a poor player

Dunkirk, NY – Roger Angell, the great baseball writer, has said that he has never heard Derek Jeter utter an interesting word. Jeter, who recently passed Lou Gehrig as the all-time hits leader for the NY Yankees, has passed his 15 years in major league baseball with something that we see less and less today – class. It’s not that Jeter knows all the right things to say; it’s that he also believes in what he says. He is circumspect, careful with his choice of words, leads by example, keeps a low profile off the field, is consistent in his routines and his approach to the game, and plays the game honestly from top to bottom. That, I think, is what defines class. He may never have an interesting thing to say, but that makes him an interesting man to study and emulate.

I think that’s what is missing these days in much of what I read and see around the theatre and entertainment world today.  Fewer and fewer people seem to want to be people who cultivate a sense of class about them. Kanye West’s recent outburst is only the most egregious and visible example of the lack of class around us today. It pervades much of our society in ways subtle and obvious.

“Class”, of course, is hard to define. One can be said to have “class” if one has the appropriate materialistic trappings; the right clothes, the right car, the right partner, the right friends and colleagues. Other people have “class” if they conduct themselves well in public, are polite and respectful, complimentary of others, assertive but not aggressive, accomplish tasks on time, make an ideal work partner/team member, keep their word, and back up what they say with deeds.

At times I try to teach my students the value of class, but often it seems a long uphill battle. They move about their day in an endless stream of endless youth. It seems that college is not the place where people learn class. You can provide them the best role models possible, but they do not seem to realize that behavior is there for modeling. Even when you present them with people like the late Karl Malden, a man who had more class than he knew what to do with, they seem to react with a far-away look, somehow not comprehending that how he went about his business is perhaps how they should go about theirs.

One of the great things about Jeter breaking Gehrig’s record is that one classy man broke another classy man’s record. It was a nice reprieve from this and this.  -twl

(UPDATE – How could I have forgotten to give a shout-out to Congressman Classy?)

Dunkirk NY – There have been a slew of articles this past weekend on the state of higher ed. One would expect that during the traditional start of the school year. But this year seems different, as a lot more of these articles are starting to peel away the secrecy surrounding many of higher education’s dirty little secrets. I’ve chosen a few excerpts for your consideration.

This first is from the NY Times, an article entitled Why College Costs Rise, Even in a Recession. The article details why it’s so hard to contain college costs. Three reasons predominate: you can’t fire professors, you can’t cut departments, and professors teach less while doing more research. It contains insights from Mr. Lawrence Weiss, President of Lafayette College in PA. A small quote:

About all Mr. Weiss will say about this is that he agrees that Lafayette needs to do a better job of discriminating between the things it can and cannot do well. He is too good on the politics to single out any department. But there is little doubt that he and administrators like him will need to give up on some foreign languages, minor sciences or parts of the arts pretty soon.

Note the comment about reducing the arts. I’ve said before that the arts make a tempting target for college administrators as the economy worsens. It still could happen. Continue reading ‘Higher Ed in the News’ »

Dunkirk, NY - Want to know what a city is capable of doing when it has no LORT theatre, a generous local, dedicated talent pool, and the will to survive? Read the following from this morning’s Buffalo News:

On With The Shows: Curtain Up! finds Buffalo theatre scene flourshing

-twl

Dunkirk NY – There is a perfection hanging over this early morning. There is no breeze to speak of, the moon is full, the air is pleasantly cool. It is quiet outside my window, at least for the moment. It’s a night made for sounding out the soul.

I am beginning that part of my career where I will come to realize what it will mean to grow old in the theatre. As the school year begins and the students start learning work, memorizing scenes, monologues and parts – a routine I’ve gone through for the better part of 35 years now -  I’ve not been able to shake from my consciousness a vast weariness. A class in Shakespearean acting turns into a fiasco when students cannot even come in with one week’s warning and have 16 lines of Shakespeare fully memorized. A lecture in Introduction to the Performing Arts sounds hollow and a tad defensive. Young bloggers write of playwrights turning 40 and perhaps being washed up at that age rather than being at the height of their experience and ability (“we need something fresh, something new”). The same sorts of turf wars begin to rear their heads as planning for the new semester and the 2010-11 season begin. And the familiarity with which all these stimuli hit my senses can only mean one thing – I am getting old in the theatre. Continue reading ‘September Moon’ »

Dunkirk NY – I hadn’t realized when I posted the article on the situation in Seattle that it had been the cause of some buzz amongst theatre bloggers. The reason I think the situation is so interesting is that it’s bringing to the forefront once again what the fundamental issue really is in this country in my view: will the theatrical tastes on New York City continue to dominate regional theatre, or will regional theatre seek to find its own unique voice independent of New York?

I’d like to make sure one thing is perfectly clear before beginning this discussion: I am not interested in changing what goes on in NYC. Nor am I anti-NYC. NYC, as a region in the country, is free to produce and create whatever its particular theatre community would like to see. What I am interested in changing is the perception generally held in the rest of the country that what goes on in NYC is the definition of “success,” and as a consequence the perception that theatre artists must go to New York to achieve success, or perhaps more accurately, fame. Continue reading ‘More on Seattle’ »

Dunkirk NY – The discussion continues to rage in the regional scene about the use of local talent. In Buffalo we have settled that argument to some degree with the loss of Studio Arena Theatre, our former LORT B house. Without a LORT theatre in the area, the local talent pool has nothing anymore to say about their in-city regional theatre not casting local talent. It ain’t there no more.

Not so in Seattle. An interesting story in the Seattle Times this past Sunday point to the same situation happening in Seattle: local actors losing work as the big regionals in their fair city (Seattle Rep and Intiman) pull out-of-town actors in to do their seasons, and choose one- or two-handers to produce, thus leaving local actors unemployed.

Artistic directors like Bartlett Sher and Kate Whorinsky do not come into these theatres to work with the locals. They come into these theatres to continue to build their own reputations and network with NYC and LA types in the hopes of moving a show of theirs to Broadway. They do not want local recognition; they want national recognition. In the meantime, local actors get the shaft because, no matter how good they are, they are not hooked into the NYC network. Until this kind of thinking stops we will never be able to produce for this country the kind of high-quality regional theatre that people outside deserve just as much as NYC does.  -twl