No Man's Land

by Harold Pinter

Director’s Notes, March 2017

Harold Pinter’s plays have always scared me to death. Where do you begin? Where do you end? Is there an end? Is there a beginning? My first drama teacher described Pinter as the “first cubist playwright” because of the way his plays can appear to be one thing, then another, only to morph into something else if you looked away for but a second. It was a truth that took me twenty years to appreciate. As a trueborn Brit I thought I had an innate understanding of the hidden codes and customs woven into the mannerisms of characters that couldn’t be more British, yet when rehearsals finally arrived I walked into the room like a child. For four interminable hours I stumbled around unable to make sense of the silences and pauses that are as much a part of a Pinter play as his dialogue. It was literally theatrical hell on earth. Yet later that evening I left that same room with in tears in my eyes at the play’s extraordinary humor and pathos. It was Pinter at his very best and a play that he had described as “an attempt to delight and disturb, hopefully at the same time.” Mission accomplished.  

It’s easy to assume that the next great playwright will always show up, that no matter how accustomed the world becomes to looking the other way when life gets ugly, there will always be a playwright to voice our fears and show us the way. But I dare you to find a playwright working today that can portray the human condition with all its warts and miracles as Pinter did for almost fifty years. He was a playwright, poet, actor, director, screenwriter, and one of the most original, stylish and enigmatic artists of the 20th century. His like will never come again.

-michael french

Other Desert Cities

by John Robin Baitz

Director’s Notes, February 2016

 family: noun (pl. families)

 1. (treated as sing. Or pl.) a group consisting of parents and children living together in a household.

What is it about the American family that playwrights continue to find so irresistible? Maybe it’s the fact that the characters are often unique, compelling, and clearly unhinged, or that the storylines are bizarre and impossible to predict, or that running through it all are epic emotions that have little to nothing to do with reason. Whatever it is, I hope the fascination continues. 

What drew me initially to “Other Desert Cities” was its robust, literary language and wonderfully passionate characters, but as I read further it became clear to me that just beneath the surface is an examination of American politics. The unsaid connection is that families, much like politics, operate on carefully constructed fictions as well truths. Not until I had my own family did I realize that this wobbly balance of fiction and truth is a necessary ill as at stake is the sanity of all involved.

What the Wythe family shows us in all its ugly glory is that family is an arena where we are often thoughtless, mercenary, lovable, cruel, compassionate, irritating, adorable, unfair, dumb, charming, nonsensical, and, at times, at very rare, but vital times, heroic.

The family: The cause of and solution to, all of life’s little problems.

-michael french

H20

by Jane Martin

Director’s Notes, 2015

human

adjective

1 they're only human: mortal, flesh and blood; fallible, weak, frail, imperfect, vulnerable, susceptible, erring, error-prone; physical, bodily, fleshly.

It’s hard to be a human being and even harder to be a good one.

It was this sentiment more than anything else that drew me to Jake, Deborah, and the bittersweet tale of H2O. An emotional labyrinth conceived in hell and set ever so gently on a bed of quicksand, H2O has language so seductively simple I honestly thought I had a grasp of what I had taken on and what it would take to wrestle it to the ground. How wrong I was. But with that said, how could I have known what I was taking on when the characters only sometimes say what they mean, only sometimes mean what they say they mean, and only sometimes say what they say they would mean if only they would say it. Sounds like real life to me, but what else is a human being supposed to do when faced with feelings he can never hope to control. 

Beyond the notion of a good person, it was the tenderness, the inescapable and tender promise at the heart of Jake and Deborah’s relationship that I couldn’t resist. Isn't what they want what we all want? On a good day it's an easy question to answer, but on a not so good day I'd rather send an email or a text in its place. That's the thing with this life of ours, there's always a way out of loneliness and a ship on the horizon. If given the chance to do it all over again I'd rather come back as a table. All you have to do is stand in the corner, make sure you don't fall down, and everybody loves you. Sounds good to me.

-michael french

The Last Days of Judas Iscariot

by Stephen Adly Gurgis

Director’s Notes, August 2014

Sin and Trouble

“The Last days of Judas Iscariot” was a play I had been desperately trying to avoid for at least five years. Each time I read a page of the script I would immediately slam it shut in absolute horror. The play was a coldblooded massacre and I couldn’t imagine anyone in his or her right mind wanting to wrestle with such a beast, but no matter how much I tried to hide from it, it wouldn’t go away. It wouldn’t go away, or leave me alone, or make nice with someone else, or simply disappear while I wasn’t looking, and then Phillip Seymour Hoffman died and I had the rights to the play within an hour. The brilliant Mr. Hoffman had directed the premier of the play by his own LAByrinth theatre company at the Public Theatre in New York City in 2005. By some accounts it was the beast that no one in his or her right mind should have wrestled with and a bit of a train wreck, but to others it was a piece of modernist jazz that would be appreciated with time. Most of my theatrical influences have been musicians and writers for some reason, apart from Mr., Hoffman, that is. He was the one that left me speechless. He was the one that left me green and raging with jealousy at his talent. He was the one living my life. Fortunately, I didn’t have the heart to tell him any of this so he was none the wiser, thank god. Instead, I decided to direct this production of “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot” so I could momentarily bring him back to life and feel tears well in my eyes. He gave me so much. He gave me so much more.

