August | 2011 | Intimate Excellent

Can’t find a good book to read this summer? How about this: microwave a bag of popcorn, curl up on the couch, and catch up on episodes of the fabulous TV series, Slings and Arrows? What? You’ve never heard of Slings of Arrows?

Showered with awards and critical acclaim, Slings and Arrows is an exceptionally well crafted, beautifully nuanced and wonderfully smart Canadian TV series about the outrageous misfortunes of a highly dysfunctional — and hilariously entertaining — theater company, exposing the high drama, scorching battles, and electrifying thrills that happen behind the scenes. It is very smart, very funny, very touching and far superior to anything you’ll ever see on American TV.

And it’s about the theatre! Anyone who loves theatre or has worked for any kind of non-profit arts organization (is there any other kind of arts organization?) will love this series. You’ll laugh out loud and it will bring tears to your eyes. Lots of laughs; a great look into the workings – creative and political – of a big-time Shakespeare theatre company losing it’s soul to commercialism and the talented madman who might turn it around.

“Deliciously written” —TV GUIDE

“Big and powerful, a corker” —LOS ANGELES TIMES

“Charming and complex and lovely” —THE NEW YORK TIMES

Here’s the brilliant part: each season of the TV series is dedicated to one “season” of the fictitious theatre company as they struggle to mount a production of Shakespeare: season one is “Hamlet”, season two is “Macbeth”, and season three “King Lear”.

The blackly comic series first aired on Canada’s Movie Central and The Movie Network channels in 2003, and received acclaim in the United States when it was shown on the Sundance Channeltwo years later. Three seasons of six episodes each were filmed in total, with the final season airing in Canada in the summer of 2006 and in the United States in early 2007.

Slings and Arrows was created and written by former The Kids in the Hall member Mark McKinney, playwright and actress Susan Coyne, and comedian Bob Martin, the Tony-award winning co-creator of The Drowsy Chaperone. All three appear in the series as well. The entire series was directed by Peter Wellington.

Paul Gross (Due South) stars as Geoffrey Tennant, the passionate but unstable artistic director of the New Burbage Theatre Festival. Haunted by the ghost of his predecessor (Stephen Ouimette), he struggles to realize his creative vision while handling touchy actors, a jittery general manager (Mark McKinney), a pretentious guest director (Don McKellar) and his own tempestuous romance with the festival’s leading lady (Martha Burns). The backstage bedlam mirrors the onstage angst as Geoffrey directs three of Shakespeare’s masterpieces — Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear — one in each season. Guest stars include Rachel McAdams (Wedding Crashers), Colm Feore (Chicago), Sarah Polley (Go, The Sweet Hereafter), and renowned Stratford Festival actor William Hutt in one of his last performances.

The entire collection (all 3 seasons) is now available on DVD, Blu-Ray, on Amazon and NetFlix. Start at the beginning! The first episode! You’ll get hooked! Warning: it’s addictive, you can’t stop watching. Makes a great gift for your favorite theater lover.

by Stephen Sachs

I understand it now. I get it. Why Provincetown has lured playwrights and painters for decades. Some artists anchor here  and never leave. Others flock in seasonally, migrating like birds and humpback whales, lingering for a period of nourishment before moving on.

For painters like Edward Hopper it was the light. The soft brilliance of the light here is legendary. The luminosity so rich, light itself seems to hold its own color. Reds are more red, blues are more blue.  Lazy watercolor clouds, vibrant cobalt skies,  the sun shimmering off the bay.  You gaze at the landscape for one hour and watch it change one hundred times as light, sun and clouds shift and dance before your eyes.

Hopper spent nearly 40 of his 84 summers on the Cape. Hopper painted hundreds of canvases here. Everywhere I look, I see a Hopper painting in the landscape. The sand cliffs, the grass dunes, a lonely solitary clapboard house perched on a bluff overlooking the sea.

Tennessee Williams spent four summers in Provincetown (1940, ’41, ’44 and ’47) during which time he worked on The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Summer and Smoke, The Night of the Iguana and Suddenly Last Summer. He struck up a friendship with Jackson Pollock (who also spent summers here). Williams was 29 when he first came to the Cape in 1940. It was here that he had his first brief love affair and also met Frank Merlo, the great love of his life.

