January, '98 Life in the Theatre: Cyberia Enter Laughing: Roots... or, How I stopped worrying about forgetting my lines and learned to enjoy life The Play's the Thing: Poking Fun at Ourselves: The Play-Within-A-Play Voices: New Voice for David Hare CyberTheatre Monthly: The Chainsaw is your Friend, and other words of wisdom on RealAudio Rubin's Corner: The Return of Cherry Jones Titanic Trivia, Gossip & News Cyberia For twelve years I was responsible for the development of new Canadian plays at the National Arts Centre. We owned an old building about half a mile away from the main complex with room enough for a tiny black-box theatre, two big rehearsal halls, a workshop and various other smaller rooms useful for locking away playwrights until they'd finished their new draft! In this building I would produce and often direct three new plays a year as well as holding an annual new-play festival and many play workshops. I also wanted it to be used as a professional development space, so I usually hired young directors, actors, designers and technicians who needed to take the next step up from being a gifted student to a professional. We called our building The Atelier, and it was home to a lot of people both in Ottawa and across Canada. I'll talk more about what we did there in other articles, but one of the major philosophies to come out of that place was "It's alright to make mistakes". I personally believe that we need that luxury in theatre, otherwise we never progress. We did some brilliant work at the Atelier, and we had some real bombs, but whatever we did it was always interesting! Unfortunately it wasn't so easy to take that philosophy up to the main National Arts Centre complex because the budgets and audience expectations were far higher, but occasionally I would try. Here's the story of a show we did in the NAC Studio. Cyberia started in the mind of Marc Desormeaux. He wanted to write a rock opera that had a love story as its basic theme, but also deal with the sudden explosion of Internet communication between people on a personal level. Because he's primarily a composer and musician, he started with some songs that had to be knit together into a viable story line. Through its new play development programme, the National Arts Centre funded the hiring of a playwright/director to help Marc, plus a series of workshops so that he could develop his ideas. Unfortunately the playwright/director turned out to have ideas of his own, and it was very obvious from the final presentation in the workshop series that Cyberia had strayed very far from Marc's original intent of a love story on the Internet.. Interestingly enough, all the feedback from the actors involved and the spectators who attended the presentation said much the same thing...forget the politics, stick to the love! After a lot of difficult discussion, the playwright/director was dropped from the project and the National Arts Centre gave Marc some more money to write his own script and workshop the results. We later added a dramaturg who Marc trusted not to take over the project, Robert Marinier, a wonderful playwright and dramaturg who had a great deal of experience helping new playwrights with their first scripts. About this time Marc asked me to take over as director because (as he put it) I got on very well with the tech guys! We had also worked together many times as director and sound designer on new work, and I think he recognized that my impetus was to stage a text as I saw it on the page, rather than to re-write a text to suit my own ideas. There's a big difference in attitude between a director who is trying to serve the playwright, and a director who wants the playwright to serve the vision. Both are valid approaches, but Marc had been burned once and needed to feel that he had control over the process. Marc worked like the devil for one whole summer and fall and managed to create many different drafts of Cyberia incorporating all the suggestions and feedback from Robert. In the meantime, I had scheduled Cyberia as the third show in the new works series for the NAC Studio (not the Atelier) in the spring of 1997, which meant that we had a definite time line....always useful in theatre! We decided to workshop the text late in 1996, and we decided that we needed to have the cast that would perform the show in the spring so that they could provide feedback and help to create their own characters. This didn't work out as planned, so we used some of our eventual cast with Marc filling in where necessary. Marc had already found his musical director, so Francois joined us with some of the band and we spent three days at the Atelier getting through unbelievable amounts of work and just about wiping Marc out with overwork and overstimulation. After many more script rewrites, I started working with Dave Ship who had agreed to be our set designer. Now we must remember that the original idea was to do a simply staged kind of rock recital, a showcase of a new musical....of course this changed almost as soon as I started working on it. The material was just too juicy to have singers standing at mics and merely singing, so I demanded Madonna-mics (as I called them) so now we had the capability of moving our actors anywhere we wanted them. Dave's not very experienced in stage design, but both Marc and I trusted him and I knew that whatever the set was going to be it would involve a lot of construction....and there's no one better at building a set for me than