Seminars in theatre; Episode 23 of 31

This is seminars in theatre a series of discussions with leading members of the theatrical profession who comment on the problems and pleasures of life in the theatre. Here now is the host of seminars and theatre Richard Paey at the evening and welcome to another discussion on theatre in America. Tonight we're concerned with Endicott and the Red Cross which is opened at the American place theatre. And we welcome our guests the director of the current production John Hancock who's a former artistic director of the Pittsburgh Playhouse and the actors workshop in San Francisco. And he's been in the forefront of the growth and influence of regional theatre. Some of his other achievements in Pittsburgh and San Francisco has been the staging of break together Layo in Esco is the lesson that poets Theatre in Cambridge Massachusetts in a season of stock at Loeb drama center of Hancock attended Harvard University where received his Bachelor of Arts degree in a grant to study theatre in Europe and some of his off-Broadway accomplishments

include Brecht's a man's a man Ostrofsky of the storm and a circle in the square production of A Midsummer Night's Dream and he's a member of the directors unit of the Actor's Studio. Other guests Julia Miles who is general manager of the American Place Theater and has been with it since its inception. And we'll hear more from her regarding a background a bit later on one of the actors in the production Jack. Police say oh plays the wolf was born in Milwaukee he studied acting at Mark my quit is that Mark quite a mark at Marquette University in Milwaukee and here in New York would win had been who's the artistic director I believe of American plays. He's appeared that is Jack as off-Broadway in Tiger Rag king of the whole damn world and ticket of leave man. He's an accomplished economist and he does a lot of that in the current production. He studied with croup.

Has appeared in a college tour of the mime show the silent stage and has his own part of my trio I believe it's Myka. You know the director that's great performs throughout the United States and a very essential guest is Robert Levine who's the costume designer for the cover production and he studied at the San Francisco Art Institute. He was resident designer at the San Francisco actor's workshop for seven years and during that time created the settings for herbut browers productions of Endgame The Alchemist Sergeant Musgrave's dance King Lear in the balcony and he also collaborated with Jim Dine on the sets and the costumes for the production of Midsummer Night's Dream which was presented at theatre duty and Mr Bean has had several exhibits of his paintings and drawings in both San Francisco New York and his works can be found in many of the. Collections here in New York. Now that we've established who's

who here Endicott in the Red Cross's by Robert Lowell it takes place in. Massachusetts town in the 16th 30s and we understand Mr. Hancock that the source for Endicott of the Red Cross had been Nathaniel Hawthorne's stories Endicott and the Red Cross in the Maypole at Marymount and Thomas Morton's New Canaan. Did you have to read or did you feel it was necessary to read any of these words but I'm sure I read them and we had them Xeroxed and gave them to the cast who I don't know if it did if it helped or not but I found them very helpful as a director because they contain many visual clues that are helpful and amplifying the play. He's really adapted them very carefully and very. Very scrupulously the first two of the two Hawthorne stories he's just gained a few. A few speeches from Morton's new English training but the Hawthorne stories are adapted faithfully.

These are three actually three plays in one. I mean there is no break. There's no intermission. Well that you haven't nor are they actually. They don't exist in segments there. They overlap he has a little bit of maple of Paramount throws in a little bit of. And they got the Red Cross then goes back to the Maple of marijuana. You don't notice the lines between these he's somehow synthesise them with his own nightmares and his own dreams to where. It becomes a unified whole that is entirely Robert Lowell. You know very faithful and incidentally we should mention to Robert Lowell has been responsible for several successful plays at the American place of the Old Glory and I think the most well-known Benito Cereno which both of them received their first production at the American plays would that be correct you. Know. It's unique. I feel a unique

organization here in the city of New York. It's a subscription number one which means that you can buy tickets to go in four separate productions. Do you feel that's a limitation on the theater Miles. Well I think you know it's not a limitation because we choose to have it that way frankly. We're a small theater and we run a place for a limited number of weeks and we like to have the audience with us during the entire season. I think we're really the only theater in New York where it says subscription that means unless you subscribe you actually cannot come to the play. Yes that's very true. And we are a writers theater and all of the sort of things we set up to run the theatre starts with the writer and you know it goes on from there. Question anyone hesitates to ask anybody about an author including a playwright author is what the play is about. Usually nobody wants to admit the plays are about anything

