I am delighted and terrified. I am a 20-year character actor tackling a difficult Shakespearean lead. Titus is for my money Quentin Tarantino’s Lear. Titus is Lear if Lear were bent toward action instead of away, if Lear’s madness were reflected in the world he inhabited instead of rejected by it. Titus is Lear without subtlety. 

Titus also talks a LOT. Non-stop truth be told and my brain hasn’t gotten younger even once in the last 20 years. I haven’t had a lead in three years and before that another 5. I am daunted. There is a mammoth task ahead of me. But I will learn my multiple fights. I will cram all of the words highlighted in blue into my head and I will choose and then navigate the insane emotional path that old Andronicus hurtles through.

But there’s always a chance that I won’t.

There is always the possibility that the show won’t go on, that I won’t ever really own my lines, that I will only make the safest choices and wave at them halfheartedly. I could mouth it as some of our players do. I am a radically pragmatic man. I know that this can happen. That’s the nightmare.

What does a pragmatic man do when he knows failure is a possibility? He leaves himself an out. An escape hatch. A pressure release valve. I do this all the time. Frankly, it’s a primary reason I’m not a more successful artist.

You begin by hedging. There’s this impediment and that resource hole. There’s not enough of X and too many Y. Rehearsal got cut short due to mono and we never really got to work a third act dance number…

You move to lowering expectations.
It’s a young company.
I’m just a character actor.
It sure is hard and I don’t know…

But the biggest weapon in this niche arsenal is?

Secrecy.

If an actor fails in the woods and no one is there to see it it doesn’t matter. If I don’t tell you I’m doing something you won’t know. Entertainment Weekly doesn’t cover me like they should…

So you don’t mention it to the folks you respect, you don’t bring it up up the ladder of artistic success. You mention it to your friends and family who have to love you even if you really do kill Mutius in 1.1. And if it goes south? You have a story to tell and no blame.

But you can’t do something as hard as Titus Andronicus halfway. You’ve got to be all in.
So if you’re in near-Travis orbit and you’re already a little tired of the Titus-talk? I apologize.
But I have to hold myself accountable to this process.
I can’t hedge.
I can’t hide.

We open on October 20th. Less than a month.
Titus Andronicus in all of its violent, operatic sprawl.
Fierce and funny and brutally tragic.

I am Titus.

Will you join us?

The more we build relationship, the more contact makers have with those outside their own sphere the better the work will be and maybe we can ease the martyr/persecution complex just a bit…. you are NOT alone.

So.

If you are a maker or supporter of new performance work we would love for you to raise your hand and be counted via the short form linked below. We wouldn’t know who to sell you out to if we were interested… and we’re not. Someone from the Austin NWC might contact you with some questions but there probably won’t be math.

Thank you.

Down the Rabbit Trail: http://goo.gl/H8R8X

This is that post.

A vibrant theatre community is one that is connected vertically and horizontally, larger and smaller, more and less resourced, and across genres. Andrew Taylor uses a image in his creative ecology talk of the Honey Mushroom (armillaria ostoyae). To quote the linked article, “To go into the forest where this giant makes its home you would not look at it and see a huge, looming mushroom. Armillaria grows and spreads primarily underground and the sheer bulk of this organism lies in the earth, out of sight.”

Armillaria are to scientific knowledge the TWO largest living organisms. But you never see the whole thing. You see it shooting up here and there but the truth of it’s life and interconnectedness lies out of sight.

The hallmarks of a vibrant theatre community:

• A talent base.
  Every community has a best, most talented person. A vibrant community has a pool of talent that like sourdough starter can be dipped into again and again and mot be diminished.
• Opportunity to begin, opportunity to continue.
  The bar to entry is low enough in terms of resources that you can enter the community and (without hitting the lottery) sustain an artistic effort.
• Culture of Making
  A vibrant creative environment needs to be rooted in creating opportunity rather than waiting for opportunity.  
• Artist Awareness
  While taking a breath from their own pursuits individual artists look up every know and again and recognize that others exist and are doing the same things they are. Occasionally they may talk or even share a meal with another artist.
• Cooperation, not competition.
  Each sees and supports each. There needs to be room for each creator to root.
• Overlap between producing groups.
  Friction creates both heat and light, keep rubbing up against new thoughts and ideas.
• Variety of goals.
  A town only producing musicals or design driven reflections on the work of Anne Sexton can’t sustain a broad enough population of artists or audience to maintain continuity.
• Ambition
  Of some kind.
  Whether is for innovation or simply drive for greatness. The needs to be an animating force for something more than “I want to do a play”.
• Continuity… and churn
  Like the ocean, a vibrant community needs a foundation of “elders” and community pillars underlaying a froth and chop of high kinetic energy, high entropy groups forming, crashing and reforming in a flurry. The two energies feed each other.

