Young Vic
A Prayer for my
Daughter
By Thomas Babe
Contents
1.
Thomas Babe
02
2.
Works of Thomas Babe
05
3.
Synopsis
06
4.
Cast and Creative Team
09
5.
W. B. Yeats – A Prayer for my Daughter
10
6.
‘The Bronx is Burning’ – New York in 1977
13
7.
An American Perspective on Thomas Babe
20
8.
Interview with David Lan, Artistic Director of the Young Vic
22
9.
Interview with Max Stafford-Clark, Director of Original UK
Production
25
10. Interview with Dominic Hill, the Director
27
11. Interview with Giles Cadle (Costume/Set Designer) and Bruno Poet
(Lighting Designer) 31
12. Interview with the Actors
33
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13. Rehearsal Diary by David Dorian, the Assistant Director
34
If you have any questions or comments about this Resource Pack please contact
us:
The Young Vic, 66 The Cut, London, SE1 8LZ
T: 020 7922 2800 F: 020 7922 2802 e: info@youngvic.org
Compiled by: David Dorrian
Young Vic 2008
First performed at the Young Vic on Thursday 31st January 2008
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By Thomas Babe
1. THOMAS BABE
Thomas Babe was born in Buffalo, New York State, on 13th March 1941 and
grew up in nearby Rochester.
He developed a passion for writing in
his youth – “I discovered that words were dynamite: they could blow up
inside me” and his first play, The Pageant of Awkward Shadows was
produced in 1963, when Babe was just 22.
In the same year he graduated
Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard, and it was not until he had completed
further studies at Cambridge and Yale that Babe returned to the
theatre, in 1975.
Much happened in Babe’s personal life in the intervening period.
In
1967 he married Susan Bramhall, and in the early 70s they had a
daughter, Charissa (to whom A Prayer for my Daughter is dedicated).
However, although he continued to portray the image of a typical family
man to the outside world, in 1974 Babe started a serious relationship
with a man who would become his partner, playwright Neal Bell.
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In the midst of all this, Babe wrote Kid Champion, a play about the
post-stardom depression of a fallen rock king.
hit.
It was to be his first
Christopher Walken won an OBIE award for his performance in the
leading role at New York’s Public Theater.
Kid Champion, which opened in January 1975, marked the start of a
fruitful collaboration between Babe and The Public Theater’s founder
and producer, Joseph Papp – who felt that Babe was destined to be the
next great American playwright.
Theater in 1976.
Rebel Women followed at The Public
This American civil war drama, set in the 1860s,
furthered Babe’s exploration of the concept of the American hero, as
this time his main character was a famous army general.
Babe’s exploration of the hero concept came to its fruition in 1977
with A Prayer for my Daughter.
Babe’s protagonists here are cops and
crooks, modern-day frontiersmen, who show themselves to be much more
complex than their stereotypes would suggest. The New York Times
described it as “a strange and compelling play” that “unsuspectingly,
delivers swift body punches”.
The play was a big hit, running for 127
performances, and was later staged in London at The Royal Court, in a
production directed by Max Stafford-Clark featuring Antony Sher and
Donal McCann.
It is now generally considered to be Babe’s signature
play.
With Joseph Papp’s support of Babe resoundingly vindicated, The Public
Theater staged three more of his plays between 1978 and 1980; Fathers
and Sons starring Richard Chamberlain as Wild Bill; Taken In Marriage
starring Meryl Streep; and Salt Lake City Skyline with John Lithgow as
labour organiser Joe Hill.
This was a prolific period for Babe, as he
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also wrote three screenplays and two radio plays, and had plays staged
elsewhere in New York and at Yale.
In the early 1980s things came to a head in Babe’s personal life – he
divorced his wife and came out as gay.
After this difficult time, Babe
was to return to The Public Theater only once more, in 1984, with
Buried Inside Extra, a drama set in a newsroom of a small-city
newspaper; but the play was not a success.
Frank Rich of The New York
Times described it as “a murky play that shows off neither the New York
Shakespeare Festival, Mr. Babe nor an estimable cast to worthwhile
advantage.”
Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s Babe turned his hand to directing
plays by other playwrights (including his partner, Neal Bell) and
writing for children’s theatre, musical theatre and television. He also
continued to write full-length plays, which were produced in regional
theatres, and with these he garnered renewed critical acclaim.
Reviewing his Great Day In The Morning for Drama-Logue, Polly Warfield
wrote,
“Only Thomas Babe could have written this play, imbued as it is with
his special blend of magical realism, energized with his bold
theatricality, empowered by his fluid, often poetic language, unabashed
in its forays into romanticism and melodrama. It bears the Babe
cachet.”
If that serves as a testimony to his longevity as a playwright, then
his programme biography from the same production bears witness to his
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lasting concerns.
After listing his education and works, he ends the
biography with two personal notes:
“He has lived for the past 19 years with the playwright Neal Bell. His
daughter, Charissa, is a third-year student at the University of
Pittsburgh Medical School.”
Thomas Babe died of lung cancer on 6th December 2000.
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2. WORKS OF THOMAS BABE
Plays
The Pageant of Awkward Shadows, Harvard College Theater, Cambridge, MA,
1963
Kid Champion, Public Theater, New York City, 1974
Mojo Candy, Yale Cabaret, New Haven, CT, 1975
Rebel Women, Public Theater, 1976
Billy Irish, Manhattan Theater Club, New York City, 1976
A Prayer for My Daughter, Public Theater, 1978
Great Solo Town, Yale Cabaret, 1977
Fathers and Sons, Public Theater, 1978
Taken in Marriage, Public Theater, 1979
Salt Lake City Skyline, Public Theater, 1980
When We Were Very Young, Winter Garden Theatre, New York City, 1980
Buried Inside Extra, Public Theater, 1984
Planet Fires, Geva Theatre Center, Rochester, NY, 1985
Carrying School Children, Theatre for the New City, New York City, 1987
Demon Wine, Los Angeles Theatre Center, Los Angeles, CA, 1987
Great Day In The Morning, South Coast Repertory Co, Costa Mesa, CA,
1992
Screenplays
The Sun Gods, Warner Bros., 1978
The Vacancy, Warner Bros., 1979
Kid Champion, Music Fair, Inc., 1979
Radio Plays
Hot Dogs and Soda Pop, National Public Radio (NPR), 1980
The Volunteer Fireman, NPR, 1981
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3. SYNOPSIS
Act One
It is one am on a sweltering July morning. Sergeant Francis Xavier
Kelly and his partner John Jack Delasante enter into the squad room of
a downtown NYPD precinct that has “all its affinities to a toilet
bowl”, with two men in handcuffs; James Rosario (aka Jimmy Rosehips)
and Simon Cohn (aka Sean de Kahn).
