"Could It Happen Here? How U.S. and U.K. Plays Are Staging Antisemitism's Resurgence"

by Carol Rocamora 

[We’re almost halfway through Black History Month, an officially designated period of marking the significant contributions of Americans of African descent to the history and culture of the United States.  Some of that recognition has to do with the dismissal of, disrespect for, and violence against African Americans.

[There have been instances of horrible violence against our black citizens, and not just in our history, but even now, in our present.  African Americans, however, are not the only group in this country that has been and are today the targets of hatred, bigotry, and violence.

[Carol Rocamora has compiled a report on how the theater in the U.S. and the U.K. is dealing right now with the phenomenon of a serious revival of anti-Semitism.  The remarkable rise in violent acts against Jews, Jewish businesses, and Jewish houses of worship is being met with an unprecedented rise in plays, new and revived, on how Jews have confronted and are confronting anti-Semitism.

[Rocamora’s report, “Could It Happen Here?” was posted as a “Critic's Notebook” feature on the website of the Theatre Communications Group’s American Theatre magazine on 1 February 2023 (AMERICAN THEATRE | Could It Happen Here? How U.S. and U.K. Plays Are Staging Antisemitism’s Resurgence).]

Over the past year, no fewer than 10 shows on both sides of the Atlantic have addressed the historical rise of Nazism and/or the troubling resurfacing of antisemitism.

“Remember this!”

That has been the urgent cry coming from New York and London stages this season. No fewer than 10 plays in the past 10 months have addressed the specter of Nazism and the rise of antisemitism with such intensity that it’s impossible not to take notice and heed the warning.

Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski was one of the first on the subject, last fall at Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn [10 September-16 October 2022]. There were already warnings from the New York stage late last winter. In February, Joshua Harmon’s Prayer for the French Republic, directed by David Cromer at the Manhattan Theatre Club, was the earliest in 2022 [1 February-27 March] to address the alarming rise of antisemitism—in its case, in France, the home of the playwright’s ancestors. Set in Paris in 2016-17, with flashbacks to 1944-46, the play deals with the deliberation of a French family on whether they should stay or leave, given the recent attack on the kippah-wearing patriarch of the family [kippa (or kippah) is another word for yarmulke or ‘skullcap’], who returns one afternoon with a bloody face after an act of aggression. “It’s the suitcase or the coffin,” he declares, as the family faces the grave question of what it means to be Jewish in France today. Appeasement and assimilation may no longer be options in these turbulent times.

It’s hard to imagine that Jews today are facing the question of whether to leave or stay, in either Europe or the U.S. But with the dramatic rise of antisemitic hate in recent years, there is unquestionable cause for concern. According to the Anti-Defamation League, 2021 was the highest year on record of harassment, vandalism, and violence directed against Jews since the organization started taking statistics over 40 years ago. That represented a 34 percent increase over the previous year, and the pinnacle of a marked five-year increase in the number of antisemitic incidents, highlighted by the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2016 [sic; 11-12 August 2017], the deadly attack on Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018 [27 October] that left 11 dead, and the hostage-taking at the Texas synagogue in Colleyville in January 2022 [15 January]. The American Jewish Committee reported that one out of every four American Jews has been the subject of antisemitism in 2021. Remarkably, the U.K.’s Community Security Trust reported the exact same increase—34 percent—in antisemitic incidents in 2021 across the United Kingdom in the previous year. Can it really be happening again?

“America was our promised land, but we might not be safe here anymore,” the artist Deborah Kass [painter; b. 1952] recently wrote [“I’m Jewish and I Don’t Want to Leave Again,” Hyperallergic 26 October 2022, https://hyperallergic.com/774049/im-jewish-and-i-dont-want-to-leave-again-deborah-kass/]. “When to leave? That’s the question every Jew has embedded in our DNA.” Just this past October, during the High Holy Days, the Washington Post reported that a rabbi asked his Washington, D.C., congregation [Dana Milbank, “American Jews start to think the unthinkable,” 30 October 2022, sec. A:25]: “How many people in the last few years have been at a dining room [conversation] where the conversation has turned to where might we move? How many of us?” His statement was delivered in the same month when major incidents from Albany, N.Y., to Brooklyn to Tempe, Ariz., to Los Angeles featured antisemitic signs, fliers, threats, and outright physical violence.  

[On or about 25 October, a man placed anti-Semitic and racist stickers at several State University of New York at Albany campus locations.  On 24 October, about a dozen people verbally harassed and threw eggs at a 15-year-old Jewish boy in Brooklyn.  On 21 October, the mayor of Tempe, Arizona, denounced reports of anti-Semitic flyers being distributed near the city’s downtown.]

No wonder, then, that New York and London stages are offering full-voiced, vigorous responses to this growing crisis.

Whether to stay or leave was the question that the young singing group called the Comedian Harmonists [a real group] chose to ignore in Weimar Germany. Harmony, a musical by Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman that ran at the Museum of Jewish Heritage [in Battery City, Manhattan] in April 2022 [13 April-8 May], tells the story of this sextet of popular singers, comprising three Jews and three Christians, whose fame in the late 1920s and 1930s extended beyond their Berlin base. Emboldened by their international success, the group ignored warnings and returned to Germany to perform, despite the Nazis’ increasing efforts to make the group’s life more difficult. Their persecution continued until the group’s final concert in Hanover, Germany, in March 1934. Thereafter they were prohibited from performing in public, their recordings were destroyed, and the group disbanded.

Tom Stoppard [b. 1937] addresses the issue of assimilation head-on in his masterpiece Leopoldstadt, which opened in London just before the pandemic and was remounted in New York last September (it’s still running [opened: 2 October 2022; scheduled closing: 2 July 2023]). In this five-act epic, Stoppard tells the story of a prosperous, elitist Jewish Viennese family who convert to Catholicism to assimilate. Spanning five decades from 1899-1955, the play follows the family through several generations during the rise of Nazism, with a devastating Act IV set on the eve of Kristallnacht, when Nazis invade their stately apartment and give them the ultimatum to be packed and ready for deportation by the following noon. 

[Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party’s Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary forces throughout Nazi Germany on 9-10 November 1938.  The name, which literally means ‘Crystal Night,’ comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings, and synagogues were smashed.]

The power of Leopoldstadt is multilayered in that it is Stoppard’s reimagining of his family history had they never fled Czechoslovakia in 1938. After his family’s escape to the Far East when he was 18 months old, his widowed mother made her way to England, where Stoppard (born Tomáš Sträussler) took his stepfather’s name, assimilated into the British artistic elite, and rose to fame. Though he suspected he had Jewish roots, it wasn’t until he was 60 that Stoppard learned that all four of his Jewish grandparents had perished in the Holocaust. It took more than 20 years for him to write about it.

Knowing this autobiographical dimension of Leopoldstadt, Act V, set after the war in 1955, is almost too painful to watch. In it, a survivor—a young English writer assimilated into the British culture, representing Stoppard himself—returns to Vienna to be confronted by a cousin, who tells him of his family’s fate in the Nazi death camps. “It can’t happen again,” the young Englishman says to his cousin. As Stoppard told The New York Times in a recent interview [David Marchese, "Tom Stoppard Fears the Virus of Antisemitism Has Been Reactivated,"  New York Times (online) 28 November 2022, Tom Stoppard Fears the Virus of Antisemitism Has Been Reactivated - The New York Times (nytimes.com)]: “It’s almost a foolish remark now. Whereas when the play was being written, I didn’t think of it as being a foolish remark.” In retrospect, Stoppard said that writing the play was “an act of self-reproach.”

[See my posts “Tom Stoppard & Leopoldstadt” (22 October 2022), an assemblage of pieces about the playwright, including a short biographical sketch, and the play, and “Tom Stoppard” (26 December 2022), which includes a report by Kirk Woodward on the new biography of the playwright, Tom Stoppard: A Life by Hermione Lee, and an interview with Brandon Uranowitz, the actor who plays the Stoppard-like character in Leopoldstadt.]

