Theater For The Future

A reminder that tonight is the benefit for uninsured actor and off-Loop theater workhorse Will Schutz, who is facing some daunting hospital bills.

Once again, the details from benefit organizer Philip Dawkins:

Our friend Will is currently fighting an illness and, per usual, his hospital bills are pilling up way, way, way beyond his means. Chicago bar HYDRATE (3458 N Halsted St) has very kindly donated their space to the friends of Will (and friends of friends, and strangers!) on Friday, January 23rd between 9 PM and 11 PM in order that we might come together to support our friend and offer up what we can to assist him financially. It’s PAY WHAT YOU CAN, with a suggested donation of $20, though any amount will get you an open bar (well drinks, domestic beer, wine, juice and soda), appetizers and some pretty terrific live entertainment, not to mention new friends. Every penny goes to Will.

If you’re not able to help out financially, no one understands that better than theatre folks and their friends. But we hope you’ll at least consider coming out to show your emotional support in person. And whether you’re able to make it or not, please keep him in your minds and hearts each and every day. He has requested ALL of your prayers and thoughts and well-wishes. God knows, Will is worth every penny you’re able to give, and every ounce of your energy and efforts. And if you don’t know him personally, trust us.

***If you want to donate but can’t come on the 23rd, you can at willschutzpancan.chipin.com ***

We come from all walks of life, and those of us that stick around do so despite greater wealth in other locales, because ultimately, Chicago Theater is a family. And you take care of family.

Ever notice how it takes most of January to really process the previous twelve months?

Exhibit A – Ian and Simon from Praxis Theater and the Next Stage collaborate to give us a quick rundown of the events of the international theatrosphere (with a focus on Canada) of the past year – the year this little baby started to gurgle, crawl and periodically lose control of its bowels towards understanding, collaborating, and promoting theater in the context of our generation.

Exhibit B – New City Chicago posts today a list of the top 50 performers [in the theater-building sense] on the Chicago Theater scene. While it could also be titled “50 people I hope will hire or give me money” it can’t be argued that this is a list of people who have substantively built this city’s theatrical environment from the ground up, and their stories are all worth knowing about. While I’m kind of disappointed that Roche Schulfer only gets a footnote in Bob Falls’ mention (Roche has been the long-time architect of several key parts of the Goodman’s clearly successful financial strategy, programs within LORT, and the League of Chicago Theaters), it’s nice to see folks like side project artistic director Adam Webster get their due.

Exhibit C – Time Out Chicago’s Ten Most Wanted productions of Chicago Theater 2008. By the CTDB’s admittedly incomplete estimate, that’s out of at least 1,000 productions. What can I say? I think Chris and Kris care about where theater is going and even if you disagree with their specific preferences, it’s easy to see that they care about this community and its work – and the organizational health of both – even when they feel the need to skewer them.

My own lessons from 2008 –

1) Do fewer shows. Do them better.

2) Spend that extra time with friends and family. It’s also gotta be face to face, not simply facebook status updates, though those updates can be warm and fuzzy. These two things feed my work in ways I can’t always understand, but I know I need them.

3) Give focus to get focus. Or: This year, I’m hoping to continue smarter and increasingly better projects to promote other people’s work and by doing so I will get that feedback I need to make my own work sharper. We’ve got a fleet of new plays to get off the ground and that takes an all-in type of community to do the hardest work there is: connecting new audiences with the parts of the scene that they want to see but didn’t know where to find it.

Okay, so I’m recusing myself from this one. But I’d love to know what you think of Very Clever Productions’ work for New Leaf’s production of Touch – opening tomorrow. What does it tell you? Does it grab you? Does it seem true to the play and the theatrical experience?

I think it’s nice to put your money where your mouth is from time to time, and see what comes out – and see what comes back. We were able to learn a little bit from the video / theater crossovers that we’ve seen so far, and I think as far as process we could also use the practice in collaborating with a cinematographer to achieve something that represents theatricality honestly in a cinematic format.

So what do you think?

And yes – as The Examiner noted today, that’s the face and voice of Dan Granata, my cohort in creating the CTDB. Break a leg, Dan.

Theater for the Future is going on vacation, y’all.

For the first time in… um… seven years? six years? I have the holiday week off – especially those coveted days before and after christmas.

So my mom and Marni and I are meeting up at my brother’s new pad – in Oahu. If you think I’m nuts, you should see Zack – who is learning to navigate by the stars on a traditional voyaging canoe and is contemplating a sea voyage from Hawaii to Tahiti. Crazy bastard. We like to say to the in-laws that ours is a family of pirates. (I’m just a music pirate. Arrrr.)

