Category: Seattle

Making “Nows” from Now Matters Too

July 12, 2011

Here’s another dirty secret for you: I am as essentially indifferent to theatre as the next 21st century adult. I like it fine, but if you were to tell me I could never see another production of American Buffalo or Titus Andronicus, I’d find a way to somehow suck it up. And even though I spent a good part of my youth as an actor, and managed to pay for what little college I got with a performance scholarship; and even though I still really enjoy doing it, if you were to tell me that I had some strange incurable disease, basically benign but which would strike me dead if I ever again strutted and fretted, I’d still somehow find a way to live the rest of my natural days in non-thespian peace. But I experienced something Sunday that reminded me yet again that there is one aspect of theatre I cannot and will not give up. So if you tried to tell me I couldn’t write another play for live performance, and I thought you meant it– well, you and I would have a bit of a war on our hands.
My wife and my boys, ages nine and six, decided late Sunday afternoon to attend the opening performance of Balagan’s Theatre’s 2011 summer outdoor offering, King Arthur and the Knights of the Playground. It was a perfect Seattle summer day, a rare enough jewel of deep greens and blues. About a hundred and fifty of us, maybe more, gathered on the rich lawn behind the Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park beneath some of the most glorious old trees you could ever hope to see. There were friends, and friends of friends, and friends and family of cast members and crew, and just plain lovers of theatre, young and old; and we all watched some truly sublime goofiness with a wide open heart at its core. I wrote the section—one of five— called “The Ballad of Balin and Balan”, and based my interpretation of these two tragically fated brother-knights on the relationship of my own two sons. Sitting there on a blanket with my mostly oblivious models, my heart was in my throat from the beginning of the piece, and I was embarrassed to have to wipe my eyes at the corny final scene:

[They both fall to the ground, gasping.]

BALAN: You know what this means?

BALIN: We’re gonna die.

BALAN: Well, yeah, but something else.

BALIN: Yeah? What?

BALAN: The curse said you would kill your best friend.

BALIN: Yeah. So what?

BALAN: So that means I’m your best friend. Curses can’t lie.

BALIN: Hey, yeah, that’s right. And I’m your best friend.

BALAN: That’s right.

BALIN: Forever.

It didn’t bother me one bit that my sons were more interested in the toy light sabers wielded by the actors than the fact that I had used their sweet, easy devotion to each other as my inspiration. I’m pretty sure that if the real Richard III had a chance to see a modern Seattle production of Shakespeare’s play about him, he would be way more fascinated in the costumes, props and actual women on stage than in any resemblance to the biographical facts of his life. (This is, by the way, another glorious feature of theatre. We all see something deeply different.) What blew me away was my own awareness of a profound and magical moment, wherein the very beauty of the earth seemed to host this collection of stories, as sweet and true and fresh as life itself; that my boys were watching grown men attempting to match the matchless nobility of love that children can hold for one another. And I was part of it. A very small, perfectly happy part of it. And because my job was done, all I had to do was breathe and gratefully accept the moment knowing that I can have no idea what experiencing the moment might mean down the road for either of my boys, but suspecting there’s a good chance that it might mean something.
Making plays matters. Alas, I still have immense difficulty convincing many of my colleagues of this truth. There’s a director in Seattle whose work I consistently admire who has maintained publicly more than once that he doesn’t believe we need any more new works for the stage because we will never have enough time or resources to produce all of the great plays that have already been written. Many powerful decision makers in American Theatre agree, most implicitly, but some even explicitly, that the canon of theatrical literature is full: like the Bible, we cannot, should not, and even must not, add volumes to it. I shake my head and smile at this notion, so apparently provable in the abstract, and yet so falsifiable by one deep blue green gorgeous Sunday afternoon in
Seattle’s Volunteer Park.
Please forgive the geek metaphor, but if plays are algorithms—timeless software to be run on a particular time’s theatrical hardware (i.e. actors, sets, costumes, props, lighting and sound designs and, yes, even directorial concepts), then I want some of those future algorithms to be from my time. Put more simply, if plays are “nows” thrown forward into “then”, then I need to believe that some of those “then-nows” will be from this now, if only so my sons’ daughters might know something of how wonderful their fathers were to each other when they were boys.

Posted at 9:23 AM in Locally Grown Plays, Seattle, Theatre | Comments (3)

Tags: Balagan Theatre, Balin and Balin, King Arthur and the Knights of the Playground, making plays matters, Outdoor Theatre, Paul Mullin, Seattle, the canon is closed, the canon is full, Volunteer Park
Intiman Asks Artists for Ideas: Sure Sign of the Apocalypse

July 8, 2011

Even if I do say so myself, I have been very good about shutting up and keeping shut since promising to do so a few weeks ago. However, when I ran across Misha Berson’s Seattle Times article “Intiman Interviewing Artists about Company Revival” I simply could not stifle my eagerness to hear what my colleagues in the Seattle theatre scene had to say. So I posted a link on Face Book and sat back waiting for friends’ responses. I didn’t have to wait long:

Stephen McCandless Spend less than you take in. Lather. Repeat.

