Flux Theatre Ensemble

After h/ting through Isaac to David Dower's heartfelt post on the New Play Blog (I'll wait for you to read them), I finally got around to writing a post I've been meaning to put together since the New Play Convening.

For those too busy to link-jump, the gist of both posts is the impossibility of the open play submission. Those at an institution who have time to read plays submitted over the transom (as the folksy saying goes) are exactly the people who have no ability to move a script forward at said institution. Arena got rid of their policy, forgoing a false inclusion for authentic limits.

I'm not sure what it says about the process (or me) that I would never even think of submitting a play to Arena or a similar sized organization; in the past year since I resumed submitting my plays, I've sent them to places that say they're actually looking (for a contest or festival), though both productions of my work this year (Riding the Bull in Seattle and Dream Walker in NYC) came through connections, not submissions.

The issue is bigger than Arena and certainly bigger than me; as Matt Freeman wrote in the comments of an earlier post on the subject, what is at stake is our faith in the idea of our field as a meritocracy. Studies reveal that this is patently false; women and artists of color are underrepresented, class presents barriers throughout a playwright's life, and a Masters from the right school can seemingly provide a faster track to success (such as it is).

This idea of a meritocracy, so fundamental to the American myth, is under assault in far more places than just the new play field. The growing gaps of income inequality, and the persistently corrosive effects of systemic gender and racial inequality, must be considered when we talk about inequality in theatre. One emerges from the other, and then sustains its progenitor by narrowing the stories we share on our stages.

This is an old ragged tune, and I don't need to sing every verse here. What I do believe is that a meritocracy is possible, and closer to achievable than we might think.

In neuroscience, our burgeoning understanding of the brain reveals that there are many divided areas of local activity that sometimes send information via transportation nodes to the brain at large. It is a system of systems, and it depends on vitality of activity at the local level as well as an effective means of sharing that activity across the whole.

The new play structure of these United States resembles a brain with dementia. The links between local activity and brain-wide communication are broken; and so information is lost, connections go unmade, and a great gyre of forgetfulness keeps the whole stumbling system in a fitful dark. Connections are top down: a play gets enough good reviews in a major city, and trickle down to theatres eager for a false legitimacy. This is not how a healthy brain works, and this is not how our new play structure should work, either.

We need a means of connecting local vitality through effective national hubs of communication, and the model for how this might works already exists. The New Play Map, created by Arena, is like a working brain that lacks consciousness. The connections are beginning to form, and now a will needs to emerge from them.

Every time that I read a play and love it, I share it with the rest of Flux; and if I'm particularly inspired by it, I'll advocate for it here on the blog and elsewhere. But without a context for that advocacy, it's difficult to achieve any momentum.

What we need is a Yelp-like database to emerge from the New Play Map that allows for participants to advocate for the new plays they read.

Here's how it could work:

-After reading a play that you feel confident in advocating for, you log-in to the platform (you've created an individual profile already). You ONLY use the platform for advocacy - this is not a reviewing platform. If you don't like something you read, it ends there. Read the full story

By August Schulenburg

Read the full story

From time to time, some degree of a moratorium on the plays of Shakespeare is considered. After seeing Much Ado About Nothing at Boomerang (a solid production that reminded me of what a profound accomplishment the character of Beatrice is) and Measure for Measure in the Park (an inconsistent production with a fantastic Lucio and a great concept for the Duke as a bumbling improviser enthralled by absolute personalities), I am even more grateful for every chance I get to spend with his plays. Unlike many others, I find even mediocre productions worth my time; every time I hear his words in motion, I discover something new.

Read the full story

On the other hand, maybe it's simple.

The IRS reports 1,982 not-for-profit theatres with a budget over $75,000.
AACT lists 1,034 community theatre members.
A rough count lists 265 theatre on Indie Theater.org (that's in NYC alone).
TCG has 88 theatre programs as University Affiliates, and Twitter peeps tell me the number of programs is around 200-300.
*01/29/10: Adam hooked me up with a search engine for colleges - searching for theatre specific programs yielded 1,118 results - so the numbers that follow are actually potentially higher.

