The Devil and Thomas Briggs

(Disclosure: I was not given anything in return for this review -- I paid for my own ticket, and in fact have not informed the People's Theater Lab that I am writing this review. However, the playwright is a friend of mine who I lived with for a semester a year ago, and the two of us have briefly discussed the possibility of me publishing his script.)

Friday night, I went back to the Bleecker Theater to see the latest version of Nik Walker's The Devil and Thomas Briggs at the Bleecker Theater, with a skeptical eye and my arms crossed. A year ago, it had gotten staged reading, before which I had written a feature article on their company (The People's Theater Lab) for the Washington Square News. Back then, Nik Walker had said to me in a moment of triumph, "'What Shakespeare did for blank verse, I want to do for spoken word."

Sitting in the theater last night, I noticed that the same aim, which had also been expressed in the program for the staged reading, was not in the program this time around. But I still remembered that end goal, and that was the metric by which I was going to measure the company's performance.

What a relief that they achieved it!

The Devil and Thomas Briggs is a soulful, blues tragedy; it focuses in on a town named Babylon "where God and the Devil aren't just names," and where a singular man whose blues music and bad living is the city's heartbeat -- until the day he's shot dead at a bar one night. From that moment forward, the family he leaves behind is torn between moving forward, or struggling against the Devil herself to bring him back.

Thomas Briggs has found a sweet mixture between 2 parts blues, 1 part blank verse, and 1 part Shakespeare that hits the spot. The writing is surprisingly tight despite the languorous, silky tone and rhythm, which leads to some fantastic surprises when the plot turns on a dime, or a character whips out a one-liner that cracks the audience up. And, of course, there's one advantage this play has over Shakespeare -- I can honestly say that in almost every moment, I had no idea where it was going.

The play could have come off as pretentious -- the imagery, unlike the narrow, earth-bound imagery of a lot of contemporary writing, dances among the stars and leans on hyperbole like it was a walking stick. But the astral lyricism is mixed with a deep, heavy, grounded sense of soul that only this heartbreakingly genuine cast could sell.

Nik Walker, in addition to having written the play, plays two central characters; Cicero Briggs, the dead blues man who used to hold a city together, and Billy Bones, an earnest young deputy in the town. He plays both with a dangerous edge with a genuine heart that drives home the uncertainty of where the play is going. Thomas Briggs, the man who risks everything to bring Cicero back, is beautifully drawn into life by Sam Encarnacion, drawing us into the world of deep love and fear that was the Briggs family.

The rest of the cast were equally superb -- Bianca Rutigliano as the Devil herself, so dangerous and sexual that she makes the air crackle, Jesse Goldwater as Remy Gin Rummy, who bravely pulls a character that could be an insufferable ass into the realm of believability, and Chivonne Floyd, the glue that holds the Briggs together. And it would be remiss of me to write about this sultry blues opus without tipping my hat to the band, cheerfully dubbed Bad Ass Mother 4000 v2.0. The band, featuring Alex Goley, Travis Artz and Alex Kveton, holds up the world of the play through the music -- without the music, all those words would be about nothing.

There's one more opportunity to see this fantastic production live, so if you're free at 3:00, saunter over here to buy tickets, or make it to the Bleecker Theater (45 Bleecker St) and see what the fuss is about.

Collaboration III: Stage Directions pt. 3

Isaac, apparently separately, starts thinking along the same lines as I was thinking:

Let me make what I'm going to assume is a somewhat controversial assertion about non-experimental theatre: The way we think about the plays we see and do is too writer/text focused.

And he doesn't use Derrida to back himself up. RVCBard has a good laugh at his expense, before stating:

Anyway, part of what I like about theatre (as opposed to film) is that it's more democratic than other art forms. There isn't (or rather, doesn't have to be) a central authority figure who makes all the "important" decisions about the play. I like not having complete control over the process. I like the unpredictability of it, how the story and characters in my head can be given a life I never imagined while still using the same base ingredients (my words on the page - whether dialogue or stage directions).

(...)

