Archives for February 2009

The artistic directors of theatre companies have a very difficult job. Trying to program work that is not only artistically stimulating (I use this term in the broadest sense) but also delivers the goods within ever tightening budgetary constraints while pleasing or at least galvanizing the company’s very many stakeholders from audiences to board members to critics is far from easy. ADs are constantly coming under fire for everything from pandering to the crowds to failing to program shows that represent the local community and its concerns.

As such, common wisdom suggests that because it’s practically impossible to please all stakeholders at once, at the end of the day, ADs can really only trust one thing when it comes to figuring out what shows to produce: their instincts. Yet gut feelings aren’t always reliable when it comes to programing.

I recently heard that the AD of a major San Francisco theatre went ahead and programmed a show even though she personally disliked it. Her decision was understandable in a sense — the production brought with it well-known television actors, dealt with some big life issues in a not-too-strenuous way and did good box office. Many of the company’s core subscriber base of middle-aged females loved the production as it covered territory with which they were familiar. So, in a sense, the programing decision was a success. Then again, many people I’ve spoken to about the play in question loathed it with a passion. And those few within that group that happen to know that the AD had staged the play in spite of her own misgivings about it, have subsequently lost what little respect they formerly had both for this AD and her theatre company.

A contrasting example, though, shows that when an AD has a strong gut feeling about a particular play, things can also sometimes go wrong. I recently saw a production at another well-known San Francisco theatre which had the AD’s stamp of approval written all over it. The themes in the play seemed very much in line with this particular person’s religious and political interests. The problem was that the play lacked theatrical merit. It felt like something that might have been staged in an ethics or women’s studies class at a high school. In this case, the AD’s personal instincts came so strongly into play that she lost sight of her audience and forgot her sense of dramaturgy.

What I suppose I’m driving at is that instincts alone are not to be trusted, but they’re still about the best tool ADs have with which to feel their way through the programing jungle. To ignore them is to betray your vision, your theatre and your community. To give into them fully, however, isn’t always the wisest choice.

On Christmas day 2007, I wrote a blog entry about Oakland’s then-unfinished Catholic Cathedral, The Cathedral of Christ the Light. At the end of the post, I mentioned that I was particularly interested to find out about the church’s acoustic, hoping that it might serve as an excellent venue for concerts following its official opening in September 2008.

Sadly the acoustic seems to be the one thing that the people responsible for developing this otherwise glorious new building seem to have messed up. I cannot fault Craig Hartman of Skidmore Owings and Merrill‘s airy, wood-and-glass-framed architecture. Entering the vast, womb-like space makes you feel like you’re walking on clouds.

But the sound produced in the church is a horrible mush. On the several occasions that I’ve heard vocal and instrumental music performed at the Cathedral, I’ve felt like my ears were stuffed full of cotton wool. Song lyrics were unintelligible and bass and percussion instruments consistently overwhelmed higher pitch-producing instruments. At first I thought maybe it was my hearing that was off. But people who’ve joined me at the church for events have agreed that there’s something badly wrong with the acoustic

How could the people behind such a gorgeous edifice allow such a thing to happen? If any buildings beyond dedicated concert halls deserve high quality sound, it’s places of worship.

I recently brought up this issue with one of the architects (a friend of mine) who worked with Hartman on the project. It turns out that my ears weren’t deceiving me. The reason behind the problem comes as no surprise: The project ended up costing too much money and some tough decisions had to be made about where to put the dwindling reserves of cash. Apparently more pressing concerns overrode original plans to perfect the Cathedral’s acoustic.

I suppose the church’s custodians thought that people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between clear-ringing bells and mud-thick goulash. They were wrong and it’s a terrible pity. I asked my architect friend if it might be possible to “retrofit” the church for acoustics at a later date once more money could be raised. My question received a negative response. I guess that explains why the church’s website doesn’t list any information about upcoming concerts.

As more and more conventional media outlets oust their staff arts writers and reduce the fees paid to / number of articles commissioned of freelance contributors, I’ve been starting to wonder how one might turn an arts blog into an income-generating opportunity.

