I just got back from “over the pond” and wanted to tell you about two terrific productions I saw – one at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the other in a small theatre in the West End of London.
RADIUM GIRLS
DW Gregory, a wonderful writer from my D.C. playwrights group posted on Facebook that her most popular play “Radium Girls” was getting its first outing at the Fringe, courtesy of a group of young actors from a high school in England. I just happened to be in Scotland during its play dates and told her I’d take the train from Glasgow to represent her.
This was my first Fringe experience. Unlike Glasgow, where few Americans could be found, Edinburgh was overrun with Yanks, there for the theatre festival, the book festival, and because Edinburgh was the only place on their list unless they were chasing down film spots for “Harry Potter” or “Outlander.”
(True confessions: I did take an “Outlander” tour with a guide who was a Jamie knockoff.)
Patrons lined the staircase, waiting to get into the show.
The theatre was on the fourth floor of an office building near the shopping district – a simple black box with perhaps 50 folding chairs for the audience.
The simple set was most effective – neon “Brat” green light glowed from boxes that became tables and stools, and a chain link fence that separated the company of actors from the audience, hung with props and costumes.
The play is based on a true story about the young women who died of radiation poisoning from licking their brushes as they painted the glow-in-the-dark dials of clocks and watches.
The actors were terrific, but my favorite part was hearing the wide spectrum of American accents. (Is this what American actors sound like when using an “English” accent?)
The “kids” were thrilled that their playwright had sent an emissary to see their production and DW was happy with the pictures from the production.
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
I considered the plethora of West End musicals playing in London, but nothing tempted me.
And then I read a review of “Pride and Prejudice.”
As a Janeite and English County Dance aficionado (with three ball gowns in my closet) how could I not attend?
That’s me on the left.
Again, the venue resembled our own 99-seat theatres. My seat was front row – so close to the actors, I had to keep moving my feet so that Mr. Darcy wouldn’t trip.
Abigail Pickard Price both adapted and directed the Guildford Shakespeare Company’s sparkling production.
And here’s my favorite part: just three actors performed the entire play! April Hughes played Lizzie…and Mr. Bingley. (Her credits include playing Moaning Myrtle in the hit West End show “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.”) Guildford co-founder Sarah Gobran played Mary, Charlotte, and Mrs. Bennet. And Oxford-trained Luke Barton played Mr. Bennet, the Reverend Collins, and of course, Mr. Darcy. Sigh.
And it really worked! I’ve seen every adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice” ever produced, but the adaptation managed to condense and highlight parts of the book I’d forgotten. Authentic English Country Dance choreography punctuated the scene shifts. The 140 minute evening whizzed by, even with numerous costume changes. If this version isn’t snapped up by an American theatre desperate for a small cast that would pack the house with a female audience, I’d be shocked.
I wish I’d written it.
Kitty Felde’s most produced play “A Patch of Earth” (a Bosnian war crimes story) was also produced in Great Britain by a talented troupe of high school thespians.
In between the acts of routine and a hard-lined schedule, my body becomes numb. I hold a series of thoughts that refuse to reveal moments of clarity. The body cannot find rest and the mind roams. To quiet the noise she writes, she goes back in time, for her body holds onto what she can’t understand.
These days I whisper hard to hear truths.
I alter time so my eyes bear witness to hidden atrocities.
Daringly, I move through space holding and releasing the stories of exiled women.
To the brave souls occupying space in Sudan, Palestine, and Ukraine:
It may seem as though your fight for a free life goes unnoticed, misunderstood, or not heard at all. Yet, we see you fighting, we hear your piercing cries for freedom that ring as loudly as church bells on Sunday morning.
These days I dream of running the 8,397 miles to Sudan, walking the 6,414 miles to Ukraine
Or crawling the 7,562 miles into Palestine to hold hands with those faces who go unseen.
I see the bloody face of an old woman shouting out her husband’s name.
I hear the howling cries of the mother holding the remains of her daughter as blood runs down the crowded street.
