"Art That Flows From a Will to Live": Marina Abramović, Performance Artist

by Jessica Testa 

[Marina Abramović (b. 1946 in Yugoslavia) is a pioneering performance artist, best known for her works that explore the physical limitations of the body, as well as the body’s potential as a vehicle to spiritual metamorphosis.  Born in Belgrade (now the capital of Serbia), Abramovic studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade from 1965 to 1970 and in Zagreb, Croatia, at the Academy of Fine Arts in 1972.

[("When people ask me where I am from, I never say Serbia,” Abramović declares.  “I always say I come from a country that no longer exists" [Sean O'Hagan, “Interview: Marina Abramović,” Guardian [New York] 2 Oct. 2010, Interview: Marina Abramović | Marina Abramović | The Guardian].  What became the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was formed in 1918 after World War I and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, gaining recognition in 1922.  It became the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia after World War II in 1945, and dissolved into six independent republics in 1992.)

[She was among the first generation of performance artists of the 1970s, a group that often resorted to using their own bodies as an artistic medium.  Her works often explore extremes of sensation, and, frequently, the audience is invited to participate in the intense, and often exhausting, painful performances.  Aramović's presentations include sound, video, photography, language, and sculpture, in addition to using her body as the central medium for her work.

[She later regularly collaborated with German artist Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen, 1943-2020; German performance artist known for his ambitious conceptual works) on other performative works, exploring the capacities of the body, as well as constructions of gender and social systems in their pieces.  

[In 1976, following her marriage to Serbian performance and conceptual artist Neša Paripović (b. 1942), Abramović went to Amsterdam to give a performance and decided to move there permanently.  She divorced Paripović in 1976 (m. 1970) and began living with Ulay, with whom she worked for about twelve years.

[From 1990 to 1995, she was a visiting professor at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris and at the Berlin University of the Arts.  From 1992 to 1996. she also served as a visiting professor at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg and from 1997 to 2004, she was a professor for performance art at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Braunschweig.

[Abramović also began traveling around the world to perform, exploring the body and nature with Ulay as a means of achieving spiritual transformation, in locations ranging from the Gobi Desert to the Tibetan mountains, and the Great Wall of China (1988).  At the end of this project, her relationship with Ulay dissolved.  

[She has exhibited her work at the Venice Biennale, where she won a Golden Lion award in 1997 (and met Italian contemporary artist Paolo Canevari, b. 1963, whom she would later marry), and at Documenta in Kassel, the Whitney Biennial, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Art Basel in Switzerland, and the Kumamoto Museum of Contemporary Art in Kumamoto, Japan, among many other venues.

[Abramović and Canevari moved to New York in 2002 and married in 2006.  She bought an estate in upstate Hudson, a small city in the center of New York’s eastern border of with Massachusetts, that became her private residence and a meeting place for performance art.  Abramović divorced Canevari and currently lives and works in Amsterdam and New York City.

[Eleven years ago, I posted a two-part article entitled “Performance Art” (7 and 10 November 2013).  It was a short history and exegesis of the artform as I understood it (and it would be pertinent to this post), so I will republish my definition of performance art (slightly edited and reformatted) for readers who haven’t encountered this hybrid of theater and art (my characterization):

Also known as “live art,” “living art,” or “body art,” performance art exists at the conjunction of the worlds of art and theater.  Performance, as it’s often called, is the demonstration or execution of the ideas of Conceptual Art, defined as “art of which the material is the concept.”  (Other, earlier art influences include Dadaism, Futurism, Constructivism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, and Pop Art.)  

Conceptual Art, which flourished between the mid-’50s to the mid-’70s, elevated ideas and the process of creation over product and technique, and insisted that art can’t be bought or sold.  Like performance art, it can’t be commodified and brought home for display.  

Accepted as a separate medium of artistic expression in 1970s, performance, however, defies precise definition, asserts RoseLee Goldberg (b. 1947), an art historian, critic, and curator who’s lectured at many institutions and schools and who wrote the most comprehensive texts on it.  (Goldberg’s Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present, originally published in 1979, was reissued in 2011 in an edition that brings the history of performance up to the first decade of the 21st century.)  

As performance artist Laurie Anderson (b. 1947), a composer and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings a variety of experimental music and art rock styles, puts it: “This is literally living art that continues to evolve and expand.” 

Except that it’s live art by artists, in fact, few practitioners will agree on what comprises performance art and the artists and writers about performance keep expanding the scope of the definition with each succeeding wave of experimentation and exploration.  By nature, performance art constantly changes and evolves, as the artists adopt and adapt new technologies and media, engulfing new ideas and concepts as they pursue their aims.  

The event might be performed only once (most common in the early years) or repeated several times, with or without a prepared script, improvised spontaneously or rehearsed over many months.  The works might be presented in solo performances or in groups, with lighting, music, or visuals made by the artists themselves or in collaboration with other artists.  Performances could take place in galleries, theaters, museums, streets, parking lots, public squares, parks, open fields, vacant lots, bars, night clubs, lofts, or any space the artist selects that’s suited to the piece.  

In general, however, in addition to being live, it’s also predominantly presentational and typically involves improvisation.  The artist-creator-performer, using her or his body as the primary artistic medium (either as canvas or as sculpture, or both), combines dance, music, drama, and often technology like film, video, projections, or computer imagery, as well as any other media that the artist can adapt and apply.  

Performance also encompasses behaviors outside the performing and visual arts like ritual, work activities, sports, and daily tasks.

[Because performance art is ephemeral, photos or videos are frequently the art objects displayed after the live performance and sold to subsidize the work and provide the artists with income.  They are also the only record of the art event that can be preserved or archived—with the caveat that the “liveness,” one of the fundamental criteria of performance art, is missing.

[(Note, incidentally, that despite my labeling performance art as a fusion of theater and art, Abramović has insisted: “To be a performance artist, you have to hate theatre.  Theatre is fake . . . .  The knife is not real, the blood is not real, and the emotions are not real.  Performance is just the opposite: the knife is real, the blood is real, and the emotions are real” [O’Hagan].)

[Jessica Testa’s interview with Marina Abramović ran in the “Sunday Styles” section of the New York Times on 4 August 2024.  In addition to “Performance Art,” other posts on the subject on Rick On Theater are: “Bob Dylan, Performance Artist” by Kirk Woodward (8 January 2011); “Lady Gaga: Artist For Our Time” by Kirk Woodward (1 November 2011); “Penny Arcade: Two Performances” (15 November 2013); “Lady Gaga and Once” by Kirk Woodward (5 May 2014); "‘The Second Life of Performance’" by Katie Kitamura from T: The New York Times Style Magazine (10 January 2016)]

Marina Abramovic, still a performance artist at 77, talks about her desires to keep going.

Marina Abramovic stood and faced the ocean on Fire Island.

[Fire Island is the center islet of the barrier islands parallel to the South Shore (the Atlantic shore) of Long Island (though the name sometimes refers to all four of the small islands). It’s 32 miles long and ½ mile across at its widest point (9½ square miles in area) and lies off New York’s Suffolk County, the easternmost county on Long Island (and location of The Hamptons, the collection of villages—67 miles and 2 hours east of Fire Island—that are weekend and vacation homes to the arty and wealthy of New York City).

[Fire Island is a 2½-hour drive from New York City (though no cars are allowed on the island itself; one must park and take a ferry) and is a popular summer resort for New Yorkers, with an active LGBTQ community for which Fire Island is well known. There are fewer than 300 year-round residents and the population swells to 14,840 at the peak season. Many celebrities, from the entertainment world and other fields, have homes on Fire Island.]

For a long minute, her arms rose symmetrically from her sides until her body formed a T shape. Her long red dress was stark against the waves. Her palms faced forward.

