It seemed to us that the only way of knowing a good play from a bad was to apply the test of time. Our programme would be classical; only those plays would be chosen which had seemed, to discriminating people for several generations [ital mine], to have serious merit, which had, in fact, withstood the test of time. This would still offer a very wide choice.....
Now the American theatre has not been long enough in existence to have developed its own classics. A distinctively American, as opposed to merely English-speaking, theatre only began to develop around the end of the First World War, at the beginning of the nineteen-twenties. Before that there certainly had been plays, written by American authors for American audiences, such as the works of Clyde Fitch. These, however, were heavily derivative from European and, naturally enough, especially from English-speaking sources....
If it be granted that fifty years is the absolute minimum of time required before a new work of art can wisely be regarded as a classic [ital mine], then it follows that the American theatre cannot as yet claim to have developed a classical dramatist.
All the same, many excellent dramatists have developed between 1920 and the present time. Several of these, it is reasonable to suppose, may be of potential classical status. In planning a theatre which we hoped to establish in an American city, and hoped might have a perceptible cultural influence in a particular region of America, it seemed neither sensible nor tactful to take such a doctrinaire view of classical status that American plays would have -- for at least another ten years -- to be omitted from the programme.
Moreover, Americans get exasperated by Europeans who point out how brief American history has been. That is is true does not make a fact more agreeable. Europeans use the seniority of their culture to give maddening little lectures intended of course for the betterment and instruction of a crude, young and, of course, totally materialistic society. The British, I am afraid, are the very worst offenders. We use the fact that Britain and America write a similar language, and that the British have been writing for a few centuries longer, to take an absurdly patronising attitude towards our young cousins, not only in cultural matters but in everything where so-called "maturity" of outlook and behaviour might be valuable.
We certainly did not want it to appear as if once again Britain were trying to instruct the colonists. It therefore seemed to us essential to include each season one American play of what we considered to be potential classical status; and to let it take its place in a programme of established classics.
-Guthrie
Showing posts with label failure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label failure. Show all posts
Thursday, May 13, 2010
And another...
12/12/2009
Towards a World Class Theatre
Playwright’s rule of thumb #3: if you don’t know what you’re doing, raise the stakes. This is also a favorite for anyone losing an argument. Arbitrarily up the ante and things become more interesting. More interesting equals intrinsically good in a play. In an argument, it’s… well… whatever it is, it’s more interesting.
Over a year ago I was given a “Genius Award” in theatre by Seattle’s weekly newspaper The Stranger. It’s one of those honors that cannot, and probably should not, ever quite sit right: the kind of recognition any artist craves not just for the added publicity and legitimacy it brings your work, but also because, let’s face it: it’s a delicious ego stroke and the $5,000 cash that comes with it helps ease any pointless pangs of guilt over being singled out. Beyond that guilt, however, looms another misgiving which grows out of the fact that the honor is bestowed not in recognition of any particular piece but one’s entire body of work. You’re forced to wonder, “What the hell am I going to do next? And how the hell will that be good enough to garner such praise in the future?” I had no idea. Still don’t.
Nor did I have any idea back then about what I was going to say when I accepted the award at the Moore Theater on that Saturday, September 13, 2008. I did know that the folks at The Stranger enjoyed presenting the awards in flamboyant and entertaining ways. (For instance, Paul Constant channeled an old time booming-voiced boxing announcer when he handed the prize for literature to Sherman Alexie.) So this much I determined: as show people, I’d be damned if I let some tabloid scribbler upstage me. I had to say something engaging other than just “thanks a lot”, but what? That’s when I remembered rule #3. Raise the stakes.
I began my acceptance by magnanimously allowing that Seattle was a pretty good theatre town. The crowd approved. Then I lofted my caveat: we were good, but we weren’t great. The crowd grew quiet, restless. I said I believed we had everything it takes to be great, but we weren’t great; and worse, we didn’t even seem to be moving in the right direction. More awkward noises. Then I said I believed we could be a world class theatre city within 5 years, but only if we wanted to. We had to want it. The crowd liked this. They clapped, they hollered. It felt great. Lots of toasts and backslaps afterwards. I made a self-congratulatory moment into a community-wide challenge. And every one seemed to slurp it with a spoon. Success, by any definition.
