1. Enough with the goddamned Shakespeare already. The
greatest playwright in history has become your enabler and your crutch,
the man you call when you’re timid and out of ideas. It’s time for a
five-year moratorium—no more high schoolers pecking at Romeo
and Juliet, no more NEA funding for Shakespeare in the heartland,
and no more fringe companies trying to ennoble themselves with
Hamlet. (Or with anything. Fringe theater shouldn’t be in the
game of ennobling, it should be in the game of debasement.) Stretch
yourself. Live a little. Find new, good, weird plays nobody has heard
of. Teach your audiences to want surprises, not pacifiers.
2. Tell us something we don’t know. Every play in your
season should be a premiere—a world premiere, an American
premiere, or at least a regional premiere. Everybody has to help.
Directors: Find a new play to help develop in the next 12 months.
Actors: Ditto. Playwrights: Quit developing your plays into the ground
with workshop after workshop after workshop—get them out there.
Critics: Reward theaters that risk new work by making a special effort
to review them. Unions, especially Actors’ Equity: You are a problem.
Fringe theaters are the research-and-development wing of the theater
world, the place where new work happens—but most of them can’t
afford to go union, so union actors are stuck in the regional theaters,
which are skittish about new work and early-career playwrights. You
must break this deadlock by giving a pass to union actors to
work in nonunion houses, if they are working on new plays.
3. Produce dirty, fast, and often. Fringe theaters:
Recall that 20 years ago, in 1988, a fringe company called Annex
produced 27 plays, 16 of them world premieres—and hang your heads
in shame. This season, Annex will produce 10 plays, 4 of them world
premieres, which is still pretty good. Washington Ensemble Theatre will
only produce three plays, one of them a world premiere. (An adaptation
of… Shakespeare!) What else happened in 1988? Nirvana began recording
Bleach—and played a concert at Annex Theatre. By the next
year, Nirvana was on their first world tour. The lesson: Produce enough
new plays and Kurt Cobain will come back from the grave and play your
theater.
4. Get them young. Seattle playwright Paul Mullin said
it best in an e-mail last week: “Bring in people under 60. Do whatever
it takes. If you have to break your theater to get young butts in
seats, then do it. Because if you don’t, your theater’s already
broke—the snapping sound just hasn’t reached your ears yet.”
5.Offer child care. Sunday school is the most
successful guerrilla education program in American history. Steal it.
People with young children should be able to show up and drop their
kids off with some young actors in a rehearsal room for two hours of
theater games. The benefits: First, it will be easier to convince the
nouveau riche (many of whom have young children) to commit to season
tickets. Second, it will satisfy your education mission (and will be
more fun, and therefore more effective, for the kids). Third, it will
teach children to go to the theater regularly. And they’ll look forward
to the day they graduate to sitting with the grown-ups. Getting dragged
to the theater will shift from punishment to reward.
6. Fight for real estate. In 1999, musician
Neko Case broke up with Seattle, leaving us for Chicago. (It still
hurts, Neko.) When asked why in an interview, she explained, “Chicago
is a lot friendlier, especially toward its artists. Seattle is very
unfriendly toward artists. There’s no artists’ housing—they
really like to use the arts community, but they don’t like to put
anything back into the arts community.” Our failure abides. Push
government for cheap artists’ housing and hook up with CODAC, a
committee that wants developers on Capitol Hill—and, eventually,
everywhere—to build affordable arts spaces into their new condos.
(CODAC’s tools of persuasion: tax, zoning, and business incentives.)
Development smothers artists, who can’t afford the rising property
values that they—by turning cheap neighborhoods into trendy arts
districts—helped create. To get involved with CODAC, e-mail
frank.video@seattle.gov.
7. Build bars. Alcohol is the only liquid on
earth that functions as both lubricant and bonding agent. Exploit it.
Treat your plays like parties and your audience like guests. Encourage
them to come early, drink lots, and stay late. Even the meanest fringe
company can afford a tub full of ice and beer, and the state of
regional-
theater bars is deplorable: long lines, overpriced
drinks, and a famine of comfortable chairs. Theaters try to “build
community” with postplay talkbacks and lectures and other versions of
you’ve spent two hours watching my play, now look at me some
more! You want community? Give people a place to sit, something to
talk about (the play they just saw), and a bottle. As a gesture of
hospitality, offer people who want to quit at intermission a free
drink, so they can wait for their companions who are watching act two.
Just take care of people. They get drinks, you get money, everybody
wins. Tax, zoning, and liquor laws in your way? Change them or ignore
them. Do what it takes.
8. Boors’ night out. You know what else builds
community? Audience participation, on the audience’s terms. For one
performance of each show, invite the crowd to behave like an
Elizabethan or vaudeville audience: Sell cheap tickets, serve popcorn,
encourage people to boo, heckle, and shout out their favorite lines.
(“Stella!”) The sucky, facile Rocky Horror Picture Show only
survives because it’s the only play people are encouraged to mess with.
Steal the gimmick.
9. Expect poverty. Theater is a drowning man,
and its unions—in their current state—are anvils disguised
as life preservers. Theater might drown without its unions, but it will
certainly drown with them. And actors have to jettison the
living-wage argument. Nobody deserves a living wage for having talent
and a mountain of grad-school debt. Sorry.
10. Drop out of graduate school. Most of you
students in MFA programs don’t belong there—your two or three
years would be more profitable, financially and artistically, out in
the world, making theater. Drama departments are staffed by has-beens
and never-weres, artists who might be able to tell you something
worthwhile about the past, but not about the present, and certainly not
about the future. Historians excepted—art historians are great.
If things don’t turn around, they may be the only ones left.
i read the stranger almost every week and it’s pretty blatantly obvious that its a snotty, free, ad-rag that’s good for late breaking happy hour updates and little else. (i know that is its raison d’etre). however, i like to laugh at the amateur agenda of its critics who mostly write like polemicists who’ve had a few too many happy hour libations. it’s simple to get your show reviewed in the stranger…#1.Drink with Brendan, #2 rant about how everyone is so sold-out and stupid except you (and he) #3 Repeat as often as you need to UNTIL you get real work from having played him for those reviews.
Brendan:
I find your opinions so infuriatingly simplistic that I wonder if you can also see Russia from your house.
Martin Dinn
Brendan, what a tsimmis you’ve cooked up. Bravo. I have to say that if I didn’t agree with much you say, I wouldn’t have worked to make ArtsWest actually utilize the applicable portions of your list.
· As of this season, we do pay actors, no less than minimum wage, including rehearsals. Not a living wage, but not the AG’s accepted “They’re volunteers being reimbursed for expenses” crap.
