It seems in the aftermath of Diversity Weekend and the subsequent release of Outrageous Fortune that the fog of war has lifted and the folks are seeing the enormity of the problems in front of us.

Of course the problems that face theatre are insurmountable.

T’was ever thus.

We are trying to perform communal alchemic creation in a hastily pasted on corporate structure. We have no funding mechanism that doesn’t involve the kindness of strangers and a talent base that pays lipservice to the good of the artform while silently chafing that they’re not paid on the level of their similarly educated (less romantic) peers. We have no economies of scale, no national infrastructure, no global networking, no buzzwords of any sort to alleviate the problems.

Reflecting on it doesn’t change it. With no disrespect meant, maybe that’s what happens when you’re inside a system and see the cliffs?

There is no system in the wild. Out here in the provinces we just make theatre. It may not be diverse enough, it may not feature enough women, but it’s pretty high quality and getting better all the time… and efficiently produced as hell.

Pride in indie theatre aside, I have long felt that the entrepreneurial model is a bad idea for theatre. We are forced to it because that’s the language our funders speak so we organize that way.

Theatres should be dealt with as record labels and producing groups like bands. Bands meant to be transitory until you find the true connection and labels to be counted on for a style.

The idea that theatre companies are just like any mini-mart (small businesses with small but measurable ecomnomic effects) is patently ridiculous. Theatremaking is as alchemic as any act of creation. It’s chemistry in four dimensions. Every chemical reaction has a limited effect. One of the components will be consumed by the process and the process will end. Of course we expect the theatremaking to continue just the same, because there are budgets and structures and mouths to feed.

And then we question why exactly theaters fall apart, or slide off mission, or stop taking risks, or any number of things that we expect other theatres to manage to do what we can’t ourselves.

Of course these problems are insurmountable, they are built into the system… But we get up and we keep trying because we need to make theatre. Not for Theatre’s sake, for ours. Theatre was here when we showed up and will be here long after we’re gone. Theatre will die the day after Religion. Stop trying to save Theatre and just make the theatre you think needs making.

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Two years ago on another windy and cold First Night in Austin Cambiare Productions was born under the 1st Street Bridge.

I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel like a million years ago.

I’d be lying if I hadn’t claimed more than once that this company was three years old. I wasn’t lying it’s just… that was a REALLY long time ago.

Since that time we produced one final show with Gobotrick Theatre Company, Will produced and I performed in (20% of) a five play cycle of Manuel Zarate’s work, I got married, we presented a reading of Seven Jewish Children, and we wrote and produced Orestes. And then took the rest of 2009 off.

We are better at what we do now.
We have a clearer picture of what it is exactly we do now.

I still have no long term plan.
Well… I have no long term plan for Cambiare Productions.

The long term plan is to finally produce the One True Show that really is everything we want in a production and for Will to get spirited off to Louisville or the Arena and go be brilliant where larger amounts of people can see.

The plan is to feature local artists in roles that showcase them to the best of their ability and let them be noticed.

The plan is to keep growing our process to make it as easy on the cast and crew as it can possibly be, providing them with the most opportunity to shine.

We can do that. We can do that with the resources we have (and a little City help) and the talent this community continues to provide. We can be, for a season, another cog in what is becoming a hotbed of new work development.

I should have a five year plan. I know.
Instead I have two consecutive six month plans.
We’ll go from there.

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Kate Foy of Groundling (and Toowoomba! I just like saying Toowoomba!) has been asking nicely all over the internet for about a year what exactly people mean when they call themselves an “indie” theatre company. I’ve talked with her in roughly 492 different venues about it, but discovered that I never had answered it here where I might be held accountable for it.

I did talk about labeling in a post a year ago but didn’t really get into why I choose that label that I do.

I like specificity. I’m not always good at it but I like it. To that end I would prefer that words retain their meaning. Unfortunately I don’t get a vote. Language remains transient and I have to move with  it.

Further, art resists labeling at the best of times.

The two together makes specificity difficult in this case.

Cambiare Productions is technically an itinerant semi-professional community theatre operated by amateurs.

I however can’t use those words because they are each freighted with cultural meaning apart from their definitions.

The amateur/professional divide is intended to be solely about the money, but “amateur” comes with baggage about the expectations of low quality as does “community theatre” as skewered by Waiting for Guffman.

