Review: Acting Class - Take A Seat by Milton Katselas

November 12, 2008 by dennisbaker 

“The study of acting is the study of life,” Milton Katselas states in his book, Acting Class: Take a Seat. He expounds on this thought with a quote from Stella Adler: “I’m not teaching acting… I’m teaching actors to be people.”

Previously only available to his students at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, this book presents the knowledge and tools that have impacted actors, including George Clooney, Michelle Pfeiffer, Alec Baldwin, Blythe Danner, and Bette Davis.

He wants actors to be able to do anything that is required and go after the roles that would be the best fit of who they are as actors and people. He understands that type casting happens but you can break out of that if you work hard enough. It all comes down to business.

Actors have to believe in themselves before they can get anywhere. They also have to prepare for any situation and script. There is a time and place for improvisation but not in the preparation of one’s acting career. An actor has to get along with others as well as to cut out the gossip. Readers will feel as if they are sitting in Katselas’ classroom, mainly because much of the book is taken from transcripts of his classes. Broken down into three sections, Acting Class addresses everything an actor needs to perfect his craft.

Section one is on acting and begins with lessons on “The Checklist,” what every actor needs to prepare for a scene, including evaluating the character, specific choices that define a character, and how to make the character believable. This section also includes class exercises in song and dance, improv, monologue, audition, relaxation, and the shoot exercise which allows the actors to feel what it would be like to be part of a film or television scene, with little or no rehearsal.

Section two looks at attitude and what it takes to be an actor who others like to be around and directors will want to work with again. Katselas claims that this not only makes the actor a nicer person, but it also actually increases his or her art, as they are willing to take critique and to grow as a person and an artist.

Section three is on administration, which the author defines as the choices an actor makes regarding his career and life, and determination to follow through on these choices. The choices Katselas speaks about in this section are less artistic and relate more to the business aspect of acting, including: networking, developing relationships with people in the industry, practicing old fashioned courtesy, appearance, promotional tools, and continuing to study.

Acting Class is easy to read, approachable, at times funny, at times earthy, and loaded with practical and helpful ideas. The exercises and tools will help actors at all levels of experience improve their craft.

(This review was originally published on Blogcritics.)

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Abolish Undergraduate Art Majors

November 3, 2008 by dennisbaker 

Article Review
“A Modest Proposal” by Tony Kushner, American Theatre, January 1998
Keynote address to Association of Theatre of Higher Education Conference

I don’t think you earn your income as an artist to be an artist. But if you are an artist, the artist is what you do, whether or not you’re paid for doing it; it is what you do, not what you are. I regard artist not as a description of temperament but as a category of profession, of vocation. What we call education in the arts is mostly training; it is, in fact vocational training.

This being the year of my ten-year high school reunion I could not help but look back to see what has become of my twenty-eight years of living. While the creation of social media outlets like facebook and myspace allows one to easily connect with people from the past, one’s ideals, hopes and goals of days gone might not so easily within reach.

The summer before my senior year in high school I just had been through a “mountain-top” experience at the two-week seminar for high school juniors at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. With all the passion and drive of a hormonal seventeen year old, I was ready to enter my senior year and begin my life devotion to the theater. I quit the basketball team to assistant direct the one play that was produced that year and pursued acting and auditioning outside of school.

That January I read the article “A Modest Proposal” by Tony Kushner published in the American Theatre magazine. I was floored by his premise to abolish all undergraduate art majors. Being from a small town in central California, where the cows at times out numbered the people and my total graduation class was a couple of hundred students, I thought maybe this was crazy east coast, liberal arts ideals rearing its ugly head. As I read the article I grew to appreciate the ideas Kushner proposed, specifically the desire for young artists to receive an education and not merely vocational training. I wished I could say I followed his advice, but I fell into the trap of training. I moved to Los Angeles so I could get an undergraduate degree in communication and theater. Like many students I thought it was the best situation. I was able to get a degree, study theater and pursue acting in Los Angeles. Many good things came from that decision, a beautiful wife, life long friends and studying with some great mentors, but looking back I wonder if I sacrificed formative years of education at the alter of vocational training. As I pursue a graduate degree in theater education I decided to re-read Kushner’s article to see what has changed, if anything. Undergraduate art majors are growing more than ever so what can be taken away from the article now?

