Theater Odds & Ends

 

[Soon after I started Rick On Theater, I began collecting and stashing articles from various sources for possible future use as posts for the blog.  Items of interest or curiosity or practical use or edification went into a file on my computer.  Over the years, I’ve posted many of them, but some have been too short to republish on their own and I didn’t have something with which to pair them to make a good post.

[I decided to collect a few of those items and present them as what they are: a random collection of theater-oriented “odds & ends.”  They’re not timely or topical—they’re just sort of fascinating.  I hope ROTters will find them so.] 

“ARTIST AS SEERS”

by Raymond J. Steiner 

[Raymond J. Steiner’s Art Times essay, “Artist As Seers,” caught my attention when I read it because my acquaintance, theater director Leonardo Shapiro, about whom I’ve blogged many times in Rick On Theater, often wrote and said that artists were seers and visionaries.  Many of his mentors and role models said so, too—Julian Beck of the Living Theatre and Peter Brook, author of The Empty Space, most prominently among them.

[Beck wrote, for instance: “An actor who brings back from his adventures a moment of communicable penetration is a hero, the light of our lives” (The Life of the Theatre [Limelight Editions, 1972: 5]).

[This essay was published in the “Peeks & Piques!” feature of Art Times [Mt. Marion, NY] 22.5 (Dec. 2005).  Art Times, founded in 1984, is a monthly paper that provides commentary and reportage on the fine and performing arts, including editorials, reviews, essays and critiques; short fiction and poetry; opportunities listings, essays on dance, theater, film, music and an extensive calendar of cultural events.  It’s distributed free at arts centers and galleries.

[One note regarding the posting of this item: Steiner wrote this essay all in one, long paragraph (which would look even longer in Blogger's narrow column), so I've taken the liberty of dividing it up for easier reading.  I trust the author won't mind.]

Long before they became craftspeople and technicians, prehistoric image-makers (dare we call them artists?) were seers. Though largely incomprehensible to us, the abstract squiggles and rectilinear lines chiseled into rocks, tomb markers, and cliff faces meant something to their carvers, but what precisely they signify remains a mystery. In the first place, why such markings? What did they convey to the maker? What to their fellows?

Some, like Otto Rank [Austrian psychoanalyst, writer, and philosopher; 1884-1939], have hypothesized that these markings represent mankind’s earliest attempts at expressing the inexpressible and, as such, represented an incipient spirituality that served as some prototypical ‘religion[‘]. In this sense, then, these early image-makers were our first ‘priests’ since our major religions, being book-based, came long after speech was transformed into a written language—and, as we know, these pre-historic “artists” were around a long, long time before speech as a means of communication came about.

It was only after, when the tools became as important to mankind as had been their original use—namely, to express ‘something’—that the idea of craftsmanship began to arise. As craftspeople became more and more technically proficient in both the making and use of their tools, it then became the doing—and not the tools—that was deemed all-important. Attention thus shifted to process. A foregone conclusion, then, that it would eventually be the product that became the focal point.

In time, it was the object created by a craftsperson proficient in the use of special tools that became all the rage—and thus the concept of “art” was born. From purpose, to process, to proficiency, to product. What an evolution!

But what of that original impetus that started the whole thing going in the first place? What happened to the seer? To the one who tried to point his fellows to a something beyond their senses? Don’t we still tend to think of artists as those who can see more clearly than the rest of us? Do we still owe anything to that original gift of being able to see more than others? And how—and why—did he/she slowly evolve into a mere producer of objects? How did they get from ‘see’-ers to ‘do’-ers?

Ought there not be some homage paid to this business of genuine seeing? After all, these pre-literate stone-scratchers are the great, great, great, great granddaddies and grandmamas of all artists—from [Leonardo] da Vinci [Italian polymath who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect; 1452-1519] to Rembrandt [van Rijn; Dutch painter, printmaker, and draughtsman; 1606-69] to [Berthe Morisot; French painter and a member of the Impressionists; 1841-95] to [Andy] Warhol [American visual artist, film director, and producer; 1928-87] to the very latest wannabe on the block.

Shouldn’t today’s artists be showing/telling us something other than where we’ve been, where we are, or where we’re heading? Shouldn’t they be doing something about giving us a heads-up on where we ought to be going?

Come on, being a seer is where it begins, isn’t it? It can’t all be about technique, trend setting, and sales—can it? When did the impetus first hit you? Remember? What was your vision and why was it strong enough for you to attempt to express it through an image? Is that initial urge to put pencil to paper still there, lurking around in your subconscious? Or have you buried it under a style, a favorite motif, or the theme of an upcoming, juried show?

Have you slavishly followed the same evolution from purpose, to process, to proficiency, to product? Or are you finally going to get serious and get back to that vision? Who knows—it might be you who really has something to share with us.

[Raymond J. Steiner (1933-2019) was a teacher, writer, lecturer, painter, and art critic/reviewer for Art Times, which he co-founded and for which he served as editor.]

*  *  *  *

“GAITHERSBURG INCLUSIVE THEATRE COMPANY

BRINGS GERMANTOWN MENTOR BACK YEAR AFTER YEAR”

by Samantha Schmieder 

[This article, from a local paper from a Washington suburb, just interested me because it was about a generous young woman, still in high school at the time, who made wonderful use of theater to benefit some community residents.  I find it heartwarming.  It ran on 16 April 2015 in The Gazette of Gaithersburg, Maryland.  (It was also published in the Washington Post of 30 April 2015 on the “Local Living: Montgomery Edition,”]

For Northwest High School [Germantown, Maryland, another D.C. suburb just west of Gaithersburg] senior Hannah Kauffman, mentoring ArtStream’s Gaithersburg Inclusive Theatre Company for the past five years has been more than community service — it’s been a passion.

“I started in eighth grade with no expectations,” said Kauffman, who turns 18 on April 25 [she’d be 27 now]. “We have 18 or 20 actors with a complete range of abilities. Just being able to see them grow over the five years I’ve been here has been amazing.” 

ArtStream’s general mission statement, according to its website, is to “create artistic opportunities for individuals in communities traditionally underserved by the arts.” Part of that occurs through its Inclusive Theatre Companies in Gaithersburg; Silver Spring; Arlington, Va.; and Raleigh, N.C.; and at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., that are open to adults with intellectual disabilities, learning disabilities and those who are on the autism spectrum. There are two groups in Gaithersburg, and Kauffman has been working with Group B.

Nicolette Stearns, a co-founder of ArtStream, has children around Kauffman’s age and noticed her in their plays and social groups [she’d have been about 13 then].

“We needed mentors at ArtStream. She’s kind, smart, a quick study, respectful and very much a leader in the group. I asked if she wanted to come and she never left,” Stearns said.

Montgomery County Public Schools students must each earn 75 Student Service Learning hours in order to graduate and 260 or more for a special tassel to wear at graduation, Kauffman explained. She said she has earned 900 SSL hours in the five years she has been involved in ArtStream.

“It’s just one of those things you have to like doing. Even if I didn’t get the SSL hours, I would still do it,” Kauffman said.

Stearns explained that Kauffman is a prime example of a student really taking something away from their SSL hours rather than just doing something once and moving on.

“She actually comes in and makes a difference. She came here, wanted to give and she really is someone who took a lot away,” Stearns said. She added that Kauffman has even used her experience at ArtStream to guide her future career path and is planning on studying musical theater as well as speech pathology in college.

Not only does Kauffman mentor the members, but she performs in the play with them, as well. She explained that sometimes being up on stage and working with the actors with lines and choreography helps everything run smoothly.

“We do an original musical every year that is derived solely from the actors, director and team. For us by us,” Kauffman said.

This year’s play, “Broadway Story,” also features a play within the play called “Gaithersburg the Musical.” During rehearsals on Tuesday, the actors practiced a song lamenting the woes of the Red Line as they waited for the metro at Shady Grove. 

[The Red Line is a line of the Washington Metro System that runs in a loop south from north of Bethesda and Rockville in Montgonery County, into central DC and returns to Montgomery County through Silver Spring and Wheaton to Glenmont in an elongated U pattern.]

Terrel Limerick, 43, lives in Rockville and is one of the actors in this year’s production. His favorite part of the program is when all of the actors, mentors and directors work together to write their original play.

