The Puget Sound’s NPR affiliate 88.5 KPLU ran a segment on our show this morning, A look at "The New, New, News: A Living Newspaper."You can read the accompanying text article and listen to the audio here.
But I won’t leave you without a little teaser:
The play also explores how long time print journalists are making their way in the world of blogs and virtual newsrooms that don’t have any firewalls separating them from the demands of advertisers.
They pull back the curtain of online journalism and raise a lot of interesting questions.
Mullin and Nichols say they don’t want people to take sides, new versus old, paper versus digital. But they do want us to be aware of the changes happening in journalism, and to question these changes so we can make the profession better. They say that if the public does not take these changes seriously, our democracy could eventually suffer.
We have finished up our West Seattle and Capitol Hill runs, and now only have two weeks left at our home base in North Seattle. So get your advance reservations now by clicking here!
... one of those moments in storytelling where, in ways you couldn’t have predicted, disparate elements of narrative and meaning all come together.
For this longtime fan of the much misunderstood mass microblogging service, it was fantastic.
I am one NewsWright who is delighted that Monica enjoyed the show, especially since she helped us so much in the early phases of our research, suggesting leads, pointing us toward whole new stories to run down, inviting us into her “meet-ups”. We do wonder, though, if she recognized herself in any of the characters.
There's nothing about News that's passive, or simple; very little that is formulaic… which is unusual and welcome in an age where everything can and will come to you. At the end of the night… one is rewarded with an excess of interesting thoughts about the world we inhabit….
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And then The Stranger’s Brendan Kileychimed in. He hasn’t seen it yet, but that doesn’t stop him from recommending it:
….[NewsWrights United] put together The New New News—about the rise of local blogs, how the Seattle Times got a Pulitzer Prize for its readers' Twitter coverage of the Maurice Clemmons manhunt, and what happened to Art Thiel when he started his own blog and had to get tangled with selling his own ads. Judging by their last effort and the seriousness of their material, The New New News should be scarier than the ersatz Mack the Knife.
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I particularly enjoyed Rosemary Jone’sinterview at Examiner.com because it gives NewsWrights United’s Managing Producer, Jim Jewell a chance to say why he believes in the work we do.
Right now, theater looks to me like newspapers in the 90's, watching changes all around them and somehow believing themselves above the change, too venerable to fail. We spend too much time in the theater talking about what theater is instead of actively engaging the form and deciding what it will be, and we aren't too far from the crisis newspapers have found themselves in: failure to evolve.
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So what does all this good news for NewsWrights mean to you? Well, for one it means that if you had hoped not to leave Capitol Hill to see the show, you better order your advance reservations soon. We have only one week at the Erickson, and it starts tonight. The following two weekends will be staged at Theater One on the North Seattle Community College campus (advance reservations for those performances here).
Of course, you can always risk walking up because we always hold back a quantity of pay-what-you-can seats. You just have to ask yourself, are you really cheaper than the majority of your Capitol Hill neighbors? If so, show up early. All evening performances start at 7:30 pm. The matinee is at 2 pm.
Gee I wish I could tell you, but then you might think you don’t need to come to The New New News: A Living Newspaper, and that would be so so wrong. Because you do need to come. We open FRIDAY! Book your reservation now so you you too can get a taste.
Seattle has already lost the print edition of the Seattle PI and the … The Empty Space. We need to fight against the Darwinian trend of saying that only the strongest survive, and take action against the slow erosion of the cultural tapestry of Seattle. We are a city that prides itself on its intellectual acuity.
Kate Whoriskey Artistic Director of the Intiman Theatre
I am often accused of arrogance. The aspersion does not bother me much. I try to remind everyone who will listen that the last thing they should be looking for in a playwright is reticence. Dramatists can be wrong—often are— but after all boldly framed public dialogue is what we wright when we write. Institutional arrogance, however, is an all together different, more heinous sin. My recent work blurring the line between journalism and theatre with NewsWrights Unitedhas opened my eyes to the prevalence of this poisonous phenomenon in both fields.
Back in June 2010, at a panel on monetizing on-line news David Boardman, the Managing Editor of The Seattle Times, made a stunning statement about the recent death of his former competition, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "The reality is: it's not like something was lost.” This is not the first time someone at The Times has gone out of their way to kick the corpse of The P-I. If you choose to watch the video (Boardman makes his remarks at timestamp 52:50 in the video provided below) you will notice that the journalism insider panelists barely blink at Boardman’s chilling dismissal of Seattle’s longest running daily newspaper. In fairness, they might have been reluctant to register the churlishness of one in the rare position to offer them a paying job in their chosen field. (As a playwright I have long since been liberated from this kind of fear, since no artistic director is willing to pay me, or any local playwright, at a rate comparable to even what an Equity actor makes, let alone a living wage.)
