When plays get done but plays aren’t being written, it’s like using plumbing or computers but having no one around who actively plumbs or programs. Your knowledge base gets finicky and fix-oriented.
Tag: new plays
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Mark Chamberlin: World Class Theatre Artist
At 11:30 AM this Tuesday, Seattle theatre lost one of its leading lights when Mark Chamberlin died from injuries sustained in a bicycle accident on Sunday. Our city still has one remaining print daily newspaper, and Mark was famous enough to rate a fine obituary therein, but for my own selfish sake, I need to stand here and share my particular thoughts.
Mark made this city a better theatre town. He did so by being an immense talent as an actor but also by being generous with that talent, because theatre is the art form wherein, by definition, nothing be accomplished alone (including mourning). Mark had a rare soulful sensibility as an actor, an enigmatic quality difficult to describe. Yesterday on Face Book my colleague Allysa Keene captured it better than I ever could:
It’s a delicate dance to assert perspective and accept critique. It’s tricky to know when to lead and when to follow, but wisest artists don’t allow their accolades or their insecurities to eclipse the fact that it’s simply that: a collaboration, a dance. They acquiesce to all the paradoxes and graciously give their “yes.” MC, I am honored by your deference and will miss that twinkle-eyed “yes”…
Perhaps my favorite turn of Mark’s was as Antonio in the Seattle Shakespeare Company’s recent production of The Merchant of Venice directed by John Langs. While strictly speaking Antonio is the title character of the play, the role is enigmatic and largely thankless; and– due to its subtlety– nearly always ends up drifting into the background, until by Act IV the actor on stage becomes little more than a flexi-prop from which Shylock might draw his pound of flesh. Chamberlin, however, never ceded his ground. He made his counterparts Portia and Shylock fight for the focus that they can usually simply assume. And how did he do this? By living and breathing on stage, deep in the life of his character. You believed Antonio. You didn’t always know why he did what he did or exactly what he was feeling, but Mark as a consummate actor understood that it is a rudimentary performer who lays these things bare for all to read. He subsumed Antonio’s mystery and made it his own, such that you had to watch to see what would happen next. Such a simple order; and so so difficult to fulfill.
Many people in our business, myself included, need at times to make a second show of their talent, advocating for it outside the theatre, either literally on the sidewalk during a furtive smoke, or in the bar, or, yes, on blogs like this. Mark let his work speak for itself. And he shared that talent for free with the likes of me, doing readings of new plays of mine and others’, when he could have just as easily stayed within the safe confines of Seattle’s Big Houses. The fact that Mark was rehearsing to appear as “the Goat” in New Century Theatre Company’s upcoming production of O Lovely Glow Worm just adds evidence to the incontrovertible case for the man’s eagerness to remain on the cutting edge of theatre in this town. I understand that New Century will be dedicating their upcoming season to Mark. By doing so, they honor not only him but all of us who had the pleasure of working with Mark or enjoying his work as an artist.
Just recently Mark read something of mine which was part of a quarterly public evening of prose pieces written for performance. A week or so ago I was asked to submit another piece for the next quarter’s offering. I began crafting it with Mark’s voice in mind. This is just a habit I have. I start to shape words for a particular actor’s mouth whether or not I know they will be ultimately speaking them. It helps me hear the music. I have worked on the piece since learning of Mark’s death, and I am still, sadly, writing it with him in mind.
And that brings me to what actors like Mark Chamberlin do for theatre. Beyond making plays possible by being in them, great actors make new plays conceivable by being the living suction that draws the words and stories out of the playwrights who know their talent. Mark was one of my many muses who live, and yes, die in this city. This is my selfish understanding of Mark’s inestimable loss. Muses are hard to come by. And while I have many here in Seattle, the loss of one so generous and so fine leaves me shaken and humbled and, also, strangely somehow more determined to carry on. After all, I believe that is what Mark would do.
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PS: Mark’s good friend and colleague Ian Bell has already set up a lovely campaign called Mark Chamberlin Memorial Bicycle Rack Project which will raise funds to install stylish bike racks in Mark’s honor in front of all of Seattle’s major theatres. You can check that out and help by clicking here.
PPS: Note on the picture above: I particularly love this production shot of Mark, not just because it is from one of my favorite performances of his, Antonio in The Merchant of Venice, but also because it makes me happy to see him surrounded, as he most certainly is at this moment in spirit, by his fellow players. Plus, it shows him as what he was in real life: a cool, confident leader: an example to the younger talent of how to be a great artist, and more importantly, a good man.
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PPPS: Apologies to all. I decided to remove the aformentioned photo as I understand that doing so most closely conforms with the families wishes. PM 3/25/11 12:03 pm.
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Huge High Five to Theatre @ Boston Court in Pasadena
They just announced their 2010 season and it’s a slate of four world premiere plays!
http://www.bostoncourt.com/the_sea.htm
What’s even cooler about this is that Boston Court isn’t mandated to do all brand new work, they just want to. They’re committed to it, in fact, and not just fancy, such as some facile codicil of their mission statement or as an utterly empty quote for The New York Times.
When we build the West Coast Pipeline of plays, you can bet they’ll be a player, as will Tom Jacobson, my colleague and co-conspirator in said pipeline planning. After retiring as Boston Court’s Literary Manager, he’s world premiering his The Twentieth-Century Way in May, ’10. I really hope I get to see it, and also The Good Book of Pendantry and Wonder.