We find out from Jack that one of
them has murdered an old lady, Mrs Linowitz.
While Jack begins to process the arrest paperwork, Kelly returns a
phone-call to his daughter Margie.
He finds out she has just married
her “number one asshole” boyfriend in secret (and has already walked
out on him) but promises to take her some ice-cream once he and Jack
have pinned the murder on either “the kid” (Jimmy) or “the beard”
(Sean).
Kelly interviews Sean De Kahn first, but this is no easy task.
Sean
insists on being called by his proper name, Simon Cohn, and on Kelly
following procedure, like not drinking on the job.
This only quickens
Kelly’s move to violence, but before he can start the beating, Jack
interrupts to ask if he can give Jimmy some heroin, as he is “melting
in front of (his) eyes”.
Kelly’s night gets worse when the phone rings.
On the other end is
Margie, with a gun in her mouth, threatening suicide.
Jack gets a
trace on the call but Kelly says he would rather Morris at the “loonie
squad” handles it, and takes Sean into the other room to administer the
interrupted beating.
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Jack proceeds to interrogate Jimmy in the squad room, but the
interrogation is far from routine. Both cop and crook take an injection
of Dilaudid (a powerful opiate).
They talk about theology and
relationships, seemingly innocently, but then Jack turns the tables on
Jimmy.
He tries to make him confess by telling Jimmy he is damned,
“midnight, on the desert under a heavy cloud cover”.
At this point both Jimmy and Sean have broken down, Jimmy through
Jack’s psychological battering and Sean through Kelly’s physical one.
All four men return to the squad room for a break, in which everyone
(for differing reasons) tries to convince Kelly to go and see his
daughter. He says he doesn’t need to, that she is his “unloseable
friend”.
At the end of the act, the phone rings again, but this time
the line goes dead.
INTERVAL
Act Two
Kelly has been desperately trying to reach his other daughter, Sasha,
to try to get her to deal with Margie.
He entrusts a State Police
Officer with getting a message to her and then takes Jimmy for
questioning.
Alone in the squad room, Jack breaks Sean by singing “You Are My
Sunshine”, a song Sean once sang after being beaten by the police,
which Jack has found noted in his arrest record.
Sean tells him that
it stems from an experience he had in Vietnam when he first turned to
drugs.
He is so affected by the memory that he begs for a hit of
Dilaudid, which Jack gives him.
Sean shows his gratitude by agreeing
to Jack’s desire to pin the murder on Jimmy.
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Sasha calls and Kelly returns to talk with her. She says what the
others have been thinking, that his heart is made of stone, but he
still refuses to go to Margie.
Instead he sends Jack to get the
written confession from Sean whilst he interrogates Jimmy further.
After forcing Jimmy to strip Kelly’s shame finally gets the better of
him, and he hugs Jimmy whilst pouring out his love for Margie. Jimmy
uses the embrace to steal Kelly’s gun, and accidentally shoots him.
Luckily the bullet lodges in his wallet.
Margie is not so lucky.
Jack receives a call from Morris in the middle
of the commotion, and has to tell Kelly that his daughter killed
herself.
Jimmy, still in possession of the gun, is enraged that Kelly
shows no emotion at his daughter’s suicide, and holds everyone hostage
to tell the story of his own daughters birth.
Jimmy gives up the gun – only to be told by Jack that Sean has given a
statement that makes him “take the whole big total fall” for Mrs
Linowitz’s murder.
As dawn approaches, the cops and crooks take one
last moment to deliver an unorthodox prayer for Kelly’s daughter,
before heading out to the harsh reality that awaits them.
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4. CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM
Cast
Kelly
Jack
Jimmy
Sean
Matthew Marsh
Corey Johnson
Colin Morgan
Sean Chapman
Creative Team
Direction
Design
Lighting
Composer/Sound Designer
Casting
Dominic Hill
Giles Cadle
Bruno Poet
Dan Jones
Ginny Schiller
Assistant Director
David Dorrian
Costume Supervisor
Emma Cascarina
Dialect Coach
Penny Dyer
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5. W. B. YEATS – A PRAYER FOR MY DAUGHTER
Thomas Babe didn’t make up the name of the play himself.
A Prayer for
my Daughter is the title of a famous poem by Irish playwright William
Butler Yeats (pronounced Yates).
Yeats (1865-1939) wrote the poem in
1919, shortly after the birth of his daughter Anne.
Babe was well
aware of this as he includes the final lines from the poem as part of
his dedication of the play;
How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.
Why would a poem from 1919 inspire what appears to be a 1970s police
drama?
First, because of the resonance between Yeats and Babe’s sociopolitical contexts; both men lived in tempestuous times.
Yeats begins
his poem with a description of a meteorological torrent that threatens
his daughter. In doing so he is alluding to both the violent Irish
political scene and the changing moral compass of his times.
January
1919 was the start of the IRA’s war of independence with the British
Government, which was in full flow until the Anglo-Irish Treaty of
1921, so Ireland was an extremely dangerous place at the time of Yeats’
writing.
As well as being physically dangerous, there was a sense of
spiritual danger, of the onset of liberalism and decadence, and these
indeed came to characterize the next decade, which has since been
described as The Roaring Twenties.
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The 1970s were equally tumultuous, especially in Thomas Babe’s New York
(see section below on the 1970s), so it is understandable that Babe, a
young father, felt an affinity with Yeats when he expressed a hope that
his daughter would grow up safe from the storms.
Secondly, however, Babe seems to have written his A Prayer for my
Daughter to critique the ideas that Yeats puts forward as to how he can
keep his daughter safe.
