Playwright’s rule of thumb #3: if you don’t know what you’re doing, raise the stakes. This is also a favorite for anyone losing an argument. Arbitrarily up the ante and things become more interesting. More interesting equals intrinsically good in a play. In an argument, it’s… well… whatever it is, it’s more interesting.
Over a year ago I was given a “Genius Award” in theatre by Seattle’s weekly newspaper The Stranger. It’s one of those honors that cannot, and probably should not, ever quite sit right: the kind of recognition any artist craves not just for the added publicity and legitimacy it brings your work, but also because, let’s face it: it’s a delicious ego stroke and the $5,000 cash that comes with it helps ease any pointless pangs of guilt over being singled out. Beyond that guilt, however, looms another misgiving which grows out of the fact that the honor is bestowed not in recognition of any particular piece but one’s entire body of work. You’re forced to wonder, “What the hell am I going to do next? And how the hell will that be good enough to garner such praise in the future?” I had no idea. Still don’t.
Nor did I have any idea back then about what I was going to say when I accepted the award at the Moore Theater on that Saturday, September 13, 2008. I did know that the folks at The Stranger enjoyed presenting the awards in flamboyant and entertaining ways. (For instance, Paul Constant channeled an old time booming-voiced boxing announcer when he handed the prize for literature to Sherman Alexie.) So this much I determined: as show people, I’d be damned if I let some tabloid scribbler upstage me. I had to say something engaging other than just “thanks a lot”, but what? That’s when I remembered rule #3. Raise the stakes.
I began my acceptance by magnanimously allowing that Seattle was a pretty good theatre town. The crowd approved. Then I lofted my caveat: we were good, but we weren’t great. The crowd grew quiet, restless. I said I believed we had everything it takes to be great, but we weren’t great; and worse, we didn’t even seem to be moving in the right direction. More awkward noises. Then I said I believed we could be a world class theatre city within 5 years, but only if we wanted to. We had to want it. The crowd liked this. They clapped, they hollered. It felt great. Lots of toasts and backslaps afterwards. I made a self-congratulatory moment into a community-wide challenge. And every one seemed to slurp it with a spoon. Success, by any definition.
Since then, however, not many people have mentioned my acceptance speech, though there is one particularly notable exception. A month after that night I got an email from my sister Margaret. It said simply: “Just in case you were wondering. 9/13/13. Make it so!” Since odds are about even that you do not know my sister, allow me to unpack her cryptic note and translate it plainly into the words I know she intended. “Dear Brother, in case you were thinking that you could make that challenge publicly solely in order to arbitrarily raise stakes and thus add empty entertainment calories to your speech, hoping no one will remember, please think again. I will remember. I will hold you to it. I will publicly mock you if you fail. So deliver me a world class theatre town by the Fall of 2013, or prepare to face my undying scorn.” You see, I come from a very loving and supportive family.
Upping the ante is painless and risk-free if no one is paying attention. Thanks to my sister, such is not my fate. But I am, after all, a collaborative artist. If she intends to hold me accountable over the next four years, then I intend to share her attentions with all of my beloved fellow theatre artists in this amazing city. My discomfiture will become their discomfiture, or at least as much of it as I can artfully manage to share. Which brings me to these essays. This is the introductory first of ten or twelve I intend to write on the subject of theatre in Seattle. During my last 22 years as a theatre professional here and in New York City I have come to some strongly held conclusions about how I think theatre can be made better. I have shared these opinions with friends and colleagues in one-on-one conversations or in small groups in social situations. Now I think it is time for me to share more formally and more widely—to raise the stakes.
A few weeks back, I began keeping a little folder on my computer with text files in it. Some contain embryonic notes and outlines, the beginnings of these future essays. Others consist only of tentative titles, like the following:
- Why Locally Grown Plays Matter
- What the Hell does “World Class” Mean Anyway?
- Why Craft Won’t Save Us
- Good Friend for Jesus’ Sake Forbear and Never Build another Proscenium Stage
- Since When Are Directors Indispensable?
- The MFA Virus
- Building the West Coast Pipeline Alternative to New York’s Hub and Spoke Failure
- Playwrights and Designers: The Overlooked Partnership
- Don’t Let the Big Houses Fool Ya, Money Has Almost Nothing to Do with It
- Stop trying to be Respectable, You’re in Show Business.
- America loves Playwrights!—The Deader the Better; or How The English Speaking World Wields its Greatest Playwright as a Club to Kill Theatre
- Sacrificing Art on a Dubious Union’s Altar
- The One-Person Show: The Lazy Artistic Director's Best Friend
The essays will be written with primarily my theatre colleagues in mind; but I fervently believe we need to also invite non-show people into these conversations because, as a self-identified neo-Vaudevillian, and in sharp contrast to the rising class of theatre academic elite, I believe that what the audience wants and needs actually matters.
Potshots of prose alone cannot go any significant distance toward making theater better here in Seattle or anywhere. Only making great theatre will make theatre great here. This series will be about sharpening my arguments and placing them in a public place, where they may serve to convince or be dismissed, or maybe even dismantled and built into something more useful. I am done bitching in bars. I am pushing my stakes on the table and I encourage my colleagues, especially those who disagree with me, to do the same. Our stock-in-trade is dialogue. Maybe we can employ its power to discover the way forward towards a world class theatre in our own home town.
