Redefining, renegotiating

I went to a tiny college. My senior year, single and fancy free, I was on the hunt for a low key dating thing. I was on the prowl, not setting too terribly high a standard and yet there was not a single person I could find on campus that I remotely wanted to get involved with.

The problem was this: In such an insular community, I already knew everyone. And anyone I might have been interested in, I already had some fore-knowledge of. I likely knew all the people they’d dated, knew things about them, and had an opinion of who they are and what they were about. And ditto in the reverse for them knowing the same info about me. And having just gone through a two year LTR followed by a series of emotionally involved if less physically proximate entanglements, I was interested in meeting who didn’t already have an idea of who I was. And in return, I wanted to meet someone that was a surprise, that wouldn’t know me in the context of the other folks I’d been involved with or the specifics of my extra curriculars and major. In short, I wanted a bit of a fresh start.

Recently, after a week of incredibly and exciting productive work on a new project in its infancy, a collaborator of mine and I were reflecting and he said, “You don’t know me very well.”

My first impulse was to argue, to say, “That’s not true at all. I’ve seen a lot of you in rehearsals, learned the ways you think, what excites you and the kinds of things you want to say in your work.” And then I thought about that feeling I had in college. Why despite my desire to get involved, I simply didn’t want that to be with the folks I saw around me. Why I was had this negative sense of knowing everything about everyone’s business.

After a moment of thought I said to this person, “That’s true. I don’t know you very well.” Because I think the truth is that I don’t. And in some ways, it’s easier that way.

Growing up in an artistic community can be a tricky business.

I think about mistakes I’ve made in the past with more than a little bit of cringe-i-tude. I think about stuff I’ve said, challenges I’ve backed down from, people I’ve pissed off, and the painful artistic flubs I’ve brought on the world. Some of them I really wish I could change. Not all, surely, but in anything, in life, we’re bound to mess up a bit, and I am certainly no exception. And it’s a tough thing as we grow to try and negotiate that evolving self, the person you feel you are versus who others have defined you to be.

Growing up, my sister and I had very different personalities. We categorized ourselves (and were categorized) in pretty different boxes. Dale – the outgoing, far more socially fluent of the Mackeys – was known for her sensitivity, her ebulient wit and charm and her facility with language and words. I on the other hand – a bit more inwardly focused, a bit more guarded, focused and intense – was the science-minded Mackey. I associated myself with drive and passion but quietness and a tougher time communicating with those around me.

Dale was the socialite poet, I the mastermind thinker. And these labels felt awfully firm in their attachment.

So it’s funny to me now when I say to people that I’m a little socially awkward and they say, “Really? I don’t see that.” And it’s taken me a lot of those to realize that I’m still affixing a badge from an Adrienne that may not really exist any more. My sister and I realize now in our adulthood while we do have some differences, in the new contexts we’ve placed ourselves into we are far more similar than either of us realized. Indeed, part of the reason I started posting so often in this space is that I realized just how much I liked expressing myself through writing and just how long I’d been hesitant to do so because we already had a writer in the family. It was only just occurring to me that perhaps that was no longer true.

The creative identities and patterns we forge as young people in an artistic community can be hard to outgrow. Beyond type casting, the habits we entrench in our early workings can stick to us, and they can be difficult to shake. I have felt this keenly as I start to take collaborations with folks that scrappily began as friends just getting together and have to shift them into the “real deal” in terms of scope, money and professionalism. There have been times when I have found frustration that those people with whom I have only begun working seem to negotioate the personal/professional line easier than those that knew me at 23.

There are creators in this city who were once my teachers. There are people who have worked with me before I knew how to pay. There are folks that have seen me break down, lose steam and hope. But most of those things aren’t true anymore. And I don’t want those patterns that I don’t think are applicable to define who I am today. So rather than getting frustrated, I’m trying to see this as a kind of opportunity. A chance to learn a lesson in how to define oneself to others at every stage of one’s career. We do this a lot when we’re young. But maybe it’s still helpful at the midway point or even near the finishing line.

Almost every theater company I know in Philadelphia was founded in my lifetime. And that means that relatively recently almost every one of those institutions has been where I am now. That’s a comforting thought, no? To think even the monoliths were slogging to figure it out, just as much as we are now. To think that the largest and most impervious “institutions” were not gifted status and knowledge by the gods. That they built it over time (and not even that long a time). That they likely made mistakes (may still be making them), but above all, did so by changing and updating themselves as they grew.

Which means you don’t have to do everything right, right now. Which means that you can try and fail and figure out how to do better.

Which also means that your faults are yours to own and change. That no one is making you who you will become. You are. That it’s up to you to see your actions and look at how they are perceived and received and decide if it’s what you want. And if it isn’t, to change.

We must not be afraid of doing it.

You are never trapped by history. If you are in a pattern, be that in the way you make work, the area or title under which you do that, or the people with whom it happens, you can change it if you’re willing to put in a little elbow grease or speak up when speaking up is needed. And rather than seeing that as a burden, think of it as a chance to re-affirm, to re-assess and re-negotiate your sense of self and art in the world. Don’t assume that the people around you have grown alongside you. Rather take the time to re-state your hopes and desires and goals, even if you think that they must be obvious. You might find that a perfect fit from the past is chafing needs a little tending. Or you might just find that everyone else has also been hoping to shed the old habits as well and is happy to jump on your boat and float that way with you.

So be bold and brave enough to keep asking for the things you want and need.

The only thing you have to lose is the stuff you don’t want anyway.

Philly reviewers, it is Tim-on to get your shit together

Excuse the bad joke. I can’t help it. I pun when I’m pissed.

Ooo-hoo. Adrienne is angry. (Can you hear it in the typing? CLACK! CLACK CLACK CLACK!) I would write in all caps (LIKE THIS!) because that is how I feel, but you would probably stop reading, and I do NOT want you to stop reading.

If you frequent this blog you likely have a sense of what I think about the role of women in the contemporary theater scene.

(In the off chance you are new here, feel free to go back and read this, or this, or this, or this…)

So when I heard that the Philadelphia Artists’ Collective (or PAC) was doing a production of a Shakespeare play – Timon of Athens – that included a bunch of cross gender casting I was interested. Interested because I will be doing a similar (even more substantial) gender re-assigning in Clark Park’s Tempest this summer. Interested to see how they handled this gender switcheroo in context of the classical cannon. But most of all interested to see how people reacted to what they were doing.

And, like one sometimes does when one is intrigued by a colleague’s choices for a production, I read a few reviews about the show to see how it was received.

And now, as previously mentioned, I’m really really angry.