Several other productions this past fall focused on actual traumatic events in American history related to antisemitism. In November, the Encores series featured a powerful revival of Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry’s Tony-winning Parade, directed by Michael Arden [1-6 November 2022]. Set in Atlanta in 1913, it tells the true story of Leo Frank, a young Jewish factory superintendent unjustly accused of murdering a 13-year-old employee. Frank (in an affecting performance by Ben Platt) was wrongly convicted, and his sentence was commuted from capital punishment to life imprisonment. But while serving time, he was kidnapped from his cell by a group of armed men and lynched in Marietta, Ga., in 1915. (The production will get a full Broadway run starting Feb. 21 [opening: 16 March; scheduled closing: 6 August].)

A few days after Parade came a new play uncovering another painful chapter of American history. Playwright Bess Wohl told the little-known story of the German American Bund, an organization active in the late 1930s that established summer sports camps across the U.S. to indoctrinate youth of German descent into Nazism. Entitled Camp Siegfried, after an actual camp located in Yaphank, Long Island, it tells the story of two teenagers who meet there in the summer of 1938, fall in love, and are eventually radicalized, with life-changing consequences. Deftly directed by David Cromer at Second Stage [15 November-4 December 2022], it offered frightening warning with contemporary resonances—namely, to “never underestimate your infinite capacity for delusion.”

Camp Siegfried followed on the heels of play also dealing with young people and the devastation of Nazism. Set in France during World War II, This Beautiful Future by Rita Kalnejais at the Cherry Lane Theatre in September (directed by Jack Serio) featured another romance, this time between a French girl and a young German soldier infatuated with killing, as their older selves look back in rueful retrospection [20 September-23 October 2022]. 

If there is any glimpse of hope in the above-mentioned plays, it lies in the capacity for individual heroism in the face of the forces of darkness. In Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski, authors Clark Young and Derek Goldman tell the story of a Polish diplomat in World War II, recruited by the Polish underground to report the horrors of the ongoing Holocaust to the West. Karski [1914-2000] risked his life to visit the Warsaw Ghetto and a concentration camp, then made secret reports on his findings that were passed on to the Allies.  When Karski traveled to England and the U.S. to report in person to Prime Minister Anthony Eden [1897-1977; Prime Minister of the United Kingdom: 1955-57] and President [Franklin] Roosevelt [1882-1945; 32nd President of the United States: 1933-45], neither leader was convinced to intervene. The co-authors drew on Karski’s own words to create a solo show, performed by David Straithairn with passion, conviction, and dignity. Despite the ultimate failure of his mission, Karski stands as a lesson in heroism for our own current times of crisis.  “Each individual has infinite capacity to do good, and an infinite capacity to do evil,” the play’s Karski said. “We have a choice.”

If any comparison or contrast can be made about how this subject matter is being addressed on the New York and London stages, it lies in the radical theatrical steps that British directors have taken to call attention to the growing crisis. In last fall’s production of C.P. Taylor’s 1982 play Good on London’s West End, director Dominic Cooke heightened the drama about the seduction of Nazism to an extreme [12 October-24 December 2022]. The story deals with the conversion of a German academic named Professor Halder—a benign, seemingly “good” man, played brilliantly by David Tennant—into a radical Nazi and a vigorous participant in the execution of genocide. Cooke sharpened the drama by paring down the production to three principal actors, two of whom play multiple roles. The action thus careened from one short scene to the next with intense velocity as performers change parts in an instant. This all built to one of the most unexpected, stunning coups de theatre I’ve seen in recent years, as if the director, in this final moment, was absolutely intent that we “remember this.”

Even more radically theatrical was Robert Icke’s The Doctor on the West End [29 September-11 December 2022] (scheduled to come to New York’s Park Avenue Armory in June 2023 [3 June-6 August 2023]). Known for his daring reimagining of classics, from the Oresteia to Hamlet to 1984), Icke here adapted Schnitzler’s 1912 play Professor Bernhardi, about a doctor who refuses to grant a Catholic priest a final visitation to a 14-year-old patient dying from a self-administered abortion. The doctor’s medical and ethical stance at first seems justifiable, given that the parents cannot be reached for permission and the doctor fears the patient might die of fright upon seeing the priest. But the doctor soon becomes a victim of vicious antisemitic attacks and political persecution by her colleagues, with devastating results. In Icke’s mind-bending adaptation (which he also directed), the play grew into a challenge of our fundamental assumptions of human identity, not only pertaining to religion but also to race and gender. Not only did he change the gender of Schnitzler’s male doctor (played here by the amazing Juliet Stevenson, he cross-cast actors in roles so that no one was who they appeared to be in terms of gender, race, or religion. It was an alternatingly sensational and mind-boggling journey, both intellectually challenging and emotionally draining.

If this chorus of productions about Nazism and antisemitism has been building to a full crescendo on the London and New York stages over the past year, it’s only fitting that a revival of Kander & Ebb’s Cabaret is running on the West End [opened 15 November 2021; still running]. This oft-revived 1966 hit seems to embody all the cumulative passion, energy, and urgency being expressed by the others. Director Rebecca Frecknall has gone all out to sensationalize the depravity of pre-Nazi Berlin in 1929-1930 as the Nazis begin their ascent to power, beginning with the reconfiguration of the West End’s Playhouse Theatre into the infamous Kit Kat Klub (a metaphor for the Weimar Republic) where the action takes place. Audience members are guided through a back door, as customers would presumably have entered the club at the time, then through basement corridors into a front lobby where lewdly costumed singers and dancers are already deep into the “in-your-face” entertainment (the dazzling choreography is by Julia Cheng). The inside of the theatre auditorium has been reconfigured into the round by designer Tom Scott, with a superb orchestra on either balcony. As a louche Emcee of the Kit Kat Klub (Callum Scott Howells, following Eddie Redmayne in the role) emerges from the theatre floor, he rotates around the stage on a turnstile along with the writhing dancers in a frenzy of hedonism. It’s an unforgettable spectacle of a society at its lowest point of debauchery and degradation, about to reemerge as a monstrous Nazi phoenix from the ashes.

As the story unfolds of an odd assortment of souls thrown together by history, Cabaret offers a frightening vision of the dark future that lies ahead for Germany—and the world. You leave the theatre with the terrifying “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” still ringing in your ears.

[In the play, “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” is sung by a Nazi-sympathizing waiter; in the film, it’s sung by an adolescent boy soprano who’s a member of the Hitler Youth.  The nationalistic character of the song is meant to serve as a warning of the rise of Nazism, but "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" has been adopted as an anthem by right-wing, neo-Nazi, and alt-right groups.]

What the theatre is telling us, loud and clear, is that tomorrow is today. Said David Cromer, director of both Prayer for the French Republic and Camp Siegfried: “I’ve been exposed to antisemitism all my life. I grew up in Skokie, Ill., in the 1970s, and remember that the American Nazi Party tried to march there. But as it turned out, there was a pathetic turnout of only 100 demonstrators, met by 1,000 counter-protestors. So I’ve spent the rest of my life saying, it’s going to be fine, we’re protected, we’re safe. But when I read Prayer for the French Republic, that’s when I felt true panic for the first time . . . I’m wondering whether I need to leave.”

[In 1978, Illinois neo-Nazis of the National Socialist Party of America (NSPA, headquartered in Chicago) attempted to hold a march in Skokie.  Because of the many Holocaust survivors who lived in Skokie, the village government refused permission to hold the event.  The NSPA appealed that decision, and the American Civil Liberties Union interceded on their behalf.  An Illinois appeals court rejected the injunction, but the march was moved to Chicago instead and the Skokie event was never held.]

Cromer spoke to me not long after it was reported that a former American president dined with an infamously outspoken Jew hater and an open neo-Nazi. “There’s something in the air,” Cromer said. “Everyone can feel it.”

