Performance Diary: 'Follies,' Part 2

by Kirk Woodward

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A few observations:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Performance Diary: 'Follies,' Part 1

by Kirk Woodward 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meanwhile my friend Annie wrote me:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Directing Experience, Part 2

by Kirk Woodward

[Welcome back to Rick On Theater for the concluding instalment of Kirk Woodward’s “A Directing Experience,” his account of serving as associate director for Upper Montclair, New Jersey’s Saint James Players’ first-ever production of a Greek tragedy. The play was Sophocles’ Antigone and the SJP production ran from 15 to 17 and 22 to 24 September.

[If you haven’t read Part 1, posted on 13 October, I recommend that you go back and pick that up before reading Part 2.  Kirk’s report is continuous and the second half won’t make much sense if you don’t know what happened from the start.

[Kirk reports that Director James Broderick attempted to give the theatergoers at SJP’s Antigone a taste of the performance Athenians in the 5th century BCE might have seen.  For ROTters who are interested in what we know of the performances of ancient Greek plays, I’ve added a brief description of how classic Greek theater worked after “A Directing Experience.”]

SCOPE OF THE PRODUCTION – As the weeks went on I started thinking of the show more as a musical than as a play. Actually, the more elements involved in a production, the more it resembles a military operation. There’s a senior officer (the director), a number of staff officers (the sound, set, costume, lighting, and front-of-house chiefs), and a lot of troops whose activities need to be coordinated.

ATTENDANCE AND LINES – Attendance is often a problem in community theater rehearsals. Not only do people have excused absences for vacations during the summer, but sometimes people just don’t, or in our case wouldn’t, show up, and we’d scrape to find pieces of the show that we could rehearse. (Our long rehearsal period probably contributed to this.)

We didn’t find such scrambling as much of a problem as one might think, because our show was made up of so many component parts that if someone who needed work wasn’t there, somebody else who needed work probably was there.

The opening circles I mentioned included vocal work led by the chorus leader. Vocal work is of obvious value, probably for any play, considering our ordinarily lazy American diction, and certainly for this one. The sanctuary where we performed requires clear and purposeful speech.

Actors are often asked, “How do you remember so many lines?” Actors tend to smile at the question, but in fact the process is remarkable – in some cases, almost miraculous.

Ordinarily, actors have successfully memorized their lines well before the show opens, but a pressing question is “when” – at what stage are they “off book” and able to function smoothly without glancing at a script (or reading from it) or asking for help.

We were no exception. Ordinarily it doesn’t do any good to fuss at people for not knowing their lines. They know they don’t, and the rest of the cast sees it too. Jim was patient. My style too is to assure the actors that they’ll have the words down pat soon, and to congratulate them when they get anything right.

There’s no great way to deal with problems of line memorization as far as I know. A director can’t get inside someone’s head. What’s more, even when the actors can make their way through a rehearsal without reference to a script, they still may indulge in any amount of paraphrasing.

Again, a director has to decide what attitude to take toward this problem. Often the stage manager may be asked to keep notes on inaccurate speeches and to discuss them with the actors at the end of rehearsal.

One of our casts learned their lines fairly promptly. The other did not, with both major leads struggling visibly with them until the final dress rehearsal. These actors, note, were among the more experienced and “professional” of the cast. Hard to understand. I felt that the uncertainty about lines in that cast never entirely went away.

Halfway or a little more through rehearsals, the cast was asking if the show looked like it would “work.” My reply was that Jim had designed it in a particular way. I think it’s safe to say that his entire approach was new to us. Although nobody used the word, he had a “style” in mind for the play.

It involved lots of things happening on stage, often at once, and a delivery of lines as though they were being announced, slowly and clearly. He told one chorus member that their delivery of a speech had “a lot of 2023 in it” – it was too “modern” for the concept. He gave many line readings to the cast, and they were always much more stately than everyday speech. That was his intention. 

The chorus held to Jim’s approach. However, the lead actors increasingly did not, instead talking with each other in a more “modern” way, and I believe this worked to the play’s advantage, providing variety and a bit of what the audience was more used to, particularly in contrast to the chorus.

METHODS – As rehearsals went on, I came to believe strongly in two directing principles: 1) Don’t speak unless you have something to say, and 2), if you do say something, make it something the actors can use – something they can put into practice.

I hit this particular nail on the head once in these rehearsals. As actors try to get “off book,” so they can rehearse without their script, sometimes they have to stop for long pauses while they think of the next thing to say, and sometimes these pauses become habitual. Asking one actor to close up the gaps in his words, I said pleasantly to him, “It’s called ‘acting,’ not ‘pausing.’”

