Most of us in the Seattle theatre community have been waiting anxiously to see who Seattle Shakespeare Company’s board of directors would name as the new Artistic Director. We have seen other theatres in town screw up this decision miserably in the past, most especially by perpetrating the now infamous “nationwide search for talent”. Thankfully, the Seattle Shakes board saw that George Mount is a locally grown talent that no one in the nation can match in perfectness for this job. As Phil Miller, the Board’s Chairman, said in an email to Seattle Shakes supporters:
Out of all of the criteria we had in looking for a new artistic director, George has the best balance. He’s had hands-on experience in the company’s main areas of programming and has deep ties to our arts community. His ability as both an artist and administrator won him a ringing endorsement from the Board.
Deep ties indeed. George knows us. And we know George. He has sweated with us in cramped backstages on the fringe, and he has whispered jokes in the woods with us in Lynnwood and Issaquah and on Mercer Island as we waited to go on in some summer production of the Wooden O. George is the opposite of a carpet bagger. He laid the frickin’ carpet.
When I mentioned to George a few months back that I was rooting for him to land this position, I added that I thought it would be unwise for me to say so publically, given the very little love lost between myself and Seattle’s upper caste of arts administrators and board members. An endorsement from me might very well have the opposite effect than intended. George nodded sagely at this, but said nothing. That’s George for ya. He’s good at nodding sagely, keeping mum.
So I am incredibly delighted to be able to come of out the closet and proclaim my deep and enthusiastic support for George, as hind-sighted as it might seem now that the deal is done. Seattle Shakes will certainly thrive under his leadership. And long long may that last.
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Confidential to George: As happy as I am for you— and I am truly delighted, as much for the entire Seattle theatre community as I am for you— I still won’t let you off the hook about developing new work. You can dance with the pumpkin-panted hack for as long as you like, but some day you need to do yourself and everyone else a favor and direct a world premiere. It’s what Will would have wanted.
At 11:30 AM this Tuesday, Seattle theatre lost one of its leading lights when Mark Chamberlin died from injuries sustained in a bicycle accident on Sunday. Our city still has one remaining print daily newspaper, and Mark was famous enough to rate a fine obituary therein, but for my own selfish sake, I need to stand here and share my particular thoughts.
Mark made this city a better theatre town. He did so by being an immense talent as an actor but also by being generous with that talent, because theatre is the art form wherein, by definition, nothing be accomplished alone (including mourning). Mark had a rare soulful sensibility as an actor, an enigmatic quality difficult to describe. Yesterday on Face Book my colleague Allysa Keene captured it better than I ever could:
It’s a delicate dance to assert perspective and accept critique. It’s tricky to know when to lead and when to follow, but wisest artists don’t allow their accolades or their insecurities to eclipse the fact that it’s simply that: a collaboration, a dance. They acquiesce to all the paradoxes and graciously give their “yes.” MC, I am honored by your deference and will miss that twinkle-eyed “yes”…
Perhaps my favorite turn of Mark’s was as Antonio in the Seattle Shakespeare Company’s recent production of The Merchant of Venice directed by John Langs. While strictly speaking Antonio is the title character of the play, the role is enigmatic and largely thankless; and– due to its subtlety– nearly always ends up drifting into the background, until by Act IV the actor on stage becomes little more than a flexi-prop from which Shylock might draw his pound of flesh. Chamberlin, however, never ceded his ground. He made his counterparts Portia and Shylock fight for the focus that they can usually simply assume. And how did he do this? By living and breathing on stage, deep in the life of his character. You believed Antonio. You didn’t always know why he did what he did or exactly what he was feeling, but Mark as a consummate actor understood that it is a rudimentary performer who lays these things bare for all to read. He subsumed Antonio’s mystery and made it his own, such that you had to watch to see what would happen next. Such a simple order; and so so difficult to fulfill.
