Want just the feed? OKAY.]]>
I'd rather put my trust in the state rather than The Nation-State. I trust each state (and local/city/municipal governments) to calculate the value of their arts orgs' contributions to their economy, tourism, and public image. Local government arts "czars" can be more responsive to individual arts institutions--and can even attend them! Yes, there's state programs now. (And in New York NYSCA is already a big deal.) But think how much further that could go. I've personally had it with dreams of some "National Theatre" in the US--but I really like the sound of, say, "The Michigan State Theatre"! I raise this now knowing full well it is the state funding of the arts that's really going down the toilet in this recession/depression. And that's a big shame. The best thing the NEA could do right now, for my money, is to simply inject its relatively healthy national budget into all these state agencies in a kind of blood transfusion.I fully agree with his assessment. Arts funding needs to be targeted at the State and local level. Now, correct me if I'm wrong (please, because I very well might be wrong here), but isn't this how it already works? It was my understanding that the NEA, by design, distributes money to artists by filtering it through state and local agencies. Are we just suggesting that we increase the percentage of the total that gets distributed to the states? What would we be doing differently?]]> Over the years, the size of this national arts "endowment" goes up. goes down, always by pennies, it seems. The truth is, it will never, never reach the per-capita levels of the most meager European culture ministries. I remember reading somewhere (I think it was Abbing's Why Are Artists Poor?) that American and European support of the arts is effectively the same. European taxes are higher so they have tons of money to support government-funded arts and culture programs. US taxes are lower, so government funding of the arts is relatively small. But private funding of the arts is far greater in the US than it is in Europe, thanks to our friend the 501(c)3. So even though the US and Europe employ different methods of funding the arts, when you compare the numbers the end result is the same.]]>
Quoth Dominique Serrand of Theatre de la Jeune Lune: "We could not get an endowment. That was made very clear to us - that we were not an institution that people wanted to invest in.."WHAT?!?!
If that's the case, we're all in deep trouble folks. Minnesota Playlist provides this incredible video interview. He discusses ensembles, financial issues, and the ecology of the arts. Please watch.]]>
The Internationalist by Anne WashburnThis one almost didn't happen. I don't know exactly what's going on in Columbus, maybe I'm getting a bad reputation with actors, somehow, but we're having a hell of a time getting a cast together and getting them to stay committed. Casting issues plagued <>Militant Language for the 6 weeks preceding the beginning of rehearsals, and in the end it got so bad we had to cancel the show.
Some of those people drop out of shows for legitimate reasons, but some people just get a little scared and/or a little flaky. ]]> In the end, we gathered a fantastic cast who brought a lot of talent, but several issues to the table. Three of them were working on Infinity - I mentioned that opened December 20, right? And we started rehearsing The Internationalist December 13 to open January 8. A little conflict there, you might guess. One of those 3 people was going to shoot an investment trailer (seen here) in the week after Infinity closed (he also has, like, 9 jobs). Another actor has only been in one show before, and another was cast sight-unseen on the recommendations of some dear friends. Oh, and our production team was pretty tired from Infinity and the busy holiday season that fills their schedule with bizarre union jobs. Oh yeah, Christmas, Hanukah, and New Year celebrations had to fit in there somewhere, along with my own travel to Michigan for 3 days. And adding to all of this was the fact that though The Internationalist is a pretty short play, it had a great deal of dialogue that Ms. Washburn wrote in a fictional foreign language. So there's that.
It's not that I didn't have complete confidence in my collaborators, I just knew hard hard it was going to be and I prayed we wouldn't kill each other in the process.
And I'm not even going get into the board meeting we had in which we were all tearing our hair out trying to create a solid business plan for the next few months having barely begun to fundraise and no inkling of whether or not The Internationalist would actually be successful.
So .... the show has opened and is thus-far a great success. We had, for the first time, a house full of people we know are a lot cooler than us. Our attendance numbers are up, despite it being early January, right after the new year, and kind of nasty weather in Columbus. And I think we're all still having fun.
