In the Wings: no, Into the wings
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PG drama critic Christopher Rawson organizes a group photo in 2005 of 225 Pittsburghers involved in the New York theater in Times Square.
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• Note the difference between today's headline and my longtime column title. "In the wings" suggests standing ready to go on stage; "into the wings" is movement in the opposite direction, like fading to black in film.
That's my way of saying that this is my final week as full-time Post-Gazette theater editor and critic. The paper has offered its veterans a generous buyout, and I've decided to take it, although with deeply conflicted feelings.
I love this job. Although I happened upon it only after turning 40, I've had a very fulfilling 25 years chronicling Pittsburgh theater. As I've said before, I must have been fated to become a theater critic all along, with my youthful experience as an actor, lifelong love of theater, graduate study in literature and experience as an English professor providing appropriate preparation.
I like to think that the increased PG coverage my mentor and first editor, George Anderson, allowed me to give to smaller companies contributed to the growth of professional theater here in the '80s and '90s. George was a model of the critic as intelligent supporter. As he was Harold V. Cohen's chosen heir in covering all entertainment, I was his chosen heir for theater. So it's not easy to give up what I've come to see as "my" beat.
But the beat really belongs to the PG. I trust the editors know what a vibrant theater scene Pittsburgh has and will continue to cover it as fully as possible.
For me, that coverage has meant a constant stream of reviews, previews, features, news stories, obituaries and, of course, this column and its predecessors. Usually that amounted to six to 10 stories a week.
Fortunately, I won't have to give it up completely. I'll continue my online journal, where I've had time to post only occasional entries but where I plan now to write frequently. And I'll be able to review once a week in print. So I'm not going away. I'll still be seeing a lot of theater.
I'll also continue the Post-Gazette theater trips to Broadway, London and the Canadian theater festivals. And I'll continue to co-produce the annual "Off the Record" with Gary Rotstein -- I should even have time to do a better job selling the show. But I look forward most to seeing more of my children and grandchildren.
Although I'm now cleaning out my hopelessly impacted desk and file cabinets (a dreaded chore and another reason I resisted taking the buyout until the last minute, but maybe I'll unearth a lost Shakespeare quarto), the true end to my tenure will come with my traditional end-of-year stories naming the 10 best shows and the performers of the year for 2008 -- the 25th year I will have done this. It's a nice round number.
Then I can dig into the August Wilson book I've been putting off. And I'm going to keep teaching part-time in the Pitt English Department.
I want to thank a lot of PG colleagues, mainly the many editors and copy editors who gradually turned this academic into a passable journalist, and I want to apologize for the times I haven't lived up to the high standards set by them and the many theater critics I admire.
But mostly, I want to thank the Pittsburgh theater community that has nourished and challenged me with its onstage creativity and skill, laughter and tears. I hope to be here some years more, to chronicle it a bit and enjoy it a lot.
• Lincoln Center has announced a spring revival of August Wilson's "Joe Turner's Come and Gone," which is great, but with a white director, Bartlett Sher, which is a surprise. Wilson, you recall, refused to let "Fences" be filmed without a black director to provide understanding. It goes without saying that his Broadway directors (Lloyd Richards, Marion McClinton and Kenny Leon) have been black, as is Suzan-Lori Parks, who will direct a 2010 Broadway revival of "Fences." On the other hand, Todd Kreidler, his close friend who directed him in his one-man show, is white.
According to reporting in the St. Paul Pioneer Press by theater critic Dominic Papatola, McClinton has called Lincoln Center's decision "institutional racism" and veteran Wilson actor James Williams called it "another way of saying that the dominant culture knows more about us than we know about ourselves."
St. Paul was Wilson's home for 12 years after he had lived his first 33 years in Pittsburgh. He then moved to Seattle, where he lived his final 15 years. Sher is the former artistic director of a Seattle theater and has presumably been approved by Wilson's widow, Constanza Romero, who supervises his legacy. But the controversy may continue.
• Closer to home, word comes that Rep. Jake Wheatley has secured $500,000 in state funding for the August Wilson Center, having helped smooth the way in the Appropriations Committee led by Rep. Dwight Evans. Construction on the new Cultural District center is well advanced.
• The board that runs South Florida's Carbonell Awards, which annually recognize the best stage shows and performances in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, has suspended the awards for reevaluation. The problem is the decline in the number of critics who cover theater in that large area and the recent death of Carbonell founder and executive director, the admired critic Jack Zink. Other area critics are trying to keep it going. But this is prophetic of the collateral losses as newspapers cut back on arts coverage.
• Bricolage's popular "Chicks with [appendages]," originally set to run through November, was extended. There are just two performances left, Fri.-Sat.
• Kudos to Pitt theater instructor Lisa Leibering and her Costume Crafts class, which created blankets for the Pittsburgh chapter of Project Linus, which distributes them to children in hospitals, shelters and social services.
• I have the privilege and pleasure of ending my final In the Wings column with news of a new beginning: Born Dec. 1 ("on his due date -- a theater dark day!" writes his proud mom), Jack Harrison Bingham, son of actors Dana Hardy and Tony Bingham. Kudos to all three!
Paid admissions at city's pro theaters for the week ending Dec. 7:
Frost/Nixon / Benedum Center (52%)........... 11,938
Lady with All the Answers / Public (58%) ..... 2,826
Brothers Size / City Theatre (94%) ............. 778
Dublin Carol / PICT (93%) ...................... 564
Love,Perfect,Change / CLO Cabaret (42%) ........ 483
Goat/Playhouse Rep (90%) ....................... 294
First Published December 11, 2008 12:00 am
