Saturday, October 29, 2011

Old Theatres

When I got to Newark in the late 1980s, they, like a lot of communities in the country, had a couple of abandoned theatres in the heart of its downtown.

The Midland Theatre opened in 1928 as a hybrid move/vaudeville house.  It was the new kid on the block compared to the venerable Auditorium Theatre which was primarily a live theatre that was later retrofitted to increase capacity and to incorporate motion pictures.

Perhaps not as grand as the movie palaces that sprang up in the country's larger cities, these two spaces were nonetheless intended as centers of their community where people of all classes could come together to enjoy the latest melodrama, or see the big name acts in vaudeville.

The use of the word "palaces" is particularly appropriate because they were intended to impress.  They were the architectural equivalent of shock and awe.

Without the experience of actually setting foot in these spaces, it's hard to imagine that there was a time when theatre owners would compete with each other to see how much could be spent to create spacious lobbies, attractive marquees and richly decorated auditoria.  As audiences we have come to accept the maxim that all that is needed to put on a show is "two boards and a passion".  The spaces where we will go to watch a concert, or a movie, or a play have become less and less.

They are smaller, they are uglier and designed not for the experience of the audience but to maximize the profit of their owners.

I love old theatres in the same way that I love old churches:  their scale and grandeur immediately re-frame the experience of their audiences and change their behavior.

You might be the meanest, toughest, cussingest son of a mother on the street, but when you walk into a church, or grand theatre, you reconsider your behavior.  In the same way that when you walk into some stores you can tell without even looking at a price tag that you can't afford to shop there, the architects and designers of these spaces forced you to slow down, quiet down and look up.  It's a shift in power.


* * *

At the time of its opening in the early 1990s I remember reading about the design of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.  The planners put a lot of thought into how they were going to tell the story of the rise of National Socialism in Germany, the massacre of Jews and other undesirable populations and the resistance to those efforts.

It was an important part of the planning that Museum visitor come away with a visceral understanding of what it was like to live through those times.

Museum designers paid attention to traffic patterns, the relative volume of spaces, the sounds and sights to which visitors would be exposed and used all of these elements, together with their collection of artifacts, to bring the experience to life.


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e7/US_Holocaust_Memorial_Museum_-_Boxcar.jpg/220px-US_Holocaust_Memorial_Museum_-_Boxcar.jpg
 A key moment in the Museum is when visitors come upon a box car--one of many that were used to transport prisoners to concentration camps.  This is one of the few places in the Museum where guest can choose their path.  They can either walk through the car, or walk around it--a recognition that for some, in particular Holocaust survivors, the experience of being in the car would be overwhelming.

* * *

Disney are masters of this kind of audience management.

In their theme parks, they don't wait for you to get on the ride before they start telling you a story.  Whether you are on line for the Haunted Mansion, or Pirates of the Carribbean, the moment you get into line, you are in the world of the story.  Lines snake back and forth from outside to inside and from room to room and as you round each corner, you make new discoveries related to what you are about to see.  The designers are framing your experience and designing your expectations.

After a day of waiting on line for various attractions, the notion of a FastPass alternative--a shortcut to the front of the line--can seem attractive, but I think, to a certain extent, it diminishes the overall experience of the ride.  The Kilamanjaro Safari experience at Disney's Animal Kingdom is a wonderful opportunity to see a variety of exotic animals in something approximating their natural habitat, but there is also a conservation message that permeates the "pre-show" line experience that is diminished if you can just step onto the ride vehicle.  It's kind of like simply pulling a rabbit out of a hat without first going through the step of demonstrating that it was empty.

* * *

Over the years I have been fortunate to have seen a number of the resident shows of Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas.  They too believe that their shows begin the moment their audiences arrive.

A particularly good example of this is with "Ka."  The person taking your ticket is costumed in the style of the show.  Audience members are surrounded in textures and colours consistent with the show.

As the audience walks from the lobby to the auditorium, they pass walls covered in what appear to be rough-hewn timbers from a pre-industrial culture.  Once in the auditorium, the aesthetic is all steel and catwalks, towers and bridges--similar in feel to a petroleum refinery.  And, as if to seal that impression, there are occasional bursts of flame that come up out of "the void" that will become the performance space.

The contrast between the pre-industrial and the industrial mirrors the conflict that is at the heart of the story.

That so much of the story involves characters rising and falling--both in stature and in physical space--the audience is set up for that when, as they are taking their seats, performers descend from the ceiling to within inches of their heads before they just as rapidly disappear from whence they came.

All of this atmosphere is in the service of setting the scene and establishing the reality in which the show's characters will operate.  If you make the mistake of arriving late, you not only miss out on this "appetizer" but the experience of the show is less immersive.  You are more a spectator and less of a collaborator in the show.

