I’m currently writing a play called The Secret of the Biological Clock, about a former girl detective who is turning 37 and wants to solve the mystery of what makes a family. I have spent the past two months flipping out about stage directions.

Stage directions.

The play itself is a mystery with overtones of spy movies. There are daring escapes and bomb plots. I’ve reread a bunch of Nancy Drew mysteries and I wanted to incorporate all the various outlandish plot points into this play, keeping it in balance with the very real aspects of someone not dealing with aging and wondering if she really wants to have a kid.

You would think this play would have me running off blithely into the land of the impossible stage directions. It has to – right?

Except I’m terrified of them.

It seems silly to say terrified – but I have spent the past month or so double and triple guessing something as simple as “The figure escapes out the attic window.”

This is not something that a rational person would be flipping out about. This isn’t something that I would have flipped out about when I started out as a playwright. I went through some really amazing training during my time at DePaul University, mostly with the excellent Carlos Murillo, who while not a fan of stage directions in general, did like assignments that included impossible ones.

This is new found fear is born of a bunch of various messages that I have internalized since graduation.

Some of these messages are pretty explicit. I’ve been told that my writing isn’t dramatic. That was a comment from a concerned (and otherwise pretty cool individual) that kept me from writing anything for three years. I’ve been told that I “can’t do that on stage,” and shouldn’t I be writing a screenplay or novel instead.

But most of the messages aren’t that direct. As a female playwright, the odds are already against me getting produced. They’re even worse in Miami, which has a hyper-masculine theatre culture and artistically prefers what I’ve called “plays where people throw chairs.” 1970s Steppenwolf is idolized by many of our artistic directors, and while we share a tendency to romanticize Chicago theatre – the Chicago Theatre I’m romanticizing is a completely different genre.

I’ve been part of conversations among playwrights that I love and respect on how Sarah Ruhl is too cutesy and trying too hard. Even worse, I’ve seen local productions of truly amazing women’s plays get trashed for being too whimsical. I think Deborah Zoe Laufer’s End Days is a delightful script with the amazing choice of having the characters of Jesus and Stephen Hawking played by the same actor. But Florida Stage’s production wasn’t well received by many local artists and Florida Stage’s audience. It wasn’t nominated for the Best New Work Carbonell the year it won the Steinberg Award. I’ve heard that whimsical plays are clever, but that a much more straightforward play can really get at the gut of the human experience.

It took a reading of In Common Hours for two of the smartest dramaturgical minds I know to get the play. It’s a delicate, domestic comedy and the charm of the play only landed for them in the hearing of it, and not on the page.

As playwright, you want everything to land on the page – so I worked to fit into the mold. I could write smaller, more straight forward, more realistic, more traditionally structured. I would write something that would be respectable. I boxed myself in and wrote a traditionally structured, five character play.

If I followed all the rules, then I would be a real playwright.

Except I was a real playwright all along and the play where I only partly followed the rules is the play that has been produced.

I’ve only now found the courage to go back to telling the types of stories that I was completely comfortable telling in college. I graduated seven years ago. And even now, I don’t have the ease of writing those stories that I had back then. Instead I flip out about stage directions.

It took flipping out about stage directions for me to realize how much I have internalized all the various messages I’ve heard and witnessed over the past seven years. And it’s even sadder that I felt the need for permission from others to embrace something that used to be instinctual to my process.

For those of us who work in this field – what are the messages we’re sending out about the value of women’s stories and storytelling? There’s been a lot of wonderful mobilization around gender parity since the Guthrie, but in addition to fighting for more women’s stories, what are we saying about those stories themselves? And what messages are we sending to women playwrights, intentionally and unintentionally?

And to the folks (admittedly all male) who have told me over the past week or so that if people don’t understand my play, they shouldn’t be directing it, I would like to say thank you. It’s unfortunate that I needed to hear that from multiple sources for this greater realization to sink in. Just because I work in this community doesn’t mean I have to let it define me as an artist. I can define myself on my own terms.

Somewhat by accident, I stumbled into a weekly twitter conversation about new play development (hashtag #newplay) despite the fact that I am not a playwright. What I am is a university professor who for six of the ten years I spent in academic administration led a large theatre/film school whose mission includes the development of new work. Most of that new work is developed by students, some by faculty, and once during my tenure, by commission. I provide this brief biographical excerpt to give some weight to the following statement: the field can do a better of job of using universities as laboratories for new play development.

There are several university programs that, in similar fashion to mine, nurture young playwrights enrolled in MFA programs. There are also several programs that have deep connections with LORT theatres that sit resident on their campuses (LaJolla Playhouse, The Huntington, for example). There are several large LORT theatres that develop and present new plays (Actors Theatre of Louisville, Arena Stage, to name two). What we’re not seeing, but which would exist in my utopian view of better connections between academic and professional theatre, is a systematic effort to engage universities in the research enterprise that is new play development.

My university, like any research intensive university, has an infrastructure devoted to contracted research. These offices exist primarily to facilitate research by faculty in university labs sponsored by an outside organization. This could be a pharmaceutical company sponsoring drug research, a municipal government contracting with the university to undertake policy research, or the department of education contracting with the university on curriculum development. What if a theatre that is interested in a playwright contracts with a university to develop their work through the sponsored research mechanism?

In such a scheme, LORT Theatre X says, “we’re really interested in the work of playwright Jane Doe, but can’t devote the staff time or space or even the actors to see her new play through the early phases of development.” So, LORT Theatre X approaches Research University Y and says, “we would like to enter into a sponsored project contract with you to develop Jane Doe’s next play. We will pay an amount of money to the university [say, enough to cover a reasonable stipend for the playwright] and your faculty dramaturg and his graduate students work with the playwright; your graduate acting students take part in readings and a workshop, and then at the end, if we like the play, we’ll put it on our season next year. Further, if there is commercial interest in the play, Research University Y gets to retain Z percentage of any commercial production.”

It seems that in such a scheme, everybody wins. The theatre reduces its play development costs because it is not shouldering any of the infrastructure of the development process. The playwright gets a stipend, development time, and, potentially a full production, the faculty and students benefit from the research/teaching/learning experience, and, ultimately, the field benefits from having a new play in the world and a class full of MFA students skilled at developing new work.

This structure has advantages to a university commissioning the piece outright because it includes an organizational partnership with the LORT Theatre that is mutually beneficial; it has advantages for the playwright because there is more infrastructure available. Emerson College recently recruited David Dower and Polly Carl away from Arena Stage’s new play development center. The field is watching the developments there, but that scenario is somewhat the reverse of that described here. Universities have been investing in the recruitment of theatre professionals for 25 years or more. The structure described here is the reverse; it involves the theatres shifting their perspective on universities away from a pipeline for new talent and toward viewing universities as potential laboratories, as research and development units with which they can contract for new play developments. Because universities have indeed been recruiting faculty from the professions, the talent is there and the facilities are there. What is needed is a vision and a structure for organizational partnership that is symbiotic, the kind of partnership between research universities and the private sector that has fueled innovation in almost every other sector.

Perhaps such a scheme already exists. If so, it needs better PR.

Visit Linda at Creative Infrastructure for more.

In the background: A rainy night in New York City in late spring. In the foreground: a live stream broadcast of Thais Flaitt’s Portuguese translation of my play The Way of Water from Cia de M.A.T.I.L.D.E University in Sao Paolo, Brasil. Four professional actors are seated on folding chairs at simple table with microphones in front of them and scripts in their hands. A voice, unseen by the camera, reads stage directions. For two hours, I am immersed in the world of my play, listening to the forceful, impassioned, precise line readings of a cast I have never met diving headlong into this new translation for viewers somewhere in cyberspace who may tune in or will tune in later (the broadcast is now archived here). The generosity of these performers is wondrous to behold. Their choices, bold and immediate, surprise me, and re-awaken me to the text, despite the fact that they are reading what is now an old draft of the play in progress, and that I don’t understand Portuguese, save for a few words here and there. Another actor in New York City emails me during the broadcast. He has just been in a reading of the play here in the city and remarks how he can follow along where the Brazilian actors are in the script, despite his inability to understand Portuguese. We chat a bit as we watch and listen. We let the language envelope us in its rhythms and follow the cadences, sometimes gentle, sometimes brusque, as the actors discover the play in front of our ‘virtual’ eyes. Thoughts of presence rise up as the rain beats upon the windowpane – the presence of performance, of text, of the materiality of language and the somatic qualities that convey meaning across translation.

