Perseverant 20th-Century Theatermakers

 

[I always find myself stunned by how artists, especially theater artists, create under repressive regimes.  We’ve seen vibrant, expressive art—visual, musical, performance, literary—emerge from the Soviet Union and its satellites, military dictatorships, and religious autocracies.  Try as they might, the most tyrannical of totalitarian states haven’t been able to stamp out the artistic and creative impulse altogether.

[Of course, of all the arts, the performative ones are the most astonishing when it comes to creating works under prohibitive circumstances.  Books, paintings, and sculptures can be hidden away, spirited out of the country, and so survive and reach a public.  But a play, concert, or ballet needs an audience to live, and that generates exposure . . . and danger.  But it still happens. 

[Below are some stories of just that kind of creativity: artists who created under the most adverse situations.  It was impossible . . . but they did it.  And some of them suffered tremendously for it.] 

“MEMORIES OF SURVIVAL”
by Gabriela Furtado Coutinho

[This article is from the American Theatre issue of Fall 2025 (42.1).  It was posted on the AT website as “How to Survive a Dictatorship, the Theatre Artist’s Way” on 11 November 2025.]

Days in the lives of theatre folks around the world who persevered through oppression and resisted dictatorship with their art.

The present is never alone. Take comfort: There is future, and there is past. We walk, hand in hand, with ghosts of world stages: all the players who have exited, shadows of violence, sets in ruins. Memory and evidence.

If you press your ear to the plays of the 20th century, they’ll tell you secrets of human acts gone by and strategies to keep on. Among bloody slings and arrows of inhumane humanity are extraordinary scenes, real and imagined, of survival. At a concentration camp, a woman hides within a crate for 10 days to write a comic operetta, encouraging fellow prisoners to keep going. An everyday South Korean town square transforms from fear to ecstasy with the banging of drums, and grieving friends see their dead materialize. An iconic Brazilian theatremaker hatches an entire pedagogy from within the confines of dictatorship, going on to inspire oppressed peoples around the world.

Stories of surviving oppressive regimes feel heavy at first, tinged with the harrowing specters of fear and death. But these are the instructive, somehow hopeful histories I find myself gravitating toward again and again, in our time of enforced fear, violence, and starvation around the world. Humanity feels fragile, often. After hearing from international artists and reading first-person autobiographical accounts, I’d like to share moments that transcend fear. That feed feathery hope. Imagine yourself there: with Germaine Tillion in a concentration camp, with Augusto Boal in a prison cell, and with grieving friends and audiences who see theatre reanimate Gwangju and sustain souls even in death.

There is a reason why A Thousand and One Nights has endured as a centuries-old classic, categorically a fairy tale in spite of its deathly stakes. The protagonist must speak story after story to survive. With every story told, we too remind and convince ourselves to hold onto life for another night. Another story. Another play. Another night alive and ready to resist.

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in the camp, germaine tillion writes, ravensbrück 1944

Another counting. You line up with the rest of the women with blue-and-white-striped dresses and numbers and bloodstains and sunken eyes. Hope—that feathery, fragile thing—is what you need to survive. You search for it.

Levity has become your weapon and shield. You led the Musée de l’Homme resistance network and refuse to be tamed. Your inspiration remains your mother, an art critic who supported you through college and in defying Nazism. When she first saw you in the camp, she exclaimed, “Fabulous journey!” She’d glimpsed German cities in ruins; the European theatre of war was teetering. The war’s end seemed near.

[The Musée de l’Homme (literally “Museum of Mankind” or “Museum of Humanity”), founded in Paris in 1937, is a research center and anthropology museum that explores the evolution of humanity, its origins, and its future. Beyond its holdings, the museum is famous for having hosted one of the first networks of the Resistance during the German occupation of France (1940-44).]

Your training in anthropology helps. You shared with your mom all you knew of the camp; you gather fellow prisoners for storytelling. You often say: “Nothing is more terrifying than a complete mystery. If you can understand a mechanism that crushes you . . . that can become a powerful source.”

A woman falls in line with a loud thud. You don’t dare check if she’s alive.

You belong to Block 32, known for miraculous camaraderie. But there’s no new news of Allied liberation. Friends look frailer. “We must find a way to laugh at our lamentable state. It is our only lifeline,” you’ve insisted to your dear friend Anise Girard.

The guards herd you to forced labor. Your task today: sorting pillaged possessions from across Europe. Your hands run through fabrics, pearls, delicate engravings, the costumes and artifacts of lifetimes; your thoughts fly—

Theatre! That’ll be your survival strategy. You approach Anise: “Let’s not pity ourselves! Let’s write! Let’s sing!”

10 days. You need 10 risky days of support. A friendly prisoner oversees your work group, and the women eagerly embrace your project: a dark comic operetta illuminating this hellscape. They pick up your work, hide you, smuggle in paper and pen.

Squeezing into a wooden packing crate for entire work days, you write without water or food. Le Verfügbar aux Enfers, as the piece will be called, feeds you instead. Takes wing in quiet, cold darkness. Each evening you stow away to 32 and read what you have.

[The German word in the title, verfügbar, means ‘available’ or ‘unengaged’—in other words, “at someone's disposal.”  The whole French title translates as “The ‘available’ in Hell.” As Furtado Coutinho explains below, the reference is to prisoners not destined for other specific work and therefore free to be assigned the worst tasks called for at the camp. (A link embedded below, reporting on a translation of the operetta staged at the University of Southern Maine in Gorham on 24-27 April 2014, the English title is given as In the Underworld.)]

You center the writing around the verfügbar—the precarious class of prisoners not assigned specific work. New arrivals. Those awaiting reassignment. The unfit. Their fates: medical experiments, dangerous assignments synonymous with death, or one-way trips to Auschwitz gas chambers.

You distance yourself from the realities with humor. You know not everyone will appreciate making light of horror—but laughter is water, necessary for survival.

Your show begins with a Naturalist. He observes people in the Underworld . . .

No, that’s not right. In your anthropology, you believe in engagement, exchange, letting people lead! This play will let the women speak. They interrupt, explain, tell it themselves. The Naturalist questions, tries to regain control, but quickly the play belongs to a Greek chorus of prisoners. The “old rats” share camp secrets with the new.

You decorate your imaginary stage with irony, deadpan humor, jokes about your skeletal frames and the camp’s “excellent utilities”—especially gas. You imagine food into existence, even write a whole song about gastronomic adventures through France!

Each night at Block 32, a close circle makes suggestions and requests. Theatre liberates in community. This sharing alleviates, for moments, the ravenous weight of this Underworld. They memorize texts and laugh and laugh until their souls traverse beyond this place.

You can’t stage Le Verfügbar aux Enfers in full, but you share pieces and copies in confidence. It becomes a clandestine hit. You and your friends sing softly on the way to and from grueling work and beatings. The melodies derive from popular German songs, pleasing the guards, but you’ve changed some lyrics to French. Name their inhumanity. They don’t understand: You’re laughing at them.

You don’t know this now, but you will survive to show how, in your own words, “Indignation can move mountains.” You don’t know this now, but friends will smuggle out your operetta pages while you smuggle out film evidence of torture and experiments. You don’t know this now, but your mother, Émilie Tillion, won’t survive. Of 130,000 women passing through Ravensbrück, 40,000 will be murdered here.

[Ravensbrück was the largest Nazi concentration camp established exclusively for women, operating from 1939 to 1945 near Fürstenberg, Germany, about 50 miles north of Berlin. Over 120,000 to 132,000 women and children—mostly political prisoners, Jews, and Roma—were imprisoned there, enduring forced labor, starvation, and medical experiments, with tens of thousands dying.]

They—your mother, your friends—will live in the empty spaces of your pages, in that sound of inevitable laughter, evidence of how they fought to keep on.

Your work will be staged and translated in the 21st century. When time comes to take your bow and depart, your sense of duty—to act while there’s still time to prevent the worst—will live on. Stage and page give flight to memory, and your warnings and daybreak laughter ring from beyond the grave.

