Theaters To Do List

October 10, 2008 by dennisbaker 

Brendan Kiley wrote an article for Seattle’s The Stranger entitled Ten Things Theaters Need to Do Right Now to Save Themselves: In No Particular Order. Below is the top ten with my reactions. Th article focuses on the fringe as the main type of theater that should implement these changes. What do you thing?

1. Enough with the goddamned Shakespeare already. The greatest playwright in history has become your enabler and your crutch, the man you call when you’re timid and out of ideas. It’s time for a five-year moratorium—no more high schoolers pecking at Romeo and Juliet, no more NEA funding for Shakespeare in the heartland, and no more fringe companies trying to ennoble themselves with Hamlet. (Or with anything. Fringe theater shouldn’t be in the game of ennobling, it should be in the game of debasement.) Stretch yourself. Live a little. Find new, good, weird plays nobody has heard of. Teach your audiences to want surprises, not pacifiers.

Goes big right off the bat. I am torn by this one as I both agree and disagree. I am sure we have all seen one too many shows of Midsummers or Romeo and Juliet. But when Shakespeare is done well it is it amazing. There are also so many students every year that see a production and then are turned on to the work. Maybe we modify this recommendation that we put a cap on the amount of Shakespeare a theater company can do. One show per year?  One every other year?

2. Tell us something we don’t know. Every play in your season should be a premiere—a world premiere, an American premiere, or at least a regional premiere. Everybody has to help. Directors: Find a new play to help develop in the next 12 months. Actors: Ditto. Playwrights: Quit developing your plays into the ground with workshop after workshop after workshop—get them out there. Critics: Reward theaters that risk new work by making a special effort to review them. Unions, especially Actors’ Equity: You are a problem. Fringe theaters are the research-and-development wing of the theater world, the place where new work happens—but most of them can’t afford to go union, so union actors are stuck in the regional theaters, which are skittish about new work and early-career playwrights. You must break this deadlock by giving a pass to union actors to work in nonunion houses, if they are working on new plays.

New works are a must! I love when I see a play that I don’t know and it takes on me on a ride of discovery. I think this can also go for published work as well. Maybe poll the audience of what plays they have seen so a theater knows which ones to avoid.

I think the union/non-union issue is the bigger issue. Just coming back from a theater conference in San Francisco this is a major issue for the actors in the Bay area. Most theaters there are non-union which leaves the union actors with little opportunity to work on new works or anything at all for that matter. There is a 99-seat code in Los Angeles and a workshop code in New York. Why can’t we get a code across the board or at least in all the major theater cities?

3. Produce dirty, fast, and often. Fringe theaters: Recall that 20 years ago, in 1988, a fringe company called Annex produced 27 plays, 16 of them world premieres—and hang your heads in shame. This season, Annex will produce 10 plays, 4 of them world premieres, which is still pretty good. Washington Ensemble Theatre will only produce three plays, one of them a world premiere. (An adaptation of… Shakespeare!) What else happened in 1988? Nirvana began recording Bleach—and played a concert at Annex Theatre. By the next year, Nirvana was on their first world tour. The lesson: Produce enough new plays and Kurt Cobain will come back from the grave and play your theater.

I am not 100% sold on producing that many shows in a season. I worked with a theater company in Los Angeles that prided itself on performing two shows in repertory.  I think for the smaller theaters it can stretch its already limited personal and budget. While it might be great for all the actors who want to work, the quality pf the show can suffer, which then effects the perception of the work being done for future shows. Also these artists also have full time jobs and other major responsibilities so while I agree maybe more than three shows per season I think twenty-seven is a bit much.

4. Get them young. Seattle playwright Paul Mullin said it best in an e-mail last week: “Bring in people under 60. Do whatever it takes. If you have to break your theater to get young butts in seats, then do it. Because if you don’t, your theater’s already broke—the snapping sound just hasn’t reached your ears yet.”

I think all theater companies should have some education ties to it. That does not mean that they have this education department that creates a touring show, but they should have a connection with a local English teacher where they can come into the class and present scenes and work with the students. Most kids think Shakespeare is boring until they experience how active the text is and then kids begin to love it. If the kids connect with the visiting actors they will ask the parents to go to that theater. There is you under 60 audience members. Then it is also the theaters responsibility to do work that appeals to both young adults and their parents at the same time. That does not mean you have to produce a fairytale, but you can’t have your whole season be crazy, sexual, avant-guard theater either.

