It was this time a year ago that I got a wild hair to post a note on Facebook about 14/48, Seattle's semi-annual 48-hour theatre festival (click here for a full introduction). Basically, I went after one of the festival's producers, Shawn Belyea, for claiming that in the context of the festival he helped world premiere 56 new plays a year. It created sort of a tempest in our teapot theatre community. My earnest praise of 14/48 got a little lost in the shouting. In retrospect, I realize a couple of things:
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I sort of bushwhacked my good friend and colleague Shawn Belyea, and that was unfair. For that I’d like to apologize again here, publicly. (Although trust me, Shawn got his revenge at the Thursday night kick off meeting last year, where he publicly encouraged everyone participating to shout “Asshole!” at me, at first en mass, and then later whenever they saw me walking around.)
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I think even back then I was unconsciously gearing up for the more formal essays I am posting here at Just Wrought. That note (posted below, for the historically curious) was simply an early sloppy skirmish in what now promises to be a longer, more difficult struggle. (And happily, I like to think Shawn’s mostly on my side for this one.)
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I should have put my praise of 14/48 up front, instead of the final paragraph, because I don’t think most of the people I pissed off even bothered reading that far.
So let me make up for those mistakes now, by listing some of the ways 14/48 gets it oh-so-right:
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The Crucible. The crushing time constraints cook out the preciousness, for writers especially, but also actors, and perhaps most importantly and least obviously, directors.
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The Leadership. The crisp, efficient, egalitarian leadership allows for dynamic creative risk-taking. Artistic directors at big and small theatres across the country could learn something from the folks who run 14/48.* They understand that nailing the logistics—consistently and enthusiastically-- and then letting artists be, creates more, better opportunities for brilliance than Stalinistically attempting to impose their will on all creative decisions.
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The People. Every six months we have this amazing informal convention of Seattle theatre talent. Every theatre town aspiring to something more than a dilettantes’ scene should try something similar. Be sure to provide, however, the correct combination of work, food and beer. Without hard work, show people tend towards over-compensations of obnoxiousness. Without food, they simply don’t stay. Without beer-- on hand as it is at 14/48, free and round-the-clock-- participants begin to feel ill-used by a brutally ambitious process. The 14/48 producers have either stumbled on to, or cynically arrived at, a fundamental truth: buy an actor a drink and he’ll give you his heart’s blood without even thinking. No one can witness the talent that accrues at 14/48 without marveling how Seattle has more than a mid-sized city’s fair share of world class actors, directors, musicians, designers, crew, organizers, and—yes, absolutely— playwrights.
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The Marketing. 14/48 has increased its audience share year over year, every year since January 2006. How many other theatres, big or small, can lay claim to that sort of consistent growth. There is no huge paid marketing campaign. Instead, word-of-mouth drives people to the shows in larger and larger numbers. Ironically, this can be attributed to a consistency of product. How can the product be consistent when the subject matter, casting, directors and play order are selected at random? Because 14/48 isn’t selling “quality” in the staid overwrought meaning of the word as used by regional theaters. Instead, 14/48 is selling what show people have always sold best: risk, danger, the unknown and the unknowable. What a wonderful tonic to the tired litany of “craft is king” that I hear over and over from my “respectable” theatre colleagues. Craft isn’t king, the show is!
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The Existential Reminders.
Being a Fool is Your Job. If you are petrified to take risks, fail, or look foolish, you should not be a theatre artist.
Everything Disappears. 14/48 sells and celebrates the fact that unless you plant your butt in that particular seat on that particular night, you will miss the show. That’s leveraging the ephemerality of theatre at its finest. -
A Free Pass from Equity. Let’s face it, a key reason 14/48 can get such amazing acting talent working such insane hours is that Equity, the stage actors union, looks the other way. Just imagine what Seattle actors could achieve in developing new plays if they were allowed the same privilege of working on them for love under some sort of Showcase or 99-Seat Waiver, like the kind of arrangements that Los Angeles, Chicago and New York actors currently enjoy.
So . . .
If you live near or close to Seattle, go see 14/48 at least once, preferably multiple times, over this weekend and/or next.
