Archives for 2009

There are a few elements in Irish dramatist Enda Welsh’s play The Walworth Farce — currently on tour in the US in a Druid Theatre production directed by Mikel Murfi — that might confuse or perplex American audiences. The reference to fish fingers (commonly known as fish sticks here) is one that leaps out.

After last night’s performance at Zellerbach Playhouse in Berkeley was over, however, I ran into a British stage director friend who’s been working on this side of the pond for the last three decades and we engaged in a short but lively discussion about the play and, more broadly, the subject of farce in America.

The director thinks that comedies like The Walworth Farce don’t work out here because people don’t understand farce like Europeans do. He says there’s a tradition of slapstick in the U.S., but not farce, which is why, he claims, productions of plays by the likes of Martin McDonagh aren’t as great in the US as they are in the Europe.

To illustrate his point, he mentioned’s recent production of McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore, which he said was inferior to the London production which he experienced. The reason the London production was better, he said, was because the actors bought into the crazy circumstances of the play lock, stock and barrel and took the audiences along with them. They were completely immersed in the absurdity of the scenario. Whereas, in the States, he said, audiences and production teams can’t quite go there. As a result, the actors on stage in Berkeley Rep’s Inishmore were too “knowing” — they were constantly indicating that they knew how how absurd the world of the play was through facial and body gestures as well as through the way they said some of their lines, therefore they created a bit of a comfortable distance between themselves and the play.

The difference between farce and slapstick is a subtle one. In one online dictionary, farce is defined as, “a light dramatic work in which highly improbable plot situations, exaggerated characters, and often slapstick elements are used for humorous effect.” Slapstick is defined as, “a boisterous form of comedy marked by chases, collisions, and crude practical jokes.”

I don’t have European productions of McDonagh plays with which to compare the ones I’ve seen in the US. By and large, I’ve found myself to be completely immersed in the farcical worlds of these American-produced experiences though. So I’m not sure I wholeheartedly agree with my director friend, though he raises a fascinating point.

I actually think this nation is great at farce. The Matt Damon movie, The Informant! is steeped in farce, as are stage works by some of our local playwrights like Peter Sinn Nachtrieb and Aaron Loeb. Anyone who’s seen productions of Nachtrieb’s Hunter Gatherers or Boom, or Loeb’s Abraham Lincoln’s Big Gay Dance Party will know what I mean. And wasn’t the Bush Administration pure farce?

If a comet were to crash into the Earth, it would make quite a dent.

But in director Ryan Rillette’s production of Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s play Boom, this colossal event elicits more of a whimper than a bang on stage. This Bay Area premiere staging of the comedy which centers on a young biologist’s madcap plan to save the human race by Marin Theatre Company misses a great opportunity to rock the audience’s socks.

There are all kinds of ways directors, designers and actors can create a huge explosion on stage. The scenery could collapse, people could smack into each other or physically hurtle into the wings. Soot, cement dust or water could rain down. There could be blood. The lights could go crazy, as could the sound.

What we get in this production of Boom instead are some malfunctioning lights, a couple of bits of scenery coming unhinged and two actors collapsing (which they do throughout the show anyway.)

I hear from friends who saw versions of the play in New York and Seattle, that those productions made much more of the comet’s impact.

How would you stage this scene?

Artists are becoming very savvy about marketing themselves these days. Everyone’s out there on FaceBook and MySpace and Twitter sending out news about their work and related upcoming events to generate interest and hopefully sell tickets.

So it’s a little disconcerting to hear about artists who are not only unwilling to promote themselves but seemingly against the idea.

An exasperated arts presenter shared with me a story about a group of musicians who had done nothing to help her promote a concert she was hosting for the group at her venue. The group has no mailing list and no web presence. They didn’t put the word out at all. Consequently, there were 40 seats filled in a venue that seats 450 for their concert the other day. What’s worse is that many of the people who came to see the concert were invited guests of the artists on stage who all expected complimentary tickets.

Luckily, the group isn’t typical of the artists that the presenter brings in. But it seems as if she needs to adopt a different strategy vis-a-vis this particular set of artists and others who may be equally or somewhat reticent about pitching in on the marketing front. If I were in her position, I’d probably do the following:

1. Allow each artist only two comps.

2. Tell them that they cannot perform at the venue again until they get a mailing list together and some kind of web presence, even if it’s just a free blog on Blogger.

3. Tell them the audience needs to consist of at least 100 paying customers in order for them to see any return from the box office split.

…is it possible to walk down the street swinging a yoga mat and be accosted by a homeless person pushing a Safeway cart in grimy clothes who says: “Pilates?” by way of introduction.

