Theater: Stuff Happens - Interview with Clay Bunker (Tony Blair)

by Christy Vutam

On September 21, 2007, less than a week before Stuff Happens opens at SMU, I spoke with theater graduate student Clay Bunker who plays Tony Blair about the play.

Do you have a good British accent?
I have a pretty good standard British dialect.

What kind of accent does Tony have?
It sounds, how do I say it? I don’t think this is necessarily a technically correct term, but 'Oxfordian.' It’s very close to the standard British dialect. He was educated at Oxford, grew up in Edinburgh. Most of the, I’m just going to use it, it’s my new word, Oxfordian – it’s almost like a Hugh Grant sort of, very precise, very crisp sound with a little bit of melody in it.

How did you prepare for this role?
It always begins on the page, begins with what the playwright is giving you. I studied the play. I studied what was said about Tony Blair in the play, what he himself says, and I read a lot about him: biographies, sources on the Internet, I watched a lot of clips on the Internet. I watched interviews with him on television. I tried to adopt his mannerisms and things like that, see how he addresses people, see how he speaks to people, how he gestures when he’s giving a political speech, how he carries himself in an interview situation. I studied body language and I studied how he is. The difficulty with a lot of that – that’s all media and that’s the face he puts on, that’s the public face. And the more private Tony Blair, how he would behave with his trusted advisors on Downing Street and stuff like that, you kind of have to trust the stuff the author’s giving you and commit to the words themselves in the play and explore them.

Can you let your real life feelings seep into the character?
Well, I like Tony Blair. I always have. I think he’s a very good politician; he’s brilliant. I think he’s very, very smart. As far as the politics of the play and everything, I don’t know. I mean, I have my own opinions, and frankly, I just set those aside when I approach the text because an actor’s job is to perform the play, is to do the play as it is written and to be as true to what the author’s written as possible. So to be perfectly frank, I didn’t think about my own political positions very much.

What is it?
Well, I…

You don’t want to say?
Not really. I’m a registered democrat, but albeit a conservative one. But, yeah, it’s not really something I really want to get into, my own politics.

Do you think the private meetings Blair puts forward – do you think they happened that way?
Possibly. You know, I don’t know. Probably not. A lot of them, you have to use your imagination. You have to use your imagination. I think the idea for some of that like the stuff that’s written for Colin Powell – you know, again, David Hare was not there, present in the room so it’s difficult to say exactly what happened but his job in writing it or whatever is to, best he can, articulate these characters as he wants to present them. Colin Powell is always the one man standing in the Bush administration as portrayed by that. I am sure that they probably had heated arguments. I am sure. But word for word, I don’t think happened that way, but again, that said, you know, we really don’t know. We’re not going to know, we’ll never know for sure what happened in those meetings. Even the people that were there remembered them differently.

How are you playing Blair when he’s talking to Bush one-on-one?
I’m playing him as a politician, and he perceives Bush as an important ally that he needs. I believe that Tony Blair perceives Bush as the leader of the most powerful country in the world, the only real superpower. For Tony Blair’s vision of an interdependent nations, as he calls it, the one superpower on earth is a good superpower to have in your quest to accomplish the political agenda. I think he sees Bush as a necessary ally in accomplishing his objectives.

Blair says that he’s not afraid to be unpopular for a good cause.
I believe that’s true. I don’t know. But I can believe that’s true for the character’s choice that I’m making is that he’s not afraid to be unpopular. When you look at the things he’s – I can back that up by actual events. The way he did Sierra Leone, what he did in Kosovo. The U.N. did not want to go in there and stop those things and he was not afraid to stand alone for a very long time until he was able to persuade them to go in there and stop a lot of the actions that he felt needed to be stopped. So yes, I think that’s true – Tony Blair is not afraid of being unpopular. I think he knew that supporting Bush was not going to be a popular choice. I was in England when we first, shortly after we invaded Iraq, and there was so much anti-Bush feelings. I don’t think Tony Blair was looked on in a positive light. So, yeah, I see Tony Blair as someone who’s willing to be unpopular if it serves his convictions.

