Mainly on Directing by Arthur Laurents (read more books .TXT) 📕

The first thing I said to the nine players was “Gypsy is a musical for actors.”

In 1959, it hadn't been cast that way; in 1959, acting was hardly a priority in musicals. It's of incalculable help to the director of a revival to look back at the state and customs of the form (in this case, the musical), the theatre in general, even the world at the time of the original production. Then he can begin to understand why certain moments seem foolish today while others weren't given their due back then. Gypsy has its share.

In 1959, Ethel Merman was the star; she set the breezy tone. In 1973, in London, Angela Lansbury was the star. A superb actress with a great voice, her Rose gave Gypsy a weight and meaning it hadn't displayed before. That it did then was almost entirely due to her Rose. In 1989, that process continued with Tyne Daly, the star making history with her savage Rose, but she was aided immeasurably by the first three-dimensional, moving Herbie, played by Jonathan Hadary, and the first credibly bland Louise to turn into a dazzling Gypsy Rose Lee—Crista Moore. It wasn't until 2006, however, that I cast the entire company—everyone, every small part, even one-line parts—with first-rate actors. Why shouldn't acting be as important a requirement for musical theatre as singing and dancing?

Everyone around that table at City Center was an actor, and every part got bigger because I asked everyone to know who he or she was in the play, why they were in the story, and what they wanted in any scene they were in, even if they didn't have a line. The fuller the character, the bigger the part becomes. When the whole company was around the table, that approach was applied to everyone: Why was someone a Hollywood Blonde or a Farm-boy? Why had they joined Rose's traveling circus? Did they want to be in show business, did they want to run away from home?— what did they want? Even if they didn't have a line, they had to know all that. This wasn't going to be a musical where anyone came on stage without a life.

What I expected from the nine major players by the end of the first week was that each would know who he was, what he wanted, and what he would do to get it. The excitement around the table that first morning was visible—but no one had to be cautioned that Gypsy was a show with a Star.

If the star of a play, let alone a musical play and one with a starring role that has been called the musical equivalent of King Lear, if that star isn't with the director all the way in every way, the tension will infect the company and nothing much will ever be accomplished. Play or musical, the performance will waffle and wobble and satisfy no one. The star at this table was Patti LuPone: famously controversial, a powerful actor with a great voice for Rose. Great voices, great anything, can get in the way of a great performance unless the director is in control. Nothing was going to get in the way of this performance: Patti LuPone was indeed a star, but she was an artist first. There's a self-consciousness about calling anyone an artist, but she was and always will be, certainly in the rehearsal hall. Nothing could make her happier than sitting around the table, probing and exploring the text. She gave herself completely to the process with constantly stunning results. The company loved watching her work, loved exploring with her, loved her—to a point: they smelled the actress might turn Star on a dime. Rarely in rehearsal, but on stage, in performance, there was the danger that she would become too aware of the audience, wanting to possess it, control it, make it hers—the Star would trump the artist. That was her problem, which made it the director's problem, which made it my problem. She trusted me early on and I respected her early on. Nothing was going to separate us, and nothing did. But I was conscious of that Star problem and she wasn't.

Of the six days of rehearsal that first week, five were spent around the table. They were the most important days of the entire rehearsal period. Musicals had never been directed this way— every line examined as one does or should do when rehearsing a play—because no one thought the book of a musical could stand up to such examination. The high regard for the book of Gypsy might be used as an excuse for making it an exception to how musicals are rehearsed, but it shouldn't be. Even a musical with a weak book can benefit from sitting around a table and exploring what text there is. All sorts of moments can be found in unexpected places; subtext can be invented where none existed to give characters some depth and color. Look for the play that is beneath the show and the result will be a richer evening. There isn't a musical that won't benefit from adding acting to performing.

Those days of exploration around the table established for the actors what their goal was and how it was going to be achieved. They got what they had never so early, if ever at all, had before: a solid base from which they could move out and try this or that, knowing there was a secure core of the character underneath. It was still a musical, but they were taking it seriously as actors because they were being treated as actors. They thrived on it, so the show thrived on it. The result was a Gypsy new to everyone, including me.

I had written the book of Gypsy, ostensibly based on Gypsy Rose Lee's memoirs; three-quarters, however, was invention—which was why I called the