If you’re in So Cal, check them out. If you’re not, then keep your eye on them, or do what I do, and send ’em a little money. They’re worth it. (And you won’t hear me say that about most begging theaters.)
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Towards a World Class Theatre
Playwright’s rule of thumb #3: if you don’t know what you’re doing, raise the stakes. This is also a favorite for anyone losing an argument. Arbitrarily up the ante and things become more interesting. More interesting equals intrinsically good in a play. In an argument, it’s… well… whatever it is, it’s more interesting.
Over a year ago I was given a “Genius Award” in theatre by Seattle’s weekly newspaper The Stranger. It’s one of those honors that cannot, and probably should not, ever quite sit right: the kind of recognition any artist craves not just for the added publicity and legitimacy it brings your work, but also because, let’s face it: it’s a delicious ego stroke and the $5,000 cash that comes with it helps ease any pointless pangs of guilt over being singled out. Beyond that guilt, however, looms another misgiving which grows out of the fact that the honor is bestowed not in recognition of any particular piece but one’s entire body of work. You’re forced to wonder, “What the hell am I going to do next? And how the hell will that be good enough to garner such praise in the future?” I had no idea. Still don’t.
Nor did I have any idea back then about what I was going to say when I accepted the award at the Moore Theater on that Saturday, September 13, 2008. I did know that the folks at The Stranger enjoyed presenting the awards in flamboyant and entertaining ways. (For instance, Paul Constant channeled an old time booming-voiced boxing announcer when he handed the prize for literature to Sherman Alexie.) So this much I determined: as show people, I’d be damned if I let some tabloid scribbler upstage me. I had to say something engaging other than just “thanks a lot”, but what? That’s when I remembered rule #3. Raise the stakes.
I began my acceptance by magnanimously allowing that Seattle was a pretty good theatre town. The crowd approved. Then I lofted my caveat: we were good, but we weren’t great. The crowd grew quiet, restless. I said I believed we had everything it takes to be great, but we weren’t great; and worse, we didn’t even seem to be moving in the right direction. More awkward noises. Then I said I believed we could be a world class theatre city within 5 years, but only if we wanted to. We had to want it. The crowd liked this. They clapped, they hollered. It felt great. Lots of toasts and backslaps afterwards. I made a self-congratulatory moment into a community-wide challenge. And every one seemed to slurp it with a spoon. Success, by any definition.
Since then, however, not many people have mentioned my acceptance speech, though there is one particularly notable exception. A month after that night I got an email from my sister Margaret. It said simply: “Just in case you were wondering. 9/13/13. Make it so!” Since odds are about even that you do not know my sister, allow me to unpack her cryptic note and translate it plainly into the words I know she intended. “Dear Brother, in case you were thinking that you could make that challenge publicly solely in order to arbitrarily raise stakes and thus add empty entertainment calories to your speech, hoping no one will remember, please think again. I will remember. I will hold you to it. I will publicly mock you if you fail. So deliver me a world class theatre town by the Fall of 2013, or prepare to face my undying scorn.” You see, I come from a very loving and supportive family.
Upping the ante is painless and risk-free if no one is paying attention. Thanks to my sister, such is not my fate. But I am, after all, a collaborative artist. If she intends to hold me accountable over the next four years, then I intend to share her attentions with all of my beloved fellow theatre artists in this amazing city. My discomfiture will become their discomfiture, or at least as much of it as I can artfully manage to share. Which brings me to these essays. This is the introductory first of ten or twelve I intend to write on the subject of theatre in Seattle. During my last 22 years as a theatre professional here and in New York City I have come to some strongly held conclusions about how I think theatre can be made better. I have shared these opinions with friends and colleagues in one-on-one conversations or in small groups in social situations. Now I think it is time for me to share more formally and more widely—to raise the stakes.
A few weeks back, I began keeping a little folder on my computer with text files in it. Some contain embryonic notes and outlines, the beginnings of these future essays. Others consist only of tentative titles, like the following:
- Why Locally Grown Plays Matter
- What the Hell does “World Class” Mean Anyway?
- Why Craft Won’t Save Us
- Good Friend for Jesus’ Sake Forbear and Never Build another Proscenium Stage
- Since When Are Directors Indispensable?
- The MFA Virus
- Building the West Coast Pipeline Alternative to New York’s Hub and Spoke Failure
- Playwrights and Designers: The Overlooked Partnership
- Don’t Let the Big Houses Fool Ya, Money Has Almost Nothing to Do with It
- Stop trying to be Respectable, You’re in Show Business.
- America loves Playwrights!—The Deader the Better; or How The English Speaking World Wields its Greatest Playwright as a Club to Kill Theatre
- Sacrificing Art on a Dubious Union’s Altar
- The One-Person Show: The Lazy Artistic Director’s Best Friend
The essays will be written with primarily my theatre colleagues in mind; but I fervently believe we need to also invite non-show people into these conversations because, as a self-identified neo-Vaudevillian, and in sharp contrast to the rising class of theatre academic elite, I believe that what the audience wants and needs actually matters.
Potshots of prose alone cannot go any significant distance toward making theater better here in Seattle or anywhere. Only making great theatre will make theatre great here. This series will be about sharpening my arguments and placing them in a public place, where they may serve to convince or be dismissed, or maybe even dismantled and built into something more useful. I am done bitching in bars. I am pushing my stakes on the table and I encourage my colleagues, especially those who disagree with me, to do the same. Our stock-in-trade is dialogue. Maybe we can employ its power to discover the way forward towards a world class theatre in our own home town.