Flux Theatre Ensemble

I wonder if every child that grows up without much religion finds those earliest, indelible rhythms of what faith they have in books. For me, that was true, and no book burrowed deeper into how I live than Richard Adams' tale of rabbits, Watership Down. And as it is New Years Eve and time for resolutions, I thought I'd write a little while about why a band of silly rabbits remains so central to who I am, and my dream of building a creative home.

For those unfamiliar with the book, Wikipedia is here to help you, though if you saw Jacob's House, you saw as much of Watership Down as you did the Old Testament. A runt of a rabbit, Fiver, has a vision that sends a group of rabbits, led by Hazel, on a dangerous odyssey to find a new home. It is a gorgeously dark and vital book, and as a child, I remember it felt more like life than anything else I'd read.

Of all the characters, I connected most with Hazel because he was a completely different kind of leader than I'd read before. He was not capable of any skillful violence, he had no magical power, he wasn't the fastest or the strongest or the cleverest, he was not a favorite of destiny nor was his leadership defined by dominance. He wasn't, in fact, particularly good at anything except one thing: the capacity to see what was best in others and call it out into the world.

As a child, I was profoundly moved by this, even though I'm not sure I could've articulated why. Every other model of leadership I'd seen was entirely individualistic - a character accomplishes great things because they themselves are great - and today, whenever I read those endless streams of articles about leadership, most continue to define it this way.

The idea that the survival of community lies not in a single greatness, but in the capacity to see what is good in every one and call it into action, continues to feel like a radical and sacred ideal. As I get older, and see clearly I am not the strongest or fastest or cleverest, it is this ideal that calls to me with ever greater urgency, to find or build a creative home.

Home is such a powerful world; simply say it with intention and let it live in the air awhile, and some strong emotion will usually follow. I think this is because, like the characters of the Old Testament and Watership Down, most of us don't feel a sense of home; most of us are in exile.

For many, that exile is despairingly literal; some power prevents them from returning to the place they call home. For others, they live in the place but that place has changed, and no longer calls to them with that voice of belonging; they are exiles in their own house. So much violence comes from exiles trying to return and others trying to keep them out; from those wanting to keep their home as it always was and others wanting to turn it into the place they left behind.

A grace of Watership Down is that the rabbits do not try to return to their original warren after it is destroyed; home is not a location for them. Rather, home is a place defined by something else: safety, belonging, the capacity to speak in your true voice and be truly heard; a sense of destiny through community; a balance between continuity and change, difference and shared purpose; peace; love. It is home defined by people instead of place.

Theatre, through its powers of imaginative empathy, is one way to see what is best (and worst) in others and call it out into the world (or exorcise it); it can help create a home defined by people instead of place. It is one way, not the only way, though it is the way I love best.

There are many exciting things I'm looking forward to in 2011; marriage (!), directing Ajax in Iraq, producing Dog Act, trying to beat the seven full-length plays I wrote in 2010, writing my first book. But through all of that burns a singular resolution to better see what is best in others and call it into the world, to help all of us exiles find or create a home in each other.

What are you looking forward to in 2011? Any Watership Down lovers reading this blog? Read the full story

(What is Flux Sunday?)

Playwrights: Katherine Burger (Ever, Ever), Aja Houston (Superwomen?), Brian Pracht (Wendell Wants), August Schulenburg (The Temptation Show)

Directors: Tiffany Clementi, Katherine, Isaiah, Kelly O'Donnell

Actors: Ken Glickfeld, Matthew Archambault, Carissa Cordes, Leila Okafur, Kathleen Wise, Matthew Murumba, Lynn Kenny, David Crommett, Damon Kinard, Alex Marshall-Brown, Tiffany, Chudney Sykes, Isaiah, Aja, Gus, Jaime Robert Carrillo

Yup, it was a jam-packed Flux Sunday for our last Sunday of 2010, and there was all sorts of good work going on.

Highlights:
-A hot Flux Sunday for Tiffany Clementi, with a turn as the foul-mouthed gorgeous Sadie in Wendell Wants, calculating therapist in Superwomen?, and then bringing a playful directorial focus to the 2nd scene of Aja's pageant play.
-The trifecta for Isaiah Tanenbaum, with funny turns as an actor (Wendell), director (1st scene in Viva Fidel) and as a playwright, the comic highlight of the day in the 2nd scene of Fidel, where Matthew Archambault played the (literally) puppet dictator in a ludicrously staged scene by Kelly O'Donnell.
-But the scene that stuck with me the most was Chudney Sykes monologue in the first scene of Superwomen?. Aja crafted a subtly troubling monologue for Cleopatra about dreams and body image that Chudney handled beautifully.
-Personally, any day that I can act in a Katherine Burger play with both David Crommett and Ken Glickfeld is a good day. And so it was, in Ever Ever (if not for ever ever).
-Matthew Murumba easily fitting into a role I may just be writing for him in mind (The Temptation Show).

