Over the past week or so I have been near the center of exchanges about theatre and social media that feel alternately like discussions, vent sessions, and policy ponderings. Social media and theatre and the mix of both — discuss. And when you add in questions of the directionality of the media stream and who controls it you have an endlessly energized exchange — media in hands of creators, media in hands of theatre administration, media in the hands of audience members, media in hands of performers. The conversations going on at this very moment on these themes among dramaturgs and other theatre professionals are active on individual blogs (see Douglas McLennan’s 1/25/2012 post “Leading from Behind – We Need a Better Definition”), on the occasional discussion forum (see the LMDA listserv discussions) , in print and elsewhere. I shall make no attempts to summarize that rapidly morphing discussion here. What I shall do is provide my own little story and recent experience, and parse that a bit. In this discussion as in all discussions that hit on philosophies of art (personal, professional) and perhaps suspicion of new tools and high emotions, details matter. So I offer a few.

I am a literature major who became a social science researcher who worked in court research for many years and morphed into a theatre researcher and dramaturg. I’ve been a pc user since 1983, and emailer since 1984 or so, at first through university accounts then through employer email accounts then free email hosts like Hotmail then gmail. I first read a play that tried (semi successfully) to incorporate projections-as-email-conversations between two characters as a script reader for one of several DC theatres in 2004. I continue to read on the page and see on various stages in the ensuing years as resident of DC, Chicago, Philadelphia, and now New York City the creative challenges for playwrights and the design/creative/ research team attempting to incorporate the use of social media in theatre. Questions, challenges, hits and misses.

So I have the eye of a dramaturg observer, and am technologically experienced, and still openly acknowledge a lot of rough edges. And add to this years of observing individual playwrights and theatre productions (as production dramaturg, as script reader, as critic) as they attempt to bring email and instant messaging and Twitter communications onto the stage into the world of a play.

My active entry into Facebook (2008) was inspired and reinforced by my smart and funny theatre friends and colleagues who used the tool to build communities around their work and their companies, advertise and discuss individual works. Humor and community were my reward for playing in the Facebook playgroup. Twitter use arose similarly for me (2009) – sparked by my curiosity about how theatres were using the tool, and enhanced by humor and instant community. Twitter’s more open anyone-can-follow-anyone structure (unless an account is specially locked down) allows you to learn more about Merrill Markoe’s and Andy Borowitz’s fast and funny brains, for example, than would be possible in the real world. One can get lost in the somewhat messy sea of output in Twitter, but I do find community-level events (such as awards shows or the New York State legislative vote on gay marriage several months ago), organized through hashtag groupings (sometimes jokingly created, sometimes seriously inserted) introduce me to the fun of live tweeting and finding a community instantly, outside my immediate physical world.

Over the past few years I have also observed theatre marketing efforts that use Twitter in a range of ways. I first encountered the idea of a “tweet seat” as last minute notice of ticket availability by various theatre companies. Theatres tweet out news of last minute deals to a specific kind of potential patron – media savvy, quick on their feet (or with their fingers), with flexible theatre-going schedules. I took note. At the same time a different type of “tweet seat” experiment began in different theatres, reported as they occurred in discussion lists, involving audience members given permission to tweet during performances. The commentary I read (on line, in print) about these experiments ranged widely from support for “whatever brings people into the theatre” to concerns about how to control the mechanics and organization of such events to questions about whether this kind of in-the-moment audience interaction/processing has a place at all in the world of theatre. Discussion of the use of a smart phone as a tweeting tool in a darkened theatre can bring up for all of us the annoyance of the light ahead of us, tapping fingers beside us, all of which can distract an audience member from absolute focus on the theatre before her. Any and all of these themes and others seemed to emerge and conflate and enflame in tweet seat discussions.

When an opportunity to become a “tweet seat” participant observer and test out my reactions in the moment to an experiment using social media in a theatre performance, I pounced. I follow @PublicTheaterNY and observed publicity about a planned “tweet seat” event for Gob Squad’s Kitchen (You’ve Never Had It So Good) coming up just after the Under the Radar Festival in early January 2012. And on January 19, 2012 the Marketing Department of the Public Theater invited selected Twitter users to attend and “live tweet” a performance of Gob Squad’s Kitchen. Here’s a little summary of the sequence of events.

1/26/2011
@PublicTheaterNY
Playbill reports on our Tweet Seats: MT: @rss_playbill: Public Opens 1st Perf of Gob Squad’s Kitchen for Live-Tweeting bit.ly/tL4XgZ

I read the article. It feeds into my recent experiences an curiosity, and I am alert for further notifications from @PublicTheaterNY. I do not have to wait long.

I read the article. It feeds into my recent experiences an curiosity, and I am alert for further notifications from @PublicTheaterNY. I do not have to wait long.

1/2/2012
@PublicTheaterNY
Just a few more days to enter SYTYCT for a chance to live-tweet GOB SQUAD’S KITCHEN! #kitchenlive #warhol bit.ly/vpz5Y6

Aha, the mechanics are now clear. I follow the instructions, through which you are led to a form (requesting name, a few facts, email, and your Twitter account name). And you are told to wait to hear if you’re selected. I don’t know what the selection process is, though one supposes there was at least a look at the Twitter feed of the folks applying.

1/3/2012
@msteketee
Decided to try to get a ticket to tweet about Gob Squad doing Warhol. I think. We’ll see! @PublictheaterNY #kitchenlive

I enter this day, and tweet that fact, and my tweet is immediately acknowledged with a “good luck” by @PublicTheaterNY. The submission period ends several days later. I tracked two tweets in particular:

1/8/2012
PublicTheaterNY The Public Theater
@HESherman Tweet Seat event is experiment for us – may not be satisfying for actors/audiences. We’ll see, it’s exciting to see what happens.

1/8/2012
PublicTheaterNY The Public Theater
Also, last day 2 enter: Win Tweet Seats for GOB SQUAD’S KITCHEN! Winners will live tweet 1st perf from special section! publictheater.wufoo.com/forms/m7x3s5/

Note that the question of who is served by the Tweet Seat experiment is already a topic of discussion. And it is clear here that the experiment is “for us” meaning the Theater generally or the Marketing Department in particular. The tone is experimental.

The contest is wrapped up and winners notified on 1/10/2011 with a Twitter Direct Message to check email. The contest is called here and a few places (including handouts in a kind of press pack the performance evening) “So You Think You Can Tweet: Gob Squad Edition”. The rest of the public process is regular reminders until the Tweet Seat event occurs. Note that the #kitchenlive hashtag can be referenced even now for tweets before, during, and after the guest tweeting on 1/19/2012.

1/13/2012
PublicTheaterNY The Public Theater
Less than a week before the 1st perf of GOB SQUAD’S KITCHEN! You will be able see live tweets from that show by following #KitchenLive.

1/18/2012
PublicTheaterNY The Public Theater
First perf of GOB SQUAD’S KITCHEN is tomorrow! Be sure to follow live tweets from our guest tweeters at #kitchenlive from 7:30pm to 10pm!

1/19/2012
PublicTheaterNY The Public Theater
GOB SQUAD’S KITCHEN has arrived! Follow #kitchenlive for live tweets from guest tweeters for tonight ‘s first perf -7:30-10pm. #warhol

When we arrive on 1/19/2012 we are presented with a lanyard and laminated tab with our twitter name (see image at head of this blog post), our real name, and the TWEET SEAT SECTION designation . For some of the participants this quasi-review role is a new one and they comment on it among themselves. We are also handed a folder that includes a set of rules: silence cell phones, no calls during performance, lower brightness on phone, only tweet during performance, no photography – though this rule was modified when the performers gave their o.k. for photos before the performance began, to use the hashtag #kitchenlive, and to tweet at the level we wanted with no expectations. We are not informed beforehand in any formal way who the other Tweet Seat occupants will be or how many, though it is clear that many of the crowd know one another. I am older than most by several decades. It turns out there are 25 of us, some of whom brought guests. We alone as a group occupy the last three rows of the Newman Theater on the first floor of the Public Theater, across the lobby from Joe’s Pub. The Marketing folks are most gracious, thank us publicly and privately post event, and give us a free drink at a nearby bar to debrief.

1/19/2012
@PublicTheaterNY
Thanks to all our live-tweeters for capturing the first performance of GOB’S SQUAD KITCHEN. a fun night! #Warhol would approve #KitchenLive

So what do I make of this experience? I journal, I observe, I write up experiences in theatres with great frequency – for my own blog and for other outlets. I would rather be in a rehearsal room or a theatre experiencing the wonders possible there than almost anywhere else on earth. And I found the personal experience as a participant in this partially controlled experiment to be a struggle with role strain. I acknowledge this is in part due to my desire to experience a play as an audience member who might review, therefore I want to be fully engaged and give myself over to the actors and designers and playwright, body and brain, in a way that is simply not possible when one pauses at regular intervals to tweet a reaction or a sensation that is in essence a note for deeper reflection at a later time. Any person attending such an event should expect to have a partial and “distanced” experience of the art before them.

This tweet from midshow on 1/19/2012 that captures a moment and a reflection to which I will return in my formal critical notes on the show, based on both viewings. This was a rare pause and moment I by chance capture on the fly (eyes up and down and taking notes and trying to function, right and left brain together). I was fascinated to hear during the 1/25/2012 performance post show conversation one of the actors in fact references the Woody Allen film Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) as an inspiration for the group for this moment in the show. This movie occurred to me immediately upon seeing the sequence captured in the image at the link below, and visible at left here.

1/19/2012
@msteketee
Simon has gone to other side. Very purple rose of cairo. Others try entice him back. #kitchenlive yfrog.com/o0svjnj

What it was:
Well organized, sensitively structured effort by the Public Theater’s Marketing Department to invited 25 Twitter Users to observe and comment upon a partially improvised work involving projections, audience involvement, and evocation of some of Andy Warhol’s movies.

What it was not:
An artist-driven effort to inform their work directly or to provide information instantaneously fed to the actors. This experiment was not intended to integrate the audience reactions to the theatre creation in any meaningful way – though in this case one could imagine that it might have been perfectly Warholian to dedicate an additional screen somewhere to scrolling audience responses to what they were seeing.

What it all means:
This limited experiment illustrates that such theatre observers can be incorporated into an audience without disturbing other patrons. As a Twitter user in this reporting/experiencing role, I experienced deep role strain in attempting to observe and experience in my conventional audience role while simultaneously attempting to engage as a Twitter user consuming the same experience (observe and note and publicly share fragments of thoughts in the moment). I returned to the show a few days later, taking up the Marketing Department’s offer to the Tweeters of another pair of seats as a kind of acknowledgment of our efforts during the experiment. I yearned for the repeat viewing. And serendipity rewarded me with a postshow conversation with actors and audience members that revealed more of the theatre makers’ art that I could have captures with one viewing, much less one during which I was Twitter-distracted.

I haven’t been an actor in a long time.

I had spent most of nearly three decades (I was a very, very young child actor…) working on one show or another before finding myself torn between those age-old female choices of nurturing myself or nurturing my offspring. Luckily, my first-born was a theatre, and I was forced offstage by its growth. My own inability to quiet my need to multi-task didn’t help. After coming to the realization that signing checks during fast changes and making exits based on the proximity of the fax machine wasn’t really fair to an audience, much less to my fellow actors, I took a break to work behind a desk instead of the curtain.

To the surprise of everyone who had ever known me I discovered that I didn’t miss performing. Whatever need I had to be in the spotlight was met by being the person who hired the person who ran the spot. I was quite content with supporting my theatre addiction by giving others an opportunity to work. I was still intimately connected – really intimately connected since I married an actor, on a Monday, at the home of a stage manager, with a playwright and marketing director presiding over the ceremony. But I was living a life much closer to those who inhabited the “normal” world, where days off were Saturday and Sunday, your workday wasn’t a night and you were regularly allowed to see the sun.

Our son arrived and drove a stake into any residual longing I had for the boards. I tried it a few more times but the juggling of diapers and scripts and sitters and stage managers made even my legendary energy inadequate. I was really done: I packed away my tackle box of makeup, and tossed out my highlighters and rehearsal skirt. Happy getting laughs at staff meetings, I felt delighted that there was no need to ever put my literal tap shoes on again.

Never say ever. Art is transitory and impermanent, and, so it turns out, are theatres.

So, following the close of the company I had spent a quarter century with, I was delighted to see an artistic director’s name come up on my caller ID. Imagine my surprise when his request was not for my vast knowledge of the industry or my expertise about producing theatre. He was calling to offer me a role. In a play. On a stage.

Suddenly, gratefully, I was back in a rehearsal hall. And I found myself looking at the process of creating a production with new eyes, observing the strangeness of the language and actions of the profession. What actors do is really pretty odd.

A person who you’ll most likely never meet has slaved over what you need to say, so you don’t have to come up with anything your own. However, you are expected to say the same thing over and over, exactly as it was given to you, word for word, but on command you have to change how you say it. You are encouraged to make repetitive motions: you are asked to sit, get up, walk out of a door, stop, turn around, walk back in, and sit, get up, and walk out again, sometimes several times in a day. It can be dizzying, especially when you are a part of a group, all coming and going and stopping and starting at the whim of a person who is not one of the walkers.

There is a person who happily sits behind a table and makes notes about everything you do. That same person tells you when to go to the bathroom, when to eat, and when to go home. Someone buys you clothes, fits them to you, and gives them to you, freshly laundered, each day. Almost always you are given something comfy to sit or lie upon. Many times you are even provided with food and drink (although a request for actual vodka in the vodka bottle is, I’ve been reminded, frowned upon.)

