On the Towns

Seasonal Depression

It’s the end of the semester, which means my life revolves around coordinating and grading a million assignments.  This spring semester has been much more difficult than fall because spring break pushed together some assignments that normally would have spread out a bit across the course schedule.  Add this to the fact that I taught SEVEN courses this semester (six classes and one practicum), that I just picked up an extra part-time job for the summer, and that I just found out my position may be cut next year (even though I am in the process of developing a hybrid version of one of my courses for the fall), and you have one extremely frustrated and overworked individual.  

Additionally, many theatres are in the process of announcing their seasons.  This means that I am trying (mostly unsuccessfully at this point) to line up directing jobs for next year.   Trolling for directing jobs has, for me, been a little bit like dropping stones into a very deep well.  Sometimes you don’t even hear the echo of the stone hitting the bottom.  Of the six or so theatres that I have formally contacted to express interest in joining them this season, I have only heard back from two, and both have answered only vaguely.  This business of obtaining directing jobs is much more difficult than auditioning for acting roles ever was.  At least as an actor, you have a defined audition process.  Now that I’m directing, if I want a job, I have to make a pitch.  Now, even though I know how to pitch a production, and myself, to an artistic director, I have found that the process of just getting to the pitch is a struggle.  Many of my requests for meetings, coffees, lunches, etc. have gone ignored entirely, and those that haven’t been ignored have been postponed indefinitely.  

So what’s a girl to do?  I know from both experience and observation that the people who tend to get directing jobs in Atlanta are the people who are there - showing up at the theatre on a regular basis to volunteer or even just watch a show.  I’ve watched good gigs go to directors with less education, experience, and proven success than myself, and when I ask myself why they were chosen, the answer is almost always, “they invest more time in that theatre than I do.”  (This is not to say these directors aren’t talented or deserving, just that I am frustrated by my own comparative lack of progress.)  But thanks to the aforementioned schedule insanity, I have no free time to see theatre, let alone lurk around to see and be seen.  So what’s my next step?  How does someone so overextended make time to smile and hand-shake her way to better jobs?

Show us your T.I.T.S.

The economic downturn that threatened to close Georgia Shakespeare and Actor’s Express last summer has claimed its first victim, Marietta’s Theatre in the Square.  On Monday, I was on my way to speak at a workshop for actors preparing for Unified Auditions when I got the phone call.  I was asked to keep the sad information to myself, but news travels fast in our community, and many of my friends had already gotten similar phone calls by the time I reached Oglethorpe.  

This has been a very sobering turn of events for many of us in Atlanta.  T.I.T.S. (which easily had the best acronym in town) was a 30-year-old institution and employed some of the most talented and dedicated theatre artists in the city.  Among them, their resident scenic designer Seamus Borne, who earned his MFA around the same time as me and who I had the pleasure of working with on Singin’ in the Rain.  Seamus’ current Facebook profile image is a photo of the T.I.T.S. signage (with an emphasis on tragedy) that I swiped and pasted above. 

The last show I saw at T.I.T.S. was The Little Foxes.  I can honestly say it was an incredible production, starring Associate Artistic Director Jessica Phelps West as Regina.  It was the last in a long line of excellent productions I had the pleasure of experiencing over the years, and I am thankful that I had the chance to see some of their best work before the doors closed.

As I write about the closing, I can’t help but remember all the hubbub caused by Rocco Landesman last year when he spoke at Arena Stage about supply and demand in theatre.  For a good portion of its 30-year run, T.I.T.S. was the only professional theatre on the square.  but that all changed in 2008 when The Strand opened its doors to the re-vitalized Atlanta Lyric Theatre.  The Lyric has come on very strong over the last four years, offering big, Broadway-style musicals and I can only imagine that this had a negative impact on T.I.T.S. as the supply/demand ratio in Marietta reached a tipping point.

In the wake of this news, I would imagine that a lot of local companies will be re-examining their mission and vision statements over the next few months to assess their place in the community and strategize their brand.  So maybe, in the long run, the loss of T.I.T.S. will serve a positive outcome by galvanizing other organizations.  Was the lesson here that Mariettans were more interested in Rodgers & Hammerstein than Lillian Hellman?  I don’t know, but I would want to find out.

