Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Onstage / Performing Arts / Arts Remy Bumppo artistic director Timothy Douglas resigns
Posted by Tony Adler on 01.18.12 at 06:06 PM
- Kimberly Aileen Scott
- Timothy Douglas
"This absolutely was my decision," Douglas told me by phone this afternoon.
The reason? "The approach to the work that I have differs so markedly from what has gone before that it just felt the compromise was too great," said the soft-spoken 50-year-old director. "What we all did have was the same goal for the work, for the impact of the work and the integrity of the work. It literally is just the way we came at it. I finally realized that it was pushing too hard and the company at large couldn’t sustain it. With the resources that we had, the financial realities of producing theater, it just seemed clear to me that it was going to be too hard of a struggle and I decided it’s just not fair to any of us."
A lack of artistic rapport was apparent in Douglas's ambitious first production with Remy Bumppo, Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Elektra. "Written as a trilogy, updating the Oresteia to Civil War-era New England, MBE is a shaggy, lumpy, self-consciously Freudian beast even in the 'fast-moving' three-and-a-half hour adaptation Douglas uses," I noted in my Reader review. "Bumppo stars like David Darlow, Annabel Armour, and Nick Sandys aren't suited to it and come off looking marooned."
Their difficulty isn't all that surprising when you consider that Douglas had never even seen a Remy Bumppo show when he became the company's AD. And yet the prospect of working with strangers was initially part of the thrill. "It was a huge leap of faith," Douglas recalled. "That’s one of the reasons I said yes—because it was so extraordinary that both sides were willing to be so game.
"But there are some practicalities about it that we’ve learned."
One of those practicalities involved having to develop a working relationship on the fly, while staging a show. "We really started at zero in the deep end of the pool," Douglas said."There was a clarity that was wanting. We speak different languages in approaching the work. I brought what I knew, and those who have worked with the company before brought what they knew, and it took us a long while in that first process to find a common language. And that was a marker for me—to realize that, wow, this requires more time and more grace and more finesse than I felt the company at large could afford. That spirit of compromise felt like asking too much from both sides."
Douglas's appointment was a breakthrough in the context of a theater community where integration has been slow in coming. An African-American, he was taking control of an essentially white troupe. I asked if race figured in to his problems at Bumppo. "We are all deeply influenced by our cultural specificity, from birth through how we were raised and how we come to learn about ourselves as artists," was Douglas's delicate reply. "So there are are inherent differences, absolutely. I think it was a part, energetically, of the overall challenge of finding one another, but certainly not the prevailing one. I don’t feel on a personal level that anyone was actively attempting to make me feel [ethnically isolated]. But as the cultural specificities became clearer to me, it was much larger than I’ve ever experienced in my career before because it was the first time I was in a position of leadership."
Douglas said he has no immediate plans. He'll remain in Chicago for now, and if he gets work, he may stay.
Comments (5)
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It's too bad that Chicagoans cannot allow their minds to open up to different experiences, especially cultural differences in the same way that people of New York City do through out their everyday lives. Chicago is still a very seperated city.
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I saw Mourning Becomes Electra. It was god-awful. Maybe the resistance he encountered had something to do with that.
Actually I rather liked two-thirds of Mourning Becomes Electra and put my dislike of the third act down to the fact that the play was scaled down from the original. Changes of Heart was a different matter. Now that was TRULY god-awful. It may be the worst play I have ever seen among hundreds and it was very clear that the fault was the director's. I don't think Mr. Douglas ever had a clear understanding of the niche that Remy occupies in the Chicago theater market and what their very considerable strenghts are. This was apparent in the letter he sent out to subscribers when he assumed the job. Race has nothing to do with it. The guy just wasn't up to this particular job although he may have great skills which would be beneficial in a different setting.
I am so impressed with the grace and clarity that both Mr. Douglas and Remy Bumppo have brought to this process. I also give Mr. Douglas enormous credit for realizing that the fundamentals were not going to change, and having the courage to leave rather than pursue a bad match. I have always loved Remy Bumppo, and I have no doubt that Nick Sandys will make a superb Artistic Director for the company. I sincerely hope that Mr. Douglas finds work with a company more suited to his artistic sensibilities soon.
Remy Bumppo has a three-play season. Mr. Douglas directed the first two plays, both tanked, and he was slotted for the third. Problems? Why not bow out of the last directing gig but stay until the end of the season? Then, if Mr. Douglas felt same way about things, resign in an orderly way that did not damage the company. Instead Mr. Douglas exited with great drama, selfishly thumbing his nose at colleagues.
Drama's fine on stage, on screen. But in real life those who act dramatically reside largely in rubber rooms. Plus Mr. Douglas's resignation has a "Please pay attention to me!" off-putting pathos about it. Quit because he didn't like his job? Nor do 90% of the people on the planet. A non-profit theatre, like a for-profit theatre, has to sell tickets. Mr. Douglas could have stayed on, retrenched, fought the good fight in his second season with a better understanding of what he was up against. Instead, like Achilles, he sulked in his tent -- though, unlike Achilles, he disdained to return to the fray. Sounds like false pride on his part.
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