“No, yoga,” I said to the man, smiling. I gave him a dollar. Then we went our separate ways.

San Francisco is probably the most sexually tolerant city in the world. There are few places where people can walk around in nothing but socks and sneakers with bells dangling from their privates without getting arrested and San Francisco is one of them. Ironically, the fact that the city is so gay-friendly makes the latest work by the luminescent British physical theatre company DV8 so disturbing: It’s eye-opening in this lovely, uber-liberal, open-minded bubble we live in to be reminded of just how much anti-gay sentiment still persists in the world.

Based on verbatim interviews and vox pops with people in the UK about their feelings towards homosexuality, To Be Straight With You delves into the personal experiences of gays and lesbians in many different communities and the hatred that society continues to have for what it considers to be a deviant “lifestyle” choice.

The production, directed by Lloyd Newson, begins straightforwardly enough, with little physical movement and a catalogue of verbal abuse culled from interviews directed against gays and lesbians. As the 80-minute-long production moves along, the physical side of the performance builds and builds through short episodic scenes that push a wide variety of movement vocabularies to their limits. In one of the most memorable scenes, a gay teenager skips rope with the grace of a hummingbird while describing the difficulty of coming out to his parents. The contrast between the performer’s sustained bout of “extreme skipping” while talking with the ease of someone at rest is virtuostic and dazzling. The mad caricature of the idea of childhood created by the skipping is made sober by the down-to-earth talking.

Meanwhile, in another scene, an Indian muslim attempts to reconcile his religion and marriage with the fact that he has quiet relationships with men on the side. The performer’s monologue is set to an amazing duet between two male performers featuring movement that pushes classical Indian dance technique to the extreme. In this scene, the monologist utters a line which to my mind captures the core tension at the heart of the work: “It is part of my nature but it is unnatural.” This duality is underscored by the friction between the flowing, organic choreography and text of To Be Straight With You and its more freakish,violent and cartoonish side.

The visual and aural elements of the show, which include some very snazzy effects such as a transparent projected globe which one performer manipulates in a lecture-style to demonstrate the vast swathes of the globe where being gay will get you a prison sentence or worse, further arrest the senses. But DV8’s presence in San Francisco for the first time in 12 years is electrifying not just from an aesthetic perspective. We might be living in 21st century San Francisco, but attitudes towards sexual orientation are still Medieval in many parts of the world. And I’m pretty certain that just below the surface even of this gay-friendly town, lurks intolerance and hatred.

Here’s a list of qualities that British theatre productions seem to think they need to possess in order to “succeed” in the U.S. market:

1. A cast of actors, most of them speaking in middle-class Home Counties accents with just one or two “regional”-accented actors (e.g. a token Welshie or Scouser) thrown in for color.

2. Period costumes.

3. Live music, preferably played on period instruments.

4. Live animals on stage or beautifully-constructed puppets.

5. A bare-bones approach to scenery (it’s all about the actors after all).

6. Shakespeare (or references to Shakespeare if not the performance of one of the Bard’s plays.)

7. At least one comical septuagenarian actor with a neatly-trimmed beard.

8. Microphones.

There’s something to be said for the fact that retreat centres try to get the people who visit them to unplug for the duration of their stay. That’s the whole point of going on a retreat — to get away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. But following an experience I had during a recent visit to the Esalen Institute at Big Sur, I’m wondering whether this attitude can go too far.

I was sitting quietly in the dining room eating lunch while reading a book when one of the staff members at the Institute rudely came over and told me to put my book away. The reason? The book I was reading wasn’t made of paper — I was reading it on my iPhone and Esalen has a rule about not using computers at mealtimes.

I have great respect for the anti-laptop edict in general. Who wants to eat meals in a sea of computers with people clacking at keyboards, yakking on skype, IMing on FaceBook, checking their email and putting up screens between themselves and others? It’s hardly very zen.

But if reading a book is allowed, as well it should be (and it is allowed at Esalen — no one told me off when I whipped a paperback out at dinner the same day) then why should you have to read the words the old-fashioned way?

As more and more people start digesting text via Kindles, iPhones and other electronic devices, Esalen might have to take a less hardline stance on mealtime regulations vis-a-vis electronics. After all, reading and eating at the same time is one of life’s great pleasures.

“I’ve Got Nothing”, the crowd-pleasing, “crowd-sourced” song created by the YouTube community under the auspices of four British teens, demonstrates just how easy it is to mobilize large numbers of people to create the kind of pop music product for free (well, for nothing but sweat equity) that was traditionally produced by a handful of professionals in a proper studio and with a sizable budget.