Dave Ship! He's worked with me for ten years as carpenter, TD, one-time set designer and friend plus he's a good friend of Marc's, so he seemed like the right choice. Dave and I had a hell of a time designing this set. How do you stage a play when the two main antagonists spend all their time talking to each other through their computers? I insisted on two fully movable desk and chair units with desktop computers so that the computers could become an extension of the actors. They could wheel them around from the sitting position (in fact they used we finally staged a wonderful dance sequence with them for one number) and they became characters in their own right. We went through about 8 ideas, none of which felt right. We argued and screamed at each other and almost gave up, but one magic day he sketched something in desperation and it was It. Another real complication for the set design was that Marc had already committed to a company to design and create huge computer graphics that would establish the cyber-world for the audience, and these graphics needed a huge projection screen. I had decided that if we had a screen that sise onstage, we might as well use it all the time, so I also wanted to project live camera images of the singers onto the screen in a rock concert style. Soooow e were staging the play in a very small space, the script called for multiple locales, we had to make room for a band, we had two computer modules that need space to wheel around, and we also had to fit 5 actors in somewhere.....it was quite a problem! I was never happy with the final sight-lines, but we did the best we could under the circumstances. A catch-phrase between Dave and me was "When we do the stadium tour......" This phrase caught on big-time among the tech guys for Cyberia. The screen also created enormous problems for our lighting designer, Allan Ross. I had to try and stage the scenes as far downstage as possible because otherwise light would spill onto the screen, but the audience sight-lines were lousy the further downstage we got. One of those classic director problems. While Marc was working with Francois on the orchestrations for the songs, I was also bugging him to finish casting the show. It was so close to him that it was almost pointless for me to audition anyone, Marc knew intimately how each voice should sound. All I asked was that the eventual cast would be capable of acting as well as singing! We reached a compromise on this point. He decided he couldn't bear anyone else playing the lead role except himself, which I disagreed with but finally agreed to as long as he promised he would turn into a performer once we started rehearsals and didn't attempt to involve himself with the directing and musical direction. As it turned out it was the wrong decision. Marc was fine in the role, but both Francois and I sorely missed his objective vision and I think it made the whole process more complicated. Especially during tech rehearsals when both Marc and Francois were onstage and I was left to make sound and balance decisions that I was completely ill-equipped to make. In the middle of these discussions, Marc finally found a Chuck (one of the most difficult characters to cast because it called for a young male or female actor who could sing but also scream, and for my needs had to embody rebellious youth) After 3 days of auditions we hadn't found anyone in the Ottawa area, and I couldn't find anyone in the national arena either although I had searched everywhere I could. Marc found Eric by accident through his friendship with the man who ran the computer graphics/producing company, and we finally had a cast. So now we were ready for rehearsals. A normal professional theatre rehearsal day goes from 10:00 until 6:00, but I couldn't envisage anyone singing rock songs at 10:00 in the morning. In addition, I had taken over as Artistic Director of the National Arts Centre Theatre and therefore had an enormous amount of office work to accomplish; also we were in the middle of rehearsing The Glass Menagerie starring Kiefer Sutherland and his mother, Shirley Douglas, and we had a lot of problems dealing with the media attention, including the fact that our star couple hated our publicity person; plus our Cyberia musical director was only available in the evenings. So it worked out pretty well, we acted in the afternoons and sang in the evenings. My major problem was leveling the playing field. I had one extremely good actor who was playing multiple roles but couldn't sing; one actor who could sing but hadn't done much acting (and was also the composer/creator of the show); two actors who had done some acting but were primarily singers; and one young actor who had never worked in a professional situation, had never acted and whose primary singing experience was classical. It made for some interesting dynamics. Especially since the scenes were classic rock-opera....short and really only there as a lead in to the song, but emotionally charged and difficult to play for inexperienced actors. Plus the songs were written in many different styles and all of them lived inside Marc's head in their final, produced condition. Luckily the company loved each other almost instantly, so tensions were minimal and the more experienced in each field helped those less experienced. I was very lucky with the company, with the band and with the designers. They built a team despite me. We also had the problem of the "dance" numbers. I wanted to