Ms. Abramovic’s face was not visible, but it was conceivable that she was screaming. The performance artist once screamed for three hours, until she couldn’t anymore (“Freeing the Voice,” 1976 [Budapest]); once yelled into her lover’s reciprocating mouth for 15 minutes (“AAA-AAA,” 1978 [Amsterdam]); once persuaded hundreds of people in an Oslo park to shriek in homage to Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream” ([Ekeberg Park, Oslo; 15-25 August] 2013).

[The iconic composition The Scream (Skrik in Norwegian) by Munch (Norwegian, 1863-1944) exists in several versions.  The first painted rendering was made in 1893 and is in the National Museum of Norway in Oslo. A pastel version, also from 1893, is in Oslo’s Munch Museum. The second pastel version, from 1895, was sold in 2012 to a private collector. The second painted version dates from 1910 and is also in the Munch Museum. Munch also created a lithograph stone of The Scream in 1895 and made about four dozen prints, several of which survive.]

Perhaps now she was expressing rage at humanity’s spoiling of the planet — the rising seas turned into garbage patches. Years ago, she said, after a deadly tsunami in Southeast Asia [the 26 December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, known as the Boxing Day Tsunami, that killed an estimated 225-230,000 people], she whipped the ocean 360 times, wanting to punish it [God Punishing (2005) in Phuket, Thailand, whipping the sea with hundreds of performers and reading poems at the first anniversary for those lost in the tsunami].

But no, Ms. Abramovic was not screaming at the ocean. At 77, she was trying to give it positive energy and “unconditional love as a way to heal,” she said in her artist’s statement for “Performance for the Oceans.” The new piece [May 2024] — an edition of three photographs to be auctioned in October by Christie’s in London [Frieze Art Fair, 9-13 October 2024)] — was made for the conservation charity Blue Marine Foundation.

Ms. Abramovic has long explored endurance and extremes, whether by sitting in the Museum of Modern Art for upward of 700 hours [The Artist Is Present, 14 March-31 May 2010] or walking across the Great Wall of China [The Lovers – The Great Wall Walk, 30 March-3 June 1988]. (Or, more recently, leading seven minutes of silence at a rowdy music festival [Seven Minutes of Collective Silence, Glastonbury Festival, near Pilton, Somerset, England, 24 June 2024].)

This year, she took the idea of endurance a step further. With an Austrian herbalist, Nonna Brenner, she introduced a line of products called the Marina Abramovic Longevity Method. They are tinctures made with vitamins and natural ingredients, like garlic and cranberry juice, to boost energy or support the immune system. (The instructions: “Take 50-60 drops two times a day — with food and water.” [This parenthetical insert from the online version is not part of the print edition.])

Immediately, some questioned whether the line, which promises “inside-out beauty,” was performance art. It was not. Ms. Abramovic, who survived a health emergency last year [see below, re: “pulmonary embolism”] — and who said she had worked with Dr. Brenner to treat her Lyme disease, including with leeches — wants to stay on this planet as long as possible, trash-filled oceans and all. “I’m not going anywhere until I’m 103,” she said.

“In American culture, when you’re old, it’s like you’re dirty, like something’s wrong with you,” said the artist, who was born in what was then Yugoslavia. “In Balkan culture, being old is actually great.”

This was the first thing Ms. Abramovic told me on a video call in June, while in Greece. We were supposed to talk about the ocean. We spoke more about the will to live. (They’re connected.) This conversation has been edited.

On Longevity

You say Americans are obsessed with staying young and living forever, but you’re also interested in living past 100. What’s the difference?

Every wrinkle is a threat in American culture. My idea with aging is to embrace the limits of the body. That you wake up in the morning, that you have pain, that you have arthritis, that you’re not flexible like you were before. Enjoying the limits and seeing how you can accept your body as it is. That’s the difference. Americans don’t accept their bodies as they are.

Personally, I’m a little afraid of living to 100. I don’t know what the planet is going to look like. You’re running toward it.

I really want to see aliens, finally, in my lifetime. Some years ago, I asked Richard Branson [English business magnate, founder of spaceflight corporation Virgin Galactic; b. 1950] if he could give me a one-way ticket to go up and not come back. I want to see what is behind all this. I want to see black holes. Who made the cosmos? I have the curiosity of a kid of 5 years old.

By the way, I think here’s how I’m going to look at 120: My nose is very big and my chin is glued together, and I will have one big hair growing out.

Humor about yourself is so important. We have to have a few jokes about this hell we’re living in.

Well, when your Longevity Method was announced, some people weren’t sure if it was serious.

I am completely smashed by the press. This is not new for me. If I read and took seriously people’s writing, I would not leave home.

I’ve worked with the body all my life. But first of all, I’m not the doctor. I’m just giving my name to Dr. Brenner in order to promote the product. Nobody knows about her. Everybody knows about me.

The products are drops for energy, allergies and the immune system. We are allergic to everything these days because of the way we’re eating food and how pollution is in the air. If you stabilize your immune system, and you don’t have allergies, and you have drops of energy, you’re doing fine. Nothing crazier than that.

You do seem healthy.

Every day I’m eating branzino, a grilled fish, with steamed vegetables. Nothing else. I don’t have dinner. I have a light breakfast, and then I eat around 2 o’clock. When you get older, you don’t need to eat so much because you’re not running around like crazy.

What keeps you up at night?

The news is always bad — every morning, one horror after another. Why are humans historically constantly at war? Why do we have violence? How is it possible that we never learned lessons? How is it possible we never learned simple things to forgive each other?

I think we need good news. In the Second World War, when everybody was painting the atrocity of the war, [Henri] Matisse [French Post-Impressionist artist; 1869-1954], for four years of the war, was only painting flowers. That’s what we need.

So you’re an optimist?

I always see the positive side. And mostly I’m right. Like, every breakup will look terrible in the moment. Actually, years later, you’re so lucky this person is not in your life.

Every day is a miracle. I wake up quite happy every morning. Not always — my life was really difficult. I’m only getting happy lately.

What makes you so happy lately?

That I’m alive. I am a little bit worried that I will not have enough time to do whatever I am interested in doing. I’m doing a big thing in Manchester [England] next year [Manchester International Festival, 1-31 July 2025]. It’s such a crazy project, I’ll just tell you the title: “Balkan Erotic Epic.” In Balkan culture, genitals were used in rituals to connect to the spirits and the gods.

It’s going to be such a scandal. Britain is so puritan. I can’t wait.

Are you going to appear naked?

I don’t know yet. When you have the naked body and you present it to the public, it’s not me anymore. If I’m fat, or with cellulite, or with sagging tits, who cares? I’m presenting a concept in that body.

Ask me something that you never asked anybody else before.

Since we’ve been talking about longevity, have you ever not wanted to be alive?

No. I always want to be alive. I had a very bad heartbreak [the break-up with Ulay in 1988]. It was the saddest thing in my life. But I was just crying. That’s it. And one day I woke up and I didn’t cry anymore.

On ‘A Good Death’

A few weeks later, Ms. Abramovic agreed to continue the conversation at her apartment in Manhattan. She showed me footage from the “7 Deaths of Maria Callas,” an opera she conceived that includes several video clips of Ms. Abramovic, with Willem Dafoe [stage and film actor; b. 1955] as her co-star, dying various painful deaths. [7 Deaths débuted on 27 July 2021 at Munich’s Bavarian State Opera (Bayerische Staatsoper).]

She showed me photos taken last year in a hospital, where she was treated for a life-threatening pulmonary embolism [May 2023]: images of the blood clots removed from her body during surgery and of her first time walking again after being in a coma. (For when she needs it, there is still a cane in her entryway, next to a framed photograph of the German dancer Pina Bausch. [See note with above parenthetical comment.])

