Extra Criticum

A Pep Talk for Artists

I don’t know if you ever sat in a high school locker room at halftime when a coach hurled chalk into the wall, kicked over chairs, and exposed his doubting troops to a vocabulary far removed from English class.  Once witnessed, never forgotten.  Besides being immensely entertaining and frightening, this ritual of American culture could also be effective.  Returning to the arena, the players usually did concentrate better, play harder, and have more confidence.

Once we’re out of school and facing the grind of daily life, pep talks are rare to nonexistent.  Which is not to say they wouldn’t come in handy when attempting something where the end is unknown and failure looms.  Artists and entrepreneurs come immediately to mind.

Musicals Suggest Models for Teamwork

What are the optimum conditions for creative output, particularly as regards working solo or in a group? (David Licata in a recent post praises artist residencies for the fertile conditions they can provide.) An article by Jonah Lehrer in the Jan. 30 issue of The New Yorker introduced me to the research of Brian Uzzi, a sociology professor at Northwestern, who is much interested in creative work. Uzzi uses social network analysis and complexity theory (whatever those are) to study teamwork, leadership, creativity and productivity.

It just so happens that Broadway musicals, viewed in toto as an industry, make excellent fodder for research on teamwork and creativity. It helps when the researcher loves musicals. Uzzi told Lehrer that he saw his first musical, Hair, at age nine: “I remember absolutely nothing about the music, but I do remember the nude scene. That just about blew my mind. I’ve been a fan of Broadway ever since.”

A New Novel Gives Actors a Hug

If creativity is an inheritable trait then Esther Freud certainly benefited on that account.  The 48-year old British novelist is the great-granddaughter of Sigmund, yes that Sigmund; daughter of the famous painter Lucien Freud (who died last July, age 88); and sister to fashion designer Bella Freud.  Esther Freud’s seventh novel, Lucky Break, was published recently to mostly positive reviews. 

Before picking up the pen Ms. Freud put on the greasepaint.  She studied at the Drama Center London where after two years she was informed that she lacked sufficient talent and was asked to leave.  She soldiered on and worked as an actress.  It is that experience that Freud draws on as she portrays the ups and more frequent downs of an actor’s life in Lucky Break.  The novel follows a group of actors from a sadistic drama school, where “they break them down to build them up,” to their various career paths.   

Seven years after drama school Ms. Freud began to write.  Her first novel, Hideous Kinky, depicted her itinerant childhood in Morocco with her counterculture mother, and was made into a film starring Kate Winslet as the mom.

The Portrait of a Failed Playwright

“It’s a strange, compulsive business, the urge to make plays.  To act in them, or write ‘em, or produce ‘em.  It’s no use appealing to reason.”  That’s Henry James counseling a friend in Author, Author, a novel (2004) by British writer and retired literature professor David Lodge.  I just read this well-told tale about the failed playwright and posthumously esteemed novelist Henry James (1843-1916). 

James, frustrated at midcareer with his fiction’s lack of popularity, tried to find success and improve his income by turning to the stage.  Oh, what fools these mortals be!

Putting the Hurt on Beckett

John Hurt, the superb British actor, gave an entertaining and enlightening interview this week on the “Charlie Rose Show.”  Hurt is currently appearing in Samuel Beckett’s play Krapp’s Last Tape at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.  For a taste of his performance see this 90-second New York Times video.  The Times review was a rave.

This production comes from Britain’s Gate Theater and is directed by Michael Colgan.  Hard to believe but this is Hurt’s debut on a New York stage.  He also stars in a movie just coming out, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. 

Artists and Obscurity

The fantasy of countless writers was realized earlier this month when Alexis Jenni, a 48-year-old high school biology teacher, won the Prix Goncourt, France’s top literary prize, for his novel L’art francais de la guerre (The French Art of War).

Galloping Stage Magic

I’m in New York this week for meetings and plays.  As I always do here, I gorge on plays.  Somehow I’ve managed to cram eight plays into five days.  I stay at the YMCA and what I save on lodging I spend on play tickets.  I love visiting New York!

