Jim Fitzmorris

Jim Fitzmorris received his PhD in history and criticism from The University of Washington's School of Drama. A native of New Orleans, he is a 3 time Big Easy Award winning playwright, educator, and contributor to NPR's Radio Open Source and The Takeaway. Jim can be found most nights at Pravda of New Orleans.

Drowsy Chaperone

August 4, 2011

As I have said before, I am not in the business of reviewing Summer Lyric. But there is something I want to talk about in regards to last night’s Drowsy Chaperone: the inserted intermission. I feel comfortable discussing this, because I am certain the artistic collaborators had little to nothing to do with this decision. The original Broadway production did not have one, and given the show can run around 90 minutes without it, that makes sense.

However, Summer Lyric, for reasons of patron age and concession revenue, chose to put one into the show. While I understand getting money where you can, I found the decision troubling. First of all, like Talk Radio, the intermission disrupted the suspension of disbelief. The show’s text actually points out the lack of intermission and the danger of having one. The plot of Chaperone is admittedly silly and giving the viewer chance to breathe only lets the reality, or lack-thereof, sink into the mind. Rather than being swept away by joyful nonsense, we are standing around in the lobby dissecting it.

Second, we return to the theatre for less than thirty minutes of material. Just like Talk Radio’s second half felt like an unmotivated firework display, Drowsy felt like two great visual gags and one staggering number. But it did not feel like a complete movement. It had no momentum, because the push behind all that opulent wackiness had been left behind in flushing toilets and crunching chips. Intermissions signal the end of one movement and the beginning of another; they are not arbitrary time devices designed to provide lavatory relief.

I would love to hear your thoughts.

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Qualifying Your Work

July 31, 2011

A local theatre producer called my attention to this blog about pre-show announcements. It is a fascinating conversation that is worth having in town in the wake of the recent reading/workshop/I-am-not-sure-what-it-was The Future is a Fancyland Place. Laura Motta argues that placing qualifiers on productions disrupts something fundamental in the process:

I understand the value of the preview process, and it’s our blog’s policy to play by the rules: We generally don’t post reviews until previews have ended. But besides just being a total drag, the announcements, I couldn’t help but feel, infringed on something really basic: They wrecked the magic.

Musicals, like opera, require the suspension of disbelief in ways that almost no other kind of entertainment does. Preshow lectures don’t do much to preserve that. They took me out of the moment and distracted me from the work. And there was a more sinister implication, too: That the audience is not capable of fairly judging a show on its own.

I would entirely agree. I also think there is something else at play. Motta talks about producers’ wish to “have it both ways”. I think that desire also extends in a more insidious direction than simply trying to mitigate the message. It is a protective shield than allows for glorious victory with no risk of spectacular defeat.

Look at it this way: when you give “the speech” that qualifies the product as a workshop, work-in-progress, against-all-odds limited rehearsal, or victim-of-the-media, this is what, intentional of not, you are actually saying:

If the show is great, we are theatre artists non-pareil. However, if you have misgivings, it is not our fault. We should be celebrated regardless.

This is one of my other issues with both Summer Lyric’s rehearsal time frame and Le Petit and Rivertown’s musical theatre offerings. It is a no win. Pointing out the disasters gets you a scold of not being in tune with the dilemmas of process, but on the rare and admittedly glorious moments when it all comes together, we are supposed to treat the practitioners to a showering of roses and attention worthy of a Tony nod.

Essentially, you can say only nice things. Enjoy!

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A Few Thoughts on Talk Radio…

July 30, 2011

I have a great deal of respect for my critical brother Ted Mahne over at The Times-Picayune. So, when he says that Jonathan Mares gives one of the best performances of the year in Talk Radio, it is an opinion I do not take lightly. After attending last night, I think Brother Mahne got it right in regards to Mares’ performance. Rather than take the easy way out, Mares, under the direction of Kris Shaw, makes the decision to play the majority of the role in a grounded, wry fashion rather than a histrionic, emotive indulgence. He pulls off the neat trick of saying one think while clearly thinking another. Talk Radio is worth seeing if only for the performance.

