needtheater Blog

Day 30: Post Game Recap

2012-02-01T17:34:00.000-08:00

Well, this is it. Thirty days of talking about plays. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm exhausted. I think we could all use a break, yes? Let the needtheater blog cool down a bit? Okay, but one more thing...

Halfway through, back on Day 15, we took an intermission break and recapped some of the things we've learned. So before I go, let's run it back for Days 16-29.

Day 16: Global Catastrophe + 1.5 years = First Plays About Global Catastrophe. Global Catastrophe + 10 years = Important Plays About Global Catastrophe. We're going to calls these Dylan's First and Second Laws of Global Catastrophe-Based Playwriting. We're going to do this because I have written a lot in the last month and I deserve at least two quasi-mathematical formulas named after me.

Day 17: The people of Finland deserve an award for their enthusiasm towards their new plays. They might not write the best plays, but they're going to make damn sure the world knows about them. And knowing is half the battle. G.I. Joe.

Day 18: Originality is overrated. You'll twist yourself in knots trying to come up with something different only to end up with a twisty, convoluted mess. Meanwhile, the themes that have always rung true continue to ring true and if you can communicate those clearly, you will find yourself an audience.

Day 19: The key to the future of theater isn't in the plays. It's in the experience of attending a play.

Day 20: Moon Over Buffalo is an incredibly silly play and making fun of it was an awesome experience. I heartily recommend making fun of plays as a form of therapy.

Day 21: There are universal conflicts that the rich and poor share. But right now the world is fucking poor. So no one wants to know how the rich are handling things.

Day 22: The Law of Packaging states that a play's probable quality is inversely proportional to the amount of secondary material that comes with its script.

Day 23: Theater rewards scrappiness. Everything about putting on a play is about problem-solving, doing things on the fly, making something from nothing. Sad as it may be, this means that the best theater will come from the scrappiest artists, i.e. the poor.

Sidenote: Have you noticed how may of these thoughts revolve around being poor? Can you guess the current state of my bank account?

Day 24: When you're talking about theatricality, the line between beautiful and obnoxious is razor thin, and playwrights would be wise to tread very carefully.

Day 25: You know how fellow magicians are probably the worst audience for a magic show because they can't just appreciate the fun of being astounded, they have to figure out how the trick works? Same thing with theater people as theater audiences.

Day 26: A play's quality improves when the environment around it feels supportive and enthusiastic. This is why theater in New York and Chicago is better than it is in L.A., even if it really isn't.

Day 27: Plays aren't getting meaner. But it does seem that way because the world is getting meaner. This sucks, both for writers and for the world.

Day 28: I am a genius.

Day 29: We have to stop taking ourselves so damn seriously.

Okay, I lied. I'm not exhausted. After the party it's the afterparty, y'all! As such, I'm moving this party over to Bitter Lemons (losangeles.bitter-lemons.com) where I'll continue to slash and burn my way through the world's bad plays. So, if you're interested, that's where I'll be.

The needtheater blog will now return to his regularly scheduled programming. Thank you.

Day 29: The Middle Ground

2012-01-31T22:12:00.000-08:00

So now that we are on Day 29 of my planned 30 days of plays and are coming to the end of the line, it seems fitting that so many of the scripts I am now reading are reflecting back on some of the things I have already written. After all, there's really only so much one can say about theater, am I right? Or maybe there's only so much I can say. I am definitely fighting the feeling that I'm increasingly sounding like a broken record here. Anyway, yesterday's play offered some new insights into my theory on the most effective times to write about global catastrophes. And today's play takes us back to Day 12's rant about scary plays. In particular, it speaks to what I said about theater's annoying and self-destructive need to bury what could be its most viscerally exciting stories under fat, dense and unappetizing layers of intellectualism.

Today's play starts as a laid-back comedy about kooks hanging around a dive bar and, through various twists and turns, ends up as a thriller. The writer has built himself a very nice career out of writing unchallenging but reliably crowd-pleasing plays of all kinds and he does a good job of avoiding the usual pitfalls of the thriller genre, never getting too wrapped up in explaining the hows and whys of his plot and instead focusing his efforts on the gradual racheting-up of tension and looming disaster. He's confident and experienced enough to know that though it might be easy to poke holes in his plotting as you read it, when put on stage, no one is going to care one way or the other as long as their heart is beating fast. So why, why oh why, does he waste so much time in the midst of things on a full explanation of the 9/11 conspiracy theory (another 9/11 play! I'm such a fucking genius, it's scary)? That's not to say this stuff isn't interesting. But to plop what amounts to a long lecture in the middle of a tightly orchestrated thriller does way more harm than good.

Look, I understand that legit genre plays are fighting an uphill battle. In response to getting our asses kicked for years by other narrative forms like film, TV and video games, theater has shielded itself behind its reputation as "the serious one." Unless you're going to go full bore in the opposite direction and do a spoofy musical or goofball comedy, then your theater better have some greater meaning to it, some possibility for intellectual and emotional transcendence. I suppose this is a kind of rationalization for the higher ticket prices and greater commitment of time and energy that theater demands compared to those other forms. But it has created this weird absence of a middle ground between silly and artsy, and this is where the genre play really needs to reside. This is what I had hoped for out of this play, not something that sought to educate or enlighten us but one that could aim for the head, the heart and the guts in equal measure. Unfortunately, it seems we have ceded this middle ground over permanently.

Day 28: I Am Pythagoras

2012-01-30T13:59:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the timing of plays dealing with global catastrophes. I said that these plays generally first start to appear about one and a half to two years after the catastrophe (GC + 1.5 = PAGC) but that the really important plays about the global catastrophe would only start to appear about 10 to 15 years after the event itself (GC + 10 = IPAGC) because that amount of time was enough to gain the objectivity needed to really address the event from a wide, universal perspective but not enough that the event's meaning had already solidified in our minds. I ended by suggesting that given this equation, the really important plays about 9/11 were due to arrive at any second.

I am a genius, guys! I am a genius for all sorts of reasons but I bring it up here and now because I read a play today about 9/11 that went a long way towards proving my theorem. The play is set in 2010 and 2011 and deals with a 9/11 widow who has devoted her life to victims and survivors rights and to the idea that we must continue to fight for justice through legislation. Her devotion has caused her to somewhat ignore her teenage son, who has struggled with the death of his father in his own way, leading him to isolate himself while he is bullied and ostracized at school. And at the same time, the town they live in debates whether or not to erect a memorial in honor of the dead man. Now, this play is not perfect. I don't even think it is very good. But the reasons why it is not very good are directly related to the reasons why it represents how the theater world has moved past its initial, raw, emotional reactions to 9/11 and into a kind of thinking about the events of that day that we will carry forward for many years to come. It's one of the first plays I have read on the subject that deals with 9/11 not as an event that happened to us but as a historical event. As such, the play has the timelessness that is crucial to any hope a work about a global catastrophe has to being considered important.

It's fitting that the story of the play tackles how those close to the events of 9/11 are dealing with it ten years after the fact. In a way, it's a subtle bit of meta in that it reflects what playwrights are now newly dealing with in regards to this tragedy. But with this new approach comes some related problems and this play has a bunch of them. There's the feeling that the play has discovered a previously unknown treasure trove of 9/11-related conflicts and it's not quite sure where to turn. It's like a kid in a candy store, dashing from conflict to conflict, stopping only long enough to sample the goods before running off to the next offering. So here, we get a wife and son who individually have not yet faced their own sadness in a healthy manner. Thus each face their own handful of resulting conflicts along with the conflicts they have with one another. And then there's the conflict the town has in regards to how they honor a man who really was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The attention of the play is divided and so its themes feels less than fully explored and the whole play feels a little skittish. But its approach, its perspective, and its central question of how we will face such a tragedy as it recedes into the past paves the way for the plays soon to follow.

I am motherfucking Pythagoras!

Day 27: Can't We All Just Get Along?

2012-01-29T22:33:00.000-08:00

I was talking with a director friend of mine the other day, bitching to her much as I have been bitching to you over the last month. My rant was somewhere near in spirit to Day 11's harangue about plays for twentysomethings. This director agreed and then said something to the effect of, "I'm tired of plays where people are mean to each other." This initially struck me as a very strange thing to say. After all, the essence of any narrative is conflict. A character is at odds with something. Often, that something is another character. And when two characters are in disagreement with one another, then very often they will act poorly towards one another. People being mean to each other is a brick in the foundation upon which drama has been built, and to ask that it be removed is to threaten the integrity of the structure as a whole. To complain about people being mean to each other is kind of like saying you're tired of plays with characters crying. It's going to have to happen from time to time, you know?

All the great plays feature characters being mean to each other. Look at Hamlet. Plenty of people being mean to each other there. Look at A Streetcar Named Desire. Same thing. But the thing to note is that in these plays, this kind of behavior is treated as incitement towards exploration of an almost completely unrelated theme, or as a symptom of conflict. The bad behavior itself is neither the theme nor the conflict, and in neither case would you describe the plays as being about people being mean to each other. Saying that would imply something nihilistic about the play. So the fact that this director, who is incredibly cool along with being incredibly good at her job, would say something like that is interesting to me. Even the fact that she would complain about it at all suggests that there is something about this meanness that has been made central for her. It has become the theme and the conflict for her even if it is not supposed to be. You know what that tells me? It tells me that the world is getting more and more fucked up by the day. People bring their own lives to bear on the plays they see. And while we might not live in a world that is any meaner than it was 100 or 1000 years ago (we actually seems a hell of a lot nicer to each other than we did 1000 years ago), we do live in a world in which our own bad behavior is displayed to us and analyzed for us all the time. We're hyperaware of it so much so that our stories have become about it too.

Today's play was all about the Holocaust, a prime example of people being mean to each other if ever there was one. It was a heartfelt but very poorly written show about a man in the gas chambers at Auschwitz looking back on his life and reliving his best moments. It ends with the man asking God what he and his fellow Jews had done to deserve this end. And as I read this and thought about what my friend had said to me, I realized that what she really meant was that she was tired of a world where people are mean to each other.

Day 26: Theatre Towns

2012-01-28T21:40:00.000-08:00

So my streak of consecutive days blogging ended at 25. Too bad. I was beginning to feel like the Joe DiMaggio of theater pontificators. But alas, I went to this restaurant in Chicago last night, and it filled me so full of cured meats and cheeses that it pushed all of the theater straight out of my brain. This is a shame because I saw some good theater while in Chicago, and I got a real sense of it as a "theater town." Chicago has a well-deserved reputation as a strong second place to perennial winner New York City in the competition for America's Most Relevant Theater Town. Comparing it to our favorite perennial theater doormat, Los Angeles, led to some interesting conclusions. On some level, Chicago is not all that different from our fair city. Geographically, it may not be quite as spread out as we are but it's certainly not as condensed as New York is. The audience demographics feel roughly the same. And like Los Angeles, the hierarchy of Chicago theater consists of a few at the top, a few more right below, and then a vast sea of storefront set-ups down at the bottom, scrapping for every dollar and bit of credibility they can find while providing the audience with a healthy mix of theater, encompassing everything from the most standard revivals to the most cutting-edge new work.

The difference then is this: In Los Angeles, most people do theater so that they may one day do film and TV. In Chicago, people do film and TV so that they can continue to do theater. This is not a judgment. There are plenty of very good reasons why someone would want to work in film and TV, even apart from the substantially larger paydays they offer. And obviously, this is also a generalization that doesn't always hold up. But you would be surprised how often it does. Even a die-hard like myself didn't come to L.A. to work in theater. I came to L.A. to work in film and TV and when I got sick of trying to claw my way through what I considered to be a very strange and off-putting kind of work environment, I returned to my original master. The only reason I even bring it up is because I do think an audience can sense these opposing motives and differing priorities, and I believe it can effect how they perceive the plays. In L.A., the play is always seen as a stepping stone to some hazy dream that hangs out in the hypothetical near future. In Chicago, the play is the end game. And this gives theater in Chicago an urgency that Los Angeles can't really provide.

I felt that during one of the plays I saw in my time in Chicago. The play was written by a playwright that I've never liked as much as most everyone else does. He always writes with an abundance of intellectual flourishes that result in many of the things I have already talked about here on the blog: self-seriousness, forced quirkiness, insincerity leading to the inaccessibility of emotions. And this play I saw was no exception. But the staging and the performances in the play were given a force, an energy, an urgency by the people involved that had nothing to do with talent and everything to do with heart. It elevated the production above the material for me. I didn't like it, but I liked watching it. And when you have an atmosphere like that, it's a lot harder to disappointment. It creates optimism, and that's something that the L.A. scene could really use.

Day 25: Theater Artist as Theater Audience

2012-01-26T23:00:00.000-08:00

So I'm in Chicago for a few days and tonight I went and saw a play put on by a company called Collaboraction. It was called Dark Play, or Stories For Boys, by Carlos Murillo, and it was very good. Throughout the play, the production used a very effective bit of sound design in order to represent conversations happening online in which the dialogue was given a little amplification and echo. And I found myself wondering how they did that. I'm sure a lot of people shared my curiosity and, to be honest, the answer probably isn't particularly elaborate. I'm not an especially technical dude and it doesn't take much in that department to totally mystify me. But the point is that while I imagine most people quickly moved past that moment of curiosity and returned to the story at hand, it distracted me for awhile. And this is nothing against the production. As I said, it was very good. Quite the contrary, the distraction was completely a result of who I am, and more specifically, what I do.

As one of the few staff members at needtheater, a small company not unlike Collaboraction, I must play a part in every aspect of the planning and implementation of one of our shows. This means that when we do a show, my mind is necessarily, constantly filled with all manner of questions and concerns surrounding the intricate choreography that comes with putting on a play. This runs the gamut from the number of backstage crew members we will need to the durability of a table that an actor plans to jump on to the amount of noise that a set piece will make as we slide it into position during the blackout. A huge part of the fun of making theater is orchestrating all this action and movement and work so that when put together and presented in front of an audience, it flows in a way that seems both cohesive and magical. But it's hard to turn that kind of thinking off.

This turns out to be a real bummer when I go to see a show that I'm not involved in. In these instances, I want to just give myself over to the experience. I want to just surrender to that magic that we all aspire to and let it touch me in whatever way it can. Because it's only when you surrender yourself that way, surrender your control of your own thinking and let the play take you where it may, that you can feel that magic. Instead I'm thinking about how they pulled off that quick-change and whether they're using iced tea or apple juice to stand in for the whiskey. It makes me think that working in theater ultimately makes you the worst kind of audience member.

Day 24: High Wire Act

2012-01-25T17:19:00.000-08:00

It sorta felt like the writer of today's play had read the past 24 days of the needtheater blog and decided to combine all of the things I had ranted most strenuously against into one story. There was the requisite sneer towards Hollywood vapidity, gobs and gobs of quirkiness and, perhaps most damaging of all, an unwillingness to confront its themes and tell its story with complete clarity and honesty. Hey, at least it was about poor people!

It got me thinking about the high-wire act that is theatricality. Theatricality is a word literary managers will often throw around. It speaks to the fact that theater and the theater space represent fantasy worlds, no matter how realistic a writer's style. Theatricality describes a writer's ability to highlight and utilize this aspect of the form to say things that aren't always clear in our day-to-day life, and it's an absolutely necessary part of any good play. But a writer can very easily overshoot the mark when it comes to this theatricality. Here are a few of the unfortunate results:

-Obnoxious protagonists: In this play, the protagonist has suffered the death of her parents and has been left to care for her disfigured brother. Her resulting stunted maturity manifests itself in a neediness that, when heightened by the need for theatricality, becomes annoying. I could barely stand a character that I am supposed to be actively rooting for.

-Unintentionally comedic given circumstances: The disfigured brother lives in a cardboard box in the family home's backyard and wears a Phantom of the Opera mask to hide his disfigurement. Again, this is heightened behavior. And in this case, it pushes things towards the absurd and away from the tragedy that this behavior is supposed to represent. It makes the play funnier than it should be but less effective than it wants to be.

-Too much description: The easiest way to use theatricality is to describe the world as it exists in the play. It describes the protagonist's conflict or the brother's circumstances. But we also need to know what can be. These are the stakes of the play and our understanding of them creates tension and keeps us engaged. The more a play gets caught up in description of what is, the easier it is to lose sight of what can be.

These kinds of effects are what lead to a loss of clarity and honesty. But as is often the case with plays like this, today's story has a profoundly touching, emotional core out of which all this theatricality has grown. And it puts the play into a purgatory that I've talked about before. Too potentially good to be bad. Too potentially bad to be good. A great director and cast can find this core and make it all the more resonant because the journey to get there was unusually tough. It can be stunning. But the wrong artists can turn it into a mockery. It's a pretty thin margin of error. Just like walking the high wire.

Day 23: We Are Survivors

2012-01-24T21:02:00.000-08:00

I didn't read a play today. I'm going to Chicago very early tomorrow morning. And I'm all kinds of full on chicken wings. So I think indigestion and anxiety are going to be providing the bulk of the inspiration for this brief post.

The reason why I didn't read a play today (and kinda the reason why I'm full on chicken wings) is because I spent the bulk of the day helping Ian (my needtheater co-AD) at his job installing fancy window displays for high-end liquor and wine stores. I am paid more per hour to do this than I am to read scripts. Normally, I would tell you that this is a sad thing, the fact that theater professionals are underpaid and that Ian and I and all our theater friends have to work at these kinds of job in order to pay the bills and continue to do theater. I guess it is sad. I would love to be paid a real salary to make theater and I have spent the last seven years trying to figure out how to make this happen, only to find little success and much frustration. And we probably would make better theater if we could devote our professional lives to it and not waste hours trying to make ends meet with menial labor of all kinds. But maybe we wouldn't.

There's something to the scrappiness of this kind of life that is reflective of theater. Our never ending search for the next odd job is just like our search for the plywood we need, the costume we can borrow, the space we can use. It's all just a constant hustle and a frequently unpleasant and demeaning one at that. We have to be insane to choose this kind of life for ourselves and not just be office managers or plumbers or whatever. And every time we realize this (and we realize it every day), we are reminded that this insanity comes from our love for theater. It is a love that runs so deep that we literally cannot do anything else. Believe me, if we could, we would. And when you make something born out of that kind of love, it will always be infinitely better than if you had made it to be paid.

Day 22: The Law of Packaging

2012-01-23T18:47:00.000-08:00

Let's get this out of the way right at the top: Yes, I am very sad about the 49ers. No, I am not angry. And no, I do not blame Kyle Williams. He's young. He shouldn't have even been returning punts and was only starting because Ginn hurt his knee the week before. And it was raining. Fumbles happen. Let's move on.

Following on the heels of last week's massively popular use of math to illustrate the most fertile time to write a play about a global catastrophe (nothing gets butts in the seats like math!), today I'm going to drop some more science on ya. I call it The Law of Packaging and it states that the amount of secondary material that comes with a submitted script is inversely proportional to the script's quality. That is to say, the more frills you pad your submission with (color photos, DVDs with video and audio clips, lollipops), the less likely it is that it will be good. Not all scripts that are simply white Xerox paper and an alligator clip are going to be keepers, but if I pick up some glossy folder and discover that I have to dig through five pounds of promotional garbage to find the actual play, you can bet we've got a dud. I'm not exactly sure why this is. I guess it has something to do with overcompensation. A playwright subliminally knows that their play is crap and so they try to prop it up with all manner of fluff in a desperate attempt to distract us. Trust me, we're not distracted. If anything, all this secondary material is the equivalent of an air raid siren.

My favorite part of these submissions is the pulled quotes from reviews of the show. I know I'm not the first to announce this but let me just join the chorus in declaring that criticism is officially dead. What was once an art form dedicated to analyzing the meaning and impact of a piece of art has now turned into a marketing tool, the equivalent of when film trailers show audience members in the lobby after a screening, declaring that it was fun for the whole family or some such nonsense. Has this ever convinced you to go to a movie?

A critic's job is not to tell us whether or not we should see a show and for good reason. I don't know this person. More importantly, they don't know me. So to suggest that an endorsement from some anonymous critic would convince me that a script is worth my serious consideration, especially in an age where anyone could make a website for themselves and be posting reviews in ten minutes, is ridiculous.

Now, I know that it's easy for me to front like I'm too cool for critics, and I admit that when Variety panned a show I directed last year, I spent a few days cursing and pacing and wondering if I had deluded myself into thinking I had done something commendable. But after a little time had passed, I remembered what I just said above. The review was one man's opinion, and if there are people out there who would choose not to go to a play just because one stranger says it wasn't good, then those aren't the kinds of people I want coming to my show anyway.

Day 21: First World Problems

2012-01-22T13:13:00.000-08:00

It's Sunday. The Niners are in the NFC Championship Game. You know the drill. It's going to be short and angry.

One criticism that theater hears a lot is that it's an elitist art form. Like with ballet or the symphony, people envision a theater's lobby filled with tasseled loafers and pearls; a bunch of bluebloods who have only come so that they can humblebrag to their friends the next morning over brunch. And it's hard to fault those who believe this, despite recent efforts to the contrary such as lower ticket prices. This is because there are a tremendous amount of plays seemingly dedicated to the problems that come with being rich. Or rather, there are a tremendous amount of plays dedicated to universal problems, as seen through the eyes of the rich.

Take today's play for instance. The play is about a 20-something daughter struggling in her relationship with her mother following the death of her father. Death and the strain it has on familial relationships is certainly something we can all identify with. But the play is set in The Hamptons and features bits of bourgie symbolism like the mother's recent interest in pool aerobics, which serves to represent both her desire to deny her own mortality through obsessive exercise and, later, her ability to float, or fly through her life and thus transcend her difficulties. The play was written by the daughter of a fairly famous actor so I'm sure that this wealthy environment is something she knows and feels comfortable working in. But to write something in this setting immediately establishes a sense of the exclusive and the exclusionary that essentially serves the same purpose as high ticket prices. At its worst, it begs us to understand that rich people have problems too. And this is not a message that anyone but the rich want to hear.