Yeats’ prayer for his daughter is that she won’t be too beautiful or
too clever.
To Yeats, excesses of either are negative qualities, which
can be the undoing of a woman.
If a woman doesn’t have the temptations
that come with an excess of either beauty or wit, then Yeats believed
she was more likely to be moral and traditional.
Further, if she is
moral and traditional, his daughter will find a good husband and give
birth to children who avoid the temptations of the changing times.
These assertions must have angered Babe, as his own life was far from
traditional, having both a young family and a gay lover.
Therefore,
the insinuation from Yeats would seem to be that Babe’s daughter was
lost, destined to be sunk by life’s storms.
Babe clearly felt this
accusation from his contemporaries too, and as a proud father it would
have wounded him deeply.
This is evident in the scene between Jack and
Jimmy in Act One;
JACK: Okay, I was curious, since you say you have a daughter of
your own, how you could be sort of his daughter, I mean, you got
obligations.
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JIMMY:
I take good care of my family… Pay the bills.
I’m there a
lot.
And later,
JACK:
Think about what she’s gonna think about you… her daddy’s
scum?
JIMMY:
Not to her I ain’t, officer.
Babe’s daughter would have been around five years old when he wrote the
play, so it is no coincidence that Jimmy’s daughter is “five and a
third”, that he acknowledges the need to go “back and forth” between
his lover and his family, and that he is the character who shows the
deepest love for his daughter.
However, Babe’s purpose is not self-defence; he is on the offensive.
In response to Yeats, he critiques those who live their lives
traditionally, who can only see the world as black and white, light and
dark, and can’t appreciate the full spectrum of possibilities that life
has to offer.
Babe could be aiming an intentional barb at Yeats by making Kelly a
set-in-his-ways Irishman. In particular, Sean’s final judgement on
Kelly, “you stupid, sentimental, Irish, drunk. You’ve lost her, your
daughter: but you didn’t stop her when you could’ve because you didn’t
want to”, feels like it might be a playwright’s vengeance.
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You can find the complete text of the poem at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Prayer_For_My_Daughter
There is also information about Yeats’ daughter at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Yeats
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6. “THE BRONX IS BURNING” – NEW YORK IN 1977
Babe wrote his major plays in the 1970s, and A Prayer for my Daughter
in particular is a play that grew out of 1970s New York.
The 1970s
were a time of great change and hardship for Americans in general and
New Yorkers in particular.
For various reasons, the great freedoms and
ideologies that had been fought for in the 1960s came to the sharp end
in the 1970s.
The ideological period of the 1960s is often described as roughly
covering the years 1958-1974.
Politically, the period was
characterised by a shift to the left in several Western democracies,
but the 60s are more significant for the rise of social activism.
“Power to the people” is perhaps the slogan that best represents the
defining ideology of the time; communal uprising against both
oppressive legislation and policies, and restrictive social structures.
Racial inequality was fought by groups led by men such as Dr Martin
Luther King, which have collectively been termed The American Civil
Rights Movement.
Second-Wave Feminism, ignited by Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique,
expanded the fight for women’s rights beyond the political dimension
into their personal lives.
The Gay Liberation Front was founded in New York in 1969, to galvanise
the Gay community after the spontaneous rebellion of The Stonewall
Riots, which were sparked by an antagonistic police raid on a gay bar
called The Stonewall Inn.
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Most powerful of all was the anti-war movement, linking millions of
people of different genders, races and sexual orientations in a common
hatred of the Vietnam War (1963-1975).
Each of these movements seemed to be characterised by dynamism rather
than desparation; encapsulated by Dr King’s famous “I Have A Dream”
speech of 1963.
There was an air of optimism that change was possible,
that governments could be influenced by protest and that social
strictures could be broken through perseverance.
Therefore, ironically, the social revolution of the early 1960s was in
some part founded on an implicit trust in authority.
The US economy
had been stable since the end of the Second World War so Americans were
relatively prosperous (though obviously huge disparities in wealth
existed) and this enabled the existence of a civic culture, in which
individuals were predisposed to consider matters affecting their
community as opposed to just themselves.
The most striking aspect of the 1970s is the betrayl of this trust by
the authorities, which led to the decline of the optimistic social
project of the 1960s.
President Richard Nixon was much to blame for this; through his
handling of the Vietnam War, the US economy and the Watergate Scandal.
In 1968 Nixon was elected on a promise to end the war in Vietnam; but
Nixon did not keep his promise.
On 30th April 1970 he announced to the
nation in a televised address that an incursion into Cambodia had been
launched by US forces.
Fearing being drafted (called up) to fight in a
war they hated, University students erupted in a national student18
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strike.
One such strike occurred at Kent State University.
On 4th May
it was brutally put down by the Ohio National Guard; four students were
shot and killed and nine were seriously wounded.
A week after the shootings 100,000 protesters descended on Washington
DC.
The protest was a sharp contrast to earlier peaceful
demonstrations.
alight.
Mobs smashed windows, slashed tires and set cars
People in Wasington felt this was more like civil war than
student protest, and the anti-war movement suffered a backlash.
Although protests continued on University campuses, this outpouring of
rage marked the final mass anti-war demonstration in Washington, as it
increasingly came to be seen as unpatriotic to express anti-war
sentiment.
Nixon also mishandled the US economy.
Overspending on the Vietnam War
put the federal budget in a position where it wasn’t possible to take
the necessary steps to control rising inflation, which was caused by a
sharp rise in the price of oil.
Inflation usually rises when the
economy is doing well, but in this case the economy was actually
stagnating, and there were large job losses.
This was an unprecedented
situation, and economists coined a new term for it; Stagflation.
Recession set in by 1973.
In 1974 things got even worse.
Nixon’s presidency had been dogged by
claims that he had illegally spied on political rivals and journalists.
These came to a head in 1972 when several of Nixon’s men were caught
breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic Party, in the
Watergate Hotel in Washington DC.
In their subsequent trials it came
to light that the President owed back taxes, had accepted illicit
campaign contributions, and had harassed opponents with wiretaps and
break-ins. In addition, he had ordered the secret bombing of Cambodia.
