Tag: Drama

Benefit of the Law for the Devil – Man for All Seasons Quote

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060665/quotes/?ref_=tt_dyk_qu

A Man for All Seasons is a 1966 British historical drama film directed and produced by Fred Zinnemann, adapted by Robert Bolt from his play of the same name. It depicts the final years of Sir Thomas More, the 16th-century Lord Chancellor of England who refused both to sign a letter asking Pope Clement VII to annul Henry VIII of England’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon and to take an Oath of Supremacy declaring Henry Supreme Head of the Church of England.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_for_All_Seasons_(1966_film)

Samuel Johnson on Reality in Theater

Theatre is powerful because it works in exact concordance with the way our heads work (not the way reality works). To quote Samuel Johnson (via Harold Bloom in Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human): “Imitations produce pain or pleasure not because they are mistaken for realities but because they bring realities to mind.” The truthfulness of the theatre is determined by the audience. Theatre is consensus. And that consensus is a function of characters who speak and act the way characters in our collective head speak and act. In other words: archetypes. Success can only be measured by the ratio of what I (the artist) see, versus what the audience thinks they see. Marcel Duchamp, a great lover of science, suggested this ratio. He said the closer to one-to-one this ratio becomes, the greater the artist. But of course, no one can measure such a ratio.

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee
Eric Bogosian
From the end section – BUILDING CHARACTER MY METHOD FOR CREATING THE SOLOS

The Hot Wing King – Denver Center for the Performing Arts

On the eve of the annual “Hot Wang Festival” in Memphis, Tennessee, Cordell Crutchfield thinks he has finally found a recipe that will land him the coveted title of Hot Wang King. He has assembled a raucous team of sous chefs, comprised of his beau Dwayne and close friends Big Charles and Isom. The four-man team is cooking with plenty of spice and innuendo on prep night until a family emergency thrusts Dwayne’s troubled nephew into the mix. Tensions boil over into heated arguments — and one team member starts messing with Cordell’s secret sauce.  

With the crown, prize money, and their relationship on the line, Cordell and Dwayne are forced to reckon with what it means to be a Black man, a father figure, and part of a loving family. Winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize, The Hot Wing King by Katori Hall is a boisterous, in-your-face dramedy that is guaranteed to leave you salivating for a second helping.  

NOTE – Highly Recommended

https://www.denvercenter.org/tickets-events/the-hot-wing-king/

RIP – Athol Fugard

The South African playwright and director Athol Fugard, whose works included the play Sizwe Banzi Is Dead and the novel Tsotsi, has died at the age of 92. The actor John Kani paid tribute on X on Sunday, saying “I am deeply saddened by the passing of my dear friend”. The mayor’s office in Cape Town said: “Athol Fugard was not just a luminary in the world of theatre; he was a teller of profound stories of hope and resilience about South Africa.”

A major political dissident playwright of the 20th century, Fugard wrote more than 30 dramas including Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act (in 1972) and “Master Harold” … and the Boys (1982). Both of those drew upon the time in the 1950s when he could only find employment as a clerk in one of the courts where black South Africans were charged (and inevitably convicted) of breaches of the “pass laws”, designed to control the movements of a racially segregated population under the apartheid system. There, he witnessed hourly the dehumanisation of those who had chosen the “wrong” streets or people.

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/mar/09/athol-fugard-south-african-political-dissident-playwright-dies-aged-92

Laurence Olivier on Oedipus


So at dinner in the Worsley Arms, over the sole and white Burgundy, we discussed the terrible scream that blinded Oedipus gave at the New Theatre just after the Second World War.
‘It wasn’t an “ah”, or an “ugh” — more an “err”,’ he said.
‘What was wonderful,’ I remembered, ‘was the endless pause, before you felt the pain.’
‘Hardly new. It’s exactly the same as timing a double-take in comedy. You know what I had to do to make that pain sound real? I had to think of animals. I thought of foxes screaming. With their paws caught in the teeth of a trap.’ He held out his wrists, stiff and helpless. ‘And then I heard about how they catch ermine. It was a great help to me when I heard about that.’
‘How do they catch ermine?’
‘You don’t know?’ Lord Olivier looked at me in amazement. ‘In the Arctic they put down salt and the ermine comes to lick it.’ He became a small, thirsty animal. ‘And his tongue freezes to the ice. I thought about that when I screamed as Oedipus.’

