Hayzie Thoughts

Last year was my third and final year as a judge for the Helen Hayes Awards, given for excellence in stage artistry in the Washington, DC, region. 

Miss Baltimore Crabs helped
Hairspray win big at the Hayzies.

I had to excuse myself from many of my judging responsibilities in 2011, due to scheduling conflicts, so the winners announced last night at the Warner Theatre were mostly for shows I had not seen.  A few thoughts on the awards ceremony itself:

Twyford and Curry sparkled.

I'll say upfront that the co-hosts Felicia Curry and Holly Twyford were absolutely terrific.  I usually hate the stage banter which award shows insist upon including, but the dialogue between our two hosts, written by Renee Calarco, was refreshingly bright and intelligent. 

The concept of mixing theatrical talent with DC politicos and media personalities as presenters was not a success.  The civilians involved seemed to be trying to pass themselves off as great supporters of DC theatre.  But none of these so-called arts supporters gave any indication that they ever actually attend live theatre. 

Holmes-Norton shmoozed Kevin Spacey.
She should have read about DC theatre instead.

The most egregious example was that of DC Rep. Eleanor Holmes-Norton.  She presented several awards for which Synetic Theatre was nominated.  Each and every time she announced their name, she called them "Synthetic Theatre."  This is a company which, arguably, has gained the most notable national reputation of any homegrown theatre in the past 10 years.  And Holmes-Norton clearly had never heard of them.

Kevin Spacey was hilarious
and sincere.

The show itself was very entertaining, and seemed to move along pretty well, particularly in the hands of Felicia, Holly, and guest honoree Kevin Spacey.  There is a shaky video of Spacey's acceptance speech here, it's worth a look, especially for his final advice.  I've got some advice, too, what are the odds?

A few days ago, critic Nelson Pressley wrote this well-considered article regarding ways to make the awards more representative of the full spectrum of DC theatre.  I agree with him on all points.  In a nutshell, he suggests splitting the awards into two realms, separating the Big Boys with the Big Budgets from the smaller kids with the smaller budgets.  How to make room for a doubling of the awards given?  I have a suggestion I have heard from no one else:  it's time to retire the awards given to "Non-Resident Productions."

I understand the reasoning behind these award categories being created in the first place.  According to the TheatreWashington's website, there were fewer than 10 producing theaters in the DC area 28 years ago, when the Hayzies were created. 

I saw Derek Jacobi's Cyrano in L.A.
A year later, he won the first Hayes
award for Lead Actor
in a Touring Production.

Including "touring productions," as they were called back then, was a smart move.  These touring productions which swept through the area via the Kennedy Center, or the National or Warner Theaters, or occasionally Fords, often had stars with name recognition;  awarding these performers probably garnered attention in the national trade publications which the fledgling Helen Hayes Awards would have been hard pressed to grab on their own. 

Estelle Getty won a Touring
Hayzie for Torch Song Trilogy

A glance at the first awards given in 1985 backs up that suspicion:  the "touring production" awards that first year went to Derek Jacobi in Cyrano de Bergerac, Estelle Getty in Torch Song Trilogy, and the gal who sang "Memory" in Cats.  The Outstanding Touring Production that year was the aforementioned Cyrano, presented by the Kennedy Center but produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

And that's my point.  These non-resident productions are not cast nor directed nor rehearsed nor produced locally, they are merely presented here.  I'm sure we're glad to have them, but do we need to consider these productions for awards which were created to celebrate our local theatre artists?

In the early Hayzie days, non-DC productions were all touring shows, and nowadays, that's not always true. Arena, Studio, The Shakes, and Woolly Mammoth are likely to import outside productions to fill out their seasons, and there is nothing wrong with that. But these productions are presented in our area, rather than produced here, and such shows are no longer vital to the national profile of our region. 

Mike Daisy was up for an award for his Steve Jobs
monologue.

We are only talking about four awards here, but in my opinion, they are no longer pertinent.  None of the three performers who won in the non-resident categories last night were in attendance to claim their awards, and why should we expect them to be?  There may be a bit of starry excitement when Cate Blanchett wins one of our awards, but that flame flares out almost immediately when she, predictably, doesn't show up. 

