Parabasis

The Price is Wrong

Don't get me wrong, I love Ricky Gervais. And I love the Ricky Gervais Show, the half hour podcast featuring the exploits of Karl Pilkington, Steven Merchant and Ricky G. But $2.00 an episode? That seems patently ridiculous.

I'm not one of those people who gets outraged at, like, their favorite TV show getting cancelled-- and I certainly wish that the numbskulls in charge of "Free Fiona" had spent their time lobbying Congress for something they believed in rather than sending foam green apples to SONY... but... $2.00 an episode for 30 minutes of three people talking shit? That's really ridiculous.

The Ricky Gervais show in its free form (with extremely obnoxious and profoundly unfunny commercials for the comedy line up on Channel 4 Fridays) reached somewhere around 300,000 people by the end of its run, if I remember correctly. At $0.10 an episode (for example) that would have been $30,000 an episode, which doesn't sound like much for roughly an hour's work, you could do worse than making $30,000 on something you used to do for fun. (Oh, and, at even underestimating at 200,000 hits an episode, that's still $24,000 in three months).

Of course, $.10 is probably a little cheap. At $0.50 (which I think people would pay) you make (again, at 200,000 hits) 100,000 an episode, or $1.2 million for three months of weekly episodes.

On iTUNES, you can get an episode of a TV show that's an hour long for the same price you pay for half an hour of The Ricky Gervais Show. This seems crazy. Am I missing something here?

Sad Day

NYTW's cancellation of My Name Is Rachel Corrie due to pressure from and worry about upsetting zionist groups is upsetting. As is both the NYTimes and apparently NYTW's lumping in of all Jews with zionists. I don't mean, BTW, Zionist as any kind of slur. It happens to be a political perspective that I disagree with (I'm pretty anti nationalism in general, regardless of who is doing the nationalisming), but I understand it and respect it at the same time. To some extent.

Anyway... Jason Grote discusses the issue briefly and promises more. I hope to comment on this one, too.

Can I just say that regardless of whether or not you agree with Zionist political aims that not doing a play because a specific group won't like it is like just about the worst reason not to do a play? I mean, if someone decided not to do a play because they were worried about offending Atheists (a group I belong to) I think I'd think it was pretty stupid too.

Sigh...

More later, I suppose.

Money, Baby

Here's my provocation for the day...

I've been involved in a few productions in which I've been paid to direct. In none of these cases was I the highest paid member of the production team. I'm not kvetching... people are free to pay what they think someone is worth, and people are also free to bargain (solo or collectively) for more pay if they feel so inclined. Budgets are limited, and people end up getting paid different amounts for all sorts of reasons.

So, dear reader... you're producing a show with a limited budget. How would you tier people's salaries in an ideal world? Would you distribute the money equally amongst all involved? Would you rank your payments, putting one person or position at the top? How would you structure all of this for your production? (You can either include or not include writer's royalties in this, which seem to me to be a separate issue from how the director, actor, designers and staff are paid and in what order of importance). Why would you structure it the way you've chosen to structure it?

And, because money conversations tend to get heated, a plea, once again, for respectful, constructive disagreement. I'll try to weigh on on this, and Shakespeare, and the American Left later on today...

Busy Busy Day

Today I am training the temp who is going to replace me here at Pratt Institute so that I can focus on theater for the next six weeks.  I'm not sure if this is viable business plan-- temping in between projects, saving up money, focusing on work when it comes-- but for now that's what I'm doing.  Normally I have enough time in the day to write a post or two but I wouldn't be surprised if that doesn't happen today.

Might I instead invite you to participate in one of three interesting conversations we're having on the site?

1) We're having a talk about a little guy called Willy Shakes  and what started out as a kind of meme-- (What's your favorite Shakespeare production you've seen? etc.) has blossomed into quite the interesting discussion of audience experience with the bard.  Amongst the commenters is one of my favorite "downtown" actors, Col, and old Parabasis stalwart Abe Goldfarb, whose Titus was quite simply one of the best edited texts of Shakespeare I've ever seen (and if you think that's somehow damning with faint praise... editing down a Shakespeare text is quite simply one of the hardest and most essential jobs in doing his plays).