Since then, however, not many people have mentioned my acceptance speech, though there is one particularly notable exception. A month after that night I got an email from my sister Margaret. It said simply: “Just in case you were wondering. 9/13/13. Make it so!” Since odds are about even that you do not know my sister, allow me to unpack her cryptic note and translate it plainly into the words I know she intended. “Dear Brother, in case you were thinking that you could make that challenge publicly solely in order to arbitrarily raise stakes and thus add empty entertainment calories to your speech, hoping no one will remember, please think again. I will remember. I will hold you to it. I will publicly mock you if you fail. So deliver me a world class theatre town by the Fall of 2013, or prepare to face my undying scorn.” You see, I come from a very loving and supportive family.
Upping the ante is painless and risk-free if no one is paying attention. Thanks to my sister, such is not my fate. But I am, after all, a collaborative artist. If she intends to hold me accountable over the next four years, then I intend to share her attentions with all of my beloved fellow theatre artists in this amazing city. My discomfiture will become their discomfiture, or at least as much of it as I can artfully manage to share. Which brings me to these essays. This is the introductory first of ten or twelve I intend to write on the subject of theatre in Seattle. During my last 22 years as a theatre professional here and in New York City I have come to some strongly held conclusions about how I think theatre can be made better. I have shared these opinions with friends and colleagues in one-on-one conversations or in small groups in social situations. Now I think it is time for me to share more formally and more widely—to raise the stakes.
A few weeks back, I began keeping a little folder on my computer with text files in it. Some contain embryonic notes and outlines, the beginnings of these future essays. Others consist only of tentative titles, like the following:
Why Locally Grown Plays Matter
What the Hell does “World Class” Mean Anyway?
Why Craft Won’t Save Us
Good Friend for Jesus’ Sake Forbear and Never Build another Proscenium Stage
Since When Are Directors Indispensable?
The MFA Virus
Building the West Coast Pipeline Alternative to New York’s Hub and Spoke Failure
Playwrights and Designers: The Overlooked Partnership
Don’t Let the Big Houses Fool Ya, Money Has Almost Nothing to Do with It
Stop trying to be Respectable, You’re in Show Business.
America loves Playwrights!—The Deader the Better; or How The English Speaking World Wields its Greatest Playwright as a Club to Kill Theatre
Sacrificing Art on a Dubious Union’s Altar
The One-Person Show: The Lazy Artistic Director's Best Friend
The essays will be written with primarily my theatre colleagues in mind; but I fervently believe we need to also invite non-show people into these conversations because, as a self-identified neo-Vaudevillian, and in sharp contrast to the rising class of theatre academic elite, I believe that what the audience wants and needs actually matters.
Potshots of prose alone cannot go any significant distance toward making theater better here in Seattle or anywhere. Only making great theatre will make theatre great here. This series will be about sharpening my arguments and placing them in a public place, where they may serve to convince or be dismissed, or maybe even dismantled and built into something more useful. I am done bitching in bars. I am pushing my stakes on the table and I encourage my colleagues, especially those who disagree with me, to do the same. Our stock-in-trade is dialogue. Maybe we can employ its power to discover the way forward towards a world class theatre in our own home town.
Towards a World Class Theatre
Playwright’s rule of thumb #3: if you don’t know what you’re doing, raise the stakes. This is also a favorite for anyone losing an argument. Arbitrarily up the ante and things become more interesting. More interesting equals intrinsically good in a play. In an argument, it’s… well… whatever it is, it’s more interesting.
Over a year ago I was given a “Genius Award” in theatre by Seattle’s weekly newspaper The Stranger. It’s one of those honors that cannot, and probably should not, ever quite sit right: the kind of recognition any artist craves not just for the added publicity and legitimacy it brings your work, but also because, let’s face it: it’s a delicious ego stroke and the $5,000 cash that comes with it helps ease any pointless pangs of guilt over being singled out. Beyond that guilt, however, looms another misgiving which grows out of the fact that the honor is bestowed not in recognition of any particular piece but one’s entire body of work. You’re forced to wonder, “What the hell am I going to do next? And how the hell will that be good enough to garner such praise in the future?” I had no idea. Still don’t.
Nor did I have any idea back then about what I was going to say when I accepted the award at the Moore Theater on that Saturday, September 13, 2008. I did know that the folks at The Stranger enjoyed presenting the awards in flamboyant and entertaining ways. (For instance, Paul Constant channeled an old time booming-voiced boxing announcer when he handed the prize for literature to Sherman Alexie.) So this much I determined: as show people, I’d be damned if I let some tabloid scribbler upstage me. I had to say something engaging other than just “thanks a lot”, but what? That’s when I remembered rule #3. Raise the stakes.
