September 01, 2008
Prior to the start of the new Broadway season, NYC.com editors sat down with a keen observer of the stage, Walt Witcover, whose Masterworks Laboratory Theater celebrates 40 years this Autumn.
On Theaters
Q: Some of the questions we have to ask have to do with acting, how you feel about the theaters themselves. We wanted to start off with a question about the more than three dozen Broadway theaters currently operating. Do you have a favorite?
A: I happened to go to one of Broadway's oldest theaters last week, the Lyceum, built by Daniel Frohman in 1903. The lobby is full of wonderful old pictures. And the stairs are full of wonderful pictures too. The show is a nice show too, it's called [ title of show ], a nice and fresh thing. The theater is lovely, as is the Belasco on 44th Street; they're both the same vintage. They are beautiful old theaters.
Q: You mentioned the Lyceum; what makes it so special to you? Is it the 100-year-plus history?
A: I've been going to theater all my life. I moved to New York in 1934. The oldest program I have is from 1935, when our stepfather took us to a wonderful production—at the front-row price of $2.50—Mickey Rooney and a wonderful cast in Midsummer Night's Dream. I have another collection of programs from when I used to go around in 1939 or so with my friend Richard Avedon. I was 15, about to go to high school. We went in to every show, and went in after the first act. So we called it Going the American Way, because the first show we saw was The American Way, at the long-lost Century Theatre, which was located on the other side of Radio City before it was torn down. We collected all the programs, with autographs. I said when I grew up I would become a famous playwright, and I would write wonderful plays with short first acts, and everything that happened would be explained again in the second act. I was a theater buff, going to Broadway theater. In the very early days, Broadway had only been showing comedies, melodramas, and Shakespearean shows; there weren't many serious shows. Only in the Yiddish Theater—when they came over in 1889 they were the first ones to show serious European drama. The Theater Guild started the little theaters, and then put on Broadway in the 1920s all the wonderful plays of Eugene O'Neill, Molnar, and Chekhov. I could have seen a lot more shows then—and I'd catch myself regretting shows I didn't see, and thankful for those I did see. I'd see Chekhov's The Seagull. I saw Helen Hayes in Victoria Regina. My mother was a play critic, so she got press tickets. I was elected—my stepfather was otherwise engaged in the evenings—so I got to see all kinds of wonderful plays. Hemingway's The Fifth Column—Lee Strasberg directed that. I remember Burgess Meredith and Lillian Gish in The Star Wagon.
Q: Any personal favorites?
A: The last show I saw. Or the play I'm going to direct, that I've been working on for 24 years! But a favorite—well, the best I've enjoyed lately is the recent revival of South Pacific.
Q: There are so many new plays premiering in the 2008-9 season. For example, Shrek the Musical. What about movies that are becoming musicals?
A: I've never seen The Lion King or The Little Mermaid. I'm not a person to speak on these, but there's much appeal here, especially to out-of-towners.
Q: Is there much difference between a play intended and conceived for the Broadway stage as opposed to a film that comes out intended for the screen and adapted for Broadway?
A: Yes, they reach a different audience. The main hits on Broadway are Disney movies: The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast. I have a friend, a student of mine, who played in Beauty and the Beast for two years. It's wonderful; these shows run and run and run. And that's what keeps the Broadway business going. "Serious" theater is very, very—it was a long way in the olden days. There were Broadway stars who could do the plays, but these days—who tours? Helen Hayes toured. I toured, played in Summer Stock. But so many of those old theaters are gone. Now we have Off Broadway; I worked there. There's an audience for Off Broadway, at a lesser price, for serious theatre. That's where you want to see something fresh and interesting. Broadway costs too much; it's just impossible. You have to run a show with X many people singing and dancing to make it go.
Q: You had mentioned earlier theaters that have come and gone. I read recently the Helen Hayes Theater is scheduled to close in 2010. In your decades of theater experience—75 years of going to the theater—are there particular theaters that you really miss?
A: Well, yes; there are several. When I started "making rounds"—that's what we called looking for jobs, we actors—on 40th Street, there was the Empire Theater. And the Metropolitan Opera on 39th Street was torn down. The Marquis, the Imperial, the St. James—where Ethel Merman played in Annie Get Your Gun—these big things were torn down. Oklahoma and Rodgers and Hammerstein could fill a big theater for a couple of years. Some of those theaters are still going, and Broadway is still going. But to make a hit, it has to be a musical or stars or a comedy. Very rarely you'll have something like August: Osage County that keeps running. It's a so-called serious play, people like it very much. But Off-Broadway has become the place for serious theater; that's the hope of the American theater as far as New York is concerned.
On Costs
Q: So you see the established and new mainstream theaters as offering entertainment, as opposed to the Off-Broadway productions?
