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By Line<br />
• Light on the Subject Makes a Case for<br />
Glamorous Paperwork<br />
• Making Choices on Sound for Jerry Springer<br />
at Carnegie Hall<br />
• How To Study Up for the First Interview<br />
www.stage-directions.com<br />
APRIL 2008<br />
Companies Choosing<br />
to Champion<br />
the Playwright<br />
new<br />
avenues<br />
for new plays<br />
SD examines the stages a play hits before<br />
it hits the stage<br />
Dramaturges Devoted to<br />
Developing New Work<br />
Directors Talk About How<br />
Their Venues Choose Plays
Table Of Contents<br />
April 2008<br />
Features<br />
18 A Cradle of Creation<br />
The University of Iowa has one of the oldest theatre programs<br />
in the country, but it’s dedicated to creating new work.<br />
By Amy Schoon<br />
22 Ganging Up on Art<br />
The Actors’ Gang Theatre in L.A. brings the audience in on<br />
their performances through fierce honesty and a commitment<br />
to storytelling. By Wayne Rawley<br />
24 Interview Tips for Interning<br />
It may be your first interview out of school, all the more<br />
reason to study up for it. By Evan Henerson<br />
Special Section: Literary Rights,<br />
Licensing and Management<br />
26 Licensing at Different Levels<br />
Artistic Directors talk about the different demands to choosing<br />
and licensing plays at different levels of theatre.<br />
By Kevin M. Mitchell<br />
30 Circumventing Development Hell<br />
Believe it or not, there are ways to avoid having your play<br />
stuck behind the music stand. By Jonathan Shipley<br />
33 A Day in the Life<br />
We spend a day with three different dramaturges, to uncover<br />
their process and influence on the creation of new works.<br />
By Lisa Mulcahy<br />
33<br />
COURTESY OF CFPTS
Departments<br />
9 Letters<br />
The stage manager is now in complete command.<br />
10 In the Greenroom<br />
Statewide smoking bans take its aim at theatre,<br />
subsidiary rights cause a clash at Roundabout, and<br />
Lillenas Publishing celebrates 25 years of Christian<br />
drama.<br />
13 Tools of the Trade<br />
The new gear for your shop.<br />
14 Light on the Subject<br />
Paperwork may not be glamorous, but it still needs<br />
to be as put together as your leading lady. By Steven<br />
L. Shelley<br />
16 Sound Design<br />
Opera in Carnegie Hall is not unusual. An opera about<br />
Jerry Springer’s descent into hell? That’s unusual.<br />
By Bryan Reesman<br />
44 Answer Box<br />
The drinks are oversize, colorful and defy gravity. How<br />
one prop shop did the impossible. By L. Jean Burch<br />
18<br />
Columns<br />
7 Ed Note<br />
Is anything unstageable anymore?<br />
By Jacob Coakley<br />
26<br />
38 Show Biz<br />
The Dramatists Guild has a few pointers for theatres<br />
working with writers to create new plays. By Tim<br />
Cusack<br />
39 TD Talk<br />
Safety isn’t something that should be taken lightly<br />
— so why do we, all too often, let it be? By Dave<br />
McGinnis<br />
40 Off the Shelf<br />
Theatre classics get the on-screen treatment in this<br />
review of new theatre collections available on DVD.<br />
By Stephen Peithman<br />
41 The Play’s the Thing<br />
Got a little time? Got a lot? We’ve got the play for you.<br />
By Stephen Peithman<br />
ON OUR COVER: Lisa Rosenhagen in Eric Coble’s play For Better presented by<br />
the Curious Theatre Company<br />
PHOTOGRAPHY BY: Michael Ensminger
Editor’s Note<br />
What Is<br />
Unstageable?<br />
Dan Hernandez<br />
No one demands that playwrights<br />
confine themselves to Aristotle’s<br />
Unities anymore. They can be taken<br />
on as an organizing principle, a challenge<br />
of form, but they are not the only organizing<br />
principle. And with advances in staging<br />
technology, playwrights have access<br />
to write whatever epic scenic moments<br />
they want, comfortable in the knowledge<br />
that they can be staged literally — as long as you have the<br />
cash to do so. Helicopters, barricades and sheer ice cliffs don’t<br />
come cheap.<br />
Yet lack of money hasn’t stopped creative troupes from<br />
getting their hands dirty with broad cinematic tales, they just<br />
rely on different theatrical techniques — puppetry, integrated<br />
video or creative staging. And there are practically whole MFA<br />
playwriting programs given over to the idea of metaphorical<br />
writing, where characters’ inner thoughts aren’t explained in<br />
soliloquies, or even dialogue with a foil, but in interactions with<br />
fantastic characters from the protagonist’s deep subconscious<br />
brought to life — fully realized fugue states.<br />
And in different terms of unstageable, don’t forget Ionesco<br />
or Albee. Albee’s works contain parenthetical line readings for<br />
the actors to interpret as best they can, and Ionesco was absolutely<br />
dedicated to absurdist stage directions, full of remarks<br />
that characters do something — unless they don’t.<br />
Of course, there are movements that are acting as a counterweight<br />
to the trends of staging fantasy, playwrights who<br />
do adhere to the unities and companies that don’t even pretend<br />
to pretend — they write pieces from their POV, not a<br />
character’s, and perform as themselves, in the space they are<br />
in, acknowledging the complicity of the audience. And then<br />
there’s documentary theatre, performances culled from interviews<br />
and observation of communities.<br />
So is there anything you just can’t put on the stage? Besides<br />
smoking? (Joking, joking. Maybe.) Has playwriting become just<br />
like writing for film and television? If so, then what is the difference<br />
between theatre and film? What can theatre offer that<br />
film or TV can’t? And it can’t only be about the immediacy of<br />
the people around you and the uniqueness of the experience. I<br />
can get that from a concert, Disneyland or even a bus ride.<br />
For now, I think the uniqueness in theatre is about a<br />
recognition — acknowledged or not — of mutual makebelieve.<br />
Theatre cannot — ever — be an invisible medium.<br />
Film can make claims to documentary truth, a “you are there”<br />
verisimilitude that theatre, by its nature, is incapable of supporting.<br />
Truth can never be disintermediated in theatre, yet it<br />
seems to exist there all the same. Theatre, to me, seems to be<br />
the perfect place to practice Virginia Woolf’s dictum: “Tell all<br />
the Truth but tell it slant.”<br />
Jacob Coakley<br />
Editor<br />
<strong>Stage</strong> <strong>Directions</strong><br />
jcoakley@stage-directions.com
Publisher Terry Lowe<br />
tlowe@stage-directions.com<br />
Editor Jacob Coakley<br />
jcoakley@stage-directions.com<br />
Audio Editor Jason Pritchard<br />
jpritchard@stage-directions.com<br />
Lighting & Staging Editor Richard Cadena<br />
rcadena@plsn.com<br />
New York Editor Bryan Reesman<br />
bryan@stage-directions.com<br />
Managing Editor Breanne George<br />
bg@stage-directions.com<br />
Contributing Writers L. Jean Burch, Tim Cusack,<br />
Evan Henerson, Dave McGinnis,<br />
Kevin M. Mitchell, Lisa Mulcahy,<br />
Wayne Rawley, Bryan Reesman,<br />
Amy Schoon, Jonathan Shipley<br />
Consulting Editor Stephen Peithman<br />
ART<br />
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Advisory Board<br />
Joshua Alemany<br />
Rosco<br />
Julie Angelo<br />
American Association of<br />
Community Theatre<br />
Robert Barber<br />
BMI Supply<br />
Ken Billington<br />
Lighting Designer<br />
Roger claman<br />
Rose Brand<br />
Patrick Finelli, PhD<br />
University of<br />
South Florida<br />
Gene Flaharty<br />
Mehron Inc.<br />
Cathy Hutchison<br />
Acoustic Dimensions<br />
Keith Kankovsky<br />
Apollo Design<br />
Becky Kaufman<br />
Period Corsets<br />
Keith Kevan<br />
KKO Network<br />
Todd Koeppl<br />
Chicago Spotlight Inc.<br />
Kimberly Messer<br />
Lillenas Drama Resources<br />
John Meyer<br />
Meyer Sound<br />
John Muszynski<br />
Theater Director<br />
Maine South High School<br />
Scott Parker<br />
Pace University/USITT-NY<br />
Ron Ranson<br />
Theatre Arts<br />
Video Library<br />
David Rosenberg<br />
I. Weiss & Sons Inc.<br />
Karen Rugerio<br />
Dr. Phillips High School<br />
Ann Sachs<br />
Sachs Morgan Studio<br />
Bill Sapsis<br />
Sapsis Rigging<br />
OTHER TIMELESS COMMUNICATIONS PUBLICATIONS<br />
Richard Silvestro<br />
Franklin Pierce College
Letters<br />
Clues<br />
on Cues<br />
Got theatre questions? Looking for some<br />
info from people with more experience?<br />
Roll on over to the <strong>Stage</strong> <strong>Directions</strong> forums:<br />
http://stage-directions.com/forum to tap into<br />
readers with help on technical solutions, stagecraft<br />
and best practices in the theatre. One recent<br />
discussion found a poster asking a question<br />
about workflow backstage.<br />
Just wondering if anyone knows who is meant to<br />
call followspot cues in a theatre production?<br />
Terry Sullivan from Hayward, Calif., chimed in<br />
with this reply:<br />
It’s the stage manager’s responsibility. A really<br />
good SM will have written in his/her prompt<br />
book (and be able to verbalize in time) the location<br />
of the actor pickup (SL, SR, USC, etc.), the<br />
color in the boomerang, the style of the shot<br />
(head to waist, full body, etc.) and when to go<br />
out. Nowadays, it’s also possible to program<br />
into the light cue the actual fade up/fade out<br />
rates, so it’s getting more foolproof. Depending<br />
on how complex the show is, that may be more<br />
information than the SM will have the chance to<br />
say because they need to be cueing sound, lights,<br />
flies and set changes, among other things.<br />
Over the run of a show, a spot operator will<br />
begin to learn by heart what his or her cues<br />
are. But the general rule of theatre is: Don’t do<br />
anything until you are given a “Go” command<br />
by your stage manager. It may take some time<br />
to get the cueing tight so that everything flows<br />
in order as one big effect, but that’s what dress<br />
rehearsals are for. From the point of running the<br />
first technical rehearsal through the end of the<br />
run of the show, the stage manager is in charge<br />
of the production.<br />
Hope this helps.<br />
Terry Sullivan<br />
Technical Director/ Master Electrician<br />
Douglas Morrisson Theatre<br />
Hayward, CA
In the Greenroom<br />
theatre buzz<br />
Arkansas Tech Cancels, Reinstates Student Production of Assassins<br />
By Breanne George<br />
In the wake of school shootings at Northern Illinois University, Arkansas Tech University administration canceled a<br />
student production of Assassins, but later reinstated the production after outcry from students, faculty and even the show’s<br />
creators, Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman.<br />
Arkansas Tech University President Robert C. Brown had originally canceled the production, fearing that passerbys would<br />
mistake the blank bullets fired by actors and corresponding sound effects for real gunfire. Students and faculty members<br />
involved in the project were infuriated by the decision, believing administration unfairly targeted theatre.<br />
Reports of gunshots and a shooting injury did take place at recent student parties, but the students were reportedly football<br />
players, not actors. What’s more, administration also permitted a screening of the violent film American Gangster on campus.<br />
Brown’s decision caused a bevy of debate about whether he had overreacted, and in the process, thwarted artistic<br />
expression. A student to play a leading role in the production sent an e-mail to Sondheim, who responded quickly with<br />
support, stressing that Assasssins is not meant to condone violence and urging that the show go on. He also implied that he<br />
would contact Music Theatre International’s legal representatives (the company that holds the musical’s rights).<br />
The play was rescheduled with extra security measures, including seating by reservation, additional security personnel<br />
and bag checks. Actors were permitted to use prop guns and sound effects as intended.<br />
Subsidiary Rights Cause Clash at Roundabout<br />
The Roundabout Theatre Company’s upcoming season won’t include the off-Broadway production of A Prayer for My Enemy<br />
after a clash regarding subsidiary rights.<br />
Playwright Craig Lucas removed his play from the roster when the theatre company sought 40 percent subsidiary rights in<br />
exchange for a production at the Laura Pels off-Broadway space.<br />
A theatre’s subsidiary rights percentage reflects the amount a producer asks for from future licensings of the play; it’s their<br />
recompense for the value they add to the play by taking a risk and mounting the original production. Subsidiary rights are generally<br />
higher for a commercial (e.g., Broadway) run of a show. Roundabout’s 40 percent share is the highest for a non-profit in New<br />
York, on par with the percentage demanded by commercial producers, according to Variety. Percentages vary among New York<br />
nonprofit theatres, though Lincoln Center Theatre makes no subsidiary requests, reportedly due to its large endowment.<br />
Theatre Fights Smoking Ban<br />
By Breanne George<br />
It is in the hands of the Colorado Court of Appeals if<br />
smoking during a theatre performance is an exception to<br />
the state’s blanket indoor smoking ban enacted in 2006.<br />
The Denver Post reports that the Curious Theatre of<br />
Denver, Colo., took the issue to court after seeking permission<br />
to use smoking during an upcoming performance of the play<br />
TempOdyssey, which focuses around a chain smoker.<br />
The theatre lost its battle in the Denver District Court in<br />
Oct. 2006, and recently stated its case to the appeals court on<br />
Feb. 5. The court’s decision is expected in the coming weeks.<br />
While Colorado theatres are fighting for a right to smoke<br />
during performance, Minnesota’s bars have found a loophole<br />
in their statewide smoking ban through the theatrical<br />
performance exception.<br />
Many bars are staging “theatre nights,” in which they<br />
print out fake playbills and encourage guests to dress in<br />
costume. One bar even put up black stage curtains and<br />
signs that read “<strong>Stage</strong> Entrance” and “Props Dept.” And, of<br />
course, cigarettes and ashtrays are props.<br />
“Theatre night” at other bars, however, gives little<br />
resemblance of a theatrical production. The State Health<br />
Department is cracking down on the shams, but about 30 bars<br />
in Minneapolis have taken advantage of the faux productions.<br />
Lillenas Publishing<br />
Celebrates 25 years<br />
of Christian Drama<br />
Lillenas Publishing, one of the pioneers of Christian<br />
Drama, celebrates 25 years of providing drama during<br />
worship services. Paul Miller, who led the drama efforts<br />
at Lillenas, based in Kansas City, Mo., for many years says,<br />
“In the mid ‘80s, the leadership at Lillenas saw a need to<br />
put some resources behind a drama effort, and that was<br />
a big part of the initial ‘Christian drama movement.’”<br />
Miller points out that a big part of Lillenas Drama’s<br />
success was the talented writers who were tapped early<br />
on to develop material. Martha Bolton was a member<br />
of Bob Hope’s writing team when he asked her to do<br />
work for Lillenas. “Today’s church leaders realize the<br />
power of using drama to bring home the messages they<br />
are preaching,” she says. “Over the years, incorporating<br />
drama into worship has helped to open people’s hearts<br />
and minds.”<br />
Lillenas will hold its “Drama Arts Conference” April<br />
24–26 at the Indian Creek Church in Olathe, Kan. For<br />
information, go to www.lillenasconference.com.<br />
10 April 2008 • www.stage-directions.com
industry news<br />
Arcola Theatre Now Hydrogen Fuel Cell Powered<br />
London’s Arcola Theatre, one of the UK’s<br />
leading independent venues, has installed<br />
a hydrogen fuel cell to power selected<br />
main house shows. The fuel cell operates<br />
almost silently, producing nothing but<br />
electricity and clean water. The 5 kW fuel<br />
cell system is showcased in the foyer of the<br />
theatre accompanied by displays describing<br />
the benefits and challenges posed by<br />
