I’ve seen literally thousands of productions over
the years, and I’ve worked on hundreds in some capacity—as director, actor,
producer, dramaturg, designer, technician, translator, house manager, and
whatever else needed doing. It has been my privilege to see many of the greatest
actors of the last half century in person: Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Fiona
Shaw, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ingrid Bergman, Diana Rigg, to name a few. I’ve
even gotten to know a few people who qualify as celebrities, at least within the
theatre community.
And I’ve seen magic happen: the voting scene in Peter Hall’s
Eumenides, Derek Jacobi as Hamlet actually answering the question in the
“words, words, words” speech, a moment in Bazaar and Rummage in which the
lyrics of a fast-paced song perfectly matched the items being pulled out of a
box. I’ve even contributed to a couple of moments like that—a handful of times
as a director or actor, even once or twice as a lighting designer. These
incidents are truly evanescent; they seldom last more that a few seconds,
usually not even that long. But they sustain us all—the production company and
the spectators alike.
Still, perhaps my most vivid memory of theatre wasn’t of a
performance. I was interviewing for a position at Cornell College in Iowa. It
was a lengthy process: I was on campus for nearly 48 hours. The last part of the
visit was lunch with a half dozen or so students. They asked me, rather
pointedly, if I’d seen the performance venue. I hadn’t, and I’d already noticed
that a facilities tour had been (obviously intentionally) left off my itinerary.
The students rolled their eyes and escorted me over to the theatre space, a
two-minute walk from where we’d had lunch. It didn’t take long to figure out why
the search committee hadn’t wanted me to see the place. The lighting positions
were terrible, the hemp lines had long since needed replacing, there wasn’t a
platform in stock I’d let an actor walk on.
But. (And as they used to say in
burlesque, it’s a big but.) I closed my eyes for a moment. Without seeing all
the things that were wrong, I could focus on what really matters. Work happened
there. Good work happened there. I could smell it, taste it, feel it.
There would be lots of work ahead just to make the space safe, but the essence
of the place wasn’t in the bricks and mortar. It was in the work, and the people
who did it… and some of them were standing there with me.
I knew in that moment
that if I was offered the job, I’d take it. If you happen to achieve magic, it’s
a wonderful sensation, but the quest matters more than the destination. It’s
been half a century since I did my first college-level production, in a minor
role during the summer between high school and college. I can’t even guess how
many thousands of hours I’ve spent since then working on whatever production it
happened to be at the time.
What I do know now, with a clarity I didn’t have
prior to that moment on a stage in small-town Iowa, is that it’s ultimately
about the people, the work, and the dedication. So as we celebrate (if that is
the correct word) World Theatre Day, I salute the thousands of students and
colleagues who have brightened my path.
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