Cost Tugs at Curtains : For Summer Theater, It’s a Rocky Run

DORSET, Vt. —  Under the spreading oaks near the village green, in a gray clapboard barn built before the Revolutionary War, Murray is having a mid-life crisis.

The play is Herb Gardner’s “A Thousand Clowns,” and Murray, its central character, is debating whether to go back to work as chief writer for Chuckles the Chipmunk, the hyper-neurotic host of a children’s television program. He hates the work, but, if he doesn’t get a job soon, Nick, his 12-year-old nephew, will be taken from him by the New York Bureau of Child Welfare.

‘Gosh ‘n’ Gollies’

“I felt I was not reaching all the boys and girls out there in Televisionland,” he confides to audiences each night in the Dorset Playhouse, a rustic converted barn. “Actually, it was not so much that I wasn’t reaching the boys and girls, but the boys and girls were starting to reach me . Six months ago, a perfectly adult bartender asked me if I wanted an onion in my martini, and I said: ‘Gosh ‘n’ gollies, you betcha.’ I knew it was time to quit.”

While Murray Burns is wrestling with his dilemma on stage, summer theater in America is facing its own trials and tribulations. Part summer camp, part boot camp for actors, it is an institution as American as the patchwork quilt. In some communities it is thriving more than ever, but in others the quilt is becoming frayed.

For actors, summer theater can be a unique experience. It is a time to stretch artistic muscles, allowing newcomers to test their skills and established performers to break out of stereotyped roles away from the big money pressures of Hollywood or Broadway, and giving playwrights a haven for experimentation.

‘Wonderful Thing’

“It’s a lot of work. It is very exciting. It’s very tiring,” said Lloyd Richards, dean of the Yale School of Drama and a summer theater veteran. “It is a wonderful thing to meet an audience at night and affect them and meet them in the day in the supermarket and on the street.

“It is a sleepless time, and I always remember saying: ‘I’ll never do it again.’ But, by next year, there you are doing it again . . . . The fun is in the work. If you have a good company that gets along and stimulates one another, it’s a wonderful experience.”

Over the years, summer theater has proved to be an indispensable experience for fledgling actors. In the turmoil of putting on productions every few weeks a bond is built between established actors and apprentices.

“It’s theater 24 hours a day,” said Ian Root, a 22-year-old apprentice. “You eat, breathe, sleep theater.”

But in some communities that tradition is threatened. Pressures of finances, including salaries and production costs, have forced most summer theaters to become nonprofit corporations so money can be solicited in addition to ticket sales. Rising college tuitions have sent many young apprentice actors and technicians looking for other summer jobs with higher pay.

The nation’s 300 or so summer theaters range from massive arenas to intimate barns to tents to showboats. All face increasing competition from movies, rock concerts and other forms of entertainment. Air conditioning and videotape recorders help keep people at home. Cheap air fares encourage trips abroad. Cruise ships and theme parks can pay higher salaries to employ singers, dancers and stage managers.

Three years ago, Actors Equity conducted a summer theater survey. It showed a sharp drop in employment over a 16-year period in theaters employing Equity players. But union officers, though worried, do not predict completely dire consequences.

‘Never Disappear’

“It is a decline, but I think summer theater would never disappear,” said Alan Eisenberg, executive secretary of Actors Equity. “As long as there is summer, there is going to be summer stock.”

“Summer theater is a very precarious business to try to make it,” said Tommy Brent, producer of the Theater-By-The-Sea in Providence, R. I., in comments seconded by other owners. “ . . . There are very few summer theaters that make a living. It is very difficult to support a place all year just to use it for 10 to 15 weeks.”

John Nassivera, producing director of the Dorset Theatre Festival, southern Vermont’s only Equity theater company, said: “When we had our 10th anniversary two years ago, I said in my opening statement in the program (that), if I had known how hard it would be to make something like this survive, I probably would not have done it. I thought I was going into it with my eyes wide open . . . . I was aware to some degree but not to anywhere like what it takes . . . . An awful lot of theater is people and real estate, and you’ve got to get that balance. The physical plant has to be in a place where there are enough people to be there as ticket purchasers and be there for the $5,000 and $10,000 checks you have to raise.”