Many people in our business, myself included, need at times to make a second show of their talent, advocating for it outside the theatre, either literally on the sidewalk during a furtive smoke, or in the bar, or, yes, on blogs like this. Mark let his work speak for itself. And he shared that talent for free with the likes of me, doing readings of new plays of mine and others’, when he could have just as easily stayed within the safe confines of Seattle’s Big Houses. The fact that Mark was rehearsing to appear as “the Goat” in New Century Theatre Company’s upcoming production of O Lovely Glow Worm just adds evidence to the incontrovertible case for the man’s eagerness to remain on the cutting edge of theatre in this town. I understand that New Century will be dedicating their upcoming season to Mark. By doing so, they honor not only him but all of us who had the pleasure of working with Mark or enjoying his work as an artist.
Just recently Mark read something of mine which was part of a quarterly public evening of prose pieces written for performance. A week or so ago I was asked to submit another piece for the next quarter’s offering. I began crafting it with Mark’s voice in mind. This is just a habit I have. I start to shape words for a particular actor’s mouth whether or not I know they will be ultimately speaking them. It helps me hear the music. I have worked on the piece since learning of Mark’s death, and I am still, sadly, writing it with him in mind.
And that brings me to what actors like Mark Chamberlin do for theatre. Beyond making plays possible by being in them, great actors make new plays conceivable by being the living suction that draws the words and stories out of the playwrights who know their talent. Mark was one of my many muses who live, and yes, die in this city. This is my selfish understanding of Mark’s inestimable loss. Muses are hard to come by. And while I have many here in Seattle, the loss of one so generous and so fine leaves me shaken and humbled and, also, strangely somehow more determined to carry on. After all, I believe that is what Mark would do.
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PS: Mark’s good friend and colleague Ian Bell has already set up a lovely campaign called Mark Chamberlin Memorial Bicycle Rack Project which will raise funds to install stylish bike racks in Mark’s honor in front of all of Seattle’s major theatres. You can check that out and help by clicking here.
PPS: Note on the picture above: I particularly love this production shot of Mark, not just because it is from one of my favorite performances of his, Antonio in The Merchant of Venice, but also because it makes me happy to see him surrounded, as he most certainly is at this moment in spirit, by his fellow players. Plus, it shows him as what he was in real life: a cool, confident leader: an example to the younger talent of how to be a great artist, and more importantly, a good man.
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PPPS: Apologies to all. I decided to remove the aformentioned photo as I understand that doing so most closely conforms with the families wishes. PM 3/25/11 12:03 pm.
Seattle has already lost the print edition of the Seattle PI and the … The Empty Space. We need to fight against the Darwinian trend of saying that only the strongest survive, and take action against the slow erosion of the cultural tapestry of Seattle. We are a city that prides itself on its intellectual acuity.
Kate Whoriskey Artistic Director of the Intiman Theatre
I am often accused of arrogance. The aspersion does not bother me much. I try to remind everyone who will listen that the last thing they should be looking for in a playwright is reticence. Dramatists can be wrong—often are— but after all boldly framed public dialogue is what we wright when we write. Institutional arrogance, however, is an all together different, more heinous sin. My recent work blurring the line between journalism and theatre with NewsWrights Unitedhas opened my eyes to the prevalence of this poisonous phenomenon in both fields.
Back in June 2010, at a panel on monetizing on-line news David Boardman, the Managing Editor of The Seattle Times, made a stunning statement about the recent death of his former competition, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “The reality is: it’s not like something was lost.” This is not the first time someone at The Times has gone out of their way to kick the corpse of The P-I. If you choose to watch the video (Boardman makes his remarks at timestamp 52:50 in the video provided below) you will notice that the journalism insider panelists barely blink at Boardman’s chilling dismissal of Seattle’s longest running daily newspaper. In fairness, they might have been reluctant to register the churlishness of one in the rare position to offer them a paying job in their chosen field. (As a playwright I have long since been liberated from this kind of fear, since no artistic director is willing to pay me, or any local playwright, at a rate comparable to even what an Equity actor makes, let alone a living wage.)
The Seattle Times survives through the idiotic exigencies of fate. It could have easily been the other way around, and in their hearts they know it. The jury remains out on newspapers. So “Fairview Fanny”, as The Times is traditionally nicknamed, would do well to watch her step in the cemetery lest she dance into her own grave.
