lies like truth

Amanda Ameer’s terrific post about classical music concert programs and related resources that may or may not help concertgoers get a handle on what they’re about to experience in the concert hall recalled a similar conversation I had with a director friend a few days ago regarding theatre programs.

Until this friend asked me for my views about what constitutes an effective program, I hadn’t given the idea much thought. Which is kind of embarrassing, considering the fact that I attend several theatrical productions a week and must have read and amassed thousands of programs over the years.

So what kinds of information should a program for a play contain beyond the usual cast list, biographies, roster of sponsors, ads by local restaurants and call for donations? And, while we’re on the subject, should all of these standard elements be included at all? Is a program in the traditional sense of the word even relevant today?

One thing that theatre programs tend to include and which strikes me as totally unnecessary, is a letter from the artistic and/or executive director of the producing company. These letters are meant to be welcoming and informative, but they’re usually completely dull, being loaded with panegyrics and generalizations. The AD/MD thanks the donors (do donors need to be thanked in the program? Surely a nice dinner / free theatre tickets / a brass nameplate on a seat-back says it all?) and pays bland lip service to the artistic team. Even worse, he or she might take a stab at summarizing the Big Themes of the play and talk about how they relate to the world we live in. It’s all a bit of a waste of space really.

Then there’s the production director or playwright’s essay about the play. Some directors/playwrights choose to leave this out entirely while others like to spell out their thinking in detail. If the director/playwright has done her job well, then the play should really speak for itself. Program notes that go to great lengths to underline the main themes and metaphors etc. seem pointless to me, though it’s always interesting, as an afterthought, to see to what extent the play fulfills the intentions written down in the program.

On the other hand, it can be useful and entertaining to have some pointers as an audience member. This is where dramaturgical research can come in handy. I like to look at tangential material such as paintings and photographs, websites, newspaper articles, poems, essays by philosophers/scientists/sociologists etc that went some way towards informing the production. These “third party” sources provide theatregoers with the tools to make the thematic connections themselves. They also provide some insight into the production process.

Which leads me to my next question: How much of this kind of information should — or even can — be delivered in the form of a traditional, stapled, paper program? Different theatre companies are experimenting with alternative ways of imparting information that might help enrich a theatregoer’s experience. At Shotgun Players in Berkeley, for example, the lobby is transformed for each production. Before the play, during intermission and afterwards, audience members can wander around the building, enjoying the “exhibition” of fascinating visual and written materials related (albeit often in a tangential way) to the spirit and substance of the play.

Companies are increasingly putting information of this type online, going well beyond the remit of traditional paper-bound program notes. Web-based video/audio interviews with the main artistic collaborators, blogs, production photographs and other materials provide a valuable resource for theatregoers.

The more I think about it, the more programs in the traditional sense of the word, seem obsolete. I like the idea of enabling audience members to upload podcasts with useful information such as interviews with the lead actor and director to listen to on their way to the theatre, or partnering with local radio to deliver this information over the airwaves.

Better still, wouldn’t it be great to receive an email from a theatre company the morning of the day I’m going to see a play, with all the useful information mentioned above included in it? That way, I could peruse and listen to the program notes on my laptop (Kindle, iPhone, Blackberry or whatever) at my leisure prior to and after attending the play.

Upon final analysis, maybe it would be a good thing if paper programs disappeared altogether. A simple one-page cast/production team list handed out at the start of the show to those that really want it should suffice. We’d save lots of trees, for one thing. Interns wouldn’t have to spend entire days collating and stapling pages together, for another.

Here are five upcoming Bay Area arts events to warm the body, mind and spirit during this particularly chilly January:

Over the weekend, I was introduced to what strikes me as a powerful and highly entertaining educational tool to help teachers turn elementary and high school kids as well as undergraduates onto Macbeth. Created in San Francisco by two Stanford lecturers – Jeremy Sabol and Greg Watkins — who teach the so-called Great Books class, This is Macbeth is a terrific, feature-length DVD about Shakespeare’s phantasmagoric tragedy of revenge. The film centers on a smartly-written television “interview” between a host — the 16th century historian Ralph Holinshed (Shakespeare’s source for the drama) – earnestly played by Sabol, and various characters from Shakespeare’s play.