Semi-professional and “Pro-Am” are still really vague. Which part of the machine is the “semi” part? The quality or the money? If I have to explain the label to you it’s not of much use as a label. It’s just a conversation starter.

So I choose “indie” or “independent” theatre, not because it’s technically correct (independent of what?), but because it accurately conveys what we are to people who are interested. People know what an indie musician is or an indie film. They have no preconceived notion of lower quality, simply less money, meaning it probably has a rawness to it. It also implies up and coming, which I hold to be the case.

Garage Theatre would also work if it weren’t a place in my house where I don’t let people go as the corpse of Orestes is still strewn about it.

Do you have a better one word label for “I don’t have your resources yet, but I know what I’m doing and I’m on my way”?

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Everyone loves lists.

Well. I love lists, and while there’s been a lot of talk over my three years actively blogging about theatre about the failings of the Theatre Education Industrial Complex, we’ve not really attempted to create a curriculum we approve of. Largely because, well, creating a new theatre education paradigm is hard. And I’m not going to do that here, because I’m not sure how to even begin.

Instead? Herein lies a list of things I wish someone had told me over a beer the night of graduation. “Well… you made it, and now you’re ‘In the Club’ so here’s all the things you weren’t taught.” This does include stuff we’ve talked about here in the past. But not all in one place.

I also want to include the one thing I WAS told outside the framework of the program that really helped.

In no particular order:

1. Read Everything.
   Consume media.
   Consume the world around you.
   An “artist” with nothing to say is “retired”. You need life experience, you need ideas and emotion flowing through you when you’re actively creating, but even more so when you’re not. There’s a reason that a musicians first album – culled from years of struggle and real life intruding on creation – is generally the most alive.
2. You’re not done learning.
   And the know-it-all attitude you’re sporting will not endear you to the in-the-trenches veterans you’re now talking with. Lose it. And keep the war stories in their place. They’ve all done crazy things on a show before too, save it for beer later.
3. This isn’t Bohemia
   You are not a Romantic Poet. You will not die of consumption in a garret, starving for your art, unless you’re stupid enough to not (y’know) go get a job and pay rent. Those Romantic ideals NEVER work out for the hero. Dead isn’t a career move unless you’ve already got a few films in the can.
4. You’re an entrepreneur now.
   Actor, singer, dancer, tech, producer, doesn’t matter. You’re in business for yourself as soon as that tassel flips. Figure out what that means for you. What’s you plan? You have a plan right?
5. Have a plan.
   You’re not going to show up in Major Metropolitan Area and get discovered while working at Florsheims. No. You’re not. So how are you going to make that happen? What are you going to do when it doesn’t? Is that really what you want?
6. Make a friend. Make Five. Make TWENTY.
   No matter what mama said, you are NOT god’s special snowflake. There are 20 or more of you in every major metropolitan area. I suggest while waiting for a break, you MAKE a break. You’re not going to go from graduation to Great White Way. So be Bill Rauch. Find people you love and a thing you love making and do it. People will notice.
7. And it can be where you are
   If you need to get out, get out.
   But there is an audience for what you do right where you are. If you’re most happy living on the New Hampshire Seacoast? DO IT. And find people who are making the theatre you like and bring them baked goods until they let you play. 
   There’s no such thing as “Never Made It Out”. There is only choosing what makes you happy. Portsmouth is as deserving of great art as Brooklyn.
8. About the money…
   About that Plan…
   There’s no money here. Or there. Or over there.
   The very best can make a living if they hustle hard.
   So learn grant writing. Learn business modeling, and budgeting. It’s going to be tight, but you don’t have to go broke making art. Or entertainment. Or whatever it is you make.
9. Leverage what you know, and keep increasing what you know.
   If you want to do more than a couple of shows you need to be adaptable and unafraid of the new. You can’t eschew the computer for the ol’ quill and parchment in every instance. You can’t avoid networking because ‘you hate that shit’. Here, we’ll call it “hanging out with different people and talking to them like you actually care”. Now go DO IT.
10. There’s no time limit.
    Unless you want to be a Broadway ingénue. You haven’t failed if you haven’t done “X” by 25 or 30. You “fail” if you stop. You rarely stop something you are still in love with. If you stopped because you don’t want to do it anymore? You didn’t fail – you changed. You don’t owe theatre anything.