give a taste of the potential for some of these musical numbers to become full scale extravaganzas, but the budget could not include a choreographer. Luckily one of the actors was also a choreographer, so she worked with the other actors and they managed to create two numbers that hinted at the potential of the scenes. They were rough, and we completely changed one of them late in rehearsal because it really wasn't right, but at least we managed to put them in. Rehearsals progressed well although Marc was stretched to an exhausting length. We had a lot of problems explaining to our computer graphics people why we needed their work as soon as possible, and they had a lot of problems explaining to us why they couldn't do that. But we all stayed friends through the process. In theatre we are used to being totally concentrated on one project at a time, it was hard to fit in with a business which had many other projects on the go. Plus we couldn't make decisions immediately because so many times it depended on how things evolved out of rehearsal and re-writing...this was hard for them to encompass. It meant that their resident programming genius was working very late at night, but he pulled through with some wonderful stuff. Now it was up to us to showcase it properly. Technical rehearsals were a nightmare. We ran into endless difficulties because the show had grown through rehearsals into a full-scale audio-visual fest. I wanted to give the audience a taste of the potential of Cyberia as it could be done in a large theatre, so I pushed the bounds of our available equipment and the budget! Because the space was too small and acoustically wrong for a rock band, we spent inordinate amounts of time working on sound. Because both the composer and the musical director were performing on stage, I had to be responsible for balancing the sound with a very willing but inexperienced sound technician and it is not my area of expertise. Each band member and the singers demanded monitors, so we had little control over the quality of the sound in the very small house (it only seats 300)....at times we were hearing the show just through the stage monitors! We had to rent special equipment to deal with cutting between the various technologies required to project the graphics, slides and the live camera, and finally we hired someone to run that equipment live through the show. The lighting designer (a good friend of mine who I had worked with before many times) had some kind of a brain block and only figured out how to light the show half way through tech. It ended up looking beautiful, but there were some very worrying moments when I wondered if he was ever going to wake up! The stage manager and the musical director had some very tense moments. He came from the music world where the musical director is God, she came from theatre where the stage manager runs the tech rehearsals. Luckily they sorted it out. I also had to re-block a few scenes because they were impossible to light where I had them staged. This is par for the course in most shows even with the best of planning, but this time it was just one more thing that created difficulties. I had to abandon the actors for about 5 days so they were getting twitchy and nervous. All I can say of this time is Thank God for the production staff! By the time we'd finished we had most of the production department of the NAC working on our show! As always happens in theatre, the day before we opened things seemed to magically come together and we had a show. It was still hair-raisingly an inch from disaster...would the equipment malfunction being a major nightmare....but the opening night actually happened. Some people loved the show, some people hated it. Some critics saw the potential, some of them didn't. About normal for a reaction to a new piece of work. I was overwhelmingly proud of the company, the design and tech team, everyone involved. I was less than satisfied with what I had accomplished....but ain't that always the way! GIL OSBORNE Until recently Gil Osborne was the Artistic Director of English Theatre at the National Arts Centre of Canada. She now lives in Houston, Texas and is in the process of setting up a business teaching acting and public presentation. Roots... or, How I stopped worrying about forgetting my lines and learned to enjoy life Normal people (and if you're reading this column you're about as off-centered as I am so you're automatically disqualified) have a dream! You know the one. You're standing naked on a stage (well, in my dream I'm naked... but that's a whole other issue!) in front of hundreds of people in the theater and you forget your next line. The silence is deafening. You struggle for the right words as you're mind's computer crashes. The cue comes again. You stammer, sweating as you turn bright red. The audience impatiently awaits your next line. Suddenly, you run howling from the stage in complete and utter embarrassment. You wake up. "Thank god, it was only a dream!". Just what is the root of this dream I wondered? Is there some sort of cosmic, pre-natal audition we all encounter just before birth which imbeds in us the idea that all the world's a stage and each of us are two pages shy of a complete script? If so, none of us know exactly which part of the script we're missing-so we live in horror expecting that instance when we'll encounter our cosmic stage fright. There's likely a more palatable, realistic source to our collective fear. It was with