I have to mention the amazing work of the cast. They didn't just open the show competently, they nailed it. They're work with the language issues is phenomenal, they totally sell it. And the dude who's now in his second show ever is perfect in his role, he even learned a standard Brit accent for the 2-page near-monologue to boot. What a great group of people. And they told me I was mad at the university. I'll show you who's mad! I'll open another show 4 days later! IN BALTIMORE!!!
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For one thing, I didn't direct the show. It's not the first time that's happened, but was really unique in that I was not very involved in the day-to-day decision making and production of the project. It was a relief that the director, Eleni, and the Production Manager, Dave, and Stage Manager, Michelle hardly needed me for anything. I kept emailing and asking, what do you need, what can I do for you, and eventually they did let me put the program together (I screwed it up pretty badly, by the way) and make small set piece (a simulation of an in-wall safe). But most of the time they said, "We're doing fine" and in fact they were. The show was really wonderful, I enjoyed watching it several times, and was very proud that our company has gotten to the point that we can support another director's vision.]]>
The story behind Eleni directing is that she asked me if she could assistant direct something. I myself have done a lot of assisting, many years ago, and I know what a frustrating, nearly-worthless experience that can often be. "Instead," I suggested, "let's set you up to direct something short with a small cast, in a coffee shop or something." I figure there's much more to learn from a difficult directing experience that places actual demands on your creativity, than from watching me or any other idiot fumble around in the rehearsal room for a month.
Well, the show ended-up being neither short, nor small, and we got to do it in the black box at Denision University, which was a great little venue that Eleni used to brilliant advantage. The performances were both at 7pm, which seemed appropriate for a college town in winter, and despite the absence of most of the student population, we had large crowds both nights. It was also great to introduce new people to our work and the Denison audience was particularly smart in the analyses and questions they presented at the talkback.
I expected it to be a good experience, but for me and the company itself, it turned out to be a great one. I really loved sitting in the dress rehearsals watching creative people work. I love knowing that the work we've done in the past of building some infrastructure and gathering a good group of people can actually benefit more artists than just me. I hope Eleni and her cast had as much fun as I did.
And, for those who saw the show and loved it like I did, mark your calendars for late May when AVLT will present another great show directed by Eleni Papaleonardos.]]>
On Jan. 31, Harvey's opera, "Leave Me Alone" makes its world debut at Oberlin College, just a 45-minute drive from Cleveland, Ohio. And as Pekar might say, if you can't make it, don't sweat it. The production will be broadcast live to an international audience at LeaveMeAloneOpera. For those who can make it to the 8:00PM premiere, it's free. To be perfectly clear, "Leave Me Alone" is not an opera in the classic connotation of the word. It's being called a "Jazz opera," which means it can be pretty much whatever Pekar wants it to be. Pekar wrote the libretto (that's the text of an opera, kids) and framed the whole presentation into a storyline. The music was written by jazz saxophonist Dan Plonsey, of the San Francisco area. Another San Franciscan, Josh Smith, is the music director, and music students from internationally renowned Oberlin College will perform and sing.Source: CBR]]>
Hello my friends. It's time for another installment of "where the hell have you been?"
The past year has been an enormous one for the growth of our company, Available Light Theatre. Really, it's exactly the kind of thing we've always hoped for, all the way back in 2002 when we started BlueForms Theatre Group. We've got a fantastic, 7-person Board of Directors that includes a lawyer, a CPA, and two of the best marketers in town. I'm jealous of myself, right?
]]> What's most amazing to me at this moment is that we're already planning 2010. We're a company who, in the past, has struggled to successfully plan much more than 3 months ahead of time, and now we're planning shows for 18 months from now. I'd always thought about how great that would be in terms of infrastructure and marketing, to be able to lay out everything you need ahead of time, and announce a season all at once. What didn't occur to me is the way this long-term planning enables us to dream big. We've started two adaptation projects, one that we'll be workshopping a couple of times this year so we can debut it in early 2010. That wouldn't have been possible with our old, scrappy model. Not because we didn't dream big, but because I was always too way-layed by the immediate demands of the next couple months to think ahead that far.