I am both curious and apprehensive to see if Atlanta theatre will suffer further casualties of the recession.  

Approaching “The Last Minstrel Show”

This week in my Theatre Appreciation classes, I will be lecturing on early American theatre.  Up until this point in the semester, we have been mostly Euro-centric, and my students have recently been dosed-up on Realism, Georg II, and Stanislavski. (Which my one-and-only Russian student this semester keeps insisting is properly spelled “Stanislavsky.” Sorry, Mikhail, old habits die hard.) Now it’s time to take a step back and tell them a little bit about what was going on back home in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries.  

This is, by far, my favorite part of the semester.  As lectures start moving into the 20th century, the sleepyheads in my class who have barely tolerated my dronings-on about Aristotle and Shakespeare finally start to show signs of interest as we approach more familiar territory. The Early American Theatre lecture is the moment that usually ignites that interest, which is entirely due to the final topic in the lecture: minstrelsy.  

At this point, I should mention that I teach an incredibly diverse population.  The majority of my students are Afro-Caribbean, with white and Latino-Americans filling up most of the remaining seats.  Additionally, this semester I have students who are recent immigrants from China, Vietnam, Korea, Russia, Germany, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan.  Moreover, several of my students identify themselves as bi-racial or multi-racial, so issues of race and representation are typically of interest to all.

When I teach minstrelsy, I first explore its origins, exposing them to T.D. Rice and Jump Jim Crow, then moving on to post-war, African-American minstrel performers like Bert Williams.  To finish, I tie the lecture to the present by introducing them to Kander and Ebb’s 2009 musical, The Scottsboro Boys.

Now, I must admit to being a fan of this musical.  In addition to my adoration of John Cullum and borderline obsession with Colman Domingo, I am a sucker for any piece of theatre that has the power to make a soul cringe the way mine does when I hear Mr. Tambo (played on Broadway by Forrest McClendon) whine “Just let those butterflies out of them c’coons,” or listen to the cheerful optimism of “Commencing in Chattanooga” (a song that forms the beginning of the horrible journey on which the “Boys” are embarking, and which just happens to be set in my home town).

In teaching The Scottsboro Boys to my students, I give a brief history of the judicial debacle on which the musical is based, and then show some clips from the Broadway production (available here).  Then we discuss Kander and Ebb’s reasons for presenting this very serious story in the minstrel form.  This is basically where the conversation used to end.  Though I would touch on the negative reactions of some critics and their objections to the perceived insensitivity of Scottsboro’s creators to the real-life situation behind the goofy minstrel show, I never treated it as more than an aside.  But this semester I have a much more interesting angle thanks to Marshal Jones III’s brilliant and distressing take on The Scottsboro Boys, “The Last Minstrel Show,” from the March 2012 issue of American Theatre (here).

In a very small nutshell, Mr. Jones accuses the Scottsboro creative team of lacking sufficient empathy to tell the story because not one of them was black.  (His argument is actually so much more elegant and nuanced than this, and I am aware here of coming dangerously close to a disastrous over-simplification of his writing.  Because of this, I urge anyone interested in my rambling point of view to read his article in full.) 

Starting Friday, I introduced Mr. Jones’s argument to my class and posed the question, “Was it insensitive of producers not to include an African-American artist on the artistic staff of The Scottsboro Boys?”  What resulted was an incredibly exciting forum on race and representation.  Many more questions followed, class ran late (and no-one packed a bag to leave), and at last I found myself the recipient of an unexpected benefit: finally experiencing some crystallization of my own rather mushy thoughts about Mr. Jones’s article. 

In the weeks since I read Mr. Jones’s article, I have reconsidered it many times.  I was somehow uncomfortable with his response to the piece, and yet his point of view was articulated so immaculately that I was unsure where I found fault.  At some point during Friday’s debate, it hit me.  Reception!  As a white woman, born and raised in the deep south, I see The Scottsboro Boys as a story about an incident that happened close to my own home, only a few decades before I was born. The young men in the story are the same age as my grandparents, and begin their trip to Alabama only a mile from my former high school. I also see a story told in a manner that I find highly offensive, first, because it portrays blacks as fools, and second, because I know that the minstrel show format is also a truth.  I asked my students what I might bring into the theatre when I attend this musical that a black audience member might not. The answer of course was shame. 