[Germaine Tillion (1907-2008) was a French ethnologist, a Catholic, and a member of the French Resistance in World War II, in the network of the Musée de l’Homme.  Betrayed to the Germans by a collaborationist priest, she spent time in Ravensbrück concentration camp from 1943 until her escape in 1945. During her incarceration, Tillion secretly wrote Le Verfügbar aux Enfers to entertain her fellow prisoners. (The link embedded in the operetta’s title above contains a list of many of Tillion’s publications, including the operetta and a number of texts detailing her personal experiences as an inmate.)

[Over recent years, I’ve posted a number of articles on ROT about performances—music, plays. cabaret—by concentration camp inmates for inmates:

•   “‘Prisoners in Nazi concentration camps made music; now it’s being discovered and performed’” by Jon Wertheim (2 March 2022)

•   "‘Performing for Survival – Cultural Life and the Theatre in Terezin’" by Bahar Akpinar (7 March 2022)

•   “The Last Cyclist” – Part 1 (2 September 2022) and Part 2 (5 September 2022)

•   “‘Minneapolis chamber group performs music written by Polish prisoners at Auschwitz’” by Fred de Sam Lazaro and Simeon Lancaster (17 February 2024),

[I also touch in this topic in my post “Theater: A Healing Art” (3 September 2023), and I invite readers to check it out.]

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augusto boal dreams of the oppressed and the free, são paulo 1971

Another night of rehearsal!

Each project draws you closer to the heart of the povo, the common people. Each play has a rawness. New nudity. You never know whether audiences will come armed, whether you’ll be arrested. The police tried once. A grenade has landed onstage. Neither finished the job. Graças a Deus!

You’re forming groups to create participatory Teatro-Jornal—“newspaper theatre.” This gives means of production back to audiences. News clippings, writings, anything can inspire them. Theatre becomes forum. You perform where police won’t suspect: behind churches, in unused classrooms, within homes.

Tonight at Teatro de Arena in São Paulo, after working on [Bertolt] Brecht’s [1898-1956] The Resistible Rise of Arturu Ui [Boal’s production: 1969], you’re rehearsing the musical Arena conta Bolívar [1971] for France’s Festival de Nancy. You’re grateful for this kind of international opportunity: It offers protection, possibility. The Brazilian government’s censors disappear whole pages from your works, but in rehearsal, words reappear.

[An authoritarian military dictatorship had emerged in the Federative Republic of Brazil in 1964 with support from the United States and ruled until 1985. Opponents to the military government, including artists, journalists, and other members of civil society, both inside and outside the country, were oppressed. In 1979, Brazil began a slow return to democracy, which was completed by 1985, after which civilian governance resumed. Brazil’s current constitution, enacted in 1988, defines it as a democratic federal republic.

[Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui [1941], subtitled “A parable play,” chronicles the rise of Arturo Ui, a fictional 1930s Chicago mobster, and his attempts to control the cauliflower racket by ruthlessly disposing of the competition. The play is a satirical allegory of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany prior to World War II.

[Arena conta Bolívar (Arena faces Bolívar) was created by Boal during his time with Teatro de Arena in São Paulo. The play, along with other Arena works, toured in 1971 before Boal was forced into exile by the military dictatorship due to the play’s political content.

[The play used historical figures to discuss contemporary political struggles in Latin America. It tells the story of Simón Bolívar, focusing on his dreams of a united Latin America and his struggles against oppression. The narrative focuses on the political actions of the characters rather than just their psychology. Arena conta Bolívar was banned in Brazil, and for developing and staging this type of subversive theater, Boal was imprisoned in 1971 and tortured by the military police.

[The Festival mondial du théâtre de Nancy (World Theatre Festival of Nancy), founded in 1963, was a renowned biennial avant-garde theater festival known for pioneering experimental, fringe, and international performances. It shifted theater focus from text-heavy plays to physical, gesture-based, and political performance, running until 1988.

[The event famously broke from tradition, emphasizing movement, music, mime, and puppets on non-traditional stages. It served as a platform for radical, revolutionary theatre during the 1960s and 70s. It appears, however, that Boal didn’t bring Arena conta Bolívar to Nancy in 1971; his Teatro de Arena staged Arena conta Zumbi and Teatro Jornal (newspaper theater) that year.

[(Zumbi (c. 1655-95) was a leader of the quilombolas, Afro-Brazilian residents of quilombo settlements of left-behind and escaped enslaved people, and one of the pioneers of resistance to enslavement of Africans by the Portuguese in colonial Brazil. He’s revered in Afro-Brazilian culture as a symbol of African freedom.

[(Because Arena conta Bolívar could not be performed at home, it premièred in Mexico City in February 1970. Then Boal’s troupe toured it through Mexico, the United States, Venezuela, and Peru between 1970 and 1971.)]

The dead come back to life.

You direct direction in a directionless country. Actors rehearse resistance, combatting dictatorship head-on. Day and night, you work, tire, worry.

Your wife calls. Milanese for dinner! The world is wet and weary, but you’re coming home.

Then: Three men approach. Your arm: twisted. Your body: in their Beetle.

[From 1963 to 1987, the VW Beetle served as the standard patrol car for the São Paulo state police. Because of its presence in almost every neighborhood, it became a visible symbol of state authority and surveillance. Because of their reliability and commonality, Beetles were frequently used by security forces to transport detained individuals to interrogation centers.]

Then: solitary confinement. You’ve heard silence before, but this silence screams.

But . . . is that your friend’s song? A hallucination, already? No, it’s real: Dori Caymmi’s “É doce morrer no mar” has broken in to keep you company. A disembodied voice from another cell tells you that every night, these kidnapped prisoners sing. Tonight you don’t feel like joining them. You think of artists, the oppressed, the vulnerable, every individual who may have disappeared here. Your wife and child. Communities across Brazil.

[Dori Caymmi (b. 1943) is a Brazilian singer, songwriter, guitarist, arranger, and producer. His song here (whose title means “It is sweet to die at sea”) was composed in 1941 by Dorival Caymmi (1914-2008), Dori’s father, and Jorge Amado (1912-2001). The song is a tragic and beautiful ballad that captures the mystical and perilous relationship between fishermen and the ocean. It tells of a handsome sailor who departs at night but never returns, having been “taken” by a mermaid to sleep in the lap of the goddess of the sea.

[While “É doce morrer no mar” is a poetic ballad, its celebration of common fishermen and Afro-Brazilian spirituality stood in opposition to the military’s push for westernized, “modern” industrialization. As a symbol of cultural resistance and the political identity of its creators (Amado was a communist sympathizer and his writings were heavily censored during the dictatorship), the song was an unofficial anthem of an element of Brazil’s population.]

One, wronged, makes a very big crowd.

The guards question and question. You pretend torture doesn’t hurt. Confess nothing.

Time stretches. You stretch. They use pau de arara torture—the same that desecrated enslaved bodies forced from Africa onto this land. The land remembers. The oppressor too.

[According to Wikipedia, pau de arara “is a torture method in which the victim is bound by the ankles and wrists, with the biceps under a pole and knees over it. The pau de arara torture method was widely used during the military dictatorship in Brazil.” (Wikipedia also reports: “Pau de arara is a Portuguese term that literally translates to ‘macaw’s perch.’ The term originates from bird sellers' practice of tying the birds to a perch, where they also hang for transportation.”)]

But you’re of privilege. After seven nights, your military brother demands to see you, dead or alive. Word gets out. Theatres worldwide learn of your imprisonment. Arthur Miller [1915-2005; American playwright], Richard Schechner [b. 1934; American academic and theater director], Peter Brook [1925-2022; English theater and film director], Jean-Louis Barrault [1910-94; French actor, director, and mime artist], and more pressure the government. Theatre wants to free you.

Guards move you from isolation. You speak with other prisoners—povo of all walks. You’ve rarely seen left-leaning folks get along so well. You teach one another, imagine new world orders. Why wait to do all this? You learn, meditate, stretch muscles, muster strength to heal from torture. You wonder how long it will take. Maybe you’ll never be the same.

You’ve experimented with theatre for so long, but here you observe a distinct form of exchange: real, raw rehearsals for revolution. You are never the same.