this groundbreaking technology.<br />
The first show to be powered by the<br />
fuel cell, Simple8’s The Living Unknown Soldier, produced by<br />
Strawberry Vale, may well be London’s ecologically sustainable<br />
show — the environmental impact of all aspects of the production<br />
have been minimized, including set construction, marketing,<br />
company travel and show lighting. The production’s environmental<br />
footprint will be evaluated by leading sustainability advisers’<br />
Global Action Plan and the lessons learned published for the<br />
benefit of other practitioners.<br />
A scene from The Living Unknown Soldier<br />
Lighting for the show has a peak power<br />
consumption of 4.5 kW, up to 60 percent<br />
less than comparable lighting installations.<br />
This is made possible though extensive<br />
use of LED lighting, provided by leading<br />
lighting supplier White Light, and careful<br />
use of high efficiency tungsten lamps provided<br />
by ETC, maker of the energy-saving<br />
Source Four luminaire.<br />
This project is part of Arcola Theatre’s<br />
sustainability-related activities — under<br />
the banner of Arcola Energy — spearheaded by Dr. Ben Todd,<br />
the theatre’s executive director, who also works as a consultant in<br />
the fuel cell industry. He said: “The arts have a crucial role to play<br />
in elucidating and motivating the changes in lifestyle necessary<br />
to deliver an equitable future for all human kind. Through Arcola<br />
Energy, Arcola Theatre is demonstrating that bold changes can be<br />
made and that making them offers exciting opportunities for new<br />
creative partnerships.”<br />
ETC Announces LDI 2008 Student Sponsorships<br />
For the ninth year, Electronic Theatre Controls Inc. (ETC) will award six college students all-expense-paid trips to the 2008 LDI tradeshow<br />
in Las Vegas, Oct. 17-19, 2008.<br />
Undergraduate seniors and graduate students in lighting design, theatre technology or closely related fields are encouraged to<br />
apply. The sponsorship includes roundtrip airfare to the tradeshow, hotel accommodations, all meals, a full conference pass, an exclusive<br />
student reception and ETC swag. Recipients will check out the latest in entertainment technology, rub elbows with veteran luminaries<br />
of the industry, meet peers and go behind-the-LDI-scenes with ETC. The sponsorship application deadline is April 30. Students can<br />
download an application from ETC’s Web site at www.etcconnect.com.<br />
www.stage-directions.com • April 2008 11
Electrosonic Systems Inc. was contracted by The<br />
Metropolitan Opera to install compact AV systems in<br />
five New York City schools, one in each borough, to<br />
enable them to participate in the “Metropolitan Opera:<br />
Live in High Definition” series of performances.<br />
The educational institutions involved in the project<br />
are Susan E. Wagner High School in Staten Island; The<br />
High School for Enterprise, Business & Technology’s<br />
Grand Street Educational Campus in Brooklyn; Long<br />
Island City High School in Queens; Washington Irving<br />
Electrosonic Helps Schools See Opera<br />
High School in Manhattan; and The Lovinger Theater<br />
at Lehman College/City University of New York in the<br />
Bronx.<br />
“What makes this project so wonderful is that it<br />
brings opera to kids and communities who wouldn’t<br />
normally have exposure to it,” says Molly McBride of<br />
Sathya Production Services, who coordinated the event.<br />
“All of the schools became so excited about it that they<br />
changed their curriculums in all of their departments so<br />
they could contextualize the music for the kids.”<br />
changing roles<br />
Intiman Theatre Artistic Director<br />
Extends Contract<br />
Intiman Theatre Artistic Director Bartlett Sher has<br />
extended his contract through the end of the 2009<br />
production season. Sher is currently in New York<br />
directing the first Broadway revival of Rodgers and<br />
Hammerstein’s South Pacific, which opens on April<br />
3 at Lincoln Center Theater. He will direct the world<br />
premiere of Namaste Man, a play written and performed<br />
by Andrew Weems, at Intiman this spring.<br />
“Bart is an extraordinary artist,” said Intiman Board<br />
President Susan J. Leavitt. “His productions here and<br />
in New York confirm that he is one of the most vibrant,<br />
inventive and rigorous talents working anywhere<br />
in the country. The<br />
entire Intiman board<br />
is thrilled to extend<br />
his contract, and to<br />
be working so closely<br />
with him to set a<br />
course for the future<br />
that encompasses both<br />
the best opportunities<br />
for him and Intiman’s<br />
continued growth and<br />
stability.”<br />
Bartlett Sher<br />
12 April 2008 • www.stage-directions.com
Tools of the Trade<br />
Clear-Com’s V-Series Desktop<br />
Clear-Com Communication<br />
Systems V-Series Desktop<br />
unit is a compact desktop<br />
control unit that comes with<br />
a low-profile loudspeaker<br />
and gooseneck microphone.<br />
Each of its 12 talk-down/<br />
listen-up keys, including one<br />
for Answer-reply, has individual<br />
audio level control. A<br />
graphical display shows 10<br />
international characters. The<br />
shift button gives access to eight switch pages, and<br />
the menu button provides access to assignment and<br />
setup menus. Digital signaling processing gives the<br />
operator increased control over their panel’s audio,<br />
including routing, EQ, mic limiting, headset sidetone,<br />
as well as intelligent dimming and local IFBs. Panel<br />
keys offer individual mix level control, allowing users<br />
to set personal audio levels to suit individual workflows.<br />
www.clearcom.com<br />
Coemar’s CycLite LED<br />
C o e m a r ’ s<br />
C y c L i t e L E D i s a<br />
digital cyclorama<br />
for theatres. It is<br />
a new optical system<br />
( a n e x c l u s i v e<br />
C o e m a r p a t e n t )<br />
that features powerful LEDs and a color-mixing system<br />
(RGB+white source). Three unbound rotating bars<br />
(motorized in the two-cell version) allow symmetric<br />
and/or asymmetric light output, with linear adjustment<br />
of incidence angle via DMX. It is equipped with<br />
96 (48 in the compact, single-cell version CycLite LED<br />
SC) high-output two-watt LEDs. The white+RGB LED<br />
interaction provides bright colors and is designed to<br />
deliver the same full white you could previously only<br />
get from a conventional light source. CycLite Led is<br />
an energy-saving and multifunctional device: dimmer,<br />
color changer, light source projector, strobe effect and<br />
optics with precision adjustment. Long-life LEDs come<br />
with mechanical frame and solid, modular clamping.<br />
CycLite LED is also available in an outdoor IP65 weatherproof<br />
version. www.coemar.com<br />
Dynacord’s Variline VL62<br />
Dynacord’s Variline VL62 speaker<br />
is designed for permanent install<br />
and mobile applications. The VL<br />
62 full-range cabinet (150W RMS<br />
& 122 dB max SPL) features a neodymium<br />
6.5-inch woofer and a oneinch<br />
compression driver mounted<br />
to a CAD-optimized 90x40 rotateable<br />
horn for high SPL applications<br />
where minimal footprint is a<br />
concern. VL 62’s 16-Ohm operation<br />
allows up to eight cabinets to be connected in parallel<br />
to any Dynacord amplifier. Coupled with Dynacord<br />
Power-H remote control DSP amplifiers, FIR presets are<br />
designed to optimize performance, resulting in linearphase<br />
and equal magnitude response over the operating<br />
bandwidth of 90 Hz-20 kHz. www.dynacord.com<br />
Le Maitre’s G3000<br />
Le Maitre Special Effects, Inc.’s new G3000 Fog<br />
Effects Generator is powered<br />
by a 2,000-watt Dual<br />
Core Heating Block for continuous<br />
output. Features<br />
include low-fluid detection,<br />
LSG compatibility, DMX,<br />
RDM ready and a detachable<br />
digital remote. Built with a<br />
stainless-steel body and a<br />
one-gallon jug holder, it is designed for a multitude of<br />
environments. www.lemaitrefx.com<br />
Lightronics’ Ellipsoidals<br />
L i g h t r o n i c s i s n o w<br />
hipping ellipsoidals, which<br />
are available in 10°, 19°, 26°,<br />
36° and 50° beam spreads.<br />
They are equipped with<br />
a high-quality optical system<br />
with variable focus.<br />
The ellipsoidals’ housing<br />
is made from die-cast<br />
aluminum and the handles are insulated. Gel frames and<br />
gobo holders are also included. All ellipsoidals are<br />
available in a black or white finish and are covered by<br />
a two-year warranty. www.lightronics.com<br />
Martin Audio’s Omniline<br />
Martin Audio’s Omniline<br />
micro-line array system is<br />
designed to use anywhere<br />
between four and 32 modules<br />
to create an array for<br />
any environment. Visually,<br />
the array is slim and unobtrusive,<br />
with soft lines that<br />
minimize its visual presence.<br />
The actual array configuration<br />
for a specific<br />
venue is determined by<br />
patent-pending optimization<br />
software, which makes<br />
judgements about the viability<br />
of the arrays’ SPL distribution<br />
when measured<br />
against objective target functions. The horizontal coverage<br />
angle of the array is 100° at the -6 dB points. The<br />
constant-directivity characteristics are not confined to<br />
the HF section, but are maintained down through the<br />
mid-band by the close physical spacing of the low/mid<br />
drivers. www.martin-audio.com<br />
www.stage-directions.com • April 2008 13
Light on the Subject<br />
By Steven L. Shelley<br />
A Brief Practical Guide to<br />
Lighting Paperwork, Part 1<br />
Paperwork is an integral part of<br />
theatre. Aside from speech, it’s<br />
the primary device to communicate<br />
or recall overall and specific elements<br />
of any production. For a simple<br />
show, paperwork may be limited to a<br />
few sheets of paper detailing the “recipes”<br />
used to create the lighting, hang<br />
the soft goods or tally the costume<br />
pieces. Archiving a complex production,<br />
on the other hand, can quickly produce<br />
enough paper to fill numerous threering<br />
binders.<br />
Theatre lighting is usually not a<br />
static design form. Many things can<br />
visually change what’s seen in a show,<br />
So keeping track of, modifying or<br />
recording information about a lighting<br />
design requires many documents for<br />
the different visual components of the<br />
design: focus charts, light cues, followspots,<br />
preset sheets, sidelight colors in<br />
dance, deck sheets and so on.<br />
While the equipment and systems involved in a show impact<br />
the amount and types of lighting paperwork needed for that production,<br />
there’s also basic differences between the paperwork<br />
used to create a show from scratch and replicating a production<br />
on tour. Touring paperwork isn’t discussed that often, and it<br />
offers many lessons that can be applied to a variety of lighting<br />
situations. This series of articles will examine some examples of<br />
touring paperwork. Before doing so, though, it’s worth reviewing<br />
paperwork categories, classes, axioms and goals.<br />
Paperwork Categories and Classes<br />
Lighting paperwork usually falls into three categories. The<br />
first category is graphic diagrams, which includes the light<br />
plot, the section or the magic sheet. The second category is<br />
information presented as sorted lists. This ranges from the<br />
instrument schedule and the channel hookup, to the shop<br />
order, the color-cutting list or the lineset schedule. The third<br />
category consists of forms that, when filled out, provide a<br />
record of actions taken. These include light cue sheets, followspot<br />
cue sheets or board operator sheets.<br />
Lighting paperwork can also be sorted into three classes:<br />
public, private and infrastructure. Public documents are<br />
constructed in such a fashion that, not only do they contain<br />
information, but any explanation required to understand the<br />
information is included in the same document. A light plot<br />
is a public document; it’s designed to be distributed, viewed<br />
and understood by others without someone being present<br />
to explain it. Keys, legends and notes provide hints for comprehension.<br />
Private documents, on the other hand, often use<br />
personal shorthand and shortcuts, and without explanation<br />
Figure 1<br />
may be confusing. These documents usually provide details<br />
that don’t need to be shared, so they’re rarely distributed to<br />
anyone other than associates. These documents have few<br />
keys, legends or notes; their purpose is to jiggle personal<br />
memory banks. Infrastructure documents include lists and<br />
inventories that are rarely referred to, but when they’re<br />
needed, invaluable to have on hand.<br />
Paperwork Axioms<br />
Brilliantly designed paperwork is useless if the people who<br />
use it can’t understand it. While the lighting designer may<br />
initially construct the layout, he or she may rarely refer to that<br />
document again. If the document is used or referred to by others,<br />
they should be consulted as to the layout and content. And<br />
the document should be tailored to their preferences.<br />
Out-of-date, or non-matching paperwork, is not a tool,<br />
it’s a hindrance. Granted, the task of updating paperwork<br />
quickly becomes a time-consuming PITA chore (it becomes<br />
an assigned task for assistants on big shows). But it’s an<br />
absolute necessity and a part of the technical process. If the<br />
paperwork isn’t maintained, and if everyone doesn’t have the<br />
same matching information, expect to waste time and effort<br />
on the resulting miscommunications and errant decisions<br />
based on inaccurate information.<br />
In the “heat of battle,” making sure that all the paperwork<br />
is updated and matches doesn’t always translate into freshly<br />
printed out documents. If you run around to all four published<br />
copies of the channel hookup, scratch out “37” and<br />
write “38” next to it in red ink, then so be it. It’s updated and<br />
all copies of the channel hookup match.<br />
14 April 2008 • www.stage-directions.com
Paperwork Consolidation<br />
While the primary goal of lighting paperwork (or any<br />
paperwork for that matter) is to legibly store or retrieve information,<br />
a secondary quest is to present that information in<br />
the most compact format to the broadest audience requiring<br />
the fewest documents.<br />
Deciding which documents are necessary for any production<br />
is a judgment made on a show-by-show basis. Although<br />
it’s important to present the proper information in the simplest<br />
format, the question “who needs to see this?” may help<br />
reduce the overall number of documents required.<br />
One less document constructed is one less document that<br />
will require alteration when the updating process occurs.<br />
Every time a document is updated, the possibility of human<br />
error can occur. Therefore, the fewer documents to update,<br />
the better. Or from another viewpoint, the fewer times the<br />
same information is repeated on different documents, the<br />
fewer documents that then need to be updated. The fewer<br />
the documents, the faster the updating process and the<br />
lighter the paperwork load.<br />
Document Distribution Chart<br />
As a lighting design evolves, the identity, purpose and number<br />
of documents required to communicate and expedite that<br />
design can be monitored by creating and updating a document<br />
distribution chart. Whether a one-off, sit-down or a tour, this<br />
basic document usually changes (and often expands) during the<br />
life of a production. The examples of paperwork shown here are<br />
all from the 2004 Patti LuPone “Matters of the Heart” tour.<br />
The document should be laid out in a spreadsheet format,<br />
with the rows divided into the three main class “packets”:<br />
public, private and infrastructure. The columns show members<br />
of the staff (lighting supervisor, lighting designer, production<br />
manager, stage manager), along with each city.<br />
Public Lighting Paperwork Packet<br />
The Public Packet was e-mailed to each stop long before the<br />
