EXTRA CRITICUM

It's Official. We Must Defeat the Algorithms. (Our Humanity Just May Depend on It)

I'm in the middle (well, probably only 20% of the way in if I'm honest) of a steep new learning curve around social media algorithms, Search Engine Optimization and the very powerful and quixotic (not-to-be-overlooked) chill of audience disinterest.

And yesterday I came upon this paragraph in a pretty interesting (albeit somewhat depressing) post I'll link to here. 

 

 

Naturally, this got me thinking.

Floating in a Sea of Deception. Who are we and what are we doing here?

In early 2017 I made the decision to #unfriendfacebook. I decoupled. I changed my profile picture to this.

At the time I thought I understood my reasons. It seemed to me quite indisputable that the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election had been handed to Trump by Facebook. ///HOLD IT! STOP THIS BLOG POST RIGHT THERE!

As I write that last sentence, there is a tiny voice in the back of my mind tap-tap-tapping for attention. And I have just interrupted this post to hear it.

It says:

Hold on there, Roland, are you sure you want to let your political position muddy the waters here? I mean, we are a country divided and suppose one of your students or potential students is reading this. With that little bit about the 2016 election, you may have just eliminated 50% of your potential target market.

Regardless of how one falls on the many sides of that strange interrupting worry, what concerns me most, and what I need to address here is the kind of landscape in which such a worry even makes any sense at all.

And by that I mean, an online world which through the powerful and slowslowslow moving and largely imperceptible forces of corporate interests has grown and continues to tilt further and further toward a kind of malignant embrace which play acts connection but at its core is really just pretty much always trying to sell you something.

Because if this blog is seen to exist to serve two masters -- my human desire to dig down to the truth and the promotional needs of my business -- aren't we fooling ourselves just a little bit? I mean, if we actually try to convince ourselves that these two impulses can live under the same roof? Without killing each other?

What do you do when you wake up one morning to discover that the world you've helped build is pretty much one enormous billboard?

Search Engine Optimization vs. Authentic Useful Content

The other day I was chatting with a friend who is something of an expert in the field of SEO or Search Engine Optimization and all things WWW-related. And a fact of life of our brave new online world just sort of spilled out and I'm embarrassed to admit, although this fact of life or fact of internet architecture is apparently common knowledge to anyone posting content online, I had somehow never heard or read this fact. 

Blog posts should be written around a set of search terms and the search terms should be carefully selected through research into the most common search terms in the topic about which you're writing. Apparently this is the way people who do not already know you and your blog will find their way to you.

When your posts have been carefully constructed around a curated set of key words and phrases designed to attract the right people to your blog, i.e. the people most likely to find it interesting and worthwhile. 

Here's the very first post which now strikes me as a little wet behind the ears and possibly somewhat blind to the vast tundra that the internet can be to the writer who posts from the heart without even a moment spent considering how people might find their way to you.

In a way, then, this blog has been floating in the shadows, only entering the field of vision of the people somehow connected to its contributing authors. Maybe that's why what began as a group blog eventually dwindled down to pretty much me posting 90% of the time. 

Were the other E.C. Authors simply not getting enough bang for their buck? I wish one of them had told me. 

Since I founded Extra Criticum in May of 2008, I have simply been writing about whatever thing struck me as important, odd, amusing or troubling. The most thought I ever gave to search happened once I'd finished whatever post I was working on when I'd stare at that empty box and come up with about a dozen key words to enter which I assumed would assist the Google bots and any other search engine creatures to find the article based on... what I thought it was about.

Boy was I misguided!

I WROTE A SHOW TO CAPTURE THIS MOMENT (Too bad "this moment" just happens to be one that the entire world seems desperate to escape)

https://rolandtec.medium.com/i-wrote-a-show-to-capture-this-moment-53cdd0d955fa
originally posted to Medium.

Click here to read it.

Attention Extra Criticum readers: If you do click through and read this piece on Medium, please consider taking a moment to follow me, post a comment, clap at the end or highlight text. Engagement really helps. Thanks!

Jean-Paul Yovanoff Interviews me for the BE OUR GUEST show on Musical Theatre Radio

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Jean-Paul Yovanoff to talk about my approach to teaching, my philosophy about the performing arts and a whole lot more. I had such fun talking with Jean-Paul for his podcast BE OUR GUEST. I wanted to share the interview with you all here. 

 

Deadline at Noon. Let me repost what I said last year.

I have to admit I found it heartbreaking having to refuse what amounted to an avalanche of last-minute requests for special exceptions to our strict Noon deadline. 

First, I feel it important to explain our rationale for refusing to accept post-deadline submissions.

 

read the full post:

Submission Deadlines When Life is Lived Online

What does theatre need most in this moment? Ken Levine says "comedy." But I think it's a bit more complicated than that.

My friend Robert Sullivan shared this morning's post on Ken Levine's popular blog. In it, he puts forth an idea I've heard before. When times are tough after an economic upheaval, what theatre need now more than ever is: comedy. Comedy, the argument goes, is our ticket to escape, to take our minds off what we've been through and what may lie ahead in a not-so-certain economic recovery post-pandemic.

We heard similar calls for comedy above all else in the period of uncertainty immediately following the attacks of September 11, 2001. 

It's understandable why some might think this would be the trick. But I have a different idea.

In those moments when the house lights go down and the curtain goes up, everyone in the audience begins putting their own life worries (of the day and of the year) on a shelf and turning their attention, instead, to the lives of the characters on stage. This is what we have come to do. To set aside our own concerns and for the duration of the play, focus our attention—with head and heart—on the lives of others.

