Archives for July 2008

There’s nothing quite like being in a show to teach an arts critic about what it’s like to be on the other side of the equation.

Other than sitting in the middle of an orchestra or standing in the middle of a choir, it’s been years since I last trod the boards. I think I performed in my last play (a terrible Wooster and Jeeves comedy during my undergraduate years) in 1996, and last sang on stage when I was about 14 in the role of — hem hem — Peter Pan.

Now I find myself having to act, dance and sing — not to mention cope with three costume changes — in a production of Hildegard von Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum, a work which many scholars consider to be the oldest musical drama of its type in the western cannon.

Last night, I somehow made it through the dress rehearsal. Been losing sleep about opening night on Saturday. We’ll see what happens.

While I don’t think this experience will change the essentials of my work as an arts critic, it is certainly helping me to gain a different perspective on the creative process. The most interesting thing I’ve discovered is that putting on a show is, above anything else, an act of community. Ultimately, the end product, though I hope that it will be good, is kind of meaningless in comparison to the friendships I’ve made while working on this project and the bonds we’re forging both within our group and beyond.

I’ll certainly be interested to read what reviewers have to say about the show. But I can’t imagine it affecting me much. This is a comforting thought: I spend way too much time as a theatre reviewer worrying about how companies will respond to negative criticism. If the performers and production team are immersed in what they’re doing, they probably don’t care.

Then again, it is this cozy-feely-touchy introspection that causes problems for audiences. As a critic, I often wish that performers would stop reveling in their so-called “process” so much and pay attention to the people sitting out there in the stalls. It’s a delicate balance I guess.

There’s an idealistic belief in some parts of the media world (The New York Times, The New Yorker etc.) that critics should stay away from the people they write about. The grounds for this are simple: If a critic gets too chummy with an artist he or she can no longer maintain an “objective” stance while reviewing that person’s work.

The media landscape has changed so much over the past decade or so that that only very few media outlets can pretend to keep up this charade. With most newspapers and magazines either doing away with their arts writers altogether, or merging the reviewing and feature-writing functions into one job description, the “critical distance” proposition is becoming almost entirely untenable.

Instead of fretting about the “loss of objectivity” within the arts writing realm, I propose that the arts journalism community should take a different approach to dealing with the issue. Instead of shrinking away from the problem of interfacing with artists and then writing about them, I think critics should embrace the privilege of their new-found “insider knowledge” and challenge themselves to write with clarity, wit and understanding in spite of it all.

Objectivity is a sham anyway. Even those critics that wear hats and sunglasses when they go to a theatre and rush out during the applause still come to every arts experience with their internal prejudices.

We need to accept that the landscape is changing. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to harness the new reality to deliver smarter, deeper and more committed writing about the arts. We shouldn’t be afraid of getting our hands dirty while we’re at it. Writing less than positively in response to a piece of art when you’ve gotten to know an artist a little bit isn’t much fun. But if we do it well, and with compassion at our core, then I believe we’ve performed a valuable service for our readers and maybe, though it seems unlikely at first, even for the artists too.

Is there such a thing as an ideal arts blog post? And if so, what would this star of the spangled Internet firmament look like? Would it read like a diary entry or more like a newspaper or magazine article in terms of tone, reported content and style? Would it seek to offer an opinion or would it rather aim for impartiality? Would it be Talk of the Town-like or more along New Yorker feature lines in length?

These questions might seem idiotic, but they are worth thinking about for anyone who’s in this game.

I bring the matter up because even though the general consensus seems to be one of “anything and everything goes” on the Web, not all arts blog posts are created equal. Or, rather, even though they may be created equal, they don’t always receive the same reception.

I’ve always liked to mix things up as an arts blogger. Sometimes my pieces are 1000 words in length; sometimes they barely hit 250. On occasion the posts are reported; at other times they’re opinion pieces. More often they’re a combination of both. Sometimes I deal with serious matters and at other times I indulge myself in interesting trivia. On occasion I put myself in the middle of the post and write directly about my own experiences; and elsewhere I leave myself completely out of the equation.

What I love about blogging is the complete freedom I have to cover the arts in as broad a way as possible. The variety is what makes arts blogging so much more interesting, often, than what appears in the mainstream press.

