Making Tech Week Count

SAN FRANCISCO: There’s tech week, and then there’s tech weak. The former describes that exhausting and stress-inducing period of time before opening night when actors, directors and designers turn to junk food and let leg and facial stubble accumulate as technical and staging decisions get ironed out. The latter, tech weak, is too often the state of affairs—and a fair description of the collective state of body and mind of artists during tech.

Of all the development residencies out there, few address this final leg of the play-development journey. Z Space, however, is taking on the challenge with its new Technical Development Residency program.

Funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts will support the venue’s late-stage residency model. Says Z Space programming director David Szlasa, “Performance-makers need more time in a full-production environment prior to opening if they are to develop outstanding new works. Tech week allows very little time for experimentation or exploration of ideas.”

The program has been designed for artists who implement ample integrated design and technology components that are central to productions. Each residency will span two to five weeks with full technical staff support and take place in Z’s performance space, which boasts a 42-by-64-foot stage. Works-in progress can be presented but are not a requirement of the residency.

“Z Space’s technical residencies will facilitate a new chapter of American art-making,” opines Brandi Brandes, the former general manager of LEVYdance, a consortium partner with Z Space on the NEA grant that helped launch the program. Selected residents include Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Sara Shelton Mann, Joe Goode Performance Group, Sarah Wilson with Catch Me Bird, the Bengsons and Big Art Group. Go to www.zspace.org.

A Lobbying Team for D.C. Stages

WASHINGTON, D.C.: When the capital’s cash-strapped city council briefly floated the idea of a tax on theatre tickets in May 2011, it got a let ter of protest from Linda Levy Grossman, president and CEO of the Helen Hayes Awards. The annual awards show itself wasn’t in danger. But over the years, the organization had assumed the role of local theatre advocate and supporter, a role taken on in other cities by the likes of LA Stage Alliance, Theatre Bay Area and the League of Chicago Theatres.

Now it’s official: The Hayes Awards have become just one of the programs administered by the newly branded theatreWashington. With six full-time employees and five part-timers, the $1-million-budget organization will consolidate audience services, including comprehensive theatre listings and ticket discounts, through a new website, www.theatrewashington.org. The expansion is the result of two years of
study by experts supplied via a Compass Foundation grant, and work by the graphic design and communications firm Unconformity.

It’s about time, says Alli Houseworth, theatreWashington’s director of communications and audience development. “D.C. is a tremendous theatre town—it just hasn’t had the branding,” says Houseworth, who until last summer worked for Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. “It’s not a tourist market, but while a percentage of the city has lived here for years and years—I grew up here—a vast amount are transient for three or four years. So there’s a significant amount of information-sharing work that has to be done. People usually think there’s just the Kennedy Center.” She even compares D.C.’s single-focus milieu to the one served by LA Stage Alliance. “We’re also overshadowed here by that ‘other’ industry.” Indeed, in a town full of lobbyists and advocates, why shouldn’t D.C. theatres have their own?

—Rob Weinert-Kendt

Queer Directions

NEW YORK CITY: “For 10 years I didn’t make work with specific queer content,” says filmmaker Ira Sachs. “The lack of any institutional and economic support for queer artwork had a significant effect on those choices.”

To redress that lack, Sachs has launched (with co-curator Lily Binns) the Queer/Art/Mentorship program, the first of its kind, focused on providing support for emerging queer artists. Sachs sees a need for intergenerational relationships in the gay community, particularly in light of the AIDS epidemic, and because today’s art world has changed dramatically since the ’80s.

The program joins mentors and mentees across five disciplines: performance, visual arts, film, curation and writing. Representing the performing arts are Justin Vivian Bond, who will counsel Yve Laris Cohen as Cohen continues to develop Duet, a dance piece exploring queer intergenerational relationship; and John Kelly, matched with Harrison Rivers, who is working on a theatre piece based in part on Marcel Duchamp’s marriage.