TOWARD THE FINISH LINE – As we approached the Labor Day weekend, more and more cast members requested that weekend off, including a few who weren’t coming to rehearsals anyway. Jim tried to schedule extra line rehearsals but got little response, so we began the final six rehearsals with a great deal to pull together. Jim wrote the production team a summary which included the following concerns: 

     We have actors playing leading parts who have not appeared at rehearsal for almost a month. It's possible these people will return not being fully off-book.

     We have actors playing supporting parts who have attended few rehearsals and were not even close to being off book when last they rehearsed.

      The musicians are adjusting to a last-minute departure. We've never [had] even one runthrough of the music. At most, we'll have the musicians for Monday night and Tuesday night. [Fortunately we had music for the two last final rehearsals as well, thanks to the musicians who made the time.]

      The opening scene -- with the Master of Revels -- is still...well, let's call it a "work in progress." [As noted, this scene was ultimately dropped.]

     Many of the light cues have changed.

     The blocking at the end of the play has been changed but never rehearsed with the full cast.

    We don't have ushers -- I can live with that (I'll manage the house). [Thanks to our stage manager, a high school student was ultimately recruited to usher.]

    In short, we're simply not going to get to that place we all hoped we'd get to. In fact, it now seems certain that we won't have a single full-cast rehearsal before opening night.

     I ask you to bear up, and soldier on, in the face of what could be rather daunting adversity this next week. There are some factors we can't control (other people's behaviors and responses) but please try to be patient with each other (you always are, by the way -- this is just a reminder!!) upbeat and supportive with the many cast members who have worked hard, and try to help out in any area where the ship is listing (lend a hand with the costumes if you have a minute, help an actor run lines, etc.)

     We're all going to see things that don't work, but as much as possible we really can't change things at this late date. We've got to build up at least a little bit of muscle memory, so let's learn to live with the imperfect (I'm saying this to myself!) 

     We need to focus this week on traffic control -- getting people in position to enter their scenes on time, listening for cues, and making sure people are arrayed in costumes and with the right props when they need to enter. The niceties will either take care of themselves. Or they won't.

His list looks daunting, but in fact most of the things in it were manageable, and most got handled. To illustrate what did and didn’t, here’s an email I wrote Jim after opening night:

Hi Jim,

I'm so glad for you about last night, because it really is vindication that what you envisioned can be achieved. Excellent. We'll work hard tonight and see how it goes.

I had a very few notes - possible thoughts. For the Saturday cast:

* The Sentry shouldn't wrestle Antigone onto the stage the second time he brings her in. The point is that she is resigned to her fate. It was like a wrestling match.

For the Friday cast:

* A big gap after the Orator's speech. Something should happen immediately.

* I imagine you've fixed this already - the gap before the first Chorus appearance - maybe a cuing problem? Or too much music?

* Creon's first entrance - can Jamie and Sharon start entering on the second verse of the "triumphal music", so he and she aren't just standing there so long? Last night they came in as soon as the music started, and there's lots of it.

* Again, something you may have fixed - on "O fate of humanity," should a couple of lights go out to emphasize it?

* Need a fast blackout after "Like the fairies." She might not have been able to hear the cue.

* Haimon should exit on the floor exit. (We talked about this last night.)

* When Sharon asks Jamie what's happened, saying that she can take it - can he briefly turn away from her, to motivate her asking the sentry?

* Jamie is clearly "dying" and dead at the end.  Is that what you want?

* As you know, that curtain call has got to be virtually continuous. Colleen and I stopped clapping long before it was over, and we're staff! 

* Curtain call - some on the floor can exit at the stage left door to help people get offstage faster.

* Can the backstage hall light stay on, or should it be off during the show, and if so, can they see?

FINALE – The sort of items on that laundry list will look familiar to many directors. The fact is that the first weekend of shows went much better than I would have predicted. So did the second. The audience response at the end of the performances was enthusiastic, and there were few technical glitches. A “talkback” with the cast after the Sunday matinee showed a great deal of intelligent audience interest.

One cast still had to ask for prompting at its final dress rehearsal. Nothing of the sort happened in performance, but as noted above I felt there was a subtle hesitation here and there that had an effect on its performance days. Learning lines may not be the be-all and end-all of acting, but it’s important.

The adventure wasn’t over yet. One actor, from the “Saturday” cast, had never actually quit the show, but also hadn’t actually attended a rehearsal in weeks. Finally, between the two performance weekends, he resigned because of illness. It seemed difficult to get another actor to replace him – although he was only in one scene, it was a long one.