After her discharge, she couldn’t travel by airplane for some time. So she took a boat to Europe, developing a new appreciation for the scale of the ocean. “What’s your Plan B, by the way?” she asked, referring to the day disaster strikes New York and its citizens need to flee. (Her plan is Australia; she has a permanent visa.)

When I arrived at the apartment, a 27-year-old performance artist mentored by Ms. Abramovic was just leaving. The artist, Miles Greenberg [Canadian performance artist and sculptor; b. 1997], asked if he could bring her back any gifts from his summer travels. She requested a “supernatural story.” She is interested in the mysticism — like crystals and numerology — and in 2016 won several bets with friends after her horoscope reader predicted that Donald J. Trump would win the election. (The horoscope reader said he would lose in 2024.)

After Mr. Greenberg left, she explained that she met him when he was 17.

“I don’t have any contact with anyone in my generation,” Ms. Abramovic said. “They’re so boring and depressed.”

So you don’t have any friends your age?

No. The oldest ones are 55 or 60. But not 77. They’re half-dead, they’re always complaining, they’re always sick.

What do you do for fun?

I always try to see life through a child’s eyes. I don’t take drugs, and I don’t drink. I love chocolate. But I don’t need to drink to be funny. I think I’m hilarious. I think I should do stand-up comedy.

Did your perspective on life change with your health scare last year?

Yes, oh my God. I have no reason to be depressed. I spent too much time on my broken heart. What a waste.

One of the reasons that I think survived was everything that I learned through performance about pain, about endurance. Last year was the most physical pain I had in my entire life. I could not move, for six weeks, my little finger. The other physical pain I could control. This was something uncontrollable. You can’t control death.

I read that you planned your own funeral many years ago [Keynote Address, 30 June 2015; Marina Abramović: In Residence, Kaldor Public Art Projects, Sydney, Australia, 24 June-5 July 2015].

After Susan Sontag’s funeral, I was so discouraged. I want a big celebration. Nobody wears black, only bright colors. I had a crazy life, and I want to have a good death.

[Writer, critic, and public intellectual Sontag (b. 1933) died in New York on 28 December 2004, but according to her wishes, she was buried in Paris.  Her funeral was in Montmartre on 17 January 2005.]

Do you think you’re fixated on death?

No! I just wanted to stop being afraid of it.

[Jessica Testa is a New York Times reporter covering the worlds of style and fashion.]

Jimmy Awards

 

[If you’ve never heard of the Jimmy Awards, you aren’t alone.  Until last June, I don’t think I’d ever heard of them—or, if I had, they didn’t register.  (I even asked my friend Kirk Woodward if he’d heard of the Jimmys, but he had no idea!).  Then two reports I saw on WABC television (New York City’s channel 7) on a newscast caught my attention.  I decided to check it out. 

[The Jimmys are officially the National High School Musical Theatre Awards.  They’re nicknamed for the Broadway producer and theater-owner James (“Jimmy”) M. Nederlander (1922-2016) because the Nederlander Organization co-founded the awards.  

[(The Nederlander Organization, founded in 1912 by David T. Nederlander in Detroit, and currently based in New York City, is one of the largest operators of live theaters and music venues in the United States.  It’s the second-largest theater-owner in New York City with nine of the 41 Broadway houses, behind the Shubert Organization with 17 and ahead of Jujamcyn Theaters with five. 

[(Ten Broadway theaters are owned or operated by individuals, or non-profit organizations such as the Lincoln Center Theatre [Vivian Beaumont Theatre], the Roundabout Theatre Company [Todd Haines Theatre, formerly the Selwyn; Studio 54; Stephen Sondheim Theatre, formerly Henry Miller’s Theatre], and the Manhattan Theatre Club [Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, formerly the Biltmore].

[(Nederlander owns or operates 21 theaters outside New York City, including three in London’s West End—the counterpart of New York’s Theatre District.  Its New York theaters include the famous Palace Theatre at 7th Avenue and West 47th Street, facing Times Square; see my post on Rick On Theater, “Playing (With) The Palace,” 18 May 2022.  The company’s other Broadway houses are: the Gershwin Theatre; Lena Horne Theatre, previously the Brooks Atkinson; Lunt-Fontanne Theatre; Marquis Theatre; Minskoff Theatre, home of the Jimmys; Nederlander Theatre, formerly the Billy Rose; Richard Rodgers Theatre, formerly the 46th Street Theatre; and Neil Simon Theatre, originally the Alvin.)]

The Jimmy Awards, dubbed by Van Kaplan (b. 1956), executive producer of the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera, as “The Tonys . . . for high school,” are given annually in New York City to recognize musical theater performances by high school students in the United States (Rachel Syme, “Heard of the Jimmys?” New York Times 2 July 2017).  

The 2024 Jimmys were awarded in New York City on Monday, 24 June, the 15th annual ceremony, hosted by Emmy-, Tony-, and Grammy-nominated actor-singer Josh Groban (Tony nominations for Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, 2016, and the 2023 revival of Sweeney Todd).

Only two principal awards are given each year, one for Best Performance by an Actress and one for Best Performance by an Actor.  All 2024 finalists received scholarships of $5,000.  (Over its history, the Jimmy Awards have given out more than $6 million in scholarships.  The scholarship amounts for each recipient vary from year to year.)  This year’s Best Performance winners received scholarships of $25,000 each.

Other awards accompanied by scholarships are also presented to nominees, such as Best Dancer, Best Performance in an Ensemble, Most Improved, Spirit of the Jimmy Award (given for embodying the spirit of the NHSMTA musical theater celebration), and Star of the Future Award; each of these winners receives $2,500 in scholarships in 2024. 

The National High School Musical Theatre Awards—they’re often referred to by the initials NHSMTA, but that’s so clumsy that I’ll mostly stick with “the Jimmy Awards” or “the Jimmys”—were inspired by the Gene Kelly Awards, given since 1991 by the Pittsburgh CLO to honor high school musical theater productions in the Pittsburgh area.

Van Kaplan pitched the idea of creating a national version of the Gene Kelly Awards to the Nederlander Organization.  Together with the CLO, the two organizations established the new award in 2009 and the first Jimmys were awarded in June of that year at New York University’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts in Greenwich Village.  There were 32 contestants from 16 regions at the first awards ceremony.

In 2010, the awards were presented at Broadway’s Marquis Theatre, while all subsequent ceremonies were held at the Minskoff Theatre in the Theatre District; both theaters are owned by the Nederlander Organization. 

The 2020 ceremony was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic and in 2021, the awards were presented virtually.  The live presentations returned to the Minskoff in 2022, and the Jimmy Awards celebrated its 15th Anniversary this year with many Jimmy alumni returning to the event to present the honors and celebrate with the winners and nominees.

The number of participating regional theaters has increased over time, partially because of the popularity generated by the videos of performances from the award show, as well as the three-part documentary series on the Public Broadcasting Service, Broadway or Bust (9, 16, and 23 September 2012), which followed that year’s Jimmy nominees as they prepared for the competition, from their hometown competitions to their debut on a Broadway stage at the Minskoff Theatre. 

Furthermore, TV shows like So You Think You Can Dance (Fox, 2002-16; ABC, 2018-present) and American Idol (Fox, 2005-present) have drawn attention to the performing arts from young people.  It probably didn’t hurt the spread of the word that some newly minted stars of stage and screen had received acknowledgment from regional theaters for their high school stage work. 

Actors like Anne Hathaway, a 2009 Oscar-nominee; Laura Benanti, a Tony-winner for musical theater in 2008; and Zachary Quinto, a 2011 Theatre World Awardee and a Drama Desk Award nominee, were spotlighted at the very time when NHSMTA was going national.

