Chelsea on the Edge: The Adventures of an American Theater
Encyclopedia
Chelsea on the Edge: The Adventures of an American Theater (1991) is a book by Davi Napoleon
Davi Napoleon
Davi Napoleon, aka Davida Skurnick is an American theater historian and critic. She is a theater columnist for The Faster Times, an online newspaper, and a regular contributor to Live Design, a monthly magazine about entertainment design and designers...

 about the onstage triumphs and the offstage turmoil at the Chelsea Theater Center
Chelsea Theater Center
The Chelsea Theater Center was a not-for-profit theater company founded in 1965 by Robert Kalfin, a graduate of the Yale School of Drama. It opened its doors in a church in the Chelsea district of Manhattan, then moved to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1968, where it was in residence for ten...

 of Brooklyn. It includes biographies of the three co-directors, Robert Kalfin
Robert Kalfin
Robert Zangwill Kalfin is an American stage director and producer who has worked on and off Broadway and at regional theaters throughout the country. He is a former artistic director of the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and the founder/artistic director of The Chelsea Theater...

, Michael David
Michael David (producer)
Michael David is a Broadway producer, the co-founder of and a partner in Dodger Theatricals. His productions on Broadway include Jersey Boys, The Farnsworth Invention, The Secret Garden, Into the Woods, and the revial of The Music Man....

, and Burl Hash, and anecdotes about behind-the-scenes activities at the Chelsea.

It is also a history of the funding crisis for the arts in America. It explores the theater's socioeconomic milieu in the 1970s. There are stories about attempts to censor the arts and describing increasing anti-arts sentiment in this country.

The book features a foreword by Broadway director and producer Harold Prince. Prince discusses the problems of maintaining an art theater in a commercial society.

It is written in the style of a novel, even though it is a non-fiction work. The model for the book is Voltaire's Candide
Candide
Candide, ou l'Optimisme is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled Candide: or, All for the Best ; Candide: or, The Optimist ; and Candide: or, Optimism...

.

The Chelsea Theater Center was founded in 1965 and closed in 1986. It was in residence at the Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn Academy of Music is a major performing arts venue in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, United States, known as a center for progressive and avant garde performance....

 from 1968 to 1978. Before and after that time, it worked in theaters in Manhattan, mainly the Westside Theater.

Glenn Close
Glenn Close
Glenn Close is an American actress and singer of theatre and film, known for her roles as a femme fatale Glenn Close (born March 19, 1947) is an American actress and singer of theatre and film, known for her roles as a femme fatale Glenn Close (born March 19, 1947) is an American actress and...

, Frank Langella
Frank Langella
-Early life:Langella, an Italian American, was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, the son of Angelina and Frank A. Langella Sr., a business executive who was the president of the Bayonne Barrel and Drum Company. Langella attended Washington Elementary School and Bayonne High School in Bayonne...

, Christopher Lloyd
Christopher Lloyd
Christopher Allen Lloyd is an American actor. He is best known for playing Emmett Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy, Uncle Fester in The Addams Family and Addams Family Values, and Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He played Reverend Jim Ignatowski in the television series Taxi and more...

 and Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep
Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep is an American actress who has worked in theatre, television and film.Streep made her professional stage debut in 1971's The Playboy of Seville, before her screen debut in the television movie The Deadliest Season in 1977. In that same year, she made her film debut with...

 were among the actors who worked at the Chelsea. Directors included Des McAnuff
Des McAnuff
Desmond McAnuff is the Canadian-American artistic director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and director of musical theatre of such Broadway productions as Big River, The Who's Tommy and Jersey Boys.-Biography:...

, Hal Prince
Hal Prince
Harold Smith Prince is an American theatrical producer and director associated with many of the best-known Broadway musical productions of the past half-century...

, John Hirsch
John Hirsch
John Stephen Hirsch, OC was an Hungarian-Canadian theater director. He was born in Siófok, Hungary, and escaped Hungary during World War Two as a refugee orphan...

, and Alan Schneider
Alan Schneider
Alan Schneider was an American theatre director and mentor responsible for more than 100 theatre productions. In 1984 he was honored with a Drama Desk Special Award for serving a wide range of playwrights...

.