Eugene O’Neill, a 29 year-old untried playwright, came to Provincetown with “a trunk full of plays” in the summer of 1916.   It proved a turning point in his playwriting career and a milestone in the history of the American Theatre. His first plays were performed on the first floor of a two-story converted fishhouse at the far end of rickety Lewis Wharf, which reached about 100 feet into Provincetown harbor. The group called itself the Provincetown Players. O’Neill stayed on in Provincetown for nine years. Some of those early Provincetown plays went on to Broadway.

The original Provincetown Playhouse on the wharf. Eugene O’Neill’s first play, “Bound East for Cardiff”, premiered here.

On a narrow harbor road, sandwiched between seaside condos, is the site of  the wharf that held the Provincetown Players and launched the first plays of Eugene O’Neill. The original dock is long gone. Destroyed by fire and surf. A plaque marks the historic site.

Tomorrow, I drive to New London, CT, to move my older son into his dorm room at Mitchell College. New London is also where Eugene O’Neill spent his young formative years. The house, once owned by his father for 30 years, still stands. It is the setting for O’Neill’s final masterpiece, Long Day’s Journey Into Night.

I journey tomorrow from Provincetown and the ghost-wharf where O’Neill’s first play was born, to New London and the childhood home where his final play is set.

I, too, am a playwright.  My week in the Cape now ends. I roamed the beach that Williams sauntered, gazed at the dunes that Hopper painted, and strolled the harbor O’Neill walked. And early each morning, I would pad down the narrow wood stairs of our rented house on Drummer Cove. Make coffee. Fire up my laptop. Sit before the keyboard like climbing into a small boat on Provincetown bay, and cast off! Set sail! Bow pointed toward the rising sun!

The first draft of a new play.

Stephen Sachs is the author of the play Bakersfield Mist and the Co-Artistic Director of the Fountain Theatre.

Peter Bayne is a composer and award-winning sound designer. At the Fountain, he designed sound for Coming Home, Opus, A House Not Meant to Stand, and Bakersfield Mist.

Did you enjoy creating the sound design for Bakersfield Mist?

Designing the sound for Bakersfield Mist was a blast. I was only sort of aware of the character of country and western swing that Bakersfield is known for. I really enjoy any design where I can sink my teeth into a genre or regional style of music that I don’t already have an affinity for, or for which I’ve already built up a sound library.

When the audience first enters the theatre to see Bakersfield Mist, as they take their seats they hear a “Bakersfield radio station” with local news, the weather report, and country music. Audiences love it. How did that concept come about? 

We were hewing close to naturalism in terms of the set and costumes, so it was important (with one major exception) to have the audience feel, as they enter the theatre, transported to this trailer park and this feel of an oldies radio station playing classic Bakersfield Sound era records. So we had to make it from scratch, and I had to put on my best “country oldies radio DJ voice” which was as humbling as it was fun.

Was it hard to create that long opening “Bakersfield radio” sound scape?

Finding these records was hard. With the exception of stuff by Merle Haggard and Buck Owens and a few others, many of these old records are out of print. I was fascinated as I dug through all this incredible material.  The musicians in Bakersfield (many of whom had left Nashville trying to get out of that increasingly corporate scene to get back to their roots), found Bakersfield to be the ideal small dusty western town, with many clubs and recording studios; it was like a big old country music family sprouting in the middle of nowhere. This sense of closeness, of communally mixing together a very Californian blend of proto rockabilly grit and toughness which made using this music a no-brainer as the perfect foil for the character of Maude Gutman, a rough and tumble, tumbler always filled, ex-bartender with an enormous heart. And an enormous mouth.

Do you enjoy working at the Fountain?

Doing this design was so smooth in terms of implementation partly because it wasn’t a hugely heavy sound show, but also because it’s my 5th show at the Fountain, a theatre that took a chance on me when I first moved to Los Angeles from Boston, and a theatre that has let me do my thing artistically, but has pushed me to refine and refine and refine even after things are sounding pretty good. They do quality well, every time, and in Bakersfield Mist they’ve got a really special home-grown piece that is truthful and funny and enjoyable to watch.

And listen to, as well!

Posted in Fountain Theatre

by Stephen Sachs

Now in New York City, the calm idyllic oceanfront of Wellfleet Harbor feels a universe away. One world slammed into another. From harmony to frenzy. The call of seagulls now sirens and car horns, the roar of waves now pounding jack hammers, the open clear horizon of ocean now vertical towers of cement and glass.  The sky only visible between buildings. Like blinders on a horse.

