I'll make this review short: if you care about piano in general and the greatest piano players of the twentieth century, you must buy this documentary by Bruno Monsaingeon about piano great Sviatoslav Richter (who would have turned 100 this year), first published in France as "Richter l'Insoumis". The 2-DVD set (totaling 2 1/2 hours) is remarkable on all counts. Not only is Sviatoslav Richter one of the towering figures of classical piano of the twentieth century, but he has a compelling personal story and the movie alternates between interview segments and archival footage of Richter displaying the most stunning, jaw-dropping mastery at the piano that I have ever witnessed. The movie will make you care about Richter the man, admire Richter the pianist, and go straight to your favorite music store (online or not) to purchase his recordings. The word "genius" is overused these days, but Richter is one of the few who clearly deserves it.
Below is a preview of the documentary. You'll be happy to know that the DVD does subtitle all dialogue not in English (mostly Russian and a bit of French). The segment below is mostly about Richter, who was self-taught, auditioning for a spot at the Moscow Conservatory. At the far right of the screen shot below with his chin in his palm, you can see Richter's future professor, amazed by the 19-year-old genius at the piano (Richter), amidst a crowd of very impressed students. For a quick overview of Richter's career, you can read his 1997 obituary in the New York Timeshere.
Here is another DVD I like, also from PBS (in their American Experience series): the documentary about Nobel-Prize winner and Pulitzer-Prize winner American playwright Eugene O'Neill, who died 62 years ago today in Boston. What is most remarkable about O'Neill is that he won three of his four Pulitzer Prizes (the fourth one was posthumous) and his Nobel Prize before writing the plays that have ensured his legacy and continued presence today in the Pantheon of best twentieth-century playwrights, up there with Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams.
O'Neill had a complicated family that he depicts with harrowing precision in his best play A Long Day's Journey Into Night, which he didn't even want produced after his death and which led to his fourth Pulitzer Prize after his third wife and executrix Carlotta disobeyed him. One can argue that most creative types who successfully contribute to the world feel like outsiders in some way but O'Neill brings it up a notch. While his family wasn't abusive, it was clearly dysfunctional: one elder brother died as a baby when the oldest boy went into his room when he was sick with the measles, to the mother's never-ending grief (and her overt belief the oldest boy had done it on purpose, pushing the boy into alcoholism and a failed life), his father's regret that he could have been a great Shakespearean actor if he hadn't stumbled upon the "cash cow" of The Count of Monte-Cristo, a perennial audience favorite that kept him stuck in a money-making acting job that he came to despise, his mother's addiction to morphine after Eugene's birth and the family's inability to deal with it, including her own inability at taking responsibility for it.
In the play, the mother (Mary Tyrone) clearly loves her youngest child, now a young man she refuses to admit has been stricken with tuberculosis while the father, a cheapskates, plans to send him to a cheap sanatorium, to the older brother's outrage. In terms of dysfunction this reminds me very much of my own family although the story line isn't quite the same and the fact that I feel right at home with the Tyrones is probably the main reason why I am so looking forward to seeing the revival of the play with Jessica Lange in the role of the mother this spring at the American Airlines Theater thanks to Roundabout. You can also watch a taped performance of a remarkable, award-winning production at the Apollo Theater in London in 2012 thanks to Digital Theatre (see my post here).
Back to O'Neill. He clearly had his own demons (who wouldn't after being raised in a family like that - he even attempted suicide in 1912 at the boarding house and saloon that would later provide the backdrop for The Iceman Cometh) and at times displayed less-than-honorable behavior, for instance when he abandoned his wife and children and ran off with Carlotta to Europe. (For another example of less-than-savory genius, check out my post on Jerome Robbins, although O'Neill strikes a more sympathetic figure than Robbins, perhaps because of what he endured as a child and also because he could - and did - lose himself in the depths of writing thanks to Carlotta busy creating a home for him. Robbins could be very mean with dancers. But his job as a choreographer was very different from O'Neill's in the amount of interactions it involved with people charged with bringing his vision to reality. O'Neill lived in the realm of words instead.
In the end one can only be glad that he found someone like Carlotta to allow him to create his masterpieces and give him a bit of peace. It is a pity he didn't get to see what amazing impact his best-known play had on theatergoers at the premiere. You can read Brooks Atkinson's review at that 1956 premiere in the New York Timeshere.
I wish there was a 2-min trailer I could embed but it seems that YouTube mostly has pirated versions of the documentary posted by people who think it is ok to deprive a public institution from much-needed revenue. If you are interested in the movie, please buy the DVD, for instance on Amazon.com. The glimpse into O'Neill's pains, trials and ultimate professional triumph brings an important behind-the-scenes look into what it took for him to become a master.
