We are soft-launching the crowd-funding campaign to finance the production of a “full-cast” audio book of my latest novel One Cherry Deep.
Check out this video introducing the project…
Then go contribute here.
Tag: Seattle Theatre
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Day 6 / Reason 6 for Going Back to the Theatre: John Langs
Yesterday I called out A Contemporary Theatre (ACT) as a reason for my going back to the theatre. What I didn’t include in that short essay is a disclosure of my profound bias, namely John Langs, who has been ACT’s Artistic Director for the last five years, and served on its creative staff since 2013. You should know that for even longer than that, John has been my artistic collaborator and very good friend.
I first met John when we were vetting candidates to direct my play Louis Slotin Sonata at Seattle’s now departed Empty Space Theatre back in 2006. He was living in Los Angeles but had directed some shows up here, including a very well received King Lear at Seattle Shakespeare Company. Before I even met with John, let alone hired him, I did my due diligence and asked around with theatre artists, mostly actors, who had worked with him. The praise they gave was effusive. To hear it from them, Langs was like some sort of directing savant always drawing the best out of every performer while making them want to do better. Their unadulterated adulation made me nervous. I get suspicious whenever I hear actors heap praise like this on a director. Stage directors have a tendency to build cults around themselves, with actors serving as acolytes. This arrangement can be deadly for a playwright trying to get a “clean” production of their play, unplagued by high concept and schmaltz . So I insisted on meeting the guy over beers. He seemed normal enough, offering questions and concerns about the script that were sharp and incisive without being arrogant or overbearing. And an additional fact helped weigh the scales in his favor: we didn’t have a lot of other options. Langs went on to give me the best production of the play it has ever had. And so when it was time to hire someone to direct the world premiere of my play The Sequence, his name was at the the top of my list. Since then John has served serious time with me in the trenches of new play development, and has became a treasured friend, remaining so long after I retired from the art form in which he continues to toil.
From what I hear, Langs is catching some flack for ultimately deciding to open ACT back up to live audiences with the theatre’s beloved annual cash cow A Christmas Carol. As I understand it, the argument goes something like this: “In this moment of radical artistic re-envisioning and reorientation, when the theatrical slate has been nearly wiped clean, why on earth would someone restage a dusty old play based on a dusty old book by a dusty old white guy about a dusty old white guy?”
I would love to avoid wading into the current quagmire of cultural revolution, while also pointing out that it was me calling for radically new work since the inception of this blog in 2010. So I’ll bite my tongue and offer the shortest riposte possible: theatre is an art form which feeds on repetition. And it is precisely those plays most familiar to us that can sustain the most radical re-thinkings and reimaginings, while still offering the “clean” essentials of their stories. Rob Weinert-Kendt, editor-in-chief of American Theatre explained this better than I ever could in a eulogy for the recently departed giant of American stage, Stephen Sondheim.
This, after all, is what a canon is, if we must have canons: not invariable paragons of perfection, necessarily, but works that somehow stay alive with surprise, with the shock of recognition, with argument. The musicals Stephen Sondheim wrote with a handful of deft collaborators remain among the most teemingly alive works anyone has ever composed for the stage, and it is hard to imagine a day when they won’t feel that way. As he put it in the second volume of lyric collection/memoir, Look, I Made a Hat, “The very thing that makes theatre impermanent is what makes it immortal. In a sense, every night of a show is a revival.”
Revival.
The word takes on a much deeper meaning in the context of the vast challenges Seattle Theatre now faces.
Langs understands that in order to get back to telling new stories with force, he has to let us have the old ones, with love. I don’t doubt for a second that John Langs’ future holds huge opportunities for him far beyond his work as the creative leader of downtown Seattle’s flagship theatre complex. He personifies that rare blend of cultivated charm, raw talent, and confident leadership that allows someone to excel in pretty much any career they choose: business, politics, the law. John chose the theatre— God help him— and the collective life of my plays has been bettered by that decision. The least I can do is go see this show he’s producing.
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Off Written
But you can’t write off a writer much
as you’d like. We do as we seek, please
as we might: trees, ideas, people!When we fail you breathe, and watch, you’ll see:
love-lighted, we’re always coming
for you, though — true — benighted we be.I feel you though: be nice to have some quiet.