But what I’ve noticed over the past 19 months since I started blogging is that certain kinds of blog posts — both my own offerings and those of fellow arts bloggers on the artsjournal site — tend to achieve a higher profile than others. It seems that “serious” blog posts that resemble traditional newspaper features and well-crafted opinion pieces seem to attract more attention from readers and are more likely to snag the front page on the artsjournal site than, say, confessional posts or posts that are lighter and perhaps more personal in style.

This is obviously a massive generalization. There are days when scant little witticisms eg the post I wrote a while back about Mike Leigh’s suspenders falling down, get quite a bit of attention, while more weighty and/or well-researched pieces about such topics as memory theory go seemingly unnoticed.

But if there really is a hierarchy, I wonder if the arts blogosphere will end up resembling traditional media? I hope not. It’s the never-know-what-you’re-getting aspect of culture blogging that keeps this form fresh.

I always thought roll-up pianos were a bit of a joke. I’d see pictures of them in those in-flight catalogues on domestic airplanes and wonder if anyone bought them, or if the people who bought them would also be likely to buy a set of foldaway, rubber golf clubs.

With its limp-looking plastic keyboard and (I supposed) tinny sound, I couldn’t imagine anyone, even a child, finding any practical use for a roll-up piano, besides, perhaps, using it to wrap around a bottle of white wine to keep it cool for a picnic.

Recently, though, I changed my mind about the object. Though I’m still not willing to go as far as to call it a musical instrument, I now see that it might be a very useful gadget to have around after all — especially for singers. My change of heart came a few weeks ago when I had the pleasure of interviewing American countertenor David Daniels for an article I was working on for the LA Times about memorizing music. I was asking Daniels about his techniques for learning singing roles and was startled to hear that Daniels works not at a polished grand piano when he’s in learning mode, but with none other than a roll-up keyboard.

“I do my best work with my little keyboard — my roll-up piano — sitting outside on my terrace in the outdoor air with a diet coke and a pencil and my score,” Daniels told me. “I look at the score, and look at the score again, and then walk around and sing the music from memory. I can’t stand being in the house in front of a piano. It’s too distracting. The roll-up keyboard is great for briefcases. It even plays chords.”

As someone who loves being mobile (I own one of the lightest laptops there is on the market today because I like to be able to work anywhere and not feel tied-down to an office) Daniels description of his learning process appeals to me greatly. The roll-up piano allows him to do his work wherever he wants. He sticks it in his suitcase whenever he goes away.

Of course, the roll-up keyboard is really only of use to singers and maybe some composers. I don’t suppose many other serious musicians, least of all pianists, would get much out of owning one.

By the end of my conversation with Daniels, I had decided to hock my clunky 40-pound Casio keyboard and buy one of these little roll-up numbers. “Where did you buy your roll-up?” I asked the countertenor before we signed off. “From Restoration Hardware,” Daniels said. “In fact, I bought three of them just in case one goes kaput.”

It’s easy to fall in love with Summer Shapiro. The 24-year-old, San Francisco-based clown not only conspired to make the entire audience fall at her feet during a solo performance of her show In the Boudoir at The Climate Theater on Saturday night. She also managed to get two random male theatergoers to fight with plastic swords, nunchucks and pistols on stage to win her affections — without doing much more than taking their hands, whispering a few quiet words to them and looking at them intently in the eyes. And all of this while rampaging around the tiny Climate stage in a frothy white hooped tutu and sparkly heels, throwing plates of cold spaghetti around and trying desperately to make an impression on — and be impressed by — the opposite sex.

In the Boudoir tells a deceptively simple story about a young female clown’s love life. When a date fails to show up to a candlelit dinner for two at the clown’s house, she compensates for her disappointment by engaging in elaborate romantic fantasies.

In once scene, she persuades a male theatergoer to join her on stage. Once on stage, she persuades the man to eat a piece of spaghetti with her as in the famous sequence from Disney’s Lady and the Tramp. In another, she asks male audience members to blow up a yellow balloon for her, having failed at the task herself. The balloon gets stuck to her fingers while she tries to tie a knot in its end. Suddenly she drops her girlish facade and becomes Terminator-like monster-machine. Stomping about the stage making hydraulic noises like a malfunctioning Stepford Wife, she attempts to destroy the balloon under her heel. The image is at once hilarious, frightening and sexually bizarre. Veering erratically and erotically between the cliches of the helpless, ditzy female and the aggressive femme fatale, Shapiro both explodes stereotypes while making us recognize the universal desires for romantic passion within us all.

