![\"macbeth3\"](\"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/macbeth3.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
In my years of work with the LA theater community, and of the probably hundreds of events I’ve planned, hosted, or participated in with my fellow LA Theatre comrades, one moment easily takes the prize for the most instantaneous, instinctive, powerful group connection — and in a situation where the stakes were heightened and in a context that only theatre people would understand.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
One of my primary roles when I worked at LA Stage Alliance was to oversee the Ovation Awards program. \u00a0I hosted the annual ‘trainings’ of the 200+ Ovation voters, to orient them to the rules and the voting system for the upcoming season.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
One year, maybe 2009 or so, the Ovation Rules Committee and the Board of LA Stage Alliance deliberately invited all the artistic directors in LA theatre to become Ovation voters, specifically to get their expertise in the voting pool and help the leaders of our community understand the peer-voting process. \u00a0The invitations went out, and suddenly there were nearly a hundred artistic directors on board, from theaters large and small throughout LA.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We asked them all to come to the Colony Theatre in Burbank for a special \u201cartistic directors only\u201d training session. Suddenly my two-hour presentation — the \u201cDoug Show\u201d as many voters affectionately remember it — was going to be done in one go for nearly every artistic director in town.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The presentation began, and it was going great. \u00a0I stood on the Colony stage, merrily clicking away on my PowerPoint, landing my voting-system-humor punch-lines and LA theatre rhetoric. \u00a0No sweat.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
And then, in making some example, I said, “Imagine you were seeing, say, Macbeth<\/i>….”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Time froze and warped in some sort of metaphysical pretzel of theatrical disaster. \u00a0A hundred artistic directors took one huge gasp, and I stood stock-still. I had just committed possibly the cardinal sin of the theater, standing in the middle of the stage in front of a room full of my most respected peers.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
There was a long moment, and then, bless him, Jim O’Neill from the Rubicon Theatre leapt from his chair, ran down to the stage, and yelled \u201cGo! \u00a0Go! \u00a0Get out! \u00a0Get out!’ \u00a0His yell broke my panic, and I dropped my notes and PowerPoint clicker and ran for the door, to do the curse-banishing ritual — run outside, spin around three times, curse and spit. \u00a0I sheepishly returned to the theatre, and quietly called \u201cMay I come back?\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
There was a shared bellow of laughter from the crowd, and Jim let me back inside to continue the presentation.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Embarrassing? \u00a0Yes. \u00a0Humiliating? \u00a0Perhaps. \u00a0But that feeling of a hundred artists thinking and reacting as one — all of us connected as one great theatre hive-mind? \u00a0Utterly joyous and something I’ll never, ever forget. \u2013 Douglas Clayton, Community Whiz-Kid <\/i><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
BRILLIANT TRACES:<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Trying to pick one memorable moment out of so many \u2013 stretching back to the 1970s when students were still allowed to go on unofficial \u201cfield trips\u201d \u2013 has proven to be a difficult task.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n First, I love going to the theater. I know that would seem to be a foregone conclusion for someone who works in the theater, but, to my amazement, I have a fair number of colleagues who don\u2019t like it at all — and these are directors, writers and actors. Now, I will acknowledge it is always an act of faith to buy a ticket, enter the cavern, wait for the lights to go down and hope to be amazed or moved or amused. However, I have been rewarded on so many occasions in some unlikely places — and some major venues — with pieces which covered the whole scope of performances, from Shakespeare to musical theater, dance, opera, comedy, drama \u2013 and have always felt so lucky not to have missed the opportunity to be present.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n At the end of 2012, Karen Landry, an actress I had worked with at San Jose Rep in the early 1990s, was directing a piece at the Ruskin Group Theatre located at the Santa Monica Airport (see? unlikely); and I finally got myself together and purchased a ticket for the closing weekend \u2013 in fact it was<\/i> the final performance.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When I got there I found it was not being performed in the regular space, but across the way in one of the warehouse buildings. When it was time for the play to begin, we trooped across the road and entered a square room that had been turned into a rustic cabin. The lights went down and the magic began: The play was Brilliant Traces<\/i> by Cindy Lou Johnson with Austin Highsmith<\/a> and Chad Wood — a 90-minute two-hander with a simple story about two wounded people seeking solace and understanding.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But because of that elusive combination of script and direction and interpretation, I was transformed into an invisible observer and given secret entre to the private world of these two broken souls. For that hour and a half (which seemed much shorter), I was transported thousands of miles away and allowed to witness the vulnerability of the human condition.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My one regret from that evening was that it was closing night and I wouldn\u2019t get the opportunity to see it again. I don\u2019t know how it was received critically and I don\u2019t really care. I only know how it affected me and that is what it is really all about, yes? How each individual is affected by a work of art. \u00a0At the very least, the audience laughs or cries, and at most they are prompted to think about something in a different and new way. But that in itself can change the world.\u2014Wendy Radford<\/i><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n DAZED BY SUCCESS:<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/a>