DENNIS BAKER » Los Angeles

Praxis Theatre’s Exit Interview Series

Dennis Baker — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 17:00:54 +0000

Simon Rice starts the Exit Interviews series with the idea that, “Theatre schools are indeed strange places, seemingly full of contradiction.” I am a big fan of Praxis Theatre’s blog, and would probably be a fan of their work if I was living in Canada. One can dream. I thought the series was appropriate for my readers, as many are hear trying to figure out of if BFA/MFA programs is what they need or want.

Some quotes from Horne interview:
“I spent three out for the fours years being really terrified of fucking up and getting kicked out. What you should be doing is fucking up.”
“There is the competition of who can cry the most.”
“I think there are three people still from my class that are acting.”

“You can’t get lower than a B without getting kicked out. Then it becomes a scare tactic if half way through the term when they show you your marks and its a C+ and your like fuck, I have to, but I don’t know how you get better. How did you come up with this number? It is not because I got a certain number of math questions wrong. Those numbers I understand. I am just not as interesting as this other person?

Exit Interviews Part I: Theatre schools are strange places
Exit Interviews: Christine Horne

#NewPlay #LAThtr Meetup Summary

Dennis Baker — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 17:00:47 +0000

You read the #NewPlay #LAThtr Meetup Summary over at 2amtheatre.com.

I did not add the next meetup dates since it is a national website. You can view all upcoming #LAThtr meetups at the 2amt Los Angeles Meetup page. for quick reference the next three meetups are:

Sunday, February 20th at Celebration Theatre
Sunday, March 27th at Boston Court
Sunday, April 17th Location: TBD

List of 2011 Los Angeles Theater

Dennis Baker — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 01:46:15 +0000

I am a day late on my weekly Tuesday post, but here it is none the less.

I was tossing away some back issues of American Theatre magazine when I came across the 2010-2011 season preview article. I ripped out the pages and started highlighting theater companies and shows I am interested in seeing. There are various reasons for the below list ranging from from wanting to meet the director of a specific show to curious about the theater company as a whole. In light of the #NewPlay Los Angeles (#LAThtr) Meetup (more meetups are scheduled) last Saturday, I want to get out and see more work.

I would love to hear what shows are you wanting to see this year?

Theater Companies:
Watts Village Theater Company
Coeurage Theater Company
Theater Unleashed
Rogue Machine
Need Theater

Productions:
The Comedy of Errors at A Noise Within, directed by Michael Michetti
King Lear at Actors Co-Op, directed by Marianne Savell
The Watts Project at Cornerstone Theater Company, dir. Guillermo Avilez-Rodriguez
A House Not Meant To Stand at Fountain Theater, dir. Simon Levy

Clarification of Comment on Creating New Theater Company

Dennis Baker — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 17:00:27 +0000

A link was shared on twitter about Rebecca Novick’s chapter in the book titled 20Under40. The linked inspired Mark Petrie, blog writer for Knightsbridge Theatre, here in Los Angeles. I wrote a comment, see below if you do not want to jump over to the post, though I do recommend it.

I don’t think self-producing theater artists is the same as creating a new theater company. In light of all the facts laid out in Outrageous Fortune, it is clear that one needs to create their own work, but how that is done needs to be the main thrust of the exploration. In cities like New York and Los Angeles, there are hundreds and hundreds of theater companies, and we need deeply examined reasons for creating a new theater company. Clear reasons that make sense to audience members. Producing the same popular play that was produced by another theater company last season, or Shakespeare set in a different time period, is not standing out of the crowd. What are some models of creating theater that are not being done as much? Is there something to learn from theaters like Sojourn that are focused on creating work specific to communities, or site specific theater that interact with its audience members outside of the normal theater building? Regional theaters seem to be taking notice as Alabama Shakespeare Festival is producing plays about specific communities within the state. Another model to look at is Stolen Chair’s Community Supported Theater. Or instead of using other models, what is a model your theater company can come up with the no one else is doing? Maybe the question should be, what is the thing that your theater company is doing that no other theater company is doing? Be the first at something, and not the fifth company in your area to produce the current popular play.

———–

I am glad you brought up the topic.

The first question I would ask, is what does the author mean by the “same old model”. I think that has to be addressed before a full critique can be had.

If the assumption is made that she means what would be considered 99-seat theater in Los Angeles, or small theater companies in New York, the second part of the sentence that needs to be examined is “unexamined multiplication of companies .”

Does that mean artists that create theater companies so they can make art and “work”? Isn’t that why the 99-seat AEA contract was created, so more AEA actors could do theater in Los Angeles? Is that inherently bad? No. But when the median income of an AEA member (including Stage Managers) is $7,475, and the weekly jobless rate for AEA members is 85.2% and percentage of AEA members that don’t work at all in a year roughly 55%, that leaves a lot of actors with the time to create theater companies. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily, but that is a lot of supply. Is there the demand to back it up? Hard to say? Since many 99-seat AEA theaters have to charge its members dues to pay rent as they can not afford to pay the rent and cost of productions from ticket sales alone. I think it can be said that the supply does not fit the demand. When there are more people on stage than in the audience, there is a demand/supply issue. Granted, that could be due to quality, and the Darwin argument would be that they would be weeded out. But if the rent is being paid for by the members, the company can still exist. Does this mean that theater companies should not be created? No. Does it mean that a theater should do Shakespeare when there are four or five other theaters companies doing Shakespeare? I think that would classify as “unexamined”.