Kushner’s proposal is simple: abolish all undergraduate art majors. His thesis is wrapped in the idea that the institutions have exchanged education for vocational training, “since the undergraduate arts majors mill is almost as profitable for cash-strapped institutions of higher learning as pesticide development and biochemical warfare research, certainly considerably more profitable than liberal arts departments”. Colleges and universities main goal is to make money and with so many people wanting to pursue the arts, the schools are going to go where the money is flowing. What college would deny eighteen year old students the “right” to pursue a major in theater, visual arts, writing, filmmaking, photography or musical composition? According to Kusher, schools that elevated education over training. “Education, as opposed to training, I think, addresses not what you do, or will do, or will be able to do in the world. Education addresses who you are, or will be, or will be able to be.”

How is one supposed to study to be an artist? Vocational training in of itself is not bad. The article points out there are many graduate programs, conservatories and private schools in all major cities that will be happy to take your money for exchange in how to make it in the profession. Seventeen through twenty-one year old undergraduate students don’t need vocational arts training, they need an education. “Think of the liberal arts, in other words, as meta-Acting Training for Life.”

Kusher continues, “The vocalization of the liberal arts undergraduate education echoes the loss in the world at large of interest in the grand dialectic of life, in all dialectics, in breadth, in depth, in thinking as a necessary luxury, in the Utopian.” Jill Dolan in her book Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theatre and in her speech to the Association for Theatre in Higher Education entitled “Unhappy Thespians: A Manifesto on Training Theatre Students” continues where Kushner left off. She is a practioner of the idea that education should be the focus and models this at Princeton University where the school’s motto of arts education seems to echo what Kushner recommends.

Believing that the best training for a career in the theater is a broad-based liberal arts education, Princeton does not have a concentration in Theater. Instead, we offer a certificate in Theater and encourage students, should they have the inclination, to make connections in their artistic work between their fields of concentration and their love of the theater. The program offers the kinds of courses and co-curricular activities that will allow the student, upon graduation, to move into the best graduate conservatories to pursue advanced training in playwriting, acting, directing, design, stage management, and dramaturgy. But most students who take courses in the program do not elect to enter the certificate program; they simply enroll in the courses that interest them. Students with a particular interest in and commitment to the arts, however, may want to obtain the program certificate.

This mindset seems to be echoed in the work of Dr. Scott Walters in the writings of his blog Theatre Ideas and his work at University of North Carolina-Asheville. In a recent post he describes the sympathy for the students in trying to embrace this type of arts education.

And so when they arrive in a class like Dolan’s, or in my own, they revolt against the attempt [from teachers] to encourage them to think, to develop their own ideas, their own beliefs, and develop them as part of a rich conversation that has been ongoing for 2500 years — because they know that it is a lie; that once they leave that particular classroom, they will once again be forced to erase themselves. Why go through the pain of developing as a unique individual when one must rejoin the masses again in order to survive, to be cast? I have sympathy for them, because they have been told that there are no alternatives, and those who have revolted against those limited opportunities by college have self-selected themselves into other departments, other field of endeavor.

In a undergraduate performing arts program the mentality is to shape the curriculum based on the industry. The problem is that colleges and universities are not supposed to be extensions of the entertainment industry, but rather they are to produce what Dolan calls artist-citizen-scholars. Artists that question society and through their art speak for those that do not have a voice. Instead performing art students are trained to accept the fact that they are viewed by all in the industry as an equivalent of a coke can, a product that is to make money for agents, managers, producers, advertising firms and production companies and if they are lucky have some money left over for themselves.

As Kushner pointed out ten years ago, “I can say let’s get rid of it and we don’t have to worry that anything will actually happen.” The same holds true now. As long as it makes money the schools will not get rid of undergraduate art majors or offer sufficent alternatives. As an educator what can I hope for is that there will be more teachers like Dolan and Walters who try to change the system from within. Teachers who show the students an alternative so that one or two might see the current form of arts education as a facade and that an education that can truly benefit an artist is much bigger and broader than what is currently being offered. How is this specifically to be done? Kushner’s suggests, “What I would hope you might consider doing is tricking your undergraduate art major students. Let them think they’ve arrived for a vocational training and then pull a switcheroo. Instead of doing improv rehearsals, make them read The Death of Ivan Illych and find some reason why this was necessary in learning improv.”

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Review: Blue Before Morning

October 21, 2008 by dennisbaker 

(This review was originally published on Blogcritics.)

The blue of the morning just before the sun breaks the horizon can be a quiet, peaceful time, a time of peace that can be hard to find in the other hours of the day.

