Art From Collections

 

[I’ve compiled another small collection of old art reports from my archive.  The first two reports below predate Rick On Theater and the third was never posted on the blog. 

[Though I may have added information to the original reports, such as life dates for significant people named in the account, I haven’t edited my comments from my initial write-up.

[A note pertinent to all these archival reports, both on theater and on art: the dates in the headings are the dates on which the reports were originally written; the dates on which I attended the events—the play or art exhibit—are in the text (if I kept a record of them at the time) and I’ve added the dates the events were scheduled at the theater or museum/gallery, also within the text.]

AN ARTIST’S ARTIST: JACOB KAINEN’S COLLECTION
National Gallery of Art, West Building
Washington, D.C.
9 & 12 Jan. 2003 

My mother and I went to the National Gallery of Art’s West Building to see An Artist’s Artist: Jacob Kainen’s Collection (22 September 2002-9 February 2003).  Kainen (1909-2001) was himself an artist, a painter, draftsman, and printmaker (I have a color etching and aquatint of his, Masquerade [1976], formerly part of my parents’ collection), but he was a curator (with the Division of Graphic Arts of the Smithsonian Institution’s United States National Museum—now the National Museum of American History) and an art scholar with several significant books to his name (The Etchings of Canaletto, 1967; John Baptist Jackson: 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut, 1962). 

This exhibit, consisting of 77 prints and 2 drawings, is of the art he owned, not the art he made—and he had exquisite taste.  (Mother and I judge an exhibit by the number of pieces we’d like to come back for on a midnight shopping trip.  Kainen, whom my folks knew somewhat in their art-gallery days [see “Gres Gallery,” posted on ROT on 7, 10, and 13 July 2018]—which is how they acquired the piece I now have—had a number we’d have liked to own!) 

Most of this collection, culled from more than 400 pieces which Kainen willed to the NGA, are etchings and prints—a special interest of his; he taught printmaking at the Washington Workshop Center for the Arts (1945-1956)—and go back as far as Rembrandt (he owned only one) and the early Renaissance and up to the modern era. 

The collection includes many modern artists such as Alexander Calder (a favorite of mine, both for his sculpture and his prints, one of which I have in my living room, and, especially, his mobiles) and Joan Miró.  Kainen’s taste was obviously eclectic, but if similarity in taste is any criterion, he really knew his stuff! 

Artists have always collected the work of other artists and their collections often reveal a span of personal connections and aesthetic curiosity that are frequently far different from their own styles.  

Kainen’s private art collection included etchings by Rembrandt (Dutch, 1606-69), Anthony Van Dyck (Flemish, 1599-1641), and Giovanni Canaletto (Italian. 1697-1768), to woodcuts by Otto Dix (German, 1891-1969), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (German, 1880-1938), and Käthe Kollwitz (German, 1867-1945).

There’s quite a contrast between Kainen’s own bold color abstractions and his favorite etchings such as the elegant images of 17th-century French painter Laurent de la Hyre (1606-56) or the detailed rustic landscapes of 19th-century British artist Samuel Palmer (1805-81).

Kainen’s strong political and aesthetic allegiances are apparent in his Honoré Daumier (French, 1808-79) lithographs, his American works from the 1930s, and his outstanding German Expressionist prints (the subject of an NGA exhibit in 1985-86, German Expressionist Prints from the Collection of Ruth and Jacob Kainen, and its published catalogue).  

Kainen’s experience in New York—where his family moved when he was 9 and where he studied art at the Art Students League and the Pratt Institute—in the thirties put him in touch with the New York School, from Louis Lozowick (Russian-born American painter and printmaker, 1892-1973) to John Graham (American painter, 1886-1961), to David Smith (American sculptor, 1906-65).

The interest in printmaking led to his admiration for the technical brilliance of Félix-Hilaire Buhot’s (French, 1847-98) views of city and shore.  One of his last collecting enthusiasms, and another of his most valued additions to the NGA collection, are great examples of American landscapes from the 19th-century etching revival: from the finesse of James Smillie (Scottish-born American, b. 1944) and the tonality of J. C. Nicoll (American, 1847-1918) to the grandeur of Thomas Moran (American, 1837-1926).

(There’s a museum in D.C., not far from my mom’s apartment, featuring another private collection of a wealthy Washingtonian named David Lloyd Kreeger (1909-90).  He’s the Kreeger of the Arena’s Kreeger Theater, the company’s proscenium house. 

(He had a very large art collection and some years ago, several years before he died, he built a big house on Foxhall Road—D.C.’s Sutton Place, in a way—that was intended to become a museum after his death.  The Kreeger Museum opened in 1994.

(My folks knew Kreeger, too, and we were invited to his new house soon after he built it—I was visiting at the time—and saw his collection before it was augmented and mediated by museum curators and others.  He had works by many famous artists, mainly from the mid-1800s through the Pablo Picassos, Piet Mondrians, and Amadeo Modiglianis, as well as later artists. 

(The problem was that he’d selected some of the worst examples of art these great artists made!  He knew artists; he didn’t really know art—or he had execrable taste, which is probably the same thing.  Kainen didn’t suffer from that deficiency.

(In an odd coincidence, another of Kreeger’s philanthropic endeavors was a gift to Rutgers University to renovate the Douglass College campus’s Little Theater.  As readers of Rick On Theater may know, I was a grad student at what is now the Mason Gross School of the Arts, then housed at Douglass, and I worked often at the Little; Kreeger was an undergraduate at Rutgers—probably at Rutgers College—in the ’20s.)

*  *  *  *

[The brief report below, on the Sackler exhibit Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur, covers art that’s not precisely a private collection in the sense that the Meyerhoff, Kainen, and Dale collections are.  First of all, 10 of the 60 paintings on display were on loan from several other museum holdings and, second, the remaining 50 works are from the palace collection of the Maharaja of Marwar-Jodhpur, held by the Mehrangarh Museum Trust, a cultural institution and museum that publishes research on its collection and undertakes conservation programs. 

[In any event, virtually none of the art had ever been seen by the public since they were created before this exhibit was assembled and after its début at the Sackler Gallery, it toured several additional museums (Seattle Art Museum and the National Museum of India in New Delhi), including the British Museum in London.]

GARDEN AND COSMOS: THE ROYAL PAINTINGS OF JODHPUR
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
Smithsonian Institution
Washington, D.C.
9 January 2009 

On Saturday, 27 December 2008, my mother and I took the bus down to the Mall to check out the newly renovated National Museum of American History (“America’s Attic”) which reopened on 21 November after two-years of work. 

Unfortunately, the same idea struck all the tourists in town for the holidays, particularly since it was a gorgeous, sunny day in Washington: lines snaked out the entrance on Constitution Avenue and curved in both directions around the corners of the building. 

Having expended the energy to make the trip downtown (and because it was just too nice a day to simply give up and go back home), we decided to walk across the Mall and see what was “playing” at the Sackler Gallery, the underground Asian art museum next to the African art museum along Independence Avenue. 

The special exhibit was Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur, a collection of 60 newly discovered paintings from the royal court of Marwar-Jodhpur (in the modern Indian state of Rajasthan).  More than 50 of the works presented in Garden and Cosmos were lent to the museum by His Highness Gaj Singh II (b. 1948), the Maharaja of Marwar-Jodhpur; the remaining 10 pieces, from the 1600s, were loaned by various other museum collections.

The focus of the show was on garden and cosmos leitmotifs, with an introductory gallery about the kingdom of Marwar-Jodhpur and the origins of its court painting traditions in the 17th century. 

The 60 paintings, almost none of which had never been exhibited before, are from the palace at Nagaur, once part of the princely state of Marwar-Jodhpur.  The collection reveals the garden aesthetics of 18th century Rajputana painters.  The court painting traditions in the kingdom of Marwar-Jodhpur originated in the 17th century.

The art was produced exclusively for the private enjoyment of the Marwar-Jodhpur maharajas; very few of the works on view in Garden and Cosmos have ever been published or seen by scholars since their creation centuries ago.

Though most of the works were exquisitely beautiful—many with the minute details of miniatures—the subjects did get repetitious and, though the collection spanned several centuries (13th to 19th), the painting style was essentially prescribed by the court atelier and masters and didn’t vary much. 

So we left the Sackler while it was still afternoon and walked down to the Hirschhorn’s Sculpture Garden.  (This is differentiated from the other garden across the Mall, the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden at Constitution Avenue.)  We wandered around the meandering display, among David Smiths, Alexander Calders, Henry Moores, and Auguste Rodins.  And a Yoko Ono. 

The Ono piece is The Wish Tree for Washington, DC.  It’s a (real) Japanese dogwood tree on which people are invited to hang on a branch, a wish written on a piece of paper.

