Arthur Miller’s After the Fall

In October of 2003, a mentor of mine died. His name was Jack Temchin. Jack Temchin was instrumental in helping me realize the potential in my thesis project for grad school – which was Arthur Miller’s After the Fall. It’s not a perfect play by any means, but the the extended scenes between the two main characters (Quentin and Maggie) are superb. I lobbied to have After the Fall as my thesis project. It was approved. And I immersed myself, for months, in Arthur Miller’s world. In Marilyn Monroe’s world (the play describes their marriage – although Miller always hemmed and hawed, in public, saying that it was “fiction”.) I studied Arthur Miller’s motivations behind the play, I studied what HE said about his own process, his thoughts about the tragic damaged character of Maggie (my part). It’s one of the most frightening beautiful acting experiences I’ve ever had. It was a real challenge. But it was also great, because of my obvious love for the play. I could have worked on it for 24 hours a day – I resented having to sleep!

There were a LOT of problems, on the technical and administrative side of things … and I got caught up in a couple of snafus. Jack Temchin went to bat for me. He stood up for me. A lot of people disliked Temchin … and he could be very cruel, very manipulative. (But dare I say this: he was usually cruel to those he felt had huge entitlement issues, those who had no respect, those who thought stuff was OWED to them. As you can imagine, acting grad school is FILLED with actors who feel “entitled”. They are the most obnoxious – and usually talent-less – people on earth. Jack Temchin was RUTHLESS with people like that.) But he was always good to me. He recognized my commitment, my passion … and would NOT let me be victimized by the inefficiency of the administration.

Anyway. I’m still not feeling articulate yet about Arthur Miller … and what his plays means to me … and my long relationship to his work … so I thought I’d re-post the story of my thesis project. The story of Jack Temchin, a small frail man, suddenly becoming a Gladiator, fighting for me to get what I wanted.

In a way, even though it’s a tribute to Jack Temchin, it’s also a tribute to Arthur Miller. Because I felt like that was MY play. It was MINE. When the Roundabout did a production of it last year, I felt … so sad. Because I felt like Maggie was “mine”. I couldn’t even go see it. That play is INSIDE me. I OWN it. I will ALWAYS be grateful for having the experience of getting so close to that particular piece of writing, so close that it wasn’t even a play anymore. It was REAL, I was in between the lines of the page.

So. Onward.

Jack Temchin, after a long career at the Manhattan Theatre Club, as well as publishing a best-selling series of monologue books for actors, was hired by my graduate program to produce the 11-week “thesis” season. This was done at the Circle in the Square Downtown Theatre, on Bleecker Street (an amazing space if ever there was one).

Temchin’s job was to be part of the thesis-approval committee – and once all theses were approved and cast – it was Temchin’s job to design the season.

This was an insane assignment – with actors, directors, and playwrights bombarding his small office with neurotic and not-so-neurotic requests: “I wish that my project was LAST in the night … not in the middle…” “Could you PLEASE talk to so-and-so and tell her that I have no plans on casting her?” “Why did you place my project so late in the season? Nobody will come to see it!!”

The panic was understandable, because the stakes were very high. For all of us. This was what we had been working for, non-stop, for the past 3 years – we all wanted everything to be right for us PERSONALLY.

So Jack had 120 personalities to satisfy. I did not envy him his assignment.

He made quite a few enemies.

He was not always tactful. He would say things to people like, “End of discussion. Your project is going up 3rd and that’s the end of the discussion. Grow up.”

I always appreciated that about him – because it was very practical, it had a whiff of the actual professional world (which I really missed, at times, in the cloister of graduate school).

My thesis project was After the Fall, Arthur Miller’s haunting (and flawed) play about his marriage to Marilyn Monroe. The play as a whole does not work, but we didn’t do the whole play. We picked out two scenes – which are stunning, all on their own. I was very pleased – I got the director I wanted, I got the co-star I wanted – I was happy.

I was also cast in another project, a short play called Gertrude Down, an original work by a playwright in the program.

Gertrude Down was a take-off on Reservoir Dogs, except with all women – gun-toting women sitting in a big empty warehouse, smoking cigarettes, arguing – talking about nothing – and they are all waiting for … something. You are not sure what. But it’s ominous. I was the “boss”. All the other women were dressed up in bimbo outfits, sparkley nail polish, stilettos – but I, as the boss, was dressed in a man’s pinstripe suit, black shiny shoes, a tie, and a fedora.

I would take out a cigarette, and all the bimbo girls would fight over who got to light it for me. It was a great part, I loved it.

Anyway:

Temchin decided to launch the entire thesis season with “After the Fall” AND “Gertrude Down” – on the same night. There were 2 other projects on the docket for the first night – and Temchin made sure that my two pieces weren’t back to back – so that I wouldn’t have to have an impossibly quick change.

One of the incomprehensible things about most of the complaints of the student body was: They didn’t want to be seen in two pieces in the same night, especially if one of them was their thesis project. They wanted to have ALL of their focus directed on their one main project, and not diffuse their concentration.