· I hate talkbacks in the theater (how self-indulgent can you get?). Our “talkbacks” are at Elliott Bay Brewery across the street or West 5 down the street. They do alcohol better than we do and we do better as a neighborhood playhouse when they do good business. Obviously, if you want a beer at ArtsWest, please go ahead and buy one. You can even bring it into the theater.
· We are producing 4 Seattle premieres in a 6 play season, one a world premiere that opens on the 22nd (“Black Gold”). I hope you’ll come and write about it; it’s one of the best plays I’ve read in years. But I won’t force you to come, nor will I tell you what to write (that’s not my job). I just think you’ll like “Black Gold.” By the way, all of our plays are contemporary, and have been for a couple of years now.
· We have a playwrights program in house and Mavis Lamb, who runs it, constantly is getting the writers to sh*t or get off the pot when submission time comes.
· Look, we’re not a fringe theater (any more), but we’re not a big theater, either. We’d love to use union performers more, but at $300/week for 10 weeks, it’s hard to afford. (We’re forced to rehearse 6 weeks for a 4-week run because the non-union actors have other jobs that pay them. We can’t overtax them by rehearsing them for 40 hours in a week, which is what the union assumes you’re doing — they only think of pay on a weekly basis, not an hourly basis.)
Oh, and to Will who said that “you don’t have to pay royalties for any theater under 400 people, and usually not at all because it’s for educational purposes”: that’s crap. EVERY company, including educational groups, must pay royalties unless the piece (and its translation/adaptation) is in the public domain. Everyone has to pay. Even on free productions. There’s no such law about not paying because of your building’s size or how many performances you give. When you use someone’s intellectual property, you have to pay for it, no matter what you charge. They deserve it. Ask an attorney or look it up.
Brendan, we agonize with the issues of the day and how to require conversation by producing plays about them, which is our mission. I write about them in my own blog…
http://test.artswest.org/?q=blog
…so you can get more insight into the ugly, sausage-making part of the process.
Thanks for caring enough to write this…
What evidence is being used here to back up the assertion that theater is “dying?” The number of producing theaters in this country has grown every single year since the ’60s. The trends say more people are attending theater today than at any other point in American history. Seattle may have had a boom, and may be experiencing a bit of a contraction right now, but I don’t see any fat ladies on the horizon gearing up for a big syonara aria.
True regional theater (work that reflects the unique culture of the place and time the play is born in) is only just now in its adolescence, particularly in the Northwest.
And maybe adolescence is the right time for the “lets take $500 bucks and put on a play” ethos. I’ve seen it create great work. AND I’ve seen artists get stuck in the trap, after 20 years of exhaustive bootstrapping, of thinking that’s the only kind of work they are ever going to be able to produce.
Everyone starts there. And as a clarion call to new playmakers to get out there and try something, I think what you have to say is great.
But over the long haul, idealizing rapidly produced, under-trained, zero budget garage-band theater subsidized by Starbucks barista paychecks is not supporting the best and brightest new work. It’s telling the best and the brightest that their work has no future, no chance to be relevant to the broader culture, no right to be compensated for their talent. It turns playwrights into screenwriters and account executives and lord knows the world doesn’t need more of those.
You want new work to get more play? Awesome. Don’t you want that new work to get the kind of play it deserves? With committed professional actors focused on the project (and not how they’re going to make rent), theater companies who have honed their skills and been selective about their workloads so they can provide the new work with the attention and resources it deserves, and a press corps that acts as true advocates for that work to their readers?
I love great fringe theater. I’m passionate about new work. I love it enough to support both with a NEW WORK-only citywide festival down here in Portland in January.
But I want that new work to be well covered, well funded,well attended and brought to life by trained professionals working at the top of their craft. And making that happen, as some of the other commenters have so astutely pointed out, is as much about inspiring audiences through impassioned media and audience engagement as it is about cutting down budgets and lowering the expectations of artists to get paid for their work.
So lower the barrier to audience participation with booze and daycare, by all means.
But don’t tell the people working at the very forefront of our culture that they shouldn’t expect to be compensated for their work. And do consider how you can use what you do best (impassioned prose) to stop heralding the premature death of local art and start inspiring people to take more risks, consume more theater (instead of Starbucks), and invest in local artists rather than spend another weekend buying some Hollywood producer another mani-pedi.
Make it a manifesto. We’ll help you make it into a movement. But only if you treat our profession with the same respect that you treat your own.
-Trisha Pancio
Festival Director
Fertile Ground: Portland’s city-wide festival of new work
http://www.fertilegroundpdx.com
Theater isn’t the only type of performance in Seattle, people… and there are only so many pages in the paper.
We’ve got very active music, fine arts, theater, sketch and stand-up comedy scenes throughout this city… which ones should have their coverage cut back to accommodate the theater community?
You want space in the paper? EARN IT. Your shitty multi-racial version of Romeo and Juliet does not warrant 2 inches simply by virtue of being theater.
Or, hows about starting your own zine, detailing all 150 plays in town? Or even just a blog? Pass out the url on cards for audiences as they’re leaving and treat if like Yelp.
Or you could, you know… bitch that no one is taking you seriously. That will really endear you to the rest of the art community.
Circle Rep used to produce 52 shows a year in the Lab space. We got a budget of $100. (which no one ever actually collected from the management although you could if you needed it)Here is how it worked. There was no charge for shows and the theater seated less than 99 and it was within the company never publicly advertised and critics didn’t come, so AEA was cool with it. We used a large room with a lighting grid in the offices so costs (rent + electricity) were budgeted in with ongoing cost of doing business. What really made it work is that Michael Warren Powell was a staunch defender of it. He selected plays and facilitated the discussion of the work with the playwright at the following weekly company meeting. We all knew each other’s work and the discussions were critical but not what these discussions have become in recent years because they were critique among peers who knew each other’s body of work. As you know many of these playwrights (Paula Vogel Lanford Wilson) Actors (Anthony Rapp) and directors (Joe Mantello)are now famous. We had a real home and a safe place to develop the work and show it to audiences, not TALK about doing it.
Also, one of the things you fail to recognize is the need for good designers and technicians…I think a theatre is only as good as the respect it has for those of us who do the grunt work. Yes, we chose it, but it’s amazing how expendable the higher-ups seem to think we are…until things go wrong, and then we get the blame.
Most LORT theatre Artistic Directors make six-figure incomes. And those of us down the line who are working 60-80 hour weeks, abusing our bodies, so tired that we’re making stupid, dangerous mistakes, make a laughable fraction of that. When I sit outside on lunch figuring out how I’m going to pay bills this month and the Big Boss drives up in his brand new Mercedes to begin his day(he chose to leave the Beamer at home), it doesn’t make me want to stay. And in theatre, where collaboration is essential, you abslutely cannot have a new face at the production meeting every single season. It would be like a major corporation having a new VP every fiscal year. Theatres need to remember that the important people aren’t just the ones on the stage – they’re backstage, they’re in the shops, they’re covering everyone’s ass in rehearsal. Hire more staff, pay them better, and see how it goes.
