Tips for Helping Artists Make Connections and Build Rapport.

Posted on October 10, 2011 by Heidi Rettig

I stumbled on this short video from Elizabeth Marshall and thought I would share it with you. Marshall has a background in classical music performance and shares some ideas from The Art of Possibility, a book by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander. (Benjamin Zander is Conductor of the Boston Philharmonic and a Teacher at the New England Conservatory of Music.)

Stick with it. I think there are good ideas here for any artist (and especially fundraisers) who must reach out to new connections in order to move ideas forward.

Making Way for Great Ideas and Deeper Connections from Elizabeth Marshall on Vimeo.

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How Do We Find The Antidote for Ego? The Creative Commons and Nonprofit Arts Organizations.

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Heidi Rettig

Look for the link to The Antidote for Ego web store in the October 2011 issue of American Theatre magazine. Seriously.

It’s been far too long since I’ve posted on the blog. I’ve been away. In that place that Washington-area women who rely heavily on hair straightening irons go during August. In other words…I didn’t go anywhere (or do anything) last month unless an air conditioner was pointed directly at my roots. One false move and my hair super-expands like a Muppet on steroids. I’m two pounds lighter after I blow dry. No – really. I can’t believe I moved back here, for the third time in my life.

Which is a long way of saying that I know I’ve left you hanging. Sitting on the edge of your seats waiting for me to post the final installment of my ethnography of the TCG 2011 conference in Los Angeles.

“What If?”sessions were sprinkled throughout the TCG 2011 conference, encouraging attendees to consider new models of theatre-making and programming and how the craft might be changed by challenges to existing assumptions and modes of practice. 

Polly Carl (with David Dower) from Arena Stage asked, “What if we adopted a radically new culture of sharing, open participation and collective contribution for the advancement of the new works sector – focusing on outward advancement as opposed to inward or individual progress?” And Carl’s session — “Making a Mesh of the New Works Sector” — was the most thought provoking conference session for me.

As a group, we discussed the value and potential application of the Creative Commons to theatre. Creative Commons is a leader within the copyleft movement, which encourages a richer public domain by providing an alternative to the automatic “all rights reserved” copyright. Under the Creative Commons authors retain some rights, and can specify how and when their creative content can be used and/or shared.

This is all very well, I said during the session, but if we [theatre people] are going to have any success moving from individual progress toward shared advancement, we will have to find The Antidote for Ego. Yes, I actually said that. Out loud.

It’s not that I’m against the idea of sharing ideas or credit. I know that many of us were probably thinking the same thing. It’s simply a reality that in the field of nonprofit theatre, sometimes the credits are the only paycheck we get cut. Credits are the currency that keeps so much of this business going when there is so little money going around.

And chances are if our ideas are any good at all, we’ve had more than one appropriated by another “thinker” in a better position to generate income. Making money off someone else’s idea has been happening since before The Flood but…it still hurts. We’ve all invested a great deal of time, money, education, and energy into garnering the skills required to make good art.When someone says they can do what we do without having made that same investment…plain and simple…it feels pretty crummy. So many in this business are on the knife edge of profitability. In an idea-based industry like ours, good ideas – properly executed – are the currency that keeps our families fed.

I know this from experience. Ten years ago, when I was just starting off on my own, another consultant sat down with me to “brainstorm” about projects we could do “together.” The Consultant then took that idea and sold it without giving me credit. Money would have been nice, but involvement in the project was what I wanted. I wanted to see my idea realized.

By coincidence, that person is at TCG 2011 and is still selling the idea, ten years on. My consolation, at this point, is that the idea was so poorly understood by this person that The Consultant could never produce it at the level of quality it deserved. My other consolation is that my appropriated idea was the last “big idea” The Consultant ever had. I’ve got ideas coming out my ears. Ours is an idea economy, and I’m doing just fine.

But back to the Creative Commons. The copyleft movement is timely response in this age of rapid information exchange. It is not without its challenges, however and we’ve seen these challenges play out largely in the craft market. A few years ago, fabric designer Amy Butler tried to restrict the usage of her fabrics to items sewn for personal use. If a sewist purchased an Amy Butler fabric, s/he was not allowed to sell the item s/he made for a profit. Simply put, you could sew a pillow out of Amy Butler fabric, but you could not sell a pillow made from Amy Butler fabric. Not even on etsy.com

The backlash against Butler (and other fabric designers like Heather Ross) from the craft community was significant. Sewists boycotted the fabric line(s) and eventually, Butler changed her tack. Now, Butler allows the fabrics to be used for manufactured goods but restricts the reproduction of the pattern design; her artwork. Legal analyst Susan Scafidi, author of “Who Owns Culture?” wrote a response to the fabric issue that you can read here.

In her book Scafidi says, “Although public awareness of the value of creative enterprise rose dramatically with the Internet Revolution, the legal protection of copyright, patent and trademark do not ordinarily extend to cultural creations. In fact, group authorship creates legal unease, and communal or traditional artistry often goes unrecognized.”

