Director's Notes
Jeffrey Sweet was once a street musician in New York, teaming up with Melissa Manchester to tell stories in song to whomever would stop to listen. Later, he began a career as a freelance journalist and playwright. Mr. Sweet has said that his own belief in the value of oral folk lore was once re-confirmed by a magazine interview he conducted with Louis L'Amour, the author of popular Westerns. L'Amour had talked of the traditions of storytelling among Native Americans, and he emphasized that the heroic figures of their tales were not merely celebrated for their individual achievements but, rather, the tales were told and re-told as an act of community pride.
For his book Something Wonderful Right Away, a history of The Second City and The Compass Players, Jeffrey Sweet interviewed all of the leading contributors to those two landmark improvisational theatre companies. (The Compass Players, incidentally, resided for a time in Gaslight Square just a few blocks from Saint Louis University.) Mr. Sweet's book explains much about the significance of the genre developed by these companies. Their approach should not be misconstrued as a "daredevil" act, intended to impress the audience with the stunt of performing without a traditional playscript. Each such theatrical event, whether a topical comic skit or an historical tale such as American Enterprise, is instead a venue for artists who are seen not as the voices of an unseen playwright but as members of the community at large who speak for themselves. The performances take advantage of an unlimited menu of theatrical devices and styles, and they move from one to the next at will, in an effort to share various impressions of the story being told. This is why actors play multiple roles in this sort of play and why they also narrate for themselves as they do so.
The script and the score for American Enterprise have been superbly crafted by its author and his co-composer Michael Vitali as an invitation to its presenters to invent their own ways to share their personal impressions of its story. It was important to me, for example, that the roles were assigned to let a little of the offstage personalities of these actors inform each role they played, and to allow each of the actors the challenge of voicing contrasting points of view on the issues at stake. I felt that it was also important that the women in our production were seen to be telling as much of the story as the men in order to appropriately represent our own community; and that the actors themselves should be continually changing the look of the stage from which they speak. Jim Burwinkel, scenic designer, who is himself trained in both theatrical design and architecture, saw an interesting juxaposition in the play between George Pullman's feudal paternalism and the realities of the Industrial Revolution. Jim refined his impressions into a clever medieval / turn-of-the-century hybrid, which the actors could reconfigure to suit various moments in the tale. Costume Designer, Cynda Reed Flores, invented a scheme in which various articles of period clothing could be used by the actors to create quick impressions of the many characters, and Musical Director, Jerry Troxell found ways to adjust the impressive score by Jeffrey Sweet and Michael Vitali to play to the strengths of our cast.
We are indebted to Messrs. Sweet and Vitali both for allowing Saint Louis University to present this play to you prior to its scheduled opening in New York next year, and for the personal encouragement we received from both men to make this production of American Enterprise our own.
Mark Landis