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The Price of Truth: Directing “Death of a Salesman”

Shortly after retiring from university life and settling in the Sierra Nevada foothills, I was offered an opportunity to direct Death of a Salesman. For most of my life, this has been the play. I've been reading it at least since I was seventeen, and along with plays of similar vintage in my parents' library (notably The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire), Miller's masterpiece shaped my vision of theatre; it was the model in relation to which I understood other plays. To me, Death of a Salesman was the epitome of American theatre, if not of theatre altogether, and I have long felt so familiar with the characters, the language, the theatrical images and the story that I sometimes must concentrate in order to notice what's unusual or remarkable about the work. I've done most of my directing in universities, but I had never proposed the play in academic theatre because of the maturity of certain key characters (I chose to direct A View From the Bridge at the University of Oregon in 2005 precisely because the age ranges were more accessible to my students), so when I saw a chance to mount a production and maintain desirable standards, I did not hesitate.I started work with few preconceptions. I've never attended a professional production of the play, and although I've seen the Schlondorff/Hoffman/Malkovich film, my last viewing was some time ago, so I had neither the advantages nor the hindrances of others' solutions. Of course, I did have the benefit of stacks of scholarship. My last book, Stone Tower, focused on Miller and his work, and I'm familiar with the contributions of other Miller scholars who have done more than I to elucidate the plays and their productions: David Savran, Brenda Murphy, Christopher Bigsby, Matthew Roudane, June Schlueter, the late Steven R. Centola, and other valued colleagues too numerous to mention. Indeed, as I approached this project, I considered that a director can know too much about a play, for the fascinating alleyways of research, paradoxically, don't all lead to helpful approaches to acting, designing or directing.However, the experience of preparing, rehearsing and presenting Death of a Salesman taught me that I did not know the play as well as I had believed, that there is more to Miller's text than I had discerned on the page, and that both actors and audience were able to reveal delights and surprises. As has been the case when I've directed Shakespeare, the rehearsal period took me on a journey that involved discovering ideas within ideas and never feeling that I had truly found all the answers or hit bottom.Sierra Stages is a community theatre in its fourth season that has focused primarily on musical comedy; Death of a Salesman marked its first attempt at producing serious drama. The company has no permanent rehearsal or production space and no retained staff; a small board of directors provides the operational continuity. The initial budget for this production came to around $25,000, of which several thousand went for modest stipends to production staff, about the same amount for facility rental, and three thousand for lumber, fabric, paint, and other materials. The venue was the Nevada Theatre, an historic building erected in 1865 and subsequently featuring such notables as Jack London and Mark Twain. The single-level house seats nearly 250, and, "the stage measures forty-four feet, six inches across the shallow apron."The dimensions suggest that the performance space is capacious, but there are no wings whatsoever; the side walls curve in slightly as they extend upstage, and there is no additional backstage space, so any scenic design must create the offstage as well as the onstage area. There is no actual proscenium arch and no teaser, and the lighting grid hangs 23 feet above the stage floor, so the height contributes to the illusion of space in what is actually a small theatre.I was quite fortunate in casting this play with unpaid actors in a small town. …