Flying Carpet's A Day In Dig Nation, which we wrote about previously here, is receiving its official New York Premiere at P.S. 122!

The piece follows one man from a post-apocalyptic underground bunker in a world where he is the only survivor (or is he...?) to his life as a waiter and video-game enthusiast...all without the use of props.  Instead, star and co-writer Michael McQuilken mimes all of the piece's physical objects, from a coffee-maker to a massive super-computer with numerous cranks and handles.  

I saw A Day In Dig Nation two years ago in an earlier form at the 78th Street Theater Lab, and will be excited to see how far it's come.

It's always sad when news gets around that a beloved independent arts venue has to close its doors in some fashion or another. Enter The Tank on 279 Church street in Tribeca. Due to several building violations which include bad pipes and that always pesky one, an asshole owner, The Tank is being forced to move out of their current location by the end of the month.

The Tank is a non-profit venue that has been a haven for creative performing artists in the independent community around New York for three years. They pretty much host every form of performance art you can think of. As of July 31st, however, they will be relocating to a temporary space until they get their feet back on the ground for 2009 (hopefully).

From the press release:

After we lost our original home on 42nd Street, it wasn't clear if we'd survive the transition. But we've been on Church Street longer than we were on 42nd and "we not only survived, we expanded," explained Founder and Managing Director Mike Rosenthal, who has curated two of The Tank's most successful offerings: the annual Bent Festival of experimental music and Blip Festival of Game Boy generated music. "It's a shame to move so suddenly after all the work we've put into this space, but we need to feel our artists and audience are coming to a welcoming, healthy setting and we're going to make that true.

A home for theater, dance, mixed media, music, comedy, film, community events and public discussions, The Tank presents 300 events a year, welcoming over 10,000 audience members at capped, affordable ticket prices. Additionally, The Tank does not charge performers or presenters, making it a unique spot in Manhattan where artists can take risks without the prohibitive financial burden of most venues.

Now, it sounds like they're performing another one of their routine moves, but I think many of us who love venues like these are cringing just a little bit inside. Many realize that anytime a cash-strapped independent has to do something like this, there's a chance they might have to close their doors for good. It's hard for places like this to thrive, let alone survive in pricey New York (that's not even counting non-profits like The Tank). Granted, their Tribeca building was not up to snuff, but hopefully they can find a great place to set up shop soon and keep churning out the goodness (while never faking the funk).

You can go to their site and donate, or if you have any tips to provide them with so they can find a new home, they'd appreciate that as well.  And wherever they might wind up, support them by showing up and having a good time.  After all, They can only exist with your (our) help!

I had the privilege of sitting down with Isaiah Tanenbaum recently to discuss his work with the Flux Theatre Ensemble. In addition to discussing the company's artistic philosophies and the opportunities it provides, he also shed some light on the company experience from an actor's perspective.

I also had the opportunity to talk to Flux Artistic Director August Schulenberg, who told me a bit about the company history, and how he manages his unique role as Artistic Director, playwright, director, and actor. He directed the recent production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, in addition to writing most of the company's productions thus far. This summer, the company will produce his Other Bodies in the New York International Fringe Festival.

One of Schulenberg's many insightful remarks during our conversation was this:

It's not a good idea for me to insert myself too strongly--no company can be about one person.

To this end, he explained that he submitted a detailed proposal to the company's core membership outlining his vision for directing Midsummer--it's vital, he believes, for the company to have a sense of ownership of each production and of the season as a whole. For each of his plays that Flux produces, the question, he says, is not simply, "Will Flux be good for my play?" but also "will my play be good for Flux?"

It is this spirit of collaboration and mutual nourishment that guides Schulenberg artistically. He says he writes less overall than he would if he weren't a member of the company, and has less opportunity for regional acting gigs, but ultimately the thrill of the company's cohesion outweighs these considerations. "You develop an artistic shorthand that opens new windows," he told me. "And I'm creating opportunities for people I love and whose work I respect."

I saw August: Osage County this weekend (most original review ever: it was AMAZING!), and have become subsequently obsessed with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company blog, where I found this little gem of a post.  Having recently played a corpse in Widows, I found the advice extremely insightful:

1) Acting is re-acting. It’s true. Don’t react to anything on stage. You are dead.

2) All great actors listen to their scene partners. You can listen, but you can’t hear. Once again, you are dead.

3) Pee before you take the stage.

4) Use the 3 seconds of blackout left after you get on stage to find the most comfortable position possible.

5) If you have an itch, tough. See rule number one.

Hope everyone is having an excellent holiday weekend.  

 

Wide Eyed's A Devil Inside has been reviewed on nytheatre.com, and the review casts even more light on the ambitiousness of mounting this David Lindsay-Abaire script:

Lindsay-Abaire's plot is a ridiculously tangled web in which everyone and practically every event, past and present, is connected. A laundromat owner who wears a sash of sad mementos demands that her 21 year-old son avenge the murder of his father while a nihilistic Russian Literature professor plots the death of a "dull" repairman who sees a laughing devil in the patterns on the wallpaper. Meanwhile a giddy student in love with the professor attempts to seduce him while his foot-loving ex-wife tries to locate an old memento that is her luckiest charm. This is really just the starting point—from here so many plot points unfold that it's like watching an origami swan being deconstructed.