The one Real thing I was told off the record was by Nancy Saklad. During a rehearsal in a very large ice storm with the power out butchering a monologue from Terranova over and over again:

“You can do this you know. Professionally.
If you want it, you can do this.”

After 5 years of college and 3 years in high school she was the first person who ever said such a thing to me.
And then she stuck the landing:

“But you have to work at it.”

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So the Chicago Small Theatre Summit happened.

My thoughts of course turned to my own desire to have a small theatre alliance in Austin. A group of indie theatremakers in town  to help avoid burnout due to isolation, to get off the hamster wheel of scene reinvention, to share resources and ideas, and to spark competitive innovation.

And I know it won’t happen.

There will be friendships and acquaintance-hood and we’ll go to each other’s shows. But no meaningful regular exchange of ideas will happen. Why not?

1. We’re busy – Ask 10 groups when the best time to meet is – get 12 different answers.
2. Different needs on different parts of the food chain.
   A 1 year old group has very different needs than the five year old itinerant group than the ten year-old landed group.
3. People want the benefits not the costs.
   Everyone wants extra hands at load-in or a volunteer at the box office. But very few want to give up some of their limited free time (see #1) to BE that extra set of hands.

Or more succinctly put… the same problems as socialism anywhere.

We can be as socialist as we want in the corner, but as soon as you try to break that out to more folks you discover why the only socialist regimes on earth have been totalitarian.

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My fantasy team has forgotten how to hit.
As they never could pitch, this is a tough week for me, and I’m going to take my faux-sport frustrations out on this Windows Live Writer box. Theatre: baseball style.

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Minor League.

Less than. Incomplete. On your way up, or down, or out.

It has a uniquely negative connotation that sort of sums up how the City-States treat the provinces in just about every field now.

Branch Rickey broke it all. Oh sure, blah blah blah Jackie Robinson, colour line, ripple effect on American race relations… Barack Obama. Mr. Rickey was, as Billy Beane would do generations later, simply leveraging undervalued markets, which is what he had been doing all his career.

In the Good Old Days minor league meant smaller, not lesser. Playing in the Pacific Coast League or the American Association didn’t mean you couldn’t play for the Yankees, you just didn’t. Babe Ruth didn’t get ‘called up’ from the Baltimore Orioles to ‘begin’ his career with the Boston Red Sox, the Orioles needed the money and sold him. The same thing with Joe Dimaggio and the Seals. There was good money and considerable local fame for a fella playing in a smaller professional league in the pre-24-hour news era.

The American and National leagues signed players… and so did the other leagues. The top two leagues had more money which tilted the talent pool in their direction, but it was a trickle not tidal.

Then Branch Rickey, general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, signed… well he signed everyone. If he heard of a guy somewhere who could throw pretty hard, or a farmers kid who was knocking ‘titantic clouts’ (oh purple prose I miss you) he tossed them a contract, a trinket, and a ticket. He negotiated affiliate deals with teams all over the South and stashed all of his players to develop them while already under contract, saving himself thousands in rapidly escalation purchase costs.

And the “farm system” was born, and the identities of those minor league teams evaporated. See, you no longer were a proud Arkansas Traveler, you were a future Cardinal. In a thousand $25 strokes Branch Rickey killed off possible competitor leagues and locked up thousands of ‘prospects’, ushering in monopolistic industrialized baseball.

Lo, and we ended up right in the middle of Scott Walters’ wheelhouse (never groove him anything middle-in).

The theatre I make is backed by less money. The talent I work with isn’t drawn from a national pool. I’m never going to be on the cover of American Theatre. But the theatre I make isn’t less than.

The baseball talent filter is well-financed, broad-reaching and highly refined (no matter how often Albert Pujolses or Mike Piazza’s slip through the cracks).  Theatre’s talent filter is passive and arrogant. “I have the money, they’ll come to me,  I’ll take the cream and stash the rest at Starbucks until I need them”.

There’s a Waltersian rant about the evils of the industrialization of art, but this isn’t the time or place. Let’s distill it down to the thesis:

Industrialization is ALWAYS a wasteful process.
In theatre our raw materials are people.
Those people waiting tables in New York, providing casting directors one more alternative look, with enough talent to be ‘starting’ elsewhere?
That’s wasted raw material.
That’s hurting theatre.

