The official blog of the Dramaturgy Department at Baltimore's CENTERSTAGE. For posts related to our current and upcoming shows, click the links to the right. Alternatively, you could begin at the beginning, and explore our posts in chronological order.
The history of the world stage has seen theatres run by actors, producers, directors and that relatively recent creation, the artistic director. But apart from Molière and Brecht, one species of theatremaker we haven’t typically seen at the helm of many theatres—particularly not U.S. resident theatres—is playwrights.
For 22 years, Emily Mann has been one notable exception, heading Princeton, N.J.’s McCarter Theatre Center while continuing to write and direct her own work there (Having Our Say, Execution of Justice, Mrs. Packard) and directing the works of Nilo Cruz, Edward Albee, Danai Gurira and Christopher Durang. When, this past year, two theatres—Baltimore’s CENTERSTAGE and Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theater—named playwrights to their artistic helms, it looked at last like Mann might no longer be so alone.
American Theatre sat down last month with Mann and Chay Yew, the playwright/director (A Language of Their Own, Porcelain, Red) who began this year as artistic director of Victory Gardens, to see if these two writer/producers—one seasoned at the juggling act, another just starting—had advice or questions to share.
American Theatre: Kwame Kwei-Armah just started as artistic director at CENTERSTAGE, but I can’t think of many other playwrights who run theatres in the U.S….
From a discussion hosted by TCG & American Theatre Magazine, moderated by Rob Weinert-Kendt. Follow the link for the rest of this extensive conversation with Emily Mann and Chay Yew.
(Source: tcg.org)
“Later I read an article in the New York Times, a piece that tickled me. Alan Alda was directing and starring in a movie called Sweet Liberty. […] The whole movie was shot on Long Island. In fact, I think in the Hamptons. And in this movie, they described a moment. They’re going for a very difficult, long exterior shot. They’re shooting something six-hundred feet away, and Michael Caine needs to show up on horseback, and it needs to take place right at magic hour, just as the sun is going down below the horizon. So there isn’t a big window of opportunity to get the shot. You pretty much got one, two, maybe three takes, tops, and you’re cooked, and you’ve got to try it again the next day. And the article was about how Alan Alda really is as nice a guy as everyone says he is, and that the only time this reporter saw him lose it, was trying to get this shot. They had it lined up perfectly, and it was all ready to go, and from out of nowhere, a cow walks into the shot way off into the distance. And Alda starts screaming, ‘Cow! Get out of the shot!’ When the DP leans over and says, ‘You know Alan, don’t worry about it, we can matte it out in post.’ So Alan yells out ‘Alright cow, stay where you are, you’re fine!’ And they got the shot. And reading that article I wrote a one-act play called Hidden in this Picture, about a director trying to get the shot.”
-Aaron Sorkin, in an interview with James L. Longworth (featured in Longworth’s TV Creators: Conversations With America’s Top Producers of Television Drama, Volume 2)