Over the course of a couple of hours, we watch Holinshed quiz Macbeth, his wife, Banquo and King Duncan about the motivations for their actions, feelings regarding their relationships and the play’s turn of events. At one point, for example, Holinshed asks Duncan (played by an affable, blustering Ken Ruta) about his rationale for promoting Malcolm as next in line for the throne over Macbeth. Elsewhere, Holinshed asks Macbeth and Banquo (Mark Anderson Philips and Liam Vincent in a fine double-act) about their reactions to the witches. He also quizzes Lady Macbeth (a coldly poised Allison Jean White) about her lack of scruples on the night of Duncan’s murder. The actors all respond in character, but use contemporary language mixed with occasional quotes from the play itself.

Interspersed with the interviews are performances of key scenes from the play. Funny songs composed by Austin Zumbro and spoof TV commercials promoting the likes of “Out, Damn Spot!” stain remover and a Medieval weapons supplier provide a delightfully irreverent way to recap the plot and a simple device to break up the long interview scenes. A ticker tape news bulletin slides across the bottom of the screen throughout the interviews with quotes from famous Shakespeare scholars and philosophers about the play.  There’s something slightly odd about the fact that the characters don’t seem to know how the plot progresses beyond the present moment in which they’re being interviewed, and yet are still able to quote from Shakespeare’s text when asked to do so by Holinshed. But it’s easy to forgive this quirk because of the movie’s overall sense of fun, brilliant casting and seamless pace. The actors perform the scenes in a straightforward yet affecting fashion in simple modern street clothes. In short, This is Macbeth is an unstuffy, entertaining and highly useful educational tool. I’m not in school and I got a kick out of it. Ultimately, This is Macbeth is fun viewing for anyone who’s interested in theatre or Shakespeare.

“Greg and I teach together in a residential Great Books program at Stanford (the program is called Structured Liberal Education, and about 100 freshmen take it each year), and we are constantly trying to generate enthusiasm and interest in great works of literature and philosophy,” said Sabol in response to an email I sent him after I’d watched the DVD. “We thought we might reach a broader audience with a movie. We wanted to make something that would draw students towards the text, as opposed to replacing the experience of reading or watching the play.”

The producers are currently at work on developing a similar DVD for Hamlet, which will hopefully be filmed this Summer, with Romeo and Juliet following suite.

It’s a strange and uncomfortable thing when you find out about an event months or even years after the fact. Over the weekend, a friend of mine in Los Angeles forwarded me a link from the New York Times. The link led to an obituary of Jason Shinder, (pictured left) who died last April at age of 52. I guess my friend had found out about his passing very belatedly too. I was aghast at the news, feeling an icky combination of belated mourning and annoyance at myself for finding out about his passing so late. So much for our networked world.

Most people know Shinder as a poet. He served as Allen Ginsberg’s assistant and went on to author two volumes of poetry, Every Room We Ever Slept In (Sheep Meadow Press, 1993) and Among Women (Graywolf Press, 2001) as well as edit many anthologies including The Poem That Changed America: ‘Howl’ Fifty Years Later (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006).

Other people know Shinder as the director of arts and humanities for the Y.M.C.A. Shinder founded the Y’s national arts and humanities program in the 1990s, including the Y.M.C.A. National Writer’s Voice, one of the country’s largest networks of literary-arts centers.

A small group of people, of which I am one, remember Jason in a third way — as the head of the Sundance Arts Journalism Institute. As a recipient, from 2002 to 2004, of this terrific but sadly short-lived Sundance Institute program aimed at developing the skills of arts journalists on the west coast, I was frequently in contact with Jason. I never quite found out why this East Coast poetry guy was so interested in working with a bunch of arts journalists on the west coast. He was always rather evasive and never really answered my questions. He ate very little and seemed painfully shy. I had no clue about his life outside of the program, let alone that he was suffering from lymphoma and leukemia.

