a poor player

(This is the fourth part in a five-part series on theatre education being written in collaboration with Scott Walters of Theatre Ideas. Please be sure to visit his site to view his own entry on these issues – twl)

Dunkirk NY – It seems that after pounding theatre departments for the past three posts for all the things I believe are not working, I would be remiss if I did not spend some time talking about what’s happening that’s right. There are some things going on which I think have merit, and in the interest of balance it’s important that we get them out there.

Interestingly enough (and this will almost seem like a contradiction with what I’ve written so far), in looking at this issue it’s important to understand that, were the theatre business healthy and popular, and there were more nationwide opportunities available (basically, if the regional theatre movement had lived up to its potential), we would not in fact be doing much wrong at all. In fact, we’d be doing a lot of things right. It isn’t that the model of training itself is intrinsically bad or ineffective; it’s just that realities within the theatre world itself have changed radically, and theatre education has not met the challenges of change. Continue Reading »

…to bring you this. I really liked its deeply personal tone and the sense of concern, as well the observations about today’s theatre scene. -twl

Dunkirk NY – I mentioned in the last post that one of the “big lies” perpetrated on theatre students is that they get to work in near ideal conditions for their time in school, something they won’t get a chance to do for a long time after. I’d like to take a more extended look at how colleges perceive the creation of art. This is a topic that goes a bit wider than theatre, and I think exposes the deep conservative nature of artistic training on most campuses.

When was the last time you read or heard about a really good controversy concerning a show produced on a college campus? Or an art exhibit? Or a music concert? They seem to be extremely rare, and even when they exist, they hardly raise any fuss outside the institution. I guess the closest I ever came to creating a major fuss was in a production of MacBeth where I had one of the witches in the fourth act vision scene bare a breast under very low light. It raised a stir with the local Baptist minister and some local high schools because they wanted to bring their students to the show and assumed they were going to get a “traditional” rendition of the play. And that sort of says it all – the expectation is that universities will present us with “traditional” art in traditional ways, the “high art” that everyone talks about. There is absolutely no expectation that universities will produce any sort of original art whatsoever, but rather act as a museum of art in every possible way. Shakespeare will be done as “Shakespeare,” classics are expected, and high art will be enjoyed by all. Continue Reading »

Dunkirk NY - Having given a history of how current theatre educational came into existence and the general framework of how their curricula were developed, Scott and I will now look to examine whether or not theatre education programs live up to the promise of their curricula and training. On the whole, I am going to come down on the side of saying they do not. In fact, I would go so far as to say that most theatre departments engage in what I call “the big lie.” I could, I suppose, modify this slightly by calling it “the big myth,” and if I did so it would not be inaccurate, but I don’t want to do injustice to the concepts of myth and mythology, because often myths can be very positive forces for societies. It is when myths are taken to be truths that they become lies. Since theatre departments are largely in denial about their situation, I think “the big lie” is more accurate. Continue Reading »

Dunkirk, NY – Over the Labor Day weekend I spent a lot of time doing two things. One was bringing my son back to NIU, where he will spend two weeks preparing for his upcoming semester studying at the Moscow Art Theatre school. The other was arranging with Scott Walters over at Theatre Ideas for a series of parallel postings discussing the state of theatre education. Both of us had talked in each of our blogs about our desire to write about the state of theatre education, but neither of us had gotten around to it. So after trading some emails, we’ve arranged on a very loose structure for these series of posts. Scott has already posted his first entry, so I am following up with my entry on how theatre education has gotten to the point that it has.

Rather than taking an objective historical perspective, though, I thought I would take a more introspective approach and tell my own story within theatre education and try to parallel that with Scott’s historical perspective. I am hoping this will provide readers with both an objective and subjective look at the same issue. Continue Reading »

Dunkirk NY – From Theatreforté. Worth linking to.

Dunkirk NY – Labor Day celebrates the working people of this country, and the past success of labor unions. So in reading the NY Times article in last Sunday’s edition on working actors, the first question that came to my mind was, “If you could make $50,000/year acting, but you had to do it in Buffalo, would you?” That would make you pretty much a high-earning “working stiff” in these parts. I’m pretty willing to bet, though, that the answer for many artists would be “no.” David Greenspan was clear that he loves NY and would not want to move (he has the advantage of living with a partner who has a steady job, hence more available income and security than from what his own personal earnings would offer him). The perception is that there is not much work in Buffalo to get anyway, but even if there were, who’d want to live in Buffalo NY? Continue Reading »

Dunkirk, NY – I own a T-Shirt (which I have sinced passed on to my son) which read “Endangered Species: Working Actor,” with a picture of a commedia clown in the middle of the shirt. I am sure the blogging world will all catch up to this article in yesterday’s NY Times, but I post the link here just in case you might not catch up with it. It’s an interesting read. I’ll probably write something on it later this week. Today is the first day of the semester, and I don’t want to be late! -twl

(NB: Two of the actors featured have been through Buffalo, Chet Carlin and Ros Ruff)

Dunkirk, NY – I attended a performance of Othello last Saturday night at Shakespeare in Delaware Park. It was a cool night with a lot of clouds in the sky, and the hill seemed relatively full. I sat off to the stage left side. I was trying to go to the show without meeting anyone from the cast or crew, but the TD Scott, ever vigilant, picked me up and said hello. I have no idea if he let others know I was in the audience. I just wanted to experience the show as a regular patron, and not someone “in the know,” if you will. When you happen to be in the business and you go to shows where you know the performers, the act of going to a show becomes more than simply attending a show. It’s that lingering feeling of obligation to say hello and congratulations that I have always had trouble with. Even when I am in a show, I do my best to avoid the after-show crowd. Often after All’s Well I just snuck out “the back way” via Hoyt Lake to avoid seeing people. When I direct a play at Fredonia I almost never make myself available to audience members coming in and out of the theatre. You never can really tell what the sincerity level is, and having been the insincere one on several occasions, I just find it better to avoid it altogether. Continue Reading »

Dunkirk, NY – It seems lately that I am surrounded by the shadows of death. I am at that stage of life where people you know begin to have operations, contract illnesses, and pass on. Right at the moment I know three people who are all coping with cancer of one sort or another. One has prostate cancer, one has colon cancer, and one has lung cancer. The oldest of them is in his early 60s. All of them are going through various chemotherapies and/or radiation treatments in an attempt to slow down or halt the advancement of their cancers. Statistically speaking, none of them will succeed. Nonetheless, the treatments will continue. In our culture, death is something which is to be put off at any cost whatsoever.

Because of this situation, I have found myself more aware of my own mortality, and perhaps subconsciously this is why I have been writing about theatrical entropy. Dealing with a concept like entropy means trying to come to grips with the notion that what once existed will no longer exist. In a metaphorical sense, theatre has been living with its own cultural cancer for some time now, and I feel that all the talk about what’s wrong with theatre, what we should do to save it, how we should change it, is merely the talk of those who want to treat theatre with some sort of cultural chemotherapy. They don’t want to see theatre die because they love it so, thus the effort to treat it in some fashion. Is it, I wonder, just simply time to let theatre die a good, honest, natural death? Continue Reading »