So let's say there are roughly 3,500 current theatre producing entities in this country (probably a conservative count, but there may be some cross over above as many community theatres have a sizable budget, and for the purposes of the thought exercise of this post, the exact number is not critical).

What if these 3,500 organizations each committed to produce 1 play a year from 1 unique playwright for the next 3 years?

You would have 3,500 different playwrights each developing a unique relationship with a company and community over 3 years.

Those playwrights would have the opportunity to see 3 of their plays fully staged, which, as J. at 99 Seats so rightfully points out, is the only way good playwrights learn how to write great plays.

And in 3 years time, 10,500 new plays would see the light of stage.

Some of the relationships developed at these theatres might turn long term, some wouldn't. But all of the communities served by all of these theatres would see a nationwide commitment to new plays and living playwrights being treated as essential.

What would this do to the national profile of new plays and playwrights?

Of theatre in general?

Some might prefer to leave community theatres off this list, but to me, our national decline in straight new play attendance demands as inclusive an approach as possible. If playwrights don't want to be produced by a partner organization, that is their prerogative. And they can certainly continue to have their work produced elsewhere, they'll just (for 3 years) be able to count on a home for their work.

Impossible logistically? Not at all. London's Bush Theatre created a website for producers to find plays, and a similar model, properly administered, could be used to play matchmaker-matchmaker between participating theatres and playwrights. The 365 Plays/Days, Lysistrata, Free Night of Theater, and The Laramie Project all serve as examples of successful national collaboration between theatres.

Some playwrights would be besieged with offers, and others would still be left out. Some theatres will protest having to work with their second or third choice, but if they don't have a list 20 playwrights deep they'd like to work with (I do), they're not reading enough (or the right) plays. And this proposal doesn't mean they can't also produce Proof, Doubt, and Twelfth Night; they just also need to produce, once a year for 3 years, a truly unique voice.

Even if only a 1/4 of the hypothetical 3,500 participated, you are still looking at 875 theatres and playwrights working together over 3 years in a program that is local in impact and national in scope. You are still looking at 2,625 deserving new plays (and yes, I think there are that many out there) seeing the light of stage.

Imagine it like a creative stimulus package for new play development. And just like the stimulus, there will be waste and mistakes. But there will also be a clear message to audiences and artists that new plays matter. And maybe, the connection between a theatre and playwright will kindle into the long term relationships idealized at the start of Outrageous Fortune; our Chekhov will find his Moscow Arts Theatre, our O'Neill will find her Provincetown Players, and our national theatre will find its way (or at least its mojo) again.

Crazy, right? Right. Though it may be crazier to continue to make small fixes to big problems.

I don't know. But, what if instead of just talking about supporting playwrights and doing new plays, we all agreed to do it. Not a huge change individually, but a sea change together. Read the full story

So I'm going to be blogging about TDF's new publication, Outrageous Fortune: The Life and Times of the New American Play, as part of Isaac Butler at Parabasis' posse of bloggers. Today, all of us will be addressing Chapter 1: Dialogue in the Dark, Playwrights & Theatres. In the days to follow we'll be focusing on individual chapters, and I'm thrilled to say that I'll be joining with Scott Walters next Tuesday to talk about Chapter 5: Whose Audience Is It, Anyway?

But for now...Chapter 1: Dialogue in the Dark, Playwrights & Theatres.

First things first: the most important thing to note about this study is the limit of its scope. 94 theatres and 250 playwrights were surveyed, with an additional 31 playwrights and 67 artistic leaders/educators/agents/producers rounding out the survey results over a series of roundtable discussions.

When you consider the IRS reports 1,982 theatres with a budget over $75,000, and the latest New York Innovative Theatre demographic study lists 900 playwrights responding to their last survey; you begin to understand how small a slice of new play activity the report is actually covering.

