Citizen-Scholar-Artist

September 30, 2008 by dennisbaker 

Dr. Scott Walters writes an excellent post entitled Teaching Alternatives around an excerpt from Jill Dolan’s Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theatre.

Walters goes on to describe theater schools as “the place where actors had their individuality erased, where they were beaten down and taunted and diminished as part of a ‘reshaping’ process that is called ‘training’”. The excuse is that the world and the industry will be even worse so the schools have to act in the same manner. Through Walters and Dolan’s classes hopefully students will be able to recognize and desire alternative ways of exploring what it means to train as an artist.

The summary on Amazon states:

What is it about performance that draws people to sit and listen attentively in a theater, hoping to be moved and provoked, challenged and comforted? In Utopia in Performance, Jill Dolan traces the sense of visceral, emotional, and social connection that we experience at such times, connections that allow us to feel for a moment not what a better world might look like, but what it might feel like, and how that hopeful utopic sentiment might become motivation for social change.

She traces these “utopian performatives” in a range of performances, including the solo performances of feminist artists Holly Hughes, Deb Margolin, and Peggy Shaw; multicharacter solo performances by Lily Tomlin, Danny Hoch, and Anna Deavere Smith; the slam poetry event Def Poetry Jam; The Laramie Project; Blanket, a performance by postmodern choreographer Ann Carlson; Metamorphoses by Mary Zimmerman; and Deborah Warner’s production of Medea starring Fiona Shaw. While the book richly captures moments of “feeling utopia” found within specific performances, it also celebrates the broad potential that performance has to provide a forum for being human together; for feeling love, hope, and commonality in particular and historical (rather than universal and transcendent) ways.

Filed under: Acting, Graduate School, Teaching, Theater/Theatre
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New York Theater’s Fall Ten Must-Sees

September 26, 2008 by dennisbaker 

With theater tickets so expensive it can be hard to decide what to see. Theatermania posted its ten must-sees for the New York theater fall season. The list hits a wide range of genres and there seems be something in the list for all the different types of theater-goers. New York magazine does not limit their list to ten. Below are the summaries of the plays picked by theatermania.

All My Sons
Schoenfeld Theatre, October 16-January 11
The new Broadway production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons stars John Lithgow, Dianne Wiest, Patrick Wilson, and Katie Holmes. Simon McBurney directs. Miller took his inspiration from a true story about a successful business man who knowingly sold the government defective airplane parts during World War II with tragic consequences. The truth comes out and his life unravels when his son prepares to marry his business partner’s daughter.
Photo Credit: Andrew Eccles

Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds
Various venues, September 24-December 13
This amalgam of events — organized by Carnegie Hall — celebrates the achievements of Leonard Bernstein. Highlights include a salute by the New York Pops featuring such vocalists as Christiane Noll and Lillias White (October 17); a Standard Time concert by Michael Feinstein (October 22), a series of screenings of classic telecasts ranging from Trouble in Tahiti to Candide and Wonderful Town at the Paley Center for Media (November 8-23); and the City Center Encores! mounting of On the Town (November 19-23).

The Cripple of Inishmaan
Atlantic Theater Company, December 9-March 1
Atlantic Theater Company co-produces Academy Award winner and four time Tony Award-nominated playwright Martin McDonagh’s The Cripple of Inishmaan with Druid, Galway. Tony Award-winning Garry Hynes directs.

Set in 1934 on an island off the west coast of Ireland, Hollywood filmmaker Robert Flaherty arrives on the neighboring island of Inishmore to film his movie The Man of Aran and excitement ripples through the sleepy community of Inishmaan. For orphaned Billy Craven, who has been relentlessly scorned by the island’s inhabitants, the film represents an escape from the poverty of his existence. He vies for a part in the film, and to everyone’s surprise, it is the cripple who gets his chance.

Doctor Atomic
Metropolitan Opera, October 13-November 13
John Adams’ contemporary masterpiece explores a momentous episode of modern history: the creation of the atomic bomb. Director Penny Woolcock makes her Met debut with this gripping story that changed the course of history. Baritone Gerald Finley, above, plays J. Robert Oppenheimer, the title character.

Equus
Broadhurst Theatre, September 5-February 8
Read New York Times Review.
Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe and Richard Griffiths star in Peter Shaffer’s Equus. Thea Sharrock directs. In Equus, psychiatrist Martin Dysart (Griffiths) investigates the blinding of six horses, a savage act committed by a mild-mannered stable boy, Alan Strange (Radcliffe), whose home life is filled with bigotry and religious fervor. As Dysart reveals the mysteries behind the boy’s demons, he realizes he is confronting his own.

