Just Wrought

Who should go to the OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE Discussion? Actors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

Center House Theatre

rsvp: [email protected]

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

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

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

The Seattle Rep Offers Us Locals a Little Love

I wrote recently that there are three kinds of playwrights in this town.  Those ardently dedicated to the continuing existence of Seattle’s large regional theatres despite decades of neglect by those Big Houses.  Those, like Louis Broome, who could not care less and would even prefer to see them all go out of business so a healthier model can take their place, (though in fairness, Louis has been tellingly vague on exactly what that model might be.)  And those, like myself, who have at long last decided to make our caring contingent on getting a little love in return.

Well, I have to call ‘em as I see ‘em, and it sure does seem like the Rep has just offered us a little love, announcing a week-long summer residency for two full-length plays (two writers, two directors and ten actors) and a solo work.  Hit this link for the details:

http://mail.tmsmail.us/bin/display_msg?id=B6CCE57E73813BE308C4B50A80B531126161775AB5955202 

The wording is artfully vague, but it certainly sounds as if the Rep has reserved at least one of these slots for a Pacific Northwest playwright. 

My good friend and fellow playwright, Scot Augustson often wonders aloud to me why I even bother tangling with the Big Houses.  “Is the regional theater stage the end-all be-all?” he asks.  “Is it really the best for all plays and playwrights?”

No.  I do not think it is.  Certainly my play The Ten Thousand Things premiered in a perfect place for it, the 40-seat Little Theatre that Washington Ensemble Theatre calls home.  The intimacy and rawness of that space made it feel like you were part of, not just observing, Etta Lilienthal’s simultaneously earthy and ethereal design. 

On the other hand, a play of mine like Louis Slotin Sonata simply could not fit in so small a venue.  And now that I mention it, I recall that the Sonata owes its existence to a new play development program ACT hosted over a decade and half ago, called FirstACT.  A two-week program that matched four local playwrights to local directors and actors and hosted the resulting staged readings for the public.  Not surprisingly, ACT put a bullet in FirstACT long ago: an early sacrifice to the budget woes that they now seem to have finally put behind them.  (Time to bring it back, ACT, and fund it in a less precarious way?)

My response to this news from the Rep is simple and selfish.  I have a farce that needs working on.  I need to get it on its feet and see how the frenzied action flows.  So I will be dropping the script off with Braden, though, after all the recent grief I have given him, I could understand if he is tempted to toss it in the recycle bin unread.  Oh, and the curmudgeonly Mr. Augustson?  He is sending something in too:

Yes yes, I'm going to submit something to Braden's Summer Bellingham. And yes, you can quote me. But, if asked: I am not anti-big guy institutional theater. I just get tired of them being thought of as the only game in town. In other art forms there seems to be more of a respect for a spectrum of scales. And of course, I'm show folk at heart and wouldn't dream of not kissing some serious ass to get at their budgets and their marketing departments.

It is almost certainly too much to hope that both slots would go to local writers, just as it is unlikely that either Scot or I will land one, given how much writing talent exists here, and less abrasive too; but at least now I have a frame to fantasize around: a week in beautiful summer Bellingham, my friend and fellow playwright Scot Augustson is there.  We work hard on already strong local scripts.  We push ourselves.  We push each other.  The directors, the actors, all of us push.  We make each other great.

As the city 90 miles to the South moves a little bit closer to world class.

Problem Solved?

Intiman is doing a new locally grown play in their 2010 season.  The Seattle Weekly just featured it in their Spring Arts guide. 

I have known about this for a while and quite a few folks have asked me what I think.  Happily, however, I have to recuse myself.  Sonya Schneider, the writer, is a former student and a genuinely nice person— an all too rare quality in playwrights.  Besides, it is high time I shut up and listen. 

But before I do, let me ask you this:  given that ACT still claims to be an active producer of locally grown new work based on its world premiere of Elizabeth Heffron’s Mitzi’s Abortion, even though that happened four years ago; and given that ACT and the Seattle Rep both still hold up their dueling defaults to Steven Dietz as proof of their unassailable commitment to local playwrights, even though Steven moved to Austin half a decade ago; and given that all of Seattle’s Big Houses have ugly records of disavowing local new work if it does not bust blocks at the box office and generally abandoning it even when it does; do we believe this move by Intiman to be a good omen, a bad omen, or no  omen at all?

The comment box is open below.   I’m all ears.

ACT and Carlo are getting a lot of play in the blogosphere for the new "Gym Membership." http://playgoer.blogspot.com/2010/02/all-you-can-eat-subscriptions.html

Good on them. Now can we see a little of that creativity and thought leadership applied to developing locally grown new plays?

