Parabasis

Road Trip Part One!

Spent an hour digging out the car and then loaded it up and drove to Richmond, VA today. Tomorrow we drive to Atlanta. Below the jump, all the music we listened to on this first leg of the trip.

From The Annals Of Amazing Casting Notices

The first one comes via Lezbehonest.  It's amazing:

Grant Wilfley Casting is seeking an African American boy, 9-12 years old, with very dark skin tone to be a featured extra in the Disney film “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” starring Nicolas Cage. We are specifically trying to find a boy with dreadlocks but may be able to do a wig if we find the right boy who doesn’t have dreads. The most important part of this is a boy who is not afraid of snakes. There will lots of real snakes in the scene & the boy will be required to hold 1 or 2 of them. The snakes are well trained, non venomous and there will be several animal trainers on set the entire time to ensure safety. But this will obviously require a boy who is unafraid of snakes.

Which reminded me of this incredible Harper's Readings clip of the real casting notice for Christina Aguilera's Beautiful video.

Delicious Data!

The Off-Broadway League is sending around the following message, in which they used Telecharge.com's data to figure out purchasing habits by geography.  Here it 'tis:

We decided to see if there were significant differences in the
geographical breakdown of customers by performance, using sales data
from Telecharge.com Broadway shows for performances between August 31,
2009 and January 3, 2010.  Unless otherwise stated, we used the total
number of orders as the basis of our observations.

Summary

* Tourists are less likely to buy matinees than evenings.
* Suburban theatergoers prefer matinees over evenings.
* People who live in Manhattan prefer Tuesday over Friday or Saturday
night.  Thursday is their favorite performance.
* More tourists attend the theatre on Thursday evening than on Wednesday.

More info after the jump!

Next Couple of Weeks

Hello all,

You may have noticed things have been a wee bit lite around Parabasis these days. That's because I'm going on a pre-wedding road trip with Anne and getting ready for it has been really, really hectic.  We're leaving this weekend, and i'll have spotty internet access for awhile.  

As a result, I'm bringing in some really awesome guest bloggers to hold down the fort while I'm gone, some of whom are regular bloggers, some of whom are not... For the first week, playwright Sam Hunter will be holding down the fort, along with a friend of mine (I am unclear if he's posting pseudonymously or not) who has worked as both a director and a literary manager outside of New York. 

For the second week, CultureFuture's Guy Yedwab will be in the hot seat, along with my dear friend Ben Owen, who is one of the smartest and funniest writers on comix I know.  

Peppered throughout will be 99Seats, writing the occasional post on whatever topic suits his fancy.

There may be additional guests as well, and I'll pop my head out from time to time.

Enjoy! I'll miss you all!

My Deepest Sympathies...

...for Tony Adams, whose mother recently passed away from cancer. You can read Tony's beautiful, deeply moving account of his experience with his mother's death here. It's a hard, strange thing to recommend, but I highly recommend you read it.

This is a strange age we live in.  I've never met Tony-- we've barely even corresponded-- but through our blogs, through the exchange of passionately held ideas over several years, I feel I've come to know him and, in some strange new internet era definition of friend, consider him a friend.

Tony, I am very sorry for your loss.  I have nothing more profound to say than that, especially as your own writing on the subject far outstrips anything I could come up with in the significance department.

Ron Paul's Ties To White Supremacy

Go a lot deeper than I thought. Wow. I only really knew about the newsletter stuff...but even if you're going to give him the benefit of the doubt on that one, there's still a lot of other evidence out there that Ron Paul's views on race (not to mention the jews) are waaaaaaaaay outside the American Mainstream.

Submission Fees

Ian at Createquity has a really great, nuanced look at submission fees for a composing competition. You can find it here. 

I know that submission fees for playwriting competitions are the subject of some controversy in the field.  The Dramatists Guild, if memory serves, takes a blanket "no" stance towards them. I feel pretty torn.  There are lots of organizations out there that are basically scams: they take money for submissions of, say, ten minute plays, and then that submission money goes to pay the winner's purse and, of course, the people from the organization. But winning the competition won't do anything for the writer and the purse is generally small... $200, say.

