Panel Discussion, Moderated by Abel Lopez
HOW TO TALK ABOUT SUCCESS:
"EVALUATION OF CREATIVITY" PANEL DISCUSSION
TCG Fall Forum, Sunday, November 13, 2005
TCG board president Abel Lopez, associate producing director of GALA Hispanic Theatre in Washington, D.C., moderated a panel discussion among Abigail Adams, artistic director of Philadelphia’s People’s Light and Theatre Company; André Bishop, artistic director of New York City’s Lincoln Center Theater; and Gordon Edelstein, artistic director of Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Conn. The topic was how to define artistic success and evaluate creativity—and how those discussions could be shared with theatres’ board members.
ABEL LOPEZ: What are some of the factors you consider in evaluating artistic success? What does it mean to you beyond box-office success or critical reviews?
ANDRÉ BISHOP: It’s such an easy and difficult question to answer. This is going to sound awful and I don’t mean it to—the only thing that means artistic success for me is if I think well of the production. I’ve tuned out everything else. I was so vulnerable when I was younger and so open to receiving all opinions, because everybody in the theatre has an opinion.
The other thing I would count as a measure of success at Lincoln Center Theater is if the show we’re doing is something that we’ve never done before, if it in some way tests us radically, whether it’s a long Shakespeare play, or a complicated and serious musical, or a play with a director who’s brilliant and impossible and drives everyone crazy and it’s worth it, or, as we’re doing next year, a revised version of Tom Stoppard’s Coast of Utopia trilogy, which involves about 60 actors and three large plays in repertory, which is probably going to kill us. Nonetheless, if we can pull it off with some distinction, to me that’s artistic success.
All of us have very specific things we look for in a play that we like. Language, character, structure, lack of all three. But there’s something instinctive about why we respond to one play versus another. I think it’s highly subjective, highly personal.
GORDON EDELSTEIN: I agree with André completely. In the end, for the artistic director, our canvas is the plays we put on. If we evaluate the play as a successful artistic event, then it is a successful artistic event. I’ve had plays that I deemed not at all successful but that have sold well. I’ve had plays that I thought were spectacular that haven’t sold well. We all have to deal with the financial end. But in the end we have to be the final judge of taste for the theatre. The stories are legend of great plays that have been excoriated when they first opened. Walter Kerr—a person who has a theatre named after him—famously resigned in 1962 from the Obie committee because they were awarding an Obie to Happy Days by Samuel Beckett, and he considered Samuel Beckett a sham. Moon for the Misbegotten, when it first opened, was a flop. The Crucible was a flop.
ABIGAIL ADAMS: Because we do a lot of work with young people and in the community at People’s Light, I think for us the question is: Did we grow? Did the constituents grow? Each constituent, the artist, the institution and the company. I don’t mean growth in numbers—I mean in terms of passion, engagement, connections, longer life.
Are there particular factors you look at, working with community or with young people?
ADAMS: Immediacy, telling the truth. That is sometimes more important than the clarity of the story.
How do you approach your discussions with the board about some of these questions of artistic success?
EDELSTEIN: Well, I’ve been fortunate. I’ve certainly had trustees who privately challenged choices that I’ve made, but I have never had a board of trustees that has challenged artistic choices after the fact. God knows I have produced some plays that haven’t sold any tickets and that have pissed off subscribers. When we present a play that I think will be controversial, that will push buttons, I try to talk about it with the board beforehand.
But other than dealing with controversy, what is the value of having discussions with the board about the aesthetic choices that you make?
EDELSTEIN: I’ve learned this by making mistakes. I’m a great believer in telling people what’s going to be in the product they’re buying. I do that with subscribers when I’m putting on a play that they might really have a hard time with. I usually write a letter to subscribers telling them what they’re going to see and why I’ve chosen it and what they can be prepared for. And I find that it works. We produced a play of Noah Haidle’s last year [at Long Wharf] called Rag and Bone, and I made the mistake of assuming it would be easy for our subscribers, and it was actually hard for a lot of them. But every time I’ve communicated beforehand, I find that it really manages the response and also lets people in on some of the thinking behind doing the play. Same thing with the board. I try to talk about, as best I can, what they’re about to see.
Does that differ when you go into another theatre and work as the director on a freelance basis?
EDELSTEIN: It’s completely different. As a guest director you rarely engage the board. Occasionally they trot you out to go to a cocktail party and be charming, and I’m always happy to do that. But it’s a different thing.
ADAMS: I think we’re much harder on ourselves than the board is on us. So we tend to completely overwhelm the board when we talk about all the things we wished we had done or didn’t do and they tend to make us feel better by the time we get to the end.
How do those discussions then inform your approach on another piece of work? Because they make you feel good, do you ask for more feedback?
BISHOP: I try to avoid all artistic discussions with the board as much as possible. But I haven’t been totally successful in avoiding these things. (Laughter.)
These discussions are important, but it’s sometimes very difficult for me personally to engage in artistic discussions with anybody. Usually when you talk about a play, it’s before you’ve done it, and so what you’re riding on is this extraordinary buoyancy. That’s what I try to engage the board in. It’s not so much, “Clifford Odets was a great blah blah blah”—though that excites me. It’s more my larger hopes for the play. We’re doing Awake and Sing!, a play I’ve wanted to do for years because it’s by a writer I feel has fallen into disrepair for many reasons. If we do a good production of it, perhaps his reputation will be slightly restored. So that imbues me with the kind of passion that I try to get the board behind.
