Well, I'm in Louisville with 10 compatriots this weekend for the Humana Festival annnnnnnnd ... I'm a little under the weather. (I was sick enough to leave Game On 2/3 of the way through so that I wouldn't pass out in the theater.) So, I've been sleeping much more than usual and working much less. Someday soon, I will post some lengthy reactions to the shows.

For the moment though, these will have to suffice.

The Breaks - Incredibly cool but a little frustrating. I'm a huge Bamuthi fan. He's an amazing performer and he doesn't disappoint. However, there are a couple of not-insignificant opportunities to make the show more effective that were staring me in the face.

The Beautiful City - The Civilians brought their A-game in this one. This show could also use a little molding still, but it had a number of moments that were incredibly moving and revealing. I'll be surprised if there's a better show this weekend.

Great Falls - Rarely have I been so indifferent to a play as I was to this 90-minute production. I really didn't mind that the play was happening in front of me, but also I wouldn't really have minded if it had stopped. This, despite the presence of the great Tom Nelis.

Game On - The Festival may have found the ultimate expression of the intern show's purpose this year - after all, isn't it really just a chance for the pros to play cheerleaders for the interns on Friday night? Past attempts at something greater have usually fallen flat, but Game On doesn't shy away from working the audience into a lather on occasion. I'd love to see audiences so excited at other shows.

Ken Davenport checks in on the six-figure salaries of some of our nation's Artistic Directors and shows you how to do it to. Choice quote:

Oh yeah, one more thing. As I've blogged about before, one of the questions I am asked most often is "Where can I find people who make enough bank that they may have some disposable income to put in a show?"

I think I just found a few.

This weekend alone I have been in touch with six movers and shakers who are all choosing now as the time to start cross-theater initiatives. That doesn't seem like a coincidence to me, friends.

Tony's critiquing the critics again. Hooray!

Apparently, Jerry Patch went to NYC to pick some fights.

And it looks like Sheila must have a show opening in Ohio.

However, instead responding by playing it safe on other fronts to compensate for the big risks we're taking, we've decided to try another big experiment. We're making all tickets to all shows for everyone all the time "Pay What You Want". That's right, just like Radiohead,Trent Reznor, Saul Williams, Paste Magazine, and a small crop of restaurants.

Of course, I know lots of theatres have done this for a couple of nights in each run, and our local Shakespeare in the Park is free, meaning "donate what you want." And I have heard gossip that a few theatres on the west coast have gone completely PWYW.

For us, it's really about two things. First, it's about serving the community. We figure it's a better world if good theatre is really, truly affordable to everyone, so we're putting our money where our mouths are, so to speak. The second is marketing. The space we're in has many more seats than we're used to, so we might as well make them available for next to nothing, otherwise, they'll just sit empty.

Has anyone out there tried this? What success have you had? What made it work or not work? What are your thoughts?

I've managed to set aside a few hours since Wednesday to try to keep-up and read all the different posts, comments, reaction posts, etc. that popped-up on the day of blogging about value (and the days since).

You should definitely stop-by Theatre is Territory for their big list of all the posts and a nice collection of quotations.

Much more if you click through to the rest of the post.

What is the Value of Theatre?

First of all, this post is part of a Theatre Think Tank initiative - a group effort to crack this nut. Please also visit Theater for the Future, Rat Sass, Theatre Ideas, Parabasis, The Next Stage, Steve on Broadway, Theatre is Territory, Freedom Spice in the New Mash-Up World, Mike Daisey, An Angry White Guy in Chicago, Bite & Smile, That Sounds Cool, A Rhinestone World, GreyZelda Land, On Theatre and Politics, and The Devil Vet.

And be sure to check back here for additions to that list. (UPDATE: There's a better list here.)

What is the "value" of theatre? We need to figure out what it is that theatre does well and better than other art/entertainment forms. Then we need to figure out a positive way to describe those things to people who do not already identify themselves as theatregoers.

Theatre is local, and a group experience, and exchange does happen. Yes. And those are good examples because they are qualities that theatre excels at, even though they're not necessarily things you can't get elsewhere. Are those, then, the qualities that we can leverage into the concrete end-result we're hoping for - greater attendance? (Or is that the gold at the end of the rainbow? Is it even bigger? A sustainable model? I think that's another discussion.)

What does make theatre different, and, indeed, why WOULD anyone choose it over NetFlix? Is relevance the key? Obviously, we hope to make our art relevant to our potential audience members. So, we choose universal themes and/or write about current events. That's one advantage of theatre - it can be quick. But that's not unique, the news is quicker, so are radio talkshows. I don't think we can definitely prove that theatre is better at being relevant than books, movies, etc.

Relevance is important, but it also sounds like importance. I bet if you ask the "great unwashed masses" if theatre is "important" in the world, they'd say yes. If you asked them if they go, well, we know the answer. I think the symphony is important here in my hometown, but that motherfucker's about to go out of business, and it's at least in part because people like me don't go often enough.

