Aging is on Arnold Aprill`s mind these days, and small wonder: The longtime Chicago theater director turns 40 next month, never a minor milestone.
But cry no tears. His boyish smile and passion for bodybuilding ensure his thirtysomething looks will linger, and after years of struggling in storefronts, he`s at a new plateau in his career as a stage director. Aprill is in the process of taking over as artistic director of Skokie`s National Jewish Theater, an increasingly important troupe that begins the season this fall with the area premiere of Wendy Wasserstein`s Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway comedy ”The Heidi Chronicles.”
Meanwhile, he has been involved in an unusual enterprise of another sort, traveling about the country and world, sampling everything from London hits to Native American-influenced productions of ”The Magic Flute,” as part of a special study grant funded by the Chicago Community Trust.
That has led to more thoughts on aging, in particular the aging theatrical artist, a growing, important concern for some years now for theater professionals. As Baby Boomers and younger television spoon-feds claim greater percentages of the population, theater producers and artists worry that going to the theater-a cultural habit of the pre-television generations-may not endure. Already they see their audiences growing old before their eyes.
”Where is the next generation coming from?” Aprill says. ”It`s an issue for us at the National Jewish Theater, and it`s a national issue, too. In Moscow, there are no gift shops, no advertising. Art is something to enrich your life, not a commercial commodity.
”But theater in this country has become a disposable-income, upwardly mobile commodity you attend once a month to prove you`re cultured,” he adds. ”We have to think differently if theater`s to survive. The relationship between the stage and the audience needs to be redefined.
”Originally, theaters served specific social functions, an impulse that came out of spiritual needs. Ritual and drama were different sorts of socialized ecstasy. They made you feel larger.”
Too often today, Aprill believes, you find that energy only with the more experimental theaters. ”Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind,” the improvisational late-night show that packs 30 plays into an hour, is one example, and so is ”The Brady Bunch,” Annoyance Theatre`s riotously beloved live version of actual television scripts.
”There`s a certain vitality there energizing those audiences,” Aprill says. ”At City Lit (where Aprill has been artistic director since its beginnings), we`ve staged black artists a lot over the years and they tend to attract black audiences. There`s definitely a heightened participation from a black audience. It`s highly interactive.
”Then there`s a different kind of heightened reaction from audiences who are heavily addicted to TV. They forget the live performance is going on and talk about what`s happening as if they were at home.”
A lot of this philosophizing will be brought to bear on his new role as head of National Jewish Theater. He replaces longtime friend and mentor Sheldon Patinkin, who resigned after three years to devote time to other projects. (Patinkin will stay involved as artistic advisor.) Devoted, naturally, to projects either from the Jewish heritage or about current Jewish issues, National Jewish Theater has had some trouble drumming up new scripts. ”Jews have a funny position in the history of American theater,” he says. ”So much entertainment, comedy and theater come from Jewish artists-I personally consider the Broadway musical a Jewish invention. And yet not that many plays deal with Jewish identity. Why that is is a complex question, although part of it has to do with an immigrant culture, of the assimilation process of leaving small communities and coming here.
He quotes one Jewish scholar: ”Where are the talented young Jewish writers today? They`re writing `thirtysomething.` ”
Despite that, Aprill has lined up an impressive roster for next year, one doused with his City Lit penchant for literary adaptation. Following ”Heidi Chronicles,” the lineup includes Aprill`s adaptation of Kim Chernin`s memoir, ”In My Mother`s House,” about a young feminist poet and her labor-organizing mother.
Then come two one-acts by Chaim Potok, under the umbrella title ”Sins of the Father,” including one he wrote from a section of his Asher Lev novels, and ”In My Father`s Court,” an Aprill adaptation of one Isaac Bashevis Singer`s childhood memoirs.
For next season, Aprill is working on an original theater piece, ”Such Wonderful Heartache,” inspired by the history of the American Yiddish Theatre, which blossomed on the Lower East Side in New York in the early 20th Century. The play will be set backstage and include portions of actual Yiddish revisionist versions of ”The Merchant of Venice” and ”King Lear.” Aprill is collaborating with Tom Mula (with whom he`s worked several times in the past) and Nicholas Patricca, who happens to be Italian Catholic.
”You don`t have to be Jewish to work for NJT,” quips Aprill, ”but you have to know some Jews.”
National Jewish Theater is a homecoming for Aprill, who grew up in Skokie. His heady ideas about theatrical theory, meanwhile, are embedded in his background as well. His early experiences include Paul Sills` old story theater projects, where Aprill acquired his penchant for turning narrative to drama, later founding City Lit and fueling it these many years. He`s also well-steeped in experimental work, going to off-off-Broadway fare while leading the life of a young counterculturalist in the late `60s and early
`70s. (For a while he lived in a kind of urban commune.)
His record is voluminous and impressive, including his signal role in launching the hit ”The Good Times Are Killing Me.” His own favorite projects of recent years include ”Awakenings” and ”The Poetry of Raymond Carver” at City Lit and ”The Golem” at National Jewish Theater. He`s also proud of City Lit`s ”Solo Song for Doc,” adapted from James Alan McPherson`s story about black Pullman waiters.
Though his projects at National Jewish Theater will have a certain establishment link, Aprill hasn`t lost his sense of humor or adventure.
”I`m working on a saga with a writer I met in Texas to be called
`Womandingo,` a cross-dressed, cross-racial story of slavery, with men played by women, and vice versa, and slaves played by whites, masters by blacks,” he says. ”We hope it will be fun and scare people, too.”
