Stephen McCandless
Nov 14, 2012
Stephen McCandless commented on Stories for Bad Children: Kelleen Conway Blanchard Plus Puppets.
Annex chooses its season from responses to our annual "Request for Proposals". No previous affiliation with Annex is required.
From these submissions the Annex Company chooses a season. We've decided that this is fair, as The Company is the body that will be working without pay to produce the chosen works. Thus, the only requirement that your play be produced at Annex is that it excite the artists who keep the theatre running.
If for whatever reason you that approach doesn't work for you, you can rent our theatre. The rates are quite reasonable; in fact, we subsidize our rental rates and charge less money than it actually costs us to maintain our space.
Between our own productions and rentals we produced or presented twenty-five different shows last year. And I'm happy to note here that many were created and directed by non-white-male types. Not that it's a focus of ours, things just turned out that way.
And Annex is only one of a dozen venues around town. All run by different groups with varying sensibilities; from the Rendezvous' Jewelbox, ACT's Central Heating Lab, and everything in-between.
Creating art is very frustrating, particularly in modern-day America. My fellow volunteers and I take great pains to afford every opportunity to those who would take to the stage.
In a few months Annex will have another RFP, and we will consider almost anything. Email the theatre and ask to be put on the 'backstage' list, and you'll receive the notice when it is sent out.
PS: I will point out that almost nobody (on a percentage basis) makes a living working in the theatre in this town. Which means for the most part the people you wish to work with are doing it do improve or adorn their lives. I would suggest that your feelings laid out in the toxic monologue above might not be as well-concealed as you think, and that your attitude might be one of your larger impediments.
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From these submissions the Annex Company chooses a season. We've decided that this is fair, as The Company is the body that will be working without pay to produce the chosen works. Thus, the only requirement that your play be produced at Annex is that it excite the artists who keep the theatre running.
If for whatever reason you that approach doesn't work for you, you can rent our theatre. The rates are quite reasonable; in fact, we subsidize our rental rates and charge less money than it actually costs us to maintain our space.
Between our own productions and rentals we produced or presented twenty-five different shows last year. And I'm happy to note here that many were created and directed by non-white-male types. Not that it's a focus of ours, things just turned out that way.
And Annex is only one of a dozen venues around town. All run by different groups with varying sensibilities; from the Rendezvous' Jewelbox, ACT's Central Heating Lab, and everything in-between.
Creating art is very frustrating, particularly in modern-day America. My fellow volunteers and I take great pains to afford every opportunity to those who would take to the stage.
In a few months Annex will have another RFP, and we will consider almost anything. Email the theatre and ask to be put on the 'backstage' list, and you'll receive the notice when it is sent out.
PS: I will point out that almost nobody (on a percentage basis) makes a living working in the theatre in this town. Which means for the most part the people you wish to work with are doing it do improve or adorn their lives. I would suggest that your feelings laid out in the toxic monologue above might not be as well-concealed as you think, and that your attitude might be one of your larger impediments.
Nov 14, 2012
Stephen McCandless commented on Stories for Bad Children: Kelleen Conway Blanchard Plus Puppets.
RE: @1, Anonymous
Annex received many proposals for our 25th season, two of which made the cut and were intentionally paired as they both involved puppets. Our plans for producing "A Mouse Who Knows Me" and "Audrey & Nelson" were in place well before Balagan announced they would be presenting "Avenue Q".
"Stories for Bad Children" features puppets by Vox Fabuli Puppets, who not coincidently fashioned in part the puppets in Annex's "Audrey & Nelson". The answer to your question regarding frequency is largely the product of a small group of very talented individuals who are seemingly inexhaustible, and the healthy range of smaller, but technically robust venues around Seattle that facilitate such experimentation.
Your comments about Ellen Forney's poster for "Kittens in a Cage" are such a wildly ignorant display they suggest an unfortunate paucity of character. That Ms. Forney is a beloved icon and your comments being simply another frothing screed with a hidden agenda is obvious; I only acknowledge them out of a sense of routine decorum.
Lastly, regarding the work of Kelleen Conway Blanchard. I have helped produce several plays by Kelleen, and have the privilege of having another scheduled next year. You are welcome to your tastes, but I can assure you that a significant portion of the theatre-going audience does not share them. Anyone with such a demonstrated ability to write such closely observed, nuanced, and wildly funny plays deserves to be fussed over in a city that values live performance.
