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Signature Re-Enters Edward Albee's Occupant
Signature Theatre Company closes the 2007-2008 Season with Edward Albee's Occupant, his exploration of the life and mind of his friend, acclaimed sculptor Louise Nevelson. Occupant continues Signature's Legacy Program, which invites past Playwrights-in-Residence back to Signature after their seasons have ended. Albee was the Playwright-in-Residence for the 1993-1994 Season when Signature presented Marriage Play, Counting the Ways and Listening, Sand: Box, The Sandbox, and Finding the Sun, and Fragments. Albee returned to Signature in 2002 for the Tenth Anniversary All-Premiere Celebration, Part Two when the company presented Edward Albee's Occupant with Anne Bancroft and Neal Huff. Ms. Bancroft fell ill in previews and the play never opened to the press.
Signature is thrilled to revisit Occupant with Albee and a creative team of new and returning artists. Pam MacKinnon directs Mercedes Ruehl as Nevelson and Larry Bryggman as The Man. Set designer Christine Jones and costume designer Jane Greenwood are returning to Occupant and lighting designer David Lander makes his Signature debut. Occupant closes "the Albee Season," as the last of four Albee plays produced in the New York metropolitan area during the 2007-2008 Season.
Signature Edition and Founding Artistic Director James Houghton caught up with Albee before rehearsals for Occupant began to discuss Albee's history with Signature, his writing process, and his fourth tall woman, Louise Nevelson.
Signature Edition: What was it like to see so much of your work produced throughout the season?
Edward Albee: All playwright, if they are honest with you, think the world would be a better place if all of their plays were being done all of the time, everywhere. But the important thing to know is that I didn't arrange any of it. It just happened because of some ridiculous birthday thing, but it's other people's ideas, not mine. That's fine, nothing wrong with it.
James Houghton: Well your birthday had nothing to do with making the call to see if you wanted to come back to Signature. I love Edward's work, I saw that there was this window of opportunity to return to Occupant, and I thought, why not finish what we started in 2002?
SE: How do you two feel to be collaborating once again?
EA: Well, we all know how I feel about Signature. It's doing stuff that no other theatre is doing. It's more responsible than most others and authors are given a fair shake. It's a good place to work.
JH: I remember, Edward, when Romulus [Linney, Signature Founding Playwright-in-Residence], you, and I, met after we had just finished Romulus' last play in 1992. We told you how Signature engaged the writer in absolutely every aspect of the process. I was in mid-sentence and you said, "Let's do it." We shook hands on it, we did it, and it was as simple as that.
EA: I react instinctively to everything.
JH: I was really taken by that, that there wasn't second guessing.
EA: It felt right. God, somebody wants to do my plays? In New York?
SE: How did you come to know Louise Nevelson?
EA: I knew Louise for more than twenty-five years before she died. And of course I've known her since. We probably met socially somewhere and seemed to like each other. I'd already admired a lot of her work, and she seemed to like mine. I think she saw Tiny Alice very early on, and she seemed to like that a lot. She felt that it related to her work; she never explained how or why.
JH: You were drawn very early on to the art world?
EA: Well, when I was seven or so I started drawing, and painting when I was nine. I quit eventually in my early twenties because I realized I was very skillful, but totally derivative, and there was no point in doing it. I wanted to be a composer when I discovered classical music when I was eleven or twelve. I was no good at it so there was no point in that either. But if you're going to be a playwright it's very important to know everything about classical music and everything about the visual arts.
SE: What drew you to Louise Nevelson's work?
EA: The quality of the work. Some people are good, and some people aren't. Some people are innovative, and some people aren't. Some people do stuff that matters and some people don't. You can't say one particular thing. I like the fact that she concentrated on form rather than color. I like that a lot.
SE: You once wrote, "For the clearest view of Nevelson I point you to her work." What does her work say about her?
EA: Why would her work say anything about her? It's about her talent. It doesn't say anything about her necessarily. The point that I was trying to make there was that she dressed in public so dramatically with the sable eyelashes and in the outré costumes that people got a misunderstanding of the seriousness of her work because of the drama of the persona, and they confused the two sometimes. But when she was working she didn't dress up all funny. She wore a smock. So the personality must not be confused with the work.
JH: That's interesting, because the way you've talked about you vs. your work is that they are separate, and you do not need to understand the artist to understand the work.
EA: Well, you don't have to see and hear and know the person to understand the work.
JH: Right. And you've actually gone a step further and said that not only is it not necessary, but it doesn't add anything.
EA: Sometimes it gets in the way if you have a highly dramatic personality like Louise. People think that is the work. And it's not. It's a separate projection she was making to call attention to the work.
JH: Have you ever felt that confusion applied to you, Edward?
EA: I don't think so. Because I've been rather reluctant to reveal personality in interviews.
JH: Maybe not in interviews, but I feel that your presence as an artist at the table influences the work.You've said that they 'don't need to know me, let them do the work,' and I say sure, the work does stand on its own. However, I do think there's an enhancement in the creation and the artistic expression of that work if you are participating in it. Not just by your mere presence, but by your engagement in it.
EA: I understand that, because I know more about my intention than anybody else does and sometimes you have to correct.
JH: Do you think it's possible to correct too much?
EA: That depends. If you've written a good piece, you know the way you want it to sound, and you want a performance that reflects the experience you had when you were writing it, then you can't correct too much.
JH: There's got to be a moment where you shut down another artist's expression by going too far and by defining too much.
EA: What I tell people on the first day of rehearsal, whether I'm directing or not, is that as long as they say the lines and words in the order in which I wrote them, and pay attention to the punctuation, as long as they end up with exactly what I intended, they will be fine. I will not tolerate approximation. I will not tolerate subtext that does damage to the character. I have never had the experience in all my years working in the theatre where an actor or a director has made anything I've written better by changing my intention.
JH: Has there been a moment in the rehearsal process where someone has revealed to you an undercurrent or a color that you were consciously unaware of?
EA: Yes. But I'm convinced that couldn't have happened unless those things were in there.
SE: Why did you write a play about Louise Nevelson?
EA: Because it was interesting and she's interesting.
SE: Would you have written the play if you had not known her personally?
EA: Oh of course not. Because the play is about her, it's only incidentally about her work. It's about her and how she survived the various vicissitudes and got to turn into her work. I couldn't have written it if I didn't know her, and I couldn't have written it if I didn't respect the work quite a bit.
JH: You said something interesting, that "she got to turn into her work." Can you elaborate on that?
EA: That moment where she took a found wood piece and stood it up. And all of a sudden she realized that she was about creating these wall pieces. That moment of revelation was very important.
JH: What was that moment of revelation for you, Edward?
EA: Realizing that I was a terrible poet and a terrible short story writer and a terrible novelist. Then I wrote Zoo Story and everything changed. It felt different. It felt individual. It felt creative. It felt talented. Those three together.
JH: Have you written any bad plays?
EA: Yes, some that I never finished and that I don't allow out, those few half-assed attempts in my twenties. But I wasn't supposed to write a good play until I was twenty-eight.
JH: I totally buy into that. I think things come when they're supposed to come. And once you have the courage to have faith in that, then they come more readily.
SE: Will you talk about the dramatic form of Occupant: two people having a conversation?
EA: Well it's more complex - one of them is alive and one of them is dead. That was sort of fun. That seemed to be an interesting way of handling it, and seemed to have dramatic possibilities. Now I possibly could have written the play in a different manner but I don't think it would have had the immediacy or the intensity of an interview with the dead.
JH: When we did Occupant for the first time Neal Huff played the The Man. How will a more mature actor in the role change the play from when we had a man in his twenties?
EA: I thought the virtue of having a younger man was that ambitious person who wasn't going to let Nevelson get away with any shit. This person will work through age and experience and is not going to let her get away with anything, but in a somewhat different manner. The same revelation will happen; she still won't be able to get away with anything. It's just not the brash young person, but the wiser, distinguished journalist instead.
SE: Does the play contain conversations you had with Louise Nevelson?
EA: It's mostly conversations that I had with her, conversations that I knew she had with other people, and conversations that I know how she would have responded to in questions. I've never listened to her being dead and answer questions by a journalist. So that's all invented. I knew her well enough to know that's how she would have responded.
JH: She's another tall woman in your life. What's that about?
EA: I don't know. I guess I like tall women.
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