by Guest-Blogger Buckminster
Hello Dear Parabasites,
My how you've grown since I last saw you. And I've changed too. I've moved to the West Coast -- the San Francisco Bay Area. It is truly lovely out here, all these trees, all these fresh vegetables. Although I am sometimes befuddled by how goddam NICE everyone is. A quick example -- yesterday I was riding the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) train, and it broke down. The conducter came on the loudspeaker to say there was some kind of signal problem, but they didn't know what. Now being a New Yorker, I'm used to this sort of thing, knowing that in this situation I may be stuck on the train for anywhere between a few minutes and an hour. And I also know that I'll be pretty much be left in the dark about what's really going on or how long it will actually be.
After about 90 seconds the conducter comes back on to apologize for the delay, explain what the problem was, and promise to update us as soon as he knows anything. And this is where it gets really wierd... he actually does this. In fact, he comes on every 90 seconds for the entire 26 minutes we're stuck there to tell us A) that he's very sorry B) how long we have been waiting,and C) exactly what is going on -- he even feeds the live message from central control directly into the loudspeaker. When they got the system online he tells us, and when it crashed again, he told us that too, sounding genuinely embarassed and frustrated. This is a very bizarre land indeed.
But I digress... Just before my move, Isaac asked if I was interested in posting a sort of theatrical view from the rregions. I think all of us, on some cold Tuesday night when your upstairs neighbors are blasting samba music at three in the morning, have fantasized about what it would be like to move somewhere else. Some place where both renting an apartment and making theatre is easier and cheaper, some place where you could conitnue that regional theater dream of the 60s. So I'm here to live the dream for all of you all. Or if that doesn't work out, than at least i can chronicle the failure of that dream.
On at least 3 seperate occasions, over goodbye beers with theatre artists I respect, I was cautioned that there are almost no good actors in the Bay Area, and even fewer designers. This frightened me, and gave me pause to reflect on how lucky we are all in New York, how easy it is to assemble a group a very skilled and talented people for an endeavor. On my second night here, I saw a show put on by what I've been told is one of the best small companies in the Bay Area. From what I can tell, this is a company that in terms of institutional funding and longevity is somewhere in the neighborhood of Soho Rep or Clubbed Thumb. Given that I've just arrived, I'd prefer not to give too many details about the show and shoot my new local career in the proverbial foot. I will say however, that I went into this show excited to see the best of what the the Bay Area had to offer, and ten minutes into the play my heart had sunk to my stomach.
Since then I've been thinking of how, when I would go to see a show at one one of the not-for-profs off broadway, or one of many downtown theatres I repsect, there is a level of quality which the shows rarely dips below. I often don't like a play, or disagree with certain choices that are made, but Ican almost always count on pretty solid acting and design. Sometimes an actor is unfortunate enough to be badly miscast, but it's been ages since I've seen a show in which the majority of the cast was just plain bad. More often the majority of the cast is astonishingly good, no matter what other problems the play may have. I'm starting to suspect that this may not be the case out here. That as I was warned, the solid acting is hard to find. But I have not given up hope yet. I will find the good actors, and I will cast them. Besides, it seems prudent to at least find a place to live before delving into the stickier territory of whether or not I should give up hope.
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