September 2011

Dear Subscriber: 

AFTER A SUMMER that was unforgettable thanks to all sorts of weather issues, it is great to be headed into the fall and the opening of the 45th season of The Rep. We’ve got a great lineup planned for you on our stages that will demonstrate the excitement, joy, humanity, power and wonder of the live theatre. Whether it’s your first time at The Rep or you’re a longtime member of our subscriber family, we welcome you to another fabulous season. We are so pleased you are here.

WE OPEN THIS SEASON with a fascinating look into the intense and intriguing world of art with John Logan’s Red. We are thrilled to be one of the first theatres in the country to produce this play after its well-received Broadway run. It is clear why this was the winner of last year’s Tony Award for best play, and we are pleased to bring it to our Mainstage.

DELVING DEEP INTO the complicated mind of famed Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko, this play explores not only the power and importance of a master’s work, but also the master himself. Taking place over two short years, 1958-60, we are introduced to Rothko at a time when his career has skyrocketed. He has been offered a once-in-a-lifetime commission at New York’s new modernist masterpiece, the Seagram Building. Tasked with filling the building’s Four Seasons restaurant with murals, Rothko embarks on a huge undertaking with the assistance of a new apprentice, Ken.

KEN IS SMART and hungry to learn from a man widely considered to be a genius in the field. He enters the sealed world of Rothko’s studio and finds a man who is without question a master of his art. Ken is hired to build the frames, stretch the canvas and mix the paint, but it is not long before he finds his voice and begins testing and trying the master. Together, the two explore the nature of creativity through emotional and intellectual debates, with Rothko at times desperate to make the young man understand his deep, profound belief in the power of his work. He is not concerned with being adored by his protégé, but instead is focused on being heard, being understood and conveying his philosophy that art truly matters.

WHILE NOT A BIOGRAPHY, this play is certainly based on facts. Though he remains somewhat enigmatic, Rothko’s work life was very well documented and provided Logan with a rich well of research when creating the events of the play. Born Marcus Rothkowitz in 1903 Latvia, Rothko and his family came to America in 1913 to escape the poverty and persecution that had been plaguing the Jews since the reign of Catherine the Great. He learned English and excelled at school, even earning a scholarship to attend Yale, but when the Ivy League wasn’t as welcoming as he hoped, he quickly became disillusioned, and in 1923 he left school. On a trip to New York, the young man reportedly witnessed a friend painting a nude model and decided "this is the life for me." He soon after began studying art at the Art Student’s League.

ROTHKO STARTED FOCUSING on painting in earnest, teaching art to children to pay the bills while privately honing his craft and his ideas. Moving through many different forms, he developed his own signature style through hard work and relentless attention. His approach was a puzzle to many, as he rejected the romantic notion of an artist’s pursuit and instead usually went about his work between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. as would a businessman.

AFTER DECADES of personal and professional toil, Rothko arrived at a style that would characterize his career and set his place as one of art’s true masters. From 1949 to 1956 Rothko worked almost exclusively with oils on canvases that tended to be vertical and big, usually at least six feet tall and four feet wide, sometimes as large as 9.5 x 8.5 feet. Sometimes he employed cool blues and greens or even earth colors, as in Earth and Green (1950) or Red, Green and Blue (1955). But mostly Rothko created "things" which pulse with hot yellows, oranges and reds, and glow with an intense brilliance conveying an ecstatic sense of pleasure and release. An elated joy predominates in the works of the early and mid-1950s, which seem to celebrate their own discovery, as if, after his 20-year search, Rothko were now exulting, "I’ve found it." Or, as if his new ebullient shapes were substitutions not for the solitary human figures in his early work, but for those "monsters and gods" with whose demise "art sank into melancholy." Rothko’s "new structural language" enabled him to confront, embody and transcend loss. His work became a huge critical and financial success. During 1957, his income tripled. In 1955, the year of his first show at Sidney Janis, he sold six paintings for $5,471; in 1956 he sold eight for $6,805. But during 1957, Rothko sold 17 paintings for $19,133, and in 1958 he sold 13 for $20,666. In 1959 his income again tripled, as he sold 17 works for $61,130.

HE GREW HIS reputation as an emotional and talented artist who was just as invested in the creation of his work as where the work would end up. As he received solo exhibitions, he was known to demand rigid and exacting layouts of his paintings, even specifying the lighting and wall height of each piece. Believing that not just anyone was fit to view his art, Rothko insisted that he was not creating mere decorator paintings for the homes of the wealthy elite. Glenn Phillips, in his book Seeing Rothko, comments on this need for the appropriate viewer:
Rothko’s own well-documented concern over the precise environments in which his work was to be displayed and his continual anxiety over misinterpretation of his work support the idea that the success of a Rothko painting hinges not just on the details of pigment present on canvas, but somehow extends to the nature of the viewing encounter itself, as if the work is only successfully completed when it generates a particular, perhaps profound, affect in a properly receptive viewer.

