A
Reader's
Theatre adaptation of the
classic novel
Directed
by Dr. Kelly S. Taylor
Despite
being published in 1926, with its exposure of the
cynical money-making scam side of U.S. conservative piety, Sinclair
Lewis’ Elmer Gantry seems as fresh
and relevant
now as it did the day it was written.
It
is a text I connected to powerfully when I read first read it and
immediately
began picturing how I could put it onstage.
My first attempt was as a graduate student at the
University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill in Dr. Paul Ferguson’s Readers’ Theatre class. I staged a short excerpt
from the novel that
eventually became the “Church at Zenith” segment of the adaptation I
produced
at UNT.
That
was the only easy part.
For
years I have called this adaptation “the show that
almost killed me.” To put matters mildly, it turned out to be
a great deal
harder to put Lewis’ novel on stage than I ever imagined.
To begin, as I describe on
the page on this
site that I have titled “Excerpts,” the book is very expansive. In order to condense the
novel down to a
manageable size for a stage adaptation, I chose to select snapshots
from Elmer’s
checkered career to give an impression of his overall story. The adaptation is divided
into six scenes set
in six churches connected to pivotal events – and women – in Elmer’s
life. Although this
type of structure would seem to
mimic a type of hero’s journey or a redemptive arc, each incident only
serves
to highlight Elmer’s essential narcissism and duplicity.
In the end, as in Lewis’
novel, he is the
same rascal he was at the beginning of the story.
Once
I had my script in hand, the next problem was deciding
on the specific technique to use to put what I had written on its feet. In 2009, Readers Theater
was regarded as “old
fashioned” by some Performance scholars.
However, I remained committed to the belief that the
format was a viable
performance style that still retained its power to critically engage
audiences.
My notion of contemporary Readers Theatre was informed by Robert
Breen’s discussions
of Chamber Theatre and postmodern views of literature. By
this I mean that, in my
view, the purpose
of Readers Theatre is not to create reverentially minimalistic
presentations of
canonical works but rather critical explorations of narrative voice
that lay a
performed text (that itself is inevitably composed of many different
texts –
visual, aural, contextual, etc.) open to be “read” by the audience.
To
this end, I decided to create a production style I called
“Total Emersion Readers Theatre” for this script.
There would be no offstage.
The audience would be cast as parishioners in
the many churches in Gantry’s life. The
narrative was divided among all the many performers who would play
multiple
roles. Characters
would describe their
own and Gantry’s actions as they sat side by side with audience members
in
Shakespearian-style asides. The
audience
would be asked to join in as the characters sang hymns and passed the
collection plate.
My
intention was that
this approach would not only highlight
the implicit heteroglossia of Lewis’ novel, but encourage audience
members to
silently explore the intertexts of their own experiences of religion
and
feelings about charismatic leaders. For me, Elmer
Gantry is not
simply the story of the journey of one shallow manipulator of words,
but rather
an indictment of the larger American community that produces, supports
and
maintains such leaders. By immersing the audience in Gantry’s world, I
hoped to
not only encourage them to identify with the cast of characters, but
also to
think about the ways in which they do (or should) depart from the
beliefs and
actions they are witnessing.
My
planned directing style, was to be a strange mix of
Stanislavskian and Brechtian approaches.
To enhance the immersive quality of the production,
I wanted my
performers to be invested in the realism of their characters. I wished each persona to
be believable as a
unique individual, not merely representations of cultural stereotypes. To help achieve this, in
the initial phases
of the rehearsal process I intended to employ the sort of
improvisational
techniques typical of Method directors.
For
example, at least once, I planned to have the performer playing Elmer
preach
one of his sermons recorded in the novel while the cast audiences the
event as
the characters they play. I
would then
ask cast members to create a diary entry in which they report the
incident in
their character’s voice.
However,
the production itself (as is typical of Readers
Theatre) was to have a more presentational, Brechtian
style. To
bridge this gap, in the later stages of the
rehearsal process I planned to incorporate several activities that will
directly address this stylistic shift of gears.
For example, I planned to have the characters create
a realistic,
“dialogue-only” version of at least one act of the performance. After they perform their
script, I would then
ask them to report differences they perceive in style or theme between
this
version of the scene and the scene as it is scripted in my adaptation.
Another
similar activity would be to divide the performers into teams and have
them
debate a proposition gleaned from the text.
As
you can see, I had a very ambitious agenda set for this
large cast-production… then I began to be hit with what I can only
describe as
the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
The
first time I held auditions for Elmer
Gantry, out of the
twenty-some roles I needed to fill, only four would-be performers
showed
up. The time was
clearly not right.
In
2004, I succeeded in finding a complete cast for the
show. We were a few
weeks into
rehearsals when my grandmother passed away. We got news a few days
after her
funeral that my father was terminally ill. His funeral would follow my
grandmother’s only a few months later. I was out of state what felt
like every
other week from February to May. My assistant director, Rebecca Walker
compassionately called me long-distance to tell me that the cast had
voted to
cancel the show before I could tearfully inform them that I had made
the
difficult decision to do the same.
Between
2004 and 2009, I announced that there would be Gantry
auditions.
However, another
faculty member decided to do a production that year.
I decided that it would not be wise to have a
big-cast production compete with that show and again cancelled.
In
2009, I had a great cast, rehearsals were going well… and
then on March 23, I got hit by a truck.
Reader,
while you take a moment to fully appreciate that
abruptly horrible occurrence, let me take this
opportunity to praise my
assistant director from the 2009 Gantry,
Gigi Perez-Langly. Even before my
accident,
Gigi was the most
superlative sort of assistant one could wish. She
was firm and efficient in scheduling and
managing the large cast. She
is an excellent
note-taker – in charge of maintaining my Director’s notebook in which
all the
blocking and character notes were recorded.
She’s a great trouble-shooter and has a keen eye for
detail. She helped
coordinate with the technical crew to keep lights, music, and props in
order. In short,
Gigi had a hand in all
aspects of the production. This
was a
very good thing because after March 23, she had to take over as
director of the
show. My encounter
with the pickup truck
left me with a mild traumatic brain injury.
I had to have complete rest for several weeks. I should have rested
longer, but I had sneak
back in to get a few peaks at my show which was going up in mid-April.
Gantry would not have gone up at all were it not for the heroic efforts of Gigi Perez-Langly and my cast. I thank them from the bottom of my heart. When I was knocked flat, you still managed to soar!