In some ways, this isn't significant, as the study is specifically looking at playwrights who are "successful", a term defined loosely in the book, but understood to mean playwrights who are regularly being produced at a regional and Off-Broadway level. The survey focuses on a sample of those playwrights, and the theatres that are able to financially produce at that level.

In other ways, it is very significant, because the invisibility of the theatres and artists not covered in the study obscures one of the most powerful solutions to the problems addressed in the book. We'll get back to that. It is simply important to remember that the book addresses a statistically significant slice of new play development, but a slice all the same.

Still with me?

Because of the above, the other important thing to note about the book is the data is primarily self-reported. Most of the data concerns what playwrights and theatre leaders are saying and thinking about themselves and each other. In that light, it is extremely interesting.

But, with all of the controversy surrounding new play production, the primary take away of this book is our desperate need for a real time mechanism to report the true demographic breadth of play production in this company. Maybe that road runs through the play publishers, who would have information on rights and therefore the most representative data. Or maybe that road runs through organizations like nytheatre.com, who could work with other regional organizations to give monthly snap shots of local and national break-downs of percentages of plays written by women, people of color, new plays vs classics, etc.

In the end, we will need to have some accurate, comprehensive, and timely mechanism to measure those demographics, or we will continue to be uncertain of where exactly we are, where exactly we're trying to get to, and what actual progress is being made.

Still with me?

Good. All that aside, the book is a triumph, and a real asset to move the conversation of new play development forward.

It starts with the divide between theatre leaders and playwrights. From the playwright perspective, the pressures of declining audiences, corporate boards, and communities of aesthetically conservative tastes force artistic directors to take avoid taking risks with new plays. From the artistic director perspectives, playwrights are either writing plays of lower quality; or plays of high quality but formal difficulty that do not speak to their audience.

In other words, each side believes a large measure of blame rests with the other, though both this chapter and the book itself feature anecdotes of relationships that are working.

Underwriting both opinions are stark financial realities detailed in later chapters. Most new plays don't make money. Most playwrights don't make a living writing plays. Whatever lack of communication driving the distance between playwrights and theatres is fueled by this dire economic reality.

The equation of this distance seems to be something like this:
1. Most new plays don't make money, so...
2. Theatres cannot afford to keep playwrights permanently on staff, which means...
3. Playwrights cannot stay in a local community, so...
4. Playwrights move to cities where they form communities with other playwrights, and...
5. End up writing plays that will be seen primarily by an audience of their peers, which is...
6. A small audience, so smaller theatres are chosen, which leads to...
7. Smaller plays being written for a specialist audience, which then...
8. Make artistic directors hesitant to program these plays that don't speak to their audience, and so...
9. The artistic directors program the few plays that are hits, which...
10. Still don't necessarily speak to their specific community, and so...
11. They don't make money even on the hit plays they program, which means...
12. They can only afford to do hit plays with small casts, which gives us...
13. The current system of new play production, wherein a small number of small cast plays with a traditional narrative that are anointed as hits receive many productions, and so...
14. To change this dynamic, the funding community gives to new play development, focusing on premieres, which leads to...
15. The much bemoaned development hell and premieritis, which ends up...
16. Perpetuating a system where most new plays don't make money, and most playwrights don't make a living.

One potential solution is ironically present in the very first paragraph of the very first page:

Think about the relationship between playwrights and theatres, and images will spring to mind: Chekhov, surrounded by the actors of the Moscow Art Theatre, reads his play to them. Moliere, starring in his own work, gets carried from stage to deathbed by his company - his literal and figurative family - for whom he writes and with whom he brings his comedies to life. A wharf in Provincetown, fog sifting in and water lapping at the floorboards - Eugene O'Neill's first sea play is being performed by the band of passionate amateurs who discovered him. Or think about Brecht directing his own play with the Berliner Ensemble; Caryl Churchill discovering hers through research and improvisation with the Joint Stiock Theatre; or August Wilson traversing a country in step with not one theatre, but many partners in ambition, vision, song. And then there's Shakespeare, looming over all of them, a player among players on the banks of the Thames, at home in his Globe.