Rik Deskin I want this to work out for them, but I’m a little miffed that they have disregarded my offer to honor Intiman subscriptions at Eclectic Theater Company. The offer was made before they posted the companies currently listed. Oversight? Probably.

Keri Healey It makes me furious that the timeline for this research into the future artistic direction of the theater is framed by the board (at least in this article) as important “if we want to start approaching funders.” Right back to the old dependent-on-funders model that got them where they are. Why not rethink that construct, too, as they look at alternatives for operating models? What I wonder about is how the implosions at Intiman and Giant Magnet might change the way local funders look at all arts organizations in the coming years. I suspect the level of trust funders have with arts organizations dropped quite a bit recently.Jim Jewell Keri, you are without doubt right on. We need to develop a different stance, more proactive and self-sufficient and more engaged with the audience, if we are going to win back that trust.

Kasia Patora To be honest, my initial response was the same as to when Hulu asks me to “choose my ad experience”: free market research.

Rik Deskin I really believe that Intiman needs to throw out the old book of running a theater and start from scratch, taking insight from ACT, … Jim Jewell and like Stephen McCandless says: don’t spend more than you make. Also, like ACT’s current model, embrace the wealth of local smaller companies, local theatre artists, and most importanly, embrace your goal of making Seattle a World Class Theatre City, cultivating, investing and developing Seattle’s voice. Not New York. Not Chicago. Not Moscow. Seattle!

At this point, Culturebot editor Jeremy M. Barker asks if I’d seen what Isaac Butler had written on his blog Parabasis. The post was so brief I don’t mind quoting it in its entirety here: “Intiman is inviting local theatre artists to submit blueprints for reviving the company. My guess is Paul Mullin wasn’t invited.“
Isaac’s right. Intiman hasn’t invited me, nor are they likely to. One can hardly blame an institution for not extending a solicitation of ideas for its survival from someone who publically called for its swift and merciful death; but a larger question remains: just who are the artists who Intiman plans on polling? And why wouldn’t a discussion of this nature take place publically? (Intiman board chair Bruce Bradburn told Misha that “…throughout July there will be individual discussions with artists about their visions for the company’s future.”)
Comments kept rolling in:

Scot Augustson I find myself more interest in elves than in Intiman’s Future. (And easier to believe in.)

Michael Baker The only way this works is if the artists kidnap the Board à la 9 to 5 and hold them for ransom, while livestreaming it on the web. Also, there should be Dolly covers by Rudinoff.

Mike Rainey I had the impression that the board was more or less the underlying cause for the problems in the first place. It’s like a fart asking how we can make this place smell better.

Jeremy M. Barker HA!

Stephen McCandless I maintain that the Intiman doesn’t need “new ideas”. The management was totally incompetent. To shut down in the fashion they did sternly suggests that their operating principle was “How can we be broke, we still have checks.”

Jim Jewell BTW, plans are quickly coming together for convening a community discussion (not so much about Intiman) about what we are doing well, poorly and what we need to do next. A strictly no-bullshit affair that is going to launch new projects, not float suggestions. Keep an eye and ear out.

Stephen McCandless (continuing) They went over budget, spent their reserves, spent their endowment – all over the course of several years. And when their MD leaves suddenly and suspiciously, only then do they cop to a problem – and even then have no idea how large it is until an outside consultant set them straight. There [was] no one at the wheel. Nobody paying attention. No administration. You can’t just let go of the steering wheel and they claim you need “new ideas” about vehicle suspensions. YOU DON’T. YOU NEED A DRIVER. Who authorized the spend-down of a one-million-dollar endowment and didn’t simultaneously raise concerns about the theatre’s finances? Who? It took years for this to go wrong. Years. And they act like it’s an emergency that reflects on the state of American Theatre. Talk about a sense of entitlement. I might as well try doing a cartwheel and then talk about how the resulting trauma reflects on the state of American Gymnastics and our chances for gold at the next Olympics.

Michael Baker I’ve been an Intiman booster for years, but I can’t fathom this. It actually strikes me as insane–if this “Intiman” (who is that, exactly) were a person, you’d assume heroin addiction. Talking to artists? What about the Intiman subscribers and donors who rallied to support them, only to be told that a) Intiman needs to shut down anyway, and b) they’d spent subscription for next season on debts? How about explaining, in minute detail, exactly how this happened, first. I can only guess that hasn’t happened because of how clubby the board is. The subscribers should form a class action and take the Intiman back themselves.

