Just Wrought

Recovering playwright, once won a STRANGER Genius Award for theater. Now writing a bloated novel about… G-d help me! Theatre.

Tag: theater

  • Day 5 / Reason 5 for Going back to the Theatre: A Contemporary Theatre

    Day 5 / Reason 5 for Going back to the Theatre: A Contemporary Theatre

    When I attended the University of Maryland on an acting scholarship, I was required to meet at the end of every semester with the faculty advisory board to discuss my progress as a student of the theater arts. At one such meeting, in the middle of my sophomore year, the head of the department expressed his concerns that I was “not a team player”. At the end of that academic year, I left college, for good as it turns out, though I didn’t know that at the time.

    I have been a practicing Buddhist for over thirty years. The three jewels of Buddhism are the Buddha, the dharma and the sangha. “Dharma” is just a fancy sounding Sanskrit word for “the teaching” or “doctrine”. “sangha” is Sanskrit for “community” or “monastic order”; what Christians might translate as “the congregation” or “the church.” I feel pretty good about my relationship with the first two jewels, but I am the first to admit that I am bad at sangha.

    I have an inherent distrust of institutions, and I am especially bad at trusting large theatre institutions. The larger they are, the less I trust them. From my perspective as a playwright, large regional theaters operate to maximize their own survival as institutions over the quality of the work they produce. I used to relish comparing the Seattle Rep to the Queen Mary ocean liner, now permanently attached to its mooring in Long Beach, trotting out the old adage, “Ships are safe at harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.” I used to think I could do something to help change this sad status quo, but after doing my damnedest to move the needle for at least ten years, I gave up. This impasse can certainly be listed among my reasons for retiring from theatre, but I’d be lying if I claimed it was the only one.

    I always assumed that Seattle’s Big Houses would survive, regardless, because that’s what they were designed to do. I assumed they would always be there for people who wanted to watch safe theater, and, because I wasn’t one of those people, I didn’t have to care. Now, after nearly two years of lockdowns and dark stages, I am not so sure.

    With eight years to think things over, I will straight up own my institutional distrust as a character flaw, particularly egregious for a playwright, for whom every achievement is necessarily the result of a team effort. I will also openly admit that A Contemporary Theatre (ACT) has been a pretty good friend to me as a theatre artist over the years. In 1997 ACT commissioned me as one of four playwrights to participate in a new play development workshop, and my play Louis Slotin Sonata received its first ever staged reading in ACT’s Bullitt Cabaret space. I have acted and written for many iterations of 14/48 at ACT, and for many years I was a teaching artist associated with the theater’s FirstACT program, which brings playwrights into Seattle high schools to teach young people the craft.

    ACT has two mainstages, and several other smaller performance spaces, and has been very generous in opening these venues up to outside performing arts organizations, like New Century Theatre, The Seagull Project and 14/48, just to name a very few.

    Until The 5th Avenue Theatre comes back online in January, ACT is the only live theatre actively producing in the downtown corridor. Think about that. Then think about the relationship of live theatre to the health of a city. What would Seattle look like without a flagship complex of performance venues like A Contemporary Theatre?

    Would it look like Seattle’s downtown core does right now? Half-empty, garbage-strewn, whole blocks lined with tents and active drug markets obstructing the entryways to the small businesses.

    Do we really want live in a city devoid of live theatre?

    I’m not interested in that.

    I want ACT to survive, so I am shifting gears, breaking my fast, and heading back to the theatre on Sunday, December 12 to join the crowd coming downtown to see A Christmas Carol.

    Maybe I’ll see ya down there.

    Posted at 12:29 PM in 14/48, Louis Slotin Sonata, Seattle, Theatre | Comments (0)

    Tags: 5th Avenue Theatre, A Contemporary Theatre, ACT, FirstACT, Louis Slotin Sonata, playwright, Seattle Repertory Theater, theater, Theatre

  • Testing… Testing… Is This Thing On?

    Testing… Testing… Is This Thing On?

    It has certainly been a minute or two since I last posted here at my old blog Just Wrought. (Damn! Four years ago, Father’s Day!?) But I am considering blowing the dust off of it. (Metaphorically of course. I would never do anything as rash in this current crisis as literally blowing dust.)

    I need a reliable platform from which to communicate, and, alas, very recently I have been hearing about problems with Face Book deleting posts for apparently no reason, and, let’s face it, all of the major social media platforms are utterly non-transparent and frankly a bit suspect when it comes to user data. When I post something here, I can see how many people have looked at it, and therefore have a much crisper insight into how well I am reaching people.

    If you’re interested in my future offerings, some of which will be old-school style, essays, and some of which will be more like opportunities for actors, writers and other arts professionals to make a little extra spending money, then by all means, click “reload” a couple times on the ol’ browser, and heck, if you’re tempted, maybe even send a link of this post to a friend or two.

    If I get enough hits here at Just Wrought, I’ll know I can use this as my primary form of communication on the internet. (Though of course, I will always post pointers to it on FB, Twitter, and Instagram.)

    So if you’ve made it this far, and you like what you see, and you want to see more, say hello in the comments. And watch this space. I will have news on a special project I’m developing soon. Very soon.

