Estragon: I can't go on like this.
Vladimir: That's what you think.
Allow me to share with you the opening paragraph of an amazing essay that Carl Sander brought to my attention a few weeks ago:
The American non-profit theatre movement is nearing disaster. Without an adequate sense of tradition or sense of social responsibility, it is in danger of becoming a movement whose only purpose is self-perpetuation. This idealistic movement begun some generations ago has been unable to achieve a living wage for its actors, a livelihood for its playwrights; it demands that its designers accept twelve to fifteen productions a year just to make ends meet, and forgoes its responsibility to train directors while permitting, under the heading of financial survival, the average income of its audience members to climb higher and higher until this once bastion of social ideas and aesthetic concerns as become the plaything of the upper middle class and the very wealthy.
Isn’t that amazing? Doesn’t that paragraph just go straight to the heart of our current situation, and by doing so make you a little bit more hopeful that smart people are talking about theatre’s endemic crisis in such an insightful way, since surely, if we talk about this cogently and passionately, we will inevitably move toward making things better?
There is only one problem. This paragraph was written by Richard Nelson for an essay in PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art in 1983. So whether you like it or not, whether you knew it or not, these problems are way over a quarter of a century old. And since Nelson’s incendiary bit of insight was published, absolutely nothing has changed.
Last Monday, a bunch of Seattle theatre folk sat in a room and listened to Todd London, Ben Pesner, and Tory Bailey present their findings on the state of the American playwright-- findings which culminate in a book called Outrage Fortune: The Life and Times of the New American Play. I cannot heap enough praise on these professionals for their efforts not only in researching and authoring this book but in their willingness to tour the country to discuss it. Thank you, London, Voss and Pessner, as well as Tory Bailey, Executive Director of the Theatre Development Fund. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I hope we happy few in Seattle can make progress worth your effort. I hope this, while understanding that hope is not a plan.
I fretted over how best to how best to shape my thoughts about the day, and then I realized I already had a loose outline in the form of the bite-sized tweets I was firing off live from the room.
“Roll Call” and “Good Mix and Size”
The first two blog posts were longer than what I could manage later, and were dedicated to making note of the very impressive cross-section of artists and administrators who came to share in the discussion. I am proud of my city for the turnout. My only caveat: I did not see a large number of actors-- certainly nowhere near the proportion they hold in the larger theatre community. If playwrights really want to get traction in making locally grown new plays a priority then we are going to have to do a better job of convincing local actors why this is important. I have myself been petulant on this point in the past and pledge to do better.
Within “Good Size and Mix” I posted the first of many quotes that I enjoyed: "We are finished with talking with playwrights in one room and artistic directors in another. This tour is the first salvo of setting playwrights and artistic directors in a room talking to each other." Soon after I began tweeting quotes with little or no context. I will try to make up for that here.
Boy howdy, ain’t that the truth! Understand if you can that in the upside-down, through-the-looking-glass world that is regional theatre everything you learned about money and investment flies out the window. The larger the commission the less likely the theatre is to actually produce what they have paid you to wright. Why? Because it is easier to score a grant funding a commission than it is to get one large enough to underwrite an entire production of a new play. In the regional theatre world, commissions are an easy win. The playwright gets paid. The theatre looks generous. So long as everyone calls it good, it’s good, right? (Note: actual play seen by actual audience not included.)
“‘Everyone wants the same ten playwrights.’-- Anonymous Artistic Director”
I ripped this from one of London’s slides. It is a key point from the book. There was no argument on Monday from anyone representing the Big Houses, nor have their season selections provided any compelling contradictory evidence. Plus, when it comes to locally grown, that list of ten can be reduced to one: Steven Dietz, who, while beloved of all, has actually lived in Austin for the past half decade.
Typical Seattle talkback static. “I need to show you how smart I am by questioning your research process while agreeing with its conclusions. Really, I just want everyone to know I’m smart. Does everyone know that now? Great. I’ll sit down. What were we talking about?”
“Things are looking up. A touch of crazy has blossomed in the room.”
