The Valley of the Shadow of Arts Death

I’ve been busy since my last post/the Big Jade of 2011, and neglected to share the response I got from my aforementioned Friend Melissa. It was nice to hear that I’m not alone.

Her advice is pretty solid too. I need to work hardest on Bullet #4–PATIENCE. I don’t have a lot of patience in general, never have, and often catch myself in emotional spirals of this. Perhaps that’s another post for another time.

Read Melissa’s response below:

What to do when we we feel jaded?
Recently, I had lunch with a family friend of mine.  Unbeknowst to me, she too had fallen in love with theatre and just graduated from college with a B.A. in Theatre.  She contacted me through Facebook to ask if I’d meet up with her for lunch while she was visiting the city to “talk about theatre.”   Throughout our lunch I was struck by how effervescent she was; she was beaming and energized by the city.  All she wanted to know was how to do this thing called theatre.  Should she move here?  If so, when?  Where should she look for casting notices?  Which were the good theatre companies?  Underlying each question was a pure love for performing and the willingness to do whatever it took to get there. As I sat there, I marveled at her energy and enthusiasm and wondered: How can I get some of that?

This past year, I have been jaded.

I haven’t been unproductive. I had two opportunities to help create and/or direct new work for the stage. Both were challenging, exciting and satisfying in their own way. But still, a sense of doubt was gnawing at me. It was something larger than these two plays.  For lack of better articulation: why theater? And if theater, why this story? And if this story, then for who? Especially when thinking about creating new work, the decisions of story, place and character became near-paralyzing, especially with the backdrop of 2011 (protests, economy, politics, etc). What could I possibly say that was important? Meanwhile, I was seeing a lot of truly crappy theater. A lot. My anxiety turned to despair, I think, and feeling jaded. The classic and enigmatic Peggy Lee song played through my mind: “Is that all there is?”

Simultaneously, I was attached to a large project (let’s call it Project X) in a producing/administration capacity that was draining me of all passion and interest and challenging my commitment to the arts (or at least making me loathe that particular brand of art). And it was bloody exhausting.

So, I started finding joy in other things – cooking, bike riding, farmer’s markets, home decorating & reading. I thought fleetingly about giving it all up to become a sommelier.

My husband recently went on a very challenging hike of Mt. Washington with a friend of his. He said it completely drained him, which he was conscious of during the hike. He was actually inviting it. He wanted to de-charge his batteries, empty himself out, so that he could be re-charged.

I realized (with a glimmer of hope) that perhaps Project X was my own version of the hike. That I’d been sapped for all I was worth–by long hours, little pay, undesirable tasks, unimaginative art–and could now start to rebuild my energy, focus and joy. Recently, I finally am feeling excited and creative again. Things that have helped:

• Finding little coincidences in my work that resurrect a time in my life when I was at full theater/joy capacity. The impetus for a new play has come from a book I bought in Spain while working with Compania Atalaya.

• Seeing some damn fine theater (WarHorse, Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant)

• Being with people who are excited about the art I’m making, especially people from other disciplines

• Being patient with myself about making art. Giving myself a longer timeline than I’m used to because I’ll be damned if I’m going to put up crap just for the sake of working. (Remind me of this later, Liz).

So, it’s a start. It’s still easy to feel burnt out, to instantly succumb to envy others when they get the grant/residency/review that you didn’t, to want to choose a glass of wine with the husband over a grant application (oh those grant applications). But maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to get back to the place where only the art matters and that’s where all my energy will go. And, if I’m doing it right, it will send it back to me threefold.

A few days ago, my friend Melissa asked me when I’m going to blog again. I told her that I’m jaded and can’t think of anything to write about, which really means, “I’m jaded and can’t think of anything to write about because I’m disenchanted with the scene, discouraged by our superficial, stacked-deck hierarchy and am not sure I want to be part of a theater community, on or offline, that is unabashedly competitive and whiny and that sometimes appears to actually hate theater, if that’s possible, which I guess it is.” But I didn’t say all that.

