Community Arts Network Website Closing

August 31, 2010 by Dennis Baker 

It was announced today that on September 6th the Community Arts Network (CAN) website will be closing. CAN has been a great resource for me in the past year as I learn more about community-based arts and what was the history of the movement, along with all the great work that is currently happening. I have referred many students to their Places to Study page to see what schools are offering degrees in arts and community/civic dialogue. I am even having my Introduction to Theatre students read field notes about two LA community-based theaters that was written for the Grassroots Ensemble Theater Research Project.

Linda Frye Burnham and Steven Durland stated “we have spent much of the past year trying to develop a stable environment for CAN to move forward, but in the current economic environment those efforts have not been fruitful. With no money for staffing or basic operational costs we have no choice but to stop. It is our plan to seek funding for the purposes of preserving the CAN’s content in an online archive so it can be accessible, but until we find such funding the site will be dark. We will attempt to accomplish this task as soon as possible.

We hope this decision does not signal the end of efforts to establish a CAN 2.0 that will build on CAN¹s history and network and provide vital services for the network that has developed around CAN during the past 11 years. There has been much hard and significant work done in that direction by extremely dedicated people and we hope they will continue to move forward with those plans.

It does signal that we, Linda and Steven, will not be in the leadership of that process. We sincerely hope those efforts continue, and we will contribute what wisdom we have as it might be found useful, but we can no longer be a driving force in that process. We have initiated a CAN Facebook page where were inviting folks to post information and to initiate and participate in discussions.”

Filed under: Acting, Chicago, Civic Theater, Devised Work, Educational Theater, Ensemble, Los Angeles, New Works, New York, Theater/Theatre
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Pilots’ Income = Actors’ Income

July 14, 2010 by Dennis Baker 

“The only reason people stay flying (or acting) is because they love it and management (theaters with executive directors making $400,000) take advantage of that.”

“I took out $100,000 and by the time I pay it back at this rate, it will cost me well over $500,000 with interest and fees and penalties, it something I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it because it is one way I get down really quickly about my chosen field.”

Filed under: Acting, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Theater/Theatre
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The Future Of Theatre

June 2, 2010 by Dennis Baker 

The below video put me over the edge. It started when I was taking an applied theater course at NYU. Learning about the work of Rhodessa Jones and Cornerstone Theater Company, I saw theater in context of true community. Being raised in the commercial theater context, I believed that participating in theater and community meant going to watch a play and sit in a dark theater, and then leave afterward with very little interaction with the other people there.

Soon after I signed up to attend Sojourn Theatre Summer Institute, I read the below quote from artistic director Michael Rohd, “One thing that gets said a lot about theatre is that a bunch of people come into a room and they laugh and they cry together in the dark, and that builds community. But I’m starting to think that’s bullshit: People crave something that involves more than sitting and watching.” I will be participating in a six day workshop June 21-26th, in Portland. This will be a time where I will determine if my artistic journey will take on a new path. To quote Cameron, one “not out of economic necessity, but out of deep, organic conviction that the work [I am] called to do can not be accomplished in the traditional hermetic arts environment.” To dive deep into becoming the professional hybrid artist that I feel I am already becoming. To become the person I already am.

My goal is to blog daily about the experience with my work at Sojourn, even though my days will be packed with ensemble work during the day and observing rehearsals in the evenings. Here is a little about the show Sojourn is creating, from their website. “On the Table is a theatre production involving inter-city travel, public dialogue, video and participation within the performance itself. Sojourn Theatre, in partnership with Molallas Arts Commission, The City of Portland and numerous local and statewide organizations, is creating this original world premiere theatrical event as an opportunity to start conversations that bridge urban/rural Oregon and wrestle with issues of identity, resources, values, and governance. Exploring the histories and connectedness of community partner sites Portland and Molalla, it goes beyond metaphorical bridge-building to physically move audiences across urban/rural boundaries.

Act I occurs simultaneously in Portland and Molalla, with a cast of actors performing for a fifty person audience in Portland, and a separate cast of actors performing for a fifty person audience in Mollala. Act 1 tells the stories of two families, one in each community, in the year 1975. Act 2 puts both audiences on buses with the actors driving towards each other. Act 2 brings the stories of these two fictional families from 1975 up to the present, so that when the buses arrive at a location halfway between Portland and Molalla, the story has reached the current moment of 2010. Act 3 brings all 100 audience members together, seated at tables of ten; each table consists of five Portlanders seated next to five Molallans. The play concludes, strangers meet and share a meal during this final act, and the buses then take everyone home.”

Some of my favorite quotes from the video:
We are engaged in a fundamental reformation.

