EXTRA CRITICUM

When to Get Out of the Way (And When to Get Back In)

I've been doing a ton of teaching lately. One of the things I pride myself on most in terms of my teaching style is that I work hard to build camaraderie among members of a class. I also try to get students to seek feedback from each other and thereby gain some greater self-awareness and self-confidence as they respond to one another's work with intelligence and compassion.

But sometimes, lately, it seems I may have been retreating too far into the background.

In the last week on two completely separate fronts I've received feedback that can be summed up as:

Roland, I'd really love to hear more of your direct feedback on the work.

It's a funny thing for me because I am so deeply programmed (thanks, Mom!) to avoid at all costs any hint of hogging center stage, pushing my own agenda at the expense of others, etc. etc. And yet, the truth is, when someone signs up for one of my writing workshops, I have to assume a big part of what they're after is feedback from me. I guess I just have to own that.

In a non-obnoxious way. 

Something to work on, I guess.

Here's some video from the recent Tec Music-Theatre Challenge I conducted for Musical Theatre Artists of Pittsburgh last weekend. I think all these folks are super talented. Enjoy.

First Do No Harm

As a indie artists, we face so many challenges. But there's one we really shouldn't have to: obnoxious treatment from other artists. I was recently reminded of this when a playwright who had contracted me to present one of my workshops decided to cancel the engagement after a failure to promote resulted in a failure to fill. 

Look. We've all been there. Time gets the better of us. Emails that were meant to go out weeks ago either go out late or aren't sent at all. Or worse an email goes out with a broken link an no one notices and corrects the problem until too late. The thing is, accidents happen. Especially when dealing in the independent production arena where schedules and budgets are stretched beyond imagining.

What was shocking to me about this particular mishap was that my would-be host accepted zero responsibility for his end and instead sent me an angry email letting me know he was canceling the contract because I had failed to fill his seats.

Time is Your Friend, Not Your Enemy

I was reminded recently of a director I once had the displeasure of working with who saw his job more or less as moving actors around like set pieces on his set. As one of those actors I remember finding it incredibly demoralizing to be searching for moments of genuine authentic action/reaction with my fellow scene partners and feeling as though doing so was just taking up more of his precious time for blocking. He had some big heady vision for the play and it involved ideas which were never very clear.

The thing is, ideas behave more or less as we expect them to. People, on the other hand...

The director who thinks of nothing but figuring out who sits and stands and crosses when and where has one thing in common with the playwright who manipulates his characters, cramming them into a plot of his own design, human nature be damned. They're both focused on control.