And the need for recognition brings us back to square one. I’m not against sharing, open participation, or collective contribution in the arts. In fact, I think its what we – creatives – are best at. At least, we’re better at idea-sharing than for-profit, big idea, corporate entities. But in order for it to take root I believe we need a couple of things to happen:

1) We need to find The Antidote for Ego. Conveniently, I’ve bottled a proprietary blend of essential oils to deal with the Ego problem (available now!) that you can spray around the office. Yes, really. Available in time for the holidays.

2) We need to better understand what protections are available to us and how they really work. I’m looking forward to learning more from Polly Carl about how the Creative Commons can be applied to the nonprofits arts field. Carl’s recent move to Arena Stage tells me that good and interesting things are going to happen in the conversation about new work.

3) We – as a community of artists, producers, and administrators – need to heal our bad relationship to money. If we are to be fairly compensated for what we do we have to start by paying each other. Using a currency of value to the field. Up until now, Playbill credits have served as a kind of currency, most often where money wasn’t available, and I think this is the major driver behind the arts’ attachment to individual progress, i.e. Ego. I think I speak for everyone when I say that being able to afford health insurance should not be seen as selling out, and it will not compromise your creative genius.

The only way we can push forward with the Creative Commons agenda, I think, is if we have to generate the exchange of more money between artists, for art. And the only way we can do that is to change the story we’ve been telling ourselves about the role of money and its relationship to ideas and art. I have big thoughts about that, and I’ll write more about them in my next blog post.

What do you think? Can we do move away from individual progress toward sharing and open participation? How?

– Heidi Rettig

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What I Didn’t Learn From My 7th Grade Art Teacher.

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Heidi Rettig

When I think back on the art and music teachers of my youth, I think good thoughts. Mr. Zeller, Mr. Plauda, Mr. Deyoe and others were all talented, encouraging, patient souls.

When my Mom moved into assisted living, I was handed a giant box full of my school papers that she’d saved since the beginning of time. Not being in the writing groove today, I decided to take a break and spend some time shredding old files. Look what I found!

It’s an old exam that tests my knowledge of the “color wheel.” I think its probably from [around] 6th or 7th grade. Reading this as an adult – one who grew up to be a painter and to work with artists of all kinds – I find the test questions almost a little hostile:

 

I still have a set of clay "dentures" I made in Mr. Deyoe's 7th grade art class in my studio.

 

 

 

“On the back, draw a PORTRAIT. Show where the eyes, nose, mouth are in ACCURATE PROPORTION.”


 

No pressure there, seventh graders. I mean, NO WONDER people grow up entrenched in the idea that they “can’t” draw or paint; and that creative abilities belong to a select few.

The grown-up artist (me) thinks, “So what about proportion?” Some of the most interesting portraits are those that cast the “rules” out the window, right? And the color wheel. Color theory can be handy. It can also be fun to just play with color and see what you come up with all by your own self.

I don’t think art keeps secrets. There is no “right” way to work. Technical knowledge can be extremely helpful and very important in the execution of good work. It can also be acquired, like other kinds of book learning. But having lots and lots and lots of original, creative ideas and being ready and willing to try them out…no matter if it leads to fame and fortune or was just an incredibly satisfying experiment…? That attitude is, it seems to me, more important to the creation of new work than anything else I can think of.

There’s no room for creativity on this exam. There were right ways to use color; wrong ways to draw. And I find that kind of depressing.

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An Ethnography of TCG 2011: Part V.

Posted on July 27, 2011 by Heidi Rettig

In Which I find Myself Talking To and About Millennials.

So, I’m on the bus to Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City. We’re all going to see Rude Mechs’ The Method Gun on opening night.

 

The Method Gun @ Humana Festival from Rude Mechs on Vimeo.

First, we have dinner. A delicious Middle Eastern buffet provided by Center Theatre Group (I think) for our enjoyment, laid out in a special room upstairs just for really cool people. The tables are set up exactly like a junior high lunch room and, I have to be honest, I feel a little bit like an awkward preteen wondering who will let me sit with them. Lots of squinting at name tags in this TCG crowd – it would be easier to decide if someone is worth knowing if the print on the tags was larger. I make a mental note to mention this to Teresa for 2012.

I go ahead and say it to the guy next to me in line but since he turns out to be Michael Robertson, Managing Director at the Lark Play Development Center, (and ultimate cool kid)  so I just get kind of a pity chuckle. But he does let me sit with him. This stuff never happened when I was a program officer at a major foundation, you know? When I attended TCG ten years ago, I couldn’t find a minute to myself. EVERYBODY laughed at my jokes. And I actually hated it. But I digress.

And I’m also way ahead of myself. I should be back on the bus telling you about the conversation I had with Vijay Mathew, from #NEWPLAYTV at Arena Stage. Vijay and I have been trading phone calls for a couple of months, trying to catch up about how one of my clients can use this amazing (and free) program to live broadcast their productions over the internet. The main obstacle is, of course, the challenge of working with Actors’ Equity, which makes the broadcast aspect difficult. To be successful, we will have to seek a waiver or concession from the union to make this work. I think this company can make it work – we have a great team of actors and a good relationship with our rep, so I decide I’m going to suggest it to my client and see what she thinks.