In the end, it took almost two hours to cover the outdoor exhibit, even though we’d both been there many times (though not for a while: it does change some from time to time—the Wish Tree was only installed in 2007, during the National Cherry Blossom Festival in April; see my report posted on 9 April 2012)—but on a nice day, even a winter’s day, it’s an extremely pleasurable way to while away some time. 

(We like to play a guessing game to see if we can identify the artists before we look at the labels.  I won’t reveal my score.)

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FROM IMPRESSIONISM TO MODERNISM: 
THE CHESTER DALE COLLECTION
National Gallery of Art, West Building
Washington, D.C.
4 August 2010 

I went to Washington for a family event and I only stayed a few days, but my mother and I took the afternoon of Monday, 19 July 2010, to drive to the Mall to see From Impressionism to Modernism: The Chester Dale Collection (31 January 2010-2 January 2012) at the National Gallery of Art’s West Building. 

Have you ever wondered what it must be like to own many of the world’s best paintings?  More than that, have you ever thought about living in a house where the walls are decorated with that art?  It’s almost unfathomable, but the thought comes to me whenever I see an exhibit of art that once belonged to one private collector.  (Recently, Mother and I took in the Robert and Jane Meyerhoff collection at the East Building last January.  See “Art in D.C. (Dec. ’09-Jan. ’10),” 18 January 2010.) 

The closest I ever came was visiting David Lloyd Kreeger (see above), once a CEO of Geico, at his new house-cum-museum-to-be.  I don’t think that was a very good model for the experience of living with magnificent art, however: Kreeger’s collection, as I noted earlier, was often characterized as the worst examples of the work of some of the world’s best artists. 

Furthermore, the house he built, where I saw his collection, was more museum than home; except for the “private apartments” (as they used to call them in old palaces), it didn’t feel like anyone really lived there. 

The next closest I ever came was visiting the office of a friend’s father here in Manhattan.  The dad worked for the Rockefeller Foundation, and we’d gone to the offices to go to lunch with him.  The offices were decorated with art, which I noticed only subliminally at first—then I stopped to take a drink from a wall-mounted fountain.  I looked up from my drink and I was confronted, a few inches from my face, with a wonderful Picasso. 

It wasn’t a print or a copy, like you might expect in some corporate offices.  It was the genuine article!  Nelson Rockefeller (1908-79), who was still alive at the time, and his brothers had generously adorned the office walls with the family’s art.  Nobody lived at the office, of course, but all day long, my friend’s father and his co-workers got to be inspired by some of the best art in the West.

The Dales have gone most everyone else a step further, though.  In the NGA exhibit (81 French and American paintings) are five portraits of the couple—all painted by now-renowned artists.  Depending on which way you go through the show, you encounter them as either the first or the last things you see.

To the left of the entrance into the rest of the exhibit is a formal portrait of Chester Dale by George Bellows from 1922, a painting of him sitting at his desk looking over an art catalogue in 1945 by Diego Rivera, and a 1958 depiction of Mr. Dale by Salvador Dali in a style reminiscent of the artist’s Last Supper; to the right of the doorway, a portrait of Maud Dale by George Bellows from 1919 (which apparently the Dales didn’t like in its first version so they tracked Bellows down on vacation and made him redo it), and a 1935 Fernand Léger painting of Mrs. Dale posed like a Greek goddess in a blue dress. 

What must it be like to have your portrait painted by Diego Rivera or Salvador Dali?  I’m sure I’ll never know!

Well, that’s the kind of thing that went through my head when I walked into the first gallery of Impressionism to Modernism.  It didn’t hurt that this collection covers the period and styles that are my favorite in painting: the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists.  And the Dales had lived with this art—though probably not all in one home. 

The show includes only some of the hundreds of paintings they owned and donated to the NGA over the years.  If you apply my usual criterion for judging an art show—whether I’d come back for a midnight shopping spree—I’d have had a hard time deciding what to take home under my jacket!

Impressionism to Modernism isn’t the normal kind of one-collector show.  The Meyerhoff collection, for instance, was a display of a significant portion of a single gift that had just been acquired by the NGA.  The artworks will become part of the NGA’s permanent collection, some to be displayed at the Meyerhoffs’ mansion in Phoenix, Maryland (the estate is the first remote site the NGA has ever administered), some among the Washington holdings. 

In other instances, the collections of one person or family go on tour from museum to museum, sometimes returning to a private venue and sometimes becoming the property of an institution as a bequest or donation.  The Dale art, however, is already part of the gallery holdings—the works have been on display somewhere in the West Building for 48 years or more. 

This was the first time they’ve been shown together in all that time because they’ve been part of various Impressionism and Modernism galleries throughout the museum.  The NGA had been able to assemble the paintings for this exhibit now because many of those galleries are under renovation; otherwise, removing them would have denuded the walls of many of the late-19th- and early-20th-century rooms where they had been hanging.

(Chester Dale began donating art to the NGA in 1941, four years after it was founded.  When he died in 1962, the bulk of his remaining collection—he donated to other museums, including New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art—was left to the NGA.) 

Though there are several American artists in the collection (George Bellows, Mary Cassatt), the Dales concentrated on the French painters (there are only seven sculptures in the Dale contributions to the NGA, none of which are in the current exhibit) of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Chester Dale (1883-1962) was a stock broker on Wall Street with a reputation for aggressiveness and sharp elbows; the Washington Post called him “pugnacious.”  (He had begun as a runner at the NYSE when he was 15 and worked his way up to true mogul status.) 

He apparently bought his art the same way—and there were not a few museums, galleries, and other collectors who regretted going up against him when he went after something he wanted.  (No one said so, but I suspect that a few of the artists had the same sentiments about the man who was a patron in the years before they were world-famous painters.) 

Chester Dale married Agnes Maud Murray (1876-1953), the divorced wife of Frederick Thompson, a fellow art student, in April 1911 (the same month she divorced Thompson).  Maud Dale was trained as an artist (and later would write about art) and Chester Dale liked to say that it was her taste and his acquisitiveness that gave birth to the Dale art collection.  I wouldn’t know about that, of course, but I can say that someone in that family had magnificent taste in art. 

Chester unquestionably had the wherewithal to make the purchases (and the market savvy to know how to get the best prices), but if Maud was the tastemaker of the pair, then I go along with Karen Wilkin’s final remark in the Wall Street Journal: “The most appropriate comment, after walking through the installation, is simply ‘Thank you, Chester (and Maud) Dale.’” 

Their taste was conservative, staying away from the starkest of the artists’ later experiments (for example, Picasso’s Cubism), but I can’t fault her ultimate choices.  From his Rose Period, for instance, Picasso’s Family of Saltimbanques (1905) is not only one of my favorite Picassos, but one of my favorite paintings of all (maybe after several of van Gogh’s). 

I suppose it doesn’t hurt that the saltimbanques are actors (well, performers—they’re really buskers).  The harlequin figure is supposed to be a self-portrait of the artist, which makes the wonderful little scene all the neater as far as I’m concerned.  The WSJ suggested that it’s “like something out of Beckett.”  (That’d be Samuel, the great Absurdist playwright.)

I’d probably have enjoyed this show anyway, considering the period and styles it covers as I said, but there were a couple of lagniappes that added an additional fillip of delight.  Ordinarily the Dale art is displayed by artist and year, but Kimberly A. Jones, associate curator in the NGA department of French paintings, has arranged this exhibition in general themes, starting with a gallery of the Dales’ favorites. 

Here is a delightful little van Gogh that doesn’t look like any I’d ever seen before—a single female figure in a simple white shift and a yellow straw hat with a broad brim, apparently just strolling in a green field.  Girl in White (1890), painted the year the artist died, is tranquil and charming as compared to van Gogh’s usual fury and energy.  If I had to select one piece to take home from this show, Girl in White would be it.  But it’d be a hard choice. 

Also in this gallery is Modigliani’s Gypsy Woman with Baby (1919), one of the finest paintings of his I’ve seen: a serene-looking young woman sitting in a chair in a blue room, holding a swaddled infant in her lap.  She wears a sort of Mona Lisa smile, her dark hair short or pulled back, with one stray strand hanging down on the left side of her face. 

The following rooms focus on portraits of women, nudes and portraits of men, landscapes and city scenes, still lifes, and, at the end (just before the Dale portraits), what the NGA calls examples of “monumental modernity” and the Washington Post characterized as “blockbuster masterworks.”

One of the neatest little thrills is in the men’s portrait gallery.  To the left of the room’s entrance from the previous gallery is Chaim Soutine’s Portrait of a Boy (1928), a nice little painting of teenager in a bright red vest, his arms akimbo as if he’s showing off his new outfit.  A few frames farther along the same wall is another Modigliani portrait—Chaim Soutine (1917)!  

