SlowLearner

VERY FUNNY, ROGERS

Mixed-to-positive review of Colorful World! I'm very funny!

--SlowLearner

THE SAFE ZONE

The Devilvet puts forward a proposal: enhanced self-promotion. Rather than have bloggers stop promoting their shows on their blogs (which won't happen and shouldn't happen), make the promotion interesting. Talk about how you created your show and what it might have to offer.

DV suggests, and Scott Walters cautiously seconds, the idea that bloggers begin writing about their rehearsal processes as a means of sharing with others outside the production what we're making and how we're making it. I noted my concern, specifically that I felt the rehearsal environment is delicate. DV responded:

Mac, please endulge me...elaborate about the delicacies of the environment. Lets try to map the obstacles...then we can strategize possible tactics.

This dovetails a bit with the tone debate that raged toward the end of last week over at AWG (in which I was a participant).

I'll explain why, but let me say one thing first: I am in no way attempting to preemptively shoot down DV's idea by pointing out a problem with it. I'm pointing out a problem in the hopes that it will modify or clarify DV's initiative. I want it to work out.

I've been in theatrical rehearsals as a playwright, a director, and an actor, and sometimes two of the three, so I've experienced rehearsals from several angles. In general, as a performer, I'm a low maintenance guy. I'm a believer in re-running moments rather than talking about them too much. I prefer my directions to come in the form of: "Stand over there." "Don't get angry so fast." "Give her a little look to show that you're sorry, then exit." But if I'm in a scene with an actor who needs a lot of discussion or even special exercises to find a moment, I feel it's incumbent upon me to be patient and cooperate. It might be me some day who needs the extra help.

But whatever the method being practiced by the artists involved, it's a pretty across-the-board truth that everyone in a rehearsal room needs to feel that they can trust everyone around them. There's a kind of intimacy there. You want to find ways of expressing moments in the play unexpectedly, strikingly. You want to reach a little deeper both in yourself and in your relationships with the other actors so you can give the audience interactions and beats that are initially startling, and then profoundly recognizable.

And how do you do that?

Well, you have to get silly. You have to go too far. You have to try some wrong choices. You have to be vulnerable and ridiculous. You have to do that first, and then you refine.

Which means that you need to believe that you're in the room with people you can trust. People that won't laugh at you or shit-talk you or undermine you. If there's even one person in that room who gives you that feeling, you're gonna shut down and make safe playing (or directing) choices in order to protect yourself, and your play will be that much duller as a result.

So, the rehearsal room needs to feel like a safe place.

(An interesting side note: one thing that originally drew me to theater was that I was a weird kid who didn't fit in and got laughed at and mocked a lot, and then I discovered this place where people weren't allowed to laugh at you. That's no longer the chief attraction, and I've discovered since that the theatrical world harbors its fair share of bullies, but it's nice that there's at least an over-arching ethic that sneers and abuse are unwelcome in rehearsal rooms.)

Along similar lines, Scott Walters wrote this on his (currently suspended) Theatre Ideas blog last June:

I will continue to write this blog, and I hope that readers who are interested in new models of how theatre might be done in the communities outside of NYC will continue to read. But I will no longer be addressing the NYC theatre scene, nor will I be responding to defenses of the NYC scene, nor attacks emanating from the NYC scene. If such posts appear in my comments box, I will ignore them or delete them. I will no longer define my ideas in terms of the dominant mode of production. I plan to be more utopian.

If there are "warm, supportive" people who have been reading, but who have been reluctant to comment for fear of abuse -- this blog is now a safe zone. So I hope you will let your voice be heard.

I don't quote this to reopen old wounds, but to draw attention to Scott's use of the term "safe zone" and to draw an equivalence between an online safe zone and a rehearsal room safe zone. In the rehearsal room, directors are often trying to gently help actors through difficult transitions or to make specific calibrations in their work. Often both parties feel weird and exposed during this process. They have to trust each other. Opening this artistic, professional, and personal transaction to the internet means bringing in a whole bunch of new people to this delicate process, people you're not sure if you can trust. People with a history that's not entirely bereft of instances of abuse and ridicule. I can't help but wonder: if I open my rehearsal process up to those people, what are they going to say? And will their online voices be ringing in my ears and the ears of my colleagues each time we meet again to work?

