Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, Cape Cod

Impresario of the Harbor Stage

Every summer i have the pleasure to go to the most amazing place on earth, to create theatre at the most satisfying company in the world to work for, for the America's hungriest and best looking audience.

 

Here's an interview I gave with Dan Lombardo, Dramaturg, for the 2008 season program...

1) What's your vision for the kind of theater you'll be bringing to the Harbor Stage?

I'm a big believer in Brecht's view that art is not a mirror but a hammer. So in that vein everything we do at the harbor, from acting style to props to sound design, will be hammer-shaped. Hammer puppets. Ball peen usage symposiums. I'll also be performing choreo-poems about Dan Jansen and his bid for the gold medal in speedskating at Lillehammer.

But then again, at the dawn of this new century, it may be time to discover a different metaphor. And we may unfold it this summer at the Harbor. It could be something else found in the toolbox. A carpenter's level, perhaps. The floating bubble is human consciousness. The green translucent liquid: the rat race of our lives. The effort to keep it within the lines and find that mysterious point of level on this swiftly spinning rock way out in space: art. And those little black lines you get the bubble between: perhaps one is our hope for the future, the other: our taste.

Or maybe it's not in the toolbox. Maybe it's under the sink. In the 21st century, art is no longer a mirror, a hammer or a carpenter's level. It's a Swiffer. It's a magical cloth capable of gathering the dust of meaning from the end table of the human soul.

Perhaps, and this is probably closer to the mark, Art is none of the above. It's a bottle of Two Buck Chuck from Trader Joe's. At the harbor we will endeavor to distill the greatness lingering in the barrel bottoms of word vintners like Rolin Jones, Liz Meriwether, Eric Lane and what would have been David Mamet's blog on being a single guy (had blogs existed in the Seventies), shove them into one bottle (the stage), cork it (my direction--which usually only amounts to opinionated obstruction), and resell it as our own brand.

That, sir, is my vision. Not only for the Harbor. But for all human interface in this infant of a century.

2) What can you tell us about the actors and directors you'll be working with.

The only way to truly have compelling raw material in the rehearsal room is to deal with actors with a checkered past. Mysterious scars, missing years, things they don't want to talk about. If there isn't that danger, that my physical safety might be threatened in the rehearsal room, that the well-being of the audience is on the line, I just don't think it's worth doing. So our actors will tend to be the strong, silent, scarred, and scary type. People who ooze menace. Someone you might allow to scrub barnacles off your hull, but never lift the hood of your car. Our forgotten ones, and happily so. They are the ones who will be under the hot lights this summer. Staring back at us in a foul mood.

3) You've been part of the WHAT extended family for several years -- your production of "The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow" in 2006 is legendary here. Since then you have worked in television, film and video. Did those experiences change the way you see theater in any way -- negatively or positively?

I have been spending the last several years trying to divine the difference between acting on film and on stage. And from what I've been able to determine, film acting is about relaxing all four cheeks and never blinking, whereas stage acting is about timing the end of benders so that you have the afternoon to sober up and make sure you don't fall off the lip into the orchestra pit. Some actors can have their last shot at 2 pm, while others have to stop before breakfast.

In film, everyone gets to work at 5 am and proceeds to snack for fourteen hours, mostly chatting about food, cars, and real estate. In theatre, there are no snacks, but the chatting is on a deeper level: baseball, cocktails, and whether the stage manager is straight. Theatre is a Pac-man power pellet of human collision, film tells smaller stories to a larger audience. I'm torn, frankly. I love baseball, but the snacks are fantastic.

4) How has theater changed in the last ten years, and where do we go from here?

I have to be honest. i don't love the kind of theatre that reaffirms bourgeois morality (which is why I love Wellfleet because neither, it seems, does Jeff. Nor his audience for that matter, the best looking theatre audience in the world). I like it when the stage is awash in blood and body parts at the end, but not in an obnoxious aren't we shocking way. In a charming way. I like a stage hilariously full of dead, burnt bodies. But not in a way that condones violence. Per se.

i think theatre needs to heave itself over the wall into the 21st century. theatre has to accept the fact that its lost the realism battle with film a half century ago, but what a relief! Now we can embrace the lo-fi achievement of impossible things. Cars whizzing by, extreme badminton, real lava.

5) What was it that made you know you were going to be a director? A particular play you saw as a kid? Did you know when you started Yale Drama School, or were you particularly inspired by someone there?

 In the sixth grade, I attended the Phyllis Wheatley Middle School in Roxbury. On MLK Day a teacher came to the door of my classroom and asked for me to come down to the auditorium. there was going to be a presentation and they needed an actor. I had a feeling they had a feeling about me,  so i grabbed my things and bolted down to the stage. There I found about twelve other students sitting closely in rows of four  with one ahead of the rest. The teacher told me this was a bus and asked me to sit in the front row. Then my crush girl came and sat next to me. I had never spoken a word to her. The teacher leaned down and whispered to me my line, "whites only, lady".

After half an hour of rehearsal I had perfected it. Performance time came. The student body filed in and I heard my homeroom classmates hooting my name. The curtain opened. I opened my newspaper. My crush girl introduced herself to the audience as Rosa Parks. Then she sat next to me. I lowered my paper slowly. For effect. I took a breath and said it. As loud as i could. She didn't move. I then began to ad lib. I got up and went to complain to the driver. "This girl is sitting in the whites only section and I'm trying to read my paper." My scene partner was a fellow sixth grader who was gripped with stage fright. But somehow he managed, "ma'am is this true?" She refused to move. Two cops came and ushered her off stage. I sat in my seat with an audible "Harumph!" And then, bursts of laughter from my homeroom classmates. "He said HARUMPH!" I heard them tell each other. Laughing and slapping eachother's backs.

I was a hit. A huge one. I've never looked back.