Ovation Fellows are current students or recent alumni from Los Angeles area universities. Fellows are paired with a Mentor, currently serving as an Ovation Award voter, and see productions and meet artists around Greater Los Angeles throughout the year. Their articles, posted on LAStageBlog, are intended to be their personal responses to their experiences, and not as critical reviews or representing the views of LA Stage Alliance.
Tyler McClain is an Ovation Fellow from Loyola Marymount University.
“I’d be willing to go there.” That’s what the Colony Theatre’s Artistic Director Barbara Beckley said to the show’s playwright Wayne Peter Liebman after a Saturday matinee performance of his historical drama Better Angels.
By “there,” Barbara meant a new direction, a change in the play. With a few performances under its belt, and a couple of weeks left in the show’s run, the creative team was still debating the merit of changing a significant moment in the play’s final scene. And I was there with my mentor Dennis, listening to the conversation and supplying my own perspective.
“That’s incredible,” Dennis leaned over and whispered, “that she’s willing to do that, even now with the show already running. That’s incredible.” Re-working the technical aspects, the lighting and sound cues, reshaping the performance of the play’s three wonderful actors–these are some of the necessary steps for the team to make if they were actually going to rework the end of the play. My suggestions were less than incredible but I was struck by their willingness to explore.
My fellowship allows me special privileges but I never thought I’d actually be listening to a conversation like this. More than just listening in, I took to heart how committed these individuals are – to them, the work isn’t finished until the production is as good as it possibly can be. It didn’t matter to them that the play had already been performed or that there would be a number of issues to hammer out in order to make their changes; they simply wanted to offer their audiences the best production they could.
As a young artist, it’s important to remember our work speaks for us and we should never pretend satisfaction. It’s not our job to be complacent but to be advocates for the vision we intend. It’s our vision, after all – let’s do it justice. The hours are long, the frustrations high but that is all part of the bargain; to see on stage the thing we have intended is surely worth the extra effort.
A NOTE FROM ANGELS PLAYWRIGHT
Our producer, Barbara Beckley, and I agonized about this for two weeks. The problem concerned whether to retain a short, fantasy coda, which left the audience in their imaginations, or cut it and end with the previous, much darker moment, leaving the audience (hopefully) with a lump in their collective throat. It had proved the most controversial choice in the play, with audience members accosting both Barbara and myself after performances and arguing both sides.
Our conversation with Tyler brought the issue to a head and Barbara and I resolved to watch the next performance together, with an eye only to the ending, and to make a decision. This we did with open minds. We were receptive to any result, trusting our intuitions as a guide. Without any discussion after, we reached the same, simultaneous conclusion, which surprised both of us: halfway through the run, a complete re-write and re-tech of the end of the play would derail all the momentum both the cast and crew had worked so long and hard to attain. This trumped everything else.
A longer run, providing everyone time to regain their footing, might have justified such a change. But given the little time we had, we would keep riding the horse we were on and save the re-write for the future. Our director, Dan Bonnell, agreed.
I think all playwrights try very hard to allow their characters to speak for themselves and not to impose agendas on them. But it can be very difficult sometimes to know the difference. It becomes very clear very soon in production that a play cannot please everyone; the only safe course for the playwright is to please him or herself. Even now I do not know which ending pleases me more. But if Better Angels has a future life, I will at least know to build the question of its ending into the next rehearsal process.
Wayne Peter Liebman
