‘I have tried to be fair, thorough, and accurate, and to write decent sentences’ — A Conversation with James Magruder

The Yale Repertory, an institution of American theater, celebrated its 50^th anniversary eight years ago, in 2016. James Magruder’s book about the Rep’s history was first dreamed of as a way to mark that anniversary, but for many reasons (including a pandemic), the book is only now arriving on bookshelves. No matter. The Play’s the Thing: Fifty Years of Yale Repertory Theatre (1966-2016) is well worth the wait.

With 317 pages, more than 100 photographs, and thirty-six “sidebars” about “Persons of the Drama” and other off-stage aspects of the Yale Rep, Magruder has written a book of epic scope that is also readable, an informative book that entertains. His goal, as stated in his preface, was to “be fair, thorough, and accurate, and to write decent sentences.” He has met that goal – and done so much more.

The book is structured in four parts, one for each of the Yale Rep’s artistic directors: Robert Brustein, who created a radical new approach to teaching drama when he founded the Rep; Lloyd Richards, who championed and helped make famous the great playwright August Wilson (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Fences, etc.); Stan Wojewodski, Jr., who left Baltimore’s Center Stage for Yale; and James Bundy, the longest serving (and still) Yale Rep artistic director.

A Baltimore resident who for many years worked as a dramaturg at Center Stage, Magruder approaches his subject from a literary vantage. His compelling tales about the Rep’s productions are the next best thing to being in the audience.

Along the way, readers gain insights into Yale Rep students and performers whose names they’ll know. Among them are Christopher Walken, the late James Earl Jones, Frances McDormand, Dianne Wiest, Meryl Streep, Tony Shalhoub, Joe Morton, Charles S. “Roc” Dutton (a Towson University grad), Paul Giamatti, and Lupita N’yong’o.

But it is Magruder’s prose and insights into theater that take the star’s turn (and helped earn the book a coveted star from Kirkus Reviews). With nimble sentences and observations that are witty and smart, Magruder breathes life into theater history. Even readers who can’t tell Hedda Gabler from Nora of A Doll’s House will find themselves eager to turn the page and learn more.

Magruder talked with me about his new book on a Friday afternoon at a picnic bench on the lawn behind Baltimore’s Ivy Bookshop, where Magruder also works as a bookseller. He is, like many entertaining storytellers, digressive. With a Ph.D. from Yale’s School of Drama and a published dissertation, he knows theater so thoroughly that names of plays, playwrights, stage designers and dramaturgs came to him easily (with one exception; see below). Our conversation of about a half-hour ranged widely and wildly. It has been edited for brevity and to obviate the need for footnotes.

On favorite interviews with famous performers who have appeared in Yale Rep productions

Frances McDormand: She was hilarious. It was a phoner, because she was in Colorado. She’d just turned 63 or something. She said, Oh my God, I’m 63! I couldn’t put this in the book – you know – but she said the most difficult thing about being in the drama school was sleeping with your classmates on the weekend and then having to do an acting scene with them on Tuesday. … She was just fun. 

And you know, Dianne Wiest … She was my very first interview. She’s the one who has that hilarious quote about “Oh, you know, Hedda went very well, but Nora, I felt like I was dragging a dead horse behind me the whole time.” Actors, they know when they’re not as good as they could be. They know when maybe they haven’t gotten the right direction. They’re actually – I shouldn’t say this – but they’re actually smarter than I sometimes give them credit for.

And James Earl Jones saying, “I didn’t know what I was doing” with (Timon of Athens). He had such a hard time with his lines. The set was sand, and he’d have some lines under the sand, and he’d just brush it aside with his foot to get his lines.

Christopher Walken was the only one who did not agree to the quote I attributed to him. He said “That didn’t sound like me!”

On the difference between actors and Henry Kissinger.

I can give an imitation of gregariousness, but I actually don’t want to talk to strangers.

I’d have six interviews in three days, and I was going, “F***! I can’t believe I have to talk to somebody else!” Because you’re putting out to interview people, and you’re listening, and it can be draining. But after – maybe 90 percent of the time – I’d say, that was great! I loved that! I love that person. You have to remember that theater people love to talk about themselves. It’s not like … Kissinger! They can’t wait to talk.

On the cross-pollination between Baltimore and New Haven when Yale hired Stan Wojewodski, then director of Baltimore’s Center Stage, as its third artistic director.

With Wojewodski, the synergy between Center Stage and Yale was pretty heavy. It was because Stan had built (Center Stage), and he knew it was still upholding his idea of how and what a theater could be.

Center Stage in its heyday, in its glory days – you can underline that because those days are long gone – you know, it was a smarty-pants institution.

So when Stan got picked – and again, Center Stage’s taste in those years when everything was awash in cash, they did really risky work, the kind of work that really today only Yale can do –  when Stan came he brought his ethos and his taste … his heavy intellect, his love of language.