These days I hold onto the voice of the little girl who stands in rubble as she talks into a camera about her hopes and dreams for the future of her country.
I pray for the woman dancing in the streets holding the ‘Free Palestine’ cardboard poster proudly above her head.
I understand having less, fearing tomorrow, and surviving today.
Tonight I do not light a candle in memory of those who have passed.
I shall not shed a tear for the unspoken names whose bodies go unclaimed.
Instead, I’ll write, create, and move to remember your profound ability to continue toward the light.
____________
‘Quay’ she called with her soft melodious voice bringing familiar comfort.
I knew Her right away //
This delicate yet statuesque woman of bold proportions…
her smooth skin as clear as the midnight sky.
She—the woman whose hands had rubbed my back while soothing my soul night after night |
days not so long ago.
Me—A woman child still in need of her mother’s touch.
A woman child still needing to hear her mother’s patio chime laughter.
Her She Me //
Mother
Daughter
Strangers.
Or perhaps
long-
lost friends
_________
*A note from within:
Finding the work is living between trust and letting go.
This summer felt a little Twilight Zone-y. I got the opportunity to travel to Valdez, Alaska for the annual conference there and to Ivins, Utah for the Kayenta New Play Lab — both for readings of my play The Abundance.
The play, as I’ve come around to understanding, is a horror play, though, like most things I write, I didn’t know it was horror until I shared it with a wider group of people. In one feedback session after a reading in Utah, an audience member said that the play was a like an extended Twilight Zone episode written at the height of Rod Serling’s abilities. And I truly can’t think of a better compliment I have ever (or will ever) receive.
Why am I sharing this? For bragging rights? Maybe. Partly because the way new play development goes these days, this may be the last time this play is ever performed in front of an audience. It may disappear as swiftly and suddenly as Lt. Harrington in Season 1 Episode 11 of The Twilight Zone. So I have to try to hold on to the moments that mean something to me. That make me feel like I succeeded in getting something across and clear, at least to one person.
The author Lincoln Michel wrote an article recently about the fleeting and fickle nature of literary (and in our case theatrical) fame and memory. Who decides what lasts, what is remembered, what continues to be seen, produced, read years from now. You won’t recognize the books on the best sellers list from 1924, nor probably the plays produced on stages then. Why should we assume anything we create will have meaning in 2124? And there’s an unsettling feeling in that realization. And a freeness.
Many of the episodes of The Twilight Zone that I love are about the desire for more time, about figuring out how to let go or being plucked from existence or entering a new plane of reality altogether or being forced to experience something over and over again. They are about the smallness of the horror of our existence — the beauty and terror of things that matter so much to our little lives and how they are swallowed up by the outside world.
I guess I’m ruminating on this because I don’t get invited to conferences and new play labs very often, and until its proven otherwise this may be the last summer it ever happens. It was a strange summer — to feel like I was in community with people who cared about the work, and to also feel like I don’t know where theatre is going, that it has more often than not been a fickle partner in this life, and I can’t count on it. Theatre still thinks she is quite important even in the yawning maw of everything else happening in the world. And I want to believe her when she says so, but I suppose I’m trying to stake less and less of my identity in that notion.
All I can do is enjoy the red mountains of Southern Utah, and the endless waterfalls of Alaska, and the little bit of laughter and applause that echo across them, and try to ignore that maybe I’m living in an extended Twilight Zone episode, and the moment I say out loud that there’s time enough at last…time will have run out. In case we get to the end of the episode and find out theatre was only a rumor or an illusion by Fate or an alien experiment. Or the last pitch we make to Death himself before we take his hand.
There have been earthquakes over here, shaking up my house of cards. Strange how they aren’t actually falling from their perches one upon the other, row upon row. Almost as if glued in place, they stand. Yet in the background, I can hear glass shattering from my past Northridge earthquake memories, leaving shards of glass on the bookshelf from the one broken item – my high school prom token. The glass shattered from the sheer sound of the earth shifting. The wine glass read, “Looks like we made it” from the Barry Manilow song by that name, it’s words lingering in the air:
Looks like we made it Left each other on the way to another love Looks like we made it Or I thought so ’til today…
I kept the shattered token for months till I just couldn’t anymore. It was like the shattering negated something – like it stopped it in motion and throwing it away would make it final…
The past is either haunting me or resurrecting the unfinished need-to-be-finished things.
