The Missing Player

In a previous issue of an ATHE publication, I read "An Open Letter" by Ronald A. Feinberg (Edited), wherein he noted that a Columbia University School of Arts nationwide survey of actors had listed "no real world experience" as an area of "failure" in student training, along with "no instruction in the business of (Theatre) business." I inwardly shouted, "hear! hear!" at Feinberg. At last, at long last, someone had raised the issue in a theatre forum.

Theatre instruction, unlike all other academic disciplines, happens in the clouds. Courses are offered in acting, directing, speech, drama, and other artistic areas, none of which touch on reality. We worship the director, the actor, the author. We recognize the dramaturg and critic. But NO course, no part of a course, no mention is ever made of the Producer -- the single entity that makes all the others possible: that makes the unreal real. The missing player in the academic theatre study scene.

My intent, herein, is to provoke attention to the Producer -- that figure or combination of figures having the power to endow an imaginary world with its own special reality. Since recognition of the role of the Producer in Theatre production is nonexistent in the academic milieu, despite its being paramount in theatre practice in America, the time is long overdue for Theatre institutions to become cognizant of this anomaly, and begin to deal with the reality of the theatrical environment as it exists outside the campus womb. Students should be made aware that they will graduate into the working world of theatre, where the single, most important person in their working situation is the Producer. It is this persona (or personae) who will select the "property" and select and cause to be assembled the artists, craftspeople and administrators of the production. Above all, it is the Producer who will somehow, by some "magical" (dimly understood by most artists) process generate the funds that will make feasible the project in its entirety; for without this last ingredient, there is no theatre -- only the play, in written form, on someone's bookshelf.

Thus, accepting the truism of the Producer's importance to theatre, the questions that follow are, "Who is this all-life generating being? Where does he/she keep him/herself, and why over time has the Producer not been heard from or about in our hallowed ivy halls?" The reason, or at least one reason if not THE reason, I suggest is Money! When we think Producer, we think Money! The man who "puts up" the money. We have always equated the Producer with the dollar, wherefore "Artists" are above such mundane mental associations. hence the Producer, almost by definition, functions on a lower plane of existence than the Artist, and, as a consequence, is unworthy of recognition or study in the airy world of unreality -- which is Theatre. (Ironically, the Producer's source of money, the "backers", are commonly referred to as "angels"; and, if backers are angels, then it follows their "boss", the Producer, must be "God" in this special world).

Many summers ago, when David Merrick reigned on Broadway, I was awarded an internship in his production offices for which I earned six university credits. Basically, my labor as a general office aide was exchanged for exposure to the operations of a theatrical production office. I copied documents -- from memos to scripts. I took dictation, typed letters, worked the switchboard, checked calculations, etc.: all these non-theatre activities eventually made me eligible for six university credits. However, that same year, in the fall, while still enrolled in university courses, I co-produced BUGS/VERONICA, an evening of two, one-act plays, Off-Broadway, and applied for an extension of my internship to include the work I would perform as a producer on this production, which would afford me the maximum allowable credits for internship assignments. My proposal was rejected on the grounds that, as a producer, the potential for profit was integral to the function, and this "profit" possibility precluded academic credit. I then resubmitted my request, described my position as assistant to the Director, Anna Sokolow, who verified same, and in that capacity qualified for the six credits. As a producer, I was academically a zero. The possible taint of money had eliminated me from credit consideration: an experience that led me to wonder, "Is money then the defining characteristic of the producer in Academe?" If so, then it would seem logical that this bias was responsible for the lack of recognition of this essential functionary.

While an indispensable factor of theatre production is cash, it is however choice, not cash, that comprehensively defines the Producer. To "raise money" for an enterprise is consistent with all activity organized for the specific purpose of gaining profit. In this regard, theatre production is akin to any other businesses, be they boxes or buttons. It is only in the area of choice that the theatre producer differs from other commercial entrepreneurs, as well as from all other parties involved in a specific theatre presentation. Hence, to stigmatize the producer as a "money machine" betrays a limited understanding of the office: for it is choice that sets the Producer apart from the average businessman: it is choice that differentiates the Producer from production colleagues; and it is choice that distinguishes the good from the bad Producer. Towards the objective of promoting a concrete understanding and acceptance of such a redefined concept, and insight into the Producer, and, using Leland Hayward as a model, the following, I trust, should contribute.

Briefly, for those too young to have known or remember, the Hayward career spanned almost three decades, from the nineteen forties to the seventies. His first production was A Bell for Adano, from a novel by John Hersey, which dealt with the introduction of democracy to a formerly fascist town in Italy. Amongst his productions that almost all will still recognize are South Pacific, Gypsy, Mr. Roberts and Sound of Music. During his lifetime, Leland Hayward produced twenty five stage productions: the final one being The Catonsville Nine, a staged version of the transcript of the trial of a small group of Catholics, seven men and two women, led by Father Daniel Berrigan, who had all participated in burning the draft records of the local military board as a symbolic gesture to protest America's participation in the Vietnam war.