As a writer, I've never understood the "need" to create "actor-proof" or "director-immune" scripts. As far as I'm concerned, I'm just there to get the damn story on paper. My duties are pretty simple. Let my collaborators know who is doing what onstage. That's it. Whether that takes the form of a coherent narrative with more-or-less natural dialogue or is a shifting series of images and/or sounds is anybody's guess. But as far as I'm concerned, that's all I'm there to do.

I agree with RVCBard that there's something different here than what goes on in Film... after all, when I saw Alice in Wonderland, I was seeing Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, and nobody seemed to care about poor ol' Linda Woolverton who only wrote the screenplay. It was her screenplay that bugged me -- I think they took a very beautiful story about a girl exploring a world of wordplay and logic puzzles and turned it into something between The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe and Shrek. But I don't think anyone particularly cared -- the whole movie was really just there to support Tim Burton's visual sensibility.

I'm getting carried away.

99 Seats says something similar in the comments section of Isaac's blog:

I never really understand why we need to parse it out so much, to what end. I was just talking to Matt Freeman about this the other day and he quoted the old saw about being a playwright and how, if everyone loves the play, they'll credit you, but if no one loves the play, they'll blame you. Every play changes in rehearsal, in performance, has limitations that are fixed by the actors or directors, sometimes in the actual words on the page, sometimes in the performing. We all know this, we've all gone through production, but the attitude is still it's all about the playwright. Which, I think, puts undue pressure on playwrights and adds to the frenzy for The Right Play.

If I understand right, RVCBard has her chuckle at Isaac's expense because this idea -- that the playwright isn't the star quarterback, he's just another team player -- isn't really so controversial as it may have once been.

Obviously, take anything I say about "before my time" with a grain of salt, but it seems to me that if this theater industry that we've not a part of used to work, then back when it was working playwrights would have probably been a lot more likely to get up in arms and scream and shout about directors trampling over "their vision." At the time, their agent would have been there to fight for precisely that thing. But in today's reality, I don't think a playwright can afford to be that controlling over a script.

When a playwright works with a small independent or local company, they're not just putting together one play -- they're building a relationship. They don't want to be a failure. They also don't want that company not to say "Screw that chump, let's not work with her/him anymore." David Mamet can say things like "Actors keep getting in the way of the play I've written," but if I tried to say that, I'd find myself without actors. That's the reality of it.

Small companies don't want to license a play that comes with hundreds of strings attached. Why do you think they love Shakespeare so much? It's the only thing that they have both wide latitude with but also established audience recognition -- although apparently you can get some mileage out of Jacobean drama, if you love it enough. If you want a company to work with you, you have to be willing to work with them.

So in the face of that, the shift in norm becomes apparent. Critics (that is to say, writers) still find the written word to be important, unduly, for a number of reasons; they can still appreciate a play in which the words are deliberately not the mode of communication. And big Broadway musical writers can still sue NYU students not to do an all-male production of Company because it wasn't their original vision. Sure. But I think, overwhelmingly, the idea is now that it's a playwright's decision to determine how much control they want to exert, and how they relate to the other parts of the pie.

Conversation IV: Excuses

99 Seats creates Holtham's Law (dubbed such by Isaac Butler):

If, in any discussion, particularly of diversity or style, you bring up Shakespeare, you lose the argument. Boom, that's it, you're done. Thank you for playing. We have some lovely parting gifts for you. You can shut the hell up now.

Isaac adds the Butler Corollary (my naming, not his):

Anytime you are defending a script (or a moment/theatrical gesture in a script) and use Shakespeare or Beckett as reasons why it works, you lose.

I would add that Butler's Corollary is actually a special case of a larger rule, which is:

Any time you defend your own actions or work based on its similarity to the actions or work of other people, you are talking out of your ass.

I've seen this in a number of contexts. There are, for instance, any number of post-modernists who hold that because Jackson Pollack threw paint against a canvas, anyone who throws paint against a canvas is an artist. This is not true; Pollack had a very specific style that happens to be very beautiful, and was revolutionary in a certain context. John Cage's 4'33" was perfect in the moment; if you go out and do it now, we all know you're just doing a bad cover version of the master.

