Some Thoughts on the Indie Theatre Scene From a Practitioner
NB: I am really only writing about New York here, I’d love
to hear what other people’s experiences of the indie/grassroots/whatever scenes
in their town’s.
NB2: This is very rough. Commentary is welcome.
NB3: Please forgive the wonky formatting.
WEAKNESSES:
The weaknesses of the Indie Theatre Scene can be roughly
categorized thusly.
(1)
Lack of Adequate Funding (And Funding Sources)
Many problems spring forth from this one issue. The lack of quality stage managers, for
example. As one Artistic Director told me “Finding a good stage manager in the
off-off world is very difficult. You want to find someone really good with
little experience, because as soon as they have both quality and experience,
they’ll be too busy to work with you.”
As a result, good stage managers are frequently either (a) people with
good organizational skills who need to be taught how to stage manage while the
director is also directing the show, (b) angels (or people involved in the
production company) or (c) recently graduated theatre students. Of these, Group
A is the least desirable and also the easiest to find.
Another problem is attition. Some people are
dedicated to indie theatre and sticking it out. They view at as something
necessary to them as people rather than as a potential profession (profession
in the sense of something they get paid to do, I’m not talking about dedication
here). Others view indie theatre
as where they are now not where they are
planning on staying. As a result, losing actors to gigs that pay actual money
is frequent, scheduling around people’s remunerative conflicts can be a
nightmare etc. On top of this, the “scene” such as it is has rather a lot of
turnover as people leave to other cities, other fields, better paying jobs etc.
There is very little institutional memory as there are, essentially, no
institutions.
One artistic director, when asked by me how he’d run
his theater if money were no option, said “I’d pay every actor $5K a week”. His
point was that he could avoid the above issues if he could pay people enough.
He had also just lost a lead actor to a film.
In addition, lack of adequate funding can make
professionalism more complicated and difficult to achieve. When someone is doing something at
night essentially as a hobby, that can have an adverse affect on someone’s
level of commitment to a project. In New York, the carrot of “being discovered”
or a show positively affecting someone’s career helps mitigate this. I am told
in other cities where it really is someone’s hobby, these problems are far more pronounced (one
director told me of an actor with some experience wanting to reschedule
rehearsal because the weather was going to be nice the next day and he wanted
to go hiking.)
More—and more creative—funding sources need to
become available. Something like
the NYC equivalent of The Awesome Foundation would be a good start. As David Dower pointed out at the TCG
conference, stabilizing the grassroots theatre world would not take a lot of
money and small amounts of money can go a long way.
(2)
Expensive, low-quality real estate
To paraphrase Richard Foreman: the
artist problems in New York are real estate problems. Space in New York City
comes at an outrageous premium. The facilities groups have access to are
frequently in states of disrepair, with out of date equipment, low storage
spaces and bad backstage facilities. They also cost easily $1,500 a week at a
minimum. Companies get around this by producing in rep spaces such as the
spaces run by Horse Trade, the Gene Frankel and the 78th Street
Theatre Lab. These spaces tend to have more severe quality issues but are
dramatically cheaper. In my mind,
the value in these spaces is fairly dramatic. A show at Horse Trade if you’ve worked out the right deal
with them, costs little up front and the rental is largely taken out of your
box office. You trade exclusivity for this and the spaces can be tricky to work
with. But many spaces costing over a grand a week are not actually much better.
One of the other issues in space
quality is the lack of good space managers. Many space managers are extremely
hostile, unhelpful, hate their jobs and/or view renters as potential Visigoth
Hordes coming to burn their peaceful village down. As the space managers rarely
own the spaces, they often fail to
understand (on an emotional or cognitive level) that the money you are paying
keeps them in business. There are good space managers out there (I had a great
experience with Kyle et al at the Access and I think Eric at 78th
Street is one of the nicest people working in theatre) but bad space managers
can make the experience of doing quality work much much harder. (As can, from a
design perspective, the lack of up-to-date drawings and all sorts of other
little things).
(3)
Low Visibility for Work
Let’s just admit it: Supply
vastly outweighs demand. This is why festival glut is a really serious problem. Individual shows have a very difficult
time getting attention even when festival season isn’t happening. Now that
festivals happen year round, getting visibility is even more difficult. The stereotype of indie theare is that
artists either (a) guilt-trip their non-theatre friends into seeing work
they’re not really going to like and subsidizing it with the ticket prices or
(b) that theatre artists make up the bulk of the audiences at indie theatre
shows. While both stereotypes are
based in some kind of reality (people who do theatre care about theatre and
want to see theatre etc.), these both arise out of the same supply-demand
issue.
Recently,
the Collective Arts Think Tank has put some thought into this issue and
recommends that we, essentially, cut down on supply. While I agree, the
question automatically begged is who is meant to be cutting down on supply? Now, the Collective Arts Think Tank is largely
centered around performance companies doing generative work, but it’s still
worth asking. Vallejo Gantner is a co-signatory. Is PS122 going to reduce its
programming by 50% while still seeking the same level of funding from donors
and foundations? My guess is no (nor would I were I he). Who, then, is supposed to take the hit
and reduce their supply? Who puts down their gun first in the Mexican Stand-Off
of Off-Off Broadway?
The truth of the matter is that as
long as work is largely funded by the artists themselves with a few outside
donations and the occasional foundation kicking in some grant money every now
and then, there’s no incentive to reduce supply (unless the producers get laid
off from the day job funding their theatre company). The market does not in any way influence what gets put on
(this is a good and bad thing). What determines it is simply staying power. Who
will stick it out the longest, go the extra mile, dump more of their own money
into their shows, and who will go with them. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing, but it’s one
of the reasons why supply is so high.
