Bang the Drums and Sound the Horns!

Joyous time is just upon us! The time of the local productions I have been waiting all "season" to see - Picnic by William Inge at Live Theatre Workshop, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams at Arizona Theatre Company, The Trip to Bountiful by Horton Foote at Waypointe Theatre and Othello by William Shakespeare at Rogue Theatre. I can't wait!

[And oh yea, I just want to mention, Steve Anderson...best among the best (in my opinion) is directing Flaming Guns of the Purple Sage...at Beowulf Alley Theatre. I'm just throwing that in there...flaming guns of the purple sage...Steve Anderson...great director...Beowulf...flaming guns...]

Anyway, just to kick of those first plays I mentioned, here is a excerpt from a preview article in the Star regarding Glass Menagerie.

There's nothing like getting some direction from the dead.
"Being a memory play, 'The Glass Menagerie' can be presented with unusual freedom of convention," Tennessee Williams, who died in 1983, wrote in his introduction to the play.
The words were like a great ringing of the Liberty Bell for Juliette Carrillo, director of the Arizona Theatre Company production opening in previews Saturday.
"That was really freeing," she said in a recent phone conversation before a rehearsal. "I tend to make choices that are not realistic."

O.K., my question, reaction to that is "what does that mean?" Read the entire article and go see the play...but in the meantime, here is another excerpt

"What I'm doing in the conceptual approach to this play is I'm investigating how we lose ourselves in the world of fantasy as a means of escape," Carrillo said.
"I'm literally dissecting that process, turning it upside down and looking at it. I don't think I'm judging it; I'm just examining it in a new way."

My thoughts: Don't we all know that Americans lose themselves daily, almost all day long in some sort of vicarious experience or fantasy or virtual reality and the acting out of personas? Do we need to examine that process in detail? Or do we need, as Tennessee intended, for us to see the absolute truth and reality of our daily situations? Don't we need to have those fantasies obliterated? and reality revealed? As happens in the play?

And what of that notion Tennessee mentions about the play being presented with unusual freedom of convention? That does not mean an escape or change from realism or reality, into the so-called "theatrical" or unreal, but rather it means throw off the disguises, those things, those conventions that hide reality, the false scenery, etc, and get to the literal, the literal, thoughts, feelings and actions of the characters. The simple but oh so difficult, "o.k., this is who and what I am and who and what you are - now let's deal with it."

This could be a case of the director mimicking our lives of hiding and playing in fantasy, avoiding what's actually there - trying to outsmart and over think, over conceptualize the play. It remains to be seen what reaches the stage.

Whatever the answers are, here's looking forward to the production!

Meyerhold and Brecht

There is a great book by Katherine Bliss Eaton called The Theatre of Meyerhold and Brecht. It was published in the mid-eighties and details the immediate and practical connections between the work and ideas of these two great directors. Essentially it tells of the massive influence Meyerhold's work had on Brecht's own. It's no stretch or great secret to say Brecht was a "borrower." But many Brechtenites are completely ignorant of the fundamental theory and obvious connection between him and Meyerhold. Eaton's Book is one of several wonderful sources to offer insight into this.

I bring this up as prelude still to Vakhtangov and the First Studio. We have to think what came just before the First Studio and what came after. We have to realize how trends and forces of theatre prior led to the formation of the First Studio and how those trends and forces were released back into the world from the First Studio. The First Studio was that turning, that intensifying moment in time for theatre - where everything changed.

Meyerhold crosses the threshold of before and after. Brecht was an after, under Meyerhold's concepts. Before the First Studio, Stanislavsky set up an experimental studio theatre with young actors under the leadership and teaching of Meyerhold. In that studio you find the first notions of the "Making Strange" ideas later adopted by Brecht.

Grotowski too was an after, and under the influence of Vakhtangov's protege, Yuri Zavadsky, with whom he studied with in Moscow for a year. Grotowski later of course formed his Polish Laboratory Theatre (as it eventually came to be called).