Move from a time of audience numbers plummeting, but the number of art participants, people who write poetry, who sing songs, who perform in church choirs is exploding beyond our wildest imaginations. These people are being called PRO-AMs: Amateur artists doing work at a professional level.

We live in a world not defined by consumption, but by participation.

We have tended to polarize the amateur and the professional, the single most exciting development in the last five to ten years has been the rise of the professional hybrid artist. The professional artist who does not work mainly in the concert halls but around women’s rights or human rights around global warming issues or AIDS relief or more.

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Filed under: Acting, Arts Entrepreneur, Chicago, Civic Theater, Creativity, Devised Work, Educational Theater, Ensemble, Los Angeles, NYU Steinhardt, New Works, New York, Theater/Theatre
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Guest Blogging

April 20, 2010 by Dennis Baker 

I have been busying guest blogging, love for you to check them out:

2amtheatre.com is site that acts as a “gath er ing place for the atre ideas.” We’ll col lect and curate blog post ings from var i ous sources that con nect to one another and try to fol low ideas as they develop.

Guest Posts:
Delete Twitter Theater Profiles
A Theater Should Be Like A Bookstore

Theatre Arts Curriculum Transformation (TACT) is a website dedicated to the assessment and re-imagining of theatre training and education at the college and university level.

Guest Post:
Theater Curriculum Based On Professional Entrepreneurial Model

Filed under: Acting, Arts Entrepreneur, Chicago, Social Media, Theater/Theatre
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Ford Foundation Grants to Aid Arts Spaces and Their Communities

April 4, 2010 by Dennis Baker 

At first this announcement from the Ford Foundation about a new $100 million grant scared me:

“As part of an effort to increase the impact of its giving, the Ford Foundation is to announce a plan on Monday to dedicate $100 million to the development of arts spaces nationwide over the next decade. The plan is by far the largest commitment the foundation has ever made to the construction, maintenance and enhancement of arts facilities.”

Oh great, more money poured into building new buildings. But then the article turned a corner:

“In addition to helping arts groups build new spaces and renovate and expand old ones, the latest initiative aims to encourage the construction of affordable housing for artists in or around some of these spaces and to spur economic development in their surrounding areas.”

“That group, Artspace Projects, has received more than $1 million toward, among other things, transforming an abandoned public school in East Harlem into such a development, in partnership with El Barrio’s Operation Fightback, a New York community organization.”

“The project is to include 72 units of housing for artists and their families and a large space that can be used for art exhibitions, cultural events, conferences and gatherings of community groups.”

“I think people are beginning to understand that spaces for artists and art are more than just buildings, structures,” she said ["Judilee Reed, executive director of LINC]. “The way these spaces animate their communities and the relationships they have to their communities is ripe for development.”

Maybe this is the beginning of something to get excited about.

Filed under: Arts Entrepreneur, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Theater/Theatre
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NYLACHI Theater At Its Best

January 22, 2010 by Dennis Baker 

NYLACHI is an acronym coined in the theatrosphere to describe the theater ecosystem in New York, Loa Angeles, and Chicago. The insanity that is this video is a good visual demonstration for the need for decentralization of theater.

Filed under: Acting, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Theater/Theatre
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Self-Producing Theater Artists

January 7, 2010 by Dennis Baker 

The talk of the “town” is the new TDF book Outrageous Fortune, waiting for my copy in the mail. From what I am hearing it is a grim look in the life of a playwright and the state of affairs for new works in American theater. It has gotten director Isaac Butler to declare, “If I want to make a living from theater, going the institutional route is almost certainly the way to do it” and “I no longer wish to pursue making a living as a theatre director in the American Theatre Industry.” J. Holtham quotes it numerous times and states,

Plays are finished in production. Period. I think just about everyone can agree with that. That’s why this discussion matters. It’s part of the Pursuit of the Hit Play, the perfect, unit set, small cast play about large themes and big issues that will run forever and provide subsidies for the original theatre in perpetuity. So much of our industry is oriented in this direction, it’s like a black hole, pulling everything that has worked in the past to create just those kinds of plays and better ones out of whack. This is the insurmountable problem that I was talking about. And the system goes around and around. Unless, you hop off the merry-go-round, write your plays and produce them. Spots, problems, mistakes and all. And learn. That’s the way I’m going this year.

While all this I agree with, what I can’t get out of my head, is the idea of self-producing in large markets. Does Los Angeles, Chicago and New York really need another theater, no matter what kind of theater it produces? I know this has been beaten over the head by the likes of The Prof, and Doug Hall has been doing it for eighteen years in Chicago, but I think it is going to be the next issue that is addressed once all the new self-producing theater artists get going, and there’s the rub.

