Guest Post — Andrea Humez: August (or Lanford) Wilson

Seeing the Huntington Theatre’s fall performance of Fences got me thinking about my husband’s habitual joke about plays by “August (or Lanford) Wilson.”  I’ve had plays by both authors side by side on my bookshelf since I was a pre-teen, and have always been vaguely amused by the fact that the two Wilsons have nothing to do with each other.  But this time, I was struck by the thought that actually, they have a lot in common.

Both playwrights write mostly plays that focus on small, intimate communities, with a strong sense of location: August Wilson’s cycle of plays about the African-American community in Pittsburgh throughout various eras of history; Lanford Wilson’s small Southern-Midwestern towns in The Rimers of Eldritch, Book of Days, and the Talley plays.

The work of both Wilsons is characterized by compelling, quirky, often flawed but almost never off-putting characters.  They both have marvelous ears for voice and dialogue; they also both write excellent monologues.  They focus on the complex relationships among their characters.  I love listening to their characters talk, both for the near-poetry of the text and for the emotional and narrative content.  (Though I consider myself more of a plot person than a voice person, one of the characteristics common to the playwrights I love best is memorable, quotable, playing-with-language dialogue.  This is why I keep returning to the works of Tom Stoppard, George Bernard Shaw, and – yes – Lanford Wilson.)

For both Wilsons, the focus on voice and character and community sometimes comes at the expense of plot; even when full of dramatic events, the plot is often a secondary element.  (Lanford Wilson has a couple of plays in which as far as I can tell nothing happens, e.g. Hot L Baltimore.  August Wilson’s plays do all have some sort of dramatic event in them, often a death and/or a family conflict.  But quite a lot of Fences goes by before it becomes clear what the plot is going to be about — though I only noticed in retrospect.  And in fact the plot events (man has affair, wife kicks him out of the house, he convinces her to raise his dead mistress’s baby, meanwhile his conflict with his teenage son ultimately leads to the son running away from home) are interesting mostly only as a way to illuminate these particular characters’ lives and relationships.

I’ve seen most of August Wilson’s plays at the Huntington over the years, without thinking too much about them.  By contrast, after seeing Talley’s Folly in middle school, I’ve been a Lanford Wilson fan, have most of his plays in my collection by now, have directed one of his plays and have at least others on my plays-to-direct-before-I-die list.  Making this connection between the two playwrights has given me a new perspective on August Wilson; or rather, has clarified some patterns in my response to his plays.  (This is not to claim they’re identical by any means, but I find the similarities illuminating.) Now I want to read his plays again, this time as an adult, all at the same time, and with a director’s eye.

Guest Post: Andrea Humez — Food on Stage

As a director of low-budget, low-tech community theatre, I often find myself evaluating scripts I’d like to direct on the basis of whether they have some sort of insurmountable logistical challenge. Fortunately I have friends willing to build me shower stalls and moving person-shaped pistol targets (Hapgood), and canopy beds (The Lion In Winter). The full nudity in Indian Ink and the multi-level rotating set in Noises Off are still beyond my current means. But at least these (with the possible exception of the pistol targets) are vital to the plot of their respective plays. More irksome are technical effects that serve minor purposes, yet are difficult to omit: for example, the dagger thrown into a painting and smashed wine glass in A Little Night Music.

Food on stage can fall anywhere along the spectrum. In The Importance of Being Earnest the eating (and squabbling over) very specific food items is an integral element of the dialogue. In Rabbit Hole, a different, highly specific dessert is eaten in nearly every scene; but while the constant serving of food does serve to illustrate something about Becca’s character and her relationship with her family, the creme caramel and lemon squares never quite play the focal role in a scene that the cucumber sandwiches do in Earnest. In Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune, preparing and eating food are part of the characters’ negotiation of their relationship — but the food required is milk, meatloaf, and a vegetable omelet that an actor must prepare during the scene, so the play requires not only food, but a working refrigerator and, ideally, a working stove. And how many actors want to eat cold meatloaf — or worse, tepid, meatloaf — in the middle of a performance? Or kiss someone who has just done so?

