Guest Blogger next week: Jonathan Reuning

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We would like to thank Tim Errickson for his humorous and oh so accurate blogs from last week.

We are so happy to announce that next week's guest blogger is Jonathan Reuning.

Jonathan Reuning was born in California but spent most of his life in NYC. As a child he was sort of an actor and singer. As a young man he studied acting and playwrighting at Syracuse U, NYU and Playwrights Horizons. His first play was self-produced in a downtown space right next to an active firehouse. His second play was produced by Emerging Artists Theater Company (EAT) in a building that doubled as a Masonic Temple. From that he lucked into running the EAT playwrights unit for a few years and also got experience as a company manager. He had more work produced at EAT and in other venues including PSNBC and Lincoln Center Director’s Lab at HERE space. He had the opportunity to do most all of the typical New York survival jobs including short order cook/bouncer and his favorite, elevator operator. Jump a little bit ahead in time, he currently is co-founder of United Stages which is a six year old playbill company mainly for NY producers (OB/OOB/Indie) looking to present small venue as a unified professional industry. He met his business partner Ian Marshall because their moms knew each other and Ian ended up directing one of Jonathan's plays and then moving into his apartment building with his bride to be, Loribeth, who graciously allowed herself to be roped into doing huge amounts of work to help get their business rolling. Today Jonathan spends most of his time promoting theater companies through marketing and publishing. He's also published some really good playwrights which he says is an amazing privilege. Finally, he is currently trying to get back into the swing of writing plays again, an ambition he had shelved for half a decade to concentrate on the playbill. He says he's a little nervous because "I’m not entirely sure I remember the drill."

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Mailbag!

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, Tim Errickson.


These are honest to goodness real questions from absolutely fake readers…

Q: Tim, love the blog posts this week! What do you think about ART/NY winning a Tony Award?
-Michele from Boston, MA

A: Great question to lead off the mailbag Michele! I think that ART/NY is a terrifically deserving organization, and any support and recognition they get is fantastic. I did wonder, however, how much they support BROADWAY theatre, which is what the Tony Awards cover. ART/NY membership criteria start with being a non-profit or seeking to be a non-profit, so most Commercial/Tourist theatre shows don’t qualify. Maybe a more accurate accolade (2nd only to their Stewardship Award from the IT Awards a few years back) would be an OBIE or The Mayor’s Awards for Arts and Culture. But ART/NY will get major pub for this, and Ginny Louloudes and her staff are bouncing back nicely from both major personnel changes and the shitastic economy. Hope we get to see Ginny on TV accepting the award shortly.

Q: Tim, what are you working on lately, besides blog posts?
-Kyle from Durham, NC

A: Right now, Kyle, my nights have been filled with rehearsals for The Desk Set with Retro Productions. It’s been going really well, and you should totally check it out when you finish celebrating Duke’s National Championship. The show has laughs, heart, a gorgeous cast, fun music, and a dance party in the middle. I shit you not. You can get tickets here.

Q: Hey man, what upcoming shows are you really excited to see?
-Jessica from Hell’s Kitchen, NYC

A: Well, I’m finally seeing God of Carnage in a few weeks, so I’m psyched about that (my love for Janet McTeer is strong and true, people). Other exciting nights in the theatre coming up include Jacob's House for Flux, The Little One with Nosedive Productions, and Song For A Future Generation by The Management Company. Rehearsal for The Desk Set (have you bought your tickets yet? C’mon!) will keep me from seeing Crystal Skillman’s The Vigil something that Impetuous Theatre Group is doing at the Brick, so I’m actually bummed about that. Ah well, next time.

Q: Dude! Ok, so…imaginary dinner party. Like that old Jon Favreau show Dinner for 5. Who you inviting?
-Victor from San Antonio, TX

A: Well Victor, I’ll tell ya…that’s a tough one. My gut instinct Chekhov (the writer, not the driver of the Enterprise, nerds), Joe Papp, Ethan Hawke, and Salma Hayek, with Sam Shepard on speed dial in case anyone gets a flat tire coming over. Keep the vodka flowing so that Anton doesn’t get too maudlin (“No more ‘we will work’ shit, Anton…tell us The Bear again”). Salma and Ethan are hitting it off and getting cozy, so I break those two up by asking Salma about a “Frida” sequel, which brings out her fiery temper. She curses me in Spanish, while Ethan smokes and asks Joe if he will finance ‘Before Moonlight’, this new thing he’s working on with Julie Delpy and Rich Linklater about two vampires who get stuck on a train to Vienna…Joe gets pissed at Ethan, who won’t stop talking business. So Joe decides to give Ethan the big fuck you by asking how Uma’s doing…Ethan downs three shots of jack, drops his phone number on Salma, and storms out. Salma, still cursing me in Spanish and thinking that calling Ethan is too much like dating Ed Norton again, gives me the finger and heads out. Joe is now sick of Anton drunkenly trying to remember the plot of The Proposal, which in his slurred speech is beginning to sound a lot like the plot from ‘Runaway Bride’ (note to self, next time invite Garry Marshall). Joe steals the last drops of vodka from Anton, and heads for the door, just as Anton passed out in mid anti-theatrical rant (“We need new forrmmsssss….zzzz”) as the check arrives. Fuck. Maybe next time, don’t go with the gut instinct. And invite Garry Marshall.

