Just Wrought

Recovering playwright, once won a STRANGER Genius Award for theater. Now writing a bloated novel about… G-d help me! Theatre.

The Bardo of The Salted Wife

October 4, 2011

Is it possible to engender genuine horror in an audience through a live stage experience? That is the standing question for this series of scripts, excerpts and essays which I will be posting throughout this Halloween season.
***
Sometimes a piece of theatre is crafted specifically and solely as a work of horror. In recent times, The Woman in Black leaps to mind, but we should also remember that the Grand Guignol in Paris was one of the most successful and longest running commercial theaters of all time.
More often, a play will contain components of horror while the larger story lands squarely in the territory of tragedy, e.g. Hamlet or MacBeth. And sometimes, but much more rarely, horror rears its head in a comedy, like my own reincarnation romp, An American Book of the Dead – The Game Show. It is early in the play, and things are cooking along nicely in full farce fashion, as game show host Blink Bodie yucks it up with contestants and Spokesmodels, when suddenly a solid wall of stylized terror stops the fun cold, and, ideally, disorients the audience enough that I can start to really —ahem—“muck” with them.
Ripped right out of Howard Zinn’s absolutely essential A Peoples History of the United States, this section is my attempt at staging one of the nastiest tidbits from our nation’s nascent colonization. This isn’t legend. Zinn cites the Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia legislature for this piece of history. So it seems consuming others for one’s one survival and delectation is as old, if not older, as the idea of America itself.
(more…)

Posted at 10:49 AM in American History, An American Book of the Dead – The Game Show, Horror in Theatre, Scripts, Theatre | Comments (0)

Tags: 1619, A People's History of the United States, An American Book of the Dead – The Game Show, cannibalism, colonial Virginia, Grand Guignol, horror in theatre, Howard Zinn, Jamestown, Kellie Waymire, The Bardo of the Salted Wife, Thomas Elliott, Woman in Black
Often Lie

October 3, 2011

Is it possible to engender genuine horror in an audience through a live stage experience?
That’s the question I started pondering a decade or so ago. Now don’t knee-jerk back some glib response. Think before you answer, and be honest. I have given a lot of thought to this, and I am still not completely sure. So this Halloween season I thought I would crack open the question again for churning with a series of scripts, excerpts and essays, in hopes that together we might strike some undiscovered insights.
Let me kick it off with “Often Lie”, a very short play I wrote for the late-night horror series Psychopomp Presents. . ., which was produced by Paul Morgan Stetler and myself, and directed by Braden Abraham, at Capitol Hill Arts Center in October 2005 . We billed the show thusly:

A late night modicum of mayhem featuring world premiere plays penned to plumb the very depths of the collective unconscious. “Lil’ Heroes” “Often Lie” and “The Reckoning” are works by three of Seattle’s most innovative playwrights: Louis Broome, Paul Mullin and Stephanie Timm. Come on, give your dark side a joy ride!

It was a failure. But one of the very best kind, a true experiment wherein a hypothesis was advanced, a test was run, and data was extracted. Our data read something like: “You cannot scare drunk hipsters after 11 pm no matter how hard you try.”
The idea for my contribution “Often Lie” was essentially, “What if two random people met and discovered they were having each other’s dreams?” From here I began lightly building in my favorite freest fashion, by just randomly associating and seeing where it takes me. I thought of Queen Mab and went back to read Mercutio’s famous rant. Spiders seemed to be prominent in that speech, so I let that take me further on. I leave it to you to find the connections, such as they are. I soon decided that only one of the characters should be dreaming the other’s dream, thus leaving more opportunity to explore the “who’s dreaming who?” question. I landed on a sort of Donald-Rumsfeld-meets-Queen-Mab scenario which pleased me. I think, given the right circumstances, it might possibly frighten an audience that wasn’t simply looking to laugh and get drunker before getting laid.
For its world premiere, I was blessed to have the dream casting of Michael Patten as “Drum” and Stephanie Shine as “Mabel”.
Here’s the play:
(more…)