I would live to rue these words, after someone stood up and complained at length about how no one in New York wanted to produce her one-woman show about the day JFK was shot. Crack-pottery suits the status quo defenders because it helps them lump the legitimate playwrights in with lunatic amateurs. They can then turn to their boards, shake their heads sadly, and say, “You see what I have to deal with? You don’t pay me enough to screen out these maniacs.”
See above. But note that the smart people are complicit as well. And I admit, I too was biting my tongue and sitting on my hands. But in my defense, I get to mouth off a lot, and was genuinely interested in what other folks had to say. Come on good folks, speak up!
This is what we we need to be talking about, friends: a pipeline: some way of delivering plays across the tiers of theatres in this town. Todd London talked about how incredibly hard this is to do, and I do not doubt it. So was going to the moon. So was writing Hamlet. So is raising a family. Can we try something hard? Can we as Seattleites lead a cultural change instead of hoping Austin figures it out? (Which by the way, according to London, Austin may already be doing.)
Some sort of pipeline is the sweet spot, I am convinced. There are other options worthy of research and development: playwright residencies, season slots dedicated to new work, etc., but I figure those will be a lot harder for the Big Houses to swallow than a pipeline, which they will wager they can quickly abandon when the pressure’s off (i.e. ACT’s abandonment of its highly successful FirstACT program.) So I say, let’s convince them to build the pipeline and then let’s defend it vigorously. Keep the pressure on, forever, forcing them to pull the plug only at their p.r. peril.
Finally voices from the Big Houses start piping up. At times to call me out by name to both praise and dismiss me in the same breath. I am used to this tactic. It has never cut much ice with me. Praise is a director’s easy currency. Many actors crave it. It soothes them. There is nothing wrong with this. At the moment, however, I happen to have my playwright hat on, and I have been to Hollywood. I know exactly how much such praise is worth. Instead, I prefer to focus on fighting words, such as “We are looking for excellence and not finding it.” Bullshit. You are not looking. And when pressed, you praise the shit out of anything handed to you in the hopes that the playwright will just go away like a happy little puppy that just got its head patted. Save the praise. Let’s do a production.
"I actually don't think the system is broken. Just limited resources."
Wishful thinking from a Big House voice. Why is the Center House Theatre packed with people for this discussion if the system ain’t broken? Are we all crackpots? Did this all somehow get fixed since Richard Nelson wrote his essay in 1983? In fairness, you have to expect that this argument will be trotted out, and even perhaps welcome it. There are people who believe all is essentially well. Best to know who they are so you can properly provide them the evidence otherwise.
“What are you willing to sacrifice?”
I find this question fascinating. Primarily aimed at playwrights, the essence is: are you willing to give up a living wage to practice your art? Are you willing to give up your career to make these changes you are asking for?
Answers: Done and done.
I started wrighting plays over twenty years ago understanding I would likely never gain a livelihood from it. How many actors my age can say the same? I also hope it is clear by now what I have personally anted up by speaking out here. Any hopes I had for a nice Dietzian career in this town are herewith spent as payment to sit down at the bargaining table. I will not, however, sit without asking absolutely everyone else at that table what they are willing to stake to make this conversation happen. Are you willing to give up your livelihoods in the theatre to fix this? Are you willing to sacrifice everything you were hoping for individually, all your preconceptions, to make theatre better in Seattle and across the nation? Or are you going to defend the status quo because it has gotten you this far?
Louis Broome wants your figurative head on a platter if you currently make your living at one of Seattle’s not-for-profit theaters. I just want your actual heart, in your chest, pumping warm blood to your brain so you can have a conversation about producing local plays that matter to the audiences you have never yet managed to reach. I do not intend to let anyone off the hook because they are having a bad year, or a good year (yes, again, congratulations ACT) or because they absolutely know what quality is and they cannot find it here, the home to some of the finest playwrights living. Given that I have nothing left to lose, and that I have very little power to comfort the afflicted, I will settle for afflicting the comfortable.