There is some interdisciplinary hopping, however. Theatre critic Hilton Als has been paired with Pati Hertling, who will develop a salon series based on content and information exchange that draws on her previous work Evas Arche und der Feminist. Playwright and performer Jess Barbagallo will be taken under the wing of poet Stacy Szymaszek for a poetic essay about loss and unexpected absence.

“I am interested in being part of a queer arts movement, a cohort of people bringing more visibility to queer history, aesthetics and life practices in art production,” says Barbagallo, who like Sachs recognizes the dearth of consistent institutional support for gay theatre artists over the years. “I am excited to hear a queer voice in theatre—a voice that presupposes that gender is not static, sex has a multiplicity of definitions, and that family and identity are more acts of imagi nation than static realities,” she says. Go online: http://queerartmentorship.org.

A Mammoth Change

WASHINGTON, D.C.: Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company may be thirtysomething now (31, to be precise), but it’s not too late for a makeover. Over the past year, a task force composed of Woolly staff and board members met to examine the past and future of the company. Helmed by artistic director Howard Shalwitz, the team decided to add more artists of different disciplines into the company fold. Formed in 1986 (six years after Woolly’s birth) as a group of core actors, the company will now, for the first time, include directors, playwrights and designers. Says Shalwitz, “We hope to tighten the connections among three key aspects of Woolly Mammoth’s mission: to develop and produce provocative new plays, to build and sustain a company of outstanding theatre artists, and to engage deeply with our community.”

The new company members include lighting designer Colin K. Bills, playwright/director Michael John Garcés, set designer Misha Kachman, playwright/director Robert O’Hara, actor Emily Townley and director John Vreeke, many of whom worked together on Woolly’s recent staging of A Bright New Boise by Samuel D. Hunter. Director of artistic development Miriam Weisfeld points out that the addition of company members goes against the grain of what many theatres across the country have done; though initially founded and driven by artists, many theatres now “job in” that talent.

“In addition to our own experiences, we surveyed colleagues, such as Steppenwolf and Dallas Theater Center, about how their companies have evolved and thrived,” Weisfeld says. “We want to head as far away as possible from what Woolly collaborator Mike Daisey characterized in How Theatre Failed America as ‘freeze-dried theatre,’ in which artists based in New York or Los Angeles shuttle between theatres throughout the country. Instead, we’re strengthening our core team of artists so we can plan more projects with them at the center.” Read more: http://woollymammoth.net

O’Neill, Lost and Found

It could be the scenario for a Eugene O’Neill play, and in a sense it is—but one that O’Neill never wrote:

SCENE: Screenwriter Philip Yordan’s 50-foot-long library, where bookcases, filing cabinets and boxes spill remnants of his life. His widow, Faith Yordan, plows through the morass. She takes an aged envelope from a file drawer and removes a sheaf of brittle pages. Excited, she makes a phone call.

FAITH: Paul, I’ve found a script called Exorcism by Eugene O’Neill. A note says “from Agnes and Mac.” Could it be important?

Thus began the discovery of O’Neill’s “lost” one-act play Exorcism, all copies of which he had reportedly destroyed. O’Neill had burned manuscripts before, but not those good enough to be produced. Exorcism had been staged: On March 26, 1920, the Provincetown Players opened a two-week run of the play at the Provincetown Playhouse on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village.

So why did O’Neill try to destroy this play? It got mixed reviews, but so had others. Exorcism was different: a stark dramatization of O’Neill’s attempted suicide and reported emotional rebirth in 1912. Some say it revealed too much about his family, especially since his father was dying at the time. More likely, it revealed too much of O’Neill, even for this most autobiographical of playwrights.

After Faith Yordan’s discovery in February 2011, TV executive and UCLA professor Paul Nagle contacted Diane Schinnerer, longtime officer of the Eugene O’Neill Society and Eugene O’Neill Foundation, as well as archivist of the foundation’s library. “She asked me two questions,” Nagle recalls. “Did it have a character named Jimmy? Was it about a suicide?” Both answers were yes.

