Author Archives: caroleditosti
David Henry Hwang, Nick Flynn, Rosary O’Neill: Writers Giving Back to Writers
Writing I worked on during a workshop at Omega Institute.
The Paradigm Shift
The long needed paradigm shift for authors is here. Like never before, successful writers of all genres are available to their fans and others as many discard traditional publishing routes that were profitable to everyone but the writer. Self-publishing and direct to the source return the profits back to authors. As social media, blogs and e-zines trump traditional media, and streaming (House of Cards) Youtube (plays and shows) and Google Hangouts (live music shows) become widespread, TV venues that formerly preyed upon the division between the creator and the passive audience are dying. It’s about interactivity. As a result writers are relying on interactions with followers on Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, etc., to promote and sell their work, engage their readers and update them on their latest triumphs. To remain current, they must stir the pot and trouble the waters of innovation and artistry. How else can they benefit from the currents of cultural resplendence? If they don’t connect, they will eventually be choked off as is happening to old line venues for the cultural arts.
Authors Stay Juiced Through Workshops and Master Classes
Nick Flynn at work during the workshop at Omega Institute.
Another way noted writers are connecting is by giving back in workshops, conferences and master classes. It is particularly rewarding when brilliant authors are sure footed guides who can shepherd their fellow writers up the mountain of difficulties regarding word-craft to unlock inspiration. Fluid workshops are settings which inspire writers to share their work without fear. They encourage spontaneous, authentic writing. They help authors learn new techniques and allow them to bathe in the creative flow of juiced writing.
Three noted writers and authors whose workshops and classes I took in the last months were particularly helpful and each was extremely generous. David Henry Hwang, successful Pulitzer Prize nominated playwright, Nick Flynn, poet and memoirist, and Rosary O’Neill, playwright, screenwriter and diverse author reached into their bounty of spirit and shared liberally. Reflecting back on the process with these exceptional writers, I now see that the exchanges and connections offered unique experiences that are helping me hone my craft and provide direction for my writing projects.
MASTER CLASS WITH DAVID HENRY HWANG at the Cherry Lane Theatre in NYC
David Henry Hwang graciously speaking with us and staying for pictures after the class at the Cherry Lane Theatre.
I absolutely adore this man, this stunning screenwriter, librettist and multiple award-winning playwright best known for M Butterfly, Yellow Face and Chinglish. I have seen much of his work on Broadway and Off Broadway. The first time I saw M Butterfly (I saw it twice.) starring John Lithgow and B.D. Wong, I remember telling my cousins after the performance that it was a happening. Thrilling and alive, it was like seeing Venice for the first time or tasting my first sip of vintage wine from a bottle that cost more than $150. Poor similes, I grant you, but I was gobsmacked. Taking this class with him I was anxious to understand his technique. I had seen his development and knew early works like Dance in the Railroad. I and was looking forward to seeing his Kung Fu at the Signature Theatre in March of 2014. What would he share?
The writers/students in the master class with David Henry Hwang were at various stages in their writing careers; their backgrounds were motley. Wang enjoys people and he interacted with us after getting a general feel for this large group who was there to breathe the same air as this multiple award winner and Pulitzer Prize nominee. He of course, is unassuming, disarming and a sponge of humility you could just hug and squeeze. Despite the large numbers in the group, David Henry Hwang put us at ease and somehow created an intensity and intimacy during the session, a talent in itself.
David Henry Hwang and Carole Di Tosti.
Move toward the unconscious.
The master playwright encouraged us to continually transcend the conscious mind and write frequently, overriding our conscious censor. For example, when thinking “I’m not good enough,” or “Why should anyone care about what I’m writing,” that is the nihilistic self-critic. Inspire yourself and unblock using various techniques; some suggestions are below.
- Silence the censor by writing as fast as you can. You can always go back and edit.
- Cut out phrases from a magazine article and shuffle them into various sequences. Copy a phrase or two priming the pump until it’s flowing. Don’t stop until there is a natural pause.
- Write out words in free association. Put them in a hat and choose various ones that continue the associations. Write continually and automatically. Follow where the writing leads you; don’t lead it.
- Of course, David Henry Want suggested to always write what inspires and keeps your interest. The more you have fallen in love with what you are writing about the better.
- Allow yourself to give your characters free reign. They will lead you to amazing places that you never new were possible on the journey.
NICK FLYNN’S MEMOIR AS BEWILDERMENT at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY
Nick Flynn chatting with writers before the workshop begins at the Omega Institute.
Nick Flynn is a poet and best-selling memoirist. He wrote The Reenactments, The Ticking Is the Bomb, and the haunting and beautiful best seller, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City which was published as Being Flynn, the title of the independent film based on the book. The film stars Robert DiNero and Paul Dano. Flynn’s three books of poetry are The Captain Asks For a Show of Hands, Some Ether, and Blind Huber. I was familiar with his memoir Another Bullshit Night... and liked his style of writing. During the two day workshop, Nick Flynn was generous answering questions about the making of the film (it took seven years) and his writing life. He challenged us, attempting to jar our sensibilities into the unusual because only then could the chaffing break us into the realm of the unexpected to authenticity. As we wrote and shared our writings, elements he uses in his own writing resonated deeply. His wonderful humor carried us through any nervousness.
Use image and object chains from various sources.
- Flynn encouraged us toward selecting images and objects threading them in our work. Images carry emotional power and weight. These are tied to associations from our unconscious that have meaning beyond what we may not recognize consciously.
- Write down dreams and the images will more naturally appear to us. Incorporate images or objects in automatic writing which should be spontaneous and unedited.
- The writing muscle should be exercised each day, a minimum of seven minutes. Write ceaselessly allowing the flow and trusting it to take you wherever. Dare to risk the journey, the more bewildered the better. Eventually rationality through the concrete image emerges.
- Create moments of surprise and use them in writing. Look for a science article (NY Times, perhaps) that is filled with images or objects and write about one that has energy and interest. Look through old pictures. List three questions about the people or objects in the photos. Write on each for 7 minutes. Incorporate the results in your work then edit later what doesn’t sing. You’re practicing powerful description and your technique will be enhanced overall with your writing projects.
ROSARY O’NEILL’s SCRIPTWRITING WORKSHOP at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY
Deborah Temple, Dr. Rosary O’Neill, and Mary Anderson at the Omega Institute.
Rosary O’Neill, Ph.D. is a playwright, director, screenwriter, writer of narrative nonfiction and a scholar who hails from New Orleans. She was the founding artistic director at Southern Rep Theatre where her plays about family with Southern Gothic themes were produced for many years. A prolific writer and virtual dynamo who has received 7 Fullbrights, and fellowships to the Norman Mailer House, Tyrone Guthrie Centre and other venues, she has studied abroad where she has completed research for a play about John Singer Sargent and a book and play about Degas, to name a few works. With extensive experience in acting and theatre production, she has written The Actor’s Checklist, is currently working on a soon to be published book with new information never before revealed about the Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Rosary O’Neill has written 22 plays. Most have been published by Samuel French. Many of them have been performed at the Southern Rep and many have garnered readings at the National Arts Club, the Rattlestick Theatre, The Players Club and in regional theaters like The Westchester Collaborative Theatre and Bard College. Her latest work, an uplifting musical entitled Broadway or Bust with lyrics/music by David Temple, directed by Deborah Temple will be performed at Bard College Black Box Theatre, November 13th and 15th. She has written a TV series entitled Heirs that that is currently being shop optioned. An experienced college professor, Rosary’s class was a joy and steered folks in a different direction, toward writing characters that live and are breathing and vital. This is playwriting/screenwriting at its best.
Deborah Temple, Dr. Rosary O’Neill, Mary Anderson, Carole Di Tosti at the Omega Institute.
Sound character when creating dialogue.
- When writing characters, think of individuals you know, their high points and dramatic episodes. Ask yourself why you remember them; what strikes you about them? Give yourself a prompt that you think might help you distill who they are in an image, then write about them. Eventually, this can be worked into creating character.
- Read all dialogue aloud. Make sure it sings. If you are bored and don’t wish to read it, have someone else read it aloud. If it doesn’t resonate to you or the other individual, then drop it and move your inspiration elsewhere.