So far, I haven’t thought of my blogging activities as a way to make money: I mainly blog to get the juices flowing in the morning and share thoughts and ideas about culture that I think might be of interest to other arts-savvy readers. As such, I’ve been cheerfully contributing posts on a variety of cultural topics for free for over two years. I have yet to see a cent generated directly from my posts, though money has emerged from peripheral activities along the way such as giving talks about blogging, being assigned paid articles on the basis of blog posts etc, which is lovely. I didn’t give the idea of making money from my blog serious thought until last month, soon after my editor at the alt weekly where I serve as chief theatre critic called to announce that my weekly theatre column would, as of the start of February, only appear in the paper every other week. That sure got the cogs turning.

I’ve long imagined that arts blogs could provide a steady, albeit probably small, source of income at some point down the line. Though I’m hard-pressed to come up with an example of an arts blog that currently earns anything near the income of some of the big political and news blogs such as Daily Kos. Four ways of generating income for an arts blog spring immediately to mind, though none of them provide really satisfactory solutions in the current climate.

1. Paid Advertising: This may provide an income stream in the future and I admire ArtsJournal for pioneering the concept for culture blogs. But for now, with arts organizations — the most likely sponsors — in dire financial straits themselves, it doesn’t look like advertising will provide much, if any, revenue in the coming months. It could in fact be a couple of years before ads start to turn a profit for arts bloggers. Plus, there’s an aesthetic issue to posting ads on blogs. Google ads just don’t look very good on the page. Until someone comes up with a better looking way of presenting ads on blogs, aesthetically-minded bloggers such as myself may think twice about posting ads. Of course, if I thought I could get some decent cash out of ads, I would probably overcome my aesthetic scruples 🙂

2. Donations: Some bloggers set up Paypal accounts and solicit donations from regular readers. Usually, this takes the form of a small note posted on the site along the “Enjoy this Post? Donate Now!” variety with a link to the blogger’s Paypal account page. This is probably quite effective for bloggers that have loyal readerships no matter how small. But I’m not quite at the point where I feel comfortable about begging for financial assistance. If I were a non-profit or collective of some sort, it might make more sense. There’s something slightly icky about doing this as an individual though.

3. Subscriptions: Unless you have a massive track record and huge brand-name recognition as an arts journalist — and I’m not sure any arts writer working in this country today, save perhaps Ben Brantley and Alex Ross, can claim this sort of level of fame within their specific fields — I don’t think subscriptions will fly as a revenue generating model for the foreseeable future. Even brand name recognition isn’t enough: You would also need to be able to churn out brilliant posts five days a week in order to solicit and make any real money from reader subscriptions.

4. Grant and Foundation Money: I’ve heard that a few bloggers are securing fairly sizable grants ($30,000) to fund the service they provide by writing their arts blogs. In the short term, applying for grant money could be a good way to float a blog, particularly if you’ve been in the game for a while and have strong user comments and good statistics. But it’s a bit of a crapshoot, as arts blogs cover very niche areas and most foundations and grant givers, if they’re set up to help individuals at all, are often more interested in underwriting artists than journalists who write about the arts. Plus, with endowments going down the tubes, even foundations are tightening their belts these days.

I don’t mean to sound so pessimistic: The above thoughts represent early musings on the theme. Hopefully viable solutions will emerge from thinking in more depth about these four ideas and scoping out new ones. I’ve no doubt that arts blogging represents the future of arts journalism. Sooner or later, more people in the field will find themselves able to support their writing through direct funding rather than by working at other (writing) jobs.

But for now, we’re in a bit of a grey area, with conventional modes of support (ie traditional journalism activities such as writing for newspapers and magazines) dwindling and new modes not yet being viable. As such, it’s high time to think carefully about what opportunities might open up now or down the line.

