Drama: An Actor's Education

of-school giddiness that accompanies the start of any new production. Lots of chatter, lots of coffee, then we all took our places around a long table. I expounded at length on my concept of the play — its late-nineteenth-century setting, its airy high spirits, its sexual sparring, its Mediterranean machismo, its military culture under assault by dizzy small-town romantics. I had a word or two to say about every character, right down to the clownish members of the Night Watch (one of whom was played by an eager sixteen-year-old local boy named Christopher Reeve). I passed around reference materials and costume designs. I unveiled a model of the set. I did everything I could to project my own enthusiasm and bring the cast on board. Everyone seemed charged with anticipation.

After a break, we launched into a read-through of the text. Halfway through the first scene, the soldiers make their bravura entrance. The first of them to speak is their commanding officer Don Pedro:

Good Signior Leonato, you are come to meet your trouble: the fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it.

Uh-oh.

These were the words of William Shakespeare as spoken by a mule skinner named Slim. A dense fog of unease slowly descended on the whole company. None of them looked up from their scripts. They didn’t have to. The sound of that monotone voice told them all they needed to know: Biff was going to weigh down the show like a flatiron. But their distress was nothing compared to mine. As I listened to the poor man struggle through his lines, an appalling thought took hold of me. Not only was I saddled with Biff in the role of Don Pedro. Later in the season I was set to direct William Congreve’s The Way of the World, a Restoration comedy that’s fiendishly difficult to perform, even by trained English actors. And who was already cast in the huge role of Mirabell, the dashing leading man with the voracious libido and the quicksilver wit? This well-intentioned lug, this sodden no-talent, this latter-day Tom Mix. Biff Richards.

For the next few days of rehearsal, I struggled mightily to raise Biff’s energy level and help him through the tricky syntax of Don Pedro’s speeches. Nothing worked. Every time he spoke, the energy would leak out of his scenes. As a result, the play felt like a dirigible that stubbornly refused to leave the ground. My anxiety was shared by everyone in the company — everyone, that is, except Biff. He was cheerfully oblivious to all the eye-rolling, foot-tapping, and teeth-grinding around him. He was having a fine time.

More days passed. A catastrophe was slowly unfolding in front of me. I continued to go through the motions of directing the play, but inside I was in agony. A few weeks hence I foresaw a disastrous opening night of Much Ado About Nothing. I couldn’t even bring myself to think about The Way of the World. Something had to be done. For everyone’s sake (including his own), Biff Richards had to be replaced. I had to speak to the boss. I had to go to my father. I didn’t have to go far. He was playing Friar Francis.

When I broached the subject of firing Biff, Dad was hardly surprised. He convened a meeting of the directors of the season’s remaining plays. After all, each of them had a vote. Biff was cast in their shows, too (albeit in much smaller roles), so whoever replaced him in my two productions would be replacing him in theirs. Within minutes the five-man meeting had reached a rueful consensus. Biff would have to go.

To replace him, we settled on an actor named John Braden. All five of us loved the idea. Johnny was spirited and reliable. He was a seasoned character man who had worked with half the actors in the company. My father left the meeting to track Johnny down by phone. Within an hour he came back with great news. He told us that he’d spoken with Johnny and found him game to join us for the rest of the season. The directing staff was delighted. We assured Dad that if he made an immediate change, we would back up his decision before the entire company.

But my father chose to proceed more gingerly. He enjoined us to secrecy. His plan was to personally deliver the bad news to Biff at the end of rehearsal on the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving. John Braden would report for work at 10 a.m. on Saturday, two days later, and the cast of Much Ado would be introduced to their new Don Pedro. Dad reasoned that, if the news of Biff’s firing got out and caused any alarm in the rest of the company, there would be forty-eight hours and the distractions of Thanksgiving to dispel it. The change would be a fait accompli, the production would be back on track, and the cast would lose barely a minute of rehearsal time. The directors deferred to my father’s judgment. I returned to the rehearsal room with my confidence restored. My problem was solved. A couple of days of pretense and I was home free. I was elated.