It's hard to know what came first, the elitist reputation or the plays about elitists. As I have said before, playwrights have to write for their audience and if your audience is rich, then why shouldn't your plays reflect their position and speak to them? But I have also said that theater's problems are going to take radical solutions and real risk-taking. If we want the theater to return to being a form for the masses, we're going to have to write like it.

Day 20: Liveblogging

2012-01-21T17:44:00.000-08:00

I love watching bad TV, mostly because it then allows me to enjoy writers making fun of the bad TV. I particularly enjoy when they liveblog this kind of stuff. So today, I'm going to liveblog a play. The play is Moon Over Buffalo by Ken Ludwig, a writer whose impressive success is due in large part to his ability to write the safest theater on the planet Earth. That sound you hear is me sharpening my knives. For those playing along at home, I'm reading the version of the script published by The Fireside Theatre Press. Release the snark!:

The original cast featured Carol Burnett. Uh-oh. I can smell the Geritol on this script already.

Pg 1: We begin with a play-within-a-play. Actors are rehearsing a scene from Cyrano de Bergerac. I brace myself for lots of self-deprecating observations about the strange life of the theater artist.

Pg 4: And the play is set in 1953?! Nostalgia for the glory days of American theater and nostalgia for the'50s?! Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

Pg 13: We've only just begun and we've already got plenty of jokes at the expense of theater. We've met an old couple, formerly Broadway stars, named George and Charlotte Hay. They come out of rehearsals for Cyrano and engage in a mock sword fight with one another, going so far as to involve an innocent stranger as an unwitting hostage. Theater people: they never stop performing! And we wonder why everyone makes fun of us.

Pg 15: The innocent stranger, who is named Howard, turns out to be George and Charlotte's prospective son-in-law. Understandably, he immediately runs away. I envy Howard. Meanwhile, Charlotte is pretending to be a horse.

Pg 18: Oh good, mother-in-law jokes. We're one-third of the way to the cheap humor trifecta.

Pg 21: Charlotte just pretended to be an Indian chief! Light-hearted racism! Two-thirds of the way!

Pg 38: Here's where we stand plot-wise so far: Charlotte and George's daughter Rosalind wants to marry Howard but was once in love with Paul, the company manager for the Hays' theater. Charlotte and their business manager Richard have a romance going on, George has knocked up a young ingenue named Eileen, and the company is in financial trouble because of TV. 59 years ago, TV was already killing us and we still haven't figured it out today. We deserve to go down in flames.

Pg 52: There's an awful lot of people coming and going in this play. It makes me think of Noises Off. This play is to Noises Off what McNuggets are to chicken. It tastes vaguely the same but you just know it comes from all the worst parts of the original.

Pg 63: The first act mercifully ends with everyone chasing after George so they can do a matinee performance for a visiting Frank Capra, hopefully get cast in his latest film, and save their careers. So the only way to save theater is to do film? Ah yes, The Actor's Gang model!

Pg. 69: Ludwig is generous enough to have Rosalind and Paul begin to rehearse a scene from Noel Coward's Private Lives, thus allowing us all a moment to enjoy an actual, good play.

Pg 90: Lotsa madcap stuff going down now. They're trying to get a drunk George ready for the matinee. Everyone thinks Howard is Frank Capra. To be fair, I'm sure this is probably pretty fun on stage. I just can't get over the feeling that this is the theatrical equivalent of watching Everybody Loves Raymond. Then again, there's something interesting about watching a play that blames TV for the demise of theater, has its story turn on the idea that a movie role can save the company, and is written with the depth and feeling of a sitcom.

Pg 94: Gay-panic joke! Trifecta!!

Pg 110: We're back in Noises Off territory, as the drunken George gets confused as to whether or not they are performing Cyrano or Private Lives, leading to all sorts of embarrassment on the stage-within-a-stage and accessing all my worst nightmares about theater disasters. I feel a momentary tinge of actual panic, which represents my first, genuine emotional response. Well played, Ludwig. Well played.

Pg 116: George falls in to the orchestra pit. I hope he dies. Now that would be an interesting end!

Pg 118: Spoiler alert: He's alive. Also, Frank Capra didn't make it to the disastrous matinee so they'll get a second chance. George and Charlotte get back together. So do Rosalind and Paul. Even Howard and Eileen make a match. Happy endings for all! All except me, that is.

Day 19: What To Do About The Future

2012-01-20T19:53:00.000-08:00

Hooray. Friday. It's time for a good play, campers. Excited? I know I am. Things were beginning to take a turn towards the heavy and the bleak, especially yesterday. I blame it on the combination of the play I had read and the fact that I'm currently catching up on Mad Men and had just watched a particularly serious episode (towards the end of season two; the one where Marilyn Monroe dies and Roger leaves his wife). But I assure you that all of my solemn and stern haranguing has a point. I'm worried about theater, obviously. I worry that there won't be a place for our greasepaint and red, velvet curtains in the arts world of the future. A few entries back, I compared theater's problems to global warming. I think that's a pretty apt comparison if I do say so myself. The problem isn't insurmountable but it's getting more and more daunting by the day and it's going to take some real radical ideas to bail us out. Lucky for us, theater is a natural home for the radicals.

Which brings us to the good play! It's called Jon, and it's an adaptation of a George Saunders short story by a theater artist named Seth Bockley. Bockley is currently the toast of several towns, Chicago chief among them, and a large part of that is due to this play. I should mention that Jon did not come to me from any of the theaters that I read for (which is telling unto itself). I had to cheat and go to my personal archives because there hasn't been anything good in a while. If you're counting at home, so far I've read 17 plays for this blog (the Scary Play and Intermission entries weren't centered around a particular play), and I've liked 3.5 of them (Day 5, Day 7, today's, and I'll give a half point to Day 14's. I didn't like it but I can admit that it's objectively, probably pretty good). This puts us at about 20% likeable, which is way better than my initial estimate of 10%. But keep in mind that I picked Jon precisely because I knew I liked it.

Here's why the play works and why it give us some clues as to the direction the form should take if it wants to keep up in the future. At the beginning of the play, there is a "note on the environment." In this note, Bockley and Saunders specify that "an immersive 'experience design' greets the audience from the moment they walk (in)...there are powerpoint presentations, audio loops, etc.." This is the kind of thing that we need to be thinking about. There are plenty of plays in which the content speaks to our contemporary and future worlds. What we need are plays where the experience of attending speaks to those worlds. Jon actually does both, thus smartly avoiding that perceptible strain that usually comes when a theater tries to pretend it's young and hip, like the parent who learns some slang in the hopes of reaching their disgruntled teenager. The equivalent to that is all the theaters currently patting themselves on the back because they figured out how to use Twitter. This play tells the story of a group of teenagers who live in a kind of corporate dormitory, assigned to be the world's taste-makers and critical evaluators of all advertising. The immersive, almost assaultive nature of this "experience design" creates something far more exciting than simply action on a stage while also contributing to the play's stylized take on where our own devotion to commercialism is taking us.

We can create worlds like these in ways that are primary competitors, television and film and videogames, cannot. Our realities don't have to be virtual. They aren't projected on to a screen. They can be felt. That's different. It's unique. That's what counts.

Day 18: On The Irrelevancy of Originality

2012-01-19T21:24:00.000-08:00

Earlier in this month-long extravaganza, I wrote about how reading plays can give a person unique access into a writer's psyche, the fears and anxieties and deepest secrets, all projected out on to a group of fictional characters wrestling with some fictional conflict. When you see a play staged, it's different. The written text becomes merely one part of a grander product. The acting, the directing, the lights and sounds and set pieces all combine to create something bigger than any one part, bigger than the sum of the parts as well. The writer becomes just the first of many artists who have lined themselves up in front of the audience to have their souls examined. This collective offering-up is what makes theater so great. But just as powerful is the singular relationship that is forged between the person who writes the words and the one who sits with their pages in his hands. There is no intermediary, nobody to step in and do the interpreting for you, just people moving about in your mind's space, talking to each other in your mind's voice, revealing themselves and their creator to you.

Of all the crimes that plays can and do revolve around, the abduction of children is far and away the most written about, at least in my experience. I imagine that part of this is due to the fact that the abduction of a child has a level of drama inherent to it that most other crimes can't touch. Children are innocents, and so to see them victimized is so unfair as to be immediately gut-wrenching. And the relationship between a parent and his or her child is one that we regard to be sacred, unknowable, almost indescribably beautiful. So to see that relationship violently damaged releases something in us that is biological and almost primitive, an emotional outpouring the likes of which theater has aspired to since the first person stood on a stage and said something. It's a great, great subject for a play, and this is why people write about it. But I also think that they write about it because nothing scares us more. And when you think about it, these two reasons are more or less the same.

Today's play was good, not great. In many ways, it was a rehash of just about every other play about a child disappearing. We watch as the two parents fall to pieces, we watch as their marriage falls to pieces as a result, and then we see the lengths that they ready themselves to go to in order to rediscover any sense of happiness before inevitably the play ends with the realization that nothing will ever be the same. If I was going to be callous, and I usually am, I would say that this play was simply following in the well-trod path of the many plays about this subject that had come before it, fully aware that its status as part of a genre of plays proven to be popular and effective would guarantee it consideration, probably even a production at one company or another. And I wanted to dismiss it because of that. In fact, I did dismiss it. I won't recommend it to the theater that gave it to me. But it scared the shit out of me and I know it will scare the shit out of an audience too, an audience that, in the moment, won't care in the slightest if a thousand plays had come before it, saying the exact same thing. That thousand plays, that number, just proves what the audience already knows, that this fear is inside them and accessing it, no matter how many times you've done it before, will lead to an emotional release that is revelatory in its pain. It makes me think that originality might be the most overrated virtue out there.

Day 17: Finns Attack!

2012-01-18T18:13:00.000-08:00

Let me tell you this: we could all learn something from the Finns.

One of the theaters that I work for gets an abnormally high amount of plays written by Finnish playwrights and then translated into English. This is because the Finnish are crazy about getting their homegrown drama out into the world, so much so that they send ambassadors out all over the world to hawk their stuff, like a bunch of door-to-door salesmen. I even met one of these guys, a boisterous little man who came to a needtheater show and presented me with a colorful folder filled with photos and synopses and glowing reviews from Finnish newspapers. Our rinky-dink, little company, that considers an audience numbering in the double digits to be a major victory, was being given the hard sell from a Finnish cultural attaché. It was hilarious and bizarre and very charming. The dramaturg at this theater company was similarly charmed and hence, his office is flooded with Finnish plays.

Hilarious, bizarre, and charming are good adjectives to describe Finnish plays. I love reading them. I've never been to Finland and I know only one Finnish person (shout out, Nina Sallinen!) so I can't speak very knowledgeably about their culture but the plays have a unique, goofy surreality to them that somehow seems appropriate for what I imagine Finland to be like, and this is only amplified by the weird incongruities that appear once it is translated into English. It's not the kind of thing that you'll ever see at one of our city's larger theaters but it's nice to know that these plays exist and that their home country is wildly enthusiastic about them. At least someone's home country is wildly enthusiastic about theater. We should all be so lucky.

As I'm sure you've figured out by now, today's play comes from Finland, though it's actually a deviation from the Finnish norm that I just described. It's basically a rip-off of David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow, featuring the same story of mid-level Hollywood power-players conspiring with and against one another as they angle their way to the top. The only difference is that this one features an even bleaker ending than that of Speed-the-Plow, presented in the dry, toneless manner that is another, somehow charming signature of Finnish drama. It wasn't surprising to find that this play existed. Not only is Mamet one of our most oft-impersonated writers but a kind of seething resentment towards Hollywood is definitely not uncommon in theater. What was surprising was that this Mametian attack on Hollywood could come from across the globe. It has all the trademark barbs too. The rapid-fire, jargony banter, the amoral behavior, even Hollywood's love of imitation and familiarity as selling points. In one sequence, the group argues about whether or not their script has met the movie star's request for something like the work of Jim Jarmusch. They discuss whether or not the use of a squirrel as symbolism is appropriately Jarmuschian.

The irony that a play that satirizes unoriginality is itself derivative of Mamet was not lost on me. But I nevertheless found it comforting. If there's anything that can really binds theater artists across the globe, it is the envious resentment we have towards the movie business, our younger, more popular sibling.

Day 16: Global Catastrophes, Acronyms and Algebra

2012-01-17T22:06:00.000-08:00

It was a momentous day today (Relatively speaking, that is. The bar for "momentous" is set pretty low when you spend your day alone in your apartment reading). Today marked the arrival of the first play I have read dealing with the BP oil spill. This was not unexpected. If anything, it confirmed a theory I have been developing. The oil spill happened in April 2010, which means it was 21 months ago. I have found that it's usually about a year and a half to two years between a global catastrophe like the spill and the first appearance of plays written about it. In mathematical terms, Global Catastrophe (GC) + 1.5 yrs = Plays about GC (PAGC). Also, let me differentiate these plays from the Ripped From The Headlines Play (RFTHP), which is one that tries to capitalize on current popular interest in something (say, for instance, the Casey Anthony trial) in order to reel us in to an otherwise fairly unrelated story. The PAGC is always very serious and focused, always gravely intent at looking at the impact of a massive moment in our collective history.

Today's play was written by a professional writer, not someone I'm terribly fond of, but a pro nonetheless, and she had clearly put some thought and research into the play, treating her subject with the weight it deserved. And that's kind of the problem. The play was screechingly angry, repeatedly pointing its finger at BP and other big companies with its story of a hard-working, good-hearted Gulf Coaster whose life is destroyed by the spill. There weren't any notes played besides the one of righteous fury. And though I'm sure that fury is well-deserved, you can't write a symphony with just one note. So while this very angry play ably reflects the anger that we all still feel about the incident and in that way provides the catharsis that Aristotle was so fond of, there will come a time when that fury dies out. The questions we will then be left with are how do we contextualize what has happened and what will that moment mean as the years go on and we move further and further away from it. Somewhere between those first PAGCs, where the wounds are too fresh for us to really probe them, and the Wikiplays that reiterate a contextualization that has already been done, lies the sweet spot. GC + x = Important Plays about GC. Solve for x.

My best guess (and I'm really still in the lab on this one) is x = 10-15 years. I was thinking of plays about the Vietnam War, which ended in 1975, and how the most iconic and important ones, plays like Tracers or Miss Saigon came about in the mid to late '80s. Enough time that the emotions will have cooled and can be studied and understood. Not enough time that the event has already entrenched itself in the history books. By that math, we have just entered the ripest time for a 9/11 play. I know it seems in bad taste to look forward to anything regarding 9/11 but I look forward to this play. I think it will be great.

Day 15: Intermission

2012-01-16T18:32:00.000-08:00

It's Day 15 here, which means we are halfway through my month-long experiment in whether or not I could write even more about plays without my eyeballs melting and my hands uncontrollably grabbing for my laptop and trying to shove it up my own ass. So far so good. Since this is a natural point for an intermission, I figured we'll do what everyone does at intermission. We'll stand up, stretch our legs and think back to what we have just seen in anticipation of what is yet to come. So, I present the lessons of Days 1-14:

1: If you're going to write about historical people or events, don't just give us facts. Actually, avoid facts altogether. If we wanted facts, we'd read Wikipedia. We want emotions.

2: We have already seen every theatrical gadget, gimmick and trick in the book. We know you're clever. Anyone who can actually finish writing a play is a clever son-of-a-gun so you don't have to prove it by showing off. Just tell your story and be honest.

3: You have to be honest because we have to know what it is you want to be talking about. It can be a journey and a mystery to get us there but we do have to get there. Being opaque does not earn you points.

4: Playwrights are freaking nuts.

5: There are points awarded for ambition. I'd rather a play overreach and end up a complete mess than play it safe and be clean.

6: It's very rarely interesting to watch a bunch of people just sit around and talk.

7: Conflict + Stakes=Tension. Tension is the simplest way to make your play engaging.

8: Playwrights are freaking nuts, but it's a noble kind of nuts.

9: Of all the different kinds of self-conscious cleverness out there, the one currently holding down the title of Most Annoying: quirkiness.

10: The most reliably successful form of theater is one in which characters spontaneously sing their emotions. This fact terrifies most literary managers. Writers of musicals, use our fear to your advantage.

11: Writing for 20-somethings does not just mean filling your play with drugs and sex and booze and then setting it in a dumpy but quirky apartment (blast you, quirkiness!). It's offensive to suggest that's all there is to it.

12: Not all plays have to be intellectual exercises. People don't always come to theater to think.

13: Don't try to sell us your play. This isn't a popularity contest and we're not in it to make money. If we were after money, we would never have gotten into theater.

14: There's really no such thing as "good" or "bad" when it comes to playwriting. It's all subjective. Then again, the plays must be objectively judged which means things are frequently unfair. This is how playwrights go freaking nuts.

Day 14: Bad/Good Plays and More Sports!

2012-01-15T21:50:00.000-08:00

There are of course generally recognized characteristics of a play that can be identified and evaluated. There's the articulation of a theme, the musicality and rhythm of the dialogue, the realization of characters that are recognizably three-dimensional. But within these categories, there are plenty of ways to pick holes. For instance, someone might wonder why it is necessary that dialogue have an aesthetically pleasing rhythm to it. A writer might intentionally write ugly, discordant dialogue in order to make a point about the characters who speak it or the setting in which it is spoken. They might write a play without a clear theme because the message is that there is no message or characters who are one-dimensional because they are stuck that way. Plays can be bad so that they will be good, if that makes any sense. And this turns the whole process of evaluating a play into a rather delicate balancing act, one in which we must be both objective (in that we are playing the role of all future audience members) and subjective (in that we must also monitor our own individual interpretation of the play and its meanings). This is not to try to make my job seem any more glamorous or difficult than it is. It's only to help explain how one reader can end up genuinely and completely divided.

I have faced this frequently, most recently with this morning's play. It's a musical written by a group of people who all have pretty serious Broadway credits to their name. They know how to write big, fun shows. And this is what they had done. It's a show about a poor, little girl in the 1930s who turns into a big star. Everyone around her becomes an enabler because they're all benefiting from her fame and fortune so the girl then predictably turns into a diva until her father wises up and saves her. Now, the girl is sweetly naive, even when she has become a horrifying monster, and her parents and friends are always motivated by their angelic desire to give the girl everything that they never previously could which means the play is completely punchless. This is perfectly fine with the writers. They are not here to make a point. They're here to put on a show with glitzy numbers and colorful sets and bits of madcap comedy. This is perfectly not fine for me. It's a perfectly constructed play that could very well be a big success, and I absolutely hated it.

Before I go, I have to mention my San Francisco 49ers one more time (until next Sunday that is). You may remember my excited anticipation yesterday and if you are even a casual sports fan, you know that the 49ers game ended in spectacular, winning fashion. I've been asked many times before how I could be as obsessive-scary about sports as I am. There are really no consequences to the outcome of a game except for the ones we ascribe to them. No one's life is at stake. No child will lose the chance at a better future. No one's taxes will go up. And yet here I am, my heart having practically leaped out of my chest and thrown itself at my TV like a crazed, kamikaze bomber, screaming and jumping around as my Niners rallied to beat the Saints. Well, I like sports for the same reason I like theater. Because it makes me scream. It makes me jump around. It takes my heart and rips it out of my chest and when it's all said and done, I can pick that heart up, put it back where it belongs and go along with my day, happy to have felt the blood rush for a few seconds. Because when Vernon Davis caught the winning touchdown pass with less than ten seconds to go, he ran off the field sobbing for joy, having succeeded in something that meant absolutely nothing.

Day 13: Ripped From The Headlines

2012-01-14T13:27:00.000-08:00

Today, I wanted to write something about sports. In a matter of moments, my beloved San Francisco 49ers will go to war in their first playoff game in nine years, and I'm having trouble thinking about much else. My brain is filled with weighty questions such as whether or not our secondary will hold up against Drew Brees, can Frank Gore return to his early season success, and if I should wear my Vernon Davis jersey despite that fact that the Niners seem to do better when I don't wear any team paraphernalia at all. But the only play that remotely dealt with sports that I had read recently was one dealing with a former football player's possible brain damage as a result of too many hard hits on the field, and the effect this had on his relationship with his son. Not surprisingly, this play ended up being much more about father-son dynamics. As a deeply obsessive sports fan, this annoyed me. Don't promise me a play about the NFL's lingering controversy regarding their handling of concussions and then deliver the same, stale family drama that's been hitting the stage ever since Oedipus first knocked up his mom. More importantly though, it demonstrated another way in which theater can mishandle its powerful relationship to real-world events.

The ways in which playwrights face these real-world events of mass interest can be divided into three categories. We've already talked about the Wikiplay, in which encyclopedia entries about historical people, places or events are essentially theatricalized. Later this month, I'll tackle the way in which theater approaches large-scale catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina or last year's earthquake in Japan. The third way is the Law & Order approach. The TV show "Law & Order" is famous for ripping its plotlines from the headlines. So Eliot Spitzer runs up a tab with the gals at Emperors Club VIP and a few months later there's an L&O episode about it. The aforementioned play basically does the same thing. In the last few years, media outlets like ESPN have been in a tizzy about concussions. Autopsies of former players' brains have revealed signs of dementia and there have been a number of related suicides, all leading to calls for harsher rules and increased protection. The writer knew this stuff was interesting and sensational and he used it as the hook to reel us in so that he could then proceed to work out his Daddy issues in play form.