These are tid-bits of information...but all roads here hopefully lead back to an eventual coherent story that tells of these connections, these ideas instigated by Stanislavsky and contained nowadays in modern theatre practice.

Strange Days Indeed

Two things! One is something which I rarely do, and one is something I haven't done in I-don't-know-when. First one is I went running, jogging. I'm no raramura, but I put in a little effort - part of an overall attempt at regaining some speed and power and agility (as if I had a lot of that before) in my movements. The second thing was I made an appointment to get my haircut. An appointment! I know some people do that all the time - but to me getting a haircut entails walking into the barbershop, waiting your turn, talking sports or politics, looking through magazines, etc. And then when its your turn, the barber cuts your hair. But I made a mistake - I went to a different place (for various reasons. none great). When I walked in the "barber" said "Hi, you have an appointment right?" I was like "Do I need one?" He said yea, so I said o.k. and the next thing I know I had to come back in two hours...Well, I did and finally got my hair cut. It wasn't the haven of male might I'm used to for the occassion. And it was fine in the long run, but being the only one present other than the "barber" and having him wash your hair as part of the process on a slow Sunday afternoon...

Good Looks

I love the publicity photo for Frankie and Johnnie! Winding Road's. Maybe Terry and Amy look a little too subtly comfortable as the characters in it...but still, I love it. It's like the play, simple, straightforward, focus on the humanity, the relationship. No mugging. All good.

Rogue Theatre always has unusually amazing production photos too. If any theatre can stage what we commonly call "a spectacle" in a relatively small theatre space, its Rogue. Their plays just look and seem big and glamorous, and that comes through in the photos. Part of that comes from that fact that they put people on stage. By that I mean they have good old-fashioned (in the best sense of that term) plays with lots of cast members! OK...there is the one show with one, two, maybe three people in it, per their season. But usually, things are spectaclish there.
In fact, as far as I know, every Rogue production has 4o musicians, 30-40 actors, 97 characters, 2-3 stage managers, 17 ushers, and 4 kinds of directors. And you see them all!

And here is a plea for Bill Killian to dust off his Chekhov one-act, On The Dangers of Tobacco, and get to performing. I saw a very short section of this in Patrick's seminar earlier this week and cracked up! It is very, very funny...and Bill was lively and improvisational with it within the circumstances of setting - and darned if he wasn't dapper as could be in that get-up he was wearing. Do it Bill!

Fresh Air, Blue Skies.

What happens when you take a twenty-minute leisurely walk to work on a morning when the weather is almost perfect? Well, in my case the following - saw and heard a mockingbird singing away, then a fat emerald green hummingbird in a Palo Verde tree, next I came across Technicians for Sustainability (http://tfssolar.com/) delivering and getting ready to install solar panels, which they were transporting by an awesome bike and trailer combo, electric power assisted, spoke to them briefly about their work, and finally standing in the middle of road, on the median, waiting to cross, Patrick drives up to make a turn and tells me to get a job, to which I reply "I'm begging for change from the medians these days, cough some up!"

Sleeping Frogs Farm

Students working along side a chicken coop at Sleeping Frog - an organic farm - labor intensive.

The Best Stew of All Time - introduction part 2

There was all this great work and these great people that came together in the time and space and years just before the forming of First Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre. All that collective knowledge, all those collective ideas and all that collective experience was put into form and practice in the First Studio - compressed and intensified so to speak. And then following, from out of the First Studio came this explosion practically of more ideas, more influence and more work. The First Studio is like the hinge, the turning point ...no, sorry that metaphor is wrong...more like the stew pot where the best ingredients arrived and somehow this stew pot magically fed everyone and then led to a whole new series of recipes, nourishing and sustaining us even to this very day...theatrically speaking that is. OK, that's a little hokey, but that's how it worked. That's what it was. It's Los Alamos. It's Darwin's trip to the Galapagos. It's the New Deal. It's the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It's the Jets winning the Super Bowl even! What came before it, leading to it, what it was in the moment, and what has come to be since as a result...

