'Playbill': A History of "The National Theatre Magazine"

[When I caught WABC’s 22 October 2023 broadcast of Broadway Backstage Fall Preview, I was delighted to see the brief feature on the printing of Playbill, which happens in a plant in Woodside, Queens.  It gave me the idea of composing a short history of the program magazine for Rick On Theater, the result of which you see below. 

[The reporter on the segment, Charlie Williams, called Playbill “the quintessential magazine of theater and Broadway.”  That’s a little hyperbolic, I suppose, but it’s not wrong.  Danny DeVito, one of several actors in the broadcast introducing plays they’re in this season on Broadway—he was in I Need That, which ran 2 November-30 December 2023 at the American Airlines Theatre—said when asked about the first time he saw his name in a Playbill, “Playbill was always . . . that thing you saved.”

[Actor Michael Urie, who was in the revival of Spamalot at the St. James Theatre that opened on 16 November 2023 (Urie left the cast on 21 January 2024), the co-host of the show with Eyewitness News reporter Michelle Charlesworth, remarked, “This is one of the theater world’s most prized souvenirs.”

[Because of sentiments like those, I’m posting the history of Playbill on ROT.  I hope you enjoy the read.]

If you’ve ever been to a Broadway show, you were handed a Playbill as you took your seat.  Since 1884, the independently edited and printed Playbill’s been the program magazine for Broadway theater, and later Off-Broadway, New York City venues like the Metropolitan Opera House and other Lincoln Center venues, and Carnegie Hall, as well as major theaters in Boston; Philadelphia; Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; Chicago; Houston; Miami, and a number of other cities.  But how did this come to be?

First, let’s step back about a hundred years before what we in the United States know as a Playbill was printed.  First, ‘playbill’ is a generic noun that’s a synonym for ‘program’ (or, if you’re in the United Kingdom or many of its former colonies, ‘programme’—a French word the Brits borrowed, meaning pretty much the same as the American and British words). 

Programs were used in Europe for many kinds of entertainment events as early as the 18th century, such as musical performances, fêtes, athletic events, and so on.  For this post, I’ll stick mostly to theatrical presentations for my examination.

The earliest programs, also called handbills, were short, handwritten, one-page leaflets which merely listed the performers.  They were handed out to patrons as they entered one of the many theaters that began popping up in almost every town across England at the time.

When inexpensive printing became available, theaters started distributing these handbills widely around the marketplace and drinking establishments to entice potential audiences.  One-sheet playbills flooded the streets, spotlighting the names of top performers who drew large crowds.

These playbills told audiences what to expect of the offered performance, such as, perhaps, alterations to a well-known play—say a new ending to Romeo and Juliet in which the lovers survive to say good-bye to one another. 

In the 18th-century predecessor to music hall, the British take on vaudeville, theater managers offered a mixed bill of entertainments.  The program would list the evening’s bill, say a dramatic play followed by lighter fare such as a tightrope walker, a strongman, or slapstick pantomime, and the order in which they’d be presented.

Across the sea in the U.S., a change was brewing as the 19th century began.  The programs were made into little pamphlets with several pages so that advertisements could be sold.  Not only did the ads pay for the programs themselves, but they brought in a little extra income to the theater. 

This development proved very popular all around.  First, of course, the theater benefitted from the additional revenue—theater is a financially precarious enterprise even at the best of times—and the patrons got more interesting tidbits on the show beside the names of the actors, the writer(s), and the creative staff: the director could put in a statement and so could a living dramatist.  Drawings, and later photographs, could be included.

Theater is arguably the most ephemeral of arts.  Once the performance is over, there’s nothing left but the memory.  This new, expanded program was a free souvenir of the event—to be taken home and consumed at leisure and even retained as a keepsake or a memory aid.

(I have hundreds filed away, going back to 1974—and a few from even earlier than that.  I’m not a theatrical packrat; they’re for reference.  I use them all the time as a source of information on plays I saw decades ago when something I’m writing, mostly for Rick On Theater, comes up.  I only wish I’d started keeping my programs long ago when I was seeing some of today’s Golden Oldies!  I wrote about that time in “A Broadway Baby,” posted on ROT, 22 September 2010.)

The program booklets before the advent of the New York Theatre Program Corporation, which eventually became Playbill—I’m coming to that—were paid for by the theater or, in the case of a touring show, the producing company.  Small theaters, music halls, and provincial or country playhouses where there were touring companies or variety acts continued to use the single-sheet handbills.

Incidentally, there was another phenomenon that developed at this juncture.  Patrons in Britain pay for programs—it’s up to £2.50 in London ($3.15) and as much as €5 in Dublin ($5.40)—whereas, in the U.S., we still get them gratis.

From the early 1880s to the beginning of the World War I (1914 in Europe), the larger theaters in London’s West End saw the commercial possibilities in the elaborate theater programs.  The theater managers produced expensive programs full of illustrations and photos of the major actors and scenes from the play to sell to the patrons as souvenirs.

In 1916, the British government instituted an entertainment tax on theater tickets.  The sale of theater programs not only produced income for the impresarios’ pockets, but covered the tax cost as well, so the theater managers didn’t have to raise ticket prices.  The U.S. theater industry never had this burden.

Back in the States, even the advertisers were happy with the new development: it was a way to make direct and virtually one-on-one contact with potential customers.  Mass-circulation newspapers were unknown in the mid- and late 19th century, and theater at the time was the only truly popular entertainment—sort of the TV of its day.  The theater program was one of the few types of printed matter that was widely—and freely—distributed.

The enterprise was a huge success.  Paid advertising, principally for local business, in theater programs underwent a quick and speedy surge and forever changed the theater program.  It also eventually led to the establishment of the company that became Playbill.