- Select a scene where there have been family get-togethers. Dialogue should reveal differences in character, cadences, phrases, accents, content. How are you revealing tonal messages through speech? Act out the lines. What doesn’t fit, jettison.
- Remain upbeat at all times. Shun negative thoughts. Do you have anything better to do with your life than to create life, through characters, dialogue and plays/films? All dialogue has run through you at one point or another. You are recalling it to your remembrance and shifting it around for greater use. Above all, enjoy the experience.
PARTING SHOTS: David Henry Hwang, Nick Flynn, Rosary O’Neill
DHH- Find a way to have your plays read aloud, even if you are getting actors in your living room. It’s the only way to find out if the characters cohere, if the whole thing works.
NF-Only submit your finest work, your best, work, the stuff you’ve edited and crafted and you still find vibrant after reading it 100 or more times. If you don’t want to read what you’ve written, then put a red line through it and circle it. Cut it out. You’re bored with it, others will be too.
RO-Spend a lot of time editing and revising. The work must pop, the dialogue must sing. If it doesn’t, you’ve overwritten. It’s too long. Cut, cut, cut, but still be logical and make sense. You can always add. The editing is hard, but vital to great writing.
All of them: Keep on writing!
Sacred Elephant by Heathcote Williams: Stage Adaptation by Geoffrey Hyland and Jeremy Crutchley
Sacred Elephant, currently Off Broadway adapted for the stage by Geoffrey Hyland and Jeremy Crutchley, is created from Heathcote Williams’ magnificent epic poem about nature’s divine design represented through the elephant. Crutchley gives an ethereal and other-worldly performance as The Other, the being of the elephant. The production is currently at La Mama’s First Floor Theatre until September 22. See the review on Blogcritics and on this site.
Below are the expressive photographs of Crutchley in an embodiment of the elephant’s ethos. I included these to enhance the previous review because of an article that appeared in the Huffington Post about a baby elephant who was rejected by its mother. It cried and cried for hours. Its response is heartbreaking…like our response when we were hurt as children and cried in desolation, or as adults who feel hopeless and cry out to God and the universe for solace and comfort. Click here for the article.
The elephant is us. Can we continue to destroy it and not perish ourselves? Elephants are beings like the other creatures on this planet and must be safeguarded and protected. If we do this, we safeguard our own destiny. Williams’ poem is dedicated to this end as is Crutchley’s performance.
The marvelous Jeremy Crutchly. Photo by Rob Keith
The following is part of the press release by Jonathan Slaff.
Jeremy Crutchley is well known in South Africa and the U.K., having performed a diverse range of award-winning contemporary and classic roles. He has received many Best Actor National Theatre Awards in South Africa and has appeared with the RSC and in the West End. He was nominated Best Actor in the South African Film & TV Awards for his leading role in “Retribution” (2011), a thriller in the style of Cape Fear. He currently appears with John Cleese as The Glock in the feature films “Spud” and “Spud 2.” In January 2014, he wil be featured in the U.S. TV series “Black Sails” (Starz).
Jeremy Crutchley in Sacred Elephant. Photo by Rob Keith
Crutchley’s varied and enviable career ranges from classics to solo shows to rock shows. He performed Doug Wright’s international hit, “I Am My Own Wife,” in 2009 to kick off the Grahamstown Theatre Festival and in South Africa’s prestigious 2010 Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards, the show was nominated for six awards and received three, including Best Actor and Best Solo Performance. Theater critic Peter Tromp (The Next 48 Hours) named the piece as one of the ten most memorable productions in his decade of reviewing. The previous year, Crutchley won Best Actor as Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice” before going on to play Alonso in “The Tempest” at Stratford-Upon-Avon and in that show’s sold-out national tour with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was a Fleur du Cap Nominee for his performance as Malvolio in “Twelfth Night”, also directed by Geoff Hyland. In 2002-3 at Edinburgh and in the West End, he created the role of Dr. Drabble in the black comedy, “The Dice House” (based on Luke Rheinhardt’s “The Dice Man”). In the UK in the 90’s, he performed at London’s Theatre Royal Windsor and Orange Tree Theatre and appeared in various TV productions for BBC. In the 80’s, he attracted notice for his performances in Sam Shepard’s “Cowboy Mouth” and “Equus,” among others. Also a rock musician, he has written two Rock Theater works and recorded a blues-rock album. When “The Rocky Horror Show” finally hit South Africa in 1992, he played Dr. Frank ‘n’ Furter in the original cast. His recent TV appearances include: “Miss Marple: A Carribbean Mystery”(BBC), “Kidnap And Ransom”(ITV), Martina Cole’s “The Runaway” (Sky TV) and “Women In Love” (BBC).
Jeremy Crutchley as The Other. Photo by Rob Keith
Jeremy Crutchley in Sacred Elephant by Heathcote Williams at La Mama First Floor Theatre. Photo by Rob Keith.
Heathcote Williams (author) is a poet, playwright and actor. He is best known for his extended poems on environmental subjects, “Whale Nation” (1988), “Falling for a Dolphin” (1989) and “Autogeddon” (1991). His plays have also won acclaim, notably “AC/DC,” which was produced at London’s Royal Court, and “Hancock’s Last Hour.” He is also a versatile actor whose memorable roles include Prospero in Derek Jarman’s film of “The Tempest.” “Sacred Elephant” was the first environmental poem by Williams, although it was not commercially published until after his better-known work, “Whale Nation” (1988). “Sacred Elephant” actually dates back to 1967, when Williams spent three months touring in India. While in Rajasthan, he observed local elephants and their trainers at close quarters. He also had a close association with a circus elephant named Rani and was able to watch her daily routine and behavior in captivity. Captive behavior, which is largely unknown to the general public, forms a large portion of “Sacred Elephant.”
The poem first appeared in print in 1987, published by Williams himself but in an unusual form. Three thousand copies were issued on elephant-sized paper and with print “large enough for elephants to read.” These newspapers were given away privately to friends and associates. That year, Williams performed the poem as a radio production, receiving many favorable reviews, including one from Harold Pinter who called it “a marvelous poem.” When Williams’ “Whale Nation” was published in 1988, it set a pattern for Williams’ books to follow, including “Sacred Elephant,” which was published commercially by Jonathan Cape a year later. Following this publication, the book received many more favorable notices.
It was recorded as a Naxos audiobook by Williams himself and given recitations, but it had never been explored for its powerful theatrical potential until Geoffrey Hyland and Jeremy Crutchley conceived this production. Heathcote Williams has granted exclusive dramatic rights to Crutchley to perform the work.
‘Sacred Elephant’ by Heathcote Williams. Adapted for the stage by Geoffrey Hyland and Jeremy Crutchley
Jeremy Crutchley in Sacred Elephant
Sacred Elephant, based on a poem by Heathcote Williams, has been brilliantly adapted for the stage by director Geoffrey Hyland and Jeremy Crutchley. Crutchley also acts the role of The Other, the spiritual ethos of the elephant of the title. The production is currently at La Mama’s First Floor Theatre until September 22. This U.S. premier and all that Crutchley embodies in the role must be seen and witnessed to be believed. It is magnificent.
This is not an easy entertainment, though. In fact it is devastating in the import of the message and experience it offers. However, that is one element of what the poet and artistic creators intend. One cannot walk away untouched by Crutchley’s performance, which awakens our empathy and opens our minds and hearts to the torment of these wonderful creatures.
Jeremy Crutchley as The Other. “The shape of an African elephant’s ear is the shape of Africa.” Photo by Jingxi Zhang
Through graceful movements and meaningful and magnetic voices and renderings, Crutchley enacts the poem, becoming The Other and invoking its spiritual dimensions. By this very embodiment of the elephant and all it represents throughout history to the current time, he engages our sensibilities, reaching for our spirits to force us to hear, see and feel the beauty of who The Other is as we acknowledge our kinship with him/her/it.
We also experience the soul-sickening malady of our own degradation. We’ve allowed The Other to be maltreated and destroyed for our pleasure, almost like a whimsical afterthought. And no one dares stop us. We do it because we can, harming ourselves in the process. Though we know better, we effect The Other’s and our destruction anyway.
