A friend asked what I felt a vibrant theatre community was. Disappointed to realize I hadn’t already defined that term in this space I told her I would write up a post.

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.

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Once upon a time in a blog post not so terribly far away I mentioned that you should be careful not to post the same platitudes on Twitter every one is posting every day because I was seeing the same quotes DAY after DAY after DAY and the only thing worse than Successories posters are Successories posters on every single wall of every single office.

The primary offender on a theatre feed is of course the Samuel Becket quote, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”

I love it, you love it, we all own t-shirts and mugs with it emblazoned in Beckett Estate approved fonts…

But every day was a bit much.

The #Newplay convening at Arena Stage was like a funhouse with creator after creator reflecting back about the need for risk and failure. It was it’s own sort of convening game… how many different ways can you say “create a safe place for risk taking”. The answer is: a lot. Most of them involved some variation of the phrase “room to fail”.

I loved it. It was good. It IS good. It’s an attitude and a reality that we need in theatre making.

Spider Man: Turn off the Dark is apparently apocalyptically bad. Last night was the longest listed press opening so everyone went all in and it got the critical lambasting we all knew was coming. I love Ben Brantley raging out as much as the next guy. I love snark and I love the sword of justice falling.

But this is after two years of snark and six months of active schadenfreude on the part of the Twitter community that I am surrounded by. This isn’t even news this was a moment of gleeful grave dancing. Noting that the sinner in this case is not a war criminal I’ll ask: when is enough?

So here’s what I want. In return for your continued bile and your smug derision. I want you to either expunge to phrase “room to fail” and “we need to find ways to take risks” from your vocabulary or you need to append to the end of each use, “in support of projects or people I like at price points I don’t find objectionable even though it’s not my money and never had any way of becoming my money.”

It won’t fit in a twitter post so you may simply add “I’m a hypocrite, ibid.”

I don’t want to hear about waste.
I don’t want to hear about how you don’t like her style.
I don’t want to hear how you think Broadway should crumble into the sea.
Because see, here’s the cold truth:

There is almost no shot I like the theatre you’re producing.

Like, a 15% shot. But by all means go and make it!
A theatre-going culture is a better culture for me even if you aren’t making the art I want to see.
I financially support what I can, I see as much as I can, I advocate for just about everydamnthing on a stage.

You cannot (unhypocritically) root for space to fail for you and your friends and not root for room to fail for Julie Taymor, or as Kris Vire portmanteau’d last night U2Mor.

They, by every non-Glenn Beck account, have failed. They have failed on every card and on a scale I actually literally never dreamed of. [They failed with half the Yankees payroll. Only the Cardinals and Mets do things like that] I would love to have that money. I want the chance to fail that big. Chances are you would too.

But instead of singing me song after song about how much the Spiderman teams sucks: dream the dream. What would YOU build given that kind of opportunity?

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This has been a fallow year for Cambiare Productions. We’re not dead. You can’t kill a guerilla group made up of two people and a mathematician (hi Amanda!). We’ve been busy bathing in other things that interest us, Will has been taking 120 or so shots a day and honing his immense talent for photography into razor sharp skills. Amanda has been chasing free range theorems and proofs all about as she pursues her 17th post-grad degree in the maths. I have noodled about with social media and the infrastructure of New Play development, learning a lot of nuts and bolts about how the bottom of this system works and how social media can make it work better.

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.

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I made them for you so you don’t have to think too hard.

The average theatre human finally discovered Twitter in 2010. There are plenty of folks coming behind you so please get out of the doorway but you aren’t the first either so settle down.

The primary faux pas that folks make when first wading into the Twitter waters (it’s also true for blogging and e-blasting but less so) is ignoring the “social” and focusing on the “media”. So let’s see if we can shift that a bit…

To wit:

1. I’m sure you’re very good at what you do. That doesn’t mean I have any idea who you are, what you do, or where you’re from and that doesn’t make me stupid. Give context in your posts as to where you are and what you’re doing.
   