Fifty Words
Lucille Lortel Theater, September 10-October 25
Something’s gone very wrong behind the idyllic façade of Jan and Adam’s Brooklyn brownstone. At 9:10 p.m., they’re reveling in the freedom of having waved off their young son, Greg, to a neighborhood sleepover. By 9:15 p.m., they’re both in tears. By 9:25 p.m., things are way past tears. Alternately funny and frightening, Fifty Words is an expansive look at modern marriage, as seen through the looking glass of one couple’s long night’s journey into day.
Photo Credit: Joan Marcus

New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF)
Various venues, September 15-October 5
The New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF) is a three-week celebration highlighting the next generation of musicals and the vibrant community of writers and artists working in musical theater today.

Pal Joey
Studio 54, November 11-February 15
Roundabout Theatre Company presents a new Broadway production of Pal Joey, featuring music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorenz Hart. This production features a new book by Richard Greenberg, based on the original book by John O’Hara, with music direction by Paul Gemignani, and choreography by Graciela Daniele. Joe Mantello directs.

Set in Chicago in the late 1930s, Pal Joey is the story of Joey Evans, a brash, scheming song and dance man with dreams of owning his own nightclub. Joey abandons his wholesome girlfriend Linda English, to charm a rich, married older woman, Vera Simpson, in the hope that she’ll set him up in business.

The score includes such classic songs as “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” “I Could Write a Book,” “You Mustn’t Kick It Around,” and “Zip,” among others. The new production also features “I’m Talking to My Pal,” a song that had been dropped from the score during its out-of-town tryout, and will be heard on Broadway for the first time.

Road Show
Public Theater, October 28-December 28
The new Stephen Sondheim-John Wediman musical Road Show, formerly called Bounce, spans 40 years from the Alaskan Gold Rush to the Florida real estate boom in the ’30s. The musical is the story of two brothers whose quest for the American Dream turns into a test of morality and judgment that changes their lives in unexpected ways.

Romantic Poetry
Manhattan Theatre Club’s Stage 1, beginning September 30
From John Patrick Shanley, the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Doubt and Henry Krieger, the two-time Tony-nominated composer of Dreamgirls comes this crackpot musical romance. Connie of Woodmere has just married Fred of Newark, but her exes are back in the picture and not sure they approve of the union. Mary of Greenpoint climbs Frankie of Little Italy’s fire escape with amorous erotic intent — but things go awry as she reaches for her dream.

DENNIS BAKER LLC’s choice:
If You See Something Say Something
Joe’s Pub, October 15-November 30th
In this groundbreaking monologue, Mike Daisey tackles a story at the heart of our world today: the surprising, secret history of the Department of Homeland Security. This is woven together with the untold story of the father of the neutron bomb—called “the perfect capitalist weapon” for the way it kills civilians while leaving cities and industries intact—and a pilgrimage to the Trinity blast site, where atomic fire rewrote history a half a century ago and ushered in an age of American supremacy. Combining damning fact and searing personal history, Daisey takes us on a journey through the dark heart of America, in search of answers for what it means to be secure, and the price we are willing to pay for it.

Filed under: New York, Theater/Theatre
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No Audition Class for Rutgers Graduate Acting Students

September 24, 2008 by dennisbaker 

The Rutgers graduate acting program is not supplying its third year students with an auditioning teacher.  The teacher for the course went on sabbatical and the administration decided not to pay for a replacement. A student brings in audition material to perform and the other classmates critique it.  Most of these classmates have no professional acting or audition experience. And they are paying for this?

How can this be okay in an MFA acting program. The big sell of these programs is that they will prepare you for the professional life of an actor. Last time I checked the major component of an actor’s life is auditioning. Actors audition far more than they are actually hired to perform. This is completely baffling. How is Rutgers expected to be taken seriously as an graduate MFA acting program when the administration is not willing to pay for a teacher to help in such an essential component of an actor’s career? As prospective students begin to research acting programs for auditions at the end of the year/beginning of next year I hope they highly question attending (and paying) an institution who is not willing to put resources into such an important aspect of an actors training.

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Filed under: Acting, Auditioning, Graduate School, Rutgers
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Literature to Life Festival

September 17, 2008 by dennisbaker 

Someone was inspired after my Educational Theater post and emailed me about the Literature to Life festival happening this weekend in New York City. I am signed up for a full festival pass and I was hoping to see most of the shows and blog about the event. Unfortunately I do not know how much of the festival I will be able to attend. Class work is picking up for me now and I have a thirty minute group performance of Romeo & Juliet due in two weeks. From the videos I have seen online there seems to be some quality performances. If you have the time I recommend it. Hopefully I will see you there!

THE AMERICAN PLACE THEATRE PRESENTS THE 2008 LITERATURE TO LIFE® FESTIVAL “CITIZENSHIP AND CENSORSHIP: RAISE YOUR CIVIC VOICE”, ON SEPTEMBER 20 AND 21, 2008.