And I wonder why the cards weren’t falling…
Wonder how much more before the dam breaks and the cards come toppling down on themselves?
I keep wondering if the quake was stopping a motion or restarting something this time… if it’s a good, good or bad, bad vibration.
The heat is always sweltering before the quakes. I’ve been dehydrated for weeks. Forgetting to drink water. Forgetting to eat. Passing out. Not so much from the heat of the day as the heat of the memories, feeling I became nothing of what I dreamed I would. Feeling like sharded glass on a shelf. Hoping I will make it to another dream or the full awakening of an old one. Maybe that’s why the cards are still standing; we’re gonna make it this time, and Phyllis (Hyman) will be singing,
Old friend This is where our happy ending begins Yes, I’m sure this time that we’re gonna win Welcome back into my life again
And my house, this house, stacked upon itself, will no longer be built of cards…
I’m sharing an image for this blog that my husband, Eric Boyd, created some years ago, and it’s a favorite of mine. The model for this beautiful image was my sister, Barbara. Eric’s legacy of artwork, in images and art glass pieces, reminds me of our evolving viewpoint, and how we frame our perception of the world.
The world has changed in profound ways in the last two weeks. I’m referring to politics, of course, and to Kamala Harris now running for president, and the newly energized Democratic Party. But I’m also referring to how I see the world, how it feels. I’m curious to see how this viewpoint will change how I write, how I grieve, how I experience theater, and how I look at character development again.
I’ve dreaded this election – the ongoing political maelstrom was depressing, infuriating, and my feeble efforts to become involved again as a pollster/volunteer seemed futile. Last year I stepped away from writing. I was finishing a script that I was initially enthused about, but writing with grief as a partner found me profoundly lost. So I just stopped writing.
In the past few months I’ve started to write again, this time working with a fiction writer’s group and it’s a very different dynamic – one I’m enjoying – although I refer to the feedback of the other writers as “puppy dogs and rattlesnakes”. (I miss my playwright comrades too.) This style of writing is a bit like wearing someone else’s clothes: they fit funny, look funny, and get a completely different response. I’m continually reminded about the crucial value of dialogue: words being offered and a change taking place because of that dynamic. And viewpoints being changed because of that interaction. Perhaps like politics this year.
Many years ago, I was cast in a movie , A LITTLE DEATH, based on THE DECAMERON, stories by Giovanni Boccaccio, written in response to the plague of 1348. I have mostly forgotten it, and misplaced most of the production stills from that project. But I recently saw that Netflix is showing a version of THE DECAMERON this month. And it reminded me of a moment that changed me.
At one point in the filming of A LITTLE DEATH, I asked the director why he was so focused on including a lit candle in the shot. It seemed all the effort to balance the light for this brief image was unnecessary. We were filming at Hammond Castle, and it was cold and damp and it was a thirteen hour day, and the crew was tired. That’s when he told me: “It’s all in the frame. How we see it, what we see, what we understand. It’s all in the frame.”
That was a moment of zen for me. I looked at this busy, crowded set where everyone just wanted to get to the next shot. And he was looking at one image, and what was revealed in the frame of the shot. How we frame what we see, how that tells us the story of what we include and focus on. It changed me.
I don’t know that the image of the lit candle created much meaning for the movie. I don’t even know if that image was included in the final version. But it was important to him. His artistry was trying to find – I don’t know – symbols? atmosphere? overtime? But I do know that he created beautiful images in the lightning and filming of this project; and I really admired what he created. (His name is Alan Ritsko, he was a Managing Director at NOVA, and he wrote the book, literally, on lighting for motion pictures: Lighting for location motion pictures: https://a.co/d/3Ec06Uu)
So – when Kamala Harris became the nominee for the Democrats – just two weeks ago – it changed how I saw the election. It changed how I saw where I belonged. So, it became for me, something that was “all in the frame”.