Jeremy Crutchley embodies the ethos of the elephant. “To the early Christians, the elephant was the Bearer of All Infirmities.” Photo by Rob Keith
The revelation penetrates like a bullet between the eyes and the question “Why?” hovers in the air as the poet and artistic executioners Hyland and Crutchley tether us to the long chain of abuses society has inflicted upon the elephant in its irrational lust for the “fun of it.” The puzzle of our humanity or lack of humanity deepens. What glory to repeatedly sacrifice, maim and imprison these creatures for the fleeting mood elevations of children and families? Where is the intelligence? Who indeed are the dumb beasts?
Even better, how does their torture relate to those activists at the tail end of consumer culture who would never traffic in ivory or advocate the abuse and poaching of these marvelous creatures? And yet, here we are, watching a stage play of Sacred Elephant for our pleasure, a play showing the misery of The Other. The irony is a cruel one, and I can’t really smile at its darkness, nor forget easily. And that is another thematic point this production makes.
The lighting (Luke Ellenbogen), music, set, sound design and staging (Hyland) are effective assists to Crutchely as is the costuming (Ilka Louw). The frames of light and shadow, the three boxes Crutchley lifts and rearranges and sits upon, the sway of his grey and white dusted flow of costume, all masterfully work with the music of Heathcote’s phrases and word jewels. The spectacle enhances the message of the power of life and the misery of the dissolution we’ve wreaked on The Other.
Jeremy Crutchley: “When elephants are allowed to die in their own time and space, they will sometimes hold up a fallen body as if forming a funeral cortege.” Photo by Rob Keith.
From historical veneration by ancient cultures to the elephant’s current decline exacted by global “progress,” this production of Sacred Elephant reminds us of how “far” we’ve come and what we’ve sacrificed to get here. It’s a banal evil, all the more rotten for what we’ve allowed, whether directly or unwittingly. Hyland’s and Crutchley’s adaptation shows that we’ve been separated from what is divine, majestic, awe-inspiring and magical in ourselves and The Other. We’ve been alienated from the spirituality of our past and have destroyed our inheritance to face an isolated, loveless future, unknown to ourselves and the creatures that are our kin.
The message is potent. The production delivers. See it to see The Other. It runs until September 22.
And from a shared aquatic past,
The elephant inherits the one quality
That Homo sapiens has always arrogantly assumed
Distinguishes him from the brute beast –
An elephant in distress
Will weep salt tears.
Westchester Collaborative Theater! 2013 Summerfest Success
WCT 2013 Summerfest cast and Artistic Director, Alan Lutwin (far right)
The Westchester Collaborative Theater‘s innovative work never fails to amaze me. A collaborative of mostly professional artists, directors, actors and writers who gather each month to share, develop, promote and exchange ideas about their work, they are a vibrant regional theater laboratory. Instead of trying to “reinvent” shows that have been done before, often with lackluster results (I’ve seen more than my share of regional theater revivals and few are worth the trip and the time.) this group has persisted in what it does best: experiments, creates, dares to risk.
WCT premiers works, mostly one act plays, some longer. Many of these are developed through the lab which is the petri dish through which all the collaborators can hone their skills and perfect their craft. Oftentimes, the works continue being developed after premiers at their performance base in Ossining, with the thought of entering them in festivals in NYC and/or in other areas of the country or developing them further perhaps into full length works.
2013 Summerfest cast of the Westchester Collaborative Theater
The WCT holds two major performances of plays, one in the summer and the other in the winter. This 2013 Summerfest of 5 one-act plays which was produced in late June reveals how far this collaborative has extended its reach, creativity and will. Each of the one-act productions showed the collaborators’ manifest effort and enjoyment with expressing their talent and artistry. It was obvious they were having fun and the crowd which was the largest I have seen to date at the WCT, demonstrated their enthusiasm and pleasure with the offerings.
Artistic Director of the WCT, Alan Lutwin. Here he is making the introductory remarks for the evening.
I brought along three of my friends who are Broadway goers and who enjoy live theater. They are not dilettantes and each has a discerning nature and circumspect opinions. In other words they do not suffer through mediocre theater eagerly and two of them are “walk-outs.” They would rather sit in the lobby or go home than sustain performances that are slap-dash with little deliberation and effort or those that are misguided and whose logic is so skewed, the production just doesn’t work to uplift, entertain or enlighten.
They agreed that the night they spent at WCT was so much better than paid performances they’ve attended in Queens and even some on Broadway. (One walked out of Mary Stuart, and the other fell asleep during Beyond Miss Julie, to name a few.) Two of them especially expressed surprise at the energy, camaraderie and esprit de corps of the company which is a testament that not only is regional theater not a bust, it is thriving in the New York City area. They agreed with me that a collaborative is the right way to go, offering a continuum of progression that is free and integrated away from the constraints of ego machinations, financials and politics that unfortunately stifle NYC theater’s creative, innovative, risk-taking. In NYC though celebrity names are king, they do not provide insurance against ill-conceived or misdirected productions circled by fans and tourists out for a night of forgettable entertainment that is more for “show” and tourist talk-back to friends at home. Off Broadway presents more innovation, still with the caveat of expenses.
Here was WCT’s 2013 Summerfest roundup, all varying degrees of delightful, insightful, humorous, telling and clever.
Facebook Friends by Marshall Fine, directed by Karina Ramsey revisits for all school graduates the possibility of reunions with former lovers and friends awakened by the Facebook revolution. Facebook has brought us “face-to-face” online with those we thought we might never see again, and if we take it further, like characters Simon (Sherman Alpert) and Arlene (Tracey McAllister) do, we’ll dare to meet them in person with funny, poignant and awkward moments and final or not so final resolutions to part ways or see each other again.
Sandra Lucas and Deacon Hoy
Wander Inn by Virginia Reynolds, directed by Elaine Hartel is every woman’s dream of vindication come true. Charlotte (Sandra Lucas) returns to visit a former partner Tim (Deacon Hoy) at his financially down-and-out Wander Inn. She continually surprises him with a series of truths which peel back the onion on their past. Charlotte’s revelations are gleefully, ironically delivered and she relishes her triumphs over her past and him. Each reveal jolts him like a prod leading him to the final realization that he has made a complete mess of his life. It is a reversal of fortune with Charlotte on the top ladder rung and Tim on the bottom. When she proclaims that her final order will be to torch the place (She became the owner unbeknownst to him.) where their past was staged and he’s been in a cage ever since (at the Wander Inn) we are shocked and somehow relieved. Things can only get better for both of them, unless Tim devolves further. Based upon the clues, the play leaves it for us to decide the probabilities.
Matt Silver and Sara Colton (as the newly weds, with invasive parents, from left to right, Nick Pascarella, Nancy Intrator Jim Coakley and Janice Kirkel)
Excess Baggage by Carol Mark and directed by Joe Lima is a joyful, humorous play with which all can identify, especially if they come from a larger family which is the clinging type whether in one’s mind or in actuality. Steve (Matt Silver) and Pam (Sara Colten) are on their honeymoon but their parents, Francine-Janice Kirkel, Edward-Jim Coakley, Margaret-Nancy Intrator, Chuck-Nick Pascarella, show up at the newlyweds’ hotel room to watch, supervise and help launch the marriage. The couple, ready for this “big night,” have to contend with their folks who interject, proclaim and interfere until they’re over themselves, and are ejected so Steve and Pam can finally be alone together. However, the question remains, will Steve and Pam ever be able to shed the carcass of childhood and parental intrusion? We are reminded, as the title suggests, that when we are united with our significant others, we also bring along the generations that have gone before us and this baggage, for good or ill, remains in ourselves and our relationships, unless we “jettison” it. The underlying message affirms that when it gets to be “crazy” with all the competing voices in our heads and our interactions and self become befuddled, then we need to take charge as Steve and Pam humorously and finally do. Do the couple continue this path during their marriage? The answer leaves us smiling and shaking our heads.