Adam Bock said that, and I love him for it, among other things. What a beautiful thought..

If you're interested, you can read my writing (and my friends' talking) about our Humana experiences from 2005, 2006, and 2007.

The 2005 page is an article from the Theatre Summit (remind me to tell you about that sometime) that I've uploaded to the Forte site. I carried around a little tape recorder that year, and transcribed it later. It's got some good advice on what to look out for, where to go, and what to plan for if you're visiting Louisville for the Festival. It probably has a lot of typos. Oh well, warts and all.

The 2006 page was one of my first-ever blogs. It's just a simple html page I built before the trip. My computer broke that year, and I spent a couple hours in ATL's big lobby with it tethered to Dave's 17" Powerbook, re-installing everything. That was a bad day, to say the least. I was on the phone with Applecare in the car for two hours. Ugh.

The 2007 entries were on another blog, but I switched them over to here, since they were written during the same days I was creating Theatreforte. I had the idea during that weekend and the site went wide-screen about a month later, when all those posts on class were happening everywhere and Sean from Working Group outed me.

So, have fun with those. I had a good time re-reading them.

19 days to go.

I see a lot of young playwrights in America writing apolitical works that don't engage with social reality. Why do you think that is?

Nonprofit theaters rely on funding from corporations and wealthy individuals. It's likely that liberal audiences and funders are deeply invested in the current structures that have allowed them to make and preserve their wealth, and it's unlikely that they are truly interested in seeing work that questions the ideological foundations that support their class status.

Artistic directors, who rely on this funding to keep their theaters afloat, are likely--consciously or not--choosing work that appeals to the ideological prejudices of the audiences that sustain their theaters.

This is not a time of great ideological dissent in the art world. There's a sense among artists today that the world is the way it is and that's it.

But you refuse to think that way.

We can't use the way things are as an excuse to give up or to create art that reinforces the dominant ideologies of our country. Artists have thrived in societies much more oppressive than ours. And it's important to remember that.

We have to remember we're able to write what we want to write--so far--without being censored or put in jail. We might not get all the audiences we want, but no one is stopping us from doing the work that we think should be done. To me, the artist's responsibility is to do the work.

Click here to read the whole interview.

We leave for Louisville in 20 days. Damn, I'm excited. The Humana Festival has been the genesis for a great number of things in my life, not least of them my taste in plays to a great extent. (You can blame Harold Clurman and the NYTR for the rest of that.)

Anyway, let's start taking a look at the Festival in detail. Today we'll talk about Gina Gionfriddo, whose new play Becky Shaw is in the Festival this year.

Gina's work has been seen at the Festival before, both as part of the anthology/intern show Trepidation Nation and in After Ashley, which was far and away the best play of the 2004 Festival. I know another of her plays very well, U.S. Drag and it's a absolute hoot. Gionfriddo's received the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, an Obie and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and she's been known to write for Law & Order and Cold Case on the boob tube. (The cast of Becky Shaw includes Annie Parisse, who's on L&O.)

Here's a choice quotation from a conversation between Gionfriddo and Rapp that was published in The Brooklyn Rail last November.

I think there is definitely a class of theatergoer who wants to have coffee and dessert after the play and really doesn't want a play to go on too long or present anything that's gonna negatively impact dessert. But I personally--and I think you, too--bring the absolute opposite desire to the theater. I am being entertained really well by TV for free and by film for eleven bucks a pop. When I see a play, I want my world rocked, my perspective shifted. I get really mad when that doesn't happen.

Q. Why did you choose to write plays when writing scripts for television, film and other media generally pays better and reaches more people?

A. Two reasons: Writers have much less authorial control in film and TV. I mean, maybe a Clint Eastwood or a David Milch ("NYPD Blue") has the clout to write a TV series or a film without submitting to editorial notes from 12 different executives, but I sure don't have it! I control the words in my playwriting, and that is very important to me.

Also, the theater just accommodates my writing better. I like a kind of verbal combat that is electric on stage and doesn't translate so well to the screen because it's visually rather static.

So, how bout a picture?

Anne Bogart told me that it's every young theatre person's responsibility to attend the Humana Festival. So, if you're planning to fulfill that responsibility, whether you're young or old, here are a few resources that could make your visit to the Festival more fun.

The list of every Humana Festival play ever.

The list of every Humana Festival playwright ever.

The Courier-Journal has the best Humana Festival coverage every year, hands-down. Here's their page for this year. Check out the new video features!

Here's ATL's Humana Festival page. (Particularly interesting is the "CD-ROM" section. They put together a CD-ROM with neat goodies for the 30th fest, and now they've put most of it online. If you click over to "Perspectives" in that section, you can read some reminiscences and remarks from people like Jordan Harrison, Anne Bogart, Paul Owen, Naomi Iizuka, Tony Kushner, Michael Bigelow Dixon, plus some critics, actors, and staff whose names you wouldn't recognize.