I managed to find two images of a young 19 year old Cynthia, from that film. I wish I remembered where I saved the rest of the production stills.
These still images from A LITTLE DEATH were taken by the photographer Francesca Morgante, who worked with Alan Ritsko on the set.
Even with all the chaos and noise in the political world,I’m going to try to find focus and meaning in the months ahead. I’m going to try to keep writing. I hope you do too.
You are traveling to a place you have not been for a long time, but think of often. The anticipation of memory is shimmering within you, cascading like starlight down your arms, then back up again to your mouth where you can’t help but smile. You arrive. The sidewalks have new cracks, the tree is smaller. Or is it larger? Is it the same tree – it must be. There is no way it can’t be, you haven’t been gone that long. But how long, exactly, does it take a tree to change? Surely it must take a great deal of time. No, it’s the same, you’re sure of it. This is the same place. But it’s different. You’re different. This is not how you left.
Sometimes, writing feels this way.
The pages and pages of fiction I’ve written stare back at me – “always strong dialogue” my favorite writing teacher would say. Strong dialogue, a playwright’s bread and butter. Some days I don’t really recognize the theater anymore. What compels a playwright to decide to ask a question in her plays? To write so many words, all at once.
It never stops being strange, to go through the draft of something, or onto the next ten pages trying to figure out where you left off. Half the time I don’t know what happened in the pages I wrote yesterday. I know there is a plot because I know my craft is at a point where it is somewhat automatic. It still remains jarring. What did my characters even do a twenty pages ago? I guess I’ll have to go back and read. Sometimes even twenty pages ago isn’t something I recognize.
We love to talk about discipline in writing. Consistency, habits, routine, can you write fifty-thousand words in one month? It feels like a cage to even write that sentence. What I wish we talked about more is the shedding of skin, learning to deal with our own inevitable evolution. If a format isn’t working for you anymore, stop. Powering through is exhausting. Perhaps sometimes we need to change the medium, not our work. Do not be afraid to change containers when one will no longer fit. Poems, prose, fiction, or plays, it’s all fair game. You’ll ask playwright questions without even meaning to. It’s just what we do.
It’s the same tree, after all. It’s just how you see it now.
In Dido of Idaho, playwright Abby Rosebrock challenges her main character, Nora, and audiences to change the stories we tell ourselves, by framing Nora’s tale in a story many of us know so well: the Myth of Dido & Aeneas (wherein the Queen of Carthage falls desperately and tragically in love with the Trojan hero Aeneas).
Abby is a Brooklyn-based writer and actress from South Carolina. Her work has been commissioned, developed and produced throughout New York City and across the country. Other full-length works include Wilma, Blue Ridge, Singles in Agriculture, Monks Corner and Ruby the Freak in the Woods. Abigail Deser directs the West Coast premiere of Dido of Idaho, produced by The Echo Theater Company. Dido of Idaho is a dark comedy about “the lengths to which a woman might go for the love of a good man.”
I wrote to Abby about the production to learn more about her process, the inspiration of the Grecian story of Dido and Aeneas, and balancing the weight of economic inequities with humor and grief.
Carolina Xique: What inspired you to write this piece and how has it grown since its inception?
Abby Rosebrock
Abby Rosebrock: Recently, I read a piece on the filmmaker Catherine Breillat that said she’s exploring the way heterosexuality deranges women. I was like “Damn, well said.”
That’s kind of exactly what I was trying to do with Dido of Idaho, though in a completely different mode, when I wrote it. But there were a million other motives and inspirations. I’d had a long-standing desire to work with the Dido myth, which had been haunting me since I first came across [Henry] Purcell’s music in high school and Virgil’s poem in college.
