Artists I admire: Shakespeare

Last evening in my Shakespeare class, I had one of those humbling reminder moments that tend to happen when I least expect it.

For people who know me, this week's entry is a no-brainer. I love Shakespeare's plays, I've been teaching courses about the plays for years, and I've directed a number of youth theatre productions of the plays.

Four of my students presented scenes from Measure for Measure last evening, which is my favorite comedy. I've directed it with young people, I've got a passage from it tattooed on my arm, and I love the darkness of it.

The humbling part came when I watched two actors play a scene between Angelo and Isabella, when Angelo first announces that Isabella can save her brother Claudio from death if she agrees to have sex with him. The actor playing Angelo made very bold choices, and she helped me to see something about this character who is described as having blood as cold as ice. The request for Isabella to have sex with him does not come easy, and that's where the comedy lies.  It's the character's internal wrestling match with even posing the question that brings out why an Elizabethan/Jacobean audience might have laughed, and why we should too.  The actors took the note, explored this notion, and gave one of the most memorable workshops of a scene in my time teaching this class. Truly enlightening. They taught me something about the play and these characters.

Because Shakespeare managed to create plays and characters that seem to be bottomless in possibilities for exploration and discovery, I'm citing him as the artist I admire this week.

Artists I admire: Sarah Ruhl

My first experience with playwright Sarah Ruhl's work came with Eurydice produced by Second Stage in NYC. My friend Jenni Werner had an extra ticket, and she brought me along. I remember a number of different visual moments from the play, but more importantly, I remember not being able to get out of my seat for a long time after it was done. I think it was the summer of 2007, which would have been less than a year after the death of my first partner, and I think my inability to move came from the fact that Sarah Ruhl had captured something incredibly poignant and real about loss and grief through her writing in the play. Honestly, I have not gone back and read the play. The memory of how it affected me is so clear, and I don't want to distort that.

Fast forward to earlier this year when my former student, now friend and colleague, Jess Honovich gave me a copy of Sarah Ruhl's 100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write.  This book of essays contains any number of excellent pieces of advice, astute observations about the theatrical process, and very funny reflections on being human. I admire Sarah Ruhl for her honesty and transparency in these essays; I've dogearred many pages, as I know I will need to revisit her wisdom in the future. Case in point, here's a great nugget:

"Be suspicious of an expert who tells you to cut a seemingly unnecessary moment out of your play. The soul of your play might reside there, quietly, inconspicuously, glorying in its unnecessariness, shining forth in its lack of necessity to be. The word 'expert' was invented after the Renaissance, a time when plays sallied forth in all their beautiful ignorance."

Because of her profound understanding of grief and the gift that she gave me with Eurydice and because she has continues to produce important plays and essays while being a mom and a teacher of young writers, I highlight Sarah Ruhl as the artist I admire this week.

Artists I admire: Aliza Sarian

Last winter I had the pleasure of teaching playwriting workshops with some fantastic eighth graders at the Salk School of Science in Manhattan. Their teacher, Aliza Sarian, is a former student of mine and a great playwriting teacher.

Aliza has about 120 eighth graders each year, and all of them write 10-minute plays that go through multiple revisions and drafts. Eventually, eight to twelve plays get mounted in a one-act festival in June. It's an extraordinary amount of work on Aliza's part, but her students produce exceptional stories. Additionally, Aliza is a very skilled and dedicated dramaturg for new plays, and her students reap the benefits of her knowledge and experience. Needless to say, I was coming in to do workshops with them, and I left having learned a ton from Aliza and her students.

Because of her great skill as a teacher, her commitment to new play development, and her cultivation of young artists in her classroom, not to mention her prowess as a dramaturg for new plays, Aliza Sarian is an artist that I admire. If you have a chance, you should absolutely check out her work at the Salk School of Science, and read more about her here.

Artists I admire: Paul Cadmus

I first learned about the the work of Paul Cadmus (1904-1999) when I was researching the photographer George Platt Lynes for a theatre piece called mindlynes. That work eventually lead to my play III about the 15-year relationship between Lynes, Glenway Wescott and Monroe Wheeler. Cadmus traveled in their circle as a friend and artistic contemporary. He even painted a picture called Conversation Piece, a portrait of the three men outside of their New Jersey home, Stone-blossom.

I never forgot Cadmus' work, his paintings in particular, as he found a way to create images that captured the beauty of the human body and juxtaposed it against the often times garish reality of the human condition. His painting Sailors and Floozies (1938) illustrates this concept beautifully: the idealized physical depiction of drunken sailors versus the harder visual representation of the women pursuing them. The painting caused controversy in its first showing, and Cadmus continued to create this kind of effect with his work. Described as a calm and generally uncontroversial figure by his friends and colleagues, he allowed his art to spark the controversy and instigate a dialogue. He was also unapologetic about his relationships with men and never hid his sexual orientation.

For all of these reasons, Paul Cadmus is the artist I chose to highlight this week. His work is also the subject of a new project I'm working on, so I'm learning a ton by seeing some of his paintings and drawings here in NYC and reading all I can find. Stay tuned for more about Cadmus, his contemporaries, and most of all, his art.

Sailors and Floozies (1938) by Paul Cadmus on view at The Whitney Museum, NYC. Photo by Joe Salvatore

Artists I admire: Trusty Sidekick Theater Company

Thrilled to see all the positive press for Trusty Sidekick Theater Company, a committed troupe of artists doing really exciting work for young people, and most recently, for children on the autism spectrum. Truly gratifying and humbling to see so many of my former students, now colleagues, making important and groundbreaking theatre as part of this company.

Please make sure to read about Trusty Sidekick's most recent success with Up and Away.  Here's a preview article and an excellent review, both from The New York Times.

Thanks for the inspiring work that's teaching us all something about audience engagement.