Lindsay-Abaire's script is very funny though not everyone will think so because it is so very quirky. I love his humor. It reminds me of the type of humor that you'd find on TV shows like Arrested Development. His characters are bizarre and their actions and motivations are unpredictable. He plants what appear to be symbols throughout the story—such as severed feet and dismal mementos—but they don't have any real connections to anything. Dreams become reality and reality dreams as every mention of an event, no matter how much you may think it's just a joke, turns out to be true. I also really enjoyed the parallels he draws from Russian novels such as Crime and Punishment and Anna Karenina.

 

The prolific Martin Denton has a list of his choices for the Top 25 moments in theatre from this past season. The boundaries of a "season" are a bit more fluid on the independent scene, of course, but check it out, and please let me know if you saw any of these productions and would like to see the artist(s) in an upcoming episode of Exclusive Roots!

A harrowing piece up on BlogStage today about the dangers independent actors face going on auditions.  It's a scary and also fascinating exploration of the notion of instinct, and how we all learn to draw the line between ambition and self-respect.  The most provocative passage:

As a new actor fresh out of college, I told myself that I would go to every audition offered to me. When I got a call to audition for a nonunion film at the director's house way out in Brooklyn, I stapled my headshot and résumé and pulled out my subway map. Did I have reservations? Certainly. I Googled the director and found that he had attained distribution for another film. I also noted that the film appeared to involve a lot of vampires running around very scantily clad. I was wary, but the vampire film was out on DVD. I wanted to be on DVD. So I went to the audition, and upon minutes of reading the very poorly spelled sides, I was informed that they would like to offer me a part, but only if I went into another room -- a bedroom, no less -- with the director and stripped topless in front of the camera. I declined. If I had trusted my instincts, I never would have shown up in the first place.

It's a scenario countless actors have found themselves in, and females in particular, who already have to deal with demeaning writing much of the time, even when the director isn't trying to sleep with them.  I'm curious as to whether any New Roots readers have had similar experiences, be they hilarious, frightening, or somewhere in between.  It's a dilemma that is particular to our profession, which requires profound emotional availability and sacrifice, and thereby makes us ripe for exploitation by the unscrupulous.   

On his 21st birthday Gene is informed that his 400-pound father was brutally murdered while hiking in the Pennsylvania Poconos. Now, left with only the old man's severed feet (carefully preserved in a jar of formaldehyde by his mother), Gene must find the killer and avenge his footless father.

If that synopsis doesn't get you interested in David Lindsay-Abaire's A Devil Inside, I don't know what will. Wide Eyed Productions' Kristin Skye Hoffmann and Justin Ness have flip-flopped roles since we last wrote about them, when they produced Much Ado About Nothing. Hoffmann, who directed that production, is acting with several other company members under the direction of Ness, who played Dogberry in Much Ado.

Lindsay-Abaire's Rabbit Hole was recently performed on Broadway in a much-hyped production featuring Cynthia Nixon, so it's exciting to see his work making it way to the independent scene, where I'm sure it will be no less dynamic and emotionally wrenching. Here's the production blurb from the Wide-Eyed website:

Wide Eyed will transform the Richmond Shepard Theatre into a Lower East Side laundromat where the play is set. Audiences will also be teleported to a university lecture hall and a number 6-train subway car. Fans of classic Russian literature will enjoy nods to Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy and for the stiff of stomach there's bloody violence a-plenty.

 

Flux Theatre Ensemble's take on A Midsummer Night's Dream has just gotten a warm review in BackStage.   If you're one to be skeptical when frequently-performed Shakespeare plays are remounted, consider this excerpt from the review:

Before starting production, Flux presented a four-night reading series featuring 16 playwrights' takes on Midsummer's characters. Shakespeare's comedy is also the opening gambit in what the company calls a "season of transformation" consisting of plays "where life changes the body against the body's will." This puts an existential spin on a key element in Midsummer: the rambunctious Bottom's transformation to not only a donkey but also the love object of the fairy queen Titania. Director August Schulenburg further tells us that as the company worked on the play, it "streaked our eyes with love, and we are chasing it through the woods, but it will not stay for us."

Flux's approach is inkeeping with their mission statement, which emphasizes theatre's transformative potential.  Schulenburg makes his directing debut with the company; he was the writer of several of the company's first productions.  It's exciting to see such ambitious work at the Off-Off Broadway level; I'm looking forward to checking this one out.

 

As you are perhaps aware, another round of labor disputes is roiling the waters of the entertainment industry. No sooner was the WGA dispute resolved when those pesky actors started getting touchy about their contracts. At issue, as was the case with the WGA, is the messy question of rights management as it relates to the use of actors' likenesses in "new media," that wonderful catch-all term for the Internet and all its corridors.

For some detailed reporting on the ins and outs of this ongoing dispute, I recommend BackStage's excellent BlogStage, which has been on top of the story from the get-go and continues to have the latest developments. Of particular note is the internal rift between the Screen Actors Guild (the union for film actors) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (which, as its name suggests, represents actors in television and radio).

I wanted to take a moment to note an interesting subtext to this dispute as it relates to the independent community we cover here at New Roots. It has been my general observation that much of the indie scene in both theater and film operates essentially parallel to the complex and hard-fought structure of union-sanctioned productions. As a matter of fact, I've been told by several independent directors that they try to avoid casting union members for independent work simply because of the crippling restrictions it can place on a production strapped for cash and resources. While I of course recognize the value of the rights these unions have fought so hard for, I do find it troubling that it has created this rift at their very roots. I've spoken to many actors and writers who have a difficult time sympathizing with their union counterparts and their impassioned cries for help in claiming hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost wages. Many independent artists are spending themselves into debt just to get the attention of these unions and their members, and many have similarly seen their projects handicapped or even derailed by stringent union regulations designed according guidelines that many view as completely out of touch with the realities of self-producing in New York City.

