Archives for March 2009

The Los Angeles Philharmonic‘s drive to bring in new audiences through a series of concerts involving artists from different musical backgrounds appears to be paying off. At least, if last Saturday evening’s soiree at Disney Hall devoted to the music of the French electronica artist, M83 (real name: Anthony Gonzalez, pictured) is anything to go by, Los Angeles concert goers are thrilled at the unusual collaborations and are packing the concert hall in droves.

The venue was almost completely full with young hipster types — skinny men sporting drainpipe jeans, spiky hairdos, pertly buttoned-down shirts, jackets and neckties, and women in thick hose, 80s-style dresses and high heels. I’ve never encountered such an audience at a classical concert before. The closest I’ve come, I think, was San Francisco Performances’ Philip Glass Ensemble gig a few weeks ago at Davies Symphony Hall — and that audience was much more eclectic, being split between Glass’ old fans and his new followers.

While I applaud the orchestra’s outreach efforts, M83’s appearance with the LA Phil left much to be desired. If nothing else, the orchestra, led by Julian Kuerti, did a wonderful — albeit unintended — job of showing up the weaknesses of M83’s abilities as a musician.

Though by no means an expert on the genre, I’ve long enjoyed the work of many electronic artists from Depeche Mode and Goldfrapp to Amon Tobin and Underworld. But by far the best parts of last weekend’s concert were the pieces performed by the orchestra alone. Arvo Part’s Fratres and Debussy’s La Mer strike me as two works that not only perfectly complement the electronic music of M83 because of their wide ranging, shifting timbres and rhythms, but also hint at the diversity and beauty of the classical music terrain for the benefit of the many people sitting in the audience that evening who might have thought that classical music was nothing but Beethoven, Mozart and Bach.

La Mer could at times be mistaken for an ambient track by a French electronica artist, in fact. And the rumbling-sinister bassline and percussion accents in Fratres is reminiscent of a drum n bass song. The orchestra drew out smooth, spiraling renditions of both pieces and the crowd deservedly went wild.

They also went wild — though in my opinion less deservedly so — for the opening set which M83 did solo and the finale, in which the orchestra, a small, amplified women’s choir and two of M83’s close colleagues (drummer Loic Maurin and a female vocalist whose name isn’t listed on the program) joined the DJ in performing arrangements of five of his songs. I didn’t share the rest of the crowd’s enthusiasm for these sections of the program, unfortunately.

For one thing, M83 isn’t very interesting to watch. The program describes him as playing “keyboards, guitars, vocals and electronics.” But as far as I could tell, all that the artist did on stage that night was “play” the final “instrument” on the list. He more or less ignores the audience. He stands before his laptops and bleeping lights and keyboards, and barring the couple of occasions when he gets so involved with the music that he practically starts humping one of his sound consoles, he looks for all the world like he’s checking his email or updating his Facebook profile.

For another, M83’s music isn’t very interesting to listen to in a concert hall (though it’s pretty atmospheric via headphones on an iPod). Sean O’Loughlin’s orchestral arrangements of the M83 numbers are, in the main, pedantic. With its sostenuto strings and assorted helicopter noises, the song In the Cold Standing sounds like the sort of music that might be composed for the tragic finale of a cheesy Hollywood Vietnam war movie. Meanwhile, anthem-like numbers like The Pioneers, featuring a solo female vocalist who can barely be heard despite the amplification, and Highest Journey, with its rock-style drums and ambient, breathy choral lines, are repetitive to the point of numbness.

I guess I remain to be impressed by M83, who looked as bored by the proceedings as I did by the end of the concert. The LA Phil’s musicians didn’t exactly register bliss on their faces at the end of the gig either. Taking their bows on cue to rapturous applause, they all gave the impression that it had been a very, very long night.

The Berkeley-based theatre company Central Works has an unusual way of creating new productions. By the time the season brochure comes out, the plays on the roster generally haven’t been written yet. I asked Christopher Chen (pictured left) author of the company’s current show, The Window Age (which I discussed here last week) to contribute today’s blog post about his experiences of the Central Works Method. He kindly agreed to share his thoughts with us today. Take it away Chris…

At first glance, there is nothing about Central Works or their plays that particularly indicates the use of a collaborative process. Unlike more prototypical collaborative ensembles, they don’t have a core acting group, the plays themselves seem to reflect a single playwright’s voice, and tone-wise, their plays tend to have a more classical, stately feel about them. In fact, the main indication that there is something very unconventional about this theater company is the caveat they always add to the announcement of their season. To paraphrase: “… incidentally, none of these plays have been written yet.” This is a theater company that takes the concept of “new work” to the next level, for each announced play is created collaboratively from scratch as the season progresses, and each is created with incredible speed. For my project with them, The Window Age, the time between putting a single word to the page and opening night was a scant four months.