This is going to be a short post on the American Masters DVD "Something to Dance About" - a documentary about choreographer Jerome Robbins's life based on the biography by Amanda Vaill. I'd watched it some time ago and when I decided to watch it again, realized it was even more gripping than I remembered.
Quite incredibly, I'd forgotten that Robbins had testified in front of the HUAC committee until I watched again the interview of Madeline Lee Giffords, who was specifically named by Robbins in his testimony. (Robbins was reluctant to testify but worried that his homosexuality would be revealed if he didn't do it and finally caved in.) And of course when I saw Lee Giffords on video in her bright red dress, full of dignity, with tears in her eyes when she recounts those harrowing years of the early 1950s, I remembered being stunned the first time I saw the video. I also remembered her red dress and her teary-eyed poise when she said she'd been told that Robbins was dogged by his testimony for the rest of his life, and naturally she hoped he was, because after he named them the Giffords didn't receive a single phone call for three months, so intense was their friends' fear of HUAC. And the pain in her eyes was so obvious, fifty years later. Lee Giffords passed away in 2008, ten years after Robbins and eighteen years after her husband, whom Robbins also named in his testimony.
The fact that Robbins named names so that he could continue to share his talent with the world is tragic, although I'm not sure if it continues to taint his reputation today. People don't really mention that about him anymore when one of his choreographies is being revived, now that he has been dead for seventeen years. We all wish we wouldn't throw others to the lions to save ourselves in situations like those. But the risk for Robbins of losing his ability to share his enormous talent with the world (as was the case for Elia Kazan, another great artist who named names) is what led him to testify. Perhaps people not as burning with an urge to share their talent with the world can more easily take the decision not to testify, in spite of the risk of the blacklist.
Zero Mostel, made famous in Fiddler on the Roof, who would have been 100 this years but passed away of an aneurysm in 1977, was a close friend of the Giffords and resented Robbins for his HUAC testimony. But even before HUAC, it seems that Robbins had complicated relationships with the people who worked with him or for him. Put another way, he could be really mean with his dancers to get the best out of them (the documentary has concrete, specific examples of his meanness), and in that respect he reminded me of Steve Jobs as described in the biography by Walter Isaacson. It seems that genius can go together with utter meanness and selfishness. Yet, there is no doubt that Robbins was indeed a Genius with a capital G - the greatest American-born choreographer of the 20th century, to whom we owe epoch-making movies such as West Side Story and musicals like Gypsy and the wonderful ballet Fancy Free.
I particularly enjoyed seeing how dedicated Robbins was to his art and how committed to excellence he remained throughout his career. His philosophy was (I paraphrase) that talent was pointless if one didn't work tirelessly to bring that gift forward. Robbins was a complex and flawed character, and perhaps not a role model; yet, this message is as timely today as it was at the height of Robbins's fame.
Below is an excerpt of the documentary, including a few moments of Fancy Free:
I was fortunate to attend the Red Carpet Dinner and Screendance Festival at DeSales University last weekend. The Screendance Festival is a festival where students are given 48 hours to make short movies involving dance using a prop given to them at the beginning of the weekend. The prop this year was that day's Morning Call (the local newspaper). They stage, choreograph, film and edit everything. Then after the screening the judge offers comments on what she liked, makes suggestions to help the students hone their skills and gives awards. I saw all seven short movies in competition and wrote below the information I have on them, as well as the award they got. My favorite movie received the Best Film Award, which made me very happy. Most teams incorporated the prop by ripping the newspaper into shreds or posting part of it on a bulletin board, except for the winner of the Best Film Award, who made a remarkable and visually stunning use of the prop and incorporated a reference to it in its title (see more below... yes, it is Tabloid.). Every movie was remarkable and of the utmost quality. I put in bold the movies I liked the best, although this only represents my own taste.
Brink. (Director and Producer: William Gorman. Choreographer: Madeline Gorman.) Award: Best execution of continuity. (The award is because they had forward-reading segments and backward-reading segments that they integrated seamlessly. The story is about a girl who wants to dance and struggles with her passion.)
Stages. (Directors: Colton Greiss and Brian Kissig. Producer: Chris Herre. Choreographer: Julissa DeJesus.) Award: Best art direction and production design. In the movie you first see a woman dancing in each of five rooms, one after the other, before they come together. Those rooms represent the five stages of grief.