A prolonged strike would therefore have a complicated effect on the artistic underground; it would create an opening for renewed focus on the thriving independent scene, but it would also pose the danger of further stigmatizing those artists working outside the union model, painting them as disloyal to their striking brothers and sisters in the industry.

Some words of encouragement to all the avant-gardists out there, via John Clancy, whose blog I've recently become addicted to.  Summarizing some notes he gave to a young director under his tutelage, he writes:

Look, some people are just not going to dig this no matter how well we do it. It's experimental. It's alternative. By the very definition, it's not easy to watch and understand. Lots of people turned off John Coltrane after the first two minutes. 

This has been on my mind lately on account of a hilarious joke I heard over the weekend in a comedy sketch.  It was a sketch lampooning egomaniacal theater directors, and featured, at one point, the line, "The audience greatly enjoyed the performance, and as an avant-garde theatre artist, I knew this meant I had failed." 

The joke is funny, sure, but it also touches upon the theatre's ongoing dilemma: how the hell do we stay relevant?!  

My short take on the subject, especially as it relates to Coltrane, is that people came around to Coltrane because he was playing the music he heard in his head. It's the people who try to replicate his music and get the same effect that no one gives a damn about.  I think it works the same in theatre; if you're inviting people to understand a new possibility, it's exciting for them--it respects their intelligence and assumes they'll be hip to your idea.  If you're challenging them to step up to your unbelievable level of brilliance and have their minds blown by your awesomeness, they'll probably react the way anyone does when they're put on the defensive: to defend themselves--most likely by not buying tickets to your piece. 

Hendrik Hertzberg has an excellent post up on his blog about his experience seeing the current production of South Pacific. He's responding in part to a similarly wonderful piece by Frank Rich about the same production. Both authors are quite reverential to the play, but it's their respective musings on its relevance to the cultural moment that I find particularly interesting...since many things on Broadway don't exactly fulfill that standard.

Hertzberg writes:

My parents and most of their politically radical, culturally snooty friends, who were in their twenties or early thirties when Pearl Harbor put the class struggle on the back burner, used to dismiss Rogers and Hammerstein as purveyors of cornball populism. They preferred the tangy, gin-flavored sophistication of Rogers and Hart. A Greatest Generation friend of mine, who not only saw Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza in the original 1949 version but also was himself stationed in the South Pacific during the Second World War, wrinkled his nose a little when I told him how much I had loved the revival. “Sentimental slop,” he said.

I can well believe that the show seemed treacly a mere four years after the war, when every person in the audience, at a minimum, knew someone who had been killed or wounded. Its earnest homilies about race must have seemed a little watery, too. The American armed forces had been rigidly segregated throughout the war; the ink on President Truman’s executive order reversing that had barely dried when “South Pacific” opened. Yet the show handled the issue with the softest of kid gloves. The sailors on stage were all safely white. The pro-tolerance message (“You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught,” i.e., to hate)—was left to be carried by two button-cute, half-Polynesian-half-European children whose existence causes Ensign Nellie Forbush, the sweet blonde Navy nurse from Little Rock, to turn away from the émigré French planter she has fallen in love with.

Yet a few subtle tweaks, plus the passage of time, have rendered the Lincoln Center version treacle-free. The production emphasizes the story’s darker edges (which only makes its exhuberant moments more so). The Brazilian baritone Paul Szot makes Emile de Becque, the French planter, into a sort of Albert Camus of the palms. (Szot avoids the blowzy histrionics of Pinza and Brazzi.) The character of Bloody Mary, a chubby middle-aged Polynesian souvenir seller whose daughter figures as the love interest of a young Marine, is played by a veteran Hawaiian lounge singer named Loretta Ables Sayre, and she is brilliant. In the 1958 movie (and, I assume, in the Broadway original), Bloody Mary is a concerned but clueless mom; Ables Sayre plays her as wheedling and angry, a mother who pimps her daughter even as she loves her. And in this “South Pacific” the racism isn’t portrayed only by Aesopian indirection: there are black American sailors on this stage, and they are off to one side, segregated.

And Rich, echoing similar themes:

The Lincoln Center revival of this old chestnut is surely the most unexpected cultural sensation the city has experienced in a while. In 2008, when 80-plus percent of Americans believe their country is in a ditch, there wouldn’t seem to be a big market for a show whose heroine, the Navy nurse Nellie Forbush, is a self-described “cockeyed optimist” who sings of being “as corny as Kansas in August"

Yet last week one man stood outside the theater with a stack of $100 bills offering $1,000 for a $120 ticket. Inside, audiences start to tear up as soon as they hear the overture, even before they meet the men and women stationed in the remote islands of the New Hebrides. Among those who’ve been enraptured by this “South Pacific” the most common refrain is, “I couldn’t stop myself — I was sobbing”...

Though it contains a romance, “South Pacific” is not at all romantic about war. The troops are variously bored, randy, juvenile and conniving. They are not prone to jingoistic posturing. When American officers try to recruit Emile de Becque, a worldly French expatriate, in a dangerous reconnaissance operation, they tell him he must do so because “we’re against the Japs.” De Becque, who is the show’s hero, snaps at them: “I know what you’re against. What are you for?” No one bothers to answer his question. The men have been given a job to do, and they do it...

