MARCH 1997 ----------------------------In this issue------------------------------------------ SPOTLIGHT ON Davis Gaines Voices: Edward Albee The Play's the Thing: As Real as it Gets Rubin's Corner: Whatever Happened to That Beautiful Theatre ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ A Conversation with Davis Gaines Singer/Actor/Recording Artist Davis Gaines - Broadways longest-running Phantom of the Opera and star of the latest Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Whistle Down the Wind, talks with Michael McLane of the Civic Theatre of Central Florida about his upcoming benefit concerts in his hometown of Orlando. MM: Everyone at the Civic Theatre, and indeed, judging from the response we've had, everyone throughout the Central Florida area, is very excited about your performing here. Are you looking forward to it also? DG: Yes! I've wanted to come back to Orlando for a long time and perform, but my schedule has never permitted it, especially during the last six years while I was involved with Phantom of the Opera. I know the shows will be attended by family and old friends and I look forward to seeing them and to be able to perform for them, to let them see what I've been up to for the last few years. It will be nice to see some friendly, familiar faces. I know it's going to be a warm, friendly audience that is coming to enjoy the music. It's going to be a lot of fun. MM: When you perform in concerts, you usually sing in very large venues. The MainStage at the Civic is much smaller than, say, an arena hall. DG: I am extremely excited about singing at the Civic, especially because it is such an intimate venue. I really enjoy the closeness and intimacy of the audience. I'm so grateful that I found the Civic because it is the perfect venue for this event. With 350 seats, it is a very intimate house. It holds special significance for me because I remember it from my days growing up. I grew up a half-mile from the Civic Theatre so it holds special memories through my childhood. The pepople at the theatre have been great, and the response has been incredible. MM: Will the Civic concerts differ from other concerts in which you have performed? DG: There will be some new songs, but most of the material will be things that I've done before. It will be two acts, with two different sections, which I don't usually do in concert situations. MM: Actually, this is not the first time you have performed at the Civic Theatre - DG: I brought a show to the Civic years ago, I think it was probably 1985 or 86, that I produced and performed in, called Living Color, a four-person musical revue, for an out-of-town tryout before we took it to New York. I t was a great success and the audience loved it. Performing at the Civic helped us fine-tune the show before we went to New York. It featured Faith Prince, Nancy Johnson, Guy Stroman and myself. It played Off-Broadway and was a great thing for all of us. We played it on the SecondStage at the Civic, which we turned into a cabaret space with tables. MM: Of course your family in Orlando will be at the concerts. Will this be the first time they will have seen you perform? DG: No, my family is very supportive and they travel a lot to see me perform, wherever I am. They are extremely supportive of me and my career. And that hellps in this business to have that base of support, since it's so uncertain a business and nothing is very secure. You never know when your next job is coming. So it's nice to have that support and love behind you. MM: You released your first solo album, "Against the Tide," this past year. How did you choose the material on that album? DG: I chose songs for the album on a very personal level, songs I connect to emotionally and songs that I just plain like and have always loved. It is a very eclectic grouping of material, from Broadway songs to new pop tunes, in lots of different styles. This was my first solo album, althought I've sung on about 15 compilation albums. MM: You not only performed on the album, but you produced it. What was the experience like? DG: I very much enjoyed doing it. It was a huge learning process and I was lucky to have the help and guidance of David Lai. David works for Sony during the day and conducts Phantom of the Opera on Broadway at night. We produced it and recorded it ast Sony. It was a long, arduous, hard task, but it was a grat experience. I was performing in Phantom on Broadway and then would go to the studio and sing until 3 o'clock in the morning. It was exhausting but well worth it. MM: What's the response been like? DG: The response has been great! We don't have a big marketing push so we're doing it ourselves. The album, on CD or cassette, can be ordered through Tower Records and HMV or at DGinfonet@aol.com We're now in all Borders Books and Records nationally and all Circuit Citys. In fact, Borders is starting a new program called "New Voices" and we were chosen as the first album for them to highlight in their stores and catalogues. That is a wonderful vote of confidence. MM: The album's label is LAP Records. What does LAP stand for? DG: LAP stands for "Life After Phantom," which I thought was an appropriate title for this new venture and new phase of my life. I look forward to doing some more recordings, hopefully towards the end of this year or the beginning of next. We have talked about doing