Also, Shakespeare is great. It gets people in the seats. And some of the more recent Shakespeare productions are some of the most relevant pieces in theatre history. Don’t get the guy in tights talking to the skull – get the man in battle dress talking to a body in a morgue. Don’t settle for Romeo and Juliet on a balcony in moonlight, get them on a fire escape in the streetlight with gunfire echoing down the alley. I agree that doing the same tired stuff is pointless, but in the same vein, the classics are as relevant as we make them.
As a Chicagoan:
The Reader is certainly important to the theatre community, but in many ways it was Richard Chritiansen and Essie Kupcinet who made the theatre revolution of the 70’s possible in Chicago. Their support and Christiansen’s willingness to embrace, review and champion the fringe theatres that popped up all over the place is what made the difference. What any community needs is champions and supporters ready to make the difference.
As to the grad school argument, it sounds more like the author ran out of items for his list. Either that or he hasn’t really learned much about the faculty he so blithely defames.
Dear everybody: Just to clear up a few points.
1. I do like theater. I want it to be higher quality, richer, more popular, better funded. That’s why I offer this advice.
2. Of course I wish everyone could have a living wage. But artists of all kinds choose to enter a very risky, very popular profession. Anyone who takes such a risk cannot expect (and demand) a guaranteed reward. That’s not the way risk works. (Or it shouldn’t, anyway. Which is why the partial nationalization of our banking industry—when we haven’t even managed to nationalize health care—is so maddening.)
I want you all to have the resources you need. But you’ve no right to expect them, just as I’ve no right to expect them just because I’ve chosen to work in a dying corner (arts criticism) of a dying industry (newspapers).
These are the risks we take for doing things we care about. I’m not trying to take something away from you—I’m just asking you to face facts.
Greetings,
#11, Solicit and listen to feedback from the audience. What they like about this choice of material to perform and its performance. About what they might like to see coming up (existing plays, new work from living playwrights or local playwrights, looked for topics in new plays.)
And existing plays can be worthwhile. Note the recent performances of Eurydice, as one example.
— from David Olson, Tukwila
Good advice, tell the Seattle theater community this. I have been shopping my below-the-belt farce around town and doors aren’t quit opening up as I thought they would be. I know it’s funny, edgy, if only Seattle would be interested in taking a chance. We need to develop late night theater in Seattle which would bring younger folks back to theater instead of just going to the movies. Look for “House of the Falling Sun” by Dylan J. Rosen.
I am a director/actor from Chicago- you may be over praising our press. The Main newspapers cover little, but the big theaters. The Reader seems to be dying. I agree with getting rid of Shakespeare.
I would add one more idea: Big theaters need to develop new work by having small theaters be their experimental labs.
Will — What you said about Samuel French: totally false. Samuel French is all about amateur rights, and that damn well includes educational institutions. They make a large portion of their income from schools. And places like Tams-Witmark and Music Theatre International are particularly adept at soaking high schools and colleges for huge royalties. The Greeks are the same: unless you are using a translation in the public domain, be ready to fork out a royalty. That said, all theatre people — not just high school and college drama profs — would do well to seek out new work, unproduced work, obscure published work. The problem: that would involve doing lots of reading, and theatre people are notoriously uninterested in doing that kind of work. Furthermore, most have no idea how to even go about locating new work to read. It is a failure all the way up and down the educational chain.
This is going to be a reaction to both the article and the posted comments from COMTE. First, the article makes several strong points but I will agree with several replys in that some of the very lofty goals are unachievalve. My biggest disagreement is with point #9. While I am not an actor myself I make my living in tech theatre. Right now I live and work in Colorado Springs a city with no unions. However if I were to move 50 miles north to Denver joining the union would provide better working opportunities and wages. While yes I may be excluded from the the “fringe” the fact of enjoying eating once in awhile cancels that out. I don’t agree with the statement “no one deserves a living wage for having talent…” I know the sentence continues but thats where I stopped reading. Brendan I feel that your article is like a mouse trying to yell at a group of giants. Great that you have found success in you systems but thats what they are YOUR systems. I work for a very succesful regional theatre, which hires both union and non-union talent, that built its reputation on Shakespeare.
Lastly I just want to comment on COMTE post that non-union acotrs and technicians are forgoing “professional status”. That is true arroggance and ignorance. Go to a show being done by professional non-union theatres and tell them their not true professionals and see what happens.
#7 and #8 RIGHT ON THE MONEY
hello, theater is entertainment. IMHO, give the audience a drink and some popcorn and you might have a 3/4 of full house EVERY night. Theater Companies need to think outside of the (black) box once and while.
The only people who don’t like Shakespeare are the ones who can’t understand it.
We all like Shakespeare, you fucking dolt. Kiley’s “five-year moratorium” isn’t a lifelong ban.
Theatre companies DO have to pay royalties to produce a work, even if you have a house of 30 people. That 400 thing is simply not true.
And don’t congratulate Chicago too much. All publications have cut their theatre reviews. They DO NOT review every play, but only handful. There are, however, listings for every play.
Reviewers are often times unqualified. They are paid very little and a fair amount of them seem to be grad students who hate the theatre, but want to write and get paid to be pretentious and to perfect their zingers. Unless, of course, they’re reviewing Steppenwolf. The ad revenue there is probably a bit too large.
I very much appreciate this article. I do think there needs to be more new work and it shouldn’t be such a risk for a company to produce new work. I also think there needs to be more money spent on commissioning and workshopping new plays, so we disagree there. It is hard to find great new work, though not impossible. The main problem: WHAT ARTIST HAS THE TIME AND MONEY TO DEVOTE TO THE THEATRE FULLY AND WITH RECKLESS ABANDON?
Answer: none. Because we don’t fund the arts the way we should. We don’t run them like businesses (at least not most of them– the ones that are doing new work). Why? Because there’s not enough money in it. And we’re too busy working three other jobs.