An enterprising young man who had arrived in New York City from Ohio as a teenager without money, prospects, or contacts saw that this development was a real business opportunity.  In 1884, Frank Vance Strauss (1863-1939), who later changed his last name to Storrs during World War I because Strauss was German, approached the managers and owners of the larger New York playhouses and offered them a magazine-style theater program at no cost.  Strauss made his money from the program from the advertisers. 

Though the name didn’t appear for decades, this was the beginning of Playbill.

Every theater that signed up for the magazine got pages with the cast list and brief information about the performance—such as setting and time of the action, act and scene breakdowns, and musical numbers—plus a cover in color.  The rest of the program booklet was the same for every theater with short articles on the New York theater scene, stage personalities, and other features—plus the ads.  

The program magazine didn’t have its own title at this point; the cover bore the name of the theater at the top.  In 1911, Strauss named his company the Strauss Magazine Theatre Program and in 1920, his company took the name New York Theatre Program Corporation.  In 1934, the magazine became The Playbill and then simply Playbill in 1957. 

The title font varied from issue to issue until it was standardized in ’57, and the current, distinct typeface appeared in about 1974, with the familiar yellow background having become standard the previous year.    Yellow was selected for the background to the logo because it was the cheapest color available.

Since 2000, variations occur to mark special occasions, such as a green banner replacing the yellow one in October 2008 for the fifth anniversary of Wicked (and again in 2018 for the 10th), or the rainbow banner in June for LGBTQ Pride Month, which debuted in 2014.

The contents of the original magazine changed weekly, which was also how often new plays commonly opened at each theater back then.  (The content of today’s Playbills, aside from the production details, changes monthly.)

When Playbill launched a subscription edition in 1982, the contents of the magazine delivered to subscribers’ homes was identical to the copies distributed at the theaters as far as the features and articles were concerned, but the production information was replaced with listings of Broadway and Off-Broadway shows and news from touring shows and the theater scene around the country and abroad.

Over the years, there have been various different regular features and columns in the magazine, such as “At This Theatre,” a column with historical information on the theater housing the production, “Ask Playbill,” which answers questions about theater from readers and playgoers, and a “Theatre Quiz.”

Most major New York theaters used Strauss’s program, but not all.  The Shubert Company (predecessor to the present-day Shubert Organization), the enterprise of the formidable “Shubert Brothers”—as Lee (1871-1953), Samuel S. (1878-1905), and Jacob J. Shubert (1879?-1963) were universally known collectively—for instance, insisted for many years on publishing its own programs.

In 1891, Strauss merged his company with his main competitor and, by 1905, had standardized the appearance of the program so that the layout, including the advertising space, was uniform.

After World War I ended in 1918, Strauss sold his company to his nephew, Richard M. Huber (ca. 1881-1965).  Strauss had made a great fortune from his enterprise, becoming a true entrepreneur and a leading member of New York City’s social elite.  

His New York Times obituary (as Frank V. Storrs, 9 March 1939) described him as “prominent in the field of theatrical advertising and active for many years in banking and at one time was the owner of a theatre chain.”  The Times added that “he had many financial interests outside the theatrical and advertising fields” and “also owned property in the midtown theatrical section of Manhattan.”

From 1918 onward, the company started printing playbills for all of Broadway and by 1924, Huber’s New York Theatre Program Corporation was printing 16,000,000 programs for over 60 theaters.  Thus began Playbill’s virtual monopoly on supplying theater program printing for New York City’s commercial theaters.

Although Frank Vance Strauss may have conceived the notion of the playbill magazine, Richard Huber gets the credit for starting the New York Theater Program Corporation.  The seeds of today’s Playbill were planted under Huber’s ownership.  The eventual iconic look and content of the magazine began to take shape under Huber. 

Under Huber’s leadership, the magazine gained the name The Playbill and short articles on fashion, automobiles, books, as well as interviews and even jokes were added to the program’s offerings.  The cover art was also standardized in the 1920s, featuring images representing the theater, which stayed the same from show to show.

Early in the 1930s, the artwork on the Playbill covers began to be show-specific, though the title of the production didn’t appear anywhere on the cover.  That first started to happen later in the decade.  By the mid-1940s, the show’s title began to appear above a production photo and the Playbill logo.

The artwork on the Playbill covers were black-and-white production photos until the late 1960s, when individualized cover art appeared, often drawings or graphic art—though they, too, were black and white.  Aside from the colored banner framing the Playbill logo, color wasn’t used for the cover art until after the turn of the 21st century.

In 1956, after 70 years as a Strauss family enterprise, Huber sold the magazine publisher to producer and real estate magnate Roger L. Stevens (1910-98), who in 1961 became the founding chairman (until 1988) of what became the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and then in 1965, the first chairman (through 1969) of what became the National Endowment for the Arts.  

Stevens changed the magazine’s name to just Playbill the year after he bought the company and no longer let a representation of the productions serve as the dominate image on the cover.  Instead, the cover design was nonspecific with the theater’s name and the play’s title inside the program.  The cover design for each theater didn’t change.

Protests from theatergoers caused Stevens to change his decision and Playbill’s colorful band across the top of the cover contained the show's information printed beneath the Playbill logo.  Eventually, the colored strip was standardized into the yellow band of today’s Playbill.

Gilman Kraft (1926-99), a publisher, bought the company in 1960 and hired Arthur T. Birsh (1933?-2021), a master printer, as the manager of the magazine’s printing plant; Kraft then sold it to the conglomerate Metromedia in 1968.  

Birsh worked his way up to president of the company under Kraft, but when Metromedia acquired Playbill, the media conglomerate liked the way Birsh handled the company’s business and kept him on as second-in-command at the corporate level.

