Women in Theatre: Anne Bogart, Director

she set South Pacific in a hospital for emotionally disturbed War veterans her streetcar named desire had eight Stanley's and a dozen Blanche's she considers herself the child of Gertrude Stein and Berthold Brecht how does she stay alive in the American theater welcome to women in theater I'm Linda whiner theater critic of Newsday and our guest today is a an Bogart one of America's leading modern directors and teachers a fearless and funny artist who says if the act of fighting back is an act of winning then making theater in this country is also an act of winning how important was it for you to start your own company well you know I didn't know that I wanted to start my own company until I was in a conversation with Arianna Mishkin who probably does not remember this she's a artistic director of the as you know the tattoo distillery in Paris I was literally it was in Berlin I was on my knees it was in a living room of a huge mansion Durrani's in the Von's a she was sitting in a chair next to a fireplace it was a party for her company and it took me 20 minutes to get the courage to walk in she had been a great influence on me and a great inspiration a model of a person a woman whose generation older than I am intelligent and her work moved me deeply and I did find myself because there was no other chair on my knees speaking French with her and I didn't know the reason it took me so long to walk into the rooms because I didn't know what I wanted to ask her I'd known I journeyed all this way and there I was and here was this opportunity which as I say she probably doesn't remember but I I asked her with my I'm sure a very red face I I didn't know what the question was she was very nice and she asked me questions asked what I did I said I was a director and she I finally said what about this company thing and she looked at me rather sternly and said what what are you going to do without a company I mean don't get me wrong it's a pain people are always leaving it's always a problem but what are you going to do and I had an epiphany in that moment and an epiphany doesn't is not a thought it happens in less time than a thought and I realized that all the great productions that I'd ever seen with no exception in theater or dance we're done by companies and it was completely clear that what I needed was a company now how do you get a company I believe that the way you make things happen is you describe them you find words for them so whenever I was doing an interview or talking to somebody and somebody would say what do you want I'd say a company and the first company I got actually didn't work out it was the Trinity Repertory company I inherited somebody else's gas so very different I was yeah yeah you had less than a year a Trinity rep and that seemed to me to be the impetus for starting your own because there you were inheriting someone else's company and bored and second generation regional theater that has that so many of the theaters now are are struggling with the board and the initial vision so you just like took your vision and said I'll do my own right I did and but it's a little more complicated than that because that company of actors who had and many of them had been there for a long time were older than I was at the time had been the initial reason I went into the theater because I was a school kid in Rhode Island and was bused in as part of their what they call project Discovery Program and was completely blown away inspired and galvanized by a production of the Scottish play that they did for school kids and it was Adrian hall and it was a kabuki Macbeth I can say Macbeth guess what are they you know nothing's going to come down on me yeah so it but it was in kabuki style it was not it wasn't in kabuki style no nice try but it was not in kabuki style it was I hate that go ahead I hate doing research that's wrong go ahead well actually I mean what is kabuki we could say it is it was exist it was very extreme I mean actually the first theater experience I ever had was a kabuki performance and and that's when I was about six and living in Japan and I hid behind my mother's skirts I was so terrified but that terror is what made me want to also engage in this thing called the theater which I didn't have a name for at that point but when I was 15 I saw this production directed by a Adrian Hall that I didn't understand I didn't understand the language I was brought up in the Navy so I didn't understand Shakespeare and it was designed by Eugene Lee who had the the which is coming out of the ceiling and and people were running 360 degrees around us I didn't understand the language and it was the first lesson I ever learned and it was directly from Adrian Hall the director then from him to me although I didn't meet him till 20 years later or whatever it was 15 years later and the lesson was never talk down to your audience in other words he could have done any kind of kids flock for the children of Rhode Island he didn't he spoke from his own complex soul his company's sense of what the theater is and we had to meet it and we had to take everything that who we were at that point in our young lives and meet this thing that was not easily digestible and I've never been able to find a lesson more profound to make something that is is not challenging makes no sense to me in the theater it has to challenge me and should challenge all of us and anyway but the point being is when I inherited that theater I inherited a company of actors who had been the impetus for my own going into the theater and what I learned is that you cannot start a company with actors who already been in another company in other words you can't inherit somebody else's company and it was one glorious and horrible year at Trinity and I was you could call it fire to resign it depend