Showman/Shaman

The following is part of an ongoing debate in Philadelphia over a particular critic. For more on that whole thing, check out We Love Toby!

This was a response to a list-serve post to Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia.

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Dear Ed,

There's no way I can match your epic posting. You've posted me into oblivion. I've been ass-posted. Stick me on a post, I'm done. But thanks for reading my book.

Anyway, y'all know how I feel about T-Zin (See? It's come to this - I'm making up new nicknames for her.) Ed, we agree on this: she can be nasty. So for the last time, here it is. It's like I tell my kids - don't be nasty to people. Just. Don't. Be. Nasty. To. People. In person. In print. On line. There is a way to tell people they can do better without hurting them. Do unto others. What goes around comes around. And with this blog, it done come around.

But here's the thing. Underneath all the hot air about the Zinmeister, her virtues, her sins, lies a troubling question. A breathtaking question. A question which calls into question all other questions. A question which cuts to the heart of criticism, of theatre training, of theatre making. And the question is this:

Is there any such thing as good theatre?

Or for that matter -

Is there any such thing as bad theatre?

And now, beloved fellow Philadelphia theatre community, because I have devoted myself to working with you, to performing for you, to studying with you and learning from you, allow me to stick my neck directly on the chopping block:

I think there is no such thing as good theatre, and no such thing as bad theatre.

And that belief has profoundly shifted my approach to theatre making, to teaching acting and to reading criticism. If I was sitting at Fergie's with ten of you, and we gave ourselves the task of coming up with a definition of good theatre we could all agree on, at best we would politely agree to disagree, at worst we would end up drunk and throwing bar stools at each other. Now let's say there were nine of us and one Inquirer theatre critic. Does her definition trump all others? I think not. A person's intellectual pedigree doesn't mean her perceptions are better than anyone else's. What if nine of us agree that Closer Than Ever was one of the most charming evenings of theatre we had ever attended - for whatever reason. But Tobitha doesn't. Are we all wrong? Is she right?

Of course not. Once we admit there is no such thing as good or bad theatre, all we are left with is our subjective response. A great piece of criticism is an articulate description of a subjective response, which can be persuasive without passing judgment on something as either "good" or "bad". The height of arrogance in criticism is this notion that there are such things as "standards" in theatre, and that it is the critic's job to name and defend them. Once upon a time there might have been theatrical standards in America, maybe in the 50s when 95% of the actors were white and everyone thought they should sound like Grant or Hepburn. But in our glorious melting pot, in the mixture of styles and the blending of genres that "theatre" encompasses today, there can be no standards beyond the most elementary (i.e. actors should know their lines). Confronted with the myriad staged events which may fall under the designation "theatre", what possible standards can apply? In our fair city, are we to judge West Side Story on the Walnut Main Stage by the same standards we judge storefront Fringe theatre? And I'm not only talking about the economic differences from one company to another. I think each individual piece of theatre essentially makes up its own "standards", its own criteria for success. The same "standards" which may apply to The Crucible cannot apply to The Imaginary Invalid, even though both shows are produced by the same theatre with many of the same artists in common.

This kind of show-by-show assessment is hard. It requires meeting each new experience without preconceptions and formulating a fresh response to each play you see. It's easier to sit back and pass judgments. I think we have fallen in love in passing judgments - not just critics, but a lot of us. It feels so good to say "That was terrible", "How embarrassing", "It sucked". By taking something down a notch, we are lifted up. In this light, the ugly truth about passing judgment is seen for what it really is: a way for people feel powerful. I've noticed how much more often I hear and read these negative judgments passed than their positive opposites. It's a bit risky in our culture to be an advocate or a cheerleader for something. You become a target for ridicule. It makes me think of all those horrible TV shows in which someone is getting fired, voted off or shot down. The brutal passing of judgment has become mass-cultural entertainment in America, so it's no wonder that the savage review is held up as "fun to read". It's no wonder that the editors at The Inquirer think the Zinster is so witty and smart. We're so much more cool when we shoot something down. But when we smirk at the savage review, all we're riding on is the critic's lust for power.