When Metromedia and Playbill parted ways in 1973, Birsh left the media conglomerate and became Playbill’s sole owner.  Playbill’s current chief operations officer and vice president since 2016 is Alex Birsh (b. 1989), the third generation of his family to operate the program publisher; he’s the grandson of Arthur Birsh.  (Alex Birsh’s father, Phil Birsh, [b. 1958] is the current CEO and president, having succeeded his father in 1993.)

On the Eyewitness News broadcast on WABC on 22 October 2023, Playbill COO/V.P. Alex Birsh declared, "We truly are quite simply the brand of Broadway."  That’s arguably so in a certain sense, but there have been competitors and niche alternatives to Playbill.

Playbill almost exclusively concentrated on Broadway and Off-Broadway theaters, while Stagebill, founded in 1927, focused on concerts, opera, and dance.  By the late 1990s, Playbill was highly profitable while Stagebill wasn’t, so, to increase revenue, Stagebill entered Playbill’s territory.  The Public Theater and Disney contracted with Stagebill for their shows.  

Disney’s issue was control of advertising content.  Playbill relies on advertising revenue that’s entirely under its authority, but Disney’s policy prohibits the promotion of liquor and tobacco products on its property.  (Disney owns the New Amsterdam Theatre, where its Lion King was playing.)

In response, Playbill produced Showbill, a sister publication started around 1999 that conformed to Disney’s advertising restrictions.  With an alternative available, Disney switched from Stagebill to Showbill for The Lion King (1997-present).  Similar situations occurred at other Broadway theaters and productions.

Playbill also responded to Stagebill’s challenge by producing publications for classic arts houses, particularly venues that were once Stagebill clients, such as Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera, and the New York Philharmonic. 

For these venues, Playbill broke from its typical format and began publishing completely customized programs like Stagebill.  Because of this action and Stagebill’s continuing financial problems, it foundered and Playbill bought up the Stagebill trademark in 2002.  Thus ended the competition for Playbill’s hegemony.

In 1994, Playbill launched Playbill Online (https://playbill.com/) and has increased its digital offerings steadily, along with entries into other media, as the new century unfolded.  My interest here has been on the ink-and-paper publication, so I won’t detail this development.  Wikipedia has a run-down of Playbill’s expansion beyond hard-copy outlets, and I suggest interested ROTters check that out at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playbill#Other_media.

[Many people, including me, speak of Playbill as the concrete reminder of the evanescent theater experience once the curtain drops and the playgoer leaves the playhouse.  I admitted above that I have been keeping my programs, including those that aren’t Playbills, for the past 50 years, and that I wish that I’d kept them from earlier times.

[The fact is that I did keep my theater programs from my childhood playgoing—I just didn’t keep them permanently.  I brought them home, read them, looked at the pictures, and then sometimes used them for something.  Here’s a case in point:

[The first Broadway show I saw on Broadway (as opposed to pre-Broadway in Washington, D.C., or on the National Tour) was Fiorello!; the second one I saw was My Fair Lady.  That would make it 1959, ’60, or ’61—7th or 8th grade.

[In those years, my Washington middle school had a music class as a regular part of the curriculum and all the students kept a folder for our music sheets.  It was an ordinary manilla folder, and we were supposed to decorate it, presumably with something related to music.  

[The year I saw MFL, I cut up the Playbill and used the still photos from the show to decorate my music folder!  The Playbill’s cover photo, which was Liza (Julie Andrews, of course) sitting on the steps of Covent Garden, holding a bunch of flowers ("Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?"), was the center pic of my folder’s cover, with the other shots from the Playbill scattered around “randomly.”  I can still visualize it!  

[Now, here’s something I’d never put together before 2021: the chronology of this seminal experience:

[Since I would have made my folder at the start of the school year, and Fiorello! opened at the end of November 1959—early in my 7th-grade year—I probably saw it that Christmas vacation.  (I’d have turned 13 during that holiday.)  We must have gone back to New York City sometime later that school year, maybe spring break. (Both sets of my grandparents lived in NYC.)

[I suspect my family saw MFL then, since if we’d waited until Christmas of 8th grade, I would have used something else to make my music folder; I must have already had the Playbill when school started for 8th grade.  So I must have seen MFL whenever spring break was in 1960 and held onto the Playbill.

[That also means I saw Andrews in TV’s Cinderella before I saw her on stage.  I already knew who she was because of all the hype about her appearance in MFL (which had opened on 15 March 1956), but Cinderella was on TV in March 1957 (see “Cinderella: Impossible Things Are Happening (CBS-TV, 31 March 1957),” posted on ROT on 25 April 2013).]

Shakespeare REMIX

[My friend Erin Woodward, who teaches theater in the New York City public schools, has been engaged in an after-school program called Shakespeare REMIX for several years.  I’ve seen a couple of the program’s performances from her school and I find it a fascinating and innovative effort in arts education—or rather, the use of the arts, in this case theater, as a teaching paradigm—not to teach theater precisely, but to teach . . . well, intellectual curiosity and inquiry.  I hope you’ll see what I mean by that somewhat cryptic characterization.  In any case, when I saw the first REMIX performance last year, I knew I had to blog on the program.  Now, here’s my effort to that end.]

In 2001, a group of theater professionals, some teaching artists, others working theater pros (including actors, directors, managers, and playwrights), launched the Epic Theatre Center.  (In 2007, the company changed its name to Epic Theatre Ensemble to “reflect Epic’s identity as a collective of actors, writers, directors, educators and activists who share a passion for utilizing the theatre to empower voices, foster dialogue, inspire self-exploration and spur social change.”  Neither name seems to be related to the Brechtian concept of Epic Theater, however.)  Among this founding collective were some of the company’s current leaders: Executive Director Ron Russell, a director, and Artistic Director Melissa Friedman and Associate Artistic Director James Wallert, both actors.  Their thrust from the start was to forge links between schools and students on the one side and performing artists and the professional stage on the other.  The company focused its efforts on integrating youth development, the training of citizen-artists, and the production of politically-oriented plays (both new and from the classic repertoire).  In 2005, Epic Theatre was instrumental in founding the Bronx High School for Writing and Communication Arts (BHSWCA), a New York City public school on the Evander Childs Educational Campus on East Gun Hill Road in Williamsbridge with a unique writing curriculum into which the arts are integrated.  

