On my own blog some time ago I wrote about smaller and regional theatres being considered “minor league” in the pejorative sense and the broken ideas around that vocabulary in a post called “Is this Heaven, No It’s Iowa”.

The happy upbeat ending for those of you too good to click through is the idea that rather than everyone trying to cram themselves into the most expensive cities on the continent to learn how to create professionally in the most expensive, least hospitable creation conditions we can muster, they find a comfortable place they like living with people they like creating with and get really good at being on stage rather than auditioning. Then rather than shipping all of our raw materials to population dense urban areas we can ship product.

A few generalities:

1. Our larger, resource rich institutions cannot afford the risks of raw development and our smaller nimble indie and mayfly companies don’t have the resources to pay a living wage
2. There is a general feeling that the theatres more on the ‘product level’ end of the scale below lack artistic ambition.
3. There is a general feeling that theatres / companies on the ‘raw research’ end of the spectrum lack aesthetic polish and have an uneven talent pool.
4. There is an audience perception that theatre outside of New York is ‘less than’ (else the question “Why don’t you move to New York?” wouldn’t be the frustrating runner-up to How did you learn all those lines in the cliché’-a-thon.
5. Universities have been removed entirely from this spectrum as players at all in the development or production of new plays.
6. Resources are disproportionately deployed in dense urban areas.

This is the spectrum I’m working off off when I say ‘spectrum’. What it lacks in nuance it makes up for by existing.

You have a thousand complaints about my generalities and the spectrum (and they’re mostly fair) but they’re a working set of assumptions so let’s talk about the ideas first and you can fix the specifics later.

There is no system in the theatre ecosystem. Every branch of this ungainly beast is trying to perform every function. Without enough resources to go around we need to improve communication and eliminate redundancies. This is actually why I remained supportive during the (over)heated discussion around Arena Stage’s submission policy. I think that finding a pod of like-minded, vetted partners to funnel texts and writers to development-minded venues who then pass off other texts and writers to producers is the dream not a betrayal.

But development folks talk to development folks, producers talk to producers, presenters talk to presenters, and the universities talk to almost no one. We need to at least smudge the lines. Let me spin a tale. It is, as most of my theatre pipe dreams are, a tale of relationship and communication.

My platonic ideal of this system rests on a foundation of dynamic local creation.The larger theatres in a given town, having a relationship with the local creators, curate their second spaces (oh hello #neverbedark) with shows that they love. The indie and fringe companies get a longer run to bash out problems in the text or production, broader exposure and they get to build a following of their own. The audience gets a chance to see more locally created theatre. The larger theatre get a low cost production in their second space that didn’t eat up all the available man hours of their staff.

And the world gets a play with a history ready for bigger things.

A forward thinking university could easily step into this sort of system and ask a new / fresh play to be brought in under their auspices for a semester of development (with the artists being paid as guest lecturers) with a production at the end of term.The students get hands on experience with development.

This sort of system eliminates the world premiere on Broadway. I have no solution for that. There is no cure for premier-itis. But the topical cream has to be narrative right? “This is a show that was born in the basement of a church in Austin into FronteraFest. After two and half weeks of buzz it got picked up and played for 5 sold out weeks on the second stage at [larger local theatre] and now it’s at a regional with some of the original cast and some actors local to the regional theatre. Regionals talk to other regionals and to the NY NFP’s…. and there may be life after closing for more new plays.

What do we get?

1. Relationship between resource strata.
2. Vetted plays we know have an audience.
3. Spotlights on smaller local companies and local performers.
4. Discussion on the order of prospect discussions in sports whether or not X theatre will have the space to call up that show from Austin we loved.
5. More full productions of new local work

Is this how we’re going to populate a Broadway of the future? No. I don’t think so. But the product end of the spectrum needs vetted productions, they need sure things. So let’s make them. When Broadway says there aren’t sure things to fill those spaces for even limited runs let’s hold their feet to the fire with specifics. Let’s have a breadcrumb trail of audiences and artists banging the next Ruined that doesn’t ever make the transfer. Let’s ease some resources down the development chain and let’s slide the overpopulation of talent in New York back to regional and micro regional hubs and keep creating truly great art on a community level that can be elevated to greater attention when it’s ready.

I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us — don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
~Emily Dickinson

I am Michael Kaiser’s nightmare.

I don’t have an MA, MFA, BFA, JD, MD, DDS, P.E. CPA, MSCE, or HVAC.

And yet I have opinions.

Opinions unformed by the cultural canon Mr. Kaiser has professed in the past. The Canon of his Youth. Not just a dead white male canon, but the dead white male canon of his specific formative years.

Opinions I foist on a range of professional, semi-professional, and amateur theatre makers as though I had some right to their ears.

Opinions shared as though, uninformed as they are by Higher Higher Education, I feel them to be correct and will sometimes publicly defend them, even when attacked by ‘names’, or the statused.

And isn’t that the magic of now?
I get to share my opinions freely without land or title, and Michael Kaiser gets to blandly disapprove of the notion of me.

The ‘democratization of the press’ isn’t democratization of publication, push-button publication has been available for two decades. The revolution is squarely in the democratization of audience attention.

Mr. Kaiser is correct in that we need professional reporting on and contextualization of our field. He is desperately wrong in that more sources, more voices increase, not decrease, the the clarity of the picture we get. Even ‘biased’ sources, or unprofessional sources increase the quality of the picture we get from any given event or production. Because we’re smart people who can read and think critically and detect biases. 

I need your help to make sure Mr. Kaiser stays wrong. You may have a proper alphabet listed after your name on the stationary, you may not, but it’s your theatre citizenship that’s going to make the most impact on a community and make sure that the Commons is heard from. Promise. If you don’t want money/resources to be the primary determiner of who gets to speak? Engage.

Keep Reading
Read as much as you can. Old school print criticism. Blogs. Long form, short form. Read things that challenge you, read things that make you feel better. But Read.

Keep Reading Critically
The fact that someone agrees with you doesn’t make them a good writer. More importantly? Someone agreeing with you doesn’t make either of you right. You know what good writing is which means you know what bad writing is. Stop rewarding bad writing just because you agree with it. And then think about what it is you have read. Is it affecting your thinking at all? How?

Keep Writing
You have opinions about things in your world /country / region / city / town / village/ hamlet / Prince William Sound and your opinions matter. Respond to these things simply to have a record for yourself of having felt and thought that way, but also? You never ever know who’s reading.

Keep Writing Better Every Day 
I know you thought your English teacher was shining you on when she said you needed writing in every facet of your life. She wasn’t. Write as much as you can and grant writing will get easier. Newsletters will get easier. E-blasts will get easier. I couldn’t locate the writing muscle for you on a chart but it is real, and it needs exercise. 

See Theatre
You can’t know what you’re talking about unless you are participating. This is part of participating.

Remember, that microphone is live.
I have people approach me from time to time to raise issues for them. While I am often glad to, the thing is? Their voice will never get stronger if they borrow mine. Your blog, your Twitter account, your YouTube channel is no better or worse positioned than anyone else’s. Create content people want to amplify and others come find the source.

The magic of now is exactly that everyone is a critic. Everyone has a voice. We’re all nobodies together and the words can speak for themselves. More. And better. And More.

The theatre niche of the social media stream operates much like any other Animal Farm and in this particular backwater Animal Farm I am a donkey who has lived a long time. Hang around long enough and one sees the patterns of people entering and leaving or the ebbs and flows of the heat of the conversation. One also sees topics come and go, but there are gestalt topics that come up daily or near daily, chief among them: “What’s the point?” The theatre-makers’ equivalent of “why are we all here and what does it mean?”.

There is a common push in this question of theatre’s relevance to prove real world payoff or in the buzzword “return on investment”. For purveyors of traditional narrative theatre it can be a tough sell. Proving hard value in collective experience is voodoo statistically, which is why I think the reaction around #2amt and 2amTheatre.com to Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) and to Conspire Theatre has been so positive. These programs demonstrate a clear, visible social benefit to these skills we share.

I have been a fan of Conspire Theatre for some time as they have grown and become a core part of the Austin theatre community. As they take the next steps toward expanding the program I reached out to Kat Craft, Executive Director and Lead Workshop Facilitator, to gain a deeper understanding of how Conspire operates their program and what their plans are for the future.

What can you tell me about yourself and your compatriots in Conspire Theatre?