Now, when I first decided to write about this, I expected that I could slam all L&O plays for the exact same reasons I just slammed this concussion play and all Wikiplays, i.e. that they lazily capitalize on popular knowledge and interest in the subject matter in order to make their own work more appealing. But then I realized that there is some value in ripping things from the headlines. Unlike a Wikiplay that features subject matter that has already been placed in its historical context, we're still trying to come to grips with how something like the dangers of concussions in the NFL affects all of us. Should we continue to glamourize hard hits? Do these new, harsher rules destroy what we love about the game and, if so, what does that say about us? These aren't life-or-death matters (at least not to the general populace) but they can offer us insights into our culture and ourselves and this is, after all, why art forms like theater exist. Even the quick turnaround from front page to stage has a benefit, denying us the protection that the distance of time creates. The best "Law & Order" episodes did just that. The worst just scavenged the headlines to get the viewers. That's the crucial difference.

Go Niners.

Day 12: Scary Plays

2012-01-13T22:11:00.000-08:00

Fair warning: You're about to hear one of Dylan's Top 5 Favorite Theater Rants so for those of you who have had the pleasure of witnessing me rant in person, we're probably going to be covering old terrain. But it is Friday the 13th, which gives me the perfect opportunity to talk about scary plays.

For the life of me, I don't understand why more people don't try to write scary plays. And let me be clear. I'm not talking about upsetting plays. There are plenty of plays about, say, global warming or genocide or the military-industrial complex. Don't get me wrong. I don't like any of those things, I wish they did not exist and plays that deal with these subjects are just as valid as any other. But those are plays that are designed to make you concerned. You're supposed to go home agonizing about how we ended up with a world where huge numbers of people are slaughtered because of their ethnicity. Those plays are supposed to break your heart. There's a place for that. But there's also a place for plays that make you jump out of your seat, that make you grab on to the armrests with white knuckles, the plays that make you scream and then burst into giggles.

I remember going to see the movie, "The Strangers." This is the one where Liv Tyler and some dude go to stay in the idyllic, woodsy cabin and spend the night being terrorized by a random group of people wearing masks and brandishing big axes. There was no reason given for why these people seemed intent on killing Tyler and the dude. There was no greater theme. No bigger purpose. There was just a barrage of classic scare tactics; mysterious noises, eerie music, killers suddenly appearing behind the unsuspecting victims, "don't go in that room!!" My friends and I yelled and screamed and laughed, watching the screen with our hands over our eyes as the killer approached and grabbing on to each other when the axe came down. I'll never forget it. It was amazing. And this was a movie with no discernible message, starring the spectacularly bad Tyler. That's some powerful shit. Can you imagine how crazy it would be live? With none of the protection and distance that that piece of celluloid offers you?

Yet very few do it, and even when a play does go for these kinds of scares, it always has to come with some sort of qualifier. It has to be an homage to some ancient piece of theater history, like Grand Guignol or Greek tragedy. Or it has to come with the glib wink-wink of self-awareness that tells us that the play-makers know they've stooped to that level but they've done it for some higher purpose. They have to look down their noses at the style and when they do that, they ruin the whole effect. Nobody's stooping. We're exciting an audience in a powerful and profound way. And a different way. Physical, not intellectual.

I know it's sacrilege to say this but we don't always have to be artists. Sometimes we can be entertainers.

Day 11: In Pursuit of the Young

2012-01-12T20:07:00.000-08:00

Theater crowds are old. Like, they are made up of mostly old people. I don't say this to be mean. The percentage of old people who are good, interesting, upstanding human beings is probably equal to the percentage of young people who are good, interesting, upstanding human beings. Actually, it's probably greater. Most young people are assholes. Incidentally, this belief of mine is how I know I am getting old myself. Despite this, most theater companies will bend over backwards to pretend their lobbies aren't filled with walkers and hearing aids and bad toupees (now I'm being mean). And this is because in order for a theater company to seem relevant, they have to give off the impression of having their finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist. And for whatever reason, it is youth who we believe are determining the rhythm of that pulse. It's also important economically for theaters to court the young. Younger generations do not have a respect and appreciation for theater that older generations do. They have grown up with a whole world of entertainment options that are cheaper and more easily accessible than theater, as well as being capable of showing us things that theater never could (thus getting rid of that pesky need for imagination). So when this older generation dies off, the question is this: who is coming to see the show?

Believe me, everyone in the theater world is very aware of this looming problem. It's like our oil dependency. Eventually, the audiences will run out and we'll have nothing to replace them with. This is why you see theaters doing semi-embarrassing things like promoting Singles Nights and programming shows about cheerleaders. I go to a lot of theater and I'll tell you this: it ain't working. I'm frequently the youngest person in the house and I'm not that young, guys. The real solution is, of course, to create plays that young people will want to see, that speak to them intelligently. This is a self-absorbed demographic so in order to do that, you have to write plays about them. But this is way, way trickier than it sounds. In my opinion, there is no more difficult a character to write than one in his early to mid 20s. Children are easy because they will do or say anything so anything you write is inherently correct. And teenagers are so desperate to fit in that they all really do fall into neat categories. There really are the jocks and the nerds and the druggies and so on. But twenty-somethings, exactly the people that theater companies need to get in their front doors, they are elusive. Too old to allow themselves to be stereotypes. Too young to be fully-formed. The answer most writers seem to have come up with is to make this age group recklessly hedonistic. Countless plays, such as today's, feature twenty-somethings doing nothing but drinking and drugging and fucking. And while twenty-somethings do do a lot of this, it's not all they do. It feels like a desperate ploy to go after our most base instincts, combined with a bunch of anti-social writers reliving a period of their lives that they probably never had. It's a punt; lazy, depressing and offensive. And so we have now taken an apathetic demographic and actively turned them off. Good work.

Day 10: The Ancient and Alien World of the Musical

2012-01-11T17:43:00.000-08:00

Today brings us our first musical. I have a theory that most dramaturgs and literary managers are secretly terrified of musicals. There are many different kinds of plays that bend the rules of reality in many different ways. But each time that they do this, it represents a choice that the writer has made. They want their world to feel differently than the one we all live in and so they choose to have dragons appear (click on this link, it's crazy) or to have rivers run through houses or whatever. And we can judge the play in part on the strength or weakness of that particular and individual choice. But all musicals are defined by one very specific bend in reality. At any point, and really for any reason, a person will start to sing a song. And it's not that they can sing a song. Any one of us can sing a song at any point. It's that they will sing a song. I think this is kind of unnerving for a dramaturg; this lack of choice. It suggests the possibility of some future, fascist world with theaters devoted to all kinds of genres with all kinds of weird demands. Your play must have a dragon appear. Your play must have a river running straight through the middle of a house. Your play must feature a character with his face painted blue, speaking in Portuguese. If a genre can sprout up where it is mandatory that characters randomly and sporadically break into song, then what's stopping the blue-faced, Portuguese-speaking character genre from appearing? We're on the brink of chaos here, people.

For this reason, I've always felt like I don't quite understand musicals. I've seen and enjoyed many of them. I just can't get over the fact that it's a bizarre way to tell a story, too bizarre to justify its popularity. Plus, I have weird, frequently terrible taste in music. My Spotify playlist right now looks like a 14-year-old girl smoked meth and then decided to throw a party for herself. It makes me a little embarrassed that I'm the one assigned to judge these things and I admittedly tend to go on autopilot just a bit when I'm forced to read one. Luckily, today's contestant didn't require a whole lot of penetrating, critical analysis. Like a disproportionately large amount of musicals, this one was set in 1930s Hollywood, just before the inception of the Hays Production Code. Its plot revolves around the filming of a movie musical, thus allowing the play to neatly circumvent the whole "why are characters suddenly bursting into song" question by limiting its musical numbers to the ones characters sing as actors in the movie-within-the-play. This kinda seems like the coward's way out. If you're going to go for it, then go for it. Other than that, it features the usual star-crossed lovers subplot; some tired, Borscht Belt humor; and halfhearted jabs at a period of censorship that might be relevant to our world today, you just wouldn't know it reading this. The play's stale humor, its dusty themes and, above all, its membership in a genre whose popularity seems inexplicable to me made it feel like I was visiting an ancient and alien world that I could never understand. Reading a musical is like going through the Stargate.

Day 9: Against All Things Quirky

2012-01-10T21:20:00.000-08:00

Here's a problem in theater that doesn't get a lot of attention: quirkiness. I don't know where this started. I guess it has something to do with the rise of post-modern self-awareness in narratives and it's certainly related to the increasing popularity of irony and kitsch and this whole idea that we can be stupid and silly in our storytelling as long as it comes with a wink that acknowledges we know it's stupid and silly, thus making it somehow smart and bold. And don't get me wrong. There are plays with genuine, loveable wackiness to them, an organic tone that helps to define the world and the themes of the story. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about forced, awkward, effortful quirkiness, quirkiness that's slathered over a perfectly good play like so much cheap frosting on a cake. Today's play was full of this kind of thing. Here's a few examples to help you see what I'm getting at.

Pop culture as content: Recently, there was a fairly successful play that featured one character watching and rewatching the movie "Top Gun." The suggestion was that this symbolized the character's inability to move forward with her life. I watch at least twenty minutes of "Top Gun" whenever I come across it on cable. So do most people I know. And do you know what this says about us? It says we've got good taste and can appreciate an awesome movie when we see one. That is all.

Puppets: I get it. "Avenue Q" was very successful and puppets swearing and singing about sex and drugs is funny. But sticking a puppet into your play does not automatically prove you're an outside-the-box kind of thinker who's mixing and matching styles like you're fucking Skrillex. It usually just means that you've seen "Avenue Q."

Unusual belief systems: I've seen it all when it comes to this one: characters who worship and obsess over the spiritual fulfillment they find in all manner of person, place or thing; sea turtles, pumpkin pie, a 1968 Chevy Camaro. You know what we call these people in real life? We call them schizophrenics. And I'm fairly sure that schizophrenia, while tragic and interesting, is not nearly as large a cultural problem as the number of plays seemingly devoted to it would suggest.

Look, I understand that all of this is just symbolism. We're meant to interpret the sea turtle as a sign of some universal and identifiable conflict that we as a culture face, and there's nothing wrong with that. But symbolism is not meant to be jammed down our throats or held up for us as some sort of self-congratulatory display of cleverness. Any good play is a mystery, in that it invites audience members to approach the play on their own terms and arrive at a meaning in whichever way they see fit. When you fill your play with easy symbolism and then shove it in our face, the whole thing becomes both impenetrable and obvious. We choke on it.

Day 8: Why The Hell Do They Do This?

2012-01-09T17:31:00.000-08:00

Today I was listening to This American Life, which this week featured a condensed version of Mike Daisey's solo performance piece, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. Daisey is sometimes a controversial figure in the theater world and I don't always like his particular brand of swag. But when he essentially goes undercover at the Chinese factories where Apple products are made, you can feel the urgency. You understand why Daisey felt he had to tell us this story right now. This instantly makes it engaging.

Today's play suggests that the 1789 mutiny on the HMS Bounty was the result of a broken love affair between Fletcher Christian (the one Mel Gibson played) and Captain Bligh (the one Anthony Hopkins played). I suppose this is possible. It's certainly an interesting take on things. Unfortunately, the play itself is pretty boring. Its tone is blandly serious and old fashioned, and it features multiple scenes where characters just stand in front of the audience and describe for us what is going on. Telling and not showing. That old saw. Thus, absent of anything else to think about, I started to compare the play to Daisey's work and some questions began to pop into my head.

Namely: Where did this play come from? What about this story compelled the writer to devote a serious amount of time and energy and blood and sweat and tears to bringing it to life? Why did he decide that he absolutely, positively HAD TO write this play right now? I dug around a little and though a few historians mention sexual tension between Christian and Bligh, it's not as if it's a part of the common narrative. Which means that the play is essentially a fictionalized, alternative take on a historical event that's been written about extensively and made into several movies and is thus already part of our collective, cultural history. Nothing about it screams urgent. Even at its best, this is a small, small play. And yet here this writer is, putting his own talents out there and allowing himself to dream that one day someone will read this and jump out of their chair and decide to put it up. And he's got to know that the chances are slim. Anyone who goes so far as to research what it takes to get a play into the stack at a large theater's literary office knows that it usually falls to someone like me to judge it, someone who could probably pass on every play he reads for a year without anyone caring (an experiment I've dreamed of trying out). So, why bother?

I know I said before that a playwright has to write to the audience if he or she wants the play to succeed. And I believe that. But maybe this guy had to write this play not so that we could experience it, but so that he could. And maybe he sent it out in the world, knowing full well that it would never get produced but doing it anyway because that affirmed that he had a voice that could be heard, even if it never would be. Maybe he doesn't give a good goddamned about any of us. I hope so.

Day 7: Simplicity, or Will The Baby Die Or Not?

2012-01-08T14:05:00.000-08:00

More football=another brief entry for the day. This will be an emerging, weekend trend, I warn you. But hot damn guys, today brought another good play! At the top of the month, I predicted that I would genuinely like 10% of the plays I would talk about, or 3 out of 30. Sad as it might seem, this is about industry standard. But we're looking at 2 out of 7 thus far, way ahead of the pace. Color me surprised.

The play of the day is called Mine and the lesson of the day is: sometimes simplicity works. I realize this sorta flies in the face of what I said about the other play I liked, Day Five's Glorious Mess, which got points for being ambitious and chaotic and trying to do a lot at the same time. This play is the opposite of that. So maybe the lesson is that there's more than one way to skin a cat. Or maybe it's just that I'm a self-contradicting dick who's out here only to confuse and toy with playwrights as punishment for the years off of my life I've spent reading crappy scripts. I don't know.

This play does a couple things really well. One: it establishes big stakes and loads of urgency immediately. The play is about postpartum depression and it puts us inside the mind of a new mother experiencing it. Very early on, this woman tells us that she literally does not believe this child is hers. This is crazy and so we know the woman is going crazy, and is thus capable of doing crazy things. And because I inherently care about the fate of defenseless, cute, newborn children, I'm worried about the child and I'm already locked in and engaged. Two: it doesn't try to fool its audience. There is a character here who appears to the mother and basically acts as the devil on her shoulder, trying to get her to do something bad. And the character has this story about changelings and parallel worlds and all this other, nutty stuff to justify the mother killing her child. But the play never tries to convince me that this woman is anything but a figment of the mother's imagination. So the conflict is crystal clear. Will she listen to the voice in her head or will her loved ones intervene in time? With stakes and a conflict like that, it's white-knuckle time for the rest of the story. Does this play offer me fully developed characters with rich, inner emotional lives? No. Does it offer me complex, intelligent themes on the world we live in? No. Do I care? Not at all. I just want to see if the baby dies or not. Sometimes, that's all that it takes.

Day 6: Talky Talky Too Much Talky

2012-01-07T16:07:00.000-08:00

There's football on today so I'm going to keep this one brief(er).

Alright so: today's play once again takes place in New York City (See!? I guess NYC is the only place where things happen). It's about a bunch of people sitting around, discussing what changes inside of you when a part of your past turns out to be different than what you originally thought it was. That's it. It's a 90 page play, and there are exactly two plot developments, one of which happens right at the end so it's less a development and more like a fairly flaccid twist. People sit in a therapist's office, or they sit on a park bench, or they sit around a dining room table (arguably the three most boring theatrical settings ever) and they have abstract conversations about the meaning of identity. It's the type of play that feels like it's made up of nothing but questions: A: What does it mean? B: Do you know? A: Should I know? B: Are we supposed to know? So basically, it's like a combination of the worst improv class and the worst philosophy class you've ever taken. Can you tell I didn't like it?

This was written by a successful TV writer and unlike Thursday's abomination, I'm not surprised. TV and film is where you write what sells, where you stick to the formula, where you give the people what they want. Theater is where you are free to indulge your inner existentialist. Or so the thinking goes. But when a theater puts on a play, they don't do it for the writer. They do it for the audience. So when you write a play, you have to write for the audience too. You have to assume that they don't have the same tortured inner arguments that you do. And if you want them to recognize themselves somewhere in that argument, you have to lead them to it. With story, with action, with forward movement, with the things that make up a person's actual life. Because if you intend to give an audience two hours of characters with their chins in their hands, agonizing over what it means to be introspective, than they're going to continue to do what they've already started to do in alarming numbers. They're going to ignore you.

Day 5: A Glorious Mess

2012-01-06T17:05:00.000-08:00

It's Friday. Everybody loves Friday. There's "Friday." There's TGI Fridays (which is actually disgusting but they have a drink called the Horny Agave 'Rita so whatever). There was the little girl who sang about Fridays and everyone made fun of her but now we all kinda like her 'cause she seems plucky. It's a momentous day of the week. And so I decided that on Fridays, I would write about scripts I liked. Lucky for me, I was handed a script earlier this week that I knew I would like. I knew that because I had read it before, for a different theater. This is always a sad/proud moment for me. It suggests that my ability to consume scripts has outpaced everyone else's ability to write scripts. Sometimes, the same theater gives me the same script to read more than once, and I realize that my memory is more efficient than their script database and then that's just a sad/sad moment.

Today's play is called A Maze, and it's written by Rob Handel. The play is about what it means to be obsessed with something and, more specifically, what it means to be an artist and be obsessed with something. There's a bunch of interweaving plots here. We follow a couple of rock stars, one of whom goes to rehab because of a drug addiction. There, he meets a reclusive and famous graphic novelist who himself has become addicted to sleeping pills because they're the only thing that can get him to take a break from his obsessive creation of a 15,000 page, multi-volume story about a king who gets (you guessed it) obsessed with building a gigantic maze to protect his unborn daughter. There's also a girl who gets kidnapped and held for years. Without giving too much away, let's say the reason she was kidnapped is directly tied to one of these artists' need to manage their obsession. So there's a whole lot of obsessing going on here and if I have an issue with the play, it's that it gives us a bunch of sometimes thin examples of obsessiveness when a single, thoroughly investigated one would be more effective. It still feels like a play in that classic, adolescent period where it's figured out what it wants to be so it loudly and proudly announces it with like eyeliner and dyed hair and chains on its leather jacket and on and on instead of just talking to us and letting us figure it out for ourselves. This is the goth kid stage.

But I do like this play. One of the reasons is that it focuses at least in part on the world of fantasy novels. I don't read these things but I've always wished they were my secret hobby. I have a weird respect for people who read thousands and thousands of pages describing elf genealogy or the topography of an enchanted forest and are then like, "Yeah, I've read all 43 volumes and I'm proud that it takes up a massive amount of my life so fuck you." These people don't really care what you think. Not surprisingly, this play shares that sentiment. It puts the action of the graphic-novel-within-a-play on stage, so that we see the king and his half-man, half-snowdog maze architect and his magical basket of food right alongside the very real depiction of an adolescent girl being held against her will in a basement. And it knows this is going to seem tonally incongruous but that's what makes it creepy because "fantasy" is a complicated word. And then it goes for laughs right alongside its creeps and it doesn't care if you think that's inappropriate because that's what life is, laughs and freaky shit right up against each other. It doesn't try to fit itself into a class or category, it sprawls itself out across all sorts of terrain. It's a mess but it's a glorious mess and those are my favorite kinds of plays.

Day 4: Nutbars

2012-01-05T18:58:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I talked about how a play, in its own enigmatic, symbolic way, very often gives you insight into the writer's personal anxieties and fears. As a result, I feel like I know a lot about the inner workings of many people I will never meet. I think this has made me a better human being, and it's one of the plusses of reading hundreds and hundreds of bad scripts for little pay. It can also provide great comfort to me. In the case of yesterday's play, I discovered that the writer and I have the same kinds of fears. We're both freaking out about growing old and dying, and the fact that I could share that with him, even anonymously and through the inanimate intermediary of his mediocre script, was somehow soothing.

Today's script also taught me a lot about its writer. It taught me that the guy is batshit insane. His story is about a couple who get evicted from their apartment and spend the rest of the play wandering New York City. Digression: I would estimate that roughly 75% of the plays I read take place in New York City. I get that New York is a scenic place and that a lot of theater happens there so consequently a lot of playwrights live there but really?! I actually think it's a bad idea. NYC is so cosmopolitan, so much of a melting pot, that it ends up lacking specificity. It just feels like "random, big city" to me. End of digression. So, in the couple's wanderings they meet all sorts of weirdos whose message to the couple and, by extension, to us is that the world is a terribly harsh and unfeeling place. Now, one might think that this is a valid theme. I kinda do. But I can't describe for you the stunning lack of nuance here, the lurching procession of bizarro characters, the heavy-handedness of the message delivery combined with the confused surreality of the world. It immediately conjures up images of the guy writing this thing in a dirty bathrobe, surrounded by trash and mumbling to himself, then finishing up the day's work and going outside to kill a cat or something. Here's the most damning evidence: the play was written on a typewriter. I mean, who does that anymore? Nutbars, that's who.

Sometimes for kicks, I google these writers and this was one time I was definitely going to do some digging. And here's what a twisted, up-is-down world the arts and entertainment industry is: this guy is very successful! He was a writer for what is indisputably one of the two or three most influential TV comedies of the past 25 years. He wrote and directed a movie starring a bunch of people that I really respect. He is, by most standards, more successful than 95% of the writers in the world. And again, this guy is loony tunes. I discovered the smoking gun, as it were, in the form of Youtube videos the guy made. Evidently, at some point, he decided that he would make his own talk show and put it up on the internet. This thing is like a zoo in Hell. There's a gutterpunk version of Ed McMahon, a bikini girl with nothing to do but sit around, Corin Nemac appears for some reason (seriously. Parker Lewis himself). I wish I could tell you this guy's name so you could watch it yourself but I'm honestly afraid he'll track me down and kill me.

