a poor player

Dunkirk NY – It’s come down to something as simple as this: I think I am losing interest in American society. I think it’s that simple, and I think in some measure it is affecting every other aspect of what I am doing with myself.

Signpost: I don’t really much like today’s movies. If I hadn’t already seen The Best Years of Our Lives 50 times already I probably would have picked it over all the movies I looked for in Movies On Demand last night. But my wife (who loves the movies) and I settled on Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock instead. It was a pleasant enough movie, with echoes of the Woodstock festival all through the movie (for which I had tickets but could not get the car from my parents, so I ended up not going), and it had some decent performances (particularly from Henry Goodman and Imelda Staunton as the parents), but in the end the story was fairly uneven and unsatisfying. Too many disjointed events in the story not really coalescing into anything other than a young man’s drive to leave home. Not stunning. And not to go unnoticed, of course, is the particularly unflattering portrayal of theatre people as represented by the Earthlight Players.

Signpost: It seems now that the morning skim of the newspapers tends to reveal nothing new. All the news seems old. Problem-solving is not the central focus of politics. Self-interest and a whole raft of inane ideology is. Politics have become a crushing, mind-numbing bore. The incivility and inarticulateness of political figures today is utterly bizarre and totally depressing.

Signpost: Education seems not to be helping the situation much. From revisionist social studies in Texas to the reported lack of empathy on the part of today’s college students, the state of education overall seems as much in deterioration as anything else I can think of.

Signpost: The Gulf oil spill is a natural disaster of immense proportions that does not have an immediate technological solution. People seem stunned by this. Why can’t anybody fix this? Everyone had the same reaction to situations like Katrina and the European ash cloud that halted air traffic for two weeks. When did we ever get the idea that all the technology we’ve created is somehow foolproof? Why do we keep fooling ourselves into believing that if we build all these technological marvels that we will be better off?

Signpost: This political ad. And the comments.

Signpost: My next-door neighbors acquired a dog in January. All they do with it is chain it to a short leash and bring it in and out of doors all day. It roams the small length of its leash. It shits on their small cement walkway and they leave it there for a couple of days before cleaning it up. It now barks at every little sound it hears, beginning at 6:30 in the morning when they first let it out. Now that I am home most of the day I hear it almost constantly. They talk to it as if it will understand what they say, telling it over and over again to be quiet. They barely walk it. Why would anyone get themselves a dog only to turn it into a neurotic mess?

Can one really think about creating theatre at a broad national community level when one takes a hard look at the national conversations and behavior going on? At this point, it becomes harder and harder to try to imagine what kind of theatre would possibly attract a nation that actually allows a movement with as little intellectual acumen as the Tea Party to grow and become a political force. The signposts seem clear enough. -twl

Dunkirk NY – It seems as if the NY Times is catching up to what myself and others such as Mike Daisy have been saying for some time now. The student debt crisis at both the graduate and undergraduate level is rapidly becoming one wherein students get so far in debt without the possibility of making enough income to pay back the debt that going to school for any reason, let alone theatre,  becomes a questionable investment.  -twl

Dunkirk NY – What can I say? It was an intense three weeks to the end of the semester; more intense, it seemed, than I can ever remember. Perhaps too many projects all at once took their toll. Between all the one-act rehearsals I had to see, and then seeing all the shows in performance, and then seeing a great number of juries, and grading final papers, there was a lot to do. It took its toll. Graduation was May 15, and I took about a week to do some things around the house as well as begin rehearsals for Much Ado About Nothing with Shakespeare in Delaware Park. I am beginning to think I am one of those people who does not know how to relax and have fun.

Anyway, the blog has clearly suffered. Not that it matters. Things have been relatively quiet, and my small voice no doubt has not been missed all that much. The other thing that has suffered is the reading of blogs. Actually, I begin to sense within me something of a waning interest in technology. Facebook, Twitter, and all the various social networking developments created over the past five years hold less and less interest for me. And perhaps that is why I have not done so much writing as well.

I do not think this is because the technologies themselves are necessarily uninteresting. I think it’s because I am beginning to sense that, for me at least, I have no need of them because am “done.” What I mean by that is I have a feeling that whatever contributions I have left to make are probably few.

I believe I am entering that phase of life where it’s time to look back, reflect, try to pull some thoughts together, and become an “elder statesman” of sorts. Two events seem to point strongly in that direction. The first is the fact that as of the beginning of the upcoming fall semester, I will become chair of my department. With the retirement of our technical director, whose has been on the faculty for 28 years, I am now the longest-serving member of the department with 22 years. The next longest-serving  faculty member has 12 years, and one of our staff members (who is also an alum) has 21 years. So when I look around around the table, I realize I am now the institutional face of the department, carrying a lot of institutional history with me. It’s an odd feeling to realize that you’re now the most senior member of the department when you still th9ink of yourself as just having got there.