Fast forward back to the pre-show buffet. At our table, we’re talking about Katori Hall – definitely lots of buzz about her at this conference. We head downstairs and settle in, waiting for curtain. For whatever reason, I have a front row seat. I’m so far forward I’m under the lights, basically. Shawn Sides laughs and waves at me when she comes out. We’d been talking earlier in the day about how I stood out like a sore thumb in this group because I was wearing a color and contact lenses versus all BLACK with a pair of cool glasses. Now, still in my bright orange shirt, I’m in the front row, all lit up like a huge piece of fruit.

There is a pencil and paper on the seat, and we are directed to write down the name of someone who taught us something, someone who inspired us. I’m thinking a lot about the importance (value?) of a guru, so I write down, Julie B. A. Brooks Nyquist (JBABN) and put it in the basket coming down the aisle. (Just like church!) JBABN is a kind of guru to me – but that’s another blog post.

The show is awesome. I don’t always “get it”, but I [will] find it digests easily and over the next few days I like The Method Gun even more.  I loved the vintage costumes. I don’t know why, but writing about Lana Lesley’s orange polyester pantsuit just makes me think I want to work in the words, “Carol Brady”, and “maxi pads” but I have trouble doing this in a thoughtful way.  At the end of the show, hundreds of names scroll by – those who found their way into the basket; who taught and inspired each one of us along the way. We pay silent tribute to JBABN and the others as the names stream up into space.

Actors: [Practice crying.]

Joan Anderman reviewed The Method Gun for the New York Times, if you’re curious. Engine28.com, an arts journalism initiative that is happening alongside the conference, also has several reviews of The Method Gun posted on the website. I’m curious what the response has been to Engine28.com – I like the idea but have hardly had a second to check it for commentary or reviews during the conference.

On the way back, I sit next to Jamie Gahlon on the bus, Co-Director of the American Voices New Play Institute at Arena Stage. Pretty much everyone at Arena Stage  – Molly Smith; Polly Carl; Jamie Gahlon; Vijay Mathew; they all have the glasses. Arena Stage is doing some pretty amazing stuff at the moment and had a huge presence at TCG 2011. My opinion. Polly Carl’s move to DC tells me that there are even more amazing things in store for Arena Stage in coming months.

Jamie and I talk a little bit about my work and life and we figure out we’re both Georgetown graduates. Only, I was there so long ago Georgetown was like a different universe. It didn’t even have a theatre program. Like an old person, I tell her what it was like to live in the city back then. That I moved there the same weekend as the Mt. Pleasant riots; what it was like to live through the garbage strike; the rat control strike; the years when crime was so bad that residents hired private security to patrol the neighborhood; the Marion Barry years; the Sharon Pratt Kelly Dixon years; the Clinton administration’s constant need to use the campus for speeches (which had a negative impact on my street parking situation, for sure.) And the Starbucks murders. I’ve paid $5 for peanut butter at [the old] Social Safeway. I’ve been reeled in by Cactus Cantina and their [surprise!] really bad Mexican food.

And I don’t want to do it anymore, or at least not in the near future. I’m living outside the city. I have been there/done that. I’ve had my own, personal stalker; I’ve woken up in a trendy neighborhood with a roach on my pillow; I’ve seen fights break out on the Metro because it was rainy, hot and humid and someone stepped on someone else’s toe.  But I can’t and don’t say all that because then it sounds like I’m trying to make my old self out to be some aging, d****bag hipster, which I certainly am not. Or never was. You know what I mean.

(to be continued)….

 

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An Ethnography of RADAR L.A. and TCG 2011: Part IV

Posted on July 21, 2011 by Heidi Rettig

So…where were we?

Friday, June 17th, 2011.

Oh yes. OK.  Flipping through my notes. We finished up the plenary. As we wrap up, I’m thinking about David Houle’s mission to make me into a “Morph Corp.” Can *I* morph, as a independent contractor? And his lesson about being “friends first” with my audience. I don’t like it. Being “friends first” sounds way too similar to the messages sent out by the Catholic Student Center at my alma mater; OH WAIT. I read that wrong.

David Houle ACTUALLY said that in the “Shift Age,” there is a change in the way we perceive and grant trust and authority. Now? We ASK our friends FIRST.

Whew. But a reminder about the importance of writing up your field notes right away. Not waiting, um…four weeks. Which brings the ethnographic authority of this entire page into question. But let’s not go there.

TCG 2011 rolls into a Whatifesto but interestingly, I don’t write much down. I also don’t write much down about Mark Shugoll’s session on The State of the Artist but I remember feeling that it the conversation was sidetracked a little bit from the intended goals. We spent a lot of time discussing the (in)validity of the data.

Actually, the numbers sound to me as if they are an accurate representation of the population – quantitatively speaking. The more qualitative concerns? We just don’t know. Quantitative data can only count, tell you how many – it doesn’t do a great job of telling you why people do what they do, or how they feel about it. A really good qualitative study of individual artists, “Investing in Creativity,” was done by my former colleague Maria Rosario Jackson at Urban Institute about ten years ago. That’s the closest we’ve come. Mark Shugoll is a reliable source, I think. But I’m not sure we ever got to hear much about the actual findings of his study.