I got through to the end of the Wednesday rehearsal with affable good humor. The actors gaily dispersed for their Thanksgiving break, not remotely suspecting that one of them was getting the ax. With two full days off, most were heading home to New York. Out of the corner of my eye I watched Biff leave the room, blithely unaware that my father was waiting to intercept him. I felt bad for him but my regrets were swept away by my relief. The next day I joined the family for Thanksgiving dinner, with something new to be thankful for. On Friday I rested and regrouped after the stressful week that had gone before.

I headed for rehearsal Saturday morning bursting with renewed optimism. Most of the cast had already arrived, greeting each other in high spirits. In walked Johnny Braden. His arrival sparked surprise and excitement — everyone knew in an instant what his appearance meant, and everyone was delighted. Three or four of his old friends greeted him with hearty bear hugs and introduced him to the others. I looked on with undiluted pleasure. Everyone was happy. Things were going better than I could have hoped.

Then Biff Richards walked in.

I looked around wildly for my father. He was nowhere to be seen.

Where was he?

It turned out that, unbeknownst to me, Dad had arrived late to the rehearsal room that Wednesday and missed his chance to speak to Biff. Unaided by cell phones or email, he had set off to overtake him. First, he had hurried over to Biff’s rented Princeton apartment. Not finding him there, he had left a letter at the door giving him notice. Biff, meanwhile, had headed straight to the Princeton train station and had missed my father’s letter. Worried that this might have happened, Dad had sent a copy of the letter by messenger to Biff’s New York home and had left messages with his answering service. Biff, meanwhile, had spent Thanksgiving with his girlfriend and had received neither the second letter nor the messages. Anxious that this might have happened, Dad had raced over to the Princeton bus stop on Saturday morning desperately hoping to intercept Biff. Biff, meanwhile, had arrived by train and had walked directly to rehearsal, where the cast, John Braden, and I had all gathered to resume work on Much Ado About Nothing without him.

When Biff appeared in the rehearsal room, there was a ghastly moment of confusion. A few of the actors looked darkly in my direction. I strode over to Biff, took him by the arm, and led him into an adjoining hallway. I informed him that he had been replaced and that his replacement was standing with the others in the next room. I said that my father was supposed to have broken this news to him two days before but that clearly something had gone dreadfully wrong. I attempted to explain the reasons behind the decision but my mouth was dry and my words sounded hollow. Inside my head, a voice was screaming, “Why do I have to do this? Where the hell is my father?!” Biff went pale as I spoke. Then he flushed crimson as incomprehension began to give way to humiliation and blind rage. Finally my father arrived, his face a mask of anxiety. I flatly informed him that Biff had already been told he was fired, then turned on my heels and walked off, letting him deal with Biff while I dealt with the cast. They were waiting for me in silence, poleaxed by what had just happened.

It was awful.

It wasn’t so great for my dad either, of course. He must have spent the preceding two days in a state of mounting dread, and the last hour must have been worst of all. He had wanted to let Biff down easy, he had hoped to ease his company through a difficult transition, and he had intended to protect me from the wrath of a jilted actor. But for all his kindly intentions, he had made a terrible mess of things — for Biff, for Johnny, for the company, and for me. And the strangest aspect of the whole episode was his reticence. For two days, he had heard nothing from Biff to acknowledge his dismissal. By Saturday morning the silence must have been deafening. Dad must have been sick with worry. And yet in that entire time, including a long, leisurely family Thanksgiving full of laughter and festive good cheer, he hadn’t betrayed a hint of that worry to me.

My father was a remarkable man of the theater. There has probably never been an American repertory theater director as civil and gentlemanly. He was gracious, generous, humorous, and deeply intelligent. He gave a leg up to hundreds of young people, signing many of them to their first professional jobs. These were qualities that