The Production Notebooks, Volume 2

Theatre in Process

Mark Bly

• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781559368223
• Topic: Médias et arts de la scène
• Subtopic: Direction et production théâtrale

* First volume, in 1996, first printing sold out * Selected as featured Alternate--Stage and Screen Book Club * only series which documents the creation of major theatrical events from the inside * includes productions premiered in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, New Haven and Berlin

The FIRST PICTURE SHOW

AT AMERICAN CONSERVATORY THEATER AND MARK TAPER FORUM

by Corey Madden

INTRODUCTION

When I first met David Gordon in the spring of 1992, he was just beginning to explore the possibilities of working in the theatre as a writer/director after more than twenty years as a postmodern choreographer. He was coming to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), in the fall to teach and to develop a new theatre work called Punch and Judy Get a Divorce, and he hoped that the Mark Taper Forum would cosponsor the residency and provide some theatrical advice. I had worked on a number of collaborative projects with UCLA, including a joint presentation of Robert Lepage’s A Dragon’s Trilogy the previous year, so I was tapped by the Taper to develop support from various sources on campus and to offer casting advice and producing support over David Gordon’s month-long workshop. Once involved with David and his work, I became captivated by his approach to making theatre and have remained so for many years.

Although David’s dance work had always contained text, at UCLA David began to be interested in the structure and intentions of dramatic writing. After I had the opportunity to read one of his manuscripts, it seemed to me that what was unique about David’s work was the connection between his physical compositions and his writing. His prose had many of the same characteristics as his dance: a focus on ordinary human behavior, fast-paced rhythm and repetition.

In 1995 the Taper commissioned David Gordon and his son, Ain Gordon, to create a work of dance, theatre and music that eventually became The First Picture Show. In the spring of 1998 we were joined by a development partner, American Conservatory Theater (ACT), who coproduced the world premiere of the work in May 1999 in San Francisco. It debuted at the Mark Taper Forum in August 1999. Along the way the project went through four workshops and three readings in addition to the two productions.

The first impulses for the play came from David Gordon and Ain Gordon’s interest in silent films and their desire to make a work specifically for the Taper and its audiences. During the research phase a chance encounter with Anthony Slide’s Early Women Directors pointed them in the direction of unknown women directors of the silent film era. They created a fictional composite of early film directors and named the character Anne First.

The First Picture Show attempts to create a world where past and present are alive in the minds and bodies of the company. The most central of its themes have to do with artists and art making, with independence and obligation, with love and death. In construction it is a piece that draws on conventions from theatre, film, dance and musical theatre.

The process of working on The First Picture Show (which was also called Silent Movie and Who’s Anne First? in previous drafts) can be broken up into four periods: research and creation of the text; workshopping of the text alone; workshopping of the music and text; and production. My role as dramaturg was naturally different in each phase and intensified as we moved toward production. Much of my work focused on the structural and thematic challenges created by a script with numerous characters, story lines and theatrical styles. My goal was to assist the artists in blending postmodern performance techniques, dramatic structure and musical theatre conventions into a unique new amalgam.

The great challenge for me as a dramaturg was to see clearly what the other artists aimed to achieve—structurally, tonally, philosophically—and to help them realize it through analysis of the text. Over the three years my analysis took every form imaginable, including rafts of notes, lists of questions, scene breakdowns, story-boarding and many, many discussions about the day’s work. In sifting through the notebooks I’ve kept, I’m reminded that an ambitious work of theatre takes a significant time to come into focus, though its essence is often established early on.

Estelle Parsons as Anne First (age 99) in the Mark Taper Forum production. Photograph by Craig Schwartz.

December 1995

We have just finished presenting The Family Business on the mainstage at the Taper. This is the Obie Award-winning dance-theatre piece that David Gordon and Ain Gordon and Valda Setterfield made last year in New York for Dance Theatre Workshop. David and Valda are husband and wife, and Ain is their son. Presenting the work of these artists has been satisfying, but working on a new piece with David and Ain is what we really want to do next.

Ain and David and I meet with Gordon Davidson (artistic director of Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum) to officially commission them to create a new piece for the Taper. They are calling the project Silent Movie. It will be a work of theatre with music, movement, singing and film.

David and Ain have both done a lot of reading about the early days of Hollywood. David is very interested in the silent-film technique of communicating meaning through gesture. Ain is concerned with the issue of censorship in Hollywood. We will support the commission with a developmental workshop once the first draft comes in.

Summer 1996

The Pick Up Company is invited to be in residence at Jacob’s Pillow, an important dance festival. David Gordon founded the Pick Up Company in 1978 to provide a stable yet fluid structure for the presentation of his work. In 1994 the mission of the company expanded to include the work of Ain Gordon. Although the number of artists involved varies from project to project, there is a core group that continues to be involved in the development and performance of new work.

The residency at Jacob’s Pillow will allow David several weeks to explore the physical vocabulary of silent film and compose sections of the choreography. The workshop performance will also give David and Ain their first chance to see how the piece connects with an audience. In this workshop David will work with professional dancers rather than actors. This will allow him to improvise and revise the choreography, a key ingredient in the early part of his process. David and Ain will write in the evenings while they are there.

I would like to see the workshop in July, but I am too far along in my pregnancy to travel. The report from David is very positive, and plans are made for a reading of the script some time in the fall. David and Ain (with Valda) will rent a house in Montauk, New York, in August and they plan to finish a draft there.

October 1996

The script arrives with a new title: Who’s Anne First? David and Ain have come to Los Angeles for a reading of the script for Gordon Davidson and the rest of the artistic staff. Since my son, Ezra, was born in September, I am on maternity leave. Kindly, David and Ain came to the house for our first real dramaturgical conversation.

The script is a difficult read. It is not formatted like a traditional text. There are no scene breaks, and it’s confusing how the doubling works. “Songs” are marked in capital letters but not in any other way.

As we go along through the script, I learn that this format reflects how they see the work for the stage. David explains more precisely the theatrical conventions of the event, how characters will double, the stylistic shifts and the constantly choreographed actions. Songs come right out of dialogue and disappear right back into dialogue.

Like The Family Business, this piece will be in a state of perpetual transition, shifting ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• The First Picture Show: American Conservatory Theater and Mark Taper Forum
• Shakespeare Rapid Eye Movement: Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel
• In the Blood: The Joseph Papp Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival
• Geography: Yale Repertory Theatre