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With these revelations, Nixon steadily lost political support. However
by the summer of 1974 it was clear that he would be impeached (sacked)
and possibly convicted, so on 9th August
1979 he resigned.
This was an
unprecedented move that sent the US into a state of shock, as devotion
to the President was a strong element of the national identity.
By the mid-1970s, urban Americans faced poverty and hardship, and no
longer trusted that the authorities would take care of their needs.
This led to a hardening of the ideologies of the 1960s.
The movements
still wanted the same rights and freedoms but no longer sought to gain
them by influencing the existing establishment.
Now they sought to
other-throw it – and the establishment fought back.
The American Civil Rights Movement was superceded by the Black Power
Movement, which was at odds with the previous movement in its emphasis
on racial separation and the use of violence to achieve its aim.
Germaine Greer raised the stakes of the feminist movement by arguing in
The Female Eunuch that men hated women, and that change had to come by
revolution, not evolution.
This prompted responses from writers like
Norman Mailer (in The Prisoner of Sex, referenced by Babe in the play),
who sought to undermine what they saw as the excesses of the feminist
movement by advocating a need to respect the differences between men
and women.
Anti-gay rights campaigners started a backlash against the Gay
Liberation movement.
Notably the “Save Our Children” campaign, started
in Florida by the singer Anita Bryant, successfully led to the
repealing of pro-gay legislastion.
In San Francisco a prominent gay
politician and a supporter were murdered, and the lenient sentence
given to the killer prompted rioting.
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The struggle for social change was also more keenly felt because
ordinary Americans started to be affected by the changes of the 1960s.
Whereas the 1960s had largely seen intellectuals, students and the
avant-garde experimenting with ideals, the 1970s saw the results of
this filtering down to people from all walks of life.
In particular,
the fight for women’s rights reached the average American home.
There
are many anecdotal reports of fights breaking out over dinner tables,
and copies of The Female Eunuch being thrown at unsuspecting husbands!
In addition, the war at Vietnam came home, with the return of
disaffected Vietnam veterans.
Many returned home psychologically and
or physically scarred, and with the economy in a terrible state there
were no jobs for them to come back to.
For some, crime was the only
option.
If the US suffered as a whole, New York was the archetype of the
suffering. In the 1960s the cities economy was still buoyed by the
LaGuardia concensus. This was a group of initiatives that had made
thousands of New Yorkers employees of the city and additionally sought
to provide health care, college education and public housing from the
municipal budget.
city.
By 1975 this great vision virtually bankrupted the
In addition to thousands of redundancies from municipal
departments, New Yorkers were also losing industrial jobs as their
firms moved to the Southern States.
Together, these two elements
forced large communities in the city into dire poverty.
If New York’s economy was the archetype of America’s as a whole, then
its law enforcement officers were the archetypal abusers of authority.
The NYPD was a watchword for machismo and corruption, typified by the
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disproportionate response to the Attica prison riots.
Living
condidions in the prison were terrible and prisoners were regularly
brutalised by guards (Jimmy describes an example in Act Two, when he is
forced to strip).
In September 1971 the prisoners heard rumours that
one of their number was to be tortured, and the situation exploded.
Half the prisoners rioted and seized control of the prison.
Rather
than capitulate to their demands for better conditions, the police
stormed the prison and shot 39 people dead.
The effect of the riots on New Yorkers was shown in the 1975 film Dog
Day Afternoon. In the film Al Pacino plays a bank robber who gets
trapped in the bank he is trying to rob by the NYPD.
He negotiates
with the police at first, but when he sees the hundreds of armed
officers massed outside he realises that a peaceful resolution is not
their priority.
In an attempt to gain the upper hand he chants
“Attica! Attica!” at the crowds gathering outside.
chant and turn on the police.
They join in the
The scene became an iconic cultural
image of the 1970s, and led to Attica being used as a synonym for antiestablishment feeling.
The Summer of 1977, the year that Babe wrote A Prayer for my Daughter,
was the city’s lowest point.
In addition to massive job losses and
disaffection with authority, New Yorkers were also coping with stifling
heat and a serial killer, Son of Sam, who preyed on young couples in
Brooklyn, The Bronx and Queens.
It is apt that Babe references light and dark in his imagery, as it was
the electrical blackout of 13th July 1977 that pushed the tensions in
the city over the edge.
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The difference in the response of New Yorkers to a 1965 electrical
blackout provides a neat allegory for the contrast between the 1960s
and the 1970s.
In 1965 there was a street-party feel to the blackout.
New Yorkers congratulated each other for the orderly, even jolly way
they coped with the crisis. For some time afterward there was a
convivial, ‘Where were you when the lights went out?’ mentality, which
spawned a 1968 film.
The feel-good factor was such that it went into
folklore that nine months later the birth-rate spiked.
Twelve years later, Time Magazine described the 13th July 1977 as a
“Night of Terror”.
1616 stores were damaged in looting and rioting,
1037 fires were responded to and 3776 people were arrested. The
blackout brought national attention to New York and prompted President
Jimmy Carter to make a surprise visit to the Bronx.
"Pictures of the president standing amid devastation of the sort most
Americans associated with bombed European cities during World War II
shocked people throughout the country and made the South Bronx the
national emblem of urban collapse" (from Working-class New York: Life
and Labor Since World War II by Joshua B Freeman.)
As the tag-line for the Young Vic production states, New York in 1977
was indeed hell, and Babe responded to his surroundings by setting his
play in the place most New Yorkers would associate with an absence of
hope – the squad room of an NYPD precinct.
He went even further and
removed the one source of optimism that New Yorkers had – baseball.
At perhaps the lowest point in the play, Jack joins the rest of New
York in looking to the New York Yankees baseball team for a sign of
hope.
In Jack’s case, hope is immediately snatched away.
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JACK:
I’m gonna go get The News.
I don’t care. I wanna see if
Catfish Hunter’s elbow got better
SEAN:
That game was over when you busted us at the dry cleaners.
Indians Four, Yankees Two.
The game Jack refers to was real.
On the 4th July
1977 the New York
Yankees played host to the Cleveland Indians in a regular season game.
The result Sean tells him was not; in reality the Yankees won 7-4.
