When Clothes Made the Woman
NEW YORK CITY: Before the mass media came along to instruct us who to admire and what to buy, the popular stage was doing its part as a trend-setter. “The theatre is what people did,” says Michele Majer, assistant professor of European and American clothing and textiles at Bard Graduate Center. “Everybody went to the theatre, from the rich down to the working class. And there was an acute awareness of actresses as fashion leaders. That was the case even before there was a regularly published fashion press.” When a fashion press did emerge in the late 1800s, Majer contends, the power of theatre only intensified: “There are always references to what is playing in the theatres or at the opera, and references to what women attending were wearing and what the women on stage were wearing.”
The convergence of fashion and stage actresses is the subject of “Staging Fashion, 1880–1920: Jane Hading, Lily Elsie, Billie Burke,” an exhibition on display at Bard Graduate Center through April 8. Majer notes that the emergence of photography and the establishment of the couture industry were also concurrent factors in disseminating the latest fads and crazes, from the Merry Widow hat, popularized by Lily Elsie, to “Billie Burke curls” (eventually immortalized by her screen role as Glinda in The Wizard of Oz).
Majer points out that this trend coincided with a “re-gendering of audiences at the turn of the century. Women in general were becoming more independent and more actively engaged in the public arena. And around that time the attitude toward actresses really shifted, and they were seen less as these immoral women who displayed themselves for money, and more as women who actually had a profession and were role models for other women.”
The exhibit, which coincides with a lavish new book of the same title, features postcards, playbills, clothing and accessories. “Actresses always had access to beautiful clothes,” Majer states. “And for couturiers, it’s such a great form of publicity that they would offer good prices to theatre management.” While regular mortals can meet their ancestors at a museum of natural history, today’s red-carpet and runway show ponies can go to this exhibit to commune with their forebears. Go to www.bgc.bard.edu.
Good Moves
NEW YORK CITY: The last few years of recession have brought plenty of bad tidings concerning theatre closures, bankruptcies and crises. But not all theatrical real estate news is grim these days.
Consider the happy ending for both Women’s Project and its new home, the Cherry Lane Theatre. This time a year ago, the 87-year-old venue in New York’s West Village was on the ropes, with owner/artistic director Angelina Fiordellisi announcing plans to sell it, while the longtime home of the venerable Women’s Project—a former church building in Hell’s Kitchen—lost its heating and air-conditioning system and had to be sold. In the first case, West Village residents came forward to stop closure of the landmark where plays by the likes of Samuel Beckett, Edward Albeeand Sam Shepard had their U.S. premieres. And for her part, Fiordellisi had been wooing Women’s Project producing artistic director Julie Crosby to make the move downtown. A co-producer of the Women’s Project’s 2010 production of Sheila Callaghan’s Lascivious Something, Fordellisi says, “I was there the day the air-conditioning died.” For her part, Crosby notes one advantage of her company’s new home, besides its more manageable rent: “The Cherry Lane has showers for the actors. We like clean actors.” The first production in this new partnership will be in June with We Play for the Gods, a work devised by 16 members of the Women’s Project Lab.
Across the river in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn, St. Ann’s Warehouse has signed a new three-year lease at 29 Jay Street, less than a mile away from its current home at 38 Water Street (which was approved by the city in 2009 for commercial redevelopment, leaving the theatre scrambling for a new venue). The new 19,000-square-foot warehouse will host St. Ann’s starting in fall 2012 and its expansiveness will allow the theatre to continue presenting shows in numerous configurations. In the meantime, St. Ann’s is still looking for a permanent home. Visit www.womensproject.org and www.stannswarehouse.org.
Curtains Up in Florida
ORLANDO and LAUDERHILL, FLA.: Cities in Florida are also stepping up for the performing arts: Mad Cow Theatre in Orlando, seeded by an initial $808,000 grant from the city and from local developers 55 West, is more than halfway to matching those funds, with plans to open a two-theatre complex in downtown Orlando by next fall. See www.madcowtheatre.com.
