Category Archives: theater

quotes, theater

99-Cent…

Aaron and I have been discussing LA waiver theater and whether it’s better to make art with the resources you have ( a contract that pays no one very much ) or to hold off and advocate / fundraise for better payment. I think you should do both.

I found myself very close to the bone on the argument, having directed 3 LA waiver productions, and knowing exactly how hard it was to raise enough money to pay people – and being a member of a waiver company, and proud of its work in producing new plays and experimental work.

But, just imagine…if there was no 99-seat plan, would theaters all be like Syzygy in LA, and fundraise all year until they could produce a play under an Equity contract? And would that be better than producing 4 or 5 shows a year, where no one gets wages to speak of?

I don’t want to see a world without Theatre of NOTE but I find myself hard-pressed to defend the model of waiver theater as a method of making a living. Which is why I’ve left LA.

I do believe that NOTE’s role in producing new plays and new work makes it ideally suited for a lower-tier contract, and I don’t want to see it or companies like it driven out of business. But should some theaters be forced to go on a low-level Equity contract? Should there be a timespan under which you can operate waiver, and then have to go union?

The best way of instituting more change is probably just to have more union companies in LA, to have more houses make the jump – to make it seem successful, to figure out marketing and survival models for it, not just legislate change and then watch as meaningful, small companies are driven out of the landscape.

Incentive, not destructive.

Keep the waiver model in place until another is working, but put incentives in place for companies that do migrate to a union contract.

I’m very torn about it.

This quote came up in the conversation.

“The artist in ancient times inspired, entertained, educated his
fellow citizens. Modern artists have an additional responsibility —
to encourage others to be artists. Why? Because technology is going
to destroy the human soul unless we realize that each of us must in
some way be a creator as well as a spectator or consumer. Make your
own music, write your own books, if you would keep your soul.”
— Pete Seeger

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directing, employment, theater

Back in town

I flew from Seattle to San Jose today. Back in Menlo Park, blogging from Borrone’s.

I’ve officially been hired, and I begin my new job tomorrow, as the assistant director for Aaron Davidman on TheatreWorks’s production of GOLDA’S BALCONY, by William Gibson. I’ll be helping Aaron out with whatever he needs, including but not limited to taking notes and the understudy rehearsals.

I’ve read the play a couple of times over the course of this trip. It’s a complicated portrait. Should be quite the journey. This is my first time on a one-woman show. The actress playing Golda is Camille Saviola.

The end of the Seattle stay was great – my meetings with Jen and Chris were wonderful, and made me very excited about coming back to do some theatre in that town.

Last night, Sam, Erica, Kyle, Rob and I made dumplings (their method definitely added some improvements to mine), tofu, stir-fried beef, woodear mushrooms, and bok choi, and (drumroll) crab, boiled alive. Yum.

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theater

Wreck of the Unfathomable Cast

I’m late in posting this but here’s the cast for the new Chris Kelley play at NOTE.

Avram (Captain) – Darrett Sanders
Bellman – Scott McKinley
Bursar – Spencer Robinson
Prior – Carl Johnson
Arla – Rebecca Larsen
Governor – Stewart Skelton
Marin – Kirsten Vangsness
Hormon – David Wilcox
Tula – Erin Flemming
Butler – Dean Lemont

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theater

Sacred spaces

Dallas theater companies are moving into churches. The shared interest in the buildings will help preserve more historic places – and church spaces, being different from black boxes, will promote more interesting patterns of theatrical architecture. (Yes, in the Viewpoints sense and the other sense.)

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theater

If You Ate Herring, You’d Smell Like Herring

Meredith, Shiyan and I saw a sold-out performance of SF company Traveling Jewish Theater‘s 2 x Malamud: The Jewbird & The Magic Barrel at the Mountain View Performing Arts Center last night. Malamud was done in the style of the Word For Word Performing Arts Company, with every line of the story dramatized and spoken. It was beautiful.

I love Malamud’s writing, but I loved the enlarged, stylized acting of the cast even more. It all made me proud to be a Jew in the theater world. The stories are problematic, allegorical. They don’t present political hyperbole. They’re simply stories of people, trying to live.

Saltzman, around the corner, chanted prayers for the dead.