The premise that the most important aspect of the producer's role is choice based on the fact that only what the producer chooses to produce is granted life -- a life upon a stage. From this single decision, all that follows proceeds as inevitably as an embryo develops into its adult form. Leland Hayward's choices conformed to then prevailing principles of "good theatre" -- hardly a concern these days, when judgmental functioning has been suspended in an immoral and unethical milieu.

Good Theatre! "Good Theatre," one might well query, "what is that?" From his meager writings, it is evident that Leland Hayward grappled with this enigma all his producing life, and most times found it in his productions, if not in his prose. The ultimate problem in seeking to define or find parameters for good theatre is that no matter how scrupulously one has obeyed the rules, or, as today, deliberately disobeyed them, in the transformation from the written word to the live event occurring in the presence of an audience something indefinable, intangible and elusive happens, and depending on that happenstance the production either sparks and flares into a success or sputters into dismal failure. For Leland Hayward the conflagration, success, brightened his existence on most occasions. Of his twenty-two productions, most were "hits"; that is, they survived and earned money. In his entire producing career, he suffered only a few failures, and of these only one was an absolute failure in that the play he chose was totally lacking in merit. Such a record for a Broadway producer adds up to, in Broadway terms, a "smashing success;" hence, something can perhaps be learned from examining Hayward's successes and analyzing what they had in common that evoked the audience response essential to their being categorized as "hits."

The group of productions that comprised the "hits" included: A Bell for Adano; State of the Union; Mister Roberts; Anne of the Thousand Days; South Pacific; Call Me Madam; Point of No Return; Wish You Were Here; Gypsy; The Sound of Music; A Shot In the Dark; The Trial of the Catonsville Nine: five musicals and seven plays. All have in common the concern with civilized values. Each production, in its own way, is saying that human life is better if the values that promote human existence dominate human actions. This insistence on judgmental functioning struck a responsive struck in the psychic apparatus of the forties' and fifties' audiences. Artaud has articulated for the moderns the theatre's power of evocation of primordial, subconscious forces in the human spectators that constitute an audience. However, Hayward's "hits" proved the opposite is also true. Human beings in large numbers reacted positively to stage events that directed their appeals to the conscious mind. As Aristotle contradicted Plato, albeit somewhat late for the latter to counter, art can be used for higher purposes than merely to "water the passions." Inspiration does not necessarily spring from madness, and poets/dramatists have a choice. They can choose to impose consciously conditioned imperatives upon their character's behavior and direct their dramatic overtures to both subconscious and conscious minds, choosing always to keep the conscious dominant. The eons and eons it took to evolve the conscious human forebrain becomes a waste of Nature's time and effort if humankind, the inheritors of that precious treasure, reduce it to nothingness in their highest cultural achievements.

Hayward's successes were compatible with Nature's evolutionary objectives, and because the evolutionary process presses onward, if it is not interrupted by man's reactionary, subconscious urges which propel him to violence and universal self-destruction, Hayward's dramatic values will endure, and are a matter for emulation. Thus one element of the Hayward "hit" can be isolated and verbalized: a production should project some ideational value with a strong emotional linkage. The "idea" evokes a sense of elevation in the psyche, whereas the emotional aspect provides the requisite stimulation.

We know that stimuli are essential to development and growth in the physical organism. It is equally accepted that the same mechanism is operative in the brain, and that our consciousness expands with repeated experiences of idea linked to emotion. This being so, and good theatre being enjoyable, mental growth becomes a pleasurable process when resulting from theatre attendance. Hayward had consciously, or unconsciously, locked into this principle and consciously, or unconsciously, applied it to his production practice, for his first concern, as his productions demonstrate, was with content, even when he was searching for material for a "star" (or "star" director) in productions such as Call Me Madam or Wish You Were Here.

A second common feature of the Hayward "hits" is the action that carries the theme. Both plays and musicals alike have a strong story line that is furthered by the characters in action. Not a single one of his "hits" are in the revue form. Hayward's own ideas of form were of Aristotelian derivation, which accounted for his inability to function successfully in the sixties, when conventional form literally broke down. Nevertheless, most of Hayward's productions promise to endure because they were organized around concepts that have prevailed through the ages: freedom vs. oppression; integrity vs. ambition; justice vs. injustice - all general ideals embracing all humanity.

This brief overview of Hayward as exemplar of producership should establish that he was no mere ATM. Nor is any producer, great or not-so-great, merely a cash provider. All producers must make choices, and by their choices are they recognized, acclaimed or rejected. Again, almost as a mantra, we need to repeat that theatre would not exist without the producer. Directors, actors, playwrights: all would have no outlet for their respective talents if the producers did not make choices, then round up the "angels" to transform their choices into working situations. Academe has too long ignored this reality. The time to fill this void is "yesterday." What University will show the way with a course on the Producer & Producership?

Copyright, Sonia Berman, 1997

Dr. Sonia Berman recently retired from California State University Sacramento and is the author of The Crossing -- Adano to Catonsville: Leland Hayward's Producing Career.


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