The thing that really baffles me is the number of 10-minute plays that
require food — sometimes not just a cup of coffee or a couple of
cookies, but something elaborate and messy like a plate of chicken and
pasta. 10-minutes plays are usually performed as a set, where
keeping props and scenery to a minimum is important for quick set
changes. Sometimes, the food is central, as in a play I recently saw
about two women whose job is to prepare the last meal for prisoners
about to be executed. If that’s the subject of your play, then the food is necessary — and there’s nothing an apple pie under construction for a good concrete, specific image. But if it’s incidental, why not make everyone’s life easier and leave it out?

Beverages are somewhat less problematic, because they can often be faked with empty cups or colored water. But if you want a character to throw a drink in another character’s face, consider the logistical ramifications: colored water on costumes, wet floor until the next scene change, possible damage to makeup. . . And that’s assuming that your `whisky’ or `brandy’ is colored water and not, say, iced tea mixed with cranberry juice. In the latter case, you will have something colored and sticky all over set and costumes. Also, it takes longer to consume a serving of beverage than most scripts allow. Unless the characters are slugging back shots, the scene can become a race to empty their glasses in time to ask for a refill.

Similarly, it takes a painfully long time to consume food on stage, especially if the eating character has the next line. (Have you ever hollowed out chocolates so that they would contain as small a volume of chocolate as possible while still reading as bon-bons to the audience? Chocolate is particularly tricky to speak through.)

Now, it must be admitted that theatre people delight in logistical challenges; that’s where all our most cherished anecdotes seem to come from. So go ahead, put that roast turkey dinner in your script. Generations of actors and stage hands will happily curse your name.

Medical drama

Medical drama isn’t a genre anymore. It used to be, but these days it’s a whole collection of genres.

Scrubs is a sitcom, ER was a drama. Grey’s Anatomy is a soap opera. (and Private Practice is an even more extreme soap opera). House is a black comedy.

And then there’s Trauma, which, as a local show, we’d all really like to see succeed out here. But it’s clearly horror.

Playwright at the desk

A pair of recent successes:

Out here in the Bay Area I’m part of the literary committee at the Magic Theatre, which means I get to meet with the fascinating and diverse group that is the committee *and* attend first rehearsals for the shows that are going up. (And I get tickets to see their shows.)

Also, starting this month, I’m a member of the playwright pool at the Playground! Each month, we get a topic and four days to write a ten-minute play. The best six are performed the following week. I’ve got my work cut out for me.

Guest Post: Andrea Humez — The Art of Editing

I am in the process of rehearsing a 10-minute play written by a writers’-group compatriot of mine; the play is being performed as part of an evening of 10-minute shows. As is common with new works, there have been several rounds of changes to the script during the rehearsal period. Most have been minor wording adjustments or small changes for the sake of clarity. But we’ve also had two rounds of cutting down the script in order to make sure it runs no longer than 10 minutes. For the most part, I think the new, tighter version of the play is probably an improvement on the original, though there were some moments I was sorry to see go. And the need to stick to the 10-minute running time decreed by the show’s producer drove the author to more ruthless editing than mere comments in writers’ group had motivated.

Now, myself, I’m one of those writers who writes long and has a lot of trouble making serious cuts to my work. It’s not simply because I’m in love with my own deathless prose: I also have trouble choosing surplus possessions to get rid of, deciding who leave off the guest list for parties. I do appreciate concision, the more so because it’s almost impossible for me to create myself. I firmly believe in the necessity and value of editing. And word/page/running-time constraints are a great motivator for those of us who find cutting text difficult.

On the other hand, there’s nothing magical about 10 minutes. (Or 3500 words, or any other arbitrary length constraint.) Was the script improved or diminished by the removal of the second appearance of the grandmother’s rambling about supermarkets, which became a punchline for the first? Or the line about how she fought to keep her son in regular schools so that people wouldn’t think he was retarded? From inside the rehearsal and editing process, I can’t tell: I’ve lost my sense of perspective. The audience won’t miss those lines, but they also won’t know what they’re missing. Maybe the ideal length for this particular play (performed at the speed this particular set of actors performs it) is really 11 minutes. But the script will be shaped to meet the constraints of the 10-minute form. This wouldn’t really worry me, except that the 10-minute form seems to dominate the world of short plays: what does one do with a play between 10 and 60 minutes long? And what is lost if all short plays must be forced into the 10-minute box, regardless of their natural length?