You don’t punch a clock, but rather sign in. It’s so much more polite, isn’t it? You get to sit in a room with people of your own kind, gossiping and reading magazines while sitting in various stages of undress. You hang out, drink coffee, and tell stories about the last time you were with others like yourself, hanging out, drinking coffee and telling stories with others like yourselves. Plus someone constantly keeps you updated on the time. (Warning: they expect you to say thank you every time they quote the clock.)

But where else can you, in all seriousness, be told to “pick up clitoris?” (so sayeth a director to an actress in Amy Herzog’s After the Revolution, which is what I’m doing now.) How about having a strike six times a year? Is there any other job where you are told to put on more makeup? Or to scream obscenities at someone you’ve just met? Or kiss your best friend’s husband like he’s yours? And in how many places can you tramp around in your pajamas, or underwear, or nothing, in front of people who have paid to watch you? (On second thought, don’t answer that one.)

And to top this all off – they give you a paycheck each week. It may not be a lot, but, jeez, what more do you want?

An audience! I had forgotten about an audience. They provide the proof that theatre is a collaborative and ever-changing art form, that there is no such thing as perfect, and that you can’t do it the same way twice. They are the reason that theatre is live and a living art. And a craft. Ah, sitting backstage and listening to the subtle changes in a performance caused by the vibe coming from the dark. I love standing on stage and finding that small tweak that makes the difference that makes it work. You’ve gotta love the bit that plays, the laugh that builds while you wait, riding its crest and then, just as it starts to lose energy curls back on itself to rise again. The feeling of power you get when you’re holding a few hundred people in your thrall – waiting for just the right moment to make the one small gesture that will send them into spasms of laughter or paroxysms of grief. The joy of getting it right, the rhythm just so, the moment that sings in its silence.

Oh, for that instant when you get it, they get it, and someone, most likely you, is transformed.

Of course there are the other moments. In this run alone these have included the patron who decides to yell over the final, pivotal line of the play, the tongue-twisted actor who said “Enema!” instead of “Emma!” and the stately, dignified grande dame of the region who did an entire scene with her skirt unzipped and a large piece of glow tape highlighting her crotch.

But those are the moments that live on in the stories told ‘round the coffee maker, in front of the mirror, and off house left, the ones that make you glad to be a part of this insane, brilliant, frightening, fabulous world. I am grateful to be back. I’m grateful to be in the rehearsal hall, the greenroom, the dressing room, in the wings and on stage. I am grateful to once again to be able to say “I am an actor.”

Over the weekend, @NewPlayTV streamed three interesting, presumably unrelated talks. The first was from Steppenwolf’s First Look Festival, titled How to engage 21st Century Audiences for New Plays, followed an hour later by one from the PlayFest at Orlando Shakespeare Theater on How to Make a Living as a Playwright? Monday night’s was from New Dramatists in NYC, titled Beyond the Culture Wars: Arts Funding in America. (The links lead to the archived videos of the talks; some of them are in multiple parts, just so’s you know.)

On the surface, there are connections–they’re all about theatre and they all feature playwrights as panelists. But one common thread leapt out at me and reminded me of conversations we’ve had on the #2amt stream on Twitter. It began with Robert O’Hara and Marisa Wegrzyn on the Steppenwolf panel talking about how they as playwrights had been welcomed into the marketing process at various theatres and, in Marisa’s case, more deeply involved as a partner and co-founder of Theatre Seven. I’ve done much the same for Riverrun Theatre as a founder and co-producer, largely for the same reasons–we enjoy it.

The next panel, from PlayFest, began with the question, “What’s a playwright got to do to make a living?” Panelist Charlie Bethel answered first. “Everything but playwriting.” He was only half-joking–he went on to list all the occupations he’s had in order to support his writing. Gloria Bond Clunie noted that “Not sleeping is really essential in holding two jobs…” And, “if you identify yourself as a writer, then you have to decide what else has to fall away so you can focus on that.”

Minutes later, Jason Loewith, executive director of the National New Play Network, asked a question we’ve been asking for a while now.

“Why don’t theatre companies with budgets of more than $2.5 million have a playwright on staff?”

Steve Yockey countered with, “Why not $1 million?”

Finally, Monday’s wish-list post by Gwydion Suilebhan and that night’s debate from New Dramatists echoed and continued these thoughts. Gwydion offered the wish that more playwrights should be on staff. At the debate, economist Eric Helland asked, “Why is the Playwright the only person in the production not on salary?” (I know several designers who’d argue with that. But let’s stick with the seven-figure-budget theatres for now.)

Several months ago, Kristoffer Diaz and I went back and forth on Twitter (both on and off #2amt) about the idea of a staff playwright and what that would entail. We agreed that it meant more than a residency or a commission, more than the ability to use office equipment and have steady health insurance. It meant more than simply putting words on paper for people to speak aloud on stage. It means, first and foremost, being there, being part of the heart of the company.

Fine. But what would a staff playwright do?

What if you had someone who could shape your social media experiences, someone trained in the art of dialogue, the craft of story? We all agree that social media works best as interaction and engagement, not as a one-way broadcast for ticket info. We’ve seen several variations on storytelling-via-Twitter–I did it in 2008 tied to an original show, Such Tweet Sorrow did it last year, Bill Corbett’s presenting a novel one tweet at a time as we speak, the list goes on.

How would this work? Let’s take a real life example. The Goodman did something like this last winter, letting Ebenezer Scrooge hijack their Twitter feed. Did it work? The idea was cute, but the execution left me cold. For one thing, the character was a little too quippy and playful, which didn’t gibe with the character in the play or the book. There was no guarantee anyone would interact or engage with him. Beyond that, because the production ran beyond Christmas Day, the character had to “go back to normal” for a few days past Christmas, which contradicted the story. Worst of all, by hijacking the primary Twitter feed, it blocked out people genuinely looking for information about the theatre. After a week of watching, I used Muuter.com to hide the Goodman account in my regular day-in, day-out Twitter stream until after the show closed. I visited their page to see keep tabs on how it was going, but avoided it otherwise.

If I’d been planning that, I would have created a second, specialized Twitter account, perhaps GoodmanScrooge–that’s funny right there. I would have pointed people to that account and given them the option of following it instead of forcing it on them. And I would have had the two accounts interact with each other, effectively doubling the amount of attention paid to the theatre and the show. This would also allow each account to pull others into the conversation, whether staff or patrons, by showing that it was okay to play. But that’s because I see these things through the prism of storytelling, crafting a narrative, even if only something as silly and ephemeral as a box office and a classic fictional character bantering for a couple of weeks.

So okay, you’ve got your playwright tap-dancing on Twitter. What else?

What if you could create games and events themed to your productions? Online, mobile games using nothing more complicated than SCVNGR and Foursquare and other mobile apps? A good game needs a good storyline, and it needs possibilities. It’s got to be more than “check in here, get 3 points.” We know story.

What if you wanted to host 360 Storytelling events throughout your season? Your playwright could act as host and occasional storyteller. Strawdog Theatre in Chicago has been trying weekly 360 events of late, hosted by–you guessed it–a playwright. (Full disclosure, I would go just about anywhere to listen to Hank Boland tell stories. And if you don’t know him or his stories, you should fix that.)

In both cases, your playwright becomes another face for the theatre, another contact point for your community. And your playwright could–and should–be out in the community as well, doing outreach and educational programs as well. They would also become a liaison between visiting playwrights and the local community. At the same time, you’re not just cultivating an audience for your theatre, you’re cultivating an audience for your playwright. You’re giving the audience a stake in the work, a deeper sense of connection. It’s not just a visiting artist visiting a neighborhood, this is someone who’s part of the warp and weft of the community.

What if you wanted to design season brochures and media with a message beyond, “Hey, these are the plays we’re doing! Buy a subscription!”? There are too many theatres I could call out for awful, easy-to-ignore season brochures. The worst I’ve seen try to create a mood or theme that has no connection to the plays in the season. Maybe worse is the generic, static brochure that barely changes from year to year, changing only the photos and the blurbs. By contrast, Steppenwolf has been finding themes among their plays each season and working from there. Woolly Mammoth has been doing a great job of connecting the shows to a theme that lends itself to a clever design. Just look at Woolly’s season brochure this year–it’s eye-catching, it’s engaging, and best of all, it makes sense. Best of all, such creativity–and thematic integration–fits with Woolly’s mission. Win-win.

A great many playwrights work by day in marketing and communications already. On the PlayFest panel, Tim Bauer pointed out how that training had helped him, and how being freelance allowed him to travel as needed for productions of his plays. Marisa Wegrzyn talked about creating Theatre Seven marketing materials as well as videos for other companies that produce her plays. I work in advertising by day and naturally applied that experience to my own small theatre company. Then there’s the lovely team at Marshall Creative in Chicago, an advertising firm riddled with Neo-Futurists, New Leaf Theatre people Improvised Shakespeare and probably carny folk, for all I know. Their mission?

We believe in building brands and connecting people through storytelling and technology.

Unquote. Still, much of our work is outside theatre, and I don’t just mean the client list itself–it’s also about hustling for clients, finding people and businesses looking for that kind of creativity. What if we were all working in-house for theatre companies?

Oh yeah, we could write plays, too.

Let’s work off the template presented by the New Play Institute at Arena Stage. Maybe you commit to producing 1 play by the staff playwright every two years, for instance. At the same time, you help to workshop whatever else the playwright might be working on. Not full workshops per se, but maybe some table reads with acting apprentices or company members, a lighter version of the traditional development process to get plays on their feet. If the script winds up being produced in-house, great. If it’s produced elsewhere, that elsewhere knows the script’s already been put through its paces to an extent. Maybe you take a smaller percentage in subsidiary rights to plays developed in-house, because you’re not committing to a full-scale development process, and you’re not commissioning a one-time event from a short-term visitor–you’re supporting a staff member and getting their creativity in other departments in return. That’s just one way to do this, we’ve got more…

Can every playwright do this? No. But there are plenty who could. Look around, we’re out here.

Can every theatre do this? It depends on your budget, your mission, your willingness to change the formula. I do think every theatre whose mission goes beyond remounting classics should have a playwright-in-residence, even if it’s an unpaid position outside of actual productions. Even then, I think classics-based theatres could benefit from having staff playwrights for all of the above reasons, right down to helping the playwright develop scripts. You may not produce them, but there’s no reason why you can’t read them aloud a few times. And if you’re a company whose budget is seven figures or more, then you really have no excuse not to try this. The larger the institution, the more important the need for faces, consistent personalities and contact points within your community.

Woolly Mammoth is already doing this, expanding their definition of company members beyond actors to include playwrights and designers. As if that weren’t enough, they provide a home base for the National New Play Network. They’re well established in both their local community and in the national scheme of new play development, and yet they’re willing to shake things up.

Why do we want be on staff? Morgan Allen from New Dramatists asked yesterday, “Is it the idea of a living wage/benefits with no expectations you seek or connection to an institution?” Kristoffer Diaz replied, “I’m looking for a connection. I want to play a role in the artistic life of a company.” I’m looking for both, somewhat. I’d like enough of a wage that I wouldn’t have to worry about outside work–which is not necessarily the same as a living wage, mind you–but what interests me most is the thought of helping to shape the narrative of a company, to tell the stories of a community, or even multiple communities within a given region. I’d like the security and freedom to focus all my creativity on the world of theatre.

In short, I’d like to drop the “Everything but” in exchange for the “playwriting.”

Other people’s money is not just the name of a play by Jerry Sterner. It is the temptation put before an “agent” when working on behalf of a “principal” that gives rise to “moral hazard.” Other people’s money is also what nonprofit organizations – like theatre companies – use to produce work. There is a lot of business literature, organizational behavior literature, and economics literature that address the relationship between agents and principals and the moral hazard inherent to the task of using other people’s money. There’s even some scholarly literature on principal agent relationship in the nonprofit sector, but nothing specific to the arts. As my colleague Andrew Taylor said, “the nonprofit arts are dripping with principal-agent problems. Just ask any governing board who they work for.” Seeing this question as part of a public conversation on twitter spurred #2amt editor David J. Loehr to ask me to explain moral hazard and principal agent theory as it relates to theatre.

Here’s one example of how the principal-agent problem plays out:

A visionary director, let’s call her Jane Doe, decides to start a theatre company in a mid-size city and, against the advice of her friend the arts administrator, incorporates in her state as a 501c3 with a mission “to enrich the cultural life of the region by presenting new plays generated from interaction with the regional community.” She has three years to get a board in place. She quickly recruits people she trusts, people who buy into her vision and the mission of the organization. Her college roommate is now a lawyer – score! Her neighbor is an accountant – score again! And, her best friend does PR for a health group to round out the functional board trifecta: legal, financial, and marketing. Fundraising begins and private gifts come in. Grant applications go out and grant money comes in. Plays get written and produced. Sometimes, people even buy tickets, but not too many.

Jane’s artistic vision evolves and she wants to direct more classics. Her board of three friends goes along with her programming. Oops…the board now appears to be reporting to Jane rather than the other way around. In a nonprofit organization, the board -– the governing body — is the principal, the steward of the mission and all of its funds, and the artistic director is the agent. Here the moral hazard results from stewardship of mission rather than money, but whenever the goals of the principal and the agent fall out of alignment, you got yourself a principal-agent problem. There are myriad examples of this situation, the unintentional (or intentional) mission drift that happens over time, mission drift that goes uncorrected because of principal-agent reversal. I’m too polite to name names.