Howard Weintraub in control and on high as the boss. Enid Breis as the demur secretary
With roles reversed: Enid Breis and Howard Weintraub
Hedge Fund by Csaba Teglas, directed by Richard Manichello is a humorous look at the Venus/Mars relationship between men and women against the backdrop of the not so recent financial debacle and fiduciary mismanagement prevalent during the Lehman, Bear Sterns, Washington Mutual, Countrywide Financial mess which is most likely still occurring today in varying degrees. Miss Prune (Enid Breis) is the demur secretary of James (Howard Weintraub) the preeminent, arrogant, know-it-all boss. Miss Prune acts the subservient, dutiful, coffee-making assistant until the tables are turned and we discover she has been surreptitiously brilliant while James and others have been twiddling their thumbs while the Roman market has been burning. Only Miss Prune was prescient and common sensical enough to take clever positions, short and long the market, and walk away with millions while the blindly incompetent “professionals, didn’t see looming disaster on the horizon.By degrees, Miss Prune sheds her demur, “button-down” collar to reveal the hottie she is, single-handedly saving the firm and her boss with the ultimate final position, taking over fiduciary responsibility and setting herself up to be his rich girlfriend (a mild tweak on sexual harassment). By the end of the play, she is in the catbird seat and James is getting her coffee. All the women in the audience applauded loudly. One of my friends thought the play might go the distance adding another act and developing the premise.
You Were Awesome by Bob Zaslow and directed by Michael Muldoon explores the hangover theme. Steven (Jeff Virgo) had a fabulous party but can’t remember any of it, in a stoned blackout of alcohol reeling brain bombing. Ruthie (Suzanne Ochs) was there and has a memory for explicit details, though she didn’t party as insanely as Steven. Anyway, someone has to chronicle the events, “spill the beans,” and get her man. Ruthie is joined by partiers Leesa (Shelley Lerea) and Dirk (Femi Alao) and their expose grows as Steven hangovers his head in shame. Ruthie in a partial state of disrobement (tying in what probably happened between them.) gives Steven each “blow by blow” description of his humiliatingly funny antics on this wild, drunken spree.
Jeff Virgo, Suzanne Ochs encouraging Femi Alao sitting in front, Shelley Lerea
Ruthie underwrites each mounting event description with, “You were awesome!” By the play’s end after we have laughed at the excesses we put ourselves through, knowing that, like Steve, we’ll regret it in the morning, we come to this realization. Yeah, maybe it was awesome. During a spree we might be able to shed restrictive, up-tightness and be ourselves. In vino veritas! Too bad we need the alcohol or whatever to “Be Awesome!”
2013 Summerfest cast
WCT has scheduled events in addition to their bi-monthly labs, development of new work and guest speakers. In July guests Ossining Mayor William Hanauer (July 11th) and renown theater director Mara Mills (July 18th) spoke. Make sure to mark your calendar and try to attend the fun events and meet the WCT directors, playwrights and actors. This regional theater group enjoys schmoozing with the public and discovering those who appreciate the arts and innovative theater. Their annual fundraiser is scheduled for Saturday September 28 at 7:30PM at the OAC Steamer Firehouse, 117 Main St. in Ossining. Entertainment for the event will be cabaret inspired.
For the month of October, the WCT will present a Living Art Exhibit in conjunction with the Ossining Arts Council. The Exhibit is being held on Saturday October 19. Playwrights have selected artworks to inspire their imagination in creating new plays. They have been busily completing their submissions for an August 1 deadline.
Regional theater on the move, WCT will continue with its winter programs and labs. If you are in the area and are interested, first check out their Facebook page. You will always be welcome as a visitor to their performances and you may always donate as the WCT is a non profit and is carried along solely by public donations. And if you are a director, actor or playwright, you may apply to join the talented innovators of this collaborative.
I like to think of the WCT as riding over the top of the Philistines who have done much to suppress wonderful artists, writers, actors, playwrights by insisting on curtailing funding programs to the arts. Live theater inspires our humanity and keeps us involved, enlightened and purposeful in our culture. Whether you are an audience member, actor, playwright or director, the feeling communication is electric during a live performance. Here is a theater group which can be supported for their daring and enthusiasm in putting on quality shows, and doing it on the good graces of their supporters. Bravo WCT!
The Nance: Nathan Lane in the Performance of a Lifetime.
The Nance is a heavenly vehicle for comedic singer/ dramatic actor Nathan Lane, who plays 1930s vaudeville performer Chauncey Miles in the Lincoln Center production now at the Lyceum Theatre on 45th Street. Supported by an exceptional ensemble – Jonny Orsini (Ned), Lewis J. Stadlen (Efram), Cady Huffman (Sylvie), Jenni Barber (Joan), and Andrea Burns (Carmen) – Lane’s performance is a powerhouse, expressing a variegated population of emotions that stretch the audience along a rubber band from zany belly-laughs to poignant tears as we identify with this gay burlesque performer who forces himself to walk a tightrope of contradictory impulses toward love and hate, cynicism and hope, self-acceptance and self-loathing, empowerment and weakness.
Douglas Carter Beane, it has been reported, wrote the play with Nathan Lane in mind. Who better to portray a caricatured “Nance,” the stereotypical, effeminate “pansy” (usually in vaudeville played by a straight man) of burlesque, who spurs on laughs with double entendres and quippy one-liners between female strip acts, cooling down the steam stoked by bare women who must change for their next peeling reveal. Who better than a “Nance” to encourage the audience males about their virility as they ogle the strippers’ nudity, enjoy the sexual thrill of it and laugh at the “bloke” who is more interested in watching them than the tasseled nipples of the lightly clad ladies. Who better than Nathan Lane to play a “Nance”? Didn’t this amazing chameleon-like showman catapult us into a laugh track with his broad histrionics and heart-opening portrayal of lovable Albert Goldman in the Mike Nichols film The Birdcage (1996)? Beane has spun circles around this irony and delivered an amazing play and the director, Jack O’Brien, with Glen Kelly (Original Music), Joey Pizzi (Choreography), John Lee Beatty (Sets), and Ann Roth (Costumes) to name a few, have brought together a magnificent conceptualization with a tragi-comical punch line as the dominoes of irony tumble on each other at the play’s symbolic conclusion.
Chauncey Miles (Nathan Lane) at the automat (photo Jean Marcus)
The theme and tensions of duality between what is real and what is masked pretense thread throughout the entire production performed with aptly giltless sets including a revolving platform upon which Chauncey unfolds the roiling aspects of his existence traveling between his fun, madcap, self-deprecatory “fag” antics onstage (that are poignant and real) and offstage as the straight, intellectual poseur, a frame to enclose his surreptitious gay affairs, moments enacted in an automat, staging ground for covert gay trysts where one can secretly troll for sex partners who are then brought back to the privacy of Chauncey’s apartment.
His duality manifests when we watch Chauncey’s “poseur” persona lure young, beautiful, down-on-his-luck Ned, who Chauncey, with carefully nuanced signals and occult gay innuendo and subterfuge (part of the act) brings to his apartment. Despite Chauncey’s reluctance (his poseur self) and desire to maintain the orderly division between what is real and what is acting, he violates his best intentions allowing Ned to stay. He is falling in love. The tearing of the curtain between reality and illusion between life and art has begun in their morning after scene when Lane brilliantly begins the morph from the initially strained, cynically laced, intellectually conservative Republican straight Chauncey into the increasingly truthful, loving, caring Chauncey, a harmless, humorous, gifted “Nance” (as seen by the culture, but who the audience sees as the eternally, mystical, tragic-comic clown/fool).
Jonny Orsini (Ned) and Nathan Lane (Chauncey)
Beane’s dual threads are fraught with complexity and can easily be underestimated because of the subtle interplay between Chauncey’s burlesque pansy act and Chauncey’s real life straight poseur which he acts out as a conservative Republican who glorifies NYC Mayor La Guardia. The shifts between onstage reality and offstage acting are reminiscent of Cabaret, but here function as an amazing reversal of the Candor and Ebb musical; the Nance act is the real thing, the real life is the act, until a certain character, Ned, shows up. The truth which Ned forces Chauncey to confront is his faux existence and after Chauncey falls hard for Ned, he no longer wants to be two different people.
Beane reveals the evolution of Chauncey and Lane is spot on as he unhappily struggles to be the poseur, a closeted gay man, who has fallen in love with married Ned, a discovering gay, as both are forced to live the lies of straights while masking their feelings, identities, beings. Lane’s Chauncey helplessly entangles himself in his true love for Ned. He becomes enraged and dislocated. Not only has he shredded the curtain between his real self and the act which ensured his former easy existence and world view, he no longer wants to repair the curtain sustaining the two person duality and its emotionally disastrous attendant issues. He enjoys the singularity of love and its feeling truths and his new, free statehood.