Another context is the one in terms of Israel. Every time I try and bring up Israel's abuses of the Palestinians, I often get the retort of Guantanamo Bay, or Palestinian attacks against Israel -- both are variations on the theme of either "nobody is perfect so I don't have to be" or "why do we have to be the first ones to change?" Morality is relative, but it's not relative to other people's actions. There isn't a certain amount of morality you show based on the world average of morality -- morality isn't racing away from the proverbial bear, where you only have to be slightly more moral than the least moral person in the world.

So if someone says "I don't like the fact that nothing happens," you can't just say, "Beckett did it." You have to argue about why nothing happening works in your play, in your context.

Same goes for Pinter or Karen Finley or Thomas Friedman or whomever you want to blame your own shit actions on.

I wish I had something as punchy as "CRICKET BAT TO THE FACE" to end this post with.

Diversity XII: Old Dead White Guys

99 Seats goes off on folks like Thomas Garvey who bring up Shakespeare in every argument about diversity. Basically, it's the equivalent of Godwin's Law: You bring up Shakespeare, you lose. I don't know if I'd go quite so far as making it the Godwin's Law of theater, but the point is very well taken.

The argument is better phrased that there is no danger that Scott Walters, 99 Seats, or anyone is ever going to drive Shakespeare out of existence. (I'm producing Shakespeare right now!). So there's no danger in having Scott Walters, 99 Seats, or anyone pull as hard as they want to against Shakespeare. On the other hand, there is a very real danger that the diverse, vulnerable playwrights who aren't getting produced might get further trampled. So really, the concern for Shakespeare is far out-weighed by the concern for diversity.

The only reason I'm hesitant is because the Nth degree of this pull is David Byrne's belief that opry is so dead that we shouldn't teach anything but pop music. There's a lot of diversity that can come through even productions of the classics: maybe the playwright is old and dead, but The Classical Theatre of Harlem certainly fits one definition of diversity.

Still, 99 Seats' post just makes me smile because of:

Because no one ever says, "What about Rutherford B. Hayes?!?" Why? Because he kind of sucked. So didmost of the old dead white guys.

Damn straight, 99 Seats. Give mediocre Presidents the tongue-lashing they rightly deserve.

Discussing As You Like It

My friends over at the New York Neo-Classical Ensemble (who've put on some good Shakespeare lately) have gotten into a back-and-forth between different Ensemble members on their blog about the merits of As You Like It.

Marc LeVasseur, from the anti column:

Attention: potential producers and directors of As You Like It! Put your copy on the floor, pour gasoline on it, and light a match. Would you put on a play whose plot dies halfway through? Would you put on a show with completely unmotivated character changes? Would you actually put on a show that had unfunny jokes and an absurd ending? This play should never be produced, you monster!

Why would you shatter the already too fragile opinion of Shakespeare that’s held by most people? All the good writing is entirely in the first half. Characters are drawn, plot is focused, and trajectory is established. Two unhappy children are exiled to the forest with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and the money in their pockets. This will surely be a great survival play, right? What are these uptight courtly young lovers going to do once they reach the hard, gritty world of Arden forest with its lions and hunting and despair? Surely not sit around and write poetry, surely not that?

That's only the beginning. The tract continues, picking specific plot points and gripes with the text. I have to say it's not necessarily all that persuasive, but it does raise a lot of interesting questions about why people produce Shakespeare's less good plays.

Many of those raised questions are tackled by company member Teddy in his defense for the pro column, which wraps up with:

I don’t think As You Like it is and more or less flawed then most (its certainly got a lot more going for it then Two Noble Kinsmen, but Gorilla Shakespeare’s production may prove me wrong). All plays, I find, follow more or less similar paths and it tends to be the points of contention, disconnection, scary and weird shit that makes them individual. The only way that we’ll get more people to “like” Shakespeare is not by staging comfortable productions to protect a fragile opinion held by some, but by bravely staging productions we believe in. Not every will care for any production, but if we continue to stage work we’re proud of, I think we further the case for Shakespeare’s talent far more than if we limit ourselves to a select number of titles. The more scared and uncertain I am of a play when I begin working on it, the more ability I have to get really loud and messy, scratching at the walls of the plot and the sensibility of the character.