this notion that I began tracing our societal roots, searching for the father (or mother) of all stage fright. It starts very early, doesn't it? Think about it... you're sitting in pre-school, trying to impress the teacher by not drooling all over yourself. You have not a care in the world other than hoping you get an extra graham cracker with your milk. Then it happens. "Wayne, recite the ABC's for the class". Egad! Yikes! "A... B... C... D... uh, um, G... uh... WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!". You failed miserably. Sure, you recovered from that fiasco. Eventually, though, some sadistic school administrator has a brainless idea of putting on a school holiday pageant. You'll have to remember scads of songs, and recite a poem or perform in a skit. The whole world will be there, just waiting for you to fail so they can say something like, "Oh, isn't that precious? He's picking his nose on stage...ahhhh...". I still will not forget the look of horror on my little sister's face when her kindergarten teacher told her she was going to have to dress like one of the wise men for our Christmas play. Talk about gender role confusion. And let's not even talk about the Pledge of Allegiance. I have a friend who, to this day, thinks he will be arrested by the Citizenship Police because he once screwed up while leading a salute to the flag in third grade. It continues through school. "Remember this...", "recite that...", "tell us all about whatever...". Every where we go, every thing we do requires us to remember something. A password, a response, an address, etc. Shakespeare was right, life is one big constant theatrical production. Why not start looking at it then as a huge Broadway play? Think of the reaction you'll get when you waltz into work tomorrow morning singing at the top of your lungs: "I can do that; I can do that! One morning Sis won't go to dance class. I grab her shoes and tights and all... but the foot's too small..." Don't forget the tap dance too. Trust me, you'll be the talk of the office, and the rest of your day will be one big smile!! And, hey, if you forget your lines, so what! You can always make up new ones. And life's a heck of a lot more fun when you haven't got a script! Tune in next month for a list of other life affirming values I've learned from the theater. I'm calling it, "Everything I know in life I've learned from the theater!". Wayne Disher: Born and raised on the beaches of California (in Santa Cruz, to be exact), lived a 'white trash' childhood. Miraculously, developed a passion for culture, and attended UCLA in hopes of becoming the next Barrymore. I settled on a degree in English. Later I obtained a Master's degree in Library and Information Science from San Jose State University, and now serve the public as 'Super-Librarian' for the City of San Jose. Poking Fun At Ourselves: The Play-Within-A-Play Actors are a funny bunch. Or at least they can be in the hands of a crafty playwright. Throughout history playwrights have employed the play-within-a-play to either make audiences laugh at the antics of seemingly unskilled actors, or to teach lessons on stage about our off stage lives. Shakespeare did both. In Hamlet the players present a play Hamlet calls "The Mousetrap," in order to "catch the conscience of the king." He used the Mechanicals in The Midsummer Night's Dream to present a hilarious version of a tragic love story before the court of Theseus, much to the chagrin of the Master of Revels. Others followed in the tradition of Shakespeare, like Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher who wrote The Knight of the Burning Pestle, a play that has hecklers constantly interrupting the performance on the stage. Plays began making fun of the productions mounted by would-be actors, like in Dan Goggin's Nunsense, in which the Little Sisters of Hoboken attempt a fund-raiser in order to raise money to bury sisters who were accidentally poisoned by the convent cook, Sister Julia (Child of God). Two plays, with outrageously long titles (I have them listed later to save space here!), written by David McGillivray and Walter Zerlin, Jr. recount the tales of the Farndale Avenue Dramatic Society's disastrous production attempts. But by far the funniest look at theatre is when the "professional" actors encounter just as many problems as the amateur groups. Noises Off by Michael Frayn peeks behind the curtain of a theatrical production called Nothing On. We meet the actors as actors and as characters in the play. At times the actors blur the lines between off stage antics and on stage performances. Frayn shows the "flaws and all" side of theatre life. The funniest moments of the play are when the backstage life is seen while the front stage performance is going on. The audience sees the panic and frenetic actions as the cast tries to hold together a production on the verge of coming unraveled. It begins with (now stay with me, the actors become characters and then actors before you know it) a rehearsal of Nothing On, being directed by Lloyd Dallas. Mr. Dallas is faced with an actress, Dotty Otley, who as her character Mrs. Clackett, can never remember whether she is to bring on or take off a plate of sardines. Dallas must also contend with Frederick Fellowes, portraying Phillip Brent, an actor who needs sufficient reason for his character's actions. There is Brooke Ashton, an actress who is constantly losing her contact lenses; Selsdon Mowbray, an actor given to too