Offscript - What I did over spring break
Two weeks talking theater with the NEA
“Is there much experimental theater in Alabama?” asked the fellow from Michigan. “In Alabama, all theater is experimental,” quipped the fellow from Alabama.
That was just one of the things I learned at the National Endowment of the Arts Journalism Institute in Theater and Musical Theatre. The University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication hosted 25 theater critics and editors from around the country. During the 11-day conference and workshop I saw six plays (counting Edward Albee’s The Goat twice), toured theaters and concert halls, wrote a five-minute play in a half-hour, participated in writing and acting exercises, rehearsed and performed a monologue, and talked to dozens of speakers from theater and journalism. And I picked up a thing or two:
Theater economics are as bad as you think. Ben Cameron, executive director for the national nonprofit organization Theatre Communications Group, laid out some depressing - if not surprising - statistics. Corporate support for theater fell 48 percent in a five-year period; foundation support for individual theaters is falling; local donations to the arts, adjusted for inflation, has dropped 17.5 percent; and single ticket sales are down. The repeal of the estate tax could mean a $10 billion annual loss to the charitable sector, including the performing arts. One of the few silver linings is an increase in individual donations, but it can’t make up for the rest. Incidentally, the Woodruff Arts Center will host the Theatre Communications Group’s annual conference in June 2006.
Broadway is stagnating. Once the incubator for new plays and musicals, Broadway now faces such high production costs that it emphasizes the safest possible musicals and revivals of familiar classics, usually anchored by celebrities. This season the Great White Way debuted only five new dramas and an uninspiring batch of musicals.Broadway producer Jack Viertel offered an optimistic perspective about the future of the musical, at least. Viertel suggested that musicals have a cyclical history: The early 20th century was dominated by Gilbert and Sullivan-influenced operetta, followed by a period of raucous comedy, and then a Golden Age of the American musical inaugurated by Oklahoma! in 1943. Viertel suggested that if Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sung-through musicals are analogous to operettas, and the likes of The Producers hark back to raucous comedy, then we might see the next Oklahoma! within the decade. Just don’t expect it to debut on Broadway.
Contemporary American playwrights hold their own. Influential theater writer Robert Brustein, New Republic magazine drama critic and founding director of the American Repertory Theatre, asserted that contemporary American playwriting has “a level of intelligence and ambition equal to Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller.” Brustein praised numerous writers, including Tony Kushner, Sam Shepard, Stephen Adly Guirgis and Suzan Lori-Parks, all of whom Atlanta theaters have produced within the past year (counting Onstage Atlanta’s upcoming production of Angels in America).
Los Angeles is like Atlanta, only more so. Los Angeles justifiably claims that it has “the largest acting pool in the history of the world,” even though its theater scene stays in the shadow of its film and TV industry. Though it boasts a far greater quantity of theater than Atlanta, I didn’t exactly see greater quality. You could fit a half-dozen Actor’s Express playhouses within the Mark Taper Forum, yet Taper’s The Goat, though certainly an estimable production, lacked the intimacy and oomph of Express’ 2004 version of the play.
Touchy-feely acting exercises show results. We began most days with acting warm-up exercises, including rolling on the floor and making funny noises, like a combination of Gymboree and Lamaze class. I can’t truthfully claim I ever felt energy shoot from my big toe to my forehead, but the classes proved remarkably effective at both relaxing and motivating us. My performances made me appreciate the actor’s craft from the other side, and confirmed that I’m not likely to quit my day job anytime soon.
The best celebrity sightings take you by surprise. Sure, it was cool to sit in the front row of Actors’ Gang Ensemble Theatre and be only a few yards from artistic director Tim Robbins as he introduced its production of Tartuffe - a mere night before he presented the Best Supporting Actress Oscar to Cate Blanchett. But that couldn’t compare to the excitement of seeing scenes from Arthur Miller’s The Price at A Noise Within in Glendale and discovering that one of the actors was Len Lesser - aka Uncle Leo from “Seinfeld.” I seldom if ever think about sitcom character actors, yet I was practically star-struck.
Critics are theater people, too. We NEA fellows frequently spoke to actors and theater people who’d been burned by bad reviews. Yet in every discussion, an early period of bad vibes dissipated when we assured them that, no matter where we write, we care about theater, too - and certainly don’t review plays for the money. Perhaps the main lesson I took from my time in Los Angeles is that we’re all in this together.