The Seattle Times survives through the idiotic exigencies of fate. It could have easily been the other way around, and in their hearts they know it. The jury remains out on newspapers. So “Fairview Fanny”, as The Times is traditionally nicknamed, would do well to watch her step in the cemetery lest she dance into her own grave.
The chasm gapes even wider and closer for The Intiman Theatre, one of Seattle’s three Big Houses. In a recent email to everyone in their database the Intiman made it clear that unless a half a million dollars is raised by the end of March, and then another half million by September, the theatre will cease operations. In the business, we call this a “shoot-the-puppy” campaign: a deeply desperate move, fraught with risk, but also deeply arrogant. At its core the implicit message is:
Our survival matters so much that you should overlook our ineffectuality, our malfeasance, our self-dealing, our cowardice and even the very arrogance of this plea. We matter more than the artists we underpay. We matter more than the audiences we fail to reach. We matter more than the smaller organizations you will not be supporting so that you can help us survive, because we must survive and you must pay now for nothing more than the chance to watch us live another day.
Allow me to honor the clarity of Intiman’s ultimatum with some clarity of my own: I hope they die. I hope they do it soon and with a minimum of suffering. And most of all I hope they do it without siphoning precious funds from the rest of us who make theatre in the Pacific Northwest.
In her note on the Intiman’s blog which I quoted at the top of this post, Artistic Director Kate Whoriskey invokes the ghosts of The Empty Space and The P-I as if she actually suffered their loss instead of showing up on the scene quite recently and long after those beloved institutions succumbed. She merrily previews the upcoming season: “I will be directing my husband in The Playboy of the Western World,” assuming we would be delighted by this nepotism. She must imagine we were similarly delighted when we learned that she had been hand-picked for her position by her predecessor Bart Sher without any input from the community, the patrons, and very little, it seems, even from board “Without the Intiman, will we be as strong?” she implores in closing. And all I can think of is the Lone Ranger joke. He and Tonto are surrounded by a band of Apaches. He says, “Looks like we might die here, old friend.” And Tonto replies, “What’s this “we” shit, Kemosabe?”
Seattle theatre is alive and thriving. Buy me a beer and I will name you at least 100 theatre organizations in Western Washington more deserving of your donation than the Intiman. For now I will give you three for free and attempt to tier them to your tastes:
If you like raw gusty innovative new stories which actually take place here now in Seattle, then support the project for which I currently serve as Executive Producer, NewsWrights United. We are world premiering our second edition The New New News: A Living Newspaper this Friday. Our ticket prices are considerably more affordable than the Intiman’s. If you can’t make the show, you can still support us here. (I don’t hate our odds of surviving past September.)
If your tastes are more conservative, but you still want to support a smaller endeavor; if you love the classics and want to see them done with verve, talent and bold new insights, support Seattle Shakespeare Company. They have a production of Three Penny Opera coming up that I am itching to see, since it’s by my favorite German playwright and it stars one of my favorite undersung Seattle actors, John Bogar. You can donate to Seattle Shakes here.
If your tastes are still more conservative, and/or you are rich enough to consider such smaller theatres beneath the consideration of your largesse, give some money to A Contemporary Theatre. The day before Intiman sent out its desperate plea, its fellow Big House downtown announced that for the second year running it had booked a budget surplus. You can donate to an already healthy ACT here.
All three of these organizations prove that at every level of operations we can do better than what the Intiman has been doing. We know this in our hearts. What we do not know is if the Intiman can do better than what the Intiman has been doing. I tend to doubt it, and that is why I believe it is time to let it die.
Please do not misunderstand me. The shuttering of the Intiman represents a loss nearly as terrible and irrevocable within Seattle’s cultural ecosphere as the loss of the P-I is within Seattle’s journalism world (Mr. Boardman’s fear-born callousness notwithstanding). I will not dance on the Intiman’s grave. But I will also not be a party to keeping the institution on life support past the time of its viability, especially when doing so means diverting funds from theatre arts organizations that have been more successful in reaching and expanding their audiences, like, frankly, NewsWrights United, Seattle Shakespeare Festival and ACT.
