a poor player

Fredonia NY – The following link is courtesy of The Onion, America’s Finest News Source. Presented without comment (although I think presenting it is comment enough).

8.4 Million New Yorkers Leave New York .

Dunkirk NY – I won’t lie to you – one of the best things about my job is the summer. But it’s not because I don’t have to go in to teach; it’s because I get to do different activities from my usual task of teaching. The pace is slower, to be sure, but it’s that lack of being “in charge,” whether in the classroom or at the administrative level, that I like. I keep working, but it’s in the doing of the different kinds of work that I find some enjoyment and fun. This summer included:

• Acting in Buffalo with Shakespeare in Delaware Park. Just did my role to the best of my ability. No other responsibilities.
• Summer orientation of incoming freshmen. Getting the newbies their classes and getting them over that first academic hurdle is satisfying. And fun. And the atmosphere is relaxed and easygoing. And I don’t have to make any decisions.
• Vacation to visit family.
• Cleaning out the office. Next step – hiring someone to make it look good. I have no skill in interior design.
• Mowing the lawn. Meditative.
• Sitting on the back porch. Contemplative.

But the summer has gone, and everything has already heated up back at school. Classes, auditions, projects; so many things hit all at once. University life is like that: it has a way of not being there, and then in one sudden onslaught, it’s back again.

Thus begins my 23rd year as an acting teacher in a small-town college. But there are many things brewing, and I think as I shake off the summer doldrums and get my head back into writing, this year the winds of summer will blow in some new and interesting developments. I am hoping that these developments will prove interesting as the year progresses.  -twl

Dunkirk NY – I have been up this evening preparing a number of items for the upcoming retreat for the department that I have scheduled for Wednesday 8/18. In the afternoon I plan to lead an open discussion on the topic Theatre Education and Training for the 21st Century. It’s designed to be a kick-off for some long-range planning, getting the faculty to think about the theatre curriculum as a whole as we come to grips with the shifting theatrical realities around us.

One of the items I’ve prepared is something I loosely called “Theatre Facts Today.” Essentially it’s a big list of data culled from the various reports that have been released over the past five years or so. Once I had compiled it, it seems like quite an interesting list, and I could not think of a place where all these facts had been collected in one location. So I thought I would post my list here and on TACT and share them with you for your inspection and reflection. I am making no attempt at analyzing all this data for the moment. I’m just putting it out there in one big list.

Sidenote – I recently had a discussion with a member of the chemistry department who is interested in getting more participation from the arts departments on campus for her Earth Day events in April. During the conversation I happened to bring up the notion that I had been looking at the data as a means of assessing theatre curricula and reforming its approach to training artists. She looked at me and said, “You are the first artist I have ever heard speak of using data to assess a condition.” Maybe I am on to something .

The following is nothing more than a listing of some facts that represent what is happening in the real world of theatre and dance today. These facts are presented as a jumping-off point and context for our discussion “Theatre Training and Education in the 21^st Century.” Continue Reading »

Dunkirk NY – Recently I received an iPad as a present from my wife honoring my promotion to Distinguished Teaching Professor. Considering that she is not technologically adept, this was a major achievement for her. I was quite taken aback. Of course I wanted one, but I was willing to wait for at least a year or more before purchasing one. I am trying very hard these days to cut down on my use of technology and gadgets. I believe I am at the point where I have enough gadgets and technology to suit all my purposes quite well.

Nevertheless, I have enjoyed exploring the iPad and suspect it will come in handy as a replacement for a lot of gadgets. I took it on my recent MA vacation and it did about 95% of all the things I usually do on a computer. Once iOS 4.0 comes out for it to add multitasking, it will prove to be a replacement for many things. I will be taking it to meetings to take notes as well as record meetings if necessary. I will be using the Shakespeare app as my textbook and reference in Shakespeare class. It’s my newspaper, encyclopedia, reference tool, translator, YouTube viewer, music player and ebook reader all rolled into one. My wife got the 3G version, so as long as I can get a decent AT&T signal, I can use it anywhere. And the data contract plan is $25 per month for 2GB of data – no long term contract. I pay for a month when I want it, and don’t pay when I don’t. That’s nice.

But through all this technological wizardry, I began to sense something was amiss, and it came into sharper focus as I began to search for usable and interesting apps. And here is what I discovered: of all the things the iPad wants to do for me, the single most important thing it wants to do is entertain me. It wants to play my music and have me buy more music, have me watch videos and movies, play games, read books, surf the web, and…that’s about it. Sure, I can do things like write notes, make Keynote presentations, balance my finances and what not, but those things are somewhat hard to do on this device. What’s easy to do is entertain myself.