company’s arrival. It contained the <strong>PDF</strong> files illustrating elements<br />
detailed in the company’s Tech Rider, and provided the information<br />
necessary to pre-hang the masking and light plot prior to<br />
the company’s arrival (Well, you can always hope). While most of<br />
the Public Packet was generic, the lineset schedule was specific<br />
for each theatre. So in place of a number, the date was used to<br />
indicate when that city’s lineset schedule is finalized.<br />
The Public Packet included the following:<br />
• A cover letter reviewing the contents of the packet, the<br />
company’s schedule and contact information, and a “we<br />
can adapt since we didn’t advance” note.<br />
• A reduced-scale <strong>PDF</strong> groundplan, showing a generic<br />
lineset schedule, notes about soft good placement, talent<br />
traffic patterns, and a review of who provides what.<br />
• A reduced-scale section, showing an ideal sightline, a<br />
reiteration of the generic lineset schedule, the relative<br />
position of the soft goods and electrics, and their respective<br />
trims to the equipment on the stage deck.<br />
• A reduced-scale <strong>PDF</strong> version of the Light Plot that fits onto<br />
a letter-sized piece of paper. As shown in Figure 1, the red<br />
circle (1) shows the title block, which is also a contact sheet.<br />
(2) is a quick review of what the theatre and company are<br />
each providing for the show. (3) is a spreadsheet showing<br />
Patti LuPone Matters of the Heart 2005 Date: 12 April 2005<br />
Lineset Schedule<br />
Event Name: Patti LuPone<br />
NEW IMPROVED<br />
Fox Theatre, Atlanta Event Date: 10 May thru 15 May 2005<br />
Line Footage Goods Trim Line Footage Goods Trim<br />
- 1' 1" Plasterline obstruction<br />
- 0' 7" Smoke Pocket 33 15' 1"<br />
0' 0" Fire Curtain 34 15' 6" 3 Electric 25'-8"<br />
1 1' 6" House Teaser 20'-6" 35 15' 10"<br />
2 1' 11" 36 16' 2"<br />
3 2' 8" House Curtain (42' open?) 37 16' 6"<br />
4 3' 2" 38 16' 10" 4 Electric 27'-0"<br />
5 3' 8" 39 17' 3"<br />
6 4' 2" 1 Electric 24'-9" 40 17' 8" 3 Blk Border 25'-3"<br />
7 4' 8" 41 18' 1" Show White Scrim 26'-2"<br />
8 5' 2" 42 18' 6" 3 Blk Legs (40' opening)<br />
sprinkler 43 19' 0"<br />
9 5' 6" sprinkler<br />
10 5' 11" 44 19' 6"<br />
11 6' 4" 45 20' 0"<br />
12 6' 9" Picture Sheet 46 20' 6"<br />
13 Dead 47 21' 0"<br />
14 7' 2" 1 Blk Border 21'-3" 48 21' 6"<br />
15 7' 7" 1 Blk Legs (40' opening) 49 22' 0"<br />
16 8' 0" 50 22' 6"<br />
17 8' 5" 51 23' 0"<br />
18 8' 10" 52 23' 6" 4 Blk Border 23'-3"<br />
19 9' 3" sprinkler<br />
20 9' 8" 53 24' 0" 4 Blk Legs (40' opening)<br />
21 10' 1" 54 24' 6" Show Black Scrim 30'-0"<br />
22 10' 6" 2 Electric 25'-9" 55 25' 0" Show Plastic 30'-0"<br />
23 10' 11" 56 25' 6"<br />
24 11' 3" 57 27' 1"<br />
25 11' 8" 58 28' 1"<br />
26 12' 1" 59 29' 1" 5 Electric 28'-0"<br />
27 12' 6" 2 Blk Border 21'-9" 60 30' 1"<br />
28 12' 11" 2 Blk Legs (40' opening) 61 31' 1"<br />
29 13' 4" 62 32' 1"<br />
30 13' 9" 63 33' 1"<br />
31 14' 2" sprinkler<br />
32 14' 7" 64 34' 0"<br />
Figure 2<br />
the distribution of each fixture type, in each lighting position.<br />
(4) The Symbol Key not only identifies each fixture type,<br />
it also states the total number of each fixture type required.<br />
This makes it easier for the local electrician to compare the<br />
needs of the show to the house stock. (5) While the lineset<br />
schedule is generic, it shows the general distribution of<br />
electrics and soft goods, and reiterates the trim heights from<br />
the section and the lineset schedule. (6) Scale bars indicating<br />
hanging location of overhead fixtures relative to Centerline.<br />
• A <strong>PDF</strong> of the Lightwright channel hookup and instrument<br />
schedule. If the theatre didn’t possess Lightwright, these<br />
<strong>PDF</strong> files were the fallback; they could be printed “as is”,<br />
and be used to keep track of the plot installation. A column<br />
in both documents reiterated the hanging location<br />
for the overhead fixtures.<br />
• The Lightwright file (and the layout file) used to create the<br />
above <strong>PDF</strong>s. If the theatre possessed Lightwight, this soft<br />
copy could be tailored or updated to their satisfaction.<br />
• A <strong>PDF</strong> of the Lineset Schedule specific to that theatre.<br />
Figure 2 is designed to mimic the appearance of the lineset<br />
schedule found on the Fox Theatre web site (www.<br />
foxtheatre.org/tech_package.htm). By mirroring the theatre’s<br />
layout, the local stagehands can focus on analyzing<br />
the information, rather than wasting time trying to understand<br />
a foreign paperwork layout.<br />
This lineset schedule is pretty typical. It includes the<br />
name and date of the engagement, the lineset number and<br />
distance from the zero (in this case the Fire Curtain). It then<br />
identifies the goods (electric, border, legs, etc.), as well as the<br />
trim height, the distance from center, and any notes.<br />
Next time, we’ll take a look at what paperwork is included<br />
in the Private Packet.<br />
Steven L. Shelley is a lighting designer and production manager.<br />
He designs the plastic Field Templates and VectorWorks® toolkit<br />
SoftSymbols, both available at www.fieldtemplate.com. He’s<br />
also the author of A Practical Guide to <strong>Stage</strong> Lighting.<br />
www.stage-directions.com • April 2008 15
Sound Design<br />
By Bryan Reesman<br />
Jerry Springer Gets Wired<br />
Bruce Glikas<br />
Brian Ronan wrestles with Carnegie Hall for<br />
Jerry Springer: The Opera’s<br />
American premiere.<br />
How do you know Mike Farfalla?<br />
Mike has been an associate of mine for a few years. He has<br />
assisted me on All Shook Up, 12 Angry Men, Curtains and now<br />
on Dancing in the Dark. He has been my production sound<br />
man for Grey Gardens and Spring Awakening. He has been<br />
production man and engineer for Pajama Game and Grease,<br />
where he continues to mix.<br />
David Bedella, as the Devil, sings to Jerry Springer, played by Harvey Keitel.<br />
There’s nothing like usurping tradition. When Carnegie<br />
Hall allowed the three-act Jerry Springer: The Opera to<br />
invade its space for two days this past January, they<br />
greenlighted an over-the-top, crass, operatic ode to the<br />
king of trash TV that starred Harvey Keitel.<br />
“Nothing can muck up the sound in<br />
Carnegie Hall like monitor wedges<br />
all around.” — Brian Ronan<br />
Sound Designer Brian Ronan, who has worked on shows<br />
as diverse as Curtains, Spring Awakening and 12 Angry Men,<br />
got to tackle the two performances of Springer, which<br />
was a challenge given that he and Director Jason Moore<br />
(Avenue Q) were putting on a modern theatrical production<br />
in a space known for more conventional performances<br />
without heavy sound reinforcement. During a break in his<br />
hectic schedule, Ronan spoke to <strong>Stage</strong> <strong>Directions</strong> about the<br />
event, which followed a successful UK run of Springer and<br />
may set up a Broadway opening.<br />
<strong>Stage</strong> <strong>Directions</strong>: What were the challenges of<br />
designing sound for just two performances of Jerry<br />
Springer: The Opera as opposed to designing for a<br />
longer running show?<br />
Brian Ronan: As is sometimes the case on short-term<br />
events, we had to rely on the venue’s system. Carnegie<br />
Hall has a Yamaha PM1D as a house board, so we rented<br />
one for the offsite rehearsals and preprogrammed before<br />
our arrival. In terms of operation, we obviously had a very<br />
short tech time, so I had to hire an operator who can learn<br />
and execute fast. I asked Mike Farfalla to come along, and<br />
he made all the difference.<br />
What challenges did you face in putting on the show at<br />
Carnegie Hall, a venue known for more traditional music<br />
concerts?<br />
It’s true that Carnegie Hall is at its best when doing a<br />
performance that requires little to no amplification. Part of<br />
choosing Carnegie Hall for Jerry Springer was the irony of<br />
staging this intentionally crass show set in a sublime setting.<br />
It was up to us to make this rock-charged opera work.<br />
Carnegie — yes, we’re on a first name basis — has very<br />
strict regulations, which dictate how many input channels<br />
and output channels can be used. Once you know that, you<br />
have to approach the show accordingly. This involves the<br />
stage direction and choices in music direction. We had to<br />
choose who’d be wearing a mic and who wouldn’t, and our<br />
director, Jason Moore, had to work out choreography that<br />
would let this happen.<br />
The two synthesizers carried a large part of the show’s<br />
orchestration. They were incorporated into the mix. We then<br />
had to choose only the instruments that needed help popping<br />
through. We chose the French horn and the acoustic<br />
guitar. The rest relied on the Hall’s acoustics.<br />
The other large consideration was monitoring. Nothing<br />
can muck up the sound in Carnegie Hall like monitor wedges<br />
all around. To fix this, I used headphone monitoring for the<br />
Jerry Springer: The Opera at Carnegie Hall was a mix of high concept and low comedy.<br />
16 April 2008 • www.stage-directions.com
Considering this show is billed as an opera, how does it<br />
vary from a typical Broadway show?<br />
Choral singing is the biggest difference. Most Broadway<br />
shows do their storytelling with fewer characters singing<br />
vital lyrics with the chorus filing out refrains that audiences<br />
have heard before. The writers of Springer are true<br />
to the operatic form and used that for both comic and<br />
musical impact. There are some acerbic and cunning lyrics<br />
sung in full voice by a large group of well-trained singers.<br />
It’s a beautiful sound, but can be hard to understand.<br />
I think that’s true for much of opera, but unforgivable in<br />
musical theatre.<br />
A madcap moment from Jerry Springer: The Opera<br />
band and very subtle monitoring for the singers. They really<br />
had to listen to the room, and it is to their credit that they<br />
pulled it off.<br />
Another challenge was working with the Hall’s four-second<br />
reverb time, which makes for difficult intelligibility.<br />
How many inputs and outputs were you limited to<br />
in Carnegie? How did the limitations make your job<br />
difficult?<br />
It depends how deep your pockets are. We bought the<br />
least expensive package, which allowed for 24 inputs and six<br />
outputs, not including their P.A. system. If money were not<br />
an issue, I’d have had a mic on the whole cast, so about 35<br />
channels there and about 15 more for the band. Filling out<br />
with some utility channels — a total of about 65. The hardest<br />
part of the limitations we faced was that some of the choral<br />
parts had to be neglected.<br />
Had you worked in Carnegie before?<br />
Yes, I did a Kristen Chenoweth’s Let Yourself Go a few<br />
years ago, and last year I did Rufus<br />
Wainwrights’ recreation of Judy<br />
Garland’s 1961 concert.<br />
How did the audience respond to all the cursing in the<br />
show?<br />
I can only describe my own reactions the first time<br />
I heard it, which was utter amusement. To hear these<br />
trained voices spewing their character’s bile was just too<br />
funny. It seemed the audience had a similar response.<br />
What is up next for you?<br />
I just opened a great off-Broadway show called Next to<br />
Normal — it was a great experience. Currently, I’m in San<br />
Diego’s Old Globe Theatre working on a production called<br />
Dancing in the Dark. It’s an old-fashioned musical with a<br />
large cast and some wonderful old songs. Then back to<br />
NYC and a musical version of the movie Saved.<br />
What do you think about The Tonys finally offering an<br />
award for sound design this year?<br />
Naturally, I’m happy that the industry has decided<br />
to include us as sanctioned members of the creative<br />
process, but I will miss our place flying under the radar.<br />
To me, really good sound fits so well into the look and<br />
feel of a show that it goes unnoticed. I’m not sure how<br />
to award that.<br />
Last year you told me the PM1D<br />
is your “go to” console. What do<br />
you like most about the board?<br />
I like the availability of instant<br />
processing on all inputs/outputs.<br />
Like all digital boards, I like the small<br />
space they take up. Yamaha is currently<br />
winning the race of digital<br />
boards, so it is easy to find people<br />
familiar with its operation, and rental<br />
shops don’t mind buying them<br />
because they’re easy to rent out.<br />
Which mics and processors did<br />
you use for the show?<br />
I used DPA 4066 boom mics on<br />
Sennheiser transmitters for the actors<br />
and a combination of Neumann and<br />
AKG mics on the band. No external<br />
processing was used, just the onboard<br />
PM1D EQ and compression.<br />
www.stage-directions.com • April 2008 17
School Spotlight<br />
By Amy Schoon<br />
A Cradle for<br />
New Work<br />
This production of 14 was written and directed by John Cameron, the head of acting at UI.<br />
Theatre Arts at Iowa stays committed to creation.<br />
Don’t mess with tradition — that might be an unofficial<br />
motto of the Theatre Arts Department at the<br />
University of Iowa in Iowa City. Its theatre-training<br />
program, the third oldest in the country, has been committed<br />
to the same basic focus since it was founded in<br />
1920: dedication to the creation of new work for the stage.<br />
Students, faculty and distinguished guests are all encouraged<br />
to develop new plays, and each year graduate and<br />
undergraduate students produce at least 15 new works and<br />
present another 25 as readings.<br />
Hundreds of writers who have made a name for themselves<br />
had their start at Iowa, including: Pulitzer Prizewinner<br />
and playwriting legend Tennessee Williams; Tonyand<br />
Pulitzer-nominee Lee Blessing (A Walk in the Woods);<br />
acclaimed playwright, screenwriter and poet Naomi Wallace<br />
(One Flea Spare); and Rebecca Gilman, who received the<br />
Roger L. Stevens Award from the Kennedy Center Fund for<br />
New American Plays for her work, Spinning into Butter.<br />
“For years, our productions have gone from here to regional<br />
theatre, big cities and even Broadway,” says Alan MacVey,<br />
professor and chair of the Theatre Arts Department,and<br />
director of the UI Division of Performing Arts. “Being involved<br />
in the creation of something, from the ground up, producing<br />
it for the first time, can be frustrating. But it’s also very<br />
rewarding and a special learning environment.”<br />
That spirit of creation may have been borne from an overall<br />
emphasis on and tradition of writing at The University of<br />
Iowa. In fact, the learning community has become known<br />
as “The Writing University” because of its world-renowned<br />
Iowa Writers Workshop, International Writing Program, various<br />
creative writing summer programs and the Iowa Playwrights<br />
Workshop — also known as the UI MFA program in playwriting.<br />
The intensive, three-year program, officially founded in<br />
1971, is dedicated to educating playwrights for professional<br />
theatre.<br />
Each spring, the Iowa New Play Festival showcases new<br />
work written by undergraduate and MFA playwrights. During<br />
the week-long festival, five full productions and seven staged<br />
readings are presented to an audience that includes six visiting<br />
professional writers, dramaturges, directors and producers.<br />
The department also brings together a team of respected<br />
experimental writers and directors to create a new work that<br />
is presented during the UI Mainstage season. The program,<br />
called Partnership in the Arts, brings artists to work inresidence<br />
for six to eight weeks, working with students on<br />
an ambitious project. Among artists who have led projects<br />
are Anne Bogart, Rinde Eckart, Karen Coonrod, The Gertrude<br />
Stein Repertory Theatre and David Schweitzer.<br />
Iowa’s undergraduate theatre arts degree is a bachelor of<br />