Shakespeare, Moliere, and Brecht were not separate from the financial decisions that brought their work to life, but directly responsible for it. They were shareholders in the life of their company. They brought their own strawberries to market. And they did so with a particular community of artists that, like the Provincetown Players and Moscow Arts Theatre, had made a commitment to long term collaboration with each other under an artist/producer model.

Flux Theatre Ensemble functions under this artist/producer, long term collaborative model. I believe that artists can and should be responsible for the consequences of their plays in a community; and I believe a producer should have their hands dirty with the theatre they're making. The silos of our specialist corporate culture may no longer be the ideal for making theatre. But whether you are a traditionally structured company or one of Travis Bedard's bands, all roads to recovery lead one way: to the audience.

We'll talk about that on Tuesday. And make sure to check out Isaac's blog for links to the other bloggers covering the book! Read the full story

The idea for new models of theatre is as old as Thespis stepping out of the Chorus. Lately, there has been some interesting ideas in adapting existing social models from other fields: examples theatre as church, and theatre as community supported agriculture.

This got me thinking about what other potential models are out there, and how they might be adapted to the field. Here's what I can think of off the top of my early morning head:

1. Sports (minor and amateur leagues probably being especially useful)
2. Politics (again, local practices probably being the most useful)
3. School (especially colleges)
4. Social clubs (whether book clubs or masons)
5. Non-arts charities
6. Social media
7. Science
8. Corporations (though I think theatres have already been pushed too far in the direction of this model)
9. Other arts (galleries, bands, orchestras, etc.)

What else? Please comment below: after Lesser Seductions closes, if time presents itself I may try to host on the blog interviews with representatives from these different fields to see what practices may be applicable to theatre. Perhaps there's already research in this area - if so, please post it in the comments below. Read the full story

Adina Levin has a fascinating post building on a theory of Dave Weinberger's called The End of Information, The Return of Conversation. In it, Adina persuasively argues that Information - who has it, who doesn't, and how it is distributed - is no longer the primary mover of our culture.

Now it is Conversation, through the form of social media, that is in the driver's seat. Rather than engaging the world through Information obtained from a single reliable source; the world is increasingly understood through the context of Conversation. Comments on blogs and Facebook, tweets and retweets, Google Wave and Wikipedia are more than just crowd sourcing information; they represent a fundamental values shift in perception. Asking the question, and hosting the conversation, have primacy over providing a single answer.

In her excellent recent post The Future Of Politics Is Mutual, Hannah Nicklin issues a call to arms for the creation of an open sourced WikiPolitics, something my friend Matt Cooperider has been advocating for at Open Government NYC. As Hannah argues, the structures of social media are ideally suited to creating a more open, participatory democracy.

What does this mean for theatre? Primarily, it means that if you claim to want Conversation, it can't simply be your old Information dressed up in social media's clothing. Flux is taking steps towards this by directly soliciting feedback for The Lesser Seductions of History, but this is only a start. As WikiPolitics and Open Government movements increase the access and leverage of engaged citizens, we must encourage a similar level of direct and meaningful conversation with our stakeholders. What theatre companies are doing this well? Please post any good examples in the comments field; especially those that move beyond using new media as a platform for old content, and instead let their audience sit in some meaningful way at the table where decisions are made. Read the full story

I am thrilled to congratulate Stolen Chair Theatre Company on their winning The Field's ERPA Award, which includes a $20,000 grant! Beyond the simple joy of seeing an Indie company snare such a prestigious (an economically useful) award, I'm excited because I love this idea and have been advocating for a Fluxy version of this within the Ensemble.

The central idea: framing the artist/audience relationship in the context of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Go to Stolen Chair's blog to read the details, but the essence is:

Like the CSA model, Stolen Chair hopes to build a membership community, a "CST", which would provide ‘seed’ money for the company’s development process and then reap a year’s worth of theatrical harvests.

