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.

There’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
Shining at the end of every day
There’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
And tomorrow’s just a dream away

Walking into the darkened New World Stages for TEDxBroadway, I half expected to see a sign saying “Presented by General Electric,” or at least a robot welcoming me to the great big world of tomorrow. After all, this niche TED talk was billed as an imagining of Broadway in 20 years. If Walt Disney were in charge of the daylong event, there would have been intricate models of Times Square—circa 2022—complete with flying cars, jet packs, and a monorail.

Alas, there were no glamorous peeks into a sterile Times Square, save for a brief joke from organizer Ken Davenport, rather the day was full of theatrical industry types waxing poetic on the future of Broadway. Much was made of the current state of affairs—Broadway has seen steady grosses over the past decade, despite economic downturn and tourism lulls—with a hint of urgency when considering the current demographics funneling money into live stage productions. As organizer and Situation Interactive leader Damian Bazadona pointed out, around 83% of Broadway’s audiences are white with average household incomes of $250,000.

While there often tends to be a sense of skepticism when speaking of Broadway’s future, TEDxBroadway was more about thinking positive, and brainstorming for the sake of live theater. Bazadona rattled off a list of needs for the viability of Broadway: incredible original productions, full theaters with diverse audiences, a wider platform to share our greater purpose, and less risk from external factors. “Broadway needs to become an idea factory,” he proclaimed, equating this industry to another—Silicon Valley.

It’s Bazadona’s hope for less risk from external factors that rings closest to the truth for Broadway’s sustainability, and ultimate growth. Theatrics aside, it all boils down to business, not art—money remains the bottom line. Yes, creative types need to continue being creative. Customer service must bounce back from the often-lackluster approach current front-of-house staff take when dealing with New York’s tourists. And marketers must work hard to cultivate new audiences. But the lasting lesson to come out of TEDxBroadway, and the idea most akin to a world of tomorrow, is the necessity for re-thinking the insular mentality most theater owners and producers have when thinking of the live entertainment industry.

Collective thinking is the future of Broadway. No longer can a producer pray for the failure of another production, merely to snag an open theater for their latest work. Billy Elliot might have just shuttered—Nice Work If You Can Get It producer Scott Landis was reportedly sniffing around Times Square, hopeful a show would flop in time for his Matthew Broderick vehicle to plop down for the winter in a warm house—but Elton John’s musical lesson in solidarity must not disappear into the Playbill vault.

Joseph Craig, an entertainment-marketing expert, proved the most provocative on the matter of collective thinking. “We want [tourists] to say ‘and see a show’ when planning their New York trips,” he said, fixating on the need for tourists to look at Broadway as a “must do” attraction. His greatest advice: “worry about how to get people to Broadway in general, not to an individual show.” I half expected to hear the TEDxBroadway audience, made up mostly of business insiders, to roll in the aisles at this blasphemous talk. Why would the Nederlanders want to help a Shubert show fill its seats?

Like it or not, everyone with a theater between 40th Street and 54th Street works in the theatrical industry, emphasis on the latter term—industry. Broadway is only as strong as its weakest link. Tourists are not looking at the minutiae of theatrical ownership and producer credits. Tourists come to Broadway to see a show. They bring their children to see a show. And, hopefully, those children will return to see a show. Business economics 101: Brand Loyalty. Broadway is the brand in question.

Barry Kahn, a dynamic pricing expert, added fodder to argument towards collective thinking, aiming his sights on a universal box-office experience. “What if all Broadway theaters worked out of the same box office?” he asked. Without touching on the precarious situation of box-office union red tape, Broadway as an industry could only benefit from a single point-of-sale. I still find myself irritated over the split between Ticketmaster and Telecharge offerings. In 2012, why must I toggle between two fundamentally different systems when trying to see what shows have open inventory on a Thursday night?

And, from a tourist’s perspective, why do we not hear about touring productions while waiting for a Broadway show to start? Would it not behoove the entire theatrical industry to alert patrons to relevant touring shows while the potential ticket buyers are ripe for arts marketing? I should be able to walk out of Jersey Boys and immediately be pointed to a customer service representative that can tell me about other jukebox musicals playing in my hometown. Movie theaters do this by way of coming attractions. Broadway does it by, what exactly?

There’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
Just a dream away

TEDxBroadway planted the seed for a great big dream to blossom in the theatrical industry’s mind. However, the dream is merely a start. It is now up to every person in attendance to see that dream through to reality. It’s time to drop the theatrics of narrow-mindedness, and open up to a collective future. That’s the only way Broadway will be standing on two strong legs in 20 years.

In the spring of 2011, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company was a finalist for an award recognizing excellence in non-profit management administered by the Washington Post and the Center for Nonprofit Advancement. It wasn’t big dollars, but we hoped it would help us connect with some corporate contacts. We didn’t expect that we’d learn something about art along the way, but we did.

As part of the process, company leadership spent 2 hours with the 20 member selection panel answering questions. These were mostly local business people who were used to dealing with direct social services organizations rather than art groups. They asked us one terrific question that we weren’t prepared to answer. They asked us about our programmatic goal setting on a project by project basis. I was disappointed to realize that the only show by show or even season by season, official goal setting we did had to do with ticket sales as part of our earned income budgeting.

That doesn’t mean Woolly never had artistic goals, just that we never framed them in a way that would be easy to share or evaluate clearly afterwards. For me, that was bad enough to want to take action on.

Artistic director Howard Shalwitz and I spent a few sessions together over the summer during which he talked about why he had chosen specific plays for our 11/12 season and what he hoped to learn from doing them. I took notes and eventually condensed them into a very dry set of hypotheses and tactics for the year. Howard then edited some of his passion and juice back into the text, and we had our artistic goals for the year.

You can see a copy here: http://www.woollymammoth.net/about/WoollyMammoth_2011-12_ArtisticGoals.pdf

We’re half way through the year now, and Howard tells me that the goals have already been useful in communicating with senior staff and some guest artists. That led me to believe that the process was valuable enough it would be worth sharing with others as an example of artistic goal setting. Also, for anyone who reads this and has been doing this for longer than we have, I would love to hear about it and see examples.

Notes:

The full Woolly theme for the season is “Does our civilization have an expiration date?”

The reinvigorated company plan has added non-acting artists to Woolly’s artistic company and incorporated a number of activities to involve company members in more of what we do.

Civilization is the title of a new Jason Grote play that opens in a few weeks.

Mr Burns is a new Ann Washburn play with which we will close the season.

When a theater is only open to the public for 15 minutes before and after a performance—and is otherwise closed and locked, with the public let in and, if necessary, kicked out—the question arises of how to make the performing arts a conversation, a participatory activity more articulated than active listening. Here’s a simple story of how that engagement happened, in a town of 7,000 people, in a way that I have rarely seen elsewhere.

I spent Thanksgiving visiting my parents in the small town they’ve retired to, a few hours north of San Francisco, on the border between wine country and redwood country. Their town has a fourplex movie theater that usually shows only least-common-denominator tentpole movies: X-Men, Avatar, Ice Age. On Monday evenings, the theater shows one screening of an independent film, or a less widely distributed studio movie: arthouse fare.

I went to the Monday-night screening of Buck, a 2011 documentary about Buck Brannaman, a horse-trainer who travels around the country teaching horse-owners how to raise horses without breaking them.  We learn that Buck himself had a very rough childhood, and we see how this informs his own approach to horses.

Here’s what happened that night. An audience of 40 or so watched the movie. Afterwards, most of this group walked from the movie theater to the town’s art gallery, next door, where there was some wine, snacks, and a circle of metal folding chairs. After 10 minutes or so of mingling, we each took a seat in the circle. The two hosts of the evening, the same ones who booked the quality films on Monday nights in this small town, set the simple rules of conversation: we would go around the circle and each speak briefly about our impression of the movie, whether or not we liked it, what we thought. Then we went around the circle a second time, with any concluding thoughts.

The whole thing took about 20 minutes. The conversation was very good: some people had worked with horses, some related to Buck’s family, some shared broader observations; some compared it to the Herzog cave-painting documentary that had been screened the previous week.

Only afterwards did I find out that there were people in the room who were not otherwise on civil terms with each other. Outside of this room, they kept to themselves, or were on opposing sides at zoning hearings, school-board meetings, the standard places where private citizens share public space. Without this circle of metal chairs and the hosts, they never crossed paths except in conflict.

Here was a space for setting all of that aside, not just communally in a darkened theater but in a conversation. The movie itself had only done part of that work. The art was only part of the experience. If the lights had come up in the movie theater and, as usually happened, we had all filed into the street with those we had arrived with, the greater connection would not have happened, and the town and the lives of those who live there would be worse for it.

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

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

A few generalities:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do we get?