"Oh come on Ben" I hear some of you muttering, "if you had seen [fill in the blank with the show you hated], you would have said it was bad, very bad." Yeah, I might have. Or I might have said I really, really didn't like it - which is different. The first response passes judgement on something. The second response describes the way I reacted to it. If I didn't like something, I'm going to do my damndest to tell you exactly why. Try sometime to talk or write about something you saw that you had a strong response to one way or the other, without resorting to value laden terms like good and bad. You'll soon discover that it's difficult. Good and bad (and their derivatives) are short cuts - sound bites used by lazy writers who don't have the time or energy to put into words what they saw and felt about something. Speaking about how you reacted to something brings an important component into the conversation - you. Yours tastes, your predilections, your biases, the kind of day you had, all these become a part of the way you reacted to the thing you saw. Then, suddenly, the see-saw comes into balance: on one side, the play; on the other, the witness. A review is a mixture of these two, and the qualities of the witness are intertwined with the thing witnessed in the review. But people invested in their power to pass judgments will resist this approach to criticism. Why? Because when they are drawn into the discussion, their biases are called into question and their power is diminished. This is why La Tobe refused to be interviewed by Vicki Glembocki of Philadelphia Magazine. Being a part of a discussion about criticism admits there might be another point of view besides her's, and all her obnoxious swipes at Vicki described at the end of the article are a lot of fearful hot air.

Once we get away from passing judgments, in other words, once we imagine a way to respond to something that admits our subjectivity, something gentle happens. We cease to be offended by something we don't like, since we know we play a role in not liking it, and we begin to speak and write about people with respect. Because when I admit my role in my response to the thing being evaluated, then I am fully present. And when I am fully present, I am concerned with how I may be treated by others, and so I treat them well. Even more important, but more ethereal, when I am present in word or in person I am acknowledging the human exchange taking place. When I am present, I am witness to the effect I am having on others, and I feel the effect they have on me. But most criticism, both in newspapers and in academia, speaks in a disembodied authoritarian voice in which the word "I" is never uttered. Judgments get passed Oz-like from behind the protective walls of an office, their origins clouded by the smokescreen of academic reputation. The artist in the cross-hairs then ceases to be human, but rather becomes an object to be scorned, the collateral damage of the savage review.

The implications of a judgment-less approach to theatre training are staggering, some might say ludicrous. I think it's for another post (or another book - I hope you'll read that one too). But let me finish with this. It gets back to my previous post, which you referred to. A judgment-less approach to theatre training leads not to the making of "good" theatre, but rather to an involved examination of the theatre which needs to be made. This examination leads to an awareness of one's audience, it leads to a connection to one's community. And we in Philadelphia (and our brothers and sisters in Chicago, where another critic revolt is under way) are ideally positioned to embark on this examination, being Citizen Artists who live where we work. Indeed, this entire donnybrook is a celebration of a community of artists bold enough to spook some sacred cows, passionate enough stand up and say we demand to be treated with respect and adult enough to converse about it without being nasty. It is evidence of our inter-connection.

It’s the Tuesday before tech week, and we’ve had our first taste of the “bad cop”. I’ve been noticing the way Lillian lavishes praise on her actors. She’s been thoroughly “good cop”. With high-risk comedy like this it’s important that actors feel supported and affirmed. “It was brilliant!” or “You’re a genius!” go a long way towards helping an actor commit to a scary choice, and go even further. It’s not that it’s phony either. I think she is genuinely enthusiastic about the works she’s seeing us do. But she’s experienced, and she knows that it’s a way to cement the choices she thinks are working.

She has developed an unusually overt mother/son relationship with Jud, the young guest actor playing Cleante. They’ve worked together several times, and watching his comic gifts, it’s clear to see why. But it’s their relationship off-script that fascinates me. Lillian can be intimidating, but Jud teases her and she teases him back in away that softens the atmosphere in the room. In a way, their relationship offers a template for how best to work with her: playful, brave and intimate. It’s a perfect example of the “family paradigm” I describe in The Actor’s Way at play. Jud sings a comic operetta in the play, and I watched her softly lecture him during a break about how good his voice is, what a fool he is for not getting singing lessons and how far he’d go if he did.