(I guess that's not entirely true. We've produced a couple of shows that I spent 18 months working on, but those were projects I worked on alone, in my own time. The difference here is the planned collaboration, which is really liberating.)
The other project is one I'm alway too excited to mention. So, I won't, I'll just hint. It's an adaptation of my favorite literary work of the past year. I'll say this too, it's a book with a lot of beautiful pictures. If you dig really, really deep, you can figure out what it is. More on that soon. Suffice to say, it's a project I wouldn't be attempting if I didn't have faith the in long-term support of our Board, our members, and our growing audience, and the knowledge that I can spend the many months on it that it deserves. Heck, I wouldn't even have been brave enough to ask the writer for permission if the company wasn't moving along so swimmingly.
So, that's my tip for today. Long-term planning is nice. It's a burden, it's hard-work, but it's worth it, both for your business and your art. At least, I'm enjoying it.]]>
All Things Considered, December 4, 2008 · More than 50 student groups across the country are performing Jonathan Larson's edgy rock opera Rent this school year. Like the Broadway show, Rent School Edition is centered on a group of friends in the 1990s dealing with AIDS, gender identity, homosexuality, drug addiction and poverty.So apparently they took out all of the profanity and toned down some of the more graphic lyrics, while keeping the main themes intact. Definitely worth a listen. And please drop us a line if there's a high school production happening in your neighborhood. We'd love to get some first-hand reviews.]]>
The brilliant Simon McBurney (of Complicite) talks in the December 2008 issue of American Theatre about, well, a lot of brilliant things. This quotation about naturalism really jumped out at me (and my wife, Acacia) and will no doubt become part of my permanent repertoire.
(The juiciest bit is at the end, so if you're short on time or attention-span, skip to the bold part.
We have to be very clear when we talk about naturalism in the theatre. It's a stylistic choice, and it's a deadly one for the theatre. Naturalism is a style that developed in the '40, '50, and 60's, that supposedly comes from the Stanislavski approach - but that is to misunderstand Stanislavksi. Naturalism is not suited to the theatre because theatre is about communication with the audience. In the end the only question in the theatre is: How does the play become alive? In fact, theatre only exists in the mind of the audience - it does not exist on stage, or in a play. It only exists because the audience brings it alive.Amen, brother Simon, amen.]]>I saw kabuki theatre in Japan, where, in a given scene, weeping takes place on stage in an extraordinarily stylized form. I was transfixed, looking along the row of faces alongside of me and watching how everyone in the audience was weeping, too. The emotion at that moment on stage was real, in the same way as when Don Giovanni is led down to hell and he sings his last act of defiance. The emotion of that moment is also real--it's heightened, it's extreme, but it's completely real. Reality in the theatre is created by actors, and it occurs only in that moment--which is why you will find actors saying "we had a good night" or "oh, tonight wasn't so good." What actors really mean is that they have found that point of communication, so you can have a great production and you can go and see it and it won't mean anything to you at all if this moment of connection between actors and audience doesn't happen. Equally, I have seen pieces of theatre that are rough and appallingly overacted or rude--and yet I've been deeply moved by them. Sometimes, even with terrible performances, actors find a way to communicate with an audience. That's why theatre can't work on video. It's an imaginative act on the part of the audience. And that is theatre's appeal, that's why it continues.