Theatre isn’t baseball. (Theatre got it’s runtimes under 4 hours except for Forced Entertainment) Theatre needs all hands on deck. But there is no interest by the people in the filed to develop others. The machine in New York needs the best player available, they are pushing a product, and they need platinum to make it.

Fine.

So mail order it.

Give me back all of the talent Austin has bled to 3-in-a-studios in Dumbo and I’ll let them share a three-bedroom in the Arboretum and give them REAL stage time. I will challenge them to think, and create, and to own stages. I will push them to develop confidence in the ability they have, and be honest with what they lack.

And we will knock the socks off of these poor Austin audiences.

Because those performers will be proud to be here, proud to be working these stages, and if you don’t think that makes a difference… and then when you need someone for a part, or you need an entire show, there will be an entire vibrant ecosystem to choose from. Actors who weren’t developed in poorly attended showcases, but rather in fully developed works with real live humans watching will be ready to come play for you.

Smaller towns, yes, but not ‘minor league’

As for me? I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. New York doesn’t need anything I have to offer, and vice versa.

And today? Today, a list of what some critics think was the best recent theatre work in Austin came out. I am proud to call many of those people my friends, and I am proud as hell of the work that went on in this city last year. And this year, and this week. All for almost no money.

All for the love of the game.

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I have my requisite ‘what I think is wrong with theatre’ post underway (and only two weeks after that virus came and went again) but I have a sub-issue in my head that needs some sussing out.

Before I get into that, a hearty welcome to Mr. Grady Burnett Walsh, and congratulations to the happy healthy Mom (and Malachy I suppose).

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I have a running fascination with the way the Right Wing in this country control the language of any issue up for debate. It raises the question of why the Left has ceded that ground when so much of that population is obsessed with words, but that’s a question for a different day, and a different blog.

While in my freshman and sophomore years at the very underrated University of New Hampshire, I (along with my class and cast mates) was hammered by Professor Peggy Rae Johnson with one word.

Specificity.

Along with Acting 1 and 2 she also taught the Voice and Diction and Oral Interp classes so you can just imaging how that particular word sounding coming out of her mouth.

Specificity.

Some things just stick.

But it also strikes me that specificity is what is missing in our discussion of the theatre universe on a meta level. The discussion is mushy because blogging as a form is mushy, and because we share an artform, but no history together. But the majority of theatre bloggers try to stay ‘folksy’ and off-the-cuff with assumed familiarity.

The vocabulary of theatre, theatre theory, and theatre criticism is bathed in subjectivity and experiential meaning.

What does post-modern mean?
(when used in a promotional slug, not a text book)

Experimental?
Performance Piece?
Good?
Revolutionary?
Edgy?
Avant Garde?
Fringe?

Blogging is a short-form medium generally, but when we are trying to communicate larger issues (like say a blogger trying to piece together what they think is Wrong With Theatre) you can’t cut corners. You can’t shorthand the language, and you can’t assume shared experience.

Rather – You can, but not without pissing a lot of folks off.

We (read: I) need to remember to fully flesh out ideas and turns of phrase. Right down to what we think those ‘short cut’ words mean. Are there more specific words and phrases to communicate with?

This is true with all audiences real and virtual.

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Well that right there was a fun little week in the theatrosphere.

You got your bile in my vitriol!

PREVIOUSLY ON THE THEATROSPEHERE:

Scott Walters got back on his horse named Provocation, or, as Nick over at Rat Sass aptly metaphored, strapped his guns back on. Six weeks of the New Civility Code imploded over a seemingly slight infraction, Iowa 08 pokes some (alleged) lazy fun at the Midwest. And Scott rode down that fun and trampled it to death.

Mac Rogers called bullshit on Scott calling bullshit, and then everyone piled on. It was pretty stunning all in all.

There’s nothing quite like a glove-slap charge of cultural hegemony to wake up the Persecuted.

The always civil, mild-mannered Joshua James posits that because he (Mr. James) from Iowa, and lives in New York that Scott has no idea what he’s talking about, with a wonderful highlight  being the absolutely unbiased:  

I’m not going to link to the Blogger, simply because I don’t want to send anymore traffic his way. He’s not in New York, he’s neither a writer, director, actor or producer. He’s a theatre professor.