“We write all together. We have to talk and give ideas back and forth,” Limerick said. “I like to give my ideas and they like to hear my ideas and they put all the ideas together for the play.”

Kauffman said her favorite part of each cycle is the time they all take at the beginning to write the play.

“These unconventional ideas you don’t think will go together that completely do,” Kauffman said, smiling, while recalling the space monsters and Greek mythology from previous years.

“Broadway Story” and Group A’s play, “The Lost Toys,” will be performed at The Historic Stage at Olney Theatre Center from May 7 to May 10. Both plays, according to Stearns, are “very sweet stories about family, finding who your people are and belonging.”

“All my friends come see the shows. They all know the actors, they love seeing the actors, they love the actors,” Kauffman said. “And I love the actors, too, for all of their quirks.”

[Samantha Schmieder is a University of Maryland graduate who wrote for The Gazette for over a year-and-a-half.  She’s now the Corporate Communications Manager at JBG Smith, a real estate investment trust based in Bethesda, Maryland.

[I have tentatively identified the high school senior from Germantown on whom Schmieder’s article above focuses.  A website called RocketReach, a sales intelligence platform intended to streamline the sales processes which features an extensive contact database, lists a Hannah Kauffman from Germantown, Maryland, who was active with ArtStream from 2009 to 2022.  I can’t be certain, but the listed credits strongly suggest she’s the Hannah Kauffman about whom the Gazette article reports.

[The site says that she has a 2020 Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre (Musical Theatre Track) and Bachelor of Science in Speech Language Pathology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (Indiana, Pennsylvania) and a 2022 Master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology/Pathologist from West Virginia University (Morgantown).

[Kauffman has experience as a graduate assistant at WVU, and from work at ArtStream; as a teaching artist with Imagination Stage, a Bethesda theater arts organization that presents productions for young people by professional actors and artists and offers a range of programs for children and families; and as a sales lead for Janie and Jack, the San Francisco-based children’s clothing manufacturer.  She’s currently a Speech Language Pathologist at CommuniCare Health Services, a provider of skilled nursing care with headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio (and eight healthcare centers in Maryland and Virginia).]

*  *  *  *

“BROADWAY POLISH ADDED IN CHICAGO”

by Michael Paulson 

[If you know anything about the history of commercial theater in the U.S. since the end of World War II, you know that plays that land on Broadway used to do a try-out tour to work out the kinks and find their sea legs.  That’s what the Cole Porter song from Kiss Me Kate, “Another Op’nin’, Another Show,” is all about: Another op’nin’, another show / In Philly, Boston or Baltimo’, / A chance for stage folks to say “hello” / Another op’nin’ of another show.  Philly, Boston, and Baltimore were among the city’s the Broadway try-outs played—Washington and New Haven were others.

[But touring got too expensive as post-war inflation pushed costs up, and the New York preview performances were created.  But as you’re about to read, sometimes it’s still a good idea to test the show in front of an audience outside the Big Apple before letting the highly critical New York theatergoers loose on your baby—not to mention the acerbic review-writers with their mighty sharp pens (think the late John Simon or Frank Rich, the Butcher of Broadway).

[So producers find a city with a sophisticated and theater-wise populace, but one that’s gentler than we Gothamites.  According to Michael Paulson, who writes about theater for the New York Times—but used to cover religion—some producers think that town is Chicago.  Maybe . . . after all, it does have a play named after it!

[Paulson’s report on Broadway in Chicago ran in the New York Times on 13 January 2016; it appeared on the paper’s website on 12 January under the headline “Before Broadway, Musicals Make a Detour to Test the Waters in Chicago.”]

CHICAGO — When the director Jerry Mitchell was looking for a place to try out a new musical about a struggling shoe company saved by a drag queen, he picked Chicago because the city was familiar (Mr. Mitchell grew up in the Midwest [born in Paw Paw, Michigan, in 1960, grew up in St. Louis, Missouri]) and the audiences friendly (compared with New York).

That show was “Kinky Boots,” and after Chicago’s embrace, it moved to Broadway [4 April 2013-7 April 2019 (2,505 performances); Al Hirschfeld Theatre] and won a Tony Award for best new musical. So a few years later, when Mr. Mitchell was ready to see what theatergoers might make of a jukebox musical about Gloria and Emilio Estefan, he again chose Chicago — and after some nipping and tucking, that show, “On Your Feet!,” also landed on Broadway, where it is pulling in more than $1 million a week [5 November 2015-20  August 2017 (746 performances); Marquis Theatre; no Tonys].

Now Mr. Mitchell is back in Chicago, for the third time in four years, using a five-week run here to find what works and what doesn’t with “Gotta Dance,” a Broadway-bound musical about older adults learning to dance hip-hop for a New Jersey basketball team’s halftime show.

[Gotta Dance débuted 28 December 2015-10 January 2016 at Chicago’s Bank of America Theatre. The Broadway transfer was postponed and the show retitled Half Time. Then the Broadway run was canceled and Half Time was rescheduled for a limited engagement at Milburn, New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse, 31 May-1 July 2018. No Broadway opening has been announced.]

“I come to this town to do my work, so when I get to New York, I don’t have to do the work,” Mr. Mitchell said. “The performances get sharper, and everything just gets focused. Chicago, for me, is a great place to do that.”

Over the last several years, Chicago has emerged as the go-to city for Broadway tryouts, consolidating a key position in the commercial theater industry as a stream of new musicals try to find their footing here.

The reasons are manifold. Most important, producers say: The city has a large population and a strong theater scene, meaning that there is a sizable base of experienced showgoers. And the audience mix resembles that of the Broadway audience: mostly female, older and more affluent than the general public, and with a significant dose of out-of-town tourists.

“You know you’re seeing the actors, the sets, just the way it’s going to be done in New York, minus the changes and tweaks, and it is a lot cheaper,” said Roger Zawacki, a 66-year-old retired high school administrator and theater director who saw “Gotta Dance” in late December and then offered an endorsement on Twitter, calling it “so much fun that it made me want to be a senior citizen. Oh wait, I am.”

There are other reasons as well. Several large downtown houses — in a newly revitalized theater district — are configured like Broadway stages, allowing sets built to be used here to be reused in New York. The State of Illinois has adopted tax credits to encourage local production of shows headed to Broadway. Labor unions, hungry for the related jobs, have embraced the challenge of making frequent changes to shows even after opening night.

And Chris Jones, the theater critic for The Chicago Tribune, is known for authoritative but also instructive reviews that producers say often help them persuade creative teams to make difficult but necessary changes.

Since a rollicking tryout of “The Producers” in Chicago in 2001, more than two dozen musicals with Broadway aspirations have had premieres here. A vast majority have been at commercial theaters, although a handful have been at nonprofits; many have successfully transferred, but some flamed out in Chicago (“First Wives Club,” which played early last year, appears to be the most recent example), while others transferred and then flopped (“Amazing Grace,” “The Last Ship” and “Big Fish,” to name a few).

[First Wives Club premièred at The Old Globe Theater in San Diego, California, on 17 July through 23 August 2009 and then opened on 16 February 2015 at Chicago’s Oriental Theatre and closed on 8 March; no New York production has been scheduled. Amazing Grace had a 17 May–10 June 2012 production by Goodspeed Musicals in Connecticut and a pre-Broadway run in Chicago at the Bank of America Theatre from 19 October to 2 November 2014. It opened on Broadway on 16 July 2015 and closed on 25 October (116 performances).

[After a tour of the United Kingdom and a run on the West End, Sting’s The Last Ship opened a U.S. tour at Los Angeles’s Ahmanson Theatre from 25 June to 16 February 2020. The show played the BoA Theatre in Chicago from 25 June to 13 February 2014. It opened at the Neil Simon Theatre on 26 October 2014 to 24 January 2015 for 105 performances.

[Big Fish opened at Chicago’s Oriental Theatre on 2 April 2013 and closed on 5 May.  It transferred to the Niel Simon Theatre in New York City on 6 October 2013 and closed on 29 December for 98 performances.]

