by Cynthia Wands

Both McDonalds (French fries, Ronald McDonald, Cheeseburgers) and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear) have a problem.  They’re both trying to rebrand their image to the public, and oh the noise.

McDonalds recently broadcast that they are no longer using margarine, they’re now using butter.  And furthermore:  “The company announced recently that it would stop selling chickens that have been raised with antibiotics that could affect human health, and milk from cows that had been treated with growth hormones. They introduced low-calorie “artisan grilled chicken” sandwiches..”  The New York Magazine, November 2, 2015: Freedom From Fries

And then the Oregon Shakespeare Festival announced it would launch a new project:  “The Oregon Shakespeare Festival has decided that Shakespeare’s language is too difficult for today’s audiences to understand. It recently announced that over the next three years, it will commission 36 playwrights to translate all of Shakespeare’s plays into modern English.”  The New York Times, October 7, 2015: Shakespeare in Modern English

The artistic director of the Festival, cited his deep interest in rewriting the plays of Shakespeare: “My interest in the question of how to best create access to these remarkable works is life-long,” OSF Artistic Director Bill Rauch said. “As a seventh grader, I translated Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream into contemporary English for my classmates to better understand it. I am delighted that the Play on! translations will give dramatists a deep personal relationship with Shakespeare’s words and that they will give artists and audiences new insights into these extraordinary plays.”  Broadway World Article, September 9, 2015: OSF to Translate Shakespeare’s Plays for Modern Audiences

And The New Yorker chimed in:  “Last week, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival announced that it had commissioned thirty-six playwrights to translate all of Shakespeare’s plays into modern English. The backlash began immediately, with O.S.F. devotees posting their laments on the festival’s Facebook page. “What a revolting development!” “Is there really a need to translate English into Brain Dead American?” “Why not just rewrite Shakespeare in emoticons and text acronyms?” Beneath the opprobrium lay a shared assumption: that Shakespeare’s genius inheres not in his complicated characters or carefully orchestrated scenes or subtle ideas but in the singularity of his words. James Shapiro, a professor of English at Columbia University, used a regionally apt analogy to express this opinion: “Shakespeare is about the intoxicating richness of the language,” he told Oregon Public Broadcasting. “It’s like the beer I drink. I drink 8.2 per cent I.P.A., and by changing the language in this modernizing way, it’s basically shifting to Bud Light. Bud Light’s acceptable, but it just doesn’t pack the punch and the excitement and the intoxicating quality of that language.”  The New Yorker, Why we Mostly Stopped Messing with Shakespeare’s Language

Afterwards, Bill Rauch wrote an essay,  American Theatre Magazine, October 14, 2015: Bill Rauch Why We’re Translating Shakespeare, giving more insights as to the project:  “First of all, I question the dangerously elitist assumption that old language is superior and new forms of language are somehow inferior. Shakespeare brilliantly invented new words at an alarming rate, sometimes daringly mashing up language from the streets with heightened poetry. I am not the first to observe that Shakespeare would probably have been a hip-hop artist were he alive today.”

If this project needed more buy-in, Mr. Rauch also plugged the culture correctness of the casting of the players on the project.  “The Play on! project, by commissioning more than 50 percent women writers and more than 50 percent writers of color, will bring a range of diverse voices and perspectives to the works of Shakespeare…” (Will we ever get to a time in our history when this is a given, and not a promotional note?)

The comments at the end of the American Theatre Magazine article were fully of noise, fury and some enthusiasm and defensive wordsmithing.

It is rather disconcerting to hear that the Artistic Director still references his seventh grade translation of “A Midsummer’s Night” so his classmates could better understand it. I’m not sure that’s a real recommendation (unless, of course, we can find some of his seventh grade classmates and ask them to weigh in on this project.) And somehow, likening Shakespeare to a hip-hop artist makes me rather tired. Yes, or course, Shakespeare was a man of his time. I just don’t know that he would have that whole hip-hop thing down.

What I’m more interested in are the original plays that OSF is developing –  the American Revolutions: The United States History Cycle, a 10-year commissioning program of 37 plays that spring from moments of change in U.S. history. And yes, one of those plays, All the Way, won the Tony Award for Best Play in 2014.