Nagle approached representatives from Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, who recognized O’Neill’s handwriting and knew that “Agnes and Mac” were O’Neill’s discarded second wife Agnes Boulton and her then spouse, Morris (Mac) Kaufman. Boulton biographer W.D. King says O’Neill probably left Exorcism behind in his rush to be with Carlotta Monterey, the woman who would eventually become his third wife.

Horowitz then presented the 23-page document to Louise Bernard, curator at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Yale acquired the manuscript in June, and the New Yorker magazine published it in the Oct. 17 issue. Next year Yale University Press will publish Exorcism along with a facsimile of the manuscript with O’Neill’s handwritten revisions.

O’Neill said of the play, “The sooner all memory of it dies the better pleased I’ll be.” Maura O’Neill Jones, daughter of O’Neill’s son Shane—a suicide—disagrees. “This will give up-and-coming playwrights a look into the growth of a genius,” she says. “It was a little hard to read because of all the suicides in the family, but also uplifting because he worked it out.”

—Jo Morello

Dayton Itself

DAYTON, OH.: The Human Race Theatre Company had the routine down. For 10 years now, its Theatre In Context education program, developed with the local company Muse Machine, has toured self-contained shows to area schools, both to prepare school audiences for their evenings at Human Race’s mainstage shows and, in many cases, to expose underserved young folks to theatrical concepts. When Human Race did Man of La Mancha, for example, schools were treated to a commedia dell’arte primer; Twelfth Night’s touring show was a look at Shakespeare’s buffoons.

But as an appetizer for Human Race’s production of Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori’s dramatic musical Caroline, or Change, which ran Nov. 3-20, broad comedy of that sort didn’t seem sufficient. So producing artistic director Kevin Moore turned to playwright Michael Slade and commissioned a new work called Change, which looks at three epochal moments in American history that “changed the way we look at things”: the Kennedy assassination, 9/11 and the 2008 election of Barack Obama. In that 45-year span, Slade highlights the successive breakdown of unanimity as successive upheavals rattle the nation—including an ostensibly positive change, the election of its first black president.

“I wanted to show that reaction to change, to cataclysmic moments, can have different faces,” says Slade. “A horrible thing can inspire hope and inspiration; a wonderful thing can inspire suspicion.”

Writers may run hot and cold on the value of post-show talkbacks, but in the case of Change, these were a built-in feature. Slade was able to attend some of these wide-ranging discussions in October, when Change began rolling out to students in grades 6-12.

“It was so exciting being in an inner-city downtown Dayton school, where the students just recently organized a drama club and found a teacher to be their advisor, because there was no funding for it; or in a school that you have to drive an hour to get to, and it’s sitting in the middle of a cornfield,” the playwright recalls. “There were fascinating conversations in both those communities.”

Human Race’s Moore sees the program as a way to pay it forward. “We say we’re building future audiences. We may not be building ours—unless the job market changes, they’re not going to stay. But we’re building somebody’s future audience.” Go to www.humanracetheatre.org.

Small Opera, Big Noise

SAN FRANCISCO: Playwright and teaching artist Erin Bregman found herself so inspired by the work she did with children through the ARIA program at San Francisco Opera that she decided to create a program of her own. Little Opera, which she started this past September along with Alona Bach, is both an entirely kid-driven opera company and an educational initiative. The young members create an original opera
each season.

“Students meet for two 90-minute classes a week from September through March, and take master classes taught by notable Bay Area artists, including California Shakespeare Theater actor Elena Wright and acclaimed directors Matthew Graham Smith and Jon Tracy,” says Bregman, who points out that roughly 85 percent of the current class of students benefit from free or reduced tuition.

“The act of creating and performing their own opera gives the students ownership over their work and an educational experience that will last a lifetime.” For their inaugural production, which will premiere in March, the young artists have decided their opera will unfold in an unfriendly forest where a prima donna, or lost girl, encounters “creatures of the night as she finds her way to safety.” Now that’s an aria with a twist. Visit http://littleopera.org.

