This used to be my playground.

This particular spot in the web is now simply a redundant archive.

The world goes on over at Blog.cambiareproductions.com, it’s much prettier. You’ll like it I promise.

Is there anybody out there? Or: Why World Theatre Day

I’m not really a joiner. I lurk, and then I lurk, and then I lurk some more. So how the hell did I find myself mixed up with a super committed group of theatre makers pushing to better establish something that had no direct pay off for our already overbooked lives?

Mostly wrong time, wrong place, and a dash of big mouth, but really it comes down to one thing:

Community is damned infectious.

The thing that surprises everyone who ever commits to a new community fully and deeply is how many folks Just Like You there are, and how quickly bonds grow. It was true in the quick pseudo-families that grew out of Usenet and IRC in the mid-90’s and it’s true of tech like Twitter (broadcast, single-channel IRC) now.

We as theatremakers spend a lot of quality time with 3 or 4 or 50 people in tight quarters under looming time/budget/artistic constraints, and we cultivate a deep and pervasive bunker mentality.

If you don’t believe that, you’ve never talked to an indie theatremaker, or read a 22 year-old’s mission statement asserting that THEY will be the one group in any town doing new work.

Then you read a broad swathe of theatre blogs, or talk to the trajillions of theatre folks on Twitter, and they’re all going through the same things you are. And you get the desire to swim with the larger tribe for a minute, not just the pod you create with.

Combined with my strong desire to tie my local community more tightly together and I think it’s pretty obvious why I’m not sitting this one out.

There are of course cynics who want ROI and TPS reports, and budget numbers on every activity. Chris Wilkinson seems to embody this cynicism with a mention on his Guardian blog post:

So it's nice to start this week's roundup on a more upbeat note. According to Rebecca Coleman at the Art of the Business blog, the International Theatre Institute's World Theatre Day is coming up on 27 March. Coleman has teamed up with the Next Stage blog to throw a World Theatre Day party. "Everyone's invited," she exclaims. To kick it off, they have created a new blog for people to exchange ideas about how to mark the day.

This is all great in theory, but there does seem to be something paradoxical about the idea of a World Theatre Day. After all, it is true that great art should be able to reach across cultural and geographical divides. But theatre, as a live and communal event, is something that cannot easily be separated from the location in which it takes place. As such, it is surely impossible to create any kind of meaningful theatrical experience which can be shared by people around the world. But maybe we should just wait until 27 March and see what happens.

World Theatre Day isn’t about creating a global theatre experience. It’s about celebrating the local theatre experience globally. World Theatre Day is an acknowledgement that we are all doing this thing that we love.

And the internet allows us to share those local celebrations and revel in the fact that we’re not alone in our pursuit, and that no matter how many times they try to prove it to us mathematically, theatre is not dead.

So on a theoretical March 27th:

Mr. Walters and his students do a free reading on the quad in Asheville, and take pictures or video and share them on the World Theatre Day media hub (hosted on Tumblr) where if you scroll down a little bit you see folks from the Player’s Ring in Portsmouth reading Augusto Boal’s address before their show, and then there are some pictures from an alumni gathering at a performance at the Barksdale in Richmond or a Middletown town celebration after an opening weekend performance of Cotton Patch Gospel at the Wayside, then some video from My First Time in Vancouver, and pictures from the theatre community parties in Austin and Chicago where all of the theatremakers not performing have gathered to celebrate the life that is in theatre even in this global anxiety attack.

Maybe I’m naive.

Maybe I’m the only one who thinks that seeing a couple of thousand folks who are all paddling in the same direction I am exist, and want to celebrate with me even if we are separated by geography is spectacular, and would energize me….

But I’m pretty sure I’m not.

You’re a Maggot.

So I have this cute tongue-in-cheek post all ready to go about how I sat 8th row center for Legally Blonde and had a really good time, and the Don Hall has to go out and enjoy Xanadu.

I can’t compete with that… so you get a city redevelopment post.

Let that be a lesson to you (somehow).

---

Every moderately sized city has it’s ebbs and flows. Immigrants come and go, college students come and go, money comes and goes. Hell entire INDUSTRIES come and go. Working classes find the step up the ladder they need to move into Bigger and Better. Eventually we end up with Bad Neighborhoods.