I owe Jason a great debt for exposing me to so many wonderful people, places and ideas. As a result of winning the Sundance Fellowship, I attended the Sundance Summer Film Lab (the other picture above is of my group at the Lab) the Sundance Festival (twice) and the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference. I met and subsequently became friends with many brilliant writers. I found a couple of mentors. I expanded my ideas and goals. None of the above would have been possible without Jason.

I feel like an idiot discovering the news so late. To whom do I send flowers?

Postscript: A couple of days ago, I received an email from someone who found themselves in a similar predicament with regards to Jason’s passing. Here’s Barbara Hager’s email message (thanks, Barbara, for agreeing to let me share your thoughts about Jason on my blog):

Hello Chloe,

All the best,
Barbara.

Contrary to what you might think from the title of this entry, this isn’t another post about Julie Andrews. The spooonful in the title refers to a fantastic, free online newsletter which introduces recipients to one emerging artist or band each week.

The service, which offers musical tastes of bands and artists working in such genres as alternative, dance, electronic, folk, hip-hop and rock, launched in May 2008. I’ve been very impressed with it in the couple of months that I’ve been a subscriber.

What makes Spooonful different to other online music missives is its minimalism. In the way that Google‘s plain, uncluttered interface drew in Web users when the search engine debuted 10 years ago, Spooonful’s offering of just one musical act per issue gives people a chance to digest the music properly. Our attention is fully focused on the one featured artist or band on offer — we don’t feel bamboozled by being offered multiple different things to listen to and read about.

The formula is straightforward: Each week, subscribers receive an email in their inbox comprising of the following information of the week’s selected artist or band: their name, where they come from, the musical genre(s) they work in and what other more famous acts they resemble. Then, following an audio link that enables subscribers to hear one of the artist’s tracks (as well as download the track and/or create a cellphone ring tone out of it should they wish to go that far) the newsletter goes into some succinct but intelligently-written detail about what makes the act so special and their back story. The bulletin ends with some links to help users find the act elsewhere in cyberspace (eg the artist’s website / myspace page / entry on Wikipedia / recording company etc) and tour information.

As a result of Spooonful, I’ve been turned on to a number of new musical acts lately, one of which, a new wave outfit from New York called The Virgins, I’m keeping a close eye on. The clean look of the website and its easy-to-digest format prevents overload, which makes the service’s name perfectly chosen. What I’d like to see is the service expanding to other musical forms like classical, jazz and world music, or perhaps similar services popping up for these other genres elsewhere in cyberspace. Perhaps they exist already in this user-friendly format. If they do, please send the information my way. I’d love to hear more.

Macbeth and Project Runway seem like an odd pairing for a double-bill. But yesterday evening, the Berkeley-based theatre company Shotgun Players followed up a New Year’s Eve performance of Macbeth with a spoof version of the popular television fashion show.

Mark Jackson’s production starring Craig Marker as Shakespeare’s over-ambitious thane offsets the play’s sick political soul with slick surfaces. The actors all strut about in designer duds, their messy guts spilling onto the on the catwalk-shaped stage both literally and figuratively throughout.

As such, the company’s choice of post-show, New Year’s Eve entertainment — “Project Macway” — made bizarre sense. After a few glasses of champagne, audience members were invited to submit descriptions of their outfits to the evening’s MC (one of the actors from the show). The MC then called each wannabe fashion model up to the stage for a sashay down the runway. A panel of judges consisting of Jackson, Shotgun’s artistic director Patrick Dooley and the production’s costume designer Valera Coble then selected the prize winners. The contestants ranged from a middle-aged woman who flaunted the paradox of Berkeley living by waving the keys to her Prius in the air while caressing the neck of her real fur coat, to a young man in a fedora and sharp suit who called himself Derek Zoolander and proceeded to do an astute impression of the male model of the same name played by Ben Stiller in the fashion industry satire Zoolander.