But today after a run, the bad cop scolded us. She said we had taken a step backwards from the run last Saturday, but I couldn’t see any great difference, and neither could the other actors I checked in with. She seemed to think we were all dropping a lot of lines and made a crack about not caring how busy the rest of our lives were “with whatever else you’re doing, the kids or whatever. Make adjustments in your life to learn the lines so you can be in a play!” That stung, me being the only actor in the room with kids at home. But I bit my tongue. I know my lines and I sensed there was something else going on with her. Today was my first run with my dentist-created fake teeth, which fit great but aren’t nasty enough. No one beyond the fifth row will notice there’s anything particularly wrong with them. Lillian was peeved, and outraged that they cost $200. “I had a dentist in Berkeley make a set for $15!” I thought, how many years ago was that, and anyway, it was Berkeley. Maybe he wasn’t really a dentist, maybe he was just a guy with some good drugs who liked to mess around with teeth.

But the scolding continued. And we sat and took it. And I realized that I had been through this before. Something tends to happen to directors the week before tech which makes the bad cop come out. Part of it is dealing with the “sag” that Lillian warned us about, which is so obvious in comedy. None of it is particularly funny anymore, and she sensed it and it freaked her out. Not that it isn’t funny. It’s just that we’ve seen the bits a hundred times now. I think this probably did make us droop a bit as an ensemble, so the scold had its just cause.

But I’ve noticed that directors will take the cast down a notch or two before tech, in order to prepare for the inevitable lift into tech and previews. The scold gives us something to refer back to later: “look at how far you’ve come!” It’s also a way to galvanize attention in a moment in rehearsal when attention can slip quietly out the door like a cat. There’s no doubt that she got our attention, and no doubt that each of us squirmed a bit, and thought, is she talking about me? Did I truly suck just now? The scold raises hackles in an effective way, and makes actors acquire an “I’ll show her” determination which can really send a production into a new plane.

An hour after the scold, we were back to jokes, laughter and shouts of “brilliant!”. There was great relief, and I thought to myself, let’s keep it up here so we don’t get scolded again. Good directors are master manipulators, and that sounds like a horrible thing to say, but I mean it with the utmost respect. What else do you call it when you’re trying to get a room full of artists to do it the way think it should be done? When I am convinced you admire my skills, respect me as an artist and are an artist yourself, manipulate me for all I’m worth baby.

Lillian is also adept at seeing and pointing out her own mistakes. She will often begin a critical note with “It’s probably my fault darling, but . . .” She will axe routines she was drilling the day before when she sees that it’s getting in the way. And she accepts suggestions well. I apologized before offering a point of view on a scene I’m not in and she leapt in, “Don’t apologize. The play is everybody’s business. Actors are artists. I leave my ego for other things. The whole play is your business and my business. We’re in this together.”

What a love/hate relationship we have the audience. Lillian began a rehearsal recently by talking about “the kelp”.

“The what?” I said.

“You know – in the audience, “ and she made the seaweed waving under water gesture, both arms extended over head, swaying softly from side to side. And yet, all we are doing, we are doing for the kelp.

Griffen has again been the source of an important costume piece. First it was Inos’s hair, and now it is Thomas’s teeth. Thomas, the dolt Argan wants his daughter to marry, needs to have an instantly comic effect. It should be clear that this is a match made in hell for Angelique. So I have been experimenting with an over-bite (think of the Monty Python “Twit Of The Year” sketch). But Lillian pointed out that without anyone else screwing up their faces like that it make me look like an actor doing a gag. “If you can find some fake teeth, then fine” she said. So, after rummaging around in the toy bins downstairs, I came across some gag teeth Griff had received as a stocking stuffer a couple of Christmases ago. When I tried them in rehearsal, we could hardly get a line out, people were laughing so much. So now I’m going to my dentist to be fitted for a well-made set of ghastly teeth. But Griff’s are in use in rehearsal, stuck to my teeth with chewing gum.

