a poor player

Dunkirk NY – There is really no other way to put it than this: I’m bored. De-motivated. Struggling to find some reason to move forward.

Perhaps it’s the winter. Perhaps my SAD is not fully under control. Perhaps I am not eating enough chocolate or getting enough exercise or drinking enough. Perhaps I am tired of looking at all my windows and realizing they are shut tight. Perhaps the lack of a full-functioning bathroom and having to shower in the basement for the last four weeks while waiting for the re-modeling to be finished is taking a toll. Perhaps it’s realizing I can’t find a pair of underwear without holes in it. I dislike shopping for clothes as it is.

It’s just that a series of events have taken place over the month of February, and those events seem to be nothing but acute reminders of how diffident I have been towards things lately. I went to see Avatar – the storyline was a re-hash of every hero myth I’ve ever seen, and I was rather indifferent to the computer animation. I went to see our department’s production of Electra last night – intellectually interesting but not much for the heart or the soul. The bathroom remodeling is my wife’s project, and I am pretty indifferent to it. It’s an improvement, to be sure, and the downstairs bathroom needed serious repair, but I just can’t get too excited about it. The Olympics – please. Every figure skater looks the same, and why is it that some kid who happens to be able to do twists and turns on a snowboard becomes such a cultural hero?

I spent some time and some political capital on my campus in a recent effort to create a College of Visual and Performing Arts. The result was favorable, and a new college will be created starting in the fall of 2012. But somehow, despite the fact that I believe this is a major achievement and the right move for our campus, I feel slightly disengaged about the upcoming process to create the organizational structure. It’s something I’ve been talking up since 2003, and now that it will happen, I almost don’t care. Almost.

Even in the world of theatre, I see so little that excites me. More British Shakespeare in New York leaves me cold. I just got cast as Leonato for the summer in Shakespeare in Delaware Park. I’ll be playing the role for the third time. Discussions in the world of the theatrosphere seem to solve very little, and the work of trying to change the theatre in the face of an uncaring and unresponsive culture seems to be fruitless. The Ohio Theatre closes, and who truly cares beyond a handful of devotees who probably loved the idea of the Ohio Theatre more than its actual existence?

And naturally, sometimes I just feel isolated. Living in a small city in upstate NY carries its own tribulations, especially in the winter. This past Wednesday there was a huge fire in downtown Dunkirk. The 101-year-old Masonic Temple Building went up flames. The building sits right in the center of the main block of the city, across from City Hall. The fire was spectacular, but depressing as well, as it’s another hit to the economic depression already afflicting the city.

When you consider the trials and tribulations that affect so many of my neighbors and this city, somehow the question of whether or not Sarah Ruhl is a good playwright loses its significance.

If there is anything that is of interest to me these days, it seems to be the people I meet who have absolutely nothing to do with theatre or academia. The man doing my bathroom is a great guy and wonderful to talk to. He knows so many local people that I feel jealous. I ate lunch yesterday with a complete stranger at a local diner and had an interesting conversation about next to nothing. He was just a plainspoken, friendly guy. I always have these wonderful little conversations with Angela,  the woman at the cash register in the student center where I get my bacon/egg/cheese sandwich some mornings. She talks about her vacation in Florida and how her husband is down there fixing up their small trailer, getting it ready for their retirement (retirement!). And Sue over in Cranston Dining Hall always asks about my son Eric, with whom she worked for a few months. They have their worries and concerns, I am sure, but at least they don’t appear to be trying to impress anyone.

I wish I knew how to create theatre for these people. I’m depressed that I don’t. They deserve better of me.  -twl

Dunkirk NY – The Denver Theatre Center has apparently decided to close its MFA Conservatory. The move was cited as a way to cut costs. Auditions that had been scheduled for the incoming fall 2010 class have been canceled. No announcement to this effect has yet been posted to its website, although the website does say that the deadline to apply has passed and all audition dates have passed.