First off: my job here is not to defend this particular production. In fact, I have not yet seen this play. I will, next week. But I write this now, not yet having seen this play, quite intentionally.

There are statements in the reviews of Timon assessing creative choices that I cannot substantiate or discredit. I do not know if the actors in the various roles are interesting to watch. I do not know if the opulence and greed of the play is borne out in the staging. I do not know if some of the problems that reviewers cite around this particular staging are true. Indeed, given that some of them appear in multiple assessments, perhaps some of the points they mention are quite valid.

But then again, I don’t know, I haven’t seen it yet. And my problem is not with the specifics of one stylistic choice or another.

Indeed, my problem here is quite the opposite.

I will say upfront that there are several actresses in this production I admire and respect, whose work I tend to like very much. And I am making such a long and belabored point of not knowing anything about the show’s specifics because I know that once I have seen the performance I may well be inclined to defend these performers’ specific choices. And I really don’t want that to get all muddled up with what’s really problematic here: the thing that’s really sticky and challenging.

I want to be absolutely and unwaveringly clear that my issue has nothing to do with giving specific critique to these particular people – be positive or negative – and everything to do with the blithe and blanket notions undercutting the women in this production that I see made under the banner of “criticism.”

“Them’s is fightin’ words.” You might be thinking.

You betcha.

Let’s start with Philly.com. You can read the whole thing if you want to, but I’ll skip to this sentence starting off the final paragraph:

As director, Dan Hodge makes a tactical error in casting women in many of the male roles; it knocks the play off balance (tiny women playing cutthroats and shrill senators), and confuses the issues that have nothing to do with gender.

Ok. (deep breath)

Let’s play a little mad libs game. Pretend this statement isn’t about a play but a business. Everywhere there’s a statement about theater, I’ll replace it with a corresponding business word. Let’s see what we get:

As CEO, Dan Hodge makes a tactical error in hiring women in many of the male jobs; it knocks the company off balance (tiny women working as cutthroats and shrill managers), and confuses the business plans that have nothing to do with gender.

You wanna publish that in a newspaper and see what kind of letters you get?

I didn’t think so.

Having no women in a play doesn’t mean the play has nothing to do with gender in the same way that having a play with only white people has nothing to do with race. It has everything to do with gender: about our conception of what greed is, what it looks like, who is allowed to display it, and the gender with which we associate that quality.

If the play’s issues – greed, ruthlessness, heroism unrewarded – are indeed not about gender, than it really shouldn’t matter if a man or a woman displays those things. The point of the review should be whether the specific actor embodying that role is successful in doing so.

That you make a point to say that “tiny women” should not be onstage displaying those things says to me that you have now made this a play about gender in a way that Shakespeare did not. It says to me that you don’t think tiny women, in general, as a whole, are not suited to being greedy or ruthless. That you can look at a tiny women and know by virtue of her tiny woman-ness that she is neither of those things.

You dislike this particular actress? Fine. Cite the specifics of their performance. But to lump women as a category under the “not viable to play this role” category is demeaning and ignorant.

And don’t get me started on the misogyny inherent in the word “shrill.”

The lesson here is that men playing aggressive roles have the potential to be booming and commanding while aggressive woman onstage are annoying and screechy. Ladies interested in Shakespeare’s works, please stick to Desdemona or Ophelia or Juliet or Cordelia or Lavinia and go die because you love a dude who is kind of an emotional asshole to you.

Or go be Lady Macbeth and kill yourself.

Or go be Cleopatra and die (again) because you’re an oversexed “gipsy.”

Or be really excited to get married.

Or a witch.

Who wouldn’t be totally satisfied with that?

Moving on.

Here is what Citypaper has to say. Again, feel free to read the whole thing but I’m skipping here to the summation at the end:

And while I understand the need for good women’s roles in an ensemble company like this one, it’s still a mistake to have Apemantus and several other key male characters played by women — Timon’s wretched world of greed and infighting is, in every sense, man-made.

Is it possible that this is worse? I think it is. Worse because of the infantilizing and diminishing way that it’s phrased. It is the casualness of these words that more than anything makes me want to punch the paper upon which the words are written:

Dan, Dan, Dan… Silly man.

Oops! I think you made a “mistake”.

FYI, this play is male-driven. You might not remember because you’ve been around so many ladies (I mean 50/50 in the cast, but come on, that’s an awful lot for a Shakespeare play).

You forgot it’s about BIG things like “greed and infighting”. It’s not that this particular female performer is not powerful commanding. It’s not that this particular actress you’ve chosen is not ferocious or greedy or money hungry. It’s not that many of the women in your show are young apprentices and might be worth evaluating based on experience or talent instead of gender.

No, no. You didn’t realize that women are not capable of such things.

This story is “man-made.”

Oh, Dan. I hope you don’t make that mistake again…

Because “while I see the need for good women’s roles,” while I see that the two female co-founders of your company are excluded from this very large and powerful portion of the theatrical cannon, while I see the incredibly limited scope of what a woman is traditionally defined as in some of these plays, while I see the subtle and casual limitations that I am placing on them, while I see the constant barrage of definition that many works put on women, a definition they constantly have to battle against, while I see that the logical extension of my argument is that because I don’t usually see women play these roles and it feels weird to me I want you to stop doing it thus ensuring that women are never cast in these roles and making sure that I, nor any audience really, will ever ever acclimate to seeing such a thing –

While I see all of these things, I’d really rather not have to deal with that.

So could you just, you know, not make me think about it?

Punch. The. Paper.

I’m out.

– A

PS – I sincerely hope that some of these reviews are a product of bad editing. If there is a fuller version, one that addresses some of my problems with generalizing here, I’d love to read them.

And, I would like to point out and credit reviewers like Howard Shapiro who manage to give their opinion about this piece without invoking a lady’s inherent inability to be greedy.

The Revolution will be Fiscally Sponsored

Sometimes you don’t notice massive tectonic shifts around you. Sometimes they’re so slow and gradual it’s only in retrospect you see that neon and slap bracelets for example are no longer the height of fashion.

Other times, you can. You can feel the slow but steady momentum of a major change happening and once you become aware of it, it’s hard not to notice how it is all around you. Once you begin to see it, it’s hard to do things that feel like they’re working against the advancing tide.

Ten years ago, if you were an artist arriving on the Philadelphia scene and you wanted to create structure to make your work, you formed a non-profit.

My guess is that ten years from now, no one under the age of 40 will imagine taking that step.

This is the wave that I see rolling over the artistic landscape. Across the country young and emerging artists look at the standard non-profit with dread. We see dwindling funds going to a fewer and fewer number of large entities. We see our own artistic mentors unhappy at having to spend so much of their time running an organization that doesn’t allow them time to make their own work. We see ourselves needing to learn bookkeeping, taxes, scheduling, payroll, and marketing if we are to follow the traditional “in house” model.