Nathan Lane (Chauncey) and Lewis J. Stadlen (Efram) (Photo credit Jean Marcus)
With this freedom has come empowerment. He becomes upfront about despising hypocrites like prudish Paul Moss (a failed theatrical, lifelong bachelor and “dandy.”) Mayor La Guardia’s watchdog mandated to curtail stage indecency, closing down perverse “Nance” acts. Moss and the La Guardia administration have labeled as perverted the love that healed the schism in Chauncey’s soul, a schism that had made him emotionally unfeeling and alien. Though Ned’s uncomplicated, authentic, self nurtured Chauncey’s individuality into a healthier state, Chauncey’s new identity/truth explodes with rage and vision. Like an artist out of his time, he is doomed for it. Of course, the irony of the play’s action is that the more Ned and Chauncey love, come alive and receive authenticity from each other, the more their straight “act” falls away. The new fusion jeopardizes their lives and both must be sacrificed on an alter of oppression.
All semblance of the curtain separating his duality is completely destroyed by Chauncey when, during his act onstage, Moss shows up and Chauncey lathered in fury shouts out at the audience and Moss With a singular will and determination he provokes his own arrest and in-jail brutality. We later discover the rumors of his love relationship with Ned have suggested he is a real pansy, an illegality the La Guardia administration in NYC will not tolerate if it is exposed.
The second act opens with Chauncey alone in front of the Lyceum theatre stage curtain. He is in court and we hear the loud gavel as if banging down on his head; the judge is silent and Chauncey responds as if the judge’s questions were audible to us, though they are not. In seething, bile-filled humor he puts on his (No one is there…in a way the scene represents Chauncey’s battle struggling between his duality: the judge/Republican poseur and the Nance) poseur straight act. He justifies the harmlessness of double entendres in the pansy act which make folks laugh. Though he makes it out of court, Chauncey has lost hold of his ordered former existence where he could easily move himself in and out of offstage illusion and onstage reality. During the court scene and after, we see he is at the end of his rope, but not the end of his very raw emotional state which has blossomed because of his relationship with Ned. Chauncey must survive: he has “to get his act together” and leave show business or put the curtain down between his two personas and live his former life of duality. Will he be able to after having been healed to oneness in the freedom of love?
After jail, Chauncey returns to his friends, muddled. Theatrical protests are forming to “save the Nance acts.” Chauncey has refused to protest, pooh-poohing any hope of success with his conservative poseur sardonic self and we are duped into believing him as the others crowd around the radio to hear the results, never once considering he is back in his straight “act” for a good reason. He has been bullied there. He can’t protest; he has been on the front lines in jail and has seen the face of discriminatory brutality. Repression and abuse have stymied him. When the protest fails, his “I told you sos” ring clear. Banned, his stage act is over; his offstage act must go on. But how can it if Ned is around?
Through oppressive cultural circumstances, Chauncey converts his reality of love to a lie; call it his material survival and soul death. Onstage, his act which had once been more real than his offstage life has taken a turn into hyperbole when he is forced to play a role that ridicules both sexes. Not only has the Nance gone undercover, he has engaged the double-edged ridicule of men and women (a further perversion wrought by an oppressive government). This ridicule of both sexes is heightened in his portrayal of drag queen Hortense. A Nance in drag, he is neither convincing, good-looking or adorable as he once was, though his humor is in tact. Nevertheless, the irony is impeccable. In drag as Hortense, Chauncey has become freakish, unfeminine, weak and unlovable. He is barely capable of carrying through with his act because it is so far removed from himself. In ridiculing the ridiculed and oppressed (women) he receives no empowerment, only the inherent humorous degradation of taking on the xx chromosome. As the Nance, he was free to be himself onstage and in a role that both empowered and uplifted him to get to the next day, the next tryst, the next stage performance.
We understand how the Hortense act stifles Chauncey’s real impulses and provides no outlet for his true self (as the Nance) when, during his Hortense “act” reality intrudes. Chauncey breaks down and sobs. He has lost himself, Ned, freedom and love. But the oppressive show must go on. He recoups after a long pause and with a one-liner gets a belly laugh. The audience gets what they came for, an hour to forget their troubles. And this tragic fool on the stage? He gets to see the curtain going down on a most wondrous part of his life and his ability to be real anywhere.
The playwright has so aptly woven the notes of Chauncey’s character with perfect writing and Lane hits every single one of them with a sledgehammer, nailing down Chauncey’s spiritual/soulish coffin. By the end, as Chauncey packs up his parapherenalia to return home, there is a huge bang-crash. A fixture drops nearly on his head, barely missing him. He looks off staring into the future. When I first saw the production, I missed an important detail that I caught the second time I saw it when I was sitting in the front row: the black shadow of a rope tied in a noose, swinging high from the backstage rafters.
The symbolism is furtive with multiple meanings foreshadowed. Certainly, the noose shadow suggests the La Guardia administration’s unforgiving and brutal noose tightening toward homosexuals, a cultural attitude which only loosened after the 1990s and hard won battles to break down injustices against gays. In parts of the country, the noose is still hanging; certainly the online bullying of gay youngsters has caused one too many to take their own lives. Related to Chauncey (Chancey) it is moot whether he will be able to maintain the curtain separating his dual selves. Will he be able to forgive himself, knowing all he has been forced to give up and has allowed himself to give up, the stereotype of a weak willed woman? Will his bitterness and self-hatred get the best of him one dark night when he decides it is better not to live at all than to live a life of lies onstage and off with no outlet for his soul’s fulfillment?
It’s all there and more in Lane’s and cast’s performances, in the direction and spectacle, in Beane’s writing, and it’s marvelous to behold. If you love Lane don’t miss this. Treat yourself to this work of art which won three Tony Awards and the performance of a lifetime by Nathan Lane who won the Outer Circle Critics Award and the Drama League Award.
The Nance runs through August 11, 2013 in an extended performance.
Production photo credits by Jean Marcus.
Classic Stage Company’s Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht
Once again the Classic Stage Company produced a play by Bertolt Brecht. Last season the company presented Galileo starring F. Murray Abraham in an unusual translation by Brecht and the fine British actor Charles Laughton, now deceased. Abraham portrayed Galileo to sold out-crowds. He and the production were superlative. The current version of The Caucasian Chalk Circle stars, as The Singer and Azdak, Christopher Lloyd, the prolific theater actor who is still most noted for his role as “Doc” Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy and Uncle Fester in the Addams Family films.
Jason Babinsky and Christopher Lloyd, courtesy of Joan Marcus, CSC website
The director Brian Kulick (who also helmed Galileo last season) has chosen to set Brecht’s play in the Soviet Union, right about the time of the fall of Communism and the partitioning of its satellite regions into their present independent states. The production’s ironic description of the time and place suggests the metaphors which choppily thread through the play and could have been developed with much greater import to make the conception more powerful: “Ancient Grusinia but also perhaps the fall of the Soviet Union, when the Hammer and Sickle were replaced by the Coca-Cola bottle.”
Because the setting is specific to this time period, the play’s universality, its satire of politics, government corruption and injustice, is unfortunately mitigated. The themes are convoluted and confused. The play’s significance related to our time, when global corporations and shadow global elites deliver a fascist repression of their own, is rendered faint indeed. With a bit more innovation, and connected theatricality of spectacle and costume, the tie-ins symbolized by the Coke bottle (meretricious mercantilism) supplanting the noble beginning of philosophical Marxism (devolving into corrupt, repressive Communism) would have been stupendous. But the conception is to a great extent washed out. Gimmicks (an interruptive blackout, ad hoc audience participation at a makeshift wedding, and the gloss of comedic Russian and Russian-accented English spoken to frame the fable) distract from the interesting conception. The lackluster effects sink the production’s impact and Brecht’s powerful theme that love and human kindness will and should overthrow political class systems whatever their stripe.
The play begins with a Stalinesque/Leninesque statue being toppled by citizens as the current governor and his wife (Mary Testa) flee the violent tumult and retaliation for his repressive rule. It is regime change. The question Brecht poses: Which devils will now come to rule? Testa, true to her comedic talent, lessens the sting of the wife’s cruelty and arrogance as she picks the dresses she will take – but in the chaos leaves her infant son behind.
Christopher Lloyd as The Singer and Elizabeth A. Davis as Grusha. Photo by Joan Marcus.
