Friday December 15 Off, Off and Away: 40 Years of Off-Broadway <http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/bpibs/20001215/en/_b_h1_off_off_and_away_40_years_of_off-broadway_h1_b__1.html> 1960, the year of Back Stage's birth, was also a seminal year for the Off-Broadway movement. Previous to the start of this decade, the smaller stages far from Times Square concentrated on mounting revivals of neglected serious Broadway fare which deserved a second look (like Tennessee Williams' "Summer and Smoke," Eugene O'Neill's "The Iceman Cometh," and Brecht and Weill's "The Threepenny Opera"), or entertaining yet silly musicals like "The Boy Friend," "Leave It to Jane," and "Little Mary Sunshine." In the first year of the '60s, Off-Broadway began to foster its own playwrights and original productions. Actually, the first long-running new American Off-Broadway hit had opened the year before. "The Connection" by Jack Gelber opened July 15, 1959, directed by Judith Malina, who co-founded the revolutionary Living Theatre with her husband, Julian Beck. The show was a breakthrough in many ways. While its controversial subject matter (drug addiction) had been tackled on Broadway before (1955's "A Hatful of Rain"), "The Connection" brought the topic right into the laps of the audience. The fourth wall was broken. Characters spoke to the audience. There was no plot-junkies discussed their condition while waiting for their connection to deliver needed drugs. Most mainstream critics ignored the play, but Jerry Tallmer of the Village Voice praised it, building up a following and forcing uptown reviewers to take new Off-Broadway shows seriously. In 1960, three important shows marked the beginnings of several trends. A double bill at the Provincetown Playhouse of Samuel Beckett's "Krapp's Last Tape" and Edward Albee's "The Zoo Story" heralded the interest in the former playwright and the establishment of the latter as an important new voice in American drama. Jean Genet's "The Balcony" at the Circle in the Square gave rise to an invasion of French authors and opened the way for audience acceptance of avant-garde, non-representational theatre. "The Fantasticks," a charming, music box of a show, began its legendary engagement at the Sullivan Street Theatre, where it still reigns today as the longest-running musical on or Off-Broadway, or anywhere in the world, for that matter. The political unrest and social upheaval of the decade were reflected Off-Broadway as boundaries and taboos were broken. Race relations were savagely ripped apart in Genet's "The Blacks," which featured a cast of future star performers, including Roscoe Lee Browne, James Earl Jones, Cicely Tyson, Louis Gossett, Godfrey Cambridge, and Maya Angelou. Homosexuality burst out of the closet in Mart Crowley's "The Boys in the Band." America's involvement in Southeast Asia was given the musical satire treatment in Megan Terry's "Viet Rock." Sexual liberation and full-frontal nudity were elemental in the erotic revue "Oh! Calcutta!," which later transferred to Broadway and became the third-longest running show in Main Stem history. All of these hot-button topics were pushed in the "hippie" musical "Hair. " Subtitled "The American Tribal Love Rock Musical," this free-form work, by actors Gerome Ragni and James Rado and composer Galt MacDermot, exposed the youth movement in more ways than one. A few seconds of nudity at the close of the first act was only one of several risky themes. Drugs, the Vietnam War, air pollution, sex, and interracial love were all sung about. The show was also the first hit rock musical employing the sounds that America's youth were actually listening to rather than the Rodgers-and-Hammerstein-style tunes their parents loved. "Hair" was the first production of Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival at the Public Theatre, the former site of the Astor Public Library. While "Hair" moved on to Broadway, the Public became one of the most important theatres in the country. Producer Papp began his theatre in 1954 with a group of actors performing-for free-scenes from Shakespeare at the Emmanuel Church in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Starting in 1956, the group toured the five boroughs with a flatbed truck as a stage, presenting their shows in the city's parks. In 1962, the company then called the Shakespeare Workshop was renamed the New York Shakespeare Festival. The same year, Robert Moses, the city's Commissioner of Parks, launched a court battle to keep the company off his greenery. Moses lost. The city and George Delacorte put up $400,000 to build a permanent summer home for the