Flux Theatre Ensemble

By August Schulenburg

There is much to say about the 2011 IT Awards, and very little time for me to say it, leaving momentarily as I am (along with my beautiful new wife and Flux founder, Heather Cohn) on our honeymoon to Spain. However, I thought I would share the acceptance speech I gave, as much of it was directed to past Members and current Friends of Flux who may not haven been there (or watched the exciting live stream). For those who are curious, you can read the script for the play that we staged before the speech here.

Acceptance for the 2011 Caffé Cino Fellowship Award
Perhaps unsurprisingly, our play ran a little long, so I'll try to keep my speechifying tendencies under control, but...

We need to thank Shay, Nick, Jason, the IT Awards Staff and volunteers, and the Honorary Awards Committee; we are humbled and thankful for this award. And though I hold this award in my single hand, I call upon your imaginary powers to see in me the six current Flux members on stage; our past Members Joe, Candice, David, Felicia, Cotton, Michael, Angela, Jake, Christina and Jason; and the more than 100 strong core artists and audience that make up the Friends of Flux; our mission is to build a creative home, and so this award belongs to everyone in our family.

However! The spirit of this award is ours only on load, handed like a torch by previous winners and past generations of artists - some of whom we've honored tonight - whose work carved out the space we currently play in; a space not defined by theatre or neighborhood, but by daring and desire; and this award is a call to us to live up to and enlarge that legacy; to pass on a more imaginative and compassionate community to whoever comes next; because this award would mean nothing without the living legacy it represents; the crazy, cacophonous community of which we are but a small part; and to that community, so many of who we love and admire and are here tonight; we say thank you, and we can't wait to continue the great work together with you. Read the full story

A super-fast reminder that amidst the flurry of new membership, weddings, and the preparation for a fall chock-full of exciting projects (stay tuned!), Flux is attending tonight's New York Innovative Theatre Award ceremonies.

We'll be performing a short play and expressing our very humble thanks as we accept the Caffe Cino Fellowship Award, crossing our fingers for Becky Byers and Jason Paradine (nominated for their work in Dog Act as supporting actress and set designer, respectively), and just generally celebrating with the indie theatre community that we are both a part of, and love.

There are still tickets available online or at the door ($25). See you there!

PS: If you can't make it, no worries: they'll be streaming the whole thing here. Read the full story

By August Schulenburg

"...but there are some ideals we cannot relinquish; there are some dreams that we won’t let go. The ideal that every human being has a right to peace, freedom, and creative self-expression; the ideal that every community is sustained by that creative self-expression; and the dream of a global stage where the stories of those communities are freely exchanged; we hold onto these things, because without them, theatre has no meaning.

Because theatre does not exist in opposition to Facebook and Twitter; theatre is not in competition with television or film: all of these forms, old and new, are in service to the expression of the human spirit. When Twitter helps spark a revolution against an oppressive regime, that is a victory for theatre..."

"If we look forward to 50 years from now, we will see this period as a precursor to a time when physics is totally reformulated in the language of holography," he says. "Once the theory is properly fleshed out, we will be able to apply it to almost any problem."

"The traditional one-way vertical relationship from the mass media to the audience does not exist anymore. Indeed, the whole notion of audience does not exist anymore, as users are now taking an active role in the creating and distribution of media."

Congrats and huzzah to the winners and nominees of the 2010 NYIT Awards! We were thrilled to see Crystal Skillman win for Outstanding Original Full Length Script and the New York Neo-Futurists grab the Caffe Cino award; and were admittedly disappointed when our Heather Cohn did not take home the IT for Outstanding Director.

As always, though, the night is mostly about celebrating this amazing community we're a part of, and it was great to hang with friends old and new. But I confess that old dirty question dressed up and sat on my other side, whispering its name in my ear:

Is this enough?

Sometimes, all our awards and blogger blather and Twitter banter and grant gilding feel like a filibuster against what's really happening; like keeping up the bed room of a child long gone; like "a speech of the self that sustains itself on speech".

Is this enough?

Sometimes it hurts, to care so much about something the rest of the world doesn't much care for; to pour your one life into little rooms like rain onto dry gardens.

A career for most of us is not a big break but a series of small stones piled high enough that when the tide comes, we can still see the place we've made. An NYIT Award is one such stone, and I am so grateful for what Shay, Nick and Jason do; giving a little weight to the light we make.

So to all the ninjas and chickens and robots,
To all the fairies and Moors and Danes,
To all those who feel half hour to places
Like a bell to prayer,
I yop this poem for you.

A Poem For The Artists At The NYIT Awards
To all those who stab their hearts with toy swords
And find their light to cry on cue and hold
A half beat longer to make the laugh double
Over; last night, did we take a cab home?