another one, but not what kind of music would be on it. MM: Unfortunately Whistle Down the Wind did not go directly to Broadway as originally planned. What was working on that show like? DG: Whistle was a wonderful, very positive experience for me personally. It was a wonderful opportunity to be given a leading role in a brand-new musical, working with two of the most respected men in the business: Andrew Lloyd Webber and Hal Prince. It was a great way to be able to leave my Phantom experiences, to make the transition from the Phantom to a new role. The whole process was good for me to be able to get in touch with parts of my craft that I hadn't been able to use for so long, that I had put on the backburner for a long time, performing the same role over and over again. It was great to have something new to create and explore after working on the same character for five and a half years. It was nice to approach a different person for a change and try to figure him out. Certainly, I'm disappointed in not going to Broadway, but it remains a very positive experience. MM: What plans to you have for future projects? DG: I've had offers to do some other things, but nothing is definite at the moment. I will continue to do a lot of concert work and to promote the album. I'm based out of L.A. so I want to pursue TV and film work, as well as continue to do theatre work that challenges me and that I find interesting. I am very excited that I will be making my Carnegie Hall debut on April 29 of this year. I am singing at a gala concert celebrating the 14th birthday of the New York Pops. The host is columnist Liz Smith and the conductor of the Pops is Skitch Henderson. The other artists involved in the evening are Jeanne Lehman, Kurt Ollmann and Elaine Stritch. I'm so excited! I've always wanted to sing at Carnegie Hall. It's thrilling. That's what this business is like, thing sjust seem to happen unexpectedly. I get a phone call and someone says "Can you sing at Carnegie Hall in April?" and I say "Yes! of course! Where do I sign up?!" MM: Your career has been, and continues to be very strong. DG: I'm so lucky to have worked at so many great places, with so many wonderful people and to have don e so many exciting things. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Civic Theatre of Central Florida, now celebrating its 70th season of bringing the best comedies, dramas and musical titles from Broadway, Off-Broadway and around the world to the Central Florida community, is a cornerstone of cultural life in the area. Utilizing three completely different series - a mainstream MainStage, off-Broadway style SecondStage, and flourishing Theatre for Young People - the Civic serves more than 300,000 Central Floridians each year. The Civic has made tremendous strides in recent years with magnificent critically and financially successful productions of A Grand Night for Singing and El Grande de Coca Cola (produced by none other than the forum's own John Loesser) and looks to have a magnificent future under the auspices of its new Artistic Director, Chris Jorie. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Voices in Contemporary Theatre: Edward Albee A word to the wise: when you talk with Edward Albee or invite him to speak, be prepared for anything. At a formal speaking engagement, the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning author of numerous highmarks in 20th Century American Drama will announce his topic as: The Playwright vs. The Theatre, but that isn't necessarily the speech you'll hear. The Dean of University of Central Florida found that out the hard way when, presumably trying to counteract the deplorable example of a respected and successful drop-out, introduced his distinguished speaker with a preemptive comment that while "Mr. Albee says he's a drop-out, but he graduated from Trinity" The poor schmuck was apparently unaware of what all but the most provincial theatre-pros know by instinct: You simply do not put words into the mouth of Edward Albee, --and you editorialize those that do come out at your peril! Albee devoted the next half hour of his address to a play-by-play of the many, many boarding schools he'd been expelled from - including, impressive perhaps for the sheer ambition of the undertaking - the Valley Forge Military Academy - before finally settling into the esteemed Choate School (the only institution from which he would ever graduate). Yes he went to Trinity, but left during his sophomore year under circumstances he describes as follows: I explained my position: It was my mind that was being educated and I surely had some insights as to how that might be brought about. They explained their position - that they owned the real estate, and if I didn't like it I could leave. I didn't, so I did. Albee is more forthcoming on the non-academic aspects of his evolution as a writer. He began early, either age 8 or 6 depending on which version of the story he's telling, and evidently experimented with every known medium and form before lucking into theatre. Those who've read his "juvenilia" confirm - to his face - that it is exactly as he describes "possibly the worst 800-page novel ever written or that could be written by an 18-year old." 20 years later, on finishing his first theatrical script, he knew he was a playwright. Not because he'd just written a play, but because at that