    Love,

    Paul

    Posted at 12:29 PM in 14/48, Louis Slotin Sonata, Seattle, Theatre | Comments (0)

    Tags: 5th Avenue Theatre, A Contemporary Theatre, ACT, FirstACT, Louis Slotin Sonata, playwright, Seattle Repertory Theater, theater, Theatre

  • A Bountiful Fall Harvest for Seattle’s Locally Grown

    A Bountiful Fall Harvest for Seattle’s Locally Grown

    Seattle’s scene for locally grown plays has always been stronger than your average mid-sized city’s, but anything good is worth fighting to make better. That’s why I mouthed off over two and a half years ago with an essay titled “Theatre takes Place: Why Locally Grown Plays Matter”.  I listed some bullet points explaining why the development of new plays is so crucial to the health of any great theatre scene:

    • “Local actors evolve a better understanding of how their contribution … can be generative as well as interpretive.
    • “Local audiences evolve a better understanding of how plays get made and how they can participate in the process….
    • “Local funders evolve a better understanding of their roles as patrons of the arts…
    • “Local funders, artists, and administrators …[can see] the development of plays as actual investments, with the potential to pump profits back to Seattle in several ways.”
    • I even complained that the then recently introduced TPS  Gregory Awards had a category for “outstanding director” but none for playwright, a blunder since rectified.

    Mouthing off is fun, but theatre is a collaborative art form.  Unless others join the fray it isn’t much more than meaningless monologue.  Happily, the last few years have shown just how much a modest city can grow as a theatre town when a group of motivated professionals put their collective mind to it.  For instance, last year A Contemporary Theatre finally took another chance on a local playwright by producing Yussef El Guindi’s  Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World.  The gamble paid off big-time: El Guindi won The Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award (plus the $25,000 that comes with it), and American Theatre Magazine just published the script in its current September 2012 issue.

    Keri Healey’s new play Torso, produced by Printer’s Devil Theater, mesmerized everyone I know who saw it.  I suspect it is no coincidence that Keri has been short-listed for a Stranger Genius Award this year.  Torso recently doubled down on local impact with its currently running second production on Orcas Island.

    These are just two stand-out success stories from many.  And this fall promises another bountiful harvest of locally grown new theatre.  Again, just to name and explain a few (with a promise to blog separately on some as they come closer):

    14/48 outdoors for the first time ever

    A few weeks ago I raved about the glorious gamble the 14/48 steering committee was then making by staging their first “Kamikaze” festival, but this weekend they are amping up their Summer of Risk by staging the instant theatre festival outdoors for the first time in their 15 year history.  Tickets are free (also a new twist) so it’s hard to see how you could afford to miss it. (More info here.)

    The Betty Plays

    Beloved local actor Betty Campbell doesn’t get around as easily as she used to, so five local playwrights, myself included, wrote four short plays tailored to her unique and extraordinary talents.  This special Theater Schmeater offering is the sort of one-of-a-kind live experience that only happens in Seattle.  (Click here for more information  and here for reservations.)

    NCTC’s Foreclosure by Vince Delaney

    One of Seattle’s hottest acting ensembles workshops one of Seattle’s hottest playwrights, as he tackles an issue facing Americans nationwide  There aren’t many performances scheduled for this pre-world premiere, so you better reserve early.

    Sandbox Radio Live!

    1. The podcast from Episode 5: “An Unexpected Twist” recently dropped.  (A blog on that to come.)
    2. A “Best Of” show kicked ass at Bumbershoot!  (Check out this review.)
    3. And Episode 6: “Something Wicked This Way” is coming very soon: October 1 at West of Lenin.

    Why is Sandbox Radio Live! so important to Seattle’s locally grown theatre movement?  Because it happens every quarter and every quarter it gets better.  Because nearly every play, poem or commercial is written by top local playwrights and performed by top local actors.  Because it is fresh local “produce” at its best and most consistent.

    Custom Made Plays

    In my opinion this may just be the most exciting new wrinkle in Seattle’s locally grown scene, and not just because I have the good fortune of being the inaugural playwright.  Brainchild of local actress Rebecca Olson, the Custom Made Play Project  is dedicated to matching Pacific Northwest playwrights with local actors to develop and produce new plays of regional significance.  In my case, after interviewing my collaborating actors, Ms. Olson and Hana Lass, I tailor-made the soon-to-world- premiere Ballard House Duet to their unique talents and qualities.  Because of that, I am painting with colors I have never used before, and I’m loving it.  The resulting script simply would not exist were it not for these unique one-on-one collaborations. That fact excites me.

    Here’s another fact: Seattle is the best city in the country—maybe even the world— for locally grown theatre.  And we are only getting better and better at growing it.  As you can see from the small sampling above, it’s going to be an awesome autumn harvest.  It makes you wonder what next winter, spring and summer will bring.

    Posted at 12:29 PM in 14/48, Louis Slotin Sonata, Seattle, Theatre | Comments (0)

    Tags: 5th Avenue Theatre, A Contemporary Theatre, ACT, FirstACT, Louis Slotin Sonata, playwright, Seattle Repertory Theater, theater, Theatre

  • Holy Fear

    Holy Fear

    More than once someone has come up to me before an opening of some play I wrote saying something like, “Oh, you’ve been doing this so long you probably don’t even get nervous anymore, right?”  My reply is always: “It’s precisely because I’ve been doing this so long that I’m terrified.  I know all the things that can go wrong.”