Posted at 10:49 AM in American History, An American Book of the Dead – The Game Show, Horror in Theatre, Scripts, Theatre | Comments (0)

Tags: 1619, A People's History of the United States, An American Book of the Dead – The Game Show, cannibalism, colonial Virginia, Grand Guignol, horror in theatre, Howard Zinn, Jamestown, Kellie Waymire, The Bardo of the Salted Wife, Thomas Elliott, Woman in Black
A Show You Don’t Have to Come See

September 28, 2011

How often do you get a plug for a show in which the plugger says he doesn’t really care if you come see it? Well, that’s exactly what I’m telling about this second edition of Sandbox Radio Live: The Halloween Episode.
Well, all right, hold on a second. Fact is, I really would like to see you there in the audience, but our seating at West of Lenin is extremely limited and we will sell out. So no matter what happens, some of you who show up without reservations will be frozen out, S.O.L, on the sidewalk outside, while the happy few who booked at Brown Paper Tickets early enough watch it live. (Book ahead here.) But do NOT despair. It’s Sandbox Radio remember? And the whole point of us doing it is to make a permanent recording. Our first episode is available for you to listen to right now, for free! at iTunes. (Listen here.)
The podcast of Episode One, at 90 minutes, is admittedly quite sizable. In future, perhaps The Sandbox might look at ways to create a table of contents with time-stamps so you can go to the sections of the show that most interest you. In the mean time, download it so that you have something to play the next time you’re stuck in traffic. You won’t regret it. (And after you have a listen, please consider posting a review of the show. It’s the best way for you to let us know what you do and don’t like, and it also raises Sandbox Radio’s profile on iTunes.)
And look for the podcast of Sandbox Radio Live: The Halloween Episode coming out shortly after the live performance on October 10!

Posted at 10:49 AM in American History, An American Book of the Dead – The Game Show, Horror in Theatre, Scripts, Theatre | Comments (0)

Tags: 1619, A People's History of the United States, An American Book of the Dead – The Game Show, cannibalism, colonial Virginia, Grand Guignol, horror in theatre, Howard Zinn, Jamestown, Kellie Waymire, The Bardo of the Salted Wife, Thomas Elliott, Woman in Black
Unlosing the Lost Plays

September 14, 2011

There are great plays that you can never experience fully. Sure, you might see them as movies, or read them as “literature”, but despite what your high school English teacher sold you, plays are not literature, any more than music or sculpture are. You may think you are special and that you can wring every artistic significance from a play by reading it; but you’re not and you can’t. There are aspects of dramatic character that only an actor can convey by speaking out loud, live, in front of you. (Not to get pedantic, but this is why we call it an audience.) Because of this, there are great plays you will never experience—at least not as plays—because of very practical reasons excluding them from the possibility of ever being professionally staged again.
Stalag 17 by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski* is just such a play. The original 1951 Broadway cast contained 21 men, a size which is simply not financially sustainable in today’s theatre economy. Beyond cast size, a myriad of other reasons doom to the dusty shelf some of the canon’s greatest plays. Once these plays cease to be performed, they are essentially lost to our culture as works of art, though of course they still have value as artifacts.
To the rescue rides Seattle’s Endangered Species Project, dedicated to giving monthly staged readings of plays that seldom get full productions. As they explain on their website:

In the present economic straights in which regional theatre now finds itself, much of the so called established international repertoire is neglected, for various reasons: there are too many different settings, or the casts are too large, or simply, the publicity requirements of selling a play that is both “old” and unfamiliar to general audiences may seem too daunting.

We feel that while it is an essential duty of theatres to read and develop new work, our group sees a parallel need to celebrate older or otherwise neglected plays….

Through our free, simply staged readings, we hope to lend live voices to plays that are now silent on our bookshelves.

