Twit You Say?

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, Jon Hoche.

I was honored that IT Awards asked me to be their guest blogger this week.  I was honored and also terrified.  I am a pretty simple guy with simple thoughts.  Nothing too profound or awe inspiring comes from my noggin.  So I wasn't sure what I should write about that would be of any interest to the Independent Theater community.  What could I possibly offer to the thousands of talented producers, writers, and actors out there in NYC making Off-Off-Broadway the place where the new great American theatre is being created?  Then to make it completely official and public, the great people at the IT Awards posted this on their twitter feed.

@NYITAwards: Our guest blogger of the week is Jon Hoche http://ow.ly/17tR8M

And then I thought to myself.  Twitter.  Has anyone talked about "Twitter" and how it can benefit Independent theaters?  This sparked my interest and here we have it.  Ladies and Gentlemen.  I give to you my blog of the week.

"What the hell is Twitter and why you as a Theater Company need to be on it."

So let's start at the beginning and give you a little background information.  Twitter is the fastest growing social network to date.  Users are able to create a user name and are allowed 140 characters to post "tweets".  Think of it like a giant bulletin board.  Ideas, Opinions, Links to websites and pictures can all be posted within these 140 characters.  (We'll get back to that) At the time this blog goes live, there are 19 million people on Twitter worldwide.  In the beginning the people who were using Twitter were celebrities and tech geeks.  However, now a days, small business owners are finding Twitter to be their best marketing tool AND IT'S FREE.  I came across this short video tutorial to help me out.



So why not use Twitter as another tool to help spread the word about Independent Theater?  More importantly YOUR independent theater!!  I follow numerous actors and theater companies that are already embracing Twitter.  They have used Twitter to do things like:

- Post auditions
- Countdown their upcoming show
- Post a link where people can buy tickets
- Link a review on someone's website
- Show production photos

They are reaching their fans, and the public at lightning speed and generating a fan base.

Now let's get to the nitty gritty shall we?  If you decided to embrace Twitter as a marketing tool, then EMBRACE it!!  So many times theater companies hear what I'm saying now about Twitter being a great tool and they'll agree, however not utilize it to the fullest.  They will do all the things I listed above, but why not take it one step further?  Your theater company has a certain mission statement, right?  They have a certain aesthetic, I'm sure.  So really create that persona on Twitter and not only make it informative to follow you, but FUN!

I think the best example of a theater company that is really taking Twitter by the reigns are the New York Neo-Futurists (@nyneofuturists).  Not only do they post all the types of information I listed above, but they go way beyond that.  They will post PSA's which will consist usually of a link to a news article or picture and their own witty commentary on it.  Also, they do TWITTERPLAYS, where they give their followers an assignments and their followers will have only 140 characters to respond.

example:

 @ Nyneofuturists: TWITTERPLAY Assignment: write a 1-tweet play that has an INVISIBLE PERSON or OBJECT. #tp63

and here are some of the results:

@swestdahl:
Lights up on A sitting opp. empty chair. A: Thank you for meeting w/ me, Mr. Fingledoofer. We’re downsizing the Imaginary Friend Dept.

@ socialarts:
4 actors mingle on stage. An invisible elephant enters and stands among them. Actors become very uncomfortable. End.

@ JennaStern:
What shall we do today, hmm? The library? The Park? A movie? Just stay inside and watch the rain? Sweetie? Sweetheart?

So not only are the Neo-futurists reaching out and informing their audience via Twitter, they are also entertaining and creating something new and creative in a new platform.  I think we can all take a lesson from them.

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Guest Blogger of the week: Jon Hoche

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We would like to thank last week's guest blogger, John Patrick Bray for his interesting and engaging blogs.

This week's blogger is Jon Hoche.

Jon Hoche has been involved with the Off-Off-Broadway community since  2006 after graduating from Montclair State University in New Jersey.  He's worked closely with The American Globe Theatre, NY's longest running Classical Independent Theatre in productions of The Merchant of Venice, Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, and most recently Titus Andronicus. Also, Jon has been involved with the Vampire Cowboy Theatre Company in productions of Soul Samurai (in association with Ma-Yi Theatre) and The IT Award winning Fight Girl Battle World, as well as a recurring performer in their Saturday Night Saloon.

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Your 2009-2010 OOB productions archived for Theatre World

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Contributed by Executive Director, Shay Gines

Last year I had the honor of writing a season review for Off-Off-Broadway in Theatre World volume 65. It was the first time in their 65 years that they had included OOB and I am so excited to tell you that they have decided to continue this practice. This year I have been asked to collect the information for the 2009-2010 season for our community.

I need your help.

1. Please complete the online forms documenting your company's season (see below)
2. Please forward this information to your fellow OOB producers and ask them to do the same.

