Ti-i-i-ime is on my side

A Not-An-Interview with Travis Bedard

Where the hell have you been?

Mostly on my back porch staining the floor for The Nina Variations plank by plank.

Also? flooding the market with cut rate press releases and talking to anyone who’ll listen about the show. Oh and getting a small City of Austin Cultural Arts Commission grant to help offset some of the costs of the show (Thank you Commissioners!)

You’ve Done Nothing For the Last Month but Show Production?

Well. Nothing much that you’d care about. I carried some water for Ivan Klousia’s production of Twelfth Night over at St. Michaels’ School. Though I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that I saw Cyndi Williams’ Dug Up over at Austin Playhouse’s second stage and was very impressed.

It features Jude Hickey and Liz Fisher who are in town royalty, and a new to me Jessie Tilton in a gothic Tennessee Williams’ tale set in post-Katrina Louisiana. It features that classic classic Williams’ “Traditional family shatters leaving the pieces to form a new family” center with a tasty dark chocolate coating. It is more than worth your while to check it out. All three performers are at the top of their game, and it plays beautifully in the (extremely) cozy confines of the King Theatre. A smart, engaging Halloween confection.

You heard me.

Aside from the brilliant Nina Variations, what else is hopping in Austin?

Lord it’s busy down here.

Dustin Wills and Tutto Theatre are remounting his well loved Ophelia with his over at the Blue Theatre with the Design Justice League.

Shannon McCormick opens Unbeaten at Salvage Vanguard.

Different Stages is about to open Shaw’s Getting Married at The Vortex.

Austin Circle of Theatres is having it’s annual self-celebration this Sunday with the B. Iden Payne Awards ceremony (nominees include Rachel McGinnis from the brilliant Nina Variations), which ceremony is being lit by the most beautiful and underappreciated lighting designer in Austin.

SIDEBAR!: Over in LA they are about to have the Ovation Awards, and Don Shirley over at LA City Beat rails against the nominating process:

Why are only 12 voters required to see a qualifying show – and why is each voter required to see only 25 shows? Because of L.A.’s notorious distances? Boo-hoo. The voting pool should be reduced only to those voters who commit to seeing at least 50 or 75 or even 100 shows. If there were fewer but better informed voters, maybe L.A. Stage Alliance could arrange to pay a gas stipend.

Looking at my calendar…

I see 52 weeks. So in Mr. Shirley’s world you need to see a show every single week to be qualified to nominate. Despite the fact that most of the committee members are producing artists! I tell you. I can afford to see 15-20 shows a year. If I’m comped to every show I can see 40. If I want to ignore my wife and go out every weekend whether she wants to participate or not.

So should nominators for awards be limited to retirees and misanthropes? I’m unclear as to the mechanics of seeing that much theatre in general, never mind having to have your critical wits about you. Are any of you on such a committee? What are your requirements?

/SIDEBAR!

If you really want to know about what’s going on theatrically in Austin you need to check out the yeoman’s effort going on at austinlivetheatre.blogspot.com. Michael Meigs is defying that lil sidebar and seeing EVERYTHING. And then writing well considered responses to them. The mind boggles.

I’m in here Somewhere

I’ve been a little lost in the haze of production.

We are in Week Three of rehearsals for The Nina Variations, which I am more in love with every time I hear it. Steven Dietz never lets his cleverness take center stage. Rarely have I read a meta-play that was less obnoxiously self-aware.

It is a blessing to have fewer roles on this production. I feel like we’re actually getting stuff done.

Given a three week run and (knock on wood) some press we might not have to cancel Christmas.

But the cast is the story right now.

A = Talent. God Given Raw Ability

B = Skill. The Ability to USE Talent

C = Hard Work

D = Material. The Play.

You get to make the choice between A and B at auditions. Generally on this level you don’t get both in large quantities.

C comes with professionalism and personal drive, which generally means they’ve moved away.

D is usually the only thing you can control about the situation.

We have hit the jackpot.

If they can keep this pace up the show is really going to be something special.

I am not Isaac

But I’m going to respond anyway, so there.

Rob Weinert-Kendt posted:

Though I'm sure that all of us, in our darker moments, have thought a version of the following thought, it's still a little chilling and/or bracing to see it laid out so matter-of-factly, by Santa Fe-based arts writer Craig Smith:

Speaking as a former nonprofit administrator and fundraiser, I think [performing arts] groups should be looking to form partnerships or mergers, or even shut down and pass the assets on to healthier groups, if necessary, to keep their mission alive. As Jung quoted Freud: "Sometimes the doctor should not try to cure at all costs." Ditto for nonprofits: better to end an organization's life and pass assets on.
It would require self-sacrifice from some people, and put some out of a job quite possibly. But organizations with similar missions banding together ... could save energy, time, and resources they could then apply to doing what they are supposed to do: help, excite, refresh, renew, feed, counsel, support, cheer, nourish, nurse, and heal.

Though the LA Times' arts blog, Culture Monster, calls this a "supply and demand" approach, frankly it sounds more Soviet in its thinking and in its likely effects. Take it away, Isaac.

The large majority of performing arts groups don’t have a specific mission. Their mission is ‘we do plays’. Which is fine. I actually have no problem with that. What I do have a problem with is the 60% of performers arts groups with the mission ‘we do plays’ doesn’t work together. They may talk, they may go out for drinks, and they usually see each other’s shows. But they don’t generally work together.

I have often (in person) talked about Cambiare Productions (my theatre company with Will Snider)  being a theatre label more than a company. I am interested in collecting talent, but not at the exclusion of their working on other projects. When you don’t have a specific style (Vampire Cowboys, Yellow Tape) or method of creation (Rude Mechs, Rubber Rep) you don’t need to hoard people. And you shouldn’t be working with the same people nonstop. Stagnation is stagnation even if you’re stagnant with the most talented people you can find. I would much rather do projects as they come up with whoever is bringing them up than try to carve my own too small space.

