In this episode Stephen Macht describes how a chance meeting with Michel Saint Denis after a performance of Danton's Death at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire led him to attend the Lamda of Michael MacOwen and Norman Ayrton in the 1960's, how it was Brian Cox that told him Kennedy had been assassinated and how he returned to Lamda a few years later to research a unique PhD dissertation about the history of acting teaching at the school.
This episode contains some adult material and language. Maybe don't play it in the car on the way home after picking up the kids from nursery....
In this episode Stephen Macht describes how a chance meeting with Michel Saint Denis after a performance of Danton's Death at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire led him to attend the Lamda of Michael MacOwen and Norman Ayrton in the 1960's, how it was Brian Cox that told him Kennedy had been assassinated and how he returned to Lamda a few years later to research a unique PhD dissertation about the history of acting teaching at the school.
This episode contains some adult material and language. Maybe don't play it in the car on the way home after picking up the kids from nursery....
So the preparation that I learned through that mask course and then transferred to all of my training further in the method when I came back to the States, it allowed me to discover who I was as a young man. What I hated; what I loved; what I wanted to fuck; what I wanted to eat, what I...all that seven deadly sins, it all came out in me. And every character I then played, for real, was based on - it's those lines, as Michel used to say, the lines in the character are the mask. That's it. Forget... just think about the lines as a mask that you are going to fill. For me the core that I got from that Lamda was summed up in that course.
Robert Price:Hello, and welcome to the history of actor training in the British drama school. In this episode, I have a conversation with a man called Stephen Macht. Stephen Macht wrote a really unique dissertation about the history of actor training at Lamda from 1861, to 1970. Stephen had been briefly a student at lamda then came back in the late 1960s, late 1960s, to complete a dissertation about the school. He tells fantastic stories, this is a wonderful podcast, I think. And in some ways, an important one because Stephen rather magically traces a line between what it means to train and to learn and what it means to to make theatre to make art at the highest level, and, and how at that moment the work passes over to an audience. So I think this is a really, really special podcast and I'm really thrilled with it and delighted to to give you a chance to hear it. I barely speak at all. It's nearly all Stephen. He's a wonderful raconteur. So I hope you enjoy it. If you are enjoying the podcast, please leave a review. Apparently that really helps. And also, if you would like to support the podcast, there's a support button on the - on the apple podcast page or indeed on the buzzsprout site, which hosts the podcast, and that would be hugely appreciated. Some people already already have. Thank you so much. It really helps. Anyway. Yep. Enjoy. Stephen sometimes talks about Michael Mac. That's Michael McCowan, he talks about Norman - Norman is Norman Ayrton and Michel. Michel is MSD. He's talking about a period from...largely Stephen's there in 1960s. But But Michael McCowan took over the running of lamda in 1954 with Norman Ayrton, his as his assistant and nominated and resigned I believe in 1972. So really for 18 years. Lambda was run by those by those two men and those two men. Michael McCown and Norman Erickson were avowedly and directly connected to the Old Vic School of Michelle Santoni, which had closed in 1952. So in a way, this podcast continues an exploration of that, but there's a lot more in it besides, okay, thank you as always, for listening.
Stephen Macht:LA has been you know, the epicentre? Yeah, so I've been hunkering down for as much as I can, at my age, and I throw that out to you. Because you must, you must remember what I wrote this dissertation, from 1968 to 1978. It was those years 68 is when I went back to Lamda. And I wrote and did the research there and in the British Museum, almost daily, which I must say was probably one of the best times of my life in actually touching the original source material there, which I had no idea existed. I think I was probably the first one to actually put all of those original sources that I quote in the dissertation anyway, that was a great time. Yeah. You know, it was London in the 60s. You know, it was at the height of all of the great theatre that went on, as well as my study and rejuvenation. So I just warn you that my memory and I tried to, you know, do some reading, so we could talk. But you'll probably know more about this than I do. So I would you know, I like to Start, if you can, if we can...
Robert Price:Sure...