The child (for expediency and symbolism, perhaps) is represented by a life-like puppet. The fate of the child is debated by a young servant girl who finds him. Grusha (Elizabeth A. Davis in a poignant though uneven performance) deliberates whether to save him. But in a typical Brechtian character tension, her humanity and the lower/middle class tenets of the Golden Rule prompt her to sacrifice her own wellbeing for the child whom she preserves. The main action of the play is the preservation of this puppet-child as she confronts danger and trials to get to her brother’s house for asylum, all the while keeping the child’s identity hidden.
The circumstances achieve a quieter resolution with strange moments of accidental kindness, and power reversal. Azdak (a hapless, loutish peasant portrayed forcefully and playfully by Christopher Lloyd) saves the disguised governor who has become his loutish, peasant equal. Through a series of inane ironies that only political revolutions can foment, Azdak turns himself in for saving the governor, but because the current political crazies have hanged all the former judges, he is in the right place at the right time to be selected as a new judge to decide matters of the law. Why not?
Christopher Lloyd and Tom Riis Farrell, CSC website, Joan Marcus photo
Tom Riis Farrell and Christopher Lloyd. Courtesy of CSC website, Joan Marcus photo.
The justice Azdak metes out is even nuttier (Lloyd shines at these moments), probably, then the decisions the former bribed, corrupt judges handed out, with one random exception. In appears that the true Just Judge (fortune, fate, God) exerts its will through this wild, roguish Azdak. The governor’s wife has returned to reclaim her child from Grusha. Azdak must make the final decision: Who is the appropriate mother? Is it the overweening, materialist, elite, selfish biological mother or the deeply human, loving peasant who exhibits the nobility, kindness and self-sacrificial traits that exemplify the finest qualities of the human spirit that we (the little people) aspire to? In a fit of Solomonic wisdom uncharacteristic of Azdak, this lout has a chalk circle drawn. Whoever is able to take the child out of the circle is the mother. This sets the competition as two women pull each arm of the child as if to tear him in half to prove “ownership.” And you know what happens.
In this translation by James and Tania Tern, with original music by Duncan Sheik and lyrics by the poet W. H. Auden, the production has rare, clarified moments and muddied, miry ones. Coherence throughout is chopped. However, Lloyd should not be missed, and Elizabeth A. Davis manages to hew out a Grusha with whom we want to identify and who vindicates our belief in ethical intention and fine human instinct. And yes, she is rewarded for this when her love interest (Alex Hurt) reaches out to her, despite the complications. (She married a dyingman under false pretenses – his being that he was escaping the draft – then is stuck with him – but not for long.)
Article first published as Theater Review (NYC): ‘The Caucasian Chalk Circle’ by Bertolt Brecht on Blogcritics.
Brian Schorn Exhibit at Omega Institute
Visitor Center
Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York
Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York is an amazing center for wellness, holistic studies and sustainable living programs and practices. Omega’s beautiful environs and campus must be experienced to be believed. The institute offers workshops, conferences, online learning, retreats and getaways and hosts programs in New York City and Costa Rica. Omega encompasses the world; it is a global community that “awakens the best in the human spirit and cultivates the extraordinary potential” that is in all of us.
My first visit to Omega was with a friend, Rosary O’Neill, who is teaching a scriptwriting workshop July 7-12, 2013. With her I had the opportunity to tour the campus and discover more about Omega’s mission and its programs. After my brief time there, I realized that Omega represents everything I embrace and have endorsed for a good part of my life, starting with health and wellness. I especially appreciate their forward momentum in implementing ways to support and integrate a sustainable lifestyle that replenishes, renews and regenerates a culture that is in harmony with the environment.
One of the opportunities open to me as I walked through the gardens and followed pathways over the stream (after a delicious organic cappuccino in the cafe) was to see Brian Schorn’s exhibit at the Ram Dass Library. Brian was one of the individuals Rosary and I met in the cafe and after sharing with us his journey of how he arrived at Omega, I was convinced that this accomplished Renaissance man who has engaged his senses in all realms of the fine arts and media is perfecting his life’s work, and that indeed, his life path is an artistic work unfolding.
To be able to let ourselves release into freedom is one of the greatest achievements we can attain as human beings. Often intense personal restrictions (after psychological cleansing) prevent us from “going over the cliff.” and finding ourselves. Over the cliff is not the great fall to fear. It is the free space allowing us to fly. Sharing time with Brian, I could easily see that he was soaring and I was gobsmacked at his courage to break out from the entangling personal labyrinths, to move to the edge and then leap.
And after the leap? New directions for his art some of which is currently being exhibited at Omega’s Ram Dass Library. Spurred by opportunities to live in the mountains of Colorado and Vermont, Schorn focused on his connection to the natural world. In the seclusion and beauty of various terrains, he could explore and delve into environmental art, deep ecology, natural history and outdoor adventure. Previous artist residencies included Ox-Bow in Saugatuck, MI and I-Park Artists Enclave in East Haddam, CT. In a ‘fusion complement’ his experiences with natural environments directly informed a new body of work: audio field recordings, electronic music composition, outdoor performance, calligraphy, sculpture with natural materials, photography and computer-generated imaging.
Brian’s exhibit at the Ram Dass Library is entitled “Lost and Found.” His work includes sculpture, assemblages and calligraphy. To whet your appetite, a few examples are below.
Brian Schorn
Heaven, Earth & Man Navigating Fear, I, II, III
sumi ink on paper
Brian Schorn
Dirt Calligraphy I (left)
pine island dirt, smoke on paper
Enso (center)
sumi ink on paper
Dirt Calligraphy II
pine island dirt, smoke on paper
Brian Schorn
Acorn Yin Yang
wood, acorns, acrylic, enamel
Brian Schorn’s exhibition opened Memorial Day to an enthusiastic reception. The selection of works and their presentation offer Brian’s unique vision and integrated approach employing a dichotomy of natural elements in a juxtaposition of artistic mediums. His works will be exhibited throughout the summer and into September. If you are in the area, drop by the library after availing yourself of a look see at Omega Institute’s Visitor’s Center to check out this phenomenal venue tucked away in the Hudson River Valley. You will thank yourself that you did.
Tony Awards. No Surprises as Tony’s Mirror Drama Desk Award Wins.
Patina Miller won the Tony for Best Performance of a Leading Actress in a Musical Revival. When she signed my program, I told her I believed she would win the Tony. Turns out I was right. She is probably still shocked and sooo happy over her win.
Pippin won the Tony for Best Musical Revival
The Tony Awards at Radio City Music Hall hosted by Neil Patrick Harris held no surprises if you saw the Drama Desk Awards. The award wins echoed each other this year, as the winners of the Drama Desks and Tonys mirrored each other last year. It’s as if the separate award committees sat down with each other and agreed on the wins.
Just the highligts are repeated here, of the Best Musical, Best Musical Revival, Best Play, Best Play Revival and the Actor awards. I’m thrilled for the Kinky Boots win for Best Original Musical and Cindi Lauper’s score win for Kinky Boots. I’m glad it won over Mathilda which I didn’t think was as great as it was touted to be when I saw it. I have yet to see the production of Kinky Boots, but will get tickets as soon as possible. Billy Porter now has a Tony to add to his Drama Desk Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical. The trailer posted online with him dressed in drag is a show stopping number and looks like a deserved win. He, as many of the performers did, thanked his family and God for sustaining him throughout to bring him to the stage and the wins.
Pippin won for Best Musical Revival. I’m thrilled. See my review of Pippin here! I predicted wins for Andrea Martin (Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical Revival) Diane Paulus (Best Director for Musical Revival) and Patina Miller (Best Performance by an Actress in a Musical Revival). I am so thrilled because I had the opportunity to tell Andrea Martin and Patina Miller that I hope they won because they were fabulous. Their wins bring viability and credibility to their careers and will most probably sky-rocket them to other roles in film or Broadway. I’m absolutely joyous for them. They and Diane Paulus so deserve it for their efforts.
Cicely Tyson (Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play ) received the Tony to go with her Drama Desk for her incredible, moving performance in A Trip to Bountiful. She was absolutely stunning and heart-wrenching. Judith Light received a Tony to go with her Drama Desk for her humorous character portrayal in The Assembled Parties. Likewise, Tracey Letts (Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play) won the Tony, adding to his award shelf that already holds a Drama Desk and other awards for his performance of George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The play’s director, Pam MacKinnon, also won the Tony as she did the Drama Desk.