Recurring dreams I was having about my mother found their way into the play, too. And another impetus was the desire to write some wild female leads that were funnier than I’d seen before. As far as the piece’s growth, I think the story has gotten sharper over the years. Seeing it come to life in different regions and contexts has helped me zero in on what’s essential in the story and prune away the rest.
Alana Deitze and Joby Earle – Photo by Makela Yepez Photography
Carolina: You say that you wanted to “write about a woman who feels hopeless of ever being loved, and to imagine a way out of that for her.” How have the references to the elements of the story of Dido & Aeneas brought this piece to life?
Abby: I love the portrayals of Dido in both Purcell and Virgil. They’re gorgeously crafted and I think largely very empathetic. Of course, in those versions, Dido is destroyed, and I wanted to write a story about a woman who survives. But those works very much inform the play; Purcell’s music and narrative elements from Virgil are woven into the script. The myth has literally determined the course of Nora’s life, insofar as she’s a musicologist who studies the opera for her livelihood.
She’s also living out a narrative of abandonment and annihilation in her romantic relationship. So it’s a play about how painful it is to be trapped inside of a compelling but ultimately destructive story about oneself. I think everyone struggles with that at some point or another. How do you break out of some terrible intoxicating pattern and start creating a life you love?
Nicole DuPort and Alana Dietze – Photo by Makela Yepez Photography
Carolina: What has the rehearsal process been like and how have your thoughts about the play evolved?
Abby: It started with a Zoom reading that was instrumental in helping me evolve the script. I feel I have a more objective relationship to the story and characters than I’ve ever had. And I’ve loved being in conversation with this team across the time zones.
Carolina: How has it been, balancing the hilarity and the weight of the themes you’re dealing with?
Abby: It was a doozy to write. I’d be confronting memories that brought up deep grief, and then I’d try to crack myself up with jokes to snap out of it. So the script has this quality of vacillating between darkness and delight. Hopefully that makes for a fun and rewarding creative process, even though it demands a lot from everyone.
Carolina: And why this play today, right now?
Julie Dretzin and Elissa Middleton – Photo by Makela Yepez Photography
Abby: There’s an economic context to the play that often escapes notice but that shapes everyone’s actions. The only person in the play with a stable income is Michael, a tenured professor at a university. His wife and his lover are both pathologically attached to him because they see him as a source of security—not just emotional but material security. Nora’s brilliant and has a job but her life is especially precarious; Michael’s wife, Crystal, a teacher who desperately wants a kid, wouldn’t have the funds to raise children on her own. And her mother is ill, so medical bills loom over the story. These characters long for a partner to the point of self-destruction because the future for a broke single woman in America is so bleak.
If there’s one timely argument I hope people take away, it’s that economic inequality brings out everyone’s worst instincts and creates immense suffering. Nora triumphs insofar as she becomes a person who can see this economy for what it is and stand for something different.
“Dido of Idaho” plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Sundays at 4 p.m.; and Mondays at 8 p.m. through August 26 at Atwater Village Theatre, located at 3269 Casitas Ave in Los Angeles, CA 90039.. All Monday night performances are pay-what-you-want. For more information and to purchase tickets, call (747) 350-8066 or go to www.EchoTheaterCompany.com.
Know a female or FPI-friendly theater, company or artist? Contact us at [email protected] & check out The FPI Files for more stories.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been creating a one act play I was commissioned to write about the legacy of writer Dr. Maya Angelou.
It’s been amazing getting to know her.
It’s not just a play either. The project is comprised of several unique storytelling tools that fill up (and out) the world in which Dr. Maya Angelou has directly and indirectly impacted throughout her life. Using dance, music, poetry, rap, critical fabulation, call and response, rep/rev and vignettes that were built using motifs collected from interviews, books and poetry.
One of the most alarming facts about approaching this project is that I didn’t know shit about Dr. Maya Angelou. She’s not glorified in the university like her peers James Baldwin or Toni Morrison. We didn’t learn about her in elementary school either; only Malcolm X and MLK (her personal friends). But though I’ve never learned about her, I’ve always known her. Like Hip-Hop or saying hella. This is just my culture. I never had to learn about her because she was always there. Tupac. E40. Maya Angelou. I remember seeing her in the film Poetic Justice and I already knew her name by then. I was only 3 or 4 when I saw the movie. My mom coming in during the Bar-b-q scene to let me and my sister know Maya Angelou wrote all the poetry in the movie.
