Salesman之死 (play)

Sonnie Brown, Sandia Ang, Claire Hsu
 in "Salesman之死"
(Yangtze Repertory Theatre, 2023)
Photo: Maria Baranova

The most recent issue of American Theatre magazine includes the complete text of Jeremy Tiang’s recent play, Salesman之死* which premiere at the Connelly Theatre on the Lower East Side in 2023.

This was my first introduction to the piece, and I was grateful to read the entire thing. Some ten years ago I read Arthur Miller’s Book, Salesman In Beijing, which were his director’s notes for a production of, well, Salesman in Beijing, in 1983, shortly after the end of the Cultural Revolution.

Yes, Miller directed the play himself, and his book is rich with Miller’s tales of how he was to encourage the performers at the Beijing People's Art Theatre (“Renyi”) to not only replicate but to comprehend this quintessential American drama. His is a story of reaching across a cultural divide to highlight a shared humanity.

Tiang’s script, which dramatizes the rehearsal process of his historic production and is inspired by not only Miller’s book but also extensive interviews with Shen Huihui, who served as Miller’s translator during his time in China, illustrates how the company endeavored to engage with the American style of performance Miller demanded from them, the American playwright had little interest in engaging with theirs.

Mi Tiezeng, Zhu Lin, Li Shilong 
"Death of a Salesman"
(People's Art Theatre, 1983)
Photo: Inge Morath

The Renyi company did the work and learned in a very short period of time what the “American Dream” means to Americans, while Miller was content to be a tourist, observing Chinese performance and customs but holding them at arm’s length, almost in contempt. They were doing the reaching, he was just there to direct his play, his way.

Another play I have recently been introduced to, The Motive and the Cue by Jack Thorne, also a 2023 premiere, dramatizes another historic production, in this case John Gielgud’s 1964 Broadway production of Hamlet, starring Richard Burton. That play is based on two texts, Letters From an Actor by William Redfield, and the ponderously if most accurately entitled John Gielgud Directs Richard Burton in Hamlet (A Journal of Rehearsals) by Richard Sterne.

I was finally able to obtain a copy of Sterne’s book (it took some time to locate an inexpensive edition) and it is an audacious work. Whereas Redfield’s tome is a collection of backstage gossip and high-flown elucidation on the craft by one of the company’s minor players, Sterne’s is an astonishing example of asking for forgiveness rather than permission – cast as a gentleman (at least Redfield’s character has a name) Sterne surreptitiously recorded the entire rehearsal process, even going so far as to hide himself under the set during closed rehearsals to which we was not invited.

Rather than being shamed and/or blackballed, once he had revealed to Gielgud and Burton that he was writing a book, they granted him interviews for inclusion, providing the entire endeavor a gloss of legitimacy.

Richard Burton, John Gielgud
in rehearsal for "Hamlet" in 1964
Photo: Bettmann Archive

There is more of Letter From an Actor in Thorne’s play, as Redfield’s book is a juicy backstage kiss-and-tell, while Sterne’s must be a pretty dry read for anyone not intimately familiar with the text of Hamlet. No internal squabbling between the legendary Gielgud and wildly-famous Burton to be found. In fact, a great deal of Motive hangs on a single quote attributed to Burton; “Don’t you dare give me a line read.” 

He may have said that, but in context it sounds more like a jovial aside than a warning, but Thorne uses that one phrase as the central conflict of his drama – Burton wants to find his own Hamlet, and not to merely replicate Gielgud’s.

Live drama is, after all, about the moment, and not wrote replication of a previous moment. Yes? No?  

While there have been countless fictional backstage dramas – usually comedies, actually – these two works, Salesman and Motive, focusing on two high-profile productions, these I found fascinating, dramatizing as they do the collaborative creative process unique to love performance that makes theater the art form which is central to my own life, and in the case of Salesman之死, a cautionary tale about humility, listening and collaboration.

* 之死 means simply “death of”

Single White Fringe Geek (blog)

American Theatre magazine produces a podcast I have been enjoying called Three On the Aisle, for which critics from the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal (Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli and Terry Teachout, respectively) weigh in on the national theater scene.

In this most recent episode, they began by discussing staff layoffs at the New York Daily News, and listeners were treated to the unusual sound of Marks losing his shit, loudly and profanely lamenting the fate of American theater criticism.

This is not a subject I am unfamiliar with. In this blog I have also asked what will happen when theater criticism is no longer a profession unto itself, but is a minor responsibility relegated to journalists who have numerous, diverse beats, freelance community writers, and blogging theater fans.

At the turn of this century, John Vacha wrote Showtime in Cleveland, the history of Cleveland theater up to the year 2000. For this book he leaned heavily on newspapers and the work of theater critics, not only to discover what details could be gleaned about specific productions and performances, but also the behind-the-scenes history of the business of theater in one large American city.

Without a written record, our work may be lost to future generations. And in the present, audiences and potential audiences suffer from a lack of sources of good theater criticism. And yes, we as artists miss out on having a variety of critical eyes assessing us, holding a mirror to our work.