We see massive non-profits that get a massive portion of the funding out there and see them as the place that many in cultural landscape look to. We see mid level ones that receive a middling portion of the pie and demanding a mid-sized level of attention. And we see small non-profits that get small chunks of change and equivalently modest voices in the larger picture.

And then we think, “There just isn’t room here for any more organizations.” In cities like Philly, ones that have had a resurgence of art and culture in the decades just before you arrived on the scene, there is an especially conflicting feeling – one in which you love the arts scene for the people that have come before you, nay may even be in the city because of those fore-runners, but are simultaneously fearful that you will ever find foothold exactly because of the people that have had success before you got there.

Is the answer to simply find the next city on it’s way up? Duke it out as a non-profit somewhere that hasn’t yet peaked? (Baltimore, I’m looking at you…)

I don’t think so.

A few months ago I read an article: THIS ONE

The message in it struck a chord with me. For years I’ve been toying with whether or not to take my work from a solo produced project to project endeavor to a non-profit. A lot of people encouraged me to just find the board, get the paperwork filed and take the plunge. For years I kept saying “At some point. But not now.”

Why?

For a long time, I couldn’t really articulate the fear. And in practice, I saw a few friends take the plunge and really have little change in “business as usual.” And yet, I just couldn’t see where Swim Pony would fit as another non-profit in 10 or 20 years. As much as I admire companies like Exile or the Lantern, I didn’t see space in which my version of a non-profit could grow. Plus, I didn’t want my own office with my own copier, my own space, a full four-show season every year. At the end of the day I went into the arts to be in rehearsals not to worry about filling the toner cartridge. And I was even more nervous about the idea of handing control to a board of directors. And I worried that a non-profit would put pressure for every show to be a success, or the same style, etc etc etc. And as I started talking about this to others, it seemed like a LOT of people were in the same boat.

I think there was a time when the regional theater model was a necessary step in the expanding of the arts across the country.

And I think that time is over.

I think the creators that will survive the next few decades are the ones that have already start to accept that the model that they studied and saw as they grew into their artistic homes is one that will not work for them. Just as the idea of what a “job” is has changed radically, so much new artists rethink structuring the administrative side of their art practices.

This is the new revolution of artist as entrepreneur. And that revolution is going to be fiscally sponsored.

Fiscal sponsorship refers to the practice of non-profit organizations offering their legal and tax-exempt status to groups engaged in activities related to the organization’s missions. It typically involves a fee-based contractual arrangement between a project and an established non-profit.

If you don’t know about it now, you will soon. And I think the reason for this is that fiscal sponsorship is the first swing of the pendulum back towards allowing artists to hand off the administrative work they haven’t trained for to those that did and do want to do. Fiscal sponsorship is about streamlining. It’s not about building up, it’s about connecting out: finding ways to think of oneself not as an island needing to generate all of its resources but as a chain of interconnected aspects of a larger whole.

There was a time when most people thought of fiscal sponsorship as a temporary state that a new organization entered into on its way to “full” non-profit status. But as a 5 year fiscal sponsee myself, I can tell you, I think that for many, this will become a permanent way of life, a way to still take part in funding structures that haven’t yet caught up to the new way that art is being made, while refusing to join a practice that undercuts our ability to make it.

Because in reality, why would an artist run a theater space or marketing firm in house? The maintenance of a building or running of a PR campaign is actually a rather different thing entirely than structuring one’s next creative project. And simpler still: do I need a copy machine all to myself when I could split the cost across three or four other companies without any inconvenience? We can mourn the loss of sheer number of dollars in this brave new world of post housing bubble collapse. We might at first glance blame it for the fact that we don’t get to each build our own tiny kingdoms since there’s just not enough money to go around. But I think that what’s happening now was always inevitable. I think the shortage of money has forced into sharp contrast a tidal wave that had been steadily approaching for a while.

Some days I thank the great beyond for my chemistry degree. I thank for it because it reminds me that I’m smart, and on some nasty unconscious level, I think a lot of artists really believe they are incapable and unintelligent. That they can’t do the books and the taxes and the admin AND the art because they’re stupid.

First of all, no one can do all those things. Especially not without the training. Go ask your accountant to choreograph a dance and see how well he or she does.

Second, just because I can do those things, doesn’t mean I should or that I want to.

And I don’t. I went into the arts to direct and to create plays. And there are plenty of sacrifices – a certain level of money and status, to name two – that I’m ok to offer up because I love what I do. But not doing the art is not one of them. We need to learn to share our audiences, spaces, and stuff so we can be smarter about producing: by pooling resources and delegating the jobs that we don’t need to do.

And then maybe we can actually get back to making a greater portion of our time go to making our art.

So as one of those “emerging” artists on the horizon, I’d like to help foster the conversation about how we creators can be as innovative in the structures that support our work as we are in the work itself.

This is the first thought in what will likely be a series of many.

– A

PS – A quick shout out to the Wyncote Foundation, who I was able to receive funding from for this research thanks to fiscal sponsorship

Also so first resources for folks new to the topic:

1) A link to a talk I gave with another small company called “Don’t Start A Non-profit.” This is part 1 and you can find the second and third parts (which are mostly discussion with the large group) on Swim Pony’s Youtube channel.

2) Here’s a link to the power point from that talk: http://www.slideshare.net/SwimPonyPA/dont-start-a-nonprofit

3) A couple of “Fiscal Sponsors” (non-profit umbrellas) we talked about that I recommend:
– http://www.fracturedatlas.org/ (I currently use these guys)
– http://www.nyfa.org/ (Check out their website for lots of cool info like grant databases, etc)
– http://www.thefield.org/ (Know less about them but have heard good things)

Not Funny

Comic. Droll. Wacky, kooky, silly and slapstick. Side-splittingly hilarious. Amusingly madcap.

If you’re an artist, do you want these words applied to you?

And if they are, are you afraid they negate your sense of craft?

Let me say up front, the funny is not exactly my personal forte. It’s a genre into which I dabble, a mode that I sometimes employ. But it’s not really my mainstay, and I don’t think many would classify the majority of my work as comedic. When people see my stuff, though there are often things that make people laugh, I think they likely put it under the heading of the frowny face dramatic mask and not under the upturned smile.

In many ways, I’m pretty lucky because of that. Lucky not to have to wrestle with the label of “funny” or “humor.” It’s something of a relief to be “serious” because I don’t personally have to deal with a stereotype and unfair bias that my fellow creators who do live squarely in the humor category do.

