The show must go on

A performance of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying was cancelled after a stagehand died of a heart attack backstage.

I can appreciate the sentiment, but if I'd died on stage*, I'd have preferred to go out the way Tommy Cooper did: With the show going on while my feet were sticking out under the curtain.

*Come to think of it, I did–more times than I care to think about!

Fissure

A play about a brain tumour that involves tramping around in the Yorkshire Dales in the rain for two days while two women prance about singing and mugging–and all so the playwright can work through her "issues".

No wonder no one goes to the theatre these days.

Profit is not for artistes

Mr Rocco Landesman, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, suggests that the way to deal with the appalling state of theatre in the United States is to reduce supply by letting the less competitive houses die off.  The response?  Gems like this from playwright Mr Durango (!) Miller:

Why not just increase funding? Maybe the N.E.A. is outdated and should be replaced by another system for funding the arts in the United States. Or maybe the people who are running the N.E.A. should be replaced.

It's a wonder that Mr Miller hasn't been given the Nobel Prize for economics with thinking like that.  Nobody wants your product?   Can't get an audience for your play even if you went outside and collected them at gunpoint?  Then demand that the government increase your subsidies.  Great thinking at any time, but in the middle of a recession when the very existence of government art bureaucracies are coming under the gun (*Cough* Pull the trigger. *Cough*)?  Brilliant.  Right up there with starting a land war in Asia or going against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

I'm not surprised by any of this.  When I was involved in theatre I was staggered at how few people understood the first thing about business.  Money to them was a bourgeois convention that got in the way of their mission to enlighten the masses.  Charge enough on the tickets to cover costs?  Put enough of a mark up on the concessions to make a profit?  Put on a play that someone other than your other actor friends would come to see?  Get a licence to sell alcohol?  Don't be ridiculous. They thought they were all serious "artists" and that they would be subsidised by ravens fluttering in clutching £20 notes in their beaks.  If not that, then the government would step in and hand them other people's money to put on a play that the other people didn't want to see in the first place.  And when they did get a grant, they used it to cover basic operating costs rather than for expansion.  It's almost as efficient as setting fire to the cheque.

All of this, of course, in the service of self-indulgent agitprop productions that were just so much posturing, humourless, self-righteous preaching.  Or nasty, vicious ad hominem attacks on whatever political enemy they wanted to make fun of that week in the cause of "satire". Then they acted all surprised when the bills came due and they had to close their doors inside a year.  The irony of it was that the suburban theatres, whom the serious "artists" looked down upon as amateur houses, actually understood how a theatre works and often had productions where two thirds of the cast were professional actors because they could afford to pay them while the "artists" resumes began and ended in the one rundown little black box house. 

You can't tell me that Burbidge wasn't counting the box office during the interval.

Why don't you try acting?

"Man, I don't drop character 'till I done the DVD commentary."

From the Telegraph:

At some point in the past 30 or 40 years, our acting tradition turned against the integrity of the words themselves. Forgetting that they are almost as carefully written as notes in opera, it pressed them into the service of production ideas – shouting them, mumbling them, slurring them in search of a more ''natural’’ style and a new interpretation. There have been some gains – the importing of greater physical energy (Mugging and scenery chewing.  ed.), for example – but they have been outweighed by the losses. 

Translation, modern actors are a load of lazy, pretentious buggers who take easy shortcuts that involve everything except doing any actual acting.

Maybe that's because there's no mystery to acting.  It doesn't involve any absurd rituals or arcane exercises.  It is a craft that consists of, in the words of Noel Coward, "Just say the lines and don't bump into the furniture".  After that, it's down to talent and experience.

Dangerous theatre

Harry Stein at the The City Journal talks about David Mamet and the problems of conservative theatre.

I know just how he feels. I've been working in the theatre as an actor, writer, producer, dialect coach, dramaturge and whatever for more years than I care to think about and the one thing that never fails to amuse me is when someone talks about a "daring" play that "challenges" the prejudices of the audience. Since the play in question is invariably a far left diatribe performed in front of a far left audience that spends the entire evening nodding in smug agreement, the whole enterprise is about as "challenging" as bringing spare ribs to a barbecue. If they really wanted to "challenge" their audience they'd put on a play about, for example, a gay man discovering that he's been living a lie and he's really straight, but that might get the house torched.

Heck, I have an adaptation of Kipling's The Butterfly that Stamped that's been cooling in my files for the past three years because its moral that wives shouldn't torment their husbands means it can't get produced in Seattle.

