SEPTEMBER 1996 ----------------------------In this issue------------------------------------------ Voices in Contemporary Theatre: Michael Crawford IS Frobozz! Rubin's Corner: Theatre Excitement - A New Season NEW COLUMN - The Play's the Thing CyberTheatre Monthly: Interactivity What's New in the Forum, TRE Trivia ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Voices: Michael Crawford IS Frobozz! Don't get excited, Gamers - Andrew Lloyd Webber is not writing a musical about Zork - at least he hasn't told me about it. But Zork does fit into this, so bear with me for a few paragraphs... Our recent chat with City 3 did generate a lively discussion (offline as well as on) about theatre in the computer-age, and surprisingly the news was mostly good. Online activity was found a healthy and encouraging activity for a prospective audience in many respects: * Interactivity - unlike passive entertainment in television or movies, online services and the better websites involve user-interaction. You have to post messages to enjoy conversation, you follow a path of links that correspond to your thoughts rather than being locked into the authors, etc. * Attention-Span Regeneration - Television must complete each "act" in the 9-minute gap between commercial breaks, while music videos have less than 3 minutes to tell their stories. Computer networks and CD-ROM games on the other hand - well, let's put it this way - has anyone reading this article NEVER stayed up an extra hour wracking their brain on a 7th Guest puzzle, NEVER eaten a meal at their computer desk, or NEVER had a spat with spouse or parent about spending all their time on that damn thing? * Cliché-Busters - by its nature, the online community is made up of some fairly smart and educated people, who reject easy answers for what they are, and the entire structure of the Internet reinforces the principle of going deeper into any topic. Whether the discussion is politics or pop-music, if you try parroting the soundbites and cliches that pass in other media, you're probably in for a swift and plain-spoken dose of enlightenment. * The Human Touch - While multi-media games and 32-bit sound and all the rest are set up to challenge equally f/x-driven media, there is no digital substitute for the human experience of live performance. Theatre, Dance, Opera, and Performance Art still hold the field for making that direct contact with an audience - and the more digitally insulated the rest of our lives become, the more precious those reality-grounded experiences become. Fine, but what does it have to do with Zork? Well, it all began like this: "You are standing near a white house with a boarded front door. There is a mailbox here." In the dark ages of 1981 before sophisticated graphics and soundscapes, text-adventurers used a different kind of multi-media interface to experience the fantastic virtual worlds those games - it was called the human imagination and it was accessed by tersely suggestive descriptions of an underground empire the creatures who populated it. In a recent review PCME's Michael Bender bemoans the loss of that element in the next generation of games "With nothing left for the imagination, the world of Zork became... static (at least as far as I was concerned)." Hmm, a medium replacing its call on imagination with flashy effects, and insodoing, losing the very magic on which it made its reputation. Sound familiar? Theatre can learn a lot from this kindred spirit - that Bender review was not pan - it heralded a new step in the evolution of the Zork Universe - the newest game - Nemesis, is a complete innovation - it offers rich and detailed graphics that leave little to the inner eye, yes, but also a totally immersive and surreal soundscape which engages the curiosity and imagination in a way no hyper-realistic movie soundtrack can ever achieve. This new generation of computer games may teach valuable lessons in adapting to and incorporating new f/x technologies without betraying the nature of an imagination-grounded medium. Watch them closely. Complete Zork Nemesis review http://www.mortimer.com/users/pcme/fantasy/nemesis/nemesis.htm ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Play's the Thing Maxwell Anderson: A Well -Versed Playwright Verse plays, iambic pentameter, and poetic dialogue conjure images of Shakespeare in the minds of most people. Shakespeare and his contemporaries offered up the poetic beauty of language on the stage. Few people since that time have been able to capture the spirit of the verse play, but by 1923 a champion named Maxwell Anderson took up the quest to give verse plays back to the theater. Anderson saw his first play, Ibsen's A Doll House, while at the University of North Dakota. Theater interested him, yet poetry was his primary interest. The need to write grew to the point that he embarked upon a newspaper career while writing poetry as well. Strong political opinions cost the young Anderson many positions. After Anderson began working on the editorial staff of the New York World, he started reading Keats, Shelley and Shakespeare. Under the influences of these poetic masters, he took up his pen and began his first play, The White Desert, which was written entirely in blank verse. Anderson knew that in 1923 