Cities DESPISE bad neighborhoods except for the concentration of Bad it gives the police force (theoretically reducing some costs).

Cities (by which I mean the government) want those areas “cleaned up” (by which THEY mean richer and whiter), and they will throw good money after bad to do it.

But the answer every time is artists. The creative class. They share an income bracket with the poor and working class, love a good dive bar (more or less) and [generalization] are self-starters who are Doing Something. They move into an area and MAKE it cool. They create the entertainment and art that Cool Seekers (um) seek. They create a critical mass of people who WANT to be in a place, and then retail and commercial developers follow along with a refreshing of the residential. Artists are the carrions crawlers of urban redevelopment.

Now I get the arguments against gentrification. I do. I lived in San Francisco when SoMa got overrun by hipster loftdwellers, and I’m in Austin right now where property values are evicting folks east of 35. But these areas were/are going to be redeveloped regardless of my liberal hand-wringing, so bear with me.

Why shouldn’t cities use their normal ecosystem proactively?

Why shouldn’t they create tax incentives for artists to live in depressed or recovering areas of their cities? Follow that with tax incentives to developers to allocate a percentage of their projects to municipal arts uses for free/low cost gallery/theatre/performance space? Or tax incentive to commercial developers to allocate free /low cost (utility included) co-work space for city arts groups?

For the city the increased tax base will more than cover the tax incentives, and for artists, lower rent, improved resources, and increased presentation venues will allow MORE time for creation, and better exposure to the community at large.

Cult Classic not Best Seller

So for those of you who missed an interoffice memo, Cambiare Productions next show will be Orestes. Date and venue vexingly TBA.

Normally it would be Euripides Orestes, but I can tell you pretty convincingly that it will NOT be Euripides Orestes by the time we’re done with it (and that I will consistently be able to SPELL Euripides by the time we open – bless you spell check).

We’ve been saying clever things for some time in story meetings, things like “Fuck Euripides”, and “Euripides Sucks!”. We’re all smart folks promise.

The thing is? Eurpidies write great words. He did. That’s why we want to use them in the first place. Story. Characters. It’s all there except…

Well. They hadn’t gotten around to finishing creating our art form yet, and hadn’t really decided to have any action ON stage. Full credit to them, I mean we weren’t that far removed from the whole thing being a concert for the human voice anyway, so they were innovating a whole lot more than I ever will. But I want my theatre to be more active. I’m not dead yet ergo my theatre shouldn’t be either.

Which works for us.

This is our second adventure in Greek Mashup-land having thrown four texts in a blender to create a very well received Elektra hybrid two years ago. That was of course before there really was an “us”. Will and I were working on our second show together, and it was mostly Will driving creation with the cast (including me as the not-normally-in-this-show Agamemnon) helping fit the pieces together, and nailing the dance that was added.

But here two years and two and half shows later  we know a little bit about what we want and how we work together, and most importantly? What our specific weaknesses as producers and storytellers are.

So we’re taking Euripides apart. Character by character. Scene by scene. Motif by motif. We will rebuild it in such a way that Orestes participates in his own story, and is not simply a commentator on the actions around him. There will be very real consequences for the humans in this moments, and in our one true betrayal of Euripides… Apollo  isn’t going to save them from themselves.

These characters will own their strengths and weaknesses in all their mythic size. No matter the eventual style of the narrative.

And then?

As most of you have no idea, I am an assistant to engineers to pay the rent. Prior to that I was a docketing clerk and baby paralegal for some lawyers.

I’ve spent the majority of my last 8 years surrounded by branded professionals. Their certifying bodies all require that they perform some sort of professional development each year to maintain fluency in modern techniques, methodologies, and developments.

So how about us?

What passes for professional development in the theatre world?

Finally reading Mamet’s True and False after a decade and slapping together a snarky blog post?

Viewing productions?

Reading George Hunka?

Do you try to maintain any sort of ongoing development process? Or set play reading goals goals for yourself annually? Do I get an hour of Modern Play Reading credit for reading Adam Szymkowicz's(excellent) Food for Fish? Classics credit for tearing apart Euripides for my upcoming Orestes project?

I honestly don’t know.
I know many actor continue to take classes and workshops yearly. Do directors? Playwrights? Do you go grab Tisch’s curriculum and grab a few ideas to plaster over holes in you own book larnin’? 