Yup. Dangerous theatre.

Park Trek

Dear God, haven't we suffered enough?

Treading the Boards

Don't knock it. At least it got him into the RSC.

Probably isn't even in Equity.

New Tabu

Over at The Spectator, James MacMillan has an interesting take on the Left; especially as it impacts the arts:

In the Daily Telegraph last year Dominic Cavendish asked, ‘Why do so few of today’s plays challenge the left–liberal consensus? Is there a tacit complicity between many of today’s writers and the liberal establishment? Is the “liberal consensus” and the fear of appearing right-wing hobbling the urge to conduct tough, awkward debates?’ The response from Lisa Goldman, artistic director of the Soho theatre, was telling, and depressing in its simplistic caricature of what ‘right-wing’ means. She asked, ‘What would a right-wing play have to offer? Anti-democracy, misogyny, bigotry, nostalgia of all kinds? Let’s get back to a white Britain? That the slave trade had a civilising influence? That women should stay in the home?’ For her, and many like her, anything that is not left-wing is intrinsically and irredeemably evil. There seems no room in her intellectual and aesthetic view to observe a huge and diverse world of moderate and civilised thinkers who have rejected the extreme narrowness of the modern Left.

I know exactly what he means. For years I've been saying that if theatres really wanted to do something "dangerous" and "disturbing" they'd have to attack the cosy assumptions of the Left, but that's as likely to happen as the BBC commissioning a sympathetic biography of Margaret Thatcher.

One example that I have literally right next to me is a stage adaptation I did of Rudyard Kipling's "The Butterfly That Stamped"; a beautiful story filled with rich language, imagery and romance that brings me close to tears whenever I read it (the story, not my script. I'm not that much of an ego case). I do not, however, ever expect to see it produced in its current state, because one of the major points of the story is that wives do not have carte blanche to browbeat their husbands into a state of utter misery. I could write a play where I contend that American soldiers eat Iraqi babies for breakfast and not raise an eyebrow, but Kipling's call for simple civility would be far too "controversial".

Banged Up

It was Chekhov who said,

If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be registered with the police even if it's a pantomine "bang" gun.

Sic Sempter Theatre

The Reluctant Dragon has finished its run and it's been a good one. We've had some very good reviews from both the mainstream and weekly papers-- and even from The Stranger, who usually don't like any show unless it's sexually perverse and has an obscene title. In fact, we were selected as the pick of the week.

The public seemed to have liked it as well with over fifty people showing up in the park for one performance that took place in the pouring rain.

My wife and I would love to take the credit, though Kenneth Grahame is the one who wrote the original book and none of this would have happened without the director J. D. Lloyd who did sterling work with a tiny budget and a cast far smaller than what the script called for. And the cast has to be commended as well. Acting out of doors is never easy and everyone stepped up to the task-- especially Scott Morse as the Boy, Aaron Allshouse as St. George and last, but most emphatically not least, Josh Hartvigson as the Dragon. If anyone was born to play a fey lizard the size of four carthorses, it's Josh.

Thanks, everyone. And now, it's on to the next script.

Theatre Spot

A review of The Reluctant Dragon is up.

Shameless Plug

If you're in the Seattle area, then you should step away from the monitor and get over to Volunteer Park where my wife and I's latest play, The Reluctant Dragon is premiering at 5 PM. Outdoor production. Fun for all the family.

If you're not in Seattle, the play is running through August and there are plenty of flights, so book now and avoid the rush.

Happy Birthday, Larry

It's Lord Laurence Olivier's 100^th birthday. On his death back in 1989, this radio anouncement summed his career up neatly:

Laurence Olivier, the greatest actor in the world, died today.
Everyone else moves up one notch.

I actually met Lord Olivier (or Larry, as I used to call him). In my career I've drifted in and out of professional acting and back in the late '70s I was waiting outside the stage door of a London theatre for an audition when The Man Himself walked up to me and said, in that effortless delivery of his, "Excuse me" and brushed past inside.

As a young actor, I always took his words of kind encouragement and advice to heart.

Theatre News

In a welcome bit of news, Seattle's Theatre Schmeater has picked by my wife and I's adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's The Reluctant Dragon for it's summer park show next season.

So, if you're in the area next summer and you're looking for some family entertainment in the great outdoors, this is the play for you.

End of plug.