Tag: Omar Willey

I launched Just Wrought a year ago today with the essay “Towards a World Class Theatre”.  I am glad I did it, but now for reasons completely different from those I had when I started.  Back then I had no idea that through this blog I would gain the good friendship and professional working relationship I have with Jim Jewell, now the Managing Producer of NewsWrights United; or that I would get to know Lyam White, Jose Amador, and Omar Willey so much better.

Conversely, I honestly did not suspect that I would lose some friends simply by saying publicly what I had always said to them in private bullshit sessions; but alas, this too is true, as some have conflated my arguments here about failures of leadership, courage and imagination in Seattle theater with personal aggression towards them and their livelihoods.  Some, but happily not all, or even most; because even more surprising than the estranged colleagues have been the artistic leaders who have reached out to me to say essentially, “I think a lot of what you say is crap, but I am glad you are saying it.”

Just like nearly everything we do as artists—or really, humans— I have no idea if this project has succeeded, and I may never know.  I do not suspect for a minute that I have yet made even the slightest dent in the status quo of how theatre gets done in Seattle, but I do sometimes flatter myself with believing I have helped simultaneously broaden and sharpen the conversation.

Of the thirteen formal essays I set out to write, I have managed to finish only five over the last 365 days.  Looking at the list now, I realize with certainty that I will never write at least three of them.  “Since When Are Directors Indispensable?” was going to point out that directors are a relatively new species in the long history of theatre, and that playwrights like Shakespeare and Moliere managed incomparable dramatic brilliance without them; but honestly, I don’t know of a single working playwright who leans more heavily on the talent of the directors he collaborates with than myself.  I literally cannot imagine producing Tuesday at Annex Theatre, or our current Living Newspapers, without Dawson Nichols, and the thought of the erstwhile Empty Space’s production of  Louis Slotin Sonata without John Langs at the helm, bringing together as he did all the amazing acting and design elements (not to mention his kick-ass choreography in the second act dance number) literally depresses me.  I could not do my work without directors, so what sort of non-hypocritical point was I hoping to make?  Perhaps only that the rising stock of the anti-collaborative idea of singular stage director auteurship, borrowed as it is from filmmaking, is a mistaken and destructive direction in theatre, especially when regional houses make season selections based on which plays will entice particular directors to work with them.  Throughout the 20th century stage directors gained power   mostly at the expense of playwrights.  The art form will regain health when that inequity is honestly addressed and steps are taken to resolve it.

I also no longer plan to write about the deleterious arrangement Seattle theatre has with Actors Equity (the stage actors union), or how the viral nature of MFA programs for actors, directors and playwrights is weakening and rarifying our art form in this country.  I realize after this year of speaking out that as a college-dropout actor-turned-playwright, these are no longer my battles to fight.  Only the actors in this town can fix things so they have the same right to develop new works for the stage as actors in Los Angeles and New York; and only young people themselves can wake up and realize that chasing the imprimatur of higher education only takes them further away from the audiences that really need them, and that the excuse of needing a degree to make a living by teaching their craft only perpetuates the virus, while ultimately helping no one, including themselves.

Of the five essays I did manage to write I am proud and stand by them.  Locally grown new plays do matter, and I see signs that Seattle is making more of them.  World Class Theatre does mean something, even when it cannot and should not be defined precisely.  Playwrights and designers can form some amazing alliances, and I earnestly hope for more of them, for myself and for the world of play development at large.  One-person shows are an easy way for a theaters to shirk the hard work of actually making new plays.  (All props and apologies to Mike Daisy, Jose Amador, Marya Sea Kaminski and everyone else who does such amazing solo work.  I don’t want you to stop.  I just want theatres to stop selling live story-telling  as “plays” {And yes, I understand that even that won’t happen.})

That leaves five essays unwritten and unspiked.  The one most likely to see daylight in 2011 is “Stop trying to be Respectable, You’re in Show Business”; because I still see way too many of my Seattle colleagues cozying up for financial support and social legitimacy to the very same powerful interests that they should instead be looking for ways to indict theatrically.  I wish I had a condo payment for every time an otherwise  brilliant artistic administrator has baldly insisted to me that theatre is an elitist art form and therefore must depend on the good graces of corporations and  the upper class for its existence.  If I believed this, I would not only quit today, I would start doing everything I could to darken every stage currently producing plays in this city.  Thankfully, I know better.  As show people, we are at our best playing the dangerous fool, telling the wealthy and well-placed  who would teach us our art, what Lear’s Fool told Lear, “I am better than thou art now; I am a Fool, thou art nothing.”

Just Wrought’s first year has been an often hectic, sometimes even bruising struggle.  Lately I have had to remind myself and others that I am an artist first, and an advocate only much further down my list of priorities.  Over the last few weeks I have been feeling a growing need to take time to lie fallow here for the sake of my creativity.  I resolve to listen more than I talk in 2011.  Of course that doesn’t mean I won’t be talking at all.

Expanded conversations.  Bruising struggles over important ideas.  Greater clarity around the issues about which I should just keep quiet.

Lost friends.  Gained friends. 

It’s been a year.