That same year, Epic commissioned No Child . . . from Nilaja Sun, an actor and teacher in the New York City system since 1998.  No Chid . . . is based on Sun’s experiences teaching theater over eight years in New York City public schools, composited into the fictional Malcolm X High School in the play.  A one-actor play with a title derived from the controversial George W. Bush-era No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, No Child . . ., described by in the New York Times as “a lightning-paced, multi-character solo play in the style of John Leguizamo,” was presented in 2006 at the Barrow Street Theatre in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village with Nijala as a version of herself (named Miss Sun).  The play received good reviews and won the 2007 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Solo Show, the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Solo Performance, the Outer Critics’ John Gassner Playwriting Award, the Theatre World Award, the Obie Award for Performance, and a nomination for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance.  In essence, No Child . . ., though based on Sun’s experiences teaching and directing theater in the schools predating Epic’s founding, is a portrait of the troupe’s philosophy and practices, especially the program it calls Shakespeare REMIX.

In its first half dozen years, Epic Theatre launched such programs as the yearly young people’s Summer Intensive which evolved into the Epic NEXT Arts Leadership Program, the Shakespeare REMIX after-school program, and the five-week Youth Theatre Festival (Epic YTF) which presents performances from Epic NEXT, Heather Raffo’s Places of Pilgrimage residencies, and Shakespeare REMIX.  In 2011, Russell became Executive Director of Epic, Friedman was named Artistic Director, and Wallert assumed his role as Associate Artistic Director.  The company’s mission, in their own words, “is to create bold work with and for diverse communities that promotes vital discourse and social change.”  This they accomplish by encouraging students to be “creative and engaged citizens,” putting forward powerful ideas that challenge people’s thinking, and fostering collaborations among artists, students, and opinion-makers to produce plays about important issues of our time, such as their 2010 New York première of Sarah Ruhl’s Passion Play.  “Because theatre has a JOB in this world,” insists Russell of the troupe’s purpose.  “It is not an entertainment.  It is an incredibly powerful tool for social change.  For awakening, particularly in young people, a thirst for rigor, and self-expression, and courage, the courage of speaking with truth and clarity in front of an audience . . . .” 

One student in an Epic program declared, “Epic pushes us to be citizen artists rather than just artists—artists that have something to say about their country, their community.”  Another, now a college student, said that “the most important thing I took away from the program was political awareness,” and added,

I’m 99 percent sure that if Epic had not come to my school I would not have been anywhere near as involved in any of the social or political issues that I am now.  I definitely would not be at a liberal arts college.  I wouldn’t be here.

Other student performers spoke of increased self-confidence born of the work with Epic, the ability to be self-assertive, particularly when confronted with teasing or bullying over perceived differences. 

In 2003, Epic launched its after-school youth-development program Shakespeare REMIX at Chelsea Career & Technical Education High School in lower Manhattan (just west of SoHo).  Epic co-founder Melissa Friedman, a teaching artist with Theatre for a New Audience and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, had been working at Chelsea with Robert Mitchell, veteran English Language Arts (ELA) teacher and Coordinator of Student Activities at the school.  Mitchell, now the vice principal of Chelsea CTE, expressed interest in doing an after-school Shakespeare program. (Chelsea CTE is where Erin Woodward teaches theater.  She’s contributed to Rick On Theater—Erin’s the author of “The Cheapening of the Standing O,” posted on 8 February 2015—and her father, Kirk, is a frequent guest-blogger on ROT, including “Thoughts On Rehearsals,” his last contribution on 26 December.) 

REMIX grew to include three New York City public high schools in Lower Manhattan (Chelsea CTE), Harlem (Urban Assembly School for the Performing Arts), and the Bronx (BHSWCA). (The program briefly expanded to four city schools with the addition of the Frances Perkins Academy at Automotive High School in Brooklyn, but currently operates in only the original three.)  The program takes its name from the recording industry where a “remix” is a piece of music which has been changed from its original form by adding, removing, or altering elements—or any combination of these processes—to create something new.  Any work of art—a song, a painting, a book, a video, or a photograph, say—can be remixed.  

In Epic’s Shakespeare REMIX, teams of actor-mentors work with the students (about 200 in all Epic partner schools) for four afternoons a week over a three-month period.  They discuss the chosen play’s social and political issues fully, analyze Shakespeare’s text, and then intertwine their own writing into Shakespeare’s original dialogue.  In the words of an Epic promotion statement, “Students remix the meaning of an original Shakespeare piece with the help of a professional artistic mentor to push their thoughts far beyond measures they have imagined.  A bridge is created in between the time of the plays and their time once they’re able to recreate an original piece and make it their own. At the festival each borough presents their remixed piece which provides the youth with a captivating experience that can encourage them to get deeper in touch with their theatrical side.”

The final remixed scripts, Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr., an Epic actor who’s appeared in several REMIX productions, estimates, usually contain about 10 to 20% student writing, leaving the rest as Shakespeare composed it.  “The students are using rigorous research and text analysis, combined with their native earnestness, empathy, thoughtfulness, and insightfulness . . .,” Epic Executive Director Russell declares, “to sculpt a truly original vision of theatre that will be impactful on their community.”  The program culminates in fully produced plays with students performing alongside professional theater artists.