What has the director, Rhonda Blair, said specifically to you about approaching Tony Blair?
Playing the character? Not too much. We’ve just had discussions. I found that we pretty much agreed on pretty much everything – [Tony] Blair really believes that what he’s doing is the right thing. I think that’s the main thing that she’s emphasize and I completely agree with is that Blair believes in what he’s doing. And even if he makes a decision that maybe deep down he knows isn’t right, he knows he’s doing it for – it’s only a means to an end. It’s the end goal from which he’s making that decision is working. He believes he’s doing the right thing. I think that’s the main discussion we’ve had. Other than that, we’ve played and we’ve explored different aspects. She’ll ask me questions sometimes about “what does he want here, do you think? Do you think Blair really believes that? Do you think Blair is worried that he’s coming across as Bush’s lap dog? Is he conscious of that?” You know, questions like that. We’ve played around with that a little, but I think the main thing that we’ve discussed is Blair believes very strongly that he’s doing the right thing.

So he’s okay with being Bush’s lap dog?
No, I don’t think he’s okay with, and I don’t think he sees himself as Bush’s lapdog. I don’t think he sees himself as that at all. There are times when he feels like, as written in the play, there are times in which he feels that Bush is getting in his way such as when they talk about they found Osama Bin Laden on the Pakistan border and the United States special forces ordered the British troops to withdraw as an operational decision and Bin Laden escaped in the time between when they withdrew and the United States came in. There’s a whole scene written about that – Tony Blair tries to persuade Bush: 'I need a promise that you’re going to stay out of my way if we find this stuff' so I don’t think Blair sees himself as a lapdog. There are probably times where he was made to feel that way, but I don’t think he sees himself as that. I think he sees himself as someone who’s trying to use the United States as an ally to create a new world order.

The Bin Laden thing, that really happened?
As far as we know, yeah. According to available evidence, that did happen. We don’t know, it’s written in the play, [about] the phone call that takes place. We don’t know about the dialogue David Hare has written, but David Hare’s pretty good about giving facts and direct quotes in some situations, in quite a few situations, particularly in interviews and political speeches.

What did you think when you saw this play was being done?
Well, to me, it was an opportunity to work and play an interesting character - that’s really the position that I take. I see, nothing particularly, I mean, it’s certainly taking a certain position in the war in Iraq, the war on terror, whatever, and it’s an opportunity to explore that viewpoint. Not so much a matter of whether I agree or not. There are some things in the play I agree and some I disagree with. But as an actor, I look at it as an opportunity to explore David Hare’s view on what happened and enter into this world that’s written by David Hare.

How is the production going?
It’s going well. Everyone’s working really hard; everyone’s very focused. It’s been really fast as far as academia goes here at SMU. Usually, you have about 5-6 weeks to put on a show and we’ve had 4. But we have a maximum of four before we open so we’ve had to put it together really fast. But it’s going well, it going fun. I’ve really enjoyed it. And I’ve loved working with the other actors. They’ve been very fun, and I’ve gotten to establish friendships and reinforce friendships of people I already knew. It’s been a very rewarding experience.

When it comes to auditioning, do you, is there a part that you want or do you just audition?
Yeah, there’s usually a part that I want, there’s usually a part that I go for. I cater my audition piece towards that role. If I feel there are going to be qualities in a particular role in a play and I want to play that role, then I will select a piece from my repertoire that will show those qualities that I think would serve the character in that play.

Were you hoping for a role in Stuff Happens?
No, I was hoping for a role in The Seagull initially. But I was happy with being cast as Tony Blair. It was an opportunity. You can’t let yourself, just because you don’t always get what you want, that’s no reason to be disappointed necessarily. I got a great part in Stuff Happens. No, it wasn’t The Seagull, which is what I wanted to do, but I was excited to work with Rhonda; I was excited to work with the undergraduates who I don’t get to work with as much, and I was excited to play Tony Blair, who, again, I like and who I find very interesting.