Thoughts?

You Got To, ACCENTUATE…

If you have ever been blessed enough to spend quality time with me in a planning meeting for any theatrical endeavor you are sick to death of hearing me say, “We have two things: time and people.”

So I’m sorry Will and Megan.

On an indie theatre level you probably don’t have space, or money, but you have people who are passionate about what they do, and you have time.

Argue with me all you want on the time front, short of 6 shows a year you have enough time to do things the hard way. If you are doing 6 or more shows a year on an indie theatre level I would argue that you should buy a healthy life insurance policy.

Wrangling about “but my life is so hard” aside, given that you have only time and people: leverage them.

Look around your grocery store, how many celebrity magazines are there? 3.5 trillion? People love people. It’s a true truth. But looking around at theatre marketing in town (and previously in San Francisco) groups try to sell concept. I know I’ve been guilty of it.

 

Sell your people.

Put them on your posters. Put them front and center in your press releases. Build your pitches to local media around them.

Create shots they can use going forward.

Link your people to roles prominently so you can create a true history for your company.

A community needs it’s stars. It’s needs a talent base that it feels invested in, or it’s never going to commit.

Self Ad

While I’m thinking about it:

Bootstrapping video game designers in Austin?

I will do free voiceover for your game. I would appreciate a copy of the finished game, but I’ll even waive that if you’re really stingy.

You need the free talent, I want more VO experience. We all win.

Contact info is all over the place.

Big Shiny Hammers!

I do love a good exclamation point.

Adam Thurman is on point again, so we’re going to have to respond.

Mr. Thurman points out in his post, “Choose Your Weapons Wisely”, that it’s easy in a world of Software of the Day to try do be present on every service at the expense of doing anything of note on any of them…. so cut it out.

Which is off course correct. So please don;t read this as disagreement. To paraphrase Josh from the West Wing, I make it a habit not to disagree with Adam when he’s right. I am however going to repurpose his message a bit for people who aren’t representing established institutions. Like say… me.

When representing an established institution it’s easy to get message creep the further you spread yourself. It’s easy to waste the time you should be using on point for you next production or fundraiser in learning / fiddling / socializing. There is no real value add (for the company/theatre) in the extra granularity of the online relationship providing by something like Twitter.

If you’re part of a two man shop? That granularity, that fleeting one-on-one with someone a world away can lead to the resources you need to stop reinventing the wheel. Or a first step in creating a relationship.

I have been blogging here for a minute and built relationships with other bloggers, and to some extent made in roads with the theatre community here in Austin. But in my quest to keep this blog on task and not allow it to devolve into a personal mishmash of what’s in my head at any given moment (THE CARDINALS!??!?!) makes it difficult to just have a conversation.

I am very much in retail audience building right now. I had 253 people show up to my last show (nine performances). To be fully self-supporting I need (roughly) double that. For the next 2 years that means a lot of hand shaking and baby kissing. I need to be accessible, and to build relationship as broadly as possible.

Thankfully we do good work, so once we get a person we can get them to come back without begging.  But that first exposure is still a lot of legwork, and (I) you need to use whatever tools you can.

So circuitous story summarized: Don’t just use it because it’s new and shiny. But neither should you discard it immediately because it’s new and shiny. Check it out. Kick it around, and see if it can work for you. Does it help your workflow? Can it make your art/company more accessible and transparent?  You probably won’t know until you try it.

And for goodness sake, grab your name and your companies name on whatever it is that is gaining steam. Just in case.

In the dawn.. in the beginnings

As I mentioned, I’m trying to get my thoughts together about what an Austin Indie Theatre Alliance should be. For me this begins with my own exploration of what I think are the problems with Indie Theatre here, and from that base of problems to solve, looking at how “unionizing” can help solve them.

Unfortunately this leads to a lot of thinking about negativity, because I’m dwelling on the problems… so forgive me, I’ll be more than happen to post about solutions and positivity when we get there.

The thing about indie theatre is: how often do successful startups get founded by middle management?

This isn’t a slam on directors. It’s just applying their position in terms of a business model to the way companies are founded, and in my experience most indie companies are founded by a strong director with loosely affiliated actors and maybe a writer.