There is of course an equation hidden in all of this that would quantify it and balance the factors but lord knows I got 99 problems but a math ain’t one.

That work will continue into the new year, and Will will continue to become the best photographer in Austin, and Amanda will take her math cudgel to an area high school.

Cambiare will take this year to really figure out how we develop plays. We began development on the “Childhood” project last year, aided by three phenomenal talents, but lost traction in part to the fact that as a team we have no process in place to develop works from scratch (adaptation we have a handle on). We put “Childhood” back on the shelf before we broke it beyond future use and decided we needed a new approach and better discipline.

So this year will be spent on at least two development projects with hard deadlines. One of Will’s devising and one of mine. If we manage to develop a presentable piece for next years’ Frontera Fest all the better. If not? Well, we at least hope to share the process here and with other member of the Austin theatre community.

We plan on working closely with the Austin New Works community on the Mellon initiative exploring new works models, and we plan on supporting indie theatre in Austin as much as we ever have.

With a low risk, low budget plan for next Cambiare doesn’t need your end of the year donations. But we would like to suggest places you can drop those final charitable doubloons of 2010 if you are so inclined:

Capital T Theatre is producing some of the finest work in Austin, they are doing it with a high degree of technical polish, they strive to treat their performers professionally at every turn and they lost %70 of their funding for the next year.

Rubber Repertory is making theatre that defies what you thought theatre could be. They do it every year. You leave a Rubber Rep show changed in some way.

PearlDamour is creating a work called How to Build a Forest that I am preemptively in love with as they develop it here in Austin via smaller Forest builds. A long term exploration of the very concept of “forest” and our relationships to them, the finished product in New York will be must see. Get in now and follow the process and you’ll be amazed how touching that process is.

These are the sorts of places that my attention and money go, if you trust me and have no other direction for your year-end giving? these folks will put it to good use.

Every blessing in the New Year from all of us at Cambiare.

On November 19th I said:

And yesterday Mr. Howard Sherman, president of the American Theatre Wing responded very thoughtfully. His considered response makes me regret we don’t share a city because I think that this is a discussion that would be an awful lot of fun over a beverage. It also made me regret my mobile status on the 19th because my shout out to the Emperor Jujamcyn was part of a running conversation about the profile of the theatre in America and theatremakers ongoing inability to a.) create a narrative about the work and the field b.) tell that narrative to any member of the press or possible theatregoing public without sounding like we’re on break from a PhD dramaturgy class. 

So let’s start with my appreciation for Mr. Sherman’s history lesson. I didn’t know any of that (save the Regionals on Broadway portion) and I think that it’s very instructive and gives us some pointers for directions not to travel.

My point of departure is: I don’t care if a single show ends up on Broadway. I have never seen a Broadway show. I’ve never stood on Broadway. There’s not a one of my megalomanical inclinations that lands on the Great White Way. But Broadway has The Juice. Being on Broadway signals to the public that This Matters and I want badly for the greater public to know that great theatre is being made every day in this country. Until that greater public has a guide to What Matters in theatre and Who Is Good we can’t begin to give them a narrative.

The idea of shipping things to New York is simply because that’s where the brand juice is right now so that’s an “easy” way to go about it and as I discussed in my post “Is This Heaven, No It’s Iowa” I would rather ship an entire show to New York than store all of my actors there.

So the short answer is that no, Broadway isn’t our national theatre in the way that theatremakers would talk about it and the founding and operation of a true national theatre in DC or elsewhere is a fate I wouldn’t wish on Donald Rumsfeld. But I’m not yet ready to cede broader vitality or a place in the cultural conversation for non-musical theatre. It shouldn’t feel like a Renaissance when we talking about August: Osage County or God of Carnage. Tracey Letts and Yasmina Reza should be cultural stars and most folks have never heard of them. To crib a line from the Bible, we need to stop hiding our light under a bushel and shine forth from the lampstand.