Blue Before Morning by Kate McGovern centers on the journey of three characters who are escaping from their pasts. As the story unfolds the characters find themselves on an unexpected trip from New York to South Carolina. During the road trip their pasts come to the surface and propel each into an unlikely future.

Ava hails a cab as she is running late to catch a bus to South Carolina. When she misses the bus she convinces the cab driver, Jerry, to drive her south. They soon meet Ella, a pregnant woman who has decided to leave her boyfriend. The three travelers begin to share stories, and questions begin to rise about each person’s life. The connections each character has to the destination are revealed through flashbacks: Ava is an NYU student who is coming home to deal with family issues; Ella is escaping from a boyfriend, Steve, who is willing to change his life to raise a family; Jerry’s wife Rita and family live in South Carolina. In their twelve hour journey there are twists and turns that pull the characters apart and bring them closer together in hopes of second chances and missed opportunities.

This new work went through a four-year workshop process through terraNOVA Collective’s Groundbreakers Writer’s Workshop. All that hard work is most evident in the first two-thirds of the play. The dialogue is sharp between the three main characters as they move from being strangers towards their destined connections. But McGovern rushes the last few scenes as she tries to tie up the three plot lines, leaving the audience with some confused moments.

Veteran cast member Chris McKinney carries the show as the cab driver Jerry. Kether Donohue as Juno-esque Ava and Jenny Maguire as Ella complete the traveling trio with compelling richness. Phyllis Johnson brings class to the role of Rita, Jerry’s wife. Jennifer Dorr White is strong as Eileen, Ava’s mother, in what seems to be a one-note role. Flaco Navaja brings freshness to the role of Steve, Eileen’s boyfriend, who desires to create a better life for his new family.

Director Gia Forakis has assembled a strong ensemble, and orchestrates solid transitions between past and present to create memorable moments that highlight the script’s strong points. The production is well supported by a creative set by Derek McLane and video design by S. Katy Tucker.

Blue Before Morning by Kate McGovern; with Kether Donohue (Ava), Phyllis Johnson (Rita), Jenny Maguire (Ella), Chris McKinney (Jerry), Flaco Navaja (Steve) and Jennifer Dorr White (Eileen); Directed by Gia Forakis; sets by Derek McLane; costumes by Suzanne Chesney; lighting by Bruce Steinberg; original music and sound by Katie Down; production stage manager, Kathleen E.G. Munroe. Presented by terraNOVA Collective, at DR2 Theatre, 103 East 15th Street, Union Square; (212) 239-6200. Through November 8. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes

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Win Copies of Milton Katselas’ “Acting Class: Take a Seat”

October 17, 2008 by dennisbaker 

We know you just love the chance to win something, so here at DENNIS BAKER LLC we want to start rewarding our loyal readers.
milton katselas acting class
The first giveaway is of Milton Katselas new book Acting Class: Take a Seat. I try to only giveaway books that I’ve read and would actually recommend. I have began to read it and do enjoy it, a full review will be coming soon.

“Previously only available to Katselas’ students at the prestigious Beverly Hills Playhouse, Acting Class presents the concepts and methods that have helped lead a generation of actors to success on stage, in cinema, and on television. Now for the first time, this all-encompassing book is available to the general public, taking readers and sitting them in the legendary acting class of Milton Katselas, where he not only covers techniques and methods, but also includes valuable discussions on the attitude any artist needs to fulfill his or her dream.”

Now you know you want to win it, right? Good, because we have 2 copies to give away!

How to enter this contest? Simply leave a comment below and we’ll randomly pick 2 winners (deadline for entry is 6pm ET Friday, Oct. 24th).

That’s all you need to do! And, if you’re not a lucky winner, you can be a winner anyway by picking up a copy of Acting Class: Take a Seat for yourself.

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Review: Fifty Words

October 11, 2008 by dennisbaker 

(This review was originally published on Blogcritics.)

In Michael Weller’s new play Fifty Words, Jan and Adam are reveling in their Brooklyn brownstone at the freedom of their first night home alone in nine years without their son, Greg. While this might be a time for great passion it also leads to years of built up tension finally being revealed.

Adam states “There is no stress in Brooklyn tonight,” but the audience knows that is not true. In the beginning of the play we see two characters that seem to be excited at the idea of being home alone but at the same time stop themselves from saying certain things and keep themselves at a distance. A simmer has started and we are just waiting for the pot to boil over. What boils over is an evening is failed dreams, difficult challenges, and disappointments that all contribute to the unraveling of this middle class marriage.