5. Offer child care. Sunday school is the most successful guerrilla education program in American history. Steal it. People with young children should be able to show up and drop their kids off with some young actors in a rehearsal room for two hours of theater games. The benefits: First, it will be easier to convince the nouveau riche (many of whom have young children) to commit to season tickets. Second, it will satisfy your education mission (and will be more fun, and therefore more effective, for the kids). Third, it will teach children to go to the theater regularly. And they’ll look forward to the day they graduate to sitting with the grown-ups. Getting dragged to the theater will shift from punishment to reward.

But when you do produce your avant-guard play that is not appropriate for children, in stead of alienating the parents give them the option of childcare so they can still come see the show. Yes, there are legal issues here that will need to be worked out, but it could be well worth it. How many theaters are offering childcare? Imagine if you were the first. You would be the talk of the PTA and the buzz around all the playgrounds. Get those soccer moms to work for you!

6. Fight for real estate. In 1999, musician Neko Case broke up with Seattle, leaving us for Chicago. (It still hurts, Neko.) When asked why in an interview, she explained, “Chicago is a lot friendlier, especially toward its artists. Seattle is very unfriendly toward artists. There’s no artists’ housing—they really like to use the arts community, but they don’t like to put anything back into the arts community.” Our failure abides. Push government for cheap artists’ housing and hook up with CODAC, a committee that wants developers on Capitol Hill—and, eventually, everywhere—to build affordable arts spaces into their new condos. (CODAC’s tools of persuasion: tax, zoning, and business incentives.) Development smothers artists, who can’t afford the rising property values that they—by turning cheap neighborhoods into trendy arts districts—helped create. To get involved with CODAC, e-mail frank.video@seattle.gov.

A definite must. Lean on the government to recognize artists as important and worth the time and money.

7. Build bars. Alcohol is the only liquid on earth that functions as both lubricant and bonding agent. Exploit it. Treat your plays like parties and your audience like guests. Encourage them to come early, drink lots, and stay late. Even the meanest fringe company can afford a tub full of ice and beer, and the state of regional- theater bars is deplorable: long lines, overpriced drinks, and a famine of comfortable chairs. Theaters try to “build community” with postplay talkbacks and lectures and other versions of you’ve spent two hours watching my play, now look at me some more! You want community? Give people a place to sit, something to talk about (the play they just saw), and a bottle. As a gesture of hospitality, offer people who want to quit at intermission a free drink, so they can wait for their companions who are watching act two. Just take care of people. They get drinks, you get money, everybody wins. Tax, zoning, and liquor laws in your way? Change them or ignore them. Do what it takes.

Embrace the idea of third space that made Starbucks what it is today. Third space is that place that is not work or home where people come together to talk, socialize and share ideas. The theater is a perfect place to do that. Make the lobby a third space. If that is not an option work with a local bar that you can encourage your audience to attend after the show. Theater is meant to create ideas and dialogue so lets give people that place to have that dialogue.

8. Boors’ night out. You know what else builds community? Audience participation, on the audience’s terms. For one performance of each show, invite the crowd to behave like an Elizabethan or vaudeville audience: Sell cheap tickets, serve popcorn, encourage people to boo, heckle, and shout out their favorite lines. (”Stella!”) The sucky, facile Rocky Horror Picture Show only survives because it’s the only play people are encouraged to mess with. Steal the gimmick.

I am hesitant to agree with this. I think there are some great shows that this can work and if a theater wants to explore melodrama (maybe Greek plays) than this might be suitable. I am not sure beyond that.

9. Expect poverty. Theater is a drowning man, and its unions—in their current state—are anvils disguised as life preservers. Theater might drown without its unions, but it will certainly drown with them. And actors have to jettison the living-wage argument. Nobody deserves a living wage for having talent and a mountain of grad-school debt. Sorry.

When referring to fringe theaters I agree there is no money to be had for any of the artists there. Work done is for the love of the art and to grow as artists. I do not think this comment should apply to the bigger regional theaters.

10. Drop out of graduate school. Most of you students in MFA programs don’t belong there—your two or three years would be more profitable, financially and artistically, out in the world, making theater. Drama departments are staffed by has-beens and never-weres, artists who might be able to tell you something worthwhile about the past, but not about the present, and certainly not about the future. Historians excepted—art historians are great. If things don’t turn around, they may be the only ones left.

Interesting comment in light of what I have been writing about the Rutgers MFA acting program. I do think more artists are going into financial debt over education which will catch up to them much like the sub-prime loans and housing bubble. Those artists will have to work more to pay off those debts and that means less time creating art. I think all artists need some education how to live financially simple.  And also be encouraged that doing the work is very important.