Even though New York was hell in 1977, at least most New Yorkers caught
a glimpse of light when the Yankees won the World Series.
Babe denies
his characters even that.
Further Reading
Websites
The Good and Bad Blackouts of New York
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3154757.stm
Review of Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/30/books/30grim.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Books
The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and
Politics - Bruce Shulman
Ladies And Gentlemen, The Bronx Is Burning - Jonathan Mahler
The Feminine Mystique - Betty Friedan
The Female Eunuch - Germaine Greer
The Prisoner of Sex - Norman Mailer
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Films and TV
Dog Day Afternoon
Taxi Driver
Kojak
Starsky and Hutch
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7. AN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE ON THOMAS BABE
An email from Si Osborne, Director of the recent Chicago production of
A Prayer for my Daughter, in answer to the question; What is the US
perspective on Babe’s place in 1970s theatre, and how is he remembered
now?
“In the late 70's we (the US) were still stunned by the travesty and
heartbreak of the Vietnam War.
You probably do not know how very close
the US was to civil war during the heat of the war.
The "Chicago
Seven" vs. the Mayor of Chicago's Richard Daley brought the crisis to a
head.
US troops were vilified; the peace movement was ridiculed; and
race relations were at boiling point, in part because young urban
blacks were drafted into a war they did not feel was their own.
…And so rose Thomas Babe and David Rabe.
These smart, cynical and
talented young playwrights seemed to fill the cavity of our angst.
Rabe's Streamers deals with anarchy within the US military in the 70s.
Babe's A Prayer for my Daughter tackles the loss of identity with the
institutions that protect our safety, the law. In Babe's play, the
police and the criminals lose the delineations.
At the end of the
night, there is no true innocence, nor true virtue.
Since the 70's, when A Prayer for my Daughter was a huge critical hit
in NY and a much lesser hit in Chicago, the play dropped off the radar.
Babe's other plays, including Salt Lake City Skyline and Taken in
Marriage were produced variously around the US with limited success.
In my production in 2007, recently closed, the (young) reviewers found
the play intriguing, but all felt that American television had taken
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them to this squad room before (LA Law, NYPD Blue etc.).
They didn’t
realize that Babe's play, with its gritty plot line, intentionally
tortured syntax, and buried gems of turns of phrase, predated these
shows.
Is Babe appreciated in the US today?
to today's US playwrights?
Probably not. Was he an influence
Absolutely.
The cynical-realist
playwrights of the 70's have led to the rise of cynical-realists like
Shepard and Mamet.
All of the above is a long answer to your short question:
thought of here?
Not much at all, I'm afraid.
How is Babe
Though I'm extremely
proud to tell you about one night of our production.
I was watching
from the wings and peaked out to the audience as Kelly says, “I was
possessed of the belief that my daughter was the most extraordinary
human being who ever moved shoes over the earth…" Every female face I
could see was wet with tears.
For me, that was the epitaph for Thomas
Babe.”
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8. AN INTERVIEW WITH DAVID LAN – ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF THE YOUNG VIC
How did you first come across the play and why did you programme it for
this season at the Young Vic?
I saw the Royal Court production in 1978 and I programmed the play
largely because of my memories of that production, which were reignited
when I found the script again in a collection of American plays.
Its one of those plays that creates a strong memory, which is odd
because in the moment it seems very slight, but there is something that
stays with you.
There is a strange depth to it; it feels like it comes
from somewhere very deep within the playwright.
It seems conjured out
of nothing, but at the same time is gripping; I particularly remembered
the moment when Kelly takes Jimmy in his arms.
I only do plays I want to see and I decided I wanted to see this
again.
From then it was a question of lining up the right team and
finding the strongest way of doing the play.
Dominic worked with us on
Ubu the King 18 months ago and I thought this would be good for him,
that he would handle the sensitivity of these very tough guys well.
The way we programme is by juxtaposition, so it seemed to fit well
into this season, coming after The Magic Flute and before the two
collaborations with ENO; it was unlike anything else.
How involved were you in the decision to stage the play in traverse?
I always encourage designers to use the space as boldly as possible,
and I think I reminded Giles (the designer) of that, but I didn't try
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to dictate the staging; I remember being surprised when I saw the model
box!
I think staging the play in traverse is very good, but also a
challenge.
It's always good to do things that express the life of the
play, and I like the way the staging exposes the characters.
They go
into a room where they should be completely concealed but instead they
are totally exposed.
The challenge is in the difficulty getting focus; making sure the focus
is on the stage and not on the audience, and making sure it is on the
right part of the stage.
I think Dominic has done a great job with
this – it has a tennis court feel; you are always drawn to the next
hit.
Why is Babe so much in the shadow of Mamet and Shepard?
Are there
other lost playwrights of the period who need re-evaluating?
Shepard and Mamet were original in a way Babe isn't.
He came from a
pre-existing American tradition, of writers like Sidney Kingsley.
Kingsley wrote in the 1930s and 1940s and had a journalistic style.
He
even has a play called Detective Story, set in a police squad room.
Babe also comes out of the realistic TV writing of the 1950s. By
contrast, Mamet is all about language and Shepard does it all through
images.
So they are also stylists in a way Babe isn't.
In terms of other writers, there is David Rabe – but I am not so
interested in him.
I find his work a bit flashy, whereas Babe seems to
have no pretensions at all.
I tend to look before this period for
'lost' playwrights and plays; for example Lorraine Hansbury's A Raisin
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in the Sun; Carson McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding; and Langston
Hughes’ Simply Heavenly
There seems to be a strong connection between the Young Vic and The
Public Theater at the moment (The Brothers Size was there last year and
A Prayer for my Daughter was developed there in the 1970s).
Are there
any plans to formalize the relationship?
By chance I am talking to Oskar Eustis (Artistic Director of The Public
Theater) due to The Brothers Size – I met him in New York and he came
to see our production.
We're also talking to Labyrinth at the moment,
a theatre company based at the Public.
However, we are also in conversation with all sorts of other theatres
all over the world; Germany, Austria, Iceland, Ireland, Brazil,
Atlanta, etc.
So it is just one artistic relationship among many.
I suppose there is an affinity in the way that we both see the
distinction between text-based theatre and music theatre as useless.