point he realized he'd spent his life "Thinking" like a playwright - makers of plays, according to Albee, observe people, examine the society around them, and interact with the world in unique ways. A playwright for nearly 40 years now, Albee does not confine himself to explaining how stage-writers think - he is a tireless and powerful advocate for the playwright's rights and their control over their intellectual property. The address he didn't give that night at UCF - that of the Playwright vs. The Theatre is sure to antagonize the director with too much ego or too little imagination. For he makes no bones about what the presentation of an Albee play is, and it's not a vehicle for such directors to express themselves. He, the writer, is communicating with the audience through the characters, story and words he has created. Facilitating that communication is what he's granted permission for, and he owns this piece of real estate. If you don't like it, you can write your own story. But you won't be propping your opinions up on his name and titles. It takes a special kind of stupid to argue such issues with the winner of 2 Pulitzers, last year's Tony Award for Best Play, one of only 4 playwrights to be recognized in The Kennedy Center Honors, and the mind who crafted The Zoo Story, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, A Delicate Balance, and Three Tall Women. This may be why Albee now speaks more often on Arts Funding. For Albee seems a man who enjoys a good war of words at the end of his talk, and he gets more action when he talks about democracy, totalitarianism, and the Arts. Albee sits on the Advisory Board for ARTSNOW, an adhoc coalition of organizations, institutions, individuals and volunteers gathered to demonstrate the value of passionate, diverse, original and provocative art - i.e. lobby for the reauthorization of the NEA and various state and local arts funding. He enjoys a special credibility among the NEA-advocates, however, for - before wading into the defense of public arts support, he offers a lengthy briefing on the conditions artists live under in less democratic societies. After a half-hour of particulars about the artists he's visited who have disappeared, died under mysterious circumstances, or been shipped off to Gulags, the most self-righteous artspolitico is forced to view the rantings of a few intellectually-impoverished politicians and the loss of a few thousand dollars in grants in a proper perspective. Not that Albee pulls his punches when he proceeds to arts in this country. "Unless we educate people aesthetically, we'll raise a nation of highly informed barbarians." He blames the preponderance of mediocrity that passes for quality in commercial theatre on an audience that doesn't insist on something better, and hypothesizes that if Broadway offered nothing but classics for ten years the popular taste would evolve to the point where they demanded better from contemporary theatre artists. Back to funding: Why should the government pay for this aesthetic education? Part of the evolutionary plan, says Albee: "We are the only animal that has contrived these metaphors to explain ourselves to ourselves" WHAT DO YOU THINK? Your opinions are invited on these and other burning theatre issues. Start a thread in the Theatre Forum Bulletin Boards, or to contribute to the TRE letters column, drop an e-mail to Theatre_msn@msn.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Play's the Thing As part of an on-going series to help people understand plays and playwriting better, this month I wanted to address a specific, and widely used form of theatre style, the style of realism. Since realistic plays dominate the stage, I hope this gives you a better understanding of this particular style and how realism began on stage. As Real As It Gets A long time ago, when theatre was just an infant, Aristotle decided to write the first infant care book, The Poetics. The work was his attempt to define and clarify this new medium and shed light on the elements that made "good theatre" good. According to Aristotle, theatre should arouse the masses to a cathartic experience which would allow them to work out their emotions. Audiences could watch tragedies which were not real life but imitations of basic human instincts. Plays during the time of Aristotle were still a religious spectacle, with masks and magical machines. Very little of what we would now consider "real life" was portrayed on stage. It would take many centuries to develop the theatre of realism in theatres. The style of realism sprang to life in the 19th century Europe. Literature led the way as writers became interested in the new advances in science during that time. Artists began to think that a scientific approach to present art was valid. Realism soon took on the look of science by using the five senses to describe observable events. Where non-realistic styles reflected the metaphysical and spiritual, realism reflected the scientific and orderly. Playwrights looked to photography as a model, trying to capture and reproduce a picture of life on stage. Audiences were soon asked to believe what they saw on stage was real life. Realism defines the way a play presents reality, a discovery mode or manner of presentation that creates a sense of reality for the audience. Playwrights like Henrik Ibsen, considered the Father of