Why _don't_ you go to the theater?

American Theatre magazine's Facebook page asks why ...
It's hardly a scientific sample, but it appears to suggest that money and time (especially the former) are big concerns.

Bobo's gotta sympathize with Bill from Montana.
But seriously, folks -- some kind of market research on what keeps people from attending might be useful for local theater marketeers.

[ image: from bizbash.com ]

SOS for theaters

[ photo: Eliza Bent, in www3.timeoutny.com, from David Cole's Q&A with her in July 2009 ]

Eliza Bent's article in the January American Theatre makes several points:
1. Emergency fundraising campaigns can come off like "ransom demands."
2. The Great Recession isn't the only problem: "Miscalculated ticket sales, declining subscriber bases, shortfalls in contributed income, not-so-successful capital campaigns and accumulated debt ..." are among the potential pitfalls.
3. Be honest with your subscribers, your board, and all your stakeholders. Don't claim that it's an emergency if it isn't.
4. Get everyone in the theater to write and call thank-you's to contributors.
5. Don't cancel shows or reduce their quality; people don't write checks to theaters that aren't behaving like theaters.
6. Small donors (in the $100-$150 range) are key.
7. Get a board members to contact three local banks and get a consortium loan from all three of them (especially if they've turned you down individually).
8. Keep reminding everyone of specific ways in which your theater contributes to the community. Make your space available for non-theatrical functions.
9. Spread the word via Facebook. But don't treat Facebook as a panacea. And supervise the verbiage appealing on your behalf on Facebook; some may find it off-putting.
10. Write those grant applications. Seek cooperations and even mergers with academic theater departments.

With Interplayers changing plays and dates and suddenly holding fundraisers — and with Lake City Playhouse apparently doing better but still in debt and about to change artistic directors — such advice may come in useful.

Even the most stable of theaters in the most prosperous of times are creating art in the face of time limits and financial constraints.

When has there ever been a perfect time for theater? Like Sonya and Uncle Vanya at the end of Chekhov's play, we must work. And then we shall rest.

On translating Shakespeare and keeping theaters alive

[ from tasss.com: "Totally Awesome Super Sweet Stuff / Fighting the forces of lame" presents the William Shakespeare Celebriduck ]

Two articles in the January issue of American Theatre magazine -- an issue devoted to vocal training for actors — caught Bobo's eye in particular:

pp. 94-99, John McWhorter's "The Real Shakespearean Tragedy," arguing that all that 400-year-old language needs to be updated in ways that today's theatergoers will find understandable
and
pp. 104-07, Eliza Bent's "Save Our Ship," on what marketing strategies should be followed by theaters that are in danger of dying a slow (or sudden) financial death (which I'll examine in my next post).

First, the Shakespeare. Using numerous examples, McWhorter points out that even people who are trained in Shakespeare don't understand Shakespeare anymore.
Beowulf, written 1,200 years ago, may be in English, but nobody denies that it needs translating (as in Seamus Heaney's great example), or else nobody but grad students would read it ever again. McWhorter's basic argument is that Shakespeare has reached the same point.
"Shakespeare is not a drag because we are lazy, because we are poorly educated, or because he wrote in poetic language," he says. "Shakespeare is a drag because he wrote in a language which, as a natural consequence of the mighty eternal process of language change, 500 years later we effectively no longer speak."
(The "500 years" is a bizarre mistake -- 400 is much closer to the truth. But that's a minor point.)

All this hit Bobo with resonance because he just had the pleasure of adapting The Comedy of Errors for Bill Marlowe's upcoming production in March.
Actually -- to back up a bit — I started modernizing the Errors script a couple of years ago for Michael Weaver and Actors Rep; Michael wanted to do a relatively simple, straightforward and funny Shakespeare in some upcoming, never-to-happen season (so that explains the choice of Errors) AND he wanted to reduce the cast down to just eight, or preferably six or seven, actors. I had the idea that the same actor could play both master-twins AND another actor could play both servant-twins (thus reducing cast size AND increasing the audience's confusion -- I wanted to put viewers in the same position as the onstage characters -- that is, of not being at all sure which twin was going to come through that doorway next.)
Alas, ARt went kaput and so did my Errors dream, until I noticed that Marlowe was going to direct it.
So Bobo set to work with several goals. First, I tried to persuade Bill about my twins idea, but at a community college, cast size is not a problem, so that went by the wayside.
More important, I set about
1. Cutting out the boring parts. I cut the script by about 21 percent. There are a lot of four-century-old jokes that just ain't funny anymore.
2. Modernizing the language: "reft" became "robbed"; "carcanet" became "necklace new"; "carriage" became "manners"; "situate" became "living"; "Diet his" became "Tend to his"; terms of insult got changed from "huh?" to slightly off-color disparagements; most of the "thee's" and "thou's" got thrown out, and so on.
3. Changing place names and character names. One of the main characters in the original is named Antipholus of Ephesus. Sounds like a disease. (Plus, Ephesus isn't remembered much at all today, outside the Pauline epistles, as a place of sorcery and magic.) In our production, he has become Sir Nicholas of ... a place you'll recognize. (Indeed, the place names have all been changed to Inland Northwest locales.)
Most of this needed to be done within the constraints of the 10-syllables-to-the-line requirements of iambic pentameter.

