a poor player

Dunkirk, NY – It’s been close to an ideal weekend. Friday’s day at work was not too stressful, just a few things here and there, mostly about filling paperwork. Friday night I was on the ball field umpiring for the local men’s hardball league, on a beautiful evening with plenty of sunshine and temperatures in the low 70s. Saturday I had a meeting to recruit a visual arts summer camp, which was not much more than a tour of the campus, pleasant talk and a free lunch. Then I went out to my property where some people were camping out for the weekend, joining them in a card game call Phase 10, a very long game which takes its origins from 500 rummy. The cool evening was spent reading a few chapters in my latest book Becoming Shakespeare. This Sunday morning I was again on the ball field umpiring a terrific game (which unfortunately ended in a too-obvious balk in the bottom of the 7th with one out, runners on first and third, and the score tied 1-1), then mowed the lawn. While I am writing this, the Yankees are slaughtering the Devil Rays 14-3 (update: final score 21-4). My wireless reaches outside, so I’m sitting in the back yard on another beautiful 76-degree day, sipping on a lemonade and writing this post.

It’s weekends like these that make me wonder why I ever do theatre, why I ever want to give up weekends like this to sit inside (or sweat outside) a theatre for three shows over two days and come away feeling exhausted enough that I can’t do much of anything else. It’s my first totally free weekend since finishing the rehearsal/run of All’s Well, which began May 22. My weekend activities have all been very common, very ordinary things, but throughout my career I haven’t indulged in them very often, choosing instead to dedicate summers and weekends doing what I thought might be “meaningful theatre.” In fact, as I was leaving this morning to get to the ball field, my neighbor across the street, whom I know by name but only in a passing fashion, called out to me, “Don’t you ever stay home?” I had to pause a minute while laughing, because in the first place he was right, and in the second place, I had never known he noticed.

If I had to reveal the brutal truth about why I have continued to theatre up to this point, I would have to say it’s because I like the people and I like the socializing. I think I stopped liking the actual “doing” of the theatre around three years ago (although I really enjoyed my ASC tour, when I had nothing at all to do BUT theatre). All the previous talk about theatre as a tribal organization left out, I think, the social aspects of being tribal. We engage in certain activities because we like the kinds of people who engage in that particular activity. And once we realize we like the people, we then begin to think and behave in ways in which we think these people will approve. I have been loathe to say “no” when offered parts over the last three or four years mostly due to the fact that I wanted to see all my theatre friends again, and because as an actor you’re just not trained to say “no.” Within my own circle during the past 8 weeks I’ve never really uttered the words “I’m semi-retiring,” because I don’t want to have to spend any time defending my decision and/or disappointing my colleagues. it’s better, I think, just to sort of fade away.

Because I’ve spent the weekend with non-theatre folk, I kept hearing in my head over the weekend one of the quotes from Dana Gioia – most American artists, intellectuals, and academics have lost their ability to converse with the rest of society. We have become wonderfully expert in talking to one another, but we have become almost invisible and inaudible in the general culture. Now, the funny thing is, I seem lately to prefer the company of non-theatre folk, but at the same time I find myself trying to be vague about what it is that I do. This is as true for my academic life as it is for my artistic life. Unless I am asked directly what it is I do or teach, I seldom directly mention I’m an actor. As an example, I will never directly refer to myself as a “college professor,” but as a teacher. If I’m asked where I teach, I will say “at the college.” If I’m asked what I teach, I will say, “I direct plays and stuff.” I do all this because my neighbors and those I come in contact with through local baseball connections understand all this. They understand “teaching.” They understand “directing plays” because their kids or their friends’ kids might be in the school play. They do not understand “professor of acting.” That, to them, is a mystery, and why anyone around these parts would want to make a living as a “professor of acting” in this area of the state is beyond them. Actors are people they read about in the local supermarket rags.

I do all this because I know there’s a huge gap between their understanding of theatre and mine, and I do not wish to seem as if somehow I am unlike them. On occasions where I go all the way and mention I work as an actor in Buffalo theatres, I get that puzzled look, as if somehow that’s not possible. You’re an actor? There are theatres in Buffalo? You do, like, musicals? Oh, yeah, I’ve heard of that Shakespeare in Delaware Park, but I’ve never been there (we really do have people in the Dunkirk/Fredonia area who have never been to Buffalo, 50 miles away).

I don’t like doing this, because I don’t like to admit that this gap exists. Also, I really do not think I am much different at all from these people – I have a wife and kids, I have a house and mortgage, I have a job, and I have many of the same worries they have. Yet I have to admit there are also things about me which are different, and hence the existence of the gap – I can’t ever be fired short of committing a felony, I make a lot of money, in many cases twice what my neighbors are making (during my time as interim dean I was probably one of the highest-paid people in Dunkirk, as the vast majority of my other academic colleagues live in Fredonia), and even though I have been living here for 19 years, I’m still an “outsider” born in New York City.

Tying all of these things together leads me to ask a few questions:

• Do theatre artists, by seeking (unconsciously or otherwise) the approval of other friends who are fellow theatre artists/writers/critics, ignore the voices and stories of their non-theatre citizens and neighbors because they are too busy trying to please members of their own community?
• Is grass-roots theatre possible if the culture is so dry that the grass is turning brown and the roots are withering?
• What and where are the possibilities for making the connections between artists and citizens? How do we put artists back in touch with the ordinary, the everyday, the lives that most people live (and which, to a certain extent, artists also live)? Do we even want to?

Way, way back in the day, actors used to tour the provinces to hone their craft before coming to the big city to expand their careers. Moliere got much of his material by a careful observation of ordinary lives during his travels through the French countryside. Shakespeare had an uncanny grasp of the average citizen, which he no doubt picked up as a young man raised in Stratford. Hellman, Williams, Miller, Odetts and others possessed a solid knowledge of middle-class America. Today, however, it seems artists don’t really want to spend any time in the “provinces” understanding the life of the citizenry. Where you came from is a place to escape: it’s directly on to NYC for the cutting-edge indie scene or Broadway; on to LA for film and television; on to Chicago for comedy and improv; always some scene which will put the artist that much further out of touch with the majority of working stiffs.

It may very well be that the common touch in art and theatre will go the way of horse-and-buggy, and that’s the nature of evolution and progress in the arts as it is in every other aspect of life. You know it’s time to step back when that new-fangled roadster is just too small to get into and too rough a ride. For a long time I’ve always felt that I would have been more comfortable in the theatre world of the 30s-70s, and I just missed it by the accident of birth. So, time to find a ball field somewhere, call balls and strikes, go home and sip a lemonade, and plod about in your slippers. And that’s OK too. -twl

Update – The day ended with a grilled salmon and fresh sweet corn dinner, followed by some kayaking on Cassadaga Lake, and a cigar up on the cabin. Could be worse.