Another example of this can be found in "Zumanity."  This show was designed to be more "adult" in its orientation and is evocative of cabaret in Weimar Berlin or pre-WW II Shanghai.

From the point where a cast member takes your ticket the lobby space is designed with curved walls, soft colors and peep holes.  The aesthetic is erotic and not pornographic.  The intent is to tease and to stimulate.

The auditorium features, predictably, a thrust stage and looks a lot like it would be an ideal location to stage a production of "Cabaret."  The soft colors of the decor play against the steel truss work and spiral staircases.  The rigid structures contrast with the flowing lines and feminine curves.  This is not a dime store architectural critique, but again framing for the experience of the audience and in support of the show's performers.

To a very real extent, for the magic to happen, it makes the magician's work easier to have a magical environment.


* * *

I was fortunate enough to be allowed to explore the Auditorium just before it was demolished.

This was a decade after it had finally been abandoned for the last time.  After the last revival attempt had failed, after the last community theatre show had closed.  After it had served as a law library and after they had used its lobby to store materials used in the restoration of the Midland across the street.

The building had been built as a tribute to those who had sacrificed during the Civil War, had survived two world wars and even a fire that claimed its original stone facade only to fall victim to the onslaught of electronic media and to community indifference.

But even in the available light you could still experience the majesty of its design and get a sense of its function as a temple of art.

The unflattering daylight that stabbed through the open doors revealed that its fit and finishes had deteriorated over the years.  The auditorium had been repainted in a series of flat colors that were not only not complimentary to the space but also to one another.

But even in its last days I had a sense of what once had been.

I remember noticing the loading dock door in the upstage right corner.  It had been pushed open in order to keep the teams of explorers from injuring themselves and you could see in silhouette that it was a ten-foot door with a portion cut out to a height of maybe twelve or fourteen feet so that taller pieces of scenery could be accommodated.

In the dressing rooms, you could see where various performers had written their names over the years in an effort to establish some form of permanence in the otherwise transitory life of a performer.

From the unfinished floor of the trap room to the tangle of rope and cable that was evident on the pin rail, the backstage spaces were not glamorous but just enough to meet the needs of whatever show was playing.  Narrow passages, steep stairways and utilitarian rooms, these were the workplaces of the performers and technicians that made the magic that would entertain the audiences.

In Mike Caveney's book on Harry Kellar he includes a list of his tours and where they stopped.  In 1898, Kellar played Newark and, as far as I can tell, he would have had to have played The Auditorium--at least I would like to think that he did--and here I was roaming the same spaces.

In the trap room under the stage, I remember seeing the remnants of what must have been an elevator trap--a way for someone to disappear or reappear in the middle of the stage.  It was exciting to think that it might have been used by the likes of Kellar and his contemporaries.

While this has not directly about conjuring I do think it is important to look at all of the ingredients of a performance and the space is certainly a part of that.

Granted, today's performers have little say over when and where they perform and therefore must create their own space where magic can happen.  Not only must they manage the attention of the audience, but also their expectations.

What can the performer do to take control of the power in the relationship between themselves and the audience?

And now that I have provided some context and created some expectation, I will leave the resolution until our next meeting.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Burden of Secrets

http://roniece.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/secrets.jpg
In the current issue of Magic magazine, there is an interview with Derek DelGuadio.

The magazine's publisher, Stan Allen considers this to be a good "get" for the magazine because DelGuadio, unique among his contemporaries, does not fit into the mold of the modern magician.  He does not promote himself, he does not release a lot of material to the marketplace and he is not angling for a showcase in Las Vegas.

After reading the interview, it is clear that what he does do is care a lot about his art.

If I am reading this correctly, it seems that while most who take up magic traffic in secrets and technology, DelGuadio is most concerned about the experience of his audience.  He wants them to be able to experience a world where magic can happen all around them.
If you see magic in everything, it's frustrating when people don't....  I'm not interested in showing people what a magical world would like if it existed.  I'm interested in revealing a magical world, because it does exist (Lovick, Jack.  "The Kid at the Table," Magic, October, 2011, p. 33).
What is refreshing is that he upends the traditional adversarial relationship between performer and audience.  He does not play "catch me if you can" with the spectators.  In fact, he much prefers telling them the truth and allowing them to believe that he is lying.

And, if you think about, there really is a kind of freedom in telling the truth.

Generations of performers have trained the audience to look for the lie, the moment when truth becomes deception and this puts all kinds of pressure on the performer to mask the "tricky" moment so that it is indistinguishable from a normal moment.  