Reviews for Bakersfield Mist wash in from Wellfleet like driftwood on the sand:

• “Absorbing.” – Boston Globe
• “Clever, witty and even poignant … a smart and insightful play not just about art and truth, but also about class differences … the dialogue swinging with wit and a zinging rhythm … the play is true to reality as it intelligently, yet subtly, examines class struggles, the aesthetics of art, the power of the privileged, the anger of the disadvantaged and the desire of all of us for self-worth.” – Cape Cod Times
• “Wild and witty … Lively and smart, new play packs as much punch as a Pollock .” – Cape Cod Today

On this muggy New York afternoon, I briskly dart and dodge my way down 53rd Street to 6th Avenue like a tardy school boy. I have only a brief moment today between meetings. The moment is now. I must make an urgent appointment. With two paintings.

I dash into the Museum of Modern Art. Up the stairs, to the 4th floor. Post-Modern Expressionism. Wind through the bee-comb of exhibits and galleries, weaving past tourists and  art-gawkers with cameras. Turn a corner, enter the alcove I’m looking for … and there it is …

One: Number 31 (1950) by Jackson Pollock is an immense canvas dominating an entire wall. I slowly approach, holding my breath. It is the first Jackson Pollock I have seen since writing Bakersfield Mist. I am coming home, full circle.

In the play, art expert Lionel says a Pollock painting “rewires your retinas.” It’s true. I stare at the expansive monolithic delirium in front of me and my eyes go through a kind of molecular transformation. I see movement, explosions, mad slashes of color. The painting not only rewires your retina — it becomes your retina, is your retina.. Ever see a color photo of the human retina?  The pulsating colored lines, the high-charged circuitry, the webbed network of electric current? That is a Pollock painting. The human retina on canvas, made visible.

Seeing the painting is like paying homage to an old friend. Pollock has lived in my imagination for three years. Seeing his work in books or online is no match for the  visceral connection of his canvas in person. Like how a movie or TV show pales to the thrill and wonder of live theatre.

I lean my face close to the canvas. Examine the drips, splatters and blotches. Like Maude in the play, I am searching for a fingerprint.

Upstairs, on the 5th floor, the other painting waits. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) by Pablo Picasso. It was when first seeing this painting as a boy that Lionel first heard the “Art Gods speak” to him. Changing him, and the world of art, forever.

One can not overstate the importance of this masterpiece by Picasso. Or how different it is from the Pollock. The master of one generation superseded by another. The Industrial Age exploded by the Atomic. Picasso is fleshy, primitive, tribal, animal-like. Distorted, frightening. The figures heavy and weighty. In the Pollock canvas,  there are no human beings. It bypasses form to a realm beyond anything physical. It is light,  airy, electric. You expect to hear the canvas hum like high-voltage wire.  Alive.

Standing before these two paintings, I come full circle with my play. These two paintings, these two artists, in my imagination for so long, have meant so much to me and my play. Arriving now is like returning to old friends.  As I approach, they see me coming. I hear them gently whisper to me, “Ah, yes … yes …  here you are.”

Pray to the Art Gods. When they speak, listen. And give thanks.

by Stephen Sachs

Think of these words: brave, fearless, heroic. What comes to mind? Soldiers, right? Infantrymen? Military men and women? What comes to my mind, when I think of these words? Actors.

Actors are miraculous and extraordinary beings. Brave soldiers willing to put their souls on the line for a cause greater than themselves.

Actors Ken Cheesman and Paula Langton in “Bakersfield Mist”

Veteran soldiers often admit that their conflict in battle, with bullets whizzing by, bombs exploding,  the threat of peril and death surrounding them, was the most exhilarating time of their life. When they felt most alive. Same is true for actors. Actors are the courageous foot soldiers of theatre. They volunteer, enlist themselves to be put on the front line, in the line of fire, at the very center of risk and danger, all for the sake of a higher purpose and the benefit of others. Willing to take a bullet — or rise to glory. That intoxicating thrill of conquering fear, the ecstasy of risk. When the battle is won —  it is glorious, transcendent. An actor connecting with an audience is an extraordinary communion of will and spirit that can lift an entire building of strangers up to heaven. How does an actor do it?