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

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

Happiness is equilibrium. Shift your weight. — Tom Stoppard, The Real Thing

Over at Arts Journal, they’re hosting a discussion & debate this week called Lead Or Follow? In their words, “Increasingly, audiences have more visibility for their opinions about the culture they consume. Cultural institutions know more and more about their audiences and their wants. Some suggest this new transparency argues for a different relationship between artists and audience.  So the question: In this age of self expression and information overload, do our artists and arts organizations need to lead more or learn to follow their communities more?”

Scanning the list of participants, there’s a good selection of arts administrators & curators. Out of fifteen invited participants, there’s one playwright and one musician.

Coincidentally, the TEDxBroadway event is going on this afternoon. The theme is, “What’s the best Broadway can be 20 years from now?” As Howard Sherman pointed out in his live-blogging of the event, “[A] number of tweets raised deeper questions. Why so male dominated (only 2 of the 15 announced participants are women), why so few artists (only 3, two slated as performances, not speakers), one speaker of color (Latino), why no (evident) speakers under the age of 35? Also, why so expensive ($100, limiting who can participate) and why during a workday (when younger professionals, if they can afford it in the first place, would need to take a day off to attend)? If this is about a vision of the future, can we vision a more egalitarian Broadway so that process enfranchises those who should, but largely do not, have stakes in Broadway? Indeed of the 13 speakers, only four appear to have direct connections to Broadway; the rest are experts in marketing, social media and customer service in other fields. So perhaps this is going to be more about how Broadway, whatever the product may be, will be connecting with its audience in 20 years, rather than what the work itself may be. But that remains to be seen.”

(Note, I’m writing this post in the midst of the TEDx event, after only a third of the presentations, and only one day’s worth of the Arts Journal discussion.)

Their questions are slightly different, but the problem is the same. There’s a distinct lack of artists involved in either conversation.

In the Lead or Follow conversation, Diane Ragsdale and Chad Bauman put it best (so far). It’s not–and should not be–an either/or proposition. It’s a careful balance, knowing when to lead your audience and when to follow them. There ought to be a shared sense of community if you hope to build your organization and building into a social hub for that community.

Theatre as a medium is unique in its relationship to its audiences. With books and films, we have little say in the matter, we vote with our money. We don’t know our booksellers, our movie ushers, we don’t get to know the managers and we don’t ever have a say in what they program. Television is even worse. Thanks to the Nielsen rating system, we have to rely on the average score of a microscopic–but supposedly statistically valid–selection of the population. Those scores determine which shows are “popular” and which shows are cancelled. It’s educated guesswork.

In theatre, we have the opportunity to focus on our particular audiences and communities. We are all in the room together. A talkback can be more than audiences asking questions about how actors can remember all those words. Let’s have fewer question and answer sessions and more genuine dialogues.

Part of our #neverbedark crusade is to encourage more opportunities not just for artists but for audiences to come together. That’s a way for cultural organizations to have their cake and eat it, too. Maybe you produce the big, splashy, crowdpleasing hit while hosting smaller companies and artists from your own community. Bring all of their audiences together in your building and start to cross-pollinate. Lead by opening your extra spaces to these groups, follow by giving audiences what they want, thrive and grow by becoming a cultural & social hot spot week in and week out. If you have one or two big shows running for six weeks, then I only have one or two reasons to visit you in those six weeks. And if I don’t want to see either of those shows, I won’t be back any time soon.

Of course, this leads to the missing part of the equation above. The artists.

We need to trust artists more. We need to stop playing it safe and start following where artists’ inspirations lead. We need to be more than waystations where productions happen. We need to be artistic homes to resident artists. I don’t mean artists with residencies, but artists who are part of your community. And we need to bring artists into those conversations more often. We need to look to the example of Centerstage’s hiring of Kwame Kwei-Armah and Victory Gardens’ hiring of Chay Yew. Imagine, playwrights programming seasons!

We also need balance. Don’t just follow your artists. Talk with them, share ideas with them. Close to half of my produced work has come from ideas or suggestions from my artistic director and stories from my community. Follow the artist, yes, but inspire the artist whenever possible. Give the artist room to play, to experiment. Let them work without worrying about rent or a 9-to-5 job. Then, produce their work. Don’t just play it safe with the latest off-Broadway script or the fifth revival of a classic. Give your community a stake in the work because it’s a work of–and from–your community.

It’s more than simply sitting in the room live with a production, it’s this personal connection on every level that makes theatre unique.

As for predicting the future, whether of Broadway or the theatre world in general, I’m not going to bother. Predictions are just that, educated guesswork. I’m more interested in creating a future. How about you?

[Edit: An hour after I wrote this, according to Howard's TEDxBroadway live blog, Kara Larson said much the same thing about predictions, concluding, "Accept change as it happens, accept it as it arrives. Or, create change — make it happen. Best way to predict the future is to create it, and let others adapt to you." I couldn't have predicted that...]

I’ll leave you with these questions. If you run an arts organization or a theatre company, ask yourself this. Is your company “of” your city or merely “in” it? Do you see your patrons or do you know them? Is your building a gathering place or a cathedral? Do you present or do you create?

Depending on your answers, you’ll know whether you’re leading or following.

More to the point, maybe you’ll know where to look for the proper balance between the two.

I’m 22 years old, a student at NYU’s Dramatic Writing Program. I’m sitting in a coffee shop, surrounded by friends. The topic of conversation is how a teacher admitted that he couldn’t name a female playwright he liked. I don’t know if this story is true. I don’t care since I don’t have a class with him.

But then, the conversation turns toward whether anyone in the group can name good female playwrights. They can’t, which is strange. Because no one can name a good female playwright, the question is inevitably asked: Can women write good plays?

It is 1992, a time before political correctness. I’m the only woman at the table. Apparently they’ve forgotten I’m here. The group is composed of guys my own age. They’re young and they don’t know you shouldn’t say certain things out loud.

They’ve also forgotten their teachers are some of the most notable playwrights in the country: Tina Howe, Lynne Alvarez, Shirley Lauro, Janet Neipris, and others. But they persist in saying how women only write women’s stories and those stories aren’t terribly interesting. I can’t relate to their comments. My friends who are also female playwrights don’t write stories about mothers, boyfriends or babies. My own plays, at this point, deal with graphic violence. I’m often told that I don’t write like a woman.

You could chalk it up to a group of immature guys, except these uncomfortable experiences start to happen regularly. Or maybe I just notice them more. With every incident, I detach from my identity as a woman. I grow a little bit smaller each time. It forces me to take a long, hard look at my career and how I want to operate in the theater world. I decide to stay far away from women’s topics because they’re perceived as weak. I vow not to get close to other female playwrights anymore because I want people to take me seriously. I’m different, I tell myself. Maybe the decision-makers will see it too.

For the next 15 years, these early experiences will play a major role in my playwriting career. They become what Julia Cameron calls my creative monsters. I shadowbox them as I tell people about my writing. I hear them in my ears as I send work out. When I’m quiet for lengthy periods, it is because I don’t have the courage to overcome them. These nagging self-doubts I hear in my head over and over again: Women don’t write good plays. They only write women’s stories and no one wants to see those.

*

It’s 2003. I’ve just finished reading an article in the New York Times called The Season of the Female Playwright. It talks about the exceptionally low numbers of productions for female playwrights. I’m stunned. But it’s the relief, the idea that The New York Times has acknowledged something I’ve felt for so long. There is a problem. It isn’t my imagination. After a heaving cry, I take my skates and go out into the streets of Brooklyn for a few hours.

As I skate, I start to wonder if other female playwrights have experienced the same things I have. Has anyone ever asked if you slept with your director? Has anyone ever scolded you for being a nice girl who wrote something so unpleasant? Has anyone ever said, “Its such a shame women have it hard,” in a patronizing voice? Or maybe you ran into the other extreme. People raged at you for questioning whether gender bias existed in theater. Maybe you talked about it to your group of male theater friends and the topic has been greeted with silence. Or you’ve been labeled as bitter, bitchy or crazy. They may have even implied that you’re only whining about it because you’re jealous of other people’s successes.

I couldn’t ask these questions back then because I stayed true to my plan. I didn’t know any female playwrights.

*
It’s 2012 and we’re still dealing with the same issues as in 1992 and 2003. Many of us keep these challenges to ourselves for fear of hurting our careers or dealing with a backlash. We quietly acknowledge the problems in private tweets or offline conversations. Meanwhile, we’re still labeled irrelevant because decision-makers believe we only write women’s stories, whatever that means.

Many theater workers pride themselves on being progressive and socially aware. The field is populated by people who know what it is to be judged by what you are rather than who are. No one wants to admit they’ve been part of the problem rather than part of the solution. To some people, admitting gender bias exists in theater is akin to accusing them of ill-gotten gains. They may see women as privileged. They argue that so many other groups have it harder. It is likely that they don’t have the foggiest idea about the challenges women face in theater.