We are all women who are passionate about changing the world in some way.  I’m a radical feminist, Michelle Dahlenburg (Associate Director) is committed to rethinking old structures through the use of theatre and Shirene Garcia (Assistant Facilitator) is heavily involved in the food justice movement through her work with the Urban Roots program.  Meg Brooker (former workshop facilitator and co-founder) is an Isadora Duncan dancer and yoga teacher who works with the body the relieve stress and trauma.

All of our guest artists have been drawn to Conspire because it gives them the opportunity to witness how their skills and practice can have an immediate transformative effect on a group of women, including the guest artists themselves.  We have no control over these women’s lives and they have very little control over their own while in an incarcerated setting so walking into that classroom space and making it a space of change and exploration powerfully affects everyone in that space – the facilitators and the participants.

Where did the impulse for Conspire come from?

I worked with Clean Break while I was in graduate school in London.  They blew me away – I was inspired by their program and their facility in central London.  They have a holistic, whole-woman approach to working with women who have been incarcerated and it really opened my eyes to what a powerful tool theatre can be.  I knew that I wanted to explore that more, so when I moved back to Austin, TX, I decided to try and start a program myself.  Meg Brooker and I ran a 5 week workshop with women at the jail to test it out.  I was terrified – mainly that the women would tell me to fuck off and absolutely refuse to work with us.  It was the opposite – they were so appreciative and excited and participatory that when the 5 weeks was up I thought, so how do we do it again?

What does the average visit to the facility consist of?

We walk into the Visitation building and hand over our IDs to the officer at the front desk.  Most of them know me at this point (and I make a clear point of being friendly and polite) and so we (myself and a co-facilitator – Michelle Dahlenburg at this point) typically get waved on to the metal detector.  They x-ray our bags and let us walk unaccompanied through the legal visitation area (where incarcerated people meet with their lawyers) and into the complex.  We walk through another building and then outside – along a sidewalk encased by chain link and razor wire.  Incarcerated people of both sexes wearing horizontal black and white stripes walk by us, with and without officers.  Travis County Correctional Complex is a somewhat low security facility so some of the people kept there can move about somewhat freely.

We walk into the administration and education building, and greet “our” officer.  He generally razzes us a bit and we exchange small talk about the upcoming weekend and various sports games.  We’re lucky – he likes us and “gets” what we’re doing but he can still be pretty cranky some days.  Michelle and I get the plastic box with golf pencils (no erasers!), our walkie-talkie, sign-in sheet and dry erase markers.  We walk down a long corridor to our classroom, go in, set up and wait.

Sometimes the women are early.  Most of the time they’re late.  Michelle and I stretch and chat as we wait.  The women file in and we greet them enthusiastically, hand them blank paper and one of those tiny pencils, and then we all freewrite for the first five minutes.  I don’t ask that any woman ever share her freewriting or give it to me.  At the end of the five minutes, we crumple up our papers and play basketball with the trashcan.  One particular woman makes sure that I take all of the crumpled balls with me to recycle at the end of the class.  I never read them.

Then we get on our feet and do a physical warm-up to music (I’m fond of Motown and Amy Winehouse).  After that, we play one or two theatre games and then get the main activity of the day.  This varies between creating short performative pieces, engaging with a piece of written text like a poem or story, and creative writing from some kind of prompt.  Women enter and leave the program quickly and so our class changes from week to week.  We have to make sure that each class is self-contained but can still be linked.

At the end of class, we go around the circle and say one word for how we’re feeling and one thing that we’ve accomplished that day, either in the class or before it.  Then I get on my radio and tell the officer that “We’re ready to release” and the women file out with lots of waves and smiles.

What are you trying to accomplish through Conspire? What is the long term goal?

The long term goal is to have ongoing programming in several different facilities in central Texas AND to have a program running on the outside for women who have been incarcerated that includes theatre classes, life skills trainings and social workers on staff who can guide women into services.   And our own building with a black box theatre space.

This connection between programs on the inside and the outside means that women who have expressed interest in creative work have easy access to it once they’re released.  I’ve encountered many women who say, “I love this!  How do I do this once I’m out?”  I haven’t had any great answers for them because often, theatre communities and classes A: cost money and B: aren’t welcoming or accommodating.  If we can form our own community, then women will have a place to go as well have access to working artists and social workers who can act as mentors and support.

You’re currently running an Indie Go Go campaign, why now?

The Social Services Program Coordinator at TCCC has just begun a new program for women in maximum security – she has asked Conspire Theatre to be a part of this program and to offer a theatre class to women in max.  Incarcerated people in maximum security units typically receive less programming than those elsewhere, so we feel it’s really important to start a new class for these women.  We’ve been working on a small grant from the City of Austin over the summer (thanks, Cultural Contracts!) but that ends soon and in order to add extra classes, we will need to hire more facilitators and continue paying the ones we have.  While I have been willing to work for free, to move forward, we need to be valuing our facilitators’ time and financially supporting teaching artists. I feel a strong commitment to the applied drama practitioners out there who are constantly being asked to donate their time.  I think we all deserve to get paid.

What next steps does this sort of campaign enable?

It enables us to start the class in Maximum Security and also to establish our legitimacy in the eyes of more institutional funders.  If we can raise $3,000 from the community, then granters will be more likely to consider us a funding prospect.

In a perfect world where you had all the necessary the funding what would Conspire look like?

An office/theatre/community space with classroom and a theatre space, and maybe a cafe?

My dream structure is:

• -Ongoing theatre classes and workshops from beginner to advanced that include anything from basic techniques to dance to mime to puppetry to facilitation to scene study to directing.

-Life skills classes that are taught by instructors trained in and willing to use creative techniques that make job readiness, computer skills, parenting, and public speaking classes effective and fun.

-Some kind of in-house work program like a cafe or partnerships with local businesses that help our women find and keep jobs.

-Daily free lunch for staff and participants.

-Onsite, free childcare for mothers so they can bring their children to class with them.

-Our own building to house all of this, which includes classrooms, a rehearsal space, common areas and a black box theatre space.

-We will serve incarcerated women while they are in jails and prisons, and offer services to women post-incarceration, and to women who are at risk of being incarcerated.

I feel very strongly that theatre is only one piece of the puzzle – an important piece and the one that I’m best at, but it needs to be part of a larger framework.  I’m always looking for chances to connect with other organizations and service providers because we’ll be much more effective working together to create a large web of services.  The City of Austin Health and Human Services Department talks about “one point of access” for youth seeking services so that they can go to that one place and be directed wherever they need to go.  We need to be thinking the same way for incarcerated and marginalized women.  I’m not a go-it-alone kinda gal – I always want my work to be situated within a larger community.  I’m not going to catch everything but someone else will see what I’ve missed.  Hell, I usually don’t even facilitate by myself; I like working with a partner.

There has been a lot of response on #2amT and 2amTheatre.com to Conspire and to Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) how can someone get involved in their communities?

Like, their own hometown communities?  Research the county and state jails and prisons that are close to them.  There are often many people already doing stuff and many facilities welcome volunteers.  Start a book club.  Get in with that church group that’s always going in (in Texas, it’s mainly church groups).  Offer to do the shit work for some other group that’s trying to get bigger – I know that we have very little room for new facilitators but write a grant for us, fund raise for us or help us with strategic planning and if you’re reliable and you keep showing up, you’ll be a part of the team before you know it.  Be prepared to give for the long haul – prison and jail work sounds sexy but it’s draining and often there are many boring hoops to jump through.  The incarcerated people will almost always welcome you, as long as you come in with a respectful attitude and don’t think/act like you’re better than them.  Do it!

Gratuitous Plug: I’ve been pushing folks to Talk About What’s Good (http://goo.gl/qdkNh) what favorite moment can you share with us?

From my work?  I love (almost) all of it.  At our last sharing, we read poems that I collected from women over the past two years.  Several women adamantly refused to read anything but agreed to sit “on stage” (we were in a classroom) with the women who were reading.  By the end of the sharing, however, every single woman got up there and read.  One woman even scolded me for picking a piece to read that SHE had wanted to read.  They all did it, even the woman who has difficulty reading out loud – another woman stood up beside her and helped.  The generosity they show each other in my class and in their performances is beautiful.

Another favorite: I brought in the lyrics to “Killing Me Softly” so we could sing together and as we got the chorus:

Strumming my pain with his fingers..

A woman said, “One time, one time” and transformed it into the Lauryn Hill / Fugees version.  She then laid down a beat with her fists on a desk and lord, we sang it out.  It was so good.

Subscribe to the 2amt podcast in iTunes.

