Saturday, July 24, 2010

O'Neill Visited

I made a check mark today off my Theatrical Bucket List and visited playwright Eugene O'Neill's birthplace in New London, Connecticut. O'Neill is the only American playwright to win the Nobel Prize; he also won four Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. His writing--dreamy, dark and intensely personal--changed American Theatre from a melodramatic frolic to unhinged reality.

Monte Cristo Cottage was the summer home of the O'Neill family. It was so named for The Count of Monte Cristo and the acting role that earned O'Neill's father his fortune. O'Neill based two plays upon the setting of the summer home: a sentimental valentine to the American family, Ah, Wilderness!, and his sorrowful autobiographical nightmare, Long Day's Journey into Night. The home definitely lives in the world of the latter play.

To a theatre nerd, the day couldn't have been much better. I was joined by my friend Jefferson, another O'Neill affectionato. Our tour began at the home's front hedge, from where you can almost imagine the character of James Tyrone, Sr., calling out merrily to neighbors while his resentful son Jamie toils with the pruning shears. The docents pointed out all the renovation shortcuts that O'Neill took making the home look elegant, further reinforcing the dramatized miserliness of Tyrone. The "spare room" upstairs (next to Eugene's) where mother Ellen/Mary retreated to indulge in her morphine addiction was locked and used for storage. This was disappointing, but left to my imagination the secrets and shame that happened on the other side of the door. Finally, the summer room, which O'Neill describes so specifically in his stage directions, is dark and cheerless, no place for a family of depressed addicts to spend the day.

After Monte Cristo Cottage, we went two blocks down Pequot Avenue to gaze at the actual lighthouse O'Neill used to evoke the mournful and lonely fog that fills the family's home. I asked the docent if there was still a watering hole in New London where the O'Neill men would have drank. She sent me to to the Dutch Tavern, which lives down a hidden, narrow street by the harbour. The Dutch Tavern was a great way to end the day in New London. The wood paneling inside was dark with beaded varnish and the mirrors behind the bar were clouded with age. There was rough wide plank floorboards, a painted tin ceiling and antique card tables. The barkeeper told us proudly it was the only bar still operating in New London that was patronized by O'Neill. The ambiance proved it and we drank a few pints to the playwright's memory.

Coincidentally, I teach Long Day's Journey into Night in an interdisciplinary theatre and history course alongside Professor Andor Skotnes. While I might take a day discussing O'Neill and the play's characters, Andor really brings them to life, filling the class in on how history got them to where they are. Potato famines, Irish discrimination and morphine use for female "hysteria" are topics that make the autobiographical play seem even more real. History brings depth to any subject and O'Neill's history of his family--loving, haunted and ultimately helpless, lives still at Monte Cristo Cottage.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Theatre for Civilians

I recently finishing teaching a Sage After Work course on persuasive speaking. The make up of the class was very broad. No theatre people, but an accountant for the state, a registered nurse, two IT professionals, an account executive for Pitney Bowes and assorted nine to fivers looking to improve their communication skills.

The students studied rhetorical devices by Shakespeare and Aristotle, plus made up a few devices of their own. With the help of youtube, we analyzed persuasive performances in films like Network, A Few Good Men and V for Vendetta. We also analyzed historical speeches ("I Have a Dream" and "The Gettysburg Address" and speeches from literature (To Kill a Mockingbird, Inherit the Wind).

Finally, we spoke. Then we spoke some more. We ended up speaking a lot.

Columbia University recently hosted 50 fellows from the World Economic Forum for a week of
"...voice, breathing, rhetoric and improvisation." The New York Times article on the event describes student resistance to such activities as "tapping their buttocks" to release tension and learning to use "the entire body and not just words" to express themselves.

I have had similar experiences training speakers, like those in the Sage After Work class. When a human being takes a breath, they prove their mortality, express vulnerability and build confidence all at the same time. More often than not however, breath is the first thing to go when public speaking. Now, imagine telling someone who has taken years of breathing for granted that, "I'd like to see you breathing more!" Their eyes roll, there is perhaps an impertinent sniff and a short, unproductive breath that moves the shoulders more than fills the diaphragm.