PS: Treating the live-performance community like some zero-sum game is a wretched way to go about what is presumably your business.
Stephen McCandless
Managing Director, Annex Theatre
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Annex received many proposals for our 25th season, two of which made the cut and were intentionally paired as they both involved puppets. Our plans for producing "A Mouse Who Knows Me" and "Audrey & Nelson" were in place well before Balagan announced they would be presenting "Avenue Q".
"Stories for Bad Children" features puppets by Vox Fabuli Puppets, who not coincidently fashioned in part the puppets in Annex's "Audrey & Nelson". The answer to your question regarding frequency is largely the product of a small group of very talented individuals who are seemingly inexhaustible, and the healthy range of smaller, but technically robust venues around Seattle that facilitate such experimentation.
Your comments about Ellen Forney's poster for "Kittens in a Cage" are such a wildly ignorant display they suggest an unfortunate paucity of character. That Ms. Forney is a beloved icon and your comments being simply another frothing screed with a hidden agenda is obvious; I only acknowledge them out of a sense of routine decorum.
Lastly, regarding the work of Kelleen Conway Blanchard. I have helped produce several plays by Kelleen, and have the privilege of having another scheduled next year. You are welcome to your tastes, but I can assure you that a significant portion of the theatre-going audience does not share them. Anyone with such a demonstrated ability to write such closely observed, nuanced, and wildly funny plays deserves to be fussed over in a city that values live performance.
PS: Treating the live-performance community like some zero-sum game is a wretched way to go about what is presumably your business.
Stephen McCandless
Managing Director, Annex Theatre
Jun 29, 2012
Stephen McCandless commented on Up Tonight: "The Best Medicine" with Kermet Apio, Star Anna, and Others.
@5 Right, because how to correctly spell the name of a 25-year-old organization should be up for popular vote. Did I say vote? I meant "subject to fiat by the man with the loudest voice."
Mar 16, 2012
Stephen McCandless commented on This American Life Pulls Mike Daisey's Story About Apple's Labor Abuses in China Because Daisey Played Fast and Loose With the Facts.
Wow. Simply awful. That press release from TAL is damning - paragraph one: "... numerous fabrications."
Mar 9, 2012
Stephen McCandless commented on Film Industry Tax Break Passes Legislature.
Again, it's not a "tax break". It's a voluntary direction of existing B&O taxes by Washington Businesses to fund Washington Filmworks.
It's not a tax-break.
It's not a tax-break.
Mar 8, 2012
Stephen McCandless commented on Oh Fuck, I'm Stuck Watching TVW Again.
Goldy, TVW is pretty remarkable - you should at least give 'em a link.
Mar 3, 2012
Stephen McCandless commented on "No Revenue, No Budget!".
A point that is particularly galling is that for all of the Republicans talk about being "ignored" and how all of this was necessary because the Democrats wouldn't incorporate any of their ideas - it's simply not true.
A side-by-side of the two budgets has been posted here - it's even reasonably legible (thanks Publicola):
http://publicola.com/wp-content/uploads/…
If you don't have a lot of time - scroll to the bottom; it's only eight pages. The "Grand Total" line? $208M - that's the difference between the original budget and the only that had to be developed in secret and introduced with a coup because Democrats can't be trusted.
And that $208M is the difference in the CUTS. To be very, very clear about this, the Democrats had agreed - in addition to the four-year-budget and all - to $564M in cuts, and the Republicans want $773M. BOTH budgets are all-cuts.
And even that $208M is a fiction. Look a little further up page eight, under "Natural Resources". The only difference between the Democrat column and the Republican column is the $67M assigned to "MTCA Related Shifts". MTCA stands for "Model Toxics Control Act" - defined here (http://www.ecy.wa.gov/pubs/9406.pdf) and "innovative CITIZEN MANDATED toxic waste cleanup law".
So one-third of this $208M - this totally unreconcilable gulf that required the Republicans to throw the legislative schedule into chaos and complicated every political dealing for the foreseeable future - one-third of that is achieved by taking the money that was being used at the direction of Washington State citizens to clean up hazardous waste.
You want to guess whether the problems of dealing with that waste are going to get any cheaper while this program is zeroed-out? You think that cleaning up toxic waste is just another big-government scam?
There was no point to this. The budget the Republicans introduced isn't some pure expression of fiscal sensibility that had to be nailed to the door and accepted as revealed truth. This doesn't make sense when looking at the very limited policy disagreements between the two bills.
