When the local talent gets
too pricey, look offshore

By CHARLIE VARON Illustration by Calef Brown "Some Off Broadway producers and theater executives say the season's collapse reflects the very nature of Off Broadway, where small houses and narrow profit margins make the life of a production especially precarious." -- The New York Times, June 12, 1996 3/12/97, New York The second act is a mess. Bernie turns to me -- we're sitting in on rehearsal, back row of the Promenade, two weeks before this turkey is supposed to open -- and he says, "Charlie, the critics will cream us." So we go down the list. Change director, hire a script doctor, add a couple songs? To an Albee play? Bernie gets up, says he's going to the toilet. He has angina, needs water for the pills. Comes back half an hour later, tells me he's made some calls. Stops the rehearsal, fires the cast and crew on the spot. 3/14/97, Manila We're in a small factory that used to make T-shirts. Where there were sewing machines, now there's computers. We meet the writers. Eight guys in bluejeans, American culture-literate, glad for the work. Cut their teeth doing Harlequin novels and Seinfeld subtitles for South Asia. Bernie tells them, "All we're committed to is Act I, Scene 3. Everything else is up for grabs. Go crazy." 3/15/97, Bombay The actors are waiting for us -- Bernie had called ahead to a casting agent. We look over their resumés: they've all done dozens of movies. What it costs to get Hollywood talent to work Off Broadway -- here we pay 300 rupees a day and they're thrilled. Bernie heads to Kuala Lumpur to talk to set designers. I fly to New York to update the investors. 3/17/97, Port au Prince On an unscheduled refueling stop, I zoom into town and meet a local whizkid who's directing a couple of Mamet one-acts -- in French. But his English isn't bad, and he's happy to work out of his apartment. His cousin can install the extra phone lines, to carry the video feed from Bombay. I call Bernie with the news -- he says the long-distance bill is gonna kill us. 3/18/97, New York The investors look at the new numbers and are thrilled. Bernie calls -- he's found a kid who'll run the sound and light cues from his computer in Macao. Over the goddamned Internet! 3/20/97, Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province Bernie calls 2 a.m. yesterday. Big fire in the Manila plant, computers burnt to a crisp. I hop on a plane, find an outfit here that uses ex-university students. They charge by the scene -- will save us 20 percent! Fax White House urging them to go slow on sanctions. AT&T gives us free long-distance in exchange for a quarter-page ad in the program. 3/21/97, New York The saloon doors, moon rocks and log cabin facade arrive from the set shop in Djakarta. Actors Equity, stagehands union, etc., file grievances, demand end to offshore work. We offer to add a line on the marquee: "Assembled in USA from foreign components." 3/22/97, Hong Kong We need the cast in New York for tech, but all planes out of Bombay are grounded by an early monsoon. I fax layoff notices to India, then zip here to track down an idle Gilbert & Sullivan troupe. They're one woman short. I phone Xuzhou to cut the Nurse. JAL will fly the new cast to JFK in exchange for 1 percent of the gross. 3/23/97, New York Smoking jackets finally in from Belarus. Way too small. Hong Kong cast doesn't like the idea of sleeping on the stage. We offer futons. They threaten to strike. Bernie fires them. We put out urgent call for undocumented actors in the tri-state area. Equity announces boycott. 3/24/97 Times article accuses Xuzhou Writers Cooperative of using political prisoners. Four of seven investors pull out. Haiti calls -- our guy wants a bigger TV. Bernie fires him, steps in as director. Still waiting for script transliterations for Belgian, Turkish and Syrian cast members. 3/25/97 Picket line snakes around block. Seventy percent of ticket orders now cancelled. In middle of Mussolini's soliloquy, Bernie has a coronary. I step in, finish the dress rehearsal. 3/26/97 It always amazes me how everything comes together on opening night. Not a missed entrance, not a flubbed line. Light cues perfect. The mariachis were fabulous. And a full house -- bless Bernie's heart. From his sickbed he got 300 audience replacements flown in from Trinidad. They loved it! It's past midnight now, and all of us -- cast, crew, audience, and our remaining investors -- are here in the theatre, waiting up for the reviews. There's a big pot of coffee, and a tray full of jelly doughnuts. It's a real family feeling. Charlie Varon is a humorist, playwright and solo performer. His one-man show "Rush Limbaugh in Night School" ran for many months in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Off Broadway in New York. His new play, "Nader's Children," is scheduled to open next spring in San Francisco. He is also co-founder of the citizen group Californians for Earthquake Prevention.

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