Starting to Feel Real

It's the same every time.

I choose some weird show for us to do that really thrills me, and only afterwards do I realize how fucking difficult it's going to be -- conceptually, musically, technically, casting-wise, acting-wise, or sometimes all of the above. And then I get a little bit stressed out.

Then, once we're sure we're doing a show, I make a copy of the script at Kinko's, I read it once more through, and then I keep it on top of my piano. I let the show swim around in the back of my head, and then every once in a while (more likely than not, it's when I'm really stoned) I come up with the perfect way to stage a scene, or a great way to explain a scene to the actors, or a revealing bit of business, and I grab the script and make notes about that, then put it back. Over time, I figure out the style of the show, the energy of it, the physicality of it -- is this more like Bat Boy or High Fidelity or Sunday in the Park with George or bare? Or is it sui generis, it's own category entirely? And if so, what are its rules? What will be hardest for the audience to understand? I think one of my talents as a director is understanding and communicating to the actors each show's individual personality. But sometimes, with the weirder shows, the Big Picture is hard for the actors to grasp until all the pieces come together.

Eventually the time comes to prepare for rehearsals and I procrastinate and I procrastinate and then I finally sit down and make the rehearsal schedule, which is really hard. I try like hell to make actors sit around doing nothing as seldom as possible. Sometimes it can't be avoided, but I do my best and I think the actors appreciate it.

Rehearsals begin, and no matter how long I've been thinking about the show, I don't feel like I'm ready to start work yet. I feel ill-prepared. (Unless it's a show I've done before, but that's pretty rare.) But I've learned over time that my process works and I always know instinctively how to get us on the right road for this particular show with this particular cast at this particular moment to get to the coolest, most intense, most meaningful end product.

I used to think I was not preparing enough because, as we worked on the show, I always felt like I understood it fully only as we worked on it, not ahead of time. But I realize now that this is how I do my best work. Having too many answers in advance robs the process of spontaneity and the inspired brilliance that comes from panic. I prepare myself in advance for discovering the piece, but I actually discover it in the process, not on the page. I can tell many of the actors enjoy discovering the show at the same time I do. It becomes a group adventure. And I think they find my frequent flashes of revelation mildly hilarious.

As we work on the show, I write a background and analysis chapter about it that really helps me, by forcing me to verbalize my ideas, my hunches, my sense of how a show works, and it often makes more obvious a wrong turn I may have taken. And all that makes it easier to talk about it with the actors.

All this work is really hard and there's very little payback, very little reward for doing good...

Until now. We call it Hell Week. Most people call it production week. I've finally seen Passing Strange now in all its rock and roll glory. With lights, costumes, a finished set, and a seriously kick-ass band. And holy fucking shit, it is a thing of beauty. Funny, sexy, subversive, emotional, heartbreaking, thought-provoking, powerful, and just so fucking beautiful. There's such poetry in the words, such joy and muscle in the music, and our actors have found that playful, honest, aggressive style the show demands. This cast may not have always known exactly where we were heading, but they stayed with me and they've arrived in glorious fashion. They were on fire last night. And Jesus Christ, was it fun.

Still a few more little details to iron out -- not really problems, just little details that can be cooler or clearer or more interesting. I could tell from the first day that these were the right people to pull this thing off and I was right. Every one one of them does wacky comedy and powerfully emotional drama with equal skill. Damn!

Come see us opening night and you can meet the cast and band at the party afterward. This is not a show you'll soon forget.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

And It's Alright...

My director's notes for the program...still under construction...

Passing Strange deserves a place beside other great autobiographical works of art, like Federico Fellini’s 8½ , Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories, Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz, and Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George. Like the others, Passing Strange traffics in surrealism and symbolism and metaphor, but unlike the others, this story is built not on images, but almost exclusively on music – rock, punk, acid rock, funk, gospel, R&B, Latin, and a little Kurt Weill and Burt Bacharach thrown in too. Here, the visuals are as minimalist as possible to make way for the rich, rowdy music and lyrics.

Constructed on the classic Hero Myth, the script calls the story’s hero just “Youth,” not “the Youth,” as if he’s standing in not only for the writer as a young man, but also for that whole period of life between childhood and adulthood, when choices are made and life’s puzzles are teased out. Late in the show the narrator says, “You know, it’s weird when you wake up that morning and realize that your entire adult life was based on a decision made by a teenager. A stoned teenager.” Like Pippin, the story of Passing Strange is episodic, exploring religion, politics, hedonism, and domesticity, but unlike Prince Pippin, this Youth finds what he’s looking for – or at the very least, he finds the road toward his destination.