Speaking in loose generalities:

They have no business training or inclination, and the last task that gets done is the Work task. Promotion, publicity, and fundraising all take a back seat to doing the “fun” stuff and so we have the never ending cycle of startup and crash.

There is no slow buildup. There is no coproduction. There is no pitch to an existing company to work with them. There is conception, production and then business failure, because there IS no business.

Theatre companies don’t see themselves as startups. I haven’t been to a single Bootstrap Austin. Directors attend play readings not marketing seminars.

How do we change that mindset?

I’m not sure that a town the size of Austin needs more than 20 core (i.e. persistent) companies and 15 to twenty in the churn pile. But we need to find a way to help the persistent companies function more efficiently. Better long term planning. Better communication with other companies and with venues.

In my perfect world indie theatre companies would operate more like record labels. They produce shows in the style they want to champion, putting a back end on projects they believe in, rather than simply being a platform for one or two directors or writers to take whichever projects appeal to them at this moment.

SIDEBAR!!!

Given $20,000 and venue time I would produce:

2 Cambiare shows

3 works by other creators in line with the Cambiare Productions thrust which at this moment is derived works and “mash-ups”, and new media.

1 Monthly reading series driven by community choice (i.e. I’ve always wanted to direct this, I want to at least hear it Out Loud… I’ve always wanted to perform this role and I will NEVER be cast in it.)

1 Quarterly Festival  focused on spurring creation (writing) with a cash prize.

2 for me 5 for other/community. Because growing the whole is good for me. Poppa ain’t no altruist.

We’ll get there.

This year will see 1 Cambiare show, Out Loud, and some form of the festival.

/SIDEBAR!!!

We just need to stop the idea that focusing on the business of theatre is somehow antithetical to the creation of theatre.

(unless you know a money/venue fairy… then call me)

Resolute?

The theatrical tribal area of blog-o-stan is populated by pretty fiercely liberal progressives (socially at least, there is some variance economically). The cheering and weeping and hootin’ and hollerin’ over the electoral win of Barack Obama barely even hit a lull in between the win and Inauguration next week.

Now what?

He keeps rolling out what he’s going to do ($1T stimulus and waffle on Israel) but the slogan is Yes WE Can.

Ask not what 44 can do for you, your art, and your community – what the hell are YOU going to do?

For my part, this is the year I take my community building philosophies and see if they have legs. We’ll be meeting in the next couple of weeks to see what an Austin Indie Theatre Alliance wants to be, and we’re going to raise the profile of the Austin Garagetroupe Theatres.

What about you? How are you going to be the change you voted for?

Challenge to myself…

And to the search indexing spiders who are always listening…

I am going to track my time for my theatre work, paid or unpaid,  like any freelance consultant would for work.

Why?

1. This is a job not a hobby.
   Tracking time will add a higher level of self-accountability
2. I undervalue myself and my time.
3. I underestimate how much work goes into each project.
4. It gives information and ammunition for grant writing.

(now whether or not I can track total man-hours for a project is another thing)

There are plenty of web resources for doing this, and I will avail myself of them.

While Rome burns…

It seems idiotic to be as focused as I am on such miniscule matters as an Austin Small Theatre Alliance, or two new development programs, or the pre-production for Orestes while Gaza and our economy are burning. But there’s nothing I can do about the Macro so I’m going to fiddle away here in the Micro.

I have whatever the opposite of blogger’s block is. My brain is so full of things I need to get on paper that they’ve stopped making any sense. So I have to being parceling it out to get it in order for the first meeting of the Austin Small Theatre Alliance later this month and you are the lucky recipients of my excavations.

---

It’s not a secret that small theatre groups are bad at business. Heck, it may be a defining characteristic of small theatre that they are bad at business. But as I begin to lay out in my own mind what I think the goals of any sort of alliance of small theatre producers here in Austin should be it occurs to me exactly the depths of our ineptitude.

Small theatre has a massive self-induced perception problem. We (guilty as charged) have cast ourselves as Big Theatre’s impoverished country cousins. We whine incessantly about the lack of money in public, and try to excuse away our insistence on trying to make the same theatre that $10M Businesses do out of tape and cardboard.

We begin our interaction with the public by declaring that we are less than!