One of the most amazing things about Shapiro is her ability to connect with audience members. The whole ‘volunteer’ selection process and ensuing audience participation sequences are amazingly seamless and organic. Guys just seem to to submit to Shapiro’s will without looking embarrassed or shy; I thought they were plants, but the Climate’s artistic director assures me otherwise.

I’ve seen Shapiro perform once before. I was entranced enough by her ten-minute sketch last November to want to come back and see more. Half an hour of this masterful, sweetly-scathing performer simply isn’t enough, however. I can’t wait till she’s ready to give the world a full-length 90 minute show.

I’ve been engaged in a lively email discussion over the last few days with Robert Hurwitt, theatre critic at the San Francisco Chronicle, about how actors approach Shakespeare’s verse.

The debate was sparked by our very different reactions to British thespian (and 22-year Royal Shakespeare Company veteran) Roger Rees’ Shakespeare-infused solo show, What You Will.

Here’s an extract of what I wrote about Rees’ way of delivering Shakespeare’s verse in my review for SF Weekly (which won’t come out till next Wednesday):

“Rees has been living with Shakespeare’s language for so long, that he seems to forget that people need to decipher the words in order to keep up with him. The actor monotonously barrels his way through Hamlet’s soliloquies with little care for the iambic rhythm, coming across more like dog race commentator than a tragic hero. This misplaced casualness bleeds into other parts of the actor’s performance. Rees’ habit of peppering his speech with “uh”s and “uhm”s, is perhaps intended to make the Bard more approachable. But this tick mainly distracts.”

Hurwitt disagrees with me. He liked Rees’ delivery. Here’s an extract from his review, which appeared in the Chron a couple of days ago:

“The Shakespeare speeches (and one sonnet) are delivered with mastery…He more than does justice to speeches ranging from the “muse of fire” from “Henry V,” Macbeth’s dagger vision and Hamlet’s “To be” and “rogue and peasant slave” soliloquies (Rees holds the Stratford-Upon-Avon record for playing Hamlet) to both a smitten adolescent Romeo and garrulous old Nurse from “Romeo and Juliet.” But it’s the way he sets up these passages that distinguishes “Will” as much as his trippingly-on-the-tongue delivery.”

I guess we like our soliloquies delivered in different ways. Said Mr. H, in an email: “I thought there were wonderful subtleties and nuances and interesting interpretations in his speeches. And I rather like his way with the meter much better than the Peter Hall full-stop method.”

“I don’t much like Hall’s way of speaking Shakespeare either,” I responded. “I guess Rees and he are at opposite ends of the spectrum and to be honest I don’t think either approach works. I like my soliloquies to sound like poetry, but poetry that flows so organically that it almost sounds like a ‘conversation.'”

It’s a good thing that us critics don’t see eye to eye on everything. The world would be a dull place if we did.

In other news, a white-bearded Florida man by the name of Tom Grizzard just won an Ernest Hemingway look-alike contest, a highlight of a festival that ended Sunday honoring the late Nobel Prize-winning author. Here’s a piece about the competition from USA Today.

It’s a bad day when, as an arts and culture commentator, you read a headline like: “Bad Day by Daniel Powter has been the most played song in the UK over the past five years. What is it about this track and others that keep popping up everywhere we go?” and realize that you’ve neither heard of the song nor the artist in your life.

My discomfiture was palpable this morning when I came across the aforementioned BBC headline. Not living in the UK is hardly an excuse for not knowing the song. ‘Bad Day’ did very well in the U.S., soaring to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 charts within seven weeks of being released. “Urk,” I thought to myself. “It really is time to renew that subscription to Entertainment Weekly and start listening to commercial radio again.”

It was only when I visited Powter’s website that I realized that although his name and the title of his song were completely unfamiliar to me, I had of course heard the catchy-mood melody thousands of times before — at the gym, in stores, on the radio…In fact, I feel like I know the song so well that I can even sing most of the lyrics off by heart. This is kind of weird and just a bit scary considering that the melody has made an impression on my neural pathways completely unconsciously.