Who should go to the OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE Discussion? Playwrights

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Center House Theatre

rsvp: [email protected]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Surely not.

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

Probably not.

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

This is from his recent blog reviewing Outrageous Fortune.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Center House Theatre

rsvp: [email protected]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Center House Theatre

rsvp: [email protected]

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

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

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

Who should go to the OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE Discussion? Stagehands

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Center House Theatre

rsvp: [email protected]

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

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

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

Heaven Help Us All: I Will be Acting Tomorrow

As much as bang on actors, I feel like it is incumbent upon me to occasionally get back up on the boards to strut and fret, if only as an exercise in humility, and as a reminder of how, each year, it just gets that much harder to memorize my lines.

Well, tomorrow is just a reading, so my failing memory won’t be an issue, but I still get nervous whenever I have to put my stage money where my big fat stage mouth is.  See details below.

(BTW:  one of the last times I attempted to act this is what fellow cast members were forced to do   . . . )

NPA & Seattle Repertory Theater present

In the Poncho Forum – Seattle Rep – 155 Mercer St

(please use main entrance)

Tues. Feb. 9 @ 7 p.m. 

Two Readings:

Borders
By Lenore Bensinger
Directed by Carol Roscoe
with
Alycia Delmore
Todd Licea
Brandon Simmons
        &
Lee Blessing’s, Reagan in Hell, directed by John Vreeke
with
Paul Mullin
& Jim Gaul

Free Admission

About the Play

BORDERS: A medical romance.  When Paul and Jean, two young Docs, sign up for hardship duty with Doctors without Borders, they find more challenges than short supplies, “friendly fire” and death lurking everywhere.  What’s it really like to test your idealism in the modern heart of darkness?  BORDERS penetrates the private lives of dedicated medical volunteers.What does it take to serve in the midst of terrifying conflict?  You don’t just give your skill.  What are the joys and costs of putting your life, your marriage and your heart on the line?

About the Playwright
Lenore Bensinger's plays have been produced in Seattle, California, Canada and St. Louis.  She has worked as a dramaturg in most Seattle area theaters, with  a special fondness for new plays.  She worked at the Empty Space and The Group, co-founded Rain City Projects, produced the first US Fringe Festival locally, "On the Fringe."  Next up, an adaptation of Sophocles THEBAN PLAYS with Jake Groshong and Ryan Higgans for Balagan late this spring.  Within the year, she'll be bringing together an ensemble-
developed exploration of today's returning soldiers through a "medical lens."  A near and dear project is the revival of NEW WAVES, the playwrights' radio show happening SOON.

About the Director: 

Carol Roscoe most recently directed DEAD MAN’s CELL PHONE, THE VERTICAL HOUR and RETREAT from MOSCOW at Arts West, END DAYS and HALCYON DAYS at Seattle Public Theater, BUG at Theater Schmeater and many, many more shows in town.  She was seen most recently in Seattle Shakespeare Company’s TWELTH NIGHT and will be featured in the upcoming Seattle Children’s Theatre production of GETTING NEAR to BABY. Carol is currently teaching at Cornish College of the Arts.

Who should go to the OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE Discussion? Theatre-Goers

As I walk backwards up through the list of those who need to come to the March 1 discussion of Outrageous Fortune, I see that it is time to talk about audiences.  Frankly, for theatre makers, it should never not be time to talk about audiences,  but anyone who knows this business knows that one of its dirty little secrets is how often we relegate our customers’ needs and desires to the far back seats of the balcony, while we place our own craving for idiosyncratic expression square in the down center hot spot.

All of the current arguments about the questionable health of theatre and the debatable need for new plays have the audience silently lurking at the bottom of them, waiting for some bold conclusions and and bold new steps.  Are we serving them?  Have we lost them forever?  Is there a way to express ourselves without tossing them out with the masturbatory bath water? 

We do a lot of self-back-patting in the theatre.  “What I Did for Love” and other auto-congratulatory paeans to our sacrifices as show people make for popular pabulum;  but honestly, self-love is not—has never been— enough.  If we ever want them to come back with the enthusiasm and loyalty capable of sustaining a long drive towards world class theatre, then we  need to show audiences a love greater, more encompassing than the love we have for own own voices and our damnable phantom “living wage.”

So, if you are a Seattle theatre-goer, let me first apologize for our art form’s pernicious self-involvement.  It is an occupational hazard, of course, but there is still no enduring excuse for it.  You really are the most important component of what we do.  And if you are even half as concerned or curious about the health of theatre in Seattle as we are, then please come to this event.  Listen, and better yet, chime in.  We need to understand your needs more clearly in order to better serve you.

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

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

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