But then there are organizations that really are playwright service organizations like Bay Area Playwrights or The O'Neill.  They have submission fees, and its hard to fault them for it. They have very few sources of revenue beyond donations, being involved with them really can help a playwright's career and they genuinely exist to help writers.  Having a fee (and really, $35.00 isn't a lot of money, although if you're applying to a bunch of programs it adds up) helps control the flow of scripts as well and makes sure that applicants are serious about applying.

So I'm saying I see both sides of it.  I have a feeling I'm going to get some grumpy comments about making money off the backs of writers, who are already underpaid and exploited.  And I'm sympathetic to that as well.  Perhaps something like in admissions to schools where there's a fee (often a lot steeper), but you can apply for a fee waver would help.

New Website To Bookmark!

TDF (full disclosure: my occasional freelance employer) has launched a new online magazine about theatre in New York.  It is here. There's some good stuff on it already, including articles about ReEntry and the costume design in The Miracle Worker.

Quote of the Day

"I never understand complaints about plays being "dated." Naturally, all plays that weren't written yesterday are dated: Their diction, their costumes, their stage conventions, and their mores all belong to the time when they were conceived. That's what makes them interesting: the excitement of comparing their view of the world with ours, of seeing how well their sense of humanity still holds up, or doesn't, despite all the obstacles time has piled in between."

-- Michael Feingold

Your Modern GOP

StageGrade Now Has An RSS Feed

For all of you who asked " but where's the RSS feed?"... well, ask and ye shall receive. StageGrade's RSS feed can be found here.

I Get Interviewed

Thanks to Zack Calhoon from Visible Soul for doing this interview with me. I probably should have proof read it, but that's how I roll!

Fun Fact For The Day

Next time a conservative says to you that tort reform is the best way to bring down health care costs, you should probably direct them to the CBO's analysis of the issue. Their conclusion?:

CBO now estimates that implementing a typical package of tort reform proposals nationwide would reduce total U.S. health care spending by about 0.5 percent (about $11 billion in 2009). That figure is the sum of a direct reduction in spending of 0.2 percent from lower medical liability premiums and an additional indirect reduction of 0.3 percent from slightly less utilization of health care services.

Eleven billion dollars ain't chump change, but it's not that significant an amount of money, when you're talking about health care costs.

The Secret is Out Now... Please Welcome StageGrade!

Critic-o-Meter has officially been turned into a new website called StageGrade.  You can read our announcement discussing this here.  You can visit the new site here.  We're still kicking the tires and seeing how this thing works, so expect lots of changes and improvements (big and small) over the coming weeks. 

And for those of you who missed us over the last month we've been seemingly-defunct, we've gone back and caught up as best we could.  The latest additions to the site are The Boys In The Band, Clybourne Park and Extinction.  Enjoy. 

Just To Be Very Very Clear

The person talked about in this post is not me. 

Preaching To The Choir

Kudos to the Times to this excellent dialogue between Brantley and Isherwood about topical theatre in New York (overpraise of Black Watch aside).  There's a lot of interesting stuff that they raise and it's well worth your time to RTWT over here (it's not very long). What's interesting to me about the conversation is how quickly they slide from talking about topical theatre to talking about theatre that explores important themes to contemporary life, which ties in to points I've tried to make several times here on the blog about how we misunderstand and misapply the term "political" when talking about "political theatre". 

 I do want to examine something that Isherwood says in a little more depth, tho.  He writes:

The strictly journalistic plays like “The Exonerated” and “Guantánamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom” are certainly a worthy and usually very moving subset of political theater. But they can feel medicinal and are very often seen by a small subset of liberally inclined theatergoers.