You’re out within four months—could’ve been four years, or worse, much fewer, with “an invitation to the undiscovered country.” You reappear from disappearance. A blessing. You’re angry.

Then: exile. You are banned from your patria.

You do not know this now, but your mind has been pregnant with pathways to unanswerable questions. Over 14 cold, lonely years of exile between Latin America and Europe, you grow more resolved. Survivors of torture and imprisonment emerge with newfound capacities. Confinement makes you infinite. Within prison’s limits, you’ve pondered the limits of theatre and learned that containers cannot contain spirit. They embolden it. Theatre of the Oppressed stretches its feathery wings.

You don’t create it alone—it has been gestated and cared for by every audience and maker you’ve encountered. This theatre helps you escape to your freest self, continue Brecht’s work, embody Paulo Freire’s [1921-97; Brazilian educator and Marxist philosopher] vision in your framework and in the book Theatre of the Oppressed [Buenos Aires, 1974; New York, 1979], an answer to a question you’ve held to light and tucked into bed and prayed over: How is agency possible under oppression?

You write: “I, Augusto Boal, want the spectator to take on the role of actor and invade the Character and the Stage . . . This invasion is a symbolic trespass. It symbolizes all the acts of trespass we have to commit in order to free ourselves from what oppresses us . . . If we do not trespass we can never be free.”

You don’t know this now, but from Brazil to South Korea to Chile to Nigeria to the Philippines to Ghana to Thailand to the United States and beyond, Theatre of the Oppressed will free generations of souls you’ll never meet.

[Augusto Boal (1931-2009) was a Brazilian theater practitioner, drama theorist, and political activist. He was the founder of Theatre of the Oppressed and Forum Theatre. In 1971, Boal was kidnapped off the street, arrested, and tortured by the military dictatorship in Brazil for his subversive theater activities.

[He was forced into exile, spending years in Argentina (1971-76). Peru (1973), Portugal (1976-78), and France (1978-86) before returning to his native country shortly after Brazil’s democratic restoration. Yan Michalski (1932-90), one of Brazil’s most influential theater critics and a vocal critic of state repression during the dictatorship, called Boal the best-known and most respected Brazilian theater practitioner abroad.]

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a survivor sees the dead marry, 대한민국 1982

The sun rises on another day. Two years since you lost your friends to the peaceful protests-turned-massacre. Gwangju, once a “city of light,” has become the memory of violence, a site where thousands of students and families “vanished” overnight.

[On 12 December 1979. South Korean General Chun Doo-hwan (1931-2021) launched a coup and imposed martial law on the Republic of Korea. He ruled as a military dictator under a constitution of his own devising.

[On 18 May 1980, citizens and students in Gwangju, which has a long-standing reputation for its “independent spirit” and history of fighting against injustice, rose up against Chun’s military coup. The military responded with a brutal crackdown, using paratroopers and tanks to suppress protestors. Official government figures cited nearly 200 deaths, while local citizens estimated the toll closer to 2,000.

[Although crushed at the time, the uprising catalyzed a decade of pro-democracy activism that eventually led to free presidential elections in 1987.]

Instead of reaching for glasses this morning, you reach for sheet music scrawled on torn notebook pages. You don’t know how much art can do, but you’ll try. Yoon Sang-won [1950 -80; a South Korean activist and spokesperson for the citizen’s militia during the 1980 Gwangju Democratization Movement; killed on the last day of the uprising] didn’t get to do so much: marry, have children, sing, live. The least you can do is sing for him. Yoon and his girlfriend Park Gi-sun [1957-78; a prominent South Korean labor and student activist; died of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning] would have wanted theatre of the people or minjung kayo [genre of South Korean protest music], song. They’ll get both today in this musical memorial. You hope they will hear from their graves.

Trudging through Gwangju toward the cemetery, the miracle of music rises, raises the city to its feet. You peer into an alleyway, where drummers help onlookers feel their heartbeats. The cemetery performance will be just one of many theatre protests today. Madangguk (마당극), informal yard theatre, has become commonplace. Drums kick off the spectacle, until the storytelling erupts in audience participation. You’ve seen these clandestine performances in the shadows and margins of the city, behind churches, in unused classrooms, homes. But they’re edging toward the light. When the government leaves no room for justice, the underground theatres must rehearse it.

“You need to be history’s eyewitnesses,” Yoon told younger students before urging us to leave the Jeonnam Provincial Office. You went to warmth; he went to the undiscovered country, as martial law overpowered the remaining protestors, massacring innumerable civilians. When those friends couldn’t speak, publish, protest, they sang. You wonder if Yoon went down singing.

You haven’t sung since then. Avoided protest theatre, though your friends rave about Theatre of the Oppressed and about our Korean traditions of theatre for the minjung, the ruled masses, “the people.” Where have the songs gotten Yoon? How could you sing without your friends? Theatre’s feathery hope feels more like crime now. You didn’t stay with Yoon for Jeonnam, a pivotal moment in this fight against authoritarianism, and now you’re here. Why are you here? You don’t want to sing. But you must. With a few university friends, being wary of the military, you will bear witness to Park and Yoon’s souls joining in a “spirit wedding” through this heaven of a musical.

[During the Gwangju Uprising, the Jeonnam Provincial Office in Gwangju served as the central headquarters for the civil militia.]

Through theatre, the dead come back to live.

Dispelling-Wedding of Light will be short, by the looks of the sheet music. You’ll only be among the dead for minutes. Hopefully it will feel longer. You recognize Baek Ki-wan’s lyrics from his prison poem written at Seodaemun Detention. The young Kim Jong-ryul set it to music. You wonder how, in their grief, they managed to create.

[Baek Ki-wan (1932–2021) was a towering figure in South Korea's movements for democracy and national reunification. Known for his fiery speeches and unwavering commitment to the poor and marginalized, he was often referred to as the “conscience of South Korea.” Baek is most widely recognized as the original lyricist of “March for the Beloved,” the unofficial anthem of South Korea’s democracy movement.]

Park wouldn’t recognize everyone here. She’d been forced from university for supporting opposition to the Yushin regime. After a short yet full, fiery life in labor movements and establishing the Wildfire Night School for workers, she died of coal gas poisoning; she didn’t get to protest alongside Yoon at Jeonnam. Some wouldn’t know her at all. No one will know her anymore.

You reach the manicured plot where stones stick up their heads to watch the living. The grass isn’t green here in February. Finding the stones and living bodies you came to see, you realize you’re last to arrive. They begin.

Then it’s blurry. You raise sheet music closer, blurrier still. Your throat is pregnant with protest and possibility. You suddenly need to sing. Your voice soars beyond. You hear. You hear Yoon hearing.

You can share breath with your friend again.

Before you can process the piece or make out who bears this wedding witness, the final song comes. “March for the Beloved.” Minor key, almost militant march.

We will leave no honors, no love, no fame. We promised to keep working on…

The river and the mountain remember, despite the passing of years…

We are marching on; those who are alive, come follow us . . .

You don’t know this now, but South Korea will transition to democracy within five years. You don’t know this now, but this musical and song will play a role. Millions will sing it worldwide for histories to come, a national memorial and international protest prayer. When cold lips clasp halfway through the word freedom, other voices will join the chorus. When you can no longer sing, friends will do it for you.

For many years to come, people will celebrate this wedding-within-a-play. The future will attend a wedding of the past that never was but could have been. And somehow is. Is. 

[The Korean word in the heading of this section transliterates as Daehan Minguk, and translates literally as the “Great Korean Republic.” In real English, that’s the Republic of Korea, and the Korean is the official name of the country since 1948.]

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marching on, present, past, future 

Countless more still rally the people, not just in spirit but on Earth. Cecile Guidote-Alvarez [b. 1943; Filipina actress and author], creator of the Philippine Educational Theater Association [1967], is still creating and empowering artists. Wole Soyinka [b. 1934; Nigerian writer, playwright, and poet] still teaches; his words and presence alike spread a legacy of liberation and peace in Nigeria and beyond.

