Alone in my Room

For a collaborative art, with so much of the creative process taking place by committee, it never fails to amaze me how much of a show ends up created in the still of the night by yourself.

Opening on May 18th in the Rollins Theater at the Long Center for the Performing Arts will be FourSquare, by Manuel Zarate.

I will be you loser, Bill.

It's part of a FIVE. PLAY. CYCLE. Called the Love Sonatas. Which is really its own headache.

FourSquare is a challenging piece.
Bill is a challenging role.
Manuel's dialog is difficult to get a definitive hold on...

All of which means that I'm pacing the apartment at 2AM quietly yelling to the door and the collage picture frame:

"You want a divorce
Is that what
no
do you
no
divorce no no
what are you talking about divorce
you want a divorce
no
I don't"

New line reading after new line reading.... Drilling to memorize... Which I'm sure is a healthy thing to be chanting near my poor sleeping fiancee.

Unfortunately I'm also sure that that's not the exact line.

Oh it's close. It's VERY close. But it's not right and it's driving me mad. Which is karmic retribution.

When I first saw Jonathan West giving status updates on his line learning I thought it was odd. I may have even mentally uttered the word "quaint". And now I pay for my hubris with a brain that is older than any I have attempted to do a show with in the past, and an opening that refuses to move from it's moorings.

Awesome. And not panic inducing at all.

Smarter things when I get my brain back.

Are any of you besides Mac Rogers involved in the Blueprint Project?
The Blueprint Project seems like exactly the perfect platform for the National Night of Theatre that we all really loved for those three weeks a year ago....

Technorati Tags: theatre,Austin,FourSquare,Lines,Love Sonatas

Hamlet 2

h/t Playgoer

Rock Me Sexy Jesus

"It WAS stupid - but it was also theatre"

Listen Up

A Muxtape for your Friday

Indie Chick Lit : A Primer to Travis' Brain

Listen Globally,
Buy Locally.

All work and no play(s)...

---note to self---

I have perception/expectation integration issues.

I know right?

I expect that:

1. If you say that your product/event of presentation is going to change my life, that it will. Or it won't be for lack of trying.
2. If you are pimping someone else's product for #1, that #1 will hold true.
3. If you tell me something is "Best of" "Classic" "Revolutionary" or try to teach it in a course, #1 is in full effect.
4. You will fail. That standard is impossible.

And I know it's impossible. I'm not sure how I grew up to be a good little Gen X'er thinking that everyone was telling the literal truth about such things. I have no idea how such a thing came into my head, but it's there.

It is a big problem for me in the arts because I am perpetually disappointed. I live in a world in which the curve doesn't go to %100. There is no such thing as %100 in live performance - there are friction losses in the creative pipes and there are heat losses in transmission, I mean it's simply not possible.

But the more important problem is that if I have been told that this thing is "Best of" "Classic" "Revolutionary" then it's going to be work. Because everything else that has been deemed "Best of" "Classic" "Revolutionary" is work. The transitive power of criticism. It becomes a bar to seeing things. Because if I'm tired I don't want to work at my entertainment.

But it's all an illusion. There is an upper limit see? No matter how important (or heavy or dense or other physics) a film is, or a book, or a play, it is bounded by the fact that it is a film is or a book or a play. It cannot be more than that.

I always get kind of surprised when something Important is Just a Movie. The precipitating event for this is my first time (and subsequent 8 times) viewing of Annie Hall. Which is on every list that can be listed. Including mysteries (why in the world would Alvy want to be with her?)

It was just a movie.

See? I got set up. Just like we have set up audiences for a century.

Used to be all entertainment was live.
Used to be that people would see things on the stage all the time and had a routine.
Used to be people chose what sort of live entertainment the were going to see, not whether it was going to be live or Memorex.

They um, they don't do that anymore.

People use words like quaint about the theatre. People who know what words like quaint mean. And they mean it. Even I am surprised sometimes when people say they go to theatre.

But too often we're selling theatre as though they have any idea what we're talking about. If someone is interested in a movie, they see a trailer (or vice versa) if they're curious about a book they read a page or two, or a chapter.

Going to the theatre is as binary as pregnancy. You is or you ain't.

And by and large we're pitching them concepts.
I am so guilty of this I'm already in line at the International Crimes Against Theatre Tribunal in the Hague.

[Generally] People who are not doing this aren't dropping $10-25 to have someone they [Generally] don't know, [Generally] with no reputation, in a [Generally] disreputable part of town play with some concept. They want to be entertained. For whatever value of "entertained" works for them.

