Scott Zigler’s past and future

“I’m one of those people who always felt that the Irish know something the rest of us don’t. Martin McDonagh – like Brendan Behan and John Synge – has an ability to capture the uniqueness of the Irish in a way that allows us to see universal truths in their particular stories.” Since his days as Artistic Director of the Atlantic Theatre Company, (which later premiered McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane), director Scott Zigler has been interested in McDonagh. “One of the things I like about McDonagh’s work is that he writes about profound issues and deep human concerns with a light touch. He’s not overt in his discussion of them. He’s delicate. The fact that he leaves so much unsaid appeals to me. Also, I happen to think that of all the dialects of English, Irish is the most beautiful. Just the chance to hear people speaking it for weeks has great appeal to me.” Therefore, when A.R.T. Artistic Director Robert Brustein approached Zigler about directing The Cripple of Inishmaan, Zigler was “delighted.”

Zigler’s first contact with Bob Brustein came long before Zigler arrived at the A.R.T. in September of 1996. “I grew up in New Haven when Bob was Artistic Director of the Yale Repertory Theatre and the Yale Drama School. My mom took me to see James and the Giant Peach at Yale Rep when I was five. Because I grew up near New York and Yale, I got exposed to a lot of theatre and fell in love with it at a very early age.” Unfortunately, Zigler’s first attempts at theatre had an inauspicious start. “In eighth grade we did a production of Damn Yankees. I played Mr. Welch, the largest non-singing role, because I couldn’t sing. I desperately wanted to play the evil Appleby and worked on that song forever. But I didn’t get the role.” Zigler’s attention turned toward directing the next year. When Zigler’s “very ambitious” junior high staged Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, “everyone realized I wasn’t a very good actor and steered me toward directing. Strangely enough, two days before it opened the student playing Ui got caught smoking a joint behind the gym and was suspended so I had to step in. Since I was the assistant director, I was familiar with the role but hadn’t actually memorized the lines. Of course, Ui is an allegory for Hitler and has endless speeches. As a consequence, I think we cut about forty-five minutes out of the play.”

Zigler’s rise began in earnest when he attended New York University and started his professional relationship with David Mamet. Zigler remembers, “Mamet was in New York during the premiere of Edmund, and we recruited him to give a series of lectures entitled ‘Aesthetics of Theatre.’ Out of that series, Mamet and his collaborator, actor William H. Macy, decided they wanted to try to run an acting program that addressed concerns many theatre practitioners had about the direction of mainstream American actor training. Certain acting schools were creating actors who were more concerned with the experience they were having as actors than the realization of the writer’s work or the experience that the audience ultimately had. It was becoming self-indulgent and self-centered. Both Macy and Mamet had studied with Sanford Meisner, who was part of the triumvirate of teachers who came out of the Group Theatre. Of these three – Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, and Sanford Meisner – Meisner was the least known. He had broken with Strasberg many years before. Meisner emphasized putting your attention on the other actors. Strasberg’s work emphasized putting your attention back on yourself – on emotional recall and sense memory. Mamet and Macy began an acting program called the ‘Practical Aesthetics Workshop’ because it was about the practical needs of the actor, what had to happen in rehearsal, and what the script required of you. It was less about the psychological and almost therapeutic exploration that many acting classes had become and more about the practical needs of getting the page on the stage and how the actor figures into that process. They drew on the later writing of Stanislavksy, in contrast to Strasberg, who worked from Stanislavsky’s earlier theoretical ideas. Twenty-five NYU students spent six weeks in Vermont, where Macy and Mamet introduced the new acting theory. I was fortunate to be one of those students and the following summer we formed the Practical Aesthetics Workshop as a training program and the Atlantic Theatre Company.”

Zigler’s relationship with Mamet was not based entirely on theatre, however. Their relationship solidified over poker. “In addition to being a Sterling Professor of Psychology at Yale, my dad is a wonderful gambler. He taught me how to play poker when I was about seven. I’d been playing seriously all through high school. When I was studying with Mamet in Vermont, he had a game that was a phenomenal group of artists and writers. So I had a relationship with David outside the classroom.”

After directing the world premiere of David Mamet’s The Old Neighborhood at the A.R.T. in 1997, the production went on to a very successful Broadway run. The New York Times called Zigler’s direction full of “empathy and feeling … uncommon on Broadway,” and said Zigler heard Mamet’s “plaintive lyricism and staged the play with great economy and flair.” Zigler has also directed The Woods, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, the national tour of Oleanna, and the theatrical trailer for the film version of the same play.

Zigler’s love of language is what makes his direction of Mamet’s plays so successful, as well as making him an ideal director for McDonagh’s work. Zigler notes, “As a director, I’m always looking for writers who are astute in their use of language, and McDonagh is in this category. His mastery of language combines with the minimalistic speech patterns of his characters, which I find tremendously appealing.” Not surprisingly, McDonagh credits Mamet’s work as an influence. In a March, 1998 interview with Fanfare, McDonagh said that Mamet’s heightened sense of dialogue drew his interest to theater and that he had modeled his first plays on Mamet’s works.

Zigler’s work as a stage director is a only a small part of his responsibilities at the A.R.T. As Associate Director of the A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard, Zigler heads the acting program, directs student productions, oversees student projects, and teaches. As one of the founders of Practical Aesthetics, Zigler is known as one of the foremost masters of its technique. Watching Zigler teach makes it clear why many students come to the A.R.T. to study with him. Whether he is teaching at the Institute or his popular class for Harvard undergraduates, Zigler quickly guides his students to the core of the scene’s action with a few concise and simple directions. The text reigns supreme in Zigler’s classroom, and all acting choices must emerge from the playwright’s words as he guides his students toward the basic tenet of Practical Aesthetics: invent nothing, deny nothing. Part of Zigler’s talent as a teacher stems from the respect he gives students. “It’s important not to teach like a director. It’s important to understand that you’re helping students find a way to make their choices from the text and discover what tools they have to execute those choices.

When asked why he continues to work in theatre, Zigler jokes at first, “I’m 35 and it’s the only set of skills that I have,” then speaks seriously of the beauty of live performance. “There are events where you don’t know what’s going to happen next. Theatre, live music, sporting events – I find the possibility of the next moment always compelling. There’s always the chance something else will happen.”

Megan Uebelacker is a second-year dramaturgy student at the A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theatre Training.