Good theater is about telling good stories -- tragedies, comedies or romances. The stage offers the chance to explore live re-enactments of events and ideas, new and old, real and imagined, and to see and learn about how other people "act."
Even before the ancient Greeks created theater as we know it, stories were told and retold. The myths of the ancient Greeks and Romans were how ancient peoples understood the world, explained various phenomena and provided insight into human behavior.
We still know bits of these stories -- think of Pandora's box or your Achilles' heel -- although they often seem like quaint fairytales to a modern audience. But playwright Mary Zimmerman knew they had more to offer than diversion when she assembled a collection of them as a student production at Chicago's Northwestern University in 1997, breathing contemporary life into stories heard before.
So strong was the response to her play, Six Myths, that Zimmerman continued to develop the text. It was produced at Chicago's Lookingglass Theatre in 1998, followed by productions in Los Angeles, Seattle and Berkeley, Calif. Because so many of the stories were drawn from a particular retelling by a Roman poet, Zimmerman changed the play's title to Metamorphoses, the same one used by Ovid (43 B.C.-17 A.D.) for his versions of legends about miraculous transformations.
Any play by Zimmerman -- who received a 1998 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (popularly known as a "genius grant") -- is noteworthy, but Metamorphoses gained special attention because she staged it in a pool of water.
In the fall of 2001 a production of the play arrived at New York's Second Stage, an Off Broadway theater. It was the first theatrical work to open after Sept. 11, and the response was extraordinary.
On Oct. 10, 2001, New York Times critic Ben Brantley wrote, "The images of loss repeat, distort, freeze and transform. Orpheus, a prisoner of his own memory, makes his famous mistake again and again, looking backward as his bride slips, unreclaimable, into the underworld. A sad, hopeful wife stands at the ocean's edge, scanning the horizon for the return of her long-dead husband, just as she did on the day his ship set sail. A girl, torn from her lover in the night, is evoked by words said softly three times by a narrator: 'She's going to suffer.' ... though Ms. Zimmerman first produced the play in 1998 in Chicago, it could surely never have had the resonance it has acquired in the aftermath of Sept. 11."
Cincinnati Playhouse Producing Artistic Director Ed Stern saw the New York production around the same time as Brantley.
"It was three or four weeks after 9/11," he recalls. "It was an extra-theatrical experience. It brought a tone to a community in mourning -- the concepts of loss, love, salvation, yet dealing with it with humor and sorrow. Catharsis was there, an unbelievable 'letting forth' of pent-up feeling. It was one of the most extraordinary performances of my theatrical career."
Stern recommended the play to everyone who asked him what to see in New York.
"Many of them said to me, 'You have to do it,' " he says.
Stern knew the show would work physically in the Playhouse's Robert S. Marx Theatre, but he wasn't certain it could be repackaged -- and whether it would have the same impact once the memory of Sept. 11 faded. In March 2002 Metamorphoses moved to Broadway's Circle in the Square to even greater acclaim.
It was nominated for and won the 2002 Tony Award for Best Play. It ran until February 2003.
"I went to see it again on Broadway," Stern says, sitting in his Eden Park office at the Playhouse with a window looking out over the high hilltop to downtown Cincinnati below. "The power of the piece was still there. It celebrates the myth and power of theater to entertain and to move and to heal. Any work that forces you to redefine the art form is amazing."
More than a year ago Stern began to explore the possibility of bringing Metamorphoses to Cincinnati. But the play isn't a script that can be done anywhere: Zimmer-man's concept is so intertwined with her text that she has maintained tight control over subsequent productions.
Nevertheless, Stern persisted, negotiating with Zimmerman and several other theaters to produce the show on their stages.
Next week Playhouse audiences will be able to watch what is, for all intents and purposes, the Broadway show. The artistic staff of that production is re-staging it at the Playhouse -- scenic designer Daniel Ostling, costume designer Mara Blumenfeld, lighting designer T. J. Gerckens and sound designers Andre Pluess and Ben Sussman. While Zimmerman isn't personally directing, one of her principal protégés, Eric Rosen, has assembled the show onstage
"This production is not a pale imitation," Stern says. "It's Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses as it was staged in New York."