Obviously there are differences in technique that need to be respected,
but in terms of what finally matters, the meeting of the audience and
the performance, there is no difference.
I want to encourage our audience not to categorise.
For example, when
we presented The Enchanted Pig, which was opera, we called it "a
musical tale" so that they wouldn't come with the preconceptions that
accompany opera.
What was great was that people, who would never have
come if we advertised it as opera, came and loved it.
If our standard
of work is high, which I hope it always is, then I hope our audience
will trust us and yield to the experience.
That way there is a chance
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they will get something unexpected – and that is always better than the
expected.
If I hope anything for A Prayer for my Daughter then it is that.
If
we've done it well, and I think we have, people will come and get
something unexpected out of it.
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9. AN INTERVIEW WITH MAX STAFFORD-CLARK – DIRECTOR OF THE ORIGINAL UK
PRODUCTION
How did you first come across the play and why did you want to stage it
at The Royal Court?
I met Thomas Babe in New York when the play was on at The Public
Theater.
He sent me a copy of it and I thought it was a very powerful
and curious metaphor for relationships to daughters and children, set
within the framework of a cop story and murder.
I was an Associate Director at The Royal Court at the time so I flagged
it to Stuart Burge, the then Artistic Director, and he programmed it
for the Theatre Upstairs.
We lined up some star names, Donal McCann
and Tony Sher, and the play was a great success; so much so that we
moved it into the main Theatre downstairs.
Did you have much contact with Thomas Babe?
No, not intensive contact.
As I said, we met and talked in New York,
and he did come and see the production in London, but he wasn't
omnipresent in the rehearsal room.
What are your abiding memories of the production?
Mostly I remember the antics of Donal McCann, the actor who I cast as
Kelly.
He was always very keen for rehearsals to finish for lunch, and
one day I went on past 1pm to 1.30pm.
I could tell something was up
with Donal for the rest of the day and after rehearsals I found him
waiting for me.
I was quite confused when he said “Don’t you ever do
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that to me again!” until I learned that Donal liked to have two vodkas
ready for him in the bar at 1pm, and he thought I was trying to
encourage him to get sober by holding up his first drink of the day!
Donal also acted in The Steward of Christendom for me, so there are
some memories connected to A Prayer for my Daughter in one of my books,
Taking Stock, if you would like to know more…
How do you think the play holds up now?
Very well.
The impact of the story is still very strong.
What reads
to me much more clearly now are the sexual undertones of the piece.
I
wasn't aware at the time that the writer was gay, but from seeing the
play now it is very clear that, if he wasn't openly gay when he wrote
it, he was certainly in love with men.
With hindsight, aspects of the
play are obviously autobiographical – but that wasn't nearly so obvious
at the time.
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10. INTERVIEW WITH DOMINIC HILL – THE DIRECTOR
It seems like it has been a busy year for you, as amongst your normal
work schedule you have taken on the Artistic Directorship of The
Traverse Theatre. What were you working on when David Lan approached
you about A Prayer for my Daughter and why did you accept the offer?
David approached me about the play almost a year ago.
I was working on
Happy Days (by Samuel Beckett) for Dundee Rep at the time, and the job
at the Traverse wasn't even on my radar.
I had been joint Artistic Director at Dundee since 2003, so I was
excited by the idea of working with a different group of people (Dundee
has a rep company of actors) on a different type of play.
David Lan has been very supportive and encouraging about my work since
my time as a freelance Director, over six years ago.
I very much
enjoyed working with the Young Vic on Ubu the King, I like the
repertoire that David programmes, and I love the vibe of the Young Vic
building.
What were your first thoughts on the play?
I was struck by the way it was written; Babe's use of language and
rhythm give the play a particular voice.
I am known for making epic theatre, taking on big works about big
subjects, so in a sense this seemed liked a departure for me. However,
what I liked, and still like, about the play is that it is epic,
despite its apparently domestic setting.
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We all live epic lives, our being is swamped with existential questions
but we keep them to ourselves because we have to eat our cornflakes.
Good plays allow the other dimension in.
I liked the fact that under the guise of a cop drama, the play asks
interesting questions about human psychology and sexuality.
It
explores a world the audience doesn’t already know and deals with
questions that go beyond the context in which it is set.
You have stressed several times in rehearsals that the play gives no
clear-cut answers; do you think it poses definite questions?
For me, the play doesn't so much ask questions as riff on themes.
explores repressed emotion in men and the damage it can cause.
presents a view of sexuality that is not cut and dried.
It
It
These themes
stem from issues and crises that were prevalent in the mid to late
1970s.
In particular, the women's liberation movement created the
context for the play, as it forced men to reconsider their role;
societally and domestically, sexually and psychologically.
When plays or characters don’t give clear-cut answers there is a great
temptation for directors and actors to create ‘back-story’; an
explanation derived from external research.
How do you determine when
research and back-story are helpful and when they are a crutch?
What interests me is what happens line by line on the page – that's the
drama of a play.
Often I think it might be interesting if we did no
research at all and just did the play.
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However, I don't agree that actors should just learn their lines as if
they were a telephone directory, as a practitioner of this period,
David Mamet, sometimes suggests.
I think if Thomas Babe were sitting
here he would probably tell us the meaning of each supposedly
mysterious line, and that would make life a lot easier!
Research helps directors and actors feel more grounded and, when it
informs what happens line by line, back-story can be useful particularly for actors.
The danger comes when research and/ or back-
story take the place of an interpretation of what is happening in the
text.
Are there differences between directing classics (like Ubu the King)
and directing new writing (the focus of The Traverse Theatre), and
where would you place A Prayer for my Daughter in relation to the two?
The major difference is that when working on a pre-20th century classic
the director usually has to interpret the piece conceptually.
This is
because we are usually dealing with non-naturalistic plays with no
specific social context.
This play feels more like new writing, just without the writer in the
room.
Like much new writing it has a specific context, so - although
you could interpret it conceptually - it feels as though the directors'
job should be to find the drama within this naturalistic context, where
the action of the play is set in specific things.
However, I don't approach directing classics and new plays differently
when it comes to interpreting the text with actors.