Stephen Macht:With Saint Denis. I met Saint Denis at Dartmouth College in 1960 in the fall of 62: Why ? He was invited by the college to give a convocation for a new Art Centre, a new Performing Arts Centre. And he came and delivered the opening speech and watched our senior production of Danton's Death, which I play played Saint-Just. And these are apocryphal stories to tell you, but they are endearing and endeared him to me forever. So after the performance, he came down to the dressing room. And at that time, my roommate was also - not at that time a famous actor, but to be become a pretty well known actor Michael Moriarty at Dartmouth, Michael and I roomed off off campus and he was the original inspiration for me to become an actor. He wrote the first plays that I ever...he wrote a morality play in which I was a lion, and I ate all the Christians. I think he did that because I was Jewish, at any rate, um, so he played Camille and I played Saint-Just. And I remember Saint Denis coming up to me. I didn't know who he was. This Frenchman came up and he went Monsieur Macht, you have a wonderful face, but you don't know how to use it. I send you to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, you go there. they'll teach you how to use your face. And you can imagine I am at that time 1962. I am. I was born in 42. So I'm 20 years old, 20 year old young actor, who was a major and had been in the theatre, maybe just for two years. So I thought Lamda...? Oh, one of my fraternity mates had gone to Lamda because he said he couldn't get any training in the United States. That as much as I knew about it. That night at a party, my date, who I had fallen in love with three months before. We were sitting at Saint Denis' foot. And he was drinking wine, and we were drinking whatever. And he looked at me. And he said, Who is that young woman pointing to my date? I said that's my date. And he looked at me said you should marry her. What is that? Needless to say, a year and three months later, I did marry her. But in between that time, so he says this. And then about a month later. He he says I;ll write. He had said to me, I'll write them and tell them to accept you in the programme. So I think that's good. Meanwhile, I audition at a place called the theatre Communications Group, which held auditions at that time for young, promising actors, collegiate actors coming out trying to become a professional. And all of the repertory companies, which were beginning to bergeon in the United States, sent representatives to this place in Chicago. At that audition, one of the heads of it, a woman by the name of Marianne Schwab, who I had met in New York, because she was the auditioning head for Lamda. And I was going to have to audition for her. She was the president of that theatre Communications Group and I auditioned. I did my audition for the whole thing. At the end of which she came up to me, she said, I'll take your audition for Lamda I will, I will support you. And I said, then I don't
have to write :?Saint Denis. I said, you don't know who he is? She said, No, but you don't have to write him. So anyway, I go to Lamda in - I take the boat and I go to, to Lamda, and I start my training. And I in October of 1963, I go to Stratford because Saint Denis is directing the inner experimental theatre for the Royal Shakespeare people, the actors, I went to see him. And I said to him, when I'm done here, what can I come and join you? Here? He said, No, you're not. You're not English. Again, I know, this is a young actor full of piss and vinegar and not saying, I want to because I've read your book. I read your book, you know, theatre, in search of style, whatever. So you have to go home, Stephen, and you'll become an actor there. But maybe we'll meet because you never know, something might happen at Juilliard. Again, right over my head. I don't know what he was talking about at that time. So, Kennedy was shot in November, and my mother, who had had breast surgery a year earlier, became very ill and my brother called me said, you got to come home. So I had to cut my training short at Lamda. And I said to Norman, and Michael Mack, I have to go home, but I'll be back. And they said, whenever you want to come back, you're welcome. So I went home. I spent 10 months before my mother passed away, and I married that girl that Saint Denis said that's the one you should marry. I took an MA in theatre, at Tufts University and then a mentor of mine who was at Dartmouth when he was the head of the theatre programme and said, Listen, Steven, because I had tried to work as an actor for for probably six months while I was tending to my mother, and I couldn't get any work. I got one job or two jobs. And then I went to New York for two months. And I remember finally being offered an understudy part in Arms and the Man and two assistant stage manager understudy all the male parts and the assistant stage manager. And the offer was $15. And I had to meet the producer for that - a week. And when I met the producer, he said, okay, he called my back when I told him this story. And when I showed up that next Monday for rehearsal - it was raining, the stage manager met me in the theatre office and said, Listen, Steven, we found somebody who would do for nothing. And I look, I went home drenched with rain, I'll never forget, I call this girl it was gonna be my wife and I said, fuck this, I am not going to stay in New York and try to fucking work as an actor and get 15 fucking dollars a week to do shit. I'm not doing and I said like the other guy at Dartmouth said fine and get the MA and a PhD and then find my way He said he'll you'll find your way. Indeed I did. I took theb MA at Tufts. I got a Ph.... I got a full grant to go to Indiana, which at that time, was the most prestigious PhD in theatre history, dramatic criticism and literature in the United States. I had been accepted at Yale three times, in the acting programme, the playwriting programme, the directing programme, and because they wouldn't be any money for fellowship, I had a chip on my shoulder and I said, fuck you. I'm going Indiana, my wife implored me, take my father's money. You can study at Yale. I said, there's no way they're going to give me full tuition. And I'll be able to act in a company that toured during the week and so I could get paid. So that's what we did for a year I did that. And then after a year, because I was on the road, from Thursday through Sunday, my wife said, this is not working for me. You teach acting, you become a TA. I said, I don't know what I'm teaching. She said you'll you'll dream it up. So then I thought to myself, I know I'm going to have to write a dissertation down the line. What am I going to do? I know what I'll do. I will wangle the dissertation that allows me to go back to Lamda finish my training, and I will write the history of that damn school and put it into context. That's what I'm going to do. Plus, I had done research in theatre history and found that Michael Mac and Norman Ayrton, in fact, worked with Saint DEnis and Ayrton studied with him. And I knew that much of a link to that. Michael Mack and Ayrton patterned a lot of that training in 54, after the war, after Saint Denis' , overall pattern. So I decided I'm going to do that. And I went and 65 and in 68. In fact, I had done well as an academic and I was acting all along and productions there. They allowed me to go to back and I got Ayrton and Michael Mac s permission to come back. Th y allowed me as the first P D student to do a work a analytical work on somethin that was still alive. Usually you know, PhDs have writte about dissertations have writte about things that are dead. An in the past, this was stil alive. But I had a I had one o the foremost theatre historian in the world back that dissertation, his name is Oscar Brocket. He was the guy who wrote all the books in theatre history during that time. So with that, and I think they even gave me a fellowship to go back to, to retrain and to write this dissertation. So having studied and really written really thought about, Saint Denis' work and what was the impulse for al of these American actors, o which I became aware? Who Oh, i England, why were they goin England? Well, seeded in, think it's either in i Michel's book, or in another n somewhere. There's a book, his is a paragraph - and I quote it - I forget what page - that S
anislavski says:How is it hat our training at the oscow Art Theatre works fo Chekhov and our Russian playw ights, but we have yet found a ay to apply that to the class cs. That's his own statement. An it is with that sense that I And as I read, as I spoke to Michael Mac and Norman - Michael thought, Ah, that's why they'r going. That's why some of all t ese young actors are going ecause the whole external pa t, or the whole physical tr ining, we never had any of hat in an undergraduate pro ramme. When I were talking now, I was in college from 59 t 63. That was not offered. So I remember the one actor who did go abroad said, Steven, you have you'll learn how to spea you'll learn how to move and t ey will teach you something abo t an internal approach.
