7-21-06
Goodbye Wayne Brown
The Artistic Home probably will stay put in its Irving Park studio theatre for at least another year. Negotiations to become the second resident company in the proposed Theater Wit space on Broadway in Edgewater are on hold, as the developer of the building has radically rethought his plans. While still wishing to include a theatre, changes are likely to delay development for 12-16 months. (Read about it in Space Odyssey by Theater Wit chief Jeremy Wechsler in the Aug. 4 issue.)
Artistic Home honchos John Mossman and Kathy Scambiaterra say they might consider other space options in the next year or two, although the Theater Wit deal isn't dead. Worst case would have them remain where they are. Best case might be a move to larger quarters sooner rather than later, allowing the Artistic Home to sublet the Irving Park location for the two years remaining on their lease. Mossman says they've had inquiries.
We traveled to Canada in June for the annual conference of the American Theatre Critics Association, at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake and the Stratford Festival.
With a budget of CAD$24 million, the Shaw Festival operates an 8-month season employing 65-80 actors, more than half of whom have Festival histories of 10 years or more. The company operates three venues in the still-picturesque and walkable town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, which is where your body will end up if you go over Niagara Falls in a barrel and float downstream.
Since 2001, the Shaw has been under the artistic direction of Jackie Maxwell, previously identified with new work at the Factory Theatre, Toronto. Maxwell subtly has enlarged the Shaw Festival mandate to include new pieces. Originally, the Festival staged only the plays of Shaw and his contemporaries. Shaw lived 94 years, so the range of his contemporaries is almost two centuries if you bookend his birth and death dates by 40-50 years. For instance, David Mamet was born in 1948, and Shaw died in 1950; therefore, they are contemporaries. Under Maxwell, the Festival now produces works set in the period of Shaw's lifetime, say, a new play about the Spanish-American War.
About two hours drive west of the Shaw, the prosperous agricultural town of Stratford, population 32,000, has been home to the Stratford Festival since 1953. Only 4 percent of Stratford's CAD$52 million budget comes from government sources, while 40 percent comes from foreign dollars. Festival officials said they are feeling the impact of higher gas prices and a weaker US dollar, and they fear the impact of the travel initiative now before Congress that would require US citizens to carry passports to enter/leave Canada (and Mexico). Stratford Festival executive director Antoni Cimolino departed from lunch with the critics to fly to Washington to testify before Congress about it. FYI: Cimolino, who began at Stratford as a young actor 19 years ago, will become the Fest's first-ever general director in 2007, when artistic director Richard Monette retires. He will have three artistic directors working under him.
More than half the Stratford acting company trained at Stratford's Birmingham Conservatory for Classical Theatre Training (BCC), a 20-week intensive for which 2,000 apply and only 12 are accepted. For some years, one or two of the 12 have been from Chicago, their scholarships underwritten by the Chicago Friends of the Stratford Festival. Following the September-January BCC, they are offered a March-October Festival contract, and may be asked back for additional seasons.
This year, there are two Chicago actors at Stratford. In her fourth Stratford season, Dana Green plays Viola in 12th Night. In Chicago, she worked at Chicago Shakespeare, Court, Eclipse, European Rep, Famous Door and The Hypocrites, among others. Brian Hamman also is with the company, having trained with the BCC last fall/winter. He's taking supernumerary roles in Much Ado About Nothing and Coriolanus and will play Osvald in Ghosts.
His hair grown thick and long unlike his Chicago cropped look, Brian told us the BCC training in text, movement and mask were additions to the techniques he learned at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, thereby extending his craft. In BCC workshop productions he played Bosola in The Duchess of Malfi, and the title roles in King Lear and Richard III. That will stretch you! Brian sends love to friends and family and apologizes for being "so horrible at keeping in touch."
FYI: Under Canadian Equity there is only one contract for all actors at all theatres, no matter size or status. Salary is pegged to tiers based on capacity.
Our gal pal Felicia P. Fields didn't win a Tony Award for The Color Purple, but don't fret: Felicia won the oldest acting award in New York theatre, the Clarence Derwent Award from Actors' Equity, as most promising female performer of the year. She also won a Theatre World Award for her Broadway debut, in the company of such other Broadway debutantes as Harry Connick, Richard Griffiths, Ian McDiarmid and Jayne Houdyshell.
Also, Steppenwolf Ensemble member Lois Smith picked up the Drama Desk Award as Best Actress/Play for the revival of The Trip to Bountiful.
A Shakespeare First Folio sold at auction July 12 at Sotheby's in London for more than $5 million. Sotheby's director said the purchaser was an unnamed London book dealer. It went so high, the director explained, because it's the only known first folio in a 17th Century binding (leather), roughly contemporaneous with the book's 1623 publication. The director added that there were notes in the margins in several late 17th Century hands, among them an amusing scatological comment about Hamlet.
I am willing to sell the original of this column for $5, autographed, with or without scatological remarks, at the buyer's discretion. Inquire at PerformInk.
Editor's Note: You can get copies of First Folio plays online. Google "First Folio" or "Folio editions" and you get an array of choices--though some seem to have been modernized. You can get copies of past Behind the Curtains at www.performink.com.