Courtney B. Vance from Lucky Guy by Nora Ephron brought home the Tony for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play. He was excellent, though I did want Tony Shalhoub to win in that category for Golden Boy. Shalhoub’s portrayal of the father (too bad it was so early in the season) was exceptional; he was dynamic and powerful in his soft-spoken, loving, nuanced portrayal. His was a pivotal character, the conscience and the theme of Odets’ play. He brought together the elements brilliantly in a living, vital performance. It was a shame he didn’t win; he was breathtaking. Vance, though fine, didn’t do it for me, where Hanks, actually, was touching and wonderful…enhancing Ephron’s somewhat lackluster characterization of McAlary. (See my review.) If not for Hanks, the play would have been a yawn. But Letts was the favorite and I unfortunately missed this supposedly iconic Virginia Woolf. After all the nominations, Matilda did receive a win for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical (Gabriel Ebert). For me, it was a toss up between Terrance Mann (Pippin) and Ebert, but I didn’t see the other performances, so I can’t say. I did think that Ebert was pushing for laughs as was Mann…both comedic roles. Comedy is very, very hard to do well.
The finest remarks in the evening were delivered by Tracey Letts as he thanked the ATW. He said something to the effect that the others in the category were not his competitors, they were his peers. He was absolutely correct: Tom Hanks (Lucky Guy) David Hyde Pierce (Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike) Nathan Lane (The Nance) and Tom Sturridge (Orphans)? I saw each production and there is absolutely no way I would have been able to select from these. Of course, I did not see Letts. And the Best Play? Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. What can I say? I loved it and of the four nominees, it was my favorite.
As a show, The Tony Awards was better than the Oscars which lasts forever in its own self-indulgent mode. But then I only watched two hours of The Tonys while I was online doing other things. It is how I watch TV, if I watch it at all, which is extremely seldom. I prefer streaming or the interactivity of social or mobile. The more alive, the better. That is why I love theater, but am annoyed that they have not entered the Social Media age of living, breathing interactivity during performances. They (the theater police) don’t trust the rabble to not throw things, I guess.
Don’t they understand about Macros flash settings and texting and silent mode on mobile? Don’t they get it that interactivity from fans IS THE BEST PROMOTION AND ADVERTISING OUT THERE FOR A BROADWAY SHOW? Maybe not. NASA gets it. They have Tweet teams. A play is a potential TWEET TEAM LAUNCH ON SOCIAL Yawn. I’m waiting for them to “get it.” It may take years.
Westchester Collaborative Theatre: New Season, New Innovations
WCT announcement for Summerfest 2013
The Westchester Collaborative Theatre has been on a whirlwind beginning January when Alan Lutwin and Marshall Fine received a 2013 Arts Alive Grant from ArtsWestchester! The WCT is officially a non-profit 501C3 corporation and will be able to intensify its fund raising efforts and continued integration with the New York City theatre community in Westchester. This inspiring and vital group theatre continues to evolve productions and projects, some of which with further development may move to New York City venues. The artistic symmetry and free flowing energy between and among artists in Westchester and New York City move their currents back and forth. This company is open and flexible and inspired by its artists’ innovations. It is apparent they will not limit themselves.
Alan Lutwin, discussing upcoming events at WCT.
LABS, where great work continues to be read and presented and where guest artists conduct workshops, now follow a new tri-monthly schedule. On March 21st Sheila Speller conducted an acting seminar workshop and on April 11th, John Pielmeier, author of Agnes of God was the Guest Artist. Buddy Crutchfield, director of the Off-Broadway hit Freckleface Strawberry, was the Guest Artist at the May 23 Lab.
During May, two events enabled WCT to contribute its energy and engage its directing and acting talent. One was in celebration of the Village of Ossining’s two hundred year birthday. Actors (including the current mayor) directed by Alan Lutwin dramatically recreated the first Ossinging Willage Board Meeting that was held in 1813. The event, “The Village of Sing-Sing, How It All Began,” was produced in the Town of Ossining Justice Court. WCT actor members who were in the production were Sherman Alpert, Jon Barb, Marilyn Colazzo, Janice Kirkel, Joe Lima, Ward Riley, Jeff Virgo and Howard Weintraub. These individuals linked their gifts to Ossinging’s history and had a ball. Lutwin who researched the project discovered, among many other interesting facts that some of Ossinging’s early residents had slaves. All slavery was banned in New York State on July 4, 1827.
Playwright Rosary O’Neill
The second event was a full length reading premier of White Suits on Sunday, a play by New Orleans/New York City playwright Rosary O’Neill directed by WCT member (actress and director) Elaine Hartel.
Elaine Hartel, Director
With the help of WCT, O’Neill has been developing the play and was thrilled that actors were able to portray the characters, allowing her to understand what sections of the play resonated and what dialogue, if any, needed tweaking. After the reading, discussion followed. Initially, O’Neill thought to entitle the play, Exposition Boulevard, referring to the play’s setting in the elite section of New Orleans. Then she reconsidered (She was raised in New Orleans in a wealthy family.) because those living on the real “Exposition Boulevard” might be offended. O’Neill’s play, like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s work, The Great Gatsby, peels the onion on the culture of wealth, but in New Orleans. (The play has themes similar to a TV series O’Neill also wrote, Heirs. The series is currently being option shopped by Executive Producers Wendy Kram and David Black.) O’Neill’s writings (plays, the TV series) about New Orleans reveal the rages, complexities, machinations of families in this elite class with often humorous results. It is a familiar subject dear to O’Neill’s heart.
O’Neill and Lutwin after the reading listening to audience feedback.
The discussion after the reading which held praise for the playwright, the play, the director and actors also pinpointed that the title “Exposition Boulevard,” resonated with the action and themes. Considering the current productions about New Orleans on cable TV (Treme) the widest latitude about the cultural life of that amazing city should be explored and O’Neill’s work does that with humor, grace and depth. Hers is a rare look at New Orleans’ economic strata and a reminder that the gaps among rich and poor can only be melded if they are first examined.
Deacon Hoy, Sharon Rowe, Janice Kirkel, Evelyn Mertens, Enid Breis
Margie Ferris, Marilyn Collazo, Deacon Hoy, Sharon Rowe, Janice Kirkel
Cathy Jewell-Fischer, Margie Ferris, Marilyn Collazo
The WCT continued June 1st, with its dynamic Spring Fundraiser at the Steamer Firehouse with their theme “Trash n’ Vaudeville.” Members dressed for the fun event in offbeat attire and enjoyed the food and drink during and after entertainment. The fundraiser signals that the summer season is in full swing. The SUMMERFEST 2013 plays which were announced in May are currently being worked on by the directors and actors and will be presented on Friday, June 28th at 7:30 pm and Saturday, June 29th at 2:00 PM. Five selected plays that participated in the Lab process will be performed: You Were Awesome by Bob Zaslow, Hedge Fund by Csaba Teglas, Excess Baggage by Carol Mark, Facebook Friends by Marshall Fine and Wander Inn by Ginny Reynolds.
While other theater groups languish for lack of vision, the Westchester Collaborative Theatre continues to move forward innovating, growing, pulsating life. WCT is fed by the creativity, ingenuity and vitality of its members. All are sustained by an immense passion for theater and the enjoyment and community of creative endeavor. This is a group to watch, nurture and hold dear. You “ain’t seen nothing, yet!”
A Family for All Occasions. A Labyrinth Theater Company Production
A LABYrinth Theatre Company production at the Bank Street Theatre
I thought that A Family for All Occasions, at the Bank Street Theatre (It’s run is completed.) was well acted and directed, but missed the mark with regard to a number of areas in the play that were obviously drop dead contrived.
The actors, with the help of the director, Philip Seymour Hoffman, managed to overcome this as best they could, but the dissonance still crept through. Jeffrey DeMunn held the piece, the family and the ensemble together beautifully. He tempered his portrayal of Howard well: always striving for goodness yet receding from it at various junctures, especially at the climax when he takes out the baseball bat and begin a smash riot. DeMunn’s performance was sustained, real and alive. (His character was also the one most fleshed out by the playwright.)