The Dales bought both paintings in 1929 and I have to imagine they bought them intentionally as a sort of pair.  (I wonder where they hung them in their house?  Were they next to each other, or looking at each other across a hall?)

There are other terrific paintings in this exhibit: the recognizable 1889 Self-Portrait by Paul Gauguin looking something like a character in a Fellini movie, Picasso’s The Tragedy (1903) from his Blue Period, Modigliani’s Nude on a Blue Cushion (1917), Monet’s Rouen Cathedral, West Façade and Rouen Cathedral, West Façade, Sunlight (both 1894), and Georges Braque’s 1928 Still Life: The Table. 

If I even just listed the great paintings in this show, it’d be all 83 canvases and go on for pages.  Just among the select artists are special treasures for me.  The two Monet paintings of the Rouen Cathedral, for instance, are the epitome of Impressionism for me.  They aren’t my favorites of the genre (that would be a long list, too), but when I was little and first saw them, the idea that they were so ephemeral that if you stood too close, you couldn’t make out the image—that was what Impressionism meant.  Even today when I think of the genre, that’s the image I get. 

The Modiglianis—the Dales eventually owned 21 of his works, one of the best selections of Modiglianis ever amassed, and donated 13 of those to the NGA—hold another significance for me.  Maud Dale was a committed supporter of Modigliani’s work and she published one of the first studies on the artist, and he’s always been a painter I’ve liked.  But what makes his work so special to me is that Modigliani was a favorite artist of my father.  Whenever I see paintings by him, I can’t help but think how much Dad would love them.

"Entertainment in the Age of AI"

 

[The following article and two sidebars appeared in the Summer 2022 issue of SAG-AFTRA (11.3), the quarterly magazine of the union that represents actors in television and film. 

[Readers should note that I have published past posts on the subject of the use of computer and advanced technologies in TV, film, and theater.  I refer to “Theater and Computers,” posted on Rick On Theater on 5 December 2009, and “Computers and Actors,” 4 and 7 October 2021.

[For those who aren’t part of the performance industry in the United States, SAG-AFTRA, the result of the merger of two formerly independent unions, stands for Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.]

Imagine waking up to find you are the face of a new advertising campaign — and it’s a product you don’t want to be associated with. That was played for laughs on an episode of Friends, when Joey did some modeling and then, unbeknownst to him, ended up the face of an STD campaign [“The One Where Underdog Gets Away”; Season 1, Episode 9; 17 November 1994].

As technology has evolved, artificial intelligence-powered software has made it possible to create realistic audiovisual, video and audio content known as “deepfakes.” It makes the above scenario not only possible, but a real threat to those who sign broadly written non-union contracts that allow for unfettered use of a performer’s image or voice.

In 2018, SAG-AFTRA magazine reported on the growth of digital replicas’ threats and opportunities. At that time, it was still a relatively niche technology, but in the last few years it has gone mainstream. Nonconsensual deepfakes remain a problem — one the union remains vigilant about — but the underlying technology has many legitimate uses that can provide exciting new opportunities for members.

AI-Generated Content Is Growing

In recent years, there has been an explosion in the number of artificial intelligence, or “AI,” content technologies, and the quality of AI-generated content has improved exponentially.

AI tech has been used in large- and small-budget entertainment projects to virtually age and de-age characters in a way that is cleaner, cheaper and more believable than traditional visual effects, and without countless hours in the makeup chair. AI can simplify performance capture, potentially eliminating the need for capture suits and head rigs altogether. It can even be used to enhance the work performed by stunt performers, which can provide safety benefits.

In dubbing and ADR [presumably automated dialogue replacement, a post-production process in filmmaking], AI technologies can help match an actor’s mouth and facial movements to the dialogue they are speaking. It can also be used to dub the films themselves. In the context of projects originally produced under SAG-AFTRA agreements, it could open new revenue opportunities by providing members an opportunity to negotiate for their voices to be used in the foreign-language release. On the other hand, distributors of foreign content who would otherwise hire SAG-AFTRA members to do dubbing work might find it preferable to use AI-generated audio of the original actors. Although this has not yet happened on a widespread scale, there are companies proposing these business models as the technology improves, so the union is monitoring this closely.

Outside entertainment, AI-generated audio can be used in digital assistant devices, customer service, speech assistance and countless other applications, opening new areas of work for professional voice performers.

AI technologies have brought historic figures back to “life” in education and museum settings, typically with the help of an actor who provides the performance capture that animates the digital person.

This field is full of exciting innovations, and a lot of performers are eager to work in these new areas and potentially generate new income through their AI voice or avatar, but it’s important to understand both the technology and the pros and cons of working with it.

“Technological innovations have historically provided incredible new opportunities for our members,” said SAG-AFTRA Executive Vice President Ben Whitehair. “But we must, as we always have, be deeply mindful of the associated risks, and ensure that our digital performances and likeness are protected.”

Know What You Are Agreeing To

Anytime you grant rights to use your name, image, likeness and voice, you should have a clear contract in place governing the use. This is even more important in the digital context. But, even on traditional entertainment projects, performers are often asked to grant rights to use their voice, likeness, and performance well beyond what is necessary for the specific project.

You might have heard about a lawsuit filed by a Canadian voice actor against the company behind TikTok. The performer had done voice work for a Scotland-based company, but the voice files were allegedly used without her consent in the popular app. The case illustrates the risks for actors, particularly when working without the protection of the union behind you. Being branded as an app’s voice and being involuntarily associated with content that you cannot control can impact your image and ability to attract other voiceover work.

The nonunion AI contracts SAG-AFTRA has seen have very one-sided terms and are often with companies based in foreign countries. Many of these contracts give broad rights to use your likeness or voice irrevocably and in perpetuity — this means they have those rights forever and you cannot cancel the permission. There typically is no case-by-case approval over how your digital self is used, and no form of residuals or use-based payments no matter how long or widespread the use is.

“There are contract templates floating around that AI companies and industry players claim are performer-friendly, but a close look at the terms reveals a lack of crucial protections,” said Senior Assistant General Counsel, Compliance and Contracts Danielle Van Lier [see a related article by Van Lier below].

Rights of publicity — the laws that protect your name, voice, image and likeness — can potentially help against unauthorized uses of your digital self. These laws and others do not provide a remedy when you sign a contract granting away the rights. Without a union contract covering your work, your only potential recourse is costly litigation.

The entertainment and media industry is always evolving, and as technology advances, it seems that the pace of change is ever-increasing. SAG-AFTRA members and staff are continually working with tech firms, attending conferences and staying up to date on all the latest information in this emerging field to ensure members are protected.

“Artificial intelligence is opening new frontiers in digital manipulation, and while it is new territory, it doesn’t have to be scary, as long as we stay informed about the potential hazards,” said SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher. “As we move into this bold new future together, your union will be standing by your side.”

*  *  *  *

SAG-AFTRA and AI

SAG-AFTRA has been working on issues relating to digital avatars and voices since long before AI was being used to create them.

THE UNION has several staff members with considerable experience and expertise on name, image and likeness rights, as well as on AI technology and its applications, deepfakes and other related topics. They have presented to a global audience on these subjects, hosted panels and discussions with experts in the field, and have written and been interviewed for numerous articles related to AI. SAG-AFTRA also participates in a multi-union workgroup on AI with British Equity and ACTRA [Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists]. 

Anticipating the rise of digital replicas, SAG-AFTRA has added or negotiated language into many of its promulgated and collectively bargained agreements prohibiting the creation or use of digital replicas without both the union’s and the performer’s consent, including those covering audiobooks, video games, podcasts, commercials and corporate/educational content.

“SAG-AFTRA HAS been advocating for rights of publicity and name, image and likeness rights for decades. This includes supporting critical legislation as well as writing amicus briefs in cases that could impact how laws relating to these rights are interpreted,” said SAG-AFTRA General Counsel Jeff Bennett. SAG-AFTRA drafted and was instrumental in California’s and New York’s civil laws against unauthorized digital nudity, as well as the passage of New York’s new right of publicity law, which includes prohibitions on using digital avatars of deceased performers.

FOR SEVERAL years, SAG-AFTRA has been in conversation with AI technology companies about the ethical use of this technology and the fair compensation and protection of performers who allow their voice, image or performance to be used in the development and use of an AI voice or avatar. 

“SAG-AFTRA is committed to ensuring that our members’ rights are safeguarded and that they are paid what they deserve whenever their work is exploited, regardless of the technology employed or the nature of the exhibition platform,” said Senior Director, Strategic Initiatives Sue-Anne Morrow.