Mac said to me:your right in all your instincts, Stephen, but we don't talk theory here. We just do it. Everything that you say you've written you've read about MSD is what we do here and more. Anyway, so I started to study and I took I split my days training, going back to the Americans, and some in the first class and some in the third year, the first and third years, and at least three, three days a week solid in the British Museum. And I found as I say, all of this material, and at the time, my research showed me that Fanny Stirling in whatever it was in the original in 1867 was offering classes in elocution. And then In 18, around 1868 in there, more, more acting classes. So I just simply wrote, this is this is where this great actress had been hired to teach elocution lessons for opera singers, as well as beginning people who are interested in drama in acting. So, and that tradition, Fanny Sterling, all the way through all of the all of the teachers, all of the heads of the school only got more and more and more now why I said, Why did they do this? So one of the things that that Indiana made me do in preparation for this study, was to study what was happening during this time, and because my interest was in Lamda, and I knew it had its roots in the London Academy of Music, I studied, I started to do some research about the actor managers. Why did that whole movement come about? Why And What happened during the Industrial Revolution? That allowed not only Henry Irving but McCready and people before him. What do they do? Well, what they did is after becoming stars, and with trains, they took the whole production all around the circuit to all of the repertory theatres. And what did that do that put a lot of actors out of work? Economically, it destroyed the training grounds for young actors in England, and the only way they could begin to learn with one of two ways either get accepted as young apprentices in that travelling company or go to school. And, and acting academies started to appear. And the whole tradition of English teaching came about. Well, lucky for me, and lucky for a whole legions of actors that we were trained by, by some very wonderful people. Michael Waugh was I'll never forget, was my introduction to Shakespeare. And and that was in that was before I finished - that I was in 63. I'll never forget what he said to me: Stephen. You're really fine but you're fucking in your head, man. When you come into the room and you talk to Lady Anne as Richard the Third, Look at her, then fucking kick her! He said, you don't have to
talk to her:fucking kick her, and then say the words. So it was a profound moment in my young... Come on. I'm 20 years old studying Shakespeare. Bertram Joseph is teaching me how to how to look and read the text and I'm having Michael Waugh tell me. You got to develop your own need to get at her. What are you gonna do to her? You'll promise her everything. If she won't get it then fucking kill her. That's all. That's it. It's over. Those things impressed themselves on me. No one ever talked to me that way. Certainly in the Ivy League at Dartmouth, and I hadn't gone to New York. I couldn't get that. So I maintain that this training, the history of acting training in England has not only its roots in the economic... well, in a way in an economic depression, for actors in the repertory companies, because the actor managers were taking their whole troops all over the place. So that required a need for schools that ultimately filtered these actors right into...by th t time later, because of t e expenses for plays and t e demand for new plays. The act r manager dropped off it was th t that those careers of Benson a d Henry Irving and all of tho e guys That sort of died off. B t the schools got a start there, I think. And then they became mo e proficient because they learn d how to get government money. A d off it diplomas as certainly n 1938. When with Wilford Foul s, who was a real estate
Robert Price:Yeah. I was amazed when I read that story in your PhD just that he buys Lamda for 500 quid doesn't isn't that the story?
