Support the arts- support the artist

I challenge you to become a proud supporter of the arts.

Support comes in many forms. You are probably like me, in that you are inundated by requests for cash support. Certainly financial support is important. I give what I can, when I can, and I'm sure you do, too. However, money is only one of the ways to support the arts.

We can support the arts by attending. We can attend plays, showcases of artists’ works, concerts. We can visit museums and galleries. We can go to festivals and conventions.

We can support the arts by participating. Take a class in pottery. Take a class in art history. Write a poem or a song. Take some photographs. Audition for a show. Draw. Paint. Dance.

We can support the arts by helping our society value the arts. Let your legislature know that the arts are important to you. You pay taxes- ask that some of those monies go to enrich everyone by promoting the arts as a valuable part of our society. Ask for local artists to be featured in our libraries, bookstores, and cafes.  Write a review of a work of art that you have recently enjoyed- whether it’s a book, a movie, a sculpture, a play. Tell a friend to check it out.

We can support the arts by supporting artists. Artists pour out their energies in the act of creation. They are investing themselves, heart, mind, and soul, in their creations. It takes a lot out of a person! So support your local artist! Offer to listen. Ask what the person is working currently. Take an artist out for coffee or a beer.

I'm an artist*. I am an artist primarily in a collaborative art- theatre. Theatre is an art that only exists in collaboration- among the artists of the theatre, and with the audience. While it is obviously true that the performing arts, to truly exist, must exist by sharing with their audiences, I believe it is also important for all artists to share with their society. Whether the artist is celebrating or mourning, calling us to action or calling us to account, each artist is a part of the larger society and in relationship with it.

With us.

Supporting the arts is more than writing a check. Supporting the arts is supporting the artists.

Including the artist in you.

 

*You can definitely take me out for coffee. Or beer ;-)

The essential ingredient

Tonight is tech.

For the past several weeks, we’ve been rehearsing in empty rooms in random buildings. Just the actors and the words.  We worked on moments and moves to find just the right interplay among these characters, when portrayed by these actors.  We made discoveries, made adjustments, made connections.

All that hard work: theatre work, but not yet theatre. Important parts of the process, but not the essential ingredient.

Tonight is another step. At tech, we bring in the props, costume changes, lighting and sound transitions. We move from cue to cue, to get the changes right. Of course, we have to let go of the flow that we so carefully crafted in all those weeks of rehearsal. We go from lights up to lights down, lights down to lights up, again and again until we get it right.

Hard work. Important work. Theatre work, but it’s not yet theatre. Important parts of the process, but not the essential ingredient.

Tomorrow night, we begin to put it back together. Lights, costumes, props, sound, changing from one scene to another to support the actors’ work as they reclaim the flow, the life of these characters. The world of the play becomes more real.

Final dress rehearsal. Theatre work, but it’s not yet theatre. . An important part of the process, but not the essential ingredient.

This Friday, we have our first preview. The house will open to admit our preview audience.

This Friday, theatre happens. Because all of the work of the weeks and months before has been theatre work, but not theatre. It is not theatre until we have the essential ingredient.

The audience.

You.

favorite theater memories

Theater is an art that transforms. It transforms those who participate as artists, and it transforms those who participate as audience.

I'm going to capture some of my favorite theater memories. Here is one.

It was 1999. With my troupe of young actors, I'd been seeking a performance space for our production of As You Like It. Our troupe was made up of young people from many different school districts- some from public schools, some from private schools, some homeschooled- we didn't have a home base.

We finally reached an agreement with an urban school. An inner city school. Not a school any of our troupe members attended. We could use their theater for free in exchange for performances during the day for their high school students.

Fair enough.

Our As You Like It was set in the swing era. We had taken Shakespeare's words and set them to the music of the era, to tunes like "Jeepers Creepers" and "Minnie the Moocher" and a number of Gershwin tunes. We'd set all of the songs in the text, and several other sections, to these tunes. We ended with a big swing dance.

Our troupe had actors of all ages- the oldest actor was 18 and the youngest actors were 3 or 4 years old. Using my customary creativity, I had given the youngest, cutest actors the roles of sheep. Each time the shepherd Corin would enter, first you would hear the strains of Rossini's William Tell's Overture Call to the Cows and then in would trip (sometimes, literally, trip) three or four (sometimes one of the sheep was too afraid to come out) little kids in sheep costume, followed by the actors of the scene. The sheep would bounce about and then exit.

Okay, now it's show time.

As director/stage manager, I am out in the audience as the high school students file in. Dripping chains and leather and torn denim. Pierced. Tatooed. Shaved heads and wildly styled and dyed heads.

