Why Are We Artists?

Contributed by Brad Burgess

“They have very prominently placed cultural policy as part of the national agenda…intelligent and insightful debate around issues of culture, the cultural agenda, the possibilities of culture to determine the future of a nation…”
           ~ Professor Peter Eckersall, Graduate Center CUNY
               speaking on Singapore 10/14/2014

Political theatre starts with a fundamental question, “Why are we artists?”

In Singapore, it sounds like almost a sacred duty for this young country to utilize arts to examine, explore and ultimately improve their culture through suggestion of political, spiritual or emotional betterment…

We are artists because on some level we are reacting to reality and saying, “this is not enough.”  We are saying we need more to experience in our daily lives.  We need to create something more, explore deeper, discuss in more detail.

For me, political theatre moves forward from the recognition that this feeling of need is a political reality.

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Recently, at Prelude Festival, there was a conversation about honesty. Allison Lyman, Artistic Producer MESTC asked “How do you know when a piece is honest?” I responded something like: "I always think of Judith and what she would say as founder of The Living Theatre. For her, every play is about inspiring the audience to a beautiful, peaceful revolution that transforms our communities into better functioning communities that care for the needs of all."

That can mean a lot of things politically, not all as overt as social revolution.

In these times, the word political has been reductively devalued by a two party system, and so now much of “political” theatre has to be directed at this reduced reality, and the issues it has left us with the environment (Extreme Weather by Karen Malpede), with our health , with poverty (That Poor Dream by The Assembly), with our hardness and violent solutions that are not working (Won't Be a Ghost by Francis Weiss Rabkin).

But political theatre is also deeper than two-party issues caused by our current version of a capitalist democracy.  It is really about our political duty to our world as artists responding to the original question, “why are we artists?”

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The Assembly’s adaptation of Great Expectations in That Poor Dream, is overtly political about socio-economic class in modern day America and how it’s the same product of our financial system as Victorian England was…

At the same time, the actors break through the 4th wall and communicate stories from their real lives that are intimate, personal, and emotional.

In those moments they are recognizing a political mandate that the actors lives matter in the creation of work.  Similarly, by doing this, they are acknowledging that the individual story of each of the audience members in attendance, also matters.

The politics of this play are that we need to address class reality with each other in order to avoid the pain of the characters, and on a more Artaudian level, the pain of the actors and the the pain of the audience.

But it doesn’t have to be so heavy either.

For instance, David Neumann’s work at Prelude, I Understand Everything Better…all on death…had an inescapable delight, a playfulness and light that was its own political statement about how we can meditate together on death and its pain and react to it.    It was fun as well as meaningful.

Having fun is just as political as feeling pain in answering cultural need and development.

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For me, all that and in between is our political theatre.

Political theatre is whatever it means to you as a person that answers the cultural need for artistic creation.

Don’t get me wrong, I think more people should come right out with direct action and political critique to encourage a more politically engaged society and work with as many organizations to do so as possible.

“Art is certainly for art’s sake,” she said. “But I also fervently believe in art for life’s sake.”         
                       ~ Deborah Rutter, President, Kennedy Center (Washington Post)

It is time to come together

Contributed by Brad Burgess

It is time for artists to come together.  It is time for everyone to understand how important art is for communities of people.  It is time for everyone to realize their own art in life and how they can participate in the communities of which they are a part.

undergroundzero festival, and the direction it has taken into being a coalition/cooperative/collective/community of theatre groups and theatre artists is one of the strongest and most unique recognitions of this timing.  There are exponential benefits to sharing resources, connecting networks and finding perspective within the industry...amidst the new worldwide economic understanding about the instability of the monetary system...especially its utter failure to support the arts across the globe...undergroundzero festival, and other efforts like it are the way to sustainability.  It is the avant garde of what is being done on the national level like at TCG or NET, and on the local level in nyc, including NYIT, ART NY, LIT, LoMAL, and FAB.

It is indescribable, the feeling of going from handling the toughest challenges and questions, alone, to sharing responsibilities.  The feeling of sharing your best ideas to turn them into better ones, and finding new possibilities, together with others, is even more transcendent.  The experience of all that when art and theatre is at the center point...you'll have to come find that one out in July.

Brad Burgess is the Executive Producer of The Living Theatre

Guest Blogger of the week: Jeff Riebe

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We would like to thank Brad Burgess for his provocative and astute blogs last week.

We are excited to announce next week's blogger, Jeff Riebe.

