Just Wrought

OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE Makes a Whistle Stop in Seattle on March 1

Karen J. Zeller Lane, Executive Director of TPS asked me to spread the word that the authors of the highly controversial new treatise, Outrageous Fortune: The Life and Times of the New American Play, will be making a discussion stop in Seattle. 

Love it or hate it (or frankly, like me, fail so far to get your hands on a copy) this book is demarking the battle lines in the fiercest struggle for the future of American Theatre in decades.

I hope Karen doesn't mind that I am outing her as being as civically ambitious as I am, but here's what she wrote in an email to me about the event:

Paul – I found out that Chicago and Minneapolis each had about 60-70 attendees. I like competing and would love to FILL the Center House Theater which holds 197. Karen

I know I said in my last essay that we should not seek to put ourselves in direct competition with bigger theatre cities, but screw it!  We can easily spank that anemic attendance.

So folks, it's up to you!  If you are a Puget Sound theatre professional of any stripe: actor, director, designer, administrator, etc.  you either agree with me that locally grown new works are the key to Seattle taking its place as a world class theatre city in five years, or you think I am full of crap about all of this.  Either way, you should come join this important discussion of the role playwrights play in the current theatre ecology.  Maybe you believe new works have no vital function when compared to the established canon, in which case I more than heartily encourage you to attend and pipe up.

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: [email protected]

THEATRE DEVELOPMENT FUND'S OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE NEW AMERICAN PLAY EXAMINES THE "COLLABORATION IN CRISIS" BETWEEN PLAYWRIGHTS AND THOSE WHO PRODUCE THEIR WORK.

WRITTEN BY TODD LONDON with BEN PESNER and ZANNIE GIRAUD VOSS, BOOK IS THE RESULT OF A SIX-YEAR STUDY WITH PLAYWRIGHTS AND ARTISTIC DIRECTORS FROM ACROSS THE UNITED STATES.

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.

New York, NY, December 21, 2009 - Theatre Development Fund, the not-for-profit performing arts service organization, announces the publication of OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE NEW AMERICAN PLAY. The book was written by Todd London, who is the Artistic Director of New Dramatists. It was co-written by Ben Pesner, and the research consultant was Professor Zannie Giraud Voss. OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE 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, drawing on six years of comprehensive research, reveals a "collaboration in crisis" between the people who write plays and those who produce them. It 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 makes clear the urgent need for new conversations and practices if the American play is to flourish. On Tuesday, December 22, the book will be available for $14.95 online at www.tdf.org/outrageousfortune and at The Drama Book Shop at 250 West 40th Street in New York City.

"The genesis for this study came from one of TDF's founding trustees, John E. Booth," said Victoria Bailey, TDF's Executive Director. "He challenged TDF to undertake a study of the American playwright to determine how TDF and others could 'be most helpful in facilitating and encouraging the work of promising playwrights and the performance of their works.' OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE NEW AMERICAN PLAY is the result of that challenge. This study is complex, revelatory and, in many cases, disturbing. It flows from careful research, both quantitative and qualitative. Much in this report may be painful to read. One of the clearest messages I've received throughout the course of this study is that language is failing us. Writers and those who produce their plays are not talking honestly with each other. Nor are they speaking honestly with their audiences or with funders. We must learn to speak together and to listen."

"The book is an attempt to paint the most comprehensive picture possible of how plays get written and produced in America," said Todd London. "It looks at the ecosystem of (mostly not-for-profit) new play production in detail. The picture that emerges is complex and contradictory. On one hand, we have a playwriting profession that is larger, better trained, and more vital than at any time in our history. We also have a profusion of highly professional theatres with a deep commitment to new work On the other hand, we have a profound rift between our most accomplished playwrights and the theatres who would produce them, an increasingly corporate theatre culture, dire economics for not-for-profits, dwindling audiences for non-musical work, and, perhaps most troubling of all, a system of compensation that makes it nearly impossible for playwrights to earn anything resembling a living. By telling this story-with firm statistical and anecdotal evidence-we hope to stimulate both conversation and action in the theatre field. In other words, we want to find ways to build on the existing energy in the field and to help open up more opportunities for playwrights and more channels for fine plays to reach the stage."

This study involved extensive surveys of 250 playwrights and nearly 100 not-for-profit theatres, most of which specialize in new play production. Once the data gathered in these surveys was analyzed, TDF held a dozen roundtables with artistic directors, playwrights, and experts in the field of new play production in five cities (Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, and San Francisco) across the country. These meetings were followed by interviews with leaders from across the profession: artistic producers from the not-for-profit and commercial theatre, playwright educators, dramatic literary agents, entertainment lawyers, and the leaders of new play development centers. Partial findings were presented at the Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival, with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and at the Theatre Communications Group's annual conference.