The Intiman has been arrogant for a very long time. If Kate’s note is any indication, they have no intentions of improving their tone-deaf messaging. They want you to believe this current crisis was the fault of one lone mismanaging scapegoat. But as Michael Strangeways pointed out on the SLOG comments board: “Brian Colburn... didn't steal the money, or spend it. Years of overspending and waste and the laziness of the Board has led to the woes of Intiman. It wasn't one man/woman, but many, including fair haired child Bart Sher.”
Losing the Intiman will be a tragedy, but we will survive. We can even hope to be a better community for it in the long run, if we guard against institutional arrogance. We need to remember that artists matter more than institutions, that audiences matter more than funders, that plays matter more as works of art than career stepping stones. As Mark Handley, author of Idioglossia, remarked on Face Book:
I'm too much of an evolutionist to take this seriously. Every one of the theaters that produced me as a young man are gone, squeezed out by creeping provincialism. People seem to think that this is ALL (read: $60 ticket, NY director, LA actors) or NOTHING (as in: nothing, gone, kaput, out of business) is the way to go... *sigh*
So yes, harsh as it sounds: please let the Intiman die with dignity. Its time is done. In its place, let's build something new, local and accountable. We actually already have the pieces in place for that. The Intiman will not live to see the promised land, but if Kate Whoriskey is serious about making Seattle her home-- claiming its unique triumphs and defeats as hers too-- then perhaps she will still be living here when we finally grow into a “world class” theatre town.
(Above is full video of the panel discussion “Town Square: Revenue Models in the Changing Media Landscape”from which I referenced David Boardman’s glib remarks about the death of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. If you dare, surf a little past the Boardman quote and you can see me holding Publicola’s Josh Feit’s feet to the fire on his equally glib Pollyannaish assessment of arts coverage in the current environment. If you decide to watch the entire event, you will witness the nearly monolithic patronizing attitude of the panel (David Brewster excepted) to questions from an audience who is clearly not buying their uniformly optimistic outlook. Oh, journalists love the concepts of honesty and transparency, as applied toothers.)
Seattle’s NPR affiliate 94.9 KUOW will be running an interview with me and Jeremy Richards about a story NewsWrights United stages in The New New News: A Living Newspaper about the Twitter coverage of the 2009 Maurice Clemmons manhunt, now infamously known as the “WAshooting Feed”. The segment will air on the radio on Saturday, February 12 at 12:06 pm PST, but the sneaky tech-savvy listener can access it now and forever at “Tweeting the Manhunt”. I welcome your thoughts. (But I already know that I talk to fast.)
The show itself premieres on Friday, February 18, in West Seattle at Olympic Hall at South Seattle Community College. Advance reservations can be made here.
We will also be delivering the “paper” to North Seattle (click here) and Capitol Hill (click here) locations. Don’t miss it!
Over the last 48 hours on-line news sources have exploded with fresh stories about Maurice Clemmons, the prematurely released Arkansas felon who, on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, 2009, walked into a coffee shop outside Tacoma, Washington and murdered four Lakewood Police officers as they drank their morning coffee. Clemmons then led law enforcement on a two-day wild goose chase throughout Western Washington before being shot dead in Seattle by a lone cop. In those two days it became clear that local journalism would never be the same, not in Seattle, not anywhere.
It is this very urgent transition which we cover in our latest production The New New News: Living Newspaper, investigating the on-line reportage of the Clemmons Manhunt in a section we call “#WAshooting” after the Twitter hashtag used to track tweets concerning the ongoing chase. We are fairly certain that our upcoming opening, (Friday, February 18) has exactly nothing to do with the recent rash of articles about Clemmons, but we welcome the renewed interest in the case nonetheless, and not just because it might cause the curious to check out our show. The story of Maurice Clemmons will not go away, nor should it, because its implications affect the future of Western Washington, U.S. national politics and the nature of journalism across the globe.
Certainly the once-and-possibly-future presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is hoping we forget about Clemmons. While Governor of Arkansas, Huckabee granted clemency to the 8-time felon, who otherwise would have been incarcerated until 2015, in part because Clemmons claimed in his application that he came from “a very good Christian family.” (One need not wonder what Huckabee’s decision would have been if instead “Muslim” had been the adjective modifying the subject of that clause.)
Likewise, it is not hard to trace a deterioration of relations between Western Washington police and the communities they serve since Clemmons’ murderous rampage. Had Maurice never left his Arkansas prison would Seattle Police Officer Ian Birk have given Native American wood-carver, John T. Williams, more than four seconds to put down his carving knife before shooting him dead?