I literally could not understand that viewpoint. It seemed so … I can’t even find a word for it. It just baffled me.

Perhaps it is because I had been out in the theatrical world BEFORE I went into grad school and I knew in my heart how advantageous it would be to be seen in two completely different pieces in the same night.

I was THRILLED, to tell you the truth.

In “After the Fall” I was playing a tortured sex-bomb nightclub singer poured into a teeny little dress with high heels, used and thrown-out by men, a woman-child with terrible insomnia, and horrible insecurities, constantly drinking to take the edge off. A tour-de-force part.

In “Gertrude Down” I was all butch, and tough, wearing a fedora, bossing everyone around, an alpha-Female, chain-smoking cigarettes, and barking orders.

What a great thing for me! To show that I would be able to transform myself.

But my fellow students went into an uproar on my behalf, (I still don’t know why they butted into my business – I think they were just using my situation as an example of what they DIDN’T want, assuming that I would feel the same way as they did). So I heard through the graduate-school grapevine that others in my class were complaining to Temchin, “standing up for me” was what they called it, saying to Temchin: “Sheila shouldn’t be in 2 pieces in the same night! That’s unfair!”

I hated that they assumed I had the same views as them. And I hated that they almost sabotaged my chance to show off my diversity as an actress. I was in a panic that Temchin would change the schedule. I had to make things right.

I stormed into Temchin’s office (a man I didn’t know very well yet), and didn’t even say “Hi” – there was no prelude – I launched right into a diatribe, “Don’t you DARE change the schedule just because the other boneheads in this program feel like THEY couldn’t handle doing two different pieces in one night – Do NOT change the schedule. I didn’t ask them to come to you, and I’m pissed that they did. They’re idiots. As long as you don’t put my two pieces back to back, and as long as you put ‘After the Fall’ BEFORE Gertrude Down on the program, I am perfectly fine with appearing in two pieces, and frankly, I am totally baffled at why everybody thinks it would be a bad idea.”

That is not word for word what I said – but I do know that I barreled out an impassioned monologue – and I do know that the word “boneheads” was used.

Temchin looked up at me – took it all in – took ME in – then leaned back in his chair, threw back his head and ROARED with laughter. He just laughed and laughed and laughed.

I turned around and shut the door on all the nosy “boneheads” out in the hallway. I had been shouting. About all of them. With an open door. While they were sitting right there.

I was too upset to laugh yet – I said, “You’re not gonna change the schedule are you? I have no idea why nobody else wants to appear in 2 pieces in the same night. Don’t they realize how GOOD it would be to show the audience that you can do the contrast? What the fuck is the matter with them??”

Temchin, still laughing, said, “You’re no dummy.”

And that was all he said.

“You’re no dummy.”

So I got him to promise he wouldn’t change the schedule. But in the middle of all of that, he noticed that I was carrying a Richard Ford novel under my arm, and he interrupted the entire conversation and said, “A great writer, isn’t he?”

It was hard for me to segue. I was too hot under the collar. I said, “Ford? Yeah. He’s good.”

It was as though Temchin had seen me for the first time. He was staring up at me, just looking at me. Not at my surface, I could feel, but at ME. He made me sit down … and then he got me to talking about literature. (We had never had a conversation before I barged into his office and demanded that he do what I ask.)

He loved that I was carrying a novel, and not “10 Things to Know If You Want To Be An Actor” or “How To Get the Casting Office To Love You” or “Helpful Tips to Actors Who Want To Be In Soap Operas” … or whatever. He thought it was so refreshing and rare: An actor who had interests outside of acting.

Anyway – it was that one conversation that sealed the deal for the two of us. We were pretty much friends for life after that.

After he saw how much I gave a shit about my work, also how realistic I was (that I knew, in my heart, that being seen in two pieces was BETTER than only being seen in one), and also how unafraid I was of ruffling the feathers of my nosy fellow students, he could not do enough for me.

He satisfied my every demand. He kept checking in with me as the thesis season went on. “How’s it going? Anything you need?”

He was amazing with me. A true mentor.

Another story about this man, who became one of my champions:

I had an idea for “After the Fall” – but I needed help executing it. The character, Maggie, becomes famous, as a singer. Her most famous number is “Little Girl Blue”, a ballad. My idea was this:

Have a haunting echoey recording of me singing that song … and play it over the scene changes, or at appropriate moments during the show … My idea for it was NOT that it should be what the character actually sounded like when the song played on the radio, but that it should be a kind of photo-negative of the same song, to show how troubled she was, how doomed.

I wanted it to sound literally like singing this song was this character’s last gasp for breath. No more energy, no more sexiness left … all emotion drained … she was giving up … she was sinking …

The lyrics fit with that idea:

“Sit there and count your fingers
What can you do?
Old girl, you’re through
Sit there and count your little fingers
Unlucky little girl blue …

No use, old girl – you may as well surrender
Your hopes are getting slender
Why won’t somebody send a tender blue boy
To cheer up little girl blue”

Nina Simone does a great version of this.

You can jazz it up, but I didn’t want that. My picture for it was of a woman, at 4 a.m., rain coming down, sliding off into perhaps an overdose … all alone … and this is her last expression of what’s going on, her last words.