2. As to #1: Make sure there’s a reason that you’re sending this message about what you’re doing to the universe. Twitter is powerful because it’s a broadcast medium. But as with all broadcasts people stop tuning in if te content isn’t worth it to them (right NBC?). Is this message or event something that belongs in your Facebook posts, on your blog or only in your newsletter? It’s okay to not shout every piece of news to the heavens. (this is of course for company based Twitter-users)
3. Don’t just cut and paste lines from your press release into the Hootsuite or Tweetdeck window. It reads like your Mom yelling into her cell phone because she can’t hear you very well. Yes this thing works, yes we can hear you. Now say something and say it to us not at us.
4. Loosen up your tie. It is okay to not have a business voice at all times. Of course comply with your companies agreed upon guidelines (try these to build off of if you don’t have any) but allow the person who is speaking for your company (or heck just you if it’s you) to really speak. Astoria Performing Arts Center, Boston Court, and American Shakespeare Center all have %100 more of my attention than they had before Twitter solely because of the engaging personal nature of their social media presence. You can do it too.
5. Don’t spam. Don’t spam – don’t. Don’t do it Sam I am. Do NOT SPAM. It’s a block-no-take-backs.
   Okay sure simple advice, but here’s the trick – you probably don’t think you are. If you push all of your content every morning at 9AM EST and you have 9 posts or 35 posts… it reads as spam. No matter how much content you have packed into those 140 character morsels, if you highjack my feed at any point it reads as spam. That doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person – but it is a problem. There are easy (free) technological fixes to the problem in terms of scheduled posts. Look into them.
6. Be there (aloha).
   Have you ever ridden one of those electricity generating bikes like at the New England Museum of Science? You power a row of light bulbs with your mighty ministrations and are amazed at how much energy you produce! Until about the end of that sentence when you rev your little 10-year-old legs down to normal speed and realize you only light two bulbs. Until you get too tired and need to go get some popcorn and you light zero lightbulbs.
   
   You only exist on Twitter if you’re posting. You only exist broadly on Twitter if you’re interacting with others. This doesn’t need to be full time 24/7 but if you’re not responding to mentions and direct messages you fade from view pretty quickly.
7. It’s a two-way street.
   I want two things in an actor, the first being an ability to listen. Heck it was the first piece of advice I ever got in college. I showed up eager to prove that I was good and that I knew what I was talking about. My friend Jeff pulled me aside and said point blank, “you need to shut up and listen for a minute”. Everyone at school had done what I had. Given time I 1.) learned more 2.) figured out what I knew (or had experienced) that they hadn’t and was able to share that. It can be unbelievably invigorating being in a room full of smart people who love the things you love, but don’t lose your brain. Follow a bunch of folks or lists, or hashtags and simply see what’s going on and get a feel for the dynamic. Then jump in the game.
8. The other thing I want from my actors is generosity. Generosity on and off stage. I like’em punctual and prepared so they’re not wasting time, I like them giving scenes as well as taking them ferociously. You have to be generous on Twitter. You can’t have every idea first. In fact the chance that you had ANY idea first is pretty slim. You can’t be working on every concept. You can’t have read every article ever (or written every article ever). Retweet. Link. Share. It does a few things. It lets people know that you’re listening. It gives people in your sphere an idea of your likes and influences. It leaves a paper trail for you of all the things you’ve read and liked. And heck it’s just neighborly. Do avoid becoming a quote machine though or simply a platitude passer. The theatre folk on twitter get the Beckett quote twice daily. Feel free to affirm the group but don’t shop for your affirmations at QuoteWalmart.com.
9. Have an opinion, but not a binary opinion.
   If you want to rant in talk radio fashion about something? That goes on the blog. If you want to discuss it? Bring it to Twitter. There is no discussing a binary opinion. If there is no grey area, and anyone who disagrees with you is stupid? Go hang out at Digg. Or SomethingAwful.
10. Stop assuming.
    Don’t assume that your not knowing someone means they’re unimportant.
    Don’t assume ANYONE is unimportant.
    Don’t assume that everyone agrees with you. (You’ll be disappointed)
    Don’t assume that no one agrees with you (and whine about persecution)
    Don’t assume their disagreement means they don’t like you.
    Don’t assume that disagreement means lack of “professionalism” on their part.
    Don’t assume that disagreement means they’re stupid.
    Don’t assume that a person is solely the sum of their posts.
    Don’t assume that a person posting means that that is all the theatre they have done today.
    Don’t assume that no one posted anything while you weren’t looking, before you started looking, or before you knew there was such a thing as Twitter.

And one for free?
If you don’t like someone? Don’t follow them just because you’re “supposed to”. Unfollow and make your life better. I recommend to lots of folks that they not follow me because I’m high volume and not always on topic. It doesn’t hurt my feelings.

