August 19 to September 2
The play was not the thing at ASF, but the company. ASF had a repertory system, meaning that a company of actors learned five or six different plays by Shakespeare, Shaw, and other more contemporary writers. Working together all year, sometimes for years in a row, they developed a rapport that brought warmth to the performances that I missed when I saw the same plays in other venues. The audience also developed a rapport with the company. We loved to recognize the same actors in wholly different roles during a single weekend. We spoke with actors in post-curtain talkbacks and sometimes saw them in casual dress around the campus.
That campus is a vast green park that extends far beyond the theatre complex in the photograph above. There are gardens, sculptures, winding paths used by the community for running and riding, and a lake with the same breed of swans you can see at Shakespeare's birthplace. (When ASF asked the Queen for some of her royal swans, they found out that she had imported hers from Alabama.)
Alone or with company, you experience the Festival Effect. So much time away from mundane things, focused on meaningful matters of family, love, and justice through brilliant images and words, you feel a boost in your IQ. You start to talk like an Oscar Wilde character. You find your world on stage. I remember the end of act one in The Glass Menagerie when everyone in my group, students and chaperones alike, turned to each other to say, "That's just like my family!" During intermission of a play by Shaw, Josh Cox bounded upstairs to the gift shop for the script because, he said, "I want to highlight every line!"
When I saw the plays in 1978 with my high school friend Matt Hutchison, we looked back over the weekend and realized how the plays had stimulated intense conversations about acting, writing, and beliefs. He announced that he had just made up his mind to be an actor; I had just decided to work the other side of drama, writing and directing. He did; I did (with students).
The man who in 1972 started the Festival was Martin Platt, then a college grad working in his old high school in Anniston AL. I met him on his last day with ASF in 1989. A photographer was posing him in front of the theatre complex for a farewell profile. I tried to convey what I've elaborated in this blogpost, my thanks.
I was a faithful pilgrim until ASF gave up the repertory system. Writing this article, I've discovered that ASF in 2018 put the "Festival" back in ASF with a return to rep. I'll have to check it out for next summer.
My memories of specific ASF productions show up in these blogposts:
- We Need More Shaw in Our Lives (05/2009)
- Treasuring Playwright Athol Fugard (08/2012)
- Boy Gets Girl, Boy Doesn't Deserve Her: All's Well that Ends Well (07/2008)
- The Invention of Stoppard
I've checked back through my old pen-and-paper journals for what I saw at ASF and with whom -- name and initial only. Sorry to the people whose names and years I left out -- my 20-something self did not anticipate blogs.
- 1977 Othello with Ben E. and other high school friends.
- 1978 Oh, William (a musical revue), Clarence Darrow, and others with Matt H.
- 1982 12th Night, Uncle Vanya, Hamlet (I fell in love with this play and directed it three times over the next 40 years)
- 1983 All's Well..., Arms and the Man, Mass Appeal with Linda P., Emily P., and teacher Steve A. Emily went on to direct a production of Mass Appeal at school.
- 1984 Macbeth, She Stoops to Conquer, Love's Labours Lost, Oh Mr. Faulkner Do You Write? Linda P., Emily P., Leigh Ann E., Veronica A., Richard A., Bill H., Peter L., Kevin S.
- 1986 Betrayal, School for Scandal Linda P., Emily P., Jennifer, Ellen L., Kevin S., Kyle O.
- 1987 Othello, Hedda Gabler, Misalliance, Tempest (I borrowed the puppet idea from Tempest in a middle school production of Wrinkle in Time 30 years later
- 1989 Cyrano de Bergerac, Candida, Much Ado..., On the Verge, Road to Mecca Josh C. and Jeff A.
- 1992 Lear, Lend Me a Tenor, Richard II, Comedy of Errors Josh C., Jeff A., Melvin P., Alexis L., Lucy P., Tresa B., Jennifer A., Buck C. (ASF performed all the history plays in regilogical order through several consecutive seasons)
- 1993 Henry IV pt. 2, Heartbreak House Josh C., Alexis L., Jennifer A., Elise K., David M., Adam F., Dr. Charles W.
- 1994 Tempest, Dancing at Lughnasa, LIght Up the Sky, Othello, How the Other Half Loves
- 1995 The Circle, St. Joan, Sisters Rozenzweig, Much Ado... (St. Joan was so wonderful that I went back myself to see it a second time.)
- One of the 1990s Shiloh Rules (a very memorable play that made me laugh, cringe, and think!)
- 1997 Merchant of Venice, Ghosts, a play by Horton Foote (no title recorded), Lady Frederick
- 1998 The Importance of Being Earnest, Coming of Rain, Measure for Measure, Antony and Cleopatra
- 200-? Terra Nova, Rough Crossing (I stole the photograph idea from the end of TN act one for an original murder mystery that my 8th graders and I wrote 10 years later)
- 200-? Sockdology (a mostly funny backstage story of the fatal production of Our American Cousin that somehow managed to make everyone gasp and even cry when THE event happens at the end of Act One)
- 2004 Arcadia (A production so wonderful, I drove back the next week to see the final performance)
←← | ← || →Use the arrows to follow the entire bike tour from the start.
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