Parabasis

Travel Day

I'm off to Richmond Virginia today to go to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and attend the reopening of the Lewis galleries. No posting for me today, sorry!

The Shuberts Expand Their Power

I was a little surprised to read Patrick Healy's solely-positive coverage of the Shuberts continuing to expand their Broadway monopoly that appeared in today's Times. Given that roughly 50% of commerical theatre folk hate the Shubert Org with the passion of a nova, I don't understand why the article contains not one singly negative comment about their new arrangement with Frederick Zollo and Robert Wankel which, as this photo indicates is pretty much the definition of Shady Backroom Deal.  So now the Schuberts get to control the ticketing, the venue and get to give shows they invest in preferential treatment in their spaces? And there's nothing even vaguely troubling about this? Look, these are the guys who force producers to use their ticketing system* and then charge the producers to see information about their own customers it can't be that hard to find someone who is less than sanguine about them expanding their tentacles of influence further .

Similarly, while I understand that its a trade magazine, the Variety piece (by Gordon Cox) should probably contain some discussion of the implications of all this as well.

*(just a question: wasn't it illegal when Microsoft simply bundled Office with Windows 3.1?)

Places to Take My Kids On Vacation In The Future When They Exist

Oxford's proposed Museum of Storytelling! Hells to the yeah!:

From Lewis Carroll's Wonderland to JRR Tolkien's Middle-earth, CS Lewis's Narnia and the parallel universes of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, Oxford has played host to some of the UK's most enduring literary creations. Now a £2.5m donation from an anonymous private benefactor means the first steps have been taken towards the creation of a museum dedicated to storytelling in the city.

The Story Museum has existed online for the past four years, holding events across Oxfordshire and running storytelling pilots in schools, but the donation enables it to start constructing a permanent home in Oxford. It has just signed a lease on Rochester House, a Victorian building a stone's throw from Christ Church College – where many scenes in the Harry Potter movies are filmed – on Pembroke Street. It now needs to raise a further £11m to transform the building into a museum, which will aim to attract 100,000 visitors a year when it opens in 2014.

I don't see why a museum dedicated to Story and Storytelling should be solely a children's museum, frankly. But ah well, I'll take what i can get. Here's the website for the web-only museum if you're interested.

Don't Ask, Don't Give

I am joining Josh and a bunch of other hardened progressives in taking the Don't Ask, Don't Give Pledge. You can do it here, if you are so inclined. What's the Don't Ask, Don't Give pledge?  It's simple...:

I pledge not to donate to the Democratic National Committee, Organizing for America, or the Obama campaign until Congress passes, and the president signs, legislation enacting the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT), and repealing the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

It's important to note that the pledge still allows you to donate to individual candidates, just not to the DNC itself.  The only way to have power with a poltiical party is to have a resource they want and need to work against. I knew that gay rights stuff was probably going to be slow in coming, after all, Obama is pretty cautious, as his half-a-loaf position on gay marriage can attest.  But still, it's time to turn off the spigot a little. I'm sick of politicians hitting people who want gay equality up for money, using the Republicans as the bogey man and then not fucking doing anything.

An Additional Thought on the Director's Hand

A thought exercise I find helpful for spotting the director's impact on a show goes something like this:

(1) Assume the script is good and "works". Think through the production you've just seen.

(2) Assume the same script is bad and "doesn't work" Re-think through the produciton you've just seen.

I've found this really helpful for training my eye and mind to see a director every when they're trying to be invisible. This is particularly true when it comes to the tone of a production. 

Spencer Ackerman On Criticizing Friends On The Internet

In re: the conversation 99 started yesterday... Spencer Ackerman responds to people who feel he went too soft on a friend of his whom he disagreed with:

I don’t think my take on the piece was equivocal at all. Eli certainly didn’t see it that way, and we have the email back-n-forth to prove it. But I thought I steered away from gratuitous comment bashing the piece, and criticized what I thought went a bit far. And that’s really what the heart of the criticism is: would I have opened both barrels on a piece like that if a friend of mine hadn’t written it?

Well, in all honesty, probably, yeah. But that shouldn’t make me beat up on my friend. It should give me pause for when I go all-out on people who aren’t my friend. There should be one rigorous standard — no euphemism, no pulled punches, no intellectual sloppiness, but no unfairness either. Doesn’t mean I have to treat bad-faith arguments as good-faith ones, nor does it mean this blog can’t have fun. It certainly doesn’t mean this blog can’t have friends

Charlotte Gainsbourg and Beck Get Crazy

Watch on full screen. Trust me:

"Kill Jews" Update

It turns out, Gothamist is already on the case.  These two posts round up what we know about the mysterious scraps of paper with "Kill Jews" written on them. 

If anyone else finds any "Kill Jews" papers, please write in to parabasisnyc at gmail dot com or post in the comments to let me know. And make sure to call the NYPD Hate Crime unit and report where and when you found them. Thanks.