In short, it is my belief that a rehearsal process requires an environment that is quite unlike the one that predominates in the theatrosphere on a periodic basis. I would very much like, like DV, a more substantive discussion of our artistic approaches and struggles online, particularly between those of us who live too far apart to be likely to experience one another's techniques and approaches firsthand, in collaboration. But if I had to choose between keeping my rehearsals safe and risking that safety for the sake of promoting that discussion, I'll choose the former in one-fourth of a heartbeat. The trick, I think, is going to be in making that choice unnecessary.

*****

Let me say a little bit more on "tone." I know perfectly well that every time I bring it up, some folks are going to react as if I'm trying to control their speech, or that I want to squelch truth-telling in the name of empty politeness. I simply don't agree that there's a stark choice between an honest-and-abusive conversation and a civil-and-dishonest conversation. I wish people wouldn't frame the debate in those terms.

But look, whenever I bring this up, I already know something before I do so: I've lost. It won't happen. I get it. The people who want to write in a certain way will keep writing that way. What can I do about it? I can't control anybody else's behavior. But I return again to Scott's "safe zone" idea. Some people, myself included, will shy away if the order of the day is intense, aggressive discussion. They will go looking for a place where they can speak without fear of that sort of thing. The temptation will always exist to call people like me "thin-skinned."

But let me submit something for general consideration: it's not all bad to be thin-skinned. It's not much good in a comment-thread flame-war, but maybe it helps a bit in other ways. Thin-skinned people have to learn a delicate, careful approach to life that can bring out the best in certain other people. They have quicker access to certain vulnerabilities that can be valuable in an artistic or rehearsal process. They can notice small but important thing about other people that the thicker-skinned people miss. I would suggest that the thicker-skinned people might conclude, if they were to study us thin-skinned folks more carefully, that we have a place in this arena and this conversation, and that they might be losing something by chasing us away.

Or maybe not. Each person can decide for themselves.

Anyway. Back to you, DV.

--SlowLearner

WHEN IS A CLOCK

I haven't written about this play yet, but I found Matt Freeman's When Is A Clock to be simultaneously lovely and panic-inducing.

Lovely because it's written with such clinical compassion and such unshowy linguistic precision, panic-inducing because it's about a man I'd really like to never become. It's about a man succumbing to that unique feeling of purposelessness that can creep into adult American lives - a man who doesn't know why he lives where he lives, why he works where he works, or why he lives with and loves the people in his house. When he starts to lose the things in his life, this spiritual dislocation robs him of the tools he needs to properly fight for them. This is a very hard subject to write about, as it doesn't lend itself to fiery dramatic confrontations but instead to quiet moments of observation. Freeman resisted the impulse to jack up the conflict in some way (which is what I would have done), and as a result has come up with a somewhat austere play that is hard to like right away, but which haunts you increasingly in the days after you see it.

There's a lot of other stuff there - magic spells and mysteries and quite a bit of comedy - but the Man I Don't Want To Be part is what got me in the gut.

Anyway, it's worth seeing this weekend after you've seen Colorful World six times. Now, I could be a career-hungry New York blogger plugging my smug little clique in order to better position my networking or whatever, or I may actually mean it. There's no way for you to know for sure!

--SlowLearner

WE'RE CLOSER THAN YOU THINK

What's that? You missed The Blueprint Project but you still want your Mac fix? Or you did see TBP but you want MORE?

Either way, you're in luck, as I will be treading the boards in Nosedive's production of James Comtois's superhero epic COLORFUL WORLD, opening this Thursday!

I'll write about this a little more tomorrow, hopefully soundling like less of an asshole, but I wanted to go ahead and drop the graphics on you, to mention how please I am to once again be smoking the Nosedive doob, and to let you know that you're gonna have an awesome time at this show.

Details here.

--SlowLearner

A BODY LIES ON A BED

Check out this awesome BLUEPRINT PROJECT image Deb Alexander made for us!

One plot. Four playwrights. Four new plays.

Three more nights!