2) What started out as a snarky little joke about horror movie advertising has grown into a discussion of, essentially, the nature, value and purpose of horror films.  What interests me a great deal is this: what is the relationship between the openly horrific world we live in now (today's headling in the Times deals with a growing refugee crisis as violence spreads beyond Darfur, the dailies in New York are all covering the rape, torture and killing of a 24 year old woman that Col mentioned in the comments yesterday) and the increasing amounts of sadism and exploitation in contemporary horror films?

3) Finally, John-Paul of Everythingsruined and I are trying to have a conversation about the American Left.  You can find my first entry here and his cogent, questioning response here.  JP was one of my absolute favorite bloggers, and after a long hiatus he's back!  So check out the rest of his site while you're at it.

Have a good one!

Shakespeare

I know quite a few well established, smart, intelligent, extremely talented, full-of-artistic-integrity type of theater people who hate Shakespeare. Not just productions of Shakespeare, mind you, but Shakespeare as a writer. I remember asking one: "Why do you hate Shakespeare?" to which he replied "I'll give you a hint-- it's fucking bad writing".

I don't agree, dear reader, although I will admit that seldomly have I seen a production of a Shakespeare play that I was quite taken by.

Well, it appears some people out there in the blogosphere love Shakespeare a great deal, and are sick to death of crappy gimmicky performances of his work. And so, to you lovers of Shakespeare, I give you THE THINGS I WILL NOT DO WHEN I DIRECT A SHAKESPEARE PRODUCTION, ON STAGE OR FILM parts one and two.

And this leads me to once again ask for your opinion, everyone out there.... I think it's easy to think of hilariously bad Shakespeare productions, laughable casting decisions or terribly gimmicks. But let us leave that aside for a moment... what are your favorite Shakespeare productions and why? What did the company do that made the play work, in your opinion? Are their lessons to be gleaned for future productions of Shakespeare? And for those of us who have done Shakespeare... would you do it again? What lessons have you learned? What plays would you like to do of his?

These are lots of different questions... so anyone, feel free to pick up the ball and run with it. And one request again: let us work together to build an interesting conversation where we can all learn things and create new answers, rather than an argument where we bludgeon people with our rhetorical superiority. Let's not make this about proving ourselves right. Disagreement and passion are all well and good, but let's work together to use said disagreement and passion to build a better dialogue.

Enjoy yourselves out there.

Books.

I wrote a really awesome post, heartfelt and personal and somewhat well written, in response to George's beautiful writing today about books as physical objects and the wonders contained within.  But due to a mistake of a mouse click, I've lost the few hundred words I wrote, and the last forty five minutes of effort it took to write and begin revising them.  Don't let anyone tell ya that blogging is easy!

Crap.

Anyway, suffice it to say that like George, I love the physical object of the book, and I don't think anyone takes advantage of this love-of-physical-object better than the gorgeous New York Review of Books line of literature, of which I am reading my first now, Oakley Halls' incredible Warlock.  If you get a change, look up the NYRB the next time you are at your local indie bookstore.

I also wrote about how books were a comfort to me in the loneliness of my youth.  I had two friends growing up, one was a pathological liar, the other is a member now of the Rapid Response Team.  I felt highly uncomfortable with, and was often shunned and picked on by, children my own age; adults, action figures and books were my solace.  Books also linked me to that adult world, filled with giant humans whose approval and love I craved.  When I worked at a book store, I surprised myself with how many books I read as a child that I remembered-- A Wizard of Earthsea, The Dark is Rising, Island of the Blue Dolphins, Bridge to Tarabithea, The Phantom Tollbooth, The Black Couldron, Ender's Game, Catcher in The Rye, Farenheit 451, Ellen Foster to name just a few-- could recall large swathes of the plot and stylistic tics of, etc.  Books were my first love affair, and now that I've discovered other things (music, girls etc) keeping balance between my different loves is somewhat difficult.

I'm a very very social person.  And what i love about reading is it gives me a chance to be a little more on a recluse.  To commune privately with the infinite world of someone else's imagination.  I love and treasure that.  I think that is why, of all art forms, I'm least forgiving of bad books.  I'll listen to a bad album a few times just to make sure it's not me.  I rarely finish books I don't like, but a book I love I'll hang on to no matter how long it takes me to finish.  Infinite Jest, ultimately a good-but-not-great-book-filled-with-brilliance-but-also-uneven, took me three months to read; Underworld took me two. 