they just happen without any effect in the cause apparently is this is just the breath of someone being skinned. But Mr. Hancock do you feel that Endicott and the Red Cross is about something. Oh very much so I think that it's what it's what it's about is sufficiently ambiguous to to to be that one can't set it out in a few simple sentences but I think it does touch on certain fundamental American experiences one of them is what it feels like to destroy the world. I think that that for today's its most the most important meaning it also does grow out of the making of this country what it what it was that at the beginning and what what went wrong at the beginning and is continued to be a source of tension down to now. How do you feel this is best expressed in the play. Well by its essential action you know that in plays you very seldom it is at all summed up especially in good

place in a single life. But by the essential movement of the character of Endicott who starts in a kind of depressed way and trying to keep the peace without violence and gradually step by step moves to violence and a kind of murderous manic at the end so that he ends up destroying Marymount in his own colony and at the same time the set and by way of another by way the sense that American plays that I think have been among the most imaginative uses of the stage that I have seen. The three act plays of both the change of set they have each one of these were really really terrific I thank you very much. Well that's the set for a ceremony of innocence was quite a beautiful thing that you do with that theater here in this case.

We don't have the set designer but we have the costume designer and artist Robert Levine in drawing up the costumes for this. Did you just have to check a few history books to determine what people were wearing in the 16th 30s and then get somebody to sew them. Or was there any special demands made upon your imagination. Well the premise for designing the costumes was to incorporate. As usual as many that as possible in the case of this play it was the attempt was to get as much of the sense of the modern overlapping and the period as possible. For historical references. Prehistorical reference. Well that's all and I think that's sort of a checkpoint. Get me later after I begin to be finite.

I generally work for my own feelings to begin with and then incorporate the details that don't make for that in the period also. And have you seen the production young man and one of the costume pieces that I would ask you about the wife of the nude the newly married even to you. Yes going to make that costume is principle at least from where I was sitting. Flowery red and white kind of dress was not the kind of dresses that. Queen of the maze war in the 16th 30s or did you invent that. I invented that one with everything in the show we've tried to invent. I mean we tried to invent a kind of timeless world that partially period partially modern but not clearly either for the plate of to live in. And

we have as Bob said tried to introduce many modern elements but we've tried to have nothing that's clearly modern and in those it's not a modern dress production. It's a kind of eclectic thing where we've drawn a little bit from here a little bit from there. Well Kenneth Hague who. Plays the governor has what appears to be a custom of the period and may not be I don't know but it looks certainly he didn't see our necktie. Well from a problem here there's this whole everyone was dressed sufficiently. I mean to suggest that it certainly isn't taking place today. Right. But you hope that in the case of Edith it was too clearly modern and kind of violated or I guess I just felt that it didn't particularly say anything in conjunction with the Mr Bean's statement that he was drawing up costumes to incorporate the ideas that you were taking the play and the

licentiousness or the particular sensuality that we were supposed to receive from the Maypole scene since it didn't come about through the movement of the actors and it didn't come about through. It wasn't particularly aided in the movie maybe this was just what you intended was a suggestion and in the in the in the space in which you had to deal which was again imaginative but it had spatial limitations in the revolving turntable that they had to incorporate their actions on. I thought the dress might have been might have been more. Sensual. That's I mean this is not particularly. This is just an opinion. Now with the most difficult costume to do it was you know one you know in the play growing out of what you're saying there is a kind of abstraction to the whole Maypole the whole Marymount world where they had a lot the last is a little bit bookish in a way. And we had the

choice of either going with that and trying to bring a certain amount of obscenity and lust alive within that framework are trying to break out of that and try to supplement something that was missing in the play. And we made the choice that this was not missing. But we should go with a slight abstraction a slight. Not bookishness but just a slight stiffness and deadness to the last. And the world of Mary. I think you achieved that. In that sense whether it was right for the effectiveness of the work as a whole I myself worry about. But I think that in the end a writer sailor like the American place where you do have an obligation to fulfill the author's vision even at sometimes at the expense of the effectiveness of what you're doing. Also I think if I may says and then the combat custom in particular I mean last I did also in I think I don't I mean you know lust and innocence are separate things but they're also combined in that custom did it for me. I mean you know visually

