Torpedoing Your Brand

I had a Professor, Jack Lechner, who put forward to us what he called Lechner's Law, which was this: At some point in a project's development, someone will propose getting rid of the thing that was most important to it. Usually it is the thing that is unique, the thing that makes it worthwhile. And what distinguishes a success from a failure is whether or not the producer/director/etc. accepts that poor advice.

Case in point. Animal Planet has a new tag-line: "Surprisingly Human." Their posters (you may have seen them on the Subway, New Yorkers) say things like, "It's not about Killer Fish. It's about one man's search for giant legends."

Excuse me while I lose my temper for a moment:

YES IT IS ABOUT THE FISH.

You're fucking called Animal Planet, for God's Sake. The reason people tune in is for animals.

But this isn't just Animal Planet. Cable is full of these sorts of self-sabotaging "Re-branding." Cartoon Network, for instance, is moving away from having its lineup be all cartoons. MTV no longer incorporates the words Music Television into their logo (in the same way that KFC was no longer Kentucky Fried Chicken for 16 years). Sci Fi Channel renamed itself "SyFy" just so they could own the trademark on its name.

Next up, I'm sure Comedy Central will start showing serious investigative journalism, and Cinemax will start to have feminist round-tables. C-SPAN will start covering the Oscars.

At any rate, these events are more extreme than "mission creep." It's a series of organizations basically deciding that they're not even going to treat their name as important. They dilute their own brand value and destroy their uniqueness without putting anything in its place.

So beware Lechner's Law, anyone. In order to avoid it, you have to be clear about what it is you offer (as all of the networks above really really should have been able to easily understand). That's what I loved about the Batman: Animated Series Writer's Bible that Isaac tossed up and I commented on. Those guys understood what it is that makes their work tick. If you forget it, you Jump the Shark.

Israel's Three State Solution

(I write this post with great trepidation, knowing the consequences that speaking aloud about this subject can bring. Hopefully all the blessings that my family got at my brother's weddings this weekend will protect this blog.)

Isaac posted along the subject very near and dear to my heart, Israel. He highlighted the New York Times article about non-violent resistance (which isn't the only example -- here's Palestinians dressed as the Na'vi), and asks the sage question:

I believe that violence against civilians is inexcusable and violence against the IDF is counterproductive if peace is what you're aiming for... but when the Palestinians lay down their weapons, what happens then? Is Israel really going to go "ah yes, here's the West Bank in its pre-1967 state, including all that water we use for our farms"? I hope so, but I doubt it.

The question is, is non-violence going to work for Palestinians? What's the end-game here?

This all is close to my heart because I am an Israeli-American. My family left Israel when I was a little baby, partially because my father was serving in the Israeli military at the time that the First Lebanon War was going on. With that in mind, my parents did not want my brother or myself serving in the Israeli military when we grew up; they also thought there might be better opportunities in the US, Australia, or Canada. The US was the place where my dad was first able to get a job and a visa, so that's where we went.

Isaac is right that Palestinians are increasingly seeking non-violent paths to protest. The Times and, of course, the Israeli government are downplaying the extent to which the violence has declined in the West Bank. Back at the height of the Second Intifada, when right-wing leaders Ariel Sharon and Yassir Arafat were facing off, car and bus bombings in Jerusalem would happen multiple times a year. According to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the number in the peak year (2002) was 55. This year it was 1. (The validity of the numbers isn't necessarily important; even Israel, whose bias would be to inflate the numbers, only count 1 this year).

The main thrust of this has to do with the little-commented on battle between Fatah and Hamas that, by the end of 2007, left Hamas with unilateral control over Gaza, and Fatah with almost unilateral control of the West Bank. Fatah, who may be corrupt up to their neck, have taken a fairly good-faith approach to negotiations; Hamas continues to call for the eradication of Israel.

However, you'll notice that the title of the New York Times article is "Palestinians Try a Less Violent Path to Resistance." Not "West Bank Palestinians Try a Less Violent Path to Resistance." Currently, Israeli and Western policy ties the future of the West Bank and Gaza together. In practice, what that means is that Israel can't reward the non-violence in the West Bank if rockets are still falling on Israel from Gaza (in December 2009, it had been over 500 rockets and 200 mortar shells since the Gaza operation, according to Israel's internal security)

Here's the thing, though: in Gaza, the problem is the Qassam rockets. Qassam are not much more sophisticated than fire-works: they're basically a tube full of gunpowder. Note that for all the rockets launched, the death toll (according to Wikipedia) has not been what you might call at war-levels. At the end of the day, Qassam rockets are just high-stress versions of knifings (or ax attacks). It takes one or two individuals sneaking to the Gaza border, shooting off a rocket, and scattering. Looking at the numbers, there is a clear difference between Hamas encouraging violence and Hamas deciding to lay low. But it's not a situation in which even Hamas could fully end the rocket attacks if they were trying.

But suppose that Hamas is fully responsible for the Qassam. The Palestinians in the West Bank certainly are not. At this point, the blockade has largely separated the populations of the two; they are administered separately, have different leadership structures that don't talk to each other -- by any measure you could think to choose, they are two separate regions. Except, of course, race and religion.

The right-wing fringe, which have undue influence on Israel (they control the Interior Ministry, who control the expansion of settlements, and the Foreign Ministry) and control Gaza, can create a cycle of violence that is mutually beneficial to both fringes; measurably, both Israel and Gaza continue their steady march to the right politically. Currently, Israel's major right wing, center left wing, and the largest third party all are led by people who used to be part of the right wing party (Likud). That would be as though the Republican, Democratic, and Green parties where all led by former Republican party members and operatives.

Because of this cycle, any time that the non-violent protesters in the West Bank might make any progress, Gaza increases the rockets a little, and then Israeli tanks move in, and we're back at square one. Never mind that the West Bank has created a stable and peaceful infrastructure that polices itself (after all, they drove out Hamas) and has created meaningful (if weak) economic growth. So long as Hamas refuses to recognize Israel, there will be no peace.