I decided to attend a session about writing for film and television. I haven’t got any active projects for film at the moment, but it seems like eventually someone will come to me and want help with their idea. And part of my personal mission at TCG 2011 is to fall in love with something or, at least, step outside the boundaries of the overly familiar. Which is a long way of saying I see the screenwriting session and I decide to go.

Officially, the session is called “Indie Film and Indie Theatre: The Art of Narrative Storytelling.”

Christopher Ashley and Jane Anderson, Luis Castro, Jennifer Sherwood. Jose Rivera. Someone says [likely Jane] at the start, “Playwrights are born, not made. Screenwriters are made, not born.”  Jose Rivera comments that you “can’t be cynical about film; you have to love it.”

Jane Anderson wrote Normal, and she’s really the most active panelist throughout the session. I start out by thinking she’s a little bit mad but by the end of the hour, I think she may indeed be mad but I decide I love it. Jane says that she believes that a fine screenplay follows all the rules of good, Greek drama. The characters and/or protagonists are motivated by a deep, emotional need. She believes that those are the movies that get made. Lots of people (meaning production companies) want a rich, beautifully made screenplay.

We talk about HBO films, Hysterical Blindness is one; Normal, another. Jennifer Sherwood from HBO is in-house to contribute to this conversation as well. She talks about HBO Films approaching projects with the expectation that it will attract phenomenal talent and get great reviews. [I wonder, to myself, why we don’t ALL approach our creative work this way? Shouldn’t we?]

Jane continues by saying that she believes that there is a Four Character Max (I’m going to call it FCM, because I don’t have any consulting-type acronyms that seem to fit what I do. I might be able to make FCM work. Should I ever morph.). But FCM is standard – if you want your play performed around the country, but film greatly expands the possibilities; the available tools in the tool box, so to speak.

Anderson with an observation that it is often difficult for playwrights entering film work for the first time to let go of their need to control the artistic vision. She advises that in film, there is no time for discussion and the more you allow yourself to be hurt by the constant revision of your work by other hands, the less you will be hired. She believes that if you let it get around that you were hurt by not being included in a meeting, no one will want to work with you.

She also advises that playwrights get some management training (can I get a hell yeah?!) ; you have to know how to hire and fire people. But honestly, I think we could all use some regularly professional development in the world of management. You don’t just get to sit in a room by yourself – you have to be kind; you have to learn to work with other writers who will fight you or don’t have your voice. Someone says – “Any rule can be broken as long as there is passion and someone to pay for it.” I think we all liked hearing that.

There is a sort-of awkward moment when I realize I’m sitting next to someone I’ve been talking to via Twitter. What’s the etiquette on that? Do I introduce myself? Do I tweet that we’re sitting next to each other and THEN introduce myself? David Houle didn’t tell me what to do. Maybe it’s in his book. Whatev. I’m still glad I know how to work a fax machine, even if it does put me in a very uncool demographic.

Coffee break. The busiest time in the Expo Hall and I can’t help but notice how many of the booth people aren’t there to say hello to people. Woman at the booth in front of the long line for coffee just works on her laptop and doesn’t engage anyone. I think that’s really sad. I have always felt like tough times are the best time to invest in meeting people and getting to know their minds and their project ideas – there is no building or buying or consulting to be done, anyway. It’s the time to be charmed by the people and talk to them about their creative work. The field needs good listeners. [Steps off soapbox.]

I eat two cookies (okay,four), look at TCG books, and shake Jack Stehlin’s hand. Titus Redux was such a pleasant surprise for me. I tell him I’d had a gap in my schedule the day before and squeezed in the performance – I loved it. And I think the rest of the audience did as well. I turned and looked at faces from time-to-time and saw that everyone was completely engaged with what was happening on stage. The interpretation worked, I thought, and I don’t usually enjoy Shakespeare TBMW (That’s Been Messed With). But the actors turned in a fantastic performance which never hurts. I wish I had been able to attend the Julie Taymor movie event the other night, but I didn’t make it. I spend the rest of the conference telling everyone to go and see this play.

 

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Duluth Moves Arts District Plan Forward.

Posted on July 18, 2011 by Heidi Rettig

Last year, we worked with Duluth, Minnesota and Superior, Wisconsin on a plan for arts-based revitalization. Here is a video update from Duluth on the progress being made in the Hillside neighborhood. You can read and download Duluth’s Arts-Based Revitalization Plan here.

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Publish Your Book on Kindle.

Posted on July 8, 2011 by Heidi Rettig

Here’s a great video from Kindle that explains how you, Average Joe, can publish your book on Kindle. The book will be available for download within 24 hours! Truly amazing.

 

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An Ethnography of RADAR L.A. and TCG 2011: Part III

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Heidi Rettig

TCG 2011 opens with a keynote by David Houle, author of The Shift Age. It’s 9 a.m. and I’m already missing the intimacy of the RADAR L.A. Symposia.