Another One Bites The Dust

This time, it's DC's Catalyst Theater.  Rumors of its demise had been circling over them like vultures ever since they didn't announce a new season or update their website for several months.  Now the Post confirms it: They're done, largely done in by a move to a larger space right when the economy blew up.  Also in trouble? The space they moved to, The Atlas in NE DC:

Meanwhile, Atlas itself has been struggling in the economy, according to Scott Kenison, the arts center's chief operating officer. "We've done what most companies have done," he says. "We cut back everybody's hours 20 percent . . . because we didn't have anything happening. Nobody was renting the space. . . . This fall, our season is very bare. All these companies sort of convulsed from the economic situation of the last year and sort of withdrew to regroup."

RTWT Here. Last year I was talking with an artistic director down in DC who told me that companies in DC come and go in waves.  Many companies will start at the same time, many of those will go out of business, and a few will remain.  For example: Everyone knows Woolly and Studio, but does anyone remember that there was a DC Playwrights Theatre? It was one of several companies (along with The Source, Stage Guild and a few others) that started at the same time.  It's gone. The Source's name still exists, but it's run by completely different people and has changed hands (and ownership) several times. Many other companies from that same wave no longer exist.  There's been another wave: Rorschach, Forum, Catalyst, Synetic etc. in DC. Some of those will survive, some of them probably won't.

We have a longevity bias in American Theatre that privileges lasting as long as possible. While it's sad that a good company is shutting its doors, I'm still not convinced that measuring success by years in business is a healthy thing in the arts.  Maybe more companies should go under and there should be more changeover.  Not every band is U2, after all. Some bands are like Liquid Liquid; they release a couple of awesome EPs and an album and then go bust. 

It was ultimately a bad business decision (upgrading to a larger, unfamiliar venue right as the economy tanked) that did Catalyst in. When you make bad business decisions, you occasionally go out of business.  I don't mean to be heartless about it, it's sad when your company doesn't work out and I feel for the Catalyst people. Ultimately to the DC scene (or any scene for that matter) the problems at Atlas are far more troubling.  Companies come and go, space is much harder to replace.

Assumptions of Bad Faith

99Seats expands on a point I made earlier about blogospheric assumptions of bad faith, suggesting it's not just a blog disease, but rather a theatre-related illness as well:

When Theresa Rebeck writes about the lack of solid structure she sees in young playwrights, the conversation revolves around how it's really about why her plays aren't being well-received or something. When Roland Tec(o) accuses the O'Neill of being a rigged game, it's really about jealousy and sour grapes. When the O'Neill responds, it's really about covering their ass. When I write about the representation of black playwrights, it's really just a plea for more attention. Everyone's motives are questionable and we basically believe the absolute worst of each other. I'd say it's just out here in the blogosphere, but we all know how it is when we meet in the lobby, at the bar after the show, three blocks away from the theatre. (And that's even more gossip, isn't it?) The default is to not take anyone at face value. How do we build communities like that?

Hm. Interestingly enough, it was that very post that 99 is responding to that I got a lot of private pushback from people on via e-mail. One e-mailer whom I respect greatly said that the theatrosphere was, in fact, too credulous, at least w/r/t non-NYTimes theatre coverage.  

But that's a conversation for another day... back to what 99 is talking about... I'm of two minds.  On the one hand, I have experienced (and perpetuated) the very behaviors he's talking about here. I'll cop to it. We've all done it. We've all played our cards too close to the vest out of fear of... something. We've all approached another member of the community with suspicion and consciously avoided grappling with what they're saying (or doing) as artists as a result etc.  

In my experience this comes up more the more resources are at stake. I don't feel particularly inclined to be suspicious towards, say, Gus or Jimmy Comtois or Don Hall or any of the other people sweating it out in the sub-99 world.  But looking back over the past couple of months... I see in my posts an  almost immediate suspicion the more $$$ or the more success someone or some institution has.  I want to be open about this because I think it's important as a blogger to check in with yourself publicly as a way of maintaining some form of real-time integrity. No one's mind is truly open, we all have out own preferences and biases. Teresa Rebeck is a successful playwright, so I get more suspicious of her advocacy being self-serving than I do 99's posts advocacy for more black theatre.  Similarly, the O'Neill is a large institution and Roland Tec is an individual artist, so I'm dispositionally inclined so to side with the latter over the former.

I don't, in other words, assume bad faith on the part of my peers. This is the place where I think 99 is maybe being a little over-broad. And I genuinely think that in the indie theatre world, there's a lot of open-mindedness and support to be found, a lot of people who genuinely want each other to succeed and are willing to help each other out.  It may in fact be the case that we're too "supportive" and don't discuss each other's work frankly enough (in private, that is, at the mythical bar around the corner from the show... I have no desire to discuss my friends' work on my blog without express permission on their part, my friendships are important to me).