I think that eliminating redundancies by doing co-productions is advisable. I think that in small independent theatre situations that the ego of My Company can get in the way of creating the best art.

I think that a healthy community will have a core of companies with many smaller more fluid companies in metaphorical orbit. Resources will find appropriate homes , and new alchemies will be discovered as people work in different combinations regularly. The talent, the magic as it were, is in the people, and in the combinations of people, not in a name or a facility.

Of course none of this has anything to do with people who make money at this… they have different concerns.

10 Things I Hate About Presumption

Brendan Kiley fills a slow week with a top ten list just like a blogger, except of course he has the weight of The Stranger’s masthead behind him.

He assumes that theatre producers are swimming in money and are just afraid of using it to entertain him fully. He also manages to mishmash the problems of shoestring indie theatre and The Regionals as though they were the same set of problems with the same remedies. He also assumes that The Audience wants all the same things he does.

Man I hate that crap.

But he’s a pretty smart guy, isn’t 100% wrong, and deserves a rebuttal not a brush-off, and definitely not the weird “here’s a link go read this” ole the theatrosphere seems to have given it, (except for Dennis Baker).

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1. Enough with the goddamned Shakespeare already. The greatest playwright in history has become your enabler and your crutch, the man you call when you're timid and out of ideas. It's time for a five-year moratorium—no more high schoolers pecking at Romeo and Juliet, no more NEA funding for Shakespeare in the heartland, and no more fringe companies trying to ennoble themselves with Hamlet. (Or with anything. Fringe theater shouldn't be in the game of ennobling, it should be in the game of debasement.) Stretch yourself. Live a little. Find new, good, weird plays nobody has heard of. Teach your audiences to want surprises, not pacifiers.

I feel for him. The number of Shakespeare, and BAD Shakespeare, that any professional/semi-professional theatregoer has to endure must be terrible. The thing is? That’s not true of the audience, and Shakespeare gives the producing company both room to play and a built in Audience. Also? Free to produce. I don’t begrudge Steven Dietz the money I owe him for producing his play, I love it and he’s earned it, but I sure could use that money elsewhere.

Also? It’s not Brendan Kiley’s job to tell me what my job is. If I choose to ennoble myself or my audience that IS my job. Not every show needs to be Blasted, indeed Blasted would lose its impact if they were.

2. Tell us something we don't know. Every play in your season should be a premiere—a world premiere, an American premiere, or at least a regional premiere. Everybody has to help. Directors: Find a new play to help develop in the next 12 months. Actors: Ditto. Playwrights: Quit developing your plays into the ground with workshop after workshop after workshop—get them out there. Critics: Reward theaters that risk new work by making a special effort to review them. Unions, especially Actors' Equity: You are a problem. Fringe theaters are the research-and-development wing of the theater world, the place where new work happens—but most of them can't afford to go union, so union actors are stuck in the regional theaters, which are skittish about new work and early-career playwrights. You must break this deadlock by giving a pass to union actors to work in nonunion houses, if they are working on new plays.

This is the moment where I question Whether Kiley has ever attempted to produce a show… I assume he has, but if you are even attempting Good Old Unsubsidized theatre and you don’t already have a brand name to trade off of, premieres are death. Runs are too short, and  press is too spotty to get it where it needs to be. This is exactly how you never produce another show.

Actors have no say.

And the poor playwrights. Has he TALKED to a playwright? I mean can you talk to a playwright about development without them breaking into hives and/or foaming at the mouth? This is on the producers honestly, and see point one.

3. Produce dirty, fast, and often. Fringe theaters: Recall that 20 years ago, in 1988, a fringe company called Annex produced 27 plays, 16 of them world premieres—and hang your heads in shame. This season, Annex will produce 10 plays, 4 of them world premieres, which is still pretty good. Washington Ensemble Theatre will only produce three plays, one of them a world premiere. (An adaptation of... Shakespeare!) What else happened in 1988? Nirvana began recording Bleach—and played a concert at Annex Theatre. By the next year, Nirvana was on their first world tour. The lesson: Produce enough new plays and Kurt Cobain will come back from the grave and play your theater.

Um. There are two of us and no trust fund. I don’t think he’s wrong per se, producing a ton means that you build a brand name. But the resources needed to get this done are – well it’s mind boggling.

4. Get them young. Seattle playwright Paul Mullin said it best in an e-mail last week: "Bring in people under 60. Do whatever it takes. If you have to break your theater to get young butts in seats, then do it. Because if you don't, your theater's already broke—the snapping sound just hasn't reached your ears yet."

This is true, and I think the Fringe is doing fine at this. This is a problem for The Regionals with their reported blue-hair subscriber base.

5.Offer child care. Sunday school is the most successful guerrilla education program in American history. Steal it. People with young children should be able to show up and drop their kids off with some young actors in a rehearsal room for two hours of theater games. The benefits: First, it will be easier to convince the nouveau riche (many of whom have young children) to commit to season tickets. Second, it will satisfy your education mission (and will be more fun, and therefore more effective, for the kids). Third, it will teach children to go to the theater regularly. And they'll look forward to the day they graduate to sitting with the grown-ups. Getting dragged to the theater will shift from punishment to reward.

We actually want to do this with our current show. Our audience is young and has the kids… but personnel, liability insurance, and space are factors. Also: SEE-SUN TIH-KUTS? Wazdat? Brendan? Fringe or Regionals?