Lately, I’ve been on a campaign to educate myself on many of the big musical theatre and opera works that I haven’t yet experienced live on stage. A couple of months ago, I wrote a blog post about walking out of the Phantom of the Opera at half-time. I was not proud of this decision. But under the circumstances, I felt I would have done myself and possibly the audience sitting around me a greater disservice by staying put for Act Two.

Contrastingly, over the weekend, I was so riveted by Wicked (seen on tour at San Francisco’s Orpheum Theatre) that I was worried that my enthusiasm for this Wizard of Oz-inspired mega hit would cause me to rush the stage. I felt a twinge of envy for the performers. At times, I even wanted to be be up there under the lights in Susan Hilferty’s staggeringly beautiful costumes belting out Stephen Schwartz’s hummable songs — a wholly unnatural sensation for someone who rarely feels inspired by musicals as an audience member and, as a singer, has repeatedly shunned opportunities to perform numbers from the musical repertoire.

Based on Gregory Maguire’s novel, Wicked cleverly and flamboyantly weaves together several important themes, including how reputations are made and destroyed, how things are rarely what they seem and how societies don’t seem to be able to function without scapegoats. From a political perspective, the musical’s subplot concerning the re-writing of history and the tightening of rules surrounding education brings the current worsening situation in Afghanistan sharply to mind.

Featuring a few truly memorable numbers — eg “Popular” and “A Sentimental Man” — the musical makes for a ripping good time too. There’s tons of spectacle of course from dazzling couture to intricate sets, but it’s all very much in service of the story.

The current production is also skillfully cast, with the perky, blonde Kendra Kassebaum as Glinda the “Good” witch acting as the perfect emotional and physical foil to Teal Wicks’ angular, tortured and sensitive Elphaba the “Wicked” Witch of the East.

My regret at not having clicked with Wicked years ago is much more acute than my misgivings about walking out at intermission during Phantom. Given that the musical had its world premiere in San Francisco in 2003, I feel rather foolish going into paroxysms about Wicked six years on. It reminds me of going to a dinner party at a friend’s house the other evening and laughing when the host, in all seriousness, declared that he had recently discovered a terrific new flavor of ice cream before producing, with a flourish, a delicious, albeit hardly innovative, tub of plain vanilla from his freezer.

Last night at the theatre I was almost knocked out by a bread roll.

In the middle of the Mexican theatre company Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes‘ Monsters and Prodigies: A History of the Castrati, the actors started a food fight on stage, pelting the audience with projectile baked goods. I took a mighty hit, square in my left eye. It’s still throbbing, some 12 hours after the fact. I’m quite surprised that I don’t have a bruise to illustrate the sensation.

Despite making me feeling slightly worse for wear this morning, the offending bread roll (which is sitting on my desk as I write as a reminder of last night’s performance) performed a valuable service: It sure put the concept of suffering for one’s art into context.

In a gloriously madcap theatrical production exploring the fine line between the grotesque and sublime via a romp through the history of castrati on the opera stage, the small physical shock I experienced is of course nothing compared to the pain that pre-pubescent Italian boys of the 18th and 19th centuries must have felt going under the knife in order to have their virginal vocal chords preserved.

With its clinical depiction of a castration procedure performed by the hideous Siamese-twin barber-surgeon Jean-Ambroise Pare, the production makes much of the contrast between the heights of vocal purity and the lows of carnal messiness. Even performed without the live horse on stage (in contrast to some iterations of this show since its premiere in Spain in 2000) Monsters and Prodigies still bristles with anarchic, animal energy.

I’m no sports expert, but I’m certain that at least one of the cast members has a bright alternative future ahead of him as a pitcher for the New York Yankees.

The arrival of opera production simulcasts (and re-runs of simulcasts) on cinema screens across the country and abroad is one of the most exciting advances for the operatic art form.

Last night, as I settled into my cushy, armchair-like seat at a movie theater in Emeryville, California to watch a re-run of the Metropolitan Opera‘s Orfeo ed Euridice simulcast starring Stephanie Blythe as Orfeo and Danielle de Niese as Euridice in a production by Mark Morris, a feeling of comfortable solitude came over me. I rarely experience this feeling in the opera house where I’m usually with a friend (or group of friends), wearing fancy clothes, have a lot less leg-room and no armchair holder in which to place a cup of tea.