In midst of a theatre career spent traveling between many borders – liminal, cultural, virtual, disciplinary and physical – as both playwright and translator and editor and activist, the sonorous call of witnessing work live in translation should seem, I suppose, second nature. Yet, on this rainy night, as I click the volume upwards on the speakers of my laptop so I can better hear the Portuguese translation and follow the emotional map the actors are charting with their encounter with the text, I am newly marveled by the humbling sight and sounds that emanate across the miles that separate me from these actors in a room in Sao Paolo. The fact that they reading a play set in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill and playing American characters makes this trans-cultural exchange – a natural part of a translation process – even more radiantly present to me as the piece’s originating artist.

Translator Flaitt is familiar with my work. A doctoral student in theatre at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, she has played a character in my play Alchemy of Desire/Dead-Man’s Blues as part of a staging of the play for the Great Plains Theatre Conference, and she also played the character of Rosalie in a reading of this same play in its original English language version in a reading at UNO directed a few weeks earlier by Professor Cindy Phaneuf. Flaitt’s desire to translate my play came about through a quick flurry of emails with a Brazilian colleague who teaches in Buckingham, UK who was directing a production of my English language translation of Federico Garcia Lorca’s The Public and who wanted to do a reading of The Way of Water in Rio de Janeiro as part of the NoPassport theatre alliance international scheme of readings of the play in April and May 2012 to mark the two-year anniversary of the oil spill and to raise awareness to the ongoing health and environmental issues. The concentric layers and levels of translation in which we were all immersed as practitioners and scholars during the email correspondence were humorous, spirited and engaging. Only in the era of globalization could such an exchange occur! Flaitt offered to translate my play for the Rio de Janeiro reading that the UK/Brazilian colleague wanted to make happen, and in turn, suggested contacts in Sao Paolo who might be interested in taking the play on.

In the spirit of the reading scheme for The Way of Water, which by this point, had already received readings in Pretoria, South Africa, Aberystwyth in Wales and Waterloo in Canada as well as, closer to home, in Austin, Ithaca, Minneapolis, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, San Diego, Tampa, Waterford, Los Angeles and more, the possibility of furthering this grass-roots endeavor with a live stream broadcast of a brand new translation of a work in progress seemed a strange and beautiful gesture toward the kind of open-minded inclusiveness from which the scheme had sprung. I said “yes,” and trusted Flaitt with the text, as the clock ticked away in a few weeks time for a reading in Rio de Janeiro and later in Sao Paolo.

Reports via email from the Rio de Janeiro reading came in a day after its presentation. Dialogue around the table had been focused on the issues the play raises regarding the long-term environmental damage to the US Gulf region in the wake of the disaster and the toxic legacy on human health as well. Discussion also focused on use of Sao Paolo slang in the translation, which seemed unusual to actors in Rio de Janeiro. My translator and I sifted through the reports along with my dramaturgy team (Heather Helinsky and R. Alex Davis), as we imagined what the reading had sounded like in Rio. No audio recording had been made available as of yet.

Whilst conversation about the play’s Portuguese translation rose to the surface, another report came in via email from the presentation in Tasmania, Australia, where the play had been presented accent-adapted and US food and occasional geographic references in the text had been substituted for those that would resonate with the Tasmanian actors and audience. The play, coincidentally, contains a running narrative thread wherein one of the four central characters dreams of going to Australia. The fact that the play was being read in the country almost seemed too good to be true: as if it the inner realization of the characters’ consciousness was suddenly coming true to life!

Swirling about the constant theme, by now, of translation and how the play was being, in effect, figuratively translated, but also emotionally, spatially and locally translated to other venues and cities and towns across the US and abroad, was the theme of presence. How does a play that deals with the tangible presence of disaster as well as its intangible forces present itself in a reading process? How is a play that is so deeply rooted in the sensual lives and behavior of its characters battling illness, economic disparity and their own rage and melancholy against the conditions into which man-made damage have placed them become palpably present in the slippery and watery world of reading aloud? How does a play set in the US South speak to an audience in Sao Paolo or one in Tasmania?

*

The volume on the laptop speakers goes in and out, as the live-stream broadcast occasionally freezes on my screen. Flaitt has been working on the translation and emails me that the experience of hearing it out loud miles away in Omaha is as thrilling for her as it is for me to hear it in New York City. Chilly spring has met Omaha as well, and we trade notes about the weather while the actors in Sao Paolo sweat through the play’s emotional arcs, giving it its due, even at a first read, albeit one happening in the public eye.

I go to bed that night with the sound of Portuguese in my ears and with the sadness that often accompanies the end of a reading. The quick rush to hear the play, the wild, beautiful, vulnerable connection with actors, and then the words “end of play” are uttered and it is all gone. On the screen for the broadcast the table is now empty and another reading of another play perhaps is waiting to begin. Yet, the presence of those four actors – Carlos Gimenez, Maura Hayas, Marcos Horta, Malu Salotti – remains very much in mind, as I think about what it would be like to be in a practice hall with them, to actually begin a process, and to take those initial bold impulses in their first reading and discover the origin for those impulses and the manner in which they can be re-translated into the physical life of the play.

The following morning my inbox contains several messages from the actors in Brasil and from translator Flaitt. There is genuine affection across the cybernetic lines of communication. We chat about these four characters, about the way the play shifts from the poetic to the rough in its language quite readily, and how the reality of the lives of the people depicted in the play hit home, despite Sao Paolo’s less immediately conscious relationship to the 2010 BP oil spill. We speak a bit about how the lay has resonated in the readings it has sustained in other venues in other cities and towns. I send Flaitt and Carlos Gimenez, the actor who played the lead role of Jimmy, and who was responsible for putting the reading together in Sao Paolo, the current draft of the script. We all remark about how we are in the middle of a process – as actor, translator and playwright, respectively- and how vulnerable we all feel and yet how grateful too for having taken the leap to work with each other, in at least Gimenez and his fellow actors’ case, sight unseen. Warmth radiates from the messages, staving off the last remnants of the previous day’s rain.

A colleague posts on Facebook about how she wants to send me a video of the rain in her neighborhood – the clearly toxic rain that she feels as she walks through it. She says it reminds her of my play. I sort through other messages, other tasks, and click again on the archived link for the Sao Paolo reading. I yearn to listen again to the play in Portuguese. Something about listening to it in another language frees me to think about how present the play and these characters, after two years of research, have been in my life, and how the decision to take action and implement an international reading scheme for it out of outrage, deep activism and compassion for the people and situation in the US Gulf region (one that affects us all) – an act of intervention, applied theatre, grass-roots activism – has yielded and continues to yield, as the scheme is still in motion, thoughts about the ineffable beauty of theatre-making, the mad faith one need have to even do this crazy thing in life, and the audacity it takes to make play.
I wonder at how truly miraculous it seems to receive a text message from a colleague in Wales whom I’ve never met who has just read the play through the recommendation of another colleague and has decided to text me to express his profound connection to the material. The presence of the play itself in the imagination of another practitioner, another reader, has suddenly taken shape. Surely this happens all the time, I think. That’s how many of us come to plays in the first place. On the page. And yet, the wonder remains at how presence can make itself manifest, at how language and languages (theatrical, emotional, spiritual) can translate across many waters in a mysterious chain of shared passion, solidarity, and humility.

A friend remarks after hearing the play at one of the US venues that it is “fragile,” and that it is also about the fragility of human lives and an eco-system torn apart. Her remark makes me think about the fragility, of course, of human experience, and about theatre-making itself, which demands so much of all of us in the field, and yet whose rewards are often unseen and tied to, inevitably, unless one is extraordinarily blessed and lucky, by financial strain, personal sacrifice and loneliness. Dreaming up a play, even one inspired by life, is a mighty fragile thing, and its enactment, even in a reading, is one too. The actors in Sao Paolo who made their way through a new translation of a new play were utterly exposed before the relentless eye of a camera to the momentary betrayal of an impulse, a misread or misunderstood line, and to the presence of those of us who were watching them in the moment or would watch in future in the aftermath of live-ness.

How present are we in our theatre when we step into a practice hall and begin rehearsal? How present is the dreamt of rehearsal in the mind’s eye during a reading? How do we even, as practitioners, re-imagine that first day when we were born into the theatre?

In a week’s time, The Way of Water will sustain readings in London, Berlin and Glasgow. Different accents. Different bodies. Different venues. All of them meeting the same text, while I ready for other presentations in New York City and Chicago later this month and briefly into the next. I am eager to learn how the nexus of artists that have bravely come together to make all of this happen – in and out of many translations and in solidarity with the belief in a sustainable present and future – will, if ever, re-meet again after the scheme, but not the play or the activism to which it is tied, is over.