Now where the hell is that lampstand? How to we build it?

I don’t know. 
So I ask smarter men than I.
Often in fewer than 140 characters.

Marks hates audience participation and I am so firmly in Mr. Marks’ camp that about a year ago I was led to ask why it bothered me so much. I don’t like being touched, I don’t like being asked questions, I don’t want the spotlight on me, no I don’t want to go up on stage… leave me alone. The kicker? I’m a performer! I’m good at all the things they want me to do!

So why does it bother me so much?

I talked to Kirk Lynn of the Rude Mechanicals about this in advance of their recreation last year of Richard Schechner’s Dionysus in ‘69 which promised to contain lots of things I hate including gratuitous nudity and audience participation.

Dionysus in 69 was perhaps the best theatrical experience of my life and my regrets are all for moments I DIDN’T participate in. What is it? Why? What was the difference between other experiences and Dionysus and why am I so excited to see Biography of Physical Sensations tonight?

The answer was simple enough to stupefy me when I realized it in development of the Cambiare piece codenamed “Childhood”.

It’s quality and intention.

Dionysus in ‘69 was a phenomenal piece of theatre by committed, vulnerable artists inviting an audience into the piece with them. In general audience participation is an unrehearsed, tacked on gimmick that essentially works as a power play on the poor audience. Either to expressly embarrass them or to carelessly embarrass them. To include an unrehearsed performer into your show gives you immeasurable power over them and includes no benefit.

Unless they are truly the point.

Dionysus worked because a.) the audience participation made sense in the framework of the show b.) the performers ceded status, c.) the audience participation sections were very well rehearsed, d.) audience participation was 100% voluntary e.) information was given before the participation was requested so it wasn’t a surprise, f.) in most cases the offer and the choice were made by audience members privately before the participation began.

Safe. Sane. Consensual.

A Biography of Physical Sensations is a step beyond that. You make the choice when you purchase the ticket that you will participate. You are a performer from the minute you arrive. You have some choice of intensity (in seat size choice) and co-AD Josh Meyer will be seating the 40 guests with some eye toward making the event pleasurable even for people who experience negative sensations.

But there is an explicit contract of participation.
To recap:

1. Make it clear as strobes that there will be participation either in style or explicitly.
2. Give the participants status.
3. Never make participation involuntary.
4. Never make involuntary participation about the embarrassment of the audience member.
5. Have a specific reason for its inclusion.
6. Give the audience reason to trust you.
7. Rehearse it. Rehearse it. Rehearse it.

Mr. Marks? Feel better, there really isn’t a ton of audience participation going on in Modern American Theatre, you just remember every painful time it’s been inflicted on you. I’ll buy you a ticket to Biography if you make the trip. You’ll get to see the fourth wall (and the idea of theatre) forcibly torn down by some Bacchae and you won’t miss it.

Y’know these things:

Never. Not once. Not then. Not now.

“Oh but Travis that’s nothing, that’s a parlor trick, it doesn’t mean anything.” Which is of course indisputably true. But back in their day they were everywhere. Those slots in malls that are selling Twilight posters right now? Or Avatar keychains or Inception dreamcatchers… they were selling Magic Eye posters, keychains, tissue boxes, books, calendars, mouse pads, oven mitts I mean they really were omnipresent.

Maybe you don’t know how foolish being beaten by an illusion you fundamentally understand is. I’m a pretty smart fella and this stupid optical illusion defeated me. I hated it. HATED IT. When you’re smart and snarky (before snarky was even a word) and 18 and you hate something, even something stupid and inanimate, you mock the hell out of it.

This is art.

A more versed human than I would look at this and be able to tell you influences on the painter, and skill level, and objective quality. They could give you facts and context. I can tell you that I like the colours and I like the texture in the spring green spackle.

Most audiences won’t even give you that. They don’t want to appear ignorant.

People have been trained (and are being trained better every day) that if you aren’t an expert in a field that you need to shut up or you’re going to be smacked down by someone else who either is an expert or is loud enough to cloud the issue until you run away. Artists and near-artist experts work so hard to prove how smart they are that they have brow beaten audiences into critical passivity.

