AMERICAN THEATRE | Les Waters: Theatre Spaces and Thin Places

When the lights went out in March 2020, theatre folks had no concept how a lot time was being dumped of their laps. The preliminary uncertainty round COVID was paralyzing, however progressively, lengthy earlier than the demise toll bought scary and the financial hardships bought critical, increasingly more of us got here up with pandemic tasks giant and small that may solely have ever occurred throughout life underneath lockdown. Les Waters and I made a decision to make a e book.

For the previous 25 years, Les Waters has carried out a directing profession on the coronary heart of the American theatre. He has staged Shakespeare, Sheridan, and Shaw in addition to American classics by O’Neill, Wilder, Williams, and Shepard, however he’s finest recognized for his work with a few of the nation’s extra adventurous up to date playwrights, together with Sarah Ruhl, Charles Mee, Naomi Iizuka, Will Eno, Anne Washburn, and lately Lucas Hnath. That work helped to earn him an Obie Award in 2020 for Sustained Excellence in Direction that acknowledged “his ease with both the delicate and the spectacular,” “his mastery of the borderlands where emotion and reality are equally slippery,” and “his significant collaborations with actors and designers and his advocacy for new writers and young directors.”

Waters has been head of the MFA directing program at UCSD, affiliate inventive director at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and inventive director of Actors Theatre of Louisville, a place he left after six years in 2018 to pursue freelance tasks. One of the extra profitable of these is Dana H., Lucas Hnath’s one-character play, through which veteran actor Deirdre O’Connell lipsyncs a prolonged verbatim textual content based mostly on interviews with Hnath’s mom Dana Higginbotham a few harrowing kidnapping expertise. After runs at Center Theatre Group’s Kirk Douglas Theatre in Los Angeles and the Goodman in Chicago, Dana H. had simply opened on the Vineyard Theatre in New York when COVID shut down theatres nationwide. But, thanks partly to Waters’s refined route and O’Connell’s beautiful efficiency, the manufacturing had not run its course. It was one of many first exhibits to be revived as theatres progressively reopened within the fall of 2021, working on Broadway on the Lyceum Theatre for six weeks in rep with Tina Satter’s Is This A Room. Waters was later nominated for a Tony Award for his route, and O’Connell and sound designer Mikhail Fiksel each acquired Tonys for his or her work.

Waters has remained comparatively busy since theatres got here again on-line. He directed two productions at Berkeley Rep: Charles Mee’s Wintertime and a brand new manufacturing of Dana H. with Jordan Baker within the difficult title position. He conceived and directed Out of Time, a collection of 5 30-minute monologues written by 5 Asian American playwrights for 5 Asian American actors over the age of 60, produced by NAATCO on the Public Theater earlier this yr. More work lies forward. There are developmental workshops with David Cale, Lucas Hnath, and Naomi Iizuka, and Martha Redbone. Next summer season, he’ll direct Pinter’s No Man’s Land at Steppenwolf with Austin Pendleton and Jeff Perry. And if all goes in keeping with plan, Waters could have a elegant full-circle second early in 2024 when he directs Dana H. on the Royal Court Theatre, proper the place his profession began in 1979 as inventive director of the Royal Court’s experimental studio, the Theatre Upstairs.

Waters was just a few weeks previous his 68th birthday in April 2020 when he reached out to me about an concept that I had first broached with him years earlier. Over that first pandemic summer season, between Berkeley and Boston, we spoke on the telephone a number of occasions every week about his life, profession, and perspective as a director. Those recorded conversations supplied the uncooked materials for what turned The Theatre of Les Waters: More Like the Weather, a mosaic of brief writings (together with a dozen lists) that purpose to seize what makes Waters the theatre artist that he’s, and by extension what makes a superb director. Collaboration, after all, is central to a director’s apply, so to seize that dimension we recruited two dozen of Waters’s colleagues over the a long time—playwrights, designers, dramaturgs, stage managers, and former college students—to write down essays describing their work collectively.