The co-production opened Sept. 12 at St. Louis Repertory Theatre, a frequent co-producer with the Playhouse. After its performance here in Cincinnati and a hiatus through the winter holidays, it will receive two more stagings at Kansas City's Missouri Repertory Theatre and Hartford Stage in Connecticut.
The Cincinnati Playhouse is proud to be making a big splash with this production, marketing it to audiences throughout the region. It will be the only chance many will have to see it fully realized in Zimmerman's staging.
The ancient myths comprising Metamorphoses were concerned with the fundamental elements of creation -- earth, air, fire and water. That's a good way to understand how a play that a year ago was the toast of Broadway has ended up in Cincinnati.
Earth: Grounded in reality
When Ed Stern came to Cincinnati in 1992, things weren't too rosy. He inherited a sizeable debt from the previous administration and, arriving in a weak economy, had to select plays that could could draw audiences but not bust his budget.
In 12 seasons, he's proven to be a master at balancing artistry and budgets. He teams almost seamlessly with Managing Director Buzz Ward, who takes Stern's artistic vision and helps to realize it in a way that's fiscally responsible while still theatrically satisfying.
Stern regularly finds ways to include crowd-pleasing shows in his season without offering what he calls "safe, dinner-theater fare all the time." Two years ago he launched his Marx season with Shakespeare's King Lear; a year ago he opened with a charming production of Eugene O'Neill's only comedy, Ah, Wilderness!; and for 2003 his batting order was led off by a pared-down rendition of My Fair Lady.
These productions, by the way, were all co-productions with St. Louis Repertory Theatre, which opened 2001 with Gypsy starring Cincinnati professional Pam Myers, 2002 with the French farce A Flea in Her Ear and this season with Metamorphoses. (My Fair Lady is on its way to St. Louis right now.)
Ward points out that such co-productions don't actually save money, but they enable the theaters to stretch tight budgets further.
"We could never have mounted Gypsy and King Lear in the same season on our own," he says, noting that both productions required big casts, elaborate costumes and expensive sets.
But Stern's genius goes well beyond pleasing crowds. He's a staunch advocate of fostering new works of theater. He inherited the Rosenthal New Play Prize, established in 1989 and funded by Cincinnati philanthropists Lois and Richard Rosenthal. The prize annually enabled a full-scale production of a new script and included having the playwright present during the rehearsal process as the script was being readied for its premiere.
Of course, staging new works can be a crapshoot. Some Rosenthal Prize winners have been gems: Jeffrey Hatcher's Scotland Road (1993) has had many subsequent productions; Keith Glover's jazzy In Walks Ed (1997) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in drama; and the April 2003 production of Carson Kreitzer's The Love Song of J. Robert Oppenheimer was unanimously praised by Cincinnati critics and nominated for a fistful of Cincinnati Entertainment Awards, which will be handed out Nov. 24.
But others have been edgy works that made audiences -- and apparently the Rosenthals -- squirm. For instance, Angus MacLachaln's The Dead Eye Boy (2000) told a tale of domestic violence and child murder; this season's new play selection, Hiding Behind Comets by Brian Dykstra (March 20-April 18, 2004), led to the Rosenthals' decision to stop funding the prize.
"Because of a lack of enthusiasm for this year's selection, we have chose to discontinue the prize," the Rosenthals said in a prepared statement. Indicating a desire to avoid "awkward situations" in the future, they added, "We have decided to discontinue the Rosenthal New Play Prize and instead work to find other vehicles in which we can continue our support of the Playhouse."
Stern is undaunted, saying the Playhouse will continue to stage new works.
"If American regional theater doesn't develop new materials, it really won't happen," he says. "Regional theater is the touchstone of new theater development."
Stern points out that when he was growing up in New York City in the 1950s and '60s there were 50 productions a year on Broadway.
"And 45 of them were straight plays," he says. "Right now there's only one (Richard Greenberg's 2003 Tony winner, Take Me Out). How can we be creating the future? Without new plays, there's no future. It must start with playwrights."