Theatre World is the oldest pictorial and statistical record of the American theatre, published annually as a hardcover book by Applause Theatre & Cinema Books (America's foremost publisher of theatre and cinema books) and has been continually published since 1945. It is the most comprehensive and definitive record of Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional theatre, AND NOW Off-Off-Broadway (which is where you come in), and is available for purchase at many fine online establishments, including applausepub.com, amazon.com , or barnesandnoble.com.

I know as an OOB producer your time is valuable, but the annual Theatre World publications are one of the premiere archives for American Theatre and it is so important for our community to be represented. I ask you to take this time to provide the information requested, so that your company's production(s) will be recorded and referenced everywhere by theatre scholars, students, casting directors, producers, and other industry professionals daily. In addition, it will be a part of the permanent record of Off-Off-Broadway and placed in important research and reference libraries from The Library of Congress to most colleges and universities across the country.

So, what I need is your production information from the 2009-2010 season (shows that played between June 1, 2009 and May 31, 2010), for inclusion in Volume 66, including individual production information as well as benefits, readings, workshops, etc.

Please read the notes below carefully for submission guidelines and links to the online forms at the bottom of this email.

PLEASE SUBMIT ALL MATERIALS BY JUNE 10, 2010 TO ENSURE INCLUSION IN THE 2009-2010 EDITION OF THEATRE WORLD!

Our publisher is making every effort to release this volume by the November 2010, so we need to get your submissions as soon as possible. Since we are under a tight schedule, it is virtually impossible for our staff to research and compile all of the Off-Off-Broadway listings for this volume and we are relying on your help to make sure we include as many productions as possible.


Now for the links:


FULL PRODUCTIONS: Productions produced by your company from June 1, 2009 - May 31, 2010

FESTIVALS: If you presented a festival please complete this form


READINGS/WORKSHOPS: For readings and work shops presented by your company


PRESENTERS: For non-resident productions (productions by OTHER companies) that were presented at your venue


Thank you for your cooperation in helping us to maintain the most complete annual record of the American theatre!

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Curtain

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, John Patrick Bray.

     Hello, all. Thank you for reading my blogs this week. I have had a number of responses on this site and via personal email. It means so much to me that the good folks at IT asked me to participate, and I appreciate your reading my thoughts, rants, and manifestos.  This last blog will be basically a list. I found myself inspired by a previous blog writer (Tim Errickson) who posted a blog titled Mailbag!, which was a series of questions and answers.

First OOB experience:
My play Cookies was produced during The Riant Theatre’s Summer 2002 Strawberry One-Act Festival. I had a few readings between 2000-2001, but this was my first production. I ended up participating with the SOAF a handful of times. On Top was a semi-finalist; A Play About a Guitar (retitled “Resonator Blues”) was also a semi-finalist; Goodnight Lovin’ Trail, my MFA thesis,was a finalist in 2004. So, I owe a debt to The Riant Theatre (Artistic Director Van Dirk Fisher), and director Dennis Wayne Gleason for believing in my work.

Inspiration:
Mostly music. I go to a lot of concerts. In Louisiana, I’ve seen a number of Zydeco bands as well as Taj Mahal, Philip Glass, and Ani Difranco. In NY, I was able to catch David Johansen and the Harry Smiths a few times. I miss The Bottom Line.  My favorite song by DJ is “Heart of Gold” (available on his second post New York Dolls album and his first Buster Poindexter record), not to be confused with Neil Young’s song, which is also excellent. And of course I was also able to catch Tom Waits, The Pixies, David Byrne, Iggy and the Stooges, and Ani Difranco. I guess I’m an audiophile at heart.

Family:
Several people have asked how I balance work and family. I just do. If you want a career in theatre, academics, and academic theatre you need to find a balance. If you have a family on top of that, you just make it all work. It helps to have an awesome wife like Danielle and a great little boy like Danny.

Favorite OOB production:
Really hard to say.  The ones I’ve seen have been wonderful. There were also a handful I missed because I’m down here in Louisiana.  I’m really sorry to have missed As we Speak  and Trickster at the Gate. Tom Berger and Dan Horrigan are both terrific guys, and I feel a pang of guilt whenever I think of how I missed these productions.  I’m also sorry to say I missed a reading of Liner Notes directed by Marc Eardley featuring the excellent Jerry Zellers. The last one I worked on (and I was actually able to see) was Hound with Rachel Klein, and it was really fantastic. I’m looking forward to Liner Notes with the Planet Connections Theatre Festivity.

Do’s:
Read. Read plays, read scholarship, just read. And improvise! Life and writing rely heavily on improvisation. Try new things!

