EXTRA CRITICUM

Taylor Swift Ticketmaster Controversy Points to a Dangerous Thing No One is Talking About: The Slow Narrowing of Our Culture

 

 

The Recent Hadestown Kerfuffle Only Proves One Thing: "It's 2022 and still... we are all just a little out of sorts."

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How ready are we for live performance as we used to enjoy it? We're circulating a very short survey. Please take 3-5 min. to answer a handful of key questions about your feelings in the fall of 2022.

Oct 2022 Live Performance Comfort Survey

 

 

The Roland Tec Inner Circle Transitions to a Patreon Membership Tier

As I thought about whether to move the RT Inner Circle to Patreon I had to stop and think about everything I'd been producing, presenting, performing or hosting over the past few years. 

Would the offerings stack up and strike all of you as worth it?

Patreon offers artists a reliable revenue stream (albeit a modest one) by inviting members of the artist's sphere of influence to make a monthly financial contribution to the general health and well-being of the artist and by extension everything they create and offer to the world each year. 

It's a tiered model so, those most casually affiliated contribute something you may hardly notice. In our case we set the lowest tier at a $3 monthly contribution.

$3 per month amounts to a little more than $.09 a day. Hopefully anyone who has found joy or value of any kind in any of my workshops or the Hear Me Out programming won't hesitate to join us.

I decided to simply keep the three existing benefits of RT Inner Circle membership as has been the case for free for all these years: subscription to the semi-monthly RT Inner Circle e-Notes, priority notice of contests and other submission opportunities and the exclusive RT Inner Circle Comp Ticket promo codes which allow you to pay zero at many of the online events I host.

This choice, I hope, sends a clear message:

That thing you were getting for free all this time now has a $3 price tag but no one is going to force you to jump on board. You can choose to continue in the RT Inner Circle without signing up on Patreon but I really hope you'll seriously consider enrolling at Patreon, thereby contributing to a community that chooses to honor the value of what I've been making happen for people with a small outlay of cash each month. 

 

It's never simple when something you've been getting for free is suddenly protected by a Paywall. I remember the first time I clicked to read an article in the New York Times online only to be suddenly asked if I had paid for a subscription. It felt like a betrayal.

That's the last thing I want to make you feel. So, if you wish to remain in the RT Inner Circle and avail yourself of certain opportunities, announcements and bits of professional advice contained in the e-Notes and on the YouTube channel, no one's going to be policing you, waiting to stop you.

But, some of the things I've been giving away free of charge, like Wednesday Gathering, for example, have never been free of cost to me. So, in order to continue to drop in on the occasional Wednesday, all we ask is that you set aside $36 a year for the privilege. I hope you'll agree that that's negligible compared to what it means to you to know that the gathering is here. Because of course, the Wednesday Gatherings are not a writer's workshop, like the Roland Tec Online Writers Workshop in which an instructor (me) has carefully constructed a course in order to result in a specific result (your completion of a specific goal for your work over a six month period).

As I said, before launching on Patreon, I thought it might help for me to make a comprehensive list of all the things I'd offered the community since the start of this pandemic.

Here's what I was able to remember:

Only URL You'll Ever Need to Access All Things Roland Tec on the WWW

If you're one of the dozens of folks who've emailed in frustration at not being able to locate a project, deadline, video, schedule or anything else related to a Roland Tec enterprise, you're in luck. As of today, you need only ever remember one address.

R O L A N D  T E C  U M B R E L L A  .  c o m

Some thoughts on writing about what disturbs us (or: Please welcome our Process Moderators)

My new play A Nagging Feeling Best Not Ignored (which I'm currently performing on Wednesday nights) grew out of the January 6th insurrection.  My last film, We Pedal Uphill was my very personal attempt to make sense of the climate of fear which seemed to take root in this country in the months and years immediately following the September 11, 2001 attacks. The first play of mine that was produced in New York, Bodily Function, grew out of an offhand remark made by a midlevel corporate executive about workplace morale and bathroom breaks. The comment was delivered casually, almost cynically over a brunch with friends in Boston. Maybe the fact that the man who made the comment was not a friend of mine but rather a friend of friends, kept me from asking a pointed follow-up question. And so for weeks afterward I was haunted by the values behind his remarks. And eventually found my way to a play about a woman who has reached the pinnacle of success in her career yet somehow finds herself not quite feeling what she always imagined she would.

For whatever reason, there usually is some kind of thorn or confounding riddle at the center of the scripts I write. I'm drawn to the details of how human beings cope. We are uniquely creative and optimistic animals most of the time and how we manage to overcome, work around or stumble through life's towering obstacles is, I think, where the most vivid storytelling lies. 

So it shouldn't have surprised me to find that my latest play, A Nagging Feeling Best Not Ignored has left some audience members feeling a kind of emotional whiplash. The piece is a kind of attempt to capture something of the tenuous relationship to truth and reality we find ourselves swimming in these days. And so the man at the center of the piece is, to put it mildly, an unreliable narrator. 

It's difficult to know what to believe as he leads us from one assertion to the next, not much of it able to be held by the same single reality of one person's life. 