I was first approached by Central Works after co-artistic directors Gary Graves and Jan Zvaifler saw my play Into the Numbers at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival in 2007. They asked me to pitch them ideas that might be suitable for their method of collaboratively developed scripts. They wanted ideas broad enough to spark dialogue within the ensemble, and specific enough to provide a suitable roadmap for the process. They were also partial to ideas suitable for their atmospheric space in the Berkeley City Club. In May of 2008 they agreed to my idea about the intersections of Modernism, studies of the Unconscious, and the First World War. I provided them with a skeleton of an outline, and brief character descriptions. With these in hand, they set about creating the ensemble, which ultimately consisted of three precast actors (including Jan Zvaifler), the director (Gary Graves), the sound designer, and myself.

Because each Central Works ensemble is created from scratch for every project, their process is necessarily accommodating to different working styles. They commit to an idea and they commit to a production, but what happens in between is a continuously negotiated process. Our first workshops consisted of discussions and research about the subject matter. But very quickly I started bringing in material to be read. Due to scheduling issues, our first workshop had to be pushed to mid-October, 2008. And with a mid-January deadline for our first rehearsal coupled with a late February opening, I was itching to get writing- I had heeded the Central Works rule demanding not a word be written before the first workshop.

More often than not, feedback on the material I brought in fell into categories specific to its sources. From the actors I got character feedback, and from the director I got feedback on the action of the scene. Before this experience, I was very much entrenched in the normal process of the playwright writing a first draft in isolation, then having the script undergo dramaturgical and director/actor work in different phases. With the Central Works method, it was as if all these phases were occurring simultaneously from the very beginning.

If this prospect sounds overwhelming, it was- at least at first. A solitary writer by nature, I was caught off guard by feedback and discussion from the script’s inception. However, it soon became apparent that hearing multiple voices at this early stage offered a truly unique perspective. Having actors ask questions about their characters from the first pages of the first draft instantaneously provided valuable information to move forward with. Potential character problems and inconsistencies were nipped in the bud before they hardened into larger script problems. Of course, reaping the benefits of all this information was contingent on a diligent filtering process, as well as a strong core vision of the play as a whole- a solid foundation from which to take or leave feedback.

Intense time pressure brought out both the adventurous and the hyper-rational sides in me. I was inclined to run with more bold ideas than usual, but I was also prepared to more quickly hack away parts that didn’t work for the actors on first read. Going into our five week rehearsal schedule in January, we still had a vastly overwritten script on our hands. I would edit and rewrite constantly as we went along, making a development workshop out of the actual rehearsal process. Everyone pitched in, offering keen insights and suggestions for the script as it was blocked out. This circulation of input was possible because we had developed over the months a strong sense of mutual trust. We had truly become an ensemble.

The final draft of the script was probably finished around two weeks before opening. By tech, the actors were still on book. And yet, as if by a miracle, it all came together beautifully by opening night. Or was it a miracle? Perhaps it was the very nature of the intensity of the process that heightened all of our senses, made us hyperaware of each other and what needed to be done collectively to bring this piece of theater to life. And what an appropriate process this turned out to be for a play whose very subject matter concerned the birth of a Modernist, multi-perspective view of reality.

Central Works is a gutsy theater company with a gutsy process. Certainly it took guts to give this unproduced, twenty-six year old playwright his first world premiere. Especially given that the play was, four months before opening night, still just an idea in his head.

In other news, I am heading down south for a few days to check out the M83 / Los Angeles Philharmonic concert at Disney Hall among other things. As a result, lies like truth will probably be on hiatus until next Thursday. Until then…

Christopher Chen’s new play The Window Age, which I caught last night under the auspices of Central Works Theatre Company at the hallowed Berkeley City Club, takes the viewer into the inner reaches of the human psyche. Inspired by members of the Bloomsbury Group like Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey as well as other fin-de-siecle luminaries of art and the subconscious such as Pablo Picasso and Sigmund Freud, the drama offers us an unusual view of the many layers that underpin so-called concrete reality.