If you were there, what do you remember (other, than of course, Archambault's brilliantly flailing limbs?) Read the full story

(Don't need convincing? Click here to make a donation to Flux through our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas.)

Thank you to everyone who has already given generously to Flux this year - all of us deeply appreciate your support. But, as you may have noticed from the emails flooding your inbox, the last two days are the biggest giving days of the year, so here's our shot at convincing you to give before the ball falls and the bubbly flows. We give you...

10 Reasons To Give To Flux in 2010, 0r
The Subliminal Power of Acrostic Poems

Giving is tax deductible to the full extent permitted by law, and it makes your eyes twinkle with a beguiling charm; especially when you give to an Ensemble that is...
Indefatigable in the face of challenges, as we rallied from the loss of our intended J.B. production to write and stage a new play, Jacob's House, in only two months. As Flavorpill put it, “Flux wrestled outside forces and won.” This was an example of our...
Values (newly revised) in action, and we'll keep bringing Joy, Compassion, Collaboration, Creativity and...
Excellence to our mission of uniting artists and audiences to build a creative home.

Together with your help we staged 1 full production, 1 Have Another, 1 Foreplay, 3 Food:Souls, our 5th Annual Retreat, and 24 Flux Sundays, serving...
Over 150 artists, nearly 1,000 audience members, and developing (I think exactly!) 68 plays, not to mention dubbing the 100+ new...

Friends of Flux, our new relationship category created to honor and empower those individuals who have made a significant long-term contribution to Flux's mission of building a creative home. And just...
Look at the amazing season we have to share with you for our 4th season! So with your help, it's
Upwards and onwards into 2011. And after all, if you don't give...
X, as in Dr. X from Hearts Like Fists, may very well poison you in your sleep - and do you really want to wake up and have this be the first (and last) sight you see in 2011? Oh, so evil.



So please give now while there's sand left in 2010, and from all of us in Flux, our deepest gratitude.
See you in 2011! Read the full story

I was pleased to note that the Laurence Klavan of the Jewish Daily Forward mentioned Jacob's House in his 2010 round up, True Drama. Laurence's original review came at a time when I was unsettled by other critical reactions to the play. His current round-up is one of the more interesting takes on theatre in 2010, including an insightful look at The Wife, which he accurately describes as "engagingly grim". Well worth a read! Read the full story

We had a great time taking early press photos for Dog Act (and did we mention tickets are now available with a limited time discount?) After our first music rehearsal with Gerard Keenan, he gratefully lent us his 100 year old banjo for the shoot, and we headed on down to Madison Square Park. I'd brought my juggling clubs for Lori (we wanted something performative that could also be used as a weapon), Chris played the banjo, and Isaiah tried to capture the perfect shot.

We may end up going with the shot above - we're all drawn to the framing of Dog and Zetta by the blurred legs of the passerbys - there is always something depressing about the inevitable overly-staged quality of most press shots that fail to capture any of the vitality of a real show.

We also liked the playful quality of this shot, but it doesn't capture the tough circumstances these characters are facing in their post-apocalyptic world.

This shot, on the other hand, feels a little too somber (have you noticed the great bare tree in the background?)

One of the highlights of the shoot was our random decision to ask a passerby if her dog could walk through the shot. She not only agreed, but spent the next 15 (cold) minutes arranging the lovely Emma in various poses. I really do love this city.
There's something really cool about this shot, but in the end, we worried having an actual dog in the shot distorted the play - hopefully Emma will find her well-deserved fame in spite of that, and thanks to Nina for playing with us!

What shots are you drawn to? Read the full story

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Much like an elephant, I won't soon forget our 7th Food:Soul of Miss Lilly Gets Boned. Please leave your thoughts on the play and the event itself in the comment field below. To whet your mindblade, I offer up these pictures from photogenie Isaiah Tanenbaum.






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(What is Flux Sunday?)

After two weeks off (one for Thanksgiving, one for NET's Micro-Fest), we returned to our trusty Flux Sunday back-up at 520 8th ave. That meant reads around the table, which, while not as fun as playing on our feet, does give us the opportunity to read more pages. And they were some solid pages, if I do so solid myself.