The Denver Theatre Center Conservatory was one of the few places where all the MFA students attended at no charge and also received a stipend, costing the theatre about $100,000 per student in scholarships.

The Denver Post story is here.  -twl

Fredonia NY – They tell me that, when you are busy or in a dry spell on your blog, you have to keep it active somehow, and one of the best ways to do that is just refer your readers to other stuff to read. So OK then: Read this. And read this. And, because I believe in the rule of three, read this (as well as the rest of the series.)  -twl

Dunkirk NY – This is interesting. Perhaps Rocco is not so deaf after all. Money graph:

(Landesman) has just announced a new initiative that should alleviate the fear that this Yale School of Drama grad wants to give money only to fancy Manhattanites.

The just-announced Our Town program will use small, targeted grants to help arts organizations revitalize their communities. It draws on research showing that investments focused narrowly at the neighborhood level can produce social ties and a healthier local economy. In next year’s budget request, the agency asks for $5 million to start work in 35 or so locations around the country: developing arts districts, sponsoring festivals, and commissioning murals and sculptures. This ground-up, community-building approach seems like an arts-world translation of some distinctly Obama-ish values.

(h/t Community Arts Network API News)

Dunkirk NY – As a teacher of actors and acting, I always try to have an eye out for any information or statistics that will give my students a greater picture of what’s in store for them upon graduation. I do not like them to think about their careers in a vacuum, nor do I like to feed them myths or illusions about their chosen profession. Since I am of the firm belief that many theatre departments nationwide are training their students without regard for the realities of the profession and the changes that have occurred over the past 30 years, the more data I can accumulate to make my case, the better. Theatre education in this country needs change at every level, and it needs to change not only because we want to produce higher-quality theatre across a wider swath of this country, but because we need to provide career options beyond the standard “pre-professional training” model which is focused almost exclusively on finding success in the NYLACHI scene.

The indie scene has seen a great rise in visibility over the past five years or so, due primarily I believe to the rise of the internet, theatrical blogging, and the web presence of such sites as TimeOut NY and TheatreMania. I think it’s also becoming the place where most graduating seniors bent on heading to NYC to begin their rise to fame and fortune find their first taste of doing theatre in NYC. As such, it bears significant study and observation.

A recent demographic survey released on January 20th by the Innovative Theatre Foundation, which is the producer of the NY Innovative Theatre Awards, is a survey that I think has flown under the radar a little bit in terms of its information and what it has to say about the “average indie theatre person.” I think that’s important because the most immediate place in NYC that any young actor is going to find theatre work upon getting their BA/BFA is in the indie scene. The data is not only telling in terms of what it tells us about the profile of a typical indie actor, it also says something about the nature of what we are doing as educators. Let’s see if we can get some sort of profile of the “average indie actor” by looking at what the numbers actually mean. And for now I will stick with actors because that’s what I primarily do – train actors. So, if you’re an indie actor in New York City:

