Actors! We've got actors! No, really, we do.

I really need to stop staying up late to post here on SR, especially when I have so many deadlines for TOC pieces tomorrow to worry about. But I'm inspired by Isaac's post today titled The Necessity of Actors. He quotes an unnamed New York director who'd recently directed a show out of town:

One of the things i've been noticing lately is that-- look, it was always difficult to get older actors to work regionally, right? Because who wants to travel. But the thing I've noticed lately is that younger actors... their agents won't even let them audition for a regional show. Because while they're doing that regional show, they could be auditioning every day for a commercial that they'll make more money doing. And once you can't get good actors to even audition for you? That's pretty much game over. The next step is them not auditioning for theatre period. Because their daytime rehearsals would still take them out of the running for commercial and pilot auditions.

My first thought upon seeing this in my feed reader this afternoon was, Why do you have to bring your actors with you from New York in the first place? Clicking over to the post, I discovered that several others had beaten me to the same punch in the comments, including Tony Adams and Kerry Reid. I left a comment there anyway, but I'll expand upon it here.

Where did we get this idea that major regional theaters need to import actors? Why not cast locally? Okay, maybe San Diego's Old Globe or the Seattle Rep don't have a broad enough base of actors to call upon—and I'm not necessarily saying they don't, I don't know those scenes—but lord knows Chicago has good actors aplenty. So why is it that companies like Chicago Shakes and the Goodman feel the need to bring in actors from New York or Toronto or wherever else to play their leads?

As Kerry said in the comments on Isaac's post, local actors can help build local audiences. I know one of the things I enjoy as a critic and an audience member is the opportunity to follow an actor's career, to be able to see her or him progress through different companies and different roles. When Gary Griffin's production of Passion at CST uses three out-of-towners for its leads (Ana Gasteyer, Adam Brazier and Kathy Voytko), that opportunity is lost for me. Why did the Jeff for Best Actor go to Torontoan (Torontoite?) Ben Carlson? I'm not knocking him, but were there no Chicagoans suited to play Hamlet?

At least Stacy Keach is somewhat of a name. Maybe casting him as Lear brought in higher ticket sales for the Goodman. Maybe casting Keach plus a host of other imports, like Linda Lavin and Matthew Modine, in the Goodman's premiere of Arthur Miller's last play sells more tickets. But it does make one wonder what is particularly Chicago about Chicago's most prominent theaters.

And while we're at it, it makes me wonder what's so good for Chicago about Wicked. The production may provide lip service to the city's theater community by giving extended employment in secondary roles to some of our hometown favorites (Rondi Reed, Gene Weygandt, Barbara Robertson), but the producers always look elsewhere for the leads. Has anyone in power ever considered that newly-Equity Jess Godwin, for instance, might make a kickass Galinda? Doubtful.

When Chicago's big theaters bring in outside talent, they're paying for travel, housing and per diem costs on top of wages. Anyone who laments the fact that so many promising Chicago actors start their careers here before heading for one of the coasts should take this into account.

In my comment on Isaac's post, I quoted from an interview TOC did with Judith Ivey a little over a year ago when she was in town directing Theresa Rebeck's Bad Dates at Northlight. (The fact that I was seeing a production of Rebeck's Sunday on the Rocks tonight at Bailiwick brought it to mind.) I'll quote it again here. Ivey was a working actor in Chicago in the ’70s before departing for New York in 1978. When my colleague Novid Parsi asked her why she left, she said this:

To be honest, it’s what I call the regional-theater disease. They kept bringing young actresses from New York to play the leading ladies, and in two instances—this was at the Goodman Theatre at that time—they ended up being disappointed in them and came to me privately and said, “We may fire this actress. Would you take over the part if we do?” And of course my answer was, “Yes.” And they would end up not firing her and then just letting that role not be done as well. And then the next production would come up, and they would still go to New York and cast yet another actress that, to be honest, wasn’t as good as I was. And so I thought, Well, I’m gonna go to New York and see if I can at least get a job to come back to Chicago, you know. And I never did. I came back once when we were trying out Hurlyburly, and that’s really the only time I’ve been back—much to my dismay, really, ’cause I love Chicago.

For the record, Ivey's production of Bad Dates at Northlight starred L.A.'s Beth Broderick.

Comments

[Dan]

I know it's sort of a bad habit of mine to reference my sister in your comment section, but I thought it worth noting that she was called in for productions at the Goodman and VG well after she moved to LA. She, too, was remarking how if she had gotten cast at the Equity theatres when she was here, she might never have left.

[Ronica]

Hello, I'm a first time reader of your blog-I linked here from Parabasis. I have to say that I'm surprised Chicago is also suffering from "Regional theatre disease." I spoke to a New York director (originally from Chicago) and another actor formally based out of Chicago, about Steppenwolf's recent Broadway import "August Osage County." And they spoke about how upset the actors in that play were about the transfer to Broadway and the possible extension of the limited run. They said Chicago scene is strong and the actors live and work there and don't want to work anywhere else. Your post suggests that this sentiment is unique to the Steppenwolf. Is the Steppenwolf the only regional theatre in Chicago dedicated to producing works by local artist using local actors?

[Patrick]

Boston faces the same problem. Our actor pool isn't as large as Chicago's, but there are a lot of talented actors. The proximity of NYC makes the talent drain flow more quickly--the common lament, "if I lived in NYC I could get more easily hired here," is common here, and was the same in Denver, back in the 90s.

Playwrights often have the same complaints as actors. Somehow because you live in the same city, the local theatres often don't seem to take you or your career as seriously. Theatre is essentially a local artform, and to keep it healthy talent needs to be grown, nurtured, and retained.

[Kris Vire]

Ronica, Steppenwolf is kind of a special case among the biggest theaters here. It's an ensemble-based company (as are many of the mid-size companies that came after it and modeled themselves on Steppenwolf). The cast of August wasn't necessarily thrilled about going to Broadway, but Tracy Letts wrote that script for that ensemble. Deanna Dunagan gave a quote to the Chicago Reader's Deanna Isaacs during the stagehands' strike: "Dunagan says she doesn’t think anyone in the show really wanted to come to Broadway, 'but we wanted the play to be seen in New York, and we didn’t want other people to do it.'" (This is also why I think a movie of August would be a terrible idea.)

Steppenwolf is committed to developing its ensemble, and recent evidence suggests they're also committed to developing the Chicago talent pool on whole. Some of the other big guns, the Goodman and Chicago Shakespeare most egregiously, do a lot of casting out of town, as do sit-down New York productions like Wicked.

That sense you mention that actors live and work here and don't want to work elsewhere is quite often true; I've heard plenty of actors lament their exodus to NY or LA. There is a lot of Equity work here for local actors; I'd just like to see our own actors considered the first resort instead of last. That's the only way to keep them here.

[Mark Jeffries]

The Goodman said a few years ago that they cast 90% Chicagoans, even if they cast the leads out-of-town. I've been a subscriber long enough to believe them.

And I've seen enough CST shows to know that they do cast most of the time Chicagoans, especially the people Gaines has worked with from the beginning. I think her argument for casting out-of-town is that she wants CST to be seen as a "world-class" theater, which means bringing in the best wherever they are. She would probably call you provincial. You can have it out with her.

And uh-huh on Jess as Glinda, as much as I love her, at least from "Wicked"'s view. She's too tall, not a blonde and doesn't have the squeaky voice that Glindas seem to have. They seem to not mind a Glinda not having Kristin Chenoweth's mammary glands, but they want everything else to be Chenoweth-ish. If Jess ever gets cast in "Wicked," I suspect she would be Nessarose.