-michael french

Dusk Rings A Bell

by Stephen Belber

Director's Notes, May 2013

ghost |gōst|

noun

• [as adj. ] appearing or manifesting but not actually existing • a faint trace of something : she gave the ghost of a smile.

• a faint secondary image produced by a fault in an optical system or on a cathode-ray screen, e.g., by faulty television reception or internal reflection in a mirror or camera.

I’ve always been fascinated by ghosts. Not the ones in a white sheet that go bump in the night, but the ones that follow us around step by step, breath by breath, so silently you rarely sense they’re there. But they are there. Always. Inevitably. Tugging at the present with the ferocity of a rabid dog. And it’s a funny thing with these ghosts because unlike the ones in a white sheet they have no intention of scaring you; they simply want to be remembered for every day of the rest of your life and never ever forgotten.

Dusk Rings a Bell is full of ghosts and with every line of every page I had only one thought in mind; it’s hard to be a human being and almost impossible to be a good one. I think that’s why after four readings I threw it under the bed and tried to find something else to direct. I wanted a comedy, something less honest, something less demanding, and something that wouldn’t bring me to tears. Of course, I never found it because I didn’t really want to find it, which didn’t make sense, couldn’t make sense, until I finally realized that this was a play about the miraculous strangeness of being alive. Once I got that, I got everything.

-michael french

Blackbird

by David Harrower

Director’s Notes, October 2011

With the world finally beginning to show its age I can think of no better time to be an artist. Common wisdom would have us believe that when times are tough the arts are the first thing to be taken out back and shot behind the wood shed, with theatre first in line. The thinking goes that it’s better to sit in a padded cell going slowly insane than buy a ticket to a play, movie, or concert that you can ill afford. It’s a thinking that goes on to say that even if you managed to make it out the front door the only thing you’re going to seek is the most superficial, distracting, and escapist form of fluff imaginable. Which begs the question, how does one gauge what is food for the soul when it might be your only meal of the day?

The moment I finished reading David Harrower’s “Blackbird” I felt fed. Not only was it daring in its subject matter and bruising style of storytelling, but it was downright heroic in the way that it refused to give me simple answers, refused to let me know what it was thinking, and refused to accept anything less than my full and undivided attention. It was more than I could have hoped for and everything I needed. With every page it said that life is a ferociously complicated and constantly unknowable place, and yet somehow through it all it’s humanity that survives. There’s no question that escapist entertainment can offer fleeting and sometimes necessary reward. After all, who hasn’t dreamt of leaping tall buildings in a single bound, but in the long run, during times of great uncertainty and great turmoil, it’s the art that’s unafraid to lay an unvarnished world at our feet that truly nourishes.

In times of loneliness seek it out.  

-michael french 

Pavillion

by Craig Wright

Director's Notes, 2009

Who hasn’t brooded over the past? In Craig Wright’s luminous play Pavilion, the past is full of memories that can never be truly saved, but can certainly be savored if looked at from the correct angle. Try as I might, I doubt that I will accept the logic of this notion until the day before I die, which is a little unfortunate when you think about it. Nietzsche said ‘without forgetting, it is impossible to live.’ He could, of course, have replaced the word forgetting with the word remembering and somehow told the same truth, but that’s the fun of being human; you have to find out everything yourself. 

-michael french

My Name is Rachel Corrie

By Rachel Corrie

Director's Notes, 2008

One of the most beautiful, yet sometimes heartbreaking ironies of life is the fact that the young have no idea that they’re young. “My Name is Rachel Corrie” is a perfect example of all that it means to be idealistic, impulsive, devoted, naïve, arrogant, magical, and, of course, young. It was this facet of the play more than anything else that truly touched me. It was this facet of the play more than anything else that I wanted to illuminate. Rachel Corrie wore her politics so passionately on her sleeve she has in many ways become a one-dimensional badge for anyone who cares to wear her. I find this sad. Whatever one might think of her choices, she was, in my opinion, using her youth the way it should be used; Shout form the rooftops what side you’re on and don’t take no for an answer. Life is nothing if not complex, confusing, mysterious, obscure and completely impossible to understand, which is why the one certainty it offers us is a chance to stand up and be counted, and that, regardless of the choice you make, is an affirmation of all that it is to be alive.     

-michael french   

The Deer and the Antelope Play

By Mark Dunn

Director's Notes, 2006

The beauty of directing is at once the beauty of theatre itself. Where else can you move people around to a story that only you can see and then hide behind the words of a playwright? On first reading ‘The Deer and the Antelope Play’ is a serious comedy about redemption. It is probably still about that on a second reading and maybe a third, but by the fourth reading something else rises to the surface that is a little more disturbing; the notion of kin, and who the hell wants to deal with that? 

-michael french