While the play reminds us of the domestic classics from Strindberg, O’Neill and Albee what this play focuses on is that love is many things all at the same time. The show’s title comes from Jan’s suggestion that there should be 50 words for love, the way Eskimos have so many words for snow. The play weaves through an extreme of emotions all grounded in Jan and Adam’s desire to connect and find meaning in what has become of their marriage and their lives.

While Weller’s dialogue is clean and sharp the strength is in performances by Elizabeth Marvel and Norbert Leo Butz. They are lead by the direction of Austin Pendleton who juxtaposes fast paced dialogue with long pauses to let the audience reflect and transition deeper into the evening. The subtle shift of time is aided greatly by the lighting of Michelle Habeck. Neil Patel’s set design is clean and concise and Mimi O’Donnell costume’s fit the story. Josh Schmidt wrote the original music; and Fitz Patton created the sound.

Fifty Words By Michael Weller; Norbert Leo Butz (Adam) and Elizabeth Marvel (Jan); directed by Austin Pendleton; sets by Neil Patel; costumes by Mimi O’Donnell; lighting by Michelle Habeck; original music by Josh Schmidt; sound by Fitz Patton; production stage manager, Pamela Edington. Presented by the MCC Theater, At the Lucille Lortel Theater, 121 Christopher Street, Greenwich Village; (212) 279-4200. EXTENDED through Nov. 8. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.

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Theaters To Do List

October 10, 2008 by dennisbaker 

Brendan Kiley wrote an article for Seattle’s The Stranger entitled Ten Things Theaters Need to Do Right Now to Save Themselves: In No Particular Order. Below is the top ten with my reactions. Th article focuses on the fringe as the main type of theater that should implement these changes. What do you thing?

1. Enough with the goddamned Shakespeare already. The greatest playwright in history has become your enabler and your crutch, the man you call when you’re timid and out of ideas. It’s time for a five-year moratorium—no more high schoolers pecking at Romeo and Juliet, no more NEA funding for Shakespeare in the heartland, and no more fringe companies trying to ennoble themselves with Hamlet. (Or with anything. Fringe theater shouldn’t be in the game of ennobling, it should be in the game of debasement.) Stretch yourself. Live a little. Find new, good, weird plays nobody has heard of. Teach your audiences to want surprises, not pacifiers.

Goes big right off the bat. I am torn by this one as I both agree and disagree. I am sure we have all seen one too many shows of Midsummers or Romeo and Juliet. But when Shakespeare is done well it is it amazing. There are also so many students every year that see a production and then are turned on to the work. Maybe we modify this recommendation that we put a cap on the amount of Shakespeare a theater company can do. One show per year?  One every other year?

2. Tell us something we don’t know. Every play in your season should be a premiere—a world premiere, an American premiere, or at least a regional premiere. Everybody has to help. Directors: Find a new play to help develop in the next 12 months. Actors: Ditto. Playwrights: Quit developing your plays into the ground with workshop after workshop after workshop—get them out there. Critics: Reward theaters that risk new work by making a special effort to review them. Unions, especially Actors’ Equity: You are a problem. Fringe theaters are the research-and-development wing of the theater world, the place where new work happens—but most of them can’t afford to go union, so union actors are stuck in the regional theaters, which are skittish about new work and early-career playwrights. You must break this deadlock by giving a pass to union actors to work in nonunion houses, if they are working on new plays.

New works are a must! I love when I see a play that I don’t know and it takes on me on a ride of discovery. I think this can also go for published work as well. Maybe poll the audience of what plays they have seen so a theater knows which ones to avoid.

I think the union/non-union issue is the bigger issue. Just coming back from a theater conference in San Francisco this is a major issue for the actors in the Bay area. Most theaters there are non-union which leaves the union actors with little opportunity to work on new works or anything at all for that matter. There is a 99-seat code in Los Angeles and a workshop code in New York. Why can’t we get a code across the board or at least in all the major theater cities?

3. Produce dirty, fast, and often. Fringe theaters: Recall that 20 years ago, in 1988, a fringe company called Annex produced 27 plays, 16 of them world premieres—and hang your heads in shame. This season, Annex will produce 10 plays, 4 of them world premieres, which is still pretty good. Washington Ensemble Theatre will only produce three plays, one of them a world premiere. (An adaptation of… Shakespeare!) What else happened in 1988? Nirvana began recording Bleach—and played a concert at Annex Theatre. By the next year, Nirvana was on their first world tour. The lesson: Produce enough new plays and Kurt Cobain will come back from the grave and play your theater.