Let us instead look to a better, truer, and frankly more successful model shall we?

The indie musician.

I live in a town that has chosen to brand itself the Live Music Capital of the World. You would be hard pressed to find a restaurant, bar or pub that doesn’t have someone playing in a corner somewhere. But while they may complain about not getting paid as much as the big boys, they aren’t less than, they just aren’t recognized. It is acknowledged that what they do is no different than what The Stars

They also get the benefit of receiving the More Authentic badge for not having Sold Out to The Man.

I gotta get me some of that.

We are at a profound disadvantage because anyone with functional hearing can listen to both the Established Music Artist and the Independent Music Artist, and make a more or less informed decision vis-a-vis their merits. The same is not true of our indie theatre artists. Most people don’t have a lot of experience viewing professional theatre on any level, and they sure as hell aren’t watching a lot of indie theatre. So I can tell them I’m doing the same thing as any indie theatre company, and that my theatre is on par with Off-Off, but they have no real way of knowing.

And without knowing, we’re only going to get a fraction of a percent of the non-theatre involved populace in the doors. So we need to get to them. We need to be in the corners of the pubs and restaurants and bars showing them that they actually enjoy what we do. That we are part of their experience, not separate from it. We need to be the “gritty” authentic local artists that we already are, we just need to be all of that in front of them.

How?
Lord knows I’m not sure yet, and lord knows I’m not advocating an aesthetic shift for myself to “bar theatre”. But lord also knows that I will be burnt out on this by forty if the hordes of people avoiding my work continue to avoid my work.

A Picasso is art in a locked room. Theatre isn’t art until it is seen.

Radio Silence

My quiet has been entirely circumstantial… I was running around New England like mad for 5 days and then my good friend dropped in on a whirlwind tour of the southwest.

I have things I want to complain about I’m sure, and I want to find a way to honor Mr. Pinter… but as this year winds down I have to take a moment to reflect.

2008 was a challenging year for many, and one that they are saying a gleeful goodbye to.

That is not the case for me.

2008 kicked ass, and if I am able to take the momentum from this year into 2009 (even in the face of global depression) the coming year will ALSO kick ass.

I produced two highly satisfying (and radically different) shows, performed to my own satisfaction in a third, got married (and went to Costa Rica) and saw my littlest sister get married.

And this country decided to take a chance on Hope.

My hope is that this year we take our first steps from Yes We Can to Yes We Are.  That this year is a year of change for theatre artists taking charge of and responsibility for their own work.

I have one major project scheduled and two new programs and the framework of a new Austin theatre community to help weave.  Money is no object.

2008 I will never forget you, and 2009? Watch your ass. We’re coming for you.

Standing at the Gate

Critics are apparently the topic of the week in the coffee bar that is my brain.

Critics are an odd appendage to the theatre community. They are (for the most part) as knowledgeable as your given practitioners in the rare case when they aren’t practitioners themselves, yet the hold themselves apart from the process to comment on it. What do I think their role should be in a perfect world?

Like it’s that easy. Different roles for different folks naturally!

First, there is a difference in my brain between reviewer and Critic. so let’s decide, just between you and me, that words mean something and that review and critic, being two different words, mean different things shall we?

RESPONSIBLIITIES

Critic to the audience
The critic owes the audience a fair evaluation of a show, but more than a blow by blow. A critic owes more than a see it/skip it. A critics owes the audience a bit of context, a bit of dramaturgy, a bit of perspective on the producing company and their previous work, and why this current work matters or doesn’t

Critic to the Artist
The critic owes the artist as unbiased a view of the art as they can offer, with full disclosure of bias where it exists. The critic owes the same level of discourse to the artist as the audience, and should spare unnecessary cynicism or “snark” as in a searchable world those things become unerasable parts of a performer’s (or companies’) CV.

Critic to the Arts community
The critic is a gatekeeper. They control the only view of this niche world that most people get. Thiers is the king-making  power of The Trusted Opinion. As a part of the arts community they have a responsibility to not be destructive. In my perfect world they are the ombudsman of the arts community.

Reviewer to the Audience, Artist, and Arts community
A fair unbiased accounting of the show. Spare the snark. Recognize your junior gatekeeper status, and do no harm to the community.

Responsibility?