The chasm gapes even wider and closer for The Intiman Theatre, one of Seattle’s three Big Houses. In a recent email to everyone in their database the Intiman made it clear that unless a half a million dollars is raised by the end of March, and then another half million by September, the theatre will cease operations. In the business, we call this a “shoot-the-puppy” campaign: a deeply desperate move, fraught with risk, but also deeply arrogant. At its core the implicit message is:
Our survival matters so much that you should overlook our ineffectuality, our malfeasance, our self-dealing, our cowardice and even the very arrogance of this plea. We matter more than the artists we underpay. We matter more than the audiences we fail to reach. We matter more than the smaller organizations you will not be supporting so that you can help us survive, because we must survive and you must pay now for nothing more than the chance to watch us live another day.
Allow me to honor the clarity of Intiman’s ultimatum with some clarity of my own: I hope they die. I hope they do it soon and with a minimum of suffering. And most of all I hope they do it without siphoning precious funds from the rest of us who make theatre in the Pacific Northwest.
In her note on the Intiman’s blog which I quoted at the top of this post, Artistic Director Kate Whoriskey invokes the ghosts of The Empty Space and The P-I as if she actually suffered their loss instead of showing up on the scene quite recently and long after those beloved institutions succumbed. She merrily previews the upcoming season: “I will be directing my husband in The Playboy of the Western World,” assuming we would be delighted by this nepotism. She must imagine we were similarly delighted when we learned that she had been hand-picked for her position by her predecessor Bart Sher without any input from the community, the patrons, and very little, it seems, even from board “Without the Intiman, will we be as strong?” she implores in closing. And all I can think of is the Lone Ranger joke. He and Tonto are surrounded by a band of Apaches. He says, “Looks like we might die here, old friend.” And Tonto replies, “What’s this “we” shit, Kemosabe?”
Seattle theatre is alive and thriving. Buy me a beer and I will name you at least 100 theatre organizations in Western Washington more deserving of your donation than the Intiman. For now I will give you three for free and attempt to tier them to your tastes:
If you like raw gusty innovative new stories which actually take place here now in Seattle, then support the project for which I currently serve as Executive Producer, NewsWrights United. We are world premiering our second edition The New New News: A Living Newspaper this Friday. Our ticket prices are considerably more affordable than the Intiman’s. If you can’t make the show, you can still support us here. (I don’t hate our odds of surviving past September.)
If your tastes are more conservative, but you still want to support a smaller endeavor; if you love the classics and want to see them done with verve, talent and bold new insights, support Seattle Shakespeare Company. They have a production of Three Penny Opera coming up that I am itching to see, since it’s by my favorite German playwright and it stars one of my favorite undersung Seattle actors, John Bogar. You can donate to Seattle Shakes here.
If your tastes are still more conservative, and/or you are rich enough to consider such smaller theatres beneath the consideration of your largesse, give some money to A Contemporary Theatre. The day before Intiman sent out its desperate plea, its fellow Big House downtown announced that for the second year running it had booked a budget surplus. You can donate to an already healthy ACT here.
All three of these organizations prove that at every level of operations we can do better than what the Intiman has been doing. We know this in our hearts. What we do not know is if the Intiman can do better than what the Intiman has been doing. I tend to doubt it, and that is why I believe it is time to let it die.
Please do not misunderstand me. The shuttering of the Intiman represents a loss nearly as terrible and irrevocable within Seattle’s cultural ecosphere as the loss of the P-I is within Seattle’s journalism world (Mr. Boardman’s fear-born callousness notwithstanding). I will not dance on the Intiman’s grave. But I will also not be a party to keeping the institution on life support past the time of its viability, especially when doing so means diverting funds from theatre arts organizations that have been more successful in reaching and expanding their audiences, like, frankly, NewsWrights United, Seattle Shakespeare Festival and ACT.