This situation begs the question: “Why did Jane bother with a board at all?” Law require it of a tax-exempt organization. If she had developed a more flexible organizational structure instead of a 501c3, she likely could have recruited the assistance of her three friends while maintaining her artistic autonomy. Poor Jane.

To be continued…

Read Linda’s blog, Creative Infrastructure.

When Jim Leonard was an English major at Hanover College in the late seventies, where I was running a one man theatre department, he responded to a request I issued for “extras” to swell a scene in a play I was staging. He had one line and seemed to be well prepared to say that one line during the final rehearsal when I blocked him into the scene. The next night, opening night, he made his entrance appropriately, but failed to say his appointed line. Somehow we got through that event and the play proceeded to its intended conclusion. Later, in the green room I asked what had happened to his line. His response was, “I got so involved in the action of the play going on around me that I forgot I was part of it and just watched.” After brief contemplation I found that to be an entirely acceptable answer.

He remained an avid theatre goer all through his four years at Hanover. Second semester of his senior year he approached me and asked if he could enroll in my Experimental Theatre class, but not attend. Instead he would undertake the writing of a full length play. We bargained a bit and concluded that he ought to come to class just in case he did not manage to write the intended play, so I could have a basis on which to give him at least a passing grade.

As it turned out he got to work on the play immediately and the process of the class was lecture and discussion in the first half with the second given over to actors in the class reading his script aloud, with comments, questions, suggestions to follow. The class genuinely became “experimental” theatre, because almost every day Jim had new pages for us to read. At the conclusion of the 14 week term he had written Act I of an astoundingly good play, as far as we could tell. I knew however, that the only way to learn how effective a play might be was to read it before a live audience. Consequently I scheduled a public presentation, script in hand, for an audience of interested auditors, mostly English and Theatre students and faculty.

The play was called And They Dance Real Slow in Jackson, and it dealt with the young wheelchair bound protagonist, Elizabeth Willow. It was a non discursive work, one that jumped back and forward in time and space, much as Lanford Wilson’s characters do in The Rimers of Eldritch. Indeed, as soon as I perceived in our classroom readings of Jim’s work that that was the way he intended to go I directed him to the library to find and read Rimers.

When the public reading was over the audience clamored to ask Jim questions concerning his ideas, intentions, plot structure, etc. With an instinctive wisdom beyond my years I pronounced that Jim would not answer any questions. The only answers given would have to come from the audience. Only they could tell us what was working, what was not. Only they could reveal how the characters had affected or left them cold. Only they could say if the non-discursive format was succeeding.

The overwhelming essence in the answers the audience offered was that we had a play that was working. They understood and followed and liked what they understood as the “time and place fractured” action unfolded.

During the five week spring term at Hanover College each student takes only one class and each prof teaches only one class. In consequence one can take off on the most wonderful tangents. I determined I would stage three plays in that five weeks–See How They Run, The Star Spangled Girl and You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. We would rehearse and present the first play in ten days at the college, then haul ourselves and our costumes, scenery, props,. etc., to Arkansas where we would do the first play again at a small theatre there run by a friend of mine. While that was running we’d rehearse Girl and present it the next week. While Run was playing we would rehearse Charlie Brown, stage it there, then toss everything back in the truck and return to Hanover where we would put up Charlie Brown as our closing show of the academic year. Jim was enrolled in the class, but did not have to attend. He stayed on campus and wrote. By now I knew he was a writer and could be trusted to complete his assignment–making a draft of Act II. Which he did. On the last day of classes we repeated our public reading process and learned that he had almost everything he needed to make Jackson a viable script.

With the reading done we all went off to a party as an English prof’s home, where alcohol could now be served to students on campus–because they were no longer students but graduates. Much talk ensued concerning Jim’s play. The host professor, Jim Ferguson, suggested to me how the major problem of the play could be solved. I thought he was spot on so I called Jim Leonard over and asked Jim Ferguson to tell him how his play ought to end. He did, and, to this day that is pretty much exactly how Jackson climaxes.

The next academic year (1979-80) I scheduled a Hanover College Theatre mainstage production of And They Dance Real Slow in Jackson. We entered it into the American College Theatre Festival, took it to regional where it was very successful and ultimately became one of the National winners and our production appeared at the Terrace Theatre at the Kennedy Center. Jim’s career as a playwright was underway. The student play that won the playwriting prize that year was by Lee Blessing and the script was The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid. In effect, Jackson was the national runner-up.

The following academic year, Jim had asked me to consider producing The Diviners, a new play he was contemplating and opened our discussion by asking a seminal staging question: “Is there a way to show a drowning on stage?” I reeled back through my years of theatre experience to a staging concept I had imagined when reading Georg Buchner’s Woyzeck while in grad school. I opined it could be done–using light to simulate water. I told Jim unequivocally that I could find a way to stage his drowning scene. All he had to do was write it. Well, he did–and wrote it beautifully.

At the beginning of the following academic year, he had some pieces of The Diviners written, but it was a long way from being a complete script. He came to campus to be in residence for the second half of the fall term. I installed him in a small storage room in the basement of Parker Auditorium, just a short walk from the mainstage where we did all our theatrical productions. He was about four doors down the hall from my office. He was equipped with a phone, a bed, a table and his typewriter. He took his meals in the student cafeteria and showered in the dressing rooms. While he was writing we would be up a level on stage rehearsing what pages he already had brought into something approaching final form. If we had a problem with a scene we would phone down to his room and ask if he could come up and give us some guidance. Conversely, when he was struggling with writing a new scene he would call up to the stage and ask to come up with new pages and have us work on them while they were still warm from the striking of his typewriter keys. And so it went for about six weeks until the play and the production were both completed and ready to be shown to an audience, who would render the final verdict.

Once again the play was entered in the American College Theatre Festival. At that time our plays only ran for two to three nights on campus. Opening night and an actress and an actor had come down with such severe laryngitis that they could not speak the lines. Our solution was to place Jenny Davis, our stage manger at a low stand on the stage left side of the stage, Jim, the playwright at a similar stand on stage right, each to read the lines as the voiceless actors moved through their performances, mouthing their lines as the words were spoken aloud for them by Jim and Jenny. It worked like a charm, better than I could have imagined–probably due to the wonderful dramatic powers of Jim’s play, which commanded attention to such a degree that it was very easy to forget that two of the actors were voiceless.

The second night the ACTF adjudicator, Sam Smiley, playwriting professor from Indiana University, responded to the show and gave Jim some very specific suggestions concerning areas where the play needed attention. The Diviners was invited to regional festival, as had been Jackson. It too went on to the Kennedy Center where it won the National Student Playwriting Prize for 1980. Biff Liff, of William Morris Agency was in DC to present Jim the prize money, saw our production and called Porter van Zandt, producer at Circle Rep in New York city, to come down to Washington to see it. He did and liked it and convinced Marshall Mason, Artistic Director of Circle Rep to have a look at it. The result was that Jim, John Geter, the Hanover student who had created the role of Buddy Layman, and I as director, were invited to Circle to create a play in progress version to show to the Circle rep patrons. Using whatever came to hand I mocked up a small approximation of the setting we had used at Hanover and rehearsed, not at the theatre, but in the office area of Circle Rep. Among the Circle actors we used was Jeff Daniels, who played Dewey and Tanya Berenson (one of the founders of the company) who enacted Norma. John Geter remained as Buddy, surrounded by NY pros, and was brilliant.

Marshall liked the play and decided to put into Circle’s season for the fall. After much negotiation (to which I was not privy) it was decided that Marshall would put aside his desire to direct the full scale Circle production of The Diviners and gracefully yield that position to me as the playwright’s mentor. It was understood that I would cast William Hurt as CC and Jeff Daniels would remain as Dewey. As fate would have it Hurt got his first big film role in Altered States and the same happened with Jeff with Ragtime.

Thus it was that I got my one and only New York directing credit. The production got good reviews, but did not seize the heart of Mel Gussow, who, instead of Frank Rich, represented the all powerful NYTimes, Gussow gave it a good review, but not the rave needed to assure a move to Broadway. Rich had been unable to attend our opening night because he was scheduled to attend and review a Broadway revival of Brigadoon. A few days later, however, he did see The Diviners and gave it a very, very positive mention in a NYTimes squib called “Critic’s Choice.” Ironically, everyone associated with Circle had predicted that Frank would love The Diviners. Clearly he did, but fate did not allow him to give us the “money” review that would allow a move to Broadway.

After his graduation from Hanover Jim Leonard moved to Bloomington, IN and with Tom Moseman, founded the Bloomington Playwrights Project to help Indiana playwrights advance their careers. The Project still exists and still has the strong intention of advancing the cause of new and underexposed dramatists. For the last two years I have directed a work for them, and will do so again in November, staging this year’s winner of the Reva Shiner New Comedy prize. Jim Leonard is a producer and writer for Warner Bros. in Hollywood and has been the central writer for several TV series: Close to Home, Skin, Thieves, The Marshall and others. He now works on Dexter. He recently had a highly praised Los Angeles production of a new play, Battle Hymn. He is married to an Indiana gal he knew, but did not date, in high school. They have two sons, both in college, and Jim remains the all around good guy who would accept a small role just to help out a director in trouble, even though he would forget to say his line. Actually, that is a true measure of how passionately he is involved in the only thing theatre cannot survive without–the word written to be spoken.

“There are still many more days of failure ahead, whole seasons of failure, things will go terribly wrong, you will have huge disappointments, but you have to prepare for that, you have to expect it and be resolute and follow your own path.”

― Anton Chekhov

Over nearly twenty years of striving, struggling and occasionally thriving in the theatre, I have honed my strategic approach to rejection.  If it’s a biggie, I give myself 48 hours to pout, weep, question my fundamental decency as a human being and eat raw cookie dough with a large spoon, but then I have to get on with it.

I learned the other day that I didn’t get an amazing job for which I had been vying.  A ‘change everything’ job.  A ‘hello, ship, I didn’t see you come in’ sort of job.  I experienced a moment of quiet disappointed surprise, followed by some thoughtful consideration of whether I had made a misstep and what other factors might’ve gone into the theatre’s decision-making.  About an hour later, I burst into tears.

This got me thinking about the difference, if there is any, between the kinds of rejection I experience as a director and that experienced by my theatrical colleagues.

I am not looking to compete here; rejection is hard however one encounters it.  I am looking to observe the similarities and the differences, to draw the Venn diagram of our experiences, and to see what strategies we might offer one another about how to cope with this inevitable feature of our business (and, well, life).

Confidence is a little rusty

Actors probably get rejected more than anyone else in the theatre.  Not least because, if they are focused, diligent and determined actors, they are out there auditioning all the time.  Those rejections suck, and can be punctuated by flashes of cruelty or indifference.  But there will likely be another opportunity within a few days.

Playwrights get rejected sometimes through an odd sort of radio silence:  Did they get my script? Have they read my script?

As a freelance director, I rarely apply formally for a job.  So I cannot consciously get rejected for a directing project for which I didn’t know I was being considered.  Yet I write a lot of letters and invite a lot of producers and ADs to see my work; the profound silence of those non-replies can be painfully dissonant.  Once an artistic director invited me to his office so that he could tell me that I was nothing, that I never would be anything and that I was naive to think otherwise.  I stopped writing to him.  The rejection in competitions such as the NEA / TCG Directing Fellowship, which I collected over six consecutive years, was palpable.  Eventually, my failure to win the NEA / TCG grant was helpfully offset by winning a Fulbright on the first try.  I like to think that those TCG rejections helped me practice for the Fulbright.

In the past few years, my desire for a home base has grown along with my aptitude for strategic and artistic planning; I have been actively seeking out artistic director and artistic associate opportunities.  I’ve gotten close.  Very close a few times.  Down to me and the Other Guy.  Thus far, it’s zero to me and four to Other Guy.  (Who IS that guy?)

Because the decision is being taken by a Board of Directors or a search committee that doesn’t work together every day, one unique feature of contending for these institutional positions is that the search can take months.  Sometimes they say, “We’ll be in touch in a couple of weeks” and it turns out to be eight weeks before they call and say, “Can we fly you out on Tuesday?”  Sometimes they say, “We’ll be in touch in a couple of weeks” and they call the next day to set up the next round.

One gets invested in the process.  One has to consider.  Am I willing to move to Wherever, Planet Earth for this job?  Am I willing to ask my husband to move there?  What might it be like to live and work over there?  As the weeks tick by, I find myself trying to walk that strangely tight rope of ‘have they thrown me overboard or are they just busy with the opening?’  There is rarely any way to know until, eventually, the call or the email or the form letter comes.

Last year, I received one email unfortunately addressed to “Dead Applicant”.  I’m not dead yet.  I’m feeling better!  (My blog post on proofing your rejection letters will come later, theatre companies.)

One playwright friend and colleague tells me that “The hard part of rejection, for me, is that it forces you to revise the image you have of yourself.”  I understand what he means, but that is rarely a big feature of my experience, in part because of the kinds of rejections I myself mete out.  When I am casting, I often see more than one actor who is clearly capable of playing the role dynamically, dramatically, thrillingly.  I have to think about the chemistry between or among my leads, about the arc of the whole story, and which combination of actors best fits together to accomplish that.  I am happy when it is a tough call; I’m not thinking, “that guy we called back but didn’t cast blew it.”  Actors can be brilliant and not get the job because someone else was just a better fit for this particular production.