It turns out that after an hour of very dark laughter, distortions of the facts of our reality and the tension of an audience holding one man's future in their hands through their vote at the end of the show, people need  a few  min. to process what they've just been through. 

And you told us as much in the feedback offered online after the first three performances. 

Post-Show Process Conversations Led by Leading Thinkers in the Fields of Psychology, Government, the Arts, Sociology, History and the Law. 

Meet our First 5 Esteemed Process Moderators

A NAGGING FEELING EXTENDED THROUGH SEPTEMBER 7, 2022

This week's sold out.

But we've just added a bunch of additional dates to the schedule so if you weren't sure you were going to get in to see this unique live solo Zoom show, visit the website today and you may be in luck. The schedule has been expanded to include Wednesday nights from now through September 7th.

The following videos feature just some of the raves that have been pouring in from audience members at our first few performances. 

 

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE TICKETS

Why my next play had to be a solo show performed on Zoom.

In March of 2020 mankind was thrust into a new paradigm. With virtually every aspect of life squeezed, stretched and stuffed into shapes that many found virtually unrecognizable, the essence of what it means to be human was called into question. And change was all but inevitable.

Change can be painful, frightening, frustrating and uncomfortable. And so for the better part of two years everyone has to some degree found him or herself wrestling with uncertainty and a gnawing question regarding all our life choices pre-CoVid_19.

I feel that my exploration of this challenging and dangerous moment in human history absolutely calls out for a presentation within the confines of the Zoom black box theatre.

Opening 2 min. of the February 7th reading to an invited audience.

This has left us at once hungry for human connection (as the oxygen of life) and wary of it. We have found ourselves surprised by our own behavior. How many friends have expressed the same confusion regarding an acute loneliness and yearning for human connection coupled with an inexplicable paralysis when it comes to returning phone calls, emails and text messages. How odd it has been to observe oneself letting 2, 3, or more days sail by while phone messages or emails went unreturned even as we wished for nothing more than the back and forth of a chat with a friend. 

Zoom is the perfect architecture for this moment.

Don't Throw Our Baby Out with the Bathwater (or: Why We Still Need Zoom)

As we enter Year 3 of the early 21st century pandemic, it's understandable why we might all long for nothing more than a life outside... outside the walls of Zoom.

The last couple years were dominated by stories of loss -- loss of income, loss of job security, loss of essential routines, loss of friendships, confidence and, of course, the worst loss of all: loss of life.

But scattered here and there, tucked behind and alongside the wreckage lie some unexpected gifts.

Please, someone, could you show me the onramp?

Lately, I feel the things I don't know threatening to overtake the things I know for sure. (And please don't ask me about the Rumsfeldian unknown-unknowns. For those you must consult my closest friends and family.)

I have no clue how we're coming out of Pandemic Pause. Though I did just walk through a mall and a grocery store and Bloomingdales, all of which felt way more crowded than my comfort-level barometer could abide.

How are you emerging from the last year and a half?

Are you rising from a deep sleep feeling refreshed, renewed, reinvigorated?

Or are you tentative as you take your first baby steps along a slightly overgrown path, following signs that appear to read:

This way to "normal" --->

or was that:

They say go "normal" ---/

or

Which way to "normal?"

I don't know about you but I notice my mood is all over the place.

Hear Me Out 2021: Submissions Are Already Pouring In. The Why and the How and the What For of Deep Diving into Monologue Writing... Again and Again (and again).

Last Spring as the possibility that CoViD19 lockdown might eat up more than a month of 2020 turned gently into probability, then undeniable certainty, I noticed something interesting. Those of us who have a hand in the creation of film and theatre--of entertainment in the form of stories that unfold before a live audience--we were all showing clear signs of cabin fever. Playwright friends were having readings of new and old work. Actors were gathering to perform sonnets. Songwriters were grabbing their guitars, logging onto Zoom and sharing stuff. 

It was exciting. And healing. We needed that. We needed to connect and to reaffirm what it is we do best. 

But there were problems. For one thing, Zoom is a pretty sorry substitute for actually being there. [Look for my upcoming argument: Zoom: Fear her not. But pity her a little bit. She'll never convince us that nothing's lost.] When it comes to live theatre, the most obvious problem is that no two actors can ever really make eye contact via webcam.

Zoom Theatre May Have Left Us Some Important Gifts. Don't Miss the Rare Opportunity That's Arriving.

We can hardly contain ourselves with the glee that stems from the idea that our current way of life may possibly be coming to an end... or at least a kind of optimistic pause 

In the meantime, those of us who make plays. films, musicals, operas, ballets, etc. etc. find ourselves stuck in the same boat: not 100% seaworthy, overcrowded, and possibly not even sailing in one discernable direction.

The Most Basic Questions:

Will Zoom Theatre continue even after we've all stopped needing to construct approximated lives via our laptops?

When will theatre lovers, for example, not hesitate for one moment when lining up to purchase tickets for shows that pack us into houses with the cool efficiency of one of our major commercial airlines?

Will the type of work that audiences clamor for have changed in any fundamental way as a direct result of a steady diet of talking heads in screens? 