So we need to be telling people why they will be entertained, not how brilliant we are to have come up with it. They don't want to have to work any more than my poor deluded brain does.

So let's not make them think that they will.

Also?

More trailers. I know it's more work, and work that is slightly to the left of our field, but it's necessary.
We need to have a sampler platter for our shows.
We need to be able to show people what it's like.

Make our theatres safe places for audiences again.

---End note to self---

Technorati Tags: theatre,austin,texas,manifesto,trailers

Omnibus Weekend Sinkhole

There is cyclical regret in the active membership of East Theatreblogostan that there is so much bitterness and whining, and so much sniping, and that Scott Walters persists in turning his computer on despite being old and not in New York.

Which, Scott aside, shows an awfully poor understanding of blogging, even after all this time.

Non and semi professional blogging (i.e. 99%) requires the author to overcome day to day inertia to write at all. Even the best of that class of bloggers need something to fire the engines. Which is why it seems like so much of the stream of posts have the volume turned up. If you're not fired up why would a group of people who are already working at least two jobs take the time to toss words into the void?

There is also a gate problem with blogging. Bloggers don't want to write newspaper articles, which have to have a low bar to entrance and spend a lot of time circling back to pick up stragglers, they want to write insider editorials with deep insight into their field.

This means (in the case of the theatre niche) that there is a lot of the first few pages of theatre blog hits concerned with what is wrong with theatre, a very valuable discussion that is unfortunately taking place in public as opposed to at the dinner table. A problem because Google doesn't differentiate between In-house fixing and busking for the outsiders. So this volume of "what's wrong?" means that all theatre bloggers are whiners who don't appreciate what they have and want the world to pay them to play in their sandboxes?

No.

It should be so much more forceful. But the answer is simply: No.

I can't speak for other niches but the vanguard of theatre bloggers are ALL people who are doing the work. These are people who care deeply about their art and their community and want to be able to pursue their art under better circumstances and have more people take part. Isn't that exactly the group of folks you want up front?

Of course it is. But we need to stop assuming that if someone isn't with us they are against us, and that if they challenge us or our way of doing things that they are Unamurkin. They are writing from their frame of reference on their way to another frame of reference neither of which is likely yours. Like acting theory - take what works for you and leave the rest. The blogger's innate desire to snark a dissenter into submission really needs to be eliminated in niche discussions, and the expectation that everyone's blog will be fact checked or more professionally edited than your own is patently assinine.

Selfish? Maybe.

After a choppy first week of rehearsal for FourSquare I was left thinking: "Wow, I used to be good at this didn't I?"

Zip it.

The answer is of course "mostly".

But the thing is? I never simply come at a script. I haven't been charged with looking at one character and only that character, with no additional duties, in seven years.

Not only have I not improved as an actor in those years, aside from the natural improvement that I think comes with age, I have lost a lot of technique due to accumulated rust.

Will I improve? Sure. That guy is still in here somewhere. But there's an awful lot of character development time that's going to get lost to me figuring how to do this again.

Small Arts Groups Fed to Media Machine

...to cover the taste of same old same old.

Look ma! Tuna noodle casserole arts coverage.

The big news ($77M Big!) in Austin arts for the moment is the opening this weekend of the Long Center for the Performing Arts. It is a beautiful venue stocked with all sorts of state of the art goodies in 2 indoor venues and some outdoor possibilities.

The staff is smart, capable, and hard working, and all of that $77M is visible. So why am I so cynical? Why am I not dancing in the streets? I mean I'm performing there in just over 6 weeks!

Two things really. One? We continue to perpetrate the idea that we have to move to our audience. Jeanne Claire Van Ryzin opens the article like so:

Location, location, location.

Like in real estate, in the arts, where you are can matter just as much as what you do.

That's why next week, when the first of many shows by some of  Austin's small and midsize arts groups start filling the new Long Center for the Performing Arts, it might seem that some of these groups are having their very first premiere.

She is referring to the Rude Mechanicals. The Rudes are landed gentry. They have their own space, and they are on the Texas Commission for the Arts and City of Austin dole. This group isn't up and coming, they're here for all theatrical values of here.

We allow our language to make them smaller than they are. They perform east of 35 so this is "like" their premiere? They aren't the three anchor tenants (ballet, symphony, opera) so they are spoken of with the same dismissive tones. Which is not a trait of the author, Jeanne Claire is an active advocate for Austin arts, but this is very much the feeling in audiences. If they aren't performing in a venue with wood paneling and concessions the venue isn't worth it.