However, in communities where strong management has been matched by creativity and a booming economic base, some theaters are much more than Shakespeare or Neil Simon with mosquitoes. They have become development lures for the areas they serve, strengthening businesses and the local real estate market and bolstering civic pride.

In Williamstown, Mass., in the heart of the Berkshire Mountains, the Williamstown Theater Festival has grown from a company of 26 people and a budget of $10,000 in 1955 to more than 275 artists and a budget of $1.025 million. A recent study showed that the festival has pumped more than $17 million into the local economy since its founding.

“I think it adds both short-term and long-term effects,” Steven L. Ledoux, town manager of Williamstown, said. “Obviously, in the short term, it does a lot for local businesses. The tourist aspect certainly is important. In the longer term, we find a lot of out-of-state people buying property and secondary homes.”

Christopher Reeve Lasagna

Civic pride extends even to the local delicatessen, which honors actors by naming sandwiches after them. Christopher Reeve, who plays Superman in the movies, first came to Williamstown as an apprentice at the age of 15. He has a vegetarian lasagna named after him.

In Dorset, local innkeepers and realtors also have found the theater to be a big asset.

“I think the presence of good theater has attracted people from all over,” said Tim Brown, owner of the Barrows House, one of the village’s principal inns. “People call up and, even before they make a reservation, they ask what’s playing at the theater . . . . If Carnegie Hall is only a stone’s throw from the Russian Tea Room, we are only a stone’s throw from the Dorset theater.”

America’s summer stock tradition can be traced back to Elitch Gardens, the nation’s first summer theater, founded in Denver in 1890. It is situated in the midst of an amusement park and still produces plays.

In 1897, James O’Neill, playwright Eugene O’Neill’s father, was a leading man in Elitch’s productions. Sarah Bernhardt appeared in “Camille” in 1906. Grace Kelly was an ingenue in a much later play. After an agent saw her, she received a call to go to Hollywood and broke her summer stock contract. Raymond Burr, Edward G. Robinson, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Sr. played the Elitch. Junior also worked as an usher.

Like many early summer theaters, the Elitch sprang up on the outskirts of a city to attract playgoers looking not only for entertainment but also to escape heat and crowds. But it was really the automobile that spurred summer theater’s greatest growth. Actors and producers followed vacationing audiences to resorts and retreats. Stages were built in barns and old mills.

Owners then as now soon found that nature can add new meaning to the motto: “The show must go on!”

At the Berkeley, Calif., Shakespeare festival, celebrating its 14th season, actors not only have coped with the Bard but also have done battle with airplane noise, swarms of mosquitoes and dogs.

“We once used a horse in a production with the predictable results,” said J D Trow, a spokeswoman for the theater.

Actors and actresses aboard the Driftwood Floating Theater’s showboat on the Hudson near Kingston, N. Y., execute Plan 27 when they see a storm coming: They sing and act faster. The floating theater has survived four hurricanes. In the off-season during one particularly bad winter, when the pumps were frozen and the moored boat began to sink, hundreds of local volunteers bailed out the ship.

“It’s just life on the river,” says Capt. Tom McGuire, the showboat’s producer, philosophically.

‘Dracula’ With Bats

At the Candlewood Playhouse in New Fairfield, Conn., the production of “Dracula” was punctuated by real bats. The audience thought it was intentional. Candlewood’s orchestra pit has flooded three times in five years. During “West Side Story,” the intermission had to be extended for an hour until the water drained and the pit dried out.

When the lights went out during a performance of “Hello Dolly,” the show continued with flashlights. Actors asked the audience if it wanted the show to go on. The audience shouted: “Yes!”

Like Dorset, the Weathervane Theater in Whitefield, N. H., is in a barn. During one summer, a row of seats gradually sank into a sagging floor until the audience could not see the stage. It was so cold during a performance of “Luv” that the water to be thrown on stage turned to ice. The theater has a tin roof, and sometimes when it rains the sound of raindrops drowns out the dialogue.