Great idea, huh?

Well, nobody would help me.

I was told there was no budget, there was nobody set up to record such a thing. (Interesting how LATER in the season when other actors wanted to do special sound-stuff – the school found a way. But they hadn’t greased the wheels of the season yet, and so they gave me a hard time.) Rich G., the guy I chose to direct my piece (a really good friend, and a terrific director – I’ve worked with him a bunch), did his best to get me what I wanted, he was a total advocate for me – but the school just did not give a crap.

They didn’t count on Jack Temchin.

My brother the musician stepped up – and we recorded me singing the song on his equipment – not very sophisticated – but hey, I was a woman with a mission. I now had the song on tape. I handed it over to the sound people, and Rich told them the cues – when to play it, etc.

Then, lo and behold, on the night of our Tech-Dress rehearsal, which was INSANE – after the run-through of After the Fall – there was a worried conference between all of these upper-level administrative people – about the quality of the recording. It wasn’t good enough, clear enough, it sounded amateurish.

Rich and Temchin came over to me, leaving the upper-echelon conference, and Rich murmured to me, “There are some concerns about the quality of the recording–”

I had fucking had it. I exploded. In front of everyone.

“I HAVE BEEN SAYING THAT FOR WEEKS AND NOBODY WOULD HELP ME. I HAVE BEEN SAYING THAT FOR WEEKS AND NOBODY WOULD HELP ME.”

Rich said, “I know, Sheila, I know, and now they understand that you were right –”

I burst into tears. “Rich! Nobody listened to me!”

“Sheila. They’re listening now.”

Temchin came over, and took me in his spindly little arms. “Okay, sweetheart, we’re gonna fix it. Bill Riley has a state-of-the-art recording studio at home, and you are going to go over there right now, and record exactly what you want. He can make it sound just like what you want, exactly what you have been asking for for 3 weeks now.”

It was midnight. I was exhausted.

“Record it now? We open tomorrow night, Jack!”

I was hysterical. I admit. My nerves were frayed, I felt like I completely had not been taken seriously, and now they were trying to cover their tracks…Also, I was exhausted. Probably hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in a couple weeks, because of all the rehearsal time.

Jack recognized I was hysterical, he didn’t judge me for it, he thought I had been fucked over, and so Jack made it all better.

He got me into a cab, he gave me money to go up to Bill Riley’s recording studio on the Upper West Side, he had told Bill Riley to give me whatever I wanted – and everything worked out in the end.

The recording that Bill Riley made, of me singing that song, was beyond my wildest dreams.

He created EXACTLY what I asked. He took me seriously as an artist. So did Jack Temchin. I wasn’t just some whimsical idiot making an unreasonable demand. I’m never rude when I make requests. I’m not a diva. I’m all about collaboration. That’s why theatre is so great. As a matter of fact, it’s hard for me to make requests at all! But I had a good idea, it was MY thesis… and I needed some help bringing that idea into reality.

I knew how I wanted to perform the song … soft and whispery … as though throughout the process of the song, the life ran out of me, and the tide pulled back.

I told Riley this idea, and I told him I thought a slight echo would be best … I wanted it to sound like I was at the bottom of a well. I gave him all my crazy images – and by this point it was 2 in the morning, and Riley DID it. He MADE IT HAPPEN.

I still have a copy of me singing that song, in the way that I wanted to.

I went into Temchin’s office the next day, completely embarrassed that I had been screaming and crying in front of the Dean, in front of the organizing committees, in front of the full faculty. I said, “I’m sorry I threw such a fit.”

Temchin gave me this look. This dead-on look. “Sweetheart, you don’t have to apologize. They fucked up. They know it. And you let them know it. If this program doesn’t invest in YOU, then we have no business being an acting program.”

And we used the song in the production – Jack Temchin cleared all obstacles out of my way. He told the sound designer, “This actress knows what she wants. She is not a diva. She needs help. So GIVE her that help. Listen to her ideas, and help her.”

And everybody did. The sound people were INCREDIBLE with me. Just incredible. They completely GOT the effect I had in my head, and they made it happen for me.

To me, Jack Temchin was a champion.

We used to call such people “spirit warriors” in college. Over the course of those weeks, with my thesis craziness, he went to battle for me. A spirit warrior, indeed.

I will never forget him for that. I didn’t even really know him that well. But he will always have a special place in my heart because of how he went to bat for me, during that crazy time.

Jack Temchin: Rest in Peace.

And now … Arthur Miller: Rest in Peace. I need to take out After the Fall and read it again. Especially now.

This entry was posted in Personal and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.

3 Responses to Arthur Miller’s After the Fall

  1. Ken Hall says:

    Just…wow. That’s honest, and true, and a bunch of other hollow great inadequate words. What a tribute.

    May someone say something like that about each of us, after we’re gone….

  2. Bernard says:

    Sheila, again and again you leave me without words.

  3. Peter says:

    Thanks for a look into a world that I will never be close to and that world’s people.

Comments are closed.