Just Wrought

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!

Hawking Whole Theatre at “What’s Next?”

Last night I joined a small but extremely energized group of theatre professionals at the second iteration of “Seattle Theatre: What’s Next?” hosted by Jim Jewell and Peggy Gannon.  I want to talk more about what was discussed and what action items came out of that discussion, but I think I will wait until Jim publishes the official minutes.  Until then, here’s a transcript of the three minute spiel that I was asked to give on what’s currently exciting me about Seattle Theatre:

 

Whole Theatre

Be careful what you wish for, sure.  But when it comes to Seattle Theater, it’s also wise to be specific what you wish for.  For a good while now Seattle’s Big House theatres have been gradually increasing the percentage of local actors they hire.  And rightfully they have then touted this change as a noble step in the direction of locally grown theatre. But let’s be honest.  We all know one of two things happened.  Either the artistic administrators of Seattle’s Big Houses all got together in a room and decided, “Hey, we should do the right thing and hire more local actors.”  Or... they all independently realized that in the current depression it was becoming cost prohibitive to fly in every actor from New York or LA.  I’ll leave it to you to decide which scenario seems more plausible.  But look, when a good thing happens it’s churlish to over-analyze the reasons for it.

The problem is that using local actors isn’t enough.  And so when we advocate for locally grown theatre, we need to be more specific…  Whole Theatre.  Theatre that is soup to nuts local: written by local talent in collaboration with local talent.  Zero degrees of separation among everyone from the playwright to the director to the designers to the actors to the audiences. 

Zero degrees of separation. 

If what I am proposing sounds radical or overly ambitious, consider this: we do it all the time.  In fact, if I can brag a little, as a playwright and an actor, I have done very little in the last five years that hasn’t been Whole Theatre.  Going back to 2006, there was the Empty Space production of Louis Slotin Sonata.  When the floor needed final painting, Allison Narver was there in jeans, helping designer Gary Smoot to finish it.  I’m trying to picture one of Seattle’s Big House artistic directors doing that.  To be fair, I’m sure there are union rules against it.

Then there was The Ten Thousand Things, which Washington Ensemble Theatre produced.  I sat in a room with the director and the designer Etta Lilienthal talking through her sketches. Later, I sat in the theatre while audience members rewrote my play one word each performance.

And most recently there was Newswrights United producing two living newspapers, researched, written and produced by Seattleites, about Seattleites, for Seattleites.

And of course it’s not just stuff I’m working on.  There’s the incomparable 14/48, perhaps the most consistently exciting weekend of theatre in town.  All local actors, directors, designers and crew mixing it up on plays written by local playwrights in the space of maybe ten hours, tops.

There’s Printer’s Devil, opening yet another Scot Augustson world premiere, Shadow Odyssey in their unique committed relationship with him.

There’s Sandbox Radio which just staged its second all original slate of short pieces, combining some of Seattle’s best actors with the best playwrights and musicians.

And right on the horizon is Rebecca Olson’s new project Custom Made Plays, commissioning local playwrights to write for specific local actors.  I’m happy to be the playwright on the pilot play, writing for Rebecca herself and Hana Lass.

Whole Theatre.  Theatre that hasn’t had the yummy good-for-you stuff processed out of it.  Non-corporate theatre that ain’t stale from being packaged three years ago in a theatre scene 2,700 miles away by MFA’s who have never stepped foot in your town.  Whole Theatre. Seattle’s crawling with it.  And surely it gives us the most solid shot at World Class.

 

(I want to do a version of the poster that says Enjoy Whole Theatre!  Or as Shakespeare, Molière and Chekhov called it, “Theatre.”)

This is Why I am Shutting Up

I kicked off 2011 here at Just Wrought with an essay called “Demons’ Year Off” in which I promised to reduce my ranting and “listen more than talk going forward”.  In a more recent piece, “Joining Averroës’ Search” I renewed my commitment to keeping quiet so that others, ideally smarter, more informed and better positioned to effect change might join the discussion.  (Admittedly, this is a bit of a quixotic gambit, given how mum most of Seattle’s artistic administrators have kept during this crisis.) Today, with his post over at the Seattlest “Open Letter to the Intiman Board”, Jim Jewell has reaffirmed my faith in the ability of smart arts professionals in this town to lead the way out of this crisis, and maybe even show the nation how it is done.