[As I’m sure everyone knows, this was Donald Trump who, on 22 November 2022, two days before Thanksgiving, had dinner at Mar-a-Lago with rapper and vocal anti-Semite Kanye West and Nick Fuentes, a  white supremacist political commentator.]

Remember this.

[I’d like, first, to amend Rocamora’s list of plays that confront anti-Semitism.  It may be an outlier in this time of increased violent bigotry, but perhaps it was a harbinger of things to come.  Back in 2015, New York’s Signature Theatre presented a revival of Arthur Miller’s Incident at Vichy (see my report on 16 December 2015), a play set during World War II in Vichy, France, the so-called “unoccupied” part of the country.

[Miller’s 1964 drama tells of the arrest, interrogation, and internment of Jews and other disenfranchised peoples in Third Reich territories.  Miller (1915-2005) was, of course, a fierce defender of freedom of speech and expression, freedom of belief, and civil and human rights.  What’s more, he was a Jew.  Even as late as 20 years after the defeat of Nazism in Europe—Miller reported on some of the war-crimes trials for the Herald Tribune—for him this was still a cautionary tale.

[For those who think, despite the surge in ethnic, religious, and even political violence, that such a thing as anti-Semitism is a bygone problem, let me assure you that it’s not.  I’ve been lucky.  My only encounters have been miniscule compared to the kinds of things we’re reading about these days. 

[I grew up in the shadow of George Lincoln Rockwell (1918-67), founder of the American Nazi Party whose headquarters was in Arlington, Virginia, across the river from my hometown,.  He was little more than a figure of fun for us, joking about his buffoonery and his silly appearance in his Nazi regalia.  Who could take him seriously?

[The worst I ever experienced personally was half-hearted bullying.  The incident that made me the angriest happened in my freshman year at prep school.  I came back to my dorm room one afternoon and found that one of my braver schoolmates had scorched a swastika into my bedspread.  I never found out who’d done it, but I also didn’t brood about it much afterwards.

[My parents, on the other hand, had the kind of experience that the movie A Gentleman’s Agreement was about.  They had moved to Washington, D.C., after World War II from New York and New Jersey so my dad could take a job offered by his new father-in-law.  There was a housing shortage in the Nation’s Capital at that time, but when my younger brother was about to make his entrance, my folks knew they couldn’t make do with the little two-bedroom apartment they had when I came along.

[So, they went house-hunting in the D.C. area.  There were some new neighborhoods being developed both in the city and the near-in suburbs, and so they started making the rounds.  At almost every turn, they got the same addendum to the sales spiel.

[Now, neither of my parents looked stereotypically Jewish.  My dad, in fact, was blond-haired and blue-eyed.  So the real-estate sales agents all made the same pitch.  As an added incentive, they proudly announced, sotto voce, “And, of course, the neighborhood is entirely restricted.” 

[For those who are too young to have heard that locution before, it’s code for “no Jews allowed.”  This was 1948.  My dad had just finished fighting the Nazis and had even served as an intelligence officer at the beginning of the Occupation, hunting down wanted Nazis and suspected war criminals.  And here he was, in the seat of our democracy, listening to people telling him and his young wife that some of the homes they might want to buy didn’t allow people like them to live there.

[Thank you for your service, indeed!  Thank goodness that was the worst they ever experienced.

[Carol Rocamora (she/her) is an educator, translator, playwright and critic.]

Music Theater Programs for Kids

 

[Two topics readers of Rick On Theater will know are of major interest to me are arts and theater education for school children and young adults and live music in the theater.  I’ve written about them and posted articles by other writers on this blog many times, but I still see a need to reemphasize the importance of supporting these efforts.  I’ve been holding on to two articles on the subjects for a couple of years now, and I feel this is a good time to republish them on ROT.  Both are about musical theater programs for children and one emphasizes the importance of live music to the experience. 

[I’ve recently added a third piece, a TV report from early this winter on a program to bring teenagers into the Broadway theater, some for the first time.

[First up is the transcript of a broadcast of “On Stage,” a program of NY1 News, the local news channel of Time Warner Cable (now Spectrum).  Hosted by Frank DiLella, the Emmy-winning (2018) host of “On Stage” who’s also appeared as a theater correspondent for the BBC, Sirius XM, “The Early Show” on CBS, CTV (Canadian private television broadcaster), and Al Jazeera TV, the program aired on 18 August 2012.] 

PROGRAM BRINGS BROADWAY TO STUDENTS ACROSS THE WORLD
By: Frank DiLella 

The classroom: Broadway. The course: musical theater. And the faculty: members of the Great White Way. Welcome to the school of Students Live!

Students Live! founder Amy Weinstein created the company after she was asked by the producers of the original production of “Rent” to form a curriculum that would help develop young audiences for Broadway.

“It grew into an interactive training ground to connect Broadway artists in front of and behind the scenes to young people from all over the world,” Weinstein said.

Students Live! teacher and “Wicked” dance captain Alicia Albright regularly conducts a Broadway choreography workshop for aspiring young performers. On the day NY1 stopped by, Albright was teaching a portion of the song “Dancing Through Life” to some students.

“The goal is that they leave remembering that hard work brings results and also, no matter what they do, whether they pursue this or not, if they do pursue it, hopefully it gives them hope and inspiration to pursue it and if they don’t, hopefully they will support the arts and the Broadway community for the rest of their lives,” Albright said.

“It kind of reminds us if we want to be an actor or singer, we can if we work hard and we put our minds to it,” said dancer Gianna Newborg.

While musical theater and Broadway are considered staples of American culture, in 2008 Students Live! opened up their program to folks overseas.

Forty-eight students from South Korea are currently putting the finishing touches on their musical show entitled “Journey to America.” The musical revue features well known Broadway songs including “One,” “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” and “NYC.” Tony-nominated actor John Tartaglia and Broadway casting director Benton Whitley recently attended a rehearsal to provide the kids with some musical theater advice.

“You forget that these kids are from another country. Most of them don’t speak English at all and all of a sudden they come here and in 14 days, it’s total immersion,” Tartaglia said. “All of a sudden, they’re singing all these complicated lyrics from 40 different Broadway shows. From where they started to where they are now, it’s incredible. It’s overwhelming.”

“I think a lot of times, kids from other cultures think they should be seen and not heard,” Whitley said. “I think theater is an incredible outlet for them to actually realize that’s not always the case.”

Veteran Broadway producer Alecia Parker said programs like Students Live! are essential for the New York theater community and beyond.

“It makes our industry stronger and builds new audiences for tomorrow, which we can’t ever forget about,” she said.

While her program seems to be thriving, Weinstein said she has big plans for the future.

“My goal in the next five years is to have a brand name that Broadway has as a conservatory on Broadway to develop younger audiences,” she said. “Not necessarily just to sell a ticket but to create what they need to cast in their shows and to create appreciation for all the shows.”

[For more information on the Students Live program, log on to www.studentslive.net.

[Since 2000, StudentsLive’s Award-Winning live interactive education programming has attracted over 100,000 participants from as far away as Guam, the UK, Italy, and from all across the United States.  The League of American Theatres and Producers and the Theatre Development Fund have awarded StudentsLive grants for Outstanding Education Programs on Broadway.  StudentsLive’s programs are now attracting adult groups and tour internationally in collaboration with presenters all across the world.

[Guest Speakers and workshop participants at the high profile Exclusive Student Matinees and Workshops on Broadway have included: Judge Judy, Geraldine Ferraro, Johnnie Cochran, Tommy Hilfiger, Kathy Lee Gifford, Susan Lucci, George Hamilton, Reba McEntire, Chazz Palminteri, Bernadette Peters, Joey Fatone, and Scary Spice

[StudentsLive’s ongoing commitment is to create highly effective, interactive and engaging workshops, events and programs for audiences of all ages in partnership with the best theater the  U.S. has to offer, “Broadway.”  The organization offers a highly personal inside connection to live theater with educators, corporations, group leaders, families, Girl Scouts, adult individuals, and overall educated, sophisticated, and new theater attendees worldwide.

