Alison Stewart: You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Our next guest is someone whose work is very familiar to the staff on this show. You see, for every interview that happens on the show, a producer has to source an image for that segment to post online and in our podcast feed. Now, over the course of the last few years, our producers found themselves typing one name into the photo credits section more than any other: Joan Marcus. That's because Joan is the go-to photographer for New York theater. Over her 25-year career, she has captured iconic moments from some of Broadway's biggest hits.

From Angels in America to Rent to Wicked to Hamilton, she's photographed more than 500 shows. Her work manages to capture the energy and the spirit of a live performance all in a still photograph. Earlier this year, her work and the work of fellow photographer Karen Roseg was on display at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. The exhibit was titled Photo Call. Since we have a behind the scenes fan of Joan, because we are behind the scenes fans of Joan Marcus for so long, I'm thrilled that she joins us in the studio. It is really nice to meet you, Joan.

Joan: Hi, nice to meet you too, Alison.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, do you have any questions for Joan about her career as a theater photographer? Maybe you want to know how it all works, or you want to know more about the productions she's photographed, give us a call. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can call us, join us on air or you can text to that number. 212-433-WNYC. Do you remember the first time that you really picked up a camera and you took an image and thought, "Oh, I could do this"?

Joan: Yes, but it wasn't something I thought about doing professionally. It was a hobby, I guess. I got my first camera when I was in college and I took lots of photography classes, but it was more fine arts. One thing that I did find was that I was a really good printer and actually I really liked to work in the darkroom. I really loved the process of it, and that was something I found out in college.

Alison Stewart: You began working in theater in DC before coming to New York. What was the first production?

Joan: Well, I was an assistant for-- To go back, it's a story. When I got out of college, I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do. There were a lot of factors that filtered into this. When I was in high school. I had a friend whose father was a photographer who had been with Life magazine. I grew up in Pittsburgh, and he was in the city working for US Steel or something. I thought, "Wow, that's a really interesting life." They had a really interesting life. They traveled and everything. Mine was a more middle-class stay-at-home life.

It made me see there was a bigger world thing. When I got out of college, I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do, but I thought I need to go on a career path. I picked a career, landscape architecture, and I had applied to graduate school and got accepted to graduate school, but I needed to make money to go to graduate school. At the time, I was working at the American Film Institute in their box office, which was at the Kennedy Center. I knew they had a photographer at the Kennedy Center because I would pass his office on my way to the canteen in the basement. I knocked on his door one day and I said, "Do you need any help?"

He was crazed, because at the time La Scala was there. The Berlin Opera came later. Then he had to print all these pictures for six operas. Washington at the time didn't have photo services like they had in New York. He said, "Can you come back after work, after you're done?" I started printing for him, and that was the start. Prior to that, I wasn't a theater kid.

I never thought of a career in theater, more in photography, but then the more I worked there, the more I said this could actually be a career, and this could be terrific. I worked there for about three years. I printed, and I started to pick up freelance assignments, mostly events and things like that. Then he said, "You need to leave. You need to be a photographer."

Alison Stewart: Go out and do it on your own.

Joan: You got to go do it. At that point, I was familiar with photographing a production, but I really hadn't done them at all. I looked at all the small theaters in Washington, and a friend who actually wasn't a friend at the time but became a friend, I contacted was one of the small theaters. His name is Ken Bloom. He said, "We take our own pictures, but this is who you should call." It was the Folger Theater, which became the Shakespeare Theater, and they ended up hiring me. My first play that I photographed was a play called Whose Life Is It Anyway? It actually came to Broadway with Mary Tyler Moore, but prior to that it was at the Folger with John Neville Andrews. That was my first production.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about how you work.

Joan: Okay.

Alison Stewart: How the actual process of shooting a show work. Do you go to rehearsal? Do you get a script? Do you go to the opening night and then take pictures? How does it work?

Joan: Every show is different, and it's actually changing a lot now. I mean, just with social media and stuff. I like to prepare somewhat. I don't read a script. I like to see some rehearsal if I can, even if it's just going to the theater and you're seeing one scene over again and again and again. A lot of it is where you're going to be, where you're going to sit, where the director wants to sit, if you have any play, how high the stage is. All of that figures into preparation for how I shoot the show.

Alison Stewart: It reminds me a little bit of either sports photography or photojournalism in a way, because you have to capture the moment.