arts, and those who pursue it receive a well-rounded theatre<br />
education experience, taking classes in acting, directing,<br />
design, stagecraft and playwriting. Those are complemented<br />
by studies in dramatic literature, history and criticism.<br />
Students also have opportunities to focus on performing<br />
arts entrepreneurship and theatre management. The<br />
department offers Master of Fine Arts programs in acting,<br />
design, directing, dramaturgy, playwriting and stage management.<br />
All faculty members work with both undergraduate<br />
and graduate students and serve as advisers on student<br />
productions, readings and workshops.<br />
The Theatre Arts department produces about 25 productions<br />
a year, five of which are fully supported Mainstage<br />
shows — including new works, contemporary favorites, and<br />
18 March 2008 • www.stage-directions.com
Shakepeare’s Love’s Labours Lost, as directed by Carol MacVey<br />
classics — with elaborate scenic, costume<br />
and lighting design. Others are presented<br />
in second stage, gallery and workshop<br />
settings, and during the Iowa New Play<br />
Festival.<br />
The department also has a social outreach<br />
component, Darwin Turner Action<br />
Theatre, which presents dynamic, thoughtprovoking<br />
interactive folk tales, 10-minute<br />
and one-act plays, and developmental<br />
scenes for social and cultural awareness.<br />
And the student organization No Shame<br />
Theatre presents multiple new works, five<br />
minutes or less in length, every Friday<br />
night at 11 p.m. in an effort to encourage<br />
new writing for a live audience.<br />
From Page to <strong>Stage</strong><br />
Productions utilize three separate<br />
performance spaces. The 477-seat proscenium<br />
Mabie Theatre was built in the<br />
early 1930s as a state-of-the-art Broadway<br />
house and has been regularly updated<br />
with new lighting, sound and fly systems,<br />
including a Congo lighting console and<br />
Vari-Lite fixtures.<br />
Thayer Theatre, a 60-foot-by-60-foot,<br />
flexible Black Box theatre with high ceilings<br />
and seating for between 144 and 250,<br />
has been dubbed “a director’s dream” by<br />
faculty members. It has seating units that<br />
roll to accommodate all designs, catwalks<br />
on three levels and computerized lighting<br />
with 400 dimmers and 250 fixtures.<br />
Theatre B offers fixed seating of 144,<br />
movable black curtains and a standard<br />
light plot. Easy to move into and easy to<br />
use, it is home to a production — mostly<br />
new plays — nearly every week of the<br />
year.<br />
“Whether you want to perform, direct,<br />
write or work behind the curtain,” MacVey<br />
says there’s a place for every student from<br />
the moment they set foot on campus. “We<br />
believe that the way you learn is through<br />
getting the chance to put something on<br />
the stage.”<br />
Cara Clonch performed her very first<br />
role on the Iowa stage at age 18 during<br />
her freshman year. And that role was part<br />
of a new work, a character no one else had<br />
ever portrayed. The senior from West Des<br />
Moines is still amazed by the experience<br />
and believes it has prepared her well for<br />
her career.<br />
“It’s been incredible. Putting on a new<br />
play is like creating a family. The play is<br />
our baby. It’s brand new, has all this possibility,<br />
it can essentially go anywhere,”<br />
says Clonch. “It’s up to us to collaborate<br />
as actors, directors, designers, writers, to<br />
guide it. You can’t base your performance,<br />
your production, off anything else you’ve<br />
seen. Sometimes it’s even being written<br />
and put together as we’re rehearsing.<br />
What a way to learn.”<br />
Creating an Ensemble<br />
Bryon Winn, Iowa’s director of theatre<br />
and associate professor of design, believes<br />
part of the magic of Iowa theatre comes<br />
from what Cara mentioned — collaboration.<br />
“Working together is at the core of<br />
Iowa’s theatre arts efforts,” says Winn. As<br />
students pursue a well-rounded exploration<br />
of the theatre, they learn each other’s<br />
roles on and off stage. They have a greater<br />
understanding for what their fellow theatre<br />
students are doing and, Winn says, it<br />
can make everyone’s work stronger.<br />
Winn recalls a time when he, as a<br />
designer for a production, brought ideas<br />
about specific lighting design to a playwright,<br />
which then prompted the writer<br />
to rework a scene to incorporate Winn’s<br />
suggestions.<br />
In fact, theatre arts students and faculty<br />
tend to avoid labeling anyone “actor” or<br />
“designer.” Everyone involved in a produc-<br />
20 April 2008 • www.stage-directions.com
School Spotlight<br />
tion can become intimately connected<br />
with all aspects of the work.<br />
It’s also important for students to know,<br />
Winn says, that when they come here as<br />
an undergraduate, they will get valuable,<br />
real-world work experience and “won’t<br />
just be a grunt for a grad student.”<br />
It is not uncommon for Winn or other<br />
faculty members to hire students as assistants<br />
for projects they are involved in<br />
outside Iowa. He trains them to be electricians,<br />
lighting programmers, “whatever is<br />
needed, because the industry’s evolving<br />
every day,” and wants them to have the<br />
necessary skills not only to get a degree,<br />
but to put it to use after college.<br />
“I’m training them for the entertainment<br />
industry, but there are many different<br />
paths they can take, and I want<br />
to make sure they have an idea of all<br />
the opportunities that await them out<br />
there, from opera to dance to corporate<br />
events — whether car shows or campaign<br />
kickoffs — to architectural lighting,” Winn<br />
says. “I want to make sure students know<br />
how to feed themselves when they graduate.”<br />
Working together and taking care of<br />
each other are themes not always found<br />
in theatre-training programs, with fierce<br />
competition and tender egos taking center<br />
stage. But the sense of community<br />
and feeling of family are palpable in the<br />
halls of the UI Theatre Building, says John<br />
Cameron, the department’s head of acting.<br />
“I’ve taught at several different universities,<br />
and theatre programs can be<br />
fairly contentious places. Here, people<br />
are very generous, very supportive of<br />
each other. It makes Iowa an extremely<br />
positive place and a healthy working<br />
environment. It’s very unique.”<br />
A moment from Versailles, conceived<br />
and directed by David Schweizer<br />
www.stage-directions.com • April 2008 21
Theatre Spotlight<br />
By Wayne Rawley<br />
The Actors’ Gang Theatre<br />
L.A. Theatre has something to say.<br />
Each and every season since 1982, The Actors’ Gang Theatre has been<br />
producing theatre. No small feat for an independent, innovative company<br />
anywhere; but even more impressive perhaps in Los Angeles,<br />
where the competition is fierce, the rent is high, and the rep is that live theatre<br />
is just a way to fill the time between film and TV work. The Actors’ Gang<br />
would beg to differ. Now in their third season at their new home in Culver<br />
City, The Gang makes theatre their way or the highway. We sat down with<br />
V.J. Foster, associate artistic director of The Actors’ Gang.<br />
The Gangs’ Mission:<br />
“To create bold, original works for the stage and daring reinterpretations<br />
of the classics. Our work is raw, immediate, socially minded and<br />
crafted with the highest artistic standards.”<br />
How much of a new season is generated by the company?<br />
Actually, very little is generated from outside. The exception would<br />
be if we are interested in working with a specific artist, we would want<br />
to know what they were interested in working on, like when director/<br />
choreographer Simon Abkarian came to The Gang with Love’s Labor’s<br />
Lost. Another exception is 1984. Writer Michael Gene Sullivan sent his<br />
adaptation to us at the outbreak of the current Iraq war, and upon<br />
reading it and considering the times we are living in, it seemed like the<br />
perfect project to do.<br />
What do you look for in a new project?<br />
What does this play have to say? Why this play at this time and why The<br />
Actors’ Gang? The project needs to have social and political relevance. And it<br />
needs to fit in with our particular style of work, our performance style.<br />
What is your style?<br />
We call it “sharing with the audience.” We are not denying the reality<br />
that we are sharing this moment in time with you. We acknowledge that<br />
we are in a room with 100 other people. The audience isn’t observing the<br />
action; they’re in on it with us.<br />
How do you achieve this?<br />
Through the acting… Our style of performance comes from the<br />
Commedia tradition: high energy and high emotion grounded in complete<br />
sincerity. We work to communicate that sincerity through the eyes.<br />
We are always revealing our eyes to the audience. The eyes don’t lie; the<br />
eyes are the windows to the soul where the emotions are painted from.<br />
We try work in a way where we are sharing with the audience directly; we<br />
are looking directly at the audience so that they can understand clearly<br />
what the actors are experiencing. It can be an unconventional style of<br />
work, but we have found it to be very effective.<br />
Who is The Actors’ Gang’s audience?<br />
We want everyone. We are constantly asking ourselves “How do we<br />
get young people to live theatre?” We have one “pay what you can” night<br />
every week, and we hold special student matinees to get young people in.<br />
Students from local primary and secondary schools are invited to take part<br />
in our Education Initiative year-long residencies where we brings students<br />
into our theatre and show them what we do.<br />
Best thing about doing theatre in LA?<br />
The audience. This is an industry town, a city of storytellers, people here<br />
are interested in well-told stories.<br />
V.J. Foster<br />
Left to right: V.J. Foster, Lindsely Allen, Scott Harris and Donna Jo Thorndale in the 2008 revival<br />
of Carnage: A Comedy<br />
Yolanda Snowball and Ken Elliott in Exonerated<br />
Ray Mickshaw Ray Mickshaw<br />
Jean-Louis Darville<br />
A Commedia-based Tartuffe from The Actors’ Gang<br />
22 April 2008 • www.stage-directions.com
Feature<br />
By Evan Henerson<br />
Taking the Next Step<br />
How to impress at the internship interview<br />
Don Ipock Photography<br />
Between School and Career<br />
Many of the major regional houses have a steady pipeline<br />
of potential interns via a tie-in with a major university.<br />
The internship won’t pay, but it will earn the student<br />
class credit.<br />
But even a non-student can find ways to make himself all<br />
but indispensable. And, guaranteed placement or no, interns<br />
are well advised to approach the interview and the job as a<br />
potential gateway to future employment, if not at this theatre,<br />
then potentially somewhere else via a strong referral.<br />
KC Rep’s production of August Wilson’s Jitney utilized technical interns.<br />
Enthusiasm’s good. Don’t try to fake what you don’t<br />
know. There’s nothing wrong with making coffee<br />
or sweeping floors, and when the people who have<br />
brought you in are done with their questions, it’s not out<br />
of line to offer some queries of your own.<br />
In other words, the process of interviewing for an internship<br />
at a regional theatre or opera company shouldn’t<br />
be that dissimilar to interviewing for a paying job at<br />
that same company, according to the people conducting<br />
the interviewing.<br />
OK, maybe the coffee thing wouldn’t be asked or<br />
expected if you were going out for a corner office job at a<br />
Fortune 500 company. In the theatre, however, when time<br />
is pressing and available manpower may be at a premium,<br />
you may well be asked to step in with that fresh pot of<br />
water or to stuff a bunch of envelopes with season brochures<br />
in the marketing department.<br />
The successful intern — the one who will get the position<br />
— is ready for any such eventuality and turns up his<br />
nose at no task no matter how seemingly menial.<br />
“I’ve always been one to say that I could train you in a<br />
task or a skill. I just can’t train general demeanor or personality<br />
to come into a project,” says Timothy O’Connell,<br />
production manager at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival.<br />
“A lot of people are coming out of a college type situation<br />
with an attitude of ‘I’m entitled to this. I’m the best at<br />
this.’ It’s that overconfidence that almost comes off as<br />
arrogance.”<br />
“I try to avoid that,” O’Connell adds. “I’m looking for someone<br />
who is open-minded and eager to learn.”<br />
The Center Theatre Group’s production of The School for Scandal<br />
“We’re always looking for new people to add to our lists<br />
of stage managers and assistant designers,” says Dan Ionazzi,<br />
production manager at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles.<br />
“If someone calls, whether it’s for something here or they’ve<br />
got a job at Disney for an assistant to help draft a show, if I’m<br />
going to direct somebody somewhere, I want to be confident<br />
that that person represents my decision well.”<br />
As the director of production for the School of Theater<br />
at UCLA, Ionazzi employs several students from his school<br />
as interns. A student’s ability to schedule her classwork to<br />
coincide with the rigors of a theatrical schedule will work in<br />
her favor.<br />
Mass availability, then, is a plus, particularly when a company<br />
is putting in 12 to 16 hours a day during tech week. Even<br />
the most professional and dedicated intern probably isn’t<br />
going to reap extensive benefits — or make a lasting impression<br />
— if he’s only available some six hours per week.<br />
“The questions you ask are important: What does a typical day<br />
look like for me? During production and tech week, what would my<br />
assignments be?” — Jerry Genachio<br />
Craig Schwartz<br />
24 April 2008 • www.stage-directions.com
Michael Lamont<br />
“I’m looking for someone who is open-minded and eager to learn.”<br />
— Timothy O’Connell<br />
“Sadly, to get the full effect, you sort of need to be here all<br />
the time,” Ionazzi says. “Otherwise, you’re relegated to simple<br />
chores: Fetch this, fetch that. If you’re really here, you become<br />
a member of the team and really get to participate in some<br />
reasonable task.”<br />
Mark Feuerstein and Jaime Ray Newman in the Geffen Playhouse West Coast<br />
premiere production of Some Girl(s) by Neil LaBute<br />
The interview itself is often the place for an intern to showcase<br />
both his ability and his hunger to do the work. For the<br />
former, common sense comes generously into play. If you’re<br />
showing a design book, make sure the displays are clean and<br />
flattering; your best work.<br />
“For the technicians, it’s harder,” says Ionazzi. “We want to<br />
see a resumé that says ‘not only did I do my schoolwork, but<br />
the university has a presentation program that books in acts<br />
all the time, and I’ve worked those crew calls.’ We see how<br />
deep they are into this and if they can really talk like they’ve<br />
done the work and understand the work.”<br />
Enthusiasm and gusto are invaluable traits, but it is possible<br />
to go overboard. Candidates who present themselves as<br />
being obsessed with theatre have been known to raise a red<br />
flag with O’Connell who gravitates toward hiring interns with<br />
more well-rounded backgrounds.<br />
“If people say, ’I’m there 24/7, I’ve got nothing else to do,’<br />
while I get excited for their energy, sometimes it can become<br />
a negative force on them that they have no other drive in<br />
their life besides the theatre,” O’Connell says. “We’re not here<br />
to fulfill your entire life.”<br />
O’Connell recalls interviewing a recent internship candidate<br />
whose background was anything but theatre 24/7. She<br />
had worked for a newspaper and was returning to school<br />