Before this project, I only really knew two things about her. The first is that she was a poet. The second is that she was kinda family. My aunty fell in love with Bailey, Maya Angelou’s big brother. She’s from the Bay too you know? She is the godmother to my cousin but I had never met her. Everybody know somebody that know somebody in the Bay. So I never met her.
Still. I knew why the caged bird sang. A film my teacher put on for the last day of middle school. No one was really watching. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t there.
Maya Angelou
I have learned so much about her. I love what I’ve learned. She was so good with children’s poetry, which is so hard to write, but she wasn’t only a writer who wrote poems for 10 year olds to recite at their 5th grade promotion.
She was a teen mother A sex worker A SA survivor A singer An activist A actress A filmmaker A director too. A friend A lover (to many) A voice A body A mute child An Aries (like me) A fighter
I love her so much. I believe I met her right when I needed to. Her complex love life was interesting and fascinating to pay attention to. She was married and remarried and dated and re-dated all the men she wanted to. And refused to stay with them if the love was lost.
Her best friend was her son Guy who was often asked if he felt like he grew up in his mother’s shadow at which he responded “I grew up in her light,” and I love that.
One of my skills as a writer is my ability to use critical fabulation to tell stories in vignettes. These collections are no different. Most of the vignettes (like Comb Your Hair) take on an approach of addressing a personal, historical and lyrical narrative all in one bite. I didn’t know that was a skill I could be proud of. She’s helped me be a stronger storyteller and writer and researcher.
I feel so seen.
I hope this body of work touches all of us who need her the most.
From one poet To one mother To one lover To one teacher To one person struggling to tell the truth
I’m wrapping up my week here with an excerpt from my article on why American Theatre is falling apart. It’s a long read (grab your beverage of choice and find a comfy spot to sit for a little while) but I think it’s a useful perspective and it contains actionable steps, so like, it’s not just an “idea” paper, you dig? And then, after you’ve had time to digest, let me know what you think! I’m all about the conversation because nothing survives in a vacuum.
EXCERPT FROM “THEATRE’S EMPTY TRIANGLE”
THE TWEET
Listen, theatre is not inherently a public good. Yes, we say we welcome everyone, but we don’t. There are gatekeepers all over the fucking place, companies get tribal, artists get catty and resentful, ticket prices go up and up and up (not to mention the cost of parking!)… none of this is actually welcoming. What theatre is, (not due to a philosophy, but rather due to its very operation) is collaborative. It takes oodles of people to make a play. And that does mean it has the potential to bring people together. But we have to stop assuming that community is a given. Community is an action.
And that’s why your theatre space, should you own one, needs to be MORE than just a theatre space. It needs to be a third space. It needs to have a coffee shop or wine bar, or sandwich shop… it needs to have reading nooks and community art space, and live music and OPEN FUCKING DOORS. It needs to be integrated into the community — not just plopped down somewhere and offered as a culture stop “because culture is good for you!” Like we’re some kind of soul vitamin.
Theatre can be a soul vitamin, if it wants to, and if it is looked at as an act of service. And I don’t mean it has to be volunteer — service organizations can still pay their personnel. But the inherent philosophy and its actions/engagement need to shore up. If you just want to make plays for people, you ain’t a vitamin; you’re popcorn.
And I like popcorn! I really do! But I don’t need popcorn, you know what I’m saying?
Anyway, what follows is basically a manifesto of sorts, with diagrams, asides, and a lot of research (as much as I could get done, anyway… no one is paying me to write this) And I’m going to be honest: I started working on this before the pandemic, but then the world went sideways and the whole goddamn theatre system screeched to a halt. I almost had a (much more academic version) of what you’re about to read published during year one of the pandemic, but the book fell through, so now I’m publishing here (with a fair bit of swearing) because fuck it. Maybe it will be useful.