All SAG-AFTRA contracts for work in the AI space include these critical terms:

•  Safe storage of the performer’s voice, likeness and performance, and the products and content created from them.

•  The right to consent — or not consent — to uses.

•  Explicit limitation on use of the content.

•  Appropriate payment for use of the content.

•  Any exclusivity must be clearly noted and fairly compensated.

•  The right for a performer to control or opt out of continued use and production.

*  *  *  *

What You Can Do

SAG-AFTRA is actively engaging in discussions with companies creating AI content, and has crafted contracts that are relevant to this new work area, are easy to use and provide protections for both the performer and the employer. But your help is critical in establishing a strong foothold in these emerging spaces.

Don’t work off the card: Many AI companies have websites through which anyone can submit their voice or likeness and sign up to be an AI “spokesperson.” Working in this space without a SAG-AFTRA contract is not only a dangerous move for a professional performer, it also impedes the union’s efforts to set fair terms and protections. [“Off the card” refers to the union membership card.]

Let your union help: If you are approached to do this kind of work, ask your employer to consider hiring you under a union contract. SAG-AFTRA staff is happy to talk to them and make the process of becoming a signatory simple and easy.

Talk to your peers and students: Let your peers know that their best protection, when working with AI technology, is a union contract. If you teach classes to or mentor actors who are early in their careers, warn them of the risks discussed in this article. 

Communicate with your representatives: Ask your professional representatives if they are current on the technology and understand the risks associated with it, and let them know that you aren’t interested in venturing into this space without your union behind you.

*  *  *  *

[The article above from SAG-AFTRA magazine included a note at the end that SAG-AFTRA Senior Assistant General Counsel, Contracts and Compliance Danielle Van Lier provided guidance for lawyers who are representing performers in connection with AI-generated content in the May 2022 issue of Los Angeles Lawyer magazine.  I’ve decided to append that article to this Rick On Theater post.]

Practice Tips:
PROTECTING ARTISTS’ RIGHTS IN THE AGE OF AI
by Danielle S. Van Lier

[Van Lier’s article appeared in the May 2022 issue of Los Angeles Lawyer (45.3), the magazine of the Los Angeles County Bar Association.]

Two years ago, in this magazine, another article was published about the rise of deepfakes and their potential for abuse. At that time, California had recently enacted Civil Code Section 1708.86, which created a civil cause of action for individuals who, without consent, are digitally depicted as “giving a performance they did not actually perform” in “any portion of an audiovisual work that shows the depicted individual performing in the nude [as defined] or appearing to engage in, or being subjected to, sexual conduct.” The article discussed the potential harm to, among others, performers when they are involuntarily depicted in the nude or as engaging in sexual conduct without their consent. A lot has changed in that short time.

“Deepfake,” a portmanteau [a blend of words in which parts of multiple words are combined into a new word] of “deep learning” and “fake,” has become the most prevalent term used to describe audiovisual and audio content created using artificial intelligence (AI). These videos typically depict someone doing something they did not do, or saying something they did not say. The term originated in connection with nonconsensual pornography and, from its onset, some have questioned whether the term is overused and its definition too amorphous. For purposes of this article, use of the term “deepfake” is limited to nonconsensual content or that created with the intent to deceive, while using “AI-generated” to refer to content created consensually.

Deepfakes remain a problem and a threat. No matter how seemingly benign, nonconsensual deepfakes can harm the individual whose voice and/or likeness is used. These concerns go beyond nonconsensual sexual content to uses in a commercial or even creative setting. It can harm the depicted individual’s reputation, mislead viewers and consumers, or foreclose job opportunities.

For all the potential harm deepfakes cause, the underlying technology has many legitimate use cases. However, even authorized use can go too far if one is not careful in the contract process. SAG-AFTRA has been closely watching the development of these new technologies and the agreements being used in the space. A number of issues have surfaced under this review, which have resulted in the formulation of some questions to ask if a client is approached to work on an AI-project.

Growth of AI-generated Content

There has been an explosion in the number of AI technologies, like the ones used to create deepfakes, and the quality of AI-generated content has improved exponentially. Companies offering AI-generated people and audio have proliferated in recent years.

The technology has potential for positive applications. In the entertainment industry, for example, it can give independent producers with lower budgets some of the same capabilities as the major motion picture studios. It can help match an actor’s mouth and facial movements to dialogue in foreign-dubbed films, or even to dub the films themselves. In a recent episode of The Book of Boba Fett [streaming Star Wars series on Disney+, 2021-present], the effects team reportedly used AI to de-age a character quite effectively. This came on the heels of criticism over poor de-aging effects using more traditional techniques in The Mandalorian [source series of Boba Fett, Disney+, 2019-present].

Outside the entertainment industry, AI-generated audio can be used in digital assistant devices or to allow those who have lost their ability to speak to communicate in their own voice. It can even bring historic figures “back to life.”

In the last few years, the technology has advanced from requiring hours of processing time, hundreds of photographs or video samples, and a computer with reasonably advanced graphics capabilities, to something that can be created on your cell phone with a single selfie. Last August, reports surfaced about a tool that can even create deepfakes in real-time for streaming video. It’s likely that in the short time between the writing and publication of this article, additional technologies will be released.

Consent, consent, consent

Consent is particularly important in the context of digital humans, both in the original creation and any subsequent uses. The use cases described above require the consent of the person depicted, particularly in the case of professional performers, whose likenesses and voices are key to their livelihood. Civil Code Section 1708.86 provides a civil cause of action for non-consensual use of AI-generated sexual content. However, what about non-sexual content?

Last May, a Canadian voice actor sued ByteDance, Inc., the company behind TikTok, alleging that the company had used her voice in its text-to-speech tool. According to the complaint, Beverly Standing had performed voice work for a Scotland-based company “purportedly for Chinese translations,” and apparently without a written contract. The voice files were allegedly obtained by ByteDance and used for TikTok’s text-to-speech feature. Standing expressed concern that being branded as TikTok’s female voice, and being involuntarily associated with content she felt could reflect poorly on her image, would impact her ability to attract voiceover work, particularly for commercials, because she already would be associated with TikTok.

Standing sued on multiple theories relating to the unauthorized use of her voice, including violation of her right of publicity, false endorsement under the Lanham Act, and multiple other claims relating to unfair competition. There is precedent holding that the unauthorized use of an individual’s voice and/or digital likeness gives rise to at least a right of publicity claim, although the false endorsement and unfair competition claims might be more difficult in noncommercial uses.

Although this case ultimately settled, it illustrates some of the risks for both actors and content creators that are inherent in this space. More importantly, it illustrates the significance of clear contracts, particularly why it is important for creators to obtain consent and why performers need to carefully consider the scope of the consent.

Beware Granting Rights

An increasing number of reports and inquiries have been received by SAG-AFTRA from performers, agents, attorneys, and even other unions, regarding terms they are seeing in contracts for digital scanning and audio recording for AI-content. Even on traditional entertainment projects, performers are being asked to sign blanket releases granting rights to their voice, likeness, and performance well beyond the scope of what is necessary for the specific project.

Attorneys and others representing performers, models, or any other person for audio or performance capture should pay particularly close attention to these contract terms. This is as true if the contract is for traditional entertainment projects utilizing digital scanning techniques as it is for work specifically in the AI space.

Many of the companies currently working in the AI voice and video space are offering standard form contracts with very one-sided terms, often governed under the law of the foreign country in which the company is based. The contracts tend to have blanket grants of rights to use the performer or model’s likeness and voice irrevocably and in perpetuity. There is no approval right and no form of residuals or use-based payments. Some ask that the performer or model indemnify the company. Furthermore, some have morals clause with vague language.

Following are some questions to consider when reviewing clients’ contracts (both old and new) in light of these new innovations. Many of these questions seem innocuous or obvious, but they take on new meaning in this evolving space.

• What rights has the client granted or are being granted with regard to the use of the client’s voice or likeness? Does the grant of rights allow use beyond the current project? Do the intellectual property rights in the character allow use of voice or likeness in subsequent works?

It has always been important to have clear rights grants, including appropriate fences around use, in contracts that grant rights in a performer’s voice or likeness. The Standing case illustrates how much more important it is in the context of work using AI. It was largely the lack of a contract covering these terms that gave rise to multiple claims; an over-broad rights grant might have precluded them.

Actor contracts typically have a provision allowing the use of the performer’s likeness in character for purposes of merchandising. As expected, the producer retains all rights in the character. However, the increasing use of technologies that allow the creation of characters that are wholly digital, or even digitally enhanced, means attorneys need to pay closer attention to how likeness and voice rights grants are drafted, both in connection with the character and in merchandising.