Drummers and Joiners

BROADVIEW HEIGHTS, OH.: Your local school auditorium is seldom the place you’d look for cutting-edge theatre. But Nov. 4-6, Brecksville-Broadview Heights Middle School hosted something other than the usual school drama production: Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie, adapted from a young-adult novel by Jordan Sonnenblick, had its world premiere there as a benefit for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

Adaptor/director Bruce Orendorf, whose son attends the school, found Sonnenblick’s book on his son’s accelerated reading list and saw an opportunity. A professional Chicago theatre veteran who moved back to the Cleveland area to raise his family, Orendorf got the author’s permission to adapt the book, which tells of an eighth-grader whose jazz band stages a benefit for his own younger brother, who’s been diagnosed with leukemia.

Says Michelle Adamczyk, a parent who stepped in as the show’s producer, “In working with the students, Bruce aims to educate, challenge, inspire and develop acting skills far beyond that of a traditional middle school level. And in terms of design, Bruce used the inspiration of photographer David Hockney and his ‘joiners’ photography—one that uses deconstruction of images and pieces them back together.”

Orendorf’s adaptation features a cast of 42 and an original score by his son Henry, a drummer, co-written with local artist Ellen Backman. No word on who’ll be baking the dangerous pie. Visit www.bbhcsd.org.

Props for the Playhouses

FAIRFIELD, CONN.: This colonial settlement town boasts no major theatre of its own, but it sits amid some illustrious American theatre history, including Westport Country Playhouse, Lucille Lortel’s erstwhile White Barn Theatre (also in Westport) and the much-lamented former American Shakespeare Theatre in nearby Stratford.

“There are 60 performing arts organizations in Fairfield County,” says Kathie Bennewitz, director of exhibitions and programs for the Fairfield Museum and History Center, where an exhibit highlighting the region’s storied theatrical legacy recently opened (it’s up through March 18). Titled “Bravo: A Century of Theatre in Fairfield County,” the exhibit is meant “not only to celebrate the past,” Bennewitz emphasizes, “but to inspire audiences of tomorrow. We want to show that this is living history.”

Not all of it is living: Props, costumes and playbills from long-extinct theatres line the walls of the 2,000-square-foot gallery, along with artifacts from more recent productions, and of the major theatres featured in the exhibit, only the Westport Country Playhouse is still operating. “We combed people’s basements throughout the area,” Bennewitz says of the exhibit’s impressive haul, which in addition to production photos and poster art includes old ticket boxes, seats and pulleys. Go to www.fairfieldhistory.org.

Seeing Red

NORFOLK, VA.: In October, the folks at Virginia Stage Company made their city a more colorful place. Via a monthlong event dubbed “Paint the Town Red,” the primary hue popped up all over, including on lawns, bike racks and public fountains.

The campaign was inspired by VSC’s production of John Logan’s play Red, which ran Oct. 18-Nov. 6, about abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko. To bring the play to vivid life, the company partnered with the Chrysler Museum of Art (which has six Rothkos on display until January), Norfolk Botanical Garden, the Virginia Zoo and REDRAIL (a performance art event along the city’s new rail line), all of which displayed the color in some mode.

The theatre’s artistic director (and director of Red), Chris Hanna, says the “Paint” promotion was a way of gathering different parts of the community. “We are working on building a creative community, rather than an isolated arts event.” Accordingly, some 500 Norfolk residents were photographed for the project, while answering the query, “What are you RED about?” Their red-lit faces were displayed on storefront windows throughout the city.

According to Hanna, this initiative attracted an audience to Red whose eyes might not otherwise have been caught by a Rothko bio-play. “Even if people don’t come, they are still engaging in conversation about the play or the color,” Hanna adds. “It’s a leg-up to attracting them to the theatre in a larger sense. They’ll find their way here.” More info: www.vastage.com.