And we are with them, the survivors, while still among the dead—at the spirit wedding, within the gray cell, among women passing pages, fluttering between now and then and could be. We are here and we are disembodied, existing in the consciousness between words, where breath breathes breath to thaw theatre, and theatre thaws a collective memory. And strength. You are not the first; there is no first time when your creative ancestors surround you with a centuries-old chorus of answerless questions.

Grim, promiseless as the world stage seems, there have been artists who’ve emerged from crates, prison cells, even death. Shoulders adjust to liberated air, wait for the script’s punchline and your daybreak laughter.

You may not feel this now, but many march on. Ghosts stroke and clasp our hands. Scripts and songs speak their words. Break our silence. You may not believe this now, but we can follow them—they beckon toward life. You may not know it yet, but as you free freedom, these theatres of resistance will reach you. Free you, too.

Special Thanks and Bibliography

A special thanks to Hayana Kim, Jisun Kim, Kelsey R. Mesa, L’Association Germaine Tillion, Daphnie Sicre, Sierra Rosetta, and Emilya Cachapero for their guidance and hope.

Adamo, Elizabeth, “Germaine Tillion’s Colonial Writing: Complicity and Resistance” (2015). Africana Studies Student Research Conference.

Boal, Augusto, Hamlet e o filho do padeiro. E-book ed., Record, 2000.

Dae-ha, Jung, “Gwangju remembers special student-labor activist.” Hankyoreh, Hankyoreh Media Group, 19 Dec. 2013.

De Andrade, Clara, editor, “Remembering Boal through images.” Critical Stages/Scènes critiques, 2010.

Kim, Hayana, Embodying Democracies: The Gwangju Uprising, Women, and the Politics of Mourning in South Korea. 2023. Northwestern U, PhD dissertation.

Lee, Namhee, “Between Indeterminacy and Radical Critique: Madangguk, Ritual, and Protest,” from The Making of Minjung: Democracy and the Politics of Representation in South Korea, Cornell University Press, 2011, pp. 187-212.

Olson, Lynne, The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück: How an Intrepid Band of Frenchwomen Resisted the Nazis in Hitler’s All-Female Concentration Camp. E-book ed., Random House, 2025.

Ribas, Cristina, “The Aesthetics of the Oppressed: Political Memory and the Pedagogy of a Poetical Laboratory.” La Escuela, 9 Apr. 2022.

University of Southern Maine Department of Theatre, “In the Underworld: A Darkly Comic Operetta Program” (2014). Programs 2013-2014 Season.

Van Erven, Eugene, “Resistance Theatre in South Korea: Above and Underground.” TDR/The Drama Review, vol. 32, no. 3, 1988, pp. 156-73.

Yi, Kang-baek, Allegory of Survival: The Theater of Kang-baek Lee. Translated by Alyssa Kim and Hyung-Jin Lee, e-book ed., Cambria Press, 2007.

[Gabriela Furtado Coutinho (she/ela/ella) is the digital editor of American Theatre, as well as a Chicago-based actor, playwright, and poet.

[On Rick On Theater, 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.’”)

The Scandinavian Actors

 

[Eighteen months ago, I posted the transcript of a 60 Minutes segment by correspondent Jon Wertheim.  Entitled “A surprising number of Hollywood stars are Australian: how the country pumps out acting talent” (19 November 2024), it examined the phenomenon in the movie business of the apparent predominance of Australian actors on American screens.

[Now I read that another group of actors, these from the Scandinavian countries, are influencing film acting, and with it, moviemaking, in the first quarter of the 21st century—not just in Hollywood, but all over the western world.] 

“THE SCANDINAVIANS”
by Nick Haramis

[The article below was published in T: The New York Times Style Magazine on 8 March 2026.  It was also posted on the Times webpage as “The Scandinavian Actors Quietly Redefining Cinema” on 2 March 2026 (updated 4 March).]

How actors from Denmark, Norway and Sweden are quietly redefining global cinema.

When Elle Fanning [American; b. 1998] appears onscreen in “Sentimental Value” [2025], her character, Rachel Kemp, a Hollywood actress, has been crying. Nearly 30 minutes into Joachim Trier’s [Norwegian; b. 1974] latest feature — about a veteran Swedish Norwegian director named Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgard [Swedish; b. 1951]), who tries to leverage a new project to reconcile with his estranged daughters in Oslo, an actress named Nora (Renate Reinsve [Norwegian; b. 1987]) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas [Norwegian; b. 1989]), a historian — Fanning’s bald emotion is jarring. In a story told through impassive exchanges and subtle gestures, her presence establishes not just a distinction between Scandinavian and American performance but also their cultures. One, Trier suggests, is tender yet controlled; the other can be a bit much.

Not since the 1950s and ’60s, when the Swedish writer-director Ingmar Bergman [1918-2007] introduced global audiences to Liv Ullmann [Norwegian; b. 1938] and Max von Sydow [Swedish and French; 1929-2020] — and again in the 1990s, when the Danish provocateurs Lars von Trier [b. 1956] and Thomas Vinterberg [b. 1969] created Dogme 95, a filmmaking style that rejected artificial lighting and made Mads Mikkelsen [Danish; b. 1965] a star — has Scandinavia generated so many exciting performances. Local directors are still largely responsible: Reinsve, 38, who grew up in the village of Solbergelva, Norway, has worked with [Joachim] Trier twice before, on “Oslo, August 31st” (2011) and “The Worst Person in the World” (2021); the 74-year-old Skarsgard’s seven film collaborations with [Lars] von Trier, among them “Breaking the Waves” (1996) and “Melancholia” (2011), cemented his reputation as one of our era’s great character actors. “When a director here has success, he brings the talent with him,” says Pilou Asbaek [b. 1982], a 44-year-old Dane who’s been in three Tobias Lindholm [Danish; b. 1977] movies, including “A War” (2015). “Most Scandinavian movies are publicly funded, which means you don’t necessarily have to sell a million tickets. You’re not forced to hire a superstar.”

Every few years, a new region seems to become the arbiter of art house cinema, telling stories that resonate internationally. The French New Wave [1958-1960s] reflected the sexual freedom and anti-establishment values of postwar youth in the 1960s; the American mumblecore scene [American independent film movement or subgenre; ca. 2002-16] captured the rebellion and disenfranchisement of the aughts; and over the past decade, South Korean filmmakers became known for delivering vengeful critiques of economic inequality [2000s to the present]. If there’s an increased appetite for Scandinavian movies today, it’s perhaps because more viewers are drawn to intimate, often darkly comic morality tales about flawed, relatable adults. These works demand close attention, requiring careful study of peoples’ faces — blemishes, wrinkles and all — to understand their states of mind. “Psychology trumps brutality any day of the week,” says Asbaek. “We can’t afford big shootouts or C.G.I., so we focus on characters making difficult decisions under pressure.”

[South Korean filmmakers earned global acclaim by channeling the country’s rapid economic shift—from extreme poverty to a high-tech powerhouse—into searing cinematic critiques. This movement spotlights the harsh realities of extreme wealth disparity and crushing household debt.

[Directors blend dark comedy, intense thrillers, and body horror into structural critiques of capitalism. Financial desperation is often depicted as a literal life-or-death physical struggle, reflecting the brutal competition of the job market. Instead of just uniting against the rich, the lower classes often battle each other for the scraps of the wealthy, highlighting how the system erodes human solidarity.

[Key South Korean filmmakers and works of economic critique include: Park Chan-wook (b. 1963; Vengeance Trilogy – Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance [2002], Oldboy [2003], and Lady Vengeance [2005]), Bong Joon-ho (b. 1969; The Host [2006], Snowpiercer [2013], Parasite [2019]), Lee Chang-dong (b. 1954; Burning [2018]), Hwang Dong-hyuk (b. 1971; Squid Game [TV series; 2021-25]).

[Mumblecore is a low-budget film movement characterized by naturalistic, often improvised dialogue, non-professional actors, and intimate, dialogue-driven plots focusing on relationship anxieties and quarter-life (i.e., early 20s to mid-30s) crises.