So here's my solution. It's a three state solution. If Gaza and the West Bank are administered separately, then Israel should propose a good-faith peace negotiation with the Palestinian Authority that treats Gaza as a separate entity. That means a settlement freeze, withdrawal to 1967-borders-or-similar (in the West bank), tearing down the West Bank Barrier, and Jerusalem as a joint capital on the table. Unlike Isaac, I don't know if Israel needs to give up the right-of-return (although it can't keep the question completely closed before negotiations begin), but at the very least it needs to create some sort of compensation system.

As peace progresses, Hamas should regularly be given the option of laying down arms and conducting a referendum on whether or not to rejoin the West Bank as a unified state. If Gaza chooses to join the peace process as a separate entity from the West Bank, let them; so long as they are peaceful, there is no need to broker a unity government between them and Fatah. This removes the fear from Hamas that if they join the peace process, they will be forced to concede power to Fatah.

From the people of Gaza's perspective, they can watch the West Bank. If the West Bank achieves meaningful concessions from Israel, gets some level of autonomy, economic growth, territorial integrity, and even some of the big dreams like shared control of Jerusalem, than Hamas' argument that Israel is operating in bad faith will be seriously eroded, and Gazans may start to realize that they can join the process, and Hamas' support will be eroded as well. Gaza will turn the tide of extremism, and start to follow the path of non-violence.

This is all a pipe-dream, however. The problem right now is that Hamas' argument that Israel is operating in bad faith is true. And I fear that Israel's intentions will only worsen in the near future. They are not thinking strategically about how to approach security; they are only responding to threats in increasingly blunt and harmful ways. Humiliating diplomats, stealing passports to assassinate people in other countries, repeatedly timing announcements of settlement increases to humiliate our VP and our President -- it is clear that the Netenyahu government is not after peace. And the only major alternative is the group of people who brought you Operation Cast Lead.

Ah well. Dourness aside, there may come a time when the pendulum swings and Israel is up for the challenger. Or there may come a time when the international community has enough pressure and inclination to pressure Israel that it can bring even the hard-line right to the negotiating table. If so, the Three State Solution is, in my humble opinion, the only way to avoid a situation in which the same kind of thinking that brings us Terrorball and the 1% Doctrine reboots the peace process every ten days.

Internships

Scott calls it a plutocracy here, Isaac calls it exploitative here, 99Seats has a "well yes, that's what an internship is" attitude and Isaac sticks by his guns here.

Here's my job experience. Paying day jobs in Southern California (one of the more affluent parts of America):

• Register at a box store for a way-above-market $9.00/hour, because it was a brand new branch in a nice new neighborhood
• Intern (as an Assistant Assistant Stage Manager) for a Repertory Theater, for $150/week, which I once calculated as being less than $1.50/hour on average, sometimes more or less depending on rehearsal. This is one of the only paid internships I have ever seen in the arts field that was paying.
• Popcorn salesman at a movie theater chain for $8.50/hour, but only because I worked until 3 or 4AM. I also got a second degree burn off the popcorn machine, which taught me what skin looks like when it bubbles; and I realized what it must feel like to be universally hated.
• Intern for a software company for $17/hour.

Now, you'll notice two things. You'll notice that, as an intern for theater, I made pittance. And yet that is considered a great internship because it was paid. You'll also notice that as an intern for a software company, I was raking in dough. And I am far, far less qualified to intern for a software company than I am at theater company, because Stage Management is something I've done a lot a lot.

I am one of Scott Walters' plutocrats, unfortunately, there's no way around it, so his point stands.

But I guess what's being left out of the discussion between Isaac and J. is that the NYTimes article was about internships in general, whereas your discussion has been about theater internships. Do you know why theater internships suck? Because working in the theater sucks. You're talking about an industry in which the successful barely make less than half their income through their jobs.

My software company job (which I currently inhabit) considers me a steal at $17.50 for the amount of work I do. They have lately planned to make me full time, which is going to be slightly more money, and include benefits. And I'll still be one of the lowest paid employees at the company, of a company of about 140 people. Think of what they'd pay if I was qualified!

That's literally the one thing that not-for-profit means: it means that if you work here, you will not personally profit. You will get to do what you want with your life. You may find it personally fulfilling despite the hardship. You may, if you get really good at it, eke out a living. Or you'll do what I do, which is get a day job in a field where even the people at the bottom rung get paid quite well -- if you can (which goes back to Scott's plutocracy argument).

Suppose the state decides its going to enforce those internship regulations. You know what's going to happen? They're going to rename "internships" as "volunteer" positions, and nothing will change for us. After all, how many of us have seen a show by ushering for free for an evening? And nobody is going to bat an eyelid at a non-profit theater company taking volunteers. Hell, many non-profit theater companies are run by volunteers! (Some of my friends run a company called Eleven Benevolent Elephants that's been around for 3 years, and one said to me, "You know how we can afford to pay our actors and writers and playwrights? Because we work for free!").

When the crackdown comes, it's going to be at NBC Universal, which can pay its interns if it wanted to. I bet if they took the head of Price Waterhouse Cooper's salary, 30% of what he makes could go to pay the interns in his building living wages. (Don't run the math on that). It's not going to be at the Roundabout, or at the Public. Maybe Broadway will have to pay their internships. But unless the industry that the internships are preparing students to enter starts paying a minimum wage, interns are not going to get their fair share.

Well, they are getting their fair share. Their fair share of a shit pie.

It isn't that I don't have sympathy for the shitty conditions they work in. I have sympathy for the shitty conditions we all work in. But wringing hands about internships is really going after a trailing indicator of the fact that the economics of theater doesn't really work. And we knew that.