In Character: Interviews w/ Some Most Influential Remarkable Men Women Our Time
John Mortimer

Photos from: Confessions of an Actor: An Autobiography
Laurence Olivier

See also: Olivier – Richard III, Jed Harris inspiration

Anna Deavere Smith – NPR Interview

Anna Deavere Smith plays real Americans on stage – and she shares her lessons
It’s Been a Minute

LUSE: Anna is a pioneer of what’s called verbatim theatre, where the characters’ lines come straight from interviews, transcripts or recordings. But what does that look like? Basically, Anna interviews real people, selects their most powerful moments, then studies their words, speech patterns, and body language so that she can sort of become them.

DEAVERE SMITH: My grandfather had said when I was a girl, if you say a word often enough, it becomes you. I decided to really study how the people around me spoke. I literally would walk up to people in the street of New York – this is in 1980 – and say, I know an actor who looks like you. If you give me an hour of your time, I’ll invite you to see yourself performed. The whole idea was to use this technique in a way to chase that which is not me.

…

DEAVERE SMITH: I became interested in how the rhythm of speech could inform an idea of who someone was. First of all, I don’t become anybody. People say that. I think of it as trying to make a jump. I call it the broad jump towards the other. You don’t make it, but you’re in this other place – colleague of mine, Richard Schechner at NYU, would talk about an idea of the not-not. So I can’t be you. So I’m not you. And I’m not me, but I’m in this other place. I’m in this effort.

And psychologically, what that is about, I think, is how I’ve decided to deal with my own sense of nonbelongingness, having grown up in a segregated city. If you really look at the whole thing I’ve been doing, it’s to get close to my opposites and to get close to strangers as a way of dealing with the sense of estrangement. And technically, what I do is listen to speech the way that you might listen to music. So I don’t just learn words, I learn utterances, and I – so I become acquainted with the – what I say is the song someone’s singing. And a lot of my work has to do with disaster and catastrophe…

Hamlet Meets Father – Jonathan Pryce, Sandra Huller Interpretations

Enter Ghost
Rebecca Mead, in her piece on the German actor Sandra Hüller, describes Hüller’s performance in a 2019 production of “Hamlet” (“Interiors,” December 4th). During Hamlet’s encounter with the ghost of his father, Hüller spoke both characters’ lines, with the ghost’s exhortation to revenge seemingly torn from Hamlet’s innards. I was reminded of another production, at the Royal Court, in London, in 1980, directed by Richard Eyre and starring a young Jonathan Pryce: the encounter with the ghost was performed the same way, with Pryce fairly vomiting his father’s words, a bodily possession both painful and purging. It still resonates with me as one of the most exciting and terrifying stage moments I’ve witnessed.

Chris Rohmann
Florence, Mass.

New Yorker
(From The Mail, December 18, 2023 issue)

Clyde’s – Lynn Nottage Play

In this feisty new comedy by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage (Sweat, Ruined) and directed by Jamil Jude (Choir Boy, DCPA), you’ll become a fly on the wall of Clyde’s, a roadside sandwich shop, in all its gastronomical glory.

At Clyde’s, formerly incarcerated individuals cook up meals that range from sublime to soul-crushing. Even as the surly shop owner tries to keep them under her thumb, their kitchen mentor, Montrellous, guides them on a quest to create the perfect sandwich – and reclaim their lives. Through this shared pursuit, each cook must face their demons on their personal journeys towards purpose, self-worth, and even salvation.

https://www.denvercenter.org/tickets-events/clydes/

Highly recommended.