How about taking a look at your pricing or at least your ticketing policies. Just paid $14 for a ticket, $6.50 Ticketmaster fee, $1.50 service change and $2.00 theatre renovation fee (and they wanted more money for me to print my own ticket online). I don’t have a problem in the world with a great $14 ticket price, heck I wouldn’t even mind a $25 ticket price but I don’t expect to pay everyone else in the pipeline too. Fool me and include EVERYTHING in the published price of the ticket and dole it out to those other parties if need be – it won’t be nearly as painful to the customer if they don’t see where their money goes and there would be no surprises when they log on or call for tickets. Steer clear of Ticketmaster and other selling venues that charges such obscene fees for such a small amount of work or at least offer the options of an open box office so that the customer has at least the option of avoiding those additional charges. Just got a great deal on a new small local company – 4 shows for $36 general admission seating any performance and absolutely no hidden or additional charges. And in addition to the two season tickets I previously planned to purchase I bought two more so that we could invite another couple to join us.
Obviously Mr.Kiley has never run a theatre, been involved as a managing director of a theatre, or had producing experience, otherwise he would never had suggested such ill-conceived, scatter brained notions for theatres to “save themselves”.
A few of his ideas are old hat and have been tried (and failed), others are just so off the wall, that any theatre practioner applying them would be considered candidates for the loony bin, and shut up shop soon thereafter. As provocative as Mr. Kiley likes to be, a few of his suggestions are certainly valid. However, I think you’ll find that theatres have already identified them and have already successfully incorporated them into their strategic planning.
Mr. Kiley’s time would be better spent encouraging newspapers to review every professional show possible, print weekly profiles on theatres, actors and directors, employ intelligent and qualified theatre critics, quickly replace a theatre critic if they leave the job, and provide theatres with low cost display advertising. These are a few things that newspapers need do right now to save theatres.
John Neville-Andrews
Brendan —
I’d find your comments more convincing if you demanded of yourself the same standards you demand of us.
What, you can’t even be bothered to read the play you’re going to review before you come to the theater? You can’t be bothered to stay the whole time?
signed, “the brown-haired woman wearing fake black side curls”
Sean:
As a 23 year veteran of the Seattle Theatre Community, I have and DO continue to call them as I sees them; and the people around here who know me, know my history, my credentials, and my experience, while they may not LIKE hearing this, and in many cases certainly don’t AGREE with it, respect it nevertheless.
A person can call themselves “professional”, but self-selecting for that particular appellation doesn’t mean it’s true. The simple fact of the matter is that, unless you’re being paid some semblance of a living wage, one sufficient to entail you to perform a particular task, job, endeavor, what-you-will, to the exclusion of any other form of employment – even if only for a few weeks out of the year, then you really AREN’T a working professional, and have no right to call yourself one, no matter how much you may BELIEVE it to be true.
Artists, and particularly performing artists, have an infuriating tendency to bandy about the term “professional” willy-nilly, to the point that the meaning of the word has been almost completely devalued in our medium. In many cases they do so without EVER doing ANYTHING that, in any other field or profession would acknowledge they’ve actually EARNED the right to call themselves such.
We don’t have “amateur” doctors, lawyers, or accountants – and nobody in their right mind would put their trust in someone who advertised themselves as such. Furthermore, in order to be considered worthing of being called a professional, practitioners in these fields must undergo rigorous training, successfully complete exhausting testing regimens, and frequently be vetted by their peers. Yet, any actor (or technician) feels they have a RIGHT to call themselves a professional, if they’ve ever cashed a $50 stipend check. That’s an insult to the very concept of professionalism, and denigrates those who HAVE trained, worked, and achieved actual professional status in our industry.
I don’t have any problem with anyone who cultivates within themselves an attitude that strives to achieve professional standards of conduct and behavior; that’s a laudable goal. But, as a card-carrying union member, and as someone who HAS, if only briefly in a 25 year career, been a working professional, I am not about to grant that title to any Tom, Dick, or Shirley who thinks they deserve it simply because they say so, when they have never achieved even the minimal level of accomplishment to indicate they’ve earned it.
“Obviously Mr.Kiley has never run a theatre, been involved as a managing director of a theatre, or had producing experience, otherwise he would never had suggested such ill-conceived, scatter brained notions for theatres to “save themselves”.”
Which is why at least one of the small fringe theatres I’m involved with (with a HUGE audience) is considering each and everyone of his ideas.
Don’t agree with everything in the original article and certainly don’t agree with every implementation, but there’s a hell of a lot of truth there.
And I sure as hell ain’t bagging on the Stranger. Yeah, LIST every show—that’s what media is there for, as a reference. But reviews? Psh. The best and the worst reviews I ever got were from the Stranger, and the resulting box offices for the shows were exactly the same.
C’mon, Comte…there’s a bit of a distance between an amateur doctor and an amateur actor. Hyperbolize much?
No, I wouldn’t want an amateur dentist pulling my teeth, but I’d be glad to watch an amateur actor perform a play. Sometimes (don’t tell anyone) I prefer it. And sometimes (again, don’t tell anyone) I’d rather work with the amateur…they’re nicer to work with, a lot of the time. They aren’t as prone to be divas.
We all know that there are a lot of us ‘amateurs’ who make a partial living acting. But simply purchasing an AEA membership does not a ‘professional’ make. AEA membership is about wages and safety. There is no inherent ‘professionalism,’ no talent edge, no guarantee of talent…it’s not really even a union. A union helps out its members when they are out of work. AEA cares very little about assistance, or it would be concerned about the ecology of a theater community like Puget Sound.
Same goes for the Stranger’s record. Comte’s nailed you on that one, Kiley. Like the rest of your so-called newspaper, it’s (not to put too fine a point on it) a load of crap. Poor writing, inexperienced or ignorant reviews and reviewers…why bother? The newspapaer either cares or it doesn’t care about its reading constituency. Yours does not. And I don’t mean the theater community…I mean the readers you ought to care about in order to keep from dying. The ones to attract. Who care about theater. Who pick up your paper to see what’s really happening but can’t find a decent damn thing about the theater scene, and stop picking it up.
Hmmm. Now I see the comparison. The Stranger doesn’t care about the theater community, and it loses readers (other than the sex clubs and hipsters) and it eventually folds. AEA doesn’t care about the theater community, and eventually all the good actors leave and the theater community folds.
There is a theater troupe in seattle that is trying to do all you espouse.
Maybe it’s time to take a second look at this hard working and original troupe, that has grown far beyond your first impressions long ago. They create new work almost every single time they open the doors and, while not all of it is ACT or The Rep caliber, there is some good stuff happening there — every single show.
Hint: it’s located on Dexter and Harrison.
For all of you still reading this thread, the Seattle Rep has invited me to host a forum regarding this article on Monday Oct 27 at 7:30 pm.
I’ll talk a little, but mostly it will be an open discussion, with you all talking to each other.
Booze will be plentiful and cheap.
Wow. That was fantastic.
What I learned: Pour liquor on it.
Jenner, are you talking about Open Circle? FWIW, they’ve moved to Belltown. The same building Freehold is now in.