(Update: Adam Thurman puts his lawyer on hat to give us a right talking to on the issue. I guess I just wish I had the strength and skill to create that "strong revenue stream" he's talking about, as though those of us who can't pay anybody are just not trying hard enough.)

Yes.

Collaboration IV: Writing Bible

I just caught up and read the Batman: The Animated Series writer's bible that Isaac tossed up. (Yeah, anything that's more than one or two pages I email to myself to catch up on later). And I have to say, I find it infinitely superior to the Screenwriter's memo that prompted it.

Mamet's memo is a pretty useful "Don't do that, dumbass" memo that probably every first-year film student should tack onto their writing desk, but the writer's bible goes beyond that in scope: the writer's bible captures, in a direct and powerful way, to set up the metrics by which the show will be measured. To say, "This is what we want the show to do, and this is how you do it."

Especially with a source material as juicy and personal as Batman is (at least, to the sorts of people who would wind up collaborating on Batman: The Animated Series), it is important to define what you want to do. And you could literally do anything with it -- hence the enduring appeal.

Take on page 4:

"Our stories will be hard-edged crime dramas with villains who play for keeps. Yes, many of them will come from Batman's well-known Rogues Gallery, but they will be as wild, dark, and sinister as we can make them. Each episode will also feature a big SET PIECE, an incredible visual action visual that will be a looked-forward-to element in each show. This will be the climax, centerpiece, or show-stopper in each episode."

And the rationale is laid out on page 5:

"We hope to encourage our writers to take advantage of the almost limitless visual possibilities allowed by animation. With our animated Batman, we can "build" gigantic sets and create special effects that could never be realized with live action. Use this advantage!

(...)

We wish to pay special attention to the "arena" or setting of each episode. Stories which have a unified sense of place will always work better. This is not to say that Batman can't 'move around' in his adventures, but the locations (especially the climax) should be adequately established and foreshadowed."

Mamet's memo is good generic advice for any drama (although I can think of plenty of shows that I love that violate it up the wazoo). But this writer's bible is a very clear declaration of purpose for this project. In fact, the first quote reads like a mission statement for a single project.

I think I need to create a document like this for collaborative works. To say, "This is the kind of work we're working on, these are the tactics we're using to build it." Our last collaboratively devised work, based around the works of Kafka, came out well (especially since we created it from scratch in 9 rehearsals), but it could have used a unity of tactic/form a little more (one day we'll revisit it, I think, from the perspective of sound and silence). It would have been refreshing to know -- "This is what I find effective about the work of Kafka. This is how we can make that effective on stage. Now let's find out how we make that work."

Two Things On My Mind In Union Square

1) You can really tell Obama's approval ratings by the woman selling Obama Condoms on the street.

2) I was talking with my mother, who lives in the suburbs of Orange County where I'm from, about the show I recently produced at the Paradise Factory, and I was talking about my obligations to the city (mostly providing a fire-guard, really), and I happened to mention that we had to put out the garbage three times a week. My mother was incensed. "You mean they take out the garbage three times a week and there are still those huge piles of trash?"

On the block where I grew up, trash was picked up once a week. Once a month, there was street sweeping. And that's all it took to keep the place clean because there were, at most, 100 people living on the street (probably a lot less -- 20 houses with probably on average 3-4 people). But here in New York, the sheer population density means that we have to take out a lot of garbage.

But not only do we have to take out the garbage a lot, but we have to have people pick up after us in our squares. Specifically, I was watching one of the Union Square Partnership guys picking up trash off the floor. After all, we leave a lot of trash.

And I wondered -- how much of that trash do we tolerate letting out into the world simply because it all gets picked up. It's the same logic that people were using on the health care bill - the fact that people don't pay the cost of their care directly, and therefore the end user doesn't care about the cost. That's why the Free Market doesn't apply -- This American Life did a very good comparison by looking at Animal Health Insurance, which includes a stop-payment level after-which people prefer to let their pet die. The same thought was on Isaac's mind recently about the cost-shifting of publicly funded or ad-supported arts. It's the same thinking behind Cap-and-Trade's "true cost of carbon" idea.

So, are we hidden from the true cost of our garbage? Measures like charging for plastic bags are one way of tackling it, but I remember when I was in the Czech Republic I visited a little (gorgeous) tourist town called Cesky Krumlov, where there was no McDonald's and vendors were not allowed to sell foods with disposable plates, cups, etc. because the city wanted to keep it pristine. Now, that's clearly not going to happen. But I wonder what would happen if the city stopped picking up after us, just to let us see.

Oh wait, it already has happened in Italy.

Collaboration III: Stage Directions pt. 3

Isaac, apparently separately, starts thinking along the same lines as I was thinking:

Let me make what I'm going to assume is a somewhat controversial assertion about non-experimental theatre: The way we think about the plays we see and do is too writer/text focused.

And he doesn't use Derrida to back himself up. RVCBard has a good laugh at his expense, before stating:

Anyway, part of what I like about theatre (as opposed to film) is that it's more democratic than other art forms. There isn't (or rather, doesn't have to be) a central authority figure who makes all the "important" decisions about the play. I like not having complete control over the process. I like the unpredictability of it, how the story and characters in my head can be given a life I never imagined while still using the same base ingredients (my words on the page - whether dialogue or stage directions).

(...)

As a writer, I've never understood the "need" to create "actor-proof" or "director-immune" scripts. As far as I'm concerned, I'm just there to get the damn story on paper. My duties are pretty simple. Let my collaborators know who is doing what onstage. That's it. Whether that takes the form of a coherent narrative with more-or-less natural dialogue or is a shifting series of images and/or sounds is anybody's guess. But as far as I'm concerned, that's all I'm there to do.