Playwrights: Fengar Gael (Devil Dog Six), Aja Houston (Superwomen?), Brian Pracht (Wendell Wants), August Schulenburg (One More Go Around The Darkness)

Actors: Will Lowry, Matthew Archambault, Alisha Spielmann, Jason Howard, Ken Glickfeld, Carissa Cordes, Isaiah Tanenbaum, Kathleen Wise, Ryan Andes, Ingrid Nordstrom, Heather Cohn, Garth McCardle, Regine Mont-Louis, Tiffany Clementi

Highlights:
-Aja's hilarious pageant play (wish we could have staged that second scene!) with a goofily lovable Grier from Regine and a fiercely focused Tiffany Clementi as Venus.
-Ken Glickfeld was ON this day: relaxed, nuanced, focused reads as Bernard in Devil Dog Six and Eliot in Wendell Wants.
-Watching our progression of Wendell's, from Isaiah's perfectly pitched younger Wendell to Garth's irony-laced teen Wendell to Jason's painfully present lover Wendell; it was a wide world of Wendell Wants.
-Ryan Andes dangerously funny cool kid. If you were there, you know what I mean.
-Ingrid Nordstrom taking my note of excitable and running with it as Charity in One More Go About The Darkness. I also appreciated Kathleen Wise's formidable Ellen.

What fireflies of the day did you catch in your bottle? Leave them in the comments below! Read the full story

Readers of this blog may remember the profound impact the 2009 Network of Ensemble Theatre's Conference had on the thinking of myself and fellow attendee Heather Cohn. So we were thrilled to attend Micro-Fest LA, NET's mini-conference on new play development in Los Angeles from December 3rd-5th. It was indeed a jam-packed 3 days - what follows are the recollections I keep several weeks after.

FRIDAY, December 3, 2010
We began with a welcome from the ever-wonderful Mark Valdez and continued with presentations from a psychologist looking at creativity and John Malpede of the Los Angeles Poverty Department.

"Loose and tight" was how the psychologist described the brain's creativity, saying that creative activity was not confined to one side, but required a focused relaxation that allowed unexpected connections to be made on the right and then articulated by the left. This makes stress the great enemy of creativity; a heightened playfulness is required to summon the muse.

Malpede's speech was moving because of the clear impact LAPD continues to have on a community afflicted with poverty. Malpede's conversion from East Coast performance artist to West Coast missionary reminded me of John O'Neal's move from NYC to the the South to form Junebug, and struck again that chord of uncertainty of my own work here in theatre-stuffed NYC.

The night ended with a performance of Clown Town City Limits by Two Headed Dog. It was clowning by way of Sam Shepard, and while I loved the tonal dissonance of the piece, I wish their had been more consequences to the characters' actions (my own aesthetic baggage, yes). After a brief talkback, there was a party we were too jetlagged for, and we rested up for day two.

SATURDAY, December 4, 2010
I started with a Dramaturgy workshop (Heather went to movement) where I was given the great gift of Elinor Fuchs essay, Visit To A Small Planet. These questions approach a play as if the dramaturg is traveling to a new planet, with its own laws of physics, social structures, and ecosystems. There are no accidents in the world of the play, and through a series of questions, the unique ways the world works are brought to light. But this essay deserves its own post, so I will leave it for now.

We then were treated to 10+ minutes of physics which, as readers of this blog know, I could have easily wished to be 10 hours. It was pretty basic stuff, but he approached the second law of thermodynamics in a way that was new to me, and conceptually very helpful (again, probably a separate post).

Then we were up on our feet, brainstorming what made an ensemble structure's approach to developing new plays unique. There was a flurry of exciting ideas that now live on paper, and I look forward to NET sharing those with us!

Next up was Clark and I Somewhere in Connecticut by Theatre Replacement. I loved this play: a rabbit-suit wearing man describes his obsession with a suitcase full of family pictures he finds one night by a dumpster. His increasingly obsessive quest to understand these strangers leads to legal consequences and a beautiful reversal near the end of the play.

Obsessive love is something that has always fascinated me dramatically; the need to control the beloved's story, however benevolently, is almost always catastrophic; except, in this case, in the instance of pets; which, while sometime master of their own actions, have less agency to change the stories we invent for them. The obsessive purity of a central character's love of her pet dog is mirrored in the narrator's obsession with the photographs; for all the staging's whimsy, it is an unsettling piece that makes you look at the strangers you call family in your own life. The rabbit-suit device may have blunted the emotional impact of the play (the actor's face was obscured by the costume a lot of the time), but that didn't prevent the performance from moving me (and thinking deeply about it after).

We then saw two short Art-Bursts: the energizing krump and spoken word performance of Buckworld, and nightmarish dreamscape of Sadam Hussein set to the music and voices of Killsonic. There are more ways to make theatre than are dreamt of in my philosophies.

And there was more theatre to come: at 8PM, we saw two performances, The Ghost Road Company's Stranger Things and Post Natayam's SUNOH! Tell me, Sister. I responded most strongly to the second piece, especially the haunting second dance which featured a woman made featureless by fabric over her face and body, dancing to escape and transforming the fabric into wings. Heather and I both walked away thinking of possibilities for Ajax in Iraq and Menders...and then collapsed asleep.