“The rhythm of Shakespeare’s text is the hook,” says Friedman, Epic’s Director of Education, “and the students connect it with some of the kinds of poetry that they like, like rap and spoken word.  It’s the way into his plays, and they really respond to it.”  As if to illustrate Friedman’s assertion, a 16-year-old REMIX student actor, who’d never encountered Shakespeare’s plays before he worked on Much Ado About Nothing in 2012, confessed, “It just blew my mind.  You go through and find the metaphors and entendres.  Reading it was pretty cool, but when we started to stage it, you saw how much he wrote for actors.  There was just so much freedom.”

Student actor Kayla Bennett of the Bronx agrees: “I like it because it’s not easy.  It’s not regular words.  You have to look inside the text and really understand it and break it down.  Once you know what he’s saying, you know what to do onstage.  Because it’s a challenge to do so, that’s why I like it so much.”  Actor Simmons explains, echoing Friedman’s words:

Epic feels that working with young people on Shakespeare, parsing out the language, understanding the language and using that language within the context of their own lives is very important to understanding themselves—understanding the world while at the same time broadening their experience, broadening their vocabulary, being able to take the words that somebody else has written in heightened language and be able to speak that in front of people, we feel is crucial to their development as young people.

Then he adds: “Once they begin to understand what's happening in the play and what the story is, they begin to understand what's actually being said on the page.  They begin to broaden their vocabulary and they begin to be able to talk about how what's going on in Verona in the 15th century affects them right now.”  Simmons continues: “Teaching artists who are in the play come in and work with the students, help them learn the language, teach them the backstory and then they come in and see the play.  They have a different experience.  They have the backstory. Experiential learning is the way to go with Shakespeare.”  This is the educational rationale of Shakespeare REMIX; it validates both the students’ experiences and perceptions and the universality and impact of Shakespeare’s 400-year-old observations and depictions.

Working with theater designers, the student actor-playwrights also learn about lighting, costuming, and sound as they rehearse their remixed plays for performance before audiences of peers, parents, and the public at an Off-Broadway theater.  Finally, working with Epic artists (and sometimes school faculty as well) as mentors and castmates and directed by a member of the Epic company, the students present this entirely new piece of theater, speaking Shakespeare’s words and their own to connect these classic plays to their time and their world through the interconnected texts of five centuries ago and today.  Friedman insists that the socio-political points in the remixed text come totally from the students themselves, not some ambitious director.  For example, for Harlem’s Urban Assembly School for the Performing Arts’ Taming of the Shrew, directed by Friedman in 2016, the students wrote new scenes focusing on the play’s subjugation of women and turned the play into a call for justice.  The new play was presented as a live taping for TV of the diegetic Crystal Sly Show for the ruling tyrant of a patriarchal society in which women have no right to vote and are required to submit to arranged marriages.  As for what the young playmakers want adults in their audiences to take away from their efforts, an actor playing Petruchio demanded, “I want to not only show the problem but put them metaphorically in the driver’s seat and say, ‘You can fix this.’  I want the audience personally to feel like, ‘Yes, there’s a problem.  How do we fix it?’”

In the remix of Richard III by Chelsea Career & Technical Education High School in 2008, the student co-authors added this warning:

Look out for “Richards.”  Don’t look for the curved back or misformed shape, ’cause you gotta look inside a man to witness his face.

After the political campaign year of 2016, that sounds mighty perceptive and astute—except that this Richard III  was created seven full years before a certain presumptive presidential nominee rose to political prominence and the Oval Office.  So, prophetic as well, then.  (In the 2016 remix of Macbeth in last year’s YTF, one of the potential successors to Macbeth’s throne is a buffoonish, Trump-like corporate mogul named Paul.  Who says kids today are oblivious to current events and politics?)

In 2009, Shakespeare REMIX won the Coming Up Taller Award (now known as the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award), a recognition of exemplary community arts and humanities programs made jointly by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, and the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. (At the 4 November White House award ceremony, First Lady Michelle Obama, Honorary Chairman of the President’s Committee, proclaimed of the recipients, ”You ask our young people to dream and you give them the tools to fulfill those dreams.  You affirm that their contributions are valuable and that their success matters to all of us.”) 

In a review of the 2010 REMIX production of Othello by students of BHSWCA, Nicholas Job wrote on New York Theatre Review:

Ron Russell [Epic’s Executive Director and the director of Othello] . . . has done a wonderful thing with these students and this piece.  By challenging his student actors to create an entirely new piece from the fabric of Othello, he’s empowered them with a unique understanding of Shakespeare’s words and meaning.  In addition, by giving them an opportunity to make their acting debuts with Shakespearian verse, in what many would consider a challenging play even to professionals, he’s instilled in them the confidence to handle classical text at an early age.  It’s exciting, inspiring, and at times, incredibly entertaining.  But don’t think just because his cast has only two professional actors Mr. Russell is interested in playing it safe.  He makes the bold choice to employ cross-gender casting for the cunning soldier at the center of the play . . . .

(BHSWCA’s Othello, which Job described as “a bit more of a mash-up and less a Remix,” was moved to the present day, with Desdemona the head of an entertainment law firm who’s “eventually s[u]nk by an untimely death, an affair, and rampant mistrust amongst her employees.”)

On Monday evening, 21 March 2016, I went up to Harlem’s National Black Theatre at 5th Avenue and 125th Street/Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard to see Shakespeare REMIX: Henry 4, presented by Epic Theatre Ensemble’s Youth Theatre Festival.  It was my first exposure to the work of this program, but as I’m a firm supporter of theater and arts programs in schools, and because the cast of Henry 4 were Erin’s students at Chelsea, I knew I had to be there to see what it was all about as well as to show my support for Erin and her ensemble.  (In 2017, I went up to Harlem again to see CTE’s Much Ado  About Nothing remix on Saturday evening, 18 March.)  Epic YTF ran at NBT from 4 March to 5 April, with Henry 4 in performance on 19, 21 (two shows), and 22 March.  (The other plays, presented by different schools, in 2016’s YTF were Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew; 10467, a play, named for a Bronx ZIP code, about the inequities of New York City schools funding created by participants in Epic NEXT; Noura, a work in progress by Heather Raffo, with Ibsen’s A Doll’s House; and Shakespeare’s Macbeth.)  I was so taken with the concept, not to mention the work demonstrated by the student performers and writers, that I immediately began thinking about learning more about Shakespeare REMIX and almost certainly writing a blog post on the program and its process.