Melissa responded by asking three questions, all of which began with “What to do…” I’m very glad she worded her thoughts this way because sometimes it seems that things are just sucky, and it’s so nice to be reminded that there’s always a what to do. DOING keeps the world spinning.

Her first question: What to do when we we feel jaded?

I’m still figuring this out. I suppose the answer is: stop feeling jaded and start feeling excited. If you’re like me, though, and you deal with things in your own slowpoke way, just proclaiming something to be true won’t work.

And so. When I’m jaded, I mostly focus on working harder than I was before. Work, work, work, even when it’s not fun. Since I’m an inward kind of person, I think a lot. I stare at the wall and try to figure out where the bad feelings are coming from. I curl up on friends’ couches and talk over wine or tea, I take long hikes, I journal and journal and make lists and journal. I remind myself of the genuine, flesh-and-blood friendships I have in the theater world, and I visit with them. I remind myself of all the places I’ve been. Every backstage, every shop, every dressing room and every rehearsal room. I try to collect these memories like snapshots: a big empty room full of strangers; tables full of coffee cups, water bottles and paper under florescent lights.  Rehearsal props and different colored rolls of tape, late-night beers, arguments, note-taking and those many moments of joy when everything just works. Opening night parties. Twelve-hour days. Paint fumes. Stage fright. Saying a line and feeling the audience stop breathing. I remember all those times I realized, as I watched the lights go up, that I helped make that. Something that did not exist at all a month prior is now a whole world, and people I don’t know are watching it. This is very special. This is rare.

I make myself remember how it was at the beginning, when theater was the most exciting thing in the world. I cried every time I stepped into an empty house because this was a room that was alive! Those years lasted longer than these more recent years of cynicism and doubt, and deep down, I know the awe is still there. I still say prayers of thanks before every single show. I’m still here despite all the bullshit and dysfunction I’ve seen and felt in the professional world. I think maybe we all have—and you’re still here.

Why do you write plays, Self? Because it’s the most exciting thing there is when you love theater and you love to write and you love what can happen in rehearsal and on a stage. I’ve done almost everything a body can do in theater, I’ve been learning for a long time, and this is where I am, today, right now. If there’s anything they teach you in theater, it’s to always be present. I’m not there yet, but I’m trying.

So dear Melissa, why do you make theater? What made you love it in the first place? What did your rehearsal space in Spain look like, and if you looked out the window, what would you see? What did it feel like when you got your first playwriting award? What was it like, on a rainy day at SITI, to be at the front of the room and see something amazing happen? What’s written down in all those Moleskines of yours? To whom do you compare yourself? To whom might they compare themselves? Who are your true friends? They love you.

More to come…

Use your Linda Richman voice, readers: The National Endowment is neither national nor an endowment. Discuss!

I wanted to quickly post a few thoughts on the NEA, inspired by Scott Walters’ number-crunching blog post and my plummeting blood sugar.

Poor NEA. It’s batted around by everyone—it doesn’t do enough, it does too much, it’s too progressive, too socialist, too conservative, too good-ol-boy. But it remains, simply, a federal agency that distributes taxpayer money to American nonprofit arts organizations. It is what it is, it can be better, and as is the way of life in Washington, would be difficult to reform. I feel no ill-will toward the Endowment. As an agency, it’s probably one of the most functional with the most bang for its buck, and one of the few that does not do evil. I feel some frustration, however, with the way the NEA functions. Like many arts bureaucracies in business today, it feels outdated and underperforming.

Scott’s numbers are pretty interesting to look at. They confirm what many people know—the award pyramid is big and fat with the major coastal cities on the bottom, then the mid-sized cities, then a teeny tiny tip of funding for “flyover” and southern states. A few comments came up on Twitter about the need to know how many applications are coming from where, which of course would be nice to know, if we could get that information. My reactions all had to do with the back-story of said numbers and applications because, as it is structured now, the mere application process disqualifies the hundreds of small and low-budget theaters dotted across the country. National agency, national problem.