to learn more about the theatre and get a master’s degree.<br />
During the interview, she also revealed an interest in learning<br />
Spanish and had moved to Brazil to study the language<br />
intensely, doing some freelance writing while she studied.<br />
Even without a theatre-heavy resumé, the candidate was<br />
a keeper.<br />
“That made me excited that she found that outlet for herself<br />
and found a way to achieve what she wanted. Instead of making<br />
it a hurdle, she made it work for herself.” O’Connell said. “The<br />
creative solution stuff made me excited for her. You have to be<br />
comfortable with who you are to make a choice like that.”<br />
Study Up<br />
When he applied for the internship program at Seattle<br />
Repertory Theatre some five years ago, Jesse Aasheim was<br />
going through a career transition as well. A double major<br />
in college, he had worked at Microsoft and as a software<br />
consultant specializing in geographic information services<br />
before shifting his focus to production management.<br />
The Rep’s highly structured Professional Arts Training<br />
Program came with a $5,000 stipend, which Anaheim —<br />
now an associate production manager at L.A.’s Center<br />
Theatre Group — saw as a more attractive alternative to<br />
returning to school.<br />
“It wasn’t necessarily that intense,” recalls Aasheim. “but<br />
it was very much like a real world job interview.”<br />
Jerry Genochio, O’Connell’s predecessor at Alabama<br />
Shakespeare and now associate director for production<br />
at Kansas City Repertory Theatre, says he doesn’t expect<br />
interns to come armed with every available bit of knowledge<br />
about the profession. (“That’s why they’re applying<br />
for internships,” he says). But applicants who have done<br />
their homework and come to an interview armed with<br />
questions of their own tend to make good impressions.<br />
Jayne Brook, Matt Czuchry and Christina Lahti in the Geffen Playhouse<br />
production of Wendy Wasserstein’s Third.<br />
“It’s a way for applicants to say they’re interested without<br />
having to say, ’I’m interested,’” says Genochio, who<br />
travels to universities in Missouri, instructing students on<br />
interviewing and preparation for that first job. “The questions<br />
you ask are important: What does a typical day look<br />
like for me? During production and tech week, what would<br />
my assignments be? Will I have real experience working in<br />
an area I want to develop more expertise in?”<br />
“There is a line between ‘Gee, I’ll do anything’ vs. ’I really<br />
want experience in my area,’ but the reality of professional<br />
theatre is that you’re going to have a lot of cross departmentalization,”<br />
he adds. “You may be in the prop shop one<br />
day and painting scenery the next.”<br />
You may do a lot during your internship, but a good one<br />
can offer a lot for you, too — that, of course, is why you take<br />
them. So prepare for that interview, and then go ace it.<br />
Michael Lamont<br />
www.stage-directions.com • April 2008 25
Special Section: Literary Rights, Licensing & Mgmt.<br />
The Never-Ending Quest<br />
Artistic directors discuss the art and science of choosing plays.<br />
The Wizard of Oz at the Valley Youth Theater<br />
By Kevin M. Mitchell<br />
“<br />
I<br />
don’t think you ever stop planning a season,” says<br />
Ethan McSweeny, co-artistic director at the Chautauqua<br />
Theater Company. “You always keep an eye out for<br />
something that might fit into your programming.”<br />
With that in mind, we took a look at three very different<br />
companies and sussed out their process of choosing a<br />
season and what factors into their decisions.<br />
Bobb Cooper<br />
Valley Youth Theatre<br />
Phoenix, Ariz.<br />
Bobb Cooper just celebrated his 12th year working<br />
for one of the most respected high school theatres in<br />
the country. Cooper himself is a veteran of off-Broadway<br />
shows and national tours, so he brings to the position a<br />
wide breadth of experience.<br />
But he knows his audience.<br />
“I keep my ear open for what’s happening out there, but<br />
honestly, we’re in Phoenix,” he says. “So, we give our audience<br />
what they want to see as opposed to forcing things<br />
on them. We’re aware that we often bring in an audience<br />
not accustomed to going to the theatre, and hopefully we<br />
send them out wanting to come back.”<br />
Cooper keeps up with popular culture and says he looks<br />
for properties that have broad audience appeal and are<br />
family-oriented. Some Disney titles will bring an audience<br />
in just by the title, but even when they do something like<br />
Sleeping Beauty, which they did a few years ago, they “twist”<br />
it in someway (in that case, they added a ballad to it).<br />
Valley Youth is influenced by what is hot. “Like when Lord<br />
of the Rings was big in the theatre, we did The Hobbit, and we<br />
sold out.” When Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was on the<br />
big screen, they did Willy Wonka; same with Charlotte’s Web.<br />
Unusual for a high school, they have an enviable budget<br />
— but only because they built a reputation to be worthy of it.<br />
“Twelve years ago, our budget was barely $100,000, but this<br />
year it’s $5 million.” But royalties can eat up quite a bit of budget.<br />
“Depending on the show, the royalties can hit you hard.<br />
Any Disney production royalties are incredibly high. Beauty<br />
and the Beast was 15 percent of the gross and that is huge.”<br />
Does it affect what he chooses?<br />
“It depends,” he says. “We work with all the major publishers,<br />
Rogers & Hammerstein, MCI, Dramatic Publishing.<br />
With some, we have a professional relationship and don’t<br />
pay a flat fee but a percentage, which we appreciate.<br />
When we do well, they do well. But some publishers, who<br />
will remain nameless, have nonnegotiable deals. We can’t<br />
avoid working with those companies because, unfortunately,<br />
they have very important properties. So you do the<br />
ones you know you can recoup.”<br />
Financial matters do figure in: If he wants to do something<br />
that is expensive from a royalty standpoint, something<br />
else that’s good but requires less cost could be<br />
figured into the season.<br />
26 April 2008 • www.stage-directions.com
Warner Miller, Carl Cofield, Chuck Patterson and Glenn Turner in the IRT production of The Piano Lesson<br />
Janet Allen<br />
Indiana Repertory Theatre<br />
Indianapolis, Ind.<br />
It is also Janet Allen’s 12th season<br />
as artistic director — and “20 something”<br />
with the organization — so she<br />
brings a lot of experience to the table.<br />
Indiana Rep has two theatres (620 and<br />
308 seats) and a cabaret that is used<br />
as well.<br />
“We throw a bunch of scripts down<br />
the stairs and whatever lands on top<br />
of the pile are the ones we do,” she<br />
jokes. It is, of course, a bit more complex<br />
than that: “Because I’m not principally<br />
a director, I work closely with<br />
the managing director, Steven Stolen.<br />
Also, the associate artistic director,<br />
Priscilla Lindsay, is heavily involved,<br />
among others.” They always know<br />
what to do with one slot: James Still<br />
has been their playwright-in-residence<br />
for 10 years, and they typically do at<br />
least one of his plays every season.<br />
“We are very close collaborators,”<br />
Allen says of Still. “And he is one of my<br />
most prized commentators. So generally<br />
it begins with things that were<br />
commissioned from him, and if he has<br />
something ready to come out on the<br />
stage, that is often the first deciding<br />
factor in a season.”<br />
After that, she looks to fill many<br />
needs. “There isn’t a black repertory theatre<br />
here, very sad to say, and we have<br />
a large African-American population.”<br />
(Indianapolis has an African-American<br />
population of 24 percent.) Also, they<br />
are the only fully professional nonprofit<br />
theatre in the state, so they must bring<br />
in those beyond their urban borders.<br />
Finally, 40 percent of their audience is<br />
under 18. “We serve 50,000 kids a year.”<br />
Two roadhouses in town do a lot<br />
of big Broadway touring shows, principally<br />
musicals. “Between the roadhouses<br />
and a fine active civic center,<br />
they all have the musical market cov-<br />
Lauren Lovett in the IRT production of Bad Dates<br />
www.stage-directions.com • April 2008 27
Special Section: Literary Rights, Licensing & Mgmt.<br />
The set of The Cherry Orchard at Chautauqua<br />
ered and frankly that’s fine with me.”<br />
As far as what a show costs to lease<br />
from the publisher: “I ignore it,” she<br />
declares. “The difference between paying<br />
11 percent royalty and a 9 percent<br />
royalty is not big enough to be an<br />
influential factor,” she says. For Doubt,<br />
for example, she is paying a 10 percent<br />
royalty, and for Tuesday’s with Morrie<br />
she’s paying 11 percent; Other older<br />
plays, like Inherit the Wind are 8 percent<br />
or 7 percent; then there are the royaltyfree<br />
works like Shakespeare, and older<br />
19th century works by the likes of<br />
Shaw and Wilde, and they figure into<br />
a season. … but bottom line is she<br />
would rather put a play like Doubt on<br />
her boards quickly than wait to see if<br />
the royalty goes down.<br />
The financial factor that does factor<br />
in is how many actors a play takes — a<br />
big cast can put the biggest dent in a<br />
budget. But first and foremost: “My eye<br />
is how we can serve this audience.”<br />
The Chautauqua Theater Company<br />
Chautauqua, New York<br />
Vivienne Benesch and Ethan<br />
McSweeny, Artistic Directors<br />
Founded in 1983, the Chautauqua<br />
Theater is a resident professional summer<br />
theatre with a popular summer<br />
program of plays that challenge and<br />
delight a theatre-savvy population.<br />
With a conservatory of artists, a combination<br />
of students and professional<br />
actors, Chautauqua has an atypical<br />
audience, though the current coartistic<br />
directors are trying to expand<br />
beyond that.<br />
“The institution itself has 10,000 squarefeet<br />
on five square miles of campus, so<br />
our primary audience is on the grounds,”<br />
says Ethan McSweeny. “But we’ve been<br />
working to extend that to other communities<br />
in western New York.”<br />
As far as sculpting a season, they<br />
have a couple of particular needs to<br />
meet. “Part of every arts organization<br />
features a training component and we<br />
have a conservatory with top actors,”<br />
McSweeny explains. “Every year 500<br />
people audition, with only 14 making<br />
it.” Since younger actors are part of<br />
the program, they lean toward choosing<br />
productions that have good roles<br />
for actors in their 20s. For their first<br />
season, the two chose All My Sons by<br />
Arthur Miller, for example.<br />
Unusual for this theatre is that<br />
they get to purposely look for plays<br />
that have a big cast, Benesch points<br />
out. With the resources they have in<br />
the conservatory plus their ability to<br />
attract top professional talent, “we<br />
need to pick big plays.”<br />
Otherwise, they approach a specific<br />
season by identifying certain ideas. “We<br />
try to offer our audience a full range,”<br />
McSweeny says. “We try to do one classic<br />
American play, a 20th century classic,<br />
and also something more contemporary,<br />
which usually ends up being a comedy.”<br />
“And we always end our season<br />
with a Shakespeare production,”<br />
Benesch adds. “And recently we did<br />
The Cherry Orchard, which we chose<br />
specifically for a couple of artists we<br />
wanted to bring back who we had<br />
worked with previously — and used<br />
that as an anchor for the season.”<br />
“It’s always important in a summer<br />
festival season that one show can<br />
become the anchor,” McSweeny says.<br />
However you anchor your season, the<br />
quest for the perfect one goes on.<br />
28 April 2008 • www.stage-directions.com
Special Section: Literary Rights, Licensing & Mgmt.<br />
Think<br />
Outside<br />
the Bard<br />
Michael Ensminger<br />
Endless readings of new plays<br />
doesn’t have to be the norm.<br />
By Jonathan Shipley<br />
A<br />
culture war being waged in American theatre is this:<br />
play development versus production.<br />
“New plays are at risk,” says Polly Carl, producing<br />
artistic director of Minneapolis’s The Playwrights’ Center,<br />
“and getting theatres to dive into the risk, to experiment<br />
with audiences and to develop the tastes of audiences, is<br />
the greatest challenge of the American theatre.”<br />
A play is written. It’s a good play. It needs some tweaking,<br />
though. A theatre says to the playwright, “Let’s have a<br />
reading!” A reading is done and so, in essence, is the play.<br />
“I have endless stories of great plays not getting produced<br />
— endless,” says Carl.<br />
There are, however, organizations across the country<br />
that are trying to eliminate this “development hell,” helping<br />
writers get their work fully produced. Here are two that<br />
tackle the problem from different perspectives.<br />
Lucky for Playwrights<br />
The spark for 13P came in a conversation between<br />
Playwrights Madeleine George and Rob Handel at the<br />
Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference. Handel floated<br />
the idea to George about starting a company based solely<br />
around the philosophy of putting playwrights in charge of<br />
a guaranteed production of their own new work. When they<br />
returned to New York the two recruited others, and they<br />
ended up with 13 playwrights — the 13P — instigating a<br />
new producing culture, one in which there is no substitute<br />
for a fully-realized production of a new play. Their 2008-09<br />
season includes a play by Whiting Award-winner Sheila<br />
Callaghan and another by Lucy Thurber.<br />
Not only does 13P allow playwrights to showcase their<br />
new works as fully-produced plays, but they, the writers, act<br />
as artistic directors of their own plays.<br />
“It’s a little bit like the company gets remade every time<br />
there’s a new show because the entire group is totally different,<br />
and each playwright wants to run it differently,”<br />
says George. In order to give the playwrights the maximum<br />
chance to succeed, they developed a few procedural guidelines.<br />
First off, while the playwrights would act as artistic<br />
directors, and have such decision-making powers as how<br />
Lisa Rosenhagen in Eric Coble’s For Better at the Curious Theatre Company<br />
to apportion their budget, they would not be in charge of<br />
producing the play.<br />
“Writers are just abominable at that stuff,” says George,<br />
only half joking. “It was very important that we notice early<br />
on with appropriate humility that we were going to screw it<br />
up if we did it ourselves, that we needed to bring in young,<br />
enthusiastic, nascent producers to produce us.”<br />
It’s also important to be sure that the producer is in-line<br />
with the philosophy of a playwright-driven production,<br />
and won’t try to impose their aesthetic upon the process<br />
— while the playwright understands that the budget and<br />
the practical limits of what can happen (as pointed out by<br />
the producer) will obviously dictate some aspects about the<br />
production.<br />
“We’ve been tremendously lucky in our association<br />
with our Executive Producer Maria Goyanes, who we got<br />
involved with when she was sort of fresh out of undergraduate<br />
and just starting to be a producer,” says George.<br />
“But it’s because when she joined up with us we were at our<br />
fiercest in terms of articulating our mission. So, although<br />
she has a lot of opinions and a lot of experience that she<br />
wants the playwrights to benefit from when they come in,<br />
she has never, ever tried to impose anything aesthetic on<br />
anyone.”<br />
The second key decision George attributes to 13P’s success?<br />
“Don’t run it like a collective.”<br />
George believes that a “chore-wheel”-type mentality<br />
where each person is responsible for different tasks on a<br />
