What I’ve learned as of Saturday, June 9th

In order of priority to me.

1. These professional designers have a lot to offer. But whoever we use as designers, we need them in the rehearsal room.

2. Writing is a solo sport. Directing is a team sport. Our personalities causes us to gravitate to one direction or the other. I am not at all certain that playwrights who come from the writing side of the business (as against actors or directors) have the skill sets necessary successfully direct a play even if they wrote it.

3. LCT’s hypothesis for their playwright as director theory would have been better served if the five plays had been more finished products so the rehearsal time could have been used to test the hypothesis rather than working on the basic structure and dialog of the play. I was pretty thoroughly criticized for this opinion although two directors approached me after the session to agree with me. The criticism’s were based on a statement from LCT not to worry about a product of any kind. That the emphasis was to be on form and process. I think that all of the playwrights took advantage of the opportunity to develop and refine the dialog and structure of their plays to the detriment of what I viewed as the overall goal of LCT.

4. So far, I believe that the playwright as director model is flawed and in most cases will not work. Looking at the Tam Lin lawsuit (which, unfortunately, did not resolve the right of Directors to copyright their blocking and direction of the play) and other emerging changes in the American Theater (most notably the increasing use of multimedia presentations as part of the play) is moving the theater towards a modified Disney model where the producing organization will own (or at least license) the product (which includes the play itself) to other theaters. (That is probably the longest sentence I have ever written.) The licensing theater may buy the script outright from the playwright or enter into some joint licensing agreement.

Saturday 2 – June 9th – Day Six

A different day today.

We didn’t need to arrive until 11 am today so I picked up my laundry. Good to be back in shirts, socks and skivvies.

First, we had the fifth of the five plays that they have been rehearsing. It was a 65 minute play titled “Minor Gods”. A very interesting premise: A man has developed a test that will tell if a fetus will turn into a gay or lesbian. The man is seeking government funding to find a “cure” for those for those fetus’ who may turn gay.

What could have been a very heavy play was lightened considerably but some very well done humor. Nevertheless the play at times seemed disconnected and talky. There were some very long passages that need to be shortened.

Of particular interest is that the cast spent 2 ½ weeks at the table and only three days on their feet. Also of interest, the play takes place in a motel room and on the three days they were on their feet, the set designer changed the size of the hotel room. The actors liked the challenge.

But – – – again they spent most of the time working on rewriting the script.

This afternoon, we split up into groups of 25 with some directors, some actors, some playwrights and some designers. They gave us a page with a lot of questions on it. Most related to how things worked with the playwright in the room. I offered my thoughts on how the process went was roundly criticized. (What’s new?) I still think I am right. What I heard over and over was that the process produced a far better play than before the rehearsals. Duh! Hire professional directors, professional actors and professional designers and spend three weeks working on the script and it should get better.

The question in my mind is whether that was an efficient use of resources and my answer is no. Remember that the initial question proposed by Lincoln Center was how to bring a new play to the stage in the four week rehearsal period allowed. If they took 2 ½ weeks to get up from the table we are looking at a seven or eight week rehearsal period.

The schedule for today listed “Reflections on what we’ve learned so far” as the topic. So I spent a couple of hours writing out my thoughts. I’ll post them after this. Remember you read up .

After this talk back period we had cookies and soda and said good bye to the actors and playwrights. I will miss Roy Thinnes and several of the playwrights. Tomorrow the designers go home after we spend a couple of hours looking at their work. Then we’re down to 58 Directors for the next two weeks.

After dinner all the Directors got together and introduced ourselves although we already know many of them. Got out early tonight: 9 pm.

That’s all for today.

Now I have to type my comments.

Friday 2 – June 8th

All in all a good day today.

Our first session was cancelled since the speaker couldn’t make it.

We didn’t need to get there until 2 pm.

I took another load to the wash and fold. I put the claim check in my wallet so I won’t lose it. I’ll pick it up tomorrow – supposed to have showers tomorrow – there must be some tie between my picking up my laundry and rain. Have to think about that one. I wonder if there is a play in there somewhere?