Don’t’s:
Don’t ignore critics, neither the ones who love you nor the ones who wish you’d go away. It’s important to be a part of the critic/artist conversation, no matter how painful.

Favorite current scholarship:
The American Play by Marc Robinson.
Postdramatic Theatre by Hans-Thies Lehmann.
Spalding Gray’s America by William Demastes.
Being Given by Jean Luc-Marion
Ethics and Infinity by Emmanuel Levinas

Current favorite plays:
The Sea Farer by Conor Macpherson
The Baltimore Waltz by Paula Vogel
Self Defense or Death of Some Salesmen by Carson Kreitzer
Two Small Bodies by Neal Bell

Other Advice:
Listen to music. Eat bagels. (I was a bagel-baker at the New Paltz Bagel Café in New Paltz, NY for six and a half years. Great place, great people!  There’s a shout out for ya.) Read opinions that you agree with. Read opinions that you don’t agree with. Be responsible for who you are, and take responsibility for what you see, even if you believe it has nothing to do with you.  Oh, and listen to Ani Difranco.

Thanks, all for reading!  Keep believing in independent theatre.  I think we’re a part of a major cultural turn. Check out this article by Stephen Leigh Morris called “Why Theatre Matters.” See? We’re seriously onto something most excellent!

Slainte,
JpB

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American?

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, John Patrick Bray.

    Hello, all. Today’s blog will be a bit brief.  I was watching the election results from across the country, and there have been a number of upsets, and a number of surprise victories (and depending which side of the equation you find yourself on, the two may not be mutually exclusive).  One of the people who read and commented on my blog regarding Regional Theatre was Jason Loewith, the Executive Director of the National New Play Network. I asked him if he had considered the definition of an American playwright. Today, I would just like to pose the same question to everyone here.       

    When I was a little boy, I said the pledge of allegiance every day at school. Sometimes we sang “God Bless America” or “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” I never doubted my feelings of patriotism. As I grew older, I grew more skeptical due to the various administrations that I watched come and go, each bringing a hidden agenda that lead to war, greed, and corruption.  Now that I’m even older, an historian, and a parent, I find myself wanting to reclaim the word “American” and look being an American as something to be proud of.  In this regard, I want to include all of the Americas, not just the U.S. There are many of us who are entitled to the word, and at the risk of exposing my politics, there are many more who should be.

    My question to you is: what is it, in your opinion, to be an American? How does this play out in your art? How does the idea of being American play out in theatre you have seen or that you have been a part of?

    I have enjoyed writing these blogs. I look forward to wrapping it up tomorrow!


Best to you and yours,
John P. Bray

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On Dramaturgy and the American Theatre

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, John Patrick Bray.

    In my first two blogs, I examined what I feel to be the quintessential American Theatre (Theatre of the U.S.).  In the first blog, I examined the Independent Theatre model, specifically, the Cite des Arts  in Lafayette, Louisiana, and how it escapes some of the totalizing of the commercial Regional theatre via the (unspoken) motto of “have theatre, bring show.”  In the second blog, I championed the plethora of independent theatres that create the Off-Off-Broadway community, focusing specifically on a few of the companies that I have the most familiarity with. In each blog, I have suggested that the NYC independent theatre is vibrant, and while it stands at the threshold of defining itself, I have cautioned that it needs to avoid some of the traps that previous models have fallen into. That is, models that have attempted to provide an outlet for regional artists have fallen victim to commercialism, often in the name of survival, resulting in the inability to serve the artists of the immediate community.  It is my hope that Off-Off-Broadway and independent theatres around the country will continue to provide a home for artists who are not necessarily “names,” and who do not fit the profile of the majority of successful regional artists.

    Many of my opinions about the commercial theatre vs. indie theatre come from my experiences as a playwright and as a dramaturge. There was a time when I thought, “Geez, am I crazy? Am I the only one who feels this way?”  But then two events occurred, practically simultaneously. The first was the publication of OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE NEW AMERICAN PLAY,  which I spoke about in my first blog. The second was a meeting with a dramaturge from a major regional company who spoke to a group of PhD students at LSU about the life of a dramaturge in new play development. During the course of the conversation, she told us that most playwrights do not know how to write a play anymore, and how dare they waste the dramaturge’s “precious time?”  As a result, she solicits scripts during an open submission period without reading the submitted scripts (?!?!?!), and feels that open submissions should be done away with all together. After all, dramaturges know playwrights, why not just ask them for scripts? By the by, this dramaturge has an MFA from an Ivy League institution. The playwright she asked?  Also an Ivy Leaguer. 

    Rather than fume over this, I think the best course of action is to consider the role of a dramaturge. You’ve heard the word before, right? Maybe you’ve been one.  Maybe you’ve been one and haven’t even known it (the magic of theatre!). So, what exactly does a dramaturge do? Or, better yet, what are they supposed to do?  For most of us, it’s kind of hard to exactly put our collective finger on it. What I have come to understand is that a dramaturge wears, primarily, one of three hats.