The lobby of the Julie Harris Stage.

Think of it. In the final frantic days before opening a new play the actor has to memorize 80 – 100 pages of text (often constantly changed and rewritten by a playwright); remember all stage movement and blocking (adjusted and altered by a still-tweaking director); know exactly when all light  and sound cues happen and remember precisely where to stand for best effect, learn to handle props and fidgety costumes — they do all of this — and must still — at the same time — give a performance with a complex emotional life that fulfills whatever the role requires: be vulnerable, be powerful, laugh, cry, bellow, whisper, be angry, mournful, philosophical, silly, wise — and do it all in front of 200 people, watching you do it, keeping them entertained and engaged throughout. And somehow tell the story of the play and dramatize the arc of your character. And make it all look effortless, spontaneous and alive, as if happening for the first time. How do they do that?

As Hamlet says,

Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit That from her working all his visage waned, Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing …

I love actors. I am in awe of actors. I’ve been a professional director for more than 25 years and the whole mystical, methodical process they go through still astounds me.

Opening Night of “Bakersfield Mist”.

I am witness to the actors’ fearless alchemy once again as we are hurled toward Opening Night of Bakersfield Mist at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre. The audience arrives. The lights go down. A hush of silence. An inhalation, a breath of courage. Lights up! The play begins — all of it now, as it always is and will forever be — in the hands of the actors.

In Bakersfield Mist, art expert Lionel Percy tries to put into words how he feels about art. He could easily be describing how I feel about actors: “A work of art is both human and spiritual. A physical thing expressing the non-physical. The beyond physical. Great art has spiritual power. Embedded within it. The power to cure the heart, heal the human spirit, save and uplift the soul.”

The same can be said of actors.

by Stephen Sachs

The outside world goes away whenever I work on a play. More so, when I’m out-of-town. And when the town happens to be a soothing and idyllic seaside village like this, the dream work of play-making dissolves into the dream world around me and the outside world recedes from consciousness  like a toxic cloud and evaporates.

I haven’t turned on the TV or read a newspaper since I arrived. The peril of Obama, the Dow dropping 600, the savage dysfunction of Congress, seems to exist in an alternate universe very far away. I know this will not last.  I will have to return to civilization. Just, not yet. Not now …

I have never lived next to the sea before. The ocean is teaching me something. There are matters of Man, and there are forces of Nature. One is momentary, the other Eternal. In Bakersfield Mist, art expert Lionel describes a Jackson Pollock painting as “Movement made infinite. No beginning or end. Each painting just is.” The same is true of the sea. The ocean just is. Movement made infinite. No beginning or end. Enormous. Unknowable. Mysterious. Alive. The matters of Man, so small and temporary, like the discarded shards of oyster shell littered along the ocean side, broken and dropped by gulls.

I live in the world of theatre. The world  of dreams. Where dreams can appear real, and reveal truth. I know dreams are not real, are not reality. Even so … Shhh … don’t wake the dreamer yet. Let him sleep. Let him dream. One more hour.

Fountain Co-Artistic Director and writer/director Stephen Sachs is in Cape Cod for the opening of his new play, Bakersfield Mist, at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre.

Technical rehearsals are a slow, painstaking process. When all of the technical and design elements — light cues, sound cues, sets, props, costumes — are layered in and integrated with the timing of the actors. Whenever I work at other theatres around the country I’m always curious to witness how other companies run a tech. The procedure is the same but the experience is different. Some are slow, some fast, some meticulous and detail-oriented, some breezy and easy-going.

As a director myself who just opened this play in Los Angeles, watching director Jeff Zinn run the tech rehearsal is like letting someone else drive your car. You hand over the keys. Sit quiet in the passenger seat. And try to not to shout out “No! Turn here!  Go faster! Slow down! Look out!” No one likes a back-seat driver. Let Jeff drive. See how he handles the road.

Whether in a sparkling new 200-seat venue or the funky intimate Fountain, the basic questions and challenges of a tech rehearsal remain the same: how do we make this moment work? What story are we telling in this scene? What should the lights be doing as she crosses to the table? Let’s work out the timing of sound cues for the opening.  How do we create the best lighting effect for the end?

The set for “Bakersfield Mist” on the Julie Harris Stage.