Finding the drama
line by line pays dividends in both cases.
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What personal challenges has this production presented you with?
I have worked with a rep company (one group of actors) for the past 5
years, so the main thing for me has been seeing the processes of a
different set of actors and adapting to those.
I have also been particularly struck by how crucial the rhythm of this
play is.
It has a musicality that is part of the dramatic function of
the piece, and therefore my most important job has been getting that
rhythm right.
Which projects will you be working on in the immediate future and what
are your longer term plans for The Traverse?
Falstaff by Verdi for Scottish Opera, followed by a new play for the
Traverse for the Edinburgh Festival… then a holiday!
In the longer
term I hope to increase the amount of work that The Traverse does, by
developing new writing and opening new partnerships.
If I were pushed for a manifesto, I would say that I intend to
encourage and stage non-naturalistic playwrights, who write plays that
deal with the deep questions of what it means to be a human being.
For
example, I have already programmed Pornography by Simon Stevens, an
exploration of the desire to transgress morally and socially prescribed
boundaries, and am in discussions to stage a play about the dilemmas
faced by a country executing war criminals; moral questions of revenge,
freedom and forgiveness.
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11. A CONVERSATION WITH GILES CADLE (SET AND COSTUME DESIGNER) AND
BRUNO POET (LIGHTING DESIGNER)
Why did you decide on the traverse staging?
Giles Cadle: David Lan encouraged me to use the space in an interesting
way so I responded to his challenge!
There was actually an end of
version of the model-box in existence at one time, but we were
encouraged to ditch that and try something more exciting.
The Young
Vic can be a tricky space, and if you’re not careful then the
impression an audience can get is just that there is a massive lump of
scenery in the middle of a huge void.
Bruno Poet: What you also have in the traditional setting is a huge
expanse of floor, and we were both keen to avoid that.
In this design
everyone is close to the stage and the audience are forced to consider
the play in three dimensions
GC:
Yes, the audience are made very aware that they have entered the
space by being forced in from above, and they are then forced to look
down into this “arena of conflict”, which hopefully keeps them more
focused.
The traverse setting also gives a distinct sense that the
actors have no escape, and we’ve enhanced that with the entrance down
the large staircase.
There doesn’t feel like there is a back-stage
area, so the audience are always aware that there is nowhere for them
to go to escape the tension.
The set and props are detailed right down to minutiae like the correct
period New York coffee cups, and the lighting is based around the
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actual sources of available light in the space (e.g. angle-poise
lamps).
Were your design briefs purely naturalistic?
BP: On one level we did aim to be very naturalistic – but this was
always tempered by the need to also distort the naturalism we set up.
I have lit the play using an unnatural yellow to portray the heat, the
time of night and the drugginess.
Although the light sources seem
natural at first, they change to become about connecting people – they
should draw the eye to emphasize the changing nature of the
interactions.
GC: The set also distorts naturalism.
Although all the set and props
have been meticulously detailed to reflect the period, you’ll notice
that anything that crosses the barrier of the stage, roof to ceiling,
has been sliced in two. This speaks to the danger of the world these
guys inhabit, and reminds us it’s not a world we’re normally invited
into – we’re only allowed to glimpse this slice of it.
Bruno, when I sat in on a meeting with you and Dominic, you said your
aim for the lighting was that it be Caravaggio-esque.
What did you
mean by that?
BP: Well, in Caravaggio’s paintings there are always very clear light
sources, coming from one direction, which create clean clear shadows
that sculpt an image.
Dominic and I felt this was right for the play,
partly because the practical lighting on stage would be suggestive of
clear light sources to the audience, but more so because it felt right
that the images of the play should feel sculpted.
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GC:
That’s a bit like the play as a whole.
There are moments of
naturalism and moments of surrealism, and the lighting and setting
needed to embrace both.
BP:
Exactly!
If I were just aiming at naturalism I could have lit the
whole thing with one state, but that wouldn’t have drawn you into the
characters or the play.
I think what Giles and I have done allows
that.
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12. INTERVIEWS WITH THE ACTORS
Interviews with all of the actors are available to watch on the Young
Vic’s YouTube site:
http://uk.youtube.com/user/youngvictheatre
You can also read in-depth interviews with Sean Chapman and Colin
Morgan at;
http://www.independent.co.uk/artsentertainment/theatre/features/interview-sean-chapman-777626.html
http://www.whatsonstage.com/index.php?pg=207&story=E8821201886414
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13. REHEARSAL DIARY OF DAVID DORRIAN – ASSISTANT DIRECTOR
Pre-Rehearsals - Research
As an Assistant Director I came on board towards the end of prerehearsal stage.
The creative team (director and designers of set,
costume, lights and sound) had been in place for some time and a stage
management team (Stage Manager, Deputy Stage Manager (DSM) and
Assistant Stage Manager (ASM)) had also been assembled, in addition to
the production team at the Young Vic.
Finally, casting of the actors
was also well underway.
The creative team had already conducted extensive visual research (or
aural research in the case of sound) into the period, in order to
situate their designs for the play in the world of New York in the late
1970s.
However my first job was to conduct further research that would
be pertinent to questions that might arise in the rehearsal room.
Dominic (the director) particularly asked me to focus on two areas;
first, the procedural aspect of the police work mentioned and,
secondly, the logistics of the substance abuse described by the text.
It was possible to complete a large amount of this research through the
internet, but I also had to order legal books from the United States,
source DVDs to reference the songs from the play, and visit my local
Drugs Advisory Service to arrange a site visit for the cast.
Week One
Week One started on December 17th.
The first week of rehearsals
traditionally consists of a lot of discussion about the play, with the
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director, DSM and cast sitting round a table to read from the script.
Hence it is often given the name ‘table-work’.
Although he told me he wouldn’t always do so, Dominic decided to give
over the entire first week to this kind of work.
This was because our
second week was the Christmas week, which was scheduled as holiday.
Therefore Dominic felt it would be most useful for the actors to have
read and discussed the play in its entirety in the first week, even if
this meant we never left the table to start getting the play up on its
feet.
Despite this, the first day was strongly rooted in the sense of the
physical reality of the play.