Key findings in OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE NEW AMERICAN PLAY include:

1) PLAYWRIGHTS VS. NOT-FOR-PROFIT THEATRES: The relationship between playwrights and producing not-for-profit theatres is collaboration in crisis. The two groups studied are deeply divided in how they view each other, the audience, and the successes and obstacles of the field of new play production.

2) ECONOMICS OF PLAYWRITING: In economic terms, it is virtually impossible to make a living or sustain a career as a professional playwright in America. The royalty system of payment that grew out of the commercial theatre has proven ineffective in the not-for-profit world. Commissions are too small to pay for the time it takes to write plays and rarely lead to production. Large grants to individuals continue to dry up. Substantial bodies of work regularly go unproduced. Mid-career is the crisis point for playwrights, and the new play ecosystem has nothing in place to help playwrights through it.

3) PREMIER-ITIS: When it comes to new play production, an emphasis on premieres-by artistic directors, the press, boards of directors, and funders-is the operating principle. This "premier-itis" means that plays rarely get the continued life they need to reach the kind of artistic completion that results from second and third productions. It also means that playwrights can't earn from their plays in an ongoing way, as there is often no income stream, because of the field's "one (production) and done" practices.

4) DOWNSIZING OF THE AMERICAN PLAY: New play creation and production in America has downsized in every way: cast size, size of venues for new plays, expectations of artists and audiences alike, and, even, ambition.

5) DWINDLING AUDIENCES: Our theatre is losing the audience for new plays at both ends, as current, mostly homogenous theatregoers age and die, and as younger and more culturally diverse audiences fail to take their place. Playwrights blame this on the conservatism of the theatres' leadership. Artistic directors believe that playwrights aren't writing for their theatres' actual audiences.

6) THEATRE BECOMING THE LOST ART?: Under all the division and concern over the state of new play creation, development and production is the widespread fear that theatre as an art form has been pushed to the margins. Writers and artistic producers alike are looking for ways to move it back to its place at the center of the conversation that is American culture.

7) HOPE FOR THE FUTURE: There is enormous, field-wide energy and commitment to new-play production. New-play activity is almost certainly at an all-time high in the not-for-profit theatre. Some of this activity, geared toward new and better practices, holds the promise of improving the systemic problems explored in this report.

TDF plans to hold conversations in eight cities throughout the country shortly after the New Year. With generous support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, we will return to the communities where we did field research as well as several new cities. We will share the findings with theatre communities across the field and moderate discussions about them.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

TODD LONDON is in his fourteenth season as the artistic director of New Dramatists, the nation's oldest center for the support and development of playwrights, where he has worked closely with more than a hundred of America's finest playwrights and advocated nationally and internationally for hundreds more. In 2009, he was the first recipient of Theatre Communications Group's Visionary Leadership Award "for his work to advance the theatre field." A former managing editor of American Theatre magazine and the author of The Artistic Home, he has written, edited, and/or contributed to eleven books. London won the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for his essays in American Theatre and a Milestone Award for his first novel, The World's Room. Under his leadership, New Dramatists received both a special Tony Honor and the Ross Wetzsteon Award from the Village Voice Obies. He currently serves on the faculty of Yale University School of Drama.

BEN PESNER has been writing about the theatre since 1987. Currently the manager of creative services at The Broadway League, he is also content producer of TonyAwards.com. For the Tonys, he has scripted numerous special events, and edited the Tony Awards Songbook. A former editor of the Dramatists Guild Quarterly and literary manager of Young Playwrights Inc., his extensive involvement in the not-for-profit theatre community has included associations with Playwrights Horizons, New York Theatre Workshop, Circle Rep, and Lincoln Center Theater, among others. He has authored and edited numerous publications for theatres, service organizations, and charitable foundations, and has written for American Theatre, Playbill, and other magazines.

ZANNIE GIRAUD VOSS (Ph.D., IAE, Aix-en-Provence) is Chair and Professor of Arts Administration in the Meadows School of the Arts and the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University, and an affiliate professor at Euromed Management in Marseille, France. She also served on the faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill and was Managing Director of PlayMakers Repertory Company; subsequently she was a professor at Duke University, where she was Producing Director of Theater Previews at Duke. Voss is a consultant for Theatre Communications Group, co-authoring their Theatre Facts since 1998. She has published articles in numerous marketing journals, and serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Arts Management.

THEATRE DEVELOPMENT FUND (TDF) has played a unique role in strengthening live theatre and dance in New York City for the past 40 years. This not-for-profit service organization's programs have filled over 76 million seats at discount prices (with theatre lovers who would normally not be able to attend live performance) and returned nearly 2 billion dollars in revenue to thousands of theatre, dance and music productions. Best known for its TKTS Discount Booths, TDF's membership, voucher, access and education programs as well as its Costume Collection, help to make the unique experience of theatre available to everyone.