Pretending. (Director: Rich Garrick. Producer: Shane Sebeck. Choreographer: Maddie McCadden.) Award: Best use of mixed genres. This movie is about a boy who is bullied. The fictitious boy expresses himself through a voice-over while four dancers with masks dance his pain at pretending to fit in while he says he is taunted and called names and shouts his anger in a haunting, powerful monologue. That was the only movie, along with the comedy-based Rock n' Roll, where the story line was absolutely clear throughout and the audience could really engage with the story in addition to the dancing. I thought the movie was exceptional. For me at the end when the dancers put down their masks it meant that the boy would not try to hide his pain any more and would not tolerate being bullied either. It was very powerful and I feel it has a great potential as an anti-bullying movie to show teenagers.
Apex. (Director and Producer: Amanda Seemayer. Choreographer: Samantha Burns) Award: Best performance by dancers. A girl wants to dance and finds herself in a theater where she watches two other girls dance and then joins them on stage.
Detached Ambitions. (Directors: Christian Mendez and JC Falcone. Producer: Christian Mendez. Choreographer: Cailin Sweeney.) Award: Best editing. In the words of the directors afterward, the movie is about someone who wants to be a dancer but isn't able to follow her dream and makes a suicide attempt, and is also about killing the part of you that doesn't want you to follow your dreams. It was visually remarkable with a great color scheme to reflect the gloomy state of mind of the protagonist and excellent use of props such as the bathtub that the dancer appears to want to drown herself into.
Tabloid. BEST FILM AWARD. (Director: Tyler Sherman. Producer: Dakota Reinike. Choreographer: Marla Wolfinger.) Award: Best choreography for the camera. What I liked about that movie, in addition to the title that used the prop, was that the headlines of the newspaper were projected onto the stage where the dancers were dancing in tight skin-colored outfits, so that the headlines were also projected on their own body. Every team starts thinking about the broad lines of the movie before the weekend (it is not possible to complete the movie in the time allotted otherwise), but this team truly made an effort to build its film around the prop to a high extent. I wrote above that this gives rise to a visually stunning movie, but it is worth repeating. I hope it will end up on YouTube so that you can judge for yourself.
Rock n' Roll. (Director: Tate Steinberg. Producer: Lindsay Driscoll. Choreographers: Noelle Cybulski and Jordan Fager). Award: Best execution of a concept. This was the only movie that involved choreographing a large group of dancers, and also the only funny movie. (The concept in the award citation is the use of an extended story line and the use of a large group of dancers.) A young man finds himself at Color Me Mine on Bethlehem's 3rd Street where he paints pottery alone at his desk, and in his back the many young women (and one man) start dancing while he isn't looking, and then he notices them and joins them after the first moment of shock, and then he finds himself dancing all by himself while the others look at him in surprise.
Those students never cease to amaze me with their creativity and sheer talent, and I particularly enjoyed seeing on stage students I had already seen dance at the Emerging Choreographers event, where promising students choreographed other students. The DeSales dance and film programs are definitely up to great things and I heartily recommend checking them out if you are in the area! Mark your calendars for April 1 and 2, 2016 where the Film department will showcase its Student Film Festival.
Over the past few years I have seen seven "Henry V", which is not the same thing as watching "Henry V" seven times. Really, it is not. I am talking about the coming-of-age-as-a-leader play by William Shakespeare, which I saw in seven different forms:
Why did I do that? I went to see the Folger Theater production because of the hype surrounding the actor in the title role, and that actor came down with the flu before I saw the play, and in the performance I attended the cover read the entire text of the his role from the script hidden under his mantle after the intermission. I kid you not. We spectators spent an awfully long time staring at someone who didn't know his lines, and no one at Folger ever apologized for it. I've actually sworn never to set foot in that theater again. This was not an auspicious beginning to my fascination with "Henry V".
This play will be familiar with leadership professors around the world because it depicts a young king thrown into the arena of power after dissolute early days and the death of his father, the previous king. As such it remains very relevant today to young students everywhere with aspirations of leadership. (Henry IV Part 1 shows the future king with his "mentor" and bad influence Falstaff, in a life dominated by parties and larcenies. In Henry IV Part 2 the newly anointed king repudiates Falstaff and breaks his heart in the process. In Henry V the young king comes into his own. The tetralogy should be studied in business schools anywhere if business schools had enough foresight to peer into the future. And for those who are reading this post with the proper amount of coffee and wonder how the three plays of Henry IV Parts 1 & 2 and Henry V make a tetralogy, it is because they are preceded by Richard II, where we see how the future Henry IV usurps power. He has some grounds for it, yet he still usurps it. The lack of legitimacy of his power hangs over the next plays.)