(Quinto’s recognition came from the Pittsburgh CLO when he won a Best Supporting Actor Gene Kelly Award in 1994 for his role as the Major General in The Pirates of Penzance.  He later won a passel of 2009 awards and nominations for his portrayal of Mr. Spock in the Star Trek remake.)

I imagine, too, that the Disney TV movie High School Musical (2006), with its popular star Zac Efron, followed by the franchise that comprised three sequels between 2008 and 2011, and the spin-off cable series (2019-23)—all from Disney—had an impact on this phenomenon as well. 

(In 2007, a stage adaptation of High School Musical premièred in Pittsburgh and became a trendy choice for high schools to mount.  The show didn’t play in New York City, but it went on a National Tour, playing in many Broadway League theaters and is listed in the Internet Broadway Database [High School Musical – Broadway Musical – Tour | IBDB], operated by the Research Department of the national trade association for the Broadway theater industry, the Broadway League, which co-produces the Tony Awards with the American Theatre Wing. 

(I don’t know, however, if High School Musical is on the NHSMTA list of Approved Musicals, which tends to eschew scripts specifically composed for child or teen performers.  The show’s not on the “2024 Jimmy Awards Qualifying Roles,” but neither is it on the list of shows and roles that were ineligible for the 2024 awards; see below.)

In 2014, the Broadway League Foundation, the charitable arm of the Broadway League, took over the management of the Jimmy awards from the founders.  Almost immediately thereafter, “some 15 new regional competitions like the St. Louis High School Musical Theater Awards [sic] popped up to feed talent into the Broadway showcase,” reported the New York Times (Syme).

The number of participating regional theaters increased over time, encompassing 43 regional competitions with 86 nominees by 2019.  In 2024, a total of 17 awards and scholarships were presented.  The ceremony featured 102 nominees selected from more than 100,000 participating students from 51 Regional Awards Programs (RAP) across the country.

At the 15th anniversary Jimmys, all the nominees got to sit in on the Tony Awards dress rehearsal.  (The Tony Awards were presented on Sunday, 16 June.)  In addition, 24 nominees saw their first Broadway show, 19 of the participants visited New York City for the first time, and three student actors experienced their first flight on an airplane.

The nominees are selected by an RAP competition in their areas.  Students can’t audition directly for the Jimmy Awards.  Nominees are selected based on the assessment of their performance of a Qualifying Role in a full-length high school production of an Approved Musical performed during the school year. 

(The criteria governing Qualifying Roles and Approved Musicals are laid out in the “Qualifying Shows and Roles” part of the “Participation” section on the Jimmy Awards website, Qualifying Shows and Roles | The National High School Musical Theatre Awards (jimmyawards.com).)

The RAP’s each designate one Best Performance by an Actor and one Best Performance by an Actress nominee.  The two nominees are then invited to compete at the Jimmy Awards in New York City in June.  (The 51 current Regional Awards Programs and the dates and locations of their awards presentations are listed at Regional Awards Programs | The National High School Musical Theatre Awards (jimmyawards.com).  There’s also information on what to do if there isn’t an RAP in your school’s area at Participation Guidelines | The National High School Musical Theatre Awards (jimmyawards.com).)

(Regional contests may give awards in other categories, such as Best Featured Actor or Best Supporting Actor, but only the two Leading Actor and Actress awardees may participate in the national Jimmy competition in New York.)

Each Regional Awards Program sends qualified judges to assess the productions presented by the participating schools.  All aspects of the shows, including acting, choreography, and design, and so on are judged on performance and production quality.  The Gene Kelly Awards served as a model for the regional competitions.  (The rules for the RAP’s are published at Rules and Regulations | The National High School Musical Theatre Awards (jimmyawards.com).)

Though the Jimmy Award is designated for one actor and one actress, American Theater magazine reports: “According to the Broadway League’s current policy, if a non-binary or gender-fluid actor were to compete at the Jimmy Awards, they ‘may choose to either select the category in which they wish to be adjudicated . . .  or they may be adjudicated based on the gender of the role they played’” (Elliott Folds, “What’s Gender Got to Do With Acting Awards?” 24 Feb. 2022, AMERICAN THEATRE | What’s Gender Got to Do With Acting Awards?).

Jimmy nominees participate in a 10-day intensive program in New York City that includes master classes, workshops, individual coaching, and group rehearsals for the Jimmy Awards ceremony.  In what the New York Times characterized as a “theatrical boot camp” (John Leland, “Starry Eyes, Souls Astir: Broadway’s Valiant Fledglings,” 29 June 2016), the student performers receive early wake-up calls and all-day coaching from Broadway pros.

“You think you are here to have fun,” announced Kent Gash, head of the NYU Tisch New Studio for Musical Theater (a partner in the NHSMTA program), when he welcomed the Jimmy nominees in 2018. “You are here to work” (Natalie Walker, “7 Days With the Most Talented Theater Teens in the Country,” Vulture [online platform of New York magazine] 7 July 2018, 7 Days With the 2018 Jimmy Awards Finalists (vulture.com)).

The teens stay in a New York University dormitory, and in addition to the coaching, attend yoga sessions and have meals together in a common area.  Throughout their stay in New York, the young student artists are in the care of chaperones (paid for by their RAP).  Those whose parents come to the city for the event are separated from their families until after the awards ceremony. 

This fosters an atmosphere of unity and camaraderie among the nominees, who come from cities and towns across the Unites States, and may be the beginning of a network of colleagues that can last until working theater careers are launched.  (The participation in and support for the annual event among Jimmy alumni is evidence that a network exists.) 

As longtime WABC-TV entertainment reporter Sandy Kenyon put it: “When it comes to future success after the Jimmy Awards, all that matters is that you are ‘in it,’ not that you ‘win it’” (“Past Jimmy Awards contestants like McKenzie Kurtz, Christian Thompson take the stage at 54 Below,” Eyewitness News [WABC-TV New York] 29 Jan. 2024, Past Jimmy Awards contestants like McKenzie Kurtz, Christian Thompson, Morgan Higgins take the stage at 54 Below - ABC7 New York (abc7ny.com)).

Casting director Tara Rubin, participating in the 2017 Jimmys (and judge this year), pointed out, “The participants have an opportunity to work with the best of Broadway, and also bond with other young people who share their dreams” (Marc Hershberg, “Jimmy Awards Jump-Start Broadway Careers,” Forbes 26 June 2017, Jimmy Awards Jump-Start Broadway Careers (forbes.com)).

At the 2016 awards, Sarah Chico, a junior from Tucson, observed that the nominees had formed close ties during the week.  “I don’t look at it as competition,” Chico explained, adding, “It’s being with a group of people who are not just from my little town.”

Tony Moreno, who won Best Performance by an Actor in 2017, spoke of finding community among a group of strangers, saying, “We were 74 people who had no idea who each other were” (Syme).  Still, they’d come together as a company and mounted a Broadway show.

At the 2018 event, Veronica Ballejos, a San Jose, California, nominee who’d previously confessed to a journalist, “I’m not good at making new friends, but . . . I’m trying!” later gushed, “I made so many new friends.  I was so scared I wouldn’t, but . . . this was . . . the best.  This was the best week of my life” (Walker).

Morgan Higgins, a finalist at the Jimmy Awards in 2015, asserted that “being part of the program is very helpful because it gives you community” (Kenyon).

When a TV newsman asked what they’d be “walking away with,” one of the student actors this year answered, “A ton of new friends . . . 101 new best friends and just the experience of getting to work like professionals in the industry” (Joelle Garguilo, “Broadway's future stars ready for the 15th annual Jimmy Awards on Monday,” Eyewitness News [WABC-TV New York] 21 June 2024, High School students across the country rehearsing ahead of the 15th annual Jimmy Awards - ABC7 New York (abc7ny.com)).