David Merrick: From Cauldron to Stage

I recently read The Abominable Showman (by Howard Kissel, 1993), a biography of legendary Broadway producer, David Merrick (1911-2000).  Merrick was Broadway’s foremost producer in the thirty odd years of roughly 1955-1985.

The stereotype I held was that he was a difficult producer who put drek on stage, pushed people around and made lots of money.  This biography reveals that “difficult” doesn’t begin to describe the man.  Merrick was a cauldron of neuroses who easily could have kept a cast of psychiatrists working overtime.  He ruled by bullying, intimidation, bluster, withholding payment and filing lawsuits.  The writer Tom Jones said, “We had the feeling we were working with a deranged person, but also someone who could use derangement for his own amusement and his own purposes.”  Jones attributed Merrick’s eagerness to upset his creative team to a “basic theory that creative people were too often too easy on themselves.”  A longtime employee remarked that Merrick was “incapable of a non-volatile relationship.”

Two Masters Discuss "Master Class"

A terrific interview with playwright Terrance McNally and actress Tyne Daly (musical Gypsy; television Cagney & Lacey, Judging Amy) recently aired on the Charlie Rose show.  The 30-minute program is well worth seeing for anyone passionate about theatre or opera or really any of the arts.  The occasion of the interview is the current extended revival of McNally’s play The Master Class at Manhattan Theatre Club, starring Daly as the diva Maria Callas.

A Brave ACT at the Box Office

Roland wrote a short post a couple of weeks ago about an innovative ticket sales strategy at ACT Theatre in Seattle, prompting me to dig deeper.

I write regularly about marketing and revenue challenges facing the theatre business in America.  (I'm a former producer who spent more time than was healthy worrying about ticket sales.)  In the last decade massive demographic forces and the explosion of media options have plunged the live stage business into turmoil. I should add that theatre is hardly the only sector suffering ulcers.  How many newspapers were on your porch this morning, how many magazines came in your mailbox last week, how has your television viewing changed in ten years?  Come on, how many ways do you “consume” movies today?  Chaos rules the media world.

A Visit To The Cherry Orchard, Live, Sort Of

This week I visited a cherry orchard to experience something I’ve been avoiding.  I discovered that it’s actually pretty good.

Five years ago the Metropolitan Opera, led by its new and intrepid General Manager Peter Gelb, pioneered simulcasts of operas to cinemas around the country.  (The Met calls it a “cinemacast.”)  Gelb’s bravura move was accompanied, in classic opera tradition, by a chorus of skepticism and prophesies of doom.  Guess what?  It’s been a success.  Mind you, not on the scale of LinkedIn’s IPO or Facebook, but these days any success in the performing arts counts as a big success.

British Taxpayers Send Plays Galloping Across the Atlantic

War Horse and Jerusalem, two plays developed in Britain’s subsidized theatres, received high honors last month at the Tony Awards.  

Michael Billington is one of England’s foremost drama critics and a veteran journalist for the British newspaper, The Guardian.  (He’s also Harold Pinter’s biographer.)  Billington recently wrote, with bitter pride, about the support that subsidized British theatre provides to commercial America theatre.  This upside-down trans-Atlantic relationship was evident at the Tonys when Mark Rylance won “best leading role in a play” for his work in Jerusalem and War Horse won a whopping five Tonys, including “best play.” 

A Big Fish Lands On Stage

Earlier this month there was quite a bit of teeth-gnashing about playwrights working in film and TV because they can’t make a living from their playwriting.  Tony Kushner set off this latest wave of groans in an interview in Time Out New York.  Amidst all the sackcloth and ashes, I glimpsed two other events out of the corner of my eye.

"Aladdin" Cast Rings Director's Doorbell

The cast of Aladdin all dressed up as Mormon missionaries earlier this week to greet their director Casey Nicholaw.  The director had just returned from New York, where Sunday evening he and co-director Trey Parker had been honored with the Tony Award for “Best Direction of a Musical” for their work on the hit The Book of Mormon.  (Nicholaw is fourth from R. in front row.)