Sustainability V: Legitimacy Pt. 4 (Local Context)

Well, over the weekend I finished reading Createquity's fantastic summary of Gifts of the Muse, and I thought that I would come in Monday ready to swing on that issue. But I want to carp on a bit about Sustainibility and Legitimacy for another moment, since this is becoming a dear idea for me.

Recently, there was an announcement that the former head of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Adrian Noble, would be coming to run the Old Globe theater in San Diego. In one of the articles (not, unfortunately, the one whose link I just found), Adrian Noble joked that he had never been closer to San Diego than the Los Angeles Airport.

Now, Adrian Noble's legitimacy in that position probably isn't up for debate. For one of Britain (and the world)'s leading Shakespeare directors/A.D.s to take over one of America's higher-profile Shakespeare Festivals is such a no-brainer.

On the other hand, there is something jarring to me to have a theater company turn over its artistic leadership to someone who freely admits that he has no experience with the town he's working in. The implication there is that Shakespeare is Shakespeare, no matter where you do it.

Now, I'm sure that Adrian Noble is a talented director, and I'm sure he's going to make good theater, but... well, obviously, creating good theater isn't enough. Plenty of people have been making good theater for a while now, and it still isn't drawing the crowds like it deserves. The point is that our theater needs to speak to its local context, it needs to find a way to make itself relevant to the people of its community. People that Adrian Noble has never met.

I'm torn, because I feel like if I wasn't wearing my "arts community development" hat I wouldn't be criticizing this move. When I heard about it, my gut instinct was "Yay! San Diego gets some good legitimacy!" I didn't mind that it was a British director. But something about never having once been in San Diego... how does he know what will strike a chord with San Diegans?

Is anyone on the same page as me on this issue?

How Copyright Hurts Playwrights

I noticed, of late, that it seemed that the Greek playwrights (Sophocles and Euripedes mostly) were making a comeback. I know several friends who now love the Greeks and make it their area of focus. I wondered about that--why in this moment, when we have more writers than ever before, people are looking at plays that are increasingly dated for inspiration. Now, don't get me wrong--they're just as relevant and applicable, and there's no reason why they can't be the right choice--but I wondered why it feels like there's more and more.

I noticed, of late, that it seemed like Ibsen was making a comeback. Hedda Gabbler and Doll's House feel like they're everywhere. Again--no reason why not, but I wondered. Why Hedda Gabler. Why Doll's House.

And then I noticed it about Chekov. There's a high-profile Cherry Orchard and a high-profile Uncle Vanya.

I don't have a lot of statistics in front of me. I wish I could look up and see whether it's true that there's more Chekov, more Ibsen, and more Greek playwrights. More Shakespeare. Maybe even more Gertrude Stein.

Because if so, there's a very simple reason why this would be. Those playwrights are free--they're in the Public Domain.

It's not just about the fees, the royalties, the tracking down of estates. It's also the artistic direction that is becoming more and more a part of running an estate.

A few friends of mine attempted to put on a production of a big musical in which all the characters would be male. The playwright found out, and threatened to sue our school, and was only mollified with a letter of apology. Another playwright was in a similar situation, but no letter of apology would mollify him: only an instant pledge not to produce the play. Students find playwrights like Albee, Beckett, Sondheim, etc. off-limits, unless they can assure the playwrights that the production will be exact.

I go to the Experimental Theater Wing. Our job is to experiment. But for playwrights like Albee, Beckett, Sondheim, and others, there is no room for experimentation. If I want to take an established play and, well, play around with it, I have to go to the classics.

Eventually, many student directors and ensembles realize that it's simply not worth it. The struggle of getting a play that's in copyright onto the stage, fighting with the playwright's intentions, fighting to be able to play around with a text, is not worth it. And why should we, when we can do whatever we want with with Ibsen, Shakespeare, or Gertrude Stein?