Just Sign Here

NEW YORK CITY: The Signature Theatre’s footprint is about to get a lot larger—both in terms of physical real estate and in terms of programming scope and breadth. A theatre founded by James Houghton in 1991 to highlight the work of one living playwright per season, Signature will use its big new theatre complex on West 42nd Street (Signature Center, designed by Frank Gehry and slated to open in February 2012) to house the work of many more than one scribe at a time. The playwright-in-residence program is now called “Residency One,” and this season it will host Athol Fugard and his plays Blood Knot, My Children! My Africa! and The Train Driver (published in AT, Sept. ’10). Its “Legacy Program,” designed to bring back previous resident playwrights, will feature The Lady from Dubuque, a 1980 Edward Albee play.

Signature’s biggest leap, though, is in its “Residency Five” program. It’s not just a matter of increasing the number of playwrights served—the inaugural list is Annie Baker, Will Eno, Katori Hall, Kenneth Lonergan and Regina Taylor—but in broadening access to a younger generation of writers. The first season will feature new plays by Eno (Title and Deed), Hall (Hurt Village) and Lonergan (as yet untitled).

The new structure sets Signature back an estimated $60 million, but don’t expect the company to take the cost out of ticketbuyers’ pockets. Continuing one of the city’s most enviable audience-development initiatives, the Signature has announced “A Decade of Access,” pledging to keep its single-ticket price to $25 for the next 10 years. It’s a plan to which any forward-looking funder should be happy to lend his or her signature. Visit www.signaturetheatre.org.

Entrances & Exits

• Blake Robison is the new artistic director of Ohio’s Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, after seven years as producing artistic director of Round House Theatre in Bethesda, Md. He takes over for Ed Stern, who completes his 20-year tenure at Cincinnati Playhouse at the end of the 2011-12 season.
• CEO/executive producer of the Old Globe in San Diego, Calif., Lou Spisto, has announced he will leave the theatre in December, after nine years there, to be an independent producer. General manager Michael J. Murphy will be interim managing director.
• Peter Matthews, co-artistic director and co-founder San Francisco’s Boxcar Theatre, is stepping down after seven years.
• North Coast Repertory Theatre of Solana Beach, Calif., has appointed William Kerlin as managing director. Kerlin was previously director of administration at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Florida for 16 seasons.
• Jorge Luis Cacheiro has assumed his post as the new chair of the Dyson College of Arts and Science’s Department of Performing Arts at Pace University. He succeeds Ruis Woertendyke, who, after six years at the helm, will now become the associate chair.
• Emileena Pedigo, who has served as managing producer of the Midtown International Theatre Festival for seven years, will resign from her position to focus on her company, The Show Goes On Productions. Pedigo will continue to serve as a consultant for the festival in the 2012 season.
• The Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival has hired actor-director Michael Marinaccio as its new producer. He succeeds Beth Marshall, who stepped down this past spring after seven years in the role.
• England’s Royal Shakespeare Company has announced that its artistic director Michael Boyd and executive director Vikki Heywood will step down at the end of 2012. Boyd has held his post since 2002. No replacements have yet been named.
• After 17 years as executive director of the Shaw Festival in Canada, Colleen Blake will retire in spring 2012. The festival is currently celebrating its 50th season.