Another Florida city with big plans for the performing arts is Broward County’s Lauderhill, just west of Fort Lauderdale, where county commissioner Dale Holness broke ground in November 2010 on a new cultural arts center. The planned Lauderhill Performing Arts Center will include a 1,200-seat hall, a black box, rehearsal spaces and a community library. Though the project has hit some funding snags and is currently seeking a new contractor, Lauderhill’s mayor, Richard Kaplan, remains confident that the “plan is to go forward.”
Bay Area Buzz
SAN FRANCISCO: The city’s largest theatre company, American Conservatory Theater, whose storied mainstage is situated downtown, just opened one of its city’s smallest performance spots in the space below its Mid-Market neighborhood costume shop. The new 49-seat black box venue, called the Costume Shop, will host an eclectic lineup of professional and ACT MFA program productions, and will also be rented out to local artists and troupes. The historic Mid-Market area has been the focus of city redevelopment hopes, with other arts-related tenants including Boxcar Theatre and Black Rock Arts Foundation, the nonprofit arm of Burning Man.
Meanwhile, on San Francisco’s Embarcadero, circus/cabaret company Teatro ZinZanni plans a permanent home not far from Pier 29, where its antique Spiegeltent welcomed upwards of 800,000 patrons in its 11-year run. The company closed its hit show On the Air, featuring local clown hero Geoff Hoyle, on New Year’s Eve, with plans to open in the new venue by the end of this year. The San Francisco port is another focus of the city’s redevelopment efforts. Visit www.act-sf.organd www.love.zinzanni.org
The English Resident
ESSEX, ENGLAND: Since 1969, the University/Resident Theatre Association has represented the nation’s theatre training programs and partnered with professional theatres. With the addition of the U.K.’s East 15 Acting School, which is associated with the University of Essex, U/RTA has officially expanded into an international consortium.
“East 15 more than met the criteria shared by U/RTA member institutions,” said U/RTA executive director Scott Steele. Among the factors that set East 15 apart: It offers a MFA in acting and directing; most European schools offer the M.A. as the ultimate training in those fields. Another plus: East 15’s success with American students alongside British pupils. The organization’s pedigree could hardly be better: It grew out of the Theatre Workshop begun by the iconic director/actress Joan Littlewood (Oh What a Lovely War, A Taste of Honey), and in years since its visiting professionals have included John Doyle, Peter Hall, Fiona Shaw, Michael Frayn, Maria Friedman, Willy Russell and Cameron Mackintosh. Optional studies include stints at the Russian University of Theatre Arts (GITIS) in Moscow and in Bali to learn Eastern theatre traditions. Visit www.east15.ac.uk and www.urta.com.
A Science of the Arts
WASHINGTON, D.C.: Do the arts work, and for whom? Those are the basic questions shaping the National Endowment for the Arts’s new federal inter-agency task force, designed to elicit and advance research on the impact of the arts on people of all ages and abilities. Grouped under the rubric “human development” and enlisting the cooperation of various departments (such as Health and Human Services and Education), the new task force will fill in gaps in research and coordinate information about funding opportunities for both arts researchers and arts providers. “It is my job to support artists and arts organizations in their prime mission: making art,” says NEA chair Rocco Landesman. “But we also have a responsibility to look beyond ourselves to see the ways in which our work connects with our fellow citizens and the world at large.” Go to www.nea.gov.
Greeks Bearing Lifts
WASHINGTON, D.C.: Aquila Theatre, based in New York City and focused on performing classics from Sophocles to Ibsen, has taken its repertoire on the road, sans costumes and set. In a program called Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives, readings of Greek classics take place not on curtained stages, but in libraries and art galleries across the nation.
In November, the company added another august venue to its long list: the White House. At the Eisenhower Executive Office building, in front of an audience that included White House officials and war veterans, the group read selections from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Euripides’ Herakles, Sophocles’ Ajax and Homer’s Odyssey. The performers were a mixture of professional and amateur actors, some of whom are also combat veterans. The event—which also included Maine Humanities Council’s reading program, Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Healthcare—was hosted by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The idea for Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives came to Aquila artistic director Peter Meineck from a desire to make theatre more accessible. “Americans, immigrants, working people—they’re at the library,” he explained in a post-performance reception in the Secretary of War Room. “They can’t afford to come to the theatre, they can’t afford to buy subscriptions. We have to go to them and get them interested in what we do.”