Butler’s thoughts are similar to my own. The one difference becomes that I am married with an infant. For the last eight months, I have not been able to do any theater except for one understudy gig because I was allowed to not be at rehearsals when I needed to be home with the baby, as my wife works three nights a week as a nurse. The downtime has caused more reflection and conversation in the theatrosphere. We will be moving back to Los Angeles this summer, as we are from there and her parents live there. While that gives us support, and potential time for me to work in theater, for me to be a freelance professional actor, I have to ask myself the question The Prof asked Butler, “does my dream of directing acting full-time include the non-stop travel that such a career seems to demand, at least if you are participating in the regional theater circuit. How often do you want to be away from your family for 4 – 6 weeks at a time?” The answer seems to become self-produce or move on. Butler continues,

The Mission Paradox blog had a fantastic post awhile ago that I can’t find for some reason where he discussed that the fundamental problem of many theatre companies is that their hidden mission is simply to propagate their members’ work and help their careers and thus they begin to fall apart when they move towards actually fulfilling whatever it is their stated mission is because it turns out none of their founders were actually interested in that in the first place. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to start a company devoted to Me. I mean, I guess I could like the do in the dance world and just start The Isaac Butler Company or whatever, but I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.

Personally, that is why the idea of the smaller markets of Portland, Austin, and Philly are intriguing, and ever more still are the rural markets of less than 100k, where one could raise a family, be part of a community, and possibly create theater. But then again, leaving Los Angeles puts us in the same position we are now in, no support. This may change over time as kids get older, but for now I am on a quest, to explore and examine how self-producing, entrepreneurial artists are making theater, where, and what kind of theater they are creating. The research list includes: Community Supported Theatre at Stolen Chair Theater, New Leaf Theatre, New Works/New Communities at California Shakespeare Festival, Cornerstone Theater Company, and Cambiare Productions, just to name a view. Always love to hear more.

In the end, the artist’s passion will lead the way. Holtham sums it up well, “find the solution that fits for you. You have to figure out what you value, what the priorities are and follow them where they take you.”

ERPA Clip 5 Jon Stancato/Stolen Chair Theatre Company from The Field on Vimeo.

Filed under: Acting, Arts Entrepreneur, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Theater/Theatre
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True Community Theater?

December 25, 2009 by Dennis Baker 

Given the reputation as one who is possibly more tenacious than The Prof about the necessity to make artists part of a community, I could not pass up reflecting on Tom Loughlin’s post about the 2008 NEA survey. Loughlin’s reflection/passion reminds me of a need for what Cornerstone Theater Company did between 1986-1991. According to their website, they created twelve musical productions in ten states. These shows were epic interactions between classic plays and specific American communities: Moliere’s disintegrating and combative families in the Kansas farmland, Shakespeare’s civil strife in the streets of Mississippi, and Aeschylus’ ancient rituals on a modern Native American reservation.

“With each of the 13 communities that Cornerstone visited, one of their goals was to leave behind a group of local people, experienced in how to do theater and infused with the love and understanding of “community theater”. The community residents involved with Peer Gynt formed Stage East upon Cornerstone’s departure. Beginning with their first performance of Play Boy of the Western World in the fall of 1990, Stage East has provided a wide range of theater, three and four productions every year, involving audiences and young people and adults both on and back stage, in the creativity and excitement of the theater experience.” (Stage East Bio, Picture from production of Peer Gynt)

During graduate school, my Applied Theater class watched a documentary on Cornerstone’s work during that time and it has stuck with me. Due in part to the cast being a mix of professional actors from Cornerstone and the community members, it was even more of an incentive to attend the production as the audience wanted to see their fellow community members, but also the productions were speaking to the issues within the specific community. The power of communal storytelling created a “reality that people who don’t go to the theatre really, truly don’t want [wanted] to go to the theatre”. I have been wondering if what Cornerstone did could be replicated over twenty years later. Is there enough artists out there who would be willing? What would such a project look like now? Does it have to be a traveling company? Can the same work be done within the community in which the theater practitioners live or are the theater artists minds focused on the gigs that will get them to NY/LA/Chicago? I am concerned that if the mindset/work of theater practitioners continue to focus on those reflected in the NEA study, true community theater will be lost.

Below is a paragraph from Loughlin’s post. There is no summary I can give that would give this post justice. All I can do is to implore you to read it.

Hopefully by pointing all this out I have given the theatre world a holiday gift it can truly appreciate – the assuaging of their guilt. Once you fully understand the reality that people who don’t go to the theatre really, truly don’t want to go to the theatre, you can then stop feeling guilty about declining attendance, lack of diversity, class inequities and the like. After all, don’t you really want to produce theatre for those who want to be there, and can afford to be there? Isn’t that what counts? Isn’t that where the road to your professional success truly lies? You don’t really want the American public in your theatres, do you? Why, that might mean getting theatre out into America, and having more artists live out in America, and meet everyday Americans of all sorts of backgrounds and income levels and ethnic backgrounds and political persuasions – and what an inconvenience that would be! I mean, you just can’t get a good bagel and a smear out there! – What’s all the fuss about? (Or why the NEA study shows how successful we are!)