So, in three years, OSF will have 36 new (adaptations? translations? or per Bill Rauch: “specify up?”) Shakespeare plays.  And in ten years, we’ll have 37 original plays.

I sense a culture of Hollywood’s sequel-madness in this Shakespeare adaptation / translation / mash up.  (“The Avengers: 4”; “Fast and Furious: 7”; “Mission Impossible”: 8). I did wonder what they will title the “newly adapted”, “translated” (mashed up?) Shakespeare plays.

So I offer you possible titles of the upcoming plays at OSF:

“Twelfth Night” now known as “11.5 Night”

“The Tempest” or “The Very Bad Storm”

and lastly:

“Two Gentleman of Verona” now appearing as “Two Millennials Try Hooking Up Without That Iambic Pentameter”

And after I read all this press, I found the blog Bitter Gertrude, which has some great comments at the end of her article, including a comment from the man who is subsidizing the series, (Dave Hitz).

Bitter Gertrude, October 13, 2015: The Problem with the Shakespeare Translation Controversy

And then I read this in the Bitter Gertrude blog: “OSF has no plans to stage them either, apart from the developmental readings.”

Oh. So these are developmental readings. Not scheduled stage productions. All of this press, all this angst, is about a series of developmental readings. It does seem more than much ado about nothing.

by Cynthia Wands

There is a wonderful interview with Janelle Jansted, in the current publication of The Shakespeare Standard, By Jeffrey Kahan.

The interview with Janelle Jenstad

It’s a bit of a read, but by god, what a fascinating woman.  She’s very clear about her first disinterested forays into the cult of Shakespeare, but her life story of academia, and travel, and discovery is really inspiring.

I also love that her discovery of maps, street maps, ancient maps, have appeared in her life.  A recent story that I’m writing has changed (a lot) because I decided to draw a map where the characters lived and migrated to.

At any rate, it was a nice read about a woman I really admire.  And that was a nice find this week.

by Cynthia Wands

Some weeks back, I went with a group of friends to a burlesque show to see a “vintage” performance of the art of burlesque dance.

I’d seen burlesque represented in lots of plays and movies, I just have never seen one in the flesh, as it were.

It was a very interesting form of storytelling:  the women were dressed in rather cheesy vintage outfits, (lots of feathers flying around) and created characters who seemed funny, sly, clever and for the most part, naked. I’d never seen pasties on a woman before, and they looked…odd. It just was strange to see a woman’s breast, and so much focus on looking at a woman’s breast, but then the nipple had to be covered up. With pasties. Very odd.

The emcee was a very charismatic performer, crooning away, winking at the crowd, with a terribly sophisticated and bored persona. The crowd was very young, as in late twenties, early thirties (I seem to see a much older audience in the plays I see here in Los Angeles).  And they seemed to have great fun: lots of laughter and joking and carrying on.

I’m still amazed at the graciousness and generosity of the dancers – they really included the audience in their form of tribal dance (“opps, I lost my clothes” kind of tribal dance), but they conveyed a kind of self that I really admired. And it was great to see a part of Los Angeles culture that I had never seen before.

by Cynthia Wands

I remember when I worked in San Francisco as an actor, yes, in the 1980’s, and there were the “Equity” and the “Non-Equity” theater wars. This was during a period of time when Equity Waiver contracts were being negotiated for the smaller San Francisco houses, and a non-union organization, BATWA, wanted to be part of the dialogue. (BATWA stood for “Bay Area Theater Workers Association”.)  I was a member of Actors’ Equity Association (AEA) and I was a member of BATWA.  There were yelling, screaming sessions with small theater managers and actors and playwrights. I remember that it did not end well. Thank God those days are over.

I ended my membership in AEA in the 1990’s, for many reasons, but especially after attending some of the Los Angeles area AEA meetings.  (Yes, there were more of those yelling, screaming sessions  that did not end well. This time between AEA members and AEA union officials. I remember thinking when I left those meetings for the last time: Thank God those days are over.) And now here we are, in 2015, with a similar conflict going on in the theater community once again.  In this Bitter Lemons article, you’ll find some of this yelling and screaming behavior still going on in the comment sections:

Bitter Lemons: Just a National AEA Councillor and a Los Angeles AEA Member Having a Friendly Conversation…

In the past few weeks I’ve been following the conflict and the articles and the calls to action:

Stage Scene LA: 99 Seat Plan in Jeopardy

The Huffington Post: A Love Letter Wake Up Call

Backstage: Equity Fires Back at LA Theater Critics

There are so many real and passionate issues to be considered in this conflict: I wish the noise of it all could be voiced without the mud slinging and fury.