SUNDAY, December 5, 2010
The last day began for me with a group discussing Culture & Creation (Heather went to group talking about Space). I attended this group hoping to learn tactics for successfully building a collaborative community of cross-cultural artists to bring into Flux Sunday, but time kept us mostly conceptual.

Then, there was a truck, and this truck had pancakes. 'Nuff said.

At 1PM, we saw our final round of performances, Critical Mass Performance Group's Untitled and Watts Village Theater Company's Clover and Cactus. I loved the first piece: I don't think I've ever seen excellent traditionally naturalistic acting merged so seamlessly with a poetic staging before. Devised work often leaves me feeling removed from the heart of the play, but grounding the more abstracted peregrinations of the piece with really detailed, nuanced human conflict and change gave me a way in. I wish I could see what happens next with this play in development!

And then, after some parting words, we packed and went our separate ways. I'm looking forward to the synthesis of all the ideas and energy generated by these busy three days. Thanks to good people of NET!

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Our friends at Judson Memorial Church were interviewed by Martin Denton of nytheatre.com! It's a great interview, and I was particularly struck by this one quote (slightly edited) from Michael Ellick:

"The way we understand the gospel in our Christian tradition is not that our job is to evangelize in the sense of I'm trying to convert you to this set of dogma and you have to give the secret knock of Christianity ...we never talk about that stuff. People are just welcome to be here. You know, our idea of the gospel is an invisible gospel that would come out of relationships, and what's being passed is the idea of compassion between us."

That last sentence strikes me in a powerful way. Our core value of Compassion says "We practice contagious empathy and mutual respect." I love this overlap of values between Judson and Flux; the idea that theatre and faith can both be a conduit for greater compassion. We all can't wait to see what 2011 brings in our ongoing collaboration! Read the full story

(What is The Wider Frame?)

Though Menders is a year away, it's not to soon to be thinking of the ripple in the real world this play makes. This is especially true on a day where the Senate votes to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell; an act that connects directly with Menders' themes of conflict between military service and sexuality.

There are a number of ways we'll be looking to frame the action of the play in a wider context, including blog posts and pre/post show speakers and conversations. Here is a list of some of the interesting possibilities - if this sparks an idea for a pre-show event, post-show speaker, or blog feature, please email me at gus at fluxtheatre dot org, or make a note in the comments.

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(What is The Wider Frame?)

A play that deals so directly with our current Iraq war can't help but be seen in the context of a wider frame. In producing Ajax in Iraq, we must do justice not only to the play itself, but to subject matter of the play, the lives of the soldiers serving in our two wars. But there are other exciting frames to this dazzling and complex play.

We'll share these frames through blog posts and pre/post show speakers and conversations. Here is a list of some possibilities - if this sparks an idea for a pre-show event, post-show speaker, or blog feature, please email me at gus at fluxtheatre dot org, or make a note in the comments.

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(What is The Wider Frame?)

It may seem that a post-apocalyptic vaudeville like Dog Act may not have a whole lot of real world resonance. But for a play of such wild imagining and comic invention, the painful and beautiful stuff of the real world runs through it.

There are a number of ways we'll be looking to frame the action of the play in a wider context, including blog posts and pre/post show speakers and conversations. Here is a list of some of the interesting possibilities - if this sparks an idea for a pre-show event, post-show speaker, or blog feature, please email me at gus at fluxtheatre dot org, or make a note in the comments.

Recycling: In the post-apocalyptic world of Dog Act, everything that remains is sacred, because everything must be used for survival. The scavenger tribes roaming the wilderness treat "reduce, reuse, recycle" as a sacred saying.

Vaudeville: More than just the detritus of the pre-apocalypse is recycled; stories and ways of telling them are also repurposed. Liz's fascinating scramble of pop culture, biblical texts and more is filtered through a vaudevillian way of story-telling; and it would be exciting to have current vaudevillian lovers talk about (and share) their work.

Invented Instruments: Dog Act is a play with music, so how do you make music when most instruments have been reused as weapons or firewood? We're hoping to create some intruments from found and discarded materials, and would love to feature the work of artisans already making music this way.

Weather Troubles: The world of Dog Act has a deeply troubled ecology, with earthquakes and momentary loss of gravity amongst its ailments. But the rapidly shifting seasons - reminiscent of Midsummer - are the greatest challenge, with both winter and summer possible in a single day. With global warming making our planet's weather patterns increasingly unstable, Dog Act could serves as a playful way to talk about this serious issue.

Guilt and Trauma: Despite being a comedy, Dog Act wrestles with how we process guilt and trauma. How do we recover our sense of self from our worst mistakes? It would be fascinating to talk to psychologists who deal with these questions, or host a story circle for our community to share our own difficult stories.

Communal Music: One of my favorite recent events was the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain's Ode to Joy event, where they taught an audience of uke players to play Beethoven's tune, and then all played it together in performance (1,008 ukes!) Given that the banjo may anchor the found instruments we create, could we teach one of the songs in the play to an audience full of banjo players for the greatest curtain call jam session ever?

