Pop-geographer Richard Florida - author of the wildly successful Rise of the Creative Class - released a new book recently, strangely titled Who's Your City? I guess some people out there still demand to know "Who's your daddy?" at, I don't know, mud volleyball tournaments or something. How, exactly, this phrase connects with geography is tenuous, at best.

The book, in a nutshell, proposes that there are three big decisions a person must make in life. 1) Choose a career. 2) Choose a spouse/partner. 3) Choose a place to live. Florida's assertion is that choosing a good fit with regards to no. 3 can not only help you lead a happier and more satisfying life, but it can help you find a good fit for nos. 1 and 2, as well. Yes, it's a little self-helpy, but whatever.

How does this idea intersect with theater? Obviously, any professional must decide at some point whether it makes sense to move to a big showbiz town, namely New York or Los Angeles. Not to discount Scott Walters' lengthy discussions about the decentralization of theater, but Florida emphasizes a significant trend toward the clustering of industries in particular metro areas. In fact, he says, the big story of the last 30 years or so has been that of cities "sorting themselves out," gaining greater distinction and specialization in various industries. Here's a smattering of Florida's urban specializations:

Lemme tell you, New York Theater Review 2008 is a great book, and I haven't even read the plays yet.

But, I thoroughly enjoyed the essays, especially those by Marya Sea Kaminski and Zach Mannheimer. In fact, click through for a couple of teaser graphs.

The economics of producing plays is fairly dismal. It still takes the same number of people to put on a play now (basically) as it did a hundred years ago. There's precious little room for increased efficiency in the process.

This is the seventh and final installment in a series of reflections about David Mamet's controversial yet influential book, ten years after its initial publication. Click here for the previous installment.

Here we are, friends, the grand finale. Or, as some may claim, the grand finally. So let's get on with it, shall we?

I remember this sentence making me extremely uneasy when I read it 10 years ago: "Nobody with a happy childhood ever went into show business" (p. 87). I feared that I would be doomed to telling mediocre stories because I was an optimistic, well-adjusted kid from a supportive family. Nowadays, I don't think it was the quality of storytelling that was at risk, but rather the determination to pursue a career in show business. Maybe those of us with happy childhoods know enough to avoid such treacherous pursuits.

Here's another bit of heresy as relevant then as it is today:

Our theatre is clogged with plays about Important Issues; playwrights and directors harangue us with right-thinking views on many topics of the day... The audience should go out front and you should go on stage as if to a hot date, not as if to give blood. No one wants to pay good money and irreplaceable time to watch you be responsible.

This is the sixth in a series of reflections about David Mamet's controversial yet influential book, ten years after its initial publication. Click here for the previous installment.

This is the penultimate installment in my True and False series. As such, these last couple of blogs will be a little less concise as I try to touch on the few remaining things I find interesting in the book. In particular, this bit about Belief vs. Acceptance made me laugh, but in a good way:

Ever wonder what it would be like if your wife, husband, or lover died? Do you believe it has happened? No. You imagine for the moment that it has happened because it is enjoyable to do so. Not to wish their death but to imagine. To experiment with the dramatic. Anyone ever play with the idea that you have a wasting disease, and you are writing your will? You toy with what you would say, with the wisdom you would impart from your position of one removed from life.... What fun. Your imagination may, in fact, even be piqued by reading the above suggestion. Now: what happens to you when I ask you to believe you are dying?

This is the fifth in a series of reflections about David Mamet's controversial yet influential book, ten years after its initial publication. Click here for the previous installment.

Mamet considers acting to be a profession that has been taken over by amateurs, "a profession of the genteel class... the hobby caste" as opposed to the buskers, gypsies, and those "noble" performers who came up from the streets. I don't disagree with this diagnosis, but it's interesting to me that Mamet is currently working on a movie about mixed martial arts prizefighting, which is notable for attracting athletes from a middle-class background who have the extra time and money to pursue martial arts classes at the local dojo. This is dramatically opposed to the boxing circuit, which historically tends to cull its athletes from low-income backgrounds, those who depend on boxing for their livelihood and a chance to escape the cycle of poverty.

It seems inconsistent to denigrate the dramatic amateur while at the same time celebrating the MMA. But maybe in comparing acting to prizefighting I'm also putting oranges in apple carts.

Please click here for the next installment.

This is the fourth in a series of reflections about David Mamet's controversial yet influential book, ten years after its initial publication. Click here for the previous installment.

Autumn quarter begins this week at Ohio State, which means I will once again find myself buried under stacks of books and journal articles. Time, then, to wrap up my review of True and False so I can focus on reading and writing about things that have little, if anything, to do with theatre... When I left off, I think I was somewhere around the "Auditions" chapter, which means that I will attempt to breeze through the last eighty pages of the book by picking out some of the passages that I found most interesting, especially now that I'm re-reading the book at 29 rather than the impressionable age of 19.

Mamet reveals a pretty strong anti-authoritarian streak during his examination of the audition process, much of which is surely a product of his Boomer-generation skepticism of the establishment. Having already dismantled our trust in schools and the education model, he now sets his sights on "the talent agent, the casting agent, the producer." Many are themselves failed actors who "seek the real or imagined security of a hierarchical system."

I finished reading Anne Bogart's new book, And Then, You Act about 7 days ago. And now I'm reading it again. Allow me to describe my experience with it.

First though, in the interest of disclosure, I should mention that I'm an unabashed fan of Anne Bogart, both her directing and her work as a theorist of sorts. She's influenced me quite and bit and she and her company have been very kind and supportive. So, you already know that I liked the book, and I'm really just going to try to convince you to read it.

2007 marks the ten year anniversary of David Mamet's True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor. When this book was first published I was still in my freshman year at USC, and little did I know that my young life was directly within the crosshairs of Mamet's manifesto. I wanted to revisit it because, among my close circle of friends, this book was incredibly influential. Some of us chose to stay in school, some chose to return to school, others chose to drop out of school entirely.

So now that it's been ten years, how have those choices worked out? I'll be blogging along as I re-read this book a little bit at a time. I have a heavy load of required reading this quarter, and while True and False doesn't represent a very challenging read, I still have to fit it in during my free time...