Ballots for the vote on the plan will be mailed to the AEA members on March 25. The ballots will need to be returned by April 17, and the union’s council will make a final decision on the new 99-seat plan April 21.  I’m no longer an AEA member, so I won’t be voting on this issue, but I can see that this new plan will affect the future of how theater is produced here in Los Angeles. I might not be saying Thank God those days are over.

by Cynthia Wands

This has been a difficult period of time for Los Angeles area Equity waiver theatre.  There have been very emotional, bitter and articulate messages from the union members about keeping waiver theatre at it’s current structure. There have been notices and interviews from Equity members about the need for new financial realities. And I hate it.  I hate it because of the bickering, disrespect and hysterical name calling. I hate it because, frankly, I hate conflict. Not a good thing if you’re an artist. Or an actor. Or a writer. Because I know that conflict is necesary for growth, comedy, negotiating, and change. Yeah. I know all that. I just hate the divisiveness and angst that seems to implode this particular issue.

So I’m going to share something completely different from the ongoing saga of the Equity Waiver War here in Los Angeles Theatre. It’s an interview with Kathleen Marshall, and here is her closing quote on the article that appeared in THE INTERVAL:
What’s something you think people can do to improve gender parity in theatre?

 I think that one of our responsibilities as women working in theatre is to give opportunities to other women working in theatre. And that can be in all kinds of ways. That can be having them as an assistant or observing on a show. Supporting other women who are artists, which could mean just going to their shows and being a positive presence in other people’s lives. I believe that good work is the best way to promote yourself and if you create good work that, hopefully, is also successful then that will be what gets you noticed.

http://the-interval.com/ints/km/

by Cynthia Wands

This has been a year of gratitude. And revelation. I didn’t get to learn the lessons I’ve been longing for:  a new finished script, a staged reading, a Broadway contract, a full production of one of my works.

Instead I learned humility (being bald from chemo for six months is at the top of the list for this lesson).  I learned compassion – especially from the other people in my life who helped me to learn to live again in a different way.  I learned a lot of other lessons in the mixed bag of nuts in my recovery from cancer this year: how irrational/moody/forgetful and detached I can become. How much I can ask for from friends and family and my husband.  I also got a new (old) cat (Puck: a rescue cat who helped save me from myself this year).

But I also want to say how much I’m grateful to this blog, as this is the only writing I’ve been able to do this year. Thank you.

And here is a story that is very close to my heart.  It starts as a story about a man with a broken neck, but it really resonated with me in some of my life lessons.  Especially those lessons about gratitude.

by Cynthia Wands

I found this facinating article:
HOW I INSULTED SONDHEIM (AND THE WISDOM RECEIVED THEREBY)

I’ve had my share of young stupid interactions with performers/artists I’ve admired.  But I loved how this writer shared an awful experience and how he learned from it. It’s amazing to see that even celebrated and successful playwrights have such feelings about feedback to their work.

A Paraphrase from the article.

Nobody cares what you think. Once a creation has been put into the world, you have only one responsibility to its creator: be supportive. Support is not about showing how clever you are, how observant of some flaw, how incisive in your criticism. There are other people whose job it is to guide the creation, to make it work, to make it live; either they did their job or they didn’t. But that is not your problem.

If you come to my show and you see me afterwards, say only this: “I loved it.” It doesn’t matter if that’s what you really felt. What I need at that moment is to know that you care enough about me and the work I do to tell me that you loved it, not “in spite of its flaws”, not “even though everyone else seems to have a problem with it,” but simply, plainly, “I loved it.” If you can’t say that, don’t come backstage, don’t find me in the lobby, don’t lean over the pit to see me. Just go home, and either write me a nice email or don’t. Say all the catty, bitchy things you want to your friend, your neighbor, the Internet.