The Weathervane’s actors once faced another distraction. “We had a dear lady who subscribed to the shows and she came back again and again and again,” said Thomas Haas, Weathervane’s artistic director. “She started saying the lines before the actors could.”

“Our audiences have increased. But we are really fighting the battle of the VCRs. If people don’t get into the theater when they are young, we may never get them. We always plan a musical to appeal to the kids.”

The other afternoon, cast members gathered backstage in the dressing room of the Dorset Playhouse. Like much of what appears on stage, the calendar-quaint Vermont village with its 200-year-old tidy white-painted houses and town commons is not completely what it seems. More than half of Dorset’s homes are owned by New Yorkers, who have restored them. The local general store contains more than a touch of Bloomingdale’s. Just down the road in Manchester, Vt., a huge Calvin Klein discount store has joined more than a dozen other factory outlets.

Theatergoers are sophisticated--New York audiences.

Some New York actors find that it takes time to become adjusted to Dorset.

“It’s wonderful, very relaxing, very different from New York,” said Joel Rooks, who plays Murray’s brother, Arnold. “It’s like summer camp except they pay you.”

Unchained Bicycle

Rooks, an experienced Equity actor, marvels at the time he took his bicycle to be repaired in nearby Manchester.

“The store wasn’t open yet, and leaning against the doorway of the bike shop was a beautiful 10-speed bike, worth $1,200 to $1,400. It had a little note on it. ‘This is what I need. Fix this.’ In New York, the bike wouldn’t have lasted three seconds. It was probably there 45 minutes and nobody thinks anything other than this is normal.”

Linda Berman, who plays Sandra Markowitz in “A Thousand Clowns,” has rediscovered nature. In New York, she lives in Greenwich Village, across the street from a shelter for the homeless.

“In the summertime,” she explained, “I usually sit in front of my air conditioner and don’t go anywhere, not to auditions, not to work. I don’t see stars. That’s what I miss the most.”

In Dorset, there are stars aplenty. “ . . . And the birds. It is a bird sanctuary up here. I feed the birds outside of my window every morning. I live with two old ladies and the blue jays. It is really beautiful.”

The tranquil setting is deceiving. Dorset means plenty of hard work for the actors. The show must go on--and fast.

“Summer theater is all about time and economics, and the two go hand in hand,” said Jill Charles, artistic director of the Dorset Theatre Festival. “You have to come up with results in a very short time.”

Although Dorset means rigorous work, an hour’s drive away in Williamstown, the theater festival is pressure personified. Several plays are being rehearsed simultaneously. Actors also perform in cabarets and experimental productions. The huge company contains stars galore.

While “A Thousand Clowns” was on stage with a relatively unknown cast, appearing in “The Rover,” a Restoration comedy, at Williamstown were such well-known actors as Edward Herrmann, Christopher Reeve, Ann Reinking and Kate Burton.

Many Awards

In his 33 seasons, artistic director Nikos Psacharopoulos--who stresses the classics--has turned Williamstown into one of the nation’s most famous summer theater festivals. Actors, directors, designers and other Williamstown staff members have won 203 major awards, including eight Oscars, 23 Emmys and 29 Tonys. The competition for apprenticeships is immense. A full-time staff of seven works all year on the festival.

Robert Redford recently visited his daughter, an apprentice. He stopped to chat with Herrmann, who was in costume for “The Rover.”

“I hadn’t seen him for several years,” Herrmann recalled, “and he looked at us in our pantaloons and our buskins and he said: ‘I’m telling you guys. I drove through this place and I was so goddamned jealous I could kill.’

” . . . It is just a measure of the lure that this place has. Actors really kind of salivate about plays.”

In places like Williamstown and Dorset, a bond is born between established actors and apprentices that gives the acting craft assured continuity.

“You go out of your way to talk to apprentices who look gloomy or shy and pull them into it so they are part of it and they understand that fundamentally, deep, deep down, there is a sense of fun, Dionysian fun,” Herrmann said. “Maybe it is because Nikos is Greek and he had his roots so deep in Greek theater. There is something wildly fun about the theater, and it is healing. People come up here to be healed.”

Researcher Eileen Quigley contributed to this story.