The Goldfish and Mrs. Whitney

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Originally uploaded by epanttaja

I was at the Magic for another read through of The Goldfish and a second reading of Mrs. Whitney. The energy in the room was great. Everyone was excited, but also incredibly laid back. Both casts were there, and John Kolvenbach flitted around the room with bare feet, sometimes watching the action from behind his hand.

Before they began to read, there was a quick game of musical chairs so that the actors could see each other: parents and children were facing; lovers were facing.

The floor was striped with colored tape.

The Goldfish was funny and wrenching. It made me want to curl up and cry for all these wounded people. They have strong, hard stories. And really, one can’t not elope after seeing this play. Can’t be done.

It was a lot of fun to watch John watching the actors do their thing with his words.

And then, after a break and another game of musical chairs, they read Mrs. Whitney.

Mrs. Whitney follows Mrs. Whitney (surprise) from The Goldfish five years later. It’s a brand new, wet-behind-the-ears play.

At this point, The Goldfish had been rehearsing for two weeks. It was starting to feel solid, with the strong characters from the first reader becoming stronger and more settled. But for Mrs. Whitney this was a first read. The actors had been there for a while, and everyone was loosened up and having a good time. The reading reminded me that the root of this practice is play, playing, play-acting. The group sat in there and had fun with the script. It was magical to watch.

Goldfish: First reading

I was lucky enough to be invited to the Magic Theatre’s first rehearsal of John Kolvenbach’s Goldfish, which looks like a great start to a very interesting season.

As we entered the room, the walls were lined with pictures of horse racing, New England college life, maps, Yonkers, and upscale Connecticut.

Kolvenbach himself was able to attend the rehearsal, which means that we both got the chance to listen to his description of the play, and had the chance to watch him as we listened to the reading. I’ve talked before about specificity in writing, and I was really intrigued when Kolvenbach talked one of the goals being to delve:

deeply into the personal until we come out into all of us

He described this play as a reduction, simmered a long time.

I love that as a goal. How to create, not just a story, but the deep reduction of a story, pulling out such a delicate essence that it transcends the story itself.

Goldfish was developed at South Coast Repertory, where it was directed by Loretta Greco (who is directing the Magic production. The particularly cool thing they’re doing this year is doing a rotating repertory of Goldfish and Mrs. Whitney, the play which tells another piece of Margaret Whitney’s life story, five years later. They’re using the same director, same designers, and some of the same actors. I can’t wait to find out what happens next in Margaret’s life.

After hearing from the playwright, the director, and the designers, we had the read through. From where I was sitting, I could see Albert and Leo, but could only see Lucy and Margaret from the back. Watching Albert and Leo was magical. They were occupying a different kind of space. We went from sitting around a table, a group of professionals watching a show, to having a very old man, an annoying teenage boy, an alcoholic woman, and a confident assertive teenage girl sitting at the table. No costumes, no sets, no bodies. It will be amazing to see what happens when they get all that.

Goldfish: snapshots

At the reading, I had my notebook with me, and ended up writing down a few words for each scene. The scenes are so clearly demarcated as moments that there’s a story in just the emotions flowing through.

Snapshots of the script

Leo’s Kitchen

Love, dismay, exhausted acceptance on both sides.

Library

Mutual bewilderment, flirtation.

Leo’s Kitchen

No words. Excitement.

Cafeteria

Beleaguered flirtation, spectacularly inept romance.

Margaret’s Den

Mutual disdain, aggression, evasion.

Leo’s Kitchen

Desperation.

Albert’s dorm room

Irritated mad love.

Leo’s Kitchen

Flayed.

Margaret’s Den

Working-class determination. What do these people want from each other?