The annual Literature to Life Festival is the only public opportunity to see The American Place Theatre’s renowned Literature to Life® educational theatre performances. This year’s Festival features 8 verbatim-adaptation performances of significant American literature along-side presentations by leaders of activist organizations. Audiences will engage in a new conversation: one between citizens and educators, leaders of renowned activist organizations, and characters from great American literature brought to life by a great American theatre.

To kick-off the Festival, on Saturday, September 20th, at 7pm, The American Place Theatre will present the premier Literature to Life performance County of Kings: the beautiful struggle written and performed by Lemon Andersen and directed by Elise Thoron. This new, original work blends memoir, spoken word, hip hop, and theatre in Andersen’s unique voice. Lemon Andersen, a critically-acclaimed poet best known for his Tony Award winning work in Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam on Broadway and HBO, brings his jarring coming-of-age memoir to life at The American Place Theatre, following the footsteps of John Leguizamo and Eric Bogosian. This performance is an opportunity to see County of Kings: The Beautiful Struggle before its appearance as part of the 2009 Under the Radar Festival. This performance will be followed by the Festival opening-night reception.

Closing the Festival, on Sunday, September 21st, at 7pm, The American Place Theatre will present a preview of the newest Literature to Life production, Flight by Sherman Alexie, directed and adapted by Wynn Handman. Flight tells the story of a young Native American teenager named Zits who struggles to overcome actions of violence. This humorous and heartbreaking story will be presented throughout the year to educational audiences nationwide – the Literature to Life Festival is currently the only public performance of this important new work.

Performances run on hour followed by a dialogue with a partnering activist organization. Showtimes are at 1pm, 3pm, 5pm, and 7pm each day, with a reception following the 7pm performances. Click here for specific times.

Single-Performance tickets are $20; Single-Day tickets are $55; Full-Festival Passes are $100. Educators attend for free (limited availability). Tickets may be reserved by calling The American Place Theatre at 212-594-4482 x10. For more information, logon to www.americanplacetheatre.org/stage/.

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Response to Teresa Eyring’s Response

September 4, 2008 by dennisbaker 

An abbreviated version of the Letter to the Editor of American Theatre Magazine has been published in the current issue. It is placed along side a letter written by Dr. Scott Walters and an informative letter by Mark Valdez, national coordinator for the Network of Theater Ensembles.

Teresa Eyring also replies saying (it is edited for space):

In the beginning of his performance, he [Mike Daisey] talks about an artistic director who advised that the title wasn’t quite right. But oops…too late. In any event, I was intrigued by the idea that theater could be powerful enough to fail America (as opposed to failing a particular city or group of artists or students or its own values). And it inspired me to choose a similarly hyperbolic title for my coloumn in order to reflect the ways that theater has impacted American life to the positive. I have also written about-and will continue to write about-the troubles and the failures in our system, such as the Feb. ‘08 (correction it is Jan. ‘08) coloumn on actors’ compensation and underemployment (which recieved exactly zero discussion in the blogosphere). My intention with this particular coloumn was not to dismantle Daisey’s entire premise, but rather shine a light on what is often neglected but very vibrant part of our ecosystem.

After her suggestion I read the January ‘08 article “Actors and Money“. There did not seem to be much to the article except for the one known fact that actors do not get paid well, if at all. One positive note, there is one scholarship for actors out there, The Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowships, administered by TCG. Eyring also mentions, “According to Actors’ Equity Association, just 18,000 of its 47,000 members were working in 2006–07, with the average number of work weeks at 17 weeks per actor in a year. Nearly 70 percent of these working actors earned $15,000 or less from work on stage; just 6 percent earned more than $75,000.” That leaves 29,000+ actors in need of the fellowship. I don’t think the Fox Foundation has a budget the size of say the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  Also the requirement for the fellowship is that the applicant has to be working with a theater associated with TCG.  I am curious to know how many of the 30% of actors currently working are working with TCG theaters.  The article ends on what I think is a somber note. The executive director of Actors’ Equity is going “reach out to the theatre community to discuss how we can make progress for actors and theatres through new ways of thinking about these issues in a world that is rapidly changing.” I am all for dialogue, but I wonder if it is the type of dialogue that is going to ever reach the benefit of the artists.

I recommended a type of dialogue the TCG could spearhead and support. Devoting a whole issue to this topic, but they did not respond or include the recommendation in the published letter. I especially liked the idea that they include Mike Daisey’s monologue How Theatre Failed America in the issue so that people who were not able to see the show can determine for themselves if the show is really all that hyperbolic. I guess the magazine can only have one “hyperbolic” article per issue. My main concern is that the American Theater magazine continues this discussion in a way that goes from one person’s editorial to the whole magazine being a conduit of opinions, from all aspects of the theater community, so that one day we can go from discussion to deconstruction to action and then to a re-birth of the American regional theater that recognizes the need to care for the artists as people and not a commodity to be used and tossed away.

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