Cate Blanchett was not expected to travel halfway around the planet to pick up her Helen Hayes Award for Uncle Vanya.

Don't get me wrong, I don't expect any non-resident actor to pay his own way to our ceremony to (possibly) accept an award, such things are just not important enough to the out-of-town actor. 

But why are we honoring out-of-town actors anyway?  Why are we awarding productions which were grown elsewhere, just because they occupy one of our theaters for a month or two?  We certainly don't need the promotional publicity, as our nominees and winners are now routinely published in all the national trades and in the New York Times, too.  Let's retire the four non-resident Helen Hayes Awards, and fully celebrate our local theatrical artistry. And get to the after-party quicker!

Friday Dance Party: Easy To Dance To

Dick Clark

1929-2012

Dick Clark is being called a TV pioneer this week, and I'm not sure I'll go that far.  But I will agree he was a savvy business man with a sharp instinct about what will appeal to Middle America.  When he took his Philadelphia based Bandstand national, he exposed much of the country to their first daily dose of rock and roll (Elvis was Dick's first interview on the national program). 

The show ran every weekday afternoon for years, and then on Saturdays for many more;  from 1956-1989, Clark was its host. 

During this period, his production company assumed ownership of the franchise.  dick clark productions (note the lower case letters) became a prolific factory of programs which would today be classified as part of the reality genre.  Various blooper shows ran for years, as they were dirt cheap to produce, while  Clark created the American Music Awards, and his company produced the Golden Globes and the Daytime Emmys.

I was not a big devotee of American Bandstand, and Dick Clark always seemed a little...um...noncharismatic, though nobody seemed to question his hosting skills. 

I was pleased when he revived the old quiz show, The $10,000 Pyramid, upping the ante to 25 and then 100 grand.  It was an interesting show which moved faster than Password and was easier than Jeopardy.  And the final round was always exciting:

I would suggest that one of Dick Clark's biggest accomplishments is New Year's Rockin' Eve, a foolish title for a good idea. 

Clark was  the first to suspect that there might be an audience watching television at midnight on New Year's Eve who were not enchanted by that crypt keeper Guy Lombardo and his Oompah Orchestra.  At the time, Lombardo's show was the only one hosting the big ball drop in Times Square.  In the early 1970s, Dick produced a series of musical specials which became the annual alternative to Lombardo.  These days, all the networks and many of the cable channels offer their own version of Clark's idea.

Everybody knows Dick Clark died this week, and that he has been suffering the effects of a stroke for some years.  His resume boasts four Emmy Awards plus a Lifetime Achievement, as well as a Peabody, and he can also be blamed for the following Dance Party. 

In 1977, Barry Manilow penned updated lyrics to the existing theme song for American Bandstand, and has been using it in his act ever since.  This clip is apparently from a concert he gave in England during his heyday.

Dark Shadows Off The Wall

Dark Shadows has reentered the public consciousness for a couple of reasons.  Johnny Depp and Tim Burton are attempting a reboot of the camp classic with their upcoming film, re-imagining the Gothic horror tale as a comic fish-out-of-water (with fangs) story. 

I must admit to being a DS geek, but I am not one who reveres the series without reservation;  as such, I look forward to seeing how Depp, who confesses to being obsessed with Barnabas Collins as a child, and Burton, who never made a visually dull movie, update the story for a modern audience.

Dark Shadows is in the news for a second, less celebratory reason this week as well:

Jonathan Frid

1924-2012

DS hit paydirt with the romance
of Barnabas and Josette.

With justification, Jonathan Frid is credited with saving the struggling Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows from cancellation, and even for putting the show into the popular culture.  He had studied as an actor at RADA, and earned the MFA in Directing at Yale, so he can legitimately be called classically trained. 

In Arsenic and Old Lace,
Frid played Jonathan Brewster,a role
written for Boris Karloff.

His first love was always the stage, appearing in the early seasons at The Williamstown Theatre Festival, and after his stint on DS, he starred in the Broadway revival of Arsenic and Old Lace.  It's likely he felt much more confident in the theatre, with its substantial rehearsal period, as he never really conquered the fast pace of the daytime soap opera.  But Frid's insecurities notwithstanding, his performance as the vampire Barnabas Collins was seminal.  His was the first portrayal of a vampire as a reluctant predator, as tortured as his victims.  Anne Rice's vampires, television's Angel, and the Twilight twink must all point to Barnabas Collins as their antecedent.

