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Aspiring television actors, writers and directors take note: the soap-opera industry is full of opportunity. That was the message delivered by Kathy Talbert, head of daytime programming at NBC-TV, during a soap-opera writing workshop offered this March at Smith. Consider internships. "At NBC," she told a group of some 35 people gathered in Mendenhall Theatre, "we're desperate for students interested in internships during the school year. Pick your field in the daytime programming genre. Everywhere you can imagine, we are looking for interns." That was good news to many of those attending the weekend workshops. They included hopeful television writers and aspiring playwrights as well as soap-watching fans. Many said they tuned in to daytime soaps at least once or twice a week. "Daytime writing is truly a terrific form," one characterized by melodrama and romance-driven storylines, noted Talbert. "But daytime is not a form you can write successfully unless you love it. We're always looking for good writers who can write about romance and relationships and can hear their characters speak." Leonard Berkman, Anne Hesseltine Hoyt Professor of Theatre, is a long-time soap watcher (his tastes run to As the World Turns and the now-defunct Search for Tomorrow). He said he brought the soap event to campus as a way to get more people interested in the theater. "Soap opera is a wonderful craft," said Berkman, noting that he takes his theater students to New York City every October to see six Broadway plays and spend a day in the studio observing a soap taping. Watching the work of New York actors on a soap-opera set can be a supreme lesson in collaboration. "Where else can you see the full force of an ensemble collaboration at work?" Berkman asked. "The collaboration is what we prize in theater. Nowhere else can you actually see in the space of one day of rehearsals the writers, the scene designers, the actors, the lighting technicians, all on the same set." Talbert, an NBC executive who also has worked as a casting director in the film industry, suggested that those yearning to write plots or dialogues for a soap opera should watch a few episodes of the long-lived daytime epic The Young and the Restless. "It's one of the best shows to watch to learn how scenes are set up," she insisted. "As a writer you'll have to know how to create enough suspense and enough romance-these are the two key factors here-so that an audience keeps coming back day after day for more." Professor Berkman said he's been watching soaps for years, in part so that he can watch "theater actors of great talent" who are also earning a living and maintaining a presence on the New York stage. Berkman named a number of Smith graduates who have contributed to those soaps as writers or actors. One, Jordan Baker '82, went on to the New York stage, he noted, and became well known in a role as one of the Three Tall Women in Edward Albee's play. In fact, Berkman said, NBC's willingness to send Talbert to deliver the workshops at Smith was based in part on the network's awareness of the number of television writers who are Smith alumnae. "You've got a whole network of help in daytime television through Smith graduates," Talbert told her Smith audience. "I'm always happy to read the work of anyone that has been recommended to me by a Smith grad in the business."-JME |
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