We’re meeting in the bowels of the Biltmore Hotel in the “Biltmore Bowl.” If you add just one letter to Biltmore Bowl it actually becomes Biltmore Bowel. Let’s just say the Biltmore has seen better days. I guess I would describe the decor as Hollywood:“Pre-Renovation.” North Skid Row-Ho.

When you’re in your room, you get the vague sense that someone famous, at some point,  attempted suicide in there. All the fixtures have been replaced with high efficiency lightbulbs that give the lobby’s gilded plaster work a green glow. If the government bans incandescent bulbs, all I can say is that they better give the entire nation a lifetime supply of free concealer. But the importance of good stage makeup…that’s another blog post.

David Houle has that familiar middle-aged-man-inspirational-speaker style. He’s corporate; he talks fast; he’s excited but you’re not yet sure about exactly what. Half the time you are so caught up in the energy of the performance that it doesn’t matter. You’re tired — maybe you’re tired of your job — but, hey, it’s o.k.! Because here is a dude with the energy and the answers. He quantifies our experience of all this uncomfortable societal change going on around us then gets us tense about the future. He’s good at keeping us suspended; thirsty.

I’m writing down that I feel like we never see women (or at least, rarely) in these roles, and I wonder to myself why that is. Ira Glass was the keynote at APAP a couple of years ago and it will be a long time before anyone tops that. Perhaps only better was when Big Bird sang at Jim Henson’s funeral, but that’s not really related because it was a funeral, not a conference, but trust me…it was extremely moving.

But that isn’t to say I’m not getting something out of what Houle is saying. He talks about how we, contemporary Americans, live in two realities: 1) A physical reality; and 2) a screen reality (be it Facebook, Twitter, online gaming, etc.). For the younger generations, their screen reality may be just as important as their physical world. Social media, says Houle, is the “word of mouth” of screen reality.

We talk about how information and production has changed from a global to an individual approach, largely driven by the accelerated connectivity of the interwebs. There are no more gatekeepers; everything is known. I wrote down, “If you don’t know, shame on you! You’re lazy!” But I’m not sure if Houle said it or I did.

Short summary: We are seeing the end of the middleman in music; publishing; industry. Technology empowers individuals to make choices. Houle uses cable TV as an example: We pay for what we won’t watch and we have to be at home not to watch it. He tries to bring it ’round to theatre but I’m not convinced.He’s one of those consultants that uses “The Five C’s” approach, and Houle’s “Five C’s” are: Creativity; Collaboration; Critical Thinking; Content; Context. Click through to see all the different Five C’s that are out there….

I’m reasonably confident that my theatre people are pretty good at David Houle’s Five C’s stuff. Houle continues by suggesting that 2010-2020 will be the “transformation” decade.  Management approaches to the Millennial generation are discussed. We’ve got to go new places; we’ve got to be resilient; dedicated to collaboration; develop a “vision” instead of a strategic plan because strategic plans are out of date; be ‘friends first’ to establish trust and authority among your stakeholders.

The root of the root comes when David Houle starts talking about Millennials in more detail. He observes that this generation should be understood as a group of “digital natives.” They were born into this technology and the rest of us? We’re just immigrants. We’ll never fit in IT-wise as well as a ten year old. He believes that this generation will change the world. The way they think and learn and the speed of that change is so radically different.

And that is the most important thing I’ll take away from David Houle’s speech. Some justification for the push toward [over]sharing via blog; Facebook; and Twitter. Email (and joke forwarding) is for old people. My favorite 17-year old told me the only reason she has an email address is so she can receive my messages. Meaning: I’m the only person in her universe that sends her email. She saw a fax machine on my desk and I had to explain to her what it was FOR. I mean…back in MY DAY (which wasn’t really that long ago) a fax machine was a TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION of sorts.

And by the way? She’d never heard of astroturf, either!

And when David Houle wraps up, I’m thinking about how we need to change our marketing approach to young audiences. We tell ourselves that work that is made for them doesn’t have to be intelligent or high quality, that it can’t confront difficult issues, or that it’s o.k. to market to their parents (just like we always have) and conveniently ignore the new reality – that kids are the major driver behind parents’ consumer purchases.

 

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An Ethnography of RADAR L.A. and TCG 2011: Part II

Posted on June 30, 2011 by Heidi Rettig

Radar L.A. Symposium: U.S. Artists Touring U.S. Work

Clyde Valentin – Hip/Hop Theatre Festival; Megan Wanlass – SITI; Daniel Beatty – Actor; KJ Sanchez – American Records; Roger Guenveur Smith – Actor.

I sit in on this conversation because one of my clients is thinking about touring in 2013. I want to have the budget conversation, but also The Conversation about Equity that I can’t have anywhere else. The Conversation that is, like, “Hey, I totally respect your needs and I want to protect them but I also really, really, really, want to be able to share a video excerpt of your best three minutes of performance with the NEA, why won’t you let me?” That one.

