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: TDFRSVP@tpsonline.org

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.

Comments

[Carl Sander]

Brother Paul, I want to believe, I want to be saved and see my father in heaven, but the devil is telling me it’s the same old harp of cheap plastic and not a harp of gold. Preach it to me brother. Tell me that there are those in the cathedrals of art who are desperate enough and bored enough of the way things are to reach for the promised land, grasp the handle of redemption, and open the doors to a new age.

[Paul Mullin]

Carl, call me comrade! 'Cuz I ain't a lookin' for no pie in the sky when I die. I'm leaning lately more towards Louis Broome's word: "Revolution".

I'm no longer interested in "submitting" my plays. I won't be submitting at all.

I'm also no longer waiting for anyone to open doors for us. What am we? Royalty? We can open our own damn doors. I also know how to pick a few locks. Failing that, a good kick perhaps?

[Carl Sander]

Right on! But then what's all this about "playing the game"? The game of submitting plays is what I thought you were referring to. And how is “letting the game go” different from tossing the broken system to the curb and getting our own ball to play with? Which I am all for.

The major theatres have their place, but it’s never going to be a priority of theirs to promote local writers - never, never, never. Our best bet is to continue to develop new forms of production (for-profit and not for profit) that serve our needs and our audiences. In that context, I look at the forum on March 1 as an opportunity to talk directly to funders and tell them that when they hear talk of a "home for artists" they’d better look for the proof and not accept it on face value.

But if that’s the case, then why are you so keen on having the theatres represented? They can be a part of the solution, but they only will be on their own terms.

"I will not rise from the masses, but with the masses" – Eugene Debs

"Go Paul Go" - Carl Sander

[Scot Augustson]

Man. I am sooo sick of whiny a-holes who say things like "Sometimes I hate the game." Like they are somehow above the nitty gritty reality of making art happen. Like it is beneath them to be diplomatic (Which I guess they would see as kissing ass.) Like somehow the promotion of work they didn't like was the championing of mediocrity! Like somehow the production of theater wouldn't involve some degree of comprimize and...and...wait a minute.
Paul, I'm the one who said that, aren't I?

[Paul Mullin]

Dear lord, Scot!

No matter how much discretion I try to show, you just can't help outing yourself can you. Is there a any closet you won't claw your way out of?

If you were Deep Throat (and don't even start) you'd have been running around the darkened parking garage screaming, "It's me, I tell you! It's me!"

Lord love you, can't you control your exhibitionism for once and indulge me just a little in my fantasy that I'm some sort of hard-edged journalist with anonymous sources?

Come on! You're ruining my fun with honesty. That's just cheap.

Paul

[Scot Augustson]

Paul, what game are your trying to play here? You know how I feel about the game!

[Tim Boucher]

A girl at a bar two nights ago asked me, quite randomly, "Do you believe in things being transparent?"

I looked up at her big glasses. "What things?"

"All things."

"Sure. I'm all for it."

Immediately the game turned into her using my response against another guy who had said 'no' to her random interrogations.

The thing the other guy kept saying, unable somehow to believe the situation's transparency: "What kind of game are you guys playing here?"