Q: Look, you seem to know a lot of stuff…what can we do about all these theatres disappearing? Pretty soon, we’ll have to do shows in parks in the afterno…whoops.
-Steven from Richland, NJ

A: Watch it there, fucker. But you are right; theatres are still disappearing at an alarming rate. David Pincus of The Workshop Theatre, along with ART/NY, the League of Independent Theatre and the IT Awards are working hard with elected officials to pass the tax incentive plan for landlords to rent to arts organizations, and let’s hope that has the desired effect. In the meantime, the community needs to seek out landlord of unused commercial real estate, churches, community centers, anywhere we can and start trying to bring back some of the spaces we lost. And EVERYBODY should get to The Community Forum on the Ohio Theatre on Monday for this.

Q: Tim, I think you are super cute. I am an actress, and I know you have auditions coming up for Boomerang’s season. What audition pieces should I avoid when going into an EPA?
-Jean-Marie from Rehoboth Beach, DE

A: J-M, no more Nina’s from The Seagull, no more Julia’s from Two Gents. Ever.

Q: Random question dude…what classic TV theme song best reps the OOB scene? My buddy in his more lucid moments thinks it’s The Facts of Life Theme (“You take the good, you take the bad…”), but I think he’s smoking crack. I can’t have Mrs. Garrett and Tootie as my personal theme song. Need your help, pal.
-Malcolm from Ghent, NY

A: I love me some Jo, and I’ll make Blair into a very bad girl…but The Facts of Life Theme doesn’t hold a candle to The Laverne and Shirley theme (aka We’re Going to Make our Dreams Come True)…Lyrics like “straight ahead and on the track now… there’s nothing we won’t try, never heard the word impossible”...it’s the equivalent of “Man in Motion” from ‘St. Elmo’s Fire’. Don’t believe me, look it up.

Q: On a scale of 1 to Christina Hendricks nude scene, how would you project the progress of the Indie Theatre scene in the next 5 years?
-CJ from Austin, TX

A: I feel optimistic about things, actually CJ. I’m looking forward to the new space that ART/NY will open in the 50s on the Westside, and the new ticketing/social media application that they’re developing with Theatermania.com (Somebody give ART/NY a Tony Award already!); I think the League of Independent Theatre will more fully establish themselves and work some of the kinks out; I think you will begin to see more recognition of productions in OOB, including OBIE, Drama Desk, and GLAAD nominations; I think you will see more prolific publishing of Indie Theatre scripts as a way of both preserving the work and distributing it for other productions; and I think you will see a major book published chronicling the experience, struggle and joy of working in Indie Theatre. So on a scale of 1 to Christina Hendricks nude scene, I would rate that a solid 8.

Alright, time for one last letter…

Q: Dear Tim, I am a Nigerian business man who needs to send $5m dollars to the US and can pay you a percentage…

A: Damn.

Thanks for a fun week everybody, and for the IT Awards for asking me to do this! See you around.

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Size, level, and the meaning of life.

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, Tim Errickson.

Some people have heard me bitch about this issue before, so I apologize in advance. Treat this like a spoiler alert…Stop reading here if you don’t want to hear the screed.

My biggest pet peeve about how OOB defines itself is not the idea of Off-Off-Broadway vs. Indie Theatre (both are acceptable to me) but rather when people say “theatre at this level”. What level are you talking about? And what are you measuring and comparing? Talent level? Entertainment factor? Level of thoughts provoked? All bullshit.

What really defines the OOB/Indie companies (see how I did that) is size. We work in 99 seat and under houses. That’s it. So let’s retire the phrase “theatre at this level”. It imparts the inferiority that Kirk Bromley was originally talking about with the Off-Off tag. We are “theatre of this size”, and a lot of that is by choice. Think about it…if you had more money, would you do your show in a larger house (off-bway 400 seater for example), OR pay everybody (including yourself), buy some advertising and more perfs and keep your show in a 99 seater? I would absolutely go for the latter, because the theatre I make is 99 seat, intimate type stuff. You wouldn’t fuck that up just so you could call yourself something else, right?