this a long story but but I I left that experience still with the conviction that a company is necessary that was 89 90 yes and you started CT is that how you pronounce it it's thank you for asking city company City yes we're Americans we say city we don't say CT oh good yeah it's the city company it's the city company as ITI yes which means well it was started and it's now you know it's 13 years old going on 14 it was started as a summer initiative and we would be in Japan with Tadashi Suzuki's company and then go to Saratoga Springs so it has the very pretentious title of the Saratoga international theater Institute but the fact is we are only in Saratoga every June we all live in New York so the word Saratoga makes no sense an institute no we're a company so it's the city company it quickly became the city company cuz every year round company yeah but people always want to know what what does that stand for so yeah now you know yeah yeah it's off-putting no yeah now that it's City it's better for me but I'm going CET i man um and you've done 7080 productions I guess yes yeah yes and you now have a home yes we have a beautiful studio in Midtown as part of the art New York family mm-hmm and you know it's something I've always dreamt I was having a studio to walk into and make work anytime and where the actors in the company can feel at home so there's offices and conference room and studio with a sprung wood floor which is very important for our work because it's so dance its ribbon it's just very physical yeah you know none of us are getting younger and the knees go and the joints go you know what happens so you have to be careful so one of your productions death and the ploughman is as we're taping playing at CSC rep and I saw these if you have taken a play a medieval play from 1401 good yes and that's never been done here all right and and reduce it to three characters three people death The Plough man and the wife who you just lost and I looked at those people and it's only 85 minutes long but it is absolutely exhausting and I think how do you get actors willing to jump off a cliff for you yeah I that's um I actually take what you say very seriously because I think the biggest compliment I ever received was from a Tina Shepard who used to work with Joe Chaiken in the open theatre and I've done a couple of shows with her and she said she said you know and you and Joe are the only directors where if I just cross this I start sweating I just it's I don't know and I take that as a huge compliment that but for the issue for me is that the creativity belongs to the actor and although I'm often labeled as you know that I have some signature or visionary or what-have-you it's the actors who actually feel they'll jump off a cliff because they're being asked of something now actors in this culture usually feel like they're are told what to do and that their job is to do what the director wants I think that what I want has nothing to do with the play usually and it's usually kind of perverse and has really nothing to do with what we're doing the question is what does the play want so what I try to do in in rehearsal is to to to make the active culture what is happening on the stage I don't actually tell people what to do I ask questions that make them sweat or make them feel like they're jumping off a cliff this particular production death and the ploughman I have to say to be honest I couldn't have directed this play two years ago those three actors could probably not have done it three years ago that it's our working together for 13 going on for three years who asked that that have that has allowed us to get to a place where not only the physical rigor of it but their trust in me and my belief that they could actually pull something off because what they're doing is very very difficult and it has it's much more complex than it looks it's actually has a secret cause inside of it that's a very difficult physical structure and vocal structure that they need to achieve eight times a week I don't think there are very many actors who could do it and I am amazed and deeply in love with what they've accomplished I could see why yeah now you believe that Americans are faking about liking literary things that you really think that we are physical and aural people I do yeah can you talk I am method talking about method sounds boring but it's so not boring when I'm reading about what you're doing with viewpoints can you talk a little bit about that well the viewpoints is actually not something that I originated and and it's it's an issue you know there's a lot of issues of ownership and original ideas that our culture is tussling with right now and I have to start start out by saying that I did not invent these I'm actually not an inventor I'm a scavenger I look around and I say well that's a good idea or that I not take them put them together if I have a talent it's using other people's ideas merry overly and this will I think help explain what the viewpoints are came out of what we know is the the Judson Church era she was actually at the tail end of it when a group of people dancers mostly and exchangers in the 60s got together and essentially dissed where they came from they dissed Balanchine they even dissed they're almost contemporary Merce Cunningham and said no to this note of a no to everything yet so what is performance or dance and out of that impulse came a reorganizing of ways of thinking about performing and in fiction or story and if you strip everything away what is it when is it dance now Mary overly is the choreographer who came along at the tail end of that and I came a little after her and she essentially clinically and but also imaginatively looked at the at the act of performance and broke it into its components and the components fall under two rubrics one is time and the other