The drama tells the story of a downbeat Modernist writer — a dead ringer for Virginia Woolf by the name of Valerie Fox (earnestly played by Jan Zvaifler in baggy Woolfian skirt, equally shapeless cardigan and unkempt chignon) — and her bookish, First World War veteran husband Jeremy (a pursed Joel Mullenix.) When a famous psychoanalyst and friend of Valerie’s, Simon Floyd (Richard Frederick, who resembles Sigmund Freud only in name and vocation) arrives at the Fox’s home for a supposedly innocent drink and chat, the threesome find their thoughts and feelings spiraling inwards.

The playwright builds a fascinating wormhole-ridden world of competing realities. Daily life merges with dreams; dreams rub shoulders with memories; and memories tickle the shadows of half-remembered truths. But like other Woolf-inspired stream-of-consciousness works for the stage such as Jocelyn Clarke’s Room and Adel Edling Shank’s adaptation of To The Lighthouse (seen at Berkeley Rep a couple of years ago)  The Window Age feels at times less like a full-blown drama than it does a precocious MFA theatre studies thesis in Modernist structuring and thought. Chen’s ideas don’t quite coalesce. The idea of creating characters that stand-in for real life historical celebrities such as Freud and Woolf is startling. But the concept of the stand-in or doppelganger doesn’t feel germane to the storytelling. It sometimes feels superimposed and gimmicky.

Designed by Julia Morgan in the 1920s, the Berkeley City Club provides the ideal environment for this play which takes place in the early years of the 20th century in England. The olde worlde charm of the space with its patio doors, high ceilings, grand fireplace and ornate plasterwork easily brings the world of the Bloomsbury Set to mind. The three-dimensionality afforded by performing in-the-round further suggests Picasso and Woolf’s multi-perspective works.

But the labored, slightly arrythmic feel of director Gary Graves staging and the plummy affectation of the actors’ British accents unfortunately bogs the play down. I wonder whether Chen and his collaborators at Central Works could have more naturally explored the same ideas and material in a U.S. setting with Gertrude Stein and her entourage standing in for Woolf & Co’s?

With the arts being a tough sell to funders and policymakers of late, it’s been gratifying to hear that the NEA is now hard at work soliciting grant applications. Only a few weeks ago, things looked extremely hazardous for the national arts funding body, what with the Coburn amendment threatening $50 million in federal stimulus package funds from going to the arts.

If the Coburn amendment was finally defeated, it was largely thanks to the efforts of arts advocates across the country in making a strong case for the social impact that the arts have on people’s lives and writing countless letters and emails to persuade policymakers to stop this catastrophic amendment from passing.

At a free, three-hour seminar held by California Arts Advocates (CAA) and Arts Forum SF (AFSF) yesterday evening, I got an extremely important basic education in the art of arts advocacy.

Until I attended the seminar, led by Brad Erickson, president of CAA and co-founder of AFSF, Deborah Cullinan, co-founder of AFSF and CAA board member, and Karen Ames, communications consultant and arts advocate, I had thought of the term “advocacy” as something scary to do with knocking at politicians’ doors and camping out on the front porches of their homes.

The seminar taught me some important things I didn’t know about advocacy. I learned that there are many different ways to be an advocate, some of which I already do in my daily life — like writing this blog for example. Knowing what you want to achieve and figuring out the wide range of people / organizations to advocate to was another revelation I learned from the seminar. For example, policymakers aren’t the only people to lobby — local businesses, heads of granting agencies, local labor and arts leaders and political aides are other people to reach out to.

I also discovered that advocacy is a two-way/reciprocal thing. It’s not simply about asking for something; it’s also about seeing how the goal that you want to achieve as an advocate lends a hand to / stands in solidarity with the advocacy goals of other individuals and organizations.

The two biggest revelations of the seminar were to do with letter-writing and talking to politicians on both sides of the fence. I’ve been rather skeptical about the efficacy of writing letters to politicians in the past, even though I do it on occasion. I just can’t believe that they actually pay attention to what I’m saying. But the workshop leaders insisted that the correspondence that policymakers receive from constituents really does make a difference. The volume of letters and emails counts as much as the messages contained within them.

In terms of the second revelation of the evening, I was interested to hear that advocating to politicians who don’t support your wishes is a good thing to do. Never assume that just because someone doesn’t share your opinion about, say, the importance of art in getting crime off the streets, that they can’t be persuaded to support your proposal. Similarly, it’s bad to assume that a politician who usually comes out in support of the arts will automatically get behind your advocacy goals. Both sides of the fence need to be treated with equal respect and persuasion.