Here do a Google Search for The Nina Variations.

How many of the first ten are from reviewers/critics?

FIVE. The others are my company’s website, a ticket giveaway for my production, a press release for an older production, teachers’ materials, Google’s own book search and Dramatists listing for it are 3rd and 4th.

That matters. That’s going to change the opinion of people thinking about doing the show never mind seeing it.

So that’s a start.
What needs to be added?
What needs to be expanded?
Aside from a rubric about always loving your work what do you want of of a critic or reviewer?

The First Step to Change is Participation

intentions put into words become actions

My wife is working with local artist L. Renee Nunez to create an art installation downtown as part of First Night Austin (and ensuring a second year of bark no my carpet at the holidays).

YOU CAN PARTICIPATE!

“But Travis? I’m in Vancouver!”

I know. Isn’t the internet awesome?

Read on:

From Regenerate2009.com:

As we head into 2009, for many of us the impact humans have had on our environment is constantly in our thoughts.  Both businesses and individuals are starting to take real action to provide a world for future generations that more sustainable than the one we currently inhabit.  Action originates in our thoughts and prayers, and we seek to use art to influence the thinking of those around us.

“Regenerate” is a site-specific installation intended for First Night Austin 2009.  At 3pm on December 31, 2008, we will be hanging mobiles made of branches and jute from the trees on triangle island. We invite everyone present to contribute a "Prayer Butterfly" to this project by writing a prayer, hope, wish, positive thought or resolution for our environment on a corn husk butterfly. These butterflies will be added to the mobiles. For those outside Austin who wish to participate, you can submit a prayer to us - we will be adding prayers received from outside Austin as well. Please help us to transform Austin's "Triangle Island" into an island of hope and intention for the new year. The more participation we can get, from Austin but also from all over the world, the greater the impact we will have.

If you are in Austin please stop by on First Night and take part in the construction, or write your prayer at the triangle. (If your in Austin on Saturday and have a pair of scissors I’ll but you pizza and beer in exchange for cutting out butterflies!) If you are anywhere else in the world? Go to the site and submit your prayer, hope, wish, positive thought or resolution for our environment. There will be tons of pictures of the construction and final installation over in the Regeneration gallery so keep checking in.

And honestly? The more people from the more places that contribute to the installation the better it’s going to be.

So tell you friends.

Tell your theatres.

Tell your churches and synagogues and covens.

Take a step, participate.

Who watches the Watchmen (and women)?

Lots of people watch the watchmen honestly. With roughly 4.3 trillion interested parties watching their every semicolon, theatre critics get banged around an awful lot for their daily bread. I would wager that on any given production the (non-appreciative) critic takes more abuse than any of the actual creators, without so much as their Mom telling them that they’re pretty and did the words in the right order.

But apparently Steven Leigh Morris at the LA Weekly thinks that they need more regulation and tighter scrutiny.

Of course, being a bear of very small brain, I am flummoxed.

Critic-O-Meter is a review aggregator. That’s what Rob and Isaac are doing. It’s what they said they were going to do. It’s a pretty great service if you’re in the greater New York area. I guess I’m not sure why they’re drawing fire for it.

There is a need for Higher Theatrical Criticism. I don’t think anyone is arguing the negative there, if they are I haven’t read them. But it is not every person’s responsibility to fight every fight. If Colin Mitchell and  Steven Leigh Morris feel the need to fight that fight, more power to them and godspeed. I know that Tony Adams over at jayraskolnikov was Critiquing the Critics for a while (before other - more pressing - duties called) and good on’em.

But that’s not what Rob and Isaac are doing. They aren’t looking to have the conversation with the critic. They are looking to provide a place where the existing critical material about Broadway and Off Broadway shows can be found and clicked through. Why this has LA so pissed is beyond me.

This doesn’t destroy any of the deeper discourse on theatre. Isaac and Rob are both very active participants in all manner of conversation, high and low, as pertains to our favorite anachronism. They do it under their own names, in their own spaces.

Blaming a review aggregator for the fact that George Bernard Shaw isn’t going to see [Title of Show] and deconstructing the deconstruction is, frankly, idiotic. I had no idea they MADE strawmen that large. The library didn’t kill Shakespeare. 