Do actors write down what roles they want prior to auditioning?
Not here. I’ve been in audition situations in which you do that, but here you pretty much just audition. Like I said, it’s the actor’s responsibilities to cater their audition to what role they want or what role they’d like to be cast in. But ultimately, we don’t have any say. It’s up to the people who are in charge of casting.

Have you ever played a character who’s real?
You mean, an actual figure that we know? Besides Tony Blair? Yes, I have. I was in an experimental – it was different. I didn’t have any dialogue, but I played Joseph Stalin once but I did it in mask and it was very stylized sort of thing and I played a couple of people who were in associated with the gulag that were under Stalin. It was an interesting play. Each actor played multiple parts. I played a survivor from the camps; I played a camp manager who was in charge of the camps. These are real people, but not people that we really knew. Stalin was the only name that we really knew. Other than that, I don’t think I have.

Experimental theater?
It was when I was at Brigham Young University. It’s actually done pretty well. It hit the regional scene and done okay. It was making its premier there and they combined a lot of multimedia. Experimental isn’t the right word. It was making its premiere and they were trying to combine multimedia with the more theatrical elements and it seems like an experiment so that’s why I think of it that way. It was a great experience.

Was that a main stage show?
Yeah, at BYU. It had a lot of funding. In fact, it had extra funding because there were some people who were very interested in the play, and they gave us special grants, special donations specifically for that show so it was a very big budget production and it got a big boost, to use all the elements that they tried to put in it.

Are you worried about playing someone so prominent in our culture today?
Am I worried about it? No, in the end you’ve just got to do your best and trust what the writer’s given you and do your best. I am not Tony Blair, and ultimately, it is you on stage. It’s Clay Bunker out there. Hopefully, the audience will accept me as Tony Blair and see me as Tony Blair, but at the same time, I’m not Tony Blair. I do my best to share his story, to share his soul the best that I possibly can. That’s the actor’s job is to share the soul of the character and be fully present within the given circumstances. But, you can’t worry about that. You’ve just got to give it your all, and trust: trust yourself, trust your director that they’re competent. And Rhonda is very smart, and I trust that she knows what she’s doing and she’s told me she likes what I’m doing and I’m being as true to David Hare’s play as I feel I can so you can’t worry about that really. You’ve just got to do your best and trust that your preparation will work.

Is this play controversial?
Sure, yeah.

How do you think the play will be received at SMU?
I don’t know. To be honest, I don’t really think about it. Again, I see my responsibility as one to tell a story as best I can and put as much of my own heart and soul into that as I possibly can and let the audience take from it what they will.

For your preparation for Tony Blair, did you read particular viewpoints? Did you read from both critics and supporters and their take on him?
I tried to read from objective camps. If someone is anti-Tony Blair, it’s difficult for them to be objective. If someone is totally pro-Tony Blair, it’s difficult for them to be objective, I think. I tried to take it from the standpoint as someone who’s objective. I asked Rhonda because she had been preparing for the play prior to my casting. I went to her and asked her. She recommended a particular biography, which I read. I forget the author, I’m sorry. I focused on that. I think it’s helpful to focus on somebody who maybe likes or supports that person to a certain degree but they can still be objective. So, oftentimes, if somebody hates somebody, it really leaks out into their biography. Whereas if somebody cares or at least sympathizes with that person to a certain degree, then they get more into the hear t of the matter, but I found this book to be pretty objective. I still had to do other things. You get different information especially involving the Internet, but most of it was pretty consistent, and I looked at consistent things and saw it matched up, and I looked at all kinds of sources.

Last comments?
I hope people come and see the show.

Theater: Stuff Happens - Interview with Director Rhonda Blair

by Christy Vutam

On September 21, 2007, less than a week before Stuff Happens opens at SMU, I spoke with Director Rhonda Blair , who's also a professor of theatre at SMU, about the play.

How was the selection of you as director made?
The chair of the department (Cecil O'Neal) asked me if I would be interested in directing in this year’s season. I said yes. He asked me what plays I was interested in. There were a number of them that I really thought that I would enjoy working on and would be right for, and this was one of them. Three or so were on the list, and he then asked me if I would do Stuff Happens, and I said yes.