The scope of any provision granting rights in a client’s voice or likeness, especially those relating to merchandising, is all the more important with the rapid growth of the metaverse and associated technologies. As the entertainment industry starts to experiment with nonfungible tokens—or, in common parlance, NFTs—attorneys should be sure their clients are protected from exploitation and have the right to control their likenesses in these new spaces.

These questions are of particular importance if the performer is being digitally scanned or providing likeness or voice for AI use, when digital assets are being created and will be owned and controlled by the producer. To the extent possible, counsel should seek to limit usage of the assets only to the current project, so they cannot simply be reused and repurposed without appropriate compensation.

Of note, if the work is done under a SAG-AFTRA agreement, SAG-AFTRA takes the position that any reuse of scanned content created for one project and used in a subsequent production falls within the reuse provision of the applicable agreement. SAG-AFTRA also aggressively objects to scanning contracts and other likeness and voice grants that extend beyond the individual project for which they are intended; with limited exceptions, the union’s agreements do not allow the producer to obtain reuse consent at the time the work is done and it must be separately bargained. These are important protections for performers, ensuring they are fairly compensated for their work and can control how their voice and likeness are used in the future.

• If a client is being scanned for motion or facial reference, such as for animation or video games, does it allow use beyond reference? For example, can the client’s likeness be used in the end product?

Actors, particularly those doing voiceover, are sometimes asked to do facial or other performance capture, ostensibly so that animators working on the project can capture their movements for character reference. Nevertheless, actors have reported that the use goes beyond simple reference to use of their likeness in connection with their characters. Performance capture technologies that are AI-driven can now do this by simply recording a client’s performance as it is delivered, without complicated rigging. Even if the employment contract is silent as to this point, counsel should look to ensure that a client is protected from this practice.

• Does the contract allow digital manipulation of a client, whether through AI or otherwise? Can the footage, itself, be manipulated even if the client cannot?

Digital manipulation goes beyond aging or de-aging a character, to things like depicting the person in a scene in which he or she did not perform, possibly even in a way the person would have objected to had he or she been present. California Civil Code Section 1708.86 provides a cause of action if that depiction involves nudity and sexual situations, and it would not apply to other manipulations. In the context of commercials and ads, in particular, if the producer has the right to alter a client or the footage, it opens up the possibility of creating completely new ads, potentially for a different product, without the client’s consent.

• Is there security around the audio and video recordings and the associated data? Do they have provisions in place to avoid unauthorized use or access? How is the content protected? What are the steps if there is a data breach?

Both the recordings and digital files of a client should be protected from unauthorized use and access, in the same manner as any personal information. Not only can an unauthorized use of a client’s voice and likeness harm the client’s brand or earning potential, in the hands of a malicious actor, the high-quality digital content can be used to create sexually explicit content, commit fraud, or spread disinformation. It is also worth determining if the content will contain any embedded technology that the producer can use to track content and if the producer will similarly assist the client in the event of unauthorized exploitation.

• If the project is an AI project, what control does a client have to approve or deny subsequent uses? Is the client comfortable with the fact that his or her voice could be used in an advertisement or other content for something the client might oppose?

These questions are particularly important for actors who work on commercials or who have other brand affiliations. Exclusivity is a critical component of many brand deals—an actor, spokesperson, influencer, or any other recognizable person cannot simultaneously be associated with, let alone be the face and/or voice of, two potentially conflicting brands. If a client lends his or her likeness or voice to a company that provides AI spokespeople or characters, without any approval rights or constraints on usage, the client risks foreclosing entire segments of future work.

Many of these platforms may engage talent to do this work early in their careers, often before they have engaged professional representation. They might be excited to work in this new space and not yet have an understanding about how this could impact their future job opportunities and earning capabilities, particularly if they are hoping to do commercials or have brand deals. The perpetual grant of rights, coupled with lack of control, is a significant risk for any performer but particularly for the performer just getting started.

• If the company does not allow project-by-project consent, does it at least have an ethics policy relating to how a client’s likeness or voice will be used? What rights does the client have if it changes?

Many of the companies developing these AI technologies come from the technology sector, rather than the entertainment sector, and they lack the types of protections or approval rights actors have come to expect. Many lack any approval rights at all. If the company lacks approval rights or will not negotiate them, it is important to determine if it at least has an ethics policy regarding how the content might be used and what rights a client might have to remove content from the company’s site should that policy change. While an ethics policy will not give a client control over his or her likeness or voice, it at least will give some reassurance as to how the client will be depicted.

• What indemnification has the client agreed to? What is the client receiving? Are there content carve-outs?

Unlike most acting work, a client likely will not have a copy of the script that will be used for a digital counterpart, and therefore will not be able to object to troubling, offensive, or even legally problematic content. One way to address this is to include carve-outs or consent requirements for certain types of content, such as profanity, sexual content, religious content, or the endorsement or advocacy for political positions or candidates. This can be coupled with indemnification for, at a minimum, content that is defamatory, casts the client in a false light, or is otherwise unlawful. At the same time, the indemnity the client is granting should be narrowly tailored and not extend to the content.

• Is the client a SAG-AFTRA member? If so, is the project signatory to a SAG-AFTRA agreement?

Voiceover and recorded performances in many of these new and evolving areas are within SAG-AFTRA’s jurisdiction, and SAG-AFTRA has been actively working to ensure its contracts keep up with technology. For the media professionals SAG-AFTRA represents, it is important to understand the implications of working on a non-union project in these areas. It not only risks running afoul of SAG-AFTRA’s Global Rule One but also means not having the union’s protections and support in the event of a dispute. SAG-AFTRA’s contracts in these areas recognize that these are evolving technologies and business models and have a degree of flexibility while still providing the types of minimum protections that have been discussed.

There is a rush to work in this exciting new space, but performers and models need to stop and think about the short- and long-term implications and risks that go with it. Is the upfront payment and excitement worth the potential long-term risk of overexposure or being associated with a product, company, or cause they do not support? Attorneys representing talent similarly need to be aware and keep apprised of the changing technology to properly advise their clients. As illustrated by Beverly Standing’s case, if a client does not maintain control over how his or her voice and likeness will be used, there is a risk it may be used in ways least expected.

[Danielle S. Van Lier is assistant general counsel for intellectual property and contracts at SAG-AFTRA in Los Angeles.]

Pat Carroll Pat Carroll Pat Carroll: A Tribute – Part 2

 

[This is the second and last installment of “Pat Carroll Pat Carroll Pat Carroll: A Tribute.”  (If you haven’t read Part 1, I recommend going back to 14 August and doing so; you’ll find this segment of the post makes more sense if you do.)  

[I’ll be presenting a “recovered” report on Carroll and Marty Martin’s one-woman play, Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein, introduced in Part 1, followed by a survey of the published reviews of the New York Off-Broadway productions.

[The recovered reports, which I’ve attempted a couple of times on Rick On Theater (“Some Out-Of-Town Plays from the Archive: Othello,” 22 December 2020; “Much Ado About Nothing: A ‘Recovered’ Report.” 20 March 2021), are analogous to the contemporaneous play reports I post on ROT, except that I never wrote up the plays after I saw them.

[These reports are based on some comments I’d made in other contexts and a random collection of very vivid impressions of the performances I saw.  I also use a little research to help remind me of details of the production.

[I called the result a “recovered” report on the analogy of “recovered memory”—which is defined as “a memory of a past event that has been recalled after having been forgotten . . . for a long time,” according to Dictionary.com.]

The Circle Repertory Company presented Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein at its Greenwich Village theater for six performances on Wednesday through Sunday, 6-10 June 1979 while the company was waiting for Sam Shepard’s Pultzer Prize-winning Buried Child to move from the Theatre de Lys (now the Lucille Lortel Theatre), but Pat Carroll’s performance and Marty Martin’s script proved so popular that Circle Rep decided to keep it running.

Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein and Buried Child opened in alternate-night rep on 24 June at the company’s Sheridan Square Playhouse, a former garage-turned-nightclub, and ran until September.  After a single benefit performance at the Baltimore Museum of Art, where Carroll viewed the celebrated Cone Collection—the Baltimorean Cone Sisters were friends of Stein, who advised them on their collecting—on 29 September 1979, GS³ returned to the Sheridan Square Playhouse until October.

The play then moved on the 23rd to the historic Provincetown Playhouse on Macdougal Street, where it ran for nine more months (and where I saw it in June 1980), closing on 3 August 1980—over a year’s run all together.  There was buzz about a possible Broadway transfer, but that never materialized.