very much so because then it was so you know regulars are also you know in that situation which is very free wheeling. There is there still is a certain innocence about the play itself. Is there any particular reason John why you think this play was better without an intermission or that you or is there it was this just an arbitrary choice. You know this is was written as a one act play as part of the trilogy The old glory of which my kinsman major Molineaux was a second plane Benito Cereno was a third place. And. The idea I imagine was to present and got the Red Cross have a dinner break and then present the other two in the evening without a dinner break quite a long evening but not quite as long as War and Peace Now which I hear is rather good. I have seen about how it was pretty bad. I am only referring to Renata Adler's But

at any rate I think that this is fundamentally one act play that has a single movement I don't know where you would put an act break although I always feel the need to stretch my legs someplace about I was going to attack you. That's when I know you're just I don't know I don't really know you know the whole play break could do me very nicely by the way I mean for those who haven't seen it may never see it ordinate long period of time in one of those old seventeenth century pillories that. Close your arms or your wrists and your neck is that faked up to the extent that you can relax around really. I don't know about you jealous I don't know. They are not going to like the film story. We tried it at first with the real Hillary and it weighed about 35 to 40 pounds and for the six week rehearsal period I suffered terribly. I have a neck injury anyway from that from an old handling and

finally I got the message through that it just wasn't going to work for me. So they ordered a new pill which looks fairly good as good. That's not my job you know I mean but it's a little lighter it's much lighter heavier and I yes it's heavier and near the end of the play my hands and arms fall asleep but I just about make it through when it looks uncomfortable and heavy. Yes like well it is really it is. That's part of the reactive guy I don't know. I'm doing some pretending that you know I see it's now before I was really dying. I think you know you save you audit but actually of course the technical director down in the scene shot made the first one and then he made the other one out of the lighter one and yeah actually John I thought we were talking about what Robert Lowe intends here somewhere in the play. And what relevance would you draw from a. Movement of action and ideas in the play to the events

that are taking place today. Well this play was written before Vietnam it was written quite a while ago but I think the result is that of Dr performing and now that it speaks very clearly and strongly to what's on people's mind about Vietnam I don't think it. It's not without ambiguity in that sense I mean he constantly belies it's not that the the community of Marymount is a Vietnamese village and a cot is an American captain is it's all hinted at and then belied you know I saw that. There are corrupt things about the Marymount religion very un-American things about Endicott in a way I mean it's it's all done and then contradicted and then the contradictions are contradicted it's a very subtle involuted play in many ways. Do you feel in directing this type of material and having to work with this type of material that you had an extra or an

additional problem in making this relevant. To a contemporary audience. Well I think that we treated it as if it needed amplification of the words we put modern elements in the costumes and in certain moments of the blocking we they've had some of the flavor of photographs in this kind of stuff from Vietnam but I don't think. The result is that we really needed to do that that much it speaks I think to people just from what the people bring in the theater without any any pushing on our part I don't think we've pushed it too much at all. Did you decide to use the turntable. Yes. Why did you decide to use that turntable and restrict most of your staging area rather than getting a different kind of spatial concept. It was all I wanted that kind of wax museum display the kind of historical pageantry historical museum quality to it where you had a kind of stiff dead exhibition of of people as they're turned around

demands more than as if it were all happening in Endicott's mind if it were his hallucination a play rather than if it were as if it were really happening. I was part of the what I spoke of earlier about the abstraction of the Marymount village that there should be. We felt we shouldn't try for our kind of full naturalistic life we wanted to kind of stylisation of that living within the kind of stiff thing. Yet the styles are mixed in the acting styles are mixed in that you don't write at all that's that's once again going with the play and moves from very real naturalistic things to very artificial things and and I think there's a kind of excitement in those transitions. We we talk about on this program many problems connected with theater and production so any question I ask is not. Irrelevant to this program and I just hope you don't think so. One question I have. Is the movement of Kenneth Hager plays the governor and his

constant position leaning on the bridge as soon as a bridge that goes down the center and most of his speeches are given. Holding onto this bridge railing with very little variety of movement and very little variety of emotional progression and very little variety in speech and very little variety in tone. And I wondered whether this was designed deliberately to make one feel tedious. Or was it to share the tedium of Kenneth Haig. Because there was no movement I wonder why he was placed in the middle of the bridge. Rob practically all Has he seen. Well I don't know I found that quite effective and quite strong. I mean to a degree I suppose there is a certain tedium involved LOL speaks of the plays being a tissue of longer. I think that that is an element that kind of