Here’s why: To apply to the NEA, you must have a staff. A minimum of two would be good, and one has to be full time and salaried, along with your artists (this is a legal requirement). A staffer is also highly necessary, because the process of grants.gov registration, getting a DUNS number, registering with CCR, registering as a credential provider and submitting a Point of Contact is a long and frustrating process that requires office equipment, time, organization and planning. You must be a 501c3 or apply through a partner (this is not the same as a fiscal agent). You must have a three-year history of programming. And you have to have impactful programming with preferably a wide reach. These requirements rule out many companies I know.

Now, I know why they do this. The red tape, the frustration, the long chains of approval and checklists an agency follows are all there to protect the taxpayer from fraud and misuse. And I stand by this very firmly. I would not ask or expect the Agency to change its requirements, no matter how desperately small theaters and artists like me need that seed money. Frankly, without an organizational structure, manpower or financial safety net, I cannot be entrusted with federal funds. HOWEVER, as a servant of the people, the Endowment should find ways to try to ensure a healthy community of American theaters in the future, and this very much has to do with feeding the young, the idealistic and underfunded.

My idea: adjust the allocation pie chart. Give the greatest percent to state agencies, and reserve a smaller amount of the pie for direct granting. State agencies, no matter how dysfunctional they may be, fuel art in this country, along with our partner foundations. I would say more about my idea of an ideal structure, using my employer in examples, but unfortunately am not able to do so because I am currently using that employer’s computer. Again, government-style silliness, but it has an important purpose, and I respect that.

…And  since I am easily burned out from talking theater, there’s this.

Playwright Michele Lowe opened her recent HowlRound interview with Kent Thompson by commenting: “Before you became artistic director, less than ten of the 264 plays produced at Denver Center Theater were written by women.” This is almost too embarrassing to print, and I wouldn’t call their current number of women produced “off the charts,” as Thompson says it is now. But hey, maybe I’m looking at the wrong list or maybe they have a special womanz theater in the basement somewhere.

I don’t want to unfairly single them out—the disproportion of women’s voices in American theater is everywhere. It’s painfully overt in arts administration and theater punditry, but perhaps more cloaked in the show-making community. There are a lot of women working in theater, but how many of them hold positions of artistic power? Although it’s been lighting up the radar these days, there’s still quite a bit of timid dancing around the problem. (Yes, it is a problem.) Mad props to those like Theresa Rebeck who don’t mind pissing people off and calling bullshit when they see it. The world is tipped toward maleness everywhere you look, but in theater—a supposedly forward-thinking, communicative, freedom-loving industry—the balance breaks the scale. What gives?

As a little experiment, I decided to tally up stats from the 15 shows I’ve seen here in DC over the past few months, focusing on the following areas:

1) Point of view (Who is the play about? From whose perspective was the play told? Whose story was it?)
2) Playwright
3) Director
4) Cast

Here are the numbers:

Point of View: 8 Male; 3 Female; 4 N/A
Ridiculous. As much as I care about white men and their ‘problems,’ here we go, again and again putting on and sitting through stories about men. Women are full, complex human beings too. Why are we so underrepresented on stage?

Playwright: 11 Male; 4 Female
Wow, this fucking sucks—generally speaking and because I’m a playwright. For a time, I even gave serious thought to using a male pen name, but wasn’t happy about the idea of losing ownership of my written work for all time. Is there a reason why women aren’t being taken seriously as writers? If the belief is that women do in fact have equally compelling stories to tell, then are we not seen on stage or getting produced because… I don’t know…? And if we’re “from Venus” or whatever, shouldn’t an artform that relies on emotion and human connection be women’s work? And if it’s all about business, shouldn’t stories by and about women dominate, since more than half of theatergoers are female?

Director: 8 Male; 8 Female (one show had two directors)
Right on. More of this.