On writing his first book of nonfiction.

I didn’t know what I was doing. I had no plan. It was just like: Get it done!

On his reaction when a friend asked him What’s your book’s thesis?

I said, “That is the worst question you could ask me. I am just doing research and writing one sentence after another.” But I will say, maybe by the time I got to Stan’s years, I realized that in addition to being a history of the Yale Rep, it’s sort of my feelings and beliefs about theater, about what makes good theater, about what makes a good play, about what’s kind of crappy about American theater. I managed to insert all of my opinions in there without becoming really didactic, and, hopefully, it’s entertaining and fun. 

So I could not have expected that, that it’s also my summa of what I think theater is, and I’m glad I kind of had the chance to do that.

On how writing the book made him proud to be a Yalie. 

It’s an amazing institution. I became more and more proud of having gone there as time went on. This (book), of course, was supposed to come out in 2016, and it was three weeks before the Trump inauguration, and there was a big round table, an anniversary party at Yale Rep, and I was asked to moderate these ten august people. There’s footage of it on YouTube. I remember thinking at the time, “well, this is just another rumba.” By the time it was over, it was like, “Wow. I got to to share the stage with Carmen de Lavallade and Brustein and Sarah Ruhl. And I’m part of this continuum.” And that was something I would never have expected.

On sands falling through the hourglass.

Here’s the breakdown: Two years of research, two years of writing, one year of revision, three years of production.

Those sentences, they have been written and rewritten fifty to one hundred times.

There were so many f****ng hoops, and they were always throwing more at me. The hoops were peer review, then legal review, then you have to respond to the peer reviews. I had to get 117 releases. I wish I’d known that. I would have brought a f****ng piece of paper to every interview.

The last thing I had to do was I had to strike Taiwan and Hong Kong from the text because (the book) was produced in China, and they didn’t want to get it held up. It’s made in China. Fortunately there was only one reference to each.

Eight years. And I’m – eight times eight is sixty-four, right? I’d have to say: this is an eighth of my life. I’ll be sixty-four in a couple of weeks. 

On length.

And then it was thirty-five thousand words over what I thought it should be. I cut out thirty thousand words, which was like 15 sidebars.

On what he cut from the book and misses, starring Bob Hope and King Lear.

There’s two or three productions that I’d done some time with. One is Gozzi’s The King Stag. Another is Horvath’s Tales from the Vienna Woods. That’s back in the Brustein Days. King Stag is from the Bundy days. And from Lloyd Richards’ days there’s a famous (Athol) Fugard play. … Well, it’ll come to me. Then there were a couple of sidebars. Fun sidebars! When I was in school there, as some sort of tax write-off, Bob Hope gave a million dollars to the Yale Rep to do comedies. So they did about three of these, including John Guare’s absolutely foul but hilarious Moon over Miami. And then the money just sort of disappeared. I took that out but it was fun. There was a long one about Actor’s Equity. And then there was one about Hunter Spence – he was a “Person of the Drama.” He was the props master who invented the eyeball-gouging apparatus for King Lear. He was a very interesting, strange character – a little frightening in a way. I wish I’d could have put him in there.

On productions he wrote about but never saw, and wishes he had.

Prometheus Bound. That was Irene Worth and Ron Leibman, and it was Robert Lowell’s free adaptation of Aeschylus, anti-war Aeschylus, without being overtly anti-war. And The Possessed. Midsummer’s Night Dream, and that’s with Meryl Streep as Helena. Anyone who ever saw it never forgot it.

On that Fugard play.

Road to Mecca is the Fugard play.

On COVID-19 shutting down his access to Yale archives

When I think of the ephemera I wish I could have found, I wish I could have found a page of August Wilson’s text with his rewrites. It’s that kind of ephemera that is as important as a photo. But I couldn’t access the library, and I’d have to see it to believe it.

On productions he’s looking forward to this season in New York City.

I have to see Oh, Mary! again. I don’t know if you’ve heard about it? Oh, my god. It’s the most hilarious. It started off Broadway. Cole Escola, a comedian, and also now a writer and a wonderful actor, they created a play about Mary Todd Lincoln trying to resuscitate her cabaret career. Because she’s internationally famous for her short legs and lengthy medleys. It’s an 85-minute show. It’s side-splitting, and he’s gone on record saying “I did no research.” So I have to see that again before it closes.

On his appearance.

This is my real hair.

James Magruder will discuss The Play’s the Thing at Baltimore’s Ivy Bookshop on Sept. 26 at 6 p.m. He’ll be joined in conversation by playwright, poet, and actor David Yezzi.

Editor’s note: The introduction to this piece has been edited to correct the name of Lloyd Richards, the second director of the Yale Repertory.