Fifteen years ago today, we concluded our run of I Hate This (a play without the baby) at the Minnesota Fringe Festival. At this festival I attracted audiences, met new colleagues, and received plenty of praise and encouragement on the local online message boards.

I also received my first actual pan for this play. Matthew Everett had only just started the blog Single White Fringe Geek, a record of MN Fringe reviews he keeps to this day. On my way out the metaphoric door, I read his review and it was not exactly glowing.

Red Eye Theatre, Minneapolis, MN (2003)

Everett felt that, in spite of the play's unique male perspective on the subject of stillbirth, it suffered from not including the grieving mother’s voice.

He said that the narrator (me) was the only fully-developed character, and that of those other characters represented, the kind ones were casually dismissed while much more attention was focused on those who were unkind, insensitive, or -- to use my own word from the show -- evil.

“There was,” Everett wrote, “a lot of anger in this play. It bordered on being unsympathetic.”

This was a lot to swallow. When you stick your neck out to create something so intimate, you know you are taking a risk. And yet, you can’t imagine someone actually criticizing you.

I hadn’t read his review these fifteen years, though I never forgot the gist of it. Reading it again, however, was eye-opening.

Because now I understand it was the single most important review I think I have ever received.

Remember, this is was at the beginning. He attended the eighth public performance of a show I went on to produce regularly for almost five years, and have returned to several times since. And it was with comments like his in mind that I revised the script, and more importantly, modulated my performance.

I didn’t change a lot of the script, a few words, light editing, nudging the piece in a certain direction. What would have happened at the New York Fringe Festival the following year without Everett’s observation? If I had received a notice like his in the New York Times, instead the positive review I did receive, due perhaps to the changes I made at his suggestion? That might have been devastating to me.

I do not believe I am overstating this when I suggest that Matthew Everett's highly-critical review saved I Hate This.

We need criticism; thoughtful, engaged, intelligent, professional criticism.

Playhouse Square presents the premiere of the video adaptation of "I Hate This (A Play Without the Baby)" by David Hansen, directed by Chennelle Bryant-Harris and performed by James Alexander Rankin, in the Westfield Studio Theatre on Saturday, October 15, 2022. 

References:
"A Cornucopia of Questions," Three On the Aisle, 7/26/2018

"Closing the Fringe With Mom - Part 6," Single White Fringe Geek by Mathew Everett, 8/12/2003

"I Hate This (a play without the baby)" now available for Amazon Kindle.

Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind

And now a word about the creative process ...

The Neo-Futurists (1988)
Photo: J. Alexander Newberry

There's a piece on the Neo-Futurists in American Theatre this month. For over twenty years they have presented a show which is maddening in its simplicity. Returning from an aborted attempt to live in Los Angeles in 1991, my best friend and I spent one night in Chicago, caught their Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind (TML) and my life was changed forever.

That is not hyperbole. I knew little of experimental theater, next to nothing actually. The Neos inspired me to learn more. But first they inspired my friend and I to rip off their act.


This was in the early 90s. Few, if any, knew of the Neo-Futurists in Cleveland. We protested we were creating a new form of theater for Cleveland audiences - and it wasn't as though we were calling ourselves "neo" anything, or that we were stealing the title of their show. No name tags, headphones, dark room timer, no pizza. We made up our own gimmicks as set-dressing for short, original plays we wrote ourselves in our own style.

However, the structure for TML was and is so basic, that trying to retro fit an original-appearing framework to it is much like the Windows operating system. As much as it wants to be MacOS, it is still just a clunky program running on top of MS-DOS.


Having said that, two years (more or less) producing short plays for Not-Too Much Light productions with names like You Have the Right to Remain Silent! and Mind Your Own Business did teach me the art of writing short plays that abandoned the idea of character or setting, and cut directly to the point of whatever it was I wanted to say. As the original Futurists said, why spend two hours trying to make your point when two minutes will accomplish the job just as effectively?

There was a premium on originality among the intelligentsia who were the clowns my older brothers used to pal around with. As a high school freshman I was particularly impressed with a series of satirical articles one of my brother's friends had written for the school paper. I had an idea for an updated sequel and went to him for permission to begin work in one and was roundly humiliated for the very idea. "Sequels," he snorted.

Believe me, I have been conditioned to feel that kind of contempt any time the word "sequel" is used in any circumstance. And you know, I am not sure that is an entirely bad thing.


However, I did spend the next several years wandering in my own neurotic wilderness, afraid to attempt anything. It is stunning to think now that I was involved in a comedy program on our local access channel for three years and never wrote anything for it. Strange to think I was surrounded by such a creative atmosphere, and yet did not feel confident enough to really engage it.

By the time Guerrilla Theater Company (for so we were called) was through, I was a writer, and a director, and not so crazy about acting any more. There was a time when it would have been ideal to contact Greg Allen about a legitimate franchise of the Neo-Futurists in Cleveland, and maybe someone should. But not me. I'd just be happy to attend, and hopefully have some pizza.

See also:

44 Plays for 44 Presidents (10/27/2016)

"The Infinite Wrench" at the Neo-Futurarium (6/26/2017)