I don't really know what the takeaway here is. Maybe it's that the world truly is a harsh and unfeeling place and that the world of theater is right down in the chewy center of that craziness. Why I have decided to ensconce myself in the middle of that world, I do not know. All I do know is that I probably have more to fear than growing old.

Mediocre Play+Powerful Theme=A Conflicted Dylan

2012-01-04T18:54:00.000-08:00

Today's play isn't what I would call "good." There are too many technical and structural flaws for that. But the play also isn't "bad," and the reason I know this is that it did succeed in getting me to think about things other than the play itself. This, in my mind, is the mark of an intriguing piece. It has an ability to get outside of itself and tell the story of each and every audience member. This really does have to happen because if not, then the best you can hope to achieve is giving your audience a nice night out; a distraction from the reality of their lives. And if that is your ultimate goal, then you are in the wrong business, at least in my opinion. We have got to, got to, got to blow people's minds. There is way too much competition in the race to be our culture's best vehicle of distraction and we're already way too far behind. Now this play definitely did not blow my mind. But it tried, and there's nobility in that.

I don't know how old the writer of this play is, or what his socioeconomic status is or any of that. What I do know is that he is terrified of growing old and dying. And I get that. The play features an elderly couple who are both seriously losing their memory and subsequently spend a lot of the play wandering around their decrepit apartment, doing unsettling, senile things like proclaiming that government agents are following them or forgetting each other's names. Meanwhile, we also see the couple at various, younger ages, sitting around that same apartment, listening to their older neighbors do those same unsettling, senile things that they will eventually do, all the while innocently imagining their futures and laughing about what they will be like when they too are elderly. The contrast is a bit forced but the message is clear: that sound you hear is God laughing as you make plans. And having just spent the holidays with my 88 year old grandfather while staring down my middle-aged years that are just around the corner, it got to me. I got a little scared. And when the elderly couple rediscovered their love for each other and took comfort in it at the play's end, I genuinely smiled.

Like I said, technical problems abound. There's no real plot to speak of, except for a few unimpressive twists to the given circumstances towards the end, and the way that the play moves between its various time periods is clumsy and confusing. Its weaknesses are enough for me not to recommend the play to my overlords. But its strengths are enough for me to briefly remember why I like reading plays. And sadly, this puts that play into the great, gaping purgatory that exists between the rejected and the produced. We'll revisit this village of the damned again, my friends.

The Perils of the One-Man Show

2012-01-03T19:39:00.001-08:00

Not only are one-man shows perilous, this whole entry is perilous. Here's a little insider gossip for you readers: needtheater's 2012 season is going to lean heavily, and I mean heavily, on the one-man show. So I have to be careful not to thoroughly trash the format that we will be joyously trumpeting to you in a matter of weeks. Lucky for me, the trashing has already been done. Among the many ways in which the world at large makes fun of theater, one of their favorites is to take aim at the one-man show. Here's my favorite. Of course, Marty would tell you that his performance is a dance quintet, or cycle, but you get the idea. Personally, I think all of this smirking scorn is the result of a structure that necessarily demands you look at and listen to one person for the entirety of the performance. The literal, narrow scope makes it feel as if the writer and performer aren't interested so much in building a world that we can explore as they are in having a place where they can talk. It inherently makes the performer seem narcissistic (and Jesus H., performers are already narcissistic enough). But ironically, this flaw also represents a solo show's best chance for resonance. Part of what made Spalding Gray a genius was that he headed this argument off at the pass. In content and form, he basically admitted that all he wanted to do was to sit at a table, talk about his issues, and have someone listen. His narcissism became the subject.

It's this sort of honesty that actually keeps the solo performance piece pretty damn popular considering how derided it is (that and it is fucking CHEAP to produce, guys). It becomes a distillation of the form, a way to shed all the extravagant flab and archaic silliness of theater and get down to the heart of things. Look at the success and effectiveness of live storytelling events like "The Moth," which is really solo performance without ANY trappings. Sadly, there's none of that in today's one-woman play, which tries to disguise the fact that the writer/performer has got some serious issues to resolve with her own deceased father. The play tries to fool us into thinking there is no connection between the writer and the subject until its very end, when Dad, a thoroughly terrible parent who has tormented his family with all manner of secret and abuse, gets a letter from his daughter revealing that she wants to write a play about him. The writer is the daughter! Kevin Spacey is Keyser Soze! I'm sure this seemed like a really clever idea that would radically shake our notions of what the play means. But it feels more like the nerdy teen untucking his shirt and turning his hat backwards and hoping this will get him in with the cool kids. If we have learned anything from teen movies though, it's that you should always be yourself.

Behold the Wikiplay

2012-01-02T16:40:00.000-08:00

We start with an easy one: a no-doubt-about-it, Wikipedia play. Or, if brevity is your thing, a Wikiplay. Let's say you want to know more about seminal '90s rap group/occasional heavy-metal crossover artists, Onyx. You pull up Onyx's Wikipedia page, and it gives you the basic biographical rundown: they're from Queens, they formed in 1988, there was "Slam." And of course there's also the little factoids and bits of anecdote that our crowd-sourced editors feel is particularly interesting. For instance, Onyx member Fredro Starr (awesome name) and 50 Cent apparently have beef because Fredro thought Fiddy wasn't properly respectful towards the memory of Jam Master Jay. Interesting! A Wikiplay then is basically a performed Wikipedia page. It takes a known subject and it gives you the facts, hence demonstrating why the subject is worthy of note.

Here's the logline for a Wikiplay about Onyx: "Queens-based rappers Big DS, Suave, Fredro Starr, and Sticky Fingaz form the group Onyx and reach superstardom with their hit single, "Slam." But friction within the group and an ongoing feud with notorious gunshot victim 50 Cent threatens their continued success." And here's the problem: if that's all we ever wanted to know about a subject, then we wouldn't go to the theater. We'd just read Wikipedia pages. And our inability to differentiate between the purposes of these two sources is a pretty good reason why theater is dying.

Today's play is a slightly discoed-up version of the Wikiplay because it has not one, but a dozen different famous women serving as the play's subjects (to give you an idea of the approximate level of fame we're dealing with here, Annie Oakley isn't one of the dozen but she could be. Or, like, Harriet Beecher Stowe) and they are gathered in a diner in the afterlife which, I guess, more easily facilitates conversations about their respective accomplishments. So points for that bit of inadvertent weirdness. But whatever points this earned the play, they were quickly squandered when the play revealed that it couldn't even come up with gracefully contrived reasons for these women to relate their biographies to one another. Instead, they sit around and all just kinda declaim at each other. It makes all these legendary women seem both egocentric and dim-witted. I'm reasonably sure that wasn't the intent.

A Play A Day

2012-01-01T12:14:00.000-08:00

Outside of co-leading the revolution at needtheater, I am a freelance dramaturg. If you want to know exactly what a dramaturg does, I once wrote up a nifty explanation of the job here. Now, one thing you should know about this explanation is it's sort of idealized. Lots of euphemistic bobbing and weaving about contextualizing and researching and advising. In reality, what I really do is simply read scripts. Lots of them. Regional theaters pay me to read the scripts that writers and agents submit to them. Then I briefly tell them if I thought the script was good or bad. It's like the book reports you wrote as a 5th grader.

The reason why the script consideration is so cursory is that these plays I read are not going to be produced by the theaters I read them for. In seven years of doing this, I have never read a script for some theater and then seen it up on their stage a few months later. Or even a few years later. Or ever. That's not how it works, mainly because the vast majority of the plays ever written in the world are terrible. But also because if a theater of any significant size (i.e. a size that would allow them to pay me to read these scripts instead of just doing it themselves) is going to produce a new play-a very risky choice these days, at least financially-then they are going to make damn sure that it's a show that fits within the mission of their company and that their audience knows why they should be excited for it. Which means they are going to develop a long-term, creative relationship with the writer by commissioning him or her and they're going to let the play mature within the safe confines of workshops and readings and they're going to work hard over an extended period of time to generate a conversation about the importance of the play with their subscribers.

The point being, when a theater is deciding what new play to do, they're not going to just reach to their considerable pile of submitted scripts, grab the one I gave the heartiest thumbs-up to, and head on down to the rehearsal room. At best, I am there to keep the channels between agencies and the theater open and free-flowing and to keep those who employ me appraised of playwrights worthy of some tiny place on the radar. More often, I'm there to sort the trash.

Like I said, I have been doing this for many years. And no one pays very much per script, which means I read as many as I can possibly get my hands on, and I read for pretty much every company in Southern California that pays. Which means that if there is a crappy or mediocre script that has found its way to the Southland, then chances are I have read it and have spent at least half an hour determining its quality. And this means I have devoted a substantial amount of brain cells to considering all the possible ways a play can suck. I blame my dyspeptic and brooding persona on this fact. I feel the need to purge.

I read at least one play a day. So every night, for the month of January at least, I'm going to write something about whatever play I've read that day. I won't use the title of the play or the name of the writer because chances are, I'm going to be mean. But I will also try to be honest and helpful. I'll mostly be mean though; dyspeptic and brooding.

First entry coming tomorrow: "Behold The Wikiplay."

In Which I Endeavor To Further Explain How We Will Blow It All Up

2011-12-08T12:23:00.000-08:00

A few blogs back, I went on kind of a rant about how we were sick of producing theater, how we were going to blow it all up, create new models, be praised as geniuses, have books written about us. If you're curious, you can read the whole thing somewhere further down on this site. It shouldn't be too hard to find. We don't write too many of these things.

It's been a few months since that particular rant. I've put our last production and all the headaches that come with a (glorious, amazing, totally worth it) production in the rearview mirror. I got some sleep, started eating real food again, hugged my loved ones. I feel better. And yet, the sentiment remains unchanged. In fact, if anything, the itch to shake things up has become even more profound. So it's time to get down to brass tacks.

First, the rub: in our present form, it's going to be extremely difficult for needtheater to grow its audience in any significant way. It's a small percentage of people in Los Angeles who go to see live theater (and I mean actually go, not just say they go) and a small percentage of that small percentage go see theater outside of Center Theatre Group, The Geffen Playhouse, and whatever is playing at the Pantages, and an even smaller percentage will pay $25 to see our kind of theater (new, unproven and often confrontational) in the kinds of venues that we can afford (cramped and/or located in sketchy neighborhoods). That's the facts. And I know this because, outside of throwing gobs of money at the issue (gobs that we do not have) or producing lowest common denominator crap, we have tried every trick in the book. Facebook, Twitter, radio ads, big postcards, little postcards, posters, banners, blogs, videos, word-of-mouth both forced and real, free tickets, free bands, free beer. And honestly, it hasn't worked. Our crowd is our crowd is our crowd. Now, we didn't get into this to get attention and we certainly didn't get into it to make money. We appreciate every single person who comes to see our shows and if one of them walks away with a new thought in his or her head, then we feel satisfied. That's enough for a lot of companies. But that's not enough for us. We came to smash.

So we're attacking the issue from a new angle. It's not the marketing that's flawed and it's not the audience, it's us. We're asking people to embrace an antiquated model, one in which we dictate the experience. Come to this place at this very specific time, sit here, look this way, think about this, clap now. Some may say this discipline is what makes theater special. I say it's what makes theater a Dead Man Walking. It just doesn't work that way anymore. Audiences not only choose what they watch, and listen to and play. They choose how they do it, and when. Often, they're the ones dictating how the story goes, sometimes in collaboration with the thousands of others engaging with that story at the same time. Sometimes there is no story apart from what the audience makes of it. It's heady stuff. Like jumping from arithmetic to calculus. And we'd be fools not to jump with it or to declare that it isn't our business. We tell stories. This is how stories are now told.

Rest assured, we're not going to give up making plays. There's a place for live performance in this new world order, we just need to figure out where that place is. But we're going to do other stuff too. We're going to take some of our stories, familiar ones, and we're going to move them to new media platforms, places where you can interact with the stories and decide how they will be told, what they will mean for you. And we're going to create new stories too, designed to be told across several of these platforms, stories that originate in the intimacy of your home and grow within the great expanse of the online world and then find their way to the inside of a theater. Stories that start before the lights go down and finish long after anyone comes out for a bow. Stories with such a wide scope and reach that they can grab that audience we've been chasing for so many years.

And then maybe they'll write a book about us. Something tasteful. Maybe a coffee table type thing. Big, glossy photos. That'll look nice.

A Year In The Life

2011-10-14T07:58:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow night, Guided Consideration of a Lamentable Deed will close. It was an epic road we went down, at least by needtheater standards. It deserves some sort of send-off. Some sort of chronicling of the battles waged, losses endured, victories earned.

It adds up to about a year. Here it be:

November 2010: I read the script for the first time. I'm a little giggly about it. I gush.

January 2011: Ian and I are installed as needtheater co-artistic directors. Ian reads the script, loves it. Wheels start to turn. The writer, Frank Basloe, and I start to talk about the script. We end up mostly talking about basketball.

February: First reading. Conducted in Ian's backyard. Ian played the Guide, doing an Ira Glass impersonation. We had younger actors too. They couldn't quite get it. I now understand why it's industry standard to cast twenty-somethings as teenagers.

March: Second reading. This one was at a dance studio, so it felt more artsy. I would say the first round of big decisions is made during and immediately after this reading. Play is officially taking shape.

late March-early April: We start rehearsals. I believe we get through one read-through and two rehearsals before we are shut down. We had neglected to get our venue approved by Actor's Equity for the 99-seat waiver. Egg on face. (also to note: we were rehearsing in an abandoned Mazda dealership covered in graffiti and weird street art and tended to by a schizophrenic homeless man.)

April: I curl up in a fetal position and wait for it all to go away.

May: We get our approval. Show is back on. New opening night set for late August. I start pacing my apartment.

June: Still pacing. Thinking a lot about the movie, "The Rules of Attraction," and how disappointing it is. Yet I love it.

July: Rehearsals begin for real. I go out of town for a wedding and jump out of a plane. Return to rehearsals still fucking terrified.

August: More rehearsals. Strained conversations between myself and set/light designer Chris Covics as he tries to convince me that 15-foot rolling towers of light are totally feasible. Producer Ian hits full stride and the needtheater credit card starts to heat up.

late August: We move into Cafe Fais Do Do. Rolling towers of light are feasible! The 17 person cast, most of whom had seen each other only sporadically throughout the process, is reunited and looks askance at each other with raised eyebrows. (note: we actually have only 16 actors at this point. Yep, still casting one role. Find our hero about a week before we go up. Big ups, Kiff Scholl.)

August 26, 2011: We open. It's a great opening night. Great. The kind you want. The cast, by now, is in full-on summer camp mode. Everyone is best friends. A few nights later, they'll play spin the bottle and it really is college all over again. The next morning, Ian, Frank and I have breakfast like conquering heroes.

early September: We have to move out of Fais Do Do for a weekend to make room for a Judd Apatow film shoot. Massively inconvenient but we got two free weeks out of it. The move involves harrowing drives on the 10 with the columns hanging out the back of a flatbed truck. We lose a couch cushion on the way and mourn it like a brother.

mid-September: We return. The run slogs through the tough middle section. Small houses. Weird screw-ups. I do a lot of fretting.

October: Show finishes well. The cast gives inspired performances, loose and comfortable and totally attuned to their audience. There are still weird screw-ups, mostly tech stuff, because it's Guided Consideration but everyone laughs about them now. The show fully matures and, on a good night, it's truly something to behold. People are tired though.

October 15, 2011: We bow out. We have a gigantic, bananas, closing-night party with break dancers and rappers and crazy craziness. And then that's it.

In Which I Endeavor To Blow It All Up

2011-09-30T10:36:00.000-07:00

We had a meeting last week to discuss our upcoming plans for needtheater and both Ian and I admitted something that was both surprising and kinda inevitable. We're sick of producing plays. That doesn't mean we're sick of theater. Far from it. And it's no slight at all towards our current production, Guided Consideration of a Lamentable Deed, which we remain ridiculously proud of and excited by. But here's the thing about Guided: a large part of the reason we were excited by the play was that it presented us with the opportunity to experiment with one of our Big ideas. We want to create theatrical events, not just plays. A theatrical event has a play at its center, to be sure, or at least a staged performance of some kind. But in this model, the play also inspires us to create new ways for our community to gather and for the piece of art to be consumed collectively. These become part of the event too. For example, Guided Consideration is a play about the college lifestyle, the debauchery and the soul-searching. Its got 17 young, attractive people in it. Its got a loud, raucous soundtrack and 15-foot towers of light rolling around on stage. It demanded that we throw a party around it. Thus, the free beer and the live music. Beer + play + bands = event.

The event of Guided Consideration has been a lot of fun. But the event has stretched us to our limits, both financially and, frankly, emotionally as well. That beer isn't actually free. Someone is buying it. And every one of those bands needs a sound engineer and a handshake agreement and people to help set up the stage. We've created an event that demands the two things always in short supply at needtheater: money and manpower. So we're learning lessons here, people.

What these lessons have brought us to, I think, is the feeling both Ian and I voiced; that feeling of being sick of producing plays. Just as we know that audiences are bored with their traditional experience of sitting quietly in a theater full of other quiet people, watching the play, and then quietly going home, we are bored with our traditional experience. Pick a play, rent a theater, produce the play, and it's gone forever. Wash, rinse, repeat. For all of its bells and whistles, Guided still follows that model. At the same time, we're learning that the boundaries for what we think of as an event are rapidly expanding. These new events don't depend on money or manpower (at least not any more than we have). They don't even depend on an audience's physical presence.

What these new kinds of events do require is new ways of telling a story, spread out across new mediums and new technologies. It requires active, continued participation from a large group of artists and an audience that will have to redefine for themselves what they think of as performance and what their responsibilities to that performance are. And it requires us to at least partially blow up our old models for producing plays. Yeah. Crazy.

But plan B is to say, "fuck it" and instead produce "The Odd Couple," starring the two, nearest available TV stars. That's an event! In which case you can find me in my kitchen, with my head in the oven.

We Demand That You See Our Play

2011-09-08T09:12:00.000-07:00

So now that we have opened our latest show, it is time for us to start selling our latest show. You might have noticed. We have at least 25 people furiously posting and liking and tagging and tweeting and, in general, making sure that pretty much everyone they have ever had even the slightest of connections to will at least have the opportunity to know about our show. This posting right here, the one I am currently writing, is itself motivated at least partially by the opportunity that it provides to once again remind you that, yes, needtheater has a show going on right now, and it's called Guided Consideration of a Lamentable Deed, and you should all come and see it because we think you'll like it a lot.

What I've discovered is that marketing, already a terrifyingly unknowable subject in my eyes, is distinctly harrowing in theater and produces a feeling akin to what I imagine the singer-songwriter experiences the first time they open up their guitar case and play for change outside a subway station. There's the sense that you're yelling into what is somehow a very full void. We here at needtheater consequently spend a good deal of time making various, educated guesses as to what may or may not work when it comes to actually enticing the public to pay $20 to see one of our plays. Some of us have some experience in it, some of us just have our instincts, a few of us are especially sharp but we're all still just guessing. Last time, it was post-show discussions. This time, it's post-show bands.

I like our current strategy, which leans heavily on what seems like the boundless energy of an especially united and close-knit cast and crew. They have taken to the world wide web and lit up Facebook like a fucking Christmas tree. At least, I think they have. It's hard to tell with Facebook. It's the most full void there is. Which brings us back again to guesses, rah-rah enthusiasm and the promise of free beer.

Of course there's also the question of whether any of it matters at all. Does it matter if 10 people see it or 1,000? Does it matter if we get reviewed in that paper or on this website? Does it matter if the reviews are good or bad? The cool, artsy answer is no. The true answer is yes, it all matters. Positive attention matters. Box-office receipts matter. The unique energy that only a full and expectant house can create really matters. So we'll keep plugging along, singing our song as the commuters walk by. Maybe this blog will do the trick. Maybe it will be the pictures that Christina took. Or Rachel's Facebook post. Or Terence's tweet. Come see the show. We think you'll like it a lot.

New Sheriffs

2011-08-31T15:50:00.000-07:00

About eight months ago, soon after Ian and I had officially put on our new, co-Artistic Director coats, the two of us spent a few weekend afternoons pacing his living room, trying to figure out what we wanted to do now that we had the wheel. Both of us are prone to outrage and self-righteousness so, unsurprisingly, we spent a good portion of those days whining about all the things we wished we could change about theater.

In our minds, theater and the experience of going to see theater had become sadly predictable. There's the same hushed and decaying atmosphere in every lobby, the same paltry concession stands with plastic cups of Trader Joe's wine and stale Snickers bars, the same post-show discussions that nobody wants to stick around for. Meanwhile, we cram ourselves into tight, dusty, uncomfortable spaces and fight over the same, dwindling audience base. It's all very earnest and noble and effortful and so it's hard to outright hate but very easy to scoff at and ignore. We wished we could change that. And then we started to realize that we could at least try. That the beauty of small theater is that there's rarely much to lose. That we could just go ahead and break whichever of those rules of theater we were sick of.

We opened our latest play, the world premiere of GUIDED CONSIDERATION OF A LAMENTABLE DEED last weekend. For better or for worse, I believe the production represents needtheater's response to these hopes and frustrations of ours. Inside the vast and amazing Cafe Club Fais Do-Do, we were able to design the space to fit the play and not the other way around. We got ourselves a bar, a real bar, with a real bartender and free keg beer before the show. We cast the 17 roles with our friends, artists who we had worked with before, who we trusted implicitly and who could form the tight-knit bonds with each other that would really let this play live. Finally, we booked live music for every night after the play, turning each performance into a party and hopefully reminding everyone that the sharing of art is always something worth celebrating.

