Celebrate the end of the strike with Broadway's Back. ( They should put the thing on TV.) Then, read The Playgoer's post-strike round-up. Lastly, please keep in mind that we narrowly avoided the strike's trickle-down effects.

In Cincinnati, a high school production of Ten Little Indians was almost canceled because of the play's original title. Anytown (say, Houston) is a good town for more Maria Irene Fornes. d’bi young anitafrika is writing a dub opera. The BBC will film the complete Shakespeare. Read about Fiona Shaw & Deborah Warner's Happy Days. Go see No Dice.

A note on food in the theater. Bring enough for everyone. Or for your row at least. Why buy one doughnut when you can bring two dozen? Everybody loves Dunkin Donuts. Even old people.

If you wanna get angry, try reading about the strike one of George F. Will and Peggy Noonan's favorite sites, City Journal.

The Public announces Under the Radar 2008. The Cornerstone Theatre seeks a managing director. Robert LePage directs Stravinsky in San Fran. Charlie Chaplin's grandson is doing an avant garde movement based performance piece in Chicago. Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia has opened in Moscow. How bout a musical ghost play created by Stephen King & John Mellancamp?

Great headline: "Nathan Lane Thrilled by Opportunity to Finally Play a Man".

Last night I met with a guy who has a real passion for Our Town, his name is Artie Isaac and he runs America's Favorite Ad Agency, Young Isaac. He also has a blog that's a great read - check it out.

Well, it was Thorton Wilder who brought us together, but we spent about half of our time talking about marketing theatre. I'm hoping to pick his brain for more, but for the moment, let's focus on two key questions. (Somebody warm-up the comment-o-tron, please.)

The first is the longer. Someone very smart wrote that if you can fulfill one of three needs, people will do anything for you.

• Aid their health.
• Make them richer.
• Do something for their kids.

So, how does theatre address one of those needs? And, as a caveat, can you answer the question without referring to spiritual health or something silly like that?

Second question. What is the promise that theatre makes?

Your thoughts?

Keep reading The Playgoer for the most up-to-date strike news.

A few words from an L.A. stagehand. Melbourne's Theatre in Bars wants to screw with you. Odyssey Theatre of Cardiff's The Ballroom involved 55 people from all walks of life, including adults with learning disabilities and those who simply have a desire to perform. Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre’s Hamlet is being performed on a real carousel in Brooklyn. Catch the Degenerate Art Ensemble in L.A. this weekend. AP talks to an Idled Electrician.

Quotation of the day:

... producers have discovered that there are more than enough people willing to pay a whole lot more to see big, dumb musicals like "Young Frankenstein" and "Legally Blonde," which is why such shows now dominate Broadway. No matter who prevails in the strike, that's not going to change.

Terry Teachcout in the Wall Street Journal

Y'know what we need out here in the midwest? More locally grown theatre.

I know, I know you read a lot about this last summer, and don't really wanna another argument cropping up. Never-the-less, this is a nice little article on Flyover. Well, it's less of an article, and more of an excuse to quote Jeff Daniels and talk about Willimaston Theatre, who really are doing interesting, homegrown work.

Check it out, please.

Listening to the NPR story about the House Theatre of Chicago, a few things were especially surprising for me.

1. The first theatre in Chicago occurred in 1837 for 75 cents a ticket. Wow.

2. A bunch of kids from Texas chose to move en masse to Chicago to start a company? I guess the theatre scenes in Dallas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio must really suck.

3. Harry Houdini, Peter Pan, the Wizard of Oz, the Nutcracker... HTC shows would seem to capitalize on name-recognition of stories in the public domain.

4. The actors earn $1000 a show? Damn, that's pretty good.

5. The most successful young theatre company in Chicago and everybody still needs to work a day job? Interesting. Just how successful do you need to be before you can afford to quit your day job?

