New stage in life after San Jose Rep
Artistic director of now-defunct company chooses passion project
If Timothy Near can be an example to the many artistic directors who are leaving their posts at top Bay Area theaters in the near future, then stepping down from leadership doesn’t mean your career is over. For her, it has meant that “you kind of pick and choose what you want to do.
“I didn’t just end my life when I left,” says Near, who led the now-defunct San Jose Rep from 1987 to 2009. “I’m 73 years old, so it is quite different in many ways (from) the kind of mad energy that you have when you’re in your 30s and 40s and 50s. It kind of mellows out.” What’s left are passion projects; and for Near, the latest is directing Weathervane Productions’ “A Lesson from Aloes,” running at Z Below June 3-29.
She describes the 1978 drama by South African playwright Athol Fugard as “a play about trauma,” but one that honors “the human urge for survival under traumatic circumstances, in a very harsh landscape.” Afrikaner Piet (Victor Talmadge), British-descended Gladys (Wendy Vanden Heuvel)
and mixed-race Steve (Adrian Roberts), all veterans of apartheid resistance, are all traumatized by an oppressive government and a racist society. They variously weather arrest, privacy invasion, institutionalization, the loss of home, the loss of career. As the three reunite over dinner, they discover that they might have lost still more: their mutual trust.
Though set amid the political crackdowns in South Africa in the 1960s, “Aloes” feels strikingly contemporary, especially when characters get real about their privilege.
“Just remember it’s easier for you,” Steve reminds Piet at one point.
In doing historical research for his role, Roberts noticed that “the race politics of that country and this country are very similar . ... In that country, once the elite went along with the (political) movement and the banning orders” — which restricted individuals’ movement and speech — “and the suppression of other people, once that’s ingrained in the society, the sickness then spreads.
“You see certain things that are happening in this country,” he adds, “and then the silence. And silence means assent and consent. My anxiety level, maybe because I’m a person of color, is high.”
Near got involved with “Aloes” when, in a reversal of the typical theatrical hiring process, Vanden Heuvel and Talmadge called her out of the blue and asked her to direct them in it. (Near has helmed Fugard plays twice before, most notably in Aurora Theatre Company’s acclaimed production of “‘Master Harold’... and the Boys,” which co-starred Roberts and for which Near won a TBA Award from Theatre Bay Area.) “I mean, how often do actors get to say, ‘We’re choosing the project, and we’re going to choose the director’?” Near says.
Near knows from the actor’s side of the table, having won a 1981 Obie Award for her performance in Emily Mann’s “Still Life.” She also learned sign language and toured with the National Theatre of the Deaf, going on to play the friend of deaf actor Linda Bove on “Sesame Street” and signing music on tour with her sister Holly Near (who’s played with the Weavers and with a who’s-who of folk musicians). That was before sign-interpreted events were common. “I think I made some contribution to bringing that concept into the world,” Near says.
A return to freelance hasn’t meant a return to acting, though.
“Unless you’re working all the time, like Joy Carlin” — a fixture in Bay Area theater since becoming one of the first members of ACT’s acting company in the late 1960s — it’s tough to keep up your chops, she says. Acting “is like a muscle,” not just for learning lines, but for “being able to be present” in an imagined world.
As she surveys the changing landscape of the Bay Area theater, with leadership transitions on the horizon at ACT, Berkeley Rep, TheatreWorks and the Aurora, Near feels “sort of wonderful about it ... a bit celebratory.” The outgoing generation has left “a big impact on theater both nationally and locally. We’ve kept the pool of artists alive and working and healthy — for the most part. One could always do more to hire local artists.” They’ve also “been laying groundwork for the next stage of diversity and women taking leadership positions.”
Near says she believes it’s crucial for theaters’ boards, as they look for successors, to build on that tradition.” If you want a diverse audience, you have to do diverse material. You have to put many faces on your stage.” While she stresses that every theater’s community is different, she also believes an artistic director “needs to some extent to reflect that community, but also to open doors for that community to other communities.” It’s a job that “doesn’t separate people” but rather “gathers people in.”
“There’s nothing more delicious than being in a very diverse audience,” she says. “It feels great! And to see, ‘How is this group of people in this culture watching that play?’ ”