6. Fight for real estate. In 1999, musician Neko Case broke up with Seattle, leaving us for Chicago. (It still hurts, Neko.) When asked why in an interview, she explained, "Chicago is a lot friendlier, especially toward its artists. Seattle is very unfriendly toward artists. There's no artists' housing—they really like to use the arts community, but they don't like to put anything back into the arts community." Our failure abides. Push government for cheap artists' housing and hook up with CODAC, a committee that wants developers on Capitol Hill—and, eventually, everywhere—to build affordable arts spaces into their new condos. (CODAC's tools of persuasion: tax, zoning, and business incentives.) Development smothers artists, who can't afford the rising property values that they—by turning cheap neighborhoods into trendy arts districts—helped create. To get involved with CODAC, e-mail frank.video@seattle.gov.

I really like this idea. But I do think that the thought process behind it contradicts his Point 9. Why is it more beneficial to communities and artists to subsidize the housing of artists but not the artists themselves? If artists are to expect poverty why are they called to expect an Artistic Section 8 benefit?

I love tax benefits for arts spaces in neighborhoods. I think arts zoning should be a prominent part of the push in urban areas for vertical mixed use, and to decrease 6PM roll up in downtown areas.

7. Build bars. Alcohol is the only liquid on earth that functions as both lubricant and bonding agent. Exploit it. Treat your plays like parties and your audience like guests. Encourage them to come early, drink lots, and stay late. Even the meanest fringe company can afford a tub full of ice and beer, and the state of regional- theater bars is deplorable: long lines, overpriced drinks, and a famine of comfortable chairs. Theaters try to "build community" with postplay talkbacks and lectures and other versions of you've spent two hours watching my play, now look at me some more! You want community? Give people a place to sit, something to talk about (the play they just saw), and a bottle. As a gesture of hospitality, offer people who want to quit at intermission a free drink, so they can wait for their companions who are watching act two. Just take care of people. They get drinks, you get money, everybody wins. Tax, zoning, and liquor laws in your way? Change them or ignore them. Do what it takes.

Ah. take your tax breaks and your subsidies and get parents drunk illegally while you take care of your kids. Apparently this is a Theatre Reform Value Menu: pick any two.

The Long Center here in Austin (get well soon Cliff) took this advice and created/purchased very nice portable bar stations that move from their reception venues to the lobbies to the corridors to where ever people are who might be parched. It may work, I don’t know I can’t afford to go see anything there, and The Long Center keeps all that money so the mechanics of it stopped interesting me.

But I think in general creating an in-house Third Space is a great idea.

8. Boors' night out. You know what else builds community? Audience participation, on the audience's terms. For one performance of each show, invite the crowd to behave like an Elizabethan or vaudeville audience: Sell cheap tickets, serve popcorn, encourage people to boo, heckle, and shout out their favorite lines. ("Stella!") The sucky, facile Rocky Horror Picture Show only survives because it's the only play people are encouraged to mess with. Steal the gimmick.

There are shows this works for. I mostly hate those shows. But I like the line of thinking, I’ve long admired Bill Veeck.

9. Expect poverty. Theater is a drowning man, and its unions—in their current state—are anvils disguised as life preservers. Theater might drown without its unions, but it will certainly drown with them. And actors have to jettison the living-wage argument. Nobody deserves a living wage for having talent and a mountain of grad-school debt. Sorry.

This is bizarre frankly. Not to pick on the plumbers again, but does anyone tell a plumber they shouldn’t expect a living wage? I mean I don’t expect to make my fortune, but “living wage” isn’t an unreal expectation. I understand it’s not the reality today, but we should stop talking about it? Bah. I retract my statement if Kiley didn’t mean “living wage” the way people who believe words have meaning do, but rather as a stand in for “enough to buy a two bedroom and raise a couple of kids with no other income”. If the latter, he’s correct.

10. Drop out of graduate school. Most of you students in MFA programs don't belong there—your two or three years would be more profitable, financially and artistically, out in the world, making theater. Drama departments are staffed by has-beens and never-weres, artists who might be able to tell you something worthwhile about the past, but not about the present, and certainly not about the future. Historians excepted—art historians are great. If things don't turn around, they may be the only ones left.

Ah yes, in an over-saturated market you should abandon the idea of networking. I agree with this point if you are getting your MFA SOLELY to go read in LA or New York. If you may teach, or want to direct, resumes matter, as do connections.

Don’t go to grad school to learn how to act.

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The End

Have an Effect

First, Happy Birthday Mr. Pinter. I’m glad you’re still with us.

Last Friday night the wife and I took a rare (for this period in our lives) coordinated night off to go out and view a Major Motion Picture, we went to see Blindness at the Alamo Drafthouse.

Blindness is of course an adaptation of the Nobel Prize winning novel by Jose Saramago. The population of Everycountry is hit by an epidemic of The White Sickness, a milky white blindness, (as differentiated from congenital blindness) and the infected are herded into an abandoned asylum. Saramago uses the asylum as a societal reset to look at how dynamics change when we make our own rules, a sort of grown up Lord of the Flies now with oppression 2.0.

Full disclosure: I started to read the book, and stopped about 40% of the way through. If any work of fiction deserved the phrase “a meditation on”, Blindness is it. S-L-O-W. I also considered the book unfilmable. part of the experience of reading it is that you like the population you are suffering from a narrator imposed lack of sight. I didn’t think that you could achieve lack of sight in a visual medium.

I was wrong.

Fernando Meirelles shoots the movie beautifully, and mixes in enough distortion and occlusion to give us the feeling of not being able to see what exactly is happening, unless his Witness to the disintegration is the focus of the scene when we are treated to an almost garish amount of light. 

But the movie’s primary mode is claustrophobia. You are trapped as witness (with Julianne Moore) to this breakdown, and it’s hard to take. Which lead to the most memorable moment of the viewing for me.

No. Not the blind protestors out front.

The gentleman who during the beginning of the (truly horrifying)  group rape scene stood, turned to the Drafthouse crowd said “Fuck this shit…” and walked out, the first of what I believe were six walkouts total.

I have myself never walked out of a movie. Not even the Jeremy Iron’s classic ‘Dungeons and Dragons”.