A colleague drops me a line late in the afternoon, as the sun’s rays filter through the rainy, persistent clouds of a strangely cool spring. He says he wants to have the play heard in Oslo. Maybe sometime in the fall. I write back “Sure,” while I dream about what kind of presence the play will have there, and how the currents of this Water, which began in the glimmer of an imagination connecting to the hard and soft earth and humid air of the US Gulf, will take shape.

Caridad Svich is a US playwright. Her play The Way of Water will be read at Rosemary Branch Theatre in London and English Theatre Berlin, respectively on May 13, 2012, and at Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York City on May 29th. It will be heard at Lookingglass Theatre in Chicago in June. For more information go here.

A lot has been said about the Guthrie’s season announcement, and probably a lot more will be. I want to focus on one part of it. But first, I want to say that while I don’t disagree with most of the criticism the Guthrie has worked hard over the last decade or so to foster –I’ve yet to hear anyone I’ve known from Minnesota stand up for Dowling—it should be clearly stated that the Guthrie is not alone.

That was on my mind as I read the transcript from this All Things Considered interview with Guthrie Artistic Director Joe Dowling.

There’s a lot in Dowling’s interview that can be dissected but this paragraph in particular, struck me as patently absurd.

“But I think diversity is a very big issue and I’m not certain that we’re all addressing it in a sort of responsible way. The question that’s risen specifically in regards to our season has been about women directors (Tom Crann: and playwrights). Let me address the playwrights first. We’re largely a classics theater – that’s what we do and I may be reading the wrong books but I find it difficult to see – because of social history in the 17th, 18th, 19th and indeed early 20th century – which are termed ‘classic plays’ – women playwrights emerged who would be able to fill large theaters.

“Now that’s changing and it’s changed quite dramatically in the last couple of years and there are now a lot more valuable women playwrights…”

It’s telling that Dowling responds to questions of diversity by primarily focusing on women, or that he doesn’t mention, the name of the “second of the Tarell Alvin pieces.” Or the playwright’s last name. (The Brothers Size and McCraney, respectively.) Even so, his argument about lacking plays, the idea that he can’t find any classic plays by women is ludicrous; there are centuries worth of great plays by men and women from across the globe.

There is no way any argument could be made that a classical theatre can’t find plays to broaden their season beyond exclusively white men–other than he didn’t bother to try.

I stopped and thought about it for a couple minutes. Two. I set a timer for one-hundred twenty seconds. I was curious to see if I could come up with a possible twelve play season, without consulting google or my bookshelf. Here’s what I came up with.

1. Of Śakuntalā… Kālidāsa
2. Dog in the Manger – Lope de Vega
3. Autumn in Han Palace – Ma Zhiyuan
4. De Monfort – Johanna Baillie
5. Las Hijas de Las Flores – Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda
6. Georgia Douglas Johnson’s one-act cycle
7. A Bold Stroke for a Wife – Susanna Centlivre
8. Rachel- Angela W. Grimke
9. A Solid Home – Elena Garro
10. Wine in the Wilderness – Alice Childress
11. Sacrifice – Rabindranath Tagore
12. Emperor of the Moon – Aphra Behn

Now, upon greater reflection, I very well might change some of these plays in a hypothetical season. I don’t expect everyone to know the plays I do. In addition to curating our annual Alcyone Festival, I admittedly have a very different reading list than most. However, I do expect anyone who runs a theatre to have a broad knowledge of classic works. And while salaries are often irrelevant to these types of conversation, I can’t help but mention that Joe Dowling is extraordinarily well compensated for running the Guthrie. At that level of stature and compensation, I do expect a broader knowledge than a general audience, or even most of the field. But that’s not the point.

The point is, I spent one-hundred twenty seconds and came up with twelve plays, none of which are by white dudes. (Okay, maybe one, depending on how you view de Vega.) Surely over the course of season planning Dowling could find one, if he tried. And if he’s not trying, why is he running a classical theatre?

I get it. Taxes are a necessary part of civic life. But what some of our civic officials don’t seem to always get is that taxes don’t always guarantee the revenue they’re hoping to make.

Where is all this coming from?

Well, as of Friday afternoon an urgent call went out to California theatre artists.

URGENT: Sales tax to be imposed on theatre ticket sales MONDAY!

California Arts Advocates has just learned that a bill is going before the California legislature on Monday that will impose a sales tax on tickets to live theatre productions.

This bill does not include a sales tax on any other forms of entertainment, including opera, concerts or sporting events. (emphasis mine)

That’s right. A sales tax on theatre tickets.

A Civic Parable

Let me tell you a story about Oakland. Interestingly I heard this story while I was in Texas listening to NPR (I don’t listen to the radio unless I’m in a car and living in San Francisco has meant existing sans car so…). The story goes something like this: Oakland officials wanted to increase their revenue and saw that people were coming to downtown Oakland for evening dinner, shopping, etc. And since parking meters stop charging after 6pm the officials thought they’d extend that time a few more hours.

The math makes sense. More time charging for parking equals more money coming in, right?

Wrong.

Here’s the thing. People aren’t pure math. They adjust. Especially when it comes to their pocketbook.

So what happened? People didn’t want to pay for parking in the evening. Fewer people visited downtown Oakland for evening dinner, shopping, etc. The city didn’t see the increased revenue they hoped for and the local businesses…well, they saw their business drop 30% due to the new parking meter hours.

So there you have it. Math in the real world doesn’t always add up. And in the end the parking meter debacle harmed local businesses.

I think of this story whenever I hear about the toll on the Golden Gate Bridge going up. Yes, people have to cross it to go to work, etc. But guess what. They adjust. They carpool. They take the bus. They get a job that doesn’t require commuting over the bridge.

Increasing tolls or taxes won’t always lead to the results you think it will.

California Assembly Bill 2540

Now we come to California Assembly Member Mike Gatto who’s introduced a bill that would tax theatre tickets. The Committee for Revenue and Taxation will be voting on said bill this Monday April 23rd.

I wonder if Assembly Member Gatto actually understands the potential impact a sales tax on theatre tickets would have. How it would impact jobs, the economy, opportunities for youth and communities.

So, let’s try and spell it out a bit. And you’ll have to forgive me, I’m going to be speaking in generalizations as I’m writing this blog post on a super quick turn around (Friday night) and the voting takes place Monday. Meaning, I will try to update this post later with stats and links to back up what I’m about to claim. (Help is welcome.)

Art Jobs are Jobs. Theatres employ full-time employees, part-time employees and contract employees. These individuals include playwrights, actors, directors, scenic designers, lighting designers, sound designers, stage managers, administrators and many more. These are the jobs that are at risk. Because if a theatre sees a drop in attendance (remember, their patrons will adjust to the sales tax and that may mean they go to fewer plays), then how will these nonprofits deal with the loss in income? Will they have to lay off employees? Will they produce fewer plays which mean fewer jobs for all those artists who are hired for a production?

Theatres are Nonprofits. If you’ve gone to see a play recently you’ve probably heard an actor at the end of the performance remind the audience that even if they sell every seat in the house, it doesn’t cover the cost of the production. Theatres rely on grants and individual donations (neither of which are guaranteed) to cover the remaining balance. So how will a sales tax affect these organizations? Will they have to increase ticket prices and run the risk of alienating their audience? Will they be forced to offer fewer discount tickets to groups like Up Next—a Bay Area teen-led organization that negotiates Rush ticket prices for teens? Will they have to abandon new play initiatives that support playwrights?

We Are Being Heard, But Is It Enough?

The good news is that thanks to theatre artists and theatre supporters who quickly contacted the Committee for Revenue and Taxation, Assembly Member Gatto’s staff has assured the California Advocates for the arts that “they will work to amend AB 2540 to exclude non-profits.”

But is this enough?

Here’s where my own expertise is lacking (and again, anyone with more knowledge is welcome to chime in down in the comments). But I wonder, are all the theatres I know, say here in the Bay Area, nonprofits? Do all of them have 501 (c) 3 status? I’m thinking specifically about the new indie theatres created by young up-and-coming theatre artists. What will happen to these theatres? And in my experience these indie theatre are the ones who are doing a lot more new work, providing new theatre artists (actors, playwrights directors and designers) their first breaks and opportunities.

Theatre Artists of California Unite

To ensure that the Committee for Revenue and Taxation amends AB2540 to exclude nonprofit theatre it’s imperative that California theatre artists and theatre supporters continue to voice their opposition to a theatre ticket sales tax.

How can you do that?