I agree with RVCBard that there's something different here than what goes on in Film... after all, when I saw Alice in Wonderland, I was seeing Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, and nobody seemed to care about poor ol' Linda Woolverton who only wrote the screenplay. It was her screenplay that bugged me -- I think they took a very beautiful story about a girl exploring a world of wordplay and logic puzzles and turned it into something between The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe and Shrek. But I don't think anyone particularly cared -- the whole movie was really just there to support Tim Burton's visual sensibility.

I'm getting carried away.

99 Seats says something similar in the comments section of Isaac's blog:

I never really understand why we need to parse it out so much, to what end. I was just talking to Matt Freeman about this the other day and he quoted the old saw about being a playwright and how, if everyone loves the play, they'll credit you, but if no one loves the play, they'll blame you. Every play changes in rehearsal, in performance, has limitations that are fixed by the actors or directors, sometimes in the actual words on the page, sometimes in the performing. We all know this, we've all gone through production, but the attitude is still it's all about the playwright. Which, I think, puts undue pressure on playwrights and adds to the frenzy for The Right Play.

If I understand right, RVCBard has her chuckle at Isaac's expense because this idea -- that the playwright isn't the star quarterback, he's just another team player -- isn't really so controversial as it may have once been.

Obviously, take anything I say about "before my time" with a grain of salt, but it seems to me that if this theater industry that we've not a part of used to work, then back when it was working playwrights would have probably been a lot more likely to get up in arms and scream and shout about directors trampling over "their vision." At the time, their agent would have been there to fight for precisely that thing. But in today's reality, I don't think a playwright can afford to be that controlling over a script.

When a playwright works with a small independent or local company, they're not just putting together one play -- they're building a relationship. They don't want to be a failure. They also don't want that company not to say "Screw that chump, let's not work with her/him anymore." David Mamet can say things like "Actors keep getting in the way of the play I've written," but if I tried to say that, I'd find myself without actors. That's the reality of it.

Small companies don't want to license a play that comes with hundreds of strings attached. Why do you think they love Shakespeare so much? It's the only thing that they have both wide latitude with but also established audience recognition -- although apparently you can get some mileage out of Jacobean drama, if you love it enough. If you want a company to work with you, you have to be willing to work with them.

So in the face of that, the shift in norm becomes apparent. Critics (that is to say, writers) still find the written word to be important, unduly, for a number of reasons; they can still appreciate a play in which the words are deliberately not the mode of communication. And big Broadway musical writers can still sue NYU students not to do an all-male production of Company because it wasn't their original vision. Sure. But I think, overwhelmingly, the idea is now that it's a playwright's decision to determine how much control they want to exert, and how they relate to the other parts of the pie.

Back from Hiatus

Hi ladies and gentlemen! I am back from hiatus right now, still recovering slightly from the success that was Hamlet! We sold out for four different nights, got almost 400 people to see our show, and generally generated what seemed like fantastic word of mouth.

If you read Isaac Butler's blog (which you absolutely should, as it is both the keystone and the lynch pin of the theater blogging community), you may have noticed that I have my first guest blog up right now. There was a technical glitch that has kept me from starting my duties at the beginning of the week, but it is settled, so you'll hopefully be seeing more content there.

Meanwhile, I also intend to be cross-posting here from my theater company's blog my thoughts on Hamlet, as fleshed out by our work on the production.

Glad to be back!

Diversity XXIV: The Checklist pt.2

Glad to see that there's some positive responses to the idea of the checklist.

99 Seats said probably the most important thing about it, which is that it's a complicated checklist and would take some thought to figure out what would be useful. And the reason for that complication is exactly what RVCBard said in my comments section:

I wish it were that simple, but the things I'd put on that checklist are cognitive, which presents a whole 'nother layer of problems - mostly the fact that people can justify anything.

It's true that any thing you'd put on the checklist that has to do with correcting your attitude or behaving differently would be completely useless. And the whole checklist, even if it is actionable in every part, will be pointless if the person is using it in bad faith (as a bit of window dressing; forced to as part of a legal settlement, for instance).

Isaac chimes in:

Guy's checklist idea wouldn't correct the structural inequalities that would make it harder for people from certain backgrounds to be qualified for various jobs-- just as blind orchestra auditions doesn't change that the fact that learning to master a musical instrument is expensive-- but it's an interesting thought experiment.

Yeah, thought experiment is perfect. The thing that was getting to me about implicit bias was that even if we remade America from top to bottom, and really ensured that every person of every background was on an even keel economically, educationally, etc., then there's the possibility that still people will not have equal opportunities, because of implicit bias. Clearly, however, we're not at that near-utopian end point.

On the other hand, this isn't purely an esoteric thought experiment. This is from the perspective of someone who runs a small arts organization and wants to say, "Well, okay, I'm not exactly in a position to level the entire economic playing field, but I am in a position to create better hiring practices. What can I do on that front?"

So anyways, I think one checklist question that came to me as I was falling asleep last night is that if you are hiring, you are going to be limited in your choice by the applicants. And your applicant pool is going to be limited by who comes across your want ad and notices.

So one point on the checklist should be reaching out to minority champion organizations with your hiring position. In other words, when you think to yourself, "I need a playwright," don't just put your playwright ads in the usual places -- Craigslist, Backstage, etc. It's not that those places necessarily have anything wrong with them (I have no idea of the demographic readership of Craigslist or Backstage, actually). But you need to also make sure you reach out specifically to groups like the one that RVCBard is forming for playwrights of color. For young actors, I remember that there's a group at NYU for both artists of color (The Collective) and female artists (The WOMB -- which I didn't know about until I looked up where to link to for The Collective).

I haven't figured out exactly how to word this checklist question, but the thrust of it is, start by making sure that you're getting a diverse range of applicants: make sure your want ad is in the hands of champion groups. And if you're looking at your applicant pool and it still doesn't look like a reflection of the diversity in the community, keep pushing for more applicants.

