Monday – June 4th – Day one

Rain!!! The tail end of a hurricane. NYC got 2 1/4 inches of rain between 7 am and 1 pm. Guess when I was out running around? 8 am to 2 pm.

Got my laundry without a problem but they didn’t get the stains out of my shirts. Two less shirts to wear. I’m tough on shirts.

The program started at 2:30. Big security at LCT.

Here are my notes – in the order I took them:

Afternoon session – 2:30 to 5 pm

This is a big deal for LCT – the end of their season.

LCT sees themselves as the testing and proving ground for the future of American Theater.

We were welcomed but the President of the LCT Board and the Director. There were several LCT Board members present.

1. The Lab is for attendees
2. It’s an idea place not a career place (although many of the LCT directors have come through this program and been noticed here.
3. Most are in their 20’s and early 30’s without a lot of experience.
4. Not a teaching environment (I’m not certain that is totally accurate)
5. Most directors do their best work in the first third of their careers.
6. The Lab works best when it is intense – thus the long tiring days.
7. All great theater is made by groups of peers – from Shakespeare to Moliere to Steffan Wolf.
8. Theater training has moved away from the apprentice/mentor model to the colleges and universities. Too many don’t have much real life hands on experience – just the false reality of the college environment.
9. Today we have playwrights learning how to be playwrights, directors learning how to be directors, designers learning how to be designers. No one is learning all the pieces anymore.
10. This lab is a change in direction for LCT. For the first week there will be 150 of us. (70 Directors – 14 from other countries and the rest from the US – 15 playwrights – 15 Designers – 35 professional actors – 15 others – primarily those working on the five plays that have been in rehearsal for the past three weeks. Next Sunday everyone but the Directors go home.
11. We are to try to answer two questions:
A. Have we reached the end of the play development cycle in the American Theater as we know it today?
B. What is the relationship between young (ie, new) playwrights and actors and directors and designers?
12. The top of the food chain works well for those who started in the theater in the ‘70’s or ’80’s: Stoppard, Wasserstein, etc. Today there is no room for playwrights under 45 +/-.
13. The costs of presenting a play have put so many constraints on the play development process that there is no room for the old way: A group of peers get together and do a play that they write, develop and present.
14. Today, no young writer has access to that old model – even the repertory theater model is being replaced by the graduate school experience.
15. Today the new actors and new directors do not have access to each other. The actors are working in theaters that the new director can not access.

A few random comments:
1. Do any of the young people today have the time to work with their peers – they have to spend all their time trying to earn enough to stay alive.
2. What an actor can do in a reading has no relationship to what that actor can do in a rehearsal. (In response to a question about all the readings of new plays that go on now around the country.)
3. Who controls access and selection to the designers? In many theaters the director is given the designers and not allowed to chose his/her own. Does this work?
4. “Why are actors so marginalized in today’s atmosphere?”
5. Some writers are writing plays that can not be acted by actors as they are trained in the traditional way. (???)
6. Why is there such a big divide between actors and playwrights? (Read: Why do directors keep them apart.)

The five plays we will see have been directed by the playwrights with a director available as an adviser to the playwright. They have been using the standard rehearsal schedule: 5 hours a day, six days a week for three weeks. In theory, these plays are one week from tech (although none will go any further after this Lab).

Monday night 7 to 10 PM

We had two panels tonight. This kind of belies the no teaching they talked about.

In the last 20 years we have seen American theater move from the “theaters running the backers” to the “backers running the theater” There are many examples of this.

In the ‘70’s and ‘80’s, the theaters were new and had boards that were the contemporaries of the actors/directors/writers that were part of the company. Now the actors/directors/writers have moved on but the boards haven’t. The need for money from he boards needs older people who can come up with the big bucks. This is a major problem because the people who are paying for it want to see shows that appeal to them but the new talented playwrights are writing for their age group.

Today, Broadway is using focus groups to determine what content a play should have. There are even rumbles of advertiser tie ins (make sure we see a bottle of Michelob in this play.)

After some period of time ALL institutions become self serving.

80% of the directors work is defensive – trying to keep other people happy so he can keep his show together.

There was a lot of criticism of the unions and how difficult it is to mount a small inexpensive play.

It is not the number of hours of rehearsal that counts but the number of days. Actors need time to find their characters and have it settle in.

In many cases the total time between first rehearsal and opening night is the same but now half or more than half the time is spent in previews so the theater can sell more tickets. Most seemed to feel that previews were counterproductive because the preview audiences are not the same as the final audience.

Even though this Lab is about more involvement by playwrights in the process, the panelists (actors, designers and directors) seemed to think that it is a mistake. The reasons:
The playwrights try to get everything they need/want from the actor the first day. (I agree with that.)
Each actor is different and needs a different approach from the director – a skill that most playwrights don’t have. ( I agree here too.)
It takes understanding and skill to help an actor move outside his/her comfort zone – something very few playwrights have any experience in. (I agree here most of all.)

“No matter how good you are and how hard you work, someone in the audience will fall asleep”

“If you have an audience of people who love George Bush and you do a play that says George Bush in a good guy, you haven’t accomplished anything.”

Got home after 11 pm . Rain stopped.