But I can imagine the emotion necessary to overcome the group quiet of a movie theatre and leave. I cannot begin to think of what line you have to cross emotionally to announce your disgust.

If you’re bored you just sit in your seat and drink your beer, or meander out quietly. You don’t announce that you’re done.

So points to Fernando Meirelles and Jose Saramago. I long for my next deserved walkout.

My first of course (my first dozen) were for New World Order.

Happy Birthday Mr. Pinter, theatrical oppressor first class.

Succinct.

DANCE VARMIT!

Oh Scott.

Scott Walters fresh off a long break (during which the Theatre Tribes manuscript had best have been at least first drafted ;) ) starts shooting at the feet of the theatre blogosphere for not caring enough quickly enough about what he cares about.

See, because promoting our own work and thinking about politics aren’t relevant to anything.

Scott, I’m as big a backer of yours as you’re going to find outside the group of folks whose grades you decide, and this and your martyred assertion that you and only you provide any energy in this sphere is a bit much.

I am required as a purveyor of an immediate art form to be alive and present in my world. I am required to know what I think about those things that are present in my world. My community doesn’t stop at the Austin City Limits. If I sit in the cesspool of only my own artform, only in my community I will stagnate, and so will my storytelling. You know that. So why is this all of a sudden Not Good Enough.

You disappear for months at a time from this virtual beer hall, and things still move along with quite a bit of velocity. Remember: you’re not reading all the same blogs we are, and you’re not writing for the same reasons we are. Further? Spitting on the people who sit above the water on this iceberg actually putting themselves out there at all for not putting themselves out there enough is ludicrous. I don’t have tenure. I need the people in this community. I can’t call folks out. I have to keep the Big Ideas vague.

Others not speaking to your priorities doesn’t equal lack of focus. Other’s not being pissed is not apathy. And theory is all well and good, but the minute I stop pushing this rock uphill in the real I stop mattering.

Now go read the 15 posts of mine you missed and have a cup of ginger tea. :)

And go read everything Don Hall has written in the last couple of weeks, which is more vulnerable, real, and human than we deserve.

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HEY LADIES!

There is a problem.

(Actually there is a better article here)

I’m going to ponder awhile as to where it lay, because kneejerk reactions are bad for you.

But while we’re here? There IS a problem. 12% in New York and 17% nationally without correcting for multiple productions isn’t a rounding error. And don’t come back with a meritocracy line. Meritocracy is a utopian ideal, this ain’t a meritocracy. Never has been, never will be. So if all you have is “if their plays were better they’d be produced” you are blind and need to get that taken care of.

And further? We care because there are stories we’re not telling to audiences we’re not serving, and for a couple million characters in search of an audience? That matters.

Now go read Isaac’s thoughts on it while daddy thinks.

P.S. Susan Jonas who co-authored the study and is a commenter on the original blog post (AND wrote the book on dramaturgy) was TOTALLY a professor at the University of New Hampshire while I was there… small world, no?

Just a simple breadcrumb trail…

Some time back I asked where people were supposed to find these Hot New Plays that No One Was Doing.

After the 6 week wind sprint to find an appropriate show to produce that ended in our selection of the Nina Variations I have to ask a pertinent follow up:

Where do you go to find any published work?

Now, you're going to say Dramatists, Samuel French, Amazon...

I'm producing shows on a shoestring I have a $50 paint budget, I can't drop $100 on texts. Which leaves aside the fact that even if I had $100 to put into the search I can't really take risks on scripts when I have a limited budget to acquire them. It also ignores the time factor. Local bookstores have a TERRIBLE drama/theatre section, even the really good bookstores, and good shipping cost money.

"Travis? Have you ever heard of the library?"

Oddly enough I have. Have you ever heard of Grad Students? The City library has the canon (just like me!), the UT library has LOTS of stuff. It's out. Did you return YOUR books at school? No you did not.

The goal is to take risks in show production. To expand the audiences experience and the performers. But if the pool of texts are whatever I happen to know off the top of my head that’s not going to happen.

I am not as theatre well read as I should be. Production and day job take  up the waking hours, and when I’m In Between I don’t want to hunker down with another script.

So the questions as I see them at this moment:

• Where do YOU find new work without a solicitation or open call?
• Where do you PURCHASE your published works?
• Where do you find a well stocked collection of published works to plow through?
• How do you selected plays to read?
• Do you have play reading goals or periods around production to keep yourself immersed?

Anyone?
Anyone?

True and False

 

Lest I for some reason forget to mention it later in this entry:
David Mamet is a self-impressed windbag.

This is a book that would feel better, less martyred, and truer if delivered by Don Hall over beer. Shorter too. (The expurgated Don Hall version; “Say the fucking words and mean it…”) I’m sure I am the last person in America to read this book so I will gloss the contents to get to my problems with it.

Mamet spends the first half of this short book mocking everything any actor has ever attempted to use to create a system for themselves. Systems are signs of fear in an actor according to Mamet.

Of course his hard target is Stanislavski, but his deconstruction of the Method is more slipshod than the average blog post, leading me to really hate the first half of the book. The easy criticism of the book is that it’s a writer telling performers to shut up and do the words, and stop trying to do anything BUT say the words. His choice to lob grenades instead of really digging in and taking the Method apart piece by piece reinforces that perception. It’s one thing to feel that a system has invalid points, or to even feel that having a system is the wrong choice, but the mocking tone really grates.

The secondary target of the first half of the book is acting training in general and  academia in general. So it’s a good thing that he is in no way affiliated with any sort of acting training program, that would be awkward…

The idea is that: due to the given invalidity of having any sort of process or system by which you approach a script or a role the concept of paying someone to teach is rank stupidty. Further it is real world avoidance. If you weren’t afraid of having a career in theatre, or of performing at all, you would simply head out into the real world and Do it.

