a poor player

Fredonia NY – If there is such a thing as overdosing on theatre, then I think that’s what is happening to me these past few weeks. What with the two-weekend run of Romeo and Juliet, reading other people’s blogs, chatting at the <100K project, seeing an assortment of acting juries from monologues to singing to dancing to scenework, and then going to another school’s theatre graduation and listening to all their theatrical and dancing achievements – and all this time trying to get ready for my first rehearsal for The Tempest which begins this coming Tuesday, I seem not to have the time to clear my head for one second about things theatrical. My cup not only runneth over, I can’t seem to shut the tap off.

How many people, I wonder, will read that and envy my position? It’s an embarrassment of riches. In these tough economic and artistic times, when so many people are crazy looking for work in the theatrical field, I list a whole smorgasbord of events and activities, and seem to be complaining about it.

The trouble is that it’s all a jumble. I can’t sort it out properly right at the moment. Part of it is fatigue, because all this is time-consuming and wears me out. Part of it is age, as I witness young people doing their work – sometimes poorly, sometimes well – and realizing all the roles I can’t play anymore. Part of it is the numbing routine of it all, each semester playing out like the last one before it, and there seems to be no end, no change in sight. And part of it remains joy, a joy so irrational and powerful that it actually physically hurts at times.

I begin to wonder where I find my catharsis in all this. That’s the missing element. For so many years theatre played that cathartic role for me, but when it consumes me to this level and will not let me escape, it provides no catharsis for me. It becomes problems to solve, critiques to expound, feedback to throw at hungry young souls whose artistic mouths are as  wide open as a baby bird’s in the nest. Curricula to write, issues to explore, ideas and theories to absorb. This need for catharsis is primal, but I wonder where the addict goes when even the largest doses of his or her drug no longer provides the cathartic high?  -twl

Dunkirk NY – The crush of production has left me with precious little time to add to this blog of late, so I thought I’d take the time this morning to add two items from my morning read.

The first is an op-ed piece in this morning’s NY Times which might go unread by many, but is I think significant. For me the significance lies in the premises presented about university education; namely, that we are producing a significant amount of unemployable people for an ancient and crumbling institution. The parallels to theatre and specifically to an MFA education should be apparent. The link is here:

End The University As We Know It

The second is the continuing dialog between Todd Olson and Mike Daisey. Many of you have probably already read it, I am sure, but just in case:

Todd and Mike Part 2

As Prologue for Romeo and Juliet

Dunkirk NY

“Birmingham Birmingham

Greatest city in Alabam

You can travel ‘cross this entire land

There ain’t no place like Birmingham”   -Randy Newman

Well, it’s back from the SETC Conference. With the change in time, I’ve actually lost two hours today; one from the change to Daylight Savings Time, and one from going from the Central back to the Eastern Time Zone. But I have to get this post up before I go into serious rehearsals for Romeo and Juliet starting tomorrow.

The Prof and I had a wonderful day yesterday getting our fill of downtown Birmingham. Actually, it began on Friday night when we went to the Five Point district to grab some Thai food. Five Points is a very nice entertainment district that has a number of restaurants, night life hot spots, coffeehouses, and panhandlers. Considering that it is in the neighborhood of the University of Alabama-Birmingham, no doubt there is a lot of college nightlife going on in the district. I was amazed, as Scott drove me back to my hotel, to find ourselves in a lot of traffic on the interstates. Things were very very busy.

Continue Reading »

Birmingham AL – The Prof and I finally met up face-to-face here in Birmingham AL. We delivered a joint session on re-inventing the theatre curriculum for small and mid-sized schools at the Southeast Theatre Conference. Scott was gracious enough to invite me in on this gig, and I took advantage of the offer. We pooled many of our ideas about re-structuring theatre curricula together into a joint panel, and I think it went well. Scott got about nine names for his <100K theatre project. There really was little resistance from the audience members. As Scott noted, they seemed to have the air of people who have been thinking the same things themselves.

Now here comes the rant.