For more information and to purchase OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE NEW AMERICAN PLAY, go to: www.tdf.org/outrageousfortune.

So long Howard Zinn!

Thanks for telling the stories that were better, fiercer, truer and ultimately nobler than the ones we were otherwise being told about this country

I owe An American Book of the Dead - The Game Show to you.  I had heard rumors of the Salted Wife, but your A People's History of the United States gave me the historical resources that proved it wasn't just a ghost story.  It's just one of the tales I lifted.

Here's that section for you, Howard!  You did well.  May we live up to your example.

The Bardo of the Salted Wife

BARDO VOICE:  Oh free and bravely born, having died and failed to grasp the clear light of reality, which is nothing but thine own nature most true, thou art entering now into the Bardo of the Salted wife. 
    Be not distracted.  Be not afraid or attracted.  Whatever strange terror might become thee here, repeat these words:

      (As the Bardo Voice speaks the following, the words flash on a screen.)

BARDO VOICE & AUDIENCE:  “Although the clear light of reality dawned upon me I was unable to grasp it, and so I must wander here.  Whatever visions appear now, I must accept them as the reflections of mine own nature most true.”

BARDO VOICE:  Behold, she stands before thee.  Born in Bristol and bred there, she sails for the New World in Sixteen Hundred Ought Nine.

SALTED WIFE:  All I ever wanted was to sail the Ocean Sea.

BARDO VOICE:  Pitching and plunging over an angry Atlantic.

SALTED WIFE:  All my brothers are sailors.  All my girl's life, to ride the waves is my only wish, my only hope.  I make no bones about this to the man who takes me as wife and takes me across.  ‘Tis an even exchange.  My body and the brood it will bear him buys this journey, not my soul.  The English, so says he, can only claim this land with womanhood.  New subjects to the crown do not flower from the mere mud.  The female sex itself is the soil of this New World.

BARDO VOICE:  Jamestown.

SALTED WIFE:  The moment we land my only hope is for us to fail and sail away.  Seems likely enough: squalid huts crouched inside ramshackle fort, savages culling us one by one when we stray too close to the forest which holds us forever in its suffocating shadow.
    Oh, perhaps tomorrow we'll ship for some place else.  Or better still perhaps we'll just keep sailing round and round and round this wonderful globe Columbus found.

BARDO VOICE:  It was a hard winter, 1609.

SALTED WIFE:  Hard.

BARDO VOICE:  Bitter.

SALTED WIFE:  Dark.

BARDO VOICE:  Contagion.

SALTED WIFE:  Starvation.
      Who'd've thought that in such a terrible time I'd find my love for my husband.

BARDO VOICE:  The livestock went quickly.

SALTED WIFE:  Too quickly.

BARDO VOICE:  So the pets became livestock.

SALTED WIFE:  But they only lasted a day or two.

BARDO VOICE:  Then it was the rats and mice and worms.

SALTED WIFE:  But they weren't enough.

BARDO VOICE:  Leather, bark, grass, feces.

SALTED WIFE:  Become hungry enough, and suddenly the world surrounds you with food.

      (A man appears out of the shadows and moves toward the Salted Wife.)

BARDO VOICE:  A few settlers prayed perhaps God would forgive them if they secretly dug into a few of the fresh shallow graves.
    And another... well another had yet a fresher meat in mind.

SALTED WIFE:  Isn't that strange.  I never loved him, not a jot, until one night it all changed, the moment he kissed me on the neck with his razor.

      (The man reaches up and slits the woman's throat.  The front of her dress runs dark with color.)

BARDO VOICE:  Be not afraid.  Be not attracted.  Beings in the bardo often do not realize-- as thou dost, as thou must-- that they are dead.

SALTED WIFE:  Now my love flows from me with such force that I doubt that I could staunch it if I tried.

BARDO VOICE:  He took the rump first, the most obvious meat.

      (The man starts to carve the woman into shadows.)

SALTED WIFE:  He pays me so much more attention now.

BARDO VOICE:  Then he worked his way down the legs: first the thighs, then the calves, then boiled the feet for a bouillon.

SALTED WIFE:  He caresses me so tenderly.

BARDO VOICE:  He made bacon of her back; rubbed her ribs with salt.

SALTED WIFE:  And looks after me so carefully.

BARDO VOICE:  Packing what was left of her in a hogshead cask.

SALTED WIFE:  It’s strange.  Something has certainly changed.  But I can’t put my finger on it.

BARDO VOICE:  Because she has no fingers.  He’s gnawed them to the quick and crunched the bone open to suck the marrow.
    By the time his fellow survivors grew suspicious of his queer vigor, all they found of the Salted Wife was her head.

      (Tight pin spot on the woman’s head.)

    They killed him of course.  And thou canst hardly doubt they let him go to waste.