Jeff Riebe is an amazingly talented actor and producer who was a co-chair of the Honorary Awards Committee 2004 - 2006. He has performed and produced numerous Off and Off-Off-Broadway productions and the ActorFest for BackStage. He currently is very active in the Minneapolis theatre scene. He often works at the Interact Center and volunteers at the Guthrie Theatre.

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Maintaining ensembles

Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, Brad Burgess.

Yesterday, Judith was talking to John Strasberg in her apartment about the highest artistic aim of maintaining an ensemble. I’m glad I did not write the blog yesterday, even though it was completely unintentional. Sometimes things just workout I guess. It ain’t called The Living Theatre for nothing! haha, Come on down to Clinton Street if you haven’t, this place is out of this world let me tell you. Never know what you are going to find.

Anywho, this blog is gladly stealing from those two technique tycoons and their minds who have been developing ensembles with their legacies for well over 100 years combined. Holy moly is right.

A true ensemble has one essential quality that cannot be taught or come from natural talent: they know each other. Being on stage with Judith during The Connection, we had a whole personal relationship to draw on. She’s my roommate, she’s my mentor, she’s one of my best friends. We share almost everyday with one another.

Tom Walker, is a company member of ours who has performed in 39 seasons with The Living Theatre. To put that into perspective, Mickey Mantle played 16 seasons for The New York Yankees. Judith and Tom have been on stage with each other for almost 40 years.

These examples are just a couple of dozens and dozens of similar stories. The profound effect these real relationships have on our ability to make our art together, is very present for us. It’s what makes being a pacifist anarchist political theatre group even possible.

Our art can’t help but manifest itself from these experiences. Our thoughts and feelings as people are developed this way. It makes sense then that our ability to relay translations of reality from the writer/director/actor/thinker as artists and produce something that has a connection to reality that is clear to the audience.

One balance we have is the problem of not being involved enough with our audience, as strange as it sounds. We are such a culture unto ourselves, that we need to be careful to keep our every day reality a part of the culture we are living in. We are very fortunate to be a part of the academic culture, so that much of our audience, theatre students and professionals especially, know something coming into the show about what to expect. Well, in our case I suppose its more of what not to expect.

When I see the experienced ensemble here working together, the company members who have been doing it for 10, 20, 30, 40 or in Judith’s case 65 years, I feel connected to the development of the culture. I see an ability for compromise, an ability to find a common ground, an ability to move forward in the midst of crisis.

I think we are able to accomplish this because we are really able to be who we are to one another. It’s part of the vibe and message from the moment you arrive here, from Judith to the babies that are born into the company. It’s a real family, in all the wonderful clichéd sense of it.

This adds a reality to the work for me personally that I have not been able to find or see in many places other than the theatre community at large. I think the connection we have to each other here at The Living Theatre, but also industry wide helps us communicate and relate to people who love their friends and families. That’s most people in the world.

It’s certainly not always perfect as again is the norm, but I feel theatre and its ensemble nature can be a real example for societal structuring. People should be working together with people they love on something they care about that says what they believe, in their deepest, and most elevated selves. Hopefully our work as an artistic community is doing so. I believe it is in this city.

Happy World Theatre Day!

BB

Health Insurance & the Theatre Artist

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, Brad Burgess.


The first important point about health insurance and thereby healthcare in our industry, is that even in the best unions, a minority of members qualify for their respective insurance requirements. (This is aside from the lack of representation for the majority of artists in our community who are not represented by the unions.)

In fact, the current arrangement is such, that if you work 8 weeks in Equity, 8 weeks in SAG, 8 weeks in AFTRA, for a total of 24 weeks, which is over the minimum requirement of weeks in one year for each of their plans, you would not qualify for any one those insurance plans. The lesson is, that even the establishment in our industry is unable to handle the health insurance of its members.

It’s important to note that all of those unions perform great services for artists, and really do have the best of intentions for their members. So, given their current situation is in sync with ours, there is an opportunity to work together from various angles with unions, government, and foundations included, while these problems seem clearer and clearer to us. Especially now that it is clear that the government is requiring insurance, it is indeed the responsibility of the industry leaders to assist and advocate on behalf of all the artists, as all of them are affected.

It starts from the top of it with the National Endowment for the Arts. If someone can explain to me how it is reasonable that through the economic explosion of the 90’s and early 2000’s, the NEA’s budget has actually dropped a couple million from its highest point in the very early 90’s, I would appreciate that very much! ha! That’s crazy.