And somehow the vessel this infinite world is contained in is important.  That's why I don't think the book will be replaced anytime soon.  The glow of typeface on an LED screen seems a crude way to contain that vision, like Cotes Du Rhone served in a paper cup. That's a snobby metaphor,, but I hope it somehow makes clear the point I'm trying to make. Cotes Du Rhone might taste just as good in a paper cup, but somehow it doesn't feel like it does. I've tried reading public-domain books on line. I've even tried printing them out and reading them.  And my brain can't do it- it can't make the change in context.

Anyway... there was a lot more in what I originally wrote, but it's lost forever amongst the bits and bytes of the world.  Go read George's post. It's really beautiful.

Truth in Advertising

 

The tagline for this movie: The Lucky Ones Die First

Why don't they just change it to: Come See Women Get Raped! and be done with it? I mean, isn't that what the picture is implying...

Truth in Advertising

Dog Needs Home!

Someone in my neighborhood has to give up their 7 year old, fully house broken and completely trained, loving, cool-as-fuck beagle (no, don't worry, Ramona is still safely ensconced in my apartment). His name is Jackson, and he's really great. If you are interested in adopting a really great "Starter Dog" (as in, most of the work is already done and he's easy going) please contact the good people at Monster Mutt.

Brunch Table II: W(h)ither The American Left?

A long time back in blogosphere-time, Everythingsruined's John-Paul and yours truly had a diablog, modled after Slate.com's "Breakfast Table" about the state of American Conservatism.  The impetus was an almost pathologically foolish article by David Brooks in the New York Times Magazine in which he tried to coin something called "Big Government Conservatism".  We're now seeing that "big government conservatism" is not only a failure, but is really just what one gets when you let lobbyists run your party.

Now that Everythingsruined is back, J-P and I decided to do another diablog.  This time a response to/digression upon/whatever Bernard-Henri Levy's Letter to the American Left published recently in "The Nation".  SO without further ado... our first entry in the Brunch Table II: W(h)ither The American Left.

Required Reading 2/23

Perhaps I'm softening towards the man Jason Grote dubbed "The Prince of Darkness"... but would everyone please turn your attention to Charles Isherwood today in his review of Indoor/Outdoor in which he takes to task, amongst other things, the musical "Cats", the career of Sarah Jessica Parker, and (in his spare time) the play itself for existing. I'm not sure how I feel about this review, to tell you the truth, which is why I thought I'd throw it over to the hive mind to see what y'all have to say about it. I think my gut reaction is that I wish he had spent his time in this column making an appeal for better theater, like Mr. Cote did, rather than being clever. But like I said, that's a gut response, and not a particularly well formed one at that.  So I throw it over to you...

Interested as always to read your thoughts on this one, dear reader. Especially anyone who wants to read this in light of the David Cote review so amply discussed below.  And if I may make a request for the comments section... let's work on building a conversation instead of having an argument. Let's learn from each other instead of insisting on our own correct-ness.

UPDATE:  Due to some conversations I've had with people after posting this, I just wanted to make it clear that i actually enjoyed this review and laughed out loud reading it. What I'm trying to do is take two different reviewers reviews of plays that they don't like and their different strategies for dealing with them and see if there's anything for us to learn there...

Holy Shit

We here at Parabasis would be remiss if we didn't at least touch on the recent spate of violence in Iraq. What bugs me here is that news people seem to say that everyone's "worried" that Iraq will descend into "all out civil war".

Here's a question, oh so savvy readers. In what sense are we not already in an a civil war scenario in Iraq? Does simply admitting this make our option and strategies there clearer (or at least, what they should be)?

A Different Prospective

And interesting, contrarian, and provocative take on the UAE Port Deal over at the always indispensible ThinkProgress blog.  Check it out!

RRT Wrap Up

The Rapid Response Team's first production in over a year rocked Galapagos last night, methinks.  Went about as well as can be expected, 45 paid audience members, which is as big as its previous incarnation at The Red Room ever got... so onward and upward!  Hopefully most of those people will come back, and those that do come back will bring friends and so on and so forth and onwards and upwards.  We're trying to build this grass-roots style, and discover what exactly it is that we're doing at the same time.

