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By: Street Vendors make the best Lemonade | Theater For The Future

Street Vendors make the best Lemonade | Theater For The Future — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 01:03:29 +0000

[...] groundhogs everywhere will come out of their Cable News comas and want to be a part of life and collective imagination again. Be ready with your best work, your comparatively cheap tickets, and your comfiest chairs. [...]

By: Jess

Jess — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 05:17:33 +0000

A good friend (and fantastic director) once said to me that good artists borrow – great artists steal. Now, I am all about giving credit where it’s due, but I think that sometimes the artistic school of “that’s mine, this is yours” and the culture of fear that can create nowadays is the pesticide on that unruly plant. Goodness knows I am guilty of wanting to be the one that had “the idea” that made the concept/show/rehearsal/after hours party come together – and some faulty education has made me sometimes feel like it is my “job” to be the one that has that idea – and make sure that everyone knows it. But remember reading about a time when theatre was young and free and the ideas were there for the taking – and the improving upon? I am envious of the days when it was okay for everyone to stand on the shoulders of the giants that came before you and spend your energy reaching still further upwards. I think we’re still doing that, only now we’re getting to the point of being worried that Dramatists is gonna show up someday and shut us down because that stage direction said she crosses left 3 steps, not 2 steps, dammit (even though in this production the scene is stronger if she doesn’t cross. at all.). How is that anything but smothering that artistic baby that the playwright took so much time to breathe life into? Nevermind what it does to the work of everyone else in the room?

Also, I feel like the minute it becomes a question of me as director truly AGAINST my actors, designers, playwright, producer, etc – rather than the temporary disparity being a stepping stone to greater collaboration and understanding – that’s the day I really do need to go be a high school English teacher. Or a nun. Or a professional wrestler. Anything but an artist.

I don’t know where the balance is – but I agree with Nick that a storm’s a-brewin’ in our sphere. It’s an exciting and disconcerting and thrilling and terrifying time to be around, isn’t it?

By: nick keenan

nick keenan — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:29:35 +0000

See, this is what i’m talking about with blogging sowing the seeds of disagreement, and i’m certainly not immune. you’re absolutely right tony, and I wish I waited until after 2 am to revise this post, because I don’t think I articulated that thought properly at your expense

You, Patrick and Isaac are all proponents of collaboration. What I’m noticing is that framing the conversation as directors vs. Playwrights or actors vs. Everyone isn’t aiding the cause of collaboration. I’m just pointing out that there are two approaches to the problem, and I think we’ve all used both at one time or another.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the duality of thought within people and how interesting it is when one holds divergent beliefs in the same mind. So this is more about me challenging the frame of the conversation, not the valid points you made within that conversation

This is all shit you don’t need to establish when you’re face to face.. We read the frame in the tone of voice. I think that’s why it’s so easy to devolve into argument and meta speak. But then again, we can all talk more this way, so I wouldn’t trade it.

By: Tony

Tony — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:44:28 +0000

“What bothers me about Tony’s question is that it continues the flawed assumption that the way to sustain the meagre power structure of theater is to separate playwrights, directors, performers, designers, and administrators into opposing camps that must check and balance with each other for artistic control.”

Nick, all due respect. That’s a pretty huge misreading of what I wrote. I have never argued against collaboration. I have argued pretty strongly against separating collaborators into contractually opposing camps. Hence the reason I gristle at that bullet point in the Dramatists bill of rights.

By: Paul Rekk

Paul Rekk — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:20:16 +0000

The most sensible kid on the block as usual, Nick.

I was a little hesitant getting into this post; I thought it was going to a ‘pat everyone on the back’ place that I don’t feel is helpful.

I was wrong. Some very good rhetoric and, I don’t know about anyone else involved in the fray, but I feel it very much addressed my complaints about the system while still challenging me on them.

I may not seem it, probably because I don’t speak it as peaceably as you, but I, too, think that the best all worlds is respectful collaboration. It’s just that, to me, respectful collaboration comes with few out and out demands, from any side. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be over here exploring this Creative Commons thing…