FOREWORD
I’m going to start things off with an anecdote. The story is not my own, rather it was told to me years ago and stuck. I’ve employed it in various lesson plans and teaching moments over the years, but it feels especially apropos here.
The story goes like this: A mother is making ham dinner for Easter. She gets out the ham, cuts it in half, places each half into a different baking pan, and puts both in the oven. Her daughter watches all this and asks “Mom, why do you always cut the ham in half?” The mother brushes the question off with “Because that’s how you bake a ham.” Her daughter presses her “I’ve never seen anyone else bake ham that way.” Her mother laughs, “Well, that’s how I’ve always done it.” Her daughter isn’t satisfied though: “Are you trying to cut down the cook time or something?” The mother pauses, annoyed, but realizes in her irritation, that she doesn’t know why she cuts the ham in half. It’s how her mother had taught her to bake ham, and that’s that. She tells her daughter that the reduced cook time is probably the answer, now can they get back to preparing Easter dinner, please?
But the question sticks with the mother, because she doesn’t like not knowing the answer. So that night she calls her mother long distance and after the usual “How do you do’s” and “Happy Easter” chit chat, she asks her why you need to cut a ham in half in order to bake it. Her mother laughs, and says “You don’t.” The woman insists: “But, that’s how you always made ham. And how you taught me to make it!” Her mother thinks a moment… then answers “Are you talking about when you were growing up? In our old house? I had to cut things in half because the oven was so short. Are you still cutting things in half? Lord, that’s funny!” The woman, red cheeked, thanks her mother and never cuts the Easter ham in half again.
The prevailing theatre model in the US is one that’s been handed down to us. Its design, and the circumstances under which this system was codified, belong to generations past. And yet, we continue to recreate this model again, and again, because “that’s how we’ve always done it.”
And oh lord, are we paying for it now, or what?
Theatres across the country are shuttering their doors, hitting “pause”, and laying off staff in a desperate bid to diagnose the problem so that it can try drafting a cure. But the very system pausing itself, excising its extremities and furloughing its life-blood in the hopes of rebranding, rebooting, and resurrecting itself, IS the problem.
Maybe we should just let it burn?
Because then, like the phoenix rising from its ashes, theatremakers will be able to repurpose the “Theatre That Was” (beautiful, yes, but also transactional, classist, patriarchal, and racist) into the thing that theatre might become: ubiquitous, transformational, inclusive, and sustainable.
And it begins by admitting we’re not all working with the same oven.
THE EMPTY TRIANGLE
So, non-profit Theatre in America — which is a big goddamn country, huge even! — looks pretty homogeneous. Whether it’s a LORT theatre, a community theatre, or something in-between, if it’s a non-profit theatre, chances are good that the organization follows a predictably hierarchal order of operations. Which means it’s probably got a number of administrators working an insane number of hours to keep the theatre operational via ticket sales, grants, and donations. At every level these administrators make choices with the best of intentions: To stay open! So that we can make more theatre! But this top-down model comes with a host of problems — chief among them being that it grants administrators power over the artists they employ while also rewarding themselves with greater financial security.
Which, in brev-speak, boils down to this:
Theatre’s administrators, the granting organizations/big donors they must suck-up to, and the critics/tastemakers who whisper-shout about it all, are Theatre’s Gatekeepers. They have the Power.
The artists and audience are the only truly necessary part of the Theatre puzzle, but they only get to play if/when the Gatekeepers say so. They make the Magic.
It’s easy to get stuck inside a system of power, know that it’s fucked up, but not be able to pinpoint WHY. Well, here you go, eyeballs — do your thing:
Yes — this is a visual map of the American Theatre Industrial Complex. Ain’t it pretty? Here’s what you’re looking at:
The map diagrams what each of the primary “players” in American Theatre bring to the proverbial party. The cast includes Funders, Theatre Administrators, The Critical Eye, Creators, and Observers. All five of these entities work in service of bringing plays to life in what I have dubbed The Shared Space of Ephemeral Magic (which is just a really fun way to talk about the physical place where Art and Audience meet).