Festival in Central Park. That first 1962 production was "The Merchant of Venice" starring George C. Scott as Shylock. Once the Public Theatre opened, the company had a year-round home for indoor productions. Its biggest early dramatic hit was Charles Gordone's "No Place to Be Somebody," the first play by an African-American and the first Off-Broadway production to win the Pulitzer Prize. The following year, Paul Zindel's "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds" also took the Prize, along with the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. Broadway was no longer the only home for serious American drama. Papp on Top As the 1970s progressed, Papp began to rival Broadway's David Merrick as the top purveyor of theatrical fare on Broadway. More and more Public shows made the trip uptown from Lafayette Street and downtown from Central Park. "Two Gentlemen of Verona," a rock-musical update of Shakespeare's comedy by Galt MacDermot of "Hair" fame and John Guare, moved from the Delacorte to Broadway in 1971. That same season, David Rabe's "Sticks and Bones" made the journey from the Public to the Main Stem. The controversial anti-Vietnam drama was a hit with critics, but not the public. The profits from "Gentlemen" were plowed into "Sticks" to keep it running. Papp would later employ the same tactic, taking proceeds from the immensely popular "A Chorus Line" to support less profitable Public plays and musicals. At the end of the season, "Gentlemen" and "Sticks" triumphed at the Tonys, winning awards for Best Musical and Play. The next year, Papp was all-powerful again, transferring Jason Miller's "That Championship Season" to Broadway from downtown and taking the triple crown of the Tony, Pulitzer, and New York Drama Critics Circle Awards. Subsequent prominent Public productions to have transferred to commercial runs on or Off-Broadway included "A Chorus Line" (the second-longest running show in Broadway history), Ntozake Shange's "for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf," Elizabeth Swados' "Runaways," a revival of Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance," Larry Kramer's "The Normal Heart," David Hare's "Plenty," and Rupert Holmes' "The Mystery of Edwin Drood." Even wilder and more cutting-edge than the Public was the Off-Off-Broadway movement. As fewer new American plays were produced on Broadway, and Off-Broadway began to feel the pinch of economic necessity, this loose amalgamation of theatres-usually former lofts, garages, and churches-provided a space for the experimental and the untried. Through the 1960s and ^A'70s, playwrights and theatres had the freedom to fail without fear of losing their shirts. Companies like Caffe Cino, Judson Poets' Theatre, Cafe142; La Mama, The Open Theatre, The American Place Theatre, and the Negro Ensemble Company presented startlingly different works by such radical new authors as Sam Shepard, Jean-Claude van Italie, Marie Irene Fornes, Adrienne Kennedy, Rosalyn Drexler, Rochelle Owens, Leroi Jones, Ed Bullins, and Lanford Wilson. The last-named later joined forced with director Marshall W. Mason, and actors Tanya Berezin and Robert Thirkield, to form the Circle Repertory Company, which had its first full season in 1969-70. Circle's first big hit was Wilson's "The Hot L Baltimore," a touching comedy-drama about a group of misfits gathered in the lobby of a hotel about to be demolished. The production opened at Circle's tiny theatre on the Upper West Side. Audience and critical response was so strong it moved to Circle in the Square Downtown in Greenwich Village in 1973, becoming the first play to transfer from Off-Off-Broadway to Off-Broadway. The same year, Circle transferred two more of its shows, Edward J. Moore's "The Sea Horse" and Mark Medoff's "When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?" The company moved to a somewhat larger theatre on Sheridan Square in 1974. Circle's basic tenet of providing a home for playwrights has survived the group, which disbanded in the 1990s. Thriving Off-Broadway companies dedicated to authors include Manhattan Theatre Club, Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan Class Company, WPA Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, and Lincoln Center Theater. During the 1970s, ^A'80s, and ^A'90s, dramatists like David Mamet, Terrence McNally, Wendy Wasserstein, Christopher Durang, and A.R. Gurney benefited from the nurturing they received from these and other groups. Mamet even went on to found a group-the Atlantic Theatre Company. Many later-famous actors also got their first exposure Off-Broadway during this period. Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Kevin Kline, Judd Hirsch, Christopher Reeve, Christopher Walken, Patti LuPone, William Hurt, Swoosie Kurtz, Mary Beth Hurt, and Holly Hunter all played important roles and received recognition for their OB work. Most have subsequently abandoned the stage for the more lucrative fields of film and television. Meanwhile, the classics are preserved in productions by companies like Theatre for a New Audience, the Jean Cocteau Repertory, and the Pearl Theatre Company. Second Stage has dedicated itself to recent plays that deserve another look. Jewish themes are explored by the Jewish Repertory Theatre and American Jewish Theatre. African-American authors are given voice by the New Federal Theatre and still-vital Negro Ensemble Company. Chicago Style and Ridiculous Antics During the 1980s, another theatre company heavily influenced Off-Broadway and, by extension, all of American theatre. But this group wasn't even based in New York. Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre brought an intense, angry immediacy to all of its productions. A few of them made the trip from the Windy City to the Big Apple, launching many careers in the process. The first Steppenwolf show to kick New York's theatrical ass was a revival of Sam Shepard's "True West," the story of two dissimilar brothers-a screenwriter and a petty thief-switching identities while trying to write a western. The original NYSF production had been an unmitigated disaster, with the playwright and director disavowing it. The Steppenwolf staging, which opened at the Cherry Lane Theatre in 1982, featured an animalistic, Brando-breakthrough performance by John Malkovich as the desert-dwelling sibling Lee. The production was directed by Gary Sinise, who also played the milder brother Austin. It ran for 762 performances and made stars out of Malkovich and Sinise. Coincidentally, another play of Shepard's-"Fool for Love," produced by Circle Repertory-began a long run Off-Broadway the same season and helped the careers of stars Ed Harris and Kathy Whitton Baker. To further add to this synergistic chain, Steppenwolf and Circle Rep collaborated on a production of Lanford Wilson's "Balm in Gilead" in 1984. This production was directed by Malkovitch and featured standout performances by Terry Kinney, Glenne Hedley, and Laurie Metcalfe, all of who went on to prominent film and TV careers. Earlier the same season, Steppenwolf's production of "...And a Nightingale Sang" opened at Lincoln Center's Mitzi Newhouse Theatre and provided a springboard to stardom for future Tony winner and Oscar nominee Joan Allen. Another hit 1984 production was Charles Ludlam's "The Mystery of Irma Vep," a two-character comic tour-de-farce with Ludlam and his life-partner Everett Quinton making astonishing quick changes in a satirical "penny dreadful." Since 1967, Ludlam's Ridiculous Theatrical Company had developed a devoted cult following for its campy parodies of pop genre entertainment. Ludlam directed, wrote, made the costumes for, and usually played the leading lady in drag in such Ridiculous hits as "Bluebeard," "Stage Blood," "Camille," "The Ventriloquists' Wife," "Reverse Psychology," "Le Bourgeois Avant-Garde," and "Gallas." But "Vep" was the company's biggest hit, resulting in offers from Broadway, film, opera, and television. Tragically, Ludlam died of AIDS just three years later. Quinton carried on with the Ridiculous into the 1990s, but the company folded at the end of that decade. A commercial revival of "Vep" starring Quinton and Stephen DeRosa had a successful run the Westside Theatre in 1998. Ludlam's legacy of lunacy has been carried on by two comic creative dynamos-Charles Busch and Gerard Alessandrini. Busch is most closely aligned with Ludlam, since he writes and often stars in drag in his own vehicles, most of which are satiric take-offs on antiquated styles of films and plays. His first big hit was "Vampire Lesbians of Sodom," a devastating parody of every show-biz clichŽ from biblical epics to Las Vegas floorshows. On a budget of $36, "Vampires" opened at the Limbo Lounge and became an instant hit. It later transferred to the Provincetown Playhouse and drew crowds attracted to its salacious title. "Vampires" went on to run over 2,000 performances and currently holds the title of second-longest running Off-Broadway play (if you don't count "Tony 'n' Tina" as a play, but more on them later). Based on the success of "Vampires," Busch and his cast formed their own company, Theatre-in-Limbo, and continued, sometimes with other theatres, to lampoon popular culture and classical literature with "Times Square