Is This Play Any Good? (July Fragment)

Having been an usher at a 320+ seat regional theater for the last two seasons, this is a question I've been asked a lot; "is this play any good?" I mean, our patrons are well meaning. In a city with a lot of potential leisure opportunities they choose to attend the theater. Tickets are $20-40 a piece, sometimes more for a 'hot' ticket. Many of our patrons subscribe or even donate additional money. Don't they have a right to expect that they will enjoy at least a percentage of the productions they see at a theater they support?

"Is this play any good?" they ask me. They cite reviews. And they complain about the last play they saw at (fill in the blank) and enumerate the ways in which it was disappointing. "I didn't understand it", "I was insulted by", "it tried to change my views about... but I just can't believe in that", and "I just want to be entertained". I hear these sentiments over and over. A recent favorite was the woman who walked out of 'Bengal Tiger in Baghdad Zoo'; "this is not a pleasant play", she said.

How to answer them? To be honest there aren't that many pieces of theater that I can wholeheartedly endorse. I sit down to watch a play with the cynical eyes of someone who has trained and studied and worked in the medium for 24 years (wow that feels pretentious to say. But it's true I started studying acting and performing semi-professionally at the age of 8). I don't want to discourage the audience members, and I don't want to patronize them either. Sometimes I fall back on citing reviews or the positive feedback I?ve heard from other patrons. I try to highlight aspects of the production that I think they will or should appreciate. But when it comes down to it, I didn't like 'The Little Dog Laughed'; although I thought Julie White gave a great performance, and I thought thematically that it was a good fit for the KDT, being just a block from a major movie studio and with a lot of audience members who work or have worked in the entertainment industry. I didn't like 'Taking Over', although I think Danny Hoch is a very talented performer. I didn't like 'Lydia', although I respect the time and effort that CTG and the Denver Center Theatre put in to developing the play in a time where a lot of lip service is given to new play development but plays and playwrights languish in staged reading hell.


...end of fragment

Summer Theater Round-Up

Before I lose track of the performances I have been seeing lately:

- Studio @ REDCAT (May '09)

- Bengal Tiger at Baghdad Zoo @ Kirk Douglas Theater (where I work, or did)

- The Langston Hughes Project @ Watts Village Theater Co.

- OceanFlight/Oh My Tiger! @ Highways Performance Space

- Oleanna @ The Mark Taper Forum

- Stranger @ Bootleg Theater

- Imagined Spaces/Imagined Lives pt. 1 @ The Manual Archives/Automata

- La Didone - The Wooster Group @ REDCAT

- RoS Indexical/Spiraling Down - Yvonne Rainer @ REDCAT


Sorry, not critiquing or opining on them. Just recording for future reflection. Maybe.

Dramaturgy Notes 3/18/09

Since last week’s class I have been reflecting on Norman Frisch’s conversation with our class. One phrase that has stuck out to me is “going into a room together”. I think he said that, or something like that, several times. There is something so time and location based in that idea that encapsulates theater, and all live performance, for me. I was reminded of that when I went to see Frost/Nixon earlier this week. What I found so poignant about the performance was watching it, and these actors giving incredibly committed performances, in front of me in real time. I frequently do not enjoy watching theater at the Ahmanson. It‘s a cavern. I was drawn in to the performance anyway, and I can only imagine the impact of such a production in a space as comparatively intimate as the Donmar Warehouse (which I love). Film has many good qualities, but there is something about having the awareness when one views live performance and knowing instinctually that we the audience are in the same space and sharing the same oxygen with the action unfolding on the stage that has the potential to be arresting and transformative. Time can move at a different pace for all participants, and I can think of few other media in which that is possible.

I ran into Norman again Wednesday night on my way to work at the Kirk Douglas Theater. He was on his way to watch his friend, Mike Daisey, perform his monologue “How Theatre Failed America”. I confessed that Peter Sellars has been an inspiration to me, that seeing what he was able to do with the Mozart/Da Ponte trilogy was part of what motivated me to want to be a Producer, despite the fact that I have never had the opportunity to see any of Sellars’ work live (something I regret). Norman commented on how his work is much more supported and produced in Europe (something I also regret, I happen to think that American audiences might be into it if they had more of the chance to see it) . I think that Daisey’s piece would be more appropriately titled “How *Regional* Theatre (or the regional theatre movement) Failed America”, and I agree with him. My career working in the theater demonstrated to me that the system was defunct and that the institutionalization of art has created a self-perpetuating cycle that inhibits progress for artists and arts communities around the country. That Daisey at 35 looks to artists younger than he is to effect some kind of change depresses me a little bit, since I am already 33, and I think that is somewhat defeatist. We all want to find some way to sustain ourselves as artists and create viable arts communities, and yes that means with adequate wages and healthcare for ourselves and for our families (by adequate I do not mean “above minimum wage”, I mean income from artistic production affords a middle class American lifestyle with the potential for home ownership, the expense of raising children, and an annual vacation). Yes, being both an artist and a parent in this country becomes a revolutionary act; we need these basic supports, how do we go about demanding them? How do we communicate to our supporters that infrastructure is more than buildings and administrative staff? And now, in a period of intense potential economic and social change do we champion new possibilities or cling to the scraps of support we can find?

Maybe this isn’t the purview of a class on Dramaturgy. But if the point of the exercise of recording our thoughts on a weekly basis, this is what I have been thinking about. For me these are not new revelations, they are why I felt stifled as a stage manager, going from contract to contract trying to keep the rent and the insurance paid, without being able to contribute to the bigger picture of reshaping the artistic climate of this country. I see the structures, I see the cracks in their foundations, I feel this compulsion to produce in order to challenge the system, to come up with a new way. Now I find myself being offered opportunities in a commercial arena, which I never expected to have. Perhaps putting 25‘ tall dinosaurs into arenas or light rock musicals on the Broadway stage is not the highest expression of artistic excellence, but it employs artists, and if successful may allow me the financial means and backing to take greater artistic risks. Is this some type of Machiavellian cop-out of means justifying ends? I don’t know. This is what I wrestle with, I want to fulfill my artistic potential which seems to be tied to supporting the artistic potential of others, not unlike the rising river lifting all boats. I don’t know if it’s narcissism to think that I could make enough of an impact with a little commercial success.