Mamet’s conjecture throughout the first half of the book is that actor’s think too much, that acting is a 100% non-intellectual pursuit, and that actor’s need to get over themselves and do it. He seeks to strip anything academic, intellectual or mystical away from the craft of performance, asking how the musician or busker would approach performance. 

Thankfully the first half of the book ends and he actually shares some thoughts on How Things Should Be.

Which of course means that he puts back all the parts of Process that he thinks are valuable and gives them slightly different names.

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1. Mamet is wrong about a need for a system. And he knows it, which is why he suggests system in the second half of the book without calling it that.
   
   He suggests simply ‘breaking it down into smaller pieces’ and attack a script. But in a shortened rehearsal process in an itinerant work place you need a shared vocabulary. Mamet feels that you only need two weeks rehearsal. With a rep company who already shares a process and a vocabulary? Sure. If you eliminate both It’s simply not feasible.
   
   His frustration comes from the misguided application of any acting theory to performance itself. Actors coming from an academic background are taught to act via a method (Hagen, Meisner, Stanislavski et al) and they then take that method on stage with them. I’ve yet to run into the young actor who has been taught that they are rehearsal techniques and that by curtain they should be removed from performance much like concrete forms.
   This is not Algebra II, do not show all work.
   (This goes double for Viewpoints)
   
2. I love his admonition to actors to simply perform each scene properly and let the writer (and I would add: director) worry about the arc of the character and the play. If actors approached every scene as an entity to itself we could eliminate the phrase '”playing the end” from the theatrical lexicon, and we’d be happier for it.
   
3. Mamet desires for actors to play the scene with interesting actions, but never really answers how expects them to choose that action. The answer of course is that they (or the team) does a little dramaturgical digging and they come up with the best action (NOT intention – systems are for wimps) for the character.
   But by all means active interesting intention choices for all.
   
4. Mamet talks a lot about actors doing Funny Voices without ever simply defining Funny Voices. So far as I can tell he means the heightened language trap that many actors fall into even in Realism, but as he didn’t define it I’m going to extrapolate his Say The Words As Written Loudly And Clearly through the No Funny Voices point to agree with me that the War on Idioms must be stopped.
   
   English is an idiomatic language. You speak in idioms every day. Feel free to stop trying to turn the idioms in your script into Shakespeare. (+1 for Mr. Mamet’s anti-intellectualism screed)
   
5. Mamet in his quest to strip away a century of bullshit from the art of (especially American) acting attacks the mysticism as a pretension of the actors club. He asks why musicians and buskers don’t feel the need to Be Someone Else when they perform, and suggests that it is fear that drives actors to claim some sort of artistic shamanism.
   
   And then misuses a common legend a half dozen times. After trying to demystify the art, he exhorts actors to return to a time when actors were buried at a crossroads with a stake in their heart." A desire for actors to return to the boldness they once had.
   
   Of course the actors were buried like other mystical creatures (werewolves and vampires among others) because it was believed that they actually incarnated their characters, meaning that their souls were loosed from their bodies. The stake was to keep that loose soul from wandering about the moors.
   
   There is too much dependence by actors on this belief that they will Become Other, but the concept itself isn’t the destructive force that Mamet presents it as.
   
6. He spends an awful lot of time telling actors to stop telling others after a show that they were “off tonight.” I get the sentiment. I am as guilty of it as anyone, and it’s passive aggressive and annoying to the participant. But much like talking to an athlete immediately after the game you’re going to get one of two things:
   A.) You get them in the process of them breaking down their performance.
   B.) You get the Bull Durham nothing of consequence litany.
   
   Lesson?
   Audience members: Don’t ask if you don’t mean it.
   Actors: Don’t answer “Nice Job!” with “No it wasn’t”.
   
7. Mamet seems unconcerned with repeatability. In the first half of the book he keeps going back to the idea of simply reacting to what you’re given every night rather than trying to adhere to a game plan, because one is honest and the other is artifice.
   
   That doesn’t work for me. The audience paid to see a show, not to see me figure out what I’m doing every night. If you can’t have honesty in your scenes repeatably, you’re not good. That doesn’t mean we toss out the idea of doing the show as intended every night.
   
   This whole piece doesn’t seem to jibe with his say the words right policy, but I could be misreading it.

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Is there too much bullshit attached to the acting process? Sure.
Is there too much dependence on third-hand recollections of acting theory? Yes.
Are there too many charlatan acting teachers? Yes.

But that doesn’t mean we throw out the entire machinery. It means we scrape the rust off and get back down to the bare metal of what it is we do.

Can True and False help with that? Absolutely. Particularly the second half of the book. But read the whole thing because reexamining how you go about your craft and (frankly) getting all fired up about acting theory is good for you.

HOMEWORK

Have you read True and False?

What worked for you?

What didn’t?

What is YOUR single biggest pet peeve about current acting trends?

Your Wednesday Potpourri

Auditions!

If you are in Austin and I haven’t already invited you in some way, we (where we = Gobotrick Theatre Company) are holding auditions on Saturday for our November production of The Nina Variations by Stephen Dietz.

Drop me a comment for more info.

Google Chrome

There is no other tech news in this cycle. Google gots a browser. So you’re not a geek? You don’t try every app that comes down the tubes? Why is Chrome for you?

It probably isn’t.

Oh it’s faster than your browser. Mostly safer. Definitely simpler. But let’s face it… You don’t give up the SUV if you have the resources, no matter how ‘neat’ the Smart Car is. We like our cupholders and 12 speaker systems.

But you should download Chrome anyway.

But you just said… yeah yeah yeah. Chrome was built for one purpose. Applications.

There was was a small program called Bubbles that essentially ran browser windows for whatever you wanted that you could leave in your system tray as though the were running on your desktop. The problem of course was that is took a whole bunch of resources to leave it running.

Chrome has optimized the hell out of that process.