    In two days I will be joining the 14/48 team as an actor for the first time.  In the parlance of the Seattle’s venerable “instant theatre” festival, I’ll be a virgin, and thus forced to fetch beer from the keg for whichever veteran demands it.  The fact that I have served as a writer four times makes no difference.  Nor should it.  As an actor, I am a virgin.  I feel like a virgin.  And I have a virgin’s fears.  Or to be more accurate I should say, I expect to feel a virgin’s fears.  I just don’t feel them yet.  It’s one of the blessings of being an actor.  You really don’t need to plan that far ahead.  Actors are soldiers in the trenches. Sure, it’s their ass in the line of fire, but at least they have something to do when the lights rise and it’s time to go up and over.  A playwright, like a general, has to watch in horror– sometimes abject, sometimes surreal– from beyond the action.  Of course there is joy too, but a playwright’s joy comes only in flashes until the final curtain drops.  Until then, anything can, and often does, go wrong.

    So my 14/48 virgin actor fear hasn’t hit me yet, but I have no doubts that by the time of the first morning’s “actors’ draw”, when I find out which play I will be performing and who my director and cast-mates will be, my insides will be doing a nasty free-style crawl towards either end of my G-I tract.  And when it comes time to go onstage for the first performance, I fully expect my swollen heart to be thumping in my chest.  This is only right and proper.  It’s how human bodies process performing publically.  And it’s as it should be. 

    A healthy fear is essential to making theatre.  It is what keys us into the audience’s experience of the immediacy of the moment. If you’re not feeling it, then chances are the audience won’t be feeling much of anything.  And, alas, they’re used to that. If they want “perfection”, they stay home and watch the boob. Our fear as theatre artists fuels the whole machina ex deus that is theatre.  The audience gets off on knowing that the train can leave the tracks at any moment.  Ours is the crucible where the experiment of art is performed—not re-enacted—but embodied in flesh and sweat and spit.  If we already know we’re right— if we know from the outset that the experiment is going to succeed— then we are also already dead.  Fear is life.  Fear is holy.  And in these darkest Northwest days just after New Year’s, fear is also a much needed bolus of bright adrenaline.  I plan on nursing it until the lengthening days can take over.

    Posted at 12:29 PM in 14/48, Louis Slotin Sonata, Seattle, Theatre | Comments (0)

    Tags: 5th Avenue Theatre, A Contemporary Theatre, ACT, FirstACT, Louis Slotin Sonata, playwright, Seattle Repertory Theater, theater, Theatre

  • Time is Memory and Might not Exist

    Time is Memory and Might not Exist

    I like to book surf. If something I am enjoying references another intriguing book, I try to hunt it down. And if that second book mentions a third tempting tome, I go after that too, following the thread as far as it will take me. In his book The Shallows, Nicholas Carr cites some research described in What’s Next? Dispatches on the Future of Science, a collection of 18 short and eminently readable essays by scientists working at the cutting edge of their respective fields.

    In a piece called “Brain Time”, David M. Eagleman recounts his investigations into how the brain reconciles multifarious streams of incoming data into a coherent perception of “now”: a feat much harder than it seems. Unlike fiber optics, neurons don’t communicate at anything near light-speed. Indeed, the signal from a pin prick to your toe takes considerably longer to reach your brain than one given simultaneously to your nose. So how does the brain register them as concurrent? Or as Eagleman asks: 

    Why didn’t you feel the nose-touch when it first arrived? Did your brain wait to see what else might be coming up the pipeline of the spinal cord until it was sure it had waited long enough for the lower signal from the toe? Strange as that sounds, it may be correct. It may be that that unified polysensory perception of the world has to wait for the slowest overall information.  Given conduction times along limbs, this leads to the bizarre but testable suggestion that tall people may live further in the past than short people.

    Also, different senses communicate to our brains at different speeds, which, if you think about it, isn’t exactly news. It’s why we start foot-races with gunshots and not light-flashes.

    So how does the brain resolve all these variously arriving inputs into a unity? Well, the answer Eagleman postulates is as fascinating as it is simple. We understand the world by involving ourselves in it:

    It has been shown that the brain constantly recalibrates its expectations about arrival times. And it does so by starting with a single, simple assumption: if it sends out a motor act (such a as a clap of hands), all the feedback should be assumed to be simultaneous and any delays should be adjusted until simultaneity is perceived. In other words, the best way to predict the expected relative timing of incoming signals is to interact with the world: each time you kick or touch or knock on something, your brain makes the assumption that the sound, sight and touch are simultaneous.

    Eagelman is keen to emphasize that the perception he is investigating here is conscious awareness. Humans, like all higher animals, are completely capable of making “pre-conscious” decisions with their spinal cords, which is how you can remove your hand from the hot stove before the pain even registers. This difference between pre-conscious perception and consciousness itself leads Eagleman to stare down the ultimate question: what do we need the latter for anyway?