Filed under: Acting, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Shakespeare, Theater/Theatre
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Oregon Shakespeare Festival…a decade later

April 13, 2008 by dennisbaker 

It looks like I will be able to visit the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in early May. The last time I was there was my senior year of high school, a decade ago. That still sounds weird. A group from my high school would take yearly trips. I went my sophomore through my senior year and also attended the Summer Seminar for High School Juniors. The seminar was a two week submersion to all things Shakespeare. We took classes and seminars on everything from acting to theater management to costumes and various other responsibilities that go into running a huge theater. We also had the opportunity to see every show that was running. Between my school visit and coming back for the summer I got to see every show they produced that year. Great shows including Death of a Salesman, Blues for an Alabama Sky, King Lear, Rough Crossing and Pentecost.

There will be five shows running for the two days that I will be there: Fences, Coriolanus, A Midsummer’s Night Dream, Welcome Home Jenny Sutter, and The Clay Cart.

midsummer play pictureOf that list the only play I have seen is Midsummer and I saw it ten years ago at OSF. From the picture and reading reviews this production is a high energy, sex romp that seems to hit on many decades. Bill Varble of the Mail Tribune says, ” The fairies are the key. They live in and represent an alternative world that exists next to and intermingles with the workaday world of Athens and the Court. If we believe in the fairies, the play’s world comes to life. f the fairies are timeless, the humans are living in a late-’50s-to-early-’80s kind of time. The young lovers — Emily Sophia Knapp as Hermia, Tasso Feldman as Lysander, Christopher Michael Rivera as Demetrius, Kjerstine Anderson as Helena — are as lusty and confused and foolish as ever. f these fools seem to spend most of their time in the dawn of the Reagan years, the Mechanicals are ’60s holdovers, stoners maybe, in over their heads without being over the top. Ray Potter as Bottom finds a balance between amiable befuddlement and simple dignity. This ‘Midsummer’ is a spectacular kickoff of the Bill Rauch era at the festival, and more. It is a revelation.” In true repertory spirit Ray Porter play Puck in the last Midsummers and now he is playing Bottom. I am definitely curious.

fences playFences is another play I am excited to see. I have not been able to see an August Wilson play yet and having read The Piano Lesson I do enjoy his writing. This production, one of the cycle’s two Pulitzer Prize-winners, offers a complex and emotionally wrenching portrait of a man hopelessly bound by duty and outdated values to a life of few rewards. The review at the Ardest Forest Inn website says, “In a riveting performance, Charles Robinson is extraordinary in his portrayal of Troy Maxson, pitting his traditional mind-set against the period’s dramatic social change to maintain firm control over his family. Ultimately, this flawless, stimulating and unforgettable theatrical experience, under Leah C. Gardiner’s honest, sure-handed direction delivers a seamless blend of theatrical elements that’s destined to make a memorable mark in OSF history and should not be missed!”

Welcome Home Jenny Sutter playWelcome Home, Jenny Sutter is directed by Award-winning Chicago director Jessica Thebus and is about U.S. Marine Jenny Sutter returns from Iraq, she lays down her rifle but isn’t ready to pick up her children. Buying some time, Jenny takes a one-way trip to nowhere–a desert community where misfit residents gently nurture her wounded spirit and nudge her back to her own humanity. It is written by Julie Marie Myatt. Varble mentions, “The real antagonists are Jenny’s pain — she’s not only missing a piece of her leg, she keeps a terrible secret — and a world that doesn’t want to hear about it. We like our invasions shocking and awesome, our occupations short and sweet, our wars to be winners. We pass the cost down to our children and move on.

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NYCAP & Baltimore Shakespeare Festival

February 29, 2008 by dennisbaker 

I attended my first New York Casting Access Project (NYCAP) that is run by the Screen Actors Guild Foundation. It is free casting workshops for SAG actors to meet and read for New York casting directors. Liz Ortiz-Mackes from Casting Solutions was the casting director at this workshop. She has a great, positive energy. It was great to interact with industry again and meet positive people. She had some great things to say and what I held onto was the idea than an actor needs to be inspired for their work to be inspiring. So much of this environment is negative and being in that negative place for the last year and half, it felt like fresh water to be with someone who was positive and respectful. The read went well. She could tell that I had a strong theater background and thought that I took the adjustment really well. It’s nice to start building a professional contact list in New York.

I also went down to Baltimore to audition for the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival. They open their season with two outdoor summer shows, Twelfth Night and Taming of the Shrew. I read for both directors and the experience was great. They have a great indoor stage at a church. The directors asked to see a contemporary monologue and was asking questions about my callback availability, always a good sign. So much so, I will be heading down there this Sunday for callbacks for Twelfth Night. I’m excited because this is a show I have never done, and just fully read it today. I have not heard yet what role I was called back. i saw outdoor pictures from past shows and the outdoor space looks beautiful as well. The one catch is they do not provide housing. I am going to send out feelers to east coast people to see if they know anyone in Baltimore. The rehearsal and performances span five to six weeks, so if all else fails maybe I can get a room to rent through craigslist. I am going to worry about getting a part first.