There’s an aggressive sort of experimental theatre that longs to prove not just how smart it is, but how much smarter it is than you. Or how much more grad school it went to.

Rubber Repertory is not that theatre.

Rubber Rep, made up of Matt Hislope and Josh Meyer, isn’t about telling you how it is, it’s all about sitting in the room with you and asking, “what if we…”? And you let them. The tiny riots mentioned above are the intimate moments of theatre that they long to create with you out of something as simple as a shell soaked in saltwater.

Their current project is Biography of Physical Sensations in a return engagement for Fusebox Festival in Austin, Texas. Biography of Physical Sensations is a life told through the decontextualized sensations that are its building blocks and its residue; performed on the audience every night.

For more about Biography of Physical Sensations in its initial run, check out Katherine Catmull in the Austin Chronicle. If you’re curious about the reviews, then read Avimann Syam of the Austin Chronicle, Cate Blouke of the Austin American Statesman and Georgia Young & Bastion Carboni from Austinist.com

Click here to view the embedded video.

BONUS Video of Rubber Reps last new production, Casket of Passing Fancy

Click here to view the embedded video.

Some Offers you missed from Casket of Passing Fancy:
Offer #1
Treasure!
Untaken Offers 1
Untaken Offers 2
A Sample Night at Casket of Passing Fancy

You get lured in with a promise of queso and get stuck with a podcast…

New York One Minute Play Festival Artistic Director Dominic D’Andrea thought he was taking a quiet trip to Austin and got caught got caught in my web.

I sat down with the Johnny Appleseed of the 60-second epic and talked about the New York One Minute Play Festival, why it’s ten times better than a ten minute play, and what it would take to get in the game.

The New York One Minute Play Festival is headed into its fifth year in original location and has begun snaking its tendrils out to the rest of the country. Committed to playwrights and their communities, the Festival has thus far served up well-over 400 plays by 186 playwrights, and those dials are going to start humming as three more iterations fire off in the next couple of months.

All that work and he got NO queso…

Beth Burns is the sort of person who is better than you at everything but doesn’t get all showy about it, and that allows you to retain your  dignity. Altogether a nice sort of person to be around. She doesn’t lord her award nominations over you, or her wins, or that she can beat you in arm wrestling

Beth Burns is the artistic director of The Hidden Room, by her phrasing a “theatrical curiosity shop” focused on audience experience. And honestly, she’s very good at it. That skill actually is the prism that makes her current project truly fascinating.

You Wouldn’t Know Her, She Lives in London / You Wouldn’t Know Him, He Lives in Texas opens on Saturday, March 5th and takes place in Austin and London simultaneously via Skype video chat and will also be streamed live to the internet so you can join in. Working with producing partner Look Left, Look Right Productions in the UK and hosted in London by Roundhouse this look at long distance (and cross cultural) relationships this show should have something that interests you whether you get to be in the room on either continent or only join in on the stream.

The Hidden Room | Roundhouse’s Show Page

Roundhouse’s Live Stream Page

The lovers on Facebook:
Ryan Peterson | Elizabeth Watson

Follow the hashtag on Twitter: #TexasLondon

The show runs March 5 & 6 + 12 & 13, 2011, at 8 pm GMT, 2 pm CST.

Some days the internet seems like nothing more than a jargon factory. It pops out new words, phrases and memes that we are somehow supposed to instinctively know moments after coinage and knowledge of the day’s watchword becomes a hard demarcation of inclusion or exclusion.

It is imperative for those pockets of the internet that intend on being community to erase those lines whenever possible, to create shared vocabulary and eliminate shibboleths. During periods of heavy influx into the #2amt community we see a lot of repeated information as folks try to stake out territory for themselves, and we see a lot of confusion as concepts that the community has bashed around for a long time come across as jargon to new eyes. As I believe that unpacked jargon becomes vocabulary let’s unpack one of my frequent battle cries: Never be dark.

Never be dark (hashtagged #Neverbedark) is a two pronged concept depending on the space you’re running. Both are predicated on the idea that the hardest commodity to come by is space and that once you have it it shouldn’t be wasted.

The first prong is something that some companies are already doing, I call it “deputize and fill”. If you are running a space, curate your second stage (or heck your mainstage) and lend your credibility and space to a group whose art you want to support. Not as a rental. Be their producer and use your pulpit to to give others a voice. It deepens the field of artists that your patrons trust and creates relationship, both company to company and person to person, that our field could desperately use. There are also good business reasons to do it, but honestly you don’t need them.

The second prong is something that we started batting around in response to Eric Ziegenhagen’s drum beat for a theatrical counterpart to evenings out at a fine dining restaurant and to 2amtheatre.com’s own 360 Storytelling: Using the space in your theatre to host readings, and storytellings and other sorts of community nights, formal and in. Not as Mr. Walters cautions against “sit down and shut up” events but events that take advantage of our current participatory culture. If instead of focusing on the monolithic cultural center we create neighborhood playhouses that include spaces for both the specialized and the community artist. It would foster ownership in the communities’ arts and in the community hub as Shishur Kurup referred to it at the most recent #Newplay convening.

“But Travis, none of this is new,
none of this is anything like a fresh idea,
why should we care?”

Because it isn’t a new idea, because it isn’t fresh and it isn’t happening. Artists keep trying to build temples to their craft and people keep staying away.

#Neverbedark isn’t a call to think about community inclusion it’s a call to act on community inclusion.  You can start with whichever community you choose, the field or the neighborhood, but closed doors and dark nights are blown opportunities for both.

—

What are you doing to include your community?
What would you like to be doing to include your community?
How can the #2amt community help you do that?

by Heather Bishop

Gathered today at the Vortex Theater in Austin, Texas, members of Austin’s theater community watched final discussions from both ideological and practical perspectives. 

From Kristoffer Diaz’ points regarding the documentation of diversity efforts in theater and the definition of an American play regardless of accent or region to very moving points made by Amy Freed regarding the role of brave artist in the preservation of the literary in theater, Austin heard and dissected the words of each speaker with keen interest.

Of particular note was developing greater relationships between the theater community and the broader community at large, with Lisa Kron’s comments about marketing and publicity sparking much interest.

Accessibility was also a point of discussion in Austin, with Steven Sapp’s comments about inclusivity moving members to point out that the very nature of live telecast and web technology increased conference accessibility, along with a responsibility of those in attendance to return to their respective communities and share their knowledge.

The product of our discussions included a commitment to focus a coordinated season of outreach beyond the traditional community of play attendees, a season pass program to include multiple theaters, participation efforts with local festivals, research into new mentoring programs, and coordination in the development of local writer databases.

Without question today’s gathering served as an excellent opportunity to develop new ideas as well as an opportunity to revisit ideas not previously developed. 

Born in New York to West Indian parents, Heather Bishop is a writer and musician from Austin Texas. Her first book and second cd will be released later this year.

FROM SOUTHERN REP, New Orleans, LA
A CONVERSATION IN RESPONSE TO NEW PLAY PANEL

When you talk about diversity – what does that really mean?
If your audience doesn’t reflect that – what is diverse?
If you want a diverse audience, are you doing work that would reflect that?
Only the institution knows what kinds of work it wants to do. They
have to decide they really want that.

The most diversity in New Orleans is found in education.
If you look at the artists in the city, you’re a completely different
kind of person than most of the rest of the city.  The kind of work
that the audience really responds to might not be about quality – it
might be about the way they (the audience) are spoken to.

Diversity for each organization might be different.
When Ameriville came to New Orleans (from the company Universes) – it
took a collaboration of four companies to bring those audiences to the
theatre.

Whatever the aesthetics of the institutions are defines its audience.
What is aesthetics?
› How you communicate to your audience, what your work looks like, sounds like?

How does development of new work and new audiences work? What is
successful? – George Wolfe at the Public Theatre – went into the
community, churches (Noise/Funk, Angels in America)  -- they took
their theatre to the community. Educating their audience.  You gotta
get into your neighborhoods and do the grassroots work.

Calling upon what John O’Neal said at a convening last week– we have
to actually provide a service to our community – what do they need?

It takes a lot of confidence – to let your audience know they are
worthy of the conversation –that you respect and want them to be a
part of the conversation – that the conversation happens because of
them.

Have a gigantic problem with the notion of educating your audience. It
sounds so pretentious.

Okay -- For example, if you bring an international group to a
community that isn’t used to seeing it – you have to do something that
helps bridges the gap to let an audience know who they are, what it’s
about, so they feel a connection to it.  Through workshops,
conversations. More about relationships and less about educating.