After the DC mishap I didn't see "Henry V" again until I became interested in it because of a side project, and watched "The Hollow Crown", which is a TV dramatization of the plays in the tetralogy. Tom Hiddleston is an amazing Henry V who strikes exactly the right note at every moment. Yet, the movie is not a videotaped version of the play, so it gives an excellent idea of what the play is about without giving viewers an idea of what a production of that play would be like. The same criticism could be wielded at the Laurence Olivier movie version of the play, which gives us a glimpse at the beginning of what a production of the play would have looked like during Shakespeare's times before turning into a movie with Sir Laurence Olivier sailing to France.
The next "real" stage production of Henry V I saw after DC was in the Berkshires. A handful of actors covered all the roles in a bare-bones stage with minimal staging where a chair or an extra here and there suggested a church or an army. The seats were memorably uncomfortable, but the production was mesmerizing. This is when I began to flesh out my theory about what theater can teach us about innovation.
Today plenty of would-be experts, from TED talks speakers to business school professors, pretend to tell us how we can become more innovative. Innovation has become a buzzword, who wouldn't want to use his own innate skills to think outside the box and help his company shine? What strikes me is that no one has attempted to draw a walkable path for people who seek to become more innovative and don't know where to start. The advice in professional development books often sounds trite and rushed, as if the authors had rushed to make their publisher's deadline that now allows them to collect non-negligible royalties from the general population's desire to bring true, original value to the workforce. But there is an obvious counterpart to business gurus' platitudes that would allow general audiences to get a glimpse of what thinking outside the box actually looks like: watching several productions of a given play. This is easier to do when you live near New York City, but you can also watch many excellent productions online (especially from London's National Theater or Shakespeare's Globe) and contrast them with local productions of landmark plays not only by William Shakespeare but also - in the US - Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller or Eugene O'Neill.
Theater today offers a unique opportunity to contrast the choices made by the creative staff for various productions. In these days where people vituperate online against others who don't share their opinion, theater provides a unique avenue to consider and tolerate different takes on a common object, such as a Shakespeare play. It is also much safer to express disagreements about a play by Shakespeare than about certain politicians, lest we offend those politicians' supporters. Watching different productions of the same play can thus help widen people's understanding of what is possible and what an author is trying to say. This shows outside-the-box thinking and points toward off-the-beaten-path interpretations that pack a greater punch than the productions the audience has grown used for.
It also documents less-than-fortunate ideas that have failed to deliver on their initial punch, although they remain to the credit of the talented creative staff. For instance, I felt that the DruidShakespeare condensed tetralogy, shown in one afternoon when I saw it in New York City, failed to build connections with the audience, so that we spectators did not care much about either Henry IV or Henry V, although the gender-neutral casting (read: women were cast as both Henries) would have provided a valuable opportunity to discuss the different standards of leadership across genders today. But you must connect with your audience members before you can make them think, and I don't think the DruidShakespeare performance achieved the first goal.
The PSF production had talented actors, including Zack Robidas in the title role and his real-life wife Marnie Schulenburg as his love interest Katherine of France, but the sets looked like something put together by a (very talented) set designer struggling with (very minimal) budget. To give you a hint, the set took its inspiration from the Globe's "wooden O" in the prologue, but in contrast with the Sir Laurence Olivier DVD, which shows at its beginning what a Shakespeare production would have looked like, there was nothing to beautify the wooden set later on. It didn't even look particularly cheap, but it did end up looking cheap when it became clear that would be the only set used throughout the performance. And it didn't look like the set designer was a spendthrift, but rather struggled with very tight budget constraints. In that context, the person made heroic efforts to present a remarkable, spellbinding performance, and the production was very well directed. Yet, it won't be a production I remember long.
My favorite production ended up being that of Shakespeare's Globe with Jamie Parker in the title role, although it is very uneven - and, since I watched it on DVD, doesn't begin to tell you what it feels like to attend a performance with those actors and see them create their roles night after night. But because it highlights differences in interpretations, both from the director and from the actors, seeing multiple productions of a well-known play highlights innovation and creativity in ways that the most inspiring business book can't. Owing one's creativity at work to a particularly thought-provoking take on Shakespeare - what can be better than that?
I'll leave you with Jamie Parker giving the famous Crispin's Day speech. Enjoy!
But really if you watch only one thing, make it BBC's The Hollow Crown. Here is the trailer.