According to the BBC Chartjackers website (through which the project is being developed) the song came into being through the following process:

“The lyrics of the song are made up of YouTube comments, compiled into a song by another YouTuber. The lyrics were released and then YouTubers wrote a melody for the lyrics, and we picked our favourite. We held YouTube auditions via video response to pick the band, found the producer of the song through YouTube, and the music video is made up of literal interpretations of the lyrics, clapping and singing along, by YouTubers!”

I am pretty impressed with the result, I must admit. For a song that’s been created by piecing together shards culled from the flotsam and jetsam of the Internet, it’s a remarkably coherent piece of music. The “I got plenty o’nuttin'” / “one meatball”-type theme of the song is an old one. But it’s one that everyone feels strongly about in the current economic climate. In the sunny key of G major, the music skips along, making the listener want to get up and dance. The tune is simple to sing. It mostly moves step by step and the refrain is catchy. The structure is a tried and true pop formula. There’s even a short guitar break and a bridge passage. The song is sung as a duet by two sweet-voiced teenage Brits (a girl and boy) and generates extra goodwill by virtue of including a chorus of YouTubers singing along and clapping in the final refrain.

As saccharine as the thing is — the video, which alternates between images of the singers skipping around London sharing ice-cream sundaes and cuddling an oversized teddy bear and snippets of YouTube footage, takes the sappy lyrics and boppy beats over the edge — it gets right under your skin. I’d be quite surprised if “I’ve Got Nothing” doesn’t make it into the higher echelons of the British pop charts as well as raises quite a bit of money for charity — the project’s two goals are to get into the Top 40 and generate funds for Children in Need.

I wonder if the same process could be applied as successfully to, say, a string quartet, opera aria, or piece for gamelan / steel drum band?

Arts organizations try many different tactics to get young people through their doors, from offering low-cost tickets and organizing party nights with DJs to doing in-schools programs and partnering with other organizations that are more closely tapped into youth culture like capoeira clubs and skateboarding stores.

SF Playhouse has come up with what seems to me like a particularly straightforward way of inspiring the next generation of theatre goers. The company’s new “Rising Stars” program provides sophomores and juniors from five different schools the opportunity to each see four plays from SF Playhouse’s 2009-2010 season.

The funding structure behind the program makes a lot of sense: A group of SF Playhouse’s regular subscribers (around 75 of them at the moment) each pledged an extra $100 on top of their annual subscription fees to cover the cost of one student’s four tickets. In addition, the program director (SF Playhouse Lindsay Krumbein, who donates her time to the project) provides curricula for pre- and post-play lessons that focus on anything from theatrical devices to theme to set design.

The first group of students – from Impact Academy in Hayward and School of the Arts (SOTA) in San Francisco — attended a performance of SF Playhouse’s World Premiere The First Day of School on October 27. In addition to Impact and SOTA, Jefferson (South SF), Oakland School for the Arts, and Oakland Tech will join the program this year.

After each show, the students are expected to write a letter to their donor describing their experience with the play. At the end of the year, participants will all meet when the theatre gathers everyone together for a closing celebration. The company’s goal is for each student to then take part in a second year of Rising Stars, seeing a total of eight plays in two seasons at SF Playhouse. The company hopes that the project will motivate the young people to develop a personal interest in theatre and seek out additional opportunities for theatre attendance and participation.

SF Playhouse producing director Susi Damilano told me the following about the impetus to start the program and the impact so far: “We started the program because we love kids. I have lots of nieces highschool age and none have gone to theatre before we began ours. And they LOVE it! We have been wanting to find an affordable way to get a program going and finally realized subscribers might be interested. Then came Lindsay who is donating time to put structure around the program. We hope to find grants to pay her, fund bart for the kids, and even increase numbers. The kids were so joyful, it was worth every penny.”

Whether the students on the program end up being regular theatre goers remains to be seen. The SOTA students are already arts-centric, so I guess SF Playhouse already has a willing audience. But what personally appeals to me about this program is that it seems highly sustainable. The company is already producing high quality work and the funding model is simple: it draws on an already-established subscriber base and asks those subscribers to chip in a reasonable amount of money – 75 subscribers at $100 apiece generates $7,500. The theatre normally charges $40 per ticket, so the program covers close to 200 tickets, which is a good start. Given the paucity of arts education in schools around here right now, Rising Stars seems like it couldn’t be more timely. It would be great to see other arts companies that have strong, established subscriber bases following SF Playhouse’s lead.