• You’re highly educated, female, and you’re white. 84% of all OOB actors have a college degree: 60% with a bachelors, 21% with a masters, 3% with a PhD. 77% are white. 5% are African-American, 4% Latino. 53% are female, 46% male.
• You’re young. 67% of all indie actors are between the ages of 21-40, a 19-year span. The highest age group is 26-30 year-olds at 24%. The average age is 36, the median is 33. There is an attrition rate of 50% from the 26-30 age group (24%) to the 36-40 age group (12%). All the percentages over 40 are in single digits. Only 20% of indie actors are between 40-55, a 15-year span.
• You’re single and childless. 51% of you are single, and 18% are living with a partner (not married). 92% of you have no children. I am assuming this 92% childlessness rate runs across all age groups.
• Your average income is between $30-50K annually. Your average annual salary is about $38, 209, which comes out to about $18.37/hour (as a reference, the contractor re-modeling my bathroom makes $35/hr). But you’re doing better that the median hourly wage of all actors in this country, which is $11.61 according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
• Before you get too excited about that, though, realize that you’re probably living in Manhattan (54%), where according to the Real Estate of New York’s rent survey for January 2010, the lowest rent for a non-doorman studio apartment is in Harlem at $1,312/month. In addition, your money is not being made through the theatre work you do – only 8% of the actors in this survey made all their money through their theatre work. 40% had a full-time job outside of theatre, and 31% had part-time work, for a 71% rate of employment outside theatre. Also, most actors indicated that acting was not the only thing they did as a theatre practitioner. 25% of you also do administrator/producer work, and another 22% also identify as directors. The survey is not clear about how much of the income that the 8% who make all their money through the theatre actually make it through acting alone, without income from these other theatrical identities.
• 48% of you managed to get into AEA, 45% did not. Union workers made an average of $32,092 per year (again, not strictly in the theatre), while non-union actors made $30, 786. So for the privilege of being a union member, you made $1,306 extra, which probably went to paying your union dues. Don’t spend that all in one place.

So, in summary, if you’re now in college studying as a theatre major at the graduate or undergraduate level planning to break into the theatre scene in NYC via the indie route, the statistics say that, for your educational and monetary investment, here’s what statistically you are/will become: a white, female, single, childless degree-holding actor holding down two or three jobs, and making $18.37 an hour at the career you educated and trained yourself for, all the while living in one of the most expensive geographic areas in the US. The stats also say that by 40 years old you will have left the indie scene at the very least; the odds are you will have moved on to something else entirely.

Is this what we really want to have happen to the human capital that makes up our richest resource for a vibrant theatre?  -twl

Fredonia NY – A man came to my door early this morning as I was having my breakfast. I don’t usually get early morning visitors, so I was taken a bit by surprise. I went to the door and saw it was a man with a shovel in his hand, wanting to clear my sidewalk and driveway of the inch or so of snow that had fallen since early morning.

I have a snow thrower. It cost about $550. My plan, as usual, was to run the snowthrower later this afternoon after all the snow had fallen. I pointed this out to the man. With a weak grin on his face, he said to me, “I see that,” and he waited.

He was perhaps in his mid-30s. His coat was worn but serviceable for the weather. His shovel was ancient, curled up at the very end. Nothing about him indicated he was homeless, an addict, or any sort of substance abuser. He seemed to be a man eager to work, but out of work. He was polite, softspoken, but behind his eyes was a look of need. We negotiated terms – $10 for the sidewalk and the driveway from the back of the car to the street. He went quickly to work.

The snow was not deep, so the work took little time; 15 minutes at most. I finished my breakfast. When he was done he came to the door, took the money, said thanks with a smile, and left, presumably on to find another sidewalk to shovel.

I remember when kids used to come around to do this job. They don’t anymore. Now it’s unemployed men. Maybe I paid for his breakfast, or for the one meal he would have today. Maybe I paid for his kid’s dinner. Maybe I made a contribution towards his rent. And maybe I paid for a six-pack. I didn’t ask. I didn’t care.

I presume I will see him for the rest of the winter when it snows. I presume I will still use the machine later tonight as the snow continues to pile up the rest of the day. Or maybe he will return later this evening for round 2. I have a feeling that I may be using my machine a bit less over the next few months. That’s all right with me.