Paul Budraitis The article doesn’t say that they’re only going to consult with artists and no one else. i understand that financial mismanagement was the root of the problem and that it must be a primary component of their restructuring, but why shouldn’t they talk with local artists – ones who the article states have worked previously with the theatre – while in the process of getting back up off the mat? if they hadn’t done this, someone would be complaining about the fact that they haven’t even bothered to talk to local artists about the future. i say good for them for remembering art while all everyone else wants to do is talk about money.

These are smart people, many of them deeply familiar with the challenges of making theatre both from an artistic and an administrative side. Most of them take great pains to disagree with me as often and as vociferously as possible. I don’t know who the Intiman plans on reaching out to for advice, but if their list doesn’t include at least one of the names chiming in above, then I gotta wonder whether the sounding board they say they seek isn’t really just another echo chamber. I will also be interested to see if Misha Berson and The Seattle Times do any critical follow up on Intiman’s stated plans to include artists’ advice. Given their track record, very little of what the Intiman’s board says should be taken at face value.
P.S. Everyone quoted above has indicated to me that they are okay with being quoted. If by some chance I am mistaken about that, please just let me know and I will remove your quote. Conversely, if you want to add to discussion, please feel free to comment below.

Posted at 9:23 AM in Locally Grown Plays, Seattle, Theatre | Comments (3)

Tags: Balagan Theatre, Balin and Balin, King Arthur and the Knights of the Playground, making plays matters, Outdoor Theatre, Paul Mullin, Seattle, the canon is closed, the canon is full, Volunteer Park
This is Why I am Shutting Up

June 15, 2011

I kicked off 2011 here at Just Wrought with an essay called “Demons’ Year Off” in which I promised to reduce my ranting and “listen more than talk going forward”. In a more recent piece, “Joining Averroës’ Search” I renewed my commitment to keeping quiet so that others, ideally smarter, more informed and better positioned to effect change might join the discussion. (Admittedly, this is a bit of a quixotic gambit, given how mum most of Seattle’s artistic administrators have kept during this crisis.) Today, with his post over at the Seattlest “Open Letter to the Intiman Board”, Jim Jewell has reaffirmed my faith in the ability of smart arts professionals in this town to lead the way out of this crisis, and maybe even show the nation how it is done.

“… For all of the difficulties facing Intiman, you have also been presented a unique opportunity. While every other theatre in town, and really in the country, tries to figure out how to make difficult transitions, shifting the earned/contributed income balance and trying to break from the failing subscription model, you have a blank slate…. This is not the time to try to fix a broken model, but to take the pieces you have and build something new. It isn’t enough to be stewards; a steward could easily work in hospice. We need you to be shepherds, to lead, and to be willing to follow, the rich flock of artistic talent in Seattle.”

Jewell goes on to offer suggestions both bold and innovative, but neither impossible nor even all that risky, compared to the very real risk that Intiman’s board will do nothing significant at all.
He rightly points out that the subscription/season model is a tumor that sucks the vitality out of arts institutions across the country, and he offers a sober workable alternative tempered by his experience as the former Marketing and PR Manager at Seattle Children’s Theatre, the founder and de facto leader of the marketing discussion group Holes Not Drills, and as Managing Director of NewsWrights United.
For better or worse, whether in self-congratulation or deprecation, I can’t help but think of myself as Sam Adams in Seattle’s struggle to become a world class theatre town. As folks are happy to point out, I have a knack for starting loud and unruly conversations; but Sam Adams, drunken loud-mouthed Tea Party-thrower that he was, was never well positioned to lead the colonies anywhere except into ever rowdier arguments. In the end, he had to turn the struggle over to his betters and let them lead the cause. If I’m Sam Adams, then Jim Jewell is my cousin John: smarter, better informed, and better positioned to effect the change we need.
Jim, the floor is yours. Let facts be submitted to a candid world.

Posted at 9:23 AM in Locally Grown Plays, Seattle, Theatre | Comments (3)

Tags: Balagan Theatre, Balin and Balin, King Arthur and the Knights of the Playground, making plays matters, Outdoor Theatre, Paul Mullin, Seattle, the canon is closed, the canon is full, Volunteer Park
The SunBreak Suggests Some New Strokes

June 3, 2011

Just because I have excused myself from the debate about the future of Seattle Theatre along with the broader crisis in American Arts doesn’t mean I can’t celebrate an insightful perspective, especially when it comes from someone who sees the problem from sides I can only barely glimpse. Michael van Baker, Editor and Publisher of The SunBreak once worked for the Seattle Opera and other non-profit arts organizations around town; and in his recent post, “Arts Marketing for Dummies”. He sneaks us a peak of some of the lessons he learned, with promises of perhaps more and deeper observations to follow:

Because self-preservation is the defining aspect of arts institutional life–ironically, the non-profit model virtually guarantees it–the business model warps in that direction. People begin to have trouble distinguishing between best business practices and those that have worked in the past to pay everyone’s salaries. Over time, the institution’s existence–its habits and proclivities–mediates the art presented. It’s not just a question of the popularity of one work versus another–it’s a question of box office receipts. That’s what’s being discussed when the directors meet: saleability.