Maybe next week, maybe next year, maybe someday down the line, I’ll be ready to hear what you have to say, but that moment, that face-to-face moment after I have unveiled some part of my soul, however small, to you; that is the most vulnerable moment in any artist’s life. If I beg you, plead with you to tell me what you really thought, what you actually, honestly, totally believed, then you must tell me, “I loved it.” That moment must be respected.

by Cynthia Wands

“the avant-garde is deader than last year’s short-in-front, long-in-back skirts”….

Deader?

Than last year’s skirts?

I appear to be far far away from the Avant- Garde and those who write about it.  I came across the above mentioned quote from an article today:

The Clyde Fitch Report: The Death of the Avant-Garde and Other Urban Legends

I remember sitting through weird performance arts pieces over the years: John Cage concerts at Wesleyan University, and Merce Cunningham dance performances in New York, the incredible THE WAY OF HOW performances in Berkeley in the 1980’s, Rachel Rosenthal shows, and strange happenings in the Ivy Substation and Highland Grounds.  But I never considered them “Avant-Garde”.

They seemed to be honest constructs from the artists to the audiences. Even if I didn’t appreciate the monotony and self absorption of a John Cage concert (a four hour concert with kitchen utensils was the last and ultimate test of my endurance with him), I learned a lot about courage and authenticity from those weird performances.

I don’t feel that I’m much in sync with the referenced “performative events” (I guess they aren’t called performance art pieces any more). And I can see, I’m really okay with that.

by Cynthia Wands

A few weeks ago I went to a staged reading of a script that I have watched develop over the years, and it was gratifying to see how much life and vulnerability that the actors gave to the script.

Most of the actors had been involved in reading pages from this script for some time, and they brought a lot of nuance and humanity to the reading of the characters.

I didn’t understand when I watched/listened to the reading why I experienced the two women in the script to be such completely different characters than what I had understood them to be. It was only afterwards when the director pointed out to me that, unlike the previous readings I had seen of the script, the two principal actress had exchanged roles.

This had been the director’s idea, and I was surprised that I hadn’t recognized the switch in the actresses – I saw very different characters because of this casting change, and they was very intriguing.

But what I missed, and what I had hoped for, was a script that could deliver that kind of surprise and dimension in the writing.  Several times conflict would simmer up from all the talking onstage, and yet it wouldn’t quite boil up to a resolution or crisis. Poignant, hurtful, insightful things were said. It just didn’t matter much what they said.  The characters went off at the end of the play pretty much as they started.  I do think the playwright is a very good writer, but this script seemed to miss the mark for me.  I left somewhat chafed and dissatisfied.

Maybe it’s because I’ve gone through such a sea change in myself and my life this past year, that I want to see/hear/experience rousing life changing theater.  I’m grateful to have the chance to have witnessed the growth and development of this script – and I learned a lot by not liking it.

by Cynthia Wands

I recently went to a yearly ceramics sale with a dear friend of mine; and had one of those intoxicating, life-flashing afternoons where there was discovery and laughter and afterwards, really good middle eastern food.

Granted, I’ve been house bound for a while, and the chance to go out and play hasn’t presented itself like that in some time.  But it reminded me of….rehearsal.  A really good rehearsal.  Where actors are making connections, and giving the gift of their talent and mind and spirit to create these phantoms on stage.

But I know, this was a ceramics sale.

There was a large noisy line of shoppers waiting to get into this sale, and once the doors were opened, I lost my friend in the crush of people foaming around the tables. It was thrilling to see such beautiful ceramic pieces, the glazes, the whimsy, and the various degrees of artistry and taste. There were some really crappy pieces too. I saw candlestick holders shaped like giraffes, and copper colored bowls, and strange plates.  I picked up a bright blue teapot with “hello kitty” skeletons painted all over it and considered buying it. But then I paused, and put it back down on the crowded table, and someone behind me scooped it right up.  I’ll never see that “hello kitty skeleton” teapot ever again.  But what a thrill of discovery and connections.

And then I heard this talk today on Ted Talks.  There is a bit of an overlong story about a Russian spaceship, but, overall, the exploration of where good ideas come from really sparked me up. Almost like a rehearsal. Or really strange ceramics.