Included in the curriculum for the “boot camp” are dance classes taught by a Broadway choreographer and media training from a Broadway publicist to wise them up about publicity, both sought and unwanted.  All this goes on at the same time as the Jimmy nominees are rehearsing the awards show, which is the competition before the judges, who are casting directors, producers, and other representatives of the industry.

The coaches included actor-singers English Bernhardt, Janet Dacal, Colin Hanlon, MaryAnn Hu, Leonard Joseph, Adam Kantor, Telly Leung, Adam J. Levy, Desi Oakley, Eliseo Román, Steven Telsey, and EJ Zimmerman.

The nominees spend time with some of Broadway’s most accomplished professionals.  They work with a creative team, including actual Broadway directors and choreographers and they get to pick their brains.  In 2024, the teen performers sat with Rich and Tone Talauega, fraternal choreographers who staged the Michael Jackson moves in MJ The Musical (and shared the Best Choreography Tony with Christopher Wheeldon, who did the other dancing).

Tone Talauega said they were “[s]haring stories and anecdotes and little methods and techniques on what made us who we are in the industry” (Sonia Rincón, “Jimmy Award nominees get to see their faces on giant Times Square billboard,” Eyewitness News [WABC-TV New York] 19 June 2024, Jimmy Awards 2024: 100+ nominees get to see their faces on giant Times Square billboard - ABC7 New York (abc7ny.com)).

The RAP pays for the round-trip travel for its two nominees between the students’ home bases and New York City.  NHSMTA picks up the tab for nominees’ expenses in New York, including housing, meals, and other necessary expenses during the program.

During the week leading up to the awards ceremony, the nominees rehearse their performances for the show while they receive coaching from theater professionals.  On awards night, the show begins with an opening number, typically a mix of current and recent Broadway hits, involving all nominees.  

That’s followed by a series of “showcase medleys” in which several nominees appear in the costumes they wore for the roles they performed in their school musical.  Each nominee sings a short solo, while the remaining performers act as backup singers and dancers.

During the intermission that follows the opening, a panel of judges who evaluated and cast the nominees into performance groups, selects about six to eight finalists.  In 2024, the preliminary judges included actor-director Gabriel Barre, casting director Kristian Charbonier, casting director Stephanie Klapper, producer Sammy Lopez, casting director Kevin Metzger-Timson, and producer Dale Mott.

During the show’s second half, the finalists each perform a solo, after which a second panel of judges selects the two winners, one male-presenting actor and one female-presenting actor.  Then the two winners are announced. 

This year, these Tony Award-winning producers, award-winning casting experts, and industry leaders included actress and singer Montego Glover, actor James Monroe Iglehart, director Kenny Leon, performer and agent Joe Machota, composer Alan Menken, producer Marc Platt, singer and actor T. Oliver Reid, casting director Tara Rubin, Executive Vice-President of the Nederlander Organization Nick Scandalios, producer (and currently President of the Disney Theatrical Group) Thomas Schumacher, casting director (and co-founder of Off-Broadway’s MCC Theater) Bernard Telsey, and record executive Lia Vollack.

(There is a full run-down of the 2024 Jimmy Awards ceremony in “2024 Jimmy Awards field report” by David Carliner at 2024 Jimmy Awards field report - by David Carliner (substack.com).  The whole week in 2018 is detailed in Natalie Walker’s “7 Days With the Most Talented Theater Teens in the Country,” cited above.  Both postings include extensive personal commentary.)

The Jimmy Awards also honors high school theater teachers, presenting the Inspiring Teacher Award, given to “teachers who have been nominated by their students and chosen by a selection committee of Broadway League members as recognition of their roles in providing valuable guidance and encouragement for their students who excelled during last year’s Jimmy Awards.”  

2024’s teaching award was presented in memory of Luigi Caiola (1959-2023), an eight-time Tony Award-winning producer, real-estate developer, and philanthropist, part of whose mission in life was to nurture and support new talent.  This year’s recipients were Jacqueline McLean, Le Roy Jr. Senior High School in Rochester, New York, and Paul Fillingim, Ronald Reagan High School in San Antonio, Texas.

Each year, the Jimmy Awards also invites select Student Reporters from participating Regional Awards Programs to cover Jimmy Awards events through social media.  The 2024 Jimmy Awards Student Reporter Initiative welcomed Nicole Scimeca from Broadway In Chicago Illinois High School Musical Theatre Awards and Richard “Ricky” Ragazzo from the Tommy Tune Awards of Houston, Texas.

The two high-schoolers are aspiring journalists who were selected following a nationwide submissions process and provided fans an inside look at the final preparations for the evening performance.  They also conducted interviews with the 2024 Best Performance winners following the awards ceremony.  As part of the experience, they were granted a special visit to the WABC studios to observe the behind-the-scenes production of an upcoming news segment.  (WABC is a sponsor of the Jimmy Awards.)

As of this spring, 67 Jimmy alumni, nominees, finalists, and winners, have performed on Broadway or in a National Tour.  Among these are Reneé Rapp, 2018 winner who was most recently seen on screen as Regina George in the movie musical adaptation of Mean Girls (2024) and also starred in Mean Girls on Broadway (2016-20); Andrew Barth Feldman, the other 2018 Jimmy winner who made his Broadway début in 2019 in the title role of Dear Evan Hansen; Casey Likes, a 2019 finalist currently starring as Marty McFly in Back to the Future and made his Broadway début in 2022 as William Miller in Almost Famous; and Justin Cooley, a 2021 finalist who made his Broadway début in Kimberly Akimbo, earning a 2023 Tony nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical.

Among current Broadway performers, Jimmy alumni include: Sofia Deler, a 2017 winner, who’s currently understudying Holly in Stereophonic; Tony Moreno, a 2017 winner who’s a Swing in The Book of Mormon; Eva Noblezada, a 2013 finalist playing Daisy in The Great Gatsby; and Josh Strobl, a 2016 winner who’s currently understudying Ponyboy Curtis and Johnny in The Outsiders and previously understudied three roles in Dear Evan Hansen, including Evan Hansen.  (These partial lists don’t include the Jimmy alumni who are or have been on National Tours of Broadway shows.) 

Several past participants in the Jimmys have returned as guests or presenters, including this year.  Andrew Barth Feldman, for instance, introduced a video segment highlighting the nominees’ week in New York City.  Feldman is currently starring as Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors that opened Off-Broadway in 2019.  The Jimmy show also spotlighted 2021 Jimmy Awards Finalist Justin Cooley, who, with Tony-winning musical actress Victoria Clark (2 wins, 3 additional nominations), introduced a medley of songs saluting Broadway shows that have featured Jimmy Awards alumni throughout the years.

In 2023, Jimmy alumna and two-time Tony-nominee Eva Noblezada presented the Week-in-Review video.  She made her Broadway début in 2017 with Miss Saigon and went on to appear as Eurydice in Hadestown from 2019 to 2023 and as Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby from 2024 to the present.

McKenzie Kurtz, a 2013 and 2015 Jimmy nominee, introduced the 2023 Tribute to Touring number honoring National Tours’ contributions to the Jimmy Awards and to Touring Broadway throughout the years.  She made her début on Broadway as a replacement for Glinda in Wicked from 2023 to March of this year.  Kurtz has also appeared on Broadway as Anna in Frozen (2020) and as Cassandra in the original cast of The Heart of Rock and Roll in April though June of this year.

(Touring Broadway is the designation of the Broadway League to identify touring productions of Broadway plays in which the content, including the text and production values, is the same as those in New York City with differences only in the set, modified for traveling, and the cast.  The term covers both the productions and the agencies that organize and present the tours across the country.)