much drink and must be looked after by the cast; Garry Lejeune, who while portraying Roger Tramplemain on stage, acts out his jealousy over Dotty's attention to Frederick by taking every opportunity to fight with him; the constantly joyful Belinda Blair, the peacemaker even when playing the character of Flavia Brent. Rounding out the cast are Tim Allgood, the long-suffering stage manager who is understudy to all the male roles, and Poppy Norton-Taylor, the assistant stage manager who also has a bit of a surprise for Lloyd Dallas. Throughout the course of the play, the action switches from the backstage "real" life of the characters and the front stage play being presented. Act One is seen from the stage side perspective as the play is in rehearsal. Lloyd is losing both his patience and his temper as problems keep occurring during the rehearsal which has run late into the night January 14th, the eve of opening. It is a miracle that they finally make it to the last line of the play. Act Two, which occurs a month later, is a blend of both sides of the stage as the production begins to come apart at the seams due to temperaments, lost lenses, drinking actors and understudies having to fill in at times. The whole act is viewed from the backstage perspective. Everyone, including the director, gets in on trying to keep the production moving forward. Act Three, which takes place April 6, switches back to the stage side of the production. The entire play is falling down around them. Lines are being dropped, actors are confused, accidents occur and no one is quite sure what to expect next. Before long three actors are on stage playing the same character. With the plot completely lost, the cast struggles to salvage what they can to end the play. Most everyone who has worked in theatre has been involved in a production that seems plagued with problems. There are primadonna actors who drive you crazy. There are sets that have doors that never seem to work. There is a prop missing every time you need it. There is an actor who looks at you with a blank expression when the lines are not there. Michael Frayn has captured all these elements in one production. Frayn's irreverent view of theatre life reminds me of the saying, "I can call my brother stupid, but you can't." Frayn is one of US so he can poke fun at us and at the same time poke a bit of fun at himself. The following is a list of plays that either contain a play-within-a-play treatment or give a look at the world of theatre. The synopses are quoted from the Samuel French and Dramatists Play catalogues: They Came from Mars and Landed Outside the Farndale Avenue Church Hall In Time for the Townswomen's Guild's Coffee Morning - by David McGillivray and Walter Zerlin, Jr. The Farndale Avenue ladies attempt lift-off with their Dramatic Society's unique production of a sci-fi thriller. Needless to say, high-tech effects coupled with the inabilities and disabilities of certain group members ensure that the cast remain firmly on the ground. The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen's Guild Dramatic Society Murder Mystery - by David McGillivray and Walter Zerlin, Jr. Every drama group has experienced the horrors of what can go wrong on the night and the ladies of the F.A.H.E.T.G. Dramatic Society are no different, with the exception that almost everything that could happen does. The Real Inspector Hound - by Tom Stoppard Two critics enter their box: one is lustful and the other is a substitute for the regular critic. The play-within-a-play opens with a feather dusting scene and a countess, her girlfriend and the roue she met through the girlfriend. They play at cards and double entendre before the roue is shot dead. Inspector Hound arrives. Strange, because nobody called him. Out of the Frying Pan - by Francis Swann Three young men and three young women share an apartment all in innocence; they are would-be stage folks. Their apartment is immediately above that of a Broadway producer who is about to cast a road company. They rehearse the play but how can they get him upstairs to see it? Nunsense - Dan Goggin The show is a fund-raiser put on by the Little Sisters of Hoboken to raise money to bury sisters accidentally poisoned by the convent cook, Sister Julia (Child of God). The Exercise - by Lewis John Carlino A completely fascinating portrait of a man and woman, trapped in the unreal and yet hauntingly real world, both at the same time. They are actors, caught up in their hate-love game, standing on a rehearsal stage living out their fears, and their fantasies with almost uncontrollable vengeance. The Two Character Play - by Tennessee Williams Two actors, a brother and sister, meet in the empty playhouse where their theatre company is scheduled to perform that evening. But apparently the other actors have deserted them and absconded with their money, so the two decide to perform the "Two Character Play," extemporizing the parts not memorized or not yet written. Anthony Rose - by Jules Feiffer A very funny dark comedy about a famous but embittered playwright who tries to exorcise the demons in this past by compulsively reworking his most successful - and heretofore funniest - play. Deathtrap - Ira Levin This ingeniously constructed play offers a rare and skillful blending of two priceless theatrical ingredients - gasp-inducing thrills and spontaneous laughter. Dealing with the devious machinations of a writer of thrillers whose recent offerings have been flops, and