With the Tony buzz this past weekend, I know I've been wondering “how does one create a career in theatre anyway?” While James Corden’s “Opening Number” Sunday night ensuring everyone watching that they too could make it to Broadway was indeed inspiring, it’s focus was exclusively upon the actors on the stage. But what about the people who make these shows possible from their very inception? Plays must be written and workshopped, produced and directed before they can be performed! And before that can even be thought about, the actors need to be trained. These steps require a much larger group of people than the cast we as the audience get to watch on stage. As they say, “it takes a village” -- or more accurately in theatre, it takes a community. This is precisely what the Tony Awards are all about: acknowledging and appreciating the hard work of scriptwriters, producers, directors, (as well as the actors and actresses!) and through this, showcasing the depth and inclusivity of the theatre community.
As if in preparation for Sunday night, last Thursday night, I had the opportunity to sit down with Corinne Mason, Theatre Faculty Professor at Massasoit Community College in Brockton, MA and director of countless plays (she hasn’t actively kept count, but her resume lists somewhere over forty). Mason is currently directing the upcoming production of "The Werewolves" with the community based arts initiative, Artists from Suburbia, out of East Bridgewater, MA. This is how I came to have the pleasure of knowing her: I am her assistant director. One afternoon before rehearsal, Corinne shared with me a bit of her life’s story and some advice on what it takes to make it in the theatre profession.
Throughout high school, Mason took part in every play and musical available to her. Some of her favorite roles include Bella from “Lost in Yonkers” at Nemasket River Productions in Middleboro and Smittie in “How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying” at her alma mater, Stoughton High.
While theatre was all Mason could imagine herself doing with her life, she had no intention of attending a college of the arts. Her plan was to get to New York and audition, no additional schooling involved. She was working with the Worcester Foothills Theatre when she received a phone call asking her when she would like to schedule her audition at The American Musical and Dramatic Academy and she realized that someone had filled out the application forms for her -- and changed the course of her life entirely. For after two years at AMDA studying musical theatre, Mason furthered her education at The New School, where she earned a degree in creative writing and literature. In her four years in New York, Mason began to teach theatre and she realized she “loved the process more than the product”. Witnessing the ways in which her pupils would change and grow during the process of a play was like nothing she had ever seen before. During a year of traveling between New York for work and Boston for her Masters degree in Theatre Education from Emerson College, Mason completed her education and realized her career as a professor and a director. She moved back to the South Shore and has had an active role in the theatre community's growth ever since.
The final question I posed to Mason was this: “What is your advice to anyone working to break their way into a paying theater profession?” She paused for a moment and what she said surprised me:
“Don’t do it. If there’s anything else you can do. But if you’re the type of person that can’t live without it, you need to take every opportunity that comes your way in all fields of interest.... You have to be hungry because it’s not easy.”
Mason’s very practical advice may seem a bit harsh, but what kind of a professor and director would she be if she were not honest? If she did not push people to be their very best?
Mason has spoken before about the potential theatre has to render “someone else’s life, the stories of people’s lives” more comprehensible. Through “getting to know what other people are going through, who people are and why they do what they do,” Mason says, we can learn to be “more empathetic and open”.
That is the purpose and the draw of the theatre community, and it is this constant growth in understanding and humility for which people like Corinne Mason are working.