This year’s Best Performance by an Actress and Best Performance by an Actor Jimmy winners, both 18, were Gretchen Shope, representing the Sutton Foster Awards of East Lansing, Michigan, and Damson Chola, Jr., from the Broadway Dallas High School Musical Theatre Awards in Dallas, Texas.

Shope is from Midland, Michigan, and made her first NHSMTA appearance at the Minskoff in her character medley as Alice from the play for which she was nominated, Alice by Heart (music by Duncan Sheik, lyrics by Steven Sater, book by Sater with Jessie Nelson; inspired by Lewis Carroll’s 1865 novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; originally presented by London’s Royal National Theatre in 2012; MCC Theatre, Off-Broadway, 2019).  

For her solo performance, Shope earned a standing ovation with her rendition of “The Music That Makes Me Dance” from Funny Girl (score by Jule Styne, lyrics by Bob Merrill, book by Isobel Lennart; premièred on Broadway, 1964; based on the life and career of comedian and Broadway star Fanny Brice).  In the fall, she’ll be attending Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, and double-majoring in marketing and musical theater.

Chola’s hometown is Cleburne, Texas.  In his character medley, he performed a bashful Seymour, the role for which he received his Jimmy nomination from Little Shop of Horrors (music by Alan Menken, lyrics and book by Howard Ashman; based on the 1960 black-comedy film directed by Roger Corman; world première Off-Off-Broadway at the WPA Theatre, 1982; transferred Off-Broadway to the Orpheum Theatre later in 1982).  

In a change of pace for his solo performance, Chola triumphed with “Make Them Hear You” from Ragtime (music by Stephen Flaherty, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, book by Terrence McNally; based on the 1975 novel of the same name by E. L. Doctorow; premièred at the Ford Centre for the Performing Arts, now the Meridian Arts Centre, Toronto, in 1996; U.S. première at the Shubert Theatre, Los Angeles in 1997; Broadway production opened in 1998 at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts, now the Lyric Theatre).  Chola will be attending the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in September.

[The mailing address and contact information of the National High School Musical Theatre Awards are:

NHSMTA
℅ The Broadway League Foundation
729 Seventh Avenue, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10019

Phone: (212) 764-1122

E-mail (general inquiries): jimmyawards@broadway.org

[The organization’s website URL is: Home | The National High School Musical Theatre Awards (jimmyawards.com).  There are several different pages—some of which I included in the post above—with detailed information and instructions about applying for participation in the Jimmy Awards program, starting a Regional Awards Program, and other aspects of the NHSMTA.

[There are also many periodical articles on the Jimmys, including multiple reports in American Theatre, the New York Times, Playbill, and WABC-TV, plus coverage of RAP’s in local news outlets.]

Performance Diary, Part 2

by Kirk Woodward 

[In my introduction to the first part of Kirk Woodward’s “Performance Diary,” posted on Rick On Theater on 25 August, I wrote:

Life in the theater is complex.  It covers a gallimaufry of fields, disciplines, and specialties.  It’s also labor-intensive, taking more time in one’s day, week, and month than most other endeavors in which people engage.  Many people, both theater folk and “civilians” (as one of my teachers referred to non-theater people—muggles, if you will), see a life devoted to the stage as more a calling than an occupation.  It’s what we do for love—to paraphrase the lines from the impassioned song in which Diana leads the dancers in A Chorus Line.

As Kirk writes in his “Performance Diary”:

I hope this account indicates some of the many practical issues one encounters when putting on a performance, no matter which kind of performance it is.  Few things are “easy” in performing, no matter how small the show or how expert the team.

I told Kirk, after I read both parts of his diary, that it made me reminisce some, so it obviously rings true.  I assured him that it's exactly what I want for ROT, along with the performance reports.  He chronicled the day-to-day activities of a theater pro—in Kirk’s case, a director, actor, teacher, and a little bit of a writer—when he’s involved in actual theater work.

[The second half of this diary, posted below, focuses on the production of two new one-act plays in which Kirk had two roles.  Kirk’s aim is to point out more of the interesting challenges he encounters while working in theater. 

[I don’t think that reading these diary excerpts in any particular order will make a difference with respect to comprehension; nevertheless, I suggest going back to Part 1 either before or after reading Part 2, is well worth your while.  (Readers may find that there are things mentioned in the second installment and explained or identified in the first part, but which aren’t elucidated in the second part.)]

During the period between the middle of April and the middle of June 2024, I was involved in a number of performance activities, all but one of which I described in Part 1 of this series. In this article I describe, from an actor’s point of view, my experiences doing two one-act plays in a local theater.

APRIL 10 – I was asked to do a role in a long one-act play in June, playing a guidance counselor, and I've printed out my script to start learning the lines.

APRIL 28 – I’ve been cast in a second one-act play for June, also without auditioning, and not particularly gloriously – it’s wonderful to have someone cast you because they think you can do the role, but I meant to go to the auditions last Saturday and completely missed them, which is embarrassing. Oh well, now I have two roles in the production, which will be staged at the Union Congregational Church (UCC) in Montclair, New Jersey, by the UCC Players.

The two plays are:

Rosaline Wrecked It All (Stephen Kaplan) – Rosaline from Romeo and Juliet, who didn’t go to the party with Romeo, deals with everyone’s blame for the subsequent suicide of the ill-fated lovers. The play is a dramedy set in a high school and many of the characters are students in the school.

You’re Bound to Come Up With a Good Idea, written by Peter Felicia (b. 1946), longtime theater reviewer for the Newark Star-Ledger, is funny. In the play, a writing student tries to convince her instructor that she can plot a good novel. A two-character play; I play the instructor.

APRIL 30 - Meanwhile I’m realizing that my task for the next few weeks is basically memorizing, getting the lines for the one-act plays in my head – and I don’t have that many of them.

I know, I know, people always ask actors, “How do you remember all those lines?” Well, to be honest, it’s a good question, and the answer is something of a mystery, and I have never understood how actors manage to memorize their lines. I know ways and techniques; I just can’t visualize how it works inside the brain.

So far I’m just reading the scripts, trying to get the sense of the lines (that’s definitely task #1) and trying to start making connections between what the other actor says and what that leads me to say.

MAY 8 – First cast readthrough for Rosaline. I like the play.

First readings are nearly always ghastly experiences, with actors trying to impress the other actors and no one knowing much about what the play is about. Adding to today’s difficulties, the rehearsal was a Zoom hybrid, with the high school students in a classroom and the adults at home. But the cast can relate to the play, especially the teenagers in it, and by the time we were halfway through the play the reading was going smoothly.

The next step is learning lines, some of these young actors have long speeches and scenes to get into their minds. I’m having enough trouble with memorizing my one short scene.

MAY 9 – First rehearsal for Good Idea. Janet Aldrich, the director, is a formidable actor in her own right. She told my partner and me that she had no preconceived ideas about how to stage the play, but right away she started making suggestions about physical moves that would emphasize what the players are saying. In many cases the suggestions amount to her saying, “Visualize what you’re talking about, look at the visualization, and physicalize it,” an approach that my wife used to call “theater for the deaf,” but for this particular script her ideas were usually good ones.

MAY 19 – I’ve continued reading my lines daily – not really working on memorizing them yet, just reading them. But this afternoon was our second rehearsal for Rosaline, the first with both adults and students in the room in person. Several actors were missing but the director had us do the scenes we had people for, plus some large-group work. Janet Aldrich, the director of this play, doesn’t seem to be over-prepared, but she has self-confidence and a good eye, and her blocking seemed fine.