We go on, as is our (sad)  nature

I’m not where I want to be in my career.  I’m not where I thought I’d be.  But I’ve done some profoundly satisfying work, directed myself proud most of the time and built some wonderful collegial relationships.  I am a smart and talented cookie who has made my share of mistakes.  It is healthy to review, to assess in the wake of a setback, but you can also second-guess your way to madness with this stuff.  Even though it stings, I don’t see a rejection as a wholesale referendum on my abilities.

I get to re-choose to pursue this challenging, ephemeral, beautiful bitch goddess of a business every day.  So I try to remember that, and also remember the wise advice of the unflappable Katherine Hepburn, “Just keep going.”

Or in the words of Mr. Springsteen, I just might walk myself all the way home.

How do you navigate rejection?

“…being a playwright is hard. One of my profs once said to me you have to work hard at it for at least 10 years before you start to see any movement.”
–Advice For Playwrights Starting Out by Adam Szymkowicz

I read that bit of insight when I was starting out in this genre and let me tell you it lifted a huge weight off my shoulders. I may be alone here, but the knowledge that it was a marathon and not a sprint was reassuring; it calibrated my expectations, if you will. And I understood more clearly that this genre required not only talent, but perseverance.

“Actually, I’m an overnight success. But it took twenty years.”
–Monty Hall

I consider my playwright start year 2006. That’s when I officially began to focus solely on playwriting and transitioned from my old genre of Poetry.

That means I’m about five years in. And recently, while assessing my year in general, I began to wonder: am I doing everything I can so that I begin to see that movement?

So I’ve decided to ask my peers. I thought a collective brainstorm on playwright best practices would help me, and others, develop a blueprint for our respective careers.

To start off the conversation on best practices I thought I’d share one of my own.

Write A Work Plan

I got this idea from an article in Theatre Bay Area magazine. In the piece an actor was describing how they write a plan for each year to map out their goals.

Perhaps it’s because my 9 to 5 job had just finished our own massive yearly work plan, but the idea suddenly made so much sense to me. I needed a tool to help me articulate my writing goals (overall and monthly), a way to see my own progress (that I was taking scripts to their next drafts), and map out professional goals.

So I wrote a work plan and I published it on my blog. I did this for two reasons: 1) I blog about my writing process so including my playwriting work plan made perfect sense and 2) I wanted to create some sense of accountability for myself and declaring all my goals in a public space seemed the best way to keep the pressure on myself to stick to my work plan.

How does it work?

Well, first it’s a living document, which means I can add to it if a new opportunity pops up. And secondly, I do quarterly check in’s where I blog an update on all the goals that should have been met by the end of said quarter.

Has it helped?

Absolutely! This year I feel more productive and in control of my playwriting life than ever. Why? Well, I feel more productive because I’m documenting all the rewrites, new drafts and first drafts of my plays. And I have a list of all the festivals, competitions and other submissions I’ve sent off. I feel more in control because I’m mapping out my progress month to month, planning how I’ll spend my limited free time and energy on playwriting.

What Are Your Playwright “Must Do’s”?

While my work plan has helped me shape my yearly progress, I recently found myself feeling a bit uncertain. I realized that it’s not enough for me to make personal progress as a playwright (that is to improve in my craft and expand my repertoire of work), I need to articulate a blueprint for my career. I need a meta work plan, if you will.

Only, I wasn’t sure what to include in that blueprint.

That’s when I decided to go to you, my peers. To ask you, when it comes to your career:

• What are your playwright best practices?
• What are your playwright “must do’s”?

I’m hoping we can all take to the Comments section and build an idea bank that we can go to whenever we’re trying to figure out what’s next for our careers, whenever we’re feeling uncertain and are looking for something tangible to focus our sights on.

While I know that best practices aren’t necessarily a one size fits all kind of thing, that we’ll each have to personalize someone else’s idea/concept, I think it’s important to articulate for ourselves and others exactly how we’re leveraging the resources at our disposal to see the movement we desire.

Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.
–Archimedes

Previously in this column: The members of Bright Alchemy Theatre, a very young devised theatre company based in Washington, DC, have spent the last nine months working on its new project which began with the question: Why do we as a species feel the need to tell stories about our own destruction? This weekend, for three PWYC performances, the company will test-drive its new play in front of an audience.

The beginning of production is when devised theatre starts to get weird. For me, at least. It’s like changing gears. In different cars. While juggling. A group of theatre artists who had, until now, simply been friends chatting in somebody’s living room congeal into more traditional roles. Actors are learning lines for roles they helped create. One deviser who has been with us from the start of the conversation takes on the role as director. Another becomes assistant director/stage manager. And the playwright starts letting the text go and takes on the role of producer. There is a brief amount of awkward negotiation that ensues as we all settle into the mechanics of rehearsal.

There are also the usual roadbumps. One actor has an unavoidable conflict arise and has to drop out, and we have to bring in someone who wasn’t there for the devising process, but who is enthusiastic and a great fit. The composer who has worked with us since the first show we did gets a job in Austin, but leaves us in the hands of another composer who is doing incredible work. We have to scramble to find a lighting designer, but acquire a fantastic one, who happens to have a day job at NASA (really appropriate considering the content of the play).

And a reading at the Kennedy Center’s Page to Stage Festival goes over great and a review of it sparks a debate about the role of critics in developing work.

All this in preparation for a three-performance workshop production. Think of it as a rough-draft production of the play. We test drive it (fully teched, everyone off-book), and elicit frank, honest feedback from the audience. That feedback will be taken into account, along with everything else we learned in the production process, when revising the show for a full run next year.

Yes, it’s a lot of work. And, yes, it is worth it. In my experience, having time in the space to experiment with design elements, and then seeing those elements in production can add whole new layers of understanding. Also, audiences can see things in your play that not only didn’t you see, but are incapable of seeing, with the entire company being close to the material.

It helps that this time we have funding and a really wonderful space. Around this time last year, I applied for a residency at the Mead Theatre Lab at Flashpoint and an attached grant from the Cultural Development Corporation’s Creative Communities Fund, both of which I was awarded. Basically, we get two weeks in a small but well-stocked black box near Chinatown in DC and a healthy chunk of change that will allow us to pay all the artists involved.

This was back when we were calling it “The Apocalypse Project” and all we had was a central question: Why do we as a species feel compelled to tell stories of our own annihilation?

That question is still somewhere at the heart of this play, now titled When The Stars Go Out. But it’s a much different piece than what I expected—more intimate, more about one woman’s anxiety than about the collective conscious of the human race.  Oh, we’ve still got some big bad weird. Like zombies and the afterlife and a giant wolf eating the stars. But the horror of all that seems to pale in comparison to one character’s battle with cancer and another who doesn’t know if she’s ready for motherhood.

One of the joys of devised theatre is that, even though I’m in the room from day one, and I’m the one creating most of the written text, the heart of the story is never what I think it’s going to be.

A side note: Sometime early in rehearsal, an actress who is new(ish) to Bright Alchemy tells me how she was explaining our process to another actress who works in devised theatre. The other actress was surprised that there was a playwright attached to this project and asked if that didn’t cause problems as the piece evolved. Our actress said that it wasn’t a problem at all, and that the playwright (me) seemed more than able to get his ego out of the way of the art. This makes me happy and suggests that I’m doing something right. Even if that something right is totally faking being ego-free.

Because this surely isn’t an entirely ego-free process. I mean, come on—it’s theatre. Everyone’s worked hard on this and, in a few day’s time, we’ll get to show it off. So, if you’re in the DC area and want to help shape a new work in process, consider yourself invited. You can find all the info here.

And, if you’re looking for a teaser, here’s the first minute and a half of the play.

The non-profit model is living on borrowed time. The current model is dying. Even still, I think we spend more time trying to figure out how to fund a show than actually making the show. Read: The way we make money to make art is not sustainable.

Insanity: Doing the same thing again and again expecting different results. Non-profit arts orgs seem to be doing this. Ask for money, produce a show, make no money, gain no audience and ask for money again – all the while, expecting to exist and support its artist’s livelihoods.

The Dream: to make a living as an ARTIST.

Creative fundraising for non-profs is important, no doubt about it. But at some point, if you’re creativity only reaches the boundaries of a bubble that never pops – you have to question the effectiveness of the method. You can call pink – brown if you want but the color will still be pink. New ways of doing the same damn thing – I’m sorry – but that is no paradigm shift.

Remember, the goal is to sustain our lives by making ART. As such, it follows we must be equally invested in the long-term sustainability of our organizations. The things we do in order to sustain our organizations, no matter how much we spin it, is not making art. Grant writing is not making theatre – it’s grant writing. Selling beer in the lobby, also, not making theatre.

But it seems in order for the theatre organization to be sustainable it becomes true that our ability to write grants and get sponsors and throw parties MUST be more sustainable. This is backwards.

Look at Apple. Apple doesn’t sell beer behind the Genius Bar to offset costs because their product isn’t cutting it. No, they just make great, user-friendly electronics. Apple folks don’t make money writing grants, they make money selling and servicing great stuff to people who want it. That’s all they do. Great product and great demand.

I know I’ve mixed the profit/non-profit models – but that doesn’t change the fact that artists have to do more to make less. And it doesn’t mean non-profs shouldn’t work like for profit businesses.

But the goal remains the same (make a living making art). And so does the obstacle. We still need money.

In order get what you’ve never had you have to try something different.

If you’re going to do something to offset the costs of making theatre, it makes sense that activity shouldn’t include doing more work. All your work should be focused on making art – nothing else.

But that’s impossible. Even so, there is a difference between getting grants just to stay afloat and getting grants to pay artists a fair living wage or being able to drop the price of tickets for a few nights or weeks so more people can afford to see your work. And let’s face it – the long-term sustainability of an arts organization depends on good people being paid to make good work and people filling the seats. Great product and great demand.

So what’s the solution? I’ll get to that – but for now – just think about how much you do that isn’t making art so that you can make art.

I’ve been trying to fully digest the recent HowlRound post On Theatricality by Lydia Stryk. With a slew of comments (15 at my last count), it’s generated quite a bit of conversation.

From the get go this blog post got stuck in my craw. I’m not the only one. Playwright JC Lee took issue with the blog post’s lack of evidence to back up its assertions. I myself wanted more clarity on the terms being used. For example:

“…our own theater tradition is too playwright-focused, and our current discussions about our crisis are too limited to the playwright/artistic leadership relationship while ignoring the collaborative potential of the art form as practiced in traditions like the German.”

I’m not sure exactly what Stryk means by “too playwright-focused.” Perhaps that our scripts are honored so that the play we see on stage matches what we see on the page? Or, that playwrights are the only ones who have a say during the production process (which may be the case if the playwright is directing and producing their play)? But most importantly I wonder what collaboration is forsaken or “ignored” as a result of this.

I won’t speculate (further) on what she meant or try to respond to those particular points, because: a) I myself need more clarity [read specificity] and b) I’m more interested in what she has to say about playwrights and their stage directions.

I infer from the rest of her post that it’s those pesky theatrical stage directions that are the “forsaken collaboration” alluded to in the above quote. That playwrights are stepping on the toes of directors and designers when they incorporate surreal or magical moments in their plays. According to Stryk,

“…this new scripted theatricality beats directors and designers into submission, leaving them little room to let their own imaginations soar.”

…I disagree.

First it’s important to note that Stryk describes these theatrical stage directions as “stepping outside the bounds ‘realism’…[as playwrights] let their imaginations take flight.”

Perhaps she means something like this:

MIQUEO ascends into the sky with DALILA. In the place of memory stars appear around them, a constellation of a tree or a tree outline of stars comes into view, the Heart and Soul Nebulae appear stage left. It’s MIQUEO’s mural appearing above the motel room…

DALILA and MIQUEO transform into stars, they are a constellation, a new version of Gemini: the two lovers.

JC put it best in his own response when he asserted that these theatrical stage directions are “an invitation to collaboration, not a limitation on it.” And what greater challenge could your imagination have than to figure out how to put a mural in the sky, or how to have your characters jump into the ocean at the end of the world?

A Slight Tangent Is In Order

Before I go any further, I need to explain a little about where I’m coming from. I’m a poet turned playwright and I hail from the Imagist poetry camp.

“A play is a poem standing up.” -Federico Garcia Lorca

I love that line. It sums up why I transitioned to this genre.

I was drawn to playwriting because it married my narrative tendencies and allowed my imagination free reign.

You see my first (and almost only) class in playwriting was a survey course taught by playwright Christine Evans. We started on Tennessee Williams and moved our way through Bertolt Brecht (love him!) and ended the semester with Sarah Kane and Nilo Cruz.

Sarah Kane’s plays were a huge early influence on me (as was Christine’s own writing). I was blown away by the idea of allowing my imagination to run wild on stage, that those imaginative moments could in fact be represented (obviously requiring some creative solutions) on the stage. A sunflower bursting through the floorboards, growing and blooming. I saw the possibility in creating a theatre experience that to me felt like a poem coming to life before your eyes. A living, breathing poem made up of bodies, limbs, words, images and narrative.

I often say that my poetics are very much present in my playwriting.

Plays come to me first as images. And when I write I consider the visual world of the play and, at times, even the soundscape.