It’s not going to be you cruising browser. Not yet. but if you use Yahoo or Google calendars, Y!Mail or GMail, remember the Milk or another online task management system, Google notebook, or any of the online Office replacement products Chrome is something you’re going to want to splash into your life.

Create a toolbar with your Chrome links to those products and you will feel very much like they are operating from the desktop rather than the cloud. That’s a good thing.

Sarah Palin

Mock away. Hell, you most likely already have. I know I have.

But let me publish this before they dump her and I can’t take public credit for having thought it:

Sarah Palin will win John McCain the presidency.

You heard me.

John McCain was floundering with an unenergized base and an odd, hard to parse record (it depended on who he was trying to piss off at the time). The Democrats had an energized fringe and a fed up base that wanted to win even if their particular candidate wasn’t the torch bearer (PUMAs be damned – no f’reals).

And the cultural conservatives were out of play.

Let me step back.

What is the best way to energize the cultural conservatives in America?
Appeal to their persecution complex.

All politics isn’t local. It’s personal. Unless it’s not.
Picking on John McCain wasn’t personal for the cultural conservatives, he isn’t one of them. Their identity isn’t tied up in being a Republican, so Republican identity politics didn’t hit their hearts.

Sarah Palin is one of them. She is theirs. They know her, or someone like her. They know someone with a handful of kids (even with an autistic or Down’s Syndrome baby) from their church. They know someone who has a daughter who Got in Trouble despite their best teachings.

And now? Now the oh-so-smart liberals are making fun of her. Belittling her. Accusing her of bizarre backroom baby-switching. Now the liberals are condescending to this poor woman who already has so much on her plate.

And so she will be a rallying point. She IS a rallying point. The claims of sexism are already flying.

The snark on Daily Kos and Talking Points and other liberal bastions about her and her family are already being attributed to Senator Obama.

And the truth doesn’t matter. Qualifications don’t matter. Perception matters.

Her nomination isn’t historic any more than Pumpsie Green suiting up for the Red Sox long after the fact was. But that’s the narrative.

Attacking her for only being governor of a population that would barely crack the top 20 CITY populations (about as big as Charlotte) isn’t sexism. But that’s the narrative.

You want sexism?

Do a count of the ‘that' poor woman’s uttered in the next 60 days.

Count the number of times we are told that things (aside from poor Bristol Palin) that we are told, or are telling, are irrelevant or none of our business. Treating her differently than we treat John Edwards or Gary Hart because she’s a woman.

But that’s going to be the narrative.

And the cultural conservatives are going to rise up and protect their own.

They were going to stay home in November. Senator Obama was going to reap the bulk of the independents and his own fractious base, and McCain was going to be left with the inert Republican base. But now he gains the conservatives that were going to stay home, along with a healthy handful of braindead independents who are just going to vote for ovaries.

I hope I’m wrong.

Let America be America Again

by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? 
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free?  Not me?
Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright © 1994 the Estate of Langston Hughes.

I am the very model of a modern theatre generalist.

Scott Walters in response to a Mike Lawler post posits that theatre specialists are a symptom of our industrial approach to theatre and need to be dodged on a regional level…

I am of course paraphrasing, so please take a moment to visit the horses mouth.

Welcome back.

I am that theatre generalist working regionally (though I think the word clouds the difference between what I do and working at a regional theatre), and I think Scott has over-simplified.

Not about my value to an indie theatre company. I am ridiculously valuable to an indie theatre company (or TWO!). I can do whatever it is you don’t have one of, and do it competently.

But if you get twenty of me together and make a troupe of me?

You’re going to get competent theatre.

Never brilliance. I am not a brilliant theatre maker. Maybe there is a breed of brilliant theatre generalists out there, but I haven’t met very many (i.e. any – but I’m being generous). But that’s kind of the point of generalism no? breadth in lieu of depth.

With specialization comes virtuosity, which for my money is required for brilliant theatre.

Let’s be generous to me and say that I’m a 7 across the board.
At everything.
Graphic design, floor mopping, acting, sound design, carpentry, board oping, networking, marketing… whatever. I’m a 7. Comfortably above average.

I am by definition never the best person for the job. I am never your first call for anything. because 1.) there is necessarily someone better 2.) you’ll “save me” for the slot you can’t fill.

You wanna see some burn out?

It’s not just a question of the industrial approach to theatre, it’s a question of wanting the Best Available person for the position.

In baseball terms?

 

Kevin Youkilis.

Can you win with 9 of him? Maybe… but I doubt it.

What Scott meant to say (TOTALLY putting words in your mouth Scott… it’s like I’m a playwright!):

Indie theatres should be built on a core of generalists. A core / corp of people who can get shit done affordably and capably, spiced with truly virtuosic talent to transcend the Just Okay.

Oops I did it again…

And I know better…

We all have quirksfaultsfoibles that slow our pace towards whatever it is we’re headed.

Most of us, by the time we reach the relative age of maturity, have some idea of what those are. Some of us manage to course correct for those quirksfaultsfoibles and end up where we’re headed anyway.

Not me.
Nosiree.

Overandoverandover again.

Forgive the seeming interview speak:
One of my greatest weaknesses is that I’m not selfish enough.
Combine that with a decided lack of a Big Picture plan for my life in theatre and you will find that I have managed to get exactly nowhere.

And I did it again.

Over the past 6 weeks I have been locked in the process of show selection for the November slot we have reserved at the Dougherty Arts Center. This is for a project with my Not-My theatre company, and we had chosen to do a published work rather than new so we could focus on Production rather than development.

After plowing through a large number of scripts we finally have zeroed on one we’re pretty excited about (which I will talk much more about once we’ve actually secured the rights).

Except that: there’s nothing in it for me.
There isn’t a role for me, I’m not directing, and it’s already written.

I will end up as the TD, the LD, carrying a bunch of the production / promotion load, and when it comes off well the only people who will have any idea that I contributed will be the people already in the room. I don’t need to sell the people in the room. They know now.

