Special to the Town Crier
As director of Berkeley Repertory Theatre, lecturer and recipient of numerous "Best Director" awards, Tony Taccone knew when to "cut" the Morning Forum program chairman's introduction March 3, so he could talk about, "The American Theater: Past, Present, Future."
Awed by the broad subject assigned him, Taccone said, "Fear is something all artists confront in order to get at what they want to say."
Confronting that fear led him to co-direct the world premiere of "Angels in America," (a Pulitzer Prize winner) and to establish four gay theaters in the area.
Taccone was working with a group of artists in San Francisco in 1981 when Harvey Milk was shot and killed. Taccone said the group knew it was time to speak out and decided to do a play on the incident.
"We spent two years interviewing hundreds of people to get a collage of differing voices that would give significance to that event, never dreaming the play would become the most produced in the United States.
"Not because it is gay, funny, political, or spiritual, but because it is all of those things - a play that speaks about life in American today. There was fear. But by presenting something with imagination that would expand people's senses, audiences responded," he said.
Taccone said he chooses plays for their eclectic experience.
"In 1998, whether speaking in metaphoric or concrete form; existential or historical; comedy or tragedy, the play should talk about being human in today's world," he said.
"A play that speaks out against injustices lets the audience figure out what can be done about it."
Taccone pointed out that theater has always been about dysfunctional families. Sophocles (495 B.C.) wrote about Oedipus; 17th century Shakespeare, "King Lear;" 18th century, Moliere, "The Misanthrope." In the 19th century, Ibsen, Checkov, O'Neill, gave us "A Doll House," "Three Sisters," "Long Day's Journey into Night," respectively, and in the 20th century Williams wrote "A Streetcar Named Desire."
When New York was swamped with huge issues too costly to produce in the 1950s, theater productions gravitated to other large cities, he said.
Because of that movement a host of small theaters grew up, Taccone said, demanding the right to speak out about social concerns.
From 1960-75, a lot of new work developed, similar to the English Renaissance, the most fertile period of theatrical history, he said.
"There is fear in presenting something new, but no style need offend us," Taccone said.
There are more skilled artists working in regional theater now than at any other time in American history, Taccone said.
A thriving family of American playwrights, directors and designers are internationally recognized, he said.