Awards

• Signature Theatre of Arlington, Va., will bestow the third annual Stephen
  Sondheim Award on Patti LuPone next April.
• Playwright Amy Herzog (After the Revolution) is one of the recipients of the 2011 Whiting Writers’ Award, a $50,000 accolade.
• Playwrights Lisa D’Amour and Melissa James Gibson received the 2011 Steinberg Playwright Awards, in the amount of $50,000, at Lincoln Center Theater in November.
• In New York City, the Theatre Development Fund, Stephen Sondheim, Mikhail Baryshnikov and arts advocate Alice Diamond were among the recipients of the 2011 Mayor’s Awards for Art and Culture, presented by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
• James Earl Jones is the winner of the 2011 Paul Robeson Award. The winner of two Tony Awards, Jones is currently starring in Driving Miss Daisy on London’s West End.
• Helen Merrill Playwriting Awards, handed out in New York City in September, honored five playwrights with gifts of $20,000 each. The winners were Radha Blank, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Dorothy Fortenberry, Dan LeFranc and Lisa Kron.
• Among the beneficiaries of 2011 National Theatre Company Grants are Chicago’s TimeLine Theatre Company; Philadelphia’s Pig Iron Theatre Company; Albuquerque, N.M.’s FUSION Theatre Company; San Diego’s Mo’olelo Performing Arts Company; Austin’s Rude Mechanicals, Atlanta’s Synchronicity Theatre; Fayetteville, Ariz.’s TheatreSquared and Los Angeles’s Watts Village Theater Company. The
  $10,000 honor, sponsored by the American Theatre Wing, is given annually to 10 of the nation’s emerging professional theatres.
• Blanka Zizka, artistic director of Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater, has been named the 2011 recipient of the Zelda Fichandler Award. The prize, and its accompanying $5,000, recognizes accomplished and committed regional directors and choreographers.
• The Casting Society of America presented its annual Artios Awards in September. The winners in theatrical casting included Carrie Gardner, Bernard Telsey, Will Cantler, Mele Nagler, James Calleri, Laura Stanczyk, Samantha Barrie, Justin Huff, Michael Donovan and David Caparelliotis.
• Goodman Theatre of Chicago’s executive director Roche Schulfer and its director of development
  Dorlisa Martin have been awarded the “Equality in Action” medal for arts and culture, bestowed by Chicago gender equality organization Vision 2020.
• Director George C. Wolfe has received the 2011 “Mr. Abbott” Award for lifetime achievement, an honor named after director George Abbott.
• The third annual Gregory Awards were presented in October to theatre artists in Seattle. Among the winners was Bill Forrester, who received the Gregory A. Falls Sustained Achievement Award. ACT Theatre was named theatre of the year for the second year in a row.
• The Barrymore Awards celebrated Philadelphia-area theatre in October. Among the recipients were Terrence McNally, honored with the distinguished artist award, and the Wilma Theater, which won eight awards for its production of In the Next Room, or the vibrator play.
  
• The 2011 Iveys were distributed in September, recognizing theatre artists and productions in the Twin Cities. Among the 10 honorees were Ten Thousand Things’ production of Doubt; Live Action Set’s The 7-Shot Symphony; and Bain Boehlke, artistic director of Jungle Theater, who won the lifetime achievement award.
  
• Playwright and novelist Jessica Hagedorn was honored with the 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Asian American Writers’ Workshop.
• In October, New York City’s Lark Play Development Center hosted an event to honor Katori Hall for her Broadway play The Mountaintop. Concurrently, Sandi Goff Farkas, creator of the Lark’s PONY fellowship, was given the Lark Risktaker Award.
  
• The 2011 Kurt Weill Prizes for scholarship in musical theatre have been awarded to Fordham University professor Larry Stempel, who received the book prize and $5,000 for Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Theater; and David Savran, who earned the outstanding article prize and $2,000 for “Fascinating Rhythm” from his book Highbrow/Lowdown: Theater, Jazz, and the Making of the New Middle Class.
• Broadway producer Stewart F. Lane was presented with the John Denver Spirit Award in October for his efforts in promoting the late singer/songwriter’s music. Lane is the creator of A Moment in Time, a new musical featuring the music of John Denver.
• Theatre consultant Edgar L. Lustig has been named first fellow of the American Society of Theatre Consultants. Lustig has worked in the field for 46 years.
• TerraNOVA Collective of New York City has announced the six playwrights selected to develop work through its 2012 Groundbreakers Playwrights Group: Krista Knight, Jennifer Lane, Andrew Lepcio, Matthew Paul Olmos, Crystal Skillman and Ken Urban.
• Olney Theatre Center and Adventure Theatre are included in The Gazette of Politics and Business’ “P&B 53” list for 2011, which acknowledges top businesses and organizations in Maryland.