ARTicles vol. 2 i.3b: Party Politics

Over the past thirty years, JoAnne Akalaitis has earned a reputation as one of this country’s most provocative and inventive directors. After studying philosophy at the University of Chicago and Stanford University and training briefly with the Polish director Jerzy Grotowski, Akalaitis co-founded the experimental ensemble Mabou Mines with Lee Breuer, Philip Glass, Ruth Maleczech, Frederick Neumann, and David Warrilow in 1970. Mabou Mines became one of New York’s most celebrated troupes, and Akalaitis’ landmark 1975 staging of Samuel Beckett’s Cascando brought the group national and international acclaim. The production also won Akalaitis the first of her five Obie awards for direction. In 1981, she created Dead End Kids, an antinuclear piece that was subsequently adapted into a film. Her productions of The Screens, The Balcony, (A.R.T. 1986) and Prisoner of Love have made her one of the leading interpreters of Jean Genet. An intellectual who has a unique visual and aural imagination, Akalaitis collaborates frequently with this country’s leading designers, including Jennifer Tipton, Paul Steinberg, Gabriel Berry, and Bruce Odland – the design team for The Birthday Party.

R.M.: What interests you about The Birthday Party?

J.A.: The play is delightful. It’s gorgeous. It’s a young play that shows the beginnings of Pinter’s thinking about being trapped by the government or the Institution. And that has basically been the theme of Pinter’s oeuvre, which is very important because it’s political.

R.M.: Have the war in Iraq and current events around the world affected your reading of the play?

J.A.: The current events are affecting the way I wake up in the morning and have orange juice and coffee. There is nothing that the current events don’t affect. This is one of the worst times ever. The events that are reported in the New York Times are so hideous, and they affect everything we do – exercising, cooking, directing a play, reading a book. Pinter has been speaking out publicly against Britain and America. He’s become controversial because he’s comparing Britain and America to Nazi Germany. I don’t know how to deal with that myself. That’s extreme. But I appreciate people like Pinter who are extreme.

R.M.: Have you staged Pinter before?

J.A.: I directed The Dumb Waiter at Bard College, where I teach. I directed and designed a production in a dormitory basement that smelled like pot and dirty socks. It was great. I wanted to stage it in a real basement to show student directors that we could do things very, very cheaply.

R.M.: Do you see any thematic parallels between The Dumb Waiter and The Birthday Party?

J.A.: I think they’re both about The Organization – about how unknown and powerful it is, and about our inability to change it because we may not even know how it functions or what it is. We may not even know it’s going to get us. R.M.: What other experiences have you had with Pinter’s plays?

J.A.: I teach Pinter in my “Theatre of the Absurd” course. My students loved working on scenes from The Birthday Party. It really woke them up as actors and directors.

R.M.: What did they enjoy about the play?

J.A.: The language is so playful, aggressive, rhythmic, and often funny. They loved performing the inquisition scene when Goldberg and McCann interrogate Stanley. The dialogue is exciting, witty, dangerous, and provocative.

R.M.: What’s the relationship between violence and humor in Pinter’s dialogue?

J.A.: Violence and humor are profoundly conjoined. There is a joyous and dangerous reunion of violence and humor in plays like Waiting for Godot, Endgame, The Birthday Party, and The Homecoming. It’s something that goes back to Euripides, Shakespeare, and some of the Jacobeans. I think we are often delighted by violence.

R.M.: Why?

J.A.: Because we’re sitting here in my apartment drinking water, we’re not out doing terrible things. These plays allow us to live the other part of our lives – something that we’re forbidden to experience. I think this interest in violence is healthy. Violence has to do with chaos and darkness, and chaos and darkness are part of religion, drama, literature, theatre, and music. We want to dip into that from time to time.

R.M.: Could you discuss your collaboration with the set designer for The Birthday Party, Paul Steinberg?

J.A.: We talked a lot about the sea, and how this play is set near the sea. Originally, I had wanted to use a scrim that would allow us to see outside, but our budget prevented it. It often turns out, however, that when you can’t afford a specific design, you come up with something better. So we created this room with a surreal painting of a green sea on the walls. Many of Pinter’s plays are about a room – and what happens outside is unknown, dangerous, and perilous.

R.M.: Sound design and music have played an important role in many of your productions. Why do you like working with Bruce Odland, the sound designer for The Birthday Party?

J.A.: Bruce is a wonderful sound designer and composer. He’s an intellectual, and he cares a lot about theatre. Most music in the theatre is just transition music. Bruce and I actually make a score for the show, so that the music becomes another character. I like the way Bruce thinks about space, about acting, and about text. He’s not just there to plug in sound cues, he’s a total collaborator, as are my other designer collaborator friends.

R.M.: How do you begin rehearsals with actors?

J.A.: I do movement exercises that help develop a company – exercises that help the actors learn to talk to each another with their bodies. I would never do a show without these exercises. It’s very hard for me to go into rehearsal and just start working – I need the actors to do something first. The actors lead me to exploration, I don’t lead them.

R.M.: What do you ask the actors to do in preparation for rehearsal?

J.A.: Sometimes I ask them to write their characters’ own stories. In Greek plays, for example, the chorus members don’t have names, so I ask the actors to name themselves and the town where they came from, and to write down whether they had children, or if they’re married. I also ask the actors to think about what maladies their characters have – if they have migraine headaches, or an ulcer, or if they’re alcoholics. It gives the actors more information about their bodies and their personal histories.

R.M.: How do you prepare for rehearsals?

J.A.: I read a lot about the writer and I read all of the writer’s plays. I read whatever I can. It’s like being a graduate student. It’s also important to be reading philosophy when you’re directing a play. We should always be reading philosophy.

R.M.: How do you use philosophy in the rehearsal room?

J.A.: It rarely comes into the rehearsal room. I think Jean Genet comes into the rehearsal room with me all the time. I think Genet’s Letters to Roger Blin are the most valuable notes to actors. In them, Genet writes about extremism in performance – about committing to the moment, letting the moment go away, and beginning the next moment. This is very important in Pinter because even though people are talking about real things like breakfast, it is not naturalistic and does not necessarily have a through-line.

Ryan McKittrick is the A.R.T.’S Associate Dramaturg.