I hope Powter’s song-writing powers don’t fall into enemy hands. Imagine what unscrupulous warlords could do with songs as sticky as “Bad Day.” The brain-washing potential is frightening frankly.

A dear old friend of mine in London, Matthew, was browsing about on my blog the other day and read my post about tuning into the terrific London Calling radio show on my way home one dark Tuesday night.

In the spirit of discovering new things, Matthew sweetly sent me information about two very different artists whose work is intersecting in an unusual way.

The first is Andrew Bird, a singer-songwriter and classically-trained violinist, whose spiraling, whimsical songs get under the listener’s skin from the very first hearing. Matthew sent me two tracks — “11.11” and “Headsoak”. I was instantly hooked. I love the singer’s doleful voice and spiraling string lines. His music is gentle in some ways, but there’s fire in this guy’s belly. I gather he’ll be performing at the Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco on August 24 (Radiohead’s performing the day after.) I may have to stump up $85 for a ticket.

Matthew also alerted me to comic book artist Jeffrey Brown. Brown’s frank, open-hearted and down-to-earth style has the same whimsical quality as many of the Bird songs I’ve heard so far. Matthew also sent me a few pages from one of Brown’s comics in which the author hears one of Bird’s songs in a cafe one day and then endeavors to try to find the name of the song and the person who wrote it. The song gets welded in his memory and has powerful associations for his life. It’s a delightful read.

The relationship between Brown’s auto-biographical character in the comic strip and Bird’s songs drew Daniel Levitin’s great book This Is Your Brain On Music to mind. In the book, Levitin talks about how songs trigger powerful memories and what mechanisms in the brain — which center on “multiple-trace memory models” — help to contribute to this phenomenon. I sent Matthew a couple of pages from the book. Here’s a taster:

A maxim of memory theory is that unique cues are the most effective at bringing up memories; the more items or contexts a particular cue is associated with, the less effective it will be at bringing up a particular memory. That is why, although certain songs may be associated with certain times in your life, they are not very effective cues for retrieving memories from those times if the songs have continued to play all along and you’re accustomed to hearing them — as often happens with classic rock stations or classical radio stations that rely on a somewhat limited repertoire of “popular” classical pieces. But as soon as we hear a song that we haven’t heard since a particular time in our lives, the flood-gates of memory open and we’re immersed in memories. The song has acted as a unique cue, a key unlocking all the experiences associated with the memory for the song, its time and place.”

This makes sense. I wouldn’t be surprised if whenever I hear an Andrew Bird song or come across a Jeffrey Brown comic strip, Matthew pops into my head.

P.S. Something you should know about Matthew: When he’s not being a doctor, he helps out at a hip-hop karaoke night in London. For some pictures and information about the event, click here.

I recently re-read Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim. The novel might be more than half a century old (my copy says that it cost “3’6” on the front, referring to the former British currency). But the book still retains its bite, as musty as it is.

I’ve been especially struck by the way Amis describes oboists, being one myself. He reserves a special place of hatred in his heart for this brand of woodwind player. You can almost taste the smirk on the author’s face every time a reference to “Johns”, the unfortunate oboe-playing character in the story, crops up, viz:

DIxon had resolved to travel to the Welches’ by bus to avoid Johns’ company, so he now got up, thinking he ought to impart some specific warning to Atkinson. Unable to fix on anything, however, he left the room. Behind him he heard Atkinson speaking to Johns again: “Sit down and tell me about your oboe.“

I was reminded of Lucky Jim only yesterday, when I found myself sitting once again between two extremely fussy American oboists at an orchestral gig in Oakland.

I hate to make rash generalizations, but if oboists are characterized as a neurotic bunch, I’m beginning to think that the American players are to blame. In the UK, the average oboe player — myself included — is ready to play within about minute. We plonk ourselves down in our seats, stick a reed in our mouths to get it going, put our horns together and get on with it. End of story.

But in this country, it seems to take oboists at least a quarter of an hour to get going. The players over here are forever mucking about with their reeds, soaking them in little pots of water, fussing with the key work on their horns, etc etc etc. It’s a wonder that they ever get their acts together in time to give the customary first ‘A’ that’s needed to tune the rest of the orchestra.