I really ought to take my own advice.

This morning I was reminded of the advice I shared with members of the Roland Tec Alumni Action Network just days ago. "Do yourself a favor," I said. "See if you can get in the habit of not checking email before Noon."

I was reminded of this today at 9:55AM just as I was checking my INBox.

But really, what advice worth giving has ever been given by someone with a perfect track record?

The truth is this pandemic shut-down has put many of my resolutions around my creative work to the test. Almost on a daily basis I'm confronted with ways in which this new and uninvited social distance (or soshedist, as I like to call it) is encroaching on my productivity, my sanity and my way of life. Some days it feels as though I'm simply outgunned by forces of nature that are encroaching on my goals like roaming sand dunes. You don't really notice them moving moment to moment. But make no mistake. These dunes are moving. And they aren't concerned with li'l ole me with my plans and lists and hopes and dreams and ideas. Fuck your intentions, little guy, step aside. We're drifting! We are, after all, the sands of time.

I created the Action Network to provide a monthly means of connection, of methods testing, of providing one place where members might check in with each other and with me about issues they're having around productivity, specific artistic projects or any other goals. We only began in April. This last session was our third meeting. And so far I'm finding myself inspired by the wide range of approaches to making a creative life these days. It's still early days in what is essentially a grand experiment. 

At the core of this monthly online gathering is my conviction that without a simple roadmap for success, we artists will always do better wrestling with the big questions in a group context than alone. Having a conversation in your own head is never as surprising as having one with a dozen colleagues you respect.

If you think you'd benefit from this kind of forum, you can join on a rolling basis. The monthly cost is $45 (which I'm told is way too low but, hey, we're still in Beta testing so take advantage.) Admission is rolling which means you can join in any month for as short a period as 4-months or as long as a year. It's up to you to choose depending on what you feel you can get out of it. Here's a link.

Your Best Work Won't Wait

This is the tag line on the home page of my teaching website and underneath my signature on any email I send. But what does it mean?

A few things at least.

First of all, the best work you're imagining will make itself the first work you undertake. You can trust your creative unconscious to see to it that this is always true. And for that reason, in 2020 I urge you to go with your gut.

If that short play you started in my workshop last semester will not leave you alone, go back and see if there might be a full-length waiting to be born. If you told yourself you wanted to finish that screenplay this year yet you keep imagining new ideas for that novel, pay attention to that pull.

That's your mind tugging at your attention the way a toddler might tug at your pant leg.

There's at least another meaning to this bumper sticker.

Jonathan Mandell on "Diversity" (on Howlround)

Fascinating new questions raised about our new obsession with diversity in the theatrical realm. Jonathan Mandell asks some tough questions in his essay on Howlround. Here's an excerpt:

David Dower on "The Scarcity Matrix"

David Dower has an astonishing piece on what he calls The Scarcity Matrix up on Howlround. Here's an interesting paragraph from this must-read post.

We used the Scarcity trigger to corral an audience for ourselves and hang onto them out of fear they’ll migrate to “our competitors in the market.” We adopted the Scarcity Principle to drive generations of artists into MFA factories because, without that credential they’d not be able to compete in the open market for the scarce opportunities available to new voices. We adopted the Scarcity Principle to build the endowments and a competitive advantage in our markets, and tied up that capital forever in the hands of the few, the proud, the chosen—ourselves. Now we are the gatekeepers and long lines are forming outside our doors. We used it to build our Boards, promising prospects that our Board was more prestigious and their contributions would mean more if given to “us” than to “them.” We celebrated our success in this zero-sum competitive frame with press releases about box office records, enormous donations, celebrity appearances, and transfers. 

 

read the whole piece at Howlround.

So Much Talk of Commerce. So Little Time.

Lydia Stryk has a fascinating piece up on HowlRound about a movement to guarantee artists a living wage. And Stryk's wonderful piece (not all of which I agree with) is just the tip of the iceberg. There's an ocean of online commentary these days on art-making and the question of its sustainability in our current economic structure. I wonder why this might be happening.

Maybe it's just that a lot of over-educated folks with upper-middle-class parents (myself included) bought the story they were sold about devoting one's life to the creation of art: You can do it.

Or put another way:

You can be whatever you want to be.

Has there ever been a more profoundly dangerous message conveyed to an entire generation?

Playwrights at the Helm (DG Academy)

I had an absolute blast moderating this panel for the Dramatists Guild on Tuesday. Really smart and generous panelists include: August Schulenburg (Flux Theatre Ensemble), James Comtois (Nosedive Productions), Susan Bernfield (New Georges), and J. Holtham (New Black Fest, EST, and Fell Swoop).

Good news for those who weren't able to join us. Here's the video:

Watch live streaming video from newplay at livestream.com

 

What do Bansky, Joni Mitchell and Joshua Bell all have in common?

So, have you heard about this thing that happened? The artist, Bansky, set up a table in central park to sell his work for $60 a canvass when they usually go for the thousands. This video is amazing to watch.

And, well, that got me thinking of the Joshua Bell stunt from a few years back.

Dennis Danziger on Amy Friedman's visit to Katie Couric's show

Really fun piece about EC pal Amy Friedman's long journey to appear on Katie Couric's daytime talk show to discuss her marriage to a prisoner and her wonderful memoir, Desperado's Wife.