I am really just guessing here, but as I browsed through the various apps available, it began to feel as if 90% of all the apps in The App Store were entertainment apps. Now, I am not a computer gamer. I do not like to play games on the computer, except perhaps chess, solitaire or some other game of that nature, but even those bore me quickly. I do not surf the web for videos, and I do not generally like to watch movies much. I watch very little television, not even HBO. Sometimes I like listening to music, but I find that at this stage of my life, an attentive silence to the world around me is far more pleasant and interesting. I like being present to what’s happening right around me, not trying to shut out the world by sticking ear buds in my ears.

Nor do I live in a big city where there is a lot to do. All the lifestyle apps are therefore useless to me. They do come in handy when I travel, and that’s why I have them there, but then again, I don’t travel all that often, so I seldom use them. I don’t need UrbanSpoon to give me options on where to eat in the Dunkirk/Fredonia area.

So what have I been doing with it if not entertaining myself? Well, reading my email. It’s a good email reader. I use a feed reader to glance through news, blogs, etc. (which, it can be argued, is a form of entertainment). I do surf the web, but mostly I read news and information sites. I check Facebook because I maintain a FB presence for my department (I was also doing Shakespeare in Delaware Park for a year, but that has recently passed to a full-time staffer in their main office). I use it to check CraigsList (a very superior app). And as mentioned, I will be taking it to meetings. I am also using it to read a book or two.

But all this makes me a minority user of the device. What’s apparent to me is that Apple is selling this device, not as a tool for gaining and organizing information, but rather as a device for entertaining yourself. It’s primarily a lifestyle device, not an information device. Look at the commericals that sell the device – they are all geared towards lifestyle and entertainment. You don’t see someone on those commericals writing an email or taking notes at a meeting or reading the Times. You see them looking up movie times and finding the best restaurants, or viewing the latest music video and then buying the music or streaming a movie. The whole message about this device that with it, you can have an endless source of entertainment, as well as a trendy lifestyle.

So my question is – what happens to theatre in 50 years when these devices – and those that will follow – become as ubiquitous as the telephone, radio, or television, all of which have about a 98% saturation point in today’s society? Will there be an app for that?  -twl

Dunkirk NY – It’s going to be a very nice day here in western NY. Temperatures will climb to the upper 70s, the sun is out, and the humidity is low. Last night I sat on my back porch, listened to the Yankees drop a game to Tampa Bay, played with a new stargazing app on my iPad, and then went to bed. It’s these kinds of situations that keep me from getting on my computer and writing on this blog. But hey, I don’t do this for a living, and I really don’t have any deadlines to meet, so I figure perhaps you don’t mind so much. Besides, at least in my neck of the woods, nothing much is happening.

Last week, though, while I was on vacation visiting family in Massachusetts, I did manage to squeeze in two days taking in the three Shakespeare offerings at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox MA. In fact, I got to do a fairly quick buzz around the Berkshires, from Lenox down to Stockbridge, then up to North Adams, across to Williamstown and back down through Pittsfield to Lenox. It was interesting. I liked Pittsfield the best, because it seemed to preserve most if its working-class history, and there was much more diversity visible in the community.

Having completed my own Shakespearian stint at my hometown Shakespeare Festival, it was quite interesting to compare the two and see what a difference money and location can make. When we talk about class, culture and the arts in this country, to me it becomes readily apparent that theatre has become the domain of the white and the wealthy. Comparing the way the two festivals go about producing Shakespeare, as well as looking at the eventual product, makes this pretty clear. Continue Reading »

Fredonia NY – From The Onion. No further comment needed.

Dunkirk, NY - Much Ado About Nothing has come to a conclusion, and right at the moment I am sitting in my backyard writing this post with my new iPad. My wife surprised me with this as a present for having attained “distinguished” status, and this week I am getting a chance to play around with it and see how it works. It is surprisingly good in terms of typing on the keyboard, and of course there will be a learning curve, but on the whole it is an interesting device that will no doubt take the place of one of my netbooks. I am forced in WordPress to use the HTML editor, as the visual editor probably has Flash elements to it, but that is no real hardship at the moment. Posts written on this device may end up being without pictures of any sort, but again, no real hardship.

But apart from the iPad itself, just the experience of sitting in the backyard doing what I choose to do is my central point. These next few days will entail undergoing some post-show decompression, but there is not really any depression that I can feel attached to ending the show. My body has been geared towards getting in the car in the late afternoon and driving up to Buffalo, and that physical state takes time to leave the system. But there is no real sadness to it; in fact, I am quite glad not to have to do a show. Continue Reading »

Dunkirk NY – This week has been a beautiful week weatherwise. The temperatures have been pleasantly warm by day and cool at night. It has made working at Shakespeare in Delaware Park very delightful. The numbers of people on the hill each night has been getting larger and larger, and it’s quite fun to see.