Lillian understands the “mechanical” quality of rehearsing comedy, what Fava might call the “scientific” nature of it. The modern term is formulaic, and it is usually pejorative but it shouldn’t be. She drills us in the routines we invent that she likes. It feels like rehearsing a dance, or learning a football play. It can drive some actors crazy, but I enjoy it. I love digging into the precision of a moment, breaking it down into its component parts and really learning it. In the ethereal world of acting – so dominated by realism - it feels solid and concrete to me. It’s an aspect of my art I can hang onto.

And it helps that so far, what I’m doing has been met with laugher. After going through a series of voices, looking for Thomas, Lillian smiled at me and said, “You’re one of those fearless actors, aren’t you Benjamin?” How is a person supposed to respond to that? I mumbled something and stared at my feet. But it’s clear that – so far – she and I are on the same wave-length. To some extent, Lillian’s right. I have the most over the top roles to play, and the task with roles like these is to go as far out on a comic limb as you can and still be in the world of the play. There is huge courage in it, but I don’t feel it as such. It feels like joyful release to me, a wonderful emptying of my perverse humor, and my fear is greatly tempered by working in a room full of people who love me.

Lillian is all about what I call “robust collaboration”. “Don’t get fragile on me” she said during a trying note session. What she meant is, bring me your objections, your questions, your ideas, but don’t wilt, because it’s hard work what we’re up to. Comedy like this hangs us up because of our need to understand what we’re doing before we do it. But this is impossible. Comedy brings home the reality that we only make worthwhile discoveries in the playing of it, swinging further out on the limb and knowing that when it snaps (which it does frequently in rehearsal), we will drop on to something forgiving, at least we will in a rehearsal guided by a good director. This need to know before doing is related to the pernicious effects of judgment, in that this need is driven by our obsession with the “good” or “right” choice. But it is in our willingness to be “bad” and “wrong” that our comic genius lies. When we throw off the constraints of judgment, we begin to manifest the quality that Lillian calls “fearlessness”, and we open ourselves up to choices which may be transgressive, eccentric, impolite, obscene and very, very funny.

I was taught a pedagogical sequence some time ago that I have thought of rehearsing Invalid. It describes how we learn. We go from unconscious incompetence, to conscious incompetence, to conscious competence, to unconscious competence. In realism, we can hide our incompetence, since mostly what we are doing is behaving like ourselves. So our mistakes are camouflaged. But our incompetence is on full display in comedy, in which the distance between my choice and the laugh is sometimes huge when I start, but my task is to close it up in rehearsal. “Lear is not hard compared to this” says Lillian.

The formulaic aspect of comedy is intentional in commedia dell’Arte. Fava would say, the plots are all the same, the set-ups don’t change very much, everyone knows what’s coming. This is why it was so easy for Moliere to take commedia and adapt it. Once you’ve seen a few commedia plays, you get it. There is a critical culture which regards formulaic comedies as bad plays – but they’re not. They are plays which rely on other theatrical virtues besides great writing in order to succeed. They rely on the virtues of the fearless comic actor: boundless energy, physical and vocal expressiveness, comic ingenuity, skilful collaboration and great audience sensitivity. Fava regards the dominance of the written play as the end of the pre-eminence of the comic actor in the commedia tradition, who, he writes, would regard memorizing lines as akin to lip-synching pop songs.

And in keeping with the commedia tradition, we are playing fast and loose with the Invalid script. At the read-through, James told us not to be precious with his lines. So we have been changing them, adding new ones, cutting things, all based on the virtues of the comic actor. When the actor invents something funny while rehearsing, Lillian usually keeps it. “We may throw it out later, but let’s hold on to it now”.

I have left Susan and the kids in Chatham and am back home alone to begin rehearsing The Imaginary Invalid at People's Light. Being alone is very tricky for me. I hate it. Lots of old buttons get pushed and it’s just me and my shadow. I am working very consciously to make affirming choices. It’s like my friend Jack said in The Rooms on the Cape: “I don’t love no one inna wohld mowah den me. An if you awl felt a same way, theyad be no mowah whoa-ah.” So I’m trying to love myself . . . a lot. No more cigarettes. Going to the gym. Eating right and getting some rest. And telling my shadow to fuck off.