Angel," "Psycho Beach Party," "The Lady in Question," and "Red Scare on Sunset." Busch is currently represented on stage with his first Broadway play (and his first play in which he does not appear), "The Tale of the Allergist's Wife." Alessandrini has been aiming darts at the theatrical scene since 1982 with his wicked "Forbidden Broadway" series of revues. Taking the songs of current Broadway shows and adding his own sharp lyrics, Alessandrini is the theatre's favorite in-house critic. The shows have run at various Off-Broadway theatres; the current edition, "Forbidden Broadway 2001: A Spoof Odyssey," is at the Stardust Theatre. The 1980s also saw the beginning of another trend, one that preceded a similar phenomenon that swept the television industry. Long before "Survivor," "Big Brother," and other programs wherein "real" people are the stars, "reality" and interactive theatre began Off-Broadway. "Tamara," described as "a living movie," opened at the Park Avenue Armory in 1987. Audience members followed cast members around the building, which was decorated to present a 10-room villa. At intermission, they received a champagne buffet from the four-star restaurant Le Cirque. Ticket prices ranged from $75-$125, but the show ran for over 1,000 performances. The following year, "Tony 'n' Tina's Wedding" went even further, with theatregoers becoming guests at the titular nuptials and following reception. "T ^A'n' T" is still playing after almost 12 years, and was followed by the similar likes of "Grandma Sylvia's Funeral" and "Late Nite Catechism," as well as various theatrical Irish wakes, Mafia weddings, and Jewish bar mitzvahs. This season, "Game Show" and the recently departed "Lifegame" continue the genre, with audience members competing for prizes and having their life stories told. 1987 saw the opening of "Perfect Crime," a complicated thriller that, thanks to its low production costs and loyal following, became the longest-running play in Off-Broadway history. Apart from a few brief vacations, Catherine Russell has been playing the lead since the beginning. In 1991, the Off-Broadway community and theatre in general suffered a devastating blow with the death of Joseph Papp. Just before his death, he appointed JoAnne Akalaitis his successor as producer of the New York Shakespeare Festival. Akalaitis, a director with a bizarre, avant-garde sensibility formerly associated with Mabou Mines, began her reign in controversy, presenting a slew of visually stunning yet emotionally cold productions. Her own 1992 staging of John Ford's Jacobean tragedy "Tis Pity She's a Whore" won a slew of awards and nominations, but her schedule as a whole was considered a financial failure. Soon thereafter, the Festival's board of directors summarily fired her and replaced her with playwright-director George C. Wolfe, whose production of Tony Kushner's "Angels in America" was a hit on Broadway. Wolfe's track record has been mixed, including one big hit for the Festival ("Bring in 'Da Noise/Bring in 'Da Funk") and two expensive flops ("The Wild Party" and a revival of "On the Town"). The final decade of the millennium saw a decrease in the number of young audiences as film, television, nightlife, and rock concerts became the staple of entertainment diets among the under-50 crowd. Grey heads began to dominate audiences both on and Off-Broadway, particularly at theatres with a heavy subscription base. To reclaim youthful theatregoers, producers have bet on unique, unusual events rather than traditional plays and musicals. Performance artists Blue Man Group, the percussive musicians Stomp, the acrobatics of "De La Guarda," and the disco party "Donkey Show" are the long-running hits of this era. But a serious work with a message can still achieve commercial success in this market. Donald Margulies' Dinner with Friends," a searing drama of divorce and lost friendship, won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize and, without major stars, is still turning a profit at the Variety Arts. Edward Albee, who first made his name Off-Broadway 40 years ago, returned to his roots in 1994 with "Three Tall Women," achieving critical acclaim, a third Pulitzer, and commercial success. As we begin a new century and millennium, Off-Broadway continues to provide the much-needed alternative to boom-or-bust Broadway. Yes, there is a space crunch on right now and the beautiful Theatre Row spaces have been demolished. But new stages are being erected in their place and the number of companies in the OB and OOB world continues to grow. ---- -- David Sheward
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : 01/15/01 EST