Jim’s solution was inventive – turn that scene into a dream sequence in which Creon imagines the voice of his son (the missing actor) arguing with him – an argument carried out on the son’s part from a microphone offstage, reading the part. “Brilliant,” I told him.

However, an actor playing Creon recruited a replacement, so we’ll never know how the last great experiment would have worked out. “Necessity is the mother of invention,” Jim emailed me, “and upheaval is the father of anxiety.” The replacement actor was excellent.

FIGURES. By my very unofficial count 285 people saw the show over six performances, which is excellent for the St. James Players. There was no admission cost; the show was free.

My friend Dan Landon, for years a theater manager for the Shubert Organization, says, “One dollar over the nut [the expenses], it’s a hit.” Again by rough estimate, the show probably cost under two thousand dollars, the largest part of that for costumes. Audience donations will probably bring in just under two thousand dollars, plus a substantial amount from program ad sales. It’s a hit. Profits will go to a charity.

SUMMARY. Unquestionably the show was a success in just about any terms. How, considering the considerable obstacles during rehearsals? Some answers:

Antigone itself, as written by Sophocles, has well delineated conflict and vivid characters. Jim’s considerable script revisions added to the script but didn’t detract from its core. The story line remained clear.

Very few people have seen a Greek tragedy performed (a statement based on audience comments). They didn’t know what to expect but had a feeling it was supposed to be important, or “good.” It had cultural cachet.

The principal character is a strong woman, an appealing feature for many, including me.

The staging was unusual – formal, often ritualistic, with some naturalistic acting within those limits, performed in the beautiful front of the sanctuary of the church, which added a seriousness that a regular set probably would not have provided no matter how well it was designed and executed. 

Formal ritual is not often an element in many plays performed in local and regional theaters. Jim insisted on retaining or imitating as much of the original religious purpose of Sophocles’ play as he imagined and could incorporate.

A number of dances, musical interludes, and other elements within the play, plus the long opening sequence(s), were dropped during the rehearsal period, making the play leaner and perhaps easier to follow than perhaps would have been possible otherwise.

The whole experience was unusual for the audiences, as well as one could judge. Novelty itself was enough to carry a great deal of interest. The dancing, chorus, and music really were “cool.”

Rehearsals had been scattered throughout the summer, but in the final continuous six rehearsals the cast did have an opportunity to pull the show together. At the opening the production was “tight” – as noted, more for one cast than for the other. At the last performance, the casts were evenly matched.

The actors really did hold their own. Whatever the appropriateness of the acting choices they made – a variable  – they doubled down on them and were consistent in them. Some of the acting was quite fine – the last scene of the “Friday” Creon was as fine as I can imagine it could be, rivaled by the last scene of the other Creon.

On stage the cast was committed to the play, and that commitment carried through to the audience. Even with only six performances, I did note that the determination to make the play “work” weakened a tiny bit as the casts felt more secure. If we had had a large number of performances, this might have been a problem.

Although I believe Jim visualized “platform” acting as described above, in practice the actors of the principal roles moved more and more into a “naturalistic” style of acting – real people talking to each other – and this contrasted well with the formal elements of the play and probably made it palatable.

Many of the elements that might have been expected to make the staging of the play seem diffuse were removed during the rehearsal period.

Ultimately, credit for the success of the show goes to Jim, who had a vision and stuck to it, and to the cast and crew who brought it to fruition. Jim had ideas, whether I tumbled to them or not, and having ideas carries a lot of weight. The choreographer and chorus leader pulled off what Jim had imagined in their areas.

Theater is full of surprises – one of the reasons that many of us find it enormously rewarding. Our production of Antigone proves the point. One feels even Sophocles might have been pleased.

[Theater, which was an integral part of the culture in ancient Greece from 700 BCE, was centered in the city-state of Athens, which became a significant cultural, political, and religious focal point.  I think, in light of Kirk’s report above, it would be of interest, especially for readers who aren’t theater scholars, to have a gloss of what we know of this origin of our modern Western theater.  I’ll be brief, and anyone with further curiosity can look up additional details in the many sources available, both in print and online.

[Ancient Greek theater developed in the Classical Period of Greek history, the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, and lasted into the Hellenistic Period, 336-146 BCE.  The great classic tragedies, including Sophocles’ Antigone, were composed in the 5th century; the oldest surviving text is The Persians by Aeschylus (ca. 525/524-ca. 456/455 BCE), first performed in 472 BCE.

[(Aeschylus’ next surviving play was Seven Against Thebes, first performed in 467 BCE.  It tells the story of the Theban civil war in which Eteocles and Polynices, Antigone’s brothers, slew each other, setting up the story Sophocles recounts in his tragedy 26 years later.)