At 12 noon, actors Ken Cheeseman and Paula Langton arrive on stage and walk on the set for the first time. After weeks in a barren rehearsal room, they finally  step into the colorfully eccentric universe of Maude’s trailer. Their eyes light up. Grins spread over faces.  They explore the set, picking up props and playing with all the weird-looking tchotchkes like giggly kids on Christmas morning. Continue reading

Fountain Co-Artistic Director and Writer/Director Stephen Sachs is in Cape Cod for the opening of his new play, Bakersfield Mist, at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre.

by Stephen Sachs

Monday, August 8

Wellfleet Harbor sits nestled on the edge of Cape Cod just a few hamlets over from Provincetown. A tiny beachfront resort village famous for its oysters and art galleries. A galaxy away from the smog, traffic and congestion of Los Angeles.

I’m here for the opening this week of my play, Bakersfield Mist, at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre. Arriving for the final week of rehearsals, tech week and opening on August 11th. This is the second production of the play to be produced, the first since our opening at the Fountain (which is still running). It will be the first time I get to see the play directed by someone else, performed by a different cast of actors. I expect to learn a lot. As playwright, I’m here to continue tweaking the script, lend support, offer guidance, and try to stay out of the way.

 

My apartment is up the stairs to the second-floor balcony.

For my one-week stay, WHAT has provided me with “artist housing”. My apartment sits nestled on the edge of beachfront, overlooking the harbor. It’s  funky and bohemian and absolutely divine. From the second-floor balcony I stand and peer out over the harbor and bay. Mac’s Seafood Market is an arm’s reach next door. The crisp aroma of steamed oysters, clams and lobster mixes with the salt air and drifts up to my balcony. Delicious.

“Downtown” Wellfleet is a postcard of charming, picturesque shops, cafes and galleries. Tree-lined, quaint. Townfolk and tourists stroll leisurely in t-shirts, shorts and sandals. The pace is slow. Languid. Why hurry to go anywhere else?

This morning I meet Jeff Zinn for breakfast at a homey little cafe off the main road. Jeff is the Artistic Director of WHAT and directing their production of my play. He’s smart, warm, easy to chat with.  We talk shop: discuss new plays, new writers, share ideas, complain, bitch and gossip.

I do a quick phone interview with the Boston Globe, then Jeff and I jump into his car for a short drive over to the theatre.

The Julie Harris Stage

Jeff gives me a tour of his gorgeous new venue: the handsome Julie Harris Stage. Named for the Tony-winning actress, of course, who did Beauty Queen of Leenane at Wellfleet in 2000. The new $6.8 million year-round theater seats 200 people and complements the 90-seat Harbor Stage where the company has been performing since 1985. “The Julie” is exquisite, glittering fresh like a new Cadillac. The stage is huge, tall and wide. The building also holds a labyrinth of office space, a costume shop, dressing rooms, green room, rehearsal room and a two-level lobby. Although I wouldn’t trade the quality of our work at the Fountain with anyone, I can’t help but gape at the glory of a fully-rigged two-story new theatre building with 200 seats and drool with envy. I mutter Yoda’s mantra (“Size matters not”) and keep moving.

The Bakersfield set is being assembled on stage. Carpenters, technicians and designers scurry about  clutching power tools and design plans. Because the Harris stage is so much bigger (and taller) than the Fountain, Maude’s trailer sits entirely on stage like a mobile home parked on blocks in a trailer park.

Jeff ushers me into the rehearsal room for a quick introduction to the Bakersfield actors, Ken Cheeseman and Paula Langton. We’re delighted to meet each other and equally excited about doing the play at Wellfleet. I’m then quickly guided out of the room so the actors can run lines with the stage manager.

Back at my apartment at sunset, I stand on my rickety wood balcony and peer out at the ocean, the orange sun painting the harbor water a shimmering coral rose, marveling at how lucky I am to be visiting such a beautiful place.  And how blessed I am to be doing what I love.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) will be a long, full 10-hour tech day.

Love the set for Bakersfield Mist? Meet the man who designed it. Jeff McLaughlin designed the Fountain sets for The Train Driver (2010), A House Not Meant to Stand (2011), and Bakersfield Mist (2011).

Did you enjoy designing the set for Bakersfield Mist?