In my first plays I explored how the emotional world of the characters impacted the physical world. The results would be moments of theatrical magic, if you will. Pomegranates bled. Missing posters wept ink. Paintings melted. A desert floor was covered in marigolds instead of sand.

But I didn’t add these elements ad hoc. They weren’t included to “seduce” anyone into producing my play. Nor was I doing it because others were, because it was en vogue.

You see, as a poet I’m a big believer in Form = Content.

What I mean is, when I write a poem, the form it takes on the page is informed by the content. Content is the driving force.

I’ve carried over this Form = Content credo to my playwriting. Therefore, I don’t incorporate those surreal or magical moments just to “pepper” up my script. They’re part the narrative, included because the narrative demanded it. They arise organically because that is how I tell my stories.

The World Of The Play

What struck me as odd while reading the HowlRound post was that it seemed that Stryk was arguing for playwrights to get out of the way, or stay out of the play’s theatrical construction. What I mean is, it seemed like she didn’t want me imagining the entire world of my play.

But…Why shouldn’t I?

First of all, there is no one way to write a play.

It’s okay if you want to concentrate only on the dialogue. If you want to, as Stryk puts it, “abandon the ‘theatrical’ imperative and think about what [you] really want to say,” then by all means do so.

But it’s equally okay for playwrights like me, JC Lee, Christine Evans and many more to attend to dialogue AND the visual world of the play. To let our imagination take flight.

The poet in me would argue that a poem is more than just words. It’s rhythm, line breaks, white space on the page, sound, the images evoked in the readers mind.

And the playwright in me argues that a play is more than just dialogue. And I want to attend to all of a play’s components when writing. And I would argue that me doing so doesn’t prevent collaboration, doesn’t prevent others from using their own imagination. My stage directions are a jumping off point for collaboration.

Directors and designers will always be co-creators in a play’s production, just as each time a poem is read it is the reader who then brings their own imagination, their own understanding and emotional baggage to the reading experience.

Directors and designers will interpret the play so that a production in San Francisco will be different and unique from one in Chicago, from one in Atlanta, from one in New York. Even if the stage directions are the same, each of them will take on the challenge of creating their own representation on the stage.

Theatre is a collaborative art form. It’s one of the things I love about it. And if you’re a director or a designer who prefers to have more control over the theatrical imperative of a play, then I’m sure you’re drawn to working with plays and playwrights that allow you to do that.

Those of you who don’t mind a playwright whose stage directions break the bounds of realism, whose imagination tends to run wild on stage, who is working to make Lorca’s words resonate in each of her plays, well…call me.

Roll On, Strange Little Plays. Roll On.

I will start off saying this: rolling world premieres should be the ONLY way plays premiere. With consecutive and distinct productions a new play gets the essential time and community to mature rapidly, thoroughly, and cradled by friendly forces. Awww.

A play becomes itself in production, less so in readings, and even less so alone with my laptop. Alive onstage is where plays belong, become, grow, and fight for their lives. The rolling premiere of Exit, Pursued By A Bear gave me and this play the truest place to create something that I think is important, bizarre, and theatrical. Without Synchronicity Theatre in Atlanta, Crowded Fire in SF, and ArtsWest in Seattle this play would have stayed quiet and young – now its loud, proud, and rolling across the country with stops in Orlando and Dallas already made and stops in NYC and Chicago on the books.

Lessons of The Roll

The first production is always about “realizing the vision and reality of the play” – truly seeing the shape, character, logic, and functionality of the play for the first time. Synchronicity Theatre’s production in Atlanta (directed by Rachel May) did that perfectly in a 100+ seat house with a wide stage and audience raked up in risers. The amazing actors were serious troopers – diving into this play from the start with energy and intelligence. This is a no-holds-barred kinda play and they went to the limit. The play is set in North Georgia so we had a built-in safety in the form of southern-friendly audiences. This production was swift, deeply moving, and perfectly ridiculous.

The second production, about to open here at Crowded Fire in San Francisco, has been about fine tuning, cutting dead weight, asking myself the serious question like “I know the line is funny but is it worth the 5-line lead up?” and “Is this scene self-referential and awesome, or self-referential and confusing?”. This production is in a 50-seat black box space with audience on 2-sides. The very real and inherent intimacy of this space is redefining how this play works, how far we can go with the funny and the violence. Desdemona Chiang’s vision of the play is dynamic, churning, and sexy.

In between the SF production and the Seattle production this fall at ArtsWest, I may continue to tweak the show. There’s a few things I’m still waiting to see if we’ve perfected. And Arts West is a larger, wider black box thrust which will continue to push my conceptualization of what the play demands.

So.

Why Roll?

There are so many reasons that rolling premieres are helpful and necessary that I might just make us a list. Actually lemme give you some background of how Bear started rolling… and then make a list. The list will be the denouement. Or the climax. Whatever. Begin.

This play has rolled since it was born.

Exit, Pursued By A Bear started as a rogue idea had while working on another play. (That always happens to me.) It was the brassiest voice I’d ever attempted, but it felt so good that I slammed out the first ten pages (including a stage direction with the phrase “meat fort”) and then… tucked it (rolled it?) away. Actually I think I submitted it for a commission award or something, was not picked up, and then tucked it away.

A few months later I met with Amy Mueller at The Playwrights Foundation in San Francisco (I was again, working on a totally different play) and she asked what I was working on and the first thing that popped into my mind was: “This crazy feminist bear play about domestic violence. But its a comedy. So…”

So. Amy read the first 10 pages, encouraged me to finish it, and offered my a spot in their Rough Readings Series – 8 hours of rehearsal, 4 great actors, smart director, and 2 public readings.

After that reading, I immediately sent it to my friend and wonder woman Rachel May, Artistic Director of Atlanta’s Synchronicity Theatre – who immediately put it in their new play reading series happening in a month.

The dual Atlanta and SF readings/reactions to the play were really great and enthusiastic. Rachel was choosing her upcoming season. She chose Bear. And she said “I want to do a rolling premiere of this.” Synchronicity had done co-pros before with a lot of success. I was so ready to see what we could do together.

Marissa Wolf at Crowded Fire had seen the reading at Playwrights Foundation and she and I had a great talk about the play after. Her company is a collective so all the artists had to read and support the play before going further – luckily they did and actor Erin Gilley, who is actually from North Georgia (near where the play takes place), gravitated toward the lead role. So Crowded Fire included Bear in their reading series, connected with Rachel, and jumped on board to produce it next. The play was officially rolling.

ArtsWest got on board after I sent the play to Alan Harrison (who heard me babbling on about it on facebook – god bless the internet). ArtsWest had produced my play Emilie last season (a really fabulous and full-hearted production I might add) and was looking for a fresh comedy. He liked the play, I now had a relationship with his audience through last season’s production, this was in fact a comedy, and now we were rolling to three cities.

The amazing thing to me is that all of this happened because of personal connection, friendships, and previous professional relationships. These were seasoned friendships, not brand new “you don’t really know me but take a risk on my crazy play please” relationships. History helps.

Everyone asked right away if this was an NNPN project but it wasn’t. The National New Play Network rolling premiere program is totally on it though, and has helped great plays become greater. But these three theaters weren’t NNPN member theaters. So. They just made it up themselves. There was no grant involved for these theaters. None of the theaters got any money outright for doing the premiere. It was excitement about the play and excitement about producing something in a national and immediate way that got everyone on board. The only rule was to produce the play within one year of the first production. Boom. You can see why I am the luckiest lady in the land, or certainly feel like it.

Though this all might have really happened because of the play’s curious yet recognizable title referencing a seemingly cute yet actually terrifying wild animal.

THE LIST OF WHY ROLLING PREMIERES ARE GETTING TO BE ESSENTIAL

1. Plays are designed to be on stage (yeah duh), alive in actors bodies, in the company of reactive audiences. That’s new play development. Plays and playwrights need a second/third production to really understand the play’s true realized self.

2. Writing is hard. Producing is hard. Give us a break, y’all, and let’s share and develop all that thoughtful work so it doesn’t stop in one city with one audience. Rachel’s work is alive here in SF, Crowded Fire will be a part of ArtsWest. Play it forward (eeeesh. sorry.).

3. The play/production has momentum, scale, conversation on a national level now – we were even featured in American Theatre Magazine and I’m thinking its not just because of this awesome picture (awesome picture here). Its because 3 companies who’d never worked together before were converging interests and resources around a subject and play in which the believe.

4. 3+ theaters share marketing, language, twitter hashtags–specifically #prepareforbear–and this awesome site donated by Synchronicity to whoever produces the play next, prepareforbear.com. Even props were shared as our sweet dead deer is getting quite a tour of the USA.

(aforementioned travelling dead deer in action. Veronika Duerr, Taylor M. Dooley, and Nicholas Tecosky in Synchronicity’s production April 2011)

5. Playwrights really appreciate productions. We really do. We hope you like our plays. But we really hope you DO our plays. That’s the truth. And having 3 in one year of the same play is not just an honor but a lifeline to the my best creative working self. Thank you Spirits of Smart Productions.

6. All of the companies get world premieres.

7. The 2 and 3rd companies get world premieres that have had the deep benefit and lessons of a full production.

8. No matter what critics say, the play is buffered by future productions and faraway advocates to continue the play’s best journey to its best self.

9. You don’t need extra funds to do it. But that helps. In fact can we start a Rolling Premiere Fund for which anyone can apply? Huh? Yes?

10. Y’all know this is a great way to produce if you can afford/arrange it.

11. Roll on, strange little plays. Roll on.

Rachel Chavkin, founding artistic director of the TEAM, a devising ensemble, wrote an article on TCG’s blog that asks the question, “What if devised theatre moved from the margins to the mainstream of theatre making?” She makes the case that the slower, cooperative methods involved in a lot of devised work could make for a richer process and a richer end product. At the very least, it would make practitioners realize that there are ways to create other than the traditional 6-week rehearsal process.

I read this about an hour ago. She was the preacher, I was the choir. Hallelujah.

She also talked about the differences between “mainstream” work and devised work, as she sees it. She mentioned how devised work generally does not have a strong central action; design elements carry equal weight with performers; and story sometimes takes a backseat to pure experience.

If you’ve followed my off-and-on blogging of Bright Alchemy Theatre’s current project, you know that our process doesn’t really fit that description. It’s very story-driven; there is a playwright working on crafting most of the text; and we’re always searching for strong central actions, though we don’t always stick to just one.

Because we have a playwright who is (at least so far) only a playwright, and because we have a specific director for each show, does that mean we’re not making devised work?

I’m guessing a few purists would answer, “Yes, that’s exactly what it means.” But most of you would answer, “No, don’t be silly. It’s just a different devising process.”

However, I think my answer would be this: “There’s no such thing as devised work.”

Let me explain, and let me use an odd analogy to do so. Maybe the process of creating a new work is like autism (told you it was odd.). I’ve been thinking a lot about autism recently. I just finished the first draft of a play where one of the two characters has Aspergers. Aspergers is characterized by significant problems socializing, along with repetitive patterns of behavior and interests. These are the same symptoms seen in autistic children, but are much milder. Aspergers was first described in 1944, but it wasn’t standardized as a diagnosis until 50 years later.

What happened in that interim is that physicians realized that autism exists on a spectrum. On one end were the children that most people think of when they hear the word “autistic”—children with severe problems communicating and interacting with the world around them. And on the other end were people with Aspergers, whom some physicians describe as “high-functioning autistic.”

Because these two diagnoses looked so different, nobody thought they existed on a single spectrum until science had better mapped the pathophysiology of the syndrome.

What if new play creation exists on a spectrum? On one end, you have the lone playwright locking her/himself in a room, pounding out a script, and handing it to a theatre that spends 6 weeks rehearsing before opening night. And, on the other, you have ensemble companies like TEAM or the Rude Mechs.

Elsewhere on that spectrum are more playwright-heavy processes like Bright Alchemy’s; interview-style theatre like Laramie Project; and the highly free form work of Charles Mee.

Even near the “traditional” end of the spectrum there are significant differences. There are playwrights who are meticulous in their first drafts and who eschew readings and workshops. And there are playwrights who speed through drafts to get them in the hands of dramaturgs and actors who they use as sounding boards to improve the play.

Just like there are some people pushing for the medical community to do away with the term Aspergers, maybe there should be a similar push to do away with the term “devised.” Maybe thinking of things in terms of “devised” and “traditional”—as if these are two separate, unconnected ideas—actually impedes the conversation about new work creation. And perhaps the goal shouldn’t be simply to get mainstream theatre and audiences to embrace devised work, but to better map the spectrum of the new work creation process. And by doing so demonstrate to everyone that there are not just two ways to make new theatre, but as many processes as there are artists actively creating it.

I am not blocked, I write in the text window. This is not block.

But it had been months, it seemed. It had been years, been centuries. Worse than that; it had been minutes, bound fast to the bottom of the hourglass, each grain landing square on the bridge of the nose and bouncing off to join the pile of eventual asphyxiation. Water torture made of sand.

Yet; I admit again, This is not block.

I can’t with any credibility refer to it as block. If I assign an arbitrary date of affliction; say, four months past, an honest assessment of my output leaves me with several exhibits of undeniable evidence that indeed, writing has occurred. There in the plastic bags on the shelves under the fluorescent lights are the work for Too Much Light, the Chicago One-Minute Play Festival, the appearances at The Paper Machete, the blogs written for both my theater company and my day employer and the blogs and articles and short film scripts written for clients of my day employer, the carefully considered Facebook status updates and tweets from numerous different accounts including those of the theater and the day employer, the business and personal emails…hundreds of thousands of assembled letters that illustrate and triangulate the current coordinates of my brain.

