Tony's blog

Barb Anderson in Bounty of Lace.

I was rereading Provoking Theatre: Kama Ginkas Directs, and I happened to read a section of it that talks of Mamet, just around the time I was watching Race. Ginkas points his finger on a lot of what I don't like about Mamet's work. I wanted to share it and get your thoughts. (This section of the book is in the form of interview between John Freedman and Ginkas)

(John Freedman) I would like to quote from True and False, David Mamet's book on acting. It is a clear, straightforward polemic with Stanislavsky that is as easy to take issue with as it is to agree with it. In one place he writes, "The only reason to rehearse is to learn to perform the play. It is not to 'explore the meaning of the play' -- the play, for the actor, has no meaning beyond its performance." He follows that up by stating that rehearsal "is not to 'investigate the life of the character.' There is no character. There are just lines on the page."

This, it seems to me, is diametrically opposed to Russian theatre in general, and to your theatre in specific.

(Kama Ginkas) Well, Mamet may be an actor, too, but it is obvious a playwright wrote those sentences. That is a sore spot of an author who wrote words that are never spoken as he wrote them. Not because the actors are falsifying him, but because he wrote a specific intonation into his play. A bad writer will do this. You can always hear in their characters the specific intonation the author is trying to give them. But the surest way to a lousy production is to perform in the intonation the author wants. That is guaranteed failure.

Mamet's utterance reveals the painful complexities of an author who is never satisfied with the intonations his text is gives. When he says "play the text," he means, "I have given you the intonation, now just reproduce it."

When he says there is no character, that is a comment on the level of his plays. This is, of course, a case of arrogance on my part because I do not know all of his plays and I am taking it upon myself to pass judgment. But the works of his that I do know are "well-made plays." Neatly built texts in which there are no characters, no living people. There are lines and punchlines that must be spoken as written and then you wait for the audience to laugh or fall silent. He wants the spectator to heed the text.

That, in his opinion, is the key strength of his plays. In my opinion, the key strength of a play, his included, lies in the extent to which the author taps into a living person. Mamet is a talented writer. As such, from time to time, he scratches the surface of humans, of lifelike situations, captures the living language in which people speak. When he does, his characters are, to a proper extent, alive. They are not as alive as Shakespeare's characters, or Chekhov's. But they are alive enough for the American public, which does not like stylizations, to see in them a reflection of themselves. They are written for a public that wishes to see its own reflection. (76-77)

Thoughts?

From The Other Shore.

Photo by Tom McGrath

What would you do if you had to restart from scratch?

If there were no commonly accepted practices?

If there were no silos, no ruts, no precedents?

If there was only an open stream ahead of you? 

It's easy to get caught up in how things are. It's easy to worry about how to plug in to existing institutions, how to properly resource the field. A lot of effort is being spent on ways to connect existing organizations and build an infrastructure from what is currently in existence.  It's an intriguing concept. One that, most days, I want to fully support. 

But then I'm reminded that it's not an option for everyone.  And when that option doesn't exist, people find new ways of looking at how they want to work. We find new ways of building things and making work.  Connecting existing institutions and replicating infrastructure could be a fantastic new opportunity. But it's predicated on the idea that most of what currently exists should be saved. 

Most of what we see in terms of theatres are either built from ideas with roots in the industrial revolution, or in direct response to them. Both are tied together, and too often, theatres tend to look more like factories, shipping similar productions around the country as an auto-manufacturer would ship parts and cars.  If the factory-esque institutions of today looks nothing like what we see in an ideal future, why work to plug them in everywhere?

If you had the opportunity for a fresh start, or were able to unlearn what you "know" about making theatre, what would you want to create?  I think that's a major question, one that's yet to be fully explored. I wonder what could be lost by skipping it?

Photo  courtesy of davedehetre

In the beginning, there was Jane. Her work, along with others along the way, has been a major inspiration for most of my work. Just as she was careful not to call it her "life's work", I try to avoid that term, though in truth it has occupied much of my life. As it had hers.

I had planned on writing something very different today. I was in the process of finishing the draft of the post I was working on when I glanced at my twitter feed and saw a link to this headline.

Hull House to close

I'll be honest, I'm having a really hard time processing this. . .

Perhaps it is a symbol of how our time is a reflection of our previous selves contrasting with our current selves. It would be easy to simply say, "times are hard. This charity couldn't cut it", and leave it at that. The idea that you can rate the impact of a charity through budgetary ideals has long since taken over the philanthropic sector, trading long term commitment for short term financials. For decades, nonprofit organizations have been told to be more like businesses.

Of course this forgets that most businesses are horribly run; most businesses lack any long-term impact; most businesses never change a damn thing. The idea of business-minded, financial "metrics" as the only way to rate a service organization's use conveniently forgets that if there were money to be made, there would be no need for any philanthropic initiatives. 

Perhaps the 60,000 plus people that are helped each year will be better served by another organization. After all, the original settlement house stopped operating in the sixties. The house is still there, it now serves as a musuem.

Perhaps the millions of people that have been helped since Jane Addams and others opened Hull House would have pulled themselves up by their boot straps and "made it."  At a time when there was no social safety net that was highly doubtful. Hull House, and charities inspired by their work--for they were part of the formation of the very idea of modern social service organizations--have always set out to help those who no one else would help: women, children and immigrants, among others.