I am not 100% sold on producing that many shows in a season. I worked with a theater company in Los Angeles that prided itself on performing two shows in repertory.  I think for the smaller theaters it can stretch its already limited personal and budget. While it might be great for all the actors who want to work, the quality pf the show can suffer, which then effects the perception of the work being done for future shows. Also these artists also have full time jobs and other major responsibilities so while I agree maybe more than three shows per season I think twenty-seven is a bit much.

4. Get them young. Seattle playwright Paul Mullin said it best in an e-mail last week: “Bring in people under 60. Do whatever it takes. If you have to break your theater to get young butts in seats, then do it. Because if you don’t, your theater’s already broke—the snapping sound just hasn’t reached your ears yet.”

I think all theater companies should have some education ties to it. That does not mean that they have this education department that creates a touring show, but they should have a connection with a local English teacher where they can come into the class and present scenes and work with the students. Most kids think Shakespeare is boring until they experience how active the text is and then kids begin to love it. If the kids connect with the visiting actors they will ask the parents to go to that theater. There is you under 60 audience members. Then it is also the theaters responsibility to do work that appeals to both young adults and their parents at the same time. That does not mean you have to produce a fairytale, but you can’t have your whole season be crazy, sexual, avant-guard theater either.

5. Offer child care. Sunday school is the most successful guerrilla education program in American history. Steal it. People with young children should be able to show up and drop their kids off with some young actors in a rehearsal room for two hours of theater games. The benefits: First, it will be easier to convince the nouveau riche (many of whom have young children) to commit to season tickets. Second, it will satisfy your education mission (and will be more fun, and therefore more effective, for the kids). Third, it will teach children to go to the theater regularly. And they’ll look forward to the day they graduate to sitting with the grown-ups. Getting dragged to the theater will shift from punishment to reward.

But when you do produce your avant-guard play that is not appropriate for children, in stead of alienating the parents give them the option of childcare so they can still come see the show. Yes, there are legal issues here that will need to be worked out, but it could be well worth it. How many theaters are offering childcare? Imagine if you were the first. You would be the talk of the PTA and the buzz around all the playgrounds. Get those soccer moms to work for you!

6. Fight for real estate. In 1999, musician Neko Case broke up with Seattle, leaving us for Chicago. (It still hurts, Neko.) When asked why in an interview, she explained, “Chicago is a lot friendlier, especially toward its artists. Seattle is very unfriendly toward artists. There’s no artists’ housing—they really like to use the arts community, but they don’t like to put anything back into the arts community.” Our failure abides. Push government for cheap artists’ housing and hook up with CODAC, a committee that wants developers on Capitol Hill—and, eventually, everywhere—to build affordable arts spaces into their new condos. (CODAC’s tools of persuasion: tax, zoning, and business incentives.) Development smothers artists, who can’t afford the rising property values that they—by turning cheap neighborhoods into trendy arts districts—helped create. To get involved with CODAC, e-mail frank.video@seattle.gov.

A definite must. Lean on the government to recognize artists as important and worth the time and money.

7. Build bars. Alcohol is the only liquid on earth that functions as both lubricant and bonding agent. Exploit it. Treat your plays like parties and your audience like guests. Encourage them to come early, drink lots, and stay late. Even the meanest fringe company can afford a tub full of ice and beer, and the state of regional- theater bars is deplorable: long lines, overpriced drinks, and a famine of comfortable chairs. Theaters try to “build community” with postplay talkbacks and lectures and other versions of you’ve spent two hours watching my play, now look at me some more! You want community? Give people a place to sit, something to talk about (the play they just saw), and a bottle. As a gesture of hospitality, offer people who want to quit at intermission a free drink, so they can wait for their companions who are watching act two. Just take care of people. They get drinks, you get money, everybody wins. Tax, zoning, and liquor laws in your way? Change them or ignore them. Do what it takes.

Embrace the idea of third space that made Starbucks what it is today. Third space is that place that is not work or home where people come together to talk, socialize and share ideas. The theater is a perfect place to do that. Make the lobby a third space. If that is not an option work with a local bar that you can encourage your audience to attend after the show. Theater is meant to create ideas and dialogue so lets give people that place to have that dialogue.