It should be discussed! Don’t get me wrong. But, as before, is anything important being left out?

Van Baker sketches some bold fresh solutions, but with the sober understanding that they are not likely to be quickly adopted by a cadre of arts administrators who would rather sink with the ship than swim a new stroke.

Rule: We create art and outsource/outshare the rest….

… As it happens, arts administrators are not the soulless quasi-corporate drones they are at times portrayed to be. So it’s already the case that most arts organizations collaborate and share a great deal, more than you might expect if you considered how competitive the marketplace is. The problem is, they collaborate inefficiently. … Every single organization reinvents the database, usually in their own way, and the results are sometimes anarchic.

The situation is unlikely to change because, at an institutional level, there’s no apparent incentive and the loss of control disturbs leadership. Thus, database management and mining remains a core function of organizations theoretically devoted to art production.

Van Baker also recognizes a fact which took over a year of me blogging here to sink into my thick skull: a lot of folks, in this city particularly, would rather quibble and bitch behind backs than make any actual moves. Says Van Baker, “Of course, the arts being what they are, there are many over-educated people willing to argue about minutiae rather than broader principle.”
Towards the end of the piece Van Baker hints that there might be a larger, more detailed opus forthcoming. I encourage that effort and look forward to its fruition, especially since I’m shutting up.

Posted at 9:23 AM in Locally Grown Plays, Seattle, Theatre | Comments (3)

Tags: Balagan Theatre, Balin and Balin, King Arthur and the Knights of the Playground, making plays matters, Outdoor Theatre, Paul Mullin, Seattle, the canon is closed, the canon is full, Volunteer Park
Joining Averroës’ Search

June 1, 2011

One of my favorite stories by Jorge Luis Borges is “Averroës’ Search”. It’s not a very good story— Borges himself admits as much in a rather tortured apology that he tacks on at the end—but it’s a story about theatre—at least in part—and since it’s one of the only times Borges, a favorite of mine, touches on the art form that I have sunk so much of myself into, the short piece has become special to me. I can approximate how many times I have read it by counting the different colors of pencils I have used to mark it up: dark blue, light blue, purple, green.
The story opens with the great Islamic annotator of Aristotle lamenting the frequent appearance in the Poetics of two words that, to a devout Muslim of the 12th Century, seem to have no meaning at all: “tragedy” and “comedy”.

He had come across them years earlier in the third book of the Rhetoric; no one in all of Islam could guess as to their meaning…. Yet the two arcane words were everywhere in the text of the Poetics—it was impossible to avoid them.

In the very next paragraph Averroës takes a break from his work and looks down from his balcony.

… There below, in the narrow earthen courtyard, half-naked children were at play. One of them standing on the shoulders of another, was clearly playing at being a muezzin: his eyes tightly closed, he was chanting the muezzin’s monotonous cry, There is no God but Allah. The boy standing motionless and holding him on his shoulders was the turret from which he sang; another kneeling, bowing low in the dirt, was the congregation of the faithful. The game did not last long— they all wanted to be the muezzin, no one wanted to be the worshippers or the minaret.

For me, this is Borges at his best and most loveable: a great thinker imagining a great thinker struggling to imagine a concept that, in fact, palpably surrounds him. As many of my friends who like to argue with me point out, theatre will always survive. You literally cannot not have theatre. But as Borges might counter, you can certainly have it without knowing you have it. Perhaps that’s where we are heading. The great Argentine did foretell the internet after all.
Recently, in a fit of frustration that so many people seemed to miss the point of my recent post about playwrights not making a living from their plays while plenty of folks make one making theatre, I recently wrote the following self-pitying status on Face Book.

I somehow need to find a way to harness the average Seattle theatre artist’s endless enthusiasm for arguing into an actual force for change.

Yes, we’re all smart. We’re all well read. We all know how to attack a straw man and cleverly defend the indefensible, but at what point do we decide we can do better and then take steps to do it?

It’s a cliché, but it always applies: if not us, who? If not now, when?