Watching “South Pacific” now, we’re forced to contemplate Iraq, which we’re otherwise pretty skilled at avoiding. Most of us don’t have family over there. Most of us long ago decided the war was a mistake and tuned out. Most of us have stopped listening to the president who ginned it up. This month, in case you missed it, he told an interviewer that he had made the ultimate sacrifice of giving up golf for the war’s duration because “I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf.”

“South Pacific” reminds us that those whose memory we honor tomorrow — including those who served in Vietnam — are always at the mercy of the leaders who send them into battle. It increases our admiration for the selflessness of Americans fighting in Iraq. They, unlike their counterparts in World War II, do their duty despite answering to a commander in chief who has been both reckless and narcissistic. You can’t watch “South Pacific” without meditating on their sacrifices for this blunderer, whose wife last year claimed that “no one suffers more” over Iraq than she and her husband do.

Want a way to have your cake and eat it too? Well, the Brick Theater in Williamsburg is ready to give you a fork to dig in with because the progressive theater has kicked off it's Film Festival: A Theater Festival spectacle (May 30th to June 29th). This fest combines the best of both worlds by presenting work that incorporates both film and theater elements into one interactive, very cool package. There are films based on plays, there are performances that center around audience-particiaption and cell phone/iPod interaction, and just generally films that explore new mediums and break the boundaries of what the film going experience should be like. It's experimental film at its finest, and even touches on concepts discussed in a previous interview with filmmaker Elise Kermani on this very site. It looks like theatrical film is becoming more commonplace, eh?

Some films of [my] note include LOL (a non-scripted, nonprofessional look at man's submission to technology), Bring Me the Head of John Ford (a "one-man, one-act production that uses video projection and live performance to examine the effects of isolation"), Kill Me Like You Mean It, Suspcious Package (a noir piece that involves portable electronics used by audience members to drive the story), The Melon of the Sky, and A Paranoid's Guide to History.

You should go to their site for schedules of specific films and details of the festival.

As we discussed previously both here and in our interview with Teresa Bass, the PIT has lately been inviting theater artists to perform in its traditionally comedy-oriented space on 29th street. They had great success with Blood and Stone Theatre Company's production of The Dumb Waiter in April, and now they're presenting John Clancy's The Event tonight.

It's exciting to see a theater having success blending these two worlds, and having John Clancy direct at the theater is a strong sign of support from the theatrical community. He's a legendary figure in the downtown scene, being, among other things, one of the co-founders of FringeNYC. It's a trend to watch, and one I hope continues!

Here's a description of The Event:

The Event is a comic examination of the act of theater. What starts as a straight-forward, hilarious deconstruction of the one-man show transforms into an honest attempt at communion with those gathered. Dealing directly and humorously with the technician, the stage manager, the critics and the audience, the actor moves into dangerous and slippery territory. Armed only with his memorized words, can an actor say something else? Matt Oberg (Goner, Fatboy, Americana Absurdum) stars. Written and directed by John Clancy.

In case you thought we at New Roots are the only folks in town who get extremely excited about independent theatre, proof to the contrary has arrived in the form of Show Showdown, an entertaining and insightful blog co-written by Aaron Riccio, Patrick Lee, and David Bell.  The "Showdown" refers to a contest the three are holding amongst each other to determine which of them can see and write about the most productions in 2008.  The current standings, as of May 25th:

RICCIO: 111.5

LEE: 86

BELL: 42

I'm not sure what constitutes half a show by Aaron's calculations, but I am sure you'll enjoy their prolific coverage of the scene.  

Here's my interview with Julie Fei-Fan Balzer, artistic director of the Milk Can Theatre Company, who we wrote about recently, and whose simultaneous runs of The 5 Borough Plays and Running you can still catch at the Michael Weller Theater.

Julie offers some fascinating insights into the nature of working as a company--and a fiercely independent company in particular--and emphasizes the importance of extensive development to the company's work.

Enjoy!

Julie Balzer Interview from The New Roots Project on Vimeo.

From the only acting school in New York to teach a course in "Jazz Acting" comes Appearance: A Suspense in Being, a meta-theatrical meditation on postmodern existence. The question posed by the piece, according to the synopsis:

What is it, about the art of acting, that touches us so deeply? It is, after all, an inherent deceit, in which the actor convinces us that they are someone else. What is the discourse between who we are and what we do? Why is that distance so compelling and moving within the self?

It's fascinating to me that TheaterLab is investigating this question, particularly from such an avant-garde standpoint. It's my general impression that the public's fascination with "the art of acting" (if you agree that such a fascination exists) is generally derived from an interest in much more mainstream, naturalistic acting styles, as opposed to the work of Meyerhold, Artaud, and Grotowski, all of whom are cited as influences on Appearance at the company's website. Each of those artists was specifically concerned with performance styles that departed from realism and viewed the actor as more of a total-theatre artist rather than a medium for expression of a certain character.

It seems like a bit of gamble to me...I look forward to seeing whether or not it pays off. After all, what's the use of theatre if it doesn't take risks?

 

After a little bout of email tag, the very talented filmmaker Elise Kermani was nice enough to let me probe her brain as to what it takes to be a successful independent filmmaker. Elise completed her film Jocasta and it is a stunning example of how original and diverse independent film making can, and should be. Through grassroots, 'shot-gun' film making, Elise took Euripides' infamous play about family awkwardness and retold it in her own interpretation of the Oedipal complex. Elise knows what she's doing when it comes to truly fulfilling art, so let her explain her various theories and methods in this candid interview that the internet has provided us with. And, with this being the New Roots Project, take note of the film/theatre interplay that she touches on frequently (eat that synergy!). So, heed the call...