Cast: 44 Male; 31 Female
There’s an equality/inequality male-default theory that if a group is 50% female, a common perception is that it’s ‘mostly’ women. The numbers above are not equal, so don’t get excited. Oh, and be even less excited, because ten of these females played small ensemble parts and some didn’t even have lines. No good. The lack of decent female roles is a whole other conversation, and more artistic directors should be talking about this. I’m not a career actor, so when my woman-centric play Owl Moon got produced, I started to realize what was up. A few female actors in the crowd came to me and said, “Thanks for writing good female roles. There aren’t many,” and “I want to talk about these people with you.” One woman in the audience burst into tears after the show, saying the play brought up some issues she didn’t expect to see on stage. Think about that for a second.

I’m sure some people will whine and argue and tell me how many “opportunities” there are for women, but frankly, they can just save it. Women are half the human population, we give life to the next generation, we’re whole people, and we work and think as hard and as sharply as our men—but we’re still somehow not worthy of equal pay, equal rights, or equal artistic representation. Don’t hire women because of some kind of diversity/bleeding heart/affirmative action bullshit, hire us because we’re really good at what we do.

Michael Kaiser has a residence at the Ritz Carlton in Foggy Bottom. It was there at a long-ago reception that I pocketed a cloth cocktail napkin. Not on purpose, I just thought it was paper. Because why would anyone display wealth like that in a roomful of underpaid artis… Oh. Oh, nevermind. He doesn’t know, does he?

The Huffington article bothered me. Not only does it display the rampant delusion of a prominent American arts leader, this time it got nasty and personal. Ageism is always allowable, isn’t it? The entire narrative points a finger at Millennials for not being into [self-defined “high”] art. It makes the ridiculous assumption that all young people are stupid, drooling rabble, when in fact young people are more culturally savvy than ever. And I guarantee, Baby Boomers and beyond don’t know Verdi and Caruso either.  Let’s take a journey through some of the article’s more choice phrases:

We in the arts face a major problem…
“We?” WE? Well, he said it right there. People “in the arts” do not include those under fifty, apparently. Not a very good way to start out.

… we now have an entire generation of young people who have had virtually no exposure to the arts. They do not go to theater, concerts, dance performances or operas.
In what universe? I work in theater and have played music since age ten. My dad is a musician, my brothers are all musicians, several generations of my relatives were musicians, my boyfriend is a musician. When I was a kid, my dad took me to Avery Fisher Hall to see Evelyn Glennie, Stanley Drucker and the New York Phil. When I was a teen, I had season tickets to the BSO with my family, I took art, drama and music, and went on class trips to see professional theater. As a young adult, I worked for an orchestra and several theaters, including the KC’s Sondheim Festival. I’m not unique. Why don’t I go to the Kennedy Center? I can’t afford regular tickets, I rarely know what’s playing, the things I do hear about are not appealing, the website is unfriendly, the building is unfriendly, the building is isolated, there isn’t much in the way of food or drink in the vicinity, and it takes a long time to get there on public transit. The Kennedy Center is not the only art source in town. I see live theater and music every week. And for things I cannot afford or get to, I sometimes watch YouTube. Get on the tech train.

I am constantly amazed at the low culture IQ of very bright and talented young people who have achieved a great deal in other realms.
I am constantly amazed at the low culture, technology, common sense, innovation and world-wise IQ of very bright and talented old people who have achieved a great deal in almost every realm.

It is easy to point to culprits…
Culprits? Ah yes, youth culture is a crime.

…the lack of arts education in our public schools…
Again, what universe? Formal arts education is a relatively new-fangled thing. My own parents didn’t get the amount of arts training I did—even in public school—nor were performing arts high schools and fine and liberal arts degrees commonplace then, as they are now. I took visual art, sculpture, drama and music in both private and public school, as did almost all of my schoolmates.

…the astonishing array of personal popular entertainment options that occupy the time of younger people…
I can smell the fear. Computers. Computers! COMPUTERS! This must be the millionth time I’ve heard this from an arts leader—computers, the Web, gaming are somehow all anti-art. I’ll never understand this. It’s as though a bunch of 13-year-olds used to go to the symphony, but now they just stay home and play Starcraft.