Just one tiny step, perhaps. Small in the face of the widespread structural challenges that face us. But on the level of individuals, it could make a huge difference to someone who could get an opportunity.

If You've Just Come To This Blog From The Guardian

I'm always pleased when the Guardian's online blog includes me in a recap of one of the theater-sphere's rolicking debates. Earlier today, they posted a recap of the debate around race sparked off by Thomas Garvey's response to RVCBard.

I just wanted to say two things, if you're just arriving now and missed it:

1. I responded to Isaac's charge, quoted at the end of the piece, that I was taking Thomas Garvey in good faith here.
2. One odd omission from the Guardian piece is RVCBard's stance on the issue, since after all it was her comments that Garvey latched onto and started the whole thing, and without her the issue would probably have died away much quicker and been less interesting. Anyways, this is her biggest response to the debate, and this is her last one. They're crucial to understanding what happened.

Should Literary Managers Be Developing Playwrights?

Mead Hunter asks:

Do playwrights really want unvarnished honesty? If I say to you, “We passed on your play because we felt your ending was lame,” what subtext do you hear? If you rewrite that ending under the impression that now Theater XYZ will gladly produce it, and that doesn’t happen, then you will really feel had. The danger of specific criticism is that will be received as advice -- or even as a promise.

Isaac responds:

I will respond to this by telling a story, a story of rejection! Rejection of me!

The story is a pretty simple one about an agent who took the time to gave Isaac five pages of quality, incisive, honest feedback. Says Isaac:

This is the important part [of the story] here though: These notes were far, far blunter than I have ever seen notes given in theatre to anyone working in any field other than design. And I'll tell ya... it didn't feel awesome. It took a couple of days before I could get through that I was kind of upset at the rejection to actually see what the notes were. But at that point, I dusted myself and the proposal off and went to work. That project has laid dormant for awhile, because of other writing needs, but when it's time to go back, I'll reexamine those notes and see how I feel.

From Isaac's perspective, the downside from the perspective of playwrights is a bit of bruised feelings, and the upside is higher quality work.

I always favor the honest, polite, incisive commentary. The key, of course, is in the politeness. I believe that there is always a way to phrase criticism in such a way as to remove any of the personal rancor from it. There is no need for you to pretend that things are not wrong when they are wrong, but there's also absolutely no need for you to use the sort of language such as "your ending was lame." In fact, the more specific your criticism, the less likely the playwright is going to be insulted.

The times that criticism really hurts, emotionally, is when you realize it is both right and difficult to fix. If someone gives you a straightforward, clearly true criticism, you tend to just implement the change and be done with it. If someone gives you a complex and clearly wrong piece of criticism, we tend to ignore it. But when something cuts down to the core of what you're working on, boy, that hurts like a raw nerve. They don't have to insult you, or be brusque, or dismissive--the truth and the depth of the criticism does all the pain itself.

I had that recently myself. A friend of mine sent me back a draft with the note that, from moment to moment, the play stands very well on its own, but the logic behind the characters' motivations are confused and conflicted. I stared at the script for hours with a terrible, sinking feeling that the hours and hours of work I had put into it was worthless. It's a really painful feeling.

But what's the alternative? That I walk around with a terribly flawed script without knowing it? Without being so trite as to say "no pain no gain"... wait, I just said it.

Anyways, a separate issue is whether literary managers have some sort of responsibility to do this. And the answer is no. They are busy. It would be nice if they could. But they are not our parents, or our friends, or our mothers. If a theater decides we have potential, then we should be developed. But theaters and their literary managers have the right to decide how to spend their time. I know how much time I spend just responding to my friends' work, and I get something on the order of two or three plays a month. It takes me time to give good criticism. How much time are we expecting a literary manager to spend giving criticism?

Outrageous Fortune

I have nothing to say on the subject. I'm not part of the book club, but if you're not following them, go read up. Start here and read forward, and follow the links to the other bloggers, because some fine extended deep criticism is going on in the web this week.

Diversity XIII: Comments and Leadership

For the thirteenth, and thusly unlucky, part of the diversity discussion... I give you Harry Reid, ladies and gentlemen!

The authors quote Reid as saying privately that Obama, as a black candidate, could be successful thanks, in part, to his "light-skinned" appearance and speaking patterns "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."

The internet is of divided opinion about whether, as Michael Steele demands, Reid should resign. For instance, Ta-Nehisi Coates, who is, not to mince words, an African-American himself and is probably better to judge the level of offensiveness/impact of Reids words -- TNC says this:

I think you can grant that, in this era, the term "Negro dialect" is racially insensitive and embarrassing. That said, the fair-mind listener understands the argument--Barack Obama's complexion and his ability to code-switch is an asset. You can quibble about the "light skin" part, but forget running for president, code-switching is the standard M.O. for any African American with middle class aspirations.

But there's no such defense for Trent Lott. Lott celebrated apartheid Mississippi's support of Strom Thurmond, and then said that had Thurmond won, "we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years.'' Strom Thurmond run for president, specifically because he opposed Harry Truman's efforts at integration. This is not mere conjecture--nearly half of Thurmond's platform was dedicated to preserving segregation. The Dixiecrat slogan was "Segregation Forever!" (Exclamation point, theirs.) Trent Lott's wasn't forced to resign because he said something "racially insensitive." He was forced to resign because he offered tacit endorsement of white supremacy--frequently.

The distinction TNC is making is one I made before in an old post called Hard Racism vs. Soft Racism; actual hate as compared with racial insensitivity:

"Hard" racism is an extreme form of racism. "Hard" racism is holding the belief that one or more races are inferior to one or more races. Adolf Hitler was a hard racist. Racial eugenicists are hard racists. Jim Crow Laws are hard racist laws. They codify the notion that one race of people is objectively (in their eyes) worse than another race of people. People who speak hard racism aloud are tagged, unequivocally, as bigots.