A: It's different because of budget. To put a Broadway show on, it has to cost you—well, in the 1930s or 1940s you could put on a show for $20,000 or $30,000. Today on Broadway, that wouldn't even get you anything! It would be $200,000 or $300,000 or more to put a Broadway show on. The main reason, it seems to me, is economic. For Off-Broadway, actors want to act, playwrights want to be seen, directors want to direct, and they get together in those little spaces and they put it on. Now it gets more and more expensive. My first Off-Broadway show I co-produced in 1956 were three one-act plays with Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara, and Charles Nelson Reilly called Three Times Three. I produced it for $6,000. Of course I lost it all! But you could find a wonderful floor on the Chanin Building on 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue. It was charming. It hasn't been used ever since! I was working at becoming an Off-Broadway and eventually a Broadway director. I had a hit show, one after the other. The first was Jerome Max's The Exhaustion of Our Son's Love, which was a prize play that was done Off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theater in 1965. I gave up working Off-Broadway commercially and I devoted myself to the laboratory theater, which grew out of the Actor's Studio. We did a very unusual production of La Traviata that sent waves. This repertory theater has been much more rewarding to me. There were three of us that started, but there's no one left but me; I turned 84 two days ago!
Q: With all the advances made in sound, lighting and recording technology and all, do you think the character of Broadway Theaters has changed? Is there a particular type of theater that favors the actors and the challenges s/he is faced with walking on stage?
A: The larger theaters are better for the producers; they're the ones that make money. The marquee theaters—my goodness. You have big money, you get big stars.
Q: Has the character of theaters changed over the decades because of the types of producers who have come in with big budgets and splashy scripts?
A: The producers are in it to make money, let's face it. If you have ten producers above the title—it costs much to put on a show. You see the same names over and over, and with new people coming in it takes ten names above the title to produce a show on Broadway to become economically feasible. August: Osage County is an unusual exception. It's feeding Broadway. Off-Broadway theaters like the Vineyard Theater or productions like [ title of show ], with four actors, have a smaller budget. It's very engaging; young people putting on a show who make a show about putting on a show. The lyricist and composer are all in the cast. Remember Urinetown, and how much time it took to get to Broadway? It's quite a leap to get there. So if a show has something special, it will make it. At the Public Theater, they are subsidized like Lincoln Center; other Off-Broadway theaters are subsidized by subscription audiences who make it able to do new plays that people want to see. But the tourist masses that will support a real Broadway theater, they need to see the The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast and things that play for years and years; that's what generates money for Broadway. The Theater Guild broke into Broadway in the theaters of the 1920s through 1950s, there was some serious theater; there are now a lot of revivals. They're going to revive Arthur Miller's All My Sons, which first came out in 1947. To get an audience, you have to have hoopla and stars; it costs so much money to do a show. So the American theater is mainly, they’re little theaters across the country who bring new writers, new actors, and new directors to work out. And to go to Broadway is such a big business.
On Acting
Q: If we could perhaps shift focus a little bit to the craft of acting—you’re not only a renowned director and actor—but you also have a career as an acting teacher, trainer and coach. In your recent book Living on Stage you make reference to the inherent conditions and demand of the stage. So my question focuses on the craft of acting itself: When you’re teaching someone, what things do you think you need to communicate and work with an actor and actress who is going to be facing that Broadway stage? Are there particular tips you give actors and actresses dealing with that situation?
A: I don’t give tips (laughter). Anyone who sells you tips, beware; they're taking your money. A serious student—after how many years I’ve been teaching, I've been teaching since 1954—I got conned into teaching, so I’ve been teaching all these years and now I’m only down to one or two at a time. A serious teacher encourages challenge. That’s the most important thing, how do you find it how do you do it? And people come to be a star; in two weeks or three weeks they’ll go home after they’ll run out of money. I had a student—they go in for six weeks, six months, and they go back to where they’re coming from. No, you have to really pay your dues and you have to work at this job or that job for how many years. And you have to really study and train and try to get in a Broadway show. I have a student—now he’s an assistant of mine—he spent a month in Florence. He spent a month playing three characters in a play. Meanwhile, have you seen Meryl Streep? Did you see her do The Seagull? She was marvelous.
Q: So take Meryl Steep; for example, when she goes into a larger theater…
A: She doesn’t go into larger theaters. She doesn’t play the big marquee theater; that’s for musicals. In the Summer Stage—have you been to the theater in the park? They’re doing Hair now. It's a lovely intimate theater.
Q: How does an actor shift stylistically when they’re going from a larger stage to e.g. SummerStage: How would you coach them to deal with that?
A: Look, you see a movie: you see the actor close up, and you see the actor further away. It’s not a big deal if you have the talent and you have the experience and you have the training and the technique you can do it.
Q: Do you have any advice for any aspiring actors who just arrived in New York and will be reading this interview?