A Body lies on a bed. A Longstanding Friend surreptitiously examines the body. The Spouse enters and confronts the Friend. They argue until the Coworker enters to announce that the Medium will arrive soon. One of the three tries very hard and almost succeeds in convincing the others to stop the Medium from coming. Two of them have a confrontation that injures the third. The Medium enters and animates the body, which reveals the secret. Someone tries to leave. Others try to stop the departure.

The Blueprint Project, Part I: The Medium
by Mac Rogers, August Schulenberg, Crystal Skillman, and Catherine Trieschmann

Directed by John Hurley and Jordana Williams

Starring Clay Adams*, Claire Alpern, Jason Howard*, Erin Jerozal, Tom Knutson, Anna Kull, David Ian Lee*, Rob Maitner*, Michelle O'Connor, Alex Pappas*, Vinnie Penna*, Zack Robidas, Vanessa Shealy*, Isaiah Tanenbaum, Jennifer Gordon Thomas and Cotton Wright*

*appearing courtesy of Actors' Equity Association

Wednesday April 30-Sunday May 4 @ 8pm
Total Running Time: about 105 minutes
Tickets $15
http://www.theatermania.com/content/show.cfm/show/143351
The Puffin Room-435 Broome Street
R/W to Prince St., 6 to Spring St., B/D/F/V to B'way/Lafayette
www.blueprintplays.com

AS LONG AS I'M CITING REVIEWS...

... here are two nice ones for Matt Freeman's When Is A Clock. I'd better get my ticket...

--SlowLearner

THE BLUEPRINT, UNVEILED!

Gideon Productions presents The Blueprint Project, a unique spin on that beloved old workhorse, the evening of short plays. We picked four diverse playwrights (Mac Rogers, August Schulenburg, Crystal Skillman & Catherine Trieschmann) with distinctive voices, styles and predilections, and we provided them with this plot:

A Body lies on a bed. A Longstanding Friend surreptitiously examines the body. The Spouse enters and confronts the Friend. They argue until the Coworker enters to announce that the Medium will arrive soon. One of the three tries very hard and almost succeeds in convincing the others to stop the Medium from coming. Two of them have a confrontation that injures the third. The Medium enters and animates the body, which reveals the secret. Someone tries to leave. Others try to stop the departure.

Even though the writers all worked from the same blueprint, the results are astonishingly varied. We've got a modern reimagining of Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale, a Sci-Fi thriller, a comedic reunion of the "Fab Four of Psychictry" and a blank verse exploration of a messianic cult. Each piece is wonderful on its own merits and the evening as a whole is a fascinating glimpse into the writers' process.

Directors John Hurley and Jordana Williams have assembled an amazing cast, featuring Clay Adams*, Claire Alpern, Jason Howard*, Erin Jerozal, Tom Knutson, Anna Kull, David Ian Lee*, Rob Maitner*, Michelle O'Connor, Alex Pappas*, Vinnie Penna*, Zack Robidas, Vanessa Shealy*, Isaiah Tanenbaum, Jennifer Gordon Thomas and Cotton Wright*
*appearing courtesy of Actors' Equity Association

We hope you'll join us! Seating is limited, so we recommend purchasing your tickets in advance:

The Blueprint Project, Part I: The Medium
Wednesday April 30-Sunday May 4 @ 8pm
Total Running Time: about 90 minutes
Tickets $15-http://www.theatermania.com/content/show.cfm/show/143351
The Puffin Room-435 Broome Street
R/W to Prince St., 6 to Spring St., B/D/F/V to B'way/Lafayette
www.blueprintplays.com

"A GEM OF A DISCOVERY"

Alongside the review of How Theater Failed America, I hope you will also take note of the rave NYT review of Catherine Trieschmann's Crooked. Catherine has been a friend of mine since college, and I was lucky enough to see this play for the first time at a reading in an Inwood apartment, and then on several occasions since. It's a superb, exquisite play about faith and adolescence and generational struggle, and it's a pretty major and awesome thing to see it get this level of recognition. See it if you get a chance.