The policy of the public authorities of never taking an initiative, and always waiting to be urged to do their duty, is obviously fatal in a neighborhood where there is little initiative among the citizens. The idea underlying our self-government breaks down in such a ward. The streets are inexpressibly dirty, the number of schools inadequate, sanitary legislation unenforced, the street lighting bad, the paving miserable and altogether lacking in the alleys and smaller streets, and the stables foul beyond description...

In every neighborhood where poorer people live, because rents are supposed to be cheaper there, is an element which, although uncertain in the individual, in the aggregate can be counted upon. It is composed of people of former education and opportunity who have cherished ambitions and prospects, but who are caricatures of what they meant to be–"hollow ghosts which blame the living men." There are times in many lives when there is a cessation of energy and loss of power. Men and women of education and refinement come to live in a cheaper neighborhood because they lack the ability to make money, because of ill health, because of an unfortunate marriage, or for other reasons which do not imply criminality or stupidity. Among them are those who, in spite of untoward circumstances, keep up some sort of an intellectual life; those who are "great for books," as their neighbors say. To such the Settlement may be a genuine refuge.

from Twenty Years at Hull House

Perhaps those in need can simply be "shifted" elsewhere. At a time when social safety nets are under constant attack, it remains highly doubtful.  The United States has changed in the almost 125 years the Hull House has existed. We have made some improvements in the Great Experiment. There has been progress; however, there is a tragically poetic link between the current conservative war on women, children and immigrants and the Hull House falling. I write this from a position of sadness that I find difficult to articulate.

To say that the Hull House helped people is an understatement. To say the Hull House germinated the earliest seeds of the American theater is unassailable. To say that one person can change their community is indisputable.  For most of my life, long before I moved to Chicago, the living symbol of that was the Hull House. 

Perhaps I'm just seeing the Hull House as a symbol. Symbols are easier to shift than cattle. Perhaps the lasting effect of the Hull House was that, for a time, a woman's dream made it so that people in need weren't thought of as cattle. The Settlement grew from a genuine refuge to a beacon of hope for millions.  

Perhaps that beacon be shifted as well?

Mark Shallow and Mark Pracht in The Runner Stumbles

Photo by Adam Dodds

I had a baseball coach way back in the day. He was my older brother's baseball coach as well.  I saw him probably 50 or so times a year for about five years. Larry had a goatee. Not the pseudo-fashionable goatee that was popular in the mid-nineties. He didn't have the faux-manly kinda goatee hipsters wore before the "ironic" mustache craze. Larry's goatee was long and bushy, like he had a muskrat-skin mask hanging from his face.

Larry's goatee was so long, you could hide a catcher's mitt behind it. I saw just such a thing happen once. Larry's goatee was so complete, you could have put a blue coat on him, sent him in a Delorean back to the civil war, and no one would have noticed the new guy was out of place.

A few years later, I was working in a car shop and a portly guy walked in. I hollered at him that I'd be there in just a second, and started wiping the grease off my hands as I walked over to the front door.

"Can I help you sir?" I asked.

"Is John there?" He asked, with a weird smirk on his face. 

"Yeah, just a sec, I'll get him. Can I ask who's looking for him?"

"It's me Tony," he said and started laughing.

I must have had a very confused look on my face.

"I shaved," he said. 

I hadn't recognized the newly clean shaven Larry. Here was my old baseball coach, who I'd known for about six years. I had no idea who he was.

At that point John walked up, "Someone looking for me?"

Larry looked at him, "I was just driving by and thought I'd stop in and say hi."

John looked confusedly at him, "Can I help you...."

Larry laughed again.

"Dad?" John said. "Oh my God, I didn't ... Woah."

They walked out and started talking. I didn't feel so bad for not recognizing Larry without his goatee. His own son didn't recognize him either. When John came back he told me he had never actually seen his father clean shaven before.

I didn't recognize Larry at first, without the goatee. Once I made the realization, it was obvious. I think that is similar to how great ideas happen. They're there the whole time, hidden behind other stuff so we don't see them. When I hear people talk about designing entire new systems for new ideas, creative methodologies and the like, I wonder how many great ideas are already right there in front of us. Just waiting to be recognized. Just waiting to be tried?

For ninety-percent of the issues a theatre faces, the solutions are staring us in the face. We just need to recognize them. There's a world of difference between "I can't" and "We can't"; just as there is between "We can't" and "We haven't been able to yet." It's okay to not recognize a great new idea at first, just as I hadn't recognized Larry at first.

The difference between "I can't" and "We can't" is trust. There are many things that I can't do.  But I have to trust that someone I know can, or give up. When you say "we haven't been able to yet", you are trusting that it is possible, someone can find the answer. Sometimes you have to find new people with new perspectives to find that answer, but it is possible.  

When you say, "we can't", you've given up. You no longer trust that something can change, that a solution can be found. You no longer trust in your people. 

Often, the first time an arts leader says "We can't" is the day they need to step down. 

Company Member Warren Lavon at the first readthrough of Trickster. 

You can catch him next in Urban Theatre's F**king A .

Ben Cameron talks about Cornerstone Theater Company, one of the companies whose work has greatly inspired us.