[Film critics and historians refer to movies made starting roughly around 2010 as “post-mumblecore.” They are defined by the transition of the movement away from extreme micro-budgets toward more professional productions while still retaining the naturalistic, dialogue-heavy sensibilities of the original genre.]

Becoming an acclaimed Scandinavian performer — or novelist (Karl Ove Knausgaard [Norwegian; b. 1968]), artist (Bjarne Melgaard [Norwegian painter, installation artist, sculptor, filmmaker, and fashion designer; b. 1967]) or even pop star (Lykke Li [Swedish singer, songwriter, and actress; b. 1986]) — often means “befriending our anxiety,” Reinsve says. The Swedish actress Noomi Rapace [b. 1979], 46, who played the vigilante lead in Niels Arden Oplev’s [Danish film director and screenwriter; b. 1961] 2009 film adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s [Swedish writer, journalist, and far-left activist; 1954-2004] “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” (2005) and two sequels, and who now splits her time between London and Lisbon, says, “When you’re up in Scandinavia, there’s a cloud hanging over everyone. People drink a lot; there’s a lot of depression. It’s quite a heavy energy.” Lilleaas, 36, whose parents ran a theater production company in Gol, Norway, where she was raised, adds, “We’re not so outspoken; our feelings are very held back. And I think it influences how we act as well.”

[Haramis’s reference to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo above is a little confusing. Larsson wrote a trilogy of novels (of a planned series of 10), and Oplev also made three film adaptations. I assume Haramis is writing here about the Swedish film series.

[The novel series has been expanded to currently eight under the authority of the Swedish publisher, and the three original Swedish films were first released as feature films in 2009 then expanded and rereleased as Millennium, a six-part TV miniseries in 2010.

[The two original sequel novels and films are entitled The Girl Who Played with Fire (2006), and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest (2007). (The Swedish titles are: Män som Hatar Kvinnor, “Men who hate women”; Flickan Som Lekte med Elden, “The Girl who played with fire”; and Luftslottet som sprängdes, “The Castle in the air that was blown up.”)

[Sequels to David Fincher’s 2011 American film of the first novel were announced, but have been indefinitely postponed. Fincher has announced that he will not direct future films of the Millennium series.]

Although there are countless differences between Denmark, Norway and Sweden (for historical, cultural and linguistic reasons, Finland and Iceland are generally not considered part of Scandinavia), all three countries heavily support the arts. “We have a strong publicly funded theater,” says Nikolaj Coster-Waldau [Danish; b. 1970], 55, who played the knight Jaime Lannister on “Game of Thrones” (2011-19 [HBO]). After graduating from the Danish National School of Performing Arts in 1993, the actor, who’ll next be seen in the Robert Zemeckis [American; b. 1951] crime thriller “The Last Mrs. Parrish” [expected to be released late 2026 or early 2027], made his debut in a Copenhagen production of “Hamlet” [1992-93]. At home, he says, “you can make a living as a stage actor. The only way to do that in the United States is to have a big Broadway show that goes for a long time.” Six of Skarsgard’s eight children are actors. Alexander [b. 1976], 49, premiered two new films — “The Moment,” a Charli XCX [professional name of Charlotte Emma Aitchison (British singer, songwriter, and actress; b. 1992)] tour mockumentary [2026], and “Wicker” [2026], in which he plays a straw man — at this year’s Sundance Film Festival [22 January-1 February 2026]; Bill [b. 1990], 35, will next appear with Hugh Jackman [Australian; b. 1968)] in “The Death of Robin Hood” [to be released in June 2026]. Although their father is pleased (“in secret,” he says) that his children have followed his path, he was careful to let them decide. “We have more respect for acting as a profession. It’s like being a doctor or anything else,” he says. “When I came to America, they asked me, ‘What’s your job?’ ‘I’m an actor,’ I said proudly. And they said, ‘Not another one.’”

[The other four acting Skarsgard sons are: Gustaf Skarsgard (b. 1980), known for Evil (2003), The Way Back (2010), Kon-Tiki (2012), and Oppenheimer (2023); Valter Skarsgard (b. 1995), who has mainly appeared in Swedish or other Scandinavian productions and became known to global audience in several Netflix shows, including Katla (2021) and The Playlist (2022); Kolbjörn Skarsgard (b. 2012), a child actor who made his screen debut in 2022 as the nine-year-old Clark Olofsson, in the Netflix series Clark.]

All of these Scandinavian actors acknowledged the recent interest in their nations’ cinema, even if they couldn’t quite articulate what sets the work apart. The one trait they could claim is humility. In an egalitarian culture, where, for better or worse, sameness is encouraged, Reinsve says, “I was really scared to stick out in Norway. Coming to America, I’ve had to embrace my individuality.” That’s a feeling shared by Alicia Vikander [Swedish; b. 1988], 37, who won an Oscar in 2016 for Tom Hooper’s [British-Australian; b. 1972] “The Danish Girl” [2015] and yet has long had trouble calling herself an actress. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing,” says the Swedish actress, who’ll next appear in Olivier Assayas’s [French; b. 1955] political drama “The Wizard of the Kremlin” [2025]. A similar sense of modesty runs through Scandinavian films themselves, which often depict a middle-class existence that’s less prevalent in contemporary Hollywood fare: It’s no accident that in “Sentimental Value” the family home, a witness of sorts to generations of trauma and pain, has cracks running down the walls.

As the group’s most recent breakout, Lilleaas has had to navigate newfound fame. “Americans seem to have no problem talking about their achievements,” she says. Without much of a marketing budget — and without resorting to, say, the promotional blimps of “Marty Supreme” (2025) or similar viral stunts — “Sentimental Value,” a small film about grief and redemption, has nonetheless found an audience. “I think Timothée Chalamet [American and French; b. 1995; see Prodigal Son (28 February 2016)] is an incredible actor, but he talks about being the greatest as if art is something you could win,” says Coster-Waldau. “Maybe he’s right, but I have a different way of looking at it.”

[Nick Haramis is the editor-at-large of the New York Times’ T Magazine.  With a focus on fashion, art, and design, he rejoined the Times, where he had previously been an articles editor, in 2022, after four years as the editor-in-chief at Interview.  He has contributed to publications such as The Last Magazine, S Magazine, Billboard Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Playboy, and Reader’s Digest.

[Born in Ontario, Canada, Haramis graduated from Montreal’s McGill University with a BA in English.  After two years as the editor of BlackBook, an arts and culture magazine published bi-annually in print and online, in September 2011 he accepted the position of editorial director at Bullett, a quarterly arts, fashion, and culture publication, both based in New York.  For Bullett, Haramis interviewed high-profile subjects at various stages in their careers, such as actor Winona Ryder, actor and comedian Bill Murray, actor Kirsten Dunst, and Trinidadian rapper, singer, and songwriter Nicki Minaj.  He’s currently based in Brooklyn.]

Wayang Kulit

 

[Wayang kulit, shadow-puppet theater, is one of Indonesia’s major art forms, with many stylistic and regional variations.  As found on the islands of Java and Bali, wayang kulit is both entertainment and ritual.

[Several epic cycles form the basis of the plays and provide characters with which new plays are created.  Of various origins, the epics have been altered and supplemented extensively, forming a distinctly Indonesian mythology.  Most wayang stories performed today in Java and Bali are based on the Mahabharata, a Hindu epic (though the Javanese are predominantly Muslim, while the Balinese are mostly Hindu).  

[I’ve only seen one wayang performance live—when I was in Honolulu for a Kabuki course at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. UH has an active Asian performance program.  Run at that time by James Brandon (1927-2015), it included the Festival of Ethnic Music and Dance, which in July 1988 included a wayang performance by the University of Hawaii Gamelan Ensemble directed by Hardja Suslo. 

[I’d seen videos of wayang kulit, but this was my first (and so far only) opportunity to see it live. I have to say that dalang Marc Hoffman made those puppets do things I wouldn’t have believed was possible with inanimate objects!  I can tell you that shadow is somehow magical.  It sort of explained to me why spectators are drawn to the back side of the screen—to see that the puppeteer isn’t engaged in something paranormal back there.]