That being said, Shaw almost unravels it all with two disastrous–and I mean exactly that: disastrous–decisions. First of all, the show’s staging is a ten-actor pile up in the Shadowbox Theatre’s back corner. It is the result of not only a terrible ground plan but also an inability to understand how to move actors within a confined space. It is not my job to be prescriptive, but there were at least two staging options in the space that would have opened up the sight lines and given Mares’ character a view of the control of the booth. Shaw chose neither. He settles on a proscenium approach with Mares facing the audience and unable to see the very people supposedly in charge of his technical fate.

It is a value lesson about how one basic decision wrecks an entire experience. Limiting the space and facing the actors out in what is a hyper-realistic drama forces the actors into a performance methodology anathema to the show. Actors are constantly having to cheat out to be seen. This reduces their ability to react to the people with whom they are performing. In short, they cannot look their fellow actor in the eye. Furthermore, limiting the space while filling it with furniture, microphones, and prop clutter transforms the station into a hoarders’ maze that has to be navigated rather than a space to play.

If a director chooses such a small space, they have to understand the opportunities for organic reaction are extremely limited. The blocking has to be tight with the rule that one inch equals one mile. A performer cannot just go-with-it, because one step out of the blocking collapses sight lines, leads to awkward pictures, and results in unjustified motion. A final sequence with a unhinged fan is drained of tension for all three aforementioned reasons. We should believe the fan is reaching for a weapon. However, because he is in a jumble of movement outside of the lights, we cannot see what he is doing. There is no expectation; therefore, there is no payoff.

But that pales in comparison to the decision to insert an intermission. The show is just over an hour without one. The majority of the evening is spent with shock jock Barry Champlagne throughout the course of his confrontational radio show. The play is structured as a tense, slow-build, single shot: a man skirting the edge. But, for what were obviously financial reasons, the show breaks just before the hour mark. It derails the tension, wrecks two character arcs, and prevents Mares’ performance the momentum that might have made it something truly extraordinary. Mares’ final monologue seems to come out of nowhere, because the tight rope that leads to it has been snapped by the need to sell wine and take a piss.

Finally, I see more and more shows in town that are making me wonder if someone should start offering workshops in how to tech a production. The lights, which were more than capable of giving the necessary looks, seemed consistently off on their call. Tech rehearsal is not another chance to run the show or help actors figure out their business. If those things happen, great. However, the real purpose of a tech is to get the internal cues right. If that cannot be done, turn the damn lights on, do the show, and do not even try for anything sophisticated.

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The Krewe of Hermes

July 28, 2011

For those of you unaware, the 74 year old Krewe of Hermes rolls the Friday before Mardi Gras and takes its governing theme from classic literature. The oldest surviving night parade, Hermes chooses a beloved world masterpiece and uses its 28 floats to tell that story in spot on detail from beginning to end. Ichabod Crane has been chased down by The Headless Horseman; Robin Hood has done battle with The Sheriff of Nottingham, and Cardinal Richelieu has plotted against D’Artagnan.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the krewe chose Homer’s Odyssey: the tale of brave Odysseus’ treacherous return from The Trojan War. Anyone on the street that night understood the connection of the selected tale with the city through which it rolled. Thrown off course by rough waters, devastating storms and duplicitous opponents, the crafty fox must make his way through a world he does not recognize and towards a home that may no longer exist. The allegory needs no explanation. Furthermore, the tens of thousands watching cannot have helped experiencing collective catharsis produced by the final float: Husband and wife in a romantic embrace of reunion. The title was simply Home.

How can local theatre compete with that?

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Communitas

July 28, 2011

The failure of professional theatre to gain a vibrant, continuous foothold in this town is due neither to a lack of money nor talent. In fact, it maybe the result of a lack of lack. New Orleans’ theatre suffers from a city wide abundance of the commodity that normally is its domain: the articulation of communitas. From Atlanta to Chicago to Minneapolis to Seattle, theatre is an opportunity to articulate the polis. Beyond the particulars of an individual show, theatre is a space where those who are like-minded, share purpose, or desire connection can gather to hear and proclaim the stories they tell themselves about themselves. It is the space where we learn who we are to form a more cohesive bond with different segments of our society. For many communities, theatre is the only place where this can happen. But with New Orleans, that is not the case. Substitute the words Mardi Gras, Jazz Fest, or Second Line for theatre, and you will find that any or all three of those performative institutions neatly fit the communitas need. Professional theatre in New Orleans is submerged by a sea of performative energy.