I don't mean to be too self-congratulatory. We've only been doing this for one weekend and not everyone likes it. Their reasons are understandable. This is a play whose wild and ruckus style does not seek to explain its very serious, central conflict but rather serves to shield us from it, just as we always shield ourselves from it, sometimes until it is too late. And the event, the beer, the music, the whole vibe, reflect that too. So maybe you're offended or maybe you're just exhausted by the circus of it all. Good. I would much rather you be offended and exhausted than fucking bored.

Our best review yet

2011-06-21T13:00:00.000-07:00

GLINT is Elegant.

Bless You and Them.

The Performance Rose to Meet The Writing, and Wallace couldDo It like Few Who have Ever Tried.

Peeking @ One Another through The Key Hole of Consciousnesswhich Arises Beyond Certain Thresholds of Self-Reflexivity.

The Issue of Trying So Hard to Simply Justify your Existence wasVery Resonant for me.

A Man, a Chair, a WhiteBoard, a Floor and Those Words – Humb-ling and Awesome.

J.P.

The Recursive Universe

William Poundstone

Thank you to everyone who made Glint wonderful and rewarding. By this I mean not only the amazing skills of Ian Forester, Adam J. Smith, Kay McGoerty, Andrew Hungerford, and Ilona Pieotrowska, but also the amazing talent of you, the audience, for bringing the show to life.

We're hoping to do it again soon. When and where? We're still working on that. It's a difficult decision between several great options--but stay tuned!

As always,
Jillian

Glint 411

2011-06-09T23:22:00.000-07:00

So Stephen Dandy of The Hollywood Fringe posed a couple of questions to Ian and Dylan about Glint for a Fringe highlight piece. Here's a sneak preview. Are you excited yet??

Fringe Asked Questions:

1. Succinctly as possible, can you describe the story, themes and circumstances of your show?

Ian: In Glint, which is an adaptation of the short story “Good Old Neon” by David Foster Wallace, I play a man who tries to convey what it's like to die, what happens after you die, and why I decided to kill myself. It ends up as a darkly funny, too-recognizable deconstruction of private thoughts, fears, and experiences that we all have and go through, and serves as a reminder that true human connection is rare, precious, and fleeting. And that it's okay, we can let ourselves (and each other) off the hook. I see it as a real call to empathy, made all the more poignant by its author's own tragic suicide a few years ago.

2. What was the germ for your idea? How and when did it come about?

Ian: Ever since I first read it, “Good Old Neon” was one of those stories that penetrated to the bone and stayed there. There was something so vital and personal about the text, as if I were being engaged on a level that went beyond whatever "life" I was living and mainlined directly to my soul or essence. Reading the story the first time was, for me, a watershed event, and it became one of those texts I would go back to over and over as a sort of touchstone. I have a handful of texts and passages I go back to that remind me of how I need to sort of construct my thinking in order to keep myself grounded, and reading G.O.N. became a personal ritual when I was spinning out and needed to get back on track.

It wasn't until I read the story aloud to someone that I realized the extent to which my seemingly private, secret relationship with the text was in fact something of a far more universal experience. (Which, in a way that anyone who understands fractal geometry will appreciate, echoes the spine of the piece itself.) However, on the page the experience of the text was something that had to happen privately, individually. There was no way to truly share it. Different people could read the story and talk about it afterward, but it was impossible for the primary experience to be truly shared. I felt that there was something to be gained by adapting the story to a context where it could be a truly shared experience, and that theater was the best context for that adaptation.

3. Just how bare bones is your show?

Ian: It's about as bare bones as it gets. One chair, one whiteboard, one actor, and a laptop with sound and light cues. Lots of ghosts, though.

4. Tell your story (and/or your company's), beginning to now, and how it's brought you here.

Ian: Needtheater started the way a lot of small theater companies do- friends from college decide to put on plays. Both Matt Wells (NT's Executive Director) and I had worked within the organizations of different companies before coming to NT, so we weren't fumbling completely in the dark. Dylan (Southard, NT's Co-AD) came quickly on board and we had a nice little team- Dylan had expertise in literary and play development, Matt knew the business and legal, and I had experience with production and casting. The three of us would collaborate on key artistic decisions. As we learned and produced more, the shows got better, we won some awards, started getting noticed, and with that comes a certain amount of freedom where the community around the company gets stronger, things get a little easier, and now with all of that we're in a good place to ask what's next. It's fun to be entering a sort of adolescence where we can dye our hair and pierce things to see what we're really about. I'm hoping for a bad tattoo by the time we're through it.

5. Any artistic influences? Individually or as a company. Anyone in particular you wish to emulate?

Ian: Coming from Chicago, I was greatly influenced by the Steppenwolf theater. Training at their summer school, I learned that acting was as much a contact sport as football, and that it's only really fun and interesting when you get on the field and start betting the things you're afraid of losing the most. Then people sit up and start watching.

Dylan: We're certainly influenced by any number of artists that produce, develop, and promote new, exciting, risky work and that make unique, aesthetic choices to do so. But we're not interested in emulating anyone.

6. If you were meeting your prospective in-laws for the first time, how would you describe the work you do?

Ian: I would say that on a good day the work we do gives people a few exciting hours in the dark, on a great day it gives them invaluable, life-altering perspective, and on a bad day it drives them to drink and rant.

Fortunately we've had more good days than bad days, and even a few great days. What I like most about doing this work is that even on the bad days nobody dies or ends up in jail (yet) and we still advance artistic lifestyles by driving our audience to drink- usually in bars, where they end up tipping bartenders who are most likely actors.

Dylan: We'd lie, especially if those in-laws were at all concerned with their son or daughter's future, financial stability. Needtheater is actually in business leasing billboard space. It's very profitable and secure these days.

7. What shouldn’t an audience expect from you?

Dylan: They shouldn't expect to be underwhelmed. As obvious as that sounds, theater suffers from diminished expectations from its audiences, and that is especially true in small theater and especially especially true in small theater in Los Angeles. But if we accept that our audience thinks small, L.A. theater is self-serving and believes that it will likely be cheap, and amateurish and kind of sad, then yes it is easy to exceed those expectations but it also sets the bar very low and that isn't good for anyone. They should expect us to be mind-blowing.

Ian: Work that sets out to placate, anesthetize, or add to the cacophony of escapist fantasies already available far more conveniently and affordably than anything we can ever hope to produce. We tend to pick work that is challenging both to us and our audiences, because (perhaps perversely) we believe that true satisfaction comes with a certain amount of struggle, and that there is immense value in creating and experiencing work that is outside of our comfort zones. While the experiments aren't always successful, when they are there's simply nothing more exhilarating.

8. If this is your first festival, what do you think you’re in store for? If you’re a pro, what is it you’re in for?

Dylan: This is the first festival for GLINT and our second time with the Hollywood Fringe, so we're semi-pros or at least high-ranking amateurs. We're all in for a wild time. It's a really big weekend for theater in Los Angeles. There will be a lot to see, a lot to do, a lot to think about. It'll be a party alright.

Ian: I just finished reading The Secret, so playing to packed houses and being handed lots of hundred dollar bills.

9. What’s the fun in Fringe?

Dylan: Well, working in theater and really dedicating yourself to it takes a tremendous amount of faith. So an event like the Fringe, where all the other believers are sort of called to gather can feel very affirming. It's like going to church, but like one of those Pentecostal tent revivals where everyone is swaying and speaking in tongues and falling over.

Ian: Clowns and naked people. Plus whatever's actually happening inside the theaters.

Now are you excited? Tickets are selling out fast at www.needtheater.org.

Sneak Preview! -- Glint

2011-05-19T22:07:00.000-07:00

If you have been following our Hollywood Fringe show (and I know you have!) you may have noticed that the title has mysteriously changed overnight from Oblivion to Glint. Not to worry, This is the same show! We just had to make a small title change while working with the Wallace estate who has so kindly allowed us bring the late David Foster Wallace's words to the stage.

Glint is adapted from “Good Old Neon”, a short story dissecting a man’s suicide in first person—from the other side. Darkly comedic, Glint holds a strange mirror not only to David Foster Wallace’s life, but to everyone’s inner self.

Working with David Foster Wallace's words has been an extraordinary (and I'm only the Producer). Although I have seen several stage adaptations of literature, this is the most contemporary piece I have worked on. Wallace's captivating prose shines through in Ian Forester's adaptation. Wallace's sentences are melodic and the themes are eerily true to life. At rehearsal on Wednesday, Ian started running through the monologue and even in the rehearsal space it was starting to sound dynamic. Spoken literature, especially when the literature has the qualities of David Foster Wallace, is very different from reading. To me, if reading is like eating prose, hearing them is like an intravenous drip. Shivers!

Theater Ideas- On the Distribution of NEA Theater Funding

2011-05-19T17:05:00.000-07:00

Scott Walters' Theater Ideas blog = Such thoughtful insights. On NEA theater grants figures... http://www.theatreideas.blogspot.com

our 2011

2011-05-13T12:49:00.000-07:00

So here's some good news: we have somewhat of a season for 2011, here in May of 2011. The season consists of two productions, our adaptation of David Foster Wallace's short story, "Good Old Neon," for the Hollywood Fringe Festival and our world premiere of Guided Consideration of a Lamentable Deed in the fall, so it's not a particularly big season. Not jam-packed with action. Part of this is by choice. If you follow needtheater on a regular basis (are there such people?), then you've heard us repeat recently, sometimes to an annoying degree, how much we all had needed to take a step back in the last six months, slow down and get perspective, look at the big picture, talk about mission statements and color schemes and what we all saw when we tried to picture this company actually growing. All that. And we needed to do it. We still kinda need to be doing it because it's all still pretty chaotic here. People are moving around, changing positions, leaving the company, coming into the company. We still haven't decided on the right font for the new logo (not to mention a name for Bowler-Hat Man, our new mascot). We've got website issues. This is all true. So forgive us for shutting things down and being sketchy about it and cautiously welcome us back now as we straggle to our feet.

But the other part of it is that we didn't just shut things down, we got shut down. Literally at times, and figuratively oftentimes and this was in large part due to the fact that we're arrogant and stubborn in the same ways that make almost everyone who's good in theater spectacularly difficult to work with. We've taken heat, guys. We were taking it six months ago and we're still taking it now. And all of this analysis and constructive criticism coming in and out of our circled wagons is good and right but also gruesome, I have to say. Whether we really needed to do it, or whether it was just the attrition and endless grind of constant self-reflection, the fact is that we ended up ripping ourselves open. And you know what I learned? I learned there is only so long you can go about ripping yourself open before the whole thing becomes too bloody.

So needtheater is proud to present a 2011 season about thought vs. action, about inner life vs. outer life, and about the ways in which our own brains can get the best of us. Please enjoy.

Tickets on Sale for Come out and Bowl!

2011-03-14T14:28:00.000-07:00

Tickets are $20 for two hours of unlimited bowling and shoe rental. Bring a Buddy! 2 for $30. Have your own shoes? Bowling only tickets are $15. There will be prizes for best team, best player, most gutter balls, and more so bring your best (or worst) bowling moves.

Tickets are available through the needtheater website. We will also be holding a raffle for some cool raffle baskets and items, movies, games, and more. Raffle tickets are $2. Don't miss this opportunity to meet the new cast and crew of our May show, catch up with the needtheater staff, and meet some new friends. See you there!

Sunday's Reading!

2011-03-08T13:04:00.000-08:00

We had a second reading of our spring show on Sunday. Looks like a rather large group, doesn't it?

You can see more photos over on facebook!

Come Out and Bowl Fundraiser!

2011-03-07T08:45:00.001-08:00

Mark March 27th on your calendar!

Grab your bowling balls and get ready to make some strikes (or gutter balls). Join us as needtheater kicks off its 2011 theater season with a bowling party and fundraiser. The fun will be happening 6-8 pm on March 27 at Mar Vista Lanes, 12125 Venice Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90066. Tickets are $20 for two hours of unlimited bowling and shoe rental. There will be prizes for best team, best player, most gutter balls, and more so bring your best (or worst) bowling moves.

Tickets are available through any needtheater staff member or at the door. We will also be holding a raffle for some cool raffle baskets and items, movies, games, and more. Raffle tickets are $2. Don't miss this opportunity to meet the new cast and crew of our May show, catch up with the needtheater staff, and meet some new friends. See you there!

The Details

Where:
Mar Vista AMF Bowling Lanes
12125 Venice Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90066

When: Sunday March 27, 6-8 pm

How Much: $20 for 2 hours of unlimited bowling and shoe rental. $2 for 1 raffle ticket or 4 tickets for $5. Tickets are avalaible at the door or through needtheater staff

Contact: Jillian Tessman, (818) 823-3441, jilliant@needtheater.org

You can also RSVP on our Facebook Invite

Spring Approaches

2011-02-24T10:35:00.000-08:00

We are very, very close to announcing our spring play. Ian and Dylan have been looking at space. This is the direction they are going:

Not exactly your 50-seat theater, is it?

Happy Belated 2011

2011-02-16T10:01:00.001-08:00

Oh my. It’s February and we haven’t updated since December. Tisk tisk on me.

It’s not to say that I haven’t tried to update our blog, but we’ve all been busy with our families and with working really hard behind the scenes to make 2011 the best year yet! If you follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook, then you already know that Ian Forrester and Dylan Southard are our new Co-Artistic Directors and that Matt Wells is now focusing on being our Executive Director. We are excited about this change, and have been working under our new artistic leadership for a little over a month now.

With a spring show picked, Ian and Dylan are looking for space. Jillian is working on fundraising events as well as finding grants and finishing those applications before they are due (mostly in march). Ilona is busy working on the website and doing a hundred other things. I’ve been focused on helping keep the mission statement and logo on track and finding our newer, clarified voice. Matt is busy keeping us all on track, and with a newly approved budget we are definitely getting organized.

It’s been a busy year thus far, and I don’t think that is going to change.

Why Theater?

2010-12-15T08:03:00.000-08:00

by Jillian Tessman, Development Director

This is a question that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about in the past few weeks as a newly minted development director. While I’ve written newsletters and stuffed donation cards into envelopes, I can’t help but wonder what I’m sure most of you wonder at some point in time—why donate to a theater company?

There are many, many non-profit organizations in Los Angeles. Non-profit organizations that do everything from feeding the homeless to funding AIDS research. If we gave a dollar or two to every worthy cause many of us would go broke. So why donate to theater? One of the best answers I found to this question was in a study conducted a few years ago by the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Arts and Civic Engagement: Involved in Arts, Involved in Life states that art, unlike pure entertainment, incites people into social and civic action. One startling statistic states that a person who attends arts performances is 2.7 times more likely to do volunteer work than a person who goes to the movies. In the words of the study, “Art is not escapism but an invitation to activism.” Performance helps people empathize with others, see the world through a different looking glass, and, as NEA has proven, go into the world and do something about it.

Non-profit theater, especially small theater, is not a business. Like an art museum, our ticket prices seldom, if ever, cover our costs. Many of our artists and staff are volunteers. We work long hours to create a production that may or may not be appreciated by audiences and critics. So why do we produce? We produce because we want to help, in our own way, to make a change in the world.

So why donate to theater? Because theater matters. Thank you to everyone who has helped our company grow in this past year. We are looking forward, with your continued encouragement and support, to a great 2011.

Want to help needtheater keep giving the gift of great theater? Donate online.

Thoughts on our break from production

2010-11-17T10:17:00.000-08:00

needtheater is currently on hiatus from production. While this time is certainly restful (and thankfully so), it is also proving strangely creative in ways I did not expect.

It feels like a sort of hibernation, the sort of deep sleep which allows you to grapple with basic questions that had been dormant in your subconscious, waiting for this chance to get out.

Why theater now? What sort of live event cries out to be made in our digital age, creates community? How can we create experience that endures in the memory, that rustles in your head even when you're back home, eating cereal, downloading apps? Check out Ben Cameron's recent TED speech for some compelling oratory on this subject. TCG also recently produced this great video on why theater matters.

It feels great to be focused on process rather than product. Memorable event, meaningful experience, innovation and creativity...The sort of alchemy that tends to occur only through periods of introspection and inquiry. Before the splendor of spring must come the germination of winter.

Gosh, aren't you glad I didn't decide to become a novelist? This sort of overly florid prose is just the sort of thing that would drive me nuts. But you get the idea.

Looking around, it is such an exciting time for theater (perhaps there has never been a better time for making it...?).

Punch Drunk Theatre is one example. Check out this you tube video or this one. Reminiscent of Russian Ark, no? And then there's this Guardian article about how they created a promenade-style performance piece to promote a beer.

Another favorite of mine is the European auteur Romeo Castellucci, whose Puragatorio was at UCLA Live last year, before they neutered the programming there. Look at this amazing video of his work, or this one, or this video of an interview with him.

Then there's Chekhov on Lake Lucille in upstate New York, which a friend of mine performs in every year. Read about it here, and check out this youtube video.

And We Players in San Francisco, currently featured in American Theatre magazine for its site-specific production of Hamlet on Alcatraz. They blog about it here.

Closer to home, Collage Dance Theatre just finished performing a site-specific piece at LA City Hall which I am sorry I missed. Check out their very-funny trailer here.

Overtone Industries' opera Songs and Dances from Imaginary Lands seems so great. It was performed in this former Culver City Mazda space which I toured recently.

Just a motley list. Please comment here with stories about creative incubation, or with other links to theater groups that inspire you by doing something stirring.

I Stole Your Identity

2010-11-11T13:53:00.000-08:00

~ Ilona Piotrowska

With the production behind us, I feel it is my turn to reveal my secret role in the show (besides being a producer, of course). As you well know, the theme of the play was a question of identity: ‘the victim’ not knowing who he is anymore and ‘the thief’ pretending to be ‘the victim.’ What was so intriguing about the concept was the fact that we’re never safe, even the audience can become the victim.

Sounds a bit confusing? A rare scenario, indeed. It was a shocker to everyone who got caught in THE WEB. If you remember Dylan’s post “On The End of The Web,” then you know how the play ends. What he didn’t mention is that which happened after the two men disappeared into the darkness: the main projection on the set faded to white and pictures of members of the audience flashed before their eyes. Standing in the aisle during those couple of seconds, I thrived on hearing people's responses as their photographs were projected right in front of them.

The play imposed itself onto the audience making them aware of how vulnerable they were. How did they get my photo up there? How did they know who I am? Where did they find the information? It's just as easy as finding a bag.

Looking Forward, Looking Back

2010-11-06T09:31:00.000-07:00

It’s been almost three weeks since we’ve closed “The Web”. Since then there has mostly been recovery, with a little bit of discussion about what’s next for the company. The break will be over before we all know it though, and this weekend we’re doing the post-mortem for “The Web” along side setting up some of the groundwork for next year.

Post-Mortems on shows are always interesting, and they are one of my favorite parts of producing. Getting to reexamine things
of chaos has lifted is important to learning what worked and what needs to change. Differing opinions happens, and sometimes new information about what really happened comes to light. “The Web” was my first production with needtheater, so seeing how my new team evaluates and examines will be even more beneficial than usual. Everything is still new and exciting (yay).

Looking forward into 2011, needtheater has a lot to do and a lot we want to accomplish. While we are getting our ducks-in-a-row, you should follow us on facebook and twitter.

On The End Of THE WEB

2010-10-26T08:49:00.000-07:00

THE WEB closed last week, so I've been spending my time thinking about what kind of artistic imprint it has left in its wake. In looking back at the almost two years we spent with the play, I often go back to the play's plot and how it was structured. It was always an especially tricky part of the play, and a lot of the criticisms we heard about the show focused on it. The truth behind what is actually happening in this play is kept so tightly encrypted that it became almost impossible for people to answer the integral question of why it's all happening. I can understand why this is might be frustrating and it was certainly an area of the play that we spent a lot of time chewing over.

But the more we chewed over it, the more we came to realize that maybe there is no definitive answer to this play, no solution at the end of the equation. You cannot figure this play out, no matter how smart you are or how much time you spend pondering it. This isn't anyone's fault. This is how it's supposed to work. And if you can accept this notion, if you can accept the fact that there are things that happen in this play, as in life, that have no explanation, if you can, for instance, accept the fact that people disappear for no reason, then you can begin to feel the emotions that this play offers to you.

Nowhere is this idea more clear than in the play's ending, when bad guy Warner tells a thoroughly destroyed Chris that he now truly has nothing left. He has been robbed of his name, his past, his relationships. He has no way of telling the world who he is. And when Chris asks Warner the question we've all been asking ourselves, namely why, Warner essentially tells him that it's a waste of time to try to answer that. He describes people flailing about, trying to make sense of things so that they can control them. And then he says, "You can't feel sorry for life. It is. Can't change it. Gets you into trouble when you try." A few moments later, Warner invites Chris to come with him, telling Chris that there is always a use for someone who does not exist. And Chris accepts this invitation. He accepts the fact that he has arrived at this particular point for reasons that will never be clear to him, and he has no choice but to move forward. Anything else would be a slow kind of death.

There's something deeply inspiring about this moment and, by extension, deeply frightening. And for me, dramaturgically, this is a great play precisely because its structure demonstrates its theme. It presents us with a mystery that has no solution and it challenges you to accept that and embrace the terrifying, exciting freedom that it leaves you with.