“… For all of the difficulties facing Intiman, you have also been presented a unique opportunity. While every other theatre in town, and really in the country, tries to figure out how to make difficult transitions, shifting the earned/contributed income balance and trying to break from the failing subscription model, you have a blank slate…. This is not the time to try to fix a broken model, but to take the pieces you have and build something new. It isn’t enough to be stewards; a steward could easily work in hospice. We need you to be shepherds, to lead, and to be willing to follow, the rich flock of artistic talent in Seattle.”

Jewell goes on to offer suggestions both bold and innovative, but neither impossible nor even all that risky, compared to the very real risk that Intiman’s board will do nothing significant at all.

He rightly points out that the subscription/season model is a tumor that sucks the vitality out of arts institutions across the country, and he offers a sober workable alternative tempered by his experience as the former Marketing and PR Manager at Seattle Children’s Theatre, the founder and de facto leader of the marketing discussion group Holes Not Drills, and as Managing Director of NewsWrights United.

For better or worse, whether in self-congratulation or deprecation, I can’t help but think of myself as Sam Adams in Seattle’s struggle to become a world class theatre town.  As folks are happy to point out, I have a knack for starting loud and unruly conversations; but Sam Adams, drunken loud-mouthed Tea Party-thrower that he was, was never well positioned to lead the colonies anywhere except into ever rowdier arguments.  In the end, he had to turn the struggle over to his betters and let them lead the cause. If I’m Sam Adams, then Jim Jewell is my cousin John: smarter, better informed, and better positioned to effect the change we need.

Jim, the floor is yours.  Let facts be submitted to a candid world.

 

The SunBreak Suggests Some New Strokes

Just because I have excused myself from the debate about the future of Seattle Theatre along with the broader crisis in American Arts doesn’t mean I can’t celebrate an insightful perspective, especially when it comes from someone who sees the problem from sides I can only barely glimpse.  Michael van Baker, Editor and Publisher of The SunBreak once worked for the Seattle Opera and other non-profit arts organizations around town; and in his recent post, “Arts Marketing for Dummies”.  He sneaks us a peak of some of the lessons he learned, with promises of perhaps more and deeper observations to follow:

Because self-preservation is the defining aspect of arts institutional life–ironically, the non-profit model virtually guarantees it–the business model warps in that direction. People begin to have trouble distinguishing between best business practices and those that have worked in the past to pay everyone’s salaries. Over time, the institution’s existence–its habits and proclivities–mediates the art presented. It’s not just a question of the popularity of one work versus another–it’s a question of box office receipts. That’s what’s being discussed when the directors meet: saleability.

It should be discussed! Don’t get me wrong. But, as before, is anything important being left out?

Van Baker sketches some bold fresh solutions, but with the sober understanding that they are not likely to be quickly adopted by a cadre of arts administrators who would rather sink with the ship than swim a new stroke.

Rule: We create art and outsource/outshare the rest….

…  As it happens, arts administrators are not the soulless quasi-corporate drones they are at times portrayed to be. So it’s already the case that most arts organizations collaborate and share a great deal, more than you might expect if you considered how competitive the marketplace is. The problem is, they collaborate inefficiently. … Every single organization reinvents the database, usually in their own way, and the results are sometimes anarchic.

The situation is unlikely to change because, at an institutional level, there’s no apparent incentive and the loss of control disturbs leadership. Thus, database management and mining remains a core function of organizations theoretically devoted to art production.

Van Baker also recognizes a fact which took over a year of me blogging here to sink into my thick skull:  a lot of folks, in this city particularly, would rather quibble and bitch behind backs than make any actual moves.  Says Van Baker, “Of course, the arts being what they are, there are many over-educated people willing to argue about minutiae rather than broader principle.”

Towards the end of the piece Van Baker hints that there might be a larger, more detailed opus forthcoming.  I encourage that effort and look forward to its fruition, especially since I’m shutting up.

Joining Averroës’ Search

One of my favorite stories by Jorge Luis Borges is “Averroës’ Search”.  It’s not a very good story— Borges himself admits as much in a rather tortured apology that he tacks on at the end—but it’s a story about theatre—at least in part—and since it’s one of the only times Borges, a favorite of mine, touches on the art form that I have sunk so much of myself into, the short piece has become special to me.  I can approximate how many times I have read it by counting the different colors of pencils I have used to mark it up: dark blue, light blue, purple, green.

The story opens with the great Islamic annotator of Aristotle lamenting the frequent appearance in the Poetics of two words  that, to a devout Muslim of the 12th Century, seem to have no meaning at all: “tragedy” and “comedy”. 

He had come across them years earlier in the third book of the Rhetoric; no one in all of Islam could guess as to their meaning….  Yet the two arcane words were everywhere in the text of the Poetics—it was impossible to avoid them.