    What is the use of perception, especially since it lags behind reality, is retrospectively attributed, and is generally outstripped by automatic (unconscious) systems?  The most likely answer is that perceptions are representations of information that the cognitive systems can work with later.  Thus it is important for the brain to take sufficient time to settle on its best interpretation of what just happened rather than stick with its initial, rapid interpretation.  Its carefully refined picture of what just happened is all it will have to work with later, so it had better invest the time.

    Humans don’t have sharp claws, or big teeth, or wings or echo-location.  We have something ultimately much more powerful: clear, cogent, handily referable memories. We experience time as a stream because that’s the best, and perhaps only way to accurately record experience with the level of retrievable complexity that we require to be, well, human. In fact, Eagleman concludes by casting doubt on the notion of time as a scientifically sound first principle.

    Most of our current theoretical frameworks include the variable t in a Newtonian, river-flowing sense.  But as we begin to understand time as a construction of the brain, as subject to illusion as the sense of color is, we may eventually be able to remove our perceptual biases from the equation. Our physical theories are mostly built on top of our filters for perceiving the world, and time may be the most stubborn filter of all to budge out of the way.

    With this line of thought, Eagleman follows down a trail blazed by Henri Bergson and Kurt Gödel, whose evocative investigations of time have been all too often ignored or poorly understood by serious scientists and philosophers over the last century.

    Implications for Theatre:

    What’s more, Eagleman may have unwittingly stumbled on an answer to the most persistently nagging question of my chosen art form: why is live theatre so much more excruciating than movies or TV when it’s bad, and so much more powerfully transcendent on those much rarer occasions when it is good?  Well maybe it is because film and TV do most of your brain’s work for you, pre-packaging all the various elements of sight and sound into a perfectly corroborated unified mega-signal. In the theatre, the data hits our brains like it does in real life—like it did on the savannah a million years ago— as an unreconciled rough draft. Our brains are working harder in the theatre to piece it all together.  Film and television tell our brains stories; theatre makes our brains do the telling. (For my own theatrical explorations of time’s mutability, check out my play The Ten Thousand Things.)

    David M. Eagleman’s bio says that in addition to serving as the director of Baylor College of Medicine’s Laboratory for Perception and Action, he is also the author of a book of fiction called Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives. Cowabunga baby! Surf’s up!

    Posted at 12:29 PM in 14/48, Louis Slotin Sonata, Seattle, Theatre | Comments (0)

    Tags: 5th Avenue Theatre, A Contemporary Theatre, ACT, FirstACT, Louis Slotin Sonata, playwright, Seattle Repertory Theater, theater, Theatre

  • Who should go to the OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE Discussion? Actors

    I thought I might be able lay low and abandon my series of short screeds about who should come to the March 1 Outrageous Fortune discussion (details below), but my colleague, the actor and incomparably astute analyst of the Seattle theatre scene, Rebecca Olson was not having it.  This from a recent Face Book round robin:

    Rebecca Olson
    I’m still waiting to hear why actors should go to the Outrageous Fortune discussion. Especially since it starts at 9 am, and you know how us actors are about getting up early.
    Fri at 11:56am ·

    Paul Mullin
    Rebecca, I’m feeling very lazy about banging the drum for OF lately. I’ve got a little of SP’s skepticism, so I’ve kind of petered out. But if you give me one good reason why actors should go, I’ll write the essay.
    Fri at 12:29pm

    Rebecca Olson
    I thought you were supposed to tell me why to go? (Yawn. Stretch.) Maybe I’ll go take a nap, then drink some whiskey and bitch to someone about how local actors are not appreciated by the Big Houses. That’s probably more helpful.
    Fri at 12:44pm

    Paul Mullin
    Wow! And I thought Chris Comte was unaccountably nasty. You’ve raised the bar, Olson. What was that you were saying about warm fuzzies, SP?
    Fri at 12:53pm

    S.P. Miskowski
    @Rebecca, if it helps to inspire you, I can tell you what the city’s most glamorous AD says to friends about the acting pool in Seattle.
    Fri at 1:07pm

    Scot Augustson
    SP: Seattle has a glamorous AD?
    Fri at 1:29pm

    Rebecca Olson
    …. Okay – here’s why actors should go: because we’re all in the same Seattle boat, together – and if we stick together and support each other (as the wise Mr. Dietz gently reminded us) it will only help – that includes reaching across the disciplines. And if that’s too warm and fuzzy just appeal to our vanity: what actor doesn’t want a playwright to write a role just for them? This is another incentive to make friends with local playwrights and get their plays produced.
    Fri at 1:35pm

    Paul Mullin
    Perfect. I’ll write the essay.
    Fri at 1:38pm      

    Of all the artists that play at this game of theatre, playwrights and actors are the most closely related.  If you go back far enough on the timeline of artistic evolution you can see that we were once the same species, called “storyteller.”  Then at some point, between 3,000 -10,000 years ago, when civilizations as we understand them came to fruition, a split occurred, allowing for what biologists call “speciation”.  Actors continued to tell stories, in a live and interactive, i.e. theatrical way, but someone else actually provided the script.  This speciation was never completely delineated, however.  There are still plenty of fertile hybrids. Shakespeare, Moliere, Shepard, and myself (see how I worked that?) all started as actors and then mutated.  Many, like me and all those I just put myself in the company of, continued acting long after they took up the pen.