Modern Drama, sought to create a real life experience by writing plays that placed the audience unobserved into the lives of his characters. It was as though Ibsen and those that came after peeled away a wall in a home and let the audience peek inside the private world of the characters. Ibsen's plays like Hedda Gabler and A Doll's House shocked many with the frank portrayal of family life on stage. To meet the demand of this new style of theatre, Constantin Stanislavski began a new style of acting, leading the profession away from the broad style of spectacle to the intimate world of realism. Going back to Aristotle for a moment, in his book The Poetics, he gave six elements that define a play: plot, character, thought, language, music and spectacle. These same elements apply to realistic theatre and can be used to further define a realistic play. First is plot which is the structural organization of a play's action -- how the events are arranged. This is not referring to the storyline. The plot is the foundation of a play. Realistic plots almost always have a climactic structure comprised of exposition (background information which helps set up the story), rising action (building suspense, reveals complications of the story through discoveries and reversals), climax ( the outcome of the play), and resolution (denouement, wrapping up the loose ends). Climactic structures often involve a search or pursuit of the truth unified around a central conflict. Character choices are limited. Time deadlines are imposed, which heightens the suspense. The audience enters the story late into the action. The play reveals that the universe operates on a logical, orderly and rational processes where causes have effects and deeds have consequences. The past, present and future are linked together. Climactic structures generally do not include supernatural or out-of-time elements. Second is character, the human agents of the plot. The audience learns about characters by what they say, their appearance, what they do, what others think or say about them. In realistic theatre, psychology is evident, as psychology was becoming widely used in scientific circles to explain how the mind worked. Characters became more complex as the idea of why they do what they do became important to the story. Characters are usually portrayed as middle class, a shift from the ever-present nobility in plays before. The characters soon looked more like the audience. Realism shows characters at critical points in their lives. The play often includes detailed physical and mental descriptions of the characters. The third element, thought, is the intellectual material of the play. Thought relates to the theme or message of the play. It also includes the character's intellectual activity. In realism, thought generally focuses on contemporary social problems of the time. It might show heredity's and environment's effect on a character. The playwright can use this element to spur the audience to take action, resulting in social change because of the play. Language, the fourth element, is the words on the page and the way the words are spoken. Language is the means for expressing the play's thought. Language becomes a form of action by depicting how people use their words to manipulate others. In the realistic play, language is an exact transcription of every day speech and conversation. After Ibsen's time, a rise in the use of dialect and proventialisms (local talk) is employed in scripts. The language of the play starts to sound like the audience and there are fewer barriers for the audience in understanding the words of the play. The language is still a form of action, with ideas being expressed in discussions on stage. Fifth is music which includes everything the audience hears on stage. Music is related to the production more than the words on the page. For a play to sustain a realistic style, no unnatural sounds effects can occur. If the play calls for a train whistle, the effect must reproduce the natural sound. There can be no incidental music. If there is a song that would occur naturally during the course of the play, then the song would be used, like a song laborers might sing on the way to work. The key is that only real sounds should be heard and they must convey real life. Last is spectacle. The Greek word theatron means "seeing" so spectacle includes everything you see on the stage: actors, scenery, lighting, props and costumes. Plays are written to be implicit on paper but explicit on the stage. Spectacle in the realistic style starts with a box set, and the audience sits beyond the "fourth wall", peering into the three-sided set design. The set must include realistic details to be authentic. The same is true of costumes and props. All must resemble real life. As mentioned before, even the actor undergoes a dramatic change so that they can better portray real life experiences. By the 1880's electric lights began to appear in theatres, so even the lighting could reflect interior and exterior light patterns. Realism as a style has undergone changes since Ibsen. With the rise of Freud and psychoanalysis, writers of realism started to perceive beyond the five senses to include dreams, intuition, hallucinations. Eugene O'Neill began his career as a realist, shifted back to symbolism, and then back to realism. At times the plot structure is not