Several more new musicals with Broadway hopes are on Chicago’s calendar, including Nickelodeon’s first theatrical venture, “The SpongeBob Musical,” based on the animated TV show “SpongeBob SquarePants” and featuring original songs by pop stars including Cyndi Lauper, John Legend and the Flaming Lips.

[The SpongeBob Musical opened at the Oriental Theatre in Chicago on 19 June 2016 and closed on 10 January.  SpongeBob SquarePants débuted in New York at the Palace Theatre on 4 December 2017-16 September 2018 for 327 performances. The production won the 2018 Tony for Best Scenic Design of a Musical and six 2018 Drama Desk Awards: Outstanding Musical, Outstanding Actor in a Musical for Ethan Slater, Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical for Gavin Lee, Outstanding Wig and Hair for the hair design by Charles G. LaPointe, Outstanding Set Design for a Musical for David Zinn, and Outstanding Director of a Musical for Tina Landau.]

Russell Hicks, the Nickelodeon executive overseeing that project, said that when he turned to theater experts for advice, “it was the consensus that was brought to us: Chicago is a great place to start.”

Out-of-town runs are expensive — Mr. Mitchell said his tryouts cost $1.5 million to $2.5 million [$1.9- 3.1 million in 2025] — but they are built into the capitalization of the ensuing Broadway productions. Audience feedback is assessed instinctively — are people in the seats laughing? crying? yawning? — but also, sometimes, more methodically, via focus groups and surveys.

“We’ve been at just about every performance, sitting in every section of the theater, to watch the audience watching the show,” said Dori Berinstein, one of the producers of “Gotta Dance.” Her co-producer, Bill Damaschke, added, “You become a bathroom stalker for a lot of anecdotal response.” (So far, the creators have taken steps to make the 20-something head of the dance squad more likable, and have written new songs that they may introduce later on.)

Most of the commercial productions take place in one of the five theaters operated by Broadway in Chicago, a subsidiary of the Nederlander Organization [second-largest owner of Broadway theaters, with nine, plus five in Chicago], which has aggressively courted pre-Broadway tryouts (some of which later wind up in Nederlander-owned theaters in New York).

Lou Raizin, the president of Broadway in Chicago, cited the work presented at nearly 250 Chicagoland theaters, as well as the increasing number of Broadway-bound productions beginning here, to argue that the city is “now the third-most-important theater city in the world, behind New York and London.”

And the theater operators have a partner in labor, which is eager for the associated jobs. “It’s found money, and it’s putting a lot of people to work,” said Craig Carlson, a third-generation Chicago stagehand and leader of the local stage workers’ union [International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) – over 170,000 members: technicians, artisans, and craftspersons].

As in other cities around the country, there are several nonprofit theaters that are developing musicals with Broadway aspirations: Last fall, Chicago Shakespeare Theater mounted “Ride the Cyclone,” a Canadian musical that has received strong reviews as it heads toward a likely production in New York [world première in Canada followed by American première from 29 September 2015 until 8 November; opened Off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theatre on 30 November 2016, closing on 18 December], and next summer, the Goodman Theater is mounting “War Paint,” a new musical that features the Broadway stars Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole as competing cosmetics industry titans [18 July-21 August 2016; Nederlander Theatre, 6 April-5 November 2017 (236 performances)].

There are also a pair of commercial houses in the suburbs, the Marriott and Drury Lane theaters, that are mounting musicals with Broadway aspirations.

“Until recently, we just did revivals, and some of our subscribers, who have been with us for 30 years, have seen some shows multiple times,” said Kyle DeSantis, the executive director of Drury Lane, which began producing new musicals with New York aspirations last year. “It’s nice to have new titles for them.”

Drury Lane first mounted “Beaches,” a musical adaptation of the Bette Midler film, last year [24 June-16 August 2015; no Broadway dates have been announced], and this year is presenting “Hazel,” a musical adaptation of the comic strip/television series [NBC, 1961-1965; CBS, 1965-1966], directed by the Tony-nominated choreographer Joshua Bergasse (“Smash”) [6 April-26 May 2016; Broadway opening hasn’t been announced].

For actors, the Chicago tryouts are a challenge (many leave children with relatives in New York), an adventure (they tend to live in a few apartment buildings recommended by the production), and a chance to develop their roles.

“The purpose of being here is to change things, experiment,” said Nancy Ticotin, a 58-year-old Broadway veteran (“Gotta Dance” will be her sixth show) playing Camilla, a character excited by trying to master hip-hop dance, as well as by a relationship with a much younger man. “Yesterday, I said to Jerry, can I say this word, instead of that word? He said, ‘Try it!’”

[From 2000 to 2010, Michael Paulson covered religion for the Boston Globe.  Since 2010, he’s worked at the New York Times, where he initially continued his religion coverage.  His work at the Times reflected his early politics roots and continued to tie religion to national issues.  Since April 2015, Paulson has covered theater at the New York Times.]  

*  *  *  *

“PROSECUTORS: PRODUCER BILKS 7 INVESTORS

OUT OF $165K FOR FAKE BROADWAY SHOW” 

[This report was broadcast on WCBS-TV (Channel 2) on 19 August 2016, reported by CBS2’s Jessica Layton.  Aside from its sheer audacity—you’ll see what I mean when you read the short report—the similarity to a Max Bialystok scheme, which Layton points out, make this an irresistible post for ROT.  If theater is often art imitating life, then this story is absolutely life imitating art—and I wonder if con artist Scahill figured as much.

[I also wonder how Mel Brooks felt when he first read a report like this one—because you know it went viral!] 

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – It seems like the kind of crime Mel Brooks made famous, except this one was a flop.

Roland Scahill [b. 1975] claimed to be the lead producer of a new Broadway show and scammed $165,000 from seven would-be investors in less than three months, according to District Attorney Cyrus Vance’s [b. 1954; New York County (i.e., Manhattan) District Attorney: 2010-22] office.

Scahill, 41 [in 2016], told his investors he had secured the rights to opera star Kathleen Battle’s [American soprano known for her distinctive vocal range and tone; b. 1948] life story and that Lupita Nyong’o had signed on to star in a production [a one-woman play] about her at Broadway’s Booth Theatre, prosecutors said. He also told them Netflix would film the bogus show, dubbed The KB Project, and make it available online, according to prosecutors.

Scahill told his victims he was raising money for the show at a rate of $15,000 per share [equivalent to $19,700 in 2025] to fund the first stages of production, prosecutors said.

After a while, the investors wanted their money back, and Scahill sent them checks which bounced, prosecutors said. He had already spent it on stocks, options, credit cards, rent as well as food, alcohol and entertainment, according to prosecutors.

“This indictment closes the curtain on Roland Scahill’s phantom production,” Vance said. “My Office will continue working to safeguard the integrity of this vital industry.”

Scahill faces charges of criminal possession of stolen property, grand larceny and scheme to defraud.

New Yorkers had mixed reaction to the investigation.

“I think it’s absolutely disgusting. It makes me sick when stuff like that that happens in the city,” Christopher Poyiatzis of Queens told CBS2’s Jessica Layton.

“It’s not surprising . . . right? I think what’s surprising is the people invested without having all the facts,” another person said.

Running a show starring some of the best names in the business? It’s nice work if you can get it, but the only ticket Scahill has right now is the one to jail.

His attorney told CBS2 the client pleaded not guilty. Attempts at reaching the producer were not successful.

[In 2017, Scahill, owner of RMS2 Productions, pleaded guilty and was convicted of stealing $205,000 [$264,000 today] by falsely claiming to be producing a play based on the life of Kathleen Battle.  He was charged with Criminal Possession of Stolen Property in the Second Degree, a class C felony, one count; Grand Larceny in the Third Degree, a class D felony, seven counts; Scheme to Defraud in First Degree, a class E felony, one count.

[Scahill was sentenced to six months in jail and five years’ probation.  In addition, he must also undergo psychiatric treatment and repay $189,000 [$243,000] to his investors over the next six years.

[According to court papers, Scahill sold shares in the non-existent show for $15,000 and got investors to buy extra shares by representing that that Netflix had agreed to film and broadcast a performance.  Not only were none of Scahill’s claims true, “representatives for [Battle, Nyong‘o, and the Shubert Organization, which owns the Booth Theatre] say Scahill never approached them and that they never had any deal with him.”  