After its successful New York run, the one-character play toured the U.S. into 1981 and beyond, including the Arena Stage in Washington; Cleveland Playhouse in Ohio; McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey; Zellerbach Theatre at the Annenberg Center, Penn State, in Philadelphia; Alliance Theatre in Atlanta; and other U.S. cities, many for a single night.  There were invitations to bring the play to festivals in Alaska, Canada, Europe, Australia, Israel, and South Africa.

There was talk of filming GS³ for either the big or small screen, and an adaptation was broadcast on CBS Cable (a short-lived pay cable service) on 6 and 7 March 1982.  (There was also the Grammy-winning 1980 Caedmon recording.)  Carroll reprised the role in productions across the country and around the world many times for the remainder of her career.

Carroll’s portrayal of Stein was a striking change from her habitual comic turns.  We theatergoers saw a compelling dramatic presentation—though with plenty of humor and (often snappish) wit.  I don’t write fan letters, but after seeing Carroll’s performance in GS³, I sat down and wrote one to her.  I told her that if she ever took on students, I was ready to sign up!  (She didn’t take me up on my offer.)

I trained as an actor and worked a decade in the profession, and retain a love for the practitioners of Thespis’ art.  I even used to keep a list in my head of a dozen or so individual performances that had astonished me.  Pat Carroll in Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein was prominent on that list. 

I’ve sat through a good number of realistic and naturalistic performances that fooled me into forgetting I was watching a play.  One of the most notable in my memory is Carroll’s Gertrude Stein.  Her performance was so magical that I found myself literally thinking, as I was watching her, ‘Gee, Stein’s a fascinating person.  I’m so glad I met her.’

When I realized what I was thinking—that that was actually Gertrude Stein in front of me—I was mighty glad I didn’t say that out loud so my companion and others near me could hear how deeply I’d fallen under Carroll’s spell.

The play is set in the Paris apartment in which Stein and Alice B. Toklas live at 27 Rue de Fleurus.  (The street, pronounced flur-ooss, is named for a town in Belgium that was the site of a 1794 battle during the French Revolutionary Wars.)  Stein has lived here since 1903, first with her older brother Leo and then with Toklas from 1910.  (Leo and Gertrude separated in 1913; the break is the climax of the play’s narrative.) 

Designer Anne Gibson’s set at the Provincetown—there was a different scenic designer at Circle Rep, Tony Straiges—was a representation of the cluttered apartment with the Picassos, Gauguins, Matisses, and other art works with which the Steins had decorated their walls.  There were a few pieces of furniture from the period.  The stark lighting was by Ruth Roberts.

When the lights come up—there’s no curtain—68-year-old Stein (Carroll, who was 53 when I saw the play) is seated in a chair, at the center of the room, dressed in a brown caftan (the sole costume was designed by Garland Riddle), with closely-cropped grey hair.  Not as closely-cropped as Stein’s was at this time in her life, which was a mannish brush-cut, but not as matronly as her hair was styled, in a graying bun, in the ’20s.  She’s drinking a glass of tea and lights a cigarillo.

In the play, Stein sits in the throne-like chair with her legs spread, but my vision of her that I still carry with me when I think of this performance is the Jo Davidson terra-cotta sculpture (Gertrude Stein 1874-1946, 1922-23) in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. 

While Stein seems to be kneeling, a Man Ray photo of her posing for Davidson reveals that she was, in fact, sitting in a chair just as Carroll was in the play.  Davidson merely sculpted her from the knees up, making Stein appear Buddha-like—which the artist thought was appropriate for his subject.

(From 1992, there’s been a bronze casting of Davidson’s sculpture in Bryant Park, behind the main research branch of the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue between 40th and 42nd Streets.  Whenever I see that rendering, it makes me flash back to the performance of Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein I saw in 1980.)

Over the shoulder of the famous expat, among the other paintings, is the well-known Picasso portrait of her.  It’s 1938, the day before she and Toklas will be evicted from their home of 35 years because the landlord’s son needs a place to live.  It’s raining and there are thunderclaps.

Stein and Toklas have been packing and Stein’s flatmate is sleeping upstairs.  The imminent eviction makes Stein reminisce about the life that unfolded at 27 Rue de Fleurus over the past 3½ decades.  The apartment is so full of her life and the ghosts of her illustrious visitors that it prompts an outpouring of memories that’s echoed by the downpouring rain outside.

“It is    it almost always is    it was and it is    almost always    an inconvenience to be evicted.”

After that, Stein/Carroll becomes a superb raconteur and confides in us many of the stories of her life in Paris in the first four decades of the 20th century.  She also reaches back into her childhood in California and her studies at Radcliffe and Johns Hopkins.  For 90 minutes, we become Stein’s confidants.  We hear Stein’s views on art, life, writing, and the import of genius and fame.

She recounts the disastrous Rousseau dinner the Picassos organized at their Montmartre home in honor of painter Henri Rousseau, known as Le Douanier (‘The Customs Agent’), at which everyone got very drunk—because there was nothing to eat but spinach—and behaved badly; the discovery of a painting by the as-yet unknown Paul Cézanne in a gallery by Gertrude and Leo; the time a drunken Hemingway paid Stein and Toklas a call and they refused to admit him, resulting in a rift between the young writer and older mentor and champion; and, finally, Leo’s loss of faith in Cubism and modernism and his embrace of a reactionary sensibility, causing him to call his sister’s avant-garde writing “tommyrot.”

At the end of the play, Stein looks around at the art works on the walls of the apartment.  She declares with quiet pride: “We moved out one century from these rooms and moved in another.”

There’s no plot in Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein, no narrative though-line, no cause-and-effect chain.  Martin’s text is a stream-of-consciousness tumble of memory, sometimes connected by a lot of “That reminds me”’s and “That brings me to”’s.

Needless to say, after all my undisguised praise, it was all wonderfully spun and fascinating to hear.  We’d been offered the invitation to be part of the literary world’s most renowned salonière’s Saturday evening soirée, and it was a delicious experience. 

It was a momentary puzzle why we’d be included among the intelligentsia who invented modern Western culture, not to mention how we’d all fit in Stein’s apartment—but that passed, unanswered, as we became engrossed in Carroll’s impressionistic portrayal of the disenfranchised intellectual.

There’s only a single actor listed in the program—GS³ is labeled a “one-person play,” but it’s really not.  Martin used the words and recollections of a score or more of the literary and artistic giants of the Western world in the early 20th century to make a portrait of Gertrude Stein, but Carroll contrived to bring them onto the stage for us to see and hear. 

Stein was a name-dropper extraordinaire, but Carroll did far more than drop illustrious names.  She made us see and hear the famous friends Stein and Toklas assembled at 27 Rue de Fleurus, creating and casting virtual playlets (long before that word had any meaning) that were as engaging as the one she was in.  I absolutely believed that Alice Toklas was just upstairs asleep.  It’s a conjuring trick no magician could accomplish.  Only an actor could do it.

Carroll accomplished this feat by recalling the personal traits of these people we tend to know only as icons.  Her Stein knew all their foibles and quirks, and sketched them in.  The distant legends of art and culture thus became warm human beings who did foolish—and sometimes hurtful—things.

Perhaps the most delicate memory Carroll’s Stein discusses is the matter of her lesbianism.  Carroll said she didn’t want GS³ to be a gay play, but she didn’t want it to be dishonest, either.  So when Stein reminisces about her first homosexual experience, with a woman at Johns Hopkins, it’s discussed paraphrastically, by inference. Nothing is said directly. 

But it leads Stein into talking about being fat, and that leads into talking about how she always felt different, which is ultimately what impelled her to leave America—because she never fit in.  It was also what made Alice Toklas follow the Steins, and what brought the two women together for the rest of Stein’s life.  (From 1907, when they met, to 1946, when Stein died, Stein and Toklas were never separated.)

The relationship with Toklas, however, isn’t emphasized.  It’s implied, of course, and hovers around the play whenever Stein brings her roommate up, but it’s not the emotional or dramatic center of the play.  As I’ve noted, the break-up with Leo was more impactful to the performance than Alice B. Toklas. 

That’s not in the least inappropriate.  After all, Leo had been his sister’s mentor for over 40 years.  But though he was the one who left their shared abode—Leo had actually instigated the salon, though Stein became the hostess—intellectually, she was the one who left him. 

She championed the new art and the new writing, going in her own direction, and he couldn’t handle that she stopped listening to him.  They never spoke to one another again.  That’s much more wrenching than a 30-year devotion between Stein and Toklas, isn’t it?

Carroll insisted that the performance was not a monologue, as most of the press coverage dubbed it.  It’s a “duologue,” declared the actress.  The other half of the conversation is provided by the audience.  (Occasionally, Carroll recounted, a theatergoer actually voiced a response to Stein.)  She added that the play is different at every performance, but not because she makes any changes.  Each audience responds differently.