Leo’s Kitchen

Beat up. Falling.

Bus

Stop.

Leo’s Kitchen

End.

The Usual Suspects

We rewatched The Usual Suspects last night. I really like that movie (enough so that I’m going to try to be very careful in my language to avoid spoiling it for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet). I watched it first at LSC at MIT with my friend M. I think I caused serious bruises on his arm (I’m not a big one for violent movies).

The thing I love about it is the presentation of different versions of a story: opinions, points of view, mythologies, lies, misrememberings. They’re all woven together into a tightly-knotted net, and every time I watch it I end up noticing things I’ve never noticed before.

I’d like to figure out a way to play more with this. Katya plays a lot with memory, and Conflict is all about different views of a single event, but I need to come up with an idea that would let me explore it longer. The key is to figure out what sort of events are complex enough to have a bunch of views, but simple enough that you can treat them in…say…two hours.

Apropos of the discussion with Andrea, my father points out that there is one female role in the whole thing, and she’s more of a plot device than a rounded character (though she does have a part to play).

Guest Post: Andrea Humez — Ruminations on the Obvious

I don’t know what the numbers are like in professional theatre (though I have the impression there’s a similar problem). But in community theatre, in my neck of the woods, women outnumber men in an audition by anywhere from 2:1 to 4:1. Most plays have at best equal numbers of roles for men and women, and many are heavily weighted in favor of male roles. Musicals are better balanced than most plays because they have choruses and the lead characters tend to come in couples; however, the modern trend is towards shows with smaller casts, i.e. fewer supporting roles and little or no chorus. Older plays — the ones with lots of characters, well-known names, and cheap and available performance rights — have the problem that they reflect the gender roles of their times, so the female roles they offer can be problematic, and the minor characters tend to be male because more roles in society (e.g. policeman, doctor, lawyer, pirate) were filled by men.

One way to mitigate the gender imbalance would be by widespread casting of female actors in male roles, but most directors don’t cross-cast much, and if they do, they only cast women in very minor male roles: e.g. you might cast women as the policemen in Arsenic and Old Lace female, but you’d be unlikely to cross-cast Jonathan or Mortimer. There are exceptions to this rule, of course, but they are infrequent. As a director, I understand why it works this way: cross-casting a part in which character gender is relevant (which is many of them, especially in older plays) is a compromise unless it’s part of an explicit artistic vision. If you keep the character’s gender male, you face the problem that a woman doesn’t usually make a very convincing man (though I had great luck with one of my cross-cast actresses in the production of The Rimers of Eldritch that I directed in November 2008; she went on to play another young man in her next show). On the other hand, changing the gender of a character often doesn’t fit well with the text (for example, in the production of King Lear that played Edmund as a woman, which worked all right until it came to the point where the sisters were arguing about who got to marry her).

I’m told that most modern playwrights write shows for smaller casts, because this is the only way to get a show produced if you’re not a big name. So, even an all-female or mostly-female modern show has perhaps 4 to 6 roles for women; not necessarily much improvement over a male-dominated show with a larger cast.

By the way, the problem is not a lack of good female roles. A substantial majority of plays have one or two great female roles. What’s lacking is numerous female roles, and also decent medium-sized female roles. Because, of course, with the pool of auditioning actresses so large compared to the number of available roles, those who are not top-notch often don’t get cast at all, or get cast as walk-ons. Meanwhile second-tier male actors often get minor-but-interesting roles and sometimes lead roles, since there are often not enough top-notch male actors to go around.

This imbalance has a reinforcing effect. Not only does a male actor rate to get more roles than a female actor of equivalent skill; not only does the male actor require less talent to get a better role; but in addition, because the male actor gets more and better roles, he gets more practice and therefore more opportunity to improve his skills (as well as his resume!).

I wish no ill no my male actor friends. But I wish something would improve the situation for female actors. I keep threatening to start directing all-female versions of plays written for mixed-gender casts, and one day I’ll get around to it, but what I really want to see is more parts written for women. Playwrights take notice: you have a giant pool of actresses hungry to perform your work, if only you’d write us some more roles!