Apocalypse: We're always wondering about how the world might end, and what might go on after it does - it would be a great pre-show discussion to look at the different ways we might go, and then enter into the joy and ache of surviving that is Dog Act.

Scavenging: The aforementioned scavenger tribes are more than just scary, funny foils; they represent a real resilience and cleverness, and it would interesting to look at contemporary scavenger movements like dumpster diving to learn a different approach to our cycle of waste.

Tribalism: And speaking of those tribes, examining the past and present social structure of tribes would be a great frame on the vauder and scavenger tribes of Dog Act.

So let us know if any of these frames inspire any ideas, and we'll be following up with more on these frames in later posts! Read the full story

(What is Flux Sunday?)

We were thankful to return to Judson for our last Flux Sunday before Thanksgiving!

Playwrights: Kira Blaskovich, Fengar Gael (Devil Dog Six), August Schulenburg (The Hand That Moves, The Temptation Show)

Directors: Kira, Amy Staats

Actors: Candice Holdorf, Kimberly Klein, Isaiah Tanenbaum, Ken Glickfeld, Jane Taylor, Kari Riely, Stacey Jenson, Matthew Archambault, Corey Allen

Highlights included:
-Amy's daring direction of The Hand That Moves towards a more abstracted, dreamlike quality than I'd intended - it's always exciting to see directors take unexpected risks with your work!
-Getting a chance to take the emotional slalom of Kira's two-hander along with Stacey Jenson - the vocabulary between former lovers is always fun to negotiate
-But the field this day belonged to Fengar's Devil Dog Six, with Corey Allen and Isaiah Tanenbaum turning in especially focused performances in these raucous series of scenes

If you were there, what memory from it did you lovingly fold to keep in your back pocket? Read the full story

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About the play:
Miss Lilly, a Sunday school teacher, has been waiting patiently for God to drop a man in her lap. When a new student disturbs the harmony of her classroom and his father disturbs the harmony of her heart, Miss Lilly is forced to re-examine her own sense of faith and self. Right or wrong, sinful or holy - a natural force is at work in Miss Lilly's classroom where her hymns are accompanied by the rumble of angry elephants and her prayers are answered by a stranger to her god.

About the playwright:
Bekah Brunstetter's plays include A LONG AND HAPPY LIFE (Naked Angels, Spring 2011), OOHRAH! (The Atlantic Theater) and HOUSE OF HOME (Williamstown Theater festival.) She is a member of the Primary Stages writer's group, a Playwright's Realm Fellow, and resident playwright of the Finborough Theater, London, where MISS LILLY received its debut in the Summer of 2010. MISS LILLY has also been developed with the Lark, Luna Stage the Babel Theater Project. MFA, The New School. www.bekahbrunstetter.com Read the full story

Thanks to everyone who answered our Family Feud survey. The event was a huge success and everyone had a great time. We've had some requests to post the questions and answers that were used. One of the highlights of the night was when the panelists (all theatre people) were presented with the question "What’s a reason someone might go to see a play?" The only answers they could think of that night were "a friend is in it", "comps", "a good review" and "a celebrity is in it". The #2 answer was "Entertainment" but not one person on the panel even considered this. Hm...what does this say about us?

Anyway, here are the questions and answers that were used. Enjoy!

Name the most important American playwright of all time.
1. Tennessee Williams – 36
2. Arthur Miller – 23
3. Eugene O’Neill – 22
4. Edward Albee – 7
5. Tony Kushner – 6
6. August Schulenburg – 6

Interesting answers that didn't make the cut, but worthy enough to mention: Shakespeare (2), Oscar Wilde, Tyler Perry, Sophocles

Name something actors do to prepare before a performance.
1. Vocal Warmup – 46
2. Stretch – 10
3. Breath – 8
4. Learn Lines – 7
5. Drink – 6
6. Rest – 5
7. Bathroom – 5
8. Yoga – 4
9. Smoke – 3
10. Exercise – 3
11. Hair/Makeup – 3

Worthy enough to mention: ritual sacrifice, make out, sex


What’s something annoying an audience member might do doing a performance?
1. Talk – 24
2. Text – 23
3. Answer Cell – 19
4. Cell Ringing – 18
5. Candy Wrappers – 16

Worthy enough to mention: audibly say they can see your underwear when you are doing a direct address monologue
vomit on the person in front of them and then talk about it,
hide their dog in their purse and have it bark during the show

What’s a reason someone might go to see a play?
1. Friend is involved – 53
2. Entertainment – 11
3. A Date – 9
4. Positive Review – 7
5. Catharsis/To Be Moved – 5
6. Cultural Experience – 5
7. Escape – 4
8. To Look Smart – 3
9. Celebrity in the Cast – 3
Worthy enough to mention: because you’re bored (2), concessions, nudity (2)

Fast Money Round!

