Doing It In Your Backyard

Yeah, it's beginning to make more and more sense to me. As I travel around the country and meet more and more artistic directors, literary managers and producers, and I contextualize them in the common cry of most playwrights I know ("We need more productions!"), I'm slowly realizing that if really we want things to change, clearly we'll have to take matters into our own hands.     

I was in Seattle a couple of weeks ago and met with a lot of playwrights and almost twelve (!) members of the producing community there.

Representatives from the largest (and consequently, most prestigious) theatres were present. The panel then scaled down from the large theatres all the way to the smallest, tiniest, barely-surviving theatre (literally, a converted home garage where an adult hand-puppet show ran for months). Playwrights peopled the audience and you could instantly feel that "us against them" energy that hangs over meetings like this.      Inevitably the question was posed to the big theatres: "Why won't you produce local playwrights -- playwrights that are literally in your own back yard?" I watched the panel people shift in their chairs, their faces immediately demonstrating the war-torn fatigue when trying to form a peaceful answer to this question. Rising out of the ashen looks of the panel was the voice belonging to a man named Jerry.      Jerry (on staff at the largest of all the theatres) calmly looked up and said, "Because every time I do, I lose anywhere from $25-50,000 at the box office, and then I have to fire someone on my staff. It's not that we don't love you, but we're a regional theatre that depends on our subscribers. And our subscribers depend on us to bring them the latest from Broadway, or the Pulitzer Prize winner, or the Tony winner. Period. End of story. And I know it's not the story you want to hear, but it's the only one I can tell with honesty . . . and even compassion."     

Fuckin' A. Bravo, Jerry. Yeah, no one wanted to hear it. But you told the truth. You were courageous in a way I've hardly ever seen from anyone in your position. It took balls, my man, but every playwright lucky to be in the room now know where they stand with you and your theatre.      But the brilliance didn't end there. What fell out of Jerry's honesty was a call from all the theatre people in the room to embrace the notion of playwrights producing playwrights (13P in New York, Playwrights 6 in Los Angeles), or small theatres banning together to co-produce (and hence share the risk) the overwhelming number of original plays, or how about this idea: self-production.       

I can hear your groan from here. Self-production? Ewwwwww. Look, the "vanity production" argument is tired and old and something too many of us embrace because we want someone else to pay for our candy bar. Okay, I get it. But baby, if you don't see anybody with their change purse out and poised for you, wouldn't you like to do something beyond standing there feeling helpless?

Comments

[Rolando Teco]

1.

I think what we're seeing nationwide is in many ways a direct result of the disappearance of government funding for the Arts. Without "blind" funding (which only govt. funding can ever really be), regional theatres not only have to produce what's more commercial but they are tending to produce what their big funding sources want.

This might explain why at the recent premiere of Anna Deveare Smith's latest play at Long Wharf, there were more than half a dozen direct references in the script to "Yale New Haven Medical Center" and when I flipped open the program at intermission...

Surprise!

Guess who had funded the whole show?

This is one of the more blatant examples I've come across but this works in more insidious ways as well, with foundations only supporting new art that deals with specific issues. One has to wonder, to what extent is the money guiding the commissioning and presentation of new work in this country.

As Gary Garrison might say, "It gives one pause."