Cheating on my Blog

I've been straying again.  I've gone and written two more articles over on ArtAnimalMag.com.  I know!  But-but-but, baby, I thought of YOU the whole time!

The first is a feature about the up and coming Symmetry Theatre Company, which has a hefty mission of attempting to achieve gender parity onstage and to tell women's stories as honestly as possible.  I spoke with Chloe Bronzan, a cofounder of the company, and Valerie Weak, to discuss gender parity in the bay area, and how we as artists can tip the scales in our own small ways.  Symmetry has done three shows so far and their next will be The Language Archive in the spring, which I'm quite excited to see.
Check that article out here.




The next is an interview I had with the fantastic Sheila Callaghan, who I must admit I now have a total arts-crush on.  My very first trip to New York a few years ago (yeah, a few years ago, I'm sheltered), I saw Lascivious Something, and it was one of my favorites from that trip - in company with Cromer's production of Our Town and Ruhl's Passion Play.)  She's working on Port Out, Starboard Home, at foolsFURY Theatre, and has all sorts to say about theatre, screenwriting, Hollywood, and more!  Check that one out here.

Off-Topic: Holly DeFount Interview

Oh, my!  It's been a few months since I've updated.  I can explain!  I switched jobs from being the artistic assistant/literary manager/dramaturg at a small professional theatre to being the Company Manager at a very small but very mighty theatre.

(I chose Holly DeFount's Incidental Tarot Death card to illustrate this post. Death signifies change -  a major transformation - and the growth of little seedlings of new beginnings out of an ending.)

In addition to the more intense gig, I've added lots more freelance to my plate:  assistant dramaturgy for an awesome company and writing for a new online magazine, to name a few.

I wrote about my dear friend artist Holly DeFount for Art Animal Magazine.  Holly devoted herself to a once-a-day art card practice and ended up creating, printing, and selling a completely original Tarot deck (including the card above).  Check it out here.

Happy May Day!

It's May 1st, traditionally Beltane, also known as International Worker's Day.  We are living in interesting times.  The Occupy Movement has lasted the winter, and the general strike activities of yesterday and today have culminated in arrests, vandalism, beatings, and tear gas.

I'd like to acknowledge and honor those who've fought this fight and thought about these concepts far longer than I have in the best way I know how: by giving you some resources to learn more about them yourself!

May Day Commemoration Calls Attention to Workers 

Occupy Theatre's Blog

This original poster from the National Theatre Project Archives is chilling to me, even 80 years later.  

Here is an article from bay area actor and activist Michael Gene Sullivan about International Worker's Day in 2010.  I find it fascinating to read articles about these themes from before the Occupy Movement became a household name.  There are far fewer trollish comments about how people need to "occupy a shower" and there are far better attempts to articulate ideas without falling back on the "99%" shorthand we've been using for six months.

One of my favorite professors from SFSU, Joel Schechter, is a huge proponent of the WPA, and I share his love of puppetry, clowns, and the National Theatre Project.  His article, WPA for Artists Program's Time has Come Again, ran in 2010 and is just as relevant now.

One of the more famous pro-union plays sponsored by the Federal Theatre Project.
 The movie about the show and surrounding events is very good, though takes liberties with time and space.

Injecting Race into the Well Made Play

My friend Sam wrote a fantastically thought-provoking piece about MTC's production of Othello, and our tendency to both inject and ignore our current race relations into a very old work of art.  Some juicy tidbits:

In dealing with the Marin Theatre Company’s recent production of Othello I feel that I have to contend with the injection of ideology into the banal world of the well made play...

But we look into this “period” production of Othello from a world where a black man is president of the United States and an unarmed black teen has been gunned down by his local neighborhood watch and we understand that this is not escapism.

That issues of race are a perennial concern in the American social and political landscapes it stands to reason that theater companies should produce Shakespeare’s Othello. For this reason the current Marin Theatre Company production of the play should be commended. It is of no small importance that the American theatre-going public is overwhelmingly white and that the demographics of Marin County are similarly inclined. So, if raising these issue in these locations is awkward it is also important.

Later:

Another story that should be mentioned in relationship to “Othello” is the recent shooting of Trayvon Martin. Othello is a tragedy in part because a vigilante justice is carried out on the presumption of guilt before innocence. A woman is guilty of adultery just because she appears flirtatious. A victim’s clothing should not be held accountable for rape and a victim’s clothing should not be held accountable for murder. These narratives play in our heads while the theater we are consuming seems to be trying its best to distance itself from these kinds of thoughts.