He's affirming his commitment this season by staging three world premieres in addition to offering up regional premieres of works such as Metamorphoses.
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Photo By Jerry Naunheim Jr
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Troubled teen Phaeton (James McKay) complains to
his therapist (Lisa Tejero) about his aloof father --
Apollo, the Sun God -- in Mary Zimmerman's
Metamorphoses.
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Currently running at the Playhouse is Joseph McDonough's One, the first work by a Cincinnati writer to be staged there since 1988 and which Stern personally directed to kick off the season in the Shelterhouse Theatre (see "The Loneliest Number," issue of Oct. 8-14). Early in 2004, Stern will present Going Gone by Karen Hartman, named by American Theatre magazine in 2002 as one of the nation's top young playwrights.
Beyond simply giving such works time on his stages, Stern follows a process that's expensive but guarantees better results: workshops. For Hiding Behind Comets, Stern, playwright Dykstra and director Michael Evan Haney will spend five days in Los Angeles in late October to work on the script with a set of actors.
"The process is longer," Stern says, "but it pays off when rehearsal begins. Our audience expects the play to be (done) right here."
In other words, Stern's previews are meant to be not only finished products but definitive stagings of new works, not developmental productions that will continue to evolve.
"Fewer theaters are doing new material," Stern points out matter-of-factly. "Most are picking far safer seasons. We came across three great new plays this season, and we're staging them."
He's clearly an artistic director with his feet firmly planted on the earth, knowing the future of his art form requires creators who are constantly pushing boundaries.
Air: The right atmosphere
Beyond being firmly grounded, Stern's Playhouse has a kind of rarified air, a can-do atmosphere about making the best work possible.
As to his process of workshops for new works, Stern's commitment is fierce. When they assembled a week-long session in New York for Going Gone, they hired a dramaturg, a theater professional who focuses on the development and refinement of texts. She told Stern, "You're one of the last theaters to use this process."
But he thinks it makes all the difference. Recalling the unusual video technology used for the staging of The Love Song of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Stern says, "We had TV monitors and were trying the concept in the workshop. The cost can be phenomenal, but the results are worth it."
Stern also has built an organization to support his artistic production that's second to none. Joseph P. Tilford, recently appointed Dean of the School of Design and Production at the North Carolina School for the Arts in Winston-Salem, has been designing for the Playhouse since 1985. The currently running One is his 22nd show here.
"Ed Stern is my favorite director," Tilford told me recently. "I move anything I have to in my schedule to work with Ed. He's innovative, and he creates a great working atmosphere. He's an absolute theatrical artist. The Playhouse is one of the best professional theaters in the country. If you travel around as much as I do, you realize this place is in the top echelon."
Tilford has an excellent perspective, having spent 13 years at Northwestern University, where he was a colleague of Zimmerman. It's fascinating to hear him speak of Zimmerman and Stern in equally glowing terms. Although the two directors have never worked together, as Tilford speaks about them, it's apparent they're kindred spirits.
"Mary is a master innovator," Tilford says. "Her creativity is really astonishing. There's a sense of being able to take something, stories that exist in other forms, and find ways of making them into live theater in a way that's compelling and beautiful and fun to watch."
The ability to bring to life brilliant stories with actors, scenery, costumes, lights and sound is the mark of great theatrical artists.
Fire: The spark of creativity
Playwright Mary Zimmerman grew up in Nebraska, where her parents were college professors. They traveled broadly.
One day when she was 5 or 6, they were in London. In the woods near a house where they were living she found a group of actors rehearsing Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
"I knew they were pretending. I wasn't fooled," she told a Time magazine interviewer in 2001. "But it was the act of pretending and the fact that adults were pretending that was stunning to me. I call that my primal scene."
Throughout her career, Zimmerman, 43, has worked from classic texts -- The Arabian Nights, The Odyssey and a 16th-century Chinese novel, Journey to the West -- and expanded on historical subjects such as Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo.