Community engagement, rather than education.

This is less about new play development – this is more about
organizations, and less about playwrights and nurturing. This isn’t
about voices, this about how to present and their structures.

But if those playwrights can’t be produced – they won’t ever develop.
That is why it is part of the conversation.

If there is a limit of “how often” you can create this process, you
are giving consideration to how well a play would be responded to by a
community.

At the core of every theatre is the person running it and their
aesthetic.  Ultimately, you are going to see work that speaks to them,
that they respond to.

As a writer, you’re dealing so much with the economics about how it
works – and after we settle all of that, we’ll get to the writer and
their process.
First you start with the theatre, their mission, their audience, their budget.

And – does your play match up with what they want to do.
If you write a play, and it isn’t part of their mission – that theatre
should be left to do what they want to do. But if that theatre is
truly seeking diversity, then there is a conversation to be had.
If the community isn’t diverse, and the community isn’t demanding it –
then do they need to change?

But there have been many conversations about we aren’t meeting our mission.

Many playwrights miss the development stuff.  There are a lot of
organizations that exist to help develop the playwright.  That play
company knows how to develop it, and how to match it with the
companies who will respond to them.  There seem to be more and more
ways for playwrights to get connected to companies.
Like NNPN – you’ve got 26 theatres there who want to produce new
plays.  Once a playwright gets their work in and produced by one of
those theatres – suddenly 26 theatres are aware of it.
Relationships are key. And it takes time to build those.

Question – once you establish those relationships, particularly if
they are local – should that trump incoming work?

What’s great about what is happening in New Orleans, you’ve got all of
these companies of young people saying, I want to do work. And they
are getting together, and just putting it up.  As a writer, you would
love for a well known institution to latch on to your work – but if
you wait for that, you won’t get produced.

Is it more important to work or to make sure your work gets done?
The overwhelming feeling is that no, you have to keep writing.

One of the things that New Orleans could use is writers being
developed more – supported in order to link new writers work in new
Orleans to stuff that goes on in the rest of the country. So that we
don’t exist in a bubble.
How do writers get their work out there?

Is there a reason that writers can’t self organize? They shouldn’t
wait for an institution.

It’s a great thing about New Orleans – it’s such a small community.
Most people multi specialize – you have a group of playwrights who
act, direct, produce for each other.

Most artists I know (playwright) – most of them created ensembles,
took initiative – and from that, eventually attention came from
institutions.  Camilla Forbes – that Hip Hop organization came out of
an idea and passion. It didn’t start with Money.
Joe Papp with The Public – they started out on a flat bed truck.

People tell me its better now -- the work, than before Katrina.  There
is more work coming from different places – more texture.

The convening, the talking, the sharing – that is the place to start.
If you don’t share and collaborate, you can’t complain.

You do have a limitation. You do have responsibility to relationships
you have already built. Can you pay a literary manager to even find
the work, let alone produce it.

If the problem is that you have more work than you have places – you
have to start more places.
I like the idea of a church basement – trinity church has one of the
best concert spaces in the city.
Artists maybe start to crave more polish – but maybe that’s about
collaboration.

PART II

Interacting with the larger world more deliberately.
To be less about how do we get people in, to share our wisdom – and
more about how do we get into the world, and do work that comes from
our community, and speaks to them.
But is that the function of art? Doesn’t it have to start from a creator?
We had talked about forming a marketing collaborative – we would
choose 3 bloggers who would write about what was happening. Who had
seen and be seen. Critique. And discussion of the work – back story.
› But someone has to pay for it, to do it, to market it.
The marketing and reviews need to come from the theatre community.
Is the public responding to reviews anymore?
If not, what are they responding to?
Well – Social Networking.
But then we are missing the step of critical review. Especially in a
small community.
Next steps  & challenges
› Talk about taking theatre out to the community. Go to them, rather
than waiting for them to come to you.

ACTION STEP -- I see Mardi Gras and Festivals as an opportunity. Can’t
we put theatre on a truck, and take it around the city?  A Flat Bed
Series. Bring an amp. It’s a great way to take theatre to the
community. A moveable outdoor space. If you plant the truck at the end
of a parade, you’ve got your audience. (There was a group that
performed from the back of a Uhaul during the fringe – and tweeted
their location)

› The NOLA fringe is 3 years old – it grew up so quickly. Would like
to see more work that is done in that place – frequent, simple. Like
Dad’s Garage – there is a show every week, that changes, its new, it
changes ever week.  The New Futurists – they remove one more short
piece every week and put in something new.  In NOLA downtown, we’re
beginning to build a new audience, if we can keep them…
› RE: What Amy Freed says – in trying to retrofit theatre to a younger
audience.  Is it dumbing it down?
› When Ads talk about diversity – they are talking about how to get a
younger audience … I don’t think you can ignore it.
› We had a noticeably young audience at our new play work this past
week – and it could have been a lot about - $5, and short plays. And
we had a lot of young writers and actors, who brought their friends,
and those friends who brought friends.  We have to figure out how to
get them in again.
› Contests, parties --- but does that mean we can’t do real theatre
and get a real audience
› Well, does an audience who watches 10 minute plays, then come back
and see a full length play?
› Theatre is a risk – 75% of the time, it sucks. So you have to be up
for the experience – and you’re only up for that risk if you are
really committed to theatre. And if the tickets are $25, that adds to
the risk.
› Length isn’t an issue – its cost and location.
› But the space has to stay available and affordable.
› If its good work, people will come, and they will sit through it.
But I do wonder what will happen to that group of kids who are looking
at their phones.  Give them 5-10 years and see what they do
› “As a young person” we change gears very quickly – and appreciate
new kinds of stimulus every few minutes, and can then sit through the
longer works. (“But do you understand how jarring that is to an older
person?”)
› Young people still sit through movies, though.  It’s about access,
marketing and price.
› In New Orleans, everything needs to be social. You give people a
chance to see work, but be active and social before during and after.
› If it needs to be social, how do you get them to talk about the work
that they just saw?
› If you look at FELA – the experience is about the total experience
of the theatre  -- it was environment that was created from walking in
to the theatre

ACTION STEP –
Collective Marketing --  You can get stuff online for free. You can
get that funded – we need to organize the talent, the writers,
photographers, and create it.

We need to be more visible. How do we get new audience.  Not even
talking about diversity – just talking about audience, any audience.
Outside of the artists – do other people know about it? Do people in
our city come to the plays?
If the official artform is music -- can we work to be as accessible?
If you look at the New York model – there is a whole ecosystem that
has come from spoken word. This is an audience that is developing in
New Orleans.

ACTION STEP– Why can’t theatre be the cartoon before the band starts?
Just to build an audience, get them excited about live theatre. This
is about thinking again how can we go TO the audience.  Theatre in New
Orleans has to be an event. It has to fall down on top of you. It has
to be accessible, cheap, and something you can decide to do at the
last minute.

As artists, we have to be multi-disciplinary.  We can’t just do our one thing.

It’s easy to get swamped during the Arena Stage Convenings.There is a lot going on and a lot of theoretical conversation. The hardest workin’ folks in show business are trying to fix some part of show business and let me tell you: it’s invigorating. I’ve been on the ground at one of these things, sometimes it can fry a circuit. 

So I’m going to give Mr. Rocco Landesman an unearned benefit of the doubt. I’m going to give him a pass that this time he wasn’t just knocking art in Peoria, and that he let slip a simple binary statement about a very complex situation and in the heat of the moment we all read it wrong. Both in the room and out.

All business is of course a question of supply and demand. But supply and demand isn’t binary. You know that, I know that, and Mr. Landesman knows that. He doesn’t care. He has to make the same life and death argument for the arts that we do every day and he does it in an arena that considers his entire agency budget to be a pretty political football and his budget a rounding error. That his impulse is to choose the Guthrie over the Kitchen makes plenty of sense from 35,000 feet. 

So when he brushed off the idea that small theatres make his dollars go further (and are idealistic) I don’t think he was being callous or naïve. I just think his perspective is so different he missed it.

Kirk Lynn and Scott Walters who rose to ask him questions are on his payroll. Almost everyone in that room is. These aren’t sour grapes swinging birks who aren’t getting milk from momma whining about the unfairness of it all. These are folks who take a penny, leave a penny and contribute to the art that makes this artform great. Kirk Lynn is one of six ADs of a cutting edge theatre group from a red state. Scott Walters is doing primary research on bringing theatre back to small rural towns and evangelizing everyday about the importance of supporting storytelling in our core communities.