But let’s not get too excited here. Heck, it isn’t as if this cause is urgent. We have at least another 27 years till someone, maybe only 15 years old now, digs up these essays and says, “Damn. Nothing’s changed. But we can’t go on like this.”
That’s what you think, kid.
Just to be clear, I'm not dismissing the value of producing in the big houses. As an actor, I'd love to work at the big houses, if, by my auditioning, I can convince them that such a partnership is desirable. And as a writer, it's hard for me to comment; though I've called myself a "playwright," my theatrical writing efforts have been considerably more focused on scribing for generative projects in which I'm also a performer and/or creating solo work. So please, take anything I say with a dash of cayenne, a pinch of turmeric, whatever suits.
I will say that, should I either dust off the plays that remain hidden in storage or decide to write one again, I would probably hope to get one produced at one of the big houses. From an economic standpoint, there's an undeniable advantage, as Jim has pointed out. I keep hearing that it's not about the money, but the functional difference between producing on the fringe and producing at a big house would seem to be an economic one . . . unless we want to echo the precise criticism we chastise those at the big houses for leveling, and suggest that the real talent resides in the upper eschelon.
So yes, I'd like to see a pipeline, a way for artists to move from these fringe venues to more economically active hubs. I think that the idea, if not the execution, of mid-sized theaters is something to which to aspire. My problem with mid-sized venues has always been that they operate at hours that seem to presume that the artists don't have day jobs while paying at levels that presume that they do, but I'd like to think there are creative ways of addressing this with which new companies could experiment.
In other words, if we're talking about the money--and I don't see very well what else we're talking about if we're granting more importance to production at a big house vs. production at a fringe house--let's be honest about it. Maybe it'll get us started in making a better fringe, a network of shared resources and intermingling companies reminiscent of British postpunk labels circa '79, or Soho art galleries at about the same time. And if that's just me pipe-dreaming, well, at least it'll get us motivated to start building that pipeline from the small houses up, and not from the big houses down. Maybe it'll just help us turn some of those little fringe companies into viable mid-sized houses operating on a more sustainable model.
And yeah, it does come down to audience. I'm all for reaching out. I think one of the reasons I'm skeptical, though, is that you can't really turn one kind of audience into another kind of audience. Which is why I go back (as if I ever left) to the music analogy: People who make death metal don't try to figure out how to sell their wares to people who like baroque. They try to create venues where their fans can interface with their music; they seek or create record labels that specialize in their form, or in multiple forms that at least have more in common than the fact that they all use guitars. Having achieved that much, they then work on weaving a bigger legacy (and more $$) from those materials.
Which is to say, we DO need to find the holes people need drilling, but we might do well to target those whose holes are likely to match our bits. Or something like that. Wait, what are we talking about?
Posted by: Lyam White | 03/04/2010 at 02:29 PM
I'm as flummoxed as the rest of you all about the solution to this issue...yet I feel compelled to comment. I want to speak up on behalf of all actors who enjoy -- and even prefer -- performing new works. I would have attended this forum, but it was during work hours, and hey, I'm a Seattle actor. I have a day job.
I've somehow had the good luck over the years to find my theatrical fortunes mixed with Seattle's many talented playwrights (Wayne Rawley, Keri Healey, Scot Augustson, Bret Fetzer, just to name a few) and my experiences helping stage their new plays are among my top 10 favorite theater moments. There just isn't anything else like the collaborative process of creating a new play. Delighting in what works, and working out the bugs where it doesn't. And they have all given me such rich, quirky characters to work on. And it beats being compared to the millions of other actresses who've played Blanche Dubois.
There's a reason I joined the company at Printer's Devil Theater. It's a theater exclusively devoted to producing new works. My favorite! I know we aren't a big prestigious equity house, but we can at least get projects up on their feet so they can launch up to the next level. Maybe if the big houses are nervous about new works (which is understandable for all the reasons Shawnmarie detailed) they could take a look down from their perches at what's going on in the non-equity world. Because there are some amazing things going on.
Posted by: Shannon Kipp | 03/04/2010 at 07:03 PM
Maybe this is from way out in left field, but...