Joan: It is. Sports is you never know what's going to happen. What you're photographing is someone's vision. You're photographing something that's not your vision. The hard part is- or maybe it's not hard. The tricky part is you want to put some of yourself into it. On the other hand, you can't go too far astray because you're telling a story, and you want to represent what's on stage. Now it seems it's changing a bit. When I first started, you had to really be pretty true to the production, and they didn't want you--

Producers, even though sometimes they'd say they want something different, they wanted it represented by what the audience is going to see. Now it's what the audience is going to see, but it's not necessarily Roque, seat 105, in the center. Now it's a little bit more abstract, and you can make things up a little bit more. It used to be that you had to be really pretty true to what the show was, what the scene was, who the people were and how it looked for the audience.

Alison Stewart: What is your schedule like, given how many shows you have to shoot a season?

Joan: Truthfully, I'm old.

[laughter]

Now I'm getting old, and I don't have the schedule that I once did. It was a lot. It was juggling time. It was not going to every wedding or family event. A lot of it takes place at night. It's a little asocial in a conventional way. Over the years, I built up a community. My husband was in the business. He understood what I did. It actually was great.

I loved the people that I worked with, people that didn't like me I generally didn't work with. It was a lot of juggling I would say and feeling bad if you couldn't do everything but trying to. It was not 24/7, but it would be working at night, processing during the day or editing during the day when film had to be processed. It was a lot.

Alison Stewart: It was a lot. It was a lot. My guest is Joan Marcus, the photographer. We'll have more after a quick break. This is All Of It.

[music]

You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is Joan Marcus. She's a photographer. Her 25-year career in the theater in New York City captured many of the Broadway and off-Broadway productions right here in New York City. If you have a question for Joan about her career or about her job as a theater photographer, give us a call. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. We got a text, Joan, that says, "Did she work beside Hirschfeld? If so, did they consciously make their images complement each other?" We're talking about Al Hirschfeld, the caricature, the illustrator.

Joan: Not side by side, but when I first started the photos, the production photos were reference photos for him. You'd very quickly, for his illustrations for the Times, you'd print a batch of pictures of all the characters, and they'd be messengered up to him. It was before digital, so you'd rush and make the prints, and then they'd send them off to Al Hirschfeld.

Alison Stewart: Is there a difference between shooting a play versus shooting a musical?

Joan: Yes, a play is calmer. It's in a way slower. It's more thoughtful. It's not more thoughtful. That's wrong. It's a much slower process. Sometimes plays, since it's really about words and isn't so much about staging, you think about how you're going to approach it maybe a little more. In a way, it's maybe a little more intellectual. Musicals have stage pictures all the time.

Alison Stewart: Stage pictures. Oh, that's interesting.

Joan: They're pictures. In a way it's easier. You want to be interesting. Sometimes the way something like a straight picture isn't-- Well, it's. It's interesting. It's how it looks. Some of it's more reactive. There's so many more elements in a musical that you have to take into consideration. Like, it used different light sources, movement, people being in sync with each other, dancing being correct. They're very different, actually.

Alison Stewart: Is it easier or harder to film something that is somewhat stark? I'm thinking of the work that Jamie Lloyd does. Everything is very, very simple. The actors are wearing dark colored clothing and there's not a lot of backdrop versus something that's spectacular, that has huge sets.

Joan: Well, that's plays and musicals. Sunset Boulevard is just spectacular, I thought was just spectacular.

Alison Stewart: It was pretty great.

Joan: It was amazing. That was so full of a million stage pictures, there. Also, you want to tell the story. It was hard. How do you tell how he's telling the story in a way, but that was full of stage pictures sometimes starkness. His starkness, though, is different than other starkness-

Alison Stewart: Yeah, that's true. That's true.

Joan: -in that his is very visual. Even is stark picture. His stark staging is beautiful. Part of the starkness is part of the design of what he does. Sometimes if you have one person on a black set and maybe some interesting lighting, that's the hardest. Jamie Lloyd isn't as hard just because his work is always so beautifully stark. You can show that and that's how it's supposed to look. Sometimes, how do you tell the story of a one person show that's someone sitting on a stool? That's the hardest, I think.

Alison Stewart: Here's a question. Does Joan have a book out? She really should. I will buy it.

Joan: I don't.

Alison Stewart: Think about that.

Joan: Nobody buys books, you know what I mean? No publisher would risk it because there's-- They wouldn't.

Alison Stewart: Theater people. Theater people.

Joan: Look at remainders. If you look at remainders, a lot of theater books.

Alison Stewart: Dear Joan, what was the hardest place you had to squeeze into to get the perfect shot? Or what was the most tricky thing you had to do in a theater to get the perfect shot?