Why is Stuff Happens an important play to be done at SMU?
I think Stuff Happens is an important play, just in general, just because of the way that it brings together the history of how we ended up invading Iraq. It hits the key points and puts the main events in sort of a historical context. And I think it’s important that it be done at SMU because we are in the process of being the likely site of the Bush Library Complex and I think it’s important to have multiple perspectives on the situation in the country right now and on this presidency and its actions, and so in particularly, I think given the real mistakes that this administration has made and the great damage that is being done in this country right now because of the decision to invade based on false premises – I think it’s important that we do it at SMU now.

Do you agree with what the play infers?
Oh, absolutely. Yes, I do, absolutely do.

Just as easily could a play be made in which they take the same – because some of the quotes are exactly word-for-word…
In the script, all of the public scenes, all of the things in there that represents public events, those are drawn directly from the public records. They’re not manipulated at all except by virtue of the context in which they are placed. The scenes that are private, of which there are no public records such as the meeting between Bush and Tony Blair in Crawford – that’s the playwright, that’s David Hare’s hypothetical construction of might have been said based on the available facts.

Could there be a play written like this, but different private conversations are being had?
Sure, surely, yes. But as I read those, his hypothetical scenes of the private meetings, the private conversations, they’re connected very concretely to specific information that we have and there could have been multiple choices that he could have made on how it was done, but I don’t believe that there is distortion by any means of the scenes. They’re very logical, I think, very logical reconstructions of what might have happened. In many instances, many parts of them are confirmed by reports since then. Some of the books that have come out in the last couple of years – the play was written in 2004 – have confirmed Hare’s hypothesis of those private moments, but the key parts of the play, the linchpins, really are the facts that we all know about what happened. For example, Colin Powell’s speech at the UN where he presents false information regarding Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction that we now know that a lot of that was based on distortion and absence in information.

How did you approach the play?
In what way?

Artistically?
We tried to keep it very, very simple, very straightforward. Some of that was just because the play technically is very, very complicated. There are over 20 defined scenes and within those scenes, there are multiple scenes and locations and you’re going everywhere from the oval office to Crawford, Texas, to the U.N. to Downing Street to Iraq to other places and we needed to keep things going smoothly and fluidly so we took a very stripped down approach to the design. We relied heavily on the look of the people, the formality of the clothing of the people. There’s a single setting that takes on multiple characteristics just by virtue of what the actors are doing in it so it’s not a play about big changes of drop and flys and things like that or furniture pieces. Our major set pieces are 12 office chairs on…which we move around to create the different environments.

And then, in terms of the acting, we focused on not so much on mimicking the people that the actors are playing but distilling an essence of them and capturing an essence of the core characteristics and qualities of them. And there are, I think, 5-6 actors who play only one part, and they are the major players like Bush, Blair, Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, and Cheney. But all of the other actors play multiple roles, some of them as many as 7 or 8 if not more. So, in terms of the approach, it’s just keeping it simple and telling the stories clearly as possible. That was really what were the keys, the guideposts.

I’m really interested in seeing the guy play John McCain and Saddam Hussein.
Oh, yeah, Steven Rodriguez! Interestingly, John McCain has one scene of about 6 lines and Saddam Hussein has a single line. He appears for a moment and then goes off so don’t get your hopes up too much, okay?

An actor told me that you’re very academic and that your approach to this play, however, was not. Can you expand on that?
Oh! I’m glad to hear that. I’d be curious to know what that actor was thinking. My career has always been a double track. I’ve been centered in academic theater and I do research for my current research project of the last few years has been looking at the possible applications with cognition of neuroscience to the acting process. They’re finding out about how the brain works, and how cognition works and how we might apply that to what the actor does. But, I began wanting to be an actor and I still perform every few years and I write solo performance pieces and political cabaret pieces and direct if not once a year, at least every other year so I honestly don’t see them as being different things. They feed each other. They feed each other for me. I think with this play because it’s so, it’s potentially so dry because it’s not about people’s personal stories, per se, it’s not about a domestic drama, a melodrama, and it’s not Shakespeare with all of the bells and whistles and colors. It seemed to me to be really important that we make the work the kind as vivid and as immediate, emotionally immediate as possible. I’d love to know who the actor is and I’d love to talk to him about it because I like that, I love that this person felt I wasn’t taking an academic approach because that certainly wasn’t my intention.