Comedy: No one takes it seriously, am I right?

And before you go telling me it’s not true, go look at the big awards in any category of art making and then count the number of “dramatic” works compared with “comedic” ones. I don’t even need to do a survey, I know that the things that people deem worthy of accolades are the heavy stuff. I unconsciously do it myself. I think we all do. When I pitch works to presenters, I down play the comedic, and emphasize the avant-garde and heady. When I want people to think I’m smart, I don’t go for the funny. I remember in college reading biographies of Moliere – one of the greatest comedy writers ever to exist – and being struck with how much he wanted to be a tragedian. That he tried to be a “serious” actor and wanted so deeply to write “serious” plays and failed over and over. He was cursed with too great a sense of humor.

Even if we don’t think that we think that way, we can’t help but admiring someone for delving into something “hard.” We revere those that make us cry and don’t see effort in the same light when it’s directed at making us laugh. Is it something hardwired that makes people equate humor with lightness? Something unconscious that makes us assume levity equals lack of depth? Why is that? What is it about “heavy” subject matter that somehow makes things more worthy of debate or academic discussion?

I think this bias runs very deep in the structures we have created to support artists, in the non-profit world most especially. Arts are a deeply imperfect fit for this model. And while again, no one would say it, I think deep down we all think of non-profitship as “doing good” in a very particular way. It is selfless and egoless and totally “good” and “serious.” And I bet its why foundations get a little squicky about giving their very important and tax deductible money to people for “just” being funny.

Feeding hungry children in Africa. Raising awareness for disability. Offering Shakespeare’s tragedies to the Philadephia area.

They all have that humorless ring to them, don’t they? They are all good for you rather than feeling good to you. They all smack a bit of responsibility and social progress and of eating one’s vegetables. Starving babies aren’t funny and if I have to compete with them for funding I guess my artwork should be just as serious.

Artists end up in this strange contortion in which we must prove that people do come to our works (and valuing theater based solely on the number of butts in seats is a whole other problem) and that they enjoy them (whatever that means) enough to value our art in society, and yet we must also prove that our work isn’t just amusement or leisure. That we deserve support, unlike a movie that people might just go and buy because they already want to, in a way that is different that these commercial outlets.

Look, entertainment is different than artwork. They are totally different metrics. Like a Venn diagram you can have one or the other or both depending on where you’re placing yourself, and they can overlap in strange and sometimes frustrating ways. But at the core they are two different circles. And the trickiest thing about those two circles is that we only associate one of them with being commercially marketable. We only equate one of them with capitalistic success.

I think laughter is tangible a sign of entertainment. And so laughter becomes a symbol of commercial success and selling out and all the things we think that a good artist in the non-profit would should ward against. Because if something has commercial value it can’t be taken serious in the “art” world or what does the art world have left to defend itself with? I think it’s a posture that is ultimately a defensive one. And it’s why entertainment and the “Arts” remain such strange and uncomfortable bedfellows. They are not the same, but they are confusingly similar. And in an effort for artists to distinguish their art from entertainment, I think too often we run to the side of the Venn diagram in which the two circles stop overlapping.

The problem with arts under the moniker of a “social service” runs deeper than just the topic of comedy, but I think it applies most especially. If at your core you want to make artwork, however you define it, and you happen to express it through humor, you have to deal with this battle going on in the minds of those around you.

Some artists are funny. Some make us cry. Both can be beautiful or transgressive or enlightening. People talk about great works of art “elevating the human spirit.” What’s more elevating than laughter?

Here is the truth:

There are comedies that are not art, work that are uncrafted and uncomplicated, even if they entertain. There are comedies that are art, complex and intelligent and change our ability to see things in a new way.

The same is true about dramatic works, we just seem to have a bit more objectivity with them.

A fruitful metaphor

Something a little new for today. A sharing of work in progress.

Soon, I’ll be embarking on a week of exploration about choice, fate and living life. I’m interested in creating metaphor for things that we feel and experience every day as a way to look at them a little differently. And, partly in response to one of my challenges posted here, I’m interested in writing more.

So here’s a bit of… something. Something in the midst of becoming… something. Think of it as a step down the road. I’ll keep you posted on where it ends up.

——-

A SHORT SOMETHING ABOUT LIFE AND FRUIT

(You sit down at a table)

(You notice a bowl fill with fruit)

(Inside your head you hear a voice that is not your own. It’s a comforting voice, likely female. It is not too loud and not too soft. It is not to cocky and not too uncertain. It is simply the truth. This is what the voice says:)

On the table in front of you sit a pear, an apple, a papaya, a bunch of grapes and a plum.

(There is exactly this on the table)

They are in a bowl.

(They are)

You are closest to the plum.

(You are, literally)

You are closest to the plum.

(You are, non-literally as well)

Sometimes the plum is small and sometimes the plum is scared. Other times the plum feels the opposite. This is because it knows there is something that makes the plum very different.

On the outside it’s much the same as the rest: shiny skin, plump, waiting for what it was meant for to finally happen. It, like all fruits, wants communion, consumption, to be made meaningful. And perhaps, hopefully, yes most surely, some day it will take its secret (guarded) wish and send it on to the future. The plum wants more than just to sit and wait and rot. Inside it has something to share, something that will grow.

The plum is the only single pitted fruit of the bunch. This is the secret it carries, it’s single inner promise, one that is big and solid and palpable.

And as the plum waits, it shrinks back into itself, desiccating infinitesimally every moment, and feels this rock of expectation within: immobile, immutable, and taking up an ever larger proportion of itself.

(Silence for a moment)

The plum feels cramped. It is being pushed upon. Who can see it with so many others in the way?

(It is in fact being touched by the other fruits. Perhaps it is near the bottom of the bowl. Another fruit is picked up and eaten.)

The plum thinks, “Why must I be buried under these indecisive many seeded monsters? Why do I have to spend so much time pondering this single thing inside me? Why does it take up so much of myself?”

The plum wonders what would happen if things were different. Wonders if the grapes wouldn’t spill over so much if they too had to commit themselves to one single investment, one sturdy wish to the future.

(Another person turns the bowl and you now see a papaya, blocking the plum from vision.)

The plum is sure the papaya is the worst of all fruits.

Why must they carry with them an excess of chances showering the ground beyond their fair share? For the plum it is an excess. A greedy hunger. The plum sees this as an attack – a wish to remove the opportunity from those that would happily share the soil if only each could keep to his own fair share of land.

It’s why the papaya must be so large. It can’t help itself, holding all those seeds.

The plum imagines a life in which it too were able to spread itself thinner and across a greater number of chances.