Like Mr. Hall, I've been paid well for my art on occasion, but I've also paid for my art an awful lot. (Most of the time, in fact.)

For the past few years, I've been producing theatre as well as working on it, and have thus been in the position of paying people - or not. I spend a lot of time thinking about how much they should be paid and what's fair and who's getting what?

Art isn't a job, the way we approach it. Clearly. Otherwise we'd fucking quit, right? We're not getting paid shit, and it's really stressful. So, if it's not a job, we can't really apply job-logic to it, can we? In fact, am I doing people a favor by providing a place for them to act and play out fantasies and get applause? Should people be paying me?

Comments appear to be working again. You'll have to type in "watch" like before. I hope someone will try it out and let me know if it works for other people as well.
Thanks.

So, I feel I can say that this part of the model doesn't need to be fixed, at least not for us. And that's good. It does occur to me that we've been spending more time (as the company grows) on all the stuff that came before this. We've been writing grants, working out rights, negotiating for space with a big corporation, scheduling, budgeting, etc., etc., since early last fall. Obviously, that's all necessary and I'm glad we did it, but I really wish we had more time to enjoy this part of it.

Since the money comes down, largely, to real estate, it'd be great if we lived in a place where real estate was cheaper, and we could still find a group of good actors we enjoy working with, and we could get an audience large enough to fill the house on enough nights to pay everyone well enough to quit at least one of their day jobs.

That shouldn't be so hard, right?

UPDATE: I'm re-reading this and remembering that I'm in Columbus, Ohio, and some people might actually think of making art here because the real estate is cheaper. Hmmm.

When I put that in the title of a post, it automatically gets way more popular. Hmmm ...

Anyway, it sounds like Prince Gomolvilas, Brandon Patton, and Impact Theatre have figured something out. Check out these posts from Tim Bauer AKA Direct Address and Marisela AKA Variations on a Theme.

Click through for the trailer.

I was going to start my follow-up the rather negative post from the other day by saying something along the lines of ... "Most of the problems associated with the American theater in the 21st Century has to do with the fact that it costs too much to create."

But Don Hall beat me to it.

Then I was gonna talk about how space is the big bully in our budgets and that marketing cash-sucking beast that'll never be sated. I was gonna say something like ... "the most cost prohibitive aspects of producing live theater are the rental fees for viable and legally sanctioned venues and the ability to openly and effectively promote the existence of specific shows."

But Don Hall beat me to it.

I don't know what I was gonna write after that, but Don Hall wrote a specific action plan for his own town that should give a few folks in other parts of the country a couple of really worthwhile ideas. Please read it here.

Hey, Don, tomorrow I'm gonna write more about RSS feeds, you got any good ideas for that one?

PS. I saw Be Kind Rewind last night, right after I wrote that sad post. It re-invigorated me a bit. It's really movie about the power of creativity/ I recommend it.

And today I met a couple dozen people from all over the country who've come to Columbus to campaign for Obama. That was inspiring too.

Lastly, Adam Szymkowicz sent me a comment email. (Sorry, I haven't gotten around to fixing the commenting yet.)

What is good about theater? It's still a great way to
spend your time. There's no where I'd rather be than
in a theater seeing a show. Nothing inspires me more
and it can be a place of great beauty.

That said, all the things you say above are true.

Yesterday, I got an email from Tricia asking me if I would email her when I update my blog, because the whole RSS thing is too complicated. When I explained (see below), she was delighted and is now done with the whole email thing. Totally 1990s.

EXPLAINED: RSS is just a little peep, a signal, a ping that comes from a favorite blog or site, telling your computer that it has been updated. If you have an RSS reader (and they're free and easy, and two of the easiest live on the web so you don't even have to install anything), whenever a blog is updated, it shows up in your reader and you can catch up on the news. If there's nothing new, it doesn't show up and you don't have to waste time surfing around.

GETTING IT: All you have to do to subscribe to this blog is ONE of the following:

a. Click this icon.

b. Copy the text in quotes below (without the quotes) into your RSS reader.
"http://www.avltheatre.com/forte/atom.xml"

c. Look in the address bar of your browser, you may see the letters RSS on an icon like this , if you click either, it'll take you to the RSS feed for this page.

IT'S EVERYWHERE: RSS is just about everywhere you want it to be. So add other RSS feeds on stuff you care about. And if you want a downloadable reader, just go to google and search on "RSS reader" and the name of your computer OS. You'll find a bunch. (If you're using Mac OS X, I recommend NetNewsWire. It's free and awesome.)

That's it. You're done.

Free, easy, permanent until you undo it and it'll save you time, tire wear and help you avoid male pattern baldness.

Thanks for your help, Seth.

So, theatrebloggers, feel free to take the text above and freely adapt yourself for your readers. Remember an RSS Blog Reader is a Happy Blog Reader.