NYTimes.com: "LAST year the writer Jon Robin Baitz removed his five-character family drama “Other Desert Cities” from Broadway’s 2010-11 lineup and took it off Broadway to Lincoln Center Theater, which had produced several of his works, including “The Substance of Fire” and “Ten Unknowns.” Among the reasons? He and his director, Joe Mantello, could choose the actors they wanted rather than face the Broadway pressure of casting household names.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
‘Other Desert Cities,’ Jon Robin Baitz, With Stockard Channing and Stacy Keach
NYTimes.com: "LAST year the writer Jon Robin Baitz removed his five-character family drama “Other Desert Cities” from Broadway’s 2010-11 lineup and took it off Broadway to Lincoln Center Theater, which had produced several of his works, including “The Substance of Fire” and “Ten Unknowns.” Among the reasons? He and his director, Joe Mantello, could choose the actors they wanted rather than face the Broadway pressure of casting household names.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Two separate thoughts on this one, and apologies for the Wall of Text ahead:
1. After the article from a few weeks ago about Broadway as a "fallback" of sorts for Hollywood and music stars, I really appreciate the fact that the director and playwright chose to take the play off-Broadway for reasons of artistic integrity (including the casting of whomever they want, not an American Idol finalist simply for ticket sales). The plays on Broadway are often overlooked in the first place by tourists unless you cast Al Pacino or the like, and Off-Broadway is usually considered even less than straight plays in TKTS. But Baitz and Mantello were planning to play Desert Cities on Broadway, and now that the show has built up buzz, here's hoping the Broadway run is as successful as many historical Off-to-Broadway transplants.
2. Watching rehearsals for A Number this past month, I'm becoming attune to the challenges to establishing a familial bond among actors cast separately. It certainly helps that our actors here know each other very well before being cast together, but this stage family needed to establish trust and common ground immediately in order for the truth of the relationships to show. It's got me thinking about what management can do (in partnership with directors) to establish the familial bond. In A Number, which centers around questions of personal and familial identity, our warmups are very informal, very collaborative and focused on establishing relationships through collective activities (I had the opportunity to do Suzuki exercises with the cast last week, for example!) Managers and directors can do a lot to facilitate building the family bond by making the rehearsal room into a family itself.
Post a Comment