But the “level” issue again makes the work we do seem like the minor leagues or like student productions not worthy of the public and the critical community’s attention. Commercial theatre/tourist theatre is a totally different fucking animal. Are they shooting for the same demographic? No. Are they spending the same amount of money? No. Are they even using the same methods? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I’ve almost just convinced myself that Indie theatre is a better way to go, just so as to acknowledge that Commercial/Tourist Theatre is different than what we do.

And sorry if you thought I knew the meaning of life…you must be new here.


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Rotating what? No friggin’ way!

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, Tim Errickson.

One of the founding ideas of Boomerang Theatre Company is the concept of rotating repertory. When I mention this to people (designers, actors, even my Mom) I often get the look like I’m speaking Swahili (I get that look a lot from Mom). The idea seems easy to me…you rent a space, and then try to get as many performances to fill that space as you humanly can. Maximize your revenue, maximize the opportunities for artists, always seems like a win-win.

The idea came from when I was a young buck crossing the big pond for the first time in the winter of 1992. I was studying abroad for my junior year, and living in London about three blocks from the National Theatre. I was fascinated by the idea that you could have more than one show in a space at one time…how could that work? Did actors perform in multiple shows at the same time? How did you have to manage a space to retain flexibility yet be specific enough to serve each production fully? And from an audience standpoint, was it a plus or a minus? To me it seemed a plus, because you had the choice of seeing Greek tragedy on Monday or Moliere on Tuesday, for example. When setting up a company in New York in the late 90’s, only one company (the now defunct Jean Cocteau Rep) was running in rotating rep. Could it be done in NYC? More importantly, could it be done in Off-Off-Broadway (OOB)? Over the last 12 years, we have refined the model and made it work on the scale of OOB economics.

Rotating rep in OOB helps to control your costs. If you rent a theatre for four weeks, you can produce three shows and let them run in rep for 8 performances each. In theory, you can market all three separately or together (one postcard or eblast), and with a limited run like this you can increase the audience’s urgency to see the show (originally we modeled that after dance companies that did limited run seasons before taking shows on the road or pulling them out of rotation). You can reuse set pieces or props between shows, also cutting down your expenses. Creative collaboration between shows can even make the individual shows cheaper than doing them separately. And because of three shows running, potentially each of your audience members buys three tickets instead of just one.

From an artistic standpoint, Boomerang is always asked why three plays appear together in a rep season. More times than not, the shows are selected because I really want to do them, with any themes manifesting themselves after the fact. In 2004, we produced O’Neill’s BEYOND THE HORIZON with Kelly McAllister’s BURNING THE OLD MAN and Jason Sherman’s PATIENCE. All three shows were exciting individually, and huge challenges for the casts who worked on them. Just as we are preparing to begin rehearsal, someone said “Ya know, all three of these plays are about pairs of brothers dealing with what it means to be responsible to the other one”. After a moment of silence and awkward stares, I said “Well fuck yeah, sure. We knew that”. Um, not so much. I’m now of the mind that our shows (whatever three they happen to be in a given season) will inform each other in ways both subtle and broad, and that no matter how excellent an individual production might be, audiences will always get a fuller experience by seeing all three.

Since 1999 when we began producing rep seasons, the concept has been used by other OOB companies with much success, proving that the model can work for theaters this size. Yes, there are extra challenges of time, being smart with expenses and smart with people, but it can also provide you with the opportunity to produce a lot of work in a condensed amount of time and really inspire your company.

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If you are an asshole, you have to go.

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, Tim Errickson.


I am a theatre artist. A producer, a director, and now an aspiring playwright at the ripe old age of 39. I belong to a world of spectacle, emotion, intellect, suspension of disbelief, no money, long hours, drama, caffeine , alcohol, good sex, bad sex, bad idea sex, more caffeine, diner food, day jobs, still no money, crap all over your apartment, and a belief that all this adds up to contribution to the city we live in and the world at large. It’s the best job in the whole world.

I’m excited to be a guest blogger this week for the IT Awards, and I’m going to do my damndest to write interesting things about my company, my process, my collaborators, and my community. I’m going to swear a lot, because that’s what happens. I’m going to say some smart things and some fucking stupid things, but again, what can you do. But we’ll take a little ride together and see what happens this week.