There’s also something marvelous about getting all those close-ups from the camera angles. For example, if I had experienced Morris’ production live, I wouldn’t have been able to see all the different costumes worn by the chorus. Decked out to represent a variety of famous personages from history such as Queen Elizabeth I, Jimi Hendrix and Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln, the chorus members’ regalia would have been hard to see even from the best seats in the house. But cinema audiences were able to examine many of these beautiful costumes up close. I felt at these times like I had one of the best seats in the house — and it only cost me $19.

On the other hand, some directors of simulcasts still have a lot to learn about how best to capture the art form on camera. Last night, the camera was so busy — it never stayed in one place for more than five seconds — that I started to feel nauseous from the near-constant movement on screen. The obsession with close-ups over wide-angle shots was equally irritating. Sometimes I wanted the camera to pull back and let me see the entire stage for a while so I could take in the vista in its entirety. But I was rarely given the chance to do this. More often than not, the camera would swoop in for a close-up of Blythe’s face, then pan to give us a quick (and completely unnecessary) shot of the area behind the main set, then move in again to capture the dancers’ feet, then head upwards for a shot of part of the chorus etc. etc. A lot of this stuff was gimmicky and irritating and made me feel giddy.

The experience did, however, leave me with a vision for the potential future of opera simulcasts: Imagine being able to experience a simulcast of an opera production on a personal screen with complete control over where the camera flies around the set. The viewer could decide when to take in the entire stage, when to swoop in for close-ups and when to take a closer look at what’s going on in the orchestra pit. The experience would then more closely resemble that of going to see a live production in an opera house in the sense that audience members looking at the stage would be able to choose, albeit in a limited way, which elements of the mise-en-scene to focus on at any given moment.

One of my favorite ways to procrastinate these days is to flip through the deliciously arcane items posted on the Weird News section of the visual arts-oriented Art News blog.

The blog is the place to go to find out about everything from artists making paintings out of toothpicks and post-it notes, to the sale of an Andy Warhol wig for $10,800 at a Christie’s auction.

Many arts institutions are launching blogs these days. In some ways, the advent of institutional blogging makes perfect sense: Blogs provide an easy, interactive and cheap way to reach out to audiences and provide them with more detailed insights into such areas as the artistic process, the latest ticket deals and how an organization runs on a day-to-day basis.

But in the process of figuring out what content to put on their blogs, the tone and style of entries, whom should be responsible for authoring them and with what regularity posts should be added, arts organizations frequently come unstuck. Lately, I’ve heard several slightly worrying stories concerning issues that have arisen as a result of institutional blogging which highlights the differences between blogging as an outsider (like me) and blogging as the spokesperson for an institution.

The most alarming tale I’ve heard was of a young staffer at a theatre company who was given the job of blogging about the process of rehearsing a production of a play by a famous playwright. The playwright was closely involved in the rehearsal process and the blog focused quite significantly on his presence in the rehearsal room. The blogger did what most outside bloggers do: He gave his opinions. Unfortunately, these opinions weren’t altogether positive. When the playwright saw the blog entries on the theatre company’s website, he demanded an apology from the theatre company. The young blogger got his fingers burned and the incident put a strain on the company’s relationship with the playwright.

Clearly, blogging as an insider doesn’t give the author carte blanche to write whatever he or she wants. There are particular limitations imposed upon the voice one can adopt online when it’s coming from inside an institution. But because blog entries are very easy to publish and don’t often involve the middleman in the form of an editor, there’s little to prevent this kind of problem from happening.

On the other hand, though, the restrictions that arts organizations feel that they need to put on themselves in order to stay within the boundaries of institutional priority can make for some pretty dull blogging. Employees are not sure how much editorializing they’re allowed to do without risking writing something untoward. All too often, they end up regurgitating canned public statements that have already been published by their organization in grant applications, press releases and programs, which hardly makes the blog a place to go for interesting nuggets of extra information that you wouldn’t find anywhere else. Plus, beleaguered employees, trying to do their already very busy jobs, often find blogging a chore.