verse plays simply were not written. He showed the play to Lawrence Stallings, a book reviewer, who liked the play and convinced Brock Pemberton to produce it. Unreceptive audiences laughed at the "Othello-like fit of jealousy" of the play's hero. New York critics proved equally unimpressed. Anderson did not let disapproval stop him. "The theater tugged at me thereafter," Anderson said, refusing to be swayed from writing in verse. After hearing Lawrence Stallings recount his wartime memories of France, Anderson began one of his greatest plays. It was Stallings that gave the play its voice of the trenches around which Anderson spun the story of a captain and sergeant in love with the same girl. What Price Glory? with its gritty, realistic language and de-glorification of war shocked audiences in 1924, yet the play had a long, successful run on Broadway. The Anderson/Stallings collaboration continued with two more projects. General Andrew Jackson's early years were portrayed in First Flight. The Buccaneer chronicled the career of Sir Henry Morgan. Each play had short runs on stage. Anderson then turned to solo writing and wrote, in prose, Saturday's Children. The sentimental comedy about love garnered moderate praise from critics and audiences. Anderson suffered several flops until the 1930 Theater Guild production of Elizabeth the Queen, the first of the "Tudor Trilogy" he was to write. Audiences loved the "well spoken" blank verse. Mary of Scotland, and Valley Forge also proved very successful hits for Anderson. His play dealing with political corruption, Both Your Houses, won Anderson the Pulitzer Prize in 1933. One of Anderson's greatest plays, Winterset, was based on the Sacco-Vanzetti case. His first attempt to write regarding the case, a collaboration with Harold Hickman titled Gods of the Lightning, was a failure. Winterset won Anderson the New York Drama Critic's Circle Award in 1935. The beauty of Winterset came from the ability of his characters to speak blank verse as if it was their natural language. Anderson filled the stage with street vendors, homeless peddlers, gangsters and families who all collide in one night. Reading Winterset is like reading what Shakespeare might have written had he lived in the 1930's. Anderson's next play, High Tor, was a combination of verse and colloquial prose. Audiences loved the satirical fantasy that starred Burgess Meredith. When accepting the Critic's Circle award for the play, Anderson remarked, "I have learned the simple facts about the theatre, the first being that the better you think you are the harder the floor will seem to you when you hit it, as you surely will." Maxwell Anderson, Robert Sherman and some other invited dramatists founded The Playwright's Company in 1938. Anderson commented that he was glad the company, while prosperous, did not become ". . .something monstrous and monolithic..." from success. Anderson also enjoyed having a home theater to work in, surrounded by great craftsmen. He continued to turn out a play every season with mixed reviews from the critics. By 1939 the chaos of world events began to affect Anderson's writing. Turning from the verse tragedies, he began to write of contemporary heroes, often perceived as rebels, who would die for the cause of liberty. From this period came Key Largo (1939), woven around a man's post Spanish Civil War experiences; Candle in the Wind (1941), a play denouncing Nazism and dictatorship in any form; and Storm Operation (1943), written after Anderson had been with troops in the North Africa invasion. Anderson used the same themes of What Price Glory? to show that in war there was no glory yet he did show the spirit of men who would fight for what was right, without question. As Anderson's career continued, he wrote in a mix of blank verse and prose, like Joan of Lorraine, and in straight blank verse in Anne of the Thousand Days. Critics and audiences again received these plays well, praise that was somewhat lost on Anderson. He was asked once why he did not use the favorable statements of critics in advertisements of the play. He responded that critics had too much power already. Anderson said, "When critics say 'no' to a play, that is final. . . . It's unhealthy because it's undemocratic. The people of a democracy should decide for themselves what plays they should see." Anderson's writing career also included several screenplays for Hollywood which included All Quiet on the Western Front and Rain. Anderson was not happy with the movie versions of Key Largo and Winterset. Another interesting play of Anderson's became a strange success. The Bad Seed, about a psychotic child who murders anyone in her way, terrified Broadway audiences. Patty McCormack as the evil little Rhoda and Nancy Kelly as her mother reprised their roles in the 1956 film version and were both nominated for an Academy Award. Kelly received a Tony in 1955 for her stage performance as Rhoda's mother as well. Maxwell Anderson grew used to criticism from the critics because of his use of verse. He also found that critics tended to disagree with his own notion of the function of theater and the playwright in a democracy. Most looked to theater for entertainment, but Anderson felt that theater had a higher calling. Anderson's