who is prepared to go to any length to improve his fortunes, it provides twists and turns and sudden shocks. The Night of the Tribades - Per Olov Enquist, translated by Ross Shideler The action takes place on the stage of Dagmar Theatre, in Copenhagen, where August Strinberg and his estranged wife, Siri, are preparing the first performance of this short play "The Stronger." With Siri is her friend Marie Caroline David, an alcoholic actress whom Strinberg accuses of having a lesbian attachment to his wife. As the rehearsal progresses, the lines of the play being read are cleverly shaded to reflect the bitterness of Strinberg's personal situation. At This Evening's Performance - by Nagle Jackson On tour in rural Dunsk (recently annexed by the hated socialist state of Strevia) a theatrical troupe is obliged to present corny melodramas and creaky verse plays as modern drama has been banned by their new masters. The actors seem more concerned with romantic assignations than politics until they discover that their new stage manager is a Strevian spy. All this reaches its hilarious climax in a wildly funny play-with-a-play in which the wrong man is shot, the right man is spared, and the Players of Dunsk decide to head to the border and freedom in the West. It's Only A Play - by Terrence McNally It's the opening night of "The Golden Egg" on Broadway, and the wealthy producer is throwing a lavish party in her lavish Manhattan townhouse. Downstairs the celebrities are pouring in, but the real action is upstairs where a group of insiders have stakes themselves out in the producer's bedroom, waiting for the reviews to come in. Dreyfus In Rehearsal - by Jean-Claude Grumberg, adapted by Garson Kanin The play is set in Vilna, Poland, in 1931. A group of amateur actors are rehearsing a new play, written by their ambitious young director, about Alfred Dreyfus, the French-Jewish military officer whose persecution was opposed by the eloquent Emile Zola. The performers in this play-within-a-play are all good, kindly people, but they have difficulty in accepting the relevance of the "Dreyfus Affair" to their own situation and, furthermore, are preoccupied with the concerns of their personal lives -- which leads to a series of very funny and often ironic exchanges with their high-strung director. Jitters - by David French The play begins on the set of "The Care and Treatment of Roses," an ambitious work by a budding young local writer which is now in the final rehearsal by a provincial Canadian theatre company. Whatever can go wrong do so but the show, despite all, goes on, even though the New York producer who has promised to attend never arrives. Macbeth Did It - by John Patrick Fast moving and outrageously funny, this delightful play traces the trials and tribulations of a community theatre production of Macbeth, from casting, to rehearsals, to the breathless deadline of opening night. Internet shortcuts to information on Noises Off Penguins biography of Michael Frayn Otterbein College Theatre Tech Department which also contains photos from their production Mr. Showbiz's review of the movie version of Noises Off Caprice Woosley is currently pursuing her BFA in theater (directing and playwriting), after 25 years working in and around the theater. She is a produced playwright, actress, and amateur dramaturg who enjoys researching plays. She is a host in the Writing Forum where she co-hosts a Writing Discussion Group. She also hosted "Shakespeare Unplugged" and "Murder and Mayhem" in the Theatre Forum. New Voice for David Hare It's odd that more people don't recognize the name David Hare. Most theatre-goers remember the playwrights who have angered, shocked or challenged them. Certainly the majority of audiences at say Oleanna, Cloud 9, and Six Degrees of Separation made a mental note of Mamet, Churchill and Guare. Yet the enfante terrible who came out of a politcally-charged Cambridge in 1968 with a determination to anger, shock and challenge, the author who's early work Plenty holds a Broadway record for intermission fistfights and drinks flung in the bartender's face - that David Hare usually goes unmentioned when people reel of names of great English dramatists like Stoppard, Pinter and Ayckbourn. So for those who aren't quite familiar with David Hare's old voice, his own description of Agitprop Sixties Theatre will have to suffice ""We were so politically aware, people were having doubts about the value of performance at all. Starting Portable (his original Fringe company) was a political act. It came out of a passionate conviction about the state of the country and the need to alert people to the gravity of the crisis - there was an apocalyptic strain to it." Sir Peter Hall described that David Hare in his autobiography as "naturally paranoid, nervous and edgy" hiding a basically warm and generous nature "under an icy and prickly manner that is sardonic and flip by turns". Hall's description is itself warm and generous compared to most. Audience sensed they were being judged, and they resented it. "My capacity for rubbing people up the wrong way seemed limitless," says Hare of the era in which he was dubbed the Most-Parsonical of Playwrights. Some 30-years into his career, the tide began to turn. Richard Eyre took over at the National Theatre and was searching for new plays to give the National a public voice. Hare's work kept it's edge. He remained critical, political, and sharp but took on a maturity and brought his sweeping