It is the blossoming of projects like ESP that continually renew my faith in Seattle theatre’s progress toward World Class standing.
Next Monday evening, September 19, at 7 pm you can defy the entropy of modern theatre and see a one-time-only reading of Stalag 17 artfully staged by director Leslie Law, with such brilliant casting as Shawn Law as Sefton (an even more natural choice than William Holden) and Richard Ziman as Sergeant Shultz. (No, this ain’t Hogan’s Heroes’ Sergeant Shultz**, though he obviously inspired the sitcom role. This German non-com has no compunction about torturing a POW on stage to determine the whereabouts of a missing American pilot.)
Even if you only live another ten years, my best guess is that you’ll have about 12 more chances to see Twelfth Night, six to see American Buffalo, and between five and five hundred opportunities to watch something scripted by Sarah Ruhl; but unless my prodigious predictive power fails me now, you will never, not as long as you live, get another opportunity to hear Stalag 17 performed by such a cast as this.
Don’t miss it.
(more…)

Posted at 10:49 AM in American History, An American Book of the Dead – The Game Show, Horror in Theatre, Scripts, Theatre | Comments (0)

Tags: 1619, A People's History of the United States, An American Book of the Dead – The Game Show, cannibalism, colonial Virginia, Grand Guignol, horror in theatre, Howard Zinn, Jamestown, Kellie Waymire, The Bardo of the Salted Wife, Thomas Elliott, Woman in Black
Heather’s Eleventh of September

September 1, 2011

I told my 9/11 story with the playwright’s notes in the program for the world premiere production of The Good Ship Manhattan, my hemi-demi-autobiographical play about those days in New York. That short raw essay also serves as my forward to Original Works Publishing’s printed edition of the play. So you can check out my version of events from Sunnyside, Queens online here (go to page 4).
My wife, however, saw the second plane hit the towers with her own eyes from mid-town Manhattan. For the first time ever, Heather Curtis Mullin has recorded in writing her memories of that day and the days to follow; and I am so grateful that she has given me permission to share them here with you.

I was working in the Conde Nast building at 42nd and Broadway on the morning of September 11, 2001. I was in an extremely good mood because my husband had celebrated his birthday the night before and we had been up late but I still felt pretty good. I was logging in and getting settled at my desk when a co-worker came out of her office and said a plane had hit “the towers.” We walked together to the conference room on the southern end of the building which looked straight downtown to the World Trade Center. As I made that walk I remember wondering to myself if we’d even be able to see the plane or the damage. One look out the window told me something terrible had occurred. Our view allowed us to see the missing parts of the building where the plane had entered and the enormous fire raging inside. Already at this time the thick black smoke was billowing into the blue and otherwise sunny skies.

I called my husband who was at home and asked him what was going on. He turned on the TV and informed me that a passenger airliner had hit the tower. As other co-workers began arriving at work there was some discussion as to whether this was an accident or a targeted attack. Many were convinced it was an attack and we all stood in shock and horror as the second plane hit the towers.

I remember yelling and placing my hand to my mouth. From our vantage point we did not see the plane and the uniform fire-burst made it look like a bomb. I had the sense at this point that we were indeed under attack and wanted more than anything else to get home. I also remember looking down at Times Square below which under normal circumstances would have been crowded with tourists and not seeing a single person.

Awhile later I called my husband from my desk and asked him what was going on. He confirmed the second plane and seemed in shock by what he was watching. He became extremely emotional when he told me people were jumping off the towers. That was the first moment that I cried and felt truly frightened. I really wanted to leave and try to return to my apartment in Sunnyside Queens, but my husband was concerned the streets would be chaotic and dangerous.

Around 10:30 -11:00 am most of our cell phones had stopped working and dialing out of the office was met with a recorded message that said “all circuits are busy at this time” so I decided not to break the phone connection with my husband and simply set the phone down on my desk. I asked my husband to call my family in Washington State and he was able to reach my grandfather who relayed a message that at that time I was still alive and well. There was already panic from several people who were unable to reach loved ones near ground zero.

