good script, Odets really has a sharp edge to his writing that i like. the production was…perfectly serviceable, utterly forgettable. B pointed out a number of design anachronisms that, in retrospect bothered me, but at the time were minor enough not to distract. the pacing was weird. acting uneven.

given similar budget constraints, i think we can do better.

i’m going to quote my own twitter feed on this one: (insert comment about hubris in blogging here)

Happy Days at Cal Shakes: Beckett’s quiet desperation punctuated by the crunchcrunch of someone in the third row eating entire bag of chips.

i’m not sure that beckett was meant for outdoor theatre. i’m also not sure i was meant for beckett. i found his plays life-changing when i was in college in the same way that Thoreau and Emerson were life-changing when i first encountered them in high school (or Douglas Adams when i discovered Hitchhiker’s Guide in the 6th grade). when you go back to revisit it later, it’s not the same. the actress playing Winnie was tremendous, and holy shit how difficult would it be to perform a 90 minute monologue while buried up to your waist in dirt but still, i found myself totally unable to stick with the play, and instead wondering whether beckett actively or only incidentally hated his audience.

it was weird that i had never seen this play, since it was so much a part of the collective artistic consciousness of the chicago theatre community. but you know how it goes…there are plays you keep meaning to see, and meaning ot see, and your friends talk about how good they are so you think, “i should definitely see that one,” but when you spend all day devoted to the creation of theatre, and it’s summer in chicago and the evenings are warm and beautiful, it’s really hard to get around to seeing a play. then it’s closing week and neither love nor money nor calling up the production manager will get you a ticket. so i missed August, and off it went to Broadway, and London, and eventually out on tour, and it put Chicago theatre a little bit more on the national map.

so anyway, a free ticket came my way to see the tour, so I went on Tuesday. and it. was. amazing. i know i just wrote in my Equivocation review how i had no interest in kitchen sink drama. and this is, dangerously, close to being kitchen sink american family drama. (this was, in fact, a kitchen with sink on stage). but this was such a sweeping, excellently crafted piece. and the design was elegant, and the acting really tremendous, but at the end when i jumped out of my seat at curtain call, it was, for the second time this week, for the play. good plays are being written in this country right now. i just hope we can find ways to support the people who are writing them and producing them. (insert plug for the National New Plays Network here)

okay, so the thing is, every time i start to have one of those crises of artistic faith (why am i giving up so much of my life to this career/art form?) is about the time i see or work on one of those plays that makes me go, “oh, right. this is why.” and i’m sucked back in. Equivocation was one of those. and i saw it on one of those days that i was have a crisis of faith. just like clockwork. any time i have thoughts of straying, it reels me back in.

of course, it was impeccably produced, because it was at OSF and, as non-profit theatres go, they have more money than god. the actors were excellent. some of the directing and pacing choices weren’t what i would have made, but i can hardly consider those flaws. but i really love is the sheer theatricality of this play. this is the kind of theatre i want to be doing. never mind kitchen-sink dramas, save those for the movies where you can have better sets and closeup camera work. the stage is for something else, it’s a different medium. you don’t feed every detail about every blade of grass to the audience the way HDTV does. it engages the audience’s imagination. and then a bare stage can become any location and every location, with addition of a piece of furniture, or maybe just light and sound. put on a new hat and a lisp, i’m a new character. do it well, and the audience will engage. by bringing the audience into the equation, you add new significance to the notion of collaborative art forms. it’s not longer just the actors and directors and designers collaborating — it’s the performers and the audience, nightly, communing in a way that can only happen in a live performance. a film can exist exclusive of its audience. but if a play falls in the forest, and there’s no one around to see it…well, then, it’s no longer a performance. its no longer art. the art needs the audience. needs it not just to witness, but to engage.

so…yeah. it’s not that it’s a perfect play, but its my favorite kind of play. the sort that embraces theatre for the medium it is, rather than trying to be something it is not. my company is producing this piece next spring, so no doubt readers will hear more about Equivocation as the season goes in. it’s a really good play. did i mention that?

also, there must be a patron saint of theatre-goers, because i left Marin at 1pm with 7 hours to drive to Ashland and drove like hell to get there before curtain. i blew through three speed traps going 80, and somehow got away with it, making it with just enough time to spare to sit down on a bench and appreciate the summer evening in Oregon for 10 minutes before going inside. still, i don’t recommend the Ashland-and-back in 28 hours trip if one can help it. it was a LOT of driving for one three-hour play.

the actor playing Sebastian fell off the front of the stage during his big dance number.

that might be all i need to say re: this particular production.

but i’m going to say a little more, i guess. oh, community theatre. you are the reason i went down this crazy-ass career path. when i was 19, and home from college for a summer, i attended the Boise Actors Guild’s (BAG) production of Three Penny Opera. it was so bad that, well, it was the moment i decided that if i was going to do theatre, i’d have to do it right, do it professionally. hobby theatre would be worse than not doing it at all.

it’s like running. running is an all-inclusive sport. there’s room for super fast elite runners, and for middle-of-the-packers like me, and for joggers/trotters/run-walkers, and everyone else. and there’s room in this world for all kinds of theatre. even hokey community theatre. it’s just that me personally, i don’t want to get stuck in the start corral behind the women who are going to link arms and walk the entire marathon 4-abreast any more than as a theatre artist, i want to see plays that have awkward pacing and timing, a gaudy concept hung awkwardly on the framework of a play that, while perhaps not his best, is still shakespeare, sets painted by interns and design concepts clashing with one another, overall aesthetic abandoned in favor of each designer, each moment being served individually, equity actors with classical training struggling gamely through scenes with community players for whom shakespeare simply eludes their tongues and hearts.

uh, yeah. that’s how i really feel. i do love shakespeare under the stars. but my standards are high. i’m not a purist, by any means. put rollerskates on hamlet if you want, whatever. just create a concept that serves the play, rather than trying to force the play to serve your concept.

next weekend, oregon shakespeare festival, and the week after that cal shakes. i’m feeling more optimistic about those ventures.