    The first: the dramaturge performs research alongside a director in order to heighten the historical-socioeconomic context of an established work.  The dramaturge may give a presentation to the cast and crew, or perform specific tasks in terms of historical research (so, if a dramaturge is working on a Restoration play, perhaps he or she will research the various ways to flirt with a fan).  While a director, I believe, should conduct a majority of their own historical research when approaching a work, as a means of creating a coherent concept, I believe the dramaturge may help fill in some of the historical gaps, and be a go-to person if and when questions arise which require additional research.

    The second hat is new play development; that is, a dramaturge sometimes doubles as a literary manager. So, the dramaturge solicits scripts which fit the vision of the company as dictated by the artistic director. If a company says they seek “diverse voices,” you need to read a little more closely. Each company has, for better or for worse, its own ideology; so, as a playwright (I try like hell to speak from experience here), I need to get the sense of which company might be interested in which work.  Once a work is accepted, it is up to the dramaturge to help the playwright develop his or her work. Again, this is tricky.  Playwrights are very protective of their work, and rightfully so, considering the reality of development hell (the dramaturge who sat in with us at LSU claims that “developmental hell is a myth”; um…playwrights, back me up here?).  So, it’s up to the dramaturge to get on the same proverbial page as the playwright and make sure that the playwright’s work is being served, while also making sure that the work stays within the margins of the company’s mission statement. This is often easier said than done. And if the dramaturge fails, they become the enemy to everyone (which could explain, but certainly not excuse, the behavior of the professional dramaturge who sat in with us).

    The third hat has to do with community outreach and audience building: talk-backs after productions, lectures at libraries and colleges, etc.  This is where the workshop readings come into play, which – as many playwrights such as Richard Nelson, James Ryan, Jeffrey Sweet, and Edward Albee have remarked – have more to do with satisfying grants for a company rather than serving the needs of a script.  I personally do not feel that the two need to be mutually exclusive, but over the years that has become more and more the case. Another problem with this model is that if a reading is lip-service to a playwright and lip-service to an audience who will hopefully come back and spend money, then in the end no one is being served, and everyone is getting a kind of subtextual “f*** you.”  This warrants further evaluation (even further than that provided in OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE). Certainly there has to be some way to make this model work?  Another topic for another time.

    So, the dramaturge has a host of responsibilities, depending on which production they are serving, or which theatre company they are hired to work with.  My favorite two personal examples were when I was the dramaturge for the “punk-rock” themed Antigone at LSU.  My wife and I spent a lot of time digging through our records and burning CDs.  The other example is when I was coordinator for “It’s Scary, Y’all! Horror Fest 2009” at LSU.  I produced four one-act plays (one was my own; the other three were written by LSU undergrads), directed and designed by students.  I let them stretch their imaginations. The result was fun, incredibly GOREY, and had Intro to Theatre students (our primary audience) saying things like, “Man, I never knew you could do that in the theatre!” That was probably the greatest thrill of all.

    Where is the problem with dramaturgy?  If a dramaturge is randomly assigned to a playwright or director, the dramaturge first has the task of explaining his or her role, followed by the never ending justification of their position. Also, the dramaturge can be a problem by soliciting scripts during an open submission process, not reading the scripts, approaching scripts with cynicism, or, okay I’m stepping in it, trying to sue the estate of a playwright claiming authorial credit on a work they helped develop.  If anything, that makes the dramaturge look even more like a nuisance. Bottom line, a bad experience with one dramaturge can poison the well for everyone else. I have heard directors say “I’m never working with playwright J. Smith again, he’s a real pain in the ass,” but I have never heard a director say “I am never working with any playwright ever again.”  On the other hand, I have heard directors swear off dramaturges after one poor experience.  Imagine if I had no awareness of the dramaturge position when I met up with the so-called professional at LSU?  I might have been tempted to do the same.

    Dramaturgy is both the most exciting and also the worst job in the American theatre. The successful dramaturge, in my opinion, resists burn-out and cynicism, approaches new works with an eye toward the uncanny, and is the silent bodyguard of the American theatre by trying to keep it fresh, alive, plural, and culturally important (which should really be a given; I think we spend too much time trying to justify theatre rather than treating its importance as a commonplace). My hope is that the dramaturge in the independent theatre, and in the academy, is aware of their great responsibility to the plurality of American theatre (again, here defined as Indie theatre of the U.S.), resisting the tendency to look at other models that may have worked for other plays. After all, if each play is different, why treat them all the same?


John Patrick Bray (ABD, MFA)

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