So Chris, what would you call me? I don’t fit your definition of a “professional” as either a playwright or an actor. I believe you saw my work as both in Annex’s production of TUESDAY. I stand by its quality, wearing both hats, at the highest of levels, but if I’m not a “professional” by your standards, or anyone else’s, then I have to shake my head and walk away from such empty distinctions.
I’m surprised at you, my friend, driving this dichotomy when it’s obviously the last thing we need in our efforts to raise the game in this good, but not yet great, theatre town.
Brendan,
Yes, the Rep is hosting this event and THANK GOD you’ll be talking very little — I think we’ve all heard enough from you at this point.
The fact that you say you can’t list every play because it wouldn’t leave enough space for your articles is laughable. Your articles are worthless, pretentious, uninformed, completely masturbatory and damaging to the arts community. Why do you even do the job you do? You’re not good at it, you seems to despise art by your shear lack of respect in that you don’t spend nearly enough time educating yourself. How many times do you read the play before you go review it? How often do you interview a development staffer or fundraiser of a theatre? How often do you sit down with the head of corporate giving at a company? How often have you put a production budget together? How many times have you fallen in love with a new work and poured your heart and bank account in it only to look at empty seats every night because some asshole at The Stranger was so busy patting himself on the back for his latest one-liner that he couldn’t find space or time to print the schedule of the show or give it some preview press that is informed and enticing?
We all want great art. We all want great artists. We all want to be innovators but butts in seats only pay part of the bills. We need as many seats filled as possible and in the meantime, we all raise as much money for our art as we possibly can. That’s where you could help — list everything that’s going on in the city — from basement fringe to ACT. Let people know there’s a wealth of stuff going on in this city at any given moment. Run preview articles that tell people why the play is important. We chose it for a reason — help us tell the people why. Publish the dicounts and special deals that theatres offer regularly. There are student discounts, under 25 discounts, under 40 discounts — there are plenty of way to see theatre cheap in this city. Help us spread the word.
We’re OVER you Brendan — and we’re over The Stranger. You want to help? — stop writing asshole articles, get informed and try to say something positive once in awhile.
And maybe you could take the garbage home in your car once in awhile…
*Sigh!* I guess, if people want to continue to argue the point, without apparently bothering to READ anything I’ve written regarding the issue, then I’ll just have to keep repeating myself ad nauseum.
So, just to make things absolutely clear: One does NOT confer “professional status” upon oneself; that flies against the entire purpose of distinguishing between a professional and an amateur in EVERY field of endeavor that embraces the concept. And as I also stated previously, this is something quite different from developing and maintaining an ATTITUDE of professionalism; there are a myriad of talented individuals in our community, who, while they may not have earned professional status, nevertheless conduct themselves in a manner that bespeaks of having a sense of professional demeanor. That, in and of itself, does not MAKE them “professional” in terms of certification, but it does indicate an aspiration toward such, and I heartily support the continued cultivation of that kind of attitude in our industry.
You know, there once was a time, not so many years ago, when people in many endeavors embraced the term “amateur” in its original meaning, “one who does for the love of”. It was worn, not as a mark of shame, but rather, as a badge of honor, because it conferred the idea that the person so designated possessed a purity of intent that elevated them above such base considerations as financial remuneration for example.
Now granted, the word has been denigrated over time to be perceived as a pejorative to the point that now people view the word as being synonymous with “ineptitude” or “of low quality”, but I don’t think that SHOULD be the case at all. Most of us do what we do out of true love for the medium, for the work, for our fellow performers – and under those circumstances, I can’t imagine why someone would be ashamed to be called an “amateur” IF the word is used in its purest, truest sense.
And Paul, if you truly wish to have the distinction of “professional playwright” bestowed upon you, I would think applying for membership in the Dramatists Guild (www.dramatistsguild.com) would be an excellent place to start.
On the other hand, if you want instead to simply “walk away from such empty distinctions” that’s perfectly fine by me. I simply take umbrage at people bestowing appellations upon themselves which they haven’t earned, and therefore don’t deserve. If you, or anyone else for that matter, feels they HAVE earned the distinction of being called a “professional” in their chosen field, well, there’s always a sanctioning body to vet that process; you just have to seek it out.
Or, quit bitching because you either haven’t made the effort, or, they didn’t approve your application.
Oh, and Paul, how does letting every Tom, Dick and Shirley call themselves a “professional” without some sort of vetting process “raise the game”? That’s just a recipe for allowing things to degenerate into a state of abject mediocrity, with the end result of diluting the very concept of professionalism until it becomes essentially meaningless, and therefore completely irrelevant.
If anyone can become a “professional” simply by virtue of self-proclamation, then eventually NOBODY will be, because there’s no longer any demonstrable distinction between what a professional is and is not.
I turned Equity at 19. I walked away from it. I was offered membership in the Dramatists Guild at 23. I declined. I suppose that makes me an amateur, and I will most certainly give your email address to anyone who seeks further clarification the non-pejorative connotation of that word.
The day I seek accreditation from a sanctioning body for my standing as an artist is the day I choke on my own bile.
And you know me well enough, Chris, to know I pit my chops, professional or otherwise, in acting or writing for the stage, against the best in the business.
To an some (perhaps arcane) extent you’re right: being a “professional” theatre artist is like being a professional poet or professional philosopher. As soon as you join the words together they become mutually absurd.
From Comte: “. . .the end result of diluting the very concept of professionalism until it becomes essentially meaningless, and therefore completely irrelevant.
If anyone can become a “professional” simply by virtue of self-proclamation, then eventually NOBODY will be, because there’s no longer any demonstrable distinction between what a professional is and is not.”
Sounds perfect. Where do I sign up?
Sounds to me like you already have, Paul.
Keep that in mind the next time you’re looking for a doctor, dentist, lawyer or accountant – I’m sure the self-proclaimed “professionals” in those fields will be just as good as those hoity-toity, elitist “board certified professionals” – and a lot cheaper too!
Okay, Mullin, COMTE . . . You’re both pretty. And you’ve both got some good points.
When you make the comparison to a doctor, dentist, lawyer, or accountant, you fail to acknowledge that art, by its very nature, deals in the subjective (often the radically subjective). It also ignores that musical history, for the last 50 years or so, has been largely driven by people who only know (or knew) three chords, who coasted on a vain hope that someone might buy a “product” that was invented while its hopeful inventors were probably slaving away at day jobs.