[Most of the alleged scam took place between October 2014 and August 2015.  It fell apart in late 2015 when several investors demanded their money back.  Scahill reportedly sent them checks that bounced, then ceased all communications with the investors.

[Music critic Michael Walsh (b. 1949) described Kathleen Battle as “the best lyric coloratura in the world.” She rose quickly in the ranks of the opera world and branched out into other types of music.  She soon gained an international reputation and was in demand all over the world.  She was admired by both audiences and critics.

[Battle was not only collecting a stack of laudatory reviews and articles, she was showered with awards and honors.  But in the early 1990s, her relationship with the leadership of the Metropolitan Opera was straining.  She was gaining a reputation for being difficult and exacting.  She began exhibiting harsh, willful behavior with both company members and management.

[In a February 1994 article entitled “Battle Fatigue,” Time magazine reported that Battle was “renowned for leaving a trail of ill will in her wake wherever she goes.”  The Met general manager Joseph Volpe, said Time, cited Battle for “unprofessional actions” and “summarily fired” her.

[The singer claimed that she had no idea there was a problem and didn’t understand shy she’d been fired.  She ceased performing opera immediately and has only recently made overtures to returning to the musical form that made her famous.

[It was reputedly this contretemps and its consequences that was to be the focus of The KB Project.]

Kwame Alexander on 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert'

 

[I watched The Late Show, the CBS late-night talk show with Stephen Colbert as host, on Monday night, 13 January 2025.  One of Colbert’s guests was poet and writer of children’s fiction Kwame Alexander, of whom I didn’t think I’d heard.  (It turns out he’d been on The Late Show before about a year ago, but I either forgot that appearance or missed that episode.)

[Alexander’s Encyclopedia Britannica entry says:

Kwame Alexander (born August 21, 1968, New York, New York) is an American poet, author of young adult and children’s fiction, and advocate for introducing literary works and the art of writing to schoolchildren. He gained national prominence after winning the Newbery Medal in 2015 for his novel The Crossover (2014), much of which he wrote in free verse.

Alexander was born to literary parents: his father was a writer and publisher and his mother an English teacher. When he was 12 years old, his family moved to Virginia. After first studying biochemistry at Virginia Tech, Alexander switched to English and developed an interest in poetry under professor and poet Nikki Giovanni. He began his career as an editor, producing The Flow: New Black Poets in Motion (1994). Among his other literary pursuits, he founded the Alexander Publishing Group and its imprint, BlackWords Press (1995–2005). In 2019 Alexander teamed with publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to launch the Versify imprint, under which he helped choose children’s books to publish.

Alexander’s first poetry collection for adults, Just Us: Poems and Counterpoems, 1986–1995, was published in 1995. His other collections include Kupenda: Love Poems (2000), Dancing Naked on the Floor (2005), and And Then You Know: New and Selected Poems (2009). The book Crush: Love Poems (2007) was written for young adults. In Out of Wonder (2017), Alexander and poets Chris Colderley and Marjory Wentworth created poems in celebration of 20 of their favourite poets. Ekua Holmes, who illustrated Out of Wonder, won the 2018 Coretta Scott King Book Award for her work. In 2020 Alexander published Light for the World to See: A Thousand Words on Race and Hope, a collection of poems on historic events, including the killing of George Floyd, the protests of football player Colin Kaepernick, and the election of Barack Obama as U.S. president.

Among his other writing accomplishments, Alexander wrote stories for children. Indigo Blume and the Garden City (2010) tells about a little girl and her rooftop garden. Acoustic Rooster and His Barnyard Band (2011) introduces jazz to young children through animals. Surf’s Up (2016) follows the adventures of two frogs, one who likes to read and the other who likes to surf. In Animal Ark: Celebrating Our Wild World in Poetry and Pictures (2017), Alexander contributed verse to go along with photographs of animals. Published in 2019, The Undefeated is an homage to Black life in the United States. The book was named a Newbery Honor Book in 2020. Kadir Nelson, who illustrated The Undefeated, won the Caldecott Medal and the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award in 2020 for his artwork.

Alexander also wrote books for an older audience. He Said, She Said (2013), for teens, explores the relationship between two seniors in high school: a football player and a social activist. Alexander’s award-winning book The Crossover follows a year in the lives of twin African American 12-year-old boys and their love of basketball. Rebound (2018) is a prequel to The Crossover, focusing on the twins’ father. In Booked (2016), Alexander again used free verse—this time, to explore a boy’s relationship with his family and friends as he navigates a soccer injury, bullying, and his reluctance to read. Working with novelist James Patterson, Alexander combined prose and poetry in Becoming Muhammad Ali (2020), a fictionalized retelling of the boxer’s youth. Solo (2017) and Swing (2018), both written with Mary Rand Hess, deal with weightier topics, such as drug addiction and social divisions, respectively. In 2022 Alexander published The Door of No Return, the first novel in a trilogy about a boy living in what is now Ghana who becomes entrapped in the transatlantic slave trade.

Alexander also wrote about the technical aspects of being an author. He published Do the Write Thing: Seven Steps to Publishing Success (2002) with Nina Foxx. In The Write Thing (2018), he discussed how writing workshops can benefit school-age children.

Besides writing, Alexander has been active in community-based initiatives. In 2006 he founded Book-in-a-Day, a nonprofit educational literacy service. The organization helps to promote reading and writing skills by encouraging children to write poetry and publish their work. In 2012 Alexander cofounded the Literacy Empowerment Action Project (LEAP), which is dedicated to increasing educational opportunities in Ghana. He is also a frequent contributor to Morning Edition, the daily news program on National Public Radio.

[In any case, I was very impressed with him as a talk show guest.  He had a charming and engaging personality and was a great raconteur, so I thought, if I could find a transcript of his interview, I'd run it on Rick On Theater.  I did find one, but it wasn’t like the News Hour transcripts I’m used to—these are full of errors and have no speaker identifications (except "Stephen" for the host, and a symbol for the guest, but no name, and no formatting).  So there was a lot of editing to do, and then I needed to listen to the video to fix all the mistranscriptions and gobbledygook.  (The transcription is clearly machine-generated and no human checked it.)

[So, I re-edited the transcript, which aside from the errors, had little punctuation, so I pretty much repunctuated it as well.  So what you’re about to read is about half computer-created and half mine.]

STEPHEN COLBERT: Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen!

My friends, my next guest is a New York Times best-selling author of 42 books, who has won the Newbery Medal [2015; for “the most distinguished contributions to American literature for children” for The Crossover, his children’s novel in verse] and an Emmy Award [The Crossover (2023) for Outstanding Young Teen Series; on Disney+].  His new book is How Sweet the Sound [Little, Brown and Company, 2025].  Please welcome back to The Late Show, Kwame Alexander!

[CHEERS, APPLAUSE, AND MUSIC.] 

We love poets on The Late Show.  We love having the artists on here who paint the pictures with the words and the rhythm and inflection and unexpected twists and turns and combinations, and I’m just curious: you as a poet—what is it that first drew you to poetry?  When did you discover poetry as a human being?

KWAME ALEXANDER: I was three years old.

COLBERT: You remember!

ALEXANDER: I remember.  I was living on the Upper West Side.  My parents were in graduate school at Columbia University.  My mother read to me every day—Lucille Clifton [African-American poet, writer, and educator; 1936-2010], Nikki Giovanni [African-American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator; 1943-2024], and Langston Hughes [African-American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist; 1901-67].

But my favorite book was a book that went like this: “Fox / Socks / Knox / Box / Fox in socks / Socks in box” [Dr. Seuss, Fox in Socks (Random House, 1965)].  So, ummm . . . at my preschool, there was this kid who didn't like me, and one particular day, I built a castle out of wooden blocks to show my mother so she’d be proud of me when she came to pick me up, but this kid knocked ’em over.  So I went up to him and I used the only weapons I had.  Those were my blocks that you flipped.  Lest you want some quick payback, better fix my quick blocks stack.  [LAUGHTER.]  And he started crying.  [LAUGHTER.]  And so, when my mother came to school, the teacher was like, “Mrs. Alexander, we have a problem.  Your son Kwame is arrogant.  He intimidates all the kids with his words,” and my mother said, “Thank you.”