I have not been to a theatre conference in a long time. At some point way back when in the dark ages I came to the conclusion that these types of conferences were only for people committed to the status quo. These are not the sort of things you attend if you want to have intelligent discussions about theatre. For the most part, everyone involved with the whole affair is really committed to the concept of spreading positive messages and positive experiences about theatre. There is absolutely no sense in these affairs that anyone connected with it really wants to think differently. In other words, my ideas for reform weren’t welcome to the party.

Fair enough, but at least at this point in time there are really no alternative conferences to go to. At places like SETC, NETC, and ATHE (Association for Theatre in Higher Education) the emphasis is 97% on “how to succeed in the theatre business by trying a little harder.” It’s self-perpetuating, narcissistic, and almost cult-like. Anybody interested in having an adult conversation about what might be wrong, what might need reform, etc., is faced with the reality that everyone else there has drunk the kool-aid of pre-professionalism. You might as well be talking to a wall.

I think the saddest experience of my day yesterday was attending the keynote address at which Beth Leavel spoke (or rather performed). A graduate of Meredith College and University of North Carolina-Greensboro, Ms. Leavel won the Tony Award for her performance in the title role of The Drowsy Chaperone. Her IBDB listing indicates she’s been in exactly 6 shows on Broadway since 1980. Almost 13 years of her career has been performing in 42nd St., the original and the revival. She was in the right place at the right time with the right show to win her Tony. She is funny, and she appears to have a very quick comic mind. She enjoys playing the comic diva. She had the assembled multitude of college theatre majors eating out of her hand.

But she had nothing serious to say, really. Neither did the  theatre majors. All the questions and all the talk was about how to succeed on Broadway and be like her. As I walked through the halls of the hotel complex during the afternoon I grew more and more sad watching all these young dressed-up kids with their audition numbers pinned to their chests waiting for their turn to show everyone what they could do and begin their climb up the great Broadway ladder. They know nothing else at all about theatre except this professional business model, and they have no sense of independent thought in terms of thinking about how to push back against it. They’re just buying it hook, line and sinker. And we, the educators, are tossing them the baited hook.

In a recent Washington Post article by Ron Charles (free registration to WP may be necessary to access the article online), the author laments the fact that young college students do not read any radical literature and are all fairly middle-of-the-rod to conservative. This is certainly true among theatre students. I do not know what we have to do to get our young people to conceive of theatre in a different way. Perhaps we cannot. It has led me to some despair over the past 24 hours. I want to follow this up a bit with some more thoughts, but for today I am going to check out the Civil Rights history that Birmingham has to offer. I think it will be far more inspiring than How To Create a Sure-Fire Resume.  -twl

Fredonia NY – This post by the inimitable Isaac Butler, a blogger of considerable skill, insight and passion, is one I read at an opportune moment. In essence, it’s a post about the critical mind. I found it timely because I have been concerned lately about my students’ inability to think critically about their artistic process as well as the products that they see. I would like to teach them how to be critical of their work and the work of their peers, but I am not exactly sure about how to go about it. I think it may be the case that Isaac’s lament is due in some measure to the fact that we, as teachers, do not teach our students very well about how to be constructive critics, and this lack of skill simply carries over into the professional arena.

The incident which caused me to wonder about this issue was a staged reading of a student play held here recently. Continue Reading »

Dunkirk NY – It isn’t often that I wrote two posts in a day – heck, sometimes I cannot even manage one post in a week. But this evening I began trying to catch up on the blogs I like to read, and I came upon some posts by Mike Daisey concerning the value of an MFA. Mr. Daisey was very generous to me in regards to my posts on why and what I teach, and for that I thank him. He’s clearly becoming more and more of a force for change in how theatre is created in this country, and from my point of view, it’s great just to have a performer and writer of his stature even think the debate on the state of educational theatre is one worth his time and his passion. As an educator, I sorely wish more theatre performers and designers would speak out on these education issues with a voice as strong as his, even if the voice is one of disagreement. All too often in my experience, educational theatre is dismissed as unimportant by the working artistic community; it’s something one gets over, like the flu. Thank you, Mr. Daisey, for lending your voice to this issue.

