So, if you did watch the Tonys . . .

If you did happen to watch the Tony Awards, you saw Roger Robinson win for Best Featured Actor in a Play. In his speech, he alluded to the long time it took for him to arrive at that moment, 46 years. As noted in the previous blog, some of that formative time was spent here in Syracuse as an original member of the Syracuse Repertory Theatre.

If you were paying careful attention, you may have also seen a photo of a very young Frank Langella, taken during a student production of Eugene Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano. Langella, of course, was a student in the Syracuse University Drama Department. He graduated in 1959. Fifty years later, the SU Drama will revisit Ionesco’s absurdly wonderful plays when Rodney Scott Hudson directs The Bald Soprano and The Chairs, November 13 – 22. Is it coincidence, or is Ionesco the perfect writer for the day with his ability to capture absurdity and tragedy in the same play? Maybe his plays should be required viewing for the New York State Senate.

If you were paying really close attention to the Tony ceremony, you may have noticed Robert Prosky’s image flash on the screen during the tribute to those theatre artists who passed away in the last year. Prosky was most well-known for his role on the popular TV series Hill Street Blues, and while he never appeared at Syracuse Stage, he performed more than 130 roles over 23 seasons at Washington, D.C.’s Arena Stage. His career underscores the importance of regional theatres as outlets for artists, resources for their respective communities, and essential contributors to the development of theatre as an art and of theatre artists. Actors, directors, designers and playwrights can only improve by practicing their crafts, and there simply are not enough “Tony eligible” opportunities for all of the Robert Proskys and Roger Robinsons. This last point is easily overlooked when considering the value of theatres such as Stage. The actors and artists who work here, though, are well aware.

Prosky never won a Tony. He was nominated twice, for David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross in 1984 and Lee Blessing’s A Walk in the Woods in 1988. Consequently, he never made an acceptance speech, but courtesy of Actors’ Equity we might have an inkling of what he might have said. A recent mailing from Equity to the membership included the following passage from Prosky:

I love actors and by extension, the theatre. I love the minutia that surrounds them both. I love listening and telling Green Room war stories. I love the onstage triumphs and yes, I love even the disasters. I love the adrenaline that shoots through every Actor onstage when something goes wrong, and the relief that sweeps through when some heroic Actor saves the day. I love performance. That time when human beings onstage interact with human beings in the audience and together they create the event of performance. It’s one of life’s most civilized experiences.

OK, by now the orchestra would be playing “it’s time to get off the stage” music, but we’ll follow Prosky’s lead and practice civility by letting him finish.

It has been said that an Actor must have the hide of a rhinoceros (Ionesco allusion here is strictly accidental. Ionesco must be in the air what with Geoffrey Rush winning for Exit the King), the courage and audacity of a lion, and most importantly, the fragile vulnerability of an egg. It also has been said, and I’m not sure by whom, that the moment of not knowing is the moment that has the greatest potential for creativity. The professional and private lives of most Actors are filled to the brim with moments of not knowing. Actors are survivors and will continue to strive because they have a need to celebrate, in performance, that sacred communion between Actor and audience.

Prosky was a working-class kid from Philadelphia who found theatre in high school and made it his life’s work. He credits Arena founder Zelda Fichandler for introducing him to “intelligent” theatre, although in the same breath he noted how distasteful such a label would be to Fichlander. He was referring to works by Pirandello, Brecht, Thorton Wilder, Arthur Miller, and it’s safe to presume Ionesco, among many others. Writers more frequently represented in regional theatres than on Broadway.

Yet, as New York Times critic Ben Brantley noted in his Awards preview, May 17, the Broadway season celebrated at the Tonys was exceptional in comparison to most recent seasons in that it was so “functionally adult.” Brantley noted a number of shows—Exit the King, God of Carnage, Hair, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Mary Stuart, Next to Normal, The Norman Conquests, reasons to be pretty, The Seagull, Dividing the Estate, Billy Elliot and Waiting for Godot—whose collective and “fierce” impact raised the “intelligence” and “emotion quotient” of Broadway. It’s as if the downturn in the economy, which forced the closing of such shows as Hairspray and Spamalot, prompted a corresponding upturn in interest in what might be called intelligent theatre.

That would be welcomed news if it is indeed true. In order to have the “sacred communion” Prosky speaks of, theatre must appeal to the emotions and the intellect. One is empty without the other. It is also possible that in economic hard times, “intelligence,” however distasteful the word, might turn out to be not such a blight on our good times after all. It might even be welcomed, sought after, and one of the reasons we attend the theatre.

Top Photo: Roger Robinson accepting his 2009 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play. Bottom Photo: Robert Prosky as Stan Jablonski on Hill Street Blues.