The whole system relies on ideas, prestige, and money to operate. In tracking each entity’s “Power Lines”, you can see what everyone brings into, and takes away from, the Shared Space.
And, as you look at the diagram, you can probably SEE why everything feels broken right now: inequity is literally baked into our prevailing model, making it nearly impossible for any of us to create with equity at the center of our work.
So yeah, it’s pretty clear why we’re all so fucking frustrated.
And yes, there are very real financial reasons theatre currently works the way it does, but the diagram shows us that there are under-valued nexus points already in play in the predominant operating model which we can refocus our energies into mobilizing.
So, if you’re still with me, I’m going to spend a little time breaking the model down for you and address the obvious questions (Why are you calling it the Empty Triangle? What the heck is the Invisible Triangle? Power lines? What? Do you honestly think you can do better?)
To the last point: Yes, and this whole thing ends with a push for us to invest in an Abundant Circle model of practice instead. So hang with me a bit, and then ya’ll can chew things over and decide for yourselves what — if anything — you want to do about it.
Who’s feeling good about the election? You? Your mom? Aunt Sal? Anyone?
No, I didn’t think so. This moment SUCKS. And we’re exhausted. But we’re also artists. And making art (whether we think of it this way or not) is never NOT a political act. This election is going to suck the life out of many of us if we aren’t careful. But also, we gotta engage hardcore if we don’t want to wake up in a 2025 hellscape.
In 2016 I started Protest Plays Project, which established a really great network of theatremakers who were invested in theatre for social change projects. We created catalogs of protest plays that received readings around the country, and we also created a “Get out the Vote” play initiative. It was a really satisfying way of engaging and activating audiences – but I don’t have the bandwidth to operate the same way I did in my early Protest Plays Project days (kids, amiright?). So I’d like to propose we write our little activist hearts out, post them to New Play Exchange, and push our little protest play babies out into the world from there.
Who’s with me?
THE PROPOSAL: Playwrights write short action oriented plays and upload to NPX using “Get Out the Vote” or “Protest Plays” as the tag. Specify in your synopsis whether or not the play is free to use. I’ve got one up now – it’s totally free for anyone to produce/do a reading of, but not everyone is going to want to make that concession. Just be upfront about it in your description.
TWO DIFFERENT TAGS:
“GET OUT THE VOTE” plays are non-partisan and seriously just dedicated to inspiring people to vote. These plays are quick, easy to do, and encourage civic responsibility. The best “Get out the Vote” play is funny and memorable, and gets people excited about the voter registration cards available at the door/in the program/on the bar/etc.
“PROTEST PLAYS” are plays that aim inspire audiences to take action on social issues. They have clear political perspectives and aim to change hearts/minds on specific social issues.
And then we promote the hell out of these plays, we find ways to bring them to our communities, and we encourage our communities to put our plays to work. We refuse to let our institutions sing and dance their way through the election without doing their best to ensure democracy survives. And with two distinct tags, non-profits can shop around for non-partisan “Get Out the Vote” fare without alienating audiences, while activists can search “Protest Plays” to find the hard-core issue plays of their dreams.
Think of the potential impact of every theatre putting on a “Get Out the Vote” play before shows this fall! I mean, come on, a 2 minute pre-show melodrama about the merits of voting costs them NOTHING and could inspire audience members to pick up a voter registration card on their way out the door!
And think about how much righteous indignation the right theatre troupe will bring to your 3-minute “Abortion IS Healthcare!” at pop-up #TheatreActions at farmers markets across the nation!
Listen, I know there’s a lot for us to get through in the next few months. We should write all the postcards, do all the text-banking, and go work the polls! But we can also take steps to get our words working out there in the world as well. This is your official invitation to participate in a collective #TheatreAction event.
And it’s sure as hell better than getting stuck between doom-scrolling and existential paralysis.