I think we need to first agree that education, professional status, and legitimacy (whatever that is) are all very different things, that an educated artist simply doesn’t differ, necessarily, from the autodidact in the way that an accredited physician differs from an inspired amateur because the human body, at least on the surface and in principle, is a fixed system that operates according to consistent rules. One might posit that the human condition, truth, beauty, or any of those abstractions on which artists hang their respective hats are also fixed systems, but such an assertion is fundamentally untestable. To call study of the human condition a soft science is to greatly flatter its empirical veracity.
To be “professional” is a matter between you and your landlord, or to ponder when determining how much longer you can take the cycle of working during the week and making art with the rest of your time. There’s nothing either ignoble or, truth be told, PARTICULARLY noble about being professional, though it’s always a laudable goal. A band that plays covers of the Eagles for weddings is “professional,” and so is Nick Cave (though one suspects he had to toil for years as an “amateur” before his experiments created a marketable product). Professionalism produces mediocrity as surely as does amateurism; I won’t mark my career any more than I already have by listing the successful, mainstream, professional playwrights I consider mediocre, but I’m sure I’m not the only one here who could name a few.
Sometimes, I’m paid a nice wage for my acting work; sometimes I’m not. If I’m professional in one capacity and not in the other, well . . . fine. But I submit, in that case, that the word “professional” is the one that speaks least to my legitimacy (again, whatever that is) as an artist.
You’ve gone off the rails, Chris. Should I throw out my volumes of William Carlos Williams because he made his living as a physician?
What does art have to do with board certification anyway? If I wanted plumbing I’d hire a plumber. If I wanted someone to act like a plumber, I’d hire an actor. I’d either audition them or cast them based on my knowledge of their work. I sure as hell wouldn’t call Equity and ask them to recommend someone.
I actually sit on that side of the casting table, remember? The “AEA” at the top of an auditioner’s resume is usually only of interest in that it means that I probably can’t work with them in Seattle. It sure DOESN’T mean they’re automatically qualified for a role.
It’s a club, Chris. You know it. I know it. And it’s time the folks who aren’t, like us, on the inside knew it, too, so maybe we can talk about changing a an unworkable system. Unless, of course, as seems to be the case, Seattle members of the union have little or no say in how they govern themselves.
It’s time to throw the tea the harbor.
This “amateur dentist and lawyer” argument is totally specious. Those regulations are about consumer protection. If Equity successfully protected regional-theater audiences from bad acting, you might have a case, but…
A closer analogy would be a professional league of painters or sculptors—which, of course, doesn’t exist.
Imagine this: A bureaucracy of gatekeepers between artists and galleries that tell curators who they can and can’t show in their galleries. Sounds totally counterproductive, doesn’t it?
Equity was founded in the early 1900s, back when rapacious producers and theater owners really fucked actors over.
We don’t live in that world any more, especially not after the rise of the nonprofit model. So what’s Equity for today? And how’s it helping? And if your union is so goddamned great, why are so many “professional” actors still migrant workers who can’t afford houses?
The system is broken.
Geez, it looks like I picked on COMTE the whole time, but the later portion also speaks a bit to Mullin. I guess what I wonder is, Mullin, if you and I both agree (and I think we do) that the term “professional” doesn’t speak to the quality of our work, why do we covet (and I think we do) that appellation? I mean, I KNOW why we want the money, but that’s sort of a different topic. I’d love to be paid, but as to how I’m known, I’d rather people say that I’m good than that I’m professional.
Brendan – “A closer analogy would be a professional league of painters or sculptors—which, of course, doesn’t exist.”
Mmmmmmmaybe . . . Or maybe a closer analogy would be a workers’ union like any other–Teamsters, AFL-CIO, whatever. Only, you know, without the money.
I think there’s a legitimate use for such a union for performers, because I think there are performers (and other artists) who function like workers. Some people really are artists the way other people are doctors or plumbers.
Some of the rest of us are artists the way other people are epileptics: it seizes us, it wrecks us, and it’s just possible that you won’t get us to stop unless you cut into our brains.
To thelyamhound: You speak as if you know me. Do you? I’ll respond only this one to an essentially anonymous poster.
I could give a shit if anyone ever calls me professional. “Professional playwright”? Hah! Why not “professional cooper” or “professional candledipper”? Our art form is so far from the exigencies of the marketplace that to speak in terms of protection for the workers is quickly moving from the absurd to the obscene.
Sorry to have been overly familiar; it’s possible we’ve met, but I don’t think so. If I did, well, it was my honor, and sorry I’ve forgotten about it; I’ll blame drink.
I was only addressing “you” (or rather, the “author function” of your comments) because I sympathized with some–hell, most–of what you said, and because I know COMTE (in the meat world, even!), and, since I was directly addressing him, it seemed only fair to do so to you.
Agreed on our distance from the exigencies of the marketplace and such; otherwise, sorry if I crossed some line or other in addressing your arguments.
No line crossed. Just like to know who I’m tussling with. We seem for the most part to be vehemently agreeing.
And for the record to all: Chris Comte is a gentleman AND a professional (in whatever sense one could mean it). He certainly has the standing to speak on any subject regarding the theatre he chooses, but I humbly submit this is because of his body of work and immense dedication, and not because he’s got three letters at the top of his resume.
(I do love and admire you, Chris. You’re just caught defending the wrong approach for our art at this time.)
Brendan, consumer protection is just one small facet of why these professions have vetting bodies; another is to maintain standards of ethical and professional conduct; to help ensure their members maintain up-to-date skill-sets; and to act as advocates for the profession and its members, among the many other functions. And I would have to say, based on my experience as a union member and a representative of union members, Equity, AFTRA, SAG and the other performers unions fulfill these functions admirably – you may not like HOW they do this, but then, nobody’s twisting your arm and forcing you to join, are they?
And just like any other similar professional association, Equity cannot guarantee 100% of the time that the actor you see on stage at The Rep or 5th Ave is going to be “better” than some inexperienced amateur, but your definition of what “better” is just as subjective as the qualities you’re criticizing to some extent. That being said, there ARE nevertheless quantifiable measures of ability: you can tell when the singer doesn’t hit the note, or when the dancer stumbles, and even usually when the actor drops a line, and given a choice between an Equity actor and a non-union actor, you have much better odds of the former having the education, training, and experience needed to successfully achieve those objectives than you do with the latter. That’s one reason why audiences are willing to pay more for a production at an Equity theatre, because there is an expectation on their part that they will be seeing professionals engaged in a higher-quality of performance. Yes, it is somewhat subjective, but not completely so, and to argue otherwise is simply ignoring the obvious.
And while there may not be a “professional league of painters and sculptors” NOW, there have been such associations in the past, and even today there ARE numerous professional associations of writers, singers, dancers, musicians, photographers, composers, choreographers – and many other artistic pursuits that recognize and adhere to standards set down by their governing agencies. So, the argument that just because SOME artistic disciplines aren’t governed under any sort of adjudicating authority, therefore acting (which DOES in fact already have such agencies) is somehow exempt from such vetting – simply doesn’t wash.