But there were also things I meant to write, things I desperately wanted to write, things I forgot to write, things I forgot how to write. There were sentences and stories that burst into existence like fortnight lilies; bloomed for a day and then walked into memory with nary a glance back. I mourn the defeats more than I celebrate the victories because that’s just the way I’m wired, and then I misdiagnose the whole mess as block.

I can’t recall which authors have written or spoken the notion that block is a figment, but I know I’ve heard it from several places, and while once upon a time I took these words to be spoken as motivators I’ve since come to the much plainer conclusion that Writers who tell you there is no such thing as block are arrogant, self-absorbed jerks. They are the trust-fund folks whose solution to every problem is to “buy a new one,” the Olympians who tell the asthmatics that “it’s just a five-mile jog,” those beings who state casually that the answer to an engineering problem is to change the gravitational constant of the universe. It is not that there is no such thing as block, o wise but forgotten writers, it is that there is apparently no such thing as block for you. And while I won’t begrudge you your good fortune, it does not give you the right to dismiss and mock the chronic conditions of others.

But again, I’m not blocked. This has been something else.

There’s an exercise that I’ve been teaching in our workshops lately, based off of similar exercises from the theatrical discipline of clown, and that currently has the unassuming title of “Positive Reinforcement.” A volunteer from the class is taken out of the room. Within the room, the audience is told that the volunteer, upon returning to the room, will have a set time limit to accomplish a simple but atypical task–for example, placing a chair atop a table and then sitting beneath the table. The volunteer will be guided to do this based solely on the feedback they receive from the audience, and the only feedback the audience may give is (a) applause, if the volunteer is doing something that brings them closer to the completed task or (b) silence, if the volunteer is not closer to their task. It’s non-verbal “hot and cold.”

The exercise is designed to do several things: one, it joins the whole room together in the attempt to collectively accomplish the task; two, it encourages active listening on the part of the volunteer and also within the audience as they work to arrive at the same set of directions; and three; it fosters a scenario where negative feedback is strictly verboten.

That third part is key. The silence is simultaneously the communication that something isn’t going right and it is the space in which to strategize how that changes. In rooms where No is commonplace the adrenal gland responds first, pipes in with Fight or Flight, with “screw you” or “you’re right I’ll shut up now.” And then some minutes later, somebody will realize that there’s still a matter at hand. In the silence, in this exercise, you watch the volunteer experiment and make leaps of intuition, unhindered by the baggage of criticism.

So the critic, as ever, is me; I am the one making too much goddamned noise. I am denying as loudly as is possible without actually achieving audible vocal the worth of my work; I am consumed of a notion that a world that can accept the trappings of my imagination is a world with something deeply wrong with it. This is not a noise that you drown with better noise and this is not a noise you can hide from or keep at a distance. It is a noise that must be dispelled and before it can be dispelled it must be named.

It’s name is not, however, block.

The irony, I suspect, is that in order to end this noise I must in fact craft a name for it.

It is a conundrum, I conclude. Perhaps I should begin.

And then I do.

“In the universe – just like in music, or architecture, or relationships – the absence, the space between, is just as important as the observable, tangible things.”

— Dear Galileo by Claire Willett

One of the questions I continually run up against when I’m writing a play is this: “Who am I writing for when I write stage directions?”

In my first plays I erred on the side of spelling out absolutely everything down to the tiniest vocal nuance, though I see that now as a symptom of my own insecurity: “But if I don’t write ‘Angrily,’ then how will the actor know?” (Well, Self, that’s really a problem you should have solved when you wrote the line.) I did a staged reading in Portland in 2009 for the inaugural Fertile Ground Festival of New Work, wherein I had the following conversation with my director Jessica mere minutes after placing a completed script in her hands:

“So how do you want to handle stage directions?”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. Generally at the first rehearsal I just have the actors go through and cross them out.”

“Cross them out? Cross them out?”

“Yep.”

“But . . . but . . .”

“It gives the actors more room to play around and make their own choices.”

“But I just wrote them. This script is like an HOUR old.”

“Claire. You have to trust me. You have to trust your actors. It’s gonna be okay.”

I really love the part of the writing process where I put a bunch of smart, opinionated actors in my living room, feed them, give them wine and coffee and a copy of the script, and let them go to town. But like many playwrights, I’m also haunted by the ghost named The Play In My Head, and letting go of that is often painful. It involves a tremendous yielding of control. It means letting other people in. It means I am not the only one breathing life into this story, that a whole bunch of other people’s minds, hearts, and bodies are now inextricably involved in the equation. And I need to step back, to let them breathe and stretch and move around inside this thing I built for them to inhabit.

So I’ve been thinking a lot lately, with the play I’m working on now, about negative space, both inside the story (which is about family and astrophysics, two places where the space between objects often turns out to be pretty important) and in how I’m writing it. I write write write, and then I cut cut cut, like that Coco Chanel mantra about always taking off one piece of jewelry before you leave the house. (Of course, just taking off a ring doesn’t help if you’re also wearing a stack of bangle bracelets, chandelier earrings, five necklaces and a diamond tiara.)

***

I wrote Dear Galileo during my recent residency at the beautiful I-Park Artists’ Colony in East Haddam, Connecticut, where I was privileged to spend a month living with some incredibly brilliant artists. I’m going to give them a brief shout-out here because they completely deserve your attention: Ed Bisese (painter, Maryland); Jung-Ki Beak (installation artist, South Korea); Bruno Cançado (visual artist, Brazil); Cameron Hockenson (environmental artist/sculptor, California); Linda Molenaar (sculptor/performance artist, The Netherlands); and Brett Sroka (composer/jazz trombone player, Brooklyn). I fell in love with them all. Especially Cameron.

Cameron and I used to stay up until two in the morning, drinking wine and talking about art and life and politics and relationships and family and religion and the world. On the surface you’d think our art forms had absolutely nothing in common. While I was writing in my studio (“writing” being an activity that encompassed such tasks as drinking endless pots of coffee, listening to my iTunes playlist of Songs About Outer Space, looking up “Higgs Boson” and “How do creationists explain dinosaurs?” on the Internet, and desperately trying to avoid being distracted by Facebook), he was out in a field on a ladder hammering planks of wood together and creating this.

But the more we talked about our art, the more we realized that we were doing the same thing with different tools. We had a conversation one night that I found so interesting and inspiring that I worked it into the play. It was early in the process, so I was knee-deep in research and fragments of scenes and bits of dialogue, trying to turn a kitchen counter full of raw ingredients into a reasonably edible dinner, and Cameron was asking me about my writing process. He asked me, “What’s the hardest part of writing a play?”

“Cutting it,” I told him. “I write like I talk, so everything is too long.” I told him about how I usually finish a whole draft, have a panic attack about how long it is and how bored the audience is going to be by intermission, curse my lack of talent, contemplate throwing myself down a well, and then finally suck it up, get out my red pen and start chopping. I told him I’m constantly at war with my tendency to say everything, to spell it all out JUST SO NOBODY MISSES ANYTHING IMPORTANT, and then I have to go back over and over and over to prune stuff out and leave room for the actors to, you know, act.

He looked thoughtful. “It’s funny, that’s kind of what I’m doing right now,” he said. “I have this design for my sculpture and I really like it, but I always have to make sure I’m thinking about the empty space. I don’t want it to be –”

“Cluttered.”

“Yeah, cluttered. The space between is really important. I have to look at it like I’m sculpting the emptiness too. It’s just as important as the stuff you can see.”

The more we talked about working with empty space in our projects, the more we realized that, actually, that’s what everyone was doing.

Bruno was working on one project where he submerged white paper into water with ink in it to create watermarked lines; it was the whiteness – whether there was more or less of it, how far it extended, how distinct the line that separated it from the gray – that defined the visual impact of each space. And Brett was working on an electronic music composition where he recorded pieces on the trombone and keyboard and then digitally manipulated them, looping, reversing, reshaping, distorting, and layering the sounds to create a composition. In music, it’s the space between that gives us rhythm.

Everyone had a different medium – what I was doing with words, Cameron was doing with nails and lumber, Bruno was doing with paper and ink, and Brett was doing with a trombone. But everything we created was defined by the space between.

So as I find myself buried in notes, research and revisions for the second of what will no doubt be many, many drafts, that’s what I’m thinking about. I’m thinking about the reading I did at our Open Studios event at the end of our residency, where I performed an excerpt of my play while standing inside Cameron’s sculpture. I’m thinking about my empty space inside his.

I’m thinking about white paper and black ink, about the notes of a trombone floating through the air down the garden path and into my writing studio.

I’m thinking about a big wooden arch made of wooden planks assembled with a pattern that seems random, but is in fact anything but; where the negative space is perfectly considered and there’s just enough of it.

I want to write a play like Cameron builds a sculpture, where someone can stand inside it and create something that’s completely their own.

***

Actors, writers, designers, directors, what do you love/hate about stage directions? What do they mean to you and how do you use them? How do you get inspired in your theatre work by artists working in other media?

It’s been a month since the first Dramatists Guild National Conference. In that month, three things have stayed with me: Mame Hunt’s declaration to playwrights to stop writing realism, Julia Jordan’s keynote speech on gender parity, and Marsha Norman’s comment that we need to hear everyone’s stories at the gender parity panel discussion. All three have been wrapping themselves around in my mind as a part of larger conversation about theatre and dominant culture.

While I was earning my BFA in playwriting at DePaul University, we had a class that was guest taught by Robert O’Hara. Sometime during that class, I said that I wished that I was a part of ethnic community. I wanted to feel a connection to some cultural heritage. O’Hara eviscerated me. He told me that I WAS a part of a cultural heritage: that I had Shakespeare and Wilde and Shaw. And he was right. I had assumed that since my culture was the dominant culture, it wasn’t mine at all.

And that’s the issue with dominant culture; because it is dominant, we often forget its context and assume that it is the voice of everyone.

Realism is a part of dominant culture.

The majority of those who post at 2amt are also a part of dominant culture. We’re a rabble rousing, invested part of dominant culture, but we are mostly a part of dominant culture.

When we support a specific style of storytelling, realism or non-realism, we need to realize that it comes from a specific context and be aware of our own biases as artists, particularly those in positions of power, such as artistic directors.

At the gender parity panel, Marsha Norman said that everyone’s stories need to be told. This was tweeted and re-tweeted liberally – but I wonder, as theatre artists, how willing are we to uphold that as our ideal? Are we really prepared to tell everyone’s stories? More importantly, are we really prepared to LISTEN to everyone’s stories?

Because if we really prepared to listen to everyone’s stories; then we need to let go of our personal preferences for storytelling. It means that we see realism as one specific style of storytelling that is rooted in a specific cultural tradition and that it might not resonate with people from different cultural traditions. It means being open to theatre that doesn’t speak to you. It means not engaging in cultural misappropriation, something that I see dominant culture theatre artists do again and again. It means letting go of idea of being able to speak to everyone or for everyone.

It would require a radical shift.

It would require self-awareness. It would require learning how to read plays in new ways. One of the things that resonated with me from Outrageous Fortune was the comment that many artistic directors don’t know how to read Sarah Ruhl’s stage directions. It would require us checking in with our assumptions of audience. It means that when we use phrases such as voice of the people; we consider which people we’re talking about. It would require us to acknowledge our own biases.

I have plenty of personal storytelling biases. I write realism about half the time and I always write for female protagonists. I have no personal desire to tell a male story, but that doesn’t mean I am not moved by male stories. If I looked at it from a limited perspective, I would start writing realistic stories with male protagonists so that I could become a part of the 17% of female playwrights who get produced. Or we could collectively work to embrace a paradigm shift and see everyone’s stories, as they want to tell them.  Think how many stories that are out there waiting to be experienced. There could be a style of theatre or specific story that thrills me that I have no conception of yet.

We’ve already challenging assumptions about dominant culture when it comes to discussions about younger audiences.  Why can’t we broaden this conversation from there to explore the intersection of culture and narrative? Or race and narrative? Or gender and narrative? Or class and narrative? What can we do to make sure that everyone’s stories are told?

In case you’ve been in a coma for the last year, there’s this Broadway musical, it’s called Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, and it’s made some headlines. There were accidents and script problems and fights with critics and the official opening kept being pushed further back and back and back and…etc.

Basically, it redefined the term “hot mess.”

And the amount of mockery, vitriol, and somber head-shaking coming from the theatre world as this tragicomedy dragged on has been spread across the Twitterverse/blogosphere in a fine layer of outrage and schadenfreude. Take a few minutes, hypothetical coma patient, and catch up.

The thing is, it’s not the safety issues or the script problems or the lackluster musical numbers that sit center stage when theatre artists take aim at this hot mess. It’s the money. It’s the $75 million spent on said hot mess.

The prevailing argument is that those $75 million could have been used to fund who knows how many other theatrical ventures. Many of which, odds dictate, would not be hot messes.

As I was writing this, theatre artists were debating under the #2amt hashtag on Twitter about NYC spending millions on a new Brooklyn theatre. And there was the inevitable comparison to Spider-Man. I think that comparison will be made for some time to come. Whenever a shit-ton of money is dropped on a single project, one that is too commercial or disintegrates into a headline-grabbing clusterfuck, there will be the question of whether this was more or less wasteful than Spider-Man.

