Edition: U.S. / Global

THEATER; Americans at Home Among the English

Published: February 21, 1999

While it may seem that British theater people stream across the Atlantic in a constant one-way flow, Americans can -- and do -- flourish in English theater. Matt Wolf, an American journalist based in London, talked to six other expatriates about what it is like to work in England. Here are their observations.

A Playwright

Phyllis Nagy, 36, is a Brooklyn-born writer who first came to London on a six-month fellowship. She has since had five plays produced in London, and her next, ''The Final Call,'' is for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

By March 1992, I was living here; and by August 1992, Stephen Daldry had programmed the first professional production of any of my work anywhere. For me, there was nothing going on at all in America. So here I stay. It can't be denied that theater is more important to more people in London than it is in New York. That may be a function of the way the theater media operates in both cities. There's a diversity of press in London -- major press -- which, like it or not, helps. There are three or four times as many fringe theaters in New York, and none of them get covered. Here there's less snobbery about what productions critics will go to see. I have no sense of a real writers' community in either place, but there's probably less of a community here. There are fewer of those developmental organizations, like New Dramatists.

An Actor

Clarke Peters, a 47-year-old New Yorker who left the United States in 1971, played Billy Flynn in the London production of ''Chicago.'' He is currently rehearsing for his New York debut as part of the international cast of ''The Iceman Cometh.''

When I was in my early teens, England appeared to be where the best actors were coming from. There were all these Brits on Broadway back in the 60's, so I thought, ''Let me go where the source of it is.'' I can't really speak on the American system. One thing I believe is that the Equity union is much stronger than it is in England. I've felt, too, that New York has spawned a distasteful kind of competition. I've witnessed friends stabbing each other in the back that -- maybe I'm naive -- I wasn't experiencing here.

For my temperament, this is a much better environment to work in. And whereas theater is very much part of the British culture, it isn't in the same way in America, where television is a part of the culture. In England, theater and acting appear to be a bona fide occupation; in America, it's like, ''That's your hobby, but what do you really do?''

A Lighting Designer

Rick Fisher, 44, has worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theater. He won a Tony Award in 1994 for lighting ''An Inspector Calls'' on Broadway. A Philadelphia native, he has lived in London for 22 years.

In London, people see your career as more than simply what you've just done. You're seen in terms of a continuum of work, as opposed to which award you've just won. People value collaboration a little bit more. As a lighting designer, you're working within a system that has to service more people's needs than just your own, like the National or a fringe theater, where they have a certain set of lights and that's that. On Broadway and the West End, you can more or less have what you want. In England, we all do more shows per year, and get paid less per show. It's not like you're ever spending six months of your professional life in your prime working on one project.

A Conductor

David Abell, 40, came to London in 1996, when he was hired to conduct the musical ''Martin Guerre,'' after a New York-based career touring with such shows as ''Les Miserables'' and ''Miss Saigon.''

There is a more fluid way of working here. In the States, I found things sort of hierarchical; I was told, for instance, that you mustn't give notes to the sound department. So you would want to make a comment and then think, ''I can't say anything.'' There's more of a teamwork atmosphere here: you always think of Americans as big on teamwork, but I've actually found that more here.

For a conductor, it's always good to have an accent. There's a certain exoticism that people expect.

A Development Director

Rachel Weinstein, 27, from Rochester, became the development director at the nonprofit Donmar Warehouse theater just over a year ago, after two-and-a-half years in the development office of the Roundabout Theater Company in New York.

A lot of the fund-raisers here are American, maybe because, with the English, there's a stigma attached to it and maybe a fear about it that we don't have. At the Roundabout, I was one of a staff of seven; here, I'm a staff of one. In London, the Government plays a role in supporting the arts that you don't have in New York. The whole notion of individual donors isn't quite as sophisticated and advanced as it is in New York.

An Agent

Leah Schmidt, 44, is a Connecticut native who moved to London in 1985. Her clients include the Irish playwright Brian Friel and, in Britain, the American David Mamet.

London is the hub of everything in Britain -- arts, politics, culture. It is easier here to move from theater to film and back again. New York can offer more to writers in terms of Off Broadway theaters of sufficient sizeand visibility to launch careers. Here, there are only a few very well-known fringe theaters that really put you on the map. There's a real lack of understanding here of how useful and important an agent can be. There's a dwindling pool -- but nevertheless a pool -- of producers here who still believe that the writer in theater is the central person. I suspect in New York such producers are even scarcer.