It is time we take back ownership of our experiences. We don’t need men, newspapers or studies to tell us what we’ve seen, heard and felt. And looking at internalized sexism is almost as scary as confronting it on the outside. Through sharing our experiences and concerns with each other and the rest of the theater community, we can inform and support each other. Our backgrounds are diverse, and each of us has a valuable piece of the puzzle. Together, we can break down isolation and create positive change.

An exuberant conversation, hosted by Peter Marks and Howard Sherman, broke out on Twitter yesterday about Shakespeare; many good ideas were debated and discussed.  I am writing this post to delve more deeply into one of the fundamental questions about Shakespeare in performance, which is, after all, his native habitat.  Shakespeare in performance should be, at an absolute minimum, (gasp!) watchable.

These are nearly 40 of the best stories anyone ever bothered to write down, and we keep telling them to one another because they continue to speak to us so evocatively, so instructively about the nature of the human condition, about love, compassion, vulnerability, courage, frailty, greed, desire, duplicity, poverty of wit and the richness of the same.  Perhaps the original stories actually belong to Ovid and Holinshed, but we don’t perform Holinshed’s Chronicles; we perform the stories as Shakespeare crafted, altered, excised and embellished them.

I must trouble you again

Harley Granville-Barker, Shakespeare director, scholar and redhead, once wrote, “If we are to make Shakespeare our own again, we are all to be put to a little trouble about it.”  It does take work.

In the course of yesterday’s Twitterchat, Michael Kahn wrote, “I believe firmly that if audiences don’t understand a prod it’s usually director’s & actors’ fault.”  I enthusiastically agree.

I have been to an untold number of productions of Shakespeare where I had almost no idea what the actors were saying.  And neither did they.  They had an inkling, sure, of what a speech was about; there was a wash of emotion or intention surrounding the words as they spilled out, but there was no specificity, no clarity of language.  The language has rarely been familiar in the actor’s mouth as Henry V’s household words.  If the actors understand only the ‘gist’ of what they’re saying, the audience is unlikely to do much better.  Actors and directors have to decide that this is important, that this work of understanding the language —  the muscularity of the language as well as the dictionary definitions of the words, the way the scansion of a line informs us about the character’s essential nature –  is worth burning a significant chunk of their rehearsal time.  (Indeed, their pre-rehearsal preparation time, too!)

Tablework for A Midsummer Night's Dream at the American Shakespeare Center; photo by Michael Amendola

One thing that helps to make Shakespeare watchable is not condescending to your audience, not making your audience feel stupid.  Seriously.  We often assume that our audiences know these stories as well as we do.  Spoiler alert: they don’t!

Well, okay, some of our audiences know and love these stories, and bring their copies of the play with them to the performance so that they can track our cuts.  But in addition to those people, there are great swaths of smart, thoughtful people who come to see our work but for whom many of these stories are brand new.  For whom the stories may exist in only charcoal sketch detail.  They come to the theatre after a day designing web pages, writing legal briefs or teaching math; they come — open to a new experience and to discovery — only to be shut down by productions which sail glossily over their attentive but bewildered heads.

Congratulations on your o-so-ingenious staging that makes it completely impossible for a mere mortal to understand what just happened there.  You may now perform it in an empty theatre.

But this troubles me

Sometimes I suspect that the director doesn’t trust that the production will be exciting if he gets out of the way and just tells the story.  He may feel he has to do something flashy, make it shiny in order for us to sit still.  He may also want to ‘make it his own’ through some – erm, innovative theatrical device.  I know I am completely over being assaulted by ear-splitting drums or synthesized bangs to let me know that something important is about to happen in the play. I have completely exceeded my recommended lifetime allowance of actors shouting over said ear-splitting drums.

Sometimes I suspect that the director doesn’t know what he is doing.  This may be an unpopular notion, but not everyone should be directing Shakespeare.  There is an actual skill set required. A particular director may have great instincts, but that is insufficient to this task.  If the director doesn’t know what he’s doing, there is but so much an actor can do to salvage it.  One has to know some things to do this work well.  One can go learn it.  One can learn some of it on the fly, but to do this work, it must actually be learned.

You can do a traditional production; you can do a modern-dress production.  You can cut some lines; you can do the whole four-hour extravaganza.  You can be high concept (although I wish you wouldn’t); let your own discretion be your tutor.  But you need to know what you are saying, and you need to suit the action to the word, the word to the action.  As Hamlet goes on to say, the purpose of the playing is not to show how frightfully clever the director is, it is to hold the mirror, as ‘twere, up to nature.  You must be put to a little trouble about it.  Trust the text and invite your audience to join you on the journey.

Sometimes its not the information you consume, it’s how you use it:

Fertile Ground Festival Project Lear’s Follies did a clever thing recently. They snagged a link that was much shared around #2amt circles (the Marie Claire article about theatre being behind only sex and exercise for creating happiness)and turned it into an irrefutable, ingenious pitch to attend theatre, ANY theatre, as a cure for Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Here’s their pitch, which arrived in my inbox as part of their email promotion for their festival project:

Scientific Proof- Theatre Makes You Happier!

Are the depths of the dark Pacific Northwest winter getting you down? Forget sunlamps and vitamins.
Try cheering yourself up by going to the theatre!

It is not just our opinion that theatre is a great way to make us feel better. It turns out there is science to back us up.

According to a new UK study involving Apple and the London School of Economics – reported by Hannah Thomas at Marie Claire – people are happiest when they are having sex, exercising, and visiting the theatre!

Why? Well it is not surprising when you consider that curiosity, social interaction, and creativity are known to increase happiness. And it turns out our brains have circuits called that are specifically designed to engage our empathy and make us feel better when we are around others who are engaged in creativity, curiosity and social interactions and feeling happy about it. These circuts are called Mirror Neurons and what we do in the theatre seems particularly designed to light them up.

So if you want to beat the Portland Winter Blues, “get thyself to a theatre!”

We invite you to get out, be social, enrich your lives and take part in the creativity that makes our region such a great place to live.

They continue on with a pitch to participate in the Festival, conveniently timed in the darkest days of Portland winter. But there’s absolutely no reason not to STEAL THIS IDEA and use it to tout your own ability to combat the winter doldrums in your area.

It’s not marketing, its SCIENCE.

I have spent the past couple days trying to get back into the real world. There is always this time period when you have taken a vacation and now need to get back to work and the world you put off for a week or so. While on vacation I pushed hard to try and stay in vacation world and not think about events going back at home.

One day while touring the Historic Charleston Museum in South Carolina, I got a text message telling me to look on HowlRound at Molly Smith’s post and check my email. Each had the announcement about the separation of the American Voices New Play Institute from Arena Stage. Specifically, their information collection and distribution duties will move to Emerson College in Boston while the producing arm and playwright residencies will remain at Arena.

There is some debate on if this is a good thing or a bad thing, if there is more red tape in academia or at a producing organization–I think it’s a toss up–or if AVNPI should have been at a producing organization or an academic organization from the start. These are good questions, and I am sure we can and will debate and discuss those in the future. But that’s not the kick-in-the-stomach feeling I have.

With the announcement of the separation of the duties of the AVNPI came the announcement that David Dower would be leaving town in April and Polly Carl, herself a recent transfer to DC from Chicago, would be leaving DC in July to move up to Boston, taking the AVNPI with them.

In the week that followed, I watched blog posts and twitterfeeds and facebook updates all with questions and cheers about AVNPI’s move. What this means for Boston. Why Academia is better then a Producing theatre. Why a Producing theatre is better then Academia. Why this move had to happen. I’d like to add a question of my own.

What does this mean for DC?

Has it hit us? What we have lost? Do we understand who’s moving away from us? The more and more I think about it, the more worried and saddened I get. In the past couple years having the research wing of the AVNPI at Arena has allowed our town to be host to countless numbers of amazing theatre artists from around the country.

Having AVNPI at Arena has brought amazing shows such as Bengal Tiger at the Bagdad Zoo, The Rude Mechs’ I’ve Never Been So Happy and others. They brought in Artists from all over the country to talk about Devised Theatre, the state of New Play Development and Minorities in Theatre. They have helped empower artists in DC as well as show DC’s theatre community to artists around the country. They have been educators, ambassadors, and inspirations to every artist, especially the fellows at Arena.

I wonder who at Arena will take up the charge and continue the work of opening doors that was started there? Without David, Polly, Vijay, Jamie, and the fellowship program who has the time and energy to do that at Arena? Their staff is already over worked with the countless things they already do and create. Every staff at every major theatre is. Who has the time and energy to be opening doors in DC, to build bridges with artists all over the country? Who here will continue the work that they were doing whether they work at Arena or not?