Stephen Macht:That's right, that that comes from sources. I mean, I didn't make that up. I mean, I found that one of the LAM and then Lamda, they had a whole. And they exist, they're still in the British Museum. They had magazines that talked about this history. That's where I got all this stuff. I mean, it was a revelation to me. So he finds a way, because he, he had a love of the art to begin to offer these diplomas. So that got money from the government and started a whole other whole other trend, I think. And I think all the schools were doing that. So that sense of of those two forces, I think, had something to do with the origin of schools. And to tell you the truth, one of the nicest moments in my life was after I came back to the states and started to build a career out of Indiana, and I got my first job at Smith, I was teaching some acting and teaching literature. And then I went into New York, and who hired me? Bertram Joseph. Whom I had stayed in touch with who was my teacher at Lamda. In all the Shakespeare - he became the chairman of the Department of rama Queens College, in the City University of New York, and he called me and I was finishing at Smith. And he said, Steven, you want to come to Queens, you'll be the low man on the totem pole. I'm now the Chairman. I know you want to be an actor. So come here, and teach from eight to 10 in the morning, and then go and act. I will take all of your acting. Instead of writing professional articles I had already, I had already published two or three of them. One of them was on the Delsarte method that was bought in the early days.
Robert Price:Was that in the society for theatre research magazine, I've read that article, I think.
Stephen Macht:So out of the dissertation. Because Because one of the one of the most meaningful courses that I did take at Lamda, was Michel's course that was drafted on: the mask course. That was taught at Lamda, I don't know. And, and it was so meaningful to me, because it was, it was the course that that summed up in a way what Stanislavski brought to acting training, which was, which was to have a whole set of given circumstances to believe in who you were. And I had to project a total character without words, only through movement, only through movement, because you couldn't see anything on my face. So the preparation that I learned through that Mask course, and then transferred to all of my training further in the method, when I came back to the States, it allowed me to discover who I was as a young man. What I hated what I loved, what I wanted to fuck what I wanted to eat, what I all that seven deadly sins, it all came out in me. And every character I then played for real was based on - its those lines, as Michel used to say, the lines in the character are the mask. That's it. Forget, just think about the lines as a mask that you are going to fill. So the internal and external approaches were summarised for me by experiencing that Mask course. And believe me, I I taught when I was teaching at um well - I taught at Queen's for five years. And then when I came out here to California, I taught at UCLA and the extension at USC and I always taught a mask course. In order to say, for me, the core that I got from that Lamda was summed up in that course. Yes, there were there were scenes study, yes, there was Shakespeare, yes, there were all the other things that you had to do at the examination of the self was that core, Saint Denis teaching, and when I finally went to Stratford, Canada, in 1975, I played. I played Orsino in 12th night, I played Dumas in St. Joan. And I played Proctor in the Crucible. This was a young American actor that was brought to Stratford by a young English director, Robin Phillips, who had seen me doing Off Broadway performance of When You Comin Back Red Ryder and he said, I want you to come and shake it up when you come up there because none of that you've got everything that they don't have. Whatever I mean, I was way over my head, but I went in fully. And when I finished Finally, with, I'd say, probably three or four performances of practice, I received a note. And who's that note from Suria Magito Saint Denis' widow. She had been in the audience, and I remember rushing upstairs to the bar, and there she was. She was a mystical woman to me, because I had written about all of this. And he looked at me and she
hugged me and she said:Steven - Michel, read your piece. And I thank you on his behalf for what you did, for showing that transition period and talking about how important it was not only to the English training at Lamda, but also he his, his whole theory was what Houseman brought to Juilliard. Anyway, so that's, you know, that's sort of my I know, I haven't allowed you to ask, I'm trying to think about what you asked me and try and just sort of prune the best of my instinct, to you to talk to you without going over, you know, all the specific notes of, you know, from one of the principles to the next, the next to the next. I could I started to read it and take notes. And I said, I thought to myself, shit, you really did all that research. My God, you sat there and that British Museum and read all you wrote it down. You could never do that now. Never in a million years. Couldn't do it again. Yeah. Anyway, yeah.
Robert Price:Yeah. No, it's it's an incredible document, Stephen. And I don't know whether I'm sure you do. But it's almost unique. Like when I was when I started researching the drama school and trying to understand the history of the British drama school, when I found your P, I even found that your PhD existed. So the first thing is, I found references to it, I can't actually quite remember where and then I sent off for it. So I think I wrote to the University of Indianapolis or got my university to contact them. And they sent it over probably as a electronic thing. And I couldn't believe it, there was this really, really detailed chronological account. And I and I remember thinking your method was fantastic, because you, you thought about the teaching. So it wasn't just an institutional history. It wasn't just about who ran it when although that that is marked out. But what you really attempted to do was to try and work out and tell the story of how people would have been teaching in Lamda's, various iterations. And that was just wonderful. And then of course, we hit the 60s, which, you know, I mean, it's...the stuff on Delsarte, and Garcia and all that stuff is wonderful. And it's a brilliant thing you do have sort of imagining what it would have been like to study. But then when we get into that heart of things - strangely, the thing I find, you know, I was a teacher at Lamda until very recently. So I taught on that one year course and I know it all intimately. And the thing that I'm kind of surprises me about Lamda is that it hadn't made more of a meal really of the fact that it was so directly connected to Saint Denis' Old Vic school and that when when Michael McCowan takes over it's only two years after the Old Vic school is closed. And of course MacCowen and Ayrton both worked at the Old Vic School. And so I was fascinated when you said that Saint Denis had actually said to you go and study at Lamda. So if you, if you don't mind, give me a bit more of your time.