But wish or no, the plum still feels that singular purpose, and it’s sharpness is a reminder.

– A

Everyone is NOT a critic

Reviews.

We all feel strongly when we get them. Good or bad, they change how we feel about our work. They influence us, even if we choose to ignore them by entering the room through our audiences. Good or bad, they color what people see and prime the aspects of the work that are highlighted. So rather than asking whether a given critic is right or wrong, let me back up and ask, do they need to be at all?

Last fall, I remounted The Giant Squid (with co-producers The Berserker Residents) and toured the show to a variety of academic institutions in the Philadelphia area. We had wanted to rework the show for a while, and had lots of thoughts about the things that we hadn’t been able to get to in the first round. The show in its original conception was quite successful, and in many ways helped define an aesthetic sensibility that carried forward into future work. We got good reviews. We got nice sized audiences. We handled some crazy challenges working in a non-traditional space. It spawned some future opportunities for both companies. As we spent our time trying to market the thing we used the press quotes as indicators of its inherent value. We held these opinions out as proof of our worth. And in many ways, I think of it as my first real “big girl” show.

But in coming back, there was a funny kind of comfort. Not because the work was always easy – which it wasn’t – or because we knew exactly how to solve the problems – which we didn’t – but because at its core the piece had already been through the debut hazing. Because we were taking it to places with mostly built in houses, we didn’t have to make the work for anyone other than ourselves and these very specific audiences. And despite the bumps in the road getting to the actual performance, once we got there, I felt like I really could just sit back and enjoy what we’d made. I could see the audience loving it. I knew that I was proud of the progress. I knew that it was a better work this time than it had been before and I measured that in the people I watched and their reactions to watching the show.

As I said, for most of the run we played to closed communities – schools or our already solid circle of audience base – and thus weren’t really looking to draw “the general public” in the way that most shows are. That relief of trying to impress the outside world in general, and just make work for these audiences in particular, was a weight that suddenly lifted. And the amount of lightness it generated was a real surprise.

It’s funny, because I didn’t really notice that I’d been carrying it. I hadn’t noticed how much this idea of being judged “in general” had affected me. And I think it unfortunately still comes down a lot to the traditional reviewer. Squid did end up getting a review, a fine one, not spectacular, and about what I expected. The person saw the show in the worst of our venues, a place a bit stuffier and more formal than the show was really meant for, and with an audience that didn’t quite get what we were about.

And surprisingly, and I can say this with a complete and total 100% certainty, I didn’t care.

I knew that audience at that location wasn’t a great fit. And I knew that space wasn’t exactly what the piece needed. In touring it to so many locations, I really got to see what kind of surrounding helped the show to sing, and what kind of people we really should be going after, neither of which were perfectly in place the night the reviewer came.

So he took those external influences – which I could see so clearly – and assumed that they were inherent characteristics of the thing he saw. And in that context they were. But it also didn’t stop me from knowing that out of that place and space and personage, this new version of the show was glorious and crafted and so so so so much better than the first version he mentioned liking better.

I’m not digging on the guy. If it has to happen, he’s actually one of the writers I’d prefer to see my stuff.

But does it have to happen? What is the use of criticism? What is its purpose?

Is it for the artists? Is it a chance for an informed and outside eye on the medium to offer perspective on our work in context of the whole?

Is it for audiences? Do they need a medium through which to evaluate the multitude of cultural intakes they might participate in?

Or is it more functional? Is it a way to separate the good from the bad and point out that for the world to see?

On each of these levels, I think I disagree that the current system is working, at least in terms of the work I like, the work I believe in making and seeing. I sometimes agree with these folks’ assessment and sometimes not. It really feels about as random as chance. And the works that I feel spectacularly strongly (both positive and negatively) about, I almost never agree with.

My own experience with review has been this: it is totally unaligned with my sense of my own work.

I have had pieces that I loved that were panned. I have had pieces I thought were weaker and not ready for audiences that get raves. Mostly, it feels really random.

And perhaps more importantly, I have had a show utterly slaughtered in print but sell out every performance and another get glowing words in literally every venue that it was showcased in that I was dying to get butts in seats for. I have had every iteration in between. And always, it feels really random and disconnected to the work.

What was amazing about the experience of remounting Squid was this: I never had to think about getting people in the door through this imperfect intermediary. I could just market directly to these people and then watch how much they liked it myself. I could talk to them and ask what they thought. I could hear them laugh or gasp. I could see how the things I’d tried to do worked or didn’t.

And it made me think, “What if I never had to have a critic in a show of mine again?”

Because if I don’t feel in alignment with the assessment and most of the time the assessment doesn’t seem to make a difference on who comes, why bother? What does a review do for me if not generate audiences? Does it help me get into a festival? Not really. At least not so far. I’ve only ever done that by making a personal connection with a presenter.

Does it help me reach a wider viewing base? Maybe. But I don’t think so. Not in my anecdotal experience. Because of the kind of performance runs I have (which unlike the traditional Broadway deal, is maybe a few weeks, max) I haven’t seen a noticeable uptick from a rave. I don’t think the people I am best suited to are reading these things. And I’m pretty confident that the people that are reading them are less likely to be interested in what I’m after with my artwork.

And even if I could prove that these reviews actually brought in new people and even if I could prove that these new people were well suited to seeing what I make, I’m STILL not sure that it’s worth it.

Because I don’t believe that one person is a stand in for all people. Because I don’t believe we should come down on declaring if the thing is good or bad. Because I’m more interested in knowing what the artist was trying to do, how they attempted it, and how close they felt they got.

Because I don’t believe there is such a thing as an objective truth about a piece. Because I deeply believe that art work should not be universally appealing or it will only appeal to the shallowest and least complicated parts of ourselves. Because I believe that a multitude of opinions are necessary and diverse expression is the point of artistic creation.

Because so much of what I believe rests on a system of artistry that builds over months or years. And when I read things like so and so “has repeatedly proved herself an excellent director and [she] should stick to that” instead of trying to do something new, I think what an ignorant and limited view of art-making that is. I think that the idea that a single work as a litmus of potential is ridiculous and that anyone who has ever made anything knows that reward is predicated on risk. And I think that to denigrate the attempt (even if the result is spectacular failure) is short sided and ultimately harmful to the form as a whole.

Because so much of what I do is about a different kind of critique, one that is less concerned with whether the thing is good or not good but whether the thing is asking interesting questions and answering them in new or surprising or thoughtful ways. I don’t know that I need someone to tell me if a work of art is worth buying, because so much of the time, it’s the less polished, midway things that I want to see more of, even when, maybe especially when, they are still in progress.