If “Project Macway” didn’t quite see out 2008 with a bang, it at least provided a lighthearted, albeit slightly limp commentary on Jackson’s take on Shakespeare’s play. If only Shotgun had rustled up a parade of strapping, young Macbeth lookalikes strutting their stuff in sporrans and kilts. Then, I’m certain, the catwalk would have truly come to life.

Just like midnight screenings of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, Sing Along Sound of Music has become an international cultural institution over the past few years. From the bags of silly props that can’t be seen in the dark like a card with a question mark which you’re meant to hold up during the lyric “how do you solve a problem like Maria?” and fake flowers to wave during “Eidelweiss”, to the fancy dress contest before the film starts, the Sing Along experience basically follows the same formula all over the world.

It’s interesting to read reports of Sing Along screenings in different cities and compare them to the one I experienced a couple of evenings ago in San Francisco. Despite the fact that the audiences are different each night, the evening seems to unfold in a startlingly similar way wherever you are. People letting off the party poppers meant for the kiss scene between the Baron and Maria at inappropriate times, hecklers, entire families dressing up girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes/brown paper packages tied up with string etc are all part of the SASM experience no matter whether you’re catching the show in London, Sydney or New York.

But there are some aspects of SASM that I think must be particular to different geographical settings. A friend of mine who came with me to see the show at The Castro Theatre in San Francisco talked about its appeal to hen (aka bachelorette) parties. This strikes me as a particularly British phenomenon. If there were any groups of drunken, tiara-wearing lasses in the audience at The Castro, they didn’t make their presence felt. In England, it seems that SASM caters specially to such groups — even offering them free champagne.

Of course in The Castro, one of the world’s most prominently gay neighborhoods, SASM has an entirely different feel. The line “I do throw some rather gay parties” got a huge cheer, as did “follow every rainbow.” “What’s the matter with all you gloomy pussies?” elicited an auditorium-wide laugh. Until now, I didn’t understand what it is about Julie Andrews that makes her a gay icon. Now I do.

A week ago or so, I posted a blog entry about Shakespeare Santa Cruz. The coastal Shakespeare Festival was faced with raising $300,000 within a few days or face ceasing operations immediately.

Today, I’m sending out another SOS, this time for another venerable Northern California theatre company — the Magic Theatre. Here is the ultimatum as expressed in the distressed company’s cry-for-help email: “Now in the midst of a staff shutdown, Magic may be forced to cancel the remainder of its season and close for good. To keep our doors open we must raise $350,000 by January 9, 2009. This will allow us to bring back our staff, go on with our season, and remain responsible to our creditors.”

It’s interesting that both of these organizations recently acquired new artistic directors among much media hooplah and the announcement of Bold New Artistic Horizons. I wonder how much information Marco Barriccelli, who joined Shakespeare Santa Cruz a year ago, and Loretta Greco, who arrived at The Magic in the summer, knew about the financial situations of their respective organizations when they signed their artistic director contracts? Were they kept in the dark, at least to some degree, about the bareness of the theatres’ coffers when they signed on? Or did they somehow imagine that the red marks on the accounting ledgers would miraculously disappear in the wake of high quality productions, euphoric reviews and packed houses?

I ask, because no one in their right mind would uproot their lives from the East Coast as both of these highly-regarded directors did and travel across the country to watch their professional lives take this kind of wretched turn.

Thankfully, Shakespeare Santa Cruz has earned a reprieve, thanks to the donations of more than 2,000 individuals who answered the company’s call-to-arms. I’m certain that the Magic will also be able to stave off the Grim Reaper. No one wants to see this seminal 42-year-old company disappear.

My heart goes out to Greco and her staff. Here’s hoping the Magic’s new and highly talented artistic director isn’t forced to pack up and head back East anytime soon.

If you want to donate to the Magic’s emergency campaign, click here.