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Summer Lyric

July 22, 2011

In case you haven’t noticed, I do not review Tulane Summer Lyric. This is not from a distaste of musicals on my part. In fact, I attend all their productions as part of The Big Easy Awards’ Musical Theatre Committee. I believe the shows are an important part of our cultural fabric if only for the fact that they give audiences an opportunity to hear a full orchestra play some of Broadway’s great scores. However, I choose not to critically engage for three reasons: the shows only run a week, the built in nature of the audience makes the review an exercise in criticism rather than a cultural service, and given the brevity of the rehearsal period, it is my belief that there is an inescapable flaw inherently built into the process. It is that final reasons I am addressing today, and to do so, I must break my rule of not reviewing ever so slightly.

In a column two weeks ago, I addressed the insanity of the rehearsal window that commercial theatre deals with in New Orleans. In the case of Summer Lyric, those challenges are exponentially multiplied. Because of the cost of the orchestra and the large cast, the rehearsal schedule is not abbreviated; it is borders on a death march. The fact those shows happen at all is a miracle. Summer Lyric directors are forced into a Solomon’s Choice. Either focus on the overall flow of the evening by working on transitions and pace, or take the time to focus on individual, and in some cases beloved, moments within production to generate show stopping moments. There are unintended consequences for both actions. If the first road is taken, the show moves seamlessly but fails to really wow. But if a director exercises the second option, a production will produce thrilling individual triumphs but lurch in fits and starts of pacing and movement. Furthermore, the second option too often produces shows that are almost a half hour longer than they should be. This second condition was the case with Into the Woods.

I bring all this up, because director Diane Lala came as close to solving the problem with Man of La Mancha as a director can. A bit of an old hand at this method of working, Lala blocked the show so crisply that I was deriving actual pleasure from watching her move actors from scene to scene. Her agenda seemed to be not to let the audience breathe and get them out of the theatre as quickly as possible. But the real revelation was her casting Kyra Miller in the role of Aldonza. I mean that in two ways. First, Miller was arrestingly terrific in sea of pleasant, unoffensive performances. She did something you very rarely see in the Lyric time frame: she was acting while she was singing. It was not just hitting the right notes or striking the right poses. This was not a matter of showcasing while hitting notes. That is not acting; that is featuring the self. Nor was it that truly infuriating musical theatre quality of damn-the-stakes-I-want-to-be-liked. This was something different. She was doing beat work within the songs, listening for meaning from fellow performers, and adjusting her reactions even while singing. You were so involved in the performance that you only noticed her spectacular voice when she hit notes that amplified the emotional content. Second, her turn reminded me that casting ferociously trained performers, like not only Miller but also Kasey Marino from Company two years ago, can simply bring the force of their talent/preparation into the arena and raise all boats with their efforts.

Of course, there is a reason neither Lala nor those two actors live here.

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Hate Mail

July 11, 2011

I received my first round of hate mail over my Le Petit column. I must say that it certainly took long enough. I was worried I was doing something wrong. My only regret is they did not put it in a public forum.

Anyway, I will have reviews of 12th Night and Brother out in the next two days. Both shows bring up some interesting dilemmas that New Orleans’ theatre is facing. In the case of the Shakespeare production, I am beginning to believe the amount of dramaturgical prep work involved to give a three-week rehearsal process a fighting chance takes at least a year. And Brother continued my issue with The Elm Theatre getting everything right except for the scripts.

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New Noise/Fancyland

July 9, 2011

I went to see Cripple Creek and Goat in the Road’s portion of New Noise’s Sound Off project Friday night at The CAC. What New Noise’s artistic directors Phil Cramer and Joanna Russo are attempting to do is create a space for the development of ensemble work. The idea is to facilitate the process between the initial spark of an idea and its journey into a final, polished product. Whether it is for ensemble generation or more traditional theatrical models, New Orleans is sadly lacking in an infrastructure for the creation of new work. This has been an ongoing struggle by a number of theatre makers in the years since Katrina; therefore, on that fact alone, the New Noise undertaking is an effort worth tracking and supporting.