… and the ticket prices for concerts, plays and operas that are so high they keep many young (and old) people from attending.
Kaiser works for the Kennedy Center last time I checked. Why not start the “fight” right at home?

The arts have survived and grown in this nation because there is always a new group of middle aged people who replace their parents as our supporters…
Wrong. “The arts” as Kaiser understands them are new—brand new. The system was forged in recent decades by a few wealthy foundations and a government that was seeing rapid cultural change. It was sustained by a bountiful economy, and as quickly as it rose, so quickly is it falling. The  Boomers did most of the institutional building and funding, and as they did with everything else, created an unsustainable climate out of their greed and live-in-the-now sensibility. Now they don’t seem to understand why “young people” can’t pick up their garbage. My grandparents didn’t give an eff about sustaining the opera. They had real problems like surviving the Great Depression and not getting shot by Germans. My great-grandparents also didn’t give an eff, because they were busy uprooting their entire way of life to come to this country. And also not get shot.

…But this phenomenon has only been maintained because each new generation cares about the arts when they are in a financial position to help us… Will they be there for us when we need them?
We might be too busy struggling to keep our jobs, pay the rent and make art for no pay.

We cannot do this alone. Our hope is that every major arts organization will join in this fight. The future of the arts in America is at stake.
Noooo! Major arts organizations need to go away. They are their own worst enemy.

Yo. Twitter/blog fighting is getting goddamn tiresome, so let’s think about shows for a moment. Cos that’s what we care about … right?

I’d like to talk about Rorschach Theatre’s Voices Underwater because two things about this production were interesting firsts for me. I like when that happens.

I’m not going to talk about the play itself. If we saw it together, we could talk about all kinds of things, but for the purposes of this post I’ll merely say that Voices Underwater is a play about Southern ghosts, race, drowning and being trapped, among other things. Here’s what was cool and different for me: I was completely drawn into the world of the play before it even started and was pleasantly creeped out for most of the show. This never happens! Two overarching things contributed to this experience:

Thing 1: Creepiness
Voices Underwater is the first stage show that has ever given me scary-movie-grade goosebumps. I’ve been told that “theater can’t be scary,” so it made me pretty happy. Theater, being representational, requires a good deal of suspension of disbelief, which of course makes illusions like physical violence, supernatural horror and sci-fi difficult to pull off. In the case of Voices Underwater, all it took was an opening moment of good light cue timing and an actress’ very, very quiet entrance. The “lightening reveal” is a common horror film gag, and I was really thrilled to see how well it worked on stage. Add this to a very specific, well-used sound and light design and the fact that the audience is basically part of the attic set itself—I felt like a fellow ghost looking in on the action. Rain beat down on the roof and eerie shadows appeared behind the rafters. Generations of ghosts haunted the space inhabited by the living without confusion or clutter. Characters moved around the nooks and crannies of the small set in both darkness and light, sometimes unnoticed, sometimes deliberately. I’m always amazed at how much you can do with audio and smart lighting. Imaginative tech sets us apart as an artform—if only every director understood this. Please, take advantage of it.

Thing 2: Immersion
The performance experience began as soon as I walked into the theater lobby. Rorschach’s co-artistic director, Randy Baker, gathered groups of ten people at a time to let into the theater space, so from the get-go, I knew something was being done differently. My fellow band of patrons and I were led to the theater in a roundabout way, winding through a room and a long hallway—everything decorated haunted house-style with gauzy sheets, old furniture, dusty books, flickering candles, the works—to an “attic” door that creaked open into the playing space. “Look at anything you want, walk around, pick things up,” Randy had told us. And since we were invited to be curious, we were. We all roamed the set, sitting on the big bed and examining its white quilt, picking up books, a letter, a postcard, looking at pictures and flyers, antiques of various sizes and functions. In the background, crickets chirped loudly.