I loved designing the set for Bakersfield Mist. Definitely the most interesting research I’ve ever done! Who knew there was so much variation possible in trailer homes? The one thing that I definitely got out of that research was just how confined a space twelve feet really is. It was something I really wanted to bring to the set, especially the ceiling height. I was a little surprised, honestly, by how big it looks in the space, but it would be a completely different story if you actually had to live in it.

Where did you find all the bizarre  stuff that goes on the set?

Bakersfield Mist

Misty Carlisle, the prop designer, and I had a VERY collaborative effort on this show. I knew we would have no problems after working together on A House Not Meant to Stand, but the crossover on Bakersfield Mist was very gray and very massive. There are so many individual items on that set that I think it would have driven either of us insane if one of us had to do it all alone. I called in lots of favors, borrowed things from everyone I could think of, made trips downtown and all the way out to Ventura to get set dressing. I stopped at every thrift shop and 99 cent store within a 20 mile radius of The Fountain at least twice! Every bag of items I brought in wasn’t enough. We needed ten more bags. I’m sure Misty was doing the same thing. It was like show-and-tell in kindergarten  every morning when we would both show up with bags and boxes of “art”. There were a few days when I didn’t think I’d ever have enough stuff. But then a big favor would come through (like an entire car load of items) or I’d find a new aisle at the 99 cent store. With all the help and the ability to literally run into a store, do a two-minute scan and get on to the next one, it happened!

Your set for Bakersfield Mist has received much praise from the press. And audiences love staring at it before the play begins and point out all the weird stuff that’s on it. Does this give you pleasure?

I’m really excited that the audiences seem to love it as much as I do. I’ve sat there for 15 minutes just scanning the set, looking at all the items and my private little jokes that are hidden here and there, but I never thought about an audience doing that. It really is something to do after you’ve taken your seat and are waiting for the show to begin. The best part for me is the fact that when the actors, Jenny and Nick, hit the stage all of it sinks into the background because the two of them are on fire! Their performances are absolutely outstanding and bigger than all of those tchotchkies combined. Continue reading

Looking for a good book to read this summer about “a life in the theatre”? Here’s one we recommend. Thrilling and entertaining first-person accounts of the passionate cyclone that was Joe Papp, founder of The Public Theatre in NYC.

Heroes without flaws appear only in bad comics and worse books and movies. The giants who seize our attention and embody achievement at its most inspiring are often nearly as troublesome as they are noble, with defects and virtues that can stem from the same deep drives. Joseph Papp, the Brooklyn-born impresario who changed the face of the American theater by founding the New York Shakespeare Festival and the Public Theater, is unquestionably a hero of the complicated kind. His story is revisited in rich, rewarding detail in a fat new book, “Free for All: Joe Papp, the Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told,” written by Kenneth Turan and — what’s this? — yes, Papp himself.

Although he was a man of protean force, even Papp’s admirers might wonder how someone dead 20 years could write a book.  As Turan explains in the introduction, with Papp’s endorsement and collaboration he began conducting interviews for a definitive oral history of the Shakespeare Festival and the Public Thea­ter more than 23 years ago. After a year and a half of research and writing, Turan presented his co-author with a first draft, only to have Papp take unexplained umbrage and summarily kill the project.

Did the 1,100-page opus seem too much like a literary tombstone to the already ailing producer, who had also recently learned that his son had contracted AIDS? (Papp died of prostate cancer in 1991.) Turan never learned. But as disheartening as this reversal was, he confesses that it didn’t exactly dumbfound him. As his more than 160 interviews amply revealed, Papp had a fierce will, a huge heart and a profound sense of loyalty, but also a tendency to turn against friends and collaborators when he felt betrayed, insulted or ill-used. Although he was a better producer than director, he possessed some of the easily inflamed sensitivity of the artists he devoted his life to nurturing.

Emerging from its time capsule today — at a slimmed-down, engrossing 593 pages, and with the assistance of Papp’s widow, Gail Merrifield Papp — the book still thrills with its tale of a historic passage in the American theater told with vividness and intimacy by the artists and administrators involved .

Joseph Papp at the Delacorte Theater construction site in 1961.

Love him or hate him, Papp was a major cultural force in the American Theatre in the second half of the 20th century. His unrelenting fervor and drive is one of the great theater stories ever told. Continue reading