Here are just a few excerpts from the e book, all composed by Waters and edited by me, that recommend one thing about who Waters is and our impressionistic technique for creating the e book’s portrait of him and directing itself.

Early Theatre Experience

I don’t bear in mind any HA!! second once I thought, This is it, I do know what I’m going to be, I’m going to be a theatre director. I can bear in mind precisely the place I used to be once I determined I used to be an atheist however not a director. Both selections concerned lengthy walks by way of native woods on Sunday afternoons as a brooding teenager. The determination to reject God and Christianity was a type of shattering. With directing I began strolling and lots of miles later I arrived again dwelling a director.

I don’t bear in mind any HA!! second once I thought that is it, I do know what I’m going to be, I’m going to be a theatre director. I can bear in mind precisely the place I used to be once I determined I used to be an atheist however not a director. Both selections concerned lengthy walks by way of native woods on Sunday afternoons as a brooding teenager. The determination to reject God and Christianity was a type of shattering. With directing I  began strolling and lots of miles later I arrived again dwelling, a director. 

The first present I ever noticed was the panto Dick Whittington and His Cat on the theatre in Cleethorpes (I used to be born there) one Christmas. Going to the theatre was a significant occasion. We couldn’t afford the theatre. We couldn’t afford a lot of something. I bear in mind cats dancing on the roofs of London at midnight and it was snowing. I used to be 3, possibly 4, and barely afraid of the entire thing, and was sitting on my grandpa’s lap and I assumed the cats have been actual and I assumed I wish to make issues like that. It was that clear. But I used to be 3. Then it’s a clean until my final two years at grammar faculty, and by then I knew that I wanted to be within the theatre and I didn’t wish to be an actor. Being checked out could be troublesome for me and that tends to be a significant stumbling block for any performer. I used to be very influenced by two academics: Enid Pittwood, who taught historical past and directed the varsity play, and Jim Hawkins, who taught English and made occasions with the scholars. He launched me to John Arden and the work of the Royal Court. So by my junior yr at highschool I used to be usually disappearing to London to see performs.

I used to be a young person within the Nineteen Sixties. Everybody knew one thing large was occurring and it wasn’t occurring within the city the place I used to be rising up. I turned concerned with the Scunthorpe Youth Theatre. Mike Bradwell—who began the theatre group Hull Truck and was shut buddies with the movie director Mike Leigh and went on to run the Bush Theatre—was from the identical space as me. And he directed a manufacturing of John Whiting’s The Devils in Scunthorpe one summer season. Quite a radical selection for a youth theatre. But it was the ’60s. I performed Cardinal Richelieu. I feel I had one scene and I don’t bear in mind something that I mentioned. I will need to have been 15 or 16. It was superb. We have been a bunch of arty, snotty, deeply opinionated youngsters, and Mike would say, you must take heed to this music, or you must learn this, or there’s a play by so-and-so, or it’s a must to see the work of this director. I bear in mind mendacity in a medieval sarcophagus in Thornton Abbey graveyard at midnight and believing, this was improvisation. I bear in mind listening to Pink Floyd’s A Saucerful of Secrets in any respect hours of the day and night time, ready for revelation. My world all of a sudden turned extra expansive and extra attention-grabbing. A way of connection to an imaginative universe.

Theatres I Have Known

The Royal Court Theatre, London. Proscenium. A beautiful relationship between the stage and the auditorium. Epic in an intimate method. So many memorable productions: Max Stafford-Clark’s Top Girls, The Glad Hand, Bill Gaskill’s The Sea, Nancy Meckler’s Curse of the Starving Class, Peter Gill’s Small Change, Ian Rickson’s Mojo.