The First Studio is the single most important gathering of people and practice in modern western theatre culture. And Vakhtangov is the single most important person from within that particular gathering.

Prior to, leading up the First Studio, you have Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko forming the Moscow Art Theatre and achieving success with the plays of Chekhov, Gorky and others. You have Meyerhold first as an actor in the Art Theatre, then as a director/teacher in Stanislavsky's studio theatre (Not in the First Studio - a different studio theatre. Bear with the names, they are kind of like how I call animals...white dog, little cat, skinny cat, black dog, one fish, two fish, etc.) You have Stanislavsky working with Gordon Craig, Isadora Duncan and other international artists. You have Sulerzhitsky. You have Tolstoy hanging around. Artists, Poets, Designers, Musicians. You have revolution in the air. And that is but the tip of the ice-berg! There is a gathering of force if you will - work, ideas, influences, including the notion that theatre can literally and immediately combine them all, especially via the work of the actor.

So comes Stanislavsky and puts together a group of young theatre artists under the leadership of Sulerzhitsky, and this group comes to be known later as the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre. I will leave aside their actual work and practice for now, except to say that now you have the idea of a "laboratory theatre." Now you have actor preparation that includes work in the realm of pre-expressive as well as the expressive. You have theatre dedicated to a specific idea. You have science and psychology and progressive ideas. You have nature and yoga and ancient ideas. You have a fusion of writer, actor, director and designers. You have ethics and spirituality. You have the question and idea of individual within a collective and vice versa. You have the question and challenge of form and content. None of these things were unique or entirely new in and of themselves. But being put completely and consciously together in totality - this was absolutely new. And it changed western theatre.

After the First Studio you have the work and ideas of Michael Chekhov, Vakhtangov's, and Stanislavsky's continuing work. You have numerous theatres under the influence of their example, including The Habima. You get Meyerhold full blown. You get Grotowski and his ideas. You get Boleslavsky and Ouspenskaya. You get the Group Theatre and in turn Lee Strasberg, Harold Clurman, Stella Adler, Bobby Lewis, Clifford Odets, Elia Kazan, and others. You get Popov, Zavadsky, Knebel, and Brecht. And again this is but the tip of the ice-berg.

The sphere of knowledge and influence leading into the forming of the First Studio and the sphere of knowledge and influence coming out of the First Studio is completely unmatched on any level in the history of theatre. But how many people actually know of it, of its details, of the people who were the First Studio? How many people know of the details of Vakhtangov's work?

Vahktangov - First Studio - a very brief introduction

About 99 years ago, Yevgeny Vakhtangov appeared on the scene at the Moscow Art Theatre. He was a young actor and soon-to-be director, fresh from the Adashev Drama School. At this time, Stanislavsky was in the process of organizing yet another group of young theatre artists - this particular one, of which Vakhtangov was chosen to be part of, came to be known as The First Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre. Much has been written and talked about regarding this group, though not nearly enough. And in a blog post like this, its difficult to decide where to begin in examining Vakhtangov and/or The First Studio. The lead-up to it is as rich in detail and excitement and historical importance as any moment of western theatrical history, as is the huge, huge aftermath. Given the set-up and the following influence, its easy to say the First Studio was the single most important theatrical group ever in western theatre practice. And in the amazing make-up of people who were part of it, Vakhtangov was/is, in the end, the single most important member and contributor to its work and influence - in those immediate moments and beyond.

Vakhtangov was born in February of 1883 and died in May of 1922. He worked with and is the in-practice combination and common link uniting Stanislavsky, Sulerzhitsky, Michael Chekhov, Meyerhold and others. To understand Vakhtangov is to understand, in fundamental practice and potential, the history and work of the Stanislavsky System and many of the subsequent great directors and teachers of theatre including Lee Strasberg. What came before, and what came after Vakhtangov is all part and parcel of, and contained in the body of work he set forth as an actor and director during his short life. His humble and dedicated endeavors (working in small theatres with as-of-yet unheard of folks and bare-bones conditions) provide an example of love and a story of promise and hope that is as good as they get.

