Lauding an 'Anti-Glitz' Icon

Actors Remember Stage Guild's MacDonald

Words like "respect," "passion" and "collegiality" are what Washington theater folk use when talking about John MacDonald, the avuncular, genially erudite director who died July 6 of multiple injuries after a fall in his home. He was 56.

MacDonald and his wife, Ann Norton, founded Washington Stage Guild 22 years ago with other Catholic University-trained actors, including Laura Giannarelli, Bill Largess, Alan Wade, Lynn Steinmetz, John Lescault and Helen Hedman. Dedicated to rarely performed works by dramatists of a decidedly literary and often Old World bent, the small company has become known for intimate productions that are never lavish but are rich in wit, crisp in delivery and respectful of the text. MacDonald was the producing artistic director.

"He cut financial corners to get a production on, but he would never cut the integrity of a piece," says Victor Shargai, a Helen Hayes Awards board member, who calls MacDonald the "anti-glitz person of Washington theater . . . there was no sense of ego with John. It was the company that mattered. It was the theater that mattered. He had an extraordinary passion for what he did. It was wonderful."

MacDonald also mentored many young artists.

"I think to a large part I owe my career to John MacDonald," Giannarelli says. "I think we all shared not just a passion for the theater, but a feeling that life was the most important thing -- life and friends. And that one didn't particularly need to suffer for one's art."

The actress remembers in their early professional years recording books with the burly, bearded MacDonald, who, with a voice deepened by many a cigarette, recorded novels ranging from "Ethan Frome" to "Watership Down." Though in recent years he mostly directed, he was to have acted in the company's two readings last Sunday of "Hobson's Choice." Michael Tolaydo took his place and the show went on, at Norton's behest.

All last week her home was filled with Stage Guild veterans and friends. "I have never felt so loved in my life," says Norton, who is Stage Guild's executive director and a past president of the League of Washington Theatres. "It's been staggering who I've heard from and the e-mails I've gotten, and [from] people who've even left the area years ago. . . . People have said to me, 'If it were not for John -- he gave me this job, he gave me the [suggestion] that made the difference, he had faith in me,' " Norton says.

She and MacDonald were married 30 years. MacDonald proposed to her during a cast party at Norton and Hedman's apartment after a student production: "He positioned himself by the refrigerator and whenever I went to get a beer for someone, he'd say, 'I want you to marry me,' " she recalls. The next day, when he showed up at her job as ordered, looking spiffy in a three-piece suit, he proposed again. "And I said, 'I will consider it,' and we started dating," Norton says.

A successful staging by MacDonald of George Bernard Shaw's "Heartbreak House" at the old Source Theatre in the mid-1980s spurred him, Norton and their pals to found Washington Stage Guild. "We really believed in what we were doing," says Largess. "And we've just stuck to that through all the things that have happened."

Steinmetz, who played many a tart-tongued Shavian woman for MacDonald, describes his directing style as minimalist. "What I've learned about Shaw from working with this company is, just stay out of the way of the words. And I think that was very much what John's approach was. Your answer will be in the text and you don't need to put any extra stuff on it," she says.

"He didn't want people to leave the show thinking 'what great direction.' He wanted them to come away thinking 'what a great play,' " says Largess of MacDonald's no-frills approach to stagecraft.

Actor-director Steven Carpenter began working with Stage Guild about 10 years ago. MacDonald might sit in and watch Carpenter direct a rehearsal and give him a few suggestions afterward. "But his placing his trust in me was the biggest note," Carpenter says.

Rick Foucheux, now a lead actor at theaters all over the area, acted for MacDonald early in his career and says every return visit felt "like Thanksgiving and coming home and seeing all your cousins."

"Whenever I had the chance to work with him as a director, it was always much more a labor of love than anything, because John was so quiet and nurturing," adds Foucheux. "He had a quiet sort of strength to him that would allow you to take risks onstage."

The company had planned to move into a new theater space in Penn Quarter this fall, but its capital campaign -- minuscule by comparison with the amounts raised by the Shakespeare Theatre Company and Arena Stage -- has been slow to gather steam. Largess, just named acting artistic director, is now projecting spring as the move-in time. Temporarily without a space to mount full productions, the company has been staying connected to its audience through a series of play readings at Flashpoint's Mead Theatre Lab.

Without MacDonald leading Stage Guild, Largess says, "it's going to be a big adjustment, but I am pretty confident in saying that the company will continue and that in some ways we're kind of dedicated to continuing it in honor of John. This is something he dedicated 22 years of his life to. . . . He would expect us to carry on the work."

Tiki Davies Stepping Back

Tiki Davies is known to arts journalists for her martini-dry wit, her love of conversation, her encyclopedic knowledge of musical theater, her flawless bob and her unwillingness to suffer fools. She can be brusque, but even then she's a hoot.

"She loves you or doesn't love you," says Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser with a chuckle.

After 30 years at the Kennedy Center, Davies is leaving her post as vice president in charge of the press office on Sept. 5. Her second in command, John Dow, will become director of the office on Sept. 8.

Davies, who turned 60 on July 4, says a key reason for making her exit now has to do with the "incredible implosion of the news business" and her uncertainty about how Internet voices might take the place of shrinking coverage in more traditional media. "The news world as I know it is fast disappearing. I feel I'm a stranger in a very new land," says Davies.

She also wants to spend more time with her oft-traveling husband, Chic Silber, a theatrical special-effects maven who has worked on many Broadway shows, and hopes to publish her father's unfinished autobiography. John Paton Davies Jr. was one of the fabled China hands at the State Department who were fired during the McCarthy era, blamed for "losing China." The family left the country for a time, and Davies grew up in Lima, Peru.

Her years at the Kennedy Center are bookended by men she views as "truly giants in the cultural world": Roger L. Stevens, who made the center a frequent co-producer of Broadway shows, and Kaiser. Working with Kaiser on the August Wilson, Tennessee Williams and Stephen Sondheim festivals -- the Sondheim Celebration in 2002 attracted worldwide media -- was "exhausting, but wonderful," she says.

Reflecting on Davies's tenure, Kaiser says: "The overwhelming reaction has to be gratitude. She served the institution remarkably well for 30 years . . . but the very first thought is, how one is going to cope without her?"