SALTED WIFE:  With my husband’s love, I dream anything is possible.  Now I am sure I could become the mother of a nation.

      (The Salted Wife disappears.)

BARDO VOICE:  Thou hast journeyed past the Salted wife.  Go now.  Leave this Bardo quickly.  But know thou never canst forget her, for she is nothing but thee.

      (Lights fade to black . . .

Congratulations to ACT on its Fiscal Success

As much as I bang on Seattle's Big Houses, I have to call it as I see 'em.  I have a lot of friends at ACT and I know how hard they worked to make this happen.  Friends are friends in this business, and success is success, whether or not you think the underlying model is doomed to failure.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/thearts/2010898445_theater27m.html

Special shout-outs to Carlo and Josef.  First round's on me, boys!  Then you can pay for the rest of the drinks, seeing as you're all flush now.

“World Class” = Fighting Words

The third in a series of essays entitled:
Towards a World Class Theatre

When I started mouthing off in a more public and formalized way about the state of theatre in Seattle, I expected some blow back.  This is the Northwest after all.  The very same person who in real life might cross the street in order to avoid saying hello is happy to anonymously savage you in your blog’s comment section.^*  What I did not anticipate was that the most controversial thing I could propose would be that theatre professionals should work together over the next five years towards making Seattle theatre world class.  This, apparently, was apostasy that certain Seattleites simply could not abide.  The objections sorted out into three essential themes:

“What are you talking about?  We’re already world class dammit!”

Why do people not think it's a "world class" theatre community now?  If you talk to someone who moves here from... the midwest or the south, they are enthusiastic about the Seattle theater scene.
Heidi Heimarck, responding to the 2009 Rain City Projects Survey^†

We all may look back ten years from now and recognize that Seattle is today a thriving community.  There are issues, yes, but there's some great stuff going on if you look at it right.
Jerry Manning, RCP Survey

Seattle is just about a world class theater community, it just is not aware of it, and seems to refuse acknowledging it.
Jose Amador, RCP Survey

“Five years?!?  Are you crazy!?!”

5 years is a short span of time, given the effect the economy is going to have on the arts over that period.
Anonymous, RCP Survey

I think Seattle has lots of potential, but I'm not sure it could get there in five years. But lots and lots of potential.
Rachel Hynes, RCP Survey

I have packets of Kool-Aid if you'd like some.
Andy Jensen, RCP Survey

“Define your terms or prepare to die!”

I'm not sure what it would mean to be a "world class" theatre community.
Mike Daisey,  RCP Survey

Define “world class.” If world class means NY or London, why would we go out of our way to suck that hard? “World class” doesn't mean anything, it's not a tangible objective. It's a marketing term, a feeling, some kind of psychological compensation. A goal is a $10MM theatre industry by 2020. A goal is 20 Seattle-based playwrights making $100K annually by 2020. A goal is every Seattle theatre at 90% capacity by 2020. Whatever the goal, it has to be tangible - something that can be measured in precise terms.

Louis Broome, RCP Survey

Does it mean Seattle theatre is regularly discussed in world newspapers? …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? …  What goals do you propose that when met signify arrival? How is Seattle tracking today against those goals?
Jeffery Reid, commenting on my kick-off essay “Towards a World Class Theatre”

I hate the need to be world classy unless someone can define it for me.
Matthew Smucker, 2009 RCP Survey

To have a world class theatre town, you must first define what that means.  You define the goal.  I believe that we discussed the importance of having a goal and you coyly responded several times that that was not necessary.

Margaret Mullin, my sister, in an email I asked permission to quote.

My sister is right.  I did respond that it was not necessary to define my terms, but there is nothing coy about it.  We not only do not need to lock down what “world class” means, it would be unwise for any single one of us to try to do so.  Louis Broome hit it on the nose:  “‘World class’ doesn't mean anything …. It's a marketing term, a feeling…”  Such was always my intention.  All the extremely smart Seattleites, Louis and my sister included, who demand something perfectly specific and quantifiable are, to my mind, like a group of outraged soda lovers storming Coca-Cola headquarters demanding: “What do you mean, ‘Coke is it?’  What the hell does ‘it’ mean?  You say you’d ‘like to buy the world a coke’?  You can’t be serious?  Do you know how much that would cost?”

Having worked at the lowest levels in corporate America for nearly two decades to support myself and my family, I am exhaustively acquainted with the standard management mantras: 

You cannot change what you do not measure.

If you’re not measuring, it doesn’t count.

But as someone who has heard these litanies chanted, at putatively great Seattle companies where I have worked from MidCom to WaMu— companies that dominated their industries and then ultimately failed— I know how deeply data-bedazzled senior management can fixate on charts and dashboards that actual workers have no realistic way of affecting for good or ill.  Such high-minded, good intentioned strategizing has become the roadmap for enfeebling an entire nation.  As my good friend and great editor, Charlie Loyd points out: “WaMu failed precisely because it had goals so clear and measurable that they took over from sanity.”

