”But it doesn`t always work out,” says Jane. ”There were two productions we knew, without any doubt, sight unseen, we would be bringing. One was from Mexico, and every review we`d read was fantastic. We almost thought we needn`t bother seeing it.”
”We were wrong,” says Bernie.
”Another was this three-person circus we thought would be great, the perfect thing since the usual language problem would be irrelevant,” adds Jane. ”Pam and I saw them in L.A., and we had to go backstage and say never mind to these people, who by that time were convinced they would be coming. You never can tell.”
”The truth is that you think there are all these great treasures out there in the world,” says Bernie. ”There are some very good things, and a few wonderful things, but by in large there isn`t that much. As we became acquainted with other producers of other international festivals across the world, we got to know this Australian fellow who runs a festival every year. The last time we saw him, he had this weary look on his face, as if to say,
`What can I scrounge up to bring in this year?` ”
The truth is also that the Sahlins and Marsden make quite the traveling trio.
Jane, who has never been seen in public dressed in any color but black, is a rapid-fire Britisher, one of Chicago`s truly intoxicating
conversationalists, just as Bernie, as befitting a co-founder of Second City, is one of the funniest. They invariably say what they think.
Marsden, quiet and slightly shy, is the born diplomat. She worked for the groundbreaking 1984 Olympic Arts Festival in Los Angeles, and ”as soon as I met her, I said, `You have to work for us,”` Jane recalls.
”Besides the obvious qualities of festival experience, she knew those subtle things you don`t know until you`ve been through it,” Bernie says.
”Who has to have a special car, because he`s agreed to promote Fiat, or who has to have a discreet extra bedroom for his girlfriend.”
”Pam also has a wonderful baby who`s sort of the child of the festival,” Jane adds. ”He was born in August right after the first festival, on Bernie`s birthday. We`d been out in London celebrating when we got the call from Pam`s husband, Peter, who said, `I don`t know what time it is there, but the baby (named Cody) has arrived.`
”I know you can`t have everything, but I was disappointed they didn`t name him Bernie,” Jane adds.
”I wasn`t,” Bernie says.
Traveling is only part of their task. They also have to manage the $2.4 million festival budget and keep up morale for the non-traveling staff (which shrank to two or three right after the last festival and is now back up to 30).
Since the whole thing is a not-for-profit venture, why would anyone in his right mind want to do it?
”Because you love, you love theater and want to share it, although that sounds so Pollyanna,” says Jane.
”And for your own gratification,” adds Bernie. ”One of the things about any vocation, be it doctor or priest, is that your life and work cease to be separate. If you`re in the theater, the same kind of commitment comes in, so that gratification comes from something other than money.
”We wanted to bring in work from all over the world that`s not quite from the same roots as our own theater,” he continues. ”To bring it here cost over $2 million, but to mount it ourselves from scratch would have cost something like $6 million. And for people to travel all over and see it would cost them thousands and thousands.”
”You get where a Telex from somewhere can make your day,” Pam says.
”Someone will write saying the government has okayed their trip. Or the English will be so bizarre you can`t read it. One South American dancer said he would be `delighted to dance in my house.` ”
”And the Spanish asked us to give a party serving only red wine, tomatoes and jam-three red items,” Jane says. ”We still don`t know what it means, but we`ll do it.
”We had to learn from, I hate to say mistakes, but there were mistakes last time,” Jane says. ”Bernie calls it `the whites of their eyes`
philosophy. We got the information out way too early, had brochures to everybody in January. Come April, they were asking us, `Where is it?` ”
”We also tried to sell the whole festival rather than the individual attractions, and it turns out the concept, the very notion of a festival, isn`t that easy to communicate,” Bernie says. ”People don`t realize they only have a month to see it all-they think they can wait.”
With past experience to guide them, the festival organizers this time also reworked their marketing, setting up a comprehensive festival box office at the Auditorium Theatre, using Ticketron as a sales outlet and saturating radio station WFMT with a weekend of advertising.
Most of the festival staff`s efforts at this point are aimed at selling the $1.1 million in tickets needed to balance the budget. But one of their biggest headaches is the paperwork involving the festival`s foreign guests. Because the visiting artists are technically on the job, not just touring, they all need special visas. That means getting information-names,
birthplaces, detailed personal histories-and when the government in question is the Soviet Union, as it is for the Lithuanians, the process isn`t easy.
”We were going through an incredible runaround, until a friend of the theater troupe brought all the information over himself, with all this paper stuffed into a suitcase,” Marsden says. ”We got it the same day the Soviet officials sent their final Telex saying we weren`t allowed to obtain such information. But we had it.”
”It isn`t so much what gets presented as what gets left behind, the effects on our own art and artists,” says Bernie. ”During the last festival, the Suzuki troupe of Japan played the Civic Theatre, and they brought with them some sacred hangings with totemic meanings, set pieces that only they were supposed to touch.
”But, of course, American stage unions are very strict about letting anyone else touch scenery during set-up,” Bernie continues. ”`No foreigner is going to touch anything on our stage,` one of them said. Well, it took about an hour, but they were working side by side, helping each other. Someone even handed Suzuki a pair of pliers and suggested he help out.
”And right after the final performance, all of the Japanese and all the American technical crew members gathered together on stage to give thanks to the gods for a successful engagement. The Japanese taught the Americans this prayer, containing a lot of grunting and handclapping, and then proceeded to do it.
”And when it was over,” Bernie adds, ”this one stagehand that the Japanese had taken to calling `Harvey san` took me aside and said, `Now you be sure you bring them back.` ”