Stephen Macht:Sure. No, no, no, I'm I, again, you, you are a better Judge of this you will recognise when you see in me a big vapid area where I can't answer anymore, simply because I've never covered it. To you. Sure, whatever you want to add?
Robert Price:Oh well thankyou. I mean, I mean, my my sort of research things I'm not really researching anymore. I'm my I'm doing a different thing. So now I've moved into a more, I just want to communicate some of this history more widely to people, because I don't think people know it. I think even within the British theatre, even within the British drama school, it's not very well known. And so if you if I can, if I can pick your brains for another 20 minutes, what I'd love is because you're the first person I've spoken to who was actually there. So it was actually at that that Lamda, which I think was an important school. I mean, I think my sense is that it became at that point it has started to become the Lamda which is still trading off that reputation in a way or it's it's evolved, it's evolved from that period.
Stephen Macht:I sent two or three of my friends there, who won Fulbrights, a an actress who died two years ago who worked incessantly never became a star. Her name was Barbara Tarbuck. She and I were at Indiana together in this acting company. And then I finished my dissertation went back, and I and she helped me come into New York to begin to get work because she was working in New York, and she had won a Fulbright to go to Lamda, and she loved Norman Ayrton. And she used to go yearly - back to England, just to take him to the theatre. She loved him, and he loved her. And when he was in the United States, I saw him a couple of times. And her heart was broken when he died. And I I'll never forget, Norman used to you know he had this sort of, you know, very straight, smile. And I'd say Barbara, I went to see him. And she saw him in an old age home, I think. But she worked all the time. And she loved her experience. If she were alive, I would say, that's somebody you got to talk to, or you have to talk to John Lithgow. But I think JOhn Lithgow if you can talk with him. He loved it I remember meeting him there. Because that was the year I went to write and he had just come - I think is a freshman, Stacy Keach there, you know, a lot. Now that we're all older, and I don't know what their memories are, but I you know, a couple of people's i said i sent anyway, because of and they act that time loved the school and had a great experience. It freed them to go on and do a whole other lot of stuff, I think. And they were at very formative years and Stacy even came to Lamda after he was at Yale. He was at Yale in the acting programme and then came to lamda. Anyway, what else can I can I tell you?
Robert Price:A few things so something that - I'm a voice teacher by training I mean an actor by by profession and then I became a voice teacher and I I knew a little bit Kristin Linklater and so I know about the Kristin Linklater, Iris Warren line, and it was only when I read your PhD that I discovered Bertram Joseph, who also taught at East 15 which is another school that I'm connected to. So I read Bertram Joseph's books, and I was really fascinated to hear in those books, some of Kristen and Iris' work so I, I realised that some of that comes from Bertram Joseph. So I don't know whether you have memories or if you could maybe take us into the, into the classroom, if you can remember anything about that work, because he's somebody I know nothing about, really apart from the book. So because you knew him, obviously quite well.
Stephen Macht:He Oh, yeah. I I got to know him much better. When I worked under him than I did, certainly then. I mean, he I, I might have taken you know, again, Robert, I was only there from September, October, or maybe the end of August, September, October and mid November when Kennedy was shot. One of my best friends that I made while I was at Lamda...it comes up...memories. I was sitting and watching O'Tooles Hamlet, at the Old Vic directed by Olivier. Yeah. And my friend was late. Who was a one act of one first year student at Lamba. And 15 minutes into it. He comes in, we're in the back of the stalls and he comes and he sits down, a little skinny guy - pockmarked. I said you're late why the fuck were you late he
says:your President was shot. I said, no he wasn't. He says Yes, he was. And we watched the we watched the show. The end of it. I remember everybody falling out. And Who was that guy, Brian Cox, Brian Cox, who had become friends during that first and we still write to one another. Hmm. And he. So right after Kennedy was shot is when I got a week later, my brother called me and said you have to come home, Ma' s in the hospital. The cancer came back. So. So again, I only tell you this, because how many times Could I have met Joseph, and having had profound influence about for the first time not even the English teachers that I studied with at Dartmouth,brought the text alive by by being able to study it, from a technical point of view, from its from its verse, it's iambic, and the breaks in the iambs that told me change of thought change of feeling. Nobody ever said that to me. And I was an educated guy, I went to Ivy League school. And Bertram was...he's anything but sort of a passionate, you know, guy, he was a he was a erudite, but a very humble. He was Jewish, I'm Jewish, and he was just sort of down to earth as down to earth as that kind of intellect could be. And he was always searching for sort of what he sort of intimated was, was individual about you, the student, and how the text might land, given the parameters of what it was, and whether or not one wanted to violate the rhythm or not. That's your choice, but that there were as you know, because I had another academic. You know, I had a teacher in Indiana and you have not yet you're going to get to the amalgamation of Bertram Joseph, into another one of my teachers who taught me after I finished Well, after I did the first three months when I went to Indiana, he he taught the text analysis course he was an