 

Q: Explain Jocasta and how it differs from some of your other projects.

Jocasta was inspired by the magnificent architecture of the Great Stone Barn which is a Shaker ruin in upstate New York. We originally wanted to do a performance there, but because the barn was structurally unsafe we decided to film the performance instead of having a live audience there. The idea to perform a Greek play by Euripides came after we found the barn. When we found out in 2006 that they were going to start reconstruction on the barn, we had just three months to get our crew together and film it. So it was a ‘shot-gun’ project: no funding, and not a whole lot of time for preproduction planning.

It differs from my other projects in that Jocasta exists mainly as a ‘concrete’ art product, whereas the other projects I’ve created have been fluid and performance based, meaning that they would be continually evolving from performance to performance and were never completely ‘set’. It’s exciting to think that Jocasta doesn’t need me and can exist after I’m dead!

Q: What aspects of theatre translate so well on film?

In Jocasta, the cinematographer was able to go into small places where no audience could get to. In film you can set specific angles, and you can be more specific in setting the tone and the rhythm of the performance. In live performance the audience member uses his eyes to shift from one place on stage to the other, in film the editor makes those decisions for the audience. Being able to see minute facial expressions and design detail is a theatrical dream. In fact, in my past performance pieces I used live camera feed on stage in order to get extreme close-ups, for instance of my feet walking on marbles in “Private Eye/Public Hand” (performed at PS122 in 1995), or of a woman putting on lipstick in “ANNE” performed at the Experimental Intermedia in 1996.

Q: How can film help enhance a theatrical production?

In film there is freedom to use diverse images which can deeply impress a theme into the subconscious of the viewer-this is helpful in creating a structure for the film. One can quickly jump to different times of day and to different locations-in live theatre this is much more difficult. Although I still love live theater, making a film is in some ways more feasible for me than putting on a live theatrical production. Performing night after night is exhausting, but in film the actors perform only once: for the camera. Their work is then immortalized for audiences to see multiple times.

Q: As an experienced sound designer, how much do you rely on music/audio for establishing themes and tones in your work?

For Jocasta I was doing the sound design at the same time as the video editing-they interacted with each other. Sometimes the music would influence the cuts, and then the music would then in turn need to be edited to fit the new visuals. It goes back and forth like this for me very quickly during the edit, it would almost be impossible to do this technique with two people-it is a one person job.

Q: How do you work with actors when translating a play to film?

Both actors, Marty New, who played Jocasta, and Michael Potts, who played Oedipus, understand how to act for film without much interference from the director or DP. They went to acting school together at Yale, and have played several classical roles with each other for many years; they know each other so well that the level of trust and creative play was instantaneous and collaborative. I asked Alan McIntyre Smith (DP), to move around them as they performed their lines without interruption, as if they were on stage. Alan then choreographed his shots around these performances. For instance, Marty and Michael performed the whole scene for the close up shots, and the whole scene for wide shots-we did not break up the lines. I wanted to get a sense of the flow of one performance.

Q: From personal experience, what are some of the bigger challenges facing up-and-coming filmmakers? Are there any myths about distribution and/or production that should be dispelled?

The main problem with being an artist today is maintaining a balance between making your art and making a living to pay for your art. If you can figure that out, whether that means you have to become a rich lawyer, or you acquire a unique skill that pays well and is needed in your field, you are ½ way there to ‘making’ it.

There are too many people who think they can make a living from their art. I think this is creative suicide. The reality is that you have to figure out the money question first, the “how are you going to pay your rent” question. Once you are secure with an answer to that question, then you can go to the 2nd issue of making your film. Then the issue is how are you going to pay for your film. It is sad, but it does all come down to the simple fact of having enough ‘money’ to make films. I think some younger filmmakers make dangerous decisions that are unrealistic –that is, they think that one of their films is going to be an instant success and they will get rich and be able to quit their day jobs. But, if you have the attitude that you might have to work your day job forever, then you won’t be disappointed. Pick a day job that pays well, and one that is tolerable for the long term! Making films is expensive, even if you get distribution, and even if you got famous from one of your films. You still have to figure out the money and then you have to figure out how to keep your creative juices flowing in the media-hollywood rat race.

Q: With the folding of festivals such as the New York Underground Film Festival and the Brooklyn Underground Film Festival in the last year, do you feel that experimental film and video are able to have adequate venues to be presented in?

It does seem that there is a plethora of opportunities for experimental film these days-and it’s the same for experimental music, dance and theater. I think that audiences are willing to take chances on seeing and hearing something unusual. In fact, it seems that younger people actually gravitate toward the diverse, the unique, and not just with ‘going with the crowd’. Young people want to think for themselves. That’s great! And, if a festival doesn’t exist for your type of film or music—you can start your own festival. It is very easy to make a global network for your work these days with the internet.

Q: Do you see experimental theatrical film becoming more interactive in the future? That is to say, incorporating both elements into a more live, community setting? Any personal preferences as to where you would like to see it progress to?

Your questions are very insightful! Our next project will be a hybrid theater/film piece that will waver back and forth between the live theater experience and film. And Jocasta will be presented in the fall in context of a live performance with 4 trombonists and 2 dancers. So, yes, for me this interactivity is very important, as well as the need for creating a personal ‘community’ for our work. The other thing that is important to me is the sense that our work is truly collaborative—it was not made by any one ‘ego’ but rather by a group of like-minded people working together for something bigger than themselves or their individual art.