Dark Shadows was struggling from the date of its first broadcast in 1966.

The cast played rep, portraying characters in the present and the past.

Creator Dan Curtis reports that the idea behind the world's first Gothic soap opera came in a dream, in which a lonely young woman takes a train to a remote, mysterious location. 

Moltke left acting when she became
Claus von Bulow's mistress, as he
was being tried for his wife's murder.

From that dream, Curtis concocted the tale of an orphaned woman travelling to a remote village in Maine, in search of her roots.  Neophyte actress Alexandra Moltke played the young heroine of the show, and for the first several months of the series, her voice intoned in an introductory voice-over, "My name is Victoria Winters."

Nobody cared.  With its brooding music, dark lighting, and hulking sets, the show looked nothing like As The World Turns, or any other traditional soap opera of the day. 

Episode #1 introduced noir fatale Joan Bennett
as Elizabeth Collins Stoddard.

Within the first year, Dan Curtis introduced a supernatural plotline concerning a ghost, and another revolving around a woman with powers over fire.  Nothing clicked, and rumors were rampant that the show was on the way out.  Curtis made a bold choice and steered the show solidly into the realm of the supernatural, and created the character which would save the show, the vampire.

Subtlety was not the show's strong point.

Jonathan Frid was on his way to California to begin a teaching career when he learned he had snagged the part of Barnabas Collins, which he expected to be a short-term gig.  Curtis himself expected the role to last only 6-10 weeks, but the audience reaction to the character skyrocketed, and Frid became the most recognizable daytime star of the period.  He became the central character of the series, a position with which he was never comfortable. 

Dark Shadows is now available on DVD, and I've been watching all 1225 episodes, in order.  (It's taking years, as one can only watch one or two episodes at a time, the pace of the show is glacial.) 

Nancy Barrett as music hall
singer Pansy Faye. She was one
the more versatile of the DS cast.

As much as I loved the show as a kid, and enjoy it as a piece of nostalgia now, I cannot overlook the inconsistent quality of the series.  The show was presented "live-to-tape," which meant that, though the episodes were not shot live per se, the logistics of the show required that the full 30 minute episode be taped without stopping.  There is a frantic, under-rehearsed quality to many of the episodes, and Jonathan Frid's performance is a prime offender.  He was clearly not a quick study, and his insecurity with his lines pops up in almost every episode.  He can be forgiven, as, once his popularity soared, he appeared in almost every episode.

Bennett and Frid struggled for lines.
Her role as Judith Collins was her
best of the time-hopping series.

The rest of the Dark Shadows core cast was inconsistent as well.  The supposed star of the series was Joan Bennett, who had a fairly big career in Hollywood during its Golden Age, with her biggest successes in film noir efforts.  I was always fascinated by Bennett, but on subsequent viewings, I can see that I was attracted by her natural elegance and style (and her authentic New England accent).  But Joan did not possess the sparkle of her more famous sister, Constance Bennett, and on DS, she suffered from the same insecurity with her lines as did Jonathan Frid. 

Hall snagged an Oscar nod for Night of the Iguana,
opposite Deborah Kerr and Ava Gardner.

Others in the Dark Shadows company ran the gamut from excellent to mediocre to downright lousy.  Character actress Grayson Hall, who had an Oscar nomination on her resume, gave a memorable performance as Dr. Julia Hoffman (a role originally written for a man), at least in her early months on the show, when she was an antagonist to our vampire hero. 

Grayson Hall as Dr. Julia Hoffman

Her performance weakened in subsequent years, and Hall was not versatile enough to convincingly play a woman in love.  She ultimately became another major player on the soap, but her work often crossed over into melodrama. 

Every Dracula needs his Renfield. John Karlen's Willie Loomis was a standout. His later career included Tyne Daly's husband on Cagney and Lacey.

David Selby's Quentin was a ghost,
a werewolf, a zombie,
and Dorian Grey.

As with other soaps, Dark Shadows proved a training ground for many younger actors.  David Selby spent more than a year on the show, playing the only other character which could be classified as "break out," the brooding Quentin Collins.  Kate Jackson's first professional job out of college was during the final year of Dark Shadows.  