[StudentsLive’s mission is to create and inspire newer, better, and wider audiences and artists alike: and to connect and provide deeply engaging and creative access to Broadway shows by offering the highest quality programming, and services on Broadway today.  As Hilary Clinton stated: “Programs like these enable a new generation of audiences to make the arts a permanent part of their lives.”]

*  *  *  *
ENCHANTED!
by Bettina Covo 

[The second article was originally published in the February 2014 issue of Allegro, the member magazine of Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, the union that represents members of the pit orchestras for all Broadway and many Off-Broadway shows (among other gigs around town).  It’s no surprise, then, that its pages often contain articles in support of live music in New York theaters—Local 802 supplies the instrumentalists and music directors for all those shows.  I couldn’t agree with them more strongly—even though I don’t play an instrument.  

[This program, which AFM supports for obvious reasons, is Inside Broadway and the series is called Creating the Magic—because that’s what happens when drama, music, singing, and dancing all come together in a theater!  (It’s all the more appropriate that the production for 2014 was Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s most magical of all musicals, Cinderella—which ROTters will know is a show close to my heart since I saw it in its world première on television in 1957 (see my post “Cinderella: Impossible Things Are Happening,” 25 April 2013).]

Live music brings the magic of theatre to kids

What happens when you combine the wonders of live music with the power of live theatre? Magic! Recently, over 3,000 public school children were treated to a special holiday gift – a look behind the curtain into the inner workings of a Broadway show.

Inside Broadway has presented another wonderful production in its Creating the Magic series. This time, the show was Rodgers and Hammerstein’s magical “Cinderella” and the venue was the Broadway Theatre at 1681 Broadway.

As the morning began, excited students piled into the theatre, many of them rushing to take a peek at the musicians in the orchestra pit. Even though protective netting prevented anyone from getting too close, it didn’t stop the kids from trying. When asked if they played music, many of the students gleamed with pride as they named the instruments they studied. To say they were excited to hear live music from live musicians would be an understatement.

Inside Broadway’s executive director Michael Presser began the presentation with a short history of the Broadway Theatre, which was immediately followed by one of the numbers from the show. Spellbound, the children watched as the stage director and various crew members from the many theatrical departments – lights, sound, props, set changes, costumes – came out on stage to reveal the secrets of producing a Broadway show.

At every Creating the Magic event, representatives from Broadway unions are invited to speak. Recording Vice President John O’Connor attended on our behalf to talk about Local 802 and the importance of live music.

Later, the talented cast (Laura Irion, Andy Jones, Rebecca Luker, Laura Osnes and Kirstin Tucker) performed several more charming musical numbers from the show, accompanied by Local 802 members Brian Taylor (piano), Billy Miller (drums) and Mark Vanderpoel (bass), under the direction of musical director Andy Einhorn. After each number, Michael Presser interviewed the cast members to talk about their theatrical careers.

Andy Einhorn was then given the opportunity to address the audience from the podium, explaining the role of the music director in a Broadway show. The children were totally engaged, attentively listening to Einhorn talk about the music and the orchestra.

“Participating in Inside Broadway was truly a rewarding opportunity for me and the other musicians who helped out,” Einhorn said. “It was great to see so many children experience the joy of watching how the sets, props, lights and music all function to help create the totality that is a Broadway musical. We are blessed at ‘Cinderella’ to have a large orchestra thanks to our producers and our friends at the Rodgers and Hammerstein organization.”

The presentation concluded, aptly enough, with the song “There’s Music in You,” followed by a question-and-answer period. Most of the questions are usually directed towards the actors and sometimes the stage director and crew. This time, it was truly heartening to see so many of the children ask Andy Einhorn questions about being a Broadway musician. He was pleasantly surprised. “I particularly found myself encouraged that so many students had questions about how to become musicians on Broadway,” Einhorn said.

A young trumpet player asked “How does one become a Broadway musician?” Einhorn’s response, “Practice, practice, practice, but above all – have fun!”

And indeed, fun was had by all, especially the fortunate children who were privileged to see what it takes to produce the nightly miracle of a Broadway show. Thank you to the musicians and the creative team, and to Michael Presser and his dedicated staff as well as the board and patrons of Inside Broadway for giving everyone involved such a magical holiday gift. Finally, as reported in last month’s Allegro, Local 802 was recently asked to join the board of Inside Broadway. We’re proud that we are represented in this wonderful organization.

*  *  *  *
BROADWAY BRIDGES PROGRAM HELPS THOUSANDS OF NEW YORK CITY STUDENTS
SEE THEIR FIRST BROADWAY SHOW
by Dick Brennan 

[The story below, broadcast by WCBS News (Channel 2) on 27 November 2022, reports on a still relatively new program that allows New York City high school students to see Broadway shows, both musicals and non-musicals, at an affordable ticket price. 

[Broadway Bridges was inaugurated in 2017 by the Broadway League, the trade association for New York City’s commercial theater, the New York City Department of Education’s Office of Arts and Special Projects, and the United Federation of Teachers.  The program’s website is https://www.broadwaybridges.org/.]

NEW YORK -- Each year, thousands of New York City high school students see a Broadway show, an experience that can change lives.

A CBS2’s Dick Brennan reports, Broadway Bridges is the largest theater education program in the city.

“I’m happy. I’m excited. I just want to see how it is,” said 10th grader Cam Johnson.

“I’ve never done anything quite like this other than the movie theater,” said Kasey Rosario, a 10th grader at East Bronx Academy for the Future.

High school sophomores recently got a chance to see “The Phantom of the Opera,” Broadway’s longest-running musical, for just $10 a ticket thanks to Broadway Bridges.

“We know that when kids do arts, they do better in life, they go on, further their school. They just are happier, more successful people. So this is a win for us, a win for the students and a win for New York City,” said Charlotte St. Martin, president of the Broadway League.

St. Martin wants every New York City school student to see a Broadway show before they graduate.

“It introduces a key aspect of the city of New York. It introduces careers in Broadway to these students because they’re making life decisions,” said St. Martin. “And it also hopefully builds an audience for us.”

Around 60,000 students have seen shows like “Beetlejuice,” “Aladdin” and “Hadestown” since the program started six years ago.

“Broadway is a really exciting place to go to. You get to see professional plays,” said 10th grader Marian Rodriguez.

“I think it’s a great way for people to grow a new love of theater,” said 10th grader Paulyne Bacani, who’s been to Broadway before. “I’m excited for [my friends] because it’s their first time.”

“They’re mesmerized. Many of our students have never even been to Manhattan, much less a theater. It’s really great. The teachers tell us it is an incredible bonding experience for them,” said St. Martin.

“People don’t realize that the arts is very conducive to learning. When you mix a passion for arts, it creates a passion for academics. It’s an outlet for a lot of our students,” said Rosemary Vega, principal at East Williamsburg Scholars Academy.

For many student, the trip to “Phantom” was their first time ever seeing a Broadway show.

“I don’t really know what I should expect, I don’t know. I’m still excited,” said 10th grader Victoria Banszynski.

Kasey Rosario, a 10th grader at East Bronx Academy for the Future, is eyeing a career in the arts and said a trip to the theater is an invaluable lesson.

“I think it might help me be more confident, since there’s actually like actors going through the process of exposing their art style and being themselves. So it might help me be more confident in my writing,” said Rosario.

In all, 19 Broadway shows, including “Into the Woods,” “MJ: The Musical,” “Wicked,” “Death of a Salesman” and “Topdog/Underdog,” are on this year’s list, ushering in new lifelong theater fans.

[Dick Brennan joined CBS2 in 2012 as an anchor and reporter.  In addition, he anchors on its digital channel CBS News New York, which is also seen on the News at Nine on our sister station WLNY-TV on Long Island.]

"A Maharajah's Festival for Body and Soul"

by Richard Schechner

[Richard Schechner is a prominent teacher of and writer on theater and has made a lifelong study of Asian performance forms and practices, especially Indian forms.  (Full disclosure: Schechner was one of my professors in New York University’s Department of Performance Studies.  He’s now emeritus.) 