But it’s smaller than that. See. My grant money is a blend of City, State, and NEA matched money. I’m on Rocco’s dole too. While I’m mostly a loud mouthed blogger and social media drone, I’m an advocate  and evangelist for Austin theatre where ever there is a venue. Rocco gets livestream R+D out of me, and model analysis on the grassroots business models for sustainable community level theatre growth. He also got two shows. For some incalculable portion of $3000.

But it’s more than the simple return on investment.

It keeps us on the team. When he says things like Ms. Mead quoted at the top of her post:

"We’re all one enterprise. We just file different tax returns." Paul Libin on the state of the American Theater, as quoted by Molly Smith at the introduction to the #newplay convening.

"I would like to start… by calling bullshit."- Rocco Landesman, in response to Paul Libin’s quote, at the beginning of his remarks to the #newplay convening.

He hurts the entire field.

We are playing a different game on the sandlots Mr. Landesman. But even down here in Austin, with no aspirational LORT palace we get 90 feet base to base and 27 outs to do our best… and our best is pretty good. But you know what’s even more important?

The Guthrie?  Berkeley Rep? The Public? They’re not reaching the next generation of storytellers here in Austin. Troublepuppet will. The Rude Mechanicals will. Lord save us all, Rubber Repertory will…

Every dollar you give a committed evangelist like Ron Berry comes back, not in jobs or earned income but as artists determined to DO THAT.

Mr. Landesman, I know it feels like giving NEA pocket change to small communities who aren’t making art you would fly to see (though you should come down for Fusebox – queso’s on me) is throwing it away when development venues are strapped and laying people off.

But I urge you to come back over this weekend and remind yourself that that pocket change is being given to the most resourceful artists your hard-working staff can find. And those artists are turning those resources into stories, and beauty and art, and creating more artists.

You keep fighting the fight to keep us supplied and let us worry about creating demand.

As part of our efforts to solidify the beginnings made last year in the dawn of 2amTheatre.com, we will be rolling out some programmatic additions. Let’s start with: award winning arts maven Suzi Steffen. Suzi will be joining 2amTheatre.com as a contributor, kicking off her stay with us with wall-to-wall coverage of the Fertile Ground festival in Portland, Oregon.

Formerly performing and visual arts editor of the Eugene Weekly and currently a freelancer for the Oregonian, Stage Directions Magazine, TheatreFace, AlterNet and others. Suzi’s setting up her own statewide arts journalism website in Oregon to cover not only the usual suspects — Portland and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival — but food, wine, theater, dance, visual arts, literary arts and film across the state. When she takes a break from Facebook (where you can friend her) and Twitter (where you can follow her), she’s going to launch the site and promises to bug everyone in the #2amt community to comment on posts.

Suzi’s both a critic and a general arts writer. She always wants to learn more about theater, including back and front of house details, acting and directing philosophies and pre-production esoteric rituals.
Suzi grew up in Kansas City attending the Missouri Repertory Theatre (now the KC Rep), the Unicorn Theatre, Quality Hill Playhouse and many others. At the University of Missouri, she found that her class clown routine did not translate well into actual acting, though she did get to play a sad lady-in-waiting in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. She majored in history and art history and then earned master’s degrees in art history and literary nonfiction. Suzi moved to Oregon in 2002 in pursuit of the state’s natural beauty … and to get away from Iowa’s hog lots, blizzards and exploding cows.

She’s a pescatarian, news junkie, culture vulture, and an adjunct professor at the University of Oregon, where in winter quarter she’s teaching both reporting and a class called Writing About the Arts.

A lot of the cross talk that happens on the #2amt tag on Twitter is, at its core, about gatekeepers. Who they are, why they exist, why we want them not to exist and what can or should we do about them. Outrageous Fortune is a story of gates and gate keepers. Getting a play from your desk to a stage anywhere is a system of locks and gates convoluted enough to make a canal planner cry.

The quick answer in general to gate keepers is to punch through the wall a little further down and enter that way. In this case the wall is between potential small producers and playwrights. The process of getting published is no easier than getting produced, and without a central clearinghouse for people to find your play how can they ever discover it? Off Book Market want to be that clearinghouse. OffBook Market wants to punch a hole in that wall.

The genesis of OffBook Market was in a running discussion on over a year ago on Twitter that was asking very simply: what can be done to lower the bar to knowledge of a play and why wasn’t there an iTunes-style market for scripts with a low enough cost that you could take a risk and a robust enough search and hierarchy system that you could find plays that interest you without having to read them all.

Brian Seitel took those ideas and built a really robust market structure to support them. The key to OffBook is accessibility. The .Pdf standard works on the major e-readers and tablets as well as smartphones. Performances rights can be licensed through OffBook or maintained with the author for private contracting. If people want to get to your script they can.

That’s the first step. The second step is that playwrights need to come forward and populate that marketplace. OffBook Market is a literary analog to the Android market for smartphones.There is no gatekeeper. There is no one reading and vetting scripts. You the author post the scripts you want with the capsule you want. And OffBook is taking the bare minimum out of the posted price to support the back end. It is up to the community of writers to make the market a worthwhile place to visit for buyers.

Are you having a ten minute play festival? Lay out those scripts with images from the productions and have them on sale by the time people leave the theatre. Maybe a QR code on your posters in the lobby with a direct link to your production script?

Writers? You have another weapon in your war on obscurity. What can you do with it?

Perhaps I am a mis-creation
No one knows the truth there is no future here
And you’re the DJ speaks to my insomnia
And laughs at all I have to fear
Laughs at all I have to fear
You always play the madmen poets
Vinyl vision grungy bands
You never know who’s still awake
You never know who understands

-Dar Williams “Are You Out There?”

There was a pointed question at the #2amt session at the Chicago Theatre (anti) Conference last week as to what quantifiable things have come out of this tempest in a teapot. A fair question (if early for our 7 months) but lord knows that’s not my goal. The relationships here are my ROI and whatever I am able to create though those relationships are net profit.

But in truth there is something measureable in those relationships. There is a tangible vibration of agreement through the differences that delineate our experience, and a willingness to reach out a hand and help other members of this tribe wherever they are because we understand that somehow we are linked. It is that vibration that frees me to whisper my dreams and wonder if there isn’t a way to make them real. (If I could find the spot where truth echoes. I would stand there and whisper memories of my children’s future.) I have long had a desire to see the theatre education model in the United States reformed and I think that we can offer some help with that in our own little way. I want to start at the very beginning, a very good place to start…

We know in our bones that there is something about the way we educate our future theatremakers that is out of step with the way theatre is made. Those of us outside the Educational Infrastructure have little power to change that. What we can do is speak the truth about the world outside of academia and seek to offer “continuing education” to any who want to listen.

My theme for the day?

The enforced separation of specialized “technical” and ”artistic” students from the beginning of their education creates artificial boundaries between disciplines and shorts future theatremakers and the field the creativity that comes from fully empowered creators who later specialize in an area of their choice. In my Utopian ideal I want my designers to speak the same language as directors. I want my electricians and carpenters to be as widely read as my actors. There of course needs to be eventual specialized education but we branch too early (in the curricula I have been exposed to) and there ends up being an artificial (and unnecessarily acrimonious) separation between “artistic” and “production” staffs.

To those of you still in school, here are five books that some #2amt folks felt were essential theatre theory books. Keep an eye on the comments section as well because they’re going to add more.

[note: these are not affiliate links,
if you have the funds please support a local theatre/arts bookstore]

The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate

Peter Brook
This selection was almost unanimous. It isn’t a guide book so much as a exhortation toward something more. It’s a surprisingly quick read even on top of your already burdensome course load.

Yet when we talk about theatre this is not quite what we mean. Red curtains, spotlights, blank verse, laughter, darkness, these are all confusedly superimposed in a messy image covered by one all-purpose word. We talk of the cinema killing the theatre, and in that phrase we refer to the theatre as it was when the cinema was born, a theatre of box office, foyer, tip-up seats, footlights, scene changes, intervals, music, as though the theatre was by very definition these and little more.

The Dramatic Imagination: Reflections and Speculations on the Art of the Theatre, Reissue

Robert Edmund Jones didn’t “invent” modern set design but he sure did evangelize it. Brilliance associated with brilliance amplifies any message. A member of the Provincetown Players and collaborator with O’Neil, his thoughts ranged far beyond set design and are useful to any theatremaker. (and what state was he from?)