RIP Michael Gambon, Anecdote from Anthony Sher book

Michael Gambon, Dumbledore in the ‘Harry Potter’ Films, Dies at 82
After he made his mark in London in the 1970s, he went on to play a wide range of roles, including Edward VII, Oscar Wilde and Winston Churchill.

Below from, Year of the King: An Actor’s Diary and Sketchbook, by Antony Sher. Gambon talking about his audition for Olivier, where he did Richard III.

Gambon: `Shall I start again?’
Olivier: `No. I think I’ve got a fair idea how you’re going to do it. You’d better get along now. We’ll let you know.’

Gambon went back to the engineering factory in Islington where he was working. At four that afternoon he was bent over his lathe, working as best as he could with a heavily bandaged hand, when he was called to the phone. It was the Old Vic.

`It’s not easy talking on the phone, Tone. One, there’s the noise of the machinery. Two, I have to keep my voice down ’cause I’m cockney at work and posh with theatre people. But they offer me a job, spear-carrying, starting immediately. I go back to my work-bench, heart beating in my chest, pack my tool-case, start to go. The foreman comes up, says, “Oy, where you off to?” “I’ve had bad news,” I say, “I’ve got to go.” He says, “Why are you taking your tool box?” I say, “I can’t tell you, it’s very bad news, might need it.” And I never went back there, Tone. Home on the bus, heart still thumping away. A whole new world ahead. We tend to forget what it felt like in the beginning.’

Are Humans Much Better than AI?

Prim Look, when Trudi comes back I’ll get her to strip it down for you. She can peel it’s outer casing off, you can see for yourself. It’s just a lot of wires and circuits and micro-servos and – bits. In no way is it a person. And it’s actually quite bad of you to think of it as a person, Adam. It’s called actoid empathy. It happens. When we do our basic staff training, we do a day on dealing with actoids. Always refer to them as it, never as he or she. Never converse with them except strictly in the line of work. Never, never socialize. As soon as you’ve finished with them, switch them off. Otherwise you risk getting emotionally involved, you get all screwed up and you also screw them up and then you don’t know where you are –

Adam But if you’d heard her talking to me. The things she says –

Prim What it talks about, Adam – the words it uses – it’s so-called conversation – that’s merely an amalgam of all the conversations of all the characters it’s played in all the shows it’s ever been in. Its personality is nothing more than that. Every time you speak to it, you trigger some response. It pulls it out of its memory bank and blurts it back to you. That’s all it’s doing.

Adam Maybe that’s all any of us do.

Comic Potential
Alan Ayckbourn

Comic Potential by Alan Ayckbourn is a romantic sci-fi comedy play. It is set in a TV studio in the foreseeable future, when low-cost androids (known as “actoids”) have largely replaced actors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_Potential

Nagg and Nell – Beckett’s Love Story

Hamm: Throughout the play remaining seated in an armchair fitted with castors, unable to stand and blind. Hamm is dominating, acrimonious, banterous and comfortable in his misery. He claims to suffer, but his pessimism seems self-elected. He chooses to be isolated and self-absorbed. His relationships come off as parched of human empathy; he refers to his father as a “fornicator”, refused to help his neighbor with oil for her lamp when she badly needed it, and has a fake pet dog which is a stuffed animal.

Clov: Hamm’s servant who is unable to sit. Taken in by Hamm as a child. Clov is wistful. He longs for something else, but has nothing to pursue. More mundane than Hamm, he reflects on his opportunities but takes little charge. Clov is benevolent, but weary.

Nagg: Hamm’s father who has no legs and lives in a dustbin. Nagg is gentle and fatherly, yet sorrowful and aggrieved in the face of his son’s ingratitude.

Nell: Hamm’s mother who has no legs and lives in a dustbin next to Nagg. Reflective, she delivers a monologue about a beautiful day on Lake Como, and apparently dies during the course of the play.

Samuel Beckett said that in his choice of character’s names, he had in mind the word “hammer” and the word “nail” in English, French and German respectively, “clou” and “nagel”.