I honestly have no idea what time the towers collapsed but I heard shouting and screaming from the conference room and went running there to investigate. All I could see was a giant cloud of black and grey smoke towering toward the sky. It ‘was then that I decided I would leave the building and make my way across Manhattan to the 59th Street Bridge.

The subway was not running so I would have to walk the five-plus miles to my apartment building. Someone had gone to the cafeteria and made sandwiches for us to take with us, along with bottled water. Several of us were walking the same way and went together. Before I left the office I told my husband where I would meet him and what I was wearing. He told me he loved me and I hung up the phone. I walked through midtown Manhattan to the sounds of sirens wailing and F16 fighter jets patrolling the air. What struck me most was the silence. The street was thronged with people and every single one of them was speechless. As we walked across the bridge we looked downtown where the tip of the island was belching thick black smoke at least a mile into the sky. Underneath the bridge were boats loaded with firefighters headed downtown to help with the rescue efforts.

I will never forget to this day the sight of those boats, the beautiful September sky, the black pillars of smoke wafting up, the unique stench of burning materials and the sound of feet hitting the pavement.

I managed to meet my husband and make it safely to our apartment around 3 pm on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. Like most people we watched tv through the night and into the next morning. Finally I turned it off and went to bed but was unable to sleep – “what is happening?” I kept asking myself. I knew that I would never be the same.

The next day New Yorkers were asked to stay home so I did, watching TV and crying with my husband. On Thursday I went to work but due to numerous bomb threats and the chaos of the aftermath of the terrorist attack our company graciously allowed us to go home for two days of paid leave and return the following Monday. Again I went home to watch tv and cry – only leaving the apartment to buy beer and cigarettes!

On Friday of that week we were all asked to hold a vigil and my husband and I went down to our local fire station where they had lost three men. Their photos were taped to the side of the station house along with flowers and candles left by neighbors. About 25 of us stood around with candles and then we started singing “God Bless America” -which most of us couldn’t remember. The firefighters stood around looking sort of uncomfortable and then one by one they all began to cry. I don’t know why but at that moment I knew I would be OK and that America would be OK.

I still get nervous in large crowds. I still look for all the exits in large buildings and I still hate to fly. My husband and I left New York City after our first son was born in May, 2002. I just couldn’t imagine trying to survive another attack with my infant. I miss the city and I miss the towers. I still think about 9/11 every day.

Posted at 10:49 AM in American History, An American Book of the Dead – The Game Show, Horror in Theatre, Scripts, Theatre | Comments (0)

Tags: 1619, A People's History of the United States, An American Book of the Dead – The Game Show, cannibalism, colonial Virginia, Grand Guignol, horror in theatre, Howard Zinn, Jamestown, Kellie Waymire, The Bardo of the Salted Wife, Thomas Elliott, Woman in Black
You Don’t Have to Hold On

August 23, 2011

I have maintained that we are better off trying to determine what art does rather than defining it. I even went so far to make a list in an essay called “The Uses of Art”, in which I promised to flesh out each enumerated “use” with an essay of its own. (Of course I miserably defaulted on that pledge.) Further, I have always assumed— like a lot of folks, I suspect— that the best art always sticks with you: it goes into your library for reference and reuse, which is why I can still recite verbatim Puck’s “If-we-shadows-have-offended” Midsummer Night’s Dream show-closer three decades after playing the role. And when I fail to hold on to a piece of art, I tend to feel a little guilty. After all, is it not a little shameful to have forgotten easily a hundred times more poetry and painting, music and movies, than I have ever remembered? Was all that art wasted on me?
The 13th Century Sufi poet Jelaluddin Rumi and his modern American interpreter Coleman Barks have convinced me otherwise. Just as art has a variety of uses, it also has many mechanisms.

“There is a South Indian story about soap. Soap is the dirt we buy. We introduce it to the dirt we have, and the two dirts are so glad to see each other they come out and mix! They swim together in the warm pleasurable water and, at just the right moment, the washer lifts the cloth of our true being free of both soap and dirt. Mystical poetry and other practices may function this way, as soap that dances with what disturbs our clarity. Then at some moment they drop away and leave us clean, ready to be worn again.”

