Theater director personifies stage work

As the University Theatre cast of “All My Sons” embarks upon another week of rehearsal, the actors are engaged in discovering exactly where their characters stand in relation to one another.

Larry Lane, artist in residence, directs two cast members during rehearsals of Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons.” Photo: Brian Moore Details The University Theatre production of Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons” opens Friday, Oct. 15, and runs through Saturday, Oct. 30, at 7:30 p.m. in Mitchell Theatre. Tickets: $12 general/$9 students. Vilas Hall Box Office: 262-1500.

“There’s a lot of subtext here. Often it’s what’s between the lines that creates the meaning,” says guest director Larry Lane. By way of example, he cites a passage in which the wife of a morally ambiguous manufacturer talks around what she really thinks and feels to justify her husband’s arguably unintentional shipment of defective airplane parts during World War II.

“It’s almost a mad scene,” Lane says. “The lines seem like nonsequiturs, but on examination you realize that the character, Kate, is protecting herself and her family. It presents quite a challenge for the actor.”

In this case, the actor grappling with those challenges is Patricia Boyette, UW–Madison associate professor of theatre and drama, who will be playing the role in the UT production. She says that working with Lane has given her fresh insights and professional growth.

“It allows me to stretch my craft, as an artist and as a teacher. The more I hone my own skills, the more I have to share with my students. ‘All My Sons’ is a strong ensemble piece, and the collaboration between the director, cast and crew has been electric. The opportunity the university affords us to combine the professional and the academic results in some of the richest and most rewarding work we can do,” she says.

There are seven students in the “All My Sons” cast. Lane credits their strong theatrical background for generating a great deal of the aforementioned electricity.

“They are extremely well-trained. They know how to collaborate,” he says. “I haven’t found the kind of competitiveness you sometimes see in some of the other drama schools.”

Lane comes to Wisconsin from New York, where he is now a freelance writer and director. Before that, he spent 12 years as the founding artistic director of the New Repertory Theatre outside Boston. His 1996 adaptation of the Herman Melville novella “Bartleby the Scrivner” earned rave reviews in London and Edinburgh.

Lane is the first to admit his success hasn’t made him wealthy or famous. Nonetheless, it has made him happy: “Life in the theater is good. Each day in rehearsal you get to enter the mind of a Chekhov or a Shakespeare, and live and work there for a while. The process always demands that you look more acutely and feel more deeply.”

Lane adds that the artist must be willing to share those sensations.

“Good theater is generous,” he says. “We all have a responsibility to others in the production and the audience. It’s absolutely the opposite of narcissism.”