Three Bay Area-based dramatists had the following to say in response to this question:

Trevor Allen: “I don’t chose to direct my own work anymore. I have been very fortunate to have been able to work with some amazing directors who “get” my weird plays (Kent Nicholson, Rob Melrose etc.) However, I also don’t think there should be an immediate negative reaction to a playwright directing their own work. As long as they know what they are doing–directing a play that they happen
to have written and not rewriting their play while trying to direct it at the same time. If they know the craft of directing, then more power to them!”

Mark Jackson: “As a playwright who quite often directs his own work, I of course think it’s a good thing. But of course it’s not for everyone. Some playwrights also have a knack for directing, and some do not. The garden variety con that usually gets mentioned is that a playwright would not have the proper objectivity to direct his or her own work. Again, I think this depends on the person and as a generalization does not fly as anything more than a seemingly logical theory. The garden variety pro is that, as the playwright, one has an invaluably intimate understanding of the play. Really, though, I think the question of whether or not playwrights should direct their own work depends on the individual, and so as a general question it is irrelevant. Should THIS playwrigt direct his or her own work? That is a question to ask, I think.”

Peter Sinn Nachtrieb: “I haven’t directed my own work since college, except for a few readings here and there. I think it’s an admirable skill to be able to wear both hats at the same time and i think leads to the generation of work that can have a very strong point of view. For myself, especially when a play is new, I really enjoy just focusing on the writing, though I will give extensive notes and observations to a director. But I like not having to be the one responsible for managing those notes and tech and actor process. As “just the playwright” I can worry about my own part of the puzzle and then be able to take notes from my perspective . I also like how a director that’s not me can expand my work and insert their own awesomeness. I like the wiggle room within a play’s process, the particular combination of bodies in the room that ultimately shape how a final product will look. That being said, never say never. But I think if I do ever direct my work again in the future, I think I would pick a piece that I feel like I’ve really finished writing.”

A bit about what each of these playwrights are up to right now:

Trevor’s drama The Creature is playing at The Thick House under the auspices of Black Box Theatre Company.

Mark is currently in Germany co-directing a group-devised adaptation of Heinrich Heine’s Deutschland, Ein Wintermärchen, commissioned by Schauspiel Frankfurt.

Marin Theatre Company is about to stage Peter’s Boom. Peter is in Bloomington, Indiana right now visiting another production of the play at Cardinal Stage. In fact there are multiple productions of his plays going on right now around the country. Read Peter’s blog to find out more.

Finessing a sudden change in mood from comedy to tragedy and visa versa in the theatre is a challenging feat. I was reminded of this fact last night at a performance of Dominic Dromgoole’s Globe Theatre production of Loves Labours Lost at Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley. The production is currently being presented under the auspices of Cal Performances as part of The Globe’s current US tour. 

Shakespeare’s sophomoric 1598 comedy of love and wordplay has one of the trickiest temperature shifts in the dramatic cannon, when, in the final part of the play, the celebratory mood that pervades almost the entirety of the proceedings is suddenly broken by the announcement of the death of the Princess of France’s father. Managing the about-turn from ecstasy to depression effectively can make or break a production of the play. To my mind, the change has to be extreme. If it feels half-hearted, the ensuing denouement and final weird song about the cuckoo leave the audience feeling puzzled rather than floored.

Unfortunately, the temperature bumped rather than plummeted in the hands of Dromgoole and his British cast. I felt a change in atmosphere in the room, but it felt relatively tepid, like an English summer day.

The scene before the shift was marked by an eruption of movement and hilarity that felt inorganic to the rest of the production, as if the director were purposefully setting up the big moment, rather than letting it catch us unawares. Actors ran around the stage for no apparent reason, and threw bits of baguette around.

When the messenger walked on stage to deliver the news, he stood out front so we could see him clearly. The cast took a while to notice him, with the princess herself being the last to stop bombarding the stage with bread. This created a lovely bit of dramatic irony, as the princess was the last to hear the news — news that concerned her before anyone else on stage.

But somehow, the timing was off and the messenger’s proclamation felt flat and stagey. The Princess’ grief seemed real enough. (Michelle Terry is a wonderful performer — I found her haughty-gamine Princess to be completely engaging throughout thanks to her lively physicality and sonorous speaking voice.) But the entire moment fizzled and the final cuckoo song, though quirky and melancholy, did not carry the weight of tragedy. The entire last 15 minutes of the production seemed more like a balloon slowly letting out air than one that went pop.

I wonder if Dromgoole might improve the staging of this final scene by listening to Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, Mozart’s Don Giovanni and pretty much any of Beethoven’s symphonies? Mozart, Mahler and Beethoven are masters of sudden mood changes. Dromgoole could learn a thing or two from these guys.