[NOTE: Alexander recited the Dr. Seuss lines from memory, but he misquoted it slightly.  He did the same with the Nikki Giovanni poem below.  In both cases, I’m transcribing verbatim what the poet said on camera, then I’ll post the correct verses as published in an afterword below.    ~RICK]

[CHEERS AND APPLAUSE.]

COLBERT: Mission accomplished!  

You were last here [on 1 February 2024] for your collection of poetry This Is the Honey [Little, Brown and Company, 2020].  You now have How Sweet the Sound: A Soundtrack for America.  This is your 42nd book—who’s counting—and many of your books are for kids.  Do you change anything in the way you write, if the book is for children as opposed to a general public?

ALEXANDER: Not really.  I try to write books that I would have wanted to have read when I was four or ten or 12 and I would love now.  So I’m writing about topics that I think families can read and enjoy together, but certainly, I have a soft spot in my heart for young people because I believe that the mind of an adult begins in the imagination of a child, and what better way to enhance . . . elevate that imagination than through the words on a page.

[CHEERS AND APPLAUSE.]

COLBERT: The book is a love letter, How Sweet the Sound . . . [APPLAUSE] . . . the book is a love letter to music.  What makes up the soundtrack to America to you?

ALEXANDER: Well, I believe it’s a symphony of refuge, it’s a score of redemption, it’s a . . . .  Last night I was at the Blue Note [Jazz Club, Greenwich Village] and I saw Sweet Honey in the Rock [all-female, African-American a cappella ensemble].  

COLBERT: Oh.  [SINGS:] “We all . . . everyone of us . . .” [We All . . . Every One of Us, 1983].

ALEXANDER: They sang that. 

COLBERT: They did?

ALEXANDER: Yeah.  And I don't care where you are from, what you are feeling . . . when you hear music, music can heal, it can give you hope.  It can open up a world of possibility, which is what the same thing I think children's books do.

COLBERT: Poetry and lyrics are . . . well, what is the difference to you?  Are they the same thing?

ALEXANDER: No.  I think maybe they are cousins.  Maybe they are kissing cousins. [LAUGHTER – ALEXANDER LAUGHS – MORE LAUGHTER.]  Imagine this, Stephen: lyrics, when they are done right, they need a beautiful guitarist, they need a sax player.  They need musicians to help elevate those words that are on the page.

COLBERT: They’re in relationship to the music that they’re dancing with. 

ALEXANDER: Poetry is the whole band.  Like, you have to do it all in those words on the page.  And I think that makes it special. 

COLBERT: Have you written lyrics?

ALEXABDER: Umm . . . not successfully.

COLBERT: You’ve given it a shot.

ALEXANDER: I’ve given it a shot, and that's when I found out they’re not the same.

COLBERT: One of those first poets that was read to you, the acclaimed poet Nikki Giovanni, passed away a few weeks ago [d. 9 December 2024; one of the world’s best-known African-American poets], and I know that she was your mentor.  How did the two of you become close?  That’s an extraordinary experience, to become close to someone who influenced you when you were 3.

ALEXANDER: Well, I met her in 1987.  This was the beginning of our relationship.  I was a sophomore at a place called Virginia Tech [Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg; Giovanni was University Distinguished Professor Emerita at VPI since December 2022].  And she was a visiting professor.  Me, deeming myself a pretty fantastic poet, took her advanced poetry class. 

I think she gave me a C-minus. [LAUGHTER] And so, I was livid and I went to her office and I—I had just discovered jazz music—and so I went and sat down in her office during office hours and I said, I don’t understand why I got a C-minus.  I’m a poet.  I listen to Nancy Wilson [jazz singer; 1937-2018] and I’m channeling my inner jazz and I know what I’m doing.  And she said, “Kwame, I can teach you how to write poetry, but I cannot teach you how to be interesting.”

[LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE.]

COLBERT: Oh-ho!  I felt that.

ALEXANDER: That was the beginning of a 37-year relationship.

COLBERT: Are there any words of hers that you would like to leave us with here tonight?

ALEXANDER: Yeah.  Can the band join me on this?

COLBERT: Yeah!  Can you guys . . . [MUSIC.]

ALEXANDER: I know you just wrote a cookbook with your wife [Stephen Colbert and Evie McGee Colbert, Does This Taste Funny? (Celadon Books, 2024)], so you might find this apropos.

COLBERT: Okay.

ALEXANDER: It’s called “Still Life with Apron” [in Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid (William Morrow, 2013)] by Nikki Giovanni. 

I would like to see you
Cooking
I would like for you to cook
For me
I would like to see you decide
Upon the menu
Go to the market
And pick the fruit
The vegetables
The fish
I would like to see you smell the fish I would like for you to Test the
     flesh for freshness and firmness
I would like to watch you
In the bakery by the dinner rolls
Deciding: Rolls or Crusty Bread
I would like to watch you run back
To get the Goat Butter
 
I would like to be sitting in a corner
And you
Intent upon your meal
Not noticing me
When you go to the wine store
I would like to watch you wrestle with red or white wine
Of course, because it is fish, but red
Is so Seductive and who ever fell in love
Over a glass of white wine?  [LAUGHTER]
 
I—uncharacteristically on time—
Would like to greet you
I would like for you to greet me
In a butcher’s apron
I would like for you to greet me only
In an apron
I would like to watch the movement inside the
     apron
As I undress for you
I would like to watch you walk
No
Stroll to the closet
Where you bring out your buffalo plaid
     dressing gown
Your pilly much-washed dressing gown that
     smells like you
After you shower After you brush your teeth
After you comb your hair
I would like to embrace your odor
I would like to embrace
Your essence as we sit down to eat
I would like you to cook for me
Yes
I would like that
Very much

[CHEERS AND APPLAUSE.]

COLBERT: Thank you for that.  How Sweet the Sound is available tomorrow!

Kwame Alexander, everybody!  We will be right back!

[The verse from Dr. Seuss’s Fox in Socks goes like this (I’ll try to duplicate its original typography as well):

Fox
Socks
Box
Knox
Knox in box.
Fox in socks.
Knox on fox in socks on box.

 [Nikki Giovanni’s 2013 poem “Still Life with Apron” (as published in Chasing Utopia; again, I’ll attempt to replicate the poets format and typography):

I would like to see you
Cooking
I would like for you to cook
For me
I would like to see you decide
Upon a menu
Go to the market
And pick the fruit
The vegetables
The fish
I would like to see you smell the fish Test the
     flesh for freshness and firmness
I would like to watch you
In the bakery
In the bakery by the dinner rolls
Deciding: Rolls or Crusty Bread
I would watch you run back
To get the Goat Butter
 
I would like to be sitting in a corner
And you
Intent upon your meal
Not noticing me
When you go to the wine store
I would watch you wrestle with red or white
White, of course, because it’s fish, but red
Is Seductive and who ever fell in love
Over a glass of white wine?  
 
I—uncharacteristically on time—
Would like you to greet me
In a butcher’s apron
I would like to watch you greet me only
In an apron
You would ask me to undress
To undress for you
Before I sit down at the beautiful table
Before you hand me my glass
You would ask me to undress
I would like to watch you watch me
Undressing for you
I would like to watch the movement inside the
     apron
As I undress for you
I would like to watch you walk
No
Stroll to your closet
Where you bring out your old buffalo plaid
     dressing gown
Your pilly much-washed dressing gown that
     smells like you
After you brush your teeth
After you shower After you comb your hair
I would like to embrace your odor
Your odor Your essence as we sit down to eat
I would like for you to cook for me
I would like that
Very much

[And for those interested in Alexander’s new book, How Sweer the Sound, which brought him to The Late Show earlier this week, here’s a review from Kirkus Reviews, 12 October 2024:

HOW SWEET THE SOUND

by Kwame Alexander; illustrated by Charly Palmer

A work whose lyrical and artistic genius only becomes more apparent upon rereads.

A journey through American music history as shaped by Black artists and traditions.