"I knew I wanted to do a show in water," she says by phone from her Chicago home. "Actually I wanted to do The Odyssey in water. But I did that one on dry land."
When she created Six Myths in 1998, the first version of Metamorphoses, with 13 students -- three of whom continued with the show in its Broadway production -- she found herself drawing them mostly from Ovid's retellings.
"There is something about the Greek culture which is so maritime," she says. "And that water is so beautiful. Water is such a transforming and malleable element -- it can be solid or it can evaporate into steam or it can be a liquid. In so many cultures, it's a symbol and sign and embodiment of change. To cross a river is a significant moment in a story or in a person's life. It's used in baptism and all kinds of cleansing rituals. It's related to life itself. And it's related very profoundly to change. So it's just right for this show."
"There is something profound about water," Stern says. "It's unpredictable, sensuous, violent, religious ... and highly theatrical."
Zimmerman took Ovid's tales and seasoned them with more contemporary thought and ideas -- poet Rainer Maria Rilke, psychologist Carl Jung, cultural analyst Joseph Campbell -- and her own words.
"I made it the same way I make everything," she says. "I sort of start with the ideas of the stories I might like to do, and in between the hours of rehearsal I sort of write and just stay a half day ahead of the rehearsal process."
Her work is extremely collaborative, with her design staff playing a key role in creating the eventual work. That's another reason why it's so exciting to have that team restaging the production at the Playhouse.
In Zimmerman's play, we find characters we recognize from the familiar stories but with overlays that make them more immediate and familiar. Midas is a wealthy businessman with little time for his playful daughter, until he loses her through his own greedy actions. Phaeton is a self-centered teenager, floating on a rubber raft and telling his shrink he doesn't understand why his remote father, Apollo, won't give him the keys to the car (aka the chariot that blazes across the sky as the sun).
These stories have resonated with people for millennia. They seemed so relevant to New York theater audiences in the fall of 2001 when they were grieving over the loss of loved ones, but today they might take on a different connotation. The devoted Alcyone awaiting the return of her husband, Ceyx, from across the sea is certainly akin to an American agonizing over when his or her soldier spouse might come back from Iraq.
Zimmerman says the power of these stories is "a credit to the primacy of these myths and how they talk about shared, universal human experience. That's what they're about, the archetypal experiences that every person goes through. Of course, not everyone is turned into a tree, but everyone grows older and experiences bodily change -- radical change in their lives that they don't look for."
Water: Metamorphoses in Cincinnati
Change is, indeed, affecting even the production of Metamorphoses. Zimmerman couldn't clear her schedule to be involved in the productions of Metamorphoses for St. Louis and Cincinnati, so she approached one of her principal students, Eric Rosen, to take over for her.
Rosen earned his Ph.D. at Northwestern when Zimmerman was creating Six Myths. She was his adviser and continues to be his friend and mentor. Today he's the artistic director of About Face Theatre in Chicago, but his path often crosses and coincides with Zimmerman's.
He co-directed a production of Metamorphoses with her for the Melbourne Theatre Company in Australia, getting the show on its feet, then observing as she tweaked and finalized it.
"That was sort of enough," Rosen says by phone from his theater in Chicago. "Watching her go over what I had already done let me know what was important to her, what images were exciting to her, the things that I had changed that she changed back. That tuned me up to what she was thinking about."
Rosen had a different challenge in taking on the new assignment. Zimmerman's cast had been part of the process of creating Metamorphoses, and much of the production was a direct product of the actors' personalities.
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Photo By Jymi Bolden
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Since 1992 when he became producing artistic
director at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Ed
Stern has been a champion of new works; his
2003-2004 season includes three world premieres.
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Rosen says he and Zimmerman didn't want to follow the process that shapes most Broadway tours, "when the original director is minimally involved and the actors are cast because they're as much like the original actors as possible. It's kind of a giant understudy rehearsal. Given the nature of the play, that seemed like a terrible idea."
Instead Rosen took his new cast -- only one actor has continued from the Broadway production -- and ran the process backwards.