You said political cabarets?
Yeah. I’ve done for Echo Theatre, which is a small professional theater in town, since 1998 through 2004, over that span, I did 3 pieces for them. One of them was a solo performance about growing up as a fundamentalist Christian and being female and that was called American Jesus. In the spring of 2002, which was right after the 9/11 attacks and after the Andrea Yates situation, the woman who drowned her 5 children in Houston and the Enron scandal exploded. I worked with 4 other woman to make an original, kind of political performance cabaret piece about gender, Texas identity. We also dealt with Karla Fay Tucker, the woman who was executed in Texas just shortly before that. Capital punishment, fundamentalist of all kinds, the Enron scandal, all of that stuff, called American Burka. And then in October of 2004, the month before the last presidential election, I made another piece with 3 other women called Dreaming America: In the Bunker with George and it was just about the current state of the country and the world and also, life in Dallas. We were looking at feeling kind of very embattled, the intersections of politics, religion, gender and money through all of this. So that’s basically it. It was kind of a critique and was sort of a very progressive, for want of a better term, call to action in that month before the election happened. For all the good that it did.

You said in public that this – since you were the…
Yes, I was the president of the faculty senate.

And you’ve called this play your…
Yeah, it’s kind of my redemption, and I do have to say because I think this is really important so I hope this gets included in whatever gets puts on the blog that it’s a very difficult situation which we find ourselves in and there’s a lot of complexities to it. Presidential libraries are very important. They’re historically significant. Presidential libraries are good things for universities to be associated with. The problem that I have is that it’s with this particular president and the trustees and President Turner for whom I’ve got boundless respect, know this but I was very aware that I couldn’t conflate my assessment of this particular president with a longer term elements related to having a presidential library here at SMU. So that was really challenging for me, that was really difficult for me to negotiate that, but I think it’s important to keep that apart, and that’s how my being an academic does come into play as somebody who teaches theater history among other things, taking a longer historical view in spite of the immediate situation in which we find ourselves in with a president who’s been at the center of a very flawed presidency.

How do you think the selection committee chose this play?
You know, I don’t know because I’ve not asked them specifically, but I would guess one of the factors is that it has a sizeable cast. We’ve got to provide performance opportunities for our students in our season and this cast has 12 men and four women in the cast in the company and also it required minimal production, minimal design. We started rehearsals the first day that classes began. So as of yesterday, we’ve been in rehearsal for just four weeks and then we open next week on Wednesday. So we’ve had a day less than five weeks to get it up so this is a play that could be done within that scope of time. Normally, we have six weeks for rehearsing and mounting a show. And I would hypothesize that the committee thought this was a socially and significant script, and I would hypothesize that it was selected, in part precisely because it was critical of the current of situation and by that I don’t mean, negative, but in asking the right questions and dealing with important issues in kind of a clear eyed way, in part because it’s likely that SMU is going to get the Bush library. Though I can tell you that it was because of the Bush library, the production requirements, I do know that for sure.

In terms of casting actors, there’s a committee, right, that watches everyone and they decide….
The directors hold auditions. We do that once a semester so for this fall show we had auditions at the very end of the spring semester. For the spring shows, we have auditions in November. Then the directors present their list of preferences for actors and we are asked to provide at least 3 choices for each part. That then goes to the committee, which makes a preliminary provision and assessment. Then a committee member will come to the director and say, “This is what we’re thinking. Is this alright with you?” And you can go, “This is wonderful, thank you” or “mmmm, all of this is fine except for these 1-2 people who I think might be better served elsewhere, who I think might not be right for the role.” And then they go back to the committee and so it’s a negotiation that works out that way.