Finally, here’s the oddest bit of information I heard at the seminar: Even in these technological times, the best way to get a policymaker to pay attention to your request is by writing a hand-written letter and sending it via snail mail to his or her office.

I hope Brad, Karen and Deborah will run more workshops like this one in the future. This sort of training should be mandatory for anyone working or hoping to pursue a career in the arts. In fact, MFA arts programs should offer it as part of their core curricula.

An American writer friend of mine based in Berlin runs what he calls a “Stammtisch”. This German term isn’t easily translated into English, but what it literally means is “regular’s table” or “regular get-together” or “standing agreement to get together at the same table on regular occasions.”

In the most traditional sense, a Stammtisch is a table in a bar or restaurant which is reserved for the same guests at the same time every day or every week. There is usually a sign on the table saying “Stammtisch”. In the most traditional German beer halls there is a large brass plaque above the table with the word Stammtisch printed on it in bold lettering. There can be all kinds of Stammtisch. There are those simply for friends to drink together. Or those for specific interest groups – say a “philosophy discussion Stammtisch” or a “stamp collectors Stammtisch”. My friend in Berlin hosts a group of mostly expat journalists, writers and other creative types.

I think what the Bay Area performing arts community needs is its own Stammtisch. I’ve been banging on about this for quite a while to the cohorts with whom I organize theatre salons in San Francisco. A salon is a kind of stammtisch. But so far, our model hasn’t fit the bill because we only run salons sporadically and so far have a pretty random approach to inviting people. We also carefully plan out what topic we’re going to speak about each time and usually go to quite a bit of effort to organize food, drinks and even entertainment for each salon.

Judging by the emails I’ve received over the past few months in response to our salons (or news about our salons) Bay Area theatre artists are hungry for a stronger sense of community. I feel that this hunger is growing by the month. People want to get together to connect intellectually and spiritually. I’m not sure that the salon model, as it currently stands, is really maximizing its community-building, arts discussion-propagating potential. Plus the salons are often labor- and cost-intensive to organize.

Moving the theatre salon to a Stammtisch model would come with several advantages:

1. The regularity of the meeting would mean that ideas get discussed in more depth, over many weeks and months, rather than just as a one-off where we invariably only skim the surface of ideas.

2. The guest list could be as big or small as it wants to be. In other words, it wouldn’t need to be carefully curated. As long as at least one core Stammtisch/Salon organizer were present each time, anyone could come. Or not. As they please.

3. Building community takes time. Having a standing agreement to meet will help fuel a sense of community and engagement over the long haul.

4. The get togethers would feel more casual and less elitist if they were run in a friendly bar or restaurant and anyone within the performing arts community (including audience members) could come.

5. We’d bring steady business to the aformentioned friendly bar or restaurant and the organizing committee would save itself the considerable time and money involved in cooking/buying food and drink to feed upwards of 40 people etc.

The plan isn’t without its challenges though, as some of my salon colleagues have pointed out. But I think these challenges can be overcome:

1. A theatre director friend of mine and salon organizer doesn’t think that the Bay Area theatre community is big enough to keep a Stammtisch going. I don’t agree with this, however. There are thousands of people involved in the performing arts in this part of the world and a sturdy proportion of them, I imagine, would enjoy coming to at least one Stammtisch meeting to try it out. Some of these guinea pigs would come back. Time and time again, I bet. As such, I should think that getting a core group of attendees would be pretty easy.

2. Someone from the core organizing group would need to be present at every single get together. But with six people on the salon committee, I shouldn’t think it would be too hard for one or two of us to make it to meetings.

3. People might suffer from burn-out leading the event to fizzle after a few months. I think we’ve been getting some good momentum going on our salons. We should leverage this and keep the interest going by picking a lively spot to meet, putting together a mailing list to remind people that the weekly/bi-weekly/monthly Stammtisch is coming up, and helping to keep conversations going.

4. Choosing the right place to meet could be tricky. The location is extremely important. We would need a place that’s cozy yet big enough to accommodate large groups; lively, yet quiet enough for a discussion; friendly to theatre people; close to public transportation; in the vicinity of at least a few performance venues; open late enough so people can join the fray after seeing or being in a show; and offers good yet not-too-pricey food and drink — a late-night kitchen would be ideal.

5. Deciding how often to meet presents a challenge. Meeting every week could be too much, but meeting once a month could be too little. Trial and error will help us to figure out how often to get together. But too much trial and error might confuse people and potentially put them off coming altogether.