In the very next paragraph Averroës takes a break from his work and looks down from his balcony. 

…  There below, in the narrow earthen courtyard, half-naked children were at play.  One of them standing on the shoulders of another, was clearly playing at being a muezzin: his eyes tightly closed, he was chanting the muezzin’s monotonous cry,  There is no God but Allah.  The boy standing motionless and holding him on his shoulders was the turret from which he sang; another kneeling, bowing low in the dirt, was the congregation of the faithful.  The game did not last long— they all wanted to be the muezzin, no one wanted to be the worshippers or the minaret.

For me, this is Borges at his best and most loveable: a great thinker imagining a great thinker struggling to imagine a concept that, in fact, palpably surrounds him.  As many of my friends who like to argue with me point out, theatre will always survive.  You literally cannot not have theatre.  But as Borges might counter, you can certainly have it without knowing you have it.  Perhaps that’s where we are heading.  The great Argentine did foretell the internet after all.

Recently, in a fit of frustration that so many people seemed to miss the point of my recent post about playwrights not making a living from their plays while plenty of folks make one making theatre, I recently wrote the following self-pitying status on Face Book. 

I somehow need to find a way to harness the average Seattle theatre artist's endless enthusiasm for arguing into an actual force for change.

Yes, we're all smart. We're all well read. We all know how to attack a straw man and cleverly defend the indefensible, but at what point do we decide we can do better and then take steps to do it?

It's a cliché, but it always applies: if not us, who? If not now, when?

Maybe self pitying isn’t the right description.  Maudlin?  Mawkish?  In any case, a good friend and theatre colleague blithely chimed in: “Shut up and do a show.”  It’s good advice.  Well, again, advice isn’t really the right word.  No one telling you to shut up is giving you advice so much as dictating a directive, and a rather ironic one at that, since it’s impossible to tell someone to shut up without opening your mouth.  Still though, the person who said this has a largely gentle heart, and I know he would not want me to do anything I did not really want to do. 

With the understanding that I did not have a lot of room to talk about Seattle theatre unless I was actually making Seattle theatre, I have been pushing pretty hard on producing over the last few years.  This spring I wrote and served as executive producer for The New New News: A Living Newspaper; a little over a year before that I served in the same capacities for It’s Not the the P-I: A Living Newspaper About a Dying Newspaper.  And before that there was The Ten Thousand Things at Washington Ensemble Theatre, The Don Juan Cult Concerto at NSCC, Tuesday and An American Book of the Dead- The Game Show at Annex Theatre.  Just listing those shows makes me smile and feel tired at the same time.  Boy, have I done some shows since coming back to Seattle in 2002!

Now it’s 2011 and I have foundered on a fact that frightens me a bit and that I need to share with you.  I don’t want to put on another show.  Even if I did, I don’t have one.  It’s just not in me at the moment.  And I don’t know if it ever will be again.  (It feels like a long moment, frankly.)  I believe this is something that every theatre artist has to face at some point.  A future with no shows.  But just like Averroës, I will be surrounded by theatre whether I know it or not, whether I want it or not.  After all, isn’t the Intiman’s colossal failure a tragedy in the truest sense?

So, with the understanding that one earns one’s right to speak about Seattle theatre by making Seattle theatre, I need to cash in for a while and keep my mouth shut.  I will still keep Just Wrought active, and still post here, but my advocacy for Seattle becoming a World Class theatre town, and all the kvetching and posturing that goes with it, is hereby retired indefinitely.

It is time for me to shut up, sit back, and watch the show… as produced by others.

Help! I Need a Word

 

Gentle readers, can you help me?  I just invented a brand new art form about which I am very excited.  Check it out: this art form employs the interplay of two or more persons seen and heard live by an audience.  As far as I’m aware there is no art form like it.  Remember, it has to have more than one person because the interplay is key, because as a fool once said:

Dialogue breeds risk like flowers bloom scent, and risk is the fabric of theatre.  Because two or more people on stage can never know with certainty what an other is about to do, no matter how many times they have done it before, the audience attends the action with a sense of the innate exposure.  “Anything could happen, and we are in the same damned room with these agitated people.”   Risk is not a by-product of drama.  It is the main ingredient. 

So what do I call my invention?  Please do not say theatre.  I have been told by experts that that word actually means:

• “Whatever takes place in a theater.”
• “...But also anything which takes place outside of a theatre but sorta feels like it could’ve taken place in a theatre.”
• “...But also anything else I decide it is.”

I’m collecting suggestions below, most especially from non-theatre artists and non-academics, because I am really hoping to convince you to come see my new art form.