Deirdre O’Connell’s attempt at portraying her character’s neurosis and anxiety was one note. In the second act, when she is finally retiring from her job (The action of massaging her feet works beautifully.) she is somewhat humanized. At that point she was more believable and relaxed, helped by that simple massaging action. Her acting choices were not spot on; she pushed as a termagant, hollowing out the character’s substance instead of making choices that revealed layers to May’s underlying angst (not just about the job) and unhappiness. The actress cannot be expected to perform miracles; this portrayal fell down in the writing and the direction also.
Deirdre O’Connell (May) Jeffrey DeMunn (Howard) Charlie Saxton (Sam)
Due to whatever, there was a problem with her characterization as there was in the relationships between and among the characters. I thought the relationship between Oz and Sue was too convenient; black man willing to do everything for this family. Oz is portrayed as Mr. Wonderful and Sue the convenient foil, a vapid, lost, presumptuous, willful blonde, demonstrating no redeemable inner characteristics (beyond attempting to find herself). The actress, Justine Lupe was remarkable and dealt with the stereotype as best she could; too bad the playwright didn’t give the character depth and substance. The character is so thinly drawn: how convenient she was orphaned by her mother who she might rather believe killed herself. How convenient she connects with no one, not even Oz and demonstrates utter selfishness. Where is her humanity, making us believe she is worthwhile? Sue is miserable before she meets Oz, but the misery is only relayed by her restlessness as a fluttering creature who never lands. Again How convenient is the playwright’s characterization as the contrived: I’m young and I can be rebellious and this baby is tying me down. (Humans have souls, spirits and complexity. This was not even etch-a-sketched in the play.)
This surface portrayal makes her a characterization device to set up the plot as was the characterization of Oz, as the hero. Both are needed to bring in the baby, create some conflict and move the play along. There is no rational explanation given as to why, selfish as Sue is, she does not get an abortion on her own. We do not see the development of Oz’s relationship with her beyond the sex scene which Sue uses to lure him. If she is perpetrating revenge on her own daughter as a sort of Orestia “sins of the fathers,” this is not apparent or reinforced with symbols. Sue is not fleshed out toward this or any end.
Jeffrey DeMunn
In fact with the exception of the father, the other characters are “types.” Just to exclaim, “Well, humans don’t have reasons why they behave as they do as an answer to the questions the play raises doesn’t cut it, especially when we see how full and deeply Howard is drawn. We know the same depth might have been added to the other characters; this is not beyond the playwright’s talents; the play doesn’t have to be lengthened to do this, either. The problem left the actors doing the best they could to fill in the gaps.
If the work is being revised and funded to go elsewhere, filling out the women characters (from their paper-thin renderings) is an imperative. We don’t need to see another caricature of a “dumb blonde slut” who abandons her baby and runs away; if she has characterized herself as this…how interesting…then this needs to be clarified through symbol, poignant dialogue, hopeless yearning. It wasn’t. What a shame. This is doubly unjust when the demonstrated home life shows no commensurate explanation for her actions except for a few convenient phrases about her past and at best we are told “she is finding herself.” Also, for the characterization of May, we don’t need to see another termagant upset with her job: is she schizophrenic? Well, then, OK. Child of alcoholics? OK. Repudiated by past loves? All right? Challenged in some way besides having no college education? OK. Something? Nothing.
A quiet moment before all hell breaks loose.
Is there a character who makes sense? The character of Sam is the perfect Geek as counterpoint and his begrudging relationship with his father comes through due to Howard’s mea culpa admission he was wrong as he hugs his son before Sam leaves for college. There is something beyond his disgruntled existence and curt, abrupt anger. But what? The Geek stereotype is current and trending (if his phobia of being touched is pushed for effect) so the playwright can get away with it. With Howard’s well drawn characterization and Sam’s stereotype Geek carrying that portrayal, these two fare OK in the play; there is some attempt at connection, only due to Howard reaching out. As for Sam, again a one note stereotype tottering on the edge of human feeling.
My normally perceptive sensibilities ran into confusion upon confusion the play never answered and bring the questions to the playwright’s door. Oz, as intelligent as he is selects Sue when there are so many phenomenal black/white/hispanic sexy women who are alluring and predatory as well. It is suggested Oz is naive with women (All the more reason for the question, why isn’t he snapped up by anyone else as he is engaging and adorable. Here come the cougars!) and is lured by her sexual gifts. Is this not the typical “black man attracted to the white, blonde woman?” obnoxious stereotype? If so it is subliminally racist. Either hone in on this with symbolism, revealing this is Oz’s problem, OR reveal that he is not a free black man who isn’t tied down by his own racial bondages and is there for another reason. The fact that Oz hangs around also because he never had the warm feelings of family? If that is the case, his actions at the end could have been made so poignant…she runs away, he stays because he has found love from Howard and May who accept him. (This is ironic and dubious, by the way.) We see no discussion or hint of any undercurrents he will stay. The end is disjointed at best, but again, that is supposed to be the charm of this free flowing mish mash. Unfortunately, life is much more dirty, specific, real, uncontrived and deep, soulful and complex, unless you tell me that all these people are on meds.
Overall, I think I would have swallowed the incongruities, if this play’s setting was a small, blue collar city in North Carolina, Ohio, Missouri, South Carolina or the Midwest in the 1990s. A Midsize Northeastern City, the present? I don’t think so. This setting was incongruous with the characters’ beings and sensibilities and behaviors. Additionally, the fact that technology was so absent from the play was another failing (Sue has no Android? or Oz? I know folks on the poverty level who sport Smart Phones. I TAUGHT THEM.) And the only one who we see using a cheap mobile is Howard…he also gets an iPod from Oz, not at the suggestion of HIS GEEK SON? I don’t care how much of an isolated recluse he is…it’s technology, computers, smart phones. OMG.)
The setting as “the present” an eastern city is abjectly myopic and discordant with reality. I know 19th century practice in the theater TODAY prevents the use of Social and Mobile to its UTTER STUPID DETRIMENT. (Did you see Roman Tragedies at BAM? They integrated the use of Mobile devices for the audience..brilliantly. We took pictures {OMG, YES…THE TAKING OF PICTURES DURING A PERFORMANCE WAS ALLOWED! We promoted that production with the immediacy of Tweets and FB and Instagram. The audience was employed as the marketing arm of the producers. FOLKS IT WAS FREE PUBLICITY!!!! DUH!} I am glad European theater, once again, is MORE BRILLIANT than restrictive, enslaving, feudalistic old media which must in greed and cupidity HAVE ITS PROFITS. How utterly stupid. Go check out the Oreo brand and see what they’re doing if you want to be profitable.} NYC theater is downright Byzantine and Philistine and the death knell is coming as a result.) But to eliminate mobile devices from the play and say this is the present? Well, it beggars all rationality.
IS ANYONE OUT THERE IN THE LIVE THEATRE LIVING IN THIS CENTURY? Or is there a rife schizophrenia in the theater community and no overlap between onstage works whose settings are supposed to be current and theater people’s own lives where they use Mobile and Social daily? Either change the setting or, change the setting or change the setting, Bob Glaudini. Then flesh out the characters and answer the incongruities you’ve raised beyond contrivance and convenience with specificity. For Oz… What is the unconscious glitch in his being? He knows “malefic”; has he not read the culture’s twistedness in Autobiography of Malcom X to understand his attraction to a clueless, blonde, white woman to forestall it? May? One note- tra, la, la? Sue- this is a very deep woman-where? Sam just isolated by his mother’s loss into geekiness and angry reticence? Again, too many questions and the playwright’s intent doesn’t even adequately hint at the deeper whys. We are left with demonizing Sue, happy Sam escaped…not sure what he escaped, as he’s taking everything with him, feeling sorry for Oz and hopeful for Howard and May’s coming years, especially since May’s chief cause for anxiety is over and she’ retiring. That is not even the beginning of irony for this “family for all occasions.”
I so wanted to really like this play because I appreciate the work of its Director, Philip Seymour Hoffman, the actors, the playwright Bob Glaudini and the usual daring of The LAByrinth Theater Company. I was let down. I hope the play will evolve. It has possibilities if the kinks are ironed out. If no one notices these issues, all the better for them, especially if they receive backing to go farther. Visionary playwrights know this to be so and they seek ways to develop and evolve their work. Will that happen for this play?
CAROLE DI TOSTI 