Kate Jackson's first gig played out during the final months of the series.

McKecknie played Quentin's love during the day,
while hoofing on Broadway at night.

As I've been rewatching the series, I love spotting actors whom I knew were conducting concurrent careers, such as a young Donna McKecknie, who spent many months on the show, during the same period that she was dancing in Promises, Promises and Company on Broadway. 

Virginia Vestoff
as Samantha Collins.

A few years later, Virginia Vestoff played Samantha Collins during the day while starring as Abigail Adams in the smash 1776 at night.    Conrad Janis showed up in a few early episodes, before he moved to L.A. to become a sitcom star, and Jerry Lacy's appearances as the hypocritical Rev. Trask were overshadowed by his more famous persona as an impersonator of Humphrey Bogart in Woody Allen projects.  

Jerry Lacy appeared as Bogie in Woody Allen's Play It Again, Sam, on stage and film.

Child actress Denise Nickerson followed up her time as a DS regular with major roles in Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and The Neon Ceiling.

During the five year run of Dark Shadows, the writers plundered all the classic horror stories.  The very first plotline, that of the young governess arriving at the mysterious mansion, is a blatant ripoff of Rebecca and Turn of the Screw, but the DS writers shamelessly stole from everybody. 

The Tower Room at Collinwood held lots of  secrets and several family psychos.

With the arrival of the vampire, the show began to be peopled with all the supernatural types.  Witches, warlocks, ghosts, werewolves, even zombies made an appearance. 

Forget Elsa Lanchester. Marie Wallace's
Eve, as the show's bride
 of Frankenstein, was one hot mess.

Frankenstein provided a major plotline, as did Jekyll & Hyde and the Picture of Dorian Grey, even the Old Testament provided source material for the show's stories.  The show used science fiction too, as there were several instances of time travel and the theory of a parallel universe. 

Thayer David as Count Petofi. He was
probably the best actor on the series.

Severed body parts were occasional catalysts for stories:  a severed hand (an idea pilfered from Edgar Allen Poe) was at the center of one of the most successful of the show's plotlines, which provided one of the consistently fine players on the show, Thayer David, two significant roles:  the cowardly gypsy Sandor, and the asthmatic Count Petofi.  A disembodied head (Ichabod Crane, anyone?) was one of the final horror icons used before the show folded. 

The 1991 failure of the prime time series allowed
Joe to sign onto 3rd Rock.

The show passed into relative obscurity after its cancellation in 1971, but not before spawning not one but two feature films.  Like the undead creatures who inhabited its canvas, Dark Shadows continues to rise from its grave.  The series was rerun on cable channels for a while, and an attempt  in 1991 to reboot the series as a slickly produced prime time soap failed.  In 2004, a pilot for a new series was shot for the WB, but never aired.  And now we have the comic take on the tale with Tim Burton's film.

At the center of all this mayhem, Jonathan Frid must be remembered for his performance as the reluctant vampire who became the inadvertent hero.  He died at the age of 87 on Friday the 13th of this month.

High, Flying Adored

This made the national news, right?  The oldest and most venerable of the space shuttles, Discovery, was flown today from Florida to its final resting place at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum's Hazy Udvar Center, out by Dulles airport.  This kind of thing does not usually keep much of my attention, but this time, it did.

My father has held a life-long fascination with all things airborne, or at least, all mechanical things airborne. 

Dad circled the globe as head of
Lockheed's commercial L-1011 program

He fast-talked his way into a supervisory position at Lockheed in Atlanta, back in the early 50s, and he spent the rest of his professional life with the company.  Earlier, he had begun training as a pilot, but WWII ended before he ever earned his wings.  But throughout his life, he has had a continuing interest in airplanes and other flighty vehicles.

When my father turned 80, my sisters, stepmother, and I pooled some resources and donated some money to the Hazy Udvar Center, which was trying to remain part of the Smithsonian Institute's array of museums, though it was located 30 or more miles away from the National Mall, where most of the Smithsonians are perched. 