After a brief respite (happy anniversary Scott) Mr. Walters returned to a flaming inbox and tried to retrench his argument, and answer for his return to provocateur.

And then everyone said they didn’t understand and didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Except Scott. Who despite some unfortunate language choices, really does want a solution, not a war.

Everyone comes out looking pretty bad, except for Australia and Freeman.

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So what are we talking about really?

Are we really so upset that Mr. Walters pointed out again that New York is biased towards New York?  Is that news? I was unaware that this was an open question. of course New York is biased towards New York. Isaac sums it up pretty well: the history of America is at least in part a history of outright antipathy between The City and The Country.

So why isn’t the response from The New York chapter simply the same as Scott’s response to Allison Croggon’s charge of Scott’s US-centrism?

“I write what I know”.

Theatre is local. Theatre is for a local audience. It isn’t New York’s responsibility to be writing for a southern audience, or writing about issues germane to Southern culture. North Carolina isn’t under the gun to write trenchant commentary about the gentrification of Park Slope.

We all use stereotypes as shorthand, why do we have to lie about it? All a writer can do (on either side) is be honest about the caricature, or try harder to write true depictions of those from other subcultures.  That’s it. That’s all you can do. If a playwright isn’t writing honest characters into being with why do we care that they’re writing cultural stereotypes?

So we honestly need to let NYC off the hook a little bit. New York isn’t a national theatre. It is New York theatre. The single biggest flaw in the repeated shotgun blasts from Mr. Walters is that he lumps the broader media in with theatre, and frankly they have different scopes and different responsibilities and it’s muddying the picture.

Los Angeles on the other hand is squarely on the hook. L.A. is national media. L.A. sets the tone for our national dialogue in a way we only wish that live performance could. And they are just as lazy about cultural stereotyping as Mr. Walters says. Again I am surprised that this is an open question. Are we all watching different mainstream media?

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As to the rancor over bias:

I am biased.

All I can do is be aware of my biases and not let them destroy my work.

• I am am biased against musical theatre
• I am biased against children’s theatre
• I am biased against community theatre
• I am biased towards word plays
• I am biased toward political themes
• I am biased toward didacticism
• I am biased toward cleverness (text or performance)
• I am biased toward over-exposition
• I am biased against “issue” plays
  (no this is not in conflict with above)
• I am biased toward new work
• I am biased against mature actors
• I am biased against cultural conservatism

I’ll add on as more come to me. This of course will feel different than, say, being biased against the Country (to borrow Isaac’s construct), but they are just as destructive to the work, and towards building community (which I take as part of my responsibility as an artist). Besides I’m not sure where I fall on the City/Country scale with my 24 years in New Hampshire, 5 in San Francisco, and 3 in Austin.

I have more raw years in New Hampshire, but the large percentage of my adult life in urban and semi-urban environs.

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Follow up sins:

• “I am not biased therefore New York is not biased” is fallacious.
• Claiming to rep your old hood while in New York is disingenuous.
• Trying to use lack of specific data backing up an editorial as a terminal point is weak, especially on such a broad topic. Argue the premise. It’s not a journal article.
• The New York theatre scene is not [any more] persecuted [than theatre anywhere else]. Not matter how many times Scott Walters calls you out. It’s just different persecution. The criticism comes with being in first place. (Ask the Yankees)

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Go see:

In New York?

Madagascar, by New World Theatre; written by Wry Lachlan, Directed by Meghan Dickerson, featuring members of my former tribe all over the place.

In Austin?

The King and I by Forklift Danceworks.

Brilliant Traces by the Vestige Group featuring the always good Andrew Varenhorst.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream – over at Scottish Rite – featuring old ArtSpark mate Illy herrin as Puck.

and last but not least: The 2007 ArtSpark Festival is here! Check it out.

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I don’t give to charities, I give to causes. (Make sense?)

Theatre is of course one of them.

Were I in a better position financially I would love to be a full-on producer of The Way Light Strikes Filled Mason Jars. I saw the show at the SFFringe in 2002 and was blown away by it. I gave it 7 out of 5 stars, and lobbied heavily for it to be Best of Fringe.

Now they are taking it to Edinburgh for that Fringe, so I’m telling anyone who’ll listen.