[Among his other credits, he is the editor of The Drama Review and was founder and artistic director of the Performance Group (1967-80), progenitor of today’s Wooster Group, and, from 1992 to 2009, of East Coast Artists  This article first appeared in the New York Times on 26 November 2000 in the “Arts & Leisure” section. 

[The Ramlila is an enactment of the tale of Rama, the hero of the epic poem the Ramayana who is often worshipped by Hindus as an incarnation of the god Vishnu.  In the Ramlila, the myth is presented as a cycle play, much like the mystery plays of Europe, and the whole celebration can last from seven to 31 days, depending on the region of India (each of which celebrates it in its own style at a different time of the year), and evokes the atmosphere of a secular festival as well as providing for religious observance. 

[The Ramlila of Ramnagar, described in Schechner’s report below, celebrated for almost 200 years, is the largest, longest, and most elaborate of the various festivals in India and the Indian diaspora.  For the interested reader, the Ramlila festival and performances are described in many books, including Anuradha Kapur’s Actors, Pilgrims, Kings, and Gods: The Ramlila at Ramnagar (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1990).]

A king, his prince and his courtiers ride in full pomp atop richly caparisoned elephants. They, along with tens of thousands of spectator-devotees, their hands pressed together in the Hindu prayer-salute, admire and worship the gods Vishnu and Lakshmi in their incarnations as Rama and Sita. Titanic battles pit human-size gods against 50-foot-high demons.

For a whole month there is continuous theater, 31 daily episodes of love, war, exile, intrigue and adventure. The stages for this performance of great magnitude are locations dispersed, filmlike, throughout Ramnagar (literally, Ramatown), a midsize settlement across the Ganges River from the holy city of Benares [now called Varanasi] in the north Indian province of Uttar Pradesh.

Ramnagar is the seat of the Maharajah of Benares, Vibhuti Narain Singh, still revered by multitudes of Indians more than 50 years after losing his crown and his kingdom when the Princely State of Benares was dissolved into the Union of India in 1949.

This is Ramlila, or Rama’s play: participatory environmental theater on a grand scale. Ramlila is theater — and it is religious devotion, pilgrimage, a festive fair and political action. Audiences range from a few thousand for some episodes to 100,000 for others. Every Hindu Indian, and most Muslims, know the story of Ramlila; it is always being presented in films, on television, as graphic art and in literature, ranging from great poetry to comic books. There are thousands of local Ramlilas enacted all over Hindi-speaking India — and in the diaspora, too, from Trinidad to Queens.

But the Ramlila of Ramnagar is different. It features the Maharajah of Benares as patron, director and player. It is many days longer than other Ramlilas. It is more skillfully produced theatrically. It draws much larger and more devoted crowds. And its future may be more precarious.

During Ramlila, Ramnagar is transformed into a living theatrical model of the entire Indian subcontinent, from the Himalayan mountains in the north to Sri Lanka off the southeast coast. Nothing of Ramlila’s size, totality and intensity has been seen in the West since medieval times. Compared with Ramlila, the Oberammergau Passion Play and Peter Brook’s “Mahabharata” are small scale.

The text of Ramlila is a version of the poet-sage Valmiki’s 2,000-year-old classical Sanskrit poem known as “The Ramayana.” Like “The Iliad,” Ramlila tells the story of a great war waged to recover a stolen wife. The background for this tale is the rise to power of Ravana, the 10-headed demon king of Lanka (today’s Sri Lanka), who terrorizes humans and gods. The gods implore Vishnu and Lakshmi to take human form — as Rama and Sita — and subdue Ravana. This they do, but as humans they are bound by the laws of human nature and society.

On the night that Rama is to be made king of Ayodhya, a reversal of fortune occurs and he is sent into exile, along with his brother Lakshmana and his wife, Sita. In the forest, Ravana tricks Sita and kidnaps her. Rama gathers an army of monkeys and bears, led by the ever-loyal, much-loved monkey god, Hanuman. Across rivers, hills and jungle, Rama’s army chases after Ravana. Reaching the southeast coast, Rama’s army builds a bridge across the sea to Lanka. In battle, Ravana loses his son and a brother. Finally, Ravana himself is killed by Rama. Triumphantly, Rama, Sita, Lakshmana and Hanuman return to Ayodhya, where Rama is at last crowned king — heralding a golden age called Ramraj, or Rama’s rule.

Like all great art, Ramlila changes its meaning over time. Nationalist sentiments, present mostly as a vague background 25 years ago, now operate openly, especially among many younger male spectators. And today’s Hindu nationalists, wanting to turn India into a Hindu state, hold Ramraj up as their ideal.

Under the watchful eye of the Maharajahs of Benares, Ramlila has been performed in Ramnagar every year since the early 1800’s. But how long it will continue is no longer certain. The pressures of India’s ever-increasing population and the nation’s vigorous economic growth threaten this unique theatrical-religious cycle.

Ramlila needs lots of time and space — scarce in today’s India. People who once would support Rama in his war against Ravana now run businesses that can’t be ignored for a month. At the same time, forests, ponds and open sites are being eaten up by housing and highways. Even finding younger actors and technicians to replace those already well past retirement age is proving difficult.

As an American theater director who has studied Ramlila since 1976, I am fascinated by its scale, by the attention to detail in its staging, lighting, scenic design and costuming, by the acting and singing, and by the convergence of narrative, spectacle, devotion and politics. I have seen all 31 episodes twice and, along the way, interviewed the Maharajah, the Rajkumar (crown prince) and many participants and performers in the play, as well as a number of spectators. In September [2000], I went to Ramnagar to see portions of this year’s spectacle, as I have in other years.

Ramayana means Rama’s journey, and Ramlila suggests this journey literally. There are no seats. People sit on the ground, stand, watch from rooftops or perch on walls. When the action calls for it, the crowd moves from one location to another. Following in Rama’s footsteps is fundamental to Ramlila. This movement is a kind of pilgrimage, a worship-in-action.

The festival itself transforms an area of many square miles. Some of the stages are enclosures in the middle of the town, others are deep in what was once forest and jungle, or on grassy hillsides and in open fields, or amid large gardens of fragrant blooming trees and temples and marble gazebos built by former maharajahs. For one scene, the stage is the Maharajah’s own palace, known as the Fort, which it really once was.

Each episode is called a lila [‘divine amusement’ or ‘the playful activity of a god’]. On most days, Ramlila begins at 5 p.m. and continues until 10 at night. Some episodes last late into the evening and one, Rama’s coronation, does not end until dawn.

The staging is simple and iconographic, replicating images from temples, religious paintings and popular posters. The costumes are richly woven silks in resplendent gold and red. The faces of some actors are adorned with glittering jewels. Many colorful masks and large, brightly painted papier-mache effigies animate the performances.

Certain roles are passed down in families and are usually played by the same actors year after year. This year, for example, Ravana was played by Kaushal Pati Pathak, a farmer living about eight miles from Ramnagar. When I first saw Ramlila in 1976, Kaushal’s elder brother, Swami Nath Pathak, shared the role with their father.

But this tradition is no longer secure, though it has persevered for more than 100 years. Kaushal said he did not want his son to portray Ravana. “Life as a farmer is too hard,” he said. “The Maharajah has no money anymore. I want my son to work in the city.” The sentiment is heard frequently these days.

The original Ramayana poem itself is never spoken because Sanskrit is a language very few Indians understand. Instead, what people hear is the Ramcharitmanas, a 16th-century Hindi version of the epic. The entire Manas, as it is called, is chanted by 12 men sitting each night in a circle close to the Maharajah. But even though at Ramlila one can see dozens of people reading texts of the Manas, many others cannot understand its archaic Hindi. To enable everyone to follow the story, a maharajah in the mid-19th century, Ishwari Prasad Narain Singh, commissioned a group of poets and scholars to compose dialogue in vernacular Hindi for the Ramlila.