It’s also been the busiest week of the summer for me. This past week was the week that working summer orientation getting classes for incoming freshmen combined with working evenings at the park. I find this year I have not been as exhausted as I was last summer, and that has been a relief. I believe my protein shake regimen has made a significant difference, as well as the fact that Leonato is not as physical a role as Sebastian was last year. They have been pretty full, active days, however, and it’s fair to say I have been tired, but not so supremely exhausted that I cannot face the next day. Today is the last show of this week, as we do not perform on July 4th, so I have two days off from the show and only one orientation later in the week. Plenty of time to recover, and as this is the last week of the show it should not be as intense as this past week was.

The show itself has been pleasant to perform. One thing I am experiencing once again about working at the park is that it is about more than just the show. SDP is really a total experience, and in many ways the quality of the show is not the point at all. In this production of Much Ado the director has mixed popular tunes from the 40s into the fabric of the show, and so you have a pleasant little love comedy competently performed with the songs nicely sung. Mix that with a gentle summer evening, a picnic dinner and/or snacks, a bottle or two of wine, a park setting with a lake in the background, a beautiful sunset, and you have more than an evening at the theatre – you have an experience in which the show itself is only one of the many elements.

This is not to say that the show itself is not good; much of it is good. But it certainly does not break any significant artistic ground, and there is no attempt to do more with the show than it can handle. The comedy is there, along with the two or three dramatic scenes that comprise the heart of the Hero/Claudio subplot. Audiences are enjoying the show because it is entertaining, and the setting makes it all the more enjoyable. And that’s it.

Despite that, I find for myself personally that getting in the car, commuting the hour up there, doing the show, and commuting back home has that “been there done that” feel to it. I can’t call it an active dislike, and I think that if I lived ten minutes from the park I would feel completely different about the situation. But I have to say in all honestly that the idea of sitting on my back porch on these delightful evenings, sipping a beer or some lemonade, and listening to a ball game, sounds much more appealing. Right n0w I am in fact sitting on my back porch writing this while listening t0 the Yankees play the Blue Jays. That’s pleasant as well. I guess at the moment I should consider myself a very lucky guy, with so much pleasantry to choose from.  -twl

Dunkirk NY – Buffalo is really a pleasant city in a lot of ways. The summers are very pleasant, the city is relatively safe, it is very inexpensive to live there, and the arts community is alive and active. It has a strong work ethic, it’s very blue-collar at its core, and the residents are quite friendly for the most part.

But it is also a city with a history of corruption and cronyism. City government is a morasse of incompetency and favoritism, not to mention nepotism. Political loyalty and patronage rule the public service sector. In just about every city department you will find some level of corruption, great or small. And finally, although not surprisingly, it has hit the arts community.

Most of the story is in this article from the Buffalo News. You can follow some of the links in the comments section at the end of the article to get earlier news stories on this issue. In a nutshell, the former Executive Director of the Arts Council for Buffalo and Erie County plead guilty this past January to stealing $25,000 from the Arts Council accounts. Now, it seems, another $48,000 has gone missing, according to the Arts Council Board President. That money was the bulk of a New York State Arts Council grant designed to support arts groups around Western NY. According to a former staffer at the Arts Council of Bufalo, the group is about $300,000 in debt. As a result, it appears that by the end of the year there will be no Arts Council for Buffalo and Erie County in existence.

It’s just sad, that’s all. Many small arts groups in the city and in Erie County will suffer. I can only shake my head in disbelief and despair when I read stories like this. Buffalo is a city with so much potential, and for this to happen only means it will get another regional and national black eye. You expect corruption in the city’s public sector departments, and in the local labor unions. But in Buffalo, the sad truth is that even the arts groups are corrupt.  If this keeps up, the arts in Bufalo won’t be worth a plug nickel.  -twl

Dunkirk NY – I have now completed the re-construction of my blog, and thanks once again to Travis Bedard at Cambiare Productions, who sent me his Google feed so I could copy/paste all the lost posts. I could never have done this without his help. If in any way you’re as grateful as I am for Travis’ assistance, use the PayPal “Donate” button on the Cambiare Productions homepage. I’m sure they can use a few bucks.

My apologies to everyone who subscribes to my feed in a reader of any sort. You may notice that your reader is filled with these past feeds as I re-published each one. Hopefully it will not be too much of a problem to mark them all read or just delete them.

What I could not re-construct were the comments. Even if I could, I don’t think I would take the time to do so. Not that the comments weren’t appreciated or worthwhile, but it’s just too much tedious labor. So my apologies to former commentators. Please feel free to comment on my most recent posts. I also will no go back and sort by category or tag anything. Again, too labor-intensive and probably not worth the effort. If you need to find something, perhaps the search box at the top of the page can help you out.  -twl