And to move from this rut in my life, more people need to know what I can do.

Not to mention that to stave off burn out there needs to be a payoff. Some kind of payoff. The satisfaction of a job well done doesn’t refill the tank.

But at no point in the process was I smart enough to be selfish and insert myself into the selection criteria.

I’m an idiot.

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE!

I work with really great people. They would throw their weight behind a pet project of mine in a heartbeat. But remember the whole “no big picture plan” thing from a few paragraphs ago?

Yeah. I don’t have a pet project or dream role in mind, so there is no direct reimbursement to be had.

Oh the joyous 1-2 punch of my theatrical idiocy.

Don’t be me, and don’t be ashamed. Be selfish.
Be your own best advocate. No one is going to hand you anything

Product trial: Scribd

 

You can embed .pdfs on your site. Or on your blog.

And your audience can download them if you’d like.

Transformations OPT - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: Transformations OPT

Practicing What I Preach…

Rubber Rep is anyway.

In my last post (Get Out The Map) I credited Rubber Rep for cultivating fans with their consistent high quality work. Now I’m going to have to go back and slap a design commendation on their chest…

Today they announced the launch of their new web site, designed by Organic Web Designs, and it is a clean modern site that is very indicative of who they are as a company.

But we all have our own aesthetic ideas, let me know what you think:

Visit them now!

To be clear? This isn't the level of design and execution I think is bottom line for a company that means it. I think this is a really great site, and something to aim for when you're thinking about how your going about your own.

Get out the Map, Get out the Map…

Isaac asks if these posts from Jason Stoddard can apply to theatre:

I answer:

10. Divorce yourself from bad design.
I think this is important both on the web and in production.
We accept a lot of unacceptable tech from companies that obviously don’t have money. Not being able to do Big in no way excuses you from doing it Right.

As for the web? I think I can mostly exclude current company, because most bloggers aren’t afraid of technology. But in general the theatre community is morally opposed to and doesn’t WANT to understand it. And their (lack of) web presence shows it.

It’s cheap and easy to set up your own site. And if you’re afraid to do even that? Make a blog your company site. But have SOMETHING, and make sure it looks better than high school class projects. We’re trying to sell stuff here people!

9. Bring us together.

This is my primary goal in most areas, but especially for theatre artists. *SniffSniff* We don’t even talk anymore. We get so lost in rowing our own boats we’ve stopped looking around to see if anyone is headed in the same direction. I talk about this enough, moving on.

8. Stop devaluing yourself.

And not just by not getting paid. Remove the word ‘just’ from your vocabulary. Your knowledge, skill, and experience are worth something – decide on what and how much. And then don’t be afraid to ask for it – even if it’s nothing more than someone else’ expertise in your weaker area on your next project. Ain’t nothin’ free. Including you.

7. Embrace reality.

We can rant and rave all day every day about how crappy conditions are for theatre artists here on the ground, and how we would make them better. BUT…
We need to operate in the here and now. Take the challenge. You don’t need to embrace the bizarre punk-martyr ethos that some of the more exotic blog commenters seem to feel is The One True way to go about doing indie theatre, but you do need to find ways to make the most of the cramped inappropriate spaces and the credit cards limits you’re operating under. Don’t ignore your limits, know them, embrace them, then Innovate to overcome them.

Also? Do theatre.
If you want to make films the cameras are over there.
(and you’re going to need a bigger credit card)

6. Lose the negativity.

Both in talking to one another, and about your lot in life.

This is a public space, and everything you say can and will be held against you. I’m as hotheaded as the next guy, and I would love to go toe-to-toe in an ad hominem war with noted curmudgeon Don Hall (being as I am doing bad work in the sticks and all).
As much fun as that would be, my job is to make sure he’s wrong, not to prove it to him rhetorically. All the while not looking like a douchebag to anyone who’s looking at me or one of my companies later.

And none of us are working in spaces that are too big, too well equipped, or have budgets we just don’t know what to do with. There’s a difference between seeking change for the greater good and whining, mind the gap.

5. Define your messages.

I believe that you shouldn’t make plays just to make plays, but I also know that part of the reason I started writing here in the first place was because I’m not sure what my message is yet. But I think in the long run you need clarity because the audience won’t show up in force until they have a pretty good idea of what they’re getting when they show up. Like WNEP or LA’s Neo-Surrealists, or the Rude Mechs here in Austin, have a mission statement, have it mean something, and don’t lie to your audiences unless that IS your mission.

4. Get visible–on all levels.

Be transparent. Folks like knowing what they’re getting, and what they’re getting is you and your company. We have a great medium for your being available 24-hours a day via web presence in a very inexpensive, customizable way let them see you. Even (maybe even especially) the goofy non-theatre related parts of you.
Be accessible.

3. Create fans–and benefits.

Goes hand in hand with #5. Rubber Rep here in Austin has been putting out quality product so long that their shows sell themselves (even when they’re not doing Wallace Shawn premieres). Consistent excellence is the best audience aphrodisiac.

Barring that breakthrough, don’t be afraid to put your rep company front and center. The same (again quality) faces up front make people comfortable. It may not make you the star, but if you’re making theatre to become a star you’re probably doing it wrong anyway.

Both speak to the need to give an audience something to hook in to, something to identify your company with to become fans of.

Then give them deals. Create coupons on your site and others. Group packages, free nights, BOGO’s, theatre company nights, any reason really to bring a friend. You will have warmer audiences if they’re making a night of it, even with just one other friend, and if that house is full even they aren’t all full price tickets.

2. Create your own worlds.

An offshoot of #3, with an additional  hat tip to James Comtois, Qui Nguyen, and Ian Hill who I think accomplish this in exactly the way that I imagine it. Their pieces all speak to each other, and have a clear style.

1. Fund a big idea or two.

I think fund is the wrong verb. But undertake works for me.