I see now that The Scottsboro Boys works, for me, in a very precise way - a way that it possibly does not work for African-American audiences.  That nagging notion of “But…” that crossed my mind every time I considered Mr. Jones’s article has all boiled down, for me, to the guilt and embarrassment that blossom inside of me when I think of The Scottsboro Boys; feelings that my admiration of the musical is directly tied to.  From my point of view, the story is told not just in an entertaining or interesting manner but in a vital manner.

My students made smart observations about the musical and its controversy.  The most verbose among them defended Kander and Ebb’s right to tell the story regardless of race.  (Though I believe this may be due partially to my own enthusiasm for The Scottsboro Boys, mixed with the fact that none of them have actually seen the musical or read Mr. Jones’s article for themselves.) Among them was a white student who insisted she experiences racism often as part of a mixed-race couple and has suffered for its impact on her husband and children.  She felt it was incorrect of Mr. Jones to assume that the white artistic staff had not been deeply touched by racism in their own lives based only on the color of their skin.

I am looking forward to the week ahead and the prospect of repeating this lecture with my other Theatre Appreciation classes.  I’m not sure if any of the rest will live up to the ideal intersection of mutual learning that was experienced on Friday, as such moments are rare in lecture courses, but I do know that The Scottsboro Boys and Mr. Jones’s article will inspire my students to think about theatre in a way that my class hasn’t yet experienced, and that’s exciting enough.

Z.O.N.K.E.R.S. Director’s Notes

I was recently asked to supply director’s notes for Z.O.N.K.E.R.S., a new play that I’m directing at Dad’s Garage.  I’m never too anxious to write this sort of thing even under the best circumstances, and Z.O.N.K.E.R.S. proved a particular beast after a friend of mine innocently commented that she was surprised to see I was directing the play since she had always thought of me as a feminist.  Maybe I should mention at this point that the show is billed as “an 80s tit comedy” and the climax involves a topless spacewalk.  Though to be honest, I was never even remotely bothered by this until my friend made me feel all un-feminist about it.

Damn.

So, after much consternation, I finally decided to meet my fears head-on and just write about the show as feminism.  My final notes are below.  

From the Director

Just for the sake of argument, let’s agree that third-wave feminism began in the mid 1980s.  Now, I know what you’re saying, “but Anne, how can you ignore the preponderance of evidence suggesting that a gender-binary feminism particular to the second wave dominated our culture well into the nineties?” And honestly, who among us hasn’t struggled with that question?  But I ask that tonight we lay aside any squabbles over origin or authenticity and recognize that in the (obviously) patriarchal yet (increasingly) pluralistic United States of the Regan Era, young women enjoyed unprecedentedly divergent cultural performances of femininity.  From the shrewd command of Margaret Thatcher, and the provocative sensuality of Madonna, to the maternal élan of Claire Huxtable, the daughters of the eighties hailed a decidedly postfeminist gynic variety. 

Samantha and Beth, the heroines of Z.O.N.K.E.R.S., serve as personifications of our early third-wave sisters (as I am certain was the playwrights intent). They courageously interrogate antiquated feminist doctrine as they struggle to supersede the prohibitive convictions of their foremothers in order to save (significantly) a man’s life. Tonight, as two pioneers expose their young bodies to the endless void of space, you will see more than breasts - you will see the symbolic life-spark of third-wave ideology.  Playwright Matt Horgan positions Samantha and Beth as nascent models of sex-positivity, gender post-structuralism, and culture/nature duality to provoke a desiccation of the Second-Sex worldview that is sure to provoke conversation and debate long after the final curtain has fallen. 

In directing Z.O.N.K.E.R.S., I encouraged the cast to move beyond the considerable academic and cultural weight of the text.  Our hope is that we have managed to invigorate what could otherwise be a dreary and pedantic rendition of this gravely important drama so that you may find the production not merely enlightening, but also (in some parts) entertaining. 

Enjoy the show!