Archives for 2011

“Everybody’s private motto: It’s better to be popular than right.”
Mark Twain, undated memorandum

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.

BROADWAY:

• La Cage aux Folles (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• Driving Miss Daisy * (drama, G, possible for smart children, closes Apr. 9, reviewed here)

• The Importance of Being Earnest (high comedy, G, just possible for very smart children, extended through July 3, reviewed here)

• Lombardi (drama, G/PG-13, a modest amount of adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• Million Dollar Quartet (jukebox musical, G, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• Angels in America (drama, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, closes Mar. 27, reviewed here)

• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

• Play Dead (theatrical spook show, PG-13, utterly unsuitable for easily frightened children or adults, reviewed here)

IN SARASOTA, FLA.:

• Twelve Angry Men (drama, G, closes Mar. 26, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN CHICAGO:

• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (drama, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, closes Feb. 13, transfers to Washington, D.C., Feb. 25, reviewed here)

“He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it–namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.”
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

• Directing is mainly listening. The director’s first job is to ensure that the actor speaks the text in such a way as to make it intelligible to members of the audience who have not already seen it on the printed page.

• When you’re talking, you’re not listening.

• If you’re working with good actors, let the performance emerge naturally from them, then shape and edit it.

• Don’t give line readings to professional actors. Your main concern should be to make sure that the point of emphasis in every sentence is correct–i.e., that it helps make the sense of the sentence self-evident to the listening audience. You can do that without “acting” the line out, and should.

• Insofar as possible, let actors do what feels natural to them. If you are the author of the play that you’re directing and the actors find it insurmountably difficult to speak the lines on the page exactly as written, then change them. If they’re well cast, then their instincts are probably sound and should be taken seriously.

• Try not to interrupt. Always give an actor the chance to get things right without being told.

• If, on the other hand, he says or does something really wrong twice in a row, fix it on the spot. Otherwise he’ll learn it incorrectly and will find it harder to change later on.

• Let the actor work out his own blocking in the first couple of rehearsals. Once it starts to gel, that’s the time to edit it and–usually–to simplify it.

• All movement on stage must be relevant and motivated. If it isn’t, it will look fussy. If the lines are interesting, standing still is always an option.

• Actors want and need to know that what they’re doing is pleasing to you. If it is, say so. Don’t assume that they can read your mind.

UPDATE: A friend writes: “Now, just wait until you’re directing multiple personalities along with a big production team!” Er, yeah….

Miklós Rózsa talks briefly about his film scores with André Previn, then conducts an excerpt from Ben-Hur:

(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)

“If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.”
Mark Twain, notebook entry, January/February 1894

“He was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.”
Mark Twain, “Brief Biographical Sketch of George Washington”

If you should happen to be in or near the Winter Park-Orlando area of Florida, I’ll be speaking about Danse Russe, the new opera that I’m writing with Paul Moravec, tomorrow night at seven p.m. under the auspices of the Winter Park Institute. Here’s part of the press release:

In 2009, the Santa Fe Opera premiered The Letter, an opera by Teachout and Pulitzer-winning composer Paul Moravec based on W. Somerset Maugham’s 1927 play. Now the two men are collaborating on Danse Russe, a backstage comedy about the creation of The Rite of Spring that will be premiered by Philadelphia’s Center City Opera Theater in the spring of 2011. In collaboration with the music department of Rollins College, Teachout presents a sneak preview of excerpts from Danse Russe and talks about the challenge of writing his first original opera libretto….

For more details, go here.