Q: Where and how can Jocasta be seen these days? Explain the internet competition.

From May 5 until June 30 Jocasta can be seen at www.independentfeatures.com which is the web site for the ‘Independent Features Festival’. After watching you can vote for it and the top 21 films will be screened in July at the Tribeca Theater in New York. We also have video clips on YouTube and we are listed on iMDB.com. But our main premiere event for New York will be on September 24th, 2008 at the NewFilmmakers Summer Festival held at the Anthology: www.newfilmmakers.com. We are the last feature film of their summer season, and we are going to create a live performance extravaganza to celebrate!

Q: What are you working on right now?

We are writing a script for a new opera that will involve a hybrid technology between film and live performance. We’ve applied for a few grants and residencies and are now waiting to hear back from them. If we don’t get the funding we’ll go forward with the project, but on a much smaller scale. Hopefully we will get adequate funding to be able to offer decent pay for all the artists involved and to explore new ground in bringing theater to film. It is interesting that Lincoln Center has begun to bring Opera to national movie theaters - we are doing something similar. We hope by filming live performances we will be able to bring our work to larger audiences, hopefully eventually to TV audiences. With the exception of a few well written shows, television has sunk to a cultural low, perhaps we can get in on the upswing and help bring homegrown theater to all American living rooms! Now, that’s a dream.

 

Trailers and further information on the film and the woman herself can be found on Elise's website, www.elisekermani.com.

Thanks Elise!

Here's my interview with Jon Stancato, the co-artistic director of the Stolen Chair Theatre Company. He offers his insights on the company's unique creative process, and the challenge of stimulating an audience intellectually and emotionally.

Jon Stancato Interview from The New Roots Project on Vimeo.
Don't miss the company's latest, The Accidental Patriot, the third installment in their Cinetheatre Tetralogy. Also, please excuse my kitchen.

 

Since it's Shakespeare's 444th birthday, and theatre has come a long way, I thought it might be interesting to wade into the discussion of the use/overuse of technology in theatre. 

Fellow enthusiast and blogger Sarah McLellan writes:

The use of technology seems to really aggravate theatremakers' insecurities about our medium's relevance; we think we need to use technology to legitimize our existence, and it ends up being weilded around like a clumsy sledgehammer. A lighting designer friend of mine likes to joke that the measure of a green, usually unskilled director is their insistence on using "slides" in their production.

McLellan links to this Lyn Gardner piece cautioning against the dangers of allowing technological opportunities to distract artists from the need for proper craftsmanship.  I find this debate particularly interesting because multimedia, tech-heavy work is a hallmark of the downtown, indie-theatre scene, and yet these are the artists working with the most restrictive budgetary, time, and scheduling constraints. 

Personally, I enjoy technology in theatre the most when it is used as a tool for expanding the scope of the performance space.  I saw a piece by the Flying Carpet Theatre Company a few years ago called A Day In Dig Nation in which there was no physical set, and all the action was mimed.  The sound, however, had been painstakingly edited and recorded as a continuous hour-long track.  The actor had rigorously scored his actions to the soundtrack, and it was gripping to watch him mash buttons on an invisible video game controller, open a coffee-can, and drive a car, all without the benefit of any physical props.  Meanwhile, on a screen behind him, video images of the various settings in which he found himself served to transport the action effortlessly to spaces far beyond the possibilities of an actual set.  He careened from his apartment to a restaurant to a non-specific dreamscape to a crowded city street to an underground bunker in the future, a journey made possible by virtue of the technological flexibility at his disposal.  I wrote about the similarly deft use of technology in Welcome to Nowhere (Bullet Hole Road) last month, and it's an exciting phenomenon in general, even if artists occasionally go a little bit overboard.  

But you have to wonder what ol' Shakespeare would have thought, especially given the spectacular settings in which he set his works, all without the benefit of so much as a footlight. 

The Times review of When Is A Clock is up!

This dizzy life of ours...

It's Super Free Wednesday at the PIT!

And just when you thought you'd heard a certain Simon and Garfunkel song too many times...THIS HAPPENED:

Find more videos like this on Peoples Improv Theater

Keep it tuned to New Roots next week for exclusive interviews with Jon Stancato, Co-Artistic Director of the Stolen Chair Theatre Company, and Teresa Bass, Artistic Director of the People's Improv Theater!

And while you're waiting, why not check out some of the exciting shows at the Magnet Theater this weekend? Look for electric performances from Tara Copeland and Jason Mantzoukas in particular in The Tiny Spectacular, one of the Magnet's premiere shows. Having performed for many years at UCB with Mother, Copeland and Mantzoukas are the kind of dextrous, hilarious, and singularly weird performers that make the New York scene so unique.

See you next week!

I'm intrigued by the Blue Coyote Theater Group's latest effort, When Is A Clock, a play by Matthew Freeman. Here's the synopsis from the website:

When Gordon's wife vanishes, the only clue to her whereabouts is a dog-eared copy of an odd book. Pursued by the police as a potential homicide suspect and perpetually nagged by his smart-ass teenage son, Gordon takes off to a strange Pennsylvania town to search for his missing wife. At turns both scathingly funny and disturbingly compelling, When Is A Clock features Freeman's celebrated deconstruction of American culture - which has been called "nonviolent, though as savage as any slasher film" by the NY Times.

Billed as a "surrealistic detective story," (the second such play we've written about this week), Freeman's play is the latest production by the accomplished Blue Coyote, whose Busted Jesus Comix was a big hit in 2005.