It's not that I disagree with him, necessarily... but here is my question: Do we actually know that journalistic plays are largely seen by a small subset of liberally inclined theatergoers? My guess is, no.  We don't take exit polls at plays. I suspect that Isherwood is right, but the Exonerated ran forever, and it is unclear that a "small subset" of liberally inclined theatregoers could have kept it going for that long (And, in fact, it's marketing campaign was largely built around inviting people of all POVs to see the show).  Furthermore, "journalistic" plays offered as part of a season subscription are going to be seen by all of that theater's subscribers, regardless of their political beliefs. 

But the other thing that's weird about the Isherwood quote-- and I want to make it clear that I'm not picking on Isherwood here, he's saying things we've all heard and many of us have said in the past, he's just the vehicle for it-- there's this idea that a play finding and speaking to a specific audience ceases to be a good thing if that audience is liberals.  I think this reflects just how broad and ingrained the anti-liberal consensus in this country is, so ingrained that people with liberal beliefs will themselves espouse self-hating cliches about liberalism. Like that theatre that liberals might like is immediately suspect because liberals like it. 

That "Black Watch" is used as the counter-example is very interesting. "Black Watch" is also a journalistic show, but it is one that uses inventive (if over-done) staging and the inability in our current climate for Americans to criticize the military to inoculate itself against any criticism whatsoever.  And what you get is an overly-long play that at its core is simply a recitation of "pro-soldier" war cliches and Scottish nationalism playing in front of an audience that wouldn't dare to be seen as anything but "pro-soldier" in a country that's fighting two wars and in which it is absolutely impossible to criticize military personnel. And it's wildly successful. And held up as example of great political drama that we have to go to our cultural superiors across the pond to get.

Meanwhile, a play like Aftermath, which isn't pro-military at all, and is an excellent example of journalistic theatre...  oh, that's clearly just preaching to the converted.  

Of course, I am closer ideologically to Aftermath's position than Black Watch's, which is probably why I see it the way I do. But this is just a reminder that we are guided by our prejudices and ideologies. Checking them at the door is impossible. Some awareness of them, however, is a good thing. 

Your Weekly Dose of Cute

John Simon, Homophobe

A while ago, I got into a little contretemps with a Critic-O-Meter reader about John Simon.  I raised questions in a C-O-M post about Simon's long history of fielding accusations about racism and sexism in his writing. Antics ensued.

Longtime readers of Parabasis probably know that I have a little bit of an...obsession, perhaps?... unhealthy fixation? I dunno, on the former critic for New York Magazine.  Frankly, I don't really understand how Bloomberg can continue to employ as a supposed honest arbiter of artistic excellence someone who says that seeing two men kissing on stage is "a problem".  I'd say more about the subject but... well, I don't really think I have to.

Your Conservative America

Sure... race has nothing to do with the current Republican Party's tactics.

Okay, once you've read that and taken a shower, here is a nice surprise, Chris Matthews actually saying something smart about race and politics:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 

The Prof Responds to Me About CRADLE

Scott Walters has a very clarifying post up at his place in which he responds to some questions I posted in his comments.  You should go over there and read it, because it's way too lengthy and complex to excerpt in any kind of intelligent way.

My basic concerns raised (which came out of conversations with others) were that because of the demographic realities of lower population and rural areas, Scott was objectively (if unintentionally) pushing for theatre funding to become whiter.  The second was a thing raised by a friend of mine where, essentially, he doesn't give a shit about money going to rural communities because he fled them due to his homosexuality. (Just to be clear, the first one is a worry I share, the second one is one I don't).

Scott has six responses to them. Again go read them here.  

I find some of them persuasive and some of them less so. Here's what I found persuasive:  (1) Rural and lower population areas are not what they used to be and are getting more diverse ethnically. (2) We shouldn't distribute arts money punitively, so the fact that someone didn't want to live somewhere, or had been traumatized by a specific kind of community, was no reason to deprive it of funding.

