My Two Proudest Moments as Director of "The Jungle Book"

Some of the Cast of "The Jungle Book" at the Center Theatre in Dover-Foxcroft, ME

Greetings all, and welcome to Theater is a Sport, my little place on the internet to talk about all things theater.  My name is Bobby Keniston, and you can find me here pretty much five days a week (Monday-Friday).  Why?  Well, because I love theater.

Since early February, I have been honored to be the director of "The Jungle Book" at the Center Theatre, right here in my home town of Dover-Foxcroft.  Every spring, the theater does an all-youth cast show, and, happily, I applied for the job to direct and was hired.

It's been a lot of work.  The cast is comprised of kids between the ages of 3 and 17.  Obviously, that's quite a big range!  It's been a challenge for me to find different ways to communicate with different cast members, and making myself understood by everyone.  There have been times when the process has tested my patience (I"m proud to say that I passed), and, of course, many other moments where it has given me great joy.  

I want to tell you about my two proudest moments as the director of "The Jungle Book".  And, the reason they are my two proudest moments, is because I had nothing to do with them.

Of course, as a director, I try to make sure the kids are prepared for anything.  But that's not always possible....

Last Sunday, during our matinee performance, all was going well.  In fact, it was my favorite of the three performances to date.  We were near the end of Act One, everything was smooth sailing, and I was watching the show from the back of the auditorium (in the shadows), and really enjoying it.  And then, the power went out.  

Black stage, during a big group scene with almost every character present on stage.  

To be honest, I expected within seconds for them to be worried, maybe even panicked, which I would have understood.  I expected some shouting out, some "What do we do?", or maybe a mass attempt to clear the stage, which, in the pitch black, could have been dangerous.  

But they stayed right there on stage.  I walked down to the foot of the stage, as did the stage manager, and whispered that they were doing a great job, and to just stay in place, and, when the lights came back on, to just keep going.

Fortunately, the lights came back on relatively quickly.  And the moment they did, BAM!, as if there were NO INTERRUPTION AT ALL, they kept going.  They picked it right back up with the same energy and focus as if they and the audience had not just been in the dark for a few minutes.  They didn't miss a beat.  

My second proudest moment was yesterday, when we spent the day performing for school children. The kids had FOUR (!) performances of the show yesterday for surrounding area schools.  Talk about a long day!  

Midway through the third play, something went wrong.  A character who was supposed to be onstage, didn't come on stage.  I figured they had just missed their entrance, but would run on.  The cast members onstage started improvising and ad-libbing, keeping the scene going,  I headed backstage to find there had been a bit of a costume mishap.  And all this while, the kids onstage kept going and going and going.  Without looking panicked, without breaking character, without freaking out.  They didn't give up.  They kept acting and improvising their hearts out, as if nothing in the least bit was out of place.  I'm telling you, I have never seen adults work to cover a scene so well!  It blew my mind.  

"Where did they learn how to do that?," I asked myself.

And then, when the mishap was sorted out, the actor went onstage, proud and confident as though nothing had been wrong.  Amazing. 

The thing is, I can't take the credit for it.  

And that is why it makes me very proud.

For those in the Dover-Foxcroft area, the final 3 performances of "The Jungle Book" are Friday, April 17th at 7 PM, and Saturday April 18th at 2 PM and 7 PM, at the Center Theatre.  You really should come check it out!

Dress Rehearsal

Greetings ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to theater is a sport.  My name is Bobby Keniston, and this is a little piece of the internet that belongs to me, where I talk about all things theater.

Dress rehearsals are on my mind today, because, well, tonight, I have dress rehearsal for a production of The Jungle Book I have been directing for the last seven weeks or so in my home town of Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, for my home town community theater, The Slightly-Off Center Players.  I have twenty-four kids between the ages of 3 and 17 in the cast, my charges, my students, my actors.  And, after tonight, the show no longer belongs to me--- it belongs to them (and the stage managers, of course).

Dress rehearsals can be painful for a director, and they can be joyous, and they can be stressful, or a huge relief, or all of these feelings and more at once.  It is the last chance for a director to make any major changes through notes.  Theoretically, it is the last time that a director can even stop the rehearsal to make changes if need be...

REALLY TRY NOT TO DO THAT.

I'm going to really try not to stop and make any adjustments tonight.  It's difficult.  There will be moments that my brain is screaming for me to stop, I know this, but my goal is to not do it, to write down whatever I need to say, and maybe run a part after ward if necessary, but to not stop them during the run.

Why?  The cast needs to run the show, and they need to run it in performance mode.  They need a run-through where the safety net isn't so obviously there.  They have to know that, no matter what happens, they must find a way to keep going.

This is particularly tough when you are directing children, believe me.  You have spent all this time being their guide, their teacher, and hopefully a mentor of some sort. It's not easy to watch them up on stage if something goes wrong and they are obviously uncomfortable.  But, hey, it's dress rehearsal.  The time to learn how handle it is now, not when there are over a hundred people in the audience.

When you're a cast member in a play, you might feel a pang of loss when the show reaches its final performance and, alas, you say goodbye to a character.  For a director, the dress rehearsal is kind of like the last night for them.  Certainly I will be there opening night (and, for this show, for every performance), and I will be giving pep talks, and maybe tiny notes for anything glaring that hasn't been fixed, but, essentially once the curtain goes up on opening night, my work is done and over with.  There is nothing more I can do.  Once the show begins in front of an audience, well, I can no longer do anything to help.

And I NEVER go backstage to talk to a cast at intermission.  Well, almost never.

I truly believe that a director has to separate from the show in order to give it wings.  That's why a dress rehearsal is so difficult... you have so much more you want to say, but the time is running out, and, you just have to hope what you do say will sink in, be implemented, and make the show work as best as it can.

As I director, I want a great show.  But I want it to be a great show not for me or my personal glory, but for them.  I want them to be proud of it, feel safe and prepared.  But that will not be up to me tomorrow night when the curtain opens.  Tonight is my last chance, in a three hour rehearsal window, to finish my job up in a way that will help make them shine.

All while not stopping them unless I absolutely have to.

No pressure.

Playwrights for the Youth and High School Markets

Welcome to Theater is a Sport, my humble place on the internet to talk about all things theater. My name is Bobby Keniston, and I often introduce myself as a playwright for the youth and high school markets, and I'm telling the truth when I do.  I have thirty or so plays published for young people (with many that have crossover appeal for community theaters), and you can learn more about them by clicking HERE, or HERE, or HERE, or HERE.  

Now that I've gotten that self-promotion out of the way, today I would like to talk about playwrights for the youth, high school, and community theater markets.  Not just because I am one, but also because, to be frank, I don't think writers in this market get much attention or acclaim, but I'm convinced that what we do is not only vitally important to the survival of all theater in general, but important contributions to our overall culture at large.  And no, I don't just believe this so I can feel better talking about what I do at Thanksgiving while other family members have promotions and raises to go on about in conversation.

So what is a playwright for the youth and high school markets?  Well, quite simply, it is a person who writes plays to be performed either for or by children and/or high school students.  These are two types of what are known as "amateur markets", simply meaning that they are plays written for non-professionals to perform. I don't love the term "amateur market"  In truth, I've seen so-called "amateur" productions, both from schools and community theaters, that could really knock anyone's socks off, so there's nothing wrong with being an inspired amateur onstage, and yet, I find the term a bit condescending.  

So who decides what makes a play for the "amateur market"?  Well, once again, it simply means that it is a play that is designed mostly to have non-professional productions, and, perhaps, has never had a professional production (there are, of course, exceptions to this).  Yet, on the other, hand, many schools and community theaters do plays outside of the amateur market all the time.  For example, The Actor's Nightmare by Christopher Durang has been a very popular one act with high schools for years, though it was written to be a companion piece with his longer one act Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All For You, to complete an evening of theater for an Off-Broadway run.  And, there's Almost, Maine, by John Cariani, which is now one of the most produced plays by schools and community theaters across the United States, and it started out Off-Broadway and in regional theaters.  Not to mention the plethora of schools who have performed plays by Neil Simon, or productions of Our Town by Thornton Wilder.  So, who decides?  The writers, in terms of their intended audiences, and the publishers, in terms of how they market the play.

The types of plays and playwrights I'm talking about, who focus a great deal of their energy on the youth and high school markets, are the ones who are found in the catalogs sent out to drama teachers across the world every fall and spring.  The names that keep popping up in the glossy tomes mailed out by Pioneer, Eldridge, Brooklyn Publishers, Playscripts, Inc. (in the youth and high school section), Heuer, Big Dog Plays, Dramatic Publishing and so forth.  Growing up, my father was a drama teacher and director for middle schools, and I would always look through these catalogs.  names like Tim Kelly, Craig Sodaro, Pat Cook, and many others would pop up over and over again.  I knew their names long before I had ever heard of Harold Pinter, Eugene O'Neill, or even Neil Simon.

Tim Kelly published over 350 plays in his life, and he died at the age of 67.  While he was alive, his plays were performed over 6,000 times a year, and were translated into almost a dozen languages.  His easy-to-produce, flexible cast plays were everywhere.  Google his name, and you will see a headline from when he passed away by Playbill magazine:  TIM KELLY, PROLIFIC PLAYWRIGHT FOR AMATEUR MARKET, DEAT AT 67.  Mr. Kelly was thought to be the most published playwright in America.  He studied at Emerson College, and got his MFA in Playwriting from Yale.  He talked a great deal about making a living writing plays for the "Way, way, way off Broadway markets".  He also admitted that critics would never like him or take him seriously.

Here's the deal, though:  how many of us read The Cat in the Hat or Green Eggs and Ham before we ever read a novel?  I would say most of us.  How many of us read books like Charlotte's Web and Harriet the Spy before we ever read Great Expectations?  Nowadays, which is a kid most likely to read first--- the new Magic Tree House chapbook or The Lord of the Flies?  One might say there's a natural progression in a reader's life from Flat Stanley to the works of Beverly Cleary to mid-grade readers to Catcher in the Rye to Dickens, Tolstoy and Balzac.  And chances are, young folks tackle Goosebumps before they jump into Stephen King and Edgar Allan Poe.

I cite these examples in the progression of a readers life for one simple person:  no one calls young people "amateur readers".  Even Young Adult fiction is called just that--- Young Adult.  And while writers like Beverly Cleary, Louis Sachar, John Green, and Judy Blume may never be mentioned in the same reverential way people talk about Philip Roth, John Updike, or Joyce Carol Oates, their work is still celebrated, and people are able to glean the importance of work for young readers, and accept them by and large as literature.  There's even a National Book Award given each year for a book designed for young readers.

In my opinion, and completely from my perspective, I don't believe, outside of drama teachers, that people truly understand what goes into writing a play for the youth and high school markets.  We don't just dive in because we figure it will be easier to write for kids than adults. It's not.  People can argue about the merits of a Tim Kelly play, and I may grant that many follow a certain formula, but, speaking as a playwright, it is not easy to write a play with speaking parts for at least 20 kids, that can also be doubled if necessary, and to move this story through a dramatic arc with simple settings, and appropriate dialogue.  It is not a simple task.  It takes work, creativity and imagination.

Those of us who write for the youth and high school markets do so because we believe in the importance of theater in education.  Just as a readers' life progresses as they grow up, so does a performers'. Plays for young audiences are important.  Young actors need scripts that were written for them, with them in mind.  So do community theater groups.  My name might never be mentioned next to Harold Pinter or Edward Albee's, but I would like to think my work is one of many gateways that inspire a kid to grow up and read these men's fine work.

I am hereby suggesting these alternatives for the term "amateur market":  how about "the thespian-in-training market"?  Or maybe "Future Stars market?"

Perhaps we can just call it the "Youth and High School Market" and realize that it's just as important as any other market?

Thanks for reading.  If you have any thoughts, comments, or suggestions for alternatives to "amateur maket", please feel free to share them in the comments section below.