In 1965, when Robert Kalfin founded the Chelsea, there were few nonprofit theaters in New York. During the next ten years, new theaters opened, funding sources decreased, and costs rose. Many nonprofit theaters started to do conventional work that would attract audiences. Kalfin and his partners, David and Hash, continued to do innovative work.

Critics often said that the Chelsea stretched the boundaries of theater. Spectators subscribed to seasons before they knew what the Chelsea would produce the following year. On the other hand, there were many clashes behind the scenes.

Chapter Titles

1 Wherein Robert Kalfin uses his salary to pay for Chelsea's first off-Broadway contract production in order to attract media attention and funding and thereby loses his partners and his space.

2 How Chelsea finds an ideal, inexpensive space in a major cultural institution which rarely attracts Manhattan audiences and where agents don't send performers to audition.

3 Wherein Chelsea's empathic Caucasian director discovers exciting black plays and gives militant performers a forum for their views, and how this results in a major triumph for the young theater—an international tour which the actors abandon in Zurich.

4 In which Chelsea mounts three major productions, moves two shows off-Broadway for unlimited runs, is featured on the front page of the Arts and Leisure section of the New York Times and can't get funding to finish the season. Again.

5 How Chelsea soars on borrowed wings.

6 Wherein Chelsea creates a Manhattan annex to house Brooklyn successes. How it opens shows, books shows, and rents spaces to other producers at the Westside Theater while continuing to move Brooklyn productions to inappropriate, overpriced rental houses.

7 In which commercial interests rally for art while artists sabotage a revolutionary production. Chelsea wins major awards for best off-Broadway and best Broadway show of the season but doesn't make any money. Audiences, theater artists, and critics take note, while funding sources make note of the growing deficit.

8 How Kalfin defends art from an experimental playwright, a Tony-nominated actress, a Hollywood star, his partners, his board, and a tribe of Indians. While backstage tensions grow, Macheath hangs.

9 Wherein Chelsea condemns the prince and aborts the family, parts three and four.

10 How a monster loses its heads.

11 Wherein we continue Chelsea, the story of a house.

12 How Chelsea cancels a season in order to pay its debts and cannot secure subsequent funding because it has not been producing plays. Our story reaches a happy end, of course.

Comments

"I have vivid memories of Bob Kalfin. His laughter, enthusiasm, and intensity. He made us all feel special and a part of something important...This book is interesting to me because it explores group dynamics...How does one maintain an organization that is created out of the passion and spontaneity and chemistry of certain key individuals?" Glenn Close
Glenn Close
Glenn Close is an American actress and singer of theatre and film, known for her roles as a femme fatale Glenn Close (born March 19, 1947) is an American actress and singer of theatre and film, known for her roles as a femme fatale Glenn Close (born March 19, 1947) is an American actress and...



"A brightly written, thoroughly absorbing account of one of the most innovative theatrical companies of the last five decades. Clashing ideals, opposing personalities, economic hazards and withal superb and original productions are all part of Davi Napoleon's narrative and make up a beguiling chapter of our theatrical history." Thomas Lask, book reviewer New York Times.

"Bob Kalfin is a unique man and Chelsea on the Edge is a fascinating account of the unique theater he created. I doubt we will ever see the like of such a theater again." Frank Langella
Frank Langella
-Early life:Langella, an Italian American, was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, the son of Angelina and Frank A. Langella Sr., a business executive who was the president of the Bayonne Barrel and Drum Company. Langella attended Washington Elementary School and Bayonne High School in Bayonne...



"I believe this book documents a tragedy. It is a metaphor for the change in the priorities of our societey. It follows a diminishing curve of moral responsibility emphasized by the government's unwillingness to acknowledge the place of art in the quality of our lives...They tell me that it's only cyclical, that times will change, that the worship of Mammon will give way to daydreaming, impracticality, naivete, idealism. Perhaps they're right. After all; there once was a Group Theatre; there once a Mercury Theatre
Mercury Theatre
The Mercury Theatre was a theatre company founded in New York City in 1937 by Orson Welles and John Houseman. After a string of live theatrical productions, in 1938 the Mercury Theatre progressed into their best-known period as The Mercury Theatre on the Air, a radio series that included one of the...

; and there once was the Chelsea." Hal Prince
Hal Prince
Harold Smith Prince is an American theatrical producer and director associated with many of the best-known Broadway musical productions of the past half-century...

, from the foreword

External links

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