These are the questions I’ve had in the weeks that followed the announcement. With those questions swimming around in my brain, a light bulb went off. I have met countless artists keeping up this charge, trying to make connections with major theatres and open their doors not just for themselves, but for everyone. I have met a number of managers at major theatres trying to open their doors, as much as they can (usually slowly), for younger and newer and smaller companies to connect to. We have artists all over town talking about local, about new works, about connectivity, about sharing time/resources/spaces. While not all of this can be attributed to the work of David, Polly, Vijay, Jamie and the AVNPI, a lot of it can.

My feelings of worry and sadness are fading. Something else begins to take hold, the understanding that connectivity will have to be fought for twice as hard, that communication will have to be pushed for twice as much, and that we will have to yell twice as loud about how great DC is for New Play Development. It’s not about one person leading the charge or one group. It’s about many voices singing in harmony. As we say at 2amt, it’s not about preaching to the choir but turning as a choir to sing out together. I plan to be singing the song of New Play Development as much as I can (or people can stand). I know that it will take more people and more energy and more chutzpah—yes, I am bringing the Yiddish! So will you add your voice to the choir?

So David, Polly, Jamie, Vijay, and the Fellows, I am sorry to see you go…it can’t be said enough, it will be sad not to have you in our backyard, but don’t forget that DC loves you, and come back as much as possible!

As the founder and now social media manager for Portland’s Fertile Ground Festival, I have recently had the delightful and curious experience of being able to dip my finger daily into the stream of material our 100 plus world premiere projects have created to promote their shows. I asked myself, how can I harness this wealth of creative promotion in ways that can be of value to our national new play community? With that in mind, welcome to Post One of a multi-post series called “STEAL THIS IDEA.”

First, some quick background:

The Fertile Ground Festival attracts projects from literally all walks of life and all levels of professionalism- from a writer who successfully overcame homelessness and the sex trade to a writer whose last piece was for NPR and whose next piece might well be for film or television. It also attracts all scales of producing partners- Portland Center Stage and Whitebird Dance both have fully staged world premieres in the festival, while the PDX Playwrights collective has probably 20 plays that will receive bare bones staged readings over the course of the festival. The common link amongst all the projects is that they are all Portland generated, and they are all world premieres.

Every project is tackling the same problem that all new work faces: How do I overcome the “never heard of it” barrier?

Audiences want to get a sense of what the experience will be like before they take a risk on a new work. The challenge is that it is nearly impossible to have real performance footage of a new work before it premieres. So how do you help a prospective audience member glimpse the future of a work that is still in the process of creation?

Here are five incredibly different, very intriguing ways this year’s festival participants are using video to address that challenge:

Variation One: Go Graphic

Festival Project Waxwing, from tiny and brand new theater collective String House Theatre employed the talents of an illustrator to take audio recordings from their new work and create a whole world of atmosphere. Check it out:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Variation Two: Showcase the Artists

The NW Children’s Theatre and School has participated in the festival three years in a row, contributing world premiere work for young audiences that often attracts some of the festival’s largest audiences. For this year’s project, Rapunzel- Uncut! created by local playwright James W. Moore, they focused their video efforts on a behind the scenes peek at the young rockers who create the ‘house band’ for this hip update on the Rapunzel story.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Variation Three: Direct Address + F word = WIN

Portland’s LORT theater Portland Center Stage, brings a main stage world premiere of Jason Wells’ The North Plan to the festival, creating a video that feels like a direct address confessional from the character’s foul mouthed and hilarious lead character. None of the language in the trailer is directly from the show, but the result is a pretty good snapshot of the show’s key ideas.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Variation Four: Inspire with the Mission

Playwrite, Inc. is a social service organization that utilizes playwrighting as a tool to help transform the lives of “youth on the edge” in Portland. Their project trailer takes a totally different tack, inspiring the viewer with the effect of the work on the young writers themselves rather than focusing on the pieces being performed (which are probably not even written yet!)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Variation Five: Fake it… Artfully

Portland Playhouse, a mid-sized theater company that’s had three very successful festival projects, uses the real actors from their performance to create a trailer that feels like an artful fake of the real show. Particularly effective are the intercuts of slightly disgusting food closeups that create the same unsettling sense of everyday foods that feel suddenly, subtly WRONG that Dexter uses to great effect in their intro sequence.

Click here to view the embedded video.

One of the things I find fascinating about these examples is that, with the new technology available for video creation, it is nearly impossible to identify these projects by budget size simply on the basis of their video trailers. Each is creative, each is polished and feels professionally produced, and each creates a very different set of expectations for the show being promoted.

What can you steal from this? And which approach works best with your mission and aesthetics? I invite you to share your own samples of newplay video in the comments below.

Soon after I wrote this Forum Theatre post on the Bechdel Test, the question arose: what might be a similar test for LGBT characters? Being both gay and up for the challenge, I gave it a try. Here it is:

The Test – Does the movie have?

1. An identifiable LGBT character
2. Who has a conversation with someone else*
3. About something other than sexuality

A clarification: “identifiable” does not mean “out.” It means that the character either has a non-heterosexual orientation or non-cisgender identity, which is made clear to the audience somehow.

And most films flunk right here. Because “suggest” and “identify” are not the same things. Dumbledore does not count. Sorry, folks. But his orientation is never made clear in the books or in the movies. Post-publication comments are not part of the storytelling. Other characters that do not count because their sexuality is implied rather than identified: Nigel in The Devil Wears Prada, Missy in Bring It On, Antonio in Merchant of Venice, Lestat in Interview With A Vampire, etc.

Another clarification: purely for brevity purposes, “sexuality” in this test means anything related to romance, relationships, having sex, or being gay. Yes, those are crucial topics, especially when you yourself are gay. But they are not the only topics. How about family, friends, work, schools, extracurricular activities, current events, food, books, sports, travel, the Metro, the heist plan, and disco bowling?

A corollary: same as the Bechdel Test. If you have to wrack your brain or resort to something inane, then it may as well not pass.

Originally, I considered formulating a direct “translation” of the Bechdel Test — ie: one gay character needs to have a conversation with another gay character about something other than a straight person. Lots of movies fail that one too, but I don’t think that it captures the spirit of the original.

The original Bechdel Test does not measure a movie’s quantity of lame stereotypes or assess its feminism, although that can happen along the way. Rather, it exposes the bias inherent in the storytelling — and the male perspective from which most stories are told. It tricks your brain into realizing that the writer has not conceived of a world in which women are as vital or profound as men.

So here is the parallel question: do movies (or plays) conceive of a world in which the LGBT characters are as profound as the straight ones?

#3 is key here. Because we are not only considering whether an LGBT character is critical to the story (that is #1 and #2), but whether the writer has developed an identity for her that goes beyond her sex life. Giving a character a non-straight orientation is not the same as giving them a personality and a history and all the idiosyncrasies that make up an authentic person.

Now for the fun part. What the heck passes this test?

Us LGBT folks are perhaps one-tenth of the population. So I would not expect 50/50 representation as I would for, say, men and women. But if a movie has at least five speaking roles and the test only requires one LGBT character in order to pass, then it shouldn’t be too tough a standard. So here is the rundown of all the movies that I’ve seen in theatres in 2010:

The Muppets, 50/50, Anonymous, Contagion, Harry Potter, Red Riding Hood, Martha Marcy May Marlene, The Ides of March, The King’s Speech, and Bridesmaids all flunk right off the bat. Friends With Benefits fails on #3. Plus I fail for watching it. My only pass was J. Edgar.

Except for Bridesmaids and Martha, they all fail the Bechdel Test as well. Even The Muppets. I don’t want to talk about it.

However, the first movie that I saw in 2012 passes. Tinker Tailor Solider Spy threw me for a loop. Why? One of the key characters is not only gay, but was made that way for the movie. As in, they actually revised the story to feature a gay protagonist, even through the change was not necessary to the plot. It was kind of awesome.

That said, I had no idea what was going in Tinker Tailor Solider Spy about 90% of the time, despite the fact that I prepped by reading Wikipedia.

Here is what does pass consistently. Reality shows. Project Runway, Top Chef, Work of Art, and Tabatha’s Salon Take Over (go away, it’s awesome) all pass. Nearly every show on HGTV passes. But while I love Criminal Minds, NCIS, Law & Order, and most other long-running procedurals, their record on this front is dismal. Dr. Huang from Law & Order: SVU didn’t self-identify as gay until the 229th episode.

So enough about that, let’s talk about theater. At Forum, our record on this one has oscillated. dark play, Angels in America: Parts 1 & 2, Amazons and Their Men, One Flea Spare, Headscarf and the Angry Bitch, and bobrauschenbergamerica pass. Scorched, Mad Forest, The Language Archive, The Illusion, and Church flunk.

I also can name countless DC-area shows that pass. This city is pretty excellent in that respect and I don’t think we should underestimate what that means. I was the artistic intern at Woolly Mammoth for the 2007/2008 season; and I still remember reading Stunning by David Adjmi on my first day. By then, I had grown totally accustomed never to seeing gay women represented. But this play had two! And they were flawed and mysterious and all types of crazy. They were real characters. And this major theatre was game for telling their story. I was psyched.