8. Boors’ night out. You know what else builds community? Audience participation, on the audience’s terms. For one performance of each show, invite the crowd to behave like an Elizabethan or vaudeville audience: Sell cheap tickets, serve popcorn, encourage people to boo, heckle, and shout out their favorite lines. (”Stella!”) The sucky, facile Rocky Horror Picture Show only survives because it’s the only play people are encouraged to mess with. Steal the gimmick.

I am hesitant to agree with this. I think there are some great shows that this can work and if a theater wants to explore melodrama (maybe Greek plays) than this might be suitable. I am not sure beyond that.

9. Expect poverty. Theater is a drowning man, and its unions—in their current state—are anvils disguised as life preservers. Theater might drown without its unions, but it will certainly drown with them. And actors have to jettison the living-wage argument. Nobody deserves a living wage for having talent and a mountain of grad-school debt. Sorry.

When referring to fringe theaters I agree there is no money to be had for any of the artists there. Work done is for the love of the art and to grow as artists. I do not think this comment should apply to the bigger regional theaters.

10. Drop out of graduate school. Most of you students in MFA programs don’t belong there—your two or three years would be more profitable, financially and artistically, out in the world, making theater. Drama departments are staffed by has-beens and never-weres, artists who might be able to tell you something worthwhile about the past, but not about the present, and certainly not about the future. Historians excepted—art historians are great. If things don’t turn around, they may be the only ones left.

Interesting comment in light of what I have been writing about the Rutgers MFA acting program. I do think more artists are going into financial debt over education which will catch up to them much like the sub-prime loans and housing bubble. Those artists will have to work more to pay off those debts and that means less time creating art. I think all artists need some education how to live financially simple.  And also be encouraged that doing the work is very important.

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Citizen-Scholar-Artist

September 30, 2008 by dennisbaker 

Dr. Scott Walters writes an excellent post entitled Teaching Alternatives around an excerpt from Jill Dolan’s Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theatre.

Walters goes on to describe theater schools as “the place where actors had their individuality erased, where they were beaten down and taunted and diminished as part of a ‘reshaping’ process that is called ‘training’”. The excuse is that the world and the industry will be even worse so the schools have to act in the same manner. Through Walters and Dolan’s classes hopefully students will be able to recognize and desire alternative ways of exploring what it means to train as an artist.

The summary on Amazon states:

What is it about performance that draws people to sit and listen attentively in a theater, hoping to be moved and provoked, challenged and comforted? In Utopia in Performance, Jill Dolan traces the sense of visceral, emotional, and social connection that we experience at such times, connections that allow us to feel for a moment not what a better world might look like, but what it might feel like, and how that hopeful utopic sentiment might become motivation for social change.

She traces these “utopian performatives” in a range of performances, including the solo performances of feminist artists Holly Hughes, Deb Margolin, and Peggy Shaw; multicharacter solo performances by Lily Tomlin, Danny Hoch, and Anna Deavere Smith; the slam poetry event Def Poetry Jam; The Laramie Project; Blanket, a performance by postmodern choreographer Ann Carlson; Metamorphoses by Mary Zimmerman; and Deborah Warner’s production of Medea starring Fiona Shaw. While the book richly captures moments of “feeling utopia” found within specific performances, it also celebrates the broad potential that performance has to provide a forum for being human together; for feeling love, hope, and commonality in particular and historical (rather than universal and transcendent) ways.

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New York Theater’s Fall Ten Must-Sees

September 26, 2008 by dennisbaker 

With theater tickets so expensive it can be hard to decide what to see. Theatermania posted its ten must-sees for the New York theater fall season. The list hits a wide range of genres and there seems be something in the list for all the different types of theater-goers. New York magazine does not limit their list to ten. Below are the summaries of the plays picked by theatermania.

All My Sons
Schoenfeld Theatre, October 16-January 11
The new Broadway production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons stars John Lithgow, Dianne Wiest, Patrick Wilson, and Katie Holmes. Simon McBurney directs. Miller took his inspiration from a true story about a successful business man who knowingly sold the government defective airplane parts during World War II with tragic consequences. The truth comes out and his life unravels when his son prepares to marry his business partner’s daughter.
Photo Credit: Andrew Eccles

Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds
Various venues, September 24-December 13
This amalgam of events — organized by Carnegie Hall — celebrates the achievements of Leonard Bernstein. Highlights include a salute by the New York Pops featuring such vocalists as Christiane Noll and Lillias White (October 17); a Standard Time concert by Michael Feinstein (October 22), a series of screenings of classic telecasts ranging from Trouble in Tahiti to Candide and Wonderful Town at the Paley Center for Media (November 8-23); and the City Center Encores! mounting of On the Town (November 19-23).