1. Connect to resources. I recommend checking out this blog post written by Cindy Marie Jenkins. Not only does she provide links to contact information for the entire Committee for Revenue and Taxation, she even has a sample language for an email which you can personalize and send to Assembly Member Mike Gatto and the rest of the committee. Or checkout the form Arts for LA has put together which ensures your messages reaches the appropriate Assembly Member.
2. Contact Assembly Member Mike Gatto and the Committee for Revenue and Taxation. Call them. Send them an email. Let them know that a theatre ticket sales tax would harm theatres and the many people whose livelihood is connected to theatre.
3. Spread the word. Use your social network to get more people to come out in opposition to a theatre ticket sales tax. Tweet about it. Mention it on Facebook.

Of course we should all see this as a wake up call of sorts. We should recognize that it’s important to nurture an on-going conversation with our representatives about the value of the arts—whether in regards to the jobs the arts supports in our economy or the overall benefit to the communities we work in.

And for a good example of communicating the value of the arts, check out this video produced by the Teen Council of Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s School of Theatre.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So join me and many other California theatre artists out there who are speaking up for theatre. And remember that this isn’t just a one-off call to action, we all need to develop ways to nurture an on-going dialogue with policymakers both at a local, state and national levels.

There is a lot of conversation within the #2amt community about new models for making art, never being dark, and working collaboratively.  Progress Lab in Vancouver is a prime example of all of these things done well.

Progress Lab 1422 is home to four of Vancouver’s most interesting companies – Electric Company, Boca Del Lupo, Neworld Theatre & Rumble Productions.  It used to be a garment factory, but now it has a new life as a rehearsal and development hub.

Vancouver, like any city with a thriving cultural base, has been faced with rising real estate costs and struggles to find accessible, affordable rehearsal and office spaces.  In order to combat those problems, these four companies decided to pool their resources and what they’ve created is a fantastic space and a real bright spot in the Vancouver theatre community.

About 10 years ago the companies began talking about what a shared space would look like. Five years ago they got serious about it and created a business plan that enabled them to get funding from four different granting agencies and foundations. The space has been open since October 2009.

The view of the studio from the entrance, looking south west.

PL1422 now houses four company offices – each office as unique as the company it houses – as well as a 3,500 square foot rehearsal studio with 20′ ceilings, a lighting grid, and a sprung floor.  Companies are able to begin integrating their tech right in the rehearsal room. In addition to the studio & offices there is a large kitchen, a meeting room (which doubles as a film screening room), a fittings room, storage space and a power tools friendly area.

Each company gets an equal number of studio weeks. If they don’t need their weeks they rent the space out to other companies.

Progress Lab has become an important part of the Vancouver Theatre ecosystem. My first exposure to it was for a wake. I’ve since attended as an audience member for Rumble Productions Community Dinner which re-invented dinner theatre as newcomers to Canada were paired with theatre artists to create a show that was a mix of a cooking show, biography, & dinner party. After the performance part of the evening the audience shared a meal with the performers. I’ve also stage managed a pair of events in the venue – a staged reading of Homegrown in support of SummerWorks, and the most recent Wrecking Ball political cabaret event.

For the past two weeks I have had the privilege of rehearsing in the studio for an upcoming production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot.  I cannot tell you what a gift it is in this city full of bizarre rehearsal spaces to be able to work in a clean space with a sound system and where I can leave the furniture set up at the end of the day and trust it to be where it was left. I have rehearsed in spaces with no overhead lighting, so when it started to get dark we had to find a bunch of lamps to plug in. I’ve rehearsed in spaces that were way too small for the actual stage and we would have to explain to the cast that actually they had another six feet upstage, we just didn’t have room to put it.  I’ve rehearsed in storage rooms with the random furniture pushed off to the side and stacked on top of itself so that we could rehearse. I’ve ended rehearsals four hours early because a rehearsal room that shares a wall with a working machine shop is not a workable space to rehearse an intimate two-hander. It is so wonderful to be in a place that feels like theatre has a home there, rather than being an intruder into another space. This is a space I can’t wait to go back to.

I’ve been thinking more and more about my responsibility as an artist. And just typing that feels a little weird—the idea that artists have responsibilities other than to their art. But our work does more than just sit there in our heads. It wanders out of our skulls and into the heads of other people, influencing them in ways that we can’t predict, but should at least be mindful of.

Recently, Forum Theater hosted a Female Voices symposium to talk about the question of whether there is a female dramaturgy and voice and about the general dearth of female artists working in theatre today. One of the main topics was whether we as a society have a predilection for stories told in a male voice and the traditional dramatic structure—something that may or may not have been learned through a few millennia of living in a patriarchy. (You want some smart thoughts on this, check out playwright Rebecca Gingrich-Jones’ blog)

One interesting question that arose from this was whose responsibility is it to address this disparity? Is it the artistic director who’s picking the season; the theatre’s board who’s helping shape the mission of the theatre; the audience members who vote with their ticket money what stories are told on stage?

And is it theatre’s job to do this at all. If it is indeed a big-picture problem—something that permeates all of society—should solutions be looked for elsewhere (by voting Democrat in Virginia, for example)? That was one point of view offered up: that what we see in our art is a reflection of the larger society and that art cannot always solve society’s problems.

What wasn’t said—at least not clearly—is that maybe it’s all our responsibility. Everyone working in the arts. And not just for reasons of altruism or gender politics, but because it’s our job.

Art’s responsibility is to challenge our current values and ways of thinking. If we as an audience and as artists value male stories or male voices more than women’s, we have a responsibility to ask ourselves why that is and present art that confronts those values.

And that responsibility extends to male playwrights, as well.

My career as a playwright has led me to spend more and more time telling stories with women at the center. And admittedly I’m hypersensitive to the issue (which is neither boasting nor an apology, it just is), but I see so many plays where the female characters are obviously there only to serve the arc of a male lead.

One reaction I’ve heard from playwrights is: This is the story that I need to tell; this is my voice. Do I need to bow to these cultural factors or compromise my story for the sake of equality?

Do you need to bow to it? No. Do you need to recognize it? Yes.

Because if you’re writing a world where women are flat, overshadowed by men, and subservient to men’s stories, your audience is going to see and internalize that. Your ideas are going to crawl into their heads and influence them.

They’re going to see that you’ve created a world where women don’t really matter to the story and, whether or not the play is about gender, they’re going to walk away with that world in their heads.

And with some plays, I have no idea how to fix this. I recently worked on a show where every line and action of the female characters in the play revolved around the male protagonist. But because the play is very good and very solid, I don’t know what could be done to address the problem, except hope the playwright is aware of it and made his choices consciously.

I think that kind of awareness in storytelling is important. At least I hope to have it when it comes to mine. To be aware of my limitations, aware of my prejudices, and aware of the lenses I see the world through. And if I’m writing characters outside my own experience, I hope to do the due diligence it takes not to f@#k them up.

Self-awareness followed by mindfulness. It’s certainly not a complete answer to how we address disparity on stage, but it’s a start. At least for me.

And it’s not the be-all and end-all of my responsibility as an artist, but I think it’s one important part of it.

So you’re at the Humana Festival of New American Plays and you’ve got a few minutes. You’ve seen the art, you’ve looked at the gifts, you’ve had a bourbon. Maybe you’re in the mood to play a game. Maybe you’re looking for something to engage audiences at your own theatre company.

Take the 2amt challenge. We did it last year & we’re doing it again. (We thought about calling it “The Humana Games,” but that sounds like playwrights fighting to the death in a dystopian future.)

First, download the SCVNGR app on your smartphone. Don’t worry, it’s free.

Sign in and create an account if you don’t already have one. Then, let it locate you at Actors Theatre of Louisville. You’ll see a list of four simple tasks. These are simple things like taking a picture of playwrights, checking in, etc.

One simple one: find me, Gwydion Suilebhan and/or Stephen Spotswood and take a picture with us. Find us one at a time, find us together, you can rack up points with each picture. An extra bonus: find someone else who’s part of the 2amt conversation, take their picture and surprise us.

Each of these tasks is simple, part of a “game layer” on top of the real world, as the SCVNGR folks like to say. For the theatre world, it’s a fun way to engage your audience with more specific tasks and challenges themed to your current productions or festivals. It’s also a way to drive patrons into your sponsors’ places of business–one of the tasks this year will take you across the street to the Galt House hotel for a 2amt meetup. Check in to the meetup & get points, it’s that simple.

Ideally, audiences would engage not just with the challenges and the production but with the sponsors’ business as well. Of course, tasks at sponsors’ locations can be more involved if you’d like, we’re keeping it simple this time for demonstration purposes.