linear. Music began to be used as a score. Symbolic elements crept in. Plays like August Wilson's Fences or Edward Albee's The Sandbox included elements of the magical or supernatural yet retain a realistic style to the thoughts and characters of the play. Almost 75% of the plays written fall under the category of realism. Next time you go to the theatre, look closely at the play. Is it a realistic play? Does it follow the elements of realism? Is it a blend of the real and the supernatural? Can you identify what makes the play "real" as far as the language spoken, the costumes worn, the props uses, the actors performances? And while you are at the theatre, take my advice and have a REAL good time! Internet sites relating to with information pertaining to this article: Perspectives in American Literature: A Research and Reference Guide Realism and the American Dramatic Tradition Edited by William W. Demastes Jefferson Lindquist homepage for the Ibsen fan Ibsen bio Aristotle Homepage, includes The Poetics --- Caprice Woosley is currently pursuing her BFA in theater (directing and playwriting), after 25 years working in and around community theater. She is a playwright, produced but not published, 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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rubin's Corner: Whatever Happened to That Beautiful Theatre Many theaters are the object of alteration or redesign as fashion, artistic tastes or market dictates chance. During the last few weeks two theaters in New York and London have been the subject of discussion. The Whitehall Theater in London, the site of many historical plays and musicals, will become a television studio for at least the next three years. The Mark Hellinger Theater in New York City, the place where My Fair Lady played for many year, continues to serve the Broadway area as a church. However, three theaters will return from the dead during the next nine months. On May 15, 1997 the New Amsterdam on 42nd Street and 7th Avenue will reopen with a concert version of "King David". This theater, which is owned by the Disney Company, was once the home of the "Follies" and the roof theater known as the Winter Garden. The Disney people have spent two years in a careful renovation of this house. They are even considering making the upstairs into a cabaret for the after theater entertainment. They have removed all the false walls that were created when the theater was used to show movies. A lot of money has been spent to restore the original plaster interior of the building. Of course, state of the art lightning and sound have been installed as part of the renovations. The theater will house a full scale production of King David and the The Lion King after it opens its doors in May. Just across the street from the New Amsterdam, the Ford Center for the Performing Arts, which was formally two theater, is being rebuilt by Livenet, USA. Unlike the New Amsterdam, the Ford Theater will have a brand new interior. This future home of the musical Ragtime will be like a new theater when it opens on December 26, 1997. Although the process of making two theaters into one will greatly change this place, the company doing the restoring is being careful to retain a few of the outer wall decorations. The third renovated theater is in London and reopened in early June. The Lyceum Theatre, which opened in July 1771, has just opened as a completed renovated theater in the Stand Area of the West End. The building was purchase in 1994 by Apollo Leisure, Britain's largest theater company, who acquired the lease and a year later secured planning permission from the Westminster City Council to restore the Lyceum as a premier Lyric Theatre. The renovated of the building features fluted Tucson pillars, curved outswelling boxes, plaster figures of maidens and gods, and everywhere balustrades, urns, wrought iron, escutcheons, gult and pompeian red can be seen on the walls. Irving's, a restaurant, has opened on the ground level of the theater. This is the sixth time that this theater has been renovated during its life time. The applause that used to greet the entry on the stars onto its stage was known as the "Lyceum Roar". Long may it resound in the present building. May the New Amsterdam and the Ford Center be around long enough to develop their own "roar". Last month we explored various ways theatre professional could use the internet to extend the same kind of research and networking they do offline. But what about integrating online elements into traditional theatre? Mark Reaney at the University of Kansas is doing some of the most exciting experimental work in this area, mixing actors performing live onstage on traditional sets with virtual reality representations of actors (also performing live, but offstage in front of a video camera) and virtual sets. The choice of material was critical, for in selecting Elmer Rice's THE ADDING MACHINE, an expessionist play about the dehumanizing effects of technology, Reaney was able to use the virtual elements not as mere gimmick or spectacle, but as a viable design element which carried its weight helping the writer, director and actors communicate the themes of the piece. What are your favorite Theatre-Websites? Let us know at Theatre_msn@msn.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright 1997, Mersinger Theatrical Services