Writer-composer Stew (née Mark Stewart) told NPR, “It’s what I like to call autobiographical fiction, in that every single thing that’s happening on the stage, I can point to something in my life, some kind of corollary, you know, that corresponds in some way. Did the things that happened in Amsterdam in our play happen to me? Some of them, but not all. It’s really just about the costs of being a young artist. It's a 46-year-old guy looking back at the things that he did and the values he had in his 20s, sort of when you're making that decision to really be an artist, you know?” Or as the Youth puts it, “I illuminate with fiction the darkness truth cannot explain.”

This is a memory play, like The Glass Menagerie or Long Day’s Journey Into Night, so these characters exist only in Stew’s memory, fictionalized both by the years and by intention. Some may see the show as a “black musical,” but race is only one of its topics. The African American Stew created the show with a white co-composer, white director, all white designers, and his all-white band (aside from him), The Negro Problem.

Stew tells us that the Youth’s journey is about finding The Real, but he doesn’t explicitly define it for us. He only tells us that “The Real is a construct.” Well, time is a construct too. Race is a construct. Theatre is a construct. Most importantly, our lives are a construct. We create them. We build them over time, moment by moment. We fashion them as we live them, very much as a product of our own ideology, personal history, and social circumstances. And when we realize that The Real is a construct for each one of us, that necessarily means that your Real will always be different from my Real, because each of us is coming from a different place and heading toward a different destination.

We each have our own Real to find, our own Tao. Passing Strange is Stew’s Real and tonight he shares it with us.

And it’s alright… cue music…

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

The Black One

When I first decided I wanted to produce Passing Strange, I did think twice about what it would mean for a white guy to be directing this all-black show which is at least partly about racial identity. But (as I've written in this space before), I've worked on lots of shows about times and places unfamiliar to me. Certainly I'm more in touch with African American culture in my lifetime than with the 1920s New York demimonde or 1940s Argentina.

I've learned in rehearsal that because of the nature of the story, I do have to be even more open than usual to suggestions and concerns from these black actors -- especially in regard to the sections of the show set in the black community in Los Angeles. Still, no matter how sensitive I am, no matter how much black culture I imbibe as we work (Spike Lee films, James Baldwin novels, etc.), we're still doing what is essentially a black show (Stew might argue with that label a bit, but still...) with a white director, all white designers, and an all-white band.

But last night something really interesting struck me.

This show was created on Stew's band, The Negro Problem -- which is an all-white band, other than Stew himself (which makes the name of the band even more interesting). And Strew's co-composer, Heidi Rodewald is a white woman. And the show's original director Annie Dorsen is a white woman. The original scenic design was by David Korins (white guy), with costumes by Elizabeth Hope Clancy (white woman), lighting by Kevin Adams (white guy), and sound by Tom Morse (white guy). Wow. Really?

But now that I put all these pieces together, what does that mean?

Race is certainly an issue in the show, although not in the way it usually is. In this case, the protagonist is grappling with what race means, what it implies, what it requires from him, what expectations it creates in others. In this story, it's not about bigotry, oppression, or any of the usual issues around race. And to a large extent, the Youth rejects the conventional notions of race and, though he does try to "cash in" on race in Berlin, he ultimately rejects race as a fundamental identifier.

To complicate matters even more, we've cast a mixed-race -- and very light complected -- actor (Keith Parker) in the role of the Youth. So the Youth's decision in the show to use his race as his entrance into the Nowhaus community takes on an even more complex tinge than it did in the original. In a way, Keith represents America in a way we wouldn't have even thought about ten years ago. People talk about "the browning of America," meaning not just the increase in population of Americans of color, but also the continual mixing of races and the subsequent blurring of "the color line." When it's hard to tell what someone's race is, race can't be used as a weapon. I see nothing but good coming from all that, but you know there are lots of people in America (Tea, anyone?) who are terrified of this.

Stew was prompted to write Passing Strange in reaction to the incuriousness and lack of worldliness of George W. Bush, but perhaps this is really a show, more than any other I can think of, about the era of the mixed-race President Barack Obama.

Race was obviously a big part of Hair, but we've never done a show that grapples with the complexity of race quite like Passing Strange does. It's tough and it's also exhilarating.

I guess in a way I struggle with race as Stew does, but in a totally different way. For Stew, it's deeply personal. In my case, I've been working for most of the life of New Line on getting racially diverse casts on our stage, to make our shows look like our community. I believe that's a fundamental responsibility for someone running a theatre company like ours. I'm proud to say that in our last ten seasons, we've only had 4 or 5 shows with all-white casts. We've even organized two local forums on race and St. Louis theatre (from which I learned a lot). Of course, we can still do better in that arena.

Anyway, I think I can finally let go of my "white guilt" over producing Passing Strange. If Stew himself gathered an almost entirely white group of artists around him to create this piece, he must think that's okay. And if it's alright with Stew, then it's alright... cue music...

What a wonderful, deep, fascinating show we're working on! We are all so damn lucky.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott