I Can Get An Understudy For You Wholesale

      If you happened to tune in Thursday to the BFCA's Critics' Choice Awards emulating from California, you may have caught Zero Dark Thirty star Jessica Chastain walk up to the stage and accept her award for Best Actress. Undoubtedly a frontrunner for the Academy Award in the same category, Chastain has been present at many of the precursor award ceremonies which similarly look to honor her work in Kathryn Bigelow's Osama Bin Laden manhunt thriller. For those performing arts lovers in New York who follow the Broadway theater scene, however, something didn't make sense. Chastain is currently making her Broadway debut in Ruth and Augustus Goetz's The Heiress eight times a week, Tuesday through Sunday (two performances on Wednesday and Saturday). How then could she have been on the west coast Thursday evening accepting her award at the BFCAs? The answer, while obvious – an understudy, Mairin Lee, went on for the absent Chastain – speaks to the growing and perhaps overpowering importance of showing face at the Academy Award run-up shows. Does this give the impression that Chastain's commitment to the Broadway stage is trumped by Hollywood gold? Or does it confirm Chastain's acknowledgment that you have to play the game in order to win it?

      There are past examples of this, of course. In the Spring of 1975, Ellen Burstyn, then an established serious actress, was performing on Broadway in Bernard Slade's Same Time, Next Year with Charles Grodin. Just three weeks before performances were to begin, Burstyn was nominated for an Academy Award for Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. Burstyn was faced with a dilemma: take time off from her play to fly to California and attend the ceremony, or stay in New York and, if her name were to be called, have Scorsese accept on her behalf. As Tom O' Neil writes in his book, Movie Awards, “[Burstyn's] producers agreed to let her scoot to L.A. for the Academy Awards. She ended up staying in New York, however, convinced that Gena Rowlands or Faye Dunaway would strike gold.”

      Burstyn wound up winning the Oscar that year and wasn't around to see it. Did this decision give her instant theater cred? In a bit of irony, her decision may have been potentially awards motivated as well; Burstyn would win a Tony Award for Same Time, Next Year just one week after the Oscars, in her acceptance speech noting, “I guess this is what it means to be twice blessed.” Coincidentally, in 1978 she would star alongside Alan Alda in a film adaptation of the play and receive an Oscar nomination for her efforts. 

      The Tony Awards ceremony now takes place in June and early prognostication suggests that Jessica Chastain is sure to be nominated. But could her efforts toward acquiring film awards stunt her theater accolades? Only time will tell. Funny enough, another potential nominee could turn out to be Burstyn herself, back on Broadway this year in a revival of William Inge's Picnic. 

      The producers of The Heiress made it known back in December the dates their leading lady would be absent, each coinciding with an awards outing (the National Board of Review, BFCA, Golden Globes, and SAG). Since the show closes on February 10^th, Chastain will be free for the February 24^th Oscar ceremony. Credit must then be given to the producers for announcing Chastain's absences well in advance, as many ticket buyers would surely be an unhappy bunch if all of the names on the marquee weren't on stage performing (David Strathairn, Dana Ivey, and Dan Stevens co-star). By being transparent with the public, the production willingly gave up potential profit.

      At the 1952 ceremony, Elia Kazan's film adaptation of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire won three Oscars in the performance categories, and yet only one of the winners showed up to accept (Karl Malden). Why? Both Vivien Leigh and Kim Hunter had Broadway theater commitments to worry about. Times sure have changed since then, and the days of high profile Oscar no-shows, Woody Allen and Terrence Malick proving the exception, slim each year. In today's climate, it's not enough to just attend the ceremony to secure a win. You have to attend every other awards show to prove you really want it. Make yourself visible, campaign, and give knockout acceptance speeches if you're lucky enough to get called. It's no secret that the Academy likes to be desired, requiring lots of personal attention to prove their worth. Why do you think their television ratings are dissected each year ad nauseum? And so, with Chastain thus doing everything right, will the actress become a 2012 Oscar and Tony Award winner for her efforts? Best to check in same time, next year, to find out.

Update: A fifth performance has now been canceled (February 10th) so that nominee Jessica Chastain can attend the BAFTA awards.