Joan: Let me think about that and answer that later. I got to think about that.

Alison Stewart: How does a change in cast members affect your work? Do you have to go back after if they've had a big cast member change?

Joan: Yes. Some of the big shows actually don't do it as much and some shows do it all the time. It's interesting because when there were big shows and they would have cast changes, there was a thing they wanted to brand the show. The initial production photos were the photos, they were duplicated all the time, the same picture because if you saw something, you'd say Lion King. You'd see it.

Now with social media, people want different things. They want more and they want different. It makes sense because if you keep showing the same old picture, then it looks old as opposed to new and vibrant. Yes, I do go back, but how it's approached is now in the process because of how pictures are used and because of press and marketing and media for shows it's really changing now.

Alison Stewart: That's interesting. You've mentioned social media a couple of different times. What's the positive of social media in your work? Then what's something that concerns you about social media?

Joan: Well, for me, again, not to stress that I'm old, I don't come from a social. I'm old enough to remember no cell phones, and social media and influencers, all of it, is how a lot of everything is publicized now or people are aware of now. It's like a story. I think what it's done is for people who want to take pictures in theater, it's provided a wonderful opportunity for new voices to come in, for people who want to do photograph theater, because production pictures were really close shop, and which is why you'd see my names coming out, because that was it.

Very rarely did you photograph a rehearsal, and you very rarely went backstage because it's not what you did. Now you have to. It's been gradual, but now you have to do that because there's such an appetite for imagery. Does it worry me? No. I've had my career. I'm not building a career. What it does is for people who are starting, it gives them an option to do maybe something they want to do that people want to see.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Joan Marcus, the theater photographer. You told Playbill about Angels in America. The pressure on everyone working Angels in America was intense. How did you feel that pressure as the photographer of the show?

Joan: Well, let's get back to the question about what was one of the hardest things that I photographed. That was a show that we didn't photograph a dress rehearsal. We just did setups, and we were given very little time. There wasn't a whole lot of time for photo setups. We had maybe two hours or whatever the time was, and we'd photographed all these things.

The last picture on the list was the picture of the angel coming down from the ceiling, which ultimately was the story. That was our last picture, and we were running out of time and its unions and stuff like that. Literally, they said two minutes, and we rushed, we rushed, we rushed, and then the angel came down. I took maybe a couple frames, and that was it, and then that became the image of the show.

Alison Stewart: Wow. When you're thinking about shows that go on and on and on, we've all been inundated with Wicked lately. Really.

Joan: Really, but I love Wicked.

Alison Stewart: You are.

Joan: Yes, and I'm very excited. I'm going to go to a screening, so I'm very excited.

Alison Stewart: When you think about the early days of Wicked, did you understand that that could be a hit, that would be a sensation?

Joan: I did. From the very beginning even when they keep saying they had to really redo it, it really had bones from the very, very, very beginning on that one. However, sometimes I think something has bones and people don't gravitate towards it.

Alison Stewart: What's an example of something you were like, oh, this is going to be great, and it just didn't happen?

Joan: The original sideshow was one. I thought that that was going to be really a huge hit, and it wasn't.

Alison Stewart: Got a text that says, "I remember Joan from my days at Arena Stage in Washington DC."

Joan: My favorite time.

Alison Stewart: "I know you won't remember me. I was the prop guy back then and, of course, my works appeared in many of your shots."

Joan: Lance.

Alison Stewart: Maybe it's Lance. "I'm sure you have lots of production photos stowed away in my memory bins. Glad to hear about your story and your success." You immediately went to Lance.

Joan: It's Lance. Is it Lance?

Alison Stewart: I don't know if. Hey, Lance, if this is you, text us again. [laughs] That's really funny. Was there ever a show that you really wish you had gotten to take a picture of and you just didn't make it?

Joan: Hairspray maybe.

Alison Stewart: Interesting.

Joan: Because it was so fun. I've had a lot of work, and I didn't want to feel bad, you know? Not to be Pollyanna, but I've been really grateful for what I've had.

Alison Stewart: As you've been saying, you've been doing this job a long time now. What keeps you excited about theater photography?

Joan: Actually, the people right now. I love to go. I love the work. I do. There's a thought process, and I feel very comfortable in it and. Now, I love going to see people I've known for a lot of years. It's like a package of everything around it that I really love.

Alison Stewart: Well, you're a big star around here. Joan Marcus, theater photographer. Thank you so much for spending time with us.

Joan: Oh, thanks for having me.