personal credo was simple. He wrote, "The theater is a religious institution devoted entirely to the exaltation of the spirit of man..." Anderson wrote for about 20 years in a small wooden shack behind his house. He wrote his first drafts in ledger books in longhand, and they needed little rewriting. Anderson plotted plays in his mind for about six months before he ever began to write them on paper. One of his favorite resources for research was the eight volume History of England by George L. Craik and Charles McFarlane. He was an unobtrusive playwright during rehearsals, preferring to sit quietly in the back of the theater and take notes. Directors admired his quick rewrites of dialogue. Anderson never attended openings of his own plays. Maxwell Anderson stood firm against the Broadway mindset. He fought them as if he was fighting a holy crusade to bring beauty of the language back to the stage. To Anderson, verse was the Holy Grail and audiences were given the chance to commune from the cup. Maxwell Anderson died February 28, 1959 from a stroke at the age of 71. Plays by Maxwell Anderson: 1923 - White Desert (with Lawrence Stallings) 1924 - What Price Glory? 1925 - The Buccaneer (with Lawrence Stallings) First Flight (with Lawrence Stallings) Outside Looking In 1927 - Saturday's Children 1928 - Gypsy Gods of the Lightning (with Harold Hickson) 1930 - Elizabeth the Queen 1932 - Night Over Taos 1933 - Both Your Houses (Pulitzer Prize) Mary of Scotland 1934 - Valley Forge 1935 - Winterset (Drama Critic's Circle Prize) 1936 - The Masque of Kings The Wingless Victory High Tor (Critic's Prize) 1937 - Star-Wagon 1938 - Knickerbocker Holiday 1939 - Key Largo 1940 - Journey to Jerusalem 1941 - The Feast of Ortolans (one act) Second Overture (one act) Candle in the Wind 1942 - Eve of St. Mark 1944 - Storm Operation 1945 - Truckline Cafe 1946 - Joan of Lorraine 1947 - Anne of the Thousand Days 1949 - Lost in the Stars 1951 - Barefoot in Athens 1954 - The Bad Seed 1958 - The Golden Six More information on Maxwell Anderson can be found at the following sites: The Internet Movie Database containing a list of the films of his work: http://us.imdb.com/cache/person-exact/f481 The location of his grave (as well as other famous personalities): http://www.orci.com/personal/jim/grave/aaaaa.html Photos of Anderson's home, which is currently for sale for $746,000.00: http://www.nyackhomes.com/lypg7.htm Lists of Pulitzer Prize Winners: http://www.teleport.com/~veg/books/awards/pulitzer/pulitzer_drama.html The Electric Library, full of photos and information on his films and plays: http://www.elibrary.com/id/1970/ --- 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" in the Theatre Forum. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rubin's Corner by Robert Rubin Theatre Excitement - A New Season According to a publication called the Broadwaygram "Without question the 1995-96 Broadway year has been the most successful Broadway season in over a decade!". Judging from the popular holdovers from last season this must be true. Shows like Rent, A Funny Thing..., The King and I, Sunset Boulevard, and Victor/Victoria are still playing at the start of the 1996-97 season. The new season finds that many of the New York theaters are already booked as we head for the start of the new season. The season starts on September 5th with one of three finalist for the 1996 Pulitzer Prize called Old Wicked Songs. This new play tells the story of a young American pianist who, while studying with an Austrian music professor, unravels the secret mystery that brings true passion to his music and his soul. It will found at the Promenade Theatre. On September 19th last years winner of the Olivier Award as Best Play will open on Broadway. David Hare has created a riveting portrait of England today and an overwhelmingly moving account of a love affair. Michael Gambon will recreate his role on Broadway. The critically acclaimed production that played a sold out engagement at the Manhattan Theatre Club last year called Full Gallop returns to the Westside Theatre. Mary Louise Wilson stars in this one women show. The play is about the legendary guru of fashion, Diana Vreeland. About the same time the Public Theater begins it season with David Henry Hwang's, Golden Child alone with Naomi Wallace's hit play from the 1996 Humana Festival which is called One Flee Spare On October 4 a most exciting psychological play that stars Ed Harris and Daniel Massey, who is recreating his award-winning London performance, opens at the Atkinson Theatre. The story set in 1946 is accused of complicity with the Nazis by American military personnel. The philosophical and more questions that are raised create the kind of powerful theatre that hasn't been seen in many years. On October 25th, Dodger Productions brings us a musical gem about a princess and a pea. They have invited Sarah Jessica Parker to join their merry kingdom and bring happiness to all the people. This production of Once Upon A Mattress is being directed by Gerald Gutierrez at the Broadhurst Theater. On October 29th the musical Chicago returns to the Richard Rodgers Theatre. The show has an amazing cast which includes Ann Reinking, Bebe Neuwirth, Joel Grey and James Naughton. They join forces to