The Intiman has been arrogant for a very long time. If Kate’s note is any indication, they have no intentions of improving their tone-deaf messaging. They want you to believe this current crisis was the fault of one lone mismanaging scapegoat. But as Michael Strangeways pointed out on the SLOG comments board: “Brian Colburn… didn’t steal the money, or spend it. Years of overspending and waste and the laziness of the Board has led to the woes of Intiman. It wasn’t one man/woman, but many, including fair haired child Bart Sher.”
Losing the Intiman will be a tragedy, but we will survive. We can even hope to be a better community for it in the long run, if we guard against institutional arrogance. We need to remember that artists matter more than institutions, that audiences matter more than funders, that plays matter more as works of art than career stepping stones. As Mark Handley, author of Idioglossia, remarked on Face Book:
I’m too much of an evolutionist to take this seriously. Every one of the theaters that produced me as a young man are gone, squeezed out by creeping provincialism. People seem to think that this is ALL (read: $60 ticket, NY director, LA actors) or NOTHING (as in: nothing, gone, kaput, out of business) is the way to go… *sigh*
So yes, harsh as it sounds: please let the Intiman die with dignity. Its time is done. In its place, let’s build something new, local and accountable. We actually already have the pieces in place for that. The Intiman will not live to see the promised land, but if Kate Whoriskey is serious about making Seattle her home– claiming its unique triumphs and defeats as hers too– then perhaps she will still be living here when we finally grow into a “world class” theatre town.
(Above is full video of the panel discussion “Town Square: Revenue Models in the Changing Media Landscape”from which I referenced David Boardman’s glib remarks about the death of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. If you dare, surf a little past the Boardman quote and you can see me holding Publicola’s Josh Feit’s feet to the fire on his equally glib Pollyannaish assessment of arts coverage in the current environment. If you decide to watch the entire event, you will witness the nearly monolithic patronizing attitude of the panel (David Brewster excepted) to questions from an audience who is clearly not buying their uniformly optimistic outlook. Oh, journalists love the concepts of honesty and transparency, as applied toothers.)
Much as I may seem to like banging on Seattle’s Big Houses here at Just Wrought, I am compelled to make clear from the outset of this essay that they are not the perpetrators but rather the victims of the ugliest rumor currently hovering like a toxic miasma over the Seattle theatre scene. To understand this you need to understand that beyond the Big Houses, and the dwindling mid-sized houses, and even the small alternative theatres, there exists a whole other tier of arts professionals that exercise a huge influence on the operations of these producing entities, while putting little if any actual creative “skin in the game.” I am talking about the “booster class” of arts organizations– entities like Theatre Puget Sound, ArtsFund, PONCHO, and the boards of directors at every mid to large theatre in this town.
These institutions tend to be led by well-meaning, “right-thinking” liberal-minded members of the upper upper middle class (formerly the “Upper Class” before the rich began to resent being called “rich”). The boosters usually come from a corporate background and tend to have adopted standard corporate best practices as articles of faith. (Full disclosure: I work at a large bio-tech company for my day job. So I am both tainted by the American corporate ethos as well as intimately familiar with it.) The Booster Class sees themselves as the noble guardians and advisors of the Artist Class. They believe they understand quite a bit better than their artistic little brethren how the big bad real world works; and they are convinced that the best way to ensure the survival of the art form they are boosting—in this case theatre—is to apply the rules and philosophies of business to their operation. Thus, we get general, inoffensive/ineffective, broad spectrum marketing campaigns like ArtsCrush, or the cold-blooded shuttering of the Empty Space because its board of directors decided it was not performing to the standards of a viable Silicon Valley startup.
That sad story brings us to the ugliest rumor: that many of the leaders at or near the top of these booster organizations believe that Seattle just isn’t big enough, rich enough, or cultured enough to sustain three major League of Resident Theatres (LORT) venues like A Contemporary Theatre, Intiman Theatre and The Seattle Repertory Theatre. One of these will have to go, goes the thinking, preferably in the next few years. Whether this happens via out right murder, like the aforementioned Empty Space, or merger, like the recent marriage of Seattle Shakespeare Company to The Wooden O, remains to be determined; but either way, murder or merger, what seems to the corporate-minded like a necessary act of cultural husbandry will in fact be an irrevocable disaster for the cultural ecology of Seattle. We have to make sure it never happens.