Chelsea CTE’s Henry 4 was moved all the way to 2042, an election year in which President Henry Bollingbroke is running for his second term.  The country is under siege by foreign powers, civil rights militants, the news media, and the National Rifle Association.  (Erin played one of the TV news crew and an NRA minion, as well as serving as a co-producer.)  The NRA is backing the president’s opponent, Hotspur Percy, while Bollingbroke is trying to groom his son, Harrison, to succeed him (though it’s daughter Henrietta who’s the more activist).  As the program put it, “Part family drama, part barroom comedy”—and I’d add political intrigue—“Henry 4 gives us a glimpse of America on the brink.”  In its cynical view of contemporary American politics during the 2016 extreme campaign season, the team of four student writers and co-directors Asher Gill, a student with Epic NEXT and an actress and model who’s a member of the 10467 ensemble, and James Wallert, an Epic founder and Associate Artistic Director of the company, have given us plenty of skullduggery, corruption, betrayal, a helluva lot of gunplay, and, to paraphrase the line in Irma La Douce, everything, in fact, that makes politics worth doing.  But, my God!  If our politics gets half as nasty in the next 25 years as the cynical creators of Henry 4 predict—I doubt we’ll make it that far!  (This isn’t a complaint, just a horrified observation.  I mean, satire is one thing . . . but, wow!  Thank goodness, I probably won’t be around to see it.)

As you’ve seen from the few examples I’ve cited already, remixes recontextualize Shakespeare’s plots, often moving the time up a few centuries, though not all are reset in our era.  The students at UASPA, for example, transposed 2016’s Macbeth up to the 1890s in a South American dictatorship ruled by a military junta.  A 2011 remix of Romeo and Juliet was reset to 1938 in southern Germany following Kristallnacht.  The daughter of a wealthy Jewish family has fallen in love with the son of a neighboring family who’re flirting with National Socialism. (CTE’s Much Ado was reset in contemporary times, but took place in Messina High School, a New York City school where “gossip fills the hallways, classrooms, and bathrooms.”  Yes, that’s right—there were scenes set in the school johns, complete with stalls!)  Erin, who’s worked with Shakespeare REMIX since her second year at Chelsea CTE—she’s also involved at various levels with Epic’s in-class projects as well—identified three REMIX techniques that the students have used: building new writing and scenes within the established concept of the play (2004’s Romeo and Juliet, ’05’s Much Ado About Nothing, ’06’s Hamlet, ’08’s Richard III, ’08’s Winter’s Tale, ’12’s Henry VI), a modern retelling that runs parallel to the original text (’09’s Macbeth, ’11’s Measure for Measure), and, as applied to Henry 4, a combination of existing Shakespearean text and new student writing within a specific, original concept and setting (’07’s Othello, ’12’s Hamlet, ’13’s Twelfth Night, ’14’s Romeo and Juliet, ’16’s Henry IV.

Epic formally recruits participants for REMIX by visiting every ELA class at the partner schools before auditions and interviews.  Each school’s faculty also informally identifies students to work with REMIX, recruiting when they see students they think should be involved.  “I try to pull kids in if I know them,” explains Erin, “or I  observe behavior that suggests that REMIX would be a good fit.”  The application and selection of student participants occurs in the first semester of the year, so Erin and other faculty don’t have much chance to get to know new students vey well.

Many of the students are failing classes or exhibiting discipline problems.  According to Friedman, however, “As participants learn to master Shakespeare’s challenging text, their school attendance and grades improve, and their confidence rises.”  A report earlier this year on the Daily Beast, the on-line journal of reporting and opinion, says that through Shakespeare REMIX, Epic has “greatly impacted their students’ academic performance and empowered a new generation of artist-activists.”  Friedman adds, “On average, 95 percent of Shakespeare REMIX participants finish high school, and 90 percent of graduates go to college.”  In the 2015-16 school year, Epic reports, “92 percent of Remix seniors applied to at least eight colleges and received acceptances to at least four.”  (In the schools where Epic works, the average for college attendance is 50%.  Epic NEXT, the company’s three-year mentoring program, maintains a college-attendance rate of 100%, the theater reports.) 

All students are welcome, but they must fill out a simple application and then, depending on whether their interest is in onstage or backstage work, do an audition or interview.  Every student who expresses an interest in the program may participate; the average ensemble is about two dozen.  There’s no limit to the size of the ensemble “as long as everyone involved has a task and feels useful and excited,” explains Erin.  She declared, “We want more rather than less,” and repeaters are common.  Most REMIX participants do at least two projects during their time at the partner school.  During the workshop period, Shakespearean and student writing is read and performed until it becomes familiar, and students all have a chance to act bits of the play in front of the ensemble.  Specific casting doesn’t occur until the play has been remixed, however, typically well into the rehearsal process. 

The project’s director selects the play on which each REMIX session will work (though Erin says that she provides input—as I imagine the faculty at the other partner schools do as well—and now, as the program has become part of the school’s milieu, the students also make requests). The texts students start with are pre-cut by the director—though, of course, changes are made as the project develops.  Typically, the REMIX project is based on a single Shakespeare play; the histories have been the only exceptions at Chelsea (Henry 6 incorporated all parts of Henry VI and Richard III; Henry 4 used Henry IV, parts 1 and 2).  The director pre-cuts the texts with which students start; in the case of the histories, for example, the initial text the students see could be a small bit of one play and the majority of another. 

