After reading Burning Vision I was reminded of this documentary that my high school science teacher had us watch when we were learning about energy sources. It’s called Dark Circle, from 1982 and it won the grand prize at Sundance that year. It’s main focus is nuclear energy and the corruption within the “nuclear business.” A lot of the footage and stories are incredibly devastating and disturbing. It had a really strong impact on me when I was 16 and today I found some clips on youtube, I’m not sure if the entire documentary is online or not but the links are easy enough to follow. The visuals from the documentary clips really helped me to deepen the play even further for myself.
So you click clip 1 down here an once you get to youtube you’ll see the links for clips 2, 3, 4 and so on.
I noticed that there was another post on this production, but this article drew my attention and I think it's an important one to read for a few reasons. First, this show looks really fun and informative. I too found it made me think of Fallujah, which is inspiring to know that work that is being done around us, by our colleagues, is touching points that broadway productions are touching.
I am also reading for an African American Literature class essays by the people of the Black Power movement. They dicuss defining art for themselves in order to create political change. Maulana Karenga says " the battle we are fighting now is the battle for the minds... and that if we lose this battle, we cannot win the violent one". There is an urgency in these writers' belief in arts power to change people that I saw a glimpse of in this article at the last line when Charles Isherwood says, "Violence is not after all the only human activity that can have far-reaching, unforeseen effects, shaping lives far into the future. Mr. Joseph’s richly conceived play reminds us that art can have a powerful afterlife too".
Here's an interesting article I came across on the NY Times about how to talk about plot in popular criticism. NYT theater critic Charles Isherwood talks about his discretion when describing the stories of plays in reviews -- how much plot can a critic give away to the reader without ruining the fulfillment of going to see the play for future audiences? It's a question I come up against a lot, both as a playwright discussing my own work with potential audiences and as a student of theater discussing plays that have taken me on a journey with other students who haven't gotten there yet.
How much summarized exposition is too much and when do we need to sacrifice suspense in order to critically discuss and evaluate plays?
So I know that in this course we've watched filmed versions of performances, but I think 3D ballet and opera may be pushing it a bit too far.
My biggest concern when it comes to these 3D filmed performances coming out is that I'm afraid the original intent of works will be lost. 3D is spreading like wildfire, it seems-- first movies, now opera and ballet (and Justin Bieber concerts). Will it take long for this movement to spread to plays and musicals? After that how long will it take for people to enjoy the 3D works better than the live action performances. Surely it will cost less to go to a screening of a 3D performance of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof than it would be to see it on Broadway. And many will be enthralled with the novelty of having the world of the play right in their faces, rather than sitting in nosebleed student rush seats.
I know film versions of plays (and opera and ballet) have existed for a long time. One reason for me, at least, to prefer live theater is that the film versions are so flat. Well, if that flatness is disappearing, should theater be worried?
A recent production of Samuel A. Taylor's Sabrina Fair at Ford's Theater (Washington) cast two African American actors in the leading roles of Sabrina and her father. Audrey Hepburn played Sabrina in it’s original 1953 production, and we can presume that Taylor probably didn’t anticipate a mixed race cast in his time. The plot line involves Sabrina, a chauffer’s daughter, becoming the object of the rich employer’s son. So where the original script explored the class theme we now bring in race, but without a word being added. This Washington Post article explores the production’s non-traditional casting and the feelings of Susan Heyward, the black actress cast as Sabrina. “It hurt so much to be in a world where something so elemental to your being was ignored.” What an interesting addition to the discussion of non-traditional or “color blind” casting.
The concept of "white default" casting is a subject in this class that has received a fair amount of attention. (Many white playwrights “default” their characters as white, unless noted as otherwise.) But if default casting is the proof that a white world view remains insidious in American theater, is color blind casting theater's Affirmative Action program? Color blind is of course an oxymoron; no one is blinded at all. The question becomes, “Does it work?” If Hamlet is black, and Claudius is Asian, and the production is being done in the summer in Ashland, then maybe I don’t care. Give me fabulous performances and I’ll go home happy.
But I think what Susan Heyward bemoans is real and potentially problematic. The language isn’t being rewritten to announce or acknowledge or celebrate what we all can see. If Sabrina Fair can be pulled off because the director and cast bring a sensibility that lets race and class co-exist as issues that add conflict, then even if not a word is spoken, I imagine this could be a success. But it’s not a lock.
Perhaps this is more problematic when audiences are asked to accept mixed race casting within families, where the script simply does not support the concept. (See? I could be contradicting myself on Hamlet.) I saw a Suffolk University production of Thornton Wilder's The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden last fall that featured a young African American actress in the role of the mother. That she was about 20 years old made being "mother" enough of a stretch, but that she was black and her family was white was something I could never quite get past. (I know, it's college theater so they get a big pass.) But in the portrayal of an immediate, nuclear family, I have to admit that for me it creates a difficult suspension of theatrical disbelief. Perhaps the real problem wasn't that the young woman was black, but that everyone else was white.
If it sounds like I'm railing against this choice, and non-traditional casting, I'm not. I just think we have to be carefully considerate of many issues, not the least of which is the playwright’s intention. One can imagine August Wilson rolling in his grave were Julia Roberts to be cast as Aunt Ester in a 2015 Broadway revival of Gem of the Ocean.