Clyde Valentin introduces Megan Wanlass and she begins by talking about SITI; estimating that 40 to 50 percent of her organization’s revenue is earned from touring. We talk about how it is a challenge to reinvent the wheel every time in terms of finding presenting partners; the challenge of finding new people interested in making this kind of work.

It is a concern for all of us how we can pay actors (and ourselves) a living wage and give them health insurance and other kinds of support that they need to do good work. It was somewhat discouraging to hear that Tony Kushner had said (somewhere) that even he can’t make a living as a playwright.

Daniel Beatty decided that he didn’t want to be dependent on traditional theatre models in order to present his work. He talked about using alternative spaces (self-funded) and presenting at festivals. Ruby Dee hosted a cabaret evening for him and through that event, Beatty developed a series of relationships that help him on the presenting circuit. He talked about the importance of maintaining good relationships with presenters, and how he’s going in doing previews with community-based organization as early as three months ahead of the show.

KJ Sanchez presents at a range of different venues – anything from VA cafeterias to Dartmouth’s full stage. She has different budgets and different levels of tech-in – Alpha: The full design for big theatres; Beta: Modified for any presenter, as long as they can get a projection screen; and Charlie: Just stools and mics. She has branding language appropriate for each presenter – VA vs. Dartmouth. The VA is less interested in what the New York Times has to say about the piece than their [military] peers. We talk as a group about the A, B, and C of touring – the adaptability required to make it affordable for different stages. KJ Sanchez talks about how and why she formed American Records as a corporation [versus a nonprofit]. She receives fiscal sponsorship via Fractured Atlas. Daniel Beatty is also a corporation.

Eventually we circle around to the challenge of being an Equity house. The need for an open, honest conversation with representatives; the amount of paperwork required for concessions; the astronomical budgets; sticker-shock admin costs of developing a piece in a regional house. Megan Wanlass suggests spending a couple days together (sometime in the future) to develop a template that could be presented to Equity to begin a conversation.

Quita Sullivan [NEFA] encourages everyone to go to festivals so that the work can be seen.

MK Wegmann asks how we provide health, retirement and other benefits without participating in a commercial market that may not fit the artistic vision of a theatre? She asks about the role of booking agents in touring – but most in this group agree that they’ve been most successful booking the tours themselves.

And so, the answer is, one way or another – it doesn’t just happen. You have to be dedicated and you will have to do much of the work yourself. Of course, we already knew that but somehow hearing that everyone else will have to do exactly the same thing is…well…comforting.

Lunch. It’s Thursday, and I’m sure about that.

I treasure my outsider status at conferences – it allows me to observe as the anthropologist I am. Move between different groups and learn what I need to know, without compromising what it is I feel I need to say within my own space and time. But even I want to sit with someone nice at lunch. The tables are set up in the main gallery of LATC and it looks exactly like a middle school lunchroom. I know people here but you do get that feeling – they know each other so much better than they know you and they are not looking to make new friends. Or maybe it is that if you were anyone, they’d already know you.

Cool. I’ll sit with that solitary guy, but he keeps his face glued to his laptop. A woman sits down across from me and since we are being actively ignored by the people to the right of us we start a conversation about what my life in DC is like and it turns out she is gluten-free and while I listen to her talk about Michelle Bachmann I am really thinking about whether or not I can ask her for her cupcake. Since she’s not going to eat it. Finally, I convince her to just go ‘head and scrape the frosting off because it’s totally the best fucking cupcake I’ve ever had and she does and she eats it and she’s not sorry. We go our separate ways after lunch and I never run into her again. I consider pretending I haven’t eaten yet so I can get a second box lunch and, specifically, a second cupcake but I decide it would probably be unwise.

I start conversations but I’m still holding back. I know so many secrets; back stories; half-truths; and honest-to-g*d lies about the business of arts and culture I’m having trouble believing in it myself. Not the art part, but the business of making it for others and believing in what we say and what we do. What I know helps me do my job – I know who to go to for what –  I know who is doing what – but I crave a little more balance. I want to be surprised. I have what I am calling compassion fatigue. Like I said this morning, I want to fall in love again. During the break, I sit next to Shawn Sides outside and tell her she’s awesome which possibly freaks her out a little bit. I walk down to Flea and look at her overpriced vintage stuff and kind of chuckle inside when I observe her disappointment on hearing I’m not a props person.

I walk over to the BOOK STORE and find that it is called THE LAST BOOK STORE and it is actually a pretty good one. I fall a little bit in love with all the books and decide to buy a Russian book with cathedral stone carvings in it. When I get back home, I’ll use these in my art studio as inspiration for painting. I also find a copy of Jonathan Lethem’s Amnesia Moon for J. because I think he will like it. Out of print, because the books Jonathan Lethem writes so well aren’t anything remotely like his first attempts. Maybe not out of print. Maybe I just gave it away. Those early Jonathan Lethem are my favorites – the characters who go off and have their sexual awakening in outer space and eat purple space-grown potatoes to survive. I loved his Paris Review interview.