And folk? I yammer a lot (in general) about the Right Way, but there is only one real rule though. The Golden Rule of Twitter – don’t do anything that you hate when other people do it.

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As has happened so many times in the last couple of years I said something off the cuff that someone else has paid entirely too much attention to.

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.

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Peter Marks of the Washington Post tosses off a quick “leave me alone” note to Washington theatremakers at the perfect time for me to talk about audiences: opening night of Rubber Rep’s Biography of Physical Sensations.

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.

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Then Will, Amanda and I have been blessed indeed.

For a company with as short a production history and as skinny a wallet as Cambiare has, we have been blessed to work with the very best people. Today the B. Iden Payne Award nominations for 2009-10 were released and several Cambiare alums were honored:

Outstanding Performer in Youth Theatre
Rachel McGinnis (Queen Honey, Just Bee) – Pollyanna Theatre Company

Outstanding Director of a Comedy
Derek Kolluri (Dead White Males) – Sustainable Theatre Project

Outstanding Director of a Drama
Derek Kolluri (Dying City) – Capital T Theatre

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama
Rachel McGinnis (Maggie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) – City Theatre Company

Outstanding Featured Actor in a Drama
Gabriel Luna (Lover, Machinal) – Paper Chairs

Outstanding Featured Actress in a Drama
Smaranda Ciceu (Cassandra, The Trojan Women) – UT Department of Theatre and Dance

Outstanding Lighting Design
Megan M. Reilly (Murder Ballad Murder Mystery) – TUTTO Theatre Company and VORTEX Repertory Company

Outstanding Sound Design
Adam Hilton (Bug) – Capital T Theatre
Adam Hilton (The Cherry Orchard) – Breaking String Theatre

Congratulations all, and also to our many friends we haven’t worked with yet who were also nominated. Austin is a town bursting with talent – now we just have to work long enough to work with you all.

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A couple of weeks ago Julie Burt Nichols of the Bailiwick in Chicago popped up on Twitter and asked for pros and cons of social media in theatre marketing… I got volunteered.

My answers weren’t needed for the eventual post due to my non-Chicagoanity but spurred by Dave Charest’s repurposing of his answers I’d like to share mine as well.

What role is social media playing in regional theater?

It is playing a very small role thus far. Like any good business Regionals are waiting for smaller, nimbler companies to create best practices and proofs of concepts around social media that ensure some stability before they risk time or treasure on it. 

Is social media a valuable use of resources in this sector, considering the time and effort it takes to build these kinds of relationships with patrons/artists? 

The time and effort is comparable to a large traditional print/mail campaign. It feels more time intensive because it is every day, but re-aggregated I think you would find that social media consumes about the same or less time than a week of folding and peel and stick. The benefit of crafting a long term narrative for your theatre? Of creating a narrative around your stable of performers (which you should have or be building) and of creating a Voice for your theatre is quite literally priceless. The ability to have instant access to anyone who has mentioned your show or theatre or is on your email rolls? It changes your customer service role from reactive/negative to proactive/positive. Your customer service staff (whichever other roles they fill) can reach our and make contact with people who are happy with the shows/theatre/staff not simply be confronted with unhappy patrons. 

Is it too easy? What are the dangers of using social media for this purpose?

Is social media too easy? The access is easy. The dangers come in message creep and in simply hiring the wrong person. A professional social media campaign requires the same writing skill as any other and planning like any other with additional gaps filled in with personal reaching out. Using SM software in the vein of Hootsuite you pre-write your campaign and time-release it.  If you simply put a junior intern on Twitter and tell them to talk? The informality will turn off most of your older base and the lack of information won’t draw folks to you. Much is made of the informality of the networks, but the non-stars drawing traffic are those that are either dispensing real knowledge or those engaging in real conversation – in shorter words: authenticity. If your feed or representative is inauthentic you will lose all the time you have put into it. 

Does it have a valuable return in relationship to the demographic it reaches?

Proven authenticity is valuable to all demographics, an extended voice/narrative is valuable to all demographics. Getting out of your building and extending beyond the people who’ve opted in to the folks who are interested in your form but never touched your space? Or who are interested in a topic related to the show or season? It may not pay off with the folks you already have – they respond to whatever you were already doing – but it is a fantastic way to reach out to folks where they already are.