    A false opposition has taken root here in Seattle, one that often pits actors against playwrights and vice versa.  Playwrights will sometimes mock actors for their short-sightedness: their willingness to sacrifice all artistic vision for their hopes of the next gig and the eternally elusive “living wage.”  Actors will sometimes join the entrenched artistic administrators in their dismissal of local playwrights as essentially backwoods whiners with nothing genuine on the line.  But the fact is, we are close cousins.  We share nearly all of our creative DNA.  And we are artistic equals.

    We do not, however, need each other equally.  You read that correctly.  Actors do not need playwrights as much as playwrights need them.  What Greg Carter once argued at the 2008 Stranger Shit Storm is true.  There are enough excellent plays already extant in the canon that even if another good one were never written, there would still be plenty of strong material for actors and directors and designers to work with simply by pulling classics off the shelf, be they Hamlet, The Adding Machine, or Glenngary Glen Ross.

    You really don’t need us, my player cousins.  And if you have never had the experience of originating an utterly new character for the stage, then I am not likely, nor inclined, to sell you on its merits.

    So come if you feel like it.  Or not.  We need you.  Desperately.  But we are also your family, and it is a shabby family indeed that makes a cousin beg.

    Theatre Puget Sound hosts
    Outrageous Fortune
    March 1, 2010
    9AM – 1PM

    Detail: 9am – 10:30 Presentation by author Todd London

    Break – snacks
    10:40 – 12:00pm Q & A in large group
    Break – lunch type snacks
    12:10 – 1pm small group breakouts and report back

    Center House Theatre

    rsvp: TDFRSVP@tpsonline.org

    Theatre Development Fund, the national service organization, is convening a meeting of playwrights, artistic directors, funders, theatre managers an
    d others in conjunction with Theatre Puget Sound at the Center House Theater in Seattle on March 1, 2010 from 9:00am-1:00pm to stimulate conversation and action to support new American play production. Tory Bailey, executive director of Theatre Development Fund, Todd London, artistic director of New Dramatists, and co-author Ben Pesner will lead the gathering, which will begin with a presentation of the results of an intensive study of new play production in America and then open out to an inclusive conversation.

    TDF has just released the book OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE NEW AMERICAN PLAY written by Todd London and Ben Pesner, with research consultant Zannie Giraud Voss. The book, drawing on six years of research, examines the lives and livelihoods of American playwrights today and the realities of new play production from the perspective of both playwrights and not-for-profit theatres. The study represents the most comprehensive field study in the history of the not-for-profit theatre to analyze new play production practices and the economics and culture of playwriting in America. Set against a backdrop of dwindling audiences for dramatic work, OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE NEW AMERICAN PLAY makes clear the urgent need for new conversations and practices if the American play is to flourish.

    The March 1 meeting will share the study findings and facilitate the beginning of a conversation in which participants can identify possible ways to improve conditions for the production of new American plays, community by community. We hope that a wide group of individuals from the theatre community in the Seattle area will join this conversation.

    Posted at 12:29 PM in 14/48, Louis Slotin Sonata, Seattle, Theatre | Comments (0)

    Tags: 5th Avenue Theatre, A Contemporary Theatre, ACT, FirstACT, Louis Slotin Sonata, playwright, Seattle Repertory Theater, theater, Theatre

  • Who should go to the OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE Discussion? Playwrights

    Just the other day I was messaging back and forth with another Seattle playwright about an email I got back from a high level administrator at one of Seattle’s Big Houses.  I could not be sure, but it certainly seemed like the administrator’s reply to my question had been artfully edged with venom.  I told my playwright friend I hoped it was, since that might offer some small sign that this particular individual was not quite as oblivious as we local writers imagined.  My colleague replied.  “Sometimes I just hate the game.”

    I understand this sentiment.  Given that, as currently played, the game is heavily handicapped against locally grown works, it is easy to hate.  But hate leaves the enlightened human very little choice.  There is no healthy way to embrace hate, you can only let it go. Thus “letting the game go” becomes the noble path.

    The entrenched powers expect local playwrights to hate the game. They count on it.  They prefer us marginalized, embittered and powerless.  Once there, they hope we make the “noble” choice and let the hateful game go, liberating ourselves to live happy lives as enlightened, and most importantly, quiet ex-artists.  As for audiences, other theatre artists, funders and boards of directors, the putative artistic leadership  in Seattle would have them believe the game simply does not exist.  “Things are as they are, as they have been, as they ever will be, because there is no other way.”  The last thing the entrenched administrators want is for local playwrights to play the game, to play it well, and by playing, change it.  Let me repeat that point, for emphasis and clarity: the Big Houses do not want to this game to change.  They like their jobs.  They want their jobs to exist exactly as they exist right now until they choose to retire or move on.  Their standing strategy is attrition.  Play long enough and the opposition will abandon the board.

    I am not ready to leave.  I honestly do not think my friend is either.  But playwrights are a funny bunch.  We straddle two realms, the lone wolf world of solitary authorship and the messy melee of creative theatrical collaboration.  We are naturally suspicious of “group think” and “movements.”   We instinctively scorn politics and dream of an ideal world where local theaters consider our plays on the merits.  Would it were so, but “so” it is not.  The time has come to admit that even lone wolves hunt better as a band.