The last time I checked, Penn & Teller were still doing an effect in their Las Vegas show called the "Red Ball".  This is a solo piece for Teller, based on the work of David Abbott, a prominent amateur inventor and chronicler of magic in the first part of the last century.  Like many of their pieces, the floating ball has an elegant poetry about it that Teller has been perfecting through diligent rehearsal.  The premise is simple--a ball floats, rises and falls at his command--but it lacks the "bad boys of magic" imprimatur on which Penn & Teller have made their reputations for almost forty years.  As you will read in the above-linked article, the floating ball did not really become a Penn & Teller effect until the decided to have Penn introduce the piece by telling the audience how it was done--with a thread.  

What is telling is that for the author of the piece, even after having watched Teller rehearse the effect, listen to him discuss every aspect of its performance and the history of similar effects, he still has some doubt as to whether that is the actual secret.  Much like their approach to the Cups and Balls, even arming the audience with the secret, does not protect them from being fooled.
 we’ve been told about the thread. But there is a caveat: I have to take Penn and Teller’s word that there is a string. I have stood next to Teller as he practiced the trick, looking hard from every angle—even the ones that would normally be rude; watched video of him developing “The Red Ball” at a cabin in Utah on his vacation; talked to him for hours about the 100-year history of floating-ball tricks; and attended a lecture he gave to doctors at Lake Las Vegas, during which he discussed every phase of the trick’s development. But I have never actually seen the thread....  When I watched him practice onstage it was just the two of us after the show and no computers were involved. I saw only ball, hoop, bench and Teller. With Teller, you are literally dealing with one of the best illusionists in the world, and so you accept that believing doesn’t necessarily mean seeing.
In the DelGuadio interview, writer Lovick makes the following comment that is I think very important when thinking about magic.
If you show them something impossible, they have two choices.  They either have the reaction:  There is a secret, I don't know it, you're not going to tell me, drop dead.  Or they go with it--on either a suspension of disbelief level or actually accepting it as magic. 
Dariel Fitzkee, author of Magic by Misdirection, an important theoretical work on this most important of magical principles, wrote the following:
In true deception, deception is not skill of the hands. It is skill of the mind. The important thing—I mean the supremely important thing—is not the control of your hands. It is not the control of your apparatus.... It is control of the spectator’s mind.
Penn tells the audience that the trick is done with a thread and then, through the artistry of his performance, Teller spends the rest of the piece disproving the possibility that a thread could be the secret.  In full knowledge that each and every member of the audience has a lifetime's worth of experience of the Law of Gravity, he convinces them that, for a few brief minutes, he has managed to carve out a small lawless part of the world where gravity might not apply.

What was inspiring about the DelGuadio interview was his perspective on the currency of secrets that has for so long defined magic and magicians. 

He states toward the end of the interview that he does not keep secrets because they give the magician his power, but rather that
I keep secrets so they (the audience) don't have to.  I carry a burden of secrets that literally destroys my ability to see the world in a magical way....   
...a secret kept just to be a secret is only good to help boost the ego.  Secrets are supposed to be put to good use.  That's why we value them, for the mystery they are capable of creating....   
...if you put the proper attention on everything else, the secrets will be put into the proper perspective....  People won't even care to ask how you do it, because they won't think your job is about secrets....  I think the magicians who get asked "How did you do that?" are the ones whose tricks have no content.  There is nothing else to examine, think about, respond to.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

It's a Character Choice

http://www.21ace.com/
It seems that everywhere I look these days there's another program about comedians interviewing other comedians.

Paul Provenza, co-director of The Aristocrats, a great film about free speech and the dirtiest joke that comedians tell one another, has a show on Showtime.  Aisha Tyler, stand-up, actress and one-time host of Talk Soup on E! has her own podcast where she interviews comedians and other members of the "Nerdverse."  On About.com there is a posting listing the top 10 podcasts of comedians interviewing comedians.

The program getting the most attention from the mainstream media is Marc Maron's WTF.  What began as a guerilla project while he was still working for the now-defunct Air America has evolved into the New York Times of comedians talking to comedians.

At just over 200 shows, Maron has interviewed top names like Robin Williams and Gary Shandling, to comedy giants like Jonathan Winters and current favorites like the "Queen of Mean" Lisa Lampanelli.

Perhaps it is the setting for the interviews, Maron's make-shift garge/studio at the enigmatically named Cat Ranch, but these interviews are compelling because the subjects are not relentlessly pre-interviewed and the questions are not shaped to set-up the guest's A-material.  They talk about the life behind the jokes and, because both parties are "in the business," there is an honesty that you just don't hear.

I bring all this up because I recently listened to Maron's interview with Andrew "Dice" Clay who was the "bad boy" of comedy a little more than a decade ago.

I was never a fan of his comedy and his "new" nursery rhymes, but in the interview he talks about how he created the "Diceman" character.  He looked at the comedians who were successful at the time he was coming up and he made a conscious choice to go in a different direction.  Where most comedians of the time--well, any time, really--draw their material from their insecurities, Clay built his comedy persona on the premise of being the most confident man in the room.  And once he had made that choice--"committed to it" as we used to say in the theatre--his act grew organically from that initial decision.