The Almeida, London. What was the unique perform of the area? A gathering corridor? A warehouse? Its curved brick again wall. Its top. Its intimacy. The sense of being contained in the manufacturing with the performers. Joint Stock’s manufacturing of Fen opened right here in February of 1983. A frigid winter. No heating. Seeing the actor’s breath on stage.

The Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh. I’m considering of the previous Traverse within the Grassmarket. I’m undecided I even bear in mind the area with any readability. I do bear in mind interviewing on two events for the place of inventive director and being rejected. A numbing heartbreak on the time. I really feel that my profession would have been very totally different if I had been accepted. “Career” makes me cringe. Sounds like one thing deliberate, one thing properly thought out. Now, I did wish to work on the Royal Court. And I did wish to work within the States. And I achieved each issues. I’ve had a life. I’m having a life. I don’t wish to say “a life in the theatre” as a result of that’s so luvvie. And additionally a David Mamet play.

(The problem in scripting this checklist is that it’s about reminiscence. I meant to write down about bodily area. Or principally about that. But it’s change into in a short time about my emotional connection to the area/theatre. I directed one present on the previous Traverse. Rona Munro’s Fugue. I bear in mind so little concerning the play. I don’t bear in mind the design in any respect. I don’t suppose it was a “bad” manufacturing. But the expertise of being there engaged on that present is firmly lodged in my thoughts. Traverse/Fugue/Edinburgh/inventive director interviews/disappointment. Proust and his madeleine.)

The Public Theater, New York City. I’ve seen exhibits in all the areas there and labored within the Newman, the Anspacher, the LuEster, and the Shiva. My American profession (that phrase once more!) began right here with Fen in 1983. I didn’t actually know the way essential the establishment was. Joe Papp, his generosity, his cruelty. My youth, my self-importance. I can’t actually describe the precise areas and the way they work. Like being inside a monument, a monument known as the Public Theater.

The Roda Stage, Berkeley Rep, California. The bigger of the 2 levels. The proscenium. I perceive prosceniums. The disconnect between the seats downstairs and the seats upstairs. Too separate experiences. No wing area. Wide sufficient to really feel epic. And but two folks standing on that stage in its vacancy can really feel intimate. I really like working there: Fetes de la Nuit, In the Next Room, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West. I consider this place as a house.

Soho Rep, New York City. I’ve in all probability seen extra productions right here than every other theatre in New York. I really like what they do. Sarah Benson. Hero. It’s small, it’s cramped, it shouldn’t work nevertheless it does. It transforms. I’ve seen nice performs right here—Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s An Octoroon, Fairview by Jackie Sibblies Drury, Is God Is by Aleshea Harris—in nice productions, however the place sings design to me. I consider Soho Rep as design. The transformation of area. Think Louisa Thompson for Blasted, David Zinn for 10 Out of 12, Mimi Lien for each An Octoroon and Fairview. Geniuses. Heroes.

The Lyceum Theatre, Broadway, NYC. Where the great folks at Lincoln Center produced The Vibrator Play. Perfect alignment of play, design by Annie Smart, and theatre. A play set within the Victorian period residing in a Victorian theatre. I don’t like watching my very own work—I do know that may be a downside—however I used to be completely satisfied sitting in these cramped seats amongst a puzzled viewers watching this. During the various weeks of previews I bought to know the area properly. I watched from up prime and beloved the layers of velvet mud on the sculptures. I watched from the wings, and once I couldn’t watch anymore I listened to the present from the dressing room inside the proscenium arch itself. A magical place.

Brooklyn Academy of Music. Beautiful. Important. Honored to have had two exhibits within the Harvey. Both by Chuck Mee. Both originating from ATL. Big Love and Glory of the World. That area carries the spectacle of the work as if it’s a head on a silver platter. I’ve watched superb productions there: Ivo’s Opening Night, the dance items of Pina Bausch and Susanne Linke. Joe Melillo. Hero.