Best of all, this game layer can be activated at any time–you can create “treks” filled with challenges ahead of time and let audiences complete them as their schedule permits. Our game has no set limit of points, but you can set a limit and/or goal if you want. Use challenges & treks to build awareness for upcoming shows. You can make it a real live contest, first person to X number of points wins two tickets to the next production, or the tenth person, fiftieth, etc.

Which reminds me. First person to 15 points gets a drink on me. And the grand prize winner might get some ATL swag…

See you this weekend at the Humana Festival!

photo by Tadson Bussey, used under a Creative Commons license

Full Disclosure: I worked at Actors Theatre of Louisville for over 7 years. I am currently a board member with Le Petomane Theater Ensemble. Over the years I have held internships at Arena Stage, New World Theater, Trinity Repertory Company and Amherst College Theater & Dance Department. This article in no way officially represents any of those organizations, even though it is informed by my experiences with each. And I don’t claim to have the answers to these issues.

There has been a lot of talk in recent years surrounding the development and flurry of activity on local deal sites like Group On, Living Social and Try It Local (among others). This is not about those sites, at least not really.

I saw a link on Twitter about Cash Mobs (via @andmegansaid) – the name and then the content caught my attention and my brain would not stop. Especially since the moment I re-teweeted this link, three people I know immediately picked up on it (@GJMaupin, @michellej and @dloehr) And thought it was a phenomenal idea for Louisville. And one of them volunteered to coordinate.

Then I got a LinkedIn message about it from someone who was already on it in terms of organizing for Louisville and asked if I was interested in being involved.

Then I mentioned it to a friend at The Paper, and they were interested in hearing what happens, and I suggested they cover it when it does.

Then one of the tweeps (@dloehr) asked me to write something for #2amt, which was exactly where my once-a-theatre-marketer-always-a-theatre-marketer brain was going.

You see, there’s a lot of talk about why the arts can’t get audiences, can’t bring in younger audiences, deep discount too much, give away the farm with Group On offers, etc. And on the fundraising side, there’s similar discussion about how those things impact donations.

But there’s not much talk about the fact that we already know a certain segment of theatre audiences can probably afford to pay more than they are already paying. How do we know this?

I’m not going to say this is Intuitively Obvious to the Casual Observer (favorite logic term learned from high school math teach Coach Brian Spicer). However, having absorbed a ton of sales data, survey and research statistics on theatre attendance, audience development and ticket sales, I would posit the following commonly held observations culled from said years of data (and would point you towards Americans for the Arts, the Doris Duke Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trust, Theatre Communications Group and smart people like Devon V. Smith):

A) Top predictors of theatre attendance are education and income.

B) Actual average ticket prices paid (i.e. if you average total revenue over total paid tickets sold) hover very low compared to median face prices. In most cases this occurs even when you exclude standard discount face prices such as student matinee tickets.

C) Most theatres (but not all) charge less per ticket for season tickets than they do for single tickets. In some scenarios, that price may be even less than the actual average ticket price paid. (Remember, that price is often lower than median face price.) So the people we often cite as being more engaged (season ticket holders) are paying less per ticket. Not necessarily bad, just an observation.

D) Season ticket holders skew at least slightly higher on income and education than single ticket buyers.

If these well-educated, high-income attendees can pay more, why don’t they? As many others have written and complained about, we have conditioned audiences to expect discounts. As fewer people have written, in recent years with budget constraints and staffing cuts plaguing the industry, quality has had some roller coasters. Correlation? Not for me to say.

So, and?

When you not only buy a discounted ticket to the theatre, but you buy it through a site like GroupOn, you are double-dinging the organization. Part of the money you pay (for what is already a large discount off the face price) goes to that arts organization, and part goes to the deal site.

Yes, the organizations who participate in these local deal sites know what they are getting into, just as they know what they are doing when they offer $10 tickets at the end of a run that is not selling and seats sit empty.

But, wouldn’t it be great if those who CAN afford to pay more, do so? On a regular basis?

I’m not saying that theatres should raise their ticket prices, exclude lower-prices or stop all discounting. There is something to be said for the service theatres provide to the community, which CANNOT be said if tickets are exclusively available to those with a college education and the income that goes with it.

I think there is a family of four who will stop going to see that family friendly show every year if the bottom level price or kids discounts go away.

I think there are at-risk kids who would never have a chance to experience theatre if it weren’t for grant programs and comp tickets. I have personally heard stories of the positive impact that the act of going to see a play with an involved teacher and classmates can have on a kid who has very little to be cheerful about.

And a theatre would be shooting themselves in the foot regarding continual audience development if they made it less likely for parents and teachers to introduce children to the theatre (and bring them back for return trips).

I think most theatres undervalue current and prospective audience members who do not have an advanced degree and are not at the top of the income bracket. Theatre is not some lofty, intellectual realm to be preserved for the elite. Theatre is one of the oldest forms of mass entertainment and you don’t have to have a fancy piece of paper or a big bank account to enjoy it.

I think a college student or typical 20-something with a job not at the top of the pay scale is more likely to give your show a try as an entertainment option if they can also afford dinner or drinks on the same night. And maybe groceries that week, too. Make it easy for them to realize that there is value in what you do, and they will pay full-price one day.

And lest my friends in development skewer me over a marketing/fundraising divide bonfire, yes, I think you should still ask those who attend the theatre for donations to support your operating budget. I’ve always been a big cheerleader for educating laypeople that theatre costs more than what you and others pay for tickets.

And I think if you are not already doing so, you should happily accept even $5 donations from those who are either too young to be at their top earning potential, or not in the highest income bracket. Look what Obama did with $5 donors.

However, if a theatre – especially a non-profit theatre that makes up less than half its operating revenues through ticket sales – values tickets in the best seats at $50 each, I think there are people who can probably afford that who should pay full price, instead of paying less.

The whole idea behind Cash Mobs, is that you can show support for the local businesses you love, by paying what you think their product is worth – the full price the business is asking.

I’m excited to see what Cash Mobs can do to support local businesses in Louisville. We’re a very proud city, so I think it will be successful. I’m also interested to see what Cash Mobs could do for the arts, as a statement of support by those who can afford to pay full price.

Because when you are fortunate enough to be able to pay full-price for something and do so in the face of daily deal sites, pay what you can and day of discounts, what you are really saying is:

I think this is important.

I think this has value.

I think this is worth paying “full-price.”

It’s March 27th again. A day stamped by UNESCO as World Theatre Day 50 years ago in that way that organizations will… slapping a name on a day as though that could make it special. It can’t of course. And every year there is a susurration of tuts and tsks from the keyboards of those around the world who think that such a day is ridiculous. And they’re right of course. But so is every holiday. Every Birth Day and Christmas Day and Arbor Day and Flag Day and Opening Day is no more or less special than any other day – save what we bring to it.

Theatremakers work hard for small tangible reward and highly variable intangible rewards. We fight for the scraps of municipal budgets that are literally too small to be full line items in municipal construction budgets. We work ridiculous hours, many at more than one job, to feed our energy into an art form that even its adherents mostly consider an anachronism.

And just like every other job that grinds us down, sometimes we need cake. Cake and some friends and a drink and a blessing for a slightly easier load tomorrow. That’s honestly what World Theatre Day has been for me. 4 years ago Rebecca Coleman asked an open question on Twitter as to who wanted in on making World Theatre Day a big ol’ international event. As I was saying just this evening, all of the best things happen to me when I don’t say no…

I met some of the most amazing people in those planning sessions. That year I directed a reading of 7 Jewish Children (that Ms. Churchill viewed herself via livesteam) and the relationships built there led to the plasma that eventually became #2amt.

Cake. Friends. And a slightly easier load tomorrow.

I can’t bring you all cake… though there will be cake here in Austin. Friends in the flesh I can’t promise either. But there’ll be plenty of folks around online all day, brothers and sisters who understand what you do, what you’re trying to do, what you hope to do, and are more than happy to cheer you along as you do it. If you don’t want to make a new friend? Call an old friend and tell stories of long ago. Record an I Am Theatre video (because you are), or just write up a theatre war story you love and share it with us all.  

For a lighter tomorrow, lord knows I can’t promise anything like it. But I offer you this wish for your next year:

I wish you work that you are proud of, done for people who can see the you in it.  I wish you moments of inspiration that wake you from a stone cold sleep with a need to share it. I wish you connections to people who inspire you and challenge you to become the you you told yourself you would be some day. I wish you the words, the color, the texture, the sounds, the movement that finally helps you say the things you’ve been needing to say, and the space to say it in.

And cake.