An interesting comparison: run this test on the recent seasons of a few TV shows and recent seasons of a few theatres. What passes more often?

Last question: Not that theater is perfect when it comes to equity of representation (it’s not), but why are we noticeably better than most other genres?

As mass-distributed products, TV and movies need to appeal to the whole country to be profitable and successful. Writers have long since lost contact with the product when it pops up in the Netflix queue. But at its core, theater is a local and immediate art form. At any given time, the work only belongs to a single community, gathered in a single space. And when the audience is five feet (instead of five thousand miles) away, perhaps their stories and identities can’t be so easily ignored.

We have great opportunity in such intimacy. Let’s keep moving forward.

—–

* A Bonus Test: Change step #2 so that the both of the conversation participants must be LGBT. I tried this and almost nothing passed. I didn’t want the test to die at step #2, thus this version is a bonus.

The murmuring from Canada was startling, and grew louder. First Toronto Globe and Mail theatre critic J. Kelly Nestruck tweeted about the cognitive dissonance of the Canadian national anthem being sung prior to a performance of the musical American Idiot. Various tweets followed, regarding both surprise at the practice and the evident irony of hearing “O Canada” before viewing a show about disaffected and damaged U.S. youths.  Nestruck then fanned the flames by writing a sustained piece about anthem-singing as a practice, which prompted a variety of responses, including one from producer Aubrey Dan, who champions the idea. As a kneejerk reaction, I pretty much sided with Kelly (with whom I had a pleasant lunch last month, pre-uproar). But the whole thing kept nagging at me.

As someone who attends very few civic or governmental gatherings, my primary association with the national anthem these days is from sporting events, which are also infrequent for me, but not alien. I began to contemplate why it is only athletic competitions which sustain our national anthem for so many people, since there audiences gather for many other activities, the performing arts unquestionably among them. Do artists, as some might wish to suggest, disdain our national identity? Are we playing into a negative stereotype by not, when together, uniting to express our appreciation for a country founded on freedom of speech and expression, the very thing we practice?

I then began to answer my own questions – even responding with contrary questions of my own. Gee, we hate curtain speeches and cell phone warning announcements as it is – do we really want to get up and sing? The çlash between an anthem (even ours) and a show likeAmerican Idiot would surely be repeated often; can you imagine the irony of “The Star Spangled Banner” before, say, Enron, Book of Mormon, or even Albee’s The American Dream? Would the famously difficult-to-sing “Banner” really set the right tone even for the most all-American of musicals, Anything Goes or Guys and Dolls? Even if the anthem made sense artistically, perhaps before South Pacific or Of Thee I Sing, should it be used as a commentary on or accessory to art, rather than for its primary purpose, as an expression of national pride?

There is, at least for many of those of my generation and younger, some mixed feelings about the U.S. anthem, as well as for its counterpart, The Pledge of Allegiance. They feel like vestiges of our youth, as we know them primarily from school days, where we first learned them and recited or sang them often. From lack of use, they have become symbols of our childhood, unfortunately, rather than vehicles with ongoing, profound meaning. I have watched many an adult sheepishly remove their baseball cap or place their hand near their hearts, self-conscious about public displays of national affection. The children of irony, we are embarrassed by the earnestness these acts require. All of these factors contribute to the incongruousness of imagining the national anthem being sung before theatre – or dance, opera, music and other cultural endeavors.

And yet…

In the days following the 9/11 attacks, I have heard stories of audiences both in New York and around the country who were deeply moved as they joined together for the anthem or the less-freighted “God Bless America.” Though I did not experience this myself, I cannot help but imagine that it was cathartic for performers and audience alike to unite for these songs and recitations that everyone knew, taking comfort in them as surely as they might find solace in a familiar prayer. The question is: why was this only acceptable for a short time after a national tragedy?

In countless blogs and discussions, online and off, we talk about how to build, strengthen and unify arts audiences, how to enhance the experience of attending a live event. And while I do think that the national anthem before every show, or “God Bless America” at every curtain call, would prove awkward and often undermine the aesthetic or message of many shows, I do wonder whether joining together only in laughter or applause in theatres truly builds the sense of belonging and community that are buzzwords for artistic and management folks alike these days.  Maybe we need to find a theatrical equivalent of these patriotic touchstones, lest our only shared moments at the theatre come as we chat in restroom lines with strangers or in the mega-mix sing-alongs at shows like Mamma Mia!

I do think many musicals would be the easiest place for this to occur, albeit at the “classic musical” primarily. I have this affectionate vision of audiences standing to belt out “There’s No Business Like Show Business” together, essentially warming themselves up for the entertainment yet to come with their own overture. Plays are more problematic in my musing on this subject, not least because no common text springs to mind; yet, imagine if audiences rose to intone, “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers,” a uniting phrase if ever there was one. You might dismiss this as a pipe dream (and it mostly is one), but even the briefest moments of audience consensus through speech or song might could a valuable addition to the live entertainment experience. Perhaps immersive theatre or “audience participation” need not be the only way to break down the barriers between the audience and the stage, or within the audience itself.

After all, even American Idiot brought out its cast for one last tune at the curtain call, with lyrics that might well serve as an anthem for all theatre: “It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right. I hope you had the time of your life.”

This post originally appeared on the hesherman.com website.

I saw a comment on Twitter this morning which reminded me that Alec Baldwin will be delivering the annual Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy at the Kennedy Center in April. This is not breaking news; it was announced in November, although a just-issued press release has reinforced awareness of the upcoming event. But the reminder coincided with an article I saw this morning as well: that the upstate New York supermarket chain, Wegman’s, had curtailed its holiday advertising campaign featuring Baldwin because of the attention surrounding his highly-publicized ejection from an American Airlines flight late in 2011. [Note: Shortly after I posted this, I learned that Wegman’s reinstated the Baldwin ads, but that in no way mitigates what follows here.]

Now let me say that I think Baldwin is a terrific performer, especially since he has discovered his greatest effect comes as a character actor, not as the leading man he was once promoted to be. Whether in dramatic roles or comic, he’s brilliant, with both a dark edge and a mischievous glint that serves most every part he plays these days.

He has also put himself forward as a spokesman and participant in many arts causes. Offhand, I can think of his advocacy for Lincoln Center (even getting it worked into one of his commercial gigs), radio host for the New York Philharmonic, interviewer for a WNYC podcast, major donor to the Hamptons Film Festival, and fundraiser for a variety of arts causes (even doing an event for the small but feisty Two River Theatre Company in New Jersey). I have no doubt I’ve missed many things.

Yet I have to express my concern over the “optics” of Mr. Baldwin as one of the leading national spokespeople on behalf of the arts. The American Airlines incident, whatever the truth of it, wasn’t pretty, nor was Mr. Baldwin’s use of his celebrity status to go on Saturday Night Livedays later to bolster his image and further reduce that of the airline (which has its own issues to be sure). There was the public flirtation with a New York mayoral run, which garnered headlines because of his celebrity (though seemingly far more for his declared interest than for his ultimate decision to drop the idea), yet had a dilettantish air about it, as if public service is something to be toyed with. Let’s not forget the publicity years back surrounding his promise to move to Canada if George W. Bush was elected president; we know what happened to the residency of both Mr. Bush and Mr. Baldwin, and only one moved anywhere. The divorce and custody battle with Kim Basinger was as ugly a public split as I can recall.

I don’t doubt Mr. Baldwin’s commitment to the arts and I know that when it comes to celebrity coverage, there are far too many sides to, and versions of, the same story, be it professional or personal. I also don’t want to in any way suggest that Mr. Baldwin doesn’t have every right to say whatever he wants about his politics, his ideals, and his beliefs – and I accept that as a talented actor who has achieved real celebrity, his comments will reach vastly more people than, say, this blog. Only days ago, Nicholas Kristof wrote in The New York Times about celebrities whose commitment to and knowledge of social causes must be taken seriously.

But I worry that in employing Mr. Baldwin as a national spokesman at a prestigious policy event, the messenger obscures the message. As someone who believes that the arts should not be a political plaything, I fear that Mr. Baldwin will be unable to preach to anyone but the converted, and that whatever the value of his words may be, they will be overshadowed by his public persona. Of course the irony is that it is his fame (coupled with his evident commitment to the arts) which resulted in his invitation in the first place. Just as I cannot bear to listen to anything the belligerent political pretender Donald Trump has to say about government policy (as recently as this morning on his subservient enabler, NBC), I don’t think any conservative, and perhaps many moderate, individuals will place much stock in Mr. Baldwin’s speech for the arts. He is, to my regret, a flawed vessel for an essential message.