Yesterday’s oboists were among the most extreme I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing with. The one to my right spent 20 minutes just selecting a suitable reed. Meanwhile, the one to my left had the most elaborate set-up I’ve ever seen in all my years of playing. This included a three-pronged instrument stand on which to place his oboe and cor anglais, an artillery-sized reed case, the most intricate-looking music stand I’ve ever sat next to (and he set it up with the sort of form normally reserved for army privates putting together a rifle), a full-sized strip lighting system for attachment to his music stand, and an enormous electronic tuner/metronome. And let’s not forget his custom-made mini “shelf” featuring a velvet cushion on which to place reeds and a special hole for a water pot — which the player proceeded to attach to his stand with industrial precision.

This country of course boasts amazing oboists. But I wonder if Amis’ negative feelings towards this segment of the musical population might stem from negative experiences he had with American players?

One of the most common things for San Francisco-based actors to do if they’ve had a modicum of success on local stages and don’t have any strong ties to The Bay Area, is to decamp for Los Angeles or New York. I’ve seen this happen time and time again in recent years.

Sometimes, an actor’s decision to up sticks makes sense. One actor acquaintance of mine, whom I shall call D, recently left for LA. He decided to make the move after ten years of working as an actor in San Francisco. D had a string of successes to his name. This really strong track record as a theatre performer enabled him to build up over the years a devoted following among audiences as well as links to several great local theatre companies, one of which he will always be able to call his artistic home.

D left because he wanted a change and wanted to explore the world of film acting for a while. Although D’s decision to launch a film career in Hollywood wasn’t auspiciously timed owing to all the Union issues going on right now, D had a good foundation to start from. Not only does he have several apparently significant contacts in the movie industry down there, but he also has family in the LA area. With the promise of free accommodation and access to a car, the move to LA seemed a lot less daunting to D than it might have done to another Hollywood hopeful.
In addition, D had also managed to line up a couple of roles in theatre productions in San Francisco and Berkeley for 2009. This meant that he would continue to keep his ties to the Bay Area performing arts scene.

Whether D lands his dream movie roles in Hollywood or not is neither here nor there at the end of the day. He went to LA in the spirit of adventure, and from the recent email I received from him, it sounds like he’s having a good time and making contacts, even though business is slow for the time being.

I sense that the desire to move seemed to come from a deep place within D and he had taken all the right steps before he left to make the transition as smooth and stress-free as possible.

D’s case is unusual though. Not everyone, after all, is lucky enough to have family and friends in the industry and free apartments and cars to avail themselves of in New York or LA. More often than not, Bay Area theatre people move to New York or LA in under altogether more precarious circumstances. Another actor actor I know, F, decamped to New York after the success of one solo show. The show had transferred from a small to mid-sized venue and had earned rave reviews.

F decided that New York would receive him with open arms and he jumped ship for the East Coast while people were still talking about him on the West. Unhappily, things didn’t go the way he’d planned after the move. And beyond the one hit solo show, he didn’t have any other strong ties to the Bay Area arts scene and didn’t have any contacts or gigs lined up in New York. Judging by conversations I had with the actor, who returned to The Bay Area after a year of trying to make inroads in New York, his move had been motivated mostly by egotism. Riding high on the success of his solo show in The Bay Area, he thought people on the other side of the country would treat him like he was a celebrity.

There’s something refreshing about F’s impulsivity; I admire him for giving New York a go. But the entire experience completely embittered him. By the time F returned to the Bay Area, he was completely jaded. Since his return a few years ago, he hasn’t to my knowledge produced any new work, though he did do a short reprise run of his hit solo show from the mid-1990s in a small theatre a couple of years ago.

The trend of actors moving away from San Francisco doesn’t especially worry me. There are enough fantastic performers who decide not to move to relegate the issue to the minor leagues. Besides, I’m of the belief that change is a good thing if it truly comes from the gut as opposed to the head. But it strikes me that people considering a move to one of the bigger metropolises on either coast should get in touch with what they’re feeling and carefully analyze their motives before making the leap.