Happy World Theatre Day.
It’s your day.
Enjoy it.

As Adam Feldman pointed out this week on the Time Out New York site: “(Mike) Daisey acknowledged that he had erred in presenting his work—a hard-hitting look at the brutal Chinese labor conditions that underwrite our sleek electronic gizmos—on Ira Glass’s series because ‘the tools of theater are not the same as the tools of journalism.’”

Adam convened a panel of prominent artists and journalists to talk about veracity, ethics and artistic license in nonfiction-based or documentary theatre. The panel featured writer-director Steven Cosson of the Civilians (This Beautiful City), playwright-performers Jessica Blank (The Exonerated) and Taylor Mac (The Young Ladies of…), and critic-reporters Peter Marks (Washington Post) and Jason Zinoman (The New York Times).

Oskar Eustis, artistic director of the Public Theater, prefaced the panel with a short statement. You can read that statement here.

The panel took place Thursday night, March 22, 2012 at the Public Theater in New York, where Daisey’s “Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” just closed. We would like to thank the Public for their generous donation of the space. We would also like to thank John Kemp, Gabriel Bennett & Arielle Edwards of the Public Theatre for providing the audio.

Note: In the interest of full disclosure, for anyone at the event who wondered about the late start, it was due to Adam, the panelists and Mr. Eustis getting stuck in the elevator on their way up to the event. We don’t have audio of this, alas.

There are two kinds of light: the glow that illuminates and the glare that obscures.
— James Thurber

In the rush to parse statements and assign blame this weekend, it seems like we’re missing the point. This isn’t–or shouldn’t be–an attack on Mike Daisey’s art or his ability. What’s on the stage–and on the page, in this case–is a dynamic, compelling, electric piece of theatre. Download it and read it, or go see it if you’re near a production of it. If you want to produce it, use that Creative Commons license as creatively as Cody Daigle did and open your audience up to a larger conversation.

There’s been a lot of talk of “factual truth” and “theatrical truth” and even serving the “greater truth.” But shows like Lynn Nottage’s Ruined or Anna Deveare Smith’s monologues, pieces like The Exonerated or Embedded, the Civilians’ documentary work or Tectonic’s Laramie Project aren’t any less powerful for being theatrical retellings of interviews & stories. They embrace the tools of theatre to shine a light on reality, and their research can back up their work. No one took them for literal truth or journalistic fact, but the productions are able to point audiences toward further information and calls to action.

The problem here isn’t what’s on the stage in The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. It’s the context in which the show was placed even before appearing on This American Life.

“There wouldn’t be a scandal if we didn’t have the frame of the journalism, the frame of the theater. Context is everything.” — Mike Daisey

The audience was never given a chance to think of this as anything other than nonfiction. The program disclaimers at both Woolly Mammoth and the Public Theater are identical.

That one line prepares the audience to accept everything as nonfiction even though it’s being performed in a theatre. It’s boilerplate text, included at the performer’s request.

The post-show handouts further that impression.

“…a single voice telling a story of a single experience.”

Thanks to Alli Houseworth, we know what could happen if audience members got out without this handout.

Interviews, television appearances, an op-ed piece in the New York Times, criticizing news organizations for shoddy reporting, all of these elements worked together to create the context for the show as a true story. (Please note, I’m not even bringing This American Life into this.) Within that context, forget about the average audience member, I know plenty of experienced theatre people who couldn’t separate Mike Daisey from “Mike Daisey,” or what happened to him from what happened to “him.”

As audience members, we trust the theatre, we know what to expect. We know that magicians don’t really saw women in half, we understand that Roy Cohn wasn’t visited on his deathbed by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg. But when a theatre program says in no uncertain terms that “this is a work of nonfiction,” we’re going to take that at face value. When that idea is reinforced at every turn, we’re going to accept it. We have a reasonable expectation of what the word “nonfiction” means. Not implies. Means.

So where do we go from here? What of “documentary theatre”?

We don’t–and shouldn’t–need full time, on-staff fact checkers. But, to borrow a phrase from math class, you do need to “show your work.”

Do take notes, record what you can. Ironically enough, it’s very easy to use an iPhone to record interviews quickly and simply.

Do like Anna Deveare Smith and put your recordings online–true, they’re primarily for performers appearing in their own productions, but they do serve as proof of what’s transformed into the art. When I’ve done shows inspired by true stories, I’ve tried to put as much of the research material online as I can, either as embedded videos, links to articles and books, etc. This also makes it easier to point your audience to that information and provide a call to action, if that’s part of your goal.

Do use all the theatrical tools at your disposal, even if it means the art could be considered fiction.

Don’t be afraid of the label of fiction.

Don’t forget the reality of the issue at hand.

Don’t mislead the staff of the theatre–they have to maintain their credibility within their community after you leave.

Don’t get in the way of the story.

Don’t frame the work as something it’s not.

Context is everything.

______________________

Adam Feldman and Time Out New York are hosting a panel about truth in theatre this week. Participants include writer-director Steven Cosson of the Civilians, playwright-performers Jessica Blank (The Exonerated) and Taylor Mac (The Young Ladies of…), and critic-reporters Peter Marks (Washington Post) and Jason Zinoman (The New York Times). Act now if you want to see it in person. We’re working together to record the audio for release as a podcast. (Unfortunately, there can’t be a livestreamed video for this event.)

A quick roundup of posts and articles

Alli Houseworth on marketing Agony and marketing agony.

Jeremy Wechsler on not throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Seth Duerr on defending Daisey and the work itself.

Polly Carl on what cannot be undone.

Chris Klimek on forgiving Mike Daisey.

Howard Sherman on how Daisey failed theatre.

Aaron Bady on the Jimmy McNulty gambit.

Glenn Fleishman on the past.

Jason Zinoman on doing a disservice to the art.

Jack Shafer on answering difficult questions.

About a month ago, I approached a local theatre company with a project: “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.”

Mike Daisey had released the script into the world a few weeks before. I read it. I loved it. I really wanted to do it. And it seemed like a valuable project for our local audience: it was a show in the larger consciousness thanks to the “This American Life” episode in January, Steve Jobs and Apple resonated in any community these days, it was a chance to engage a piece that was taking an unusual route to theatres like ours, and it’s form – the evening-length monologue – isn’t seen often locally, so our audiences could experience something new.

We decided on a four-performance run as quickly as possible: opening night was set for March 17. Our thoughts: “Being current is part of the way we sell the show, so let’s stay as current as possible. Let’s open the thing before Daisey finished his run at the Public.” I’d perform it as a reading, the tech would be minimal, so we could compress the time from idea to opening without much worry.

And anyway, it was the script that was the event. We wanted people to focus on the script.

On March 16, the day before we opened, we got what we wanted. This American Life retracted their episode, citing fabrications in the script as a cause. The firestorm that ensued (that’s still churning on in some corners) is known – no need to detail it here – but while the large part of the theatre world was spinning on its broader implications for the theatre and journalism and ethics and the truth, we had a very different problem.

What in the hell are we going to do with our show?

I figured we had three options:

1. Ignore it. Do the show as written and not address the controversy about the veracity of the text.

2. Acknowledge the controversy in the program or in a short curtain speech, but continue to do the show as written.

3. Respond.

We chose to respond. Anything else felt dishonest to us (particularly to me, because I was going to have to perform the thing). If we were going to be faithful to the truth-telling spirit that pervades the show itself, and the spirit of freedom that Mike offered theatre companies and artists when he released the thing and the journalistic “this thing is happening, right now!” quality of the show’s invention, we’d have to respond.

So, we did two things. First, we compressed “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” into a single act, one which focuses the piece on Mike’s trip to China, his visits to the factories and meetings with workers and union members. And we opened that with a short preface about the piece’s history, This American Life’s retraction and the controversy that was occurring around that retraction.

Then we crafted a new second half, one that would unpack the controversy surrounding the work the audience just heard. The second half culled together bits and pieces of the reporting that sprang up in the wake of the retraction, the responses from theatre companies supporting him, Daisey’s response himself and other sources. And we closed the show with a short epilogue that I wrote tying up the piece.

We hoped this would allow audiences to hear Daisey’s work for what it is – a powerful and beautifully written piece of theatre – and for what it isn’t – a journalistically true piece of theatre. And we hoped it would do this without judgment. Because we didn’t want to say, “Mike was wrong! Mike was right! The piece is bad! The piece is good!” We wanted to say, “This is his story. This is the counter story. Somewhere in this is the truth. Let’s talk about it.”

