End of the LCT Directors Lab (before the Post-Lab posts)

Wrap of days 17 & 18 of the LCT Theatre Directors Lab
(June 6 & 7)

It is high time I tied up the loose ends of the last two day of the lab... (You can read more about these two days in previous posts.)

On the final Friday morning of the LCT Directors Lab, a group gathered to discuss theater in the UK and Canada. Lab directors from each of our English-speaking cousin-nations talked with about 20 of us. In Canada, like the country as a whole, theater is divided into French (Montreal & Quebec) and English (Toronto et al), but new French plays are usually translated and done in the western part of the country, too. The relevant history of Canadian theater is all post-WWII. Our Canadian representative felt that the English speaking theater in Canada is generally too conservative (too many of the American “one-word-title plays like Proof, Doubt, Wit”), and ironically obsessed with both Canadian identity and the plays of Shakespeare and Shaw (in terms of its biggest festivals). Nevertheless, there is a great number of companies in Toronto, as well as several good seasonal festivals of newer and experimental theater in Montreal, Toronto and Quebec that are worth researching.

We are all familiar (or so it seems) with the ancient history of theatre in England, and with London’s West End and The National, and that there are a variety of healthy regional theaters, too. Scotland has its own national theater now, and similar efforts have been taking place in Wales. Of interest to me was learning that dramaturgs in the UK only work on new writing (directors of classics are expected to be their own “dramaturgs”), that in the current climate, the playwright is still preeminent, and that “new writing” is really almost its own genre (like “comedy” or “drama”, for example). Also, there have recently been tentative experiments with corporate funding, though mostly that is frowned upon, still being almost taboo in the UK. There are a few exciting new companies with a more European, non-playwright-centered, theatrical sensibility, like Kneehigh from Cornwall.

Although it wasn't discussed in the lab, the Royal Shakespeare Company has been undergoing a transformation in recent years. I recently heard the artistic director of the RSC speak, but that deserves its own blog entry later this week.

Coincidentally, one of our UK directors held a BIG party in his upper west side sublet that night. It was very hot and noisy: people deliberately cramming together and telling revealing stories or talking to others to whom they had not yet spoken (time was running out!). A secondary node ended up on the front steps and the sidewalk. I heard-tell that the cops came by responding to a noise complaint—and a neighbor came by to complain, too, but I had ljust gone home.

On Saturday morning (our last day), we had a couple of sessions, small groups and then large, with visiting playwrights. These discussions were open-ended, and mainly focused on where playwrights' and directors’ work overlap, both in terms of copyright and control; and also in how to negotiate a complex process of collaboration. There was general consensus that a director of new play should respect the playwright’s intent by asking good questions rather than suggesting solutions, and that a playwright should not intervene in the process between directors and actors... nothing earth-shattering, but good to hear out loud... A kernal of understanding began to emerge: that playwrights and directors need better forums to find each other and to form alliances to bring new work to theater companies and producers--and that they should remain loyal to one another in the process.

Most interesting to me was the way in which this last group of guests to the lab seemed like outsiders, sometimes trying to argue points and network—impulses many of us had given up at least a week before—and it was poignant to begin to understand how rare it is for a large group of people to spend enough time with one another to develop their own internal sense of respect and unspoken rules of civility and listening...

We had a final little gathering related to the logistics of keeping in touch and being ongoing members/alums of the lab, and a pizza party, and then people started leaving. There were a couple of dramatic exits (a plane to Germany, a life at home with kids), and then the usual devolution of individual goodbyes and relatively anonymous departures... and the sidewalk lingerers, and the inevitable Malvolio-like response to the ending of one particular lab journey.

BUT, in the evening, a certain core gathered again, like a multi-headed downtown phoenix rising from uptown ashes. At Drop Off Service, and then at 7A in the east village, the most social and connected among us clung to the lab-time incarnations of our new friendships. Many of these friendships will survive, but will change and evolve. For an evening, we held on to the moment, and an intense moment it was: reveling for several hours in the happiness of full fellowship: true peers celebrating a shared experience.