Aristotelian. So I became schooled in Aristotle's poetics, deeply schooled in it, and how to recognise a tragedy, comedy and a melodrama by its structural techniques and what he would do when I never forget it. The first day of class, he picked up a copy of Hamlet. And he had he used to have sort of in in in in an indentation in his head because he had a pipe that he used to put here and there was a big indentation there as if the pipe rested there and carved it out. And he would take Hamlet and he'd go. What are y'all.... he was from? I think he was from Arkansas. What do y'all think this is. He say what do you say is? What do you say? You say it's not a play until it staged... then what the hell do you think it is and he throw the script all over the all over. He'd say, he looked at me say it's all here. It's there. It's all built in there. You've got to learn how to read. It's where you want to do something that's different from there then you write it. Now he was even more even the strangest part of academic - that then in a much gentler way I felt Bert was. Bert was saying, just get into this text you must know everything about it. Not only technically but you. And he taught us about Elizabeth an Elizabethan worldview, he taught us about the revolution of science that had hit, you know, that came to England, he taught us about, you know, the difference between Copernicus and Ptolemy? Because he he would say, there's certain things in this play that once the great chain of being is disrupted, things fall out. And who are you on that chain? So when you begin to when you begin to look at this play, you have to not only look at what is there in the words, but what gave birth, what's the what's, what's the background to the play. So he was more intellectual than any other people that I knew at Lamda, because that was his, that was his way of looking at it. And I got to know him much more. Certainly, when I became his bottom of the totem pole, the bottom of the totem pole meant I was the young guy untenured and I taught from 8am to 10am, five days a week at at Queens College and I lived in Pelham, New York, which was a just in Westchester and it took me 25 minutes to drive there against traffic every morning. And then I would teach and then I'd run into the city and audition for my first part was nine lines as the Brewer in Vivat Vivat Regina opposite Claire Bloom and Eileen Atkins. I had three lines with the other. That was my first part. Wow. But I got that part because Bert Joseph said go be an actor, you want to be an actor. And when the moment came, when I auditioned, ach ! these memories come back. When I auditioned for William Hutt, and Robin Phillips at Stratford on Shakespeare Festival in Canada. They wanted me to do Orsino in 12th night. So with all of my background in directing under, I directed five or six plays at Queens College under Bert. You know what I chose to do? When I went there before Robin, I played Orsino with a hard on. I played him with a big fucking dick hanging down like this, and I said If Music be the food of love play on give me surfeit of it cos I gotta get fucked. I played him like that. And Hutt was hysterical and he said you gotta tone it down a little. But we've never seen that. Usually, he's a love. And I looked at it, I said, Orsino means Bear so I'm going to play a fucking bear who wants to get laid. Wants to get laid, and he'll do anything to get laid. He'll even believe that he could be in love with a boy. You know, he was hungry. He was hungry. And that was probably the reason why most girls in my life rejected me for sex. Because I was too hungry. And that's why I think Olivia didn't like him. I told Bert that's what I'm gonna do is go have a have fun with that one. So from the time I studied with him to directing four or five plays under him, you know, to going up there auditioning and playing that guy. And then I played Proctor. Oh man, I'll tell you. I played Proctor as a Jew in hiding. Because I knew Miller. I met Miller. I played him as an out of in my - I was a Jew at Stratford there were no Jews there, when I was there. And also there was there was a total rejection for my Americanism when I was there. So I used that and decided you know what, I am an accompany, in this play in this world of this play of hypocrite They are Christian hypocrites. And Miller wrote that play, because it was based on the McCarthy period when McCarthy was looking into the House UnAmerican Activities and flushed out all these people and ruin their careers, and I played him as a Jew in this myth, who then finally was hiding his own lives and had to tell the truth in order to save his wife. I played him it was probably and that's what Surya saw. Not only that, huh, wow. That's what I had. Miller's agent. Her last name is brown, might had a fight with I wanted to direct one of his plays off Broadway. And he gave it to me because I wrote him a letter, a 20 page letter about why I should direct All My Sons. And he called me up and he says, Come on, we'll have a bagel at the Algonquin. I'm going to and then I convinced him to give me the plate, because I had saved $1,000 that I wanted to do as an off Broadway workshop. Not he said, cost you $50,000 to do this. I said, I don't have that. He said, Well, what do you want? I said, I want I want to do a experimental or we'll just do it on the weekends. He said, Oh, fuck, go ahead. Yeah, I'll tell it. Anyway. I had it for six months. And then I got this Off Broadway 'When you come back red ryder, which was what Robin saw me at...to take me up to Stratford. But I still had two months to do it and clear. And this Brown called me and said we're taking them. We're taking it back. They're going to do an
