogue and song lyrics (with the music in a separate section at the back of the book). I got some of it clearer in my mind when we walked the scenes, although I had to be coached a great deal; I asked a question afterwards, to clarify one bit; and my next job at home is to work it all out in a form that makes sense for me. Busy busy busy!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24 – As I was cramming for tonight’s dance rehearsal, my son Craig said to me, “Each time you do it, it’ll be better.” That was exactly what I needed to hear, and it’s true, although I forget it when trying desperately to keep up.

Actually I’m hardly alone in this – none of us in the number are trained dancers as far as I know or can see. I know I look like a guy trying to dance. But it’ll get better, and it did tonight, too.

Emily had to leave for a while in the middle of the rehearsal for a family errand, and while we waited for her to get back, the eight of us worked on the number very slowly, and when she got back she seemed to be pleased with what she saw.

Susan, our director, watched the last run-through of the number and seemed delighted, but when I talked to her I was surprised to learn why. “Usually you’d expect this number to be performed by young professional dancers. It’s so much fun to see a group of older men doing it!”

Not exactly high praise, and I wouldn’t want to use her comment as an excuse not to at least try to do a good job . . . but she’s got a point. My friend Colleen, a choreographer, has also pointed out that an audience almost always cheers a group of men trying to dance, pretty much no matter how they do.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30 – I wasn’t sure why I was at tonight’s rehearsal, and neither was anyone else. Susan staged a scene in which I had one line, at the end of the scene, and then everybody decided I could go home.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31 – Halloween, and driving to the theater in the dark was a perilous adventure, with children all over the place. This was a dance rehearsal, and my advice to myself for the evening was to think, not about what I knew at the start of the rehearsal, but of how much more I’d know at the end.

As it turned out, we started with four of the eight men in the dance, a number that later swelled to six. Emily wasn’t there, and Kristy led the rehearsal, moving slowly through the sections of the dance and “cleaning up” bit after bit. It was two hours of steady work. At first I was mildly irritated that Kristy was working the number instead of Emily – what if she told us things Emily didn’t want? – but she did an excellent job. Is there anything she can’t do?

Midway through the rehearsal I decided to imagine that I was Mikhail Baryshnikov (b. 1948), the great dancer. I have no idea if I moved any better as a result, but I felt more comfortable and had more fun.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 4 – The best laid plans . . . tonight’s rehearsal was supposed to start at 6:30, but a school age production by the same company rehearses in the same space and ran late, so we didn’t get all the way through Act 1 tonight. The creative staff didn’t seem stressed, though.

The movement in Act 1 is complex, lots of people on stage for substantial parts of it, and although I had notes on my movements, tonight was the first time I’d actually done them. The directors, again, were patient. I’d been told that I enter with my (character’s) granddaughter; I met her tonight, a lovely, personable woman. Weismann (my character) must have been quite a charmer in his youth.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6 – The day after the election, and Kristy brought in about six different chocolate desserts, which went fast. Yesterday the non-musical scenes with the eight principals rehearsed; tonight was for big group numbers, and for those of us who haven’t seen them practicing, the effect was like a magic act – suddenly there are all these people on the stage doing intricate dance steps and singing like crazy.

Eventually we men (we call ourselves the “Poor Lost Souls” after a line in our song) got to do our dance number – not that we’d expected to – and then we went into the hall, worked our way through it bit by bit, and I’d say got pretty sharp with it. Emily, when she came out to watch, seemed pleased. A relief – I no longer feel I’m hopeless.

My discovery tonight was what a difference a wig makes. The two women in the “Buddy’s Blues” number wore wigs with long curly brown hair tonight, and both seemed utterly transformed. Ah, theater!

The junior show (“Singing in the Rain,” it turns out) has the auditorium tomorrow night, so we were going to meet at Kristy’s house, but at the end of tonight’s rehearsal Kevin, the stage manager, announced we’d be off until Monday. Okay! More time to get things solid. I almost have the group songs memorized, and I noticed that a number of people were still reading them from the script, so that felt good.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7 – Kevin, the stage manager, sent out a request for hands to help move pieces of the set into the theater (the Glen Ridge Women’s Club) where we’ll be performing, so I went over to help. Most of the dozen or so people there are old hands with the theater – a real ”community” theater. It was fun to hang out with the “in group.”

A note on my character in the show and how I approached it: the script suggests that Dimitri Weismann is 80, and I’m close to that age. I started with an image of him – authoritarian, maybe with an accent acquired from his immigrant family, a real boss.

Eventually I remembered that beginning an acting role with an image is a terrible idea; it channels you into working for effects rather than working from the inside of a character. I couldn’t think of any reason Weismann shouldn’t be like me – I’ve led theater companies, I’ve put on numerous productions over the years, I’ve directed.

So I allowed Dimitri to behave as I’d naturally behave, rather than the reverse, and apparently that’s fine. I did buy black-rimmed glasses (with clear glass lenses); letting my hair go grey, I looked a bit like a Cary Grant (1904-1986) imitator. Nothing wrong with that.

[Since it covers the entire preparation and performance period of Gas Lamp’s Follies, Kirk Woodward’s “Performance Diary” is too detailed and comprehensive to be accommodated in a single post.  Therefore, Kirk and I have agreed to split it into two installments for publication on Rick On Theater.  “Performance Diary: Follies, Part 2” will be published on Wednesday, 18 December 2024.  Please return then for the account of the final days of the Gas Lamp Players’ Follies.]