The League of American Theatre Women is awarding us the Lortel Award for showing “great creative promise”. There’s a luncheon today at Sardi’s honoring us, which is quite exciting. To find out more about it, check this out.
At dinner, Kara (Manning) talked about the difficulties of juggling her freelance gigs as a music journalist and her career as a playwright. She talked about that rare thing: The ability for an emerging playwright (any writer, really) to focus entirely on her writing without the distractions of deadlines from a paying gig. It’s tricky. She kept saying that her time at Yale was a real luxury. She then expressed concern that no one else would understand what she was talking about — she was worried that she sounded like she was talking “Icelandic”. Not really. Her story is all too familiar. It reminds why this type of residency (any residency really) is so important for writers. It also reminds us how badly we wish we could fully fund our playwrights and provide them with enough resources - anything! - so that they can just sit down and write, research, do whatever they need to do to move on to the next play, rewrite any play, or just think about a play — to do it all without having to run to that temp job to make ends meet. Basically, we want to turn our playwrights into trust fund babies.
We’re organizing the first read-through of Tommy’s newest play (Beautiful Day) tomorrow. It’s in the evening. The play looks at the relationship between Leon Theremin and prima ballerina Lavinia Williams, who was a member of the American Negro Ballet.
And now a word about our fall production…
We know the article is a couple of days old. (We also know that we haven’t blogged in a while. We’re erratic bloggers.) But we do want to respond to Charles Isherwood’s article from this past Sunday’s “Arts & Leisure” section in The New York Times. Isherwood finally says something nice about Off-Off-Broadway (and it’s not even in the context of Chicago theater) and writes about the cross-pollination that may or may not be occurring between Off-Off-Broadway non-profits and Off-Broadway non-profits. (He calls Jenny Schwartz’s God’s Ear “adventurous”. That’s a compliment, no? He says that voices like Jenny Schwartz’s need to be heard more often. Again, a compliment, we think.)
He does raise some interesting points in his piece. From our perspective (the perspective of one of the many Off-Off-Broadway non-profits), the biggest issue is this: How do the Off-Off-Broadway non-profits retain their identities in light of their collaborations with the larger Off-Broadway non-profits? Isherwood briefly mentions this when he quotes Dan Sullivan, who, regarding MTC’s collaboration with Ars Nova on From Up Here, says that “[t]here could be some trepidation on the part of smaller organizations in sharing with the larger ones, the fear that the big dog eats the little dog…” Apparently, though, the concerns that Ars Nova may have had were addressed since Ars Nova was with MTC “for artistic decisions of all kind”. That’s only half-the-story, though, in the big dog/little dog scenario. How can/does an Off-Off-Broadway non-profit truly capitalize on this situation? How does an Ars Nova, a Page 73 retain its brand in these situations? And are these true collaborations? Does each company have equal say in the marketing strategy of the play? What about the artistic decisions? What if Ars Nova and MTC disagreed about the casting of a particular actor? Who has the last say? (In the From Up Here scenario probably MTC, given that Ars Nova is getting “in association with” billing.) And do most MTC audiences even know that From Up Here is a collaboration with Ars Nova, given that Ars Nova’s billing is in such small font (a function of the financial contribution of each company, most likely)? We just wonder how these arrangements are set up. From the Off-Off-Broadway non-profit perspective, these collaborations are great because they help sell tickets; the larger Off-Broadway non-profits usually (always…) have a subscriber base, which Off-Off-Broadway sorely lack. But after the show has closed - then what? Do the smaller shops retain the mailing list? Can they approach the subscribers of the larger non-profits? And will the subscribers remember the small non-profits? And how do you quantify the success of these collaborations? Certainly, through the satisfaction felt by the artists - the co-mingling of the companies’ resources should increase the tools available to the artists and hopefully heighten the artistic quality (from a physical production perspective, at least) of the play that is co-produced. But what about the smaller non-profit? How does it protect itself? Hire a good lawyer, I guess.
“On Playwriting” from Tommy Smith on Vimeo.
The first in a series of web videos commissioned by The New York Council for Poets and Playwrights (NYCPP).