Today’s Monday, and I’m going to talk about collaborators…how do you find them and how do you keep them. Back at the dawn of time, there was a place in NYC where lots of theatre got done, called the Lower East Side. I worked for a crazy woman and her slightly more sane husband (just slightly, really) who‘s one piece of sanity was to pass on to me the “No Assholes” rule. The rule is: I don’t care how talented you are, how many people you have worked with, who you’re blowing, where your credits or your MFA are from…if you are an asshole, you have to go. Plain and simple. Nobody’s making enough/any money, and the sex is never THAT good (real or imaginary). At the end of the day, everybody has to pull their weight and make the thing work. So if you are a dick, and making everybody so frustrated at you or your process, no amount of talent in the world can save you. At least not at Boomerang.

And sometimes, it just takes calling someone a dick to snap them back to reality and make them a collaborator again. A few years back, we were producing a project in our rotating rep season in which the director was extremely personally involved. He believed this piece to be the thing that would skyrocket him into the upper echelon of young directors, and that all our limitations of hours and manpower and budget were holding him back. After a run thru during tech week, he dismissed the actors and called the designers and stage manager into the theatre and read them the absolute fucking riot act, hardcore. How dare they not have everything to his specs, how he wanted it and exactly when he wanted it? He announced if they didn’t all get their acts together soon (and honestly, the team was no further behind and exhausted than any other crew before or since in my experience) then he was pulling his name off the project. It was at this point that I stepped in and asked that if he wanted his name off the project, fine, but that this meeting was over. Nobody needed to be treated like that, considering all they were giving. If he was going to be an asshole, he had to go.

Afterwards, the designers and stage manager knew they were protected and respected for all they were doing, and the director was delivered a wakeup call to reiterate that we are all in this together. Has that director worked with us again? No. Have those designers and SM? Absolutely.

While that might seem like a horror story to some, especially during tech week, it served as a reminder to choose your collaborators carefully and to keep them close once you do. How to find them? Obviously word of mouth is a good thing, or seeing their work onstage. But sometimes you just get a gut feeling and you trust it. One of my best friends and closest collaborators met me across the bar at a day job and we discussed college basketball, women, and theatre (three things that have dominated most of my adult life) and without seeing a thing he’d worked on, I had a feeling he’d be a good person to have on my side. Or sometimes it’s just who’s been through the deepest shit with you and come out the other side still sane and alive. You think, hey if that show didn’t drive them to stick their head in the oven, and I didn’t want to kick the shit out of them every day of the process, (and they didn’t quit) then maybe there’s something there.

And while I said that no amount of talent can save you at the end of the day if you are an asshole, it is still talent we are all looking for. Talent is, to my mind, the sexiest thing a person can possess. It’s that magical “it” thing, and if you can find collaborators who posses talent, who can understand the limitations of your project and the success that comes from team work rather than being a douche, then odds are your project is going to be successful enough that you’ll get 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night during tech. And that’s pretty good.

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Guest Blogger of the week: Tim Errickson

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We would like to give our sincere thanks to ML Kinney for her insightful blogs about her writing process.

We're excited to announce that this week's guest blogger is Tim Errickson.

Tim Errickson is the Artistic Director of The Boomerang Theatre Company. Originally from New Jersey, Tim has made his home in New York City for the past 12 years, working as a stage director and theatre administrator. Tim's recent New York directing credits include the world premiere of THE WEDDING PLAY by Brian Smallwood, STOPPARD GOES ELECTRIC (three Tom Stoppard teleplays adapted for the stage), Kelly McAllister's FENWAY, SOME UNFORTUNATE HOUR, and BURNING THE OLD MAN (Nomination for Outstanding Directing by the New York Innovative Theatre Awards), Michael Weller's MOONCHILDREN (OOBR Award for Outstanding Production), and UNIDENTIFIED HUMAN REMAINS AND THE TRUE NATURE OF LOVE by Brad Fraser. Under Tim's direction, Boomerang was the recipient of 2008 Caffe Cino Fellowship for outstanding achievement in Off-Off-Broadway. As an administrator, Tim has worked at Lincoln Center Theatre, New Dramatists, and The Oberon Theatre Ensemble. He trained at Hofstra University's experimental New College, The University of London, Circle Rep Company, HB Studios, and most recently with LAByrinth Theatre Company for playwrighting. Tim is also the current president of the Off-Off-Broadway Community Dish, serves on the Honorary Awards Committee for the New York Innovative Theatre Awards, and is a member of the Independent Producers Alliance. He currently lives in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.

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