There are some playwrights out there who aren't as fanatical as Albee, Beckett, or Sondheim about controlling the artistic production of their plays--who see the responsibility of the production being good as being of the people producing the play--but they wind up being hurt as well. Because we stop looking to fight with them.

It's a pity. But I think the director/ensemble needs leeway to try crazy things, to experiment with a play. Perhaps it's different for a first production, but when you have a play that's already out there? Why control the way the director interprets it? Interpretations reflect on the director, not on the playwright.

Pragmatic Theater: Responsivity II - Read Only Culture

I wanted interactivity and responsivity in theater. In a way, it's based on the differences Lawrence Lessig laid out between "Read-Only" culture, in which there is a producer and a consumer, and "Remix" culture, where everyone responds and reacts. The internet, of course, facilitates "Remix" culture greatly, but it existed first: in participatory theater (before the concept of actors/audience originated), in poetry competitions (such as those that Muslim students have competed in for centuries), etc. But after inventions like the Printing Press, the Radio Broadcast, and the Television were created, our most popular forms of getting culture and information became mass media--not aimed at the few people in your local community, but at a global population. And in order for that to be possible, the technology limited mass-media to a read-only culture.

But the Theater has, for quite some time, been a predominantly read-only culture. This is probably because of the rise of literary theater, for which Shakespeare is probably to thank. After all, Shakespeare is more well-known for his published plays than for his actual productions--his actual productions are inaccessible to me, but his text is still reachable to me. In fact, in the English Tradition, the 18th-19th Centuries (from accounts I've read by George Bernard Shaw) was mostly dominated by productions of Shakespeare or translations of popular French farces; and since the idea of producing 'novel' or 'original' works becomes devalued, and thus the established text becomes the core of the show.

Meanwhile: These productions go from being performed in venues like inn-yards to "theaters," which are built with a read-only ethic in mind. Audiences become silent, still, in the dark; more and more they are separated from the stage. Late 19th-Century realism imposes the "fourth wall" and ends the long tradition of soliloquoys and asides in "serious" productions.

So the theater became a (largely) read-only venue. Is that the only way it can be? Is that the healthiest way for the theater to interact with the public? And what would a theater-building look like that took Remix Culture instead of Read-Only Culture at its core?

Review: Pericles, Prince of Tyre

The most exciting part of seeing a rarely produced Shakespeare production is that it is a rare event--although we may see plenty of Hamlets or Macbeths in our lifetime, we will only see a few shows like Pericles, Prince of Tyre. This is a risky proposition: the reason that these plays are less produced is usually because they are simply not as good as their more-produced counterparts. But as New York University's Classical Studio proved this weekend, even the Bard's less brilliant plays can still be excellent productions if they are produced with care.

The pitfall of the script of Pericles is that, though it has an interesting, Shakespearean plot, the language does not have all of the bells and whistles of Hamlet. Yet on the other hand, the sparser, plainer language actually lends itself to being understood easier. Indeed, Director-Choreographer John Farmanesh-Bocca has tackled the production in a way which makes it far more accessible than the average Shakespeare play. The movement pieces are cunningly arranged to break up the play without disturbing the flow, and to illustrate elements of the script which (without the movement) would be too briefly hit upon.

The other support which this production leaned upon was the humor. The script is not a particularly funny script to begin with, but Farmanesh-Bocca teased out a lot of humor in ways that, although not necessarily the original intention, harmonized with the script and made it even better.

The cast was extremely talented in bringing these visions to light. Jabari Brisport, Michael Eisenstein, and Juan Grafton-Delgado, playing the role of the Fates, performed the movement pieces with grace and intensity, and managed to invest themselves in all of the portions of the play which they were silently observing. Terence Stone, as a Bill-Pullman-esque Pericles, was also well-performed, and although sometimes he had trouble keeping up with the boundless enthusiasm of the rest of the cast he usually served as an excellent straight man against a background of exciting and enticing characters.

It is difficult to highlight all of the actors who should be highlighted; suffice it to say that there was not a single performance, from Pericles all the way down to the three prostitutes, which was not performed with a grace, enthusiasm, and delicate handling of language which brought what on the page is a mediocre production into full life.