--SlowLearner

TRY IT ONCE

This week I would like to announce my two new upcoming projects, but since one of them involves an acting role for me, today I'd like to talk about one of my long-held theories of acting. This theory was not devised during my early days as an actor, but rather from my experience as a playwright sitting in a rehearsal room.

(This is an experience I tend to dislike, as it's boring. The better the process is going, the more boring it is. If the process is going badly, it's less boring, and is horrible instead. All in all, I would rather never be in a rehearsal in which I don't have an active role, unless it's to watch the occasional runthrough and give the director my thoughts after everyone else has gone home.)

My theory, practiced to my satisfaction for years, has been this: always try just doing what the director says first.

I know there are a lot of people who disagree with this. There's an increasing number of people who are expressing the feeling that directors have become dictators in the creative process of making theater. Some go further, saying that directors are either no longer necessary or that they were never necessary, just an artificial imposition created a century and a half ago that needs to be dispensed with now.

My intention here is not to speak to the historical argument, but to speak to my own experience. As a writer/producer, I am frequently in a position of authority on my projects. I regard this as a necessity in order to be sure that 1) projects with my name on them are executed at a level of quality that honors the audience's investment of money and time, and 2) plays with my name on them properly express what I wish them to express in at least their initial production.

I don't usually like being in charge. It stresses me out. And noting stresses me out more than being a director. It was a measure of the specificity of my vision for Universal Robots that I chose to be the director of such a complicated play. I don't usually like the feeling of walking into a rehearsal room full of people waiting for me to tell them what to do . I don't like being the one who has to think about every aspect of a project, the one who never gets a break. With Robots, my need to implement certain aspects of my vision my own way overcame my natural aversion to directing, but that's rare for me, and I don't expect to direct again for a while.

All of this to say that when I'm an actor on someone else's play, I revel in the feeling of not being charge. I particularly enjoy the feeling of burying myself in another playwright's voice, and embodying a director's vision. I was recently in plays by the writers Dan Trujillo and Ed Malin, both of whom write quite differently than I do, so I had to read their scripts aloud to myself again and again until I could get their voices in my head and dampen down my own. The joy is in the abdication of self in favor of the voice of another. (With James Comtois, it's a little different; James and I have similar playwriting sensibilities and styles, so I frequently understand how to approach his material as an actor on a first or second read.)

Now, to get back to my thesis: if a director tells me to play a moment in a certain way, I always do it, not matter to what degree I agree or disagree. I always try to carry out the direction as specifically and intensely as I can, and then go from there. I do this even if I think the direction is completely wrong. Why do I do this, instead of arguing? Because if I just play the moment as directed, even though I think the direction is wrong, here are the things that might happen:

1) Upon playing the moment, I'll realize I was wrong and the direction is in fact appropriate and right.

2) The result of my following the direction will be so clearly bad that the director will retract the direction.

3) The result of my following the direction will be obviously partially wrong, and the director and I will collaborate to use that partial wrongness as a starting point to seek out the right choice.

4) The direction will turn out to be one in a series of experimental options being explored by the director to find the right choice for the moment.

5) The direction will be wrong, and my playing of it will reveal this, but unlike in the first four possible scenarios, the director is not very talented, and will never realize that the choice is wrong. If the director is bad, then the production will be bad, at which point I can either commit to the flawed aesthetic of the production or quit.

The one thing I never, ever do is argue the choice before trying it once. I have, as a playwright, watched actors do this in rehearsal, and it maddens me. Partly this is because I don't like to talk much in rehearsal. I like to try a scene, physically, in a whole bunch of ways, and try to find the right choices with my voice and body rather than in my mind. The audience will process my character's choices through watching my body and hearing my voice. They can't read my mind.

Also, while I do trust my instincts, I only trust them so far. If a choice I'm making feels organically right to me, but someone watching me - someone I have reason to trust - tells me that it's not playing right, my experience as a playwright sitting uselessly in a corner teaches me that 99 times out of 100, the person watching has a better sense of what's going on. It's very easy to get lost as an actor. It's easy to mistake certain chemical rushes inside your brain and body telling you this choice feels right or this choice feels wrong as authoritative. On stage, as in life, it's very difficult to see yourself, to know how your actions are registering to others. In rehearsal, you have someone helping you with that.