Abe G. and I had a good conversation about the show, trying to pin down what exactly it is that we do.  I think that it's important not to drum up too many rules for oneself when trying to discover something... the rules of the Team are very loose... the news stories must be recent and must be true, and beyond that the writer can do whatever they want.  The Team then, as a group, constructs rules for how the show is to be.

But what it usually comes out being time and again is something quite close to the idea of a Revue Show akin to The Cambridge Footlights back in the 60s.  I'll let Abe, who is more of an expert on this than I, expound on this in the comments if he feels so inclined.  But there's a mixture of material, most of it funny, some of it silly, some of it serious, and lots of music.  It tends to be "clever" and skews towards a well educated, well informed audience. Doing something based on the news is usually going to aim for people who pay attention to it.

At the same time, I think that there are deeper reasons why I do the Rapid Response Team, and I'm sure someone is going to call me a self-important jackass for writing this, but here goes: I think that, consideirng how alienating and fear-based our culture is, and considering how anti-dissent our political landscape is, and how violent and dangerous and randomly so things are and feel these days... I think it's important that there are a group of young, energetic artists out there doing a fun event for people to leave their homes, come together as a group, and enjoy themselves in an evening specifically driven by said alienating/fear mongering/dangerous current events.  I'm not saying we're, like, heros (Captain Anti-Alienation and the Humanity Patrol!!), all I'm saying is that I think that what we do with the RRT has some small positive effect on us as artists and, hopefully, on the audience as well.  And sometimes, I have to admit, sometimes it feels like just getting people together in a room to laugh at the news an dpolitics and this world around us is in its own way a little act of rebellion. There, I said it.  And I believe it. You can start making fun of me now.

One main difference from our earlier shows  i've noticed is that our material, while political, isn't as partisan as it used to be.  I think that is becuase we were doing the show before in the context of an election, so most of the stories that were around to respond to were actually process stories which are easier to make partisan hay out of.  While certainly political, and definitely coming from a leftist perspective, our work this time out was more laughing at the utter ridiculousness of it all.  A friend of mine who is a Republican (and, I'm pretty sure, a born-again one at that) was able to have a great time at the show and not feel excluded by it while we were openly pointing out and mocking Western imperialism, Bush's environmental record, and Cheney shooting someone in the face. If I ever get a die-hard Bush supporter in the audience, I'll have to interrogate them afterwards to see what they thought.

Anyway... this is all a way of saying thanks to everyone who came out to support us, it really meant a lot. And thanks to my awesome collaborators for making this a really great night of theater, and the most fun I've had in a rehearsal room in awhile.  We'll be back in March with some brand new material, so come check us out then!

Taking Another Reviewer to Task

Just a quick (somewhat snarky) note for the uber-snarky people at Pitchfork Media:

Dear Pitchfork Media,

In today's review of Maximo Park's "Missing Songs" collection, Sam Ubl writes this:

Album nadir "Isolation", meanwhile, mercifully aborts mission after 74 ticks, which makes it kinda cool in a self-voyeuristic, Bee Thousand way, but I still can't abide that first verse: "The world is just a little town/ Everybody's tryin'a put us down/ Isolation," etc. Mouthing such without-a-point dreck, Smith's voice ceases to convey sweet, slightly sarcastic indifference, rather coming across achingly precious.

It is gratifying that Mr. Ubl knows about Guided By Voices' "Bee Thousand" but it is somewhat shocking that he does not know that "Isolation" is a song by John Lennon that Maximo Park is covering. Honestly, you'd expect that a paid rock journalist and reviewer who has written reviews on your website for about two years on everyone from +/- to Of Montreal etc. would know that.  I know that, and I don't even know very much about John Lennon.

This is not to defend Maximo Park, who I find a bit tired and Franzish in the least interesting way.  Still, considering the general holier-than-thou tone of your website, you should probably make sure that thou art actually, you know, holier.

Thanks for your time,
Isaac

Shameless Plugging Again

Tonight is the first performance by The Rapid Response Team is over a year. If you are in New York tonight and looking for a fun night out, please come by Galapagos this evening.  For just $7.00, you'll get an hour of entertaining, unpredictable new theater and music based on recent news stories!  It'll be a blast, I promise you.  Or you can post in the comments section and harangue me.  Or something.

Anyway, for all the info just check out our website.  Here's the rough essentials:

WHAT: The Rapid Response Team

WHERE: Galapagos, 70 North 6th Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 11211

WHEN: 8PM

PRICE: $7.00

Thanks again, and I hope to see you there!