So what I am proposing is a little different.  I am asking all of my colleagues to decide for themselves what would make Seattle a world class theatre town, and then work on those goals on which they believe they can individually move the needle.  We can employ the “wisdom of crowds” to get this done.  Surely a gifted scenic designer like Matthew Smucker has different ideas about how to elevate the game to “world class” than a gifted managing director like John Bradshaw, and both of them would differ from a poor playwright's approach.  With us all working diligently, though, in our separate tracks, overlapping when possible and appropriate, we could certainly reach our collaborative goal of world class theatre; and once there, not need to debate the point, because, like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart espousing his timeless definition of pornography, we will “know it when [we] see it.”

We are theatre professionals— I usually prefer “show people”, but for the sake of this argument, make no mistake, we are professionals, whether or not we pay dues to an out-of-touch union.  We ply the art of theatre—the art of “say-so”.  I say it, and thus it is so. 

I am the King of England come to Agincourt.

This wooden O holds the vasty fields of France.

Seattle will be a world class theatre town in five years.

I understand not everyone is sympathetic to this particular brand of rhetoric-as-reality.  Louis Broome again: “As mission statements go, ‘Seattle as a world class theatre town,’ stirs me not at all. ‘Seattle is the epicenter of a theatre revolution,’ is a good start.”  But I have misgivings about bandying a word as inescapably violent as “revolution.”  It implies a zero-sum game— some winning while others lose.  The game I suggest, if played well and with underlying generosity, need not have any losers at all.  Revolutions come and go and tend to be suggested by folks who do little if any of the actual fighting.  This city craves something more sustainable.  (And if Chairman Mao taught the world anything, it is that nothing is more hateful than a sustained revolution.)

Then there are those who see the effort as beneath us, like my colleague, former Seattle Weekly drama critic John Longenbaugh, responding to my essay “1448 Afterwords and Forwards”: “I really wonder if the whole question is frankly provincial. I really don't think that London, Chicago or New York artists, critics or audiences worry if they're still doing ‘world class theatre.’ So why should we?”

Ah.  I think I see.  Nothing is more provincial than aspiring to be more than provincial.  What wonderful latte logic: frothy, appealingly bitter, and artfully laced with a barely noticeable hint of syrupy self-loathing masked as indifference.  But the strong and black cup-o’-joe fact is that you can safely bet your sweet ass Chicago cares.  A lot.  As do New York and London.  As a former reviewer, John might take particular notice of the title The Chicago Tribune’s drama critic Chris Jones came up with for his blog, Theater Loop: News from America’s Hottest Theater City.  How is that for self-aggrandizement?  And from a critic no less!  Boosterism like this is a flogging offence among Seattle’s professional theatre goers, as S.P. Miskowski, who recently moved to Los Angeles, points out in her response to Longenbaugh's comments.

The work I've seen in Seattle is, as John said, on a par with New York and London. What is not world class is the way theater is perceived in Seattle. When people decide where the limited amount of money will go, they fail to consider that theater is making the city more livable, more exciting, and more interesting. They fail to give theater its due. So do (some of)  the critics. My view is that theater artists accept lousy critiques from unqualified reviewers on a regular basis out of fear that if they don't make nice they will be squashed. …And there's the smug assumption that positive reviews are what we want when we say we want better reviewing. It isn't. We want people who can read and write and evaluate. We want people who stay for the entire show. We want people who write about the show and not themselves. Most of all, I hereby call for a change in attitude among editors and critics--to take theater seriously as an art form. I dare you to take it seriously.... Take as a given that Seattle IS a world class theater city, and keep that in mind when you plant your butt in a free seat and start taking notes?

Where I differ with S.P. is that I think critics own less responsibility for the “it-ain’t-cool-to-think-you’re-cool” campaign than many artists and artistic directors themselves.  Then again, I have innate issues with ceding any undue influence to a questionable and ever shrinking handful of opinion mongers.  Certainly no one can deny that this self-defeating predisposition against self-promotion runs deep and wide through Pacific Northwest culture.  Its origins are beyond my East Coast ken or caring to explicate, but suffice it to say, in the theatre at least, we can and will change it.

Chicago, New York and London never miss a chance to promote their respective scenes.  They not only “worry” about it.  They spend money on it.  Lots and lots of money to make sure their theatre districts keep drawing tourists and locals alike, to the playhouses themselves and to all the businesses that depend on them: the restaurants, bars, souvenir shops, and so on and on.  We want, in a few short years, to be able to go to our mayor, now newly elected, and say, “Seattle is now a world class theatre city.  We said it would be so.  We worked at it and made it so.  Everybody who lives here and everybody in the greater American theater community knows it.  Now kindly spend some of that money and prestige we have earned this city back on us.”