The other issue is the play that doesn’t get produced. Wilson was very aware of the deficit of stage time for the work of black playwrights, and saw black actors playing “white roles” as a poor substitute for having black playwrights’ works produced. I hope we can give this careful consideration. Non-traditional casting might appease the subscriber who believes she’s getting diversity, or some kind of heightened social experience. And it may truly bring a different and important, relevant and contemporary slant to an old play like Sabrina. But it also might be working to keep exciting new works by black playwrights sitting on the shelf.
This interview, though not about Women Dreamt Horses, helps me understand Daniel Veronese's work. I don't know how much time we'll have to talk about this in class, so it might be a helpful booster. (Beware non-spanish speakers, however. The translation is poor.) He believes the greater sufferer in life is the one who doesn't show it. The theatrical illusion of actors going through pain in their relationships on stage demonstrates this. The public, the audience watches silently. So the play in conversation (The Way It Unfolds...) actually sends the message that the public/the audience suffers the most, not one character over another.
Here is a review of "Bengal Tiger in the Baghdad Zoo" on Broadway starring Robin Williams. This article drew me in for several reasons, the first being working on Fallujah by Evan Sanderson has increased my awareness of and understanding of the need for plays about war. Also, the article compares this new play to the work of David Rabe during the Vietnam War era (which our Scene Design 1 class is currently studying) and discusses how this play is different from usual Broadway fare and why producing such alternative fare is (as you might guess) difficult.
What is it about puppets that make us feel the way they make us feel? Is it because they so genuinely harken us back to being a child? Like riding a bike makes us feel?
Yesterday morning this was a scoop, but then a letter came in the mail announcing it to the world. Walt McGough is a terrific young writer right here in Boston, hails from the mid-Atlantic, and spent time in Chicago writing and producing plays before coming to BPT for his MFA work last year. I had the opportunity to get to know him in Kate Snodgrass' playwriting class, and he is excellent. His play, The Farm, was read in May '10 at BPT's The Ground Floor festival of new work readings, and it was gripping. BPT will be producing the play as part of it's Fall '11 lineup, and I couldn't be happier for Walt. I guarantee you will be hearing his name and seeing his works in years to come.
Oh lordy. I hesitated posting this since the comments thread of the original review is currently in pile-on mode, but there's a good lesson to be learned on how not to behave if you're an emerging writer, trying to get traction. Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as bad publicity.
Here's one of my favorite useful comments, and one I think we all would do well to heed. Substitute "publishing industry" with "theatre," and I think you'll see my point:
This is definitely a master class on how to burn bridges in the publishing industry.
For any newer authors who may not be aware of this, many editors and agents will Google your name before they contract you to see what sort of person you are. My agent often asks me about new authors who submit to her before taking them on. She won't work with a 'difficult' author, nor will many of her fellow agents. They have an email loop, and they tell each other everything. One of my editors admitted that a number of them do the same. I know of several reviewers who eventually became editors, so the person you slam today could be the editor who holds your future in their hands tomorrow. This sort of behavior really can be career suicide.
We all get bad reviews. Grow a thick skin or get out of this business. And no matter what happens, always be calm and polite. Always. [comment by Eden Bradley]
Time for some more sad news. Lanford Wilson passed away last week. The NY Times wrote up a really nice feature on him that includes a slideshow of various productions of his plays. But the real gem is the feature Ben Brantley wrote about him. An interesting and affectionate assessment of Wilson's work. Rest in peace, Mr. Wilson.
"In the American theater, one quest is eternal: the pursuit of the hot young playwright of the moment, the sort with a freshly minted MFA from Yale or Brown or NYU, living in Brooklyn or on the Lower East Side."
But next season, the Huntington will produce two local playwrights: Huntington Playwriting Fellow Rosanna Yamagiwa, a 71-year-old who graduated Radcliffe 50 years ago and began writing plays 30 years ago, and West Medford playwright Kirsten Greenidge. The Boston theater community is thriving, and you can actually feel a movement taking place that, like the Boston comedy circuit that exploded starting in the early '80s, has its own style and sensibility.
John Kander and Fred Ebb wrote, among other great musicals, Chicago and Caberet. They wrote the musical in which Liza Minelli made her Broadway debut (and it wasn't Caberet...), and remained involved with her career for years. They wrote the song New York, New York, made famous by an Italian kid from Hoboken, and they wrote much, much more. Then Fred Ebb had to go and die, a fairly brazen final act, indeed.
NYT: Here's to new beginnings. John Kander has been working with the young New York fiction writer and playwright, Greg Pierce (whose website is really fun to peruse, by the way) in the development of three one acts that involve four actors and three instrumentalists each. The actors portray different characters in each play, stories that are linked by the theme of characters getting what they think they want. The NYT article about the collaboration is succinct enough, but I'm struck by the subtext of being well past retirement age, losing your lifetime writing partner, and still not knowing defeat. Imagine being 84 and going through the process of "what's next?" It would be so easy to give up...here's to old souls.
And they’re positive. Year Zero is an Asian discovery play, with some interesting twists about the differences between identifying with different Asian countries.