I think I lost quite a few listeners when I played three movements from Olivier Messiaen’s 1935 organ work La Nativite du Seigneur on my KALW radio show the other day. At least, several of my friends who tuned in to hear the show weren’t impressed by the French composer’s ponderous, mystical meditation on the nativity. “That was catchy,” said one of them, sarcastically. “Was there something wrong with your CD player?” another one asked.

In a sense, I kind of empathize with their feelings. The piece isn’t exactly easy listening. And the recording I aired on the radio featuring the composer himself playing the organ of the Holy Trinity church in Paris where he served as “organist titulaire” for more than 40 years, wasn’t very high quality. The recording was made around 50 years ago and the instrument is almost a quarter-tone flat. Still, the guest I invited on to my show for a live interview was just about to perform La Nativite in recital and I was enough entranced by Messiaen’s take on it to broadcast it near the top of my two-hour show that night.

But now that I’ve heard the piece performed live, I can full appreciate the wonders within it. Jeffrey Smith, head of music at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco (and the guest on my radio broadcast the other day) performed Messiaen’s piece in recital at the Cathedral yesterday afternoon.

I don’t think I’ve listened to an organ piece more carefully and with such rapture in my life. The music hit me on a really visceral level. The sparkling flurries of treble notes in movement VI, “Les Anges” made my head ring. I felt like I was watching snowflakes skitter down a window pane. My skin prickled with every overtone that pinged like a sharp point of light in the night sky throughout the spiraling third movement, “Desseins Eternels”. And when the reeds of the pedal descended with an epic growl in the final movement, “Dieu Parmi Nous”, before ending with a crashing, glorious major chord, I felt like I were being physically stretched in all directions, my feet pulled deep into the grown and my head way up towards the rafters of the cathedral.

Part of the pleasure of listening was also intellectual. Thanks to the judicious publication of some of the composer’s notes about his composition in the program, I was easily able to pick out particular themes, hear where raga-inspired melodies rubbed shoulders with Bach-like cadences, and feel the tension between major-minor scales and Messiaen’s innovative, freewheeling “modes of limited transposition.” Not a bad way to spend an hour on a Sunday afternoon.

My friend Sarah, a London-based professional saxophonist and trumpet player and advanced yoga enthusiast who joined me for the concert, made an interesting point afterwards. She said that like bell-ringing and singing, organ music opens up the heart chakra in the body. The news came as no surprise. Not only did I feel more awake and open during and after the performance, but I could also hear “eastern” ideas in this most “western” of music idioms, the church organ recital. This was obviously intended by the composer — ragas are mentioned in his program notes. Once again, I saw how music is one way of sampling the fundamental kinship between western and eastern spiritual traditions. As different as world theological traditions purport to be, Messiaen’s work demonstrates how they are grounded in the same roots.

This morning I’m thinking of Harold Pinter, the news of whose death on Wednesday December 24 I just learned having spent Christmas Day away from anything resembling a computer screen, iPhone or newspaper. The first image that comes to mind is that of the tree outside my office window. This tree is much larger than anything else in view. It’s many branches are crooked, but there are brilliant grass-green leaves on the end of each one, even though it’s the middle of winter. It’s also an out-of-place tree — one of the few on this very urban block in Oakland, California. It seems to blend in with the concrete and cars and street lamps, and yet it clearly stands out. If the tree disappeared tomorrow, I would lose the one aspect of the view from my window that rectifies the balance between nurture and nature, that beautifies the flawed.

Pinter always mocked the concreteness of life. His plays are like green shoots appearing through the cracks in a sidewalk. The tree is gone, but the branches are still there in the form of the playwright’s far-reaching influence — for instance, thousands of miles away from his London home, a group of playwrights in San Francisco created Pinteresque a few years ago. This medley of plays based on Pinter’s The Lover had its highs and lows. What stood out for me was the great passion that all these American dramatists shared for their muse. It was a true celebration not just of one play, but also of the writer’s famed taut style and seething sensibility.