This was an expression of political power. Those behind it - to paraphrase Jon Stewart - "Have mistaken not getting everything they want all the time with being oppressed."
More...
A side-by-side of the two budgets has been posted here - it's even reasonably legible (thanks Publicola):
http://publicola.com/wp-content/uploads/…
If you don't have a lot of time - scroll to the bottom; it's only eight pages. The "Grand Total" line? $208M - that's the difference between the original budget and the only that had to be developed in secret and introduced with a coup because Democrats can't be trusted.
And that $208M is the difference in the CUTS. To be very, very clear about this, the Democrats had agreed - in addition to the four-year-budget and all - to $564M in cuts, and the Republicans want $773M. BOTH budgets are all-cuts.
And even that $208M is a fiction. Look a little further up page eight, under "Natural Resources". The only difference between the Democrat column and the Republican column is the $67M assigned to "MTCA Related Shifts". MTCA stands for "Model Toxics Control Act" - defined here (http://www.ecy.wa.gov/pubs/9406.pdf) and "innovative CITIZEN MANDATED toxic waste cleanup law".
So one-third of this $208M - this totally unreconcilable gulf that required the Republicans to throw the legislative schedule into chaos and complicated every political dealing for the foreseeable future - one-third of that is achieved by taking the money that was being used at the direction of Washington State citizens to clean up hazardous waste.
You want to guess whether the problems of dealing with that waste are going to get any cheaper while this program is zeroed-out? You think that cleaning up toxic waste is just another big-government scam?
There was no point to this. The budget the Republicans introduced isn't some pure expression of fiscal sensibility that had to be nailed to the door and accepted as revealed truth. This doesn't make sense when looking at the very limited policy disagreements between the two bills.
This was an expression of political power. Those behind it - to paraphrase Jon Stewart - "Have mistaken not getting everything they want all the time with being oppressed."
Mar 1, 2012
Stephen McCandless commented on The Final Push for a Local Film Industry Tax Break.
Again, it's not a tax-break. This bill allows Washington business to direct a portion of their State B&O tax to a rebate offered to production companies to defray the costs of shooting in Washington State.
The production companies pay the same taxes, the Washington State businesses pay the same taxes, those employed by the filming pay their taxes, everyone pays the same in tax.
The production companies DO receive approximately 30% in rebates on their costs. However, the rebate is limited to monies spent in Washington, and only paid out after the money is spent and the expenses reviewed.
In exchange for this $3.5M a year, many times more than that is spent by the production companies. The economic impact of this tax-earmark is felt across the state.
Lastly, this program is funded by business voluntarily redirecting their B&O taxes.
The production companies pay the same taxes, the Washington State businesses pay the same taxes, those employed by the filming pay their taxes, everyone pays the same in tax.
The production companies DO receive approximately 30% in rebates on their costs. However, the rebate is limited to monies spent in Washington, and only paid out after the money is spent and the expenses reviewed.
In exchange for this $3.5M a year, many times more than that is spent by the production companies. The economic impact of this tax-earmark is felt across the state.
Lastly, this program is funded by business voluntarily redirecting their B&O taxes.
Feb 17, 2012
Stephen McCandless commented on Some Tax Loopholes Have It Harder Than Others.
It is worth noting that this rebate is voluntarily funded by Washington businesses. It's not a tax-cut; it allows businesses to direct a portion of their B&O tax payment to fund this program. They only receive a 1:1 credit, meaning the businesses pay the same total amount of B&O. Further, the enabling legislation limits the funds so directed to $3.5M a year.
Secondly, in addition to only offering the rebate on money spent in Washington, and only paying the rebate _after_ that money has been spent and the expenses reviewed; the program requires that the projects provide health and retirement benefits to their employees.
Which means in most cases hiring Union crew.
I believe these seemingly small details make this program literally unique among such incentive programs.
Secondly, in addition to only offering the rebate on money spent in Washington, and only paying the rebate _after_ that money has been spent and the expenses reviewed; the program requires that the projects provide health and retirement benefits to their employees.
Which means in most cases hiring Union crew.
I believe these seemingly small details make this program literally unique among such incentive programs.
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Medic One fate again may lie in levy vote
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.c…
In an amazing display of short-sightedness and self-interest, the electorate voted to defund Emergency Medical Services. Classic.