Word: brustein
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...juxtaposing, humor and pathos, undercutting the concept of the heroic ideal with lacerating irony, and completely devoid of the compelling central figure so key to the other plays, it is also arguably the trickiest one to interpret and perform. The current American Repertory Theater (ART) production, based on Robert Brustein's adaptation and directed by Francois Rochaix, chooses to play up the comic-ironic aspects without jettisoning the ambiguity or the tragedy. It succeeds marvelously in the first aim, somewhat less clearly in the second...
...Institute's faculty and staff help out a bit too. All are A.R.T. affiliates with impressive credentials, and some like Charles Levin have been on TV and appeared in feature films. At their head sits the insuperable Robert Brustein, a godfather to the business and one of the most important voices in American theater today. He founded both the Yale Repertory and American Repertory Theatres, he is Professor of English at Harvard (he requires Institute students to audit his theater classes) and The New Republic retains him as their drama critic...
...Brustein's vision for the Institute somewhat resembles Harvard's approach to a liberal arts education--to teach approaches and methods to acting rather than a fixed body of works. He wants theater training to be both visionary and practical, sometimes experimental but always grounded in fundamentals...
Since 1979 when he first came to Harvard, Brustein has managed to transform theater education in much the same way he transformed the Yale School of Drama during his 13 years there, albeit on a smaller scale. The resulting curriculum takes a comprehensive approach to the essentials of staging a show, while liberally conceding that the students are artists, not just apprentices...
...good example of how Brustein allows his students to make innovation the only expectation they consistently satisfy. Everything else can feel like a work in progress so long as the audience goes away thinking about conventions overturned. "If we don't encourage our young artists," Brustein recently told the Harvard Gazette, "we will have a country without a civilization, without a culture." Next fall the Institute moves into its 10th year, a landmark for any school, but a referendum of sorts on how well the Institute lives up to its own expectations...