OOB-er Waste

Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, Neal Freeman

First let me say that I’m honored to be featured as a guest blogger and that I don’t have a particular theme in mind for the week. Rather, I’m planning to write about a few topics that I often chew on myself without worrying about tying them together. I’ve also got a special guest for one of the posts later in the week. I welcome comments, feedback, and differing opinions. And now, on to the blogging!

This, by the way, right here, is my first blog post EVER.

-Neal

OOB-er Waste


As Executive Director of an Off Off company, I often find myself (as I suppose many do) wearing any number of different hats around the theater. Volunteer carpenter is one of them, and despite my hatred for power saws (frankly, they scare me), I spend a lot of time in the theater assembling or dismantling our sets.


Our procedure is something like this: Go to Lowe’s. Buy a bunch of lumber and paint. Hire “man with a van” for $30 to bring it the 4 blocks back to the theater. (Seriously, it’s only 4 blocks.) Ask him to help us unload it. He declines. (Did I mention he only had to drive 4 blocks?) Over the course of 2 or 3 weekends, chop up the wood and assemble it according to whatever set we’re building. Paint it. Take pictures of it at a dress rehearsal. Charge people $18 to see it 12 or 16 times over the next 2 or 3 weeks. Then on the Sunday evening after the last performance, dismantle it as quickly as possible, chop it up into pieces no more than 5 feet long, and put it out with the garbage. Repeat 7 more times. Every season.


This is reductive, of course. We go to Materials for the Arts whenever we can, and as a company with our own space we have many stock items like flats and platforms that we re-use. But for every show there’s still a good amount of lumber we buy that will be cut and screwed into and onto various pieces that isn’t practical to keep when the show is over. We don’t have the space for all of it, and because of our limited storage we have to make smart decisions about things we might actually want again vs. things that are just going to get crammed in a corner and take up valuable space before they are thrown out in 5 years, un-used.


I also know that as a company with our own year-round space, we have it easier than itinerant companies for whom it must be significantly harder to avoid throwing out nearly everything at the end of a production.


I’d love to donate things at the end of a show to MFTA or to other theater companies. Sometimes we do. More often, we simply don’t have the resources to truck materials around the city after every show or to keep them around until someone else can pick them up. Besides, a lot of it gets destroyed in the process of trying to take it apart, or has been permanently altered in the construction phase into some specialized shape that isn’t useful to others. Ultimately it’s a hell of a lot easier to throw it away then it is to deal with donating it to someone else.


And this doesn’t take into account the paint, which of course cannot be re-used once it has been applied.


I wish I was leading up to some brilliant epiphany about how to work in a less wasteful way but I don’t have one.


For now I just accept that the fleeting nature of theater makes us far less responsible as consumers than I’m comfortable with.

Working Period.

Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, Heather Cunningham

It’s in the details. Whether your production is on Broadway or in a 40-seat theater on a side street in an industrial neighborhood, it’s in the details. The angle of the heel on the shoe, the buttons on the coat, the frame of the chair, the packaging of the cigarettes. And when your audience practically sits in your actors’ laps it is even more important that those details be as right as possible.

It’s hard work. It’s my own fault Retro Productions does nothing but period pieces. But the truth is, I love those details. I love doing the research and playing hide and seek with the items that will make those details right. And nothing drives me crazier than going to see a show set in 1960 and seeing a modern package of Ronzoni on the stage.

I know there is an argument, especially in Off-Off Broadway where money is ridiculously tight, for simplifying the experience. Why do you need a set, costumes and props to tell the story? Why not just focus on the acting, and save a ton of money in the process? And that’s right for certain plays (and hell, focus on the acting no matter what). But if you are doing a play that belongs in another world, say, the New York City of the mid-1950s (as Retro will be doing again this May with THE DESK SET), you really can’t get away with that.

The world has changed and so has the way people interact with each other and the material things in their lives. We dial and hold the telephone differently. We pack and carry our suitcases differently. We even type differently (tell the truth, would you even know how to change a typewriter ribbon now if you had to?). As the things around us change, so do our interactions with them, which is why I object to modern props and costumes in a play set in the past.

