Beautiful Chaos
A LIFE IN THE THEATER
Carey Perloff
City Lights Foundation
San Francisco
Copyright © 2015 by Carey Perloff
All Rights Reserved
Front cover photo: Carey Perloff contemplates the stage of The Geary Theater at a technical rehearsal in 200Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Perloff, Carey.
Beautiful chaos : a life in the theater / Carey Perloff.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-931404-14-3 (pbk.)
1. Perloff, Carey. 2. Theatrical producers and directors--United states--Biography. I. Title.
PN2287.P393A3 2014
792.023’2092--dc23
[B]
eISBN: 978-1-931404-16-7
City Lights Foundation books are published at the City Lights Bookstore
261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133
www.citylights.com
Preface
It’s a peculiar thing to write a memoir while one is still in the middle of it all. But this book is not really a memoir; it is the result of what happened to me during the beautiful chaos of a life in the theater, when I paused long enough to try to take stock of where I was and how I got there. I have always wrestled with the evanescence of live theater, with the way the work consumes every ounce of one’s creativity and then disappears overnight, almost without a trace. But though I have always kept a journal and held tight to mementos like opening-night cards and letters from playwrights, I had never stopped working long enough to gather my thoughts and consider whether and how the whole endeavor adds up. On the occasion of my twentieth anniversary as artistic director of American Conservatory Theater, I mentioned to Jim O’Quinn (editor in chief of American Theatre magazine) that I was thinking of writing an essay about my experiences at A.C.T.; he was encouraging and said he would consider publishing what I wrote in the magazine. Once I began, I couldn’t stop. The first two chapters of this book were indeed excerpted and published in American Theatre (January and February 2013), and I remain deeply grateful both to Jim and to Terry Nemeth (publisher of Theatre Communications Group), who not only urged me to write but introduced me to Elaine Katzenberger, executive director and publisher of City Lights press. For any literary-minded San Franciscan, the thought of being published by City Lights is a dream come true. Just to sit in Elaine’s office, where the anniversary edition of Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems was being prepared and Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s old wooden desk still holds pride of place, was worth the entire process of writing the book. I am honored to be among their authors, and to throw my lot in with the intrepid publishers of Ginsberg’s “Howl.”
Beautiful Chaos is an attempt to articulate not only why I chose a life in the theater, but how being in the theater has given shape to the rest of my life. It is also something of a polemic about the state of the American theater today and the urgency with which I feel certain aspects of it must be addressed if the field is to flourish. It doesn’t pretend to be an objective account, although my treasured colleague, A.C.T.’s education director (and former publications editor), Elizabeth Brodersen, has tried to bring the chronology and details in line with the actual facts. But if it is true that the particular yields to the universal, then it is my hope that this very subjective and particular story about a particular artist in a particular city at a particular time will yield some broader truths about the state of culture and the world we live in today. I hope it will make people long for the beauty of live performance, as it offers a glimpse into the often byzantine inner workings of making theater.
I also hope the book will encourage women in this field, particularly women with children, to stick with it in spite of the punishing hours and relative paucity of female voices rising to the top of our profession. The logistics of the life of a working mother in the theater are ridiculously complex, but to my mind the effort is utterly worth it. I vividly remember a T-shirt that circulated around our household when my children were young; the lettering on the front declared, I CAN’T, I HAVE REHEARSAL! in bold capitals. Indeed, rehearsal is the great maw that devours Fourth of July picnics and Christmas Eve celebrations, family visits and school performances. I spent over twenty years wishing that I could clone myself and be at home and at work simultaneously, worrying that my bereft family would disown me if I rehearsed one more play or cultivated one more donor. The beauty of hindsight is the realization that much more is possible than one thinks, and that it’s never worth torturing oneself for failing to subscribe to some artificial norm of marriage and parenthood.
Much of this book is concerned with the artistic collaborators that have meant the most to me in my creative life, and I hope that those artists will forgive me if I have pulled the curtain back on conversations and rehearsals that were essentially private and occasionally difficult. At the same time, the book makes no attempt to cover the entire time period comprehensively, so I make apologies to many treasured colleagues who didn’t end up being mentioned. In trying to stitch a narrative out of many disparate threads, some have inevitably ended up being more visible than others.
The next few years are filled with new adventures: At A.C.T. we are opening our long-awaited second stage (The Strand Theater); we are starting an initiative called Stage Coach to bring theater on a mobile unit to neighborhoods across San Francisco; we are developing an unprecedented number of major new theatrical projects; and we are launching the San Francisco Semester to introduce undergraduates from across the country to A.C.T.’s unique form of actor training. Several of my plays are having productions around the country and in Europe that I look forward to enormously. Perhaps this book will help to frame and catalyze many of these initiatives; I know I will learn a great deal in the process.
In researching stories for this book, I reread hundreds of letters from A.C.T. subscribers and notebooks full of press clippings, and I am eternally grateful both to Bay Area theater audiences and to the San Francisco Chronicle and Bay Area theater critics for their ongoing dialogue with our work. For reading sections of the manuscript in process, I want to thank James Haire (who patiently guided me through much of A.C.T.’s complicated history and explained the earthquake and many other touchstone moments with his incredible memory and wit), Alan Stein (who reminded me of many things I had forgotten about our early years of working together and continues to be my gold standard of arts patronage), and Sue Yung Li (whose taste and wisdom have guided me from the day I arrived at A.C.T.). Olympia Dukakis read the book cover to cover and responded with her characteristic passion about the artistic journey it represents, and Robert Brustein encouraged me to tackle the big issues of acting companies and classical repertoire that he has championed so brilliantly in his own career. Graham Beckel dared me to be provocative, and Liz Perle’s well-honed narrative instincts helped me lift my personal observations toward something more universally applicable. Michael Paller applied his razor dramaturgical eye to the proceedings; Craig Slaight urged me to think rigorously about my dreams for the future; and Ellen Richard made sure my frequent hyperbole was grounded in the truth. Nancy Livingston gave me the invaluable perspective of a longtime Bay Area arts lover and trustee, and Caresa Capaz held the rest of my life together while I tried to remember what happened when. My parents, Marjorie and Joseph Perloff, and my sister, Nancy Perloff, all three among the most incisive critics I know, were happily patient and incredibly perceptive as I attempted to become the last person in the family to finally write a book.
For being my companions in this long theatrical journey, I thank the tenacious and talented staffs of Classic Stage Company and A.C.T., as well as so many remarkable board members whose faith and generosity have sustained the work. For helping me shape and conceptualize the whole project, for talking me through every argument and interrogating every assumption,