After NYC and Chicago, what’s the best theatre city in the United States?
1. Washington, DC – 20
2. San Francisco – 20
3. Minneapolis – 16
4. Seattle – 15
5. Boston – 11
6. Philadelphia – 10
7. Los Angeles – 8
Didn't make the cut: Montevideo Uruguay

What’s your favorite Flux production?
1. Lesser Seductions of History – 20
2. Angel Eaters Trilogy - 18
3. Pretty Theft – 15
4. Riding the Bull – 12
5. Jacob’s House – 8
6. Never seen one – 8
7. Can’t Decide – 5
8. Rue – 4
9. Other Bodies – 3
10. Life is a Dream – 2
11. Midsummer – 1
12. Cotton Wright – 1
13. Hearts Like Fists – 1
14. J.B. – 1
15. Flux Family Feud – 1

What was Shakespeare’s funniest play?
1. A Midsummer Night’s Dream – 21
2. Comedy of Errors – 19
3. Twelfth Night – 18
4. Much Ado About Nothing – 16
5. As You Like It – 9
6. Taming of the Shrew – 8
7. Titus Andronicus – 4
8. Love’s Labour’s Lost – 3
9. Merry Wives of Windsor – 2
Didn't make the cut: Car Wash III, the one with the mistaken identities

What signals the start of a play?
1. Lights Out – 74
2. Lights Up – 7
3. Curtain – 5
4. Stage Manager – 5
5. Silence – 3
6. Curtain Speech – 3
7. Flashing House Lights – 3

What’s the most important part of the curtain speech?
1. Turn Off Cell Phones – 49
2. The End/Brevity – 19
3. Thank You’s – 15
4. Ask For Money – 10
5. Fire Exits – 7
Didn't make the cut: Thank John Horgan –without him nothing else is possible, location of the bar Read the full story

Walls play a major role in all three plays of our Season 4: Don't Look Away. In Dog Act, the legacy of a breach in a walled city defines the conflict. In Menders, we follow the arc of two student guards watching the wall of a post-apocalyptic city. In Ajax in Iraq, the walls are more metaphorical, as cracks appear in the borders between past and present, soldier and civilian, and heroism and cruelty.

Much of our marketing discussion has therefore centered around walls as a visual motif for the season. So I was particularly struck by this article Kelly O'Donnell forwarded me about art on the blast walls of Baghdad. As photo-essayist Holly Pickett writes:

Baghdad’s blast walls are a blank canvas. They reflect Iraqis’ shared history — both proud and painful facts of life here in the capital.

Beauty and violence; security and anxiety; the art in her photos connects with the themes of our season in a powerful way. We'll talk more on this blog about the further variations of this theme, but first, check out her photos and let us know what you think. Do you know of other examples of walls being repurposed as canvases for art? Read the full story

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On November 26, 2007, in our 6th post on the Flux Blog, I explained Flux Sundays, our then year old weekly workshop process. This process has undergone a subtle but important evolution, and it seems therefore important to post a revised explanation of just what, exactly, a Flux Sunday is and does.

Flux Sunday is a weekly workshop process that brings 10-30 actors, playwrights and directors together to read and lightly stage 3-8 scenes. Directors have an hour and a half to two hours to lightly stage the scenes, and then we gather together for the last hour to share them. Flux Sundays are almost always on Sunday (natch) from 4 to 7PM at our new home, Judson Memorial Church.

The goals of Flux Sunday are:

• To build a creative home for Members and Friends of Flux through the sustained, long term collaboration of making theatre on a weekly basis
• To develop new plays with the intention of moving them into Have Anothers, Food:Souls and full production.
• To explore relationships with new playwrights, actors and directors beyond the hit-and-run of auditions/interviews.
• To empower Members and Friends of Flux to shape Flux's destiny by inviting new artists to Flux Sunday through our new Guest Policy.

This new Guest Policy allows any permanent invitee of Flux Sunday to invite any artist to attend any Flux Sunday they attend themselves. This not only brings new talent to Flux, but allows our core community an active role in shaping Flux's work. The exception is playwrights, who should still submit plays through fluxplaysubmission@gmail.com. This policy difference reflects the profound impact playwrights have on the Flux Sunday experience.

While these workshops were previously closed to audience, our revised Mission Statement and Core Values seek to blur the divisions between artists and audience in building a creative home. To that end, we're continuing to extend the audience's role in our developmental work, and as Flux Sunday is the heart of that work, it makes sense to open it up. Therefore, the last hour of Flux Sunday (usually 6PM) is now open to members of Judson and Flux's wider community. Look for the next scheduled Flux Sunday in our Up Next section, and email me at gus at fluxtheatre dot org if you'd like to attend.

