Theatre for Lifelong Learning Artist Interview: Scott Fishman
Text: Linda Lau & Rae Mansfield with Scott Fishman
TFLL: Hello! We are Rae and Linda, and this is Theatre for Lifelong Learning. Our guest today is Scott Fishman. Scott is the founder/CEO of two pharmaceutical research companies, a university professor, and author whose lifetime interest in performance art has led to roles in over 45 community theater productions. Welcome Scott.
Scott Fishman: Thank you.
TFLL: Tell us how you got into theatre.
Scott Fishman: In 1998 or 1999 I was working with an advertising agency. They were doing some work for my business and the principals of the agency were a couple who had been involved in theatre for many years. They kept begging me to try it. We were at a meeting one afternoon [and] they said, “We set you up with an audition.”
I said, “Okay…” I went to the audition and I was cast in an unusual role. It certainly wasn’t a major lead role. But it was a bit challenging and I just completely fell in love with it.
When you talk to people in theatre many of them will describe theatre as, I mean it’s a bad analogy right now, but theatre is kind of a virus. It gets in your system and you can’t get it out.
TFLL: Since you were thrown into the audition, what did you end up auditioning with? Did you have a piece or did you just go in and be your great self? How did that happen?
Scott Fishman: I don’t recall the specifics, but my guess would be that it was a typical audition with sides to read. I did become very involved with that particular theatre for a long period of time and ended up being president of the theatre for about four years. That audition was the start of getting to know a lot of people and forming an entirely new social circle.
I would say it was pretty significant in a lot of ways in my life. It sort of changed the way that I spen[t] my leisure time. It changed the people that I spent my time with. I actually met my future wife at an audition. And, as I said, I ended up running the darn place a number of years later, so that audition, it was quite an event.
TFLL: Theatre changes lives, even when you’re drafted.
Scott Fishman: Yes, it was a big favor they did for me. It’s very difficult for me to even describe to you how important theatre became to me.
TFLL: How is theatre a lifelong practice for you?
Scott Fishman: It’s a really good question because right now we’re all trying to stay engaged. I’ve done some Zoom productions and readings. It’s not like being there. It kind of keeps your hand in and so forth, but it’s not the experience of being onstage.
More particularly, being involved in theatre is not just being onstage. It’s about the rehearsals. It’s about the people that you engage with. It’s about the whole experience of it, which sort of has this narrative arc to it, where you go from auditions to casting, to getting to know everybody, to getting really really close through rehearsals. You do the production, and then you sort of disband. Some of them you see again and some of them you don’t.
Theatre certainly became for me something that you could describe as at least partially lifelong. The last time I had done theatre prior to my early 40s was in middle and high school. But I really hadn’t set foot on a stage or taken any particular interest in theatre until 25 years later.
TFLL: Tell us about one project that you’re working on currently.
Scott Fishman: I just finished a Zoom production. It was a playwriting festival done on Zoom and one playwright is a friend of mine and I’m part of a playreading group. We meet periodically and read each other’s stuff. I’m not a playwright, but he asked me to perform in it. It was kind of fun, but again, it’s different when you’re staring at little boxes and you’re one of those little boxes. There are things you can do and things you can’t do.
I did some Shakespeare theatre readings last year. Those are kind of fun, but they’re one-offs and you use your voice, tone, rate of speech, or facial expressions.
I haven’t decided yet the extent to which I’m going to reengage once we can all get up on stage again, but everything I’ve done my whole life is performance. I tend to be more extemporaneous than I am scripted, so theatre has been different for me in that respect. When you build a couple of companies, performing is a substantial part of it and that gets back to your question about lifelong engagement. I have to admit that I love being in front of an audience.
TFLL: There’s that switch that happens between engaging in everyday life and what happens on a stage in a theatre when you have an audience.
Scott Fishman: And anybody who tells you that they don’t get gassed by the applause, the bows, and the encore is lying to you. I don’t think that’s particularly why everyone does it, but it’s certainly a draw. Even the shyest person, once they get on stage. You already know this because you’re doing this project, but a large percentage of the people I know in theatre are actually introverts, except on stage.
TFLL: What do you most appreciate about your theatre practice now?
Scott Fishman: Theatre changed the way that I opened myself up to other people. Theatre people are really warm and fuzzy for the most part. You run into an occasional unpleasant diva or something, but they tend to be really fun people. What I really appreciated over the entire experience is that it changed the openness with which I interacted with other people. That was a good thing.
TFLL: How do you think acting and performance can help older adults?
Scott Fishman: There’s an obvious piece, that it exercises your brain because you have to memorize sometimes staggering line loads. The memorization thing is sort of amazing to me. I’ve done shows where I had a 15-minute monologue three quarters of the way through the show. At the beginning, you look at the script and you start highlighting all of your lines. Then you realize that in a 60-page script. if you’ve got a lead, you may have 15 or 20 pages of solid lines when you add it all together. How could you possibly do this? And particularly, how could you possibly do this when your brain isn’t as plastic? And you do it.