Thanks in advance!

Why Omar Willey’s “Why Theater Matters” Matters

Let’s get the over-arching irony out of the way first thing: my friendship with Omar Willey blossomed on line, through Face Book and his responses to my blogging here at Just Wrought; and had that been the extent of our relationship, then certainly a cynical dismissal of my recommending his recent essay “Why Theater Matters” would be eminently fair.  After all, he argues herein for a theatre triumphant over the distance and disaffection with which our “on-line lives” infect us.  Fortunately, our friendship has also blossomed in “real life” and real-life’s cooler cousin, theatre.  Omar comes to my shows.  Omar comes to everyone’s shows.  If you are a Seattle theatre artist and you don’t know Omar, I can assure you that your ignorance is not reciprocated.  Omar knows you.   Omar knows your work.  What’s more, Omar Willey and his colleague José Amador (whom I also have the honor of calling friend) have begun to review your work, over at the Seattlest. 

In his essay, posted a few days ago, Omar offers an implicit explanation for his coming out of retirement (he  reviewed theatre for KCMU-FM back in the 1990’s) and again lowering his lance at our windmills.

Simulacra. Pseudonymity. The theater … erases them. Theater restores the primacy of the human body. It restores presence. It restores the potential, the fear and the promise of the present, and gives an immediate response in the present tense.

... Theater remains a communal experience of people, persons seeing themselves with, through and in other persons in a unique, irreproducible moment. A self, communing with other selves. Being here. Now. And never to be the same person, the same place, the same way again....  Bridging the gap between friends and strangers, the sense of a marvelous, wondrous love and beauty that restores joy to life, shared together. How easily we forget it when we do not seek it.

This reminds me so much of a favorite quote of mine from Carl Jung that I would not be at all surprised if Omar knows it intimately.  But just in case you don’t, here ‘tis:

...You go to the theatre: glance meets glance, everybody observes everybody else, so that all those who are present are caught up in an invisible web of mutual unconscious relationship....

Mankind has always formed groups which made collective experiences of transformation--often of an ecstatic nature--possible. The regressive identification with lower and more primitive states of consciousness is invariably accompanied by a heightened sense of life... .The inevitable psychosocial regression within the group is partially counteracted by ritual, that is to say through a cult ceremony which makes the solemn performance of sacred events the centre of group activity and prevents the crowd from relapsing into unconscious instinctuality... The ritual makes it possible for him to have a comparatively individual experience even within the group and so remain more or less conscious.

—Concerning Rebirth, circa, 1940

 As I understand it, Omar and José threw their hats in the Seattlest ring because they saw a dearth of earnest, careful theatre criticism, not just here in Seattle but across the country.  Of course others have noticed this drought as well, myself included.  My problem has been caring.  After over two decades of professional work as a playwright and actor, watching the importance of reviews plummet from marginal to minimal to finally negligible, I openly admit I have trouble seeing how criticism could help Seattle become a World Class theatre town.  In a recent semi-private exchange on Face Book, Omar called my hand: "... I do wonder, Paul, if you don't think criticism is key to helping us get somewhere, then what do you think will? Or do we simply understand criticism differently? Plays written about other plays or inspired by thematic ideas from other plays--these, too, are criticism, no?"

Let me respond now, weeks later:

Omar, in the context of your comprehensively inclusive understanding of what criticism can be, and what it can do, yes, indeed, I believe it can help us get somewhere.  Of course, such an approach—steeped in the art form’s history but somewhat foreign to Seattle’s cultural ethos— will require leadership.  It appears you and José are stepping forward to be those happy few to rally the critical flank of Seattle’s charge forward toward World Class.  So even though I have already said it privately, please allow me to state again publically here, loudly and proudly...

Omar, José?

Welcome to the fray.

Mark Chamberlin: World Class Theatre Artist

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 Companny'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.

* * *

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.

* * *

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.

On Institutional Arrogance

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 United has 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.

 

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Seattle Channel Video can be played in Flash Player 9 and up

 

(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 to others.)

It’s Been a Year

I launched Just Wrought a year ago today with the essay “Towards a World Class Theatre”.  I am glad I did it, but now for reasons completely different from those I had when I started.  Back then I had no idea that through this blog I would gain the good friendship and professional working relationship I have with Jim Jewell, now the Managing Producer of NewsWrights United; or that I would get to know Lyam White, Jose Amador, and Omar Willey so much better.