The point being: McWhorter's right. Perhaps especially in the comedies, we have to get rid of the "WTF?" moments and all the head-scratchers (and worse, all the words that we THINK we know the meaning of, except that Will used them in a completely different way). Comedy isn't funny until it's clear. We need to make The Comedy of Errors, written about 420 years ago, clear. It's come time to admit it: Shakespeare may be in English, but he still needs to be translated for us.



[ from Getty _Images_and_London's The Independent ]

Popular plays not yet done in Spokane

Every year, American Theatre magazine publishes the most frequently produced plays at its professional member theaters (always excluding Shakespeare and Christmas Carol-derived shows, which would otherwise be at or near the top).
Bobo has compiled a list here of the nationally popular shows that nonetheless have never been produced in the Spokane-CdA-Moscow region.

Apologies in advance for the mistakes I’ve made: If I’ve listed a show that you’ve done here as never having been produced hereabouts, please write in and tell me what an idiot I am.
(The Civic had done Nuncrackers 10 years before CdA Summer Theater, for example.)

I don’t know all these scripts. (I’ve never even heard of Heather Raffo or her play.) Naturally, the closer we get to the present, the less opportunity there has been to mount productions, and so the lists for recent years are longer.
They’re listed in reverse chronology, so when I note that a particular show is listed “again,” that’s in moving UP the list from the bottom.

Conclusions? Primarily, why hasn’t anyone done The SantaLand Diaries? (It’s listed every year from 2001-09 except 2008 — some people must see value in it. And especially with Sedaris appearing here again in May.)
The list, it seems to me, presents oodles of opportunities.

Bobo isn’t saying, however, that all these shows ought to be done locally. For example, The Cryptogram, Yellowman and Bad Dates — I’ve read Yellowman and seen the other two (in Wash., D.C. and Portland), and can’t say I’d recommend them.

Not saying these are my favorites, just pointing out cast sizes:

Later Life, 4; Arms and the Man, about 7; Gross Indecencies, 9; Bat Boy, about 9, plus chorus (but it's hard to tell -- there's lots of doubling); The Pillowman, 7; Opus, four middle-aged guys and one 25-ish woman; Shipwrecked!, 3; Speech & Debate, 3 teens and one middle-aged actor; Dead Man's Cell Phone, 6; Topdog/Underdog, 2


2010 (that is, the 2009-10 theater season)
(previously relayed in this blog on Oct. 9 )
boom, by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb
The Seafarer, again
Speech & Debate, by Stephen Karam
Dead Man’s Cell Phone, by Sarah Ruhl
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, by Rachel Sheinkin and William Finn (but with productions scheduled in Moscow in July 2010 and at the Civic in Jan. 2011)
Around the World in 80 Days, adapt. Mark Brown from Jules Verne
Opus, by Michael Hollinger
Shipwrecked! an Entertainment, by Donald Margulies
Yankee Tavern, by Steven Dietz
Black Pearl Sings! by Frank Higgins
Boeing-Boeing, trans. Beverly Cross from Marc Camoletti
(The inspiration for *Speech & Debate* came from here in Spokane. So why hasn't it been done here? Karam only moved it to Salem, Oregon, because of a bunch of witches.)

2009
The SantaLand Diaries, again
The Seafarer, by Conor McPherson
Eurydice, by Sarah Ruhl
To Kill a Mockingbird, adapted by Christopher Sergel
Mauritius, by Teresa Rebeck
Radio Golf, by August Wilson
(The Seafarer just struck me as the Faust legend rehashed. I’m not a McPherson fan.