I don't know how to combat that feeling in them.

But the big lie in the Long Center opening is of course that small theatre (or dance) groups can afford the space at all. Musicians who don't require the in-space lead a time may be able to  but if you need to do a full hang, load-in and tech? It's not going to happen.

From the article the Rudes were partially underwritten and the rental was waived. The landed gentry couldn't afford to come across 35 to perform in the big white house.

This isn't to say that the Long Center staff don't want it to be true. They do. I believe whole heartedly that given their druthers they would have that space full every week with different redheaded stepchildren. I believe that Cliff Redd was being genuine when he said that he wanted to have the blue hairs and the pink hairs meet in the hallway and mixnmingle.

But they have bills to pay, and that has to come from somewhere.

So even if their rental subsidy program takes care of your rental fees (the highest in the town). The charge you a per ticket fee. You either have to use their concessions or pay them a percentage of yours. You have to pay them a percentage of your durable concessions. All the little ways a small company could make some money back get taxed.

The only way for Cambiare Productions to present at the Long Center would be to get a Catalyst 8 rental subsidy AND a reasonably sized City of Austin grant. And there is no way to use the Long Center's cultural cache to make a windfall to fund the rest of a short season, you will have difficulty breaking even.

None of which I mind. That's the reality of the game.

I just want for that truth to be presented rather than this idea that the Long Center is going to save the Austin performing arts community from life on the far side of 35.

Technorati Tags: austin,theatre,rude mechanicals,Long Center,Cambiare Productions,grants,money

Riddle me this

I am a bear of very little stuffing, so forgive me for not understanding, and forgive me for taking the long way around in explaining my lack of understanding.

I am a second tier blogger, and second tier theatre practitioner in a second tier American city. I have no credentials to wave around and the wisdom to know it. I do my best to be a non-offensive milquetoast in this space, because I may need one or all of you in the future so I try not to burn any bridges. I don't take any hard stands on anything, I'm more interested in the conversation than in riding the storm.

But I need to understand.

Most of you DO take hard stands on things. You use your blogs as daily or pseudo-daily editorial soap boxes on theatre or politics, and you rant away. And honestly it's what makes you enjoyable reads. You challenge my way of thinking and allow me to examine how I feel on issues. Some of you have bylines for publications that require something more than being able to pass a captcha to write for and use your blogs to supplement that. Good on ya. 

So with all these accomplished writers and theatre practitioners writing rants and screeds and diatribes why is it that only Scott Walters attracts scrums of disgruntled bloggers?

DevilVet. I am the non-Nylachi voice you were asking for. (Austin by way of San Francisco and New Hampshire)

Once you get around the fact that Scott posts all of his hypotheses as declarative statements rather than questions I don't even understand what's so offensive. Is he single minded in his pursuit of a true regional theatre stripped of the corporate capital feeder model we work under now? Of course he is. And Qui likes super heroes and Ian like Orson Welles.

Scott isn't picking on New York. It's never been about picking on New York. It's about REMOVING NEW YORK FROM THE EQUATION TO SEE WHAT ELSE WE HAVE. New York is what it is. It is the de facto capital of theatre until people start practicing their religion where they're at. There are ten of thousands of practitioners there, paid and unpaid, and they are taking admirable care of the beast.

So why are you all so goddamn defensive when the rest of the country asks what else we have going on? You want Scott to change his tone? Really? You are so incapable of being an audience who accepts frustration from a writer that you insist he alter his words to suit your sensibilities? He reads something that reads to him as xenophobic, he says so. He reads what is purported to be a national magazine with a narrower focus than he'd like, he says so.

He's more zealous than I'd like, but he's not my representative. I didn't vote for him, nor is he on my payroll. So when he gets caught with some shoddy methodology on counting articles, I laugh. It's not a scandal. It's not an election. A partisan got carried away.

Why can't New York laugh and join him?

For my money right now, AS IT AFFECTS ME, the two most important things that I know about that are happening in American Theatre are Available Light's attempt at full on Pay-As-You-Can in a non-NY environment (do they have the critical mass to do it? If they do, does Austin?) and the Des Moines Social Club. Is there a theatre that can exist without the government teat (and the requisite say in what I produce) or private sponsorship?

That's what Scott's asking. And I don't see why so many of you expect him to be careful about New York's toes in the process.

It may not be about you, or for you, and if you are in New York making it happen for yourself it is likely very much not about you. But neither is it to SPITE you.

Some times things are about us. And that's okay.