Also, I'm a bit late on this, but it's pretty stunning news for the theatrical community: the New York Theatre Workshop has fired its entire production staff, and will go dark for all of next year. I'm sad to know that one of the most beautiful and exciting places to see theatre in New York will be out of commission, but also puzzled by the decision. Everything I've ever seen at NYTW has been pretty much flawless from a technical standpoint (even when the production itself left something to be desired artistically). The obvious speculation is that the move is due to budgetary troubles, but, according to the EcoTheater post linked above, NYTW is moving ahead with plans to build a state of the art prop shop across the street from the theater. I'll try to stay on top of developments in this story in the days to come. In the meantime, I'm still incredibly excited about Elevator Repair Service's The Sound and the Fury, currently in previews.

The Milk Can Theatre Company's next production offers theatrical portraits of each of New York City's five boroughs. A workshop company founded by members of the Looking Glass Theatre's Lab program, The 5 Borough Plays promises an evening of varied content, from the existential tale of two sock puppets waiting for the Staten Island Ferry (Stan and Illy Wait for the Coming) to the more straightforward A Visit to the Bronx.

The "About Us" page of Milk Can's website is particularly interesting to peruse. It's rare that a theatre company offers such precise insights about their artistic vision on their homepage, and Milk Can's philosophies are audacious and admirable. Of particular note are their reflections on storytelling and connection with the audience, excerpted below:

Theatre must be about something. "Seinfeld" was the show about nothing -highly entertaining and often clever, but it didn't have the power to affect. We believe that the power of theatre is the power to transform the viewer - to truly change that person. The Milk Can Theatre Company strives to produce plays that have a strong point-of-view without being preachy...

...we do make a distinction between plot and story. Plot is like pearls on a string - one pearl follows the next pearl until the strand is complete. Story is more like the effect of those pearls. "Seinfeld" always had a plot, but never a story. Ionesco, on the other hand, often has story, but very little plot...we want to engage the audience. Every theatrical performance is an event. It's different every time - each audience creates a certain kind of chemistry with the actors. The awareness of being in a theatre with live actors creates a heightened atmosphere. It's immediate, there's a risk, it's happening NOW. The theatre assaults the audience's senses - the scent of a cigarette wafts over the audience; the smoke from a fog machine engulfs the first few rows and brings the atmosphere of the scene out into the audience; an actor enters from the back of the audience creating surround sound; a chandelier falls over the audience creating a ripple of fear.

The Stolen Chair Theatre Company has been active in the Off-Off-Broadway scene for several years now, and their next production is set to debut next week at the Milagro Theater on the Lower East Side.

The Accidental Patriot: The Lamentable Tragedy of the Pirate Desmond Connelly, Irish by Blood, English by Birth, and American by Inclination is the third installment in Stolen Chair's Cinetheatre Tetralogy, an audacious project initiated two years ago. They've set out to create 4 original stage productions based on 4 classic film genres. Their first, a live-action silent film called The Man Who Laughs (based on the Victor Hugo novel), generated rave reviews as well as nytheatre.com's 2005 People of the Year award. Yours truly actually appeared in the next installment of the tetralogy (and is an associate member of the company, for the sake of full disclosure), 2007's Kill Me Like You Mean It, and is therefore not qualified to speak objectively about it, but United Stage's Stanley Hall is.

The Accidental Patriot... promises to be another genre-bending adventure from Stolen Chair. We'll have an interview up with the Artistic Director of the company shortly!

Pangea 3000 isn't alone in looking towards the future.

Theatre Communications Group's 2008 National Conference will focus on the role of the theater as a source of community enrichment. You can read the full press release here, but the audacious assertion of TCG's vision for the theater is summarized thusly:

As theatre professionals and supporters, we know that theatre is vital to our communities, important to our education, and relevant to our lives. We know that some of the most complicated issues we face in our daily lives are investigated onstage, in the rehearsal room and at the writer’s desk.

Imagine a time when communities know that they can turn to the theatre for help understanding a complicated situation. How many of our community members see the relevance of theatre to their daily lives? How do theatres and artists share the power of this work in our communities, our country and around the world? What steps do we need to take in order to leverage the power of theatre in visionary and vital ways?

The notion of theatre's relevance in the current cultural climate is always a provocative question, but its capacity to drive dialogue at a policy level is even more intriguing. With that in mind, TCG asked several regional theatre producing organizations to make 3-minute videos about how they see themselves contributing to the art form's potential for the future, as well as to speculate about what that future might look like.

This being the New Roots Project, we'll showcase the response of New York's own Lark Play Development Center here, but all eight videos are worth watching.

 

Speaking of changing perceptions, you're hopefully, by this point, familiar with the PIT as a venue for high-quality improv and sketch comedy. They also occasionally offer interesting theatrical fare, such as their upcoming production of Harold Pinter's The Dumb Waiter. Pinter is, of course, a controversial writer, but if you like his work, the opportunity to see it for $10 is hard to pass up. Personally, I adore Pinter's trademark sparseness and opacity of circumstance, and the PIT's relatively simple staging area will be an exciting venue to see these characteristics on display.

Bridging the divide between the focal points of the New Roots Project is 29th Street Rep's upcoming production of The Conversation, the stage adaptation of Francis Ford Coppola's film of the same title. 

Adapted by Chicago-based actor and artist Kate Harris, the piece debuted in 2005 to great acclaim in the Windy City, but now roars into New York as 29th Street's first production in two years.  Harris's adaptation notably received the personal authorization of Coppola himself, and is firmly on my radar.  