Maybe it’s something I’m picking up from my wife, or maybe it’s the 8 years of being called unMurkin, but I grow ever more tired of people deciding what everyone else should do. Colin and Tony, kudos for following your gut, and responding to the gatekeepers. And Mr. Morris, I enjoy your work when I stop in (out here in the provinces I don’t have much need for show reviews from Gomorrah) keep that LA scene on it’s toes, and maybe Travel + Leisure will have y’all a tenth of a point ahead of us next year instead of behind. (I’m kidding, it’s Travel + Leisure and we have ZERO beaches)

But everyone needs to stop bitching about what everyone else should be doing, especially if it’s not touching your work. If you see a lack, a hole on the fabric of our business, step up. If you can’t for some reason, ask for help, or point it out. You want Higher Discourse? There are limitless pixel inches for you to create it any time you want. You want to simply read the Higher Discourse? George Hunka is available 24/7 at www.georgehunka.com.

Be part of the solution or go watch teevee.

See… The Idea is to do this massive theatre piece

This is a post regarding my reaction to Synecdoche, New York, a film written and directed by Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind) I have no idea what would constitute as a spoiler for this movie but I’m not screening for them so if you’re going to see it and are sensitive to such things please don’t read this until such time as you have gotten an opportunity to see it.

To start with the 7^th grade term paper staple I will define my terms:

A synecdoche (sin – EK – doh - kee) is a figure of speech in which the one of the following (or its reverse) is expressed: A part stands for a whole.

There is a cottage industry springing up for folks trying to explain this movie. Which seems a shame as they are spending time trying to intellectualize their response (rather than go with their emotional response) when Charlie Kaufman told you what it was about in the title.

Synedoche, New York (henceforth the shorter SNY) is Charlie Kaufman’s examination of the artists’ life, his experience in the artists’ life. The first criticism of this film, and most Serious Films (and make no mistake – this is a Serious Film), is that it is pretentious and masturbatory. Which is shorthand for “I didn’t like it so the artist is an elitist asshole who made it too hard”… but I digress.

The film opens with Kaufman avatar Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Caden Cotard, a regional theatre director languishing in Schenectady in an unfulfilling relationship with his artist wife Adele (Catherine Keener) and young daughter. He is about to open a dreadful, unfulfilling production of Death of a Salesman (perhaps the prototypical America self-deception drama) and is failing at therapy.

Adele (who takes the life she examines and contains it on tiny canvases) bails with Olive for Germany, and global fame and success (highlighted by an ‘extra’ in Caden’s later opus walking through wearing a faded ‘Adele’ t-shirt), while Caden begins to mentally and physically fall apart and we first begin to slipstream through time. Caden loses months without recognizing it, only being made aware of it by amorous coworker Hazel.

Caden receives notification that he has received a Macarthur Fellowship, announces to a not-listening Adele (via phone) that he is going to make something big and real and true, acquires a hangar in New York and sets to.

And now, the scene set, the movie really begins, and becomes impossible to describe linearly.

So we move on to why in the world I’m writing this all down in a theatre blog.

Two reasons.

Reason the first?

The Grand Overarching Theme of Synedoche, New York is Caden Cotard’s synecdoche. Caden immerses himself in his Great Work. His synecdoche is theatre. He substitutes the work for the whole of life, and it consumes him. Time compresses, and relationships tangle, knot, and slip away in moments until the fiction of his engrossing production becomes his only reality.

Reason the second?

Caden works on this production from early midlife until his (and most of the casts’) death. It is never finished because in his quest for ultimate reality each new person that he or a cast member interacts with needs to be added to the cast. Their lives and homes become part of the Synecdoche, New York he has had constructed in the hanger inside the Real New York.

Without predetermined boundaries (Caden would call them out for fake) the network of stories is as large as the population at any given moment. You can never tell them all. Or as Caden discovered, tell even one with all the richness and truth that it truly deserves.

Everything is a choice. How much of your life will you devote to your art? Really and truly devote? How much will you live in the Real World with everyone else? How does that balance compromise or enrich the work or your life? Separately, at what point does the chase for Truth and Purity in art become destructive, because no audience ever gets to view it?

Please understand, this isn’t a post where Travis explains it all to you. This is what I got out of this film on this viewing in this moment in my life. I really think that it’s going to say different things to me each time I view it, and I will view it several more times. I recommend that you give it a try if you have a chance.