Furthermore, our last audition process has convinced me that we need a better way of meeting new artists. Not only did we end up seeing less than 10% of those who submitted, but the audition process itself is antithetical to the collaborative process of making theatre, and it is very easy to mistake an average artist who is a great auditioner for a great artist who is an average auditioner. The warm, collaborative spirit of Flux Sunday seems a far better way to sound the true spirit of an artist. To that end, I'm hoping to soon announce a new way of joining us for Flux Sundays - please stay tuned for that.

Flux Sunday was one of the first programmatic decisions the Ensemble made after our founding, and it remains the cornerstone and catalyst of everything we do. Hopefully, this new evolution will make us even stronger. Read the full story

What a night! Over 100 people showed up for our Flux Family Feud Benefit. We'll be following up with the answers from the Feud itself (there was some fun controversy), but for now, we'll let these pictures equal a whole bunch of words. All photos by Isaiah Tanenbaum.
Read the full story

Ken Glickfeld to the rescue!

With our usual Flux Sunday spaces occupied, Ken rode to our rescue, allowing our theatre-making momentum to continue. I had thought we'd only be able to read scripts, but he was willing for us to stage scenes, and though that shift led to a time miscalculation on my part, some lovely work happened.

Playwrights: Katherine Burger (Ever Ever), Fengar Gael (Devil Dog Six), Brian Pracht (Unplugged In), August Schulenburg (The Hand That Moves)

Directors: Heather Cohn, Katherine, Brian, August

Actors: Jane Taylor, Kimberly Klein, David Crommett, Ken Glickfeld, Lynn Kenny, Alisha Spielmann, Ryan Andes, Kathleen Wise, Chudney Sykes, Damon Kinard, Candice Holdorf, Leila Okafur

Highlights:
-Um, holy crap, Lynn Kenny. Evidently, she had a big bowlful of Acting for breakfast. Not only did she ably navigate Lois' tricky future-vision scene in The Hand That Moves, but her performance as Leah in Unplugged In was high strung as Christmas lights on the top of the tree. Yeah, that metaphor may have failed, but how would you describe that awesomeness?
-The many hats of the day award went to impressive newcomer Chudney Sykes, who rocked out a lovestruck do-gooder, a Jamaican nurse, and outraged slacker dude, respectively.
-Strong direction from both Heather and Brian sharing the end of Unplugged In, with Lynn's scene above matched by go-for-broke turns in the blinding scene from Candice as Zero and Leila Okafur as Leah.
-Ryan Andes's playing of Jean-Pierre in Devil Dog Six - he was as French as a baguette made out of berets (metaphor failure again?).
-Kathleen Wise and Alisha "Paint It Black" Spielmann making some invisible/banana children feel all too real.

If you were there, what did you remember before the Feud benefit made you forget? Read the full story

This post continues on our updates on the changes that came out of our Annual Retreat - past posts have focused on Core Values, Aesthetic Values, and Membership Structure.

As mentioned in our previous post on Membership, moving away from the two-tiered Membership structure necessitated the creation of a second relationship circle. We wanted to honor the people closest to Flux who weren't right for formal Membership, and so created a special relationship category called Friends of Flux.

Friends of Flux, or 'FOFs', are the artists and audience members who have shown a sustained commitment to Flux through some combination of time, resources and talent. FOFs have supported our work through artistic collaboration, committed show attendance, production support, and financial contributions; and we want to honor and celebrate that ongoing relationship.

What exactly are FOFs? We're still in the process of figuring that out, but we know what FOFs and Flux should be for each other:

Ambassadors:

• Flux and FOFs will use social media and word of mouth to spread the news about each other's work, including posting links to each other on our mutual websites
  
• FOFs have direct access to suggest the work of worthy theatre artists to Flux, and Flux will give those suggestions priority consideration for Flux Sunday and other artistic opportunities

Accomplices:

• FOFS will look for opportunities to support Flux's mission through volunteering when available
  
• Flux will pass on opportunities to FOFs, looking to move forward each others work when possible
  

Allies:

• Flux hopes to create a special social media group for FOFs, possibly called FluxBook. This will allow FOFs to communicate directly, providing FOF-specific opportunities to each other, and building an even stronger community
  
• Flux will look for other opportunities for increased access, including insider emails and monthly town halls, called SpeakEasy, where FOFs and Membership share ideas over drinks post Flux Sundays
  
• FOFs will have increased access to Flux process, through priority invites to special events and the rehearsal process
  
• FOFs will participate in a poll for season decisions, giving everyone a voice; Flux will respond to directly to the ideas generated by such discussions

Artists:

• FOFs will have increased access to artistic opportunities - special callbacks for actors, streamlined director proposals, priority script consideration. Non-theatre artist FOFs will have other ways to engage creatively with the community
  
• Flux and FOFs will actively look for chances to work together, prioritizing such collaborations

Audience:

• Flux will provide priority discount tickets to FOFs when available
  
• FOFs will actively recruit new audience members and potential FOFs, and receive discount tix and special events to help do so

Awesome!