I began my acceptance by magnanimously allowing that Seattle was a pretty good theatre town. The crowd approved. Then I lofted my caveat: we were good, but we weren’t great. The crowd grew quiet, restless. I said I believed we had everything it takes to be great, but we weren’t great; and worse, we didn’t even seem to be moving in the right direction. More awkward noises. Then I said I believed we could be a world class theatre city within 5 years, but only if we wanted to. We had to want it. The crowd liked this. They clapped, they hollered. It felt great. Lots of toasts and backslaps afterwards. I made a self-congratulatory moment into a community-wide challenge. And every one seemed to slurp it with a spoon. Success, by any definition.
Since then, however, not many people have mentioned my acceptance speech, though there is one particularly notable exception. A month after that night I got an email from my sister Margaret. It said simply: “Just in case you were wondering. 9/13/13. Make it so!” Since odds are about even that you do not know my sister, allow me to unpack her cryptic note and translate it plainly into the words I know she intended. “Dear Brother, in case you were thinking that you could make that challenge publicly solely in order to arbitrarily raise stakes and thus add empty entertainment calories to your speech, hoping no one will remember, please think again. I will remember. I will hold you to it. I will publicly mock you if you fail. So deliver me a world class theatre town by the Fall of 2013, or prepare to face my undying scorn.” You see, I come from a very loving and supportive family.
Upping the ante is painless and risk-free if no one is paying attention. Thanks to my sister, such is not my fate. But I am, after all, a collaborative artist. If she intends to hold me accountable over the next four years, then I intend to share her attentions with all of my beloved fellow theatre artists in this amazing city. My discomfiture will become their discomfiture, or at least as much of it as I can artfully manage to share. Which brings me to these essays. This is the introductory first of ten or twelve I intend to write on the subject of theatre in Seattle. During my last 22 years as a theatre professional here and in New York City I have come to some strongly held conclusions about how I think theatre can be made better. I have shared these opinions with friends and colleagues in one-on-one conversations or in small groups in social situations. Now I think it is time for me to share more formally and more widely—to raise the stakes.
A few weeks back, I began keeping a little folder on my computer with text files in it. Some contain embryonic notes and outlines, the beginnings of these future essays. Others consist only of tentative titles, like the following:
Why Locally Grown Plays Matter
What the Hell does “World Class” Mean Anyway?
Why Craft Won’t Save Us
Good Friend for Jesus’ Sake Forbear and Never Build another Proscenium Stage
Since When Are Directors Indispensable?
The MFA Virus
Building the West Coast Pipeline Alternative to New York’s Hub and Spoke Failure
Playwrights and Designers: The Overlooked Partnership
Don’t Let the Big Houses Fool Ya, Money Has Almost Nothing to Do with It
Stop trying to be Respectable, You’re in Show Business.
America loves Playwrights!—The Deader the Better; or How The English Speaking World Wields its Greatest Playwright as a Club to Kill Theatre
Sacrificing Art on a Dubious Union’s Altar
The One-Person Show: The Lazy Artistic Director's Best Friend
The essays will be written with primarily my theatre colleagues in mind; but I fervently believe we need to also invite non-show people into these conversations because, as a self-identified neo-Vaudevillian, and in sharp contrast to the rising class of theatre academic elite, I believe that what the audience wants and needs actually matters.
Potshots of prose alone cannot go any significant distance toward making theater better here in Seattle or anywhere. Only making great theatre will make theatre great here. This series will be about sharpening my arguments and placing them in a public place, where they may serve to convince or be dismissed, or maybe even dismantled and built into something more useful. I am done bitching in bars. I am pushing my stakes on the table and I encourage my colleagues, especially those who disagree with me, to do the same. Our stock-in-trade is dialogue. Maybe we can employ its power to discover the way forward towards a world class theatre in our own home town.
A rebuttal
From the Executive Director
How Theatre Saved America, Part 1
By Teresa Eyring
Every so often, TCG is contacted by a reporter who questions how common it is for theatres in America to have resident acting companies. The purpose of such a call is usually to confirm that there are just a handful. Sometimes the idea is to highlight the achievements of the companies that do exist, but more often it is to point up the difficulties theatres have historically faced in maintaining year-round acting companies, or to expound upon the ways in which the nation’s resident theatres serve or don’t serve artists.