Actors Theatre of Louisville. I’ve labored in all three areas—the Pamela Brown, the Bingham, and the Victor Jory—and in an deserted warehouse in Butchertown. My involvement with ATL started with Big Love in 2000 and ended with The Thin Place in 2019. I used to be AD from 2012 to 2018. Not a lot the efficiency areas because the rehearsal room, the Humana Room on the fifth ground of the executive workplaces on Market Street—that claims Actors Theatre to me. It’s not run-down and seedy like so many rehearsal rooms. It’s crisp with a little bit little bit of battered. It’s not giant sufficient to accommodate the width of the Pamela Brown. It’s not deep sufficient both. The AC system is quixotic. It has fluorescent lighting and it has home windows. It could be quiet. And it doesn’t really feel remoted. For six and a half years I each made theatre and watched others make theatre in that area. I’ve watched discoveries and meltdowns and revelations about performs and efficiency that may by no means be recreated. I’ve had seizures in that room. It is an ideal area. An area of infinite prospects.

La Fenice, Venice, Italy. I’ve by no means been to Venice, I’ve by no means been to Italy. To be trustworthy, I’m probably not positive what the area is like. The identify calls out, although. La Fenice.

A Good Rehearsal Room

Somewhere that’s a part of the theatre and never miles away.

Somewhere quiet.

Somewhere the place folks can enter quietly.

Somewhere with good lighting. 

(Sitting underneath fluorescent gentle all day isn’t good.)

(Staring by way of a window on the solar all day isn’t good.)

Somewhere above floor. 

(I don’t wish to have to affix the Miner’s Union with a view to work.)

Somewhere the identical dimension because the taking part in space of the stage. 

Somewhere I belief everyone I’m working with.

Somewhere the place everyone has an urge for food for the challenge.

Somewhere with an infinite provide of espresso. 

Somewhere we will fail and no one will snicker or titter or roll their eyes.

Somewhere I really feel protected and there’s a sense of risk within the room.

Thin Places

My mom’s household in Lincolnshire have been farm laborers, generally servants within the large home, very Methodist, and deeply superstitious. You couldn’t deliver sure flowers into the home at sure occasions of yr. You couldn’t minimize your toenails on a Sunday or the satan would get you. A spirit of some kind known as Raw Head and Bloody Bones lived underneath the steps in my grandparents’ home. The Wesley brothers, who based British Methodism, have been from Epworth close to Scunthorpe the place I used to be introduced up. Methodism was very sturdy in my household. I spent quite a lot of time with my maternal grandparents rising up. I bear in mind them as storytellers. They have been first era city dwellers and would inform tales of what it was like within the village the place they have been born. I assumed they have been residing historical past.

My Grandma Carrie would discuss skinny locations. I’m an solely youngster however I’m the youngest and the smallest—I stand at 6′ 2″ now—of 4 male cousins. I used to be the baby, the newborn. We by no means actually knew what the time period meant and it was in all probability her method of maintaining us in line, however there have been these skinny locations and he or she would warn, “Leslie, if you go there, you’re going to be in trouble.” A skinny place is the place the membrane or boundary between this world and another world—I’ve typically mistakenly mentioned between this world and the following world, nevertheless it undoubtedly wasn’t the following world—may be very skinny. And you possibly can slip between one and the opposite. There was a skinny place in a area near the village the place my grandparents have been born. Kirmington, Lincolnshire. It has a inhabitants of about 300. We have been instructed to stay away from there as a result of it was harmful. And why it was, I don’t know. Maybe any person disappeared there 100 years in the past. I don’t know. I’ve no info.

I lived the primary 18 years of my life at 30 Lincoln Gardens in Scunthorpe. And on the nook of Lincoln Gardens and Laburnum Grove, there’s a tree. Not an enormous tree. A medium-sized, reasonably scrappy-looking tree. And that tree, for years I believed, walks at night time. I sound like a Thomas Hardy novel once I discuss this. But that tree walks at night time and it’s not smart to stroll by that tree late at night time.