We will never know the answer to that, but we do know with certainty that active crime investigations will never be covered the same anywhere in the future. From now on, journalists, law enforcement, regular citizens, and yes, even criminals, will all be privy to instant information, some of it deeply flawed or downright false, as it emerges on Twitter or whatever tool we will be using to share data. We examine this fundamental shift in The New New News. I could tell you how, but really, I’d rather show you. The first copy drops on West Seattle’s doorstep a week from Friday. Why not order your “subscription” now?
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned to a friend of mine that I was thinking of auditioning for The Wooden O this year, since for the first time in a years I won’t be on vacation during their run. My buddy, who happens to be a Seattle firefighter, but whose wife acts with the O on occasion, trotted out a taunt he likes to tweak me with: “But Paul, you hate Shakespeare.”
He bases this facetious conclusion on a challenge I proposed some years back calling on all Seattle theatres to self-impose a Shakespeare hiatus for one year. Brendan Kiley, Arts Editor for The Stranger, picked the idea up and wrote about it here. I still genuinely believe this would be a grand and beneficial experiment, but not because I hate Shakespeare—quite the opposite. As a playwright I flatter myself that I understand the man’s genius better than most of the directors and actors who worship so sycophantically at his altar for all the wrong reasons.
“It’s the language that makes his plays so exquisite.”
“No, it’s his sumptious, multifaceted characters.”
“No, no, it’s the tradition, the chance to etch one’s mark on the living canon of performance.”
It’s all bullshit. Shakespeare was a great—yes, even the greatest—playwright for one and only one simple reason: he wrought great plays. All the rest is just so much makings. You might praise a chef for her choice of ingredients, but you wouldn’t claim them as the reason for her genius. A year without Shakespeare would help us gain some much needed clarity and distance from the material. We would come back to it ready to attack with refreshed hearts. And it would also get us off his cash-cow tit for long enough to taste a little bona fide self-sufficiency. Hell, we might actually miss Shakespeare. That currently unfathomable notion alone would make a break worth it, wouldn’t it?
Never mind. I already know the answer. It was shouted at me and Kiley at the Seattle Theatre ShitStorm back in 2008. And it has been shouted just as fiercely upon every subsequent mention. “Never! We will NEVER stop staging Shakespeare. Not for a year. Not for a month. How dare you!? You and the rest of your modern playwright ilk are not fit to wipe the soles of his pointy shoes.” The level of vituperation one encounters upon even suggesting a breather from the bard naturally calls a paraphrase of one of his more famous lines to mind, “Methinks the status quo doth protest too much.”
Yes, American Theatre literally worships Shakespeare. And I have to laugh, because I am pretty sure he would have hated us.
Shakespeare was a playwright, poet, player and proprietor, in equal measure, despite our hindsighted emphasis on the first of those four. He made plays to make money and he made a lot of both. He would hate our precious process of endless workshopping plays to an early death on dusty shelves. At the Globe you worked the problems of a play in performance.
He would hate that people more often read his plays than see them.
He would hate, or not have been even able to comprehend, a system in which playwrights make plays for performance in cities far from where they live, for less than it costs them to create, for the narrowest sliver of society.
He would hate that so many modern American playwrights have never acted and never produced, have never done anything in a theatre except watch silently from dark seats.
Since he shared them, he would sympathize with the milquetoast middle class aspirations of most American playwrights—“I just want to have a house and a family and make the same kind of money as my friends I went to college with”— but he would grow to hate them eventually. Shakespeare may have envied his social superiors, but he also knew at his core he was better than them.
He would not hate that we kiss the asses of our benefactors and patrons, but he would hate how poorly and surreptitiously and self-loathingly we do it; almost never managing, as he did, to flatter and skewer with the same loaded lines: floating sublimely above, then suddenly crawling at them from beneath, being everyone and no one at the same time with such stunning success that even today reasonably sane and educated people entertain themselves with the pseudo-intellectual dalliance that he did not even write the plays which he so clearly did.
He would have hated the MFA system for generating new viral spores of actors, playwrights and directors when there isn’t enough work for the ones already in the system.
He would have hated the advent of the auteur director, smothering the natural brilliance of his plays with their dense cloying concepts.
He would hate that artistic administrators make the decisions about which plays get done, instead of a consensus of proprietor/players, all sharing the ownership of the theatre, and thus the risks and rewards.
And most of all, he would hate our necrophilic prejudice for his plays, even the poor ones, over anything new, even the good ones. As the consummate playwright, he would want us to love the living writers as much or more than the dead.
So, yeah, I’m pretty sure if Shakespeare were alive today he would hate us.
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