I don’t advocate the replacement of Mr. Baldwin for the Hanks Lecture and I am eager to both hear his speech and see the resultant attention to it; disinviting him would only bring more attention to the ideological rift in this country over the value of the arts, in both policy and practice. But as we continue to fight for the value of the arts both in education and in American life, we need a genuinely bi-partisan approach and I hope that more celebrities committed to the arts and arts education – those with perhaps less baggage than Mr. Baldwin – with join the fight as publicly and frequently as he has, so we can grab the essential and elusive media attention, but then focus the country on what is being said, not on the speaker.

This post originally appeared on the hesherman website.

A few weeks ago, during the TCG Fall Forum, I saw an interesting Twitter conversation and felt compelled to wade in. Kristoffer Diaz had written:

Disappointed at the lack of response to question about non-financial contributions of potential board members. #tcgff

My response was that every board member should give, though the amount might vary. That started what was for me, anyway, an interesting conversation.

Though we were focused on questions of financial contributions from staff – particularly artistic staff – I think the issue is really a bit larger. I think the underlying issue is about the tension between artist and organization.

I believe every board member of a nonprofit organization should make a financial contribution. Though artists will often say that they contribute their skills and, well, their art, I think that explanation opens a door that’s better left closed. How long before a board member with other applicable skills – say public relations – wants to contribute those in lieu of an outright financial gift?

In such a situation, it would be proper to ask whether that board member is really looking for a board position, or ought to apply for a position on the staff.

That’s also the difficulty of staff serving on the board. The purpose of that service needs to be very clear.

Is it a sense that a board position is prestigious? A way to be seen as an “equal” socially?

Is it a fear of losing control of the vision?

A board of directors has clear duties that are largely fiduciary and financial. The board is entrusted with safeguarding the organization’s mission, its integrity, its connection to the community – and its financial security. Every board member should be a fundraiser. (That doesn’t necessarily mean making direct solicitations. There are many ways board members can help – from signing letters, to bringing friends, to opening doors to connections). As fundraisers, board members ought to be donors first.

That’s not to say that giving and raising money is the whole job description. On a good board, it’s not. Board members ought to have many different skills put to use for the organization. In fact, for board members themselves, this is the joy of the job. The opportunity to contribute – both financially and with talents they already have or can learn as board members – is what drives good people to accept an invitation to serve.

Those talents, however, shouldn’t be allowed to supersede or conflict with professional staff. When those lines get blurry, chaos ensues.

In my experience, artistic staff are often treated either as celebrity guests or… “the staff”. (And yes, that comes with the faintest whiff of condescension). I don’t think either is good for the artist or the organization.

When staff – particularly artistic staff – are part of the board, it’s important that they are accepted as peers. Respected for their talents and knowledge, but on an equal footing. Making a contribution is part of that. It’s important that the artistic leader be seen as sharing in the financial commitment.

The much bigger question is one of control.

Is the artist part of the board to keep an eye on things? To be sure that a group of people who necessarily have less invested artistically don’t drive the organization in a new direction?

Those concerns are valid. Boards have certainly made choices – in leadership, in mission – that have veered from the leading artist’s vision. Better, certainly, to be part of the conversation as a peer than to become a supplicant for your own leadership.

So I think it’s good for the artist to be involved. But it’s especially important that involvement be not as a staff person (hired and fired by the board, after all), but as a full-fledged board member in his or her own right.

You want nothing ambiguous about your position and your voice.

There’s an innate tension between an artist and the organization. It’s creative chaos versus stability, art versus budget. When balanced properly, it’s a dynamo that drives everyone involved to do better. It keeps things zinging. It keeps things existing, too.

Taking a seat on the board means the artist has to balance those forces.

So do serve on your board. But serve as a real board member, not an artistic figurehead. Make a gift.

(By the way, I’ve seen this done – and you can call it either clever or cynical – by insisting on a salary increased enough to cover the size of a significant gift. Just saying…)

I have opined in the past about the dark arts of theatrical billing, marketing and publicity in such posts as This Blog is Prior to Broadway and Blurb. Now, as the holidays approach, I have decided to give you a special gift.

You no longer need to try to parse that brochure, that post card, that press item as just another member of the uninformed masses. No, you can read between the lines by converting shopworn phrases that fill ads, direct mail and online solicitations by using this handy-dandy list, which will surely have me drummed out of the American Academy of Arts Euphemists, a secret society of which you will find no other evidence (we’re that good). Read and learn.

1. Comedy = it’s funny, or intends to be.

2.  Drama = it’s not funny, or doesn’t intend to be.

3. Comedy-drama = there are laughs, but it’s serious minded.

4.  Dark comedy = there are laughs, but it’s really sort of creepy.

5. Black comedy = a) it’s funny, but you wouldn’t bring your mother, or b) it’s really not funny, but we don’t want to admit that and call it a drama.

6.  “It’s about the human condition” = a) we don’t understand it at all, or b) if we told you what it’s actually about, you wouldn’t come.

7.  Play with music = there may be a few songs, but don’t get too excited or expect a cast album.

8.  Musical = it has a bunch of songs and dance.

9.  Musical drama = it has songs, but it’s serious and there’s probably not much dancing.

10.  Music theatre = it’s serious, likely has no hummable tunes, and has movement.

11.  Movement = there’s sort of some dance-like stuff, but don’t expect a production number. (See also, “subliminal choreography,” coined by Ben Brantley in New York Times review of Once.)

12.  Annual tradition = it pays the bills.

13. New version of our annual tradition, A Christmas Carol = a) the royalties on this script are lower than the old one or, b) our artistic director didn’t see why the theatre has to pay someone else royalties for an edit of a public domain novel.

14.  New holiday favorite = a) we’re tired of doing A Christmas Carol but we have to pay the bills so you’re getting this instead, or b) why did Dickens have to use so many characters? This has just one elf. (See also, “One-man Christmas Carol.”)(See also “One-man Christmas Carol adapted and directed by our artistic director.”) (See also, “One-man Christmas Caroladapted by, directed by and featuring our artistic director.”

15.  Crowd-pleasing = the critics won’t or don’t like it. (See also, “281 shows. 281 standing ovations.”)

16.  Heart-warming = tear-jerking.

17.  Brechtian = not heart-warming.

18.  Classic of world literature = a) you should like this because smarter people than you say it’s good, and/or b) didn’t you read this in school?

19.  Rediscovered gem = no one has produced this in decades, maybe centuries, and you never read it in school.

20.  “In the tradition of…” = it’s reminiscent of these other plays that were hits, but isn’t as good as them.

21.  Updated = standard script of a well-known classic lightly sprinkled with jarring references to the Geico gecko, Twitter, and current political candidates, with no one credited for said emendations.

22.  Hip = we dare you to say you don’t understand and/or like it.

23.  Current = people swear.

24. Daring = people swear a lot.

25.  “In the tradition of David Mamet” = people swear constantly.

26.  Family friendly = no one swears.

27.  Family drama = everyone harbors resentments which emerge during birthday/holiday/vacation.

28.  Regional premiere = it’s been done in many other theatres, just not in the immediate area, which may only be a 60 mile radius of the theatre.

29.  Broadway premiere = it’s been done almost everywhere, possibly for years, just not in a Broadway-designated theatre.

30.  New York hit = it was produced somewhere in Manhattan.

31.  New York actor = they live in New York, but aren’t very well-known there.

32.  Broadway actor = they were once in a Broadway show.

33.  Newcomer = just graduated.

34.  Broadway star = terrific actor, but not necessarily a household name or guaranteed box office draw.

35.  Film and/or TV star = may or may not have stage skills or even experience, but everyone knows who they are and wants to see them in the flesh.

36.  Produced in association with [commercial producer] = they gave us a lot of money.

37.  Suggested by Shakespeare’s _____________ = this ain’t Shakespeare. Purists likely to be miserable.

38.  Translated by = this person actually speaks the language used in the original script.

39.  Adapted by = a) this person doesn’t speak the original language in which the play was written or b) this person had made some tweaks to original play, but it’s still pretty much the play you remember.

40.  Freely adapted = you may have trouble recognizing the original play, often because it is now hip or daring.

41.  With a new book = we’ve kept the score, but a) have made significant changes to the story, including removing all of the casual racism that was common in musicals from the 20s and 30s, and b) convinced the family of the original bookwriter that their parent’s work really wasn’t any good and stood in the way of the score ever being heard on stage again.

42.  Two-piano orchestration = You think we can afford all of these actors and an orchestra? Just be happy you’re getting a musical you’ve heard of.

43.  Chamber musical = One piano, maybe a violin, and you’ve never heard of the show. Might be music theater.

44.  Concert-style presentation of a play = scripts on music stands and no one has memorized it, but you’re still paying full price. Cast may be dressed formally, despite actual setting of the piece.