According to Erin, the choice of play affects the way a process unfolds.  “The only really consistent effect that I see in the process,” says Erin, “is that some plays inspire characters to be created, while others inspire characters already in existence to be further fleshed out.”  The development process, says Erin,  has evolved and changed over the years, but the overall arc of the process is pretty much the same from project to project.

While the prime goal of Epic’s REMIX program isn’t  to train theater artists, NYTR’s Nicholas Job remarked that “Shakespeare newcomer Brianna Del Rio does a nice job with her portrayal of the ruthless Iago.  I suspect we’ll be seeing more of her and her fellow Remixers in the future on the New York stage . . . .”  Working closely with teaching artists (defined by Marit Ulvund as “a professional artist working in and through the arts in an educational or community setting” in her essay “In the age of the teaching artist: What teaching artists are and do”) has had an aspirational impact on some students and, over the years now, REMIX has fielded National Champions and New York City runners-up in the English Speaking Union’s National Shakespeare Competition.  

[I was able to get some input for this article from Erin Woodward but her work schedule precluded much follow-up.  Associate Artistic Director James Wallert, a founder of the Epic Theatre Ensemble, was willing to submit to an interview, but ultimately his schedule also made him unavailable.  The result has been that I’ve composed this article based mostly on secondary-source research, from which I was unable to answer all my questions.  Nonetheless, I believe the REMIX program is well worth covering on Rick On Theater and so I have gone ahead with posting this profile even in its incomplete state. 

[Epic’s office and mailing address is 55 West 39th Street, Suite 302, New York, New York 10018; e-mail:  epic@epictheatreensemble.org  phone: 212-239-1770.]

To Note, Or Not To Note

A theater program booklet is a useful thing. In its most basic form, a program tells you the names of the characters and the actors playing them. It may also tell you the locations and times of the story; in musicals, it often lists the songs by title. Programs generally also name the creative and administrative people. All this is useful for those of us who like to know whom to credit for what. The brief biographies of company members are also nice reminders of what else these folks have done and where they got their experience and training. I like that; it helps me keep track of people I know and learn about new people. It also helps me understand why some actors or directors or designers did what I just saw. It puts them all in perspective in a way. Beyond that, the program may also be a wonderfully instructive document about the play, playwright, director, or theater company. This usually emanates from a “program note” of some kind, often written for or by the play’s director or the company’s artistic director. The notes seem to fall into two basic categories: specific explications of the production and general background essays. In this country, the latter is rarer than the former, and more’s the pity.

European programs, in fact, may end up being small texts about the playwright’s artistic philosophy and life, the cultural history of her or his milieu, or theoretical discussions of art or political movements which inspired the director and designers. Rarely do such programs go into detail about the purposes or techniques of the staging itself. As audience, we are given some data that the artists used, and left to make our own interpretations and judgments. Essentially, the performance is expected to stand on its own. In the U.S., Minneapolis’s Guthrie Theater’s and Washington’s Shakespeare Theatre Company’s have been excellent examples of this kind of program. The notes in the program of the recent Lincoln Center Festival production of the Théâtre du Soleil’s Les Éphémères contained several revealing and interesting articles, including excerpts of an interview with company director, Ariane Mnouchkine. The same was so of the Katona József Theatre’s program for Ivanov, which director Támas Ascher had moved from 19th-century Russia to mid-20th-century Hungary. (The Katona program also included a short essay about the company, with which I was unfamiliar. It provided some information about their approach to theater, especially the classics, as well as some company history.) The recently-departed Broadway production of Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County provided a family tree for the very large cast of characters (with photos of the actors playing the family members and others) so spectators could keep the relationships straight.

Usually in this country, however, when program notes are published, they are generally statements of what the director or playwright, or both, were trying to accomplish. This was the case with two Off-Off-Broadway productions I recall from some years ago of, first, Romeo and Juliet and, second, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Both companies were attempting reinterpretations, and both felt it necessary to justify and explain their interpretations. My reaction, though, was dichotomous. If the ideas are well thought-out and the work is clear, the notes become superfluous. I don’t need to be told what I can plainly see. If the ideas are muddled and unfulfilled on stage, the note serves only to illuminate what might have happened, but didn’t. In the first instance, there is an implicit insult to the audience: we need help to see what’s right before our eyes. In the second, it suggests the company doesn’t have to worry about actuating its ideas: if they can’t get them on stage, they can write them in the program. Robert Brustein noted in an essay on “Reworking the Classics“ that this kind of production is “at best a platform for ideas.” He concluded, however, that it was “at worst an occasion for pranks,” and since what I saw on stage showed me nothing new about either play beyond the program notes, that’s all that the two productions seem to have been.

The R&J asserted a new approach. The production, with the Capulet party a backyard barbecue and the Tybalt-Mercutio duel fought with aluminum bats on a baseball diamond, was decked out as middle-class American suburbia. In “Notes From The Director” in the program, the director explained, “moral corruption masquerading as religious zeal is explored . . . tragically in Romeo and Juliet.” He believed that it “is a substantially different play thematically than traditional stagings and scholarship have rendered.” Invoking unspecified “dark forces,” the director saw Friar Laurence not as a “bumbling fool,” but “a dominant motivating force in the tragedy,” convinced that any sacrifice--even the lives of the two teenagers--is justified in order to heal the feud between the Capulets and Montagues.