This piece brings up so much of what has been bouncing around in my conversations about Othello this past week or so since seeing it.  I enjoyed myself during the play; it was a beautiful piece of theatre.  I respect the production team:  many of them are my friends.  But I left the play feeling like it barely scratched the surface of what we could feel as a mostly white audience watching a horrible tragedy unfold.  I found myself wondering about other iterations of Othello:  is there a way to take us away from the black vs. white shorthand that is so hard-wired in our culture that we don't even have to explore it except on a superficial level?

Read all of Sam's essay here.

Familiarity is Key?

A brainstorming session a few weeks ago fostered this hot mess:

When I went to Clay Lord's Intrinsic Impact talk a few days after that, I felt like my head would fall off from all the nodding I was doing.  I'm reading the book, Counting New Beans, now.  The book has much bigger ideas than my silly brainstorming cluster, and I can't wait to really dive deep into it.

The gist of my brainstorming all those weeks ago was to think about why people go to the theatre, especially those who aren't "theatre people."  (Which I'll argue that all audiences are "theatre people" of some sort, they ARE in a dang theatre - but that's a tangent.)

People go to theatre for all sorts of reasons, and - to me - the gateway seems to be familiarity.  If they know someone involved in the production, if they know the story, if they have a tradition built around going to see it, or if they have a certain interest in the history or the aesthetic of the piece, then they have some familiarity with the work and it becomes more accessible.  This is the cornerstone to my love of dramaturgy and key to getting people to show up to see and become a part of the work we pour our hearts and souls into.

MUCH more later, over the course of many entries, I'm sure.

Avant-garde?

This past weekend, I sat in the audience of Othello at Marin Theatre Company, and a couple behind me (matching the description of most of the audience members there:  These Fine Folks were a heterosexual upper middle class white couple in their seventies) were discussing cancelling their subscription to Berkeley Repertory Theatre.  Apparently Berkeley Rep has become “too avant-garde.”  They then discussed the possibility of going to Aurora Theatre Company instead, but the wife quickly discounted that idea, saying that Aurora is even more avant-garde than Berkeley Rep.

Now, I know I’m one of these damn young kids that sits in front of a screen all day...but Berkeley Rep?  Aurora?  Avant-garde?  I mean, they keep using that word. I do not think it means what they think it means.  


By “avant-garde” what do they mean?  
Too many solo shows?  (Palomino, Rita Moreno, Let Me Down Easy)  
Too many people of color on stage?  (Arabian Nights, Ruined, Trouble in Mind)  
Too much puppetry?  (Compulsion, The Composer is Dead, The Soldier’s Tale) 
Too much multi-disciplinarianism?  (Soldier’s Tale, The Wild Bride)
Too much activism?  (The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, Let Me Down Easy)  
Too many gay characters?  (Ghost Light, Body Awareness) 
...What?

Of course These Fine Folks are entitled to their opinion, and should subscribe to whatever theatre floats their boat!  But what does this mean, if the shows that Berkeley Rep and Aurora are programming for their seasons is too...whatever...for couples like These Fine Folks, who make up a good portion of the subscription population that these companies are trying to please? And what does it mean when some of the members of these audiences might find a lot of the "avant-garde" shows offered by professional theatres in town not at all avant-garde, but firmly within their boundaries?  Those same audiences that find all of those elements listed above not only aesthetically exciting, but sometimes even normal in their theatre going experience: those same audiences may actually WANT to see people of color, multidisciplinary art, masks and puppets, gay characters, and activists, and to see them as a matter of fact, and not as something "other".  


In fact, these "avant-garde"-loving audience members might find it stretches their comfort level to watch what These Fine Folks behind me at Othello would call normal. Stuff that Berkeley Rep and Aurora still program with as much frequency as the rest of it: shows about what These Fine Folks seem to want to see, shows that feature people that look like they do and grew up in similar circumstances and whose sexual orientation is neutral or closeted or straight, just like their own. Shows like A Delicate Balance, Red, Metamorphosis, Eccentricities of a Nightingale, How To Write a Book for the Bible, Anatol, A Doctor in Spite of Himself...well, frankly, more than half of each theatre's season.

Surely there’s a middle ground here.  In fact, I think the middle ground IS the ground.

First Pass

Welcome!  Here on this blah-dee-blog I will offer yet another shout to the crowd and a place to heckle with my cohorts.  The hope will always be to contribute something constructive to the ongoing conversations about art, theatre, dramaturgy, and the dramas therein.  Stay tuned!

(Image source)