On Being Edgy

2010-10-12T14:50:00.000-07:00

This weekend marks the end of needtheater's world-premiere run of Michael John Garcés' THE WEB. It also marks the end of our 2010 season. We've still got a few events coming up, namely our annual Hamburger Mary's fundraiser on October 20, but the rest of the year will mostly be devoted to slowing down, breathing deep, and regaining our bearings. Here at needtheater HQ, this translates into a lot of big-picture conversations. There's been much recent talk, for instance, about things like our website, our logo, and our mission statement and how these sorts of signifiers might be re-formatted to better represent our artistic identity.

Of course, we then come to the inevitable question: what is our artistic identity? This also being the time when we choose the plays we will do in 2011, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about the plays we have already done. There's a certain spirit that connects these plays and, at least in part, defines needtheater's pursuits. Our plays all try to speak to big, universal themes, things like family, memory, identity or desire. Yet, they communicate these themes through new frameworks. So in MERCURY FUR, a family is now defined by the shared struggle of a group of drug-addicted teenagers living in a post-apocalyptic London. And in FATBOY, our own brutal greed resonates in new and profound ways when it is presented to us in a brutal and confrontational style. These are not easy plays. We intend to provoke deep responses from our audiences and this means that it will sometimes be a difficult process.

As artistic identities go, this is one we strive for. But selecting plays and managing a theater company are two, different things and while there is a world of edgy, innovative, challenging plays to choose from, it becomes very tricky to extend this aesthetic into other areas of the company. What is edgy marketing? What is innovative publicity? How can you be challenging when trying to raise money to keep the lights on? Not only are these tough questions, but real answers to them require risk-taking that far exceeds even the most daring of plays. I had a conversation recently in which it was hypothesized that the amount of people that would come to one of our shows because of a good review would probably be more or less equal to the amount of people who would come specifically because of a bad review (these being the types of people who define their tastes in opposition to mainstream likes and dislikes). In either case, the number would be so small in comparison to direct word-of-mouth that actively pursuing any sort of relationship with critics might be a misuse of our time.

While I'm not ready to jump on that train quite yet, its logic does suggest that a theater company could survive and perhaps thrive while working entirely outside of conventional wisdom. It's a little scary to think about but it's also necessary, especially when we remind ourselves that we came to blow people's minds. Anything else and we would just be one of the pack. And we're not here to be that. So while our 2010 might be slowing to a stop, the wheels are still spinning pretty fast over here at HQ. Input and ideas are always welcome. Stay tuned for more.

JustGive!

2010-10-10T09:13:00.000-07:00

In honor of 10.10.10, for anyone who gives at least $10 to needtheater over the next 10 days at www.justgive.org/10years, justgive will give us $10 extra! That means that your donation of $10 equals $20 for our organization with this matching incentive.

needtheater's LEGENDARY BINGO Fundraiser

2010-10-05T10:10:00.000-07:00

Starring Bingo-boy
Bingo Hostess "Bridgette Of Madison County"
And Celebrity Guest

HAMBURGER MARY'S
Bar/Restaurant
8288 Santa Monica Blvd, @ Sweetzer
In West Hollywood
Valet parking in restaurant lot
Full menu and bar

Wednesday, Oct. 20th @ 9 PM

$20 suggested donation at the door

Includes 10 regular bingo game cards (for nine regular games)
AND 2 grand prize bingo game cards (for one grand prize game)

Proceeds Benefit needtheater.

We've got some great prizes, so come on out to play some bingo and
support LA theater.

The next installment of the NT reading series

2010-10-03T09:29:00.000-07:00

Check out the information below on the next needtheater reading. It is free and open to the public. You're invited!

A Reading of THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF DISSOCIA by Anthony Neilson

Please join us for this free public reading.

THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF DISSOCIA is a colorful and exciting off-kilter trip that follows Lisa Jones in search of one lost hour that has tipped the balance of her life. The inhabitants of the wonderful world she finds herself in - Dissocia - are a curious blend of the funny, the friendly and the brutal. This is a hugely original play, both magical and moving, that confirmed Anthony Neilson as one of the major voices in contemporary British theatre.

Directed by Alex Harvey

Featuring-

Duke Doyle, Elvy Yost, Alan Simpson, Alexander Wells, Bob Turton, David Downs, Dylan Ris, Jessa Sherman, Mattie Hawkinson, Satya Bhaba, Stephan Taylor, TJ Miller

Monday, October 4. 7:30 pm - 9 pm

At the Paul G. Gleason Theatre

6520 Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90028

Parking available in paid lot directly behind the theater, or on the street.

On Opening Weekend

2010-09-24T10:15:00.000-07:00

Two things worth noting from this past weekend's big opening of The Web. The first was the Opening Night party on Friday. Now, these parties can come in all sorts of flavors. I've been to some where everyone is just going through the motions; doing the handshakes and the hugs and then moving on. Some "parties" don't even get that far. We're all so exhausted and sick of each other that we scatter like roaches when the lights come on. But this was a real party. Nobody had a lampshade on their head or anything, but everyone was drinking and eating and talking excitedly about projects and plans and ideas. We like being around each other and we're proud of having created this thing together and we celebrated it. At the end of the day, that's worth a lot.

The other interesting thing happened on Sunday. There were four people in the audience on Sunday, and one of them was me. Now, obviously, this is a little sad. It's also not completely unexpected. Close friends and family come on Friday, everyone else is procrastinating, and word-of-mouth has yet to spread so that first Sunday performance always feels a little quiet. Nevertheless, it's disappointing and it was hanging in the air as everyone got ready for the performance. I had promised to watch the show that night to look at some new additions and changes and I honestly wasn't thrilled at the prospect. This crew was on the verge of four days away from this show after a long weekend and an even longer last couple of weeks, playing into a mostly empty room. They're pros and I expected the show to be done competently. I just wasn't expecting much inspiration. But what I saw was a completely different type of performance, and I realized this was because the performance was being done for completely different reasons.

The rule of thumb is that if there are less audience members than there are cast members, you give the actors the option of canceling the performance. And so we had and the actors had chosen to go on. That choice was an affirmation of what they were here together to do and, in the end, this had very little to do with how many people were going to watch them do it. They did it for no other reason than because it was fun and right and they enjoyed doing it together. You could see this freedom sort of realized in their performances that night. It was loose, but it was loose in a comfortable, practiced way. The performances felt assured and the play moved efficiently. It felt finished.

On Previews

2010-09-15T11:40:00.000-07:00

This past weekend marked a first for needtheater: our first weekend of previews. Previews, for those who don't know, are basically full dress rehearsals in front of a paid audience. This can be a little confusing, I admit. The lights are on, the actors are in their costumes, we're selling concessions. It's a show. So it's often hard to tell the difference between a preview performance and any other kind of performance other than by our insistence that a preview means it isn't finished yet. One would be forgiven for asking if all this isn't just an elaborate excuse for what we anticipate will be a slightly incomplete product. Allow me to explain.

First off, and not to get all high-and-mighty on you, but what we're doing right now is not easy. There's a whole group of people who have spent days making sure that every technical element, every light and sound cue, every scene and costume change, is happening at the exact right time, in the exact right way, every time with the goal of making this so effortless that one person will be able to orchestrate the entire process quickly and silently every night. The actors are busy remembering their lines and what prop to put in what pocket and where to aim their kick so as not to break their fellow actor's nose while appearing as if they have, not to mention when to feel sad and when to feel angry and when to feel a little sad but also a little angry. Meanwhile, there's a whole group of producers and house managers and noble helpers scurrying around buying ads and selling ads and posting on Facebook and dropping off postcards and hanging posters and cleaning and sweeping and stapling. So, yes, we're buying ourselves some time to practice a little bit more.

But we also know that everything changes once an audience walks in the doors. So if a preview really is a dry-run not just of the play itself but of the entire play-going experience, than an audience needs to be there to contribute what they're going to contribute. An audience brings with them anticipation, an energy and an intensity that we have not dealt with before. Everyone's adrenalin goes up and this affects not just the way the play is performed but the way it is received as well. To be able to observe these changes and have the time to adjust to them is the real gift of the previews.

Betsy Reisz, Ian Forester, Edgar Landa and Justin Huen in The Web

The humor in The Web is a good example of what can be accomplished with previews. Like all good dramas, The Web has some very funny, very human moments that have only begun to emerge now that large groups of people are collectively seeing this play for the first time and responding as such. Once the moments are discovered, actors can use subsequent previews to really hone them so that they have the same precision that our light cues and transitions do. The application can be quite practical as well. For instance, we have this idea for the very end of the play. It's clever but it's also kinda high-concept, and it's taken us awhile to figure out if and how it will work. We tried it out for the first time during last Saturday's preview with the idea at about 80% completion. Afterwards, during a post-show conversation, we were able to directly ask the audience about this idea, how they felt about it in its current state, how they would feel about it in its idealized state, and how we might bridge that gap. Appropriate adjustments are then made.

It really was a beneficial weekend for us. And for those audience members who were there, they can always feel as if they did not just watch the play but actively helped to build it as well. That being said, there's really not much to be done now. A few last-minute rehearsals, a few tweaks, a few errands to run, a lot of fingernails to chew. Opening night: Friday.

On The Love of the Game

2010-09-06T23:12:00.000-07:00

The other day, Matt and I were performing one of the countless, thankless tasks that go into putting on a play. We were careening back and forth across Los Angeles in a borrowed pick-up truck, transporting set pieces from our "build site" (i.e. Matt's parents' backyard) to the theater, and somehow conversation turned to the 1989 movie, "Glory." We were talking about the scene near the end where, on the eve of the big, climactic battle, the regiment gathers around the campfire and has the sing-along/group prayer/revival meeting, and I remembered that, during high-school plays, the casts would sometimes recreate this scene as part of our warm-ups. Looking back now, this little homage of ours was probably 95% facetious; something about the irony of privileged, private-school kids imitating Civil War-era soldiers fighting for their freedom and praying for their lives. But I still cherish this memory and point to it as the perfect example of why certain kids are drawn to theater in the first place and why some of those kids persist with it through adulthood.

Right now, it's Sunday night and I'm sitting in the theater, half-watching as The Web goes through its "cue-to-cue," the stage where the play's various technical elements are first blended with the acting. This means it's Tech Week, the fourth quarter, crunch time. Theater people cherish this time in a very specific way. It's the time when people proudly compare notes on how long it's been since they've slept, how little they've eaten and how much caffeine they've consumed. The theater looks like NASA Control at the end of the Apollo 13 mission, covered in junk-food wrappers and discarded notes and the debris accumulated by a group of people living and creating and arguing and trouble-shooting together. Nerves are frayed, dark smudges appear under eyes, everyone develops a faraway look of deep and fragile concentration. No matter what specific job you might hold, anyone who gets involved in theater has a bit of the drama-queen in them and this is the time when we all get to be our most dramatic.

But no matter what kind of kick we might get out of Tech Week, it's really not that pleasant a way to live, and we know it. No one's getting paid much and few if any of us have lived with this project long enough to feel like it's an essential part of our lives. And so while those around us know better than to ask the relatively obvious question, "Why?" we will always be asking it of ourselves.

Meanwhile, back on stage, two of our actors are engaging in one of the time-honored rituals of a cue-to-cue. They're screwing around. Since a cue-to-cue is the time for designers to tinker with the timing and the levels and all that, there's ample opportunity for everyone else to stand around. And so the actors wander, singing snippets of songs, playing with props, randomly bursting into character, laughing all the way. Their uninhibited goofiness is infectious. It reminds me of kids reenacting movie scenes. And watching them, I realize how consistent this behavior is, how it reminds me of all the other Tech Weeks I've been a part of and how there is something reassuring and reassured about the way all of us fall naturally into it. We need both the safety and the danger that this darkened room and this half-built set suggests. We're not angry or annoyed to give up sleep and food and health. We're happiest here.

It You Build It...

2010-09-03T13:37:00.001-07:00

We are a week from previews and we have started building our set. Art|Works has a great space for us and our set design has tried to incorporate some of the more unique aspects of the space for entrances and scene changes. One of the largest challenges about "The Web" has been trying to figure out how to keep the projectors aligned in a certain way when the set pieces move. Our designers have come up with a solution, but it has yet to be built or tested. Here are some pictures from the beginning of the build. Our load in is this weekend. Woo-Hoo!

On The Stunning Similarities between THE WEB and PIRANHAS 3D

2010-08-30T12:38:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I worry that I'm misleading people when I try to talk intelligently about The Web. This is, after all, a play that sometimes seems specifically designed to disorient you. So to speak definitively about anything that is or is not happening seems to go against the very spirit of the play. It's also a play featuring characters who are very aware of their role as storytellers, responsible for creating their own fiction that can be mistaken for reality. So there are two levels of storytelling (the writer's and the characters') and there are two, thematic levels to traverse as well. All this ground to cover makes the play feel both wide-open and tightly mapped.

But so the point is that it's very easy to go down the rabbit hole and get lost, and it's worth it to periodically get back to the basics with this play. When I do, I remember that when I initially came to the play, I didn't like it because it was thematically or structurally challenging. I liked it because it was fun. Honestly, I liked it because it reminded me of a movie.

Now, this comparison isn't always a favorable one. If you're talking about the big, loud, blockbuster, Hollywood movie, then most theater people are going to place their own work on a higher level of artistic integrity. This is understandable but it's also both snobby and insecure of us. Movies (and TV) are significantly more popular forms of entertainment. They get more attention, more admiration, more money. This makes us jealous. And so we take comfort in the notion that while movies might have quantity, theater has quality. I only kinda agree with this because I do think that movies do certain, desirable things way better than theater does. For instance, I went and saw "Piranhas 3D" recently. The most common reaction to what people were seeing in that movie was to scream, then immediately groan in disgust and then immediately collapse into giggles. It was amazing. I thought it was an amazing movie. When was the last time you got that kind of reaction at the theater? We're way too precious for that.

And so I love the plays that try to do the same thing. This is a live art, after all. That immediacy, that visceral quality, that instinctive reaction, can only be heightened from watching it all play out directly in front of you. The Web knows this and it plays with these techniques: the slow build of tension, the reversals and reveals, the explosion of physicality. It may not be the most analytical approach but sometimes I like to watch things not to analyze them but to enjoy them.

More Rehearsal Photos

2010-08-27T07:55:00.000-07:00

We have been posting photos of rehearsals every couple of days on our Facebook page so check there for more photo updates.

The Web: Rehearsals

2010-08-25T09:34:00.000-07:00

We are getting close to previews (September 10th!) so our team is very excited watching this all come together. We posted these images on Facebook last week, but here they are if you missed them:

Edgar and Justin being entertaining, gun in hand.

Tony saying something important to Ian in one of the cafe scenes.

Coffee cups in our rehearsal cafe.

Waiting for a high-five?

On Identity and Disappearance

2010-08-23T08:34:00.000-07:00

You know you're on the right track when it seems like the entire world is inadvertently commenting on the play you're doing. Such was the case when I saw that the cover story of the August 13 L.A. Weekly was entitled "Seized: Inside The Brutal World of America's Kidnapping Capital." The article focused on Phoenix, Arizona and detailed the stunning number of cases where Mexican immigrants were held hostage by the guides they had hired to take them over the border into the U.S.. Now, The Web isn't about immigration (even we aren't ready to dive into those murky waters), and it's arguable whether or not a kidnapping even takes place. But the play is about people disappearing. More specifically, it's about the way this can manifest itself not only in the physical absence of a person but in the destruction of the identity that this person has spent a lifetime constructing.

It took me awhile to realize how central to the play this idea was, and the turning point came a few months back over lunch with the writer, Michael John Garces. We were discussing this phenomenon of people vanishing and Michael pointed out that it happens far more frequently in this country than one might imagine. Sure, there are the Natalee Holloway and Laci Peterson-type cases, but these gain our attention through their luridness. Tropical locales, cheating husbands, and serial-killing, Dutch playboys are the stuff of airport mystery novels. More often however, these disappearances are ignored or, more chillingly, the vanishing is so complete that we do not know it ever happened to begin with.

Conversely, in most of the rest of the world, the idea of a person suddenly ceasing to exist is familiar. It may not be fully accepted or understood, but it is a known part of life. It's comparable to the way Americans react when some crazed nut-job walks into a grocery store or office building and opens fire. We may mourn the dead and rail against our perceived reasons for it happening, but we also know that this sort of thing is a consequence of our societal structure and so we are able to move past it quickly, taking with us the lesson that life is fragile and that luck is as integral to our survival as anything else.

The Web then is truly a paradigm shift, bringing this more global mentality to a distinctly American story. It forces us to familiarize ourselves with this concept of a person simply disappearing and the way this threatens not only a person's life but their entire relationship to the rest of the world. It suggests that your life is not the only thing that is fragile. Your identity is as well.

Front of "The Web" Postcard

2010-08-18T07:59:00.000-07:00

The Reading Series Returns

2010-08-13T14:18:00.000-07:00

One bit of non-THE WEB related news: after an eight month hiatus, the much loved Need Theater reading series will resume this coming weekend. The reading series was designed as a simple way for Need Theater to do what it loves most: get together with friends, watch plays, and talk about plays. Admission is free and the mood is laid-back. First off, a reading of Brett Neveu's TWENTYONE. The play, directed by long-time Need Theater ally Steve Walker, tells the story of five, twenty-one year old, college students who have come to Mexico for Spring Break. This familiar but endlessly bizarre setting and its mindless “Girls Gone Wild” atmosphere of alcohol, tanning and casual-sex serves as an unlikely backdrop for self-reflection. The reading features Nicole Bella, Jamie Julia Parker, Alex Sell, Andrew Perez and Jarrett Sleeper. It will be held this Sunday, August 15, at 5pm at The Gleason Theatre, 6520 Hollywood Blvd.

This will be followed on Thursday, August 19 by a reading of BROADSWORD, written by Marco Ramirez and directed by Aaron Henne. BROADSWORD takes place in a small, New Jersey town where the former members of the heavy-metal band Broadsword have come together again to mourn one of their own, prodigious guitarist Richie, missing for months and now presumed dead. But Broadsword will be reunited when it is revealed that Richie's investigations into arcane and medieval music history and structure have led him straight to the gates of Hell and only one song can bring him back. The reading stars Richard Azurdia, Rebecca Jordan, Edgar Landa, Mark McClain Wilson, Paul Vroom, and Don Boughton. It starts at 8pm.

Finally, on August 29 at 5pm, we will be doing a reading so cool that we can't even tell you what it is. We can't even tell why we can't tell you what it is. Suffice to say, something so secretive must be awesome. If you're intrigued, find one of us and we'll tell you what's up. White Russians will be served.

More info can be found on our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/needtheater

On First Reads and World Premieres

2010-08-13T14:10:00.000-07:00

Rehearsals for Need Theater's production of The Web began this week with the first read-thru of the script taking place on Monday night. This is always an exciting time. It's usually the first (and too often the only) time that the whole production team is gathered in one place and there's those first-day jitters and that palpable energy that comes when a group of artists collectively begin to lock into a project. The effect is like flipping the master switch and watching as the machine begins to ratchet up to full speed.

It's particularly exciting when it comes to The Web because this is a world premiere. And so as we gathered around the table for the first time, everyone armed with binders and highlighters and studious looks on their faces, there was that immediate understanding that the questions we would ponder have never been pondered before and that the terrain we're setting out to traverse is throughly uncharted.

Now, this isn't actually, totally true. Need Theater has been working on The Web with its writer, Michael John Garcés, for more than a year now. We were first introduced to it while developing our play-reading series in early 2009. The initial theme of that series was thriller plays and The Web, which Associate Artistic Director Ian Forester had come across during his time with the Chicago theater group Collaboraction, certainly fit that description. Following the initial reading, we realized we all shared an interest in helping this play to further develop, and our collaboration with Garcés continued. Several more workshops of the play followed as everyone focused in on refining the story's themes while also entangling ourselves in its labyrinth-like plot.

So as the team hunched over their scripts on Monday night, chewing their fingernails and furrowing their brows as they first confronted the unnerving complexities of this story, some of us were smiling knowingly. It is gratifying and thrilling and terrifying to have come this far and to now find ourselves surrounded by such a talented and committed group as we get set to go further.

And then we ended the night by discussing how we were going to find all the cool, prop guns we were going to need, and we remembered that The Web is also just badass. And that is its own kind of exciting too.

First Reading of "The Web"

2010-08-10T07:31:00.000-07:00

Last night was our first rehearsal. The first read-thru is exciting since it's usually the first time the cast has heard the entire script. Monday night was no exception to this, especially since we had playwright Michael John Garces there as well.

In addition to some of the twitpics you can find on our twitter account here are some that were taken by Sarah (stage manager) and Rachel (producer).

The view from our stage manager's side of the table.

Tasty snacks in front of our fabulous actors, Edgar.

Everyone is paying attention!

The author (Michael John Garces) is reading with us closely.

Betsy and Matt looking serious.

We Have a Cast!

2010-08-06T08:49:00.000-07:00

vision of the roles
actors' faces flashing through
no identity

~Ilona Piotrowska, Producer

This post was written by our director, Alyson Roux:

We have a cast! The artistic team filtered through almost 500 headshots and resumes and watched four full days of auditions and callbacks. And now we have seven extremely talented actors who will originate the characters in THE WEB. They are a diverse ensemble, a group of people who come from a variety of acting backgrounds, as well as different geographic roots.

The audition process is thrilling for the director, because it is often the first time you hear the words of the play out loud. I've read the play too many times to count, but hearing the characters speak for the first time makes it all the more real. The playwright, Michael, has written very natural yet driving dialogue and while I anticipated that the pace of scenes would be quick, it was a treat to finally hear and see the words come to life.