    Fellow playwrights, this is happening.  This game is getting played.  Over the past few months, partly because of this book, Outrageous Fortune, people are talking about playwrights, new plays and “locally grown” in ways that they never have before.  The discussion will continue live and unscripted on March 1 at the Center Houses Theatre.  Big gambits are opening on the board, and while we playwrights may be many moves behind, we still have our queen, creativity.

    Theatre Puget Sound hosts
    Outrageous Fortune
    March 1, 2010
    9AM – 1PM

    Detail: 9am – 10:30 Presentation by author Todd London

    Break – snacks
    10:40 – 12:00pm Q & A in large group
    Break – lunch type snacks
    12:10 – 1pm small group breakouts and report back

    Center House Theatre

    rsvp: TDFRSVP@tpsonline.org

    Theatre Development Fund, the national service organization, is convening a meeting of playwrights, artistic directors, funders, theatre managers and others in conjunction with Theatre Puget Sound at the Center House Theater in Seattle on March 1, 2010 from 9:00am-1:00pm to stimulate conversation and action to support new American play production. Tory Bailey, executive director of Theatre Development Fund, Todd London, artistic director of New Dramatists, and co-author Ben Pesner will lead the gathering, which will begin with a presentation of the results of an intensive study of new play production in America and then open out to an inclusive conversation.

    TDF has just released the book OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE NEW AMERICAN PLAY written by Todd London and Ben Pesner, with research consultant Zannie Giraud Voss. The book, drawing on six years of research, examines the lives and livelihoods of American playwrights today and the realities of new play production from the perspective of both playwrights and not-for-profit theatres. The study represents the most comprehensive field study in the history of the not-for-profit theatre to analyze new play production practices and the economics and culture of playwriting in America. Set against a backdrop of dwindling audiences for dramatic work, OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE NEW AMERICAN PLAY makes clear the urgent need for new conversations and practices if the American play is to flourish.

    The March 1 meeting will share the study findings and facilitate the beginning of a conversation in which participants can identify possible ways to improve conditions for the production of new American plays, community by community. We hope that a wide group of individuals from the theatre community in the Seattle area will join this conversation.

    Posted at 12:29 PM in 14/48, Louis Slotin Sonata, Seattle, Theatre | Comments (0)

    Tags: 5th Avenue Theatre, A Contemporary Theatre, ACT, FirstACT, Louis Slotin Sonata, playwright, Seattle Repertory Theater, theater, Theatre

  • Who should go to the OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE Discussion? Anyone Who Has a Full-Time Permanent Job at a Seattle Regional Theater

    Who should go to the OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE Discussion? Anyone Who Has a Full-Time Permanent Job at a Seattle Regional Theater

    Hypothetical: if my actions made it plain to you that I neither knew nor cared that you existed, would it be rude, or perhaps just presumptuous, for me then to insist that you care deeply if I died? Or would it just be weird?

    Essentially this is the position that Seattle’s regional theaters put me and every single one of my local but nationally known playwrighting colleagues. “You have to understand,” say good friends of mine working at the Big Houses. “We are simply trying to survive here. Surely, you don’t want to see us go out of business. Surely that wouldn’t help your career as a playwright.”

    Surely not.

    Let me state categorically that I do not want to see any of Seattle’s Big Houses go out of business. (My play Louis Slotin Sonata was the Empty Space’s last production before being killed by its board, so I have a deep and personal understanding of the pain such an irrevocable loss can inflict.) Let me state further that I understand that such a catastrophe would surely not help my career as playwright. Here’s the problem. Would it hurt?

    Probably not.

    If I have seemed at times radical or outrageous in my banging on the Big Houses, let me assure you, gentle reader, that among my nationally known local playwright colleagues I am, in fact, a moderate voice.  Allow me to introduce to you, if you do not already know him (and sadly I fear that the artistic leaders at all of the Seattle’s Big Houses suffer from this specific ignorance), Louis Broome, author of the Ovation Award-winning Texarkana Waltz.

    This is from his recent blog reviewing Outrageous Fortune.

    If the tax-exempt laws that have sickened theater were repealed, the very next day almost all of the theaters would shut down and a bunch of administrators would be out of work. The players – the actors, playwrights, designers and directors, who were already out of work most of the time anyway – would no longer have the theaters to blame for their sorry state. They would have to either give up the theater and get day jobs, or figure out a way to make theater pay the rent.

    I love Louis. I love that he is part of this conversation. I see a lot of holes in Louis’s broader manifesto, i.e. all theatre must be for profit. But I am not prepared to wager he will not fill them in time and with cunning. I am dubious of and vaguely bored with his calls for revolution. But I half-wonder if this is not just my own personal aversion to that word. Others, younger and less jaded, will not necessarily share this particular semantic qualm. Louis stands as a healthy reminder, for anyone who cares to listen, of just how broken the theatre has become and just how frustrated we playwrights are with the administrative machines that have knowingly continued down a path they can see leads nowhere, all the while warning us artists not to say anything negative less we hasten their demise.

    So you see, we playwrights run a spectrum. Some care deeply and unconditionally that the Big Houses exist. Some, like Louis, could not care less. And some of us, like myself, have decided at long last to make our caring contingent on getting a little love in return. So show us you care, you happy few who make your living off this thing of ours. Show up on Monday, March 1. It will mean a lot to us. And we have long memories.