Until that point, the performers mimed the action but did not have lines to recite. Today, the dialogue is spoken — or rather, shouted with great vigor — by the actors. It is necessary to shout because Ramlila uses no microphones. This adherence to an earlier technology — kerosene lanterns and flares provide the lighting — is a major aspect of the production. Once, in the 1940’s, microphones were used, but angry spectators stormed the stage and smashed the equipment. Ramlila exists partly as a window in time, a conscious conservation of pre-Independence traditions.

Not only the techniques, but the underlying socio-religious structures of Ramlila are extremely conservative. Tradition, of course, has its own role in the presentation of the epic. Virtually all of the Ramlila actors are Brahmin men and boys, the highest Indian caste. The exceptions include a boatman and the small boys who play the monkey and demon armies. The roles of Rama, his brothers, Bharata, Lakshmana and Shatrughna, and Sita are enacted by young boys, usually between the ages of 8 and 13, whose voices have not yet changed and who have no facial hair. These children, it is believed, who are still innocent, are the only ones fit to embody the gods.

When I asked why a girl might not play Sita, I was told that any female onstage would be considered by villagers to be sexually compromised. It is also said that any girl who portrayed Sita would never find a husband because the action in Ramlila is considered real, including the wedding rites for Sita and Rama. Thus, “No one will marry a girl who has already been married.” When asked why the youth playing Sita does not face the same problem, my informant laughed: “He is a boy. He can’t be married to another boy.” The contradiction — that what is true for a girl-as-god is not true for a boy-as-god — did not seem an issue. As for Rama, no problem: a king can have more than one wife.

The boys who enact the five most sacred roles of Rama, Sita and Rama’s three brothers are “gods for a month,” and people literally worship them by touching their feet, singing hymns in their praise, or simply staring intently at these divine beings. This intense gazing, called “taking darshan” [the auspicious sight of a Hindu or Buddhist divine image or holy person] of the gods, is adapted from Hindu temple worship, in which looking at images of the gods is thought to be beneficial. The actual felt presence of the divine is the core of the Ramlila experience.

At the other extreme, thousands of people come to Ramlila mostly to enjoy everything from snacks to dinners and to obtain goods ranging from trinkets, posters of the gods, books and good-luck charms to marijuana and hashish. Ramlila is a time and place of pleasure as well as devotion.

The largest crowds attend the final battle between Rama and Ravana. This occurs on the 10th day of the Hindu month of Ashvina, almost always in October. It is the occasion for a great theatrical spectacle, a moment of supreme religious fulfillment and yet excited festive celebration.

First, the Maharajah ritually worships weapons and horses — the symbols of his royal power. Next, he and his court mount magnificently adorned elephants and parade through the adoring crowd from the Fort to Lanka. The Maharajah then proceeds through the battleground and departs. “It is not proper for one king to witness the death of another,” the Maharajah told me. “Therefore, I do not stay to watch this lila.”

After the departure of the royals, Ravana and Rama fight. Ravana’s death is marked relatively undramatically. The actor crosses the battlefield and touches Rama’s feet in humble surrender.

A three-hour celebration ensues. The people are happy: Rama is victorious, Sita liberated, Ravana dead. It’s a great, happy picnic on a warm early autumn night. People are eating, singing, socializing, flirting and praying. Towering over the scene is Ravana’s giant effigy.

About 10 p.m., in the words of Anuradha Kapur, an Indian theater director and author of a book on the Ramlila: “All at once, the effigy bursts into flames. Firecrackers explode, bamboos crackle, sprays of sparks shoot out. The customary five hot-air balloons ride into the sky. Ravana’s mighty spirit rises heavenward. The balloons soar into the clouds until they are no more than little yellow specks. The demon is liberated.”

One group that always gains maximum pleasure and devotion from Ramlila are the sadhus, holy men who have renounced worldly goods, live on alms and spend their days and nights singing praises to the gods. The Maharajah provides all sadhus with daily rations of rice and lodging. But despite this generosity, there are many fewer sadhus than before. “Who wants to renounce the world these days?” a man asked me.

And where there used to be lightly traveled paths leading into the quiet countryside, now there are streets clogged with diesel fume spewing trucks and buses, horn-blasting cars and motorcycles, not to mention bicycles, cows, water buffalo and goats. The deeply rutted dirt roads have not been filled or smoothed for years.

Why is the Ramlila so enormous? The most direct answer is that since the early 19th century, the Ramlila has been the defining project of the Maharajahs of Benares. The current line was established in the mid-18th century and, caught between a failing Mughal [Mongol conquerors of India or their descendants] power and an emergent British presence, was not secure on the throne. Sponsoring a large Ramlila was the way for the Maharajahs of Benares to shore up their religious and cultural authority at a time when they were losing both military power and economic autonomy.

Vibhuti Narain Singh ascended the throne in 1939 when he was a boy of 12. Ten years later, his kingdom was dissolved. But the Maharajah continued to rule, not in political fact but by virtue of his learning, his religious devotion and his patronage of Ramlila. Wherever he goes, people greet him with ringing shouts of “Hara! Hara! Mahadev!” (“Shiva! Shiva! Great God!”), because he is believed to be a manifestation of Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction and reproduction. Now 73 and frail, unable to walk unassisted, the Maharajah is doing all he can to pass the Ramlila on unchanged.

With the participation of Nissar Allana, a stage designer, and myself, the Maharajah is planning a Ramlila museum, which will take shape first as an Internet site with thousands of images, as well as sound recordings and scholarly and historical materials. Kapila Vatsyayan, one of India’s leading performance scholars, hopes to edit a facsimile edition of an early-19th-century illuminated manuscript, a four-volume version of the Manas with hundreds of original illustrations in a style influenced by Mughal painting.

I am helping to prepare a prompt book detailing all of the current staging — a how-to-do-it manual that the Maharajah hopes will assist his son, Anant Narain Singh, who is now in his 30’s, when it becomes his turn to oversee the Ramlila.

The Ramnagar Ramlila has thrived for nearly two centuries as a magnificent spectacle, a religious experience and a cosmic drama. But will it make it through the next 25 years? The crown prince has never known what it is to rule a state. Is his devotion as intense as his father’s? Can he command the same respect? He is a more modern man than his father. Is it an irony or a sign of the times that on several occasions when we have met, I was dressed in Indian kurta and pajamas, while he wore casual Western clothes?

BUT succession to the throne is not the only uncertainty facing Ramlila. A bridge across the Ganges that opened this year funnels hordes of trucks close to the Ramlila stages. New housing overruns rustic Ramlila settings.

Meanwhile, money is a big problem. Environments and costumes are beginning to look rundown. Performers receive a few hundred rupees as a contribution to those who do sacred work. At one time, this money amounted to something, but no longer. Atmaram, the 80-year-old supervisor of props, sets, lights, costumes and special effects, was not sanguine about the future. “I am training no one,” he said. “After I am gone, who will know what to do?” Atmaram has been on the job for more than 50 years. The knowledge he carries in his head is not replaceable.

Until now, few outsiders have attended Ramlila. It doesn’t make sense to go for one day, and Ramnagar does not have the infrastructure to accommodate longer visits, unless one is ready to rough it. For more foreigners to come — or even for upscale Indians from Delhi and Calcutta [now Kolkata] — Ramnagar will require extensive upgrading. The crown prince is studying the possibility of converting a portion of the Fort into a five-star hotel.

Yet everyone recognizes that Ramlila’s uniqueness is a function of its nontourist Indianness, of its being theater and more than theater at the same time. Will increased attention from outsiders help preserve or further disturb Ramlila?

[On 17 August 2018, I posted “Speaking Truth To Power” on Rick On Theater, a report describing the Shaliko Company’s production of its 1987 “Circus Opera,” Mystery History Bouffe Goof, conceived by company director Leonardo Shapiro.  A modern take on Vladimir Mayakovsky’s 1918/1921 Mystery-Bouffe, I made a comparison of Shapiro’s production to the Ramlila.

