Fred Zollo
When Fred Zollo studied abroad in IES Abroad’s first London class in Spring 1974, he didn’t expect the experience would help lay the foundation for a future career in theater and film. From going to the theater three to four times a week, including seeing Laurance Olivier’s final performance, to producing a one-man show for a class – Fred lived and breathed theater in London. Coming from a family of Italian anarchists, Fred was brought up in the tradition of social justice. But witnessing the coal miners’ strike first-hand while studying abroad brought the issues of social justice to life – themes he has continued to focus on as a producer. Winner of six Tony Awards and 18-time nominee, Fred is best known for his work on Best Picture Oscar Nominees Mississippi Burning and Quiz Show. Read on to see how studying abroad impacted his career and why he believes every American student should study abroad.
IES Abroad: What led you to study abroad and why did you chose to go to London?
Fred Zollo: I had always planned to go to the London School of Economics (LSE) for undergrad but didn’t. The IES Abroad program was a perfect way for me to attend LSE (one of IES Abroad’s foreign partner universities at the time), so that is why I chose it. I eventually went to graduate school there. What was so wonderful about IES Abroad was that I ended up making lifelong friendships with members of the faculty that I had met during the spring of 1974. It couldn’t have been more perfect.
IES Abroad: What are some of your greatest memories from your time in London?
FZ: It was a very tumultuous time in the United Kingdom. There was a coal miners’ strike and elections, which brought back Harold Wilson. We witnessed that first hand. Many of us were even active in the campaign. I spent some time in Wales where I observed the strike first-hand and went down in the mines with the striking miners. It was a remarkable period. We also went to Germany, traveling in the Black Forest, and to the University of Freiburg in Germany. It was a very tumultuous time not only in the U.K. but across Europe. The Vietnam War was finally coming to an end. It would take another year. In retrospect, it seemed like any other year, but it wasn’t. It was a profound time to be in Europe. I look back on it as one of the most important six months of my life.
IES Abroad: How did your experiences, classes, and the people you met while you were studying in London impact your interest in theater?
FZ: I did a little bit of theater while I was there. I worked on a project that was actually involved with Philip Windsor’s class at the LSE about George Bernard Shaw. I did a one-man show related to this called, Conversations with Myself. It was some random thoughts of Shaw shuffled together in a 25 minute presentation. When I think of it now, it is rather embarrassing. The great thing about IES Abroad and the LSE is that they welcomed us and embraced us. It was a very special and rare experience. Everyone got to do stuff that was unique to them. They encouraged things that we were interested in. I don’t know what it was like for those who followed us, but remembering back, we couldn’t have been more excited.
As far as an educational, cultural, and social experience, study abroad was extraordinary. I think we went to the theater at least three times a week, sometimes four. In those days, the West End was extraordinarily inexpensive. For two and a half pounds you could go to any of the West End theaters, and I was able to see some legendary performances. They were building the new National Theater, and it was Laurence Olivier’s last season. During this period – my spring 1974 term – Laurence Olivier performed in his last three plays. I saw all three. In fact, I saw the last performance of his final performance. It was a watershed time. It was a remarkable place for the theater. I was young, of course, and had an interest in the theater, and little did I know that I would go into it professionally.
IES Abroad: After graduating, how did you get your start in theater? Were there skills learned abroad that helped you in the early days?
FZ: My start in the theater is, of course, based on nepotism. My father was involved in theater and film production. We did some things together before he died. He passed away in 1977. The first thing I worked on on Broadway was a play by David Rabe, with Al Pacino, about the Vietnam War, The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, which my father did just before he died. I had the good fortune to work on that with him. I have done a number of plays with Mr. Rabe since. I thought that it would be an experience in my modest life, but it turned out to be a career.
IES Abroad: A recurring theme in the plays and films that you have produced is equality and justice. Did your experiences while you were in London help shape your attitudes and ethics? If so, how?