The second event is that I was promoted to the rank of Distinguished Teaching Professor. This is a SUNY-wide honor bestowed on those who have excelled in either research/creativity’ teaching’ or service.  You are nominated to this rank by someone on your campus (you can’t nominate yourself), and  then you have to document your excellence with a pretty comprehensive dossier. There are only eight other people on my campus who hold a distinguished rank. It is a rank above full professor, and gets conferred by the SUNY Board of Trustees. I guess you could say it’s a career achievement award. It’s another signpost in terms of how long I’ve been at the teaching game, and the fact that I am becoming an elder statesman. But I sort of feel uncomfortable with that title “distinguished.” I don’t exactly look “distinguished,” and most of the time I don’t exactly present myself in a “distinguished” fashion.  So it’s sort of weird to have the title.

So it appears I am now in the position of having to think about what types of things I can do to pave the way for those coming up to do the innovating and creating. That’s not such a bad thing. But it does sort of give you the feeling that you’re moving in a direction where others will do the heavy lifting. It’s sort of like an Act IV in a Shakespeare play, where the characters all re-group for that final push to the conclusion. Where to put the attention first is the issue. In the meantime, trying to sort out the clutter in the other corners of my life (clearing the attic and basement, cleaning out my office of years of collected papers), becomes this summer’s priorities. One day, one month at a time. Tra La it’s May, the lusty month of May!  -twl

Dunkirk NY -

In 1952, we didn’t want to do (our sitcom) live – we just didn’t know how to tape things. I don’t know what this show’s excuse is.

When I first heard about the campaign to get me to host Saturday Night Live, I didn’t know what Facebook was. And now that I do know what it is, I have to say, it sounds like a huge waste of time. -Betty White

This one makes my head hurt. Nothing has ever made me feel more like a cultural anachronism than Betty White hosting Saturday Night Live because of a Facebook campaign. It just makes theatre seem so – well, so pointless.

Deconstructing the technology alone is mind-boggling. Betty White essentially began her television sitcom career in 1952, the year I was born. 2″ quadruplex broadcast video tape did not come on the scene for another two years. If you wanted to tape a television show in 1952, you used motion picture film. In 58 years, the industry has moved from live broadcasting to HD digital recording and broadcasting, with full episodes available worldwide on demand via the internet in digital quality. There is nothing – nothing – in terms of entertainment or art (or in fact almost any other industry you’d care to name) that has developed with that kind of speed. I won’t even mention the saturation factor, only to say that television probably has as near to a worldwide saturation point of 100% as one can reasonably imagine.

And what, you may ask, has this remarkable technology presented to us, its viewing audience? 58 years of Betty White and similar personalities. Betty White has made a career (not to mention a good living) out of playing stereotyped, two-dimensional characters and being on game shows. And simply because she is 88.5 years old and willing to go on live TV and say and do naughty things, she is hailed as a legend. So clearly, her career and her type of work is now the standard to become a legend in the entertainment field. Her SNL appearance was the highest in 18 months (8.8 household rating, 21 share), and even Justin Bieber was moved to tweet, “Betty White Rules!”

Then there is the powerful mobilization capability of Facebook. Given the numerous issues we have on this planet that need serious attention, it’s nice to know that when we need to see a living television legend on SNL, all we need do it use the social networking capability of Facebook, and voila! There she is! World hunger, Haiti, the oil slick in the Gulf and other passing issues will have to wait. Now I am sure that if I created a Facebook group called I Bet I Can Get 10,000 People To Join This Group Against The Oil Slick, the problem will be solved soon after that. If Facebook can get the lengendary Betty White on SNL, it can do anything.

I simply cannot wrap my mind around a culture that can create such amazing technology in so short a time for such trivial things. Betty White is a woman whose life and career spans all this development and represents all that is trivial about it. It’s triviality squared. Matching all this triviality with the triviality of Facebook, and you have triviality cubed. Yet the acceptance of all this triviality in today’s culture makes me wonder what the bigger waste of time truly is: Facebook? Television? or theatre?  -twl

Ernie Harwell

Dunkirk NY – The death of Ernie Harwell, longtime radio and short-time TV voice of the Detroit Tigers, really seems to have gotten to me. All day today I have felt nostalgic for the past. They are all almost gone now, the great baseball announcers of the radio era, the local voices whose descriptions of each day’s game brought a familiarity to it as comfortable as an old pair of jeans. Mel Allen, Red Barber, Harry Carey, Jack Buck, Harry Kalas. Only Vin Scully, who has been broadcasting Dodger games since 1950 (where he succeeded Ernie Harwell) remains, along with the slightly younger Marty Brennaman of the Cincinnati Reds.

Bob Costas, a national sports broadcaster most connected with NBC, made a very keen and interesting observation on the MLB Network last night as I was listening to the tributes coming in for Ernie Harwell. He noted that all these men had gotten their start in baseball announcing during the days of radio, when the descriptions of the game were more intricate, and when the connection of that voice coming over the box to the listening audience was the single most important aspect of a team’s identity. National broadcasters, noted Costas, were not of that team in that city; they fly in and fly out, with no real connection to the teams they are broadcasting about. The local radio broadcasters, on the other hand, were of that team in that city. For six months of every year, as regular as the seasons passing, they came to describe to us the 162 games, with their ups and downs, their successes and failures, played each season by the hometown nine. Ernie Harwell was as important – perhaps more important – to the city of Detroit than any politician, union boss, automobile company, or any other single person or institution ever was.