recreate the Kander and Ebb score and the sexy sensational choreography of Bob Fosse. Following two successful seasons, A Christmas Carol returns on November 22 as New York's favorite holiday treat. You can get in the holiday spirit and see this production which opens at The Theater in Madison Square Garden. The man, the magic, the mystery and the biggest, best and most spectacular stage illusions come to Broadway on November 25th at the Martin Beck Theatre. David Copperfield brings his show to New York City for the first time for only five weeks. Following Mr. Copperfield into the Martin Beck Theatre is a production called Whistle Down The Wind. The production is being composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber and directed by Harold Prince. The last time they collaborated, they created The Phantom of the Opera. Their new venture is set in Louisiana in 1959 when a group of children discovers a mysterious stranger in their barn. The sensitive story of spirit and faith will be the first project that "Sir Andrew" initiates on Broadway rather then London. The excitement will continue with several new interesting productions. The 20th Anniversary production of Annie, the classic family musical starring Nell Carter as the infamous Miss Hannigan returns to Broadway. Martin Charnin will direct this production. Stephanie Powers will be starring as Margo Channing in a new production of the Betty Comden/Adolph Green/ Charles Strouse musical Applause base on the movie "All About Eve". Christopher Plummer returns to Broadway by portraying John Barrymore in a new play titled Barrymore by William Luce. A new musical version of Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre will come to Broadway. The show will be directed by John Caird and will open after an engagement in Toronto. The musical version of Jekyll and Hyde will finally made it to New York in January. Winter will bring the return to the stage of Kander and Ebb is a new musical called Steel Pier. Scott Ellis will direct this production and the choreography will be provide by Susan Stoman. We can look for a new production of The Diary of Anne Frank and a new Cy Coleman musical called The Life in time for the March melt. The Titanic will sink to music by Maury Yeston in April. The book to this musical is being written by Peter Stone. Tommy Tune's next musical will be The Royal Family of Broadway, with a score by William Finn. Finally there will finally be a production of the 1994 Olivier Award winning comedy called Hysteria which follows Sigmund Freud on a roller coaster ride through his own subconscious. This could be the most exciting theater season in a long time that starts with a number of new plays and finishes with a number of interesting musicals. Keep checking the Broadway BBS for updates. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ CyberTheater Monthly: Interactivity So, you've browsed the sites. You've read the marketing pitches. You've perused performance schedules. You've seen the electronic ticket order forms. But you haven't talked to a human being. Where are all the human beings online? Where is this interaction' that everyone keeps talking about? Well, there isn't much of it, to be honest. The Internet is still relatively new. The World Wide Web has only been around for a little over 3 years now. Hard to believe, I know, but true. Mark Andresen, wrote the first graphical web browser, Mosaic, in early 1993. Even electronic mail has only been around for about ten years. Services such as the Microsoft Network have been around for about a year. So there really hasn't been much time for true inter-human interactivity to develop. This is only further compounded by the fact that most computer programmers define interactivity as being between a human and an automated computer system. But the programmers are waking up. While still not widespread, there still are a few places where you can interact with other human beings online. Unfortunately, few of those are of any interest to thespians. The most basic form of web-based interaction is the bulletin or discussion board. These are quite popular and come in many different styles. One type, the message board, is like a great big tack board, with message after message after message through which you have to scroll. The other major type, the threaded discussion board, looks more like what you'd see in your average news reader, with titles displayed in a threaded manner that link to the actual posting. A large majority of sites are now using the second type. For example, you can find industry discussions on the Peekaboo discussion boards. Then there is the IRC-based real-time chat. Many online magazines, such as Vibe, use this simple and cheap solution. IRC is a multi-user system that allows users to talk in a rooms-based environment (they call these rooms "channels"). The server is free for the companies hosting the service and there are about 10 different freeware clients out there. But you get what you pay for. Interaction using these real-time systems are cumbersome at best, involving knowledge of advanced IRC commands in order to do anything beyond pass a few lines of text back and forth. In addition, without the integration of multimedia, it is difficult to achieve