If you don’t live near or close to Seattle, consider participating in, attending or founding a similar event. At the very least, embrace the fact that what makes theatre theatre is foolishness and ephemerality. Leave your respectability at the door.
If you’re an artistic director at a regional theatre in Seattle or elsewhere, understand that 14/48 adheres to a model that is probably closer to generating future sustainable success than the one you are currently laboring under.
*To his significant credit, Jerry Manning, Interim Artistic Director for the Seattle Repertory Theater, has actually participated in a 14/48 as a director. Whether ACT’s AD, Kurt Beattie has ever even attended one, I’m not sure, but I doubt it. I doubt even more deeply that, during what seems destined to be her brief tenure leading the Intiman, Kate Whoriskey will ever go see what happens at this festival. I hope I am wrong. My pledge: if she does go, her first free beer is on me.
Original Note:
14/48: Not the Full Meal Deal, but a Taste of the Good Stuff
Tuesday, January 6, 2009 at 9:55am
The last time I talked to Shawn Belyea about new works, he claimed, with no irony I could detect, that as a producer of 14/48 he was responsible for premiering 56 new plays every year. I nodded, smiled, decided not to argue. I was, after all, trying to win him to my point of view that new works are vital to Seattle’s bid to become a world class theatre town within five years. And, more importantly, I had just bummed a smoke from him and didn’t want to seem ungrateful. But the fact is, I’ve been bristling at that claim ever since.
It takes me on average about a year and a half of sustained work to wright a play ready for production. For the sake of the math I’m about to do, let’s simplify things and say that one of my plays requires about 1,000 hours of work to produce a final script of 80 pages, breaking down to 12 & 1/2 hours of effort per page. (Actually sounds kind of small put that way, but that’s what the calculator’s telling me, so . . . )
Now for 14/48 the playwrights have approximately 10 hours to produce 8 pages. That means that for the two plays I’m about to write for this weekend, I’ll be spending 1.25 hours per page. So bottom line: even with all compensations made for brevity, my fully wrought plays have had over ten times more time and effort put into them. They are a full order of magnitude more “finished.” And that’s not even counting all the added effort brought by actors, a director, a stage manager, designers, administrators, etc. To compare that effort to the plays staged at 14/48 and call them both “world premieres” is like comparing a late night jam session to composing a symphony. And to some degree, it’s insulting to both composer and jammer.
So with that said, here’s what I think the real value of 14/48 is for playwrights: it scares the shit out of us and we love it for that very reason. It makes us let go of our pretensions, procrastinations and bag of tricks to just write for a few hours. It allows us to play with designers, directors and actors, which is SO much fun and SO much a part of what makes being a playwright different and – dare I say it?—better than any other kind of writer. It brings us back into the crucible to live and die by the fire trial that is and can only be live performance. It takes us so long to wright plays that more often than not we are forced to survive long dry epochs out of touch with the raw fear that floods through us at that moment when our work goes up before a live audience. It’s a much needed albeit much too brief taste of the “good stuff”.
And that’s why I can’t wait till Thursday night.
You should have a taste yourself, if you can.
OK, Paul. I'm calling you on one point:
"Let’s face it, a key reason 14/48 can get such amazing acting talent working such insane hours is that Equity, the stage actors union, looks the other way. "
Bull fucking shit.
Now, I love that our equity brethren and sistren can participate in 14/48. And I love it when actors are paid. And I do believe that equity should find ways to allow it's members to be in interesting 99 seatish things.
HOWEVER. In Seattle membership in equity is no prediction of talent. There are brilliant union actors, so-so union actors, and stinky union actors.
The same as non-equity.
Many of the e-actors who participate in 14/48, were in 14/48 before jumping the broom. Do you think they're now better just for being equity? (And again, I am not anti-equity.)
Oh, I could go on and on.
xo
Scot
Posted by: Scot Augustson | 01/06/2010 at 07:35 AM
I'm glad I found this blog (via Chris Lucas). I'm glad to see that the Seattle scene is just as intense and vibrant as when I left, probably more so.