recurring basis will quickly lead to the dissolution of the<br />
group. 13P does not demand their members or staff participate<br />
in anything, they only ask that each member participate<br />
in whatever fashion they can at any given moment.<br />
“If everybody is forced to contribute something, regardless<br />
of their will and their desire, you lose people,” says<br />
George. “It is sort of counterintuitive. The typical ‘Hey, let’s<br />
put on a show’ thing is more about egalitarianism, it’s more<br />
like everybody pitch in — I’ll make the costumes you do the<br />
lights — but I think that the success of 13P is largely due to<br />
the fact that we didn’t take that route.”<br />
Don’t misinterpret — the playwrights are still involved in<br />
30 April 2008 • www.stage-directions.com
the process, whether it’s getting together for mailings, making<br />
curtain speeches or helping at the box office.<br />
“People help with other kinds of stuff — but it’s very<br />
much on an as-needed basis and there is no official designation.”<br />
When it comes to getting people involved it also helps<br />
that 13P is a social — and finite — experience. Once the 13<br />
plays have been produced, they’ll no longer exist.<br />
“It’s such a social experience being in 13P, it involves so<br />
much fun — going to parties, and doing mailings and different<br />
stuff like that, but then when it’s your turn, it’s your<br />
ups,” says George. “It’s all about figuring out where your<br />
priorities are.”<br />
And the deliberate expiration date?<br />
“There’s sort of the point of 13P as a life responsive organization<br />
that’s being made and remade according to the<br />
needs to individuals, and it really runs counter to what happens<br />
to a lot of theaters when they institutionalize,” says<br />
George. “It’s invigorating to us to feel like this is the thing<br />
that’s happening in the present moment, and it’s happening<br />
for a reason, and it serves each one of us as we need it<br />
to serve us, and then, you know, poof, it’s gone.”<br />
Jim Baldassare<br />
Do Your Networking<br />
Getting a new play produced is not the only obstacle,<br />
though.<br />
“Many theatres are doing premieres,” says Dramaturge<br />
Matthew Maher and Frank Deal in the 13P production of Have<br />
You Seen Steve Steven by Ann Marie Healy<br />
www.stage-directions.com • April 2008 31
Special Section: Literary Rights, Licensing & Mgmt.<br />
Michael Ensminger<br />
Rhonda Brown in Eric Coble’s For Better at the Curious Theatre Company<br />
Liz Engelman, now serving as board chair for the Literary<br />
Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas association.<br />
“The hard part is actually getting these plays to be done a<br />
second and third time.”<br />
Enter the National New Play Network and its Continued<br />
Life of New Plays Fund.<br />
The National New Play Network is a means to facilitate<br />
communication between theatres that are the “new play<br />
hubs” in their region, spread across America. These are generally<br />
larger theatres, with budgets between $500,000–$4<br />
million a year, according to General Manager David Golston’s<br />
estimates.<br />
It works like this: The literary departments of the member<br />
theatres read scripts that are submitted to them. If they like a<br />
script, they “pitch” it at one of the monthly online meetings,<br />
or at the face-to-face meetings that happen twice a year. If<br />
other theatres are interested in the play, they pass the script<br />
between them and start a conversation between themselves<br />
as to whether or not they’d like to produce the script. If three<br />
or more artistic directors find a play worthy to produce, NNPN<br />
invests in that particular play. This investment comes in the<br />
form of a $5,000 donation to each of the theatres producing<br />
the play.<br />
“That money can go to pretty much anything the theatre<br />
needs it to,” says Golston. “Although we do put an emphasis<br />
on the collaboration aspect of the development of the play.”<br />
These theatres all agree to individually produce the same<br />
script — these aren’t co-productions, where the same production<br />
of a play travels to different theatres, and those theatres<br />
spread the costs between them. Recently, David Rambo’s<br />
The Ice Breaker found success in San Francisco, Indianapolis<br />
and Boston. Zina Camblin’s And Her Hair Went With Her<br />
showed in Indianapolis, Long Branch, New Jersey and Los<br />
Angeles. Eric Coble’s For Better opened in Denver, Miami and<br />
New Orleans.<br />
Coble has been delighted at the successes he’s had as<br />
part of the NNPN program. “It’s been great. I loved getting<br />
to know theatres I’ve never worked with before,” he says,<br />
“to meet their audiences and see what they think about<br />
the issues of the play. We now have a relationship to build<br />
from.” He enjoyed the production process the whole way<br />
through, having three sets of director’s eyes watching over<br />
rewrites. “I knew they already loved the piece and were<br />
committed to it.”<br />
While the NNPN facilitates communication between<br />
theatres and funds new play production, it doesn’t promote<br />
any individual scripts itself.<br />
“We encourage the playwrights to have a relationship<br />
with the member theatres,” says Golston. “We want to get<br />
away from the ‘New York down’ model, and our alternative<br />
is not the ‘NNPN down’ model either. What we’re really<br />
talking about is sort of a grassroots effort coming from<br />
the regional theatres up, sending a play up that might not<br />
have otherwise gotten attention if it was never produced<br />
in New York.”<br />
Wherever they’re produced, it’s good to know that<br />
theatres like 13P and those involved with NNPN are there<br />
supporting writers.<br />
32 April 2008 • www.stage-directions.com
Special Section: Literary Rights, Licensing & Mgmt.<br />
The Diversity of Dramaturgy<br />
Three dramaturges, three different career tracks<br />
By Lisa Mulcahy<br />
When you think about the typical career of a dramaturge,<br />
what comes to mind? The traditional perception<br />
is that you toil away in anonymity at a regional<br />
theatre, buried up to your neck in obscure historical research,<br />
churning out notes that the playwright may or may not use.<br />
But today dramaturges are taking complete control of their<br />
careers, applying their unique personal talents and interests<br />
to a variety of theatrical genres and having a major impact on<br />
the development of fresh, thrilling stagework. Here’s an inside<br />
look at three dramaturges who ply their trade in three very<br />
disparate ways — but are each making a major mark.<br />
“That was great — I was young and working with the best.<br />
It really built up my faith in my own ability — I had some things<br />
to say, and those things were listened to,” he says.<br />
Cerniglia next got a PhD from the University of Washington,<br />
taught for a time and got a taste of creative corporate work at<br />
Microsoft Cofounder Paul Allen’s company Vulcan. While<br />
attending the annual Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of<br />
the Americas conference in Chicago in 2003 (www.lmda.org),<br />
Cerniglia caught up with Greg Gunter, the literary manager<br />
he’d known at La Jolla Playhouse.<br />
“Greg had since gone to work for Disney in their New York<br />
office and was developing shows for Broadway,” Cerniglia<br />
recalls. “Disney seemed like a good, successful mix of art and<br />
commerce. They offered me a job, I took it, and in the fall of<br />
2003, hit the ground running.”<br />
“Our writing teams are genius,<br />
and I’m their sounding board —<br />
I try to know where we need to<br />
arrive ultimately, although I may<br />
not know how we’re going to get<br />
there.” — Ken Cerniglia<br />
Ken Cerniglia at his desk<br />
T h e P e r f e c t o r o f<br />
Pop Culture<br />
It’s 11 a.m., and Ken<br />
Cerniglia, dramaturge<br />
for Disney Theatrical<br />
Productions, arrives<br />
at the company’s New<br />
“Breaking Free” in Disney’s High School Musical National<br />
Tour.<br />
York City office. He starts the day of with a round of meetings,<br />
consulting the marketing, legal and production departments,<br />
plus company management.<br />
Next, he works with a number of Disney writers, such as<br />
the translator in Mexico who’s doing subtitles for an international<br />
production of The Lion King. He evaluates a script<br />
treatment, attends a table read, gives notes on a licensed<br />
adaptation and edits the liner notes for a Broadway show<br />
CD, before rushing off in the evening to scout material at a<br />
play reading. His day ends around 11 p.m. — and he’s loved<br />
every minute of it.<br />
Cerniglia trained as an actor and dancer during his undergrad<br />
years at U.C. San Diego, which is affiliated with La Jolla<br />
Playhouse. Cerniglia then went on to receive an MA from<br />
Catholic University in theatre history and criticism. While there,<br />
he interned with the literary department at Arena <strong>Stage</strong>.<br />
The touchstone of Cerniglia’s work process? “Get the right<br />
team for the right project! For High School Musical’s stage<br />
adaptation, it was about, ‘These are pop songs — how do<br />
we make them musical theatre songs?’ Our writing teams are<br />
genius, and I’m their sounding board — I try to know where<br />
we need to arrive ultimately, although I may not know how<br />
we’re going to get there. I float ideas past writers, try to nurture<br />
their process.”<br />
Pushing the envelope in a positive direction is what<br />
Cerniglia thrives on. “Our new frontier is to diversify what<br />
people expect from Disney Theatrical Productions — we can<br />
put on small shows as well as big shows. We put stuff out<br />
there that is often people’s first experience in the theatre,” he<br />
explains. “I’m very proud of our adaptation Aladdin, Jr. — we<br />
went down to a high school in Texas to work on a dual language<br />
version and integrated a language barrier into the story,<br />
which is a real social/generational problem in that area. Local<br />
students were in the show’s cast, and the community could<br />
celebrate both English and Spanish living side by side.”<br />
A Beautiful Mind<br />
Carolyn Balducci’s journey to a dramatic literature career<br />
began via a very unique route: by studying art. “I was a bookworm<br />
and an artist as well, so it was a tossup between majoring<br />
in English or majoring in studio art,” she recalls, explaining<br />
www.stage-directions.com • April 2008 33
Special Section: Literary Rights, Licensing & Mgmt.<br />
Melissa Berman<br />
Carolyn Balducci<br />
her undergrad choices<br />
at Manhattanville<br />
College. While she<br />
went with art, she<br />
stayed attached to the<br />
written word. “As electives,<br />
I took a couple of<br />
creative writing courses.<br />
My best marks were<br />
in The History of the<br />
English Language —<br />
go figure!”<br />
Post-graduation, Balducci was invited to teach creative<br />
writing at the University of Michigan. She grew interested in<br />
expanding her work into a theatrical medium while she taught<br />
there, and began translating dramatic works, plus writing and<br />
producing original plays for university productions. After a<br />
number of years in academia, though, Balducci felt the desire<br />
to spend more time in her home community, Montauk, N. Y.,<br />
and became program director for the Montauk Library. There,<br />
Balducci began to really immerse in theatre. “I became sort of a<br />
literary manager, coordinating staged readings with a group of<br />
actors who perform in a collective,” she recalls. “Together with<br />
Dramatist Peter Zablotsky, I wore the hat of ‘dramaturge’ —<br />
sorting out which plays were most likely<br />
to work with the community, and also<br />
capitalizing on the strengths of the acting<br />
company. This was not a simple task, but<br />
the results seem to make a lot of people<br />
happy.” Among the fruits of her labor: In<br />
Times of War by David Alan Moore, which<br />
was produced at <strong>Stage</strong> Left in Chicago.<br />
Balducci has her dramaturgy technique<br />
as smartly planned out as the rest<br />
of her life. Her precise routine fluctuates<br />
depending on the play or musical she’s<br />
working on, but she applies these strategies<br />
during every workday:<br />
Think technically — and emotionally:<br />
“The model I use for working with other<br />
writers is an editorial process — lots of<br />
marginalia and revisions — combined<br />
with positive feedback. And I suspect<br />
quite a bit of ESP and gut reaction goes<br />
into this, something I must have by<br />
nature. I also apply what I know from<br />
my own writing process: revisions are<br />
necessary.”<br />
Foresee what the reader will see:<br />
“My draft of Asylum looked professionally<br />
formatted, and I’d taken out a lot<br />
of awkward stage directions, or rewritten<br />
them to be more readily visualized.<br />
Visualization is critical to evaluating a<br />
screenplay or theatrical script.”<br />
Respect the writer’s vision above<br />
all: “I take the author’s intent seriously,<br />
and push toward making the author<br />
reach their artistic goal — while trying to<br />
restrain my impulse to rewrite their work<br />
for them.”<br />
The Independent Spirit<br />
Anne Hamilton jettisoned a public<br />
relations career at age 28 to study dramaturgy,<br />
and has since become one of<br />
the field’s trailblazers, working with luminaries<br />
such as Andrei Serban, Michael<br />
Mayer and James Lipton. The principal of<br />
Hamilton Dramaturgy, a nationwide con-<br />
34 April 2008 • www.stage-directions.com
sulting business based in Pennsylvania,<br />
she publishes the industry newsletter<br />
ScriptForward!, consults with playwriting<br />
and directing clients on both material<br />
and career concerns and continues<br />
to work on many acclaimed New York<br />
productions.<br />
Hamilton credits a choice made during<br />
her time at Columbia University<br />
as a major career boost. “I fell in love<br />
with dramaturgy — in class, it was<br />
about developing new plays, working<br />
with the playwright and director to<br />
make whatever he or she had better,<br />
according to his or her terms. There was<br />
collaborative enjoyment involved, and<br />
you got to put up a show!”<br />
Hamilton also showed major professional<br />
initiative while she was still in<br />
school. “At Columbia, we had a connection<br />
with the Shubert Organization,<br />
and I asked if I could have a position on<br />
Passion, which was rehearsing at the<br />
time. I was sent to see James Lapine, who<br />
said no, but offered to send my resumé<br />
around the city. Fabulous! I interviewed<br />
at the Public Theater, and was referred<br />
to the Classic <strong>Stage</strong> Company. I became<br />
production dramaturge on The Triumph<br />
Of Love, directed by Michael Mayer. It<br />
was a brilliant translation — bright,<br />
bubbly, smart, clever. And Michael is a<br />
brilliant and generous man, so kind, so<br />
good at what he does.”<br />
A typical workday for Hamilton<br />
involves serving each of her clients<br />
quite specifically. “When I wake up<br />
every morning, I think about each of my<br />
writers — who needs what from me?<br />
Generally, I have a script to review; I’ll<br />
sit and write comments. Another thing<br />
I always do is think about opportunities<br />
for the playwrights and directors I<br />
work with, so I read through newsletters<br />
and lists for submission opportunities,<br />
I read Variety, I read Backstage. If I see<br />
something of interest, I pass it on. I go to<br />
meetings for networking purposes.”<br />
She also works on background information<br />
— judiciously. “One-hundred<br />
percent of the time, a writer or director<br />
knows what they need from you. Writers<br />
need to be supported and told the truth.<br />
I don’t shy away from delivering hard<br />
facts, if something’s not working. How<br />
can writers trust you if you don’t express<br />
the good and the bad?”<br />
Dan Z. Johnson<br />