And the committee is made up of faculty members?
Mm-hmm.

What were you looking for in casting this play.
Smart people. People who were flexible and generous. The intelligence of the actors mattered a great deal in this play because this is a play about language and ideas and politics. So, I’m delighted with the cast that I got because they’re just fine actors generally and wonderful people and everyone is just fully, fully engaged in the material.

Were you also looking to see if they would look the part?
That was a factor. You know, is there some kind of resemblance? We couldn’t have a whole lot because of the age of our actors and the age of the characters that they’re playing, but you know, there’s some, there’s some resemblance amongst some of the actors to the main one. I think that’s fair to say. I was fortunate in that regard. And then some, not so much, but I don’t think that matters.

Do you think - should actors judge or not judge?
I think actors cannot judge their characters. You have to be an advocate for you character. You have to be inside of them because this play is not a satire although because how some of the way things happen, there is some laughter in the play. It’s kind of about the absurdity of the way that the events unfolded. But, no, the actor has to be absolutely committed to the point of view of the character.

So, what did you tell the actors?
When?

In how to approach their characters.
To operate from inside of them, rather than commenting on them. To research a whole lot about the characters. To watch videos of them, to listen to speeches that they might have given, and they’ve all been doing that. The actor playing Bush, in particular, has just been devouring material including the new biography that just came out last week, Dead Certain.

About that. Bush is a very interesting character because there’s a line there between playing him – there’s so many ways you can play Bush. You can play him as a buffoon, you can play him as this mean guy, and so forth. How did you see Bush?
What we’ve been working with is the idea of this man who is passionately convinced of his rightness, passionately convinced that he is the commander in chief although technically he is the commander in chief of the military but not the commander in chief of the American people if you look at the Constitution and our laws. Someone who is deeply grounded in his faith, who is firmly believed that he is led by God and that’s all backed up by public documents and things like that and so that’s really what we’ve done. Someone who is very tough, very firm, because he knows he’s right with the capital law.

Are you afraid of the play, for lack of a better term, pissing off Highland Park conservative residents?
No, I’m not concerned about that. I mean, I know that some people might be upset by it, but I’m not concerned about that because I'm very clear that this play is telling the truth or maybe I should say, telling a truth. This is a view of what happened in the run up to the war that has a lot of integrity to it, I think. Sometimes people come to our shows and they are offended by some of the language, by some of the representations of sexuality. This is theater. It’s art. It’s a university where free speech matters, where academic freedom really, really matters and it’s America, for goodness’ sake. It’s supposed to be a place of freedom, and particularly at a time, when, certainly in the last 6 years since 2001, there’s been an incredible diminution of freedom of speech, of the right to sort of hold viewpoints that are different from the leaders of the administration, where if you speak against them or are critical of the administration, you’re subject to harassment and denigrating comments and I guess I’ve just had it with that. I can’t be worried about that. I can’t be worried about offending somebody when I’m doing work that matters.

I think my last question is do you have anything else you wanted to comment on?
No, but I hope that the people that come to this play understand that theater is theater. It’s art.

What does that mean?
It’s not a history book. It’s not a research paper. It’s not a report. It’s not a newscast. It’s a group of artists’ attempt to engage and indicate an important situation, an important issue but to do it with our own set of tools, our own perspective, which will tell a story about it.

Theater: Stuff Happens - Interview with Cecil O'Neal, Chair, Division of Theatre

by Christy Vutam

On September 19, 2007, the week before Stuff Happens opened at SMU, I spoke with Cecil O'Neal, Chair, Division of SMU Theatre about play selection at SMU and Stuff Happens. Here are his answers regarding Stuff Happens.

Why did you sign off on Stuff Happens?
Well, it’s an interesting piece of theater. David Hare is a distinguished, contemporary playwright who’s produced a lot of exciting, important work for the British and American theater, the English speaking theater, and it’s an interesting piece, a challenging piece for our students. It’s always interesting what a student, when an actor gets to tackle a character that represents a living, breathing celebrity if you will in the contemporary world. I think, it asks interesting questions about how decisions are made in a democratic government. I think it asks interesting questions of this particular administration although that administration changed. Several characters are no longer members of the administration. It represents a particular style of theater that is interesting for our students to work on, in terms of its presentational style and in terms of its direct address to the audience, in terms of its dramatic structure so it’s a valid interesting piece to work on.