Early rehearsals can be agony, since everyone is deep in their scripts. I don’t usually like it when a director gives acting notes while still in the blocking phase, but we don’t have a great deal of time. I tried to stay calm, breathe, listen, and not get irritated when the director tells me to do something – a bad habit I have, and a crazy one. I try to remind myself that directors are only trying to help you.

MAY 23 – Theater can be so simple, can’t it? Actors act, directors advise. Sometimes it’s like that.

Rehearsal for Good Idea tonight. Janet told stories about the great director George Abbott – she worked with him on a show when he was just turning 100! Like Abbott, I think, she doesn’t do a lot of pre-planning but watches the actors closely and responds to what she sees. She had an angle for my character tonight that we hadn’t discussed at all last week; the new approach strikes me as excellent, and I’m almost “off book” with my lines memorized, so at the next rehearsal we should have some fun.

MAY 26 – A rehearsal for Rosaline with most of the cast present. For a one-act play it’s long, which gives the director a lot of challenges, but I’m not the director! More power to her!

MAY 27 – Still working on memorizing my lines for the one-acts. The process feels like building connections (bridges? synapses?) among the words in the lines, so eventually they are structured in the brain the way they need to be. I wonder if others feel the same way about how memorization happens.

MAY 30 – Rehearsal for Good Idea tonight, and an interesting situation for an actor: at our last rehearsal the director had given me an approach for the character to take. Tonight, before we’d read a line, she gave me a different assignment for how to perform the character. (I think she had been talking with the playwright, whom she knows, and he might have given her the idea.)

I was taken aback, but what can one do in a situation like that? There’s only one right answer as far as I know, and that’s to try it, so I did, and by the end of the rehearsal I felt things were going well, not exactly with either of her suggestions, but with a mix.

Also, my scene partner and I are both almost “off book,” not needing the script anymore.

JUNE 2 – How do directors do it? We rehearsed Rosaline today and, with three weeks to go before we open, the director listened patiently while actors read scenes in low voices, as though they were talking to themselves; I was the only person who did a scene without a script, and I’m barely in more than one scene. It will come together, but what a journey! A worthwhile destination, but full of perils.

I had a real Actor’s Ego (or My Ego) moment today. I spent a great deal of time thinking about how the cast would feel if I knew my lines, or if I didn’t and blew them. How wrong is that! My job is to focus on what’s happening in the scene. I had to continually remind myself of that. Shame! (I wasn’t perfect with the lines, but I was all right.)

JUNE 6 – Both one-acts cancelled a rehearsal this week. More time to learn lines, which are still being stubborn in the details.

JUNE 11 – Rehearsal tonight for Good Idea. Janet, the director, is an extraverted and talented performer – think Ethel Merman (1908-1984) – so her suggestions to us sound like she’s giving line readings – “do it like this.” However, she’s not – she doesn’t ask for imitation, she’s just giving ideas.

Good Idea has nine very small scenes, and she asked us to paraphrase each one before we did it with the written lines, just for this rehearsal. I was leery, partly because I was afraid I’d start using paraphrase in the performance. However, it loosened our acting up a lot, and we had fun. Paraphrase is a technique I’ve used when directing Shakespeare, but almost never with modern-language plays. I may start, now, though.

JUNE 15 – Today’s rehearsal for Rosaline was a preordained mess, with almost the whole cast together, something between 12 and 15 people, in a different space from before, with blocking and lines still uncertain. Kathryn, the director, wanted to get a timing for the show, but the workthrough took at least twice as long as it should have.

She was frank that the purpose of the rehearsal was to show everyone how much work they still had to do, and it did, so it was useful, but I had almost no concentration and couldn’t think of lines I’ve known for weeks.

I still feel that a director should define for the cast a single, definite purpose for each rehearsal, or for each run through, with the choice of purpose determined by whatever needs the most work. Today we had at least a double purpose (both lines and blocking) instead of a single one.

JUNE 17 – A four-hour rehearsal of all the one-acts, half an hour of it devoted to getting the room in shape to work in (not the large room where we’ll be performing – it’s not available yet – but a smaller room in the church), and half an hour to put it back.

Janet, one of my directors, said, “I don’t know how anyone can remember their lines in conditions like this,” and she’s right, which again is a reason for a director to define what’s expected of the actors at each point of a rehearsal, and to reassure them that it’s okay not to try to do everything at once, especially since each time something new is added or something major changed, the acting falls back to an earlier stage. It will recover, but not until a subsequent rehearsal.

Kathryn, the principal director, became so frustrated at having to repeat things she’d already emailed the cast that she said, “Does anybody read what I wrote?” The answer, not just in this show but in nearly everything, is no, most people don’t read what someone wrote, especially on email.

They may glance; they may overlook; they may ignore. They seldom if ever study the message point by point and try to retain what they read. They just don’t. At least that’s my experience – I’ve seen this in the business world repeatedly. (I had a bread-and-butter job in an office until I retired a few years ago.) Also, of course, the younger the people involved, the less they want to do with email at all. They prefer texting, or whatever has superseded that.

For myself, I tried to work on relaxing and concentrating in the moment tonight. Kayla, my scene partner in Good Idea, told me afterward that she’d decided the same thing, and both of us felt the rehearsal was useful for us.

JUNE 18 – A technical rehearsal in which we didn’t do any acting, just working on transitions and scene changes. That’s not entirely true – Kayla and I got to do our scene a couple of times.

A famous director – or maybe all directors – once said, “No matter how much you rehearse, you always need two more weeks.” That appears to be the case with our show – Rosaline needs more work on the acting and the scene changes have difficulties and will take a while to settle down – longer than we’ve got?

Also, we have a new lighting board and lights. They’re run by computer, and from what I saw of the program that operates them, I wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to make them work, and last night no one else did either, so we only had two working lighting instruments. (That bread-and-butter office job I had?  It was in IT.)

Overall lesson from last night: improvisation is a useful tool in theater, but not for the technical aspects of a play.

JUNE 20 – Last rehearsal (“final dress”) before we open tomorrow night. The show ran 2 hours 15 minutes, which is a little long, but it should compress a bit tomorrow night. Many set changes were botched, and Rosaline had a number of technical breakdowns; otherwise the show seemed pretty good, particularly since we hadn’t run it in several days. I attribute my big blunder to that fact: I made an entrance in Rosaline on the wrong side of the stage, but it was the first time I’d done the scene on that stage (the night before opening!) so I didn’t feel too incompetent. Besides, it’s easily fixed.

I spoke up about one thing, the curtain call, which was a mess, long and difficult to follow. I believe curtain calls should be quick and effective, because they’re the last thing an audience will see, and audiences mostly remember what was most recent.

JUNE 21 – Kathryn sent out the following this morning: “Curtain call:  no individual play bows, only one company bow, then up to Kyle, then another company bow, then off or out.” Thank goodness.

I also had a separate email asking if I’d mind cutting a long section of one speech I have. (I don’t mind.) A little late in the game? Well, yes, although of course line changes – even changes of whole scenes, or acts for that matter – used to be standard in out-of-town shows headed for Broadway, hence Sheldon Harnick’s well-known curse on Hitler, “He should have had to be out of town with a musical!”

My friend Nick, drawing on the legend that a bad dress rehearsal means a good first performance, said, “Now you’re bound to have a great opening night!”

After all the above, it was an acceptable opening night. We arrived at the theater to find that there was no power – and this in the middle of a heat wave, with temperatures in the 90’s. The power came back but the air conditioning never did. Peter Felicia, the former reviewer for the Newark Star-Ledger who wrote Good Idea and was there tonight, texted Janet, “Well, truth to tell, my wife just couldn’t take the heat, so we had to leave after my show. I was sorry, because I would have loved to have seen the others. You have VERY talented performers!”