Harwell had one distinctive trademark like no other broadcaster had. Whenever a fan in the stands caught a foul ball, Harwell would remark that the ball had been caught “by a man from Ypsilanti” or “a woman from Muskegon.” Of course he had no idea where those people were actually from. It was just his way of letting his listeners know he knew where they were, where they were from, and what they were about. The hometown touch, if you will.

Baseball was a game invented for the radio. Once you know the game, the pace is easy to follow on the radio, and a person with a gift for painting pictures with words finds the game rich with imagery and excitement. Often I enjoy sitting out on my back porch with a beer on a warm summer evening, listening to a baseball game. Mostly I listen to Yankee games, and I wish I could wax poetic about John Sterling, but I really can’t stand him. My memories take me back to Mel Allen’s voice, or Phil Rizzuto’s voice emanating from the radio. Baseball was not as frequently aired on TV back in the late 50s/60s, and so much of my baseball knowledge came from the voices on the radio. Perhaps that’s why I still tune in to the radio to catch a game.

Recently I noted the death of Craig Noel, the founder and longtime artistic director of the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. To me he was the theatrical equivalent of Ernie Harwell, a voice in the community through which the community found an identity. Not interested in the national spotlight, Noel was content to give to San Diego quality theatrical productions over a long career. Harwell and his contemporaries understood that their job was to offer that same identity and connection to the community by offering quality broadcasts of their baseball team’s successes and failures, day in, day out, 162 games a year. They were not interested in the national spotlight, but chose instead to find their glory in their local community.

It’s foolish of me to be nostalgic, I know. Times change – faster than they ever have – and the past is unrecoverable; one must let go. Baseball does, in fact, look great on a 39″ HDTV. But in my soul it is hard to make the old radio voices go away. Same too for theatre – it’s hard to make the voices of Shakespeare, Saroyan, Williams, Hellman, Inge, Miller and Odets simply disappear. It’s hard to stop hearing the tunes of Porter, Hammerstein, Rodgers, Loesser, Lerner and Lowe. But one thing I do know – no one lived up to the words of William Saroyan’s prologue to The Time of Your Life more than did Ernie Harwell:

In the time of your life, live—so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches. Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding place and let it be free and unashamed. In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.

-twl

Dunkirk NY – I think over the past eight days I have seen more theatrical endeavors than anyone should have to. Beginning with last Saturday’s viewing of Kiss Me Kate to last night’s viewing of Closer, I have seen two full productions, about 13 one-act plays of various types in rehearsal, four class sessions’ worth of final scene projects from my Acting for Non-Majors class (16 scenes), one class session of final scenes from directing class (5), and 4 O’Neill scenes from my independent acting studio. On top of that it was assessment week, wherein the BFA actors have to present acting juries consisting of two monologues, and then the acting faculty as a group offers them feedback and assessment of their growth. That’s maybe 30 mini-auditions and 30 feedback sessions.

The hard part is that I have to make intelligent comments and helpful criticism about them all. I have to grade the assignments (which I dislike) and offer students an opinion on their work should they ask (I do have a rule about that – I never offer my opinion on a student’s performance unless they ask me). It’s particularly difficult when it’s 10PM at night, you’ve worked straight through dinner, you’ve seen three scenes or one-acts before this one, and you actually have one more to see after it.

When I go through a week like that, I don’t get why people don’t understand concerns about undergraduate theatre training. I felt like a machine, going from one scene or show to another, offering advice, comments, criticism, encouragement. How can I possibly know if anything I am saying is of merit, or worthwhile, or even intelligent? Maybe some of it is just plain dangerous. What do the students really think is valuable, and what do they take to their stress-relief parties and make fun of (there’s always someone who can do a spot-on imitation of my mannerisms)?

In my independent senior acting studio we have been working on two scenes from O’Neill, one from Anna Christie and one from A Moon for the Misbegotten. I have been very lax in that class, not hurrying them, and for many of them it’s been the best work they have done. I tried not to put the onus of having the scene ready at a particular time on a particular day, but to just keep presenting it until they felt it was ready. I did the most dangerous talking there, asking them to make real honest emotional connections with each other as the scene progressed. Each scene was about 20 minutes long, and many of them commented that they had never had to do so long a scene. They also commented about how hard it was to memorize, never having dealt with language like O’Neill’s. When it was over they spoke a lot about their own stress, how their work sometimes is overwhelmed by the stress of their daily lives, how they had such a hard time trying to find the time to really work on the scene as much as they’d like. They spoke about how hard it is sometimes to let themselves totally go in a part. They, too, feel like machines sometimes, going from class to class, working assignment after assignment, being in show after show, preparing jury after jury.

After a week like that it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that there must be a better way. -twl