Maybe self pitying isn’t the right description. Maudlin? Mawkish? In any case, a good friend and theatre colleague blithely chimed in: “Shut up and do a show.” It’s good advice. Well, again, advice isn’t really the right word. No one telling you to shut up is giving you advice so much as dictating a directive, and a rather ironic one at that, since it’s impossible to tell someone to shut up without opening your mouth. Still though, the person who said this has a largely gentle heart, and I know he would not want me to do anything I did not really want to do.
With the understanding that I did not have a lot of room to talk about Seattle theatre unless I was actually making Seattle theatre, I have been pushing pretty hard on producing over the last few years. This spring I wrote and served as executive producer for The New New News: A Living Newspaper; a little over a year before that I served in the same capacities for It’s Not the the P-I: A Living Newspaper About a Dying Newspaper. And before that there was The Ten Thousand Things at Washington Ensemble Theatre, The Don Juan Cult Concerto at NSCC, Tuesday and An American Book of the Dead- The Game Show at Annex Theatre. Just listing those shows makes me smile and feel tired at the same time. Boy, have I done some shows since coming back to Seattle in 2002!
Now it’s 2011 and I have foundered on a fact that frightens me a bit and that I need to share with you. I don’t want to put on another show. Even if I did, I don’t have one. It’s just not in me at the moment. And I don’t know if it ever will be again. (It feels like a long moment, frankly.) I believe this is something that every theatre artist has to face at some point. A future with no shows. But just like Averroës, I will be surrounded by theatre whether I know it or not, whether I want it or not. After all, isn’t the Intiman’s colossal failure a tragedy in the truest sense?
So, with the understanding that one earns one’s right to speak about Seattle theatre by making Seattle theatre, I need to cash in for a while and keep my mouth shut. I will still keep Just Wrought active, and still post here, but my advocacy for Seattle becoming a World Class theatre town, and all the kvetching and posturing that goes with it, is hereby retired indefinitely.
It is time for me to shut up, sit back, and watch the show… as produced by others.

Posted at 9:23 AM in Locally Grown Plays, Seattle, Theatre | Comments (3)

Tags: Balagan Theatre, Balin and Balin, King Arthur and the Knights of the Playground, making plays matters, Outdoor Theatre, Paul Mullin, Seattle, the canon is closed, the canon is full, Volunteer Park
St. Peckinpah

May 26, 2011

“Come” she told me, “with your shame and your gringo.” I looked up & stepped toward
the old woman, black habit
standing under the sun-white arch of the church.
She was called Agatha, mistress of God.
And I would be called graverobber, trapped in a movie
trapped in Mexico, some hundred & eight miles from the border,
with a man’s head in a Scotch plaid hatbox. Fucking flies. And not a whorehouse in sight.
This is a dirty old town without clear pavement markings
& I drove right into the doorway of the little apostolic house of Jesus
before I noticed the labored eyes of Our Lord looking down on me.
I parked the sedan. It purred raggedly, panting exhaust
like a hole in a lung. Then the engine stopped altogether & I took my cue to get out
& get religion. Head, I’m taking you with me.
There’s nothing sacred about a hole in the ground. The Church
cuts off lips, fingers, the petrified genitals of saints made merchandise …
but me I’m seventy miles an hour
out of midnight, the village cemetery in Jalisco,
men shouting in Spanish on brown horses, women on horses
shouting & everybody’s got a gun.
Hypocrites, double-crossers … Head, you’re the only one in this country who’s not trying to kill me
& I appreciate that. Bygones are bygones, the past is the past & the past
wants us all to be happy. I’m going to stagger into the confessional
& stagger back out. Then we’ll go see Mr. Big
& his boyfriends. So don’t touch anything on the tables. So stop looking at me
with your goddamn fucking eyes.
David Penn
1995
“peckinpah”
by Omar Willey
(more…)

Posted at 9:23 AM in Locally Grown Plays, Seattle, Theatre | Comments (3)

Tags: Balagan Theatre, Balin and Balin, King Arthur and the Knights of the Playground, making plays matters, Outdoor Theatre, Paul Mullin, Seattle, the canon is closed, the canon is full, Volunteer Park
Art Picks up Journalism’s Slack Again