I talked to Rob O’Neill today and we’re going out to dinner on Monday. He said to say ‘Hi” to everyone on Orcas. I told him that everyone on Orcas says hi to him (and Lisa Benner).

Now to the rest of the day.

Last things first. The evening session (7 to 20 pm) was very different. We were broken up into small (7 person) groups. Each group was headed by a playwright who gave their group ten pages of a script he was working on. The play he is working on is a one man opera. Really! It is based on the true story of a Chinese man who was trapped in an elevator in NYC for three days. We listened to a couple of songs from it and they weren’t too bad. Not high opera – just a musical where every line is sung. By definition that makes it an opera.

We read parts of it aloud then we spent an hour talking about it and our ideas on it. Here we have a guy trapped in an elevator – not a whole lot of room for blocking. Wrong!!! One of the guys in our group is a costume designer but also does set design. He came in with a possible design for the set and it was REALLY great. It gave the directors a lot to work with and we just brainstormed. It was really good. The playwright is coming to Seattle next week to have a reading (singing) of his play at The Theater Off Jackson.

That reminds me of something I’ve been meaning to mention: My biggest revelation so far is the important part Designers play in the play presentation process. Each type of designer brings something different to the process – far more than what we are used to on Orcas. Of course these guys get paid big bucks. This guy tonight was talking about a show he is currently costuming. He analyzes each character and knows more about the character than the playwright or director. He even put a medallion in the pocket of a costume because he decided that the characters mother had given it to him. Not mentioned in the script anywhere.

After we finished with the opera, we talked about working with playwrights in general. It was a really good discussion and one of the best I have been involved in since I got here. We had actors, the designer, the playwright and four directors all participating. It was an amazing discussion.

Before this session, we had the fourth of five plays that they have been rehearsing. This one was called “Green Zone” after the name of the American compound in Baghdad. It was a comedy/drama and poked a lot of fun on the American Army and the civilian support people but also had a more serious overtone. A fourth play very different that the others.

It was also the first play that effectively used the new collaboration model with great success. The actors, designer, director and playwright all felt that the more interactive model provided a much better product. It was funny and well done.

The first session today was cancelled because the expected speaker could not be there.

We start an hour late tomorrow so I have time to get my laundry.

Good night. It’s 11:20.

Thursday, June 7th – Day Four – Part Two

One final (maybe) thought on “Only Children”:

Of the three plays I’ve seen (including the one I saw Thursday but have not shared yet), Only Children was by far the most fully realized. Blocking, singing, relationships, etc were all pretty well done. To have accomplished all of this in three weeks is truly a Herculean accomplishment.

Tidbit: Discussion has the same root word as percussion – not a soft and gentle word. Dialog is.

Tidbit: Process and product are tied together. If you are not satisfied with the product, look at the process to see what isn’t working right.

So far I’ve seen three plays and talked to the playwright of a fourth (out of five). In every case (with the possible exception of The Maestro’s Garden where the playwright had to leave for a family emergency) the playwright has made a conscious decision to turn direction of the play over to the director rather than do it themselves. One playwright told me that while he was fumbling around trying to direct he couldn’t see the big picture: How the play was working. He wanted to be in his role of playwright so he could watch the play, see where the problems were and work on rewrites to solve them.

After all my words last night about directing styles, the director of today’s play “This Bloody Mess” said that she got the actors up the first day to look at some things in the play that may have needed work. Two actors complained about that: having to put the work up for people to see (even if it was just the people from that play) without doing all the table work they were used to which helps them find the character.

This Bloody Mess is an interesting type of play: 5 Acts, probably 50 scenes in 2 1/4 hours. That makes the average scene just a couple of minutes long. Added to that was jumping back and forth in time. All in all the play suffered from the short scenes. We know we lose the audience when there is a scene change and it takes several minutes to get them back into the play when the next scene starts. What happens when the next scene is not long enough to get them back?

My take on this play is that it would make a good screen play.

The story is about a young woman who leaves her home and child to go to an unnamed country to do good work. She goes for a short period of time but stays several years. We watch her but also the effect on her family back home. Like most plays, this one would be considerably better if it were shortened (except for my plays of course).