–From Coleman Barks introduction to a chapter in his collection
The Essential Rumi

Sometimes art doesn’t stay with you. And sometimes that’s best. How disgusting and useless would it be if the film from every bar of soap you’ve ever used still remained on your body? Some art is meant to mix with parts of you and then rinse off, parts and art together.
So the next quiet night you read a poem, and then find you’ve forgotten the entire thing the next morning, don’t berate yourself. Instead, give yourself a pat on the back for being spiritually hygienic.
Rumi himself this time:

“. . . Enjoy this being washed
with a secret we sometimes know,
and then not.”

Posted at 10:49 AM in American History, An American Book of the Dead – The Game Show, Horror in Theatre, Scripts, Theatre | Comments (0)

Tags: 1619, A People's History of the United States, An American Book of the Dead – The Game Show, cannibalism, colonial Virginia, Grand Guignol, horror in theatre, Howard Zinn, Jamestown, Kellie Waymire, The Bardo of the Salted Wife, Thomas Elliott, Woman in Black
Looks like A Great Discussion was Had Last Night

August 2, 2011

And if, like me, you weren’t able to get to West of Lenin for Seattle Theatre: What’s Next? you can get a good sense of it by reading José Amador’s evocative blow-by-blow here.

Posted at 10:49 AM in American History, An American Book of the Dead – The Game Show, Horror in Theatre, Scripts, Theatre | Comments (0)

Tags: 1619, A People's History of the United States, An American Book of the Dead – The Game Show, cannibalism, colonial Virginia, Grand Guignol, horror in theatre, Howard Zinn, Jamestown, Kellie Waymire, The Bardo of the Salted Wife, Thomas Elliott, Woman in Black
Seattle Artists Lose an Unsung Support

July 29, 2011

When I first came to Seattle in 1990 I had only one decent paying trade to my name: I knew how to clean glass. The problem was I was spoiled. In New York I had worked mostly high-rise residential units and got paid three dollars a window by my boss/friend Patrick Shields who worked next to me and also happened to be an actor/writer himself. In Seattle the only window work I could find was with a large outfit that did commercial properties and offered a flat ten dollars an hour. Instead of a bon vivant, polymath, small business-owner working next to me, I had ex-cons, two-bit bigots and pot-smoking thugs tying my ropes. (Literally. One guy told me getting high beforehand made him concentrate harder on the knots.) I quit after a week and took a job dishing at a breakfast cafe in Green Lake, but the money from that, barely above minimum wage, just wasn’t enough.
The advice I got at the 1911, the dive-bar de facto headquarters of 90’s Seattle fringe theatre, situated directly across Fourth Avenue from Annex Theatre, was simple: “go to Woods.” Woods and Associates was a small, locally owned temporary and permanent placement service located in the Galland Building downtown. I protested that I had zero office experience. The advice was reiterated: “Go to Woods. They’ll take care of you. You can even tell them you’re an actor. They like actors.”
“They like actors!?” What kind of outfit was this?
An outfit, as it turns out, that I would have an ongoing professional relationship with for the next two decades. My fellow Annexers were right. After my initial interview I was paraded around the office to meet owner Sarah Woods, Sarah’s brother Will, Sarah’s business partner Sam Hunter, plus all the rest of the folks in the placement bullpen. It didn’t matter that I was an actor or that I had never worked in an office. I would start out slow and simple, they told me. First gig: the microfilm department of Northern Life Insurance, where I captured images of old annuities documents on their way to the shredder. To tame the boredom I listened to Rush Limbaugh and KPLU jazz on my Sony Walkman. Aldrich Allen, another Annexer, now dead, worked beside me. A few years later, when I came back from shooting a movie in Maryland to find my first marriage disintegrating, I needed a job desperately. So Woods put me back at “No Life”, this time in the licensing department. It’s where I got to know William Salyers and began to hatch my plan to write a role that only an actor of his talents could pull off. A few years later we premiered Tuesday at AHA! Theatre.
As time went on, I even found myself temping in the Woods office itself. I called these gigs “meta-temping”. I used to love Fridays, not only because Sarah ordered in lunch and a masseuse every week, but also because Woods, unlike any other temp service I knew, paid every week, on the week. Many temps came into to pick up their checks personally, giving me a chance to do a quick gossip swap with my fellow show folk, like Chris Jeffries or Josh List.
It is not an exaggeration to say Woods was a big part of why my wife and I came back to Seattle from New York City after 9/11. Temp work in Manhattan had completely dried up. My unemployment was running out and I had literally no idea how I was going to support our new-born baby boy. I was certain, however, that if we went back to Seattle, Woods would find work for either Heather or me, so that the other could stay home with the baby. As it turned out, Heather landed the more lucrative gig—she always could stand working for lawyers more than me. On nice days I would roll my son in his stroller downtown from Capitol Hill and often visit the folks at Woods after having lunch with Heather. Bottom line: after a very tough year, Woods gave us options in another city where theatre thrived.
Woods and Associates will be closing their offices for good today. When I spoke with Sarah yesterday she sounded upbeat: “I don’t regret the decision at all, but it I’m the one making it so I understand it’s hard for others.” I nearly choked up when I told her what Woods had meant to me and my family over the years. “That’s the sad part,” she replied. “We’ve all been there for each other: the folks that work for us, the client companies.” Certainly Woods has always been there for me. No matter how bad a particular day gig might get, I could always think to myself, “Well, I can quit and Woods’ll take care of me: find me something.” Now, I guess I’m on my own. My only solace is that I’m not alone in feeling that way.
* * *
So here’s my request. If you are an artist, theatre or otherwise, and Woods has helped you at some point, please chime in down in the comments section below. Share a story if you’d like, but chime in, regardless, even with just your name. I’d love to share a sense of how many creative folks Woods and Associates has helped over the years.