This was a challenging casting process because the characters are strongly archetypical in quality and relationship, while being complex and grounded in their actions. We had to find actors who fit the archetype of each role, while bringing their own unique quality and a level of complexity to round out the character. Simply put, I wanted actors who fit the roles and could put their own “stamp” on the characters. We have quite the group, I'm thrilled to be working with such talented people.

Our New Project: "The Web"

2010-07-27T14:22:00.000-07:00

Allow us to introduce you to our new project, Michael John Garces’s gripping and fast-paced thriller “The Web”. Our team is very excited to start working on this because we think it's a great piece, and relevant to our technologically-connected lives.

Last week we had a designer/production meeting which developed a conversation about the vision and design of the piece. Words and concepts that came up were: identity, loss, torture, "the machine",portals, silhouettes, technology, theft, and code. We are working on wrapping up casting with our first table read looming tomorrow.

Apart from the design and auditions, we've been working on getting the twitter up and running while trying to connect with other theaters and patrons. So follow us if you aren't already, and check out our facebook page too!

Rick Culbertson's Ideas for Theater Producers

2010-02-23T08:18:00.000-08:00

Check out rickculbertson.com.

Rick was one of the producers on "Divorce! The Musical" and other shows. He posts every Monday. This week he has the idea to create a Better Business Bureau for LA theater producers.

Who's in?

On SCARCITY

2009-10-29T10:35:00.000-07:00

The title of a play can be a very tricky thing. A title can say volumes about the play or it can say nothing at all. It can enhance a theatrical experience or it can mislead and distract. It can sound cool or it can sound silly. But no matter what, it’s always worth thinking about and it definitely is in the case of Scarcity. The scarcity that the Lawrences, the family at the center of this play, face is not only a scarcity of intangible qualities like hope or love or respect. It is also a literal scarcity, a scarcity of resources. In fact, when examining the considerable challenges that confront this family, it is this literal scarcity that provides the context and thus ignites the action of the play. In this way, the play becomes firmly grounded in a tough, nuts-and-bolts reality, and it becomes the job of the production to examine the details of that tough reality so as to better understand the emotions that flow out of it.

One such detail is the setting of the play, a small town in Western Massachusetts. As our production began to dive into its work and the reality of the life of this family began to emerge, this setting began to take on a notable significance. Western Massachusetts can be defined in several different ways. For instance, it can be defined by what it once had but does not anymore. The area was a center of growth during the Industrial Revolution, and many of its towns sprang up in the early part of the twentieth century, powered by the revenue that new factories and mills provided. But those times have long since come and gone and large pockets of Western Massachusetts remain mired in a decades-long, economic stagnation. But at the same time, the area is also defined by the promise that is all around it. New York City is a three-hour drive away. Boston is two hours away. And of course, the region is famous for the impressive number of prominent and elite universities located there. These include Amhearst, Williams, Smith, Hampshire, and Mount Holyoke. This presence means that for as much scarcity that might exist in Western Massachusetts, there is also the constant promise of a better tomorrow.

This duality between scarcity and hope is a large part of what drew us to this play. When we consider a play, we consider the universality that the play can embody. And this duality is indeed universal. It is something we all have to reckon with, these days especially. After all, our society and our world is now largely defined, like it or not, by an insufficiency of supply. And yet, there is always the promise of a better tomorrow. This promise and this potential is what powers us through the tough times. It is what gives our lives momentum. And it is what enables us to succeed.

Scarcity runs Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 2pm until November 22 at The Imagined Life Theater, 5615 San Vicente Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90019.

NeedTheater Blog Readers Receive Discount to Aaron Henne's Writing Workshop

2009-10-08T16:25:00.001-07:00

Wordstrut Presents:

WRITERS IN RESIDENCE
Another 6 week session of "Writers in Residence" an ongoing program of writing
study will begin on October 13th.
In this class, you will get a large selection of writing exercises and specific
dramaturgical guidance for your project, be it a play, screenplay, novel or memoir.
A great opportunity for forward momentum before the holidays and the first of
the year.

No more than 8 students - Availability is limited.

When: Tuesdays from 7pm -10 pm, October 13 - November 17
Where: Silver Lake
Cost: 350.00 to the general public.
200.00 for friends of Need Theatre if signed by 10/7.

Aaron Henne's plays include King Cat Calico Finally Flies Free! (published by Original Works Publishing), Record Storm Spreads Ruin! (commissioned by the Los Angeles History Project) and Sliding Into Hades, which received LA Weekly Awards for Playwriting and Production of the Year. Aaron has served in script development capacities for Culture Clash, The Colony Theatre, Center Theatre Group and The Theatre @ Boston Court, where he serves as Co-Literary Manager. Mr. Henne also works with spoken word and movement based techniques. His exploration of machines and their relationships to humanity, Body Mecanique, was developed and produced by LA Contemporary Dance Company. His playwriting process book, You Already Know, is now available through Writ Large Press. He teaches writing for the Playwrights' Program at The Robey Theatre Company, Writing Pad and runs the writer's studio, Wordstrut. Aaron is a proud member of The Playwrights Union.

The Vetting Process

2009-07-15T13:51:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite parts about being a part of a theater company is getting to have a hand in selecting the plays that the company will next be producing. If you work in theater professionally (or are trying to) then that means you have read or been exposed to hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of plays and you carry with you a mental, laundry list of the plays you dream of one day doing. Twice a year, my NeedTheater cohorts and I get to bring our lists up to the light of day to see if and where we can all find some common ground.

Obviously, while the aura of limitless possibility makes choosing a play thrilling, the questions that this looming decision demands that we face make it all quite stressful and terrifying too. After all, we are a small company that can only afford to produce two, fully-staged plays a year. And because these shows are the most publicized and visible things that we do, the responsibility that they carry is huge. They are our most effective means of communicating our message and ideals to our audience. So we must tread very carefully and we must address, if not answer, all the questions that arise. When this predictably spirals out into a sort of panicked, philosophical point-counterpoint, the process becomes that much more difficult.

For instance, the idea of doing a classical play has come up and intrigued many of us. NeedTheater’s plays have tended to be contemporary pieces with decidedly modern styles and attitudes. So doing something classic might be a refreshing change of pace and a way for us to show some range. But even this fairly innocuous bit of reasoning can give way to huge, conceptual questions. Namely: What is the benefit of range? Isn’t there something to be said for rigorous, stylistic consistency? If we have developed a reputation for doing edgy, modern work that does not dance around conflict but rather attacks it head-on, then shouldn’t we continue with that trend? Shouldn’t we play to our strengths and continue to nurture the audience that has come along for the ride? Touché.

Ah, but watch now as the conversation spirals out. See, one could easily defend the choice of a classic by saying it is exactly that challenge of breathing modernity into the production that makes it so rewarding. The thrill of uncovering the timeless relevancy of a play written two hundred years ago is huge and it’s a big part of the reason why guys like Shakespeare and Chekhov and Molière are considered the literary titans that they are. A sharply conceived take on a classic could add to the modern, aesthetic identity of our company that has already been established with shows like Fatboy and Mercury Fur while also showing a broader style of thinking that would open up our doors to new audience members. So, again, touché.

But this uncovering of the timeless is a risky process, and it walks a fine line between inspired and pretentious. For example, is there a more tired, interpretive move then taking a classic play and moving it around in time and space to demonstrate how its themes are bound by neither condition? Do we need another Romeo and Juliet set in 1871, or 1945, or 2002, or, God forbid, in a “timeless” space where everyone wears black t-shirts and totes acting cubes around the stage? It’s gimmicky and self-congratulatory and, yes, pretentious and even if we don’t do something like that, the very act of putting an interpretive mark on a classic means we walk that line. Is that a risk we’re willing to take?

This is what I’ve realized: No matter how convoluted the conversation becomes, almost every one we have had about our next play leads inevitably to that same question. Is that a risk we’re willing to take? There are no sure things in theater. Just as every time the curtain comes up, there is the possibility of complete disaster, every play we consider carries with it the faint whiff of doom. So what is the risk we’re willing to take?

Essential Arts and Flying Fur

2009-07-09T10:22:00.000-07:00

Check out this oped from today's LA times, in which Shakespeare LA's founding Artistic Director, Ben Donenberg, makes the case for continued arts funding during these dire economic times.

It's up to all artists, at every level, to make this case, that the arts are essential. Even small LA theater has a role to play. Especially small LA theater. The onus is on us to demonstrate that we can take responsibility for our role as the grassroots/petri-dish/heartbeat of our communities.

In other news, Jonathan Dorf of ALAP (Association of Los Angeles Playwrights) recently posted on LA Stage Blog with a extensive response to the LA Times' review of MERCURY FUR, needtheater's most recent main stage show.

For those interested in needtheater activities this summer, check out THE NUCLEAR FAMILY and our Reading Series.

Erik Ehn Will Leave CalArts to Head Playwrighting Program at Brown

2009-06-22T09:41:00.000-07:00

A recent Culture Monster posting broke the news.

Erik, we will miss you in Southern California.

Theaters Increasingly Turn to Facebook to Promote Shows

2009-06-22T09:28:00.000-07:00

Check out this article on Live Mint, a fascinating look at how theater is going to the web.

Facebook is a powerful seat-filling tool indeed.

Day Laborerer Theater Without Borders

2009-06-09T14:45:00.000-07:00

Do you guys know about this? It's a group of day laborers who formed a theater group after their experience working on LOS ILEGALES, a play that Cornerstone did last year. My friend Ethan Sawyer is their project manager, and he forwarded me info on their new tour, to day laborer sites throughout the area. Should be very interesting.

Here's that info:

The June tour for Teatro Jornalero Sin Fronteras (Day Laborer Theater Without Borders) is off and running -- below you'll find a list of upcoming performances. This new tour features three brand new pieces: Demolición (a comedy), Caminos al Paraiso (a drama) and Salud (play that tackles issues of health and safety in the workplace). You can find out more info here on our blog.

Hope to see you at one of the sites!

- - - - -

Wednesday, June 10 @ 9am
Cypress Park Job Center
(Home Depot parking lot)
2055 N. Figueroa St.
Los Angeles, CA 90065

Thursday, June 11 @ 9am
Pasadena Job Center
500 N. Lake Ave.
Pasadena, CA 91101

Friday, June 12 @ 11am
Pomona Job Center
1682 W. Mission Blvd.
Pomona, CA 91766

Monday, June 15 @ 9am
Carecen Job Center
(Home Depot parking lot)
1675 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90017

Tuesday, June 16 @ 9am
(on east side of Home Depot parking lot)
Hollywood Job Center
5569 W. DeLongpre Ave.
Hollywood, CA 90028

2009 LA Arts Town Hall

2009-06-04T15:09:00.000-07:00

Don't miss the 2009 LA Arts Town Hall.
http://www.artsforla.org/2009ArtsTownHall

2009 LA ARTS TOWN HALL
LA ARTS LEADERS CONVERGE ON THE JACCC
FRIDAY, JUNE 12, 2009

Arts for LA and the Center for Cultural Innovation are pleased to present the 2009 L.A. Arts Town Hall, a daylong convening of Los Angeles arts professionals taking place on June 12th at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center. The convening will feature a keynote address by Americans for the Arts President & CEO, Robert Lynch, a morning plenary session on the future of arts funding in Los Angeles by a distinguished panel of arts leaders and an afternoon series of concurrent breakout sessions geared toward empowering the nonprofit arts sector to address the critical issues facing the field, including regional advocacy, marketing and new models of operation. Participants will hear from leading arts policy makers, advocates and funders and learn about important trends and initiatives that will impact Los Angeles’ artists and arts organizations alike.

The convening is the largest gathering of arts leaders since the last Arts Town Hall in 2007. Over 400 arts managers, arts educators and artists, from top-level executives to grassroots organizers are expected to attend.

The 2009 L.A. Arts Town Hall is free but registration is required and closes Tuesday, June 9th.
For further information and to register visit www.ArtsForLA.org/2009ArtsTownHall.

Plenary panelists include:
• Robert Lynch, President, Americans for the Arts
• John E. McGuirk, Program Director, The James Irvine Foundation
• Claire Peeps, Executive Director, Durfee Foundation
• Judilee Reed, Executive Director, Leveraging Investments in Creativity
• Laura Zucker, Executive Director, Los Angeles County Arts Commission

The afternoon series of concurrent breakout sessions will follow the plenary session. Organized by leading arts community partners, these facilitated conversations provide in-depth information and create opportunities for dialogue around topics such as Arts Education, Capacity Building, Cultural Policy and Self-Organizing an Artists’ Community. Sessions organized by: LA Stage Alliance, Department of Cultural Affairs Los Angeles, Arts for All, the Music Center’s Arts Education Department.

What: 2009 L.A. Arts Town Hall: A daylong convening of arts professionals

When: Friday, June 12th 2009
9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Where: Japanese American Cultural and Community Center
244 S. San Pedro Street in Little Tokyo, downtown, LA (between 2nd and 3rd Streets)

For more information and press registration, please visit www.artsforla.org/2009ArtsTownHall.
Contact Arts for LA at 213.225.7580 or Camille@artsforla.org.

on MERCURY FUR

2009-05-29T14:59:00.000-07:00

Mercury Fur is a shocking play. There’s no denying this. Its language is violent. Its action is brutal. Its world is unhinged. It was shocking when I first read it and it continues to shock me today, months later.

There are many challenges that come with doing a play like Mercury Fur. Chief among them is this question of the value of shock. After all, we, as a theater company, ask a lot out of you, the audience. We ask that you pay money for the privilege of watching us perform. We ask that you give us your Friday or Saturday night. We ask that you put on a coat and do your hair and sit silently for two hours, staring straight ahead. These are sacrifices. So to then present you with something shocking and insist that you forsake your own contentedness in the name of some ambiguous, higher purpose might seem like a bit of a buzzkill. I mean, isn’t theater a medium of entertainment? Aren’t we here to make you happy? Isn’t this why you pay the money and put on the coat and do the hair?

The short answer is no. Theater is not just entertainment, it is art, and the job of art is to ask questions of its audience. If those questions are tough and if the answers are tougher, well then, all the better. This is why all theater isn’t sunshine and lollipops and Neil Simon.

Mercury Fur does ask tough questions. It is, after all, an undeniably sociological play. Its references to mid-20th century, global pop icons like Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe, along with primitive Aztec, Egyptian and Greek cultures suggests a path between the two that might be charitably described as a steep decline (though which end is the top and which is the bottom is a question up for debate). Meanwhile, its vague allusions to a series of devastating riots and its characters’ frequent, almost casual use of racial slurs take on a political tone when you look at the general escalation of racism in Western Europe and the race riots that broke out in England during the time that Philip Ridley wrote this play. The play doesn’t so much demand answers as show you how those answers are becoming increasingly grim. But to stop here when contemplating Mercury Fur is to do injustice to the play itself.

While researching the play, I looked into accounts of genocide in Rwanda in an attempt to provide our production with a real-life parallel to the sort of violence that is exhibited in the play. While interviewing a group of the killers who perpetrated this genocide, writer Jean Hatzfeld found himself—against his better judgment—developing an affection for these men. As he says in the book Machete Season:

“At first, I feel only natural hatred or aversion for them…But as time goes by, a kind of perplexity creeps in, which makes the Kibungo gang not more likable but less unpleasant to spend time with…Their friendly solidarity, their disconnection from the world they soaked in blood…their patience and serenity, and sometimes their naïveté, finally rub off on our relationship and touch particularly on their mysterious willingness to talk….Perhaps they feel the need to glimpse themselves as they were, even from this distance, in the stories they tell. Perhaps they are telling their stories to convince us they are ordinary…”

Mercury Fur seeks to convince us that, even amid the shocking brutality of its story, its characters are ordinary. They love one another. They stand up for each other. They are like us. There is a moment early in the play when brothers Elliot and Darren recite a sort of poem to each other that speaks volumes about the strange but recognizable warmth that is at the center of this play and that drew needtheater to it in the first place. It goes, in part, like this:

I love you so much I could chase you and chase you.
I love you so much I could grab you and grab you.
I love you so much I could punch you and kick you.
I love you so much I could make you bleed and bleed.
I love you so much I could kill you and kill you.
I love you so much I could burst into flames.

Mercury Fur opens tonight! Go to www.needtheater.org for all the details.

The Human Trickle-Down Project, part 2

2009-04-27T11:52:00.000-07:00

We had another meeting regarding our docudrama project this weekend. In attendance were myself, Artistic Director Matt Wells, Associate Artistic Director Ian Forester and Associate Artists Brandon Baruch and Mike Wells. We’re still very much in the preliminary stages of this whole idea and so the major question of the day boiled down to, “What do we want this play to feel like?” This is a tricky question. Obviously, there is a gravity to the idea that can’t be ignored and if this project is truly going to be a reaction and a reflection of the huge fight to survive that many of us are looking at now, then we have a responsibility to capture the truth of that fight in all its dirty details. But, on the other hand, part of the ethos of needtheater is an effort to get away from the self-seriousness and pretension that has infected so much theater today. With some plays and some companies, you can almost see the production patting itself on the back for being so hard-hitting and socially aware, and it is that smug, self-congratulatory streak that has turned off so many audience members; all of whom have come to, at least in part, be entertained. One of the reasons we are all so proud of our production of John Clancy’s “Fatboy” is that the play managed to be both incendiary and socially relevant while maintaining a loose, fun tone that allowed our audience to sit back and enjoy themselves. When you have both of those things working together, you have the potential to do something really great. So it’s a balancing act. How do we create a play that will tell such an important story while continuing to prize theatricality and a spirit of entertainment that will keep the play from becoming too leaden? Pondering the answer to that question at this point only leads us to more questions. For instance, is there a kind of humor to be found in our current economic crisis? Are there bad guys out there besides the bankers and brokers and Bush? And, most importantly, is there a happy ending to this story? One great thing we discovered during this meeting was that we think there is. After all, you have to knock down the house if you want to rebuild it. And in asking these questions, we begin to see the basic, building blocks of the play we will create: character, tone, an arc to the plot. So maybe it’s not a docudrama. Maybe it’s just a play. Who knows? More importantly, who cares? The classification isn’t important. The spirit behind the work is what matters. And we’ve got spirit. Yes we do

In Praise of The Nation

2009-04-22T10:22:00.000-07:00

Recently, I embraced American liberalism wholeheartedly and got a subscription to The Nation magazine.

Not only does The Nation have the left-ist hemorrhage on a weekly basis that I just don't have the energy for, but they also deserve praise for their prominent coverage of arts and culture. They treat the arts as a necessary part of American civic life.

As examples, consider two recent cover stories.

This week's is entitled A New Deal for Culture. It is a very thoughtful piece by Jeff Chang (whose writing I adore) on the new role that culture may play in this recession era (I think it might last long enough to be an era), and under the Obama Administration's leadership.

The cover story for the March 26th issue was entitled Tell Her the Truth. It was a marvelously intelligent piece of dramatic criticism written by none other than Tony Kushner (Kushner is on the editorial staff for The Nation, did you know that?), on Carol Churchill's searing new play about the recent war in Gaza, Seven Jewish Children. The play, incidentally is available for free download from the website of the Royal Court Theater. It is short (only about 12 minutes long probably) and definitely worth the read. Check it out here.

So yes, the Nation. I recommend it.

The Next 25 Years of American Theater

2009-04-06T09:15:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't seen this yet, American Theater has asked some of the coolest kids in town to predict the future of theater in the next 25 years. What they say is very inspiring -- very galvanizing! Soak it up and pass it on.

http://www.tcg.org/publications/at/apr09/at25.cfm

Mixed Progress Report on President Obama, the NEA, and the Arts

2009-04-01T17:44:00.000-07:00

This article offers an insightful report on the mixed progress the Obama Administration has made on the Arts.

Baby steps...

The Human Trickle-Down Project, part 1

2009-03-31T11:22:00.000-07:00

It would be easy to think that the role of an artist in these tough, economic times would be something akin to that of the violinists on the Titanic; just play something melancholy and poignant and stand by as the crew desperately tries to cram as many people as possible on to the lifeboats. But the reality is a little more complicated and a lot less bleak and this is because—and not to sound too self-inflated here— it is during times like these that people look to storytellers. To watch the news these days is not only terrifically depressing, it also only tells you a part of what’s going on. One of the most fascinating things about our current crisis is how far-reaching it has become. Everybody has been affected by it and that means its effects are deeply personal and intimate. And this is not something that the news can capture. It’s not about facts and it’s not about macro-trends and it’s not about what the stock market did yesterday or what President Obama will sign into law tomorrow. It’s about what this one family in this one town is struggling with today. Like I said, it’s intimate and it’s an intimacy that only a well-told story can reflect. This is why people in theater sign up to do theater.
So, we here at Need Theater have decided to jump into the fray. In the coming months, we’ll be working towards creating a theater piece that will reflect what is happening to people as we all ride through the storm together. It will be collaborative and based on the stories that people in our community share with us. In a best-case scenario, these stories will create a sort of unity of experience that will help us all to collectively band together and heal our society. Granted, that’s a best-case scenario. We had our first brainstorming meeting about this last weekend and it was just as terrifying as it was thrilling. We like to believe that we’re pretty good at taking a fictionalized world and creating a reality for it on stage. But to take reality and to create a fiction for it is quite a different story altogether and we have no illusions about the tough road that lies ahead of us. But we know that this is what we should be doing. This is our contribution. Thanks to those who want to come along with us.
By the by, if any of you want to contribute your stories, ideas or general comments as we go forward, I can be reached at DylanS@needtheater.org. Cool.

LA Theater Criticism 2.0?

2009-02-02T10:21:00.000-08:00

Can LA theater survive without adequate coverage from journalists?