That being said, many arts organization insiders love to blog and are very good at it. For example, I always enjoy reading California Shakespeare Theatre‘s blogs — the actors and other production personnel that take it upon themselves to write the blog during the rehearsal process often provide me with information about their way of working which I wouldn’t be able to get anywhere else. Sometimes, the writers are extremely eloquent and have a good sense of humor.

In order for organizations to get the most out of their blogging efforts and avoid getting their employees into trouble, they should think more carefully about what it is they want to convey with their blogs, who should be responsible for writing them and what checks and balances they might put in place to ensure that the information that ends up appearing on these blogs is fresh and interesting but not likely to incur the wrath of important stakeholders.

What is it with all these modern war plays written by journalists? Why do some journalists feel compelled to make dramas out of their articles? And what is it that makes them think that they can write well for the stage?

I’ve been thinking about these questions over the last couple of days quite a bit since seeing journalist George Packer’s play, Betrayed. The drama, which is currently receiving its west coast premiere at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre, can pretty much be summarized by a couple of lines from the March 26, 2007 essay that Packer wrote for The New Yorker: “The arc from hope to betrayal that traverses the Iraq war is nowhere more vivid than in the lives of these Iraqis. America’s failure to understand, trust, and protect its closest friends in Iraq is a small drama that contains the larger history of defeat.”

It’s easy to see why Packer thought his essay entitled “Betrayed: The Iraqis Who Trusted America The Most” would make a good basis for a play. The arc of the story — from the initial jubilation of many pro-American Iraqi’s about their country’s bright future in the wake of the U.S. defeat of Saddam Hussein, to their eventual disillusionment and fear as their lives become more at risk and the American occupation falls apart — is strong. The essay is full of emotional dialogue and pithy storytelling. There’s plenty of confrontation. It’s possible to visualize many of the scenes clearly in the mind’s eye. The characters, particularly the Iraqi translators who put their lives on the line to help U.S. forces in their country, are vividly drawn.

For a novice playwright, Packer certainly understands how to tell a story through dialogue and how, at least in the case of the three main Iraqi characters in his play drawn from real people he met during his many visits to Iraq, to create full-fledged characters.

Thanks to the efforts of director Robin Stanton and Aurora’s sensitive cast, Betrayed makes for a moving and informative experience. It’s a shocking revelation or reminder — for those who either hadn’t heard or had forgotten about the U.S. forces’ treatment of its Iraqi workforce — of American colonialist naivete, ineptitude, bureaucracy and callousness.

But for all the play’s merits, it doesn’t fully work as theatre. Packer, alongside such authors of recent war plays as Gillian Slovo and Victoria Brittain (Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom), have a journalist’s eye for storytelling and ear for dialogue. But what these writers lack is a true sense of theatre as an art form. Neither Betrayed nor Guantanamo has a strong sense of visual metaphor or dramatic irony. The language in both plays isn’t particularly rich, unusual or interesting. No matter how compelling their plots and characters and strong their messages, the memory of these works fades fast.

Compare these journalist-written war plays with the likes of Gregory Burke’s Black Watch and David Hare’s Stuff Happens. Crafted by writers steeped in the theatre, these plays are full of powerful visual images and haunting language that stand out in the mind long after the final curtain descends.

As the most intimate of performance mediums, the theatre is an ideal format for the telling of war stories. The stage, more than any other medium, has the power to take a huge, abstract concept such as global conflict and make it personal. Through spending time on the front lines and asking difficult questions, journalists have important insights to share. But they need to immerse themselves in the study of stagecraft before putting pen to paper. Perhaps it’s time for professional media training organizations like Mediabistro, the Columbia Journalism School or one of the country’s top playwriting programs e.g. Brown University, to run a workshop or series of classes on the art of theatre for journalists?

Betrayed plays at the Aurora Theatre through March 1.