One closing comment: The ending of the play almost made me cry and I’m not one who cries easily.

Our evening session was made up of the same group we worked with Wednesday night. The goal is to have everyone in our small group do something other than what they normally do. In our case, we were directed by a playwright, Roy Thinnes was the playwright and I was an actor and so on. Our task was to put the play up on it’s feet then answer two questions about the play: What is the “action” of the play and what is the play about. First no one knew what was meant by “action” and we never did figure out what the play was about. Well we couldn’t agree on what the play was about. Each of us had a different idea. Our playwright playing director was not in charge of what happened so we just sat at the table for two nights talking (arguing) about the play. For people who want to try to figure it out, the play is “Woman at at Threshold, Beckoning” by John Guare.

One final comment before I get on with today:

Play writing is a solo sport. Directing is a team sport. Since I’m not a “real” playwright, I can’t talk about playwrights in general. But a successful director needs to be a leader. Don’t tell LCT I said this but he needs to be a benevolent dictator. Someone has to be in charge. It had better be the director if you are to get anything done.

The personalities of the few playwrights I’ve met here do not go to being the leader. If an aspiring director does not have strong leadership qualities, he is not going to be successful. If a playwright does not have strong leadership qualities, he is not going to be a successful director either. I’ll keep watching but that is my first thought on having playwrights direct.

Time to get to work.

Thursday 2 – June 7th – Day Four

Woke up this morning at 6 am with two things on my mind: The play we saw yesterday and the discussion I had with Mark about directing styles.

First, the play from yesterday. Roy Thinnes called it pornographic even though he really liked it. The young, opinionated director in our group hated it (not surprising – she hates anything she didn’t do) plus two others were greatly offended by it. One young woman said she was surprised at how puritanical she was. Looking back on it, was I offended? Mildly. I was taken in by the drama of the play and the high quality of the music. Do I think it was pornographic? No. But if they cast it with young kids (12 to 13 years old) rather that the 20+ year old actors they used, it would be. It would have been if there was any nudity, but there wasn’t. I do think they were far too graphic with the sex scenes but they didn’t rise to pornography.

What was the play about? The sexual pressures on 12 year old kids from advertising, from TV and movies, from their parents as they grow up. We saw a 12 year old girl become a prostitute. A 12 year old boy think he was gay and kill himself, a 12 year old boy rape a girl on a date and kill himself – all graphically represented on stage.

BUT the important thing was that this play moved us. No one was neutral about it. We are still talking about it today.

I may have been offended but I will look at the world differently now. Isn’t that what great theater is all about?

One more thought: As I said last night, the purpose of these plays is not to present new plays but to test a hypothesis: Will having the playwright direct the play make it possible to present a better product (play) in a short period of time?

If they had selected some Neil Simon type of play, the playwrights as directors wouldn’t have to face the hard issues of working with actors in these hard scenes.

Issue number 2: My discussion with Mark yesterday confirms what I thought about my directing style when I got here: I need to work with some other off island instructors to see how they work.
Whatever directing skills I possess were learned from other directors (mostly local), reading books and the school of hard knocks. I need to find a director to work with or just observe it is done in the professional theater.

As I have said before, I spend very little time at the table going over the script while most directors spend a lot of up front time at the table. I could prepare the entire play before the first rehearsal – I have a good idea what I want out of each scene and how I plan to achieve it – but I don’t prepare to the extent that I could go page by page through the script and spend 30 to 40 hours doing it. The advantage that I see to my current method is that I can make adjustments as I see them without throwing away a lot of work.

Here’s an interesting tidbit:

The copper and silver bracelet I wear is shiny when I wear it at home. When I got to NYC it started to tarnish until it looked like it was a million years old. In the past three days it has become shiny again. Wonder why????

Another interesting tidbit: The subways are a study in acoustics. When you first hear the train coming all you hear are the very lowest frequency sounds. Since they spread out so rapidly, you have no idea which direction the train is coming from. As it get closer there are more and more higher frequency components which let you determine which direction it is coming from.

It’s 11:30 and I’m tired.

Have to finish this tomorrow.