Pericles, Prince of Tyre was being performed in Rep with a production of Hamlet which I saw last fall and is being performed again, and this production succeeds in every way that I thought that production of Hamlet had fallen short. But the growth and grace of the cast was such that I regret not being able to go back to Hamlet to see if it has become a completely different, effortless production.

Review: Macbeth

Shakespeare seems so dry, so removed from our times, that it is hard to imagine it having a deep, visceral impact. Richard Foreman once said that all theater is about death because in the act of freezing it and performing it exactly, over and over, we've killed it. If that's true, then Shakespeare has been dead for hundreds of years. The production at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, directed by Rupert Goold and staring Patrick Stewart (Macbeth) and Kate Fleetwood (Lady Macbeth), does create that visceral feeling. This is what a remounting of a classic should be: absolutely grounded in our guts.

The set, designed by Anthony Ward, provides an immediate base from which the play can already begin its powerful effect. It is gray and dingy, at once recalling ugly kitchens, sinister morgues, interrogation rooms, or whatever gloomy industrial needs one might have. As the play progresses, a few small moving set pieces are all that is needed to transform this set into whatever locale is needed.

Meanwhile, an equally sinister story is being told onstage. Macbeth and his companion Banquo (Martin Turner) come back from the war as heroes, but a prophecy from three demonic sisters (Sophie Hunter, Polly Frame, Niamh McGrady) gives him an appetite for more: he and his wife collude to murder the King of Scotland, and everyone who stands in their way.

The play has a very distinct tone, set in place not only by the set, but also by powerful sound choices from designer Adam Cork, subtle lighting design by Howard Harrison, and video/projection design by Lorna Heavey. The tone was very distinctly set, creating a very heavy and sometimes overpoweringly suspenseful backdrop to all of the character's actions.

Sometimes, early on, this was not ideal--it seemed as though the choices were so powerful that they'd have nowhere else to go as the play progressed. The video projections in particular were often less helpful; it seemed to me as though they should have either been used more, or used less. Some visions, such as the appearance of a ghost near the end of the second act, were accompanied by strong psychedelic projections. But others, like the infamous "is that a dagger which I see before me?" were played without any projection at all. I found it difficult to understand what the logic was behind certain choices of projection versus others. But there was no denying that even before the end of the first scene, the show's tone and mood was very powerfully set, and that all of the design elements had played a part.

Of course, had the mood prevailed in one tone for an entire show, it might have become overpowering, even stifling. And it is here that the director and the actors are to be commended for balancing out the mood. The heavy tones of the play could have been insufferably relentless, but at times became a springboard to turn even the subtlest humor into a real joy and release. In one scene, Macbeth is discussing ordering a murder. As he does so, he prepares a sandwich for himself and for the murderers, putting it in one murderer's mouth to stifle objection. The choice brought humor into a stark moment, but the care with which the choice was deployed turned an intellectual concept about greed into a human moment of hunger.

This transformation of intellectual concepts into visceral, emotional experiences was clear in each of the actors. Patrick Stewart's Macbeth was a very human incarnation, whose soliloquoys seemed to be honest conversations with the audience. No matter how many murders, or how vile his actions were, there was a human being looking for something, whether it be from the audience or from other members of the ensemble. Kate Fleetwood's Lady Macbeth was equally invested with life; like Lady Macbeth she seemed to be able to slide from one end of Lady Macbeth's existence to the other without destroying the integrity of the character. Neither character ever milked the "great lines" of Shakespeare any more than the moment dictated.

The term 'modernization' is bandied about a lot in reference to Shakespeare, but it seems strange to talk about this production as 'modernizing' Macbeth. Although the prop elements (also from Anthony Ward) and the costume choices (supervised by Christine Rowland) were 'modern,' the feeling was not that this is what Macbeth would look like if it happened in the 21st Century. It looked to me as though this story was a universal story, and that all of these 'modern' elements had been selected for no other reason than to make the story work. The time in which the play took place was not important--what was important is that it was happening now, in the visceral sort of way that theater has of always happening now.