The Art Of Stagecraft A Memoir, Mostly
By C.S Gilbert
Summer Stage is providing not only professional theater productions during the months that were theater-less before the arrival of Bob Bowersox and Theatre XP (see review of Waiting for Godot in the Blast and this paper edition) but the company has continued the monthly Story Slams introduced last year and now has offered seminars offering a look into the anatomy of theater production. Directing was the topic on July 9, scenic design was on July 11, acting coming up July 22 and writing on July 25, 7:30 p.m. at the Red Barn.
The July 11 seminar is after deadline; perhaps we’ll comment after the others. But the consideration of the art and business of stagecraft triggered vivid memories of times of total immersion. The theater bug first bit when I was 14 (1954); the five dollar paycheck probably helped. Most of the good memories of high school center on acting, usually not school plays: They ceased to cast me once I became involved with regional theater and summer stock. I spent my 16th birthday rehearsing the very minor role of an 8-year-old in William Saroyan’s Time of Your Life at Ohio State’s Stadium Theater. The cast and crew surprised me with a cake. But the best summer was eight weeks (1956) as a theater major (art and dance minors) at National Music Camp, Interlochen, Mich., under the auspices of the University of Michigan, with exposure to acting, directing, scene design and every other aspect of technical theater. Except for a lead in summer stock (Roomful of Roses) the next year, I would have returned.
During my wonderful two years based in Manhattan, I was paid for some acting but the lion’s share of income was from assisting the director of the Jewish Theater for Children (which included house management and understudying the only two female roles, ages 8 and 58), running lights at LaMama and cataloguing the library of a winter stock operation in Upstate New York. Scattered memories include being atop a tall ladder, changing gels in lights hanging behind the tormenter, the short curtain across the top of the stage, and hand-run light boards with six or eight levers I could just barely reach in full up position.
There was also the busywork of taking a script booklet apart and framing it with 8 x 11 inch sheets of paper with the centers cut out to create master scripts for the director and stage manager; there’s probably an app to do that on an iPad by now.
Yet more memories buried for years if not decades: Creating the right shade of green Max Factor make-up for the witch in a regional repertory production of Goethe’s Faust and the moment during a scene of violence when both I and the actor playing opposite me were transported, became the characters, gave the performances of our lives and thoroughly scared ourselves. (Spinning out of control is Not Good.) The show was Snow Angel by Lewis John Carlino, the year probably 1965 and the character I was playing was a failed hooker named Connie.
Funny: I always played children, hookers or young ditzes (The Hostage, The Birthday Party).
There is truth to the old saw that greasepaint make-up gets in one’s blood, although there are now no doubt gentler products than truly greasy Max Factor. I closed in an Off Off Broadway (Bleeker Street) comic musical review, Raven Hall’s Scanties, four months before the move to Key West in late 1994. Other than a long-ago Plays in May reading at the Waterfront, thanks to the late Lori Katz, it was almost two decades before the original People’s Theater (now Key West Fringe) and TSKW’s One Night Stand allowed me back on stage. Thank you, Chris, Connie and Elena. I’m immensely grateful.
ONS cast me first as a horny middle-age ditz, then as an older ditz. We’ll see what the July 19 ONS leads to. Whatever it is, it’s going to be fun.
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