45.  Originally conceived by = if not named in any other credit, this person had an idea but didn’t actually create any part of what’s on stage, is no longer speaking to anyone with billing and may be bringing, or has already brought, legal action (see also: “based on an idea by”).

46.  $30 under 30 = a discount predicated upon our average audience member’s age being at least twice this number.

47.  “__________.com raves” = no print, TV or radio critic liked it.

48.  Limited seating available = we’re selling pretty well, but not so well that we can afford to stop advertising.

49.  Final weeks = a) non-profit meaning: it was always a limited run, but we’ve got lots of tickets left to sell so please buy them, or b) commercial meaning: if you don’t start buying tickets soon, these will be our final weeks.

50.  Extended by popular demand = a) we left extra space in the production schedule because we thought you’d like this one, and b) this is going to help us close our projected deficit for the season.

Have you been bamboozled by, or guilty of obfuscating through, promotional euphemisms? I hope you’ll share other examples below, for the sake of theatergoing humanity.

This post originally appeared on the hesherman.com website

I am a tremendous admirer of the verses of Robert Frost. I’ve been studying his work for as long as I’ve been studying poetry, which is (at happens) more than a couple of decades now, and it continues to yield new discoveries for me. He was a prosodic genius—a fact that I fear goes largely unrecognized by most fans of his work, who react largely to his occasionally folksy and deceptively simple diction—and a deeply complicated thinker. I will probably return to his poems time and time again throughout my life.

Although I’ve read two or three autobiographies of Frost along the way, I don’t presume to know his true character. What I do know is that Frost the poet and Frost the man are often mistaken for one another. We imagine him to have been a slightly curmudgeonly person, a stolid New England patriarch with the wisdom of hard soil and tough winters in his bones and a half-smile in his eyes. His writing, by contrast, has many moods and tones and voices that do not always square with the grandfatherly image we have of him. The truth, as always, is probably still buried under a pile of leaves in a woods somewhere… and may remain buried forever.

And still: that image of Frost is compelling. So many of us—even those of us with little exposure to poetry—can conjure him up. He has become one of the few iconic American poets (along with Whitman, Dickinson, and perhaps to a lesser extent Ginsberg). He’s important to our country’s history. You might be aware that he actually wrote a poem for the inauguration of President Kennedy (an event that pre-figured what I would call the dismal artistic failure of Maya Angelou at Clinton’s inauguration). What you probably don’t know is that Frost was also viewed with enough gravitas and respect to actually advise President Kennedy on a variety of sensitive political issues. Can you imagine that? A poet advising a President? He really mattered.

Why has the same never been true of a playwright? I’m not asking why, say, Tony Kushner hasn’t been seated at President Obama’s right hand during difficult discussions about Afghanistan. I’m asking why we don’t revere playwrights in the same way Frost was revered in his lifetime. And I’m not talking about celebrity, either, or Arthur Miller and/or Neil Simon might quality: I’m talking about something bigger and more permanent than that.

Yes, there are playwrights working today whose names we all know—and by “we,” I am referring to the run of theatrically-educated folks who read this blog—but there aren’t any living playwrights who’ve entered the general public imagination, with possible exception (because of his work in Hollywood, perhaps?) of David Mamet. Do you want to make a case for the notoriety of Edward Albee, or the aforementioned Tony Kushner? Fine: that’s not my point.

My point is that none of these fine folks, nor anyone else you’d care to name, have the general respect and admiration of the American populace. They don’t appear on the Sunday morning news programs, they aren’t on David Letterman, they don’t write for Reader’s Digest or USA Today, they don’t back non-profit campaigns, they don’t pitch (even high-end) products of any kind, and they certainly don’t advise sitting politicians. They just (primarily) write plays.

Is there something about our art form that makes us ineligible for icon status? Is it our association, however remote, with the seemingly-shallow glitz and glamour of Broadway? Is the fact that we only rarely act in our own plays, while poets have to stand up behind the podium and air their own verses (on the rare occasions on which they are called to do so)? Is our work generally too accessible, too much “of” the people, to be seen as grand or elevated in any way? (Not likely…)

Or is it that the current state of American culture simply does not allow for artists of any genre to be icon-ified? I have a hard time thinking of anyone, short of a few actors, who are granted such treatment (whether they merit it or not). We may no longer be living in an age in which that’s possible.

If so, that’s sad to me. I wish the world wanted what playwrights have to offer, which is (at least in part) the ability to think about narratives: to help us edit the stories we are living publically, politically, and personally and make them more liberating, more healthy, more imaginative, more invigorating, more revealing, and more useful. I think we could make a difference if we popped into the Oval Office for five minutes now and then. I think we’d be useful in times of national crisis, or to help dramatize complex scientific ideas vital to our nation’s health, or to rally people to important causes. I think we would earn the same respect the world afforded Frost.

If time hasn’t passed us by, that is.

Early in 2011 the national and international theatrical community rallied together behind the Belarus Free Theatre as they struggled to find a way to not only continue their powerful work in the theatre, but bring awareness to the truth of the situation in their country of Belarus.

Human rights infringements, horrors of torture, disappearances, and unjustified imprisonment were brought to light as a result of these brave artists fleeing their country and arriving in New York to perform at the Under the Radar Festival.

That act of courage brought many of us around the globe and throughout the United States to add our voices to their cause. ‘Free Belarus’ was video taped and chanted in places and by people who may never heard of or given much credence to this country prior. But it was the passion and commitment of Natalya Kolyada and her husband Nikolai Khalezin who awakened many of us. These founders of Belarus Free Theatre brazenly put not only their art into the world, but gave shape, feeling and articulation to the cries of their countrymen who otherwise would have been silenced to international ears.

In New York, London, Chicago, here in Los Angeles and many other cities throughout the US and Europe vigils were held, readings of ‘Being Harold Pinter’ (created by Nikolai and based on the work of their supporter Harold Pinter) were staged in solidarity.

But relatively quickly, the focus moved from Belarus to the Middle East. And the members of Belarus Free Theatre could not return home without risking grave personal danger. And nothing changed in Belarus. Except that more of their friends and colleagues were arrested and put in jail. As Natalya once shared with me, Belarus has no value. Only people. No oil, no resources. So who will come and help a country whose leader has been called ‘the last dictator of Europe?’

However, they tirelessly continue to bring focus to the abuses of power and human rights violations. They meet with diplomats and politicians with hope that they will apply pressure on the Belarusian government to release political prisoners and bring an end to enforced disappearances. And, they make their art. They must. Because as long as they make theatre and tell the truth of this story, it won’t be ignored utterly. It will not be forgotten. As they have stated on their website: The Belarus Free Theatre is a “project” which will be ended when the situation in Belarus changes from dictatorial regime to democracy. Within the current political and world climate, that does seem unlikely any time soon.

So what happens until then?

Unable to return home Natalya and Nikolai, as well as several company members applied for and won political asylum in the United Kingdom. They are also busy creating new pieces they hope will make a difference, one of which, A Reply to Kathy Acker: Minsk 2011 was presented at the Edinburgh Festival. It received a top award of the festival, “The Scotsman Fringe First 2011″ Award for “Innovation and Outstanding New Writing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe”, as well as The Guardian’s “The Very Weighty Topics Award.”

And what can we, the international theatre community, do to help them now?

Natalya and Nikolai are in the process of officially registering “Belarus Free Theatre” for charitable status (not-for-profit) which will allow them to grow their organization at a more substantial level. The goal of the first leg of this campaign is £9,000 (approximately $14,000) and they are more than halfway towards that goal. The deadline is December 12th—if they don’t reach the goal by that time, they will be liable for a high penalty.

On #2amt we often have very weighty and interesting discussions of theatre and its relevance. And here we have one of the most relevant theatre companies in the world who need our help. Not only are they giving a voice to a country suppressed, they are artists of the highest caliber in our profession. I know that my association with them has opened my eyes and my heart to the true power of what place art and artists take within our world.

For more information, click here.

Once upon a time, perhaps 15 or 20 years ago, I read a really fascinating article which posited that the arts would get more coverage in the media if they opened themselves up and provided greater access to the media. It suggested that the arts were working too hard to “control the story” at every possible turn and that as a result, we received only perfunctory coverage. Why, asked the article, which I believe had been presented as a speech at a conference of arts journalists, couldn’t the arts be more like sports, which gave the press access to practice sessions, to the locker rooms, in addition to the game itself?

Now I’m remembering this article (how I wish I still had it) at a temporal remove, so it would do no good to try to refute many of the points that made up its argument, which was perhaps hyperbolic, or even tongue in cheek, in the first place. But the issue of access remains with me, as someone who used to be one of the guardians who sought media coverage yet attempted to control every interaction between the artists at work in my theatre and those who would write about them.

