Josh Gladstone has served as Artistic Director of the John Drew Theater at Guild Hall since 2000 where most recently he directed Alec Baldwin, Blair Underwood and Rob Morrow in the comedy Stan The Man by Eugene Pack, and acted alongside Mercedes Ruehl and F. Murray Abraham in Jules Feiffer’s A Bad Friend, an evening celebrating the playwright’s 90th birthday. At the Drew he’s directed and produced such plays as Romeo & Juliet, Extinction, Steve Martin’s The Underpants, All My Sons starring Laurie Metcalf and Alec Baldwin; Clever Little Lies starring Marlo Thomas; Tony Walton’s productions of Tonight at 8:30 starring Blythe Danner, Equus starring Alec Baldwin and Moby Dick Rehearsed starring Peter Boyle; and The Glass Menagerie starring Amy Irving. Regional credits include Children’s Theatre Co.; Shakespeare Theatre, DC; and four seasons as Artistic Director of Hamptons Shakespeare Festival.

the-creative-process-guild-hall-alec-baldwin-blair-underwood-rob-morrow-john-drew-theater.png

the-creative-process-guild-hall-josh-gladstone-john-drew-theater-lab.png

the-creative-process-guild-hall-lewis-black-rob-reiner-susan-lucci-john-drew-theater.png

the-creative-process-guild-hall-alec-baldwin-naomi-oreskes-alex-soros-rhea-suh-david-rattray.png

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

So we're here backstage at the John Drew Theater in Guild Hall. Just tell me a little bit about how you came to direct for Guild Hall and some of your recent projects.

JOSH GLADSTONE

Well, thanks. Thanks for asking. I'm the artistic director of the John Drew Theater, which is a 360 seat proscenium stage at Guild Hall. Guild Hall is an Arts Center that's been here since 1931. It's a museum, a theater, and an education center. And it serves the community year-round. We do plays, we do concerts, we produce work, we present work. We partner with artists. We make the space available. We do everything from concerts and staged readings. We do dance performances. And since the year 2000, I have been the producer here and have basically been involved in every project, in some way or another, that has gone across the stage for the last 19 seasons or whatever it is. Talking about creative process, having mostly had experience in theater and acting, a little bit of directing at the Shakespeare Festival, a little bit of producing, working at Guild Hall, I've had a chance, and you can see the pictures in the office and the pictures that were taken backstage.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Oh, the people you've worked with!

GLADSTONE

It's been an incredible adventure meeting with all kinds of people.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Let's just talk about some of the photos you have here, and your experience working with these actors.

GLADSTONE

Well, in this office, there's pictures of Nathan Lane and Mario Cantone and Kathleen Chalfant and Joy Behar and Danny Glover. Mandy Patinkin is over there, underneath Blythe Danner. These are all the headshots. Liza Minnelli is up there. James Earl Jones is over there. Spalding Gray, who lived in the Hamptons. Harris Yulin's picture is here. Harris has been a tremendously useful director to know and work with because he's so well-connected in the industry. He's got such a long career.

And he himself is–I've produced shows for him. We did The Glass Menagerie with Amy Irving and Ebon Moss-Bacharach a few years ago. That was right after we renovated because when I got here the place was a disaster, structurally. And Ruth and the board wanted to renovate it because really, I mean, you could walk in the theater and put your hand right through the seat. It was so rotten and old and everything was falling apart.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Well, it's beautiful, I mean, we were just out there. It's a beautiful house. And to think that visitors have the opportunity to see all these greats in this kind of–it's not the same, if you see them out in the city or whatever. It just seems this, it does feel like a family, a community...There are others over here. We have, Alan Alda we have...

GLADSTONE

Roy Scheider. Peter Boyle did. One of the last plays that Peter Boyle did. We did a production that Tony Walton directed, which was Moby Dick–Rehearsed. Tony directed and Peter played Ahab. And that was one of the first big plays that we did here back in 2005. There were a handful of plays we did before that. There's posters on the wall, Macbeth. When I got here, I started to do some of the Shakespeare plays, working sometimes with kids from the community and professional artists. Michael Nathanson played Hamlet with us in 2005. Shortly before, we did Moby Dick–Rehearsed.

But Alec Baldwin, Eric Bogosian is up there. Geoffrey Tambor, Melissa Errico, there's Anne Jackson and Eli Wallach, who lived in East Hampton about two blocks from here. They were involved in the John Drew Theater from the 60s, 70s, 80s, all through much of their life. They were lifetime performers at Guild Hall, always in the summer doing a little something. And I was lucky enough...Eli, you know, he worked up until his 90s, and he was still working, as sharp as a tack. So we had the pleasure getting to know him.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

And even Laurie Anderson.