Posted at 10:49 AM in American History, An American Book of the Dead – The Game Show, Horror in Theatre, Scripts, Theatre | Comments (0)

Tags: 1619, A People's History of the United States, An American Book of the Dead – The Game Show, cannibalism, colonial Virginia, Grand Guignol, horror in theatre, Howard Zinn, Jamestown, Kellie Waymire, The Bardo of the Salted Wife, Thomas Elliott, Woman in Black
Sandbox Radio – Worth the Wait

July 27, 2011

A bunch of us founded the Sandbox Artists Collective a few years ago “as a place for mid-career artists to explore their craft in the company of their peers.” Unlike most assemblages of show folk, the Sandboxers weren’t in any hurry to produce publicly as a group. Most of us were already performing, writing and/or producing professionally elsewhere. We were not, however, completely quiet in our first years, hosting salons, like “Playground” in which four Sandbox playwrights wrote specifically for Sandbox actors. Finally, however— and fully to the credit of Leslie Law’s leadership— the membership felt the urge to share what happens when we put our collective mind into putting on a show. The result was last month’s Sandbox Radio Live, Episode 1, available now in podcast here.
On an individual artist’s note, Sandbox Radio Live has given me the opportunity and motivation to finally flesh out a project I have been percolating since high school. For all that time, all I knew was that I wanted to wright a nasty noir angel detective saga. Now you can listen to the first chapter of Markheim on the podcast, with the incomparable Charles Leggett starring in the title role of the reluctant semi-heavenly gumshoe. Below the fold I am posting the script in case you want to follow along.
And be sure to attend the next episode of Sandbox Radio Live on Monday, October 10th at West of Lenin, the fabulous new theatre space in Fremont, when Markheim adjusts to life in the strange city of Seattle, and begins his search for the reasons that brought him here. Special appearance by the fellow that Jesus Christ Himself once called “the Prince of the World.”
(more…)

Posted at 10:49 AM in American History, An American Book of the Dead – The Game Show, Horror in Theatre, Scripts, Theatre | Comments (0)

Tags: 1619, A People's History of the United States, An American Book of the Dead – The Game Show, cannibalism, colonial Virginia, Grand Guignol, horror in theatre, Howard Zinn, Jamestown, Kellie Waymire, The Bardo of the Salted Wife, Thomas Elliott, Woman in Black
Was Mission Creep/Diffusion the Smoking Gun of Seattle Theatre’s Decline?