Recently, I started giving a series of talks about all the processes and intuitions you go through when you choose a play, some of it being totally practical and not high-falutin’, and some of it being airy and high-falutin’. This was a great, great success and the board was amazed because they’d never heard anyone talk about the process of selecting a play or a season of plays. Our board really responded to that, more than any discussions I’ve had.
I’ve only had two close shaves. One was at Playwrights Horizons when we were doing the first production of Sondheim’s Assassins, during the first Gulf War with the first Bush in the White House. That was tough. There were two board members who tried to get me fired for choosing Assassins, though we had triumphed two years before with Sunday in the Park with George. It was a difficult time. Years later I saw one of those board members at a party—after the Roundabout had so triumphantly revived the same play—and he was jabbering away about how wonderful Assassins was at the Roundabout. It was sweet.
The second time I ran into trouble was at Lincoln Center. There was a board member who left the board. He believed in good reviews, notably in the New York Times. He had two manila folders on his desk. One was filled with the bad reviews Lincoln Center Theater had gotten, and one was filled with the good. And he weighed them in both hands…. (Laughter.)
Those comments actually raise some great points about the difficulty of engaging in conversation or obstacles that may arise in approaching the discussion with a board or a subscriber or a member of the audience. Are there questions around aesthetics or creativity that are difficult to approach in a conversation?
EDELSTEIN: Well, in the great words of Cyndi Lauper: Money changes everything. When a show, or a series of shows, that is fantastic, continues not to sell and challenges the theatre’s financial status, that’s where the rubber meets the road. That’s where the discussions become complex and painful and challenging. We did Stephen Wadsworth’s Triumph of Love, which is art at its absolute highest. Our audience didn’t come, and our reviews were mixed. It’s an expensive show. Stephen’s worth every nickel and then some. It was confusing and very painful for me.
ADAMS: I would have to have an ongoing conversation that separates the financial from the artistic. Not that one is bad and one is good; there are contexts where you bring them together, but there are also contexts where you have to separate them in terms of valuation. Each theatre has to decide its own criteria for artistic success. You make a contract with your board about where you collectively place value.
BISHOP: I think [board members] must respond to these plays in the same way we do. Read everything you can in advance about the play. If there are materials, try to lasso the artistic director as he runs down the hall. If it’s an old play, that’s somewhat easier to do than if it’s a new play. I always urge people on the board, like an audience, to just respond to it. It’s a problem we have in New York a lot. Often people come with a particular axe to grind. Certainly the critics do, and sometimes they get blinded because they’re not always open.
ADAMS: In England, the reviewers tend to read the scripts before they go and see a production. In Philadelphia the reviewers say that they don’t want to be tainted by any prior information. I think that’s really too bad.
Recognizing that many boards have great expertise in financial matters, what can the board do to encourage and support the artistic director?
EDELSTEIN: When finances become the overriding concern, it’s hard to dream. Our job is to imagine and to dream and to think and really let our minds go. The board should try to find ways that are sincere—not invented—to encourage the artistic director. Artists generally thrive in supportive environments and close up in judgmental environments. You want the best out of your artistic director: Find the way to give him or her the most supportive environment possible.
I do want to say one other thing about how you learn to evaluate a play. Think of a play as a language. I don’t speak French. So if I were to see a play in French, probably I wouldn’t understand most of it. Sometimes you’ll see a play—for instance, one by Noah Haidle. Noah creates his own world, his own language. Try before you go to learn the language the best you can so you’ll understand the language the writer is writing in. Waiting for Godot seems quaint, it’s so easy now. But Beckett was writing in a new language and people didn’t know how to understand it.
ADAMS: One of our board members takes classes on a regular basis. He has an understanding of many of the artists and what they care about because they’re the ones who are doing the teaching. We encourage board members to come to rehearsals—but never just once. That’s useless.
EDELSTEIN: It has a lot to do with the culture of your organization. I like to be around a lot of people. I try to find situations to bring boards into the artistic process. First rehearsal is a great time for board members to come. You meet the director, you see the actors, you hear the presentation of the set, you even can stay for the readthrough. Their ownership of the show becomes profoundly different.
Another thing that has been successful from time to time: Board meetings being the way they are, very often the artistic conversation is relegated to a short amount of time. I’ve done scenes from plays in the board meeting. Use the actors who are going to be in the show, read 10 minutes of the play and then talk about it. It’s incredible. Your board will delight in the intimacy and the informality of that experience.
BISHOP: One of the great ways to deal with the artistic director is through the managing director or the executive director of the theatre. I’ve been blessed with two extraordinary partnerships in my life. At Playwrights Horizons [where Bishop was artistic director for 10 years] with Paul Daniels and, now, with Bernie Gersten at Lincoln Center. That partnership is crucial because the managing director or executive director can act as the advocate to the artistic director, can explain things that the artistic director can’t or won’t or doesn’t have the tools to do, can be an advocate of the plays from his or her point of view as much as the artistic director. All the times I’ve seen theatres falter or fail, or just make utter asses of themselves, have been when that partnership has not worked out.
EDELSTEIN: There needs to be strength and leadership in all areas. Board leadership is equally important. When trust breaks down in any relationship—your wife, your husband, your partner, your friends—it really poisons and soils a relationship. You have to work very hard to get that back. It starts with acknowledgement of the issue and then trying to have a constructive, productive, candid conversation about it.
BISHOP: I think the crucial thing is that prospective board members want to be on the board primarily because they have a love of theatre. If you love the theatre, you will respond to what the theatre does and what the artistic director chooses. If you love the theatre, the rest will take care of itself.