How would fringe houses accept the idea that they can operate as the "farm team," can be the starting point of a pipeline, if they partner with some Bigs and do a couple of plays each season by request of the Big? "Take these two plays we're considering or have some kind of interest in, produce them with some artistic and marketing support from us, we promise to watch it develop and see the final product."
Would fringe house be willing to take that kind of direction from a Big if they were in a partnership?
Is there enough trust left for such an idea to build on?
Seems to me that one of the unspoken stumbling blocks in this conversation, and really in every artistic decision, is the tension between "give them what they want" and "give them what you want to give them."
Does the pipeline only seem acceptable to the originators of new work if the originators choose what heads up the line, or can it be pulled by the Bigs at the end of the line?
I think it would be really interesting to propose this to the artistic leadership at SCT. Anyone want to try their hand at fringe TYA?
Posted by: Jim Jewell | 03/05/2010 at 01:39 PM
Jim,
If that's from left field then it's like a rocket fired by Ichiro to put the runner out at the plate. (I know, I know, Ichiro plays right field, but it's sunny and March, and a Baltimore boy's idle thoughts turn to baseball, so forgive me.)
Point is, I think it's a great idea, though I of course don't own any fringe real estate myself so I would think a Stephen McCandless or a Bret Fetzer or a Teri Lazara would have more from-the-trenches insights than I do.
However, speaking as a local playwright I would have a few points I would need assurances on to throw support behind such a program:
1) The Big and smaller houses would need to arrive on which plays they developed TOGETHER, through some sort of conference process, and not a unidirectional top down, "here do this" sort of fiat.
2) They should be locally grown plays. Why on earth should Seattle fringe houses be developing risky new work by New York playwrights when there are so many fringe houses there?
3) The Big houses should find some way to bring real money and union (specifically AEA) talent to the mix.
If those terms could be swallowed by the Bigs, I think we'd have something to talk about.
Also, what does TYA stand for?
Sincerely,
Paul
Posted by: Paul Mullin | 03/05/2010 at 02:12 PM
TYA = Theatre for Young Audiences
Tends to scare slightly fewer people away than "children's theatre."
Posted by: Jim Jewell | 03/05/2010 at 02:18 PM
That's a fascinating idea, Jim. I suppose it would depend on how specific the fringe company's mission statement was, and whether the new works being handed down in that fashion would fit within that mission statement. I also think that arrangement would be moot if there weren't also a way for writers who already have a working relationship with, or are members of, the fringe companies that participate to move their own work up that pipeline from the bottom up. That is to say, the pipeline could be acceptable with the bigs pulling at the end of the line, but only if the originators, in turn, have some recourse to choose certain projects, as well. Maybe one that's pulled from the bigs, one pushed from the grassroots? I'm not sure how it would look, but it's interesting to think about.
Since UMO's neither fish nor fowl, I'm not sure we'd have a place in such an arrangement, but I'm still intrigued.
Posted by: Lyam White | 03/05/2010 at 02:33 PM
And/or what Paul said.
Posted by: Lyam White | 03/05/2010 at 02:34 PM
One more term:
There would need to be some mechanism to rigorously incentivize the Big's to actually MOVE stuff UP. This can't be just another dead-ending PR program (i.e. FirstACT, FringeACT) that they can expediently put a bullet in when no one's looking, or when they have a bad year. It needs to be sheltered from that somehow. (Though I know, I know, to hear Kurt tell it ACT will never go hungry again.)
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Posted by: Paul Mullin | 03/05/2010 at 02:54 PM
Thanks, Jim, for the clarification re: TYA.
You know, I've been noodling on something for years now that I call Plays for Tall Young Actors. In other words, plays specifically written to be performed by young people aged 13 to 19. That seems to be a gap. Sure plenty of stuff that's like "Don't do drugs" and "Don't join a gang" but nothing of the quality of Brecht or Beckett. Where is the absurdist cannon for Young Actors? I think they'd LOVE that genre.