In my experience actors won’t let a show fail – they’ll do something to keep it afloat. Everybody tonight seemed to have a commitment to the project; our Rosaline in particular was staggeringly good. I was happy with the couple of scenes I was in, and all in all we got through the evening well enough. But it was hot!

JUNE 22 – The air conditioning was back, the cast was confident, my scenes went well except that I could not remember the concluding phrase of my last speech and kept trying out substitutes. No harm done as far as I know. The show was videotaped, so presumably I’ll be able to check my performance at some point, if I want to. A more lively audience than the previous night’s.

In one scene, on a contentious point a husband is supposed to say to his wife that “I said yes” to another group of people, and the play went on from there. Tonight he said, “I said no.” She was dumbfounded and responded, “You said what?” Eventually she ad-libbed, “I know you, you really said yes,” and got the scene back on track. I’m not sure the actor ever realized what he’d said.

This incident reminded me of a story that Ken Barnes, a technical director at my college, told about a melodrama in which an actor supposedly entered late in the first act and announced, “I can pay the mortgage!” The entire play, the story goes, was derailed for some time . . . .

JUNE 23 – Our final performance, a matinee, followed by “strike,” in other words taking down the set and putting everything away. A quiet audience but they cheered and stood at the end – you can never tell how an audience will ultimately feel. Much of the cheering was for a high school student named Camilla Perez, who played the role of Rosaline and knocked it out of the park – she was strong, dynamic, and letter perfect in a huge part. I’d be astonished if she doesn’t go on to other notable things. I had one scene with her and one with an actress named Kayla Jackson, who was a pleasure to work with.

So I got some major breaks in the production, and all in all it was a good experience. I learned, or reinforced, some points about both directing and acting, and I am filled with admiration for everyone who undertakes the adventure of doing a play. Much more goes into it than many people realize. Theater must be a worthwhile activity – we all keep coming back.

[I said in my introduction to both parts of Kirk’s “Performance Diary” that reading it had caused me to reminisce about some of my own theater experiences.  I made note of some of them, so I thought I’d share them with Rick On Theater readers. 

[I’ve recounted some of these tales before, including in various posts of ROT, so you’ll pardon me if you’ve read them before.

[In Part 1, Kirk writes about performing with his colleague and friend Martha for the New Jersey Mental Health Players.  In the scene he describes, Martha played a woman suffering from depression and Kirk was her “oblivious brother.” 

[The issue about which Kirk writes in the diary is the confusion experienced by some members of the audience about whether he and Martha were actually siblings and if she was depressed in real life.  Here’s the memory that anecdote jogged for me:

I played Mother, the drug-pusher in A Hatful of Rain (Michael V. Gazzo, 1955), when I was in the army in West Berlin (1971-74).  An Air Force NCO who’d seen the show spotted me when I was out in the U.S. military compound doing tasks related to a security investigation.  (I was a Military Intelligence officer and we wore civilian clothes on duty, not army uniforms.)  The non-com actually threatened me, saying I was a real bastard and he'd like to take care of me some night in a dark alley!  I pointed out I was a U.S. Army officer and he needed to back off.  

[I remarked in my note that that was audience confusion!

[In his 21 June entry in Part 2 about the opening performance of Rosaline, Kirk recounted that there’d been a heat wave and that the air conditioning in the performance space had gone out.  “It was hot,” recorded Kirk.  This reminded me of another experience I’d had in the summer of 1977, when the tri-state area was in the midst of a severe heat wave.

[I was working on a master of fine arts degree in acting at Rutgers University’s School of Creative and Performing Arts (now the Mason Gross School of the Arts) in New Brunswick, New Jersey.  That summer, I was part of the Rutgers University Summer Theatre, a two-play presentation that combined MFA actors and professionals from New York City.  Here’s my recollection of that experience:

I was playing “Gunner” in Misalliance (1909-10) by George Bernard Shaw.  We couldn’t run the A/C except before curtain, at intermission, and after the final bow because it was too noisy.  It was so hot in the Philip J. Levin Theater on the campus of Douglass College, I sweated so much—​partly because I started out in the “Turkish bath,” a wooden box enclosed on all six sides—t​hat my green plaid suit looked black by the end of my first scene.  (That’s not a joke or even hyperbole.  It’s absolute emes.)

[For the record, the heat wave started on Wednesday, 13 July, and lasted through Thursday, 21 July.  On the last day of the heat wave, the temperature reached 104 degrees, just below the all-time record for New York City of 106, set in 1936.

[On the first day of the heat wave, New York City suffered a blackout that lasted 25 hours, caused by a lightning strike that tripped two circuit breakers.  When the circuit breakers didn’t reset, the city was sent into darkness as all electric power was lost.

[I drove from New Brunswick into the city (where I lived during my time at Rutgers) after the performance that night, with a carful of New York actors I was chauffeuring back and forth.  I also had my dog with me because I was in New Jersey too long to leave him home. 

[That night, I packed the dog, his things, and clothes for a few days, and the next day, when I got back to New Brunswick, the dog and I moved into the apartment of a couple of MFA classmates and stayed in Jersey until the power in the city went back on.

[In his entry for the next day, Kirk related an incident in which an actor flubbed a line and said the exact opposite of what he was supposed to say.  It took a few more lines until the actress in the scene with him ad-libbed a line that got them back on track.  That reminded me of another Rutgers performance, a year earlier than Misalliance:

One night in a performance of Devil Take the Hindmost by my classmate William Mastrosimone, a playwriting candidate at Rutgers, I also flubbed a line.

Devil is an epic play about the Battle of Trenton in the American Revolution.  (1976 was the Bicentennial Year, of course, and Bill is a native Trentonian.)  I played Colonel Johann Rall, the Hessian mercenary commander of the garrison at Trenton (for readers who didn’t get history in a U.S. school, the Hessians were paid allies of the British), an actual historical figure who died of wounds received at Trenton.  

Mortally wounded, Rall was captured after the Battle and when I surrendered to George Washington, I was supposed to say, “I beg you to treat my soldiers as men of honor.”  What came out of my mouth one night, however, was “I beg you to treat my soldiers as men of iron"!  (I don’t know where that even came from.)

The actor playing Washington, Jeffrey B. McLaughlin, a New York pro hired for the production (a huge cast representing three armies—American, British, Hessian—and a number of civilians, the company included not only MFA and undergraduate actors from Rutgers, local residents who were frequent participants in university theater, members of the university theater faculty—I got to act with my own acting teacher—and Actors’ Equity Association professionals), was standing face-to-face with me, a few inches apart at center stage. 

As I spoke those nonsensical words, I knew I was screwing up, but it was too late to stop, and Jeff had a look of perplexity and, yes, fear, on his face which he was fiercely trying to hide from the audience seated on all four sides of our environmental performing area.

We nevertheless went on as if I’d said the most appropriate thing imaginable!

[Devil was Bill Mastrosimone’s playwriting MFA thesis script.  Johann Rall was my thesis role for my acting MFA.  The university theater production of the play took place in November 1976.  (The Battle of Trenton, the first major American victory of the Revolution, took place on the night of 25-26 December 1776, almost exactly 200 years before our show.) 

[It was Rutgers’s entry in the Northeast Regional Festival of the American College Theatre Festival IX.  We were selected as a finalist and went on to the regional festival, hosted by Cornel University in Ithaca, New York, in February 1977.  Unhappily, we didn’t place in that competition, so we didn’t perform at Washington, D.C.’s John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts that April.

[(I don’t know if Bill had to write anything other than the play text, though he, like all of us MFA candidates, had to face an oral defense before the faculty degree committee.  I had to write about the work that I did to create the role of Colonel Rall, which is on reposit in the Archibald S. Alexander Library at Rutgers.  I also posted the thesis on Rick On Theater on 10 and 15 December 2009.)]