I would have loved to have been in London to see Pinter perform his last stage role in Krapp’s Last Tape a couple of years ago. It was the perfect role for an old tree of an artist such as Pinter — Krapp is a man reduced to a gnarled husk above but whose roots spread deep and wide beneath.

Here’s the playlist from the holiday-themed classical music radio show I hosted on KALW 91.7 FM on Sunday. It’s heavily weighted in favor of choral and other vocal works, but, hey, I’m a sucka for singing and much of the holiday repertoire is written for voices:

Benjamin Britten – A Ceremony of Carols – Toronto Children’s Chorus

Olivier Messiaen – La Nativite Du Seigneur – Olivier Messiaen, organ

Traditional – “El Desembre Congelat” from Angels’ Glory – Kathleen Battle, soprano; Christopher Parkening, guitar

Marc-Antoine Charpentier – Messe de Minuit pour Noël – Aradia Ensemble

Heinrich Isaac – “Kyrie” from Missa Virgo Prudentissima – Artists’ Vocal Ensemble

Traditional – “Hubava Milka” from Wintersongs – Kitka

Truman Bullard – “Chanukah Suite” from Home for the Holidays – Eaken Piano Trio

Danny Elfman – “The Grand Finale” from Edward Scissorhands – Original Soundtrack recording featuring the California Paulist Choristers

Phil Kline – “Hallelujah!” from Messiah Remix – Phil Kline

Traditional – “Riu Riu Chiu” from Our Heart’s Joy – Chanticleer

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

It’s interesting to read James Surowiecki’s latest financial column in The New Yorker about the state of the newspaper business in the light of the current situation at SF Weekly, the publication for which I write a regular weekly column about theatre.

Two years ago at this time in December, the average SF Weekly was 104 pages long. This month, we’ve alternated between 72 and 80 pages (after having a couple of 64-page papers in November). Historically, January is a slow month for ad sales and the paper shrinks. The recession will likely magnify this seasonal trend. As a result, the powers that be have been forced to make some cuts to content, and, unsurprisingly, the Stage section is taking a big hit in the months ahead. The paper’s coverage of theatre will drop from three plays — my 1,000-word column plus two 200-word capsule reviews — to just my column. The publication will not be running capsules in January. The situation is likely to remain the same in February and March at least.

This is unhappy news for my great team of capsule reviewers at SF Weekly. I’m sad about it too, as making decisions about which shows to review among the hundreds to pick from each month has been hard enough in the past. Now the task is going to be even more difficult. Even more terrible though, is the impact of the falling coverage on the local theatre scene. Small companies in particular rely heavily on reviews not just for selling tickets but also for getting grants. In these tough economic times, the fall-off in media interest is particularly crippling.

Surowiecki doesn’t really provide any solutions to the problem in his column. But one part of the article in particular, about the ill effects of the impoverishment of content owing to reduced media ad sales, struck me as particularly poignant:

“Papers’ attempts to deal with the new environment by cutting costs haven’t helped: trimming staff and reducing coverage make newspapers less appealing to readers and advertisers. It may be no coincidence that papers that have avoided the steepest cutbacks, like the Wall Street Journal and USA Today, have done a better job of holding onto readers.”

For publications like SF Weekly which depend almost entirely on ad sales, the future is bleak. I’m lucky to have an independent outlet for my writing about theatre — this blog. And it’s great that arts organizations across the Bay Area are becoming increasingly open to coverage on the blogosphere especially from trusted sources with a strong track record and brand recognition such as former Oakland Tribune critic Chad Jones’ blog Theatre Dogs, Karen D’Souza’s blog at the San Jose Mercury News website and (hem, hem) my own effort here at lies like truth.

But because I don’t (yet) derive any income from blogging and don’t have a trust fund, my ability to cover lots of theatrical productions as a blogger is somewhat limited by the need to make a living.

As Surowiecki points out, the business model for the future of the media industry is still in the balance. I’m optimistic that coverage will bounce back — doubtless helmed by efforts on the Web. It’s just going to take a little while.