As I inveigh against self-defeating specificity, let me be specific about one thing.  I am not asking that we benchmark ourselves against New York or London or Chicago.  Playing a toy replica-scale, inferiority complex-driven version of their game gets us nowhere.  Our smallness and uniqueness and, yes, even our geographic remoteness can work just as strongly for us as against.  You can get your arms around the Seattle theatre scene.  You can, if you work hard enough and long enough, confidently claim to know all, or almost all, of the players.  A small, nimble, semi-quarantined community such as ours can make its own unique claims on world class.  We can, if we want, be doing work that no one anywhere else could possibly do.

We are show people.  We can claim to be anything we want to be.  The more outrageous and untenable, the better, so long as we ultimately back it up through sheer creative brilliance.  We are not obliged to subscribe to any preordained corporatized benchmark.  The audience is our only arbiter.  So long as we give them what they want, or better-- what they did not even realize they wanted until we made them want it in the first place-- we are doing our jobs superbly.  We should stake our claim, without irony or arrogance, to becoming a world class theatre community, and when, and only when, we convince our audiences, then world class is what we will be.  Because we say so.

****

Before this: "Theatre Takes Place: Why Locally Grown Plays Matter"

Next up: "The Solo Show: A Risk Averse Artistic Administrator’s Best Friend "

^*I no longer allow anonymous comments on my blog.  As I wrote when the first one was posted: 

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!

^†Many of the quotes I have included in this essay came from the 2009 Rain City Projects Survey, which, as a member of the RCP Board, I helped to design and distribute, and then analyze the returning data.  The results were made public in August of 2009 and a more detailed report is available at RCP’s Facebook page:  http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/notes/rain-city-projects/the-rain-city-projects-survey-results-are-in/123960970745

Because I am an unrepentant data geek, and because this essay does not have any other pictures let me share one of the results graphs here.  You can draw your own conclusions, but clearly a majority of the Northwest theatre community currently believes Seattle is a good but not great theatre town.  Its rating as a new play community is significantly less high.  I think these are connected.  Once we get better at developing and disseminating strong locally grown plays, our stock as a theatre town will rise to “world class.”  That is a data gauge needle that I can get behind trying push.

Congratulations to Ensemble Studio Theatre for Being Ranked #1 in New York

I am delighted to pass on the news that Ensemble Studio Theatre has been ranked the #1 theatre in New York for developing new plays by emerging playwrights, according to a recent survey of hundreds of playwrights from across the country, published in the new treatise taking the theatre world by storm,  Outrageous Fortune: The Life and Times of the New American Play by New Dramatists Artistic Director Todd London.

I am a proud member of EST: proud that they produced Louis Slotin Sonata back in 2001, and proud to have known and worked with Curt Dempster.

The fancy pants houses in Manhattan can flog their Broadway and Regional Big House credits, but the playwrights in this country know where the new work really gets done in NYC.

For more about Outrageous Fortune, visit www.tdf.org. This is the book I have been telling you about.  The authors will making a talking tour stop in Seattle on March 1 at the Center House Theatre sponsored by TPS.  All of  Seattle’s theatre professionals need to come and stand with Northwest playwrights in support of locally grown new work.  Or, conversely, come tell us why you think that’s a bad idea.  So stay tuned.  More details soon.

THE SEQUENCE now Half-Price

Just slashed the price of the Kindle version of my play The Sequence. To order the digi-script, hit my page for the play here and then click through the Amazon badge pictured just to the right of the synopsis.

 

The Sequence dramatizes the real-life race to decode the genetic instructions for building a human being.  The play world-premiered in 2008 produced by The Theatre @ Boston Court in Pasadena, California. 

Here’s a little teaser:

Renegade researcher Craig Venter develops a controversial “shotgun” technique for sequencing DNA, then quits the NIH over an institutional lack of imagination. He quickly makes a fortune in the private sector, and becomes simultaneously the most loved and hated scientist in the world.

A folksy doctor named Francis Collins inherits the U.S. government’s Human Genome Project. When his victory in the sequencing race is threatened by Venter, he quickly makes the transition from apparent bumpkin to fierce competitor.

Journalist Kellie Silverstein cuts her teeth on the biggest science story of all time, while simultaneously running a race with her own mortality.

In the competition to sequence the human genome, will the grand prize be the public good or private profit? And how will three people, amid the frenzied race to determine what makes a human being, discover their humanity?

 

So if you dig electronic versions of play scripts (and really, who doesn’t?) then order a copy of The Sequence now, because supplies of these electron configurations are going fast!  (186,000 miles per second, to be exact.)

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Note: other scripts of mine currently available on Kindle include:  Louis Slotin Sonata, Tuesday, The Ten Thousand Things and The Don Juan Cult Concerto.