In exchange for certain donations, the museum was erecting a wall which would showcase the engraved names of people who were important in the aerospace industry over the years.  My father can be counted as one of those men, as he spent a lifetime at Lockheed, and headed the company's only commercial airplane division.  We presented Dad with his surprise one Christmas, and about 6 months later, we all gathered at the Hazy Udvar Center to view our father's name, permanently engraved on the wall.

I was thinking of all that today, when the shuttle Discovery was swooping down over the White House, the Capitol, and the other monuments on the national mall. 

I had forgotten the flight was taking place, and was on highway 395, headed across the Potomac into Virginia, when the huge jumbo jet and its backpack loomed ahead of me.  All the drivers slowed, and then stopped, to watch this historic moment.  The plane(s) had dipped to about 1500 feet, which seemed close enough to touch.  It was a serene moment, and I wished Dad had been sitting in my passenger seat to witness it.

Waiver Games, Finale: Acting A Lot, Or Something.

My career working in Waiver Theatre in Los Angeles came to an ignominious end with my final appearance in a Waiver show. Out of the six shows in which I appeared, working under the code, I was most excited to have snagged this one.  While I was performing in The Puritan, a casting call came out for another show from roughly the same period, Machiavelli's Mandragola. Machiavelli, of course, is best remembered for his cynical political treatise The Prince, but he was also a playwright, with Mandragola (often translated into English as The Mandrake) being his most memorable stage piece.

Boy, this production was memorable, but not in a good way.  As I said, I was very excited to have landed in Mandragola, as it was the largest role I was to have in my Waiver career.  Because I earned the part through a cold audition, from total strangers, I was even more full of myself.  The role, Lygurio, was the antagonist of the piece, the villain as it were, and was substantial.  He was really the catalyst of the plot. 

Our director was never without a
hat or cap.

This was a role, I was sure, which could attract some attention, and perhaps shove my career upwards.  I became even more full of myself when the director informed me that, though all the other roles were to be understudied, mine was not.  She simply could not find another actor of my talent to play the role, so she urged me to take my vitamin C and never get sick.

The fact that this show was to have understudies was pretty unusual, as Waiver shows go;  it certainly never happened in any of my five previous experiences under the code. 

This kid understudied our leading man, and was far superior.

Our understudies were guaranteed one show a week during our 4 week run, and they received substantial rehearsal.  I was called, then, to every rehearsal, as I was to play Lygurio with both casts.  Another oddity here was the fact that, with only one exception, the understudy cast was better than the principal cast.  I never quite figured this out;  I could understand the director making a false choice in one instance, but in FIVE?

Well, I knew almost immediately, once rehearsals began, why one of our actors was in the show. 

Steve, our leading man, had the looks but not the chops.
A Google search reveals he now directs soft-core gay porn
for the internet.

Our director was in love with her leading man.  Our leader was a woman named Helen, and she hailed from Long Beach or Redondo Beach or someplace like that.  She ran a group called Eccos Players, which had had some success in her hometown.  With Mandragola, she hoped to introduce herself, and her company, to L.A. proper. 

Helen has always had an ongoing career as a jazz radio DJ.
She also currently runs an amateur Shakespeare group
in Long Beach, CA.

For her company's Big Time Debut, she rented a newly refurbished little jewel of a theatre called the Off-Ramp.  It was so named because it was located right off the Hollywood Freeway, at the base of the Hollywood Hills.  The theatre really was a charmer, with new seats and equipment and tight but comfy dressing rooms above the stage.  Having appeared in a couple of real rat trap theatres in my Waiver career, the Off-Ramp was a real dream.

Stairs from the lobby rose to the dressing rooms. The Off-Ramp Theatre was cozy, well-equipped, and didn't stand a chance against Mandragola. It ceased operations soon after our production.

The rest of the show, sadly, was a nightmare, beginning with the script.  Helen fancied herself an exceptional dramaturg (she wasn't), and she adapted Machiavelli's text by interpolating several different translations and some updated language. 

Our costumes were elaborate by Waiver standards.

The result was a mash-up of various styles which simply did not play.  Helen also fancied herself a strong director (she wasn't), and her staging was dull and uninspired.  I could tell immediately that the comedy in the piece was going to fall resoundingly flat, but being the accommodating actor which I always try to be, I never made waves.  But Helen's biggest problems were in her casting. 