off Broadway production:Circle in the Square. And I hit the ceiling. I said you gave me until the end of October. She said doesn't matter. They're going to do a professional thing. I know that you have put a down payment in the Circle in the Square. But they're going to give you your money back. Anyway, I hit the ceiling. I wrote Miller, he said listen. She got caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Anyway, a week before I saw Suria I get another note from Brown in the audience, saying Let's have breakfast I want to talk to you. So I went to see her after that performance. And she said to me, Steven, I was instrumental in getting this play The Crucible done. And I've never seen a more handsome and a more dynamic Proctor in my life. And I'll try to get Arthur up here to see you. He never he wrote me a letter. But never came to see me. But probably the most meaningful thing that I ever had in my life as a result of a performance was one afternoon besides Surya and, and this What's her name her first name anyway, Brown. I was walking home after a performance a matinee and a guy - it's raining and I have a an umbrella. A little guy with a bowler. He must have been 40 and his wife who was wearing a kerchief, and I could see that she was wearing a wig. So I thought, oh my god, these are Orthodox Jews. And he said, Mr. Macht, Mr. Macht, wait a minute, I have to talk to you about your performance. I said what and she's hitting him with an umbrella saying don't do this. Don't do it. He takes his shirt. He unbuttons the thing and puts out his arm. And there are the numbers on his arm from the concentration camp. He said you play Proctor as a Jew. Do you know they sold Jews for two golden candlesticks? And that's the line that Proctor says to the Inquisitor, he has two golden candles. You're not supposed to have gold. When he said that. I absolutely broke down. In front of I started weeping. I said you got it. You got it. He said, got it ! That's who your Proctor was. So the only reason I tell you that story is the mask and all of that work. All that study, all that I came back to becoming an actor. That was 1975 1975 from 1962 13 years. It took me To first taste of training, stop it, go to Indiana, do all that PhD work, then go to to Smith to Queens to build a career to get up to Stratford and play where I was my own man, finally, my apprenticeship ended in, in as an actor on that stage with that background all came to be, I'll never forget it. That's what my whole experience of studying there doing the research, then coming back and being with Bert directing, I directed five or six plays, I acted Off Broadway, and built this little career too, when I got to play up there. And it's the very thing that the Hollywood scout scouted me right off that stage. And I came to California under a universal contract. That's, that's how it paid off. So I have nothing but but love for what it did for me. You know, um, you know, of course, when I'm in the middle of doing all that I have, I have myself on tape saying that my wife made when we were living in London. She used to send home to her mother and the mother would send back and I have myself as a young, just beginning to think the first week of my aunt telling her what I felt about the work at lamda that I was looking at and questioning, am I doing the right thing? I don't know. You know, I feel a little split. I'm, I'm acting, I'm doing it, I'm going to the British Museum. And I don't know how they're going to really do some internal because I was depending on the work that I had started. And you know, all the questions that a young academic sort of actor came up with, but by the time it was over, and I remember Mac saying to me, Steven, you can't stay here. The plant is in you. Take it and transplant it. Where you must, you can't be here, you're not English. Use it the way you can do it and, and transplant this in your own way. That's what he was saying to me. I You said it to me. I didn't know really what he meant. Because I had no experience to back it up except the training and a little bit of professional experience. But after all those years of teaching, and struggling and trying to get a part and then finally meeting Robin Phillips and Hutt and doing all of that work, all the adversity of it, and having finally a Jew look at me and say look at these numbers. That's who you played. It was all worthwhile. And I got the deal to come out to to California, and begin to work on other stuff that was some successful and some not, but I don't regret it for a minute. None of it. And what and because I was taught by real I really felt they were purists, they really did care about their students. I really felt that from Michael. And from Norman. I just remember very good intentions for each one of us. And I I wanted to stay you know, before I had to go home and then I wanted to stay the second time. After I completed it. I wanted to stay because I felt you know, I got it and they were telling me No you can't stay. You have to make it your own now. It's all in you. But you can it'll only come out with experience. You have to go home now and find. You know and I finally understood the transplant had to become fully embedded in me. Whatever I got from the training that transplant was to renew my being is really what happened. So I have nothing but you know after after whatever, you know, the guy who was looking for the gold in the you know with the sieve I feel I got to that I whatever they taught me. The nuggets came out internalised. I found it, using their...using the training that I got, and all the thinking about it. Because I couldn't, I couldn't think any more I just had to do it had to find what worked and didn't work. And through trial and error I got there. So I have no regrets. And I have if I don't do anything else as an actor now, I'm 78. You know, I hope the COVID goes away, I hope I have another chance. But if I don't do anything else, I feel I feel I did the right thing. I really did the right thing I did anyway. And they always treated me. They were real gentlemen, all of them, I think they looked at me sometimes was thinking, What's he doing? Well, when I look back, I was trying to imbibe. You know, I read I read all the stuff in order to write this stuff.
Robert Price:I read your PhD. Is that it?
Stephen Macht:That's my, that's the dissertation.
Robert Price:Is that is that original one? Yeah. Go this amazing. You have to send me send me a photo of that would you.