This is related to another issue
(Which is interrelated with the next point). Success is poorly defined. A
show that sells badly can still be an artistic success. A show that no one
liked can still be beloved by its creators. If success is poorly defined,
failure is also poorly defined, and thus a company ceasing production is
largely based on factors that have little to do with the actual work.
(4)
Severe Quality Control Issues
Most theatre is bad. There, I said it. There’s plenty of bad theatre happening in
large venues with lots of money. Money does not determine quality (although it
can help create an environment in which quality is easier to create). That being said, as a practitioner and
viewer of indie theatre, it’s worth noting how often amateurishness pervades the
scene… plays frequently have uneven casts, clumsy staging and poorly-thought
out design.
Sometimes, this is made up for by
the early-Sam Shepard qualities… energy, intensity, immediateness etc. but oftentimes, it is not. Frequently shows display potential
excellence with little actual
excellence.
There are many reasons why this is
so, but one that keeps coming up in conversations with peers is the lack of
frank peer-to-peer dialogue about the work created. If frank peer-to-peer
dialogue about work is to happen, it’s most likely going to happen in
person-to-person private contact, in meat space, not cyber space. Artists don’t really want
to hear criticism and their friends don’t really want to deliver it. In addition, there is little effort put
out to question non-friend audience members as to their responses to work. The
rule of thumb is at times that if the creators were happy with it, the
audience’s experience of it can be easily dismissed.
I’m painting in broad strokes here,
of course, and I’ve seen lots of excellent work that I wouldn’t have seen
anywhere else were it not for the Indie Theatre scene (Fight Girl Battle
World and Universal Robots being two recent examples) but the truth of the
matter is, a lot of work is sub-par.
And it’s very difficult to convince first-time audience members to take
a risk on indie theatre (Despite the excellent price point) because of their
worries about the quality of what they’re about to see.
It’s also why—as one
producer/director told me—“we need to plaster any good reviews all over the
fucking place like needy children to get people to believe we don’t suck”.
Which gest back to the visibility issue.
This also returns us to the issue
of Poorly Defined Success. If market
considerations are irrelevant (and again, I think it’s in general good that that’s
so) due to self-funding and the work “plays be its own rules” or
some other “has its own terms” type thing going on, then no matter what
happens, the play can be defined as a success. As a result, the only way of
separating wheat from chaff overtime becomes exhaustion. But how dedicated
you are is not the same as how
good you are.
STRENGHTS:
(1)
Resourcefulness
I think most civilians would be
surprised on what theatre people create out of next to nothing. The show I’m directing right now has
multiple costumes for five actors (including a hand-made giant chicken outfit)
for under $300.00. Theatre
folk—and especially indie theatre folk—are amazingly good at stretching every
dollar and at using technological innovations (particularly where sound design
is concerned) to accomplish this.
What amazes me every time I do a
play is the amazing resources contained just in the human beings I work
with. Many of the people working
in indie theatre are polymathic in their interests and talents. And because the
scene is not dominated by theatre MFA folk, there’s more of a diversity of
background and kinds of experience and knowledge. Talented and generous people are able to bring their diverse
backgrounds out to help make the show better.
Necessity being it’s mother,
resourcefulness is of course deeply intertwined with Inventiveness. When design in the indie world is inventive (and
it’s worth saying, often it is not as stated above) there’s a sophistication
and ingenuity behind it that really cannot be found elsewhere no matter how
much money you spend. It’s more magical to transform a shoebox into a kingdom
than it is to build a replica kingdom out of plywood.
(2)
Supportive Community
Really, one of the best things
about working in indie theatre is the communities of artists that have
developed. It reminds me a bit of what someone told me about living in
Portland, Oregon, “No one has much money here, so there’s a real desire to help
people out and make the best of it. You get a lot of invitations to come over
to a potluck”. These communities
then overlap and “intermarry” in a way, helping expose artists to new
collaborators in a safer way than the usual blind-audition process.
In addition, I have found indie theatre artists to
be in general a fairly selfless, generous lot. We go to see each other’s shows
(when possible), we help each other when sets need to be built or crises
emerge. We consult each other when we need help. We work together in strange
overlapping circles and learn from each other, then bring this knowledge back
to our own little fiefdoms. It’s
really remarkable, and quite moving to experience. It’s like having a very large extended family. For example,
I’ve never worked with Vampire Cowboys, but I know so many people who have (or
are just part of the same social circles) that when I met Qui and Abby we were
basically already friends.
(3)
Variety
I think this one speaks for itself,
really. If you’re looking for variety in theatre, the indie theatre scene is
the place to go. You can see a gajillion new plays on any given night, all with
very different sensibilities jostling with company created work that ranges
from commedia derived spectacles to somber meditations on death. In some venues you can see one show at
8 and see its polar opposite at 10.
The one chink in variety’s armor is
the classics. There aren’t a ton of productions of either the classics or the I guess
you could call it “20th century rep” in the indie theatre scene. I
don’t personally think there should be. That territory is very well covered
elsewhere, and it’s fine to let other people do what they do well while doing
what we do well.
(4)
Audience Demographics
While in my experience, indie
theatre audiences are not as racially diverse as they probably should be (and
would be if the work produced was more diverse) the audience for indie theatre
is in general young, hip, interested in the arts, well read and/or educated
etc. They are, in other words, the
audiences that large institutions increasingly talk about trying to rope in to
their shows.
As time passes
and it becomes clearer that the Indie Theatre Scene is its own scene-- rather
than the minor leagues for institutional theatre—addressing these (and other)
weaknesses by building on our strengths will be the way forward. In some cities the grassroots or indie
theatre scenes have already gone their separate ways from the larger LORT
theaters that dominate the landscape of their cities. I’m interested in finding
out what innovations and different ways of thinking have arisen from this.
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