Tom Stoppard discusses Chekhov, the media, democracy, and the theater with David Remnick at BAM

Image via WikipediaTalking points from tonight’s Artist Talk with Tom Stoppard and David Remnick at BAM (not quoted verbatim):

The great innovation of Chekhov was his fundamental neutrality towards his characters. It seems jarring to consider The Cherry Orchard or Ivanov as comedies, but they are comedies in the same way that life is a comedy.

As he wrote in Ivanov, Chekhov recognized that in every human interaction the following conditions exist: I don’t know what you’re thinking, you don’t know what I’m thinking, and neither of us knows what ourselves are thinking.

In translation, it is not good to be a linguist. It is good to have an exactly literal translation as a reference point, but in translating it is more important to have to understand meaning and tone more than to strictly what is actually said (Stoppard doesn’t read Russian).

There is no such thing as a finished translation. When you write your own work, you’re done with it at the end of the day and you’re happy with it. But when you’re working on someone else’s work, there’s no way to compress and finish the creative process of translation.

In a free democracy, where there are no restraints on the media, the culture becomes saturated, and opinions lose their importance matter. But in a world where thought is restricted, media becomes a prime focus. Behind the iron curtain in Czechoslovakia and Russia, students would frequently go to the cafés asking for when the next article by a popular radical thinker came out.

It is hard to adjust from that mindset to one if a free-, media saturated society.
At the same time, it is not in human nature to see the positives of the good of a media saturated world. We want every opinion to matter, and can’t focus on the fact that thought is free.

In the New York theater world, there’s more of a focus on “how we’re doing “ than in London. The Broadway producer plays a larger role than the West End producer. It’s partly based on capitalism, but it’s more of a cultural focus on success and fear of failure.

There are more small theaters in New York than there ever were before. Despite the disparity between musicals and straight plays in New York, and increasingly in London, the next new play is still the great animal everyone in theater is trying to catch.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Q&A with Tom Stoppard
• Nicole Kidman Plays Ivanov
• 'You can't help being what you write'

According to Michael Feingold, being fat = bad acting

A lot of theater bloggers like to malign Michael Feingold. I am not one of them. His general disdain for new media is not all that out of line for his trade or age group, and he's less obnoxious about it than many others (he's also smart as hell). However, if he's going to criticize bloggers for being uncouth, he better not go around and criticize actors (especially one as established as Richard Griffiths) solely for being fat. I don't know how many people picked up on the fat joke from Feingold's review of the Daniel Radcliffe Equus:

The hogwash taints Sharrock's production particularly because Griffiths, a capable actor hopelessly miscast, never suggests a man whose inner discontent is constantly gnawing at him. On the contrary: Griffiths's placidly adipose Santa Claus of a shrink seems to have done far too much gnawing himself.

I found this line perfectly horrid and completely tasteless, straight from the Rex Reed playbook. In fairness, I have not seen the Broadway Equus yet, but I know Feingold is not alone in seeing Griffiths as miscast. What's egregious, however, is to say that Griffiths is miscast for the part simply because he is obese. Besides being unfairly mean, it's also a completely baseless claim. There's nothing saying shrinks, or even Dysart's character in particular, can't be overweight. If Feingold had a reason for not wanting a fat Dysart, he should have explained why it didn't fit the role. Instead, he basically mocked Griffiths in third grade style, veiled by a graduate school vocabulary.

It was less than two years ago when Timothy Noah slammed the Academy Awards as having a fat bias for not nominating Griffiths for The History Boys. I didn't believe it at the time, but if Feingold's review of Equus is any indication, it may be time to start addressing that bias more seriously.

The Academy's fatty problem - [Slate]
Equus, The Tempest, and The Glass Cage—Old Texts That Need Some Old-Style Theatrical Flair - [Village Voice]

Where have all the tough guys gone?

A New York Times feature by Mark Blankenship on Sunday talked about the declining role of the tough guy on the stage. As this blog's name should indicate, I believe that if anything, the American stage needs more tough guys and angry young men. As neutral as the article tried to be, it still welcomed the rise of the emasculated man in America drama. This antipathy towards masculinity has dangerous implications.

Here are some quotes that made me nervous:

“It’s about experiencing his conflicting emotions instead of driving forward to get something, which is what the leading man is usually doing,” Mr. Groff said, noting that Claude is ambivalent about both hippie ideals and the Vietnam War.