Stephen Macht:Yeah, sure. That's the copy of it. You know, as I got it, from university films, the first the first copy that I got, it was, you know, and I had all these people along the way who contributed to it and i and i, and that guy, you look him up Brokett I would never have been able to finish it had he not edited this was long before computers, this was all type written. He I sent him by chapter and he and he hand corrected all of the grammar all the mistakes asked and more information where you thought it flimsy. And he really he was the one who permitted me to go and do it. So that that's really the story of it. Absolutely...It was a tribute to the to all of them all those forces in my life. I when I say I stand on shoulders, absolutely. All of them all the way back to you know 1861 Look at that, Oh, my God. people cared about that one on top of the other, or that's what the history taught me. It was it a wonderful legacy that exists. I found that when I was writing that legacy, that melding on top of each other people caring enough to teach this art form, to then let it go out into the world. You know, I just hope it will go on. It's wonderful, really, really good stuff for me. I had one other story, Bert. Yeah. After the first year, I invited Bert to come over for dinner to thank him for all the definiton for hiring me, and letting me go as a you know, Langley work as an actor. And using that as a credit. And believe me when I finished at Stratford, and I got scouted, Queens College, offered me tenure. They offered me tenure, they made me an associate professor with tenure. And then when I got to come out to California, they gave me a leave of absence. In other words, they said, You're tenured. You can go for two years, and then you have to make up your mind. And if you don't like it, or you're not successful, you can come back and we'll give you a job. That's what Bert arranged. He was like a father to me. He did that. And I'll never forget, after dinner one time, he came over and looked at all my academic books. And then when we had them all displayed, and he looked at him, he stood there, he said, these your PhD books. I said, Yeah, this is why, you know, I spent all this time. He said, Well, when you move on to your next job, you'll sell all those books. And I said What? And now they all exist in a hallway in my home, but my wife for lack of storage space has filled the hallway with with stuff that we've had for years and nobody can get to my books. I have a whole classical library. I have 1000 books. I think it's so funny. I think it's so funny, I think of him saying that you going to sell those books before your next job. So that's a story I had and only one other where he got really pissed at me once I directed Dracula, Stoker's Dracula, but I rewrote the whole thing. I rewrote it and this was in 1973. I rewrote it. And I made Dracula into an antichrist who was simply offering eternal life. The human beings do whatever he would think could live on forever and glorify in whatever they wanted to do. And I saw him as Pan actually. And I, I I had a set where it was an open set and borrowing from my my English when I first saw the As You Like It, where everybody in the city wore, wore leather, and everybody in the country wore Furs. I Van Helsing and everybody wore leather. And Dracula wore furs and offered free love to everyone. And I had an open set with it was like a jungle gym. Renfield crawling like a fly up and through it all out until he finally gave Dracula up. So and Dracula's bottom basement was his experimental lab. But in the back of this was a spike. And because Renfield gave over to the Christians he had a spike up ass and through his neck and he was there. And in the last scenes, Dracula came out as Pan with golden horns, and black and just a just a leotard on and Lucy was with a bikini spreadeagled on a sacrificial stone and Dracula was going to fuck her and in from the upper flies came the Christians with light with light. And they threw the light on Dracula and he started to burn. And he backed up into a cross that was 40 feet high. And he's he, in this cross, they had all kinds of aluminium foil so that all of the turrets have lights when he was burning in this cross. And as he looked at me said, You fools, you know, not what you do. And the cross elevated out, nd so ended the play. Well, hunderous applause, but I was alled into Burt's office the ext day. And as I walked in, he had a chalkboard in his office, he took a piece of chalk, and he threw it out. He said, You traitor.
Unknown:He said,
Stephen Macht:Why are you angry at me? He said, you can have Dracula fucking Lucy. . I said, I'm doing everything you said to do I use all the training. Anyway, that that was his that was my story. And then finally, when I got the offer to stay in California, he said to me, Steven, don't come back. You wanted to be an actor. Go act. And I said to him, I owe it. I owe a lot of us to you Burt. Because you began to train me there at Lamda, you gave me this job. And you fathered me, you allowed me to go and act and you use that within the academic atmosphere. To say I was bringing all that back to the students and teaching my acting classes. You allowed that. So you birthed me, and he just looked at me hug me and that was it. So I owe a lot to him a lot. He really freed me to go do what I came to do in the first place.
Robert Price:Thank you so much, Steven, I will let you go now. And but I'll get back to you. Well, we're going to do this for another year at least. So my my decision is to do one year of these one a week, so it's gonna be another 52 or whatever. So I'll definitely be back in touch the thank thank you so much for your time. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.
Stephen Macht:Its my pleasure good luck to you and if I can hel you in any way, you know, just let me know. All right, and if you get a cast of it, and me send me a copy of it. I love to hear it.
Robert Price:Oh, for sure. Definitely. I definitely well.
Stephen Macht:There's a lot of shit in it. So take that out.
Robert Price:Not at all ! I'll do a little snip, but it's fantastic stuff. Thank you so much.