Thought on the first day of King Lear rehearsals
“If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less, but to dream more, to dream all the time.” Marcel Proust
“ There is no one correct way of speaking Shakespeare’s verse and prose, for he had no one way of writing it. ”
Prefaces to Shakespeare: King Lear - Harley Granville-Barker, 1927
“ Shakespeare meant it to be acted, and he was a very practical playwright. So that should count for something. ”
Prefaces to Shakespeare: King Lear - Harley Granville-Barker, 1927
“ We commonly say he was careless about these things. It is a very fertile carelessness that shows here. For from this collection of inconsistencies emerges a quite definite picture all illuminative of the fantasy of the story. In a work of art, for what other consistency should we ask? ”
Harley Granville-Barker, Prefaces to Shakespeare: Cymbeline, 1927
“ At one time those who worked in the theatre dictated its path, its growth. The many writers, actors, and directors who worked well and often created the theatre, and the public came and watched and loved or liked or endured or hated it. This is over; this is gone. Through a rabid and idiotic fear, the theatre relinquished its role as creator and designer and gave it to the public, which will always want what is safe and sweet and recognizable and easy. Bring me a star and something that reminds me of a better time. Do not test me. You think people wanted to do early [Tennessee] Williams and [Arthur] Miller? I’m telling you they did not, but we had smarter producers then: They trusted the artists; they listened to arguments. They weren’t the wives or lovers of dentists or decorators or real-estate men. These were men and women who happened to have money and who happened to love the theatre and who happened to have their lives burnished by brushing up against talented people. They knew their place. Now the wives and lovers are running things and telling the artists what to do and how to do it. And we have a dumb, unimportant theatre. Your Aunt Sadie is dictating what gets on the stage. A minor talent with a sinecure sits for decades at the helm of a non-profit and regurgitates safe puddings for the Friends of Thirteen. Up at Lincoln Center you can walk into the circle jerk of [John] Guare, [A.R.] Gurney, and [Wendy] Wasserstein, and sink into the soft cushions of that theatre. Meatloaf theatre. Same-old, same-old. And where are the new plays? The new directors? Try breaking into that group and getting a job. It’s all like the union of doormen, and you have to be grandfathered in by someone who has been beaten down by the landlords of badness. ”
Elia Kazan - Interview with James Grissom - 1993. From “Artistic Suicide.”
“ Life may be a mess: You may have a hundred crises forcing their way into your mind and your heart. But—and I stress this—the theatre and the person you bring to the theatre must be pure and clear and ready only for the work at hand. Your fellow actors, the stage manager, the dresser—they don’t need to know the drama you have at home or in your life. Pour it all into the performance. Blow away the audience with your intensity, but don’t alienate or alarm your coworkers with the diary of your life. And the theatre becomes therapy. So does the commute to the theatre. Just wash it all away, store it, command it to sit and be still. You’ll work a lot of it out in the performance, so that by the time you face down the problem at home, it’s smaller and it knows its place, and it knows that you’ve been made stronger by giving to others, by prioritizing, by doing the right thing. ”
Colleen Dewhurst - Interview with James Grissom - 1990.
“ People interested in truth seek out those who disagree with them. They look for rival opinions, awkward facts and the grounds that might engender hesitation. Such people have a far more complicated life than the optimists, who rush forward with a sense of purpose that is not to be deflected by what they regard as the cavilings of mean-minded bigots. ”
Roger Scruton, The New York Times, March 24, 2013
“ If an artist really wishes to commit artistic suicide, he will become primarily obsessed with the business of the theatre, with the so-called trends among the audience. This is death. Of course we are all aware of how the theatre and its audience keep changing, but the development of an artist remains the same, and you have to be utterly devoted to becoming the best artist in your field as you can. Be strong and pure as so many advised me. Stay on the right track. …Don’t you think that we all thought the theatre was entirely upended whenever an Osborne or an Orton or a Pinter arrived? We all thought we, the old ones, were superfluous, aged, worthless. We still have a place, if we’re good, if we’re needed. Be good and be needed. There is no period of fashion for good: It is eternal. Let others worry about trends and box office and top-of-mind awareness, whatever the hell that is. There is a place—there will always be a place—for art that is done well and purely. My advice to all artists is to become that person, and in addition to being needed, you will be valued and protected. ”
John Gielgud - Interview with James Grissom - 1991. From the forthcoming “Artistic Suicide.”
“ I cannot tell you precisely when the change occurred, but there was a palpable shift in attitude among actors and directors and playwrights, and they began to no longer believe that the theatre—all of the arts—was a great thing to which they should aspire: It was instead something to which they were owed admission; from which they were owed gratitude and repayment. This degraded everything, and I still cannot fully understand why this shift was allowed to progress. I think everyone—or most people—became more concerned with working, surviving, making a mark than with becoming better at what they did and leaving behind a better theatre than the one they inherited. We used to have a narcissism that was kept in check and in service to the art: Now we simply had narcissism, and it was irrelevant by which means it was sated. …The theatre owes us, the workers, nothing. It owes its audience stories and truth, and now we give it careerism and the very visible steps of our ascent. We need to once again ask to be made worthy of our arts and not demand our place within them. ”
Elia Kazan - Interview with James Grissom - 1993 - From the forthcoming “Artistic Suicide.”
“ There will be times when there is no work, and the tendency is to believe that life, that progress, has halted. This is both untrue and fatal: We are always able—required, really—to develop and to share. This is one of the ministries to which we are committed: To be the fullest people we can possibly be. We must develop our minds and our hearts and our souls. We should always be pouring into ourselves philosophy and art and religion and culture and language, and we should always be pouring out to others what we’ve learned. This, too, is work. It is necessary. And when we are called on to be whatever it is that we do, we will be better at the craft, we’ll be better friends, we’ll be better people. ”
Irene Worth - Interview with James Grissom - From “Artistic Suicide.”