6. They've had 20,000 people in attendance for a production of a drama? Damn, that's really good.

7. With a budget of almost $500,000, everybody has to work a day job and the company is still listed in the "fringe and storefront" section of Time Out. Maybe if they reach an operating budget $3 million they can quit and work in the theatre full time. That seems absolutely crazy to me. Granted, NPR does not go into great detail about the HTC business plan, but that strikes me as an extraordinarily high figure for being able to pay out a living wage.

Again, how successful do you need to be before you can afford to quit your day job?

One thing about this strike, it's certainly been a big learning opportunity for a lot of us.

Let's look at a post from the Humble Nailbanger, in which he re-publishes a flyer that Actors' Equity has apparently been passing out in NYC.

Myth The Stagehands are striking because they want to preserve “featherbedding.”

Fact
If you follow the League’s logic about “featherbedding,” they could say swings and understudies fall into that category. They’re at the theatre but not working on stage. (”Featherbedding” is an epithet or charge employers always make against Union workers when they want to cut jobs. The term itself refers to workers who supposedly get paid and don’t work). Why are these negotiated, accepted business practices suddenly “featherbedding?”

Myth
The Stagehands on strike are making $150,000 to $200,000 a year.

Fact
A Local One member who works 52 weeks a year will average $67,500 plus benefits. Most extra money comes from working beyond their regular work week.

Vaclav Havel's first new play in 18 years.

Go behind the scenes with Richard Foreman and the Ontological-Hysteric. The Henry Hewes Awards for design announced their 15 2007 winners. Hey, 9 to 5 is gonna be a musical! I love that movie! And, apparently, Young Frankenstein both sucks and blows. In Chicago, The Neo-Futurists are lookin for interns. A number of non-striking shows are benefitting from the picket-lines. Matthew Freeman lists 20 indispensable rules for the writing of plays. One Minute Play Festival.

Does this recent development indicate that America's most prestigious film schools are becoming more relevant, or more obsolete?

It's been a while since we've done a post about blogging itself. So, here are a couple of posts for those bloggers who might be trying to improve their web-worthiness.

Jeffrey Zeldman wrote a great little primer for A List Apart (for people who make websites) called Understanding Web Design. It's not so much a primer for people who want to make websites, more an unpacking of some of the problems that beset those who do. Maybe the best little part of the whole article is his answer to "So what is web design?"

Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.

Armin Vit at Speak Up asked Where are the Canonical Web Designs? And Joshua Porter of bokardo dot com responds with Do Canonical Web Designs Exist? Here's a lil bit:

You can’t appreciate a web site in the same way you appreciate a logo or a poster. When a logo works, it makes you think certain things. Makes you think about the company, their influence, their reach. It’s about branding. The IBM logo suggests a solidity, the rock that is Big Blue. At this point, after you’ve thought these things, you’re done. There is nothing else to do. Maybe you’ll consider their products in the future.

When a web site works, on the other hand, you’re using it to do something. You might be looking for your next favorite book on Amazon, or searching for a critical piece of information on Google. You’re using the web site…interacting with it, having an experience that, contrary to logos, involves you. You are inputting information, asking questions, getting answers.

There's more to read and much to learn. Please check them out.

Tragedy at Yale Rep and on the Local One picket line.

I've no words.

I couldn't have said it better myself, Marisa ... well maybe like this ...

Isherwood got HOUSED!!!

Anyway, lots of folks are linking to Jon Robin Baitz quite civilly hurtling the smack down on the Ish-man over at The Huffington Post. Here's a taste.

In his first paragraph, the following words stand out: "for all those writers lying on the couch in Hollywood perfecting their video-game scores, or weeding the backyards of their Laurel Canyon haciendas." He goes on to challenge them to name the author of a bit of dialogue from a certain classic American play. His supposition about what the writers are doing is faulty. They are on the picket lines. Many, who are currently unemployed, including a number of playwrights, are figuring out what to do about mortgages.

The line he challenges readers to identify is from Clifford Odet's play "Waiting for Lefty," a playwright he then writes off rather high-handedly as someone who became "hooked on the money " and who " continued to work in Hollywood for years, growing sour and self-disgusted."