Fittingly, given the U.S.’s long and complicated racial history, this work takes its title from the beloved hymn “Amazing Grace,” written by a slave trader turned abolitionist [John Newton (English; 1725-1807)]. The book begins on the African plains: “Listen to the fireside chorus / of the motherland / to the talking drums / dancing beneath the gold sun / that beat a bold tapestry / of yesterday’s stories / and tomorrow’s dreams.” Likewise, the author has created a beautiful tapestry, woven with song titles and musical references. With each introduction to a different genre, he implores readers to “listen.” Laced with powerful imagery, alliteration, and onomatopoeia (“BUM-DUN! BUM-DUN!”), his verse begs to be sung. Taking a comprehensive approach, Alexander explores regional styles such as go-go alongside internationally known genres, including gospel, jazz, and hip-hop. Palmer’s distinctive illustrations offer the perfect accompaniment. Bold colors set the mood, while his brush strokes evoke movement and convey strong emotion as he depicts everything from enslaved people joyfully dancing in New Orleans’ Congo Square to fists raised high for Black power to performances by Chuck Berry [1926-2017], Prince [1958-2016], Lauryn Hill [b. 1975], and other musicians. Detailed backmatter defines terms and explains the significance of the music referenced.

A work whose lyrical and artistic genius only becomes more apparent upon rereads. (Informational picture book. 5-10)

[How Sweet the Sound is available through Amazon ($17.09), Barnes & Noble ($18.99), Strand Book Store ($18.99), and Books of Wonder ($18.99).]

Bombast to Beckett

by Kirk Woodward

[Kirk Woodward has contributed many posts to Rick On Theater since I launched it in March 2009—122, including several multi-parters.  Most of Kirk’s pieces have been on theater or other performing arts, notably music, and he’s covered a broad range of topics within those areas.  One of the areas of theater on which Kirk’s written is, necessarily, acting and actors. 

[As a sometime actor himself, and a director and acting teacher, Kirk’s well-positioned to write about acting.  (It also doesn’t hurt that he’s also a produced playwright, in which capacity he’s had to work closely with actors as well.  And let me not forget that his late wife, Pat, was an accomplished actor, teacher of acting, and director as well.)

[Back in March 2022. I published Kirk’s review of Isaac Butler’s book The Method, his exploration of the popular acting style based on an American interpretation of the techniques of Konstantin Stanislavsky.  Kirk recently reread The Method and did some reconsidering and expanding of his responses.  “Bombast and Beckett” is my friend’s later thoughts on the book.

[Let me add that I also trained as an actor at HB Studio, the American Academy of Dramatic Art (briefly), and the T. Schreiber Studio (with the late Lee Wallace [1930-2020]), and I have an MFA in acting from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University (when it was still the School for the Creative and Performing Arts).  I had a short career on the stage, doing some teaching and turning to directing in the last few years.  I have some experience from which to judge Kirk’s conclusions, and I agree with them entirely.]

One of the best books about theater in general, and about acting in particular, that I have read is The Method by Isaac Butler (Bloomsbury, 2022), a “biography” of the approach to acting that may be said to have begun with the work and writing of the great Russian director Konstantin Stanislavski (1863-1938). I’m reading the book for the third time, and I continue to find new and interesting things in it. (For a review of and commentary on Butler’s book, see “The Method – a Review,” posted on this blog on 12 March 2022.)

At the end of the book is this provocative passage:

Today, the major challenge to an actor is not being heard, or seen, but seizing and holding an audience’s attention. One thing that art can offer us is a chance to be a pure spectator, to discard for a moment the discomfort and anxiety of always performing and to simply experience. But it turns out we often find these islands of solace anxiety-producing. We feel the pull to check in with the outside world, the worry that we might be waiting in the wings while a big moment passes us by onstage. It is this drive in the audience that actors must fight against. The ever-escalating battle for the finite resource of a viewer’s attention encourages both storytelling and acting in which the choices are big, simple, and clearly communicated. . . . Now acting and writing head instead toward clarity, worried that a surfeit of mystery and subtext risks committing the cardinal sin of art: boring the audience.

I wrote a friend that:

Butler points out how closely related styles of acting (and playwriting, I’m sure) are to the society they exist in – maybe “the environment they exist in” is more accurate. David Byrne [the singer and composer, formerly leader of the rock group Talking Heads; b. 1952], in How Music Works, claims that the environment is as much the creator of art as the artists are.  Anyway, as Butler says, the acting style of Cary Grant would have been completely out of place in Streetcar, and Brando’s acting would have been baffling in Philadelphia Story.

That may just be another way of saying that acting styles and fashions change. However, something he says at the end of the book has made me rethink some of that narrative. Something is radically different for theater (and movies) now in a way that’s more than just changes of styles. For the first time people don’t have to go to the theater – it’s entirely optional in a way that it wasn’t, say, in 1900, where there were extremely limited alternatives. Not only do they not have to go – they’re afraid to, because something more interesting may be happening somewhere else at exactly that moment, as illustrated by the number of people consulting their phones during plays, and also by the number of ways you can multitask art, for example by streaming while texting. What style of acting does that call for? FOMO, fear of missing out, is driving our media, and what kind of theater can keep up with that?

No sooner had I written those words than I began to regret them, or at least to rethink them. Should I have? Jason Zinoman, in his column “On Comedy,” posted on the New York Times website on December 31, 2024, titled “For Comics, Honing Jokes Has Taken a Back Seat to Marketing. That’s Not Good.,” quotes the comedian Isabel Hagen (b. 1991 or 1992):

Every day instead of writing, I sit and think: I should post a clip of stand-up. What clip will get mean reactions that spark fights in the comments and therefore feeds the algorithm and gets me more views? Should I go into my folder of bikini photos and post one with the caption ‘lol hi’?”

Zinoman notes that “the major change has been the proliferation of video,” and then he adds, “The current ethos is to throw everything at the wall as fast as possible and see what sticks.”

“Hagen speculates,” the Times columnist asserts, “that the accelerated speed of technological change is what’s behind the need to grow careers at the same rate”; however, he wonders: “Do we want to live in a world where quality is so easily compromised to get more attention? Should we really be happy with a cultural system that incentivizes artists to spend more time selling their wares than developing their work?”

The stand-up Hagen “fears that we are moving to a culture where we’re just looking to be distracted.” She concludes, “If distraction is the goal, the loudest and most persistent ‘artist’ will win, and many may forget why they entered a creative field in the first place.”

If what Zinoman and Hagen say is true of live comedy performance, what can we say about theater? Is it likely, is it even possible, that live drama can compete in a short-attention-span world?

Whether or not it was literally correct for me to have said that “For the first time people don’t have to go to the theater,” I am certainly not the first or only person to observe that attention spans are getting shorter while the availability of easier, faster, and more disposable means of entertainment are proliferating.

At the moment, for example, one can stream a series of movies, series, and concerts on the cell phone while doing any number of other tasks, or doing nothing. How can theater compete with that?

I may be wrong, but it seems to me that paradoxically what seems to be the great weakness of theater – the proliferation of faster and more available kinds of technologies – may be its strength. The “Third Law of Motion” of Isaac Newton (1642-1727), which states that “To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,” applies to society as well, perhaps not in every specific but certainly in general.

Technology today is producing a reaction – for example, people deliberately doing without their cell phones or computers for varying periods of time. For those fed up with things technical, theater in its basics can be powerfully attractive. Theater can be performed anywhere, under any circumstances, even without technological assistance if appropriate. For example, I’ve staged plays in living rooms with no settings or properties of any kind.

[Many of Kirk’s ideas in this section are reminiscent of the foundational theories of Polish director and theorist Jerzy Grotowski (1933-99), considered one of the founders of experimental theater. Early in his career, Grotowski devised what he called “poor theater” (see Towards a Poor Theatre [Simon and Schuster, 1968]), which eliminates all the aspects of theater that he considered “extraneous” (i.e., “spectacle”).

[Poor theater entails little to no costuming, props, or elaborate sets. Grotowski relies on the abilities of the actors and uses nontraditional performance spaces (i.e., not conventional theaters). It’s essentially the opposite of commercial theater. Grotowski believed that theater shouldn’t be compared to television or film and shouldn’t try to emulate or compete with them. ~Rick]

Will theater in years to come resemble theater as we know it now? I don’t know, and certainly on Broadway these days we’re seeing plays that make elaborate use of technology, Will that kind of large-scale production survive? The monetary costs of technology can be enormous, and in addition, as always, there’s the problem of attracting audiences. Will a play that tries desperately to use cinematic techniques be as popular in its way as a movie?