moody kind of brooding atmosphere where nothing much seems to be happening but the terror grows underneath if the terror didn't grow underneath for you then. Then that was our failure but that's the idea is that beneath this kind of still melancholy exterior things are getting worse and worse and the anxiety is growing. As a director how do you overcome this problem of distinguishing. Others in a very difficult problem of distinguishing between the the one dimension that you want to create and the one dimension of an actors playing that may necessarily creep into this kind of situation. This is this is a very this is a technical problem I would imagine. Well I think what you're referring to in this case is is it's alright to hold the man still if the inner excitement of the actor is growing at a significant

rain you feel that it wasn't in this case is that it for this reason it was because he was still in it's hard to get your motor driven not only that but in his physical position it was difficult for him to respond or react differently to various characters and also there's a kind of constant head movement that Kennedy engages in which always takes him from left from stage right to center from stage right to center because all of the characters are talking to him from the stage right in his right and consequently you are sitting on the other side of the house and I was sitting. Yeah. On stage. Ha ha. Well this of course again I don't want to quibble about it. It just seems though that this position was used in ordinate really a long period of time to no particular dramatic effect. And I didn't get that what you mentioned was the growing inner fire of course that doesn't mean it wasn't there at all. I just wondered whether this was a deliberate design to create this kind of situation or emotional. Absolutely.

Julia Miles what does the general manager do with a theater like afraid you're going to have American placed there. I came into the theater is an actress and then went on as a producer first in a church another church and then off Broadway and I never really had much to do with the general management. But they did. But that at the Americanized theater anyway that's my title and which got grown out of a hat. I mean I don't know I look after contracts and all that sort of thing with writers and directors and actors and look after the production. Look after all the budget look after seeing that we have enough money for everything and seeing that one place I just had to cut the Red Cross doesn't break us completely for years and it has a quite a large cast. You know it's and I wabbit production but you know it's all worth it I think when the when

you see what's on stage it comes out as well as this. On that note I want to quickly hear that anyone going to see and caught in Red Cross would not be damaged to the degree that they would say I had an unpleasant experience in the theater. I would say that there are many many elements that John Hancock has brought out on that stage and the stage itself and many many elements which would make it. A very worthwhile leaving the theatre sometimes and talking about these productions honestly and talking about them candidly would be the wrong impression right. I'm more interested in praise than in a right and I'm trying to get to that is harder when you start out with a rather low I think you know there's always something that you can certainly start from and get from. Yes in spite of the. Number of things about Lowell politically I think that he has his followers and he

has his detractors and stems not from so much his artistic output as his political input and I think if we can leave that aside. Robert Lowell is something is immaterial. I mean he's given great material there. Being a general manager I was going on that and I was saying that the we often see this title when you go to the general manager and I was really asking you what are the general managers responsible for and they were because I think many of our listeners see this title and wonder you know just what does what does a general manager do when you've just indicated that you're responsible for a wide range of things that go on in terms of American place theatre activities of a general manager differ from that I would say of other theatres. Well I'm I would assume as I say I've never been a general manager before but I would assume simply because General Manager to say a Broadway or a

particular off by play only looks after that one play. And where is the American place theatre I look after a theatre you know. We work on many productions and we also see subscribers and I have something to do with that and seek grants and monies from all possible sources and I have something to do with things like that and developing a living breathing programme you know you're out it's not just a one shot thing is what would you be able to say what place excited you most that has been mounted at American place since you've been there. Guys that aren't Christian. Obviously I'm partial to Mr. Lo I like Benito in the allegory in this play very much and Ronald Reagan is another very big favorite of mine we've done three of his hairy noon and night ceremony of innocence which we did this year in Journey of the fifth horse which is maybe my favorite I mean every time it has been on I think television several times the ceremony of an ounce of

innocence I thought was a great potential play and really is a delightful to see this kind of a play in the theater and I think the American place David offers a wonderful opportunity for not only playwrights but for audiences many things that happen happen there that I've seen and it's a curious policy you have there. Not curious but it's a frustrating policy to some degree that these plays never run you never let them run very long and spite of the popularity they may have.