Home is where the house is sold out. Send me
Your conflicts so I can make the schedule,
We get so few hours with this damn code.
How many speakers? How many dimmers?

Tell me what you really thought, I trust you.
Tell me what's beautiful, what's a mistake.
Tell me mistakes alone are beautiful.
Give me the bad news, that nothing we do

Is ever enough; give me the good news,
Nothing we do will ever be enough.
******

Here's to another year of pouring our lives into little rooms. Read the full story

We stumbled across some fun pics from the 2010 NYITA Ceremony on the BOBOOBLOG courtesy of Eric Roffman - scroll down to see choice party pics of Tiffany Clementi, Kelly O'Donnell, and Candice Holdorf.

BOBOOBLOG is new to me, but promises to "keep the spirit of high quality OOB alive by trying to PREVIEW the work of OOB theaters". A worthy endeavor, and so we've added them to our blogroll.

Another new-to-me blog is Works By Women, a blog inspired by 50/50 in 2020 and dedicated to gender equity in season selection. They report on the strong representation of female theatre artists in the nominations, which happily includes our Heather Cohn for Outstanding Director of The Lesser Seductions of History. Likewise welcome to the blogroll! Read the full story

We're all thrilled to report that our own Heather Cohn was nominated for a New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Director for The Lesser Seductions of History! For those of you who took the time to vote for us, your votes contributed to this nomination, so from all of us, THANK YOU.

This is Flux's second consecutive year being nominated - last year, we were nominated for 7 awards, with Angel Eaters Sound Designer Asa Wember taking one home.

It was a great ceremony, with many Indie friends in attendance. We were excited to see friends recognized like Crystal Skillman and Impetuous Theater Group, James Comtois and Nosedive Productions (for Infectious Opportunity, which we featured here), Piper McKenzie (for Craven Monkey and the Mountain of Fury, which we also featured here), Tim Errickson's work with Retro Productions, and of course, perennial NYITA all stars, terraNOVA, the Brick, and the Neo-Futurists.

Work was also recognized from companies we admire like PL115, The Management, CollaborationTown, Vampire Cowboys, Electric Pear, and Astoria Performing Arts Center. But most importantly - and here is the signature magic of the NYITA - a number of companies I'd never heard of were recognized. The Mad Ones, The Associated Mask Ensemble, Down Payment Productions, and WeildWorks were all new to me, yet all of them brought home multiple nominations.

I would have loved to have seen Flux nominated for more - like Best Ensemble for Lesser Seductions and Best Set Design for Jacob's House - but the bad news with the NYITA is always good news, too - the Indie theatre community that we're all a part of is wider and deeper than we thought.

On a personal note, I'm especially disappointed to see Viral by Mac Rogers and Gideon Productions not nominated - it was by far the best Indie play I saw this NYITA year (I saw it twice, something I never do).

What plays and artists were you thrilled to see recognized? What do you think was missed? Read the full story

Until Sunday the 29th, the New York Innovative Theatre Awards will be accepting your votes for The Lesser Seductions of History. The audience votes count for 25% of the total, so your vote really does count. Flux was previously nominated for 7 NYIT Awards, winning one for Asa Wember's Sound Design of Angel Eaters, and we'd love to see the work of the amazing artists in Lesser Seductions recognized.

So, vote, before the tryptophan kicks in!

A note on the process - there are a limited number of Lead and Featured actor slots available per show, which put us in a difficult position in a show where every actor is equally a Lead and/or Featured. We thought a lot about the best way to navigate this, including only allowing votes for Best Ensemble; but that would mean no actors would have a chance to be individually recognized. The only fair way to do it seemed to undertake the arduous task of counting every line, and base the Lead vs Featured designation solely on the math. So we did! This is what you'll see when go to vote; not our feeling of which character is the most important, simply which character speaks the most.

Also, Jodi Witherell, our intrepid stage manager, handled a cast of eleven, a script of many rewrites, and a show of literally hundreds and hundreds of light and sounds cues spaced seconds apart. Consider this post our unofficial nomination of Jodi for the Outstanding Stage Manager Award. (And how does one nominate her officially, goodly NYITA staff reader out there?)

Do you need to remember who exactly played what? Put faces to names on our website.

So please vote for The Lesser Seductions of History, and warm-as-twice-baked-potatoes-thank-you from all of us. Read the full story

(Photo: Isaiah Tanenbaum. Pictured: Marnie Schulenburg, Maria Portman Kelly)

Well, it's closed, and all of us are very sad. THANK YOU to everyone who made time to see it. And if you want to give us just a wee bit more of that time, please vote for us at the New York Innovative Theatre Awards.

But we're not resting, oh no. Tonight we have a read through of the latest draft of The Lesser Seductions Of History, our fall production.

Onward! Read the full story