I’m singing a somewhat different tune these days, although I’m no longer a publicist. While I never placed theatre in an ivory tower, I did respect that the artistic process shouldn’t be constantly opened up to scrutiny at every turn, and that to do so might well be detrimental. But I was doing my job in the very earliest days of the internet, and certainly before blogs, Facebook, Twitter and the like transformed every individual in a given production, and on the staff, into a broadcaster of news, gossip and personal opinion, readily accessible to not just the press, but to audiences as well. Consequently, the issue of access has fundamentally changed, in both positive and negative ways.

Several weeks ago, my Twitter sparring partner Peter Marks took exception to the fact that Arena Stage was holding a summit of some three dozen industry leaders to explore the issue of new play production in America. Prompted by a press release announcing the event, which listed the theatre notables expected to attend, Peter sought to report on the two day “convening” but was rebuffed. After protracted discussions, he did not attend; he subsequently set down his thoughts about access in a piece for The Washington Post.

When first made aware of the situation, I stood squarely (but silently) with Peter, assuming that the November event mirrored Arena’s January convening, where the participants numbered over 100, the public was invited and panels were streamed live. But the recent event was by invitation only and, had it not been announced by press release, might have actually taken place unnoticed.

The January meeting, for which a summary report was just issued, became infamous forremarks about supply and demand in the theatre industry as voiced by NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman. News of those comments came fast and furious onto my Twitter stream as he spoke and, I confess, I called the theatre desk at The New York Times to suggest they might want to read what I was seeing (of which they were unaware), fueling what became an industry furor. To the best of my knowledge, no such news came out of the more intimate November convening, perhaps because of a shared commitment to privacy among the participants, but more likely due to the lack of tweeters and bloggers amongst our artistic and management leaders

While trying to keep any conversation in this day and age from reaching the public is difficult, I do believe that there are some conversations which can be most productive when people can speak in complete candor, which public or press presence can immediately mitigate. No one should interpret every closed-door meeting to be nefarious, nor should they cease because of pressure for unfettered inclusion (I should note that I know of several in the non-profit community who resent not having been invited as well). I’m not advocating exclusion, but privacy has its merits. TDF new play study, Outrageous Fortune, was not discounted upon its publication because it emerged from private conversations and used unsourced quotes, after all.

On the other hand…

Recently, a theatre in New York held a public panel on the arts, an event to which the public was invited to attend for a moderate price. Although I am not a journalist, I inquired about whether I might attend and “live-blog” the discussion, in the interest of sharing the conversation with a wider audience. I was rebuffed by the press office, being told that the theatre wanted to keep its event intimate and quiet. Because I have many personal relationships at the organization and because I am not a journalist, I did not pursue this further.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked. After all, this was a public event and anyone there could have tweeted or written about what took place. If I hadn’t wanted to bring my laptop and access a wi-fi connection for contemporaneous reportage, surely nothing would have stopped me from reporting via iPhone tweets (save for an eagle-eyed usher, perhaps). If I did not consider myself part of the theatre community, if I didn’t have friends I might offend, I might well have barreled ahead and, having seen no reports of the event, maybe I should have. I do consider it disingenuous to label something as a public forum and then suggest that only those physically present should have any access to what occurs. A very different case than what transpired at Arena.

All of this brings me around to the buzzword “transparency.” In both of the examples cited, the events were not fully transparent; I agree with one company’s position, while I’m mildly resentful of the other’s. I think transparency is, overall, positive, but it isn’t necessarily an all-access pass. Indeed, some may question why in my latter example, I’m not naming names — in the interest of transparency. I do so because I know the company in question will see this, may well be prompted to consider their future approach and I don’t wish to embarrass them or reveal private communications; I name Arena because the incident is already part of the public discourse.

Let me share a third example, in which the media plays no role. At Hartford Stage in the late 80s, a benefit for donors of a certain level, which proved quite popular, was the opportunity to observe tech rehearsals. With as many as 75 donors at the back of the theatre, the rehearsals proceeded, but a flaw in the plan was quickly discovered: the attendees were bothered that they couldn’t clearly hear the director’s instructions to the actors, the designers and the crew. As a result, the director was fitted with a body mic, to be turned on and off at will, which would allow everyone to hear directives more clearly. While it may have saved on vocal strain, and was perhaps incidental, it did have the effect of transforming that rehearsal into a sort of performance, where with every booming pronouncement, the show’s production team and company were reminded of the patrons at the back, whose presence had impacted upon process, whether imperceptibly or fundamentally we’ll never know.

Smart phones, ever-smaller computers, social networks, the rise of the citizen reporter and critic, the persistence of the mainstream media all promise to insure that we are living in an ever more transparent world. We have seen the impact upon politics and governing (not always the same thing) and every day we see society evolving to address the new openness, whether cultivated or abhorred. While our dressing rooms may remain off limits, we may well be reaching a point where little else in the creative process can be protected, and where surely the field will benefit from broader, open conversation in so many instances.

Perhaps rehearsal rooms will be fitted with the one-way mirrors employed by police dramas (and presumably the actual police), so that rehearsals can be observed, but with those rehearsing none the wiser. Perhaps every pre-show and post-show discussion, every panel and forum, will be streamed or recorded for public consumption. Perhaps the inspiration of first rehearsals and the very first table read of a script will be opened up either live or through technology. Perhaps we can demystify the process of theatre so that more people can appreciate its magic (and no, that’s not an oxymoron).

Let’s face it: we’re heading in a direction where transparency is unavoidable. Would we do better to hold on to the shutters from the inside, waiting in fear for outside forces to rip them from our hands, or to open them (and the doors) as often as we can, perhaps supporting the argument for those times when a little privacy may be of value? The way may not be completely clear, but only with unobscured vision will we succeed in managing this transformation.

This post originally appeared on the hesherman.com website.

What can we learn from the birth of the regional theatre movement? Which arts administrator has reached a mass-critical critical mass? Where did Verdi and Shakespeare work to support their writing habits? How many theatres are we going to have to occupy? Why do we call it play?

These are the stories we’ve been following at 2amt this week. This is Follow Friday.

Michael Kaiser criticizes the blogosphere
Mr. Kaiser is afraid of the rise of the citizen critic. As Adam Thurman points out , his fear is justified, even if we disagree with his conclusions. Goodness knows Travis Bedard, Jeremy Barker and Isaac Butler did. That’s why I’m reaching out to Mr. Kaiser while in DC this weekend.

Simone Scully on the vox populi
Of course, citizen criticism might be even more widespread than Mr. Kaiser thought. At the TCG website, a profile of Barrington Stage and their iCritic project. Walk out of the show, step into the booth & record your reactions to share with the world. What’s next for iCritic? What if it could travel from theatre to theatre? What if it were mobile?

Howard Sherman & Peter Marks, together again for the first time
Conveniently enough, all this talk of criticism in the age of Twitter comes to a head the week Arena Stage hosts Howard & Peter in the Kogod Cradle, talking about the role of critics, the use of Twitter and the brave new world of interaction & engagement. The event will also be streamed live at NewPlayTV and archived for later viewing. Right before the event, we’ll be hosting a 2amt meetup at Arena from 3pm until 5pm, so if you’re in the DC area, come on down and say hi. Stay for the event, maybe we’ll all critique it afterwards.

Diane Ragsdale on making a living
Another theme emerged this week, from Zelda Fichandler’s speech on the history of the regional theatre movement while giving an award to Blanka Zizka of the Wilma Theater, from Michael Dove of the Forum Theatre’s meditation on their words and his call to change “non-profit” into “social profit” to my own post on the idea of staff playwrights as opposed to resident playwrights. Naturally, Diane is right there with a few more “outlandish suggestions” on making a living as an artist in the regional theatres.

Ben Brantley occupies theatre
As the Occupy __________ (choose your nearest protest) movement grows and gathers support, Ben Brantley takes a look at the 99% in the world of theatre, from Willy Loman to Mike Daisey, all the way up to the Civilians’ latest production, inspired by interviews conducted at the Occupy Wall Street protest in Zuccotti Park.

Scott Stratten on being awesome
Archived video of the Livestream of Scott’s keynote address at the National Arts Marketing Project Conference this past weekend in Louisville, Kentucky. The main takeaway? People follow awesome. Be awesome. Stop marketing and start engaging. Is it really as simple as that? Watch and find out. Hint. There’s a reason his website is called UnMarketing.

Garry Wills sings of Verdi & Shakespeare
You might be surprised by some of the similarities between the two. “Both were supplying performances on a heavy schedule, to audiences with a voracious appetite for what they wrote. In a career of little over twenty years, Shakespeare turned out thirty-eight plays…Verdi had a longer career of fifty-four years…in which he created twenty-seven operas…” Wonder if being core members of their own companies had anything to with that. Makes you think.

Katherine Catmull on the uses of joy
There is a reason what we do is called “play.” The women of Conspire Theatre remind us of this in the amazing work they’re doing with the women of the Travis County Correctional Complex in Del Valle, Texas.