Just spent a beautiful evening at The American Bach Soloists’ Summerfest. It all began at 6pm with ABS principal violone, contrabass and viola da gamba player, Steven Lehning, giving a lighthearted yet informative lecture on early string instruments. Then there was a delicious picnic supper with music provided by the early music ensemble The Whole Noyse. The evening ended with a (mostly) expertly played concert of string quartets by Beethoven, Schubert and Mendelssohn. (I say mostly because the intonation on the opening number, Beethoven’s D Major quartet Op 18 No 3, was a little dicey.) The players were Adam LaMotte and Carla Moore (violins), Elizabeth Blumenstock (viola) and Tanya Tomkins (cello.)

One of the best things about the evening for me, however, was the discussion I had after dinner with Stephen Escher, The Whole Noyse’s cornett player.

The cornett is a velvety sounding hybrid between a brass and woodwind instrument that was all the rage between the 1500s and 1700s. The instrument is made out of wood (usually box wood), has open finger holes like a recorder and a small, trumpet-like mouthpiece. It’s often curved in shape and fiendishly difficult to play.

I once played a cornett. I think I was about 16 at the time. I don’t remember much about the experience except that I almost burst a lung trying to get a note out of the thing.

Anyway, it was wonderful to hear the instrument come to life in The Whole Noyse’s program of short works by Italian composers of the 1500 and 1600s like Antonio Troilo, Giovanni Taeggio and Florentino Maschera. I also learned some fascinating facts about this weird and rarely heard instrument from Escher. Some highlights of our conversation:

The cornett’s curved shape may derive from an earlier form of the instrument that was made out of an animal’s horn.

Some cornetts are straight and some even have the finger holes on the other side of the curve. (I asked Escher if this was to make playing easier for southpaws. He didn’t think so.)

If you want to buy a cornett today, you have to visit the few people who still make them. One master craftsman (who made Escher’s instrument) lives in Utah. Other respected cornett makers reside in Montreal and Paris.

Escher doesn’t really know why the cornett fell out of use. According to Escher, one explanation might be to do with a great plague which hit Italy in the 17th century. “It killed off most of the great cornett players of the era,” said Escher. “And no one really kept the tradition alive in Italy after that.”

The 17th annual San Francisco Fringe Festival kicks off on September 3. Judging by what I’ve read about the lineup so far, a notable difference between this year’s Festival and its previous incarnations seems to be the plethora of site-specific work.

In recent years, the festival has offered one or two site specific shows — I caught one offering in a cramped hotel bedroom last year; another company staged a show on a traveling bus a couple of years earlier.

In addition to hosting 30 shows at the festival’s headquarters, The Exit Theatreplex, the festival will present a further 18 shows at venues ranging from Grace Cathedral to doorways on Market Street (the main road that runs like a backbone through the middle of the city.)

Some of the Festival’s most creatively situated shows include:

To Kill For, film and theatremaker Lucy Gray’s remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo at Grace Cathedral. Probably the most famous film ever shot in San Francisco, Vertigo celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. The show will be staged in the 99-seat chapel in the nave of the Cathedral.

The Doormen, a street theatre-esque tour led by performance artist Barbara Michaels of the seedy doorways of Market Street.

Theatre that Moves, another tour, this time on a 15-passenger bus, led by artist Mercedes Segesvary.

If You’re Going to San Francisco, a series of 16 performances by Greedy Fish at Union Square. The series is billed as “a celebration of some of the unique characters and conflict that have shaped the city “built on vice, ambition, and sand dunes.”

Peg-Ass-Us, a puppet-infused burlesque show staged at the Centre for Sex & Culture on Mission Street by New York artists John Leo and Sophie Nimmannit.

Last Exit, a show staged in a basement by San Francisco company Scrap & Salvage. The location can’t be revealed, according to the Festival’s organizers, because the landlord “sort of doesn’t know about it.”

“I was looking for more site-specific pieces and I’m happy to say I got them,” Festival director Christina Auguello told me over the phone yesterday.

No Fringe Festival is complete, as far as I’m concerned, without giving audiences the chance to explore the strange and cobwebby nooks and crannies of a city. It’s all part of the adventure. I’m happy to hear that SF Fringe is embracing the concept.