So how do you get the details right when your combined costume, prop and scenery budget are just a couple of hundred dollars?

1) RESEARCH! (The good news is if you have a library card and an Internet connection, you can do this step for free!) Know what it should look like and you will start to see the things around you that may not be vintage, but come so close that they won’t stick out like a sore thumb. (Check back for some of my favorite 20th Century research resources.)

2) “Beg, borrow and steal” (I’m not condoning the latter.) Obviously we all do this anyway, but it still applies! In addition to treasure hunting at estate and yard sales, junktique stores, salvage dealers, freecycle, ebay, craigslist, dollar stores and thrift shops I also fully admit to dumpster diving. I’m always checking out what people have tossed… one mans trash is another mans treasure!

3) Time is on my side, yes it is! And it can be on your side too. I occasionally take up to 6 months in advance of a show in order to get what I need within my budget. Time to spare can be your greatest ally when working on a budget.

4) Learn Photoshop. Need a mid-40s dust jacket for War and Peace? A ‘60s box of Wheaties with a ball player on the front? A can of tomato juice out of the ‘50s? At Retro we’ve done them all… with Photoshop.

5) No matter how gorgeous the costume, the look is not period complete without the right hair and make up. As a producer it makes me crazy (and I’m willing to bet costume designers hate it too) when actors don’t understand that the wrong hairstyle or shade of lips can throw the entire balance of the design off.

6) Don’t focus on what something is; see what it can be. I’ve had more than one designer for Retro who took apart something they bought at Goodwill and made it into something else. I’ve seen an early 90s cotton wrap dress transformed into a 30s day dress with a few cuts and stitches and a set of vintage buttons. And that modern sofa looked a lot less “Jennifer Convertibles” once the throw pillows of 50s fabric were put on top of it.

7) She’s crafty and she’s just my type… learn how to make stuff. Because when you can’t find it, you’ll have no choice but to make it. Giant wheel of cheese? Check. Bad modern art? Check. Wood burning cook stove? Check. Room sized “electronic brain”… check back with me in May.

And the diner jukebox that everyone loved… a combination of plywood, colorful plastic rods, kitchen lamps, and, yes, photoshopped images… if I had a buck for everyone who asked me where we got an old jukebox I’d have more money than it cost to make it.

And that’s one definition of being innovative, don’t you think?

Two New Theatre Sites Are Born

In this economic climate, it's inspiring to see colleagues focus on their passions, both on stage and off. In a time when the arts have to struggle to keep themselves in the news, I caught up with two innovative entrepreneurs who have recently launched theatre websites that make it a point to include Off-Off Broadway in their coverage. Read on as Molly Marinik from Theatre is Easy and Karen Tortora-Lee of The Happiest Medium talk about what inspires them to help keep Off-Off Broadway talked about.

Read the full story...

Contributed by Morgan Lindsey Tachco

OOB theatre needs idea bank

The New York IT Awards is collecting needs and suggestions from the NYC theatre community to the City of New York, and asks for your contributions.

It is our hope to collect the community's needs as a whole, and put together a master list of items when making presentations to community boards, arts task forces, and city officials.

If you are inclined (even one suggestion), copy and paste the following information into the comments below. If you prefer anonymity, email your suggestions to community@nyitawards.com.

COPY AND PASTE THE FOLLOWING TEXT
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Name:
Organization:
Email:
Date:
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SUGGESTIONS:

1)
2)
3)
4)
5)

Thank you for your participation, and don't forget to spread the word!

Community Corner: assessing the current economy's impact on artists & venues

Help NYC Performing Art Spaces accurately assess the economy's impact on Performing artists and venues. They have created 2 surveys to gather information:

- Performing Artists Survey
- Performing Arts Venues and Cultural Facilities

To read more about Happenings, events & issues affecting Off-Off Broadway, visit the Community Corner.

Thoughts on Presidential plans for the Arts, contributed by Shay

Presidential Plans for the Arts

President Barack Obama is the first-ever president to enter office with a platform and plan for the arts. His website claims that he "uniquely appreciates the role and value of creative expression." This is an exciting change for the arts. His eight-point plan includes a promise to set an example on how to appreciate the arts, more money for the arts and his "arts corps" and agenda to "expand public/private partnerships between schools and arts organizations" resonates his overall theme of service. All of this bodes well for the Off-Off-Broadway community.