April 28, 2011

I went on record a while ago saying that I will not be doing reviews here at Just Wrought. However, in order to make a couple of larger points later, I will have to stipulate some things about Mike Daisey’s performance last night at the Seattle Rep’s production of his new one-man show, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. Here’s why: I was pressing my way out of the theatre after the show, doing my best to spare myself and Kurt Beattie the awkwardness that always ensues when we try to casually chit-chat, when I overheard an older and obviously well-off man say to his wife, “I’ll be interested to see how his [meaning Daisey’s] performance grows after a couple weeks. I mean, this was only just opening night after all.”
Yeah.
So let’s get something straight from the start: Mike Daisey’s performance was brilliant, alternatively hilarious and harrowing; funny and furious: one moment cannily manipulative and the next heartbreakingly earnest, and it only grew more compelling as the evening progressed. Frankly, I expected no less. Daisey is a brilliant performer. Full stop. What’s more, he’s a consummate professional, meaning that he will bring that brilliance to every performance he does of this piece or any other, night after night, week after week, venue after venue. To engage in speculation about whether Daisey’s performance will improve or decline after a couple weeks is to indulge in the worst kind of aesthetic fetishism, and worse: it lets you off the hook of the message.
Unfortunately, this hobbyist’s game has been getting played more and more here in Seattle. “Hans Altwies’s performance was brilliant the other night,” says the canny theatre-goer, making plain that she not only knows Hans Altwies by name, but also understands the nuances of his work well enough to gauge when he’s brilliant and when he’s not. Well, I got news for ya, knowing theatre-goer. Hans Altwies is always brilliant. Like Mike Daisey, Hans is a consummate theatre professional, and he’s going to give you the acting goods in great plays, okay plays and terrible plays alike. What’s more, Hans is not the only brilliant actor in Seattle: we have at least a hundred world class actors in this town—way more than we can sustain with a living wage. What we do not have in huge supply are shows that matter, right here and right now to our fellow citizens. (Yes, I understand Of Mice and Men is moving. But no, I do not agree that staging it yet again can make a wit’s worth of difference in most people’s lives.) The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs is different. In his show Mike is telling stories that you simply cannot and will not hear anywhere else—true stories about the lives of our fellow human beings who make, by hand, the “shit”—as Mike calls it– that we consume.
If you are reading this on a digital device (and how could you not be?) Mike provides a journalistic investigation that is as intimately connected to your life as the technology you are using right now. He did the risky leg work that no “professional reporter” was willing to do, and he got past the corporate obfuscation that no other journalist could breech. If you want to hear these stories in the next few weeks, the only way you can do it is to show up at a specific place, the Seattle Rep, at a specific time and listen to Mike tell them to you. If you say to me that the Rep’s tickets are too pricey, I will listen respectfully and sympathetically, but I will counter with a question of my own: how much did your phone cost? Was it more or less than a ticket to Mike’s show? And how can you really assess how much it really cost, unless you find out how it was made and by whom?

Posted at 9:23 AM in Locally Grown Plays, Seattle, Theatre | Comments (3)

Tags: Balagan Theatre, Balin and Balin, King Arthur and the Knights of the Playground, making plays matters, Outdoor Theatre, Paul Mullin, Seattle, the canon is closed, the canon is full, Volunteer Park
Money isn’t Everything… or Anything

April 11, 2011

My friend Maria’s mom gave me one of those rare koan-ish gifts of wisdom that stick with you for a lifetime, poking you at odd times as you struggle on and off to get to the core of understanding it. I was in high school, over Maria’s house for dinner, and her mom and I must have been talking about my hopes and aspirations. I said something like, “It’ll all work out so long as I can find the money to afford all the things I want to do.” Smiling sweetly, Maria’s mom said, “Oh Paul, don’t worry about money. Money is the easiest thing in the world to get.”
What?
Okay. Set that notion on the table a moment so that we can compare it with what a former friend and colleague once flatly told me. “Paul, theater is an art form for the Upper Middle Class. Period. End of argument. End of story.” I remember seeing in his eyes the pride of superior conviction as he went on to explain that fundraising, marketing and, by tacit implication, programming itself must be tailored to this essential truth. Furthermore, since theatre is for, by and of the moderately to handsomely wealthy, then raising money for theatre, which was his job at a large West Coast regional theatre, was the noblest and most essential duty one could perform for our art form.
Now, honestly, that sounds more sensible than my friend Maria’s mom’s enigmatic epigram, right? We are on much firmer territory with that kind of thinking, aren’t we?
Are we?
After all, what the hell did my sweet earlier friend’s sweet mom mean? For the longest time I tended to interpret it prosaically. “Well, okay… everything else takes money to get. Therefore money is easiest, since it requires one less step. Money is freeze-dried effort waiting to be reconstituted for a different circumstance… or something. Got it.”
I guess that makes a sort of sense but only the sort that isn’t really worth much digging for. However, as the years blurred by, and most especially as the struggles for the vitality of my art form have come to a head, especially in my adopted home town of Seattle, I am beginning to suspect something lies deeper in Maria’s mom’s words.
All right. Let’s dig: if money’s easy and I shouldn’t worry about it, then what is it that is hard and that I should be worrying about? Maria’s mom did not elucidate. I realize now that this is because she knew I had to figure it out for myself. Happily I am beginning to believe that the alternative currency she was pointing me at is one that I, and so many of my true friends, have been blessed with to a richness. The “hard” currency Maria’s mom wanted me to find and treasure was the precious tender of ideas.
“Oh sure,” I hear my former friend say, “That’s great. Wonderfully idealistic and all, but without money, theatre dies. Raising money is the essential task that makes it all possible.”
What do you think, gentle reader? If one wanted to destroy the essence of an art form, obliterate its fresh ideas and enchain it to defending at all costs the miserable back-ass-wards status quo of comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted, could one employ any more effective strategy than keeping its brightest people constantly courting the almighty upper middle-class dollar instead of trading and paying interest on ideas?
All art is a conversation—theatre doubly so. If my former friend is telling me I can only hold a conversation with the upper middle class of the Western World circa early 21st century I am obliged to either politely ignore him, or firmly insist he go fuck himself. I want to talk with everyone everywhere and everywhen. And I buy into this conversation with my ideas or I don’t join at all. I will not, nor will the colleagues I admire most, huddle acquiescently on the tiny postage stamp theatre artists are ceded when we are told that money is what defends us and what we must defend.
Maria’s mom always had faith in me when others didn’t. She is no longer in this world and I have no way to repay her for her gifts so gracious. So in honor of that fine lady, you can have this idea, and everything you find here, for free:
Yours is the territory you refuse to surrender.