And putting all that into a system in which one voice is meant to stand in for all the possible interpretations of a work, to sum up what it is and means, and stamp whether those things are worth twenty bucks makes me feel a little ill.

I believe in feedback. I believe in response. I believe that it is important to hear how our work resonates with our audiences, as we define and seek them to be. But not everyone is my audience. And I don’t need to keep asking, “What did you think?” from folks that want something different out of theater than I do.

And the truth is that NOT everyone is a critic. We all have opinions, but we’ve set up a system in which we allow some opinions a greater forum for expression than others. And if I – the artist being judged – fundamentally don’t trust those opinions more than the general public, what the hell am I letting myself be judged by them for? If I don’t agree with their assessment of works that I see, why do I assume what they say about me is any more true? Why do I give them the power to have influence over me? I’m the one giving these people tickets.

I think about the times I’ve spent waiting for those words to come and the stress it caused and the uncertain help that it offered and I wonder why put myself through that?

And maybe, just maybe, next time I won’t.

What would you do with ten million dollars?

In 2011 PIFA spent $10 million dollars on their first festival.

Think about the impact of $10 million dollars on an arts community. What can (or should) that look like? If that number just seems beyond imagining, take these few stats in to help give it some perspective:

$10,000,000 is 25% more than all of the Pew Charitable Trusts annual budget for a year. It’s roughly all the assets of The Arden. It’s about 100 years of Swim Pony work if I continued at last year’s pace.

And as this article says that’s also

The total combined cost of the four years of the Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe leading up to PIFA.
The combined grants that will be given out this year by the state’s Pennsylvania Council on the Arts ($8.1 million) AND the city’s Philadelphia Cultural Fund ($1.6 million)

Chances are you aren’t a millionaire. Which means that unlike the folks over at the Kimmel, you don’t get to decide where that money goes.

You can argue how PIFA is spending its money (and from the looks of Facebook a whole bunch of people are) but imagine instead what it might be like you didn’t have to. For a moment, imagine that you had to give away that 10 million dollars tomorrow to theater artists or companies. What kind of work would you want to support and why? Would be to companies with an established track records or would it be to scrappy folks making stuff that a little less predictable? Who are the people who you know are awesome that just can’t seem to get the dough?

The question is at its core: where do you think the money belongs and what kind of work do you want to see in the future?

The Wall Street Journal did just this thought experiment in NYC with some interesting results.

I think that chances are the money in the real world is not allocated the way that artists might decide if they had the control. And while on the one hand, we could look at the difference between where the money does go and where we think it should be going and despair, I think that there’s another take away here. Artists are often out front of what’s coming down the artistic pipeline. How could they not be? They are witnessing the development of the future leaders and successes before they get there. And I think because of that, we should concentrate on doing a better job telling the outside world not only about our own awesome work, but about the awesome works of the fellow artists that we admire and respect. The folks that we know you need to know.

There’s a trend among smaller companies these days to have a section of their website that lists of other people that they think are great with links to their info.

I think this small gesture might be the first signs of something bigger.

I think it’s a signal that the monolith arts organization is ending. I think it’s a sign that in the face of a crowded ecosystem, rather than trying to fight the largest predators on the landscape, new makers will give up on the traditional company and instead seek out loosely affiliated groups of creators, folks who respect and admire and promote each other rather than trying to take on all of the resource and producing themselves. I think it’s a sign of a larger, and perhaps more diverse ecosystem of artistry in the future.

At least, that’s what I hope. Because it’s the future that I see people like myself surviving in. I dream of a future with more opportunities for cross-pollination between individual artists or collectives and institutional organizations. I wish for a Philadelphia in which the possibility for getting one’s work to an audience doesn’t depend so heavily on one’s institutional building capacity. And In my mind that means more money directly to artists AND presenters/curators that are not their own primary generative source.

In addition to this, I think there are organizations in town that do a huge service to the landscape with little to no monetary or accolade recognition. They diversify our audiences, educate us as artists or create unimagined resources that help us immeasurably more than their budgets would belie.

So with that context, here’s what I would do if I had PIFA’s cool 10 mil to divvy up to Philly theater and affect change the way I want to. I’ve listed the company or person, divided roughly into categories of how they’d serve the city’s future arts interests and why I want them to have that moolah.

– Hidden City: $2,000,000

– Fringe Arts: $1,500,000 earmarked for local artists only

These are the folks that have the possibility to take on a bulk of administration for artists so that they can really focus on the art. HERE Arts, PS 122, The Kitchen, La MaMa. NYC is lousy with places you can apply to without a 501 (c) 3 to help get your work out there. We need more places like this.

– Team Sunshine Performance Corporation – $500,000

– Applied Mechanics – $700,000

– The Berserker Residents – $500,000

– The Bearded Ladies – $300,000

I love these four companies. They are doing the new exciting work and they are each doing it in a totally different way. If you don’t know these people, go look ‘em up right now. Bigger bucks to the Mechs in part because their stuff is super tough to explain and raise money for. Little less to the Beards because they’ve done pretty well on the institutional support and grant front.

– The Mantua Project – $500,000

– PlayPenn – $500,000 – earmarked for a spot every season to a local playwright

– Shakespeare in Clark Park – $1,000,000

Talk about people who do an awful lot with very little. Chances are you don’t know Mantua, which is too bad because it is one of the most exuberant, genuinely empowering and artistically excellent youth theater programs in Philly. You probably know Play Penn. And as much as I personally tend not to spend as much time in the traditional script world, I think it’s great that they’re making this town a place that people think of when it comes to developing them. And lastly, chances are you do know Clark Park. Now take a second to think about what their presence means to this city. It is hard to deny when you look at a photo like this:

Remember that what they do is 100% free. I defy you to argue how much that matters for theater’s future in this city.

– Artists U – $1,000,000

– Culture Works – $600,000 – earmarked for offering free membership to mid to small size organizations for a year or more

– White Pine Productions – $300,000

If I could endow AU forever, I would. I think there’s probably no better program for artists out there. I am sure that there’s nothing making a deeper more sustainable impact on creators in this city. Culture Works I know less from the inside, but they are asking some big questions and thinking hard about what arts will look like in the future. White Pines is in an even younger state of development, but anyone that is trying to transform an empty Gilded-Age mansion into an artist haven and offers its incredible beauty to selected resident companies free of charge is bueno in my book.