July 15, 2011

It all started with me bitching about a Stranger review. (Come to think of it, that’s how a lot of it starts.) Now, full disclosure, I actually wrote one of the pieces in Balagan Theatre’s outdoor show King Arthur and the Knights of the Playground, but this ain’t my first rodeo, so I can assure you I’m highly unlikely to complain about a review simply because it’s negative. (Press is press after all.) What bugged me was that Goldy began his analysis of the show with a quintessentially flawed premise.

“If the best children’s theater amuses and engages adults as much as children, then Balagan Theatre’s world premiere … doesn’t make the grade. Still, the kids seemed to love it, and you can’t beat the ticket price—free—for the next three weekends in parks around the city.”

So thusly irked, I posted a link to the piece on Face Book along with the following note: “Ah the old, “children’s-theatre-must-also-equally-please-adults” trope. How tiresome it truly is.”
In flooded the comments and quickly the discussion drifted, fueled at times by troll-power alone, to the larger question of whether theatres should feel free to stray from their missions in pursuit of general excellence.

Commenter “I’m not sure why you’re advocating for being “middle of the road” and only pleasing your base. I want theater companies to make great theater.”

Paul Mullin Why would a children’s theatre seek to have artistic viability outside of being a children’s theatre? That’s like asking a GLBT theatre to appeal to straight audiences. It’s confounding.

Around and around we went, with narrowly scoped opinions glibly offered as evidence for the larger dismaying trends of Seattle Theatre.

Commenter You’re so niche-y! Every theater wants/needs an audience. Yeah, you go after your core demographic, but it also makes sense to go after OTHER demos as well. …. Consistently ONLY targeting one group is boring and not healthy for a theater, artistically or financially.

Paul Mullin Can you back this opinion up with any facts? Because it seems to me to be a pretty viable business plan to know your audience and target it…. And I would further maintain that it’s exactly when arts orgs seek to please the aesthetic intelligentsia that they start going off the rails.

Commenter Really? So Intiman/ACT/Seattle Rep should only produce shows that appeal to its supporter base, i.e. 65 year old, upper middle class retirees? Constant revivals of Neil Simon and Vanities and Dancing at Lughnasa? Isnt’ that why the big rep houses are dying…they’re aging along with the subscriber base?

I was just about to beg off the merry-go-round for good when a long-time friend and colleague leaned in with some extremely crisp and compelling insights.

Rebecca Olson* This is going to be very shocking, but I actually agree wholeheartedly with Mullin on this one. First, we need to separate the idea that having a clear mission (ie: ensemble generated new work) means doing work that isn’t new/interesting/pushing the box. Having a clear mission is exactly what non-profit organizations are required to do, and what a lot of theaters in Seattle are lacking. What makes a theater excellent is consistently excellent work. Having a clear mission that you stand behind does not make that impossible, and having a broad non-mission (ie: “Our theater is here to make theater,”) does not mandate good work. However, history does seem to be teaching us that having both – a clear mission *and* producing consistently excellent work (ie: Wooden O Theater) creates a lasting organization.

One of the most enlightening conversations I’ve had in my theatrical life was with the late (and very much missed) Melissa Hines, who described how when the Seattle theater scene was young, the “big” theaters (Rep, ACT, Intiman, Empty Space) each had clear missions, and filled specific niches. This is a broad generalization (so please don’t nitpick,) but basically the Rep did modern classics and newish but box office safe shows from Broadway, ACT was slightly more edgy but close to the Rep, filling in the summer season when the Rep was dark, the Intiman did classics, and Empty Space did brand new/quirky/edgy work. Audiences could subscribe to all four theaters and have a completely different experience at each theater; thus, there was no “competition” for audiences.