And people did. At both shows, the lobby of our 50-seat house was host to an impromptu discussion circle: the audience gathered, with us, to simply talk through the issues, their responses, their feelings. They did this before the show. During intermission. And after the show.

We have two more shows this weekend. And the show will continue to evolve as the week goes on, reflecting whatever happens between now and Saturday. We’ve talked a lot in the last few days about how this feels like a wonderful opportunity to do something theatre doesn’t often do: respond to breaking news in front of an audience. It’s been an exciting experience.

Here’s a chunk of the epilogue that I wrote the night before we opened, just hours after the controversy broke. It’s an immediate response to the accusations and an attempt to tie up the complicated issues for an audience.

For what it’s worth…

____________________

“The way in which a thing is made is part of the design itself.”

There’s more to “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” that you haven’t heard, things that (in light of the doubts cast on the veracity of the material at the show’s heart) didn’t feel right performing. Things that poked fun at Steve Jobs and our technological world, things that were funny on Thursday, wonderful on Thursday, but wrong yesterday, wrong today.

And I think about the truth. How it shifts beneath our feet, how it twists and bends, how it distorts and folds in on itself, how the truth is less sturdy than we think, how the truth is a lot like the ground beneath our feet – we walk on it every day and it seems unchanging and certain, but deep down, in the bones of it, under everything surface, it’s always moving, imperceptibly shifting, reorganizing itself.

And I think about the theatre. The fiction of it, the construct we all agree to when we walk in the door – I’m here, you’re there, we pretend for a few hours that it’s all real – then we let it all go, and what was real is now artifice, memory. But how that fiction, the theatre fiction, done well, FEELS like the truth — more truth, really, than regular truth, a truth that can find its way into the deepest part of who we are and shake us at our core. How, in the artifice, we can reach something more profound than fact, something without a name, something we only KNOW, the way we know love when we see it, grief when we feel it, joy when it sits beside us.

And I think about how I felt when I first downloaded the text of this show and read it, sitting at my kitchen counter, overcome by the power of what I was reading, the elegance of it, reading parts of it out loud and savoring what it felt like to SAY something so gut-punchingly delicious to say, feeling this art form I love reach into my stomach and set an unspeakable truth there, thinking to myself, “wow, I MUST do this show.” How I felt that Daisey’s story could be my story, how I felt compelled to pass along this story in the medium I love, how his call to action set me to action.

And I think about Mike Daisey, creating this thing that must have sprung off the page and hit him square between the eyes like a lightning bolt of fucking goodness, knowing that it was GOOD, that it would do the thing that theatre’s supposed to do to, that it WORKED, that it spoke from a place of passion, conviction, it spoke from his Truth.

How, in front of his Mac, he was making choices that playwrights make, choosing to fudge this detail here, choosing to tell this truth in a different way, choosing to move the facts to make the play tighter, better, more effective for the audience, organizing the reality of the world into a Story, a beautiful Story that does what real life cannot, a Story that works in the Theatre, a story that might change people’s minds, change people’s hearts.

How he decided that the theatre truth was more important than the factual truth.

“The way in which a thing is made is a part of the design itself.”

____________________

Note: This post has been edited to correct attribution. This American Life is produced by Chicago Public Radio and PRI: Public Radio International, not National Public Radio.

Here in DC, it’s season roll-out time. The major theatres are sending out press releases listing the plays they’ll be tackling in their 2012-13 season, making each seem like a precious gem that audiences would be fools to miss.

Recently, after two major theatres went public with their season and I was hard-pressed to find anything exciting about either, I started thinking about how safe so many of these shows seemed. And I don’t just mean safe in the sense that they’re audience-friendly. There were a few shows on that list that I’m sure the public relations department will have to bend over backwards to market. But safe in the sense that the theatre was not artistically challenged in tackling them.

As an audience member and as an artist, I don’t like things to be too easy. Sitting in the dark, watching a play that lays out everything point-by-point and leaves nothing up to the audience to figure out (either plot-wise or thematically), I wander off in my head, sometimes for whole scenes at a time. Sometimes I don’t wander back.

Same with creating new work. I’ll sit down, get 30 pages into it, and then just fizzle. Not because I don’t know what happens. Not because it’s not a good idea. But because there’s nothing in it to challenge me.

Again and again, I’ve found that I get the biggest satisfaction, and grow the most artistically, when I attempt something that is well outside of my wheelhouse. I doubt if this is an uncommon feeling, and I don’t think it’s one that should be limited to individual artists.

The reason I found these theatres’ seasons so unappealing was that none of the plays on the docket seemed like a real challenge. Sure there might be a challenge to get audiences in seats, but that’s a money challenge. And non-profit theatres should be in the business of making great art, not great money.

I would love it if, even if it’s just for one show a season, every theatre company in this city would make a concerted attempt to try punching above its weight class.

What does this odd sports metaphor mean, you ask?

I want theatres to take on a project that is above and beyond what they know they’re capable of. I don’t mean just “pushing the envelope” or “going outside their comfort zone.” Both of those phrases suggest that they can always pull back. That they’re just a few tweaks away from being safe and sound and on familiar ground. I want theatres to take on a project where they honestly don’t know if they’ll succeed.

And, yes, I know there are economic realities to think of. But a) punching above your weight class does not necessarily mean spending more money, and b) there has got to be a pay-off for doing safe shows the rest of the season. Doing that musical in the fall slot has got to give you leeway somewhere else to do something artistically daring. And doing a show that audiences might not like IS NOT ARTISTICALLY DARING.

And I know this is easier to say than do. Especially for larger theatres. Small theatre companies do this kind of thing without thinking. They have less to lose and they’re so small that just about everything they want to do is above their weight class.

But how do you know what you’re capable of unless you try. And how long will you continue to create great art without pushing yourself, without taking those chances, without putting something on your season that says “We have no idea if we’re up to this challenge. But we think it’s worth finding out.”

Biodiversity is the practice of cultivating and sustaining a broad array of species in a given ecosystem. The opposite is monoculture. Monoculture is the practice of limiting species in a given ecosystem.

Agriculturalists and eco-warriors promote biodiversity because they have found (and history has proven, see: Potato famine) the prevalence of a multitude of species of plants in a given ecosystem promotes natural systems of sustainability. Also, biodiversity offers more crop choices and finally, a vibrant and diverse ecosystem stands a greater chance to survive and recover in the wake of major disasters.

Why does this matter?

Recently, I have seen and heard lots of rumblings about what kind of work theatre companies should be producing. In some lamentations, folks have railed against companies that do Shakespeare. Sometimes people talk about how farces are stupid and meaningless. I’ve heard others complain that musicals suck and shouldn’t be produced. Some comments are as sweeping as “Everything a theatre produces should be a world premier.” While others will say that narrative based story driven theatre is for the birds. I’ve heard folks say theatre should only be about audience experience and interaction and still others think interaction is boring and intrusive (read: not engaging). I even heard one person say, “If I ever see another couch in a play… I’ll kill someone.” Dramatic and hyperbolic. And yet the thing that unites all these cries out against every kind of theatre is that everyone seems to believe they will (or have) discover(ed) some brand of theatre that will save the art, making it more resonant and vital, returning audiences to the live theatre, crushing film and television and blah blah blah. Often these grievances and corresponding solutions are tied (somehow) to solving the financial crisis we face.

I call bullshit.

I think it is great so many people have so many opinions about what they want to see (and make)… but to believe that classics are killing our theatres, that musicals are ruining artistic integrity, that any one kind of theatre is better than any other kind – is just stupid. It’s so, so, so untrue and just plain stupid.

The fact is the more kinds of theatre there are the better it is for all of us. Sure, we may be in competition in some ways. But let’s be honest, we’re on the same team. Not liking a form of theatre to the point you wish it would stop being made… that’s not critical, it’s ignorant. There is a difference. You don’t have to like a form of theatre in order for it to be important in a community. If you’re writing off a form you are writing off the audience members that are moved by that form.

Another important phenomenon overlooked is the idea exposure to the classics is often the gateway drug into the harder stuff.  Maybe as a theatre artist, or an avid theatre critic, you’re tired of seeing the classics, so it makes sense for you to want to push boundaries or in the case of the critic to see new material. I get that. And yes there are theatregoers tired of the same old stuff as well. But those folks likely started their journey in the theatre by being introduced to a classic of some kind. Or in some cases, I imagine the opposite is true. In any case, an introduction to a play or performance is an introduction to the world of theatre. Not one person knows enough about this world and the nuances of individuals to say that any form of theatre is better or worse at making an impact on another person.

We all do better when the art is doing well. We should encourage people to go the theatre, no matter what the form. The theatre world is an ecosystem. Only by promoting widely diverse forms in our communities do we protect that ecosystem.

