Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Content about content.

Tony Adams causing a ruckus again. You’d think he’d be distracted by imminent natal events but noooooooooooo.

I don’t know why you don’t post more about the content of your (or others’) work.

Why don’t I?

A LIST!

  1. Time
    To talk about content you need to do your homework. Or rather, I need to do my homework. I can stand publishing half baked thoughts about something, it makes my itchy.  That takes me a long time.
  2. I’m a coward.
    I can tear apart others’ work as well as you can. I just know that I need these people later, so I talk to THEM about it, not you.
  3. This thing is turned on!
    This blog exists as a record of all of my work, I’m not going to talk down the core of what my company is doing and leave a bread-crumb trail. But I tear apart my own work mercilessly. I’m not in this to be mediocre, so I am constantly trying to improve. And I share that fairly unvarnished look at my personal work which I don’t mind being accountable for to whoever chooses to hold me to it.
  4. No one cares.
    500 words is about the limit. After that people skip it. “But I read EVERYTHING”. Maybe you do, but most people don’t and I don’t need to publically share my breakdown of something if there’s no one on the other end of the line. (This does not invalidate #3, search exists).

/List!

In addition? RVCBard is more naked about process (and content) than anyone I can think of, but I am wary of participating in any way despite the implied permission, because I’m not a partner to that process. I think the same would be true if I were to open up about personal content issues here.

But the biggest single reason I don’t blog about content?

That’s not what I do.

That’s not my explicit part of this process. I do just about everything but content creation on most projects. On The Nina Variations I am the producer, the scenic and lighting designer, and the master carpenter and electrician. Will, Rachel or Aaron are in prime positions to talk about the text, or the production process, but I am outside of that loop on the Venn diagram, and this space’s primary reason for existing is for me to figure me out -to suss out my own theatre philosophy.

I will discuss content with y’all on Cambiare Productions’ upcoming Orestes. Will and I will be crafting content for that, and I will have thoughts on both the content itself and our process for it.

As a side note to you content junkies: Art Street Theatre (who I want to be when I grow up) published a book reviewing their first five years. It is an energizing piece of work. It delves into their collaborative creation process and the success of each part of that process. I’m not sure if Mark even still has copies available, but you can try to order that here. You can’t have mine, it’s on the Nina Variations set.

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