Mercenaries, One night stands, the F word, and my kind of army

NOTE: This entry is too damn long. Seriously. Like Lord of the Rings Extended Director's cut Special Edition long. Read it only if you're really hard core.

Otherwise just note that I believe in committing to producing work and then developing it. Not developing work to see if it should be produced. I want to train actors because I believe in a continuity of style and certain aspects of acting are very important to me and integral to what I want to do. Audiences should be part of development but not in charge of it. Invite them to support your work and the artists involved but don't hand the reins over to them.

That's all.

Whew. I just saved you like an hour of reading time.

You're welcome.

Cue the extended director's cut now.


Okay. This is a looong entry. Sorry. I'm thinking out loud here. But I value your feedback so I hope that you talk back to me on this one.

So we've tackled the first two principles of my rough manifesto, Immersive Theater and Accessibility. And in doing so we've addressed two of the major reasons why attendance at performing arts is down all over the country: Price of tickets and competition from Film and Television.

So let's march on to the third principle:

Brave New Voices, I think I called it. Not happy with that "title." Suppose you could just call it development. But I'm not sure that entails what I'm talking about.

The Pay What You Can model should attack the Price problem and hopefully a focus on creating an Experience rather than just a "Show" should help differentiate our "product" from film and tv, but there is a remaining problem....Risk vs. Convenience.

It's still a lot of time and effort to go to a play. AND, there really is nothing worse than going to a bad play. It's like listening to someone sing off key. Just stomach churning. It's a big Risk.

Well how do we attack this problem?

We develop better art and create a reputation for high quality. And we have to give them a sample that let's them know it's worth their time.

I'm not just talking about just script development. I mean complete development of what we are doing.

Direction, design, script, acting, and the audience involved in the reading, workshop, and production of a piece.

First and foremost, there should be goals and questions set up by all the artists involved and agreed upon beforehand, revisited throughout the process, and used as a guide towards reaching culmination.

Design

With design, I think it's crucial that to create an experience the designers are involved from the initial reading on. Let's have a commitment to that. let them experiment in workshops with the lighting, set ideas, and sound. Let's hear what they have to say in the reading process.

Designers are often hired guns and treated as so. They come in late to the process usually after a show is already slated for production. Why? Let's invest in their artistic ideas and experiment with them as we develop the show! If the playwright is struggling with how to address a problem whose to say a designer won't have a technical answer to an artistic problem that will affect the whole show.

It often feels like almost everyone in a show is a "hired gun." The director, the designers, the playwright, and the actors.

Well I don't want mercenaries, however effective they maybe, I want a real army. One that is loyal, patriotic, and dedicated to the cause. It doesn't have to be the same army every time. But it should be the same army throughout that particular war.

Let's give designers the chance to experiment in workshops before they have to gamble on ideas in a full scale production and let's let them be a real part of the growth of a show. Not just someone who comes in to help shape the final product.

Direction. As my personal area of focus I have to say I have come around to a specific belief.

I believe in monogamous relationships that eventually lead to marriage.

Playwrights and directors should agree to develop scripts together early on.

If there is to be a change in directors as the process as it goes on--I think it should come from either the playwright, the director, or the Artistic producer. And the process should start over.

It maybe sped up at that point, but the process should be restarted.

I firmly believe in the "marriage" of playwrights and directors. And I think that artistic marriage should be well defined, understood, utilized, and nurtured. If a marriage doesn't work, then let's not try and replace a marriage with a one-night stand. What a poor sad substitute for a real relationship.

The playwright, the director, and the artistic producer should be in agreement before a step in the process begins as to what the benchmarks or questions are that must be addressed in this new stage. Only when everyone agrees that they have been addressed adequately would the next step begin.

Again, I think that all the artists involved must, MUST be allowed to FAIL during this process. That's right. I'm using the big ugly "F" word.

What we need more of in theater is FAILURE.

But the right kind of failure.

There's is simply too much pressure on theater artists to "NOT FAIL." One step behind the curtain into the world of TV, Film, and Big budget Theater and it becomes easy for anyone with eyes and ears to see that the emphasis is on "not failing" rather than risking a real achievement.
Well personally I'd rather see artists struggle and reach and grow--then just rehash their greatest hits.

But when it's just a bunch of hired guns coming in for a one night stand and there's immense financial pressure on everyone to not tank the show, or the season, or the theater company with a failure...well that's not a good time to fail, is it?

So let's invest in that time to fail! R&D is crucial but you can't experiment with bias and expectations! You need to be able to truly experiment, to fail, and to look at your results with clear eyes. This is where we should encourage failure! True experimentation.