The director based this interpretation on several “facts,” citing evidence from the text for his assertions, and the concept might well have worked at least theatrically, not to say intellectually, if he had followed through with it in his production. Only one of the proofs the director offered focused specifically on Friar Laurence: the priest’s opening speech makes no mention of God and refers to “a sophisticated moral view that is far more based in natural or pagan philosophies than in Christian teachings” such as that all things are equally good and bad and “that death is an essential component of the cycle of life.” His “other evidence” was that the lovers are called “star-crossed”--an astrological reference opposed to “the Christian concepts of . . . free will”; Juliet is 13--a magical number--and was weaned on the day of a great earthquake; Juliet describes the devil in 13 different ways when she learns Romeo has slain Tybalt. Except for the remarks regarding his first speech, none of this actually has nothing to do with the Friar--at least it didn’t in this staging.

To support his interpretation, the director adjusted the script. Principally, he gave the Prologues and Prince Escalus’ epilogue to the Friar, thus lending him an air of prescience that isn’t born out in the rest of the text. Additionally, in consonance with the company’s advertising that there would be “magic” in the production, the Friar performed two brief parlor tricks. Before the first Prologue, with several pantomimed street fights behind him, the Friar, sitting at the front center of the playing area flanked by a hooded bride on one side and groom on the other, cut out two paper dolls--one male and one female. As he rose to utter the first Prologue, the two dolls, cut from flash paper, burst into flame in his hands. In the second magic trick, at the end of the marriage scene, Friar Laurence made a paper bouquet appear in his hands. Neither trick elicited any reaction from the company. Nor, for that matter, did any characters react to the Friar’s putative machinations. In fact, other than these changes, the play proceeded fairly traditionally for the most part (aside, of course, from the overlay of American suburbia).

None of this seemed to raise the possibility of Friar Laurence’s control above that of an intellectual curiosity. The Friar’s part itself is simply too small, and while he may not be a “bumbling fool,” other, non-Machiavellian interpretations, such as a sincerely involved friend, have been played successfully. To create the impression that Friar Laurence is a controlling force in this tragedy, the director needed to put him on stage more and make his presence more substantially felt. There are a great many supernatural references in all of Shakespeare; that there are several in Romeo and Juliet does not mean that the Friar is the source.

The “Director’s Note” in the program for Midsummer, the second example of staging that didn’t carry through on the promise of a program note, stated that the director was “treating the ‘Dream’ as a new play.” After 400 years, that may be a little presumptuous, but the production did contain several ideas that were, to say the least, curious. Most, such as giving Puck and Peaseblossom/Egeus each a set of drums upstage which they played at selected moments or providing Bottom with an immense, green phallus along with his donkey’s head, didn’t seem to add anything to “the grand humor of Shakespeare,” but one might have, had the director and cast followed through on it. The director promised to explore the animalism in us all. Unhappily, they seem to have relegated it to little more than a design element, “an occasion for pranks.”

The costumes in this Midsummer were essentially non-representational--mostly tights and leotards or other tops. Color and the style of the top, along with certain accouterments such as a bright red miniskirt or a studded belt or wristlet, indicated character, but there was no attempt to create a specific period or culture. The fairies, however, were given definite animal elements for their costumes. Oberon had a pelt strapped to his left thigh and a piece of leopard-skin cloth over his right shoulder; Titania wore a lizard-skin body stocking; Puck wore leopard-skin tights, and Cobweb had a small lizard appliquéd on the back of her leotard. In some cases, animal images were continued in make-up, such as the spider web on Titania’s left foot and the “warts” on Cobweb’s face. The male fairies--Oberon, Puck, and Peaseblossom--were bare-chested, an added suggestion of their feral nature.

Of these characters, only Cobweb behaved in any way like an animal. She walked about in a crouch, her arms dangling in front of her and her tongue flicking in and out. She usually entered with Peaseblossom, whose character I was unable to determine, her left arm curled around his right leg as if she were a lizard clinging to a tree branch. Except for a stomping dance twice performed by Oberon and Titania, none of the fairies’ other behavior was in any clear way animalistic. Director McDanal seems to have left it to the costumier, uncredited in the program, to fulfill the “sometimes bestial” part of his concept.

Now, unlike making drummers out of Puck and Peaseblossom/Egeus--the same actor plays both characters, and he drums in both guises--the view of the forest folk as animal-like, even “bestial,” could be useful to the production, particularly if the idea were carried over to the lovers as they go deeper and deeper into the woods--and fall deeper and deeper under its fairy spell. Passion--love, fear, jealousy, hatred--has an animal aspect: in the grip of passion, people can behave more like beasts than thinking humans. But for the play to make this point, the production must commit to the idea and go with it. Animal images can be a wonderful, useful, and liberating technique for an actor, but a few costume trappings don’t accomplish anything. An actor must develop the image and communicate it in behavior--speech and gesture--to the audience, otherwise it adds little to the production.

It’s too bad. Among the confusion of incongruous images in this production, here was a good idea that went astray. Bestial humans and animal spirits could go together nicely, and using a fantasy-comedy to explore our brutishness might make a strong point. It could certainly be a stunning theatrical premise. The cast, though, didn’t follow through with the visual images created in their costumes and, having devised this interpretation, the director couldn’t or wouldn’t commit to it as a real production concept. In both these reinterpretations, the productions and staging concepts that might have born them out on stage remained imprinted only in the program. As I warned, the presence of the program notes gave away the decent ideas these directors had and showed how poorly they realized them with live actors.

One of the best innovative productions I ever saw, a Macbeth also Off-Off-Broadway, had no notes to explain what I was seeing. I had to figure it out myself. This may have required a little astuteness, but it wasn’t really all that hard. It was also fun, and gave me a sense of accomplishment. Determining, for instance, that Macbeth was in the hold of evil forces, not just swayed by the power of suggestion or caught up in a tide of action--other possible interpretations--this company trebled the presence of the witches, the symbols and representatives of the evil forces. By being cast as the servants, messengers, and other occasional characters and being placed silently on stage during all the scenes of portent and moment, the witches seemed to be controlling events and guiding the fates of Macbeth and his wife. The director had a message for me, and I got it. And he never needed to explain it to me.