Theatre – Jocelyn Beard, Teller of Tales

How To Art In Really REALLY Bad Times

Ah, the Salad Days of cultural angst.

When Billy Joel growled out the final words of his 1989 list song, “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” I wonder if he considered for a moment that the 40 years of world events highlighted in his unforgettable primal scream would, in a mere 30 years, come to be seen as “precious.” Yes, I know that was an incredibly long sentence, and no, I don’t give a fuck.

Who among us wouldn’t trade COVID for British Politician Sex? The Climate Catastrophe for Ho Chi Minh? Trump for Rock n Roller Cola Wars? Whoever said, “may you live in interesting times” can blow me…in hell, if the Christian Right is right.

Like many of my sister and brother writers, I’ve been struggling to find artistic purchase in this exceptionally challenging time. My work-in-progress is a YA fantasy, but it’s set in our world. Our pre-COVID world. I’d also started a play – a contemporary satire – in January that no longer seems particularly relevant as we collectively inhale the reality that nearly one million human beings have died from this plague. And there doesn’t appear to be a true end in sight…at least not one that can be achieved by the application of critical thought.

The West Coast is on fire. Sally is having a party in the Gulf while other storms circle like a shiver of sharks in the Atlantic. The results of the 2nd most important election in our lifetime (we blew the first one) are already disastrous, and it HASN’T EVEN HAPPENED YET. Giant chunks of the Arctic are turning into a massive slushie. Sahara Dust is on the way. BLM has had enough of our country’s legacy of racist bullshit, and their anger is so incredibly righteous that it’s contagious – in a good and long overdue way. Schools are unbelievably open, and as of this writing, the number of teachers, TEACHERS, who have died from COVID continues to rise.

RIP Rana Zoe Mungin, 30, a graduate of both Wellesley College and UMass Amherst, who died from complications associated with COVID-19. On two occasions prior to her death, her family said, Mungin went to a hospital seeking a coronavirus test but was unable to get one. (THE BOSTON GLOBE)

And of course there’s more. So much more.

How do we function as artists when our collective frontal lobe is filled with end-days shit that none of us had on our Bingo card? The thought of COVID literature/theatre/art makes me cringe. It’s too big, too awful to reduce to the intimacy of storytelling, and yet, how can we legitimately spin a contemporary yarn without it?

Those who fought in WWI were dubbed the “Lost Generation.” Countless soldiers returned to their homes suffering from shell shock, which we now call PTSD. Their wandering, directionless lives were succinctly captured in works like The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises.

Shell shock wasn’t reserved for soldiers, however. The War to End All Wars was too big, too awful, and the artistic response to what was previously unimaginable was a jagged slash through the fabric of what had come before. Dadaism exploded in the art world in Europe and America, and Theatre of the Absurd was soon to follow. The sensual beauty of La Belle Époque that preceded the war became unbearable to contemplate, and artists scrambled – like many of us are scrambling now – to integrate our unimaginable reality into our individual forms of storytelling. Are we becoming a new Lost Generation? I hope not.

“That is what you are…all of you young people who served in the war.
You are a lost generation.” Gertrude Stein

The German Dadaist, Richard Hülsenbeck, described his world thusly:

“Berlin was a city of tightened stomachs, of mounting, thundering hunger, where hidden rage was transformed into a boundless money lust, and men’s minds were concentrating more and more on questions of naked existence… Fear was in everybody’s bones.”

Sound familiar?

The Dadaists, Surrealists, Existentialists and Absurdists saved our species’ artistic asses while carving out a new space in our understanding of art for daring new forms, which sadly seem commonplace today. Will our generation generate a similar eruption in response to the unprecedented times in which we’ve found ourselves? I really hope so.

Outside my window, the world seems unchanged from where it was a year ago. The grass is green. Trees are just beginning to tease with autumnal blush. Herons fly overhead on their way to the Ten Mile River. Our horses graze, unperturbed. But I can feel it. The thing. It’s out there and it’s terrifying. It taints my every thought. I’ve spoken with other writers and know that I’m not the only one trying to push through this malaise. I have no credible advice. Just keep telling your stories. I’m pretty sure that the world needs us now more than ever, because this fire we so totally started.

Stay safe/Wear a freaking mask/Support the ARTS

I don’t know about you, but I have a bad habit of saying “Yeah, sure! I’ll do that!”

When I was approached to direct Young Frankenstein at Theatreworks in New Milford, CT, my first thought should have been: I better read the script before I say anything…remember what happened when you agreed to direct Dirty Rotten Scoundrels without reading the script?

But there was no thought. Just a “Yeah, sure! I’ll do that!” that flew out of my mouth like a fruit bat zeroing in on a ripe banana.

I’ve directed a lot of shows, and I thought I’d seen and done most of what I was most likely to encounter in theatre until I finally sat down and read Mr. Brooks’ script.

To be fair, Young Frankenstein isn’t exactly great American theatre. It is, however, a beloved and revered piece of our collective comedic mythos. Only those of you with the stoniest of hearts don’t crack a smile for at least one of the terrified horse whinnies that dutifully follow the mention of the iconic Frau Blucher.

But the script! Mel Brooks basically took his screenplay, reformatted it for the stage, and added a LOT of music.

I’m sure that all sounds well and good, and you’re wondering what on earth I have to blather about. Well, I’ll tell ya what I have to blather about: Spectacle musicals taken directly from the screen to the stage.

Now that I’ve directed several of these beasts, I have this to say to the show creators: Since a huge part of your residual profits from these shows occur AFTER they’ve closed on Broadway or the West End, take a moment to consider what community theaters all over the world have to put themselves through in order to properly produce something that you spent millions on.

It all rests on this: There are no traditional black outs between scenes, just the mystifying: “…as we transition to…”

Transition to? Sub-text: this was a jump-cut from one location to another in the film.

Musicals like Young Frankenstein are filled with jaw-dropping transitions. With a dollar and a dream, you can make these transitions happen quite nicely. The thing is: most community theaters only have dreams, not dollars.

So why even attempt such shows? Because audiences want to see them. Actors want to be in them. Set designers want to design them. And crazy people, like me, want to direct them.

So, getting back to my message to the men and women who create these monster shows: Out here in the hinterlands, where a budget for a musical like Young Frankenstein wouldn’t even have covered the catering for the first read-through with the original cast, we’re learning. And while we learn, we create. We problem-solve and improvise. We’re self-taught. We turn ourselves inside out making your transitions happen. And we never back down from the challenges left behind in your scripts. At this point, there’s probably more talent for this work out here in Community Theatreville than exists in all your unions…combined.

There’s no feeling in the world that compares to pulling off a show like Young Frankenstein in a house with less than 200 seats. Of course we haven’t opened yet, but we will on May 4, and the Heavens will tremble at our audacity, despite the impossible transition-filled ~~screenplay~~ script.

To my sisters and brothers around the world, I salute you! We do what we do with virtually no money, buoyed only by our love of theatre and the support of our loved ones and our communities. Imagine what we could do with the resources a show like this one originally consumed!

Transition to: the Heavens trembling at the thought.

Category: Theatre

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