As we work we must seek not for self-expression or for performance for its own sake, but only to establish the dramatist’s intention, knowing that when we have succeeded in doing so audiences will say to themselves, not, This is beautiful, This is charming, This is splendid, but–This is true.

Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays

David Ball created a handy technical guide to give you a method for working through all the plays we’re going to recommend for you in the future, It’s not as revolutionary as those first two, but reading a whole mess of plays will go down easier if you have a framework for analyzing them.

Towards a Poor Theatre

Jerzy Grotowski is the least universal of these five. Towards a Poor Theatre is circuitous and poetic in it’s exploration of what exactly constitutes the raw unaltered state of “Theatre” and “Acting”. There are lots of things about his discussion of a Poor Theatre that will frustrate a designer, but I think there is immense value in examining the necessary roots of the theatrical form (especially in reaction to the screen) before we flesh out its bones.

I am a bit impatient when asked, ”’What is the origin of your experimental theatre productions?" The assumption seems to be that "experimental" work is tangential (toying with some "new" technique each time) and tributary. The result is supposed to be contribution to modern staging – scenography using current sculptural or electronic ideas, contemporary music, actors in- dependently projecting clownish or cabaret stereotypes. I know that scene: I used to be part of it. Our Theatre Laboratory productions are going in another direction. In the first place, we are trying to avoid eclecticism, trying to resist thinking of theatre as a composite of disciplines. We are seeking to define what is distinctively theatre, what separates this activity from other categories of performance and spectacle.

History of the Theatre

Brockett and Hildy
Not the book I was taught theatre history from, but easily the most readable volume on theatre history I’ve ever touched. I’m sure you have coursework in theatre history at your revered institution, but it can’t hurt to read up a little more. It makes it considerably less tedious than your standard 8AM survey history class

I urge you to fill the comments with other books that would populate a theatre curriculum you designed. Please refrain from adding plays just yet as that’s a separate post, but what other books would you insist be read on entering college to give every student a firm hold on the vocabulary of the Theatre you would like to see built?

I also encourage you to give examples of theatre programs that you think are doing an exceptional job of broad theatrical education across disciplines. Let us know how they do it so the ever present discussion about relevant educational models can eventually be more focused.

So in the last blink of the internet a poor AD in Edmonton dropped his guard for a moment, blew off some steam, and didn’t get away with anything. At all. Ever.

Mr. Jeff Haslam still thinks people are unhappy with him because he commented publically not because of what he said. If you are at all close to Mr. Haslam I would ask that you pull him aside and mention that content matters. Your defense in a case like this can’t really be “well they hurt my feelings so I hurt them back” and “I have free speech rights.”

But high school slap fight on the internet aside, my interest is in what would drive someone, a grown adult with responsibilities no less, to vent his bile publically, consequences be damned. The reviews he’s responding to aren’t raves by any means but even in their moderate  complaint they generally  exhibit the disappointment of high expectations not an evisceration. (None rise even to the level of being accused of boring a baby say) 

It seems to me the answer, in looking at the defenses he offers, is that he is suffering from the bunker-itis I talked about at the Devised Work convening.

Mr. Haslam talks about all the martyrdom that we all feel after our umpteenth show in a row. We go from production meeting to rehearsal to bathroom plunging to box office to show to bed and there’s never enough hands and never enough money and then some pretentious woman and her icky friends wants to JUDGE me?

We tend to lock ourselves into the pods we travel  with and the project we’re working on and the communities we’re in without ever taking an opportunity to stop and look around a bit. There are only these 12 people and these 3 shows and this theatre and maybe a coffee shop. No one understands everything I do for this shop/theatre.town / city / country / art form / existence.

When you are the only person in existence responsible for something the pressure gets unbearable.

Find a way to let go of that pressure.

For me, the internet is my perspective giver. No matter how hard I’m working? I’m not working half as hard as Dan Granata is for instance. I have it pretty good. I have good folks around me and people who are going through what I am going through along with me.

Where can YOU go to get that? Is that something your local Arts Umbrella provides at monthly meetups? Do you volunteer at a charity for perspective or maybe you have a sister company or two?

You’re not alone. How do you prove that to yourself and avoid a meltdown?

After the first sustained pause in the conversation between (sober) theatremakers the party question of choice is “what is your dream project?”

It’s a fun topic and generally it means you don’t have to talk for a minute which limits your probability of saying something stupid. It works best for actors and directors and pretty well for designers or writers. It works less well for… well for me.

I am a sometime actor and director, more often I’m a producer, but mostly I’m a thinker with an interest in community building – which isn’t really invigorating party talk. I would love the time (and ability) to do King Lear but my true dream project is bigger.

I want to create and curate the ArtsDepot.

My first real theatre experience after school was at the Exit Theatre in San Francisco. It’s a warren of 3 theatre spaces and a cabaret/cafe space in two physical locations in the Tenderloin District. It’s magic. Christina Augello and Richard Livingston have created the sort of hive of theatrical energy that every community desperately needs.  If you’re new to the San Francisco theatre scene and have any interest in indie theatre, hang out at the Exit for a little while, your people will show up.

I want to do it bigger.

You have one of these in your town. It’s an abandoned big box store. In this case a Home Depot. It is a massive footprint space that only another Big Box Retailer could fill, but their sustainability (of profits) plans generally requires that they build from scratch.

I want it.

I want this store and its land.

I want to carve three performance spaces into it, one 99 seat house and two 50 seat houses.

• I want to have:
  rehearsal space,
• scene shop + housing for the Austin Scenic Co-op
  furnished communal office space for theatre and dance groups to use,
  meeting space,
  gallery space,
  and a cafe/bar.

So roughly I want the moon and the stars, but wait! There’s more!

There is plenty of space around the building to create outdoor performance space and plenty of parking. It’s on a major highway (the same major highway as the Guthrie!) so access is easy if not always uncongested.

What does this do?

1. Creates more performance spaces for Austin.
2. Provides a space for artists to create in community. I want to model this on Sandy Stone’s amazing ACTLab at the University of Texas.
   Friction requires proximity. Giving people the tools necessary to create includes access to one another.
3. Equal opportunity for visual, performance, and movement artists.
   In the same space. The future means not separating specialties.
4. It creates a space in the building for the audiences and artists to interact. There is no physical break between the experience and the interaction. Getting in your car and separating yourself from the experience to go to the bar euthanizes the moment. Can you imagine the audiences from three Fusebox shows all emptying into the same cafe at once and talking about art and performance and feeling the glow that only shared experience can bring?
5. It creates opportunity for awareness. With three shows running you will be exposed to a broader cross-section of available than being at one far-flung location.

On a selfish note it also would grant me space to curate. Whether that meant allowing for an extension of a show that deserved a longer run than one of Austin’s other theatres could provide or bringing in a production from out of town that I think Austin would enjoy. That sort of exchange broadens the vocabulary of our community and creates opportunity for outside artists to experience this city. There is also the opportunity to host a company in residency as the Exit has done for Ripe Theatre and for Cutting Ball Theatre which eliminates their space costs for a year.

Of course something on this scale is a pipe dream for me personally, a fun “if I won the lottery” game, but the model that the Exit presents would scale beautifully, and I hope to help see it put to the test in some daring community,

(if you have the capital and inclination to do it in Austin call me! (512) 524-3761)

After the gusher of cynicism and bitterness surrounding this years Tony Award telecast I suggested on Twitter that instead of whining about movie stars and dime store trinkets representing our business that A.) They were in a different business and B.) Whining that They are getting it wrong doesn’t help, you need to show how to do it right.

It is easy to sit back and deride everything that is wrong with theatre and it  is a lot of work to advocate for what is right, who is right. who the shining stars in our regions and towns are, whose scripts they should be reading and which artists they should be dying to collaborate with.

The problem dogging theatre in America isn’t primarily a quality problem, it’s an exposure problem. No one knows what’s going on and American Theatre only has so many fingers to type with. Audiences crave certainty in their spending and the knowledge that what they’re seeing is legitimate. We collectively need to stop talking about how X publication is covering the wrong thing and cover it ourselves. If you’re so smart? Tell us. Stand for something. Confer legitimacy where you see fit.

There is a lot of fear around approaching others’ work critically. A fear of backlash, of stepping out of line, and even of liking something not cool enough for the hive mind. But that shouldn’t mean that you stop advocating for the things that you love, about the shows that melted your brain, that inspired you to create, that intimidated you from ever creating again because they were so good….

