3-3-06
BY CALVIN MacLEAN
I have heard my share of excellent pitches. I have participated in more than my share of discussions, critiques and seminars on the topic. And it’s a lot easier to describe one’s opinions on what makes a good experience in the theatre than to actually have it. I wish that I felt more certain of my own opinions. The problem is that the really good experiences I have had in the theatre—seeing the work of others, I mean—confounds and astonishes me. I’m too wrapped up in the experience to notice how it’s happening, or to care much about how it’s happening, for that matter.
Not that I don’t think about it a lot. There are things I know that I prefer in the theatre I go to: great language, honesty, clarity, wisdom, effortless acting. Unobtrusive directing and supportive design are also important to me. But I have seen some wonderful theatre that confounds one or another of these preferences.
There are two things that for me are truly theatrical, that I love about the theatre, that I admire in others’ work, and that I try to make in my own: the element of surprise and the feel of a true ensemble. If you can short-circuit my expectations, or make me see something I thought wasn’t there, or make me wonder what the next thing that’s going to happen will be—well, then you’ve got my attention. Or, if the performers are so with each other, so bound together soulfully, so tight—then I’m right there with them. If both things happen at once, if something unexpected happens because the performers are together in some powerful way, that’s magical.
Steppenwolf did it in Balm and Gilead. I will never forget it. Sinise bumming a match to start the show, or the diner coming to life with “Thunder Road” booming, or Metcalf’s Darlene breaking down while Headley’s Anne is drawn in, the moments I remember go on and on. I remember having only the vaguest idea of what was going on in the story, it wasn’t really clear, but I didn’t care. I got it. It was overwhelming—the ensemble, the daring of the whole thing. The best theatre I had ever seen, probably ever will see.
De La Guarda did it to me as well. I remember standing with a crowd in a room of white-paper walls wondering what on earth was about to happen. There were drums and bounding shadows on the walls and ceiling. The shadows looked and sounded like people bouncing up and down to the beat on the other side of the paper. Then the shadows crashed through the ceiling and actually tried to pick somebody off the ground. It was terrifying and exhilarating. Like being in the circus, really in the circus, and having no idea… Great theatre.
Famous Door was where I tried to make good theatre. The goals we shared—to do something daring, to make the ensemble tight, to conjure up something really soulful—these goals and the people who shared them are what I will long remember about Famous Door. When the magic happened, it happened because of our collaborations with each other. When idea followed upon idea, as one person contributed and then another took it up, both of the things I think make good theatre started to happen—the surprises coming along with the feeling of an ensemble. It was a privilege to be a part of those rehearsals with the actors, or with the designers, to see those things happen. To maybe light the fuse and then to stand back while the damn thing just lit up. To see the theatre in the work actually emerge.
It’s hard to describe, harder still to get it to happen. I just know it when I see it.
Cal MacLean is the head of the directing program at Illinois State University. He directs all over Chicago.