So, here’s the thing. I’m going to say it and I’m going to say it in public. I am grateful that $75 million was spent on Spider-Man. I am ecstatic. I think it’s awesome that producers decided that they wanted to spend $75 million on a single show.

And that gratitude is not diminished one iota by the fact that the show and the process of its creation is, by all accounts, a hot mess.

I have spent the last two years teaching devised theatre and new play development to teens. There are a handful of things I tell them during the first class that I desperately hope I can pound into their skulls by the last. One of them is that it’s okay to fail. In art, failure happens all the time. As artists, this might be institictive. But these are teenagers, and the last thing they want to do is look stupid in front of other people.

“If you are going to fail, fail spectacularly,” I tell them. “If you are going to run into a brick wall, I want you to be going full-speed when you hit. Think of this process of theatre creation as a science experiment. Because even failed experiments teach us something. Which means they’re not really failures at all.”

And now here are a bunch of Broadway producers, a world-class director, and fucking Bono running full tilt at a brick wall. It’s glorious.

Next time I give that talk, I can point to Spider-Man, and I can say this: You think it’s embarrassing to make a big, wrong choice in an acting exercise? You’re afraid of what your friends will think? Here are a group of professional theatremakers and a couple of world-famous pop stars who went and made a big messy risky choice for the whole world to see and criticize. And they hit that brick wall going 100 mph. And they got back up, dusted themselves off, and kept working. Do you think Julie Taymor is going to change her aesthetic? Will her next show be any less theatrical, any less insanely complex and challenging? Of course not.

Or, at least, I sincerely hope not.

Would I love to see $75 million worth of $100,000 grants spread out across threatermakers nationwide? Of course I would. As an audience member, I’m far more interested in seeing what the Rude Mechs can do with $100k than I am seeing Spider-Man, even if it were produced to perfection.

But, as an artist, do I also want there to be people willing to sink $75 million into a single hot mess of a Broadway show so pumped full of spectacle it makes your eyes bleed? Abso-fucking-lutely.

Because if we’re going to fail, let’s fail big, fail in public, and fail informatively. And, yeah, failure can be expensive. But sometimes it’s worth it.

Join us this weekend at City Theatre in Miami for the CityWrights Conference 2011. We’ll be livestreaming several sessions via NewPlayTV. We’ll also be tweeing throughout the conference using both the #2amt and #cwc11 tags over on Twitter. Send questions, comments and conversation our way.

Below is a schedule of the weekend’s livestreamed sessions.

Friday 24 June

2:00 — 3:30pm ET - Dramatists Guild Town Hall Meeting
led by Gary Garrison, Executive Director of Creative Affairs, Dramatists Guild, and Andie Arthur, Executive Director of the Theatre League of South Florida

3:45 — 4:45pm ET - Dramatists on the Web
A conversation with 2amt’s David J. Loehr & Andie Arthur about playwrights and the internet, social media and outreach, with a focus on new methods of making connections, telling stories and working together.

Saturday 25 June

2:00 — 3:00pm ET - Professional Development Without an Agent
A talk by David Faux, Director of Business Affairs, Dramatists Guild

4:00 — 5:00pm ET - Theatre Smarts and Etiquette
A discussion on how to build relationships effectively

6:00 — 7:00pm ET - Decisions & Transparency in Season Programming Roundtable
A roundtable with Artistic Directors: Henry Fonte, Israel Horovitz, David J. Loehr, John Manzelli, Ricky J. Martinez, Stephanie Norman, Jeff Revels & Deborah Sherman, moderated by Andie Arthur

John Lahr, New Yorker theater critic, wrote a piece on Julie Taymor’s frustration with the process of creating a new theatrical work in the era of instant feedback, Twitter, and focus groups. It’s a great piece, full of historical perspective on the role of audience (that is to say, amateur) criticisms of theater. He rubbed me the wrong way, however, when he generalized his annoyance with those who tweet their opinions. He asserts Twitter users are “crickets, not critics,” spewing a “cultural gas of opinion and vitriol.” And, per Lahr, “the Tweetosphere [sic] has no interest in ambiguity, irony, or careful distinction.” So, I proved him right and vented my spleen in this tweet.

A few people must’ve enjoyed this, because they retweeted it, in the process boosting my Klout score 1 point. And I know why. Snark sells. Especially on Twitter. Or in Lahr’s words, “the glibbest and loudest rule.” This may be why Twitter was the perfect medium for Dan Sinker‘s brilliant, satirical @MayorEmanuel saga. With 140 character limits, Twitter encourages the sort of reductionist, over-confident, unambiguous sound-bite phraseology that I so lament in “serious” public discourse.

I suppose, therefore, Lahr has a point in his critique. But he makes the mistake of conflating the limitations of the medium with the limitations of the users. That’s like blaming Peter Parker for not being able to execute aerial acrobatics without visible guide wires in the theater like he does in the movies. As David Loehr and Brandon Moore said, many who tweet are also long form bloggers, informed content matter experts, well versed in subtlety and irony and all that nonsense.

That doesn’t automatically make us Lahr’s scholarly nor critical peers. I’ll be the first to admit nobody would ever give me a theater critic job at The New Yorker. But we also know that there are far fewer such jobs then there are gifted critics. Many are simply toiling away on blogs and on Twitter, because that’s the outlet available to them, and are frankly not deserving of Lahr’s ignorant judgment.

But I’m not really writing this in defense of amateur critics. The good ones can write better than me and defend themselves. I’m writing this because Lahr’s vision of theater as essentially a one-way communication form (with an indulged peanut gallery giving feedback only through gasps, laughter, jeers or applause) may still be dominant, but is by no means unchallenged.

Devised work is showing that you can, in fact, create art by committee. Though, theater artists have been collaboratively creating art for so long that we shouldn’t be surprised. Lahr writes, ”the essence of great theatre is an expression of the individual voice of the makers,” but he doesn’t acknowledge the oxymoron in his own sentence. What, exactly, is the individual voice of a (plural) group of makers? Scripting and otherwise building a show through ensemble improv is certainly nothing new. Conference panel discussions, which are sort of a less entertaining form of theater, can be shifted and enriched mid-course by a gutsy provocateur. If art can be created by committee, how can we so glibly rule out focus groups? I’m serious.

Why not include and build on the audience’ input, either in development of a piece or during a performance? And I’m not just talking about the mad-lib type suggestions that you might throw out at a Second City review. I’m talking about making the art more relevant to the audience by including them in the creative process. Directly, transparently, without defensiveness or arrogant posturing about the false superiority of the story-teller over the story-tellee.

What could be more hyper-local and intensely relevant to new audiences? What could engender deeper communication and relationship between artist and community? In what better way could theater artists learn more about diverse audiences that we so desperately claim to want to serve? How else can we better hold up a mirror to society?

I’m bone-tired of theater artists and institutions that seem to think they have a monopoly on illuminating the human condition. When we treat theater as one-way communication, why are we surprised when the stories we’re telling don’t lead to a flood of new audience members banging down our doors? Instead of thinking of ourselves as uniquely qualified to tell stories, let’s realize that our unique qualifications are really just to tell stories in a certain WAY, with actors and a live audience. Everybody has stories they want to tell, including (and maybe especially) our potential but untapped audiences. Let’s use our skills to first learn and then share their stories, using our artistic forms. Let’s include them in the process, all but guaranteeing that they will become our collaborator-audience. In the process, we will broaden our own understanding of the humanity around us, which might even make us better artists.

NOTE: There are a few Chicago groups I know who are already doing this, in very different ways. I’d bet there are groups doing this all over the country, though they’re probably not on John Lahr’s radar. And even though these examples are in Chicago, I’ve a feeling even Scott Walters would approve. Further, I’d bet these models are sustainable in ways that some of our traditional theater companies can only dream of.

Barrel of Monkeys produces the hilarious and ever-changing That’s Weird, Grandma! from the texts that come from from writing workshops they run in Chicago Public Schools.

Albany Park Theater Project is an excellent multi-ethnic youth theater ensemble that builds their scripts from the life experiences of residents of Chicago’s diverse Albany Park neighborhood. The actors write and perform stories from their communities, while developing their talents as artists and performers.

Among other initiatives, Storycatchers sends theater and musical artists into a juvenile women’s correctional facility to help the young women perform their stories through scene work, poems, and song.

Companies like these give me great hope for the future of theater in an increasingly multicultural, networked society.

Here’s the latest installment of the director-to-director interview series…

Meet Tlaloc Rivas

Hometown: Tijuana, Baja California

Raised in: Escondido, CA and then Watsonville, CA

Current city: St. Louis, MO

Occupation: Assistant Professor of Directing & Performance, University of Missouri-St. Louis

Profession: Stage Director (www.tlalocrivas.com)

1) What attracted you to directing?

In the early 1990s, there was a wave of hostility against Latinos in particular, where I felt that a purely political solution was no longer viable. From Proposition 187 back then to SB 1070 today, Latinos and immigrants have marginalized and persecuted by the very country that claims to welcome those “yearning to breathe free.” As an immigrant and a Chicano I belong to both those families. And I wanted to say and do something about what I was thinking and feeling at the time …

Meryl Streep described theatre and the roles she chose as a way to “give a voice to the voiceless.”  I embraced that – and embarked on a journey which gave voice to my protests and concerns. During my undergraduate years I switched from history and politics towards acting, and later on to directing.

When I started, there weren’t as many Latino (much less Chicano) directors as there are now. In some ways, it’s better than it was twenty years ago, and despite the fact that Latinos are now the largest minority group in the United States, we have some distance still to go before people in the profession like myself are satisfied. I have to admit, this is a subject I don’t spend too much time thinking about or discussing only because I feel that by doing so, I only work myself up and get distracted from actually doing the work that will eventually open doors for myself and other artists from underrepresented groups.

That being said, I used to say that I directed plays in order to make sense of the world around me, but the world sometimes confounds sense. So today, I say I direct plays to make contact: with audiences, with collaborators, with myself.  I understand that the development of my career and the number of doors that open for me is commensurate with the quality of work and the degree of professionalism I offer, and that my best work will open the doors and jump-start the careers of others who will one day take the baton and run with it.

2) Did you receive academic and/or practical training in directing? And how has (not) having this formal education/training shaped your directing career?

My training came from a couple different worlds early on:

I was trained as an actor and stage manager before making the shift to directing.  My study of acting at UC Santa Cruz was grounded in the American Method, Shakespeare & Verse, and Asian Performance Techniques (including Indian dance, Noh, Kabuki and Bunraku, Javanese Puppetry, etc.). Widely diverse stuff from brilliant, hippie instructors who were certified under Meisner, Boal, Linklater, etc. directly.

Later on, I founded a theater company called Chicano Theatreworks with no blueprint other than a mission statement and lots of “ganas” (to steal a phrase from ‘Stand & Deliver’). We staged guerilla-style theater: one-act protest plays, agit-prop skits, site-specific performances, etc. That was my on-the-job training. Thoughtful process, quick execution.  Brecht, Valdez and Boal were my inspiration.

None of my friends at the time had ‘formal’ training’; at best, they had taken an acting class or two.  And yet, we displayed more unbridled talent and energy than most professional companies. We built a light-board from scratch and lights using floodlamps and coffee cans. We raised money, built costumes, wrote our own press material, went out into communities and offered workshops to disadvantaged teens. We did it all. From this experience I know exactly what everyone is doing at any given time during all phases of production – because in those early days, I had my hands in it all.

So when I decided to go to grad school for directing, I really wanted to synthesize my own sense of collaborate practice with the craft itself. When I arrived at the University of Washington’s Professional Directors Training Program, I was a tabula rasa.  I was mentored by M. Burke Walker (founder of The Empty Space in Seattle), Valerie Curtis-Newton (now Head of Directing at UW) and Jose Carrasquillo (Artistic Director of The Group Theatre), who hired me as an Artistic Associate while I was still in grad school. All of them gave me tremendous, incalculable support, both professional and academically. I directed a show every 10-12 weeks, while also curating a new play reading series at The Group. I didn’t sleep for 3 years; I immersed myself non-stop in directing, dramaturgy and ensemble-creation. I graduated with a degree, a new job running a theater in Philadelphia and an ulcer (which later healed, thankfully).

So, I had the best of these worlds: D.I.Y. theater, academic training, and professional mentorship.  But I had to work hard, make a lot of sacrifices and overcome the deliberate indifference of others in order to make my

work noticed. I can count the working professional Chicano directors in the U.S. in one hand, and those are the odds I face every day.

3) Which director (or other theatre artist) (dead or alive) has had the greatest impact on you as a director?

Luis Valdez (whom I interned under at El Teatro Campesino) is and always will be an inspiration. Peter Brook (“The Man Who” at BAM was the 1^st of many productions that I still carry indelible memories of); Mary Zimmerman (I was fortunate to see her stunning but unwieldly “S/M” in Chicago); Ingmar Bergman (both stage and screen). Tony Taccone (whom I’ve assisted) is crackerjack genius. Mark Wing-Davey, Richard E.T. White, Sharon Ott, Ivo Van Hove and George C. Wolfe have all directed individual shows that have kicked my ass and in return, I’ve wanted to kick theirs.

4) In your personal library, what is the most indispensable text on the craft of directing? Or, alternately, have books/practical guides proven unhelpful?

