Green room productivity

Patrick Healy has a piece in the New York Times about the unusual ways in which some actors spend their downtime during a performance: Jan Maxwell (doubly Tony-nominated next Sunday) helps her son with his homework; during August: Osage County, John Cullum actually went and did another play, then returned for the curtain call.

Since a recent post on local actors who can improve box-office receipts scared up a lot of comments, Bobo thought this topic might do the same, providing some modest entertainment value. So ... local actors, how do you spend your time backstage?
Any amusing stories about people completing their master's theses, brushing their teeth, changing their cousin's baby's diapers in the minutes before rushing onstage as the fourth chorus girl from the left?

[ image: from thegreenroomstudio.tv ]

Theatrical reading

Ben Brantley in the New York Times has again suggested a reading list for theater ho's.

In addition to his suggestions — Hart, Rich, Quintero, Gielgud, Coward — peruse the many good suggestions down in the comments, including books by Antony Sher, Peter Hall, Michael Blakemore, Tyrone Guthrie, James Kirkwood, Simon Callow and more. (Helen Epstein's biography of Joe Papp is about the only book by a woman listed here.)
[ photo: Antony Sher as Richard III in 1985; see Frank Rich's review here ]

Local stars mean box-office bonanza?

As part of its Tony coverage, the New York Times included a sidebar on how much big-name stars mean to Broadway's weekly grosses.
Basically, if you have Denzel Washington/Hugh Jackson/Catherine Zeta-Jones/ScarJo in your production and the other guy doesn't, then you will rake in two to four times as much per week.

Which leads to a local application. Kathie Doyle-Lipe has her local following, and for good reason. Some people will go see anything directed by Troy Nickerson — again, for good reason. Perhaps Patrick Treadway, Reed McColm, Ellen Travolta, Jack Bannon, Patrick McHenry-Kroetch and others have similar fan bases? (I don't know, and apologies to anyone I've failed to mention here. You fill in the names.)

Now, Bobo doesn't have access to box-office records hereabouts, and he tends to go to shows on opening night (which has its own buzz, but cannot yet have acquired the shine and increased ticket sales that result from good word-of-mouth). In other words, what does he know?

But here is your chance to praise your fellow artists. Who around here has the marquee name to "open" a show? What examples can you recall of a) poor scripts that sold well because so-in-so was the star, or b) good productions that grossed even better because of a recognizable lead actor?

[ photo: Patrick McHenry-Kroetch as Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha, Spokane Civic Theatre, May-June 2008 ]

One-on-one theater

If we really mean it when we preach the impact of live, up-close-and-personal performance, then why not follow the example of what they're doing in Times Square?

Obviously, with their air conditioning and gasoline generator and glassed-in performance area, they've got a bigger budget than we, the 91st-biggest radio market in the nation, might be able to manage.
But what if somebody scored a) a confessional from a Catholic church about to be dismantled, b) a new Dumpster, c) one of those double Porta-Potties, d) a two-sided enclosure that some hardy local actor with carpentry skills devised?

Just dream with me a second: the Civic and/or Interplayers gets the permits to set up on a sidewalk somewhere near Post and Riverside, or else in Riverfront Park. It has the aroma of something slightly risque, like a peep show, only it's perfectly legit. Think of the curiosity it would arouse: Me, too! Me, too! And it plays right into the current fashion for reality-TV, you-are-there, no-bullshit, WYSIWYG entertainment.

The payoff? Somebody told me once that an event needs to enter a prospective playgoer's consciousness six times before he or she will actually make the decision to attend. This could count for a couple of those pings. A Lake City actor in an enclosure? Makes passers-by just a bit more likely to attend, the next time they hear of a Lake City show....

Sandy Hosking and Bryan Harnetiaux could start churning out one-person scripts. Local actors would be able to add a line to their play program bios.
And the critics? Sorry, fella -- there's no room. We're sold out.

Rumors of criticism's death

A.O. ("Tony") Scott of the New York Times recently ruminated on the demise of "At the Movies," the Siskel-and-Ebert-inaugurated, thumbs up/down discussion of current films in a format that Scott shared with Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune for the past several months, until it was axed by Disney.

Here's a snippet from near the end. Scott is laughing about how he and Phillips would be told they'd have 60 seconds to discuss, really discuss, an entire movie (as opposed to reading off the TelePrompTer). All critics can ever do, he says, is get people to think, to make a claim that people will agree with or oppose.

"And that kind of provocation, that spur to further discourse, is all criticism has ever been. It is not a profession and does not stand or fall with any particular business model. Criticism is a habit of mind, a discipline of writing, a way of life — a commitment to the independent, open-ended exploration of works of art in relation to one another and the world around them. As such, it is always apt to be misunderstood, undervalued and at odds with itself. Artists will complain, fans will tune out, but the arguments will never end."

Writing reviews — even with all the illiterate, uninformed, idiotic citizen-reviewers on the Web, even with Metacritic reducing entire films to a single number — won't come to an end, because it's a habit of mind. We all do it, all the time. We're always trying to figure things out, or should be.

(Scott's partner on the show, Phillips, is one of the best theater critics - and far and away the best teacher of criticism — that Bobo has ever encountered. I had the good fortune to have him as an instructor twice, in 2005 and again two years ago. But viewers don't want to spend the time time with two talking heads anymore.)

Watching movies and going to plays, even for those who do so regularly, has become too much of a checklist activity: "OK, saw A Serious Man, I can cross that off my list now."
When was the last time you saw a movie or play and discussed -- really discussed, at length, with point and counterpoint in the discussion — what you'd just seen? We're all too afraid of appearing naive or too easily impressed. Or something.

Added April 2:
Phillips' response to the show's cancellation -- with a good Fred Willard joke at the end — is here.

[ photos: Scott, left, and Phillips; from amysrobot.com ]

If you can't see 'em, read 'em

Dwight Garner's article in the New York Times describes the pleasures of reading the Tony Best Play-nominated scripts if you live in, say, a backwater like Spokane and can't travel to what Variety still refers to as the Rialto to see the plays in performance.

Bobo is pleased to say that he's done a lot better than Garner in reading and/or seeing the Tony-winning scripts of the past five years. Bobo's also midway through reading reasons to be pretty and has God of Carnage about to arrive in his mailbox. (The LaBute just seems like more of the same; a local playwright once took classes with LaBute and reports him to be, well, not nice; given his obsession with others' physical appearance and his own ... well, I can believe the "not nice" report and reasons strikes me, so far, as just more of the same from LaBute.

2008 Broadway review

Ben Brantley reviews the dozen best shows of 2008, complete with audio slide shows. Sarah Kane's bleak and violent outlook can be hard to take, but at least it has migrated over to this side of the Atlantic. (Bobo saw Kane's *Crave* in Salt Lake City, c. 2002.)

A companion look-back article by Charles Isherwood mentions *What's That Smell,* the show that Max Kumangai is in. (See the Nov. 30 post on this blog.)

(photo: Sarah Kane, 1971-99; *Blasted,* full of atrocities in its commentary on domestic violence and the Bosnian War, premiered in 1995)

Upcoming B'way season is male-dominated

The Broadway season preview in the New York Times cites shows such as A Man for All Seasons, Equus, Pal Joey, Speed-the-Plow, Billy Elliott and All My Sons as evidence of a male focus this season.

Ben Brantley has a follow-up commentary on movie actors (Katie Holmes, Daniel Radcliffe) acting on the Nooh Yawhk stage.