TJT’s executive director was present, and she spent much of the intermission answering questions from audience members. It’s really great to see a full house, and to see them so engaged in the art.

Amazing how the Jewbird character evokes the stereotype so perfectly – migratory, traveling, at death’s door, raggedy, dirty, smelling of fish, educated but also slightly snobby – sick – kind, but something of a user. Not beautiful. But very, very proud.

Malamud closes this weekend.

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the chorus, theater

Portland WS Flier

If you’re in Portland and want to do some mad physical theater, exploring the principles of choral improvisation (and who doesn’t want to explore the principles of choral improvisation, anyway?) it’s not too late, folks: info below. RSVP by putting the magic “@” between jessicawallenfels and gmail.com.

***

You’re invited to take part in a free workshop Many Hats Collaboration is offering to Portland’s theater community. We had a great past season and want to say thanks to everyone who helped make that possible – as well as those who are new to us – with a visiting artist opportunity.

WHO: You! And us: Many Hats Collaboration (http://www.manyhatscollaboration.com) and Dara Weinberg, a visiting director from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Los Angeles

WHAT: Ensemble Performance, Generative Creation, Physical Theater

WHERE: Performance Works NorthWest
4625 SE 67th Ave.
Portland, OR 97206
503.777.1907

WHEN: Tuesday, August 28, from 8pm-10pm

HOW: RSVP por favor. If you really want you can donate a couple of bucks to go toward space rental but other than that, its free.

WHAT AGAIN? AND WHO?
Jessica Wallenfels (dir. Rest Room, Break, Then Open; choreog. OSF’s Romeo and Juliet, Mutt) and Dara Weinberg (AD on this season’s OSF shows Tartuffe, Romeo and Juliet, see bio below) will be divvying up a couple of hours to experiment and share on ensemble movement and physical theater. This will be on-your-feet actor/mover type stuff in a no-pressure environment. You’ll be creating and working in a group, as well as bouncing off of varied directorial viewpoints, in this evening for novices through experts. Many Hats Collaborators Lava Alapai and Annalise Albright will be on hand and throwing into the mix.

Don’t forget to RSVP! See you the 28th.

Dara Weinberg is a director and choreographer who works with the free radical chorus, an experiment in improvised choral theater and creating choruses through imitation. Until recently LA-based, Dara directed The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, an improvised dance play based on William Blake’s poetry, at the Met Theatre Company. Other Los Angeles directing credits include A Vast Wreck and Brandohead at Theatre of NOTE. She assistant directed the premiere of My Wandering Boy (dir. Bill Rauch) at South Coast Rep. At the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, she assistant directed Romeo and Juliet (dir. Bill Rauch) and Tartuffe (dir. Peter Amster). Other credits include Human Bombing for the Berliner Compagnie as well as choreography for the West Bay Opera Company and Sacred Fools Theatre Company. She assistant directed The Stones (dir. Corey Madden) at the Kirk Douglas.

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directing, interviews, theater

The Rohd to Community-Based Theater

Just finished with Michael Rohd. Great interview. Having started as an actor/director and taken more and more responsibility for his own life and artmaking as his career went on, his story should be particularly significant to young actors. One of his stories was about not going to a commercial callback as a turning point in his life.

We discussed the possibility of doing a workshop later this year, which is exciting. And he may be devising work at OSF.

Michael also had a great list of possible dream collaborators for the Stage 2 5th Wall Interviews: Liz LeCompte, Ping Chong (who he’s working with on a project about Buffalo Bill) Robert Lepage, Peter Brook.

He’d looked at this blog before and mentioned that the actual interviews weren’t up yet – I need to learn more about publication details before I can do that – but I do hope I’m able to put them online and archive them, either here or at Upstage.

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directing, interviews, quotes, theater

A Moon For Daniel Sullivan

It’s not that Slate has no theater coverage, just sporadic coverage, mostly centered around New York. They’re doing better than many news sources. There’s an article every few months. They cover the Tonys. They mention Spring Awakening. Obviously I think there’s more writing to be done on the topic, and more coverage of the regional world, but at least they’ve started.

