Month: February 2021

Beginnings

Several months ago the producer, Jeffrey Richards asked me to write about “the play or musical that inspired me to become a director.”

The problem was there was no one production that inspired me to think,”I’m going to be a director.” There was however, one musical that acted as a catalyst, and ignited my desire to pursue a career in the theater…changing my life forever.

I was eighteen years old and a sophomore at Dartmouth College. I’d had an exciting freshman year and loved being away from home. I was a pre med student working at the local hospital drawing bloods and collecting lab samples, as part of my financial aid package. My parents wanted me to be a doctor, but I had my doubts.

The science courses were killing me. I was struggling with physics and chemistry. And I found myself in the middle of the “sophomore slump.” Lethargic, disinterested, doing my laundry every two months whether I needed to or not (I needed to) and changing my sheets less frequently. I didn’t know what to do.

To make matters worse, Winter Carnival was coming up and I didn’t have a date. One of my classmates said he could fix me up with a blind date from Barnard. Remember, this was 1965 in the days before women on campus.

I said yes. 

I’d never been on a blind date, so I bought tickets to everything….the hockey game, the glee club concert, and the Players’ production. Friday night we went to the hockey game. Saturday afternoon we heard the glee club, and Saturday night we went to see the student production of Wonderful Town directed by the late great Warner Bentley.

The lights dimmed, and time seemed to stand still. Suddenly brass and percussion erupted from the pit as the orchestra launched into the overture and the curtain went up. The explosion of light and sound and music and dance surpassed every expectation of what I knew happiness to be. I felt like a kid who’d walked into F.A.O Schwartz, barely managing to keep my mouth from hanging open at the spectacle in front of me. Throughout the show I vacillated between the desire to join the eccentric denizens of Greenwich Village on stage, and laughing so hard, I could hardly breathe. Two hours flew by and when the show was over, I knew I had fallen in love. Not with my date, though she was fun, but with the joy filled experience of the show.

That evening changed my life forever. 

I dropped premed, majored in English, and acted in every show on campus. Much to my parents’ chagrin, I went on to get my MFA in acting at Smith College and came to NY in the fall of 1969 to become an actor. I acted for ten glorious years, until I started directing which is what I’ve done ever since. But that’s another story.

I fell in love at Winter Carnival with Wonderful Town and the joy of theater.

It’s a love affair that’s gone on for over 50 years.

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Jerry Zaks

Jerry Zaks is an American stage and television director, and actor. He won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play and Drama Desk Award for directing The House of Blue Leaves, Lend Me a Tenor, and Six Degrees of Separation and the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical and Drama Desk Award for Guys and Dolls. His recent Broadway Directing credits include Mrs. Doubtfire, Meteor Shower, Hello Dolly, A Bronx Tale, and Sister Act.

Once upon a time, a young woman ventured forth on a long road trip to attend the dreaded entrance interview for the Yale School of Drama. 

That was me, in a carefully chosen brand new double-breasted suit, hopeful, like a lottery ticket holder. I nervously entered an unremarkable brick building on York Street in New Haven.

I lugged my giant black bag filled with everything remotely artistic I have ever done up the stairs and sat in the Design Office waiting to be called, smoothing down stray hairs and trying to get my heart to slow down.

My fate would be decided by legends of design; professors Ming Cho Lee, Jane Greenwood and Jess Goldstein. I walked in, unzipped my portfolio, took a deep breath and launched nervously into my spiel.

After a short while, I was interrupted by Ming who raised his hand and said, “That’s enough.” 

The group silently pawed through my pile of naive attempts at designing the set for King Lear, pencil sketches of my mother (my only willing model), photos of medieval armor I made out of carpet pads, earnest attempts at still life paintings, laughable costume designs for Twelfth Night and my diaries filled with memories and doodles.

Finally, Ming spoke. “Your watercolor is terrible!”

 “The proportions on your figures are all wrong!”

 “Your set and costume design is really terrible!”

And, finally, he said, “I think you don’t know many plays!” 

Ouch.  

Sad but true. 

“But… this…” He added, “this is something.” 

It was my hoard of scrappy, little diary/sketchbooks. The ones I’d take to concerts, museums, restaurants, on the subway, in which I’d sketch and write about the things I wanted to capture and commit to memory anytime I was still for more than a few minutes.

He flipped through them, nodding his head.

The others began nodding silently, too. 

To my amazement, I was accepted right there on the spot. 

What I realized then was that I didn’t need to show dazzling proficiency in theater design to be a promising designer; they were looking for a keen observer and a willing sponge.  

Designers draw from their wells of artistic inspiration. They fill this well with amazing and ordinary things they see and experience everyday and everywhere. 

I learned my first lesson before classes even began.

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Linda Cho is a Tony Award winning costume designer with extensive experience designing for both theatre and opera in the US and internationally. In 2014 she won the Tony Award and the Henry Hewes Design Award for the Broadway musical A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder.  In 2017 she was nominated for the Tony, Outer Critic’s Circle and Drama Desk Awards for Best Costume Design of a Musical for the Broadway production of Anastasia. In 2018 she was proud to be part of Broadway’s first all female creative team for Lifespan of a Fact.