“LARRY REED, 81, MASTER OF SHADOW PUPPETRY 
WHO MADE IT MODERN”
by Richard Sandomir

[Larry Reed, an American wayang kulit shadow puppet master, died on 30 January.  His obituary, which ran in the New York Times on 28 March 2026 (Section B: “Business”/”Sports”), motivated me to blog on the Indonesian performance form. 

[I realized, though I had covered several other forms of theater from Asian cultures—noh, kabuki, gigaku, classic Sanskrit drama, and the Natyasastra, I’d never posted anything on the Indonesian shadow puppets, which are tremendously fascinating.  I decided to do it by commenting on Reed’s obituary, which was also posted on the Times website on 25 March 2026 as “Larry Reed, Master of Shadow Puppetry, Dies at 81.”]

Taking the intimacy of a traditional Balinese art form and making it a large-scale show.

In 1970, a young filmmaker named Larry Reed traveled to Pengosekan, a Balinese village, searching for a new theatrical experience, something different from the standard Broadway fare.

He wasn’t certain what he was looking for. But one night he found it.

“We came upon a clearing filled with people crowded around a small screen, with a flame behind it making flickering shadows,” he recalled decades later. “A single performer was manipulating scores of puppets, creating incredible sounds with his voice, leading the orchestra with a mallet in his foot and making the audience laugh and cry.”

What he had seen was the ancient art of wayang kulit, or Balinese shadow puppetry, whose stories are derived from the Mahabharata myth cycle. UNESCO designated the form a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2003.

[Wayang kulit (pronounced wah-YAHNG KOO-lit) literally means ‘shadow leather’ because the puppets are carved from leather. Wayang can refer to the puppet alone or the whole puppet theater performance. Furthermore, wayang can be used to mean ‘theater’ in general, as one of the forms of Indonesian performance is called wayang orang, which is theater performed directly (i.e., no shadows) by human actors. (Orang is the same word that appears in orang utan, the great ape whose name means ‘man of the forest.’)

[The Mahabharata is an ancient Indian epic poem, revered as one of the two major texts of Hinduism alongside the Ramayana. (The Ramayana is the story of the god Rama, a major Hindu deity.) Composed in Sanskrit between roughly 400 BCE and 400 CE, the Mahabharata is the longest known epic poem in world literature, about ten times the length of both the Iliad and the Odyssey together. 

[The name means ‘the great (story) of the Bharata,’ who are the descendants of the legendary emperor Bharata, whose name is also the Sanskrit and Hindi name for India.  The Mahabharata is the story of the rivalry between two princely families, the Kauravas and the Paṇḍavas.] 

Mr. Reed, who died at 81 of a heart attack on Jan. 30, at his home in San Francisco, didn’t understand the language being spoken.

But the show “excited me because it was so worked out, yet so wild,” he told The San Francisco Chronicle in 1984. “It involved the same old stories that we’re used to here, but a different mix — like ballet and a clown show all mixed together. It was like watching primordial cartoons.”

This would not be just a thrilling one-off. Over the coming years, as he trained to become a dalang, or shadow master, Mr. Reed returned regularly to Indonesia to study in the village of Tunjuk [on Bali] with the dalang I Nyoman Rajeg. Mr. Reed lived in Tunjuk for a year [ca. 1974] with his future wife, Jane Levy, before they married in 1976.

Back in the United States, Mr. Reed had formed the nonprofit ShadowLight Productions in San Francisco in 1972 to stage traditional shadow puppetry shows. But by the early 1990s, he began to realize that “not everybody in the world is as interested in Indonesian stuff as I am,” he told Mission Local, a San Francisco news website, in 2023.

So he created a modern version, or what came to be called cinematic shadow theater, “that emerged over many years through experimentation,” Caryl Kientz, ShadowLight’s managing director, said in an interview.

Mr. Reed turned the intimacy of traditional Balinese shadow puppetry into a large-scale show, using the age-old techniques to tell stories from around the world. Instead of a single dalang, there was a cast of performers — including puppeteers, masked actors and dancers — behind a 15-by-30-foot screen, and multiple electric light sources instead of a flame.

[The puppet figures of wayang kulit are rear-projected. They are flat leather figures carved and incised from water buffalo or goat hide and attached to rods which the dalang uses to make the limbs and heads move. The shadows are thrown onto the back of a large linen screen by an oil lamp (the traditional method) or, today, an electric light.

[The leather is used rather than other, more modern materials. Because in its thin state, after being worked and carved, it’s not only more supple than any other material, but it’s slightly translucent, making the shadows less opaque and more lively.

[The dalang manipulates puppets while sitting on the ground—wayang kulit performances are traditionally outdoor events—between the lamp and the screen. Audiences, who are free to come and go as they please during a performance, are clearly meant to be seated on the opposite side of the screen from the dalang. But it has long become common for spectators to come behind the screen and watch the dalang work and see the shadows from the “wrong” side.

[The wayang performance is traditionally accompanied by a gamelan orchestra, commonly an ensemble of bronze percussion instruments.  The dalang “conducts” the gamelan, who are seated behind the dalang. The gamelan is usually also accompanied by male and female singers.

[The dialogue of the puppets isn’t written down—there are no scripts in the western theater sense. The dalang, with all his other duties in a performance, makes up the words the puppets speak as the story unfolds. Furthermore, the story is tailored to suit the audience attending the performance. The dalang may even make references to current events and local affairs, especially during comic scenes.]

Drew Dir, a shadow puppeteer and a founder of Manual Cinema, a performance company in Chicago, called Mr. Reed a creative inspiration.

“When we were coming up, people would pass us DVDs of his performances,” Mr. Dir wrote in an email. “His tools were so simple — light, shadow, foamcore, the human silhouette — and yet the possibilities were endless. To the best of my knowledge, he was the creator of modern shadow play and performance.”

[Foamcore, or foamboard, is a lightweight, rigid material composed of a polystyrene foam center clad with paper facing on both sides, commonly used for mounting photographs, making architectural models, temporary signs, and craft and school projects. It’s extremely lightweight, rigid, and easy to cut with a sharp blade (like an X-Acto knife).]

Mr. Reed’s productions, which he often directed and in which he gave voice to some of the characters, were multicultural in their subject matter.

“Monkey King at Spider Cave” (2006) was based on a 16th-century story about a Buddhist high priest in China. “Ghosts of the River” (2009), a series of vignettes written by the playwright Octavio Solis, explored stories about crossing the Rio Grande. “A (Balinese) Tempest” (2005), an adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, debuted in San Francisco and was also performed at the Public Theater in Manhattan.

[The Monkey King, a simian trickster with human characteristics and abilities, is one of the best loved and most enduring characters in Chinese literature. Armed with a staff and extraordinary powers, he comes from the 16th-century novel Journey to the West, attributed to writer Wu Cheng’en (c. 1500-82 or 1505-80). In the centuries since his literary debut, the Monkey King has been the subject of movies, TV shows, and games across both the East and the West.]

“In Xanadu” (1993) followed the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan’s [1215-94] quest to bring his late wife, Chabi, back from the underworld. It won puppetry’s highest honor, the Citation of Excellence from UNIMA-USA, the North American chapter of an international puppetry organization.

Steven Winn, a critic for The [San Francisco] Chronicle, praised that show’s “ingenious use of perspective,” which made shadow images of 13th-century warriors look three-dimensional on the screen [see what I mean about the dalang’s magic?]. The battlefield scenes, he added, had “a wonderful, illusionistic depth.”

Charles Lawson Reed III was born on June 21, 1944, in Los Angeles, and moved with his family to Cincinnati after World War II. His father, Charles Reed Jr., was an engineer who owned a valve-manufacturing company. His mother, Dorothy (Whittaker) Reed, was a homemaker and an active supporter of arts organizations.

Mr. Reed recalled noticing the effect of shadows from an early age.

“Once I woke up from a nap and found myself watching the shadow of a bug on a leaf, inches from my nose,” he wrote in Puppetry International magazine in 2009. “My first photographs were of shadows in the snow.”