I understand that to corporate eyes, the Seattle theatre is overdue for a down-sizing. No other town of our population size has asmany large regional theatres. In corpo-speak there are all kinds of economies of scale to be leveraged and redundancies to be eliminated by closing one of the Big Three or merging it with another. What this analysis overlooks is that theatres are less like widget-manufacturers and more like ecosystems. Diversity matters. For Seattle to make a run at world class status as a theatre town, it needs all of its Big Houses, plus a lot more middle-sized spaces, and it needs all of them to be as different from each other as possible.
Of course, sadly the Big Three have done everything possible over the last fifteen years to make themselves less distinguishable from each other as an Applebee’s® is from a Red Robin® is from a T.G.I. Friday’s®. They hire the same actors, designers and directors. They fight for the same plays, semi-fresh from New York. When called on their lack of local freshness, they hold up for cover the same one or two nice playwrights, local or not, call them “local” and call it good, while hoping that the call for “local” goes the way of the Empty Space. (It won’t.)
Instead, they should privately strive and publicly argue for what sets them apart from their competitors. (Yes, Big Three, I said “competitors.” The concept might make you squeamish, but your Booster bosses don’t share your scruples, and your audience actually enjoys an honest rivalry.) The Bigs should also locally source as many of the stories they stage as possible. (Just ask Tom Douglas: great local restaurants start with great local ingredients.) Finally they should develop an aesthetic and stick with it, building their artistic corps around this defining core.
That’s right, B3: pull the artists you like working with in house. As celebrated local scenic designer Matthew Smucker once plaintively exclaimed in the comments section of this blog: “Freelance is killing us all, so give us all a home.” Oh, and while I’m ranting: stop choosing safe plays. Theatres are built to contain danger so that audiences can experience it without actually being damaged. When you consistently choose safe plays, or direct dangerous plays safely, you smother the internal fires of our art form. Instead of strategizing to survive, strive to make a difference.
The differences matter; and as happy irony would have it, they better ensure your survival. When theatres are truly diverse, audiences will care about diversity. Then they will make ticket purchases based on it. People will go to all three venues to marvel at the differences, like enjoying varied species at the zoo. As it is now, they aren’t convinced they are missing anything if they fail to catch Intiman’s latest because they are fairly certain that eventually they will see something similar at ACT.
Now, in all fairness, I could be wrong. The rumor could be baseless. When I recently checked my sources, a certain much more knowledgeable colleague of mine said: “The movement toward ‘consolidation’ of big houses, which was at one time aimed at ACT and Intiman, and then at the Rep and Intiman, is now largely over.” What’s more, apparently there is a counter rumor circulating that the booster organizations which were originally pushing for these mergers (ArtsFund and PONCHO, to varying degrees) are now in worse shape than the theatres themselves. There might even be a movement afoot to merge them. Hah! True or not, you cannot help relishing the poetic justice.
Still, we have to stay vigilant. Seattle cannot lose even one of these Big Houses, and the boosters who seek to “right-size” Seattle theatre need to be convinced that our theatre scene is fatter than an average city’s because Seattle is destined for greatness. Let’s put a bullet in this rumor once and for all. Let every leader at every booster organization even remotely associated with the survival of the Intiman, ACT and the Rep publically avow the following:
I understand that for Seattle to rise to its rightful place as a world class theatre town it cannot afford to lose any of its three LORT theatres. I will do everything in my power to ensure the survival of the Intiman Theatre, A Contemporary Theatre and the Seattle Repertory Theatre in perpetuity, and I will reject any attempt to destroy or dilute their potential diversity whether by murder or merger.
Further, I will demand that these institutions maximize the differences among themselves, so that a truly vibrant and viable theatrical ecology can thrive here, such that the loss of any one of these theatres will be utterly irrevocable, and thus unthinkable.