Like what? A theater museum? The Chicago Theater Database? The Off Loop Charter? The >100K Project?

Perfect.

Solutions to larger problems (or gaps anyway). A moment away from working on your next show perhaps, but no less needed by the community at large than your next work.

---

Alright, so that exercise turned out to not really be applicable to anyone who reads this. Well done me. It’s already written so I’ll throw it out there… Carry on all.

And Isaac? The (much) shorter answer is yes, I think it can apply….

After these messages…

One more quicky before we get back to the meat:

A shot from the wedding, easily my second favorite shot, featuring part-time preacher, part-time Sooper Delishus writer, full-time awesome - Christopher M. Keating:

My Beautiful Bride:

Something for Malachy and the other Yankees fans
(MAN it’s going to be a fun end of the year!):

And my favorite shot:

The tattoo says, “We are strong, We are the good ones.” from the Anne Sexton poem Rapunzel, which Megan turned into a performance piece, which launched the eventual creation of Transformations last spring.  As read by Kacey Samiee it was quite a favorite of the entire cast.

 

Back to our regular programming in juuust a moment.

SooperDelishus Sharethrough

Click though for full size.

Life Saver

There was a time not so long ago when I was that adrift member of the post-academic actor tribe awaiting for the big kids to make up a project I could work on.

Then I found religion.

I had listened to the idle talk that actors aren’t generative artists and taken it to heart. I was living the malaise.

Then I got knocked off my donkey.

I got a call from a man who had created and ArtSpark team and was short an actor. Hey! I was an actor! Hey! I was going crazy having nothing to do after my office day ended!

I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

I was now part of Team Infinite Perspectives.

Our task was to create a new theatre piece given a Spark on opening night that was be presented to the public in three months, and then presented after extensive notes and corrections to the public again a week later.

We were given a budget and a 24-hour office.

We were given space for the show.

And on opening night we were handed a whole PILE of Spark.

I won’t recount the process step by step that can be found over at the Team Blog. But what I will say is that through the ArtSpark Festival and it’s gracious extension of the opportunity to fail on someone else’s dime, I figured out that I really like making plays. Not just getting the lines right, but being in the generative trenches.

It also gave me the opportunity to play around with projections and do voiceover for a video game team. (haHA!)

I met the majority of my Austin theatre tribe through this festival one way or the other.

I met Will Snider, my partner in crime with Cambiare Production, I met indefatigable Andrew Varenhorst, director Aaron Sanders, I met my Gobotrick folks and my Texas State alums through Will. And the rest I met through Foundation events of one stripe or another. (I also won Miss Congeniality!)

Will (and Co.) won the Festival Grand Prize ($5000) in ArtSpark 2, and now works for the Foundation. I got Will. Fair’s fair.

And now?

ArtSpark 4 is up!

Beginning Thursday at the OffCenter in Austin we have another round of theatre groups giving it a go.

I know a whole raft of folks involved, and haven’t seen them in months, so you know they’ve been working hard.

This this year the sparks consist of:

“a piece of visual art and a musical composition that were produced and submitted by your team's Visual Artist and Musician(s) prior to the start of the Festival. This year, teams will also receive the Dell Children's Hospital play room as one of their "sparks." The “sparks” will serve as the jumping off point for Creative Teams, since no work on the team’s new pieces can begin prior to the start of the Festival. Theatre artists and video game designers will use these “sparks” to begin brainstorming on the Creative Team's new play or video game. Once development of the Creative Team's video game or play begins, that team's visual artist and musician(s) will create a new piece of visual art and music that responds to the entire team's ArtSpark experience. The theatre artists or video game designers on your Creative Team are required to incorporate the visual art and music into the new play or video game.”

Sweet.

The Theatre Showcase are at the OffCenter.

The Music Showcase are at the Scoot Inn

The Game Showcases are on the ACC campus

The Visual Art showcases are at the Pump Project

All are worthwhile. I encourage you to check it out. These sorts of festivals are exactly what builds the kinds of community I’m talking about. And they just may save lives.

Get Your Tickets Now!

I have met the Enemy

Tony Adams asks,I answer:

Tony asks in a very well thought out post a simple question which I will sum up as, Why Don’t We Make Them Us? Why don’t artists step up and sit in the big boy seats?

Well the first and easiest answer is that they don’t want to. The want to do Their Thing. They want to be an actor, or designer,, or playwright.

Secondly? The Institutions don’t want them. Not in America. Not in 2008. This is an era of specialization, and there is no reason to hire an actor with some back office chops rather than an MBA. Not a single non-altruistic reason. Why would you hire someone that you know for a fact is only half paying attention to the job you need them to do? The mechanics of it alone are iffy. And are you going to have them work when the office is closed? The big boys rehearse during the day. But I’m piling on…

For my money the biggest reason specifically actors aren’t stepping up (outside of the fringe) to positions of leadership on the organizational side is that we’ve trained them to do as they’re told.

In American theater most people come to the business via education. They discover it in high school or college and are trained in either pre-professional or conservatory programs. That training is largely carried out by lapsed or current professionals who teach their student to operate in the system and the hierarchy they know.

That system is of course the current system, and that hierarchy is the primacy of the text, then the director, with the actor doing as they are told.

And they are listening.

Did your school teach you how to be a producer?
Poster design?
Advertising theory?
Social networking?
Grant writing?
Press release writing?
Interview technique?

Are actors forced to take play writing and design classes at you alma mater?

We are getting the actors we ordered. They do What They Do.

Of course lots of them are starting companies of their own. And they’re failing at the same rate because they have to learn by trial and error.

Artists, actors at least, aren’t stepping up because they don’t want to and because they don’t have the skills institutions  need to run the business efficiently.

Your Turn

How am I wrong? Which assumption is one step too far?

I don’t want this to be proclamation, I want it to be discussion.