This is the challenge and delight of teaching theatre skills to civilians. When working on these skills we are doing no less than recreating ourselves to be genuine, believable human beings, not waxworks or pod people. This takes time and this is why we train. Learning to be comfortable in possibly uncomfortable situations. Using breath to relax and knock down the walls that obscure our aura. Speaking colorful rhetoric to awaken the ears of sleepy, unfocused listeners. Trusting the body to work for us, not against us.

According to the article, the students at Columbia ended up doing well. The students at Sage did too. They wrote and performed final speeches that were passionately expressed on meaningful topics. This is the reward of working with students who may never appear onstage, but use new skills to bring authenticity and theatricality to everyday situations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/10/theater/10acting.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Buchman Cool

My faculty office is on the second floor of the Schacht Fine Arts Center. Abrasives wizard Elmer Schacht gave the generous gift towards this building, but for some reason his beneficence did not extend to the air conditioning. Schacht is an inferno this week.

To escape the blaze, I have moved to a "satellite office" across campus. Buchman Pavilion was built in 2001 with lead gift from Natalie Buchman. Constructed in an age much closer to the apocalypse, Buchman Pavilion is swimming in air conditioning. The room has a gracious, open ambiance, a centerpiece glass dome surrounded by columns and the Russell Sage College seal jig-saw puzzled into the tile floor. There is a scattering of sofas, tables and chairs, with a convenient coffee bar serving Starbucks.

The space is cleverly designed to connect three or four buildings--Sage Hall (a dormitory with a bistro grill), the classrooms of Gurley and Walker Halls and even the back of Bush Memorial. This officially makes Buchman a hub through which you must pass, a central location for coffee, dining, seeing others and being seen. Additionally, it faces a walking mall over what used to be Ferry Street, before the underpass. A vista of glass opens the possibility for even more people watching as Sage employees pass on the mall between First and Second Street--into the library, into the copy center, into Science Hall and out of public safety.

It's a wonder I can get any work done in Buchman at all.

A friend of mine noted that college campuses can be intimidating to "civilians" who may feel that dining halls, academic theatres and lecture spaces are hard to find, that the overabundant energy of youth can create a microcosm crowding out interested seniors and others. If so, this is a shame. Buildings like Buchman Pavilion have a lot to offer in a community like Troy. Coffee and pastries for ladies who lunch, a respite for frazzled clerks from the courthouse and a comfortable rendezvous spot for those who need one.

Today, I blog, I chat, I eat and I drink, in comfort. Thank you, Natalie Buchman.

Post Script: Maxine, my canine office mate and friend, passed away on July 2.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Maxine

I went away to visit family for a week and returned with a vicious head cold that has had me in bed for three days. My mind and body have not really been at Sage, but I still wanted to offer some thoughts.

To keep this entry Sage-related, I have to say that I'm worrying about the health of my office mate. She was diagnosed with bladder cancer in December and, as the prognosis promised, is not getting any better. I haven't mentioned that my office mate is an eleven year old Scottie dog named Maxine. I have had the privilege of bringing Maxine to work with me nearly every day for eight years. She greets every student at my door, snoozes on the couch while I teach and begs food from me when I eat at my desk. It a routinized life that seems to suit us both.

Maxine is a great mascot for each production I direct. She attends all rehearsals, but sits quietly while the cast works. When the humans go on a ten minute break, she goes to work--howling greetings, pattering around the stage floor, basking in the enjoyment of the company. Maxine is a real show dog, toe nails for tap shoes and a slick black coat.

I'm not sure I have an identity on campus without Maxine on lead. She gets all the greetings and I get the crumbs. I'm somewhat shy, so am very comfortable with this set-up. Maxine, my platonic wing-dog. It's been this way for eight years and we've fallen into a "Marley and Me" type of existence. Unfortunately, we all know how that story ends. This is where my mind is today. For now, I'm grateful for Maxine's time on the job and the friendly world she's opened up to me just by taking me along.