Let’s cultivate our art by celebrating it all inclusively.

In January 2012, multi-disciplinary theatre collective Waterwell collaborated with the glam-punk band Bambï to create GOODBAR, a rock concert based on the book Looking for Mr. Goodbar, which played in Under the Radar at the Public Theater. I had the pleasure of personally rocking out with the show, and after, I spoke with director Arian Moayed about the development and future of the show.

James Carter: Looking for Mr. Goodbar is a product of the 70s, so it makes sense a glam punk band like Bambï would create a concept album inspired by it. How did you go about creating this piece and did it differ from other musical works Waterwell’s previously done, like The/King/Operetta and #9?

Arian Moayed: This project differed from other Waterwell productions in a lot of ways.  First of all, the idea for the concept album came about before the idea for the production as we know it.  Bambï had already been working on adapting Looking for Mr. Goodbar into an album for a while when Waterwell proposed collaborating on a project for SummerStage last year.  With shows like #9 or The/King/Operetta the devising and writing was shared equally amongst the core Waterwell team, but in the case of GOODBAR, while the narrative was structured by the group, the songwriting was done by the band.

Bambï

JC: You developed GOODBAR at Ideal Glass, and Mark Russell had the good sense to curate the show into Under the Radar. How did performances at the Public Theater differ from those at Ideal Glass?

AM: There were some benefits to both spaces.  Because Ideal Glass is more of an “art space” it seemed like people came in with fewer expectations around what they would see, whereas at The Public people are clearly expecting so see THEATER.  And GOODBAR really isn’t a play or a play with music or even a musical – it is a theatrically staged rock concert.  So in that regard, GOODBAR may not benefit from being performed in a traditional theater setting.  However, the technical capabilities of The Public far exceeded Ideal Glass and made the sound a lot clearer, and everything run smoother overall.

JC: There’s several downtown art stars and celebrity cameos, including Bobby Cannavale, Ira Glass and Moby, in the video. How did these performers become a part of the project? What was your reasoning behind casting name artists as opposed to other actors in your company?

AM: We wanted the scope of the video to be really big and cinematic, so it made sense to try and get more recognizable faces to play the different characters.  Also, it’s good publicity to have famous people help you out. We’re not proud.

Kevin Townley and Hanna Cheek, or Bambi, rock out with Bobby Cannavale, covered in bugs.

JC: The video design, created by the fantastic Alex Koch, is a huge part of the show. Did you always intend on using video, and why use it to support the narrative instead of creating a rock opera/musical?

AM: We knew that since we were going to be creating a live concept album we wouldn’t be able to rely on the typical conceits of theatre to convey the narrative, like scenes for example.  And since video plays such a huge part in rock concerts it seemed the perfect medium to help tell our story.  The degree to which we ended up using video surpassed what we initially thought though, considering we created a feature-length film to accompany the concert.  It was also exciting for us to explore this way of telling a story because essentially what we’re doing is telling one story in two different ways (through music and video) simultaneously and they’re constantly banging up against each other throughout the show.

JC: What was the most challenging aspect of creating GOODBAR? 

AM: The challenging aspect of GOODBAR was coordinating the many different visual elements into something cohesive and exciting. At first we wanted it to be a big, bad and bold, which the narrative suffered for it. Then in the second go of it, we kept focusing on the narrative aspect and worked on that for a good portion of a year. And with the major design elements, we had to hone in on what would help to tell that story. Making sure that the costume pieces, somewhat matched the images on the screen. That the world of the video didn’t overpower the choreography. That the dancers weren’t overpowering the lyrics but guiding the audience better. Every decision was geared to help tell the narrative even though each element is so powerful and bold. That’s the challenge.

JC: After your successful run in Under the Radar what’s the next step for GOODBAR? What’s next for Waterwell?

AM: Obviously we want to tour it. And we want more and more people to see it, but a live concept album based on Looking for Mr. Goodbar isn’t an easy sell. Right now we are taking a break from it, then get together again and see what the future holds for the show. But Bambï continues to play clubs and really rock their audiences with their kick ass music. They really are an incredible band with incredibly energy. Everyone should see them. Check out bambirocks.com for more info. As for Waterwell, we have a bunch of different projects and still running the drama program at the Professional Performing Arts School.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The New Theatre at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon

I’m at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for opening weekend, and I’m live-blogging this morning’s media coffee using Cover It Live – click the link below, and you should see as much info as I can get in while Artistic Director Bill Rauch and Executive Director Paul Nicholson tell us about this year’s roster of shows and what’s coming next year.

Click Here for the Cover It Live link!

What are we missing out on by not having more female voices and perspectives on our stages?

As we make our way to the culminating event in Forum Theatre’s current Female Voices Festival, I thought it appropriate to step back and give some explanation as to what led us to producing this festival and what it means to the past, present, and future of both Forum itself and the American Theatre.

It started with an embarrassing admission.

As we were discussing the 2011/2012 season and what shows we wanted to produce, someone from the company called us out for not having a very good track record when it came to diversity in our past seasons. It had been a conversation for several seasons at Forum and the challenge to produce a more diverse season (when it comes to playwrights) was one that I thought we had been making some decent progress in. I instinctually responded by citing the various plays that we had produced recently that showed more diversity–plays by hispanic writers, writers of Arab descent…hadn’t we at least improved?

“No, I mean more women. We’ve hardly produced any female writers.”

Before I opened my mouth in defense, it dawned on me–maybe smacked me in the head is a better analogy–that of the 21 plays we had produced to that point, only THREE had been written by women. And of those three, Caryl Churchill had written two of them (Naomi Wallace, who we were producing at that moment, the other).

How had I never noticed that? As ridiculous as it sounds, I can honestly say that I had never realized the fact that we were so male-writer-heavy. I don’t say that as some sort of a defense. It’s the part that maybe worries me the most.

That conversation continued as we examined the issue and i started to do some real soul-searching: Did I have some sort of mental block that led me to only think of male writers? Was there something in Forum’s aesthetic that drew us to male voices, primarily? And was that a problem?

The need to produce more women writers wasn’t engrained in my knowledge of how to curate a theatre season. If it wasn’t a part of my artistic director’s ethical core–and I consider myself to be a fairly progressive, democratic, person–then how many others were just like me?

Recent studies show that both in the US (and in the UK, thanks to the Guardian), only 17% of all plays produced in non-profit theatres are written by women. Looking at DC, a colleague just shared on Facebook that “From 9 DC area theatres with their own venues, offering 66 productions total: There are only, 10 women playwrights and 17 women directors represented.”

Going back to our season discussion, we has already decided to produce THE ILLUSION, by Tony Kushner, at that point, but by the end of our planning, we had chosen three other plays to make up the 2011/2012 series, all written by women–Julia Cho, Young Jean Lee, and another Caryl Churchill script. We wanted to see what a more female-writer focused season would feel like and to explore what we’d been missing out on, all those seasons before.

And that’s where the idea of this Female Voices Festival came from and more specifically, the idea to hold this symposium and really delve into the topic, more fully. I welcome you to join the conversations going on this weekend by following our feed @forumtheatre and the ongoing conversation under the #2femt and #2amt hashtags.

The Metropolitan Opera just posted their new online brochure, and it has a few clickable links to audio and video plus photos that make it look more like an edgy contemporary theatre than the keeper of the flame for a legacy artform.

I kind of dig it. You can check it out here.

The only thing I don’t dig? They have put their “brochure” in a frame that still conforms to the traditional idea of a season brochure- page flipping, intro letter, etc.

If we are going to go multimedia with our season brochures, and believe you me I think we’re crazy not to, then let’s really GO there. Build a brochure that’s like a flow chart or a tree, with branches to follow based on your preferences and bents, and intriguing side discursions into videos, explainers and secret  pop ups. Instead of pull quotes, have pull audio from the artistic director or an artist in the show. Instead of a welcome letter, it should be a welcome video from the company. And every unfamiliar title should link to a “5 Things to Know” post. And at the end, instead of a one size fits nobody season subscription offer, a pop quiz that ends with a customized subscription offer based on your answers to questions like:

“Performances should…

a. Challenge me

b. Amuse me

c. impress me

d. Make me think

I’m not positive, but I think this whole thing could be built for free on wordpress by anyone with a video ready camera and the time to make it happen.

But let’s say you don’t have the time or resources to build a full interactive online season brochure. How can you, right now, with the tools you have ready to hand, build an email invitation to participate in your season that is more interactive, more visual, more multi-media, more engaging?

Get on it.