That’s an ongoing conversation that we need to keep reminding ourselves that to have, but to kick us off I’d like to talk about an awards ceremony recently held in Austin. I know there is lot of scorn heaped on awards but I am personally for them and this sort of ceremony is a great model for what I think these sorts of awards so attempt to do.

On Monday, June 7th, the Austin Critic’s Table announced the winners of the 2009-10 awards. The Critic’s Table is an informal collection of the critics in town for the Austin American-Statesman, the Austin Chronicle and MightBeGood.com. The roster of critics on Austin has a very cordial relationship with the arts community. Most of them are artists themselves and take part in one discipline or another. All of them are underpaid and overworked. I believe only 2 or the dozen are employed full time as critics, but they see everything. According to legend and Robert Faires, they meet in a corner booth at Opal Devine’s over martinis and a couple of baskets of french fries and hash out the nominations. My kind of group. 

As you can see below, the awards themselves cover the gamut of artistic disciplines and one of the huge strengths of this tradition is that is places the players from all of the disciplines in the same room together, something that rarely happens. The ceremony is very informal and the physical awards are certificates that Mr. Faires prints up. The Critic’s Table isn’t at all afraid to give more than one award in a category, and errs on the side of rewarding multiples rather than not recognizing someone truly worthy.

I admit freely that I didn’t see everything below.
I didn’t see maybe but a third of the stuff on this list.
My posting of this list is my faith in the judgment of this group of critics not a direct personal conferring of Legitimacy.

Where ever possible I have linked a groups or person’s site and the project that was awarded. Take a minute or two to bounce around and get a feel for them. They have analogs in your community. They are just like folks you know and work with and they are GOOD.

VISUAL ART
Museum Exhibition
“Desire,” Blanton Museum of Art, curator: Annette DiMeo Carlozzi, curator

Group Gallery Exhibition
“Polymict,” Okay Mountain, curator: Nathan Green

Solo Gallery Exhibition
“Beilu Liu: Bound,” D Berman Gallery

Work of Art: Independent or Public Project
‘24 Hour Roman Reconstruction Project,’ Liz Glynn, Arthouse

Work of Art: One of A Kind
‘Halliburton Archiving Solutions (II), 1987,’ Adam Schreiber, “One on One on One,” Art Palace

Work of Art: Installation
‘Camp Base Camp: Everest Friends,’ Peter Reichardt, Mary Rothlisberger, and Kristyn Weaver, “Ideas of Mountains,” Creative Research Laboratory

Artist
Okay Mountain

Touring Show, Art
“The Lining of Forgetting: Internal and External Memory in Art,” Austin Museum of Art

CLASSICAL MUSIC
Symphonic Performance
Symphony VI, Golden Hornet Project

Chamber Performance
Ellen Fullman and the Long String Instrument, New Music Co-op

Choral Performance
Ode to Common Things, Conspirare Symphonic Choir with Austin Symphony

Opera
‘A View From the Bridge,’ UT Butler Opera Center

Singer
Cristina Caldas, ‘A View From the Bridge’
Brad Raymond, ‘Albert Herring’
Jean-Paul Fouchecourt, ‘The Star’

Instrumentalist
Douglas Harvey, cello, Don Quixote

Original Composition/Score
“Two Cautionary Tales,” Steve Snowden

THEATER
Production, Drama
‘Dionysus in 69,’ Rude Mechanicals

Production, Comedy
‘Killer Joe,’ Capital T Theatre

Production, Musical
‘john & jen’, Penfold Theatre Company

Direction
Beth Burns, ‘The Taming of the Shrew’
Mark Pickell, ‘Killer Joe’

Acting in a Leading Role
Pamela Christian, ‘Mary Stuart’
Ryan Crowder, ‘The Taming of the Shrew’
Joey Hood, ‘The Atheist’
Gabriel Luna, ‘Black Snow’/’Orestes’/’Endgame’

Acting in a Supporting Role
Michael Amendola, ‘Our Town’ (Zach Theatre)
Smaranda Ciceu, ‘Black Snow’
Sean Martin, ‘Mary Stuart’/’Three Days of Rain’
Jose Villareal, ‘The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee’

Ensemble Performance
‘Black Snow,’ Tutto Theatre Company
‘bobrauschenbergamerica,’ Mary Moody Northen Theatre

David Mark Cohen New Play Award
‘House of Several Stories,’ John Boulanger

Music Direction
Lyn Koenning, ‘The Difficulty of Crossing a Field’

Movement
Madge Darlington/Shawn Sides, ‘Dionysus in 69’

Touring Show, Theater
‘Paved Paradise Redux,’ Fusebox Festival

DESIGN
Scenic Design
Lisa Laratta, ‘Murder Ballad Murder Mystery’/’Black Snow’

Costume Design
Alison Heryer, ‘The Trojan Women’/’The Difficulty of Crossing a Field’

Lighting Design
Stephen Pruitt, ‘bobrauschenbergamerica’/’The Trash Project’/’Ears Wide Open’

Sound Design
William Meadows, ‘Impermanence’/’The Trash Project’

DANCE
Dance Concert
‘The Trash Project,’ Forklift Danceworks

Short Work
“Angel of My Nature,” Truth & Beauty/The Bach Project
Choreographer
Deborah Hay, ‘No Time to Fly’

Dancer
Masa Kolar, “Your Provision”
Jaime Lynn Witts, ‘Truth & Beauty: The Bach Project ‘

Ensemble
‘Ears Wide Open,’ Tapestry Dance Company

Touring Show, Dance
Black Grace, Texas Performing Arts

Special Citations – 2010
John Bustin Award for Conspicuous Versatility: Graham Reynolds
W.H. “Deacon” Crain Award for Outstanding Student Work: LaTasha Stephens, UT Theatre & Dance; Jacob Trussell, St. Edward’s University
Graced in the Machine Award: Don Anderson, “The Crane Dance,” The Trash Project
Get Up, Up, and Away Award: Shannon McCormick & Shana Merlin
Time Out of Mind Award: The Hideout’s 40-Hour Improv Marathon

I am a ranter.

No surprise I guess that a blogger likes ranting, it would seem to be a blogger’s stock in trade, and I have a reputation as something of a John the Baptist of the CAPS LOCK… but I more specifically mean in real life. I tend to caffeinate and hold forth on something that is bothering me until I run out of steam or people willing to listen. The topic most often these last couple of years has been changes that need to be made in the operation of indie theatre companies and the creation of new work. If you happen to be my wife or my producing director you have heard the topic ground into dust over various meals and commercial breaks.

I want revolution.

Sekou Sundiata warns I wouldn’t use that word if I knew what it meant. It ain’t pretty, It’s messy. It overturns things. But maybe an art form needs overturning when its business model seems to boil down to [(wish + hope)/ask nicely = Profit]. Maybe we can stop asking what color the new memorial lobby should be and DO SOMETHING. Maybe more folks should get honestly angry when we spend another 8 hours in a room talking about a new way to divvy up the day-old doughnuts that the federal government disperses instead of talking about creation.

I keep shouting in the wilderness online because it all feels so possible. It feels like movement is taking place. It feels like the increased access to power brokers and the democratization of publishing means that common sense can be heard all the way up the chain and good ideas can be implemented even if they came from outside the advisory board or the Executive Council. It feels like these connections to other people and other ways of telling stories matters.

Of course it doesn’t.

Not on the macro scale we want it to. We listen to our macro leaders talk and it becomes clear again that we’re just talking about entirely different worlds. The disconnect between someone like Michael Kaiser and the day-to-day conversation happening between the theatre blogs and in the #2amt and #newplay spheres is jaw-grindingly apparent as he talks from his talking points of 2 years ago and proposes solutions for producing paradigms of 40 years ago. Mr. Kaiser and Mr. Landesman have million dollar businesses to buttress and no matter what they feel personally (and I LIKE them both) they are in the business of selling theatre shaped widgets.

But I will tell you that this revolution has mattered very much to me personally. I take this discussion and the ideas that it generates very seriously. I use as many ideas as I can in the production of our work with Cambiare Productions as possible. I think we’re right about a lot of thing and I’m itching to prove it.

So a modest proposal: Forget about them.

I don’t mean the Arena Stages and David Dowers, or the A.C.T. and Portland Center Stages… Every Theatre Bay Area, League of Chicago Theatres, and Austin Creative Alliance that buys in to the conversation is better for us|them|we.  But if the big boys and girls don’t want to play? Forget about them.