• We want FOFdom to be fun! Silly titles, FOF happy hours, FOF SWAG, whatever is fun and Fluxy

This give and take was in large part already happening, but we wanted to make this kind of relationship official as a means of empowering FOFs to engage more deeply with Flux, and for Membership to better serve our FOFs. We like it, and so, we want to put a ring on it.

Friend of Flux status is re-evaluated every year to make sure both sides are getting something meaningful out of the relationship. We'll shortly be posting a list of our inaugural Friends of Flux - it's a pretty amazing group of audience and artists, and we're extremely fortunate to have them as the foundation of our mission to build a creative home.

If Friends of Flux sounds like something you'd like to be a part of, just ask a Member; we're trying to strike the balance between small enough to matter but big enough to count; and we want to make sure that everyone who works with us, FOF or not, feels valued and respected as per all those newly minted Core Values of ours. FOFdom is a work in progress, but we're excited to see where it goes. Read the full story

This post continues on our updates on the changes that came out of our Annual Retreat - past posts have focused on Core Values and Aesthetic Values.

A change in Flux's Membership structure has been in effect on the ground for some time now, and we thought it was time to tell you about it. Some of you may be curious about the inner mechanics of Flux; other structure junkies may find this change interesting in its move away from organizational rigidity towards a flexibility based on mutual trust.

Those paying close attention may have been familiar with our past two-tiered Membership structure of Core Members and Members. We decided that we would move away from that two-tiered structure into a single Membership category. There will be no more Core Members of Flux. Instead, there will simply be Members, all of whom have the same level of rights and responsibilities. Membership is now seen as an Artistic Partnership. All Members of Flux are committed to an Artistic Partnership with each other. (To clarify, Members will still be called Members - Artistic Partnership is capitalized here as the central definition of Membership for emphasis, but we are not changing our titles to Artistic Partners).

What does this Artistic Partnership look like?

• It is committed - all Members are doing a similar amount of work.It is based on equality - there will be a single voting process that treats all Membership votes equally. Department Directors will retain control over the day to day functioning of their departments.
• It is built on belief in each other - the season discussion includes a frank conversation about the artistic needs of each Member. There is no system of artistic guarantees, rather an open conversation about how each Member will fit into a current season. Because Membership is an Artistic Partnership, this conversation will naturally lead to artistic opportunities for Members, because we will want to create those opportunities for each other. This discussion of artistic opportunities balances the needs of individual artists with the overall good of the Ensemble, with Members expected to be mature contributors to that discussion.
• It is maintained by trust - rather than an overly complex laundry list of responsibilities, Members are expected to be self-starting catalysts who don't need to be told what to do, or always checked up on to make sure they're completing work. An Artistic Partner is someone who looks for every opportunity to move the Ensemble forward.
  
• It is long term - as Artistic Partners, we are committed to each other, and the Ensemble, for the long haul.

The primary rights of Membership are voting rights. All Members vote in all major decisions the Ensemble makes. The current decisions that require a Membership vote are as follows:

Votes that belong to all members:

• Season selection of plays (major majority)
• Season theme (majority)
• Director selection for full production (major majority)
• Budget (majority)
• Performance space (majority)
• Performance schedule/calendar (majority)
• New Members and Removing Members (unanimous)
  
• Friends Of Flux (majority)
• Changing the working agreement/amendments - mission, core & aesthetic values (major majority)
• Retreat invites – voting structure (unique)
• Adding or subtracting programming (major majority)

The primary responsibilities of Membership are unique to each Member, with the expectation that each Member will be contributing a similar amount of effort. However, some responsibilities exist for all Members, including:

Responsibilities that belong to all members:

• Taking a daily leadership role in the governance of Flux
• Making significant artistic contributions
• Contributing to the execution of every aspect of production
• Showing up for load-in, tech, front of a house, and strike; and providing pre-tech production assistance
• Attending Flux meetings regularly
• Showing financial stewardship by helping fundraising efforts
• Being an ambassador for Flux

Why this change? Because the division between Core and Regular Members, with their differing levels of rights and responsibilities, was simply unsustainable. We learned after a lot of trial and error that at the leadership level of our Ensemble, we needed an equality of rights and responsibilities. But this change required the creation of a new circle of engagement for people making significant contributions to Flux that for whatever reason were not able or willing to commit to the structure of Artistic Partnership outlined above.

That circle became Friends of Flux, and it will be the subject of our very next post. If there are any other Ensemble companies reading this post, I'd love to hear how your org structure matured over time, and what you learned along the way. Read the full story