The veteran experience is one focus of the program because Meineck is a former Royal Marine and a volunteer EMS. “It’s very near and dear to my heart,” he said. Other areas of interest include immigration and contemporary American life, and every reading is followed by a discussion.
At the White House post-performance talkback, audience members praised the sensitivity of the material. The wife of a Marine identified with the ending of the Odyssey, when actors Brian Delate and April Yvette Thompson grabbed hands, reuniting Odysseus and Penelope: “It brought it home for me, so I thank you,” she said. “My husband was home for three months before we really realized he was home, and we finally held hands with each other.”
Delate, a Vietnam War veteran, also experienced emotional clarity when he was forced to relive his combat memories via the stage, not just through the Ancient Greeks program but in his one-man show Memorial Day. “Theatre helped me to get a window into the truth about my experiences,” he mused. “I didn’t know how scared I was, and when I had to relive it theatrically, I received an understanding that I didn’t have before about my own combat experience.”
Ancient Greeks is funded by an $800,000 grant from the NEH, the first time such an amount has been awarded to a theatre company, enabling the program to travel to 100 communities from 2010 to 2013. For more information, including tour stops in 2012, visit http://ancientgreeksmodernlives.org.
—Diep Tran
The ‘Pentagon Papers’ Chase
LOS ANGELES and CHINA: The story told by the Pentagon Papers—the massive government-conducted study of the USA’s entanglement with Vietnam between 1940 and 1967—is rich and complicated enough by itself, but the tale of its confidential creation and later dissemination is at least as intriguing. Geoffrey Cowan and Leroy Aarons’s play Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers treats the drama that unfolded in 1971, when Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham decided to publish the leaked papers in defiance of a federal court order that had blocked the New York Times from printing them.
Now the play has experienced some drama of its own. After producing it stateside, L.A. Theatre Works took Top Secret on tour to three Chinese cities last November and December. The response was resoundingly warm—until, suddenly, it wasn’t.
“We did post-play discussions after every show in Shanghai,” recalls Susan Loewenberg, LATW’s producing director, who teamed with Alison Friedman’s Ping Pong Productions to produce the tour at an estimated cost of $175,000. “Virtually the entire audience stayed for them.” But when the production got to Sun Yatsen University in Guangzhou, the post-show discussion was cancelled. Things came to a head when the tour stopped next at Beijing’s Peking University.
“About one week before we were supposed to play there, there was a danger of the show being cancelled,” says Loewenberg. “We didn’t tell anyone, not even the author. We had to convince many levels of bureaucracy to let us go through with it.” The show did go on, but not before organizers were ordered to stop selling tickets for the university’s 2,200-seat theatre when they reached sales of just 1,000.
The last shoe dropped at intermission, when producers received a text message from authorities that the post-show discussion would be cancelled. Friedman jumped up on stage at the end to announce this change of plans to a stunned audience. For Loewenberg, this incident only made the play more relevant.
“Everybody got it,” she says. “It’s a play about the American government acting badly, but it’s also a play about the American press in one of its finest moments. In the post-show discussions and on Weibo (the Chinese equivalent of Twitter), rarely did it overtly become a discussion about freedom of the press. But everyone knew that’s what it was about. This wasn’t just a feel-good cultural exchange.”
Meanwhile, at the Santa Monica Playhouse, playwright J-Powers’s multi-monologue rendition of the document itself, called simply Pentagon Papers, plays Feb. 5-March 25. Powers likens the historical document to “the Grand Canyon—it’s vast and has a kind of beauty, but if you descend into any cranny of it, it’s fascinating. We were never even supposed to know about it, but I think it’s one of the greatest works of American literature—it exposes the American character in such granular detail.” No word yet on post-show discussions.
—Rob Weinert-Kendt