Carroll sat in the chair for most of the play.  Only occasionally getting up, when Stein is especially agitated, for brief moments to walk about the apartment.  But her hands were so animated and eloquent that the play didn’t seem static.  Her face, too, was infinitely expressive.  Of course, GS³ is a verbal play, depending on Martin’s words to take the place of action. 

Ordinarily, that would be a detriment; word plays are almost always talky.  In one-actor plays like Hal Holbrook’s Mark Twain Tonight! (Broadway, 1966; television, 1967) and Clarence Darrow with Henry Fonda (Broadway, 1975; television, 1974), the actors walked about the set a good deal, but, as GS³ was conceived for an incapacitated Carroll, Stein is mostly seated.  Yet Carroll exuded energy so vibrantly that her Stein is always vital even when stationary.

Still, the words are the true action of Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein, and Carroll made them dance—the way one imagines Gertrude Stein would have when she captivated those students in 1934.

I guess it’s obvious without my even saying so that I thought Pat Carroll’s performance was extraordinary.  (I wasn’t the only one; her reviews were excellent.)  Even as restricted as she was, Carroll held the stage for the whole hour-and-a-half and never lost her grip on us.  She even made Stein’s idiosyncratic speech—those triple repetitions—seem like natural talk from a sophisticated, hyper-intellectual woman.

In several interviews, Carroll asserted that for this role, she didn’t just rely on the rehearsals and her homework to develop the performance.  She drew on everything she had learned over the thirty-some-odd years of her career. 

She pulled out all the stops, and whether she whispered or roared, she made the language alive.  No wonder the recording of the play won a Grammy.  (By the way, I even bought the album when it came out.  I wanted documentation of that performance.)

The smallest gesture—the shrug of a shoulder, the twitch of a finger, the slap of a table, or the clench of a fist—filled the theater.  Even her distinctive laugh that made her so popular on TV game shows was part of her offering; boisterous and infectious, it became Stein’s laugh.

Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein was one of the longest-running one-person shows of the ’70s.  The press found the evening “enormously fascinating” and “poignant” (from the New Brunswick Home News and Variety) and actress Carroll received the best reviews of her career, capturing both the humor and the sorrow of the character.  Let’s look at what some of the reviewers said about Marty Martin’s play and Carroll’s portrayal of the iconoclastic American expatriate in Paris.

Because the coverage was so extensive, with many regional papers reviewing the New York City run and then local papers all over the country writing about the national-tour performances, I’m going to limit my review round-up to the Off-Broadway productions alone.  (There were notices into 1985, and even reviews of Carroll’s performance in Jerusalem in the Jerusalem Post.)

In the New York Times in June 1979, after the play’s fill-in stint at Circle Rep was extended but before it moved to the Provincetown, Richard Eder characterized Martin’s script as “appealing,” but felt, “It lacks the intuitive brilliance of James Lapine’s effort to literally stage a poem of Miss Stein’s in “Photograph,”  two years ago.”  

Mr. Martin's assemblage is anecdotal, and intelligent rather than inspired; but it works very well on the whole, and it gives scope for Miss Carroll’s winning and often very moving performance.

(The 1920 poem “Photograph” is composed in five sections Stein labeled “acts.”  This gave Lapine [books for Into the Woods, Falsettos, and Passion] a rationale to stage it in 1977 for the Performance Workshop at SoHo’s Open Space.  “It is a lovely and remarkably successful attempt to render the qualities of Gertrude Stein in theatrical terms,” wrote the New York Times.)

The Timesman found that the playwright “has realized that Miss Stein’s wit, her reflections about herself and others, and the wealth of anecdote need to be anchored to something; and he has accomplished this very well.”

Carroll, reported Eder, “glares and beams as she talks, caught up in the fascination of telling and recalling. . . .  [She] revels in the beat and counterpoint of her phrases; but she disciplines them as well, cutting them off abruptly in the sheer enjoyment of showing who is boss.”

“It is, all in all,” concluded Eder, “a moving and splendidly personified picture that Miss Carroll gives us; a piece of cultural history that like all good history strikes us as the history of ourselves.”

Four months later, after Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein’s open-ended run had started, the Times’ Walter Kerr saw the play.  “Off to the Provincetown I went,” Kerr related, “and I went expecting a great deal.  I got more than I bargained for.”

He expected “outrageousness,” he confessed, and “Miss Carroll . . . obliges in spades.”  The Times reviewer noted that in her portrayal of Stein, “some of the time,” Carroll is

content to snuggle, warmed with self-satisfaction, in the chair built as four square as she is, as often as not she’s likely to leap to her sandaled feet, take a hearty belt from her omnipresent drink, and bellow out a great bleat of anger.

The review-writer asserted that “we feel confided in” with Carroll.  “I don’t know precisely how Miss Carroll is able to do it, but she manages—without any effort at all—to make us share Gertrude Stein’s attitude toward herself.”

In the end, Kerr concluded, having invoked a housekeeper famous for her outstanding souffles, “Miss Carroll’s own souffle is very choice indeed.  Superb texture, body and lightness both, four‐star anywhere, I’d say.”

Don Nelsen asserted in the New York Daily News that in Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein, “Martin’s script and Carroll’s performance make a perfect match and Milton Moss’ evenly paced direction is skillful, indeed.”

The Daily News reviewer proclaimed that “Pat Carroll has recreated [Stein] with remarkable fidelity and dimension.  She catches Stein’s snobbery, pettiness, perception, loyalty and wit and at the same time tells the story of an artistic revolution.”

Nelsen concluded, “I have never thought of Gertrude Stein as a particularly enchanting person but if she was anything like Carroll’s portrait, she must have been.”

“Wonderful wonderful wonderful is the phrase for Pat Carroll doing ‘Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein’ off-Broadway at the Circle Repertory Theater,” wrote Mary Campbell of the Associated Press in the Philadelphia Inquirer.  She was one of the many journalists who found it irresistible to mimic Stein’s triple-ese.

The AP reviewer continued: “Gertrude Stein calls herself a genius, and Miss Carroll makes that—and everything else—believable.”

“She tells an anecdote richly . . .,” Campbell added.  “She delightedly sets out insights and one-line quips.  She has a remarkable mind that makes one wish to have known her.”

In a later edition of the paper, Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer Barbara Kantrowitz commented that Carroll “dominates the theater’s small stage . . . .  She raises name-dropping to a fine art.”  Kantrowitz prefaced this remark by asserting that “both the actress and her subject have gained new images.”

The Hollywood Reporter’s Charles Ryweck observed that “‘Gertrude Stein etc.’ may be a one-character play but it evokes an entire gallery of the titans of modern art and literature . . . .”  Playwright Martin, Ryweck added, “has revealed [Stein’s] personality through the art of the raconteur.”

“Carroll,” the HR reviewer felt, “is a fascinating actress, funny, yet piercing . . . .” 

She is a mesmerizing actress as Gertrude and was rewarded with a standing ovation by an appreciative opening night audience.  Milton Moss directed the ebullient Carroll with flair.”

In the Allentown, Pennsylvania, Morning Call, William A. Raidy of the Newhouse News Service asserted, “The avant-garde writer would be both pleased and flattered by Pat Carroll’s charming portrayal of her in . . . ‘Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein.’”

Martin’s play “is a warm, intimate portrait of the woman from Allegheny, Pa., who from her armchair in a Paris studio encouraged such young artists as Juan Gris, Pablo Picasso and a whole Lost Generation of writers.”

“Martin rarely directly quotes his subject,” explained Raidy.  “Instead, he lets her tell her story as seen through her relationships with others . . . .  He makes, therefore, Miss Stein perhaps a bit more likeable—and modest—than she actually was.”

“Pat Carroll’s Gertrude Stein laughs a lot,” pointed out the Newhouse reviewer. 

Reading most of the Stein canon, we never thought Miss Stein the laugh riot actress Carroll portrays.  Then we came across this evaluation from her old friend, [literary critic, biographer, and historian] Van Wyck Brooks [1886-1963]: “Gertrude’s personality was magnetic; she had a laugh from the middle of her . . . .”

“More than anything else,” felt Raidy, “Pat Carroll has captured the physical sense of Gertrude Stein in this one-woman show.”  The review-writer concluded with the observation “what a pleasure it is to be reminded of [Stein’s] very special genius with the help of Pat Carroll.”

Calling Carroll’s performance “brilliant” and labeling it the “undisputed highpoint of her career,” Variety’s Madd. (the reviewing “sig.,” or pseudonym, for John Madden) characterized GS³ as “an intelligently drawn, poignant, often hilarious, entertaining, thoughtful, instructive, and most of all exhilarating theatre experience.”