Posted at 9:23 AM in Locally Grown Plays, Seattle, Theatre | Comments (3)

Tags: Balagan Theatre, Balin and Balin, King Arthur and the Knights of the Playground, making plays matters, Outdoor Theatre, Paul Mullin, Seattle, the canon is closed, the canon is full, Volunteer Park
Why Omar Willey’s “Why Theater Matters” Matters

April 4, 2011

Let’s get the over-arching irony out of the way first thing: my friendship with Omar Willey blossomed on line, through Face Book and his responses to my blogging here at Just Wrought; and had that been the extent of our relationship, then certainly a cynical dismissal of my recommending his recent essay “Why Theater Matters” would be eminently fair. After all, he argues herein for a theatre triumphant over the distance and disaffection with which our “on-line lives” infect us. Fortunately, our friendship has also blossomed in “real life” and real-life’s cooler cousin, theatre. Omar comes to my shows. Omar comes to everyone’s shows. If you are a Seattle theatre artist and you don’t know Omar, I can assure you that your ignorance is not reciprocated. Omar knows you. Omar knows your work. What’s more, Omar Willey and his colleague José Amador (whom I also have the honor of calling friend) have begun to review your work, over at the Seattlest.
In his essay, posted a few days ago, Omar offers an implicit explanation for his coming out of retirement (he reviewed theatre for KCMU-FM back in the 1990’s) and again lowering his lance at our windmills.

Simulacra. Pseudonymity. The theater … erases them. Theater restores the primacy of the human body. It restores presence. It restores the potential, the fear and the promise of the present, and gives an immediate response in the present tense.

… Theater remains a communal experience of people, persons seeing themselves with, through and in other persons in a unique, irreproducible moment. A self, communing with other selves. Being here. Now. And never to be the same person, the same place, the same way again…. Bridging the gap between friends and strangers, the sense of a marvelous, wondrous love and beauty that restores joy to life, shared together. How easily we forget it when we do not seek it.

This reminds me so much of a favorite quote of mine from Carl Jung that I would not be at all surprised if Omar knows it intimately. But just in case you don’t, here ‘tis:

…You go to the theatre: glance meets glance, everybody observes everybody else, so that all those who are present are caught up in an invisible web of mutual unconscious relationship….

Mankind has always formed groups which made collective experiences of transformation–often of an ecstatic nature–possible. The regressive identification with lower and more primitive states of consciousness is invariably accompanied by a heightened sense of life… .The inevitable psychosocial regression within the group is partially counteracted by ritual, that is to say through a cult ceremony which makes the solemn performance of sacred events the centre of group activity and prevents the crowd from relapsing into unconscious instinctuality… The ritual makes it possible for him to have a comparatively individual experience even within the group and so remain more or less conscious.