 

Not for nothing…

But will the last show open on Broadway remember to feed the cat and turn out the lights?

RANKINGS? I LOVE RANKINGS!

I’m a baseball fan.

I love stats and leaderboards and comparisons, even if the criteria are completely opaque and arbitrary.

Travel + Leisure runs lists of, y’know, everything. Best everything bagel under $2, top 20 fresh mozzarellas… I mean it’s pretty comprehensive.

They ran a list of the top 25 theatre cities: 
(H/T AmericanTheatreWeb)

Rank      Score      City
1     4.90     New York
2     4.52     Chicago
3     4.50     Minneapolis/St. Paul
4     4.30     San Francisco
5     4.26     Boston
6     4.25     Washington, D.C.
7     4.19     Las Vegas
8     4.06     Seattle
9     4.05     Philadelphia
10     3.97     Portland, Oregon
11     3.92     Austin
12     3.91     Los Angeles
13     3.87     Nashville
14     3.85     Charleston
15     3.84     Denver
16     3.83     San Diego
17     3.72     Atlanta
18     3.69     Santa Fe
19     3.66     San Antonio
20     3.62     Dallas/Fort Worth
21     3.60     New Orleans
22     3.54     Orlando
23     3.47     Miami
24     3.45     Phoenix/Scottsdale
25     3.36     Honolulu

SO THERE LA! Travel + Leisure couldn’t find your theatre apparently…

Surprises for you?

For me, Austin being 11 and so close to the top 10 is a little surprising. But then when I asked myself who should be higher I couldn’t figure a better answer. San Antonio being on the list is a little surprising, it beating out Houston a little MORE surprising.

Las Vegas? Over Seattle?

But I’m interested in your thoughts. What would you change if you wrote for Travel + Leisure?

(and no I have NO IDEA what criteria they used… if you find a mention of it somewhere let me know and I’ll edit away.)

ETA: "Travel + Leisure teamed up with CNN Headline News and asked travelers to rank 25 top U.S. cities in 45 categories[...]. More than 125,000 opinionated travelers voted."

One eyed, one horned, flying purple people something something

I have very few theatrical pet peeves. I do have a loathing of actors who refuse to recognize that English is an idiomatic language ( SO SPEAK IT THAT WAY), and I dislike alcohol mixed with performance, but really you're more likely to annoy me on an individual level than on a global issue.  

I get very frustrated by the lack of public vocabulary for theatre. Last week as he was preparing to come see the Nina Variations a coworker asked what the "proper" thing to call the play was, because I was continually referring to it as a production, and I had rather unceremoniously extracted the manhood of the CAD tech who wanted to know why I was spending so much time on "[my] skits".

But the public's sliding scale of what they consider small theatre to be is the most frustrating to me. Part of it is my issue, I want to be taken seriously, and I work hard to make sure that my work product reflects that. But the general population has no idea how to classify small theatre. 

Michael Barnes in a warm and mostly complimentary piece on his on his Out and About blog (part of the Austin-American Statesman's Austin360 site) talks about Different Stages' current production of Shaw's Getting Married, and calls them "Austin's most literate community theater". Which he means as the compliment it almost is, except that Norman Blumensaadt and Different Stages is a multiple award winning theatre group judged on the same merits as the multimillion dollar Zach Scott Theatre.

I have nothing against community theatre, but there is a marked difference between professional caliber production that doesn't get paid, and amateurs whose primary reason for performing is for themselves. If we label our high quality small theatre groups with the same brush that we label our committed amateurs we are sinking an audiences motivation to see the work. 

I regularly have to deal with people whose response to a show invitation (with professional marketing materials) is: "my niece did a play last year". Not their fault, they are trying to remember the last time they went to a show and relate to the interaction that's currently happening, but there is no universe in which that connection should be made.

So we need to be careful with our labeling, even if that makes us arugula eating snobs. If I am being judged against the same standards as the closest thing the Austin area has to a regional theatre, and the area's major university programs, I need for our brightest producing companies to not be considered in the audience-going mind with non-professionals. You don’t compare a web startup to a lemonade stand no matter that they are both businesses in their beginning stages.