Galt MacDermot, “Hair’s” composer, said that when he and James Rado and Gerome Ragni, the librettists and lyricists, wrote the show, they were tired of men always having to be cowboys. “Men are what they are,” he said. “And like anyone else they need the freedom to express that.”

What exactly, are men? Are they just conflicted, wavering, or—dare I say it—complacent? Or are they more assertive, pushy, refusing to concede a point? How has the decline of these values been due to the post-women's lib confusion of this attitude with misogyny and brutishness? That may be an unpopular view of masculinity, and the article vaguely alluded to the "blue state-red state mentality" as part of the fear of approaching true masculinity. But how do conventions get challenged, how does intellectual progress persist, without aggressive, free-thinking males not afraid to take a stance, whether or not it falls out of favor?

Here's a passage that upset me more, regarding the Billy Elliot musical:

Mr. Hall said that Billy embodies the “frustrated creativity” of men who are raised to be tough but that the character is also an economic symbol. In countries like Britain and the United States, he said, products offered to consumers are being made elsewhere. “You’re changing from a society of making things to a more service-oriented and entertainment-oriented society,” he continued. “And that requires skills that are more often thought of as feminine or soft. All the value of being a hard guy means nothing now. Billy’s community has to embrace him, Mr. Hall said, “because the men are going to have to become like Billy if they want to survive.”

What does he mean by becoming like Billy? Is creative expression a method of escaping social injustice? Is it a method of apathy? Does Billy's dancing solve the labor crisis? There are ways of expressing social frustration in a creative manner, and if Billy was a true artist, ballet would be part of the solution rather than simply a means of escaping the problem. However much that has to do with the femininity of his chosen art is irrelevant.

Matt Wolf at The Guardian says this has been the case for over 50 years, and we shouldn't complain anymore. I say the fact we haven't complained is precisely the point.

Broadway did NOT contribute $5.1 billion to New York economy

Variety had a report up talking about how Broadway contributed $5.1 billion to New York's economy, which is up from $5.09 billion last year. These reports, according to Broadway league's biennial report, are misleading and a gross exaggeration that anyone who's ever taken a basic economics class can counter. The report got that number based on "sums paid out by producers and theater owners as well as ancillary spending -- hotel, restaurant and transportation costs, for instance -- by visitors who reported seeing a Broadway show as their primary reason for visiting New York. Total also figures in the indirect after-effects of this spending as it circulates through the economy."

To be fair, this report is slightly more accurate than most reports of this type, as it focuses on tourists who primarily visited for Broadway. But the number is a still an exaggeration for a number of reasons. For one, it assumes that if Broadway didn't exist, Broadway producers, realtors, and visitors would not contribute to New York for another reason, including what could theoretically be there instead of theater. It adds hotel, restaurant and transportation costs as if the rooms in hotels or the tables at restaurants wouldn't be filled by visitors in New York for other purposes. Secondly, I'm deeply suspicious of what those "indirect after-effects" were, as the report was basically able to make up any figure it wanted for that. It also doesn't consider the costs that hotels, restaurants, and transportation went through. Instead it just considered the costs of Broadway (and the Variety report was unclear if those were figured into its contributions to the economy), which went up by $111 milliuon dollars.

The more telling sign is that even as visitor spending for New York tourism increased overall, Broadway visitor spending was actually down. This basically means that Broadway has actually contributed less to the overall economy than a conceivable substitute—for instance, stores for international shoppers looking to capitalize on the weak dollar—would be able to contribute. So not only is Broadway not contributing $5.1 billion to NYC, it's actually costing the city money through unrealized revenue with conceivable substitutes.

This is not to say that all Broadway theaters should fold and be replaced with more Disney stores. I'm just saying that this report should be taken with about a pound of salt.

23-Year Old Broadway Playwrights? What have I done with my life?

And I thought a recent grad getting produced at Williamstown was impressive. Nathan Jackson's got nothing on James Gardiner and Nick Blaemire, 23 year old recent graduates of Maryland and Michigan, respectively, who are getting their musical Glory Days produced on Broadway. This is a straight transfer from the Signature Theater in Arlington, VA, and when people barely 2 years older than me get their play on the Great White Way, I must simply tip my cap. Congrats Gardiner and Blaemire, you're now the Lebron James and Mark Zuckerberg of American theater. (NYT)