KP, who played my wife in July 7th, 1994 will take over for Sooz as Beline. Peter, from both Jason and Crucible will play Bonnefoi and Beralde. Also from Crucible are Steve (Argan) and Tom (Diafoirus and Purgon). From Jason, MB as Toinette and Joey as Angelique. A newcomer named Jud is playing Cleante. That leaves Thomas, Louise (a nine year old girl), Fleaurant and The President for me. I call a job like this Screaming Cameos - a series of small outrageous roles - I love it. My task will be to convince the audience that more than one actor is playing my four roles. The truth is Thomas and Louise are more than cameos – they are over-the top comic supporting roles. Combined with Katherine in Shrew next spring, it will be the year of cross-gender classical roles for me. What next? Medea?

Lillian, our director, was born and raised in Argentina with German-Italian parents . . . I think. In any case, she is quintessentially European and has a bit of the grande dame about her. But she’s also goofy, and reminds me of the commedia Signora: lusty, authoritative and experienced, but able to execute a Lucy pratfall at a moment’s notice. She’s like your smarty-pants older sister, who got straight As without trying, but taught you how to roll a joint and told you the filthiest jokes. She has a reputation as a task-master (Sooz had the lead in Lillian’s play Midons a few years ago which Lillian directed herself, and was telling me affectionate and descriptive stories on the Cape), but after two days of rehearsal, I suspect we will get on just fine. I had to write her a difficult email, almost begging her to allow me to be excused to teach in the afternoons at UArts Tuesday and Friday of preview week. Abbey said she’d have a fit, but she wrote back the sweetest email saying she’d work around it, and by the way, would you please play Louise because you were too funny in auditions.

She has suffered a real pratfall of late, and arrived a half an hour into the design presentation with stitches in her upper lip and soft cast on her right leg. It seems she fell while returning home from caring for her mother. So we have that in common too – care for our frail elders. The set for the play is a two story, enclosed semi-circle with a balcony that runs around the wall half way up. There are doors above and below, giving it the feel of an enclosed, interior piazza. Marla presented her zany-but-beautiful period sketches, and I realized how important her sketches are to me as I begin a play. Her drawings are my first solid visual building-block for the characters I am playing.

Lillian began by saying that there is great truth in comedy, even when it is absurd as it is in Invalid. She said she was excited to do this play at People’s Light because we have a great company of clowns, and she meant it as a high compliment, which was how I took it. We are losing respect for the art of clowning, she said, and in the USA humor is being poisoned by TV. A great deal of her work on the play will be informed by commedia dell’Arte, which, of course, was Moliere’s chief source of inspiration. There will be masks (briefly), music, choreography and lazzi, lazzi, lazzi. She pointed out that Argan is a direct descendent of Pantalone. I thought of Fava, his book, the workshop and felt both the recognition of the divine sequence at work in my life, working with someone who shares the name of my suicidal grandmother, the frustrated actress. But I also fret about Fava’s admonition that we never “dilute” commedia.

Later, we read through and laughed and laughed, Lillian having to hold her upper lip in place so she didn’t pull her stitches out. Our translator is my Yale Drama School classmate James who has done a great job at creating a script which sounds American but holds on to just enough classicism so that the play stays in its period.

On the second day, Lillian led us in a discussion about “attitude”. She spoke about how she loathes the American tendency to play “attitude”, rather than getting right to the thing at hand, what she calls “coming from zero.” She said it is especially prevalent in youthful movie and TV acting, and I offered that it is a kind of detachment born of fear of the vulnerability one feels when living genuinely in a real moment with another human being. Again I was reminded of Fava, who writes about the comic actor’s tendency to resort to parody or satire when he can’t commit to the comic moment on its own terms.

“It’s tough rehearsing a comedy.” Lillian said. “We discover something and laugh, then the laughter wears off because we know the joke, but we have to keep rehearsing it, keep refining it, keep discovering it as if it’s new, but without the payoff of laughter. Then we have our first preview and we begin to learn a few things.”