a poor player

Dunkirk NY - 

Regan – We shall further think of it.

Goneril – We must do something, and i’ th’ heat. King Lear, I.1

As a kid growing up I was enamored of the TV series Dragnet (the 1967-70 remake, not the 1951-59 original, thank you very much). Quietly and without much fuss at all (and, to my recollection, never firing a weapon), Sgt. Joe Friday of the LAPD went about meticulously gathering the facts and, in the end, solving the crime. His catch phrase “Just the facts, ma’am” (which he never actually said in the series; it was “All we want are the facts, ma’am”) always rang out when someone on the show became emotional or tried to drag in some useless information not related to the questions Joe was asking. The facts always solved the case.

I have always based my decisions in life on trying to acquire the facts. Information has always been valuable to me. Having as much information and as many facts as possible has always made decision-making a lot easier. That is not to say that every decision I have made was easy. When the facts told me that, in all likelihood, I was not going to be a major American actor, there were clear emotional consequences. There still are. But the facts told me it was time to make a change, and so off I went to grad school. Continue Reading »

"Fisherman and The Siren" - Knut Ekwall

Dunkirk NY – Over the past three days I have been in Houston, TX on something of a fund-raising event for the university. The “big idea” being discussed involves the participation of the Alley Theatre in Houston, and so this past Wednesday I got a tour of the facility and saw a production of Horton Foote’s Dividing The Estate. It was all very wonderful. And therein lies the rub.

The actual show itself is sort of besides the point. It was just being in the atmosphere of a working theatre that got to me. The Alley is probably an exception to the state of LORT theatre in the US at this point. It is financially sound, and embarking on an $80 million renovation of its facility. It is one of only three LORT theatres in the US that employs a resident ensemble of actors and designers. Some of the Alley’s resident actors have been there for 20+ years. They have an in-house scene shop, costume shop, props shop, etc. They have a 60+ year history. They produce 11 shows in 2 spaces. They do new work – two this season. They are, in many ways, exactly what the LORT theatre movement intended a regional theatre to be.

Of course, the demographic picture of the audience is the same as it is everywhere: upper middle class educated whites. That in and of itself is part of the rub. So is the $80 million campaign for a new space – can anyone else think of better uses for $80 million than a new theatre space for UMCEW theatregoers? But the real nub of the rub was its seductive attractiveness. At heart, the Alley represents and embodies everything I always dreamed theatre could be when I was a young, aspiring theatre artist. Continue Reading »

Dunkirk NY – I don’t generally write two posts in one day (hell, I don’t generally write twoposts in one week), but today happens to be a gorgeous day outside – perhaps one of the last of this summer/autumn season – and in watching the sun slowly set from my back porch, I have to admit I am overcome with a sense of endings. The summer warmth will soon end; the days grow shorter; the leaves change color and drop; the grass no longer grows; the baseball season ends. And inthe past couple of weeks in the acting classroom, it becomes more and more apparent that I am a person stuck in time and place, and in a sense dwindling like the last rays of light.

There are a few things about my circumstance that have been pulling me up short lately. I attended a meeting this past Friday, and in attendance were myself, the dean, the associate dean, the Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management, the Director of Admissions, the Director of the School of Music and his Associate Director. Everyone except the Associate Director was in a tie and jacket (he wore a good sweater and slacks). I arrived in cargo pants that are a little too short for me, sneakers, and a slightly oversized Fredonia sweatshirt. All the adults at the table looked like adults – except me. After a 30-year teaching career in higher education I still can’t dress like an adult. Continue Reading »

Dunkirk NY – In all this “Occupy This and That” fervor, I assume that one thing theatre people will not want to hear is any talk about Occupy Broadway. Given the logic of the Occupy Wall Street movement, it would seem to be a natural, as probably 1% of the people on Broadway control 99% of its income. Theatre in this country is as big a business as any other big business, such as a bank, and if theatre artists are going to think of occupying anything, why not Broadway?

Frank Bruni has this column in today’s New York TImes, and in it he chastises those Hollywood stars who have come out in support of the Occupy Wall Street participants in Zucotti Park. But he doesn’t go far enough – he merely suggests those stars named should just avoid being seen down on Wall Street lest they appear to be merely looking for a good photo or publicity op. So I will go further – if they want to do some good then they should get out in front of an “Occupy Broadway/Hollywood” movement that protests the incredible concentration of money, power and profits in the hands of a few and robs all Americans of their chance to enjoy and participate in the arts. Continue Reading »

Dunkirk NY – Substitute “actor” for “cartoonist.”