This year it’s only 160 million, though for the first time it will be higher than the city of New York’s budget for the DCA because of a major budget cut that’s happening. But in recent years this city’s made more money available for the arts than the federal government. How did that happen? One city found a way to make more money available for the arts than the federal government.

...160 million for the arts industry while the congressional budget for its small business committee is 400 billion dollars… I mean, this is what we are dealing with, all of us, a complete and utter lack of money in the industry from the government, along with the financial problems of foundations and individual patrons.

The ones that are mass affected by this are the thousands of low income artists in this city that scrape and claw and hustle to survive without nearly enough money working its way into their hands for the work and responsibilities they handle. I can’t say enough about how impressive it is, the dedication of the individual artists all over the city that make their art and provide for many aspects of the culture. Many of them do this in addition to having families and full time jobs. I think this is likely a pretty nationwide phenomenon in the arts industry in regional and community theatres and arts spots everywhere in the U.S.

But it’s clear we have an advantage in this city with its perspective on culture from the residents to the businesses to the politicians and we all have a responsibility to make the best of it. We need to be hopeful and diligent and happily continue to work together as we are.

I’ve been working on organizing a push for a proposal, with the help and focus of many individuals. As of right now, so long as the bill pushes through without disaster, I will be working with the help of the policy writing team from Equity, and the gracious guidance of their national director of special programs who is a really cool lady if there ever was one. Speaking of, Olympia Dukakis and Judith helped me meet with many industry leaders and ultimately Flora at Equity, with whose help this idea can really tackle the necessary details of a proposal like the one we need.

The details of this proposal are pretty vague at the moment, but let me say that everyone I’ve talked to has been very supportive and sure that we can come up with something that really benefits everyone in the industry without disturbing the status quo for the people are comfortable and secure with it.

Stay tuned for more about it in the coming months, we’ll be asking for all the help and participation we can get. Please feel free to email me with interest!

Less politics and more art tomorrow.


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The Practice of Progressive Politics

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, Brad Burgess.


So, before even getting to how artists fit into all this, I think the most important thing when talking about healthcare reform (this one is really health insurance reform), is to take the following perspective, “I must let go of whatever bill I would have written if it were %100 up to what I think it should be word for word.” In fact this may be the most fundamental, yet modernly unpracticed, aspect of progressive politics. We can’t make all the progress at once.

It would be foolish to criticize the healthcare bill because it doesn’t also solve the energy crisis. By the same token I feel its important not to criticize the bill because it does not solve every problem we have with our health and with the way we practice it in society with one another.

This is one area in which being part of a collective is very helpful. A collective is not a congress, and that is a tremendous advantage of a group’s ability to compromise. At The Living Theatre everyone is considered a director of the play at rehearsal and is given the opportunity to act as such as much as the individual artists in the group will go along with whoever has the floor. We almost never come to an impasse where half the group thinks one thing and half the group thinks the other. We have many common interests and it’s not hard to find them in the creation of our art together.

The debate on our health should have a plethora of common interest. Instead, somehow, every member of the red team thought the exact same way. I can’t imagine how this is possible. If this last vote does not display that: this system of decision making is not good; then I’m not sure what can. Not one republican could compromise on this bill? About our health!? If they can’t agree about that, then how can this congress possibly have a chance at really representing our common interests?

I’m not saying that it’s the republicans fault at all, though lots of activity on the right is quite terrifying at present, including the racial slurs and shouting at people during press conferences. Kudos to Obama for keeping it totally focused and calm and collected amidst all this.

But, it is the systems fault. There are two problems that showcase this systematic failure as I see it. The democrats couldn’t come up with a bill that one republican would vote for. And, not one republican could make any compromise with the proposal. When those two factors are true, then it seems there’s a pervasive systematic break down at that point. ‘Two parties’ does not work as a system. It can’t. We are too diverse, and it’s very silly to think that all 300 million people in this country fit into two categories on any level, especially the political level.

But, we have to get over all of this. It’s all there and we have no choice but to work with it. We have to get over the fact that there are enough problems to make everyone go on passionate rants that make every idea sound like a bad one and create an impossible environment for progress or change.

Do you think that, as an anarchist, I like that this bill gives insurance companies more money? Do you think that I like %100, that now, I am being forced by the government to pay for something that I have freely chosen not to pay for for the last few years? Listen, I can’t even stand that there is a government at all. So, what am I gonna do, try to prevent the government from doing anything? How could anything get better if that was my attitude?