What are examined ways? Still working on that. Maybe we should read Novick’s chapter as a starter. Regarding Novick creating Crowded Fire Theatre Company, what is the context behind it? The mission/history page does not mention her name. It says the theater company is in its 13th season. For all we know, she could have started it, and left after the first year. Also what she learned from that experience could be the source material for the chapter. She is available on twitter (@rebeccanovick) if your curious.

As I mentioned on twitter, would love to see you at the #NewPlay Los Angeles Theater (#LAThtr) Satellite Meetup. I don’t know if this topic will be part of the conversation, but your passion for Los Angeles Theater would be great for the conversation.

2011 Productivity Apps: Evernote

Dennis Baker — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 17:00:05 +0000

Now that I have been back in Los Angeles for four months, things are starting to get into a rhythm. It feels like good timing with it being a new year and new decade. As part of my post a week series, I will be sharing new activities I am undertaking for 2011 and new productivity applications that are helping me achieve these new goals.

I have joined one of the nine Power Groups offered by The Actors’ Network. These are groups of about 30 actors from TAN who get together once a month to discuss goals and progress, share resources, and ask questions. Each group is led by an experienced facilitator. These are a great way to meet other productive actors, and begin to really find a sense of community, one of the hardest things to do in this city, particularly when you first arrive.

A requirement for each participant is to come to the meeting with a laundry list of goals and activities accomplished for the previous 30 days and a list of goals and activities one wants to complete for the 30 days. The two-hour meeting is spent going through everyone’s list, along with discussing any industry-related questions.

Evernote has been the application that has helped me in preparing for my Power Group (PG) meetings. I am able through the month to cross off goals as I complete them, and make a list of new goals. This can be done on my iMac, Macbook, or iPhone and the information is saved to my account. During the meeting, I can easily type up information that I hear other group members talk about and automatically know they are saved for easy access later. I can also upload the calender of events from TAN’s website and scan any handout that I receive in the meeting into a PDF and upload it to my Evernote account.

I am always looking for great applications that would help my freelance work/life. Do you have one that you love and can not live without? Let me know what it is, and if I write about it, I will give you a free half-hour website, or social media marketing, phone consultation.

List of 2011 Los Angeles Theater

#NewPlay Los Angeles Theater (#LAThtr) Satellite Meetup

Dennis Baker — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 03:39:57 +0000

Janurary 29, 2011 – #NewPlay Los Angeles Theater (#LAThtr) Satellite Meetup

NEW LOCATION: Atwater Village Theatre 3269 Casitas Ave. LA, CA 90039

Circle X Theatre Company and Ensemble Studio Theatre-LA, with the partnership of LA Stage Alliance, will host the New Play Los Angeles theater satellite meetup to coincide with the final day of the national convening, entitled Scarcity to Abundance: Capturing the Moment for the New Work Sector, organized by the American Voices New Play Institute at Arena Stage in Washington, DC.

The Los Angeles event will be held Saturday, Jan. 29 from 9am-1pm. Participants will view the pre-recorded roundtable discussions from the national convening, and discuss the themes within the context of the Los Angeles theater community.

The national convening will focus on the following: identifying the rich and vital activity that already exists in the new play sector, exploring the gaps and challenges facing the field and strategizing the means of continued and closer collaboration to advance the new work infrastructure moving forward. This convening will build upon the outcomes and initiatives that grew out of last yearâ€™s convenings: Defining Diversity, Black Playwrights: the Stories We Tell and Devised Work

Circle X Theatre Company and Ensemble Studio Theatre-L is located at the Atwater Village Theater, 3269 Casitas Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90039. There is street parking.

We need an accurate head count for space, please RSVP at: http://www.meetup.com/2amt/54701/

You can follow the discussion on Twitter at #LAThtr and #NewPlay

UPDATE: To further the Institute’s commitment to documentation and dissemination of all findings, the events of the convening will be live-streamed on #NewPlayTV, with commentary shared by commissioned tweeters (#NewPlay) and bloggers on The New Play Blog. In order to view live-streamed events, please access #NewPlay TV online at http://www.livestream.com/newplay. In partnership with 2AMt, Arena Stage is setting up viewing parties across the country. Plans are underway in Dallas, Austin, San Francisco, Minneapolis, DC, New Orleans, and Chicago. All findings from these communities will be published on the 2AMt blog. In addition, along with the final convening report to be published in the spring, the new online journal Howlround: The Journal of the American Voices New Play Institute will release a special edition specifically around the convening. – Full article, with full conference schedule, on BroadwayWorld.com

UPDATE: Bitter Lemons article

Community Arts Network Website Closing

Dennis Baker — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:46:51 +0000

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 CANÂ¹s 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.”

Pilots’ Income = Actors’ Income

Dennis Baker — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 04:16:27 +0000

“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.”

The Future Of Theatre

Dennis Baker — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:00:29 +0000

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 Iâ€™m starting to think thatâ€™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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Ford Foundation Grants to Aid Arts Spaces and Their Communities

Dennis Baker — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 23:03:08 +0000

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 Barrioâ€™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.”

â€œI think people are beginning to understand that spaces for artists and art are more than just buildings, structures,â€ she said ["Judilee Reed, executive director of LINC]. â€œThe 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.