– $75,000 unrestricted fellowships to Charlotte Ford, Sarah Sanford, Lee Etzold, Manu Delpech, Leah Walton, Jess Conda, Gwen Rooker, and Jenna Horton

Think about the possibilities that open up when a year or more of your living expenses are subsidized. There are more women than men out there and they are fighting for fewer total jobs. No offense to the talented guys on the theater scene, but can we get a little cash to these ladies, already? By the way, Pew whose fellowship program actually does do this for real people has awarded 16 men and only 4 women Fellowships in theater based on the listings back to 1993 on their website (with 47 men to 26 women granted across all disciplines from 2007 to this year). So you know, the ladies actually need it.

And finally shout outs to Headlong, Amanda Damron, Scott McPheeters, Green Chair, Johnny Showcase, Les Rivera (aka el Malito), Megan Mazarick, Mike Kiley, and Nicole Canuso who I love but didn’t include for the purposes of this because they aren’t officially theater.

I think about how different that list is from the amounts of money that is actually dispersed. I think about the real impact such a gift would make. And I think it’s important for us to do imagine and articulate a vision of the world where the money does go where we’d want it to. So that when we’re asked to be a part of that conversation, we’ve thought as long and hard as the people that generally get to decide.

I’d be interested to hear, where would you put all that money?

What’s old is new again (?)

The 2006 Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe

Coming home…

Sometimes a piece of art in early stages is filled with a certain kind of special newness.

It’s a fluttering, butterfly feeling, a buoyancy that fills me with brilliance and space. It feels like being full of something delightfully lemony and bright. It feels like opening a door a crack and peaking into a possible future full of light.

It can be with a person – an actor or co-creator. But it just as easily could be a bit of writing, a song, an inspiration, the kind of process you’ve just discovered.

It’s a creative crush, this affinity and affection. I think of this thing, the who or what I’m falling for, and it starts to feel like a piece of me. Or rather, it feels like I am beginning to know it, and I like it, and I want to be even more a part of it. It feels like it could become a piece of me, lifting me up and making me better. I want to mesh these two separate things – the work and myself – into a single whole.

In the wanting to be filled up with this deliciousness I treat my memories of this bit of text written or character choice. I do it over and over. I listen to the same snippet of music or replay in my mind this or that scenic choice. I take it out when I’m blocked like a secret piece of candy, mining this tiny taste of sweet for sustenance. And through this replaying of little moments, obsessing and relishing in the details like a gushy teenager, I think of where this thing might go in the future. I think about our potential happily ever after.

It’s sort of like falling in love. Falling in love the way one would with a potential lover, but instead with my work, with my own capacity for creation.

And while it does feel that way, like love, I think that love is not exactly the right way to describe this feeling. I think it’s closer to desire, infatuation. Closer because the feeling gives a glimpse at something perfect and mysterious without letting one in on all the arduousness of specificity, of actually having to do the work of completing the promised outcome.

Perhaps in art as in life, infatuation and love feel confusingly similar, but are not quite the same.

Desire, need, infatuation are emotions based in hunger and lack. They are shadows, mere glimpses at potential. And I think it is only possible in absence of the whole where one can maintain an imagined perfection.

As I once heard someone say, there are two kinds of art works – perfect ones and finished ones.

Love is something different. It grows out of actually weathering through the test of stress and time. It is a gathering. Of knowledge. Of familiarity. Of fault. Of history. It is precise in a way that infatuation cannot be, because it is built on actual details and shared experience.

I think that our artistic work is like a romantic partner. It is a relationship we have to manage over time. And I think that in our art, as in our personal lives, we need to define what kind of partnership we believe in having with our companion. Do we seek a turbulent but intense bond that is unknowable and always elusive? Or do we work our way to a cozy if duller comfort?

Perhaps this is where the myth of the wild art of youth comes from. The work of our 20’s is like the kind of boyfriends one had right out of college. They are a bit messy and dangerous. They hurt you and teach you where you need to keep yourself protected. But they mean so very very much. They have moments that seems so impossibly intense and lovely that even if they turn out terribly, you love them for their failures.

Are these early plays the ones we settle down with? Or do we instead slowly grow into our art? As we grow we begin to revisit things we initially passed over because they weren’t shiny enough. We tackle subjects and modes of working that we couldn’t quite grasp the depth of in the first go round. And we stop trying so hard to impress and begin to steep ourselves in tenderness and support, in a making that is deeper and perhaps more lasting…

Is one better? I don’t know. But I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.

The first full piece I premiered in Philadelphia was a show I created called The Ballad of Joe Hill. I made that work in 2006. And this fall I will be presenting it again after seven years.

This seems a little impossible – seven years for a work to come to fruition. That a thing I started during a time in my life that was intensely uncertain will find a new form when so much of who I am and what I do is now known. This piece, which is one that examines what a life is worth and how we make it so, is one that began a relationship with so many of the people I now think of as home. And it is one that I have often looked back fondly on for the sheer creative ineptitude and blind luck and intuitive spirit that guided its creation. It was a piece born out of those infatuated seeds. It was a piece I wept and worried and laughed over at every step of its creation. And in watching it again, in thinking about what was there that first go round, I see so many things that still lift me up with light. And I wonder what it will mean to go back there.

Can I find love within this thing borne of infatuation?

Or perhaps I’m simply framing this all wrong.

If desire is steeped in anonymity and vulnerability and love in recognition and protection, perhaps my question ought not to be whether one is better than the other. Perhaps I do not need to assume that the thing must be one or the other.

Maybe my question should be whether they must be mutually exclusive.

Cat Doctor

In order to pay my mortgage I currently still have to have jobs outside the creative sector. And the one that I work most often is for U Penn School Medicine’s Standardized Patient Program.

A standardized patient or SP is a person who portrays an illness or medical situation in order to allow medical students to practice their skills. So that for example, the first time someone has to give a life threatening diagnosis, it can be to an actor and not a real person. And the mega bonus of this system is that the “patient” can then come out of character and have a substantive discussion about how what just happened affected them. So that the medical professional to be can get some insight into the patient perspective. And in doing this they can start to see cause and effect – when you do this particular behavior it makes me feel a certain way, has this particular result.

It’s kind of satisfyingly scientific actually. It removes the judgment and anger from critiquing interpersonal skills and reduces it down to inputs and outcomes. Try this particular tactic to gaining my trust? I can tell you what the emotional output is in this scenario.

I like this job in part because it has taught me to listen. It has taught me the value of the subjective experience. It has taught me that intention is often not a useful tool towards substantive change. I can want to make you feel better but if my choice of words in expressing that is offensive or off-putting then my intention is a moot point.

When I train the performers I use metaphors of theater a lot. And when I get back into the rehearsal room, I have started using the tools of this SP trade in return. The language of linking action and behavior to some relatively objective measure of emotional outcome is really really useful.