These 20 minutes before the show were more valuable than I ever would’ve thought. They made me ready for the show—they brought me into the world of the play, got my imagination going, and gave me a ton of information about the story I was about to see. Before the lights went down, I knew:
- We’re in the South, in the attic of an old house.
- Someone lived in the room, probably a woman.
- It’s nighttime.
- The house is haunted.
- Property has been transferred from someone named Jennifer to someone named Emma.
- A woman is dead.
- “Jennie” lived in the 1920′s.
- Someone in the story was in or had ties to the KKK.
- Something about the story has to do with the Civil War.

Needless to say, when I did eventually sit down, I was chomping at the bit to find out the answers to my myriad questions.

I know this is simplistic stuff, but I couldn’t help thinking of “The Haunted Mansion” ride at the Disney parks. I’m not talking about subject matter or special effects here, I’m talking about suspension of disbelief. This is what Disney parks are going for, and they’re really, really good at it. Their task is to get you, who has just bought a Goofy cap and eaten a hot dog, to believe you’re in a haunted New Orleans mansion. It might not work as well if you just walked in off the street. So you wait in line in a graveyard, actors in period costumes say weird things to you in character, and you are herded into a creepy parlor. Then, in groups, you get onto an elevator and are shut up with an opening monologue that sets the story and tone. When the elevator doors open (unless you’re a total ass who hates fun) you’ve been properly prepped for pretend.

Theater isn’t Disney, but it still requires imaginative work from the audience. Film doesn’t—it requires that you “sit back, relax and enjoy the show.” I wish people wouldn’t use this line in their curtain calls. It releases the audience of any responsibility when they should be actively participating in the experience: going to the land of make-believe and giving of their creative energy. Too many theaters build sets instead of environments. Too many directors expect the audience to sit down and immediately absorb the play without any context, clue or welcome. And how sad that many theater buildings make you feel like you’re in a museum or a convention center. Why is theater so often uncreative? Why so unapologetically un-fun? What should be an imagination-stirring, stimulating experience is more often  like a long, itchy afternoon at Sunday School.

I’m well aware that creating an intricate world in the way that Rorschach did won’t work for every theater company, space or show. But it’s something to think about in either broad terms, or in practical terms such as how you design and light your lobby, what people see and hear during preshow, what the theater itself looks like, how and when the show starts, and what the audience is and is not allowed to access, see, know, touch and connect with. Humans are curious—give them a chance to explore and inquire, and they probably will.

I know I am long, long, long overdue for a proper blog post, but for now I want to share something simple and lovely with you. Then I will shamelessly leave you with the “trailer” for a show I wrote, because I like the idea of play trailers.

A beloved, most-influential former professor of mine emailed (in all caps, as usual) today. He said:

BELOW IS THE PROLOGUE TO A MODERN PLAY BY THE GREAT HOWARD BARKER CALLED “THE BITE OF THE NIGHT” (1986).

YOU SHOULD KEEP THIS PASSAGE SOMEWHERE IN MIND AS YOU ENCOUNTER ALL ART, NOW AND IN THE FUTURE, NOT JUST PLAYS.

HERE’S THE TEXT:

They brought a woman from the street
And made her sit in the stalls

By threats
By bribes
By flattery
Obliging her to share a little of her life with actors

But I don’t understand art
Sit still, they said
But I don’t want to see sad things
Sit still, they said

And she listened to everything
Understanding some things
But not others
Laughing rarely, and always without knowing why
Sometimes suffering disgust
Sometimes thoroughly amazed

And in the light again, said
If that’s art I think it is hard work
It was beyond me
So much beyond my actual life

But something troubled her
Something gnawed her peace
And she came a second time, armoured with friends

Sit still, she said

And again, she listened to everything
This time understanding different things
This time untroubled that some things
Could not be understood
Laughing rarely but now without shame
Sometimes suffering disgust
Sometimes thoroughly amazed

And in the light again said
This is art, it is hard work
And one friend said, too hard for me
And the other said, if you will
I will come again
Because I found it hard I felt honoured