Seattle Gay News comes late but strong to the 14/48 love-fest.

http://www.sgn.org/sgnnews38_03/page26.cfm

Question is, are there even any tickets left to buy?

The Blog You Need to Follow, the History You Need to Know, the Book You Need to Read and Rally ‘Round (or Against)

Folks, I am so excited right now that I am leaping heart first into this blogging without thinking thing.  If you have agreed with what I have been saying so far, or conversely, if you have been vehemently disdaining it, you need to go to http://theatreideas.blogspot.com/ to see what I am trying to say said by someone who actually knows how to say it, better, more thoughtfully, more informedly, and more consistently than I can offer it here, life-addled playwright that I am.  What Scott Walters is saying is so clear and bold and brilliant that I basically insist that you stop reading this right now and go check out this:  http://theatreideas.blogspot.com/2007/08/welcome-new-readers.html

Yup, that’s right.  In August of 2007 he called for, what I so boldly and presciently just called for in December of 2009.  (Hey, I’m a playwright.  I’m used to being irrelevant and my betters preceding me.)

Just recently Scott posted this: a very cogent history of what went wrong with the regional theatre movement in America.  (BTW: thanks a lot, Tyrone Guthrie.  Do we need to fight another war to get you British to finally fuck off?) 

Naturally I subscribed to the guy’s blog, and just yesterday he comes out with this:  http://theatreideas.blogspot.com/2010/01/outrageous-fortune-chapter-1-build.html

It is the first in his chapter by chapter analysis of Outrageous Fortune: The Life and Times of the New American Play, the hot new treatise which examines the "collaboration in crisis" between playwright and those who produce their work by Todd London, Ben Pesner and Zannie Giraud Vos.   The book is available on line at www.tdf.org/outrageousfortune.  (Though trust me: there is already a promo copy sitting unopened on your favorite theatre critic’s desk.) 

This is it, folks.  You mark my words.  This book is going to spark the revolution Louis Broome has been so ardently calling for from his comfy day job office in Redmond.  I have not read it.  I have no idea if it is ultimately any good.  But that hardly matters because it is going to spark the deep struggle that will turn this whole art form upside down in the space of four years.  The powers-that-be already have their forces out, desperately, snarkily trying to put out the fire.  The first missile of dismissal comes from Chris Jones.

“'Outrageous Fortune': Playwright book full of whine and din”

I’d respond, but my guy, Walters, does it so much better:

Chris Jones may characterize this as whining, but that is a term that is always used as a weapon to shut up anyone who questions the status quo. The consistency of the complaints is indicative of a real problem….  The larger picture -- this study uses 250 surveys received from "working professional playwrights at all stages of their careers, including Albee, Congdon, Dietz, Letts and many others whose names you would recognize …  , as well as surveys of almost a hundred theatres across the country -- reveals an entire system in disarray, not simply individuals in dismay.

Walters also knows what it will take to set this all aright:

As a theatre historian, it is baffling to me how willing artists are in this country to dismiss what has been proven effective throughout most of theatre history. Yes, Shakespeare AND the rest of the Elizabethans created work within ongoing ensembles, yes Moliere AND the rest of the theatre artists of the French Neoclassical era, AND the commedia dell 'arte troupes, AND Chekhov and Odets and O'Neill and and and. And lest someone wants to make the case that this is a thing of the past, we might look to the Royal Court as a model, or to Ariane Mnouchkine and Peter Brook and Peter Stein and and and. What is it about the American theatre that is so committed to the idea of a "free agent nation," failing to recognize the artistic value of an ongoing relationship between artists?

“May you live in interesting times,” goes the Chinese blessing/curse.  These are them, friends.  This is the crisis coming to the head that we have been earnestly ardently waiting for. This book will be pivotal, whether you believe it or not, whether you like it or not.  This is what the forces of change will rally around.  For those who were hoping that they could put it off for a few years, it is too late.  The New York Times is writing about this now.  The problem is receiving wide and deep attention now.  Join the fray or stay away, but this chance will not come again within this decade, if ever.

So order the book.  Show up at the discussion of it hosted by TPS at the Center House March 1 from 10am – 1pm.  (Stay tuned for details on that.)  Think about how you can make this theatre town world class now that everything’s a’changing, because, trust me brothers and sisters, you will not recognize the place nor the art form in four short years.

1448 Afterwords and Forwards

On more than one occasion I have had an artistic staffer at one of the Big Houses say some variation of the following to me:  “We will do more new local plays when local playwrights write better scripts.”  For my own part, I have always found that argument, just on its face, so petty and mean-spirited, that I never really bothered to respond to it, even though I understand how it tacitly pervades the Seattle theatre ethos and sets up an invisible blockade to our progress towards being a world class theatre city.  But for those who require a more substantial rebuttal to this flimsy canard, I offer you, simply, 14/48.