“Milton Moss has staged the work with authority,” continued Madden, “but obviously allows Carroll the freedom of instinct.”  Quoting the Circle Rep program for the play, the Variety reviewer wrote, Carroll “was determined to make the world of Gertrude Stein, once again, come alive.”

Madden added, “To that purpose Carroll has perhaps exceeded even her own expectations, with a performance that illuminates the stage throughout two acts and ranks among the best of the solo theatre pieces offered over the last decade or so.”

“Carroll,” the reviewer continued, “brings such warmth and personal appeal to the role, as well as a marvelous gift for story telling, the audience becomes immediately intrigued with the gossip and friendly intimacies she reveals . . . .  A lengthy and hilarious tale about a near disastrous dinner party she attended, is a highlight of her impeccable delivery.” 

In Long Island’s Newsday, Allan Wallach, dubbing the play a “tour de force” for Carroll, reported, “Her triumph is so complete that the theater piece has become a surprise hit of the summer . . . .”  In explanation, Wallach said, “What Carroll has done to bring all this about is, simply, turn herself into Gertrude Stein at every performance.

The words of the play aren’t Stein’s, as we’ve seen, “but the actress invests them with Stein’s enthusiasm and rhythms.  The intelligence and humor—and occasionally a haunting sadness—shine through.”

Proclaiming that Stein “has been made, finally and inevitably, the center of an enormously fascinating play,” Ernest Albrecht wrote in the New Brunswick, New Jersey, Home News, “In the person of Pat Carroll she is also the play’s sides, top and bottom.”  The actress, he wrote, “is giving a performance of enormous energy and magnetism.”

“This is a real play,” the review-writer admonished us, “that happens to have as its one and only character a figure from real life.  It is a work created for the stage out of all the things the stage finds most useful.”

“Miss Carroll is seated at the center of the famous room at 27 Rue de Fleur[u]s, Paris, for virtually the entire evening. . . .  But,” observed the man from the Home News, “from this throne-like seat, Miss Carroll miraculously creates a[n] evening that always seems alive and active.  She tells the stories brilliantly.”

“Miss Carroll plays with the language as if it were a musical instrument.  Her stories are oral impressionistic paintings and the glimpse into the ego are startling revelations of vulnerability,” affirmed Albrecht.

He didn’t spare his praise: “If you want a model of stunning acting by which to judge all other such attempts, do visit Miss Carroll at the Provincetown Playhouse.  So much of what passes for acting in other enterprises merely seems so much ranting and raving in comparison.”

The Home News reviewer concluded by stating, “All of which adds up to an enormously varied evening that treats us as [her] intellectual and emotional equal.  What greater tribute can an artist pay her audience?”

“With Miss Carroll playing [Stein], it is sometimes difficult to remember that it is, after all, only a play,” continued Albrecht.  “She makes it seem like a private soiree.”

As readers can see, the reviews all hit much the same notes.  These were all notices of the performances in New York City, either at Circle Rep or the Provincetown, but the reviews of the tour dates were in the same vein.  So, I’ll stop here—with two exceptions.  The first is a review of the Caedmon recording (TRS 367) of the play, released in September 1980, about a month after the play’s New York run ended.

In the New York Times, Paul Kresh, an author, critic, record producer, and broadcaster who specialized in spoken-word recordings, advised, “Plays for one or two performers not only make for economical stage productions but are ideally suited to the recording medium.”

Kresh labeled the two-disk, stereo release “Pat Carroll’s tour-de-force monologue.”  Having seen the live performance, the record reviewer acknowledged,

It was a joy to watch Miss Carroll . . . thronging the stage with the ghosts of the great as she reminisced on a rainy afternoon in her studio about life in Paris at 27 rue de Fleurus.  You could swear that Alice B. Toklas was really napping away all the while in the next room!  Yet, little is lost when you only hear this performer, since most of the delights of Mr. Martin’s compelling script are in the flow of language that illuminates character as the formidable Stein recalls her adventures, her quarrels with her brother Leo, her love affair with modern art, and her attempts to make language do what Picasso was doing on canvas.

Kresh made a side note to say that compared to a recording of Stein’s actual voice, “Pat Carroll has caught its cadences and even its timbre without resorting to slavish mimicry.”

The other outlier is a review in the Hartford (Connecticut) Courant of the 1982 television broadcast of the play on CBS Cable.  (The telecast ran two hours, rather than the 90 minutes of the stage version.)  Owen McNally, the paper’s television critic, described GS³ as “a good play, a good play, a good play” (I warned you about the triple-ese) and credited Carroll’s “tour de force performance.”

“It is a one-woman monologue,” McNally explained, “with Carroll pulling out all the stops” in what he called Martin’s “imaginary monologue.”  The TV reviewer characterized Carroll’s work as a “vivid, earthy performance,” presenting “a very bold, flesh-and-blood Gertrude Stein, a Stein running over with brilliance as raconteur and writer.”

“Although most sympathetic,” warned McNally, “this is not a totally idealized representation of Stein.”  The reviewer added (as we recall what Anita Loos revealed), “What you get in this two-act monologue is no mere ‘Saint for Two Acts.’  Stein also comes across as at least a bit of a bitch.” 

The Courant writer reported, “The play itself is all but totally static.  Yet Carroll makes it come very much to life by generating static electricity that lights up the Stein character. . . .  The words—the words made flesh by Carroll—are the real action.” 

(Stein wrote the libretto to an opera with music composed by Virgil Thomson entitled Four Saints in Three Acts, 1927-28.  She also wrote a libretto, often performed as an avant-garde play, called Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, 1938—but I think that apparent reference is inadvertent.)

I will also quote a few passages from one of the tour-stop reviews because it was the only one I read that had anything negative to say about GS³.  James Lardner’s Washington Post notice was generally laudatory, especially regarding Pat Carroll’s performance (the piece’s headline was: “On Stage: Fierce, Convincing ‘Gertrude Stein.’”)

The WaPo reviewer, who saw the show at Washington’s Arena Stage two months after it left the Provincetown, found that Martin’s script “succeeds in making Stein an absorbing and sympathetic figure,” but “is much less successful in its structure and selection of material.”

Carroll is constantly forced to jump from one subject to another . . . .  And there is no compelling dramatic reason behind Stein’s speaking to us from the mid-1930s: The story doesn’t build to any ’30s climax, and indeed sweeps through the ’20s . . . with alarming briskness.

Lardner, however, immediately returned to his complimentary assessment of the play, which he dubbed “a highly entertaining excursion to a unique time and place,” and especially Carroll’s acting, which, he proclaimed “is the bottom-line reason to see this show.”

In Carroll’s bio in the Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein program, the actress made a statement, part of which the Variety reviewer quoted.  The rest of Carroll’s thought reads: “personalizing history through Gertrude Stein is a fantasy come true.”  I’m thrilled that it did and I got to share in it.  It’s remained indelibly engraved on my memory for 43 years . . . and counting.

[Thinking about the possibility of other negative reviews of Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein aside from a brief passage in the Washington Post notice, I wondered what John Simon might have written in New York magazine.  In my original searches, I never found a New York review, so I made a search specifically directed at finding one.

[It looks as if Simon may not have written a full review, but penned the blurb New York used in its theater listing for GS³.  It doesn't have his name attached, but it sounds like him and the abstract/citation on one database points to it if you look for “John Simon” and "Pat Carroll." 

[(Wouldn’t you know that the first use of the blurb in question—there was another text in the theater guide in earlier issues—appears in an issue that follows one that’s missing from the database of complete issues.  If there was a full review from which the blurb was excerpted, the frequent practice, it'd probably be in that missing issue.  I’ll try to remember to check in a library my next opportunity.)

[So, to complete the record, here’s what the “anonymous” critiquer of New York magazine said about Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein:

The Gertrude Stein that emerges is, unlike the title, far from triple—only a third.  She is less formidable, much more easygoing than the original.  The comedienne Pat Carroll plays her heroine with verve, variety, and finesse, but Marty Martin’s monodrama simplifies, falsifies, and vulgarizes the life and times and works of Ms. Stein.

[Assuming this is John Simon, I’m not sure how he would know “the original” Gertrude Stein—though he was 20 when she died.  I don’t know, though, that he was in Paris at the time.  We’ve heard in the testimony of people who knew, or at least met, her, that Stein presented a different face in person and in private than she did in her writing. 

[Besides, as Carroll and Martin both repeated, GS³ isn’t a history lesson, it’s theater.  It isn’t presenting historical truth, but theatrical truth—and, however the New York reviewer felt about Martin’s dramaturgy, he praised Carroll’s acting.]