[I’m in the process of preparing a biographical post on Leonardo Shapiro, about whose work I’ve blogged many times (including the most recent offering, the four-part “Leonardo Shapiro’s Strangers: A Dramaturg’s View,” 8, 11, 14, and 17 January.  I hope to have it ready for posting shortly.]

Dramaturgy Analyses, Part 2

 

[After my internship with the StageArts Theater Company concluded with the end of the Spring 1984 term at NYU, Cynthia Jenner, the instructor for Production Dramaturgy, the course I was taking in the Department of Performance Studies; the two StageArts artistic directors, Ruth Ann Norris and Nell Robinson; and I worked out a plan to continue my work as literary manager through the summer (21 May-31 August 1984, NYU’s Summer Term) as a Supervised Research. 

[As with the spring internship, the subject of “Dramaturgy Analyses, Part 1,” I was obligated to keep a journal.  At the end of the term, I turned in the journal, copies of all my work product from the project, and a “Summary and Evaluation” (dated 9 January 1985).  As I did with Part 1, I’m posting the final document from that Supervised Research.

[It isn’t strictly necessary for ROTters to gave read Part 1 before reading Part 2 below, but it’s probably a good idea.  I use some jargon terms and some individual expressions that I define and explain in the first post that I take the liberty of not re-defining here.  (Theater may be a somewhat commonly-understood  field, especially to readers of Rick On Theater, but dramaturgy is still an esoteric subject even among theater professionals.) 

[I have also identified StageArts, the co-artistic directors, and Cynthia Jenner in the first installment for ROTters.  “Dramaturgy Analyses, Part 1” was posted on ROT on Sunday, 22 January.  Earlier postings that are relevant to this one are “Dramaturgy: The Conscience of the Theater” (30 December 2009), “A History of Dramaturgy” (31 December 2022 and 3 January 2023), and my short series, “Leonardo Shapiro’s Strangers: A Dramaturg's View” (8, 11, 14, and 17 January).]

SUMMARY AND EVALUATION
StageArts Theater Company
New York City
9 January 1985 

I’ll start off with my conclusion: StageArts doesn’t really want a literary manager. 

First of all, neither Nell Robinson nor Ruth Ann Norris knows how to make full use of the services a good literary manager can provide.  That’s not an insuperable difficulty—they could be educated.  A persevering dramaturg could discuss with them what they need, suggest ways he/she could help, and demonstrate his/her abilities.

Norris, and particularly Robinson, both profess an interest in this.  They did seem to want to know what I can do, what a dramaturg’s area of operation can cover; they asked about this several times during the spring and summer period I worked with them.

The fact is that StageArts can use, even needs a full-fledged literary manager.  They have a woefully inadequate process of evaluating scripts, a haphazard Christopher-Columbus method of discovering material, and no organized system of getting scripts through the reading process. 

[The “Christopher-Columbus method” is actually a colloquial typing term.  Touch-typists know instinctively where all the keys on a typewriter are because they’ve learned the keyboard from hours of practice and experience.  Non-touch-typists use the Columbus method of finding the right key: they discover it and land on it.  A synonymous, perhaps more familiar expression is the “hunt-and-peck” method.]

The smallness of the StageArts operation means that Norris and Robinson shoulder the whole burden of running the company.  They desperately need a member of the staff who can take part of the burden away and organize the whole process of seeking, evaluating, testing, and returning scripts. 

This was what I tried to begin over the summer on the assumption that if I could work with them full time for an extended period, I could get a working literary department started.

I began by contacting literary agents on behalf of the theater to introduce StageArts and its artistic policy to these sources of new scripts and playwrights.  I also contacted some other sources I thought might pay off in the long run. 

I tried to forge a system of reading and evaluating the scripts that came in so that it would be a routine path.  I proposed a prototype workshop program for testing new material “on the ground” after it was accepted from reading.

All of this I did with an eye to creating a literary management program that could be taken over by anyone hired to do the job.  Norris and Robinson seemed enthusiastic and receptive to the ideas and plans I discussed with them.  They made all the indications that they valued my ideas, suggestions, knowledge, and opinions.  They always seemed genuinely interested in what I had to offer.

The problem was that I didn’t really seem to be getting anything accomplished.  I was reading a great number of scripts, most from the sources I had begun to cultivate, and sending off reams of seriously considered evaluations, in a new format I devised to make them detailed and complete for both present use and future reference.

[In “A History of Dramaturgy: The Modern Era” (on Rick On Theater on 3 January), I wrote about John Corbin, the first U.S. literary manager employed at a professional theater (New Theatre, 1908-10).  He resigned in frustration after only two years because he’d found himself “doing a lot of play reading”: five scripts a day, every day of the year for his entire tenure.  It’s the lot of most play-readers, lit managers, and dramaturgs the world over.

[In her marginalia, Cynthia wrote: “Solution: recruit a battery of 1st level readers so the process goes more rapidly.”  That’s fine advice—and rather obvious, since I did several gigs as a first reader myself, as a glance at the various postings of my script reports on this blog will attest.  But I wasn’t an actual staff member at StageArts, even if the internship had morphed into a Supervised Research project.  I didn’t have the authority to hire anyone on my own initiative, and StageArts didn’t have the money to hire readers. 

[As a newbie in the field, too, I wasn’t really in a position to recruit a bunch of readers to work for free—what could I offer them as recompense?  The next StageArts production wasn’t scheduled until February 1985, so I couldn’t even offer potential readers Annie Oakleys.]

Norris and Robinson both frequently asked for my estimation of a particular script they had received from one of their own sources, and they seemed to agree with my reports.  I thought I was beginning to understand their taste better, and was being more successful at finding scripts they would like and could consider.

I was also trying to convince them to broaden their sights a little in two ways: to consider some less-known older plays to compliment the originals they wanted to produce, and to consider some slightly less conventional plays to attract the attention of critics and producers who would be less likely to see a showcase that was predictably conventional.

Both artistic directors expressed interest in these two ideas, especially the former.  But in the end, little of what I was saying was resulting in any real action.

At first this was all just frustrating.  I kept thinking that I should just have to ease them into really listening to me.  I thought it was all a matter of getting them to hear what I was saying.  It wasn’t until the end of the summer that I realized what was really operating here.  They didn’t trust me.  They trusted my intelligence, experience, and reliability.  But they didn’t trust me. 

It wasn’t personal—they didn’t trust anyone from the outside to get into the inside.  They paid lip-service to the idea of having a trusted colleague to share the load, but they are so jealous of their control over the company, they won’t let anyone else’s ideas in.

[Concerning Ruth Ann and Nell, Cynthia remarked:

I think this is only partly right.  I think they also feel intimidated by more refined intellects against whose sensibility they are forced to examine preconceived prejudices and dated tastes they are loathe to part with.  People hate to change what they are comfortable with, as a general rule.

[She agreed with me, however, that they were “jealous of their control” of StageArts.]

All of this became clear to me when they began planning the opening of a show on which they were collaborating with another producer.  The production had run into a snag, and it jeopardized not only its production, but the production of StageArts’ own first show of the season.

They never told me what the problem was (it was no more than some problem with finding a suitable theater), and wouldn’t even confide the titles of the co-production or their own first show.  I was literally frozen out of the whole matter.

I wasn’t even enough of an insider to be troubled with the names of the shows being produced until they were announced to the general public.

Another indication of StageArts’ inability to trust me is in the shows they have chosen to produce this season.  Aside from the co-production, which was outside the StageArts’ season, they have selected three plays so far.  (They may expand to a four-play season this year.)

Two of the scripts were never passed to me at all, and the third is one the artistic directors asked me to read after they had read it, and to which I reacted somewhat coolly.  They are producing it anyway.  (The play is Don Nigro’s November.)

Only one play that I recommended was given an evaluation reading; none of the others received further action.  Some of these may still be under consideration, and may be included in future seasons, but no action has been taken since I passed along the recommendations and the scripts.