What are the pros and cons of social media in the regional theater market?

Pros? Narrative – I think that going forward Regionals are going to need more than "We’re Good" to carry on, they need a personality around the space, the staff and the talent – they need a narrative for who they were, who they are, and who they’re going to be. In the past you let critics and arts columnists do that for you… now you don’t have to.

The cons? You can’t get away with anything. At all. Ever. That has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not  you (or the theatre) are participating in SM that’s part of the ubiquity of information… but it is a con.

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I have never been able to see those stupid magic eye images…

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. 

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Now granted I heard that from a frame salesperson, but it sounds good right? She was responding to my incredulity at what was easily a 6 inch thick frame around a 4 inch picture. Her longer explanation was that any given wall is a blank space and a frame gives the art context in the space.

I buy that.
<sidebar> I will also buy that I really hate gaudy faux gilt frames around pastoral landscapes </sidebar>

Jonathan Mandell (@NewYorkTheater) over at the Faster Times, in the wake of the American Theatre Critics Association wingding last week, drew up a broad post discussing the state of criticism in America. It was a really fun post that ranged far and wide, from the necessity of criticism, to the death of critics, to John Simon averring that bloggers are vermin (I am) and Stephen Hendel admitting publically that he doesn’t read George Hunka or Lucas Krech.

I have no use for the argument about whether blogging is valid. Publishing is publishing. If you haven’t found something to read that makes your pink parts tingle that doesn’t invalidate the medium. Neither do I care to (further) discuss the “death” of anything like criticism, as that conversation is expressly about the ability of Professional Whatever to make as much money as they feel like they should be making, not about the thing itself.

What I DO have use for is what I want criticism to do.

Not reviewing. Lord we have a lot of reviewers. We have citizen reviewers and professional reviewers and pro-am reviewers and the irascible Don Hall reviewer and friends and family and cast and crew and the butcher, the baker, and candlestick maker.

Criticism.

In a time of centralized (truly Mass) media the upper echelons of each field could be recognized and the average person would know at the very least who the Biggest and Brightest in each small niche were. It wasn’t a broad knowledge or anything like even a basic working knowledge of a niche, but you could play word association games – Theatre? Arthur Miller! Poetry? Robert Frost!

In a time of fractured media and self selection of sources it’s more difficult to assume any knowledge whatsoever of a niche.

There’s no context whatsoever for what we’re doing. We talk about microlabels inside our niche “indie” theatre versus “pro-am” or whatever… do a man-on-the-street and ask who the biggest star on Broadway is. Who has the number 1 album on Billboard?

People like knowing what they’re talking about. People like knowing that what they’re seeing is the best, the first, the something-th. They have no way of knowing unless someone knowledgeable steps in provides that knowledge for them. If they walk into the small and oddly shaped Hyde Park Theatre and see Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation this week they don’t know (without someone telling them) that they’re seeing a Obie-winning play directed by an in-town Hall of Famer with a cast that has a few closets full of awards and nominations. Despite the irregularities of the space, the informality of the evening and the affordability of the ticket,  you should have high expectations for both the show and the performers. This isn’t a Waiting for Guffman extravaganza written by a bored 5th grader.

I want for the critics of the now, print or on-line, paid adequately or not, to be those context providers. Every town has a narrative. Every town likely has multiple narratives on multiple levels, but let’s stick for the moment stick to the singular. If our critics in each town look to that narrative to inform the coverage and the features we continually build hooks into creating broader interest in what we do. Who is the bad boy of Minneapolis theatre? Who is the rising star of Seattle?

It seems a little trite. But I believe firmly in selling our people and if we only ever talk about plays as product? Wow are we missing the boat. I know allotted column inches are shrinking, I know budgets are shrinking, I know that many critics are working multiple jobs and don’t have time for features.

So my call to action is this:
Critics give your audience context for each show you talk about. A an extra online paragraph. Feature the author, or a performer, or the venue – how does this production fit into the town? Or the season? Robert Faires did this really well with his “The Classics Comeback” piece in the Chronicle.

YOU. You have a blog. Tell us about folks you love in your town. Stop whining about how no one is doing something and be the person who does it. Be an advocate! Out Adam Szymkowicz Adam Syzmkowicz! It isn’t our job to research the best and brightest in your town, it’s your job to tell us.

Frame the picture for us, so that when we come to see your art we have context.

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