Leading
Lady Strong Hand
Guides Curtain Call Theatre into ninth season By Michael
Eck (Special to the Times Union)
The first thing
Carol Max did after finding a permanent
home for her vagabond theater was to buy
a road map.
"I got it out," Max says, "and
I found Latham and I drew a circle around
it. Then I asked myself who are these people?
Who lives here?"
That was in 2000, and as Curtain Call Theatre
moved deeper into its ninth season on Old
Loudon Road, Max continues to refine her
answer to that question.
Max began her own theatrical career as an
actress, but in 1987 she moved to the Capital
Region from California and, under the Curtain
Call Dinner Theatre rubric, began producing
shows at a number of different venues and
hotels.
But bouncing around like a gypsy troupe
for seven years took its toll, and Max scoured
for a permanent location before settling
in the nearly 170-year-old church that hosts
her operation to this day.
Once in place, the first Curtain Call production
was either a statement of purpose or a warning
shot across the bow: Edward Albee's "Three
Tall Women." It's tricky, serpentine
work that pits the beauty of Albee's dialogue
against a woman's battle with the elements
of her own psyche. It is decidedly not light
fare.
Since then, Max has made a habit of leveraging
- at least on occasion - lots of feel-good,
popular plays with the odd thought-provoker.
For her, it's all about balance. Currently,
Curtain Call is presenting Dale Wasserman's
"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,"
Based on the book by Ken Kesey.
"'Three Tall Women,' By Edward Albee,
'Betrayal,' by Harold Pinter; those are
my favorites," she says. "That's
the kind of stuff that made me want to be
an actress. That's what intrigues me about
the theater."
"But I think you have to know that
that material isn't for the masses. There
has to be a balance between what I do for
myself and for the audience - because if
I'm just doing this to please others, then
I'm not living my passion, and that's not
why I got into it."
"But I'm smart enough to know that
I can't get up there and do Albee and Pinter
to five people in the house because then
it becomes pointless. If I just give them
a smattering of it, they'll tolerate it,
and I might even persuade them to like it.
I don't want to quite push them over the
cliff, but I want to push them to the edge,
and them we'll give them the ice cream and
the toppings that they so desire."
What makes Curtain Call distinctive is that
Max is doing this all on her own.
That's not to say that she doesn't have
a strong supporting cast, including her
husband, Peter, a carpenter who maintains
the facilities and builds many of the sets;
Steve Fletcher, the resident director, who
has been with Curtain Call from the start;
and a "family" of actors who return
time and again despite not being paid.
But Curtain Call, which expends from $10,000
to $12,000 for each four-week run of its
shows, is a private effort. Unlike community
theaters, it is not run entirely by committee
and by volunteers. And unlike regional not-for-profits
like Capital Repertory Theater and Stageworks/Hudson,
Max does not answer to a board of directors
while planning her season.
"I have a hard enough time answering
to myself," she says. "I could
never have a board of directors."
This means that the success of the 95-seat
Curtain Call - artistically as well as financially
- rests on her decisions.
Max, who reads 20 to 30 plays a month, has
made a discernible effort to serve both
masters - art and finance - and subscriptions
are up this year by 15 percent.
In addition to staging occasional works
by the like of Albee and Pinter, she has
also offered a string of socially conscious,
topical play about families in crisis, including
"The Memory of Water," "Taking
Leave," "The Rabbit Hole"
and "Looking for Normal."
She's also stressed the role of new plays
in the schedule.
"I'm probably the only theater around
that will do between four and five regional
premieres of every genre in a season,"
she claims.
But even Max is quick to point out that
not all of her premieres are adventurous.
She has a corner, for example, on the works
of British farceur Ray Cooney, whose "low-brow"
material occasionally makes Neil Simon seem
closer kin of Albee and Pinter rather than
laughmeisters like Ken Ludwig.
"If it's going to pay my utilities
and we can do it well," she says, "that's
still the bottom line."
Looking
beyond cancer, back to work By Michael
Eck (Special to the Times Union)
In August 2007, Curtain Call Theatre founder
Carol Max was diagnosed with breast cancer.
"I had a dream," she says, "about
a friend who had cancer. the last part of
my dream was that he and I both had it.
When I woke up, I felt something on my night
shirt, and I realized it was a part of me.
I thought, well now I know what a lump feels
like."
Max, who has a remarkably open personality,
let her audience in on the news almost immediately.
"They have been in this with me every
step of the way," she says.
At one point, chemotherapy robbed Max of
her trademark long hair, and she announced
a show from the stage while wearing a wig.
An audience member called out, "Carol,
I love your hair." Max said, "if
you like it so much, you can have it"
and threw the wig - to some patrons' shock
- into the crowd.
Max's mother survived multiple forms of
cancer for 35 years before dying a little
more than a decade ago. Max's memories of
her mother's struggle informed her own decisions,
and to be sure of being cancer-free, Max
opted to have a double mastectomy last October.
"Now," Max says, "I'm in
my reconstruction phase."
In November, Max will undergo breast reconstruction
surgery. I knew that I had to be able to
wake up in the morning and not see a cancer
victim. I want to see survivor, and this
will help me," she said. (To prove
that her sense of humor is intact, she says
she is looking forward to her new "twin
girls," adding, "I haven't picked
out names yet.")
"There have been dark days," Max
admits, "but my sense of humor is what
gets me through life, so I knew it was going
to get me through this."
In an effort to recognize the care she has
received and to foster research for the
medications and procedures that have saved
her, Max plans to raise funds each October
- which is National Breast Cancer Awareness
Month.
Ten percent of profits from the current
Curtain Call production of "One Flew
Over the Cuckoo's Nest," as well as
any donations Max receives at show intermissions,
will go to research.
