The best things in life... ISC in L.A.

This nifty website maps the locations of well over a hundred Shakespeare festivals and theaters across the country, far more than I'd thought. America is truly the land of Shakespeare performance, thriving far and wide, despite an overall lack of big media attention.

One relatively young addition to this panoply of Shakespearean summer theater-making is Independent Shakespeare Company (ISC) in Los Angeles. The company offers all of its performances for free in Griffith Park, and has a standing company of actors who have been working with one another for up to a decade or more. ISC is committed to an authentic and specific artistic mission, and the founders work deliberately to include all members of the company in the evolution of that mission's praxis.

One day while I was driving in L.A. with the company's producing director, David Melville, he shared his opinion that a "professional" company is one that serves its audience. I was struck by the simplicity and artistically healthy attitude of his definition. As we all know, fiscal and status concerns can unduly influence the sincere work of theater-making, no matter what size the organization, and during every part of the producing process.

You can read about ISC's mission at their website under About/Mission+History. Personally, I felt the company's shared sense of purpose most palpably toward the end of our rehearsal process. Once so much of the basic work of analysis, staging and practice were out of the way (the bulk of the rehearsal period), the ISC folks were especially eager and adept at applying a thorough-going sense of story-telling to our work together.

A moment came when I could more specifically state the story of our production, in terms of everyone's understanding up to that point -- call it "the definition of what was emerging," if you will. Within a couple of days the company members were identifying and exploiting multiple opportunities to adjust and deepen their performances to bring out that story -- and inspiring me to make complementary improvements to the staging. Of course, as a director, I always try to unify a group of actors around a goal once they are comfortable enough in their roles, but I rarely have had the experience of an entire cast so uniformly stepping up to the plate, providing their own inspiration sans individual ego.

The L.A. Times review of "Much Ado" felicitously mentions "the company’s mission to bring appreciation of classical theater to a broader public." In practice this means an open park, free admission, an accessible style that includes audience interaction -- and a post-performance plea for donations to be tossed in buckets, with a heart-felt caveat that attendance alone is the most important contribution an audience member makes to creating live theater. In a professional landscape of freelance "actor-for-hire" and "management vs. artist" practices, this spirit of generosity -- reciprocal giving, rather than paying-and-getting -- is a feature of the experience that inspires both actors and audience members to be in a community with one another. In this way ISC provides an example of a mission that inspires creativity among its members.

With only a minimal marketing budget, ISC's focus on the primary interaction between cast and audience has helped them build a large and loyal following, mostly by word-of-mouth. In a consumerist culture such as ours, where a living production is often sold like an inert product, it is so easy to forget that theater is meant to be a shared experience. It's great to know it can be a celebration, with a simple and sustained commitment to that goal.