Lately though, I’ve been noticing this trend in my day job that is puzzling. And it’s one that I’ve been subsequently trying to untangle in my theatrical work.

I’ll call this thing “Cat Doctor.”

Fact: I love cats. Love them. Seriously, if that toxoplasmosis parasite that makes you love cats is real, I have it. If there is a cat in a window, I will stop and talk to it. I literally want to smash the small furry bodies into my face.

And that’s weird. And very unique to me.

So if were in a doctor’s office and a cat in a little white coat and stethoscope walked into the room I would be overjoyed. I would be so pleased to be treated by cat doctor that I’d be a little beside myself.

But that doesn’t mean that cat doctor is a good doctor.

And so when I train my SPs I tell them that they have to watch out for the cat doctors – the students that they love for reasons that aren’t really anything to do with their medical skills. This can be because it reminds them of their best friend in 8^th grade, or because the person is really attractive or has large ears and that’s just funny. Whatever the reason, when cat doctor syndrome occurs, I tell my SPs to be on double watch for their scores, because they need extra vigilance to make sure they can back up with substance why they are rating this person high.

I’ve been throwing this term around a lot in auditions lately. And I think about it in relation to collaborators.

Does the same cat doctor rule apply to the arts? If I see an actor who’s a bit of a mess, who’s a little bit off, but for whatever reason tickles my fancy, am I a fool to just trust that gut instinct? Should I resist casting the catactor?

If I love to watch them, can I trust that others will as well?

Every director I know has an actor that they love to work with that I just don’t see the charm of. Someone they just want in the room. Maybe they’re just blinded by some intuitive thing… Or maybe the particulars of an artistic process aren’t supposed to reduce down to objective quanta in the same way as a med school exam. And perhaps whether or not the audience can see exactly why, that cat doctor has a magic or influence that matters. They treat the problem with a strange and unconventional approach that just happens to work, even if it looks crazy.

Or maybe I’m just too distracted with the cuteness.

Fifteen years

I’ve been talking a lot in generalities lately. Big warm and fuzzy ideas that I think need to be guiding us as we make our way forward as creators. I think these things are important. I believe in them.

There are also times when the in your face, nitty gritty details of working in the arts hit me with a force and vehemence that is surprising and overwhelming.

Let’s get a little bit into the gritty and nitty today.

Last night I sat in the audience of a show. It was in a big high-end theater. I helped usher so I saw every single person that walked into the theater on that Thursday night. I exchanged pleasantries, I tore their ticket and I watched them walk into the theater.

I swear at least 80% of them were 65 or older. It’s probably closer to 90%.

I swear this is not hyperbole.

Of all the people I saw working at the theater that night (Literary manager, actors, crew, bartender) only one person that might be in that age bracket. All these young people working at the theater and a much older subset coming to the theater.

That’s weird, right?

Also, I did not love this play.

It was not, for the record, the actors’ fault. They were doing the job. They really were. They were doing their very best to justify some really horrifyingly inane stuff. Things that I took a lot of issue with as a feminist, as an artist, as a –

Look. I’m gonna stop there. I don’t want to rail on this performance. Because the particulars of what I didn’t like aren’t really the point.

The point is I came home fuming. I was mad at this thing. I was mad at the theater. I was sad for the actors that I saw that night, who probably got paid well for this gig, but who I doubt much like what they were saying up there. And I felt this looming thing, of the work that we make that we don’t totally agree with but we do anyway because we think it’s the stuff that audiences will like. I was upset that I feel like I see so many works that people are just slogging through for a paycheck. Work they have resigned themselves to because they don’t see any other way.

And I thought a lot how often I see so few other people that are my age in the audience around me.

Let me say right now that I am not trying to rail on people older than me. This is not an ageist argument. Because youth is not better. People who are younger than 65 are not better or worse people that those that are over 65. But they are only 12.8% of the population in the US according to the 2010 census data. So there’s no reason that they ought to be 80 or 90% of the patronage. I don’t think this is just the particular theater I happened to be at. I think this is mostly true across the non-profit theater world.

The average life expectancy in the US is currently 78 years. Which means that statistically in 15 years almost everyone in that audience I was in will be dead.

Something in theater needs to change.

Because if we don’t do something as an art form, we’re going to be dead too.

I’d like you to think for a moment about the example of Sleep No More.

I think what they’ve done with this show is a revolutionary achievement of a play. Not just because this is a massively successful experimental show. Not because it requires a ton from its audience and they can’t wait to participate. Because the night I went there were SO MANY KINDS OF PEOPLE SEEING IT.

Whether you like its particular style and form or not, and I had plenty of qualms with some aspects of it, you have to admire, support and love the idea that something so weird and avant-garde has managed to hit a chord in so people that has re-energized the desire to go to see a play, often multiple times. This thing has made it fun and exciting and cool and not just “good for you.”

Can we learn from this? Not that we should copy them, but that there is hope that such people are out there. We just need to get to them.

I think model of buying tickets and parking downtown and big lobbies and concession stands and long programs with dramaturgy notes and season subscriptions and paying a lot of money to leave a plaque on the seat is over.

I think it’s been over for a while.

I think there is an ever-shrinking base of people with more money than most that like this system just the way it is. But I don’t think they are our future. Let me be clear: I don’t think they are bad. And I don’t think everyone who is over 65 wants that old way of seeing theater. But I think more of them do. And I don’t think we should be making theater only for these kinds of people. Because if we do, I think we will exclude people who don’t care to take in performance this way. And if we don’t figure out how to get in those other people, soon we won’t have anyone left.

I think most of us kind of know this already. I think most of us are really afraid to admit it.

If you are a theater maker, for just this moment, be really honest with yourself: When you are in rehearsals making your art, who is the person you imagine in the audience? Are they like you? Do they think the way you do? Do they have similar interests and concerns? Do they look at the world from a similar perspective?

Is everyone in the room somewhere between 25 and 45?

Are those the same people that you see in the audience?

And are you ok with that?

Are the people you spend so much time courting, the people around whom we start to tweak and change our work for, the same people we most want in the seats? Or are they the ones that we think we are likeliest to get?

I’m not just talking about age. I’m talking about real diversity of audience. Of perspective on what performance can and should be. Of people who come to what we make from a variety of classes and income levels. People with a variety of facility in technology. People seeking different genres: action, suspense, horror, western, romance, comedy, science fiction, magic realism.

Is there a large swath of the country that simply don’t listen to music? No. Everyone listens to music. They listen to different kind of music. They take it in through different kinds of experiences. But they don’t avoid the genre of art as a whole.

We need to find a way to do the same with our performances.

We need to find a way to get more people interested in what we’re doing.

This is not an option.

This is simply a fact.