The really interesting thing about that experience is that when you see people go deer in the headlights on stage, it’s usually because they’re overthinking what they’re doing. It just has to sort of trigger and flow out of your head.
So there’s that element of it, but I think the thing that helps older adults is that it’s really fun. I didn’t start this as an older adult. I suppose I am now — it’s hard to hide the gray — but I don’t know if it’s because of the nature of the people theatre attracts. It’s just a wonderful environment. And it’s a wonderful experience and it does keep you sharp in a way.
If you get older and you’re just puttering in your garden or something that’s perfectly pleasurable, [that’s fine] but [doing theatre is more] challenging. I’ve spent my entire career doing analytic work. It’s a combination of left and right brain, but it requires a lot of cognitive work. Theatre is more emotive work and draws more from the right brain and that’s really, really valuable for anybody. I don’t care if they’re twenty or seventy-three.
TFLL: What’s the newest skill you’ve developed in theatre and how have you applied it to other parts of your life?
Scott Fishman: I teach and teaching is about maintaining interest and engagement. If you’re in a classroom of 20 or 30 people or act[ing] to audiences as large as 400, [or] giv[ing] talks to audiences as large as 1000. Those are different experiences. The thing that theatre has done for me in terms of learning skills that are applicable elsewhere, is it hones the ability to give and take the energy with the audience.
If you’ve ever seen a teacher or professor who doesn’t know how to do that, they stand at the podium. I always feel bad for kids when I see them sitting in a classroom [like that]. Trying to listen to somebody drone on.
Theatre is a transfer of energy back and forth to and from the audience. You learn to utilize that energy and feed it back. You can do exactly the same play two nights in a row. [One night you can] have a completely flat audience and you go back at intermission and you’re in the dressing room thinking, “I don’t even want to go back out there because they’re dead. Did somebody put an opioid into their drinks?” and they can’t keep their eyes open.
And the following night they’re totally alive. They’re with you and you feed off it and so forth. I’m having difficulty answering the question because I don’t know how consciously I’ve thought it through. I think [my] management of energy in the room has gotten better over the years for a variety of reasons, but certainly one of [the reasons] is theatre.
TFLL: Thank you. I think you answered that question very well, because I think we all agree that doing theatre is not necessarily about being on stage. It’s about connecting with people. It’s as simple as that.
TFLL: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received or given about theatre?
Scott Fishman: Not all directors are great. The best director knows how to take the raw material that they’re working with and get the most out of you. The worst director tries to stuff their vision into your head and that never works. So maybe the best advice I’ve received isn’t so much verbal advice as really good guidance from a director in terms of how they get you to inhabit the part, really inhabit the part.
I’m not a director but I’ve worked with lots of [actors]. [There was one actor who was] relatively new to theatre and she was [just] delivering the lines. And I said, “Just be the character.” I’m not talking about method acting, as a discipline per se, but be the person that you’re inhabiting, and then it comes out in a different way. There’s so much to be gained from just being present.
TFLL: What would you tell someone who’s never been involved in theatre before?
Scott Fishman: Sounds like a Nike commercial, but just do it! I mean, why not? Seriously, why not?
You asked a question earlier about older people and what they can get out of theatre. If you’ve been acting for a long time, from when you were younger, there aren’t that many leads anymore. Probably the best leads for somebody who’s older are all Shakespeare or something, and I don’t do Shakespeare. I mean, I’ll read it, but I don’t try to memorize that stuff.
I had the lead, Vanya, in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. I did it twice. Vanya is probably one of the very best roles in modern theatre for an older male actor. I can remember very vividly that experience, particularly his monologue.
But if you have lots of experience it’s possible to become less interested as you get older because you don’t want to play the bailiff, you know? “I have too much experience to do a walk on or something because it’s not worth the engagement of my time.”
Everyone says, “there are no small parts, only small actors,” but actually there are small parts. Nobody else has said that so directly to you, but there are small parts. If you’re experienced, you don’t want to spend the 100 hours that it takes to put on a production to do something that has half a page of lines. But if you haven’t done theatre before or if you have limited experience, what a joy. You’re going to be absolutely thrilled with it, even if it’s a relatively small part.
I did To Kill a Mockingbird when I was in my 40s. I was Atticus, which is a superb role. The courtroom scene is just plum. It’s wonderful. But I don’t think I’d get cast as Atticus now. Instead, I would be one of the other roles.
That’s a better way to explain it. It’s not the size of the role, it’s whether there’s something in it that evolves or something that you can sink your teeth into, something you can bring life to, which makes it worthwhile.