space now under the very dancer thing absolutely and she's she comes from a dance background now under time and space she broke it down into smaller components I met her in 1979 we were both teaching it and Yui taught much too early but and we co-directed a show together and work together and she showed me her work and I was knocked out by it because when I moved to New York I was more excited by the dance world and this was in 1974 I moved to New York I was more excited by what was happening in the dance world and a lot of theater with the exception of that of say the open theater the performance they say all those people but but in terms of most theater that you saw it was it was not interesting to me but the dance world seemed fantastic and so when when I was introduced to Mary's ideas I took them and to her simultaneous chagrin and dismay we put them back together in a different way and we've had conversations well she say and there are six viewpoints and I said well I'm using nine and there's the vocal viewpoints in this physical viewpoints and now what happened is is that actors you say talk about actors jumping off cliffs actors basically want to be asked of they want to jump off cliffs and in most circumstances they are just told what to do so there's been a huge seismic shift in the theatre world and a great interest and excitement about the viewpoints because essentially that's what it does it says you have time and space and these subsets which are spatial relationship tempo duration architecture and on and on use them and make something now so with the viewpoints you get to practice creating fiction in time and space on a daily basis it's like it's a training and do you know how do you notate I don't okay um I it with the city city company what we do is we do fifteen minute before any rehearsal or performance we do together 15 minutes of Suzuki training and 15 minutes of and viewpoints improvisation and it's essentially a way of staying loose with each other of practicing in rehearsal notation is as any stage manager would notate because we don't improvise and then set something the agent essentially work very traditionally we take go from the beginning we set very carefully it's so very very specific just looking at it that it made me wonder how does this exist in a script that it was much more like dance notation well that likes your notation it's like here which is which is a baroque statement I would say and and I would say our stage manager Elizabeth Moreau keeps notes that are pretty as dense is that page you have on which is impressive because it's very very very detailed but a lot of people think Oh viewpoints you just improvise and then there's a show no no way no were you ever interested in psychological realism I still am okay and actually I think that the best actors have trained in psychological realism first and then they come to more extended forms in other words if a young actor comes in just as sort of physical training and has no basis in are no knowledge of how to break down a script and look at a character there's a big missing piece so I think the best actors have it have a strong background in psychological realism and from that can move from description into expression description is what you do on film and television expression is what the theater does best which is a different frustrating must be to be working on this kind of theater and still see that most of what this culture considers theater is linear and method acting and do you feel like you're in a parallel universe or do you was it easy or do you think for people in the 60s than it is now I do sometimes feel in a parallel universe I just think that the theater could be much stronger if it made greater demands on itself and what I see is too fast compromising on what's on stage I don't and I do have a problem with the method and I think the misunderstanding of the Stanislavski system has essentially destroyed the American theater I think that the that the notion when an actor says if I feel it they'll feel it that is the center of the problem it is not true that an audience feels the same thing as an actor and that misunderstanding which is basically brought about by this exercise called affective memory where you think about your dog dying I know this is far too general what I'm saying but just for the sake of this conversation I get the feeling of what I feel like when my dog died and then I speak creates a sense of solipsistic utt off 'no sand a weakness the other thing is in the tradition of american rehearsals where you say well maybe 20 minutes into the rehearsal I might start getting the juice I love what Ariane machine does in her work where she says no you know you have to walk on stage and the first step must be give us so much information about your character you're where you're coming from where you're going your second step needs to tell us more and the third step on the stage it needs to tell us more than that what that asks is that rate of the actor how that raises the bar is huge so I believe from the depths of my soul that a good actor good what does that mean an actor who is expressive and has a balance of feed-forward and feedback that they have a sensation and they also are putting out wants to be asked to jump off of cliffs did you did you act did you want to be an actor I never have no I mean in college I had to study it as directed UNESCO in high school yes you've done your reason what kind of child is this uh you know I grew up in a Navy family and we moved every year so you know it's a classic thing anybody who is brought up in the military or what we call dip kids diplomatic kids or mich kids which are Michigan missionary kids we all have the same problem you get to the age of 18 you wonder why you can't have a deep emotional relationship with anybody the reason