Anne Hamilton<br />
(left) and<br />
Playwright Alex<br />
Beech<br />
www.stage-directions.com • April 2008 35
PLAYS & MUSICALS<br />
2007-2008 Theatre Resource Directory<br />
Americanplaywrights,<br />
Inc.<br />
P.O. Box 577676<br />
Chicago, Illinois 60657<br />
P: 773-404-8016<br />
W: www.american<br />
playwrights.com<br />
Anchorage Press Plays<br />
617 Baxter Ave.<br />
Louisville, Kentucky<br />
40204<br />
P: 502-583-2288<br />
W: www.applays.com<br />
Aran Press<br />
1036 S 5th St.<br />
Louisville, Kentucky<br />
40203<br />
P: 502-568-6622<br />
W: www.aye.<br />
net/~aranpres<br />
Artage Publicationssenior<br />
Theatre<br />
Resource Center<br />
P.O. Box 19955<br />
Portland, Oregon 97280<br />
P: 503-246-3000<br />
W: www.seniortheatre.<br />
com<br />
Baker’s Plays<br />
45 W. 25th St.<br />
New York, New York<br />
10010<br />
P: (212) 255-8085<br />
W: www.bakersplays.com<br />
Broadway Onstage<br />
Live Theatre<br />
21517 Kelly Rd.<br />
Eastpointe, Michigan<br />
48021<br />
P: 586-771-6333<br />
W: www.broadway<br />
onstage.com<br />
Broadway Play<br />
Publishing Inc<br />
56 E 81st St.<br />
New York, New York<br />
10028<br />
P: 212-772-8334<br />
W: www.broadway<br />
playpubl.com<br />
Brooklyn Publishers<br />
1841 Cord St.<br />
Odessa, Texas 79762<br />
P: 888-473-8521<br />
W: www.brookpub.com<br />
Centerstage Press<br />
P.O. Box 36688<br />
Phoenix, Arizona 85067<br />
P: 602-242-1123<br />
W: www.cstage.com<br />
Centerstage<br />
Productions<br />
21 Hunt St.<br />
Norwalk,<br />
Connecticut 06853<br />
P: 203-899-0319<br />
W: www.centerstagemusicals.com<br />
Classics On <strong>Stage</strong>!<br />
P.O. Box 25365<br />
Chicago, Illinois 60625<br />
P: 773-989-0532<br />
W: www.classicson<br />
stage.com<br />
Crystal Theatre<br />
Publishing<br />
12 June Ave.<br />
Norwalk, Connecticut<br />
06850<br />
P: 203-847-4850<br />
W: www.crystalthe<br />
atrepublishing.com<br />
Dramashare Christian<br />
Drama Resources<br />
82 St.. Lawrence<br />
Crescent<br />
Saskatoon, Saskatoon<br />
S7K 1G5<br />
P: 877-363-7262<br />
W: www.dramashare.<br />
org<br />
Dramatic Publishing<br />
311 Washington St.<br />
Woodstock, Illinois<br />
60098<br />
P: 800-448-7469<br />
W: www.dramatic<br />
publishing.com<br />
Dramatists Play<br />
Service, Inc.<br />
440 Park Ave. S<br />
New York, New York<br />
10016<br />
P: 212-683-8960<br />
W: www.dramatists.<br />
com<br />
Eldridge Publishing<br />
P.O. Box 14367<br />
Tallahassee, Florida<br />
32317<br />
P: 850-385-2463<br />
W: www.histage.com<br />
Encore Performance<br />
Publishing<br />
P.O. Box 95567<br />
South Jordan, Utah<br />
84095<br />
P: 801-282-8159<br />
W: www.encoreplay.<br />
com<br />
Hank Beebe Music<br />
Library<br />
4 Shep Rd.<br />
Springfield, Maine<br />
04487<br />
P: (207) 738-2143<br />
W: www.hankbeebe.<br />
com<br />
Hatful-Breindel Productions<br />
78790 W Harland Dr.<br />
La Quinta, California<br />
92253<br />
P: 760-345-2573<br />
W: http://hometown.<br />
aol.com/hatfulsnow<br />
Heinemann<br />
P. O. Box 6926<br />
Portsmouth, New<br />
Hampshire 03802-6926<br />
P: 800.225.5800<br />
W: www.heinemann.<br />
com<br />
Heuer Publishing LLC<br />
P.O. Box 248<br />
Cedar Rapids, Iowa<br />
52406<br />
P: 800-950-7529<br />
W: www.hitplays.com<br />
I.E. Clark Publications<br />
P.O. Box 246<br />
Schulenburg, Texas<br />
78956<br />
P: 979-743-3232<br />
W: www.ieclark.com<br />
Josef Weinberger, Ltd.<br />
12-14 Mortimer St.<br />
London, UK<br />
W1T 3JJ<br />
P: 44-20-7580-2827<br />
W: www.josef-wein<br />
berger.com<br />
KMR Scripts<br />
P.O. Box 220<br />
Valley Center, Kansas<br />
67147-0220<br />
P: 316-425-2556<br />
W: www.kmrscripts.<br />
com<br />
Lillenas Christian<br />
Drama Resources<br />
P.O. Box 419527<br />
Kansas City, Missouri<br />
64141<br />
P: 816-931-1900<br />
W: www.lillenas drama.<br />
com<br />
Maverick Musicals<br />
89 Bergann Rd.<br />
Maleny, Queensland<br />
4552<br />
P: [61] 61-7-5494-4007<br />
W: www.mavmuse.com<br />
MC2 Entertainment<br />
3004 French St.<br />
Erie, Pennsylvania<br />
16504<br />
P: 814-459-7098<br />
W: www.mc2entertainment.com<br />
Meriwether<br />
Publishing —<br />
Contemporary Drama<br />
Service<br />
P.O. Box 7710<br />
Colorado Springs,<br />
Colorado 80933-7710<br />
P: 800-937-5297<br />
W: www.contempo<br />
rarydrama.com<br />
Music Theatre<br />
International<br />
421 West 54th St.<br />
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36 April 2008 • www.stage-directions.com
PLAYS & MUSICALS<br />
New York, New York<br />
10019<br />
P: 212-541-4684<br />
W: www.mtishows.com<br />
Mysteries By<br />
Moushey, Inc<br />
P.O. Box 3593<br />
Kent, Ohio 44240<br />
P: 330-678-3893<br />
W: www.mysteries<br />
bymoushey.com<br />
New Plays, Inc<br />
P.O. Box 5074<br />
Charlottesville, Virginia<br />
22905<br />
P: 434-823-7555<br />
W: www.new<br />
playsforchildren.com<br />
Onstage Publishing<br />
190 Lime Quarry Rd.<br />
Ste. 106J<br />
Madison, Alabama<br />
35758<br />
P: 256.461.0661<br />
W: www.onstage<br />
books.com<br />
Pioneer Drama<br />
Service, Inc.<br />
P.O. Box 4267<br />
Englewood, Colorado<br />
80155<br />
P: 800-333-7262<br />
W: www.pioneer<br />
drama.com<br />
Plays And Musicals<br />
Lantern House<br />
Horsham, West<br />
Sussex RH12 4JB<br />
P: [44]<br />
44-700-593-8842<br />
W: www.playsand<br />
musicals.co.uk<br />
Plays <strong>Magazine</strong><br />
P.O. Box 600160<br />
Newton,<br />
Massachusetts 2460<br />
P: 800-630-5755<br />
W: www.playsmag.com<br />
Playscripts, Inc<br />
325 W 38th St.,<br />
Ste. 305<br />
New York, New York<br />
10018<br />
P: 866-639-7529<br />
W: www.playscripts.com<br />
Playwrights Canada<br />
Press<br />
215 Spadina Ave.<br />
Toronto, Ontario M5T<br />
2C7<br />
P: 416-703-0013<br />
W: www.playwright<br />
scanada.com<br />
Playwrights Guild Of<br />
Canada<br />
54 Wolseley St., 2nd Fl.<br />
Toronto, Ontario M5T<br />
1A5<br />
P: 416-703-0201<br />
W: www.playwrights<br />
guild.ca<br />
Popular Play Service<br />
P.O. Box 3365<br />
Bluffton,<br />
South Carolina 29910<br />
P: 843-705-7981<br />
W: www.popplays.com<br />
R&H Theatricals<br />
229 W 28th St.<br />
New York, New York<br />
10001<br />
P: 800-400-8160<br />
W: www.rnhtheatri<br />
cals.com<br />
Readers Theatre<br />
Script Service<br />
P.O. Box 421262<br />
San Diego, California<br />
92142<br />
P: (858) 277-4274<br />
W: www.readersthe<br />
atreinstitute.com<br />
Samuel French, Inc<br />
45 W 25th St.<br />
New York, New York<br />
10010<br />
P: 212-206-8990<br />
W: www.samuel<br />
french.com<br />
Scirocco Drama/<br />
J. Gordon Shillingford<br />
Publishing<br />
Box 86<br />
Winnipeg, Manitoba<br />
R3M 3S3<br />
P: 204-779-6967<br />
W: www.jgshilling ford.<br />
com<br />
Select Entertainment<br />
Productions, LLC<br />
23 Sugar Maple Ln.<br />
Tinton Falls,<br />
New Jersey 7724<br />
P: 732-741-8832<br />
W: www.select- shows.<br />
com<br />
Sewanee Writer’s<br />
Conference<br />
119 Gailor Hall<br />
Sewanee, Tennessee<br />
37383<br />
P: 931-598-1141<br />
W: www.sewanee<br />
writers.org<br />
Smith And Kraus<br />
Publishers, Inc.<br />
400 Bedford St.,<br />
Ste. 322<br />
Manchester,<br />
New Hampshire 3101<br />
P: 603.669.7032<br />
W: www.smithand<br />
kraus.com<br />
Summerwind<br />
Productions<br />
P.O. Box 430<br />
Windsor, Colorado<br />
80550-0430<br />
P: 970-377-2079<br />
W: www.summerwind<br />
productions.com<br />
Tams-Witmark Music<br />
Library, Inc<br />
560 Lexington Ave.<br />
New York, New York<br />
10022<br />
P: 212-688-9191<br />
W: www.tamswitmark.<br />
com<br />
The Drama Book<br />
Shop, Inc<br />
250 W 40th St.<br />
New York, New York<br />
10018<br />
P: 212-944-0595<br />
W: www.dramabook<br />
shop.com<br />
The Freelance Press<br />
670 Centre St.,<br />
Ste. 8<br />
Jamaica Plain,<br />
Massachusetts 2130<br />
P: 617-524-7045<br />
W: www.freelance<br />
players.org<br />
Theatre Maximus<br />
1650 Broadway,<br />
Ste. 601<br />
New York, New York<br />
10019<br />
P: 212-765-5913<br />
W: www.godspell- themusical.com<br />
Theatrefolk<br />
P.O. Box 1064<br />
Toronto, Ontario L0S<br />
1B0<br />
P: 866-245-9138<br />
W: www.theatrefolk.<br />
com<br />
Theatrical Rights<br />
Worldwide<br />
1359 Broadway<br />
Ste. 914<br />
New York, New York<br />
10018<br />
P: 866-378-9758<br />
F: 212-643-1322<br />
W: www.theatrical<br />
rights.com<br />
Watson-Guptill<br />
Publications<br />
770 Broadway<br />
New York, New York<br />
10003<br />
P: 800-278-8477<br />
W: www.watsongup<br />
till.com<br />
2007-2008 Theatre Resource Directory<br />
www.stage-directions.com • April 2008 37
Show Biz<br />
By Tim Cusack<br />
Putting the Prenup On Paper<br />
The Dramatists Guild has a few pointers for protecting both the writer and the theatre.<br />
In highly competitive arts markets, in order for a company<br />
to differentiate itself to funders and audiences it must premier<br />
original pieces. And whatever path it takes to acquiring<br />
new work — accepting submissions, commissioning<br />
playwrights whose work the company admires, or generating<br />
material in rehearsals that is later shaped into a performance<br />
— it will need to negotiate a contract in order to ensure all<br />
the parties involved are fairly compensated.<br />
The organization that is tasked with reviewing all contracts<br />
for working playwrights is the Dramatists Guild of<br />
America. Unlike the acting unions, where one must be<br />
hired for a professional job before being allowed to join,<br />
any writer, upon submitting a completed play script and<br />
paying a relatively modest fee, can become an associate<br />
member of the Guild. Unlike the Writers Guild of America,<br />
which is an actual union and negotiates contracts on<br />
behalf of its membership, the Dramatists Guild is a trade<br />
association and can only act in an advisory capacity. But<br />
while playwrights or their agents must negotiate individually<br />
with producers, the Guild is a co-signatory on all<br />
contracts, which members are required to file with the<br />
organization’s Business Affairs department. As such, it has<br />
a big say in what those contracts ultimately contain.<br />
To find out more about the process of negotiating a contract,<br />
I spoke with David Faux, the Guild’s director of Business Affairs.<br />
Faux is a lawyer by training, and he repeatedly stressed the<br />
importance of not leaving anything to a verbal understanding.<br />
“People think when I tell them to get it in writing that I’m just<br />
being a lawyer,” says Faux. “But no one gets a prenup on their<br />
first marriage.”<br />
In other words, the love everyone’s feeling for each other at<br />
the start of a project often clouds better business judgment, so<br />
it’s in everyone’s best interests to have a clear understanding<br />
from the very beginning of who owes what to whom, when, for<br />
how much and for how long.<br />
The Guild offers its members access to model forms that<br />
they can then use as templates during their negotiations with<br />
producers. At my company, we’ve used these models and found<br />
them to be a workable solution when producing at the off-off-<br />
Broadway level. Regardless of whether you take an existing<br />
contract as your model or draw up an agreement from scratch,<br />
there are a few elements you should keep in mind.<br />
First, the playwright should receive a standard royalty between<br />
5 and 10 percent of the gross. If that seems like too big a bite out<br />
of your budget, Faux has a rejoinder: “I’ve had producers try to<br />
negotiate a royalty payment as low as three percent. My response<br />
is ‘If 95 percent of your gross can’t pay for the<br />
show, then you can’t afford that script.’”<br />
And keep in mind when managing cash<br />
flow that it’s standard practice to offer playwrights<br />
an advance on anticipated royalties,<br />
with the balance to be paid once the final<br />
B.O. tally has been calculated.<br />
Secondly, every contract should include<br />
an indemnification clause (language that<br />
protects one or both parties if a signatory<br />
to the contract knowingly promises<br />
something that turns out to be false). Faux<br />
points out that producers sometimes forget<br />
that this language needs to be reciprocal<br />
— that is, they include language that<br />
protects the playwright, but neglect to<br />
protect themselves if, say, the writer has<br />
plagiarized portions of the play.<br />
And finally, theatres that commission a<br />
new play from a writer often mistakenly<br />
assume that they own part or all of the copyright.<br />
This is not the case, and the Guild will<br />
require any language conferring copyright<br />
on the producer to be struck.<br />
For Faux, it all boils down to keeping it<br />
simple. Don’t try to include complicated language<br />
concerning subsidiary rights to future<br />
productions, but do include language that<br />
gives you the option to negotiate later for<br />
those potentially lucrative payments if the<br />
show moves to a bigger venue. Like in any<br />
marriage, clear, honest communication will<br />
leave all parties feeling taken care of.<br />
38 April 2008 • www.stage-directions.com
TD Talk<br />
By Dave McGinnis<br />
Do It Right, Or Do It Elsewhere<br />
Safety should never be a priority — it should be THE priority.<br />
Part of my job incorporates teaching future techs about<br />
theatre safety while on the job. Of course, we set out to<br />
get the job done to the best of our abilities, but I notice<br />
more and more how willing techs are to put life and limb at<br />
risk in order to give the appearance of daring and skill. Over<br />
the years, though, I’ve noticed some behaviors, which will<br />
often precede such risks, and the safety of your techs can be<br />
sustained by watching for these signs.<br />
1. Competitions<br />
How many of us have taken part in some form of pseudoathletic<br />
competition that included feats of speed and accuracy,<br />
ranging from racing one another up a ladder to re-focusing an<br />
ellipsoidal? I confess it — I have. At the time — and in younger<br />
days by no coincidence — I knew for a fact that I could get<br />
these things done in blazing time. But looking back, much of<br />
what I did was caused by an acceptance to unnecessary danger.<br />
I would go to height without safety equipment because<br />
1) I wanted to save time and 2) I had enough success in these<br />
tech competitions to believe myself invincible.<br />
This is not to say that tech competitions don’t have their<br />
place, but as TDs, it falls on us to monitor them and make sure<br />
that everything gets done right, even in fun. It only takes one<br />
accident to end a life.<br />
given predicament. Under those circumstances, accidents<br />
can, and do, happen. I’ve personally worked on crews where<br />
techs who had worked for too long without break or sleep<br />
suffered injuries from drops or electrocution.<br />
Unions mandate working conditions for a reason, and I<br />
find it wise to implement these rules whether you’re a union<br />
house or not. In my youth, I prided myself on my ability to<br />
work all-nighters and still function the next day, but now I<br />
realize that I placed myself in harm’s way.<br />
As my body refused to heal from accidents based on stupidity,<br />
I grew wiser. In later years, I worked a freelance gig<br />
and one day noticed that a lot of the gear was missing safety<br />
cables, and this particular house had lighting over both the<br />
stage and the house. Any piece that would have fallen would<br />
have surely hit someone. I took it upon myself to go through<br />
every beam, attaching safeties to any fixtures lacking them.<br />
One of the older techs caught me doing this and pulled me<br />
aside to tell me, “You’re doing God’s work. Don’t ever stop.”<br />
I soon noticed that two other techs had been dispatched<br />
elsewhere to do the same thing.<br />
See? If safety becomes a habit in your theatre, it becomes<br />
contagious very quickly. To this day, I smile more to see a tech<br />
don goggles and gloves than to see them cut a perfect 47<br />
1<br />
/16-inch two-by-four.<br />
2. Attitudes<br />
This one is tough to spot, and sometimes<br />
it’s already too late by the time you<br />