true collaboration online. The more advanced solutions are extremely expensive. Peekaboo's chat system, the Magma Chat, is a slight advance over the IRC systems in that it can integrate some multimedia, but still costs several thousand dollars. The avatar-based chat systems that drives the Microsoft Network's TheatreWeb is even more expensive, costing tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement. Most theatre-related sites won't have the money for that kind of functionality for a long time. So how can you interact with another human? For now, you'll have to frequent an online service where sophisticated multi-media chatrooms like TheatreWeb are available or settle for the complicated IRC-based chats or the few sites that can afford slightly more advanced systems. The bulletin boards will have to suffice for ongoing conversations. But you won't have that long to wait. Peekaboo, along with several competitors, is working on an integrated real-time chat system that is actually designed for artistic collaboration. You won't see anything for six months or so, but by then you should see it become markedly more easy to find and collaborate with other theatre-doers online. Web sites mentioned in this edition of CyberTheatre Monthly: http://www.i-see-you.com/interact/discboards/ http://www.pathfinder.com/ --- Andrew Q. Kraft is the creator and maintainer of Theatre Central. He is also the Vice President of Operations for Peekaboo, an online network for music and theater (http://www.i-see-you.com/). Andrew is currently writing a book on the Internet for Actors, which he writes instead of sleeping. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ W H A T ' S N E W in the Theatre & Performance Forum New Mini-Series First - Every Monday in September - It's SCRIPTease Then in October - countdown to Halloween with Murder and Mayhem Transcripts from Shakespeare Unplugged and other special guest and mini-series chats can always be downloaded from the library... New Broadway Season Remember, the new season began September 5th - keep up with the news between issues in the Broadway BBS and Reviews section of the library Back to School with Theatre For Young People Fall auditions are coming up - talk about monologues, casting cliques, and other backstage issues with other young thespians in the Theatre for Young People Mini-Forum Back Issues Remember, you can always download back issues of TRE from the Forum Library. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ TRE Trivia: * True or False: There is a loose musical adaptation of She Stoops to Conquer called Lumpkin! * Who created the role of Peter in the original Broadway production of Prelude to a Kiss ? * David Mamet's Speed the Plow is set in what industry? * Parallel Lives is subtitled "The Kathy and Mo Show" Who are Kathy and Mo? * In Deathtrap, mystery-thriller playwright Sidney Bruhl was famous for writing The Murder Game. Is there really a play called The Murder Game, and if so, who wrote it? * In the Jerry Herman/Harvey Fierstein musical, the club is called La Cage aux Folles. What are the performing names of the resident dancers and the star? Answers to last month's trivia: It is Cinderella (and her Prince, Stepmother, etc. who appear in both Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella and Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods. Big River is based on Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. The first actor was the Greek, Thespis, from whom we derive the word Thespian. Mandy Patinkin made his Broadway debut as Che in Evita, in which his co-stars were Patty LuPone as Eva (easy) and Bob Gunton as Peron (hard) The quote about buying rich people a pot of jam comes from John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation Hamlet is performed four times in The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (abridged). The last time backwards. Gossip Tidbits du jour... * Despite the happy flutterings of Diva-watchers like Playbill's Andrew Gans, Elaine Page does not have the draw with American audiences to sustain Sunset Blvd.-a wholly star-driven show. Reviews have been trying to manufacture that draw - but the only the box office numbers will tell if they succeed. * While the PR-machines are working overtime, legit and magic insiders alike are keeping a close and skeptical eye on David Copperfield's Broadway plans. Copperfield is not the first magician to take to the New York stage - following Penn & Teller, Doug Henning & Franz Harary. Will his "Intimate Evening of Grand Illusion" be the most successful - or just the most expensive? * Neil Simon's later plays have been so autobiographical an actual autobiography might seem redundant - but the upcoming Rewrites (scheduled to hit the stands in October) is rumored to have some surprises about, among others, Bob Fosse, Mike Nichols, Cy Coleman, Maureen Stapleton, Walter Matthau, and George C. Scott. * Two Pop-monsters went on sale Sunday, Sept 15th - the D.C. engagement of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Whistle Down the Wind and the New York ritual A Christmas Carol. "This is an exhibition not a competition - please no wagering" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright 1996, Mersinger Theatrical Services