Today, we don't see nearly as much of that. But what we do see is a lot more of "soft" racism. "Soft" racism is hard to define. "Soft" racism is non-absolute; it does not hold that one race is absolutely worse than another. But it has a lot of negative connections with a race. One type of soft racism is ignorance. Another sort of soft racism is resentment.

(...)

[S]oft racism can usually be bridged by better communication, more cooperation, and more information.

TNC is right; what Trent Lott said was hard racism in gloves; the feeling that the Segregationalist candidate (who was definitely a hard racist) should have won is not the same as some outdated and insensitive language.

However.

I do not agree, as Isaac seems to be leaning, and as folks like TNC or Ezra Klein seem to be holding, that Reid shouldn't resign as Majority leader.

Now, let's make a quick distinction: Reid has three choices ahead of him: to step down as majority leader, to step down from the senate, or to apologize and move on. He appears to be taking option three.

Now, Trent Lott took option one. I think what was morally obligated of Trent Lott was to take option two, and resign from the senate completely. He was a bigot, and there should be no room in the Senate for bigots. Strom Thurmond should have been long gone too, but I guess bigots like Lott and Thurmond still represent their states adequately enough for their states' tastes.

I think Reid should take option one. I don't think he did something inexcusable. But when we look to our leadership, we demand something more than just actions that are "excusable." We demand leadership that is to be looked up to -- in fact, that leads.

If these comments reveal anything, it is that Harry Reid is behind the times. And we, as Democrats (if you are a Democrat, that is, o hypothetical reader) should push for a majority leader who best represents where we are now, where we are today.

Obama had a very stirring (for me at least) passage in his book Audacity of Hope where he describes going to meet Senator Robert Byrd who, many years ago, was a white supremacist. Many people told him to snub Byrd and skip the meeting. He went to the meeting, and he got some sort of a pseudo-apology, and Byrd basically acknowledged "I was wrong, I was behind the times." That's very laudable of Byrd to realize. But he's not the man I want leading our party.

Think of it from the perspective of a young, capable black man who might want to run for office. If the Democratic party is willing to tolerate leadership who are insensitive on the issue of race, who are clearly outdated, then we're going to lose some of those talented people, who don't want to be part of an organization that tolerates that. They're not going to feel represented.

And I don't want to hear the phrase "How could they think that -- we elected Barack Obama President." We don't just prove these things once. We have to prove them every day.

As a for instance, when Proposition 8 passed in California, the aftermath claimed the job of artistic director Scott Eckern who had donated to the pro-Prop 8 campaign in accordance with his Mormon faith. I think that was the right choice for the California Musical Theatre. As an organization, they have the choice of leaders to present to the community. They communicate their values as an organization through who they put forward as a "leader."

The word "leadership" means something.

Another One

In addition to 99 Seats' change in direction, Isaac Butler decides he's going to strike out on his own. I have to pick up this Outrageous Fortune everyone is talking about, but my hands are a little full right now.

I feel like when I started reading the blogs in fall of 2008, there was an incredible sense of stasis and dispiritedness in the air. People were shaking the institutions of theater and shouting "Is this all there is?" And one by one, folks are discovering that it is not.

Let's see what New Years 2011 brings.

Conversation IV: Excuses

99 Seats creates Holtham's Law (dubbed such by Isaac Butler):

If, in any discussion, particularly of diversity or style, you bring up Shakespeare, you lose the argument. Boom, that's it, you're done. Thank you for playing. We have some lovely parting gifts for you. You can shut the hell up now.

Isaac adds the Butler Corollary (my naming, not his):

Anytime you are defending a script (or a moment/theatrical gesture in a script) and use Shakespeare or Beckett as reasons why it works, you lose.

I would add that Butler's Corollary is actually a special case of a larger rule, which is:

Any time you defend your own actions or work based on its similarity to the actions or work of other people, you are talking out of your ass.

I've seen this in a number of contexts. There are, for instance, any number of post-modernists who hold that because Jackson Pollack threw paint against a canvas, anyone who throws paint against a canvas is an artist. This is not true; Pollack had a very specific style that happens to be very beautiful, and was revolutionary in a certain context. John Cage's 4'33" was perfect in the moment; if you go out and do it now, we all know you're just doing a bad cover version of the master.

Another context is the one in terms of Israel. Every time I try and bring up Israel's abuses of the Palestinians, I often get the retort of Guantanamo Bay, or Palestinian attacks against Israel -- both are variations on the theme of either "nobody is perfect so I don't have to be" or "why do we have to be the first ones to change?" Morality is relative, but it's not relative to other people's actions. There isn't a certain amount of morality you show based on the world average of morality -- morality isn't racing away from the proverbial bear, where you only have to be slightly more moral than the least moral person in the world.

So if someone says "I don't like the fact that nothing happens," you can't just say, "Beckett did it." You have to argue about why nothing happening works in your play, in your context.

Same goes for Pinter or Karen Finley or Thomas Friedman or whomever you want to blame your own shit actions on.

I wish I had something as punchy as "CRICKET BAT TO THE FACE" to end this post with.

Happy New Year!

Well it's New Years, the end of a decade which everyone seems to have settled on calling the "Aughts" but which I steadfastly insist on calling "The Turn of the Millenium" a la "Turn of the Century" which I think worked out really good for McKinley.

Over the last week or so I've been getting a lot of hat tips, linkage, and pushbback from a wide array of folks, all of whom I deeply respect, and it's been very wonderful getting to join them in this conversation: Ian Moss (who's been supporting me for a while), Isaac Butler, 99Seats, August Schulenberg, Ian Thal, and Leonard Jacobs. I probably should even thank Andrew Breibart for unleashing the trolls on me, because it spurred me to take a look at things I believed.

Happy new year, blogosphere!

Diversity VII: Death of Monoculture

This is going to be a short post because I'm starting to come down with a bad cold and my brain is getting fuzzy, but to tack on to my last post, where I talked about how diversity in theater is also going to be partly about diversity in audience.