notice. I once knew a lighting tech who<br />
absorbed at least 110 volts at 15 amps on<br />
more than one occasion, and that was only<br />
in my presence. I can’t speak to how many<br />
times he had done it elsewhere. (Luckily, I<br />
was just another tech at the time, not the<br />
head honcho.) These incidents stemmed<br />
from a strong desire to prove himself, but<br />
in trying to prove he could do the job he<br />
would forget minutia… like pulling dimmers<br />
before pulling circuits.<br />
Because of this, I make sure to always let<br />
my techs know that I would much rather<br />
fall behind on a show in an atmosphere of<br />
safety and support than get done with time<br />
to spare and two techs in the ER. I can jump<br />
in and help with a lighting rig — I can’t say<br />
the same about a human body.<br />
3. Overworking<br />
This is the biggie. Good techs will go to<br />
great lengths to get their jobs done, and<br />
we should extend our gratitude to them<br />
every chance we get, but overworking<br />
leads to catastrophic errors. As we get<br />
tired, our minds and bodies slow, disabling<br />
our ability to react quickly to emergency<br />
situations or to predict the results of a<br />
www.stage-directions.com • April 2008 39
Off the Shelf<br />
By Stephen Peithman<br />
TheBig Picture<br />
Theatre classics on DVD<br />
Thanks mostly to the BBC, there is an embarrassment<br />
of theatrical riches among recent DVD releases, with<br />
multi-disc sets offering Shaw, Shakespeare, Wilde,<br />
Chekhov and Ibsen — plus a modern classic about the business<br />
of nonprofit theatre.<br />
The Shaw Collection includes six acclaimed adaptations<br />
of George Bernard Shaw's classic plays, including Arms and<br />
the Man, with Helena Bonham Carter; The Devil's Disciple, with<br />
Patrick Stewart and Ian Richardson; Mrs. Warren's Profession,<br />
with Coral Browne; Pygmalion, with Lynn Redgrave;<br />
Heartbreak House, with John Gielgud; and The Millionairess,<br />
with Maggie Smith. Three "bonus plays" are also included<br />
(You Never Can Tell, Androcles and the Lion and The Man of<br />
Destiny), plus two short documentaries, (The Wit and World<br />
of George Bernard Shaw and the shorter George Bernard Shaw<br />
Lived Here) and audio of Shaw on the radio. [BBC Video,<br />
$59.98. In addition, Arms and the Man, The Devil's Disciple, Mrs.<br />
Warren's Profession, Pygmalion, Heartbreak House and The<br />
Millionairess are available individually.]<br />
The Henrik Ibsen Collection features 10 BBC productions<br />
in one six-disc box set. Considered the father of modern<br />
realistic drama, Ibsen attacked the values of the Victorian<br />
society in which he lived, and yet many of his themes are<br />
thoroughly modern today. The collection features stellar<br />
casts in Ibsen's best-known (and some lesser-known) works,<br />
including Ingrid Bergman and Michael Redgrave in Hedda<br />
Gabler; Judi Dench and Michael Gambon in Ghosts; Anthony<br />
Hopkins and Diana Rigg in Little Eyolf; Denholm Elliot in The<br />
Wild Duck; and Sir Donald Wolfitt and Leo McKern, respectively,<br />
in two different productions of The Master Builder.<br />
Other plays in the set include Brand, A Doll's House, An Enemy<br />
of the People and The Lady from the Sea, plus radio versions<br />
of Peer Gynt, The Pretenders, Emperor and Galilean, The Pillars<br />
of Society, Rosmersholm, John Gabriel Borkman and When We<br />
Dead Awaken. As a bonus, the set adds A Meeting in Rome, a<br />
play by Michael Meyer about a fictional meeting between<br />
Ibsen and August Strindberg. [BBC Video, $59.98]<br />
The Anton Chekhov Collection includes The Seagull with<br />
Michael Gambon; The Three Sisters with Anthony Hopkins,<br />
Eileen Atkins and Janet Suzman; two productions of Uncle<br />
Vanya (one with Anthony Hopkins and another with Ian<br />
Holm); and two productions of The Cherry Orchard (one with<br />
Judi Dench and Bill Paterson, the other with John Gielgud<br />
and Peggy Ashcroft, Ian Holm and a much younger Dench).<br />
Bonus features include audio productions of an additional<br />
four plays and A Visit from Vanya, a feature on Oleg Efremov,<br />
director of the Moscow Arts Theatre. The set totals more than<br />
18 hours of programming on six discs, including several productions<br />
available for the first time in North America. [BBC<br />
Video, $59.98]<br />
The Oscar Wilde Collection presents four plays, digitally<br />
remastered, including The Importance of Being Earnest (with<br />
Joan Plowright as Lady Bracknell), An Ideal Husband (with<br />
Susan Hampshire and Jeremy Brett) and Lady Windermere's<br />
Fan (with Helena Little, Tim Woodward, Stephanie Turner<br />
and Sara Kestelman), as well as a dramatized version of The<br />
Picture of Dorian Gray (with Peter Firth, Sir John Gielgud and<br />
Jeremy Brett). Like the other BBC releases, all plays are divided<br />
into chapters, so you can search out particular scenes.<br />
[BBC Video, $39.98]<br />
Shakespeare Retold is a two-disc collection with four<br />
cutting-edge productions that emphasize the parallels<br />
between Shakespeare's day and the modern world. Here,<br />
Macbeth is the chef in a three-star restaurant, slicing apart his<br />
celebrity boss, Duncan. Much Ado About Nothing's Beatrice<br />
and Benedick (Sarah Parrish and Damian Lewis) are rival<br />
co-anchors on a nightly newscast. In A Midsummer Night's<br />
Dream, Titania and Bottom romp through a tacky theme<br />
park. And in The Taming of the Shrew, the eccentric aristocrat<br />
Petruchio (Rufus Sewell) sets out to tame Kate (Shirley<br />
Henderson), who is played here as a conservative member<br />
of Parliament. Particularly notable is the chemistry between<br />
the various leads, and the occasional modernization of<br />
Shakespeare's language. [BBC Video $34.98]<br />
Slings and Arrows is a smartly written, smartly acted<br />
Canadian television series (seen in the U.S. on the Sundance<br />
Channel) that is funny because it speaks so precisely to<br />
the world of nonprofit regional theatre. Paul Gross (Due<br />
South) stars as Geoffrey Tennant, the passionate but<br />
unstable artistic director of the New Burbage Theatre<br />
Festival. Haunted by the ghost of his predecessor (Stephen<br />
Ouimette), he struggles to realize his creative vision while<br />
handling touchy actors, a jittery general manager (Mark<br />
McKinney), a pretentious guest director (Don McKellar)<br />
and his issue-laden romance with the festival's leading<br />
lady (Martha Burns). The backstage bedlam mirrors the<br />
onstage angst as Geoffrey directs three of Shakespeare's<br />
masterpieces — Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear — one in<br />
each season. This is arguably the best fictional account<br />
of life in the theatre, and Slings & Arrows: The Complete<br />
Collection includes cast interviews, bloopers, deleted and<br />
extended scenes, plus a new disc with the A Look Behind<br />
the Scenes documentary, cast and crew interviews, and onset<br />
footage. [Acorn Media , $59.99]<br />
40 April 2008 • www.stage-directions.com
The Play’s the Thing<br />
By Stephen Peithman<br />
The Long & Short<br />
Plays from 10-minute to full-length<br />
Theatre is not a one-size-fits-all proposition —<br />
whether in terms of subject matter or the amount<br />
of time required to cover it — as evidenced by this<br />
month's roundup of recently published plays that range<br />
from 10-minute plays to full-length productions.<br />
Manifesto Series V.1 is an anthology from Rain City<br />
Projects, Seattle's 16-year-old playwright service organization.<br />
Works chosen by Editor Erik Ehn include Great Men<br />
of Science, No. 21 & 22 by Glen Berger; Back of the Throat<br />
by Yussef El Guindi; Tornado & Avalanche by Bret Fetzer<br />
& Juliet Waller-Pruzan; Cleveland Raining by Sung Rno;<br />
Stray by Heidi Schreck; and Two Birds and a Stone by Amy<br />
Wheeler. This is an edgy collection with an often apocalyptic<br />
spin on everything from politics to science, from war to<br />
natural disasters. These plays of varying lengths aren't for<br />
everyone, but all strive to help us see the world around us<br />
in a very different way. [Rain City Projects, $19.95]<br />
Don Nigro's My Sweetheart's the Man in the Moon<br />
takes on the story of Evelyn Nesbit, the beautiful chorus<br />
girl at the center of an explosive and deadly love triangle<br />
involving architect Stanford White (her married lover) and<br />
Harry K. Thaw, her wealthy and demented husband, who<br />
eventually shot White at Madison Square Garden in 1906.<br />
The affair plays a part in the musical Ragtime, but here it's<br />
a bit more like Chicago — a darkly comic play (for three<br />
women, two men) chronicling the events leading up to<br />
the murder and Nesbit's subsequent wild ride through the<br />
American tabloid press. While most accounts have pushed<br />
the sensational aspects of the story, Nigro lets the facts<br />
speak for themselves. The result is a quirky, ironic account<br />
that expertly combines real-life situations with nonrealistic<br />
theatricality. [Samuel French]<br />
Another history play is Bill W. and Dr. Bob, by Stephen<br />
Bergman and Janet Surrey. It's the story of the two men<br />
who founded Alcoholics Anonymous, and of their wives,<br />
who pioneered Al-Anon. Richly textured with the ragtime<br />
and jazz of the era, the play comes across as an unusual<br />
American success story. The message is nicely handled<br />
through well written, often humorous scenes that include<br />
a number of significant supporting characters — most<br />
notably the two wives — including two actors who play<br />
the various men and women helped by the team of Bob<br />
and Bill. What's particularly fascinating is AA's successful<br />
launch, despite the profound differences in the personalities<br />
and backgrounds of those two titans of temperance.<br />
This is a real audience-pleaser, as proven by the 118-<br />
minute DVD of the original off-Broadway production,<br />
which also includes a 25-minute question-and-answer<br />
session after the show. Both script and DVD are available<br />
from Samuel French.<br />
Brett Neveu's The Last Barbecue is a quietly dark comedy<br />
about Ted and Jan's barbecue held during a 10-year<br />
reunion of their son's high school graduation, and the<br />
one-year anniversary of the death of their next-door<br />
neighbor. In the first act, the parents attempt to get ready<br />
for the barbecue, oppressed by regret and the heat. Their<br />
son, Barry, and his wife join the barbecue. Barry, a bit of a<br />
bully (like his father), makes fun of the situation and looks<br />
forward to going to his high school graduation that night<br />
to show everyone how much he's changed. (He hasn't,<br />
really.) His wife tries to rein him in as he pushes his father's<br />
buttons, revealing how much both have in common, and<br />
how much both wish they weren't who they have ended<br />
up becoming. The second act takes place late the same<br />
night, when Barry shows up again, looking for beer and<br />
a chance to have it out with his father. There's no real<br />
change for anyone at the end of this beautifully written<br />
slice-of-life drama, with the four characters remain locked<br />
in a continuous cycle of clichés and crushed dreams.<br />
[Broadway Play Publishing]<br />
The 10-minute play as an accepted dramatic form is a<br />
fairly recent development. Some would say its popularity<br />
stems from our diminished attention span, and there may<br />
be some truth in that. On the other hand, it's been taken<br />
up by theatre companies across the country as a way to<br />
help emerging playwrights, or established playwrights to<br />
experiment with new forms. And, in fact, the "best" plays<br />
in the new volumes, 2006: The Best Ten-Minute Plays<br />
for 3 or More Actors, are the ones that depart most from<br />
conventional drama. The new collection includes 13 plays<br />
for three actors, nine plays for four actors, and three for six<br />
or more actors. Some of the playwrights may be familiar<br />
(Don Nigro, Craig Pospisil), but most are from talented,<br />
but relatively unknown writers who strut some very good<br />
stuff, indeed. The same can be said for 2006: The Best Ten-<br />
Minute Plays for 2 Actors, which includes 16 plays for one<br />
man and one woman, four plays for two women, and five<br />
plays for two men. [Smith & Kraus, $19.95 each]<br />
www.stage-directions.com • April 2008 41
Classified Advertising<br />
Check out our other publications:<br />
For advertising<br />
information contact<br />
James at 817.795.8744<br />
www.plsn.com<br />
www.fohonline.com<br />
42 April 2008 • www.stage-directions.com
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A step-by-step approach, Illustrated<br />
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www.stage-directions.com • April 2008 43
Answer Box<br />
By L. Jean Burch<br />
Magic Tricks for the <strong>Stage</strong><br />
Custom-making realistic prop drinks<br />
All photography by L. Jean Burch<br />
The Light Opera Oklahoma production of HMS Pinafore<br />
Milk, slush powder and food coloring combined to make a<br />
solid tropical “drink.”<br />
Replicating food onstage almost always presents an<br />
interesting challenge. For a production of HMS Pinafore<br />
at Light Opera Oklahoma, the director was looking for<br />
a series of colorful tropical martini-style drinks in increasingly<br />
larger glasses. The drinks needed to look very realistic. Also,<br />
the raked deck and movement of the actress required that<br />
the drinks be completely spill proof. This was particularly an<br />
issue with the largest drink, which was contained in a very<br />
oversized martini glass.<br />
Our options pointed toward a solid material filling the glass.<br />
It needed to adhere to the glass; however, adhesive tended to<br />
make the drinks appear unrealistic. We considered purchasing<br />
the drinks, but the director was interested in specific color<br />
schemes for each scene and size of glass. Additionally, the<br />
largest size was unavailable for purchase. After investigating<br />
several different alternatives, we decided to use a substance<br />
used in magic tricks called slush powder, which is also sold<br />
under the names Lightening Gel or Water Gel.<br />
After much experimentation, we determined that milk<br />
was the best choice for the liquid. It took the coloring well,<br />
and the consistency was nice when the prop was finished<br />
(it had a texture and appearance very similar to a frozen<br />
Different colored layers were<br />
prepared in the glass.<br />
The “drinks” were actor safe, staying in the glass even<br />
when upside-down.<br />
drink). We mixed cold milk, food coloring and grenadine<br />
to the desired coloring. We found that it was easiest to mix<br />
the largest drink by combining small amounts of liquid with<br />
the powder in the prop glass working in layers. It should be<br />
noted that we did mix a higher ratio of powder to liquid than<br />
the instructions indicated; in general, we added the powder<br />
to the liquid until we reached the desired consistency. The<br />
top layer was styled with a spoon so that the finished edge<br />
was level and clean. Accessories such as umbrellas and fruit<br />
slices were then added to make the drink more inviting.<br />
The finished props did need to be kept refrigerated<br />
(because we used a milk base). They were taken out during<br />
the pre-show, setup, and returned after the show to the<br />
refrigerator. The run lasted several months, and we remade<br />
the drinks every three to four weeks. The slush powder was<br />
inexpensive, and was available in local magic shops, craft<br />
shops and in a variety of places online. The drinks looked very<br />
realistic, and stayed securely in the glass even when turned<br />
upside down.<br />
L. Jean Burch is a project manager at Chicago Scenic Studios.<br />
Her blog can be seen at: tdtidbits.blogspot.com.<br />
44 April 2008 • www.stage-directions.com<br />
Answer Box Needs You!<br />
Every production has its challenges. We’d like to hear how you solved them!<br />
Send your Answer Box story and pics to answerbox@stage-directions.com.