The work The Future is a Fancyland Place contained the strengths and weaknesses of both theatrical organizations and suggested something compelling might spring from their thematic concerns and performative methodologies. Ultimately, the piece itself felt like a lyrical End-of -Days Americana with echoes of Waco and Jonestown. However, it is not the work I wish to discuss or review but the evening itself. Despite their hearts being in the absolutely right place, New Noise created an atmosphere that forced viewers into a traditional performer/audience binary and deprived the evening of an air of rigorous examination. In short, they showed too much product and then failed to create a structure where the audience could do little more than act in affirmation of the effort. That being said, the overall project is a noble effort that with continued development and numerous tweaks could be the start of something important.

To begin with, the show’s presentation suggested a final product was within reach. The majority of the evening was off book, possessed strong choices, and felt quite rehearsed both in the moments and in its technical execution. I understand from director Chris Kaminstein’s opening statements that the show has both numerous technical requirements yet to be realized and casting considerations that are, as of now, unfulfilled . However, Fancypants felt dangerously close to a closed system. An object to be judged in its totality. Sharp snaps jerked us out of the real world and into static fueled visions, and performers like Emilie Whelan and Francesca McKenzie engaged in grounded, consistent tactics. Great, right? Here is the problem: that sort of presentation is asking to be judged on its overall weave rather than on the logistical mechanics of the text. To put that in a less fancy pants way, the polish of production had the unintended effect of covering the structural and arc shortcomings of the text itself. I found myself fighting through the presentation to determine whether something was working in the text or if it was just masked by the skill of a performer or directorial vision.

It is a fascinating dilemma. New Orleans’ theatrical companies like Cripple Creek are so used to putting product together quickly that they have honed tactics and shortcuts of presentation that facilitate the covering of multitudinous sins. Short time and long odds are the coin of their realm, therefore they know how to maximize the temporal frame. And I mean that as a compliment. However, one wonders if that methodology has created an environment that does not allow for marination, because that aforementioned maximization is for final product not development. If that is the case, it becomes a matter of making what is there work to the best of its ability rather than discovering a better way.

Choosing to present the entire piece forced the joint company effort into a pass/fail atmosphere. If it looks like a production and is framed as a production, then it is a de facto production. An audience cannot help but see it that way. Asking an audience, no matter how sympathetic, to sit in the dark for two hours is to ask them to pass judgment on product with a certain level of finality. Acting values, consistency of choices, and skill of execution begin to overwhelm the more relevant questions for development. The conversation in such a room shifts from what works into did it work. Furthermore, by not defamiliarizing the process away from standard theatrical presentation, the audience began to root for and become incredibly supportive of the performers in the sort of way one sees fellow actors do for their colleagues on an opening night. After a while, the message becomes confusing, because the creators are not sure if the audience is laughing at the mystical woman in the wheel barrel or the image of Natalie Boyd as a mystical woman in a wheel barrel.

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The Coming Month

June 29, 2011

I am taking a much needed staycation this week. I am moving from my beloved Marigny home of 7 years, and into a lovely three bedroom in The Fabourg St. John. Needless to say, this is taking up a great deal of my time. The break could not have come soon enough, because if I did not take it, I would not get one until October. July alone is going to become ferociously busy. Brother, Into the Woods, Talk Radio, 12th Night, and Porgy are all in the pipe to open this month. Along with that, Cripple Creek and Goat in the Road are teaming up at the CAC, and Le Chat Noir finishes up its stationary farewell tour. On a different note, I have two columns planned for July and August about theatrical literature. The first is ten books every practicing theatre person should own, and the second column is ten entertaining summer reads about the theatrical profession. Finally, a few weeks should give us a bit more clarity in the Le Petit saga. Once we do, along with Nola Defender’s necessary coverage, I hope to be able to offer some final thoughts on a topic that has exhausted many.

See you soon.

Past Work

Exit Le Chat (April 27, 2011)

Women Who Kill, A Review (April 26, 2011)

A Desired Prescription (April 20, 2011)

Orange Flower Water (April 17, 2011)

A Theatrical Desire (April 13, 2011)

Marisol: A Review (April 11, 2011)

Air Born (April 8, 2011)

Parallel Universe (April 4, 2011)

The Wizard of Oz, A Review as Editorial (March 30, 2011)

Identical Crises (March 28, 2011)