More and more I am convinced that the only way that will happen is if someone creates a huge non-profit website to cover LA theater. Combining volunteer reporting (Michael Ritchie used the phrase "peer-review" in a recent discussion on this very topic on KPCC's Airtalk) with professional journalism.

How to make this website work? Let's look to Martin Denton and the New York Theater Experience (NYTE) as an example. This group is a non-profit organization to support the NY Off-Off Broadway "Indie" Theater Community. In New York they call him "St. Martin." He is a former Marriot employee who founded NYTE nine years ago on a whim, after taking an internet training course. Since then, NYTE has grown to be one of the most admirable theater-service organizations in the country. We in LA could learn much from St. Martin.

NYTE is focused on providing online theater coverage. It does not charge dues to the tiny theaters that it serves. Rather, NYTE's revenues come from ad sales and tax-deductible donations.

It maintains nytheater.com, indietheater.org, and nytheatercast.com. They even have mobile.nytheater.com (instant theater on the go, directly to your cell phone!). They have reviews of every small theater show in town. And NY has just about as much small theater as LA. If you are putting on a play, NYTE will review you.

They have great blogs, and they have a wonderful podcast series. These are interviews that Martin conducts with the leading artists in the NY Indie Theater community. These podcasts are such a great chance for dialogue, community, and publicity.

For nine years, NYTE has published annual anthologies of small NY productions. Can you imagine if LA theater were published in an annual anthology? NYTE also hosts annual Indie Theater convocations. I could go on.

If we had an organization like this in LA, perhaps the collapse of theater coverage at the Times and the Weekly would be easier to deal with...

...Pilgrimage to St. Martin anyone? Next time any of you are in NY, call him and ask for a meeting. I'd be happy to facilitate.

Don Shirley Has the Goods on Michael Ritchie

2009-01-30T15:51:00.000-08:00

No one writes better about Michael Ritchie's rather disappointing tenure as Artistic Director at CTG than Don Shirley of LA City Beat.

Don Shirley's got a great new piece this week which you can check out here.

The article is not only a review of Danny Hoch's OUR TOWN at the Kirk Douglas Theatre but a salient piece of criticism of Center Theater Group's hypocritical claim to be "LA's Theater Company" while producing no plays in the past year that are actually about L.A.

Don goes to over 300 LA Theater shows a year. He is one of maybe three or four working journalists I know of who are devoted to Los Angeles as a true theater town and who are not afraid to take large companies like CTG to task.

In searching over Don's recent columns, I also found this gem, another trenchant piece of journalism criticizing Ritchie and CTG, this one tied to their selection of "The House of Blue Leaves" as the inaugural production at the new Mark Taper Forum.

I urge everyone to read Don Shirley every week.

ArtBash 29/08

2008-12-03T15:45:00.000-08:00

Check out www.artbashLA.com for more info about this great event.

ArtBash 29/08
Where the Arts Go to Party

A festival from the heart of LA's arts community.

To celebrate the worst financial crash since 1929.

Saturday, Dec. 13, 2008. 8pm-2am.

$20 admission, $10 open bar access.
Online tickets bought with "bigcheap" discount code: $15

At the A+D Museum,
5900 Wilshire Blvd,
(across from LACMA).

Presented by NeedTheater
in Association with the Hollywood Fringe Festival.

Featuring performances from over 50 artists, including...

DJ set by dj.AnaRoxSicc

Live performances by
Anacron of The Peanut Gallery, featuring Netherworlds (Murs, Himself, and Anacron), Kruse, DJ Shiro, DJ Jedi (Digable Planets), and Tha Brothaload: Blvme and Double-K (of People Under The Stairs).

Dance by
The Original L.A. Breakers, L.A. Contemporary Dance Company, Invertigo Dance Theatre, Vox Dance Theatre, Kim & Bobby, the Follies Sisters, and Monday Night Tease.

Theater by
Poor Dog Group, Cabeza de Vaca Arcestra, and CDN Collective.

Music by
Petrojvic Blasting Company, Soup Greens, Ryan Harrison, Gerhard Schultz.

Circus by
Kinetic Theory Theatre

Sponsored by
Barefoot Wine, New Belgium Brewing, LeTourmentVert Absinthe, Boru Vodka, Monster Energy Drinks, Hansen's Natural Soda, Argentum Signs, The Out Crowd, and the Studio Wardrobe Department.

Full info and tickets available at www.artbashla.com

Enter Stage Right

2008-11-17T09:05:00.000-08:00

The Wall Street Journal weighs in on the dearth of conservative plays.

The American Idol-ization of Theater Training

2008-10-31T15:57:00.000-07:00

We need new ways of thinking about theater training.

Too often do theater schools celebrate vanity and fame. Whether overtly stated or not, most theater training is geared towards individual aggrandizement: getting on the soaps or landing an agent.

Particularly in LA, acting training is sold as a commodity rather than imparted as a way of life. The NoHo Arts District, with its endless storefront acting studios, is arguably the most flagrant example of the institutionalized commodificaton of theater training.

What is to be done?

Could we not build a theater school that focused on socializing success, rather than assigning it to individuals? That would be a theater school for the 21st century.

We would finally get theater as a team sport. Even though the Lakers have Kobe Bryant, the greatest basketball player on Earth, they still couldn't win until Kobe learned how to pass the ball. And theater is the same way. The field has already moved to ensemble-based production, from nationally-recognized groups like Wooster and SITI to local LA theater companies such as Son of Semele and ARTEL. Training has yet to catch up.

Talking more broadly, as a result of globalization and the rise of the knowledge-based workforce, the entire economy has also moved in the direction of teamwork and shared leadership. Theater is no exception, but our training facilities do not reflect that.

Also, this new training would finally give us community-oriented theater artists. Arts policy has already gone down the road to community participation and training facilities must follow. Artistic seriousness correlates with arts accesibility. How can your art be serious if you do it by yourself in a room? Too often the choices of artists and arts organizations are driven by self-interest rather than community interest.

Big picture, I believe it is possible for community accesibility to forge a more progressive social contract for the arts, where the artist is the intersection of many different aspects of daily life, grappling with education, health, land, etc. Perhaps this is the way for the arts to be valued in a new way.

So, you budding acting teachers of the world, I encourage you to do as Thomas Friedman (my favorite NY Times Columnist) says, to "think globally and act locally." In light of greater social trends, and where the field is going, we need new thinking when it comes to training theater artists.

Anna Deavere Smith: Four American Characters

2008-10-27T15:07:00.000-07:00

Here's another great TED Talk, a great video of Anna Deveare Smith.

Check it out:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/anna_deavere_smith_s_american_character.html

Joe Papp Biography Astounds

2008-10-22T15:34:00.000-07:00

Joe Papp: An American Life by Helen Epstein. I highly recommend it for those interested in leadership in the theater. Joe Papp's story is seminal and inspiring. I look at him as a true American hero. We need a latter day Joe Papp in Los Angeles, that's for sure. Here's to the grand old man who started the Public Theatre.

Financial crisis is a good time for "pay-what-you-can" nights

2008-10-19T18:04:00.000-07:00

Check this out:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2008/10/financial-crisi.html

I've been on this kick lately about the financial crisis and the arts, as those of you who have been following my recent posts undoubtedly have noticed. I am convinced that somehow we artists must respond to this crisis as a matter of survival. LA Times' Culture Monster blog is--thank goodnes--addressing this as well.

For the next several years, I anticipate needtheater offering pay-what-you-can nights for every show. Box office revenue is important, but on the other hand, you've got to get the work out there. There must first and foremost be accessibility to the art.

Ten Things Theaters Need to Do Right Now To Save Themselves

2008-10-14T13:37:00.000-07:00

Check this out.

http://www.thestranger.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=691862

This article by Brendan Karlin of the Seattle Stranger is a cogent, brutal analysis that is meant to challenge and certainly makes for interesting reading. The shrill blogosphere commments below the article certainly reflect that he has hit a nerve.

Eve Ensler on Security

2008-10-03T17:22:00.000-07:00

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/eve_ensler_on_security.html

What the Turmoil of Wall Street Means for LA Theater's Main Street

2008-10-03T14:21:00.000-07:00

There was a very interesting arts article in the LA Times this week (I know I know, an oxymoron right? Go figure.), "The Arts' Nouveau Funding." The article examined the effects of the current financial meltdown on the arts in LA, and also offered some suggestions for how arts organizations can adapt.

Lord knows how the financial crisis will play out over the coming weeks, months, or years; but my hunch is that its ripple effects will define the economics of LA art-making for quite a while. Economists who I respect such as Paul Krugman (btw, bookmark his NY Times blog, "The Conscience of a Liberal", it is great) believe that America's financial woes will continue at least through 2010, and perhaps beyond.

So let me paint a sobering picture...That means at least two or three years of penny-pinching and tight wallets in which...

1) Grantmakers will be giving out less money--government grantmakers will have a lower tax revenue base to draw from (and the arts may be the first thing to get cut), and foundations will have devalued investment portfolios to draw interest on.

2) Individuals will be less inclined to buy tickets and donate to the arts--due to lower consumer confidence, which means less discretionary spending on things like theater, dance, charitable giving, etc.

3) Artists, who indirectly subsidize much of the arts in town by offering their time for very little pay or often no pay at all, may be less inclined to work with nonprofits because they will have to concentrate more on making ends meet.

I won't get into the disastrous policies that have got us to this point. But suffice it to say that artists and arts organizations must develop new and innovative strategies in order to survive.

The LA Times article suggests a combination of "pluck, innovation, and eagerness," offering several examples such as a museum that stays open after hours or a theater that gives away free tickets to the young.

In the LA Times article, Susan Medak of Berkeley Rep says: “It’s been fun, a very stimulating time for nonprofit organizations, because all bets are off...You throw all sorts of preconceptions out the window and find new programs, new ways of interacting with the audience.”

How does that translate into the world of small LA Theater? A popular idea with arts professionals that I think is worth serious examination: non-profits will have to start dealing with the for-profit market. The reasoning goes that non-profit organizations should develop new for-profit revenue streams (such as consulting, party-producing, graphic design, etc) that can supplement their not-for-profit activities (such as theater shows, dance performances, exhibitions, etc).

This has always been a good idea. Alternative revenue streams diversify funding sources and make arts orgs more stable. Examples of early adaptors to this model abound. The Des Moines Social Club is looking at funding its arts activities with a restaurant. The Fusion Theater in Albuquerque funds its theater with a film production crew business. The Greenway Arts Alliance here in LA funds its theater by running the flea market at Fairfax High School.

Although this for-profit/not-for-profit hybrid may have been an inventive way to go before, in the future this may become a necessity. Most individual artists have "day jobs" and perhaps in these troubled economic times most small arts organizations will have to find "day jobs" too.

I welcome comments on how YOU would deal with the current mess.

Why Russ Stanton and Sam Zell Can Go Jump in a Lake, But Steven Leigh Morris and Don Shirley Deserve Medals.

2008-08-21T21:51:00.001-07:00

Although I still subscribe to the print edition of the LA Times, that paper seems to get worse by the day. This year they fired their dance critic. They buried their book review and opinion sections, not to mention the Guide of LA Cultural happenings, relegating their best pieces of journalism to the back pages.

And now it has come to this: it seems they no longer print reviews of small Los Angeles theaters. I haven't seen one review ANYWHERE in the calendar section for weeks except for bigtime shows like South Coast Rep or Pasadena Playhouse. I guess, from their POV, we little guys don't bring in the eyeballs. We don't help their bottom line.

I say Russ Stanton and Sam Zell should go jump in a lake. The LA Times is more than a business. It's a civic institution with the duty to report on and nurture Angelino arts and culture.

Don't we want a theater scene that is dynamic? That is vital? That is world-class? Well, without coverage from the Times, it will be that much harder to get the word out about exciting new work.

What can you do about it, you ask, dearest blogosphere? Email a letter to the LA Times' short-sighted, inexperienced, spineless, puerile editor, Russ Stanton, at letters@latimes.com, and give him a piece of your mind.

Even worse than censoring an artist is ignoring him. I am paraphrasing a bit, but Steven Leigh Morris wrote something very similar to that in the LA Weekly earlier this year. He was discussing ARTEL and their recent piece on Bulgakov, a great show which Steven gave a great, full-page article to when it premiered at Highways space. Were it not for Steven that show would hardly have been covered by the press at all, and Los Angeles would have been the worse for it.

Which brings me to another thing you can do about the sorry state of the LA Times arts coverage: you can celebrate the great theater critics from our weekly street newspapers, who are doing a great job and picking up some of the slack (despite lacking the Times' reach).

Let's focus on one of the finest: Don Shirley at LA CityBeat. Someone should give him a medal or a gift certificate or something.

Don Shirley at LA City Beat apparently goes to see about 300 LA Theater shows a year. God bless him. His writing style is candid, funny, unapologetic, unpolite, dead-on. He treats LA theater companies with the respect of being the legitimate cultural institutions that they are, rather than being subcultural quasi-invisible distractions. He knows about every theater company in town, and has a relationship with them in his writing. Case in point: Don's hilarious column this week in which he trashes the Unknown Theater. Don demonstrates a knowledge of every show they've done for years. Kudos to him. Write a letter to Don's editor at rebeccas@lacitybeat.com.

Another exciting new source of LA theater criticism is the blogosphere itself. LA Stage Alliance's new blog site is a good example.

Perhaps in this Brave New World we won't need the LA Times after all?

Forgive my silence

2008-08-08T13:56:00.000-07:00

Hey There my thronging readers, my legions of adoring fans. Sorry I haven't posted in months. I have only had this blog for a year and am still learning the etiquette of this thing.

Rest assured I have been toiling away in the theater dust.

I thought I'd get back into the blog by sharing with you...more blogs!! The theater blogosphere is vast and real, with lots of people writing brilliantly about this, perhaps the greatest profession...

"LA Stage Blog"- http://www.lastageblog.com. This is LA's first real shot at a collective online theater blog. I am one of fifty regular posters, as well as LA Stage Alliance staff.

"Scrappy Jack's Worldwide Theatricals and Dime Museum"- http://clancyproductions.blogspot.com. This is John Clancy's blog. John Clancy who started the NY Fringe Fest, did lots of great stuff at Edinburgh, wrote FATBOY (needtheater's upcoming Fall Mainstage show) and initially directed HORSE COUNTRY (needtheater's inaugural production in 2006).

"TheaterForte"- http://www.avltheatre.com/forte. This site is very comprehensive, with tons of links to theater going on across the country.

"Theater Ideas"- http://theatreideas.blogspot.com. Scott Walters is one of my heroes for the way he envisions the future of regional theater.

"On Theater and Politics"- http://matthewfreeman.blogspot.com.

"Indie Theater"- http://www.indietheater.org. This NY site is the greatest website for small theater that I know of. Martin Denton, who runs it, is a critic who nurtures indie theater artists (off-off-off-Broadway) by giving them reviews and interviewing them on monthly podcasts.

"An Angry White Guy in Chicago"- http://donhall.blogspot.com.

"A Poor Player"- http://www.apoorplayer.net/blog/

And finally: http://www.artsjournal.com. This site is great, and you can subscribe to it as a weekly digest that clues you in to arts and culture throughout the Western world.

Arts Advocacy, March 4-5 in Sacramento

2008-02-02T21:07:00.000-08:00

I was contacted just now by a fellow who was aghast, disgusted by the Arts Funding figures in my last posting. Once again, in terms of arts funding, California is 50th in the nation, dead last, spending only 3 cents per capita. For a state of 37 million residents, that is only $1.1 million for arts spending last year. This is a sum so low as to be a joke.

If you share his disgust, I suggest going to Sacramento for Arts Advocacy Day. I and a few other needtheater Artists will be driving up to our Capitol (only 7 hours from LA! woo-hoo!) for March 4th and 5th. We will receive Arts Advocacy training, participate in a march, and meet with our representatives in the State government.

If you can't make it to Sacramento, then I suggest you write your representatives an email or--better yet--a handwritten letter expressing your concerns about the Arts. Click here for the website of the CA State Legislature, which has all the relevant contact information.

Arts for LA is another fine advocacy group right here in LA.

Incidentally, the state that spends the most per capita on the arts is Hawaii, which spends over $4 per capita, more than 125 times the amount that we spend here in California! I would guess that Hawaii has a strong public mandate to support the arts because they are perceived as essential to preserving the native Hawaiian culture. Are they no less essential to preserving our contemporary Californian culture?

LA Theater is Dead

2008-02-02T20:33:00.000-08:00

Any serious theatermaker in Los Angeles must start with the premise that the theater in this town in dead. Not dying. Not on its way out. D-E-A-D.

People in LA don't go to the theater. They don't care about the theater. They don't IDENTIFY with the theater. And they shouldn't.

Why?

For right now I want to focus on what is wrong with the Los Angeles Theater TRADITION, which has been created and is being perpetuated everyday by us, the LA Theater community. It has been built around the tens of thousands of actors that arrive in Los Angeles every year to get famous in Hollywood. They showcase themselves in plays TO GET FAMOUS. It happens to me all the time: actors come up to me begging me to put on a play so that they can star in it. I always tell them no. Let someone else do that.

LA needs to stop serving these Hollywood wanna-be's and their vanity. Their vanity is boring because it has nothing to do with the fabric of life here in the city. To get butts in the seats, we have to come up with a new paradigm for theater work based on artistic responsibility, not paltry career aspirations. Last time I checked, the artist has to take responsibility for not boring his audiences to death. Not only that, we should delight them, scare them, provoke them, change their very lives with the generosity of our sharing, and reassure them that they are not alone in the world. And we are failing at that. Not just a few of us. All of us. For no theater company is an island, and so even if you think you're the only one in town doing great work, you are still surrounded by a mountain of shit, and people think that you stink too by association.

So it is in everyone's interest to improve the OVERALL quality of theater in this town. Not just our own companies. A small group of artists can take responsibility for this transformation. Steppenwolf did something like that in Chicago. We can do it here. We can revamp EdgeFest, or start a new LA Fringe Festival. Somehow, we must help everyone in town identify LA with theater. The whole city will benefit; and, if the theater finally ends up serving a genuine public good, maybe California will finally get some serious Arts Funding. With regards to spending on the Arts, California is currently 50th in the nation, dead last, at a measly 3 cents per capita; the best way to raise that figure is to produce art that matters, on a small budget. This is the original BIG, CHEAP theater that Erik Ehn wrote about.

In ten to twenty years, wouldn't it be great to have people calling LA America's great new theater town?

If they aren't, it will be our own fault as LA Theater Artists. So don't make excuses, and take responsibility for your art. We'll thank you for it.

Ben Hill and the Hollywood Fringe Festival

2007-12-21T22:46:00.000-08:00

Ben Hill is an imaginative guy with a great idea, the Hollywood Fringe Festival. Check out his blog about the project at: http://www.hollywoodfringe.org.

In case you're too indolent to go his web page, copied below is Ben's first posting, which outlines his basics ideas for the Festival:

What’s Hollywood Fringe?
BenHill | general | Friday, November 9th, 2007

The Hollywood Fringe Festival is an annual event uniting local, national, and international theatre artists in a celebration of the performing arts.

It’s mission is to:

* Host an environment for bold and experimental theatre
* Vitalize the theatre industry in Los Angeles
* Promote and enrich the Hollywood neighborhood
* Champion underground art and artists

Our first festival will take place in the Summer of 2009 in Hollywood, California.

Interested? Here are some of our guiding ideas:

AN EXPANSIVE EVENT
We are thinking at least 20 official venues. The venues would be filled with performances of all types: Comedy, New Plays, Hip Hop, Dramas, Solo Artists, and more. To manage this monstrous event, we seek enthusiastic, inventive, and driven people as associate producers, volunteers, coordinators, marketers, grant writers, and idea people. For a few days, we want to turn this city on its head and we can’t do it alone.

ALL VARIETIES OF PERFORMANCE
Within the Fringe itself, there will be multiple programs to keep things interesting. For example, there may be two nights dedicated to 10-minute plays. Perhaps we will stage a new play festival to celebrate new works. We may stage an improv festival or one dedicated to sketch comedy. The nice thing about Fringe is that it is all-encompassing. We needn’t be hog-tied by a specific vision; all performance-based art is welcome.

STREET THEATRE
Up and down theatre row…everywhere you look there will be stuff to look at. Clowns, Mimes, Commedia, fire eaters, performance artists. Add to that food stands, merchandise sellers, information booths. We hope to create a real circus-like scene, making the the neighborhood a little crazy.

CENTRALIZED
Our current plans are to hold the event in the Hollywood, CA area. We want audience members to easily wander between theatres to check out new and interesting events. Hollywood is a wonderfully diverse neighborhood steeped in history and culture. It’s also a little rebellious, a little rock n’ roll. And, of course, there are tons of venues all within walking distance. The Fringe is a love letter to this place.

INTERNET-DRIVEN
We will be spending a lot of pain and effort making this a very tech-savvy event. We have several Internet aficionados on board with us, and plan to provide services to artists and audience to make this a truly wired event. To begin, we have launched this blog to connect with our community.

FOR THE COMMUNITY
if you are reading this blog, you are probably a direct or indirect member of the theatre community. This event is for you! We welcome your participation, feedback, thoughts, complaints - all of it. We can’t oblige every request; we will always be open minded. It is not our place (the festival producers) to make judgements on art, politics, religion, etc. On these points we are completely agnostic. We facilitate performances for passionate artists. If you have the passion, we are here to help you realize your vision.

…we have a lot of ground to cover. Feel free to post your thoughts and ideas. We hope you will help make this event as successful as it can be.

Fringe On.

Ben Hill
Producer, Hollywood Fringe