Of plays and dying industries

A friend of mine paid me a really nice compliment yesterday. She said she enjoyed my stories in recent issues of the Globe. She said “It’s like reading NPR.”

      I consider NPR one of the few remaining bastions of careful language in modern media, so I especially appreciated her comment.

      Although my ‘beat’ doesn’t include the really potentially controversial news, like city or county commissions or even the school board, I have discovered a few things about reporting since I began.

      Because I spent over 30 years in the theater business, directing plays, I’ve noticed some similarities in the process.

      Both directing and reporting involve what might be called organized curiosity.

       A play script gives you little more than the words spoken by the characters. Most serious dramatic scripts are limited to just the words. No description of the setting. No explanation of the action. Not even stage directions indicating the movement of the characters around the stage.

      Scripts for comedies more usually contain notations taken by the stage manager during rehearsals for the first professional production – things like “crossing down left.” These stage directions tell us that, in the original production, the actor moved to a certain part of the stage at this point.

      Although this gives us some idea of the character’s state of mind, it might not work for our production, depending on the set design and the blocking of scenes leading up to this point.

      Some authors include clues for the actors, like who they’re speaking to if it’s a complicated scene or how a particular remark is delivered.

      The scripts for most musicals are even less likely to contain any helpful hints. Often, large sections of music appear in the score with little indication in the script about what’s going on.

      Absent any guidance from the author, the task of the actor and director becomes figuring out what happens ‘between the lines’. This layer of the play, sometimes called subtext, is where the drama lies. But by its very nature as a blank canvas, it offers both the biggest opportunity for creativity and the biggest opportunity for failure.

      I’ve seen casts completely ignore this layer, delivering the words of the script perfectly but not knowing why it’s funny. I’ve also seen casts use this layer to go completely counter to the author’s intentions.

      That’s the attraction and danger of a blank canvas. And that’s where a director’s organized curiosity should lead the actors toward creating an inner life for the characters that makes sense.

      When I think back over the years of performances I watched, I recall moments when the actor and I were able to really understand what was going on in a scene. At those moments, a perfect dramatic gesture or facial expression was able to convey exactly what was going on — it was usually a heart-stopping dramatic effect and when it meshed perfectly with the intention and structure of the text, it was magical — whether it produced a laugh or a tear.

      I experience the same blank canvas feeling when I interview someone for a story. If someone is telling you what it was like to be blown from room to room in your house during a tornado, it’s not just the facts you’re looking for; it’s the insight between the facts.

      Like any blank canvas, the story can go in several directions. "What’s the angle?" we say in the newsroom. I usually realize during the interview that a this story could be told with in number of different ways. I also usually realize that this story could branch out into several other stories as well.

      When I first started directing shows back at Boot Hill, the local audience was smaller and more willing to go on a theatrical adventure with us. As the company grew, the audience got larger, more conservative, and less willing to try something new or different.

      So far, the newspaper audience has shown positive interest in the stories I’ve been assigned. I’m sure that eventually people will begin to complain.

      I’ve decided the only way to avoid that is to keep changing careers. Maybe you can keep that beginner’s luck, new-kid-on-the-block, cub reporter thing going every time you start over.

      Besides, I’ve decided to try my hand in every dying industry I can find. I only wish I had worked at a CD store before they became obsolete.