In fact, the answer to this question ain’t so simple. While permanent acting ensembles are indeed a rare commodity at major U.S. theatres, typically ignored—even by the popular monologist Mike Daisey in How Theatre Failed America, which ran Off Broadway through June 22—is the array of ensemble companies working across the country. What about, for instance, the long-term acting collaborations of Minneapolis’s Theatre de la Jeune Lune, Brooklyn’s Irondale Ensemble Project, New York City’s Wooster Group, California’s Dell’Arte International, Pig Iron Theatre Company of Philadelphia, and Touchstone Theatre, also of Pennsylvania? In New Orleans alone, a city that has no large resident theatre company, there are five operating ensembles. The Network of Ensemble Theatres, founded in 1999, now has nearly 100 members. Typically these companies are artist-driven, provide some form of regular income source for their members and act as “homes” for their artists. If they aren’t doing so already, many are working toward employing ensemble members year-round. They also tend to consider themselves “place-based,” meaning that they work primarily with local artists and respond to and serve their local communities.
A perfect illustration of “commitment to place” exists in Bloomsburg, Pa., a 138-year-old town of 12,000 that offers up a microcosm of how theatres can reflect and bond with their communities. At the center of town—along with a spectacular fountain, a Civil War monument and assorted 19th-century buildings—resides the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble, occupying a restored movie theatre now named for Alvina Krause, the famed acting teacher who drew the original ensemble members to that locale. The 30-year-old group, which currently has seven ensemble members, is intricately interconnected with an ecosystem of Bloomsburg residents, businesses and public institutions, not to mention the area’s nature and history. As well as classics and contemporary work, BTE generates productions—such as Letters to the Editor and Susquehanna—that tell stories about the immediate environs. And while Bloomsburg may appear to be the classic picture of “small-town America,” it has also become an international crossroads, thanks to BTE. In the summer, the world-renowned Noh Training Project, masterminded by one of the company’s members, attracts practitioners from around the world. On a recent visit, I had the opportunity to witness the passion of the people of Bloomsburg for their ensemble—the advisory committee member from Bangladesh, who has a restaurant next door to the theatre; the county commissioner who serves on the BTE board; a philosophy professor who is passionate about BTE’s annual fundraiser, “The Taming of the Brew,” which raises money through a beer tasting; and, though I didn’t meet him, I heard about the support of the town’s 23-year-old mayor, who works at Starbucks.
So Bloomsburg stands as a shining example of a company that doesn’t get mentioned when the resident-acting-company question is posed by the press.
In larger cities, there’s another interesting dynamic at play in terms of how theatres and artists productively coexist. Many cities boast one or two major theatres that set down roots in the 1960s and ’70s, alongside a range of small and midsize companies that have sprung up within the community over time: think Chicago, Philadelphia, the Twin Cities, Washington, D.C. In many of these communities, a strong local acting, artistic and production community has also evolved. This group has in effect become a repertory company—not of a single theatre, but of an entire community. Many actors—instead of performing in several shows with a single theatre company in the same season—construct year-round employment by performing in different theatres throughout the year. Audience members get to know the actors of their community by seeing them in a number of plays at various venues. Yes, this arrangement still calls upon actors to freelance and lacks the year-after-year commitment of a seasonal contract with one institution; there can be frustrations when theatres hire too heavily from outside the community, or when there isn’t much opportunity for crossover between larger and smaller houses. But the fact remains that in these cities, the regional theatre movement’s larger goal of making it possible for theatre professionals to make a living in their own communities has in many cases been achieved.
These examples provide two views on how artists function within the framework of company today. Admittedly, the second example is more conceptual and lacks some key characteristics of an actual resident ensemble. But it helps illustrate that the ways that theatres interact with artists and community are far from monolithic—and, as with the ensemble theatres’ “place-based” philosophy, many are forging ever-stronger relationships, specific to the concerns of their region, both inside and outside the creative community. And this is just the beginning of how theatre saved America.
http://www.tcg.org/publications/at/julyaugust08/exec.cfm
How Theatre Saved America, Part 1
By Teresa Eyring
Every so often, TCG is contacted by a reporter who questions how common it is for theatres in America to have resident acting companies. The purpose of such a call is usually to confirm that there are just a handful. Sometimes the idea is to highlight the achievements of the companies that do exist, but more often it is to point up the difficulties theatres have historically faced in maintaining year-round acting companies, or to expound upon the ways in which the nation’s resident theatres serve or don’t serve artists.