It made an impression on me as a baby. These locations the place you possibly can stroll by way of and be in another world. But what horrified me as a baby is that one thing from that different world may go by way of into this one and seize me and take me again. What the opposite world was, I don’t know. At one level I imagined it as a thick moist fog. I used to be fearful by skinny locations as a child after which I forgot about it, or it became yet one more unusual story about my mom’s household’s rural life.

When we have been workshopping Dana H. on the Goodman, Lucas mentioned he wished the play to vary gears very all of a sudden, for one thing to occur that was surprising that shifted the play into totally different territory. And I mentioned, “Oh, it sounds like a thin place.” I defined it to him. And he thought it was an attention-grabbing title for a play, after which there was a play known as The Thin Place.

Do I expertise it personally? Thin locations? I don’t know. In a way it might be tied to my epilepsy. Or is it a method for me to visualise my epilepsy? I don’t know what occurs to me throughout a seizure. I’ve no reminiscence of the occasion. Or when I’ve a reminiscence of it, is it as a result of I’m reconstructing one thing that different folks have instructed me? Am I unconscious throughout a seizure, or am I in another consciousness? I’ve a notion that I’ve gone some place else. But I’ve no information of the place that some place else is. I’ve gaps in my reminiscence which might be larger than the precise occasion. The seizure could possibly be solely two or three minutes lengthy, however it might eradicate a number of hours of reminiscence. So there could possibly be a three-hour hole after which I discover myself sitting in a chair having a cup of tea speaking to folks telling them I’m all proper, asking can they get me dwelling and I’ve a horrible headache and have they got one thing for it.

And the whole lot else has been erased. Or reasonably there’s a really, very faint blur of the expertise someplace. As if I had drawn or written out the expertise on a sheet of paper after which I or my rogue neurology had erased it. Maybe that is what attracts me to Rauschenberg’s “Erased de Kooning Drawing” within the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Rauschenberg requested the Abstract Expressionist painter Willem de Kooning—close to the peak of his fame—for a drawing after which he erased it and put it in a gilded body. I may have a look at it for hours. For hours. I’m fascinated by the traces of issues. I discover the concept of destroying one thing—the concept that the destruction of 1 factor is the act of creating one thing else—profoundly attention-grabbing. Its blankness is compelling.

Opposites

I’m hooked on opposites. To be exact, I’m hooked on the area between opposites. It’s essential to look between the opposites, on the area between two issues. I’ve an acute sense of contradiction. I really like contradiction in a manufacturing. I like queasy floor. I like issues which might be porous and journey forwards and backwards between two poles. That intrigues me. I’ve at all times thought that the whole lot was double-sided. That the whole lot accommodates its reverse. And as a result of I don’t admire being instructed what to suppose, I must maintain the other spinning all the time.

My maternal grandparents, Carey and Charles, have been working-class socialists. I don’t suppose they ever sat me down as a baby and mentioned, “You need to understand the principles of Hegelian dialectics.” But once I did, I assumed, “Thesis? Yes! Antithesis? Absolutely! Synthesis? Really? I’m not convinced.” I don’t consider that issues resolve. Ever. I simply don’t consider it. I like change. I like the potential of change. Cozy concepts of decision and closure make me loopy. Change is the one fixed. Productions ought to finish with an enormous sequence of query marks. Shouldn’t they?

Here’s a favourite quote:

I hate endings. Just detest them. Beginnings are undoubtedly essentially the most thrilling, middles are perplexing, and endings are a catastrophe. The temptation in the direction of decision, in the direction of wrapping up the bundle, appears to me a horrible lure. Why not be extra trustworthy with the second? The most genuine endings are those that are already revolving in the direction of one other starting. That’s genius.

                                                                                                —Sam Shepard, The Paris Review

Released in April, The Theatre of Les Waters: More Like the Weather is offered from Routledge/Taylor & Francis group.

Related