If you’ve ever seen any of McCarter’s marketing materials, you’ve undoubtedly noticed the incisive and revelatory photographs that somehow capture the heart of our productions. Those photos—which we feature on our website, our brochures, our mailings, and throughout the theater—are almost all taken by one man, photographer T. Charles Erickson. Charlie has been the theater’s primary photographer for the last 20 seasons, and by this point even our administrative hallways are peppered with hundreds of his photos.
American Theatre Wing’s “In the Wings” program recently featured Charlie in the short video above—it’s a great-behind-the-scenes-glimpse of this often invisible part of the theatrical ecology. I’m always fascinated by production photographs because our art form is inherently ephemeral. Over time, the memories of a production become hazy, the details fade. The photographs, however, live on—permanently capturing a moment, a glance, a theatrical effect. I wonder that gradually they don’t begin to replace the actual memory of the show, or rather to bolster up the memory of the moment captured, while the other moments slip away. What does that mean for the moments that we’ve chosen to capture, or the images we’ve allowed to be lost? How will our directors, actors, lighting designers, and productions be remembered but by the work of Charlie and his compatriots? If you’ve never thought about this stuff before, I urge you to watch this video. And please feel free to post a comment below to share your thoughts—do you notice production photographs, and do they change your behavior?
Rebecca Brooksher and Veanne Cox in Twelfth Night. Photo by T.Charles Erickson
Evan Parke and Ben Vereen in Fetch Clay, Make Man. Photo by T.Charles Erickson
Patrick Andrews and Tracy Letts in Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s American Buffalo. Photo by Michael Brosilow.
Have you seen American Buffalo?
What did you think? Did you think it was the bee’s knees? Do you agree with the newspaper reviews, or disagree? Favorite parts of the show? Things that weren’t to your taste?
Post an “audience response” or read what other people are saying by clicking on the “comments” link below.
We can’t wait to hear what you think!
Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.
In this video, Francis Guinan, Tracy Letts (author of August: Osage County and Superior Donuts) and Patrick Andrews discuss working with director Amy Morton on American Buffalo. The play, from Chicago’s famed Steppenwolf Theatre, will be performed at McCarter Theatre from March 9-28, 2010.
Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.
In this video, Amy Morton (director), Francis Guinan, Tracy Letts (author of August: Osage County and Superior Donuts) and Patrick Andrews discuss the character of Bobby in American Buffalo. The play, from Chicago’s famed Steppenwolf Theatre, will be performed at McCarter Theatre from March 9-28, 2010.
Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.
In this video, Amy Morton (director), Francis Guinan, Tracy Letts (author of August: Osage County and Superior Donuts) and Patrick Andrews discuss the character of Teach in American Buffalo. The play, from Chicago’s famed Steppenwolf Theatre, will be performed at McCarter Theatre from March 9-28, 2010.
Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.
In this video, Amy Morton (director), Francis Guinan, Tracy Letts (author of August: Osage County and Superior Donuts) and Patrick Andrews discuss the character of Donny in American Buffalo.American Buffalo will be performed at McCarter Theatre from March 9-28.
Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.
In this video, Tracy Letts (the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of August: Osage County) discusses his creative process and what it is like returning to the stage as an actor in American Buffalo, which will be performed at McCarter Theatre from March 9-28.
Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.
In this video, Amy Morton, the director of American Buffalo, discusses what makes great acting. American Buffalo will be performed at McCarter Theatre from March 9-28.
Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.
I had the great good fortune last week of listening to two of this season’s plays being read aloud. First, I heard a reading of Fetch Clay, Make Man that we produced in NYC. This was the third or fourth reading of the play that I have heard, and it’s a revelation every time. And then on Friday, I was able to stay for the first read-through of Having Our Say. A few months ago I saw an archival video of McCarter’s 1995 production of Having Our Say, but this was the first time I’ve been able to hear that play read live.
Hearing these two plays in dialogue with each other made me think about some of the themes that run through all of the plays in our season. For me, one of the most powerful and resonant themes is of how we shape (or try to shape) our own self-images. The characters in this season’s plays are interested in creating a version of themselves for others to see, and a great deal of the dramatic tension in this year’s plays comes out of the distance and dissonance between the characters themselves and the image they are trying to create. In Having Our Say, as Bessie and Sadie Delany reflect on their lives one hears a difference in how they speak about each other and how they speak about themselves. As African-American women living through 100 years of American history, their lives were filled with situations in which they had to forge a public identity of themselves that doesn’t always match the inner woman. In She Stoops to Conquer, characters disguise themselves, pretending to be lower class in order to, well, conquer. Fetch Clay, Make Man examines very literally what happens to people as they shape their public images—Cassius Clay becomes Muhammad Ali, Lincoln Perry becomes Stepin Fetchit, and even the supporting characters (Sonji Clay, William Fox and Brother Rashid) are in the process of re-shaping their images. They are changing their names and putting on metaphorical masks as they make the man (or woman!) that they will become. American Buffalo concerns three small-time crooks as they posture for each other and negotiate their relationships, and Take Flight tells the story of four pioneers of aviation, trying to shape their legacies.
So I started to wonder why this theme felt so present this season (in a way that it didn’t, for example, last season). Of course, part of it is that three of this season’s plays are about historical characters (the Delany Sisters, Fetchit, Ali, Fox and Clay, and of course the Wright Brothers, Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh). In writing these characters drawn from America’s history book, the playwrights are naturally intrigued by the questions of identity and legacy–who was the private person underneath the public, etc. But perhaps also maybe there’s something about this moment, at least for us here at McCarter, that drew us (unconsiously, I’m sure) to stories that share in an exploration of shaping self-image. As we enter our artistic director’s 20th season and start our first full season with a new managing director, we’ve all spent a lot of time thinking about who we are as a theater right now, and what our identity is in the world and our own community. And as our nation has undergone a massive shift, with democrats winning two of the three branches of our government, and with a president who represents, for many, a very new (and welcome) idea of the image of American leadership, it seems natural that we would be thinking about these questions. Frankly, as America starts to look toward our sister nations and say: “we are a different country now than we were a year ago,” perhaps we are all thinking about identity differently.
What do you think? Coincidence, or is there an underlying trend here?
Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre
