Day 408…
Life can be messy. Or so the electronic billboards above the interstate in Rhode Island say, anyway. It follows with something about not littering along the highway, but I didn’t catch exactly what as I was driving.
Michael and I are back up in Provincetown on Cape Cod for a few days. It’s still cold up here and many places are either not open at all or just open on the weekends. It feels like the entire place got up early to pee but is going back to bed for an hour or two.
The cat figured out we were leaving when the suitcase got dragged up from the basement and he immediately gave Michael the cold shoulder. The second our friend who’s staying with him shows up, though, he will forget all about us. Like having a substitute teacher for a few days, the cat often gets away with murder with a sitter who isn’t strong enough to withstand his pathetic plaintive wails and hollow starvation-filled stares. Enjoy it while you can, cat.
Another piece about Scott Rudin has been published. In it many different assistants described what life was like working with him. The constant physical, verbal and emotional abuse that seems to have been heaped upon these people by him seems truly horrific. I feel for them all, but I can’t say that it is all completely foreign to me.
As we were driving up and I was looking at the ‘Life can be messy’ signs every few miles or so, I couldn’t help but think back on a lot of my own work experiences. Variations, albeit to a far lesser degree, for the most part, than what Scott Rudin’s assistants have described happening to them have happened to me and to people around me ever since I started working. If I took all of the people off my resume who have never behaved badly at one time or another, I would have a pretty spare resume indeed.
Certainly, there are people I’ve worked with who were lovely, gentle and gracious but unfortunately not as many as there should be. “the rest of these guys,” as someone says in Jersey Boys, “very dramatic.” Of all of them, though, there are only two that I cannot imagine ever working for again.
One Producer I worked for didn’t trust the fact that I didn’t yell at the cast. They felt that I couldn’t be an effective leader without yelling at them every so often. Unless I berated them, they wouldn’t have any respect for me. I asked this producer if there was anything that wasn’t getting done or anything in the show itself that they were unhappy with. Just yell more, is what I was told.
Whenever the next understudy rehearsal was scheduled to happen, the Producer said that they were going to come and watch how I did. I gathered the cast together beforehand and told them that I was going to yell at them and why. They were all game and cringed appropriately while we worked, and I yelled. After an hour or so, the Producer got up, patted my shoulder and whispered, “Much better,” in my ear as they left. One of the actors made sure they were gone and then we all relaxed, laughed and continued on with the work. Without the yelling.
There were countless instances of abusive behavior throughout the run which were all just considered part and parcel of working with this producer. After a particular meeting, when it was outlined how they planned to treat a departing actor, both the Company Manager and I put in our notices and walked away from our jobs. They must have been as glad to see us go as we were to leave because neither of us was ever approached about working for them again.
Another director that I worked for, I did so because I was very interested in the project and the chance to work on specific aspects of it. I took the project despite thinking that the director was really not up to the task. I had heard stories about the director but was sure I could handle it. The director’s paranoid narcissism got in the way of every single department being able to do their work. People were told that other people were working against them and to watch out. The ploy didn’t actually work because everybody involved with this project would just talk to each other on their own and confirm that whatever it was had just been made up by the director. I enjoyed working on the project despite the person at the top, but having done it once, I don’t feel the need to ever do it with them again.
The rest of the multitudes of people I have worked with, for the most part, knew what they were doing. We all put up with the occasional bad behavior because what they were creating was so good. In some cases, it was a badge of honor to get through a show with a particularly notorious person. OMG, you worked with ____? How was it?
Early on in my career, a General Manager labeled it for me as ‘nuisance value.’ How much bad behavior out of a person was acceptable versus what they produced. How much was everyone willing to put up with because what was being created was so much more than.
Part of my skill set as a stage manager is my ability to work with, through and around people who are not always honorable, not always respectful and sometimes actually destructive. Until recently, I have honestly not ever given it a thought. It was all just what it was.
One of the problems with working with a person like a Scott Rudin is that you want them to like you. It’s easy to walk away from the kind of producer or director I talked about before, but what about one that you truly respect as an artist? Scott Rudin has pushed through countless edgy, interesting and challenging projects both onstage and on screen that may never have seen the light of day where it not for him. Of course, you would want somebody like that to like and respect you. So, you keep trying. What is Scott Rudin’s nuisance value? It seems clear that despite his jaw-dropping list of accomplishments, that he has finally exceeded it.
What of everyone else? With this light shining on our industry, how does this behavior change? Where is the line between somebody being angry because they are frustrated and being angry because they are just being selfish? We cannot ask anybody not to be angry, but we can ask of them to learn how to manage it better.
Stage managers become the repository of anger both from the casts and also from the creatives on a show. We are right there in the middle. We get yelled at when one of the other groups doesn’t feel that they can or should yell at someone in the other.
When people get angry, they either get very loud or they get very quiet. The loud ones get all the attention, but in my experience it’s the quiet ones that are the most dangerous to deal with. As one who gets quiet, myself, I know what’s going on under that smooth and calm, slightly pinched facade and it unnerves me.
Someone who gets quiet in tense circumstances is a hallmark of a “good” stage manager. The ability not to get ruffled in a fraught situation is golden. One of the pieces of advice I’ve always given to younger stage managers is to listen to what is being said and not how it’s being said. Ignore the volume and just try and figure out what the actual problem is.
I have spent forty years perfecting that skill. A stage manager I worked with was fully aware of when I was angry and said that they always wanted to avoid hearing a certain ‘tone’ coming out of me. In trying to do an accounting of my own behavior in the workplace, I am trying to measure my actions against the actions of people I was working for. Was I ever that abusive? I can think of some questionable moments, and I am going to have to figure out how to make amends for them. Unfortunately, I can’t get into the heads of everyone I have ever worked with so maybe the things I question are not at all the things I should be questioning.
Having this entire year away from our industry is really forcing us all to look at it. The #metoo movement started us along the path to identifying gender discrimination in the workplace. The Black Lives Matter movement forced us to look at racial discrimination. Now the revelations about Scott Rudin’s office environment are forcing us to look at yet another aspect of our lives - anger management. There is nothing distracting us from examining it all. It's not just going away.
What we are finding about life in Scott Rudin’s office has been an open secret for years. Racial and gender bias are by no means new either. What is new, is all of us, truly all of us, now having the time to confront them. We can’t go back to the same old patterns because it’s all shut down. All we can do is look at it from afar.
Life can be messy. That, of course, may be the understatement of the year. Life IS messy.
COVID-19 protocols are the least of what we have to think about when we start going back to work this year.
When our work starts happening again, we are still all going to be operating under a capitalistic system - survival of the fittest. Nothing about that is going to change unless we have a socialist revolution.
When our work begins again, we are all going to still be human beings with emotions that we may not always know how to control.
All of the work we have all done this year is not going to suddenly bring about a utopia where everyone is respectful of everyone else and is freely given a perfectly equal opportunity. If anything, when we go back to work it is going to be even messier than it was before.
I think that’s OK. If we have a period during which everyone is called out for everything, which is undoubtedly what is going to happen, it will allow us to learn. What is justifiable anger and what needs to be corralled? Not everyone is going to be cast in everything. If you can’t hit the notes, you probably won’t be given the role whatever gender or race or age you are.
I am looking out of the window in the place we are staying up here in Cape Cod at a beautiful clear day. The bay is calm and a deep and vibrant blue. The parking lot which will be full in a few weeks, is still largely empty.
Even so, my chest tightens when I start thinking about all of the work that we have ahead of us. It’s not a new feeling. It’s one I get at the start of every new project and at the start of dealing with every new issue. How am I going to do this? Will I be able to do this? What mistakes am I going to make? Will I fail?
I don’t know any of those answers, but I will figure it out as we go. Some of this, from the perspective I have now, lying in my bed and staring out at this day, seems undoable. It may just be too messy. Thankfully, that is not a voice I give any credence to.
That is a voice that I ignore and leave behind as I start to move forward.
Life is messy?
Bring it on.
Such a great read!
Enjoy your break Richard. I love your introspection on human behaviour and have always been infuriated at how the more powerful one is, the more acceptable rotten behaviour is. Standing up to bullies takes courage and anyone vulnerable usually has a higher price to pay. I think so many of the inequities we’re finally spotlighting have arisen due to power
Jx