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Filed under: Acting, Auditioning, New York, Shakespeare
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Hitting the Pavement

January 29, 2008 by dennisbaker 

Life is busy! I was the city three days last week for drop offs, design interviews, auditions, and classes. I have been doing some “strategic” drop offs to casting directors. What is great about New York is I can walk/take the subway and do three or four drop offs in an hour, which would have taken two hours or more in LA. I also had a three hour callback for Romeo & Juliet at the Pax Amicus Castle Theater. It was intense, but fun. The most difficult thing was that it was my first audition. They called me into a callback straight from my headshot, which was nice, but I did feel like the underdog. They went into rehearsal today, and I did not get the call. It was good to work on the skills I am learning from John Basil at the American Globe Conservatory. John is one of the best teachers I have had in a long time and would highly recommend him.

On the web design front I had an interview with fusionlab. I felt the interview went well and the job is a perfect fit for me. Hopefully I will hear from them soon. I have also been interning over at Slideluck Potshow, helping them as they are doing a major update to their website. Things are even getting busier so stay tuned…

Filed under: Acting, New York, Shakespeare, Web Design
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I’m back!

January 19, 2008 by dennisbaker 

I have been not in the mindset of blogging of late. Some things in life took a turn and caused me to doubt many things about career choices, life choices, etc. The short of it was that I was dismissed from the MFA acting program at Rutgers. The details are too l long to go into here. If anyone is applying to the program, and comes across this blog, I am willing to give you the details if you email me.

I am back in the professional world and trying to get my barrings. On the day job end I have been applying for entry level web design positions in the city while taking online classes to boost my skills. I have had a couple of interviews and sign up with a couple of creative temp agencies, so hopefully something will stick soon.

As for acting, I am starting to learn NYC and the players there. It is slow going, and there are times I wish I was back in LA where I knew the industry better. I am doing a lot of research, reading blogs from NY actors, sign up with the SAG Foundation for free casting workshops, and submitting for auditions. I recently submitted headshots to all the background casting agents in the city. If I can get three days of extra work then I can join Actor’s Equity, which is key for New York. Most of the theater here is equity where that was not always the case in LA. Three days might not seem like that much, but with the writer’s strike going on, film/tv work is slow to none.

Lastly, I am currently taking a three week Shakespeare Intensive with Jon Basil at the American Globe Theater. I am auditioning for USD, Cal State Fullerton, and the Academy for Classical Acting at the Shakespeare Theater in DC. The class is great and something I recommend if you are looking.

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Hamlet Picture from Rehearsal

November 28, 2007 by dennisbaker 

Filed under: Acting, New York, Shakespeare, Theater/Theatre
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Hamlet: Backstage Review

May 19, 2007 by dennisbaker 

The backstage review of Hamlet is in, see below:

Backstage Review

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Hamlet

May 18, 2007 by dennisbaker 

For those who have seen the homepage of my website in the last couple of weeks you know that I am in a performance of Hamlet. I was asked by the director Chris Carter Sanderson (fiancee to one of my classmates) to play the role of Marcellus. It has been fun and an educational experience doing a workshop off-off-Broadway production. The reason it is a workshop performance is because Chris wants to put the show up again off-Broadway in 2008. Before then he will go to Iraq for a year as part of the navy reserve. One reason that he is doing that is to raise money for the theater company he founded, Gorilla Repertory.

The show is an uncut version of Hamlet which marks the show at about three hours and ten minutes. This is with no intermission…sort of. One thing Gorilla Rep. is known for is having the audience take their own intermission. Audience members are free to come and go as they choose, and with an uncut Shakespeare a plot point is usually repeated three times and therefore no one will miss anything. Gorilla Rep. usually performs outdoors in the summer time, and I think this intermission ideas goes great with outdoor theater as there are many avenues to get up, walk around, grab a bite to eat. Unfortunately we are doing this show indoors and with only one door to leave from (and it being so near the stage) audience members are hesitant to leave, which for some makes a very long show.

My role is done at the end of Act I so I usually go home after that. With an hour train ride it is nice to get in at 10pm verses midnight if I stayed for the curtain call. Below are the links to the reviews from NY Times and nytheatre.com. Karen and school friends gave me congrats for making my name in the NY Times. Which I responded, you have not arrived in theater until you get a bad review in the NY Times.

NY Times Review
nytheatre.com review
Time Out article

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