It began with a ‘meet and greet’ in The
Cut at The Young Vic, where all of the full-time staff at the Young Vic
introduced themselves to the cast, creatives and stage management, so
from the very start we were reminded that what we were doing was
supported by the organisation as a whole.
After the ‘meet and greet’, the cast, creatives and stage management
re-grouped in the rehearsal space where Dominic began proceedings by
asking Giles Cadle (the designer) to show us the model box.
The model
box is a scale model of the set design, so we were all immediately
plunged into the physical world of the production.
Next, the cast embarked on a read-through of the play from start to
finish.
This is a traditional aspect of the first day of rehearsals,
as it focuses everyone’s minds on the text.
Following the read-through
Dominic spoke to everyone about his vision for the production,
including pertinent aspects of research that he had conducted, thereby
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putting the text into context and setting the frame of reference for
the discussions to follow after lunch.
The rest of the first week progressed from this foundation in a
deceptively formulaic way.
Working linearly from the start of the
play, Dominic directed the cast through readings of small sections of
the play; scenes (segments of a play defined by having one set of
characters interacting in one place) and smaller units of action
(segments of scenes defined by a specific type of interaction).
The
cast members involved in each section read it and then everyone present
for the table-work (including me) discussed their impressions of it,
with Dominic facilitating the discussion.
By the end of the week we had worked through the whole play in this
manner (the fact that it took a week to get through an hour and a half
of script shows you how in depth the discussions were!), and the week
finished with another read-through of the whole play, imbued with the
thoughts and feelings generated by the first weeks discussions.
Weeks Two and Three
The next stage of rehearsal was focussed on getting the play on its
feet – placing the actors in the physical environment of the
production.
In preparation, the stage management team provided rehearsal room
versions of the set (by marking out the floor to the dimensions of the
design and by providing desks and chairs to scale) and props that were
as close as possible to those called for in Giles’s design.
This
allowed both Dominic and the actors to be sure that the physical
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relationships and practical actions found in rehearsal would be subject
to the same spatial and structural dynamics when they were transferred
into the theatre.
However, there were various aspects of the design that were
intentionally left as flexible so that we could discover what would
work best in rehearsal.
chairs and desks.
One such aspect was the placement of the
In order to provide a starting point for the actors,
Dominic and I came in by ourselves on the Friday of Christmas week to
experiment with various different placements of the furniture.
After a
few hours of moving desks around and trying out possible scene
configurations Dominic was happy that we had found an optimal
positioning to present to the actors the following Monday.
Monday came, and, after a short period of exploring the space, the
actors seemed happy with the placement of the furniture Dominic had
arrived upon, though they had questions and suggestions about the
placement of items not yet sourced (filing cabinets, water cooler
etc.).
However, once these had been answered to everyone’s
satisfaction, we were able to start working on physically realising the
action of the play.
Dominic’s method extended naturally from the table work; again working
linearly from the start of the script, he encouraged the actors to
follow their instincts of how to play each scene and unit of action.
This is a much more intricate and complex process than simply blocking
a play (where a director suggests movements to actors).
In this
process the director is more a facilitator than a dictator, aiding the
actors as they discover their own route through each set of
interactions.
The discoveries made during table work formed the
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foundation for the process, but each moment was discussed again in
great detail, now with additional reference to the demands made on it
by the physical aspects of the set and the actions of the other actors.
Once the discussion had occurred the section discussed was played again
so the actors could imbue their playing of it with what had been
discussed.
Each unit of action was scrutinised in this way several times, then
when a whole scene of units had been worked, the scene was played and
discussed in a similar way.
By the end of the second week, Act One had
been worked in this way so the entire Act was run and then commented
upon by Dominic.
The third week was given over to working on Act Two
in the same way, so that by the 11th of January the actors had applied
their instincts to the entire play ‘on their feet’.
Weeks Four and Five
Over the next two weeks we built on this foundation by using the same
techniques to both detail each tiny aspect of the play and piece it all
together in runs.
Week four (starting Monday 14th January) saw us re-rehearse from the top
of the play – allowing the actors to revisit and clarify their
instincts.
It was also the week in which we went to our drugs
workshop, at Haringay DASH.
We were given a demonstration on safe
injecting by a drugs advisor, and the actors were also able to ask
questions about how their characters habits would affect them socially
and psychologically.
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The workshop was invaluable for our staging of the injection scenes in
the play, and also came at a moment when the production side was
appreciably becoming more closely linked with rehearsals – clarifying
the actual props and pieces of set that the actors would be using.
By the end of the week we ran the entire show for the first time, and
that sprung us into Week Five, when several runs were undertaken.
After each run, Dominic decided which sections needed special attention
in terms of detailing.
We would then rehearse those sections before
putting them back into context in a run.
Week 6
Week Five was our last week in the rehearsal room.
moved into the Theatre.
In Week Six we
The first stage of that part of the process
was the technical rehearsal.
The technical rehearsal is usually not a rehearsal for the actors, as
it involves the laborious task plotting cues; programming hundreds of
lighting states and soundscapes into the lighting and sound control
desks.
However, in our case the actors were able to rehearse large sections of
the play, as Dominic trusted both Bruno Poet (lighting) and Dan Jones
(sound) to plot in a flowing manner, only stepping in if he saw or
heard something that would distract or mis-focus an audience.
Therefore the Tech was incredibly fast – it took less than 9 hours to
complete (bear in mind there are well over a hundred lighting cues, and
the play itself is 2 hours long!).
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Finishing the technical rehearsal early enabled us to start the dress
rehearsal period early.
It also allowed us to use one afternoon that
had been set-aside for a dress rehearsal, as a kind of preview
rehearsal session – in which sections of the show were re-rehearsed in
detail with the benefit of the stage and full technical support from
lights and sound.
These preview sessions continued in earnest once we welcomed our first
public audience on 31st January.
The technical support enabled us to
change the volume and length of sound cues, and to experiment with reblocking some of the smaller units of action (as these could then be
lit).
The actors were also able to experiment with subtle changes that
Dominic suggested in order to clarify the plot and the journey of the
individual characters.
These sessions continued all the way until the
afternoon of press night, when the show was set for the rest of the run
– marking the end of rehearsals.
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