I particularly enjoyed segments of Daniel Sullivan‘s diary during MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN, in 2000. The whole thing‘s worth reading, but here are a couple of good excerpts from the life of a stressed freelancer:

Daniel: 5:00 p.m.: A meeting with set designer John Lee Beatty on another play, Spinning Into Butter, by Rebecca Gilman. To be produced by Lincoln Center Theater in the summer. We sat in the theater and talked about where things should go. The play takes place in an office in a New England college. John Lee said, “What do I do so it won’t look boring?” He always gets right to the point. I was at a bit of a loss. “Windows?” I said. “Oh!” he said, surprised. But he always acts surprised by even the dullest idea. He’s very nice. “Maybe it should be a very tall room,” he said. “How tall?” “16 feet.” “That’s tall. Do they have rooms that tall in New England?” “Victorian rooms are tall.” “But Victorian doesn’t give you the typical New England school.” And so it went for an hour or so. I don’t know what initial design meetings are like for other directors, but this is par for the course for me. And at the end we agree to meet again soon since neither of us knows what the hell we’re doing.

And again:

Daniel: “The press department calls to ask where they should seat the chief theater critic of the New York Times. I suggest a local restaurant. “No, really, where?” I suggest Row J. “Why J?” “Because if he’s any closer he’ll see the side light we haven’t been able to hide.” ”

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interviews, theater, writing

The Crossover Interviews

I began my series of short interviews with a bunch of theater professionals, mostly folks from my days with Bill Rauch, today.

The first one was with Tony Taccone and it went very well. He’s had such an interesting career (here’s more about him in Ellen McLaughlin’s 2006 American Theatre interview), and so many of his projects have been explicitly political. One of the anecdotes he shared was about the Eureka getting burned down by an arsonist who objected to an anti-apartheid piece they were staging.

If the others are half as interesting as him it should be a great article. I’ve read a lot of interviews with Tony before – he’s a great communicator on behalf of the field – but I’ve never heard this stuff about him directing his very first show at Colorado Shakes before, or his transition from acting to directing. I love it.

The moment of time at which we transition from one field to another, one skill to another, from amateur to professional, defines us for the rest of our careers.

I’m hoping this can be a springboard for THE FIFTH WALL or for some other, longer series.

Here’s my warmup spiel:

As you know, I worked as Bill Rauch’s assistant for two years, during which time I observed a lot of working theater professionals, and also came into contact with many of Bill’s students and younger people in the field. Working as an assistant director at OSF, I felt that there was an interest in and need for some anecdotal research in what I’m calling “the crossover period” – moving from being a student or early-career professional to a fully professional theater artist.

So I’ve put together a couple of questions on the subject, which I’m asking to a wide variety of folks in the theater world – designers, directors, educators, administrators. I’m hoping to put this together into an article which is anecdotal and interesting, but also just reveals the wide variety of paths people take towards careers in our field. I want to dispel the idea that there is just one path or timeline towards a fixed point, and show how much change is inevitable.

My goal is to eventually have this reach publication, but I will send your answers to these questions back to you before they are shown to anyone else, so you can correct anything that doesn’t seem right to you.

These are the questions I’m asking. Kersti helped me narrow it down.

0) Where are you from (where were you born), and where do you live now?

1) What is your current job or profession, and what is a typical day for you? (Also mention what production you’re working on now, if any.)

2) What was your first professional job in theater – the point at which you were able to support yourself from your theater work? How did you get this job, and how long did it take you?

3) Talk about one interesting change or setback you encountered on the path from that first job till now – something you didn’t expect. Did you ever work in other fields, or have to take non-professional work after first crossing over to the professional world?

4) If you could give yourself one piece of advice as a young theater artist, what would it be? Is there a particular city or company you would recommend, or a strategy – or just a piece of information you wish you had?

These next are the bonus questions, which I didn’t get to with Tony and I don’t expect to have time to include with most folks.

5) Did a particular mentor or teacher play a role in your becoming a professional theater artist? Do you teach now, yourself?

6)) What is a project you would like to work on in the future, or an area of the theater world into which you would like to cross over?

I was supposed to speak to Jeff Hatcher this AM but we missed each other, and I’m going to call Cliff Faulkner in half an hour.

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