GLADSTONE

Laurie Anderson, Leslie Odom Jr. from Hamilton was here a couple of years ago. Judd Hirsch, Charles Durning. I got a chance to drive in my car with Charles Durning and Jack Klugman. You know, Jack Klugman from The Odd Couple. And the two guys were in the back of my Toyota. And, you know, having studied in the Circle and the Square and worked in the city in the basement and been the hindquarters of Babar. And then the next surreal couple of years later, I'm driving around the Hamptons with Charles Durning and Jack Klugman, who were two character actors that I admired all my life. It was a surreal experience.

And I've been very fortunate that for 20 years I've been the steward of this place and been able to interact with these incredible artists and have a life in the arts. Now that my son has grown up, and he's gone off to college in Emerson. I don't know what the future holds. He's had his life growing up here playing in the oceans, in the bays and being around here.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

What a great foundation.

GLADSTONE

A great foundation! And my wife and I kind of look at each other in the empty nest and say, "Okay, we raised him. He's a big guy. What do we do now?"

But I, you know, I salute her because she's taking her work out of The Hamptons and doing stuff in Berlin and Finland and New York and so... Now I have to think maybe I want to do some work, too that, you know, as much as I've enjoyed being here and having this experience. So, who knows? We'll see.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

And so, as a director and also as a performer, how do those two activities inform each other? I'm interested in the casting process, the rehearsal process. You know, what you look for in actors or in building an ensemble. And then the experience of being an actor.

GLADSTONE

Well, I think that there's a holistic quality to being a theater artist. In the old days, you had theater managers and they were everything. You look back at Shakespeare's day, they wrote, they produced, they traveled, they got their funds from patrons. They were actor-managers.

And the era of the actor-manager has probably passed, but in a curious way, I feel like I've been living that life as an actor-manager because I will both act, direct or produce and they all inform each other. You know, they're all part of the same creative language. And I think, having been an actor and first and foremost loving being an actor, I think I know how to speak and communicate with other actors at various levels.

Whether they're very established or whether they're kids coming up who have just an interest and, hopefully, what I look for as a director, are actors that have that spark of energy, that curiosity, the imagination and playfulness, that they want to jump in and learn and work. And they're not shy, they're brave and they're bright and they're willing to be part of a collaborative, an ensemble experience.

When I'm directing, it's often not just about the credits on the resumé, but it's about that energy and that passion that they may bring to a project. That's why I like particularly working with younger actors who are starting out in their career. They're coming at it with...they're not jaded.

But I also love working with seasoned professionals because it's always a joy to see great artists who are so in control of their instruments, who are able to summon forth their emotions with such ease and who are able to play with language in such a nuanced way that it's always a joy to work with–you know, the commonality is the love of the process. So I hope to engender that with artists that I work with. And I hope to be inspired by artists I work with. I look for those who inspire me. And I find that in the rehearsal room, the best work comes from letting artists really explore and play and be free. And then you start to shape the clay and form. You don't have the performance set until very late in, at least in my process, allowing a lot of fluidity to happen along the way.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Emma Veon. Assignment Editor was Sorella Lark. Digital Media Coordinator is Camille Montilino. “Winter Time” was composed by Nikolas Anadolis and performed by the Athenian Trio.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.

It's about, can you handle the complexity of these things and, with American Indians, it's overwhelming, for the American public, this terrible tragedy and seeing Indians as part of the 21st century. Seeing Indians who are engineers or contemporary artists at Biennales is hard for people becaue they're always thinking about (not always, but) many of the kind of people who go to our museum. They're coming from a place of guilt and also not knowing how to process things. And so to always see Indians as of the past, which is sort of what happens. We're only Indian as much as we're like our ancestors, is something the museum has always been trying to challenge. And, you know, it's difficult. This is not a good time for complexity and nuance. We're trying to flip the script from the idea of just tragedy, this terrible past, to say, American Indians are part of the 21st century doing all kinds of interesting things. And the connections between American Indians and the United States are profound and deep, and it's not simply an issue of us being victims and the U.S. being the opressor. It's much more complicated than that.