But wait you say, "Isaac, again you're just saying stuff everyone already knows. Almost every theater already does readings and development."

Well this is where I have some experience my friend. WMC did a TON of readings and I was one of three people leading the charge on that. But I made a lot of missteps and mistakes. As did everyone involved I think. We tried to develop directors and plays and actors at the same time. AND we tried to use it to determine what shows WMC produced. (Wait isn't that what I'm talking about now? Read on and see what I'm talking about)

To be honest, I don't think this ever worked how we wanted it to. With the exception of SHE LIKE GIRLS which has some very specific traits that make it a bit different which I'll list in a bit, I'm not sure we ever did this very well.

But let's jump forward just a bit. It's a brisk October 5th morning, 2009. Bekah Brunstetter and I have just finished a really successful reading of MISS LILLY GETS BONED a few days ago as part of Playwright's week at the LARK and are at the Assessment Brunch.

I tell John Eisner, the producer director and one of the founders of the LARK Play Development Center, that we felt incredibly supported there and were able to really focus on certain goals AND that we never felt any pressure at all--and that was a big part of our success.

I knew part of the reason was because at the LARK they really hound you to lay out specific goals, revisit those goals during the process and change them if needed, and they also beat you over the head that the public reading should be viewed as an invited rehearsal. This is crucial. Lark readings are free and are almost always filled to audience capacity--they are also very high profile in the theater world. But they have a vast and loyal audience that expects to see unfinished work. The audience and the LARK themselves would be disappointed if they saw a finished product or a "show." And while audience members are free to leave comments (on a guided questionnaire), or go up to the playwright or director after the reading, they don't usually hold talk backs at the LARK--saving the writer and the director from hearing about everything they "should" be doing or defending the play.

When I said I thought this was really helpful, John Eisner said:

"There are three types of readings and all of them are fine things to do but they can become deadly when you try to mix them together. There is the reading that is an audition for a production, the reading that is there as cheap season filler (cheap for producers and audience members) for theater companies, and there is the reading that is solely focused on helping the writer develop the script. At the LARK we do the third and because we don't produce plays, there is almost no way for the reading to be anything else."

So basically what I tried to do with WMC is combine ALL three of those things AND also in the beginning we also threw in the idea of using readings to develop actors and directors. Which led directly to some rather disastrous experiences. Throw in the obligatory "attack and defend the play" talkback and no wonder those readings were often drudgery.

There were readings that were often vague auditions for directors--the scripts the weren't the focus of those readings!!! The director was putting on a show for WMC! Not fixing problems with the playwright in the script!

There were readings we did just to try and help build audience--those were usually fine but why did we pretend like they were developmental readings???

All of our biggest successes--To Nineveh, Men Eat Mars Bars, Penetrator, Fresh Kills--we decided to produce because we liked the script before we did any readings!!

All of those shows went through some kind of change or development during rehearsals, some not as much as they needed, but they all were chosen for production before any reading was planned. Like SHE LIKE GIRLS.

That script was actually developed at the LARK first!!

Our reading of the script was an audition, but really more for us as a company for Chisa than for the merits of the script. We had to win her over so we could produce it. The workshop was an audition for her agent and for investors--although there was some refinement on the script during that time, but nothing more than you expect from a new work being rehearsed.

So what was developed during all of this? Excitement about the production on both WMC's side and Chisa's side. Momentum. Jared's directorial vision about the script, the actors, and the design. His relationship with Chisa. The cast. Both in WMC's casting choices and the actors that were involved in more then one part of the process got to develop their handle on the material. Audiences came to the reading, the workshop, and then excitedly told people about the upcoming production of this awesome play they had seen developed!

No wonder She Like Girls is so successful both artistically and commercially!

Can a producing company develop a script?

I think so.

But I think that there has to be a commitment there on both sides. I think the script audition part of the process has to go out the window. That should be handled in a submission process.

I don't to create another "development hell" (definition: a process where scripts go with the promise of an eventual production and end up stuck in a cycle of readings and workshops never quite satisfying the producing powers that be) but I think there is a smarter way to handle this.

Just make the commitment for a small scale workshop production from the get go.

The director and the playwright should be in charge of when the play is ready to move from readings and private workshops to that small workshop production.

They will have deadlines and commitments to live up to in the development process beforehand (because those things actually help spur progress) but they won't "audition" for a full production until they're ready. That "audition" will be actually be a small scale production so the playwright and director have no reason to rush into a large production before it's ready. If the producer doesn't want to go all in--the work was still produced the playwright can use that production as means of attracting other possible producers.