Beckett was an avid chess player, and the term endgame refers to the ending phase of a chess game. The play is dimly visible as a kind of metaphorical chess, albeit with limited symbolic meaning. Hamm at one point says “My kingdom for a knight-man!”. Hamm, limited in his movement, resembles the king piece on a chess board, and Clov, who moves for him, a knight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endgame_(play)

I’ve never seen a greater love scene in modern literature than those two old people in the ash cans. I’ve always said, it’s easy to write a love scene on the back seat of a Cadillac with the leopard-skin seats. But if you really make me believe in love, two old people whose legs are cut off, who live in sawdust in an ash can, that shows great compassion and great understanding.

Alan Schneider
The director who introduced the works of Samuel Beckett to American audiences, beginning with Waiting for Godot. Since then, he has directed all the plays of Edward Albee.

from interview with Studs Terkel, found in
The Spectator: Talk About Movies and Plays With the People Who Make Them

Forgetting Your Song and Finding Your Song – August Wilson

In his theatrical vocabulary, “finding a song” is both the expression of spirit and the accomplishment of identity. Some of his characters have a song that they can’t broadcast; others have given up singing; some have been brutalized into near-muteness; and others have turned the absence of a destiny into tall talk—the rhetoric of deferred dreams. But Wilson’s most brilliant demonstration of “carrying other people’s songs and not having one of my own”—as one character puts it—is in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, where a conjure man called Bynum, who has a song, discourses with Loomis, who has been separated from his. Bynum says:

Now, I can look at you, Mr. Loomis, and see you a man who done forgot his song. Forgot how to sing it. A fellow forget that and he forget who he is. Forget how he’s supposed to mark down life. See, Mr. Loomis, when a man forgets his song he goes off in search of it . . . till he find out he’s got it with him all the time.

Joy Ride: Show People and Their Shows
John Lahr

Anne Frank Play – 1956 Berlin Performance, Kenneth Tynan on

And at the Schlosspark, last Monday, I survived the most dramatic emotional experience the theatre has ever given me. It had little to do with art, for the play was not a great one, yet its effect, in Berlin, at that moment of history, transcended anything that art has yet learned to achieve. It invaded the privacy of the whole audience: I tried hard to stay detached, but the general catharsis engulfed me. Like all great theatrical occasions, this was not only a theatrical occasion: it involved the world outside. The first page of the programme prepared one: a short, stark essay on collective guilt. Turn over for the title: The Diary of Anne Frank, directed by Boleslaw Barlach. It is not a vengeful dramatisation. Quietly, often gaily, it re-creates the daily life of eight Jews who hid for two years in an Amsterdam attic before the Gestapo broke in. Otto Frank was the sole survivor: Anne was killed in Belsen.

When I saw the play in New York it vaguely perturbed me: there seemed no need to do it: it smacked of exploitation. The Berlin actors (especially Johanna von Koczian and Walter Franck) were better on the whole and devouter than the Americans, but I do not think that was why the play seemed so much more urgent and necessary on Monday night. After the interval the man in front of me put his head in his hands and did not afterwards look at the stage. He was not, I believe, Jewish. It was not until the end that one fully appreciated Barlog’s wisdom and valour in using an entirely non-Jewish cast. Having read the last lines of the diary, which affirm, movingly and irrationally, Anne Frank’s unshattered trust in human goodness, Otto Frank closes the book and says, very slowly: ‘She puts me to shame.’

Thus the play ended. The houselights went up on an audience that sat drained and ashen, some staring straight ahead, others staring at the ground, for a full half-minute. Then, as if awakening from a nightmare, they rose and filed out in total silence, not looking at each other, avoiding even the customary blinks of recognition with which friend greets friend. There was no applause, and there were no curtain-calls.

All of this, I am well aware, is not drama criticism. In the shadow of an event so desperate and traumatic, criticism would be an irrelevance. I can only record an emotion that I felt, would not have missed, and pray never to feel again.

Berlin Postscript
Observer, 7 October 1956

From:
Theatre Writings
Kenneth Tynan