There are days when I wish I had skills – like the kind they talk about in Napoleon Dynamite. The kind my sister has that put her in medical school and have everyone at the Thanksgiving table think she does something really important. Versus the kind of skills that allow me to whip up absolutely anything out of chopsticks, duct tape and spray paint or write something about Tom Wesselmann on a moment’s notice.  [Which, truth be told, actually works out great at Thanksgiving (I make some pretty amazing pumpkin centerpieces, I tell you what….) But no one at the dinner table seems very clear on what value I’m adding to the universe beyond just being REALLY entertaining. I could stitch anyone back together with the good stories I have to tell about the work I’ve seen.

During most shows I am just so busy. Thinking…I would have done this or that or the other thing….until I’ve sewn together a completely different (and more powerful) show in my head. But there’s a PlayBill of work in my mind - always being edited, never published - that has moved me. Not always to tears, but in some significant direction. Seeing the AIDS quilt on the Mall in 1992 [which I wrote about here, on my personal blog] was one of those times. early days of development on The Laramie Project. Liz Lermann at Grantmakers in the Arts in 2001, performing the obituaries of 9/11 victims; Adrienne Truscott; the background research I did for a playwright on ancient Iraq….maybe what Richard Montoya said yesterday.

It’s addicting; that feeling of going in as one person and coming out completely changed by what you’ve seen.

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An Ethnography of RADAR L.A. and TCG 2011: Part I

Posted on June 29, 2011 by Heidi Rettig

[sadly, I forgot my camera's memory card. no photos.]

[all mistakes are mine. comments and corrections encouraged.]

RADAR LA:

Today is Tuesday. Possibly Wednesday. Must be Wednesday. I don’t know what day it is because my phone isn’t working down here in the bowels of LATC. What is the point of having hashtags for the conference if we can’t tweet? Honestly. But, then, if I’m honest with myself, I’ll have to admit that I don’t know what day it is because I’m disorganized. But let’s call it “tired,” instead. Two thumbs up for the smart theatre person who scheduled events to begin after 10:00 a.m. Two thumbs up for L.A.’s Delilah Bakery, who catered this thing.

Mark Murphy, Mark Russell, and Diane Rodriguez make opening remarks. Olga [Garay] is introduced as a “fierce and brilliant innovator;” and it is said that “several big ideas exist on this planet because of her.”  What would happen in the world of theatre if we did approached everyone, especially our audience, with this same reverence?

We are told that what we will see this week at RADAR L.A. showcases a kind of work not seen by a vast group of people; curated with a West coast slant vs. the New York sensibility that informs Under the Radar. This is work being created in the ‘here’ and ‘now,’ it is “tour-able;” ultimately, they hope we will take what we’ve seen back home and champion the work in our own venues and networks.

I am listening to the opening remarks and reflecting on conferences in general. I am aware that I hoping to fall back in love during my time here – with an idea, a person, a practice, a performance. We (as a field of practitioners, policymakers, researchers) have been having the same conversations for decades. I am thinking of how we make the mistake of alienating younger staff and excluding them from national conversations. Not only do we miss out on their energy and ideas, but it feeds that engine of repetition on conference schedules.

We can and will have these same conversations over and over again because the young folk were never at the table when we talked about it the last time. Some bright minds will leave for more lucrative positions and become the people we wish we would have been nicer to. Others, perhaps, will stay but give up (and only on the inside, where it really counts) on any possibility of change. Just sit back and think about their personal lives while we run through the all too familiar conference chatter about limited resources; importance of engaging youth; the lack of enthusiasm on the part of policymakers for arts and culture.

It’s the same old argument. The problem is that its the same old group of decision makers in charge of allocating resources to the field. Every once in awhile one of us goes over to the other side and thinks that we’ll be able to make a difference. To be the one that cuts a wide path through the jungle vines of need. It’s time for a radical shift in the way we talk about what we do. We can’t make that change for our stakeholders if we’re tired; if we don’t even believe in what we’re doing ourselves.

In her manifesto for the “future of theatre,” Shawn Sides will say, “Fuck the predecessors!” and I think there is some helpful truth in that. Throw out old ways of thinking and tired “best” practices that can’t peacefully co-exist with technology and friendship 2.0  Sides will also say that theatre should be “more like a party and less like church.” But truth is? Nowadays even some of the most conservative churches have espresso bars and allow you to bring your phone inside. When I attend theatre, I have to turn off my phone and throw my coffee in the garbage. I had to do that here; at this conference. And, I guess, in church you can’t say ‘fuck’ like you can in theatre. Shawn Sides rips the band-aid off the wound of good behavior and frees us all to speak in offensive tongues.

You need to wear some funky glasses to fit in around here. I should have worn the glasses. I HAVE the glasses. I have a leopard pair I bought in France, dammit. I have a black titanium pair; a frameless pair with neon blue sides; a brown pair. I have color-tinted lenses; wraparound black shades. I have fucking everything funky eyeglass related, quite frankly. But I still haven’t found that box in my storage unit. I’m also wearing a bright color, vs. all black, which makes me feel like people are staring at me thinking, “What the hell is that contact lens wearing person in the orange shirt doing here?!” Existentialism and high heels. No reason that can’t go together.

