The Drama of Celebrity

 I recently finished Sharon Marcus's delightful book The Drama of Celebrity. Focusing on the career of legendary actress Sarah Bernhardt, the book examines the interplay of celebrities, the media, and the various publics they both serve.

In her first chapter, "Defiance," Marcus discusses how the open defiance of convention practiced by celebrities like Bernhardt can actually enhance their fame. Celebrities create social exceptions in which they win the approval of society precisely by going against that society's demands. These celebrities shamelessly display their abnormalities rather than hiding them, as Bernhardt did with her unfashionably slender physique, large nose, and frizzy hair. "Defiant celebrities appeal not only to the marginal and to the outcast, but to anyone who has ever wanted to bypass conventions," Marcus writes.

Her next chapter, "Sensation," looks at the desire of audiences and critics alike to willingly submit to a star's overpowering performance. As an example, Marcus cites Bernhardt's exit at the end of Act Four of Victorien Sardou's La Tosca. After killing the villain Scarpia, Bernhardt's character (according to Sardou's stage directions) "takes a carafe of water, wets a napkin, cleans the blood from her hands, and removes a small spot from her dress." Marcus notes, however, that the Chicago drama critic Sheppard Butler was fascinated by how Bernhardt "finger by finger, scrubbed the blood from her hand." By isolating each finger individually, Bernhardt slowed the action down just when the audience wants the heroine to get away as quickly as possible. At the same time, the stage business delayed the exit of the star everyone had come to see, prolonging the audience's enjoyment.

Chapter Three is entitled "Savagery" and deals with depictions of fans as being true fanatics who are capable of violent disorder. "Celebrities by definition attract large followings, but their very popularity usually inspires a vocal minority to resist the general euphoria," Marcus writes. Critics thus tend to characterize fans as "gullible, ignorant, and unruly." Depictions of Bernhardt's fans show them as anarchic, and after her first American tour, French caricaturists felt free to indulge in ridiculous stereotypes of Americans, frequently portraying Native Americans, African Americans, and Mormons in blatantly offensive ways to "other" her fan base in a drastic manner. At the same time, depictions of Bernhardt herself often exaggerated her large nose and unruly hair, sometimes adding Stars of David into pictures, just to make sure their anti-Semitism came across loud and clear.

In "Intimacy" Marcus delves into attempts by fans and stars to form an important bond (or at least the illusion of a bond) between the two. While previous critics have discussed the "remediation" of a piece of art in one format into a new format, Marcus argues that fans clipping images and pasting them into a new context are not so much engaging in remediation as "resituation." Fans collecting photos, programs, articles, and ticket stubs in scrapbooks nevertheless engage with the material they resituate in a new location. In an era long before Pinterest or Tumblr, theatre fans could resituate images next to one another, and thus close "the gap between the players themselves and between celebrities and fan." According to Marcus, such resituation "registers work that hovers between production and consumption, looking and making, and speaks above all to a desire to bask in celebrities' presence by collecting, handling, and holding their representations."

Marcus's next chapter, "Multiplication," points out that while received wisdom tells us "multiplying the star's image dilutes celebrity and undermines the star's uniqueness" in reality "the more copies, the more celebrity." She interrogates the writings of Walter Benjamin, who postulated that the age of mechanical reproduction destroyed the aura of a unique object. Reproducibility, Marcus argues, replaced the aura with a "halo of the multiple" in which "apparent singularity is intensified by copying." Bernhardt, rather than diminishing hunger for her bodily presence with duplication, ensured that she would always have a live audience by posing for countless photographs, then by recording her voice, and later by starring in more than a hundred motion pictures. Though most of Bernhardt's films are now lost, they contributed to the demand to see her on stage, rather than decreasing it.

Chapter Six on "Imitation" might seem closely related to the multiplication discussed earlier, but Marcus instead focuses on failures of imitation. Her central thesis of the chapter is that celebrity imitation is "a privilege that members of dominant groups often seek to deny those in subordinate ones." She bypasses José Esteban Muñoz's theory of disidentification to focus instead on depictions of ethnic and racial minorities failing in their attempts at mimicking white celebrities. While Marcus comes up with some compelling examples for her arguments, I found it strange that she seems to ignore so much theory from the past 20 years. For instance, in discussing a story about Henry James failing to impersonate Bernhardt, she notes that there is "more than a hint of gay shaming" in the account. Shouldn't that remind us of J. Halberstam's notion of "queer failure"? Like Muñoz, Halberstam is oddly absent from the book.