Well, that is the attitude in Washington D.C. It’s mostly preventative politics instead of the politics of progress. So for now, let me give a resounding, “Hell yeah!” that something forward thinking got done some how.

Tomorrow I’ll tackle how we are possibly going to handle being able to pay for health insurance when we can barely figure out how to even pay legitimate salaries to those deserving in our organizations, or even rent a lot of the time.

BB

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Our World has Permanently Changed

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, Brad Burgess.


Hello everybody!

I am very excited for my week here on the IT blog. Three cheers for everyone at IT by the way. Without their valuable statistical analysis and dedication to improving our industry and its understanding of itself, we would not be moving forward as fast as we all are together.

That’s where I’d like to start this week, and just address the state of the industry from my perspective over here at The Living Theatre. Judith and I talk about it often and really embrace our role as small business organizers as well as artists. In fact I think that the movement and action in the Off-Off-Broadway scene of the past year, represents some of the most innovative business being done in the new economic world.

It seems our world has permanently changed as a result of the economic crisis. We almost saw it (DOW) hit zero in a matter of months. Barack Obama probably saved us from a militaristic fascist coup, which is usually what happens in societies where the economy collapses, along with riots, death and other mostly awful stuff. It pains me to say it, but thank heavens for the bank bailout, because even though the current system is pretty lousy and well below what our intelligence is capable of, it offers hope for change, something that marshall law would have likely stifled a little. It would not have been pretty if he hadn’t acted quickly. Judith lived through the great depression as a child in the 1930’s and also feels this way.

I say this all as a pacifist anarchist who does not vote, because as JM says, “I can’t responsibly elect someone to be in charge of the armed forces.” I think that money is on its way out in the long haul. (Are there going to be trillionaires? really?) I don’t think we will let it carry on like it is now, where so few have mostly all the wealth.

Noam Chomsky said yesterday at Pace University that of the seven thousand billion dollar gross national product in the US for the year, that about 500 people made two thousand billion of it. In a country of 300 million people, that’s simply wrong. It’s wrong ethically, morally and rationally.

I think this crisis was a big wake up call on that train of thought and people are really ready to listen to suggestions that they weren’t before because the faith in the system is fading. It almost collapsed on its own.

One major sign of this change for me, was the Community Board Congress on the state of small-midsize theatres, last February at The Players Club. There, Scott Stringer challenged the city’s politicians to take care of its artists and challenged us to help make it happen. It was a great event for anyone who wasn’t there.

There we all were, industry wide from the communities we all live in, and since then there has been an amazing amount of work being accomplished on all accounts, with great effort on everyone’s part like IT, the community boards, the executive directors and administrators at all the theatres and the politicians in the city. It has been great to see what we are capable of and we are just getting started. Also, I think we, as artists, can help provide examples of good business at a time when we need to reexamine our societal practices, and make sure that equality actually becomes a real concept in practice not just in theory. This is especially true I feel at nonprofits where the goal is actually in the corporate identity of the companies. Not for profit actually means for the culture, if you define it by what it is instead of what it isn’t. At least for me that’s what it means.

So that's a start for now. I'll be addressing healthcare and how artists can fit in at some point this week as I have been working on a proposal with the help and support of Olympia Dukakis that is coming together now that yesterday happened. Also, I'll try to cover other aspects of the industry, and maybe even a little art at some point!

More tomorrow...


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Guest Blogger of the week: Brad Burgess

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We would like to thank Roman Feeser for being our guest blogger last week.

Next week's blogger is Brad Burgess.


Brad Burgess joined The Living Theatre as an original cast member of the 2007 revival of The Brig by Kenneth Brown directed by Judith Malina. He quickly became part of the directing efforts at The Living as understudy ensemble director for the show, later co-directing the piece in Los Angeles. The play won two OBIES for direction and ensemble, Best of Theatre NY Times 07 and LA Times 08, as well as capturing Best Foreign Play in Italy, for its tour in Germany and Italy. He assistant directed Maudie and Jane starring Judith Malina, with then company director Hanon Reznikov, Malina's second husband/co-director of The Living. Tragically, Hanon suffered a stroke in 2008, leaving Malina, at 83 without the help she needed. Since that time Brad has mustered up as much courage as possible to help her run The Living Theatre, helping her direct new works Eureka! and Red Noir and playing Ernie in the 50th year anniversary revival of The Connection. He is now Associate Artistic Director and Administrative Director at The Living Theatre on Clinton Street in the LES, Manhattan.

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