In fact, Mr. Odets, far from being hooked on the money, had given so much of it away to the Group Theater, et al over the years, that he had very little choice but to turn to Hollywood. Particularly after he grew ever so slightly cold in the eyes of the fickle New York critics. He had children to bring up, and that cost money then as it does now. (Mr. Isherwood, whom I do not dislike at all , has, I note with a degree of idleness, no such obligations, as far as I know.)

UPDATE:
Leonard Jacobs and JRB are mixing-it up over at The Clyde Fitch Report.

This morning's NPR Weekend Edition featured a story about the House Theatre of Chicago. Sadly, I don't have time to write up my thoughts, other than to say that it is definitely worth 9 minutes and 15 seconds of your time.

Newer on the block: The House Theatre of Chicago, started by a group of Southern Methodist University grads who came to Chicago six years ago. They had been offered funding in Denver, but they chose to come empty-pocketed to Chicago, simply because of the intensely competitive and supportive theater community.

The troupe's first show was at Halloween 2001: In a borrowed storefront space across from a cemetery, they premiered Death and Harry Houdini — an underground hit, a sold-out run. The Terrible Tragedy of Peter Pan came next, and the House was off and running, always with big shows in small places, with music and dance and battle scenes and actors flying overhead.

Strike Update: View the Local One Press Conference

Watch out, Japanther is coming to PS122 this week. Steppenwolf has announced of its Traffic series. The Harry Ransom Center in Austin has the first major exhibition on Arthur Miller, through Dec. 30. In Chicago, Silk Road has extended their hugely popular production of Merchant on Venice. Sam Shepard will be rocking out with the Velocity Ramblers in Bustown this weekend. There's a Director's Competition in Cincinnati.

Okay. Is this digital theatre?

Steppenwolf concludes the festival with a unique collection of seven “digital plays,” created in Adobe Flash for online-only viewing.

H/T Mr. Parabasis.

Theatre de la Jeune Lune is in trouble. Support the writers, sign the petition. Brat Productions will present A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pagaent in Philadelphia this holiday season. A Goonies musical? The NY Times profiles Edward Albee. Steppenwolf has fancy dressing rooms. Theatre couples often go to extremes to make it work. Getcher Living Theatre DVDs right here.

Here's a great response to theatre-goers worried about how the strike will affect their vacation plans.

From Terry Teachout:

How long will the strike last? Your guess is as good as mine. I'll let you know what I know when I know it. In the meantime, though, keep in mind that at any given moment, most of the good shows in America are playing way off Broadway. In recent weeks I've praised productions I saw in Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. You don't have to go to New York City--or anywhere near it--to spend an unforgettable night at the theater. What are you waiting for?

Great post. It starts like this:

Solidarity

That's not just a word to the Broadway theatrical community. For the second time in this decade, we have felt it and lived it. And each time that solidarity is tested, we become stronger for it, individually and as a community. You, the Producer, do this. We rediscover that part of the human spirit that we have been alienated from, the power of the group, the tribe, the union. This is a sense that can only be found during times of mutual trial.

So, I was at our vet's office this morning, hanging-out in the waiting room with Beckett, and CNN was on the TV hanging overhead. They were talking about the writer's strike and then they switched to some "on location" guy in New York who talked about the stagehands strike.

Well, suffice to say it was not a very sympathetic report. Not at all. "What were the stagehands thinking," they asked, "going on strike during such a busy time of year for the Great White Way?" The only sympathy CNN displayed was for the poor tourists who came to town expecting to see a show and were disappointed to find a picket line instead.

They had plenty of video of the picket lines, but rather than interviewing anyone who had a clue what was going on, they interviewed a mom whose kids were sad cause they couldn't see How the Grinch Stole Christmas. "One wonders" they said "why the stagehands would choose to strike on the opening weekend of such a potentially popular show."

CNN. In depth reporting. Reliable sources. It made me more than a little sick.

UPDATE
Be sure to read this entry from The Humble Nailbanger for more on this.

It's been a long while since I've run a Seth-themed post. So, here's a three-some of rules that should be of help to anyone who's put themselves in charge of a theatre.

