EXTRA CRITICUM

It's About Fuckin' Time

I'm sitting in my office at the Dramatists Guild, half-dazed from the heat beating through my window countered with the screams of some Michael Jackson imitator seven floors down on the street level. Half in one world and half in another (my natural state these days), I'm brought back to office-reality when one of our cheery office assistants slides my mail across my desk and announces, "Mail!" (Btw, I find this fascinating. Why announce what's obvious? It's not like you're sliding a pizza or an old boot across my friggin' desk and trying to pass it off as mail.)

Anyway, I'm sifting through my mail -- which generally consists of "you're doing this right" mail, and, "you're doing this wrong, asshole" mail with a few season announcements, show announcements, and gym postcards announcing the end of summer is in sight (really?), and shouldn't I lose the twenty pounds I've been meaning to lose? -- when a brochure catches my eye: the announcement for Playwrights Horizons 2009-10 season.

A pigeon is not a dove. And vice versa.

Last season I did something stupid and enough time has passed that I (and hopefully my board of directors and staff) can laugh at the mistake. A few months ago, it was anything but funny.

There's a scene in a famous opera that I was staging that I'd always thought should start with a flock of doves. It's a symbolic thing... difficult to quite explain but it relates to my thoughts about the character who makes his first entrance on stage, etc. etc.

Notes Or Thoughts

[cross-posted at www.JeremysGreenRoom.com]

Notes are often given to directors and writers. A lot of the time in these notes sessions I find myself saying “what is the problem we’re trying to solve”. This is because a lot of times notes are given as solutions and a lot of times, for whatever reason, the solution is flawed. But that doesn’t negate the underlying problem.

Notes are very useful because they offer multiple perspectives, and they keep you from that problem of not being able to see the forrest for the trees. But writers usually come up with the best solutions for their scripts, and directors usually come up with the best solutions for their productions. I think it is usually preferable to simply present the problem and let the person in charge of that department ask for help, or give them the space to figure out their own solution.

American Priorities?

When you run an opera company in this country, you get used to the threat of having to cancel portions of your season. It happens to the best of us. Fundraising goals aren't reached and you have to move (as gracefully as you can) to Plan B.

But you don't expect to find yourself discussing the cancellation of one of 5 announced operas because the composer who you're bringing over from Europe for the premiere of his new work can't get a visa!

A Total Lack of Irony

Nine years ago I set off for the wilds of Alaska, my first play in hand. I went to the Last Frontier Theatre Conference and had an amazing time. Among the momentous things that happened that week was meeting the estimable Rolando Teco, great friend and collaborator, as well as being the editor of this here online journal.

The play I went with has since been buried under a large rock, but my love of the Conference soldiers on. I recently returned from a week there as a featured artist. And I’m here to tell ya, it’s still pretty great.

Detroit the next artists' mecca? Who woulda thunk it?

In May I posted:  "What city will be the next New York?" and lots of folks joined in a freewheeling speculation as to where artists might next land in light of the mounting impossibility of making ends meet in NYC.

Well, check this out? Courtesy of Thomas Cott's You've Cott Mail:

Run Don't Walk to See BENNY

Last year I had the pleasure of seeing an early workshop of Suzanne Bachner's autobiographical play, Benny. Well, word on the street is, the John Montgomery Theatre Company has revised, reshaped and rehearsed and made it even better -- although when I saw it in its earliest version, it blew me away!

Here's a link to more info. Seriously, this was one of the most surprisingly bold and theatrical new pieces I'd seen in a long time. Check it out at the JMTC website.