However, at some point the Rep/ACT/Intiman theaters began spreading out and away from their original mission/focus, and all began to look alike (and the Empty Space closed.) As the big theaters homogenized, it became increasingly clear that moving away from their original missions was not allowing them opportunities to push the envelope and try new things. Instead, it was spreading them thin with too many choices and not enough structure; when one has the opportunity to select from the entire canon, from ancient Greece to modern classics to current new regional hits, to plays not yet written, seasons start to look like a dusty college textbook of “what plays are important for you to know about” rather than an exciting collection of stories for artists and audiences to explore together.

In addition, this homogenization encouraged audiences to pick one theater and ignore the other theaters; since one season mirrored another, there was no reason to subscribe to all three. This created the climate of competing for an audience.

Finally, it alienated a lot of lifetime theatergoers, who were irritated at being constantly force fed something not to their liking. While some audiences want to see Shakespeare, others want edgy new work, and some want to modern American classics. Audiences began to feel obligated to watch something they didn’t enjoy because it was part of the season they had chosen to subscribe to. Instead of educating and challenging their audiences, over time it simply lost people completely.

Thus the crux of my conversation with Melissa, was that to have organizations that last (which are part of an artistically healthy theatre community,) we need to ask our theaters to figure out what they do that is unique and fantastic, and then ask them to do only that, and do it consistently. For example, I would be disappointed if Strawshop decided to dust off “Guys and Dolls.” On the flip side, it seems natural that 5th Avenue produced “Guys and Dolls” this year –and I would be disappointed if 5th Ave decided to try their hand at “The Laramie Project.” It isn’t that these companies are doing every kind of theater all the time; it’s that they have found their niche, and they are filling it well with consistently interesting, artistically sound productions. If I want to see a good musical, I know where to go. If I want to see productions that are intensely creative and topical, I know where to go.

I am not suggesting an organization become boxed in by a mission that is too confining to allow it to grow, develop and mature over time (ie: Our mission is to produce the plays of Paul Mullin.) I am suggesting that having a mission that is clear but not confining (ie: Our mission is to produce the plays of Northwest playwrights) gives artists/organizations a starting point and framework for choosing their seasons, and gives audiences a clear idea of why they might (or might not) be interested in attending. Missions such as “We want to produce interesting plays that challenge our audiences,” may feel like they allow for more options, but until the statement is so obvious as to be embarrassing (let us all assume that no theater is hoping to product uninteresting plays that bore their audiences), and gives no indication why exactly that organization exists, or what it is offering the community that other theaters are not already offering.

And I am also not suggesting that artists be completely tied to the organizations they primarily work with; if I belonged to a company that produced new plays but I wanted to do an all female version of Hamlet with myself in the title role, I should either pitch the idea to a local classical company or self-produce. And if the artistic director of a theater who produces classical worked decided that she wanted to direct a production of a new Paul Mullin play, I would encourage her to again, find a company doing new work to pitch the idea to, or self-produce. A non-profit organization’s responsibility is to serve the community – both the artistic community and the audience. If Seattle theatre history has taught us anything, it is that while sometimes fun for the artists who are involved, muddying the water of your organization’s mission and season with random, off point productions is confusing to your audiences and does not serve the organization in the long run.

***

*Rebecca is an actress based in Seattle, performing with theaters throughout the region. She also has worked extensively as a fundraiser for the arts, both on staff and as a consultant to arts groups of all sizes, as well as a volunteer for several arts boards and committees.

Posted at 10:49 AM in American History, An American Book of the Dead – The Game Show, Horror in Theatre, Scripts, Theatre | Comments (0)

Tags: 1619, A People's History of the United States, An American Book of the Dead – The Game Show, cannibalism, colonial Virginia, Grand Guignol, horror in theatre, Howard Zinn, Jamestown, Kellie Waymire, The Bardo of the Salted Wife, Thomas Elliott, Woman in Black