Three things you need:
1) the ability to abandon a plan when it doesn't work,
2) the confidence to do the right thing even when it costs you money in the short run, and
3) enough belief in other people that you don't try to do everything yourself.

Downtown Columbus is kinda funny. After 5:00pm, the high-rise office towers empty out and everyone drives back to the suburbs for dinner. I guess things have gotten a little more lively in recent years, but there's still an awful lot of dark storefronts in the evenings and on weekends.

Given the fact that most theatre artists I know have to hold down day jobs, our rehearsal schedules nicely complement these non-working hours. So if the cafe that serves breakfast and lunch to the downtown office crowd closes at 5pm, and theatre artists need performance space after, say, 6pm, why can't these two uses be incorporated under the same roof?

The NY Times had this great picture of James L. Brooks picketing Fox.

Hollywood writers took to the sidewalks, if not quite the streets, on Monday, as last-ditch bargaining failed to avert the first industrywide strike in more than 19 years.

Just after midnight, about 12,000 movie and television writers represented by the Writers Guild of America East and the Writers Guild of America West went on strike against Hollywood producers represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.

Picket lines went up at more than a dozen studios and other production sites on both coasts. And at least a handful of television shows — including the CBS series “The Big Bang Theory” and “Two and a Half Men” — quickly shut down.

Wait, what's going on? Watch this.

The big man over at Ain't It Cool has a rave review of the Sweeney Todd movie. Have you been reading Praxis Theatre's Sentences about Theatre? The League of American Theatres and Producers put out its annual press release on the demographics of the Broadway audience. About Face (of Chicago) Artistic Director will head to Kansas City. Speech & Debate opens the Laura Pels Theatre. Paper Mill Playhouse has a new executive director. Ex-football star Bo Eason's semiautobiographical solo play will soon begin an engagement at 37 Arts.

George Hunka has yet another essential post today. He's leaning back in the big, leather armchair of perspective and giving us a bird's-eye view of some of the highs and lows of the recent blogosphere times, while delineating some of our failure and successes along the way and most important current challenges.

Whether you're a blog writer, reader, commenter, lurker, lover, or hater, it's required reading.

I'll warn you, though, he ends with a downer.

The Theater Hall of Fame has chosen its 2007 inductees. Tony Kushner's The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures will open at the Guthrie. Sheila Callaghan was one of the winners of the $50,000 Whiting prize. Is that science? No, it's rock n roll in Austin. Chicago theatre hit the road. Need some help with the lights? You might try ETC's new knowledge base.

You know you want to write a play in November. You know you want to. Even if you never have. Even if you don't know how. And if you know how and want to and haven't signed up, you need to sign up at these two addresses :

Naplwrimo Homepage
and
Naplwrimo Discussion Boards

Signing up for both is the only way to participate!!!
Don't miss out! and See you there!

I gotta go start my play.... or you know... write the 30 other web pages that should be up and aren't yet.

Playwrighterly Yours,
Dorothy

Guy Debord was a French philosopher with some far-out ideas about the alienation of capitalism, commodity fetishism, and the banality of modern culture, summed up in his most influential work, Society of the Spectacle. In 1957 Debord was a founding member of the Situationist International, a group which sought to upend conventional society through a kind of creative disruption, using politically charged art and writing to reclaim individuality and self-determination outside of the Spectacle's pervasive influence.

The Situationists were also known for practicing derive, essentially a drug-addled wandering through Paris, during which Debord and his friends would use urban space in unexpected or unintended ways. After all, why not take a nap in the middle of the boulevard? Why not relieve yourself at a bus stop?

Debord's influence is still present in creative works such as Fight Club, Adbusters, or with our friends at Improv Everywhere. Witness their latest stunt, where 111 shirtless men go shopping in a Manhattan Abercrombie & Fitch store.

Frankly, the New Albany-based corporation has had it coming for a long time. But are Charlie Todd and his wily band of IE Agents subverting the Spectacle, or merely perpetuating it in a different way?