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Filed under: Acting, Chicago, Graduate School, Los Angeles, New York, Shakespeare, Theater/Theatre
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Artists and Money

June 29, 2009 by Dennis Baker 

It Is Okay for Artists to Make Money…No, Really, It’s Okay
From a Harvard Business School ‘Working Paper’ published June 3, 2009 by Robert D. Austin and Lee Devin:

When art and commerce are mentioned in the same sentence, many people become bad-tempered or think something needs fixing. This paper argues that more artists ought to make more money more often. Harvard Business School professor Robert Austin and theater dramaturg Lee Devin identify and undermine three fallacies about art and commerce, and suggest that it is necessary to carry on a more careful and less emotional conversation about the tensions between art and business and to overcome a general aversion to business common among artists and their patrons. They also stress the need to develop better theories about how art and commerce can achieve integration helpful to both. Key concepts include:

  • The interests of art, artists, and business can be best served if more commerce enters into the world of art, not less.
  • There are three fallacies, often implicit, about relationships between art and commerce: (1) art is a luxury and an indulgence, (2) art is clearly distinguishable from “non-art,” and (3) commerce dominates and corrupts art, and subverts its purpose.
  • Good art should achieve appropriate commercial value consistently, not just occasionally. A conversation takes place when art and commerce are in tension, a conversation in which neither artists nor managers should dominate.

Pay My Rent
Alan M. Berks, writing on the blog Minnesota Playlist, June 28, 2009
Would you feel comfortable with a part-time dentist? Someone who’s got some talent filling cavities and performing root canals but who only squeezes them in at night, after she comes home from the full-time job she does all day, typing at a desk, let’s say, to pay the bills? Or, do you think, the work is going to be a helluva lot better if your dentist could concentrate on the job full-time, all year round? What about your plumber, lawyer, electrician, and accountant? Why then do we accept a system where performing artists have almost no expectation of making a real career in their chosen profession?… I don’t believe that everyone who wants to do theater deserves a living wage. For most people, theater is always going to seem like more fun than dentistry, so more people will want to do it. I think that a market that squeezes young performing artists a little so that they have to choose whether they’re really committed to it is probably appropriate. But anyone who doesn’t think that theater is already a ruthlessly competitive market has no idea what an audition is.

Filed under: Acting, Chicago, Educational Theater, Film, Los Angeles, Music, New York, Theater/Theatre
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Building Relationships with Local Theaters

May 24, 2009 by Dennis Baker 

When a small New York theater company reports that they received 700 submissions for 22 parts in their summer production, it is a telling factor of the odds one actor has in getting an audition, let alone a part. How does this fair for larger regional theaters that hold EPA auditions in New York? People stand in line sometimes as early as 5am to make sure they get an audition. While at the same time, some of these companies still hold auditions, through their casting directors, for actors that were submitted through agents.

Instead of only doing these cattle call auditions, an actor needs to find other ways to build relationships. What are possible ways to skip the middle man and go directly to the buyers, the directors and artistic directors?

Define Your Area
What regional theaters are in your area? Define your area. Is it the theaters that are less than an hour drive from your home? Is it two hours? Be clear so you can have a purposeful marketing and networking plan.

Research
Once you have made a list of all the theaters in your area, do the research. Go online and find out what their season is going to be. From their you can determine what roles you would be right for. Send an odd-size mailer of your headshot to the artistic director wishing them good luck on the season and that you would like to submit for a role. Read any of the plays that are not familiar. Also research the artistic director. Are they new to the area? Are they originally from your hometown? This information will help when you meet them at opening night.

Opening Night
If the production you are submitting for is later in the season, go see the other productions. Opening night would be the best night to go, as it is almost guaranteed the artistic director will be there. Don’t be shy (also don’t be pushy or rude) and introduce yourself. If this is after you sent your mailing, then the artistic director might remember you. Make the conversation about the current production and the artistic director. Do not make the conversation all about you and how you would be perfect for their upcoming production. The point of this meeting is not to sell yourself, but to begin a professional relationship with someone in your field. Don’t sound like a needy, out of work actor.

Don’t Forget the Middle Man
While doing all this work, do not ignore the casting director that the theater company hires for each production. You can find out who the casting director is in the Playbill of the production you just saw, or maybe on their website. The artistic director might ask the casting director about you once they see your mailing, or meet you, and it would be good to have a headshot in the casting office so they can look you up.

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Filed under: Acting, Auditioning, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York
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