The kid playing the comic servant was the
lone bright spot in an otherwise lousy cast.

As the romantic leading man, she cast her best friend, a tall, blond, good-looking guy who couldn't act his way out of a paper bag.  It was pretty clear that Helen, who was not a physically attractive woman, had a substantial crush on Steve, who was at the time a big ol' closet case.  I had most of my scenes with Steve, who was a very nice guy but had no sense of style or comedic timing, so I became increasingly frustrated.

The Eccos Players premiere production in Hollywood was to be their only production in town, as far as I know, and I think the whole organization folded as a result of the dismal reception Mandragola received.  The Off-Ramp theatre, being newly refurbished, was pretty expensive to rent, and our houses were very small; I have no doubt the producers lost a buttload of money. 

Wayne played the cuckolded
husband. He was the best known
of our cast: he spent years as the
Sparklett's Man.

I came to be thankful for the small houses; the fewer people who saw me in this thing, the better.  My opinion of the show was reinforced by several friends who, bless 'em, came to support my work.  My high school friend Kathy tried to be supportive, but in the end, blurted out that she could not stand the thing.  She wondered why I hadn't dropped out of the show as soon as I saw what a disaster it was going to be.  Well, I had made a commitment to Mandragola, and I have never been, nor will never be, someone who bolts from a project when there is trouble.  It never even occurred to me to quit the show.

When my acting coach and great friend Bobbi attended, all she asked was, "Are you having fun? Because that's all that matters..."  Bless Bobbi, she and I both knew that is NOT all that matters, but she knew that trashing the show while I was still in it was not appropriate nor professional.  I have to admit, though, that I was embarrassed when my friends came to see the show.

This review tore
us to shreds.

Thankfully, we dodged a bullet when the L.A. Times, considered the money review in town, declined to review us, but we did receive a visit from a critic from one of the local trade papers.  His scathing review was so hysterically negative that I kept it.  It's since been laminated and resides on my refrigerator, where it has lived for the past 25 years.  This guy singled out each and every actor for target practice, and hit the bullseye on most of us.  Even if that review weren't on my fridge, I would remember his mention of me:

"R. Scott Williams, as Lygurio, acts a lot, or something."

I laugh and cringe when I think of that production of Mandragola.  It was to be my final appearance on any Waiver stage.  Several years later, I left L.A. for grad school, and was taken out of reach of the Waiver code. 

I was inpired to write this series of entries a couple of weeks before I began work on my most recent project, Taming of the Shrew, which was presented in New York City under the Showcase Code.  The Showcase and the Waiver Codes have some similarities, as they were created by Actors Equity at the provocation of its own members, as a way to allow union actors to appear without payment in productions in New York and Los Angeles.  The obvious purpose is to give actors a cheap way to display their talents to others who might be able to actually hire them.  During my years appearing in Waiver productions in L.A., I never heard of anyone actually being "discovered" in one, though I imagine it must have happened.  Perhaps it happens in NY's Showcase productions, too, but I suspect not very often. 

While I was working in Waiver, I was also appearing in various community theatres, dinner theatres, and the like, so this series of blogs certainly does not cover my entire theatrical output during the 80s.  But I consider the six productions in which I worked under the Waiver code to be important steps in my career and in my life.

America, Hurrah, my first Waiver show,
made an unexpected appearance on Mad Men
this season, when Don was dragged to its
original 60s production by his actress wife.

My first Waiver show was the first time I auditioned in the "real world:" America, Hurrah! happened while I was still in college (that story is here).  Poof! was my first gig after college, and afforded me a great part, a showstopping number, and most importantly, the chance to know one of the finest gentlemen I have ever known (that story is here).  The Time of Your Life was a rocky production in which a group of college buddies clashed with some Hollywood types, that story is here.  I will never regret my decision to do The Hostage, under the direction of my coach, mentor, and great friend  Bobbi Holtzman (that story is here), and I'm quite proud of landing a gig at perhaps the most prestigious Waiver house of the period, in The Puritan at the Globe Playhouse (that story is here).

(You can reach the full six-part series here)
As for Mandragola, well, if anyone ever asked me which of my stage experiences I would consider the most disastrous, it would be at #2.  Maybe one day I'll write about #1.