    Theatre Puget Sound hosts
    Outrageous Fortune
    March 1, 2010
    9AM – 1PM

    Detail: 9am – 10:30 Presentation by author Todd London

    Break – snacks
    10:40 – 12:00pm Q & A in large group
    Break – lunch type snacks
    12:10 – 1pm small group breakouts and report back

    Center House Theatre

    rsvp: TDFRSVP@tpsonline.org

    Theatre Development Fund, the national service organization, is convening a meeting of playwrights, artistic directors, funders, theatre managers and others in conjunction with Theatre Puget Sound at the Center House Theater in Seattle on March 1, 2010 from 9:00am-1:00pm to stimulate conversation and action to support new American play production. Tory Bailey, executive director of Theatre Development Fund, Todd London, artistic director of New Dramatists, and co-author Ben Pesner will lead the gathering, which will begin with a presentation of the results of an intensive study of new play production in America and then open out to an inclusive conversation.

    TDF has just released the book OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE NEW AMERICAN PLAY written by Todd London and Ben Pesner, with research consultant Zannie Giraud Voss. The book, drawing on six years of research, examines the lives and livelihoods of American playwrights today and
    the realities of new play production from the perspective of both playwrights and not-for-profit theatres. The study represents the most comprehensive field study in the history of the not-for-profit theatre to analyze new play production practices and the economics and culture of playwriting in America. Set against a backdrop of dwindling audiences for dramatic work, OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE NEW AMERICAN PLAY makes clear the urgent need for new conversations and practices if the American play is to flourish.

    The March 1 meeting will share the study findings and facilitate the beginning of a conversation in which participants can identify possible ways to improve conditions for the production of new American plays, community by community. We hope that a wide group of individuals from the theatre community in the Seattle area will join this conversation.

    Posted at 12:29 PM in 14/48, Louis Slotin Sonata, Seattle, Theatre | Comments (0)

    Tags: 5th Avenue Theatre, A Contemporary Theatre, ACT, FirstACT, Louis Slotin Sonata, playwright, Seattle Repertory Theater, theater, Theatre

  • Who should go to the OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE Discussion? Marketing & Publicity Managers

    I have been scanning through the minutes of the recent San Francisco discussion of Outrageous Fortune, blogged in real time here by Karen McKevitt.  There’s a lot of great stuff, but this particular nugget leapt out at me.

    [Question:]  “When a movie is produced, they market it to an audience, not the audience.  It seems if you did the former, you’d expand audiences.”

    [Answer:] “On the subject of marketing and [audience development], it describes a feeling from playwrights that theatres aren’t doing it successfully.  The theatres know this, but have fallen into a bind of subscription season.  But playwrights also say that marketing departments [don’t] want to hear from them about how to market their play, unless they’re a playwright of color.  Playwrights haven’t been part of the larger conversation about audience development.”

    Marketing and publicity managers stand at a crucial and fatally overlooked nexus of original theatrical endeavor and its potential audiences.  We need eager ambitious innovative thought leaders excelling in these roles.   (You would think that bigger theaters might be able to poach some young people who are just entering the job market having studied these disciplines and hitting the wall finding their dream position in the current depression.) 

    Publicity and marketing departments do need to be much more willing to collaborate with playwrights to brainstorm ways to reach and bring in new audiences for locally grown new plays, but perhaps more importantly, playwrights need to be equally willing to get their hands dirty doing  some bona fide promotion.  Heck, we might even deign to consider writing plays based on what audiences want instead of whatever brilliant obscure idea we have been obsessing over for a decade.  (This admonishment comes, mind you, from the guy who wrote about Frank Sinatra, the Chinese Massacre at Rocks Springs, and IBM’s existence as a corporate person all in the same over-wrought, self-indulgent and quintessentially wonderful play.)

    If you are involved in marketing , publicity or public relations for a local theater, please come on March 1 (details below, RSVP to guarantee a seat).  We need your insights.  And if do not work in those areas, but you just have brilliant ideas on how to promote theatre, please come as well, because I want to hear them.  (And possibly steal them.)

    Theatre Puget Sound hosts
    Outrageous Fortune
    March 1, 2010
    9AM – 1PM

    Detail: 9am – 10:30 Presentation by author Todd London

    Break – snacks
    10:40 – 12:00pm Q & A in large group
    Break – lunch type snacks
    12:10 – 1pm small group breakouts and report back

    Center House Theatre

    rsvp: TDFRSVP@tpsonline.org

    Theatre Development Fund, the national service organization, is convening a meeting of playwrights, artistic directors, funders, theatre managers and others in conjunction with Theatre Puget Sound at the Center House Theater in Seattle on March 1, 2010 from 9:00am-1:00pm to stimulate conversation and action to support new American play production. Tory Bailey, executive director of Theatre Development Fund, Todd London, artistic director of New Dramatists, and co-author Ben Pesner will lead the gathering, which will begin with a presentation of the results of an intensive study of new play production in America and then open out to an inclusive conversation.