FZ: I come from a family of anarchists, very much of the tradition of the early twentieth century and the immigration of Italians to the United States, many of whom were abused, mistreated, and, eventually, deported. The whole social justice movement, the anarchist movement, is highlighted, of course, by the execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in 1927. This was the tradition that I come from: of looking at the world a little bit differently. Being in London, in England, and on the Continent in 1974, in particular, was very important because it is not often you are in a country that basically shuts down for a couple of months because of a miners’ strike. It brought to the fore all of the issues of social justice. I don’t remember the exact average pay of a miner in 1974 (40 or so pounds), but the notion that somebody would think someone else would do that incredibly dangerous job for a pittance in the 70s—we are not talking about the 1870s—put the world in a clear light.
Again, the Vietnam War was still going on, and those of us who were of age had to deal with the possibility of having to go there and the injustice of the war. Theater and film were a platform for social justice. To quote H.L. Mencken, the purpose of what we should do is “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” That is the intention, with some exceptions, for most of the work I’ve done – whether it is Angels in America or Pavlo Hummel, or all of the August Wilson plays that I have had the honor to be involved in, or films like Mississippi Burning, Quiz Show, Ghosts in Mississippi, and others – all attempt to do that, some with more success than others.
IES Abroad: You have won six Tony Awards, have been nominated for a Tony 18 times, and won many other awards for your work. What are you most proud of?
FZ: That I’m still here. I’ve been doing this for forty years. I am just happy that I’m still doing it and that we are able to continue to do films and plays about things that matter. When I started making movies, we had a company called Movies That Matter. We hoped that the movies we made would matter. So, when a movie like Mississippi Burning was on the cover of Time magazine in those days, it was very rare. It wasn’t an article about a movie star; it was an article about a film. The second Mississippi film was about the murder of Medgar Evers and the thirty-year hunt for and prosecution of his murderer, Byron De La Beckwith. Rick Bragg of the The New York Times described it as telling our history through celluloid. For better or worse, and some more successfully than others, the idea was to try to earn conscience with celluloid. That is what the greatest filmmakers have done, and that was always our hope. In terms of theater, I have been very blessed to do plays by people like David Rabe, August Wilson, David Mamet, Marsha Norman, Wendy Wasserstein, Tony Kushner, Christopher Hampton, Eric Bogosian, among others.
IES Abroad: Without revealing a ‘spoiler’, what projects are you engaged in or considering?
FZ: We have a whole list of things coming up. In terms of the theater, I’m redoing a play that I did with Mike Nichols 20-25 years ago about social justice in Chile called Death of a Maiden by the great Ariel Dorfman. We are also in the process of making a film about the murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955, which galvanized the Civil Rights Movement.
IES Abroad: What is one thing you learned while abroad that remains a constant in your life?
FZ: I think that study abroad is the best thing for Americans. Again, I’m a pacifist. My parents were Italian, so I had been out of the United States several times. The most important thing we Americans can learn is that it is a big world out there. It is very important to see how we are perceived and how what we do in the world is perceived by others. You learn a lot about how we are perceived when you are in Britain, France, Germany, the former Soviet Union, or Asia. You begin to see that the world does not rotate around us. Just because we say it, doesn’t mean that it is true. It is a great learning lesson for Americans to understand different cultures, languages, literature, music, and history. All of it is very, very important. All of us were very fortunate to be taught the lesson that our place in the world may not be what we thought before we studied abroad. Plus, LSE would not be described as a conservative place. I was inspired by Bernard Shaw and others. The lesson that we all learned there tilted us a bit, and should have. I also remember Edward Mowatt (Founder of IES Abroad London and Center Director). We played cricket in his backyard in Kent. He was lovely, talented, giving, thoughtful, and supportive. He was an extraordinary influence on me and all of us. He welcomed us in a terrific way, and he ran interference for us with the very impressive people at the LSE, like Philip Windsor and Frederick Northedge. We couldn’t have been more fortunate.
IES Abroad: What advice would you give to a student who is considering studying abroad today?
FZ: Study abroad should be a requirement for American students. And if they can’t afford it, there should be scholarship funds. I’m talking about a national scholarship fund where the government helps them, and not a government loan that some bank is going to hound them for the next 20 years. It is an essential part of every American’s education, regardless of class, creed, or economic standing. You will have a much different discourse in this country if people actually spent six months or a year abroad in an important institution studying and thinking and looking at the world. Americans are more insular than they have ever been. If more young Americans were able to avail themselves of a program like IES Abroad, it is a life-changing thing, not just for them but for the country.