You GO, Paul Mullin!!!!!
Posted by: kimber | 12/15/2009 at 09:12 AM
I heart Paul Mullin.
Posted by: Leslie | 12/15/2009 at 01:50 PM
"Good Friend for Jesus’ Sake Forbear and Never Build another Proscenium Stage"
HAHAHA. I can't wait for that one. And Amen.
Posted by: Darian | 12/15/2009 at 03:00 PM
Sir, if by your statement, "I'm done bitching in bars," you mean to imply that such an activity is a poor use of time and energy, you do bitching and bars a great dishonor. The plots that led to the American and French revolutions were hatched in bars; both were born of considerable bitching and drinking in bars.
Bitching in bars was fundamental to the great success of the Elizabethan theatre. Plays were purchased based on readings given in bars. Given the circumstances - playwrights, actors and company managers drinking together – Elizabethan barmaids and barmen beheld a volume and quality of bitching likely unsurpassed in the history of Western Civilization.
The theatre of our time desperately needs more bitching in more bars, not less. Social media, in its purest form, flows from bottle to glass to gullet
Posted by: Louis Broome | 12/15/2009 at 04:26 PM
It sounds like Seattle theater is a very different scene now than it was in the 90's, when I was there, Jeff Reid was an artistic director, and Paul Mullin was an angry YOUNG man.
With nostalgia for that past and hope for the future, I look forward to reading all of these.
Nice work, Paul.
Posted by: Bill Salyers | 12/16/2009 at 07:06 AM
Louis, I knew it it was just a question of how long until someone called my bluff about bitching in bars. I'm just glad it was you, who shares my love for it as well as my adoration for the greatest living mixology artist in Seattle and quite possibly anywhere, Zig Zag's Murray Stenson.
Posted by: Paul Mullin | 12/16/2009 at 08:45 AM
In order to raise the caliber of the bitching around here, we probably need to find a more suitable bar in which to do it, or preferably several.
And I've got you linked on my web site now, so you bet I'll be keeping track.
Posted by: COMTE | 12/16/2009 at 02:07 PM
I wouldn't worry too much, Chris. There's a reason why the title for the piece on Equity is near the bottom of the list. Fact is, I'm nearly done trying to convince AEA members that they need to reform their union for the sake of their artform. And everyone else seems to consider the point blatantly obvious. So I'll be surprised if I can sustain the energy to build these essays at the level I want to all the way to the bottom of the list. But if I can, trust me, Equity will get the logic lashing it so richly deserves.
Posted by: Paul Mullin | 12/16/2009 at 02:19 PM
In order to have a meaningful conversation about making Seattle a world class theatre town I think you need to define what world class means...
Does it mean:
- Seattle theatre is regularly discussed in world newspapers?
- Seattle productions get consistently reviewed in the NY Times?
- Other countries regularly import Seattle productions to run in their local theatres?
- plays written by Seattle natives are produced in other countries?
- Seattle theatre gets lots of mentions in The Drama Review?
- Dan Sullivan gets elected President of Norway?
- Some Islamic leader issues a Fatwa against a locally grown playwright?
I mean, what the hell does world class mean? I think you need an essay on that. What does it mean? What goals do you propose than when met signify arrival? How is Seattle tracking today against those goals?
Posted by: Account Deleted | 12/17/2009 at 10:50 AM
Dear Paul Mullin,
I don't know you, but I think I heart you. If there had been more people like you in Seattle I might not have jumped ship for New York about two seconds after I graduated from Cornish.
I grew up in Kitsap County and I used to see plays in Seattle when I was a teenager. (This was in the 90's. Anybody remember that show "Poona the Fuckdog"?) The scene seemed very vibrant from the outside. By the time I graduated from Cornish in '03 it seemed very different. I don't know if the scene actually changed or if my perspective changed. I suspect it was the actual scene, since so many houses were closing down.
Anyway, I got a job here which is why I came, but I miss Seattle all the time. I really, really hope it becomes the world class theater town you're aiming for.
Posted by: Joshua Conkel | 01/05/2010 at 06:35 AM
Welcome Joshua!
I don't know you either, but I heart you back and thank you for your comment. Ironically enough I moved back to Seattle from NYC just as you were moving in the opposite direction, so I can tell you without hesitation that the city definitely did change from the fervent '90's to the Zeroes. The acting talent got older and better, more professional, but also, sadly more risk averse and less likely to give the finger to the Big Houses or Equity holding them down.
Also, the fringe theaters became more risk averse too. Customarily the bastions of new work, they did less and less of it in the Zeroes until, when finally called on it, they offered distinctly "Big House" excuses like "It hurts our box office. We make less money on new works." Like an Annex or an AHA! ever let that weak crap ever stop them from choosing something original over the hot thing from Off-Broadway 2 years ago.
I've been targeting the Big Houses a lot here, but fact is, the fringe houses here have lost heart and true direction. Except for Annex, but Annex can't do it alone.
Posted by: Paul Mullin | 01/05/2010 at 11:18 AM
There are no venues in Seattle, no subversive cadre of off the wall playwrights willing to jump into the cauldron. I love it here - live here, study here sometimes at Freehold - but if I want to feel alive and inspired and challenged I go to NYC.
Posted by: Mark Rose | 01/13/2010 at 12:27 PM