    TDF has just released the book OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE NEW AMERICAN PLAY written by Todd London and Ben Pesner, with research consultant Zannie Giraud Voss. The book, drawing on six years of research, examines the lives and livelihoods of American playwrights today and the realities of new play production from the perspective of both playwrights and not-for-profit theatres. The study represents the most comprehensive field study in the history of the not-for-profit theatre to analyze new play production practices and the economics and culture of playwriting in America. Set against a backdrop of dwindling audiences for dramatic work, OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE NEW AMERICAN PLAY makes clear the urgent need for new conversations and practices if the American play is to flourish.

    The March 1 meeting will share the study findings and facilitate the beginning of a conversation in which participants can identify possible ways to improve conditions for the production of new American plays, community by community. We hope that a wide group of individuals from the theatre community in the Seattle area will join this conversation.

    Posted at 12:29 PM in 14/48, Louis Slotin Sonata, Seattle, Theatre | Comments (0)

    Tags: 5th Avenue Theatre, A Contemporary Theatre, ACT, FirstACT, Louis Slotin Sonata, playwright, Seattle Repertory Theater, theater, Theatre

  • Who should go to the OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE Discussion? Stagehands

    Who should go to the OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE Discussion? Stagehands

    Pretty much everyone connected with Seattle theatre knows something about its dirty little secret: the stage actors union, Actors Equity of America (or just “Equity”) refuses to grant Seattle the same kind of showcase contracts, readily available in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, that allow union actors to work for free in very small theatres (99-seats or less).  But there is another theatrical union that, like Equity, is run from big market cities thousands of miles way, with, like Equity, near zero regard for the particular needs and aspirations of local theatre artists. The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) (known to show folks as “Eye Yatzee”) represents the stagehands who run the shows at the big houses in Seattle.  Because of IATSE, my favorite venue in this town has been relegated to a pitiful existence as a glorified rehearsal hall.

    Before Dan Sullivan had built, at his personal behest and to his narrowly focused Broadway launching pad specifications, the crappy toy proscenium known a The Leo K Theater, the Seattle Rep had a different second space where you could see glorious world premiere productions like The Cider House Rules – Part I.  I speak with awe and ardor of a warm, open, bare bones black box called the PONCHO Forum.

    With the magic number of 99 seats, the PONCHO is the perfect space for developing locally grown new plays.  But IATSE requires that two members get full scale wages whenever it is used for performance.  So the labor costs of merely turning the lights on effectively obliterate any potential revenue.  Thus, by demanding two union jobs, IATSE gets zero.  And Seattle gets zero production use out of the perfectly useful PONCHO.

    There is no reason to believe IATSE members actually give a damn about developing new work in Seattle, or that they ever will.  Actually, they get fatter from the big Broadway touring shows offered at the Paramount, Fifth Avenue, and increasingly–and to their increasing shame– big houses like Intiman, which last year imported an Othello whole cloth from New York instead of hiring the actors locally.

    After 25 years as a theatre professional, I understand that stage hands cannot be begged, cajoled or threatened.  They can, however, be bribed.  So, if you are an IATSE member and you come to this discussion of Outrageous Fortune, simply show me your current union card and after the discussion I will personally walk you to the Lower Queen Anne bar of your choosing where the first round will be on me.  Maybe over that drink you can explain to me how keeping the PONCHO dark makes anything better.

    Theatre Puget Sound hosts
    Outrageous Fortune
    March 1, 2010
    9AM – 1PM

    Detail: 9am – 10:30 Presentation by author Todd London

    Break – snacks
    10:40 – 12:00pm Q & A in large group
    Break – lunch type snacks
    12:10 – 1pm small group breakouts and report back

    Center House Theatre

    rsvp: TDFRSVP@tpsonline.org

    Theatre Development Fund, the national service organization, is convening a meeting of playwrights, artistic directors, funders, theatre managers and others in conjunction with Theatre Puget Sound at the Center House Theater in Seattle on March 1, 2010 from 9:00am-1:00pm to stimulate conversation and action to support new American play production. Tory Bailey, executive director of Theatre Development Fund, Todd London, artistic director of New Dramatists, and co-author Ben Pesner will lead the gathering, which will begin with a presentation of the results of an intensive study of new play production in America and then open out to an inclusive conversation.

    TDF has just released the book OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE NEW AMERICAN PLAY written by Todd London and Ben Pesner, with research consultant Zannie Giraud Voss. The book, drawing on six years of research, examines the lives and livelihoods of American playwrights today and the realities of new play production from the perspective of both playwrights and not-for-profit theatres. The study represents the most comprehensive field study in the history of the not-for-profit theatre to analyze new play production practices and the economics and culture of playwriting in America. Set against a backdrop of dwindling audiences for dramatic work, OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE NEW AMERICAN PLAY makes clear the urgent need for new conversations and practices if the American play is to flourish.

    The March 1 meeting will share the study findings and facilitate the beginning of a conversation in which participants can identify possible ways to improve conditions for the production of new American plays, community by community. We hope that a wide group of individuals from the theatre community in the Seattle area will join this conversation.

    Posted at 12:29 PM in 14/48, Louis Slotin Sonata, Seattle, Theatre | Comments (0)

    Tags: 5th Avenue Theatre, A Contemporary Theatre, ACT, FirstACT, Louis Slotin Sonata, playwright, Seattle Repertory Theater, theater, Theatre