{"id":8607,"date":"2020-10-27T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-27T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8607"},"modified":"2020-12-07T09:22:13","modified_gmt":"2020-12-07T14:22:13","slug":"seeing-a-play-twice-the-in-between","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8607","title":{"rendered":"Seeing a Play Twice: The In-Between"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This fall I\u2019m taking a five-week ZOOM course on \u201cHow to Watch a Play,\u201d led by Adam Immerwahr, artistic director of Washington, D.C.\u2019s Theater J. Prior to the first class, everyone watched online a 2018 production of the Tony-award-winning play Red<\/em> by John Logan. I\u2019d seen it a few years ago and didn\u2019t remember it all that well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This London version had Alfred Molina as Mark Rothko (born in 1903; committed suicide in 1970) and Alfred Enoch as his assistant, Ken. In the script, Ken arrives to help Rothko with the task of creating nearly 40 enormous canvases to hang in Manhattan\u2019s then-new Seagram Building. He stretches canvas, he mixes paint. Red paint. The paintings are undeniably red, in varying shades, and it\u2019s a tribute to both artist and playwright that audience members can go from \u201cmy kid could do that\u201d to \u201cI get it\u201d in about 90 minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A filmed play has plusses and minuses. Closeups are an advantage. Actors and directors manage stage elements so that you\u2019re looking in the right place at the right time; with the camera, the decision where to look is made for you. What\u2019s lost is the sense of community a live audience provides. (Adam cited a 2017 study<\/a> that found audience members\u2019 hearts begin to beat in sync.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adam distinguishes between a play and a production. The play is the script. Everything that brings it to life (actors, sets, costumes, lighting, music) is the production. And, when it comes to production, he says, \u201cEverything\u2019s a choice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you see different productions of the same play, those choices become apparent. One version may be immensely enjoyable, another a big disappointment. A few years ago, Princeton\u2019s McCarter Theatre produced an intimate version of My Fair Lady<\/em> with no orchestra, just two pianos. A delightful choice. We\u2019ve seen six or seven productions of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum<\/em>\u2014from Broadway to community theater\u2014and enjoyed each one. Great choices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, the disasters: Romeo and Juliet<\/em> in a tiny theater where the set design included a traditional second-floor balcony and, when Juliet was up there, the audience could see her only from the knees down; a particularly awful Hamlet<\/em> (referred to at our house as \u201cthe nude Hamlet\u201d); and A Christmas Carol<\/em> with Tiny Tim played by an adult. Cue eyeroll. Yet, whatever their choices, a production team doesn\u2019t totally control your reactions. External factors intrude. Say you eat a bad dinner before the show, or an actor reminds you of someone you loathe (or love!), or the set calls to mind your terrifying Aunt Gertrude\u2019s living room. Between my first and second viewing of Red<\/em>, as it happens, I visited Houston and saw the Rothko Chapel, hung all around with his large, dark, ominous paintings. Because of that experience, when Rothko says, \u201cThere is only one thing I fear in life, my friend. . . One day the black will swallow the red,\u201d I took so much more from that line. To me, that\u2019s exactly what happened with Rothko, both literally and metaphorically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This fall I\u2019m taking a five-week ZOOM course on \u201cHow to Watch a Play,\u201d led by Adam Immerwahr, artistic director of Washington, D.C.\u2019s Theater J. Prior to the first class, everyone watched online a 2018 production of the Tony-award-winning play … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Seeing a Play Twice: The In-Between - They say you can't swim in the same river twice. You can't experience a play exactly the same way twice either. You and it change.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[269,265,682,104],"tags":[1760,1759,1761],"class_list":["post-8607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-actor","category-biography","category-fine-arts","category-the-morgue","tag-john-logan","tag-mark-rothko","tag-red"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2eP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8610,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8607\/revisions\/8610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}