In fact, the answer to this question ain’t so simple. While permanent acting ensembles are indeed a rare commodity at major U.S. theatres, typically ignored—even by the popular monologist Mike Daisey in How Theatre Failed America, which ran Off Broadway through June 22—is the array of ensemble companies working across the country. What about, for instance, the long-term acting collaborations of Minneapolis’s Theatre de la Jeune Lune, Brooklyn’s Irondale Ensemble Project, New York City’s Wooster Group, California’s Dell’Arte International, Pig Iron Theatre Company of Philadelphia, and Touchstone Theatre, also of Pennsylvania? In New Orleans alone, a city that has no large resident theatre company, there are five operating ensembles. The Network of Ensemble Theatres, founded in 1999, now has nearly 100 members. Typically these companies are artist-driven, provide some form of regular income source for their members and act as “homes” for their artists. If they aren’t doing so already, many are working toward employing ensemble members year-round. They also tend to consider themselves “place-based,” meaning that they work primarily with local artists and respond to and serve their local communities.
A perfect illustration of “commitment to place” exists in Bloomsburg, Pa., a 138-year-old town of 12,000 that offers up a microcosm of how theatres can reflect and bond with their communities. At the center of town—along with a spectacular fountain, a Civil War monument and assorted 19th-century buildings—resides the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble, occupying a restored movie theatre now named for Alvina Krause, the famed acting teacher who drew the original ensemble members to that locale. The 30-year-old group, which currently has seven ensemble members, is intricately interconnected with an ecosystem of Bloomsburg residents, businesses and public institutions, not to mention the area’s nature and history. As well as classics and contemporary work, BTE generates productions—such as Letters to the Editor and Susquehanna—that tell stories about the immediate environs. And while Bloomsburg may appear to be the classic picture of “small-town America,” it has also become an international crossroads, thanks to BTE. In the summer, the world-renowned Noh Training Project, masterminded by one of the company’s members, attracts practitioners from around the world. On a recent visit, I had the opportunity to witness the passion of the people of Bloomsburg for their ensemble—the advisory committee member from Bangladesh, who has a restaurant next door to the theatre; the county commissioner who serves on the BTE board; a philosophy professor who is passionate about BTE’s annual fundraiser, “The Taming of the Brew,” which raises money through a beer tasting; and, though I didn’t meet him, I heard about the support of the town’s 23-year-old mayor, who works at Starbucks.
So Bloomsburg stands as a shining example of a company that doesn’t get mentioned when the resident-acting-company question is posed by the press.
In larger cities, there’s another interesting dynamic at play in terms of how theatres and artists productively coexist. Many cities boast one or two major theatres that set down roots in the 1960s and ’70s, alongside a range of small and midsize companies that have sprung up within the community over time: think Chicago, Philadelphia, the Twin Cities, Washington, D.C. In many of these communities, a strong local acting, artistic and production community has also evolved. This group has in effect become a repertory company—not of a single theatre, but of an entire community. Many actors—instead of performing in several shows with a single theatre company in the same season—construct year-round employment by performing in different theatres throughout the year. Audience members get to know the actors of their community by seeing them in a number of plays at various venues. Yes, this arrangement still calls upon actors to freelance and lacks the year-after-year commitment of a seasonal contract with one institution; there can be frustrations when theatres hire too heavily from outside the community, or when there isn’t much opportunity for crossover between larger and smaller houses. But the fact remains that in these cities, the regional theatre movement’s larger goal of making it possible for theatre professionals to make a living in their own communities has in many cases been achieved.
These examples provide two views on how artists function within the framework of company today. Admittedly, the second example is more conceptual and lacks some key characteristics of an actual resident ensemble. But it helps illustrate that the ways that theatres interact with artists and community are far from monolithic—and, as with the ensemble theatres’ “place-based” philosophy, many are forging ever-stronger relationships, specific to the concerns of their region, both inside and outside the creative community. And this is just the beginning of how theatre saved America.
http://www.tcg.org/publications/at/julyaugust08/exec.cfm
HTFA Audio
http://www.joespub.com/jp_radio_popup.php?add_mp3=HTFA%20opening.mp3&add_mp3_artistID=2043&add_mp3_showID=3743&add_mp3_perf_no=
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