Paul, the more pertinent question is NOT whether someone can be a “professional something” while at the same time they engage in artistic pursuits; the issue is would that artist (and we’ll take WCW as the example, since you bring him up) would consider themselves a “professional” in both arenas? Williams continued his medical practice during his entire tenure as a writer, and in fact, even drew inspiration from it; he most certainly didn’t abandon it when people started buying his poetry. But, so far as I’m aware at least, he never considered himself to be, nor did he ever identify himself as a “professional poet”. So, really, what’s your point?
Ah, but here’s the rub: you wouldn’t “call Equity and ask for someone” to play a plumber, but if you can GET an Equity actor to play a plumber, and NOT have to pay them a living wage, then everything’s cool, right? So, you’ll take the “professional”, but only when the terms suit your own needs and purposes, that is, when you can get them on-the-cheap.
Really, you’ve got a bit of nerve calling the union you QUIT a “club”, then criticizing it from the outside because it doesn’t allow you to exploit its members in exactly the manner the union was created to prevent! The system you describe as “unworkable” is only so – IN YOUR OPINION – because it doesn’t let you get away with paying union actors next-to-nothing in exchange for their labor, which is really all you seem to care about. If you want to cast actors who are more concerned about “doing the art” than “making a living doing the art”, then you’ve got a sufficiently large pool of volunteer labor already at your disposal. But, apparently even you yourself don’t consider them “good enough”, because you keep harping back to the notion that “if only the UNION would let me use their members at fringe theatre rates of compensation, THEN everything would be hunky-dory!”
You can call Equity a “club” Paul, but that’s a statement of opinion, not of fact. Actors Equity Association is a LABOR UNION, recognized as such by the National Labor Relations Board, the Associated Actors and Artistes of America, and the AFL-CIO; none of which are in the business of sanctioning “clubs”. Just because YOU happen to think of it in such a manner, don’t make it so. You got a problem with labor unions, again, that’s your opinion to express, but I don’t have to watch you sit at your computer and INSULT the tens of thousands of actors who have chosen to associate themselves with AEA, who recognize the collective benefits of union solidarity, and who actively strive to improve the lot of working actors across the country, especially when, by your own admission, you’d prefer to use UNION ACTORS in your shows, IF ONLY they wouldn’t be so uppity as to demand things like living wages and safe working conditions!
So far as I can tell, you seem to be suggesting the system is “unworkable” because it doesn’t let you do what you want, which apparently is to have the union roll, over, play dead, and get out of your way. Somehow, I don’t think that’s going to happen, regardless of how much you kvetch.
Lyam, I don’t for a moment believe in the idea that ALL an actor does falls into the “subjective” category. There are plenty of quantifiable criteria that come into play when casting: can the actor do the dialect? How do they handle a rapier or quarter-staff? How quickly can they memorize dialogue? Do they take direction? Can they perform certain specific physical actions required by the script such as: dance choreography, hitting that high “C”, or doing that back-flip, or landing that punch? Whether Paul wants to admit it or not, he, just like any director worth their salt, is going to cast an actor in a role based as much on these measurable quantifiers as for the subjective ones. And the more of these demonstrable, quantifiable skills an actor has, the better their chances of landing a role and successfully portraying it.
I’ve read the first 100 or so of these comments and i’ve noticed a couple of interesting threads weaving through here. There seems to be one group (we’ll call them The Establishment) saying: “We CAN’T do these things, Brendan! Give up The Bard? Published works? Equity? Our aging donors? Oh no, that’s IMPOSSIBLE!” and another group (we’ll call them The Fringe) saying “damn it Brendan, we’re already doing a bunch of these things, but we’re losing our asses anyway!”
These two groups clearly have conflicting interests. As much as it’s nice to all get along and be friendly with each other, there comes a time when we need to recognize when we’re at cross purposes. When the relationship between two groups naturally OUGHT to be antagonistic.
By antagonistic, i mean The Fringe needs to start pushing The Establishment out of the way. We have to stop letting them define what “theatre” is, need to stop supporting artists who sell out, betraying theatre for a shitty but paying (and poorly at that) role with The Establishment, and need to stop kissing ass whenever The Establishment takes a dump.
The reason The Stranger and the majority of young people are more excited about (and give more press to) the music scene is that independent musicians are independent. They have thoroughly distanced themselves from radio friendly pop, and from old folks who shit their pants when they hear Sinatra or Bach.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that this is the model Fringe Theatre needs to follow, and it starts at the artist level. Have you ever listened to indie rockers or punks rip each other up for even listening to radio friendly schmaltz? It’s devastating, and it indicates a real passion for the kind of music they play. If you compare that to theatre, where we’re expected to congratulate an artist who aquires immense debt in an MFA program just to be groomed for the equivalent of an opportunity to play in Celine Dion’s back up band (or worse, actually, at least Celine Dion didn’t die hundreds of years ago).
I hate to say it, but it’s begining to look like time for a war.
I get all that, Chris, but I don’t really see where MFA or AEA in any way assures an auditor that an actor can do all (or in fact any) of these things. This is more a culture-wide problem than a specific theatrical one: we use education and accreditation as shorthand for things that we can’t be bothered to measure for ourselves, but for which, in fact, the accrediting institutions cannot really account. Which means that a lot of that is taken on faith, even at an Equity casting call.
I’ve never heard anyone complain (too much, anyway) about my “quantifiable skills,” but there are no letters with which they can be confirmed. If there are specific skills required of me for a given show, I assume I’ll be auditioned on that basis.
The point isn’t that ALL an actor does falls into the subjective category, but the question as to whether an actor is “good” or not certainly does (and we’re not even touching upon actor-writers, generative theater artists, etc., categories of theatrical artist that lie outside the audition mills and contingencies of regional theater).
I don’t necessarily buy that Equity is a club; I recognize its legitimacy as a union, and that it’s more than an “anvil” when it comes to making theater a viable pursuit. But just as the future of music is often written in basements and garages by people whose technique only emerges over time in direct response to content, theater might not have the room to evolve at houses where houses need to be filled to pay the (well-deserved! and still paltry!) wages of its artists. And it’s a shame, I think–maybe not a big shame, but a little shame–that you have to take yourself entirely out of the one kind of art in order to practice the other. No one tells a “professional” musician who’s following the work that he can’t have his art-punk band on the side; this seems like the functional equivalent. A lot of that is because of the commercially cumbersome nature of live theater, and the contingent nature of acting, in particular (how do you act when no one has a project for you?), so I don’t blame the union for it. I’m just sayin’ . . .