I talked a little about this model, and how it might work for Flux, in the post The Metabolism of Theatre. On the surface, this idea could feel like a reframed subscriber relationship for an age that hates subscribing. For the change to be more substantive, several conceptual and practical things need to happen:

1. The theatre company must provide a robust and regular harvest of work: it's not enough to ask an audience to seed 1 production a year - that's like the subscriber system without shows to subscribe to! The key is to open up the development process to the audience. Stolen Chair outlines a monthly crop, and as mentioned here, Flux could do so as well with our Have Anothers and Food:Souls.

2. The theatre company must engage in open dialogue with the audience: if a farmer keeps bringing arugula and you hate arugula, you're not going to particularly enjoy supporting a CSA. The same obviously applies with theatre. Without moving into a test screening model, the opened development process must be a two-way conversation, and the company must be willing to seriously consider the feedback received. Even when if you don't take the suggestions, you need to explain aesthetic choices and take responsibility if they don't quite work.
Flux is experimenting with that online, though thus far our open threads have been largely positive (which is appreciated). Hopefully we will gradually develop a critical culture where our audience feels empowered to speak candidly about what's not working, and we'll have the courage to consider changing.

3. The theatre company must empower their audience as artists: Part of the joy of CSA is relearning our appreciation of cooking the best locally grown sustainable foods. Someone who picks up a bunch of locally grown goodies and doesn't know how to cook them is not going to benefit as much as someone empowered to artistically engage with the fruits of CSA. This metaphor extends absolutely to Community Supported Theatre (CST). The theatre company must find ways to empower their community to engage creatively with the work on stage. Flux is doing this with our ForePlays, but we can do a much better job of creatively empowering our audiences (a good model was Electric Pear's solicitation of artifact videos for Artifacts of Consequence).

4. The audience must think of themselves as partners in the enterprise: The relationship needs to go beyond simply writing the checks and showing up at the theatre, though it must be said loudly and clearly that properly watching a play is not a passive experience. For all the exciting conceptual stuff above, the simple act of an audience showing up should never be dismissed. However, in the CST model, the audience needs to take those next step and communicate their feelings about the work, engage creatively with it, and take ownership of the sustainability of the company. This doesn't mean just writing checks: it can mean actively bringing new members to the CST, advocating for grant support, volunteering, and more.

Stolen Chair is reaching out for charter members of their CST - if you've seen their work and believe it worthy of this innovative kind of support, please, go to their website and learn how to become a member. In the meantime, I look forward to learning from their example, and seeing if and how this model can be adapted to Flux.

BUT WAIT!!! Don't get all warm and cuddly yet from this audience-empowering, cross-organizational love fest post just yet. Because our friend Isaac Butler at Parabasis has a post saying Don't Support Theatre!

To quote:

There are plenty of ways that people can be asked to show their support-- Donating, telling friends about the show, volunteering, providing you with honest feedback. But what have we come to that we discuss seeing the show itself as a form of support? Isn't the show for the audience, and not the other way around? I see this "support us" language all the time. It drives me up a wall.

These different ideas posted only a day apart from each other represent, in miniature, one of the existential crises facing theatre today. If you believe that the Marketing and Development departments of a theatre have essentially separate functions, than you might agree with Isaac that Marketing language should be a "sell", not an "ask". If you see M and D as more intimately intertwined (as I do) you might agree that supporting a theatre actually empowers an audience to a greater sense of ownership, and requires from the theatre a higher level of responsibility to that audience. When practiced properly, that ideals behind that language of support are actually the reverse of the entitlement Isaac describes. (Please note: Isaac's post was not in response to the CST idea, and I juxtapose the two posts with no intention of making them adversaries; rather, I'm hoping some sparks of illumination come from banging them together.)

As Adam at Mission Paradox wrote, there are a lot of similarities between churches and theatres, and I don't think most of us want churches to "sell" us anything. Instead, churches ask us to participate in a communal process of practicing faith.

So I think that you should support theatre, but for that support, you should expect a lot more in return. You should expect to be a partner in a communal process of practicing story.

What do you think? Post away! Read the full story