From The SunBreak:

If you've never been, you should go. If you have been, you should consider going again. 14/48 is a brilliant exercise in the essentials of theatre--seven world premiere plays written, produced, opened, and closed in 24 hours. And then repeat. If it sounds like another tedious exercise in theatresports, it's not….  Last night was great for demonstrating that in only 24 hours, theatre artists can tackle tough issues in a meaningful way. There have been funnier line-ups for sure, but the evening spoke to the quintessential power of theatre that's so often lost in a mix of artful obfuscation and middle-brow pandering.

http://thesunbreak.com/2010/01/09/a-few-notes-on-last-nights-14-48

From The Stranger’s Slog

And, God fucking damn, did I ever enjoy 14/48. The theme last night was “collateral damage," and we got to see a real variety of stuff: collaterally damaged alien heads, a collaterally damaged baby, and... well, some other pieces that incorporated the theme less successfully….  This was my favorite Stranger Suggests so far. It was fun and me and Law both left ACT with dopey smiles on our faces.

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/01/09/yesterday-the-stranger-suggested-1448-at-act

My own personal opinion?  This past weekend was the best I have ever participated in.  I thought the first night was great, but we out-did it the next, with nary a dud in the line up, and casting karma to die for.  Sure, that kind of across the board success is rare for 14/48.  You almost always get a few clunkers.  (Lord knows, I’ve written them.)  But curiously, 14/48 is, in fact, getting better, year over year.  The reason is simple: the veteran talent is evolving.  Some of them have adapted so well to the process that it’s a little unnerving to witness, kind of like being there when the first frog decides to flick its tongue at a fly.  (Troy Fischnaller and Scot Augustson are gaming the process so well at this point that they really should be handicapped in some way.  I’m thinking some sort of body cast for Troy and mandatory heroin for Scot.)

By nature, I am a product-over-process sort of artist.  I fervently believe that undo preciousness about how we do what we do points the way towards madness, museums, and MFAs.  But that said, one of the most important things 14/48 accomplishes is never experienced directly by the audience.  The plays go away after that day, but there remains a shadow canon of stories surrounding how those plays got made: Tim Hyland cheerfully recalling how he managed to turn a piece by Carl Sander—a three stanza poem, with no stage directions or character assignments—into standout comic tour de force one night last summer; Tim Gouran comparing the vast number of shows in which he was required to appear nude against the vanishingly small number in which he was not.  (Luck of the draw, Tim.)  It all becomes part of the primordial soup, the necessary substrate, the stories that binds us together as a community of artists.  The Big Houses do little to consciously nurture this substrate.  More’s the pity.

So. . . Friday night came.  There were seven great shows.  They went up, then they were gone.  Saturday night came.  And it all went up and went again.  Gone.  If you weren’t there, you will never see those plays in that way again.

The audience’s apprehension of this transitory magic was palpable on the first night.  On the second it was redolent.  They connected and responded to the material.  Deeply.  They didn’t just laugh and clap; they “ooohed” and “aaahhed” and “hooted”, they muttered “bullshit” and “oh yeah”.  They “booed”—bless them— one time fiercely and for a formidable duration after someone on stage wondered if their kid might become a Yankees fan.  (Great play, Joy!)

 

In a way that almost never happens in that particular space at ACT, or in any of the Big House venues, the audience began to take ownership of what they were witnessing.  They began to understand the fundamental truth that they were the only ones that would ever see this particular show.  So the connection to the material also connected them to each other and to the moment.  This point cannot be underscored enough: it is this ephemerality itself and the community it engenders that we are selling as purveyors of theatre, not as by-products of this or that story, but as the main product itself.  If we do not deliver this, we have failed as theatre artists.  Plain and simple. 

14/48 feels like a game.  And mind you, it is one: a glorious game, steeped in risk which the audience revels in.  For the time being, the Big Houses refuse to look at what they do as a game.  They seek to minimize and mitigate all risk, forgetting, or never having learned, that it is the risk itself we are selling.  They want to run a carnival with no rides, a candy shop with no sugar, a look-but-don’t-touch brothel, where sets get applauded and actors are interchangeable.  It’s enough to make you want to go watch a movie.

What new back stories am I looking to play out next weekend?  Well, there’s Darian Lindle, drafted into directing even though she’s due to give birth to twins in May.    And there’s David Schmader, veteran Stranger columnist, but virgin 14/48 playwright.  Uncle Dan Savage can’t help you now, Schmadie.  So buck up, strap in, and get me a damned beer, noob!

The SunBreak - 14/48 beyond “artful obfuscation & middle-brow pandering” of Big Houses. http://thesunbreak.com/2010/01/09/a-few-notes-on-last-nights-14-48