You don't usually cast people off of cold readings. You usually hold callbacks. Imperfect method, but certainly better than just a cold read. Because hopefully people are prepared and rehearsed. Hopefully, you've been clear and open with them and they know what you're looking for by that final callback.

I believe that this process could work because it still has the pressure of an audience watching it at certain stages which I do believe is crucial, but I feel like letting the director and the playwright choose when to move to that "audition" stage helps relieve the pressure. I also think that by the time that audition stage arrives all the parties involved will already know what the fate of the show is going to be.

Also, this process would put the playwright in charge of the development, but also make them really seek out and develop a relationship with a director. It makes the director really create a complete vision/mission statement for the show. It forces the producers to either choose material that is already developed or to commit to or commission work from artists they know, admire, trust, and want to support.


Actors.

I, of course, now look back with great embarrassment on my idealistic intention of using script developmental readings to also help actors develop. What a disastrous attempt that was!

But there is something else that I do believe needs to be addressed.

I think it is important that there be a cohesive style among the actors, a common artistic language between the actors and the director, and an artistic standard that is expected of the actors.

It's a delicate subject, I know.

I'm not saying that I think my preferred approach to acting or that any specific type of acting is better than any other. But I do think it is important to make a some specific choices here.

I like to watch a lot of different styes of theater. I enjoy watching all different styles of actors too.

But I'd be lying if I said that plays that had organic, unforced, emotionally charged performances didn't do a heck of a lot more for me than plays that don't have that.

Faking it just leaves me cold. Even if you fake it well enough that I buy it enough to be moved by it--it's just not a substitute for the real thing.

We have to train actors. That's all there is to it.

If an actor comes in and is able to organically, honestly, give an emotionally charged performance and they have different training--no one will care as long as they doesn't disrupt other people's process--and the workshops will let us know if someone is a disruptive presence.

I'm not saying we only use actors that we have trained, but I think that there are two reasons to train actors.

One: you are helping make sure that there actors who work how you want to work and can achieve what you're looking for. Meisner, Kazan, Strasberg, Clurman, Grotowski, Brook, Bogart, and Stanislavski all did or do it. Why shouldn't we?

I don't believe I am God's gift to teaching but I do believe I can teach people a lot about acting and that I (like everyone listed above did) can grow and refine myself as a teacher. I know what I like in an actor, who's to say I shouldn't start cultivating those traits? Am I able to teach actors everything they need to know? No. But I know that I can help them learn what I need them to know.

Two: very few things are more commonly detrimental to a production than fundamentally different styles in acting onstage. Nothing hurts like watching actors with vastly different acting styles try to get through a scene onstage.

They must be trained. But not just by "doing the work." Nope. That as I explained above must be a seperate operation.

Audience.

Let them be a part of everything--but don't give them control over the process.
Let them be a voice. Let them come and see the work in various stages. But only when appropriate. Don't let mob rule dictate your work. But don't ignore it either.

Don't build a long list of subscribers that run the theater instead of you.

We are not there to be the servants of the audience, to obey their every whim.

Let them be part of the family. Encourage them to adopt your company, take care of the individuals in it. Get to know them. Invite them to become a patron who is connected to the people behind the art. Who doesn't want to help artists?

Let there be food and wine. People who eat and drink together become friends. The LARK offers free coffee and cupcakes at their readings--it's brilliant. You don't eat and drink among strangers or enemies. You eat and drink among friends. As a good friend of mine said a while a long time ago, "I just don't believe in theatre without cocktails." You know what? I don't either.

Let's make friends--real true friends--with our audience. That type of friendship that supercedes family because it's based on love and respect instead of fate and duty.

Friends like that may argue and fight, but they tell each other the truth and they support and love each other. And they listen to each other.

If the audience feels like they are part of the art--they will support it. They will hardly have a choice but to support it.

However, while I think the audience should be used to help development--I think it needs to be clear that this about appropriately participating in something--not an extra thing we do for our audience or certain patrons.

We invite them to be a part of the process, but we don't do the process for their benefit. That's fake.

Let the watching the process of the art be a part of supporting the art.

Which would you rather have on your side?

A group of mercenaries gathered for a one night stand afraid of both of failure and or doing anything that would offend their far off masters?

Or an army trained together, working cohesively together in concert to achieve something wonderful for their family and friends?

I know what I choose.

"Our legacy is our friends.

We write our history onto them and they walk with us through our days like time capsules, filled with our mutual past, the fragments of our hearts and minds.

Our friends get our uncensored questions and our yet-to-be reasoned opinions...they get the very best and they are stuck with the absolute worst we have to offer.

Our friends get our rough drafts. Over time, they both open our eyes and break our hearts" Steven Dietz