Required Reading 2/17

This one's not theater.  Kevin Drum writes today and links to more information about who exactly is in Guantanamo Bay and what, exactly most of them did to get in there in the first place.  It's upsetting.  It's outrageous, really, and I hope that (A) outrage will build about this and (B) be bipartisan.

There's quite a bit of theater stuff I'd like to write about, but right now I'm working like a dog at this (we had our first meeting last night and the is going to be awesome) and at my temp job.  So hopefully I'll get to post later today.

Are They Out Of Their Fucking Minds??: England Edition

One of  the more interesting conversations I've had in theater recently is going on right here in my comments section, under the post "today's required reading". Since I also have a Rapid Response Team to plan (which, look, dear reader, I've read the scripts for this week, and I think it's going to be fucking awesome, so please come, if you can) to prepare for, I thought I'd keep things brief today.  So here is ATOOTFM: England Edition:

Britain stands up for free expression by banning speech that "glorifies terrorism".  PM Tony Blair explains it thusly:

"The new law will mean that if people are going to start celebrating acts of terrorism or condoning people who engage in terrorism, they will be prosecuted, and if they do not come from this country, they should not be in this country. We have free speech in this country, but you cannot abuse it."

Um.  If you have free speech except only if use it "right", you don't have free speech.

This is actually far scarier to me than a lot of what we on the left get worked up about from the Bush administration.  Then again, Western Europe doesn't really have the history of jurisprudence of free speech that we have in the US.  The Skokie case, for example, would have certainly gone the other way almost anywhere in Europe.

Because You Can't Get Enough About Danish Cartoons

I think this TAPped article put it well:

In recent years, Denmark has not offered the same courtesy extended to Jews during WWII to their darker-than-blond minority populations; the children of immigrants to Denmark are not considered Danes. Kids whose parents were asylum seekers or economic migrants in the 1960s but who may have never been outside Denmark are still considered second-generation immigrants rather than full blooded Danes. And Denmark, a seemingly liberal and tolerant country, has adopted a reactionary politics as a response to the growing number of Muslims in their midst. This cartoon was a combative offshoot of that kind of politics that was directed at Muslims in Copenhagen -- not Beirut.

European conservatives -- and Andrew Sullivan -- have tended to ignore this half of the story, and see the conflagration over the cartoons exclusively about the Muslim world’s backwardness and their lack of tolerance for the freedom of expression. To be sure, every liberal should agree that a newspaper ought to be able to print any political satire it wants. But condemnation of the riots must be accompanied with a challenge to Europe to expand its definition of citizenship. And where that definition already includes immigrant populations, say France, public policy ought to be used to address the lack of social mobility that plagues the minority population of Western Europe.

If the two do not go hand in hand, nothing positive can come out of the current crisis.

I think this is a sensible position to take.  You?

Looking Back

a little under two years ago, I started a blog (which you can still see here).  At the time, I had barely read a blog and didn't really know what was out there beyond Terry and Atrios.  I started writing about politics and theater and after doing a google search on "theater" and "blogging" stumbled across george hunka.  I e-mailed him to say "hey, would you add me to your blog roll? You have any advice for a new kid on the block?"  TO which he said "Yes." and "post regularly".

Little did I know that there weren't that many of us on the block at the time. I am hardly a blogging pioneer (obviously) for that you'd have to read the odious Glenn Reynolds or Andew Sullivan or the delightful Mr. Teachout himself (or George, for that matter).  But I've stuck with it over the past couple years, and George's post today congratulating Laurie on her engagement (And let me add myself, belatedly, to those hosannas) has got me thinking, and getting a little sentimental.

The past two years have been eventful, politically, theatrically and personally. Laurie getting engaged has only further driven this point home for me. This blog has been enormously helpful for my growth and development as a human and as an artist.  It has put me in touch with many many different views, helped me to question some of basest assumptions, and put my in touch with many possible collaborators whom I never would have met had it not been for my random, often masturbatory musings here in the internet.

I guess all I'm saying is... thank you for reading, people.  Thanks for the encouragement, and for calling me on my bullshit.  And to my many guest bloggers (Dan, Rob, Abe, Buckminster etc.) thanks for helping out in times in need.

Actual substantive posting later today....