We can’t make revolution simply about resources. Most of the folks taking part in the conversation have few. It has to be about ideas. It has to be about creation. We have to eliminate the culture of ownership that drives business and foster a culture of shared ideas.

Let’s have the Stone Soup revolution:

Once upon a time, somewhere in post-war Eastern Europe, there was a great famine in which people jealously hoarded whatever food they could find, hiding it even from their friends and neighbors. One day a wandering soldier came into a village and began asking questions as if he planned to stay for the night.

“There’s not a bite to eat in the whole province,” he was told. “Better keep moving on.”

“Oh, I have everything I need,” he said. “In fact, I was thinking of making some stone soup to share with all of you.” He pulled an iron cauldron from his wagon, filled it with water, and built a fire under it. Then, with great ceremony, he drew an ordinary-looking stone from a velvet bag and dropped it into the water.

By now, hearing the rumor of food, most of the villagers had come to the square or watched from their windows. As the soldier sniffed the “broth” and licked his lips in anticipation, hunger began to overcome their skepticism.

“Ahh,” the soldier said to himself rather loudly, “I do like a tasty stone soup. Of course, stone soup with cabbage — that’s hard to beat.”

Soon a villager approached hesitantly, holding a cabbage he’d retrieved from its hiding place, and added it to the pot. “Capital!” cried the soldier. “You know, I once had stone soup with cabbage and a bit of salt beef as well, and it was fit for a king.”

The village butcher managed to find some salt beef . . . and so it went, through potatoes, onions, carrots, mushrooms, and so on, until there was indeed a delicious meal for all. The villagers offered the soldier a great deal of money for the magic stone, but he refused to sell and traveled on the next day. [Taken from here]

Not to agree with Don Hall publically or anything, but indie theatre spends an awful lot of time dressing up in big brother’s clothes, pretending we’re something more than a bunch of fly-by-night bootstrap  concerns that likely won’t exist in 5 years. We hoard thoughts. We want in first. We want to hit it big on That One Idea. The indies, the storefronts aren’t playing the same game as the Kennedy Center and we need to stop pretending we are.

We need to stop holding back the cabbage, the salt beef, and the potatoes. Give it away. Publish your thoughts. Your ideas. Hell, even your scripts if you don’t intend to publish them traditionally. Look into Creative Commons and what it means (Lucas Krech has a great post here to get you started).

We’re never going to move the monolith. It’s doesn’t mean I’m going to stop yelling at it, or getting infuriated when it notes glibly that regional theatre audiences seem to be getting older (REALLY!? I hadn’t heard!), but rationally I know that it’s going to stand there until the Chapter 11 judge gives it away.

Let’s not waste the energy and momentum that we have in this moment.

I have this stone.
What have you got?

I have talked time and again over at the Cambiare Productions blog about relationships and trust metrics and “street cred” and…. yes I’m as surprised as you are that anyone reads… but I’m going to restate it here because it needs restating.

Ask a theatre artist what they don’t have, wind them up, and go get dinner. They will just chatter on for lifetimes abut the things they don’t have and that goes from the minute the start until the day the pick up their Kennedy Center Honor. The resources a person or company manage to accrue become precious and in need of defending.

So when a small company begins an interrogatory sentence of any kind in the presence of a larger entity is it quickly shot down … not least because so many of those sentences end in “give me money / space / time”. But we need to take a moment, because we’re not all greedy little pedants who don’t value the fact that someone had to earn everything you and your institution have and earning isn’t a naughty word.

As part of the Outrageous Fortune event presented by Wooly Mammoth and the American Voices New Play Institute yesterday a question David Loehr and I had been batting back and forth got asked:

Can larger theatres adopt smaller companies as a junior varsity to meet new artists & auds? Why not?

This was answered with a flurry of “We don’t have the spacetimeresources… partnering across theatre size is the hardest partnership to to difference in focus… blahblahblahblah

First: Larger theatres and I don’t have a different focus. We have the SAME focus. That’s the magic of all of this. Every institution is made up of people, and those people all share my focus. I have yet to run into the mythical “officious bean counting robber baron looking to slash everything at the expense of art”. So let’s stop peddling that line. Larger institutions have different limitations than I do. That’s different having a different focus and we need to say what we mean.

Second: We don’t have a development system in American theatre. We sometimes talk as though we do, but we don’t. So let’s get cracking on creating something. When creating something? Start with your friends.

Every convening I’ve witnessed or been part of has boiled down to: We need morebetterlonger relationships with Real Partners.

So let’s do it.

Major Institutions: You don’t need to produce my show. You don’t need to cast it. You don’t need to do anything other than bless it. A major problem for theatre-goers is that audiences don’t know what’s or who’s good, and “what’s good” isn’t easily discernable from the outside. You, Mr. or Ms. Institution can help me by using your credibility as a purveyor of Good Theatre to let potential audiences and artists know that you approve of us. You have worked with us or seen our work and lo, it was good.

Here in Austin my favorite example of this is what Ken Webster is doing with his Hyde Park Theatre. Hyde Park Theatre is becoming a clubhouse both for a style of theater and a coterie of producing companies and folks that Mr. Webster likes and trusts. People may rent Hyde Park Theatre, but more often than not what’s in the space reflects a relationship with the theatre and with Ken. If you like the dark comedy like Ken does you more likely than not will like the work he blesses. Just like Netflix.

Now, Mr. or Ms. Institution let’s be clear: No company is going to turn down a grant or space to do a show. If you want to bring in Orestes I’ll get the band back together and sharpen the daggers. But even if you can’t or you’re a small company with no resources except your good name: lend a small company your Good Theatre Making Seal of Approval.

This week is all about the Devised Work convening hosted by the Arena Stage doing their level best to truly be a center for new American play development.

They scooped up a raftload of folks not frightened off by DC’s recent uncharacteristic winter weather event and we will be discussing the ins and outs of the Devised Work in this theatremaking environment beginning on Friday..

The intrepid Mr. Dower has outlined the discussions that have already taken place around devised work, his goals for this weekend, and some questions for the creators of devised work to jump start the thinking for this weekend.

Let’s zoom out from that specific set of questions to some general questions for a group of folks who may not be devised work creators themselves.

Starter Questions:

What does the term “Devised Work” mean to you?

Have you ever seen a devised work show?

Have you ever taken part in a devised work process?

What do you like most about devised work? (Process or performance)?

What do you find most challenging about it?

What production problems can a devised work process alleviate?

What production problems can a devised work process create?

In what ways is a devised work process better than  a single voice process?

In what ways is it more difficult than a single voice process?

What are your general thoughts about devised work?

What questions do you have for the convenors even this far out?

These #newplay convenings are capital I Important because you take part; Because of the broader discussion that takes place around the room not just what happens in the room. So let’s ramp up early and really knock the doors off of this. This is a topic that begins in collaboration so let’s not sit back and just watch.

Isaac Butler at Parabasis asks how we should define “new play”.

In the face of how the phrase has been treated in recent years, and rung like a gong again and again in Outrageous Fortune, and with it being the focus of the Arena Stage convenings it seems fair to ask how we define it.

Oh, you’re saying to yourself, that’s just being pedantic, we all know what a new play is!

I know you are because that’s what I opened this window to say.

I opened this window to say that a new play is one that had never been performed anywhere before, and any other attempted definition was just sales slipping into the art. And to an extent that’s true, but we’re selling to our funders AND our audiences so this matters a little.

Try it.

Try to define it. Really define it, with specificity and limits. Nail it down, I’ll wait.
It’s slippery isn’t it?!

Okay, so begin with  my obvious stab at it:
It is a play that has never been performed anywhere else before.
Straightforward and concise, but how long does it play before it isn’t new anymore? How many scenes can be rewritten in this production before it is new again?
How much needs to be rewritten for it to be considered new for it’s second production?

So obviously that’s too elusive a corner to nail it down in.

Do we simply take the author’s word for it? Even when they are motivated by premiere-itis to keep it new as lnong as possible?

Is it some sort of definitive production? Is it Is it New York?
Are we just waiting for Isherwood on his cross to declare. “It is Finished!” and then the true second comings can happen?

I really am open to any definition you may have, with the caveat that I’m not looking for the term of art for sales.
I want to really get underneath what it is we’re supporting with these convenings and this funding and our conversation.

What are YOU talking about when you’re talking about #newplay?