issues to a more personal plane. ""There comes a time, " says Hare, when it is no longer possible to keep predicting civil disorder when it plainly isn't going to happen. There's a limit to how long you can go on feeling wholly outside the system." That's all for the better, since the new perspective allows an inherent wit, elegant dialogue, and an almost classical sense of construction to peek through. The critical and box office response has been dramatic. Since 1990, the pair have produced five plays at the National - Racing Demon, Murmuring Judges, The Absence of War, Skylight, and Amy's View. The later starring Judi Dench transfers to the Aldrych this week after a run of packed houses, and the next project, 'The Judas Kiss', is expected on the West End in March and has already starred up considerable anticipation on both sides of the Atlantic. The Judas Kiss will star Liam Neeson as Oscar Wilde and Tom Hollander as Lord Alfred Douglas. This Month's Quotes: "In Amy's View, the theatre itself emerges as a powerful metaphor for the survival of humane values in a world of fragmented individualism." --Robert Hewison, London Sunday Times "When I started, the theatre was at a kind of cultural apex, it was the place to be." --Richard Eyre "He is always there for you no matter what and he always is ready to provide a hug when you need one." "With the new instructor, new ideas, hopes and goals are brought in to the school along with a new attitude. I hate to say it, but could the lack of interest be because of the intstrcutor or his recruition tactics? If anything, look at it as a positive experience, and never feel as though you will never be able to see him again. Im sure he'll drop by frequently to see how things are going." --Tracy & Mark, on Drama Teachers old and new, Theatre for Young People Bulletin Board The Chainsaw is your Friend, and other words of wisdom on Real Audio Under the innocuous title "Real Audio Tips" on the equally low-key Screenwriters and Playwrights Homepage the aspiring screenwriter can download 13 tips on the craft of screenwriting, which may or may not be of equal interest to playwrights. How much you feel the two disciplines can learn from each other mostly depends on how similar you find them. But even if you're one of those playwrights who feels more in common with novelists than screenwriters, give this page a look and listen, if only for a demonstration of catchy titles. A few of these tips like "Write Inside Out not Outside In" I listened to because the subject was interesting. Others including "The White Page Test", "The Zen of Screenwriting" and of course the abovementioned "The Chainsaw is Your Friend" I listened to out because I just had to know what would follow such a heading. In other words, titles that get the manuscript read and get bodies in the seats. This month's featured websites suggested by Caprice Woosley. To suggest a theatre, dance, or music-related website for CyberTheatre Monthly, write to Theatre_msn@msn.com The Return of Cherry Jones In 1995 Cherry Jones won the Tony, Drama League, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards for The Heiress. Ms. Jones played the role of Catherine Sloper, the women who gets even with her family and suitor for a life of making fun of her lack of beauty. Ms. Jones was not exactly an overnight star. She had appeared in Angels in America, Our Country's Good, for which she received a Tony nomination, Macbeth, and Stepping Out. She had been in dozens of Off-Broadway and regional productions before winning the role of the The Heiress. However, if you ask many Broadway theatre patrons they still do not known Cherry Jones. Jones brought pieces of her background to her various roles. Her southern background helped her shape the role of Catherine Sloper. A first rate storyteller, she hasn't developed a star's grand gestures, and her tales don't sound rehearsed. "My life has changed in that I now know thanks to Lincoln Center and Gerry Gutierrez that I'm probably going to be able to find work for the rest of my life. I'm eternally grateful for that change." However, she has really not created any roles since her Tony award. Her career has been steady crescendo in the last two year. She has modeled her acting style after that of Colleen Dewhurst, Maureen Stapleton, Geraldine Page, Spencer Tracy, and Mary Tyler Moore. She credits Tommy Tune's direction in Steppin Out as the turning point in her career. Since her big success was at Lincoln Center, she decided to return to the Theatre Company of Lincoln Center, for her new role. As Mabel Tiding Bigelow, the heroine of Tina Howe's new play, Pride's Crossing, Jones becomes a 90 year old, a ten year old girl, and a number of ages in between. Although the change of wigs and costumes help her make this transformation, it is her performance and her voice changes that make these changes possible. Since the performance takes place in Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newman Playhouse the job is even harder. The fact that the audience is only a few feet away makes this a tough acting task. Whatever the production's drawbacks, they fade beside Jones' luminous performance. She is extraordinary. She insists that big screen stardom is not her goal. She's still busy adjusting her position of prominence in American theatre. She says," I feel this wonderful sense of responsibility. I'm so flattered to be sharing the mantle with my peers". Cherry Jones is a one of a kind actress.