We shall see. Regardless, live theater is always an alternative. It doesn’t need to be elaborate. It can be simply staged. It needs something to say, but it doesn’t necessarily need elaborate and expensive ways in which to say it.

However, my major subject in the letter I quoted above wasn’t so much about the survival of live theater as about the impact our intense current technological environment might have on acting. Here too I find myself rethinking my initial panic, for the following reasons.

There are of course countless theories about acting – what it is, what it means, how to do it. It might make sense just to ask actors what they do, and quote them, in order to define the craft, and there are excellent books that do just that, for example Actors on Acting by Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy (Three Rivers Press, 1995). However, actors’ thoughts on their craft are all over the place, and there may be discrepancies between what performers think they do and their actual behavior.

Similarly, in the last hundred years or so there’s been no shortage of acting teachers and writers on the craft. One might wonder how there’s anything more to be said, although of course it keeps being said anyway. Is it possible to find a synthesis somehow?

Perhaps we can look at acting this way (although of course there are exceptions to every rule).  Actors’ work typically sorts itself into three different areas. Actors work on themselves, their bodies, minds, feelings, spirits. They also work (typically) on the script of the play (e.g.: Aaron Frankel’s [1921-2018] How To Do Homework course at HB Studio; see “An Actor’s Homework,” 19, 22, 25, and 28 April 2010) or on other material provided by the creator(s) of the play. And they work with a group of other people – production staff, audience, but in particular with other actors.

Self, script, other actors. It seems sensible that a theory of acting would incorporate all three aspects of the craft, making a sort of “three-legged stool” capable of supporting almost any kind of acting.

This is not always the case. In the Twentieth Century, three of the major teachers of acting in the United States were Lee Strasberg (1901-1982), Stella Adler (1901-1992), and Sanford Meisner (1905-1997).

Although the following is an oversimplification, Strasberg may be said to have prioritized the actor’s own inner self, through a technique known as “affective memory.” Adler was particularly noted for the emphasis she put on script analysis. And Meisner based his teaching on the interaction between actors, devising exercises to bring them into close communication with each other.

Each, then, is best known for emphasizing one of what I have described as the three major elements of acting. Each also, I believe, would have said that of course all the elements of acting – internal, script-oriented, and relational – are important to a performer, and that of course an actor would have to be skilled in all of them. And after all the three famous teachers learned their craft in the same place – the Group Theatre of the 1930’s, out of which came The Method.

In practice, however, I suspect, actors are likely to use what might be called a “toolbox” approach to acting, drawing on a range of techniques depending on what is needed at the time. Butler in The Method makes it clear that many actors who swear by the approach of one of the great teachers (or of other teachers, or of principles outlined in numerous books), nevertheless in practice use a combination of techniques as necessary.

Butler writes that we can

go to many rehearsal halls in America and you’ll see a process divided in equal fourths into work around a table, staging, refining, and tech. The director and actors will talk about beats and structure a scene by its actions, will try to create staging that is informed by the characters and their needs. Visit a scene study class in America and you’ll likely hear the teacher ask the student some variation of “what does your character want? What is in their way? What are you doing to get it?” You’ll see them try to activate the mind, will, and feelings of the actor. You’ll hear them say the words “given circumstances.” You’ll hear actors alternate between the third person and first when discussing their characters. . . . You’ll hear them talking about being present in the moment, or really listening to their scene partner, or the steps they’re taking to stop indicating so damn much.

Every word in that paragraph is a description of standard American acting practice. It’s what I’ve learned and worked with and taught in my own experiences in theater. The elements of the description originated in various places and have been passed down to today by generations of actors, directors, and teachers who included elements from the various “schools” of acting and applied them to the actors’ selves, script study, and teamwork.

Actors who approach their work with a mixture of internal work and physical relaxation, intelligent script analysis, and the ability to talk and listen in the present moment to the other actors in a play, are in a position to expand from that base to almost any style of acting, from detailed realism to stylized period performing, from mumbling to mesmerizing, from bombast to Beckett.

Because, particularly in this country, an actor’s career is so precarious, so strenuous, so uncertain, an actor becomes skilled in adjusting, in rolling with the punches, in taking advantage of what’s available. As long as the foundations of an actor’s craft as I’ve described them are sound, an actor can and will maneuver from a solid base.

That is why I feel my letter, although accurate enough in laying out the problem, was wrong to expect a crisis in acting. This is not to say that there are not – or will not ever be – crises in society, in the economics of entertainment, in delivery methods of performance. There will be. There are, right now. (See “A Crisis In America's Theaters,” 13 September 2023.)

But the actors who have learned the pillars of the profession – sound work on themselves and their minds and emotions and bodies, capable script work, and the ability to “live” in performance with others – should be well prepared to weather the storm.

[When I read “Bombast to Beckett,” I had some reactions to several of the things about which Kirk had written.  That happens a lot, not just with Kirk’s pieces, and the reactions aren’t usually in disagreement, but are often commentary on or support for what the writer has said. 

[These were my thoughts on the post—my responses to what I was reading.  I’ve decided to append them pretty much as I wrote them on Kirk’s draft of the article.  I've done this before: my four posts of commentary on Kirk’s Art of Writing Reviews back in November ’09 were entirely composed of my remarks, made in marginal notes, on what I was reading.

[When I taught writing to college students, I told them that writing, especially essay-writing, was a sort of conversation between the writer and the reader(s).  That's what an essay is supposed to do: make the reader think, look at something from a fresh angle, ask questions.  In an extended version, the “reader” would write another essay in response (the other side of the conversation), then the original writer or another essayist would chime in, and so on.  Well, what I’m doing here is a perfect example of that, and this afterword will be my contribution to the conversation.

[What I’m going to do here is comment on some of the things Kirk said in “Bombast” that jogged my mind and made me think about all kinds of ideas.  That's a good thing, I think.

[To his first quotation from The Method, Kirk invoked FOMO as a motivating force in present-day acting.  This, in a way, is what drives Tom Stoppard’s (b. 1937) 1966 absurdist comedy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: two (inconsequential) characters who are out of the room when significant actions occur, try to “glean” (a word they use extensively in one scene) what’s happening around them. 

[In Act I of this Hamlet-derived play, The Player admonishes the courtiers to “. . . look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else.”  But in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s situation, when someone like Hamlet, Gertrude, or Claudius finishes a scene with them and leaves the stage, the two courtiers are left behind while the others enter a scene of great moment “somewhere else.”  (The reverse also occurs: when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern leave a scene, they enter into oblivion, while a scene of great moment takes place where they left.) 

[Stoppard makes Rosencrantz and Guildenstern try to piece together what went on in their absence—and they always get it wrong.  I maintain that one of Stoppard’s favorite themes is How do we know what we think we know? It’s the central theme of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Arcadia (1993).  In Arcadia, piecing together what the characters missed is something of an intellectual exercise, but in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, misinterpreting what happened when they weren’t present, leads to the courtiers’ deaths.

[I pointed out to Kirk that his discussion of eschewing spectacle and tech on stage sounds very Grotowskian.  I suggested Kirk give the Polish director and theorist credit and he responded that “a reference to Grotowski is fine if you think it will be useful”—I did, as you can see—"no harm in expanding readers’ frames of reference, I guess.”

[By the way, I always found it interesting, in the days when I was researching the work of experimental stage director Leonardo Shapiro (1946-97; see, among other posts on ROT, “A Biography of Leonardo Shapiro,” 16 April-7 May 2023), that he laid claim to being an acolyte of Jerzy Grotowski, who was fundamentally anti-tech, while Leo himself loved tech. 

[Shapiro’s productions were low-tech (but not no-tech) due to budget, not artistic philosophy.  He once told me, after I saw one of his shows in which he had some very effective low-tech visual effects—he was very good at that—that he wished he’d been able to afford holograms. (Kirk noted: “That is a funny paradox with Leo.”)