Plenty of that though, fear nought, where we’re headed,
always together, writers each, off and oft, you and we. -
Boiled Frogs
Josh Parks is a fellow veteran from Annex Theatre’s golden years in the early to mid 90’s. Josh starred in my favorite Annex show of all time, Bessemer’s Spectacles by Glen Berger. Nowadays it is wisest not to mention the show to anyone involved with it if you don’t want to hear an earful. Apparently it was a clusterfuck to produce, but produced it was, and beautifully, devastatingly so. When the house lights came up after the curtain call everyone but me filed out of the theatre. I had to stay where I sat. Couldn’t get myself zipped back together. My was heart pulled open and sore and I couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down my face. Josh also did a few other turns across the Annex stage, including Faith Healer. A production still is provided below. Josh stands to the far right alongside the incomparable Susanna Burney, left, and some guy named Paul Giamatti, center. (Wonder what ever happened to him.)
I can claim zero credit for what Josh says below, beyond cutting and pasting it with permission from his Facebook page, and maybe suggesting the title. While many of us have sat stuck in these ever warming waters of theatrical ineffectuality, Josh has been living his life, raising his family, working his jobs. The essay describes his experiences jumping briefly back into our pond.
Clybourne Park is the first equity house (non Christmas) production I can remember seeing in at least 10 years. Maybe 15. That was a big part of what pushed me from “That play sounds interesting,” to actually being willing to shell out $116 for two tickets (more on that later). I was not only interested in what the play had to say, I was very interested in what the experience of an evening of theater had to say. The world has changed so much on so many fronts over the past 10 to 15 years, I felt like I had a unique opportunity to see how theater had evolved over the same period of time, having very few intervening reference points to color my thinking.
You may have an idea where this going.
But before we get there, one of the striking things about the experience was that the most memorable line did not come from the play, it came from the preshow ask, delivered by a board member. I believe he said something like, “As you probably don’t know, the price of your ticket only covers about half of the cost of production.”
Really? In the 10+ years since I’ve been to a show has the Rep really done such a poor job of educating its patrons on this issue? Are there any regular Seattle arts patrons who don’t know this? I am the opposite of a regular, and I knew it. “For those who may not know…” or something that didn’t insult the intelligence of what I imagine to be a big chunk of the audience would have made a surprisingly big difference. To me anyway.
Even more memorable was the impression, having shelled out over $100 for my tickets, that the Rep was trying to make me feel — even before having seen the show — like I had received what I should regard as a temporary discount. I found that off-putting. There seemed to be very little appreciation for the fact that we had already given them our money, and a lot of appreciation for the fact that, “little did I know,” I had actually come up a little short in their eyes.
OK, so now that I’ve been made to feel like I’m not doing enough to support the arts (even though every dollar is “meaningful”), on with the show!
The production was serviceable. The playwriting was really not as good as I had hoped, nor was the direction, which seemed to be trying (but failed) to make a lot of the dialogue come across as Aaron Sorkin-esque line-chopping rapid-fire banter. The acting was good enough.
But what’s the word to encapsulate the experience, the energy in the room, the aftertaste? “Quaint” seems to be the most persistent answer. As the play unfolded I found myself amazed at how little things had changed since I last saw an Equity house production, and I have been pondering that ever since. When I think about what the world was like in 1998 and where we are now, how so many industries, and governments, and lives have been transformed in that time, the experience of going to the theater seemed to have stood still. The production I saw was certainly no worse than any quality production I could have seen years ago. But much more important (and surprising), it was absolutely not a single bit better. And suddenly it occurred to me, could this be at the heart of theater’s “decline” (LORT theaters anyway)?
I was expecting some progress, some innovation, some sign that what the Rep and similar establishments offer does in fact track the change/progress going on in the real world. Certainly the subject matter of the play was “relevant” and “topical” to a degree, and it was connected to a famous play and film in an ostensibly interesting way. But the actual production itself, including the means by which it was staged, struck me as really no different from anything I have ever seen on any stage anywhere. And that surprised me. I was not expecting virtual reality goggles, but I realized as it was happening (or not happening) that I was expecting something. I understand there are limitations on what can change about a play and still have it be a play, but I was stunned to feel like I had stepped out of a time machine.