I think also that there are some actors - a minority, thank goodness - who for whatever reason automatically regard direction as oppressive and demeaning, a challenge to their intelligence, dignity, and agency as human beings. These actors will then argue every single direction (and in the process eat away countless invaluable minutes of rehearsal time) because they feel like if they don't, they are being diminished in some way - that they will be seen as being "wrong," or being "corrected" in some way.

It's important to state that what I'm writing here comes from anecdotal experience. I've been fortunate in most of my experiences with directors. I do know of tyrannical and/or incompetent directors. The minute a tyrannical and/or incompetent director is assigned to a production, that production is doomed, unless they're fired. Nothing can save a show from a bad director.

But I would dispute the idea that a director can't be both collaborative and have a firm hand. The director's I've worked with have been totally open to ideas in rehearsal, wherever they come from. Where the firm hand comes in is that I believe the director has to be the one with final call over which of those ideas make it into the show.

But anyway, back to my thesis - I think actors should always just try the direction first. Just do it, full out, don't sabotage it, just commit to it, full on, as if you believe in it, whether you do or not. Try it first. And then take it from there.

--SlowLearner

BOOK LAUNCH!

April is a pretty big and busy month for me, theater-wise, which is something I'm finally able to look forward to after months of kinda wanting to just hide out. I'm starting with this little event later this week.

One of my favorite things to happen in the past year was the selection of Universal Robots for New York Theatre Experience's Plays and Playwrights 2008 (and not just because I now have a fur coat of my own and don't have to fondle James's or Qui's any more!). Last week I got to hear readings from several of the other plays (Crystal Skillman's The Telling Trilogy, John Regis's Linnea, and Leslie Bramm's Magnificent Shrine), and I gotta say, it's pretty sweet to be in an anthology with those plays.

We will be doing a ten-minute scene from the second act of Universal Robots, which includes angry robot action - and who doesn't like that? So if you're free and inclined this Thursday, check it out!

You can also hear Carolyn Raship, John Regis, Robert Attenweiler, and myself talking about our plays and processes on a podcast here (WARNING: I stammer).

--SlowLearner

****

Please join us at T. Schreiber Studio for our celebration of Plays and Playwrights 2008!

The event will begin with a brief, informal reception, followed by performances from five of the plays featured in the book:

UNIVERSAL ROBOTS by Mac Rogers
A riveting sci-fi cautionary tale inspired by the lives and works of Czech writer/activists Karel & Josef Capek, especially the play R.U.R. which gave us the word "robot." Performed by Esther Barlow, Jason Howard, David Ian Lee, Michelle O'Connor, Ridley Parson, Nancy Sirianni, Tarantino Smith, Ben Sulzbach, Jennifer Gordon Thomas, and James Wetzel. (In the photo are Barlow, O'Connor, Lee, and Wetzel in a scene from the original production.)

ANTARCTICA by Carolyn Raship
In this sometimes surreal fantasia on growing up, Magda and Winnie set out to become the first American Girls to make an expedition to the South Pole. Performed by Maggie Cino and Melle Powers.

IN OUR NAME by Elena Hartwell
A triptych of short, breathtaking one-acts about the ways that the War in Iraq has hit home, especially among American women. Performed by Elena Hartwell.

LINNEA by John Regis
A young writer who is obsessed by Dostoyevsky lives out his own NYC dream version of The Idiot in this remarkable coming-of-age tale. Performed by Benita Robledo and Ken Trammel.

MARVELOUS SHRINE by Leslie Bramm
17-year-old Marvelous isn’t sure if he’s gay, but he knows he wants to play music. His parents battle over his destiny, and nobody wins in this moving drama. Performed by Paul Hufker and Sara Thigpen.

EVENT DETAILS
WHERE: T. Schreiber Studio, Gloria Maddox Theatre, 151 West 26th Street

WHEN: Thursday, April 3, 2008

WHAT TIME: Doors open at 6:45pm; performances begin at 7:30pm

HOW MUCH: Free!!!!

WILL BOOKS BE AVAILABLE FOR SALE? Definitely, $18 each.

MORE INFO: Martin Denton's nytheatre i blog