Lincoln Center Theater has jumped on the bandwagon and recently announced its newest initiative, LCT3 - a space for productions of works by emerging playwrights. There’s an interesting post on the McCarter’s blog about the recent trend at larger non-profit institutions of setting up a separate stage for productions of plays by untried new playwrights. It’s all well and good - and I actually think it’s a great thing. I hope we soon see works by Jason Grote, Krista Knight and Quiara Hudes at LCT3. (Too many organizations with the number 3 in their title - 13P, P73, etc. What’s that about?) I guess, this begs the question: Why not produce these new plays at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center (w/re: to the Roundabout) or at the Newhouse? Knee-jerk response (I’m guessing): The economics don’t make much sense - it’s harder to get audiences to see a new play by an unknown (when do the economics in non-profit theater make sense, though?) - and critics (primarily Charles Isherwood and Ben Brantley) are less likely to villify a new work by an emerging playwright when that writer’s play is not produced at a theater like, say, the Newhouse or the Steinberg Center. (I’ve heard this latter argument before.) Is that really it, though? Are citics really less likely to trash a show when it’s being produced by a small non-profit in a basement in a downtown walk-up. (Not really… I’ve read some pretty nasty reviews of shows produced on a shoe-string budget.) And then I see how, in the same season that Isherwood gave that horribly dismissive (and unduly harsh) review of Mr. Marmaladeat the Steinberg Center, he gave a similarly dismissive (and again unduly harsh) review of Bach at Leipzig at New York Theatre Workshop - in a less established, more downtown (much more downtown) venue. So what gives? Is it really about real estate? If a show is produced in a 60-seat basement theater, is it less likely to get crucified by the Times? Would the Roundabout’s Speech & Debatehave received reviews that were as good if it had been produced at the Steinberg Center?
Regardless, I think this is a great trend. The bottom line is that, because of these new initiatives, there will be additional theater spaces that are specifically dedicated to productions of new plays by emerging playwrights (I know. People dislike that term - “emerging” - immensely and I apologize for using it. Here at Page 73, we’ve replaced it with “early-career”. Whatever that means.). A stage for productions of work by new playwrights? Honestly, I can’t think of anything better.
Marsha Norman blogs about August. If you haven’t seen the play, don’t read her post. But she mentions something very interesting:
“…Finally, at least for this go-round, I like what this play represents: a life-long association of a writer with a group of actors and a theater. This is why Shakespeare wrote so much, he had a whole gang of actors waiting to do his work. Go down the list — the writers who wrote a lot of wonderful plays were always associated with a community of actors they could write for: Shepard, Chekhov, Brian Friel, Alan Ackbourne [sic], David Mamet, Lanford Wilson, Caryl Churchill, Richard Foreman, Wendy Wasserstein. Playwrights who live apart from theaters and actors have a lot of trouble getting their work done. Playwrights need to be around actors, need to be a part of a theater’s life…”
We were recently thinking about this - a playwright’s association with “a group of actors”. It would be wonderful to structure the fellowship so that the same group of actors could work with our fellow on his/her play for the course of the fellowship year. Of course, we’d work around the actors’ schedules - but wouldn’t it be exciting to creating some type of acting company? (Obviously, we’d only set this up if the fellow wanted it.) I think about Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue and how in the rehearsal room the roles in that play became so indelibly associated with those actors, their speech patterns, their postures.
We’re hosting a benefit at In The Heights this evening. We’re having a little soiree at Angus McIndoe prior to the show. Naturally, we’re stressed out. Are people going to show up? Will there be enough food, etc.? Will people like each other? Party-planning is always so stressful.
Blogging is tough. It requires dedication and time. And, lately, we’ve been short on time. In addition to board meetings and grant writing, we’ve been casting two readings. Readings baffle us. Producing a reading is a pain, but casting a reading is the worst.
We’ve come up with a haiku, celebrating the hard work and tenacity of the two casting directors who have been working on these readings (The Wife by Tommy Smith, directed by May Adrales; Mother Earth by Andy Bragen, directed by Jackson Gay). Really, the following haiku is dedicated to all casting directors who, as far as we’re concerned, are the unsung heroes of this business:
Angie, Gwyneth, Reese,
Emma, Meryl, Cate and Madge —
They do theater, no?
We’re largely non-partisan here at the Page 73 blog.
But we do like to have a laugh (or two) at the expense of our crazy primaries.