The funny thing about this is I’m one of the few people that is loving the weather in Chicago these days – you know, the cold, stormy, snow-dumping weather. I guess I like a little variety, but I’m actually gonna miss being locked up for the winter with my blanket and hot cocoa. I’m not going to complain, but…

In any case, I’m excited to put my computer down for a while, and will certainly be picking it up with verve before the new year – Two designs opening and a big old O’Neill Festival to load in and tech in the first week of January. Until then, as much Zen as I can swim in.

For those of you braving your way through a busy holiday run schedule, my wish is that it will be your turn next. I got your back next year.

Mele Kalikimaka.

A follow-up for you content-lovers out there:

I just got back home from my second design run of Touch. Something happened tonight.

Something Something Something.

Something Something Something Something I can’t tell you yet. That was EIGHT somethings, not one that got repeated. EIGHT. SEPARATE. SOMETHINGS.

I will say this: I have never had to take care not to spill tears onto my computer while I took notes for a cue list before. While gut laughing as if my life depended on it. That is a first for me now. I keep that with me from this point on.

The cast and crew have been exploring the specific and for me whole-body-shuddering content of Touch over at the New Leaf Blog for a couple weeks now, and I’ll be weighing in, oh… Thursday.

I think this play might have cured my insomnia for one night. I’m going to need to go hug my wife now.

H/T to Mirror up to Nature for drawing attention to Isaac Butler and Rob Kendt‘s latest project – The Critic-O-Meter, which Isaac at least has been hinting at for a couple months now. Using as much data collection as allowed by nature with subjective reviews, their project seeks to derive a letter grade from the collected reviews of every Broadway and Off-Broadway show in Le Grande Pomme. Stamp. of. Approval.

New Leaf company member Kyra Lewandowski also pointed me in the direction of this handy tool which demonstrates how beautiful data analysis can be. I’ve been thinking for a while now about collecting some word clouds from theater company and blog sites and displaying them to help provide some biofeedback about the words coming out of our mouths. These Wordles are only made from the most recent 6 posts from the following blogs, So as always, the more data you feed in, the more illuminating the analysis.

Theater for the Future:

Don Hall:

Steppenwolf Blog:

Chicago Tribune critic Chris Jones:

All images created by Wordle under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

My posts are what happens in the tight spaces between gigantic comments on other blogs.

We’re over at Don’s place today, as he sets off a first volley of discussion about real, working city & theater partnership models that should be proposed and refined and shopped to new and changing political administrations: right now.

Basically, the argument goes: the government will get more bang for its art-supporting community-organizing buck by supporting lots of small, local programs rather than a few massive ones. Here in Chicago, we have examples of several arts support programs in a microcosm that quickly pokes holes in arts admin ideology with healthy doses of arts reality. So the programs that have survived are often quite instructive, and we lay them out on the table for you.

Brilliant stuff, and I can’t think of a more apropos subject for the arts in an economic crisis. How do we serve the community, stay alive and vital, without being a burden?

Let me direct your attention, especially all you feed-readers out there, to the little green widget in my sidebar that I have labeled “Big Ideas”. This is, in my humble opinion, a feed of some of the most mind-blowing thoughts on infrastructure and analysis on the theatre web. It is culled from a hundred or so blogs that I read regularly, and “Big Idea” status is only conferred on most enriching content out there. And you can even subscribe and save yourself all that work if you so choose. So enjoy.

That said, two special mentions today for folks I don’t normally link to:

Scrappy “Jack” John Clancy reposts his essay on the rehearsal process, which reads as fresh as a lime soda. Though, as a designer, I have to take issue with the idea that it is “Best to forget about the play entirely during technical rehearsals and leave the poor actors alone.” But of course, he’s mainly talking about managing actor energy, not a director’s energy. Good stuff.

And if you haven’t read Dark Knight Dramaturgy yet, (the amazing Chicago expat Dan Rubin, who is now in the literary department at ACT), today’s the day to start. Dan’s posts are nothing short of illuminated in general, but he begins a series today on effective strategies and resources for playwrights to get their works included in some of the most high-profile festivals in the country. Knowing Dan’s approach to literary management (Dan was both dramaturg for New Leaf’s Girl in the Goldfish Bowl and assisted greatly during the Goodman’s Horton Foote Festival), I can say with trust: he’s your man on the inside.

This post in particular is a must-read for all you underproduced playwrights out there.