Danielle Thys and Nick Sholley are top flight performers, Joe Besecker’s script is wonderful and all three deserve a wider audience.

You can read more about the show here (and check out the benefit and auction if you are in the Bay).

Or if you believe in the the Gods of Karmic Theatrical Microfinance you can donate directly here.

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To wrap up my shouts out to people who wouldn’t remember me if I held a gun to their head:

Congrats to Banana Bag & Bodice on their NY Innovative Theatre award nominations – I want to be Jason Craig when I grow up.

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If you are in the business of creating art for public consumption, have a reason for doing it, and try to show some skill.

On Sunday, July 2nd I saw what I have since been referring to as the ‘worst thing I’ve ever seen on stage’. Which is of course not quite right, and is instead shorthand (as such hyperbole often is) for a more complicated truth.

It was the worst show I’ve ever seen by a reputable company with considerable buzz going on. Which means of course that we had the classic failure to meet expectations. I was hoping to write a review of the piece in this space, but it was so off-putting that this is the closest we’re going to come.

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The travesty of July 2nd was supposed to be a faux modern dance piece set to the music of a rising local musician. I like (most) modern dance. I like clever deconstructions. I like local musicians. So I ‘treated’ my fiancee to a show.

This was however not a deconstruction. There was no modern dance except by the most loose of definitions, and the ‘movement’ on stage had absolutely no relation to the music. This piece also fell prey to the most insidious of fallacies: Announced Lack of Pretension.

Oh pretension, enemy of the common man.

Everyone “hates” pretension. In the same way that ‘everyone’ hates Linkin Park (still sell half a million every time out), and every one hates Jerry Bruckheimer. They don’t.

People hate things they hate, and then pick a reason to tack on later. Pretentiousness is an easy bugaboo to tack on because in our ‘egalitarian’ society the only thing worse than socialism is elitism. And elitism is only elitism if it leaves you out.

Insofar as theatre production, the pretension that people mean when they toss it about as a slur is almost always directed at the intent, not the execution. A character behaving pretentiously won’t get slurred (though that character will almost always be a villain), a producer throwing around words like deconstruction generally will.

[Pause]

Here we run into the problem of dictionary definition versus accepted colloquial use. M-W.com has some useful definitions, 1. Poseur, 2. Ambitious. Colloquial usage almost always means ‘elitist prick’.

[/Pause]

I get accused of being pretentious all the time. And well… the accusers are mostly right, by all three definitions above. But the difference between 1 and 2 is success, and the difference between Merriam-Webster and the colloquial is the audience’s understanding.

If my work doesn’t overreach my boasting I am a poseur. And if my work doesn’t get through to my audience I am at best a poor storyteller and at worst… well - elitist prick it is.

But there is nothing more pretentious (definition 1) than announcing to the world that the work you are presenting is for the Common Man! Unlike the elitist pricks over there! Announcing lack of pretension is the equivalent of apologizing in advance. If you aren’t trying to do something with your production, no matter how low your aim, it starts dead and can only rot from there.

The very act of asking that people pay to see you do something is pretentious. It assumes that what you are presenting has real world value. So in return for that pretension offer them a real product made with some skill for a reason. The reason doesn’t need to have four syllables and be vetted by Jill Dolan’s Performance as Public Practice coterie. They can be very simple.

1. I/We want to make people laugh
2. I/We want to make people cry (I use this one quite a bit)
3. I/We am/are really good at dance
4. I/We like singing and think people should pay us for it
5. I/We want to change your mind about the plight of banana farmers

The July 2nd travesty failed because it wasn’t trying to do anything. If it had been a deconstruction of modern dance, if it had begun as a ‘straight’ dance piece and devolved into the muddled contact improv mess that it was with the same amount of glee that the performers were exhibiting? Or if it had been about freeing dance from the structure of modern dance and focused on just feeling the music while doing the Living Room Boogie. It would have been riveting. But pretentious.

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I need to confess… my fiancee and I were among the few that didn’t stand during curtain call. The house loved it. They almost sold out their entire Thursday to Sunday engagement.

So I obviously have no idea what I’m talking about.

HOMEWORK

Why am I wrong?

How can we achieve pretentious goals without being elitist pricks?

Is there a good example of art made for NO REASON that was any good?

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