The Cripple of Inishmaan
Atlantic Theater Company, December 9-March 1
Atlantic Theater Company co-produces Academy Award winner and four time Tony Award-nominated playwright Martin McDonagh’s The Cripple of Inishmaan with Druid, Galway. Tony Award-winning Garry Hynes directs.

Set in 1934 on an island off the west coast of Ireland, Hollywood filmmaker Robert Flaherty arrives on the neighboring island of Inishmore to film his movie The Man of Aran and excitement ripples through the sleepy community of Inishmaan. For orphaned Billy Craven, who has been relentlessly scorned by the island’s inhabitants, the film represents an escape from the poverty of his existence. He vies for a part in the film, and to everyone’s surprise, it is the cripple who gets his chance.

Doctor Atomic
Metropolitan Opera, October 13-November 13
John Adams’ contemporary masterpiece explores a momentous episode of modern history: the creation of the atomic bomb. Director Penny Woolcock makes her Met debut with this gripping story that changed the course of history. Baritone Gerald Finley, above, plays J. Robert Oppenheimer, the title character.

Equus
Broadhurst Theatre, September 5-February 8
Read New York Times Review.
Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe and Richard Griffiths star in Peter Shaffer’s Equus. Thea Sharrock directs. In Equus, psychiatrist Martin Dysart (Griffiths) investigates the blinding of six horses, a savage act committed by a mild-mannered stable boy, Alan Strange (Radcliffe), whose home life is filled with bigotry and religious fervor. As Dysart reveals the mysteries behind the boy’s demons, he realizes he is confronting his own.

Fifty Words
Lucille Lortel Theater, September 10-October 25
Something’s gone very wrong behind the idyllic façade of Jan and Adam’s Brooklyn brownstone. At 9:10 p.m., they’re reveling in the freedom of having waved off their young son, Greg, to a neighborhood sleepover. By 9:15 p.m., they’re both in tears. By 9:25 p.m., things are way past tears. Alternately funny and frightening, Fifty Words is an expansive look at modern marriage, as seen through the looking glass of one couple’s long night’s journey into day.
Photo Credit: Joan Marcus

New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF)
Various venues, September 15-October 5
The New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF) is a three-week celebration highlighting the next generation of musicals and the vibrant community of writers and artists working in musical theater today.

Pal Joey
Studio 54, November 11-February 15
Roundabout Theatre Company presents a new Broadway production of Pal Joey, featuring music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorenz Hart. This production features a new book by Richard Greenberg, based on the original book by John O’Hara, with music direction by Paul Gemignani, and choreography by Graciela Daniele. Joe Mantello directs.

Set in Chicago in the late 1930s, Pal Joey is the story of Joey Evans, a brash, scheming song and dance man with dreams of owning his own nightclub. Joey abandons his wholesome girlfriend Linda English, to charm a rich, married older woman, Vera Simpson, in the hope that she’ll set him up in business.

The score includes such classic songs as “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” “I Could Write a Book,” “You Mustn’t Kick It Around,” and “Zip,” among others. The new production also features “I’m Talking to My Pal,” a song that had been dropped from the score during its out-of-town tryout, and will be heard on Broadway for the first time.

Road Show
Public Theater, October 28-December 28
The new Stephen Sondheim-John Wediman musical Road Show, formerly called Bounce, spans 40 years from the Alaskan Gold Rush to the Florida real estate boom in the ’30s. The musical is the story of two brothers whose quest for the American Dream turns into a test of morality and judgment that changes their lives in unexpected ways.

Romantic Poetry
Manhattan Theatre Club’s Stage 1, beginning September 30
From John Patrick Shanley, the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Doubt and Henry Krieger, the two-time Tony-nominated composer of Dreamgirls comes this crackpot musical romance. Connie of Woodmere has just married Fred of Newark, but her exes are back in the picture and not sure they approve of the union. Mary of Greenpoint climbs Frankie of Little Italy’s fire escape with amorous erotic intent — but things go awry as she reaches for her dream.