–PAUL CHAAT SMITH · ASSOCIATE CURATOR
SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN
Excerpt of an interview for The Creative Process

I actually assumed in graduate school that I would become a teacher and I've taught in a number of different universities, but it was working with art objects and seeing them in museums like the Metropolitan Museum or The Frick that made me want to go into museum work and ultimately become a curator. So when I was finishing my dissertation and had to think about a career, I applied to a lot of teaching jobs and there was one job that year in America in my specialized field, which was European sculpture, and I was very lucky. But a professional career is a bit of luck as well as predisposition, so I knew I wanted to work in museums, and I was lucky enough when
I was able to find my way here.

–IAN WARDROPPER · DIRECTOR
THE FRICK COLLECTION
Excerpt of an interview for The Creative Process

I think there are certainly social aspects to this because, you know, whether painting a landscape or doing a conceptual piece or large sculpture, I think artists, who are all involved in this creative process, I always say they are almost like bellwethers. They pick up on trends, pick up on anxieties, pick up on things in the world almost before the rest of us do. And artists get up, eat their cornflakes, go to work. They really do. And it's this creative process, which as Chuck Close once debunked and said, "Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us get up and work." It's not always inspiration, but another great quote of his is that he always, anytime he sees a lot of painting like going to a museum, he's always astonished by the transcendent moment when you realize that this is just colored dirt and pigment laid on the surface with what's arguably just a stick. There's such a metaphysical moment when these images are created on a surface. In three dimension, if you're talking about something that has reference in the natural world. In three dimension on a flat surface, it's kind of a head-scratcher to start. So great art has a transcendent moment.

–ALICIA LONGWELL · CHIEF CURATOR
PARRISH ART MUSEUM
Excerpt of an interview for The Creative Process

I think that contact with ancient civilizations is very important because we get to have in our life a third dimension. If we live only in the present, we don't understand what happened many thousand years ago. We don't realize what the development of humanity really is. I think it's very helpful to know history. I don't believe that history can teach for the future, but history can give us another dimension, can make us wiser with more abilities to judge our present. Sometimes we think that we invented everything, but this is not true. The history of human thinking is very important, is very useful for us to know different thinking of other people. At the end of the day, multicultural civilization is also very helpful today. I know, for myself, for example, I concentrate on antiquity, but sometimes I work on other civilizations. Some months ago I organized an exhibition on a very famous Chinese emperor – Qianlong (1711-99). And through this opportunity, I studied a little about Chinese culture, and I found very exciting things. And I can compare these things with our Western civilization. All this is very fruitful because we open our eyes, and we are not going on only one track. There are different approaches in life and different interpretations of the world and of societies.

–DIMITRIOS PANDERMALIS · DIRECTOR
ACROPOLIS MUSEUM
Excerpt of an interview for The Creative Process

The whole thing is to get them to feel like no matter where their background is from, the difficulty they have in their personal lives, the isolation that they feel in relationship to that, that within the art community they are embraced, they are welcomed. All they have to do is just keep getting better at it, but the community is there. I think that something we're all looking for is where we belong.

–ERIC FISCHL
ARTIST
Excerpt of an interview for The Creative Process

When I first started acting, I came to Los Angeles for a one week job. I was with my dad and we went to a production of a play called Fences. And James Earl Jones was the star. And I remember I was just the whitest kid ever from small town New Mexico. I'm sitting there watching this play about a lower middle-class African American man in Pittsburg and his family. And I just remember being so moved, moved to tears at thirteen, fourteen years old about a world that I really knew nothing about. Not even from school, even, but certainly not this feeling empathy for this specific man and wife, and she was peeling potatoes on a rocking chair and monologing ire at his character. And it was so moving. I did think, even back then I recognized the impact that the theater can have on someone that isn't even anything like what they're like.

–NEIL PATRICK HARRIS
ACTOR, WRITER, PRODUCER, MAGICIAN & SINGER
Excerpt of an interview for The Creative Process

Creativity is perhaps the ultimate mystery. I veer wildly between opposing views on it and have different feelings depending on whether the creator is isolated or a collaborator. Gropius said the artist is an exalted craftsman. “In rare moments of inspiration, moments beyond the control of his will, the grace of Heaven may cause his work to blossom into art, but proficiency in his craft is essential to every artist. Therein lies the source of creative imagination." And Steve Sondheim said, "Art is craft, not inspiration." And Rilke mistrusted any artist's knowing participation in his own creative process.

–TONY WALTON
ART & THEATER DIRECTOR · COSTUME DESIGNER
Excerpt of an interview for The Creative Process