In elementary and boarding school, he acted. At Yale, he studied French and theater, but left after two years to join a Peace Corps theater program, through which he worked at the National Theater of Costa Rica from 1966 to 1968. In 1970, he earned a combined bachelor’s and master’s degree in film from the San Francisco Art Institute.

Following his first trip to Bali, Mr. Reed returned to the United States, where he studied Balinese instruments and the Indonesian language at the Center for World Music in the Bay Area [founded in San Francisco; relocated to San Diego in 1980]. One of the teachers suggested that Mr. Reed study shadow puppetry with his father, Mr. Rajeg, in Indonesia.

Returning to Bali for extended trips in 1973 and 1974, Mr. Reed recalled sitting behind the screen with Mr. Rajeg — watching him perform, learning how he gave voice to multiple characters and how he animated his flat, carved-rawhide puppets.

“I learned the entire repertoire, just note by note, the way the Balinese do it, except much slower,” Mr. Reed said in a video on the ShadowLight website.

His time in Mr. Rajeg’s village led him and the filmmaker John Knoop to make “Shadow Master” (1979), a docudrama about the dalang’s family — including his grandchildren, caught between tradition and modernity.

Mr. Reed’s troupe has collaborated with organizations like the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, the Santa Fe and Los Angeles operas, Gamelan Sekar Jaya, a Balinese music and dance company, the singer Coco Zhao, the choreographer Wan-Chao Chang and the actress Karen Kandel.

Mr. Reed is survived by his wife; his son Nik, who confirmed the death; another son, James; three grandchildren; two sisters, Janet and Dede Reed; and a brother, Foster.

His final show, which he performed last November on a houseboat in Sausalito, Calif., was a wayang kulit story, “Arjuna Tapa,” in which the title character travels to secure a powerful weapon from Lord Shiva for an upcoming war. Mr. Reed, who had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease [COPD], was the sole puppeteer and used a portable oxygen concentrator to breathe during the performance.

Rachel Cooper [performing arts presenter specializing in cultural exchange], the director of performing arts, culture and diplomacy at the Asia Society [New York City], recalled watching him perform in Indonesia in 1996.

“People were so delighted,” she said in an interview. “I think they felt here was someone who really respected and knew the form. If you can make jokes in another language, and they laugh, it tells you something. He made that connection.”

[Richard Sandomir, an obituaries reporter, has been writing for the Times for more than three decades.  “I am . . .  assigned to write short biographies of the famous, the infamous and the obscure,” he says.  Sandomir joined the Times Obituaries desk in 2016 after 25 years covering sports media and sports business for the paper.  

[He’s worked for Long Island’s Newsday and other publications, and written several books, including his most recent, The Pride of the Yankees: Lou Gehrig, Gary Cooper and the Making of a Classic (Hachette Books, 2017). Sandomir’s journalism background of more than 40 years has helped him become a better storyteller, which is critical to writing obits.  He graduated from Queens College of the State University of New York in 1979 with a B.A. in communications.]

More Notes on Acting

by Kirk Woodward 

[My friend Kirk Woodward has contributed well over a hundred posts to Rick On Theater since I started the blog—at his suggestion—back in 2009.  He’s covered many subjects over those years, from personal reminiscences, play and other performance (most notably, pop music) reports, some history, and lots and lots of theater.

[As readers of ROT know by now, Kirk’s a multi-hyphenate theater person—a playwright, director, occasional actor (see below, for example), composer and lyricist, instrumentalist, theater and acting teacher, theater historian, reviewer and critic, and general commentator.  He’s blogged here in all those capacities.

[He’s also, since his younger years, a journal-keeper.  Not a few of Kirk’s posts have been based on diaries and journals he’s kept, some dating from as far back as his army service in the early 1970s, and even before.  “More Notes on Acting” is one such post.

[Also as ROTters will already know, Kirk, who lives in suburban New Jersey, is very engaged in the life of his community, including, perhaps even especially, the theater life, which is especially rich in his Jersey region.  He has written for, directed, acted in, composed for, musical-directed, and accompanied many area productions for numerous local troupes.

[Kirk’s contributions to ROT are too many to list in their entirety anymore.  So I’m going to cherry-pick the posts that cover acting specifically one way or another.  (Most of Kirk’s posts on directing, a long list in itself, also make comments pertinent to acting—so do his play reports—but adding them to the upcoming list would extend it to an unmanageable length.)

[Here, then, are Kirk Woodward’s acting posts in Rick On Theater:

·   “Herbert Berghof, Acting Teacher” (1 June 2011)

·   “Reflections On Directing: Actors” (17 April 2013)

·   “Creative Dramatics” (30 September 2013)

·   "Reflectionson Theater Etiquette” (11 February 2014) – less about acting than about actors

·   “Memoirs of a Desperate Actor” (3 March 2015)

·   “Simon Callow” (23 June 2015)

·   “Four Actors” (30 January 2018)

·   “Notes from a Sometime Actor” (27 December 2019)

·   “Acting Class (On-Line Edition)” (4 August 2020)

·   “The Method – a Review” (12 March 2022)

·   “Acting Notes” (27 April 2022)

·   “Bombast to Beckett” (13 January 2025)

[Interested ROTters can find all of Kirk Woodward’s posts by clicking on his name.  There are also more articles on ROT about actors and acting by other authors, including me, in those links.]

I have written in this blog before about my experience as an actor in a production of the musical Follies in 2024 directed by the very talented Kristy Graves (“Performance Diary: Follies, Part 1” [15 December 2024] and “Part 2” [18 December 2024]). This year I was cast in the musical Little Women, also directed by Kristy.

The musical is based on the well-known 1868/1869 novel by Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) about a close-knit family of four daughters and their mother (with the father remaining offstage) with music by Jason Howland, lyrics by Mindi Dickstein, and book by Alan Knee.

Little Women was performed on Broadway for a modest run of 137 performances in 2005. It toured extensively and has been produced numerous times since. It is a “chamber musical” (a small-scale musical theater production characterized by a limited cast, small orchestra, and intimate venue setting) with a cast of ten playing eighteen roles, although it can also be performed by a larger cast.

Our production, like last year’s Follies, was presented at the Women’s Club of Glen Ridge, New Jersey. It had two performances, on April 9 and 12, 2026. I played the small role of Mr. Lawrence in the play.

Our rehearsal period had its ups and downs, like pretty much every production. The “downs” are not my subject in this article, but I will briefly summarize some of them:

·    Space availability was a problem, apparently the reason we gave only two performances. Since the space was available for rental by outside groups, we frequently had to clear the space completely after a rehearsal, which led to some late evenings. Also because of space availability, we had to hold the earlier rehearsals in the director’s living room.

·    We performed the show in a lovely second floor ballroom, with the stage area on one of the shorter walls, and the small orchestra located outside the room beyond a side double door. This was an excellent setting for the home scenes which made up most of the play, but since we were in a room, not on a stage, the backdrop could not be changed when, for example, the characters were on a beach, indicated by their sitting on a blanket.

·    Acoustically the room was close to an echo chamber. No amplification was necessary (or affordable), but voices bounced around the room. Visually, since the room was a ballroom with a level floor, visibility from the rear seats was limited. (As a result Kristy did her best not to have characters sit if she could avoid it.)

·    As always, actors’ time was limited, making it difficult to schedule rehearsals. Kristy had to make major overhauls of the rehearsal schedule twice due to shifting commitments. She held up under the strain, but it must have been difficult.

Offsetting these difficulties was the nature of the “family” in the show – all high school students, plus Kristy as the mother (Susan Knight Carlin provided a second directing eye). Every one of the school-age women was talented, skilled at singing and dancing, and thoroughly professional at things like learning their lines and being on time. [Susan Knight, as she prefers to be called professionally, is mentioned in “Performance Diary: Follies, Part 1” and “Acting Class (On-Line Edition)” (4 August 2020).]

They were a delight to work with and a challenge to us older people. They made me feel there was hope for the future. During one “notes” session I glanced over the shoulder of one of the students, who was doing her Physics homework on a tablet. Physics!