Mark Valdez, National Coordinator for the Network of Ensemble Theatres introduces the “Manifesto” speakers – a group commissioned to share their thoughts on the future of theatre.

First – Raelle Myrick Hodges, Artistic Director at Brava Theater. I love her from the moment she opens her mouth. I love her bitchin’ deltoid muscles and her acid green dress. Possibly I remember her from Philadelphia days [when I was working for Knight Foundation] but I’m not sure, which means that I didn’t know her, though she looks at me in the hall in a funny way, too. Probably because I am staring at her, trying to get my bifocal contact lens to focus to see if I really do know her or if she just reminds me of someone.

More important than all that, Raelle Myrick Hodges thinks and says that in a theatre made up of women-of-color, it is expected that she would ask everyone to weigh in on the topic at hand. Here is what they came up with:

1)      We [as practitioners] need to ask the tough questions because we must. We’ll never get paid to deal with them; never get paid to come up with the solutions.

2)      Do not equate commodity with community. When people say they want diverse audiences, Hodges suggests they are talking about people like her, and if they want people like her, then you’ll have to think bigger than “Raisin in the Sun.” Think about your neighbors; if your neighbors don’t know who you [the theatre] are, then you’re not doing it right. She talks about Brava Theater giving away Halloween candy – perhaps not the largest part of the vision statement for the organization but a ready acceptance that they are part of their community and they may be the only place for neighborhood children to go where they are safe and protected. I like this.

3)      Master laughing at ourselves to learn from ourselves.

4)      We need to CELEBRATE the work of our technical directors and stage managers as much as that of actors and designers. Every single person on the project yells at them at some point, yet who do you think is doing the work when you expect the show to open with one day of tech in? Love them. They’re an important part of your company.

5)      The future will all be INTERNATIONAL. Hodges asks a good question – where do you live that you are not already intersecting with that [meaning international cultures]?

Next up, Shawn Sides of Rude Mechs. During the introduction, it is noted that a previous Rude Mechs show you could give them objects and they would deep fry them for you.  I vaguely remember seeing this, but where? Edinburgh? Or am I just remembering my days in Scotland and associating anything deep fried with that time? Because lots of things were deep fried there. Even pizza. But I digress….

Sides says a lot of really compelling things, most of which I didn’t write down because I loved what I was hearing so much I didn’t want to be pulled away toward the page. She says the future of theatre is the end of a lot of things – that she thinks of a manifesto as a great, big “fuck you predecessors!” That rules are show men; that we should just go ‘head and admit we have no idea. The future of theatre will say no to:

words/concepts like “dogma;” “journey;” “bookends;” “narrative;” “my character would do…;”

curtain speeches; [can I get a HELL YEAH on the end of curtain speeches?!];

” that we have “no fuckin’ idea how to make a play, and if we say we do, we make a ‘dead’ play; an audition for the movie version.” I love that. Sides continues…

in the future of theatre… we will not start at 8 p.m..

I wrote down: “call it ‘devised’ work = idea + terror. Though now I really have no idea what Shawn Sides might have really said or meant about those words. She tells us “your future is grim; you have to make a play to give a shit.”

Guillermo Calderon, Director of Chile’s Teatro En El Blanco wants to ask China and India to stop growing; he says that he wants people to understand that we were are doing is not about the money, it’s about doing something absurd in a very small room. I’m looking for video so you can hear him.

Richard Montoya’s manifesto is published on Polly Carl’s online journal, HowlRound. My favorite words were:

Jesus is walking toward you in the desert
—he is filthy—he is dark—he speaks a tongue you do not
understand —what do you do? Arrest him? Give him
water as you would a dog?

and;

in LA nothing is concrete except our river—
in that river I would wash the feet of the dreadlocked kid felled
by the two bullets and bad luck—

And so it makes a lot of sense when, one week later, he asks about a painting I made last summer. The one that scares everyone.

In her plenary, Diane Rodriguez says that we are in the midst of change. That more regional theatres are taking on the role of presenter in their communities; producing collaborative work; commissioning a playwright is not the only route to new work. She gives an amazing list (which I will link to once I have the information) of practioners engaged in new work. The list (as I wrote down):

Theatre:

La Jolla Playhouse – The Edge series; Work Without Walls (site specific);Center Theatre Group’s non-text based commissions; Public Theatre; New York Theatre Workshop; ART in Boston (non-traditional space); South Coast Rep; Live Arts Brewery; St. Ann’s Warehouse; Walker Art Center; Getty Villa (reinterprets classics).

Venues:

Fusebox Festival in Austin, Texas; Fusionfest at Cleveland Playhouse, a multi-disciplinary new work festival; No Boundaries at New Haven; QuestFest in Baltimore – visual theatre; NY Hip/Hop Festival; the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh; Mad River in Blue Lake, California.

Rodriguez mentions new producing models – folks like Pomegranate Arts; Beth Morrison Projects; Archetype, and MAP International. [not sure I have all those names right.] And funders who support new work – NPN; Creation Fund; NEFA’s touring grant; TCG’s Global Connections; MAP and Creative Capital; and Mellon Foundation.

[to be continued...]

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