Everyone thought theatre would die with the appearance of cinema, just as everyone thought painting would die with the appearance of photography. But all photography did was to liberate painting to be itself. Without photography, we would not have Picasso or Rothko. Painting would still be trying to do what photography can do much better. We need painting to do what happened on the walls of caves eons ago - to record what we deeply feel, and the complexity of what we feel and imagine. In the same way, film has liberated theatre to be itself. Without film, we wouldn't have Jacques Copeau, who gave rise to Antonin Artoud. We wouldn't have the plays of Beckett or Pinter. So in the theatre, what you do is to create the language to communicate with the audience on that night in that moment.
Ready to do this again?]]>
Thanks to American Theatre magazine for some nice publicity, and "labdien" (that's Latvian) to those of you joining us for the first time.Since you're here wondering about Militant Language and the National Premiere idea, allow me to fill in some details.
First of all, the whole thing started in the comments of a post on Matthew Freeman's On Theatre and Politics blog. (You'll find that a lot of theatre bloggers like to combine the two on their sites.) I got inspired by the ideas there, and wrote a post called "Every City Should Have a Dead City". (Funny coincidence, Dead City is a play by Sheila Callaghan, who's on the cover of that very American Theatre magazine that directed you here.) So, I suggest you open new tab in your browser and go read that post. Then come back, we'll wait.
The audience hears some really annoying - yet amusing - Muzak. Maybe something from Grunge Lite.
(You see how we did that? Theatre bloggers often enjoy inserting obscure pop culture references and funny You Tube videos in the cracks around their artistic analyses and political diatribes.)
Ok, you're back? Did you read all the comments? Well, you have to read the comments. A lot of the good stuff is in there.
After you read the comments, you're going to want to read this post, in which I responded to a lot of the comments.
More Grunge LIte.
Done there? Okay, I'll tell you how we got from there to here. You're gonna see some blue words that say "Continue reading 'Welcome American Theatre Readers'". Click those to get the rest of the story, and so I can track how many of you are reading today. Thanks.]]> After a month or two, the enthusiasm kind of died out as we realized how incredibly difficult it would be to get a group of theaters of any size to co-ordinate, and, though there was no official declaration of giving up, we stopped working.
Meanwhile, Sean Christopher Lewis, extra-ordinary playwright and touring solo performer, was reading all these posts with great intrigue. What a coup that could be for a playwright, to have an independent network of theaters debut one's play at the level. In a way, it'd be a lot better than a New York opening. Could it it happen?
And that's where the story gets good. While we artistic directors were all worried about how to pick a play, a playwright, one determined enough to do the work on his own, beat us to the punch and brought the idea to life. Sean had the right play, Militant Language, and we could do it at the right time, in the month before the most important election of our lifetime.
So, Sean started contacting theaters, beginning with the producers who were on-board fore the national premiere idea to begin with (Next Stage, Halcyon, Available Light) and began pursuing others. At the peak of excitement, it looked like there would be productions and/or readings at a dozen theaters, all in October. Now, as it's turned-out, it's going to be a bit of a rolling national premiere, with all those readings and productions occurring over the next several months. Producing theatre isn't easy, and many of the groups willing to take a risk on this kind of work are in tenuous situations.
None-the-less, the play will be debuting all over the country this month and throughout the season, and it's a tribute to Sean's ingenuity and the potency of the idea. This month's American Theatre also features this season's Top Ten most produced plays. The bottom two only have eight productions. Sean's efforts could yet land Militant on that list. (Though we should note that few of the theatre willing to produce such a daring play are big enough be in the TCG.)
Anyway, thanks for visiting, please check out our archives, or go here to learn more about us and view a list of some of our most popular posts. We hope to see you again. Soon.]]>
The best magazine of all-time, The Believer, features an interview with playwright Will Eno in their October issue. Eno is interviewed by Patricia Mulgraw, who, as it turns out, does not exist.The following short list tops the page under a portrait of Eno.