Let me say that I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Daisey’s point of view. Taken as a whole, MFA programs are by and large selling a false product. But rather than seeing this situation as deliberately fraudulent, I would prefer to cast this more in the light of understanding it as an “emperor’s new clothes” situation. It is not that universities are out there deliberately trying to defraud students of money (the “ponzi scheme” reference), but rather that they are simply refusing to acknowledge what’s right before their very eyes – that the system is stark naked of value or meaning. Mr. Daisey is merely the young child in the crowd pointing that fact out.

I have an MFA in Acting. I received it in 1982. As in my previous posts detailing why I teach and what I teach, I want to tell you why I got my MFA. The short version is that I studied for my MFA for one reason only – it is considered in academia a terminal degree and thus a major qualification for obtaining and retaining a teaching position at the college level. You cannot gain tenure without it or a PhD. Period. The long version follows after the break. Continue Reading »

Dunkirk NY – So in the last post, I tried to give people some ideas about why I teach and why I think teaching is important, both to me and to the theatre. Now let me try to articulate, if I can, some idea of what I teach. I think this is going to be a combination of some of the philosophical principles I adhere to when in the classroom, as well as some mention of general content.

1. The old cliché is “those who can’t do, teach.” I’d like to be able to say this is insulting, but because it’s such a generally ignorant statement I find it hard to believe that anyone who’d utter it would have the intelligence to know how to properly insult someone. At every level of every profession in this country there are those who are incompetent at their profession. But in the teaching profession, because the work done is so public and affects everyone who ever went to school, incompetence becomes magnified, while competence and excellence gets little recognition or reward. Continue Reading »

Dunkirk NY – There are times in my life when I feel depressed about conditions in academia. I become acutely depressed when I read items like this blog post by Mike Daisey, or this op-ed column in the NY Times by Stanley Fish. I become simultaneously defensive, offended, frightened, depressed, angry, dispirited, bemused, and a whole host of other emotions both positive and negative. When you’re an acting teacher, it becomes doubly difficult, because in an age which prizes utilitarian values more than any other, you are doubly dispensable: you’re not only a university professor, but you’re a university professor in the arts. Society at large has little value for you because you’re a teacher teaching a very non-utilitarian subject, and those active in the field in which you teach have no respect for you because you teach, and you don’t “do.” When I become overwhelmed with these feelings, I find that the only thing I really have to fall back on as a response are my own principles and reasons why I continue to do what I do. For what it’s worth, this is why I teach: Continue Reading »

Massapequa NY – I haven’t been thinking much in the theatrical vein lately. This winter intersession is typically a time where I can ease back and hibernate a bit. It’s also a time when I can get out to visit my parents, which is where I am at the moment. Although I had planned to sojourn into the city and perhaps see a show or two, other pressing family business came up and I am occupied with that.

It’s also a time where I get a little more introspective than usual. It’s a prelude to the coming semester as I try to figure out what needs to change and what does not. The problem, however, resides not in finding the right answers, but in finding and asking the right questions. This has become more and more difficult. Continue Reading »

Dunkirk NY – The weekend gave rise to a seized back. The pain was, at times, exquisite yesterday. Each little movement of the hand or arm produced a feeling of paralysis, as if I was never going to experience movement between my shoulder blades ever again. Two doses of prescription-strength ibupropen and a shower using all the hot water in the tank produced some small relief. Today brings a forced day off, but since it is finals week and I have no final to give today, nothing is amiss. The pain is not as great today, but still lingers.

The weather is also grey, gloomy and rainy – a rather typical Western New York winter day, actually. As I write this the temperature is beginning to drop, from a high of 52˚ this morning to the current 43˚. Darkness, of course, comes early now, with sunset (Ha!) scheduled for 4:45 this afternoon.

On top of this, more sobering news about the health of two colleagues: one with prostate cancer, one with colon cancer. Both of them have had their cancers caught early enough for good treatment via surgery, but it still brings one down to earth a bit, and suspicious of one’s own back pain.

All this amplifies the feelings within me that the world is growing far too large and complex for me to work well within it anymore, particularly theatrically. I am now beginning to feel this more and more acutely as I work with student actors. I finally have to acknowledge that there is a vast gap between how I view theatre and how my students view theatre. Whether this gap can ever be fully closed will be the question I will have to answer in the coming semester. Continue Reading »