2008
9 Parts of Desire, by Heather Raffo
A Year with Frog and Toad, again
The Little Dog Laughed, by Douglas Carter Beane
The Piano Lesson, again
Gem of the Ocean, again

2007
I Am My Own Wife, again
The Pillowman, by Martin McDonagh
Santaland Diaries, again
Gem of the Ocean, by August Wilson
Intimate Apparel, again
Tuesdays with Morrie, again

2006
Intimate Apparel, by Lynn Nottage
Crowns, by Regina Taylor (again)
I Am My Own Wife, by Doug Wright
Frozen, by Bryony Lavery
A Number, by Caryl Churchill
Bad Dates, by Teresa Rebeck
Bug, by Tracy Letts
The Santaland Diaries, again
A Year with Frog and Toad, again

2005
Anna in the Tropics, by Nilo Cruz
Crowns, by Regina Taylor
The Goat, again
Santaland Diaries, again
Tuesdays with Morrie
A Year with Frog and Toad, by Willie and Robert Reale
(sorry if I’m mistaken on this one, and it has been done locally)

2004
Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks
The Santaland Diaries, again
The Goat, or, Who Is Sylvia? by Edward Albee
Yellowman by Dael Orlandersmith
Blue/Orange by Joe Penhall
Nickel and Dimed, from Barbara Ehrenreich
(The Bill Pullman/Mercedes Ruehl production of The Goat premiered in early 2002. Lots of broken crockery, some incest, bestiality and a goat carcass in this one.
Blue-Orange is a British health system play when we need a good one on our American health care problems. The 2001 London production had Bill Nighy as the careerist psychologist and Chiwetel Ejiofor as the patient who thinks he’s related to Idi Amin. 3m, often done in the round.
The plays by Wilson, Parks, Nottage and Taylor, by and large require a pool of talented black actors, which Spokane is not diverse enough to offer. Topdog, though: only two men needed.)

2003
Copenhagen, by Michael Frayn
The Santaland Diaries
Bat Boy: The Musical, by Keythe Farley, Brian Flemming and Laurence O’Keefe
(another head-scratcher. But didn’t UI do it in Moscow? Bobo saw part of a rehearsal at Salt Lake Acting Co. -- hilarious, outrageous, toe-tapping fun)
My Way: A Musical Tribute to Frank Sinatra
(was the cabaret show in the Peacock Room based on this?)
The Piano Lesson, by August Wilson

2002
Santaland Diaries and Fuddy Meers, again
the musical version (?) of I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change

2001
Closer by Patrick Marber
Fuddy Meers by David Lindsay-Abaire
The Santaland Diaries, adapt. Joe Mantello from David Sedaris
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
(Fuddy Meers premiered at the Manhattan Theater Club in 1999. It proved to be too wacky for the Brits, who never warmed to the play. 4m, 3f. Claire has amnesia; the plot’s too convoluted by half; but the the way in which the gradual resolution of plot details parallels Claire’s awakening awareness is kind of cool.)

2000
Gross Indecency and The Old Settler, again

99
Gross Indecency by Moises Kaufman
The Old Settler by John Henry Redwood
(Gross Indecency has a cast of 9m, but it’s done virtually in readers theater style. A gripping courtroom drama with, of course, the anti-discrimination-against-gays angle.
The Old Settler is set in Harlem, 1943 -- two spinster sisters deal with the new man in their midst.)

98
An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde
Valley Song by Athol Fugard
Skylight by David Hare
Old Wicked Songs by John Marans
(Skylight starred Michael Dumbledore Gambon in London in 1995-96; he argues politics with his former lover, who’s teaching poor kids now; 2 m, 1f, simple set.
Old Wicked Songs was a Pulitzer nominee. 2m. In Vienna, a 50ish music teacher tries to instruct a 25 yr old pianist, with complications having to do with anti-Semitism.
Valley Song is Fugard’s post-apartheid “tone poem” for his stand-in, an old white man, and two “coloreds.”)

'97
The Cryptogram, by David Mamet
Love! Valour! Compassion! by Terrence McNally

'96 (that is, the 1995-96 theater season)
Later Life by A.R. Gurney
Angels in America by Tony Kushner (Part One)
Arms and the Man, by GBS
Three Tall Women by Edward Albee

'94-'95
From the Mississippi Delta by Endesha Ida Mae Holland
(Did Onyx produce?)

95-98: Christopher Sergel’s adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird
(four years in a row; and again in 2008-09, but presumably to be produced here this Feb. during The Big Read)

For a quick look at all the wonderful plays synopsized in the Best Plays Theater Yearbooks for circa 2001-08, go here.

Terry Teachout in the WSJ ruminates on these same lists' national implications.

[ image: Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman, at Boise Contemporary Theatre, 2008; set design by Jeremy Winchester; visit jwinchesterdesign.com ]