Thus, my Colonial Williamsburg comment. Was this really creativity? Or was it about recreating a notional idea of theater. Playing the experience out into the future, I can imagine some day that the experience of going to a play at an Equity house could become more and more like attending a concert of Baroque music on the original instruments. Quaint. A bit odd. And — no offense to anyone who has mastered the sackbut — just as relevant to the human condition.
I imagine in the days of O’Neill and Williams and Miller and Shaw and Coward and even Neil Simon for God’s sake, that theater thrived because it was one of the places people went to see something cool, something current. It wasn’t a place where ideas were rehashed — be they about politics, society, design, lighting, or acting — it was a place where they were born.
Unfortunately, I find I don’t have many answers, just questions. Where is the surprise, the creativity, the unexpected, the brilliance? If there isn’t some in every element of the show, why should anyone bother? I see you and like-minded folks trying that with This Not Just In. I can think of exceptions to a lot of my ranting, but dare I say most of them are from the fringe element in Seattle, where the quality index is a lot more volatile, but it also doesn’t cost as much to get in the game. There are people who are trying to create theater they wouldn’t have seen 15 years ago, certainly, but the impression I have is that isn’t what gets a lot of established theater people out of bed in the morning, and that baffles me. Maybe it shouldn’t, but I’m glad it does.
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A Pair of 14/48 Rumors
Just heard a delicious brace of rumors about 14/48’s 2012 Summer offerings. I am solemnly sworn to secrecy, but suffice it to say that the news involves innovation and once again pushing into territory heretofore unexplored. Doing the undone is what makes Seattle theatre World Class, and 14/48 has consistently shown “go-big-or-go-home” leadership when the putative leaders of Seattle’s Big Houses have shown little.
Watch this space for more news when I’m allowed to break it, or better yet, “like” 14/48’s Facebook page to get the latest first hand.
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Yussef el Guindi’s Interview at HowlRound Gets me Pumped!
One of the best things about Seattle as a theatre town is that it’s small enough that you can get your arms around it. If you care to, you can get to know pretty much everyone who is active here as an artist. For instance, I have met Yussef el Guindi, chatted and corresponded with him, and very much enjoyed the interaction. But thanks to Vincent Delaney’s interview of Yussef over at HowlRound, I feel like I know him so much better, and admire him all the more for it. His thoughts on the new works scene in Seattle are fervent and hopeful without indulging in the “best-of-all-possible-cities” Pollyannaism that some successful playwrights and artistic administrators like to espouse publically here.*
I . . . wish artistic directors were as brave as their audiences. I think audiences are much more adventurous than some artistic directors imagine. . . .
What’s surprising to me is that you’d think the Seattle theater scene would be more open to riskier choices, in terms of choosing plays that are a little edgier, even more political. Seattle being, for the most part, a liberal city, you’d think that would be reflected in the plays selected. But perhaps more than being liberal or progressive, Seattle is also known for being very civil. We are a polite town. That politeness gene, I sense, seems to influence the selection of plays, as much as anything else. But then I’ve always felt theaters in general are inherently conservative, especially the big LORT houses. . . .
Thanks, Yussef, for energizing and inspiring me to keep working for world class. You being here gets us so much closer.
* Note to said colleagues: singing desperate paeans to perfection is a particularly pernicious form of despair. We can only have hope when it’s possible for things to get better.
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Seattle Week at HowlRound
Keep your eyes on HowlRound. According to Seattle Playwright Vincent Delaney, “The national journal based at Arena Stage, is featuring Seattle for the entire week. We’ve got blog posts by playwright Stephanie Timm, Allen Fitzpatrick of Icicle Creek Theatre Festival, Kathy Hsieh of Sex In Seattle, dramaturg Liz Engelman, and a culminating interview with our own Yussef El Guindi.”
Vince has already posted his kick-off essay and it’s a clarion call.
Local actors rule the Equity stages here, and no one expects that to change. They’re just too good, and everyone knows it.
So, Playwrights?