I happened to re-look over Isaac's recent post about the death of monoculture in response to an NPR segment which I happened to hear as well, when it aired.

Isaac uses the death of monoculture meme to talk about our frustration that theater isn't changing fast enough, and briefly at the end gets to what the death of monoculture meme is really about:

We experience (To some extent) this sea change going on all over the place and wonder why the art form we love the most, that we are the most dedicated to, isn't changing at the pace of everything else. It's frustrating. And meanwhile, those who do not care about or are actively opposed, particularly those who define "good" as "coming out of the aesthetics of white male majoritarian culture" feel particularly threatened. With everything else changing, there's something comforting about institutional theater to those attached to that monoculture.

I think that's what 99Seats and Scott Walters mean when they talk about the "quality dodge." They're assuming that we're all rallying behind the artistic director in terms of perpetuating the monoculture (or, if you'd prefer, the "European patriarchal system" if you're in the 1960s). Some people are, but some of us aren't, in the same way that some opponents of the Single-Payer System are against health-care reform and other opponents of the Single-Payer System just don't think it's the most effective form of health-care reform.

If you reread Scott's post, it makes a lot more sense if you rephrase the argument as "Quality is irrelevant if you define quality as matching the whims of monoculture. Quality is relevant if you define quality as relevant to the local culture." That's a statement I could definitely get behind. I still would disagree with him that a lottery system would accomplish that shift, but it'd be nice to have common ground.

It doesn't surprise me, by the way, that after Isaac talked about monoculture, he reflected on why the Audience Matters.

So maybe what we need to do is figure out how our culture became mono-culture and take aim at that. The MFA-problem is one aspect of that, the New York centrism is another aspect of that, the inequity in access to arts education from an early age is (I think the most important) aspect of that.

And whereas Isaac is correct in his post that YouTube doesn't making doing theater any cheaper, one of his commenters (Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist!) points out:

People worry that the art of theatre and live performances are dying, but I disagree. In fact, I would argue that youtube (and Vimeo) have helped people to have a better appreciation for the arts and would introduce them to something new, something different. Now all you have to do is look up "Kabuki theatre" or "Bali puppet show" and you'll find a clip. This, in turn, will inspire people to read up on this and even get involved.

In a way, what technology leverages to us is an audience that has equal access to culture. Hopefully that'll be a more diverse audience, and then we'll start to turn the tide on this.

Diversity IV: Ways That Work

Those who support Isaac Butler's "sue the theaters" idea (which I don't think he was honestly advocating) or Scott Walters' "numbers out of a hat" idea (which was serious, if ill-received), do have one sharp retort to those of us who criticize: If not these ideas, which ideas?

Well, I certainly don't want to sit around sniping all day, so... some ideas that work.

Firstly, Thomas Garvey (who I stopped reading the same day I stopped reading Clyde Fitch) reacted last Monday to the Butler/Walters proposals in a post that goes between putting forward the same criticisms I made and some other points I don't know if I agree with. But it ends with:

To be fair, when "diversity" is the problem, maybe real diversity is the answer. But that doesn't mean chance is the answer. So count me unconvinced, although if Scott Walters can dream up more ways to undermine the system of privilege in this country, I'm all ears.

I want to repeat something I said at the time, which is that I think Scott Walters has discovered one of the better methods of encouraging diversity in this country, which is his attempts to decentralize our theater industry with the project formerly known as the Less Than 100,000 Project (I forget what it's called now -- sorry Scott!).

1. The only way in which it is possible for 7 MFA programs to be the gatekeepers of success is because playwrights are all fighting tooth and nail to break into NYC. There's a limit of number of theaters, which are all being absolutely inundated by submissions (as we've seen by the behind-the-scenes looks at literary departments).
2. It is much harder to get your work seen in a community that isn't yours, that doesn't share your background and your history. Many of the best works of art surface locally first, before they break-out in a wider realm. If there's no local market, it's much harder to take that first step.
3. If we developed local-grown theater, then those under-served communities would have a lot more theater-saturated audiences, which in turn develop more artists to begin with.

That's why I felt comfortable dismissing the names-out-of-a-hat idea -- because this idea seems so much more likely to work! I'm a firm proponent of that idea.

Secondly, there's a post by a blogger Ian Thal (who I hadn't read before, but now I will follow) on the subject which puts forward another proposal:

So now for my mischief: I challenge you critics, producers, and artistic directors who should be advocating for great theatre. Find an underappreciated, underproduced, perhaps unknown playwright who should be appreciated, produced and known. Better yet: find six, eight, ten, and advocate for them.

Obviously, this only works to a certain degree if you're inside the gates -- after all, I would love to give a diverse number of playwrights beautiful prizes for their work, but I'm still working on paying my rent with theater myself.

But on my theater company's blog, I authored a post about how producing is about love:

It turns out that a producer is just someone who falls in love with projects that aren't their own -- falls in love so hard that they have to fight to make the project.

If you put diversity in your mind, and prepare to fall in love with a diverse range of productions, and fight for others as hard as you'd fight for yourself, you can make things happen.

I have two projects for that company commissioned (for no money -- I said I was poor); I don't want to talk about them until they're done, but it happens that both are from playwrights of communities whose voices are missing. I didn't select them because of that, but at the same time, they had a voice that I couldn't possibly provide, something new that I knew no one but them could give to the world. It would break my heart not to see it on floorboards soon.

Anyways, that's the post: solutions that I think work. There are almost certainly more, but it's good to hat tip when you see them.

(Updated: I keep mis-numbering my own series. Fixed.)

Legitimacy IX: The Right To Speak

Not much that I want to say on my own, but if you seriously aren't reading 99Seats but are reading this blog (which seems really silly, you should fix that), take a look at this post on the lottery issue.

