Never Too Late to Learn

Despite an impressive directing career in Chicago regional theater, director Monty Cole went back to school

By Steven Leigh Morris

Monty Cole (Photo courtesy of Mr. Cole)

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“I hit the glass ceiling pretty fast, so I knew I wanted to go to grad school to kind of . . .” Here, Cole pauses. “So coming to Cal Arts was really about finding my own artistic voice, and I didn’t feel I could do that by shadowing other artistic directors.”

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Director Monty Cole currently lives near the Cal Arts campus where he recently graduated with an MFA in directing. One might presume (reasonably but wrongly) that Cole is now getting his feet wet in the professional theater by directing Adrienne Kennedy’s very short autobiographical one-act Etta and Ella on the Upper West Side at REDCAT (which is administered by Cal Arts through its Center for New Performance program). One might presume that Cole’s alma mater is paving his road into the professional theater with this directing opportunity. Wrong again.

Though a graduate of Boston’s Emerson College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre Studies, Cole grew up in Chicago, where, on his own steam, he returned from Boston to form his own theater company, The Chicago Commercial Collective. The aim of his new company was “to create a commercial off-Broadway system in Chicago,” a system that he says “worked pretty well.” Meanwhile, Cole forged his own writing and directing career in Chicago, having been brought in by Chay Yew at the Victory Gardens Theatre to serve as Artistic Programs Manager. Eventually, Cole found himself directing at theaters such as Victory Gardens, Steppenwolf and the Goodman, which commissioned his own play American Teenager.

So, what’s a nice guy like that doing in a place like this?

Explains Cole: After entering the nest of the Victory Gardens Theatre, where he said he gained a “new play” edge, learning “new play strategies in directing,” he started “directing for myself,” at both regional theaters and off-Loop theaters, leading to what he describes as a number of big hits. What made his mark in Chicago was a production of Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape, presented by Oracle Productions in its storefront venue.

Wrote Kerry Reid in The Chicago Tribune, “Cole’s decision to use an ensemble of six Black men for all the roles in O’Neill’s Expressionist one-act play doubtless made those parallels easier for me to see. Cole’s production works so well because it walks a smart balancing line between the O’Neill original and his own original vision.”

After which, says Cole, “I hit the glass ceiling pretty fast, so I knew I wanted to go to grad school to kind of . . .” Here, Cole pauses. “So coming to Cal Arts was really about finding my own artistic voice, and I didn’t feel I could do that by shadowing other artistic directors, and doing the assistant director route. . .  I knew I wanted to be something different [from] what I was seeing in Chicago directors, but I didn’t know how to do that.”

Cole goes on to explain that Chicago is really good at training directors in what he calls the “Steppenwolf style,” which Cole affirms is a kind of kitchen sink realism blended with street-wise repartee.

Yet Cole’s favorite theater that he observed in Chicago was not in that style: They were shows that came into the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, and its WorldStage program (which invites international companies to its stage); Cole also appreciated the style of performances at The Museum of Contemporary Art. “A lot of the world theater that came into town, I’d say, now that’s theater, that’s crazy, that’s cool, that’s exciting. I’d never seen work like that before. I don’t think I’d even have known how to approach Etta and Ella had I stayed in Chicago. I would never have figured that out.”

Etta and Ella

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“The whole play is a kind of puzzle, an autobiographical mystery, that asks the audience to put the pieces together,” like some of the more poetical writings by Suzan-Lori Parks and Caryl Churchill.

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Adrienne Kennedy, now 92 years old, based her 35-minute one-act, Etta and Ella on the Upper West Side, on a short story she’d written years ago. It’s an extremely lyrical, non-linear piece, says Cole. Its two eponymous characters “may or may not be sisters . . . they may both be Adrienne,” Cole explains.

“The whole play is a kind of puzzle, an autobiographical mystery, that asks the audience to put the pieces together,” like some of the more poetical writings by Suzan-Lori Parks and Caryl Churchill.

Though Kennedy now lives in Virginia, Cole travelled to her former apartment on the Upper West Side in order to get a feel for the place, and for what she left behind — left behind with some regret, Cole notes.

Though he’s never spoken with Kennedy, they did have one correspondence in which Cole tried to explain how he was approaching the play, and what he hoped to derive from it. He said that Kennedy wrote him back with touching generosity and support.

Cole’s hope is that the production is sufficiently dazzling and sufficiently lean that it can tour to presenting houses — America’s version of the European touring circuit.

Meanwhile, Cole has been honing his film directing skills, and he finds Kennedy’s play sufficiently cinematic to support that.

“Although it’s short, it’s wonderfully dense. I love this idea of seeing a one-act, and then moving on to do what else you have to do.”   

ETTA AND ELLA ON THE UPPER WEST SIDE by Adrienne Kennedy, directed by Monty Cole. REDCAT, 631 W 2^nd Street, downtown LA; Thurs.-Sat., Feb. 23-25,  8:30 pm. https://ci.ovationtix.com/34348/production/1146207?performanceId=11202672