Dunkirk NY – The other day one of my former students posted new head shots on Facebook and was looking for feedback from her friends. Occasionally they ask for my feedback as well. Often I am reticent to give out feedback because I think I have no skill in this area. But in this case I looked at the pictures. I did not like any of them, and in fact thought most of them were very unflattering. I said so in my feedback. Turns out she was trying a certain “look”in order to play to her type in LA. So I wrote back that she probably knew the business better than me and if that’s what was playing out in LA to get her work, then ignore my comments.

But it was frustrating to me because I think she is so much better as an actor than that. She is smart, she has talent, she has remarkable access to her emotional life, and she has a great sense of humor. But to work in the business, she feels she has to get head shots that make her look like a gawky 17-year-old “quirky friend.”

Are we selling the next generation short? I think we spend so much time thinking about the business as a business that doing interesting, thoughtful theatre is almost an afterthought. There’s no place for her to grow her talent. So frustrating. -twl

Dunkirk NY – I can’t say I know too much about rejection. Having been gainfully employed in higher education for close to 30 years, my professional theatre endeavors have never been life or death for me. There have been roles or opportunities I’ve not gotten, to be sure, but not getting them has never meant I’ve not been able to eat. So no doubt I have very little right to talk about rejection and what it can mean.

But this post by the remarkable Kate Powers, as well as this one by the redoubtable Ann Sachs, left me scratching my head just a little bit. It’s not that I think they are wrong-headed about what they are saying about rejection. For Kate, it was very personal. For Ann, it seems to be a “business tip.” It’s just that my questions is – what, exactly, did you, or are you, asking for?  In both the posts, it seems to me that what was being asked for is some sort of entree into the world of professional theatre. I think, when one goes through rejection, one really has to ask the question, “Am I really asking for the right thing?”

The problem with developing all these coping strategies for rejection, in my opinion, is that oftentimes they have the effect of encouraging people to continue in the profession who should not do so. The dark side of the “coping with rejection” syndrome is that many times people do so by ignoring the reality that they do not possess the talent to be successful in achieving that dream. Additionally, since “the dream” of making a living in the professional theatre means making a necessity of rejection and, indeed, sometimes glorifying it as part of the dues one pays to gain that dream (along with other cliches such as living in garret apartments, eating ketchup sandwiches, endless waitering/waitressing, singing in the streets), people continue to pursue this goal at the expense of looking for success in other places, other cities, other professions, or even in themselves. They continually ask others to give them something that, with the same expense of energy, they could easily give themselves – without asking others. Continue Reading »

St. Paul, MN – These days, at almost every conference I attend, I seem inevitably to hit a wall. I get to a point where I believe I have heard enough, and things become repetitive. As I write this, I am sitting in the Macalester College library, having just had lunch, and having found no other interesting sessions to attend. The only session I attended today was not much like its description. It was run by a group of people who are trying to connect their various community projects together in some sort of collaboratory fashion, and then hopefully bring them and the ideas they have together. One woman, an economic geographer (her term), did hit the nail on the head, in that she advocated for using the resources within the community, not imposing ideas from without. Another commentor reminded people not to forget the rural areas, as all the projects presented were urban projects. Again, a good session in a way, because you got to hear what people were up to, but really no time for educating people interested in community arts to ask questions or gain information. Continue Reading »

Minneapolis, MN – So far the Imagining America Conference has been a mixed bag. This is a good conference in the sense that the people here are all in the effort to reform education, particularly in the arts and humanities, and move the focus from careerism to social justice, sustainability, and community-based foundations. It makes for a good collection of people. But I have found that occasionally they tend to talk about “community engagemment” as trying to impose their vision onto a particular community.

The organization has been around for 10 years or so, and I discovered it at a regional meeting in Syracuse NY last year. It’s definintely the place to be to gain ideas if you have any interest in gaining insights into how to re-shape your perspective on higher education. So here’s a brief run-down of each session I attended:

• Tertiary Artistic Training and the Public Practice of Art in the 21st Century. This one tackles the problem of continued training outside post-secondary institutions (“tertiary”) and participants reflected a bit on how they got into the idea of community arts and how they had to re-direct their training towards that. In this session was one of my former students who is now a second-year PhD candidate in Arts Education at Ohio State and very interested in community arts. She talked about how she experiences the disillusionment of pursuing a professional career and giving that up to focus on arts activism. Encouraging to hear. We were all asked to idetify a “burning question” we all had. I mentioned the issues identified by Scott Walters in terms of how we aquire funding and support for rural communities. This was mostly a sharing session with no real answers.

Continue Reading »

Minneapolis, MN – I am attending the Imagining America Conference being held in Minneapolis MN this weekend. It’s a new group of people I have found interested in moving academic towards a more civic-engaged approach to higher education, mostly in the arts and humanities. I have been tweeting from the conference from my Twitter account @apoorplayer and will be posting some more in-depth thoughts on the blog. The hashtag for my tweets is #IA2011 on Twitter. Hopefully you can follow along if you’re interested.