However even more than a general awareness and appreciation of the arts, there are two points in his plan that I think will have the largest and most direct impact on our community.

Provide Health Care to Artists: Finding affordable healthcare for independent artists who don't always have a regular employer/regular employment has not always been easy. Anyone paying attention to the campaign knows that President Obama's plan is to create and make available a subsidy healthcare plan similar to the one that Federal employees now have. Will this make it possible for many OOB artists to spend more time working on their art and less time chained to a "day job?"

Ensure Tax Fairness for Artists: This is the one I find really interesting. This will allow artists to deduct (at fair market value) hours of time volunteered from their taxes...... This may mean a whole new game for OOB. How will Equity codes be affected by this? A very interesting proposal.

What are your thoughts?

Go here to see the outline of Barack Obama's plan for the arts.

Also if you haven't heard, Quincy Jones has started a petition to ask President-Obama to appoint a Secretary of the Arts. This would be a Cabinet-level position that would oversee several federal agencies including the NEA. While many other countries have Ministers of Art or Culture but the United States has never created such a position.

Elizabeth Blair from NPR discusses the Secretary of the Arts here.

What do you think? Do you think a Secretary of the Arts would benefit us or do you agree with David Smith?

Go here to sign the petition.

Shay Gines

Where is the New Young Audience for Indie Theatre?

Last month, Isaac Butler posted a provocative column on his website, Parabasis, entitled No-Brainer Secrets Revealed!, about the best ways for theater to reach younger audiences. Butler surmised that the best way to bring them in is to do uncompromising work and offer it at a reasonable price. The work will speak for itself. If you build it, Butler said, the audience will come.

Easier said then done, though. Butler then homed in on a larger point; that most theater companies don’t want to reach out to younger audiences because that’s not where the money is. In other words, to cater their work to such an audience would indeed be a compromise. So the question is what do theaters want? To reach people or to make enough money?

There is no one answer to this question. Writers, performers, and producers alike must want to do good work. But the easier it is to make a living at it, the better able they are to keep putting on original, personal artistic work. And it is also hard to lump in all theater companies when the Off-Off world, more than anywhere else, I imagine, is made up of very distinct companies with very heterogeneous missions.

The other question is, what do audiences want? Who do they want to see portrayed? Is money the major issue, or is it interest? Again, the term “younger audience” also needs to be broken down and defined in order to figure out how best to appeal to that demographic. Are we talking about young audiences who have dramatic aspirations, or young laypeople, or both? And what spectrum does “young” include?

Even when figuring this out, there is no easy answer to the main question. Would revivals of known works be best? Does an original work have to have some measure of gimmickry or novelty in order to create buzz? Is this audience only likely to turn out if they have friends involved in a production?

I’ve never met Butler, but I should say that I’m a big fan of his site and his writing, including the column I reference here. I agree with his stance and the point he makes. But I look to it as a tipping point, of sorts, to engender an ongoing dialogue about what makes theater thrive, a quest more important than ever in our current economy.

The entire point of the IT Awards was to foster a sense of community throughout the hard-working, passionate members of the Off-Off world. I believe they have gone a long way in cementing a feeling of camaraderie among the various production companies doing their thing. But that community is far from limited to the people doing the work; the people who show up are just as important. I would like to think that the IT organization can also help in figuring out exactly what audiences are out there, and how we can appeal to them. Perhaps this very newsletter can even help the process.

What do you think, faithful readers?

Contributed by Doug Strassler

Good ideas: The Give List

Ran across The Give List on idealist's blog. The Give List marks 71 ways to give without opening your wallet - a great idea not only holiday recession season, but also great ideas to add to appeal letters.

A favorite of mine that's incredibly easy, from LA Chamber Orchestra:

"If your favorite arts organization has a blog, a facebook page, or some other form of social networking – leave a comment, post on their wall, or just send them an email telling them what you love about that organization."

What other ideas would you add to your Gift List?