—Concerning Rebirth, circa, 1940

As I understand it, Omar and José threw their hats in the Seattlest ring because they saw a dearth of earnest, careful theatre criticism, not just here in Seattle but across the country. Of course others have noticed this drought as well, myself included. My problem has been caring. After over two decades of professional work as a playwright and actor, watching the importance of reviews plummet from marginal to minimal to finally negligible, I openly admit I have trouble seeing how criticism could help Seattle become a World Class theatre town. In a recent semi-private exchange on Face Book, Omar called my hand: “… I do wonder, Paul, if you don’t think criticism is key to helping us get somewhere, then what do you think will? Or do we simply understand criticism differently? Plays written about other plays or inspired by thematic ideas from other plays–these, too, are criticism, no?”
Let me respond now, weeks later:
Omar, in the context of your comprehensively inclusive understanding of what criticism can be, and what it can do, yes, indeed, I believe it can help us get somewhere. Of course, such an approach—steeped in the art form’s history but somewhat foreign to Seattle’s cultural ethos— will require leadership. It appears you and José are stepping forward to be those happy few to rally the critical flank of Seattle’s charge forward toward World Class. So even though I have already said it privately, please allow me to state again publically here, loudly and proudly…
Omar, José?
Welcome to the fray.

Posted at 9:23 AM in Locally Grown Plays, Seattle, Theatre | Comments (3)

Tags: Balagan Theatre, Balin and Balin, King Arthur and the Knights of the Playground, making plays matters, Outdoor Theatre, Paul Mullin, Seattle, the canon is closed, the canon is full, Volunteer Park
Anonymous, Anonymous, Wherefore art Thou Anonymous?

March 29, 2011

Within weeks of starting Just Wrought I had to institute its only rule:

…I know it’s considered the custom of internet country to post anonymously, but there is no tradition of it in the theatre. In the world of live performance, one says one’s words in public and stands by them with [one’s] body. So as a rule I won’t be accepting any more anonymous posts. Stand and deliver, people!

Jan 6, 2010 on “14/48: A Regular Reminder of . . . ”

In the 15 months since, I have only had to enforce the rule once or twice. Everyone seems pretty happy with it. Of course, mostly only artists reply here: notorious exhibitionists with notoriously little to lose. If you look back through the 512 comments which I have accumulated (and I am not recommending it if you have even a half-life) you will find only a handful from artistic administrators and even fewer from board members and arts funders. That latter group runs particularly mum, not just here, but throughout Seattle theatre’s public conversations. They did not attend in any numbers the Outrageous Fortune discussion a year ago. They have not, to my knowledge, attended any of the legendary Shit Storms hosted over the years. Fact is, they do not engage in much discussion with local artists at all. I imagine this is how they like it; and how artistic administrators love it. When it comes to funding, theatre artists are to be seen (on stage), and not heard (anywhere else).
Thus, imagine my lack of surprise when the Intiman Theatre announced last Friday, just before the curtain went up on All My Sons, that a donor would be matching gifts up to a total of $100,000 in order to bail the Intiman out of its ongoing fiscal crisis, and that said donor has chosen to remain anonymous.
Benefactors of the stage have not always been so modest. Back in Shakespeare’s day, if you supported a theatre company, you damned sure wanted it known, hence the names of the companies: The Lord Admiral’s Men, The Lord Chamberlains Men, and…

“The King’s Men … [catered] … to a more exclusive clientele at the Blackfriars, which could accommodate some five hundred higher-paying spectators. Gallants eager to show off their clothes could even pay to sit on the Blackfriars stage and become part of the spectacle. The practice—not permitted at the Globe— must have annoyed the actor in Shakespeare: later in the century a riot broke out during a performance of Macbeth when a nobleman slapped an actor who had remonstrated with him for crossing directly in front of the action in order to greet a friend on the other side of the stage.”

Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World

How far we have gone from Will’s world to ours, wherein a patron can think saving the Intiman is important enough to donate $100,000 (contingent on others doing the same) but not important enough to tell us why, or even put their name to the gift. I suppose in 2011 America, money is expected to do its own talking.
I have made my opinions on Intiman’s survival painfully clear here. Equally clear is that someone a lot wealthier than me feels quite differently about the situation. What isn’t clear is who, or why. And dang it, I’d like to know. We make a lot of assumptions about rich people in this country. One of the most pervasive is that they tend to be smarter than poor folks in direct correlation to how much richer they are. (This presumption was evident when a Big House Board Member—the only one, to his credit, to ever bother having a conversation with me—pointed out over a casual coffee that the problem with playwrights is how little they understand about the play development process. ) What I want to know from Intiman’s wishful bashful benefactor is what they know about the troubled institution that I don’t, dumb poor artist that I be. To that end, I am suspending my anti-anonymity rule for this post, and this post only.
Dear anonymous Intiman patron, please feel free to post your unsigned thoughts in the comments section below on why Intiman should be trusted with even more of our money, and I will leave it unmolested for the masses to read and understand.

Posted at 9:23 AM in Locally Grown Plays, Seattle, Theatre | Comments (3)

Tags: Balagan Theatre, Balin and Balin, King Arthur and the Knights of the Playground, making plays matters, Outdoor Theatre, Paul Mullin, Seattle, the canon is closed, the canon is full, Volunteer Park