Arts

Entertainment

Giving Direction

Pioneers in regional theater follow the footlights
to U-M's new works festival.

SUZANNE CHESSLER
Special to the Jewish News

T

wo Tony Award winners, who crossed
theatrical paths early in their careers, will
be together again for the concluding pro-
grams in the "Festival of New Works
2001" at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Zelda Fichandler, now head of the acting pro-
gram at New York University, will be the featured
festival speaker June 15. Mel Shapiro, head of the
acting program at the University of California at
Los Angeles, will introduce his newest play,
Divided, as a staged reading with production ele-
ments on June 15 and 16.
Fichandler, a founder of the Arena Stage in
Washington, D.C. — and thereby one of the pio-
neers in the regional the :er movement — gave
Shapiro his first directing job, and their friendship
has remair_L!d strong.
"I'm going to talk about the relationship of audi-
ence, playwright and actor and, in particular, what
creates the play — the shape of the playhouse, the
culture and the playwright's psycho-biography," says
Fichandler, 77, who terms her inception of the
Arena Stage and her leaving 40 years later as
"whims."
Although she had taken acting classes and been
cast in plays at George Washington University, she
took on theater management and directing without
any real training. Thinking about becoming a psy-
chotherapist, she applied some of that analytic out-
look to make the company successful.
The theater launched many illustrious careers,
including those of Jane Alexander and Ned Beatty,
and premiered many successful plays, such as The
Great White Hope.
Fichandler, who won her Tony Award in 1967 for
her theatrical work in regional theater, recalls always
being interested in make-believe.
She wrote an award-w . fining newspaper youth
essay on why she wanted to be an actress. It was not
about mor , .7 or fame; rather it had to do with
showing people the way they are.
"That simple [theme] seems to define my interest
in creating theater and a central performing artist
who is the actor," says Fichandler.
The former Russian-language and literature major
took a drama history class that sparked the idea for
a venture into a regional company. "My professor,
Edward Mangum, was discussing the absence of
theater around the country, and at the time, I was
very interested in social movements.
"I suddenly felt the deprivation that my home city
was experiencing by not having a living theater and
suggested we just start one."

6/8
2001

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Using an emerging Dallas theater as a model, the
two raised money, rented an old movie house and
did 17 plays in their first year. With a new marriage
and new baby, Fichandler soon had to take complete
charge after illness forced Mangum to leave.
Her husband, Thomas, an economist, managed
the finances for what has become a three-theater
complex performing to more than 250,000
patrons each season.
'As I grew, I began to see that the actor really car-

ried the human experience onto the stage," says
Fischandler. "The playwright provided the scaffold
and the series of events, but it was the actor who
really embodied the experience of the audience, who
could empathize and be. transformed."
Fichandler, who was raised as a Jew but did not
raise her own two sons in any denomination, left
Arena for a change and worked with a classical tour-
ing company for three years before moving on to
New York University full time in 1991.
"I try to train people who can use their own past,
feelings and thoughts and transform them in ways
suitable for characters who might be different from
them," she says.
Fichandler enjoys being with her young grand-
children because they return her to the world of
make-believe.
"I think that theater is the last free place in which
one can examine anything," she says. "That's why it's
under-funded and not attended by as many people
as we would like."

Zelda Fichandler:
"I think that theater
is the last free place
in which one can exam-
ine anything."