But, Rex, who’s going to be on which side in the coming war?
Many of the people I know who do fringe theatre at night, spend most of their days earning their livings in the very “establishment” theatres, unions, and organizations you’d see destroyed! They may not be actors (although in some cases they are), but rather administrators, teachers, technicians, designers. They work in the establishment theatres because they prefer that to working shitty temp or corporate jobs elsewhere, and at least it’s in the same field as their undergrad or MFA degrees.
These day jobs provide them with the financial stability that in turn allows them to spend most of their “leisure time” creating work about which they feel passionate, if in fact they don’t share the same passion for the mainstream product as the organizations for which they toil during the day.
Also, in my experience theatre tends to be much more collaborative than music; three, or four, or seven people at most are needed to form a band, but in some cases the CAST for a show is going to exceed that number. Plus, there’s a fairly limited pool of good stage managers, designers and technicians, and it’s essential to the health of the community that they circulate between companies. And then there’s all the barter that goes on: your company loans me some costumes, and I loan you some props in return, yadda-yadda.
The environment in which fringe-level theatre takes place simply couldn’t support a purely competitive, Darwinian model; without some level of self-serving altruistic symbiosis, none of the fringe would survive. We may just be the scrappy little mammals scurrying beneath the feet of the giant, plodding dinosaurs, but at least those dinosaurs will provide much needed cover when the Big One hits, not to mention a few tasty morsel that occasionally fall to ground from their ravenous, gaping maws.
So, really, don’t knock the dinos too much; they come in handy sometimes.
Another thing to consider: the fringe has always shared the DIY ethic of the punk and later grunge scenes; it’s really no surprise to anyone who’s been around for any length of time, that Seattle simultaneously developed a rep as a hot fringe-theatre town at the same time the music scene was garnering similar attention. There was in fact a fair amount of cross-pollenization going on between the two in the late ’80’s and early ’90’s. And that “punk” ethic still drives much of the fringe to this day.
Annex, the theatre of which I’ve been a company member for more than 20 years operates as an anarcho-collectivist ensemble: the people who show up to the meetings make the decisions, and everything, from selection of programming, to who will be artistic director, to who’s going to dump the garbage that week are made on a consensus basis. We operate on the narrowest of margins: the production budget for the show I just directed was a whopping $300, but I had an incredibly talented team of young, eager, creative designers and technicians who have done some truly incredible things with that small amount of cash – and in fact, I don’t think we even spent it all.
So, the real problem with your “up against the wall, mutherfucker!” attitude is simply that, for a lot of theatre practitioners in this town there is no “us versus them”; it’s all “we”: we work in those “establishment organizations”, and while we may not always think what they do is great, or noble, or inspiring, or whatever, being there is what makes it possible to do all the punk-assed crazy shit we do at night.
And who knows? Maybe having a few of the punks running around the Halls of Establishment might even have a beneficial effect on them – there IS something to be said for “changing the system from the inside.”
It’s really only selling-out if you give in to the establishment ethic, and stop doing the radical shit on-the-side. After all, biting the hand that feeds you is a time-honored revolutionary practice!
Well, in that respect Lyam, there are no assurances about ANYTHING – scores of people die on the operating table every year because a trained, experienced surgeon or anesthesiologist bollocks-up the procedure; nothing is 100% guaranteed.
BUT, there IS an expectation that, if one has put in the additional time and training to get the advanced degree, or if one has performed a sufficient body of work at the professional level to qualify for an Equity card, that they WILL be better than the fringe actor coming straight off a general studies undergrad program. If they’re NOT, they’re either not going to land the role in the first place, because someone better, or more experienced will invariably beat them out of it, or if by some chance they DO, their deficiencies will be come readily apparent to an experienced director. And believe it or not, if an actor in an Equity production isn’t cutting the mustard, they CAN be replaced.
So, the problem with the whole issue of subjectivity we’ve been bandying about here is that it’s just that; subjective. YOU may think that actor in that Rep production sucks donkey balls, but the person next to you may not. And more to the point, the person who hired them, for whatever reason, also clearly disagrees with your assessment. So, maybe you take issue with the director’s choice, but that calls into question the qualifications of the person who hired THEM, and so-on and so-on. At what point does one have to at least tacitly acknowledge that, one’s opinion regarding the relative merits of a particular actor, or director, or playwright, or whomever – is simply a matter of personal taste, of opinion, and perhaps one not shared by others who are equally qualified to judge (as much as one can ever be), and who therefore have the right to express equally valid, if not completely contrary opinions to your own?
There are certainly plenty of people just in this discussion thread, who have taken umbrage with MY opinions, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong; just as I have to grant to them, if I respect them as practitioners, that some of their points may turn out to be RIGHT.
But, they’re going to have to do one heck of a job of convincing me first, just as I imagine I would have to do the same to get them to change their respective opinions.
Heh, heh . . . I liked the “up against the wall!” flavor, but yeah. The one difference worth noting is that music, like cinema, can create a distributable product–a CD, cinema–whereas theater requires that the personnel in question (at least the actors, stage manager, and running technicians) to show up every night their product is to be consumed.
Also, I happen to like playing around in the canon. Shakespeare, Beckett, Brecht, and Artaud are, for me, proof that people have been COOL throughout history, that they understood that big ideas + sex + blood + whatever else you can come up with to fuck with the audience’s collective senses = slam-bang entertainment AND enduring art years before we had a continuum from Throbbing Gristle to Sleepytime Gorilla Museum to re-acquaint us with that fact.
Chris, I don’t think anyone “sucks balls”; what I find, rather, is that theater is theater, and the difference between shows at big houses and shows at little houses is usually a matter of special effects and tech support (the importance of which can’t be underestimated).
Well, and patrons. Which is perhaps the MOST important thing of all.
Which, of course, is just my subjective opinion. But if we’re admitting that the opinions we hold might just be our own, oughtn’t we to admit that the vetting process is just a calcified, codified version of someone’s subjective judgment? Yes, this is how canon is formed and traditions established; yes, this is how we build upon the knowledge of the past and avoid repeating mistakes. But I tend to think that having gone to school or put time in on equity productions says more about your capacity to deal with those systems than with your capacity to learn, the breadth or depth of your knowlege, and/or the quality of your work.
Do you think music professors decided that the Clash were worth remembering? Hell, did music professors OR the market canonize the Velvet Underground?
Which makes me think, if anything, that what fringe theater needs to do better is FIND its audience, and in THAT, we can learn from music. Because punk bands don’t seem to have all that much trouble finding punk fans. There’s an untapped audience for what we do, and we just need to figure out where they’re hiding.