is is because every year or two your parents come to you and they say we're moving so all the people that you love and you cared for you and we'll never see them again you go to an entirely new state or country you go to a brand-new school what I found and at 18 I did deal with that I can now have deep emotional relationships but you do have to deal with it at some point or not but I found that in all the schools there was always this pocket somewhere this place where people were putting on plays and in that place you could have an intense experience where something beautiful would happen and you usually fall in love which is a big part of the deal and then it was over and that was a repetition of something I could believe I could in a short amount of time create create intensity in my life and love and and beauty and these were the things I felt somewhere my soul I was longing for so but I never wanted to act I always wanted to pull the curtains up or set the lighting or help you know get props during classes and you've been we have so little time left so I just you have been unafraid of saying things such about women that there's a the purest perhaps the purest form of female art is nonlinear and cyclical you know is there a female art I actually believe it's a huge question right there as we know there is no female and male there is there is gradations in between but to be really simplistic I think that feminist art is at its heart subversive in other words whatever it port forward it also puts forward its opposition which is why I like Brecht practice probably a feminist it that doesn't mean that only women do this but the effeminacy aesthetic for example is not popular is not a popular in the commercial world because it is subversive it is it can be highly satisfying and very exciting but but it there are differences between linear where you get to Z because you've gone through ABC in in in I will say the word feminist but I and I don't mind Elaine and also in and on it yeah I'm just not sure what I'm about to say is is is a quality of feminist art but in this nonlinear form every a B C contains the entire alphabet so you don't actually have to it's it's an anti rest' Italian notion you're not getting to a catharsis down here that the catharsis is contained in the microcosm of each moment yeah so it's a difference of biological thing I don't know I wish I could answer that so do I so do I know you directed Baltimore walls I in 1992 absolutely wonderful play by a by Paula Vogel and which was um relatively compared to some of your other work relatively straightforward that play straightforward oh I mean it's it's a woman whose brother is dying and in her fantasy she goes to all these countries in Europe and yet at the same time never leaves the hospital room that's not very that's it extremely a has all the alphabets yeah of the alphabet and I find that no not at all linear not linear but but less experimental at least in terms of we no way you approached it the direction was less experimental this is this is something that bothers me is that in New York City I usually do plays that are more as you say experimental I spend a great most of my year and a lot of my work is not done in New York it's done in regional theaters and also in performing arts venues and in festivals a lot of my work is with the classics and with opera and I wouldn't necessarily say that those are experimental either so I I'm I'm stylized I I hate that word okay I take it back no no and I appreciate you actually putting the word out for me to respond to because a style assumes effect what I'm trying to do is to find a very unique way into each play and the Baltimore Waltz asked for a very particular expressive form death and the ploughman written in 1401 is actually very complicated but if you look at the play it's full of numerology it's very complex in its thinking so I resist the word style because I think it's something mine fine you once said you weren't sure that you could that you can teach directing and yet you are on the faculty at Columbia teaching directing and I teach a criticism course there and I'm always asking myself can you teach criticism yeah so you what you can at least help people understand what what we think we're doing can you okay what I do is I give the pressure to put out each director is a graduate program each director and I take six directors a year believe it or not does two fully staged productions a week in their first year not long their half-hour long or under but fully staged off-book costume designed a week and at the end of two weeks these directors many of them have been out of school for a while and come back they don't know who they are they all are Trix they've used already after two weeks they have to keep working I do this because the way I learned directing was by having to do it really fast and we live in a culture of fast and to find the deep connection to intuition under pressure so that when they start in their second year doing they have a whole semester to do a project they are working in a more muscular way they aren't being lazy they're they're they're questioning in a deeper way so I insist that they do this work and then I can criticize it so they show and then they get deep criticism so we have a culture of fast also notice I'm so sorry I've got a thousand more questions for you and bulgar thank you so much for being here and thank you for being here on behalf of the League of professional theater women I'm Linda whiner and this has been women in theater you

Channel: CUNY TV

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Keywords: CUNY TV, Women in the Theatre, Linda Winer, Anne Bogart, SITI Company, director

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Length: 27min 9sec (1629 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 08 2011