It encapsulates a bunch of issues but one of them has to do with a simultaneous debate that's raging alongside the debate itself, which is, Who has the right to take part in the debate?

That's a debate I am thoroughly disappointed by. I hate that debate. For instance, I used to read Leonard Jacobs' Clyde Fitch Report. But every time he would link to Isaac Butler at Parabasis he'd refer to Isaac as "trust fund baby Isaac Butler". He often had that sort of casual scorn for people, often based on where they're coming from. Maybe that's a virus that takes a hold of you when you start being a contributor to Fox. So I stopped following his blog, even though it's a wealth of information and a very good blog, simply because it feels unhealthy to me to sit around questioning "does so-and-so have the right to weigh in on this issue?"

We could sit around until the cows come home and debate it. Does Scott Walters have the right to talk about arts administration even though he hasn't been in "the shit"? Suppose Isaac Butler did come from a wealthier background (I have no idea -- he doesn't sign his posts with his parents' income level), can he still talk about ways of lifting up the poor? Does 99Seats have the right to weigh in the debate and keep his anonymity?

Ach who cares! We're not going to keep anyone out of the debate, what with this pernicious free speech thing and the problem that the internet doesn't pedigree people before they register.

I do think his Backdraft metaphor is worth the read. I would have gone with "economists and laborers" or something pedantic like that, but instead I get to be Billy Baldwin for the day.

Diversity III: Actually Everyone Talks About Diversity

Having just hit "publish" on my somewhat irritated rebuttal to 99Seats I do want to mention that his posting on the subject of diversity has been pretty stellar, as well as the posting by Isaac, and Scott, and Matthew. It's been really challenging to read. As of yet, I don't feel like I see an answer I like.

Scott put out a great piece on how fear of change holds us back from action on diversity--which, even though I rejected his one idea, doesn't mean I don't agree with that wholeheartedly. As a matter of fact, I happen to think that the project that used to be called the Less than 100 K project is a far more persuasive and effective way to change the system -- if we create local community theaters in diverse communities, and then find a way to recruit or tour local breakout talent across the country -- rather than making them all apply to the same ten theaters in New York City and then ignoring them until they rot away, never having been given the chance to prove themselves -- I think we have a much better chance at finding talent than simply pulling names out of a hat.

99Seats has a fantastic piece about the tropes of Race plays, and about his own experiences with race. The one thing I might say is that the whole "when black people write about race, they write about their own communities, when white people write about race, they write about race relations" I think boils down to something like this: when people say "race" they usually mean "minority race".

Is August Osage County a play about "race"? It's a play about a white family, a white community, and therefore, it isn't about race. The thing that has always gotten me about Raisin in the Sun is that its plot is largely the same as Death of a Salesman -- it's not a play about "race," but it is considered to be a "race" play because it's about black people. (And don't get me started on the "Black Family adaptation", as its producer put it to me, of Death at a Funeral)

So if a white playwright wanted to write a play, he has two choices: to write a play about two races interacting, or to write a play set in a non-white community. The latter would almost certainly be terrible. LaBute's story of a small Latino family in the Bronx? Mamet's trilogy of plays detailing the struggles of a family of Cambodians living in Indonesia? Alright, now I'm just having fun imagining poor Cambodian refugees shouting "Fuck" at each other and scratching their balls, but the point is that a white playwright doesn't exactly have a lot of options of how to frame a play "about race" except in that "black meets white" way, or in the metaphorical way.

The pit-fall, of course, is trying to write a play about race. Usually if you see one of those terrible plays 99Seats (I wish he would give up his anonymity just because it feels odd typing 99Seats over and over again) is talking about, the pit-fall isn't just the racial insensitivity, it's the same problem playwrights run into when they want to write a play "about war" or a play "about science."

I'm speaking from personal experience. I saw a play listing once that was calling for plays from Middle Easterners "about the Middle East." I said to myself, "Oh thank God, finally some diversity I can participate in!" and I sat down to write a play "about the Middle East." Well I was born in the Middle East, my family is from the Middle East going back generations, my grandfather fought in two wars personally and was involved in Israel's campaign against the British before independence.

The play I wrote was garbage.

I resolved never again to be deluded into writing "about the Middle East" again. What I needed to write was about what I was passionate about. Eventually, I wound up writing a different play, not consciously about "the Middle East" but actually based on my emotional response to the 2006 Lebanon War -- not focused on the event itself, but based on the emotional manipulation in the media around it. It wound up being a movement-theater piece, and the focus turned away from the 2006 Lebanon War and onto political manipulation. Was it "about the Middle East"? No. But it was the best genuine response to the Middle East I think I've been able to muster.

Lastly, Isaac has a fantastic response to that post and the discussion in general in which, among other things, he discusses his own experiences with anxieties. I think one of the thing he's getting at (and which 99Seats is sort of getting at) is the fact that we can't control when something we think isn't "about race" turns out to be "about race."

I recall my own experiences, in my AP English class, how after every book we read, there was always an essay response by a famous black writer about race issues in the book. Chinua Achebe on The Sound and the Fury, Ralph Ellison on The Heart of Darkness, I forget who I read writing a race issues paper Araby. The arguments range from right-on-target (Ellison's The Heart of Darkness essay is pretty apt, and, well, Joseph Conrad was writing about colonialism and The Congo) to kind of weak, weak tea (Achebe's response to The Sound and the Fury didn't really convince me at the time). Worse than that were the feminist responses we read after each (the one about The Heart of Darkness could and should have just said "There were no women in this book.")

Obviously, there are significant race issues in these books, but what irritated me was the dismissal of any possible content in the play that was not about race. All of the descriptions were reductive.

On the other hand, Ta-Nehisi Coates over at Atlantic Monthly uses Clueless to talk about the real goal: the seamless integration of characters of diverse backgrounds into the story being told.