Reasons to become involved in theater: Loneliness,You can read an excerpt on The Believer's website, but you'll have to buy the issue to read it all. (It's totally worth it though, there's also a long article about GI Joe.)]]>
You enjoy seeing people suffer under bright lighting,
You enjoy hearing people in pain in rooms with good acoustics
Photo by Simon Kane from the NY TImes.Thanks to everyone (Sheila, Isaac, Ruben, Rob, and Jason) who encouraged me to show-up for Blasted. I showed-up early, looked forlorn, waited and waited, and got the best seat in the house. It was well-worth the effort.
Now, the show is in previews, and this wouldn't be a review anyway. But I will say that I thrilled to it, I was astonished by it. And I hope you don't need me to tell you that it's essential viewing for anyone who thinks the theatre is still important in this day and age. Aside from being the most controversial play of the last 15 years, it also test more thoroughly than any other modern work the theatre's special abilities and responsibilities. ]]> Hell, remember the Right Now Reading List? Topped it, didn't it?
Seriously, I know you're thinking that you've gotta get out and see Equus before Harry Potter goes home, but Fuck That.
You've got 19 chances to see this thing and they've got about 30 different discounts available, student rushes, group rates, and the top ticket price is only $40 anyway. There's no excuse. Get there.
But be prepared. A little Wiki-research won't hurt. There were a lot of people in the house who clearly had no idea what they were in for, and some of them were really upset about it. Here's a tip, on the phone late last night, I was telling my wife about it and I found myself saying, in all seriousness, "Yeah, the anal rape is actually one of the best moments in the play. The acting was amazing." So ... there's that.
Not that knowing what's coming will keep you from being disturbed. Lord knows I've read that play and had fights about it, and read it more, and read commentary, and have flipped 180 degrees in my opinion of it a few times and it still took me places I really didn't want to go.
Final note, I discovered in reading the program that I had seen all three actors in other productions, but in 3 different cities. I saw Reed Birney, who play Ian, in Homebody/Kabul at Steppenwolf (Chicago). I saw Louis Cancelmi, who plays the soldier, in Peninsula at Soho Rep a few years ago. And I saw Marin Ireland, who plays Kate, in the Royal Court touring production of Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis, which played at the Wexner Center in Columbus. Go me, right?
Go get Blasted. Read more in the NY Times or the Village Voice.]]>
I am a little frustrated in the lack of actionable suggestions being offered. I am a theater person who is looking to start a theater ensemble in the next year. What can I do to make the change ... a reality?]]> Rex Winsome replied,
I look at the "garage band" approach to art as a radical alternative, and find that transitioning to even a mid-size theatre company will require sacrifices that are smaller than the sacrifice of having to put in a few hours at a shitty day job to pay the rent. ... Things my company is trying (and i don't know how well they really work) include: street theatre as fundraising and promotion, DIY touring (like a punk band), local runs at underground venues, connecting with other groups that share your ethics and motives not just theatre groups, but bands, galleries, visual artists, performers, buskers, etc etc. There's a growing DIY circus / burlesque movement in america, these groups blur the line between rock band (who get young audiences) and theatre (who don't, or at least less)...All great ideas, Rex. Another big thing that I notice garage bands doing is selling their merchandise. At every rock show you'll notice a merch booth that sells buttons, t-shirts, stickers, and perhaps most importantly, CD's. Garage theatre should take notice of this and find ways to adopt this strategy. Assuming you're writing and producing original work, this means adapting the script as a radio play or a movie and stamping out multiple copies so you can sell them for $10 a pop during intermission. Now the work can be borrowed, traded, and loaned to friends of the people who took the risk on buying a ticket to your show in the first place. I can't tell you how many bands I discovered in college because someone was thoughtful enough to loan me a CD or assemble a bunch of cool songs onto a mix tape. Word-of-mouth recommendation becomes that much more powerful when it's backed up with an example of the work in question. Some may contend that the business of making theatre should not require the making of radio plays or movies. But I assert that recorded media are complementary to live performances and can help sustain a company's operations by both generating revenue in the form of CD's and DVD's and also providing access to a wider network of the target audience's friends and peers.]]>