We'll be out this summer, hopefully we'll see you all.
Posted by: Julie Gillis | 01/06/2010 at 08:17 AM
Thanks, Paul. I couldn't have said it better myself.
Kurt Beattie & Carlo Scanduizzi both attended 14/48 when it was at ACT last year. They dug it. Carlo came a number of times and saw us at On the Boards in the Summer. ACT asked us back to the Falls Theatre.
Posted by: Andy Joe | 01/06/2010 at 09:39 AM
I agree Scot...and to digress...
Its a tricky situation in our fair city with the Union. Lets take a look at someone like Marya Sea Kaminski for a moment. She, in my opinion, is one of the most dedicated, talented and passionate fixtures of our community...equity? Nope. Im sure she would love to be in order to get the support that comes with joining the union but it is simply not worth it to her (as far as I know) to lose her ability to say YES! to projects that excite her. This is part of what makes her so awesome. Equity looks at our city and thinks "oh, seattle only has 400 union actors, they arent big enough to listen to." Well, theres a reason equity and its cause you guys are outdated and do not serve your member's best interests. I am reminded of Lawrence Ballard's tyraid when he finally told the realities created by the institions that support life-time artistry in Seattle to wake the fuck up.
I bet you can google it.
I want nothing more than to help Seattle develop into a world class theatre town (even if only by proxy for now: My investment at Yale is actually about and for Seattle) and the union needs to be taken to school. What can a relatively small arts scene do against the national, ancient Equity? What do we have to bargin with? How can we make the changes we need to take the next step to keeping the artists the city breeds and needs IN SEATTLE.
Posted by: Michael Place | 01/06/2010 at 09:48 AM
Here, here, Micky.
I couldn't have said it better and I'm glad you did because I worry that people have started to tune me out as a broken record on this subject.
One response point: it's no big mystery what Seattle actors (both AEA and non) should do in response to Equity. They should simply do any work that they deem appropriate as artists. This is basically what AEA actors are doing with 14/48 anyway. I'm just asking them to expand their scope to other new plays.
The dirty little secret is that Equity has no teeth. If every AEA member (like myself: I've been doing this for years) started acting in full productions of new works at fringe houses for free or less than scale tomorrow, Equity would do nothing to stop them except, perhaps, issue a sharply worded letter. We could call it the "anti-strike": A coordinated effort to WORK as artists instead of waiting for AEA jobs that never or rarely appear, and when they do, are uninteresting.
Once it becomes clear that Seattle Actors, union and non, will do new work as they see fit, then Equity will codify it in a new agreement and call it good in order to avoid an unseemly struggle.
Posted by: Paul Mullin | 01/06/2010 at 10:00 AM
So the union should be more willing to let actors work for beer and let someone else pocket the money when it's for something that you deem artistically worthy (i.e. you're involved in it?)
What's the point of a union again?
Posted by: Money Changes Everything | 01/06/2010 at 01:42 PM
You're asking me, Money? To explain what Equity is for? I'm the wrong person, trust me.
But I can say this, plenty of other artists' unions let them do art for free and then offer their services when that artist works for an established large institution. My wife works as a singer through a union for the Seattle Opera, but that union doesn't prevent her from performing in smaller circumstances. This a particular thing Equity does, particularly here in Seattle. As I say, pretty much any AEA actor who wants to can do one of my plays in LA or NY.
On a completely different note: I know it's considered the custom of the internet country to post anonymously, but there is no tradition of it in the theatre. In the world of live performance, one says one's words in public and stands by them with their body. So as a rule I won't be accepting any more anonymous posts.
Stand and deliver, people!
Posted by: Paul Mullin | 01/06/2010 at 01:52 PM
I love my baby bro's dictums! I concur with the whole Anonymous posting shenanigans. Anonymous is synonymous with "yellow bellied, chickenshit".
Posted by: Maggie | 07/30/2010 at 12:38 PM
And let's not forget my post attempting to bring peace to the 14/48 world - http://opensourcetheatricals.blogspot.com/2009/02/mullin-equation.html
Posted by: Louis Broome | 04/22/2011 at 04:29 PM