THIS PROFOUND AFFECT was exactly what Rothko was trying to achieve with each piece and what came to be his torment when he accepted what was, in the 1950s, the art world’s largest commission to date. Highly regarded as a genius and the creator of a new form of expressionist painting, Rothko found himself perched atop the art world’s tower of greatness, so naturally he was offered the momentous opportunity to single-handedly provide the art for New York’s elite Seagram Building. A new construction by famed architects Mies Van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, Rothko was to create a series of murals for the building’s Four Seasons restaurant. Certainly, it was an interesting concept—that one of the art world’s most popular masters, known for his disillusionment with society and vehement insistence on art’s purity, would take on a wholly commercial enterprise.

WHY HE CHOSE to accept the commission, we may never know.  Many believe it was Rothko’s desire to create a space that was all his own, with no one else’s work displayed. Surely the cachet and high price of the job was appealing—he would create 500-600 square feet of paintings for the sum of $35,000 (around $2.5 million today). He would later say of his motivation, "I accepted this assignment with strictly malicious intentions. I hope to ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who ever eats in that room." Inspired by Michelangelo’s Laurentian Library in the Basilica di San Lorenzo, he wanted his paintings to make diners feel like they were in a place "where all the doors and windows are bricked up, so that all they can do is butt their heads forever against the wall."

BUT DINERS WOULD never see the works, at least not at the Four Seasons. After many months of intense labor (he is even reported to have complained to his doctor about fatigue from his rigorous pace), Rothko finished the job. He had created three sets of panels—about 40 mural-sized canvases—and it was time for a break. Rothko, along with his wife and daughter, took a vacation to Europe so he could rest and recoup. Upon their return, Rothko finally visited the completed Four Seasons for dinner. His first look at the rooms that would house his paintings, along with his experience at the meal, enraged the artist. He immediately returned the payment and refused the commission saying "anybody who will eat that kind of food for those kind of prices will never look at a painting of mine." Perhaps his initial visions of epic renown were finally crushed under the realization that he was compromising his art, and his belief in the importance of art, along the way.

LUCKILY, THE MURALS later made their way out of Rothko’s studio for us to view. Several are in private collections, but nine can be seen at the Tate Modern in London, 13 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and seven at the Kawamura Museum of Modern Art in Japan. You can glimpse some of his other work here at our own Saint Louis Art Museum or at the Art Institute of Chicago. Believe me, it’s worth the trip. The paintings are powerful. As Simon Schama describes in his Power of Art documentary on Rothko: "They’re not paintings that just dumbly wait to be watched. They come and get us. And we surrender to total immersion."

MY FIRST EXPERIENCE in seeing the Rothko’s work was at the Rothko Chapel in Houston. His work in black with some grey transported me. I have seen quite a bit of his work and it never fails to bring me into the painting, looking at portals and doors to other places in imagination. I understand how some people reject modern art, but I find Rothko’s work wonderfully mysterious, compelling and unique. If you get a chance to see his paintings in person, get very close—he recommended standing about 18 inches away—and let the world on the canvas envelop you. It is always fascinating.

I AM THRILLED to direct this remarkable play with a brilliant cast including Brian Dykstra as Rothko and Matthew Carlson (The Miracle Worker) as Ken. We’ve also assembled a top-notch creative team; Scenic Designer Michael Ganio (Macbeth) has created a spot-on stage version of Rothko’s Bowery studio and Kevin Kline Award-winning Costume Designer Dorothy Marshall Englis (Macbeth) outfits both master and apprentice perfectly. Lighting Designer Phil Monat (The Diary of Anne Frank) is back to light the way, Rusty Wandall (Beehive) designs the sound and Jeffrey Richard Carter joins us as music consultant; Rothko tended to listen to a lot of Mozart and Shubert as he painted.

RED BEGINS a most exciting season of theatre-going. We are so pleased that you have joined us. There is nothing like the experience of living theatre.

See you at the theatre,

Steven Woolf 
Artistic Director

P.S. Since Mark Rothko was known for chain-smoking his way through life, never to be seen without a cigarette in hand, this production will include simulated smoking onstage. We are using a smokeless cigarette which emits only vapor, not smoke. It’s a pretty interesting new technology—it’s actually electronic. There is no smell at all from these devices.

P.P.S. Don’t forget about Café at The Rep—the place for drinks, pre-show dining and delicious desserts! This season we are expanding our special dining options, which will now include pasta dinners on Tuesday and Sunday evenings; a soup, sandwich and salad buffet for Wednesday matinees; and brunch prior to Sunday matinees. For more information or to make reservations, please visit www.repstl.org. Reservations may also be made by calling (314) 968-7340 and pressing [star] *302.

BRIEF NEW YORK REPORT: Just for fun—Anything Goes starring Sutton Foster is a wonderful production of this musical. Ms. Foster is the reason to see the show—she is magnificent. Also Priscilla Queen of the Desert is outrageous and clever and very entertaining. One of the shows we saw on our London trip in May was One Man, Two Guvnors at the National Theatre. It’s truly one of the funniest plays any of us have ever seen. It is part of the NT Live series which broadcasts some of their shows into movie theatres. This will be at the Tivoli theatre sometime in September, so check out their schedule for it.