The following chapter on "Judgment" examines how not just critics but also ordinary fans engage in the process of evaluating performers. Throughout the nineteenth century, audiences became less rambunctious, more likely to sit quietly and listen rather than shout their approval or boo to show disdain. Fan letters and scrapbooks display the judgments of audience members, though, and Marcus provides plenty of amusing examples. A correspondent wrote to the actor Edwin Booth stating, "Your constant contortions render your part monotonous." Another theatre-goer, on seeing James O'Neill in The Count of Monte Cristo, wrote in a scrapbook that the performance had "sunk lower than any play which might have been acted and dramatized by a child of six years old."

Marcus's final chapter on "Merit" looks not just at how fans have judged individual performers, but how they have compared those performers to one another. Originally, fans and critics alike relied on historical competition, for instance comparing Bernhardt to the earlier star Rachel Felix, or to Mademoiselle Mars, who originated the part of Doña Sol in Victor Hugo's Hernani. People could also compare stars to other living performers, especially when actors developed what Marcus calls shadow repertories. This is when actors deliberately pursue roles already made famous by their peers. Bernhardt did this when she played the lead in Sardou's La Sorcière, which had previously been played by Pat Campbell. In some cases, stars have even developed mirror repertories, in which two actors perform the same role in rapid succession.

Ultimately, the book argues that celebrity culture is a lot more complicated than many of its critics are willing to admit. Some celebrities like Bernhardt can deftly handle their fans and the press, but they are still reliant upon both. Media moguls play a big role, but they have failed again and again when they have tried to foist an unpopular celebrity on an unwilling public. Ordinary individuals have some agency, but our access to celebrities is always mediated through something else, whether it's a producer, a journalist, or an Internet platform. As Marcus concludes, "no single person or force can ever be assured of permanent victory."

The Brutes

Last night, I saw Casey Wimpee's play The Brutes at the New Ohio Theatre. This production by spit&vigor reimagines the rehearsals for the famous production of Julius Caesar presented in New York City in 1864, featuring all three of the sons of actor Junius Booth... just months before one of them--John Wilkes--assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.

The story has plenty of inherent drama. Edwin Booth, the most successful of the three brothers, was preparing to take on the title role in Hamlet for 100 nights at the Winter Garden Theatre, which he co-managed with his brother-in-law John Sleeper Clarke. The night before he was to begin this extraordinary run of Hamlet, he appeared for the first and only time on stage with his two brothers, Junius Jr. and John Wilkes.

Booth's production of Julius Caesar was intended as a benefit to raise funds for a statue of Shakespeare in Central Park. Junius Booth Jr., the eldest, played Cassius, while Edwin played Brutus and John Wilkes played Marc Antony. The production was also a tribute to Junius Sr., and the playbill bore the words "FILII PATRI DIGNO DIGNIORES" which means roughly "worthy children of a worthier father."

As The Brutes points out, this performance took place on Evacuation Day (November 25th), the holiday marking the evacuation of British troops from Manhattan during the American Revolution. It also fell just after the last Thursday in November, which President Lincoln had declared a national holiday of Thanksgiving for the second year in a row. (The holiday had been celebrated only sporadically before then, and on various dates.)

Wimpee gives us what is possibly the most awkward Thanksgiving dinner of all time, as the pro-Union Edwin and Junius Jr. sit down to eat turkey and cranberry sauce with their unabashedly pro-Southerner brother. John Wilkes Booth reportedly confided in his sister Asia Booth Clark that he was running the drug quinine to the Confederacy past a Union blockade. Wimpee dramatizes this conversation, giving a moment to shine for Sara Fellini, who plays Asia, and Colt W. Keeney, who plays John Wilkes.

Fellini also directed the piece, and she has a chorus of "Brutes" appear first in masks and then later with drums, beating out a violent rise in tension throughout the play. Some of the Brutes--Herold, George, and Mary--bear names similar to Booth's alleged co-conspirators, David Herold, George Atzerodt, and Mary Surratt. A fourth Brute, Fontaine, bears the name of a hanged man who requested that after his execution his skull be given to Junius Booth Sr. to use as Yorick's skull in Hamlet. (That skull continued to be used by Edwin, and it is now in the possession of the Players Club, which that actor helped to found.)

Junius Booth Sr. appears in The Brutes as a ghost played by Eamon Murphy. He re-enacts scenes from Hamlet together with Edwin, played by Adam Belvo. In addition, we get not only scenes from Julius Caesar (which is to be expected) but also lines from King Lear. Edwin takes on the role of Edgar, while John Wilkes assumes the role of the traitor, Edmund the Bastard. As characters in The Brutes observe, all of the Booth children were technically bastards, since Junius Sr. had abandoned his first wife to run off to America with a flower girl. (The couple claimed to be married, but weren't officially wed until the year before the famed actor died.)