A: Don't come to me unless you're serious (laughter). Don't come to me for a quick fix. There is no serious way to get where you want to go, except to keep plodding and plodding and plodding. However many years it takes, as long as it takes. You come to find the right teacher for you, which is helpful. You have to go through the steps; I went through Strasburg for three years. I found out what I didn't know about how to act. I worked with him at Actor's Studio, and finally began to learn to act through experience. Over the years, I hope it's gotten better. It takes a long time to learn how to act; it really takes a long time.
Q: You mentioned technology and advances. Due to the advances in technology, is there a way to act and perform in a larger venue?
A: In the 20th century bigger and bigger theaters and the art of acting declined. In mean, you have big melodramas and you have movies. The art of acting will always be what it wants to be, and it can only be so big to do it well. To me the human being can do what it can do. We used to fight over who was the leading lady. Now there are no leading ladies, and no stars really. Everyone's a star and you never heard of these people.
Q: Well, what about Frank Langella, who you saw last year in Frost/Nixon? All those projection screens; did they enhance the performance?
A: I didn't remember the scenes; I remembered his performance.
Q: This season Langella is the star vehicle again in A Man For All Seasons.
A: Right. I first saw him in Good Day at the Cherry Lane in 1965. Now he’s a big star because he's learned over the years. His performances are wonderful, and he doesn’t need all those technological things. That’s why you go to see a really fine show—because given the vehicle, the actors do their utter best. You don’t need a great big theater for that "big" acting; you need a right size theater. There are some good theaters on Broadway; The booth theater is nice one.
Q: What would you say is the range of nice size? When does it get too big?
A: Well, not too big not too small (laughter). 1,000 seats, that's plenty big. The old theaters—The Booth, The Plymouth—they were where what we call a "legitimate" play could be heard. The beautiful theaters that were torn down—Joe Papp and Meryl Streep were fighting against it until the last minute– the Helen Hayes theater, the Morosco (a beautiful theater where Death of a Salesman played)—you know it was just such the right size, and they tore it down to make bigger hotels in Times Square. And a bigger theater marquee. It ruined the theater, but all the Off-Broadway theaters on 42nd Street have come back. There are very nice places to see productions, like 59 E 59, where I saw the new Gurney play Buffalo Gal. It was nicely done.
Q: The stage worked well?
A: The stage worked well.
Q: So what's the formula? Is there a formulaic way of describing what will make a hit?
A: The bigger the theater, the bigger the actor has to be to build it. And there is only a limit to a human being. Now what wonderful technical work the lighting, the sound machines. But the human being can just do so much to be true to himself. And most of all, the best theaters are small theaters. The small theaters are where the actors are there; and the playwrights who want something serious comedic as well as serious plays. And the best Broadway theaters were The Plymouth, The Booth, the old Morosco. 1,000 seats is big enough; when it gets to 2,000 or more, that’s marquee, that's the Disney play. It’s big bucks big acting.
Q: You mentioned Meryl Streep; she’s in the film version of Mamma Mia. Do you think she made the decision to do that because the film somehow offered her—
A: She made a lot of money. I'm sure she made a lot of money to pay off the rent on her farm. You know, they have to pay the mortgage like the rest of us. I directed with Ruth Chatterton one summer. She only did it to make money to pay off her farm. She was a great leading lady, she was wonderful. She didn't give it anything, but she got away with it because she was a good actress. She needed the money.
Q: Did you see Mamma Mia on Broadway?
A: No. I don’t go for that kind of music.
Q: From the actors' perspective is it a challenge…
A: If young actors can get away with it, fine.
Q: There’ve been a lot of these in recent years; surely you have something to say about that?
A: Not much. I don’t pretend to know anything about it.
Q: But it seems to be a successful formula
A: I don’t know; I went to see Ben Stiller's latest movie. He's the son of my dear friends Jerry and Anne. He's making a lot of money; he's a big star. That’s what the movie business is: to make money to build an audience.
Q: What do you think of all the actors that make money, and then go back to Broadway? Is there a revolving door?
A: I don’t know if it can be done that easily. The people you respect, like John Malkovitch: he knows what he wants to do. You respect people like that. Meryl Streep, she does Mamma Mia maybe because she wants to put her daughter through college. Lawrence Olivier—the greatest actor in the English-speaking world—people criticized him because he did commercials. He said, "I have to put my kids through school." What are you gonna do?
Tags:
a man for all seasons, all my sons, anne meara, arthur miller, august osage county, beauty and the beast, ben stiller, broadway, charles nelson reilly, cherry lane, ethel merman, frank langella, helen hayes, imperial, jerome max, jerry stiller, lion king, little mermaid, lyceum, marquis, meryl streep, mickey rooney, oklahoma, st james, summerstage, theater guild, title of show, urinetown, vineyard theater
© All rights reserved.
Posted on 9/1/2008
(
Permanent Link
)
Send to Friend