[I’m not going to give a summary of the history of classic Greek drama because I want to focus on the production methods that we know of or have deduced from such sources as the surviving plays themselves, Aristotle’s (384-322 BCE) Poetics (335-323 BCE), accounts of contemporary historians such as Herodotus (ca. 484-ca. 425 BCE), hints and clues from examining the surviving theaters of the era, and modern archeologists like Luigi Bernabò Brea and Madelaine Cavalier, who discovered a cache of models from the 4th to 3rd century BCE for theatrical masks in 1973 (the so-called “Masks of Lipari”).

[One historical note, however: Greek drama developed from chants in honor of Dionysus (Bacchus to the Romans), the god of revelry.  (Why director Broderick of the SJP Antigone made Zephyr, a god of wind, the “Master of Revels” is unclear, but since that sequence was dropped before performance, it’s also irrelevant.)  

[Because of this association, theater in ancient Greece was sacred to Dionysus.  For this reason, the most important festivals in which dramatic competitions were held were the Dionysia, and the premier theater in ancient Greece, built on the Athenian Acropolis, was the Theater of Dionysus (completed in ca. 325 BCE).

[The Dionysian chants were later adapted for choral processions in which participants would dress up in costumes and masks.  Eventually, certain members of the chorus evolved to take special roles within the procession, but they were not yet actors in the way we would understand it. 

[According to tradition, in 534 or 535 BCE, Thespis, a poet probably born in the early 6th century BCE, astounded audiences by leaping onto the back of a wooden cart and reciting poetry as if he was the characters whose lines he was speaking.  (In other accounts, Thespis is said to have introduced the first principal actor as distinguished from the chorus.)  In doing so he became the world’s first actor, and it is from his name that we get the world ‘thespian’ as a synonym for ‘actor.’  (The International Thespian Society is an organization for high school and middle school theater students.)

[Little else is known of Thespis or his acting, but he started a trend.  In about 471 BCE, Aeschylus introduced the second actor, and around 468 BCE, Sophocles brought on the third individualized performer.  They played the roles Kirk refers to as “named characters” played by “actors with character names.”

[Plays in ancient Greece were performed during late winter and early spring, perhaps because of the hot climate. The theaters were outdoors and open to the elements, and the plays were performed in daylight.  The actors, who, incidentally, were all men (as they were in Elizabethan/Shakespearean times as well), wore heavy costumes (another possible reason for performing in the cooler seasons) and masks, and performing required strenuous physical and vocal exertion, which would have been impractical in hot weather.  Each play was usually only ever performed once (until later in Greek theater history, during the Hellenistic Period, when it became permissible to perform older plays).

[Greek theaters were huge. The Theater of Dionysus could hold 15,000 spectators.  The audience sat on seats carved out of a hillside (or man-made berms in regions with flat terrain). This seating area, called the theatron (‘place of hearing’), encircled a round playing area called the orchestra (‘place of dancing’) where the chorus performed.  At the back of the orchestra was the skene (‘tent’ or ‘hut’). This was a stone building that acted as a dressing room and was where the actors made their entrances from and their exits to.

[The actors performed in front of the skene, which was unchanging—except, perhaps, with some paint.  (It’s probably obvious, but this is the Greek word from which we get the modern word ‘scene’ and, by extension, ‘scenery’—though there was none in Greek theater.)  On either side of the orchestra were the paradoi, two stone passageways through which the chorus made its entrance and exit.

[There was also some form of crane-like stage machinery that facilitated special effects—such as the entrance of a god from above—but we are unsure as to exactly what this machinery was or how it worked.  It’s been dubbed deus ex machina, Latin for the Greek term apo mekhanes theos (‘god from the machine’), used metaphorically today to mean the sudden or abrupt resolution of a seemingly unsolvable plot problem by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence. 

[(There’s a terrific example of both applications of the deus ex machina in a play at least partly by William Shakespeare—Pericles, Prince of Tyre [published in 1609].  In a report for ROT of a 2016 production I saw, I wrote that in order to resolve some intractable plot complications [sense #2], Diana, Roman goddess of wild animals and the hunt, appears “raised up high [sense #1] behind a scrim and intoning in an otherworldly voice in an honest-to-goodness deus . . . er dea ex machina.”)

[Because of the size of the Greek amphitheaters, plus the lack of walls or ceilings, and despite excellent natural acoustics, hearing and seeing were problematic.  The elaborate costumes and masks were aids to the latter, of course, intended to make the actors more visible.