[Kirk speaks of the impact of the "technological environment might have on acting,” which made me think that artificial intelligence is already considered a direct threat to acting and actors.  AI was at the center of the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike against movie and TV producers (14 July-9 November) and the almost-simultaneous Writers Guild of America strike against the same industries (2 May-27 September).  

[According to the unions, AI makes possible "artificial" actors and acting, NHI (no humans involved).  What impact could be greater?  Among the goals of the actors’ strike was the prevention of AI from replacing actors on set by creating virtual copies of actors’ faces, bodies, and voices.

[(The writers’ demanded that scripts, dialog, or plots generated by AI not be considered literary or source material—meaning machines can’t be eligible to receive any writing credit and thus take both creative credit and payment out away from WGA writers.)

[The effect of these developments, if any, on the nature of the work itself (writing or acting) hasn't been openly discussed as far as I know—except the possibility of putting actors and writers out of work entirely if producers and directors can assemble Franken-scripts and Franken-casts instead of hiring live writers and actors.

[One frightening change in the field that occurs to me is that in the (near) future, actors may be hired to create AI templates, like mo-cap files, to be stashed and then used later in myriad movies, tv shows/commercials, and videos, morphed into other “actors” and inserted into scenes over and over again.  Sooner or later, once the technology has advanced, there’ll be fully generated virtual productions without actors, a director, designers, techies, or ushers! 

[Back in 2021 (in a post called "Computers and Actors, Part 1" [4 October]), I ran a 1987 Time magazine article on the pre-AI precursor of this potential, "Dreaming the Impossible at M.I.T." by Philip Elmer-Dewitt.  It was about a computer program that let playwrights create a virtual representation of their plays w/out hiring actors and a studio and putting up a workshop production of their scripts.

[Kirk’s response to these comments was that my points “are extremely important”—but that “developing the thought of electronically created actors would derail” “Bombast to Beckett.”  You can see that’s he’d be right.

[As to Kirk’s brief discussion of actors talking about their techniques and practices, I’d add that there’s also the apparent fact that actors, even the most talented performers, aren’t the most articulate about what they do.  They often either use acting jargon (of which there are many different “vocabularies” for all the “countless theories,” as Kirk indicates, plus hybrids) or incoherent explanations made up of things teachers, coaches, or directors have said to them and their own unmediated descriptions of their techniques.  At least that’s been my observation. 

[I guess that suggests a corollary to the saw that "those who can't do, teach": Those who can do, often can’t teach.  Acting is such a personal and individual endeavor, it’s not easy for artists to explain or describe what they actually do clearly to someone else.

[Kirk’s response to this remark was: “You’re absolutely correct.  I was tempted to mention that, but [I] didn’t feel that was important enough.”  As far as “Bombast” is concerned, he’s probably right—but the next time an actor is a guest on a talk show and the host asks about her or his craft, note how coherent the actor is.

[When Kirk refers to books by actors writing about their own techniques, I thought another excellent example, in addition to the anthology collection of Actors on Acting, is, of course, Uta Hagen’s (1919-2004) Respect for Acting (Macmillan Publishing Co., 1973).  My dad gave me a copy in 1974, when I got home from the army ready to go to the American Academy of Dramatic Art.  

[That copy got so well-thumbed, it was falling apart, and so full of marginal notes, underlining, and highlighting, it was hard to read the original text.  I was teaching acting then and ended up buying a new copy so I had a clean one to lend to students.  (I should note that my first acting teacher at HB Studio and the Mason Gross School was Carol Rosenfeld, a student of Hagen’s and my main model as a teacher.)  Kirk agreed that Respect was “a really fine book, one of the very best of its kind in my experience,” but he didn’t feel expanding his examples beyond the one book would advance his point.

[Kirk points out that the “three-legged stool” that comprises an actor’s preparation for a role necessarily requires that "actors work on themselves."  Possibly many readers know that the original Russian title of the Stanislavsky book we know in English as An Actor Prepares (translated by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood; Theatre Arts, Inc., 1936) is (in literal translation) "an actor's work on himself" (Russian: Работа актёра над собой (Khudozhestvennaya literatura, 1938) – romanized: Rabota aktyora nad soboy).  “Which is a better title, I'd say,” replied Kirk to my reminder.  I’ll also note further that a 2008 retranslation by Jean Benedetti of that seminal acting text is entitled An Actor’s Work (Routledge).

[Regarding the things Kirk specified that actors work on, "Self, script, other actors," I asked if he would consider that "place," meaning the work space (i.e., not just the theater and the stage/acting space, but also the set), is important, too.  I contend that Ihe space in which actors work, both in rehearsal and in performance, has an effect on the acting.  I offer some illustrations:

[When the Group Theatre was doing Johnny Johnson (1936; see “The Group Theatre’s Johnny Johnson," 18 November 2019), their only musical, they rehearsed in a small, intimate theater.  When they moved into the much larger theater where they performed, many witnesses reported that the production suffered. 

[In his Homework class, to impress upon us the importance of establishing a sense of place, Aaron Frankel recounted that when Jack Klugman (1922-2012) took over the role of Oscar in the Broadway première of The Odd Couple in November 1965, he actually lived in the apartment set at the Plymouth Theatre for several days to establish a relationship with what was supposed to be his home. 

[Years ago, in an acting class, I was assigned the Watchman’s opening monologue from Aeschylus’ (ca. 525/524-456 BCE) Agamemnon (ca, 458 BCE).  When I read the play, I realized that I had visited the ruins of the place where the play is set, the city of Mycenae, of which Agamemnon was king.  I’d stood atop the Lion Gate, which is restored, looking out over the Plain of Argos down to the Aegean Sea.  I’d been in that place in real life only a year or two before this class, so it wasn’t hard to envision what the Watchman sees when he spots the signal fires from Troy telling the Greeks that the war was over.

[(As a director, I have worked on this aspect of a performance once or twice, most memorably in Ward Six (Drama Committee Repertory Theatre, NYC, 1979), a stage adaptation of a short story by Anton Chekhov (Russian; 1960-1904) in which most of the cast were patients in a psych ward, but the performance space was a store-front black box with suggested, non-Realistic scenery.)

[Kirk responded to my point: “It’s very important, probably next in line, but I wanted to limit my list to what the actor brings into the room, so to speak.  You’re certainly correct about its significance.”  In Respect for Acting, Hagen includes “place” as one of “the essentials to examine in order to define” what makes any given moment in a character’s existence “real.”  She wrote, “Since place is crucial, let me remind you [to] examine every aspect of it. . . .”

[Kirk quotes Butler’s statement in The Method that “actors alternate between the third person and first when discussing their characters,” depending on what training system the actor follows.  For instance, Uta Hagen, and therefore Carol Rosenfeld (my teacher), stressed the first-person relationship to the character.  They felt it reinforces the identification of the actor with the character, which was their interpretation of the Stanislavskian approach to creating a character.  (I can’t remember if Hagen says anything about this in Respect for Acting—Kirk said he couldn’t either—but Carol said it to us in class.)  

[Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), on the other hand, and therefore Leo Shapiro (a follower of Brechtian theater theories, alongside Grotowski’s), eschewed character identification, both for the actor and the audience.  Kirk agreed, asserting, “Yes, Brecht loved using the third person.”

[Leo said frequently that he didn’t see the dramatis personæ as “characters,” but as “roles,” by which he meant their functions in the story/scene.  For example, in Children of the Gods (Shaliko Company, 1973; see “Children of the Gods: Launching The Shaliko Company (1973),” 19 November 2021), his collage of several Greek plays, he didn’t see Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Iphigenia, Menelaus, Orestes, or Electra as characters, but as “[t]he greedy King, the unforgiving Queen, the sacrificed Virgin on the altar, the stormy Uncle, the wounded, disillusioned Young Hero, the Sister who has been unhinged by the thirst for revenge.” 

[I try to explain this dichotomy from Leo’s perspective in “Acting: Testimony & Role vs. Character,” 25 September 2013.  Kirk’s response to this comment: “That’s an extremely interesting comment.  By the way, I find in working with actors that even the most method-oriented actors will literally alternate between ‘s/he’ and ‘I’ constantly in discussions, with no reason for the differentiation that I can tell.”]