I find the rest of the arguments contradictory, sometimes self-contradictory.  Scott wants us to remember that funding is a zero-sum game (as he's said in earlier posts) but at the same time wants people to act against their self-interest (and towards his) in distributing it:

My initial response to the anonymous questioners was bafflement: really? You recognized that people in rural areas are getting systemically shafted by the arts funding models and priorities, but you're going to continue to support this injustice because your side is benefiting? When wealthy people do this, it is called cronyism, and it is something we liberals get all fluffed about. So the comment seemed sort of selfish and unethical, frankly.

Second, he wants to work against the problem of artists just making art for their friends and people like them in cities by making it easier for artists in lower population areas to make art for their friends and people like them. Why is it not okay in the former but okay in the latter? The latter gets phrased under attractive things like "supporting your community" or "reflecting your community's values" or having a right to your heritage. The former is pointy headed liberal city elitist arrogance. That's weird, to say the least.

I'd buy it if the issue is-- hey, you guys get to have your art that reifies your community, I'd like to have mine too-- but that's not how it gets phrased. City art is doing "plays for your friends and people who are like you" whereas country art "increases empathy, creates community, bridges difference, and helps dissolve barriers of all kinds". Or to put it another way, if speaking to communities different than yours and bringing them together is what CRADLE was about, it would be a cultural exchange program (that'd be pretty awesome too, btw).  But it's not.

I support CRADLE's goals, I just want to say that again-- the goals of having more fairly distributed theatre funding in this country and encouraging local arts and theatre-- but those goals have little to do with using art to bridge difference. If anything they have to do with using art to reify communities that aren't being represented. Which is okay, I just want to clarify what's being advocated for here.

Most importantly, though, I think this exchange has highlighted for me what the differences are between Scott and my priorities and values.  Simply put, I view "geographic diversity" as a means to an end. Scott views it as an end in itself.  So what are the ends that I believe it is means to accomplish?  Theatre being more responsive to local needs, being less NYC-centric, and being more diverse from a class perspective are all things I think are good for the ongoing health of the art form and in terms of having a theatre scene that reflects values I care about.  Scott views geographic diversity as being about democracy. 

Which is fine. We don't have to agree with each other about that to be able to support each other.  The truth of the matter is that there's plenty that we agree on.  When you form coalitions and work collaboratively with people , you don't have to line up with them 100%, you simply have to have something mutually beneficial to work on. In a way, this is inter-related with 99's points about engagement vs. debate here.  If Scott and I decide to simply debate each other to death, the end result is almost certainly that nothing will happen beyond seriously busy comment threads. 

But we can engage with each other.  We can use the points where we do agree to build something and use the points where we disagree to try to sharpen each other's thinking on an issue. I don't raise the point above about reifying a community as a gotcha directed at Scott.  I raise it because I'm interested in his clarifying what he really wants and stands for on this particular front, because it seems a little murky to me. And I list what I do and don't find persuasive so that he knows how his arguments are playing with someone he's engaging with. 

Can I also just ask... really, seriously... do we actually know, in terms of population, how NEA funds are distributed? Does anyone have answer for this? I mean, I know that NC, for example, is getting twice as much money per capita from the stimulus than NY is and that, outside the arts, less populated areas often benefit from a lot of federal largesse when compared with cities (thanks, US Senate!).  I believe this is probably reversed when it comes to NEA funding and cities benefit disproportionately.

In other words, according to the 2000 census, 58% of this country lives in urban areas with more than 200K people in them.  How much arts funding goes to areas with more than 200K people?  I don't believe that arts funding should be distributed "evenly" in the sense that Senate votes are distributed "evenly" (which is to say, via a formula that vastly over-represents underpopulated areas), but I do believe they should be distributed more fairly in terms of per capita spending.  But like with the how-many-plays-of-what-kind-were-produced-in-the-aughts question, it'd be clarifying to know how out of whack, going by per capita spending, our current model is. Can anyone help me out here?

Also... and this is a real question for Scott (and Tom, and anyone else passionate about this issue)... if arts funding were distributed so that 58% of it went to areas with more than 200K people and 42% of it went to areas with less than 200K... would that be okay?