That's my brief, brief introduction. Its a long tale, but I can give you some detail and perspective over time, over more posts, and of course there are others out there who can contribute mightily to the story. Revisiting Vakhtangov is always a must!

Making Adobe Bricks

Last week I took a ride to the Prescott College Tucson Center's "Greenlots." We have two. I was accompanying a group of resident students down from Prescott and our local Ironwood Tree Experience leaders/organizers. The Greenlots are intended to be working, ever-changing areas bringing together adults, children, nature, and urban life - projects of The Center for Children and Nature at Prescott College. On the agenda for that day at one of the lots was making adobe bricks!

A Million and One Things

Yes, there are a million and one things (at least) that I haven't yet gotten around to writing about. Here's my working list of generalities up to about # Nine or so (and I'm open to suggestions).

1. More Stanislavsky.
2. Much more on the local productions, and local artists.
3. Brecht.
4. Meyerhold.
5. Vakhtangov, Vakhtangov, Vakhtangov.
6. Lee Strasberg.
7. Play Analysis.
8. Rehearsals.
9. Anecdotes.

Reading a Play Script vs Going to the Theatre

The question came up a couple of weeks ago, courtesy of Patrick by way of quote from Maya Angelou I believe. The quote was to the effect that it is often, usually, better to read a play than to see a production of a play. The idea was that one could get more out of a script (personal value) by reading alone than one could get sitting in a theatre experiencing a production of that very same script.

Rather than get into an either/or debate about the qualities of each, I want to articulate the concrete, fundamental differences between the two (besides the obvious).

First is logic. Reading a script (a play) allows for one single flow of logic - the words as written on the page. No matter if you move from a chair to the bed to the patio to field nearby under the shade tree while you read, this logic will be single and the same. A theatrical production/spectacle, allows for simultaneous, parallel and multiple streams of logic. (O.K. most U.S. directors and presenters, including our local artists, rarely present more than one stream of logic/action unless by accident - but the possibility is there, and even in the normal gussied up stage readings advertised as full productions there is some simultaneous logic and action).

Second is that in reading a script you are in the art and realm of the writer, the word(s). Sitting in the theatre you are in the art and the realm of the actor, action/behavior. The page belongs to the writer. The stage belongs to the actor.

These two fundamental differences, means that there are also fundamentally different skills required for the "audience" of each. The reader of the script is required to read and comprehend. The spectator is required to take in a production via the senses - sight, sound, taste, touch and smell. Reading is a mental, intellectual challenge. Being a spectator, while including mental intellectual challenge, is a visceral experience.

Hell Freezes Over!

I'm about to sing the praises of Arizona Theatre Company. Shocking but true. For ten years or so, such a notion has been strange to impossible for me. I might have said previously, "If you like technical wizardry and gadgetry in theatre, sets that are nice if not truly interesting and meaningful, silliness and buffoonery, dark skinned people singing-dancing-and smiling, over-priced tickets, then go see shows at Arizona Theatre Company." But I wouldn't have actually praised them. Times change. I change. And I'm happy to say that while they may not have changed they are at least doing something that makes sense to me. They are doing a series of free public events around the production of The Glass Menagerie - and I was the first one to sign up for the Actor's Lab, Text Analysis through Scene Study Workshop! That's right, numero uno!

(Check out the theatre announcement list or perhaps their website for the full listing of events, and then get yourself involved too!) .



I love the play, The Glass Menagerie. It might be a hard case convincing a few knuckleheads, as to the relevance and importance of this play today, but then again lots of great work goes unnoticed and unappreciated...in favor of ...uh...other plays. Anyway, I am looking forward to the workshop, to learning a little more about the play perhaps, and meeting the facilitator and the other attendees - as well as seeing the production itself.