[The basic costume was the common garment worn by ancient Greeks, the chiton, a draped, shift-like tunic.  There were differences for men’s and women’s chitones which were replicated in the theatrical costumes for each gender and the chiton was accessorized for character reinforcement.  Actors playing female characters also wore prostheses to give the impression of breasts and soft, rounded abdomens.  They wore a white body stocking under the costume as well, to make their skin look fairer.

[Male characters in tragedies also usually wore kolthornoi, calf-length boots with thick soles to give the actors more height for both stature and visibility in the large theaters.  Female and comic characters wore sykkhoi, soft slippers or ‘socks’; because the kolthornos was often translated as ‘buskin,’ we have the expression “sock and buskin” as a metaphor for the world of theater.  (On 25 and 28 May 2014, I posted a two-part piece on actors who were spies; it was entitled “Sock and Buskin & Cloak and Dagger.”)

[As for the speech, we believe that the actors spoke in stentorian tones—what I think Kirk meant by “platform acting”—and may even have sung or chanted the lines.  We don’t know how the actors related to one another in a scene, but the common belief is that they didn’t play off one another as modern Western actors usually do in Realistic dramas or comedies, and may have all faced out toward the audience.  Gestures were probably few and big.

[The masks were elaborately carved or assembled by skilled mask-makers.  Paintings and vase decorations indicate that they were helmet-like, covering the actor’s entire face and head, with holes for the eyes and a small opening for the mouth, as well as an integrated wig.  They were made from organic materials, which is why there are no extant examples, as they would have decomposed over time.

[The masks were probably made of light-weight materials such as stiffened linen, leather, wood, or cork, with the wig consisting of human or animal hair.  It was once thought that they served as a kind of megaphone, but the mouth holes are too small to serve such a purpose, but they may have functioned as a resonator.

[An artfully created mask can appear to change expressions when it’s activated by a really experienced and talented masker (see my post “The Magic of Masks,” 17 September 2011).  The masked actor can make the mask seem truly alive by the angle the audience sees and the play of light on the frozen expression.  But the Greek masks restricted vision, another reason that the actors probably didn’t move around the stage much; they would, however, still have moved their heads and angled their bodies for effect.

[The masks, of course, made it possible for one actor to play multiple characters, including women, in the play.  Remember that there were, at most, three actors to play the named characters; in Antigone, there are at least seven, including three women.  Some of the masks represented single characters, with recognizable iconography to identify them, but most were generic—a young and beautiful woman, a crone or witch, a heroic warrior, and so on.  Small changes, such as a different wig or beard, and voilà, a new character.

[As Kirk states above, the plays of ancient Greece were performed at festivals in honor of Dionysus called the Dionysia.  (There were other festivals dedicated to Dionysius in and around Athens, such as the Lenaia, but for the drama, the Dionysia was the important one.) 

[There were two related Dionysia in Attica, the region around Athens, each lasting seven days.  The older one was the Rural Dionysia, held around the time of the winter solstice, so in December or January by our calendar.  It was very ancient, almost certainly predating the invention of tragedy, and probably celebrated the cultivation of the grape vines.  (Dionysus was the god of wine.)  It started with a procession, probably followed by animal sacrifices, a ceremony honoring worthy citizens, and other rites. 

[These were followed by competitions in music, singing, dancing, and choral chanting.  After the middle of the 6th century BCE, plays may have been performed—first tragedies and satyr plays, then comedies as well—but they would most likely have been plays that had been performed the previous year at the newer festival in Athens itself.

[That would be the City Dionysia, established by the Tyrant Pisistratus (ca. 600-527 BCE; Tyrant of Athens: 561 BCE, 559-556 BCE, 546-527 BCE).  (The first dramatic contest was held in 535 BCE, when Thespis won the first prize.)  It was here, around the vernal equinox (that is, March to April), that the great dramatic competitions were held: tragedies and satyr plays from the festival’s inception, comedies from 490 BCE. 

[Three selected poets each presented three tragedies and a satyr play.  (When comedies were added in a separate competition, comic writers also presented three plays, but no satyr play.)  The three plays may or may not be thematically linked, and the satyr play would be connected somehow to the tragedies.

[The satyr play, only one of which has survived in its entirety, Cyclops by Euripides (ca. 480-ca. 406 BCE), was a ribald drama having a chorus of satyrs, creatures associated with Dionysus.  The satyr play’s mytho-heroic stories and the language style were similar to those of tragedy, but its plots, titles, themes, characters, and happy endings were reminiscent of comedy.  The chorus of satyrs’ costumes focused on the (permanently erect) phallus, and their language used wordplay and sexual innuendo.  (Aeschylus was noted for his satyr plays, but only one fragment survives.)]