DENNIS BAKER LLC’s choice:
If You See Something Say Something
Joe’s Pub, October 15-November 30th
In this groundbreaking monologue, Mike Daisey tackles a story at the heart of our world today: the surprising, secret history of the Department of Homeland Security. This is woven together with the untold story of the father of the neutron bomb—called “the perfect capitalist weapon” for the way it kills civilians while leaving cities and industries intact—and a pilgrimage to the Trinity blast site, where atomic fire rewrote history a half a century ago and ushered in an age of American supremacy. Combining damning fact and searing personal history, Daisey takes us on a journey through the dark heart of America, in search of answers for what it means to be secure, and the price we are willing to pay for it.

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No Audition Class for Rutgers Graduate Acting Students

September 24, 2008 by dennisbaker 

The Rutgers graduate acting program is not supplying its third year students with an auditioning teacher.  The teacher for the course went on sabbatical and the administration decided not to pay for a replacement. A student brings in audition material to perform and the other classmates critique it.  Most of these classmates have no professional acting or audition experience. And they are paying for this?

How can this be okay in an MFA acting program. The big sell of these programs is that they will prepare you for the professional life of an actor. Last time I checked the major component of an actor’s life is auditioning. Actors audition far more than they are actually hired to perform. This is completely baffling. How is Rutgers expected to be taken seriously as an graduate MFA acting program when the administration is not willing to pay for a teacher to help in such an essential component of an actor’s career? As prospective students begin to research acting programs for auditions at the end of the year/beginning of next year I hope they highly question attending (and paying) an institution who is not willing to put resources into such an important aspect of an actors training.

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Literature to Life Festival

September 17, 2008 by dennisbaker 

Someone was inspired after my Educational Theater post and emailed me about the Literature to Life festival happening this weekend in New York City. I am signed up for a full festival pass and I was hoping to see most of the shows and blog about the event. Unfortunately I do not know how much of the festival I will be able to attend. Class work is picking up for me now and I have a thirty minute group performance of Romeo & Juliet due in two weeks. From the videos I have seen online there seems to be some quality performances. If you have the time I recommend it. Hopefully I will see you there!

THE AMERICAN PLACE THEATRE PRESENTS THE 2008 LITERATURE TO LIFE® FESTIVAL “CITIZENSHIP AND CENSORSHIP: RAISE YOUR CIVIC VOICE”, ON SEPTEMBER 20 AND 21, 2008.

The annual Literature to Life Festival is the only public opportunity to see The American Place Theatre’s renowned Literature to Life® educational theatre performances. This year’s Festival features 8 verbatim-adaptation performances of significant American literature along-side presentations by leaders of activist organizations. Audiences will engage in a new conversation: one between citizens and educators, leaders of renowned activist organizations, and characters from great American literature brought to life by a great American theatre.

To kick-off the Festival, on Saturday, September 20th, at 7pm, The American Place Theatre will present the premier Literature to Life performance County of Kings: the beautiful struggle written and performed by Lemon Andersen and directed by Elise Thoron. This new, original work blends memoir, spoken word, hip hop, and theatre in Andersen’s unique voice. Lemon Andersen, a critically-acclaimed poet best known for his Tony Award winning work in Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam on Broadway and HBO, brings his jarring coming-of-age memoir to life at The American Place Theatre, following the footsteps of John Leguizamo and Eric Bogosian. This performance is an opportunity to see County of Kings: The Beautiful Struggle before its appearance as part of the 2009 Under the Radar Festival. This performance will be followed by the Festival opening-night reception.

Closing the Festival, on Sunday, September 21st, at 7pm, The American Place Theatre will present a preview of the newest Literature to Life production, Flight by Sherman Alexie, directed and adapted by Wynn Handman. Flight tells the story of a young Native American teenager named Zits who struggles to overcome actions of violence. This humorous and heartbreaking story will be presented throughout the year to educational audiences nationwide – the Literature to Life Festival is currently the only public performance of this important new work.

Performances run on hour followed by a dialogue with a partnering activist organization. Showtimes are at 1pm, 3pm, 5pm, and 7pm each day, with a reception following the 7pm performances. Click here for specific times.

Single-Performance tickets are $20; Single-Day tickets are $55; Full-Festival Passes are $100. Educators attend for free (limited availability). Tickets may be reserved by calling The American Place Theatre at 212-594-4482 x10. For more information, logon to www.americanplacetheatre.org/stage/.

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