Conversely, I honestly did not suspect that I would lose some friends simply by saying publically what I had always said to them in private bullshit sessions; but alas, this too is true, as some have conflated my arguments here about failures of leadership, courage and imagination in Seattle theater with personal aggression towards them and their livelihoods.  Some, but happily not all, or even most; because even more surprising than the estranged colleagues have been the artistic leaders who have reached out to me to say essentially, “I think a lot of what you say is crap, but I am glad you are saying it.”

Just like nearly everything we do as artists—or really, humans— I have no idea if this project has succeeded, and I may never know.  I do not suspect for a minute that I have yet made even the slightest dent in the status quo of how theatre gets done in Seattle, but I do sometimes flatter myself with believing I have helped simultaneously broaden and sharpen the conversation.

Of the thirteen formal essays I set out to write, I have managed to finish only five over the last 365 days.  Looking at the list now, I realize with certainty that I will never write at least three of them.  “Since When Are Directors Indispensable?” was going to point out that directors are a relatively new species in the long history of theatre, and that playwrights like Shakespeare and Moliere managed incomparable dramatic brilliance without them; but honestly, I don’t know of a single working playwright who leans more heavily on the talent of the directors he collaborates with than myself.  I literally cannot imagine producing Tuesday at Annex Theatre, or our current Living Newspapers, without Dawson Nichols, and the thought of the erstwhile Empty Space’s production of  Louis Slotin Sonata without John Langs at the helm, bringing together as he did all the amazing acting and design elements (not to mention his kick-ass choreography in the second act dance number) literally depresses me.  I could not do my work without directors, so what sort of non-hypocritical point was I hoping to make?  Perhaps only that the rising stock of the anti-collaborative idea of singular stage director auteurship, borrowed as it is from filmmaking, is a mistaken and destructive direction in theatre, especially when regional houses make season selections based on which plays will entice particular directors to work with them.  Throughout the 20th century stage directors gained power   mostly at the expense of playwrights.  The art form will regain health when that inequity is honestly addressed and steps are taken to resolve it.

I also no longer plan to write about the deleterious arrangement Seattle theatre has with Actors Equity (the stage actors union), or how the viral nature of MFA programs for actors, directors and playwrights is weakening and rarifying our art form in this country.  I realize after this year of speaking out that as a college-dropout actor-turned-playwright, these are no longer my battles to fight.  Only the actors in this town can fix things so they have the same right to develop new works for the stage as actors in Los Angeles and New York; and only young people themselves can wake up and realize that chasing the imprimatur of higher education only takes them further away from the audiences that really need them, and that the excuse of needing a degree to make a living by teaching their craft only perpetuates the virus, while ultimately helping no one, including themselves.

Of the five essays I did manage to write I am proud and stand by them.  Locally grown new plays do matter, and I see signs that Seattle is making more of them.  World Class Theatre does mean something, even when it cannot and should not be defined precisely.  Playwrights and designers can form some amazing alliances, and I earnestly hope for more of them, for myself and for the world of play development at large.  One-person shows are an easy way for a theaters to shirk the hard work of actually making new plays.  (All props and apologies to Mike Daisy, Jose Amador, Marya Sea Kaminski and everyone else who does such amazing solo work.  I don’t want you to stop.  I just want theatres to stop selling live story-telling  as “plays" {And yes, I understand that even that won’t happen.})

That leaves five essays unwritten and unspiked.  The one most likely to see daylight in 2011 is “Stop trying to be Respectable, You’re in Show Business”; because I still see way too many of my Seattle colleagues cozying up for financial support and social legitimacy to the very same powerful interests that they should instead be looking for ways to indict theatrically.  I wish I had a condo payment for every time an otherwise  brilliant artistic administrator has baldly insisted to me that theatre is an elitist art form and therefore must depend on the good graces of corporations and  the upper class for its existence.  If I believed this, I would not only quit today, I would start doing everything I could to darken every stage currently producing plays in this city.  Thankfully, I know better.  As show people, we are at our best playing the dangerous fool, telling the wealthy and well-placed  who would teach us our art, what Lear’s Fool told Lear, “I am better than thou art now; I am a Fool, thou art nothing.”

Just Wrought’s first year has been an often hectic, sometimes even bruising struggle.  Lately I have had to remind myself and others that I am an artist first, and an advocate only much further down my list of priorities.  Over the last few weeks I have been feeling a growing need to take time to lie fallow here for the sake of my creativity.  I resolve to listen more than I talk in 2011.  Of course that doesn’t mean I won’t be talking at all.

Expanded conversations.  Bruising struggles over important ideas.  Greater clarity around the issues about which I should just keep quiet.

Lost friends.  Gained friends. 

It’s been a year.