"The first thing we did was get the play to its exact physical form," he says. "In the first rehearsals, we staged it exactly as it was in New York. We told the actors, 'This is going to be a strange week in which we're asking you to imitate the play as it was originally created.' Then we broke it into pieces and started to investigate it in a more creative way."
Rosen, like Stern and Zimmerman, marvels at the play's ability to connect with audiences.
"Like myths, like the ancient source material, the coming together in a room to hear these stories is both personal and public in a way unlike any other I've ever seen," he says. "It draws an audience together in a community in a way to use these stories to reflect on whatever is the most pressing issue of the day. It hits different people in different ways, and it's kind of alive in a really mercurial way."
The physical staging of Metamorphoses presents many challenges. The swimming pool built for the St. Louis production couldn't be moved to Cincinnati, so a new 3,000-gallon tank -- complete with filtration and heaters, as the water is kept at 76-80 degrees so the actors don't become too chilled -- has been constructed here. The balance of the set -- a wooden deck surrounding the 30-foot square body of water, a large doorframe, a chandelier and a backdrop of clouds -- has been transferred.
Behind the scenes of the 90-minute production is another matter, as Rosen explains.
"The backstage life of the show is 90 percent of the show," he says. "You wouldn't believe how complicated it is. There are quick changes happening every second. The actors are soaking wet and freezing. The Cincinnati backstage space is the polar opposite of St. Louis. Trying to figure out how to make the play work backstage is the challenge. The trick is to make it seem effortless to the audience. But it takes five backstage crew just to do the dressing."
The Playhouse has hired a linen service to provide fresh, dry towels for the actors each night -- and for theatergoers who sit in the first few rows where they could well be splashed by the churning activity in the onstage pool.
Rosen and his cast will have a week to work out these logistics and get comfortable with the show in the new space before audiences come to see the first Cincinnati preview performance Tuesday. But he has every confidence they'll be ready and that people will be seeing a Broadway-caliber production.
All the Elements: A promise to audiences
There is a dark cloud, even on this rosy horizon. Despite the marvels of production and likely accolades it will receive, the Playhouse struggled to find a sponsor for the show. Why? Perhaps it was the subject matter -- myths might seem distant and irrelevant to potential sponsors who are ultimately seeking marketing opportunities and who don't want to risk offending audiences.
What's to offend? Well, there's the issue of nudity. For the story of Eros and Psyche, the god of love is naked. Nudity always seems to make conservative Cincinnati audiences (not to mention law enforcement officials) a tad nervous.
Stern is dismayed over such hesitation.
"But this is the event of the year," he says emphatically.
After the Playhouse's development staff's search for a business sponsor failed, a generous longtime Playhouse board member, Howard Tomb, and his wife Mary offered to be the show's sponsor.
Of course, Stern says he would have produced the show with or without a sponsor, but those dollars are an important component of a season's budget. The Playhouse's derives nearly a third of its operating budget with income from resources other than ticket sales, such as show sponsorships.
But Stern knows what he has to do to keep people coming back to the theater.
"We have a promise to our audiences," he says. "We can't let the funding wag the dog. Not to do Metamorphoses or Hiding Behind Comets or Going Gone -- we'd be missing the point of what we do."
Stern is completely committed to continuing excellent theater in Cincinnati. After 13 seasons, the 56-year-old director is beginning to think about what he might do next, and he's eager to see the outcome of a long-range strategic planning process.
"I'd like to spend more time in a rehearsal room -- that's my greatest joy," he explains, envisioning the place where he can bring exciting texts to life with actors and technical staff. "But I also take joy from making an organization creative, that is by making the Playhouse a place that thrives on creativity. I want us to be thinking about the future."
Stern celebrates his opportunity to bring Zimmerman's brilliant work to his audience, and he admires how she's pushed the boundaries of theater.
"You don't need a Ph.D. in mythology to appreciate the power of the stories," he says. "She trusted the material. There are no layers of varnish. It is what it is. She has an unflagging instinct to rethink how theater works.
"The work is simple and pristine, slightly holy yet highly theatrical. She is seeing theater in a new light." ©
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