There’s a play here to be written. It’s the story of two men: one with, and one without, who meet on a chance encounter. For one, the stakes are low; for the other, high. The snow is the catalyst that brings them together. They negotiate a re-distribution of wealth, of means. Where will this lead both of them? If you’re a playwright reading this blog, why not give it a shot?  -twl

Fredonia NY – Over the past eight days I have been involved in a discussion on my campus about the creation of a College of Visual and Performing Arts. It is something of a culmination of the work I’ve been doing as a blogger, trying to bring attention to the condition of theatre in non-urban areas, and highlight needed reform in how we train artists in this country. Scott Walters of Theatre Ideas is also a college professor, and he and I are joining forces to create a new blog called TACT, an acronym for Theatre Arts Curricular Transformation. We have resurrected some of our old posts from the past to being the process and intend to add new posts focusing on connecting the data and the disconnect we believe we see in theatre departments in relation to that data. We hope you’ll join us for a peek at the blog, and if you’re a theatre educator, spreading the word to your colleagues about its existence. Thanks.  -twl

Dunkirk NY – This evening, as I returned home from a disappointing meeting of my University Senate, during which a decision was made to continue discussing the issue of creating a College of Fine and Performing Arts, I happened to be listening in to the American Public Media show Marketplace. One of the segments on the show happened to be about a research study done on the topic of people’s perceptions of wealth distribution in this country. Here are the key points of the study:

• 20% of the nation’s population own 85% of its wealth (pre-recession figures).
• People polled in the research study underestimated how much of the wealth of this nation the 20% owned. They believed that 20% of the nation’s population owned only 68% of its wealth.
• When they were asked what they thought would be an equitable amount of wealth for this 20% to own, they said 33%. This figure cut across the political spectrum; Democrats and Republicans alike thought 20% of the population owning 33% of its wealth was OK.

Then later this evening, while desperately trying to catch up on blog reading, I read this article over at Leonard Jacob’s Clyde Fitch Report. Leonard spends some time trying to dismantle Scott Walter’s response to an essay at the Huffington Post by the Kennedy Center’s Michael Kaiser. The paragraph that got to me in Leonard’s post was the following:

And why is Walters’ argument always “either/or” — either New York or the rest of the nation? Why is it never “and” — New York and the rest of the nation? Why is it better to be a divider and not a uniter?

These two ideas – that of the notion of wealth distribution and the question of New York and/or the rest of the nation – seemed to connect in my head as I thought about them. If we substitute “theatre” for “wealth,” would this be a reasonable way to look at the issue?

Whenever I have spoken against the concentration of theatre in New York or other large cities, it is not because I have some ax to grind with them as such. New York is a community like any other community, and is entitled to the brand of theatre that suits it. But if one accepts the notion that wealth distribution skews opportunity in this country and puts all sorts of power into the hands of a few, it must be recognized that the concentration of theatrical wealth in the hands of a few has the same debilitating effect on theatre. And in our case, the theatrical wealth of this country – its people – is being squandered because so much of its potential goes untapped and wasted within the urban areas. Is it unreasonable to assume that 20% of the nation’s theatrical population, as represented by the major urban areas,  control 85% of its theatrical wealth? Certainly the numbers from Actors’ Equity in terms of work weeks indicates that a small percentage of union members make a substantial percentage of the total dollars earned in any given year. And perhaps, as in the perceptions people have of wealth distribution, the illusion is created that the 20% don’t own as much of the theatrical wealth as they really do.

If we are looking to find some way out of the gridlock, we might find it in the 20/33 percentage split: 20% of the nation’s urban centers control 33% of the nation’s theatrical capital. This is a model that gives the major urban areas their due, not only as artistic communities, but also as the national hubs and centers from which ideas, innovations and trends can flow. It acknowledges that richness is a benefit, that it can create opportunities for everyone, and that it can help to establish broad-based standards of quality and excellence. But it also acknowledges that theatrical capital cannot be so concentrated as to strangle opportunity, deny living wages to artists outside the urban areas, and starve regions from having the necessary capital to develop strong regional theatres (and by “regional” I mean “of the region,” not the current LORT model). If Leonard and others want to see the cacaphonized voices of the theatrosphere unite for the collective good, then perhaps a first step towards that must be a re-distribution of the theatrical wealth in this country to something fair, workable and equitable. Creating strong community-based regional theatre, where theatrical capital can be used effectively and not squandered,  is one way to do this. -twl