Raising the profile of Seattle writing is really a matter of changing our own self-image. Yes it’s frustrating to see season selections that reflect some other city’s priorities (curse you, Wichita)—but what are we going to do about it? Sit and complain? Threaten to leave? Spend all our energies on angry blog posts?
(Uh-oh. I think I know who that last shot might be aimed at.)
Go read Vince’s essay and give him feedback in the comments section. Then keep your eye on HowlRound and weigh in when Stephanie, Allen, Kathy, Liz and Yussef step to the plate. This is a great opportunity for Seattle to continue its discussion about mapping its way to World Class as a theatre town, and an even greater way for the whole nation to see how sexy smart and committed we are.
Go get ‘em, Seattle!
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Sandbox Radio Live: Episode Two- "Horror Show"
Episode Two of Sandbox Radio is now available on iTunes chocked full of Halloween offerings for your listening delight and convenience. Here’s what you’ll find.
Act 1
@1:50 “The Hands of a Girl” by Ki Gottberg
@21:15 “The Back of the 358 #1” by Paul Mullin
@22:35 “Markheim: Episode 2” by Paul Mullin
@37:40 “The Back of the 358 #2” by Paul Mullin
@39:10 “The Black Cat” adapted from the story by Edgar Allen Poe.
Act 2@0:37 “PSA: Hanford Challenge” by Elizabeth Heffron
@3:45 “Madame Flora” by K. Brian Neel
@9:32 “The Request” by Vincent Delaney
@21:50 “The Back of the 358 #3” by Paul Mullin
@23:25 “Pipe Play” by Elizabeth Heffron
@43:02 Finale/Credits. Music Director: Jose Gonzales
(Sandbox Radio Live: Horror Show, was recorded at West of Lenin on October 10, 2011. The show was engineered by Christopher Stewart, mixed by Dave Pascal and Rob Witmer, and directed by Leslie Law.)
For you true Markheim geeks I’m including the script of Episode Two below the fold. Enjoy it while you can, ‘cuz “Things can always get uglier, right?”
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The Inalienable Happy Pursuit of the Living Wage
This image has been floating around Face Book lately, accumulating plenty of “likes” on its way.
Well, I don’t like it. I actually kind of hate it. I believe that once an artist ties his or her work in a one-to-one, all-or-nothing relationship with making a buck off it, the game is done, and the moneyed powers-that-be have won it all over again. Nothing new or good or game-changing can come out of saying you’re only going to do your art if someone pays you a living wage for it. Instead, what you are really saying is that your creativity is simply one more commodity to be bought and sold in a market-driven society owned by folks who know a lot more about money, and a lot less about creativity, than you do.
One the other hand, I also hate the idea artists should shun the marketplace altogether. We should get paid, as much as we possibly can in any given market. (So long as we are aware and comfortable with knowing that some markets will only offer us compensation that is utterly untranslatable into coin.)
Up until now I have not written about the “living wage” crisis in Seattle Theatre because I did not have a good new idea on how to frame it. Then I attended the October Seattle Theatre: What’s Next? Forum, and listened with growing excitement as actor/producer Peggy Gannon kicked off a heated round-robin discussion of the issue that was finally and brilliantly summed up by Annex Theatre’s Meaghan Darling. Jim Jewell’s notes from the night describe it best:
Making a living and making art should not be mutually exclusive.
This last point came out of our earlier discussion, but was most eloquently encapsulated by Meaghan Darling, fairly paraphrased as, “Nobody owes me a living, but I want them to not prevent me from making a living.” Big House rehearsal schedules were particularly discussed here, as the now-standard 10-6 rehearsal day precludes keeping a day job, while the economics of theatre (and of course there is much debate here) can’t offer a sustainable salary for that work (and we lamented how many amazing actors have had to leave town or the profession). We all rallied around this idea, because it is very much in the spirit of Seattle Theatre: What’s Next as a whole – it is a statement that holds within it hope and offers compromise, which seem to me essential components of productive dialogue.
“Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Despite the Tea-Bagging idiots who have co-opted their ideas and headgear, our Founding Fathers were no fools. No one can or should guarantee anyone happiness or a living wage. But when your systems—and this goes for unions and Big House administrations alike—stand in the way of the pursuit of making a decent buck from doing theatre, well, then the truth becomes self-evident, and independence must be declared. If this be treason, let’s make the most of it!