Oh dear.

How is a swing-era Shakespearean pastoral comedy going to work with this group???

The opening scenes of the gentle comedy face a stony silence from the tough- or posing as tough, which could be worse- teens of the audience.

The first songs are tolerated. We think. The vast tough audience has us worried.

Then, at last, in come the sheep.

And almost as one, this tough group of a couple thousand inner city teens, coo "Awwwwww....." at the sight of the unbelievably cute sheep.

And the audience starts to laugh at the jokes.

And applaud the songs.

In fact, when the rendition of "In the springtime, the only pretty ring time" is performed to the tune of "Minnie the Moocher" a la Cab Calloway, it brings the house down. The audience demands an encore.

And the two thousand some students who were grudgingly willing to endure Shakespeare to get out of math class roar and stomp their approval of the ending swing dance and curtain call.

Hey, and a  ho, and a nonny nonny no!

My life in Theater Art

My Life in Theater Art

I fell in love with the theater when my sixth grade teacher read Taming of the Shrew aloud to the class. I went to the Stratford Festival and saw great theater- and not so great. I started acting in high school and from that day to this I have performed in, produced, written and directed hundreds of shows.

I love the transformational power of theater. Theater saved my life, giving an awkward, introverted girl a community and a shared experience of power and energy and connection. I have seen this magic work again and again on actors, crew, designers, directors, -everyone, as Stanislavsky would say, including the hat check girl. I love the power of ensemble: the very real experience that together, our whole is far greater than the sum of our individual parts.

I hate theater that despises its audience. Without the audience, there is no theater. We, as theater artists, must develop our audience, tease, tempt, teach our audience. I don't advocate a "comfortable" theater or a safe theater; I do advocate a theater that seeks and engages the audience.

I have many goals for theater. One personal goal: I would like to see theater artists who are teens- or who work with teens and youth - recognized as (potentially) valid theater artists. Also, expanding on my comment #2 above, I would like to see the work of amateurs- those who do this work for the love of it- to be recognized for the important work that it often has been.

Shakespeare

Many years ago I directed a production of Twelfth Night with actors aged 7 to 17. After the show, an audience member- someone I knew well- asked in all seriousness how long it had taken me to "translate" the script.

He understood everything being said so well that he assumed I had changed the script.

I hadn't changed the script. The actors, Shakespeare and I had all done our jobs well enough that the audience entered into the world we created together and understood the characters, action and dialogue.

The audience enjoyed the show. They forgot it was Shakespeare. They forgot it was youth. They just had fun watching the comedy.

That's how it should be. Shakespeare is a theatrical genius; just do the *show*, and the audience will have a blast.

And wonder later how long it took you to translate the script from Shakespearean to understandable.

An Introduction to Theatre

I've been teaching Intro to Theatre for some time now. Recent events have me musing on what the purpose of such a class might be.

One important purpose is to develop new audiences.

Theatre has so much to compete with for entertainment in today's world. Television - now cable, high definition, 3-D! Movies- in theatres, on DVDs, STREAMING!

Not too mention sporting events of all types. And video games! And social networking!

What chance does theatre have? Without a live audience, there is no theatre.

And that is what we must capitalize on: theatre is live- intimate - in person. The physical, sensual presence of the live actor engaging with the energy of the live audience is something that technology cannot replicate.

Introduction to theatre- when it includes a requirement to GO and SEE SOME SHOWS- is an opportunity to bring this live experience to those who may never have tried it otherwise.

And once there- good theatre will do the rest.

Who do you love? THE AUDIENCE!

As I was working with young people, training them for performance, audience awareness had to be a part of the training.

We would do dances on stage: Look Upstage! Step Stage Right! Step Stage Left!

As we worked scenes and blocking, I would hop up and demonstrate positions that would open up actors to greater visibility on the proscenium stage.

"The audience wants to see *these* cheeks," I would say, pointing to my face, "not *these* cheeks!" as I turned around and pointed at the butt cheeks.

Lots of giggles. And they learned.

The short hand shout out of "Wrong cheeks!" would prompt the actor to re-orient, adjust, move to share more with the audience.

They learned.

"You are a sunflower!" I would say, "And the audience is the sun! Ever so subtly you move, you lean, you orient to the sun!"

They learned.

I taught them that without the audience there is no theater. "Who do you love?" I would challenge them.

The shouted response: "THE AUDIENCE!"

The audience, I taught them, wants to like you, wants to love you. Share your character, your voice, your energy, your play, with the audience and they will love you and appreciate you and give back your energy ten-fold.

Who do you love? THE AUDIENCE!