Why was Rhonda Blair chosen as the director?
I think Rhonda has a particular talent for this style of theater. She’s a distinguished scholar and artist. She has done a lot of work in solo performances and ensemble work and this is an important contemporary ensemble piece. Rhonda was just the logical – she has also strong political views and political interests and she was attracted to the piece. I asked her if she was attracted to the piece, she was, and I just think she’s the logical person to be directing it.

Given the fact that SMU will probably be home of the Bush library and all the controversy that that has rained over the past year, and the fact that Rhonda was the…
President of the Faculty Senate?

Yeah, and I believe she’s said that this is kind of her, not vengeance, I don’t think that’s the word she used, but something along those lines – her redemption.
Well, I think Rhonda did an amazing job as president of the faculty senate and in managing everything that was swirling around the controversy, around the library and the faculty. So, I think it’s always the case for those of us who find ourselves in the position of being both artists and administrators to be able to shift focus and in some degree, compartmentalize our responsibilities as administrators to always look after the best interests of the entity that we represent. So as chair, it’s important for me to always keep in mind what is best for the division as a whole as opposed to what I, as an artist or a teacher, personally would like to see happen. Those are not necessarily the same things, and I think Rhonda did a very terrific job of taking very seriously her responsibilities to represent the faculty as a whole to the broader university and public and board of regents and the…of the administration versus what her own political views as an individual might be or what would be an extension of her individual artistic voice. So, I think that this is probably a relief for her after spending a year representing the faculty as a whole to work on a piece then where she has the freedom to express her own personal artistic vision and give to some voice for her artistic voice.

For Stuff Happens, because it alludes to the Bush administration wanting to invade Iraq before 9/11 happens – does the piece speak kind of where the theater’s stance is on politically?
You mean, when you say the theater, you mean the division, or...

Yes.
You mean, the American theater or theater as an art form?

I mean the SMU.
We do not have, as a division, we do not in any way speak with one voice about politics in America. I think, the tradition of academic freedom is something that I personally take very seriously and it would be a violation of the principles of academic freedom for any academic division, department, entity within the university to have a political litmus test for its work within the academy. We’re a division of 17 faculty members, probably a dozen staff members or more, 130-140 students. There is no unified political voice representing this group of people. We do not ask our students what their politics are. We do not ask a faculty member what their politics are. When they’re being hired, we do not ask what their politics are so there is no divisional political stance or political voice other than advocacy for and protection of academic freedom and artistic view.

Well, thank you so much.
My pleasure.

Theater: Play Selection - Interview with Cecil O'Neal, Chair, Divsion of Theatre

by Christy Vutam

On September 19, 2007, the week before Stuff Happens opened at SMU, I spoke with Cecil O'Neal, Chair, Division of SMU Theatre about play selection at SMU and Stuff Happens. Here are his answers regarding how plays are selected at SMU.

How long have you been the head of the department?
This is my second year. This time around. I was also chair from 1988-92.

Does it go in cycles?
Not necessarily. I think some departments have rotating chairs. We’ve had a series of chairs that have chaired anywhere from 3-5 years.

Why is that?
It’s a really demanding job. I think people get burned out and get ready to move on.

How does the selection committee work?
Well, we have a committee that I appoint. It’s made up of faculty representatives from each area within our division so there’s someone representing the acting faculty; there’s someone representing the theater studies faculty; there’s someone representing the design faculty; there’s someone representing the directing area, and then there is one undergraduate student appointed and one graduate student appointed. They meet periodically and accept suggestions for plays from the faculty and the student body, and then members of the committee have their own ideas. They read plays; they discuss them; and then they try to put together a season that they recommend to me that has the right kind of mix and variety of period work, classical work, contemporary work. Normally, we try to add at least one major classical piece in the season. We try to have often a piece of modern American realism in the season. We usually try to have something that’s contemporary, that’s written in the last five years. We usually try to have something by a minority or a female playwright or something that deals with minority issues or women issues. The primary purpose of the season is to create a season that is an effective laboratory for our students. Production is the theater student’s laboratory just like a chemistry student goes into a chemistry lab.