The infamous benefit performance of Julius Caesar did not go well, in spite of the $3,500 it raised for the statue of Shakespeare (which still stands in Central Park). During the first scene of Act II, audiences were distracted by a cacophony of alarm bells and fire engines. Confederate sympathizes had set fire to various parts of the city, and the building directly next to the theatre was ablaze. According to contemporary reports, Edwin Booth calmed the crowd and helped to prevent hysteria. The performance continued, and eventually the cast finished the show.

Fellini stages the fire with the four Brutes utilizing percussion and red flashlights. It is a haunting moment, as are the allusions to the Lincoln assassination and the execution of the conspirators. As Wimpee's play remarks, the president's murder did not occur on the Ides of March like Caesar's, but it did occur on the eve of the Ides of April. That day, which was also Good Friday, Lincoln was watching the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre, and John Wilkes Booth snuck in and shot him in the back of the head.

If you're interested in seeing The Brutes, it's playing at the New Ohio until December 9th.

Art and Activism Panel Tomorrow

Gingold Theatrical Group, which just finished an amazing production of Heartbreak House on Theatre Row, is sponsoring a free panel discussion on Art and Activism tomorrow night, Monday, October 1st.

The panel will be at The Players Club at 16 Gramercy Park South. It's scheduled to go from 6:00 to 7:30. You can make reservations by calling 212-355-7823 or by e-mailing info@gingoldgroup.org. The event is open to the public, and is a great chance to get in to see a 19th-century club founded by Edwin Booth.

G.B. Shaw's Heartbreak House was written in response to World War I, and cast and crew members will be there to discuss that play, but no doubt the discussion will move to more recent occurrences of Art and Activism as well. Hope to see you there!

Maria Irene Fornes

This evening, the 2015 Edwin Booth Award for outstanding contributions to New York theatre was awarded to Maria Irene Fornes.

Unfortunately, Ms. Fornes was unable to attend the ceremony in her honor, due to the extraordinary illness from which she suffers. However, a special event at the Graduate Center of City University of New York paid tribute to her.

Jennifer Thompson coordinated a staged reading of scenes from Fefu and Her Friends, and Maria Alexandra Beech, a former student of Fornes, gave a moving speech in her honor. I was invited to read a selection of an interview Fornes gave a number of years ago, which thrilled me, since her play The Conduct of Life was a big influence on me in college and grad school.

This is the answer Fornes gave to the question of how long she had been directing her own plays:

Since 1968 with Molly’s Dream. That summer there was a workshop for playwrights at Tanglewood in connection with Boston University. They had a company of fine actors. The plays were done in elaborately directed readings, with a lot of people memorizing as much as they could. Robert Lewis was the director of the program, but he wasn’t directing any of the plays. I told him I wanted to direct and he said, “No. The directors will direct.” I said, “But this is a playwrights’ project and, as a playwright, I need to direct this play.” He said no. I was annoyed, but I asked Ed Setrakian because I knew him as an actor and liked him and thought, “Why not?”

Then Ed started doing things that I didn’t think were right. The play was very simple and he was making it too abstract. So I went to Bobby Lewis and said, “This is not right. He’s asking people to do this bizarre behavior. The play’s a kind of movie fantasy where people behave normally.” So Bobby Lewis said, “You have to ask Ed to do it the way you want. And if you have any problems, I’ll talk to him.” So Ed did what I asked and then he said to me, “I haven’t been able to sleep because of what you’re doing to me.” And I looked at him and said, “Ed, I’d rather you don’t sleep than I don’t sleep.”

I’d always been so timid. When a director would say, “Boo,” I would acquiesce. But that situation taught me never again to give in. I didn’t want to make Ed not sleep. I wanted to do it myself. If then it doesn’t come out right, I did it wrong and nobody else has to suffer. I promised myself that I wasn’t going to let anyone else direct my work. And I didn’t care if it never got done again.

So I went to New Dramatists—I was a member there—to do Molly’s Dream again. I wanted to do it with Julie Bovasso. They said, “All right, but we have to get you a director.” I said, “No, I want to direct it.” They said, “There’s a rule here that playwrights are not to direct.” And I started screaming, “I’m directing or I’m quitting. If this is a playwright’s organization you have to do what is good for the playwrights. What are you going to lose?” So they made an exception for me. I directed Julie Bovasso and it was a bumpy ride. I didn’t know her history of quitting and throwing chairs at directors. It worked because I didn’t have a director’s ego. I just wanted her to do my play. And she was wonderful.

I have no doubt she was! So congratulations to Maria Irene Fornes for yet another well deserved award.