Condensed into a paragraph, the choices that led to him being the most successful comedian of the decade seem self-evident and facile, even somewhat clinical.  Like any new business venture, he surveyed the market and identified a niche, or character, that was unique.  The revelation is remarkable because it seems so out of synch with the persona he created.

Earlier in the interview, Clay discloses that he began performing as a John Travolta impersonator.  This was at the time of "Welcome Back Kotter" and Travolta's Vinnie Barbarino was the show's stand-out character.  I just have a hard time imagining Barbarino with an MBA and yet that is, in essence how the world got Andrew "Dice" Clay.

It is in separating the actor from his character, the comedian from his persona, that we see the effect of conscious choice.

You come across interviews with actors all the time who talk about how their characters can do things that they themselves could never do.  The example that comes to mind right away is perhaps not the most persuasive, but I remember at the time Raiders of the Lost Ark came out, a big deal was made out of the character's fear of snakes.  Turns out that Harrison Ford is not afraid of snakes and yet there were a number of interviews where he was asked about this.

The other story that comes to mind is from the Dustin Hoffman movie "Marathon Man".  True, or not, it speaks to conscious choices designed to create a specific effect in the minds of the audience.

Sound familiar?

Elsewhere in this blog I have written about choosing material that is appropriate for the performer.  It is perhaps more accurate to say that the material should be appropriate for the performer's onstage persona.

Where does that persona come from?

Without the advantage of a screenwriter to create the character, the magician has to piece together his own.  

Who are the magicians that inspire?

In the 1950s, one of the biggest names in magic was Channing Pollock.  He created a night club act that has inspired magicians for generations.  His suave presentation of his signature dove routine defined what magicians were.



Johnny Thompson was one of those inspired by the Pollock act.  He recognized that he could not compete with Pollock and so he took his act in a different direction.



Lance Burton's onstage persona was more polished than Thompson and he was able to create an award-winning act that was evocative of Pollock and yet totally his own.



Watching these videos provides another insight into Robert-Houdin's maxim about the magician being an actor playing the part of the magician. Not only does the performer have to be savvy enough to understand what the public is buying, but they must also be sufficiently self-aware to know how to find that character within themselves.

I can only draw on my limited experience doing stand-up and the rankest of amateur levels.  

When I would participate in open-mic nights it was the same crowd of wanna-bees that would swarm from one club to another in order to get as much stage time as possible.  Because the faces were the same from one week to the next, we had an opportunity to watch performers evolve their comedy personae:  there was the dumb-joke guy--I wear condoms on my ears so I won't get the hearing aids; the guy who was inspired by Richard Pryor--this is my impression of James Brown taking a dump;  and several who would jockey for the title of the most outrageous.  They seemed to pride themselves on coming up with material that would not be suitable to share around the workplace watercooler.

I was inspired by the thinking comics and so I tried to come up with material that was topical.  Against a backdrop of fart jokes and drug humor, I tried observational humor and from the headlines type stuff.  Needless to say, by trying to swim upstream, I was not doing myself any favors.  I was not making myself accessible to the audience.

One night, I remember trying a joke about Maxwell House coffee and I knew it wasn't working.  For some reason, I thought I would overdrive the punchline with some profanity and not only did it not help the joke, I was immediately uncomfortable for having done it and I never did it again.  

I was uncomfortable because using that kind of language, while it was common for the environment of the club, was not authentic to who I was.  I did not have it in me to act the part of a profane comedian.  To refine my persona, I needed to keep looking for authentic parts of me that I could amplify for the stage.

The role of the magician is a character like Romeo or Indiana Jones.  To play that part, the performer, the "actor" doesn't have to have had the same experiences as the character, but they do have to be able to find analogs in his own experience that enable them to bring a "truthiness" to the performance.

The choice of character continues to evolve over time right along with the magic.  Continuous refinement is inevitable in the performance arts and as the character becomes "truthier" then it becomes clear when the magic fits and when it doesn't.

As a magician, I never really found my character.  I would be drawn to material that I was convinced I could get away with and never paid much attention to how the right character choices could have made my lack of any discernible skill less apparent.

By way of illustration, I refer you to the work of Rene Levand.  Sen. Levand is from Argentina who specializes in close-up magic.  At the age of 9, he lost his hand in a car accident and was forced to develop his own approach to magic.  In his signature effect, "It Can't Be Done Any Slower" you see a marriage of material and perfomer where the strengths of each support the other.



Perhaps the best example of the synergy between character and material is found in the performances of Lennart Green. In this 2005 performance at the TED conference, Mr. Green disguises world-class technical skill behind the persona of an absent-minded professorial type. As a result, his material is always surprising to himself and to the audience.