And has more than a year of making theatre happen within the narrow confines of the Zoom Box somehow helped us all to see some of the ways in which the traditional rules of how theatre gets made and who gets to make it don't necessarily need to be renewed without question?

What Have We Learned? Surely a lot. No?

COVIUSbe sure there's nothing we'd like to carry with us into the future, a future that's anything but certain for the performing arts.

The Fuel Getting Me Through Pandemic Pause is You

It's taken me a good six months but I think I've finally landed on one of the most effective antidotes to Pandemic Pause Malaise. Since March my teaching activities have slowly increased week by week by week. And in a less direct way, perhaps almost unconsciously, I've been increasing the various opportunities for encountering the creative work of colleagues. 

Some of you have joined us for the monthly celebration of monologue we call Some1Speaking. It's been one of the most important means of staying sane for me. And it wasn't until last night when we heard some amazing work from John Yearley, Sara Israel, Sherry Friedman, Alonzo Lamont and my dear old pal from the days of Naked Brunch, Mr. Rick Park. Rick's piece, by the way, closed out the hour with a riveting performance by a Minneapolis-based actor I'd never met before,  Andre Shoals. Wow. So, yeah, one of the things that keeps me sane these days is the work itself. It's inspiring to hear writers like Yearley and Israel who are really working at the top of their game.

And then the other thing that's huge for me is the warm fuzzy feeling I get when I can see first-hand that simply making the space for this is having an impact. Now, more than ever, I feel we artists need each other. We need to see and hear each other and be reminded of others who, like us, may occasionally fall into deep dark despair but manage against all odds again and again to sit down and make new work.

When I see you creating something powerful it renews my faith in my own ability to do the same.

That's why, as it became clear that this Thanksgiving was going to contribute to bigger hotter fires of infection all across the country, I knew what I had to do. I had to make room in my week for more opportunities to bump up against your new work.

And so from now through the end of February (at least), I'll be hosting a free online Wednesday Gathering from 8PM to 9PM, EST. This will be a kind of open mic but I really hope that visual artists will join us too. Take 5 min. to show us some slides or film or just talk about your practice. We'll gather weekly and in so doing, I have no doubt, we'll each, in our own way emerge renewed and energized.

For security reasons, if you want to join us, you'll need to sign up in advance. Please join the circle.

Hitting Storefronts and Thankful for the Generosity of My Fellow Artists

I'm spending a good portion of this summer workshopping my storefront spectacle, No Place to Hide. In a nutshell, I appear inside the storefront window of a local business somewhere typing on a laptop and either by means of projector or flatscreen, every word I type is instantly enlarged and displayed to passersby.

I started doing this piece without fully understanding exactly why I was doing it. Something just seemed to propel me to want to try this out.

Truthfully, I'm not yet sure what this will all amount to, whether the playwright in me will ultimately find this format interesting enough. (I tend to want my work to be somehow transformative, either by way of taking an audience on a journey, or at least shaking them up a bit and the jury's still out on whether this idea has the potential to do this for us.)

Serendipity and Meryl Streep at the Quad Cinema

On Tuesday afternoon, my plan was to take my Mom to see Claude Berri's THE TWO OF US at the Quad Cinema. About an hour before we headed out I learned that -- oops! -- in a last-minute scheduling change, that time slot would be filled instead with a screening of Ai Weiwei's Oscar-nominated doc, HUMAN FLOW. The film interested us both just as much so we grabbed our coats and headed the two blocks to the Quad.

I was surprised to see a big crowd filling the lobby of the tiny multiplex at 4PM on a Tuesday and apprehensively asked if there were two tickets available. There were. We went in, grabbed our seats and waited as virtually every seat in the theatre (70 total?) was slowly filled. 

The Quad's programming director walked down to the front of the theatre. As he did so, I realized that there was probably going to be a Q&A and I briefly recalled the time in 1999 when I had been called to the front of one of the Quad's screens to introduce my film, ALL THE RAGE. I remember still what I said that night. The film had already screened at dozens of film festivals across the globe and throughout the U.S. but that screening at the Quad would be its New York Premiere. And I made a joke about my delight at finally getting the opportunity to screen my film in "the center of the universe."

"We have a great honor this afternoon that the filmmaker, Ai Weiwei is here to introduce his film. And..." And he paused and cleared his throat for dramatic effect. "And I can hardly believe I'm saying this but to introduce Weiwei we have three-time Oscar-winner Meryl Streep."

Everyone's a Critic

At the multiplex in Roanoke.

Waiting for the feature presentation to begin, an action-packed trailer pops up for a movie called KIDNAP. We see Halle Berry as a mother-warrior fighting what looks to be an army of humanity (criminals, bystanders, doubters, cops, liars, thieves, truckers, lovers...) getting in the way of this mother's fevered pursuit of her adorable innocent bespectacled little boy who has suddenly inexplicably been stolen from her at an amusement park.

As the title KIDNAP splashes its intention across the screen, I hear this from a guy in the row behind me:

Oh dear. That is so NOT the right role for her to come back in.

Now, if this were Chelsea and he were a gay man, I wouldn't be surprised. But I'm in Roanoke and he appears to be on a date with a woman.

When did the entire country turn into Rex Reed?

Discuss.