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Seattle Artists Lose an Unsung Support
When I first came to Seattle in 1990 I had only one decent paying trade to my name: I knew how to clean glass. The problem was I was spoiled. In New York I had worked mostly high-rise residential units and got paid three dollars a window by my boss/friend Patrick Shields who worked next to me and also happened to be an actor/writer himself. In Seattle the only window work I could find was with a large outfit that did commercial properties and offered a flat ten dollars an hour. Instead of a bon vivant, polymath, small business-owner working next to me, I had ex-cons, two-bit bigots and pot-smoking thugs tying my ropes. (Literally. One guy told me getting high beforehand made him concentrate harder on the knots.) I quit after a week and took a job dishing at a breakfast cafe in Green Lake, but the money from that, barely above minimum wage, just wasn’t enough.
The advice I got at the 1911, the dive-bar de facto headquarters of 90’s Seattle fringe theatre, situated directly across Fourth Avenue from Annex Theatre, was simple: “go to Woods.” Woods and Associates was a small, locally owned temporary and permanent placement service located in the Galland Building downtown. I protested that I had zero office experience. The advice was reiterated: “Go to Woods. They’ll take care of you. You can even tell them you’re an actor. They like actors.”
“They like actors!?” What kind of outfit was this?
An outfit, as it turns out, that I would have an ongoing professional relationship with for the next two decades. My fellow Annexers were right. After my initial interview I was paraded around the office to meet owner Sarah Woods, Sarah’s brother Will, Sarah’s business partner Sam Hunter, plus all the rest of the folks in the placement bullpen. It didn’t matter that I was an actor or that I had never worked in an office. I would start out slow and simple, they told me. First gig: the microfilm department of Northern Life Insurance, where I captured images of old annuities documents on their way to the shredder. To tame the boredom I listened to Rush Limbaugh and KPLU jazz on my Sony Walkman. Aldrich Allen, another Annexer, now dead, worked beside me. A few years later, when I came back from shooting a movie in Maryland to find my first marriage disintegrating, I needed a job desperately. So Woods put me back at “No Life”, this time in the licensing department. It’s where I got to know William Salyers and began to hatch my plan to write a role that only an actor of his talents could pull off. A few years later we premiered Tuesday at AHA! Theatre.
As time went on, I even found myself temping in the Woods office itself. I called these gigs “meta-temping”. I used to love Fridays, not only because Sarah ordered in lunch and a masseuse every week, but also because Woods, unlike any other temp service I knew, paid every week, on the week. Many temps came into to pick up their checks personally, giving me a chance to do a quick gossip swap with my fellow show folk, like Chris Jeffries or Josh List.
It is not an exaggeration to say Woods was a big part of why my wife and I came back to Seattle from New York City after 9/11. Temp work in Manhattan had completely dried up. My unemployment was running out and I had literally no idea how I was going to support our new-born baby boy. I was certain, however, that if we went back to Seattle, Woods would find work for either Heather or me, so that the other could stay home with the baby. As it turned out, Heather landed the more lucrative gig—she always could stand working for lawyers more than me. On nice days I would roll my son in his stroller downtown from Capitol Hill and often visit the folks at Woods after having lunch with Heather. Bottom line: after a very tough year, Woods gave us options in another city where theatre thrived.
Woods and Associates will be closing their offices for good today. When I spoke with Sarah yesterday she sounded upbeat: “I don’t regret the decision at all, but it I’m the one making it so I understand it’s hard for others.” I nearly choked up when I told her what Woods had meant to me and my family over the years. “That’s the sad part,” she replied. “We’ve all been there for each other: the folks that work for us, the client companies.” Certainly Woods has always been there for me. No matter how bad a particular day gig might get, I could always think to myself, “Well, I can quit and Woods’ll take care of me: find me something.” Now, I guess I’m on my own. My only solace is that I’m not alone in feeling that way.
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So here’s my request. If you are an artist, theatre or otherwise, and Woods has helped you at some point, please chime in down in the comments section below. Share a story if you’d like, but chime in, regardless, even with just your name. I’d love to share a sense of how many creative folks Woods and Associates has helped over the years.