Thank you for your interest in Page to Stage. 

Page to Stage is a book club for scripts and plays!

How to participate:

Read the script, watch the play, and join our group discussion!

Following the performance at Prospect Theater Project, we’ll be meeting in the Artist Lab.

Location: 1218 K Street Modesto, CA

Time: After the Sunday matinee

Questions? Email info@prospecttheaterproject.org

Are you ready? Grab a life vest and clamber aboard The Orca for a wild romp in the sea! 

In The Shark is Broken, actors Robert Shaw (M 48), Roy Schieder (M 33), and Richard Dreyfuss (M 28), working on Steven Spielberg’s second feature film, Jaws, have to kill time in a small boat while their mechanical co-star, the shark affectionately named Bruce, is down for repairs. Their own struggles–as actors and sons and fathers and men in the world–emerge in a volatile stew. 

We note two threads for your consideration: 

Sons & Fathers

Each of the men have complicated relationships with their own fathers, which animate their relationships aboard ship. Scheider’s father was physically abusive; Shaw’s father took his own life. Their regrets and recriminations emerge in the way they respond to one another, and good-natured intergenerational ribbing, especially between Dreyfuss and Shaw, turns personal very quickly. Though clearly the father/son backstory is a central one to the characters on stage, perhaps even more important is playwright Ian Shaw’s relationship to Robert Shaw–the larger-than-life father he writes about in this play, a father who died with Ian Shaw was just 8 years old. Yet because of his name, his uncanny physical resemblance to his father, and his choice to pursue the same career, Ian Shaw for his entire adult life has faced competition from the ghost of his father. So why this moment as the way to explore who your father is? 

Additionally, Linda Scheller uncovered a powerful backstory, one that may have emerged from Shaw’s own experiences writing, producing, and starring in The Man in the Glass Booth, a novel turned into a play and then a film. The book and play present a complex and morally ambiguous tale of a man who, at various times in the story, is either a Jewish businessman pretending to be a Nazi war criminal, or a Nazi war criminal pretending to be a Jewish businessman. The play was quite controversial, and closed, according to many, due to threatened protests by Holocaust survivors. Dreyfuss in the play certainly thinks it was anti-Semitic, and says so. What does it mean for Shaw to have played such a controversial character? Does some of that stick with him as he shares the screen with Dreyfuss?

Actors 

A key context for the three men on this “boat” is their insecurity about their own profession. Each of them have serious ambivalence about being actors–both as an activity but also (especially) as a profession. What does it mean to be “known for” your work as an actor? How do they assert their masculinity within those confines? The towel-snapping repartee raises their competitive edge, but is it a missed opportunity for emotional growth? 

Further, a play without women actors removes a key dynamic. How do we respond to what used to be a regular occurrence in theater but which hasn’t happened on a Prospect stage since Dwight Mahabir’s brilliant one-man show Satchmo at the Waldorf (2019) and the ensemble Glengarry Glen Ross (2017). Is this analogous to the way we respond to female-only productions like Top Girls (2022)? Does this production’s timing hitting the stage post-election influence those feelings at all?

It is perhaps especially interesting to consider how the threads of acting and sons/fathers …coalesce? …resolve? …complicate? things in the playwright Ian Shaw, who is himself an actor and writer and the son of a (much more famous) actor and writer who died far too young (age 51) after many years of hard drinking, a habit that the man himself felt limited his ability to write. 

If you’d like to learn more about the play, its reception in New York, London, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, take a look at the two attached New York Times articles (or if you are a subscriber, please use these links):

1. Wrestling With His Past. And an Animatronic Shark.
   Ian Shaw plays his father, Robert Shaw, in “The Shark Is Broken,” a comedy based on the troubled production of the 1975 film “Jaws.” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/25/theater/the-shark-is-broken-shaw.html

2. Review: A Bloodless Postscript to ‘Jaws’ in ‘The Shark Is Broken’ Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the theater, a play about the making of Hollywood’s first summer blockbuster bobs up on Broadway. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/10/theater/the-shark-is-broken-review.html

The first one is an interesting read with lots of background on the play’s development and Ian Shaw’s process. The second one is a not-terribly flattering review of the play from its summer Broadway run. Interesting regardless.

Join us for the play and discussion!: 

This play opens Nov 15, with a phenomenal cast of Jack Souza, Luke Gonzales, & Noah Thompson. Directed by James Kusy. Remember, our Page to Stage discussion will be held Sunday, November 24, after the matinee performance. The final weekend matinee will be followed by Talk Back, which is always a delightful way to learn more about the cast and crew.

Meanwhile, let us know if you have any questions, and we’ll look forward to seeing you at the theater. 

Your Page to Stage hosts,

Scott, Shannon and Linda

Prospect Theater Project Page to Stage

Season 2024-25

Lucas Hnath, The Thin Place (2021) opens 9/20, discussion 9/29

Ian Shaw and Joseph Nixon, The Shark Is Broken (2019) opens 11/15, discussion 11/24

David Hare, Skylight (1995) opens 1/31, discussion 2/9

Lauren Gunderson, The Revolutionists (2018) opens 3/21, discussion 3/30

Bertolt Brecht, The Mother (1932) opens 6/13, discussion 6/22

For any questions about list management, email Ally@prospecttheaterproject.org