A fascinating piece in The New Republic examines the notion of Eliot Spitzer's fall from grace as a "Shakespearean" event. The key passage:

The Shakespearean character who most resembles Spitzer comes not from tragedy but from comedy: Angelo in Measure for Measure. As the prosecutor of Vienna, Angelo sets about cleaning up the vice-addled city, all the while trying to seduce a would-be nun, Isabella. But Angelo is a much deeper character than Spitzer. He wants Isabella because she's virtuous; it's her virtue that arouses him. This is a much more complicated emotion than the one Spitzer must have felt when he called the Emperor's Club. And when Angelo is eventually confronted with his crime, his response is fascinating: "I crave death more willingly than mercy; / 'Tis my deserving, and I do entreat it." The hypocrite prosecutor, when called to judge himself, is true to his ideals. The lines are brilliant and original. Spitzer, in his initial press conference acknowledging his misbehavior, and then when he announced his resignation and said goodbye, just piled one useless cliché on top of another and called it a day.

Few, if any, of the commentators who have been using the term "Shakespearean" are thinking about Angelo, of course. All they are saying is that something dramatic has happened. "Shakespearean" used to mean a situation of extreme emotions in high politics mixed in with a measure of the unfathomability of fate. Now it is shorthand for any situation in which somebody becomes powerful and/or loses power. The whole range of Shakespearean terms has been debased. "Lady Macbeth" is shorthand for any ambitious woman. "Othello" is shorthand for anyone jealous. "Hamlet" is shorthand for anyone who overthinks. The time has come either to use these terms far more selectively or to retire them altogether.

Stephen Marche, the article's author, goes on to suggest that the value of Shakespeare's characters lies in their capacity to contain all of humanity's conceivable refractions; they are less individuals than prisms placed at varying angles relative to the light of dramatic circumstance.

The Polish writer Jan Kott suggested that the value of Shakespeare's history plays lay not in their explication of the character of the individual, but rather the awesome power of the "Grand Mechanism" formed by the collective force of history. The Mechanism, he argued, may be challenged by men such as King Henry, but it will, over time, correct itself and crush the foolish mortal who dares to impede its progress.

Interestingly, Marche, who argues that Sptizer's escapades do not live up to the exploits of Shakespearean characters in terms of enduring resonance, is credited as the author of Shining at the Bottom of the Sea, "a literary anthology of an invented country." Kott, meanwhile, writing about this same struggle between the individual and the weight of Shakespearean prose, titled the book in which he discusses the "Grand Mechanism" Shakespeare Our Contemporary, suggesting that we would do well to consider our own actions in the context of Shakespeare's characters.

Whether the country is contemporary or imagined, Shakespeare's grip on our perceptions of each other remains rock-solid. As evidence, the Public Theater is currently presenting two plays that explore the notion of the individual's historical significance to its fullest extent. Conversations in Tusculum considers the debates between the conspirators who murdered Julius Caesar, while Drunk Enough To Say I Love You explores the tumultuous relationship between the United States and Great Britain through the lens of the struggles experienced by pair of gay lovers.

The currents of theatrical history are converging on you, the viewer, as we speak! I urge you to succumb to the will of the Mechanism and check out both productions.

Continuing our discussion of reason vs. impulse in the arts, here's some audio of David Strathairn being interviewed by Leonard Lopate on WNYC about his work as Cassius in Conversations in Tusculum, currently running at the Public Theater. His reflections on finding a personal window into a character from a well-documented and fairly reified historical period are fascinating, and he discusses the value of "intangibles" as "grist for the mill."

 

Here's a link to the article Lopate references about plays with characters that never appear on stage.

Also, just a reminder that The Apple Sisters' five-week run at the PIT starts tonight! 

Janet Albrechtsen has a response to the response to David Mamet's declaration of defection from the Left, which we wrote about here last week.

I think it's worth noting because of her assertions about art and politics, summarized in this excerpt:

Think about it. So many issues the Left is consumed by are about raw emotion, not intellectual analysis. They will ask you how you feel - not what you think - about some gripping issue. And that's why Mamet changed his views. He started thinking about issues, engaging his head. So many on the Left take the shortcut, letting their gut reaction dictate their response.

Of course, even before Mamet's political conversion it was easy to work out that left-wing politics is essentially emotional, not logical.

With only rare exceptions, poets, playwrights, actors, directors and artistes generally are overwhelmingly political bleeding hearts.

If your daily occupation is to emote as effusively as possible and your aim is making your audience feel some emotion or another, then rational analysis is simply not your strong point. Hence any collection of Australian artistes - think Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Judy Davis or David Williamson - resembles nothing so much as an old-time Fabian Society love-in.

Notably absent in Albrechtsen's piece are her thoughts on what does or does not make good art, or the value of art in modern society. If she is rejecting the arts as viable (she seems to find them almost annoying), does she welcome or condemn Mamet's shift?

She is, however, spot-on in raising a more interesting question: when do politics handicap art? She makes the case for conservatism's basis in intellectual pragmatism, which strikes me as inhibitive to the creation of good art, which so often strives to express things that defy reason. But the same could be said of a pointedly liberal mindset, so intent on making its political points that it bypasses any opportunity for the viewer to connect to the emotional content of a particular piece.

Of course, one might also argue that any attempt to define a set of necessary intellectual characteristics for the making of art is heresy. I, personally, am inclined to agree with this latter assertion.