How do plays get suggested to them?
Anyone in the division can suggest a play so normally if a graduate student wants to suggest a play, they would take it to their graduate representative and an undergraduate would take it to their undergraduate representative. Faculty members would just forward it directly to the chair of the committee.

So there’s 6 people in all?
Yes.

What is the chair of the committee in charge of?
Chairs of committees are always responsible of organizing and administering so the chair calls meetings, creates lists, communicates to the committee as the list gets shortened, talks to me, represents the committee to me.

What are your concerns?
About the season?

About the season.
Well, my primary concern is that there are enough roles to provide an effective experience for acting students and there are enough design assignments to be an effective experience for design students, that there is student exposure to a wide variety of genre and periods. Those are my primary concerns.

Do you worry about box office?
No. We’re fortunate that we don’t have to worry about box office. We certainly want to put together a season that’s appealing to an audience and we are nearly always successful in doing that, but the primary purpose of the season is as educational training aide for our students.

Is is true that your primary audience is the Highland Park resident?
Well, first of all we have a large student audience. We operate in three different theaters. Our smallest theater is 125-seats, the Margo Jones Theatre - we fill up every performance with a combination of students and subscribers. I would not say that Park City residents are our primary audience though they are a large component of our audience.

Do you worry about pleasing them or offending them?
No. Every season I get one or two letters from people who are offended by something they’ve seen on our stages, and I try to respond to those letters in a reasonable way and explain to people that we are preparing students for the American professional theater and as part of that preparation, we need to include things in our season that represents current trends in American theater, that are contemporary, that are sometimes provocative and are sometimes not going to please every audience member, but there will always be things in our season which aren’t going to appeal to every audience member.

How do directors get chosen?
They get chosen in a variety of ways. We have our head of directing, Stan Wojewodski is extremely distinguished director in the American theater, and we are incredibly fortunate to have him as a member of the faculty. Certainly, one of the first things I do is say to him, "What would you like to direct next season?" It would be a total waste of resources for our students not to have an opportunity to work with him as a director. There are a couple of other very experienced directors on our faculty. I often talk to them, ask them if they’re particularly interested in directing something in the upcoming season. There are productions that seem to me are appropriate for a professional guest director. When that’s the case, I contact people who I consider to be valuable contacts for our students, valuable people for our students to work with. And then in some cases, I just ask people within faculty to accept directing assignments for particular shows.

Does the university get involved in terms of the season’s selections?
You mean the broader university?

Yes.
Outside the division of theater?

I guess we’ll start small. Does Dean Bowen have a say?
No. He could, but he’s absolutely respectful of the decisions that should be made at the divisional level and generally does not interfere at all in those decisions.

And then does President Turner or…
The president, the provost, no, not all.

And then, do you have to send them the selections or anything like that?
No. I suppose that if we did something that was so controversial that it got to the level of the board of trustees or something to that extent, then upper levels in the administration would get involved or at least have discussions about it. In my 20 years here, we’ve never run into, no one’s ever interfered with our process.

Do you stay away from controversial…?
No, not all. Like I said, every year, I get one or two letters from people who are offended by language or politically offended by what we do, but you know, that goes with the territory of any arts organization. If you are committed to presenting to the public, art as relevant, as provocative, some can be thought of as cutting edge. Although, to be honest, we don’t shy away from it, but I don’t think most of what we do could really be called ‘cutting edge,’ but I think it’s at some level, there’s always going to be some controversy in what vital arts organizations presents so that’s in professional world as well as in academic world. You know, we are not a museum. We are a part of – not that museums don’t have controversies, too – but we are a part of a lively, growing, changing art form that we share with the public, and if you do that, there’s always going to be some controversy.

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