Someone on the SLOG comments was saying that we need to do more training of people to love theatre when they're kids, but frankly, I think there are plenty of programs, SCT chief among them, that are doing that. Where we lose them is when they hit their punk years and they want to stop pleasing adults. There's a gap between 15 and 25 wherein we really provide them very little to do or see.
I would love to work in that niche.
I have already written a few short plays for these talented Young Tall People. I'd happily write more if I thought they could get staged.
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Posted by: Paul Mullin | 03/05/2010 at 03:00 PM
Paul, there is a group in town called Young American Theater Company (YATC), Teenagers producing edgy plays and producing them themselves. A lot of these kids went to college in the past year, but I heard something about them passing the torch.
I love the idea of a partnership. It actually makes me think about how Crime and Punishment went from CHAC to Intiman via Sheila Daniels. Of course, not a locally written play, but a good example of how that can happen.
Speaking of which, places like CHAC and ConWorks were such great hothouses for this sort of thing (though I think I saw more new works at ConWorks). Unfortunately both of those meccas were botched in the administration.
Posted by: kate | 03/05/2010 at 03:33 PM
Jim,
Stellar idea. And I'd stand behind a couple of the caveats being suggested, but not all. I can deal with the bulletproof option, and the locally grown bit (just my druthers). But I have some reluctance about bringing the unions down, for example (again, my druthers, and since this is all hypothetical, why not treat these ideas as negotiating chips?).
I grok what Lyam's saying about the fringe company's mission statement, but I say let that be the company's decision; I'd bet most would be willing to waive those concerns for a) the opportunity, b) the exposure, and c) the association with a big.
There are some other little issues that spring to mind, but overall I think the idea's solid.
Posted by: Jose' Amador | 03/05/2010 at 04:00 PM
Anyone who wants to work on audience development should take the Authentic Marketing for Small and Mid-Sized Theatres workshop (aka Beyond Butts in Seats) next time TPS offers it.
Here's the info from the last time:
http://tpsonline.org/forum/index.php?topic=4162.0
Posted by: Louise Penberthy | 03/05/2010 at 11:29 PM
Thanks, Louise. That course looks quite useful. I'm tempted, but I think my sons would kill me if I gave up two Sundays in Summer.
Posted by: Paul Mullin | 03/06/2010 at 07:35 AM
@kate: YATC is still very much alive and well, with some of the original members and some new ones ('cause they are committed to keeping the company youth-led and some of the original members felt that - at 19 - they were getting a bit long in the tooth.) http://www.youngamericanstheatreco.org/
Paul, plays for Tall Young Actors is genius.
I just wrote the longest comment in the world about the neccessity of engaging teenagers and the role that programming choices play in that effort, but I found I have more than a comment's-worth to say on the subject. Suffice it to say that you are so correct in your diagnosis that it's not the little kids but the older kids who need our attention. None of them are getting enough art in school nor seeing enough art, but the small kids are better shape than the tall kids, and the tall kids are the ones who are developing the tastes and habits that they will carry into adulthood. Engaging teenagers is crucial if we want any audiences at all for the arts a couple of decades from now.
See? There I went again. I'm just going to shut up and get back to doing my job now.
Posted by: Holly Arsenault | 03/08/2010 at 12:12 PM
Here ya go Paul: http://www.youngamericanstheatreco.org/6501.html
Have at 'em. I'll bet you anything they have some budding playwrights in the mix too.
Just don't tell them right away about all of our high hopes for them, don't want to scare them off too quickly. Right??!!
Posted by: kate | 03/08/2010 at 01:34 PM
I realize I'm coming into this one a little late, and its possible this was answered in another thread. But...
I'm curious as to why Paul thinks AEA should be involved.
Do you honestly believe that the James Weidmans and Marty Mukhalians of the world are any worse than whatever equity actor you care to name?
I find it a particularly laughable idea in light of your ongoing rant that theaters are moronic for wanting to produce established playwrights. Why then demand that they use more established actors?
Posted by: Alex Samuels | 03/17/2010 at 10:27 AM