Over the years, I’ve kept my own journal for directing, with notes after each production.  I jot down what worked, what didn’t, what I could’ve communicated better, etc.  I’m a task-master when it comes to my own work and very critical of myself.  It may turn into a book one day, who knows?

My text preferences lean towards the theoretical, rather than the practical.

“Pensamiento Serpentino” – a poem by Luis Valdez – is both a cultural and personal cornerstone for me. “Theatre of the Oppressed” and “Brecht on Theatre” may have had the most impact for me; these are certainly the texts I recommend for any aspiring director.  And although “Backwards & Forwards” is a classic on script analysis, it is a must-read for directing as well. More recently, I’ve found Katie Mitchell’s “The Craft of the Director” very insightful, and I’m in the middle of reading a new book called “Ghost Light: An Introduction to Dramaturgy” by Michael Mark Chemers (a former classmate of mine at the UW School of Drama) in the hopes it may prove useful in the classroom.

5) Defend/Describe the importance of ‘the director’ in contemporary theatre.  (Has the director’s place/status changed in the time you have been directing?)

No one asked nor told me to become an artist. In fact, I was discouraged by many instructors, professionals and friends not to pursue theater.  What they didn’t understand (because of their sense of privilege, or ignorance), was that I came to directing out of a sense of civic and social responsibility.  It came from the building coalitions through democratic and community-building practices I was exposed to through my family.

When I was a child, my father founded a night-school for immigrant, migrant farm workers, and I often joined him to tutor students in English and American Civics.  And it wasn’t just because I wanted to be with my dad; I understood the importance of being part of something that wasn’t just about me, but about our responsibility to assist those who wanted a better future, who desired to become citizens and, in return, pay it forward to create a more diverse society.  To me, the theater has always been about using creativity as a applicable tool for relationship building – through dialogue, partnership, and examining ourselves as part of a greater whole.  I mean, isn’t that what the Greeks did? Notice I did not use the term, “theater for social change” – for many in our profession scoff at the term.  Call it what you will.  I was called to action.  And directing became the path.

Directors, at least the good ones, should be consummate collaborators.  That is our role. Our task is to bring out the best in everyone in our communities, our society, and in the rehearsal room. People believe we have all the power in the room; we don’t. We’re only as good as the friends, neighbors and collaborators around us.

6) How would you characterize/describe your own directing style?

I believe the play, the collaboration and the venue determines 95% of the style of any particular project.  The last 5% is my experience, process, quirks, (unconscious) signatures and some go-to techniques.  So unless you’re going to write my biography and see each of my productions, my style won’t be noticeable, nor should it relevant. I prefer my hand to be unseen.

That being said, I strive for simplicity and theatricality.

7) To block or not to block, that is the question. Do you block before rehearsals begin, in the midst of rehearsals, or not at all, and why?

During the conceptual stage, I sketch the entire show, no matter what size, style or genre it is.  It helps bring a lot of imagination to my process, whether or not it all winds up getting used.  By sketch I mean just that: tracing transitions, French scenes, significant moments in the play or anticipating large numbers of actors in a given scene. Sometimes with a play that is unorthodox in structure I collaborate with my designers on scene-by-scene storyboard. However, I leave a lot of room for the actor to fill everything in between with their actions, movements, results, etc.

It also depends on who I’m working with. With professionally trained actors, I feel more at ease with improvising blocking in the rehearsal room. But in a college setting or with a group with varying degrees of experience, I do a little more preparation, with the caveat that I expect the actors to come to rehearsal prepared with ideas of their own.  I am well versed in movement and composition, but I dislike feeling like a traffic cop. There is always more important work to do in room, i.e. What forces are at work that motivate the blocking.  When a director gets hung up on the blocking, they’re really avoiding something else; procrastinating in order to avoid dealing with the real problems of a play. There exceptions to the above: I have worked with some amazing actors who initially prefer for you to explain precisely where you want them to go and only then do they begin to trust the process – but all that really means is that I’ve INSPIRED them (and the characters they’re playing) to MOVE.

What quirks, habits, rituals, etc. (if any) inform your directing process?

Arriving early to every rehearsal.

Being present every single moment.

Maintaining positive energy in the room.

At my most difficult moments, my thoughts turn to my loved ones and they carry me the rest of the way.

Acknowledging that what I do is a responsibility, not a privilege; and never taking what I do for granted. Our profession is an honorable one, and I try to live up to that every day.

9) What style/type of work do you find most compelling to direct?  If you have an area of specialization, what are the unique challenges/needs of directing this kind of work?

I like projects that are always little outside my comfort range.  I don’t believe in repeating myself.  I rarely direct plays I may have seen productions of (I have an irrational superstition about that).  I don’t think there are very many professions that demand that you come at each project like a beginner. I prefer being dropped into the deep end and learning to swim at the beginning of each process.

New work is always challenging, and fun.  There should be more of it.  I relish the opportunity to work with writers on their plays in whichever stage their plays are at.

I yearn to direct the epic, several-hour production of play or series of plays; doesn’t matter is if it’s contemporary or classic. I hope that there will be the right place and time for that to happen.

10) What is your fondest directing experience/memory?

I’m very fond of “El Paso Blue” by Octavio Solis; I directed it in graduate school and it was my professional debut in Philadelphia for its East Coast premiere.  Both involved a wonderful collaboration with acclaimed blues musician Michael “Hawkeye” Herman, who won the Barrymore Award for Original Music.  If you don’t know the play, it’s 90-minute bluesical riff on Euripedes’ “Helen” set in and around El Paso, TX, about a newly released ex-convict hunting down his wife who has run off with his father.  It is relentless, funny, and absurd with deep faultlines of Mexican/American themes of identity and assimilation.  Octavio’s poetry, along with Hawkeye’s mixture of blues, roadhouse, Tex-Mex and country music, deeply informed both productions. That experience continues to serve as my template for an ideal, artistic collaboration.

11) What is the most challenging work you have directed to date? Why?

I had a very particular challenge in directing “The Crucible” at Penobscot Theatre Company in Bangor, ME, in that at our first rehearsal, I was meeting the entire cast for the VERY FIRST TIME.  Because of logistics and lack of funding, the theater could not bring me up for auditions and casting.  So there I was that first night, hearing the play for the first time with 24 complete strangers, who were also meeting me for the first time.  It was like, “Here’s your cast, your creative team and your play. GO.” It was surreal and it felt like I was directing on my heels for those first few days, but over the course of several weeks, we all bonded and became very close.  It was extremely memorable for the fact that it was the year George W. Bush was re-elected to office and the play suddenly took on a particular resonance, which audiences responded to quite emotionally.  It was also very intense that here I was in New England doing a play about a very significant historical event that many folks were well-versed in.  For me, there was also a sense of longing and loneliness being so far from home, and I wondered often whether this sense of isolation also existed in the early-American colonies. I’m sure some of that emotional world found its way into the production.

12)  What advice would you give to a young or aspiring director?

DO A DIRECTOR’S CLEAN SWEEP:

Does your profession inspire you?

Are you confident of your communication skills with playwrights, designers, actors, producers, dramaturgs, technicians, etc.? Do you work on those skills when necessary?

Do you fully enjoy the rehearsal process?

Do you have clear career goals and a strategy for pursuing them on a daily basis?

Do you have a presence on the World Wide Web (i.e. your own website)?

Are you pursuing a directing career completely by choice, because it brings you joy personally and professionally?  Knowing that the odds are against you in many respects, do you accept the challenges fully?

Do you know and can you articulate the image/message you want to convey as a director?

Are you proud to tell people you are a director?

Do you have a resume that represents you perfectly?

Do you have a list of the champions in your life, education and career who, no matter what, will support, advocate and endorse you on a moment’s notice?

Do you keep a record-keeping system of all your meetings and interviews, tax-deductable expenses and correspondence?

Do you support your colleagues by attending shows, donating your time/money or volunteering your assistance when possible?

Are you willing to accept the mindset that there is no US vs THEM in this industry?  Will you endeavor to grow and discover the best ways to work together with your current and future colleagues?

If you can do most (if not all) of this things from here on out, you will do well…

13)  What is your current directing project?

This spring I directed CABALLOS MUERTOS by Law Chavez at the University of New Mexico, for the Words Afire Festival 2011 (Albuquerque, NM).  The playwright has since received the 2011 KCACTF National Latino Playwriting Award.

At present, I’m directing the St. Louis premiere of BECKY’S NEW CAR by Steven Dietz for Insight Theatre Company. The production goes up June 9-19, 2011 (St. Louis, MO)

I’m currently in pre-production for THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS by Caridad Svich, based on the novel by Isabel Allende. Our production will open in October 2011 at the University of Missouri-St. Louis in the Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center (St. Louis, MO)

I was recently tapped as the inaugural director for SHAKESPEARE IN THE STREETS, a new program initiated by the Shakespeare Festival of St. Louis, which will collaborate with the community of the Cherokee Street neighborhood as well as professional artists to work side-by-side to mount a site-specific production of either an adaptation or an original work inspired by one of Shakespeare’s plays. (April-May, 2012).

………………………………………………………………………

Thanks, Tlaloc!

This Saturday, we’re hosting a convening on artistic excellence at FoolsFURY.

This convening arises from a belief that, as a field, we have serious difficulty having useful (and sometimes hard) conversations about the quality/excellence of each other’s work. We do this fine, at the bar, without the artists present. But how can we have more useful and constructive conversations?

We need to improve the quality of our work. We make constant demands of audiences, of funders, and more. To have strong arguments for the worthiness of the time and money of these various constituencies, we need to raise the bar. And to do so, we need as a first step to be able to talk about quality: What is excellence? And how can we strive for it? How can we have better conversations to encourage and inspire one another to aim higher?

You can join this conversation by watching the convening live, embedded here or directly at the New Play TV page at Livestream, and by following the hashtag #furyfest and our Twitter account, @FoolsFURY.

We’ll be taking questions from Twitter and asking the conference participants to address them. If you’re in the Bay Area, buy a ticket and join us in person! Expected speakers include:

Teresa Eyring, executive director, Theatre Communications Group
Morgan Jenness, agent/dramaturg, Abrams Artists Agency
Diane Rodriguez, dir. new play development, Center Theater Group
Lisa Steindler, artistic director, Z Space
Paul Walsh, professor of dramaturgy, Yale University
Kim Whitener, producing director, HERE

The conference will have three sessions for discussion and exploration:

1. Why do we have trouble with discussing quality? And what is the value of talking about it?

There are certainly many reasons as to why we have trouble. Some of those that have come up repeatedly are:

-Lack of consensus on criteria by which to evaluate or assess the quality.
-Question as to whether the artists actually want honest critical feedback.
-Funding and psychological realities – not wanting to cut off relationships with potential collaborators or funders. (Not wanting to get a reputation as a nay-sayer)

Some (possible) historical perspective about criteria: since the advent of Modernism, there has been a lack of criteria or standards with which to judge quality. What are, or might be those standards? To be groundbreaking – to test the boundaries of art, became a criterion in the 60s and 70s. Every thing is subjective now, permeated back from the edges back into the mainstream.

We want to be judged by the criterion we’ve set up within the work. But if the work isn’t very good, often those criterion are not clearly defined.

Are pre-existing criteria necessary? Are they possible? Maybe the call for excellence is the call for a new toolkit of criteria.

If something is truly groundbreaking, (Godot) is it because it allows us to reformulate our criteria? And/or, in the world of contemporary theater, is the fact that it reframes or reshapes our understanding of the theater one of the criteria of excellence?

If work outside that mainstream is going to be judged on its own terms, then we have to get better at articulating the terms. (For example, how do we take in the Growtoski work– which falls short in many ways if we applying “mainstream” expectations to it – and apply a different definition of excellence to it, that accords with what, in fact, they are trying to do?)

2. How to do Better – or What might a better conversation look like?

Perhaps much of the problem lies in the structures we use to discuss and critique – both among artists, and with audiences and works in development.

Let’s not ask the critics to be the sole voices of criticism. Not that they do a good or bad job – but in order to look at a different perspective, let’s ask the practitioners to take on the responsibility of offering criticism. What happens when the responsibility is shifted to the practitioners?

A thought: One of the most common modes of getting feedback is the post-show discussion. But this is not always helpful. All one receives are first perceptions, and this is not always what is useful. The analysis has
not yet taken place. This is often more valuable for the audience – as it gives them a feeling of engagement in the process.

3. The Tension Between Process and Product in Ensemble Theater

What is the experience we are providing for the audience – vs. what is the experience we create for ourselves? Where is there the combination between excellent process and excellent product. There are many angles:– excellence from audience pov – societal pov – makers pov – excellence in terms of the art form (pushing against the boundaries).

What are the criteria here? What are we offering the audience? What are we engaging in ourselves? What are the goals of production here?

Difference between therapy and theater is the outward looking project.

What does that collaborative mode of company-created work add? How is company- created work different from playwright-then-director dominated work (the more traditional/mainstream mode)? How is it differently excellent? How can the conversation around them improve? To some extent this is a question of the value of theorizing a practice. Or least increasing communication and thought around these issues.

More often that not, good theater verifies something it’s audience already knows, rather than bringing out new ideas. Is this preaching to the choir a problem? Or does it have value in creating community, and validating
people’s beliefs.

A performance can be the performance of a process – which could provide audience with the value of a process – interwoven with the aesthetic value of the play.

Finally, these are all just thoughts. Please feel free to disagree, and bring other perspectives to what, I’m sure, will be a series of compelling and fruitful conversations.