Audiences dislike anything that they feel like they may not “get”, and they refuse to believe that they did in fact get it, or how little it matters that they “get it right”. People hate feeling stupid.

So instead of deriding their taste when they go see something that won’t insult them why don’t we meet them halfway? Save your dramaturgy for folks who will appreciate it (email me!) and give a scene after the show. Don’t continue hogging the spotlight, draw out of the audience that remains in your lobby what they saw, what they liked or didn’t. Help them feel comfortable talking about it. We complain vigilantly about the about the dreaded “how did you learn all those lines?” but we hesitate to help give our audiences any more critical vocabulary than they came in with. Be teachers. I understand that you’re tired. But this is a job, not Pretty Polly’s Tea Party.

The North American population has been mainlining short and medium form storytelling since they were infants. They know a ton about it, they just don’t think that they do. Show them that they don’t need magic eyes to see your art and you’re halfway to making a fan out of them. 

Of course that’s also a strength in what is a D-I-Y town, do your thing and make it on your own.

It also means that there isn’t a Big Boy in town to root against. There isn’t a Giant in town that is sucking the air out of the room for the indies. There are two larger theatres that pay better, but they’re really just older successful versions of what everyone in town is doing. One a little less adventurous and one a bit more, but how do you root against the theater that sits in the big boy seat and has as it’s “In Trouble Need to Make Money” season:

Rent
Hairspray
The Break-Up Notebook
Fiction written and directed by Steven Dietz
The Book of Grace written and directed by Suzan-Lori Parks
August: Osage County
and the yearly Santaland Diaries

Yeah. That’s a tough life. Absolutely there are commercial choices, but they have salaries to pay. And there are commercial choices and there are COMMERCIAL choices.

Way to go Zach! thank you for challenging yourselves every year.

Why do we do it?

Why do we talk about getting more people in to see our work, their work, anyone’s work? Even in those icky business clichés that drive all the true artists/punks to want to slit their digital writs?

Because we love this.
We love this out of all proportion.
We love this more than we really should.
At some point in our lives live performance hooked into us and never let go.

And we spend our free time creating it, talking about it, talking about talking about it, writing about talking about it, hanging out with other people who create it, write about it , talk about it, write about people talking about creating it…

My wife has two degrees in this and she would really like me to go back to being hooked on baseball sometimes.

And most people just don’t seem to care. They care more about jai alai than live theatre. This field has become a cliché on both ends of the spectrum (the garish Broadway musical and the warehouse performance artists) and those of us in between just can’t get people in the doors.

And we know that it’s because someone somewhere lost them, and that if we can get them in the door one more time we can keep them. That they will be as hooked on this as we are. But we messed up somewhere and lost them to something someone told them was newer and better. Frankly, we suck at language for a largely text based art form. Republicans never would have let this happen to their art form.

Even old and musty doesn’t need to be a terrible thing. The masks and Red Curtain can still be wonderful, and theatre in general is just as vital as it’s ever been. But we talk about it like half-drunk epileptic docents, and THAT is what this discussion is about.

We don’t have the words for what we do that make it easy for anyone else to understand why we love it, and the time for that ineffability being enough is long since passed.

Records, vinyl records, are an outdated medium that has no technical advantages over the technologies that followed it, it lacks portability, it lacks purity, and it lacks permanence.

And for a whole bunch of folks it is the only way to Really Listen to music because those imperfections lend a certain warmth of tone that perfect FLAC files and $20 ear buds just don’t capture.

But theatre makers manage to make analog sound like a thesis instead of a privilege and I’m going to keep mucking around in the language bin until I get the words right for what it is that I do.

I’m mostly well behaved about such things.

But I want to point anyone who knows the formentors of rebellion who sic their fans and subscribers on someone who doesn’t like a show to what a grown up response looks like.

Mr. Don Hall and his 5-Ring WNEP production The (edward) Hopper Project have gone before the review stand and while you might assume that you can guess Mr. Hall’s stance, would it really be Don Hall if you could?

No it would not.

So if you would please take a look at Mr. Hall’s dialogue with the critics after each review, rather what I would like to believe the bar would be like after the show.

And if you know someone at the Huntington feel free to point them there as well.