Peter Gerety
The Actors Center Journal Vol. 1 No. 2, November 2009
Actor’s Voice: Peter Gerety
What the hell is wrong out there? What is different today for an actor just starting out? First, let’s ask, what is the same?
Most young people drawn to theater or film see it as a child and are mesmerized, more than most of their peers. They also seem to put themselves into the picture somehow. They think, “That could be me up there.” The thrill of being the story is coupled with the profound fear of stepping out on a brightly lit stage before an audience—an experience rated in some studies as the “most terrifying” to an average person.
So we are storytellers—and we are high-wire artists. What is it that attracts us?
In times of great social upheaval, the theatre of Brecht or Dario Fo might be the inspiration. Theater forms such as commedia, circus and vaudeville lend themselves to political expression, so groups such as the San Francisco Mime troupe or Mabou Mines or the Wooster Group arise.
While some may be motivated politically, others are excited by great dramatic literature, or the possibilities, especially in film, of new technological expression, or a need to reflect what they understand as their own community. Of course, most of these models overlap.
Layer onto this the often powerful needs of one’s ego, as it develops in becoming adept at something so connected to an audience response. And then, particularly if that audience is in the film or TV world, the audience response may be measured in dollars—lots of dollars.
It has always been this way. From Macready, Kean, and the Gish girls through Hepburn, Gracie Allen, Willam Dafoe and Renée Zellweger, even profoundly talented actors find themselves modeling their career around the bottom line.
So more to the point: Is anything wrong out there? And if so, can anything be done about it?
When I first became a professional actor, somewhere around 1960, there were a few companies in major cities and, of course, university programs. By 1970 there had been a sea change—an explosion of energy fueled by Vietnam, the women’s movement, and civil rights. It had become politically feasible for cities and foundations to fund the creation of what were meant to be permanent repertory companies.
And visionary artists like Bill Ball, Margo Jones and Adrian Hall responded and founded companies from Providence, RI; to Dallas to San Francisco. For almost the first time in America, theater artists could experience plying their trade outside of New York, and experiencing “a life in the theater.” Working on a regular basis in a city, raising kids, performing a kind of theater which took into account the peculiar racial or educational or labor-related nature of that city was possible.
Universities and professional schools greatly expanded their programs and produced the actors to feed those new venues, as well as Hollywood. It was an exciting time – until the reaction set in.
The “reaction” came in two forms. First, and continuing, the political and religious right’s antagonism to any expression of racial or sexual diversity and their out-of-proportion influence on corporate purse strings.
Way before Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ” controversy, the NEA and cities around the nation were pressured to continually reduce their arts budgets. For a time, local and federal governments did so, claiming that corporations would fill the gap. It didn’t happen.
So endowments dried up – grants dried up, excepting perhaps for “safe” art forms like opera or symphonies. By the end of the 20th century, most of the true theater companies had died.
There are a few that remain and retain a small core of actors. But even there, salaries have hardly kept pace with the cost of living. Only Steppenwolf in Chicago seems to have maintained both a vibrant core of top actors and a connection with its city. For the most part, actors are now jobbed in for each show. They have no particular stake in the community, and for the most part, cannot wait to get back to New York where they can be available for film, television and more remunerative commercial work.
I am not in the least deriding the actor. Times are very hard, and I spend most of my own time gratefully working in film and TV. Besides, it wasn’t actors who destroyed the Rep movement and drove Broadway ticket prices into the stratosphere.
So what’s wrong? Well, the second part of the equation is a kind of falling away from the printed word. My kids don’t read: They don’t take the time to. I heard a new word today: “instanaity.” It was used to describe what’s driving the news gathering world, and was referring, of course, to the circle of hell formed by the Internet, YouTube, Twitter and the other instantaneous information—or misinformation. The conversation I was overhearing, between some experienced newspaper hands, had to do with what was replacing the old model, and poignantly, what was lost.
I don’t know what can replace the old model of theater connected to community, and where you would get a chance to steadily perform in all kinds of challenging roles. I do know that 10 or 15 years ago, when I would tell young actors about Trinity Rep in Providence, where I had the privilege to work as a company member for somewhere around 23 years, I would hear, “Oh God, would I love to belong to a company like that.”
Today, whenever I get that opportunity, “Oh, no, Grandpa’s telling stories again” is closer to the response. Once again, I’m not faulting the young actors. I love actors too much and it is such a hard life to choose. It is just that the options open to them today are limited and for the most part are pretty thin gruel when it comes to feeding the spirit.
OK. I think I know what’s wrong out there. And yet, in the ADD culture of reality TV instanaity, little national respect for artists. dried-up funding, aggressive political opposition, and , perhaps worst of all, audiences that seem to be OK with not being challenged—even given all this—wonderful theater gets made.
Some of it even gets to Broadway (think “August, Osage County”). Some will always find its way Off-Broadway (think John Thompson’s “Emperor Jones”). But in general—in the country as a whole? Not so much.
Young theater artists are always ready and willing to be inspired, but they have to know what is possible. Is it possible or inevitable that the new theater paradigm will develop from the Internet? Will audiences, instead of being asked to put their cell phones away, be texting their way into audience participation? Will new technology-driven forms mean, to future theater-goers now in grade school, as much as O’Neil, Chekhov, Caryl Churchill, Susan Lori-Parks and Tony Kushner mean to us? Will the older forms always be with us? Hard to tell. But, my vision is not what it used to be.
Peter Gerety began acting with the Provincetown Playhouse on Cape Cod. He spent 25 years with Adrian Hall and the Trinity Rep in Providence, Rhode Island. Somewhere in there, he took five years off to help found a theatre in Portland, Oregon with his sister Anne Gerety and her husband, actor Tom Hill. Since returning to New York in the 1990’s, Peter has worked extensively on and off-Broadway, in film and on television. He can currently be seen in the casts of both ABC’s “Brothers and Sisters” and NBC’s Mercy.