I don’t know if the Stammtisch idea will take off. But I think we could make it work if we go for it.

We’ve all been to those dreaded events — you know what I’m talking about. The evenings where you stand around in a gallery or theatre with a glass of cheap wine in your hands and a cube of rubbery, orange cheese, smiling and trying to look interested as some old windbag rambles on at you about their appreciation for Avant Garde Theatre or the summer they spent doing life drawing classes in Florence.

Things need not be that way. I attended a reception for a group of theatre artists over the weekend that for me pretty much epitomizes the right way to run this sort of event. The reception, held at the well-appointed though cozy home of a couple of Bay Area arts patrons, was held in honor of the winners of The Glickman Award — a prize given out each year by a group of theatre critics to the best new play to have received its world premiere in the Bay Area in the preceding calendar year. I’ve been to a few of these events in the past, but this time around, the event was particularly wonderful. Here are the elements that I think go into making an arts reception work:

1. Copious amounts of good things to drink and eat: You don’t have to spend a ton of money, but the soggy cheese plate is to be avoided. Our hosts got their finger food from Trader Joes and, being wine connoisseurs, opened their cellar to us all.

2. Short, lively speeches: There were a few speeches, but they were short, passionate and delivered off the cuff (as opposed to read aloud from written notes with accompanying Powerpoint slides.)

3. Entertainment people care about: An arts gathering should have some form of art involved, preferably performance-based and maybe with an interactive element thrown in for fun. In the case of the event I attended, the winners of the award got up and performed a few songs from their show. We all joined in on a chorus in the last song.

4. Unstuffy, relaxed hosting: Organizers should make people feel at home. They shouldn’t shoo people out at the end (unless it’s very late and guests are truly outstaying their welcome.) The hosts of our event were very gracious and generous. They didn’t make us feel like we had to get out when the official part of the proceedings were over.

5. A feeling of community: This last point is very important and largely explains why the Glickman party was such a success. It’s to do with getting the right combination of people in a room — people who know why they are there, want to contribute to the event, can move discussions in interesting directions and make newbies feel included and welcome. 

Last night, a group of about 25 Bay Area theatre community people got together at the Exit Theatre in San Francisco for the latest in an ongoing series of Theatre Salons. Organized by theatre director Mark Jackson, actress Beth Wilmurt, director John Wilkins, producer Kimball Wilkins, theatre critic Rob Avila and yours truly, the Salons aim to bring folks from disparate corners of the local performing arts landscape for wine, food and discussion on a topic of pressing cultural interest of the founding committee’s choice.

On this occasion, we decided to talk about the current elephant in the room — “theatre in the new, new, new economy” — seeing the deluge of stories of financial struggle bouncing around our community of late e.g. the recent death threats sent out by The Magic Theatre (artistic director, Loretta Greco, pictured above) and Shakespeare Santa Cruz, the broader issue of dwindling theatre coverage in the press etc, as a jumping off point for a wider discussion about what is happening to our little eco-system. We specifically wanted to mull over a few questions such as: Do these close-to-the-point-of-no-return theatre companies and newspapers matter? What if some of them vanish? Is our community truly essential to the cultural life of the Bay Area? Is there a difference between a vital organization and the vitality of the general scene? Or are we in need of some loss, the cultural equivalent of a controlled burn?

The fittingly downsized format of this recession-time Salon (fewer participants, smaller room, snacks for purchase from the Exit Cafe bar rather than a buffet/sit-down meal catered by the organizers) meant that the discussion was more focused than usual. We didn’t end up digging as deeply as I would have liked — to do this would require more regular meetings with similar participants showing up every time, I think. But we covered quite a lot of ground from a breath perspective. I was especially impressed with peoples’ openness, strong sense of engagement and willingness to say what they felt without worrying about tarnished egos.

What was interesting in particular was the passion with which participants approached the topic of The Magic Theatre. With the exception of a few dissenting voices, nearly everyone in the room had said that they hadn’t seen anything at the flagship new play theatre in around a decade that they thought was any good. Yet despite the negative attitudes surrounding the theatre’s artistic output, most Salonites believed that the disappearance of the Magic — if it were to go under for good as threatened a couple of months ago — would be extremely detrimental to the local ecosystem in terms of such things as lost jobs and even fewer mid-sized houses.

This attitude extended to feelings about other local arts bastions such as ACT and the Datebook section of the beleaguered San Francisco Chronicle. Somehow, there’s a deep attachment to these institutions, despite questions surrounding the strength of the services they provide.