Mike Nichols and the sounds of silence

Mike Nichols and Tom Hanks on the set of "Charlie Wilson's War."

The New York Times has an interview today with Mike Nichols, the legendary director of stage and screen (and, with co-conspirator Elaine May, one of the funniest improv actors ever). Hard to believe he's 77 but, thankfully, he's still busy directing.

His list of credits includes iconic movies like "The Graduate" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" And plays and musicals ("Annie," "The Odd Couple," "Spamalot"). And even TV (he did "Wit" and "Angels in America" for HBO). He's purposely cultivated a directorial style of invisibility, preferring to work in several genres instead of just one and to make his focus the writing and detail in what he works on.

In his youth he was an avid listener of classical music but said he now prefers silence. The last graphic in the Times' piece shows how this informs his work and his view of his art. I like this because it's something I enjoy in a good play or movie: That moment when the whole audience is silent and listening and getting something that hasn't been said:

“The greatest thrill is that moment when a thousand people are sitting in the dark, looking at the same scene, and they are all apprehending something that has not been spoken. That’s the thrill of it, the miracle — that’s what holds us to movies forever. It’s what we wish we could do in real life. We all see something and understand it together, and nobody has to say a word. There’s a good reason that the very best sound an audience can make — in both the theater and the movies — is no sound at all, just absolute silence.”

What's the matter with the theater?

Audiences are dwindling for live theater and British playwrite Anthony Neilson has a theory: most plays are boring. "Boring an audience is the one true sin in theatre," he writes in the latest issue of The Guardian. "We've been boring audiences for decades now, and they've responded by slowly withdrawing their patronage."

Neilson has a solution: Tell a good story.

"The way to circumvent ego (and thus reduces the risk of boring) is to make story our god. Find a story that interests you and tell it. Don't ask yourself why a story interests you; we can no more choose this than who we fall in love with. You may not be what you think you are – not as kind, as liberal, as original as you ought to be – and yes, the story (if you are true to it) will find that out. But while your attention is taken up with its mechanics, some truth may seep out, and that is the lifeblood of good, exciting art."

Amen! I've been saying for a long time that the problem with the movies is that directors (with few exceptions) don't know how to tell a good story. If people aren't asking "And then what happened?" you've failed on a very basic level. Directors are so enamored of special effects that the foundation of a film -- the story -- has been lost.

Neilson feels the same about theater. Read the rest of his piece here.

Suzan-Lori Parks

I want to be Suzan-Lori Parks. She's smart, she's funny, she's talented and she just has that aura of coolness about her.

Maybe she'll adopt me.

Parks is the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama (for "Topdog/Underdog"). She spoke last night at the Seattle Arts and Lectures Series.

She mostly talked about how she became a writer. Her message is similar to Joseph Campbell's famous exhortation to "follow your bliss." Parks talked about being open to ideas when they come, no matter how weird they may seem, and then acting on them.

Parks began writing in the fourth grade. After a brief diversion into science in college (a high school teacher discouraged her from literature because she was a poor speller), she returned to her first love: writing. James Baldwin was one of her teachers and an important mentor.

When she heard voices talking to her and telling her stories, she wrote down what they said ("They come from that way," she said, gesturing to her left). She was afraid to turn around and look at the source of the voices for fear they would leave.

August Wilson described a similar experience. His plays began with a character coming to him and speaking. He would write the play to find out what the character was talking about.

One of the most important lessons Parks learned from Baldwin was to "honor the spirit" when it makes an appearance. When those voices come, when the spirit moves her to write, she embraces it and doesn't turn away. It takes guts and perseverance.

"Every morning when I wake up I tell myself; 'I want to be a writer today,'" she said. It's never too late to try something new, she said. The important thing is to follow what your gut tells you to do and then just do it.

One of Parks most recent ideas was to write a play every day for a year. She told her husband about it and he said: "That's cool." She immediately went upstairs and began to write. No matter where she was or what she was doing, she made sure to write a play every day. Most are short. The final play is all stage directions and no dialogue.

The resulting works -- "365 Days/365 Plays" -- are being produced by theaters all over the country, including Seattle.

It's all about faith, she told Hilton Als from The New Yorker:

“The writer has two kinds of faith: actual writing and sitting openly. Have faith in your personal effort or sweat. And faith in God, or whatever you want to call it. Then the voices will come.” She paused. “Faith is the big deal,” she said.

Suzan-Lori Parks links:

• Hilton Als New Yorker profile.
• 365 Days/365 Plays web site.
• Seattle365.com.
• Seattle P-I interview about the "365" project.
• NPR interview about the "365" project.

'Big Love' Poster

Kim Carney, a friend and former co-worker, has a terrific blog where she shows off all the cool art she does. Her work is a constant inspiration to me. I'm not in Kim's league, but I thought I'd show one example of my own work and talk a little about the process.

A good friend, Mary Martin, is directing a production of "Big Love" (definitely not the HBO series) by Charles Mee. It opens tonight (Feb. 8) at UACT in Roseburg, Oregon.

Mee's "Big Love" is based on an ancient Greek play, "The Danaids," by Aeschylus. In it, 50 brides (all sisters) are betrothed to 50 grooms (their cousins), but the brides run away before the wedding, landing in a large villa on the coast of Italy. The grooms swoop in by helicopter and all hell breaks out. Soon, people are tossing saw blades at each other and dropping tomatoes and throwing themselves on the ground over and over. And 49 of the bridges kill their grooms, leaving only one couple to fall in love.

"About the same odds as today," Mee writes.

Mee's subject is the nature of love and identity. Can anyone retain their identity when love and marriage consume them? Can a modern woman be true to her ideals in love? Must love end with marriage? Does everyone even have to fall in love?

Whew! How to convey all that in a simple poster?

A group of us retired to our cabin in the mountains to read the play and help Mary with her directing plans. There were lots of visual possibilities here: mangled wedding invitations, a bride and bashed-up groom from atop a wedding cake, blood, knives ... whatever. My initial idea was a simple type treatment: the words BIG LOVE with the LOVE all scratched out, as if one of the angry brides had gotten her revenge on the poster.

Not great but it was an idea. At least it gave us something to fall back on. I had even prepared copy for the poster:

50 brides.
50 grooms.
49 murders.
Can't we all just get along?

Not bad but ... not the greatest. I always say: You have to get the bad ideas out of the way before the good ones arrive.

During a second reading of the play a light dawned: one of the characters (a gay man) has a collection of Barbie and Ken dolls. Ah-ha! The original romantic couple! People would quickly grasp the idea that this is a play about love and relationships (or maybe they would think it was sponsored by Mattel).

I decided that a simple photo of Barbie and Ken just staring straight out from the poster would be the art. And I would play the name of the show large across their chests (it's southern Oregon; we have to cover of Barbie's bare breasts somehow).

It's cheesy but I substituted a heart for the "o" in "love." After finishing a version I decided that the heart made it look too happy and cute. God forbid, people might think it was a romantic comedy (it's funny, but dark).

Back to the original, all-type poster. I made some scratches in Illustrator and put them over the heart. It's just enough to let you know that there's something askew in this show and that it isn't all flowers and happy endings. If I'd have had time, it would have been fun to actually scribble and cut each poster individually.

Other elements on the page were dictated by UACT's design rules. I tinkered with running the BIG LOVE vertically between Ken and Barbie or turning the poster into landscape mode and putting BIG LOVE between them. The idea was that BIG LOVE is keeping the pair apart. That might have been cool but it wouldn't meet the design criteria.

Maybe next time.