I played Mr. Laurence, the crochety grandfather of one of the boys in the play, and it’s my experience in that role that I’m writing about here, because it taught or reminded me of a number of things about acting.

I should explain that directing and playwriting, not acting, have been my major interests in theater. I took acting classes and did a moderate bit of performing onstage in the 1970’s, but little acting after that until recently. I did however teach acting, and I’m happy to report that I’ve found the things that I taught to be sound.

However, doing them is something else, and here I will describe mistakes I made (that I know of) and things I learned, or re-learned. I suppose and hope that professional actors know all these things already, but actors at my level and non-actors and non-theater people who are curious about the work might find this interesting.

IMAGES – When I was asked to play the role of Mr. Laurence, I did exactly what I’ve told acting classes for years not to do. I read the play hunting for the scenes I was in (there were five), basically ignoring the rest. I had never read the novel and had only the vaguest idea of its story, and I never really caught up with the plot until the first run-through.

That is bad enough. Not yet having the script, I skimmed through the play online, hunting for the scenes I was in. But there’s worse. Gathering that Mr. Laurence was a difficult, cranky old man, I immediately formed an image of what a difficult, cranky old man would be like. (I had little problem with the “old” part.)

What’s wrong with that? The question is, what’s right with it? Over a hundred years ago, the director and teacher Konstantin Stanislavski (1863-1938), followed by numerous others, stressed the importance of the actor’s developing a character “from the inside,” from what the character wants and what the character does to get what it wants.

To ignore this – to begin with an “image,” or in other words a cliché – is to turn a specific character into a generalized, unmoored notion of an unspecific person. If we think about it even a moment we realize what a bad idea this is. My two grandmothers and grandfathers were utterly unlike each other. We are all individuals. That’s part of what drama often wants to teach us.

I ignored it and spent most of the rehearsal period trying to undo the image and work from the specifics of my character.

ONE THING AT A TIME – As a director, a few years ago I began to believe it’s important that actors be given a goal for each rehearsal (or section of a rehearsal), something they can focus on, such as “Tonight we’ll only be working on the words of the script,” or “For this run-through please just concentrate on in-the-moment contact with the person you’re talking to.” [Kirk addresses this same practice from a director’s point of view in “All’s Well That Ends Well Production Notes, Part 2” (29 November 2025).]

The effect of this approach is to reduce strain for the actors, keeping them from trying to do everything at once. Practically speaking their acting improves a great deal under these conditions, because they’re not worrying about it – their focus is elsewhere, on whatever the director has pointed them to.

Given the role of Mr. Laurence, though, I completely forgot this idea, and tried to do everything at each rehearsal. I should have applied what I learned as a director and set myself a goal for each rehearsal – “this time just focus on your lines,” “this time really listen to the other actor.” I finally caught on, but late in the process.

This approach reminds me of what I’ve read about the film directing technique of Clint Eastwood (b. 1930), who dislikes re-shooting a scene and has been known to film a scene’s rehearsal, unbeknownst to the actors, and use it in the finished movie. He wants to remove the stress of acting from the performers as much as possible, and the same is true of the idea I have described here.

The next points are common currency, but I again saw their importance and I feel they’re worth mentioning.

KEY POINTS – My daughter Heather tells me she realized this idea in drama school; it came to me much later, and yet surely it’s obvious: an actor should identify which points in a scene must be made clear to the audience, so it can follow the story with security.

Sometimes these moments are difficult to miss – “I’m going to kill you someday,” that sort of thing. Sometimes they are quite subtle, and yet the play may not make sense without them. It’s best, I’d think, to start from the obvious and work to the more hidden. At the back of an actor’s mind should be the need to make sure the points are clearly made.

I’m guessing this idea is probably not taught in many acting schools, where the emphasis may be on what the character is feeling and wanting. That’s fine and important, but somewhere along the line the needs of the play and the audience ought to be addressed. Once the “plot points” are identified by the actor, they don’t need to be dwelled on – just presented clearly.

WHAT JUST HAPPENED? – Many scenes grow out of some earlier scene that the audience doesn’t witness. Those earlier scenes are fuel for the actor. In my first scene in Little Women, I have just seen, out my window, one of the girls next door chopping down one of my trees and dragging it into her house for a Christmas tree.

This fact should be – and was – enough to send me charging into the next scene, in which I confront the family and the girl, who is standing next to the tree. A piece of cake! – if I’ve made the preceding moment clear to myself, and refreshed it just before I go on stage.

DISCOVERIES – Because as actors we learn lines, we subconsciously come to think of a scene as a series of things that inevitably have to be thought or said. At least it often feels that way. However, for the characters in the play, none of those things have happened yet, and many of the things that characters do and say are motivated by discoveries, new realizations about something.

There may be only a few of those discoveries in a scene, or as many as several times in a single line of dialogue – it all depends on the play. If as actors we identify those discovery moments in advance, then when they come up we can let the discovery “hit” us as though for the first time, think our way through it (very fast, usually), and respond more freshly than we otherwise would.

Because we had a week-long break in rehearsals due to school vacations, I had leisure to go over these points using the script and to try and get them into my mind. I tried to work methodically with these points in mind, and found it difficult to stick to the program – my acting habits, as opposed to my directing habits, were deeply ingrained, or, possibly, just needed developing.

(On the other hand, I can’t help thinking these limitations in my acting skills have helped me as a director, because I seldom if ever have the impulse to show an actor how something should be done, a practice that is widely frowned on today. I do like the story about the director George Abbott (1887-1995), who, criticized for giving an actor line readings, replied, “How else will they know what I want?” [See “George Abbott” (14 October 2018).])

A few more observations:

Kristy, our director, has a remarkable ability to work on many things at once. As a result she at least visibly takes calmly things that would drive me to distraction. As I’ve already said, she is an excellent director, with a creative approach to a script, a fine visual sense, and a straightforward way of working with actors. I’d enjoy seeing how she directed under relatively calm conditions.

Possibly because of time constraints, there was relatively little feedback on performances up to the last couple of rehearsals, not a lot of comment on how things were going one way or the other. I had no idea whether people thought I did a good job or were just putting up with me. However, I realized that I was happy not getting specific praise because I felt it would make me wonder whether I could repeat that good thing I’d done, or not.

Final rehearsals went the way they usually do – the lights were a day late arriving, we tried to work straight through the show each night but had to stop to fix things, and the focus became more and more on opening night and not on that particular night’s rehearsal.

On the daily schedule updates that Kristy sent out during the last week (“production week”), the last item read “Clean (?).” I assumed that meant straightening up the mess that always accumulates backstage in theater productions. I should have realized that what she meant was, “Clean up whatever small problems remain to be fixed.”

I adopted two mottos for keeping myself in focus during our final rehearsals. The first was “clarity and calmness” – that is, focus on what my character was doing, and breathe.

The second came when my friend Janet Aldrich, who has had a major theater career including Broadway, walked by muttering to herself, “In the moment.” That’s a phrase that actors often use; it means to be there each moment in a scene, not thinking about something else. Like everything else, it takes work to get in that frame of mind, but it definitely helped me concentrate.

One thing I made it a point to do was to thank the orchestra and the lighting operator for their contributions. I’ve played in the orchestra for a couple of high school shows, and we had no connection with the casts of those shows at all, which I don’t think is a healthy condition. The people who support the production should not be taken for granted.

My friend Annie asked if I felt jitters before performances, so I tried to understand how I actually did feel at those times. On the surface, my principal feeling was curiosity – I wondered how it all would go. Underneath, I suspect, was a deep reservoir of panic, but if so it never became conscious. I knew I had worked diligently on the project; I just hoped that was enough.

Hopefully there comes a time when a difficult task turns into an enjoyable experience. A great deal of the satisfaction of theater comes at the end of it, after a great deal of work. On the day we opened, driving here and there, thinking about the show, I found myself thinking, “I love this!”

I didn’t love, quite as much, the mistakes I made in the first performance – two involving lines, and one when I took off a costume too soon and couldn’t sing onstage in a chorus number (I sang just offstage). The second and last performance, I was almost letter perfect. That’s show business!