Some of the playwrights and agents are becoming understandably anxious, and I have received several phone calls and letters of inquiry about a few scripts we have in limbo.

None of this indicates that StageArts should not continue to produce.  Their work is usually high-quality, though often unexciting.  They produce good showcases for actors—the kind of show an agent can see and judge the quality of a performer in the best light.

This is a valuable service to the acting community.  Whether they are contributing to the artistic life of the theatergoing public, I can’t say. 

[Cynthia: “I can.  No, they aren’t.]

Their ultimate goal is to produce these same kinds of shows, both old and new, with stars.  It seems unlikely that they will reach that goal, and I doubt they will ever develop a program of introducing new plays of any real consequence. 

That being the case, I doubt they have any real need for a literary manager in the full sense of that title.  All they need, and all they want, is a full-time script-reader.

My experience with StageArts indicates that whoever fills such a position for them ought not to have ambitions beyond a literate go-fer.  Norris and Robinson don’t really want anything else, and they won’t accept anything more.

[As I reported in the earlier post, I took two dramaturgy courses at NYU.  The first was Directing and Dramaturgy (Fall 1983), taught by Carl Weber (1925-2016), who’d been an actor and dramaturg at the Berliner Ensemble (1952-57), and assistant director to Bertoit Brecht (1898-1956). 

[The term project for that class was to make a stage adaptation from non-dramatic material, a frequent assignment for dramaturgs.  My partner and I did a mash-up of Molière’s Tartuffe and John Henry Faulk’s Fear on Trial (book, 1964; CBS television movie, 1975).

[As I also explained, I took Cynthia’s class twice.  (I also audited it once as well.)  In the first class, the one during which I interned at StageArts, we had a term assignment of making a complete work-up of dramaturgical materials to accompany the rehearsal and production of a play.  I chose one of my greatest favorites, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. 

[While I was doing my lit management for the internship, I was also assembling useful information of Godot for the cast and director; an annotated bibliography on the play, its genre (Absurdism), and the author; proposals for the lobby display; articles for the program; and a students’ study guide.  There was also a breakdown of the play’s structure and a production history.  (I’ve posted parts of this project on ROT.)

[The second time I took Cynthia’s course was in the spring of 1985, and my internship was with Cynthia herself.  She was in the earliest stages of forming Theatre Junction, an incipient playwrights’ company she wanted to be run by dramaturgs and focus on both new plays and new performance forms.  This encompassed new adaptations of non-dramatic material and translations.

[TJ was ultimately never realized. (At the same time as Cynthia was trying to launch TJ, she was also a principal participant in starting Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of America [LMDA, now called Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas].  LMDA was established in April 1985 and I served as Vice President for Communications in 1986-87.) 

[Cynthia enlisted me to be her assistant after we’d become acquainted during the first Production Dramaturgy course I took from her and I did a number of jobs for her, including scouting new writers and plays.  I also read some scripts and other material to determine their potential suitability for TJ.  I’ve posted some of the results of the work I did for TJ on this blog from time to time.

[In Spring 1986, I audited Cynthia’s course and did an internship with the Theatre Communications Group, the service organization that promotes professional, non-profit theater in the U.S.  Among its many services, TCG publishes American Theatre, a monthly magazine; Plays in Process, a series of scripts of new plays produced in its member theaters; and the annual Dramatists Sourcebook (1981-2010). 

[During my internship with TCG, the literary services section was in the midst of preparing the 1986-87 edition of the Dramatists Sourcebook.  It was my principal assignment to assist editor M. Elizabeth Osborn (1939-93) and her staff with that task.

[The Sourcebook was updated annually, with detailed questionnaires sent to all member theaters at the beginning of the process (before I arrived on the scene in February) and the staff was in the midst of collating the information from the returns. 

[The end result was a reference book for playwrights about when and how to submit plays and musicals to producing theaters—the Sourcebook listed only TCG members—and for festivals and contests.  The Sourcebook listed theaters that are looking for new scripts (and which ones accept unsolicited submissions), and their typical submission criteria, time frames, and contact information.  

[It was a massive undertaking and included helpful advice from the field—i.e., dramaturgs and literary managers—about how to submit scripts, the best formats for typescripts, tips on making adaptations and translations (a sideline for many playwrights), and other issues facing working dramatists.

[In fact, the term project for this iteration of Production Dramaturgy was to make an adaptation or translation.  I paired up with a classmate who spoke and read Russian (his mother taught in the NYU Department of Slavic Languages).  He had obtained a microfilm copy of a 1910 stage script adapted by Fyodor Sologub  (pseudonym of F. K. [Fyodor Kuzmich] Teternikov, 1863-1927) of his Decadent and Symbolist novel The Petty Demon (romanized Russian: Melkiy bes, 1905).

[The novel had been translated into English four times (most recent: translated by S. D. Cioran; Ardis Publishers, 1983), but the script, popularly produced by a theater in Moscow, had never been translated into any language or published (even in Russian).  My partner had made a photocopy from the microfilm of the typescript from a Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) library. 

[We translated a chunk of the play—one act, I recall—and then selected a scene to refine and polish as a sample to turn in.  We used the published English translation as a trot and my partner did the literal translation (his Russian was better than mine, plus the text was typed in the pre-revolutionary alphabet, with which I was not familiar) and I put it into actable American English and form (and did the typing—I had a word processor by this time).

[At TCG, I did a little (copy) editing, but mostly my job was collating the returned questionnaires and calling theaters that hadn’t sent theirs in yet.  (If you think that’s a simple job, remember that TCG’s membership covers not only the three time zones of the continental U.S.—so, when we get to work at 9 a.m. in New York City, it’s only 6 in the morning in California—but also Alaska—where it’s 5 a.m. when we start work—and Hawaii—4 a.m.) 

[As that effort was in progress, the data from the questionnaires had to be entered into the word processor (this was pre-Internet) and each theater’s entry had to be printed out and proofread so it was ready to be sent to the printer (which was still working from paper copy). 

[The TCG internship was demonstrably different from the StageArts placement, but I got a real overview of the variations among the regional theaters in the United States.  (I also got to speak to a lot of lit managers, dramaturgs, and artistic directors at theaters that work with new plays.) 

[I also learned quite a bit about editing, particularly for a book (as opposed to, say, a journal article) that came in handy later.  I had remarked in one of my StageArts journals that some response I’d made to a situation was like being a teacher, a position I was in at NYU at that time as a ”preceptor” in the undergraduate Expository Writing Program.  Cynthia added in the margin that it was also like an editor, which is an aspect of a dramaturg’s work along with being a critic.

[The term project for this class, by the way, was, like with Carl Weber’s Directing and Dramaturgy class, to make an adaptation from non-dramatic material.  Because I was auditing the class, I was assigned to work with a classmate taking the course for credit.  My partner and I decided to draw on the aphorisms and other sayings of Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) to compile an “illustrated lecture” of Wilde’s visit to the United States (1881-82).

[Our concept was that while Wilde was lecturing, the “slides” would be brought to life by a small cast speaking the writer’s words in brief scenes, the dialogue for which was taken from his occasional comments about America. The performance was to be fashioned in the style of a Victorian music hall entertainment.  (I posted this snippet of “Nothing But My Genius” on ROT on 12 May 2011.)

[Later, I did other work that bore on my qualifications as a dramaturg and literary advisor.  I said above that I served as LMDA’s VP of Communications.  My main responsibility in that position was to serve ex officio as the editor of the members’ newsletter, which I titled Program Notes during my tenure.  I also hired on as editor of the newsletter of the now-defunct American Directors Institute, a service organization for stage directors and artistic directors.  I started this quarterly publication, which I named Directors Notes, and edited it from 1986 to 1988.

[(Incidentally, the similarity in the titles of the two newsletters was coincidental.  They both refer to a kind of writing of which the members of the two organizations did a lot.  The simpler newsletter title Notes was in use at the time by a musicians’ publication.)]